Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Legend

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Ridley Scott’s dark fairy tale “Legend,” starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara and Tim Curry. (originally published 8/30/2024)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. My name
is Joe McCormick. Today we're bringing you an older episode
of Weird House Cinema. This is the feature that we
did on Legend, directed by Ridley Scott, starring Tom Cruise,
MIAs Sarah, and Tim Curry. This originally published on August thirtieth,
twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And
today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking
about the nineteen eighty five Ridley Scott fantasy tale Legend
starring Tom Cruise, MIAs Sarah, and Tim Curry. I wanted
to start off just by because I mentioned it so
many times on the show that I love a good

(01:04):
synthetic forest set, like a you know, a fairytale woodland
built inside a sound stage. Legend is a kind of
heaven for me because it is there's more of that
in this movie than any other movie I can think of.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
Yeah, they built an enormous forest for this one inside
the double Low seven Stage at Pinewood Studios. That was
the studio that was built for nineteen seventy seven's The
Spy Who Loved Me, and interestingly enough, it burned down
shortly before filming could wrap on Legend, tragically killing the
last two living unicorns.

Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yeah, now, no, the unicorns are fine, but some of
their final scenes had to be filmed in an actual
outdoor location because of this. So if you're watching closely,
there may be some unicorn scenes here and there where
you're like, oh, that looks like maybe that's for real
outdoors instead of this lush and amazing indoor forest they built.

(02:00):
But they do a good job of making you not
necessarily focus.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
On the difference. I love that it goes back and
forth and you can't always tell if you're actually outside
or if this is an indoor forest.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Yeah. Like they just like they're like particles floating around
in the air. I'm not sure if it's like pollen
or fairy dust. I mean, it's just there's a lot
going on. It's a very rich visual texture.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
In my opinion, this is an almost perfect example of
a movie that has all the things it needs to
be absolutely wonderful, but it doesn't know exactly how to
use them to the greatest effect. So this this movie
has unbelievably gorgeous sets, some of the most amazing production

(02:47):
design of any movie I can think of ever. It
has stupendous makeup effects and costumes. Has a great cast,
especially in the sort of the down cheat character role
in the villain roles. It has some intriguing ideas and moments,
and some fun and funny dialogue in it. It's got

(03:08):
unicorns all the resources and technical skill that is needed
to make a best of the best fantasy adventure. And
yet somehow the movie always still feels like it kind
of doesn't come together right. Something kind of falls apart
at the core of it. It's like it's not organized
correctly toward a toward its storytelling purpose.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yeah, I know what you mean, and this is going
to be something we're going to discuss back and forth,
I think, the whole episode. But it's also I think
one of the reasons that I realized that the time
was right to discuss legend. We've been talking a lot
about alien and alien related content on the show, and
I was heavily tempted. And we may still come back
and do Alien at some point. But Alien is one

(03:51):
of those films, a Ridley Scott film that I mean,
it's it's basically perfect, like it like everything works in
that picture, and it's and it's fun to talk about
films we're passionate about and that you know, are so
great that you don't really have anything critical to say
about them. But I don't know, sometimes it's a little
more engaging maybe to get into something like this, a

(04:12):
film that is rougher around some of the edges in
some aspects of the production.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
I very much agree that Alien is basically perfect, but
Legend is different. This is not the only Ridley Scott
movie that could be described in this way as having
so many technical elements that are just at the peak
of excellence. You know, maybe has a kind of esthetic perfection,

(04:38):
but something just doesn't all work as a narrative. It
doesn't fit together in the right way. And I want
to be clear that nobody's going to tag me as
a Ridley hater, you know, as I already said, I
think Alien is basically perfect. I'm not one of those
people who thinks Blade Runner is overrated. Some people say
that now I don't agree. I think it is brilliant,

(04:59):
and I even personally find delight in some of Ridley
Scott's more arguably or some would even say objectively bad
films like Hannibal or Alien Covenant. I sort of think, well, yeah,
maybe they are bad, but I kind of like them anyway.
But apart from that, I think it's interesting that Scott
has made a number of these films that, at least

(05:20):
as I see it, pull together the best of the
best in terms of all the technical elements of filmmaking.
They look amazing, they sound amazing, they have beautiful and
interesting things to show you, but at the same time
they can end up feeling kind of disorganized, flabby, and
sometimes even irritating. Exercises in storytelling.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, yeah, I would broadly agree with all that, and
I think maybe a lot of it comes down to
the particular way that really Scott seems to command a picture,
because yeah, I think he's a tremendous visual director. His storyboards,
which are often called Ridley Grahams. I don't know if
he calls them Redly Grahams or people who work with
them call them Ridley Graams, but I'm not sure of

(06:00):
the term. But the Ridley Grams alone are always worth
a look because on one hand, they're just I mean,
they look you could say, here's a comic book past
the Ridley Grahams and you would buy it. Like they don't.
They don't feel as much like a rough sketch of
what is to be filmed as as some storyboards, do
you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (06:20):
And also it's it's provides a lot of insight into
how it all comes together, even though again they are
essentially blueprints of everything to come. It's where he takes
the screenplay written by others and projects them into a
more solidified visual form. And like you say, you know that.
On top of that, really Scott's going to bring in
just the absolute best behind the scenes crew and generally

(06:42):
just great casting choices as well to make it all
come alive. That being said, yeah, he is often criticized
for being inconsistent. And I guess one of the weird
things here is I'm, by by all means not a
Ridley Scott complete us. There are a bunch of Ridley
Scott films. I haven't seen many of these. Yeah, many
his historical pieces, for example, many of his dramas, even

(07:03):
some of the big dramas like Film and Luise. I
just haven't seen it and it's not on my immediate
to watch list. It's not something we could work into
Weird House, you know, But that one was critically acclaimed
and nominated for multiple awards. But yeah, for my money,
Alien and Blade Runner are all timer's. I personally loved
Prometheus and Alien Covenant, and really admired Covenant more. On

(07:26):
a recent rewatch, I realized that one's kind of divisive,
but it certainly has its fans, and I think its faults,
in my opinion, are trivial in the face of everything
it does.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
Right.

Speaker 3 (07:36):
Hannibal, that's another weird one to look at. Hannibal is
one I would almost consider doing for Weird House as well,
because I remember when the novel came out and it
was I thought it was kind of a mess and
kind of repellent, And if anything, the film improved matters
by cutting out some of the more lurid elements and

(07:57):
finding its own sort of strange, grotesque tale to tell
again with a stunning cast, great visuals and this kind
of like, you know, baroque awfulness that Scott does so well.
But yeah, that's one I probably need to rewatch, but
it's it's also not one I'm in a super hurry
to see again.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
I don't know. Ridley has a kind of magic that
even when he makes a movie that I'm not going
to go out and defend I don't think is a
great movie, I do want to keep looking at it.
Usually like I will come back to these movies.

Speaker 3 (08:28):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean Ridley is going to bring
you somewhere you haven't been before, and in all likelihood
no one else is going to bring you to, you know,
And I think that's one thing I really love about Covenant.
That's one thing that I even admire about Hannibal is
like there have even been other adaptations of the source
material for Hannibal, and that adaptation as well has its

(08:50):
own visual flare, but it's not quite the same.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
You know.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
There's just something about the Ridley is really Scott approach
to filmmaking that is just really going to sing.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
I'm curious about your own viewing history with Legend, because
mine is a bit confused. I'm going to say what
I think it was, but I'm not positive about this.
I think the order for me goes. I saw pieces
of this movie on TV growing up, so, you know,
running it. I don't know which cut they'd be airing

(09:20):
on TV. We'll have to talk about the multiple cuts
of the film. I'd guess probably the US theatrical cut,
but bits of it on TV where I was just
seeing like a big devil with gigantic horns that's very
striking and hard to forget Mia Sara wearing a kind
of like triangle shaped black dress with goth makeup on,

(09:40):
and seeing Tom Cruise's legs and thinking I didn't know
Tom Cruise was ever in a fantasy movie like this.
I'm not sure what's going on, but it just kind
of getting past me, you know. I'd see a little
bit here and there, and then at some point I
saw the film in full, and I don't know what
cut it was, but I remember thinking it was beautiful

(10:04):
and I was mighty impressed by it in some ways.
But I do kind of remember feeling tempted to fall
asleep at certain parts.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, I mean, there are plenty of stretches of this
film that are very hypnotic and also in places a
little slow. Especially. It depends on the cut of the film,
which we'll get into there. I think two major cuts
and probably four separate cuts you could point to. But
with me, it's possible I saw part of it on
TV at some point, or had seen a VHS box

(10:36):
for it certainly previously. But my clear memory was being
homesick from school one day and I had a couple
of movies rented movies to watch. One of them was
Highlander and the other was This wo And I do
remember from the moment the VHS type started playing the
film proper, I remember getting hit with that Tangerine dream score,

(10:59):
and then you know, the visuals began to kick in,
and I realized right away there was something special about
this one. You know, this was an enthralling, dark fantasy
world that I just hadn't seen anything like this on
the screen before. You know, like you look back to
this time period and like, what else, what else did

(11:19):
you have in nineteen eighty five that really, I mean,
that gave you live action fantasy at all, but much
much more, to the point, gave you live action fantasy
that was this dark in its texture, you know. I mean,
nowadays you can easily point to Peter Jackson's Lord of
the Rings films, which really get in there with all
the mor door stuff that works in the goblins and

(11:41):
deliver it to you know, in spades. But at the time,
like this was kind of this is as deep as
dark and dark as it got.

Speaker 1 (11:48):
Yeah, I guess you've got the different sort of sub
genres of fantasy. So like by the mid eighties you
had you had Conan type stuff which could be dark,
but was more I don't know, it was more gritty
and though it had magic in, it was more brutal
and realistic overall, and it was more pitched at a

(12:09):
I don't know if this is the right word, but
a mature audience. You know, it was the original Cone
and rated R. Surely not or was it?

Speaker 3 (12:16):
I believe it was an R.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Yeah, oh okay, I mean so just like very violent,
kind of gritty, barbarian fantasy, you had that kind of thing.
Of course, you had the more animated approach often to
high fantasy type stuff. But I think it's interesting that
Legend is is dark fantasy that shows you a lot
of scary, devilish kind of stuff, but at its core

(12:40):
it is a fairy tale. It's not a grim, gritty,
more kind of muscle and steel fantasy like the Conan movies.
It's a fairy tale with a broad fairy tale kind
of brushstroke to it, but it's also very dark.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
Yeah, and I think this is another thing that even
early on I realized there was kind of a disconnect
with because the visual style of Legend is insanely epic,
the actual story that it tells is maybe it. I mean,
it has high stakes, like you know, yea the world,
it's about saving the world, but in many other respects

(13:16):
it's less epic. The story is a little more simplified
and more I think, just sort of fairy tale in form.
So it's yeah, it's it feels it feels like the
visuals are like far out delivering the actual story.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Can I suggest I think a reason why it feels
less epic. I think it's because it's a fairly tight
character list, Like there are not we never see masses
of people or armies or anything like that in this movie.
It's actually quite intimate in terms of the characters. The
only regular people we ever meet in the movie is like,

(13:55):
is a single cottage full of peasants in the forest.
You know that MIAs Sarah's character goes to visit at
the beginning of the movie, And so there's no sense
at all of kind of the broader world of peoples
and armies clashing or anything like that. I mean, we
are too believe that somewhere out there there is a

(14:15):
castle where the king MIAs, Sarah's father lives and all that,
but we never see them. So the characters almost kind
of exist in this private, intimate kind of fantasy forest
dream world. And so though we know that the fate
of the entire world is at stake with what happens
to the unicorns in the movie, we never see mighty

(14:39):
forces coming together.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yeah. No, I think that's a solid red. Yeah, yeah,
because just looking at the picture, they're less than like,
less than twenty people in the whole world, but we
know that they're out there. There's supposed to be a castle,
there's supposed to be these more expansive civilizations, we assume.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Now, Rob, maybe this is a good place to address
the different cuts of the movie, because when you picked
Legend for the show and you told me we're going
to be watching the director's cut, which is not the
cut that has a Tangerine Dream score, I was quite
confused how you could make this selection. But this is
preferred by most fans of the movie. They're going to

(15:17):
say that the director's cut, which is a good bit
longer and has a traditional orchestrated Jerry Goldsmith's score instead
of the Tangerine Dream score, most people say this is
massively preferable to the US theatrical version.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Yeah, that's the vibe I've always gotten. And so I
felt like, well, if we're going to talk about Legend,
even though I'm all my nostalgia and my love is
built up around this theatrical cut, it's going to be
a little weird if we come in and then we're saying, well,
this movie has problems, and then people are going to say, well,
did you watch the director's cut, And we'll say no, no,
we just watched the one that we're familiar with. So

(15:54):
and you know, I want to thought, well, this is
a way to experience a film that I do have
nostalgia for and then I do admire in many ways,
it's experiencing it in a different light. So yeah, it
was like, let's do director's cut and then we can compare.

Speaker 1 (16:11):
To be clear, I still think the director's cut has problems.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
But yeah it does.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
I will say, on rewatching it, I was expecting, you know,
I sort of had this idea in my memory that
it was a very beautiful looking movie that had massive
narrative deficiencies. I don't know which cut it was I
saw in you know, the intervening years in between seeing
Bits on TV and this rewatch. It may have been theatrical,

(16:37):
may have been director's cut. I'm just not sure. But
I thought the film was not as bad as I
remembered in terms of putting together a cohesive narrative. I
still think it's flawed, but it's better than I would
have said. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:52):
Yeah, I'll get into some particular examples of ways that
I think that the director's cut improves upon the theatrical cut,
and I do want to also go ahead and throw
in here that I think there are maybe like four
different cuts total that have been out there and the
ecosystem of movie viewing. The director's cut, which came out
years later, decades later. I think there's the US theatrical cut,

(17:16):
there's the euro theatrical cut that I think is in
large part reflected in the director's cut, and then there's
apparently some sort of a TV cut out there that
I think was US theatrical cut with some extra added stuff.
Added in, you know, to fill out a certain run time,
that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
However, one other thing I want to say about the
different cuts is that I was not able. I didn't
have time to watch the US theatrical cut in full,
but I watched the full director's cut and then the
first I don't know ten minutes of the US theatrical cut.
And the difference is not just that there is more
stuff in the director's cut that was taken out for
the theatrical That is not the only difference. There is

(17:56):
a very different style and approach. For example, in the
opening scenes, the US theatrical cut just straight up shows
you the villain's face, which is delayed for a long time.
In the director's cut, there's a big build up. And
so I perceived the US theatrical version to be significantly

(18:16):
more clumsy and awkward in its edit from the very beginning,
even without talking about major differences in what material is there?

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah, yeah, Like it feels like the US theatrical cut
was very much an attempt to make everything tighter and
more exciting at the beginning, and like I guess, to
keep people from falling asleep or leaving the theater or something.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
But in doing so, Yeah, they make some choices like this, like,
let's go ahead and show them darkness in full, Let's
go ahead and show them the tree, Let's go ahead
and show them the hell kitchens. We're gonna go ahead
and roll out all of some of our at least
a glimpse of some of our big set pieces early on.
And they have this scrolling in on the screen. Yeah,
it really feels like the abstract from a peer reviewed

(19:05):
science paper, you know, where it just lays out all
the basics of the hypothesis, tells you what the experiments
were and the findings right up top. Whereas the director's
cut does not do this. The director's cut lets you
pick up on this or not pick up on it
on your own. But the yeah, the the US theatrical
cut basically force feeds it to you.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Now, on one hand, you can kind of understand the
impetus behind the theatrical cut, because you were saying they
were trying to make it tighter and more exciting right
at the beginning. I don't know if the director's cut
needed to be more exciting right at the beginning, but
I will say the first twenty or thirty minutes of
the director's cut. It happens at a very dreamy, lilting pace,

(19:51):
and that can feel particularly it can have a kind
of sedative effect, especially when you know Tom Cruise and
Mia Sarah are just kind of frolicking around in the
forest and you know, looking at the flowers and stuff.
I was feeling the call of sleep at those times.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Yeah. Again, it's very hypnotic and dream like as well
in these sequences, and be watching all unicorn run and
slow motion through an unreal forest. Yeah, I mean, you're
supposed to feel at peace at that point.

Speaker 1 (20:21):
I'm not knocking it too much. I'm just saying, like
I can understand somebody watching this and saying the first
third of it is slow, Like you've got to have
some patience to go with it at the beginning there.
But I agree that the way they tightened it in
the US version is not an improvement. Instead, it just
sort of like it kind of blows the air out

(20:41):
of the whole thing.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear a little
little trailer audio, not the full trailer, but just a
little of it to get a certain taste of it.

Speaker 4 (20:53):
There is a balance to the universe. The struggle to
maintain that balance is the stuff of legends. For there
can be no good without evil, no love without hate,

(21:13):
life needs death, innocence, please last. There can be no
heaven without hell. There's no light without.

Speaker 5 (21:28):
Meeting I am darkness.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
All right. If you want to go out and watch Legend, well,
you can stream, And I'm mostly speaking of the US
situation here. I'm not sure what availability is like in Europe, where,
of course there was a theatrical cut, but at least
here in the United States you can stream Legend in
a number of places. You can buy it rent it digitally,
but at least currently for the director's cut, you'll need

(22:12):
to hunt that up on disc. Fortunately, there's a great
Arrow Blu ray of the film that features both the
US theatrical cut and the director's cut, plus loads of extras.
This is the version that I rented for video.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
Dr Yeah, I watched the Arrow Blu ray and Robert,
I don't know if you had the same thought to me.
I was kind of surprised by how much grain it
still felt like there was in the film, Like it
seemed like something that would or could have been sharpened
up a good bit, but it wasn't, and I don't
know if that's for lack of effort or if that's

(22:45):
an intentional choice about this release.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah, I wouldn't sure about that either. I'm not tech
savvy enough on their whole remastering scenario. But certainly we've
seen some older films that have been remastered to like
just a level of perfection that that that certainly influences
your viewing of other films. You know, why why aren't
other films as flawless looking as this one? So I

(23:09):
don't know what exactly, you know, the choices or hurdles
were with this one, but there was more grain than
I expected, But still it did not get in the
way of appreciating these visuals in the long run.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
No, I almost wonder if it's a oh, I don't know,
kind of a film version of like t staining a
document to make it look ancient, you know, that if
maybe there was a concern that if it was sharpened
up too much, it wouldn't have the kind of the dreamy,
fairy tale effect that they were going for.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
I wonder if these you know, i'd have to go
back and rewatch, but I wonder if these were some
of the restored segments in the director's cut. I know,
sometimes there's a sourcing issue there and you have to
sort of make do with what you can get when
you're restoring sequences and scenes that were not used in
like the main cut.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Of the film. Possibly.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
All right, let's get into the people involved in this one,
starting at the top, of course, with Sir Ridley Scott
born nineteen thirty seven, highly successful and influential English filmmaker who,
at eighty six years old and turns eighty seven in
just a few months, shows no signs of slowing down
on his directing and producing. I mean, it's really quite uninspiring.

(24:31):
He worked on projects as a TV production designer from
nineteen sixty two through nineteen sixty five, and his first
directorial credit was a nineteen sixty five episode of a
police series in the UK called Z Cars.

Speaker 1 (24:45):
Sounds great. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:47):
His debut film was, of course, nineteen seventy sevens The Duelists,
starring Keith Carrodine, Harvey Kaiitel and Albert Finney, a serious
historical drama that is cited as a key inspiration on Highlander.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
I've wanted to see this for years, but I never have.

Speaker 3 (25:02):
Yeah, this one kind of ends up falling through the
cracks for me because it is it's a Ridley Scott
period piece. And I mean I have seen some of
his historical films. Of course, I've seen Gladiator, but I
don't know, They're just not the ones that I'm drawn
to as much. So he followed this up, of course,
in nineteen seventy nine with Alien and then in eighty
two with Blade Runner. He tackled some smaller projects during

(25:24):
that time, including the Apple Mac nineteen eighty four commercial,
and so already a really strong, genre heavy early career,
and then comes Legend, a fairy tale, a fantasy, and
this of course ends up proving a commercial failure upon release,
and from here we see Ridley Scott veer off into
historical crime and drama pictures. He doesn't return to science

(25:48):
fiction or fantasy for twenty seven years, returning to the
Alien franchise with Prometheus in twenty twelve, and then he
did twenty fifteen's The Martian, which it is quite good
as well, based on the novel, and then he did
twenty seventeen's Alien Covenant and two episodes of The Super Weird,
very original and criminally canceled Max series Raised by Wolves,

(26:12):
which he also produced. Now as a producer, he's also
had a hand in many other great films and series,
including including AMC's The Terror, which I really enjoyed. The
recent alien Romulus is of course a Scott free production,
and Academy Award nominations for Ridley Scott include nineteen ninety
two's Film and Louise, two thousand and ones Gladiator, two

(26:34):
thousand and two's Blackhawk Down, and twenty sixteen's The Martian.
I should note that Ridley Scott, as far as I
can tell, has never directed what you'd truly call a
kids movie or maybe even a family movie. This really
Legend from eighty five is really the best case you
can make for either category. But at the same time,

(26:54):
it is just way too dark, both visually and thematically
for children.

Speaker 1 (26:59):
Yeah, this is who this is one of those who
is this for movies? I mean, I don't have a
problem enjoying it, because I'm the kind of adult that
can enjoy a fairy tale, but it is clearly it's
a fairy tale which is going to make a lot
of adults think, oh, this movie is not meant for me.
And while the movie. It doesn't have a lot of
like explicit like sex or violence in it. It really

(27:24):
doesn't seem appropriate for kids because of the way that
it is. I don't know, it has kind of erotic undercurrents,
and it has a lot of very scary suggestions of violence,
even if you're not seeing explicit like blood and guts
on screen.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
Yeah, and also a subtext that I'll get back to
that seems to deal with with sin and shame. Yeah,
in ways that I just don't feel as fun for
you know, ten and twelve year.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Olds, right, So it's like it's a fairy tale but
not probably not appropriate for kids. So you're limiting your
audience here. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Now.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
The screenwriter on this one was William Hertzberg, who lived
nineteen forty one through twenty seventeen American writer, best known
for his work on this film, as well as as
his nineteen seventy eight horror novel Falling Angel that was
adapted into the nineteen eighty seven Alan Parker movie Angel Heart.
I did read this book ages ago, and I remember
liking it. I remember liking it more than I liked

(28:23):
the actual film, all right. Now, getting into the cast, Yes,
this is a Tom Cruise movie. But it's also not
a Tom Cruise movie in the sense that it from
the modern perspective of what you expect from a Tom
Cruise movie. It's not that it's something different, it's something
a little it's like proto Tom Cruise movie.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
This is from before Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise. I
mean he was a star at this time, I think
because he'd already been in risky business.

Speaker 3 (28:47):
Right, that's correct.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, Okay, so he was like a young actor who'd
been in at least one or two big movies, So
like he wasn't a nobody at the time, but he
also was not like the Hollywood juggernaut that we know today.
He was like a young, up and coming, good looking actor.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Yeah. I mean today, Tom Cruise is someone that is
known around the world. He's like one of, if not
the most bankable stars in Hollywood. You know, you put
him in Blockbusters, that's where he lives as his ecosystem,
and he's one of these people too that it's like
he's more industry than man. You almost don't think of
Tom Cruise as an individual, but he's like an industry

(29:26):
built around somebody that is almost as much myths as human,
if not more myth than human, at least from our perspective.
Outside of that.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
Yeah, speaking of built around, I mean now, I think
some of his movies they build around some stunts he
wants to do. He's like, so he'll be a producer
on the movie. He's like, here, I'm going to cling
to the side of an airplane or something. Write a
script around that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:49):
So Legend was only his seventh film role. His debut
part was in nineteen eighty one's Endless Love, and he
also had a supporting role in Taps the same year,
but two he had a starring role in the team
comedy Losing It, and nineteen eighty three was a real
breakout year with parts in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders

(30:09):
and the starring role in both Risky Business and the
football movie All the Right Moves. So the time was
right for Tom Cruise to do a genre film, but
not a B movie, you know, not a not a
B sci fi or horror movie on your Way Up,
but I know, a lavish, twenty five million dollar epic
that of course wouldn't quite break even at the box office.

(30:31):
So the next year he would go on to star
in the mega hit Top Gun, and I guess his
legacy was assured at that point. But then again, it's
kind of with Tom Cruise. It's easy to say that
because he has proven to have this real staying power
in Hollywood and has remained this juggernaut despite you know,
various things popping up that would you know, you might

(30:52):
expect to derail some careers, or certainly the occasional film
that doesn't deliver to the degree that producers would like.
For the most part, he has remained stable up there
and is still big business.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah, So from what I understand, apart from weird movie connoisseurs,
if you're just looking at it from the kind of
Hollywood business point of view, I think Legend would have
long been mainly regarded as a as an early misstep
in the career of Tom Cruise. You know, it's just
like a this was some weird, failed little movie that

(31:27):
Tom Cruise did early on that critics hated and audiences
hated too, and just didn't go anywhere. But then he
corrected course and was in Top Gun.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
Though it is kind of interesting that I don't think
he would come back to any genre pictures like this
for a while, though he would in time come back
and do you know at least some weirder and sci
fi type material, but still very much like blockbuster angled
material at the same time. But that was the case
with this film as well. This film was meant to
be a big success at the box office. That's why

(31:59):
they spent twenty five million dollars on it.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Wait, is this the first time we've talked about either
Tom Cruise or Ridley Scott on Weird House?

Speaker 3 (32:08):
The first time they've come up that we've looked at
something they were either involved with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so
they're both you know, huge mainstream successes. Though when Ridley
wants to go weird, he definitely I think goes weirder
than Tom Cruise goes weird.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah. Well, in terms of movie plots.

Speaker 3 (32:25):
Yes, And part of this too is like, what is
Tom Cruise's role in a picture? It is the leading man,
and it has always been the leading man with you know,
a few small caveats along the way, you know, you're
only going to go so weird in that kind of
role that Tom Cruise plays. Well, maybe there's an alternate
dimension where he ends up playing a bunch of villains
and it's really fascinating as well. I don't know, but anyway,

(32:48):
Cruise was twenty three at the time, and we should
acknowledge that he was, I think, by many estimates, dangerously hot.
I was looking around for some like outside the podcast
commentary on this, and I found some words from the
blogger Jin at ep bot dot com, who has a
post titled Legend, the thirty six year old movie that's

(33:09):
a love letter to Tom Cruise's thighs and other thoughts.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
I could not help but notice that the camera is
all up in Tom Cruise's upper thighs. Yes, it's uh yeah,
So they gave him a costume like once he gets
his armor on, it's basically like a short tunic. He
wears no pants most of the movie, and just yeah,
it's it's all up in his haunches.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
Here's here's a quote from that post by Jen at
epbot dot com. Tom Cruise was twenty two during filming,
and fresh off the set of Risky Business, the movie
that gave us the world famous underwear dance. Not to
be outdone, the producers of Legend decided Tom would not
only be pantiless the entire movie, he would also be
prohibited from walking upright for most of it.

Speaker 1 (33:56):
I noticed the same thing. He is like squatting or
crawling or on the ground in nearly every shot of
the movie.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
Yeah, and I guess part of this is that he
is kind of like a feral creature, you know, especially
early on, like he is a he's a boy of
the woods. He's kind of a Peter Pan. Yeah, he's
a little loopine, So I guess that's part of the
whole attraction here. I also want to note that this
is Cruz prebracest, So he doesn't have that perfect Hollywood

(34:28):
smile yet, but he has like he has a smile
befitting of a fair young man in a fantasy world,
which I think is perfect. He also has like a
bit of a unibrow going on, like not a full unibrow,
but like his brows are a little more connected, you know,
he's which again is also perfect for a fairal young

(34:48):
man running around the woods falling in love with princesses.

Speaker 1 (34:50):
I guess.

Speaker 3 (34:51):
So, speaking of that princess, the princess is of course
played by Mia Sara born in nineteen sixty seven. This
is Lily, and we talked about her previous on Weird
House Cinema because she was in nineteen ninety four's Time Cop.

Speaker 5 (35:03):
Ah.

Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yes, I was thinking, this is not our first Mia
Sarah film.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
Yeah, this was. This was her first film role, following
up just of one shot I think on TV's All
in the Family, Legend and Labyrinth were shooting next to
each other at the same time here, and the casts
and crew apparently frequently mingled, And this is where she
would meet her future husband Brian Henson.

Speaker 1 (35:23):
Oh, okay, but was she in Time Cop? Yes, she was.
So you can go back and check out our episode
on Time Cop if you want. Now. Is this also
our first Tim Curry movie on Weird House?

Speaker 3 (35:34):
This is the first time we have gotten to talk
about Tim Curry. There was a time when you were
out in Parental Leave and Annie Reese came on the
show and we talked about Congo, Oh my.

Speaker 1 (35:44):
Lord, where he plays her Kimerhamolka, the formerly of Romania,
traveling the world and doing good.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Yes, another great scene chewing performance, but not as the
primary antagonist, second or third level antagon.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
Tim Curry in Congo is one of the most hilarious
movie acting jobs I can think of ever. He is.
I love Tim Curry. He is just a delight every time.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
Yeah, he plays darkness in this Born nineteen forty six. Yeah,
just a true legend stage, screen and TV. He was,
of course doctor Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show
back in nineteen seventy five, and was in the original
stage version as well. He was Wadsworth in nineteen eighty
five's Clue. Other memorable films and Clue, Let's see There's Annie.

(36:32):
There's the nineteen ninety adaptation of it, in which he
played penny Wise, the dancing clown. And he's also done
a great deal of voice work over the years, I know,
outside of weird House cinema. You and I have also
discussed his triple role in the Tales from the Crypt
episode Death of Some Salesman.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Oh, where he terrorizes Ed Begley Junior. Right, Ed Begley Junior.
Is he's like some kind of corrupt salesman or something.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
Yeah, but yeah, obviously just a terrific all round performer.
Been in a share of more than his share of
bad movies as well, but some of the other like
credits worth noting nineteen ninety is The Hunt for the
Red October nineteen ninety two's fern Gully, ninety three's The
Three Musketeers, ninety four is The Shadow, and nineteen ninety
six is Muppet Treasure Island. But like, even if it's

(37:16):
a not a great film, you know that Tim Curry
is going to be amusing in it no matter what.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Now, this movie makes an interesting decision, which is a legend.
Takes a solid gold character actor with charm for Miles
and hides him behind forty seven pounds of makeup. He
is under so much makeup in this movie it is
hard to believe. And the makeup I think looks amazing.

(37:43):
But yeah, it's an interesting way to like there's a
trade off here, isn't there. It's almost like maybe they
did have to cast somebody with Tim Curry's you know,
kind of not just screen presence, but stage presence almost
like it's almost like it requires a type of stage
act to get through the makeup to the camera. Does
that make sense?

Speaker 3 (38:03):
Yeah? Absolutely. I think it is a huge testament to
both Curry and the effects crew that this works as
tremendously well as it does. That it doesn't feel like
you've buried Tim Curry and a bunch of prosthetics that
you know that it doesn't feel like you have something
that only works in close up shots or something like.

(38:25):
They managed to make this feel like a cohesive living
being as opposed to know what it could have been.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Of course, Tim Curry plays the main villain in the movie.
I don't know if we already said this, but he
is like the devil essentially, he's the lord of darkness
and he has I don't know how long do you
think his horns are. I mean, he's got so much
horn on his head it looks like his neck muscles
should be sore.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
It is. I mean, if you haven't seen it, do
look up at least images of this character, because it
is essentially an outrageous red devil men a tar that
it feels like it's about eight feet tall, not counting
the horns. So it is a bold design choice and
they manage to make it work.

Speaker 1 (39:16):
You know who else in this movie I feel like
really acts through heavy makeup and just shines right through
a character design is Alice Playton as blicks.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Yes, Oh my god, she's so good in this. She
lived nineteen forty seven through twenty eleven. Stage actor with
a lot of Broadway and off Broadway credit its TV
and film credits going back to sixty three, but she's
often best remembered for her voice because she has this
this kind of childlike voice that she can utilize, and
she can perfectly lean into really haunting an uncanny territory

(39:50):
with it. She voiced a demon in nineteen eighty two
Amityville to the Possession. She has also voice credits and
things like nineteen eighty one's Heavy Metal nineteen eighty six
is My Little Pony the movie. She was also in
twelve episodes of The Croft Super Show in seventy six.
But yeah, in this she plays the scheming goblin blicks

(40:10):
like just a perfect goblin that also has an outrageous
design in play, you know, with the long nose and
like elongated head, just so nasty, so vicious looking, and
she just shines here.

Speaker 1 (40:25):
Appears to be made of rot in a way, almost
kind of an undead looking sort of goblin, and also
speaks in rhyming couplets, which I love. I would say
that you know it's weird because we were saying. The
way in which this movie falls short, despite all of
its great elements, is in its cohesiveness as a story.

(40:50):
So you might think from that the script is weak,
but actually I think the moment to moment, line to line,
the script is pretty strong. Like the dialogue is good.
And so this character speaks in rhyming couplets that are
mostly I think, great rhyming couplets. They're very pleasing when so,
like when Blicks is looking down on Princess Lily, he says,

(41:11):
may be innocent, maybe sweet, ain't half as nice as
rotting meat, And Clayton really sells the couplets, like I
just believe that this is how Blix talks.

Speaker 3 (41:21):
Yes, and indeed like just such a goblin, like just
delights in grotesqueness and depravity but not but not within
like without any underlying argument for why that is the
superior choice. It's just that is just the texture of
Blix's life and Blix's values, and Blix is very vocal

(41:43):
about his his preferences here.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Now, interestingly enough, I mentioned that that Alice Clayton's voice
like it has this she can lean into these uncanny aspects,
but she can also get kind of like a childlike
voice going on as well. She actually dubs the character
Honeythorn Gump.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Oh picture, Okay, that makes sense. Honey Thorn Gump.

Speaker 3 (42:07):
Is our elf, our youthful elf guy who's helping out,
played physically here by David Bennett born nineteen sixty six,
a German actor at the time eighteen or nineteen years old,
but he looks younger, and yeah, we don't hear his
actual voice. I've read that producers thought he sounded too German,
which I'm kind of like, why did you cast a

(42:28):
German actor? Didn't want him to sound potentially German? But anyway,
Bennett is still really good in this is still a
very good physical performance even though we don't hear his voice,
and he's been working in German productions for ages, still
active now, started out at an early age. His other
like big international credit is probably nineteen seventy nine's The

(42:51):
ten Drum.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
I think the job they did dubbing him. I didn't
realize while I was watching that that was also Alice
Playton doing his voice. But I think the ubbing is fantastic.
It totally matches the pace of the character speaking, and
instead of feeling uncanny and unpleasant, as some post production

(43:13):
dubbing without live sound can be, instead it fits the
character the way that his voice doesn't feel like it's
coming like it's what should be coming out of his
mouth works and makes him feel more kind of magical.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Yeah, I would agree, I would agree. So, yeah, it
didn't throw me off. It's one of those things I
only picked up on much later reading about the production. Yeah,
all right, now, I want to probably try and speed
things along here a little bit, so I'm going to
spend less time than I should, perhaps on some of
the additional cast members. We have a number of various
Elvin folk that are involved in the plot. For instance,

(43:49):
they're Screwball, played by the tremendous Billy Bardi, who lived
nineteen twenty four to through the year two thousand, three
foot nine character actor who often played wise, cracking, little
person roles, but he instantly stands out in any ensemble
cast because he is at the heart just a tremendous
character actor. His uncredited work goes back to I believe

(44:10):
nineteen thirty and apparently includes a very small part as
the baby in nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein. So
one of those early scenes with the little miniature people
in the vials.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Wow, I didn't realize that so.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Many credits to Billy Bardy, but they include the likes
of Roger Corman's The Undead in nineteen fifty seven, nineteen
eighty seven's Masters of the Universe film. He has a
memorable role in that. He's in eighty eight Willow, but
he also did some voice acting as well, like nineteen
nine he's the rescuers down under. All right, some of
the other folks here. We have Brown Tom, who I
guess is kind of a leprechaun. He's part of the

(44:44):
good guy Elvin Krk here. He's played by Cork Hubert,
who lived nineteen fifty two through two thousand and three.
A four foot eleven actor. His other credits include eighty
one's cave Man under the Rainbow from eighty one and
nineteen eighty nine sent Bat of the Seven Seas.

Speaker 1 (45:00):
He has a real dad joke moment in the movie
that I think works pretty well. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
There's also there's a scene where he thinks he's been shot.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
That's what I'm talking about.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. That's great. Okay, all right,
we have Pox. Pox is a pig demon and somewhere
underneath all of the prosthetics for this role there is
a man by the name of Peter O'Farrell. I couldn't
find any additional information about this actor in terms of
his you know, when he was born and so forth.
But his other credits include nineteen eighty has Hawk the Slayer,

(45:32):
nineteen eighty five Santa Claus, and he has a role
in two thousand and two is Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets. All right, we also have Blunder. We'll
get into Blunder in a bit. He's kind of he's
one faction then another. But he's played by Kieran Shaw
born nineteen fifty six, a four foot one and a
half tall actor who is Elijah Woods scale double in

(45:55):
all three Lord of the Rings films. His other credits
include two thousand and five's The Chronicles of Narnia, Star
Wars Productions, The Dark Crystal and Raiders of the Last Art.
We also have a fairy Una played by Annabelle Lanyon
born nineteen sixty British actress who has worked a lot
in TV. She's temperamental tinker Bell.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
She doesn't want you don't get to know about what
her powers are. That's that's for her to decide.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
Yes, Oh, and then we've talked about this. This is
a character that it comes up every now and then
on the show pretty much anytime we're talking about hags,
because oh we have such a hag in legend. The
character is Meg Mucklebones and the actor underneath there, and
also I think doing a great job shining through and

(46:39):
making this a living being is Robert Picardo really? Yeah? Yeah,
we talked about him previously in our episode on Joe
Dante's Grimlins too, because he's like the he's like one
of the executives there that ends up marrying the lady Grimlin.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Right, Oh, yes, that's right, Yes, what a what a
beautiful marriage? Yes? But he what is he? Is he
like a coach on The Wonder Years, Jim Teacher or something?

Speaker 3 (47:07):
Yeah, yeah, some sort of role like that. I wonder
he's been a while since seeing that he was on
China Beach, But most I think people would know him
from like Star Trek Voyager. He's like the hologram guy
on there. But his other film credits include eighty one's
The Howling, eighty seven's Inner Space. Oh, he's Johnny cab
in nineteen ninety's Total Recall, And he also has a
role in the twenty sixteen Coen Brothers film Hail Caesar.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
The Door Opened. You got in.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Richard O'Brien what was apparently considered for this role, and
that's what led them to realizing that Curry would be
perfect for darkness.

Speaker 1 (47:39):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
All right, some behind the scenes people worth noting here.
Production design Hashton Gordon, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty fourteen,
worked on such films as nineteen sixty six Is a
Blow Up, nineteen seventy one's Get Carter in two thousands,
Shadow of the Vampire. The director of photography was Alex Thompson,
who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and seven.
Regular camera operator for Nicholas Rogue in the nineteen sixty

(48:00):
before becoming a director of photography in nineteen sixty eight.
Nominated for an oscar for his work on the nineteen
eighty two John Borman epic ex Caliber, which I think
that shows there's definitely some great scenes in this with
the lighting and shiny armor that made me think about Excalibur.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah. You've mentioned Excalibur before as a movie that is gleaming, yes,
and yeah, we have some gleaming armor in this one
as well.

Speaker 3 (48:26):
Thompson's other cinematography credits include Doctor Fibes Rises Again, which
we've talked about on the show Deathline from the same
year in nineteen seventy two, Michael Man's The Keep from
eighty three, Electric Dreams in eighty four, Labyrinth in nineteen
eighty six, which is like right next door, So I
guess he's just walking back and forth Leviathan in eighty nine,
Alien three and ninety two, Demolition Man in ninety three,

(48:47):
and Hamlet in nineteen ninety six. Who you called this
one out, Joe? What credit stood up to you?

Speaker 1 (48:56):
It's just because I saw it in the credits as
it was rolling by. So we have somebody named Vic
Armstrong as he was given two titles. I don't remember
what the first one was, but the second one was
Unicorn Master.

Speaker 3 (49:09):
Yes, yeah, it's not often you have a Unicorn Master
on set, but yeah, that's Vick Armstrong. He was also
the stunt coordinator born nineteen forty six, Very Prolific. Guinness
Book of World Records has listed him as the most
prolific like stunt coordinator, but his earliest role is apparently
an uncredited Ninja extra part in nineteen sixty seven's You

(49:30):
Only Live Twice.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
Oh, recently came up in our Ninja episodes.

Speaker 3 (49:34):
Yep, he's still working well. The costumes in this are
pretty great. Costume designer and this was Charles Node. He
lived nineteen forty two through twenty twenty three, English costume
designer whose work includes nineteen seventy nine's Life of Brian,
the Munty Python film, Blade Runner fourteen ninety two, The
Conquest of Paradise, another Ridley Scott film. Oh, and then

(49:55):
Braveheart from ninety five.

Speaker 1 (49:57):
Costumes are great, you could mention a number of them.
Mia Sarah's goth gown is just the triangular color hood thing.
I don't know what that is, but it's great.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
Yes, Yeah, and then everything that Jack is wearing, from
his the rags that he's wearing initially like the feral rags,
to the like gleaming Elven armor that he dons for
the main adventure portion of the picture. Yeah, but then
again we have to come back to the special effects
makeup and the special effects makeup lead on this was

(50:30):
Rob Botein, who've talked about on the show before. The
Rob Botin crew as well various people working with and
for him on this. He was born nineteen fifty nine,
special makeup practical effects wizard who worked on such films
as Squirm in seventy six, Star Wars in seventy seven,
The Howling The Thing from eighty two, the John Carpenter

(50:51):
version Robocot from eighty seven. I think we talked about
him in that one as well. Total Recall from nineteen ninety.
Just capable of such phenomenally nasty, fleshy work. And you know,
it's hard to imagine this picture with anyone else. It
would be a different picture if anyone else had done
the makeup effects.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
Now, wait, so Robert Piccardo played the Johnny Cab. Did
Rob Bottin make the Johnny Cab in Total Recall?

Speaker 3 (51:19):
Oh, that's a good question. I don't know for certain
on that, because I mean, we know for certain some
of the things that Rob Botein was doing on Total Recall,
you know, but I'm not sure about Johnny Cab. But
I guess it very likely.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
How to split my time between a quatto and a
Johnny Cab?

Speaker 3 (51:37):
Yeah, yeah, he was definitely on quata duty, all right. Now,
coming to the music, this film Fade famously features those
two separate scores. There's the original Jerry Goldsmith's score, and
this is the one that is used in the original
euro theatrical release of the picture. But then for the
US theatrical release, they brought in Tangerine Dream to do

(51:59):
a new score for the film. Now, I, of course,
is what we've been saying. Grew up on the Tangerine
Dream score, and I think it's absolutely excellent. I listened
to it a couple of times through while working on
notes for this episode. It really connected with me when
I was younger, and there are a few things that
I love more today as an adult than a really
good Tangerine Dream motion picture score, So this one, in

(52:23):
my opinion, They instantly elevate anything they touch, so it
was hard for me to set that aside and watch
a full cut of the picture, an even longer cut
of the picture that has this score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Jerry Goldsmith lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and four.
Multiple Academy Award winner, responsible for the scores of seventy
sevens to Omen Alien, nineteen eighties Star Trek, the Motion Picture,

(52:44):
and many more. Obviously, Jerry Goldsmith is no slouch. This
is his score for Legend is terrific. There are times
where it is maybe more is certainly more mainstream, more
swashbucklery in its scope, maybe by some estimates, a little
hammy in an intentional way, but it's also just really

(53:05):
great in moments as well, like the whole section we'll
get into with the Hell Kitchen. Jerry Goldsmith's score here
is tremendous.

Speaker 1 (53:12):
Yeah, it's a very traditional score you would expect with
the fantasy movie and it delivers on that front. But yeah,
as I said earlier, Rob, I know your love for
Tangerine Dream, for electronic music generally, but especially Tangerine Dream,
goes so deep. That is why I was shocked that
you would have us watch the director's cut. But what's
the main difference in the sonic texture here? What does

(53:35):
the Tangerine Dream score sound like in the US cut?

Speaker 3 (53:38):
Oh? I mean the Tangerine Dream cut is, of course
it's electronic, it's very synth heavy, but it also has
this kind of ethereal otherworldly vibe to it, you know,
and that I think is typified by that opening bit
of music that plays in the US theatrical cut, where
it's like a strange Elven synth flute playing to you,

(54:00):
you know, across the dimensional barrier. Tangerine Dream is, of
course a German electronic act founded by the late Edgar Frosie,
who lived nineteen forty four through twenty fifteen. There have
been numerous lineups over time, but he was the only
consistent member of the group at the time of this score.

(54:21):
I believe Christopher Frank and Johannes Schmoling were also in
the group. The band Tangerine Dream is still around. They
still record and tour, but it is a younger lineup,
so none of the original members. And I could be
wrong in this, but I don't think any of the
current members were alive when the band was initially formed.

(54:42):
But you know, I haven't seen them. I assume they're
still great, but it is not the original members all right. Finally,
of note, we also have two different vocal tracks on
the US release, We have Loved by the Sun, a
Tangerine Dream track with vocals by John Am, former lead
singer of the band. Yes, this one plays towards the

(55:04):
end of the very end of the picture. I don't
hate it, but it's far outclassed I think by the
end credits song, which is Brian Fairies. Is your love
strong Enough?

Speaker 1 (55:14):
I was trying to describe this one, and it's like,
it's such a mood. It is soft, smooth, neon waves
of emotion.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a great vibe. You got
you got Fairy in his vocals, of course is the
was the front man of Roxy Music. Ridley Scott co
directed one of their music videos in eighty two and
then on guitars. For this track we have David Gilmour
of Pink Floyd. So great track, I think, a great
way to end the picture. I think is one that

(55:43):
I overlooked this when I was a kid. I was
like I had some sort of cheesy pop song. But
now now I'm like, this song is amazing and it
should be it should be heard.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
You ready to go to the plot, Let's do it.
So note as we get into the plot that I'm
going to be talking about this from the point of
view of having watched the director's cut most recently so
in this version, the plot begins with a character we
do not see or only see from behind, in a
high backed chair like doctor Claw. This is the Lord

(56:19):
of Darkness, and he is in a shadowy hall within
a stonework palace illuminated by fire, with fog flowing across
the floor, and we hear his voice. It's deep and complex.
It's almost like it was kind of made of multiple voices,
or maybe it contains its own echo, and Darkness says,

(56:39):
I am the Lord of Darkness. I require the solace
of the shadows and the dark of the night. Sunshine
is my destroyer. All this shall change tonight, the sun
sets forever, there shall never be another dawn. So we
learn that the Lord of Darkness has a place he

(57:01):
wants to forever, destroy the sunshine and rule over a
frozen kingdom of eternal midnight. And he calls forth his
most loyal, infernal servant, a foul, fetid goblin named Blicks,
and Darkness says that he senses the presence of an
enemy in the forest outside, an enemy that mercifully he

(57:22):
had almost forgotten the existence of. But now it's sort
of resurging in his mind. It's out there. It's a
power that threatens him. What power could that be? Well,
Darkness says, looking upon these frail creatures, one would not
think they could contain such power. One could rule the
universe with it. And then he tells Blicks, you must

(57:43):
find them for me and destroy them. Blicks asks what
these creatures look like? And Darkness gets very angry, says
you fool, and he stabs a piece of silverware into
Blicks's head, or it might be a dagger or something.
So the answer is they look like this. They've got
a single spike growing out of their heads, like an
antenna reaching up to heaven. Now, Blix is like, okay,

(58:08):
single horn on the head, intenna reaching to heaven. Got it.
I will destroy them. And but wait a minute, how
am I going to find these creatures? And here Darkness says,
you know, there's only one lure for such disgusting goodness,
one bait that never fails. Blick says, what's the bait?
And Darkness says, in no sense, in no sense, I

(58:32):
can't quite capture Tim Curry's delivery there, but it is
the best.

Speaker 3 (58:36):
This is This is a great scene. Pretty much any
interaction between Blicks and Darkness is golden, and I wish
we had more of it, because yeah, Darkness is of
course just absolute, over the top dramatic evil, and Blicks
is of course also extremely evil, but in a more

(58:58):
sniveling way. But also you know, like he like, clearly
Blicks can and will betray darkness at any moment, but
he also knows he could be destroyed at any moment
by darkness, so he's yeah, I love this line where
he's like, what be the bab Please you teach you
teach me, you know, and oh it's so good.

Speaker 1 (59:16):
Yeah. Blix is your classic subordinate villain, who is who
is haughty and abusive when he is out on his
own with his own subordinates, but then very servile when
in the presence of his of his infernal lord.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
Yeah, it's it's tremendous, great vocal performance, great physical performance,
shining through the makeup.

Speaker 1 (59:36):
It's a bummer that Blicks and the other goblins just
disappear at some point in the movie, like somewhere in
the second act. They never show up again.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
Yeah, I think I read that at some point it
was they'd written it so that they would come back
in for the final showdown, you know, which would make sense, right,
because there's especially Blicks is such a great character, This
is such a great secondary villain. It's weird that he
just like retires or something.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Yeah, So Blick's goes out hunting the in no sense
with a couple of other goblins. One of them is
a bipedal hog named Pox, and the other is a
goblin whose face we do not see. This goblin is
named Blunder and he wears a cage visored bucket helmet
with horns.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Yeah, he kind of looks like he could have wandered
out a labyrinth down down the studio road there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:27):
Yeah, so next we're gonna meet our main characters, Lily
and Jack. Lily is a princess, but we learn that
she does not want to be cooped up in the
stuffy castle with her servants and her glittering treasures. She
wants to wander free in the countryside and roam through
the forest. She hangs out with peasants in their cottages,

(01:00:48):
and especially she wants to meet up with Jack, and
she I think she's talking to well, I don't remember
if she's talking to one of her peasant friends or
to Jack when she says this, But she says, this
place holds more magic for me than any palace in
the world.

Speaker 3 (01:01:03):
So Lily is, of course the embodiment of purity and
innocence here, but there is something more, and it's kind
of underscored at this point in the picture, especially I
imagine more so in the in the US theatrical cut.
But I think her privilege is also really key to
her character, because you know, who would deny you anything, princess?

(01:01:24):
You know, you know, she's really sweet and she's innocent,
but she does feel like she has the right to
everything in the world, be it walking into a peasant's
house and observing their life and feeling to some level
like she gets to be a part of it, or
as we'll see in a bit, that she should be
able to walk right up to a unicorn and touch it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Yeah. The other side of innocence is naivety, and so
she does not realize the consequences of her actions and
maybe doesn't even consider them.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
Yeah, she doesn't understand that there are things in the
world that are not meant for her.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
Yeah. Now, the other character or is Jack, played by
Tom Cruise and Jack, I'm not sure exactly what he
is in the movie. I see if you agree with this, Rob,
I think the layout is that he is biologically a
regular human, so he's not a fairy or an elf
or any of the other types of hidden folk that

(01:02:19):
we meet in the story, but he does not seem
to be a part of human society and seems to
live alone in a in a kind of ageless and
carefree communion with the forest. He's almost a hot raticas.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Yeah, I think I think hot ratagas is a good
way of putting it. I also was thinking of him
as sort of a fairal Peter Pan, you know. So
he also has more than his share of innocence. He's
very connected with nature, very connected to the forces of
light in the fairy Folk, but this is underscored a
bit as well. But he's also lusty, granted in a

(01:02:57):
way that I think we're to understand is a largely
in a largely innocent way part of his youthfulness. And
it's not like he's manipulating Lily or anything like that.
But his desire is obvious as well, so you know,
it's like that's kind of that's we're setting that up
to be his sin here. And I mentioned this because
the plot, especially in the in the director's cut, is

(01:03:18):
very concerned with the interconnectedness of light and darkness, as
well as feelings of shame and are two protagonists. Though
it feels rather lily heavy in that regard, which I guess,
you know, kind of matches up the basic story of
Adam and Eden, where it's you know, far more shame
is placed on the female in the scenario, when really
it takes two people to touch sacred fruit.

Speaker 1 (01:03:39):
Yeah. So Jack and Lily they meet together in the
forest to frolic about, and eventually Jack takes Lily to
show her something very special. He sort of blindfolds her
while he's leading her to a secret place, and he
takes her blindfold off when they arrive. They're at this
kind of hidden brook somewhere somewhere in in the forest glen,

(01:04:01):
and what they see there is a pair of unicorns
that emerge from the trees, and then they kind of
gallop about together like they're playing. And these unicorns, we understand,
are sacred creatures, almost primordial, and their fates are linked
to the fate of the world itself. So Jack communicates somehow,

(01:04:21):
we've got to treat these creatures with reverence. You know,
remember she had to be like blindfolded to go to
their secret grounds.

Speaker 4 (01:04:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:29):
Yeah, these this matches up with some of the ideas
swirling around the concept of the unicorn. We talked about
unicorns in an older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
where at times like the unicorn is presented as Christ
as Jesus Christ himself in the form of a single
horned horse.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
Now we watch the unicorns play together and Lily becomes enraptured.
I guess because of her in no sense she does
not take the proper precautions in their presence. She doesn't
want to hold back and just observe them from a
distant a distance like Jack recommends. She sort of runs
out of hiding and touches one of them. I think
the stallion right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:09):
And it's not so much the touch that is going
to be disastrous, but it does impact other elements in play.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Right, because all along Lily has been tracked by the
Goblin trio. They've been they've been following the inno sense,
and sure enough, the innocense led them straight to the unicorns.
And I think this is around the scene where Blick
says that line, maybe innocent may be sweet, ain't half
as nice as rotting meat. So we see where Blick's

(01:05:40):
preferences lie, and they are with death and attack. So
when they when the Goblins see the unicorns, I think
Blunder yells out look ugly one horned mule, and they
take the opportunity to strike. They shoot one of the
two unicorns with a poisoned dart, and the unicorns gallop away,
and I think at first Jack and Lily don't realize

(01:06:02):
what has happened. Like Jack is disturbed that Lily was
so brazen with these holy creatures, but he is quickly
distracted by love because Lily takes off a piece of jewelry,
a golden ring inlaid with gems, and she throws it
into the pool at the base of a waterfall where
they're hanging out, and she says, I'm gonna marry whoever
finds this ring, and Jack is just hot diggity he

(01:06:25):
dives right in after it. Yeah. Now a lot happens
while Jack is diving under the water looking for the ring.
The goblins catch up to the unicorn, which is faltering
under the influence of the poison, and blicks his dart
and they go up to it and they chop off
its horn, and this instantly causes a worldwide calamity. A

(01:06:48):
supernatural winter descends. The peasants are frozen solid in their cottages.
Ice forms over the pool where Jack is diving for
the ring, so like when he comes up for air,
he has to break through the ice. Lily is caught
out in the blizzard and she runs in terror as
the Goblins come tramping through the new world of frosty

(01:07:08):
horror that they've created. It's a scary time, and it.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
Must have been scary to read this script and think
about producing this. You know, this is it's like, we're
gonna build a forest, then it's gonna be winter in
the forest. We're gonna have a frozen over pond. We're
gonna have somebody swimming in that and breaking up through
the ice later, like I don't know. It is one
of the many places in the film where you'd really
have to admire the what they really set out to

(01:07:32):
do here, Like this is a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Blick says, mortal world turned ice. Here be Goblin paradise.
So the goblins are having a ball, they run around
using the unicorn horn as a magic wand they're just
doing all kinds of mischief and Lily eventually tracks them
back to their Goblin camp, which I think his position's
sort of down in a kind of ravine or a

(01:07:54):
pit in the earth, and they've got a fire going
and they're playing around with the horn, and this is
all good stuff. I love this scene. I think this
is where Blick says, higher burning fire, making music like
a choir, and they're all sort of talking about what
they could do with their new found of power. I

(01:08:15):
think the pig Goblin I love this, suggests turning everything
into garbage. That's a quote. He says, why not turn
everything into garbage, A big, towering mountain of slot. Wouldn't
that be magic?

Speaker 3 (01:08:29):
He's a simple guy, he knows what he wants.

Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
Love numb, numb garbage.

Speaker 3 (01:08:33):
Now, one of my recurring questions on this rewatch of Legend,
given recent changes and slaying, is this goblin mode? Does
this constitute goblin mode? If you're not familiar, Goblin mode,
as defined by the Oxford Dictionary in twenty twenty two,
is a type of behavior which is unapologetically self indulgent, lazy, slovenly,

(01:08:54):
or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms
or expectations.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
You know, I would say that the goblins in this
movie are not in goblin mode by default, but in
this particular scene, they are going goblin mode. Okay, like
Pox's desire to quote turn everything into garbage. That's goblin mode.
That's going right.

Speaker 3 (01:09:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
Now, at the same time, Blick's he seems he's having
a big time here waving this unicorn horn wand around
and it seems like he has he has greater designs.
He's thinking about the power of the wand here and
what he could do with it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:31):
I don't know, so we'll see what happens and when
Darkness shows up. So Darkness arrives at the goblin camp,
he's covered in a cloak, so we still don't see
his face or his true form. And this is where
one of the three goblins, I know it's Blunder, the
one with the helmet on, tries to take the horn
and use it to usurp the power of the Lord
of Darkness, but he's he's not strong enough. Tim Curry

(01:09:53):
just like sucks it out of Blunder's hand magically and
then reanimates a nearby mummy, grab up Blunder and cast
him into a crevice in the earth, though we'll meet
him again later.

Speaker 3 (01:10:05):
Yeah, this is a great thing because basically, yeah, Blicks
has been playing around with the wand there's really getting
into it. And has all these flourishes to his movements.
You know, clearly he's really digging this power trip, and
you get the impression that Darkness has shown up really
to be like, Okay, enough of this before it gets
out of hand. I'm here for what's mine. So but
Blix is smart enough to just drop it to the

(01:10:26):
ground immediately. Yeah yeah, But but Blunder is stupid, and
Blunder is like, oh, there's the wand it's mine now,
this is my time to shine, and as sind at
the top, and he's just instantly destroyed. Yeah, or seemingly
at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Blunder has some good lines though, before he gets cast
into the ravine when they're like they're talking about uh
Lily and they're like, oh, she's so beautiful, and then
Blunder's like, I know, I could eat her brains.

Speaker 3 (01:10:53):
Like jam, they just don't have the same values as mortals.

Speaker 4 (01:10:58):
Though.

Speaker 1 (01:10:59):
Unfortunately, the mission is not fully accomplished because Darkness is like,
you fools, look, Dawn is about to break. That means
one of the unicorns still lives. You have to get
both of them, So go find the other unicorn and
bring it to me.

Speaker 5 (01:11:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
Yeah, Because the remaining. Unicorn is the mayor, and they're
like what, it's just the female and Darkness is like, yeah,
that one has the power of creation, you dummies, Like
that's the most important unicorn.

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
Yeah, so you got to bring me Unicorn too. Meanwhile,
Jack wakes up after being frozen in the Blizzard of Wickedness,
and when he does, when he wakes up, he is
surrounded by a coterie of hidden folk. So there is
a sort of panlike magical boy called Honeythorn Gump. I
think he's supposed to be an elf, do they say? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:11:44):
I believe so.

Speaker 1 (01:11:45):
I don't know technically what all of the fantasy classes
of these creatures of the forest are. They're all various
hidden folk of different kinds. A couple of them are
Brown Tom and Screwball. They will be companions along the
rest of the journey. In the movie, there is a
fairy creature named Una, who I think is like a
will of the Wisp. Yeah, honey Thorne Gump is sort

(01:12:08):
of the leader of them. He's he's got the most
lore information in his head and seems to like kind
of know what's going on. And Gump is interesting. He
has these great fantasy time units that he always talks
in like he all the expressions of time are things
like three flicks of a badger's tail or two hundred

(01:12:29):
beats of a sparrow's heart.

Speaker 3 (01:12:31):
Yeah, it's like you get the impression where if you
were in tune with nature as much as as an
elf is or any of these magical fairy folk here,
you would know exactly what that means. You would innately
know what that means. But to us mortals, we're a
little lost on the particulars.

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
Yeah, there are some initial negotiations. When they first meet
Tom Cruise, he has to answer a riddle or die.
I think, is that right?

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
I'm always this scene kind of lost me a little bit.
I'm sure exactly what is happening in the scene, But
then it's kind of like, Okay, I guess he passed
the test, whatever it was.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
Also, I don't understand the logic of the riddle. The
answer is flowers, bluebell flowers, but I don't understand how
it corresponds to the riddle itself. Anyway. They eventually decide
that Tom Cruise is the champion foretold who must defend
the world from the Lord of Darkness, and so there's
a scene of him being sent to raid a treasure

(01:13:27):
trove and a hidden barrow to get magical armor and weapons.
Around here is where I first started to notice that
Tom Cruise is not getting to stand up in this movie.
He's always squatting or creeping on the ground.

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
Yeah, and now he has like a golden chain mail
skirt to wear the whole time. Yeah, and a really
cool shield and sword too, So he's decked out. He's
gotten his plus one plus two gear from the dungeon
Master and is ready to hop into the main adventure.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
Yeah. Meanwhile, there's a scene where Lily makes her way
to sort of the camp where Jack originally was, but
they don't meet up. Lily is there with the Unicorn
Mayor and they get captured by the goblins and taken
back to Tim Curry. And there's a funny moment here
where Brown Tom, who was with them, one of the

(01:14:15):
good guys, he gets shot in the head with an
arrow and you think he's dead, and he thinks he's
dead when his companions show back up. He says, I
was shot through the brain pan. But then he takes
his hat off and he literally had a pan in
his hat. And it was the arrow went through it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
It's a great moment when this movie wants to be
silly and funny, it succeeds.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
So now that Tim Curry has Lily and the last
living Unicorn, that they got to turn this into a
rescue operation, right, So Jack and his magical friends make
the journey to the Layer of Darkness to confront Darkness
and his minions. And I thought this was interesting. It's
shown from the outside and it is not your typical

(01:15:05):
stone castle, but seems to be built inside a giant
ancient tree. The Honeythorn. Gump describes it by saying, the
Great Tree, when evil anarchy ruled the land, the wicked
came here to sacrifice. That's an interesting, almost kind of
biblical foundation story that, like the Cursed Place, is a

(01:15:28):
place that you associate with the sacrifices made by an
ancient enemy.

Speaker 3 (01:15:34):
It's interesting too in that like what we have here
in form and it looks amazing in the picture with
we see like the spots of carrion birds circling around it.
But in many respects you could compare this to like
a world tree from various mythologies, you know, connecting the
realm of Earth to the realm of the cosmos, but
it's corrupted and it's dark. But on the other level,

(01:15:57):
numerous times we have, especially our evil characters, speak to
a universe here in which darkness was the purity of
existence that was then invaded by light. And therefore it
maybe feels kind of fitting that the world tree here
is something of the darkness, because the darkness is the
original structure of the universe.

Speaker 1 (01:16:17):
Yeah, it is an interesting mythology, and again we get
these statements about the necessary interconnectedness of the elements that
come back in the very end as well. Okay, now
on the way to the castle, they've got to do
battle with a swamp hag. Right. We brought a megg
muckle Bones early on, played by Robert Piccardo in some
amazing makeup and prosthetics or I don't know if there's

(01:16:39):
puppet Tree involved in as well.

Speaker 3 (01:16:40):
It feels like it there feels like there's some sort
of like device that's moving him around at the base.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
Yeah, so it's like a big old Jenny Green teeth
pops up out of the water and is going to
eat Tom Cruise because she's like, you look delicious, and
he starts trying to get out of it by flattering
her beauty, and she ends up saying, ooh, what a
fine meal you'll make be the rest of you as
sweet as your tongue.

Speaker 3 (01:17:07):
And this scene, this scene is just so perfect but
just and I'm just to touch on like some of
the little things that make it great. The scene where
he has the resplendent golden shield up and Meg is
like close to it, half seeing a reflection in it,
and her nails are tapping against it, and there's also

(01:17:27):
so there's the gleam of the shield, but then also
there's a little bit of her sliminess on it. So
it's just like visually and just sonically too, that tapping
is just complete overload. It's just a tremendous scene, even
in this small detail.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
Yeah. Yeah, So eventually Meg is decapitated and our heroes,
you know, they go on their way into the Great
Tree of Wickedness, where they quickly fall into a pit
and end up trapped inside prison cells. Now they will
get out of these eventually released by the Fairy Una
after she reveals that she had abilities that even Gump

(01:18:01):
did not know of before. She's interesting because she's one
of the heroes. But she's capricious, you know, she doesn't
want to be pinned down. She's like, I'll do what
I want, and you know, just so happens that that
turns out to be helping them sometimes. But she also
wants Tom cruise. By the way, Yes, but while in
this prison, they meet the goblin Blunder, who reveals he

(01:18:24):
is not actually a goblin. He takes his helmet off
and we learned that he is one of the hidden
folk of the forest and known to Screwball and Brown Tom.
But I guess he sort of went astray and now
he's back on the team. But unfortunately, right after they
meet him and realize who he is, he gets snatched
up by their jailers and the dungeon and taken away

(01:18:46):
to be baked into a pie. Because this dungeon is
right next to the kitchens of Hell. This set, we
need to talk about the hell kitchens. Here. There's this
doctor Salvador prep table in this blow bucket kitchen, where
like right in the middle of the floor there are
random fires burning, so it's like a barbecue preparation area

(01:19:10):
attended by like bondage axe murderers.

Speaker 3 (01:19:13):
Yeah, they're like big ogres and like execution hoods just
very physically intimidating. The fires are just raging, like just
out of control levels of flame. It's like a delirious
vision of hell, like a baroque mashup of Texas chainsaw
massacre and a medieval wood cut. And they're also throughout

(01:19:35):
like the last half or third of the picture. There
are also just lots of creepy statues, Like there's a
pazuzu statue from that pops up twice, I think, once
in the swamp and then once in the depths of
the underworld here. Sometimes those statues are actually alive and
they move. So there's just a very rich, disturbing visual

(01:19:57):
world down here in the hell. Kitchens are just yeah,
absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 1 (01:20:00):
Now, there's also an extended series of scenes, a kind
of drama here where after Lily is brought to the
palace as a captive, Darkness decides that he wants to
seduce her, and he's sort of instructed by this other voice,
this kind of statue or other god speaking to him.
I think it says, make her one of us, and

(01:20:21):
so that's his goal. He wants to take the innocence
of the princess and to make her evil as well,
to bring her into the darkness and make her a
creature of the night.

Speaker 3 (01:20:33):
You know, it's interesting that you look at this in Labyrinth,
two films being made at the same time, next door
to each other. They both have very similar elements in
that you have a dark lord who is pleading with
like trying to seduce and ultimately just offering to be
subservient to a woman. He is in love with a
mortal woman, and they I'm to understand that with Labyrinth too,

(01:20:58):
they were aware of what was going on in Legend
and made deliberate choices with Jareth the Goblin Goblin King
to portray him in a less like overtly satanic manner
and like finding a different sort of form for him.
But it is interesting that, yeah, out of the same
production timeline, you're getting like these two different I guess

(01:21:18):
kind of like equally iconic versions of somebody's potential supernatural boyfriend,
you know, from beyond the realm of mortals. You know.
So it's like, ultimately, like who do you see yourself
with on the dating show? Is it Darkness the Prince
of Evil, or is it Jareth the Goblin King, I
don't know, your preference may vary.

Speaker 1 (01:21:41):
But now Lily here goes through a transformation. At some
point she gets a kind of spell cast on her
while in the banquet Hall of Darkness here, and she
becomes gothly. She like transforms to have this bizarre gown
with like there's sort of this this we were talking about,

(01:22:02):
this big extending triangular hood or collar thing, and then
like a big V cut in the middle of it,
and her hair gets very stringy and dark, and she's
got this, I don't know what you call it, the
kind of a a twiggy, twiggy black crown on her head.
It's a it's a very strange and interesting look and

(01:22:23):
props again to the costume designers there. But so there's
like it's it's to symbolize that she has in a
way had a spell cast over her. But she that
doesn't mean she's been like hypnotized fully by the Lord
of Darkness, because she's still not into him at this point.
He's he's trying to make all these you know, seducing
her to evil kind of moves, and she she's still

(01:22:46):
screaming like, no, I will do nothing for your pleasure,
but In the end, she does appear to make a turn.
She says, Okay, I will stay with you here if
you will grant me one thing. Let me be the
one who cuts the throat of the last unicorn instead
of you and Tim Curry. You could just see him.

(01:23:07):
He's like, yes, yes, He's.

Speaker 3 (01:23:09):
Like, this is exactly the sort of thing I'm into,
and I'm so glad you are into it as well.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:23:14):
But oh but before we get to that point, I
have to talk about her brow though. Oh because yeah,
because yeah, her costume of goth Lily is amazing, you know,
the makeup is amazing. But they make a seemingly very
deliberate choice to narrow and nearly unify her brow. So
she has this very sweek monobrow youni brow going on

(01:23:36):
here in a way that is that is of course
also very like beautiful and hot. Don't don't get me wrong.

Speaker 1 (01:23:42):
It is enough.

Speaker 3 (01:23:43):
It is like the kind of like stylized you a
brow that can make you realize, you know, it is
like maybe a silly cultural thing that some of us
don't think brows should grow together, because here's proof that
it can look really cool. But like, first they made
this decision, and I wonder, like how how they talked
about it behind the scenes, where they're like, I really

(01:24:03):
think we need to give her a unibrow here, and
like maybe people were doubtful and then they saw the
results and they're like, no, you got it. This is
exactly what God Lily needs.

Speaker 1 (01:24:12):
So the audience at this point may be left to wonder, like, Okay,
has she fully been captured by the darkness? Does she
want to kill the unicorn for real? But no, No,
Lily has a plan, and Jack's about to get a
plan too. Like the Jack and his friends, they've snuck
into the palace and they're like peeking through a through
a window and watching what's going on. And so Jack

(01:24:34):
comes up with an idea that involves bringing light into
the darkness. So they need to go gather a bunch
of big shiny plates from the hell Kitchens to have
shiny plates for some reason that they're going to use
to create a series of reflector beams to bring sunlight
from up above down into the darkness where it will
destroy Tim Curry now on the way. At one point

(01:24:56):
they get drawn into a fight with the ogres and
the Hell Kitchen. I think they they beat them by
like dumping out a big pot of broth. Unclear exactly
how this fight is resolved.

Speaker 3 (01:25:09):
Here now, yeah, I'm not sure either, but while it's happening,
the fight is very cool. There's a lot of running
around and jumping and dodging, and of course the set
is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
And skipping over a few more things that go on
in the palace here, it all leads up to this
final confrontation where Lily and Darkness are down there with
the last unicorn and Lily is about to exercise her
privilege to be the one to put an end to
all goodness and bring on the forever night, and Jack
and Honeythorn Gump are They've got the plans set up

(01:25:40):
to bring the light in and they're watching from above
with bows drawn as this is about to happen, and
Gump is saying, oh, no, she's going to kill the unicorn.
You've got a stopper, Jack, But Jack says, no, I
trust you, Lily, And so this is a sort of
repeated idea that he puts his trust in her, and
it was well placed, because she in fact does not
go through with hurting the unicorn. She instead cuts it

(01:26:02):
free of its bindings, and then it kicks off a
final action scene where Jack rushes in to fight the
Lord of Darkness and put an end to this once
and for all. The fight scene here, I'm of mixed
opinions about it. It has some cool elements, something about
it feels kind of thrown together in a way, but

(01:26:24):
individual moments of it I like.

Speaker 3 (01:26:26):
Yeah, I think the thing I was most impressed by
is that Darkness still feels like a cohesive entity here,
despite the fact that we're suddenly seeing him move around
a lot more like he's swinging a giant sword. He's
like shooting fire from his fingertips, and in one sequence
like runs like charges like a bull at Jack and
sort of like pins into the wall and snarls at him.

(01:26:50):
And I feel like like, if the effects were not
just so on point here, either this wouldn't feel believable
or we wouldn't see an attempt like this at all.

Speaker 1 (01:27:00):
Yeah, yeah, I agree U. And he has some great
dialogue in the scene too, like while they're fighting, at
one point, Darkness says, every wolf suffers fleas 'tis easy
enough to scratch. Oh, and then at the final defeat, Okay,
so you know, they blow the doors open with the
sunlight brought in through the maze of mirrors, and it
shines a big ray of sunlight onto darkness, which is

(01:27:22):
a destructive It like unleashes this destructive gale upon him
that blows him out through this big sort of aperture
we've seen in the wall. There's like this gap in
the wall that seems to lead out into space and
the night. We just see black and stars beyond it.
And as he's being blown out, Darkness says, you think
you have won? What is light without dark? What are

(01:27:44):
you without me? I'm a part of you all. You
can never defeat me. We are brothers eternal. But he
is seemingly defeated. He's blown out into space. And I
just want to point out for comparison, so the villain
of this movie is destroyed by being sucked out into space.
How is the Starbis defeated at the end of Alien,

(01:28:04):
also by Ridley Scott from several years earlier, blown out
the airlock. Both of these movies end with the villain
being the villain nor the monster being blown out into space.

Speaker 3 (01:28:14):
That's also how Gladiator defeated Emperor Commutists in that movie, right,
just out through the airlock, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:21):
Strangely, I would say, Thelma and Louise does have an
almost kind of out into space ending.

Speaker 3 (01:28:27):
That's true, Yeah, like into the void. I guess you
could say.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
Yeah, Now, after the evil is defeated, the unicorn is
all right. Somehow we see the other unicorn revived, so
now they're both okay. The supernatural winter ends, Lily is freed,
and everything can go back to normal. I think depending
on which cut of the film you are seeing, there'll
be a slightly different ending. There might be one where
it seems like they're going to get married or something.

(01:28:52):
I think there is one ending where we hear darkness
laughing after the happy ending, suggesting, oh, he's act coming back.
The ending of the director's cuts has them coming to
a kind of bittersweet agreement where Jack and Lily conclude
that Jack can't really be part of Lily's world, that

(01:29:15):
he is going to have to stay in the forest,
But she says, can I come visit you every day?
And he says yes, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:29:22):
I guess this getting into the the basic thesis statement
that our heroes are going to have to embrace darkness
and light, that they're going to have to find some
balance of things, and that maybe, like the ideal happy
ending isn't really in the cards, but I don't know.
But then I don't know. Especially in the US theatrical cut,
it does feel a lot more good conquers everything, you know,

(01:29:43):
good over evil, And then we can't argue with those songs.
We're hit first with that Tangerine Dream vocal track, and
then we get your love Is your love strong enough?
And the answer is yes, clearly, The answer is yes
a million times. Yes, love is absolutely strong enough.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
Is your love strong enough to turn the world into garbage?
One great big mountain of slop?

Speaker 3 (01:30:07):
All right, Well, there you have it. Legend from Ridley Scott.
I'd be very interested to hear what everyone out there
has to say about this film, like did you see it?
What version did you initially see, and what were your impressions?
And has it grown on you over the years, like again,
like it's a film that had such an impact on me,
like visually that it's always stuck with me, but it's

(01:30:29):
also a film that I always come back to and
realize that well, you know, it's a little rough around
the edges in the in the end, but you know,
it's definitely developed its own cult following, and it has become
iconic in its own right.

Speaker 1 (01:30:41):
I can't deny there's something about it that just doesn't
quite come together. And yet I'm not going to get
rid of my copy. I know I'm going to be
watching it again.

Speaker 3 (01:30:49):
Yeah, this is a great one to put on. I've
played this one before just in the background with other
music on top of it, and it's always a delight.

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:56):
All right, Well we're going to go and close out
this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we'll be back
with the future installments, which air on Fridays in the
Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. If you want
to see a full list of the movies we've covered
over the years for Weird House Cinema, go to letterbox
dot com. It's L E T E R B o
x D dot com. You'll find us on there. Our
user name is weird House and there's a list of
all the films we've covered and sometimes a peek ahead

(01:31:18):
at what's coming out next. Also, if you're on Instagram,
go to st b ym podcast. That's the Stuff to
Blow Your Mind podcast channel handle and you'll get updates
there as well.

Speaker 1 (01:31:28):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:31:49):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.