Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Next of Kin (1982)

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe venture down under for the 1982 supernatural thriller “Next of Kin,” starring Jacki Kerin, John Jarratt and a superb score by German electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze. (originally published 3/25/2022)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. Yeah, we have
a rewind episode here for you today because we're doing
a little stuff behind the scenes to get a little
bit ahead. So we'll be back next week with all
new content. But today we're going to rerun an episode
that originally came out three twenty five, twenty twenty two,
so it's a little bit older. It's our look at

(00:25):
the excellent Australian supernatural thriller Next of Kin from nineteen
eighty two. Let's jump right in.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:49):
And this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Now, if you've been listening to Weird House Cinema for
a while now, you know that we always note the
musical score, and I feel like we've had a being
of unremarkable scores.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
La. Yeah, what do we see? Score to Eliminators? That
wasn't really anything to write home about. I'd say the
same for Beast Masters beast Master two. Why did they
try to make that plural? There's only one beast master
y beast Master two. Yeah, yeah, that wasn't so great.
And Rob, I know your particular weaknesses as well, because
while I don't quite feel the same way, I know

(01:23):
you hold it against a score merely merely for having
three D physical instruments. You prefer an all electronic score.
I've literally heard you say before, like about a movie score.
You were like, I guess it was fine, but it
wasn't electronic.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, you know, there are exceptions to the rule, but
by and large, that's a fair assessment. Yeah. So I
figured on this one when you know, we have different
ways of picking out movies, and this week I was like,
I want something with a good score. I'm gonna let's
go with a good score first, searching principle here, and
so I started looking around for films that generally I

(02:00):
had not seen but were well regarded for their score,
and it led us to this motion picture. It is.
It's also kind of neat because I think it is
our first film from Australia and New Zealand. It's an
Australian and New Zealand co production. It is nineteen eighty
two's next of kin.

Speaker 3 (02:19):
Well, if you pick this title based on score alone,
maybe we should start by talking about that score. What
drew you in about the music?

Speaker 1 (02:26):
Well, I was looking at these some of these lists saying, oh, listen,
is a great score. This son is a great score.
And it was really when I saw who was attached
to the score, because the score on this film is
by an electronic artist, a pioneer of electronic music. Klaus Schulz,
who was born nineteen forty seven, is still alive and

(02:47):
I still think still performs or has performed in the
last few years. I'm not never sure exactly where you're
landing with that right now during the pandemic, especially with
older performers. But yeah, this this guy is a huge deal.
And while he he isn't Tangerine Dream, he was in

(03:10):
Tangerine Dream okay a very short period of time, so
he is. He's an artist that I'd listened to his
albums before, and he hasn't done a lot of score work.
I think there are only really three motion pictures that
you could say, yes he did. He did the scores
for these films, and so I was I was excited
by by seeing his name on this one, seeing that

(03:30):
it was well regarded, and then also just looking a
little bit into the plot, I was like, oh, Yeah,
this is, uh, this looks like it's weird house territory.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
So Rob sent me straight on my electronic terminology. Would
I be right in saying that this movie is set
to the Berlin sound? Is this the the the famous
Berlin style of electronic.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
I think so. I'm you know, I'm not one to be,
you know, super strict on terminology, but yeah, this would
be I guess the Berlin school of early electronic music.
You know, this is a true synth wizard of old
we're dealing with here.

Speaker 4 (04:04):
You know.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
He's also attached to certain groups that were considered kroud
rock back in the day. So yeah, he was briefly
a member of Tangerine Dream in nineteen sixty seven, but
he moved on to Ashra Temple, which is not a
group I'm familiar with, before he went solo. And he's
one of these artists that has just an absolutely intimidating discography.

(04:26):
Like if you were excited by what I'm saying about
him and you got to look him up on one
of your music streaming sites, you'll just be bombarded with
like a million different releases.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
Well, coming back to the movie itself, I gotta say
for a movie that you picked purely on the basis
of its soundtrack. I thought this was actually a great
horror movie. I was surprised I'd never seen this before
and that I hadn't seen it. I don't know included
on more lists or curated picks of the great overlooked
horror movies of the eighties, because I thought that Next

(04:57):
to Ken was just excellent, really careful crafted, beautifully shot.
It's a great looking movie. It's got a lot of
interesting thematic symmetricality. I don't know the things that are.
There's some things about it that I really want to
talk about, but they're hard to talk about without spoiling
the ending. I think this movie has a pretty good

(05:18):
reveal in the third act that I don't want to
I don't want to get into the details of until
maybe after we do a spoiler warning later in the episode.
But yeah, this has so much going for it, and
I just love the dusty, aw shucks australianisms of it.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
Yeah, so, I myself was prepared for this to be
like a schlocky movie with a great soundtrack, which is
which is that I'm all on board for something like that,
But I was also pleasantly surprised by just the quality
of everything else about the production. Now, by some definitions,
this is an example of oz bloitation. You know it is.

(05:53):
It is a post nineteen seventy one R rated film
from Australia and so again also a newsy Co production.
But I've also seen it listed as part of the
Australian New Wave, and I think that might be a
little more accurate. I don't know, like osploitation doesn't necessarily
mean that there is something super exploitive about it, or

(06:15):
that it's exploiting the australianness of something. But I've also
read that Australian New wave films like they often have
this kind of sense of big open spaces, and you know,
they are often tying into something about the character of
the Australian landscape, and I do think we see that
in this film. There are a lot of especially early
on and late in the picture, there's some wide shots

(06:39):
that really make you feel a certain amount of isolation
regarding these characters and the world they live in.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Well, not only that, I think the movie is very
smart in the way that it plays with contrast of spaces.
There are these tight claustrophobic, trapped kinds of scenes in
small rooms, and then there are yeah, these big voids
in the night or big open fields that we see
long shots of as like a car is cutting through them.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Talking about, you know, the popularity of this film, It
certainly has its following, and there's been a as we'll
get to, you know, it's been nicely re released in
recent years. I know Quentin Garantino was apparently a fan
of this film and has mentioned it, and Michael Weldon
includes it in his psychotronic film Guides, so it was

(07:25):
on some people's radar. But yeah, in general, this is
not a film that I'm super familiar with or remember
seeing on shelves anywhere. When I hear the name next
of Ken, my mind instantly goes to the VHS box
cover art of Patrick Swayzee in that nineteen eighty nine film,
which I have not seen but seems to have a
great cast.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
What's it about.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
I think it's about it's like a crime thing. I
think it's like a oh okay, yeah, like I said,
really good cast. But I think it's just kind of
a crime thriller. That's my limited understanding of what it amounts.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
To there was actually not a lot I could think
of to compare Next of Kin too. It's a very
unique film, but you know what, it actually reminded me
of more than anything else, And I think having seen it,
you might at first balk at this, but then come around.
My point of comparison is Fulcy, so not in terms

(08:17):
of gratuitous gross out scenes and buckets of blood. There's
a little bit of blood in this movie, but nowhere
near the you know, the just you know, swimming pools
full of gore that you would expect from a Fulcy movie.
So it's not gross in the Fulcy sense. It's much
more restrained. But the cinematography and camera work frequently brought

(08:39):
Fulci to mind, and I think it has to do
with the visual fixations and the image drivenness of it,
and the kind of slow throbbing, dreamlike focus on things
that are maybe there more for texture or for suggesting
a feeling than for being informative about the plot.

Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely fair comparison. I thought a
little bit about Fulci and perhaps Argento a little bit
while watching it.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
There is also one extreme eyeball close up of note
oh yeah, that brings to mind some of these films.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Oh well, I will say that eyeball scene you're thinking of,
I think is directly mirrored in a ful Chi movie,
though I don't know which one came first. But another
thing I was going to say to bring it back
to the score, actually is that so Jallo movies and
ful Chy movies, these Italian horror movies that I'm comparing
this to, are not known for having this German electronic

(09:36):
sound in their music, but somehow it fits and heightens
the jallowiness the klaud Schultz does, maybe because of the
way the music influences the rhythm of the movie. So
I was thinking about, you know, the feeling that the
music creates in all these scenes, and it's like you
feel the thoughts of the main character, Linda, kind of

(09:56):
moving along at the rhythm of the score. So there
are these law long, warping synth pads when she's daydreaming
or wallowing or just like feeling big, enveloping emotions, and
then like the arpeggiators come in, or the rhythm picks
up when her thoughts pick up the pace and become focused.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yeah. Yeah, And that's a great description of the kind
of music that Klaus Schultz is known for. Like, my
big introduction to him was the nineteen seventy five album
Time Wind, and I'm not entirely sure how I came
across it. I think maybe I was listening. I heard
part of it on a like a warp podcast or
something where they were featuring some older music or something,

(10:35):
but I ended up picking up time Wind, and it's
it's very long form, wonderfully dreamy. One of these things
where I'm not going to ask Seth to include a
sample from time Wind, because you can't. You can't have
like a succynct sample of time Wind. You need to
listen to at least like a ten minute stretch of it.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
I listened to it on your recommendation the other day
while I was working on notes, and I thought it
was just great.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
Yeah, it was my goat for yoga music for a while,
so it's really good stuff. Now Claus Schueles has are
He has a wonderful website that I believe someone else
curates for him with his input, And according to that website,
the score here for this film is not one original composition. Rather,

(11:19):
it's composed of parts from quote known ks titles originals
and outtakes, So that that's interesting to think about in
terms of this film, because it sounds like maybe it
was a situation where they're putting together this film and
they're like, hey, we'd love to get Claus Schultz, and
he's like, oh, well, I have some music. You're welcome
to have any of this, and then they made it work,

(11:42):
which actually mirrors I was reading. One of the other
films that he did a score for was the nineteen
eighty three German thriller Angst, which was cut to fit
his score rather than the other way around, so you know,
he's not he created the score and it's like here
you go, all right, all right, we'll cut it together
and make it work. He also composed the score. I

(12:03):
think the only other film he did was nineteen seventy
eight Jaws knockoff by the name of Barrakuda.

Speaker 3 (12:10):
And how have I not seen that? I thought I'd
seen every Jaws ripoff.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
I mean, it looks like it has all the things
you would expect from a Jaws ripoff, but it has
this really nice score. I don't see a lot of
details about the score, Like it's one of these where
I was looking at the movie itself, and it says
it says that the soundtrack is available on Island Records,
and there's no I've found no reference to that ever
actually happening. But it looks like he put out a

(12:37):
track called Barracuda Drum on one of his compilations that
came out many years later, and I was listening to it,
and I think this is one of the underwater dreamy
tracks from that movie. His music has been featured though,
in the soundtracks of a number of different films, including
Michael Mann's Manhunter from nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 3 (12:58):
Oh that's a good one.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah, And weirdly enough, I found him credited on some
of the Hans Zimmer scores for the most recent done adaptation,
and I was trying to figure out what this. So
it gets complicated because Hans Zimmer apparently huge Doom fan
and didn't just create one score for the movie, but

(13:19):
created like three plus albums worth of music, and some
of those have some contributors, so I'm not exactly sure
what's happening. Maybe they just know each other, they bounced
a track between the two of them. I'm not certain,
but at any rate, you don't see gloss Shoels doing
a lot of soundtrack work. This is one of three
real films that he scored, and I feel like his

(13:41):
music does really stand out. Like you say, it really
contributes to this field, this sort of deeply contemplative hauntedness
of things, but also at times it definitely contributes tension.
And I thought we might play just a sample from
it from this score. This is. This is from the
track rhythm Fugue gets your gets your pulse pounding a

(14:17):
little bit there, huh.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Though I want to stress one thing that I think
is interesting is that when the when the music picks
up the pace in the movie. I don't know which
scene this song corresponded to, but when it does, it's
not always because there's something like dangerous or thrilling going
on on screen, where like you know, somebody's running or
there's some threat.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
It's often because a character is like discovering something. You know,
a character like suddenly like they're making mental progress, which
I liked.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Yeah, this is one of those movies that has a
very substantial research portion. You know, it's very It's very
much like a game with the Colic Cthulu role playing
game where you're gonna you're gonna devote a large chunk
of your playtime to creeping around libraries and checking out
old diaries.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
I agree with that, though at the same time that
could give the wrong impression and make it sound like
this movie has a very complicated plot, which actually does not.
I would say this is very simple. Actually, it's just
well crafted, smart, thoughtful, simple plot.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Well, in that case, should we should we give the
elevator pitch? What is this movie in a nutshell?

Speaker 3 (15:21):
Well, I didn't writ one ahead of time, maybe I
can wing it, okay, So I'd say something like, when
Linda Stevens returns home after the death of her mother
to the rural Australian village where she grew up, she
finds records of many strange doings in her mother's old
diaries and leisure books, and then things get even stranger

(15:42):
when some of those strange doings appear to be happening again.

Speaker 1 (15:45):
M Yeah, I think that's that's pretty accurate. The old
VHS cover for this said there's no place like home,
bloody home, which I think is okay.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
Well, I think I left out a crucial detail actually
for my elevator pitch, which is that her ancestral home
that's been left to her after her mother died is
serving as a retirement community. It's like a mansion and
they're renting out the rooms to retired people.

Speaker 1 (16:10):
Creepy retirement home movie. Yes, it's not a subgenre people
tend to go wild for, but it's well executed. Here.
All right, let's go ahead and here just part of
the trailer. This is one of those trailers though, where
it's a lot of just the music and just some visuals,

(16:33):
and I think there's maybe a little bit of voice
over at the end. So we're not going to play
at all, but here's just a sample.

Speaker 4 (16:40):
Will Linda survive the nightmare that threatens her sanity? Fathoms
of Gothic Hora will not be disappointed?

Speaker 1 (17:07):
Well, let's talk about We've already talked about Closs, but
let's talk about some of the other humans involved in
the production of this film. All right. Right at the top,
the director's credit and also one of the screenplay credits,
goes to Tony Williams born nineteen forty two, New Zealand
born director who mostly did documentary work, as well as
the nineteen seventy eight film Solo, which I've Seen, credited

(17:29):
as the first Australian New Zealand feature film co production.
It's like a romance drama.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
Huh. I was not familiar with Tony Williams.

Speaker 1 (17:38):
No, and like I said, I think his name was
mostly made in documentary work and he's known for this film.
The other screenplay credit goes to Michael Heath. This was
his first film, but he went on to write a
handful of pictures, including nineteen eighty four's Death Warmed Up,
which is I believe a hypnotism horror film, and then

(17:59):
who He did a nineteen ninety two film called My
Grandpa Is a Vampire and it stars al Lewis, Yes
Grandpa Munster basically playing Grandpa Munster. And this is the
plot submariny from IMDb quote. Sent on a trip from
California to New Zealand to visit his eccentric grandfather, Lannie

(18:19):
discovers that his grandpa is a vampire. Unnerved at first,
he soon discovers that his grandpa is a good vampire.
So that just that sounds amazing.

Speaker 3 (18:30):
And this is Grandpa his Grandpa's blade.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Yes, that's what I do. Imagine it. It's blade. But
instead of Wesley Snipes. It'sis Lewis anyway, That screenplay I
think is you can't really compare. My grandpa is a
vampire too, next of Ken, but at any rate, same
individual involved in both projects, all right. The star of

(18:56):
this picture is Jackie Kieran playing the character Linda. I'm
not sure what her you know, birthdate is, what her
age is, but she is still very much alive. Australian
actor who mostly did TV and shorts over the years
and became increasingly interested in writing and storytelling. She has
written a number of really cool looking children's books, some

(19:19):
of them I think have like a nature tie in.
But she, you know, she makes the rounds reading from
these books, supporting these books, and if you want to
catch up on all the stuff she's into, you can
find her at Jackie Karen dot com dot au. That's
j A C k I E K E r I
N dot com dot au. And she's really quite good

(19:41):
in this. I thought it's the sort of role we've
seen plenty of times before in other horror films, you know,
particularly of this period. You know, a female character who
is in a strange and or slightly haunting environment, kind
of experiencing this place physically and emotionally. But I thought
it was a real standout performance.

Speaker 3 (20:03):
I think she's excellent. I think Jackie Karen is sort
of the anchor of this movie. She's an extremely likable protagonist.
I was initially tempted to say, as I often do
about somebody who's just really likable on screen, that they've
got screen charisma or star power, but I think actually
her strengthen this role is a kind of anti star power.
She's a lead actor who has very earnest, down to

(20:26):
earth human being energy, real person energy and so and
it makes for a very likable lead role.

Speaker 1 (20:32):
Yeah. Absolutely, So we'll touch on her performance more as
we proceed that. I think she's definitely a highlight of
this film that you know, you could easily see have
seeing this part played by various other actors, and they
wouldn't have brought the same likability and real life quality
to the character into the performance, all right. Another actor

(20:54):
of note in this is John Jarrett born nineteen fifty one,
who plays Barney Uh. This is basically the boyfriend character
in this movie. He's an Australian actor, possibly best known
to international audiences as Mick Taylor in Wolf Creek one,
Wolf Creek two, the Wolf Creek TV series. I think
there's going to be a Wolf Creek three. I haven't

(21:16):
seen any of these. Maybe you have, Joe, but I
understand they're quite nasty in the early two thousand sort
of way.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Oh, the kind of the torture age of movies.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Yeah, that's I could be wrong, but that's my understanding
of these pictures. And I guess Jared was kind of
a staple of two thousand's Australian horror, as he was
also in two thousand and seven's Rogue, a giant croc movie.
He also pops up in Django Unchained, as well as
nineteen eighty seven's Dark Age, which is another killer croc movie.
And he's also been in a killer Boorr movie, though

(21:51):
not the one you're thinking of, Joe, a more recent movie.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Okay, speaking of Jaws ripoffs.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
But yeah, in this he basically just a boyfriend that
Linda reconnects with.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
The main thing I'm taking away from what you've just
said is that there are at least two giant killer
crocodile movies that don't have the word crocodile in the title.
So I guess I haven't seen them yet, and I've
got to look those up.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yes, all right. Another actor of note, Alex Scott, plays
Doctor Barton. He lived nineteen twenty nine through twenty fifteen.
An Australian actor with a very long career in film
and TV. He had uncredited small roles in such sixties
films as Beckett and Gorgo That was a wonderful euro

(22:34):
Godzilla movie, but he also appeared in a credited role.
He had a credited role in the nineteen sixty six
adaptation of Fahrenheit four fifty one. He also appears in
Twins of Evil in nineteen seventy one.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Oh yeah, that's a hammer horror movie that I've seen
a number of times. That's one of the count Carnstein movies,
and the Carnstein there's a great scene where he's like
dining with his with his evil buddy, and I think
he raises a glass and he says to Satan.

Speaker 1 (23:07):
Not enough toast to Satan. It's always a conversation start.
He was also in Romper Stomper in nineteen ninety two.
This is the Russell Crow Skinhead movie. And I know
one of our listeners at least will be excited to
know that he was also in The Abominable Doctor Fibes.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
I got to see that someday.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
Oh yeah, I haven't seen Doctor Fibes either, but I
keep putting it on the list. It's one that you
can't really stream anywhere right now. You have to run
a copy. So I'm hoping we'll get to it this year.
It also is it was popping up on lists that
I was looking at for a great or memorable scores.
It has a real, I think, weird, kind of jazzy

(23:47):
horror score. So I was listening to part of it
and I was like, yeah, this is interesting. I really
need to get in on the Doctor Fibes magic at
some point. All right. A couple of other credits here.
Chris Murray is credited with special effects on this. He
did special effects on nineteen seventy nine's Mad Max, and
he went out to work on a ton of projects
specializing in pyro. It seems worked a lot in Australia,

(24:09):
as you might expect, including on both Crocodile Dundee movies,
Peter Weirs Gallipoli, and Russell McKay. He's razorback from nineteen
eighty four. This I believe is the killer Boar movie
you were thinking of, Joe.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Yes, I have seen this one. It's been a while now,
but a few years back I watched this one and
it's I remember thinking it is a it's like a
cross between Jaws but with a pig instead of a
shark and Texas Chainsaw Mascer, but sat in Australia instead
of Texas.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
I think this is one that you can make a
much stronger case for being just pure osploitation.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Right, yeah, probably, but also with significant elements of Russell mulkay,
just things you will recognize as like highlander tuisms. Yes,
it's got wild boys.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Oh man. Yeah, we've got to watch an actual Russell
McKay film on the show one day.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Well, this may be the one. Yeah, all right, fair
warning though, I remember this one being really gross, like
it being a very just like wet, nasty movie with
unlike I think one of the main sets is like
an unethical dog food factory. Oh but one other credit
I wanted to mention is the cinematography in this by

(25:20):
Gary Hanson. I just wanted to bring that up because
a lot of what's great about this film is I
think the camera work in the framing. This movie has
a wonderful look to it. I think that is what
calls to mind, the full gess of it or the
jallowness of it. So I looked up this guy, Gary Hanson.
I don't think I'm familiar with anything else he did.
He was a cinematographer on what looked like a few

(25:42):
made for TV thriller movies called things like Demolition from
nineteen seventy nine and Roses Bloom Twice from seventy seven.
So I don't really know much of anything else about
this guy, but yeah, stellar job on Next of Ken.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah, there are plenty of shots. There are a lot
of like scenes are allowed to really breathe in this film,
and so yeah, there were a lot of times where
I was watching it and I just really liked the
way things were framed. All right.

Speaker 3 (26:08):
Well, as I think we mentioned before, this movie does
have a pretty simple plot, and yet at the same
time it has a more interesting series of twists and
developments than most movies we talk about. So I don't
want to spoil too much about the third act. I
think maybe this is one where we shouldn't go scene
by scene, but maybe we can talk about the setup
and then discuss some things that we liked or noticed

(26:28):
along the way.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Sounds good and yeah, and if we decide to get
into spoilers, we'll put a firm barrier so that folks
will know to stop there and come back later if
they don't want to be spoiled.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
I thought that the very opening shot was interesting because
I didn't love it the first time I watched the movie.
The first time, it was one of my least favorite
things in the movie, and then on my second viewing
when I went back and showed it to Rachel, I
actually thought it was great because it forms a kind
of bookend. I don't want to say too much, but
the movie opens with this slow mo shot, and you know,

(27:02):
that's just like always a thing that bothers me. I
don't like movies opening in slow motion. But yeah, we
get slow mo of Jackie Karen as Linda, looking dirty
and exhausted, walking around the outside of a pickup truck
in this low frame rate slow mo, and you're just
wondering what has happened, And then you start getting voiceover

(27:23):
of this kind of echoing older woman's voice saying to
my daughter, Linda, Mary Stevens, I leave all my inheritance,
and she explains that, you know, she's leaving her the
estate of Montclair. We don't know what that is yet,
but that's what the voiceover says. I don't know if
you feel the same way I do. Rob. I generally
hate movies starting in slow mo, but I'm going to

(27:44):
make an exception for this and say, once I got
it and had seen the whole thing, I liked it.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
I don't. I guess I don't really have a firm
opinion about it. I don't remember being ever being offended
by slow moo in the opening of a film, but
I also can't think of a firm example of it
outside of this one.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
I feel like it's most common in like moody horror
movies that are starting with a kind of like, oh,
here's a weird vibe, and then we'll we'll take you
back and show you how we got here.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Mmm yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
But then we get a credit sequence and then we
come back to sort of the beginning of the story.
So we see a long on the road shot cutting
through the middle of these golden fields. The road is
receding as the camera flies backwards, and I really liked
the look of that and we find Jackie Karen driving
a truck with a young boy standing up in the
bed of the truck.

Speaker 1 (28:32):
Yeah, and we did. This is one of those sequences
where we get we certainly get that Australian quality of
the of the geography here, you know, wide open spaces.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:41):
The color palette of the landscape too in these shots
is really cool because you have these dry blonde fields
cut through by like a stripe of green trees which
I assume are they're along the banks of a river
that we can't see. And you know, we often complain
about driving scenes in movies because they are clearly being
used to pad out the runtime of a movie that

(29:02):
is wanting for content. Don't have enough plot, pad that
thing out. Have some driving scenes, show people parking, Yeah,
go for it. But I love Oh they're they're terrible,
But I love these driving scenes. This is how to
do it right. They're they're setting the tone.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, yeah, I've done properly. They can definitely set the
tone and tell you something about the world that these
characters are are living in.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
But also I liked this opening shot of the you know,
the camera receding along the road over the truck because
it got us used to the idea that there's going
to be a lot of camera movement in this movie.
This this was a movie with a very active camera,
and it likes the camera pulling away shot, and I
thought that worked very well throughout the runtime. Yeah, so

(29:48):
we're seeing Linda driving along on these on these rural
roads through the stry landscape, and the dryness is accentuated
by what we're hearing on the radio, which is an
announcer saying, you know, clear all combustible materials from around
your home and remove trash from gutters. Fire conditions are
in an all time high, which connects to something in

(30:09):
an interesting way later in the scene. I wonder, I
guess we can come back to it. But eventually Linda
ends up the friendly roadside diner and gas station. Maybe
my favorite set from the movie, though it has multiple
good sets, but this diner is just everything.

Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yes, this is one of these environments that I just
my eyes were just busy the whole time checking out
all the little details and taking it in, and like
everything in the film is very well shot. I couldn't
decide though, and I guess this speaks to just how
well it was put together. I couldn't decide how natural
the environment was, Like is this did they just basically

(30:44):
walk in, clean this place up a little and start
filming it, or did they meticulously put it together? Because
it certainly feels real. It feels like just a slice
of late seventies Australia, something that I don't think I've
seen on screen before, and of course I don't have
any personal experience with seventies Australia, but it feels so authentic.
And he had, on the other hand, like the colors

(31:04):
popped in a certain way that felt that made me think, well,
maybe this, you know, there's something very intentional about it
as well, like something about the bright greens that show up,
you know, concerning like the jukebox and some of the
other details in the location.

Speaker 3 (31:19):
To mention the greens, one of the characters who talks
in the scene is the cook who's operating the kitchen,
who eventually comes out to talk to Linda. But in
the kitchen, of course, one thing is Elvis posters everywhere.
It looks like he's got at least five Elvis posters up,
but he's also got these green cones that he grabs
at various times are they supposed to be salt and

(31:40):
pepper shakers.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
I don't know if he's cooking, so maybe that's what
they are.

Speaker 3 (31:45):
But the other thing is I got overly fixated on
the game cabinets inside this diner. So one of them
was a real arcade cabinet called space Wars. I had
to look this up. You've ever seen this game, rob now?

Speaker 1 (31:58):
I don't remember ever seeing it before. Why this film?

Speaker 3 (32:00):
Okay, So it's like a player versus player game where
you have these two little space ships on a star
field and you're trying to like shoot missiles at each other.
The two space ships are trying to destroy each other,
and you can pilot around in space, and I think
usually there's like a star in the middle of the
screen that acts as like a gravitational pull that pulls
you in, and so these ships are flying around, they're

(32:22):
trying to shoot each other, and it's it's a kind
of thing that I don't know if that really exists
much anymore, but it's like an arcade game that only
works player versus player, I guess, like an air hockey
table or something. It doesn't you can't play against the computer.

Speaker 1 (32:35):
Huh.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
Interesting, But the other thing that really caught my attention
is the pinball machine which is called beat Nicks. Yeah,
it's a Beat Nicks themed pinball game. The back I
don't know what you call it, the back face of
it that's got all the art on it. It shows like
some people whacked out at a crazy party. Man, And

(32:58):
it's got one guy who looks like Prince Valleyant or something.
He's got the long blonde hair but he's clearly been
been on the tee sticks.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
And oh boy, it looks like an exciting machine. You know,
it doesn't have any competition out here in the middle
of nowhere, so I guess it doesn't matter what the
theme is. It's not like folks are going to drive
over to the next town and play their sci fi
themed pinball machine over there.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
Yeah, I want to play a Star Wars pinball machine. Sorry, Bud,
we only got beat Nicks here.

Speaker 1 (33:30):
But this day the machine is. It has this wonderful
purple and black kind of coloration going on, so it
really pops in the scene. And it's right next to
the jukebox.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Oh yeah, and we see like a kind of greasy
outback guy working the jukebox, and then right I don't
know if you noticed the poster right above the jukebox
that says new polywaffle and that ring a bell, rung
a bell. The second time I was watching because I
was like, wait a minute later on the kid is
offering somebody a polywaffle. What the heck is a polywaffle?
It's real. I looked it up. It's a type of

(34:02):
chocolate bar. It's got a waffle wafer tube inside it
that's full of marshmallow, and then it's got chocolate on
the outside. Interesting choice, poly waffle.

Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yep. Okay, I've pulled up I've pulled up an example
of this. Yep, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
I mean, yeah, okay, this has been Australian anthropology with
Robert and Joe.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
I mean, it looks a lot of images are popping up.
It looks quite popular. It looks like there may be
some sort of an ice cream version of it as well. Yeah.
This is definitely one of the many instances in this
podcast where we'll be asking for our Australian listeners to
reach out and let us know more about the polywaffle experience.

Speaker 3 (34:55):
But when so, Linda sits down at the counter in
the diner where she's clearly no and remembered, you know
that people start talking to her. She knows this kid
here and the cook, and she does something interesting. She
starts building a balanced tower of forks, like propping them
up against each other and making a little tower. And

(35:16):
the kid asks her about it, and she says, it's
a test of nerves. And I think it's interesting. It
has a parallel with a scene later on in the
movie where she's building a pyramid out of sugar cubes
in the same diner, but under very different conditions.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, it's just another example of things in this film
makes sense. There's an economy of things in this film
and an interconnectedness of things in this film that it's
not always there in pictures we discussed. You know, I'm
so used to there being like some sort of plot
element that goes nowhere. There's a dead end road that
you know, it's something that sometimes it's like a major

(35:50):
like four lane dead end highway. And in this movie,
even the little Oh, it seems like maybe a meandering
path will come back and reconnect to something else in
a delightful way.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
What do you think about those hamburgers?

Speaker 4 (36:03):
Huh?

Speaker 3 (36:03):
When the cook comes out with the hamburgers. What you
want to eat those things? You want to put that
in your mouth?

Speaker 1 (36:09):
I mean they're definitely small town hamburgers. I mean, what's
the competition here in this place?

Speaker 3 (36:13):
Not too good, is it?

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Chief.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
So the cook comes out and he says, sorry about
your mother, Linda, and they have a little talk. When
we find out from Linda's conversation with the cook at
the diner that, of course her mother died recently, that
Linda has been away and that she's come back. I
think we find out later on in the movie that
she has been teaching at a school for emotionally disturbed children,
and that she's returned after her mother died, and that

(36:38):
her mother left her the Montclair Estate, which is a
big mansion where they rent out rooms and it functions
as a retirement home. And the cook says, what are
you going to do with that big house, Linda, And
she doesn't know. So next thing, she's driving to the
house and we get to see it from the outside,
and I love the look of it because it is
this type of mansion. I don't know what type it's called.

(37:01):
I was actually trying to even look this up. It
might be a new Victorian style, but it's made of
brick instead of wood, so I don't know what it is.
But one whole corner of it is just completely covered
in thick ivy or some kind of green leafy vine,
and I don't know. I love the contrast. The other
half of the house is totally clean, just like clean stonemasonry,

(37:26):
and then this corner is a forest. It's just total vegetation.
It felt like it meant something.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Yeah, yeah, Like I said, it feels like there's very
little wasted detail in this picture that everything kind of
works together.

Speaker 3 (37:40):
So we meet some of the characters. Linda apparently has
a long friendship with one of the residents. I think
he sort of helped raise her. It's a man there
named Lance who is wearing a blue beret and he's
sort of always going on about the Great War. There's
a story he tells where he was well, I was
walking out to the latrine and then along comes a
big whacking shit l and repeat that many times throughout

(38:03):
the movie. I guess the other characters that are worth
mentioning that she she meets there at the home are
Connie and doctor Barton, who both I guess her employees
who work there. Doctor Barton is a doctor, he tends
to the residence, and Connie is she's a general caretaker.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
I guess, yeah. And they kind of have the role
in the film that you encounter in a lot of films,
you know, like this, where she is supposed to come
to them and say, I think something is wrong here,
and their job is to say, no, there's nothing wrong
here at all.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Whyever would you say that? Yes, But here's where we
start getting scenes of Linda going through her mother's old things.
So she's looking through her possessions as the you know,
the synth music is pulsing. She's looking through her mother's things,
her account ledgers, her diaries, and the music really sort
of invites you to wonder what's happening in her mind.

(38:53):
But she's clearly because there are unanswered questions about her mother.
She's trying to figure out what happened in the time
she was away, I think. And we learn about Linda's
mother and her sister Rita trying to solve their money
problems by turning Montclair into a retirement home. And there
are just so many things here where I noticed how
symmetrical the movie is and how well things are set up,

(39:16):
like there's a scene of her taking her mother's red
shawl or cape whatever it is, and I didn't notice
it the first time, but she's like, she's, you know,
having an emotional connection to this article of clothing, which
turns up again later in the movie, but somebody's wearing it.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
And another symmetrical thing I noticed was early on establishing
the spiral staircase in the mansion and how it's you know,
it's shot multiple times from above looking down. These shots
are all banging. There's even one later on where somebody
is descending the staircase very rapidly and the camera's just
like following over their shoulder, but with a weird type

(39:55):
of focus that's distorting the edges of the frame, and
it's just glorious.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Oh yeah, these spiral staircase shots are indeed just absolutely beautiful,
very well composed. I also was drawn in by those.
There's also a great scene where you included a picture
of this in our notes here where she's researching. She's
in pure research mode and we see her in the
middle of the floor with various boxes of research material

(40:23):
around her. There's a lamp in the floor. She's looking
at a book, and it's just so well structured. She
is not engaged, to be clear, she's not engaging in
any kind of supernatural activity in this shot, but it
has this feel of seance to it. It has this
feel of sort of ritual diving into the past, which,
of course she is diving into the past here she

(40:43):
is trying to sort of commune with the deceased, though
not in a supernatural way, in a very real world way.
And I just loved that shot.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Yeah, yeah, I agree. It's this darkened room with these
pools of warm light coming from a few lamps, and
then in the middle of the room she's on the
floor and it's almost like, actually the possessions are forming
a kind of spiral around her. And there's another scene
early on that is so good at setting this strange mood.
It's so weird. But it's the new arrival scene. They

(41:15):
find out, oh, somebody, we're getting a new resident tonight,
and I think Linda has a brief argument with Connie
about this. She's like, I don't know what we're going
to do with this place. You know, we don't want
new residents, and Connie's like, we need the money, and
so the new arrival comes in just as lightning strikes
a tree outside. The tree falls across the driveway, and
so the van that's approaching has to stop, and we

(41:36):
see a man helping his mother out of the van
and having to like carry her over the tree to
get her into the wheelchair on the lawn, and then
the wheelchair won't move because the lawn's all soaking wet,
and it's just very strange, big mood. But another thing
that really hits about the scene is how out of
place it feels to have this driving rain, because just

(41:57):
earlier today we were watching these scenes where everything looks
so dry, and the guy on the radio is talking
about the unprecedented dry condition and fire hazard. So something
in the weather has changed upon Linda's arrival. Yeah, So
the new arrivals or missus Ryan and her son, and
so we get some weird scenes of them coming in

(42:19):
in the dark, in the rain, and more scenes of
Linda sort of interacting with the other characters, you know,
showing her friendly and fond relationship with Lance, the guy
who was in the war. And eventually we start getting
into seeing spooky things. And I would say one of
the first examples of This is a time when Linda

(42:40):
is alone in her room and she looks out the
window at night and it's still i think raining outside,
or at least it's you know, wet and kind of hazy,
and there's a single lamp standing out in the middle
of the front lawn out in front of Montclair, and
behind the lamp there's just a shadowy figure, a figure
in silhouette that looks so cool, but it's just looking

(43:03):
up as if looking at her window, and no idea
who it is. But it starts to set this unsettling
mood of things just weirder and weirder stuff starts happening.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Yeah, and of course deaths begin to occur. And it's
interesting that this is where the setting becomes interesting as well,
because this is a retirement community, this is a place
that is populated by the elderly, and it's a place
where death is you know, maybe not in everyday occurrence,
but death is regular enough that this location, this world

(43:36):
that the characters are moving around in, is more adjacent
to death than the rest of the world, which I
think adds to the texture of everything rather nicely.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
Yeah, there's actually a lot of ambiguity in this movie.
So you mentioned earlier, I think the idea of this
movie has a lot of ambiguity about whether it is
ghosts or not. And I love that ambiguity. So Linda
res in her mother's diaries all these stories she tells
about things moving on their own, or hearing whispering or
voices in the night, or you know, things that start

(44:09):
to suggest so maybe Montclair is haunted. And there are
a number of just like eerie encounters that Linda has
where it could be that somebody is screwing with her
or it could be ghosts, and it's really not clear.
It could work either way. So there are like times
when she leaves her room and then comes back and
then a candle that she blew out is lit again,

(44:31):
and all of the faucets are running and the bathroom
is flooding. Like there's a great scene where she has
to go turn all the faucets off as the bathtub
is overflowing onto the floor. And I love the bathroom,
by the way, because it has this disgusting looking linoleum floor,
but these beautiful I think the fixtures are green, like
the green tub and sink.

Speaker 1 (44:52):
Yeah, these are great bathroom locations. Accentuated, of course by
the fact that we have we have drowning deaths occurring,
and that also plays into the ambiguity because these are
deaths that could very well be natural, they could be suspicious,
but they could also play into this idea of the supernatural.

(45:12):
You know, this of the haunting of the water, it
made me think of some of the yokai, the Japanese
spirit creatures that are associated with hauntings, haunting bathrooms, particularly
like elementary school bathroom situations, that there might be some
supernatural force that lurks in a place like this. And

(45:35):
you did very much get that vibe in this film,
kind of a moaning myrtle kind of a thing. I
guess if you want to draw in a Harry Potter a.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Connection minor character that I just want to mention because
Rachel and I liked her so much. I think her
name is Carol, the girl who's going to the party
and is having trouble shifting the gears on her car.
She's just this lady in like a red hat who
clearly likes to party. And there's a scene so Linda

(46:02):
reconnects with I think an old boyfriend. Is that how
you understood Barney that like, yeah, they had been together
in the past. She comes home and they rekindle.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Yeah, and you know Barney, Barney's just he's a local boy.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, you know, he's just a nice guy.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
There's a great scene where they're like out having fun
in the woods and then suddenly Linda sees like a
creepy figure standing on a stump and she thinks it's Barney,
but then Barney turns out to be behind her, so
she's like, well, who's that And then they turn and
look and there's nobody there. So you know, the strange
doings continue.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:38):
Now there's one stylistic choice that I thought was very strange,
and I wonder what you made of this. This movie
has something I can't recall seeing in other horror movies,
at least horror movies post Psycho, because I think Psycho
established a precedent that if you want to make a
jump scare work, you need loud audio. You know, like

(46:59):
when when when Missus Bates comes out of the room
with the knife held high at the at the detective
and Psycho, we get the stabbing violins. I just tried
to do an impression of them on mic and I
am insisting that we cut that out, so so but
bye bye to me going but yeah, yeah, yeah, So
you gotta have like a loud noise, something that accompanies

(47:20):
the visual sting and makes it a total sensory experience,
and that's how you really get people jumping out of
their chairs. This movie has what I would call jump
scares that have no audio at all. They're purely visual
scares set to absolute silence or just to ambient sound
from the room. Very unique and it seems intentional to me,

(47:43):
and I like the effect of it, I mean, being
silent like that. They don't function as well as loud
scares at actually getting you to jump to go ah,
but they have a different kind of effect all their own.
They're they're more unsettling that way, Like when you when
you pan up and see the man's face turned rob
I think you know the scene. I mean, after we've

(48:03):
been following the cat and then there's the cadaver in
the room and we pan up and see the man's
face and it has been turned so that it's looking
directly at the door into the camera. That's a jump scare,
but there's no sound.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
Yeah, after you brought this up. I started thinking about it,
and so I wonder, first of all, it might just
be purely intentional. This could just be a very intentional
choice by the filmmakers. I also wonder how much of
it has to do with their musical choice, because again,
it doesn't seem like it was a case where Claus
Schules wrote them a score much less, you know, watch
the film and then compose something to fit their cut.

(48:38):
He apparently gave them some music to use and they
used it. And you know, if you're gonna do a
jump scare type thing, you need that, you need very
bombastic music. You need the screeching violins or I don't know,
maybe like a big wall you know sound, or I
don't know, maybe that's like a dubstep drop kind of
a thing. And class Schules is a amazing but that

(49:01):
is that's not really what he does. I could be wrong,
because there's a lot of his music. I have not
listened to it. There's just a tremendous amount of it,
and I'm only familiar really with a few of his releases.
But while some artists do engage in that kind of thing,
like I can think of various sort of industrial noise
artists who have been a very kind of alarming screechy
noise is thrown in there. But I don't think he

(49:23):
has that sort of sound in most of his work,
or at least stuff that I'm familiar with.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
When you made the waw sound with your mouth, I
get what you're saying now, But for a second I
thought you were suggesting it should be a didgeridoo.

Speaker 1 (49:34):
Well, I mean it could. It may very well have
been done.

Speaker 3 (49:39):
This movie needs more Australian sound in it, so like
the jump scares are accompanied by the opening riff of Thunderstruck.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
Yeah, I wonder if that might be. One of the
reasons this film has been more of an underground cult
favorite is that it's not as exploitive of if of
its Australian ness. Like, it's more honest and low key
in how it presents Australia. It's a setting, uh, and
there's there's no didgerido there's no nobody's being stabbed with
a shrimp on the barbie. You know it when you

(50:08):
if you if you bring your your crocodile dundee uh
e reader up to this thing. Uh, it's not gonna
go up into the red.

Speaker 3 (50:17):
There's no there's no kangaroos in this movie, not a single.

Speaker 1 (50:20):
But there are koalas. Oh my, they do real ones,
not real ones. But there's a fabulous koala puppet. I
thought he was. He was cute.

Speaker 3 (50:31):
Oh, come on. The guy he's operating it is making it.
It's uh. It's like that laughing clown and the incredibly
strange creatures who became stopped living and became mixed up zombies.

Speaker 1 (50:41):
Except well, okay, it's a koala puppet. Yes. And then
later on in the film doing actually a very crucial
scene there there there's like a there's some koala stuffies
on a display.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
M I may have missed that part. I don't remember
the stuffies.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Oh yeah, it's in the finale.

Speaker 3 (50:58):
Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
I know this because my sunwalked in while I was
finishing watching it. I know. I was like, all right, buddy,
something violent might be happening here shortly. And then I
was like, oh no, the kual is stuff and he's
like no, so then he left. All right, we've reached
the point where we're going to do a spoiler break.
But before we do the spoiler break, I'm just going
to go and tell you Where about the availability of

(51:20):
this film right now, as of this recording, at least
in my part of the world, it is available to
stream on Shutter and AMC Plus. There's also a very
nice blu ray edition from Second Side Films, And if
you really want to get into the music, you can
buy or stream this wherever you get your digital music.
It's also on band camp, but Roundtable put the soundtrack

(51:43):
out on vinyl. It has a really nice cover beat,
a bit of cover art. So these are all wonderful
ways for you to seek out the film. Yeah, you
can also go to the Roundtable dot bandcamp dot com
if you want to find the digital album there. All right,
let's do it, Joe, Let's jump into the spoiler section.

Speaker 3 (52:10):
All right, Well, as the unsettling events continue on, we're
looking for a culprit, right, is it ghosts or is
it some kind of human actor? And Linda begins to
suspect a pair of human actors actually doctor Barton and Connie. Now,
how do we get to them? Do you remember?

Speaker 1 (52:28):
How do we get to them?

Speaker 3 (52:29):
How do we get to thinking that they're doing something nefarious?

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Well, the main reason would be like if somebody is
killing people here and it's obviously not Linda, and it's
not ghosts, Like these are the only two other major
figures that have access to all the facilities that you
know are mobile enough. That's the other thing. It's like,
you can't really suspect the people who live here the
retirement community, because you know, most of them are kind

(52:54):
of infirm and are kind of hobbling around and also
just seem very nice. It's a very nice place. And
the only characters that we've seen that they really have
kind of a suspicious air to them are Connie and
the doctor because they're the ones that are like, no,
nothing's wrong here, why would you think that?

Speaker 3 (53:11):
And they appear to be conspiring also, like there are
moments where Linda comes across them and they're like whispering
to each other, and then they turn and see her
and they're like, oh, hey, we're doing nothing.

Speaker 1 (53:20):
And I think clearly the film is structured so that
we're supposed to suspect them. Once it becomes clear that
this is not ghosts, we're like, oh, yeah, it has
to be these two.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Well, I think even up until close to the end,
you still think there could be ghosts involved, that maybe
it's a combination of nefarious human actors and ghosts. But
Linda becomes especially convinced that doctor Barton and Connie are
doing something evil because she's been reading all these old
diaries and ledger books, and she eventually sneaks into doctor

(53:50):
Barton's office and finds discrepancies in the records about deaths
that occurred at this place, and so, yeah, she thinks
something very nefarious as going on, that maybe doctor Barton
and Connie are up to no good. And so there
is a scene where she runs out fleeing from after
she thinks they've discovered that she knows about them. She

(54:12):
flees into the night, and she runs off to Barney's
meeting of the what the brush Fire Volunteer brush Fire
Fighters Association, where they're all sitting in this bingo hall
and this guy is giving some strategy session about I
don't know what he's talking about, but he's saying like
more thinking, less drinking, and meanwhile Barney is passed out

(54:34):
in his chair. He's like a sleep holding a beer,
and she has to get his attention in the middle
of this meeting and everybody's looking at her, and she
and him go outside and she explains the whole situation.
So they're going to go back and get the evidence
so that they can figure out what's really going on.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
I would love to say sort of the dry Australian
humor sort of set up for this meeting where they're saying, well,
we need to really touch on the fact that we
need less drinking among our volunteers. And then someone's like, well,
we're not gonna have beer at the meeting. Then it's like, oh, no,
we should have beer at the meeting.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
It sounds like what they're talking about. It sounds like
what they're talking about is some kind of competition that
they're doing. Like I don't know if there's a Brush
Firefighters Association challenge that they're going to be competing in.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Oh, I don't know. I can imagine some sort of
incentive program. Yeah, like Spotify get a free beer something
like that.

Speaker 3 (55:29):
Oh, there you go. But okay, Linda and Barney go
back to the mansion together and this is when things
really go off the rails. It's funny how restrained most
of the movie is and then how hog wild it
goes in the last twenty minutes or so.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all the things that you might expect
movies like this to do it. It gets around to
in the last yeah, twenty minutes or so, and part
of this is that the film finally reveals what's going
on and commits to being like a full psychopath movie.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
Right, So of course they go back and then there's
just bodies everywhere. So Barney goes in first, but while
Linda's waiting for him, she's like, oh, there is a
dead body with its throat slashed in the in the
water fountain here, and it like turns the jets in
the water fountain red as the blood comes through. And
then she runs into the mansion and like, oh, well,

(56:19):
Barney's dead now, and oh and so someone is chasing
her and she runs to Lance's room and she is
able to get Lance away, and I was like, that
felt so good to me. I was worried about Lance.
But Lance gets out all right.

Speaker 1 (56:31):
I was still worried about him then, because she lets
him out through the window and down the fire escape,
and I wanted to be like, Lance is an old man.
He does not need to be going down the fire escape.

Speaker 3 (56:39):
Linda, well, better than being left inside with with who
we're about to find out about.

Speaker 1 (56:44):
So she's true.

Speaker 3 (56:45):
She ends up then locking herself in a room. Somebody
has been running around, like jiggling the doors trying to
get at her. We don't know who it is. I
think she's assuming it's doctor Barton, you know, chasing her,
trying to kill her. And so she locks herself into
her room. But we get the big reveal. A character
is sitting at her desk and the character turns around

(57:08):
and who is that what? It's Missus Ryan, the new
arrival who came in in the Driving Rain earlier in
the movie. She removes her wig and then makes clear
she says, I'm not Missus Ryan. I am your aunt Rita,
the Rita we've heard all about in the diaries that
you know, her mother's sister and who doctor Barton had

(57:29):
said earlier, had had been sent away to a psychiatric
care facility. And so what Rita says was actually, you know,
she says, your mother was the mad one, and they
put me away to shut me up because I was
going to spill the beans about all the bad stuff
that your mother and doctor Barton were doing.

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Oh wow, So we have a real Hugo bart situation here.

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Yes, But so like you, you're maybe on board with
this for a second, you're like, wait, what's happening. But
then she she reaches around to hug Linda, and Linda
doesn't see, but the camera sees that her hands are
covered in blood, and so she opens the door and
into the room comes her terrifyingly creepy son, the guy

(58:12):
who brought her in the van that night of the arrival.
And no, it turns out that Rita is there in
fact to get revenge and kill people.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
So she is the Hugo.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
Yes, she is the Hugo and her creepy Hugo son.
They have murdered everybody. They have murdered doctor Barton and Connie.
They're like in the bathtub in the bathroom, and there's
a horrifying struggle and fight scene. Eventually Linda is able
to knock the sun unconscious and she locks herself in
the bathroom. And here's where we get the horrible eye

(58:43):
in the keyhole scene. Oh, where she locks herself in
the bathroom and Rita is looking through the key hole
in the door saying, I can see you in the mirror.
And what does Linda do about this? Well, she gets
herself a little I don't know what this is it's
some kind of.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Pick, Yeah, like the the long narrow pick end of
some sort of a hair brush type of thing.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
Yeah, and then whoosh straight through the keyhole.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
Oh yeah, very very h for sure, though not as
gratuitous as I stabs in a lot of Jala movies.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Yeah, So that's there's no out foul jelly or whatever
going on here.

Speaker 3 (59:20):
But she eventually so she flees Montclair. She drives away
into the night and ends up back at the roadside diner.
I knew we would get back here in the end.
And so the only person there is the kid that
she was driving with at the beginning. He says, yeah,
my dad's out hunting rabbits tonight, as just me here.
So you know, she's freaking out. She's saying, lock the doors,
you know, does your dad have another rifle here? And

(59:42):
the kid's just like, why, what's going on? And sorry
for I was saying to myself, I was like, I'm
never going to do an attempt at Australian accent in
this episode. I just failed.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
This is such a great situation, though, because it feels
thoroughly you know, late seventies, early nineteen eighties in a
way that not just applies to Australia but also to
the United States, that this would be a time when
something like this might occur, where a shop would be
left in the care of a child with access to
a rifle.

Speaker 3 (01:00:12):
Well, actually, I think it turns out to be a shotgun,
Like okay, yeah, he's got a scatter gun in there. Yeah,
And so they lock the doors and she like pushes
the space War's arcade cabinet in front of the door.
I think she tries to call the police, but the
phone doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Oh man, that phone I love too. It's a payphone
and it's a big, red honkin' payphone. I don't think
i'd seen one of these before.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
It's like the President's red phone. But it's Yeah, it's
in the diner.

Speaker 1 (01:00:39):
But super chunky. Yeah, it's neat. It's another wonderful detail.
I just want to go to I want to be
in this space and appreciate all these details.

Speaker 3 (01:00:47):
And oh I loved this final showdown scene. It's so
good where she's she's sitting there in a sort of
semi catatonic state, building this pyramid out of sugar cubes. Yeah,
and you see her going cube by cube and then
right when she gets up to the ending, she needs
one last cube to complete it. She runs out of
cubes in her little bowl, and the kid like shoves

(01:01:10):
another bowl of sugarcubes over to her so that she
can finish it. And right when she's putting the final
cube on, there is this rumbling as if an earthquake.
But what is it? No, it is the creep sun
in his van driving the van through the front of
the diner.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Right like, he crashes through it, and then it's like
he continues to look floor it, so it's getting closer
and closer, and this is where it actually hits the
display of Koala stuffies.

Speaker 3 (01:01:38):
Oh yeah, okay, and the kid. The kid tries to
shoot at the driver, but he misses, and he just
keeps flooring it. And then eventually the kid calls for help.
And I don't know why, this is one of the
most satisfying moments of defeating the bad guy I can
recall in any movie recently, But Linda just grabs the
shotgun and runs straight up, point blank and just make

(01:02:00):
the guy's head explode. Yeah, did you have that same feeling?
I was, like, it was it's got to be like
a new top ten defeating the bad guy moment.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
Yeah, it's very just like she's done with it, and
it's kind of he has this kind of like sort
of helpless, Like he's not helpless, but like you see
gasoline leaking onto the floor and there's like a spark,
and for a second there you think, oh, he's just
gonna get blown up in the car and she'll have
like a hands off victory here. But no, she walks
up and she just takes him out with the shotgun.

Speaker 3 (01:02:30):
And then finally as she and the kid drive away
in the truck as the service state because it's a
diner and a gas station, and I guess the fire
from the leaking gas tank and the wires and everything
causes it to explode. So there's like repeated explosions of
the gas pumps as they're driving.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
Fireball.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
Yeah, and then eventually they stop somewhere and it's the bookend.
We see the scene again that the movie began with
with the slow motion of her walking around the car.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
As did you notice that? As she's driving away though,
and the gas station's blowing up behind them, we get
to see again that warning about dry.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
Conditions, Yeah, the risk of wildfire is high.

Speaker 1 (01:03:10):
Yeah, so it all feels feels connected in a meaningful way.

Speaker 3 (01:03:14):
So yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised by this one.
I thought this was a really solid, lesser known movie.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Yeah. Absolutely. I know some people, it looks like, have
have checked it out and not really knowing what to expect,
they might find it a little slow. You know. Again,
if you're going into this one expecting something kind of
schlocky and and exploitive, this this film is not going
to satisfy you on those fronts. But it's just a
very thoughtfully composed and interconnected thriller film. Yeah, with a

(01:03:43):
wonderful soundtrack. And I have to mention, yeah the soundtrack.
The cover to it is a picture of her at
the diner table stacking that making that pyramid of sugarcubes.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
I love it. Those sugarcubes are going to be in
my brain forever, Like, it's such a cool image.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Go to this, get yourself a box of sugar cubes
and start stacking.

Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
I guess so, well, I don't want to summon a
creep of a van.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
All right, Well, we're gonna go and close this one out,
but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. Specifically,
we would love to hear it from any you know,
Australian and New Zealand listeners who might have some insight
on some of the details that we enjoyed in this film,
or or some insight on like where this where this
film belongs and sort of the you know, the appreciation

(01:04:31):
of Australian cinema. All that is fair game. We'd love
to hear from you. If you have any recommendations on
other Australian films that we should consider viewing, you know,
let us have it. We'd love to hear. In the meantime,
you'll find other episodes of Weird House Cinema every Friday
in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed We're

(01:04:53):
mostly a science podcast with our core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, but on Friday we set most of that
aside and we just settle in to appreciate a strange film.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stufft Blow Your
Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
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.