Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Ravenous

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1999 frontier cannibal horror film “Ravenous,” directed by Antonia Bird and starring Guy Pearce and Robert Carlyle. (originally published July 4, 2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. Today we are
re airing our July fourth episode from last year. It
is the nineteen ninety nine Frontier cannibal horror film Ravenous.
It was a real joy to revisit this film. I
feel like it is just as strong today as it

(00:25):
was back when it came out, and has just as
much to say, some strong performances throughout. Big fan of
this movie and happy to share this episode with you
once more.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb
and this is Joe McCormick. Today is July the fourth
Independence Day in the United States, as many of our
American listeners can attest to, and I think our international
listeners can also attest to to varying degrees and understand,
national patriotic holidays like this can be really weird to process.

(01:09):
They are at their they're very least a time of
celebrating certain ideals while often ignoring the more complex or
even problematic elements of a nation's history and place in
the world. I often find myself just like end up
with a day off on the on the fourth, and
I'm just like, what am I doing? What? What's the
game plan? I guess I'll watch some fireworks and you know,

(01:30):
this year I made some space for today's.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Movie, oh, on the fourth of July itself, or just
an advance of like are you gonna watch it again
on the fourth?

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Who knows what I'll do? But I mean, you know,
given publication delays, you know, I couldn't actually watch it
on the fourth, but in anticipation of the fourth.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
I see, typically if we watch a movie on the
fourth of July, it's Jaws, that's you know, for obvious reasons.
Fourth of July is a big holiday. In the narrative
of Jaws, It's very much a summer movie. And I
don't know, it just kind of feels right, especially if
the day involves, like otherwise being outdoors or barbecuing or something.
At some point you come inside, sit down and watch Jaws.

(02:09):
I think we we haven't really done this fully and
in a few years since my daughter was born, But
I don't know, I think we're working our way back
up to it at some point. And another tradition we
used to have. This may sound a little bit cheesy,
but so we used to like read Walt Whitman out
loud in our house on the fourth of July. It's
it's a good thing to do. I recommend that nice.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
Nice. Well, these are both solid, solid choices, especially Jaws,
and because again the greatest primordial summer blockbuster in many respects.
I mean, it's set the set the blueprint for blockbusters
to follow. But also, you know, Jaws, in its own
interesting way at least dips its toes into some contemplation

(02:49):
about America.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Hmm, I have to think about that. Okay, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Think it's it's in there. But the picture that we've
selected here is nineteen ninety nine's Ravenous. Of note, this
is only our second nineteen ninety nine film. The only
other film from nineteen ninety nine that we've watched is
Deep Blue Sea, a shark movie.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Oh okay, interesting connection. You know, maybe it's not just
the narrative of Jaws that ties into the Fourth of July.
There is something very American feeling about the subgenre of
the shark film that's just part of the national identity.
Looking for connections between Deep Blue Sea and Ravenous. Not
a huge amount in terms of I don't know the

(03:35):
feel or content, but I guess they're both very much
about eating.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, Deep Blue Sy very much feels like a nineteen
ninety nine film. Ravenous in many ways just really feels
out of place, Like it feels like maybe its soul
is more seated I don't know, in the nineteen seventies
or or in a way it's almost like a blueprint
of things that might come later. And as well as

(04:00):
I don't think anybody knew what to do with this
film when it came out in nineteen ninety nine, no
one knew how to market it, and no but and
a lot of people didn't really know how to receive it.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
It is one of those artifacts like floating outside of time.
It feels like it doesn't really fit in exactly anywhere.
It is a strange. There are strange anachronisms within it,
like this is a period movie set in the eighteen forties,
and something I think, especially about the sound track leans

(04:31):
a little bit into the sound of a nineteenth century music,
you know. It involves like some accordion voicings and banjos
and fiddles and things like that, but also has these
electronic elements that kind of pull it out of the
time space in which you're supposed to be imagining it,
and it as a result, it does kind of feel
like this this alien object that's just kind of like

(04:53):
inserted randomly into the last one hundred years of culture. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
The soundtrack, the score, especially as we'll discuss, gives it
this kind of vibe of something ancient that is clawing
its way up into the modern world. So I originally
saw this one back more or less when it first
came out. I did not see it in the theaters.
I don't know how many people actually did. I caught
it on home video, maybe even VHS, I'm not sure.
Probably it's probably DVD. This was a time when DVD

(05:20):
was really getting into the vibe. But I have to
say it really impressed me back then. I was a
rather different person back then, but it still impressed me
when I rewatched it today. I think it certainly has
its flaws, and we'll touch on some of those, but
it's quite exceptional in its rumination on its central thesis,

(05:42):
which it rolls out I think with enough care and
nuance that it invites us to further ruminate on what
this film means and what it's saying without transforming the
picture into a kind of blunt instrument of social or
political commentary.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
You know, something about the setting in time and place,
and the fact that it takes place among kind of
military officers within, you know, a couple of decades of
the US Civil War makes it feel like it should
have some kind of political historical commentary. Whatever political historical

(06:16):
commentary is there, feels kind of subtle to me. I
would say overall, the main themes are more of a
classic morality struggle, but with Gonzo Freddy Krueger elements.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah, I think it ultimately
strikes a nice balance in its commentary. I do think
if it had been made ten years ago instead of
twenty six years ago, I think it would have been
more aggressive in its critique. I think it might have
been a little blunter and and I don't know, it's
these are big what ifs, but I can easily imagine

(06:52):
a picture that was ultimately less successful. So, if you're
not familiar with nineteen ninety nine Ravenous, this is a
weird one. Ravenus is a frontier cannibal movie set in
eighteen forties California. It draws clear inspiration from both the
Donner Party and then and the confessions of alleged cannibal

(07:14):
Alfred Packer, And there's also a dash of Windigo of
lore from Algonquin folklore. Now, given this premise, you might
well expect a couple of different possible treatments. You might think, Okay,
this is gonna be an exploitive horror movie. This is
gonna be like a gonzo maybe even euro cannibal film

(07:35):
like we saw in the seventies and eighties, including Cannibal Apocalypse,
which we've covered on Weird House Cinema, partially filmed right
over here in Decatur.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
I'd say there are some special effects sequences that are
similar to Cannibal Apocalypse. Yeah, there's some kind of shoving
of organs into the mouth.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, they definitely. They definitely get in there and paint
with those brushstrokes. But at the same time, it doesn't
really go overboard there either. I wouldn't set so if
you come into this wanting like a complete gore fest,
it might not deliver, certainly by sort of like fangoria standards.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
At the same time, yeah, you might think, well, this
is about cannibalism, and cannibalism is inherently funny. There's no
denying it. No matter how serious your treatment of cannibalism is,
you can't help but get a yuck in there, you know,
somewhere or another, in part because cannibalism is such a

(08:29):
dark topic. But then there it also there are just
so many potentially humorous wrinkles to the concept.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Cannibalism really lends itself to puns and word play, a
little double on tondras in sentences. Have you noticed that
I feel like almost more than basically anything except sex,
cannibalism is just like the double on tundras leap out
of the language for you, right, and.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Then they often go back into sex as well. So
it's just it's all over the place. And so you
might well think, well, this is going to be a
you know, a grizzly comedy, maybe along the lines of
Trey Parker's Cannibal the Musical, which came out in nineteen
ninety three, based in part on the Alfred Packer account
which I just referenced. And it to be clear, this
film does have its intentional laughs, but it also shows

(09:17):
a great deal of restraint here as well.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, there is I would say a good bit of
humor in this movie, but it's way less overt than
in Cannibal the musical. I mean, this is not, in
any sense played for comedy. Instead, it's one of those
It's a dark story that is through and through dark
on its face, and I think the viewer is expected

(09:41):
to find little ironic amusements throughout it, you know, like
you're having a little chuckle, but there's nothing, no juicy
comedy happening on screen.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, so I think it's generally on the money to
think of Ravenous as a horror film. Absolutely. I'm not
going to make an argument that it doesn't belong in
that section of the video rental store, but I think
when you look at it, yeah, it also tends to
defy categorization in other ways, and I think the studio

(10:11):
clearly didn't know what to make of it. Audiences and
critics also tended to respond as such. I believe Ebert
really liked it, but I think a lot of people
just didn't know what to make of it. No one
really knew what to do with a serious minded cannibal
slash sort of vampire frontier film, reflecting on, you know,
to a certain extent, on the dark side of American

(10:33):
destiny and capitalism or at least human nature.

Speaker 3 (10:36):
Yeah, I mean nothing marketers hate more than something that
takes too many words to describe. Yes, it's just like
hard to market something that doesn't really fit its jenre
tropes very well.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
Yeah, and as such, the original marketing for this film
is just I mostly just hate all of it. I
hate all the posters in box art for it. All
of it's just kind of like ugly looking. I don't
like the trailer, and I don't think any of this
has changed. It's weird, like, this is a film that
has definitely developed its own cult following over the years,

(11:08):
and it's readily available. It's been re released, you know,
in Blu ray and so forth, but the packaging is
still more or less the same. I picked up the
box at at Video Drome here in Atlanta, and it's
on the recent Shout Factory release, which is very nice
as all these extras that were originally on the DVD release.
And it's the same description the box states quote it's

(11:30):
a recipe for NonStop action and excitement when the inhabitants
of an isolated military outpost go up against a marauding
band of cannibals in a deadly struggle for survival.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
That doesn't even accurately describe the plot. No, but then
it also gets the tone roll.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Yeah, yeah, the tone is totally incorrect here, Like, I
love this film, but it is not a recipe for
NonStop action and excitement.

Speaker 3 (11:53):
It is Also it's not that this makes it sound
like it's like a bunch of soldiers having a shootout
with a cannibal gang that had like it's mad Max
or something.

Speaker 1 (12:01):
Yeah, or maybe the thing. You know, there's some comparisons
to be made there, but yeah, totally different vibe.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
It's actually closer to the thing than what this makes
it sound like.

Speaker 1 (12:10):
Yeah, yeah, So my alternate elevator pitch for this would
be cannibalism American style. But even that makes it sound
like it's going to be more of a comedy than
it actually is.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
If I could give it a slightly pretentious elevator pitch,
I'll cite a line from the movie. The characters in
the movie discuss a believe a Benjamin Franklin quote where
they say, eat to live, don't live to eat. Now,
that's an interesting aphorism. This movie explores what that aphorism
means when you have to interrogate the meaning of both

(12:43):
live and eat.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Yes, all right, I'm gonna skip the trailer since I've
already established that I don't really like it. I would recommend,
I even if you've not seen the film, I'd recommend
just going in cold and experiencing it. And you know,
don't even look at the box, don't even look at
the posters. But but if you want to watch it
on your own, it is widely available for digital rent
and purchase. The Shout Factory Blu ray is definitely the

(13:08):
pick for physical media. It contains numerous extras, including no
fewer than three commentary tracks. I believe these were on
the original release. This is just that period I believe
for excitement for regarding disc extras, so they just went
all out.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if the original release
of this movie on DVD had little like little Easter
eggs in the menus. Oh yes, something you could like
navigate over to and click and it would play like
a I don't know, you'd have like a dancing Robert
Carlyle and.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah, this is when they did all
of that stuff, and I have to admit I haven't
really gone into the extras on the disc. I feel
like this is sometimes I really like to do that
with the film for a weird House and get more
of the backstory. This, I really feel like, is a
film that just speaks so well for itself as itself.
But you know, sometime down the line, I might really
get into the extras because they look really good. You've

(14:00):
got Carlisle and Bird doing a commentary track, You've got
you know, various other individuals involved in the production, and yeah,
I'm sure it's all really good stuff.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
One thing I would say before we go any further
is that, of course, always on Weird House Cinema, we
end up talking about the plot in some amount of
detail as we go on, and that will include spoilers
for the story. In cases where I think, you know,
you might want to go in without anything spoiled, I
throw a warning up. I think this is probably one
of those. This is a movie where you might want

(14:39):
to watch it without any of the surprises ruined. So
so fair warning, folks. If you haven't seen the movie
you feel like you want to, this might be a
good place to pause and go check it out before
listening further.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
All right, we've given you the warning, so now we're
going to get into the meat of the people involved
in this production, starting at the top. The director to
hear is Antonia Byrd, who lived nineteen fifty one through
twenty thirteen English TV and film director and also occasional producer.
Her TV credits go back to the early eighties, working

(15:11):
on various series and TV movies, including some work in
the long running series EastEnders. In ninety four, she directed
the film Priest starring Linus Roach, Tom Wilkinson and Robert Carlyle,
which earned her a BAFF denomination among other honors. She
followed this up with nineteen ninety five's Mad Love, no
relation to the Peter Lourie picture. This one starred Chris

(15:33):
o'donnald and Drew Barrymore. But what if it had been
a remake of Mad.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Love starring Chris O'Donnell Andrew Chris O'Donnell as.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
In the role of a lifetime in the Peter Lourie role.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
She also did nineteen ninety seven's Face, a crime drama
starring Robert Carlyle alongside ray Winston. Ravenous would be her
last feature film, but she continued to work in television,
directing a handful of TV movies and episodes of show
like I five and Cracker. She was one of the
UK's leading female directors by many estimates. She sadly passed

(16:07):
away following a battle with cancer. Now it is important
to include a brief note about the production here. So
first of all, just incidentally, this movie was filmed primarily
in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, So I think all
of these scenes that are supposed to be the American
Frontier are actually Europe. And then the scenes that take
place in Mexico were actually filmed in Mexico.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Bird was apparently a last minute replacement for a different director,
a Macedonian director, Milt show Manchewski, And I'm not sure
on the details there ultimately not important, but amid discussions
of who are we going to get into who's going
to step in and direct this picture? Now we're getting
down to the last minute. You know, the cast, everything,

(16:51):
all these these expensive pieces are in place, and it's
Robert Carlyle who reportedly suggested that they get Bird done.
His previous work with her.

Speaker 3 (17:02):
It was clearly a good move. You can feel something
about something that is really working in this movie is
a kind of playfulness and a freedom to experiment that
I think you can feel coming from the top. At
least that's my sense in watching it.

Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yeah, and I believe that's the sense that you get
when you read interview pieces from Carlisle about the picture.
So he had worked with her on episodes of TVs
The Bill Cracker, as well as an anthology series called Screenplay.
The episode that Bird directed was a nineteen ninety three
episode titled Safe that centered around homelessness and also feature

(17:40):
Aidan Gillen and Kate Hardy. So yeah, he always he
seems like he always spoke very highly of citing her
collaborative spirit and her on set demeanor. In a nineteen
ninety nine interview with The Guardian that, to be clear,
was promoting this picture, he said the following about power
dynamics on productions, Antonia is very different from most directors

(18:03):
in thinking that way, the more you do in your
career and the more success you get, you can pick
and choose. But I've been confronted with a power thing
from directors before and that's what makes Antonia refreshing because
she doesn't have that. It's a collaborative thing. It's about trust,
and you build up trust over a period of years,
and therefore you will do anything for each other.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Oh okay, yeah, So if I'm interpreting that right, that
does match the feeling I get from watching the movie
where it is. You get the sense that this is
the kind of production where people were just trying things.
People might do something weird, and then it's like, oh,
that kind of works, let's go with that, yeah, instead
of a director just draconian ly to you know, bossing

(18:44):
everybody around and saying, no, I've got a vision, do
it this way.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
And of course all that makes sense when we get
into the cast here in just a minute, because it's
a great cast of character actors and experienced the stage
and screen actors, and so you can really feel it
all come together.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (19:01):
The screenplay is by Ted Griffin born nineteen seventy. This
was his first produced feature film script, but he followed
it up with two thousand and one's adaptation of Ocean's Eleven,
based on a previous film from many years back. He
also did two thousand and threes matchtick Men, the twenty
ten series Terriers, twenty eleven's Tower Heist, and twenty ten Solace.

(19:24):
He also got into producing and co produced twenty thirteen's
The Wolf of Wall Street. All Right, heading up our
cast top build is Guy Pierce playing the character BOYD.
Born nineteen sixty seven. And I think everybody knows who
Guy Pierce is, big name Australian actor who really broke
into the mainstream with his supporting role in nineteen ninety
seven's La Confidential.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
I would argue Guy Pearce is really playing against type
in this movie. He again and again throughout his career
he plays characters that are very driven, the kind of focused,
competent people who are always the active party in the scene,
always the agent, And here he plays the exact opposite,

(20:07):
a character whose main vice is cowardice and indecision.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Yeah, I think that's a great read because whether he's
playing heroes or villains, which and he does both terrifically,
it is generally a very driven character. And in this
film the character is intentionally presented is very passive for
much of the film, resigned to whatever fate has seemingly
for whatever fate has seemingly chosen for him, and you

(20:32):
know as such, he doesn't even seem to have much
agency at first, and on the whole speaks very little
in the movie.

Speaker 3 (20:38):
Yeah, it's a weird choice to have a protagonist this way.
He's like, there are multiple scenes where he is an
officer in the military in this film, but he has
like men underneath him who are having to kind of
like give him orders essentially because he's just frozen and
he doesn't know what to do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
So, prior to Like Confidential, his Australian credits included the
cult favorite drag film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of
the Desert, alongside Hugo Weaving and Terrence Stamp. So this
film pretty much follows up on the La Confidential boom
and proceeds a string of early two thousand films Christopher
Nolan's Memento in two thousand, of Course, two thousand twos,

(21:18):
The counta Monte Crisco, two thousand and two's The Time Machine.
Subsequent credits included such films as two thousand and five's
The Proposition, two thousand and eight's The hurt Locker two
thousand and nine is The Road twenty twelve's Prometheus, twenty
thirteen's Iron Man three, in which he gets to play
the chief villain, twenty sixteen Brimstone. I believe that's another

(21:39):
grim sort of Western frontier picture. Twenty seventeen's Alien Covenant,
small but memorable roll. There a turn as Scrooge in
twenty nineteen's A Christmas Carol. I haven't seen that, but
I'm imagining it as Peter Wayland as Scrooge, so I
hope that wouldn't disappoint.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
Dan Ackroyd did nothing but trouble as Scrooge.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
And then oh, he's in twenty twenty fours The Shrouds.
That's I believe the latest Cronenberg film. Haven't seen that one,
And he's also in The Brutalist, for which he was
nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Yeah, I always like Guy Pearson. He is great in this,
but once again a very different kind of role for him.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
All right, now, coming back to Robert Carlyle. Robert Carlyle
plays we're past spoilers at this point, so we can
go in and say that it's kind of a double role.
He plays a character that it's initially identified as with
the name Calhoun, but we come to know as ives.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
There are a lot of great things about this movie,
but I would say Robert Carlyle is the hub around
which the spokes revolve here. He is the core of
this movie, and he's like the best thing in it.
He is driving this train and he's driving it right
off the tracks and it's great. He is fantastic.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, he really gets to shine here. He gets to
go in various directions. It's in many ways a Dracula
role in all the great ways that it's a Dracula role,
but with all these other layers in place, Like he
gets to play a frontier mad man, he gets to
play a cold, pragmatist villain. He gets to be this
kind of embodiment of predatory capitalism and empire. And there

(23:16):
are also subtle homoerotic layers to the character as well.
I don't think those are as pronounced, or at least
they didn't jump out at me as much, But based
on interviews I've seen with Carlisle, he does stress that
that it was part of the calculus of the character.
So Carlile is of course a noted Scottish actor whose
credits go back to the late eighties, starring in TV

(23:40):
with some small roles before starring in nineteen ninety one's
Riff Raff, which earned him earned him a BAF denomination.
And it wasn't long after this that he worked with
Byrd Unsafe and then worked with her again on Priest
the same year, nineteen ninety four, he also appeared in
a supporting role in the Robin Williams film Being Human.
In nineteen ninety six, he appeared in Dan he Boils

(24:00):
Train Spotting, playing the sadistic Oh, it's been a while
since I've seen this. I think the character's name is Bigbie.
It's been forever. Yeah, Franco Begbee, I think. And this
is a role he'd reprise in twenty seventeen's T two
Trained Spotting. He followed this up with ninety seven's Face
and The Full Monty, and this was another role he'd
later reprise in twenty thirteen The Full Monty TV Project.

(24:23):
He was a ninety nine's Plunkett McClean ninety nine's The
World Is Not Enough. I forgot about this one. But
he's a Bond villain.

Speaker 3 (24:30):
Oh, he's the villain of it. I've seen this movie,
but I don't really remember he.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Is either this is Yeah, I'm not a big fan
of this era of Bond pictures, but he either plays
the main villain or the chief henchman.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
Okay, the world is not. Oh is this the one with? Yes? Sorry,
just had to look it up. She's doctor Christmas Jones.

Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, I'm I think I saw this, but I maybe
I didn't because I don't really remember any of this.

Speaker 3 (25:00):
I notice it's a forgettable one. It's got a showdown
in a nuclear submarine I think in the end, and
Robert Carlyle is he's a villain called Renard. I had
to look this up to jog my memory. I truly
did not remember any of these details.

Speaker 1 (25:13):
Goldie is in it, the UK DJ musician. But yeah,
maybe I haven't seen this one at all. Well, it's
not Robert Carlyle's fault. That's like good no, but you know,
more power to him forgetting that Bond villain pay day.
Let's see that same year, though, he was in Angela's Ashes,
and then in two thousand he was in the Beach.
He played Adolf Hitler in the two thousand and three

(25:35):
mini series Hitler The Rise of Evil. Other credits include
two thousand and seven's Aragon and also twenty eight weeks
later from the same year. And he also played the
role of sort of an updated version of Rumpel Stilskin
on TVs Once Upon a Time, which ran from twenty
eleven to twenty eighteen. All right, third billing for this

(25:56):
picture is David Arquette playing the character Cleaves.

Speaker 3 (26:00):
Billing that's a strange choice.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah, yeah, I think I guess they were capitalizing on
his sort of like MTV era Scream franchise celebrity status
at the time. But this is a very minimal role,
kind of a mild comic relief stoner character.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
I mean, he's good in his scenes, no offense to
David Arquette at all, but he's more unhinged than I
would have expected David Arquette to get, like his hysterical
laughter at absolutely nothing and h and also like while
he's getting gutted.

Speaker 1 (26:30):
Yeah, yeah, I guess they, you know, they when they
were marketing it, they're like, you liked Scream, right, well,
enjoy Ravenous because ye at this point, Scream one and
two had already come out the same year he starred
and Never Been Kissed. Subsequent films include two thousand and
two's Eight Legged Freaks, two thousand and fours Never Die Alone,
and also twenty fifteen's Bone Tomahawk, which you know is

(26:52):
another weird Western frontier movie.

Speaker 3 (26:58):
Oh. I remember having mixed feelings about that one, because
I thought like, in some ways it was well made,
but also it just made me feel so nasty.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
Yeah, it's it's kind of a kind of a nasty one.
I'm I'm like, again, only twenty fifteen, and I'm not
sure it has aged well, but and I haven't gone
back and rewatched it, but I enjoyed the experience when
it came out. You know, Kurt Russell was great and
everything and solid supporting cast in that one as well.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
Yeah, who is it? Oh Man who plays Richard Jenkins.

Speaker 1 (27:28):
Richard Jenkins is outstanding in that.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
He's great in it. Yeah, but I remember that one
just being particularly just mean and vile.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, all right, let's get into the more of the
supporting cast. Here. We have Jeremy Davis playing Toffler. Born
nineteen sixty nine, American actor who the same year was
part of the cast of Saving Private Ryan. He'd already
appeared in ninety six's Twister Subsequent films included two thousand
and two Secretary as well as Solaris, and he played
Charles Manson in two thousand and four's Helter Skelter that

(27:57):
was a TV film, and he also had roles on
TV's Lost and Justified.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
It's weird to imagine him playing Charles Manson because he
usually played it once again against type there he usually
plays these kind of quiet, frightened, timid mouse like characters.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Yeah, yeah, he's a he's like a sweet but weird
dude in this very religious if we haven't mentioned it already,
one of the whole things here is that all of
the people that have been kind of exiled to this
remote outpost in Ravenous they are all outcast of one
sort of or another. They have been put here to
be forgotten. This is the ubliette of the American Frontier. Yeah,

(28:40):
all right, and then we have we have a major
supporting character by the name of Heart, played by Jeffrey
Jones born nineteen forty six, and is kind of This
one is kind of a tough one to write about
and to bring up here because Jones was one of
I think the most beloved weirdo character actors of the
eighties and nineties, noted for roles in such films as
eighty four's On It of Course, nineteen eighty six is

(29:02):
Ferris Bueller's Day Off, in which he is the principal.
He also has a fun villain role in Howard the
Duck the same year, He's in eighty eight Beetlejuice, ninety
two Stay Tuned, and nineteen ninety four's ed Wood, in
which he played the amazing Chris Well.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
On TV. He had a regular cast role on HBO's Deadwood,
but of course legal problems in two thousand and two
with some really rough charges that I don't even want
to get into here on the podcast, but the info
is readily available on Wikipedia and everywhere else. This essentially
ended his career. At any rate. His on screen work
was always terrific, and he's great in this His Heart

(29:38):
is it Colonel Heart.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
I can't.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
I don't necessarily remember everybody's military rank, but Heart is
a very likable character and it has a very nice,
it perhaps a bit rushed character arc.

Speaker 3 (29:47):
Which sets up a late movie twist that is I
remember back in the day, was like a real gut punch.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, it hit the same way, even
though it was knowing it was coming. All right. We
also have General Slawson. Great choice of a name because
it sounds like it goes with barbecue, played by John Spencer,
who lived nineteen forty six through two thousand and five.
Noted American actor best remembered for his role as Leo
McGarry on TV's The West Wing. Other credits include eighty

(30:16):
three's War Games, eighty nine's Black Rain, nineties Presumed Innocent,
ninety six is the Rock in ninety seven's Copland. This
was his last theatrical appearance.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
I was thinking of this character as General Cole Slawson.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
Yeah, they do those nicknames. Yeah, he's really good at this.
You your gruff authority figure. Everything that you would ask
about that character, he does a good job, all right.
We also we have a return of a character actor
that we previously talked about on the show. Steven Spinella
plays Knox born nineteen fifty six, American actor of stage, screen,

(30:52):
and TV. We previously talked about him because he was
in nineteen ninety five's Virtuosity. He played the creepy doctor
Lynden Meyer.

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Is this the guy who In Up, he creates Sid
six point seven, Yes, the Russell Crow virtual reality murderer,
but then like starts worshiping him.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
Yes, okay, yes, yeah, so yeah, great creepy performance in Virtuosity.
Totally different vibe here as he plays brash, terminally alcoholic
major knocks. His other main film credits include two thousand
and eights Milk, twenty tens Rubber, and twenty twelve's Lincoln.
Solid performance here. All right, then we also have Reich.

(31:31):
This is the character played by Neil McDonough born nineteen
fifty six. Stealey, American tough guy actor whose first role
was a dock worker in nineteen nineties Dark Man. He
also popped up in ninety six's Star Trek First Contact.
Really busted out with a role in two thousand and
one's Band of Brothers, followed by a key role in
two thousand and two's Minority Report, and he got to

(31:52):
play m Bison in the two thousand and nine Street
Fighter movie.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
Oh okay, that's the later movie, because yeah, for me,
m Bison will always be Roald Julia. Oh.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Absolutely, Once Raal Julia has played a role, it's his forever.
So mcdod is good here it's kind of one note role,
but it's a good note.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 1 (32:11):
And then we have a couple of Native American actors
to round everything out. First, we have Joseph Running Fox
playing the character of George born nineteen fifty five, Native
American actor of the Pueblo Nation whose credits go back
to nineteen seventy eight. He played the lead in the
nineteen ninety three Geronimo TV movie and since Ravenus has

(32:31):
continued to work steadily, appearing in two thousand and two Skinwalkers,
the Navajo Mysteries, TV's Sons of Anarchy, and also TV's
Dark Wins.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
The character George is the scout who works at the
four Tier, and he is also the character who delivers
the movie's core lower dump.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yes, so a minimal role, but an important one, and
he's good. And then we also have Sheliah Talzi playing
Martha born nineteen sixty She's a Monomine and Stockbridge, Munsey
Native American actress whose credits include nineteen ninety two's Thunderheart,
nineteen ninety five's Lord of Illusions, the Clive Barker film.

(33:10):
I don't remember her from that, but that's one i've
been tempted to revisit. In recent years. She pops up
on TV's The X Files. She was in two thousand
and two skin Walkers and two thousand and fives Into
the West. She was active from about ninety two through
two thousand and five.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
Her character's presence is limited, but she does play a
kind of central role in giving one of the core
like moral exhortations in the movie. Especially. It's interesting watching
the movie multiple times because you might not fully understand
what she's saying to Guy Pearce's character the first time
you see it, and then it kind of makes more
sense when you know the whole arc of the story.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:47):
Martha and George have important roles in being the characters
who have some degree of understanding of what's actually happening.
They provide a certain wisdom that has thus far been
elusive for the Western characters in the picture. All right,
briefly getting behind the camera here. Anthony B. Richmond was

(34:08):
a cinematographer on this Born nineteen forty two. His work
goes back to the nineteen sixties and includes such films
as seventy three's Don't Look Now and nineteen seventy six
is The Man Who Fell to Earth. Wow. Yeah, he
also worked on ninety two s Candy Man and ninety
five's Tales from the Hood and apparently is still working today.

Speaker 3 (34:26):
That's a good resume for a bunch of great looking films.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Yeah, Nicholas Rogue connection there. And you know, I'm not
going to get into the producers, but I think there
is a producer executive producer perhaps connection to some Nicholas
Rogue pictures as well. Okay, but now look, we should
talk to just a little bit about the score. In
my opinion, Ravenous boasts one of the most original, un
effective scores that I can think of, certainly from this

(34:50):
time period, painting a rich sonic tapestry that includes discordant
renditions of patriotic anthems and American frontier banjo, some of
which I've read was performed by non musicians that were
gathered together for the project. You have tape loops, you
have brooding primal beats, electronic distortion, in addition to some

(35:12):
more traditional movie score flourishes.

Speaker 3 (35:14):
Yeah, that's right. The score is extremely varied. It's all
over the place and all different kinds of genres and textures,
and it comes together quite well. This is I would
agree with you. The score is one of the strongest
elements of the movie, which is overall very strong, and
it really stands out to me. I think the music

(35:35):
is fantastic, especially because there are so many moments where
the music it seems like it doesn't quite fit in
one way or another, like it doesn't fit the time period,
or it doesn't fit the mood of the scene. But
then it kind of does, like it just continues and
then it resolves and reaches this state where it does

(35:55):
feel right in a way that it kind of rewards
your earlier trust in this tension created between sound and picture,
and I don't know, it's it's a very interesting feeling
that it creates in the film. And this is one
that I would like to have music from this movie
just on a record.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, it's this. It was released on CD, and I
know that I either had the CD or some MP
three's ripped from the CD back in the day, But
as of this recording, I don't think it's available to
stream anywhere aside from YouTube, as you know, probably a
user upload a situation, and as far as I can tell,
has never been released on vinyl. It seems like this
would be a no brainer for a really cool like

(36:35):
blood red vinyl release, but you know, I don't know
how the rights for those sorts of things work. Apparently
the music here was a so the music here is
a joint composition of two different musicians, though it's sometimes
a tangled web to try to figure out which one
did what. Apparently it was ultimately like a sixty forty split,
and the credit order depends on whether you're looking at
the film or the published album. But the two gentlemen

(36:59):
involved here are Damon Alburn and Michael Nyman. Damon Alburn
born nineteen sixty eight is, of course the illustrious English
musician best known for his work with the British band Blur,
who had a string of hits that I mostly know
from their inclusion in various DJ mixes from the nineties.
But then he would go on to be the key

(37:19):
creative force and lead vocalist on the Gorillas Project. I
believe his only other film score or soundtrack work is
a two thousand and one film called one Oh one Reykivic.
That's another collaboration, so really not much that's directly film
oriented outside of that. In ravenous, but he's worked in
all manner of musical projects, including things like operas, throughout

(37:41):
the course of his career. If nothing else, you're familiar
with Gorillas, and yeah, his work is fabulous.

Speaker 3 (37:48):
There are actually moments in the movie where I don't
know if he's using exactly the same electronic instruments or voicings,
but there are moments where I hear bits of the
first Gorillas album, Like there's a kind of electronic piano
tone used in a loop throughout the hit, their hit
Clint Eastwood that I hear that same tone in the

(38:09):
soundtrack here. And there's just stuff like that that feels
very familiar to Gorillas fans.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Oh yeah, that would make sense now. As for Michael
Nyman born nineteen forty four, English composer, pianist, filmmaker as
well in his own right, His best received scores in
addition to this one include his work on nineteen eighty
nine's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover,
nineteen ninety eight's Gatica, two thousand's The End of the Affair,
in twenty fourteen's The Piano. His other scores include nineteen

(38:39):
ninety one's Prospero's books ninety four's mesmer In nineteen ninety
six is the ogre?

Speaker 3 (38:52):
All right? Is it time to talk about the plot?

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Yes, let's do so.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Okay. We get a couple of epigraphs right at the start.
One is a quote attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche that says
he that fights with monsters should look to it that
he himself does not become a monster. The relationship of
that to the plot will become a parent as we
talk more. And then you get a second quote that
comes in which is attributed to anonymous, and it is

(39:16):
eat me this.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
I like this, but this also maybe feels like a
late studio attempt to sort of try and control how
people are going to consume this picture. But I don't
know exactly whose choice this was. I don't know it
still works.

Speaker 3 (39:36):
Is this the chef coming out and telling you how
to eat your food?

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Yeah? But overall I love this because we're instantly hit
with that squeaky, perhaps non musician Frontier band rendition of
the American patriotic song Hail Columbia, which sounds fabulous here,
but when you look up the lyrics, it's it's pretty

(40:01):
It fits pretty well. To what we're about to see.
Hail Columbia, Happy Land, Hail Ye Heroes, heaven born band
who fought and bled in Freedom's cause, Who fought and
bled in Freedom's cause.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
Yeah. So we start with, of course, that kind of music.
It's patriotic military marching band kind of music. And we
see a waving American flag and that with fewer stars
though than the flag you're used to because this is
the eighteen forties. And then we see a banquet hall
with a long table, bunch of place settings, patriotic regalia,
and it's lined by officers in full uniform, so this

(40:36):
is some kind of ceremony. And we hear a voice
saying for heroism beyond the call of duty, for successfully
infiltrating the enemy's ranks and securing victory independently with cunning
and honor. We see Guy Pierce here in uniform as
Captain John Boyd, and he is ready to receive a
medal for his meritorious service. We also get a glimpse

(40:59):
of John Spence is the general presiding over this ceremony.
This is General Slawson, and then we cut back to
Boyd looking kind of uneasy as we get a sudden
flashback to the midst of battle, so we see him
in a very different place. There's gunshots ringing out on
this hillside, smoke everywhere. This is supposed to be the
Mexican American War, so it's a Mexican kind of landscape.

(41:21):
And then Guy Pearce is kind of falling to his
knees in the middle of the battlefield, as if his
strength has left him, And of course we get a
title telling us it's the Mexican American War. The year
is eighteen forty seven. A chaplain says a blessing, and
then all of the officers here at this banquet sit
down at their places at the long table, and they

(41:41):
dig in and the meal appears to be steak and
nothing else, not even a little salad, baked potato, some cream, spinach. Nothing.
But of course then I remember that this film takes
place before vegetables were invented.

Speaker 1 (41:58):
I was reminded of that in this of of the
later film two thousand and sevens There Will Be Blood,
in which Daniel day Lewis's character Daniel Plainview. At one
point he is in a restaurant with his son and
he orders quote two steaks, a whiskey and water for him,
and we never get to actually see that meal, but
I always I had a false memory that I had

(42:19):
seen it because I just imagine it coming out just
like that, just two steaks, no vegetables, one glass of whiskey,
one glass of water. Though I believe there is a
later key scene in which plaine View is enjoying a
plate of just steak.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
I mean, I don't know steak. How steakhouses worked back then,
maybe that was a more normal kind of meal to eat,
but I know I have to imagine even back then,
people would probably want some more variety. You want some starch,
some sides, some vegetables, something in there, like just a
plate of steak.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
The last time I went to a like certified steak
restaurant before I gave up steak, I do remember it
being a situation where you order the steak and then
you have to pay extra for anything else, any sides,
which kind of I mean, I guess the idea is
that that's just how it's priced out and all. Maybe
that's tradition, but it also kind of felt like like, oh,
if you want to get anything in addition to the meat,

(43:11):
you better pay for it, you're paying extra for that, buddy,
the steak stands alone.

Speaker 3 (43:15):
Yeah, I think that that sort of makes sense, like
because you can choose, like you get to pick your
sides all the carts, so you pick your favorite. So
it's not just like you know, oh, this is what
comes with it. But yeah, I see what you're saying there.
You know, the cream spinach is the classic steakhouse side.
I feel like, at least in the I don't know
how far back that tradition goes, but I would think

(43:37):
even in the eighteen forties you got to give them
some cream spinach or something.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
In this case, they were not able to requisition some
cream spinach for the troops.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
So everybody noisily digs into their steak and nothing else,
and you can really just hear them making sounds. Like
the movie plays up the disgustingness of the eating noises,
and it's like, and as this happens, Boyd is sitting there,
the only person not eating. All his peers are shoveling

(44:07):
the meat into their mouths, and you can see him
feeling anxiety, like his breathing is shallow and he's looking
around nervously. And then they also show Boyd's plate, which
looks disgusting. It's got this gross looking gray cut of
I think this is beef shank, which also is confusing
because that is not typically prepared as a steak. That's

(44:27):
going to be tough as rubber. If you need shank,
you have to cook it a long time, like in
a stew or something. So it's just like a steak
of beef shank sitting in a puddle of juice that
has clearly been modified to look less like regular steak
juices and more like fresh red blood. It looks like
thick and bright red. Here Boyd has another flashback to battle,

(44:49):
this time too, lying pinned down on the ground in
a pile of dead bodies, covered in blood, gasping for breath,
and eventually the association overwhelms him. He bolts up, gets
up from the banquet table, runs outside, and vomits, and
then we get the title Ravenous.

Speaker 1 (45:05):
Yeah, And I think this is where that unsettling banjo
music begins to kick in a ditty that will continue
to hear over and over again throughout the picture. So really,
at every key moment in the film, the music is
right there, amping everything up, and at times like subtly
twisting your expectations.

Speaker 3 (45:24):
Yeah. So the next thing we see is John Spencer
as the General, giving Boyd a real dressing down in private.
He tells Boyd that he is not actually a hero
and he wants him as far away from his company
as possible. So Boyd is sent away on a new
assignment to a remote frontier fort in California called Fort Spencer,

(45:46):
and we see Boyd in a few little scenes making
his journey across a background of these huge, black, snow
covered mountains. I think these are supposed to be the
Sierra Nevadas and millions of acres of dark green forest.
This wild landscape, so Fort Spencer is sparsely occupied. It's
this outpost in a meadow in view of the mountains,

(46:08):
built mostly of woods, surrounded by palisade wall, and the
accommodations are pretty grungy. Boyd gets shown his quarters. He
sort of like tests the give of the bedroll and
then looks at it, looks at himself in this dim
spotted mirror. In this sequence, we also briefly meet the
character Martha played by Sila Tauci, and this is a

(46:28):
Native American woman who works at the Fort and she
brings boyds and blankets here. Eventually, Boyd has to go
for a meeting with the commander of the fort, Colonel Hart,
who is at least at first portrayed as kindly, mild
mannered and a bit odd. We see him dressed up
with a large blanket or cloak kind of covering his uniform,

(46:51):
and he's often like this when we see him. He's
got something kind of draped over him that just turns
him into a kind of mass. And he's hearing what
looks like two different pairs of eyeglasses at the same time,
one set up on the bridge of his nose and
another down near the tip. I guess for reading. I
don't understand if that was like a thing people commonly
did back then or.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
But I don't know. I haven't caught myself doing that
with my own reading glasses.

Speaker 3 (47:17):
Yet it does contribute to making him seem kind of odd.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Well, no, I have to back that up. I do
frequently find myself painting miniatures with a pair of reading
glasses and my magnification loops, so I have essentially done
this a time or two. So maybe that's what's up.
Because as we learn, like his passion is reading various texts,
reading books in their original language, So who knows, sometimes

(47:43):
maybe he has to really bust up the optics in
order to handle certain font sizes.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Yeah, so when Boyd gets in, he's like trying to
frustratedly pry into a walnut with a knife, and this
is unsuccessful. So he's telling Boyd about what you were
talking about, how he fights the boredom the outpost by
reading these old texts in the original languages. And then
he goes and gets this giant leather bound book from
the shelf and uses it to smash his walnuts open.

(48:09):
I wonder if there's a kind of implied joke here that,
like he tells himself the way he fights the frontier
boredom is through reading these ancient tomes, but really the
way he fights the boredom is through eating. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Yeah, possibly it's there's a strong time enough at last
vibe to this character, you know, Yeah, like he is
like everyone here, he's an outcast, but he's found the
place where he can mostly just set around and read.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
Hart asks Boyd if he has a hobby, and Boyd
says swimming. Probably not much opportunity for swimming here in
the mountains. Heart explains a bit about the history of
the ford. It was originally a Spanish mission. Now it
serves as a way station for travelers moving through the
Sierra Nevadas, and he says, of course, there are very
few travelers in the winter, so the ford only has

(48:58):
minimal staff for the season, and then we get a
brief introduction to each of them. There's Private Toffler, who
is very religious. This is Jeremy Davies. We see him
praying before meals and like heaving wooden crosses up to
the sky. He's also in many scenes trying to compose
a hymn. You can see him working on the melody.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
And the lyrics. It's not coming together.

Speaker 3 (49:18):
Yeah. We see Major Knox played by Steven Spanilla, who
likes to drink. That's his main character trait. He likes
the whiskey bottle. He used to be a veterinarian, so
he is the forts medic. We see Private Reich played
by Neil McDonough, who is the tough guy, and there's
this brief flash of him standing naked up to the
waist in a mountain stream surrounded by snow, and he's

(49:40):
just screaming and flexing his muscles.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
Yeah yeah, this is some troubled masculinity here.

Speaker 3 (49:50):
I am hard man. Yeah yeah. And then of course
there's George played by Joseph running Fox, who is Martha's brother.
He's a Washo scout. And then there is Private Cleaves
played by David Arquette. Hart calls him the over medicated
Private Cleaves. He likes drugs, and he's the cook. We
get a short little dinner scene with everyone assembled. The

(50:11):
vibes are pretty cursed, especially since Cleaves is seized with
crazy laughter at apparently nothing the whole time. And then
we get some more of Boyd's backstory. We like flashback
to what happened during the war, and we learned the truth.
The truth was Boyd was in the middle of battle
and he became so terrified that he froze, and he

(50:34):
just laid down on the field and pretended to be
dead while his men were slaughtered all around him. And
then after the battle was over, the enemy came and
collected the bodies from the field and put them in
a cart. Boyd was at the bottom of the cart
with the blood of his commanding officer running down his
face and into his mouth. Then he says, after this

(50:55):
he had a change of heart. Something came over him
while he was lying at the bottom of that cart.
He regained his courage, and he sprung from the pile
of bodies, and he single handedly captured the enemy command.
And this was the act that won him his commendation
for heroism. But when General Slawson found out that this
whole thing started with the dreadful act of cowardice, you know,

(51:16):
playing dead on the battlefield, he decided to punish Boyd
by sending him out here to California. So back in
the present, it is winter time, snow is falling, and
Heart sends Cleaves and Martha out on a journey to
the nearest trading post to get the stuff you need salt,
pork and flour and all that. And it's going to
be a three day journey. So it's only the rest

(51:36):
of the crew there left at the fort. And while
they're gone, we see Heart and Boyd bonding sharing some bourbon.
There's an interesting little moment where Heart talks about how
he wanted to escape the world by coming here, but
now he wants to escape this place. Quote frightening thing
about escape is the chance you might end up someplace worse.

(51:57):
I don't know if this is one of the major
themes movie. I have to think about it, but it
is a little interesting in the context of the story,
that the observation that we can be deceived into thinking
that everything would be better if we could just change
some particular set of external circumstances, like where we are,
what our job is, or what we're doing, or something
like that, but that sometimes, you know, maybe sometimes that

(52:20):
is really the problem, but a lot of times it's not.
Sometimes you manage that change and discover that wasn't actually
the problem, and your new circumstance is not actually the solution.
The new circumstance is something you once again desire to escape.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Yeah, yeah, I think that idea does weave itself rather
nicely through through many aspects of the plot.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
But this moment is suddenly interrupted by a boo scare outside.
Through a frosted window, Boyd sees a figure in black
looking in at them from the cold. So the soldiers
run outside and they find a man collapsed in the snow,
apparently dying of hypothermia, and they bring him inside and
they're able to warm him up and save his life.

(53:01):
The next day, the man wakes up and he looks
to me surprisingly healthy. He introduces himself as F. W. Colhoun,
servant of God, and he's like, I don't know, like
you get to look at him and like he looks
like pretty well fed, Like he looks like he's doing great.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
He's worth noting to hear that both Calhoun and Boyd
they both kind of look like Jesus, you know, they're
both shaggy, long hair and either a beard or a goate.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
Yeah. So Colhoun explains that he had been stuck in
the mountains for three months before he found the fort,
three months without food. And Heart is incredulous at this,
but Colhoun clarifies. He says, I said three months without food,
not three months with nothing to eat.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Yeah, and he's going to explain. But you also get
the idea here that that's all he really needed to say,
Like everyone knows what he means by that. Everyone's familiar
with the idea of cannibalism.

Speaker 3 (54:01):
So here Colhoun launches into his backstory and he gives
a whole monologue. I'm not gonna quote the entire thing here,
but basically he tells a story of how he was
part of a traveling party with five other people and
a There was a guide. They had, a military man
named Colonel Ives, who he calls a detestable man, a

(54:22):
disastrous guide, who professed to know a new shorter route
through the Sierra Nevada mountains. But in fact, it turns
out they took the route and then they got stuck
in a snowstorm in the winter, and they were stuck
in a cave and they couldn't get out. This, of course,
mirrors real incidents in history, like the quote shortcut that

(54:44):
was taken by the members of the Donner Party. This
was a path that others had taken in the past.
But basically the Donner Party, when they took a different
path through the Sierra Nevada has got delayed and then
got stuck up in the mountains in the winter. So
he describes them getting stuck in this cave, and then
Calhoun and says, quote, we had run out of food.
We ate the oxen, all of the horses, even my

(55:05):
own dog, and that lasted us about a month. After that,
we turned to our belts, shoes, any roots we could
dig up. But you know, there's no real nourishment in
those we remained famished. The day that Jones died, I
was out collecting wood. He had expired from malnourishment, and
when I returned, the others were cooking his legs for dinner.

(55:27):
Would I have stopped it had I been there, I
don't know, but I must say when I stepped inside
that cave the smell of meat cooking, I thanked the Lord.
I thanked the Lord. And then things got out of hand.
And he goes on to describe how he, you know,

(55:48):
only ate you know, the meat from the people who
had died naturally, and he ate sparingly. But the others
something changed in them, something came over them, and they
had to eat a special Ives became insane, and he
just kept killing other people from the cave so he
could eat them. And at last, Calhoun says that his

(56:11):
courage failed him, and he fled the cave, and he
wandered out and eventually came across this fort. But the
way the story trails off, it is alleged here that
Colonel Ives is still alive up in the cave with
at least one other person, innocent person stuck up there
with him, a woman named McCready. Is she still alive

(56:33):
as far as Calhoun knows, possibly she is. So Heart decides,
based on the story that they immediately have to send
out a rescue party.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
Yeah, nobody really wants to go, but Heart is, you know,
he's dedicated to what is right here, and he says,
it's our job, it's our job. We have to do it.
There's no choice.

Speaker 3 (57:00):
Everybody's getting ready to leave. But George comes up to
Heart and Boyd and stops them to warn them about something.
And it's based on Calhoun's story. What he wants to
warn them about is the wind to Go being spoken
of by some of the people of the north. In reality,
I believe the Windygo legend comes from Algonquin folklore, which

(57:21):
would have been further north and east. But here George
explains and Heart translates for Boyd. The gist of it
is a man eats another's flesh, usually the flesh of
an enemy, and in doing so, he steals the man's strength,
his essence, his spirit. His hunger becomes insatiable. The more

(57:42):
he eats, the more he wants to and the more
he eats, the stronger he becomes. And Heart is, like George,
people don't still do that, do they? And George responds
by telling him that white man eats the body of
Jesus Christ every Sunday.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Yeah, and he flips the high that he's been reading
the soft ov and it has Christian iconography on the
other side.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
Yeah, it's a nice moment. So the party sets out
on the rescue mission. The party is Hart, Boyd, Reich, Toffler, George,
and the stranger Colhoun. They pack up provisions, they bundle up,
and they head into the mountains, and so we get
a little montage of their journey. I like one little
moment on the journey where Colhoun helps Toffler find a

(58:25):
rhyme when he's composing as him like he says, he
ends a line with the word servant, and he's going
like leervent deervant, and Calhoun is like fervent. And Toffler
is very, very helped by this. He's appreciative. But anyway,

(58:46):
they are making their way along through the mountains and
at one point they stop in this high mountain pass
in the snow, and Boyd kind of questions Colhoun. He's
clearly he's curious. He says, when you ate the flesh
of the man, afterwards, you said your hunger was different,
more wanton. Did you feel physically different, stronger? And Calhoun

(59:08):
kind of mildly says, I seem to recall something like that,
feeling some kind of virility. He's being very reticent about
it now, but this will become funnier in retrospect. Also,
I just have to comment on everybody's nineteenth century sunglasses here.

(59:28):
They've all had these shaded goggles of various kinds that
look like, I don't know, they look like Vin Diesel
and pitch black.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
Yeah, Robert Carlisle here reminds me a little bit of
Kurt Russell. And the thing actually with the sunglasses and
to a certain extent with the hat. He does not
have the full the full hat situation going on.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
But still so somewhere in here Toffler falls down and
gets injured, and so he's got like a bloody wound
that they have to bandage up. And later that night,
after Toffler's injury, everybody's asleep in their tent when suddenly
Toffler comes away can he starts screaming, and it's dark
and you can't see what's happening. But then somebody lights
a lamp and Toffler is backed up against one side

(01:00:09):
of the tent, terrified, and on the other side of
the tent is Calhoun looking pale and kind of crazed
with blood on his lips, and Toffler says, he was
licking me. And this is interesting because rob if you
know what I mean, Robert Carlisle plays Calhoun very straightforwardly

(01:00:33):
before this, like there's nothing to indicate really that they
would should have any concern about him. He seems like
a wronged, victimized man who is frightened and in search
of justice, Like there's nothing about him that reads as abnormal.
But that starts falling apart on this journey. So Calhoun

(01:00:56):
pleads with hard on the others he's apologizing. He says
he was having a nightmare and then he woke up
to find himself crouched over Toffler licking the wound, and
then he asks them to restrain him for the rest
of the journey, so they do. They tie his hands,
and then the next day they come to the cave,
the cave where there should be ives and missus McCready

(01:01:18):
and I still have strong memories of how freaky this
scene was. The first time I saw it, such a
powerful sense of unease and menace, and things just steadily
becoming weirder and more chaotic by the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
Yeah. Yeah, the editing is superb here. The music is
incredible building that tension. We get these kind of like
rumbling rhythmic beats, like there's some primal force welling up
through the whole situation.

Speaker 3 (01:01:49):
Yeah, exactly. And so as they approached the cave, Calhoun,
who had been again, he was fairly composed and sympathetic
at first, I mean, frightened, but that's all. He starts
acting increasing erratic, not just afraid, but like quaking and
moving his body in bizarre ways and making these weird
little like yipping and whimpering noises again at first like

(01:02:11):
he's afraid, but then just more and more weird, like
some kind of trapped wolverine that's tipping from fear into
a kind of threatening playfulness. And so Reike and Boyd
go into the cave to investigate, and everybody else waits outside.
And in this scene, Reich makes his contempt for Boyd

(01:02:33):
clear while they're searching, like obviously he views Boyd as
gutless and unworthy of command, and inside the cave, they
find some kind of pit like a natural ubliet, and
they go down and investigate this, and what they find
inside is too many skeletons, too many skeletons to Magicalhoon's story.

(01:02:54):
And the piles of clothes inside include a military uniform.
So if the colonel ives of the story was not
the eater and was instead eaten, who was the eater?
And then the guys inside the cave are like, oh no,
and they scream it's a trap.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
And this whole cave. To drive this home, this this
is this is like a wonderful like cannibal cavern situation.
We're right out of an episode of Tales from the Crypt.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
Disgusting. Yeah, the skeletons all have this kind of melted
fat looking thing over them, like they look they're kind
of waxy. It's really gross. And then so Boyd and
Reich rush back outside, but Colhoun is already on the attack.
He first he starts frantically digging in the dirt outside
the cave and he digs up a knife. He attacks

(01:03:43):
and stabs Heart. A heart lays on the ground dying.
He shoots George, and then he chases Toffler out into
the woods, and this is where I was saying Colhoun.
He gets into full like late sequel Freddy Krueger mode.
He is having fun, like he tries to shoot top
but the gun jams and he goes that is so annoying.

(01:04:04):
And then he's like playing with him. He's brandishing the
knife at him and kind of dancing, and he says,
run run. So the chase breaks out, and interesting music
choices here once again. The music at first in this
chase is not like a threatening, dissonant jabs. It's not
minor key chase music. It's a hodoun It's like a lively,

(01:04:26):
upbeat major key fiddle and banjo music.

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
Yeah, yeah, you don't expect it to go with this direction,
but it, you know, looking at it, this was the
obvious choice, Like it breaks the tension and we get
to go in a different direction here.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
So Boyd and Reike run after them again, even though
Boyd is the officer and Reich is the private. Reich
is giving all the orders and Boyd is lagging behind,
barely complying. They find Toffler's body disemboweled. Colhoun is a
bit like Jason Vorhees here, seemingly disappearing and reappearing through
the woods. Kind of an arcane trickster. At one point here,

(01:05:05):
Boyd tries to chicken out. He's like, I'm going back,
I've got to go back, but Reike kind of bullies
him into staying. Reike is killed by Calhoun with a
knife to the chest and he falls off a cliff.
Boyd panics and then to escape Calhoun, he jumps off
the cliff. He survives the fall, but he falls into

(01:05:25):
a bunch of trees, breaks his leg, and then tumbles
along with Reike's body, into a hidden pit in the
earth covered by pine branches, and then he falls down
in there along with Reike's body, and time begins to pass.
So we get a little montage showing kind of I
don't know, maybe days going by, and we see Colhoun

(01:05:48):
transformed into a free roaming master of the wilderness. Now
he's just sitting on a shoal of pebbles in the
middle of a river, eating lustily from a big joint
of human meat and then laid. He's skipping rocks in
the stream with his shirt covered in blood and blood
all in his beard.

Speaker 1 (01:06:05):
Yeah, just loving life.

Speaker 3 (01:06:06):
At this point, back in the pit, Boyd sets his bone. Yeah,
so warning folks, there is a self bone setting scene
in the film, and it seems like he's clearly done
for unless he could get some nourishment. And there's Reich
right there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:24):
And I love right how Right's body is presented here.
Reich has like just wide open dead eyes, like just
continuing to judge him for his cowardice.

Speaker 3 (01:06:33):
These horrible cloudy eyes, but this horrible, huge grin, this
dead rictus and he's covered.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
In dried, like blackened blood.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
Yeah, and it's interesting to see how Boyd works his
way up to it, Like it starts with him taking
Reke's coat off his body because he's cold. He's like,
can I borrow this? You don't need it? And then
he's like, well, I already took the coat, and he
gets the knife, and it's mostly implied what he does next,
But sometime later we see Boyd emerge from the pit

(01:07:04):
somehow healed, like he's good, he's all right enough to walk,
and he makes the track back to the fort. When
he arrives, he's received and taken in by Martha and Cleaves,
who have returned from their trip, and Knox, who was
passed out drunk the whole time there while everybody else
was doing the things in the previous scenes. So there's

(01:07:24):
a scene here where Boyd goes to Martha. Now he's
clearly he's turned on to the idea of the Windigo,
and he goes to her to ask if she knows
anything about it, can it be stopped. She gives a
different kind of answer than he was expecting. She says
the Windigo always takes, never gives, and to stop the
wind to go, she says, you must give yourself, you

(01:07:46):
have to die. Implicit in this is that she understands
Boyd to be part of the Windigo, and the only
way to truly beat it is to admit that you
are part of it. For sake, cure hunger, and die. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
And Boyd doesn't say I'm asking for a friend. Yeah,
I didn't try to cover it.

Speaker 3 (01:08:07):
Yeah. So as time goes on, General Slawson and his
entourage arrived at the fort. They hear Boyd's story and
they investigate the cave, but they find nothing there, no bodies,
no bones. There's not a scrap of evidence to back
up the story Boyd has told. And Slawson tries to
get Boyd to amend his statement, but he won't anyway.

(01:08:27):
General Slawson has brought in a new commanding officer to
serve as a replacement for Heart. It's a colonel Is.
So step into the room, Colonel, let's let's see your
new captain Boyd here, and it is a colonel named Ives. Uh, oh,
it's him. It's Colhoun. He's all cleaned up now he's
in uniform. And it turns out Colhoun is Ives.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
Yeah, gone is the is the prospector's beard and the
crazy eyes. Now we have this like steely calm that
is over him. He looks very professional. He has establishment
cannibalism at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Yes, so Boyd immediately he freaks out and he tries
to tell everyone, but the story doesn't check out because
in his story he got a shot off on Coolhoun,
like he shot him in the shoulder. So they're like, okay, well,
if your story's true, he would have a scar. So
they look on ives body and there are no scars.
They find nothing, just like well fed, unblemish skin.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Yeah, so Boyd's stock here. He continues to go down
in the generals the general's view.

Speaker 3 (01:09:25):
Here, that's right, So everybody settles in with the new kernel.
There's like a dinner scene where they're all having ribs,
except Cleaves discovers that neither Colonel Ives nor Boyd will
eat meat. Ives never eats meat at all, since he
can't forget it used to be an animal, and Boyd
says he will only eat meat as a last resort.

(01:09:46):
There's a later scene where Boyd is looking out the
window at Cleaves as he's setting up some kind of sculpture,
like a big cow skeleton thing, and Boyd fantasizes about
killing him and eating his organs, and Boyd kind of
snaps out of it. It's like, what's going on with me?
Why can't I stop thinking about eating people?

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
Yeah, It's like it's kind of a version of the
Looney Tune scene where you know, one character looks at
another and they just just see a giant turkey leg.

Speaker 4 (01:10:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
Yeah. So later there's one night alone, Boyd is like
he's paranoid. He's sitting outside clutching a big kitchen knife
with a blanket around him, and Ives comes out. He's
very suave and dapper, and he's smoking a cigarello out
in the cold, and Ives breaks the tension by essentially
now admitting it because they're alone. He says to Boyd,

(01:10:35):
I found your private reichup there, or what was left
of him. You didn't finish. I can't blame you. He
was tough, but then a good soldier ought to be.
And then he takes a big drag out of his
smoke and he says, you know, not too long ago,
I couldn't do that. Could barely take a breath without
coughing up a pint of blood. Tuberculosis. That along with

(01:10:58):
fierce headaches, depression, suicidal ambition. I was in pretty horrible shape.
In fact, I was on my way to a sanatorium
to convalesce or more likely die, when en route, this
Indian scout told me a curious story. Man eats the
flesh of another, he takes the other man's strength, absorbs

(01:11:18):
his spirit. Well, naturally, I just had to try it. Consequently,
I ate the scout first, and you know what, he
was absolutely right. I grew stronger. And then he launches
into telling the wagon train story is sort of a
different version of the story he told at the beginning,
but now he is colonel Ives. He manages to get

(01:11:41):
people stuck in the mountain, so he can eat them.
He says he ate five men in three months. And
he says tuberculosis vanished, as did the headaches and the
black thoughts. I returned that spring, happy and healthy and virile,
And here I've shifts shifts to kind of tempting, to

(01:12:01):
being the satan figure tempting Boyd. He's like, you know
what I'm talking about. You've done it too. You know
its power, So why are you resisting? And Boyd says,
what's wrong? It's wrong to eat people? But Ives mocks him.
He says, morality is the last bastion of a coward.
It's like a man says he cannot do something because

(01:12:22):
it would be wrong. The real reason is because he's afraid.
And then he keeps tempting him, like he gets a
cut on his hand and he's like, sniff my blood. Mmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
It's a great see this and a subsequent sequence. We're
going to get a subsequent temptation segment sequence between Ives
and Boyd. Just tremendous here, especially from Carlisle. Just just
great acting, love every of the way the scenes are
put together.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):
Tremendous, fantastic. Yeah, and Boyd here tries to attack Ives,
but they are interrupted by Martha and then by Knox,
who they quickly discovered that Cleaves has been killed along
with all of the horses, and Boyd is put under
arrest on suspicion for that killing. So the next day

(01:13:14):
Martha volunteers to make the journey by foot to San
Miguel to get General Slawson for you know, I guess
to come back and investigate crimes once again. So that
just leaves Knox, Boyd and Ives at the fort, and
so Boyd is under arrest, and there's this scene where
Ives is cooking a stew and Knox is like can

(01:13:34):
I help? And Ives is like, not right now, perhaps
later you can contribute. Yes, yes, So.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
We get a little bit of the comedy here, but
they you know, they underscore it's it's.

Speaker 3 (01:13:44):
Nice, yeah, and Boyd listens. So in this scene there
are things happening in the other room, and it becomes
apparent that somebody in the other room has killed Knox
with his own sword. But then when the door swings open,
it's not i'ves standing there, it's Colonel Heart Yep. He
smiles and he says hello, Boyd, and he's covered with blood.

Speaker 1 (01:14:06):
Now he doesn't have any of his glasses on. There's
a new energy to this man. It's clear that he
has engaged in the cannibalism.

Speaker 3 (01:14:13):
That's right. So he tells the story of how he
thought he was dying, but he found himself being nursed
back to health in the cave by Ives, and he
was healed from his mortal wound because he ate man flesh.
He says, by the time I regained my senses, there
was no turning back. I feel terrific. So now Heart

(01:14:35):
and Ives are part of a cannibal conspiracy, and Heart
makes a pitch Boyd should join them.

Speaker 1 (01:14:43):
And this is where we get this other temptation scene
that is just excellent. This is where we get another
just tremendous monologue from Carlisle, and it really kind of
drives home I think the central thesis of the whole picture.

Speaker 3 (01:14:58):
Yeah, so Boyd is taken out to where Ives is.
I think they're grilling outside maybe now are they grilling
parts of Knox or butchering him? I think, I don't know,
They're doing some kind of cannibalism stuff outside and Ives
looks at the mountains and he says, manifest destiny, westward expansion,
you know, come April, it'll all start again. Thousands of

(01:15:19):
gold hungry Americans will travel over those mountains on their
way to new lives, passing right through here. We won't
kill indiscriminately, no selectively. Good God, we don't want to
break up families. And then oh yeah, horrible, And then
he talks about how they want to recruit somebody else.
General Slawson. They want to convert him to the religion

(01:15:43):
of cannibalism because it would be useful to have somebody
that powerful, right, He says, we don't wish to recruit everyone.
We've got enough mouths to feed as it is. We
just need a home. And this country is seeking to
be whole, stretching out its arms, consuming all it can.
We merely follow.

Speaker 1 (01:16:02):
Oh and that line there just gives me chills.

Speaker 3 (01:16:05):
So Boyd tries to resist them. He says he's not
going to be like them, but the bids continue. Carlyle says,
you're already one of us almost. You hunger for it,
you just won't resign yourself to it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
Oh yeah, and we get that other line that's always
stuck with me. It's not courage to resist me, Boyd,
it's courage to accept me.

Speaker 3 (01:16:24):
Yes, yeah, yeah, but this makes me think, like when
are you really part of a conspiracy, like when you
do the crime, or when you accept that doing the
crime is all right?

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Yeah yeah, And there's a lot to chew on here,
Cannibal puns aside, but yeah, it's like this idea that
like there is this gravity that is pulling all of
them down and there's inevitability to it, And like, Boyd,
you're not doing yourself any favors by fighting against the tide.

(01:16:56):
You'd make things so much easier for yourself and for
everyone around you if you just gave in, if you've
just accepted the world as it is, the world as
we've made it, if you just accept that you're a
part of it. And that, of course, has been part
of Boyd's moral failing thus far. He's just proceeded through
life like a thing encased in mud or almost fossilized

(01:17:19):
in his environment and has just been generally just unwilling
and unable to attempt to counteract that flow.

Speaker 3 (01:17:28):
Yeah, he has acted upon, he does not act against. Yeah, yeah,
though he is trying to resist here. And it's interesting
the way that Carlisle, the way that i'ves is like
papering over distinctions. Like, He's like, you've already done the
same as us, But Boyd hasn't unlike them. He has

(01:17:49):
not killed to eat man flesh. He's just eaten of
those who already died. But I think they're trying to
make that transition for him easier. It's like not observing
the distinction. Yeah. So then Ives tries to persuade Boyd
by stabbing him, So he stabs him. He's like, all right,
now you know the rules. You've either got to eat
human or die from your wound. So Ives and Heart

(01:18:11):
like sit around the table enjoying a major Knox stew
and at first Boyd resists, but then the pain of
his wound becomes too great and his fear of death
overwhelms him and he begins to eat.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
I like, how, Yeah, the answer heres for him to
give in and eat the stew too, which is like
the completely civilized version of the cannibal feast, which I
don't think we've had it up into this point. It's
been more like bone nawing. But here is the sanitized
version of it, which I think is also rife with
so many different interpretations. When you start analyzing this picture
like here, here's the refined version of the thing you're

(01:18:44):
afraid of. Give in to it, be become a part
of this operation.

Speaker 3 (01:18:49):
Yeah. So the next day, of course, Boyd is all
healed up. The cannibalism does wonders, and there is a
conversation between Boyd and Heart while ives is outside. Heart
talks about how he misses his books. They were taking
off his shelf, I guess when he was presumed dead,
and he muses about how even thousands of years ago,

(01:19:09):
Plato and Aristotle were thinking over the same problems that
they can't solve today, like what is happiness and how
to get it? And Boyd says Aristotle wanted to get
to truth, not happiness, and Heart kind of rebels against this.
He says, I spent my whole life trying to do
what I thought was right and true, and now here
I am. But some cracks appear in Heart's conviction. Boyd

(01:19:34):
reminds him of all the people they killed, cleaves knocks,
and Heart kind of he fights his conscience off. He's
screaming about how you have to kill to live, But
Boyd eventually gets through to him, and Heart kind of
collapses and decides you're right. I don't want to go
on living like this, Boyd, You've just got to kill me.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
And Boyd does this scene here, which is intercut with
a few things concerning Calhoun and other characters. But this
scene I think is pretty admirable because a lot has
to happen, particularly with Heart's character, in a very short
amount of time, and I think it was done even

(01:20:14):
slightly incorrectly, it would have felt really rushed as it
is here, like it feels ultimately feels, you know, a
bit on fast forward, but also completely earned. And I
think it comes down to the direction, to the performances
and just the way they've cut it all together. Like
I end up completely buying it. But man, they do
so much in such a short scene.

Speaker 3 (01:20:34):
Well, I mean, I think because it comes across that
Heart was also just kind of weak willed, and he
was allowing Ives' confidence in the cannibalism conspiracy to sort
of allow him not to consult his own soul about
whether this was right. He was just like going along
with the justifications that i'ves gave. But now that somebody

(01:20:57):
else from the outside is pressuring him kind of does
break through the facade and the real heart comes out
and his guilt and grief are unleashed and he can't
deal with it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
Right, And so now the line is clearly drawn. Ives
sees this happen through the blood splattered window, and so
now it's going to be it's gonna be a standoff
between Bloyd and Ives, right.

Speaker 3 (01:21:21):
So the rest of the movie is basically this grueling fight,
this duel between Boyd and Ives. They sword fight, they slash, stab,
bash across the landscape of the fort, and then they
end up at the end of this fight in a
bear trap together, which is just perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:21:37):
Yeah, it's an enormous bear trap, Like I'm almost like
Acme level of bear trap, but it feels earned and
it's a surprise I think they do. We do see
a bear trap earlier in the picture, so it is established.
But when it goes off, yeah, just get.

Speaker 3 (01:21:51):
Them both, I've says says to to Guy Pearce, if
you die first, I am definitely going to eat you.
But if I first, what will you do? Good question,
because we actually don't know at this point. Boyd's character
has been portrayed as weak willed enough, and the story
is bleak enough that you could believe it would end

(01:22:14):
with him just embracing the cannibalism eating him and becoming
win to go again.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
Yeah, because that thus far, that's how he has proceeded.
Those are the choices which brought him to this moment.

Speaker 3 (01:22:25):
But Boyd does have a moral victory in the end
by resisting the temptation. Ives does die first and Boyd
does not chow down. He dies as well. But then
General Slosson arrives with his retinue and they wander in.
They're looking around and he finds a stew bubbling over
the fire. I guess this is still the knock stew,

(01:22:47):
still left over from the day before, and he decides
to taste it, and he tastes it. He's like delicious, yummy, yummy.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
Yeah, So it seems like maybe the cycle will continue
with General Slosson. And then we see Martha show up
and Martha finds the bodies of Boyd and Ives and
the bear trap and she sees what's happened and she
runs off into the wilderness.

Speaker 3 (01:23:10):
Yeah. Thinking about this slows in question like if he
eats the stew, does he become the wind to go?
Within the logic of the movie, are you a wind
to go? If you don't know that you're eating human
I think that's a real question. Like it comes back
to one of the questions that we raised earlier, like
does the monstrosity arise from eating human flesh physically? Is

(01:23:33):
it the physical processing of it with your digestive system
even if you don't know what it is, Or is
it the conscious awareness that you are eating human flesh?
Or is it the moral acceptance of yourself as one
who eats human flesh. So the distinction between those last
two being like being aware that you're eating human flesh

(01:23:53):
but not feeling okay about it, versus feeling like, all right,
it's okay that I'm doing this, versus the final thing
is killing, the act of killing someone in order to
get more human flesh. They're all like different points on
a continuum, and I guess you could ask at what
point does one become the monster? And does each step

(01:24:14):
kind of lead to the next step.

Speaker 1 (01:24:16):
That's a great question. Yeah, the movie leaves it ambiguous,
Like we can I think reasonably think that, Okay, Slawson
is going to eat this stuff. It tastes great. He's
probably going to just really pig out on it and
maybe have like a really great week. He's going to
take up new hobbies, he's going to get a lot
done at work. But will he be able to make
the connection? And maybe he will, Maybe there's enough essentially

(01:24:37):
forensic evidence at the camp that he'll realize what he
ate and then start making increasingly horrific choices. But maybe not.
But then also it does kind of tie into some
of the questions raised, like what happens when you come
along and you eat this stew and you don't know
how the stew was made. It's just presented to you,
and now what are you for having participated in this meal?

Speaker 3 (01:25:01):
All right? Well that's ravenous?

Speaker 1 (01:25:03):
Yeah, yeah, I think it really holds up. I think
it's a great, great film, really stands out. Hard to
think of another film from nineteen ninety nine that really
that I keep coming back to. But this is the one.
I mean, it's not it's not End of Days, it's
not Blair Witch Product product, Blair Witch Project that should

(01:25:25):
have been the sequel Blair Witch Product.

Speaker 3 (01:25:28):
My memory is actually the Blair Witch Project is pretty good.
I think, Yeah, I think it might hold up pretty well.

Speaker 1 (01:25:34):
I think with that one, it's it really impressed me
at the time, but then we saw so much found
footage material that I've just been so resistant to going
back and watching anything from that year. I don't know.
I look at a list of other nineteen ninety nine
films that was the year we had audition. I'm in
no hurry to rewatch that, but that was pretty strong
as well, with.

Speaker 3 (01:25:53):
That remake of The Haunting with Liam Neeson and Catherine
Zeta Jones. How about that.

Speaker 1 (01:26:00):
That's not on the list from the rewatch anytime soon?

Speaker 3 (01:26:04):
All right? Does that do it for today?

Speaker 1 (01:26:06):
Yeah, we're going to go ahead and close it up here,
but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. What
are your thoughts on Ravenous or other cannibal films or
other films from nineteen ninety nine. It's all fair game,
right in. Let us know we would love to hear
from you. You can get this show wherever you get
your podcasts. Get it either in the Stuff to Blow
your Mind podcast feed where it publishes every Friday, or
on its own in its own standalone playlist, which you

(01:26:28):
can currently get wherever you get your podcasts, as well,
wherever you get Weird House Cinema rate and review. That
really helps us out. If you were on letterbox dot com,
look us up. Our username there is weird House and
we have a big old list of all the movies
we've watched over the years, and sometimes we get a
peek ahead at what's next.

Speaker 3 (01:26:45):
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 (01:27:05):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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