Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Brain Eaters

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1958 sci-fi movie “The Brain Eaters,” which doesn’t actually feature brain eating but is still a lot of fun. We're re-running it during Trek Week because it features Leonard Nimoy! (originaly published 02/11/2022)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
And this is Joe McCormick, and we are bringing you
an older episode of Weird House Cinema today. This is
The Brain Eaters. Oh, this one's got a young Leonard
Nimoy in it, doesn't it.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
That's right. That's why we picked it for rerun duties
today because it is of course Star Trek Week here
on Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
This episode originally published February eleventh, twenty twenty two.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
And this is Joe McCormick. And today we are doing
a movie that I'm so excited for. I've had it
on the list for a while, mainly because it has
one of my all time favorite nineteen fifties drive in
movie posters, and I'm kind of a connoisseur of nineteen
fifties drive in horror movie posters. In fact, I'm sort
of surrounded by them right now. I've got the It

(01:10):
Conquered the World poster, the Attack of the Crab Monster's poster.
But this movie I'd say the poster is the best
of them all. It is a nineteen fifty eight film
called The Brain Eaters.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, and if you haven't seen the poster for this,
look it up, you know, go to any go to
the IMDb page for it, look it up on Wikipedia,
just do an image search. You'll see this fabulous poster.
You've probably seen it before, and it is just gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
It's this gigantic face like a lady's head, her eyes
wide open in a kind of desperate anguish, but instead
of regular eyes, they're just pure yellow, these yellow voids.
And then she's got fangs like a vampire, and like
very red lips, like vampires are often depicted in color
films of the time. But then also so her skull

(02:01):
is cracked open to reveal the brain underneath, and the
brain is like exploding. There are shafts of light or
power or something shooting out of the brain. And then
it has the title in yellow, The Brain Eaters. It
shows people scattering below the face as if they're fleeing
in terror from this yellow eyed vampire lady, and it

(02:22):
says crawling, slimy things terror bent on destroying the world.
I don't know what terror bent means the brain eaters.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Maybe they couldn't put hell on the posters, so they're like,
I still like the bent part. Can we just let's
go with terror Bent?

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Yeah? Exactly. So, Rob, can you describe what movie you
would think you were about to see based on the
title of this movie and the poster alone?

Speaker 1 (02:48):
Okay, so yeah, having looked at this poster over the
years and never having having seen the film into this week,
I would say that I look at this poster and
I think it's about a lady who gets like an
earth woman who gets you know, altered by some sort
of cosmic ray. It gives her some sort of psychic
power so that there's like you know, mind blast firing

(03:10):
out of her brain. Maybe her brain is exposed, maybe not,
but then she has this vampire thirst for human brains
or like or maybe like you know, just like neural
juices or something spinal fluid.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Yeah, so she's just, you know, she can't stop this hunger.
She's just and as we see in the bottom part
of the poster here, law enforcement and the general public
they're having to swoop in to try and stop her.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Unfortunately, every single bit of that is entirely misleading. The
lady on the poster does not appear in the film,
and the movie The Brain Eaters has no brain eating
in it.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Right, no brain So if you have you look at
this poster and you're like, I don't know about this.
I don't want to watch brains get eaten. Don't worry.
There's there are no brains in this picture. They're no really,
I don't think they're exposed brains either.

Speaker 4 (04:01):
No.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
I mean the closest thing is this movie does feature
alien parasites that like jack into your spine, and so
I don't know. I guess the spine is connected to
the brains. That's as close as you can get.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Yeah, it's kind of like if they'd called the movie
The Social Network the Brain Eaters, it would be just
as accurate. Like, yes, okay, technically it's about eating brains,
but not in a not literally.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, not in the physical way that we were imagining.
So do you want to know why it was called
The Brain Eaters despite the fact that there's no brain eating.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Oh, let's have it. I'm guessing it has something to
do with the studio.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
Oh yeah, well, I don't know. This is actually rather
independent production. But it has something to do with an
uncredited producer. So I found the answer to this question
in an interview with the named producer of this film
and leading actor, Edwin Nelson, who's come up on this
show before. Definitely we talked about him because he was

(04:59):
one of the people who operated the crab suits in
Attack of the Crab Monsters.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
That's right. He worked with Roger Corman quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yes, And so it turns out that this movie also,
despite the fact that Corman is not credited on it,
it was created under the uncredited auspices of the schlock
Father himself, Roger Corman. And so I was reading about
a little of the backstory of this movie in an
interview with the producer and lead actor ed Nelson in

(05:29):
a book by the horror historian Tom Weaver. And let
me look up the title of that book real quick,
just in case you want to look at up yourself.
It's called Double Feature Creature Attack, a monster merger of
two more volumes of classic interviews, published in two thousand
and three. And in this interview ed Nelson explains in
his own words, he says The Brain Eaters was originally

(05:51):
not called the Brain Eaters Roger, meaning Roger Corman loved
our original title so much that he took the title
off of it. And Bruno that's Bruno Visoda, the director,
and I had to make up the brain Eaters. The
original title of the brain Eaters was Attack of the
Blood Leeches. That was the title Roger loved, so he

(06:12):
took the title to make another picture, which ended up
being Attack of the Giant Leeches. He got somebody to
hack out a script for him, and yeah, that's putting
you in the right zone of this era of filmmaking.
Very title first, very poster first. We can get a
script out this weekend and we'll just make it Attack.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
Of the Giant Leeches. By the way, that one was
riffed on Mystery Science Theater three thousand back in the day.
Kind of a kind of terrible garbage bag giant leech effects,
but a very grimy film, and there was always something
about it. It kind of creeped me out, like it
felt there's something legitimately creepy about that film.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
I can't remember. Is that the one that has dogs
with like carpet on them, or is that the Killer Shrews.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
That's the Killer Shrews. That's the one Killer Shrews is
where then they build like a weird suit of armor
to try and survive the Trews. This one has all
these like really grimy, mucky scenes where the giant leeches
have like kidnapped people and taken them back to their
their their layer. That's like underwater, underground, and I don't know,
there's something legitimately creepy about those sequences, even though it's

(07:19):
you know that the costumes are not the avery realistic
as if, as if realism can even really be applied
to something like a giant leech.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Well, anyway, while the movie itself on its own terms
is a lot of fun and I'm really excited to
talk about it, I do also just want to have
like a moment of silence for the for the movie
that is implied but never realized by the poster entitle.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
There's still time though they could. They could basically come
back take this post. The people are always looking for
things to adapt into films like come back get this one.
Just take the title, take that cover image. You can
leave the rest of the film, but just take those
two things and run with it. It wouldn't be the
first time someone took a Roger Corman related picture and

(08:03):
just took either the title or the poster. I believe
this was the case with The Fast and the Furious. Correct.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Oh, maybe that actually sounds right, but I don't know
much about that. I do think that there is there
was an earlier film called that It was long before
Vin Diesel Walk to this Earth.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
Yes, The Fast and the Furious nineteen fifty four, let's see,
based on a story by Roger Corman, produced by Roger Corman.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
Okay, Well, then using that principle, I would say it'd
be great to apply to the brain eaters, because once
again this poster is an awesome, gobsmacking thing of beauty.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yes, so I was looking into this because I'm like,
all right, well, what's the story on this. Well, the
person responsible for this poster is Albert Callus, That's ka
l Lis. Not only did he do this poster, but
he's responsible for a lot of classic movie poster goodness
from this period. If you want to see some of these,

(09:00):
there's there's an excellent blog that I've been visiting for
a while titled monster Brains and at monster brains dot
blogspot dot com. If you look up go there and
look for Callous k A L. L. I. S. You'll
find at least one gallery from twenty eleven of these
various posters that he put together nice high qualities, so
you can admire them. But they include such films as

(09:23):
I Was a teenage Frankenstein, Attack of the Crab Monsters,
Invasion of the Saucermen, Not of This Earth, which we
covered on here before, a Weird House conquer let's say
it conquered the world.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
How to make a monster?

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, that's a good one. The Astounding she Monster, that's
a really eye catching one, and so many more. Now
this is inincidentally, this is also the same Albert Callous
of the Albert and Trudy Callous Foundation, which is responsible
for various documentaries. So he was only really in the
poster game for you know, a certain number of years

(09:57):
and then moved on to other things.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
Well, he's one of the I love that style. I
wish that style of movie poster would come back, you know,
the great hand painted drive in movie style poster that
often has nothing to do.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
With the movie. Yeah. Absolutely, these are gorgeous. Though I
will say that some of his other posters do feature
creatures or version variations of the creatures that are actually
in the film, so they're not all as oh yes,
as deceptive as this and certainly any deception. I'm not
going to place the blame on the poster artist, but anyway,
they're beautiful posters.

Speaker 2 (10:30):
Now the other two Corman posters of his I have
or they're on target. Like Attack of the Crab Monsters,
it's got that crab and it conquered the world. It
has the killer artichoke, it's right there, right But anyway,
to bring everything back to the brain eaters. While this
movie may not in fact have brain eating it, it
has nearly everything you could want of a drive in Deluxe.

(10:50):
Apparently this one was a double feature that was often
paired with Earth versus the Spider, the Bert Eye Gordon movie,
Mister Big and So. Of course, like Attack of the
Crab Monsters and other great movies of this caliber, it
is mercifully short. This is a sixty one minute long movie.
That's another thing I want people to bring back. Give

(11:12):
me hour long movies. There is no reason to try
to pad everything out to ninety minutes if it doesn't
need to be that long. A sixty minute movie is fine.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Absolutely. I think that's why I'm so drawn to some
of these outer Limits episodes because they get in, they
get what needs to be done in less than an hour,
and this, you know, we're just talking a little over
an hour. You watch this film twice and you ended
up spending less time watching it than some of the
pictures that are out there, especially some of the modern
films one might view totally.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
And they packed so much in So this movie has
an anomalous cone. It has an elfin looking murder boy
who runs around transporting mysterious globes. It has Leonard knee
Moy sitting in a garage full of fog dressed as
a wizard. It has no sense heroics from a senator
named Walter k Powers, whose name is uttered at least

(12:06):
thirty times in this movie. It has the fact that
every single character is armed with a loaded revolver at
all times and is constantly shooting at things. And the
monsters in it are Tinglers, just like in The Tingler,
and I love watching these tinglers creep around. They got
a little pipe cleaner an tinny. I want to know
what is the secret of the Cone. I can't deny it.

(12:28):
I love the brain eaters.

Speaker 1 (12:30):
That'd be fair to the Tingler. These are kind of
like your bargain basement tinglers.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
These these are not on the level of the Tingler
as far as creature effects go. These, in fact were
made with little wind up toys. That's another thing that
Ed Nelson talks about in that interview. In fact, I
read from it directly. Nelson says, quote, we made the
creatures out of a little toy wind up beetle that
was around in toy stores at the time and quite plentiful.

(12:57):
They had antennae, and if they bumped into a piece
of furniture, they would turn and go the other way.
We put crepe hair on them. I'm not sure what
crpe hair is, crape like the food or crep. However,
you say that we put crepe hair on them and
pipe cleaners for their antennae, and there you go, that's
that's your movie. Monster.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah. Well, when I looked this movie up in Michael
Weldon's books, one thing he said was, yeah, the effects
are not good, but it's a fun sci fi film nonetheless.
And yeah, I think I have to agree. Like sometimes
we say, oh, well, you know, this film did a
really good job with the effects for the time or
for the budget. I mean, I'm not saying I was

(13:38):
insulted by the effects in this film. It's not that level.
But I'm gonna I'm not gonna spend a lot of
time defending them or pro or finding nice things to
say about them. I guess they get the job done well.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
I mean, this movie was i'd say on the border
of micro budget. I'm not sure exactly what the cutoff
is there, but I think this was in nineteen fifty
eight and it was made for just a few tens
of thousands of dollars. Yeah, so yeah, they were not
pumping money into the effects budget. I think they were
pumping money into like catering for the crew.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Yeah, they managed to not insult the audience with them,
So that's a success given the size of this picture.

Speaker 2 (14:17):
You're ready for the elevator pitch, Let's have it. When
a mysterious cone appears in the woods outside Riverdale, Illinois,
it's up to a ragtag team of scientists, local bureaucrats,
and senators to shoot everything suspicious until they solve the
secret of the cone.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
Yeah. These are some action packed senators. Like they just
just show up on the scene and it just just
really It's almost like they ran on UFOs and strange
cones as one. Yeah, they're you know, one of their
major campaign points.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
I can well, so you say that it's action packed senators,
but the senator in this movie literally says I want action,
like seven times. And I'm imagining that says campaign slogan.
Can you see the posters. They've got Walter k Powers
wearing that weird double layered coat and it just says
I want action.

Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (15:10):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
And also, to complete the elevator pitch, there are these
furry little alien leeches that are going to turn our
nation's precious telegraph operators into mindless space thralls.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
That are again apparently made from toys in the same
way that the Martians in Santa Claus Versus the Martians
are using whammo air guns.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
Let's hear some trailer audio.

Speaker 4 (15:34):
Ejected from Unexplored Secret Strutus. This giant, harder than steel
piston disgorges strange creatures inundating our world, twisting the emotions
of women, distorting our men.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
These things take over a man's mind.

Speaker 4 (15:50):
It becomes a robot, a machine, taking orders. Join the
hunt for the hiding place of terror, find the breeding
place of these gloves of destruction. It's an adventure that,
of course your blood vessels with suspense see the brain eaters.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
All right. Sounds sounds good, sounds like drive in material.
All right.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
So we've already said that Roger Corman was an unofficial
producer on this. It was at least basically, you know,
a Corman Mafia type production, but his name does not
appear on the film. The lead the lead producer credit
goes to Ed Nelson, that we can talk about in
a minute. But let's see, the actual director was somebody
named Bruno Visota.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Yes, born nineteen twenty two, so like one hundred years
ago and died in nineteen seventy six. Mostly an actor
active in the fifties, sixties, and early seventies. He apparently
showed up as a bartender on Bonanza a lot, the
old TV western. He directed a handful of films, including
such titles as Female Jungle from nineteen fifty five, in

(17:00):
Invasion of the Star Creatures from nineteen sixty two, and
he also acted in Roger Corman's or Roger Corman produced
Attack of the Giant Leeches from nineteen fifty nine.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Oh, that was the movie that stole the original title
of this movie.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Yeah, so he got to be there for it, just
as you know an actor. All right. Now, the screenplay
credit goes to Gordon Orkhart, who lived nineteen twenty two
through nineteen fifty seven. He acted in Female Jungle, but
this is his only screenplay credit.

Speaker 2 (17:29):
Oh wow, that's short. So did he die the year
before this movie was released?

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Looks like it? Yeah, oh no, yeah, he was only
thirty three. All right. Coming back to our producer, one
of our producers, and of course our leading man. Let's
talk a little bit about Ed Nelson here playing doctor
Paul Kettering Edwin.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
You know, he's handsome. He says his lines with vigor
and confidence. Maybe not a whole lot of nuance, but
I like him.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Yeah, yeah, I mean he's one of these Sometimes the
lead in a picture like this, you're like, who is
this black hole of charisma that you like cattle prodded
in front of the cameras. But no, Ed Nelson's got
He's got this kind of Hammy Shatner esque charisma that
works in a picture of this caliber.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
Yes, he is Hammy in a way that I like.
This movie is not big on character nuance. There are
actually a couple of scenes that are more subtle than
the rest of the movie, But in general they're not
Paul Kettering, they're not the character and Ed Nelson's just
there to be the dashing scientist hero, to be the
calm voice of reason and the face of bravery.

Speaker 1 (18:41):
Yeah, you say that character development nonsense for the seventy
minute pictures. We don't have time for this. We're trying
to get in and out in an hour.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
But now are the other main performance we've seen of
Ed Nelson's that we've talked about before. You actually don't
get to see his face at all. It's when he's
operating the crab suit and attack of the crab monsters.
And I saw you had a note where you thought
there was a question about whether it was him operating
the crab suit. I think maybe you're remembering our question

(19:11):
of whether, in addition to Ed Nelson, Jack Nicholson. Yeah
sometimes operated those crabs.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Okay, yeah, yeah, the Nicholson part is in question. There's
still still time for Nicholson to come forward.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
If you're interviewing Jack Nicholson, ask him about this. Get
the final word.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
So Nelson was a new Orleans born actor who ultimately
did just about everything in film. He seemed to really
get in there on these productions. I mean, case in
point was inside a giant crab costume and I think
he had didn't he have a human role in that
as well? I saw him listed as Lieutenant Quinnlan.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Oh, that might be right. A number of crew members
and stuff for Attack of the Crab Monsters also had
short on screen roles, like I think Charles B. Griffith,
who wrote the script for Attack of the Crab Monster
was the navy boy who gets his head chopped off
by the crab at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh yes, yes, well he did so. Ed Here did
a lot more acting. Eventually had a long TV career,
a lot of Westerns, but also which I guess is
unavoidable given the time period. See that was the number
of these actors. But he also pops up on classic
series that are fondly remembered today, like The Twilight Zone,

(20:24):
the Original Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock hour Gun Smoke. He
played the elusive Robert Dendy in nineteen seventy six's Writing
with Death, which MST three K fans may finally remember,
and he played Governor Nielsen in Police Academy three from
nineteen eighty six. De Brayley Scott from Death Moon was

(20:46):
also in that one.

Speaker 2 (20:48):
Oh, but unfortunately Ed Nelson was not in Death Moon.
We will never get to see him as the work beast.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Oh, you can't replace the work beast. Ed would have
had to have played like his boss or something, the
advertising agency or whatever wherever he was supposed to work.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
Okay, So how did ed Nelson end up being the
producer on The Brain Eaters and not just an actor
in it? Well this is addressed in the in the
interview from that Tom Weaver book, So I'm gonna read
ed Nelson's own words. The question is what was it
about working with Roger Corman that made so many of
his coworkers feel that they should be out making movies

(21:24):
on their own, Because this is a you know, the
people who worked with Corman at the time would end
up going out and doing their own, low budget independent
movies in the fifties, and Ed Nelson says, I don't know.
I suppose they thought that if Roger could do it,
anybody could. Obviously that's not true. I never felt that way.
I never wanted to do it. I mean, I produced
The Brain Eaters only because I needed the money. I

(21:47):
knew I could do it. I could always produce a picture,
but I just don't like it. It's not my bag.

Speaker 1 (21:53):
That's it's good to hear that, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
But so yeah, apparently Corman came to Ed Nelson and
was like, hey, you know, Bruno Soda is going to
direct this movie about killer leeches and I need a producer.
Do you want to do it? And Nelson was like okay.
And so a lot of the producer work on this
seemed to be like going It was in Pomona, California,

(22:16):
and so they would like go around to the local
hospital and say, hey, if we make a small donation
to the nurses charity, can we shoot inside your hospital?
Or they would go to the police station and say, hey,
if we make a small donation to the police fund,
can we like use your guns and stuff. So it
looks like that's about how it worked.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
Well, they got enough guns with this picture.

Speaker 2 (22:39):
Yes, they did. Their guns runneth over.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
All. Right, So let's talk about some other humans in
this picture. We have an actor by the name of
Cornelius keith A appearing here as Jack Hill. Playing Senator
Walter K. Powers The Powerhouse. Yes, he was born nineteen
hundred died in nineteen seventy two. This is a guy

(23:12):
that was acting during the mid nineteen twenties, and this
turned out to be his final film role. I think
basically he had been active, you know, many many years earlier,
and had kind of recently come back as Jack Hill.
I don't know. I don't know why I don't because
I think Cornelius Keith is a is a great name.
It sticks with you.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
Well. He plays Senator Walter K. Powers with tremendous gusto.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, he has this kind of frantic, rudy Giuliani skull
about to jump out of his face energy. Yes, but
also with this just intriguing mustache.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Yeah. So I spent about half the movie just trying
to figure out if Senator Walter K Powers had a
mustache or not. He has a mustache that I don't know.
If it's because the movies in black and white, it's there,
but it's like invisible half the time.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah, and or you know, maybe he just felt compelled
to grow one and just wasn't very good at it.
I mean, I can I can understand that. I can
I can sympathize with that, but it is it is.
It is a faint ghost of a mustache.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Well, I think it's one of those that doesn't he
decided not to let it cover the entire upper lip.
It's like one of those little kind of sculpted, thin ones.
But it like follows the what's the name of the
little indentation on your upper lip? What's that called the
lip dip? It follows the little edges of the lip dip,
and then it goes along the top of the upper

(24:37):
lip just a little bit. But it's it's tiny.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
I'll tell you what he could be. It could be
that this is a style of mustache that he always wore,
and as he grew older, it was just harder for
it to be that that that you know, well defined,
because I think I've seen interviews with John John Waters
where he says much the same thing. It's like, oh,
you know, the pencil thin mustache is my thing. But
the older, I guess, the more work it takes to

(25:01):
make sure that it's visible.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
I can understand that.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
All right. We also have Joanna Lee in this, an
actor who lived nineteen thirty one through two thousand and three.
Playing Alice Summers. I don't remember which character this is.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Oh, Alice Summers. She will so I think she works
in the Mayor's office at the beginning of the movie.
But then she becomes Paul Kettering's research assistant. Yeah, and
they like figure out the leeches together, and then they
fall in love, and then she is and then she
is zombified by the leeches, and then at the end
she's the one saying like, come come with me, we

(25:36):
can be happy forever living under alien tyranny. And he's like, no, Well.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
She's as close to the lady on the poster as
we get then.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
I mean, but she didn't look like her.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
True true But a lot of people might remember her
from a lesser but more famous picture she was in.
She played the alien Tanna in Plan nine from Outer
Space ed Woods nineteen fifty seven and Masterpiece.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, were you hesitating on the word masterpiece?
And I don't know why you said that's a lesser film.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Well, it depends how you're judging, It depends what your
criteria is, but certainly a film that sticks with you.
So she's in that film. She's one of the two aliens.
I mainly remember her male counterpart, because he's the one,
isn't he That's like your stupid live, stupid stupid.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah, they're the two main alien. Yeah, he's like your
stupid earth minds, stupid, stupid bid.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
We also have Jody Fair in this, playing Elaine Cameron
born nineteen thirty four. Active during the late fifties and
early sixties, she was mostly in a bunch of sort
of youth panic movies of that time period. It seems
like titled like High School Confidential, Hot Rob Gang, Ghost
of Dragstrip, Hollow Girls, Town Sex, Kittens, Go to College,

(26:55):
and then ultimately some TV Westerns.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
Yep, everything comes back to Westerns. Everybody we look at
in these fifties drive in movies, it seems like did
mostly Westerns.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yeah, and you know, the same can be said for
the next name we want to talk about, Leonard Nimoy.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
Wait, did you mean the same cannot be said? Or can?

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Candy said? Yes, Like, you know, sixty six is when
Star Trek came out and Nimoy had been acting for
you know, years and years prior to that, and a
lot of it was Westerns.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Wow, I somehow I've never seen any of those, But yes,
Leonard Nimoy is in this. It's a small role. He
doesn't show up until the end of the movie, and
so you can even going into it knowing that he's
going to be there. At some point, you kind of
forget about it until he appears at the end in
a bank of fog, dressed as like gandal for his
God or something, talking about how we will force men

(27:50):
kind to live in Utopia.

Speaker 1 (27:52):
Yeah. So as A Nimoy was born in nineteen thirty
one died in twenty fifteen, is mostly famous and four
playing Spock on the original Star Trek and various Star
Trek films and Star Trek related things later on. You know,
legendary role, iconic role, will always be remembered for that.

(28:13):
But this at this point, I think this was his
twentieth film and TV credit, So this is about like
eight years into him actually appearing on screens of one
sort or the other. He'd eventually go on to do
Twilight Zone and Outer Limits in sixty six once more,
once again Star Trek starts up. But you know, he

(28:34):
wanted to do other non Star Trek things as well.
He was in the nineteen seventy eight Invasion of the
Body Snatchers.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
I love that movie and he's great in it.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
It's still on my list to see. I haven't watched
that one yet.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
Yeah, I think he'll love it. Man.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
He later had roles in Let's See Night Gallery, the
nineties Outer Limits series, which I don't think I've seen
his episode yet. He was in the ninety seven TV
miniseries He's David in. This is like a biblical movie
in which he plays Samuel. This is not the one
where George Eastman shows up his Goliath, but he does

(29:08):
have Frank o'neiro as Nathan, so it has at least,
you know, one euro actor in there.

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Wow. So another thing ed Nelson reveals in that interview
from the Tom Weaver book is that he was supposed
to pay Leonard Nimoy forty five dollars to be in
this movie, but he never gave him his money. Also,
his name is misspelled in the credits in E M
O Y for some reason.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
Wow. So what forty five dollars?

Speaker 2 (29:36):
You say, Yes, never gave it to him.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
I wondered they should have. He should have done you know,
later on Nimoy did in search of He should have
done an episode in search of the forty five dollars
that that add owes me.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Where is my brain eaters money?

Speaker 1 (29:51):
All right, we have one more name to mention here
because it's kind of a fun, weird, uncredited cameo. I mean,
it wasn't a cameo at the time. It was just
this individual's first appearance in anything. But we have Hampton
Fancher showing up.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Is he playing the kind of elfin looking guy who
keeps like carrying around globes and then attacking people.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
I don't think he is the main globe holder. He
is the thinner, handsomer of the troubled, brainwashed youths that
we see. So he's the really young one with kind
of a kind of a lean and hungry look to him.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Huh, well, I guess I would say that's the main one.
I guess that's kind of the one I'm in.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Which other one, the win who crawls up to the
window insteady okay, Yeah, that's him.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
Oh okay.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
So Fancher was born in nineteen thirty eight, and I
believe it's still very much around and has actually been
active in fairly recent years. This was his first screen
role as an uncredited quote unquote zombie, though I don't
think he's really a zombie, but that's what's listed on IMDb.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
This movie is just full of like sketchy guys who
are carrying globes around and doing what the aliens say.
I guess because they've got tinglers on them.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
It's kind of the youth danger element of this picture, right, Yeah. Yeah,
So I don't think he has any lines in this,
but he's you know, he has a certain screen presence.
Would he would have been I think twenty years old
at the time or around that. He went into act
in a lot of stuff, mostly TV through the sixties
and seventies. He was at one point married to Sue Lyon,

(31:30):
who played Lolita in Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of that novel Huh.
But he's most notable for his work on the screenplay
for Ridley Scott's nineteen eighty two classic Blade Runner.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Oh Wow.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
Yeah. This was, of course a loose adaptation of Philip K.
Dix do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
He also worked on the screenplay for Blade Runner twenty
forty nine and twenty eighteen, as well as some of
the related like shorter film projects that were kind of
attached and revolving around that picture Like Moons, he didn't
do a ton else in terms of writing and directing.
He adapted the screenplay for nineteen eighty nine's The Mighty

(32:12):
Quinn starring Denzel Washington.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
Oh, it's been a long time since I saw that,
but I remember liking it as kind of a noir
detective movie.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yeah, yeah, very much so. And he also directed and
wrote the screenplay for nineteen ninety nine's The Minus Man.
This was adapted from the novel by Lou McCreary. Are
you familiar with this.

Speaker 2 (32:32):
Picture, Joe, I know of it, but I've never seen it.

Speaker 1 (32:34):
I watched it, I guess when it came out, and
I remember really liking it, and I read the book
as well, which was pretty good, as I recall. But yeah,
it's an indie serial killer flick with a really great cast.
Owen Wilson in the lead is the sort of you know,
mild mannered, quaint serial murderer who's I've seen him compared

(32:56):
to both Chancey, Chauncey Gardner and and of course Norman Bates.
Oh okay, but that film also stars Jennine Garofflo Brian Cox,
Mercedes rule.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
I mean, Brian Cox, I'm there.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah, but also just just to be on the safe side,
they throw in Dwight Yoakam, John Carrol Lynch, Larry Miller.
Isn't it Wow? And I think Sheryl Crow is actually
in it as well. It's it's it's a it's a
it's an interesting cast and yeah, Brian Cox is great
and everybody's great.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
All the names you just mentioned get murdered.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
I don't think, you know, I don't remember how many
people actually get murdered. A lot of it is, it's
not it's not really that kind of a serial killer
movie's Oh, it's a slower paced kind of indie thing.
You I feel like a lot of characters are in
danger and there's this always this this feeling that like
he could kill any one of these people, but I

(33:50):
don't remember, like, for instance, if Larry Miller gets gets murdered.
All right, well let's uh, let's break into the plot
on this one.

Speaker 2 (33:58):
Well, I like this movie Becase because it's got a
cold open. So before we even get the title sequence,
it's a cold open on a deserted street corner in
the dark with ominous music, and immediately voiceover narration just
kicks right in and it says, a few weeks ago, Riverdale,
Illinois was just another quiet small town. Then on that Saturday,

(34:20):
what's Saturday, I don't know. Shortly after midnight, a living
nightmare began and we see two people about to cross
paths on the sidewalk or they're going around a corner.
One is I think an older man and like a
heavy coat, and the other is I think Himpton Fancher.
It's a young man with sort of elfin features, carrying
a transparent globe that is beaming light from inside, and

(34:45):
he's got a cloth draped over it. And they bump
into each other on the sidewalk. Elf Boy drops the globe.
It shatters everywhere, and then and then elf Boy viciously
throttles the older man.

Speaker 1 (34:57):
It's an intriguing opening. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, we see some kind of dark goo pouring out
of the glass ball as it's lying fractured on the concrete.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Oh, in a picture like this, we never know is
it blood, is it oil? It's all kind of the same.
Hershey chocolate syrup.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
Yeah, of course, it's a hot fudge Sunday on the sidewalk,
and we hear a hissing sound that will recur throughout
the movie. But then we go to the title and
credit sequence, which looked very stylistically familiar to me.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yeah, it looks really good. I was looking it up
in the credit to see, well, who did this, who
did the opening scroll? And it's this guy, Robert Balser,
who lived nineteen twenty seven through twenty sixteen, who is
known for his work in the animation department. I'm both
nineteen sixty eight's a Yellow Submarine and nineteen eighty one's

(35:47):
Heavy Metal.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Just looking him up, I see that he apparently worked
under Saul Bass, the director of Phase four, and I
don't see evidence of this directly, but I got to
say that the art style is very familiar to me
from the credits of other Roger Corman drive in movies
of the fifties, like Attack of the Crab Monsters and
Not of This Earth, So I wonder if he also

(36:10):
did those, but I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Yeah, either way, it's certainly I catching well.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Anyway. After the credits finished, rather hilariously, the narration resumes
in the first person. I don't know if this caught
you off guard the same way did me, so like
at first, it's like God is speaking, it's just you know,
disembodied narrator describing events. But then it's the same voice saying,
on Sunday, about an hour before nightfall, my fiance and

(36:36):
I were returning from a trip to her family's home
in the country.

Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah, the voiceovers in this film are kind of out
of control. It brings me back to what we were
talking about recently about Blade Runner. You know, some people
are like, oh, I don't want any narration, and other
people are like, I'm fine with the narration. That's what
the first version I saw. You know, narration doesn't mean
that something's broken in the film necessarily. I believe it

(37:03):
is there because something is broken because audio didn't work
in some scenes.

Speaker 2 (37:08):
They didn't get sound in a scene, so they just
fill it in with narration. Because there are a number
of scenes in this movie where the narration is not
filling in gaps. It's just telling you what's happening in
a scene that you are currently watching without live sound.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Right, And I have to admit sometimes that I'm glad
it was there. I'm glad there was the voice of
God was present to fill me in on what these
characters are doing.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
But the funniest thing. Also, Rachel pointed this out when
we were watching it, and I had to concur I
thought the same thing. The narrator sounds exactly like the
Gene Shepherd narration in a Christmas story.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah. I didn't catch this when I watched it initially,
but on your urging I went back and listened to
part of it, and yeah, yeah, I can title to
get it. This sounds like a grown up ralfie. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:55):
But also I thought it was funny because so the
narration is going, like, you know, oh, our wedding date
was set, everything was right with the world. Meanwhile the
car is just peeling around corners on this country road now.
But the narration says, we were on the way back
to town to tell the good news to my father,
and then for some reason, they just suddenly stop and
get out of the car. And I don't think I

(38:17):
understood why. I maybe it implies they have engine trouble,
but that was not clear to me.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah, I'm not sure on that.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Another thing about the first person narration is that the
narration is from a character who doesn't really make sense
to be the narrator, because I would say he's not
the main character of the movie. He's like a secondary
lead and he doesn't really have any special insights. So
the character is the character Glenn Cameron played by Alan J. Factor,

(38:47):
whose role in this movie is that he's the son
of the mayor of this town and the actor who
plays him looks sort of like a young Richard Nixon.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
Yeah, otherwise, not much of a fact in this picture.
Like I didn't even list him because I was looking
at his IMDb profile and nothing was really jumping out
of me.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, so he's the narrator, but you kind of forgot
he was in the movie.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:13):
Well, anyway, so Glenn and his fiance Elaine played by
Jody Fair, they go wandering off into the woods after
their car stops, and going by the lighting, it would
seem that they wander for days. But I don't think
that's what it's supposed to be. This movie just switches
frantically between daytime and nighttime shots with no apparent rhyme
or reason. It's just they just do it. Scenes that

(39:36):
are supposed to be totally continuous repeatedly switched between day
and night. But anyway, so I think this is just
supposed to be moments later that they bumble around in
the woods and they come across a clearing full of
dead animals.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah, yeah, this is a move. And I have to
admit when this was happening on the screen and I
was watching in really good quality. I rented it through
Amazon Prime, so I feel like I was watching it
in as good a quality as possible. But I couldn't
tell what some of the animals were, and the only
one we really get a good look at is a
dead dog. So at first I heard this is a

(40:09):
movie that is not only unafraid to kick things off
with a dead dog, but it seems to have like
a field full of dead dogs.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
Right. But then right next to this slaughterhouse we meet
the cone. They immediately they look up and they see,
in all its glory, gleaming in the sunlight, with its
apex like a claw reaching out of the earth. The Cone.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah. My son was in the room when I was
watching this part, and he's like, what's happening, what's this about?
And so I was like, I don't know. I think
that this cone just messed up a whole field of dogs.
So I don't know, But it was okay that he
was watching this film because I noticed the rating on
this film when I started watching it on Amazon was
seven plus. So as long as seven years old, you're

(40:55):
good to go. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
I mean, it doesn't have any bad words or anything,
but this film that's an awful lot of like dead
animals and people just randomly shooting it stuff.

Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yeah, and it did not capture my son's attention. He
was like okay, and he left, but he agreed with
me that the Cone, the Fabulous Cone, does look like
something you might see in a really interesting playground. Like
a lot of playgrounds these days have the same very
nice playground equipment made by kind of the same company,
and it's good stuff, but you'll still occasionally find one

(41:27):
that's a bit you know, avant garde or you know,
was futuristic when it was first built, you know, maybe
ten or fifteen years ago. And this is what this
looks like. You're like, oh, that's a cool playground. I
kind of want to visit that.

Speaker 2 (41:39):
I look at playgrounds now and all the slides and
everything made out of this like soft plastic without sharp edges.
It's kind of gently curved and looks like it's not
going to slice your legs up, like the metal equipment
I remember from my youth. This is this is the
old school. This is metal playground equipment that will it
will annihilate your thighs.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
And kill every animal within several yards. Here.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Well, I like it. So they discover the cone and
then immediately cut to Washington, d C. Establishing shot of
the Capitol building. We know where we are, and the
narrator goes. Forty eight hours later, in Washington, a hastily
summoned UFO committee anxiously awaited to see a special screening
of top secret army films. Delaying the proceeding was the

(42:32):
late arrival of Senator Walter k. Powers. And then Senator
Walter k Powers busts into the room wearing a hat
and large overcoat. He's immediately chopping. Next, this guy is
every room he goes into, he's immediately in charge.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
Yep, oh oh.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
But then he just sits down. They watch the film strip.
So we get a movie within a movie, and I'm
going to do the narration from it because it basically
sets up the whole premise. This movie front loads all
of the exposition and then it just turns into people
shooting at things later on. So the narration goes like this.
It says, a ravine six miles south of the town
of Riverdale, Illinois, forty eight hours ago, discovery was made

(43:12):
of a great cone shaped object. The cone stands fifty
feet high as a base diameter of fifty feet. The
nature of the cone undetermined. I like how they were
gonna say unknown, but that would have rhymed with cone,
so they changed it to undetermined. You know, like, you
can't say the nature of the cone unknown, but then

(43:33):
they say origin unknown. Efforts made to determine the composition
of the cone by doctor Paul Kettering, principal scientists for
Project Damper, have proven futile. The surface of the cone
has proven resistant to pressure, heat, acid. Coincidental with the
discovery of the cone is the brutal slaying of several
of the town's leading citizens.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
We don't see the right Wait, what we don't see
the brutal Well, I guess we saw. We saw.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
It's all the guy getting shaken on the street corner.
He dropped the globe.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Was he a leading citizen though? I suppose, Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
It doesn't tell us who he was, but oh yeah,
But then we also learned that some townspeople are saying
that they've seen chariots of fire flying through the sky.

Speaker 1 (44:17):
I like that. I did like that that detail I did.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
And yet it shows just a couple people kind of
like without sound, just going like wow, brow and pointing
off camera. And then finally it says, all reports inconclusive.
As of this report, the origin and nature of the
cone remain unknown. And meanwhile, like, so it's showing you
the film strip they're all watching, but occasionally it cuts

(44:40):
to these like very square Washington guys watching the movie
and they look exactly that. They're all wearing these dark
suits with the glasses on, and I'm just imagining, you know,
they're whispering. Do you think it's a cone? Looks like
a cone to me. But anyway, right after the movie finishes,
Walter k Powers takes charge. He gets up in front
of the room. He's like, okay, look, everybody, the President

(45:02):
has ordered me to take the lead on this cone.
And he says, quote, I want some action. I have
the people's interests at heart, but I will not have
my hands bound by lack of all the facts. So
he announces he's going to fly to Riverdale and see
this thing for himself and then he just bolts out
of the room.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, you'd think they'd maybe send in the National Guard
or something I don't know, or maybe some sort of
you know, an X Files type crew, but it's no.
Let's say the Senator is going to arrive and actually
like look in on things, not just do a photo op.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
Why is Walter k Powers part of the fact finding
mission about the Cone? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Must be an election year. Has to be an election year.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
Right, Oh, and then I like, also we see Walter
K Powers doing some sneaky power moves while he's trying
to keep the Cone under his jurisdiction, Like he's sending
his underlings off to like if they try to get
at the Cone, make sure that they know there's a
thread of investigation of their activities and that'll keep them
out of the Cone. And then he says, I'm going

(46:03):
to poke so many holes in that spaceship fairy tale.
The lit'll be off in twenty four hours. So Walter K.
Powers is not a Cone believer. He's a Cone skeptic.
And so he's got to fly to Riverdale. He flies
out there by a little plane and he meets he
meets Glenn little Nixon, and he asks, hey, why was
the mayor not sent to meet me? And Glenn Cameron explains, well,

(46:26):
there have been some disturbing developments. The mayor, who happens
to be my father, has disappeared, and so here I
am instead, and then we just cut. This is not
explained at all. So they're at the airport, and then
it just cuts to a shot of this super shady
globe guy holding a globe and making the funniest face.
I wish I could explain.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah, it's almost like three stooges, ask as he's looking
side to side. This would make for a wonderful little
looping animation type deal.

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Yeah, he looks. He looks like they're not going to
get my globe.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
It's like he stole the sun.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Well, so anyway, the Glenn Cameron narration continues as he
takes Walter k Powers to meet the head scientist at
the Cone site, doctor Kettering. Doctor Kettering again, is that's
Ed Nelson? That's our sort of leading man. We also
meet the character of Alice Summers played by jo Anna Lee,
who is helping doctor Kettering with his research, and as

(47:22):
soon as Walter k Powers shows up, he is throwing
his weight around. He's like, why has nobody been inside
the cone yet? And Alice explains very calmly that it
could be dangerous, but he wants answers. So Walter k
Powers goes up to meet ed Nelson. There's all this
scaffolding next to the cone that they're constantly climbing up

(47:42):
and down and shooting scenes on. So Walter k Powers
he just climbs up this fifty foot pile of scaffolding
to the top himself, and then he finds kettering up
there at the top working with his assistant, and he says,
you know why I'm here? I want action? What do

(48:03):
you think he's imagining when he says action, Like what
is the action he's talking about?

Speaker 1 (48:07):
It's almost like he is this is just political theater,
Like it's just about demanding the action. Actual action is,
you know, given any kind of situation is a lot
more complicated, like like, what do you mean are we
going to try and make? You know, see, if there's
intelligent life inside, she would be trying to communicate with it.
She would be setting up all sorts of sensitive equipment.

(48:28):
I guess they're supposed to have some sensitive equipment set
up here. But uh, yeah, I don't really know exactly
what he wants. He just wants to bust in like
g men.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
I guess, yeah, yeah, action. And so Ed Nelson does
seem to understand what he's talking about because he just
launches into a bunch of fake scientific technobabble. You know,
the ship is indestructible. You can't mark it with diamond
bit drills or metal eating acids. Nothing can affect it.
So they try another test that they, I guess haven't

(48:56):
tried yet. They're like, well, let's just shoot a gun
into this hole and see what. Yeah, so they shoot
a gun into the hole and it ricochets around, which
they say proves that the tunnel is It sounds like
they're saying psychic, but that doesn't make any sense. I
think they're saying cyclic, like it's a circle and it
comes back to the beginning.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Yeah, it's yeah, it's a crazy scene. It just seems
to ricochet forever in there, and I love why. It's
almost immediately that he's like, you got to get in there,
and then they're like, make sure you bring a gun
with you so that yeah, clearly if you have to
fire it or it goes off by accident, it will
just ricochet endlessly in there, right, and no doubt hit
you at least once.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
Right. Oh, but before they send Kettering into the hole,
I love Walter k. Powers gives a speech where he says,
I can do without the double talk. I don't like
to push you, Kettering, but you science boys tend to
get all wrapped up in your test tubes and the
obvious things escape your attention. I've got to have something
to report. I want action, not theories. I want to
know what's inside that ship. So he commands Kettering to

(49:59):
go in inside the ship, and Kettering gets a gun
and crawls on into the hole. But then this is
utterly uneventful because later he just crawls out of the
hole and he's like, yep, nothing to report.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Yeah, there's no reveal of what the inside of this
thing is. Like. He's just like comes out and it's
like yeap, just goes around in circles.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Yeah, yeah, up and down. Nothing really going on in there. Oh.
But then it cuts to they get a call that
the mayors showed up again. Remember the mayor had disappeared,
and Walter k Powers did not like that news at all.
He was like, the mayor shouldn't it sounds like everybody
here is bungling this. It's not time to take a
leave of absence. But so the mayor shows back up.

(50:36):
He's in his office having some kind of horrible anguish,
like pointing a gun at himself and then removing it
and like sweating profusely, And everybody goes to the mayor's
office for some reason. Oh, and there's a brief power
squabble between the mayor and Walter k Powers. The mayor
is like, this is my jurisdiction, and Walter k Powers

(50:57):
is like, I'll bring in the National Guard, I'll take
over this tow. But while they're arguing, doctor Kettering observes it.
He looks at the mayor and he's like, you don't
look well. And the mayor doesn't like being scrutinized like that,
and so he's like, Kettering, I order you out of town.
You can't be in this town anymore. And then the
mayor freaks out. He pulls the gun out of his

(51:18):
desk and starts pointing it at everybody. And Kettering is
very calm manner. He's like as calm as the t
one thousand. He says, what is that on the back
of your neck, Mayor? And the mayor says, there's nothing
on my neck, and he says, I say there is,
mind if I take a look at it. Well, they
almost get him to calm down, but then I don't

(51:39):
remember what triggers it, but suddenly everybody just starts running
around and shooting.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
Yes, this is probably as good a time as any,
Just to mention that I believe the allegation was that
this film borrowed the plot from The puppet Masters.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, the Heinland novel. And apparently Heinlend was
gonna sue them and got a settlement. He got some
cash out of them, but did not want his name
attached to the film.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
Right, But certainly, if you're looking up things about adaptations
of The puppet Masters, or you're just looking up Heinlend
on IMDb, you'll see this film listed as an adaptation
of that book. Even and I have to admit I
haven't read The Puppet Masters and I have not seen
the Donald Sutherland adaptation. I guess Donald Sutherland was really
into alien invasion parasite films.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, Well.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
I mean he was in two of them, so I
don't know at any rate. I haven't seen it or
read it, so I can't really comment on how closely
this mirror is it, but I know that both involve
like next slugs that take over your brain or something.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
Well, anyway, in this scene, everybody shoots the mayor and
then they inspect the mayor's dead body and there is
indeed something horrifying on the back of his neck that
we don't get to see it. The characters all go
like oh, and an autopsy confirms it. And I just
wanted to point out rob I took a screen grab
of this. Ed Nelson is in the autopsy room with

(53:05):
the coroner doing the autopsy and looking at the next slug,
the Tingler thing, and he's he's got like muscle scrubs.
He's wearing scrubs that are sleeveless with his biceps hanging out.

Speaker 1 (53:17):
I don't know, he's just really going to get in there.
I don't know, is that.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
A thing muscle scrubs?

Speaker 1 (53:23):
Well, I haven't seen it before.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
Well I like it. So everybody's hanging out. Then the
coroner comes out to assure everybody. He's like, look, none
of you should feel bad at all about shooting the
mayor because he had an alien slug on his neck
and that would have killed him anyway. So we get
some scenes where they explore these these tinglers. They say, okay, well,
they've got two little antennafhangs, and these little antenna fangs

(53:46):
pierce into the spine at the base of the neck,
and they inject acid that will kill you if they're detached,
so you can't just take them off of somebody, though.
They will extract a hefty price, a fatal price from
the victim if they're removed, kind of like the face hugger.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, try and cut the face hugger off.
The alien's going to alien blood is going to burn you,
you know, try and pull it off. It's going to
strangle them with the tail.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
But they give the expository set up. They're like, once
this thing attaches itself to the victim's back, the victim
is not human anymore. They become they are under the
command of this of this tinkler. And so the movie
is front loaded with a lot of expository setup. But
you know, there are a lot more horror and action
action scenes to follow, and the next thing indeed is

(54:32):
one of these. So we get like a scene of
a I think it's the sheriff. There's some kind of
cop out driving on the road at night, and then
there's a guy lying in the middle of the road
as the police car approaches, so the officer gets out
to investigate. But then the guy it's a surprise attack.
He ambushes him and he starts punching him, and then
they do some kind of globe magic on the cop,

(54:53):
like this other guy comes in with one of the
glowing orbs and that they get the cop cone zombified.
And you know what, there's not much about this movie
that's really like effective on the level that it's trying
to be. I'd say the closest thing is this scene.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
You're talking about, the scene at night with the cop. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:13):
Yeah, Like with they showed the siren going around and
as the spooky guys are approaching with the globe. It's
a little bit creepy, I guess.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, the scene where they're
milling about there after they got him and you got
hamped in there, you know, looking all again kind of loopine.
You have globe guy milling about. Yeah, yeah, they're building
up their forces.

Speaker 2 (55:35):
There's also a scene somewhere around here where Alice and
Kettering start falling in love while they're dissecting the slug
and the lab and Kettering says, you cut a snake
in half and it's two pieces will go off in
different directions, And I was thinking, is that true?

Speaker 1 (55:53):
Yeah? I was iffy about that as well. It's like,
I know that's really how snakes work. Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (55:58):
But this scene had one of the funniest in the
entire movie. We were shrieking when one of the tinglers
crawls up on the table and it attacks Kettering's arm
and he starts screaming. He's like, ah, hit it. And
then Alice just starts batting at it with a clipboard.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
Yeah yeah, and I think he burn it off with
a Bunsen burner.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
Yes, yeah, really funny. But eventually we get a big,
fat theorizing scene. They take their knowledge and apply it
to what's going on with these parasites. They say that
the parasites must have initially tried to infect the animals,
remember that all the dead animals around the cone, but
it didn't work. They say they tried animals out of ignorance.

(56:40):
They didn't know which animal, including man, was best suited
for this environment, so they experimented trial and error. And
then Alice says, you mean they can think, And Glenn Cameron,
the little nixony looking guy, says, you mean these things
can take over a man's mind and he becomes a robot.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
I love a good robot line in a picture. Yeah,
And in this I guess we're getting into the you know,
the obvious. You know, communism comparison to be taken here,
that the parasites are communism. And of course, as we
all know, communism was first tried on animals and it
did not work, you know, and many of the animals died.

(57:21):
I didn't work on goats, it didn't work on dogs.
But then but then it tried people, and you know,
here we are.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
Well this is we get these parallels in all these
movies from the fifties, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and
it conquered the world. It's the same plot in almost
all these or some kind of mind control parasitic alien
or something that comes in and says, you will have peace,
there will be no more conflict if you just let
us take over your minds, and I think it's pretty

(57:49):
clear what the what the allegories are supposed to be there.

Speaker 1 (57:52):
So in this picture, you know, I don't know if
they're necessarily thinking too much about them, and they're just
sort of painting with some of the same shades that
were popular in genre fiction at the time.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
But the other thing they figure out that they're like, hey,
this spaceship, the cone, it must actually just be one
section of a larger hole. And what we need to
do is because they think, well, this section of the cone,
maybe it's just like a fuel storage portion, and we
need to find the control portion of the ship, and
in order to do that, we better split up into

(58:26):
groups and go look forward individually. So they do that
and we get some funny scenes, like one is Walter
k Powers riding in a car with his assistant and
one of the other scientists, and the scientist says to
his assistant, he's like, you don't talk much, do you,
And Walter k Power says, that's why he's my assistant.
Now you take parrots, great talkers, lousy flyers. It's like,

(58:49):
what does that mean? Is his assistant a good flyer?

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yeah? Or is he saying that he's essentially a parrot,
that he's the talker, but he can't fly.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
It's strange, it's lousy flyers. I don't even know if
I believe that.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
I don't. I don't know. I don't think that's that's
actually true either. That's that's pulled from the same animal
fact book is the snake thing.

Speaker 2 (59:10):
But basically everybody investigates, they find nothing. There's a scene
where Glenn in a lane they go, they go and
look around in a shack and then they hear that
hissing sound we've heard a few times and then they
see I think it's Hampton Vancher at the window with
the globe. But fortunately Glenn is armed and he shoots
it all movement until everything is set right. And then
everybody comes back and they're like, nope, we didn't find anything.

(59:33):
And then there's a I enjoyed the long telegraph scene
where Walter k Powers is trying to send a telegraph
to the governor. That's like, I don't remember exactly, He's like,
everything is ruined. Stop aliens invading parasite. Stop, you know,
send army immediately. But then we cut to the guy
at the telegraph office, and what he actually sends is

(59:56):
everything peaceful here, spaceship pure bunk. So they've gotten to
our telegraph operators.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Oh, and also later that night, the parasite zombies they
attack Alice. Whoops, whoops. They go and they put one
of the tinglers in her room and it gets on
her neck and now she's zombified.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
What I loved about this scene though, is that this
is basically the same scene that we get in Attack
of the Clones when the assassin tries to take out
this Amadala and then Anakin you know, leaps in with
the lightsaber to stop her. It's the same thing. The
shape shifting assassin puts some sort of a strange killer,

(01:00:35):
you know, toxic slug into the room with her, maybe
a couple of them if I remember correctly, And yeah,
it's it's it's very similar. I would not be surprised
if Lucas might have been thinking back on this sequence
when when putting that film together.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Oh, I do think Brain Eaters is one of his
favorite films. He said, so, no, I made that up.

Speaker 1 (01:00:54):
Well, but I mean he Lucas was always you know,
throwing in various you know, homages to old or pictures.
Oh yeah, yeah, so I wouldn't be surprised, but yeah,
I was expecting Anakin to jump in with the light
staber and start cutting slugs in half.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
Well, I would love to find out that we're true
A good inspiration from from nineteen fifties B sci fi.

Speaker 5 (01:01:14):
Yeah, oh, but I totally forgot until we just got
to this.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
They go back to the cone and then there's a
dying man lying outside the cone in the dirt, and
they recognize him. They're like, hey, he's that famous scientist
who mysteriously disappeared.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
That was a moment I was where I was wanting.
Was I just not paying attention to the setup from this?

Speaker 2 (01:01:43):
Okay, never appeared in the movie before, never been referenced.
So they're just like, hey, we all know who you are.
It's like you go up to the cone and it's like,
that's Carl Sagan lying in the dirt.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Anyway, so they say, well, he disappeared on an expedition
five years ago and looks like he had one of
these parasites on him and was inside the cone somehow.
But now the parasite is off of him, so he's dying.
Because remember if you take the parasite off you die,
and they take him back to the hospital and we
get this scene where they're they're interrogating this this frail

(01:02:16):
dying man, and they say, where is doctor Cole who
vanished with you? And oh oh. The other questions they say,
are the parasites from the cone? What is the secret
of the cone? And the man's he has like two
more words before he dies. One of them he says carboniferous.
It sounds like carnivorous, but no, he says carboniferous, referring

(01:02:37):
to the geologic epoch. And they're like, oh, okay. So
he says carboniferous. That means that these parasites are from
the ancient past. They're from Earth, and they were under
the Earth all this time. Walter k Powers deduces, then
it's not a spaceship, it's from below.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
Oh so this is like like a drill device that
has drilled its way up through crust.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
Right, it was created by aliens from the carboniferous era
of Earth to me a few hundred million years ago
or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
And then the scientist also he says, as he dies,
he goes death. That's a good one, yes, famous last words.
And then there's like, I love the scenes where they
just discover that all of their infrastructure has been taken
over by the Globe zombies. Because Walter k Powers is

(01:03:32):
trying to call somebody to get the I don't know,
he's trying to call the governor or something, and the
phone operator just keeps saying, I'm sorry, sir, that line
is busy no matter who he tries to call. So
they've got our telephone operators too. And then following up
from this, Kettering and Glenn Cameron go to the telegraph
office to beat up the guy who works there.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Oh, and this is where we get a big cowboy
style martial arts fight. Right. I think there is a
which I always love in a picture from there's like
a I mean, it's a wide period of time, I
want to say, like upwards of like twenty years where
all these fights have kind of the same choreography. If
there's a table, somebody's going over it, and then there'll
be a few karate chops in there, and there's one

(01:04:15):
karate chop thrown by by our hero here by doctor
Kettering right to somebody's back, right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:21):
Yeah, yeah, it always happened. So the bad person in
the fight goes head down and then tries to kind
of tackle, like goes into the mid section of the
good character, and then the good character has to like
chop at their back until they like knock them down.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Is it always like that?

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
I don't know, there's just something about there. I really
should research it at some point, Like what is it
about fight choreography from films from this time period? Is
it just like the sort of the same group of
choreographers that were doing everything? Is it how much of
it is like a holdover from like vaudeville or silent era.
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
I'm wondering. I wonder if delivering blows to the back
is easier to make look realistic while risking less injury
than other types of fighting moves.

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
That is probably a big part of it. Yeah, because
I know that, Yeah, you know, you can you can
have like more of a a flat blow to the
back and it's going to be less intensive. You know.
You can do some uh some mock strangling, uh and
and so forth, some some basic like headlock stuff and
it'll look pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Speaking of headlocks, did you did you pick up on
the thing throughout the movie where the people who were
infected by the parasites often have a lump under the
collar on the back of their shirt that is like
throbbing or pulsing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
I did yeah, which again I guess this is the
presence of the slug.

Speaker 2 (01:05:49):
Right right, it is, yeah, and so like it's a
giveaway in some scenes. So uh, you know, the phones
don't work, the telegraph won't work because zombies have taken
over whatever they are, the you know, the parasite controlled
humans have taken over all those things. And then Walter
k Powers tries to go to the radio station to
send out a broadcast about the cone, but apparently they're

(01:06:10):
not transmitting because the guy operating the radio station you
see under his shirt, he's got this wan want thing
going on back there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
It reminds me of the later Battlecarclactica remake where the
spines of the cylons had like glows. I don't know
if anyone, any actual characters ever notice it, but the
viewer is to notice it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Oh, I didn't even remember that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
But also this makes me realize the karate chopper in
the earlier scene that was a karate chop right to
the sluck. That was the spot on martial arts.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Yeah, that was a pressure point strike right to the Tingler.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
It's really a flaw in the plan. Like the Tingler
at least is an indo parasite, this one's an exo parasite.
Even though it's altering behavior, it leaves it susceptible to
karate chops like this.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Right, So we know in the end that ultimately Kettering
is going to have to venture into the Cone again
to learn the secret of the Cone. And so Kettering
does go. Oh, before he goes into the cone, there's
some guards that have been stationed there. I think they're
police officers to protect the cone, but of course they're
infected to so they start shooting at Kettering and then
everybody starts shooting at everybody because everybody is armed. But

(01:07:16):
Kettering gets inside the cone and meets Leonard Nimoy.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Yeah, and this is the whole scene here is nice
and weird. Like at this point you're like, Okay, this
was worth the fifty minute journey to get here.

Speaker 2 (01:07:28):
Sure. Leonard Nimoy surrounded by fog, dressed like Gandalf with
long beard and was supposed to be long hair or
a hood. I think it's a hood. Yeah, we see
it close up, and he's got a hood on, and
I'm wondering, why is he dressed like that? Because he's
supposed to be Professor Cole the other scientists who vanished
with the guy we met earlier. But was Professor Cole

(01:07:50):
carrying like wearing robes with a hood when he went
into the ship.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
Now he must be lower ranking in the new order
that has arisen a depths here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:00):
But where did the robes of the hood come from?
Did the did the aliens make it? Did the did
the slugs make the robe?

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
I guess? So you know, the robes were supplied and
the other professor did not want to wear a robe,
and they were like, well, if you're not gonna wear
a robe, you're gonna have to leave, and he did
and then he died. That's my read on it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Well, anyway, so Kettering gets down there and he confronts
Professor Cole Lenner Niemoy, and Nimoy says, we are in
complete harmony, We are inseparable. There is no conflict. We
will not engage in combat, no violence of any kind.
Why should we when we can scatter quietly like seeds
in the wind. I was like, oh, the writing got

(01:08:42):
slightly better for a moment, yeah, But then then he
starts talking about in a slightly more awkward way. He's saying, like, let's,
you know, let's replace all this messy, flawed humanity with
the exactitude of mathematics. It's like, is that what these
slugs are about. They're into mathematics.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
Well, they built a giant drill spaceship cone thing, Yeah,
I have an assumed math with an assuming math was involved.

Speaker 2 (01:09:10):
So Niemoy says, you know, we're going to force upon
man a life free from strife and turmoil. And again,
this is very similar theme we've seen in other movies.
It conquered the world and so forth. And so they
talk for a bit and then eventually the scientists just
start shooting everything, and so how do they So they
start shooting at Leonard Dymoy and shooting at the tinglers,

(01:09:33):
and they get out of the cone, and so they're
back outside and like, how do they defeat the cone?
In the end, it's a nineteen fifties movie. It's indestructible
alien enemy. Give you one guess, how do they beat it?

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Sodium? That's that's another movie.

Speaker 2 (01:09:48):
Though, electricity. They beat it with electricity, and luckily, why
didn't I think of that?

Speaker 1 (01:09:54):
Yeah, this is the same thing they did in the
Thing from Another World, right, electropads?

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
That's right, yep, that is what they do.

Speaker 1 (01:10:02):
Yeah, the aliens never see that coming. They're like electricity.
Who would have thought?

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
But luckily they don't know about electricity.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
They go yeah, or they've forgotten about it. They move
past it to their detriment. But luckily the narrator here
is here is back to walk us through every step
of this plan because it involves a harpoon gun. Then
they say that, well, this is your standard issue for
folks doing like electrical line work if they need to
run something over difficult terrain.

Speaker 2 (01:10:30):
I got to say, the logistics part of the final
the final ten minutes of the movie really slowed down.
I think that was not a highlight of the film,
Like you can just speed through this now, we get it.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
Yeah, normally you know it. Guess it's stylistically kind of
interesting because a lot of times, like how are you
going to do the final comeuppance of the alien? You're
going to have like a plan and it's going to
be planned out and explained, liking the Thing from Another
World or many pictures. It's going to be kind of
a gut instinct on the part of the hero, like
where he suddenly remembers something and the weakness comes to

(01:11:02):
him and he makes it happen. This was, Yeah, this
is a little bit more drawn out. It's basically in
the neighborhood of the Thing from Another World, except I
don't know, there's no real tension. You know it's going
to work in the Thing from Another World, You're not
so certain.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
Oh, but it's sort of like the Thing from Another
World this movie, the final confrontation with the monster involves
a sort of like a flawed temptation towards human connection
with the beast because Alice comes out. Remember Alice comes
out of the cone. She's been parasite zombified, and she

(01:11:38):
says to Kettering, she's like, hey, you know, don't you
remember me? Want to come party with me and Leonard
Nimoy and we'll live for two hundred million years? And
he's like, no, no, we can't, and so she gets
really mad at him and she says, I can't believe
I ever loved you, and she shoots him, and then
Kettering is yelling out to his friends he's like fire
that harpoon gun. So they do and we watch, we

(01:12:03):
watch the I guess they're just a bunch of tinglers,
little slug things with the antennae, like rolling around getting electrified,
and we see all the human characters shielding their eyes.
I guess because it's it's bright. And that's it. They
defeat the cone YEP and one of the last lines
of dialogue is is Walter K Power is saying something
about how something or you don't know, Walter K Powers.

Speaker 1 (01:12:27):
Got to get his name in one more time, one
more time, just in case you forgot it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:31):
That's Walter k Powers dot com. And we take donations
in ten, twenty fifty or whatever you want to give,
whatever you can spare, it's Walter k Powers dot com.
I want action.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
And then and then you're done, like you're You're in
and out on this picture in about an hour, like
we I think we've we've talked more in this episode
than the movie actually lasts.

Speaker 2 (01:12:52):
This episode is like twenty eight minutes longer than the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):
So this is a film that you know and moved
right along, had a pretty fun sci fi plot, great poster.
I feel like if this movie had had a more
memorable looking creature or effect in it. It would have been,
It would be better remembered, you know. Yes, like I

(01:13:17):
think of some of these other pictures that we've discussed
or talked about, there'll be some sort of practical effect
in there that it works on some level, or is
even goofy enough to where it throws, you know, it
goes over the top enough that it becomes memorable. So
I'm not going to say it's a failing of the picture,
because the slugs and the cone are all great in
their own way, but it's lacking that one like super

(01:13:40):
weird visual thing that pushes it over the hedge.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
I agree. If it had a puppet like the artichoke
and it conquered the world, or like the crab in
Attack of the Crab Monsters, this would be an all
time great drive in movie. I mean, this is not
a good movie by any means, but it's highly amusing.
It's only sixty minutes long. It moves right along. There
are a few boring stretches, but they're over pretty quick.

(01:14:03):
It's h This is a good one.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Yeah, yeah, I mean an hour picture. You're you're not
gonna be bored for long. It does have some fun
cameos and yeah, it's just a just an enjoyable, enjoyable
little picture. Yeah. Worth it for the Nimoy reveal at
the end, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
The warning you can barely tell it's him, like he's
he's hiding behind a lot of fog and a big,
big old beard.

Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
Yeah. Yeah, it's best no to know going into it. Yeah,
nim Oy will appear. You just got to give him time.

Speaker 2 (01:14:31):
But he still never got his forty five dollars.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
Still didn't get paid. Yeah, way to go ed. All right, Well,
if you want to watch this movie as well, you
can find it in various places. I found that I
couldn't find it some places, and I found it other places.
So I found it on Amazon Prime. I was able
to You can rener by it there at least as
of this recording in the United States. You can probably

(01:14:55):
find it in some other places as well. I want
to say, like Pluto or two B looked like they
had it, so you know, shop around. It's out there.
It's it's not completely forgotten.

Speaker 2 (01:15:05):
You can get it as a complimentary digital download with
any donation at Walterkpowers dot com Walter k Powers for America.

Speaker 1 (01:15:14):
It is also on DVD. You can get it on DVD,
and and people are selling the poster. You can get
that vintage poster. I would say that the poster is
probably better well known than the movie. I think that's
that's that's fair to say, because especially in this age
of you know, like Tumbler and so forth, and you know,
in blogs like Monster Brains, you know, you get the

(01:15:34):
instant satisfaction of looking at this stellar poster, and not
everybody's going to be inclined to actually check out the
motion picture behind it. All right, well we're going to
go and close it out here. If you want to
check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, it comes
out every Friday and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
podcast feed We're normally a science podcast with episodes core

(01:15:54):
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
most of that aside and talk about a weird picture
like this one. On Wednesdays we do a short form
artifact episode. On Mondays, it's listener mail.

Speaker 2 (01:16:06):
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 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 3 (01:16:28):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
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