Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: The Dunwich Horror

Today's Weirdhouse Cinema rewind is a love story, as well as a hippie necronomicon extravaganza. Join Rob and Joe as they crack open 1970’s “The Dunwich Horror,” starring the late, great Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee and Ed Begley Sr. (originally published 11/19/2021)

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:08):
And this is Joe McCormick and ooh, today we are
featuring an older episode of Weird House Cinema. This is
the episode we did on The Dunwich Horror with the
most Lovecraftian of casts Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee and Ed
Begley Sr. Nothing says horror like that.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
Yeah, Yeah, this was a lot of fun. It's like
it's a hippie necronomicon extravaganza, and it's also something of
a love story, especially in the early going, so it's
not a bad lead end to Valentine's Day in my opinion.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
This is Rob Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
And this week we have a I think we have
a pretty fun on film for everybody. We're going to
be talking about the nineteen seventy necronomicon film The dune
Wich Horror, starring the late great Dean Stockwell.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Does a beholder make an appearance in this movie? I
want to know from somebody who has more d and
d experience than.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah. Well, the depiction of the monster in this film
is very interesting. For the most part, is very minimal,
but we do see a weird splash of some sort
of a beholder esque, you know, almost kind of Medusa
esque gorgon head creature towards the end, but you don't
really get a great look at it.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, sort of a flying ball of meat with like
eyeball stalks and tentacles writhing as the color saturation flashes.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Now, there's a thing that's featured on the poster for
this film, and it's a pretty cool poster. You'll see
different versions of it where there's this kind of like
beastial dean stockwell head with a bunch of snakes and
serpents and leeches stuff kind of like writhing on the head.
This is not exactly what you see in the film.
This is just kind of poster art I think inspired

(02:06):
by it.

Speaker 2 (02:07):
True though, I do like the diversity of the different
kinds of heads on the snake things coming out of
this beast. So you got like a cow skull looking
thing with horns, but then you got a leech mouth,
and then is there one thing that just kind of
looks like a raccoon, like.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
A monst Oh yeah, it does kind of look like
a raccoon. Yeah, all sorts of stuff going on there.
It's chaos. It's chaos in that creature. But this is
a film. It's been on my list for a while,
but I think a couple of things kind of propelled
it to the forefront for us to record this month.
First of all, I'm growing a mustache for the November effort.
You've probably heard our ads about that, and you know

(02:41):
mentioning you know where you can go to learn more.
So I wanted to watch some films with solid mustaches
in them, and Dean Stockwell's mustache in this film was
essential for me because, unlike the excellent mustaches of someone
like Vincent Price or Olliver Read, this one looks like
the sort of mustache that I could conceivably grow, an
uncanny mustache, a mustache that at once checks out checks

(03:05):
off all the boxes for being a cool mustache, but
also looks somewhat uncomfortable. I don't know, maybe it's just me.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Well, that's the That's the essence of Dean Stockwell's character
in this movie. Because, while of course this is based
on a novella originally by HP Lovecraft. One way I
think the movie is very different than the source material
is the movie has more suaveness in it. Dean Stockwell
plays a guy who is ultimately an occult creep whose

(03:34):
affinities lie in other dimensions. But at the same time,
there are some scenes where he's kind of he's kind
of smooth, he's kind of got a little bit of charm.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, it kind of feels like a love story at times.
It doesn't stay that way very long, but there are
a few moments in here where you're like, oh, this
is kind of a you know, a slightly horror themed
love story. Now, the other thing that really propelled this
to the forefront for us is that, of course, on
November seventh, Dean Stockwell passed away. The star of this
film were one of the stars of this film. So

(04:04):
I thought, well, that settles it. You know, we probably
need to cover this one. And it is kind of
a tribute to Dean Stockwell, who, as we'll discuss in
a bet. You know, it's been in tons of stuff
over the years, and there are some very memorable roles
mixed into that filmography. Now, as you mentioned, this is
a film that is based on an HP Lovecraft story,
And I think I long avoided watching this adaptation of

(04:27):
the Dunwich hor because I'd always heard that Lovecraft officionados
did not like it. They didn't think it was true
to his vision. But I think that time has shown
us that, first of all, cosmic car doesn't always translate
that well onto the screen anyway. And also the more
we come to terms with what Lovecraft's vision really entailed
in its entirety, I think deviation from form sounds increasingly okay.

Speaker 2 (04:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Plus I saw that Electric Wizards just Oborne loves this film,
so I figured, well, something must be working in this adaptation.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
For people not familiar. That's sort of a house favorite
Doom Metal Stone or Doom Metal band. But yeah, they
actually sampled this movie in at least one of their songs.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
Right, Yeah. And then there's another song that is just
called Dunewich, which it seems entirely inspired by this movie.
It has lyrics like Child of Dunewitch Rise you have
your father's eyes, and it looks like somebody affiliated with
the band actually cut together, you know, a music video
for that track using footage exclusively from this movie. So

(05:32):
there you go.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
I think it's fitting for the band because this movie
has just the their right sort of balance between cosmic
menace and absolute cornball.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Yeah. And by the way, that track that music video,
I'll include that on the blog post for this episode
at Sammuda music dot com. And by the way, for
those of you that have written in and you've said, hey,
where can I get a list of all the movies
you've covered of all the Weird House episode so that
you've done that is where you will find that Samooda
Music se m u t a m u sic dot com.

(06:06):
So let's get into it. Yeah, what do we have
in this film? We have a we have like a
nineteen seventies hippie necronomicon story full of weird music bean stockwell,
and it's produced by Roger Korman.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
And see the Corman connection, because it has a little
bit of the same grit as those those like Corman
Edgar Allan Poe movies from around the same time.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
Yeah, and it also, as we'll point out, a number
of the people involved in this went on to be
in episodes of Night Gallery. I feel like this if
you if you dig Night Gallery, you'll dig this film
because it has that same texture, that same field, that
same mouthfeel that you get with Night Gallery.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
So how do you do an elevator pitch on this movie?
Would you say, like boy meets Girl, boy wants to
open an interdimensional riff to summon ancient demons that ruled
the cosmos before humankind, meddling grandpas and professors interfere.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
Yeah. Yeah, sort of generational conflict over over you know,
illicit books of ancient knowledge. Uh well, what would happen
if you rolled a doobe with a page from an ecronomicon?

Speaker 4 (07:12):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (07:13):
These are all ideas that are bouncing around my head.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah. Well, we'll probably need to come back to this
later on. But it's interesting the little ribbon of hippie
culture and aesthetics running through the middle of this movie.
I mean, it's not a you know, it's not a
Woodstock kind of movie, except in little like moments, and
those moments are the suggestions of the the the otherworldly evil.

(07:37):
It's almost like a you might say it's more anti
hippie than hippie because like the hippie imagery and it
is the visions coming from the the unspeakable place.

Speaker 1 (07:48):
Yeah. Yeah, so it's gonna be very interesting to discuss
those themes, because it's not one of those films that
I feel like purshase itself, you know, perfectly between cultures
of this time period, where it can fully be one
thing to one side of the culture war and another
to the other side. But it does it does seem

(08:09):
to sort of be trying to have that ambiguity at times.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Of course, then again it might just be sort of,
I don't know, historical happenstance. The same way you might
imagine if this movie was made in nineteen ninety five,
the visions from the Other Plane would involve sinister grunge
people in flannel kind of flailing around in a Seattle alleyway.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, exactly. All right, Well, let's go ahead and have
some of the trailer here.

Speaker 5 (08:37):
The nights are Darker at night is when it happens
in The Dunwich Horror and.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
Come back old life, the faces of Dark, and Repossess
the Earth.

Speaker 6 (09:12):
The Dunwich Horror based on HP Lovecraft's Terrifying Tale of
Those Who Explore the Unspeakable, starring Sandra d Dean Stockwell
Academy Award winner Ed Begley, Sam Jeffy Never Heard Anything
like that.

Speaker 1 (09:40):
All right, sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good.

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
All right, Well let's dive right into the people involved
in bringing this to the screen. First of all, I
should know that apparently this was originally going to be
a Mario Bava film, but it sounds like American International
Pictures switch things up, you know, sort of for you
the sort of business reasons you might expect with the
STU Radio. Like, I think one of Baba's previous films
underperformed or didn't perform in the way they wanted it to,

(10:05):
so it ended up getting shuffled around and we ended
up with Daniel Holler directing it. This is a guy
who was born in nineteen twenty six, and weirdly enough,
Haller's directorial debut was a nineteen sixty five Lovecraft adaptation
Die Monster Die, starring Boris Karloff.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Oh yes, that one based on the Color Out of Space,
I believe.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
So.

Speaker 1 (10:27):
Yeah. I have not seen this one either.

Speaker 2 (10:29):
I haven't either of it. You know, they just made
a new Color out of Space movie within the past
year or two, and I actually never saw it yet.
But it's got Nicholas Cage in it.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
Oh wow. Well, you know, it's good then. So Haller
went on to from Die Monster Die, he went on
to direct a pair of late sixties biker movies. He
did Devil's Angels, starring John Cassavetti's he did The Wild Racers.
This starred Fabian and also featured one of our favorites,

(10:58):
Dick Miller in there.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
Of course, you know, this movie really missed out on
having Dick Miller, and Dick Miller would have been great
as one of the irate townspeople.

Speaker 6 (11:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, yeah, he has townspeople written all over him. He
could have been the guy the gas station. That's a
perfect Dick Miller role.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
Yeah, Or he could have been one of the guys
at the store making fun of Grandpa when he was
talking about bringing beings over from another dimension.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah, yeah, missed opportunity. Anyway. Haller went on to do
mostly a lot of TV work. He directed the pilot
for Buck Rogers in the twenty fifth Century, which ended
up being pushed out as a film, so technically there's
a film credit for him. He was also production designer
and art director on a bunch of old Roger Kornman movies.

(11:41):
All right, now, the writers on this there are a
couple of writers that really didn't go on to do
a whole lot else, Henry Rosenbaum and Ronald Silkowski, but
Curtis Hansen was one of the writers. He lived nineteen
forty five through twenty sixteen, and this was his first screenplay.
He went on to work on screenplays for White Dog,

(12:03):
Never cry Wolf, and La Confidential, which he also directed.
Other directorial credits include The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,
Wonder Boys, and Eight Mile.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Now, I guess if you're trying to adapt a Lovecraft
story for the screen, there's always a choice you've got
to make, which is sort of I would say, probably
usually prized for its dreadful imagination, you know, very imaginative
of strange and powerful imagery that makes you feel small
and afraid. So it's good horror in that sense, but

(12:36):
very often lacks a human or humane element. And so
do you just sort of try to do that in
a movie and risk making an alienating film that nobody
doesn't really have characters anybody can connect to, or do
you try to adapt the story into something more human
with more identifiable characters.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah, yeah, that is always a because yes, so generally
these are stories that are very asexual, don't really have
any romance in them, and it's all about you know,
dread and cyclopean architecture and so forth. So, yeah, what
direction do you go in it? Do you go in
like an action direction which a number of people have
gone or tried to go. I know, that's what Gallermeal

(13:14):
Del Toro I think has been wanting to do with
at the Mountains of Madness. Do you go in kind
of a schlocky, sexy horror direction like you know, the
reanimator movies definitely went in that direction, or do you
find some other path?

Speaker 2 (13:30):
I would say the screenplay adaptation in this movie doesn't
step fully into making it like a you know, like
a rich, lovely world full of identifiable characters that are
you know fully human, But it takes sort of a
half step in that direction. It is less barren of
humanity than your standard Lovecraft story would be.

Speaker 5 (13:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
Now, Lovecraft lived eighteen ninety through nineteen thirty seven, pole
horror author and one of the major voices of the
Weird Tales era, who became more influential and famous after
his death. His work has left an undeniable mark on
modern horror, but modern horror fans have had to contend
with the racism in his letters of correspondence as well
as in the fabric of many of his tales in

(14:14):
the stories themselves. It's one of those things that I
feel like it's impossible not to see it once you've
seen it, you know. And even in The Dunwich Horror,
which I did not reread for the purposes of viewing
this film, but even in watching this film, there are
elements that are about like people being despised because of
their lineage, and it's just impossible to ignore, Like it's

(14:36):
just baked into so many of his works totally.

Speaker 2 (14:39):
And I think that's one of the reasons I would
agree with what you said earlier, like I'm not really
troubled by lovecraft adaptations not being true to his vision.
I mean, I think you can probably take a lot
of what's like cool about the monstrous and imaginative qualities
of some of his stories and do something else with them,
maybe even something better with them.

Speaker 1 (14:59):
Yeah, in this case, something groovy here. Yeah, so let's
talk about the groovy humans involved in acting in this film.
The top build star is Sandra d who plays Nancy Wagner,
who lived She lived nineteen forty two through two thousand
and five. A former child model and teen actor, d
was a big deal in the late fifties through the

(15:21):
late sixties, known for the title role in nineteen sixty
two's Gidget, among others, and this film The Dunwich har
was supposed to be part of a comeback for her,
but it apparently didn't quite take off, and her work
after this film was increasingly sporadic. But she did go
on to appear on three episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery,
which again feels appropriate considering the tone of this film

(15:45):
and the tone of Night Gallery.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
You know what, I thought Sandra d did really good
in this movie. I thought her part was a little
bit underwritten later in the film, but she does a
good job with it.

Speaker 1 (15:57):
Yeah, I mean, she's very charismatic on the screen. Buy
into her into her character, just based largely on DEA's performance.
But yeah, her character increasingly feels less dynamic and more
powerless and kind of like shuffle to the background of things.
So that being said, she does a good job with it.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
I was gonna say, actually, very much reminds me of
the arc of the protagonist in Lords of Salem who.
My main problem with that movie is that the protagonist
for the second two thirds of the movie becomes mostly catatonic.

Speaker 1 (16:30):
Oh yeah, I think it was very much a comparison
to be made between the character trajectories of both of
these these roles in both of these films. All right, well,
let's let's talk about Dean Stockwell, then Dean stock Will

(16:52):
plays Wilbur Weiteley here. So Dean stock Will live nineteen
thirty six through twenty twenty one, and boy, he had
a really long career. He started out as a child
actor in nineteen forty five and continued acting for the
next seventy years. His last screen credit was in twenty fifteen.

(17:12):
So some two hundred and four screen credits. Wow, So,
as you might imagine, there's a why hold on, hold on.

Speaker 2 (17:18):
Sorry, I have to ask, is that counting each individual
episode of Quantum Leap separately or just as one credit?

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Just as one credit? Yeah? Wow, yeah, because yeah Quantum Leap.
Of course, because he did a fair amount of TV work,
And so I think a lot of people when you
think of Dean stockwell, you probably think of his character
Al the hologram on Quantum Leap. The guy who appears
to you and helps helps you figure out what you've
got to do in this weird sci fi reincarnation serial

(17:48):
situation in order to keep passing on through other people's lives.
I was a big fan of Quantum Leap. I remember
we would it was like a show that my family
would watch. We would watch it together whenever it was on.
That's fond memories of that.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
I think that was another one that I sometimes saw
at hotel cable like Cocation, because they did reruns of
it on the Sci Fi channel.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
Right, Oh, did they Okay? I think yeah, I think
you're right. I think you're right. So Stockwell did a
lot of Western's early on again, a lot of TV work.
He did the hippie picture psych Out in nineteen sixty
eight opposite Jack Nicholson. He was also in Dennis Hopper's
The Last Movie in nineteen seventy one, so to a
certain extent he seems to have been very much a
part of that. Nicholson Hopper dern Fond a scene of

(18:32):
the late sixties early seventies. In the mid eighties, he
had this sudden film resurgence, appearing in Vim Vender's Paris,
Texas in nineteen eighty four, as well as David Lynch's
Dune in nineteen eighty four, in which he played doctor U.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
Oh yeah, I forgot he was in Dune.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah. Yeah, he's got the mustache, he's got the mark
on the forehead. In nineteen eighty five, he was in
William Fredkins To Live and Die in La. Subsequent films
include Blue Velvet, Beverly Hills Cop two. He also had
a memorable role in the nineteen eighty eight Jonathan Demi
comedy Married to the Mob, in which he played a mobster.

(19:11):
I think it was something like Tony the Tiger or
something was his name, But yeah on TV though, I
think he's best remembered for Al and Quantum Leap. He
also later had a fun recurring role on the Battlestar
Galactica reboot as a John Cavell, and he did an
episode of Night Gallery.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
So a weird fact I came across while while reading
about this movie, Dean Stockwell was in a second movie
adaptation of the Dunwich Horror of the novella. This movie
is based on It's one from two thousand and eight
that looks truly dreadful, but in this one, he's like,
he switches roles. So in this movie he plays the

(19:50):
guy who's trying to summon the demons, and in the
two thousand and eight movie he plays the professor who
has to battle that guy in the end. So it's
basically a switch from like playing Macbeth to playing McDuff.
And this adaptation is set in Louisiana, which what can
you really separate the stony New englandness from this story

(20:11):
that seems absolutely crucial to that seems like trying to
set the shining in Louisiana.

Speaker 1 (20:16):
Well you say that, but then again, this film was
the dunwichar from nineteen seventy was filmed in coastal northern California.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
So oh, that makes sense given it, and it works, but.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Then again it works for this film, but yeah, it
doesn't feel particularly like New England now. I will also
mention that Dean was the son of actor Harry Stockwell, who,
among other things, was the voice of the Prince in
Disney snow White, the classic snow White animated film, and
Dean's older brother, Guy was also an actor, appearing in
such films as Santa San Gria and also nineteen sixty

(20:52):
five's the Warlord. He played the villain in that opposite
Charlton Heston. Now you mentioned the professor that the battles
Wilbur This is Professor Armitage, doctor or doctor Henry Armitage,
as he's referencing the credits for Dunwich Horror and in
this film, this character is played by Ed Bagley Senior,

(21:14):
who lived nineteen one through nineteen seventy. So he's the
hero of the picture. Philosophy professor at I believe from Missicatonic. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know if this is like the California branch
of the college or he's visiting.

Speaker 2 (21:30):
It's not really explored. Yeah, Miskatonic University, Riverside.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yeah, so Ed Bagley Senior. As you may notice, this
is of course Ed Bangley Junior's dad. He was nearly
seventy years old during this film, and it definitely shows
he has very much the feel of an older guy
in this which I think is rather fitting because we
talked about sort of the themes of generational tug of

(21:57):
war in this picture. You know that it's about the
old people telling the young people they shouldn't do things,
and and ultimately it feels like it has this. You know,
it makes sense that that armitage would be this grandfatherly
character who's trying to protect young Sandra d from the
dangers posed by hippie sorcerers.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
Oh yeah, I can see that. And well, even though
Ed Begley is supposed to be on the side of
good at the end of this at the end of
this movie, he plays so well into the cranky old
man archetype. I mean, and I think he was often
type cast that way. I'm not I haven't seen all
of his movie, but like, for example, in Twelve Angry Men,
he plays like the worst duror. You know, he's like

(22:40):
the racist one, he's the he's the like nasty old
guy who they eventually went over in the end, but
like it becomes clear that he's just like a mean
old crank, and he can play a mean old crank.

Speaker 1 (22:53):
M yeah. I don't know that I've really seen him
in much, or I at least don't remember him for much,
but he was a major actor. He won an Academy
Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in nineteen
sixty two Sweet Bird of Youth. You already mentioned fifty
seven is Twelve Angry Men, he was also in The
Unsinkable Molly Brown in nineteen sixty four, and he was
nominated for an Emmy Award for Inherit the Wind?

Speaker 2 (23:16):
Oh who did he play? And Inherit the Wind was he?

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Was he Darrow or a caveman? I think it's been watsin? Oh?

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Okay, no, I just looked it up. It was in
not the original movie adaptation with Spencer Tracy, but another
one they did for TV. And Ed Begley plays plays
Matthew Brady, who is the character based on William Jennings Bryan. Okay,
so he's the do not teach evolution guy.

Speaker 1 (23:42):
Okay, well, that falls in line with your basic argument
here though that he tended to play the cranky antagonist.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
But yeah, so something about it does work in this movie,
like you're saying, because I think because the like the
evil visions are inflected with this kind of like youth
and counterculture hippie strangeness that in the end the day
is saved by just like a like a grumpy old crank.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah, an old guy who's like, you get your hands
off the necronomicon. That's that's not for young folks, that's
for us old, right, that's not for the common folk.
That's for the professors like me. That's why we behinde
the Necronomicon behind a paywall. I get to study it.
You don't.

Speaker 2 (24:23):
But this is literally a conflict in the movie. Like
early on, Dean Stockwell and Ed Begley have an argument
about whether whether he can like look at the Necronomicon,
and Ed Begley's.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Just like, no, it's not for it.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
It's not for you to do.

Speaker 1 (24:36):
It's for me. It's for my study. It's like, yeah,
he's not of the mind like, no one should look
at the Necronomicon, you know, no one, not one of those.
He's like, oh, I should totally look at it. It's
this is my thing.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Well, we can discuss this when we get more into
the plot. But I think the idea is Ed Begley
believes Dean Stockwell's interests in it or not purer, which
he's correct in actually true true.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Okay, So Wilbur Weightly's father is Old Weighty, and he's
played by Sam Jaffey, who lived eighteen ninety one through
nineteen eighty four, character actor known for roles in The
Asphalt Jungle, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bed Knobs
and Broomsticks and Ben Her and you better know he
appeared in an episode of The Night Gallery.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Now you know. One of the actors I was most
surprised to see in this movie was that Talia Shire
shows up in a very small role. She plays a
receptionist in a doctor's office who sort of passes along
some general folk town knowledge about the evil of the
Weightly family and how you know you better stay away

(25:42):
from them. But I guess this makes sense because I
was like, man, this is a strange role. But this
was before The Godfather Rocky.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Right, Yeah, this was only her second film credit. But yeah,
she would go on to play Adrian. She's Adrian. She's
the one that Rocky is where you'll like about yea,
He's Connie and The Godfather. She was in a ton
of other movies, including the nineteen seventy nine mutant bear
film Prophecy, which of course also stars our favorite work

(26:10):
beast Robert Foxworth.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Ferk Based maybe we should start making a list of
the movies that most often get mentioned with crossover. I
feel like Prophecy somehow comes up a lot.

Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yeah, I guess we've got to do Prophecy at some point,
just because it keeps coming up. It's this collection picture
that it just collects all these other actors that we
keep referring to, and I guess it's one that I've
never seen myself. But the VHS cover is like firmly
fixed in my head because it has this like mutant
bear in sort of this embryotic state. All right, well,

(26:44):
let's talk about the music in this film, because this
I was really excited for because the music once more
is by Les Baxter, who lived nineteen twenty two through
nineteen sixty six. We've discussed him a few different times.
This is the king of exotica music. He did the
effective jazzy score in Mario Bava's Black Sabbath. He also
did the very minimal electric blooping frog noise score for

(27:09):
the film Frog. Okay, what always happens is Baxter comes
up and I mentioned, well, okay, Baxter's got all this
excellent exotica work that he did, and then I'll say
something to the effect of, well, but this isn't really
an exotica score or anything. Because Baxter did a number
of B movie scores and then it went on to
compose music for SeaWorld. When scorework kind of dried up

(27:31):
for him, So I think his work is probably better
understood as a professional output rather than anything like, hey,
let's get that exotica guy to do this film because
we want an exotica score. But with Dunwich Horror, I
think the elements of weird pagan ceremonies and it really
provided a reason for some of those exotica elements to

(27:51):
flare up. So we have this fun mix of nineteen
seventies cinematic jazz. We have Eastern motifs, we have weird
theram and electronic sound effects. We have foreboding drums and
blaring horns. It very much feels like jazz cigarette rolled
with a paid for an acronomicon here. You know.

Speaker 2 (28:12):
I thought one of the sonic elements of this movie
that was especially effective, And I don't know if Les
Baxter did this part I would assume he at least
partially did, was that when you are seeing the evil
twin brother from the house. I guess would this be
the titular Dunwich Horror or just the horror refer to
like this guy or like the whole sort of situation.

(28:35):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (28:36):
I always took it to mean like the whole situation,
but I think it could apply specifically to the brother.

Speaker 2 (28:43):
Yeah, so the twin brother. There is this monstrous twin
brother who is sort of the Hugo, if you will,
the Hugo of the film, who's behind a rattling door
for most of the movie, but later on in the
film he gets out and that's when when things really
get wild. But so when he gets out, we sort
of see Hugo caam and so we're seeing from his

(29:03):
perspective as he floats around over the landscape looking for
people to terrorize. And in those sequences or when you're
seeing people and you just know that the twin brother
is near, there's just this steady, ominous chord and a
slow kind of heartbeat rhythm. I know that sounds very
standard for horror movies, but it works really well in

(29:26):
this one. I always really liked the sound in those scenes.

Speaker 6 (29:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
I mean, I think a huge part of it is,
first of all, they're adapting a story about essentially an
evil brother who's an invisible space blob. So if you're
going to try and portray that accurately, you're already limited.
So a lot of what they do is based in
sound and then also in like weird colors and stuff.
So the sound is essential here. And I don't know

(29:52):
for certain, but I suspect this was totally Baxter's deal
as well, for no other reason because it lines up
with his work in Frogs, which is almost entirely you know,
electronic and like minimal ambient in that regard. Now, I
don't think the score for this film is widely available
in digital or physical form right now, but it has
been released over the years, and it was originally released

(30:14):
on vinyl in nineteen seventy under the title and I
Kid you Not Music of the Devil God Cult Strange
Sounds from Dunwich and then it it's just it's a
wonderful title, like they seem to be going like further away,
like it's not just hey, here's the score for the
dunwichar by Less Baxter, like they no, here is the

(30:34):
music of that Devil God Cult.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
And the cover of the album is just Dean Stockwell's
face with his eyes so wide it looks like his
head's gonna explode.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Yeah, this is one of this wonderful pose that he
does where he puts his his hands to either side
of his face while they're crossed. During one of his
many yog Sagath chants.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
Oh yeah, I like that. So he puts his hands
up beside his head and he's got a ring on
each pinky, so it's like he's got a second pair
of eyes almost. But also the way his hands are
out flat beside his face, he looks like a cobra flaring.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
It's it's hood, yeah, it's it's it's it's excellent. It's
it's a great pose. Maybe maybe my wife will let
me use this pose and in the next photo.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah, that'd be good for the Christmas card.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Yeah, So yeah, I would say that in general this
movie is excellent from an audio standpoint. I watched it
with with earbuds in and I felt like the weird
sounds were just kind of like rolling around me in
like three D audio. It has this these great dark
ambient stretches. It has some wonderful like like you know,
cosmic horror jazz going on, uh, which which I I

(31:48):
absolutely loved. So this is yeah, this is this is
a wonderful score, and I really hope someone puts it
out again, not only digitally, but like all these like
crazy vinyls that we often touch on that come out
to re release these very scores, like, oh man, you
could go in so many fun directions with this.

Speaker 2 (32:03):
Yeah, I agree. I really enjoyed the music. The whole
audio landscape I thought was a highlight of the movie.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
All right, Well, let's get into the plot for this baby.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
All right, So this movie begins with a pre credit sequence,
but it has some amazing animations that go along with
the credits. We should talk about those in the second
But before we get to that, there is this pre
credit sequence where there's like a bunch of witches in
a bedroom. It's kind of the it's kind of Rosemary's
Baby ending scene, almost some witches in a bedroom and

(32:43):
like a lady maybe going to give birth or having
given birth. And the problem with this scene is all
of the characters are being drastically upstaged by the decorps
in the rooms, which is just the busiest purple wallpaper
I've ever seen, and like weird clocks that look like

(33:06):
they're made out of like they're like, you know, trash sculpture,
strange framed photos, weird like popping sconces and sculptures everywhere.
This house is awesome, but the interior decoration is so
busy it's almost funny.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Yeah, yeah, it is. It is an intensely decorated house
that they use for this film, and that, like the
color scheme is wonderful. It's got like these weird purples
going on. I love it now.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
I guess we're just supposed to assume that something ominous
has happened in the scene. But after the scene we
go to the credits, and the credits are wonderful. They
are these blue and black silhouette animations where we're like,
we're watching all these scenes. For example, there are like
these little figures that look like wizards of some kind

(33:55):
running around on a blue background over the solid black terrain,
and then we kind of get a zoom out and
it turns out that the terrain is not ground, but
it's like muscles on a giant horned devil body, which
was great. But then they're also I don't know, there's
just great imagery in it, like these weird trees and
a big snakehead, and then a guy who I got

(34:19):
to say, in his pose with his big cloak and
staff looks way too much like the Master from Manos
The Hands of Fate.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
But that's Okay, I agree that the opening credits for
this are really fabulous. They also kind of tell a story,
like they kind of fill you in and get you
prepared for what's happening. It's about some sort of you know,
presented story about a miraculous birth and you know, the
coming of a sorcerer and so forth.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
It's it's nice, but okay, we cut from here to
a modern university. It's like a university campus again. I
guess this is supposed to be the infamous Miskatonic University,
and we see Ed Begley as this character, Professor Henry Armitage.
He's walking with some students, having just given a lecture
on this book. The book is the Necronomicon. It is

(35:10):
this tone of ancient evil that is stored in a
glass case in the Miskatonic library.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, plain sight of everything.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
Yeah, and he well, I don't know if you understood
it the same way. My read on this was that
the Armitage character doesn't necessarily believe that the like spells
in the book would actually work, or I was a
little unclear on that, but he seems to have some
kind of cautious respect for this book and its power,

(35:43):
even if he doesn't fully buy into magic or any
such nonsense.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, he is, I mean again thinking of putting kind
of like a generational conflict read on all of this.
It's kind of like he's evaluating the hippie culture. And
he's like, I don't actually believe in you know, Eastern
real religion. I don't believe that you know that in
all these beneficial, you know, powers that the young people
say that these you know that these various drugs have.

(36:10):
I don't believe in their music, but I believe that
all these things are dangerous and can hurt them, and
therefore I need to protect them from those influences.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Oh yeah, I could see that.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
Well.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
So anyway, sander D who plays a character named Nancy,
and her friend Elizabeth is that her friend's name, I
think so they're apparently students who have been attending these lectures,
so I guess they're interested in ancient evil tomes and
uh and and Ed Begley hands off the Necronomicon to
sander D. He's like, take this back to the library,

(36:41):
and she's like, okay, uh. But while she's taking it back,
Dean Stockwell shows up, and he is from the very
first moment. This this powerful combination of suave and unsettling.
You know, is he is he a smooth operator or
is he a dangerous creep? Seems like he's both.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah. Yeah, he really walks that line. It's it's a
great performance. There's a lot of a lot of him
staring intently at characters and talking very calmly about, you know,
either about some sort of esoteric topic or in this case,
he's just like, oh, yes, I understand, but can I
see the Necronomicon? Like he's very insistent.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, he really wants to borrow the Necronomicon for five minutes.

Speaker 1 (37:26):
Yeah, And she's like, she's finally like, oh yeah, okay,
you can, just don't take it into the bathroom. Oh.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
And also, sander Dee immediately has a crush on Dean Stockwell.
She and she and her friend are like, wow, did
you see his eyes. He's got great eyes.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yeah, he's got his father's eyes.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
So Dean Stockwell takes this book and I think he
goes to a side room or something and he's reading
aloud from it, and he's he's just enraptured. He's reading
these lines about yogs of Thoth and various prophecies about
gates and old ones and so forth. But then Ed
Begley shows up and he's like, the book please. I
beg does not like this screwing around this. This book

(38:02):
needs to go immediately back to its display case. So
this whole group ends up like going out to a
bar and grill together to get realisticks and talk about
ancient evil.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
Yeah. Like there's the conflict is not such that it
prevents everyone from going out to lunch, which I wish
more conflicts in films would go like this, where there's
an initial argument and they're like, well, hey, let's do lunch.
Let's talk about this further.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Shall we discuss yogso thought over a shrimp cocktail?

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
So while they're all out, you know, talking to each other,
I think we find out something about Dean Stockwell's character's background.
He is he's a guy named Wilbur Weighte and he's
from this famous Weightly family that their family history is
tied up in the Necronomicon, this evil book. And so
Wilbur Weightly is the great either the grandson or great

(38:58):
grandson I think great grand son of a guy named
Oliver Weightly who was was murdered by the townsfolk of Dunwich.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
I think is done.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
What's supposed to be in Massachusetts.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Or something like that, Yeah, or in this case, perhaps
in northern California.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah, right, But his his great grandfather was murdered by
the towns folk after having you know, it was mob violence,
for allegedly having done something very evil. And Dean Stockwell
wants to borrow the Necronomicon so he can study it
because he says he's a student of the occult, and
he says that this book is like the Bible to him.

(39:38):
And Armitage is not amused by this. He's like, I
know enough about strange things not to laugh at them,
and so he won't let the book go and and
so he heads off. And then Wilbur and Nancy are
just hanging out Dean Stockwell and sanderde and and Wilbur's like,
I can't stand pomposity, which is funny because his care

(40:00):
is extremely pompous. Like there these moments where he is
just making these grandiose prophecies. I don't remember exactly how
he phrases them, but I would say that that Wilbur
gets pompous, Yes, but his is the pomposity of youth, right, yeah,
which is apparently more acceptable. So it ends up where
Sandra Dee drives Dean stock Well back to Dunwich because

(40:22):
he misses his bus, and we get a taste of
the townsfolk's feelings about him and his family when they
stop for gas in Dunwich and the gas station attendant
once he sees Dean Stockwell in the car, he's like, oh, Wilbur,
I don't want anything. He says, he just wants one
dollar for the gas, and then he like leaves them alone,
and apparently the animosity goes both ways. Wilbur does not

(40:44):
like the townsfolk. He says, they've treated me that way
since childhood. They're still the same, frightened, superstitious fools.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
And true enough, everything we see of the townspeople from
here on out like they do seem they do seem awful.
So i'm i'm, i'm, I'm i'm. When I was watching this,
I was kind of at times wondering whose side we're
supposed to be on. So you know, it becomes clear
that you know, Wilbur does not have great intentions for
humanity through his dealings here with an acronomicon and it's

(41:14):
it's forbidden wisdom. But on the other hand, the townspeople suck.
So I don't know, I don't know who we're supposed
to be rooting for here. I guess Sandra D. I think.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
I think ultimately the audience is supposed to be on
the side of Sandra D and her friend and professor Armitage.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
So anyway, Sandra D comes over to Wilbur's house for
a cup of tea or something, I think a cup
of tea, and inside it's immediately clear that this is
the house that the pre credit sequence took place in,
because again, the busiest decor of any house ever. And
I don't recall if it's like this in the novella.
My impression of the house and the novella was that

(41:52):
it was more of just a wreck. Yeah, this house
looks like it was decorated by a family of a
flamboyant stage magicians.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Yes, yeah, they have. For instance, they have these wonderful
crystals setting around that are never fully explained and are
pretty fabulous. They occasionally are moved around, or move on
their own, or suddenly set off intense fires. It's great.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Yeah, the house is just wonderful. It's one of my
favorite things about the movie, honestly, is the wallpaper, the
little ornaments on the coffee tables and the hearth and everything,
all the wall art. It's just oh and the floor decorations.
When you get those sudden like shots from up above,
it's just a great, great house.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Yeah, yeah, just a complete environment that they put together
here now.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
At first, even though Wilbur has already said some strange things,
we get the impression that sander d I think likes him.
He's very handsome and charming and I don't know about charming, yah,
sort of charming. I mean he's at least like smooth
and confident and there's something about him. But we start
immediately seeing this is not going to go well because

(43:03):
Wilbur is not a cool guy. Wilbur is the inner
dimensional creep that you got that hint of earlier. So
he immediately sneaks out to Sanderde's car and steals something
from her engine, disabling the car, and then back inside
the house, Sanderdie starts having visions of threatening hippies in
elaborate face paint and clothing, and she sees tree limbs

(43:26):
and waves crashing on rocks.

Speaker 1 (43:28):
Yeah, and this is where we get that real sense
of hippie danger and I love it. The hippies and
their magic pose a threat to the innocent youth and
it's up to the olds to protect her from their influence.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Okay, so we already saw Wilbur steal something from her
car engine, which is bad enough, and then he gets
even worse. We see him inside the house putting some
kind of potion or substance into her tea, presumably to
knock her out and keep her at the house to
keep her from returning back to wherever Miss Katonic is.
But while while Wilbur's being a creep over here, Sandra

(44:03):
Dese somehow stumbles into Wilbur's grandfather.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Mm hmm. Yeah, he's just kind of just lurching around
the house with his weird, funky staff.

Speaker 2 (44:15):
Oh yeah, that's staff. It's great. It's just got a
big occult pendant on the top.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah yeah. And later, of course, we see that it's
not just around the house. He like takes this with
him when he goes to like the gas station in town,
which you can just imagine, like Wilbur's like, Dad, please
please don't bring that to town again. Stop bringing that
to the gas station.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
With you, Okay. Well, Sandra d finds out her car
won't start, and she's getting very sleepy, presumably for the
sleeping powder or whatever it was that he put in
the tea. So she decides she's gonna have to stay
the night at the house, and so Wilbur gives her
a guest bedroom and she settles down and then she
has a dream. And this dream really reinforces those vision

(44:59):
themes from earlier, because it's these like elderritch half naked
hippies running around grabbing at her face, and then waves
crashing on the rocks, and these visions of just psychedelic
evil woodstock, and then she gets chased into a shack
and then I think that's the end of the dream.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
These are great sequences because we really don't see too
much of them, and but what we do see of
them is evocative and colorful and a little bit scary.
I reminded. It made me think back to the nineteen
sixty seven film The Trip, which was Roger Corman directed
Jack Nicholson written film about basically about character played by

(45:37):
Peter Fonda going on an acid trip. In that film,
there are a number of different psychedelic sequences, but also
sequences that go on way too long. And she used
to feel very trippy because you've been in them for
like five minutes and had sort of like stationary effects
and so forth. But these these feel very trippy because
they are given in like dreamlike flashes.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Okay, and then the next day comes along and we
get two different threads. One is that we see Professor
armitage Ed Begley and Sandrode's friend Elizabeth are driving out
to Dunwich to find her because she disappeared the night
before and the Weiteleys don't have a phone at their house,
so she couldn't call anybody, so they're like, well, what

(46:20):
happened to her? So they're driving out to check on her.
But then the other half is we see Sander d
and Dean Stockwell just hanging out walking around town, getting
to know one another and sharing information. So among the
conversations they have, one is where Wilbur and Nancy are
exploring downtown Dunwich and he explains how the town's folk

(46:41):
murdered his great grandfather and he says the reason for
this is that he didn't believe in God or the
devil and instead believed in an ancient erace of beings
from another dimension that came before humanity are more powerful
than us, and that he could bring them back from
the plane where they sit waiting. And then he claims
that they that they put a trumped up murder charge

(47:04):
on his great grandfather, that a girl disappeared and they
claimed that he had murdered her in some kind of
human sacrifice. Though I think we were maybe supposed to
understand that that charge may in fact be true.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:17):
Meanwhile, Armitage and Elizabeth end up they end up connecting
with the local town doctor who might know something about
the Weighty family, And this is where we meet Talia Shire.
She's the receptionist of the doctor's office, and she, when
speaking to Elizabeth kind of discloses the town's beliefs about
the Weightles, Like she tells Nancy's friend that Wilbur never

(47:38):
had a girlfriend before and no girl should go over
to that house because that house is bad news.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
And this is a nice little scene, I thought, I mean,
it's nothing groundbreaking or anything, but I felt like they
had a nice little scene together with some well written dialogue.

Speaker 2 (47:51):
Yes, and it's a funny counterpoint to what's going on
in the room next door, where Ed Begley is talking
to the doctor and he's explaining, well, you know, there're
these old ones, and so it's at least alleged that
they can be brought back from another dimension and then
the earth will be destroyed.

Speaker 1 (48:05):
I also love how it's basically armatage showing up and
he's been like, hello, doctor, I'd like to I was
wondering if I could sit down with you for a moment,
you could tell me the medical histories of this entire family.
And he's like, well, it'd better be good for a
good reason.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
And it's because of these ancient gods from another dimension. Yes,
And then the doctor is like, well in that case, yes,
let me get out the file.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Now.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Somewhere in here, I don't remember how we get into this,
but there's like a flashback of a scene, or maybe
it's not a flashback. Maybe it's either a flashback or
it takes place at the same time, but at some
points a.

Speaker 1 (48:43):
Tone, so it must be in the past.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Right, Oh, okay, okay, you're right. Grandpa Waiteley is in
a local general store and he's just ranting about old
gods I think, and the locals are viciously mocking him.

Speaker 5 (48:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:57):
Yeah, this is one of those where you're like, oh, man,
the people done, which like they mostly suck, so I
really can't side with them, and all this feel bad
for old Wayley here.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
But somehow in all this, the doctor and Armitage they
figure out that Wilbur's mother, Lavinia, is currently in an asylum,
and they go to see her there and she's in
a padded room and her hair is turned completely white,
and she's in there screaming about how my son's open
the gate, my son's and then she says, kill them all.

(49:27):
And so I think it's one of those cases where
a character who is said to be mad is speaking
things that are directly informative of the coming plot, but
none of the characters realize it, so they're just kind
of like, oh, what's this nonsense? And then meanwhile we're
just seeing more stuff with Dean Stockwell and Sandra d
they're hanging out. Dean Stockwell is always in a suit.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Yep, great dapper, and I think it's.

Speaker 2 (49:51):
Implied Sandra Dee appears to be from this point increasingly,
it's kind of hard to describe, just like increasingly kind
of hypnotized, like she's always kind of sleepy.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
Yeah, I'm kind of unclear on this, but the film
seems to keep her in this weird place where she
doesn't seem like she's like one hundred percent been kidnapped,
but she's also not one hundred percent of collaborator either.
She's not like, yeah, let's go up there and raise
some old ones Wilbur. It really does feel like this
film aligns with something we've talked about on the show before,

(50:23):
this late sixties early seventies fear of hippie occult mind
washing during this period. So it's really as if Sandra
D's character is she's not being held captive by the
evil Wilbur. He's not tying her to train tracks so
the old Ones will run over. And she's also not
portrayed as like a complete doll person where she's like,

(50:43):
I obey Wilbur and the old Ones. Now, No, she's
just under their spell in the non magical sense, like
she's she's been caught up in all of this hippie
danger and that's why she needs Professor Armitage to Grandpa
Armitage here to jump in and save her.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yeah, I think that's about right. So, yeah, she's not
being portrayed as being held and done which against her will,
but at the same time it is suggested that that's
something she's somehow enchanted, like her free will has been
compromised in some way. Yeah, and so she and Dean
Stockwell are out on these They're out on a seaside

(51:20):
cliff at some point, and they walk up to some
old stone ruins. They're like these pillars and a staircase
and a stone altar, and Wilbur says, legend says, it's
been here forever. It's called the Devil's hop Yard, which
is the name. I look this up. It is the
name of a place in Connecticut which does not look
like this at all. There's no temple as far as

(51:41):
I can tell. But the landscape is very beautiful looking
in the movie.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Yeah, again it's it's clearly coastal northern California, but it
looks gorgeous. And yeah, they're increasingly these shots, and I
think these are ultimately closing shots of the film of
this the seaside and the waves crashing on these rocky beaches,
and it's it's good, it's really good.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
And so Wilbert starts talking about this ancient ritual, ancient
occult rituals here that would involve like virgin sacrifice, and
this would somehow open a gate that would allow the
old ones to come through. And then he does the thing.
He puts his hands to the sides of his head,
flares them like the cobra hood, and he's got the
pinky rings next to his eyes, and he starts yelling

(52:23):
yogs of Thoth. And so here we get more weird
psychedelic visions. Sandrade imagines herself to be sacrificed on this
stone altar. She's surrounded by evil priests with these black
hoods over their heads, and there's Wilbur standing among them.
So it seems like he may have some kind of
connection to these evil rituals from the deep past. Oh oh,

(52:45):
and in this whole sequence, this is where we finally
get the Wilbur chest reveal, which is where he takes
his shirt off and he's covered in tattoos that look
like hieroglyphics.

Speaker 1 (52:55):
Yeah, which is great. I think in the original short story,
Wilbur for starters of not dashing. I think he comes
off more as like a dangerous bum and we find
out that he ultimately find out that he's like he
has part monster body or something, and in this we
don't have that. Instead we just have these really cool,
you know, occult tattoos all over him.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
After this, there's a whole sequence where we follow Nancy's
friend Elizabeth, who's trying to investigate you know, she's worried
about the well being of her friend, so she's going
to the Weightely house to look around for her, to
check on her and make sure she's okay. And while
she's investigating the house, there are several times so far
in the movie where we have seen this door upstairs

(53:44):
in the house rattling as if there is something behind
it that wants to get out. And unfortunately it is
Elizabeth who opens this door and goes into the forbidden
room while she's looking around the house. And so this
is the first like attack, like the first murder scene
in the movie. By this the why Wilbert's twin this
other being in the house. And this scene is weird.

(54:07):
It's it's done with this flashing color abstract animation suggesting
kind of the flailing of octopus arms and lights from
another world. It does this heavy like red and blue
color saturation that goes back and forth.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, like they're really I feel like they were really
going for like an LSD trip kind of a vibe
here and again. It comes back to the fact too,
that they can't really show the monster. They seem to
have some sort of physical apparatus that they're shooting, some
sort of tentically thing about. They're not showing as much
of it at all, and the film works better for that.

Speaker 2 (54:39):
I think it's always a better decision to show less
of the monster. I mean, you can find exceptions, like
the thing shows a lot of the monster and it's wonderful,
but that that's pretty rare. Most of the time. You're
going to do better if you give suggestive imagery rather
than just getting a good long look at the suit.
And you know, because often if you get a good

(54:59):
long look at the suit or the makeup effect or
whatever it is, it starts to look less and less great.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Yeah, that the flaws become increasingly obvious.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
It's the Jaws principle. They did not have a great
robotic shark, but they ended up getting really good footage
out of what they did have, just by clever use
of it.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, even today when you have some
tremendous CGI effects, and granted there are some pitfalls with
CGI at times as well, but like, even if the
monster is perfectly well executed on the screen, you know,
I mean, you have to remember what are monsters? Historically,
Monsters are things that lurk in the imagination, and monsters
are things that are not fully seen but partially seen

(55:38):
in the mist, in the dark, in the wild, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
Now there's a scene shortly after this that I think
this is more indication of that there's something going wrong
with Sandra D's volition that because there's a scene where
Wilbur and Grandpa start arguing about whether Wilbur is going
to be successful in usingancy to open the gate and
allow the old ones in. And I think she's just

(56:03):
like right there, She's like in the room with them, right,
m yeah, yeah. And Grandpa, I guess Grandpa has been
turned against this ritual. He used to be for it,
now he's against it. And he swings his staff at
Wilbur and misses and then falls down the stairs to
his death.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (56:20):
And there was a great moment here though, where there's
these creepy sound effects these birds in the background, and
Sandra desques those birds, what does it mean, and Wilbur explains, well,
they were trying to capture his soul as it left
his body.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
Yeah, it was so weird. It's such an interesting addition.
I love it.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
But then I love at the funeral for Grandpa, weitly
here it must not be this. But for some reason
when I so, townsfolk arrived to bust up the ceremony
and it looked to me like it was implying that
about thirty people got out of one pickup truck.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Yeah, there's just suddenly a mob of town folk here
to object to them carrying how to burial.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah, so they're like, this is a Christian cemetery. We
dispose of our trash at the town dump. But then
I think eventually the police come in and they're like, okay, okay,
break it up.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Yeah, I mean, we can't possibly be supposed to feel
anything but disdain for these town folk, right, I mean,
this is bad. Like, even if you know Wilbur is
the villain of the piece, he's just trying to bury
his dad in the cemetery.

Speaker 2 (57:23):
Well, and some of elder gods that will destroy the world.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Well, yeah, well he's doing that too, but this is
a side thing, you know, like like come on, come on, guys,
leave this man alone.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
So Wilbert, you know, he still needs that necronomicon. He's like,
you know, the professor wouldn't let me borrow the book
for five minutes, so I guess I'm gonna have to
go to the university library and steal it. And then
there's a whole sequence where he does that. He breaks in,
he tries to get the book, he gets into a
fist fight with a security guard, and so they have

(57:55):
a fist fight, and then the funny part is the
guard wins kind of surprisingly, like he knocks will We're
unconscious apparently. Then he goes to the phone, I think,
to dial the police. But then Wilbur just picks up
this big weap it's like a halbird that is on
display in the library and stabs the guard and the
guts with it.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
Yeah, it's a nice ending to a fight scene that, yeah,
has this unexpected twist, but is also very like Old
West style fighting, you know, like people getting punched and
falling through tables and such. So it's a fun sequence
and it's also I think a nice twist on what
happens in the story. In the original short story, if
I remember correctly, Wilbur breaks into the museum to try

(58:35):
and steal the book and guard dogs kill him.

Speaker 3 (58:38):
You know.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
So, yeah, so, which is clear? I mean, I guess
you know, you can argue whether that worked in the
original story, but it would not have worked in this story.
We need Wilburt to be there at the finale. We
don't need him to be done in by a German shepherd.
And it adds to this additional twist. He's not only
willing to break the laws of nature and all to
bring about this resurgence of the old ones, he's also

(59:02):
willing to kill for it, right right, Yes, but even
then it was in self defense. Towards the end, it's
still they managed to walk this line where it's not
like he kills the cop in cold blood. He grabs
the spear and then the cop rushes him and he
like pulls it up in time to impale the security guy.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Yeah. So, there are several scenes in this movie where
I think Wilbert is presented as having a kind of
dangerous nichean beyond good and evil outlook. You know that
he believes that moral concerns are just sort of like
a petty folly. Like there's a part where Grandpa's trying
to like convince him, like you can't do this, you know,

(59:40):
you shouldn't do this, and then he says, I do
what I want.

Speaker 4 (59:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (59:44):
So I think Wilburt maybe he rejects the idea of
an aught or a should. You know, there is nothing
I should or ought to do. There is what I will.

Speaker 4 (59:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:54):
So at this point he's killed, he's crossed that line.
But he also has an ecronomicon.

Speaker 2 (59:59):
Right, And so this sets the third act of the movie,
which is going to be some twin monster rampage and
a very slow moving ritual. So the final showdown is
wilbur is setting up to do this ritual to open
the gate to allow the old gods in, or the
old ones, and they're going to come and destroy the world.

(01:00:19):
This is probably going to involve human sacrifice of Sandra
d on the altar. And then meanwhile his brother, Oh,
he says at the beginning of the rituals, he's saying
the name of these gods. He's singing like yogso Thoth,
and he's got the necronomicon, and he says, I summon you,
brother of darkness, I summon you. And his brother is
his twin brother, is apparently this thing upstairs in the

(01:00:41):
house that keeps rattling on the door, and it bursts
forth from its confinement, and that goes out to roam
around the town and get into all kinds of mischief,
good natured mischief, some unspeakable, deadly mischief, the geometry of
which is impossible to describe. Now, I will say, in
some of these scenes where the monster is roaming around again,

(01:01:05):
we're not really seeing it. We're seeing more from its
point of view, and then getting a kind of audio texture,
that heart beat sound that that allows that helps us
know that something very dangerous is going on. And then
we're getting these suggestive flashes of imagery that aren't I
think are not to be understood as pictures of the

(01:01:26):
monster itself. But in a way, the monster itself kind
of can't be seen or can't be comprehended with human eyes,
so it's just this presence that suggests other images.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
Yeah, and at times they do this with like it's
like the weather, it's like rain or wind moving in
it's it's it's I thought, really effectively done.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
Oh yeah, there's a really nice shot of like visions
of wind blowing dust over a winding road or wind
blowing over the surface of a pond.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
Mm hmm. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
But of course it's gonna attack a bunch of the townsfolk,
so we get, you know, scenes of that. There's like
a nearby house that has these people they're about to
have dinner. I think they're saying. They're saying a blessing
over some kind of wretched ham. It's some of the
same townsfolk who busted up the funeral earlier, and they
hear these weird sounds. The house is kind of shaking.

(01:02:19):
The man grabs his rifle and he goes out to investigate,
and he shoots at something he sees in the barn,
and then it attacks the house and everything is shaking,
and we're to understand it doesn't go well. And then
this is confirmed when Professor Armitage and the doctor from
the town from earlier, doctor Corey, they show up at
the house where the townsfolk have gathered. They see the

(01:02:39):
remains of this family and they're like, oh no, we
got to form another angry mob. Because they correctly assumed
that the Weightlees are responsible, or at least that Wilbur
is Wilbur and his monstrous twin brother, and they want
to go get revenge. And Armitage is like, Wilbur Weiteley
might be the only person who can stop the creature
that did this. So he's trying to talk sense into them,

(01:03:01):
you know, he's like, hold on, we need to figure
out what's going on. But the shapeless being it attacks
Talia Shire while she's driving a car. It attacks a
posse who's hunting for it in the woods. Uh, And
so they're there are these repeated scenes where people are
sort of felled by psychedelic visual effects. And again I
think it works pretty well.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Yeah, yeah, again for a film that that can't or
won't show, you know, an actual monster like this works
really well, I think. I think. Ultimately, I feel like
Lovecraft officionados are probably too hard on this film because
like they're they're kind of pulling it off. They're they're
pulling off this this unseeable, unknowable horror that you know,
makes you crazy if it touches you sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:44):
Now, of course, this all comes down to a wizard battle.
You got you gotta have a wizard battle to settle
this problem. Armitage shows up at the sight of the
Devil's hopyard where they're they're going to do the human sacrifice,
and Wilbur's there, and so Armitage and Wilbur's start essentially
yelling spells at each other. I think they're just like
calling out love crafty and phrases at one another.

Speaker 1 (01:04:06):
Yeah, and it's it's I love it. It's super weird,
especially since there are no real added effects like it.
It's the kind of thing where if you saw actors
doing this today, you would think, oh, well, this is
before they added like the lightning and lights and lasers
shooting off of them every time they say something. But
none of that was added, and they really didn't have
to because both actors are doing such a good way

(01:04:27):
of saying I don't know of of saying the magic words,
I don't know, like just their intensity as they're they're
belting out these lines. It works really well, and you
totally buy into the fact that, yeah, they're they're they're
they're blasting out spells here. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
I think I think you're quite right that it especially
has something to do with the audio mixing of this
scene that makes it more unsettling than you would think
a wizard battle should be.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
M hm.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
But ultimately Armitage wins the wizard battle. He's yelling out
these phrases. I guess he must know from having studied
the Necronomicon and Dean st well, he gets sort of
like he gets I don't know something about these phrases
getting his head, and he clearly gets like foggy and
confused and frustrated. And then he gets struck by lightning and.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
Catches on fire and it falls off a cliff.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Yeah, and at the very last we do get a
vision of this unspeakable evil, the Wilbur's brother. And this
is the one moment where when we get this flash
of its actual form. I think it looks like a beholder,
doesn't it, Or at least it looks like illustrations I've
seen of beholders.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Yeah, I mean we don't. It's even it's still in
the big reveal. We don't see it all that clearly.
So there is the sense of a beholder, there's a
sense of a gorgon's head. But also it's just like
color and madness.

Speaker 2 (01:05:45):
And so then after all the violence is done, things
are coming back down, and the final thoughts are well,
Armitage says, well, looks like Wilbur's twin took after the father,
so like you were saying earlier, you know, he has
his father's eyes. But then also we see Sandra d
is okay, but it is suggested she may in fact
be carrying the child of an interdimensional demon god.

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
Now yeah, that's right, because we have that pause and
then the creepy music, the heartbeat stuff comes in and
we have like put an animation of a fetus that's
visible there, which which I quite like because it implies
like the next level of this curse is the generation
of those born in the nineteen seventies, which being a

(01:06:28):
child in the nineteen seventies, I like this because I'm
watching the screen and like, that's me. I'm the baby.
This is my generation that they're referring to. So in
a way, like you know, people my age and you
know and younger, like we are the sequel to the dunwichar.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
The generational curse of the old ones is that you
will give less of a crap than any generation ever before.

Speaker 1 (01:06:54):
But anyway, it's ahnomenous ending I thought it's a good,
good place to land it there again, there are also
all these shots of just a waves crashing on the
on the coast. It's it ends in a nice spot,
all right. So there you have it, the Dunwich Horror,
which I quite enjoyed. I found this a very very,
very fun film to watch. You might be wondering, well,

(01:07:15):
where can I watch The Dunwich Horror. Well, you can
buy or rent this movie most places you get your
films these days. You stream it, you know, on all
the major platforms. You can also pick it up on DVD. Sadly,
there doesn't seem to be an awesome vinyl re release
of the score, like I said earlier, but I really
hope someone does that, maybe something like nice purple vinyl

(01:07:36):
or something, or I mean really there are a number
of wonderful colors used in the film, so you could
swirl them all together in there.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Oh yeah, I could see that, you know, if they
put out one of those big collectors editions of this
that that comes along with merch. In addition, it should
come with a roll of wallpaper so you can put
up the weightlely house wallpaper in your house.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
Yeah, as you can. You can done which your your
own home. I like it. Yeah, it's a very stylish movie,
very stylish, very nineteen seventy, so I highly recommend it
if this is your sort of film, all right, If
you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema,
this comes out every Friday and the Stuff to Blow
Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and culture podcast,

(01:08:18):
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with artifact episodes
on Wednesdays and listener mail on Mondays. But Friday that's
our time to cut loose and discuss a weird picture.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
Like this one. 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 (01:08:49):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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