Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Venom (1981)

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe wrestle with their first full-blown snake movie: 1981’s “Venom.” It stars Oliver Reed, Klaus Kinski and a live black mamba snake from the London Zoo. Film historians still debate which was the more difficult actor of the three. (originally published 11/12/2021)

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Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:06):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and
today we're featuring an older episode of Weird House Cinema.
This one originally published November twelfth, twenty twenty one, and
this is the movie Venom, starring Oliver Reed klaus Kinski.
A bunch of snakes this is in this. It's got
a fun British cast, and it's snakes in an apartment

(00:29):
building or a singular snake in an apartment building.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Nicol Williamson is also in this.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
That's right.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yes, it's got a real fun cast for sure.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
And I'm Joe McCormick, and it is the Serpentine Hour
here on Weird House Cinema. Because today Rob am I
right that this is our first snake movie.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
It is. I mean, we've certainly had some snakes and
even killer snakes pop up in some of our Florida
movies that we did, including Zat and Frogs, but Venom
is going to be our first true snake movie.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Now, this movie is called Venom. But no, it's not
that Venom. No, it's not that other one either. It's
this is Venom nineteen eighty one, the original Venom.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Or well, one of the original venoms. I noticed that
there are multiple films with the title Venom, so I'm
not sure if this one is the true originator, but
it's the one that we're talking about here today.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Man, I love a good snake romp. You know, a
snake movie. Really it just gets you by the gut sometimes.
So I love, as we've discussed before, the campy supernatural
pleasures of the Layer of the White Worm to even
what I would argue is maybe the best creature feature
of all time, the nineteen ninety seven Amazon snake hunt

(02:00):
movie Anaconda, in which the cardinal rule of great snake
movies is observed. And this is what I would argue.
The rule is any creature movie featuring an unusually large
or unusually deadly reptile must also contain at least one
human actor who is more reptilian than the creature itself. Now,

(02:22):
in the case of Anaconda, you've got your giant cgi reptile,
but it is being constantly upstaged by John Voight, delivering
one of the most bizarre performances I have ever seen
in any movie. You know, you just look at him.
You can tell his blood is room temperature. When he
blinks his eyes they go horizontal, and his accent is

(02:44):
just radioactive weirdness. He sounds like he's trying to sort
of be Peter Lorie doing a like Spanish Count Dracula
kind of thing, but also as a ruthless jungle poacher
with a ponytail. So that movie definitely here's to the rule.
But I think today's pick also observes the rule.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
That's right. Venom is a very interesting film in a
large part because it features not one, but two notoriously
difficult actors, Oliver Reid and Kloss Kinski. And there's actually
another reportedly difficult actor in this as well, so you

(03:25):
can really up that to three. But it's especially evident
with Reid and Kinski based on some of the stories
and the fact that they share a lot of screen
time in this film, so you can imagine if they
were constantly shouting at each other and almost coming to blows,
it would it would have been a particularly terrible working
environment for everyone on the picture.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
You can feel the bad vibes through the screen.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yes, Now, I mean luckily they're both playing villains, and
the characters are also supposed to somewhat hate each other,
so on the screen, you know, putting a setting aside
anything we know about the making of and these actors themselves,
you know, it ends up working. But yeah, both Kinsky
and Reed were kind of larger than life figures. Both
were noted hedonists in their own ways, and they were

(04:09):
both highly talented actors whose careers were damaged by their
difficult behavior. So I think it's fair to say that,
you know, at the very least, they were both very
problematic figures.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Well, if you're talking about their personal lives, I think,
especially in the case of Kinsky, that's sort of an understatement.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Oh yes, yeah, I feel like every time I learned
something new about Kinski, I regret it. Now, you know,
we're not going to focus that guess too much on
their personal lives, but you know, I admit that I
don't necessarily have the stomach for too much of that
sort of thing. But you know, some argue that Reed
sort of played up this hell raiser image for the press,
though there seems no denying his alcoholism and his also

(04:47):
kind of like brute, macho demeanor. Kinsky, on the other hand,
was prone to outbursts and tantrums, it seems, and seems
to have suffered from mental illness. He also was apparently
just reviled by many people who had to work with him,
and I think Werner Herzog kind of stands apart as

(05:07):
really the only filmmaker to have been able to work
with him multiple times for a total of five different films.
It's interesting to me though, that Kinski played a vampire
in two different Nosferato films and Reed played a werewolf
in one Hammer film. So you know, to a large extent,
we have vampires versus werewolves in this movie, and behind

(05:30):
the scenes on this movie, the vampire and the werewolf
really do seem like monstrous reflections of the individual energies
of these two actors.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Okay, so we know we're dealing with Klaus Kinski and
Oliver Reed both in a snake movie. But the weird
thing is it's not just a snake movie. Really. What
this is is a genre hybrid. This is a realistic
crime thriller plus snake.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yes, another elevator pitch on at give it is a
deadly game of cat and mouse, but mostly snake.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Or home alone but with snake.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
All good ways of summing it up. Another way you
could sum it up is bad at crime, good at
dying by snake.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah. The bad at crime note is good. And this
is one of those where those films where the criminal
enterprise is perhaps not entirely well thought out and or
bad and or mistakes are made that just lead to catastrophe.
So it's, you know, in a way, it's more in
sort of the Fargo realm of crime cinema, Like these

(06:39):
are guys who really screw up and make mistakes that
are just catastrophic for their venture.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
I also want to note that in terms of boo mechanics,
I think there are basically two kinds of snake movies.
So you could have like a big snake movie and
a stealth snake movie. So big snake movies would be
more like anaconda. They focus on the scale of snake
in order to intimidate, and this is either by having

(07:07):
a single very large snake or by having a large
quantity of regular sized snakes. But your stealth snake movies
have a snake instead that is regular sized, maybe especially deadly,
but it hides in places you don't expect and pops
out at you. And this is a film in the
latter camp. This is a stealth snake movie. This is

(07:27):
a movie about opening up the liquor cabinet and oops,
there's a black mamba and it bits you on the face.
Though it would be hilarious to try to imagine doing
the same premises this movie like a realistic crime thriller
involving a kidnapping plot plus snake with like a giant
snake or a million snakes.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, I mean, I guess you could do a million snakes.
It could be like the a million snakes are set
loose in the house. I mean, isn't snakes on a
plane essentially that It's like there's something else going on, right,
It's not just snakes on the plane and they're like
a hostage scenario or something.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Can I confess something. I've never seen all of Snakes
on a Plane. I started watching it and never finished it.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
I have to assume there's something else going on beside snakes.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
So yeah, I think there is a perfunctory crime element,
like somebody it's like a witness in a mob case
or something is being transported on a plane. But I
would say snakes on a plane goes big snake because
the issue is there are many snakes on the plane.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
This film, with the single snake threat, it reminds me
a lot of the Sherlock Holmes adventure, The Adventure of
the Speckled Band, which concerns like a very deadly, venomous
snake that is responsible for a death. And I wouldn't
be surprised if that was ultimately one of the inspirations
on this story.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Well, I think it's got a lot of actors who
were in Sherlock Holmes movies and TV series in Britain.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
Right, Yeah, Yeah, we have more than more than one
Sherlock Holmes connection here for sure. Well let's go ahead
and jump right into the trailer.

Speaker 4 (09:00):
Here venom, the kidnap that became a murder, that became
a siege, that became a death trap. Venom.

Speaker 5 (09:16):
The fear explodes, trapping their hostages and kidnappers in its grip.
The panic spreads, sending an entire police force into action.
But this is a terror unlike anything anyone has ever faced.
And when it uncoils to strike, your blood will run cold. Venom.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Whatever you feel you will fear.

Speaker 4 (09:42):
Venom.

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Dude, this is classic creature feature narration trailer, narration. I
absolutely love it. What does he say, venom, the kidnap
that became a murder, that became a sea, that became
a death trap. Venom.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Yeah. They do a really good job of selling this
movie in that trailer.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Uh huh. And he also says this line. I kept
thinking about it. I was like, what does it mean?
He says, whatever you feel you will fear. Does that
mean that once you start thinking about snakes, Like anytime
something touches your body, I don't know, you brush against
the doorframe as you're walking through it, or I don't know,
like a leaf falls on your shoulder, you're always gonna

(10:30):
think it's a snake.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
I guess. So, if we're being generous, I guess that's
maybe what the ad copy here is trying to say.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
What else would it mean? That's a weird line.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Whatever you feel you will fear. I don't know, it
doesn't really make much sense in the context of the film.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
I feel happy.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Oh no, maybe it was the director of the actors.
They just said like they're like, well, what's my character,
what's my motivation? And the director's just I don't know,
whatever you feel you'll fear, And they're like, okay, because
it does seem like, for the most part, a lot
of these actors were just kind of turned loose to
just do their thing with the character, and there's not

(11:11):
really necessarily a great sense of who the underlying character
is supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (11:16):
Do you remember how did you come across this movie?
What's the origin story here?

Speaker 1 (11:21):
I have a couple of different blu rays of just
trailers from like the seventies and eighties, and I was
watching a compilation and this one popped up and I
was like, oh, now this looks interesting.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
I suspected that because this is very much one where
if you see the trailer, you're like, yep, okay, gotta
see that one.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Well, let's jump right in and talk about the various
humans and the snakes involved in this film. So the
director is Peers Haggard born nineteen thirty nine. Interestingly enough,
Toby Hooper was going to direct this picture originally, and
I think may have been working on it a little bit,
but then he had to bow out for some reason.
And I think they're varying accounts as to why, and

(12:04):
then enters Haggard here, who had previously directed the nineteen
seventy one British horror film The Blood on Satan's Claw,
A Divorce, The Quartermass Conclusion, also the Peter Sellers comedy
The fiendish plot of Doctor Fu Manchu, which everyone seemed
to hate in nineteen eighty and did still very much
hated today, seemingly with good reason. And he also directed

(12:27):
various TV episodes. He went on to do more TV
and a potentially interesting looking sci fi film, a TV
film titled The Life Force Experiment in nineteen ninety four.
Another interesting thing about him is he was dialogue assistant
on the nineteen sixty six film blow Up.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
So he did the Life Force Experiment and he was
He came in to direct a movie that Toby Hooper
was going to direct, and Toby Hooper directed Life Force.

Speaker 1 (12:56):
Right. I don't know that there's any connection between Life
Force and the Life Force Experiment, but certainly the names
are similar. Now, this is an adaptation of a novel,
it's worth stressing. The original novel, Venom, was written by
Alan Scholfield, who lived nineteen thirty one through twenty seventeen,
a South African author who I think lived most of it,

(13:19):
may have lived most of his life in England. I
think it was like London based or something. But this
book came out in nineteen seventy seven and it still
seems to be in print. You can go obtain this
book and read it. I've never read any of his novels,
but he was quite prolific. He also wrote a nineteen
eighty one horror novel called Cat's Eyes under the name

(13:41):
Lee Jordan, and it seems like he was seems like
he was reasonably well regarded and often worked African history
and culture into his works. Apparently best known for his
McCrae and Silver novels, which were London based detective books. Now,
the screenplay was written by Robert Carrington born nineteen twenty eight,
who wrote such films as Wait Until Dark and Fear

(14:03):
Is the Key, and he was active in the sixties,
seventies and eighties. All right, let's move on to the actors.
So our reptilian humanoid in this film is, of course Kloskinski,
who lived nineteen twenty six through nineteen ninety one. He
plays the character Jack.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Mel So this is one of our main trio of criminals.

Speaker 1 (14:26):
Yes, I guess he's kind of the mastermind. He's supposed
to be. I think we mentioned at one point that
he's a member of the German Underworld. He's like a
German Underworld figure, and he has of course flown in
to London to mastermind the sort of I'm not sure

(14:47):
if he's the Mastermind or not, but anyway, he's going
to be one of the main operatives in this kidnapping plot. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
I think he's played as the Mastermind because there are
a lot of scenes of him pointing a gun at
Oliver Reed and being like, remember, you know you don't
drink whiskey until I tell you.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
To, all right. So. Kinsky, of course a German born actor,
perhaps best remembered today for his smoldering presence in some
of Werner Herzog's best known works, such as Geary, The
Wrath of God was Zek, Nosferatu, the Vampire, Fitzgeraldo and
Cobra Verde. He also had a small but memorable role

(15:23):
in Doctor Shivago in nineteen sixty five, and accounts of
anyone who had to work with Kinsky they tend to
revolve around two different things. His raw talent, you know
that undeniably like there's something electric in a klos Kinsky performance,
but also intense difficulty and displeasure of working with him.

(15:43):
It seems to be a common theme. Herzog managed it,
but also had a just legendarily explosive relationship with Kinski,
and at times from you know, stuff I've watched, you know,
documentaries and so forth, it seems like he was able
to get his the best stuff out of Kinski by
sort of manipulating him, like, for instance, wearing him out

(16:06):
with takes. In the case of a Gira like, Kinsky
has this monologue at the end of it, and Kinsky
thought he needed to rage through it, and Herzog reportedly
just had him do it over and over again until
he was just worn out and could only deliver it
at the energy that Herzog wanted. So, you know, I

(16:27):
thought that was an insightful story about working with Kinski.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
It seems like he was raging a lot.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
Yes, yes, certainly behind the scenes. So Kinsky did a
number of spaghetti westerns as well, including for a few
dollars more, as well as various European genre films. He
played a vampire in Herzog's nineteen seventy nine nos Faratu film,
as well as the nineteen eighty eight film Vampire in Venice.
This was supposed to, I think be a sequel to

(16:56):
Nosfaratu in some respects, but kinskyly refused to wear any
vampire makeup for it, and so he doesn't look like
Nosfatu in it per se. After a career of butting
heads with various directors, he finally directed himself in nineteen
eighty nine's Paganini, which he also wrote, and this was
his final film. Now a couple of interesting facts. Allegedly,

(17:21):
Kinsky turned down the role of Major Tat and Raiders
of the Lost Arc because he hated the script, and
Venom is the picture he did instead.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Oh, both snake centric movies.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah yeah, And of course Ronald Lacey wound up doing
the character of Major Tots, which I think he's so
great in it. This is the best thing that could
have happened. As for Kinsky's performance in Venom, here, I'd
say what we see on the screen is very good.
He's menacing, he exudes evil very much, plays to his strengths.
Though there is a scene where he has to fight

(17:54):
a rubber snake, and let's be honest, that's a tall
order for any actor.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
I think his snake wrestled scene is a highlight of
the film, especially because it turns into a gunfight with
a snake.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
Yes, yeah, a lot happy. Yeah, it's a great climax.

Speaker 2 (18:10):
You just wouldn't think that if a snake is wrapping
around you and you're trying to fight it off, the
solution you would come to is trying to shoot the
snake in the head with a pistol.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Right. Yeah, it's a wonderful scene, though I think Herzog
could have gotten a better, better take out of him.
He just like worn him down until he got the
right energy.

Speaker 2 (18:31):
Okay, So Kinsky is playing our lead reptilian criminal in this,
but then we've also got a more brutal criminal.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Right that is Dave, the chauffeur, played by Oliver Reed.
Oliver Reed lived nineteen thirty eight through nineteen ninety nine,
English actor with piercing eyes. Really his as far as
like eyes first acting goes, Reed was a master of this,
you know, just setting there smoldering and looking at you
with murder eyes. Oh.

Speaker 2 (18:59):
He uses the murderized in this film. Part of The
problem though, is like there's really not any surprise so
as the plot is revealed, because we first see Oliver Reed,
I don't know, thirty seconds into the film, just acting
in his capacity as a chauffeur, and he already looks
like he is not just getting ready to do murders,
but has already done them. He looks like he just

(19:21):
came back in a hurry from doing murders.

Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yes. Absolutely, he always had a knack for playing brute,
macho characters, and of course he increasingly earned a reputation
for hell raising, drinking, and being difficult to work with.
He had his first big leading role in the hammer
film The Curse of the Werewolf from Terrence Fisher, came
out in nineteen sixty one, and he landed some huge

(19:46):
roles in such films as nineteen sixty eight's Oliver, in
which he plays the villain Bill Sikes. He played Athos
in Three Musketeers in seventy three and its sequel in
seventy four, and he continued to do a lot of
villain roles and roles in horror film. He worked with
Ken Russell several times, including Women in Love and of
course The Devils in which he really delivers a memorable performance.

(20:09):
He played the god Vulcan and Terry Gilliams The Adventures
of Baron Muchausen in eighty eight. Other notable roles, at
least to me, include Disney's Condor Man in nineteen eighty one,
in which he plays this the villain in this ridiculous
kind of superhero James Bond kind of film, he plays
the I guess he's the hero and David Cronenberg's The Brood.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
No, no, he is not the hero.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
He's not the hero. Oh no, I guess I've forgotten
most of that film. He's the villain. He's the manipulating
psychiatrist sort of, yeah, psychologist.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
He plays an unorthodox psychiatrist who has like a retreat
where he leads people through these strange exercises and gets
them to to sort of like turn their their psychic
pain and trauma into like physical external manifestations like I
don't know. He leads people through these exercises where like

(21:03):
their pain is turned into in the case of one character,
like a physical tumor, but in the case of other
characters like like literal like little like beings or monsters
that run around the Brude is a gross movie. Be forewarned.
If you're gonna if you're gonna venture there.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah, Samantha Egger, isn't that and I have to I
have to look it up. Let's see what Oliver Reid's
character's name. What was this weird Kronenbergian character, doctor Hal Raglin. Yeah,
not that weird as far as cronenberg names go.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Yeah, my memory is just that he's like a weird,
sort of unethical, unorthodox psychiatrist who's doing a combination of
something like you know, like scientology auditing at the alongside,
like creating tulpas and stuff.

Speaker 1 (21:46):
Mm hmm, okay, yeah, it's been been a while since
I've seen that one.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
We should also mention Oliver Reid was, of course in
Ridley Scott's Gladiator in two thousand and This was his
final film. He died during the filming of it in Malta.
I believe. Now here's a fun fact. Venom is not
the only Oliver Reed snake movie. He also appeared in
nineteen eighty three Spasms alongside Peter Fonda. And this one,
Joe is a giant snake movie.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
Okay, big snake instead of Stealth snake.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
Yeah, so you can look up various stories about the
production of Venom. Basically, yeah, Reid and Kinsky famously did
not get along on the film, reportedly hated each other,
and Read allegedly kept intentionally setting Kinsky off, which sounds
absolutely dreadful. You know, you already have Kinsky, who is

(22:35):
you know, has a reputation for being Satan, Yes, Satan,
and you have and then you have Oliver Reed provoking
Satan and like pranking Satan and you know, just to
get a ryle out of him. So yeah, this sounds
absolutely dreadful for everybody else on the production. That being said,
much like we said with Kinsky, Read, I feel like
he's good in this. I don't know. I feel like

(22:57):
at times maybe they weren't sure exactly who this character
was supposed to be. Sometimes he just seems to be
like loud and abusive because he needed to do something
in the scene. But also, I guess the better parts
of the performance they drive home that this is a
guy who yes, has signed on to be part of
a kidnapping plot, but also has misgivings about it. And

(23:20):
there are times where you see like maybe his gentler
nature shine through just a little bit, as if to
give you hope that he might turn good guy and
strangle Klaskinsky's character, Jock Mail, though of course that doesn't
come to pass. He remains a bad guy throughout. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
It never really has the face turn. Yeah, mainly you
get the idea that the moments where he's showing misgivings
are actually just like when it would it would be
bad to go to prison. I don't want that.

Speaker 1 (23:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he doesn't have a true change of heart.
I will say this as well, though Reid has a
wonderful mustache in this film. Often he had wonderful mustaches,
and this is no exception.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
But actually, the star power in the movie doesn't really
stop there with with the criminals, because this movie has
a number of other actors who were well known and
quite respected. This is something I remember. I watched the
Ciskel and Ebert review of this movie, in which Ebert
did not like it, but Ciskel did, and oh did
he Okay, Yeah, you know, occasionally, Geene Ciskel, you could

(24:31):
see there was like a ridiculous creature horror movie, and
you could just tell he just kind of liked it
and had a hard time explaining why But he just
liked it. He just will like to be like, yeah, yeah,
I thought Wes Craven's Shocker it was fun. You know,
it was interesting. Maybe it's not interesting, but you liked it.
Come on, admit you liked it. And I don't know

(24:54):
why I'm talking like that, because he did. He recommended
it on the show and he did with like. I
think he also liked Rod Corman's Carnosaur and and stuff
like that. So occasionally he just had a soft spot
for creature films. But one thing that a lot of
critics talked about was how wow, you really got an
a level cast in this movie. And so the casting

(25:14):
goes on with Sterling Hayden.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, Sterling Hayden. Oftentimes it looks like he has top billing.
I don't know why. I don't really know how billing
order it goes, especially over the decades of a film
that's come out. But yeah, Sterling Hayden plays Grandpa Howard
Anderson aka Grandpa Safari. That's what I kept thinking of
him as. But he this is this guy was a

(25:37):
big name.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean Sterling Hayden. He was in
He was a villain in the Godfather. He plays a
corrupt police chief who is helping one of the other
families with their with their schemes. He gets shot in
the forehead by al Pacino.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Oh yes, and that that very memorable scene in the restaurant, right.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, yeah. But he also he also plays a great
villain role in Doctor Strangelove Is. He plays General Jack
d Ripper. He's the guy who initiates the sneak attack
on the Soviet Union that sets off the whole chain
of events on the plot because he has quite clearly
consumed a lot of anti communist propaganda and lost his mind.

(26:18):
He's the character who believes that fluorination is stealing our
precious bodily fluids.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
He was also in Asphalt Jungle. He was in Robert
Altman's The Long Goodbye Now. He lived nineteen sixteen through
nineteen eighty six, and this was his last feature film role,
but it kepped off a long career full of a
lot of leading man roles, especially westerns and noir films.
He is I was not prepared to enjoy his performance

(26:46):
as much as I did, But I feel like he's
a lot of fun as Grandpa Safari here in part
because maybe it comes down to the fact that I
do feel like most of the actors in this film
were just kind of turned loose in the house, much
like a wild beast and just like do whatever. And
I like the strange energy he brings to this performance
at times.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, I agree. So the other two characters we've talked
about already are criminals and bring a lot of menace.
Grandpa Safari here is he's just like a big old
ball of fun and he plays this character like an
old rough and tumble rascal.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah. And also, I mean he's the grandpa and the
grandson is one of the main characters there. And like
the grandson seems to suffer from some severe form of
asthma which requires the house to be at a constant
seventy five degrees and he has to have like a humidifier,
and his mom seems very much of the mindset like
he needs to be kept in the house. But Grandpa
is like, oh, what you need, soney, I'm gonna get
you a cab right across town to buy yourself a

(27:46):
new snake. Get to do it all by yourself.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
And of course that becomes central to the plot.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Now, maybe we should specify in the plot that there
is a mix up. Grandpa did not buy his grandson
a black bomba on purpose.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, I thought that's where it was going, because I
knew that a black mamba was going to be introduced
into the house, and I was like, oh, man, Grandpa's
this is a little bit reckless. But now it was
supposed to be a normal like non venomous snakes, some
sort of a you know, acceptable pet species. And there
is a mix up.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
But the a list cast continues.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yes, because we've we've talked about the criminals, we also
have to have a representative of law and order, and
in this case we have Scotland Yards Commander William Bullock,
played by Nicol Williamson, who lived nineteen thirty six through
twenty eleven. I knew him best. I think a lot
of listeners, a lot of viewers of films would probably

(28:38):
know him best as Merlin in the Endlessly Shiny nineteen
eighty one Camelot film ex Caliber, which is a super
fun performance.

Speaker 2 (28:48):
As I remember, I've never seen it.

Speaker 1 (28:50):
Oh it's good. It's very shiny, like the armor gleams
like it's you know, it's reflecting the light of the sun.
At all times. So it's very stylish and has a
wonderful cast. He also plays a similar role in nineteen
ninety seven Spawn. He plays this character Cagliostro, who's kind
of like, I think, basically portrayed as like a wizard

(29:12):
character that helps Spawn, helps him fight demons, trains him
or something. He's kind of his mentor character. Oh and
that was his final film role.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
He's kind of like, what does he wear, like a
cowboy hat and a coat?

Speaker 1 (29:25):
Kind of yeah, I remember it correctly. They wanted him
to grow a beard and he's like, no, I'm not
doing that, Like they wanted him to be more of
a wizard. But he was a highly regarded actor on
the stage and screen. Other credits include The Exorcist three,
The Seven Percent Solution. He played in that he plays

(29:45):
Sherlock Holmes. This is the film adaptation of the Nicholas
Meyer novel. And you know Nicholas Meyer we talked about
in terms of time after time. Well, you know we
mentioned that he wrote the novel The Seven Percent Solution
and it was made into the Well, this was the
Sherlock Oh okay, he was in So Williamson was also
in Robin and Marion. He was in nineteen sixty nine's

(30:07):
Hamlet playing Hamlet. He was in a TV movie version
of of Mice and Men playing Lenny, and while very
talented on both stage and screen, he was also known
to be a bit erratic, was a heavy drinker later
in life, and was said to be difficult to work with. So,
you know, so we have Reid, we have Kinski, and

(30:29):
we also have Williamson. Though I guess the situation is
Red and Kinski were working together together, like they shared
so much screen time, and for the most part, Williamson's
character is just standing outside like shouting. We're not even
quite shouting. It's one of those movies where where his
character is using just a normal speaking voice but can
be heard inside a house a good distance away.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yeah, they spend a lot of There are multiple scenes
where they're negotiating, like we need a car and we
need money, and then he goes away, and then he
has like a meeting with all his little police lieutenants,
and then he comes back and they talk again about
how they need a car and they need money.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Yeah. I'd say, well, Williamson is good in this, but
there's not a lot to this particular character. He's just
that sensible British cop on the scene. You know, he's
our embodiment of British working class law and order.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah, he's got a nice accent in it. I mean,
but this character doesn't have a whole lot to do. Now.
The next character, I would say, though, brings a surprising
amount of weird energy that also makes this movie come alive,
and that is Sarah Miles playing the snake expert doctor
Mary in Stowe. I really liked her. She had a

(31:43):
certain kind of distracted electricity kind of coming off of
her head in all of her scenes, if you know
what I mean.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah, yeah, no, she was good in this. Sarah Miles
was born nineteen forty one and another connection to nineteen
sixty blow Up, So Miles had actually had a major
role in this adaptation of Julio Cordeesar's story Well but
I can't remember the novella short story offhand Pa was

(32:13):
adapted into this film in nineteen sixty six. Other titles
on her filmography include Ryan's Daughter, Hope and Glory, White,
Mischief and more.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
There are a lot of good scenes of her talking
to the police about snakes and so, you know, Coppled.
She'll just be like, I am a toxicologist, and the
Copple be like, what's that poisons?

Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yeah, she's good. The other great performance in this, in
my opinion, is our third kidnapper who The character is
Louise Andrews, played by Susan George. So. George was born
nineteen fifty, probably best known for playing Amy in Sam
Peckinpa's straw Dogs. Other titles include Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry Mandingo,

(33:01):
and Enter the Ninja, as well as Tintor Rhea, Killer Shark,
the Sorceress starring Boris Karloff and doctor Jekyline. Mister Hyde
from nineteen seventy two, a musical starring Kirk Douglass.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Uh. Yeah, Susan George is good in this so yeah.
Like you say, she's our third criminal in the trio.
So you got Kinski, you got Oliveried, and you got
Susan George and they're scheming to do this kidnapping plot
to get a bunch of ransom money. Of course, the
criminals in this movie are bad at crime, so they
keep failing. But you can, I don't know, it's fun
the way you see her like struggling with things not

(33:38):
going their way. And she also, I gotta say, really
sells a snake bite to the face death scene quite well.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
Yes, I would say perhaps the greatest death by snake
bite scene in any motion picture. It's a tour toive
force in which she used thrashes around, she cries out
and basically goes just full exorcist towards the end, like
all the into like wheel pose or you know, reverse
crab or something.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
She turns blue. There's a lot of blood coming out
of her mouth.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
Yeah, she's a lot of fun in passing. I'll say
that the mother in this so this would be Grandpa
Safari's daughter, yeah, or is it his daughter in law?
I can't remember his daughter at any rate. Ruth Hopkins
played by Cornelia Sharp born nineteen forty three, probably best
known for Cerpico. She also appeared in the Reincarnation of

(34:30):
Peter Proud, The Next Man opposite Sean Connery, Open Season,
and of Hey, The Adventures of Pluto Nash.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
She's just sort of in the beginning in the end
of this movie, though, because a lot of it's like
she's gone and the son has been left there with
Grandpa played by Sterling Hayden and that's when the crime
is supposed to take place.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Yeah, I mean the whole thing. It's kind of a
home alone movie. It's also it's weird. I don't know
if you had this experience, but I felt like this
movie felt like an adaptation of like a Simpson's Treehouse
of Horror episode that doesn't exist, you know, like or
maybe it's just that a Treehouse of Horror episode would
be perfect based on this film. You could have Grandba

(35:13):
Simpson in there, you have Bart, and I don't know
who else would be involved. Who you would cast as
our kidnappers?

Speaker 2 (35:22):
Oh yeah, so I guess Snake, Oh Snake, I mean,
let's see to play for Oliver Reed, you need to
be sort of a cross between Snake and groundskeeper Willie.
Oh yeah, I don't know exactly how it would work out.
Was so Kinsky is sort of mister Burns, But I
guess he wouldn't need the money, but I don't know
he'd want it anyway. Yeah, yeah, it would work out somehow.

(35:47):
Oh but hey, this movie also has Michael Goff in it.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Oh yeah, in a strange role. Because Okay, so, first
of all, if you're forgetting who this act is it's
Alfred from Tim Burton's nineteen eighty nine Batman film and
the Batman sequels through Batman Forever. He's a guy who
did a lot of work prior to that, including performances

(36:11):
in The Boys from Brazil, Satan Slave, Crucible of Horror,
trog Women in Love, How, Horror of Dracula, and titles
going all the way back into the nineteen forties. And
in this he plays like an expert snake catcher who
never does anything.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
Yeah, he shows up later in the movie. So this
movie has multiple snake experts. There's the one played by
Sarah Miles who is the toxicologist and you meet her
early on, but then she eventually also gets taken hostage
by the criminals. And then so the police after that
are working with this character played by Michael Goff. But
he's just got sort of like one of those snake

(36:48):
hooks and he's standing there beside the police as they're
trying to bust into the house.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Yeah, and you keep thinking, well, he's going to be
called upon for more than his expertise, but no, he's not.
The fun part of this though, is his character's name
is David Ball and the real David Ball, an overseer
of reptiles at the London Zoo, was the snake wrangler
and snake advisor on this film, so I guess Goff's

(37:14):
character is kind of just a nod to his help
with the film. I was reading about this in a
New York Times article about about the snake wrangling in Venom,
and it was titled in Venom, the Snake Steals the
Show and it shares a number of interesting production facts.

Speaker 2 (37:33):
I love that there is an article in the New
York Times in nineteen eighty two about Venom that is
not just a review of the movie. It's like, yeah,
our readers need more Venom content.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, But it did just share some fun stuff, like
apparently they shot ten hours of snake footage for the film,
and of course that gets reduced down to just, you know,
very little of that, just minutes of footage. They used
five different actsual black mambas in the picture, so when
you see black mambas striking at the camera and slithering about,

(38:08):
it's the real thing, the real snake for the most part.
They also apparently had one non venomous rat snake that
they used for some scenes. They had plastic snakes made
from actual casts of mambas. That's of course what Kloskinski
winds up fighting at the end. And they also had
one hundred thousand dollars robot snake that apparently looked terrible,

(38:30):
so we barely see it in the final film.

Speaker 2 (38:32):
Yeah, I think the sentence in the article is something
like the robot snake could rear up and open its mouth.
It cost one hundred thousand dollars to make and it
appears for one third of one second in the final cut.

Speaker 1 (38:44):
Now, according to David Ball in this article, black mambas
are very high strung and they feel threatened by anything
within six feet of them. They have really potent venom
and they're very effective at delivering it, usually via multiple bites,
which is something we see in the film. It is
a very impressive snake. There's one at Zoo Atlanta and

(39:05):
I've seen it many times. They can reach lengths of
fourteen feet. Yeah, they tend to be nervous. They pack
tremendous venom. It's the largest venomous snake in Africa and
the second largest venomous snake in the world, right behind
the King Cobra. It's not actually black but the inside
of its mouth is black, and that's what it flares

(39:25):
as a warning to anyone who makes it nervous.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Now a bit of monster science on this. The movie
repeatedly emphasizes that the black mamba is the most I
think it actually uses the word poisonous. I think you
would want to say venomous instead. But whichever one they
say poisonous or venomous snake in the world, which I mean,
it's difficult. There are different ways you can measure that.

(39:51):
But just by your standard like pure LD fifty ratings
of snake, venom and mice, this is not true.

Speaker 1 (39:57):
I should also point out, as with pretty much any snake, reptile,
amphibian sort of movie, it's always worth going to californiaherbs
dot com. They have a section about snake films in
which they weigh in on different snakes and different films,
and they have a They have an article on venom here,
and basically they applaud the use of real black mambas,

(40:21):
but they add quote oddly enough, the snake doesn't try
to get out or hide as you'd expect a snake
to do. All it wants to do is kill people.
It just sort of hunts the people in the house. Yeah, yeah, Yeah,
It's one of the most ludicrous things about this movie
is that, yes, I totally believe everything I've read about

(40:42):
the black mamba being a potentially dangerous snake that you
absolutely don't want running around in your house. You wouldn't
want to, you know, go poking around haphazardly where you
knew they might be. But on the other hand, I
mean it's implied in this film where like, if you
were to call the police and say there's a black
Momba in my house, the police would just be like,

(41:03):
we are legally declaring everyone in the house dead because
there's no way you're going to survive.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, as you're saying, I do want to reemphasize, given
what I said a minute ago, by these like LD
fifty charts, it is not necessarily the most venomous snake
in the world. But as you are correct that you
absolutely don't want to be bitten by one. These are
people do die from black mamba bites all the time.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Now, we don't always mention the cinematographer on films, but
on this film we have Gilbert Taylor, who lived nineteen
fourteen through twenty thirteen. He was a cinematographer on such
films as Star Wars, Flash, Gordon, the Omen, The Frank
Langela Dracula Film, Polanski's Macbeth and Repulsion, Hitchcock's Frenzy, Doctor Strangelove,

(41:58):
and various other titles. Did a bit of TV, including
episodes of The Avengers.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
This movie doesn't really stand out to me in terms
of a lot of cinematography choices, but though there is
something that happens quite a bit, which is mambacam where
you are seeing from the snake's point of view as
it like crawls through heating ducts, and so yeah, okay,
that's fun.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
Well, and then you know, we do have I guess
the shots of the snake often feel very well executed.
You know, at times they're basically doing the Raiders thing,
I think, where they have some sort of plexiglass screen
so that the snake can jump out and leap at
the camera and you don't have to worry about it
actually biting anyone. As for the music on this picture,

(42:45):
it is Michael Kammon who lived nineteen forty eight through
two thousand and three. We've mentioned him on the show
before because he scored Free Jack and Tales from the
Crypt Demon Night, as well as such movies as Highlander,
Robin Hood, Prints of Thieves, Brazil Bill, The Dead Zone,
Event Horizon, which he did with the orb so a

(43:06):
known commodity in various genre films. I'd say that for me, anyway,
I felt like the score in this movie was traditional.
It was fine. It did everything you'd want a score
to do. It helped drive home these thrilling moments and
snake scares. But other than that, it's not the kind
of thing I would want to seek out.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
I thought there was some strange choices in terms of scoring,
not because the music was bad, but I thought like
sort of oddly placed. Maybe we can talk about those
a little bit when we break down the plot.

Speaker 1 (43:36):
Well, let's go ahead and get into the plot, all right.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
So the movie begins with a shot of a schoolhouse.
Kind of a weird choice for a crime thriller plus
snake movie, but I guess you know, it's about an
attempted kidnapping of a rich boy, so we got to
see the boy getting out of school. I guess there's
an American flag flying out on the balcony in front
of the school. But it is clearly in Britain, and

(43:59):
we see a sign later saying it's the American Academy
of London. So I think this is a school for
American children, the children of diplomats and stuff like that
in London. And so Philip is going to the school
and we meet him on the stairs reading a book
and his mom runs up to him saying, oh, this
is the limit you'll catch cold, and he's, you know,

(44:21):
he's clearly like, oh, I don't want to be safe.
I don't want to bundle up. I want adventure. So
you know, he's like, oh, mom.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
I will say that the actor they have playing the boy,
Lance Holcombe, he was really good in this, Like he
has kind of a kind of a Charlie and Chocolate
factory sort of vibe to him.

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Okay, But so his mom takes him away to a
waiting sedan where Oliver Reed is just looming nearby in
a comically brutish fashion. And I love the very first
time we see him. It's less than a minute into
the movie. He is dressed in a formal chauffeur's uniform
with a cap and everything, and even in this Guberrie outfit,

(45:01):
he looks I mean like he often does, like he
just came back in a hurry from doing a series
of things that are all illegal. You know, he looks like, oh,
he just ran a bunch of errands, including purchasing illegal
whale gonads on the black market, and like getting into
a fight, like you know, somebody looked at him wrong
and he kicked them in the neck. And now he's

(45:23):
back here to drive this kid home, do you know
what I mean? Like he's got this Even apart from
whatever he's acting out in the scene, he just almost
always looks kind of sweaty and like he has just
been caught or almost been caught doing something he wasn't
supposed to.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
Yeah, and constantly, like if he were a Dungeons and
Dragon's character, it would be constantly doing intimidation checks on
everybody around him. He's constantly busting out that that cold,
intimidating stare.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
And like I said earlier, there's really no suspense about
what's going to go on with this character, because as
soon as the mother and son get into the car,
we just see Oliver Reed looking at them in the
rear view mirror with absolute murder eyes. I mean, he
looks like he should be weeping blood. But then so
after that we just cut to a driving scene. God
to Love a driving scene at the beginning of a movie.

(46:14):
So we're just watching the car navigate the streets of London.
The title comes up and the music gets all hopeful
and peppy. Do you remember this. I thought this was
a weird choice because the opening music makes it sound
like it's going to be a movie about a jaunty
sea voyage and teamwork and friendship.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Yeah, it has strange energy. This was I think the
point too where I really didn't know what the score
was going to be, and I was still maybe holding
out hope that it would be, you know, electronic or something,
and I was like, oh, no, it's not gonna be.
It's going to be very traditional.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
But whatever they're going for, it has a funny effect.
So we get this driving scene in the beginning, Philip
and his mom getting driven around London by Oliver Reed.
He's just like drilling holes into them through the rear
view mirror. And then the music is just rousing strings
and brass. It's trying to warm your blood. And then
they get home and they meet Louise, the housekeeper and

(47:07):
she's like, ah, Young Master Phillip, two whole days off school. Ah.
And of course this is Louise is played by Susan George.
And so we learn a bit about the situation that
these are Americans living in London, that the boy's father
has been gone for a while, and that he is
there with his mother, Ruth, and his grandfather. And so

(47:27):
we learned that Ruth, the mother has to leave town soon.
But Young Master Phillip wants to go see his zoo.
That's what he calls it. He's like my zoo. And
so what does this mean. Well, he gets up to
his room and oh, my god, his bedroom is straight
out of Dante's Inferno. It is like a dungeon for
small animals. It is just crates and cages stacked up

(47:50):
to the ceiling with rabbits and hamsters and god knows
what else.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah, I mean, he's definitely they're definitely overdoing it here
in my opinion. But on the other hand, my son
has a leopard gecko, and I know that like just
having a leopard gecko that means, oh, well, you don't
just have a pet leopard gecko. You also have pet
crickets and some people actually go to the level of
like raising their own crickets, so maybe that's part of

(48:17):
what we're seeing here. It's like, well, he's got a
bunch of snakes and so forth, Well that means he's
also raising mice.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Oh I didn't think about that. But so you think
the mice in his room are there to feed his snakes.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
I don't know. Maybe, but then again, yeah, his things
like rabbits in there, so I guess it is just
an extended, you know, zoological collection here and not just
about feeding the animals.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
I keep these rabbits to feed to my pet hyena. Well, anyway,
we meet Sterling Hayden, we find out he is Ruth's dad,
and he's staying with them. I think because of some
kind of injury. Am I right about that?

Speaker 1 (48:54):
I was a little foggy on this. I mean, we've
learned that he's what some sort of like great explore
safari type guy and a photographer. Maybe yeah, yeah, I guess. So,
you know, he's kind of you know, the you know
safari guy in the classic sense where he's he's studying,
you know the world and probably writing about it and

(49:17):
taking photos. But there's a sense that like his adventuring
days are perhaps over right.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
Yeah, sort of. I mean I think they're trying to
give him Ernest Hemingway energy.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Okay, he has enormous shotguns on the wall.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
Yes, yes, yeah, with like shells the size of soda cans.
So I think these are meant for elephants or something.
But so after we meet these characters, Oh, and of
course Grandpa and and Ruth talk about how she's got
to leave town soon, and she's worried about leaving, leaving
the young boy there with him because she's like, oh,

(49:51):
he's got asthma, but I don't know, it seems like
it's gonna be fine. So so she's like, okay, I
got a head out. And then things immediately start getting
juicy because we start seeing the conspiracy Oliver Reed and
Susan George. You know, the housekeeper Louise. When they're talking
in private, she is washing Ruth's jewelry. That's interesting, washing

(50:15):
the jewelry. I don't know if that's supposed to say
something about about Ruth being really really fussy about fancy
things or something, but that's what she's doing. And then
they're talking about something coming up. They're plotting in secret
about something, and Oliver Reed appears to be having misgivings.
He's like, look, this isn't just stealing cars. If something
goes wrong, they're going to lock us up and throw

(50:37):
away the key. And he's wondering, will jack Mel come through,
and Louise assures him, yes, Jackmel will come through. Now,
there was a thing I note. I don't know if
you noticed this, but as Ruth is leaving the house,
she's giving instructions to Louise, and she's saying, Okay, while
I'm out of town, the house must be kept at

(50:58):
no less than seventy five degrees. So the heat always
turned up to seventy five or higher, which I don't know.
Maybe my senses are off, but obviously they'll be normal
in the summer. But like turning the heat in the
winter up to seventy five, that sounds insanely high.

Speaker 1 (51:14):
Yeah, I mean, I feel a little guilty if I
set it for seventy, you know, And I'll feel really
guilty if I'm like, that's it. I'm going up to
seventy one. But even that'll be like but just for
a few minutes, So I start feeling, you know, my
toes again that sort of thing. Seventy five seems like
it would be just like it'd be like a jungle
in there.

Speaker 2 (51:33):
Yeah, yeah, because yeah, like heat or heat feels very
different than natural heat. Like if it's seventy five degrees outside,
that's nice weather, but if it's seventy five degrees from
a heater, that's like, you know, you're going under the gates,
abandon all hope you who enter here.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Well, I think we see it now that I think
about it, It looks like it's gas, right, So they're
probably just completely dried out in there, which I guess
is why we also see the reliance on the humidifiers.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Oh that's right, yes, so they keep it at seventy five.
But also the kid sleeps with the humidifier. The humidier.
I think the idea is he's got asthma and the
humidifier maybe delivering some kind of medication in the steam.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
M Yeah, because there is that I would say effectively
creepy scene where we see that Jock Mel jumping ahead
a little bit here, but where Jack Mel checks on
the house that they have set up the place they
want to take the boy after they kidnap him. And
they have the same machinery there. Like they're intended to
have like a long stay at the kidnapping house, which

(52:30):
was creepy.

Speaker 2 (52:31):
Right, But of course they never get to that house
because the criminals in this movie are bad at crime.
So Oliver Reed takes Ruth to the airport, so the
mother leaves town, and then at about eleven minutes into
the movie, the two devils collide. Oliver Reed meets Jack Mel,
who is klaus Kinski. They meet at the airport, they
come face to face. It's clear from the very first

(52:53):
moment that they do not like each other, but they're
they're locked into this conspiracy together now.

Speaker 1 (52:58):
Yes, And Louise is the sensual gloe holding the whole
thing together, And of course that's gonna be one of
the great complicating situations of the plot is that she
is the one who dies first, right.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
And I think it's implied that she's been having love
affairs with both of them, right. Oh, And as soon
as they get in the so they go off to
the car, and of course Oliver Reed has a gun
for Jack Mel, and he drops him off at a
house in the country that they've rented ahead of time.
And this is where they're going to stash the kid
while they're holding him for ransom. So we get to
see Jacmel going around the house pulling the curtains aside

(53:32):
inspecting the rooms and when oh, and then Louise shows
up at the house and the two of them are conspiring.
So Klaus Kinsky and Susan George are, you know, checking
in on how the plot is coming along, and jaq
Mel says he doesn't trust the chauffeur. He says his
hands sweat, which I love it. It's like, oh, he's
not cool like you.

Speaker 1 (53:55):
Yeah. Yeah, you get the sense that Kinski's character Jacmel
does not sweat it off.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
But so jack Mel lures Sterling Hayden out of the house.
I think they're trying to get They're trying to find
a way to get him away so that they can
take the kid. And so they lure him away by
pretending to be a filmmaker who wants Grandpa's help on
a film shoot in Central Africa, and he tells him
to come meet for a cocktail at the Tower Hotel.

(54:23):
But of course Grandpa goes to meet with the filmmaker,
who will in fact never show up because it's Klauskinsky
just pretending to be somebody else is just a ruse
to get him out of the house. Meanwhile, Philip is
off in a taxi to the pet shop and here
is the scene where things finally really kick off, I
think because he acquires his snake.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Yeah, supposed to get just a normal, non venomous petsmith snake.
I forget what variety was supposed to be. But there's
a mix up. The black mamba that is supposed to
go to what the London Zoological Society or something. It's
going to end up being studied or something. Yeah, it
instead goes to this boy. It's put in a box
for Philip and he is taking it home on a taxi.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Right, So, and then we the plot is exposed when
we cut to it's the London Institute of Toxicology and
that's where Sarah Miles works. So they're checking on there.
She and a couple of researchers there are checking out
their new live specimen of the black mamba, this would
be dinderro Aspis polylepis, and they're like, this isn't the

(55:27):
right snake at all, So something's wrong here, And on
closer inspection they discover it as a harmless species of
snake commonly sold as a pet, and there must have
been some kind of mix up. So they quickly trace
this back to I don't know why they were getting
a black mamba from a London pet shop, but they were,
and so they trace it back to the pet shop

(55:49):
and they realized there must have been a mix up there,
and she immediately calls the police and she's like, hello,
I'm calling from the you know, the toxicology Institute, and
the policeman like toxicology. That's poisons, isn't it, And she
explains that there's been this mix up and some kid
must have just walked out of the shop with a
black mamba. And they really play up the danger of

(56:11):
the snake. It is the most deadly thing on the planet.
It might as well be a nuclear bomb.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Yeah, I mean there are moments later in the film
where it's like, there's a black mamba upstairs. You should
absolutely not go upstairs, Like going upstairs is just a
no go. You will die if you go up there.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Now. Meanwhile, the crime plot is already getting screwed up.
As we said, this is a movie about criminals who
are quite bad at crime. So Philip was supposed to
stay home so Louise could put him in a car
with Jack Mel who would kidnap him for ransom. But
he didn't stay home. He went to the store to
get his snake. So eventually he comes back with his
snake and she's frantic and she's like, hello, I need

(56:50):
you to get directly into a car with this man
who you've never met before and is klaus Kinski. And
the kid is like, no, I will not be doing that.
I have to put my snake into its vivarium. So
he runs inside to do that, and then Oliver Reed
is there, and Oliver Reed's just angry. He's angry at
this child for failing to be kidnapped.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
And yeah, he's just like insulting the child, which was weird.
He's like, he's like he's such a brat or something,
you know. It's the total outburst.

Speaker 2 (57:20):
Yeah, and then Louise chases Young Master Philip up to
his room where they open the snake box and she
is just immediately bitten in the face a bunch of
times by the black Mamba. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
It's a frightening scene too.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah. Yeah, and then the snake slithers away into the shadows. Meanwhile,
Sterling Hayden arrives back home, so the rue I guess
he's given up on waiting for the German filmmaker at
the cocktail lounge. He wasn't supposed to be there, but
he arrives and Philip's still there. Louise, who's been bitten
on the face by the snake a bunch of times,

(57:53):
is like, I am dying, and everybody's like, oh, you'll
be fine. It's just a harmless house snake. And then
all Reed just starts punching Grandpa, and Jack mal points
a gun at him and is like, you know, I'm
in charge. It is not time to punch Grandpa until
I say it's time to punch grandpa. So they lock
Sterling Hayden in the cellar, and then we see Oliver

(58:15):
Reed loading a gun and this is the one you
were talking about earlier, Like it must be an elephant
gun or something because the shells are enormous. And then
the badness at crime just continues, like a policeman arrives
and knocks at the door. I guess because the toxicology
lab figured out that this is the address of the
boy who accidentally took home the super Snake, and the

(58:37):
policeman knocks Philip shouts for help from inside the house,
and then the officer opens the front door to just
see this tableau of Oliver Reed holding a shotgun, klaus
Kinski clutching a terrified child, Susan George with her face
turning purple and she's gasping for air, and then Oliver

(58:57):
Reed just shoots the police officer and the kid, and
so like everything is screwed up now. So now they
are in the house, having shot a police officer outside,
and they are not going to escape to their hiding
place with the kid for ransom. Now they're just in
the house with the cops outside and it's a siege.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Yeah, so at this point we're very much and like
they say, the best laid plans of mice and men
and go astray. This was not a very well laid
plan and it has definitely gone astray. But this is
a common feature in a lot of crime shows and
crime stories. You know, it's like the heightst doesn't go
as it's supposed to, and now we have to deal

(59:45):
with the consequences of that, and then here come the police.
That's going to be our next big movement in the plot.
And I will say that one of the things I
liked about the film that I thought made it very
watchable is that it has very strong procedural bones, you know,
out like what the the the the you know, poorly
thought out criminal enterprise seems to be like what their

(01:00:07):
plan is. And then there's a lot in the film
about the police officers responding and getting advice and trying
to figure out, like what is the proper strategic move
to make? And it really helps to you know, drive
the film along in a way that I thought was
ultimately entertaining. Like I was reading Ebert's review off the film,

(01:00:28):
and Ebert was like, despite all these actors, this film's boring.
And I disagree. I don't think this film is ever boring.
It falls short in some notable areas, but it's never boring.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Oh, i'd agree, And yeah, you're right about the procedural stuff. Wait,
you made this comparison off Mike. Did you say it
on Mike that it's kind of like Shin Godzilla in
that regard.

Speaker 1 (01:00:47):
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like the Shin Godzilla of
Loose Snake movies in that you know, there's a lot
of well, let's talk to the expert and see what
they think we should do. Okay, let's talk to another expert.
What did they think and and so forth.

Speaker 2 (01:01:01):
Shin Godzilla is the best movie ever made about meetings.
And this is this is a very good movie about yeah,
little strategy sessions where people are talking out their next plans.
Oh oh, I should have mentioned after all that last
stuff happens like around the you know, one third of
the way into the movie, Louise dies, so, you know,

(01:01:23):
they thought she'd just been bitten by this harmless house snake,
but then she turns completely blue, there's blood coming out
of her mouth, and she's dead. And the other crime
boys are like, oh, whoops, maybe there is something bad
about the snake. And and so then the the police arrive,
and this is when we really meet Nicol Williamson. He arrives,
he sets up outside. He's trying to do negotiations with

(01:01:45):
Jack Mel. These negotiations will continue throughout the middle third
of the movie. Of course, of course, klaus Kinski he
wants a car and money in exchange for the kid's safety,
and they're not going to get that yet. So the
act to set up is complete, and from here it
goes on to a lot of you know, the standard
fun and games part of a creature movie, where there's
a lot of mamba cam and like hunting around for

(01:02:07):
the snake. They send Grandpa up to hunt for the
snake and he's holding like a lamp with the shade
taken off.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
And there are some some false positives in his search
for the snake that the work pretty well on the screen.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
But he knows what it is because he's, you know,
from all his safari experiences, he's familiar with black mambas
and and the fact that they can be dangerous. So
he's like, okay, we you know, we're really in trouble
with this thing in the house.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Mm hm.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
And you know, one scene I thought was pretty good
was the one with Sterling Hayden hunting around for the
snake in the in the empty room.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
I wonder if this is perhaps something that maybe worked
better in the book, like if the book allowed the
author more room to sort of ruminate over like tales
of the mamba from from Africa that Grandpa would be
familiar with, and maybe Grandpa thinking about like just how
intensely dangerous the situation is like maybe it was able
to drive home this idea of the mamba being such

(01:03:04):
a threat in ways that the film maybe struggled to
do at times.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Yeah, I mean a lot of what we know about
the mamba in the movie gets filled in by these scientists,
so like it around. Like, you know, there's a lot
of the sort of cat and mouse games in the
middle third of the movie, and somewhere like an hour
in there's this meeting between Nicol Williamson and Mary and Stowe,
the snake scientist, and this is where they talk about

(01:03:29):
you know, he's like, how dangerous is it because she's
finally gotten the information to him that there's a killer
snake inside, and she says it's the most dangerous snake
in the whole world. But she gives it all these
sort of anthropomorphic qualities. She says, like they're very aggressive,
but they tend to be a little awkward paranoid really,

(01:03:49):
And she says they happen to be the fastest snake
in the world. And she says unless the bite victim
gets antidote immediately or anti venom immediately, mamba bites are
one hundred percent fatal. But she says if you get
the antidote to the venom. It's a fifty to fifty chance,
provided that the victim is not allergic to it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
I'll go ahead and mention again that California Herb's website
reminds us that there are some some suspect mamba facts
in this movie. So don't watch Venom just for your
education on black mambas, go to other sources. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
But also, I mean, it is certainly true that the
black mamba is one of the more dangerous snakes on
Earth in terms of interactions with humans. Like, if you
see one, don't go anywhere near it. You know, that thing,
it probably doesn't want anything to do with you, but
you do not want to be bitten by it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Right, But can it smell crime? Does it own the night?
I mean these are questionable.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Yeah, Now there's a there's a fun scene where they
send out Sarah Miiles to deliver a snake science lecture
to the people in the house. So, you know, the
house is besieged by cops and she just goes out
in front of it to like tell them about the
the mamba and its venom. So they do keep saying
poisonous snake. By the way, the pedantic part of my

(01:05:05):
brain couldn't let that go, and through some devious trickery,
klaus Kinski eventually manages to get the snake scientist or
the toxicologist doctor Stowe into the into the house by
pulling a gun on her that he tricks her into
thinking that she can administer an antidote to someone who
has been bitten, but really it's just him pointing a

(01:05:27):
gun in her face. So she's a hostage now as well.

Speaker 1 (01:05:31):
Uh, And I love how basically Jack mel is approaching
this situation. It's like, what got us into this problem, kidnapping,
we'll get us out of this situation more kidnapping.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Right exactly. And so there's a bunch of stuff with
the police scheming about maybe back entrances to the house.
This I think is part of the shin Godzilla quality.
You were talking about little strategy sessions where they're like
consulting the building plans of the house. They're like, there
used to be a back entrance, we could maybe bust
through there. And then meanwhile inside the house, there's a

(01:06:02):
great scene where everybody's just sitting around. It's Oliver Reed
and Sarah Miles, and Oliver Reed's like, I'm thirsty. I
fancy a drink, how about you?

Speaker 1 (01:06:10):
Yeah? And this is a I love this moment because
Reid's character Dave, he kind of enters into this comfort
zone offering the drink, and he's listing all the different
liquors that are available, and he's like, we've got most things.
And it puts you completely at ease because then when
he opens up the drink cabinet and you find yourself
just You're like, I want to see these bottles. I

(01:06:32):
am curious. Maybe I'll have a drink too.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
Oliver he's going to make a white Russian.

Speaker 1 (01:06:36):
Yeah, But then he opens it up and what is
in the liquor cabinet but the mamba.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
There you go. It's a snake pop out scare. It's
a great snake pop out scare. I gotta say I
really enjoyed it. It is and the special horror of
like Oliver Reed realizes that the snake is in there
with the alcohol.

Speaker 1 (01:06:56):
Yeah, at first I thought that was going to be
the thing. It's almost like a Simpson's moment. I don't know,
the beer is locked up with a snake. No one
can get the beer now, that sort of thing. But
then Yeah, there's this scene where they then pull the
liquor cabinet away from the wall and we see the
snake slither through like a crack in the back of
the liquor cabinet into the wall.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
It's a duck.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Did you understand this. It's a duck.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
It is a duct. I did not know. Well, I mean,
I think I understood what I was looking at. But
so it's not like built into the wall. It's a
liquor cabinet that is a separate piece of furniture. It's
like a chest or a wardrobe kind of thing, almost
as a cabinet opens up. It's got all the liquor inside.
But there is a hole in the back of it
where there's a duct leading into the wall, like connecting it.

(01:07:41):
I don't know. I don't know what that was supposed
to be or if that's normal. I mean, do you
normally have a duct going from the wall to a
separate piece of furniture containing liquor bottles.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
I can't imagine you would. But then again, it's necessary
for this scare to work because otherwise, oh, the snake
is just in the liquor cabinet now, and okay, he's
in there. Now we've won. Now we can just nail
the liquor cabinet shut. But no, it gets away. It's
back in the walls. It goes wherever it wants to
in this house.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Now, So the police are scheming about ways to breach
the house to get in there and save the hostages.
But I think the funny thing is that ultimately the
police fail in this regard, and it is the snake
in fact, that defeats the criminals.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
Yeah, the snake is ultimately the hero of the picture,
dispensing with all three kidnappers and never I mean threatening,
I guess, but never actually harming any of the non
criminals in the picture.

Speaker 2 (01:08:38):
Yeah, it's a lawful good snake.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Can smell crime, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:08:42):
Yes. I don't know how much detail we want to
go into about the particular demise of Oliver Reed or
klaus Kinski's characters. Oliver Reed, they're like down in the
basement and suddenly the police bust in through the wall
and they're having a stand off. They're shooting at each other,
but then there's a snake and the police are like

(01:09:04):
snake and they have to run away and go back
out the you know, the breach in the wall. It
was like you were more scared of the snake than
the gun.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
I know, it's like a xenomorph in this thing. But
Reid's character Dave is shot. He's like shot on the shoulder,
so he's he's heavily injured. He can't quite crawl up
the stairs. And that's when the mamba comes for him.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
In a in a quite gratuitous scene of like Creature
Revenge against Human Evil, Oliver Reed is bitten in the
crotch by the snake and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Yeah, it goes right up the pants leg. Yeah, and
now it's just Jack Mel.

Speaker 2 (01:09:40):
Right, but I'm imagining like the writing that scene, you know,
like what did that look like on the page? The
snake slithers slowly up his thigh.

Speaker 1 (01:09:50):
Oliver Reid's great in this scene though he totally sells it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
But then, of course the snake in the end also
has to attack the one remaining criminal, Jack Mel. We
see it like creeping up through curtains behind him as
the music builds, and then it like it springs out
and attacks him and literally, like the final conflict of
the movie is is klaus Kinski wrestling a snake and
engaging in a gunfight with a snake.

Speaker 1 (01:10:14):
Yeah, like thrashing around in the like the living upstairs,
living room or whatever it happens to be, Yeah, trying
to shoot the snake's head off with his own gun.
Eventually the fight goes out onto the balcony, and the
whole time like it's clearly a rubber snake. It's Kinsky
of battling this rubber snake. And then especially when he
fires the gun, that's when the snipers start firing. The

(01:10:37):
police snipers start firing. So Kinsky's character and the snake
die in a hail of bullets and then fall off
the balcony. And my only criticism is that the body
does not become impaled on the the like the spiked
fence at the bottom that I think would have been
would have made it a little more perfect, But maybe
they thought that would that would just be overdoing it.

(01:10:59):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:59):
I think it should have ended with the snake slithering
down klaus Kinski's throat and biting him from the inside.

Speaker 1 (01:11:06):
Like going right to the heart.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
Yeah. Yeah, it coils around his heart and bites it
a hundred times.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
But basically that's the big finish. Yeah, Now, all of
the kidnappers are dead, the Black Mamba itself is dead,
and everybody is safe once again. Or are they?

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Oh that's right, because we get a delightful stinger in
which you go into the heating ducks and you see
some eggs, some snake eggs up in there. I guess
they're being incubated by the gas heat.

Speaker 1 (01:11:39):
Not only that they've hatched, there's like a baby mamba
crawling out of one. So it's not only mamba time
once more in this house, but it's also going to
be like double mambas. So you know, set up for
the sequel here, I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:11:53):
Is that like it's Miller time, it's Mamba time.

Speaker 1 (01:11:56):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean they could have done a sequel.
I mean, they were able to make all those taken movies.
It's it's I think you could come up with another
scenario in which you have kidnappers or terrorists or something
taking over the house.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
The exact same family, the exact same house, and it's
two snakes this time, two snakes. Yeah, okay, who would
have to play the criminals in the sequel? It would
be how about Gary Busey and Robert mitcham.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Ooh yeah, well was Robert Mitcham still alive at that point.
I can't remember when.

Speaker 2 (01:12:30):
He died nineteen ninety seven, Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:33):
He could have done it. Sure, I don't know. I
don't know if I want to see like mid eighties
Robert Mitcham wrestling a snake, though, I don't know I
want to see that at any rate. It never came
to be. We never got a sequel to Venom. But
you know, like I say, I feel like it's a
it is a movie that is essentially ludicrous. Like the

(01:12:53):
premise at the center of this movie is he is
just ridiculous. I mean, the idea that this snake is
just so dangerous and wants to kill people, wants to
kill criminals or anybody that gets near it. You know,
it's just ultimately, I never really bought it in the film,
you know, like I'm quick to give something credit if

(01:13:14):
it works within the context of the film, and this
never quite did that. But we still have some great
snake scares, we have some fun performances, and we have
this procedural energy kind of driving things along. All right, Well,
you're probably wondering, well, where can I watch Venom? Well,
Lucky for you, it's widely available for digital rental or purchase,

(01:13:34):
and also Blue Underground put out a nice looking blu
ray of it as well with restored two K transfer,
so you can watch this movie yourself via those means. Also,
I'll stress again the novel is out there in digital
and physical form, So I would love to hear from
anyone who's read the novel Venom and can chime in

(01:13:55):
on it. And you might be wondering, well, I haven't
read it, but could I read it and then tell
robin Ja what it's all about and give my review. Yes,
you can absolutely do that. I would love to have
some insight into the novel that came before here.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Now, wouldn't it be great if Venom was one of
those films that had a novel and then a movie,
and then a novelization of the movie separate from the
original novel.

Speaker 1 (01:14:18):
Oh yeah, you see that sometimes for me, the most
notable example being Francis Ford Coppola's Bromstoker's Dracula and which,
of course it is an adaptation of Dracula, but there
is also a novelization of the film Genius Yeah, which
I aways found outrageous because it's not like Dracula. The
original is an unreadable text, Like did it really need

(01:14:39):
to be updated, you know, in terms of the written version?
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:14:45):
No, I mean so it was so it could say,
you know, Jonathan Arker, who looked like the American actor
Keanu Reeves, arrived in Where Does He Go? You know budhams.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
Oh doesn't I'll have a mustache in the original Bromstoker's Dracula.

Speaker 2 (01:15:03):
Maybe that was it in the movie or in the novel.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
In the novel, I don't recall.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
I don't recall how he's described.

Speaker 1 (01:15:10):
I could be wrong on that, but wouldn't it have
been funny though? If they were like, okay, standard operating procedure,
we need a novelization of this film and they assign
it to somebody, And what if they just turned down
a copy of Bromstoker's Dracula and they're like, it was
just it was such a great adaptation, like as it
just as it worked out, the novelization of the film

(01:15:30):
is the original novel.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
That's just smart. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
I didn't even realize that I had completely reproduced the
original Bromstoker's Dracula. I was just adapting the film.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
Well, if you're gonna do it with any film. I
will say the Coppola adaptation is unusually faithful to the novel,
much more so than most other adaptations I can think of.

Speaker 1 (01:15:51):
Yeah, and also has some really fun performances in it.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
All right, Well, we're going to go ahead and close
the liquor cabinet on this serpent, but we will be
back with other episodes of Weird House Cinema. They publish
every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed.
We're primarily science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have listener mail on Mondays and
artifact episodes. Those are shorties on Wednesdays.

Speaker 2 (01:16:18):
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 (01:16:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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