Weirdhouse Cinema: The Face Behind the Mask

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe celebrate Noirvember with a viewing of the 1941 Robert Florey crime film “The Face Behind the Mask,” starring the legendary Peter Lorre. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
In today's episode of Weird House Cinema. We're getting in
on the Noir November festivities. If you're not familiar with this,
this is a yearly, month long celebration of noir cinema,
a concept introduced in twenty ten by film critic Maria E.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Gates.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Film noir is, of course, a turn that covers a
lot of ground and bleeds into a number of different
subgenres and adjacent genres. I mean it ultimately becomes just
sort of a shade, you know, and a stylistic flourish
that may be employed even just in key scenes in
a particular picture. But in its arguably truest form, we're

(00:56):
talking about black and white old Hollywood. I'm dramas full
of cynicism, amoral characters and style, heavy dash of German expressionism,
plenty of cigarette smoke. Throw all that in and you're
good to go. There's also much to be said about
this genre emerging out of the Great Depression. Lots of

(01:17):
moving parts, so you can identify noir in everything from
such films as The Maltese Falcon from nineteen forty one
nineteen forty two's Casablanca to stuff like nineteen eighty two's
Blade Runner and multiple neo noir films from the likes
of the Cohen Brothers and David Lynch. And we haven't
really gotten in on this Noirvember thing before. You know,

(01:40):
I've seen it. I've seen it celebrated at Videodrome, the
rental store here in Atlanta, I've seen it celebrated online
in various places, and you know, it feels right. November
is a really choice month for all of this, because
wordplay aside, it's a month of continued descent through fall
and into winter. It's a month often deified by things

(02:01):
like elections or corporate layoffs. It's a bleak time for
bleak hearts. So what better time than now to dive
into the black and white world of private detectives and
professional criminals. So what is today's movie? It is nineteen
forty one's The Face Behind the Mask, And yeah, it
actually comes out nine months before The Maltese Falcon, which

(02:25):
is sometimes considered the first big film noir picture. But
it also ultimately depends on how you slice it. You
can also reach back into the thirties for possible examples
of forerunners in the genre. And also, this is a
picture that I'm to understand wasn't actually viewed a lot
after its initial release. It's kind of built up a
following over time.

Speaker 4 (02:43):
Yeah, so your selection this week got me really thinking
about what is it that makes a movie film noir.
I don't really know exactly what the primary criteria are.
It's one of those things where it's defined by a
number of different sort of plot conventions and stylistic conventions.
And if a movie has a critical mass, if it

(03:05):
has enough of these different things in it, then it
starts to feel like noir. But I don't know what
the core things are though you mentioned a minute ago
the Maltese Falcon, the Humphrey Bogart movie, and I feel
like that's kind of the prototype film noir, right, Like
that's or the archetype. I don't know which is the
right term there. It's like it's the type example that

(03:26):
you think of, or at least that I think of
for film noir. So it has a tough, cynical detective,
it has a lot of people running around chasing after money.
It has cynical crime themes. It has a maybe somewhat
gloomy outlook on human nature, but also has a sense
of humor, a kind of dark sense of humor. And

(03:49):
in fact, it has an actor in common with the
movie we're going to be talking about today, because a
major character actor in The Maltese Falcon is Peter Laura
in the role of Joel Cairo, who is the main
character in the face behind the mask. So I would say,
almost to the same extent that I associate Humphrey Bogart

(04:10):
with noir, I also associate Peter Laurie with it.

Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's right.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
If you're cooking film noir, either during this time period
or in later decades, Peter Lourie, or at least the
ghost of Peter Laurie, is very much on the spice rack,
as is Humphrey Bogart, as are various other elements. Like
you can also throw in things that are not president
in this picture, such as the fem fatale is very

(04:34):
often employed to some degree in a noir picture. So
there are yea all these different things that may or
may not be added to the finished product. But when
you taste the soup, you know, Ah, this is film noir.

Speaker 4 (04:45):
Yeah, cigarettes, fried eggs, black coffee, revolvers, Fedoras, trench coats.
That's what's going on here, and Peter Laurie is part
of the mix.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
So as far as weird house cinema selections go, it's
notable that this is our This is only our fourth
selection from the nineteen forties, following Doctor Cyclops, The Beast
with Five Fingers, and The Devil Bat. It's our second
picture directed by Robert Florey and our third Peter Lorii picture.
It's also one of our infrequent picks to not feature

(05:18):
a speculative element, though I would say it's weird enough
in its own way for our purposes. I also want
to stress that this film is also very strongly a melodrama,
so it's not subtle in its manipulation of the heart strings.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
It's a bit of a morality play as well. So
it's Yeah, it's a good picture. I was really pleased with.
It's one that's kind of been on my short list
for a long time. Often held up as one of
Laurie's best performances, a picture where he is the lead
and gets to bust out a number of his tools,
and you know, not just be the villain or a

(05:54):
side villain or a side quirky character. He is the
main event here.

Speaker 4 (05:58):
This really is a look at my range movie for
Peter Lourie. There are some scenes where he is so
wholesome and so precious, He's just cute, adorable, wonderful, other
scenes where he is the creepiest creep and he gets
to do both in the same film.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Yeah, so for like an absolute Peter LORII picture, it's
like this and Mad Love or I think Neck and Neck.
They don't, but each film hit slightly different notes. You know,
you don't get the same array of Peter Lourie in
both films, but added together, I mean, you get to
see so many different colors from him.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
But you're also right in saying that this is not
a subtle film. I mean, this is not a film
where the drama takes place reading between the lines. It's
all on the lines here. So there are extremely overt
monologues in which the themes of the film are pretty
explicitly stated, and we get like swelling music while they're delivered,

(06:56):
and they're delivered in almost kind of a stage performance way,
characters kind of borderline shout their lines and they're full
of overt passion. But if you know, if you know
that's what you're in for, it's not really a bad thing.
It's just a different way to tell a story.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
Another point about this picture we'll keep coming back to
is that it's a pretty fast ride. This film's only
sixty nine minutes long, and I think it's the rare
weird house cinema selection where I have to say I
don't think it is long enough. I feel like I
needed a little bit more from it. I mean, what
we have is tremendous, but you know, I wanted to
see scenes that are alluded to but not shown to us.

(07:37):
And yeah, it doesn't have a lot of time to
even necessarily further explore some of the ideas that it
brings up, which you know isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Speaker 4 (07:46):
Many of the most pivotal scenes in the plot happen
off screen. They're like the big turning points are like
you see what's leading up to it, and then you
see the characters talking about it afterwards, but you don't
see the thing itself.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah, but you know, so it's like Frank Herbert would
dig that. But it's like, it's not battle scenes that
are left out, you know, it's not like big budget
things that I don't know, you know, maybe it was
a budgetary decision to not show someone like the key
heists that become important later on, but you know, they
make a lot out of the time they have here.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
Do you think they left out the safe cracking scene? Like,
was it cut for content that was just like too
spicy for audiences at the time.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
I don't know, I really yeah, we'll talk about when
we get to that point in the plot, but yeah,
I really wanted to see this first big heist that
that Janosh is involved in. But more on that in
a bit.

Speaker 3 (08:37):
Now.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
I am, by no means an expert in film noir,
but I associate several different plot types with this genre.
The most common, I would say is the private detective story.
You know, somebody shows up with a strange case for
a private detective and the detective goes down the rabbit hole,
you know, figuring out all the twists and turns and
all that. Multice falcon is of that sort. But if

(09:00):
there is a second type of plot structure I most
associate with film noir. It is the plot that we
get in the face behind the mask, which is an
originally good hearted person is lured or forced into a
life of crime.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Yeah, fallen angel, breaking bad, Yes, you know.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:19):
And one of the interesting things about it is that
this is of course also an immigrant story. And so
the good person at the heart of this is someone
who is entering America for the first time and has
all these big ideas and all these dreams, dreams that
he has absorbed, you know, from afar, the American dream,

(09:41):
and so his fall is also about realizing the flaws
in the American dream and the things that you know,
that he had built up in his head that just
aren't part of the reality.

Speaker 4 (09:53):
Yeah, that his hopes are sort of crash against the
rocks of reality and of circumstances beyond his control. And
that just happens over and over until he is forced
into becoming the gang story that he once feared.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
All right, Now I don't have any trailer audio for
this one, but if you want a little dash of
the trailer audio, look up Joe Dante's Trailers from Hell
feature on it. It's pretty fun. It's just you know,
Joe Dante talking a little bit about this picture and
then sharing some audio and video from the trailer. But
I couldn't find that trailer anywhere else for us to sample,
so I'll just say go ahead and check out what

(10:30):
Joe Dante has to share about that trailer. Now you
might be wondering at this point, Hey, I haven't seen
Face Behind the Mask. I'd like to before continuing on
with the episode. Well, fair enough. I support that. This one, however,
is not, to my knowledge, currently available in the US
on disc, but it is currently part of the streaming

(10:51):
options over at the Criterion Channel. That's the streaming platform
and app brought to you by the Criterion Collection. The
Face behind the Mask is currently featured as part of
their Noir November Essentials collection. We don't champion a lot
of streaming options on stuff to blow your mind, but
the Criterion Channel is, in my unpaid four opinion, here
a great streaming option for film fans. So you can

(11:13):
try it for free for a week, you know that
sort of thing. But you can watch everything from Brida
Frankenstein and Scanners to the story of Ricky and Raising Arizona,
and they have some really tantalizing playlists of films, including
I was just looking at it this morning. There's one
that's just synth scores, so all sorts of cool electronic
scores for the pictures selected. And then they have one

(11:34):
that's just hopping vampires. So it's like, I think it's
all just mister Vampire pictures. And of course we talked
about the first Mister Vampire film on the show a
while back.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
Yes, also, in my unpaid for opinion, I greatly enjoyed
the Criterion Channel, though I should issue a warning to
people because I was confused by this at first. You
can't assume just because a movie has a Criterion collection
release that it will be featured streaming on the Criterion Channel.
Some movies have a disc from Criterion, but they're not

(12:05):
on there. But it's still a good channel.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Right, And likewise, there are plenty of pictures on there
that I don't think have discs on Criterion. But it's
just it's a great selection, and a number of weird
house cinema pictures are in there as of this recording.
All right, let's run through some of the people involved here.

(12:29):
The director is, of course Robert Florey, who have nineteen
hundred through nineteen seventy nine. Industrial strength French American director
who worked from the twenties through the sixties, amassing one
hundred and eighteen credits and just really cranking out pictures
during the nineteen thirties. His early career was apparently more
avant garde expressionism, but he became one of these kind

(12:52):
of like cinematic workhorse types of guys. From a purely
horror standpoint. He's perhaps best known for directing Murders in
the Room Morgue nineteen thirty two, based on the Edgar
Allen post story and starring Hungarian American film legend Lagosi,
as well as ape suit legend Charles Gomora. Also of
note was the noir film Daughter of Shanghai from thirty seven.

(13:15):
That one featured a female Chinese American elite in the
form of Anime Wong, another legendary name from a lot
of noir pictures, as well as Korean American actor Philip
an Flori is also noted for having been the initial
director on nineteen thirty one's Frankenstein, with Lugosi attached to
play the monster during those early stages, before Legosi like

(13:39):
leaving the picture because he didn't want to play like this.
You know, what we might think of is just like
a killing machine Frankenstein monster, and you know, of course
Flores ends up being replaced by James Whale, and we'd
get the nineteen thirty one Frankenstein that we all know
and love. Flori later directed a lot of TV, and
his last film credit as an episode. Our TV credit

(14:00):
is an episode of the original Outer Limits series titled Moonstone.
He also did three Twilight Zone episodes. All right, now,
as far as the story and screenplay here goes, there
are four different names, some of which I don't have
a lot of information on. Apparently the story is based
on a radio play called Interim by Thomas Edward O'Connell,

(14:21):
who live nineteen fifteen through nineteen sixty one. I couldn't
find out much about this. The screenplay for the film, however,
was apparently very much put together with Peter Lourie in
mind for the lead. Let's see, author Levinson has a
story credit note relation obviously to I think there's a
contemporary author Levinson who's involved with like Apple computers or

(14:43):
something different.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Guy.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
There's Alan Vincent who has a screenplay credit, who lived
nineteen oh three through nineteen seventy nine actor and screenwriter
who appeared in such films as nineteen thirty three's Mystery
of the Wax Museum. This is his first screenplay credit,
and then we also have a screen play credit for
Paul Jericho, who lived nineteen fifteen through nineteen ninety seven.
Oscar nominated American screenwriter here for nineteen forty two's Tom

(15:09):
Dick and Harry, who was later blacklisted during the McCarthy
era for his ties to the Communist Party and alleged
subversive content. During this time, though, he produced the nineteen
fifty four film Salt of the Earth, which was a
project that entailed a handful of other blacklisted filmmakers and
was well received, and I think it continues to be
well received. Often worked uncredited or under a pseudonym. His

(15:33):
other credits also include nineteen sixty twos All Night Long,
All Right, but of course our star playing Janosh Johnny Zabo.
We have Peter Lourie Yeah, nineteen oh four through nineteen
sixty four, Austro Hungarian actor of Jewish descent who made
it big in Fritz Lung's im Back in thirty one,
sometimes singled out as an early noir picture are certainly

(15:56):
very influential on noir films to follow, before he ended
up fleeing the rise of anti Semitism under the Nazi regime.
A legendary character actor who of course appeared in one
of our first Weird House Cinema episodes, covering nineteen thirty
five's Mad Love, he is best remembered for his various
roles in such noir mainstays as Casablanca, Maltese falcon thrillers

(16:19):
like nineteen thirty four's The Man Who Knew Too Much,
as well as such horror films as nineteen sixty three's
The Raven and even such big budget productions as nineteen
fifty four to twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea. He
wrote and directed a single film, nineteen fifty one's The
Lost One, and he was technically the first actor to
play a Bond villain, appearing in the nineteen fifty four

(16:40):
TV adaptation of Casino Royale.

Speaker 4 (16:42):
This is the Thing That was an adaptation of Casino
Royale that had Barry Nelson as James Bond. Barry Nelson
is the guy who plays the hotel manager at the
beginning of the Shining. He's like the guy hiring Jack Nicholson.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
This is back when James Bond was played by an
America and present it as an American character.

Speaker 3 (17:04):
Oh that's so good.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
But man, I would watch Peter Laurie as La Chief
that that'd be good.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah, yeah, I'm whatever else is.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
Going on, Yeah yeah, I mean Peter Laurie is such
an intriguing icon, you know, like iconic in ways that
are hard to overstress, you know, like he becomes this
like you go ack and you watch old Bugs Bunny
cartoons and they'll have a Peter Lourie character. I think
plenty of people still like doing, Like if you have

(17:33):
I have a Dungeons and Dragon's character that uses a
Peter Loriie voice. I feel like a lot of other
people haven't leave. Even dungeon masters have probably done some
version of a Peter Lourie voice at some point. You know,
he's just he's that iconic.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
Yeah, he's so iconic that my Christoph Lambert voice is
actually a Peter Lorrie voice.

Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah yeah, I mean, he's just tremendous, you know, And
he was. He was frequently typecast the Sinister Foreigners, and
his career has some real ups and downs absolutely, but
especially during his prime here, he's always there's always something
about his performance.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
It's a treat.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
And this is a film much like Madlove, where we
get to enjoy him as the star of the picture.
He gets to play a lot of different notes in
his performance that we don't otherwise get to experience. I
want to point out too, that he was thirty six
when they filmed this, and he looks thirty six. But
there are different points where they would call him like kid.

(18:30):
Are they talking about him as if he's like this
young boy who just arrived in America. It's like he's
clearly a grown man, but fair enough.

Speaker 4 (18:40):
Oh yeah, I don't know. Early in the film, he's
so full of hope. He almost has a kind of
newborn quality.

Speaker 3 (18:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
I mean he is totally bought into the American mythology
that he's been presented with. And yeah, it's just overflowing
with optimism and it is a bit naive, as we'll discuss,
all right. So that's Peter Laurie more his performance as
we proceed. The love interest here, the eventual blind love
interest for our protagonist is the character Helen Williams played

(19:09):
by Evelyn Keys, who lived nineteen sixteen through two thousand
and eight. She was an American actress who played supporting
roles in some pretty big films, including nineteen thirty nine's
Gone with the Wind and nineteen fifty five's The Seven
Year Itch. Other credits include nineteen fifty one's The Prowler
and then much later in her career, Larry Cohen's A
Return to Salem's Lot in nineteen eighty seven.

Speaker 4 (19:32):
So we were just mentioning there's a part of the
movie where where Peter Lourie is full of hope and optimism,
but the character of Helen appears later in the film
after all of Peter Laurie's hope and optimism is gone,
and she's sort of like the energy beat. She's like
an energy weapon of happiness just blasting into the film

(19:53):
from orbit, and you know what it's like. She really
does completely change the tone of the movie when she appears.
But of course, you know, this is film noir, so
they're going to have to play this romance for tragedy ultimately.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Yeah, I mean, she's she's great in this. She's delightful,
you know, totally buy into this this light of optimism.
You know that she brings, but also like obviously she's
a doomed angel, you know, like, yeah, you know where.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
This is going? Too good for this world? All right.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
We also have Don Bedo playing Lieutenant James Jim O'Hara.
He lived nineteen oh three through nineteen ninety one. Yeah,
he's a sympathetic New York police officer who helps jan
o'sher early on. Played by an American character actor whose
credits include nineteen fifty five is the Night of the
Hunter and nineteen forty six is the Best Years of
Our Lives. He performed on Broadway prior to this movie

(20:50):
and prior to his going into film and television. According
to Joe Dante, he's an actor known for a lot
of milk toast roles, but he thinks this is one
of his best performances. And then we have the character
of Dinky.

Speaker 3 (21:04):
Dinky.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
This is the character that really surprised me because I
came into this expecting a great Peter Lorrie performance, but
I really think George E. Stone is terrific here as Dinky,
the criminal with a heart of gold.

Speaker 4 (21:20):
He's the guy who he just can't he can't stop
doing crime, but he's actually a really nice guy.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, he doesn't want to do crimes, but like, things
keep happening and he keeps falling back down the ladder,
and then he has no choice, you know.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:34):
Stone lived nineteen oh three through nineteen sixty seven. Polish
born American actor of Vaudeville, Broadway, film, and TV. Played
a lot of scrappy Prohibition era New York characters often
described as runyon esque. This is not really terminology I
was familiar with, but this is a reference to the
writings of author Damon Runyon, who invoked a lot of

(21:57):
colorful New York City slang in his writings.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
Oh yeah, So like when we very first meet Dinky,
he comes out of the shadows to pick up the
wallet that was dropped by like a wealthy you know,
Wall Street trader who gets scared by Peter Lorii's face
in the middle of the movie scene, and Dinky he
picks up the wallet and he goes like, hey, let's
see what Sandy Claus left for us.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, Like, I didn't know what runyon Esque was beforehand,
but now that I've seen this performance and I have
heard the word, now, I can recognize runyon esque elsewhere
in pictures, like there are definitely characters in Santa Claus
Conquers the Martians that are run your esque. Yeah, even
though they're Martians. I don't know why they're run your Esque,
but anyway, but yes, Stone is terrific in this his

(22:42):
film roles. Other film roles include nineteen thirty one's Little Caesar,
nineteen fifty fives Guys and Dolls, and nineteen fifty nine
Some Like It Hot. Yeah, he's it's a great performance. Like,
he's very likable and he has a lot of heart,
and he is a characters will discuss that very much
saves Janosh at a very dark point in his life.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Now, to the extent that this movie has a villain,
like a centralized individual villain, it is Jeff Jeffries. I
guess his full name would be Jeffrey Jeff Jeffries, a
man so Jeff they named him twice, played by James
c who lived nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 4 (23:24):
I was banging my head trying to figure out where
I recognized this guy from because he was very familiar,
and I finally realized it was from a Miracle on
thirty fourth Street.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Oh yeah, who does he play in that.

Speaker 4 (23:36):
He's like I think there are two psychiatrists in it,
and there's like the one mean one who's sort of
the antagonist, and then there's the one nice one, And
I think he's the nice one. I could be remembering
that wrong, but I know he's in the film.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
He has a very memorable chin, and in this picture anyway,
has very memorable shoulders. Like Jeff's suit has shoulders so
broad that they made me think of the Dick Tracy
villain shoulders, Like it's basically the same dimensions.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
Yeah, and he's absolutely.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Towering over all the shorter character actors in the picture, Like,
his shoulders are as broad as Peter Laurie is like
long if you laid him out, you know, Like that's
how broad these shoulders are. It's ridiculous. It's laugh inducing,
at least from our modern perspective.

Speaker 4 (24:23):
The effect created by his outfit, and it's a standard forties,
you know, gang member outfit. So it's a suit with
a with a black fedora, you know, big shoulder pads,
the vest of the tie. And if this makes any sense,
it has the effect of like he's in football pads.
He's fully suited up. He's suited up for game time.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
And yeah, I end up having this like real reaction
to him too, because like Laurie is obviously like you know,
he was a much shorter guy. You know, he's he's
not leading your typical leading man material, you know, like
he really I attached to Peter Lourie more as like
he is like a nerd, you know, he's one of us.
And Jeff Jefferies is total jock here. James c is

(25:08):
like total jock mode, and like its instantly I identify
him as a danger to our hero and our icon here.

Speaker 4 (25:16):
But there's there's a scene where Peter Lourie like beats him.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Up, yeah and makes us believe it. Like I like,
we build up to that encounter and I'm like, okay,
how are you going to make me believe this? Like
this dude is enormous, But you know Laurie does it.
But uh yeah, See, see pops up in a number
of different things, So you might have seen him in
things like fifty ones, The Day the Earth Stood Still,
fifty four'st Killers from Outer Space, and I think I

(25:42):
probably recognize I don't know who he was in this
because I haven't seen it forever. Because nobody will put
it out on disk, but nineteen fifty seven is the
Amazing Colossal Man also features a James.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
C row Oh and Rob you had this note. He
was also in the Beginning of the End, which is
a Burt Eye Gordon film. This is the one with
the giant grasshopper.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's another one. I don't think I've
ever seen that one in full. And he's not the
star in that one. He's like, you know, mid cast.
That one stars Peter Graves.

Speaker 4 (26:10):
I think see here was known for often playing like
a military commander or some government bureaucrat. He's like somebody
you would cut away to and they're just giving orders. Yeah,
and so he's got a more substantial role in this movie.
But it does turn out because I've seen Beginning of
the End and I've seen some of these other sci
fi movies, so it's not just Miracle on thirty fourth Street.

(26:32):
I know him from him, but that is what was
in my mind when I was seeing him here in
his crime uniform.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, all right. Two more behind the scenes credits to mention.
Franz Planner, who had eighteen ninety fourth through nineteen sixty three,
is the cinematographer Austria, Hungarian cinematographer and five time Oscar nominee.
His other credits include nineteen fifty threes The five Thousand
Fingers of Doctor t that is one that has been
recommended for Weird House numerous times, also Roman Holiday, as

(27:02):
well as nineteen fifty fourth twenty thousand Leagues under the Sea,
which of course has Peter Lourie and it's a pretty
vast ensemble cast. And then finally Sydney Kuttner is credited
with music on this nineteen oh three through nineteen seventy one.
But this is all pretty much stock music, I'm to understand,
and there are some other music credits in there that
are clearly labeled as stock. So you know, there's nothing

(27:27):
out of the ordinary as far as the music for
Face Behind the Mask. But it's effective, it does the job.
It's nice and melodramatic, all right.

Speaker 4 (27:42):
So I guess we're doing the plot now. So the
movie opens with some text gives us the setting, and
it says it's set just a few years ago, when
a voyage to America an adventure, not flight, when a
quota was a number, not a lottery prize to be
captured by a lucky few. I guess the contrast between
adventure and flight there being that this movie was released

(28:04):
during World.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
War Two, so yeah, it's already kind of like calling
back to the interwar period here.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah, so we see a boat streaming into harbor in
New York City, passing in front of the Statue of Liberty,
and on the musical track, the orchestra plays a couple
of bars of my country tis of thee when we
see the statue. So again, this movie is not subtle.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
No, it lays it on pretty thick.

Speaker 4 (28:30):
And then on the boat, two passengers gaze out over
the water. So there's one man who's sort of taller
with a mustache, looking a little bit hopeful, but his
expression is more tempered and he walks away, leaving only
the other guy there. The other guy in the background
is Peter Lori, looking out at the scene with wide eyed,
almost childlike giddiness. And this is our protagonist Janosh, a

(28:54):
watchmaker by trade who is a new arrival to America
from Hungary. Yanosh approaches a crew member on the deck
of the ship with excitement and he asks him for
a match, and the kindly man offers him a match,
and then Janosh says, no, thank you, I don't smoke,
and then he asks for the time. The man tells
him it's a quarter past ten. Yanosh checks his own

(29:15):
watch and agrees that is indeed the time. Janosh then
reveals with an infectious giggle that he is simply practicing
his English and again, I can't drive home enough. How
sweet Peter Laurie is at the beginning here.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
Yes, yeah, he really is.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
There's a childlike innocence here.

Speaker 4 (29:33):
So he points out over the water at the Statue
of Liberty and he says, look, she's beautiful, and the
boat worker agrees, says, yeah, I'd love to see it
every every time we come into port here, and Yanosh
then shows him a picture of a woman folded in
his wallet in his wallet and says, she is very
beautiful too. This is his beloved Maria. Yanosh explains that

(29:56):
after he establishes himself in America, she's going to make
the journey to join him, and then they will be
married when she arrives. So Janosh arrives on the streets
of New York and we see him walking around. He
stops a stranger to ask him where he can find
a good hot and Cold Water Hotel, and the stranger
gives him directions to the Carlton Plaza.

Speaker 3 (30:17):
He's like, go.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
Six blocks up, one block over, two blocks to the left,
and then he says, they're waiting for you. I think
this went over my head a bit, but I assume
the joke is that this is a ridiculously fancy hotel
and they're waiting for you, as like their advertising slogan
or something.

Speaker 3 (30:33):
Yeah, I think that's the dig here.

Speaker 4 (30:36):
But then up the street, Janos stops to buy a
juice from a street vendor and discovers that all of
his money is gone. The fifty nine dollars he arrived with.
It's all missing from his wallet. So he runs to
a nearby policeman for help.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
And yeah, and at this point he's like he's begging
the policeman to help him. And again we have more
of this over the top, a naivety and an optimism
from Janosh. But he has this line though that is
so dumb that it does actually succeed in being really funny.
He's like, I've been gangstered. So but then he like

(31:14):
calms down a bit, like the this is where we
meet O'Hara for the first time, and O'Hara is here
to sort of talk him down, and it's like, all right, well, buddy,
when when did you last see your money? And then
he's able to get Janos to calm down enough to realize, oh,
I still have the money on me.

Speaker 4 (31:27):
I have it under my shirt, that's right. So I
was afraid in this scene. Oh no, he's going to
run into a crooked cop who's going to double scam him.
But fortunately the detective he meets is friendly and helpful,
so O'Hara talks him through it, and then he remembers
he was listening to a man on the boat talk
about gangsters in America and he became afraid. And you know,

(31:49):
I don't know if the like Tommy Gunn gangster was
as big a media sensation at this point in American
history as it had been like a decade earlier. I
think of like the early thirties as the heyday of
the you know, the big gangster stories about John Dillinger
and so forth. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but yeah,
I wonder if that's sort of what they're playing on.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
Yeah, I mean, at any rate, we're all familiar with
the sort of chewed up by the Big City trope,
which of course is reflected in that wonderful Simpsons episode
where Homer has to come back to New York City
to pay for to get a boot off of his car. Right, yes,
And it's just you know, absolute I d in his
mind that this is a hell city that will you know,

(32:31):
that will come at you. So yeah, I was afraid
too that Janosh was about to run into another scam
and just be all the worse off for it.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Oh yeah, because in that Simpsons episode there's a scene
where he gets his camera stolen. Then he goes to
complain to a police officer, and then the police officer
steals his suitcase. But anyway, like you said, he remembers
that he just hid his money in the shirt. He
finds it again, so everything's okay. Then the policeman takes
Yanosh for cold drink of some kind. It looks like

(33:01):
they're having like an ice cream float. They're at a
soda shop and Yanosh tells O'Hara about all of his
hopes and dreams. He wants to get a job and
make money, then bring Marie over the ocean with him
to get married and then have children. He wants to
have his sons follow him into his trade, which is
watchmaking and watch repair, and Ohara tries to help Yanosh

(33:25):
by telling him, Hey, I know of a hotel that's clean,
comfortable and cheap. You go to the Excelsior. It's run
by a guy named Finnegan. So he gives him directions
sends him on his way. Now at the hotel, Yanosh
not only rents a room, but he gets a job
washing dishes at the cafe on the ground floor, where
it seems like he does extremely good work. We see
a scene of him efficiently drying off plates and teacups

(33:47):
while singing to himself. The gist is that Yanosh is
a machine. He's a real good worker, and he's friendly
to boot.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
Now, at this hotel, we learned from the manager there
are a couple of rules if you're a guest. Of all,
no ironing for some reason. I think he says it
overloads the circuits or something. But then the other thing
is no cooking your own food. And the reason given
is explicitly that the cafe is not making enough money
and the hotel needs the business from the guests, so

(34:16):
you can't make your own food. Well, one night, we
see Yanosh relaxing in his hotel bed after a long
shift at work. He's sort of chattering away lovingly to
his photo of Maria. And then meanwhile, in another room,
a guest is doing such wickedness. He is breaking one
of the two commandments. He is cooking in his room,

(34:37):
and we get a close up of his little hot plate,
and unfortunately, the black and white photography is not kind
to whatever he's cooking in this spot. It's some gleaming,
wretched slop. It looks like he's boiling glass beads in
a broth of nail polish. It does not look good.

Speaker 2 (34:53):
Yeah, I can figure out what this was. It was like,
is he doing like some sort of reduction of marachino
cherries or something.

Speaker 4 (35:00):
Yeah, he's like tasting it. He's stirring it with a
fork and tating yum yum yum. Well, old man Finn again,
the guy who runs this place. He's roaming the halls,
sniffing around at the doors for illegal cookery, and he
detects He detects the cooking, so he zeros in on
the culprit, pulls up a ladder and tries to snoop

(35:20):
through the transom over the door to the room, but
the guest wises up real quick. He realized he hears
something outside, and then he hides his hot plate and
the pot of stew in the drawer of his wooden dresser.
Seems like a predictable outcome from this, so the guest
like he hides it in the dresser, and then he
puts on a hat and coat leaves the room. He

(35:42):
gives a wink to the old man that the manager.
He's like, ah, I thought you could catch me. Huh. Now,
as you might guess, putting the hot plate and the
pot inside the wooden furniture starts a fire, and the
fire grows out of control and then rages through the hotel.
So this scene turns horrifying. Yano Sho had been having
such a sweet time earlier. He was doing well at work. He's,

(36:05):
you know, dreaming about his beloved. Suddenly he's awoken to
find himself in a crumbling inferno. He tries to escape
the hotel, but he is hit by falling debris and
he ends up badly injured, very badly burned. By the way,
I just wanted to point out, rob there's one part
where he's like coming down the stairs and he's hit
by burning debris that falls from above and then tumbles

(36:26):
over the staircase railing. I just thought this was a
pretty impressive and dangerous looking stunt. I don't know how
they pulled this off.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Yeah, I'm not sure. Like the stunt double of they
have for Lori here, I assume it's a stunt double
and looks just like him, And yeah, very terrifying. I
tend to find most fire effects terrifying in films these days,
but yeah, it absolutely feels like a raging inferno here.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
So Yano survives and he's taken to the hospital, but
he has suffered extensive third degree burns over his face
and head, and we see him in his hospital bed
with his head wrapped up completely in bandages like a mummy,
and his policeman friend O'Hara comes to the hospital showing concern.
He says he feels responsible for Yanosh's injuries because he's

(37:14):
the one who sent him to that hotel, and he
pays for some of his care. I think he gives
five dollars to pay for his hospital care, and then
he leaves a business card for Yanosh writing a note
on the back that he should call him when he's recovered.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, or I think the wording is something like when
things are okay. It's a little bit more vague, and
that's going to be important later on.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
I think it says call me when okay. So Janosh
retains the use of his hands, but as the healing
process goes on, it becomes clear that he's going to
have extensive scarring on his face and he will never
look the same. The scene where the doctor removes his
bandages is extremely dark and it's played like a horror film.
The doctor draws the shades on the window and then

(37:58):
covers the mirror in the corner of the room before
he takes the wrappings off. And while the doctor is
removing everything, Janosh is still his friendly, optimistic self. He's
going on and on about how he's excited to go
back out and look for work. He's talking about how
he's saying, I'm very skilled with my hands. I have
experience as a watchmaker, but also in other mechanical jobs.

(38:19):
I once worked in an airplane factory. I even flew
airplanes when I was in the Armed Forces. And so
he's going on about the future. He's very hopeful, but
once his face is revealed, the nurses in the room
shut their eyes and wins, and then one nurse even
walks into the room and screams in horror.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Yeah, this scene instantly made me think of a nineteen
eighty nine Batman, the Tim Burton picture. We have that
great scene with the removal of the bandages on Jack
Nicholson's joker in that and you know, it's not you know,
one to one here, But I can't help but ponder
to what extent like this picture and what other pictures

(39:00):
may have influenced that scene.

Speaker 4 (39:02):
You know, yeah, I see strong similarity. I would agree
it's a likely influence. But of course, you know these reactions,
they start to alarm you a ocean. He becomes upset,
so he runs to the mirror, pulls away the towel
that's hiding the glass, and is confronted with his new face.
Every inch of it is scarred and it has sort

(39:22):
of a melted texture. And it's interesting that this is
basically the only time the movie actually gives you a
good look at his injuries after this scene. For a
long time, until there's another plot development, his face will
be always turned away from the camera or otherwise hidden.
At a certain point, he's going to acquire a customized

(39:44):
mask that makes him look like Peter Loriie again, but
a sort of altered lory like Uncanny Laurie. And I
don't unless I'm forgetting it. There's really not any other
time they show him with his injuries.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
Yeah, we get some pretty solid glances of it, like
the mirror and so forth. But yeah, for the most part,
they they don't show it to us directly. It's focused
more on him becoming a creature of the shadows and people,
you know, having this terrible reaction to seeing him.

Speaker 3 (40:14):
And then once the.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Mask is acquired, it is quite interesting because it gives
it ends up giving Janosh this kind of weird, almost
otherworldly beauty.

Speaker 3 (40:23):
You know.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
He's like like like an angel, like a fallen angel certainly,
you know, but this clearly this being that's caught between realities,
Like it smooths out Peter Lourie's face. So, yeah, he
takes on this strange but not like you know, monstrous appearance.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:42):
So after seeing his face, Janosh temporarily loses his mind.
He starts screaming, where is my face, and he thrashes about,
shouting and attacking the doctor until finally he is forcefully sedated.
So after this, some time passes and we see things
continuing to go back. For Yanosh, he goes out looking
for work, dressed in a black fedora and a dark

(41:04):
coat with the collar pulled up around his face to
hide himself. So he's dressed kind of like a cross
between your standard hard boiled PI but also a bit
of Dracula in there, somewhere in between the two. And
everywhere he goes, including a watchmaker shop and an airplane factory,
he asks for work, but he is turned away once

(41:25):
the boss sees his face, And there's some very gloomy
atmosphere in this part of the film, like I'm thinking
particularly of the scene where he goes to the watchmaker's shop,
or it seems to be nighttime outside and the windows
are illuminated from inside, so he goes in to talk,
but once the watchmaker sees him, he's like, sorry, I
forgot to take the sign out of the window. We

(41:47):
don't have any positions and sends him away, and we
see Peter Lorie walking off down the sidewalk where he's
illuminated by like he should be illuminated by this lamp
that we see in the foreground, but it's like none
of the light touches him somehow, like he's just a
pure shadow from head to toe. Yeah, we see him
becoming increasingly desperate when he goes to talk to the

(42:10):
manager of the airplane factory, like he's turned away from
the camera, but he says, please, my face makes no
difference to how I can work with my hands, and
he's showing the manager his hands, but the manager just says, sorry,
there's nothing doing here. And then we get maybe the
most heartbreaking scene in the entire film, a scene where

(42:31):
Yanosh writes a letter to his love back home to Maria,
which we see part of it translated into English, and
the part we see says, I must hurt you, dear Maria,
just once, then you can forget me forever. I have
met a girl, a very pretty girl. We are going
to be married. Goodbye, Maria, forgive and forget Janosh. Obviously

(42:53):
this is not true, but he can't face her now,
so he lies to make her move on with her life.
And this part is so.

Speaker 2 (42:59):
Sad, absolutely heartbreaking. This one legitally made me tear up
when I was watching the picture.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
But then we're going to get another slight reversal of fortune.
So here we come up on the scene where Yanosh
meets Dinky. Now, the setup to this scene visually is
very moody and beautiful. Yanosh is standing in his dark costume,
covered by the coat and the hat at the railing
of a concrete walkway overlooking the ocean, and the moonlight

(43:27):
reflects off of the water and casts these white ripples
across the whole scene. It seems to imply Yanosh is
thinking about jumping from the railing and ending his life,
but hope comes through a series of unusual events. So
a well dressed man approaches Yanosh to ask for a
match to light his cigar, and this is kind of

(43:47):
interesting in how it plays on the very first thing
we ever heard from Yanosh, when he walks up to
the guy working on the boat at the beginning and
asks for a match to practice his English. This guy
comes up to ask for a match, and then Yanosh
tries to get give him one, but when the man
sees Janosh's face up close, the cigar falls out of
his mouth and he runs away screaming. Suddenly, from out

(44:08):
of the shadows behind a bunch of crates and barrels
comes a third man, and this is Dinky, who's going
to become a major character. Dinky notices that the well
dressed man dropped his wallet as he was running away,
so he approaches Yanosh without fear. He picks up the
wallet and he's like, you know, oh, hey thought I
was a cop, didn't you. Well, let's see what Sandy

(44:29):
Claus left for us, And he starts going through the wallet.
And Dinky is a crook, but he's also instantly likable,
Like he gets the cash out of the wallet and
he's like, ah, what a cheap skate, only twelve bucks,
but he splits the cash with Yano. She gives him half.
So they introduce themselves to each other, and Dinky is

(44:49):
a little squirrely, but unlike everyone else, he doesn't react
with horror at Yanosh's face. Instead, he treats him like
a friend, like when Yanosh is like, aren't you afraid
of me? And Dicky says, what your face? Ah, that's nothing,
And they start talking about Janosh's apparent thoughts of jumping
from the wall, and Dinky has has a kind of

(45:11):
casual way of bringing some cheer to the situation. He says,
what do you get out of being dead lying around
in a grave? Ain't my idea of a good time?
And he's a sympathetic ear. Yano starts to tell him
about his troubles. No one will give him work and
no one will look him in the face or talk
to him, And Dinky says like, hey, I'm looking, I'm
looking at you, I'm talking to you. Let me take

(45:33):
you out for a hot meal. So he takes him
to eat and takes him back to the hotel where
he's crashing, and they start to become fast friends.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, Dinky almost has kind of a what a run
and ask Zen quality to him. You know, he lives
very much.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
In the moment, that's right.

Speaker 4 (45:49):
So back at Dinky's place, Dinky's like having a bath
and sermonizing to Yanosh about his life philosophy.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
Oh and by Dinky's place, we mean a hotel room
that they were able to pay for for just one night,
you know, because again, Dinky lives in the moment, is
one night at a time, you know.

Speaker 4 (46:04):
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, So Dinky says, I've been on
my own since I was fifteen. I learned my lesson early.
You got to go for the free rides in this world.
You got to grab everything you can for yourself before
somebody else grabs it first. Only don't get too greedy.
I grabbed one thing too many once and got free
room and board in a reform school. And Yano says,

(46:26):
what you stole, And Dinky says, well, that's what they
called it, And Yano's just like, but Dinky, it is
wrong to steal. You can't do wrong and find happiness
in life. And here there was big like Loupita from
Santa Claus energy.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Yes, absolutely, yeah, yeah. The morality play aspects of this
picture very interesting because it's like the police in this
picture are absolutely good. Criminals can go either way. And
then of course Janosh, at least at this portion, in
this portion of the picture is very much of the
idea that like there is an absolute right and wrong,

(47:03):
there is a firm line between the two, there is
no gray area, and you cannot cross over that line.

Speaker 4 (47:09):
Really, it's funny. Yeah, the cops in the movie are good,
even though I expected them to be crooked. The criminals
are a mix. The really like bad lot are hiring managers.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they cast a bit of
shade too on the guy who dropped the wallet. I
think they were they prefer to him being like a
Wall Street guy or something.

Speaker 3 (47:28):
Right.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
Yeah, Dinky's attitude is like, what is he going to
come back for this money? He's not gonna miss it. Yeah,
But Dinky also explains it's not like he really wants
to be in a life of crime the way he
thinks about it. He says, what do you get out
of going straight? I tried to go straight six or
seven times, but something always went wrong, something always happened.
So we sort of get the picture forming that Dinky

(47:51):
is a small time crook, but he's not really malicious.
He's kind of a sweetheart, and he keeps trying to
set things right. You find out that he's got a
mother living out on a farm in the Midwest, hoping
he'll come home sometime, and he keeps meaning to save
up some money so he can take some money and
go back to her and help her buy a chicken

(48:12):
ranch she's always dreamed of and work on the ranch
with his mom. And it seems it's a really sweet intention,
but he just never manages to get it together, often
because of stuff outside of his control, like he They
never say exactly what it is, but it's implied that
Dinky has some kind of chronic disease that occasionally flares up,
and then he gets sick and asks to go to

(48:32):
the hospital, which in the past has caused him to
lose whatever legitimate job he had at the time. So
then when he gets out of the hospital, he has
to do crime again. Yeah, So they compare their attitudes.
Janosh is now very hopeless and fatalistic about his situation
in life. Dinky is relatively carefree. He says, Yanosh's like,

(48:53):
what's going to happen when we run out of the
money that we got tonight? Dinky's like, eh, you know,
something else always comes along. He mentions that he has
an associate named Jeff. This will be Jeffrey Jeff Jeffries
who is doing a stretch up the river, like doing
time in prison, and when he when he gets out,
he will have plenty of jobs for the both of them. Yanosh,

(49:14):
not fully understanding the criminal implications here, is like, oh, boy, jobs,
and he goes to sleep dreaming that things will turn up.
So Dinky and Janosh who Dinky calls Janosh Johnny. They

(49:38):
go on living in cheaper and cheaper motels. You see
a kind of montage of the four rent signs getting
lower and lower prices, until finally they get thrown out
of a real flea bag and they're living in a junkyard.
And Dinky at this point he's had some kind of
health flare up. He's sick and in need of a doctor.
And here is where the plot takes a turn. Dinky

(49:59):
is supposed to go out on a job tonight, but
he's too sick, and he sends janoshoff to tell his
associates that he's not going to be able to be
there to do the job. Instead of that, Yanosh goes
to his associates and pulls the job off in Dinky stead,
and we learned that the job was straight up crime.
It was cracking into a safe and pulling off a

(50:21):
jewel heist. I think we're to assume, you know, they
talked multiple times before about how Yanosh has skilled hands.
He has mechanical skill with his hands, so I think
we're to assume that these skills transferred, you know, his
watchmaker skills were transferable to opening a locked safe.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Yeah, he's got that eighteen dexterity, so he's able to
get in there and break into some space. But yeah,
we don't see this heist, this, this this safe cracking
scene at all. It's missing, Yeah, scene, absolutely missing it.
I would have loved to have seen it, like I
wanted to. I wanted to see like the gears turning

(50:59):
and Yanosh his head as he realizes like what this
job is, as he you know, actually you know, gets
the determination together to go ahead and pull it off,
like this seems like a great dramatic sequence that I
guess it was just never filmed, And I don't know
what the full story is here. If they never intended to,
it's just that's not the sort of picture it is,

(51:19):
or if it's something they were going to film and
didn't have the funds for, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
Yeah, I don't know. I would have liked to see
it too. But anyway, Yanosh makes so much money from
the job he is able to take Dinky to the
doctor and get medicine to make him better. So Dinky's
recovering now. But while he's he's in bed and Iyanosh
is there by his side. Some tough guys show up
to demand money that Dinky owes them, and they're like, Hey,

(51:44):
this new guy's real good. Let's put him to work.
Just another note, This doesn't feel like a comment on
their character, or at least on an intentional one. But
I should note that the other criminals also do not
seem phased by Janosh's scars the way that like any
buddy who's offering a legitimate job does.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah, this is interesting, isn't it. I hadn't really thought
about this as much. But they they just see the
dollar signs. They're like, Oh, this guy can crack a
safe and in no time. Well, yeah, of course we
want to keep doing business with him. Yeah, but in
ways that other like legitimate businesses, refuse to consider on
all these job interviews he was going for and so forth.

Speaker 4 (52:24):
Anyway, so the path is now on offer. They can
keep lining up more jobs for yanoshan he can make
them all filthy rich. Now Janosh initially does not want this.
He still thinks it is wrong to steal, but Dinky
knows how to make the appeal to him. He's like, Janosh,
I know what you want more than anything else in
the world. You want your face back. And there are

(52:45):
these people out there called I think he calls them
plastic doctors. He's talking about plastic surgeons. He says, if
you have enough money, they can they can give you
your old face back. And Yanosh is entranced.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
By this idea.

Speaker 4 (52:59):
He's like, really, I didn't even know that was possible.
So he says, could they fix my face so that
people can look at me? And Dinky says, all you
need is money, So it's impossible for Janosh to resist. Now,
a new face would be a new life. So he's like, okay,
crime me up, I will do crime.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
This bit of dialogue between Dinky and Janosh, it really
feels like the heart of the picture, And it's the
part of the picture that I feel like gives us
the most to chew on and figuring out what its
message is. You know, this bit where he's saying it's
being done every day. Yeah, all you have to have
is money, you know, buying yourself a new face and
so forth. Yeah, it's a lot to chew on. It's

(53:39):
really it's as if Dinky is really opening Janosh's eyes
to the real American dream, Like, here is the real America,
and this is how you climb here.

Speaker 4 (53:50):
Yeah. So there's a scene where Yanosh goes to visit
the plastic surgeon, but unfortunate once he gets there, the
answer isn't as straightforward as Dinky led him to believe.
It's interesting the surgeon isn't presented as giving him giving
him impossible promises. Instead, the surgeon seems to be fairly

(54:11):
measured in his initial analysis. He's like, well, I'll need
to consult another doctor from the practice and compare notes,
but we think full reconstructive surgery would be expensive and
protracted might not be possible at all. In the meantime,
I can make you a rubber mask of your old
face based on your passport photo, and the mask will

(54:31):
serve until we can, you know, do a full rundown
and see what the prospects for surgery are.

Speaker 3 (54:36):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
So Janosh is like, mask me up. Let's go with
the mask and then I'll come back for that next apployment.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
Yeah, the mask will also be expensive. So Yanosh does
have to do more crimes. So he goes from reluctant
safe cracker to just NonStop crime boss. He not only
it becomes a safe cracker, he takes over the gang
like he all the you know, the tough guys who
were showing up at Dinky's, now they're all working for

(55:02):
Janosh and he pulls off highest after heist, we get
the newspaper headlines, scenes of the police getting chewed out
by their superiors because they can't catch this criminal mastermind.
In fact, it seems like the main detective on the
case is Yanosh's old friend, Lieutenant O'Hara.

Speaker 3 (55:18):
Of course, it is.

Speaker 4 (55:21):
Also somewhere along this process Yanosh ends up not only
with a lot of money, but ends up with an airplane,
or at least flying an airplane, like he They mentioned
multiple times that he goes out flying an airplane.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Yeah, yeah, so's he has become the boss. He's running
this entire operation. And we'll get some more of crime
Boss Janosh. But this is another part of the picture
where it's like I really wanted more. I needed like
another solid twenty minutes of Yanos just being the boss,
you know, enforcing his will, being a little scary with people,

(55:52):
and so forth. We get all that, but you know,
it just leaves you wanting more.

Speaker 4 (55:57):
Now next to I'm sure we're all dying to see
the mass. Well, we do get to see it, and
of course when we finally see it, it is a
bit creepy, because I guess a realistic mask sort of
always is. But I'll also say it's not bad for
a nineteen forties mask, Like I can tell that it
is supposed to be Peter Lourie.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
It looks better than some decapitated head effects I've seen
for sure.

Speaker 4 (56:20):
Yes, And then when he puts it on. You were
talking about this earlier rob so when he puts the
mask on, we go back to the cameras showing Peter
Laurie's face again, but now his skin looks tight and
sort of pinched up and unnatural. I don't know exactly
how they accomplished this effect. I guess it's some kind

(56:41):
of makeup effect, because ironically, the mask we're now seeing
I believe is just Peter Laurie's real face, but with
some makeup and manipulations.

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
Yeah, Like I say, it kind of like smooths him
out a bit more and gives him this slightly uncanny appearance.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
It's like Peter Laurie with an intense face lift.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (57:00):
After this, there's this one sequence where they pull off
some kind of opera robbery I'm not sure I didn't
fully get the details here, but it involves an opera
and then like going to the opera and like looking
at each other during a certain time in the show,
and then we just see like I think an orchestra
conductor tied up and they've got a bunch of money.

Speaker 2 (57:19):
Yeah, I mean, I guess so they didn't have access
to montage technology.

Speaker 3 (57:25):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 4 (57:26):
But anyway, while the gang is counting up all their
money from the opera heist, they are interrupted by a
real nasty customer. Remember old Jeff we heard about earlier,
Jeff Jeffrey. Jeffrey's well, anyway, he's out of prison now,
and he wanders into the gang's counting room with a
gun and insists he's in charge now. Jeff says, we're

(57:46):
gonna live just as swell. Only one thing will change.
We don't need him appointing at yanosh Ooh but then twist,
I didn't see this coming. Peter Lorie like muscles this
much bigger guy. He slaps him around. He's like, I'm
in charge now.

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Yeah, this is great. It's very much like little dog
putting a bigger dog in its place. Sort of energy
here and you know, Laurie brings it like he makes
you believe it, like seconds before it OCCURR. You feel
like something like that is going to have to happen
in order to put Jeff in his place. But if
you're like, I don't know if LORI can do it. No,

(58:21):
he totally did it. He pulled it off.

Speaker 3 (58:22):
I believe it.

Speaker 4 (58:23):
Yeah, And so I think the line he says is
these were your boys, their mine. Now we can all
be friends. If you want to play friendly, it's up
to you. So Jeff cools his attitude and he gets
absorbed into the gang. But you can see in this
scene that he's he's swallowing his pride for the moment,
but it might not be going away. He's he's still

(58:43):
hanging on to a grudge.

Speaker 2 (58:45):
Yeah, so this is this is a great scene. So
this Janosh in his villain era here, it's tremendous.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
So some more plot developments. Janosh goes back to a
follow up appointment with his plastic surgeons, and during this
appointment they explain, you know, after really looking at things,
we cannot, in good conscience recommend an operation to you
because your burns are too extensive, too severe to be repaired.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
They say, you.

Speaker 4 (59:09):
Know, if it's possible at all, it would take like
thirty operations over fifteen years to even really give you
a chance of looking like your old self.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Yeah, we get that great bit of that great line
from Jano. Schrez just repeats that. He just says, fifteen years.
You know, is it really sinks in that this path
that he's chosen for himself, that he's picked up is
a temporary change to get back on track is a
long term track apparently, and potentially the rest of his life.

Speaker 4 (59:38):
Yeah, to him, it means fifteen years of crime.

Speaker 3 (59:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:43):
So Janosh is furious, but on his way out of
the building, he has a chance encounter that will change
his life. Yet again, we keep having these reversals of
fortune here. So he bumps into a woman on the
sidewalk and makes her drop all her things. And this
is the romantic meat cute in the middle of the
film noir about a good man's desperate and hellish descent

(01:00:05):
into crime. It's a strange change of tone, but this
character is the one we mentioned earlier. Helen, played by
Evelyn Keys. Helen is blind and works as a jewelry maker,
stringing necklaces I think she does. She string them for
a department.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
Store, I believe so.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Yeah yeah, and she was transporting project boxes when they
ran into each other on the sidewalk. Helen is friendly
and she's funny and optimistic, and her positivity just cuts
through the gloom of the story like a laser. Janosh
is instinctively rude to her at first because he's feeling
so bad, but he quickly softens and he helps her

(01:00:44):
pick up her things. And in this scene, I don't
know if you noticed the same thing, Rob, but you
can hear in Peter Lourie's vocal performance his voice changes
as as he became the crime boss. His voice changed
to become very tight and gruff. That uses this tight,
gruff voice with his gangster accomplices, but when he talks

(01:01:07):
to Helen, he quickly starts to sound more like he
did at the beginning of the movie when he first
arrived in America, with a softer, higher pitched voice.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Yeah yeah, yeah. It reawakens the old Janos share.

Speaker 4 (01:01:20):
So Yanosh offers to walk with her and carry her things,
and she accepts, and so they go back to her
apartment and they get to know one another. Helen talks
about how she enjoys living independently. She likes keeping up
her apartment and listening to music on the radio from
the neighbor's next door, and she's so charming it is
easy to see why Janosh's crime boss heart is melting.

(01:01:43):
Will probably come as no shock that this is the
beginning of a romance story. He asks if he can
come back and visit her sometime, and she says she'd
like that. So the two of them get to know
each other, they become friends. The love story blossoms. They
spend lots of time together and one day they go
out walking in the country among the oak trees. Here,
Helen gives this monologue sort of sharing her perspective on life.

(01:02:07):
Why she's so optimistic and has such a sense of
good humor about everything, And she explains from her point
of view, being blind, she's able to find beauty in
things more easily, So she says, like, you know, when
I feel the fur, even of a scrawny alley cat,
I can imagine it's the most regal beast. Or just

(01:02:27):
by putting one fresh flower in a jar in my apartment,
I feel like I'm living in a spring meadow. And
this already kind of interfaces with stuff she said earlier
about how much pleasure she gets in listening to the radio.

Speaker 3 (01:02:39):
Yano.

Speaker 4 (01:02:39):
She gave her her own radio as a gift sometime earlier,
and she loves the music, of course, but she even
finds pleasure in the advertisements, like even if she's not
interested in the product they're selling, she just likes listening
to the enthusiastic appeals of friendly strangers.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
Yeah, and she likes her work. It's mentioned in one
of these bits from her talks about like she enjoys
listening to the radio and beating you.

Speaker 4 (01:03:02):
Know, yeah, Yano. She's so taken with her way of
seeing the good and everything. And he says he wishes
he could see the world the way she does, he
would imagine himself as a noble king. But she's like, dude,
you are a king. You are unselfish and thoughtful, and
that's the most noble thing of all. And during the scene,
Yanosh breaks down, he starts to cry, and he says

(01:03:26):
that if she were able to see his burned face,
the face behind the mask, the title of the film,
she would run away and terror like everybody else.

Speaker 3 (01:03:34):
But she rejects this.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
She wants to know what he's been hiding, what's troubling him,
and invites him to tell his story.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
So he does.

Speaker 4 (01:03:42):
He relents, and he tells her his whole history, everything
that happened, though he tells her off screen, as many
pivotal scenes they do take place off screen. Though I
guess this is a common This is a fair thing.
We don't want to see a character recap the entire
film so far, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
But there would have been some really emotional moments in
that we miss out on. But we know what's going
to happen. She is going to accept him for who
he is, and she sees the true face behind the mask.
She sees his heart.

Speaker 4 (01:04:12):
That's right, and I guess that's the play on the title.
There are two different kinds of face behind the mask.
When Yanosh thinks of the face behind the mask, he
thinks of his scars, his physical face, and when she
thinks of it, she thinks of the real hymn, his
good heart.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:04:34):
So Yanosh's conscience is now awakened again by his love
for Helen, and he goes back to his gang and
is like, boys, I'm out, I'm going to clean my
whole act up and he is out of the life
of crime for good.

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):
This always works. You can always walk away from a
life of crime. We know that from so many pictures.

Speaker 4 (01:04:52):
Well it's funny because he tries to tell Jeff, like, hey,
you're going to get what you always wanted. Now the
boys are yours again. You're in charge now. But you
get the sense that Jeff maybe has enjoyed coasting on
Yanosh's crime skills and just sniping from the sidelines. Now
that he's in charge, he's mad.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:11):
I mean, now Jeff will have to deliver as the
boss of this crew that has become accustomed to a
higher level of success. So, yeah, good luck, Jeff. Let's
see how this works out for you.

Speaker 3 (01:05:24):
It's what he wanted.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
But now that he has it, he's not happy. He's
just doing but he can't stop Yanosh from leaving. Yanosh
has a house out in the country and he plans
to move there with Helen. Yanosh gives his new address
to Dinky in secret and says, if you ever you know,
you ever need me, you ever want to get out
of the life, look me up here. So Yanosh and
Helen make their plans. They pack things up. They make

(01:05:47):
plans to move out to a house with green shutters.
They talk about this detail and Yanosh oh, he buys
a secondhand car, one with a radio because he knows
Helen likes to listen to the radio so much much. Meanwhile,
at crime headquarters, Jeff is stewing again. He got what
he wanted, but he's still angry. He starts digging around

(01:06:08):
through Yanosh's old things and he finds something curious. He
finds the business card of a police detective. This is
the card that O'Hara left for Yanosh in the hospital
way back when. But not understanding what it is, Jeff
jumps to a conclusion, and that conclusion is Yanosh wanted
out of the business because he is ratting the gang

(01:06:29):
out to the cops. And Jeff says, I figured it out.
We got to get revenge against Janosh.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
Again, the cryptic nature of that original scrawl message, now
out of context, is interpreted to me, oh, Yanosh is
in a league with the police.

Speaker 4 (01:06:46):
That's right. And here's where the potential happy ending turns
to tragedy, as it must in a movie like this.
Jeff and the gang find Dinky and they torture him
for information about where to find Yanosh. Finally they retned
to burn his feet in the fireplace, and he tells
where yan oshan Helen are hiding. So the next day

(01:07:06):
yan Oshan Helen and an adorable scruffy dog by the way,
really old dog, big cute dog. They move out to
their house in the country you never you know, and
they like settle in and everything's so happy. You never
want to be a movie character saying it's all so
perfect unless you're in the last like two minutes of
the film and I say, we have another fifteen twenty

(01:07:28):
to go here.

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):
Uh oh, not good.

Speaker 2 (01:07:32):
But yeah, they seem like this seems to be the dream, right,
the dog, the house. There's a scene though, where Janosh
tells Helen that she doesn't have to do her bead
work anymore because she'll have this house to run, And
part of me was kind of like, yeah, I know.
She she had this whole bit where she talked about
how much joy she derived.

Speaker 3 (01:07:48):
From her work, but I likes it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
It's a nineteen forty one film, it's supposed to be
well intended by it. But yeah, I think she can
still do her beadwork.

Speaker 4 (01:07:58):
So everything is beautiful and till knock on the door
and it's Jeff. Jeff arrives and he makes menacing comments
to Yanosh. They have a confrontation, but it does not
escalate to violence.

Speaker 3 (01:08:11):
He leaves.

Speaker 4 (01:08:11):
He says like, I won't even waste a bullet on you.
But when he gets back to the car, when Jeff
gets back to the car with his boys, they revealed
that they had planted a bomb in Yanosh's car. It's
wired to the radio. And then the gangsters are driving
away and they conclude that they're done with Dinky, so
they throw him out of the moving car onto the highway.
It's unclear if they thought they had killed him or

(01:08:33):
if they meant to leave him alive. I wasn't sure
there did.

Speaker 3 (01:08:36):
They shoot him first in the back.

Speaker 4 (01:08:38):
Think so to hear like a you don't see a gun,
but you hear a gun sound effect. And then they
throw him out of the side of the car. But
Dinky manages, despite his injuries, to get to a nearby
service station and place a phone call. And then the
logistics of this climax scene get really complicated. Dinky calls
a neighbor of Janosh's. I guess Janosh and Helen don't

(01:09:00):
have a phone yet. He calls the neighbor. The neighbor
cranks his car up, drives to Yanosh's house, picks up
Yanosh drives him back to his house to take Dinky's call,
only for the call to be like, don't start your car, Yano,
she don't use your radio, And unfortunately it's a Godfather scenario,
you know, it's Apollonia in Sicily. Yanosh rushes back home

(01:09:23):
to stop Helen from using the car. But Helen, she's
been loading things into the car. She wants to listen
to the radio. She turns it on and there's a
terrible explosion and she dies. So it's incredibly sad.

Speaker 2 (01:09:36):
And the dog dies too, Like that makes it even
more heartbreaking, obviously, because she's in the car with the
dog and she's like, all right, scruffy, let's turn on
the radio. I love listening to the radio. And yeah, explosion.

Speaker 4 (01:09:48):
So now Yanosh's only hope of love and happiness is gone,
and he decides there is only one thing left for him,
and it is revenge. This leads to the final sequence
of the movie, which is the airplane revenge plot. So
Jeff and the gang have plans to fly an airplane
somewhere for some are they doing Are they trying to

(01:10:10):
get to a job or are they trying to do
it get away.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
I thought it was more of a getaway, like we
got to flee to Mexico. Boys, that's the desert. But
I mean they probably have some jobs lined up there.
They got to keep working, gotta stay busy.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
Yeah, I didn't remember. But they're in a plane for
some reason. And Yanosh, remember he's a pilot, he can
fly a plane. He impersonates the pilot and he takes
the role flying the plane that all the gang is
in except Dinky. Dinky's left behind, but all the bad
guys in the gang they're in the plane and he
flies them out to the middle of nowhere in the desert,
landing the plane when it has no fuel left, and

(01:10:45):
then he explains to them their predicament. He's like, there's
no fuel, there's nowhere to go. I just want you
to know I have my revenge.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
And I believe they actually filmed the sequence out in
the Arizona desert, so this is like real desert. I
think we get some stuff. Footage is some desert from
when they're flying around. But then yeah, we're out here
on the sands.

Speaker 4 (01:11:04):
So the gang is furious, but they have nothing to do,
you know, they can't get out of the situation. So
they tie Yanosh to the plane. They start exploring in
different directions, but they just get you know, beaten down
by the sun. They find no not a hint of
civilization anywhere nearby. They start fighting over water rations, turning
on each other, shooting at each other, and it's a

(01:11:26):
real desperate scene. Now, finally, there's a thing we established earlier,
which is that Yanosh sent a note to O'Hara, to
the police, to his old friend saying, hey, if you
want to find the gang who's been doing these robberies,
come to this place in the middle of the desert.
Here are the coordinates at this time on this day.

(01:11:47):
And so the police take them up on that. I
guess they're like, surely, yeah, let's believe this anonymous tip.
So they arrived by plane several days later, finding all
of the gang and Yanosh dead. And when they find
to Jeff in the desert, collapsed in the sand, they
observed that he was trying to escape, but they say
he just kept walking in one big circle. It seems

(01:12:09):
thematically loaded.

Speaker 3 (01:12:11):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
And leading up to this moment we get some great
desert sand and hour glass imagery which I also really
like tickets a little artsy here.

Speaker 4 (01:12:21):
Yeah. So when O'Hara finds Janosh's body, there's a note
waiting for him, explaining, explaining who he is, and saying like, hey,
remember me when we first met, you were kind to me.
Wanted to thank you that for that, and also to
repay you the five dollars that I owe you. And
you know, however long ago that was. I don't know
if they make explicit how long how much time has

(01:12:43):
passed in between. But O'Hara is reminded and he it says, you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Were kind to me.

Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
These men here they were not, And he says, I
have forgotten either, And so the music swells on a
scene of the men standing in the shadow of the
airplane in the middle of the desert, and it's a
it's a very bleak ending, though there is one happy
element to it, which is that I don't remember if
if we get an indication whether Dinky survives in the

(01:13:10):
end or not, but he does. Janosh does have a
big pot of money and he oh no, wait, no,
there's reward money for the capture of the gang.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
He arranged it to go to Dinky's mother.

Speaker 4 (01:13:21):
That's right, Yes, so he has the reward money sent
to Dinky's mother.

Speaker 2 (01:13:26):
Yeah, so there is this sense and I'm gonna take it.
I'm gonna assume it works out that Dinky's mom is
going to get to fix up the chicken farm. Dinky
gets to go out there and settle down, support his mother,
live there, and in his own way, live happily.

Speaker 3 (01:13:41):
Ever after.

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
You got to take your victories where you can find him.

Speaker 4 (01:13:43):
Yes, no, that's that's there is a glimmer of happiness
in this mostly bleak ending.

Speaker 2 (01:13:48):
Yeah so yeah, that's the face behind the mask. You know,
it's a in a Columbia Pictures B movie, but it
has a has a great look, has some very nice
performances in it, great Peter Loriie performance at the center
of everything obviously, and you know it it's it's very
much you know, it's very much on the rails, and

(01:14:10):
like I say, it's a short run time, but it
does give you some stuff to chew on it. It does,
in its own way, examine some fairly complex issues and
you know, morality and and and ambition and and even
the American dreams. So it's it's a much better film
than I was anticipating. Like I was, I was expecting

(01:14:31):
something that was just going to mostly be centered in
the Lori performance, you know, where I might just be
appreciating it for its own sake. Is this is sometimes
the case with great character actors. You know, like sometimes
it's just a gym in the rough, and you appreciate
that gym for what it is. But I think as
a whole, the picture's quite good.

Speaker 3 (01:14:49):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 4 (01:14:50):
Can I actually revise my judgment about something we said earlier?
We said we said that the movie is not subtle,
and I think that that's true about a lot of
things about it, but there are elements that are subtle.
I think actually what I would say is that some
things about it are incredibly unsubtle, Like it has very
overt themes and very overt use of the tools of

(01:15:15):
cinema music and you know, and you know, heavy like
visual foreshadowing and things like that. Some of that stuff
is not subtle. But there is also some subtle stuff
that you know, you get by implication. The death of
Jeff at the end, you know, walking around in circles.
They don't state that connection to the themes too overtly.

(01:15:35):
And also some things about Peter Lourie's performance, Like in
some scenes he is just very overtly like stating his
emotions and motivations and performing them very forcefully. But in
other scenes, I think there is some subtlety. There's some
subtlety about like exactly what is so beautiful to him
about about Helen's attitude. You know, that's not all stated explicitly,

(01:15:59):
like he mentions her optimism, but the the stuff about
like the way that she finds the best in everything
that seems to kind of like remind him of his
earlier self, but like he never says that explicitly, So
I don't know, I think there's some good subtle stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Actually, this is interesting because we might in a way
be getting back into the idea of what is noir,
you know, And you know, you think about these black
and white pictures with you know, deep midnight blacks and
you know, contrasted by the white, and you know, we
think about like you know, good and evil, but then
all of these like areas of ambiguity in between, even

(01:16:34):
though you know, obviously noir pictures often also play with
severe absolutes as well.

Speaker 4 (01:16:40):
Yeah, some stuff is very heavy handed and some stuff
is more subtle. In fact, I wonder to over extend
the metaphor perhaps I wonder if you could almost think
of this as kind of like a stage magician, that
a stage magician is going to be through misdirection, being
very flamboyant with what they do with one hand in
order to you know, sort of keep your attention off

(01:17:02):
of what they're doing with the other hand. Could that
could that be the case with some noir storytelling like
we see here, that it makes the subtle elements all
the more the more emotionally resonant, that they're kind of
hidden by this heavy handed, overt storytelling style in some
of the other choices.

Speaker 2 (01:17:21):
Yeah, I think that's a pretty solid way to look
at it, And obviously we'd love to hear what listeners
have to say about all of this. You know, think
about it in terms of your favorite noir pictures, be
it you know, old timey noir or neo noir, you know,
the various noir elements that you'll find in various works
of science fiction, anime, and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
Right, in.

Speaker 2 (01:17:41):
We'd love to have that discussion with you and think
about it as we proceed through the month of November.
Is there another noir or neo noir picture you would
like for us to consider on Weird House Cinema, you know,
in the future, right in and let us know. For instance,
I was my backup for this one was going to
be a Cohen Brother's picture, And at some point I

(01:18:02):
think I would like to come back and do a
Cohen Brothers picture on some of my favorite filmmakers, and
a number of those films are very close to my heart.

Speaker 4 (01:18:11):
Oh, I think I know exactly what movie you have
in mind. Yeah, or we could come back to the
Cohen Brothers in a number of ways. Actually, oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Just a reminder to everybody that Stuff to Blow your
Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core
episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film here on Weird House Cinema. And if you want
to see a full list of the films we've covered
over the years, and sometimes a peek ahead what's coming
up next, go to Letterbox Dot com look for our
username there it is weird House and you'll find that list. Likewise,

(01:18:42):
if you're on Instagram, follow us at STBYM podcast. That's
another way to keep up with what we're doing in
the Stuff to Blow Your Mind feed in general, be
it Core episodes or Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 4 (01:18:52):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, JJ Posway.
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 1 (01:19:13):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.