Weirdhouse Cinema: The Magic Sword

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe return to the filmography of Bert I. Gordon with his 1962 fantasy adventure “The Magic Sword,” starring Basil Rathbone, Estille Winwood and Gary Lockwood. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema,
we're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty two
fantasy adventure The Magic Sword starring Basil Rathbone, directed by
bert I. Gordon, the director of another film we've covered
on Weird House Cinema at least one other. Gordon was

(00:36):
the director of Attack of the Puppet People. Also known
as Mister Big Big his initials, he was well known
for shrinking and blowing up things in his movies, either
making little things big or making big things little, and
we get some of both in this one.

Speaker 2 (00:55):
That's right. One of the things about The Magic Sword
from nineteen sixty two is that it is a special
effects spectacular. You're gonna there's so many special effects coming
at you, some of them very noticeable and and others
you can easily take for granted, especially today, where you
know various things like, for instance, the magic mirror that

(01:17):
we see in the movie. You know, it's an impressive
special effect, and it's it's one of just many, many
special effects that are used to create this magical world
of love and happiness, but also horror and mutilation.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Now, Bert Eye Gordon was well known for making sort
of low budget, B grade movies, movies that a lot
of people would would call hack but or in many
ways quite enjoyable. You know, the King Dinosaur and stuff
like that, movies that ended up on Mystery Science Theater
three thousand.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
As did this one.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
I've actually never seen that episode, but this, from what
I understand, is widely regarded as one of his best movies,
and I can see why it it has it still
has some of the hallmarks of his other stuff. Like
it has some i would say, texturally or tonally inappropriate
special effects that actually do look pretty good, but they

(02:12):
don't fit the vibe of the movie. Like the movie
is ostensibly, you know, sort of a fun, magical adventure
almost maybe aimed at a younger audience, aimed at kids,
but it also has just absolutely unnerving, almost perverse gore
in it.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, I would compare it in a way to Peter
Jackson's King Kong in that respect. You know, moving made
by you know, a consumant pro somebody that also had
a great lot of experience with the special effects creating
a film that is aimed at a very wide audience,
very mainstream audience, but ends having some moments of just

(02:50):
extreme horror or well, I don't know. In the case
of The Magic Sword, it might be a bit much
to say extreme horror, but still are that does seem
maybe a little out of pace with the rest of
the picture, and seems to have been out of pace
at the time. I mean, there were some seemingly strong
reactions to this. I was reading that upon initial release
the British Film Board gave it an X rating. They right, No,

(03:13):
you were not having any of this. And later, you know,
some things get adjusted and it comes out.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
It's kind of like if you imagine Disney's The Sword
and the Stone, but if it included a lot of
close ups of nights being melted by acid and radiation.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, And in that, you know, radiation
is a hallmark of other bird Eye Gordon pictures and
that element is at least visually present in this that
nobody's calling it radiation.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
But another one of the things that I would single
out this movie for is it has some deliciously hammy
performances especially the ones from Estelle Wyndwood and Basil Rathbone
as the two main sorcerers in the movie, they are
hamming it up. It's some all time ham here.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, a lot of other bird Eye Gordon films don't
necessarily have as strong of human performances, and this is
a film that really has the human special effects at
least in a couple of roles to match up with
the the the actual special effects. So yeah, I think
it is a really solid, enjoyable picture, and yeah, it

(04:22):
is often sided just one of Burnye Gordon's best.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Now, I'm trying to think, have we done another high
fantasy movie on weird house with like knights and wizards
and stuff like that is the closest we've come to that, Krull.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Oh, well, I mean we did Crawl. I mean you
you could. You could also think of another sword. You
can think of a thrilling, bloody sword, though that's a
little bit different. We of course did Conquest, uh so uh,
and I imagine I'm forgetting one or two. But you know,
we do touch in on the the epic fantasy of
different shades now and again.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
Yeah, that's a I guess all of those have elements
of this, so so I would say all of the
weird grotesque texture aside, which makes this movie wonderful. Just
in terms of straight plot content, this is the most
down the middle high fantasy we've done, and.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yet there are a number of just real bonkers elements
to it that are going to be fun to get into,
like just in terms of like, yeah, like the textures
are all sort of traditional mainstream fantasy, but some of
the things that the screenplay does with it I ended
up really admiring. All right, So what would your elevator
pitch be for the magic sword?

Speaker 3 (05:29):
Oh? Can I not do sword in the stone? But
with radiation melting? I guess we already said that. Let's see, that's.

Speaker 2 (05:34):
Olid, we can stick with it, stick with what works.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Let me try another one. Let's say George A an
adventurous young lad of only twenty years old fus It's
debatable in the movie whether he is supposed to be
understood as a child or not. At the age of twenty,
he falls in love with the princess without ever having
met her. He just like observes her through magical TVs

(05:58):
of various sorts. Then she is kidnapped by a wizard
and he must come to her rescue and brave seven
perils and curses along the way, and it's gonna be gross.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
The curses are all amazing. The titular magic sword is
probably the fakest looking thing in the whole picture. Yeah,
so it is kind of weird that, like, that's the
selling point. And the poster says the most incredible weapon
ever wielded.

Speaker 3 (06:23):
So funny because yeah, it does not look incredible. It's
one of the least good props and effects in the movie.
It looks very flimsy, very plastic. It's the sword is
kind of lame.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Its special power is set manipulation, and it fails halfway
through the picture.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Yeah, yeah, that is funny. It has the power to
open doors. Wow. But you know what I do like.
I like a version of the sword that completely misrepresents
what it's like in the movie. The I think it's
either the Italian or the Spanish poster for the movie
La Spada Magica that makes the sword look really cool.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Oh yeah, it's glowing. I don't think it ever really
glows like this. And you also have a great image,
a great drawing of Basil Rathbone has Lodak in the background,
looming large.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
All right, should we do some trailer audio.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Let's do that trailer audio.

Speaker 4 (07:22):
I am Sir George, possessor of a magic saw, my his powers.
I will lead you on the sun great adventure.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
Each one might hear the leon.

Speaker 4 (07:35):
Together we will go where no man has ever gone,
into the land of terror itself, where the superman of
evil is king. Let no man race my seven cousins
and reached the dragons. Together we will dare the demon

(08:00):
of the green Flame. See the white hot face of
the fiery rock. Enter the mammoth cave that closes behind you,
where humans are trapped and tombed. Brave the volcanic inferno
of the boiling crater. See the miracle of the magic Sword.

(08:24):
Battle the gigantic ogre.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Ah.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
You will be thrilled to the hill by the magic sword.
None like it since the world began two thousand year
old legend Hollywood waited until now to tell the Magic Sword.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
All right, So you might be wondering at this point, well,
where can I watch the magic Sword? Well, it is,
at first glance, widely available. You know you can. You
can find the mst through K version. I think Riff
Tracks did a version of it. You know, usual caveats
on on riff content. You know, it's like it can
be a lot of fun and so forth, but you're
are going to lose some scenes, especially in the MST

(09:21):
three K episodes. And I have to say, even though
this one looks like it's streaming everywhere, I initially like
marked it to stream on a on a prime channel.
I went and queued it up, started watching it terrible quality.
I ended up having to watch it kind of like
last minute. I found a YouTube stream that was in

(09:43):
higher death and so I have to say my main
recommendation for watching The Magic Sword is make sure you
watch it in as good a quality as possible, because again,
this is a special effects film, and if you watch
it in high depth, it looks really nice, has some
wonderful colors and textures to it, and that's just lost
in the grated version. I would recommend grabbing it on
physical media. Kale Studio Classics put it out on Blu Ray.

(10:07):
I think that's probably the way to watch it. If
you can find an official stream that's good quality, great,
but it looks like a lot of them are not.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Yeah, I agree, there are a lot of kreuddy rips
out there.

Speaker 2 (10:18):
All right, Well, let's get into the cast and crew here,
or some of the highlights of the cast and crew.
As usual, we can't highlight everybody that made the picture happen,
but yeah, starting at the top, Bird Eye Gordon, director, producer,
story credit, special visual effects, along with his wife, I believe,
and he lived nineteen twenty two through twenty twenty three,

(10:38):
the legendary mister Big, as we've been saying, an icon
of nineteen fifties B cinema. His earliest credit is producer
on fifty four Serpent Island, and he moved on into
the director's chair and the writing chair with his follow up,
fifty five's King Dinosaur. We talked about him a greater
length than our episode on the fifty eight film Attack
of the Puppet People. Other films of note include the

(10:59):
amazing Collossal Man from nineteen fifty seven that I think
we absolutely will do if we get a proper release
of it and I can watch it in decent quality
Earth Versus a Spider from fifty eight, Village of the
Giants from sixty five, an Empire of the Ants from
seventy seven.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
Did we ever figure out what's going on with the
rights to Amazing Colossal Man, Like why is there not
a good Blu Ray of that?

Speaker 2 (11:20):
I don't know the answer I checked in. I haven't
checked in recently on it either, so it's entirely possible
something's been announced and I haven't missed it. I try
and pay attention to the various channels and so forth
that would announce this sort of thing, but sometimes it
slips through. I have no idea, Like Amazing Colossal Man
is such a tremendously fun movie that it needs to

(11:42):
have a proper Blu Ray release, and I don't know
what's holding that back. Far lesser films are getting elaborate
Blu Ray releases.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Agreed, And I do want to emphasize again I sort
of said this up top, but despite Bird Eye Gordon's
reputation and the dullness of some of his other movies,
this one is I would say this is a well
made film like it just it's got energy. It just
zips right along, and it's fun even if you're not
in it. For the weirdness of the texture is the

(12:10):
way that we are. I think you're probably not going
to be bored by this one.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Yeah, the plot moves right along, and yeah, we have
to give credit. Screenplay credit to Bernard see Schoenfeld, who
lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen ninety American screenwriter. His
first screen credit state back to nineteen forty four's Phantom Lady.
His other credits include fifty eight The Space Children. That
was one directed by Jack Arnold, who've talked about on
the show before, and he did a lot of TV work,

(12:36):
including sixteen episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and one episode
of The twilight Zone from Agnes with Love about a
computer technician who begins to take advice from a computer
that he has fallen in love with.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Wait, is that the original Twilight Zone? Oh that's original?

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, yeah, I should stress that because I know there
have been like thirty or four different iterations of the
twilight Zone at this point. This was original Twilight Zone
and also original Alphad Hitchcock Presents, because there were at
least two different versions of that as well.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
I guess I didn't realize they were doing fall in
love with the computer stories back then.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean the various sci fi writers
and horror writers of the time, like a lot of
that stuff was. It still holds up today, at least
from a plot and script standpoint. Yeah, so yeah, on
the whole, I love the weird energy and the interwoven
schemes in this picture. We'll get into all that again.

(13:32):
It depends on a lot of the textures of traditional
old timey fantasy films and likely swashbuckling fantasies as well.
But I'm just not that up on But the plotting
feels pretty fresh and at times really bonkers.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
It does bring just like warm jets of zaniness that
just keep coming in anew. There are multiple things in
the movie that, you know, I almost kind of wonder
if they were actually in the script, or if it
was in the original draft of the script, or if
it was just like bird Eye Gordon Floor Gordon saying
we can do this kind of effect. What if we

(14:05):
had some people trapped in a tiny cage, you know,
what if we had this or that and they just
wanted to show it to you.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
So here it is. Yeah, and this is the guy
who figured out how to weave all that together into
a coherent plot, because yeah, it has like all of
these things, like it seems like he maybe had a
checklist to work with.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Yeah, yeah, we've already done the attack of the puppet people.
Let's just put some puppet people in.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
There, people giants of some sort. Yeah, all right, let's
get into the cast here. As we mentioned, oh, we
have the wonderful Basil Rathbone in this playing the evil
and vain wizard Lodac. We talked about Rathbone before. He
lived eighteen ninety two through nineteen sixty seven, South African

(14:48):
born English actor with a very long history on stage
and screen. He popped up in sixty six is Queen
of Blood, but I have to say, yeah, yeah, he
was in it, but very forgettable because he It's difficult
to compare that Basil Rathbone to this Basil Rathbone because
we get like full powered, you know, hamming it up

(15:09):
Basil Rathbone in this picture, and what we saw in
Queen of Blood was a lot more subdued.

Speaker 3 (15:14):
I truly did not remember he was in that. I
remember Dennis Hopper more than him.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
Yeah, yeah, I don't think rath I think ratt was
one of those pictures where Rathbone did his stuff in
like one or two days. He's just an ultimately very
small role in the picture. But in this, I mean
he's in almost every scene.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
He's in some scenes he's not in in this.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, yeah, his energy resonates through the picture. But yeah,
I'm not going to get in all the details, but yeah.
He started appearing in films during the early twenties, often
in Swashbuckler's always you know, Buckling that swash. He stayed
active on stage, won a Tony Award in nineteen forty eight,
and he was nominated for two Oscars I Believe nineteen

(15:54):
thirty nine's If I Were King and a nineteen thirty
seven adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. He also had a
big footprint in horror and detective series. He played Sherlock
Holmes multiple times, and he played Baron von Wolf in
nineteen thirty nine Son of Frankenstein, the third Universal Frankenstein film,
with Carloff and Bella Legosi.

Speaker 3 (16:13):
I feel like Rathbone was sort of on the second
tier of the great horror stars. If you have like
Karloff and Legosi at the very top, that the level
under that is where Rathbone hangs out.

Speaker 2 (16:25):
Yeah. So yeah, tremendous talent, and again we get to
see him firing on all cylinders in this picture. Very
energetic performance, just captivating. And also, you know something that
I think is always admirable when you have an actor
of this caliber is that he does seem to bring
a little extra out of the other players in their
shared scenes.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, in every scene he's in, it feels
like the other actors are having fun with him.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Absolutely, And I would say some of the most fun
we have is when you have has interactions with our
next actor, and that's Estelle Wynwood, who plays Sybil, the
which foster mother of our hero, Sir George.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
She has her own kind of excellent handiness. So Rathbones
Hamminess is, Yeah, like you said, he's this arrogant, vain,
you know, pompous wizard who's who's just like can't stand
to have his ego pricked. Meanwhile, Stelle Winwood's sorceress is

(17:24):
she's like very checked out. She's almost like half of
her brain is not on this plane of existence.

Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah. Well, she's been raising this twenty year old boy
all by herself, and she doesn't get a lot of
help from the chimpanzee or the the conjoining twins or
two headed I'm not sure exactly what's going on with
that character. But these these folks are not helping her
out a lot around the house. And clearly, as we'll

(17:51):
discuss Sir George, it's is a lot to handle. And yeah,
so she she can't have she doesn't have her head
in her scheme all the time. And it's you know,
it's also established early on, like she's not the best
witch or wizard in the world. You know, Lodak is
a towering figure and she rates you know, a good

(18:12):
bit down the list. But still she's a good witch ultimately.
But she's not afraid to get her hands a little.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
Dirty, that's right. Well, unlike Lodak, she has the power
of love in her corner.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
That's right. So. Stelle Winwood lived eighteen eighty three through
nineteen eighty four English actress of stage, screen and TV,
who had a very long and celebrated history career here
in the US. She made her Broadway debut in nineteen sixteen.
In her first film roles in the early nineteen thirties,
but some of her biggest, most memorable films were from

(18:43):
the fifties and sixties, including nineteen fifty nine's Darby O'Gill
and the Little People. She plays the mom of the
town bully pony, who of course gets into at least
a couple of punch ups with Sean Connery. I've never
seen that. It's it's tremendous fun. I mean, Stell was
great in it, and then everyone else is great, and

(19:04):
it's it's just a really fun, you know, old timey
Irish fantasy film.

Speaker 3 (19:09):
You've brought it up before as the I think in
the context of being a pre Bond Sean Connery.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, yeah, I highly recommend it. It's great Saint Patrick's
Day viewing in my opinion, or at least you know,
I grew up watching it on Saint Patrick's.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
Day anyway, Okay, I'll have to see it sometime.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
But Winwood was also in nineteen sixty four's Dead Ringer,
sixty seven's Camelot as well as the producers both two
huge films in sixty seven, and her final film role
was in nineteen seventy six, is Murdered by Death. Like
I said, when it comes down to interactions between Sybil
and Lodac, they're so much fun. Even when they're not
actually in the same space at the same time. They

(19:46):
have a wonderfully spicy interaction just via closed circuit magic
mirror at one point.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Yeah, exactly, despite the fact that, I mean, this is
a silly movie and it's hard to get too wrapped
up in the you know, in the battle of good
and evil in the plot here. But nevertheless, I did
find her defeat of Lodak at the end of the
movie very satisfying.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Yes, absolutely, all right, let's move on to Sir George,
who again Sybil has been raising as her foster son,
played by Gary Lockwood born nineteen thirty seven. Former stuntman
and stand in for Anthony Perkins. He's probably best remembered

(20:32):
as doctor Frank Poole in nineteen sixty eight two thousand
and one A Space Odyssey. You know, we've talked before
about actors from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey
kind of like classing up the joint in pictures. We
talked about that in Gorgo right. I don't know, I
don't quite get the same effect with Lockwood's presence here.
This one man he plays he plays a real goober,

(20:55):
a lovable goober, and a young boy of twenty He
was actually I think twenty four to twenty five filmed old. Yeah,
and then there are other weird We'll get into some
of the other weird aspects about his character. What sort
of home environment he has here in this Witch's Layer.

Speaker 3 (21:11):
I mean, it's weird, but it's kind of sweet.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah, yeah, he's sweet. He's sweet anyway. Lockwood had a
memorable guest role in the third episode of Star Trek,
the original Star Trek, the episode where No Man Has
Gone Before from nineteen sixty six. I believe he's a
crew member who gets possessed by an alien force. His
other credits include sixty one Splendor in the Grass, the
nineteen sixty three Elvis movie It Happened at the World's Fair,

(21:37):
nineteen sixty nine's Model Shop, in nineteen ninety five's Night
of the Scarecrow, also in the nineteen sixty one Elvis
movie Wild in the Country.

Speaker 3 (21:46):
Wait, what happened at the World's Fair?

Speaker 4 (21:48):
It?

Speaker 3 (21:50):
What was it?

Speaker 2 (21:51):
I don't know, you know. I meant to reach out
to my aunt to who's an expert on all these
Elvis movies, and ask her about these two and find
out if these are good ones or not. I had
not heard of either of them, but I didn't get
the chance to reach out to her, So I have
to pick up the thread on that in listener mail.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
I'm just gonna choose to believe the Elvis movie It
Happened at the World's Fair is about the HH Holmes murders.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, I'm sure that's it. All right, we have we've
been talking about Sir George. Of course he's gonna he's
fallen in love with the princess. The princess is Princess Elaine,
played by Anne Hilm born nineteen thirty eight. Her biggest
film was probably the nineteen sixty two Elvis movie again,
follow that Dream, And I cannot tell you what the

(22:33):
dream in question is, but this is a movie about
following it. She's also in the nineteen sixty nine horror
film Nightmare in Wax, starring Cameron Mitchell as the mad
wax Master. This one I have seen. This is how
my movie viewing history tends to go.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
I think we talked about this one in our episode
on wax. Well, we did an episode on like the
science of wax, but then also talked about wax horror movies.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
Yeah, this is one that fels very grimy and sweaty.
I remember a lot of close ups of Cameron Mitchell's
face looking kind of sweaty.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
He's got an eye patch in it.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah, this is the one where he has an eye patch.
Not the best Wax movie, but still very much an
important entry in the wax Master franchise.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
It's hard to beat Vincent Price's House of Wax.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, that's the absolute best.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Now, maybe we should save this for later, but I
just want to say it now so I don't forget.
I feel like we should do a compare and contrast
on Vincent Price versus Basil Wrathbone, because I feel like
they have a lot of qualities but also some hard
to define differences that are nevertheless important.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Hmmm, well, yeah, I feel like Vincent Price was better
at conveying kind of like the the internal mechanisms of
his scheming, you know, whereas wrath Bone, especially in this
there is a sense that he's he's not considering you
much at all. Like his enemies, He's very dismissive of

(24:03):
their abilities, you know. That's his level of vanity and arrogance,
at least as he plays it up in this character.
And I feel like in you know, certainly Vincent Price
could play some vain and evil characters but there was
always a sense that no, he wasn't he wasn't underestimating
you per se. He was thinking long and hard about
your various strengths and weaknesses.

Speaker 3 (24:25):
I think that's right. Yeah, that's very astute. I would
say if Vincent Price had been in this role, I
think you would have played it a little bit colder
and would you would have seen him taking the stock
of George and his allies more than just kind of,
you know, batting at them like a gnat that's bothering him.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
Yeah, he would have seen Sybil as more of a
rival and not as an ant. He seems to see
everyone as just mere pieces on the chessboard.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Oh but hey, Basil Rathbone is not the only bad
guy in this movie. We actually get multiple Hammi villains.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
That's right. We have Sir Brandon, who is a romantic
rival for the princess's heart and a seemingly brave knight
at first, but we get a series of twists that
reveal that no, he's not here to make friends, he's
not here to play fair. He'll do whatever it takes.
He's here to kick you in the acid, Yes, kick
you in the button, make you fall on the Acid,

(25:19):
played by Liam Sullivan, who lived nineteen twenty three through
nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, very very fun character, and the
performance here provides I think, a nice dry counterpoint to Lodac.
You know, like you're not gonna have You can't have
two villains that are going for that level of hammed
up villainry. This is the right level for your secondary villain.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
Yeah, I guess you're right about that. I did identify
him also as a hammy performance, but it's in a
different way than Basil Rathbone, not at the same level,
and it has a different quality. It's more kind of sneering.
It has a sneering, snidely whiplashiness to it.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Yeah. Yeah, still solid villain for sure. Sullivan was an
American actor of TV and film. I'd say mostly TV.
He did episodes of Star Trek Original, Twilight Zone, Original
Man from Uncle, and his film credits include sixty Five's
That Darn Cat, eighty four is What Waits Below, and
the nineteen eighty six film Wisdom all Right. The next
character is credited as Mignonette. I don't remember if they

(26:20):
call her this in the film. She's a seducer, a witch.
We find out some sort of a hag creature.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
The false magical mask of a witch that is used
to seduce a knight who is French. And they explain
this in the plot. They're like, well, he's French, you know,
so he's into pretty ladies. So she is the pretty
lady form of the evil witch who wants to bite
his neck and I don't know, drink his blood maybe,

(26:51):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Blood blood there for sure. Yeah, And she falls into
some of the other schemes of Lodak as we see.
But she's played by Nielle de Metz born nineteen thirty eight,
French born actress who worked in American film and television.
She appeared in nineteen fifty nine's Return of the Fly,
which you know, if you haven't seen, you might remember
from the Misfits song, and she had a small part

(27:14):
in Blake edwards nineteen sixty eight film The Party. Mostly
active in the sixties and seventies, she was nominated for
an Emmy for a special guest part on The Man
from Uncle in nineteen sixty four.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
I don't believe I've seen Return of the Fly. Does
she become a fly?

Speaker 2 (27:30):
I don't know. I just I haven't seen it either,
have just seen stills in which a fly headed man
is approaching her and she is screaming. Well, so, I
don't know if she's like the main heroine of the
picture or if she's just like an early victim. I'm
not entirely certain, but there are a number of stills
of her in the picture.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
Nobody likes to get cornered by a flyhead guy at
a party?

Speaker 2 (27:49):
No, absolutely not all right? And then finally, the score
is by Richard Markowitz, who lived nineteen twenty six through
nineteen ninety four. Emmy nominated composer best known for his
work on such TV shows as Murder. She wrote Mission Impossible,
though I knew do need to stress that he did
not write the theme music for either of these series.
He's the father of singer Kate Markowitz, who also worked

(28:13):
as a backup singer for such artists as James Taylor,
Randy Newman, Katie Lang, and Warren Zevon. Her two thousand
and three solo album was Map of the World. But
as far as as Richard Markowitz's work goes, there are
plenty of places in this score that are very traditional
highlighting either like the sweeping mainstream drama of the thing

(28:33):
or some nutty high jinks, nutty magical hijinks. But it
also gets weird and I believe electronic at times. There's
some nice suspense in a later cave scene, and there's
this wonderful Sibylis cooking sequence that features an absolutely bonkers
track full of bleeps and bloops and monster croaking. It's fabulous.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah, there's a nice mix of things. So in the
traditional end, we've got the you know, the King of
the Castle horns bump bump, bump, bump bump kind of stuff,
and then we've also, yeah, in the funny scenes, we've
got plenty of doom do Doom do doom. But I
know what you're talking about with the experimental moments. Yeah,
I liked those parts.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah, all right, Well let's jump into the plot of
the Magic Sword.

Speaker 3 (29:21):
All right, Well after the credits. The credits just are
pretty straightforward. They're like red credits playing over a painted
backdrop that looks like Saint George slaying the Dragon, which
I suppose is loosely the inspiration for this movie, but
I would place emphasis on loosely. The action opens with
a shot of a witch's layer So there's a bubbling

(29:41):
cauldron and a table with a polished human skull as
a centerpiece, and it's all saturated in red light. This
movie really likes the red gel lights, especially in Sibyl's
sort of fortress of magic.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Oh yeah, she has so many red gels going in there.
It's like a dark ring. You would think, yeah, she's
developing an Eastern Kodak film in there or something.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
So we pan up and we meet Estelle Winwood as
Sybil the Sorceress. She's wearing kind of a sorceress dress
with like the big dangly open sleeves, and she's got
jewels around her neck and all that. She looks very magical,
and she's talking to herself. She says, he's gone again.
What good is my sorcery if I can't help my
own boy? Answer me someone? So like, who's there to answer? Well,

(30:28):
we're going to pant around the room and see. First
of all, we've got a chimpanzee dressed in a red
tunic and a leather belt who's sitting at a chair
at the dinner table here. He has no input, He's
just sitting there scratching his head. And then Sybil says,
he's not fooling me. I know where he is. He's
at the magic pool again. Now commenting on that, we

(30:49):
suddenly hear from Sybil's other I don't know, like her
coworker or friend or help her here, which is a
two headed man who's two heads say simultaneous lee, love
is his curse. He is in love?

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Now.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
One thing I noticed about the two headed man here
is that the way that the two heads here they
behave in a way that sort of defeats the purpose
of imagining this, this creature with two heads, because they
always say the exact same thing at the exact same
time in unison.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Yeah, yeah, Well, I assume that they've just worked together
for a very long time and it just had to
They had had to come together in agreeance on a
number of things here, because we don't know the origin
of this character or characters, I mean, she might have
made them through her sorcery at some point or another.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
I guess.

Speaker 4 (31:41):
So.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Yeah, Sybil says, yes, I've tried to cure him of
this love? Why have I failed? Am I losing my
skill as a sorceress? Doesn't my witchcraft cure snake bites
chill Blaines, carbuncles, pink eye, hangnails, and unhappy memories. And
I'd love to imagine who is coming to sibyls like
red Witch Cave and the chimpanzee and saying I have

(32:03):
pink eye.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
I feel like the movie kind of like cut to
the chimp when she said pink eye, and it was
like implyed that, like this chimp is just can pink
eye like crazy, like every week having to cure this
chimp with pink eye.

Speaker 3 (32:17):
But her two headed friend here assures her, yes, her
powers are still strong, so why can't she cure her
son George of his love infection. She sort of argues
with the two headed guy about this that they say
George is a man and he's human, so you know
he's going to fall in love, but she says he
is not a man. He is only twenty years old,

(32:37):
which means he is still a child. She obviously does
not approve of his decision to grow up. At first,
I didn't understand what this whole thing about, like her
repeatedly asserting that a twenty year old is a child.
But I think it's because she is an immortal sorceress
who is I think she says four hundred and twenty
years old, So compared to that lifespan, it's like, oh, yeah,

(33:00):
he is a child.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Yeah, yeah, he should not get the keys to the
car until he's like at least sixty five.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
So meanwhile, we go to meet George at the magic
pool that Sybil was talking about. So he's leaning over
the water's edge, the water's bubbling, and he starts begging,
begging the water to show him the princess. So first
we see a castle, and then we cut inside the
castle to the throne room, where like the whole court,
the king is sitting there on the throne holding his scepter,

(33:27):
wearing his crown, and then everybody in the court is
gathered and they're just watching a belly dancer perform. Yeah,
nothing going. Princess is not there. Everybody's just like a
good show.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Good. I mean, he apparently spends a lot of time
just watching, spying on the castle so that he can
see the princess that he's in love with. Yeah, this
is our first hint at like the idea that George's
whole upbringing is just weird, Like he's he's grown up
in this magical crypt. He has access to all of this,
you know, privacy defying, magical pools and mirrors and so forth,

(34:07):
and then gets fixated on people he's never met.

Speaker 3 (34:10):
That's right, and the privacy violations get worse because he's like,
all right, she's not in the throne room. Show me
the pond in the palace garden where yep, that is
where she is. In fact, she's bathing in the pond
there with her lady in waiting, hanging out and like, dude,
respect the princess's privacy please, But you know he's just watching. Yeah, yeah,
so this is Princess Helene. She gets out and starts

(34:33):
talking to her lady in waiting, and she's talking about
how she's upset with her situation in life. She's like,
you know, even though I'm a princess, I'm unhappy because
I'm not allowed to fall in love. Essentially, she can't
even speak to a man, she can't meet people or
talk to them. She's sort of like kept away apart
from the world in a tower. And she tells her

(34:56):
lady in waiting, quote, you can do whatever you please,
fall in love, fall out again, a squire one day,
a stable boy the next, and the lady in waiting
does not take offense to this. She's like, it's the
cost of being a princess. But suddenly a voice calls out. Oh,
it's like a ghostly, otherworldly voice. It says Princess Helene.

(35:18):
And she looks around and then sees the kind of
insubstantial figure moving toward her. It's like the figure of
a lady with a green veil over her head, some
kind of fairy like queen. And this lady is coming
toward her, and she says, Princess, I'm going to take
care of you, and then her eyes flash green and

(35:40):
I don't think we ever see this lady again. Do
we have no idea who she is?

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Yeah, I mean presumably it is some sort of agent
of Lodac, but not someone that is named or featured later.
This is also a great scene where the ghost is
coming right at the camera, right out at the audience.
And there are a number of moments like this in
the picture, because again, this is all about special effects.
It's about thrilling the audience and so Bert's come and

(36:04):
ride at you.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
This movie would have been a great candidate for three D.
I mean, I'm kind of glad it's not three D
because I enjoy it in the two D format, but
it has a lot of stuff coming at you. Could
have been a three D option for sure. So anyway,
George witnesses this magical fairy abduction of the princess through
his magical spy pool. He jumps up and he shouts Helene.

(36:27):
Then he runs back home to Sybil and explains that
the princess is in danger and he's got to go
rescue her at once. But Sybil is very dismissive of this.
Her points are the following, You're only a boy, You're
not old enough to be in love. You can't be
in love with somebody you only saw in a magic
pool and have never met. That's a good point, and

(36:49):
also just basically, like I love is silly. But I
guess they're like, well, we'll get some more information. So
she takes George over to her magic mirror, which is
yet another long range magical surveillance device. And this sad
me wondering, wait, why did George have to go use
the magic pool if they've got magic mirror at home?

Speaker 2 (37:11):
You know, I guess it's like sometimes you know, you
have like two TVs in the household, you know, perhaps
so the dad can watch football and the kids can
watch cartoons. It's like she has witching stuff she needs
to do. She can't have George in the way spying
on princesses the whole time.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
She's got to call into her sorceress Zoom meetings. Yeah,
so Sybil tunes into Throne Room TV and she sees
the King, presumably done with his belly dancing session. He's
talking to his court about his daughter's disappearance. Now in
the scene, we're going to meet a couple of other
major characters, Sir Branton and Lodak. Sir Branton we meet first.

(37:52):
He is this haughty, arrogant, goateed knight wearing a blue
tunic with a blazing sun emblem over the top of
his mail, and he explains to the King that Princess
Helene cannot be found anywhere. And while they're in the
middle of discussing what to do, suddenly a palace guard
enters the throne room escorting Basil Wrathbone. Basil Wrathbone here

(38:14):
is dressed in a black sorcerer's robe with a golden
dagger at his belt. He's got a giant jewel encrusted
pendant on his chest. He's wearing a red and silver
cloak with almost Santa CLAUSI implications. He's also wearing some
kind of wound cloth head covering. I don't know if
this technically is a turban or is supposed to be

(38:36):
a turban, or if it's something else. Everything he's wearing
pretty much has gold trim on it, and he just
looks really smug.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Oh yeah, very smug, very colorful. Yeah, it's a fabulous
presentation and just absolute confidence oozing off of them. Here.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
The guard is like, we found him skulking on the
castle grounds. He won't speak, and Sir says there are
means to make him speak. So I love that Branton
is going straight to suggesting torture with no information whatsoever
on the sky. But also, look at him. This guy
is going to speak. You can look at him and
know he's about to speak. You don't need to worry

(39:16):
about him not speaking.

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Also, I'm gonna have to ding the script here, or
at least the way the script was performed, because this
is not a character that has ever skulked in his life.
This is no sculptor. I think you mean to say
vainly awaiting his audience with the king.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah, you skulking, I think requires a down a downturned
angle of the head, like you know, the head is
sort of down, but this guy's chin has never even
like been parallel with the ground. Right. So Basil raises
his arms up. He stirs up some kind of magic.
The lights go dim, thunder cracks, and he says, your

(39:53):
most serene majesty, you can call off the search the princess.
Your daughter is in my castle under lock and he
So the king demands to know who this sorcerer is,
and he answers Loadak. So they know who this is.
They know him by reputation. He is a bad sorcerer.

Speaker 2 (40:11):
Yeah it's not Lodak the Great, the terrible. Just all
you need to know is Lodak. It's great branding.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
I don't know why, but I imagine I always imagine
Lodak's name when I heard it here as an acronym,
like it's all capital letters. I don't know what it
stands for.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
I mean, lord of damnation, and I don't know. Pick
a sea word and you got it, I think.

Speaker 3 (40:34):
So they ask him, you know, why did you kidnap
the princess, and Lodak says, this is the quote. The
answer is very simple. Your father executed my sister for
witchcraft when she was only eighteen years old. I have
waited until your daughter reached that age so that my
dragon could relish the flesh of the princess. I don't
know if that's very simple. It's moderately simple. I guess.

(40:57):
So Lodak has a dragon. He's going to feed the
princess to the dragon to get revenge on the king's family,
or so, he says.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Yeah, And I don't even know if we should believe him.
This never comes up again. He doesn't seem to be
dwelling on this too much, and Lodak doesn't seem like
a sentimental type.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, it seems like if some king executed his sister
for witchcraft, he'd be like, shouldn't have gotten caught. But
in reaction to this, Sir Branton, he's coming out hot.
He says, I'm not afraid of some warm eatn sorcerer.
I'll come straight to your castle and rescue the princess.
But then Lodak warns them all. He says, look, it's
not hard to find my castle. It's right down the road.

(41:35):
It's a week's journey from here, but between here and
there you'll have to face Lodak's original recipe of seven
signature curses. No one has ever passed through all seven
curses and survived. Then he explains that his dragon is
going to eat the princess in seven days time, and
he starts to show himself the door by the way

(41:55):
he like. He turns and starts walking toward the door,
toward the camera with his arms just raised up in
the air, and then suddenly he changes course and then
turns into a crow and flies away. That had me
laughing out loud.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
It's so showy, it's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Also, right after this that I did a still frame.
You can look out here Rob the King and Sir Branton,
they have this look on their face, just like okay,
but anyway, Sir Brandon, he's still saying he's going to
save Helene. He says he does not care about the
seven curses. For Helene, he would face seventy curses, and

(42:31):
the King promises him that if he succeeds, he will
receive half of his wealth and the princess's hand in marriage. Meanwhile,
back in the Witch hole. George and Sybil have been
watching all this in the magic mirror. I kind of
forgot about them while the scene was going on, but
I guess we've been watching what they are watching. And
George is not happy. He's mad. He does not want

(42:54):
Sir Branton to save Helene. He does not want Sir
Branton to marry Helene. He's the one who loves her,
even though than never met. So he begs Sybil to
let him go rescue the princess, and Sybil is like, nonsense,
you are only a child. So here we're about to
get some backstory. First of all, we learned that three
hundred years ago, Sybil's father and brother were eaten by

(43:15):
Lodak's dragon, and they were excellent sorcerers, so Lodak is
far too dangerous for them to face. She says, I
fear him almost as much as I hate him. And
after all, while Sybil is a sorceress who is hundreds
of years old, George is a mortal and still a child.
And we're also told that this is not framed as
a revelation. It's just more like, as you know, George,

(43:38):
when you were only a week old, your royal parents
died of the plague, and then I took you in
and raised you as my own son. And we learned
that Sybil has been a kind and loving mother to George,
but being an ancient sorceress, she doesn't get him because
he's mortal, so she doesn't really understand that humans are
not children at the age of twenty.

Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yeah, I mean, he's a difficult age right now. But
on the other hand, it I think there's a lot
of evidence to support the idea that Sybil has just
had to do a lot of guess work in how
to raise a boy, a mortal boy like he seems
like maybe he hasn't been as exposed to like other kids,
growing up into a wider world. He's had maybe a

(44:20):
little bit too much access to magical items, and she's,
as we'll see, you know, kind of spoiled him a
bit too. So again it makes for this George ends
up being this very weird hero in this picture because
you know, he doesn't have the same sort of origin
story introjectory that you would expect of your Dragon Slayer character.

(44:40):
He's lived a very privileged in many ways upbringing, but
also a very there's been a lot of deprivation in
his upbringing, it seems. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah. Also, this is where we get the scene where
he's really he's moping. He's upset because of you know,
her denials here, and then she tries to cheer him
up by turning into a panther. But she doesn't do anything.
It's not like she turns into a panther and I
don't know, like spins plates on her head or something.
She just is a panther. And then she's not.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
That should be enough.

Speaker 3 (45:13):
I can't do that, That's true. I can't either. What
am I gainsaying this for? Yeah, okay, she turns into
a panther and doesn't do anything, But that's that's pretty impressive.
But he says, mother, not that trick again, Like she's
like blowing raspberries on his belly or something. Anyway, this

(45:33):
leads Sybil to take George on a She like takes
him down into a kind of dungeon to show him
the birthday presence she's going to give him next year
when he turns twenty one. And these presents include a
magical white stallion called Bayard that is faster than any
horse on earth, a magical suit of armor that cannot

(45:55):
be pierced by any weapon, and a magic sword that
has a name. I was trying to hear what I
think it's called Escalon, which that sounds right, okay. Escalon
defies all swords in battle, neutralizes black magic, and it
can open or close any door, portcullis, or portal with
a touch.

Speaker 2 (46:15):
So basically, she's like, George, you're gonna be a level
one character, but I have three legendary magical items for you.
That's just right out of the gate. You're going to
totally destroy these cobonts.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
Yeah, he's a level one fighter with the with the
Saber of Doors, I guess. Yeah. Oh. Also, George just
starts like groaning with pleasure when he holds the magic sword.
He's like, Oh, it feels like it's part of my
own body. Also in the room, she just happens to

(46:49):
mention these are not presented as part of his birthday presence.
It's just like, oh, yeah, those six night statues there
against the wall, these are the six most valiant knights
in the world, which were turned to stone by Sybil's brother,
which makes me wonder, Wait a minute, was Sibil's brother
a good sorcerer? Or a bad one.

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Uh yeah, Yeah, it sounds like maybe he was the
bad sort, because these are six noble knights that were
evidently defeated, imprisoned, you know, made eternal servants of this
Witchcraft family. Yeah. I think there's a lot to suggest
that this is not a beneficial fate that was bestowed

(47:30):
upon them.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
But here George comes up with a clever trick. He
manages to trick Sibyl into going down into an enchanted
sub basement to I don't know what he did, just
to go down there and look at it, I guess.
And then as soon as she goes down ahead of him,
he taps the stone trapdoor of the access to this

(47:51):
basement and it closes behind her, trapping her inside. Now
he's free to go save the princess.

Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yeah, he said, barries his mama so that he can
god and pursue his love.

Speaker 3 (48:02):
Seems kind of cruel, Yeah, But also they do. I
feel like they drop a few things to emphasize that, like, oh,
she is an immortal sorceress, so it's not like she's
gonna die of thirst down there or anything. But she
still doesn't like it.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
She's like, oh, you scamp.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
So he then uses his sword to unfreeze the knights
because I guess they were frozen by black magic. And
we're going to meet all the knights in the next scene.
But they wake up, and then there's one with a
French accent who is like, oh, thank you. But here
we go straight to a scene another scene in the
throne room room of the castle, where at the beginning

(48:40):
of the scene it's just like a repeat of what
we already saw, like Sir Branton is promising to rescue
the princess, but at this point he kneels in front
of the king he makes this solemn vow to rescue her,
and the king is like, hmm, that's a strange ring
with a picture of a dragon on it. Sir Branton, Well,
let's not pay any attention to that. They are interrupted

(49:01):
by George, who is now calling himself Sir George. He
barges into the throne room. He's dressed in his magical armor,
he's got his magical sword, and he is accompanied by
his six unfrozen cave men lawyer knights, and they all
introduce themselves and show off their accents. So we've got
and they're they're each like from a country of Europe.

(49:22):
So the strange thing about this is it's not set
in like an alternate land. It's not you know, Middle
Earth or something. It seems to be set in Christian
Europe in Earth. So we have Sir Denis of France,
they say, Dennis. I don't know if that would be
Deni in real life, but Sir Denis of France, Sir
Pedro of Spain, Sir Patrick of Ireland, Sir Anthony of Italy,

(49:45):
Sir James of Scotland, and Sir Ulrich of Germany, and
they all sort of like say a hello in their accents.
The German Knights. Sir Ulrich said he looks at the
king and he's like mine Kaiser.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
And that's actually the voice of Paul Freese, the noted
voice actor who worked on such things as The Bullwinkle Show,
The Last Unicorn and just tons of of of various
animated shows of old like he was in you know,
The Return of the King, The Flight of Dragons, you know,
the Frosty Snowman specials and so forth.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
Oh I did not know.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Yeah, yeah, he's a he's a frequent name and all
of those.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
Well, here we get some conflict because Sir George is
he shows up, he stands next to Sir Branton. He's like, yeah,
I'm also going to save the princess, and I'm also
going to marry her. And Sir Branton doesn't like this.
He tries to fight George. George doesn't want to draw
his sword, so Branton strikes first, but just ends up
shattering his sword on George's magical armor. And eventually the

(50:47):
King he's he literally says, I like these knights. So
he decides, well, they're all going to have to go
save the princess together. They'll have to work together, George,
the six Knights, and the scheming creep Branton.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Yeah. The King sort of reminds them here that, like,
actually the important thing is saving her from the wizard.
We're getting a little sidetracked in the whole, like who
should get to marry her things? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (51:11):
Yeah. Meanwhile, at Lodak's castle, we are going to check
in with the princess. Now, Princess Helene is being taken
to her cell and there she meets a couple of
other princesses who are sisters. And this scene sort of

(51:32):
suggests that Lodak is running like a full time princess
dragon feeding operation. Like he's processing incoming princesses on a
bi weekly basis, so he always has some princesses in
the hopper when he feeds the ones that have already
been there to the to the dragon. So I think
he's like seasoning them in the dungeon while the dragon

(51:55):
eats the ones that have been there already.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah, and it also makes me wonder are there attached
skins for these princesses as well that result in some
sort of revenue income or magical item income. Yeah, it
seems like a big operation because this is not some
dusty old sorcerer. This man has a fabulous wardrobe, He
has a big cut castle to upkeep, He has various

(52:19):
pets and curses to take care of. You know, you
gotta stay busy to keep that afloat.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
It is indicated that that he asks for ransom. He
doesn't for Princess Helene because he says that she is
a special case. But what we're led to believe is
that normally, yeah, he's got princesses coming in all the time,
and he gets there, he gets their king fathers to
pay money. So these princesses think that they're going to
be fine because their father will pay the ransom required

(52:45):
to save them. Unfortunately, Lodac says their father did not
pay up, and instead he sent a company of knights
to rescue them, and the knights all died facing his
seven curses. I have questions about this, like would there
be an enough princesses to sustain this kind of operation indefinitely?
Like how does Loadak not exhaust the supply of princesses

(53:07):
at this rate?

Speaker 2 (53:08):
I mean, maybe he's working internationally. We don't know, Like
he's just in Christian Europe, Medieval Europe at this point,
but maybe he's also jetting off to uh and to
you know, to East Asia. At times he's heading he's
heading to Africa, South America, like he's got a full,
full global operation going here. Maybe he franchises.

Speaker 3 (53:31):
I wonder if sometimes like he can't get a princess
and it's just like this week, I had to feed
my dragon an earl. Anyway, he tried a basil rathbone,
tries to make Helene watch the other princesses being fed
to the dragon, but she won't look, and we don't
get to see the monster yet. So then Lodak explains, Hey,
you know, there are some Knights who are coming to
rescue you, but don't worry, they will fail. First of all,

(53:54):
he says, Sir Branton is coming, and she seems not
excited by this prospect, so I guess she doesn't like him.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
She's like, I'd like to be saved, but.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Not a big fan of Sir Brant.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Here.

Speaker 3 (54:06):
But there's also somebody coming named Sir George, and despite
having never met him and not knowing who who he is,
she's like, oh, George sounds cool.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah, and his main main attraction being that he's not
Sir Branton.

Speaker 3 (54:20):
I guess, oh, that's a good point. Maybe she's just
excited that it's anybody but Sir Branton. So Lodak is like, well,
I'll show you the young fool. And then once again
we tune into Magical Remote Surveillance TV. So, like on
a screen on the wall, Lodak shows George Branton and
the other Nights approaching the First Curse. What is the
first Curse? Well, you know what, I really like the

(54:42):
set and the landscape they set up here. It is
quite creepy. So they go into this this landscape of
strangely shaped trees that at first I was like, what
are we looking at? It almost looks like trees that
have been pulled up out of the ground and you
can see the whole root structure around in this pyramid
shaped kind of structure. But no, I don't think that's

(55:05):
what it is. I think it's actually supposed to be
trees that have been knocked over in some way at
like ten feet up off the ground. But I gotta
give him credit. I really like this set. It does
make me feel uneasy what lives here? And then we
find out it's an ogre. It's a big old ogre
that starts trying to smash the knights, And I also

(55:27):
the ogre design. It's gross looking, it's creepy.

Speaker 2 (55:32):
Yeah, this monster has like that. Obviously this is going
to be something akin to amazing Colossal Man, but yeah,
in terms of just being this giant humanoid. But yeah,
also has this kind of like were wolfy wolfman quality
to it, and also seems I don't know, I ended
up feeling more sorry for this creature than anything because

(55:54):
he doesn't really do much. He just kind of stands
there and howls while Knights attempt he's got like.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
One thing that looked creepy to me about him is
that it's like he's got different kinds of teeth in
his mouth, So they're not just like a row of
sharp teeth. It's like he has teeth from three different
kinds of creatures all in the same mouth.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
This may also be the character I've read. I think
Michael Weldon points out that Richard Keel is in this
movie but is completely uncredited. This would seem to be
the role you would have him in if you had
an uncredited Richard Keel.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
I wonder, But I know what you're saying about feeling
sad for the creature, because it almost does seem like
he's just trying to hang out in this little blasted
landscape here, and then these things come in and start
poking at him with spears.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
And yeah, I know what's happening. Yeah, he didn't ask
to be the first curse maybe, I mean, that's the thing.
He's somebody who is cursed.

Speaker 3 (56:48):
Yeah, that's true. So there's a long battle scene. George
eventually defeats the Ogre by galloping in circles around him
on his magically fast horse, and the Ogre is trying
to like follow him in order to crush him, but
round he goes round around in circles, and then the
Ogre becomes dizzy and falls over, and then George pokes
him in the heart with his sword.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Yeah. Can't be that satisfying of the victory, honestly.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
Oh, and some of the Knights are killed here. So
Sir Ulrich and Sir Pedro are killed by the Ogre
and they have a little funeral for them and show
them being buried, and Sir Brandon skips the funeral he's
scouting ahead. Meanwhile, there are just like some scenes in
the castle where Helene is running around. She like sneaks
out of her cell and is running around getting scared
by various things, one of which is shrunken people inside

(57:37):
a cage. There's like dull sized people in a little
cage saying help us, help us, like attack of the
puppet people. Yeah, a Lodax castle also has like these
like blue ghules and guys with conical heads, and people
in plague doctor like bird masks, and just various people
being scary.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Yeah, but mostly cone heads. There a lot of coneheads.

Speaker 3 (58:00):
So on the road the Knights travel on to the
next curse, which is a vile, misty swamp full of
bubbling acid pools. In this swamp, the Knights become separated
from one another and Sir Anthony falls into a bubbling
acid pool. George tries to go save him, and Branton
intentionally knocks George into the pool. Somehow, George doesn't realize

(58:22):
this later. I don't know if he thinks it was
an accident or he doesn't realize somebody kicked him. I'm
not sure.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
But the result is pretty gruesome because we don't get
You might expect it from a movie like this. You
might expect it to be like that high school biology
classroom skeleton rising to the surface. No, what we get
is is a big grimmer.

Speaker 3 (58:40):
It's like a skull with very bleached white, gritted teeth,
and then where the flesh would be over the skull
is just like bubble gum has been stretched over the bone.

Speaker 2 (58:52):
But the bubblegum that's had all the flavor chewed out
of it.

Speaker 3 (58:55):
Oh yeah, it's a nasty looking And it happens like
immediately Anthony's He's like swimming in the pool, going and
being like help, help, and then it cuts away and
then cuts back and now he's just the skull.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
Done for fatality.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
But George survives the acid pool. I think because of
his magical armor. I assume that's the reason.

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Yeah, he's indestructible on this stuff. Now.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
Meanwhile, back at the witch Hut, Sybil finally escapes the basement.
She realized owing her her friends there in the witchholder
like playing chess, and she realizes George is in danger,
so she decides she has to intervene to save him.
But first she's gonna watch him on magic TV. So

(59:38):
we see her watching in the magic mirror. The camp
of the Knights after Anthony also has died, So now
there are only three of the other Knights left, I think,
Sir James of Scotland, Sir Patrick of Ireland, and Sir
Denis of France. And at the camp, Sir Branton is
giving a speech trying to convince the other Knights to
abandon the journey. He's like, go home, you, you don't

(01:00:00):
have to risk your lives anymore. But the other Knights refuse,
and Sir Patrick mocks him. He says his tongue is
like the honey from a clover patch. Is that an expression?
I've never heard that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
I've only ever heard it in this movie.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
So while the other night's sleep, Sir Branton sneaks off
alone to a house in the countryside, all for an
illicit rendezvous with Loadak. So here we get a big twist.
Turns out they have been conspiring together from the beginning.
Remember that ring with a dragon on it that Sir
Branton had and the King noticed and then nobody said
anything about. So it works like this. Lodak lost his

(01:00:41):
magic ring a while back. Sir Branton found it. Lodak
wants the ring back, but he can't take it because
the ring protects itself against being taken by force. So
they make a deal. In exchange for the return of
the ring, Lodak will help Sir Branton win the hand
of Princess Helene and the reward of half of the

(01:01:02):
King's kingdom for her rescue. So he would do that
by staging this abduction and then allowing Sir Branton to
bring her back.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
I love it. Yeah, a nice side scheme to everything here.
The plot dickens.

Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
It is a good twist and but clearly the party.
One thing I like about it is that they're not
just cleanly in league like the parties involved here distrust
one another. They are both snakes, and they're both wondering,
how will the other one try to betray me? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Yeah, either one will stab the other one in the
back once they have what they want.

Speaker 3 (01:01:35):
Oh and then suddenly, while they're talking, Lodak is like, oh,
Sir Denis of France is coming, you know he So
Sir Denis noticed Branton leaving the camp early in the morning,
and he followed him to investigate. While everybody else is sleeping.
Lodak detects he's coming, but don't worry. He has a plan.
It's some kind of horrible love trap, Like he sees

(01:01:56):
Sir Denis coming and then he's like, ah, he's a
Frenchman and so I will get him with a pretty woman.
So suddenly, a while Dennis is approaching this house that
he's trying to investigate, just like a pretty lady just
wanders onto the screen singing Freira Shaka, and Sir Dennis
is like, there can't be anything suspicious about this. So

(01:02:20):
he's just like monto more, I'm in love. He is
successfully catfished by magic. I guess you would call this witchfished.
And so he's like they're just sitting there smooching, and
then suddenly she transforms into a witch and tries to
bite his neck. And the witch has like the witch
is creepy looking, she's got like one eye melting off

(01:02:42):
of her head. She tries to bite him in the neck,
but Sir George comes to the rescue. Dennis is saved
because George does something like with his magic shield and
it like emits light that scares the witch and makes
her vaporize. Oh and then I like how Dennis is
He just fully plays into the Lodax assumed seo type
here when he's talking to George, He's like, yeah, Lodak

(01:03:03):
got me. He must have known I was French.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
Yeah. I mean it's enough to make you wonder are
these knights even real? Were they really captured knights or
were they just made by sorcery and therefore based on
just broad stereotypes.

Speaker 3 (01:03:15):
That's funny. Yeah. Oh, and then there's a confrontation where
George and Dennis go into the house to see Sir Branton,
but Branton lies his way out of it. And there's
also after they leave, there's a funny scene where the
witch like they have a performance review the witch does
with Lodak, and she's like, I almost killed him.

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
I tried, but you know that's not gonna cut it.
So what does he do? Bam, turns her into a spider.
All right, So how far into the curses are we now, Joe,
This is a good question.

Speaker 3 (01:03:55):
I sort of got confused trying to count the curses.
So the ogre is the first curse, and the swamp
with the acid pools, I think that's the second curse.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
Okay, we're at least two.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
In third curse is I think the witch who looks
like a French lady.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Yeah, okay, so that would mean we're ready for four
at this point.

Speaker 3 (01:04:18):
But when when I think about the rest of it,
it doesn't add up. I'm like, what are the seven curses?

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Well, the next one is definitely a doozy.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
Oh my lord? Yeah, okay, So at this point I
think somehow Sir James of Scotland and Sir Dennis of
France like, go ahead to investigate what's down the road,
and that leaves Sir George, Sir Branton and Sir Patrick

(01:04:47):
of Ireland and the three of them they they they're
approaching their their comrades. But the comrades who went ahead
are now just like melted. They're horribly irradiated, covered in blisters.
Their hair is gone, their skin is like peeling away
like old wallpaper.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Is.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
It's disgusting, absolutely disgusting. You see them in like a cave,
I think, staring into this yellow spiral and they're shirtless
and their hair is gone. And then they turn and
look into the camera and they're all messed up, partially melted,
and then you see their like silhouettes coming over a
hilltop and then they just disappear. It's like they turn

(01:05:28):
to dust.

Speaker 2 (01:05:29):
Yeah, in a way, almost like a decade appropriate version
of the Robocot melt scene, you know, because it's like
they're coming right at us. They look horrible, they look
in pain. And it's this moment especially where I can think,
I can rationalize. It's like, Okay, I could see where
some sensors might have had a problem with the tonal
inconsistency of this film. One second, it's a chimpanzee playing chess,

(01:05:51):
and then later on it's this.

Speaker 3 (01:05:53):
Yeah, can't you just imagine Sir Branton here in ray
wise fashion and being like, don't touch me in yeah,
all right, So those nights. They're gone melted, blasted by
whatever that the yellow spiral thing was. Now somewhere in
here this may actually have already happened, or it's somewhere
in here that there's a whole scene where Sybil back

(01:06:15):
at home, is trying to intervene to help George. She
wants to like brew up a potion and do a
spell that will help him somehow, but she ends up
having the exact opposite of her intended effect, and she
accidentally disables his magic powers instead.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
This is the sibyl is cooking scene that I referenced earlier,
And even though it doesn't pay off for her, it's
still a fabulous sequence because again, the music just gets
super weird. You got those red gels, and yeah, she's
just cooking away and I love it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:50):
And you could tell she's improvising, like she she doesn't
remember the recipe, so she's you know, it's like she's
playing a solo here, making it up as she goes, Yeah,
well I think I need the ear of a rabbit.
That's right, that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:02):
Yeah, she doesn't have the recipe in front of her,
she doesn't have everything prepared, but oh man, her cauldron
is an upturned monster skull.

Speaker 3 (01:07:10):
Yeah that's good.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
So I love everything about this sequence, even if it
doesn't really pay off the way she's hoping it will.

Speaker 3 (01:07:17):
So after this, Sir Branton leads George and Sir Patrick Ireland,
the last of the six Nights, into a cave and
then he like leads him into the cave I can't remember.
He kind of like taunts them somehow and makes them
follow him, and then they go into the cave and
then he leaves the cave and it the door of
the cave closes behind him, so they're trapped inside. And

(01:07:40):
then these weird green mask ghosts come out. They're like
floating in the air and wailing, and one of the
ghosts kills Sir Patrick sort of just by flying into
his face and then seeping into him.

Speaker 2 (01:07:54):
Yeah, it's it's kind of a hard to follow sequence,
but the ghosts are creepy, the music is good. The
ghost kind of looked like shrunken heads, and like you said,
also like masks. So uh, yeah, it mostly works. It does.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
The one thing that works less well is that the
tone of what follows. So Sir Patrick dies and he
can be heard violently screaming George help me. It's like
really painful to hear ragged screaming desperate. But then a
ghost face flies into the wall of the cave and

(01:08:30):
a door opens to the outside, so like they were
trapped inside. Oh and George had tried to use his
sword to open the door because it's supposed to open
any doors, but it has been deactivated from afar by Sybil,
so that didn't work. And so yeah, this ghost face
flies into the wall, the wall opens up yet again,
and then the voice of Sir Patrick, still screaming in

(01:08:51):
exactly the same way, says George.

Speaker 2 (01:08:54):
Through the wall. Yeah, and yeah, it's hard to follow
exactly what has happened here, and which character is it
that then tells us in a bit here and explains that, oh,
well it's Patrick's faith.

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
That yeah, Lodak explains it. Actually, So George escapes the
cave because of whatever that was, the like face flying
into the wall and the screaming voices door it opened.
George gets out. There's this lingering shot of Sir Patrick's
dead body in the cave as the wall closes behind
George on his way out. Then we see once again
somebody watching magic remote TV Loadak and Sir Branton are

(01:09:32):
looking upon a magic fire scheming, and Sir Branton says,
was it magic? Loadak says, no, not magic. Sir Branton says,
then how did George escape. Loadak says, I think, yes,
something stronger than magic, the power of Patrick's faith.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
Yeah, Like, where does that come from? We have not
There's been nothing to establish that Patrick was particularly religious.
All we know is that he is Irish and he
doesn't even like call out to God or Jesus or
anything during that final encounter, Like that alone would have
been if he was like Jesus Christ, save our hero

(01:10:13):
or something anything, But no, it's it's just apparently his
faith was strong enough that God intervened.

Speaker 3 (01:10:20):
I guess, yeah, I agree with all of that very strange,
but I think it's funny that Lodak acknowledges that his
powers are helpless in the face of like prayer, so
his enemies would just like pray to God to defeat
him they could win.

Speaker 2 (01:10:35):
I guess he's kind of like, well, God only gets
involved directly on rare occasions, so it's gonna happen every
now and then, but not to the extent that it's
going to actually derail my plans here.

Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
Yeah. So anyway, this seems to be the last of
the seven curses somehow, or maybe there's one still at
the castle something like. George gallops up to.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
No way, we're past five here this don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
Where are the others. George gallops to the castle on
his white horse, and as he wanders through the deserted courtyard,
a heavy wooden door creaks open by itself to allow
him inside. And Lodak and Branton they know he's here.
They're watching as he heads towards helene cell, and Lodak says,

(01:11:18):
don't worry about it, Sir Branton, It'll all work out
just fine. So George gets to Helene's cell, he greets her.
Helene says, George, Oh, I must be dreaming, but you are,
George or is this just more of Lodak's magic? And
he I guess he has to be like, Hi, you
know I've been spying on you in the magic pool
for years but we have not met. But she is

(01:11:41):
happy to see him, and there's some type of parody here,
because she says Lodak has been showing her visions of
him just to torture her. So they like both only
know one another from magical remote surveillance, and this is
the first time either one has seen the other in person.
They start smooching. Of course there's kissing there, and what

(01:12:02):
about Sir Branton? Who cares? So they try to sneak out,
but just as they are able to reach the front door,
Lodak springs a trap. His weird minions magically materialized in
front of the exit, and George and Helene are caught.
Sir Branton's treachery is revealed. Branton, thinking that the deal
has been finished, gives the magical ring back to Lodak,

(01:12:26):
and then Helene says she will happily leave with Sir Branton. Huh,
I thought she didn't really like him. Why was she
so happy to go with him? I mean, I guess
it would kind of make sense, you'd be happy to
leave with anybody. But you know, it's surprising to the viewer.
But guess what, it's another double cross. We sort of
saw this coming, didn't we. You can't trust Lodak captured

(01:12:46):
well in this production still that I drug rob or
so Sir Branton is like embracing Helene and she it's
the witch double cross again.

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Hagged again, but he's not going to get off that.

Speaker 3 (01:13:00):
No, of course, no, Loadak says, did you think I
did you really think I'd keep my word once I
had the ring? And Brandon seems genuinely shocked and betrayed.
Did you notice like it's weird, how like surprised he
seems by this?

Speaker 2 (01:13:15):
But I made a deal with an evil wizard.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
Yeah, it's like we already even talked about this, Like
how does he I don't know, but Sir Branton says
she belongs to me. We made a bargain, and Lodak says,
I don't bargain with mortals. I destroy them. And then
we get the magical destruction of Branton. What does Lodak
do to him? Does he summon an ogre to crush
him like a grape? Does he create another heat tornado

(01:13:40):
to melt his flesh away?

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
He transforms Sir Branton into a mounted head on the wall,
like a stuffed deer head at a hunting lodge.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
And the effect is pretty funny here.

Speaker 3 (01:13:51):
Yes, it does look funny. In fact, I don't I'm
not even sure it's not just the actor sticking his
head through a hole in the wall.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Been it might have been that simple, or it might
have been some you know, some optical special effects that
especially to a modern view, or you know, we're liable
to miss because we take that sort of thing for granted. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:14:11):
Meanwhile, back at home, we see more of Sybil trying
to help George. She is trying to remember the words
to a spell that she knows she could use to
save George and defeat Lodak, but she can't remember the words.
She knows, like, there's like a number of lines and
they all rhyme with sack, I think, but you can't
remember the last word in the last line. Turns out

(01:14:33):
it is attack.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
I think.

Speaker 3 (01:14:34):
The last line when she finally does remember it later,
it's help my son to attack. It seems like that'd
be kind of obvious, but magic's complicated, It's true. She
decides to transform into a bird and fly to Lodak's castle,
and she's going to figure out the spell on the way.
So at Lodak's castle, Lodak brings Helene to a dungeon

(01:14:55):
room where George is shirtless and tied to a rack,
and he he's, uh, this part's creepy. Yeah, He's like, hmm,
show me what young mortals in love dude to bid
farewell before they die. So I think he just wants
to watch them make out a little.

Speaker 2 (01:15:13):
Yeah yeah, and and and mock them. But he's like
two feet away from them, maybe.

Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
Yes, standing right there, and they're they're smooching, and then
he's like, m how tender. Uh yeah, but too bad,
you know, it's it's too late for love now. Now
you're gonna die. Uh. So they both say they love
each other, and George is the plan is he's gonna
have to watch through the window as Helene has fed

(01:15:38):
to the dragon, much like she was supposed to watch
as the other princesses were fed to the dragon.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
Now, have we had the part where Lodak and Sybil
have their final zoom conference with each other and he
destroys her mirror. We may we may have skipped over
that by one.

Speaker 3 (01:15:52):
I'm sorry. I think I forgot to mention that scene.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Yes, it's it's wonderfully spicy because like it's like Zdak
calls in on the magic mirror and he's like, hmm, Sybil,
you're looking old, and I just stop to a really
toxic start between these two and they kind of talk
trash to each other, and then he destroys her mirror
and he's like, you're not getting interfere with my plants.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
Oh, but Lodack's in for a surprise. So we get
a scene of Lodac's minions preparing a feast, and one
of them is supposed to go get the cage of
shrunken people like the puppet people to put in the stew.
But he drops the cage and they escape, and it's
a repeat of attack of the Puppet People. It's literally
like the shrunken people get out and start like setting

(01:16:36):
up traps and wreaking havoc within the room.

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
It's nice they condensed all of that into a short
segment in a much better film. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:16:44):
Yeah, So the puppet people, for some reason, they break
into George's cell and they bring him his magic sword
and they use it to cut the ropes that are
binding our hero. They set him free. George thanks them.
He tells them that even though the sword has lost
its magic, it's still a which.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Yeah, it's like an escalator, you know, it breaks down,
nish Hedberg pointed out, still stares. That's a good point.

Speaker 3 (01:17:08):
Yeah, So the dragon is coming to eat Helene and
she's you know, like tied up there for the dragon
to eat. She's screaming in terror. And you know what
I'm gonna say, This dragon looks surprisingly good. I would say,
actually shockingly good. For a Bert Eye Gordon movie. This is,
without doubt the best looking special effect I've ever seen
from mister Big.

Speaker 2 (01:17:29):
Absolutely looks looks amazing. You know, obviously you see it
in motion. You know that it's an effect, you know,
but it's it is very well done, and it's shooting flames.
It looks dangerous and wild.

Speaker 3 (01:17:40):
Yeah. So it's like a big two headed dragon breathing fire.
It has frills on its head heads. And George comes
in on his horse. He's trying to save Helene, squaring
off against the dragon with his lance. And then Sybil arrives.
She she like parks next to Lodak, who is looking
down from above on a parapet, and Lodak says, Sybil,

(01:18:01):
come to watch your boy die. But Sybil, she's busy
trying to remember the next line of the spell to
restore George's magic. I gotta say in the performance here,
she does not seem to have the appropriate sense of urgency.
She's still just doing her kind of absent minded, only
half present, you know what was that next line? But

(01:18:21):
eventually she does come up, she doesn't just remember it.
Lodak cues her, you know. Lodak sees that George's magical
weapons are not working against the dragon, and Lodak says
he's even lost the power to attack. And then Sibyl's like, oh,
that's the word attack. Give my boy the power to attack,
and so now I guess he's powered up once again.

(01:18:42):
Oh and then while Lodak is distracted, Sybil steals Lodak's ring.

Speaker 2 (01:18:47):
That's good, yep, yep. I'm a little foggy on how
it works though, because we were told earlier you couldn't
be taken by force, but I guess it can be
slipped off while you're looking the other way. Too much
wizard grease on your fingers there.

Speaker 3 (01:19:02):
Now, Loadak doesn't consider himself defeated yet. She takes his ring,
but he says they will still die. I curse you,
curse upon curse, and so George, Oh, here's how the
math works out. Now that I'm remembering it, I think
the dragon itself is the sixth the curse. And then
Lodak explains that the seventh curse is himself is Lodak.

Speaker 2 (01:19:26):
That's fitting. That's fitting.

Speaker 3 (01:19:27):
Yeah, So Lodak seems ready to blast out some kind
of killing magic, but then, in a fantastic payoff to
what seemed like a really pointless setup that we were
even making fun of earlier, Sybil turns into a panther
and mauls Lodak, killing him. It's George's favorite trick when

(01:19:48):
he was a boy.

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
And now it's paid off once more. It's great and
it's a great moment when Sybil gets her come up
and see her because again Lodak has not considered her
threat at all the entire time, and now she she
has completely defeated him. For George, I get, you know,
George is the hero. I get. I don't know. I
feel like Sybil's the hero.

Speaker 3 (01:20:06):
I mean, Sybil does most of the work, like she
enchants all of the items that allow George to defeat
these monsters and stuff. I would say the most the
craftiest thing that George does of his own accord is
actually when he tricks Sybil into going in the basement
at the beginning and traps her there and his it

(01:20:27):
is and most of his equipment does the.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Rest yeah, which again she supplied.

Speaker 3 (01:20:33):
But anyway, okay, so all is all is restored, All
is happy now, and we go back to the castle
where the king is and Helene and George of return
and it seems like the king approves of George now,
so of course they're going to get married somehow. The
Six Nights are alive again. They just are shown walking
into the throne room. I don't think there's any explanation

(01:20:53):
of how they're not dead. Did you pick up anything there?

Speaker 2 (01:20:57):
I kind of I was thinking about this and I
was like, oh, I guess it's because you know, Sybil's
brother whenever he froze them, like he made them his
sorceress slaves forever. So it's like, you guys are not
getting out of this just because you died horribly in
this quest. Like no, no, no, Sybil. You belong to
Sybil forever and you have to serve her son or

(01:21:18):
whoever happens to have the reins here.

Speaker 3 (01:21:20):
It's like a Warlock pact. It's like, yeah, if you die,
you still you go to your you're in a Vernas,
and you still have to serve the warlock. The patron.

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
Yeah, they still seem upbeat about it, but I don't
think they have any choice in the matter.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
Well, who's complaining. We get to hear all those wonderful
accents again. And and then Sybil is also hanging out
in the throne room. I guess she's like the court sorceress.
Now she's gonna she's gonna heal the king's pink eye.
And I think that's that's as about as happy an
ending as one could ask for.

Speaker 2 (01:21:51):
It's really the rise of Sybil too, because she's gonna
basically be running the place I was not super impressed
by the king. Uh, Sybil is totally ruling this kingdom.
Now there's a huge power vacuum left by the death
of Lodak. So yeah, this is the reign of Sybil
day one.

Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
I agree with that. The king's previous most decisive moments
were things like I like these nights.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
Yeah, more belly dancing please. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
Well, I pledge fealty to Lady Sybil. It may she
rain for ten million years.

Speaker 2 (01:22:25):
All right. Well this one was a really fun one. Yeah.
I encourage everyone out there to see this one. If
if you were a fan of the old MA St
three k version or the newer Riff tracks. Yeah, do that.
It's a great film to enjoy rift, but it also
more than stands up on its own and again, if
you do seek it out to watch it, watch it
in the best quality you can get your hands on.
All right, Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your

(01:22:48):
Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on
Tuesdays and Thursdays, but here on Fridays we set aside
most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a
list of all the movies we've covered over the years,
can go over to letterbox dot com. It's l E
T T E R B O x D dot com.
Our username is weird House. We have an ongoing list
of all the movies we've covered so far, and sometimes

(01:23:10):
a peek ahead at what's coming up next. We're currently
if the math is all right, I'll correct here. This
was one forty eight, so we're almost a one fifty.

Speaker 3 (01:23:19):
Wow, how time goes by?

Speaker 4 (01:23:21):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:23:22):
Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello.
You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:23:43):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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