Weirdhouse Cinema: Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss the 1971 fantasy musical "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," directed by Mel Stuart, written by Roald Dahl and starring Gene Wilder.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, Rob Lamb here, I'd like to dedicate this
episode of Weird House Cinema to my mother Dorothy. On
July fifteenth of this year, she passed away after seven
years of cancer treatments, and I was able to be
with her towards the end there went up. I was
a visitor in the hospital, and you know how it

(00:21):
goes in a hospital room. After you've chatted for a while,
there's not much else to do but to turn on
the television. And there was almost nothing on, of course,
but there was a single option that presented itself, nineteen
seventy one's Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory. So we
jumped into it, neither of us realizing that this would
be the last movie we'd ever watched together. Now. To

(00:42):
be clear, my mom was never a big fan of
weird movies, certainly not much in the way of sci
fi or horror. She loved the Halloween season, though, and
she took me to see all of my first cinematic experiences,
you know, the Star Wars, the Disney movies and so forth.
And she was, of course, unsurprisingly as a supportive mother,
a big fan of stufftable your mind. She didn't listen
to many Weird House episodes, but she would make an

(01:05):
exception if she knew the film or liked one of
the stars. So, for instance, she did specifically listen to
our episode Unforbidden Planet because it's course starred Leslie Nielsen.
And she even tuned in for the episode of Cannibal
Apocalypse because it starred John Saxon, So if Forbidden Planet
had been on, we might have watched that. But clearly
Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory was meant to be.

(01:26):
It's a weird and whimsical film, at times dangerous feeling,
but full of heart, full of song, and built around
a tremendous weed performance by the late Gene Wilder. Furthermore,
it concerns children, and this felt appropriate given my mother's
long career as an elementary school teacher. And finally, this film,
like perhaps all great films, does not ignore themes of

(01:46):
life and death. So again, I want to dedicate this
episode of Weird House Cinema to my mother, Dorothy nineteen
forty six through twenty twenty five, who always encouraged me
toward a world of pure imagination.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind. A production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And as I just
laid out in the cold open, we're talking about nineteen
seventy one's Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This is
definitely a film I grew up watching. I think we
were talking about this before we recorded, maybe exclusively on television.

(02:32):
And I've seen it therefore in a kind of scattered
way over the years, many different times, popping in at
different points in the film. So I've always been very
familiar with certain scenes and themes and characters, but maybe
less focused on certain beats in the plot.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
Exactly the same experience here. I have seen this movie
many times, but honestly, watching it for Weird House today
may have been the first time I ever saw the
whole movie at once. I saw it in pieces on
TV over and over.

Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yeah, absolutely, like I very of course, very recently watched
it with my mom in a hospital with TV commercial
so there are a lot of distractions there obviously, and
we're chatting back and forth. But then this dedicated rewatch
that I did exclusively for Weird House. Yeah, I don't
know if I'd ever watched it beginning to end like
this before. Willie Wonka in the Chocolate Factory is, without

(03:28):
a doubt, though, a weird kid's musical, and it's weirdness,
it's unhinged vibe, and honestly, the dangerous energy that it
has at times. This is the reason that many of
us have kept coming back to it year after a year,
either tuning in to parts of it when we catch
it on TV, doing a dedicated rewatch, or even just
thinking about it and engaging with memes and so forth.

(03:49):
And we've done this as children, We've done it as
out of adolescence, we've done it as adults. I think
there's a genuine imagination to this film, but there's also
complexity and certain gruesomeness at times. This movie, as I
think most of you are well aware, it genuinely and
intentionally leans into a horror vibe.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
I used to have a theory about Willy Wonka when
I was in high school. This is a very high
school Joe kind of theory that Willy Wonka was a
slasher movie for kids. Now I'm not still arguing this today,
but the idea I had was, you know, In it,
you establish a cast of mostly unlikable kids, each with

(04:30):
a characteristic sin, and then you have them punished for
expressing that sin, with a consequence that feels like violence
that we're told in the end that they're all okay.
Of course, Charlie is kind of the final girl archetype,
and I think this theory does not hold up super well,
especially since Willy Wonka predates the invention of the moralistic

(04:51):
slasher film, and it doesn't really resemble the model in
other ways. I think the best you could say for
this is that instead, both Willy Wonka and slasher films
are inspired by a much older tradition of moralistic fiction,
in which we get to see bad people get their
come upance while a virtuous and good hearted protagonist in

(05:12):
their midst is frightened but ultimately rewarded. I mean, I
think you see this model in the Canterbury Tales and stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
Yeah, And to the film's credit, it also kind of
toys with the possibility that well, maybe nobody gets to win,
you know, maybe Charlie isn't good enough and so forth.
It's a fascinating picture to contemplate.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
But I like that you mentioned the idea that the
movie feels dangerous. I do think this is key to
its appeal and to the appeal of a lot of
the most popular children's films and the stuff that really
sticks in our mind and we want to keep coming
back to. This is a movie that invites children to
bowl without the bumpers on.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, reminding
me of several children's films that we've talked about in
Weird House Cinema, films that would come later in the
wake of Willy Wonka, The Never Ending Story, Labyrinth, Return
to Oz, I feel like Willy Wonk in the Chocolate Factory.
It reveals complications and contradictions and its depiction of the fantastic.

(06:16):
So it's not merely creating a simplified or sanitized version
of reality. I mean it's doing a bit of that too,
in the way that all movies do that. It also
seems like it's laying this imagined topography rather snugly over
the peaks and valleys of the real world, if that
makes sense.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yes, certainly. There are a lot of ways in which
the movie is unreal and represents unreal scenarios. But the
scenarios it does represent have dangers that feel like they
reflect reality. If that makes it.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, it almost I'm almost tempted to
say that it's not sugarcoating anything, but I mean it
is sugarcoating some things, and it is a film about
things coated and sugar. Yes. At the time that it
came out, Roger Ebert wrote a nice review of it,
and but also he kind of used as an opportunity
to just do a scathing review of all other children's films.

(07:06):
He wrote that nine out of ten children's films quote
were stupid, witless, and that they displayed contempt for their audiences.
And he said that's why kids hate them, and and
it also said that's why this film stood apart from
the rest of what was coming out at the time.
Though he did he did make a point of singling
Outstay the Wizard of Oz as being a film that

(07:27):
was was also cherished for similar reasons that the children
didn't feel like it was talking down to them. Now
at the same time, you know, we're talking about, you know,
how great this movie is. I also want to stress
this movie is quite silly, and it does have it
does raise a lot of questions about about the morality
of the picture, like why is why is this film

(07:49):
so concerned with gum chewing as a cardinal sin that
sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
It's placed on the same level as being like a
dark triad narcissistic, you know, manipulator.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
And yeah, yeah, so we'll get into more of that
when we get into the characters and then into the plot.
But for some just some random thoughts about this. I
kept thinking about The Abominable Doctor Fibes as I was
watching it, and it's very interesting that these films came
out the same year. They feel kind of like spiritual
siblings from different video shelves.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Absolutely, Willie Wonka's dark and wobbly sense of humor feels
extremely similar to that of Doctor Fibes, just pitched at
a younger audience. I also think you could find some
comparisons between Vincent Price and Gene Wilder in these two projects.
Both of them feel like loose ham.

Speaker 1 (08:40):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
After watching Willy Wonka this time, I had another thought,
which is the question, why is this movie so imminently
memable both visually and in its dialogue. I'm not the
most online person these days. I'm not on the socials,
But I believe I have seen a ton of individual

(09:04):
frames and little animated clips from Willy Wonka popping up
as memes usually feature, usually featuring the character of Willy
Wonka himself. Is this just a function of the movie's
popularity everybody saw it as a kid, It's nostalgic, so
it's an easy thing to draw from. Or is there
something particular about Gene Wilder as Wonka that is especially

(09:29):
compelling out of its original context and applied to a
new one. You know, I think one of the most
common types you'll just see is like a Gene Wilder
face or a Wonka quote reacting to whatever the original
post or piece of content is.

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. I've seen many
of these, and they're often very shallow pieces. Again, just
using a still of Wonka, I would venture to guess
that part of it comes from our memories of a
vibe that we get from Wonka at various points the
stop don't come back, the note don't Stop, where a

(10:06):
child is about to meet their possible doom, and he
in a very lukewarm way, tells them that they shouldn't
do it, knowing that they're going to do it anyway.
So there's kind of like this sly, sassy judgment on
the choices and morality of those around him. And maybe

(10:26):
that's a vibe that people are trying to dip into
when they share one of these memes.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
I think that's right. I think one of the most
popular rhetorical stances to adopt on the internet, especially in reacting,
is a loof snarkiness. Yes, and Willie Wonka is sometimes
full of aloof snark.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
That it is one of the many flavors in the
everlasting gobstopper of his character. And we were talking about
this off Mike, and we'll get back into it repeatedly
as we continue. But I think this is one of
the great things about Gene Wilder's performance as Willy Wonka
is that he hits so many of these different notes.

(11:07):
There's so many different different in a way like wild
dimensions to the performance and to his character. He is
at times heartfelt, and I feel, in my viewing of
it anyway, just genuinely heartfelt, like I totally believe him.
For instance, when we first meet him and he's telling
the children, you know, I hope you have a good time.

(11:27):
I think you will have a good time, Like, I
don't you can tease that apart and be like, he's
about to put these children through a horrendous loyalty test.
Some of these children surely may not survive. Does he
really think they're going to have a good time? And
yet I believe him when he says that, Like it's
a contradiction, and it's weird that that's part of the
magic of the character. Other times he's raving. Other times

(11:50):
there's a deep sadness to him. Other times, yeah it's
whimsy or yeah, this snarkiness or sassiness as he's speaking
to the adults and the children in his environment.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Willy Wonka is a strange character in that he is
on one hand a guardian and a guide, and on
the other hand a trickster and a Shakespearean fool. He
is like a combination of Virgil and the Mad Hatter,
not really a combo you'd expect to see. And also

(12:20):
a bit of Captain Nemo thrown in there too, in
that he is a mysterious inventor of mechanical marvels. He
has a secretive agenda which the characters are not privy to,
and he is leading hapless guests slash prisoners on a
tour of sites beyond their wildest dreams.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, that's a great comparison. All right. Well, my elevator
pitch for this one is Willy Wonka and the elaborately
cruel loyalty Test. Yeah it's more than that, but it
also it's totally that.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Let's hear some trailer audio.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
From the pin about rolled dall to the motion picture
screen comes a most unusual trumpet factory and the mysterious
candy man inside.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
I'm so glad you could come. This is going to
be such an exciting day.

Speaker 3 (13:07):
Gene Wilder is the mythical candy man Willie Wonka, and
he's opening his factory gates for five lucky children who
find a golden ticket. He wrote, Charlie Buckett wants his
golden chance more than anyone over there. Charlie, let's see
the golden ticketed.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
To fanatastic, it's not there to raise his home from
a mind all over the Charlie, I want to see
the gold stopping dead. I've got to see chances anybody else, haven't.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
I eat your way through the chopet room, take a
ride on the per polic wencome Obsle, float around the
Bubbly Becusey Lifting Room, sail down the Chocolate River on
the s s Wancotania, step on the Wanca Beator end,
gold through the roof, destination the scrum little, yumptious world
of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory rated g.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
All right, Well, if you would like to watch Willy
Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, perhaps for the first time,
perhaps for the ten millionth time, well, you can buy
or rented wherever you like. You can definitely catch it
on television, Like I said, I caught it on television
last month. It's also currently streaming on HBO Max in
the US, and there have been many physical releases of

(14:14):
the movie over the year every format you could possibly
ask for, including a recent Ultimate Collector's Edition set that
comes in a candy box and includes a book and
things like candy scented pencils, and a golden.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Ticket doesn't actually have candy in it.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
It might have candy. I get less into special editions
that have too many things that are not the movie.
I mean, that's fine for people who are into that,
but I like a little of that. But maybe if
there's too much of it. I just kind of like,
I don't want to read the whole list, but this
particular set does have like a full disc of extra
so it seems like a solid buy.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
All right. Should we talk about the people involved?

Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, let's start at the top with the director. It's
Mel Stewart, who lived nineteen twenty eight through twenty twelve,
not to be confused with the American actor of the
same name. This Stuart worked extensively with producer David L. Wolper,
who was a producer on this film and as such
has a number of producer credits himself. He worked a
lot in documentaries, and he won the nineteen sixty five

(15:21):
Oscar in the category for four Days in November. That
was a JFK documentary, and his other features include sixty
nine's If It's Tuesday, This Must be Belgium, nineteen seventies,
I Love My Wife, seventy twos one is a lonely number,
in seventy eight's Mean Dog Blues. And I know if
a lot of you're probably not familiar with any of
those titles outside of Willy Wonk in the Chocolate Factory,

(15:43):
And is my understanding that nothing else he really did
is it all like Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory.
So not a big musical or children's movie guy.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
But of course Willy Wonka in the Chocolate Factory. The
movie is based on a book with a slightly different name,
Charlie in the Chocolate Factory.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
That's right, book by Raal Dahl, who lived nineteen sixteen
through nineteen ninety British author of fiction for both children
and adults. He wrote the original book and its sequel,
and he also wrote the screenplay, the main screenplay, and
then there were some changes maybe the screenplay after he
was done with it, which to understand is one of

(16:20):
the reasons that he did not like this film and
kind of disowned it to some extent. Now, we've never
directly covered Rall Dahl on Weird House Cinema, but we've
mentioned a number of projects that either involved him or
were based on his work. When Seth filled in for
you on an Anthology of Horror special a couple of
years back, Seth had picked an episode of Doll's Tales

(16:43):
of the Unexpected. This was a TV anthology series kind
of a Tales from the Crypt except instead of the
Cryptkeeper you got actual raw Dahl on screen and often
with a kind of creepy vibe. And the episode in
particular that we watched was called Royal Jelly that aired
in nineteen eighty It's about bees. Yeah, yeah, it's about
a guy who's a little too into bees. And then

(17:06):
in our recently rerun Ninja series, we mentioned Doll's role
in nineteen sixty seven's You Only Live Twice, which was
a James Bond film that played an important role establishing
Ninja mania in the West. Ah. Yes, yeah, that was
a film that Dolls scripted, and it should be noted
that and we got into this in those Ninja episodes
that by today's standards, there's some culturally insensitive and or

(17:29):
cringy content in that one. Yeah, And that's been a
bit of There's been a bit of similar controversy with
Doll's fiction in general because of this. His I should
preface here and say that I'm not super familiar with
his written work. I don't know that I've ever read
one of his full books before, but I'm to understand

(17:52):
his work often had that I'm going to tell you
like it is voice to it, which unsurprisingly maybe sometimes
translates into a whole host of express views that were
at the very least curmudgeonly and at the worst maybe
blatantly if offensive by today's standards. These are difficult conversations
to have about many authors, obviously now. Dahl's most popular

(18:12):
books for children include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, The Witches, The Fantastic Mister Fox,
and The BFG. All of these have been adapted into films.
And I don't know about you, Joe, but I think
I not only have I seen film adaptations of all
of these works, I think I loved all of them,

(18:32):
with the possible exception of the BFG, which I didn't dislike,
I just maybe didn't enjoy at all on the same
level as these other adaptations.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, let's see, I think the only ones I've seen
are Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. Actually, I have
never seen the mid two thousands remake Charlie and the
Chocolate Factory, which to B. Frank has always looked absolutely
repulsive to me. The Tim Burton one, Yeah what, Ian,
I don't like hate all Tim Burton movies. I love,

(19:02):
especially some of his earlier ones, but that one I
remember from the trailer it looked so unpleasant that I
never even tried it, and I think I have actually
left rooms where the movie was put on. Maybe I'm
being unfair, and maybe I should give it a try,
but it just looks dreadful. When I'm asked to think
of a really off putting acting performance, one of the

(19:24):
first things that pops into my head or moments in
the trailer for that movie with Johnny Depp doing these
like twoty little reactions to children.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Mm, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's maybe unfair. It's not
impossible to compare Johnny Depp's performance in that movie to
Gene Wilders. Here. I saw this movie when it came out,
but I really don't remember much about it. I might
have even seen it in the theater. I always enjoy
a Tim Burton movie, but this is probably not like

(19:55):
top tier Tim Burton for me.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
I think it is not considered one of his best.
But anyway, but coming back to it, let's see the
other one saying, oh, I've seen Matilda long ago. I remember,
I think I liked that when I was a kid,
and The Fantastic Mister Fox, which I saw the Wes
Anderson adaptation and I liked that too.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, Wes Anderson came back and did a trio of
Roaldahl Schwartz for Netflix as well. I loved at least
one of them, and they're all good. And then Let's
See Matilda. We had the of course it became a
stage musical, and then they did the film adaptation of
the stage musical, and I really enjoyed that as well
as the original film. And I love both adaptations of

(20:33):
The Witches. Nicholas Rogues nineteen ninety versions starring Angelica Houston,
and I know it has some haters, but Robert Za
Machis's twenty twenty version starring Anne Hathaway, It's like, I'm sorry.
If you're gonna have Anne Hathaway play like a killer
mutant witch, I'm totally like, I'm totally on board for that,
and I thought she did a great job all right.

(20:54):
So outside of the aforementioned films and You Only Lived Twice,
Doll's screenplay credits include Let's See nineteen sixty eight's Chitty
Chitty Bang Bang. This was also based on a book
by Ian Fleming James Bond, James Bond's creator. And then
there's also nineteen seventy one's The Night Digger, also known
as The Roadbuilder, which is a horror film that I'm

(21:14):
not familiar with. There was also a nineteen sixty nine
film starring Gregory Peck and a young Ian McKellen titled
Death Where is Thy Stingling Ling? But it was it
was never finished, so all we have are I don't
know if there's any footage of it, but all I've
seen are just some stills.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
With a title like that, How can it not be boded?

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah? Yeah, all right. I mentioned that there were some
changes made to the script. These were apparently made by
first Robert Kaufman nineteen thirty one through nineteen ninety one,
American screenwriter whose credits includes sixty SEVENS Divorce American Style,
seventy eight Freebie and the Bean, and seventy nine S
Loved First Bite. He was also a writer on The
Bob Newhart Show. I believe he maybe did some comedy

(21:55):
punching up comedic punching up in this picture. And then
David Selt Serb born nineteen forty American screenwriter, best known
for seventy six Is the Omen and seventy nine Is
The Prophecy, also apparently tinkered with the script a little.

Speaker 2 (22:08):
Interesting apocalyptic horror connections.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah, all right, Now getting into the cast, Yeah, we
got to, of course, start with Gene Wilder playing Willie
Wonk here. He lived nineteen thirty three through twenty sixteen,
a beloved American comedic actor, best remembered for his work
in the late sixties as well as in the seventies
and eighties. He worked on the stage in New York
during the nineteen fifties, in the early sixties in off

(22:31):
Broadway and finally Broadway productions, and during the early sixties
he started making TV appearances as well. He appeared in
a nineteen sixty six TV film adaptation of Death of
a Salesman and in sixty seven a couple of films
of note. First of all, he has a small part
in Bonnie and Clyde, which I had forgotten about his
role in this. I think he plays someone that he's like,

(22:52):
is he's a hostage or something that they take.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Is that guy like Faye Dunaway in it? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Yeah, okay, yeah, that's the one, the Bonnie and Clyde. Okay,
But that same year he also co starred in the
Producers from mel Brooks, and this, of course is a
collaboration that would lead to two other of his best
remembered films with Brooks, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, which
I was shocked to remind myself. Both of these films
came out in seventy four that was the heck of

(23:18):
the year for mel Brooks and Gene Wilder on Fire.
So Blazing Saddles would lead also to four more films
in which Wilder co starred with comedian Richard Pryor seventy
six is Silver Streak, nineteen eighty Stir Crazy eighty nine,
See No Evil Here, No Evil in nineteen ninety one's
Another U. I should also mention this is not necessarily

(23:40):
his best work, but he did play the mock turtle
in nineteen ninety nine's Alice in Wonderland, so it seems
worth mentioning. In a discussion of Willie Wonka in the
Chocolate Factory, ohe quick insert here listener, Amy wrote in
after this episode published to remind me that while Richard
Pryor was one of the writers on Blazing Saddles and
was attached to a peer in it early on, he

(24:01):
of course doesn't actually share the screen with Gene Wilder
in this one at any point. Wilder's co star, Emblazing
Saddles is of course Cleven' Little and he's tremendous in it.
So thanks Amy for writing it and reminding me.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
There is a well I already mentioned the Mad Hatter,
I think, but there is a Lewis Carrolinus. To Willie Walker,
I would say.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, absolutely now is a writer. Gene
Wilder's screenplay credits include Young Frankenstein, See No Evil, Hear
No Evil, and ninety nine's Murder in a Small Town,
all of which he also starred in. Additionally, he also
wrote and directed and starred in five films, including seventy
five's The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother and nineteen
eighty six's Haunted Honeymoon, one of the films in which

(24:42):
he co starred with then wife Gilda Radner. Again, this
is just an amazing performance to watch, just to take
in all the little details of it, no matter what
mode Walk is in at the time, whether it's sarcasm,
whimsy mania or something else. I buy, like I say,
I just buy all of it, and I totally believe
that it is ultimately the different dimensions of a cohesive character.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
It's very captivating, It's a highly charismatic performance. It doesn't
feel to me like a normal movie star performance. Instead,
something feels a little more improv comedy night to it,
if that makes any sense, But in a good way.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Yeah, there is kind of an improvisational feel at times,
and I'm to understand there are parts of the film
where they intentionally held things back from the children, the
child actors in the picture in a way kind of
fittingly manipulative for really walking the chocolate factory. I guess
this is just one approach to getting quality performances out
of young, you know, young actors who maybe you know,

(25:45):
don't have all the tools of an adult actor. Though,
of note, there are plenty of directors who have used
these techniques on adult actors, treating them like children in
order to get various assumingly you know, authentic reaction actions
out of them. One that comes to mind is when
we first meet Wonka, or when we first venture into

(26:06):
the Big Candy Room, like these are things that they
held back so that the kids would have a more
authentic response to them.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
I started thinking after this viewing of the movie that
I think we sort of have to see the Willy
Wonka character as some kind of god or angel or
otherworldly being. And I've got a specific reason for that,
which is that he is presented in the end as benevolent,

(26:34):
which I think we're supposed to accept, but it doesn't
quite work if we think of him as a mortal man.
If he is a mortal man, the danger he puts
the children in throughout the movie would be a crime.
It's like only excusable because it's implied that they all
turn out okay in the end. But if he were
a mortal man with only mortal powers, there is no

(26:57):
way he could have known in advance that they would
all be all right in the end, to give all
the given all the weird threats they face. So he
could only be benevolent if he were somehow omnipotent and omniscient,
or at least had superhuman powers of foreknowledge and control.
And because he is benevolent peop we're told that, and

(27:17):
he you know, we accept it. I think he is
therefore necessarily a god, an angel, or a mayar. He
is goofy Saruman.

Speaker 1 (27:26):
Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, things like the fizzy
lifting drink experience, which we'll get to like it. If
he's just a mortal man, then this is just completely reckless,
Like he wasn't even there to stop them, give them
any hints about how to save themselves from the rotating
fan blades at the top of the room. But yeah,
he knows and sees everything, and we get some indication

(27:48):
that he does. Then he was in control the whole time,
but not in a mortal sense, in a divine sense.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
I mean, I was thinking about this when I was
watching poor A Gusta's glup stuck in a pipe. I mean,
that's horrible things. It was only if he could magically
know ahead of time that he would get unstuck and
be okay, that this is like, oh well he's all right.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Then yeah, yeah, especially as he's you know, saying like, oh,
I don't know, he might be okay, yeah. Yeah. He
takes a very detached view on the potential fates of
the children, though again later on in a scene that
I had completely forgotten about until I rewatched the film
in July, that where he tells Charlie, I don't worry

(28:30):
about any of the children. They're all Okay, none of
them were hurt. They just might be a little wiser. Now.
I'd totally forgotten that happened. I thought that the movie
just left the door open that they were all dead. Yeah,
all right, we'll have more to say about Wonk as
we proceed, but let's look at some of the other
cast members. We have Jack Albertson playing Grandpa. Joe Albertson

(28:50):
lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen eighty one. This is
Charlie's lovable, grumpy grandfather. Albertson was a vaudeville and stage
veteran whose uncredited bit roles go back to at least
I think nineteen forty, maybe even a little earlier. He
even pops up in the background in forty seven's Miracle
on thirty Fourth Street. He did a lot of TV
and occasional bit parts through the fifties, and in the

(29:11):
sixties earned himself a Tony, an Emmy, and an Oscar.
So he won the Tony for the sixty four play
The subject was Roses, and he won the Oscar for
the nineteen sixty eight film adaptation of that play, and
he won the Emmy for the sitcom Chico and the Man.
Other major films featuring Albertson included seventy twos The Poseidon Adventure.

(29:31):
In nineteen eighty one's The Fox and the Hound, the
Disney animated film, he provides one of the voices, and
he also appeared in a single horror film, nineteen eighty
one's Dead and Buried, written by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald shusan.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Ah the Alien Duo.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, I have to admit that I like the character
of Grandpa Joe a little less in my recent rewatches.
He's always bad mouthing the other children to Charlie right
in front of the kids and their parents, which I'm I,
you know, I On one level, it totally feels on
brand for a grumpy old man to do that, and

(30:08):
he's passing judgments that the film agrees with and we
as the viewer are supposed to agree with as well.
But I'm also kind of like, come on, dude, those
are kids. Don't say that in front of the kids
and their parents. That's just you're being a little rude.
You're gonna get an Opa Loompus song if you keep
this up, dude. Still great performance, no doubt about it. Yeah,

(30:28):
all right, who's playing Charlie. It is Peter Astrom born
nineteen fifty seven, child actor and future veterinarian. This is
his only film role, so this is sometimes the case
with child actor. Is this one's one and done. But
great kid performance here, And you know, he feels just
authentically like a real child, doesn't even necessarily feel like

(30:49):
a child actor. And I mean that in you know,
all the best ways.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Yes, there is a sweet, regular wholesomeness to him.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Yeah, all right. Getting into some of the other rental
unit and child duos, let's start with the Salts. Mister
Salt is played by Roy Kaneer who lived nineteen thirty
four through nineteen eighty eight, a rotun British character actor
who is great here as the nervous straight man to
Wonka's antics and is the overclocked daughter spoiler the father

(31:19):
of Veruka Salt.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
As we learn in the Opa Lumpa song about Varuka Salt,
it is the mother and the father's fault, that's what
they say. And so this guy is to blame for Veruka,
who is a nightmar incarnate. But I guess we'll get
to her in a second.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Kannier also appears in sixty five's help He's in nineteen
seventy Scrooge. More on that in a bit, and he
provided the voice of Pipkin in nineteen seventy eight's Watershipped Down.
His other credits include four episodes of The Avengers playing
different roles, nineteen seventies Tastes the Blood of Dracula and
seventy two is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, in which he
plays the chechire Cat and then playing his daughter. Veruka

(31:57):
Assault is Julie don Cole born nineteen fifty seven. This
is just an amazing performance. Everything that Varuk Assault is,
which is a lot, Julie don Cole just does an
amazing job here bringing it to life.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
She is not subtle, just screeching and screeching from moment one.
I want a ticket, I want to go first. People
talk about the boat ride as the scariest part of
this movie. I think I used to think that, but
now that I am a parent, I think Varuka Sault
is the most frightening thing in the film. I'd be like,

(32:34):
what if I become the mister Salt and I create
a child like this? I don't think that's quite possible.
I don't think there are real children.

Speaker 1 (32:41):
This bad Varuk assault is an exaggeration, to be sure, though.
I think one of the interesting things about All the
Children is that all the children are to varying degrees
exaggerations of aspects of all children, Like there's a little
Varuk assault sprinkled in every child. Every child has some
sort of of greed or entitledness. And you know, when

(33:05):
you start thinking about the movie along those lines, it's
kind of like Wonker, You're just punishing children for being children.
What a grumpy stance to take on everything. But that
being said, verukasault really is the worst or possibly the best,
depending on your viewpoint on human behavior. But yeah, Julie
don Cole's great here. This is her first TV or

(33:26):
film role, and she'd continue to act until at least
twenty thirteen. Her subsequent credits included the seventy seven poll
Dark series and an episode of Tales of the Unexpected
in eighty two.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Hats off to Cole, she does a great job. It
makes it makes your blood run cold.

Speaker 1 (33:39):
All right, let's move on to the Beauregards. We have
Mister Beauregard played by Leonard Stone lived nineteen twenty three
through twenty eleven American actor whose TV credits go back
to the mid fifties, and those credits include a lot
of cop and cop adjacent shows. But there's also the
nineteen sixty three episode of The Outer Limits the Architects
of Fear, and he pops up in seventy three is

(34:00):
Soylent Green. It all makes sense because this is a
very very straight laced American car salesman character.

Speaker 2 (34:07):
Here, I can get you a deal on a Chrysler.

Speaker 1 (34:09):
Yeah. Yeah, he's great at what he does here, and
you know, he's concerned about contracts and so forth. And
then his daughter is Violet, and she's played by Denise Nickerson,
who lived nineteen fifty seven through twenty nineteen. She previously
appeared on TV's Flipper and Dark Shadows, and she'd go
on to appear as a grown actor in seventy eight

(34:31):
zero to sixties, starring Darren McGavin. Violet Violet likes gum.
That's the Violet's big thing.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Yeah, I can't remember. We have already talked about this.
I can't remember if it was on MIC or off now,
But it is incongruous to say the least, to say,
like each of these children has bad qualities, And like,
on one hand, you've got Varruka Salt, who's just like
evil incarnate, and then you've got Violet, whose problem is
she choose gum. She I mean, she's also a little

(35:00):
bit of she's a loud mouth, she's a bit obnoxious,
but it's not like really blameworthy in that sense.

Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, there are a number of things that you can
attribute to her. Yeah, she is loud, she's a little rude,
and she picks her nose at one point and so
forth does a lot of things again that a lot
of children do. But the song the Umpah Lumpas Sing
is specifically about her chewing too much gum. So yeah,
she also doesn't take no for an answer. There's a

(35:27):
bit of a Varukas sault to Violet as well. All right,
now let's move on to the TVs. That's spelled tee vee,
but it is pronounced like TV television, So missus TV
is played by Nora Denny, credited here as Dodo Denny.
She lived nineteen twenty seven through two thousand and five,
longtime TV staple who got her start as local horror

(35:51):
host Marilyn the Witch on KCMO TV five Kansas City's
The Witching Hour.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
I would love to see that.

Speaker 1 (35:59):
I included a picture for why Are You Here? I
haven't found any footage, but I found these various stills,
and yeah, it's Nora Denny in a full blown witch costume.
And she would have been presenting various horror movies on
Kansas City Television. So I love that.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
My god, I would love to let this witch show
me creature with the Adam brain.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
She also pops up in nineteen eighty four Splash the
Mermaid movie. Mike TV is played by Piis Themen born
nineteen fifty nine, child actor who appeared in a handful
of credits, but clearly this is the big one.

Speaker 2 (36:30):
While we're on the subject of evaluating these children's sins,
is Mike TV's sin that he is obsessed with violence
or that he watches TV?

Speaker 1 (36:40):
The song is about TV, that he's watching too much
TV and maybe not reading enough books. But yeah, we
do see that he's really into violence and toy guns,
and this seems to be part of the whole TV
obsession package. Yeah, all right, now let's meet the Glops.
We have Missus Gluke played by Ursula Right, who lived

(37:00):
nineteen fourteen through nineteen ninety eight, German character actress who
mostly worked in German television in the sixties through nineties,
as well as in some supporting roles in some German
exploitation films of the sixties and seventies, such as seventy
threes She Devils of the SS and seventy Fours the
Devil's Female and then Augustus Glup the child is played
by Michael Bolner for nineteen fifty eight German Child Actor

(37:24):
and this is I believe his only credit.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
I just today made this connection for the first time,
but I believe I, like many people out there, might
have become familiar with this character in parody form before
seeing it in the Willy Wonker movie. And that character
is Uder on the Simpson.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
I hadn't thought about that before, but I think you're right. Yeah,
like Uder is basically Augustus Glupe in later Housen. Yeah,
all right, so those are the children, those are the
grown ups. We have a couple of other supporting characters
of note. Aubrey Woods plays Bill, the candy store owner.
He lived nineteen twenty eight through twenty thirteen. Kind of
a minor character in many ways. He just runs the
local candy store, but he gets to sing one of

(38:05):
the movie's best songs, The Candyman can.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Why does the world Taste sweet? Because the Candyman thinks
it should?

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (38:12):
Really, giving the candyman a lot of.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
Power, yeah, power that he does seem to have.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Now. One of the interesting things about Aubrey Woods is
the same year he also appeared in The Abominable Doctor Fibes.
He plays the Goldsmith and the m Okay. Longtime British
character actor here, who also appeared in the seventy two
Days of the Dalek series on Doctor Who, and he
also pops up in nineteen seventy two's ZPG. Now we
should mention mister Slugworth as well, at least playing the

(38:40):
physical mister Slugworth. A different actor does the voice, but
Gunt Meisner plays this particular character. He lived nineteen twenty
six through nineteen ninety four. German actor with a great
menacing face. He'd go on to appear in seventy eight's
The Boys from Brazil and played Hitler in the eighty
three mini series The Wins of War. Other credits includes
seventy seven's The Serpent's egg, eighty four's under the volcano,

(39:03):
and eighty six is in a glass cage.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Not surprised he gets Nazi roles. He has that look,
that creepy, that creepy kind of look like the guy
who plays the bad guy in Raiders of the Lost Arc.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Yeah, yeah, he just has a good, good German villain
appearance for sure. Now I'll mention in passing here that
the cinematographer on this film was Arthur Evanston, who lived
nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety seven. He was an
Academy Award winning cinematographer for nineteen seventies and of One
Thousand Days, and his other credits include sixty Eights Where
Eagles Dare and eighty four is the Bounty. And this

(39:39):
brings us to the music. The music comes to us
via songwriting partners Leslie Brickis and Anthony Newley, for which
they received an Academy Award nomination, and these two have
loads of credentials. Both have lyrics and music credits. Leslie
Brickis lived nineteen thirty one through twenty twenty one, three
time Oscar winner, whose other big film music include nineteen

(40:01):
sixty seven's Doctor Doolittle and one of my absolute favorites
nineteen seventy Scrooge, starring Albert Finney.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
Oh, it's been so long since I've seen that that's
actually a musical. Yeah, yeah, I forgotten that aspect of it.

Speaker 1 (40:14):
Oh, it's such a good musical. I mean, it's telling
that I love Scrooge and I love Willy Wonka, so
it makes sense that they're shared musical dna here. But yeah,
Scrooge has a load of great songs, just a great
performance overall, and also just a in many ways a weird,
weird adaptation of a Christmas Carol with devils and rotting
ghosts and so forth.

Speaker 2 (40:34):
Oh, we can bookmark that for Christmas season this year.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Yeah, you know, I got the family to watch it
with me this previous Christmas. I'm like, Okay, now's the time.
I know y'all are hesitant, but now you've got to
watch Scrooge with me. Maybe they'll watch it again. There's
more musical energy in the family at the moment, all right.
And then the other individual, Anthony Newley lived nineteen thirty
one through nineteen ninety nine, actor, comedian, singer, and poser,

(41:00):
who also gave us the Grammy winning song what kind
of Fool Am I? As well as Feeling Good, co
written with Brickus and famously performed by Nina Simone. This
is that song. You might not recognize it by the title,
but it has the lyrics It's a new day, it's
a new dawn, It's a new life for me. They
were the original writers, so that that amazing song that's

(41:21):
been covered so perfectly by Nina Simone. And he also
co wrote the lyrics to the Goldfinger theme song.

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Oh okay, He's a man, a man yeahing rhymes spider
with Midas.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
That's just that's just musical genius right there. So yet
to be clear. We'll come back to this as we
talk about the individual songs. This this movie has some
amazing musical numbers in it. Uh. There were one or
two that are completely forgettable that I completely forgot existed.
But for the most part, we have some real bangers
in this this this film.

Speaker 2 (41:59):
Do you think they all wrote the Boat Tunnel song
even though it's basically a cappella I believe so, yes, Okay, yeah, okay,
is it time to talk about the plot.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yeah, let's do it. And I think one of the
fun things here is we're going to have to really
acknowledge that it takes us a little while to get
to the chocolate factory. The chocolate factory is the part
that I think most of us remember the most, especially
from catching it on television, But there are a number
of steps we have to go through in order to
get there.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
The parts that I remember the least are all of
the news segments and everything like that when they announced
the contest. But some of that stuff was really funny.
I thought it held up good.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
I suspect, and I have not looked this up at all.
I suspect this is where they made some of the
edited for television cuts in order to fit it down
into the right time bright.

Speaker 2 (43:02):
So the opening credits play over hypnotic footage of the
candy making process. We get a very how It's made
style montage of milk, chocolate waterfalls, and these churning dunes
of cocoa powder, and then the action opens on a
clock tower with a bell clanging down in the city below.
We see heavy schoolhouse doors creak open and children come

(43:24):
running out. So school's out for the day, and where
are the kids going? They are all running to the
nearby candy shop to get some treats. Now, personal experience question, Rob,
because I can think of one place in particular I've
had this experience. Have you ever been in a store
that's like adjacent to a school that in the same way,

(43:44):
just gets flooded with children when the bell rings?

Speaker 1 (43:47):
Oh? Yes, Actually, there is a market in one of
the adjoining neighborhoods that is, you know, handy for picking
up odds and ends. And if you go around the
time school gets out, there are going to be a
bunch of kids in there, and they they're focused on
the sugar retreats.

Speaker 2 (44:02):
Yeah, good luck. You're trying to go in there for
a couple of groceries on the way home, and it's
like right when school is out, you are you're not
getting out anytime soon.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
But a candy store, that's that's perfect. Nobody's dropping by
to get toilet paper, or if they are, it's some
sort of novelty toilet paper that's like sugar coated.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
There's not like a dad trying to buy beer there.
Who's the twenty fifth person in line and all the
kids getting candy. Yeah, But and I think I'm thinking
of the exact same store you are in Atlanta. But yeah,
so anyway, the kids run into the candy shop, they're
gonna get some treats. One thing I wanted to mention
here is I remember in the past being confused about

(44:42):
where this movie takes place because it's an American movie.
Just looking at it, I think I could have even
told when I was a kid, this is obviously not
an American city. I think this was shot in Germany.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
Yes, yeah, Well the exteriors we see here are from
like Munich and some other parts of Bavaria.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
It's clearly just not American architecture. This is somewhere in Europe.
I mean, I probably couldn't have said Germany when I
was a kid, but it looks like Germany now, and
so there's that. But then also there's a millage of
different accents, all just mixed together. Like some people. It's
in English, and there's some American accents, some kind of

(45:22):
Transatlantic old school accents, and a lot of British accents.

Speaker 1 (45:26):
Yes, yes, and we only have a few characters who
are specifically German, but it does seem to be a
Germanic setting. So again a case could be made that
all of the characters here are German unless specified, you
know that they're from America and so forth.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
It almost feels like an alternate history, post World War
two American and British colony settlement in Germany.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
Yeah, I agree, it is very It's a little bit
confusing when you're trying to figure out exactly where this
takes place. Like I think part of it is everything
you've just mentioned, But on top of that, the original
novel takes place in the UK, and it's my understanding
that Doll loosely based some of the initial ideas on
actual candy company espionage that was going on, or allegedly

(46:17):
was going on. And then on top of that, like
you're watching it, in my case, you're watching it as
an American kid in America on American television. With these
American characters, it feels very American. And also in the
back of your mind you have something like Hershey, Pennsylvania
in your head, like, oh, well, there's a real place
that maybe this is a riff on that, when in

(46:37):
reality I think it largely wasn't.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
It is a strange mix. I mean, if I had to,
you know, if I had to say, I would say,
this is supposed to be set in America, but it's
got such a you know, European and British flavor, and
there's even the candy company idea. It feels very Cadbury.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cadbury, if memory serves, was one of
the companies that was maybe involved in sort of war
of spies over chocolate.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
So this candy shop that all the kids go into
is Bill's Candy Shop. And they gather around the counter
and they're they're yelling at the candy store clerk. I
guess this is Bill. And the clerk knows them all
by name, and he knows what they like. It's like, oh,
you know, Cindy, here's your Wonka bar, and here's the
thing you want. But he has a new item to
show off, which is the Wonka scrum died ly umptious Bar.

(47:26):
A little boy wants to know how Willy Wonka makes
all these delicious candy bars. But Bill chides him for
this question. You shall not ask why, he says, Do
you ask a fish how it swims or a bird
how it flies? No, Surri, you don't. And this guy's
got a almost kind of the music man energy, you know. Yeah,
he feels like a character in the Music Man. He says, no, Surria,

(47:48):
you don't. They do it because they were born to
do it, just like Willy Wonka was born to be
a candy man.

Speaker 1 (47:53):
And He's like, whoa, but I just wanted to know
if it was organic or Now.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
I got to say. This is some tricky and evasive
rhetoric on Bill's part, but it leads into the first
song in the movie The Candy Man.

Speaker 1 (48:08):
Yes, and this is a great, great track, great song,
one of my favorites. And I love this candy shop
in general. Joe, I'm sure you noticed the pagan candy
frogs that were out there on a tray.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
I'm glad you brought it to my attention because I
did not. But they could have been from May Morrison's
shop in The Wickerman.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Yes, yes, yes, absolutely, two films from the early nineteen
seventies that feature strong candy shops.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it with dew, cover
it with chocolate and a miracle or two? Nuada Nuada Can.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Lord summerle Can. That would actually, that would fit the cadence.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
He is a kind of candy candy man of sorts. Yeah,
but no, the answer is the candy man can. The
candy man can because he mixes it with love and
makes the world taste good. So he sings this great
song about candy. It's a wholesome, innocent song about eating
a lot of sugar. And then at the end of
the song he says, in the world tastes good because
the candy man thinks it should, attributing a lot of divine,

(49:09):
almost omnipotent power to this figure of the candy man,
which I think relates back to my idea that we
should understand Willy Wonka as a higher being. He is
not a mortal man. He is at the least a
mir and maybe like an angel or a god.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Also in this song, while he's singing about the genius
of Willy Wonka, Bill just keeps throwing handfuls of loose
candy over the heads of the children. That's kind of
go on the floor and then they're going to pick
it up.

Speaker 1 (49:35):
And Yeah, it also seems like it's a weird business
practice because are they going to buy less because you're
giving more away? I don't know. Maybe it's just the appeal.
This is a candy store, it's a magical place.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
This will be an episode Rob where we can share
our preferences about candies. I'm just one of those weird
kids that, even going back to when I was little,
I was not huge on candy. I mean, I like
sweets and candy, but I've always liked savory foods more.
You know, when I was a kid, I would rather
have some pizza than a bunch of candy. But but

(50:06):
one of the things that they get into in this shop,
or those little pills that are stuck to paper, you know,
the little sugar pill he peels off the ticker like
it's a stock ticker and.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
Offld or something.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
The kids are pulling them off. There, that's a candy.
I don't think I ever understood. I was like, what
is the appeal?

Speaker 1 (50:26):
Yeah, that one maybe felt a little bit old school,
like you don't have to make candies like this anymore,
you know kind of Look. I have similar attitudes towards
Circus peanuts. Oh yeah, yeah, some of the other ones. Uh.
I'm not going to name any brand names, but there's
some candies that just were never for me. But at
the same time, I always loved Twizzlers, which I love

(50:47):
them and loved them, but it's like eating plastic, but
it's like eating delicious plastic. I can't explain it. I
can't forgive myself for it. But I do have a
weakness for Twizzlers. Generally I am able to avoid that. Nowadays,
I'm more inclined to go for a dark chocolate. I'll
still go for like a Reese's Peanut butter cup. And
when I was a kid, I think the Reese's Peanut
butter Cup, in its various forms, was the top shelf

(51:10):
candy for me.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah, to the extent that I liked candy. I think
my tastes were pretty straightforward. You know. I liked like
a Snickers bar or whatever.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
But then there's a lot going on in Snickers Bar,
so you know, I guess it's a pretty complex profile.
It's got all sorts of stuff in there.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Out through the window in the candy shop scene, we
see another child, not among the kids who are getting
the candies thrown over the tops of their heads. This
is our protagonist, Charlie Buckett, and he is watching the
scene through the glass. It's almost suggesting that he can't
afford to buy anything in the shop. We will learn
that his family is very, very poor, so maybe that's

(51:48):
what's suggested here. But this would be a good time
for him to run in and take part because the
guy's just throwing out free candy right now.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Yeah, yeah, I guess, as we'll see, he does seem
to have somewhere he needs to go, so maybe he
realized it's a real time sink to go in there.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
It's like it's like if this were a movie about
grown ups, and he's like, should I go into the
bar for a pint knowing that like one pipe becomes
two pints becomes darts and so forth.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
That's right, and we do see Charlie he begins to it.
The only time in the movie he really exhibits derange
to behavior is when he goes into the candy shop
and eats a bar. Yeah, so, Charlie. He heads on
down the street to a newspaper vendor stand. This is
his boss, mister Jopek and Charlie. He works as a
newspaper delivery boy, and it's payday, so he accepts his pay,

(52:34):
which appears to be a big single coin, and then
he runs off with a satchel full of newspapers two deliveries,
tossing them into shops and yards and open doors all
around the city. After a long shift of delivering papers,
Charlie wanders down a lonely road up to a huge
pair of wrought iron gates which are locked shut. And
beyond the gates he sees a factory with smokestacks billowing,

(52:58):
and on one of the towers it's got some letters
that light up slowly, one at a time, spelling Wonka.
This is the Willy Wonka candy factory. Suddenly, in a
moment that I was surprised by, I did not remember
this at all, and I loved this, Charlie is startled
by a man who approaches from behind. This is a tinker,

(53:19):
like a guy who's got a cart rattling with scissor
blades and butcher knives. And he comes up behind Charlie
and he starts to recite a poem. He says, up
the airy mountain, down the rushing glen, we dare not
go a hunting for fear of little men. Wo ooh,
that's good. I was like, what is that, and I

(53:39):
looked it up. This is a real poem. It's from
a poem called the Fairies by William Allingham, and it's
not the whole poem. There's a bunch more. It's about fairies,
it's about the good folk. And this wonderful little tone
setter there because it doesn't fit the tone of the
Candyman Can song, Suddenly it's quite spooky in this movie.

Speaker 1 (54:01):
Yeah, yeah, this is this. That's a very spooky tone.
I also don't remember this from when I would watch
this film as a kid. But you know already it's
like we have a mystery in place. Nobody's going in
and nobody's coming out of of the Wonka Chocolate factory.

Speaker 2 (54:15):
He says that after the quote. Sorry I didn't mention that, but.

Speaker 1 (54:18):
Yeah, yeah, and then the and then this this hint
of of little men, very folk of some sort. Uh,
you know, as we of course, we all know what
this is going to be. He's talking about the Oplumpas,
and our experience of the Oople loop is going to
be a little different from this, but not completely removed

(54:38):
from this. But I think this line helps firmly establish
that the the Oopleloopas in the film at least are
meant to be seen more as something like a leprechaun
or a fairy, as opposed to some sort of colonial
fantasy uh involving pygmy humans or something.

Speaker 2 (54:57):
After this encounter where the guy quotes the poem and
says nobody ever goes in or out of the factory,
Charlie is clearly he's a bit rattled and he runs
back to his house. So the situation with the family
is Charlie and his mom lived with Charlie's four grandparents,
all of whom have been bedridden in the same bed

(55:17):
for twenty years. So it's four people in the bed.
They're kind of crisscrossed, and I think it's supposed to
be funny, but I do remember that being a head
scratcher for me.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah, that was a head scratcher for me. And I've
kind of heard back and forth over it over the years,
with you know, some definitely making the case that it's
intentionally over the top and maybe it's supposed to be humorous.
I've seen it ridiculed for being like a kind of
over the top upper class person's idea of what poverty is.
But at the same time, and I honestly don't remember
who I was talking to, somebody was like reminiscing about

(55:51):
growing up and they're like, oh, yeah, those were basically
my grandparents, and I was just kind of shocked back
because generally I've heard people criticize this as being you know, ridiculous,
unfunny or and so forth. But then somebody's like, oh, yeah, yeah,
that tracks, and I'm like, whoa, Okay, maybe I'm going
that's out of touch.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
Well, Charlie's family, it's clear that they, though they are
very poor, this is a good home. These people love
each other and take care of each other, and Charlie
works very hard to help take care of his grandparents.
So as a demonstration of that, when he gets home,
he's like, hey, everybody, we are not just having cabbage
water tonight. Seems like it's always cabbage water for them.

(56:32):
He says, with the money I made at my delivery job,
I bought us a loaf of bread. And so he
pulls it out and it looks like a big pretzel bread.
The family is overjoyed. We also learned that Grandpa Joe,
the grandparent we get to know the best, has a
regular pipe smoking habit, but he decides that he's going
to give it up, not for health reasons, but to

(56:52):
save the family money on tobacco. Finally, yeah, yeah, I
wonder how long has this been going on? How much
of it they sank into that tobacco.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
That's not a get in bread till now.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
So later that night, Charlie tells Grandpa Joe about his
experiences that day and about what the tinker told him
outside the Wonka factory, and Grandpa Joe says, it's all true.
He says, for years nobody has gone in or out
of the factory. The deal is Wonka closed it years
ago because he was besieged with spies. Double agents from

(57:27):
rival confectioners and chocolate ears would dress as workers and
sneak into his factory to try to steal his secret recipes.
And the worst of these rivals was a man named Slugworth,
And I was like, yeah, that's the name of a
man born to operate a candy company. They were actually
like slug Worth bars in this movie.

Speaker 1 (57:47):
I mean slug Worth bars presumably have their followers. They're like,
uh yeah, They're like you want to walk a bar
and they're like, nope, I'm a slug Worth man.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
That's right, get me that.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
It's like Cores. No offense to Cores. I have no opinion.
I mean, as a second most well known brand. I
guess anyway, Wonka closed the factory completely after he had
all the spy problems, and then a few years after
that production resumed and the Wonka Company started putting out

(58:16):
more delicious candies than ever before. And yet nobody has
ever seen crossing the threshold. Nobody goes in, nobody comes out.
It's just trucks leave full of candies, and that's it.
So if the factory is always closed and nobody ever
goes in or out, how does the candy get made?
Who is working there? Grandpa Joe says, that is the
biggest mystery of all.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
So to be clear, we're left to imply, also knowing
what's going to happen, that since he couldn't trust any
human workers, Wonka made a pact with beings perhaps from
another dimension, yeah, to work in his factory. And clearly,
I guess you know, due to some sort of special
arrangement with the local and federal government of wherever this

(58:59):
factory is has there are no health inspections. No, no,
I don't.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
Know what's going on there because if the inspectors came in, yeah,
they would see like a show goths stirring the big
vat of the sugar syrup.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
It's like the funeral Home and Phantasm a number of
ways it matches up.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Actually, yeah, yeah, he's sending the He's sending the hard
candies to another planet to be crushed under the gravity
into a denser and denser ball.

Speaker 1 (59:25):
Oh that would be a Wonka would totally make hard
candy that way.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Yes. So one day at school, word gets around that
there's there's something new happening with the Wonka factory. That
Wonka is holding a contest where he's going to open
his factory up to a tour for a tour, but
not just to anyone, only to the holders of five
golden tickets, which have separately been hidden in random Wonka

(59:51):
bars and send out into the world to be sold.
Not only will the winners get a private tour of
the candy works, they will each get a free lifetime
supply of chocolate. And by the way, Charlie finds out
about this in his chemistry class at school where the
teacher there, I wish I don't know the actor's name,
but I could flag him. He's funny.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Oh yeah, he's very funny.

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
He's like creating a wart remover in the scene and
he dismisses class when he finds out about the chocolate
because I think presumably he wants to go buy all
the Wonka bars he can find to try to get
into the factory.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
Well, everybody wants this prize, and as the next I
don't know. Then the next section of the film is
going to be devoted to how this almost breaks society.

Speaker 2 (01:00:34):
Yes, yeah, it's like this is it tests the limits
of our civil society. That's right. So in the world
of this movie, the Wonka contest is the top story
on the nightly news. They run a bunch of footage
from candy shops and grocery stores around the world showing
Wonka madness, shopping carts just piled high with Wonka bars,

(01:00:55):
crowds screaming at the candy man like it's Beatlemania. Yeah,
give me the bars. There's also a shot of a
Wonka delivery van unloading outside of the White House, and
that made me laugh because at the time this movie
was made, the president was Nixon.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
So.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Tricky Dick Stranda, he's got the bars, he's unwrapping him.
He's trying to get that golden ticket.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
He had a favorite, They all had a favorite. Candy.
Didn't Nixon have a favorite candy? Was it Charleston Chow's
or is that just a futurama joke. I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Oh, I've got to go through that factory.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
So this section of the movie again probably more easily forgotten,
especially by young viewers, over time, but it does an
interesting job depicting just the massive international effect that the
contest is having. I almost get like Black Mirror or
shin Godzilla vibes here. Almost.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Yeah. There's another funny scene to show how much everybody
wants it, where there's like a guy who's at his
therapist is a man lying on a couch talking to
a therapist. The therapist is a stereotypically grim Freudian psychiatrist
with a German accent, and the man describes a vivid
dream in which an archangel appeared to him, and the

(01:02:05):
psychiatrist is like, you recognize these are just delusions, it's
nothing real, and then the man says the archangel told
him where he could find one of the Golden tickets.
And the guy starts going on about what the dream means,
what it's telling him about his subconscious but then the
therapist interrupts him and he's like, you've got to tell
me what the archangel said? Where is the ticket? So

(01:02:27):
who gets the tickets? Well, we start seeing news reports that,
let us know, in Dusselheim, Germany, one ticket is found
by the son of a butcher named Agustas Gloop. The
newscasters are interviewing him while he's shoveling potato salad into
his mouth at a beer hall. They say, Augustas, how
does it make you feel to be the winner, and
he says hungry, And then they try to interview his father,

(01:02:51):
but his father eats the microphone and Augustas says, I
feel sorry for mister Wonka. It's going to cost him
a fortune. I think that presumably me. It's the lifetime
supply of chocolate. That's going to be a lot of chocolate.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Yeah, now one might question the lifetime with a diet
like this, but we'll leave that quip to Willie Wonka.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Each segment that introduces a new child makes clear their
characteristic sin, and Augustus's is gluttony. As you know, they're saying, like,
this kid eats too much. That's the that's the prod Here. Now,
somewhere in England, we're about to get a more diabolical child.
Another ticket is claimed by Veruca salt the daughter of

(01:03:32):
a rich peanut processing facility owner. Varuka is spoiled, manipulative,
and vicious, and she bullies her parents into converting her
father's workplace into a round the clock Wonka bar peeling
operation where all of his workers are just like opening
truckloads of bars, checking for tickets and then throwing the
chocolate away. And we see we see her throw a

(01:03:55):
tantrum because she was not the first child to obtain
a ticket, and her father is like desperately trying to
placate her, promising they will find a ticket soon, and
eventually one of his workers does so the worker runs
up and gives it to her. Vukas sin Is, I
think all of them she has like wrath machiavelianism again,

(01:04:15):
dark triad child.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Yeah, Varuka salt Is is awful, but at the same
time she's also kind of awesome because hey, she knows
what she wants, right, I mean, there's a reason there
was a band called Veruka Salt.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Right, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I like them. I've got
some of their songs on a playlist. I've got the
is a song seether Is that right?

Speaker 1 (01:04:34):
That sounds right? Yeah? Yeah. Oh. And then this scene
where they're they're opening all the candy bars. This reminds
me like Willie Walk is a film where I think
there's so many things in it, lines, scenes, gags that
it probably bubbles up in my brain on a regular
basis more often than I than I usually acknowledge. But
this is a scene with them working on an assembly

(01:04:56):
line to open chocolate bars. I frequently think of this
anytime I encounter some sort of a contest a consumerist,
you know, contest where you got to buy a bunch
of a product or open a bunch of a product.
At least in the back of my mind, I'm seeing
that that disassembly line in the peanut factory.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
Or let's be real, Sometimes certain workplace directives kind of
feel like, okay, we are now, we are now opening
the chocolate bars to not speaking of any particular employer,
but you know, that's that's life sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Yeah, all right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:38):
The next Ticket is discovered in Miles City, Montana, by
a child named Violet Beauregard. Violet is the daughter of
a used car dealer who tries to parlay the golden
ticket media attention into a free ad for his dealership.
It's like, come on down and get a great deal.
Violet herself is we were sort of describing earlier. She

(01:05:58):
is brash and patient and extremely competitive, and she loves
to chew gum. She claims to hold the world record
for the longest time a single piece of gum has
been chewed. She says that's three months, and she manages
to keep chewing the same piece of gum for three
months by sticking it behind her ear at meal times. Now,
at first, I was like, wait, what is Violet sin.

(01:06:21):
She's just like too obnoxious, Like she's loud and brash.
But no, it's not the it's not that. Actually it's
the gum, right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's the gum. That's what the op Olympas
song is gonna focus on exclusively, which seems more like
like like the author's pet peeve here than anything. But
but yeah, I think on top of that, she she
is a loud mouth. She doesn't really take no for
an answer. There's a lot of crossover, like we described
with Veraruk as Salt, but she is quint essentially American.

(01:06:53):
I don't know to what extent Varuk Assault feels quint
essentially British, but this it feels like a fair amount
of American satire in our presentation of Violet.

Speaker 2 (01:07:04):
Here there's less class tangled up in the way Violet
is portrayed. I mean, Rouk Assault is characteristically a spoiled, obnoxious,
rich child, and Violet she's not like that. She's just like,
she's just two in your face. Yeah, she's poochy, She's
kind of poochy. Yeah, yeah, to the extreme. Busted now.

(01:07:26):
The last one is from Marble Falls, Arizona. This is
a kid named Mike TV who dresses in a cowboy
suit and carries a cap gun revolver. Mike spends every
waking moment watching TV shows where people get shot, and
he can't wait to get his hands on a real gun,
he tells the news. I get the feeling this was
a cuter and more amusing theme when the movie was

(01:07:48):
made than it is now.

Speaker 1 (01:07:50):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what you mean. But
it does seem to be the case, though, that his
TV consumption is tied up with over consumption of violent media.
Yeah yeah. Oh.

Speaker 2 (01:08:01):
Also, the one other thing is that each time we
meet a child, we see a creepy looking guy with
kind of tinted spectacles sneak in and start whispering something
to the kid. Same guy each time. This will be
our slug worth.

Speaker 1 (01:08:14):
Yeah. Yeah. The the CEO of the rival company is
coming up personally to pester the families and of course
try and cut some sort of secret arrangement arrangement with him.
Then we'll find out more about later.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Now intercut with all this, we follow Charlie and his family.
He's occasionally he will get a walk a bar like.
His family gives him one for his birthday and they're
very hopeful that it will have the Golden Ticket inside,
but it doesn't. He's very sad about this, and there's
even one point where he visits his mom at work
and report. He reports his disappointment with the fact that

(01:08:47):
he is not going to get to tour the factory,
even though he believes that he wants it more than anyone,
and his mom sings a song called Cheer Up Charlie
about how he needs to, you know, stay stay strong,
bet because he's a sweet he's a good boy and
one day his luck will come.

Speaker 1 (01:09:03):
Not one of the better songs in the movie, So
no wonder didn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
There's a whole subplot where there's a guy in Paraguay
who claims he got the last ticket, but then he didn't. Really,
it's just a fake. And anyway, on the way home
from school one day, Charlie hears the story about how
the last ticket didn't actually get found by the guy
yet and so there's still one out there somewhere. So

(01:09:28):
Charlie finds a coin in a sewer drain and uses
it to buy a couple of chocolate bars from I
believe from Bill's Candy Shot.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
Ye goes back to Bill's eats.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
One of them in the store too fast.

Speaker 1 (01:09:41):
Yes, yeah, yeah, he's just slamming that bar.

Speaker 2 (01:09:44):
Bill warns him. He's like, hey, you can't eat that
much candy that fast. And you get Bill warning you,
you know you really got a problem.

Speaker 1 (01:09:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
But the other one he takes home for Grandpa Joe,
and on the way home he gets curious and he
opens it and what you know, there it is there's
the last ticket, golden ticket in his hand, and he
is immediately swarmed by a mob of frenzied adults. They're like, look, look,
this kid's got it, and some are kind of reaching
at it, but he runs away and he takes the
ticket home. On the way home, he is confronted by

(01:10:15):
Arthur Slugworth, a rival candy man. Slugworth tells Charlie he
has a proposition that he could make Charlie very rich.
He says, Willie Walker has been developing a new invention
called the Everlasting Gobstopper. If he succeeds, it will prove
the ruin of Slugworth's business. All Charlie has to do

(01:10:36):
is smuggle one Everlasting Gobstopper out of the factory and
give it to Slugworth so he can discover the secret formula.
And if he does that, he says, Charlie will get
ten thousand of these, which are conspicuously unspecified paper bills,
once again not being very clear about where this is set,

(01:10:56):
but the gist is that his family's going to be
rich now, no more power concerns. He'll make him rich
if he just brings him the cob Stopper.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
All right, ten thousand marks, that's the offer.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Ten thousand credits. Also, the slug Worth scene is made
extra creepy by the way Slugworth's voice is dubbed. It
does not perfectly match the speaking we see on the
screen in multiple ways. It doesn't perfectly match the timing,
and it just doesn't look like the voice of the
guy who's playing this part.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
Yeah, so like it's like some sort of cosmic entity.
It's trying to stop Wonka.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
So back home, Charlie shows the Golden Ticket to his family,
and Grandpa Joe is so overjoyed that he gets up
out of bed for the first time in twenty years,
and he sings a song about the Golden Ticket called
I've Got a Golden Ticket. Now that he can walk again,
it has decided that he's going to be charlie chaperone
at the factory tour. So should we go straight to
the tour?

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
Let's go to the tour. This is where things really
begin to kick into high gear, because this is where
we're going to meet Willie Wonka.

Speaker 2 (01:11:57):
Outside the factory gates, a crowd gathers and the clock
strikes ten. The front door opens, and then down a
red carpet comes Willy Wonka. It is Gene Wilder in
a purple coat and a top hat with a big
olive green bow tie. He first hobbles slowly and walks
with a cane, so his approach to the gate takes

(01:12:18):
a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
Rob.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Did you say what happens next was kept as a
surprise for the kids in the scene.

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
Yeah, that's that's what I read. Yeah that this was
one of This is one of the moments in the
film where they had all or most of the children
were going into this cold so they could get a
more organic reaction. Yeah. So what happens, Well, he comes up. Yeah,
he's doing this this interesting cane affectation, like he's limping
up towards the gate, and then he makes like he's

(01:12:46):
gonna just do like a complete face plant, but it's
a fake out fall and tumble rises to his feet.
Thunderous applause. Hey, Willy Wonka's here now it is. It's
interesting that he is already manipulating everyone here in this
moment and faking him. Yeah. But at the same time,

(01:13:07):
you know, he greets them and it feels very heartfelt.
This is the part where he tells them that he
thinks everyone's going to have a good time, and like
I say, I believe him. He meets each of the
children and he's already laying out a few singers here
and there, but so we're already getting beginning to get
a taste of the character of Willy Wonka, his aloofness,

(01:13:29):
his wit, his charm. But yeah, also the zingers.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
So as we enter the factory, I'm not going to
narrate each room in order, one by one. Instead, maybe
we can do a brief overview and then come back
and talk about the highlights in some different parts. So
the rest of the movie is a tour of the
factory where Willy Wonka shows off a sequence of rooms
containing his wonderful, magical inventions and products, including the Chocolate

(01:13:56):
Room more on that later, The Inventing Room of inventions
like the the all important, everlasting gobstopper, of course, but
then also the three course dinner chewing gum Yuck. The
Fizzy Lifting Drink Room, in which is brewed a soda
that causes you to defy gravity and fly up to
the ceiling, even up into a big you know, chop

(01:14:18):
you up fan, like it's a half life game.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
The Golden Goose Room, where geese lay golden eggs. The
good eggs are kept and the bad ones are sent
down a garbage choot. I think the golden eggs are
chocolate golden eggs.

Speaker 1 (01:14:31):
They are chocolate.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
Yes, I think I'm to understand that this was a
somewhat different room in the book that was like a
nut room or something. And then the walka vision room,
a Willie walka version of the telepods from the Fly,
where objects are photographed by a huge camera and then
somehow both teleported and miniaturized into a box across the room.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
And it's something about like you have to make a
giant chocolate bar in order to shrink it down to
make a normal sized chocolate bar. So the economics of
the granted, it's still in the testing phase, and that's
the thing about the the Wonka company. They're continuing to
innovate and try new things. But I'm not sure why
this is even gonna eventually be practical. Maybe the idea

(01:15:15):
is it's like all that flavor of a giant bar
is concentrated into a small bar. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
But then by analogy, all the flavor of a bad
child with a tainted soul will now be concentrated into
a smaller miniaturized child with a tainted soul.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Yes, that is the way it'll work its way out.

Speaker 2 (01:15:32):
Yeah, So as the kids go through the factory. One
by one, they are each sucked away into a bad
place or bodily deformed as a result of their greed
and bad manners, until only Charlie and Grandpa Joe are left.
And then we proceed on to a sort of double twist,
ending that maybe we'll save that for later. But some

(01:15:53):
of the great imagery as they first come into the factory.
One thing I love is the helping hands on the wall.
I didn't remember this detail.

Speaker 1 (01:16:01):
I didn't remember this either, Yeah, but they're like, yeah,
hands the golden I can't remember that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
Ye, instead of coat hooks. So the people go, they
go to hang their coats on the wall, and there
are just these live hands painted gold that grab hold
of your hat and your coat. And then also there
is a great scene with a contract before the tour begins.
Willy Wonka is going to force the children to sign
a giant waiver emblazoned on the wall, which is so

(01:16:26):
vast that its fine print vanishes into nothing. I'm certain
that this would not be enforceable in reality for multiple reasons.
Mister Beauregard, Violet's father is wary, seemingly because he is
familiar with tricking people into signing sketchy contracts at his dealership,
but all of the children sign and then from here,

(01:16:47):
this is when we go on into the Chocolate Room,
which is sort of the centerpiece sequence in the movie.
This is like the main thing everybody remembers.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
Yeah, a giant, enclosed space that is like, it's like
the Garden of Eden, except chocolate, you know, it is.
It is like a botanical garden except chocolate. It is.
It is a place of dreams and beauty. To quote
Willy Wonk says, inside this room, all of my dreams
become realities, and some of my realities become dreams, which

(01:17:20):
that's lovely, lovely line, but also the sort of line
that Lilly Wonka keeps utilizing where he does a little switcheroo,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:17:28):
Yeah. So it's a huge indoor set made up like
an outdoor candyland meadow with hills and valleys and a
brook of flowing liquid chocolate. At first, somebody comments that
I think it's mister salt Verruka's dad is like, oh,
you know, your river must be full of toxic waste
due to the color, but Wonka corrects them it is

(01:17:50):
not water. It's chocolate. It's supposed to look like that,
and points out the chocolate waterfall and all that. But
then also everything in this meadow is edible, as you're saying,
all the flowers are able. There are big mushrooms that
are seemingly full of marshmallow cream. You can just walk
through the walk through nature and pick up and eat
everything you find, and it's all candy.

Speaker 1 (01:18:11):
Yeah, yeah, he tells them you can you can eat it.
You can eat anything in here, and boy do they
do it. They just dig in. But along the way,
of course, we get probably the best song on the soundtrack,
certainly one that I think has resonated well beyond the
confines of the movie, and one that I believe is
featured in the Timothy Shallowy film as well, which I

(01:18:32):
also enjoyed. But the song of for Us is pure imagination,
where Wonka is introducing you, is introducing us, inviting us
into this sacred space of candy making U. And it's
just a great sequence. We get, you know, Wonka's voice,
Wonka's strange little dance moves as he like walks down

(01:18:53):
the steps. All the little moments here are nice and
and and the candy is I don't know, varying levels
of grotesque. But I also really like the bit where
we have the buttercup teacup that Wonka himself drinks from
and then begins to eat the cup.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
Yes, that's my favorite, but I'd say the main theme
of the song is the freedom provided by living a
life of the imagination. You know, there is no life
I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, You'll
be free if you truly wish to be.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
Yeah, beautiful song, love everything about it, and then you know,
we begin to learn more about about the room itself.
The bit where he's talking the description of the nature
and purpose of the chocolate waterfall is brilliant. This is
the only place in the world where they mix their
chocolate by waterfall. And I realized watching this this is
a scene I think about every single time I encounter

(01:19:45):
an artificial waterfall, be it at a botanical garden, a mall,
a mini golf course, you name it. If I see
an artificial waterfall, I always think of the scene in
Willy Wonka.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
This is also the scene where we meet the Oupa
Lumpas for the first time, are the workers in the
factory who make all the chocolate who are there seem
to be powered by a combination of you know, can
do spirit and industriousness, but also magic. Like are are
they magical? I think so?

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
Yeah. They're Like I said, they really lean into the
idea that they are from another world. They're more like leprechauns.
They have orange skin. They they're also very emotionless. They're
very grim in their demeanor. Not to say they're threatening,
but they It's fitting that they sing so many songs
in judgment of what is transpired. You know, they take

(01:20:39):
no joy in it, though they are dancing and singing.
They take no joy in it. But they present the
facts as they see them.

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):
They are, in a way like Old Testament prophets, not
you know, not the kind, not the idea we have
of prophet being someone who tells the future, but someone
who channels the will of the Almighty and casting judgment
on on sin and injustice in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
All right, So it's in here that we're going to
get our first early elimination, and it's going to be
Augustus Glue because what happens, and I have to stress,
I always feel a lot of compassion for Augustus because
we've established that his sin is gluttony, and he's going
to fall into the chocolate river because he's leaning over
to drink from it. But wanka, where are the railings?

(01:21:25):
And why didn't you warn them not to drink from
the chocolate river? If it was forbidden, you should have
said that thou shalt all the what's the line from
the the Old Testament, you know, like all the fruits
of the of this room or for your pleasure, but
not the chocolate river.

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
I don't Yeah, I don't think he said that. I
think he when they're going into the room, he's like, yeah,
you can eat anything in here.

Speaker 1 (01:21:44):
That's what I thought. He said, yeah, yeah, that's what
I heard. And then then but he does say, please stop,
don't do that. You're not supposed to drink from the fountain.
And then he falls in and then it gets it
gets grimmer from that point on, all.

Speaker 2 (01:21:57):
Right, So they say the suctions got him. Oh and
then there is a glass pipe that is leading up
from the chocolate river and they see it goestus gloop
like get sucked up into the pipe. And this this
is like horrible because trying to imagine the reality of
being sucked into a pipe. Is a is a nightmare.
This is a terrible thing. But yeah, and this is

(01:22:21):
just kind of like, oh, he's gonna be okay. You know,
he'll come out at the what did they say, there's
another room where he'll come out, and they send his
mom to go get him.

Speaker 1 (01:22:28):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know Wonka is not too concerned.
So one down, the rest still to go. And I
believe this is where we bored the Wonkatania the tunnel
boat ride and this is just this is a boat
ride through hell. Such an amazing, darkly psychedelic sequence with
wilder givings. Just an unhinged performance here, musical performance.

Speaker 2 (01:22:52):
I remember, I don't know, many years back now reading
some article somebody wrote about like how insane this this
sequence is for a kid's movie. It is crazy and
dark and has some weird background footage. It's like, while
they're going down, he's singing the song and his eyes
are going back and forth in this creepy way, and
these lights are playing all over the place. But then

(01:23:14):
in the background they're playing basically the tape from the Ring.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Yes, yeah, with like like centipede crawling across somebody's face,
a flash of slug Worth and other nightmarish things happening
and flashes, and meanwhile, yeah, he's reciting this poem, kind
of singing this song, and he's getting more and more
intense and unhinged as he's doing it. You know, not
a speck of light is showing, so the danger must

(01:23:40):
be growing. Are the fires of hell a glowing? Is
the Grizzly Reaper mowing. It's getting really intense. People, children
and adults are screaming, and then it ends and they've
arrived at their destination, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:23:54):
So one of them says like, Walker, you got to
stop this, and he's like, Okay, here we are.

Speaker 1 (01:23:59):
Yeah, And I'm to understand this is another scene where
the children were maybe not quite prepared and maybe the
adult actors too for what they were going to see
or experience. But this is where we arrive at the
inventing room, and this is where they're making those everlasting
gobstoppers along with some other gags.

Speaker 2 (01:24:17):
Right, So, the deal with the everlasting gobstopper is it
is a candy, a hard candy that you suck, and
normally a gobstopper would as you gradually suck at, it
disintegrates in your mouth and goes away. This one you
can suck forever and it will never go away. I
don't know how great that would actually be. You know,
do you want to have this candy in your mouth forever?

Speaker 1 (01:24:38):
Yeah? Well, I think Slugworth is approaching it like, if
you sell them this one candy, they'll never buy candy again.
But on the other hand, it's kind of like water
bottles and children. Like Joe, you're not at this point
yet with your child, but don't fool yourself into thinking
you're buying this child one water bottle. You will buy
them so many water bottles and they will lose them all.
The same would be true if the everlasting gobstopper. These

(01:25:01):
kids are gonna lose one a week.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
We've already got several, and we keep losing them in
the house.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
There you go, Okay, you do have a taste of it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:09):
Yeah, where's the cat bus water bottle? I don't know
where's it. Then we'll go get the Totoro water bottle.

Speaker 1 (01:25:15):
Okay, yeah, yeah, And once they start leaving the house, yeah,
I forget about it. Oh but this is also where
we have the multi coarse meal gum.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
But anyway, so he gives them the Gobstoppers. He's like,
you got to be very careful because you can never
share this with anybody, only keep it for yourself. And
we've seen slug Worth talk to all these kids, so
we just know all of them or they're dying to
give this thing to slug Worth as soon as they
get out of there and get the money. Does Vruca
Salt need it? She's rich anyway?

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know what her motivations are, necessarily.

Speaker 2 (01:25:45):
Just pure treachery for its own sake.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
Yeah. In fact, it seems like she would want to
keep it because it's hers, right, she wants it all,
as we will learn in song later on.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
But here we get another elimination that's right, and it
is based on an invention that I mentioned earlier, the
three course dinner chewing gum, which he gives to Violet
Beauregard to taste.

Speaker 1 (01:26:18):
No, no, he just snatches it, that's right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):
Yeah, she grabs it, that's right, because she's being greedy.
He doesn't tell her it's ready yet. They're still experimenting
on it, but she's like, give it to me, puts
it in her mouth, and the first course is tomato
soup and it tastes like tomato soup. She says, it
feels like tomato soup going down your throat. I'm like, oh,
what kind of gum is that?

Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
But you said you like savory stuff more as a kid,
so you know this is for the savory kids.

Speaker 2 (01:26:45):
Should gum ever feel like it's going down your throat?

Speaker 1 (01:26:50):
Maybe not? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
So the second course is roast beef, and then the
third course, the dessert is blueberry pie. But uh oh,
when she gets to the dessert course, she starts turning
blue and then puffs up like that guy in Big
Trouble in Little China, And then she's a blueberry now,
And of course Willie Wonk is like, yeah, blueberries. They

(01:27:11):
always turn into blueberries.

Speaker 1 (01:27:13):
Their DNA always fuses with blueberries during the late last
stage of the gum. And there's nothing to be done,
we learned, except that she needs to be juiced. That's
her solution, that's the cure. So they roll her out
of there and with Dad following close behind, and we.

Speaker 2 (01:27:28):
Get another Oopeloopa song. Did we mention last time that
the Umploopa's judgment of augustas gloop came in the form
of a song.

Speaker 1 (01:27:35):
Yes, that was largely based on fat shaming. It was
mostly about how he was overweight, which again that's another reason.
I'm like, come on, now we established he's a bit
of a glutton, but how much of that can he help,
you know, as far as his weight is concerned.

Speaker 2 (01:27:50):
This case, they're like, they're going after her with the
Uploopa song for chewing gum. But I don't think it's
the fact that she choose gum that was the problem.
It was that she was told not to chew this
gum and she did it anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:28:02):
Yeah, but that's all the op Olympus song fixates on gum.
Chewing's fine when it's done once in a while. It
stops you from smoking and brightens your smile, which sounds
pretty good. But then it continues. But it's repulsive, revolting
and wrong, chewing and chewing all day long the way
a cow does. And I don't know, I think they're
they are worse things. Does at least they're not smoking, right,

(01:28:26):
come on, Olympus.

Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
Yeah, I think the op Olympus they get one in
on her here it's a sick burn.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
Yeah, but now it's time to go to the goose room. Right,
the right, the Golden Egg Room.

Speaker 2 (01:28:39):
Well, I don't know if we're doing these in the
right order.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
Are we may have missed? Okay, so the fizzy Lifting
room occurs at some point in all this.

Speaker 2 (01:28:46):
Let's talk about the fizzy lifting drinking room. I think
that probably comes in here anyway. Uh So they're taken
to this room where there is a soda that Wonka
makes that will allow you to defy gravity. He tells
them not to drink it. But after after everybody else
leaves the room, Grandpa Joe is like, come on, let's
break the rules. Grandpa Joe convinces Charlie to drink some

(01:29:07):
and he drinks some too, and then they start floating
up towards the ceiling where there is a giant fan.
Like you know earlier I said half Life, but it's
like Highlander.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
Two quick is exactly Island two.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
Highlander two the Quickening. They're going to be death by fan.
But whereas Sean Connery defeated the Fan by saying, most
people have a full measure of life, but most people
watch it slowly drip away. But if you can sum
it it all up at one time, in one place,
you can accomplish something glorious. In this case, they defeat

(01:29:39):
the fan by burping. Yes, so they burp out the
gases produced by the fizzy lifting drink and slowly descend
back to the floor, and then they are able to
rejoin the group.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
Yeah, they catch it in the nick of time. Eventually, though,
we end up in that goose room. And this is
this is where you were talking about this earlier. The
geese are these are Eastern geese laying giant chocolate Easter eggs,
but they don't know that it's not Easter because walk
is trying to get ahead of the Easter season. And
I'm and then yeah, they're wrapped in gold foil, and

(01:30:10):
you just have giant chocolate Easter eggs, which I'm not
sure what the market is for these exactly. They don't
seem to be processed any further. But I never got
a giant chocolate Easter egg in my Easter basket.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
I don't think I did either. So Veruka Salt doesn't
just want candy. She wants a golden goose. She wants
to take a goose home herself. She's like, Daddy, buy
me a goose, and her dad obeys as he always does,
and He's like, all right, walk He gets out of
his check book, how much for the goose, and Walka
says they're not for sale. Uh oh, Veruka salt will

(01:30:43):
not be denied, so she starts throwing a tantrum. Does
she sing a song here?

Speaker 1 (01:30:48):
Yes, not only does she sing a song, she sings
one of the best songs in the film. This is
the I want the world, I want the whole world. Yeah,
I want to lock it all up in my pocket.
It's my bar of chocolate, give it to me now.

Speaker 2 (01:31:02):
But at the end of the song we established there
there's like a little mechanism where when the geese lay
a golden egg, it rolls down onto a scale that
decides if it's a good egg or a bad egg.
Good eggs or kept bad eggs go down the chute.
Veruka climbs up onto the scale and uh oh, it
says she's a bad egg and goes straight down the chute.

(01:31:23):
And then the question is, well, let's see half of
the shoots go into the furnace and they are incinerated
and the other half go somewhere else, So we'll hope
it's one of the good ones.

Speaker 1 (01:31:32):
Yeah, yeah, she has a fifty to fifty chance and
then the ople Lump of Shame brigade shows up to
place the blame firmly on bad parenting, and of course
makes all of us parents watching the show suddenly question
all of the gifts that we've bought for our children.
We're like, are we making a Veruka salt? And I
guess that's the intent. But this is the first case
where the ople Loops have been like, no, not the

(01:31:53):
kid's fault, this is all the parents.

Speaker 2 (01:31:57):
Which is funny because again this is clearly the worst
of the kids.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:32:01):
Uh so then we then we go to the Wonka
Vision room. Uh that's the one with the fly telepods,
where they've got a camera that does TV except its teleportation.
This leads to the elimination of the last non Charlie
child there, Mike TV.

Speaker 1 (01:32:17):
That's right. Love the set here, love the costumes Wonka,
and even in the opeloopus are wearing these you know,
these solid white get ups with cool goggles.

Speaker 2 (01:32:26):
It's THX eleven thirty eight.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's solid. That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:32:31):
But uh oh but anyway, so they show he demonstrates
the teleportation of a candy bar, and then Mike TV
is like, could that work on a person?

Speaker 1 (01:32:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:32:40):
Wonka's like probably maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
Yeah. What Wonka convincingly seems to have not thought of
this before, and it's like, I don't know, I guess
it's possible. And then that's enough for Mike TV. He's like,
give it to me, yeah, jumps up on the platform. Yeah.
He's like, telepod me across the room please, I.

Speaker 2 (01:32:59):
Want to be the first in the fly Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:33:02):
Yeah, and you know, and Wonka's you know, does the
normal like wait, stop, come back back kind of response,
but the ooper oop is alright already pulling the levers.
They're like, all right, boss, we're doing it. They shoot
him across the room and he is, of course reduced
to a pocket sized version of himself. His mother is horrified.
Mike seems really impressed by it. He's like, I've made history.

(01:33:24):
I'm the first person in history to be miniaturized. And
then they realized, well, we're gonna have to take him
to the taffy room to stretch him out to full
size again.

Speaker 2 (01:33:33):
Once again, this is similar to the Violet thing. The
ople Lumpa song here blames the problem on TV, but
wasn't the problem that Mike TV just like wasn't paying
attention to what he was told by adults.

Speaker 1 (01:33:45):
Yeah yeah, there seemed to be other aspects of the
Primes then here. But the Oopa Lumpa song here is tremendous.
Like they come out, they're decked in those protective sci
fi suits, and there seems to be an an increase
seriousness to this number. I don't know how much of
it is, like the music or the movements, and I
do want to stress all the performers playing Opa loompa's

(01:34:07):
in this are amazing, you know, the grim faced doing
the dance routines, the different poses. Their poses are very
serious here as well, and it is they're starting it up.
It kind of feels like, Okay, this is the final
judgment song, this one they're really going to cut down
to like some prime sin. But again it is just
don't watch too much television, which.

Speaker 2 (01:34:29):
Not bad advice. I mean, screen time concerns I think
are real, but I think was not exactly the problem here.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
Yeah yeah, I mean I get the you know, today
we would talk about screen time and too much screen
time and the perils of screen time, and I think
some of that is legitimately manifested here as well, you know,
with like the violence, the consumption of violent media that
Mike seems to be affected by. But the song is
more like saying like, you should just read a book instead,

(01:34:59):
where there's never vibe of sexuality obviously, and also pointing
out you'll get no commercials, very dramatically reminding me that
if you read a book there will be no commercials.

Speaker 2 (01:35:13):
If you're lucky. I don't know what the e readers
in the next few decades are going to be.

Speaker 1 (01:35:16):
Like, oh no, the e readers now you still you
have to, or at least in my experience, I had
to pay extra to get the advertisement off the front
of it, but it was I gladly did it after
a while. And you know, in books, I remember paperback books,
you'd have adds in the back. There were commercials in
the back for like other Stephen King books.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
Yeah, that's true. We talked about that recently.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
Yeah, and I think we were talking about this offline. Though.
It is also ironic that so many people grew up
watching Willie Wank in the Chocolate Factory on TV with
the commercials. Yeah, with commercials, and this number is like saying, hey,
don't watch television, don't watch commercials. You got better things
to do, like watch Tales of the Unexpected this Spring
on ITV.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
All right, So finally at the end, we come down
to the only tour members left are Charlie and Grandpa Joe,
and we get a double twist ending it's a bad
twist followed by a good twist. So the bad twist
is that Charlie and Grandpa Joe are they're sort of
sent home, and then Grandpa Joe's like, huh, what about

(01:36:25):
the lifetime supply of chocolate? And he barges into Walka's
office and Walka says, you can't have your lifetime supply
of chocolate because you violated the contract you signed on
coming in which they didn't have time to read and
it was too small to e again, not enforceable, but
he says, you know, I know that you drank the
phizzy lifting drinks, which was Grandpa Joe's idea by the way, Yeah,

(01:36:48):
I know that you did that, and therefore you get nothing.
You lose. It's that famous monologue that's been clipped in
a lot of things where he's just yelling you lose.

Speaker 1 (01:36:56):
Good day, sir, this is a noting that this is
another scene where apparently like they ran through the lines
and they got it down, but then when they actually
filmed it, this is a scene where Wilder definitely enhanced
the intensity and the anger level of it all. So
that's that's interesting to think about it, because he does
get very animated with the whole you know, he gets nothing.

(01:37:20):
I said good days there. Yeah, classic scene and really
a heartbreaking scene because now I mean, not only is
there the side of it where Charlie is losing, like
at the end, like it seems like Charlie Buckett is
being eliminated as well, but also like this whole room
that Wonka is in, everything is like in half. Like
there's a half of the head that is used like

(01:37:41):
a mannequin head used as to breast his hat on.
There's a half a safe everything is half there, and
it's like this is the inner synctum of an incomplete
person or one who is halfway through a journey. Hard
to figure exactly what they were going for, but it
resonates with a sadness. You know, you get the sense
that that Wonka is also disappointed with the way things

(01:38:03):
are going.

Speaker 2 (01:38:03):
So having been rejected like this. They start to walk away,
and then Grandpa Joe's like, yeah, well, you know, we'll
give slug Worth a a gobstopper and then we're gonna
get some money. So Grandpa Joe once again the devil
on Charlie's shoulder, but in multiple points. But Charlie is like, no,
I gotta give it back to him because he's a
good boy. So he takes it back to Willy Wonka,

(01:38:25):
puts it on his desk and leaves it there. And
then as they try to leave, there's another twist. Wonka's like,
you did it. You did it. That's what I was
hoping for this whole time. Just give me back this gobstopper,
but I'm sorry again. Logical thing like what if Charlie
was going to take it with him but just keep
it for himself and not give it to slug Worth.

Speaker 1 (01:38:45):
Yeah, at what point they would they decide? Okay, I
guess he's not giving it to slug Worth. I guess
Charlie wins now or would it be? It would be
it would be like the Woman in the Snow legend
from Japanese traditions, where years later Charlie is CEO and
has CEO of Wonka for ages and then he finally
lets somebody else hold the gobstopper and then loses everything magically.

Speaker 2 (01:39:08):
That's right. So so yeah, so what happened is that
was not really Slugworth, who was the creepy guy talking
to all the kids, that is an employee of Wonka's.
And Wonka has been looking for someone to hand over
his factory too. I don't know why exactly He's done
with it. He wants to hand it over to someone,
and he had to find a child who is pure

(01:39:28):
of heart, who could be trusted to, you know, receive
this great burden, this great responsibility, and this was his
selection process.

Speaker 1 (01:39:37):
Yeah. Yeah, Like he never outright comes out and says,
you know, I'm going to die or says that like
death is imminent for him. He does say I don't
I'm not going to live forever and I don't really
want to try, which is I think such a clever line,
because you know, it kind of implies like all of
the unnatural things a wizard or mad scientist might do

(01:39:59):
to like grasp and hold on to life and hold
on to riches instead of passing it on to the
next generation and Also he's thinking about the Oople loopas
as he reveals like he needs somebody with a childlike
vision to keep running the company and to care for
the oomple lumpas who I think we skimmed over this,
but like they have adversaries in their homeland, like monsters

(01:40:20):
that want to eat them and so forth. Yes, show
gots and whatnot.

Speaker 2 (01:40:24):
Right, all of this, by the way, explained in an
elevator that's flying over the city. We didn't mention that.
But they get in the big glass elevator. We're told
that this is an elevator that not only goes up
and down, it can go anywhere. So it goes through
the roof and then flies around over the city.

Speaker 1 (01:40:39):
This is the perfect manifestation of the divine power of
Willy Wonka. Like an elevator that is not limited by
physical space. It can go everywhere, it can rise above everything.
So happy ending, I guess, yeah, happy ending. Now, you
know there's a whole second book where they have adventures
in the amazing glass elevator. But you know that's that's

(01:41:02):
another story and I guess we'll be told another time.
I don't that's never been really adapted as far as
I know, I'm not sure what kind of adventures they
get up to in that, but for here, it's just
it's clear that, like, yeah, happy ending has been achieved.
Charlie is now the heir apparent for the Wonka company.
Wonka is pleased with this. The oople loops are going
to be okay, and Charlie's family is going to be
provided for, and that's the end. Send you home happy, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:41:27):
Assuming Charlie wants to run a candy factory, It's funny
he doesn't ask him beforehand, but it seems it seems
to work out that Charlie is into it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:35):
What child wouldn't want to run the chocolate factory. It's
it's that it's not even worth factoring in here. Of
course they say yes, But if somehow Varuka sal did one,
that would have been a different ending entirely.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
Oh yeah, a new era of darkness, the reign of
terror in the chocolate factory. Question though, does Charlie inherit
Willie Wonka's magic powers?

Speaker 1 (01:41:58):
I would think so, I would think so. Yeah, Like
he is now in the elevator with him, It's it's
kind of implied that he will have all the necessary
powers needed to run this chocolate empire.

Speaker 2 (01:42:09):
I don't know how that transference process works. Maybe it's
a maybe it's the thing you have to learn. It's
like wizard magic.

Speaker 1 (01:42:17):
Yeah, yeah, he needs to learn the various spells and
there are probably some magical items involved.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
Unless Willie Wonka is not a wizard and he is
a warlock. Is there a packed patron involved? There is
there a patron of candy.

Speaker 1 (01:42:32):
That could be that. That's that is the big question.
Like as as Charlie is ushered into the responsibilities of
actually running things, he may learn strange new threats Like
he doesn't know, like the getting back to the Captain
Nemo example. He doesn't know like the full range of
the of the situation that Wonka faces, like Wonka's. Maybe
Wonka's real world concerns are not not much to consider

(01:42:54):
compared to like the other worldly forces he's constantly wrestling with.

Speaker 2 (01:42:58):
All right, well that's all I've got on Willy Wonka
and the Chocolate Factory.

Speaker 1 (01:43:02):
That's right. This is a great film and that Yeah,
not only everything that's included in the film is tremendous,
But you can speculate endlessly. You can do various analyzes
on what happens and sort of blend the film over
into different genres. It's beautiful, so it's always been one
of my favorites. So I'm glad we glad we got

(01:43:24):
to cover it this week on Weird House Cinema. Good pick,
all right. We know that a lot of you out
there have thoughts and feelings about Willy Wonka and the
Chocolate Factory other adaptations. What are your thoughts about the
latest one? What are your thoughts about the Tim Burton one?
Or there have been a few. I think there was
like a Swiss animated adaptation that I don't know much about,

(01:43:44):
so in addition to I think some stage performances. So
if you have thoughts on other Willy Wonka media, they're
Willy Wonka video games, maybe you can write in about those.
We would love to hear from all of you. Just
a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays
and Thursdays in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed,

(01:44:05):
but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film here on Weird House Cinema.
If you want to keep up with all the movies
we've covered over the years, and sometimes a peek ahead
at what's coming up next. Follow us on Letterboxed where
we are weird House Huge.

Speaker 2 (01:44:17):
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. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

(01:44:39):
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.