Lovecraft Minus Lovecraft with Spencer Parsons: An Introduction to all things similar to Lovecraft!!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Film Foundations, a collaborative
show between weirding Way Media and Someone's Favorite Productions. I
am your co host Chris Statue from weirding Way Media
and the Culture Cast. Because I'm in this position, I
don't get to say anything funny.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
And I'm your other co host, Brian Verril from The
Disconnected and Someone's Favorite Productions coming to you straight from
the Moist Moist cosmic hell that we're going to be
discussing tonight. I like that.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
I like moist.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
The use of the word moist is apropos here.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
You just alienated a big part of the audience.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Was my job for the word?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
On the show, we ask an answer four questions about
a given topic that is surrounding either an actor, director, franchise, or,
in this episode's case, a micro genre. Our job is
to entice you to broaden your horizons of film, to
encourage you to travel down tangents and side roads that
you may not have traveled down otherwise. On this episode,
if you've clicked on it, you know that we're gonna
be talking about love Craft without Lovecraft. What does that mean? Well,

(01:04):
our guest Spencer Parsons who's all the way from Northwestern University,
where he is a professor Associate Professor of our TVF Radio,
Television and Film for you people who don't know what
that abbreviation. Is also a filmmaker, but he's also one
of the few people who have come to the show
with something that is intently specific in a way that
again not saying Meryl Streep or Steven Spielberg wouldn't be.

(01:28):
But this is like you went out of your way
to pick a thing. So first off, tell our audience
a little bit about kind of what you do, what
films you make, and then why if given the opportunity
to pick anything, you decided to do lovecraft without Lovecraft.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Well, you know, I don't only make horror films, but
I mostly make horror horror adjacent And I guess a
word that's gonna come out a bunch tonight weird. Uh,
you know, kind of kind of films and uh, you know,

(02:06):
shorts and features and uh. I have recently come off
of teaching a class on weird horror specifically, you know,
sort of derived from the idea of weird tales and
uh and love craft and kind of kind of trying
to think about the uh, the aesthetics of the weird

(02:28):
uh in in cinema. Uh, and uh you know part
of that is, uh, well, we'll get into a lot
that's very film specific.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (02:37):
You know. One of the tough nuts to crack about
adapting Lovecraft is that, uh the work is so uh
literary in ways that are both good and bad that
that uh. One of one of the reasons why I'm
thinking of this as Lovecraft without Lovecraft is I think
I think some of the work that is not directly
based on Lovecraft actually comes a lot closer to the

(03:00):
mark of achieving the love Craftian by not trying to
stick to what, you know, what are the specifics of
given stories and the sort of love crafty and mythos.
If that makes sense, I mean it totally does.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
We were talking before we turn the recorder on about
things that were and weren't kind of applicable here, So
I would I would say, before we go any further
in your mind, what are the hard lines here so
our audience can kind of see what the paths we're
going to be traveling down are and the ones that maybe,
like we talked about before we even started recording, might
be quote a little too on the nose.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Right, So like I love Reanimator, it's one of my
favorite movies of all time. But no, we're not going
to be talking about Reanimator because it's love Craft without
Lovecraft and so not you know, based on a specific
Lovecraft film. I don't know. Maybe the topic of Stuart
Gordon's Dolls will come up later, and that is a
movie that I can sort to be fairly Lovecraftian, maybe

(04:02):
arguably more love Craftian than than Stuart Gordon's direct sort
of adaptations. So so not direct adaptations and also not
direct pastiche or citation. So we're going to talk some
John Carpenter, but we're not going to talk about In

(04:24):
the Mouth of Madness because from the title onward there's
a lot that's very specific to Lovecraft that is being adapted.
You know, it's kind of I think of In the
Mouth of Madness, even though it doesn't name love Craft
within the movie. That's that's a movie that's a little
bit like Naked Lunch or something in terms of interpreting

(04:44):
William Burrows. So that becomes a little bit too close. So,
you know, I guess the way i'd like to talk
about this is to you know, maybe start with some
of the stuff that's like Lovecraft inspired and see how
how it works that's not necessarily a direct kind of
reference or pastiche and then go farther and farther off

(05:06):
the reservation, you know, to think about how, you know,
cinema itself can be actually quite Lovecraftian when it wants
to be well.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
And I mean, as much as I'm not disappointed we
don't get to talk about In the Mouth of Madness,
because I think it's a movie that has gotten a
reappraisal in the last ten to fifteen years. And I
think similarly to another movie that came out in the
nineties much further ahead of its time than it had
any right to be, Wes Craven's New Nightmare, is it's
operating in a world that people at the time were

(05:41):
not really as in tune with the idea of metafiction
and what that would mean to be, and especially with
something like In the Mouth of Madness, which it is
a I and again like because I just rewatched it today,
just because again, like it's one of those movies that
when I think about it, I'm like, I should rewatch
it because it's such a good movie. It's meta within
meta within meta. It's like three levels of meta on

(06:04):
top of everything else. But the entire thing really is
essentially they're just not saying Lovecraft. They mentioned Stephen King
in the movie several times, which is the funny part.
I always forget that. They're like he outsold Stephen King.
Was like, oh right, they straight up say that in
the movie. But the other thing, and I think you
kind of already alluded to it, is if Cuthulhu is

(06:26):
mentioned outright, that is a disqualifier here.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
And so for instance, the Evil Dead movies are out
because you know, they've got the necronomicon, and you know,
I I love I love Evil Dead, uh and I
And maybe we'll talk a little bit about the way
you don't we all really Maybe we'll talk about the

(06:52):
way in which that relates, you know to uh, the
idea of what's love craftian. I mean, I guess I'll
just i'll very quickly. So one thing about Lovecraft is
that as a writer, he's you know, really famously open source.
Uh you know, uh he encouraged uh and worked with
other writers who would uh sort of elaborate upon ideas

(07:16):
and monsters and and whatnot, that that he had created,
which is actually you know, remarkably ahead of its time,
uh as a as a way of working and and
so that's that's the kind of you know direct tradition.
Uh that that like uh you know the Evil Dad
movies fit into with with an necronomicon.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Evil Dead is very similar to the way Robert Chambers
use love Crafts. Yeah, yeah, material. It's like we're talking
about it and we're expounding further, but like this is directly.
It's like we're coming at this directly like it is
Lovecraft because what he talked about we are now going
to talk further about that is not what we're doing here.

Speaker 3 (07:57):
And I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna kick out Jason goes
to hell while we're talking about it. That also has
the necronomicon boy, you know, borrowed from from Evil Dead,
but other Friday the thirteenth, maybe on the table.

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Interesting if we go that's true.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
So well, one thing, one thing, we're dancing around here.
There's a lot of people that are going to listen
to this or watch this that have probably never watched
a love Craftian movie and don't know what that means.
How do you, how do you define a love Craftian movie?

Speaker 3 (08:26):
Right? Okay, So, so here's the here's the big idea
of that that Lovecraft had that I think is is
better than him. And I'm about to piss off love
craft fans when I say that, Like, you know, I
love the stories, but on a certain level, U HP
Lovecraft And I say this with love is the worst
writer to ever be the most influential on you know,

(08:48):
culture and totally agree other literature and movies and everything.
And it's because he has this central idea that is
so big and important, but that uh, even he can't
handle and he has to call it unnameable over and
over again, all the eldritch unnameable blah blah. You know,

(09:09):
the it's ironic, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
I mean even he can't handle it, right, Like he
couldn't know what he created.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
He can't handle the truth. But uh but so yeah,
so so that that big idea is uh and I'll
just I'll just bring up a direct quote because I
got some direct quotes. Uh, he says, Now, all my
tales are based on the fundamental premise that common human
laws and interests and emotions have no validity or significance

(09:36):
in the vast cosmos at large. Uh. That's that's pretty big.
That's central, that's like right there at the middle.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (09:45):
And this is about cosmic horror. And you know, we'll
be talking about the cosmic u quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
But the But but one of the things, another way
of putting this that he sets up and there's really
important to Lovecraft is a kind of view on the
inside from the outside. One of the essential things that
Lovecraft stories do is they decenter our normal way of
thinking about drama. And you know, just in saying that,

(10:17):
like all human emotion and endeavor and everything is not
what my story is concerned about. Well, yeah, just right there,
You've you've taken away all the Aristotle, you've taken away
all the save the Cat, You've you know, some of
that stuff can come into And I'm not gonna say
that like all this, all the movies we'll talk about
are not applicable to more traditional kinds of dramaturgy. But

(10:40):
there's this like really big guiding idea that Lovecraft throws
out there that even he can't quite describe. And I
think part of what's interesting about cinema. Cinema is a
little bit better at describing this stuff by being literal
up to a point and then leaving a lot of
you know, kind of interesting, purposeful ambiguity at the same time.

(11:03):
But there's stuff that we can see that conditions are
imaginations for the unimaginable, if that makes sense. And so
I think in a way, cinema is better from the
get go at taking on taking on these ideas than
literature necessarily is. And that's not anything against literature, but

(11:24):
it's like, just think about what the camera does. We
have a protagonist who's like the main character in a movie.
The movie may even be from their point of view,
and we see them from the outside at all times.
This is typical. This is the main way of seeing
it unless you unless you see the you know, the
remake of Maniac from a few years ago, or Lady
in the Lake or you know, there's a very small

(11:46):
number of like true all the way through POV movies,
and those tend to be kind of weird style exercises
and not totally work out. But the way in which
movies are filmed from the get go has a tension
between the inside and the outside that that I think
makes uh, cinema really good, uh for dealing with this idea.

(12:08):
So there's there's this idea of of uh uh you know,
imagining the unimaginable that comes from trying to see ourselves
from the outside, uh, in a in a way that
recognizes that we are tiny within our universe. Now, again,
that doesn't mean that human endeavor isn't ultimately important. Maybe

(12:30):
to love Craft, it wasn't to most of the filmmakers
I'm going to be citing it really is. So that's
a way in which it's not love Craft. It's love
Craftian uh and uh, you know, but is not necessarily
directly based on that. So it is does that? Is
that a good enough explanation to start with? Is there
more stuff to get into with it?

Speaker 1 (12:52):
I mean, so much of its meta textual. That's the
problem les getting to this point. I mean, like you've
kind of already alluded to Lovecraft. Without Lovecraft, you have
to understand what that means initially, And like you alluded to,
I mean I think about it often when it comes
to someone like Lovecraft, because I think another way for
more contemporary audiences to understand it in terms of an example,

(13:16):
And again I think he's more involved than Lovecraft was
in terms of downstream, but I mean in a lot
of ways, it's like what George Lucas did. He created
a world and then just it was okay with everybody
else doing their own thing within it, which not a
lot of people would have been for a lot of reasons,
but he was. And then obviously it kind of it

(13:36):
left his ability to control it and it became its
own thing. I mean, it's kind of a it's kind
of a cheap analogy because I think what Lovecraft was
getting at is obviously a little bit more interesting emotionally
and at least challenging me as a reader and a
writer than what George Lucas has done. But it's the
same thing. I mean, they've created something that has essentially

(13:59):
escaped the velocity the escape velocity there gravity and have
gotten out into the world. And there's nothing There's nothing
better than someone else doing something with your thing, and
maybe even doing it better. There's nothing wrong with that.
I understand why someone would bristle at it.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
But yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Mean, to your point, Lovecraft ends up people end up
carrying the ball a lot further and a lot harder
than Lovecraft ever would have even thought about.

Speaker 2 (14:20):
Doing well.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
And an interesting thing is that, versus George Lucas, he
had a tiny audience while he was alive and even
for many years after he died. We're talking about a
niche audience. Lovecraft is kind of the velvet underground of cinema,
right and of a certain kind of horror literature in
a way. You know, it's it's not so much that
so many copies were sold, it's that the copies got

(14:42):
sold to the right people, and that that open source
kind of way of developing a mythos that went on,
you know, after he died. And you know, there's argument
among the Lovecraft scholars as to how much he meant
to be open source, but the fact of the matter
is he did end up very open source. And what
that did was it spread these ideas. You know, again,

(15:07):
I think to people who didn't even know that they
were taking them on. And we might even we might
talk about a couple that I think, you know, end
up in the same place as Lovecraft, just by drawing
on the same influences that he did and living through
the twentieth century. And maybe they didn't they didn't read
him at all, They didn't rate him as important but

(15:29):
that he concretized an idea that then, you know, folks
later on have run with, whether intentionally or not.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
Well, and to be fair, George Lucas knew a lot
more about the inherent value of capitalizing your ideas into things.
Lovecraft was not necessarily as interested. But that again goes
into the idea of how does the idea spread if
not through multiple venues and multiple means.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
If only he'd been selling stuff. Yo, so thoth.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Right right exactly? I mean, hey, Cthulhu's cute now, I
mean good?

Speaker 3 (16:06):
Yeah, yeah, I think there are stuffed choice Oh yeah,
they're absolute tons the world.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
The comic bookstores around the world are replete with them.
As what one might.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Say, Yeah, but Lovecraft didn't have that idea originally, somebody
else had to come along and uh, you know, make
make that stuff well.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
And again, I mean in my mind it goes back
to I mean again like in terms of like the
philosophy behind what we're talking about, like the idea of
putting penned to paper and making something tangible. That alone,
that like creative process is ultimately in my mind, what
Lovecraft becomes so important about, which is again being creative.

(16:48):
But not necessarily starting from zero. You might be starting
from one, two or three. And I mean again, like
in so many things in the world, like if something
is in your brain, it is just a thought. It
is when it is put on paper, it's somewhat becomes
tangible and reality and it can be received by people.
I mean, I think there's a quote there is nothing
outside the text, and that's I mean, in reality, there isn't.

(17:12):
I mean, human history is only really outside of the
oral tradition is shared through text. And I mean again,
like that's what's so interesting about Lovecraft is that becomes
a part of modern mythology in a way that Tolkien
and Lucas and other people would kind of throw their
hat into the ring as well. But Lovecraft is a
very early expression of creating an idea, putting it to paper,

(17:35):
and then just letting it grow on its own.

Speaker 4 (17:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Well, and I think I think, for instance, you bring
up Tolkien and so one, uh, you know, Tolkien obviously
hugely influential. Uh And I you know, I enjoy Lord
of the Rings myself. So this is this is not
to slag on Tolkien, but I think Lovecraft is a
bigger deal in this in the sense that Tolkien creates

(18:00):
more of a map for world creation that unfortunately a
lot of the followers of Tolkien follow his kind of
world creation. Obviously, there are some who have taken that
kind of notion of world creation and created their own worlds. Right.
But but Lovecraft I think has an idea that like
worms its way into a lot more stuff and is

(18:22):
more flexible, and he becomes you know, again, I already
said he's like the worst writer to be so influential,
But I think I think his influence you know, I
don't know, you got to give it about three hundred years,
but I think it's actually like you know, quasis Shakespearean.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Well and it again, it like it's Ora Boros. It
eats its own tail because it the idea of what
Lovecraft is is a cosmic horror that spreads and how
does it spread through the storytelling? You know, through either
oral or you know, written down or whatever. And again
it is ironic because yeah, Lovecraft himself is less important

(19:00):
than ever.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Frankly, I mean.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Again, I mean, I'm not to be dismissive, but you
kind of already alluded to it, like he wasn't a
great writer. But if you but if you're introducing broad
ideas to people, you don't necessarily have to be the
best writer. You just have to be able to get
your point across.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
He does well, and so philosophers, for instance, are super
into Lovecraft right now. There's a lot of philosophy built
on this, and there should be because however he does it,
he's articulating you know, serious kinds of philosophical ideas and
questions through the stories without necessarily being a philosopher. It's

(19:39):
the philosophers that come after it to sort of, you know,
take the rats in the walls and expound upon what
that represents philosophically.

Speaker 1 (19:47):
Which is where I was so excited to do this episode,
and I know Ryan was as well, because the the
influence of Lovecraft in things that aren't necessarily Lovecraft is
it's so it is broader than it seems, but it
is very specific, but it is broad because I think
once we kind of get more into the specifics of

(20:07):
what movies we're going to be throwing into the ring here,
you'll see kind of what we're talking about. But like again,
like you said, like he is so influential in a
way that is it's really hard to pin down any
one thing, because it feels like the ideas and the
singular ideas have been taken and run with, the metafictional
ideas have been taken and run with, and then both

(20:28):
of those things have been put together by people and
run right. And it's like Jesus, how many other derivative
not derivative, but derivations of this can we run with
before it's exhausted? Still haven't seen it yet, really like
people are still doing things with these ideas that seem fresh,
even though Lovecraft hasn't seen any of these movies, because

(20:49):
he's been dead for a very long time, so we're
very long time. So let's before we get into the questions,
Spencer kind of give a broad kind of over you
in your mind of what the love Craft without Lovecraft
movie kind of history, media history of that is, before
we kind of just jump into the questions.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
Oh cool, Yeah, So there are there are some some
films that were you know, kind of Lovecraft inspired, you know,
not long after his life. So you do find some
stuff in uh, you know, particularly in the nineteen fifties,

(21:32):
you start to see some stuff come up. You've actually
hit me with a question where I'm not as as
fascile with the titles. But you know, like there were
Poe based movies that would get Lovecraft titles put onto them,
and of course Poe was a big influence on on Lovecraft.
And uh, there's a Roger Korman in particular that I'm

(21:55):
that I that I'm forgetting. But you you get into
like so is the Lovecraft the directly Lovecraft based movies.
You know, there's a Dunewich Horror and they're you know,
there are a number that start to percolate up through
the nineteen fifties and sixties, and then in the seventies
I think is where this like really takes off as

(22:16):
Lovecraft without Lovecraft. I have a couple of Lovecraft without
Lovecraft that are earlier, but but it's the seventies where
it really takes off because it's a certain kind of
nerd that you know, of the famous monsters of film
land readers and the easy comics readers who are who

(22:38):
are aware of of of Lovecraft, you know, whether it
be Stephen King or Dan O'Bannon, Rod Serling, Rod Serling, yeah,
or I mean n.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Night Gallery has a couple h Lovecraft. I mean, there's
I know that there's a Pickman's model, like straight up adaptation.
I mean I watched it, so that's right then, and
then there are a couple other ones within it. So
like and that was a big pop culture needle mover
was Rod Serling's stuff. I mean, maybe not Night Gallery
as much as Twilight Zone, but I mean having HP

(23:11):
Lovecraft in Night Gallery is pretty pretty important. I mean
in terms of sure showing it to a certain kind
of audience at a certain time.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Well, and I would throw out that like within Lovecraft
without Lovecraft, outer limits has to be considered because the
structures of those stories are more lovecraftying than like Twilight Zone.
Uh and maybe a little bit more but not not
definitely more of the Twilight Zone, maybe a little a
little bit more uh Lovecraft informed than Night Gallery, but

(23:43):
that you know, the the way that Outer Limits worked
was really just like bringing the audience up to the
edge of revealing a monster and then getting out of town,
you know, like not not kind of bring us, bring
us around for a full moral. Not that that's necessar
wrong in a story, but just works a little bit differently.
You know. Again, Lovecraft is not gonna be a Lovecraft

(24:08):
without Lovecraft movie. Is not going to be dedicated to
giving you a clear moral, because that's one of the
first things that's got to go in this cosmic horror
idea of not caring about, you know, human preferences.

Speaker 1 (24:21):
Right right, The cosmic horror is bigger than humanity ever
could hope to be.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Yeah, bigger than a moral at the end of the
story that you can easily sort of comprehend and teach
a child to lesson with.

Speaker 1 (24:33):
Older and bigger, which is why, which is why the
thing for Lovecraft period, and I mean even Lovecraft without
Lovecraft has this The idea of being informed of whatever
it is causes you to go mad because you can't
comprehend it. But that does show I mean, I'm assuming
that's probably gonna show up in some of the things
we pick anyways. I mean, maybe not as much as

(24:55):
it does in the things that are directly referencing it,
but that's always part of it, is the inability to
comprehend whatever it is, which again is now looking at
that as a contemporary analysis like that's so metafictional, like
I can't comprehend it because it has expanded beyond the
reaches of my ability to look at all of it like,

(25:15):
that's just another way of putting it. Really, like Lovecraft
was just getting at it in terms of more of
a applicable to horror as a genre which is being
driven mad by something. But take the genre of it
out and you have something that's a lot different now
that I think is being played with in a way
that can be lovecrafty and without Lovecraft.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Absolutely, I I'm very excited about this episode. This is
one that it is feels like it's written for me
and Spencer. We may have to talk after we've done recording,
because absolutely, you brought up the genre of the weird,
and I'm gonna bring that up in something I'm gonna
talk about to the answer of question two. Soabe, just
get into those questions there.

Speaker 1 (25:56):
Let's do Yeah, go for it, Ryan, you kick us off.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Ryan, all right, Spencer, Question number one as usual, what is,
in your opinion the foundational title for Lovecraft without love
Craft that if somebody has never seen any of these
this is the first one that they should watch.

Speaker 3 (26:13):
I'm gonna say Alien, and we know that it's directly influenced,
but in fact, like not Alien, I've got to talk
about it as as actually the Alien series because Alien
kicks it off. But I'm gonna have some hot takes
about later Alien movies in the franchise, and as hot

(26:34):
as you would think.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
Man, we did an Alien episode and I may have
already pissed the Alien fans off.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
So maybe well well so, so Alien does does really
kick it off. It's this you know, Dan O'Bannon and
Ron Sushai they have they have this this basic idea
that is a kind of haunted house thing, but because
it's in the cosmos, it starts to speak to cosmic
horror from the moment that they step off of you know,

(27:03):
the the ship in there there. They got to go
to the uh you know that big wonderful uh kind
of that I'm forgetting what the what what? Everybody has
the name for it, that that big crazy like halfy
wish the wishbone thing, the wishbone, Yeah, like half eaten
doughnut ship that uh that the you know, the the

(27:25):
space jockey is inside.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
And thank you for using that term, by the way,
because they don't even we don't we don't use that
term no more. After Prometheus, don't you know, We're.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Going to talk about Prometheus in just a second. Two Uh,
which uh Prometheus might not quite uh fit here. We'll
talk about it a little bit, but might not quite
fit because it is a little more directly pastiche from
at the Mountains of Madness than Alien is from any
particular But the moment that we have a room full
of eggs and a space jockey and like a weird

(27:57):
laser kind of protective level above those eggs, you know,
with the fog, we're into a realm of implications that
are much larger than the people who have walked in
the mystery of the space Jockey, which you know, it's funny.

(28:17):
Ridley Scott talked about that long ago and the extras
about Alien, you know, from the DV dear era in
the nineties his interviews. He's already on about, you know,
wanting to do Prometheus, and it's kind of like, dude,
don't do it. Because the beautiful mystery of this thing,
of it encountering this thing that's maybe a skeleton but

(28:38):
also looks kind of like a like a space suit
and it's got a hole in its chest, and the
way that all this is going to come together and
where did it come from and what is the purpose
of all this stuff? It is speaking to something bigger.
And then what happens, you know, among the crew is
not merely, oh, there's now a bug on our ship,

(29:00):
but it's a kind of thing that brings out different
responses from everybody, but that as a social group begins
to drive them mad, and that they are they're on
a mission that is So this is one area where
the original Alien is so much better than Prometheus. And
I know people have said this before, but this is
another thing that's great about Lovecraft without Lovecraft, these these

(29:24):
folks are truckers. There are space truckers, as Obannon always
talked about it and everything. So they're space truckers. They're
not scientists, they're not on a big mission, but they
find their way into a big mission that is beyond
their comprehension. In Prometheus, you send in a bunch of
scientists and they act so much dumber than the truckers.

(29:47):
Space truckers in Alien are so much smarter. There's so
much more scientific than the scientists in Prometheus.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
Or an Alien Covenant for that matter, because they go
full dumb dumb. As as much as I enjoy that movie,
don't take your helmet off on an alien planet? Are
you it's breathable air. What's your fucking point.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Yeah, exactly, yourself safe? What are you thinking? Yeah, no,
it's uh so, so at any rate, we have this
setup at the end, and then at the end, you know,
it's interesting the cosmic force in a way is defeated,
but it's also not She's left alone in hyper sleep
at the end, and uh there's this ambiguity about what

(30:31):
could possibly happen to her, and she's sort of left alone,
and she leaves that little message at the end, signing
off that she's going to go to sleep. And and
then we get Aliens and Alien three and Alien Resurrection,
all of which continue this story to become more and
more Lovecraftian as they go. She's going further into madness.

(30:54):
She is confronted with more of an unknown with each
successive chapter, and James Cameron does his level best to
close this out in a Reagan era happy ending, and
it's right and I love it. And but they still
have to go to sleep, and that's the thing. Going
to sleep allows, you know, the aliens back in. And

(31:18):
it reminds me the sleep pattern in the Alien movies
and the way that this works. It reminds me of
Lovecraft's night gaunts. You know, this this thing that from
as a child, he was visited by h he visited
in dreams by these very difficult to describe kind of spirits.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Sleep paralysis, probably right, I mean now now the modern interpretation.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
No, totally. And I think and he knew that it
was psychological. You know, he was a very materialist, you know,
That's that's one of the interesting things as well. He's
he's a very materialist character, and the materialism is where
his his weirdness comes from. So atheists and himself did
not believe in the kind of like elder gods and everything.

(32:06):
His elder gods, like the monster and alien are metaphors,
you know, they're allegory for other kinds of things. But
so here's the thing. I really don't like Alien Resurrection,
but my hat's fucking off to that movie for producing
a couple of things that are just incredible as like

(32:27):
Lovecrafty and horror. So my hot take on Alien Resurrection
is that the whole movie should not actually have aliens
in it anymore. They've exhausted the xenomorph. Don't bring in
the aliens. It is enough to bring this woman back
from death in multiple clones, and she confronts her own

(32:50):
like horrifying her own horrifying like different manifestations of badly
cloned selves. This is so great tesque. This is actually
like really over the line.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Are you talking about the scene in general or just
the idea?

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah, it's no, the scene in the idea. It's disgusting,
and I mean, like the effects in it are really grotesque,
and they're you know, even by being like more fake
and less convincing, there's still like grotesque in this way
that's like really really messed up. And then she's got
to fuck the alien at the end. So I mean,

(33:28):
this is this is what brings us into like true
madness territory by the end of that movie is she's
got to fuck the alien. She's gonna birth an alien. No,
this movie is not as good as Possession, which is
definitely a Lovecraft without Lovecraft movie, But in Alien Resurrection
we're kind of starting to get into Possession territory in
terms of like the relationship to this monster. But Alien

(33:51):
three also deserves a lot of credit for sort of
taking the love crafty and ball farther into like you know,
into real madness. That's where you know, if you want to.
I don't. I don't necessarily like I Actually I like
fan theories better when they're like fan readings. Right, call
it a reading because you know that that's not necessarily

(34:14):
what's intended, but there's enough in it to give you
something to work with. And there's there's a reading that
I like of Alien three where there is no alien
on board. It's a figment of her kind of imagination,
a figment of the imaginations of all the people that
she's around, because it's so you know, the whole film

(34:36):
is like embedded. I'm not saying this is literal. Again,
I just want to be clear. I am not doing
a fan theory. I am doing a reading where this
this sort of enriches the sort of psychology of the
character of Lippery Ripley as she's going through all these
films that the alien is almost this like yellow wallpaper
figure or a ghost or like the rats in the walls,

(34:57):
this thing that may or may not be Rea that
is driving everybody mad, on a total death drive to
where she has to kill herself. By the end, she's
in such pain because of the confrontation with the cosmic
horror that she has to die and and so that's
that's one of the things that I really love and

(35:19):
the least, you know, by continuing, Aliens is a bit Lovecraftian,
but it's the least Lovecraftian of all of the Alien movies.
But it's implicated Lovecraft is in there. Jim Cameron just
is not like that. He's he's not down for like
the totally open James Cameron is gonna go in. He's
gonna solve a problem. You know, we're sending in the Marines,

(35:41):
They're gonna kill the bugs. We're gonna solve a problem.
And you know what, it's one of my all time
favorite movies. So this is not a complaint. It's just
a kind of an ethos. And I guess like one
of the things I'd like to throw out that I
love about the love Craftian is that it defeats our
traditional sort of movies are built around a fantasy of mastery,

(36:01):
and Aliens is the most dedicated to a fantasy of
mastery where we figure out what the problem is and
we're gonna go in and we're gonna solve it. And
so of course James Cameron was pissed off when Alien
three begins by killing off a couple of characters that
he thought he had saved, and you know, there's the

(36:23):
fantasy of mastery that they can get back home, that
they can solve the problem, they can kill off the
alien queen, and they're going to get there, and James
Cameron believes in that till the very end, and because
the series continues that it becomes more Lovecraftian from there.
We actually did solve the problem, and then we didn't.

(36:44):
It's unsolvable. Ripley is driven to madness, So that that
would be my starting point. I think that's I think
that's the best love Craft without Lovecraft to start with,
and I include all the movies. I mean, I don't
even really One trouble of having a re of Alien
Resurrection like I have is that movie's not fun to watch.

(37:05):
I don't really have a lot of fun watching it.
I'm you know, I'm a big I'm a big fan
of the whole series, so I've seen it now a
number of times. But it's worth watching. And this is
if you if you really want to go there, it's
worth watching for the way that it synthesizes these ideas

(37:25):
in a truly horrific fashion that I kind of hope
will influence other filmmakers to make something better, you know,
out of these ideas. So I think I think it's
it's actually to me, it's become a tremendously important film
while being one that I don't really want to watch
again soon. But you know, I might teach it in
a class someday as like a problem film.

Speaker 1 (37:48):
I mean, look, at the end of the day, I
think that movies that don't necessarily succeed all the way
tend up being end up being more interesting in the
long run because movies that succeed often they've laid their
groundwork out for you to see. And the movies that
necessarily aren't successes they may not be as much of
a success because they are a little bit more ambiguous

(38:10):
with the audience, which Western audiences read as American ones
don't seem to. It's not that they don't value it's
just not something that feels like it's been part of
the storytelling tradition here as much as it has been
other places, which is unfortunate. I mean, like you said,
with with Aliens, as much as I like Aliens, I
find the ending of Aliens to be a little pedantic.

(38:32):
Am I gonna and we're just here again, like it's
I mean, I get it from a sitcom point of view,
like we're right back where we started, but again to
your point, like when we kind of transcend that first
two films and go further, they start playing around with
some interesting ideas. Maybe they don't all work, but they're
doing something interesting with them. And hey, I would have

(38:53):
liked to have seen that goddamn wood Planet in the
third one.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Oh I know, just say, and I know Vincent Ward
in the Wood Planet. I love it.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Well.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
One other thing about Cameron is Aliens comes in a
cycle of Vietnam War movies, and there's a way in
which Aliens is a fantasy of winning the Vietnam War,
which might be the most loved Craftian war that America
has ever been involved in, A deeply love Craftian war.
That is madness, you know, that lasts in our culture

(39:23):
to this very moment. It is a madness that has
not yet died out.

Speaker 1 (39:28):
I have a very close family friend who is in
his eighties now, and he was stationed in Vietnam. But
he didn't participate in like the infantry or anything, but
he was special ops or some sort of like something
that had to do with antennas and radio communication, so
he was somewhat top secret. He remembers interacting with people

(39:48):
in Vietnam soldiers who had and again this is maybe
it's hyperbolic. Maybe it's being embellished soldiers who would come
back after the evening with ears around their necks on
a string because they would go and cut the they
would kill viet Cong and cut their ears off, and
it's like, uh, I know, they weren't doing this in
World War Two, you fucking psychos. I mean, and that's

(40:11):
the thing. It's because they've been driven to madness by
an enemy they cannot see. I mean, that's the thing, right,
Vietnam was about an enemy you can't see. You don't
know where they're coming from. They're in the walls, man,
I mean, that's scene in aliens, right, I see him,
I see them on the thing. Where are they? And
they pop the ceiling up and it's just like oh fuck,
but that's but that's Vietnam, right, Like that that happened

(40:31):
for real. I mean, people walking into punge traps. You know,
the fucking Vietnamese are underground in their tunnels, like you
can't see them. You know they're there, you can't see
them well.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
And if i'm if I'm gonna be an idiot sociologist,
which I'll just go ahead and be, even though I
don't have the training, I'll go back. You know, this
is pretty common theory about seventies horror, but the Vietnam
War unleashes This is why the seventies and why I
think Alien, you know, uh, Texas Chainsaw Mass is also
a Lovecraftian kind of movie and very influenced by the

(41:05):
the you know, the Vietnam War. You know, so it is.
It is a love Craftian force that unleashes a lot
of energy, even though you know the love Craftian stuff
was lying in wait and did exist beforehand.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Ryan, what do you think about Alien? You like the
movie Alien?

Speaker 3 (41:24):
Do you like Alien?

Speaker 2 (41:25):
Of course I do.

Speaker 4 (41:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
I think this is a great choice, very very like timeless,
mainstream type of choice, that one. This is the one
that I would consider most people have probably watched at
this point.

Speaker 3 (41:38):
And it has the tentacles which others coming up are
not going to have.

Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean they just reshowed it in theaters
a couple of weeks ago for its forty fifth anniversary,
which is you know, shocking, don't.

Speaker 3 (41:50):
I don't want to think about that. Please, let's not well.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
I'm just think forty five years later, they're making another
Alien movie that comes out in like a month and
a half.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
So yeah, yeah, yeah, can't shake it.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
No, can't shake it. Ryan, Do you want me to
answer next or do you want to answer sir? Okay, okay,
So my answer I think mainstream as well. Probably it's
a movie that I have a deep affection for, So
this might be a little bit of a bias, but
I think in terms of hitting the notes, but not

(42:22):
in a way that it's like, oh, that's that's that.
It's like this is you're there. I can see your influence,
but I'm not necessarily seeing the tentacles and all that.
So maybe it's two on the nose. I mean again,
if Alien is two on the nose, this might also
be two on the nose. But Alex Garland's Annihilation I
would I would put up there as a imminently approachable movie.

(42:45):
I think if you sat down and watched it, will
you get everything from it the first time? Maybe not.
I think it's a little less straightforward than Alien in
terms of the conversation. Is trying to have with the audience,
but I think it's mainstream enough to still be worthwhile
in the This is a foundational title because I think,
like Alien, it's kind of having a conversation with the

(43:06):
audience that once you pick up on it and see
what it's trying to say, it makes a little bit
more sense. I just think Alex Garland as a screenwriter
tends to traffic in ambiguity a little bit more than
Dan O'Bannon and Ron Schussett did, which, again, Dan O'Bannon
is one of the few writers that I have like
an immense amount of respect for because he was cantankerous

(43:28):
to the end babies, and I appreciate that. I mean
as someone who maybe isn't as cantankris, but is again,
I consider myself to be the kind of person who
does not like to bend when other people steal my script.
David Geiler, Yeah, God, but Annihilation is a movie that
I've seen plenty. I enjoy it immensely. It is in

(43:48):
terms of the source material, it's not even really based
off of the book that it's based on, which I think.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
The memory of reading the book.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Right literally, it's like, this is what I remembered about
the book, and it's like, Okay, s Garland perfect, And
that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (44:02):
I mean in a lot of ways.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
You know, his film Civil War just came out, and
there's a universe where that movie is mentioned here as
an answer because the ideas there could have been transmuted
into covering something like this changes a person irrevocably into
something that they were not beforehand, and Civil War touches

(44:25):
on it just like it sniffs it, just barely. And
I think I know why. It's because Alex S. Garland
already had this conversation in Annihilation, and I think he's
also kind of had that conversation in Men and an
ex Machina, But Annihilation, I think is where he's having
the most interesting conversation about the transformative nature of things.

(44:45):
And Natalie Portman goes into the force field or I
guess I forget what it's called exactly in the movie,
but it's literally just like a wall that you travel
into and you can't tell that things are different necessarily,
but they are, and it drives everybody mad. That's not
love crafty, and without necessarily saying Cuthulu or something else
or tentacles, I think it's batting in the in the

(45:08):
right ballpark, as it were. And again to your point
about Alien, I think it's very approachable for mainstream audiences,
which when we're talking about these kinds of ideas, we
probably need to make sure it's as ground level maybe
first or second story, but not going any further up,
because then we're really kind of into a place that
people are going to start being uncomfortable with the ambiguity

(45:28):
of the stories being told. And look Alien, like you said,
very straightforward at the end, like she's asleep, she's drifting
out into space. Hopefully they find her annihilation the way
that movie ends. Yeah, right, like the interpretation of that movie,
My interpretation and other people's interpretations don't necessarily all resonate

(45:49):
with one another, but they're all kind of the same conversation,
which I think is for me more interesting in the
long term for something like Annihilation that has a little
bit of ambiguity, but not so much that mainstream audiences
are like, uh, like I saw Zodiac and I didn't
like the way it ended. I mean, Zodiac, I think
is probably a mentionable thing here, if not frankly another answer,

(46:11):
because that's literally the point of the movie is these
guys are being driven mad by the Zodiac Killer, who
is seemingly played by different actors throughout the movie because
he is sometimes we don't even know if he actually
is the killer or not when Charles Fleischer's on screen.
So Annihilation, But I also think in terms of again
like maybe even less obvious Zodiac. But I think any

(46:34):
movie where a character loses themselves literally, physically, metaphorically, or
emotionally could be mentioned here. But I think Annihilation is
a very good example of we have the idea of
what we're doing, we know who inspired it, but we're
not going to like punch you in the face with
it constantly.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Yeah, what a.

Speaker 2 (46:52):
Great transition of the title. Home we're going to talk about.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Jesus can rest in the face all the time?

Speaker 3 (46:57):
No?

Speaker 4 (46:57):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (46:58):
The other one getting lost in yourself in multiple ways.
I went with another modern one, kind of like you
twenty nineteen's The Lighthouse.

Speaker 3 (47:06):
Oh okay, let yeah, completely different side of Lovecraft than
what we've talked about so far.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
We've got the the ocean, which plays a very big
part of a lot of the cosmic core here. We've
got the tentacles, We've got the you know, isolation and
complete loneliness with somebody to drive yourself mad, and then
suddenly these people become larger than life and weird beyond
belief and who knows what's real or not? And moral

(47:34):
ambiguity of you know, do I trust this person with me?
Do I not? I don't have any reason not to.
But also fuck this guy? And uh should I fuck
this guy? And everything else, like.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
A lot of homo eroticism in the movie too, which
is I mean, lots of wieners, lots of penises in
that movie. It's a lighthouse. It's called the lighthouse, a
vertical structure that's cylindrical.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Come on, yeah, the lighthouse. If you have somehow never
see it. Robert Pattinson, Wilhelm Dafoe in the middle of
nowhere and you just watch them lose their minds, talking
about beans, farting, touching themselves, discovering dead birds. There's a
little bit of everything here. But what's funny. Lovecraft hits
so many weird things. Highlighting the word weird here. This

(48:19):
movie is like every every little frame of this movie
is like, yeah, that's a Lovecraft frame. You can tell
everything about this. You take a scene you can implant
that into almost any of the actual Lovecraft stories and
it makes sense, like this fits into Dagone, this fits
into some aspects of From Beyond, This fits into so

(48:41):
many of just the out of nowhere, what the fuckery
that he always came up with, that you lose yourself
as you're watching the film. And that's why I like
this more than so many of these other ones that
we're gonna talk about tonight, because you watch this thing
three different times, you feel three different ways about this movie.
I love this movie so much.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
I respect you swinging for the fences because this is
more of a swing than even Annihilation is, Like because
like The Lighthouse is a movie that I just saw
two weekends ago, Like I love.

Speaker 3 (49:13):
That I've shown up and I'm the most normy, Like.

Speaker 5 (49:16):
Yeah, I mean, but that's the thing, like a right,
but at the time, like Alien was such a thing
that nobody had ever seen that, like you're you're really getting.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
To the core of the idea.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
It's like this is how pared down it had to
be then for anyone to accept it now, Like The
Lighthouse is, Yeah, it's a big release with massive actors
in it who aren't like this is one of the
early roles that there's like, no, Willem Dafoe and Robert
Pattinson are like operating at peak here, like I don't
think I mean, like, look, Willem Dafoe farting throughout the

(49:48):
movie is really just give me a super cut of
Willem Dafoe farting over and over again, because that's that's
really the best part of the movie.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
But with the speech played over it.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
What a what a good film man, Robert Eggers knows
what he's doing. Huh weird?

Speaker 2 (50:03):
I would agree here. Yeah, these are all great choices
and oddly compliment each other very interestingly within the the
Lovecraft Ouvra considering cosmic sci fi very wet in one
of them. So now you know we got a little
deep onto those. Let's get even deeper. Spencer's what's a

(50:24):
you know, a movie that maybe isn't great as a
first time pick for somebody, but one that is still
a really great film. But you know, maybe if they
watch this first, it would turn them away from the
idea of Lovecraft.

Speaker 3 (50:37):
I like your gusta with that laugh might turn you away. Well, okay,
so this is a really big favorite movie of mine.
And I don't think it generally gets talked about in
terms of Lovecraft. But Ganja and Hesse I love Ganja

(50:57):
and Hess and uh, you know in a certain in
a certain respect, who needs Cthulhu when you have uh,
you know, the history of Western colonialism and slavery as
the back background to the horror of people becoming vampires?
But but particularly But the thing is, this is one

(51:19):
where it is slow moving. Uh. It is because of
the way that it was not just made but kind
of thrown away by uh, you know, by its producers,
the the you know, even though it's been restored, it's
been restored in a form that is very rough. I

(51:42):
think the way that it was made was rough, but
the restoration of it preserves even more roughness of how
it's how it was treated. It is. It is a
slow movie. It is, Uh, it is very strangely structured
and put together. You know, from the title onward Gonja

(52:04):
and Hess and Ganja is not a character who enters
until like halfway through the movie. You know, that's you know,
right there, we got some some weirdness, uh that's going on.
But this is I think also when we talk about
Lovecraft and I just gotta throw this down. This is

(52:25):
necessary to understand, but I think it's part of what
makes Lovecraft actually influential and interesting. Lovecraft, as many people
listening to this watching this, well know super racist.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
You finally brought it up. I was like, eazy, we're
an hour into this, We're an hour.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
In we know.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
But but so one of the things is that, like,
I don't think that Bill Gunn, the director of Ganja
and Hess, was directly influenced by Lovecraft, but I think
his ideas dovetail in some really really interesting ways. And
it is notable that a number of, you know, artists

(53:04):
of color recently have taken on Lovecraft and the Lovecraft
mythos and stories as a means of sort of flipping
the script. And so one of the things that I
think that's really interesting about Lovecraft is that this is
a racist guy who's super xenophobic, super othering to other

(53:27):
human beings. Not just through the stories, and it's definitely
in the stories, but boy, oh boy, you read the
letters what he thought about those Slavs. This guy was
racist against everybody, so super xenophobic. But the what comes
through in these horror stories is an anxiety about colonialism,

(53:47):
an anxiety about being the inheritor of colonialism. And what's
really fascinating in Ganja and Hess is from the point
of view of wealthy and educated African Americans who are
contending with being insiders and outsiders at the same time.
They can never be insiders with white and upper class society,

(54:10):
but at the same time they cannot be insiders with
you know, the people that they are descended from in Africa.
And there is this this this like toggling of inside
and outside going on. Also, Bill Gunn, as a bisexual director,
is dealing with a lot of anxiety about his sexuality

(54:30):
that it doesn't it's not it's not as direct as
in his first movie, Stop, which pretty much ruined his career.
And that's one of the first big Warner Brothers movies
to get totally deep sixed. If you think it's bad
what they did to Coyote versus Acme, if you think
it's bad what they did to Batgirl, Bill guns Stop

(54:51):
has been really really suppressed for a really really long
time because it's a pretty straightforward bisexual movie, uh you know,
and it got an X rating for it and whatnot.
So Gonjen Hass also has you know, uh built into it. Uh,
you know, an eroticism towards both women and men that

(55:15):
is that is really fascinating. If you if you thought
Saltburn was great, there's uh, there's a great scene in
Ganjen has Bill Gunn was there first with Dwayne Jones
from Night of the Living Dead licking blood off of
a bathroom floor. Uh and clearly coded because it's coming
from Bill Gunn, the director. Uh. Naked on the floor.

(55:38):
Uh and bleeding definitely. Uh, just as queer coded as
anything going on in Saltburn. And uh and uh, I
think a couple of steps more disgusting. Uh and and
this is this is like, you know, pretty much right
out of the gate. This is like maybe the break
between the first and second act. If this is a
movie that has acts, but it's it's it's also a

(56:01):
movie that that kind of represents a sort of madness
in its structure or its anti structure in a way.
One of the things that's interesting is what's the nature
of the vampirism that's in it. How does somebody become
a vampire? It is very confusing in terms of timeline
and narration everything. You know, where exactly does this come from.

(56:24):
There's a beat where you know, hess Is is stabbed
with this African knife that seems to be coded, but
then it also is coded almost as a dream thing
that happens between between these two characters. I'm forgetting the
name of Bill Gunn's character who commits suicide in it,

(56:46):
but he, you know, after this stabbing where it appears
that he stabs Dwayne Jones, Dwayne Jones seems to be
fined and unstabbed. I mean, yes, it could be a
magical kind of of uh, you know, dagger, but it
also could be an imaginary one. And he's also uh,
you know, sort of in the narrative is described as

(57:08):
being addicted to the blood before uh, this guy ever
arrives in his life. So there's a lot of lack
of clarity going on. And then once Ganja arrives, I mean,
she has one of the greatest arrival scenes in any
movie ever. She's she picks she's like calling from a payphone,
and it's just this beautiful shot of of her lips,

(57:30):
you know, with the payphone and uh and and eventually,
you know, Gonja says, I'll send a I'll send a
limo to pick you up. And she's what terminal are
you at? She says, uh, I'm a terminal too, and
he won't miss me because I'm that evil and uh.
And then she goes on to sort of reveal a

(57:52):
class level of of of anxiety and horror uh in
the way that she treats, you know, the butler at
Hess's house. So it's a movie that works on all
these different levels. I mean, I barely can plot synopsis. No,
I'm not going to give you a plot synopsis for

(58:13):
Ganja and Hess. You just got to go in and
give yourself over to crazy dissolves and sound design and
strange monologues that just kind of erupt out of their
characters and don't seem in any normative way to be
driven by the plot. But they are sort of creating
an overall environment. And that's a big thing that you

(58:36):
brought up with Annihilation. Annihilation is very environmental movie, and
Lovecraft is a very environmental writer and influence you know
about these kind of horrific, decaying sorts of environments. And
Ganja and Hess is less a normal movie than it's
an environment that you step into. Interesting.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
I have not seen it.

Speaker 3 (59:00):
Oh you gotta see it. You gotta do a culture
Cast episode. You gotta do it. Okay, you want to
be on it. You kind of signed yourself up. I
set myself up on Happy I could, I could keep
talking about Gonjen Hasse. I realized I'm taking up so
much time. I gotta I gotta shut up here. But yeah,
great movie.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Ganjen has is a masterpiece. And you don't need to
shut up. You're doing You're doing good.

Speaker 1 (59:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
I was about to say, what's shutting up?

Speaker 1 (59:23):
Just keep talking? Say Ryan, you answer first. I went
first last time.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
All Right, I'm gonna I'm gonna go for what I
hope is a little bit of a of a not
so mainstream, although if you're in certain horror corners, this
is a little mainstream. Possibly. But I discovered this movie
by just randomly finding the DVD in a Las Vegas shop,
uh way back, like right when it came out. This
movie is from two thousand and eight, and I didn't

(59:52):
know anybody in it. I didn't know the director. I
really only picked it because the cover looked fucking weird,
and that is Lovecraft. And that led me to two
thousand and eight's Splinter. So Splinter is about a couple
that are going by what is teased in the film
for a very short moment like a of course, it's

(01:00:14):
always this. There's like a nuclear testing facility or something
like that that they just drive by a sign, you
see it for a split second, and then they get conned. Basically,
somebody attacks them and gets in their car and makes
them go back to a gas station. And as they
go back to this gas station, there's this I dare
to not even say creature. There's like this thing that

(01:00:35):
is in the back of this gas station that attacks
the clerk at the gas station. And it is a
creature that is literally splintering itself and going in and
consuming every living creature that it comes in contact with.
And so these three individuals they go into the gas
station and try to hole up there. This thing sees

(01:00:56):
that they're in the gas station and tries to come
after them. Now what's great is, like many these lovecraft stories,
it runs into this like almost nihilist feeling by the
end of it, because it's like, well, who fucking cares.
This thing's gonna chase us till we're dead, and they're
doing everything they possibly can. No matter what you do,
you put it in the you set it on fire,

(01:01:16):
you put it in the freezer, you chop it up,
Like this thing will always just keep coming back. But
what really appeals to me about this movie is, man,
the effects in this thing are great. They make everything
that it consumes look like the gnarliest contortionist ever put
on film. The splintering effects in this are really well done,

(01:01:37):
and it seems like to me nobody saw this movie.
I'm seeing four glazed over eyes, so I will stick it.
Splinter is very good and the biggest name from it still,
which is now sixteen years later, shay Wigghams in this,
and he's rather good in it. He plays, of course,
the bad guy that canned them and got in their

(01:01:58):
car and everything. But this is a mega some movie.
It's a really great, like it's ten thirty and I'm
half awake movie and I really want to wake up.
You put this in and fifteen minutes after it's on,
You're like, what the fuck is this? This thing is wild?

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Wow, I gotta see it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
This movie is amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
I have never even heard of it, and I am
also intrigued. Now I like that four Glazed over.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
This is another culture cast episode now here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah, apparently well and I was gonna say, like, for me,
in terms of like my answer, it was another like
you just alluded to Ryan, like nobody saw this movie,
myself included, And I will say why, it's because it
came out in twenty twenty. Talk about the height of
cosmic horror in terms of like the reality of it,
I mean, like realistically, like that might be the first

(01:02:46):
time in my life where I'm like, what is actually
fucking happening out in the world, Like now we're in
kind of like post capitalist dystopia now where it's like
everything sucks and everything's just heading towards the sun anyways,
and all the resources are being gobbled up. So it's
like I can't really comprehend that either, which is why
I try not to think about it. But the pandemic

(01:03:06):
was a hard thing for a lot of people to handle,
so but it just didn't, I guess, is what happened. So,
speaking of not taking care of ourselves during the pandemic,
that included not being able to see movies in theaters,
which I would like to see this movie in a
big screen because I think the opening of the movie
is pretty nuts, and then the movie kind of calms
down and does a very interesting rebuild up to kind

(01:03:29):
of another peak. But twenty twenties The Empty Man David
Pryor's film, which again like for me, it's not Lovecraft
on the nose of it, but the cosmic horror, like
it is Lovecraft, but it isn't because it's not talking
about Cuthulhu per se. Oh but like you know, what

(01:03:52):
they're getting at is more and again like what they're
really getting at is something that has a much longer
tradition in the world than Cuthulhu did. It's you know,
we're talking about dream not dream demons, but kind I
mean externalized dream creatures existing in the real world as
a tulpa, which is what the movie is kind of

(01:04:12):
getting at and where it kind of comes at. And
the opening of the movie seems like it makes no
sense until you get to the end of the movie
and you're like, oh, okay. And like you said with Ganjin,
has less said about the movie's plot the better because
it's a movie that you need to see and watch
the first time to understand it, and then once you've
seen it the first time, when you rewatch it, it's like,
oh wow, this is just recontextualizes everything which a good

(01:04:34):
twist in a movie does. But the idea of the
unknowable horror driving people insane, and then our main character
also seemingly being driven insane, possibly, I think is again
like just touches on the love crafty and idea of
like a horror so vast old and immutable that it it,

(01:04:57):
the idea of it giving it a space in your
brain is enough to drive you insane, Like just the
smallest splinter inserted into your brain can just infect you completely.
And so I mean, for me, you know, I kind
of wanted to answer with something else that David Pryor
has done, because I think his episode on Germo del

(01:05:18):
Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, The Autopsy, which is based off
of a short story from I want to.

Speaker 4 (01:05:25):
Say the six sixties eighties, sixties eighties, it's it's a
the name of the story is The Autopsy, but it's
in Michael Shay's belief polymius.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
I believe it's not a movie, so it doesn't really count.
But I think it's similar to The Empty Man in
terms of like the cosmic horror being so unable to comprehend.
It's like you said, Spender it's like best not to, yeah,
because when you do, it's like this just kind of
becomes all encompassing and it just takes over everything. So

(01:05:58):
I like the Empty Man. No, but he saw it though,
like literally because it came out in twenty twenty. Yeah,
but like we've made it clear that we are not
necessarily the everyday audience, right, Like, yeah, twenty twenty was
not a calendar year for films. Let's put it that way.
Even though many of us sat at home and watched movies,
there weren't a lot of new things coming out that

(01:06:19):
were moving the needles. So that's my pick.

Speaker 3 (01:06:22):
I mean, the first twenty minutes alone of are like wild.
The first twenty minutes is like a perfect little Lovecraft story, Yeah,
totally just by itself, and then the rest of the
movie is great, But like that first twenty minutes alone
is like a kind of yeah, I'd best not to
say anymore, right, for those who haven't seen it, just

(01:06:44):
go avail yourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Well, and that's the other thing about it is it
does really traffic and some of the other things that
Lovecraft was doing, where you have like a detective researching
something and chasing after something, and that that process drives
them to the brink, and like that's the other thing
that again in the mouth of Madness doesn't count because
it's too on the nose. I think this is an

(01:07:06):
interesting kind of counterpoint to that, where it's like, here's
how you can kind of do the same idea, because
there is the idea of again fiction and nonfiction, And
where is that line that the Empty Man does traffic,
in which Lovecraft kind of sort of did but maybe
didn't necessarily mean to do it as much as he did. Again,
how much he meant to do it is kind of

(01:07:27):
up for interpretation. But yeah, I definitely think there's a
movie that more people should check out. And I think
the only thing, and this I understand might be a
little bit of a stumbling block.

Speaker 3 (01:07:37):
It is a long movie.

Speaker 1 (01:07:38):
It's long two and a half hours, which is it's
a lot for that kind of movie. It's a lot.
But I think it also benefits from being given a
rather long tail to fuck around and just kind of
set up the movie because a lot of ways it
reminds me of like of a Tie West film. It's
like we're just gonna spend a lot of time, which
is not a bad thing. Like that in and of

(01:07:59):
itself is another good thing. But yeah, the empty man
is my answer here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Fantastic still blows me away. This is owned by Disney.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
Right, boy, isn't it?

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
Well? So is Alien for that matter. So you know, Rocky,
Horror Future, all of the cultural touchstones are now owned
by Breckinridge.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
God, the House of the Mouse Baby. They're just gonna
sit on those eggs. They're never gonna let them hatch.
They're just gonna sit on them. It's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Oh man, that's all right.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
Then we we have come to our third and perhaps
most vague and wide question. Okay, what is the biggest
impact that love Craft without love Craft films has had
on pop culture? Now, remember this does not necessarily have
to be a specific film. It can be, but it
doesn't have to be. It could be something like inspiring
other filmmakers. It can be increasing environmental awareness or anything

(01:08:48):
like that, whatever you choose.

Speaker 3 (01:08:51):
Okay, So I'm gonna end up naming a few different films.

Speaker 1 (01:08:56):
Oh, this is your opportunity to go wild.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
So I'm going to start with with Psycho, which is
not typically thought of as Lovecraftian. But there are a
couple of things going on here one Robert Block, who
wrote the novel that Psycho is based on, was actually
a sort of protege of Lovecraft, and then where the

(01:09:22):
novel came from, and everything is like a kind of
real life love Craftian thing that I'm going to get
into in relationship to Psycho and some other some other movies,
very very strange. Robert Block went to report on the
doings of ed Geen in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Butcher in

(01:09:43):
the nineteen fifties, and ed Geen has inspired all the
best serial killers in movies, you know, whether you're talking
about Buffalo Bill or in Silence of the Limbs or
or you know, clearly the main character in Mania also
based on ed Gean, saying Weatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre,

(01:10:07):
all the best, all the best they're based on on
on ed Geen. So a couple of interesting things about this.
Robert Block started working on the novel before it was
known that ed Gean had a particular weird relationship with
his mother and that he had possibly it's still not

(01:10:27):
totally known that he had possibly exhumed his mother's body
and had her, you know, in the house. Block didn't
know about that, and he wrote it in Similarly, he
did not know, you know, this is this is getting
us into some you know, appropriately controversial kind of territory
because of what ed Gean has meant in popular culture.

(01:10:51):
And I'm not I'm not really concentrating on the gender element,
but we should mention we should mention this. Another thing
that Robert Block wasn't really aware of, the the sort
of woman suit idea that that ed Gean had created
a kind of you know, woman suit was not something

(01:11:12):
that he was aware of, but in a some strange way,
seemed to uh interpret this into psycho.

Speaker 4 (01:11:21):
Now.

Speaker 3 (01:11:21):
One of the things that that I've also got to
say is that some of these elements are are a
little more vague in terms of the reality, uh, you
know than uh than than you know is usually thought of.
And Psycho and and silence and the Lambs have done
a lot to sort of cement ed Gean as you know,

(01:11:45):
potentially trans I think it's an unknowable, strange thing. I
don't want to go into those waters. They're folks that
know better than I do. But so here's here's why
I say, uh, here's why I say psycho. Well one
hugely influent, but it actually contains a very specific kind
of love crafty and idea of the unthinkable that I

(01:12:09):
don't think that most people have recognized it recognized before.
And this goes into other films. I have not heard
this theory from anybody else. I would be happy to
find out that other people believe the same thing. But
if you pay attention to the voices that are in
maryon Crane's head in the first big chunk of psycho
that are talking in her head while she's driving, and

(01:12:30):
then when she arrives and then she kind of magically
hears mother up the hill, like this is not possible
for her to hear mother up there. It's very much
codd as in her head. But then that voice after
she dies continues in Norman's head when Norman kills Marion.

(01:12:55):
There's something even more radical and weirder than this, and
of course weirder than this stupid explanation that the psychiatrist
does at the end. There is this like strange level
where they are psychically tied together, and that you know
that the movie is kind of psychotic in a way
in presenting to us these voices that can be heard

(01:13:17):
that continue after the character has died, Norman's mother has
the same like kind of timbre. I mean, it's a
number of different people performing the voice to like mess
with us, but it's recorded in the same way. It's
in the same sound space, in the way that the
movie is mixed. It is in Norman's head in a

(01:13:37):
similar way as has been established in Marion's head, and
previously she's had these other voices established in her head.
And there's a way in which you can read who's
the psycho. Is she psycho for the way that she
hears these voices that are imaginary and seem to be
leading her to a place, or is Norman bait psycho?
Well yeah, obviously. But then in terms of the like

(01:13:58):
weird gender quality Marian, when she dies, she passes a
baton to Norman, who is you know, more than a
little gender queer coded throughout the rest of the film.
And there's a way in which the protagonist baton gets
passed from one to another. But maybe there's also a way,

(01:14:20):
and I like this kind of reading myself, that Marian
becomes Norman. Norman becomes Marian. There's a not just a
transfer of sort of the protagonist in the movie, but
a transfer of consciousness that is set up, you know,
through through this. Now, why am I picking on this
as a love Craftian idea, Well, one, it's sort of.

(01:14:41):
It's a mysterious thing that's beyond the characters. This is cosmic.
This is bigger than any one of the characters. It
is not a Freudian thing that is located in Marion
or Norman, much as the movie tries to tell you that.
It is a cosmic thing that is passed among them
and is a s real, you know, kind of you

(01:15:02):
know presence that's that's going on, and something that is
just beyond full understanding or comprehension. Now, I'm going to
get into a couple more movies that sort of do
a similar thing. First, I'm going to go to Twin
Peaks fire Walk with Me, and then of course Twin
Peaks Season three. I think Twin Peaks as a whole fits,

(01:15:22):
but I'm going to talk particularly about Twin Peaks Firewalk
with Me the Bob. You know, the very much revealed
that Bob is a kind of cosmic horror figure within
cosmic horror rules in Twin Peaks, but within Twin Peaks
Firewalk with Me, there's a really, really interesting thing that's
going on that I think is you know, Lynch taking

(01:15:46):
these ideas from Lovecraft out of the air and making
something even more significant out of them. He sort of
unifies the Bob presence into Leland as you know, the
abuser both you know, sexual and violent abuser of his
own daughter, and Laura actually going through a thing where

(01:16:06):
Bob is sort of entering her as well throughout Firewalk
with Me. That this is this is this transient sort
of evil that passes from person to person, but the
evil is also in these people. It isn't just that
like the transient evil, you know, the devil made me
do it. It's that on some level, Leland Palmer wants

(01:16:30):
to do these things that Bob then fulfills. Laura Palmer
wants to do things that Bob fulfills. And Cheryl Lee
in fire Walk with Me has the greatest ever love
crafty and performance because it is beyond comprehension. In the
scene where she and Bobby accidentally kill the cop and

(01:16:51):
she starts to laugh, she goes into this like incredible
strange laughter that I've never seen anything like in any
other film in response, and it's a horrifying situation. And
she laughs and seems to inhabit at once both the
kind of Bob evil of taking delight in this horrifying

(01:17:13):
thing that has happened, and yet also at the same
time is an innocent child who is not interpreting the
situation correctly. She is both at the same time, and
I've never seen such bothness in one actor, especially an
extreme level of bothness. Now from Firewalk with Me, I'm

(01:17:34):
going to descend, but I also love this movie and
I will throw down for at any time. And you
other Friday the Thirteenth fans, you better fucking step off
if you do not like Friday the Thirteenth, Part five,
A New Beginning. It is absolutely amazing. It is incredible movie.
The spirit of Jason sort of floats through this movie

(01:17:55):
in very strange, indefinable ways, and the murders begin with
this completely unmotivated uh kind of moment of uh of
this this uh this one guy uh at the the
the sort of I'm at the uh, What's what's the
best word for it? This kind of camp uh halfway

(01:18:18):
house for uh. You know, people with mental illness, you know,
teenagers with mental illness, all put together in this like
very questionable, uh sort of uh, you know, summer camp
environment and uh, and we have this like unmotivated murder
of one of the the campers or inmates by another,

(01:18:40):
while we also at the same time have Tommy Jarvis
uh from the previous movie now kind of grown up
and turned into a different actor because Corey Feldman wasn't available. Uh,
he's receiving these visions of Jason that seemed to be
driving him closer and closer and closer until the very
end of the movie, uh to becoming a killer. And

(01:19:01):
then there's this paramedic that seems to be you know,
he ends up as the like weird Scooby Doo explanation
of oh, it was the paramedic who was Jason all
along in this one. But I actually think this is
kind of amazing. The implications of how the violence spreads
among people as very much like the kind of fire
Walk with Me notion of Bob, but it's even more depersonalized.

(01:19:25):
We can sort of think of Jason as an allegory
within the story, but Jason's not quite exactly Bob. Jason's
not precisely inhabiting these characters. It's more like the characters
want to inhabit Jason, it goes goes in this other direction.

(01:19:46):
I think this movie is absolutely incredible. It's maybe not
the best of the Friday the Thirteenth series, but it's
my favorite. I can make these distinctions. The best is
either two or four, depending on which I've seen most recently. Uh,
I'm a big fan of Baghead Jason, and of course
I love Tar Tommy getting to kill Jason by the end.

(01:20:07):
But this is a love crafty and evil force that is,
you know, at large, uh in the world. And so
these are these are three movies among others. I mean,
there's there there are others working with uh with with
this this same kind of idea in different kind of ways.
Even uh it's a more it's more explained, so it's

(01:20:28):
not as exciting to me while also being more love
crafting because of that necronomicon. But uh In uh in
in In Jason Goes to Hell, we have a similar
notion of of an evil that that goes from body
to body, but it's not as it's not as intensely
love craftian. I don't I don't think that it quite

(01:20:48):
has this unknowable, undefinable intense quality.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
To it, so it's more literal in that it's much
more literal. Yeah, I think it's funny because some of
the things that I have here to mention are because
you ask, like, when have we seen characters exhibiting those
two things? So I would actually throw into the ring here.
And again I think that this movie is now one
that is looked at. I mean, I think it was

(01:21:14):
looked at fondly now then when it came out a
couple of years ago. But now I think again, like
this director is really pushing the envelope. But I think
there's there's some cosmic horror in Midsummer, right, I mean
towards the end. I mean, we have a moment that
you alluded to in something else, which is a character.
The agony of making that decision is not necessarily being felt,

(01:21:38):
but the joy of what you've done is, and that
like horror turns to joy and it's like your inability
to comprehend what's.

Speaker 3 (01:21:45):
Going on just drives you mad.

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
And speaking of pissing people off, because I'm going to
take my opportunity to now to piss off a whole
bunch of people. I think in terms of seeing love
crafty and things where they necessarily weren't, and maybe someone
embracing them lightly. I'm not going to give him all
the credit in the world because I don't think he's
necessarily done a great body of work and horror. I

(01:22:09):
know I am in the minority here on that. But
they touched on it in Halloween Ends. They really did.
They tried to, They went there, they sort of did.
Then they backed the fuck off, which was a real
bummer to me.

Speaker 3 (01:22:20):
Is she washy? Yeah, so wishy.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Washy, Because again, there's a moment in that film where
one of the characters is staring into Jason's eyes, and
he's staring into his eyes, and that scene should have
could have fan reading is that there is a transference
of something to him that could never be explained tangibly

(01:22:42):
and in a lot of ways. I mean, I think
Halloween as a franchise post the second one is kind
of trafficking in cosmic horror anyways, because Jason is or
not Jason, But I mean again, Jason and I think
Michael both are kind of in this camp of at
some point they exceeded reality's ability to contain them. And

(01:23:04):
you know, Mia Michael Myers is I mean again, at
the later movies. He's just a fucking thing. He's just
a thing. It's not a person anymore. It's an idea
externalized into reality. And it's you know, the it's evil.
I mean, that's what you know. Evil, Evil dies tonight,
you know, fucking just pairt it over and over. But
that's kind of what Michael is in the third David

(01:23:28):
Gordon Green movie and kind of the second one, but
the third one, it's like, it's the evil that still
exists in the world that can be and should be
respected and looked at. But at the same time, don't
don't stare into the void because it will stare back
into you. And you know, they, like you said, wishy washy.
It's kind of a shame, but they're right there more
than they have been with more of the movies in

(01:23:50):
terms of actually addressing what is Michael Myers at his
core other than just evil in a shell?

Speaker 3 (01:23:56):
Can can I throw out some some Halloween takes here
for a moment? We all means well so so, uh
in terms of Carpenter, who comes up a lot when
you talk about the love Craftian. Uh, you know, not
surprising that we're we're talking about Michael Myers here because
I think from the very first Halloween it has been
argued that Michael Myers is is a Lovecraftian uh kind

(01:24:18):
of figure. The shape, the shape, exactly the shape and
the kind of abstraction that's done there. Halloween three, Season
of the Witch, this is a very love Craftian movie
as well. Uh you know that's that's a very very
exciting kind of thing. And now to really start pissing
people off, though I know there are big fans of

(01:24:39):
this movie out there. Rob Zombies Halloween two is fucking great.

Speaker 1 (01:24:44):
Hell yeah, we are in We were singing the praises already. Man,
You're you're in good company.

Speaker 3 (01:24:50):
Okay, good good, No, absolute master work, and especially the
first twenty odd minutes. Uh you know, there's some ropey
stuff after that, but I'll forgive anything for those first
twenty minutes of true dreamlike nothing else like it outside
of Italian cinema, you know, kind of absolute craziness, for

(01:25:10):
the for the first big chunk, the white horse, Sherry
Moon Zombie is the mother appearing. You know, where does
where does Michael go? How does he get there? Who cares?
Who knows? We are? We are in the cosmic So
throughout you know Halloween, the love Craftian is very strong.

Speaker 1 (01:25:30):
And the other thing I would mention, because we've mentioned
Dan O'Bannon, I think Dan O'Bannon treats Zombie's very love
Craftian in Return of Living Dead. I mean, it is
a stifling force that is unable to get out from under,
even once Louisville, Kentucky is nuked, even once, even once
we've gone as far as human technology can take us,

(01:25:51):
it's not enough. And like that alone should drive you mad, because,
like you said with Splinter, Ryan, like at some point
they're just gonna take over and there's nothing we can do.
So why are we even fighting? Like just give into
the process, become one with it, right, you know? Sam
Neil says it in the mouth of mad and it's like,
what's my them?

Speaker 3 (01:26:10):
You want to know what my them is?

Speaker 1 (01:26:12):
And it's like, I mean again, at times it can
be interpreted as like deeply schizophrenic and paranoid, but the
movie says that's not the case. Like the movie says,
like this shit's going on, it's for real, but it's
you know, to bring in Barney Miller, it's the paranoids
with proof that matter, not necessarily the paranoids that are
just paranoid. When it's the paranoids with proof, it's a
lot more of a intense conversation because again, what do

(01:26:35):
you do when it's all encompassing and stifling and overwhelming, Well,
Return of the Living Dead nothing, you do nothing, nothing
matters and you can't do anything well.

Speaker 3 (01:26:43):
And Return of the Living Dead has the best piece
of exposition in all of horror. Seriously, when the zombie
on the on the table at the morgue talks and
the answer to like, why do you eat brains? Is
the pain of death? Right, death itself is like what

(01:27:04):
you're up against and you know, and the death itself
is animating the undebt, right, you know, the pain of
being dead means you have to eat brains and call
for more paramedics.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
Yeah, oh gotcha, man, Dan O'Bannon just oh he he
nails it so hard, right, Like with Return of the
Living debt, it's just it's for me. We haven't done
a zombie movie episode yet, but that I don't know
how that won't be my answer because it's one of
those movies that, like, I watch it frequently and I
love it so much, But it does have at the
end you're just like, oh okay, and we're back to

(01:27:42):
square one because again, like it's just so overwhelming and
all encompassing in it being a threat that you can't
comprehend it you really can't like and best not to
try because if you do, you will drive yourself mad.

Speaker 3 (01:27:55):
Yeah, Ryan, what's your answer?

Speaker 2 (01:27:59):
Uh My, we mentioned Carpenter. I got to bring up
the thing here just this movie. Oh yeah, love crafty
and beyond belief. I mean, not only is it the
same isolation and who cares what's gonna happen because we
can't tell anything with the way that we're living right now.

(01:28:20):
Everything is a question. That's the amazing part about this movie.
The thing that always gets me, The thing that always
gets me about this movie is the thing just sort
of always was and always will be and we know that,
and that existential aspect of that is just when I'm
done with this, I just want to sit and say

(01:28:41):
like fuck, like ninety times and then still just be
depressed and then watch it again and be like, yeah,
this is amazing. And then on top of that we
get great like technical effects, we get great interactions with
these people that lost all trust, so like all morals
are gone because you can't trust a single person in
the world. There's not any there's no real hope. And

(01:29:01):
when you break it down on an individual level like that,
this is like pure lovecraft. Every single character in this
is the essence of these lovecrafting characters that we've been
hearing about for one hundred years. And then, unfortunately, the
end of the movie is perfect because it's just another
giant question and it's so well done.

Speaker 3 (01:29:21):
So well done well. And then if you really think
about what the monster is in the thing, it's not
just that it's given a vague sort of name. When
you really break it down, the monster is nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:29:33):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:29:34):
Like, the only things that we can see from the
monster is what it has previously inhabited, and so all
the tentacles and everything are what it's inhabited. But what
is it in itself? There is no answer. And actually,
to the degree that there's an answer, it's a void, right,
everything nothing and everything.

Speaker 1 (01:29:54):
Well, and also Ryan to your point, like the end
of the movie really touches on something that I think
you know in the mouth of Matthdness touches on and
so many of these love crafty and things, which is
the the person versus the group or the community versus
the singular individual. And in the mouth of madness there's
that great line where it's something to the effect of like, well,

(01:30:14):
what if everybody else goes insane? It's like, well, are
you sane now? And it's like, so if I was
insane first and now everyone else is insane, does that
make me sane? And then the thing it's that same
thing of who is sane and who isn't? And in
a post truth society that we live in now, if
you can't tell the difference, does it really matter? And
I mean we live in a love crafty and horror

(01:30:36):
movie in reality is kind of what it feels like,
like the unknowingness and the overwhelming unknowingness of everything is
hard to fathom, which is why so many people don't.
But I think to your point, Ryan, like using something
like a movie is probably the easiest way, especially when
it's just called the thing or I mean again, we've

(01:30:57):
kind of alluded to it, and I think it bears
but Stephen King's it, I mean Stephen King Dark Tower
in general just yeh is exists within this world of
like the the fear on the other side of the door.
You don't know what it is, but it could be anything.
It just decides to show itself as a clown, which

(01:31:17):
is I mean again in the source material, in the
sacred texts, that is what is I mean, that's what's offered.
Is this thing goes out of its way to be scary,
the way it knows you are scared, which is a
knowing that it has that we do not have, which
is horrifying. And then again you know, the individual versus
the group, I mean not so much in it, but

(01:31:38):
in the thing and in the mouth of madness. When
you are no longer an individual and you're part of
the group, what does that mean in the thing? It means,
like you said, Spencer, the void nothing. You are now nothing.
Your individualness has been assimilated into the group, and now
you are nothing because you are everything or all encompassing
all at once.

Speaker 3 (01:31:57):
Well, and you know, to be too political, but but
this is again back to the back to the notion
of the intense fear created through colonialism and having the
fruits of colonialism. What is it to be colonized? Uh?
And and what is to be colonized by nothing?

Speaker 1 (01:32:19):
You know, like taking to colonize from the inside out
like a rise.

Speaker 3 (01:32:22):
From the exactly. Yeah right, so alien very much a
sort of colonization image. And we have, you know, the
colonialism throughout a lot of this stuff. And I think
this is one of the big things that keeps Lovecraft
really current, is that we live in a world created
through colonialism. It's one of the things that has made

(01:32:46):
him uncancellable, uh anti cancelable in spite of the outrageous
you know, racism. I mean, just read some of the
stories and you find out the name of his cat,
which I'm not gonna say, uh, you know on here, it's.

Speaker 1 (01:33:03):
One can only imagine. Go look it up, folks, Go.

Speaker 3 (01:33:07):
Look it up. Uh, you know, get it. Get an
audio book of uh of Lovecraft stories, uh and listen
to it and mixed company and see what happens. Hey,
you guys know what brazil nuts are called?

Speaker 1 (01:33:22):
By the way, I have a bull of them on
the table while we listen to our Lovecraft.

Speaker 3 (01:33:26):
Exactly. But but I think I think this is one
of the one of the things about it that that
that like this is this is uh an intense and
necessary kind of allegory uh for the lives that we
live and it comes up over and over again, and that,
you know, back to the idea of like what you
can master, these are these are movies that are about

(01:33:48):
not being able to you can even learn what it
is and not master it. I see They Live Over
your Shoulder. That's another love Crafty and Carpenter film, and
that's about even once you have secret knowledge, it doesn't
drive rowdy Roddy Piper mad, but it's a mad world
in which he doesn't totally succeed. By the end, the

(01:34:11):
knowledge is not enough to overcome. Uh. You know this
this force uh and They Live is is a pretty
simplified love Craftian idea. But the but even so, even
that fairly literalistic and simplified idea, Carpenter works with it
to create this this really fascinating uh kind of you

(01:34:33):
know allegory ultimately that that works with how you can't
necessarily win.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Speaking of not winning, I think it's also surprising to
me that none of us have mentioned the mist I
guess is it too on the nose?

Speaker 3 (01:34:48):
No? No, I mean the myst is totally in there,
and uh, you know the the the Stephen King story,
which is definitely in my top three, Uh, Stephen King
any things. Uh, it's fantastic. It's fantastic that that novella
is just so perfect, and the movie definitely the drabant

(01:35:08):
Uh you know that ending show right? Oh the ending
is so bleak.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
I know, but it's But what is so great about
it is like I feel like it it takes what
Stephen King was doing in that story and adds just
that little bit more love crafty and nature to it,
which is there is no escape ultimately, even when you
I mean even when you think there is, there isn't
you know, And then being driven mad at the end.

Speaker 3 (01:35:33):
I mean, that scene with Tom Jane at the end
is just every time just gets me.

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
So he's so sad.

Speaker 3 (01:35:40):
Tom Jane is just so sad.

Speaker 1 (01:35:42):
If they just waited two more seconds, it is like
grab the screen and be like just wait another second, bro. Nope.
But that's but that's what makes it so great is
the idea of like, no matter what you do, no
matter what how hard you try, at the end of
the day, you're fucked. You can't get out of its way.

Speaker 3 (01:35:57):
Yeah. Well and okay, so I here's here's the thing
that I want to throw out. And not many movies
work precisely this way, but to be a little to
turn positive for a moment. Uh. Not being able to
master the situation doesn't only mean that you're fucked, uh.

(01:36:20):
It can also it can also mean that you're forced
to focus on you know what, what is most important
and what you can focus on if the Lovecraftian uh
kind of cosmic forces a raid against you are are
not uh conquerable. At the same time, you gotta live

(01:36:43):
a life within them. And now this is not a
happy ending, but I do wanna, I do want to
suggest another Lovecraft without Lovecraft movie that moves in this
direction for a horror film. They're definitely fucked at the end,
for sure, but the ending of The Birds is actually
really really interesting in that the arc of the movie
is to create a family and it like Tippy Hedron's character,

(01:37:08):
you know, Melanie Daniels, she goes mad by the end
of the film, but she also is surrounded by you know,
people who have taken her in Jessic Catandy doesn't even
like her through most of the movie and is then
taking care of her. And it's not it's not a
hopeful ending. They drive away into a world that's just

(01:37:30):
full of you know, birds that are going to attack people.
But I do find this element of hope, which is
unusual for Hitchcock. You know, a Hitchcock happy ending is
is like a sort of cackling, crazy sort of thing,
like the end of north By Northwest, where it's like
a great, big, dirty joke, you know. But but but

(01:37:52):
this is a kind of strangely, if not happy, a
provisional ending that I think is interesting. And I just
I just want to point out, uh, you know, for
folks influenced by this kind of work. You know, the
ending of Alien has a happiness to it, uh, if
you take that as just one movie. However, however much

(01:38:15):
she's fucked by being left in in in hyper sleep
in the middle of the universe. But yeah, I just
I have to throw that out a little bit. It's uh,
the mist creates a good measure of ultimate nihilism against
which to sort of measure the possibilities of hope within uh,

(01:38:36):
and of happy endings within within this this way of thinking.
Because I don't think it's precisely a genre, I'll reveal
that what I've been up to here is not necessarily like, oh,
this is precisely a subgenre it's a little bit more
like a framework for thinking about, like Lovecraft provides a
framework for thinking about, you know, how things work, and

(01:38:57):
a framework that is different and a posed to this
sort of traditional Aristotelian like fantasy of mastery. Though to
be fair to Aristotle, I say Aristotelian. To be fair
to Aristotle, he was dealing with tragedy. But American cinema
is like tragedy by Aristotle, except with happy endings, right,

(01:39:19):
And that's that's the thing we make it by the
Aristotelian rules. But Aristotle, you know, was dealing with tragedy
where things turn out very badly for mister Oedipus, among
the others.

Speaker 1 (01:39:31):
And also Lovecraft, I think, at least for me in
terms of the things that I've read and then the
interpretations that people have done with it. In terms of Lovecraft.
Without love Craft, there's also this intimate exploration of like
the self and the self's place in the greater machine
of things, and whether or not you even matter as
a cog within it, which is again part of the

(01:39:53):
unknowableness of everything, and the kind of against self versus
the populace because again, like I mean invasion of the bodies,
I think is a good example. Again, you don't know,
and when you do know, it doesn't matter anyways, Like
by the time you find out what the reality is,
it's too late. I mean, it's not surprising that Lovecraft
was an atheist because in a lot of ways, not

(01:40:15):
to get overtly religious, but as far as I'm concerned,
and I was talking about this with my wife the
other day, by the time you know what the fucking
score is, uh, it doesn't fucking matter. You're dead. That's
how this works. The only way to know what the
answer is is to make a decision that is irreversible,
and it's in its severity. And so what's interesting is

(01:40:37):
the idea of well, I will know once I find out,
but then it doesn't really matter because by that point
it's too late. As part of the Lovecraft idea, it's
again you've exposed yourself to something knowingly, willingly sometimes even
by choice, or and again something like Prometheus by design,
and you have now lost yourself completely. But it's that

(01:41:00):
initial curiosity, it's the engaging with it to begin with
that ultimately is the undoing. It's your problem. I mean,
look like an evil dead with the necronomicon. The fact
that they open it is enough. I mean, you know,
in something, I mean in so many things, like I
mean Cabin in the Woods is kind of again kind
of traffics in tropes, but the idea of disturbing something

(01:41:24):
and that's enough, like touching something by accident. I know that, Ryan,
you and I had talked about a film that's in
theaters right now that has a similar idea of like,
you do something by accident, and the cosmic horror that
you have brought upon yourself is so hard for you
to fathom that like just give up, like just give up.

(01:41:44):
And like you said, Spencer, like most of these stories
have no happy ending because the ending that is given
is the one that is deserved, which is you are
facing the void and guess what, there's nothing beyond it,
so deal with it or don't or go crazy or
go crazy like.

Speaker 3 (01:42:01):
Well, what you just threw out about the self? I
think is also a really important thing in terms of
cinema's relationship to love crafty and ideas. Cinema at base
requires at least cartoon level characters and in some lovecraft
tales and this is this is actually not a dig
because it works in the terms that he sets there's
not even really a main character. There's kind of Lovecraft

(01:42:26):
putting out ideas of the world through the narration of
someone who is only a set of ideas and not
really as much what we think of as a character.
But movies are really great at character require character. Performances
are built around character. And so this is another title
that I just want to throw out because I think

(01:42:46):
that Daphne de Morier was a really great love Craftian
writer who sort of took Lovecraft's ideas and put them
into characters. I already mentioned The Birds, which is a
very different story from hitchcock uh version, and that is
is about being confronted. The story is so good, the

(01:43:07):
Daphne new Bornia story. Go read it right now. It's incredible.
The story that she wrote of the Birds is about
an ordinary father with his family confronted with this uh
you know, horrifying and the story is really I've read
it multiple times now and it's actually scarier every time
thinking about this, these like attacks by birds and and

(01:43:28):
and the father's sense of his self, his masculinity and
his running the family is completely shattered by having to
repeatedly lie to his family, Uh, to convince them that
everything's going to be okay when it is manifestly not
going to be okay. And this is where it goes
into madness. And I'm going to name another movie. And also,

(01:43:50):
you know a story by originally by Daphne and Borier,
Don't Look Now, which has a very intense like internal
wrestling with of crafty and force you know, represented by
this second site that you know that uh, it cannot
be understood and as a result of not being properly understood,

(01:44:12):
uh you know, uh, you know, kills the protagonist. Yeah, yeah,
there's nothing.

Speaker 1 (01:44:19):
Once you know it, it's too late, Like once you.

Speaker 3 (01:44:21):
Know it, it's too late. Well, and and so I'm
going to add another another element of uh, because you
were just talking about this identity to it. So an
interesting thing about this is this is tricky for talking
about Daphne de Maurier, but there's evidence that she was
trans She talked about herself as a boy a lot,
and she was definitely queer, and you know that's that's
well known. Uh. Transnis again hard to say given the times,

(01:44:45):
and like language and concepts are all changed in the
Don't Look Now story versus the movie, there's a whole
thing at the beginning. It's set up at the beginning
thinking that these two old ladies are actually met and
drag uh and that they have the second site, and

(01:45:05):
and so that the story and the movie to a
lesser degree I think actually kind of functions a little
bit as a trans allegory of you know, not fully
understanding what is within you and needing to bring it out.
And while this story turns out badly because you know,

(01:45:26):
the main character is ultimately repressed, you know, Donald Sutherland
is too repressed to deal with the knowledge of his
second site. I think part of there's a side of
hopefulness to this that if you can recognize it and
work with it, like these ladies do they survive, they

(01:45:47):
can deal with their second site. And it truly is
second sight as well, because there's a blindness and if
we take, for instance, again in the movie, it's two
old women, but in the story it really is it
really is set up with like, uh, what could even
be at the beginning of the story. It's actually kind
of offensive the way that this married couple is making

(01:46:08):
fun of these these two women who they're thinking of
as uh as men in drag or as trans women,
and they're they're making fun of them and uh, but
but then by the end they are proven to be
sort of right in having embraced and understanding uh you
know this this otherwise not quite understandable power. So there's

(01:46:31):
a lot, I don't know, there's there's there's lots of
interesting I I I liked Marier better than I like
uh lovecrafts to sit down and read. Uh. And Rebecca
as well has a lot going on in it that's
very lovecraft in. Now, was she influenced by Lovecraft? I
I kind of don't think so, but they were influenced
by the same stuff, and I think they had similar
like anxieties and concerns that they're putting out through their stuff.

(01:46:55):
And de Marier pushes more in the realm of character
like you were just talking about ris, which I think
is essential to this cinematic genre of Lovecraft without Lovecraft.

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
Well, yeah, definitely, the cinematic Uh you know, this is
the cinematic skew. And that's the thing I mean again,
that's in my mind, that's why we have seen so
few actual straight Lovecraft adaptations, because, like you alluded to,
the idea is the idea is not really though there
here's a character, and here's the things that they go do.

(01:47:26):
It's here's what's happening, and this is happening in a
world where these things should not happen theoretically, or the
existence of them kind of breaks the facade. That's I mean,
I mean again, the idea of if tomorrow aliens landed
in New York City in Central Park, walked out and
said we are aliens, we come from another universe. That's

(01:47:49):
that right there would literally drive people insane. That right there,
that that alone would drive a percentage probably even a
larger percentage than I'd been willing to give number two
here mad because it's like, what does this mean for
anything now?

Speaker 3 (01:48:04):
And that's why the government is hiding mad.

Speaker 1 (01:48:08):
I mean, it could very well be again, like in
my mind, part of this goes back to the idea
of what happens when we know the thing we shouldn't know,
And that's and you know, the question ultimately becomes be
careful what you wish for, because it will bite back.
I mean, so many things that I love, like videodrome
even again, the loss of the self within the greater

(01:48:29):
context of the populace.

Speaker 3 (01:48:31):
You know, I.

Speaker 1 (01:48:33):
Think so much about what you said at the beginning
of this episode that Lovecraft doesn't deserve this, and in
a lot of ways, he really didn't deserve to have
as much of his stuff being accepted this way, because
there are better writers out there, but not throwing out
broad ideas like this that can be so manipulated by
everybody else in a way that is either minimalist interpretation

(01:48:56):
or a maximalist interpretation where I'm just gonna go full board,
like We're never gonna see Germa del Tora's movie of
in the Mountains of Madness, which is fine, we don't
need it, but because we've got everything else now, that
is so much more interpretive of what the ideas are,
less just a straight adaptation of this thing.

Speaker 3 (01:49:15):
Yeah, well, and again as like a kind of framework
for storytelling or a framework for evaluating storytelling. This responds.
You know, Lovecraft's big ideas is a big It's a
response to newer realities. It's a response to knowledge that science.
In parts, it's you know, an idea that has been

(01:49:40):
has existed. I think actually at different times, I mean
to go back to Greek tragedy. I think there's you
can make some arguments that there's a pre loved Craftian
strain in that kind of thing, but there are particular
terms that have changed over time that Lovecraft synthesizes through
the literature. And so then I will say deserves all this,

(01:50:03):
you know, even if the you know whatever, whether the
writing is the absolute best, right, Uh, the ideas are
out there, and you know what we don't we don't
generally see adaptations of you know, uh, A lot of
philosophy used to be done through uh dialogues, you know,
throughout all of philosophy. There's until fairly recently, you know,

(01:50:26):
dialogues were like a main way right right right, expressing
the ideas sort of putting these people together, you know,
sort of from the Socratic Dialogues forward and uh, and
also creating meta texts you know, you got, uh, this
was written by this person, not by the actual philosopher.
You got those kinds of tricks that go on in
order to frame the work in particular ways, and so uh,

(01:50:49):
you know, Lovecraft has just been very good at like
framing these these like philosophical uh and dramatic ideas that
uh that then other artists have been able to use
and really run with well and like.

Speaker 1 (01:51:03):
You said with Burrows, like I can't believe we have
Naked Lunch as a movie because the source material is
I mean, I've read I read Naked Lunch two years ago,
like it's it's a it's a book that I pick
up when I get super stoned because it's one of
those things that's just like I'm not saying you have
to be stoned to read it, but it's it's a
it itself is a as a text, is a vibe.

(01:51:25):
What it is doing is not necessarily entertaining you as
much as presenting you with ideas, which I mean, again, Ryan,
you and I were talking about that the movie that
had that that moment in it where characters are doing
something accidentally. It's even better when they have done nothing
to deserve it and it's just happening, and something like
and I know Ryan is probably going to laugh that

(01:51:46):
he has to even write this down, but something like
skinnem Rink from last year, it has that again, like
the unknowingness of what is going on, the inability to
perceive obviously because you're a child or you're being put
in the child's pov in that film is how is
how it needs to be interpreted. But again, the idea
of pairing cosmiccor with the idea of a child's inability

(01:52:07):
to comprehend it is pretty smart. I mean again it's
kind of maybe is a little obvious, but nobody had
done it, and so again like that, again those ideas
are still here. It's just I don't need to see Cuthulhu,
I think is kind of the thing here, Like I
don't need to see those things to understand where you're
coming from with it.

Speaker 2 (01:52:28):
Yes, yeah, a halt right there, I know, right out
of there.

Speaker 3 (01:52:38):
Well, I don't know. One last thing that I'll mention
is just that like the drama of a few of
these stories where uh where Lovecraft has characters, you know,
Dagon being a big example of like the discovery that
you yourself are the frightening thing. Uh. This is also something

(01:52:58):
that I think is really really you know, important, and
that has been dealt with increasingly, like since you know
the nineteen seventies that the monstrous thing that you fear
is you know, yourself, You're going to be one of
the fish people just not the fish people were scary,
but by the end you are one of the fish. People,

(01:53:21):
and that's maybe, yeah, not so bad. I mean, Lovecraft
actually positions it as a little bit more neutral. And
to go back to talking about Cronenberg, Cronenberg really, you know,
thinks in this outside versus inside sort of way, thinks
from the perspective of you know, like like in Rabbit

(01:53:44):
or in Shivers, thinks from the perspective of the disease
rather than from the perspective of human beings. But that's
a mode that even if Cronenberg doesn't credit Lovecraft, well,
certainly Burrows was interested in Lovecraft and was influenced, and
you know, Burrows then influences Cronenberg in uh so so

(01:54:06):
many ways. Also, like with the tentacles, the tentacles can
be there or not, it doesn't necessarily matter. It's the ideas. Similarly,
you know, when we talk about all you can't film
naked lunch, the first issue is the obscenity, but the
obscenity is not the issue. And in fact, like there
are websites I can go to that are going to
show me many of the obscenities that are acted out

(01:54:27):
in some kind of form or fashion, just maybe without
you know, fantastical mugwumps and stuff certainly add them. The
obscenity is not actually the issue. What key like, I
mean I love the obscenity in Burrows. Oh yeah, yeah,
you better or you're not going to stick with it,
You're not going to finish the book. But but the

(01:54:48):
obscenity is not the issue. It's it's this like, as
you put it, a vibe. It's a sort of malevolent
atmosphere of drugs. It's a malevolent atmosphere of kind of
ambient evil. That is what's at work in Naked Lunch
more than just you know, all the pornography.

Speaker 1 (01:55:09):
Well, and I was gonna say, like Junkie even more so,
like you Haun junk I mean, as much as I
love Naked Lunch, like Junkie, I think even leans further
into again, like the transformative nature of these things and
what does that mean and how far? How far does
one go before again you become someone who's using a
dildo named Steely Dan on yourself.

Speaker 3 (01:55:30):
That's right, most inappropriately named band of all time for
the kind of music I really expected based on Naked Lunch.
When I first heard Steely Dan, I was like, Okay,
this is gonna be some dark shit, not.

Speaker 1 (01:55:45):
Really is longey A little bit loungey. No, I don't
want to do your dirty work no more. Okay, yeah,
I was gonna think. I think we've mentioned pretty much everything.
I mean again it I think for the most part,
you can see a lot of this in what we
consider to be modern elevated horror. You know we mentioned Midsummer.

(01:56:10):
I think Hereditary is kind of in the same world
of again, the forces of the world bearing down on
you and it's unknowable, and again once you find out
it is beyond too fucking late. And I mean in
something like Hereditary, nobody's that's almost the perfect case of
nobody is asking for it in that movie, and yet

(01:56:30):
they get it anyways, And in that movie, you almost
feel like you are the force of the movie you're watching.
You may not be involving yourself directly, but it feels
like the narrative is involving itself with the lives of
the characters, which is again that kind of removes where
is the engine? The engine is something unknowable that nobody understands.

(01:56:54):
We're assumed that there's a demon and we're making a
deal with him, and that must be what's going on
or are they all fuck and crazy? Well, if they've
all bought into it, does it really matter? No, it doesn't.
And again that goes back to Lovecraft's ideas. So yeah,
I don't. It's these things pop up a lot now more.
I think, like you said, Spencer, as more of a
framework at this point, less like Cuthulhu is in our movie.

(01:57:17):
I mean as much as I love Underwater, which we
can't mention here for various reasons, Like I kind of
wish they had never said it's not Cuthulhu, because then
we could mention it.

Speaker 3 (01:57:26):
But it is Cuthulhu, thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:57:29):
Okay, fine, Like, okay, all right, let me.

Speaker 3 (01:57:32):
Let me throw out one more. I'm gonna beer way
off the reservation out of horror. And this is this
is the framework idea. Uh. Love streams, uh. John Cassavetti's
love streams deeply love crafty and film. And I don't
think that that cassavetties knew Lovecraft at all, That's not
what he was up to. But I think he was

(01:57:52):
aware of, you know, the vibe, the thing that's out there.
Love itself becomes the kind of thulu of love streams,
this thing that the characters cannot quite fully grapple with
invades their dreams that we get this like bizarre kind
of inner and outer life makes things questionable about the

(01:58:14):
nature of animals versus human beings. So a lot of
animal stuff going on, whether it's like bringing in all
the animals into the house with the like you know,
little ponies, the miniature miniature ponies going into the Cassavetti's
house and pooping everywhere, you know, whether it's that or
the dog that turns into a human being near the end,
or just all the scenes with that dog with its gigantic,

(01:58:35):
fucking pendulous balls, like as the center of the shot
over and over again. But Jenna Rowland's character talks about
love as a stream and how it never ends and
and all this kind of stuff, and it's it is
tapping into the idea that that love can is absolutely
essential in people's lives, but also a harmful and kind

(01:58:58):
of malevolent force at the same time. Back to you know,
Laura Palmer again, And it does have a kind of
happyish ending, uh, at least on its own terms. As
as these these characters in a storm with weird synth
music and the dog turning into a man all seem

(01:59:18):
too sorry, for that spoiler if you've never seen Love Streams,
but I tell.

Speaker 1 (01:59:24):
You I want to watch it now though, Man, I'll
tell you that much.

Speaker 3 (01:59:27):
Yeah, you can know about it, you're not prepared. I can't.
It's it's one of those moments I cannot spoil for
you because it's so deeply weird. And I mentioned Cassavetti's well,
So the the ending is like the characters have come
to terms with a thing. They haven't conquered it. They
can't who can conquer love? Love is this gigantic force
that you can't conquer. But in terms of their relationship

(01:59:49):
as brother and sister played by a married couple in
the film, But in terms of their relationship as brother
and sister, they they kind of they kind of come
to an understanding. And it's an understanding that results from
dreams and understanding that results from failure, from hallucinations. The

(02:00:10):
narration of the movie is not totally reliable, and I
threw out Cassavettes as well, just because like I think
we mistake cassavettis for a realist filmmaker, that Handheld does
a whole lot. I mean, I love the Handheld, but
in a lot of people's minds the handheld and not improvised,

(02:00:30):
but I'll say improvisational interpretation of the dialogue has in
people's minds. This is realism when actually most of those
films are surrealism, their expressionism. And in the case of
Love Streams, I'm gonna throw down it's full on crazy
love Craft in who needs Cthulhu when you have love

(02:00:52):
itself as an ambientforce in the world or woman under
the influence which I just read absolutely under the influence
of what exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (02:01:03):
I think it's funny you mentioned the idea of love
because I you know, you mentioned the idea of it's
so encompassing of everything and hard to really grab on to. Like,
I think there's room for that in the world of Lovecraft,
and we haven't seen enough of that, which is approaching
it in a again, we're using the framework of the

(02:01:24):
ideas to have the conversation. But there doesn't need to
be an actual monster, like there doesn't need to be
the monster. The actual monster is unimportant, which I mean again,
you know. The last thing I will mention, because Ryan
has taken down so many things at this point, is
and again this might be a little too on the nose,
but again it's Chambers, not Lovecraft. Is yeah, the first

(02:01:45):
season of True Detective. Yeah, I mean it's like, I mean,
they mentioned the Yellow King, they mentioned Carcosa, which both
show up in Chambers, but they they do the thing
where they walk up to the line, toe the line
a little bit, and then back the fuck out and say,
now it was just a detective story all along. Yeah,
and again, like I think that that works. I think

(02:02:06):
that it is still like my favorite eight hours of
television in terms of what it's going for. But I
think the things that it's getting at in that are
the unknowable, all encompassing idea of what in that narrative
sense is evil is evil as all encompassing evil is everywhere,
Evil is behind every door, but we don't really know

(02:02:26):
who or what, but we know it's there. True detective
traffics in that. Again, it doesn't go full Lovecraft or
Chambers at the end, thankfully, but I think that that
deserves at least just be mentioned in passing as we
continue on down the lovecraftd in road to love Craft Country,
as it were.

Speaker 2 (02:02:42):
But true love Yeah, of course you did.

Speaker 3 (02:02:46):
Yeah, I had to. Are there any other questions left?

Speaker 1 (02:02:49):
There's one more.

Speaker 3 (02:02:50):
Oh okay, yeah, we went a long way in that life.

Speaker 1 (02:02:53):
Well, the third question can tend to be the longest
answered question because it again the conversation still it's very narrow,
but the third question just opens the gates up. So
to bring it back down for the fourth question, Spencer,
if someone is a fan of X, they would also
be a fan of Lovecraft without Lovecraft, solve for X.

(02:03:15):
What is the X in our equation?

Speaker 3 (02:03:19):
Hmm, this is a strange question. Okay, I'm gonna go
off the reservation again. I'm gonna keep going down this
love streams path. I don't think they're fully Lovecraftian, but
screwball comedies actually, you know that love is a force

(02:03:45):
of chaos. That's what makes them really really screwball, And
in particular bringing up Baby is you know, so chaotic
and anarchic, and the way that the love relationship works out,
how much it kind of actually you know, carry Grant
goes mad and is ruined at the end of the

(02:04:07):
film as his brontosaurus is all destroyed. Uh, but but
love wins at the same time. Uh. Bringing up Baby
is there. And then back to Cronenberg, I would love
to have a double feature of bringing up Baby and
The Fly because they're really very much the same movie.

(02:04:29):
And the Fly is is basically a screwball comedy that
goes totally awry into tragedy, which is always the possibility
in a comedy. You know, comedies should have the possibility
that everything could veer way off off base into into tragedy. Uh,
And and the Fly has uh has a kind of

(02:04:52):
you know, dissent into destruction and madness, but it is
actually set off. Seth Brundle gets the idea that makes
everything work by you know, Veronica telling him that you know,
old ladies like baby's skin, and that he has to
get serious about the flesh, that the flesh is complicated

(02:05:15):
and weird and can't just be put together by numbers.
And so this this notion, you know, after they have sex,
as they're falling in love, this notion of the flesh
becomes essential to making the machine work, which of course
also destroys Seth Brundle, turning him into Brundlefly, and ending with,

(02:05:39):
you know, the one of the most profound tragic images
that never doesn't make me cry, where Veronica has to
shoot Seth Brundle, brundlefly in the head and it explodes
everywhere and fade to black. End of the movie. No
dnum no coming off of that. Uh. And that that

(02:06:02):
again is like you know that that is a it
is at once done with love. She's she's killing him
out of love. He lifts the Oh yeah, he lifts
the shotgun up onto his own head. So this is
a youth in Asia. This is a thing that they've
gone through. She is killing him out of love. There
is no fantasy of mastery here. You cannot master the

(02:06:26):
love and what it has created. And so similarly bringing
up Baby, did I answer this correctly? If y'all like
bringing up Baby, you should check out the Fly. I
love crafty and as all, fuck.

Speaker 1 (02:06:41):
I would I mean, I mean, I would say you
you answered it in a way that I mean you
answered a specific thing. And there are plenty of people
who are fans of a specific thing. My answer is
a specific thing. I think if you are a fan
of Martin Scorsese's often underwatched, but I think more recently
is being reappraised and re released and redone in four K.

(02:07:02):
I'm sure after hours not Martin Oh yeah, directed by
Martin Scorsese. Sure, but After Hours, which is like, again,
pretty love crafty, and I think in terms of like
what it's doing, maybe again, it's not immensely obvious immediately
that New York City is the love crafty and monster
that he is contending with, or just the vibe of

(02:07:22):
New York City as.

Speaker 3 (02:07:23):
A whole, or women in that movie, to be fair.

Speaker 1 (02:07:26):
Or just everybody really, I mean everybody, but in particular
the women in that movie.

Speaker 3 (02:07:31):
And I like that movie, but let's be real.

Speaker 1 (02:07:34):
Yeah, to be yeah, I mean yeah, I mean the
way that they're painted is again it's so yeah, it's
just so kind of again like it's so specific that
you have to wonder why it's being done this way,
if not just to be provocative. But again, I would
go as far as to say the idea of After
Hours being this like, again, the city feels so stifling,

(02:07:55):
it's a character of its own. It feels like.

Speaker 3 (02:07:57):
It's pressing down on him.

Speaker 1 (02:07:59):
Throughout the movie, Griffin Dunn is underneath New York City
trying to get out from underneath it, and he cannot.
That strikes me as very lovecrafting, and he never understands
really why it's going on, which I think for me,
you know, the cyclical nature of it just being you know,
Moby is stripped, just being dropped off. Right at the
front of his office, he walks in, and who knows

(02:08:19):
if he I mean again, he acts like he's never
done this before. But who knows if seven days later
it's gonna be the same fucking thing, or twenty four hours.

Speaker 3 (02:08:27):
Later it might be the same thing. He acts like
it's not.

Speaker 1 (02:08:29):
But again, just because the movie doesn't hang a lantern
on it doesn't mean that city isn't just a cosmic
horror unto itself. So no, I don't think you answered
incorrectly because I answered the same way.

Speaker 3 (02:08:39):
So excellent.

Speaker 1 (02:08:40):
What about you, Ryan?

Speaker 2 (02:08:42):
My thought on this was very benign compared to those two.
I just went with if you grew up on anthology horror,
like a lot of us did, anything from you know,
the modern series Creep Show to Twilight Zone to the
Outer Limits, all this stuff, you have been subjected to
some aspects of Lovecraft without Lovecraft, and if you look

(02:09:05):
back on those fondly, you will find a sense of
odd hope in the hopeless of lovecraft without Lovecraft.

Speaker 3 (02:09:14):
I'd say so.

Speaker 1 (02:09:16):
So anything else we want to talk about. Is there
anything else, Spencer, you want to bring up before we
bring this love crafty and train into the station.

Speaker 3 (02:09:25):
Let me just name some more movies, just to throw
them out to people. I'm not going to talk about
them for long. If you haven't seen Messiah of Evil,
you gotta see Messiah of Evil. This is consciously influenced
by Lovecraft. But oh boy, what an incredible I mean,
it's an incredible experience. But if you are an all
a fan of Lovecraft and you want to see something

(02:09:46):
that is a fully Lovecraftian movie that's not consciously based
on it, you gotta see Messiah of Evil. What else
do I have? I had a few others? I thought, Oh,
Clive Barker. We haven't mentioned Clive Barker. All Clive Barker
movies are Lovecraft without Lovecraft, all of them, the good ones,

(02:10:07):
the bad ones, whatever, Hell Raiser. Is there a more
Lovecraftian movie than Hell Raiser?

Speaker 1 (02:10:13):
No?

Speaker 3 (02:10:13):
There isn't, is there? Except maybe candy Man. Candy Man
both both the nineteen ninety four and twenty twenty one
candy Man's super super Lovecraftian and working very much on
sort of notions of identity. One of the things that's
great about the original Candyman spoiler alert, but it's been

(02:10:37):
out there long enough. Hold your ears. If you haven't,
you haven't seen candy Man. You know, our intrepid grad
student who travels into a place where she should not go.
She is from outside and she is the protagonist. But
she turns out just like a Lovecrafty and sort of

(02:11:00):
a love Craftian character who finds themselves to be the monster.
She is the ultimate monster. She is the one that
unleashes candy Man by by studying him. She is the
one that becomes you know, Helen at the end is
is the new monster. And similarly, in the New candy
Man movie, the act of making art is monstrous and

(02:11:23):
this is very much a Lovecraftian uh kind of idea,
and the act of making the art about candy Man
turns character into a new manifestation of candy Man within
a very strange sort of multiplication of candy Man, you know,
by the by the end of the film, but really,

(02:11:44):
any any Clive Barker, we have to have to mention him.
And I think I think that's it. I'll settle there.
I won't just keep rattling off titles, Ryan.

Speaker 1 (02:11:54):
Do you want to bring up Event Horizon for a moment?
I know you still, of course had Hell Raiser.

Speaker 3 (02:12:00):
I was like, the best hell Raiser movie that's not
called hell Raiser.

Speaker 1 (02:12:04):
God, yeah, I don't think it's better than the original
hell Raiser, but I think it's pretty close.

Speaker 3 (02:12:09):
I mean, no, it's the best hell Raiser that's not
called health Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:12:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:12:14):
I had five titles listed and that was one of
them that I wanted to bring up one of them.
We barely touched on it. But if you've somehow never
seen Possession, yes, everybody needs to discuss.

Speaker 1 (02:12:25):
Good starter movie for people to watch. I might say too, like,
if you've never seen a horror movie, check out Possession.
You can't go wrong.

Speaker 3 (02:12:32):
Oh man, I showed Possession to my students this quarter,
and uh they they weathered it okay, but it was
that was a loud and intense and rough screaming. They
were shell shocked by the end. Shit.

Speaker 1 (02:12:47):
That sounds like more fun than I had in college
in one evening. Your student's had more fun in one
evening than I did in five years in college.

Speaker 3 (02:12:54):
Why I like teaching college because I get to do
it better than was done for me, Oh yeah, I
had a lot of fun. I didn't have as much
possession fun though.

Speaker 2 (02:13:06):
My next one that I was going to bring up
is twenty sixteen's The Void. Have either of you seen this?
I think Chris has Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:13:11):
I have. Yeah. I don't like that one, but that's Lovecraftian.

Speaker 2 (02:13:15):
I like the ending. I feel like getting there is
a little bit clunky, but I think compared to modern horror,
it sticks the ending much better than like a lot
of mainstream horror. And this went way under the radar.
I mean, this was a kickstarted movie. It was a yeah,
proud funded film. That's pretty pretty great for them. Definitely
another one that I feel like nobody has seen, and

(02:13:36):
I really hope at least one of you two have
seen this. Twenty fifteen's Turkish film Baskin. Have either of
you seen this?

Speaker 3 (02:13:43):
Baskin? I have it. It's it is high on my list.
I gotta see Baskin.

Speaker 2 (02:13:47):
Baskin is amazing. It is a one crazy night type
of story about a group of cops that basically fall
into hell and have to come to terms with that.
And it is a crazy combination of some of the
wildest movies you can think about It's like Dante's Inferno
and hell Raiser and I some other just random like

(02:14:11):
Turkish culture mixed with him and the weird areas that
they take to. By the end of the movie, you
get done, no clue what just happened. And it's just
the most interesting movie to watch with zero context. East
Go see baskin. It is amazing. It's so good. The

(02:14:32):
last one that I have is a movie that very
few people had seen until recently when it was released
on a four K beautiful package from Seven Films called
The Spider Labyrinth. This is from nineteen eighty eight.

Speaker 3 (02:14:44):
Oh I got to see this, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (02:14:46):
Have it yet.

Speaker 2 (02:14:47):
Directed by Jean Franco Jeanni, and it is It is
like the definition of the weird genre that we brought
up earlier. In this movie. It reeks of lovecrafting things.
It's wet, it's goofy, it's got these weird things, like
our main characters in a bustling city and he's trying
to find another place that he goes in his car

(02:15:10):
to go find and there's nobody on the streets, and
every time he comes around the corner, the road is
blocked off in a way that there's no driving around it,
there's no escape, and so the actual labyrinth turns out
to be the city that he is in trying to
escape from. And oh wow, it is this amazing film
that I got a chance to work on the disc.

(02:15:31):
It is a like it's a masterpiece. I love this movie.

Speaker 3 (02:15:34):
I gotta see it. I will. So I'm going to
make a confession, partly to narrow things down. I did
not address much foreign stuff. So let me just throw
out now I have to. I'm like, I'm chomping at
the bit. Basically, any Kyoshi Kurasawa movie deeply love Craftian,
but most especially Cure and going back to that kind
of firewalk with me idea of you know, sort of

(02:15:58):
ambient you know, ambient evil. Uh. That that definitely is uh,
you know, high on the list. And now, oh man,
why am I forgetting the title? It's a huge favorite
of mine, the the best and nastiest Korean serial killer
movie ever. H oh h.

Speaker 1 (02:16:21):
I saw the Devil.

Speaker 3 (02:16:22):
I saw the Devil. I saw the Devil is the
goddamn greatest. That's a good movie, super duper Lovecraftian. Uh
not out there officially in a good format, but I
found a decent YouTube of this love Massacre. Holy shit,
what a good movie. Uh that's a Hong Kong feature.

(02:16:42):
Uh and uh it is uh that one's that one's remarkable.
It is uh that that one is a special kind
of movie where its bite is much worse than its bark.
You go for a long time and you think you're
safe and kinda you know, like I think it's gnarlier

(02:17:04):
than Audition in its own weird way and like kind
of keeping you wrong footed and then going in a
very very hard horror direction. Interesting. Yeah, uh so I'll
throw out those those are those are big for me
right now.

Speaker 1 (02:17:18):
Kind of surprise, Ryan, when you were mentoring several I
was expecting you to mention Eyes of Fire, which I
think like green horror, and like environmental horner is kind
of yah like part and parcel with this. I mean
we kind of alluded already to annihilation, Like environmental horror
feels love crafty. I mean, look, Cthulhu is a it's
an animal really like I mean, he's a giant octopus

(02:17:41):
creature elder god, but he's an animal by by all,
and so again like the environmental the green of it all,
I think Eyes of Fire has in terms of it
being like a vibe and you're not sure what's going on,
but the kind of encroaching evil that starts to envelop
our characters. That's I I watched that I think this
year last year and was very taken by it in

(02:18:04):
terms of, again the evil that exists that is hard
to pin down, that feels like it's just everywhere. I mean,
we talked about the Lighthouse, the Witch is kind of
the same thing. It's like it's out there and once
we figure out what's actually going on, it's too late
for everybody. And I mean, as you've kind of alluded to,

(02:18:25):
the characters in these movies don't tend to always have
the best time.

Speaker 2 (02:18:30):
But that's okay, No, it's all right, all right, pulling
it in for a landing spencer. Where can people look
you up if they want to hear more from you
or check out anything you've worked on.

Speaker 3 (02:18:44):
Well, I got you know, I got movies that are
out there available. My movie I'll come running on my
movie Saturday Morning's Saturday Morning Mystery. But the real title
to me is always going to be Saturday Mornings occur.
But those those movies are are out there to find wherever.

(02:19:06):
And then I guess anyone who's been impressed by this
and then they don't like those movies, they'll be like, no,
I think that guy's stupid, So you know, go check
out that stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:19:17):
You know.

Speaker 3 (02:19:17):
I'm watching Twitter slash x burn. You can find me
on there. I mean, I don't know how long I'm
gonna stick around. I didn't think it was gonna last
as long as it has. I was like, I want
to see the ship to go down, and now I'm
kind of like, I don't know that this is as
interesting as I thought it was. But you can find

(02:19:38):
me there. You can find me on Instagram. But I
fucking hate Instagram now because it's all ads for how
I can poop better. That's that's what the algorithm has decided.
I want at video games where little worms get pulled
out of people's feet. I guess, like, because I'm into
horror and body horror, that I'm supposed to like video

(02:19:59):
games about tweezing out worms from holes in people's feet.
I don't know. Maybe those are great games, maybe those
games are fantastic, but yeah, Instagram, I just want to
see pictures of people's dogs and their kids and like
fun places where they went and like you know, but

(02:20:21):
I don't get that anymore. I get like poop ads.

Speaker 1 (02:20:26):
You and I are friends on Facebook. I see you
posting about that from time to time. That shit's funny
as hell?

Speaker 2 (02:20:34):
What about you, Ryan, I will throw out. I put
out a physical media focused magazine called The Physical Media Advocate.
You can get that on Amazon and a handful of
retail locations. If you are interested in where check out
all of my social media under the Disconnected, I post
about that frequently and.

Speaker 1 (02:20:51):
Chris weirding Way Media. That's where you can go to
find this show all the other shows Spencer, You and
I have done several culture casts together. We did a
Scare Stories we Tell together as well. So those are
the places you can find the things that I've recorded
with Spencer. Just on my own the Projection Booth, which
has you on god knows how many episodes with Mike

(02:21:11):
White talking about movies, but yeah, all that and more
can be found at weirding Way Media. As for this show,
like rate and review the show wherever you get it,
but if you would help us out, go to iTunes
and rate and review it there. Most places you get
your podcasts don't allow you to rate a review. Things
if you're listening to this on iTunes, like subscribe, hit
that bell, all the things to engage with that so

(02:21:32):
we can be helped by the algorithm there would be
helpful as well. Spencer, thanks much for Joe.

Speaker 3 (02:21:37):
Oh go ahead, thank you. I'm going to throw out
one more thing. Yes, So I have a couple pieces
and more to come on split Toooth Media, and in
particular apropos of this conversation, I have a pretty epic
long piece about the franchise surrealism of the Friday the

(02:21:59):
Thirteenth movie and about how they are better as an unwieldy,
insane franchise than as individual chapters, though I love the
individual chapters quite a bit. So that's there. And I
got an interview with John McNaughton about Wild Things that
went up not long ago. Pretty fun interview with John,

(02:22:19):
and I'm gonna have more interviews with him coming up
soon about some deeper cuts from his filmography. So yeah,
go to splittooth Media. You can find some of my
writing there and I hope you enjoy it. And Wild
Things is fucking great, so if you haven't seen it,

(02:22:40):
you should watch it. And then read the interview that
I did with John agreed. You want to take us out?

Speaker 1 (02:22:48):
Ryan? Do you want me to do it? I mean,
I mean we're out. It's over.

Speaker 3 (02:22:53):
Bye, good night. Now, conversation is over.

Speaker 2 (02:22:56):
We've enjoyed this. Check out the next episode of Film Foundations,
and until then, watch something weird. If anything, tonight should
have you know, inspired you to put on something that
makes you say what the actual fun

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