Episode 764: Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)

Czechtember 2025 wraps with Jan Švankmajer’s Conspirators of Pleasure (1996), a delirious, dialogue-free plunge into fetish and surrealism. Mike teams up with filmmaker Jim Vendiola and critic Samm Deighan to unravel the tangled lives of six Prague eccentrics whose private obsessions—ranging from papier-mâché contraptions to elaborate role-play—collide in hilariously unsettling ways. The result is a darkly comic meditation on desire, ritual, and the pleasures of the bizarre, filtered through Švankmajer’s singular stop-motion, tactile textures, and Surrealist imagination.

We're joined by Peter Hames, editor of The Cinema of Jan Svankmajer: Dark Alchemy.

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-projection-booth-podcast--5513239/support.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:21):
Oh g is folks, it's showtime.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
People say good money to see this movie.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
When they go out to a theater.

Speaker 4 (00:28):
They want clothed, sodas, hot popcorn, and no monsters in
the projection Booth.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring, Let it off.

Speaker 5 (01:05):
Music, what aicle? Whatever?

Speaker 6 (01:36):
Reform none and.

Speaker 5 (01:52):
You let all us your hony body hody.

Speaker 6 (02:20):
Lomy lony for.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
But y, thank god, Welcome to the Projection Booth. I'm

(03:00):
your host, Mike White too, and me once again is
ms Sam Degan Hello, also back in the Booth as
mister Jim Vindiola.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Hey guys.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
We conclude check Timber twenty twenty five with a look
at Jan's Funk Myers nineteen ninety six feature length film,
Conspirators of Pleasure. This dialogue free film follows a handful
of perverts as they indulge in their various fetishes, Their
stories intertwined in some unusual and interesting ways, even flipping
at one point in the narrative. I know that doesn't

(03:29):
make a lot of sense to hear, but we will
be doing our best to unravel all the fun as
we ruin the movie. For anyone that hasn't seen it,
you have been warned. So, Sam, when was the first
time you saw Conspirators of Pleasure? And what did you think?

Speaker 7 (03:42):
Oh, it's been a long time. I want to say
I first watched it maybe when I was in college
and starting to get more into Eastern European cinema and
at that point kind of struggling to find things that
were available. And I think, because this one, as you
say said, doesn't have any dialogue, you don't need subtitles.

(04:04):
And I think this might be my favorite spunk Meyer.
I'm not totally sure, but he's one of those directors
that I think I find more interesting to think about
than to actually, like sit down and watch his feature
length films, except for this one, which is delightful and.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Not a lot of stop motion in this one at all,
not a typical smack Meyer film.

Speaker 7 (04:27):
That's probably part of it too.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
And Jim, how about yourself?

Speaker 2 (04:31):
I actually watched it for the first time for this podcast,
and so I am grateful that you invited me to
guest spot on this one. You know, it made sense,
I guess, given our track record with what I normally
rejoin you guys for. But really I have admittedly very

(04:53):
little exposure to Jon spunk Meyer. I mean we're talking
like the last time I probably boy saw anything of
his was back in art school, and that was like,
you know, his first feature, the Alice one, and maybe
some of his shorts, but that was, you know, twenty
five years ago.

Speaker 5 (05:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
Watching this for the first time for this specific episode
was super delightful.

Speaker 1 (05:18):
Yeah, this was also a new one for me. This
is one that I've owned on DVD for I don't
know how many years, and watched it actually while I
was donating platelets at the Red Cross, and I was
just very glad that the nurses were leaving me alone
or the phlebotomis weren't really peeking over my shoulder. Though,
there's not a lot of objectionable stuff in this movie,

(05:41):
and I would say probably the most shocking quote unquote
is the stuff at the beginning with some of the
very old drawings that are going on, and then the
pornography that one of our main characters as well. I mean,
there's six people in here. I guess I'm calling him
a main character just because he's one of the first

(06:01):
people that we see on screen. But the I guess,
let's just call him the chickenhead guy.

Speaker 7 (06:06):
I was going to say, can we call him rooster Man?

Speaker 1 (06:08):
Sure, rooster Man works as well. He's the person that
we meet the first time, he's the person that is
buying pornography, and we get to see some of those
magazines that he's looking at. I mean, it's all pretty
darn team. It's just magazine spreads, and I do mean spreads,
but yeah, nothing too objectionable. But yeah, I was glad

(06:29):
that the nurse the phlebotomists were otherwise occupied with the
Red Cross duties, so they weren't checking out what I
was looking at. I have seen some Sonkmeyer through the years.
It's funny that you brought up Alice. I'm not sure
if I've ever talked about this on the podcast before,
but I had one date during college and I took

(06:50):
that date to see Alice. Oh no, we never had
another date.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
I was gonna say, that's how you knew it wasn't
meant to be.

Speaker 1 (07:00):
It was not meant to be.

Speaker 2 (07:01):
No, No, I took a potential philistine out to a movie.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
So I don't have Heidi in my life anymore. But
I still have young Smunckmyers, so I'm glad for that.
That's right.

Speaker 7 (07:13):
But in Heidie's defense, a stop a feature length stop
motion film, is a lot to ask from a regular
person who's maybe just been exposed to mainstream cinema and
animation and not his like weird crossover of the two.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, and the talking skull with the fake eyes in
it and stuff. It's pretty creepy. I mean, I think
it's probably one of the most effective versions of Alice
in Wonderland that I've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, No, I definitely kid. I ultimately enjoyed that, but
it's kind of like a rough start if you don't
know what you're getting into for sure.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Just to be plunked in the middle of that not
knowing and I didn't know what was going on, but
I felt frightful, and after I saw it, it was
just like, Oh, I want to see more of this
guy's stuff. Luckily, the nineties was a pretty good time
to be interested in Smackmeyer since he was doing a
lot of feature work, and some of it was not
too hard to find. Like you said, Sam, this one
not knowing though, I have to admit, I was watching

(08:16):
the movie and there came the moment pretty early on
in the film where he gets a letter and the
letters written like a ransom note and it says a
word in check, and there were no subtitles, and I
was just like, oh my god, there's no subtitles, so
they're going to start talking in this movie. I had
no idea that there was no dialogue in this film,
so I was just like, fuck, I gotta find the

(08:38):
subtitles for this. So I looked high and low and
I found a few files and I synced him up
to this because I had misplaced my DVD and then
when I watched the DVD at the Red Cross, so
I had watched it twice. When I watched the DVD
at the Red Cross, there are no subtitles on it whatsoever.
So I searched high and low for the video file

(08:58):
finally found that matched up to it, only for one
word to be translated in the entire film.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
That happens in like the first five minutes, which is
which is funny because I opened the one file and
I was like, oh shit, this doesn't have subtitles. I
opened the next one and saw the burned in you know, Sunday,
and then gleaned like fifteen minutes after that. In that
I was like, that's probably the only subtitle we're going
to see.

Speaker 7 (09:24):
So and it's funny whenever we see other words. They're
also just days of the week, but they're written in
both English and check so it's like literally just that letter.

Speaker 1 (09:37):
Ultimately, it doesn't seem to have any bearing on the
plot whatsoever other than we start on a Thursday and
I guess we end on a Sunday. That's about it.

Speaker 7 (09:48):
I think it's the lady across from Chicken Man's apartment
who sends him the letter saying like, let's do this
on Sunday.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Is that what you're saying, Mike, that there's no real
significance to like the timeline other than they wait like
a few days before they have their little like weird
date where they don't actually like physically meet up.

Speaker 7 (10:09):
They're a weird like voodoo ritual fetish sequence.

Speaker 1 (10:15):
Yes, yeah, this is not a sex film. It's more
of a I don't. Well, I guess there is some
masturbation that happens in here, guided by a machine, but
it's more just people seeking pleasure in other ways, and
definitely not seeking pleasure with each other. Even this whole
thing of chickenman on one side of the hall and

(10:38):
this woman on the other side of the hall, and yeah,
they have this osi relationship. They both have dolls of
each other, but they don't they're so free with each other.
Oh my god, And especially when they start to stop
motion animate those dolls and again with the false teeth
and the eyes and everything. Oh. But yeah, no one

(11:00):
is interacting. There's even a I guess they're married, the
TV presenter and then her I guess it's her husband
who spends a lot of time.

Speaker 7 (11:08):
Who's the police officer, the cop.

Speaker 1 (11:10):
Yeah, they seem very distant from each other. And there's
so many scenes of her looking down at his shed
where he's doing his stuff, and then she's doing her
stuff up in their room. They never connect really like
I think. You see them in bed together once and
that's about it, and you don't see any sort of
affection between each other.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Oh, and it's a fraud interaction in bed, right, you
know he doesn't.

Speaker 7 (11:35):
Yeah, she looks really frustrated.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
That feels like the most least delightful of the unions
or potential unions or you know, pairings in the movie
to me, because to me, he kind of like almost
feels a little bit like a serial killer tinkering in
his garage while his wife likes sort of helplessly wonders
like what he's up to, almost like a BTK mustache

(12:00):
all but.

Speaker 7 (12:01):
She discovers her her carp friends.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Oh yes, No, I mean I feel like eventually it
ends on a delightful almost sitcom like you know worthy
uh Little Danumont where everyone yeah, has their little uh
has their little moment to enjoy themselves.

Speaker 7 (12:20):
To connect. Yeah, exactly, connection being in air quotes for
those of you who cannot see me. Yeah, that's my
favorite thing about it though, that I don't think you
could show this movie to like a thirteen year old.
Even though there's nothing in it that's explicit, it's explicit

(12:41):
without directly showing sex or nudity. I mean, I guess
there are some implied orgasm scenes.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Yeah, I mean it's like it is very chaste, and
I think what is interesting about it, Like I agree
with you that it's not it's certainly not for minors,
but I don't know, I feel like they do depict
things like you know, definitely audio visually, but it's like
the sort of like it's almost up to us to

(13:13):
feel how we and react how we're going to react
based on our personal experience about it, because I also
like I could see, I you know, I've read like
other things like you know, letterboxed like thinks it's like disgusting,
you know, or a lot of viewers, but it's just
like no, I thought it was delightful. I thought it

(13:34):
was like such a celebratory depiction of basically these lovable
freaks in a way that I feel like I aligned with,
even though like it was obviously I think, like, you know,
taken to an extreme where I'm sure like people do
have these sort of paraphilic tendencies and even like crazier.
But you know, as someone who I feel like, you know,

(13:59):
feel like I feel like I relate to this, but
given the depictions of this, it's still like I feel
like I'm pretty vanilla compared to you know, what a
lot of these like folks are doing. And that's like,
really the fun part about it for me.

Speaker 7 (14:14):
So you're saying that you didn't carefully spend hours crafting
a rooster head that you then made out of clay
glued pornography to uncovered in feathers for your honeymoon. You're
saying you didn't do that.

Speaker 2 (14:28):
Only because prior to Mike hitting record, I told you
we had to fly fly back home the very next day.
So okay, fine, we had less than twenty four hours,
you know, hope y'all will forgive us.

Speaker 7 (14:41):
But what the technology today? You could have three D
printed yourself a rooster head.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
I have one arriving from an Etsy seller.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
So good thing is not coming from TIMU because then
the tariffs on that are just crazy these days.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Exactly, it's no longer financially feasible. Well I did get
my tetanus booster like two years ago though, so I
feel like I'm okay with like, you know, the nail play,
the nail and the rolling pin play for another eight
years or so.

Speaker 7 (15:12):
Yeah, all of that is so wonderfully elaborate.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah, he is putting together such a well defined group
of fetish objects that he's just bringing all together. And yeah,
to see like the lids that he's got and the
rolling pins and all of these objects. And that's the
thing that I find so fascinating is like when the
Chicken man, who I'm pretty sure the whole chicken thing

(15:36):
is very well. I mean, chicken's obviously used in like
black magic a lot, and there is this whole thing
of the woman across the waves cutting the chicken's neck
and him capturing the blood, and the blood definitely plays
into this whole thing too. But I want to say, like,
the thinks in this movie are fantastic.

Speaker 7 (15:53):
They're so funny.

Speaker 1 (15:55):
Oh, I love it. And one of the people that
he thinks, that Smockfier thinks is Max Ernst. And Ernst
had chicken images going through his stuff like crazy everywhere.

Speaker 7 (16:06):
Also all the cut up collage stuff, cutting up images
of naked women from pornography and adding them to your
fine art. That's peak max Ernst right there, for sure.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
But to thank the Marquis de Sade as well as Freud,
Sigmund Freud, yes, of course, boon Weell, I mean yeah,
it's it's I love how open Sponkmeier is about being
a surrealist, very much like Boonoell, where He's just like, yeah,
this is my bag. You talk to like a you know,
like a Lynch or whatever. He's like, I don't want labels,

(16:40):
don't label me kind of thing, whereas Fonnkmeyer is just like,
fuck yeah, IM surrealist. Yeah, this is all this is
what I do, baby, And he does it well. The
elaborate play with objects, whether those be like you're saying,
with the clay and the paper and all this stuff
very organic, the the postal carrier with the bread, and
how she's just so obsessed with hallowing out her crust

(17:04):
bread and making these tiny little like marble shapes with
the bread. You get that very organic stuff, and then
you get the very inorganic. And I don't know if
it if I could make a distinction between the men
and the women in this, I guess I can. I
got to think about the woman across the way, if
there's more organic there. Because the TV presenter obviously really

(17:27):
likes having your toes stuck by carp right, which is great.

Speaker 7 (17:31):
But I love that she keeps a basin, a metal
basin under her bed with carp in it that her
husband does not know is there.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
I love it, yeah, seriously, And I didn't know for
the longest time because when they show her, she's just
petting those and then feeding the little dough balls to
them and everything. So again a connection between different characters
and all that. Yeah, I didn't realize that she was
basically prepping them to suck her toes.

Speaker 7 (17:58):
It's so interesting the he shows people turning their fetishes
into these art projects, and I think seeing that kind
of crossover makes me think a lot about some of
these more contemporary discussions about how radical pleasure can be.
Like Bell Hooks writes a lot about this, like people

(18:20):
talking about how it's not just erotic pleasure or sexual pleasure,
it's really just anything tactile that you're taking pleasure in,
whether it's a hobby or actually having sex. And here,
I think he shows that so clearly because it's like
all these people are escaping from their boring lives by

(18:43):
getting really into these projects that are also their fetishes
and not even like.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
Just their boring lives. But I think it's funny that
the letterbox crowd, you know, and I didn't go through
every review, but a lot of them are stout by this,
and I'm like, the.

Speaker 7 (19:01):
Grosser is crazy.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Absolutely the grossest thing to me about this was just
like some of the clutter in these spaces, you know,
and like this just like yeah, like sort of like
the trash that lays lays around, and I'm just like, well, yeah,
that's part of like them escaping from their world, right,
that's like part of the mundane that is like also

(19:24):
like kind of gross and what.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
A world they live in. Like every time we see
the man who runs the magazine shop, the one who's
building that remote control sex robot.

Speaker 7 (19:36):
With the yeah, the sex robot, it's just like Doctor
Octavias sex robot. It's just like six arms on the
TV screen.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah, I want that franchise me too.

Speaker 1 (19:48):
And he's just obsessed with this news presenter and every
time she's on the news, it's bad news, you know.
It's the nightly news that we see these days and
that we were seeing back in ninety six in Czechoslovakia.
Just one bad thing after that. There's not a lot
of human interest stories going on on this. It's mostly
just bad news. That's the one area where I'm like,

(20:09):
I would have liked to have had more subtitles, just
to see more of like what those news stories are. Like, yeah,
I see like the pope and some nuns and some
of these things, but a lot of it is fire
and bombings and just awful stuff. So yeah, what, no matter,
they're always they're trying to get away from some of
that shit as well. I think like that's why they
have the detritus all over the world that they have.

(20:30):
They live in a shitty place.

Speaker 7 (20:32):
And I think this would make a really interesting double
feature with something like Daisies, where they're also escaping the
world through their fantasies, which also involves engaging in pleasure
and a lot of tactile stuff, lots of food. And
to see how some of those themes are updated, what

(20:53):
thirty years.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Later, Yeah, close to thirty years, I would say, because
that was what sixty sick, so sixty seven.

Speaker 7 (21:01):
Yeah, and so yeah, thirty almost exactly thirty years later.
And also to see how he basically had to wait
until after the fall of check Communism to be able
to make the kinds of films he wanted to. He
was sort of I don't know. I think for somebody
in that particular environment, it must have been so frustrating

(21:23):
to be young and have all these ideas and write
all these scripts and be part of these art groups,
but you're not allowed to make a feature film because
nothing that you want to make is approved, so you
just have to play the long game and wait fifteen years.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Well, yeah, in the meantime, he's helping out other filmmakers
with you know, even I can't remember which film we
were watching where he had done the title cards. He
and his wife did title cards for probably your Ihurtz film.
Or he's doing special effects for older Chlipski, like the
inventions in Mysterious Castle and the Carpathians, or.

Speaker 7 (22:00):
Visitors from our Kanna Galaxy, the Amazing Monster sequence at
the end. So it's like he was busy, but it
still must have been frustrating to not be able to
fully express yourself when you're someone who clearly is just
overflowing with ideas and creativity.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
Yeah, this was based on adea that he had or
a script he had back in what nineteen seventy I think,
and took parts of that to build this. And I
talk with Peter Hayms a little bit later about that,
just to talk a little bit about how that earlier
project changed into this. To have so many years where
he's literally not allowed to make films inside of his

(22:42):
own country.

Speaker 7 (22:44):
But he still managed to loyally stick to those Gothic
and surrealism themes. Like if you just look at his
list of shorts and scripts and then his features, it's
like he returns to that eighteenth century or only nineteenth
century gothic material repeatedly but does such amazing things with it.

(23:06):
And I'm I wish that he was. I know, he's
still with us and made his last film was what
six or seven years ago, but I wish he was
a little bit younger so we could he could make
us a sequel, so we could find out what happens
to the sex arm TV robot.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
I mean, if if part of that guy's interest was
you know, the actual like headlines in the tragedy, there's
there's no shortage of that, so he may even be
more aroused, you know, because that was part of my
question is was it just like the news anchor, or
was it the tragedy itself? Was this like a you know,

(23:47):
simp Ophelia, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
The Ona Club finally coming out?

Speaker 2 (23:52):
Yeah? And what what her sort of relation to that
was if she was almost kind of like this mommy
slash dom like this purveyor of bad news to him,
which I thought was fascinating to sort of ponder. And
I love that you know again that there it's dialogue
free because you don't really know what you know, the
actual connection is.

Speaker 1 (24:13):
Well, it feels like he is not interested when the
actual clips play, and he's only interested in her, and
he's got that great joystick where he can zoom in
on her and zoom in on her mouth because he's
he's there making love to the television at once one
point and it goes away from her and it cuts

(24:33):
to water and then you see him spit the water
out like it came from the television. There's another part
where he basically takes a break at that point because
it's like, well, she's not on TV. I'll wait until
she's back on. Yeah, once she's back on, and he
zooms in again on her lips. I mean, it is
so Debbie Harry from Videodrome to me, and I'm like,

(24:55):
is this a reference, because I know video Drome came first.
Is this or is it just that they're both playing
in this with the same deck.

Speaker 7 (25:02):
I feel like they're playing with a pretty similar deck,
just handling it in different ways. Because I think Cronenberg
is also someone very interested in people exploring their fantasies
and forbidden pleasures, and also really indebted to that kind
of like Gothic surrealism. He's just maybe more conventional than

(25:26):
spunk Meyer.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
For sure, at least at some point in his career,
and at least these days. Well, I don't know. I
haven't seen The Shrouds and I haven't seen the last
couple of bites.

Speaker 7 (25:35):
All the Shrouds is so good, Okay.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
I'll definitely have to check that out. But a Dangerous
Method a little bit more mainstream, you know, and Butterfly,
those kind of things, not playing so much with the
fetishism that he was. But yeah, he gets back to
it here and there, which is.

Speaker 7 (25:52):
Great well, and his last film is all about people's
weird fetishes.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
So before the Shrouds, oh, Crimes of the Future. Yeah,
other Crimes of the Future, I should say, how confusing.

Speaker 7 (26:06):
Yes, his recent Crimes of the Future. I think that
would also actually be a really interesting double feature with
Conspirators of Pleasure because it's about this weird body modification
fetish cult basically.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
No, that's a good point. I would love that double feature.

Speaker 7 (26:23):
It doesn't come across the same way where it's like
people engaging in you know, arts and crafts type of hobbies.
But there is also a connection between like the experimental
art world and these fetishes.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
So I do think there are a couple parallels, like
kind of a performance and a spectator component to it
is that is really fascinating, that that would pair well
with this and is like just really interesting on its.

Speaker 7 (26:53):
Own, But I think it also does a thing where
the way people are connecting to each other is through
the spectatorship, and there's less about people having one on
one sexual relationships, so you get the same type of
distancing that happens here. Though, I think in Conspirators of Pleasure,

(27:15):
aside from the husband and wife and the wife obviously
feeling neglected, I think Conspirators of Pleasure is not as dark.
It sort of reminds me of children. And maybe I'm
saying this as basically an only child, but it sort
of reminds me of like kids who don't have any

(27:35):
other kids to play with, so they just happily go
off in their own fantasy world and like make these
dolls and these sculptures and they're collaging and like there
is something very kind of whimsical and childlike about it,
even though they're I.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Mean, it goes back to just how I think, like
lovingly they're portrayed. It does feel very like there's an
innocence to what they're doing, even though they are like
so perverted. There was just like a wholesome potent into
it that I really just like, it just felt very affirming.

Speaker 7 (28:11):
The only one who doesn't totally feel wholesome to me
is the cop who's obsessed with all these different tactile sensations.
Like we mentioned, he you know, hammers all these nails
into a bat and then rolls it on himself and
goes to the market and gets these like latex finger
covers and puts them on his fingers and then like

(28:34):
sticks his hands in his pockets so no one can
see him. But at the very end of the movie,
at this crime scene, he's holding a cat, and the
way that he's stroking the cat is the same way
that he interacts with all these objects, and it's like, Okay, buddy,
let's not graduate to other living things.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Other than the death of a chicken which is cooked
and eaten and properly plus and all that other than that,
the characters don't seem to have any sort of malice
against anybody, but him cutting the fox fur and then
being like, Oh, I don't have enough fetish material. I
need to go out again. And it's almost like a

(29:16):
serial killer when he goes out and he's like on
the hunt for the next fetish material. I'm like, Oh, okay,
that's a little creepy. Does the chicken man Does he
steal the cops car?

Speaker 2 (29:28):
He steals a car. If it was the cops car,
that would be fun. But I didn't. I didn't catch that.

Speaker 7 (29:34):
Yeah, I didn't clock that either. It just seemed like
a car.

Speaker 2 (29:37):
I think he was just there was because there was
like almost like a little montage of him trying different
door handles. So I feel like it was like his
third or fourth attempt, or at least that we saw.
I feel like it was a Rando car.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
All right. I thought he just happened to steal the
guy's car while he was on the hunt for the
next fetish object. And then you mentioned the word pride,
and so much of this is so private, except I'm
curious about the newscaster, and like you were saying, I'm
curious as far As who all sees this because the

(30:13):
man with the sex robot, he seems to be able
to control her image on the television with that very
special remote control. But then you see the camera you
see her starting to basically orgasm, And at first I'm thinking, oh,
it's because the man with the sex robot who is

(30:33):
kissing her lips on television, that she can feel that
through the TV somehow. But then you cut to the
studio and you actually see the cameraman tilt his camera
down and I guess he's showing the entire world or
everyone that's in the viewing audience that she has her
feet in the basin. That's the only real public thing

(30:56):
that I can really see this movie as far as
people not being in private, because the rest of the time,
I mean, so much of this movie takes place or
they will have these giant wardrobes and people are going
into wardrobes like crazy, at least the Chicken Man and
his neighbor.

Speaker 7 (31:12):
Yeah, it's like horny Narnia, absolutely like horny pervert Narnia,
which again I would like to see a sequel to
find out more about this wardrobe system.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
We need that franchise.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Oh, I had such a crush on the White Witch
from Narnia, the animated version.

Speaker 7 (31:31):
Oh my god, she's so scary.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
She was so hot though, Oh my gosh. Yeah, feed
me some Turkish delight. I'm for it.

Speaker 7 (31:38):
Wrap you in some furs and feed you some Turkish delights, right.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
And I just take care of that. Mister Tumnus, Get
him the fuck out of here.

Speaker 7 (31:46):
Mister Tumnus is kind of annoying.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yeah. No, I agree that the cop is the most nefarious,
but he is still also, like cartoon initially nefarious.

Speaker 7 (31:55):
Well, he's also a cop. So if somebody's going to
be creepy in the fairy as, it should be him.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
And they don't reveal that until the very end though, correct.

Speaker 7 (32:05):
Yeah, because you see him. And this is where I
think it gets especially interesting. So you have chicken headed
man and chicken slaughtering lady who lives across the hall,
and they make these seemingly without each other's knowledge. They
make these like sex voodoo dolls of one another, these

(32:27):
effigy dolls, and they both go on these separate adventures
in the countryside where they're torturing and killing these effigy dolls,
and then sort of like the magazine seller with the
sex TV robot. It's like their actions in private reflect

(32:48):
in the real world. And the chicken slaughtering lady actually
dies because his fetish seems to be dressing up like
a giant rooster, dancing or around her doll ominously and
throwing boulders at her until he finally crushes her skull
with a boulder. It's like, what is this fetish?

Speaker 2 (33:11):
I'm crushing your head. I'm crushing your head. It's wild.

Speaker 3 (33:16):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
I love it too, and it reminded me of you know,
I think any time anyone wears a bird head, I
just think of stage Fright.

Speaker 7 (33:25):
So I think the bird head is a very clear
reference to surrealism in the thirties and forties and fifties,
because you see all these different the birdheads in Max Ernst,
you see it in Judex, you see it in Story
of Oh, and the leonor Fini designed basically the masks

(33:48):
that were used in the Story of Oh movie. But
she's got a bunch of those kinds of paintings, and
so I think he very consciously does have these nods
to surrealist artists who influenced him. But my favorite part
about this costume. It's like he's got this tall clay
paper mache glued together chicken mask. But then he's an

(34:11):
I now kind of want to do this for allowing
one here, yes, his wings instead of making chicken wings
with the feathers and gluing feathers onto them, it's like
he's cutt an umbrella in half so it looks like
he has bat wings. It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (34:30):
Oh, it's so good.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
It's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
That image when he unveils and lifts up his arms
like he's a vampire or something with those great wings
under there. And that's one of the first times that
we get real stop motion, is him skating around, not
lifting up his feet, but he's moving around her and
moving everywhere. And then you get, yeah, those boulders that

(34:54):
he just keeps throwing and seems to be scaring her
each time, Like the voodoo doll like you're saying, has
this shocked expression on his face. It's like, oh my gosh,
you know you're gonna kill me with this thing, and
he doesn't. He at one point he goes he goes
into a building and then it comes back out and
he does it some more.

Speaker 7 (35:13):
Oh yeah, and we see him through the window of
the building continuing to throw boulders indoors in this abandoned house.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Or is it just the one boulder that like never breaks.
It might just be the one boulder looks the same
every time.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
And then we finally find out why he has saved
the blood and he has basically put it under her
Sunday go to meat and hat and when he throws
that boulder down on top of her, that breaks the
balloon with all of the blood. We get that the
blood with her actually three times, because we have the
blood at the end, and we'll talk about the end

(35:51):
scene later, the blood at the end with the blood
from this. And then the first time he goes inside
of her apartment, it's a rather unpleasant image of a
cat chewing on what looks like a sanitary napkin.

Speaker 7 (36:04):
It's probably that same chicken's blood, it could be.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
And yeah, like to your point, Jim, with all the
people on letterbox, like how gross this is. Her apartment's
a mess. Her apartment is so messy. You know, he
has to clear away some stuff to get to the
sewing machine so he can make his bat wings.

Speaker 7 (36:26):
I mean, in a different era, this woman could have
just gone on Craigslist and found herself a slave to
come over and clean that apartment for her.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
That would be too vanilla. You know, you would have
to build an effigy of a person you would want
to then clean up and stop motion. I suppose.

Speaker 7 (36:43):
Yeah, what you would need is you would need the
six arm TV robot man to build you a six
arm house cleaning effigy slave that you could whip while
he cleans the apartment.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
Rip his clothes with your whip and your mask on
and everything. And I love how we see the mask
in the closet and that comes back with the cop
when he's looking through things and the way that he's
touching the same sweater and I'm like, yeah, he's going
to be very interest in that sweater.

Speaker 2 (37:13):
Isn't getting ideas?

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Yeah, And we see her out buying candles, and again
it's very ritualistic, and I don't think that that's any
sort of stretch as far as the ritual of the fetish.
You know, the whole thing of the cop rubbing the
rolling pin with all the nails across him, or the
pot lids with the soft things inside of them. But

(37:38):
like every time, this is such a ritual, like the
food that the chickenman lays out in front of her
that he has to then eat afterwards, eat that chicken
and her the woman across the way with candles in
the chair, and then that mysteriously shows up back at
his apartment later on. I mean, I can say this

(37:59):
movie not that surreal. It's completely surreal through and through this,
but like the way that things will happen without following
in the movie logic that comes up, I would say,
what in the last ten minutes of the film.

Speaker 7 (38:12):
That repetition that feels so ritualistic is really intentional and
a really important part of spunk Meyer's work. A lot
of surrealists were interested in occult rituals and mysticism and
things like folk religion and paganism, and spunk Meyer has
talked about how puppets in particular, because like he grew

(38:35):
up loving the puppet theater and it being a really
big influence on his films and like his future art
direction and things like that. He talks about how he
sees puppets as this kind of you know, vessel for
ritual magic and the way that it plays out repeatedly

(38:58):
with the ritual going a little for there each time
in this film is such a good example of that.
It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (39:05):
Well, fetishism is ritualistic, right, you have to say the
right words, you have to have the right images, you
have to hear the rate music, and gosh, we should
talk about the music cues, especially when it comes to
the cop and that I guess it's Mario Lanza. According
to the credits, there's just little clip of opera.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
The opera.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
Yet, oh my god, it is so great. Every time
he gets a little I guess, I don't know if
it's aroused or if it's just like he he kind
of tunes into an object. That music comes screaming up,
so fun crack, it's so great.

Speaker 7 (39:45):
That's why I don't understand how people could find this gross,
Like it's clearly meant to be funny, and a lot
of it is clearly pretty joyous. So I don't I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (39:58):
Letterbox these days, letterbox, these days, media literacy these days,
that too.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
I mean so much of this, Like I've said, they're
not hurting anybody, They're just trying to get themselves off.
And they are doing this in a world where human
connections seem to be very difficult to come by and
helping themselves out as at were giving themselves a hand,
sometimes six or seven of.

Speaker 7 (40:22):
Them, sometimes literally, and also some of them are thinking
about how to enable their fellow pervert. It's like the
lady with the bread marbles that her fetish is all
day throughout her work as a postal carrier. She's like

(40:43):
making these marbles that she saves for later and then
snorts them through this rubber straw and puts them in
her ears. But somehow has leftover marbles that she gives
to the fish fetish lady. So it's like this is
a whole, you know, self sustaining cycle of perversion.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
She's busy and also thorough. Like the bread crust that
she threw out, I was so impressed by. I was
like there was there was not a crumb waisted there,
It was just the crust.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Are they ones that are left over or does that
become part of the ritual that she has to snort these,
put them in her ears and then wait what five
minutes for the alarm clock to go off, and then
the like are those better for the carp.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Yeah, that's the thing. I wasn't sure if they were
like kind of sealed by her mucus, like if that
made them like kind of water tight for some Like,
you know, I don't know if that's part of the
ritual or if I'm even like, you know, thinking of it.

Speaker 7 (41:44):
It seems like it's part of the ritual.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
I mean, the last time I was in Spain, I
was looking all over. They've got those pedicures that you
can get where the fish will come and eat the
dead skin off of your feet. They used to have
that in the United States and they banned it for
sanitary reasons. I guess I was looking everywhere for that
because I was like, that sounds amazing, And when I
saw her with those carp chewing on her toes, I

(42:09):
was like, yes, that's what I'm looking for. This looks great.

Speaker 2 (42:13):
And in fact, I thought about that because my brother
went to the Philippines and got that done at one
of the mega malls there, you know, they have these
giant malls and without even like, I did not voice
this during the family you know, video sharing hour, but
I was like, I don't know if I could do
that because that might arouse me. So yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
I thought it was called shrimping. Not carping.

Speaker 7 (42:37):
The only way to know for sure is to give
it a try.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
I am allergic to shrimp, so it might have to
just be the little guppies.

Speaker 7 (42:45):
Someone listening to this episode is forming a brand new
fetish right now as we speak, I hope.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
So we're just talking about carp for the first episode
of Cheptember this year. The whole thing with the ritual
of car for Christmas, where you go out and buy
a carp and then you put in the bathtub and
let it cycle through the water and everything, and then
you remember from the creamat how that's like the big
Christmas meal the copper can gole brings home, right, And

(43:15):
so when I see the carp in here and she's
bringing home the carp I was like, oh, is it
Christmas time?

Speaker 7 (43:20):
It is for her, It's Christmas morning every morning.

Speaker 1 (43:24):
It's the gift you give yourself.

Speaker 7 (43:27):
It's like, what does Dale Cooper say, give yourself a
present once a day every day?

Speaker 1 (43:31):
It's right, also ritual you were talking about that. As
far as the surrealist, I mean that the woman across
the way who I always think of the landlady. I
don't know why, I guess whenever I see somebody giving
like Stern looks across the hallway. I think it's a
land lady.

Speaker 7 (43:48):
She has landlady vibes. She reminds me of the landlady
and the tenant.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
She seems to be having her ritual inside of what
looks like a former church. I mean it is completely
burned out and everything, but to have the candles and
the chair and the bucket, and then of course the wardrobe,
and she goes in the wardrobe comes out after a
costume change. I just I love that her and him,

(44:15):
the chickenman, seem to have that connection so much, with
that wardrobe and them going in and out of these
different wardrobes, and that she has one set in this
place for her ritual and he goes out all the
way out in the country and does his thing, and
again is in an abandoned church that he goes into.
I'm not sure, but it feels very similar, like these

(44:37):
kind of burnt out husks of buildings.

Speaker 7 (44:40):
I love the stuff with the wardrobe and the fact
that the magical realist element increases throughout the film, like
we don't start there. I think the first time you
see the wardrobe is when the chicken headed guy goes
to the porn store or the magazine store, or buys

(45:00):
his porn magazine, and he goes home, gets himself all
worked up, and then instead of just masturbating in the
privacy of his own home, he climbs into the wardrobe.
And I think that's the assumption that that's what he's
doing in there, because the male lady rings his doorbell
and he comes out with like his clothing askew, and

(45:23):
he's always sweaty. Yeah, he's all sweaty, and his like
shirt is untucked from his pants, and when she hands
him the letter, she looks at him like, I know
what you were just doing.

Speaker 2 (45:34):
She has the most knowing glances. Yes, for sure she does.

Speaker 7 (45:38):
It's almost like she has a sense for who else
is a pervert.

Speaker 2 (45:42):
They have like these really fun glances, you know that
they exchange throughout And it's funny because again, like the
cop glances are always like a little more nefarious and granted,
you know, newsstand guy a little more pervy, but I
think that's just kind of like what he looks like.

(46:03):
But I feel like other other than the detective, the
glances are pretty like.

Speaker 7 (46:08):
My co conspiratal. I guess it is called conspirators of pleasure.

Speaker 1 (46:12):
The way that the male lady brings several of these
fetishes together, she seems to be the deliverer of you know,
she's the deliverer of the Sunday message, and she's the
deliverer of the breadballs. To the news announcer for her carp,
I mean, yeah, it's she's tying them together. It's so great,
the way that these it's kind of like perverted slacker.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Well, and it doesn't even feel like a contrivance, right,
because I always feel like best freaks, or even like
similar enough freaks always kind of gravitate towards one another anyway,
you know, we always we always end up finding each
other somehow.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
You know. I talked about how the woman across the
way has a bucket. She drowns the man or his
effigy in that bucket, so it's like they both of
their rituals and in murder the way that he murders
her with the stone she drowns him. This is much
less violent, I guess, because he's there's no blood involved
with that. That she doesn't have any sort of lease afterwards.

(47:10):
And then her wardrobe is fully full when she opens
up that wardrobe. Inside of her ritual place, there are
all those clothes and she has to put them apart
before she can get inside. I'm just like, oh, right,
that's interesting, you know that you have all of that there.
And I was just rewatching the scene with the man
and the chickenman and his fetish doll. That doll seems

(47:34):
to move inside the building and outside the building and
then down the railroad tracks. It's moving without him ever
being shown moving it.

Speaker 7 (47:43):
The way that that starts to really ramp up in
the second half of the film, I love because maybe
I'm reading too much into this or making assumptions, but
it sort of seems like when he kills her effigy,
she actually dies and that's why the police are there investigating.
And then he goes across the hall and it seems

(48:06):
like he's preparing to also be killed.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
Yeah, because that chair and the bucket are there.

Speaker 7 (48:12):
Then yeah, he's going into fetish murder Narnia.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
At the very end of the film. Seven minutes from
the end of this, so we've had the two murders.
I don't remember. I think this is after we've seen
the newscaster on air with the fish. Possibly I have
to double check that, but he goes in. The chicken

(48:39):
man goes in back into the magazine shop, and it's
like that guy, the magazine seller, is he's co opting
other people's fetishes because when he pulls back the towel
that he had or the blanket that he had over
the electronics. Now he's got a rolling pin, which is
the cups instrument, and he's got chicken feathers and he's

(49:04):
pasting them onto the rolling pin, just the exact same
very ritualistic way that the Chickenman was pasting those on.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
And he's got the blood balloon.

Speaker 1 (49:14):
And he's got the blood balloon, yes exactly. It's like,
what are you doing? Are you stealing their fetishes or
what's going on.

Speaker 7 (49:20):
What it reminded me of, weirdly is Exorcist three, where
the one serial killer dies but passes his spirit on
to another person. I would like to imagine that he
goes on to live a rich, fetish life, continuing the
Chicken Man's weird boulder throwing dance.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
He just absorbs it.

Speaker 1 (49:44):
Not to say like, oh, this movie doesn't make any sense,
but I find it very interesting too that before so
it was post her reveal of the carp on air
and when you see the chickenman walking back to the
magazine shot, it's now in daylight, and it looks like
she is just at her orgasm. She's like getting back together,

(50:08):
like putting her hair in place and stuff. And she's
still on the air and he walks past, and he
looks at her, you know, on the TV screen, and
she seems to have a big smile on her face.
He doesn't seem to, you know, ever smile really, And
I think that's also we get to see the postal
person looking at fish now in a window like maybe

(50:31):
I should try it.

Speaker 7 (50:31):
It's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
I love it. I love it. Yeah, And she gives
that little like you were saying, that little knowing look
at the chicken man, just like I know what you're
up to. You're about to go buy some more pornography.

Speaker 2 (50:43):
Well the chickenman doesn't. He buy like a book on circuitry.

Speaker 1 (50:47):
He buys the electronics books. So yeah, it's like they
flip places now, and it's so exactly the same as
far as at the beginning he's buying pornography. The looks
at him gives this kind of like creepy smile, and
that freaks the chicken man out, and he just basically
throws the money on the counter and then walks out.

(51:08):
And the guy's like, oh yo, your change, kind of
thing like holds up a coin. The exact same happens
without pornography, but with the secretary magazines. Now it's like
he's ashamed of buying this electronics magazine.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Well, he knows what he's going to do with it.

Speaker 7 (51:24):
He knows exactly. And I love that instead of having
a cash register or even like a real cash box,
the guy is keeping his money in an empty Marlborough
cigarette carton.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
I literally remember buying those cartons from like nineteen ninety
six and they were eleven dollars.

Speaker 7 (51:43):
I was going to say, back when they were extremely affordable.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
I think you're right as far as him dying at
the end, because he comes in, sees that bucket, sees
that chair with the candles on it, and then starts
taking off all the c and it just feels like
from that, especially that wonderful shot of the water going
and the reflection of the candles, and he just seems

(52:09):
to have this look of resignation on his face that
we end with. And I don't know why murder has
to come into it, but you know what, I'm okay
with it. I'm really okay with everything here.

Speaker 7 (52:20):
He seems excited about it, like maybe a little apprehensive,
but like, Okay, this is what we've been working towards.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
And we do get that shot of the wardrobe opening too.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah, it seems like they're both resigned to it and
it's almost part of the ritual. And the only thing
that is seemingly unexpected is that, like the real world
has kind of crept into it.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
I e.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
There's like an investigation that that's happening.

Speaker 7 (52:50):
And she actually dies because somebody has dropped a boulder
on her head.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
I don't know that the cops are going to be
able to be able to solve that one.

Speaker 7 (52:59):
So I would really love to see that version of
the movie where it's like framed as a detective story,
like how did this weird fetish enthusiast with a creepy
closet manage to get killed by a boulder smashing on
her head inside her apartment building?

Speaker 2 (53:18):
It would kind of be the best erotic thriller.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Wasn't that already made? With Madonna and Wilm Defoe Body
of Evidence.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
I mean, I've seen it. I couldn't tell you what
the plot is.

Speaker 1 (53:29):
I just remember Joe Maintaine going, is it true you
were a dominatrix?

Speaker 2 (53:34):
This is one of those movies that is crazy in
HD because they they don't know that, like they probably
didn't know that, like Willem Dafoe's like erect penis is
visible in HD.

Speaker 7 (53:48):
That's amazing.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
It's as insane as la Lars van Trier, like you know,
hints that it is. Have you done Body of Evidence
on the show?

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Oh, sometime I might be tempted to do that though.

Speaker 2 (54:01):
It is an absurd movie, completely.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
Absurd, yes, and so kink shaming. And that's the thing
that I like about this is even though all of
these characters are into these absolutely bizarro finishes, I feel
like there's not a lot of judgment here.

Speaker 7 (54:17):
No, it's a celebration.

Speaker 2 (54:19):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
Yeah. I guess this is available on Blu Ray in
maybe Czechoslovakia. That seems to be the only thing I've
been able to find is one version that is terribly overpriced,
But everywhere else it seems like it's just plain old DVD.
And it's been a long time since I think anybody's

(54:41):
released this, and this came out, like I said, Keino
Quinolrbert Well Keino on video. That was the version I watched,
and it had special features, chapter stops, and it had
a bonus film of food, his short film Food, which
if you're not of vegetarian you might be one after

(55:02):
you watch Food, which.

Speaker 7 (55:03):
I think is a pretty common thing with a lot
of the surrealists, Marco Ferrari and Bunuel. They always have
these excessive eating sequences, or frequently have them back to.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Daisies, daisies and food. And wasn't that why it was banned?
Was the shameful waste of food that was going on.

Speaker 7 (55:23):
The decadence, the decadent eating that was happening.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
And I forgot that we had talked about Max Ernstein
the show before. He was actually the leader of the
bandits in Lodge d'Or at the beginning segment of Lodge d'Or.

Speaker 7 (55:39):
Yeah, they were good friends, I believe.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
Then he was also in Dreams that Money Can Buy,
which I still shamefully have not watched.

Speaker 7 (55:48):
I haven't seen it either.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
I think I actually owned it on VHS on the
shelf over my right shoulder, So maybe eventually I'll finally
check it out.

Speaker 7 (55:58):
I definitely have DVDs that I've now owned for twenty
years and still haven't watched. But like one day, Well,
it's like.

Speaker 1 (56:06):
All the books, right, uh huh, Someday I'll read all
these books. Someday I'll watch all these movies.

Speaker 7 (56:12):
The struggle is real.

Speaker 1 (56:14):
The show just gives me an excuse to have to
watch those. All Right, We're going to take a break
and we'll be back with an interview with Peter Hams,
the editor of Dark Alchemy, the Films of Jan Spunkmeyer.
Right after these brief messages, looking for something superior to streaming,
a place with more than five times the selection available
on all the streaming services combined, Select from an unparalleled

(56:36):
collection of over one hundred and fifty thousand films and
get blu rays, four k's and DVDs delivered directly to
your door. Get in on it now at scarecrow dot
com and rediscover the wonders of physical media. I'm really
excited to talk about spunk Meyer with you, because I
know that one of your many areas of study.

Speaker 8 (56:57):
I was thinking about how long not being dealing with
shrank Meyern it's about forty years now. Wow, mind you,
it's fifty years since my engagement with Jeck Cinema, so
it's not surprising.

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Do you remember what was the first funk Meyer film
you saw.

Speaker 8 (57:14):
I think it was Jabbawocke to give it the full
title Jabbawockell Straw Hubert's Clothes, and I think that was
at a time when I knew nothing about shrank Meyer.
It came through as an animated movie. I think it
was released in the US as well as the UK
at the time, so I was impressed by that, but

(57:35):
I knew nothing about schrank Meyer. And of course it
was probably mid ages or early ages. I've probably got
recorded somewhere. When he won the award at Annecy for
Dementias of Dialogue, I think that was a big breakthrough,
and that was followed up by British TV in the

(57:58):
Channel four Quay Brother production captin of de bian and
I think that triggered everything really from not that just
from my point of view, but from everyone else's point
of view as well.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
When you look at his works, do you divide them
into certain periods or themes.

Speaker 8 (58:19):
I don't divide them at all, but I think they
do fall into certain categories that before Alice and after
Alice at it's the main category short films and feature films.
There's the other category. I think they fall into those
categories without me dividing them.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
What themes do you see in his films as far
as what topics he's dealing with or is it just
what is happening at the moment, or does he seem
to have certain predilections.

Speaker 8 (58:50):
Well, it's not certainly what's happening at the moment, though
of course he would say at any stage that he
is living in contemporary society at the all points, and
that the debate will be responding to that. Obviously, there
are surrealist applications in his work, and clearly even Jabbowakie,

(59:11):
which as partly based on the serialist poet as well,
and then you have The Pit, the Pendulum and Hope
and the Fall of the House of ussha Edar Allan
Poe say, the influence of the Marquis Dessar et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera. I think you could say that

(59:32):
there is a surrealist background to his work, but I
don't think he would ever claim to be adapting.

Speaker 1 (59:42):
Their work.

Speaker 8 (59:43):
I think he's much more concerned with releasing his own imagination.
I would say at one stage that he said, I
don't work with intentions. In other words, he doesn't pre
He does pre plan his work, clearly, but he's not
pre planning it to achieve a desired result. He's planning

(01:00:03):
it to give expression to his imagination basically.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
I mean, you've had opportunity to actually speak with him.

Speaker 8 (01:00:15):
Yes, several times actually, but obviously when I was preparing
the book on him, I met him two or three times.
For the first edition, I met him a couple of
times in his house in Krague, and for the second edition,
I met him in his mansion in Horny Sankoff, which

(01:00:37):
is an amazing place full of his prinstance, you go
into the barn and you find the marinettes from Faust
staring you in the face. Will virtually walk into the
theater because from ceramic sculptures and objects and the part
of his collection everywhere. So that's an amazing experience. And

(01:01:00):
so yeah, I admit him on those occasions. The questions
I asked him when I was writing my book were
all submitted in writing at his request anyway, and he
gave very careful consideration to He was very concerned about
being misrepresented. He frequently is misrepresented, of course, so he

(01:01:21):
was very careful about those questions. I subsequently did an
interview with him in London at the Animation Festival, obviously
run into him and some of his exhibitions. I think
it's quite important to recognize that he doesn't only work
in film. He works in virtually all media. Has even

(01:01:44):
has even written two novels and there works in career,
graphic media, ceramics, sculpture, particularly touch sculpture, you name it.
I can't think of anything he done, hardly anything that
he does. And this is an aspect of his work

(01:02:04):
which is largely disregarded because people say, oh, and Strength
makes animated films. He doesn't just make animated films. He
makes a lot of other things as well as not
all his films are animated. It's quite interesting that his
exhibitions I've seen three, i think exhibitions in the UK,

(01:02:27):
none of them in London, one in Wales, one in Brighton.
I think somehow the orthodox art establishment except oh, he's
a filmmaker. They don't accept his other work. But if
you go to his exhibitions, you will see that work
reflected there. You will see the objects from Alice in
the exhibition. All those objects and creatures and inspirations exist

(01:02:53):
independently of the films, and they have a resonance outside
the films as well.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
I was always impressed by some of the things that
he did for other filmmakers, some of the title card
work that he and his wife worked on, some of
the special effects that he did for Lipski or for
Right Hurtz. Felt like he and Hurtz really had some
good collaborations.

Speaker 8 (01:03:16):
They both studied together at the puppetry faculty, so they
both had that background in puppetry. Of course, Hertz was
in shrank LANs first film, The Last Trick, as one
of the sort of puppets actors. He also appeared in
The Flat's, another one the shank Las films, so there

(01:03:38):
was a close collaboration there and kind of shared perspective
to some extent, I think. And of course Shrank worked
on The Ferret Vampire, which just a film that Hats
made about the car powered by human blood. Apparently some

(01:03:59):
of the more extreme elements so were cut out by
the Census, but yeah, so that's what he was doing.
He did that when he a period in the eighties
really wasn't allowed to make animated films, and he worked
on other people's films in theater and so on. But
he always said he was never employed by the state industry.

(01:04:22):
He always offered projects to the short film studios and
they either accepted them or rejected them. But the period
during the eighties following a number of his films, so
I think it was a pit the Pendulum and Hope
and down to the Cellar, which they disapproved of, and
then he was banned, and then later they disapproved of

(01:04:42):
Dimensions of Dialogue and he was banned again. But he survived,
and he seems it's extraordinary, really that he managed to
just seemed to be keep to his own ideals and convictions,
regardless of what people were doing to him. He would
offer some of he would get things done, and if

(01:05:03):
he couldn't do them, he would work in another media.
I think he said during that period of enforced non
filmmaking period that he worked on his touch sculpture in
particular and developed that, and he subsequently wrote a book
called on his Touch Sculpture, So that was significant, I think.

(01:05:23):
But of course when he got to making Alice that
was largely funded from outside Czechoslovakia, with Swiss and British
and I think probably some other co production money. I
remember asking the then head of the Czech Film Institute
was it a Czech film, and he said, of course,

(01:05:44):
it's a check film, but actually the money was coming
from elsewhere. His first feature film therefore was effectively subsidized
from outside.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
With those times that you met him, how would you
describe him as a.

Speaker 8 (01:05:57):
Person very committed for the staff. I think there's no
question about his commitment to Surrealism and the Surrealist group,
absolutely for them. The other thing I think that struck me,
which might not immediately occur to you, is it extremely analytical,
very precise, very logical actually, if I could put it

(01:06:20):
that way, because if you think that the conventional notion
of surrealism is something which is allogical, he's extremely logical,
very clever. I also went to a lecture by him
some I think, some years earlier than that, which he
was absolutely precise, really good lecturer. He didn't do it

(01:06:43):
very often, I don't think, but.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Seems like you would have to be so precise with
all the start motion and just knowing what to move,
how to move, and how to shoot all of that.

Speaker 8 (01:06:54):
Yeah, he did say that.

Speaker 4 (01:06:57):
Well.

Speaker 8 (01:06:58):
With a lot of his earlier films, he worked with
an animator called Bedrick Glazer, plus who could worked with Trunka,
So he had two very good animators. But he said
with Glaser that he almost didn't have to tell him
what to do because they were working on the same
sort of mental level. The shrike my animated some of them, didn't.

(01:07:21):
He normally directed the animation, as I understand it, but
he did do some animation himself as well, But it
was his ideas they did. They they produced what he
wanted to see.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
Now, if memory serves. When I was reading about Conspirators
of Pleasure, that project started much earlier than when it
came out, Wasn't it based on a script from the
early seventies?

Speaker 6 (01:07:47):
Is that right?

Speaker 8 (01:07:48):
That's right. I think it was a Pale Bluebird. I
think it was called which he wrote in the seventies,
and then he began it as a short film as
a version of this the script or development from the
earlier script. And he said that I think he suddenly

(01:08:09):
realized that he was going to develop it into the
feature belt with all the other stories added, and he said, ah,
I went to my producer and said, oh, I can't
leave this alone now, I've got to turn it into
a feature belt and he said, ah, yeah, I've only
got the money for short Phil. They managed to do it.

(01:08:29):
That's the main thing. The initial story film, the seventh
seventy with obviously just inspired the additional stories. I think
the play of Blue Room, that's the guy who creates
the fetish as a'n it of the neighbor, and she
creates the fetish of him. Yeah, and I can imagine

(01:08:50):
how that idea Mike's park some other ideas. I really
loved the police chief who has to go away and
leave his beautiful wife and go into the shed and
get erotic pleasure for them various kinds of objects.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
Everyone seems to touch each other's lives, but they're unaware
of each other so much of the time.

Speaker 8 (01:09:16):
The film originally had a different title, and he gradually
realized as it developed that they were co conspirators. And
one of the things I like this is a personal repellection.

Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
Now.

Speaker 8 (01:09:29):
When I first saw the film, it was at an
afternoon screening in London. I think it was actually the
first screening for some reason. It was in the afternoon.
There weren't that many people there. A few many raincoats
turned up because they'd heard about it, and I managed
to get the seat number one in row number one

(01:09:53):
with the title Conspirators of Pleasure on it. So I
was quite pleased with that, but I think I've lost
the ticket.

Speaker 5 (01:09:59):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:10:00):
What was the audience reaction at the time, do you remember?

Speaker 8 (01:10:03):
I think they were puzzled. I think it's a great
comedy myself. It's the humor in it that appears to
be I have to say, and sometimes there's a humor
which is not readily apparent, but none of this I
find it actually enjoyable. But maybe I shouldn't. Well, and
then I as a conspirator number one, so.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
So as a non check person, I'm so curious about
certain things in the movie, especially the television presenter, who
I understand was a real TV presenter.

Speaker 8 (01:10:38):
Yes, yes, I believe so, yeah, yeah, yes, her name
comes from and the Veinska, which is more a Polish name,
so I don't know. Yeah. And it's the interesting thing
is how many sort of star actors personalities how ready

(01:10:58):
to appear in strength by as almost regardless they just
seemed to trust in his vision and call it back.
But he did say. What was interesting about one of
the things he said about actors is that because I
once asked him how he managed to get so many
star key actors into his films, and he said, well,

(01:11:22):
I don't select them on that basis. I select them
on their eyes and their mouths. I then treat them
like puppets, or he views them as puppets. It's the
expression in the eyes and the mouths that seemed to
attract him to his lead actors, and he got a
lot to perform for him, none better than Pattern Cheppek

(01:11:44):
in Faust, of course, which is that a lot of
the brilliant film.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Watching Conspirators for the first time a few years ago,
I was just surprised about the dialogue and the lack thereof.
I just thought it was so well told that you
didn't need any words at all throughout this entire film.

Speaker 8 (01:12:05):
Well there the films is. For some reason, when I
was just thinking about this interview, that came into my
mind was an early film called The Garden, which was
he described as his first surrealist film, black and white,
entirely acted and extremely weird, that's short. They should be seen.

(01:12:25):
It has some similarities with a later New Wave film
called The Party and the Guests in all those early
films really incredible, most of them. They he was still
relatively unknown at the time. It's certainly internationally.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
Do you know what he is still working on, because
he's the last film of his I think was just
three years ago, which is fairly recent.

Speaker 8 (01:12:51):
Yeah, CODs Kampala with the last one, who is twenty two,
I think yeah. As far as I know, there's two
versions of that. There's the short version, which is the
word we've seen, and a longer vertion which is a
complete I think record of his collection of the curiosities

(01:13:14):
and ethographic artifacts and so on. The last I heard,
which was not recent and totally that he was going
to release the complete version of that, possibly together with
the documentary which his colleagues made called The Chemical Furnace,

(01:13:35):
which is a very good documentary on absolutely precise kind
of analysis of his work, as the best thing I've
seen about it, directed by Daniel who worked with the
Serialist group. He worked on feature films as well, but
he's worked on I think he worked on some of
Shrank Mars later features. It really goes into the surrealis

(01:14:00):
background in a way that nothing else has done.

Speaker 1 (01:14:05):
Is it difficult studying and writing about a surrealist filmmaker?

Speaker 6 (01:14:11):
Is it?

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Yes?

Speaker 8 (01:14:14):
Curiously enough? I never intended to write anything about shrank
What happened to us I was at a film school
in Czechoslovakia, in Pisa actually, and the then director of
the Czech Films to shut a man called Jarislav Botchik,

(01:14:34):
who wrote a book on yusual trunka and other things.
But he said, could I find a British publisher for
a book they were preparing on shrank Meyer. So I
went around, not well, all like the British publishers, and
they all said no, they weren't interested. And then a
few years back after that, small British publisher said, how

(01:14:57):
would you like to do a book on shrank Iak.
I was never going to do a work called Strength Buyer,
but if I'm going to do one, I wanted to
be a kind of collective text and I felt it
was really important to get the view from the inside,
and that is absolutely clear, and that's why I did
the interviews. And also I got the very difficult piece

(01:15:20):
of writing by Francis Sacrea called the force of imagination,
which is also key to strength Bier's work. That was
a substantial part of investigating Shrength Buyer. And then of
course there was also the background with the Quay Brothers
Keith Griffiths film Cabinet of Bead Shrank Buyer. So I

(01:15:40):
managed to recruit Roger Cardinal, who'd been one of the
contributors to that, to write one of the articles, and
so gradually it coalesced. But yes, it's certainly it's not
something you would think to yourself, Ah, that's going to
be an easy job. It is, okay, it came together

(01:16:03):
of its owner called I'm sure surrealism has an explanation
to that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:08):
And how about yourself? What are you working on these days?

Speaker 8 (01:16:10):
And technically retired, but I've been working on our number
of Blu rays now this year. I've done some work
on YouTube Artis' short films that was a commentary. I've
done an essay on your I Hertz's film Oil Lamps Versus,

(01:16:32):
one of my favorites from years ago. So I'm writing
some stuff on the Czecho Slovak animation for upcoming book
that's about it. Animation are really surprising that the animation
has managed to survive the market, and it seems to
be coming that quite strongly, even with feature films.

Speaker 1 (01:16:56):
I hope we can talk again sometimes and it's I
was a pleasure.

Speaker 8 (01:16:59):
Thanks for about.

Speaker 1 (01:17:02):
All right. We were back when we were talking about
Conspirators of Pleasure and yeah, my notes for the second
part are are there any films that are like this?
And we might have mentioned a couple, but I can't
think of too many other films that are like this
in any way. I mean I mentioned Slacker. There's other
fetashy type films. I mean not like this.

Speaker 2 (01:17:22):
There are like films where like certain elements of this
movie kind of remind me of like like Delicatessen. It
kind of like feels like that a little bit, and
also like not really in subject matter at all, but
kind of maybe the dead panness or maybe it is

(01:17:42):
just like you know, the European sensibility of it. But
like I think about like Roy Anderson's You the Living,
if I remember correctly, is largely dialogue free, and that's
like a vignette based movie. But again it's the kind
of thing where people will just be like, you know,
freaks in this vignette and it's like it's like handled

(01:18:03):
so lovingly and people will kind of like die in
cartoonish ways, and it's sort of I think he is
Swedish though, but it's a similar sort of like I
feel like set up and delivery to this, but yeah,
not quite the same. It just kind of like made
me remember. It made me think of, like how I
want to watch that, same with Delicatessen. But in terms

(01:18:26):
of movies that this feels like very similar to. No,
I'm kind of at a loss other.

Speaker 7 (01:18:33):
Than the things I've already mentioned as having some things
in common, like Daisy's and a little bit of Cronenberg.
The thing that it made me think of, and this
is purely coincidence because it's what I was watching. I
was rewatching genre Lan's Requiem for a Vampire because you know,
we're in fall now. I forgot how little dialogue that

(01:18:56):
film has and how much it feels like just really
indebted to silent film serials in a similar way that
Conspirators of Pleasure does. I don't think it celebrates the
vampires or the fetishes quite as much because there's a
lot of sexual torture and exploitation. Movie elements in that one.

(01:19:18):
But I am always fascinated when contemporary directors who don't
have to use silent cinema trappings choose to, because I
feel like it makes you pay so much more attention
to like the textures and the visual world. And it
kind of got me wanting to watch some I don't know,

(01:19:41):
Furad and maybe like House of Usher and other just
really visually gorgeous silent films that are also gothic and weird.

Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
Well, there was that movie them Rock, I think it
was called That's Completely Silent and ironic. I was just
talking with a friend about I Will Up early the
day I died and that being a relatively silent film,
which is so much fun, especially to see Billy Zane
just going absolutely ape shit. I know that the guy

(01:20:12):
that played the newspaper vendor was in one called America
with a k which was a adaptation of Kafka's novel,
and I think it's very inspired by Carol Zeman, so
kind of more of that.

Speaker 7 (01:20:26):
Yeah, I've been wanting to see that, but I haven't yet.

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
And ironically, he was also in a movie from two
thousand and seven called The Catfish Summer, so I'm not
sure if there's any carps catfish crossovers in that one.

Speaker 7 (01:20:41):
A carping summer sounds like a summer.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
I want to be in. I've really never seen anything
quite like this before, and it is so interesting to
me that this is so live action. I really thought
that this was going to be so much stop motion.
But then you go back even to that earliest of
the smockmer films, the one with the two guys with

(01:21:05):
the big puppet heads on, and I think your I
heard's played one of those puppet creatures, and the way
that that's pretty much I know there's a little bit
of stop motion in there, but there's so much just
human actors doing their thing, and it almost reminded me
of Woman Schance. The way that these guys are interacting.

Speaker 7 (01:21:26):
Wow, I haven't thought about Moomen Shance in a long time.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
I'm glad I could bring that back for you. If
only I had like clay on my face and I
just started making myself look sad and then I'll be happy. Now,
those guys used to kind of freak me out a
little bit, like when they showed up on The Muppet
Show and stuff, and the one guy who would like
grab his ankles and hop around.

Speaker 7 (01:21:47):
Yeah, dolls as a kid, Dolls, clowns, puppets all kind
of freaked me out.

Speaker 2 (01:21:55):
Yeah, they still do it for me.

Speaker 7 (01:21:57):
I think that's part of why I like Conspirators of
Play so much, is because those effigy dolls are fucking creepy,
especially when they come to life.

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
I'm going to go ahead and admit this to the
Internet that my mom gifted us some dolls from a
deceased family member for my toddler.

Speaker 7 (01:22:17):
No, I was going to say, you have a child
in the house, Well, well, one.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
Of them was so terrifying that we had to We
donated it. You should have burned it, yeah, I mean
we passed the cars on to someone else. Clearly, you know,
someone's having a fucking bad time because we couldn't have
that juju in our house.

Speaker 7 (01:22:39):
But you know, yeah, no, keep that away from your kid.

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
FYI. If you hear it and you own the doll,
I'm sorry, and you should burn it.

Speaker 1 (01:22:48):
All right. Let's go ahead and take another break, and
we're going to play preview for next week's show right
after these brief messages. Nineteen twenty three, A Yellowstone Origin
story introduces a new generation of the Dutton family as
they explained the early twentieth century, when pandemic's historic drought,
the end of Prohibition, and the Grave Depression all plague
the Mountain West and the Duttons who call it home.

(01:23:09):
The series stars Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford. This release
features all eight episodes of the season, plus over two
hours of special features. Own it now on DVD and
Blu ray. A mysterious phone.

Speaker 5 (01:23:23):
Call, I.

Speaker 3 (01:23:26):
Nice raven.

Speaker 8 (01:23:30):
A coffin.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
A terrible dream.

Speaker 3 (01:23:35):
It seems I was in a graveyard.

Speaker 4 (01:23:39):
And then.

Speaker 7 (01:23:41):
I can't remember everything.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
A psychic investigator, Missus Stanton. The Unknown is writing people
since the beginning of time. The only cure is understanding.

Speaker 2 (01:23:52):
Oh dog, I'm trying to understand.

Speaker 6 (01:23:54):
Can't you see that?

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
I'm really am trying to understand.

Speaker 1 (01:23:57):
A family secret.

Speaker 8 (01:23:58):
Someone was playing p games with Paul the night of Vision.

Speaker 2 (01:24:01):
I don't play games with married men.

Speaker 1 (01:24:03):
Luke Stephanie Powers stars in Sweet Sweet Rachel. I know
what you're trying to do, Lilian.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
It won't wear.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
As right.

Speaker 1 (01:24:11):
We'll be back next week. What they look at the
made for TV film Sweet Sweet Rachel. As we kick
off s October twenty twenty five until then I want
to thank my co hosts Sam and Jim. So Jim,
what's happening with.

Speaker 5 (01:24:22):
You, sir?

Speaker 3 (01:24:23):
So.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
I have a feature film that is half financed that
we're hoping to pull over the financing finish line and hopefully,
you know, do when it's not in the dead of
winter and shoot it in Chicago. But you know, if
we do shoot it in Chicago in the dead of winter,
it's kind of instant production value because everything looks so

(01:24:46):
drab and you don't actually actually have to dress the
streets of Chicago like that. But it is a it's
an adaptation of a queer body horror novel called Waif,
and we're really excited about it. And so you know,
I think the last time we spoke, I had zero
dollars in place, and now I have, you know, half

(01:25:07):
the money. So we'll see. Maybe next time we record
it'll it'll be out in the way.

Speaker 1 (01:25:13):
So well, the next time we record is pretty soon.
We're going to be talking about Door in December for
Dirty December.

Speaker 7 (01:25:20):
Oh, I forgot about that. I love Door.

Speaker 2 (01:25:24):
I forgot about that too, So yeah, fingers crossed that
I have the rest of my moneys by the time
we speak, it'll be a Christmas miracle.

Speaker 7 (01:25:31):
Like the carp you can celebrate by carping.

Speaker 2 (01:25:35):
I was gonna say, You're like, why are you so silent, Jim,
And it's like, well, it's because, like you know, the
zoom frame cuts off, like you know, my bottom half
and I may have my feet and you know, a
top of carp a cub full of carpet.

Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
Don't hear Jim talking. I just hear splashing.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
Well, you need to zoom into my face with your
joystick as well.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
So yeah, and Sam, how's the busiest one in New
York City?

Speaker 7 (01:26:01):
Hired? But that pretty good? I guess the things I
should probably shout out. So my solo podcast, which is
called aerosplus Massacre, I just did an episode on the
first ten years of Kiyoshi Kurasawa's horror movies and thrillers
that I had the best time doing. I started another

(01:26:23):
podcast called Perverse Permission, and we are doing a very
long running long Jing series if you like Hong Kong
cinema and want to learn more about it in the
eighties and nineties, specifically, every time I come on, I'm
really bad at remembering what blu rays I've worked on

(01:26:44):
that are announced.

Speaker 1 (01:26:46):
The one that I'm looking forward to is this whole
Oshima box that's coming out.

Speaker 7 (01:26:52):
Oh yes, Radiants are doing this really incredible nine film
Nikisa Oshima set I was super on to do a
commentary for Death by Hanging. This has been a very
Death by Hanging year for me because I got to
screen it on thirty five millimeter in Cleveland in the winter,
which was, you know, the bucket list moment. I think

(01:27:16):
the other thing I would want to shout out on
kind of a similar note. So Third Window are putting
out this Kaizo Hayashi trilogy set of the Mike Uhama films.
If you've seen or heard of the most Terrible Time
in my life, they are amazing. Come with the highest recommendation.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
I love them.

Speaker 7 (01:27:35):
I got to do a commentary for The Trap, which
is the very strange gothic third entry in the series.
So I feel like that's enough shout outs for one episode.

Speaker 1 (01:27:47):
Well, thanks folks for being on the show. Thanks to
everybody for listening. Want to support physical media and get
great movies by mail, head over to scarecrow dot com
and try Scarecrow Videos incredible rent by mail service, the
largest publicly accessible collection in the world, you'll find films
they're entirely unavailable elsewhere. Get what you want, when you
want it without the scrolling, and yes, Conspirators of Pleasure
is available. If you want to hear more of me

(01:28:09):
shooting off my Mouth, check out some of the other
shows that I work on. They are all available at
Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Thanks especially to our Patreon community. If
you want to join the community, visit patreon dot com
slash Projection Booth. I highly recommend joining Sam's Patreon as well.
What is your Patreon, Sam?

Speaker 7 (01:28:25):
Oh, thank you? It's You could find it at patreon
dot com. Slash my name so Sam Dean.

Speaker 1 (01:28:31):
Every donation we get, that's me and Sam helps the
Projection Booth take over the world.

Speaker 9 (01:28:44):
God Joy money, say it Ah Sheties, call on.

Speaker 5 (01:28:55):
Joy on you bon.

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Speaker 5 (01:29:15):
You may.

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Beyond bes.

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PROSPECTI Senory.

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To come home May for He's home, He's this song

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It was a heart to.

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On me, you.

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(01:32:09):
but love him all.

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