Mario Bava: The Whip and the Body (Podcast/Discussion)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello and welcome to Castle of Horror, the show dedicated
to horror movie is an awesomeness. We are a feat
Spot top one hundred horror podcast. This week we kick
off a cycle of Mario Bava films with a look
at the nineteen sixty three film The Whip and the Body.
This is episode four hundred and sixty eight. Bear in
mind if you haven't seen today's movie, we're going to

(00:28):
be talking about it from the perspective of horror fans
who've seen it, So warning spoilers ahead. From Denver, Colorado,
I'm your host, Jason Henderson, publisher at castle Bridge Media,
home of the Castle of Horror anthology. With me from
Austin is Tony Savaggio, lead singer and bassis of the
band Deserts of Mars and lead guitars in the band
Rise from Fireus. Hello, Tony, Howdy Howdy, Also in Austin.

(00:50):
Mister Drew Edwards is the writer creator of the long
running underground comic Halloween Man, which you can find at
Global Comics. He is a Best Writer Ringo nominee, Austin
Uncle Best of Boston Award winner and a member of
the Penn America fellowship say hello.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Drew, the safe word is bava.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
I like that. I like that a lot. Also in
Denver color commentary a phrase that means less and less
every week from Julia Gusman of Guzman, Immigration of Denver,
chair of the American Immigration Lawyers Association of Colorado, quoted
by the Denver Post, and last week Julia say hello hello.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
I think the color commentary is that I embrace it.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
I love it. It is who I am.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
The funny thing is she was actually promoting our show
to a bunch of immigration attorneys. So we may have
we may have new listeners or flabbergasted. Yeah, yeah yeah.
And finally, once more, we are joined by a very
special guest, a writer who has received the Tony Award
for his play Read wrote the book for the Tony
Award winning Mulan Rouge. As a screenwriter, writer nond for

(02:00):
an Oscar three times, and has received Golden Globe, BAFTA, WGA,
and Edgar Awards. His film work includes Skyfall, Gladiator, The Aviator,
Hugo Rango, This Is Crazy Reading This, Sweeney Todd, Theay Them,
The Last Samurai, Any Given Sunday. He also created the
television series Penny Dreadful, which is quite dear to our hearts.

(02:21):
And next year we'll see the release of his movie Michael,
about Michael Jackson, which honestly, I just I just cannot
wait to see that, And I haven't asked you for
any spoilers, right, but I really want to know what
that's gonna be like, so I can't remember.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
I think we already know the stuff about that story.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
We do, but the thing is like, like, is it
gonna be like walk Hard where it's like, wait on,
Michael Jackson has to relive his whole damn life before
he goes on stage, or like, what's it? What's it
gonna be?

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Like?

Speaker 4 (02:49):
I'm producing him though, because we're dying. We're dying to know.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Oh yes, okay, I'm sorry. Our guest is John Logan,
say hello, Hello, happy to be back. I'm so happy,
And honestly I don't want I don't want the spoilers
so so so you know, uh, I don't think but
so you don't have to respond to any of that,
but welcome.

Speaker 4 (03:12):
I love that the.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Whole time you were introducing him, he's just looking down
like he's just like, oh gosh, I'm so uh.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
I'm so humbled, so humbled. I'm so humbled, Jason By
you're listing my amazing credits. Well, I love I love
being back with you guys, and always makes me happy
to have like a little a little talk with my
my horror pals about anything, especially like Mario Bava. Now
we get to talk about for a while, which is great.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Oh, I am stoked about this because we're in into
a bunch of them, and uh, John, you you you chose,
but I mean, honestly, we can just keep going. But
you've chosen like four Bava films for us to get into,
and I honestly have not seen several of these like
this one. Uh, I'm going to introduce it right now,
but like this, this was a new film to me,
and I've seen an embarrassing lot of horror films, so

(04:07):
it was very cool to like be introduced to something
that I hadn't come across. So all right. Whipping the
Body nineteen sixty three Gothic horror film directed by Mario Baba.
The film is about Kurt Menliffe Christopher Lee, a nobleman
ostracized by his father for his relationship with a servant girl,
and that girl's eventual suicide, he returns to reclaim his

(04:29):
title and his former fiance Noveca, the very lovely Dalia Lavi,
who is now Kurt's brother's wife. Menlif has later found murdered,
but the locals believe his ghost has returned to hot
the Castle. So as a murder mystery and a gothic
horror horror movie and a psycho sexual drama Italian sense, Yeah, yeah.

(04:53):
Italian censor has had some objections to the film, and
in the US apparently it was released without the without
some of the scenes of s and m. So like,
we didn't get the whip, and I don't even know.

Speaker 2 (05:06):
If we just got the body, but no whip.

Speaker 1 (05:08):
You got the body. I don't know if this movie
would make much sense without the whip. And what I
like is how jectionable a lot of it is, because
that means there's room to talk about it. So let's
get our opening thoughts. We're gonna start with John because
he chose this, this perfect piece of work, and then
we'll we'll go Julia, Drew and Tony and then we'll
go into the discussion. So, John, why did you foist

(05:31):
upon us the whip and the body?

Speaker 5 (05:32):
Because it's a it's a great movie, and it's it
is it is Bava doing what Baba does, which is
taking something a traditional Gothic melodrama. I mean the first
the first like ten minutes of this movie, you could
be in a Walter Scott novel. And then about ten
minutes in an outcomes the whip and it becomes so
transgressive and it's you know what, if there is needs

(05:54):
more proof that Europe is sex positive and America puritanical,
is this movie? You know? And it this is a like, yeah,
we're gonna whip this woman and she's into it. Okay,
that's really not what the story is about. We're just
that's that's what they do. That's their passion, that's their excess.
And this is nineteen sixty three. So bravo Bava.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, it's fantastic. Thank you, Julia. What are your what
are your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (06:22):
I I thought that was it was really good looking movie.
It was I was very conflicted about it because I
always have been conflicted about people who are into masochism
in terms of their sex lives, because I'm like, well,
how much of this is because you have you're like
addicted to abuse, because you've been abused your whole life.

Speaker 4 (06:43):
Or is it? I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (06:44):
I'm just so I'm excited to have this conversation with
you guys, because as I'm watching it, I'm like, oh,
I'm having really this is really hard for me to watch.
The part with the whip. I hated the wigs. I
thought the wigs were terribul, but the sets were gorgeous,
the people were great. I think it's funny that Christopher
and I guess the wigs partly are because Christopher Lee
is only seven years younger than his parents. But because

(07:08):
I was looking at I was looking at the ages,
I'm like.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
What is everybody's age here?

Speaker 3 (07:11):
But it's an interesting story, and I thought there was
a lot of neat stuff about it. I thought it
was funny that they just stuck this castle onto this
What was the beach, Jason, Well, I.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Think it's Anzios. It's near. Yeah. I nearly died around
by the way.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
I know you'll have to tell that story. Yeah, but yeah,
it's interesting. I think it'd be really interesting conversation.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
Yeah, let's see Tony. Well, actually I'm sorry, I said, Drew, Drew,
what about you?

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Well, I was introduced to this movie for the first
time speaking of sn M through a friend of mine
when I still lived in Dallas who was a dominatrix,
and this was one of her favorite movies, and we
would repeatedly go over like either she would come over
to my then or we would go over to her

(08:01):
home and we would dig into each other's movie collections
and watch movies. And I introduced her to Faster Pussycat,
Kill Kill, and she introduced me to this movie. I
really like this movie. A lot of the stuff that
makes Julia uncomfortable about this movie I kind of dig

(08:25):
because I like it when a movie wears its perversion
on its sleeve. That is one of the reason. That's
what you pay for when you watch a movie called
The Whip and the Body. It's a gorgeous looking movie,
as I think basically everybody here will agree on. The colors,

(08:45):
the reds, the blues, A wonderful looking corpse at the
end of the movie. That's actually probably the image for
some reason, with all the kinkiness in it, I always
remember the gooey skeleton at the end of the movie
more than any anything else. For whatever reason, I do
think it is a bit unfortunate that Christopher Lee is

(09:09):
dubbed in this movie. I think if if I were
to have one criticism of it is that one of
the best things about Christopher Lee is his voice. And
you know, maybe it's because he didn't do well with Italian.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
No, it's it's in the IMDb. He actually agrees with you.
He regrets that he didn't do his voice. It is
because he had to run off. Uh, but he had
to go back to Switzerland before they did the actual dubbing,
so he got dubbed by in English.

Speaker 4 (09:39):
Even did you watch the English version or did you
watch it in Italian?

Speaker 2 (09:42):
I watched the Italian version.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Yeah, but even in English, he's dubbed by William Keel.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Well, I'm specially disappointed that I didn't. No, I've only
ever seen the Italian version of this. I I've heard
that he's dubbed in the English version as well, but
I've never experienced that for myself. This is this is
this is a great I agree with you, Like I'm

(10:08):
I'm all in on this movie. I like everything about it.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
That's that's wonderful. Uh, Tony, what are your thoughts? Yeah,
it's an extremely beautiful movie.

Speaker 6 (10:17):
And if somebody if they had decided to say now
in uh kioskiro vision, it would have been perfect.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
Like there's so much of that in here. That's just
I mean sometimes.

Speaker 6 (10:28):
Just to a fault, like there's half of a shadow,
you know, but it's beautifully shocked, gorgeous. You know, it's
such it's cool to see all these actors interacting. Uh,
you know Dahlia Lovey, you know, I am definitely like
dark haired gothy women. I'll watch It's gorgeous. She's absolutely stunning. Uh,

(10:51):
I think it's cool. It's it is fascinating. It just
how like pervy it gets, and how conflicted her character
is in that, like you know, we're kind of ed
down this like no, I'm horrified, but but maybe not
as horrified as you think.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (11:06):
And that's you know, that's fascinating. I kind of sit
between Drew and Julia though, because I also like, uh,
you know, S and M isn't my thing. But I've
been in goth industrial band, so the look of SEM
it's like like anytime there's you know, I've wrote a
song called black Leather, so what do I know?

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Come on?

Speaker 6 (11:26):
But uh, but I think it's I think it's a
really interesting movie to dive into you, and I'm really
glad that we picked this one as our first one.
I haven't seen it before either.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
I am really into the places that this conversation is
going to go, because I think this is this is
gonna be a revealing conversation. You know what I mean?
And I think you do.

Speaker 6 (11:50):
We've done the four hundred and something episodes. I think
probably people know a lot more about us than we
remember at this point, so who knows.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
It's a good point. You could probably feed four hundred
and sixty seven episodes we've done into some AI and say,
please explain to me.

Speaker 4 (12:05):
Don't give anybody any ideas.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Do you think just so we're clear on what we're
saying here? You think you could feed everybody this podcast?
You could feed this podcast into computer and they can
figure out our sex lives.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
I don't know about that, but they can figure out
our personalities. But I really I have no idea, and
in fact, I can tell you.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Our personalities right now. Nice nice, nice asshole?

Speaker 4 (12:32):
That's no What are you pointing out though? When you
said asshole? Is the question?

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah? Okay? Actually I would like to start let's start
actually with the themes and and we'll take Rather than just
reciting the plot, I want to go straight to something
about gothic and about the psycho sexual themes of this film.

(12:59):
So one of the reviews I read, the guy was like,
this movie put me in a bad mood because I
kind of felt like this woman was projecting her own
abuse and it was screwing up her desires and all
this stuff. And I respect that guy's opinion, but reading it,
I was like, this is a Gothic tale where everything
is very heightened. These aren't real people, and it's I

(13:22):
on display here. If you imagine like Roddy McDowell listing
out the perversions in Legend of hell House, there's you know, jealousy, sadism, masochism, adultery, murder.
So there's all of this stuff on display, and I think,
I guess I don't know how to I'm just throwing

(13:44):
this out as a thought because I'm not even sure
what the question is other than is it possible that
in Horror we are not meant to take this as
people on the other side of that silver screen that
we really need to reach so that we can give
them some life. Advice and that this is instead some
thing more like a dream or like a like a
piece of music. I guess what I'm saying is, are

(14:05):
we to treat these as real people we should feel
sorry for, or as exciting people we should live vicariously through.

Speaker 3 (14:11):
Now, that question is for every single movie we ever watched.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
Ever.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
I mean, you can't just pick this one because of
because of the S and M and say, oh, for
this one, We're not going to do that if we're
doing it for all the others. And okay, but I
think John want to say something of for it.

Speaker 5 (14:26):
Yeah, I think yes, we look at them as real people,
and we look at Mario Bober as an artist, and
he presented exactly what he wanted to and you know,
I think in all the.

Speaker 6 (14:36):
Baba movies we're going to talk about it.

Speaker 5 (14:37):
I think Dhalia Lobby gives the greatest performance in this
movie because his camera just stays so tight on her
eyes and literally on her eyes at one point, and
her face you can see the molecules shifting. So when
she gets turned on by being whipped, she's being turned
on by be whipped. We know nothing about her backstory,
we know nothing about her child that we know this

(14:59):
moment in cinema, Bob is giving us, and I believe
it entirely. I think it's erotic, I think it's hot.
I think it's disturbing. I think it's all those things
because I know I'm in a horror movie. If I
were in a drama, you know, and I wasn't in
a Gothic setting, I might evaluate it differently. But because
I'm in a heightened Bob, a gothic world where everything
is sumptuous and oversaturated and colorful, you know, the eroticism

(15:23):
of it, I find really the point and unapologetically the point.
And I say that is the that is the Italian
of it, and God blessing me for it.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
I say, all I know is I like watching good
looking people do kinky things to each other, so I will, Uh.
That's like the less sophisticated version of what John just said.
I I don't think you necessarily do have to dissect it.

(15:56):
I think it's fine if you do, because I mean,
art doesn't a exist, you know, in of itself. Like
when people watch a movie, you know, they they they
put with their feeling while watching back at the movie,
which is why you get a review like that do
I did. I feel bummed out while watching this movie. No.
I had a great time, but you know the you know,

(16:21):
I I again, you know, you know, somebody's gonna bring
their you know. I I hate to say this. I
think a lot of the times people's reaction to a
movie or are in general, you know, it says a
lot about them as a person, you know, like maybe
that's there's something in their own background that you know,

(16:43):
you know, scenes of sn M make them feel depressed.
I don't know, you know, but you know it's it's
you know, there's no wrong or right there, but you know,
I I do you know, like.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
No, no, I see exactly what you're saying. And really
because I don't know, but ah yeah.

Speaker 6 (17:02):
I mean, Drew, I can absolutely tell you that. And
it may even depend on where you are in life.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
I was.

Speaker 6 (17:08):
I just talked on wrap Up about Fantastic. Yes, I
saw a movie though was objectively great, but it had four,
like three or four things that I had been dealing with,
and it was extremely triggering to me, for no fault
of the filmmaker. Like I had I seen the movie
a different time period, I would have I would be
watching at that point for me a different movie. So

(17:30):
I think that and that's and that's all about how
you engage with the art as well, you know, So
I totally get it, and also like like you're saying,
like it depends on what you bring into the theater
or into the experience as well as the time that
you see it. You might feel differently as you digest
it in a different way.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
And the idea that your experience of blood and Roses
will be different from mine even if we're sitting right
next to one another, because we're absolutely we're like moving
along these different lines on this spider way it and
we've we've intersected at this movie, but we're still moving
in different directions.

Speaker 5 (18:05):
So there's an old line in theater that that is
the person seat thirteen E is having their life change,
and the person seat you know, thirteen F is having
the worst night of their life. And they're all the
same piece of theater.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
And thirteen you might be falling asleep.

Speaker 5 (18:22):
That's the one you got to walk out for, Julia, No, right.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
But I think the way I'm thinking of it is
because when a person goes into a relationship, a lot
of times they're trying to work out the issues that
they have with their Almost always they're trying to work
out at least some of the issues that they have.

Speaker 4 (18:42):
With their family of origin.

Speaker 1 (18:44):
You know.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
So you go into a relationship with someone and you're like,
you know, my I'm going to use something example does
nothing to do with my family, but has a lot
to do with many families, which is my you know,
my parents are alcoholics, So I'm going to marry an
alcoholic because I'm.

Speaker 4 (18:58):
Going to try to work through that, you know. And
that's not the case in our situation.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
But so when I see a movie like this, I'm thinking, Okay,
so she she's going toward the physical abuse, and like
I said, I'm thinking, is it because she was physically abused?
So that's why I get bummed down, because I'm like,
why does she like why is she drawn to it?
If somebody, you know, if you found that a friend
of yours, every time you saw them, they had they
were their face was black and blue, and you're like,

(19:22):
is your spouse beating you? And they're like no, because
they know it's that they should say no because that'd
be bad, but they're actually getting off on it.

Speaker 4 (19:30):
Like would you feel bad or good?

Speaker 3 (19:31):
For them, Like if you found out, oh no, they
actually get off on being beaten up, I would feel I.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Mean, here's here's the thing, here's the thing, Julia, you
know be you know, having been around sn M people
quite a bit, you know, there's a saying in the
fetish community safe safe, consensual saying. You know, you you know,
that's the whole you know, I made the joke about
the safe word, but that's the whole reason why a
safe word, you know, exists. Like if if someone one

(20:00):
isn't actually enjoying something in your you know that's physical,
and you're still doing that to them, then yes, that
is abuse. But if someone is getting whipped, you know,
just to keep it, you know, in the wells.

Speaker 3 (20:13):
I mean, that's that's why I used the expression about
the thing, about.

Speaker 2 (20:16):
The thing, and sometimes people like I knew. I used
to know a guy in Dallas who liked having his
ball stepped on by stiletto hills. You know, I can't
imagine how his testicles looked after that, but the bottom
line is as he was happy as a clam after
it was done, you know.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
So yeah, that.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
Remains that if you have somebody who says I'm fine
with it, even though my face is always bruised and
I always have black eyes. You would feel uncomfortable because
you're seeing it all the time. When it's hidden, you wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
Feel and you would feel uncomforb you would feel uncomfortable. Yes,
but again you you do have to kind of, you know,
getting into other people's lives, particularly their sex lives. You know,
that's that's why we don't all follow each other into
the bedroom, because you get into different things and you

(21:09):
know different you know, like you know, my relationship with
Jamie out in the world is one way, and our
relationship and our sex life is a different way, and
it might be completely different than how people might perceive
it be.

Speaker 3 (21:25):
You know why, I don't necessarily like to watch a
movie like this, and you you don't mind it. I
don't want to see inside of anybody's bedroom.

Speaker 4 (21:32):
I don't watch porn.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
I like, I like, I like, but I get I
get that. But you know, art that's horny should exist,
porn should exist, sex work should exist. All of these
things should exist, just even if it makes people uncomfortable.
If they aren't comfortable with it, you just don't watch it.

(21:53):
You know, you can't watch something.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
I would never say this shouldn't exist, but is why
I feelt uncomfortable watching it.

Speaker 5 (21:58):
And a part of part of this, sort of like
the Gothic sensibility and the horror sensibility, is excess, you know,
is pushing things to the limit. You know, whether you're
talking about you know, Robert Maplethorpe photograph, or you're talking
about when Manet first created Impressionism and people stormed out
of the theater, or Texas chains On massacre or this,

(22:19):
you are pushing buttons. You're provoking with these very things
we're talking about here. It's particularly sensitive because you're provoking
sexuality and carnality, the deepest, darkest place of that we
all have. It's what the best Dracula movies do. It's
the best vampire metaphors or where wolf metaphors do, can
go back to some some sort of frustrated or sort

(22:44):
of carnal desire. This puts it in close up, right
in front of you. And that's one of the things
I so love about this movie.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
I love the way that Baba is able to work.
I mean, think about this in the early sixties, right,
so this is the era of this a year of
you know, Goldfinger and and other stuff like that. The
way that Baba's showing sexuality without he can't show certain things,
so he'll suggest masturbation just with the way that she's

(23:14):
moving when she's by herself, the way that she moves
her lips when she's turned on. There's all this stuff
that he can do without. Well, there's not even any
nudity in this movie, if I recall, I don't think
there is.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
I think this movie is actually rated PG, which is
weird to think about.

Speaker 1 (23:31):
Well, because you'd have to be paying attention to get
the stuff that we're talking about, Like, like, I think
it's very coming.

Speaker 4 (23:37):
She's literally got slashes across her back.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
No, that's all right, fair, But I'm just saying that
this could very well probably have shown up on USA
back in the eighties, and I think, you know, people
being lazy might not even have noticed.

Speaker 3 (23:51):
Well, like you said, if you take the whip out
of it.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Then yeah, I can't even imagine what that cut look
looked like. So okay, that is that is?

Speaker 2 (23:58):
What was it called at the time? Did they give
it a different name? Because if you.

Speaker 5 (24:04):
Yeah, it was called what with a question mark? Seriously,
what I want that post.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
Yeah, decently, I were watching the movie, told me yeah,
and we kept going what at various points.

Speaker 4 (24:14):
That's why it's called that, Here's.

Speaker 5 (24:17):
Here's something fascinating. This is the this is the topic
I really sort of wanted to talk about also, which
is like there was something in the air from nineteen
sixty one to nineteen sixty three, because all these movies
came out in that period, The Innocence, Horrible, Doctor Hitchcock,
The Haunting, Whipping the Body, all of which deal with
sexual repression or trauma or transgression, and three of them

(24:43):
are about a female character who is driven to possible
it's a possible supernatural encounter, it's a possible psychological derangement
going on. Because you look at Dahlia lab As Novenka,
if you look at depercar in The Innocence, if you
look at Julie Harris and The Haunting, the three sides
of the exact same coin, if you will, and all

(25:03):
they all have a very transgressive sexual element. You know
clearly s and m The Innocence it's it's the verge
of pedophilia, and in the Haunting it's forbidden lesbianism or yes,
sexual desire and then The Horrible Doctor Hitchcock obviously another
great you know, Italian one is like it is literally necrophilia.

(25:24):
So in that three year period, those four movies all
came out about characters in three of the cases female,
actually four of the cases you consider, you know, Barber
Steel in Harbor to Hitchcock, characters being driven mad by
carnal obsession of one sort or another. And is this
real or is this supernatural? You know, I think, fascinating

(25:46):
little moment in cinema.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Okay, so let's talk about that. I mean, the first
thing that I would that I would point to is
when I think of the Innocence and the Haunting and this,
the characters are superheated, like in a way that that
only like erotic thrillers of the nineties kind of harkened
back to where the characters just the moment they come
on screen, everybody is like deep in this sort of

(26:11):
just superheated. Their emotions are every I don't even know
how to explain it other than there they are hyper dramatic.
Like we have a thing called mumblecore now where everybody's
like very realistic and they mumble mumble, mumble and nothing
and you're never engaged. The whole point is disengagement. These
people are super engaged, you know, and they can see

(26:32):
the characters themselves, can see the symbolism around them, which
and so why is that happening in the early sixties.
That's a really good question. I mean, I is it
a is it a response to the fifties? You know?
Does it have to do with a loosening of censorship
at the end of the fifties. I don't. I don't know,
but you know, because again, like I say, what's what's

(26:55):
winning American culture in that period, it's James Bond, which
is just like shoots off like a rocket as of
like nineteen sixty two, which is also about like deep
Lushivus living. So I don't know. Does anybody else have
a guess as to as to what brings on this
sort of torrent of sexual I mean not just repression,
but expression of repression where the repression is the story.

Speaker 6 (27:19):
Isn't isn't it the tale of the sixties in general?
Like you know, you had the fifties, which we thought, oh,
you know, here's leave at the Beaver and nuclear family
and we're coming out of the war and into like
I thought you know, to me, it's always been that
like the sixties is the start. In seventies it changes
that a little bit, but like the sixties was, I mean,

(27:40):
so there's so much transgression there.

Speaker 1 (27:43):
It gets and it goes hogwild by the late sixties,
right right, right, But this is a sweet little period
where where you're still using a lot of the form
of the fifties and a lot of the a lot
of the censorship of the fifties.

Speaker 6 (27:56):
Also, let's remember that europe was ahead of the game,
just like John said, like E're the head of the game,
going Okay, we're gonna have a lot of this stuff.
And then you know, and then that pivots into you know,
Franco movies, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
Right, that's kind of the that's part of the whole point.

Speaker 5 (28:13):
In Giallo, which we're gonna be talking about, right, I think.
Thing so that's the next iteration of the European Forum.
But you're so right, because because you know, Hammer at
this period was doing like Dellaship Pirates and the Gorgon,
you know, as opposed to the whip and the body
or the innocence, you know, and so so there's I
think just something about those particular movies or that little

(28:34):
cauldron of of sort of creativity that was so unique
and special. Then I think you're right also that it
was it's Tony, it's the it's the shape of the sixties,
a borname if you will. Finally, you know, will Flower
with Easy Rider and you know, and the Wild Bunch.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
The sixties sexual revolution was in great part because of
the pill coming along. So that kind of influences everything
that comes I think in the nineteen So that's a
lot of it, but it's not necessarily what you're talking
about in these these films, but in general that's what
it sort.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Of well, I think it's also you know, with Dove
telling off of what Julia said, I you know, because
what we're talking about is a grouping of horror films.
I think there is a tremendous fear in the male
psyche in America of the female libido in the nineteen

(29:29):
sixties because certainly, yeah, yeah, well, you know, up to
a point, you know, the whole idea was only men
enjoy sex. Sex is for men. Your wife doesn't really
even enjoy it when you have sex, you know, and
so the idea that a woman could enjoy sex is scary,
and so I think that's why you have movies with

(29:55):
women and it's i possibly supernatural, uh, you know, experience
to be horny.

Speaker 6 (30:03):
And also don't forget as we as we kind of
talk sometimes perhaps with our pinkies out, perhaps not, but
getting people into the theater to watch the sivia stuff
is still like what sells tickets. I've gotta I've got
a thing for you, you know, And this doesn't have
as much nudity as perhaps some movies like a you know,

(30:25):
let's say a bikini surf film where you're guaranteed to
get some of that, or you know, other other movies
that are flat out like little teens like, oh, I think,
I know. So this is a different thing than that,
but it's still you know, as we talk about it
every once in a while, it is easy to forget
like you're bringing that in. But in this case, we're

(30:46):
seeing that with artistry combined, right, Like the combination of
that is is what's fascinating and why why we're talking
about it now, you know, all these years later, there's.

Speaker 1 (30:57):
Also this thing that I find fascinating about this period
and it lasts for another fifteen years or so, so
what Drew was talking about was there was always this
concept that good girls weren't sexual, or at least not
expressibly sexual. And the bad girl characters, the ones that
were like scarves around their necks and low cut blouses

(31:18):
in nineteen fifties crime movies, those are the bad girls,
and they enjoy sex.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
Well. The ones with the.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Scarves around their necks is stick to keep their heads
from rolling off.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
Remember, yes, but there's this that period where sexuality is forbidden.
I think makes for interesting stories, right, because in a
when you finally get to the seventies and there's just
complete licentiousness, it becomes rather dull when nothing's forbidden. In
other words, I kind of have to have a movie

(31:48):
where I could buy into the weird morality of the characters,
so I can get into what they're afraid of, because
in our world, we don't you know, do you understand
what I'm saying about this?

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Like, you know, it occurs to me that there is
also a good girl bad girl thing going on in
this movie as well. It's just.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Why don't you go ahead and tell us about that
aspect of this?

Speaker 2 (32:11):
So there is the aforementioned proto Goth who is married
to one brother to the Christopher Lee character's brother square
John Yeah, square Job, generically handsome guy. And then there's
Christopher Lee with all his swagger, and then there is

(32:32):
another I guess this would make it a love rectangle.
There's another access to this because there is a cousin
who Square Job, handsome, boring brother is in love with
and she is in love with him, but he can't
get married to her because he had to marry the girl.
Christopher Lee was supposed to marry, but he he ran

(32:57):
off after he had a girl.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
Add another detail to the to the plot. So Christopher
Lee was around in the past. And by the way,
his name is Kurt, which I know probably back then
wasn't like such a dorky name, but now like here
are all these Talian people go court. It was just
like making me giggle every time. But anyway, Kurt Menliff
is Christopher Lee. Christian is his brother, and Nevenka is

(33:25):
the is Christian's bride, but Kurt was his like you know,
they were in love and then he left her, so
she ended up having to marry, having to marry the
brother and the brother's in love with uh with her Katya,
but but the other person too is that he also
apparently seduced and killed the daughter of Georgia, who is

(33:46):
the servant.

Speaker 4 (33:47):
So there's also it's not that he killed her.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
It's not that he killed her, it's the when when
she left the she she committed suicide, drove her to
suicide for her death.

Speaker 3 (33:58):
This is the point as well.

Speaker 5 (34:01):
Her mother, Georgia, the suicide girl's mother, also gets the
great line I cling to my hatred as I cling
to this dagger.

Speaker 6 (34:09):
Yes, so we love that.

Speaker 5 (34:10):
But yes, good girl Bago and the good girl katyas
but by Ida Gali, who's also in hercules in the
Haunted World by the way above the film Great Baba
film with Pistole, and she's the good girl presented as
you know, absolute breathtaking to look at. I think, just
look takes your breath, how beautiful she is and how
weally photographs her.

Speaker 7 (34:29):
But when she begins to have a romance with Christian
Novenka's husband Novenka, truly, that's what sends her over the
edge when she realizes that that relationship is that.

Speaker 5 (34:39):
That's when her hair comes down. Because the hairs me
up very carefully, and then suddenly she has hair come down,
and she looks exactly like Lucida Lamamore coming down the
scene for the for the you know, for the mad scene,
and that's when things go insane. So they use the
good girl to help drive the bad girl crazy when
she realizes she's gonna lose her for guy and guy
she doesn't want any because she wants the ghost of

(35:02):
a whipper and who wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (35:04):
I mean, come on, Christopher Lee's gotta you know, despite
the fact that he doesn't have his voice, he's got
a lot. He still earns his pay on swagger alone,
like the moment he no one wears a cape during
this time period, as well as Christopher.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
Lee like he yeah, it actually bugged me.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
He was that he wasn't a vampire. I kept being like, oh,
you're not a vampire. Wait once he's such a good vampire.

Speaker 4 (35:32):
But yeah, it was. But at least he gets to
be a ghost so and.

Speaker 6 (35:36):
He doesn't even have to swagger because two thirds of
the time it's just him glowering outside of a window
or like shadows in the shadows in the out like
in the back of a.

Speaker 3 (35:47):
Room, and somehow leaving muddy footprints everywhere, even though there's
no mud, and nobody else leaves many footprints except for
except for.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
The By the way, that guy is another part of
Babo's troop. It's Luciana Piozzi. And he shows up, isn't
he great? He shows up in Baron Blood and I
know that he's in a number of other.

Speaker 2 (36:09):
Of other He looks he looks like somebody like when
they used to do the Looney Tunes of Hollywood. In
the way, he looks like the cartoon of Peter Lorie. Yes,
and I mean that the possible.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
We actually said that while we're watching the movie. We
were like, oh, it's the Peter Lourie character.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Well, he's he's basically playing Igor. I mean he's right
down to like the the way he walks and everything,
except he's he's a weirdly benevolent version of Igor.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yeah, yeah, I was. I was just thinking about how
wonderful and easy it is. I was just admiring this
as a writer watching this film, and how look all
he did is take a big old castle and he says,
give me two couples and let me have them marry
the wrong people. That's it, and it works so great.
You instantly know who everybody is like, it doesn't take

(37:01):
any time to get it. Like this travels internationally you
immediately go oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (37:07):
And this is one This is one of the rare
scripts that Baba didn't rewrite.

Speaker 6 (37:11):
I mean he got it.

Speaker 5 (37:12):
You know, his career was really interesting. He counsel said,
I never got to choose my films. I needed to work.
They came my way. I did them, And for the
most part, that's kind of true. This script he was offered,
he loved it and changed very little because he believed
me so strongly. Another thing I think that's so worth mentioning,
just from a technical standpoint is the sound design. The
howling wind that like is like a screaming banshee outside

(37:35):
those you know, throughout most of the movie, I think
is incredible, and just the way he's able to like
lay it along the atmosphere in such an effortless way,
so that one like there's the one sequence, like the
centerpiece of the film is one night, it's one very
long night where Nevenka is just she's turned on. He
appears he's not there because there's the footsteps as the chase.

(37:56):
Someone's murdered it and it's just this endless night that
goes on with with variations of sound design around it.
It's just it's just really really constant, old world artistry.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
I think I hadn't thought about the soundscape, but I
was so amazed. So you're right. But the music is
also just incredible. It's a really neat score. It's such
a good score that this is sacrilegious to say, but
I was like, did this score? Is this a score
that he already had, like from another because it's so good.

(38:27):
I was like, it is, no way this is an
original score for this movie. But it is, and it's
it's it's fantastic.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Well for me.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
What blew me away, though, as and TONI mentioned it earlier,
was the amazing lighting.

Speaker 4 (38:38):
I mean the.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Fact that the CROs girl, Yeah, that I was thinking.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
About talk about different examples.

Speaker 3 (38:43):
Of it, like a Caravaggio painting come to life. No,
it's constant throughout the film you have, And I don't
know how he does it.

Speaker 4 (38:50):
I really don't.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
I kind of need to look into how they do it,
because what it'll be is it'll be just the eyes
will be lit up or just the half of the
face and the person will be walking away like walking
down a hall, and so you're getting all these different
lights all around, like you know, outside and whatever, but
still the lighting on the faces remains exactly the same,
which I'm just I was just baffled. I I don't
know how they did it. And then the color, like

(39:13):
we you know there at some point there would be red.
And then there's even a shot in the trailer where
Christopher Lee after he's a ghost I believe, is like blue.
Sorry for the doggoes, he's blue, and then he's red
as he's getting closer to the cameras.

Speaker 5 (39:27):
Yeah, passing in and out of the jells. We'll talk
about this a lot when we get to some of
the later films that are really colorful. But you know,
Boba began his career as a cinematographer, and he was
a cinematographer scores of color films, and so when he
finally got to direct his own films, you know, he
made real use of that in terms of inventive as
partly he would say, to disguise minuscule budgets, you know,

(39:48):
so like he could put smoke in, he could put
different He would use every trick like a magician that
he could to make these films visually interesting because he
had no money except for except for day a job
of leakuate sort of a large budget. He was always
it was always pennies that he made.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Can you tell me about anything about the making of
this movie? And like, for instance, obviously the Beaches of Beach,
I think it's Anzio, but you know, and he's got
some practical castles, but is most of what we're looking here.
This is a set, right, this is a.

Speaker 5 (40:19):
Studio one one huge set. And he was almost much
more comfortable working within sets because he could light them,
and he could he could control That's why you know,
we we've talked about Black Sunday, Black Sabbath almost entirely
on on set, built build everything, can control it. But
mostly it's like Julia said, so we could light it,
so we could do the lighting effects that he that

(40:40):
he finds so powerful.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
There's a trick uh fireplace in this movie that is
almost identical to the trick fireplace in Black Black Sunday.
If you remember the big bedrooms.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
And all that time I'm wondering is do do we
all have trick fireplaces? And that's how Sanna gets in
and out of the house because that would make the
most sense, and we just don't know what. None of
the rest of us knows about the checksler.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Julia has always had a dream of suddenly finding secret
rooms in the house, and.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
I literally have dreams about it, like that I just
suddenly discovered that I bought a new house and that
has a secret wing.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, and so anything with like secret passages is always
like like like her thing. But by the way, that's
a great Oh doesn't that that sounds like a wonderful
horror story. You know, a person who always has dreams
of a secret wing in the house, Like I don't
know what to do with that, but write that down.
That's good, God, it's really good.

Speaker 3 (41:37):
I've read in IMDb that most of the cast and
crew were required to use English pseudonyms because the producers
hope to fool the intended Italian audience into thinking the
movie was produced incognito by like Hammer Films or American
International Pictures.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
That was really funny.

Speaker 5 (41:55):
That was all through these through Italian movies in the
early Like for Baba's credit for this is John m Old,
because they said to him, pick like an old fashioned
American name, So you pick John m Old. His name
all of like Ricotta Frado's movies, so many movies' is
like directed by Anthony Dawson. They make up these names
because to the Italian audience, they thought they would be

(42:16):
more appealing that way.

Speaker 4 (42:17):
Oh interesting, that's just so funny.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Well, it does have a quality to it that does
feel in conversation with the Roger Corman Paul movies.

Speaker 1 (42:27):
Oh yeah, especially being in color, you know, yeah, easily
it fits in with all of that. I'm trying to
think what else was going on, and well, i mean
John already mentioned several movies that are happening in this period.
It's just so interesting that that this is the one
that gets banned because Baba just pushes the pushes the

(42:49):
envelope just a touch too much and causes a band
is a strong word. It gets heavily edited, you know,
for when it gets released. But you're right, it fits
in perfectly with you know, I don't know, well, with
the Pit and the Pendulum especially, you know, and yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
This would be a great double feature with Pitt and
the Pendulum.

Speaker 1 (43:08):
Actually, oh yeah, absolutely, with all of its torture devices
and everything.

Speaker 3 (43:13):
Yes, you can just call it the double feature of
the Whip the whip and the pendulum.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
It's interesting.

Speaker 5 (43:18):
It's interesting though, but the the the Corman pose, which
I love, I love for their their sort of panas
and color. But they're not dangerous the way this film is.
You know, they're just they don't. This This film is
it's a little I think Julia is right to say
it's it's disturbing because of its frankness and dealing with
these things, and you have to sort of you're confronted
with this woman with scars all over her back that

(43:39):
seems to turn her on. How do you feel about
that as this man brutally beats her. I mean, Chris
really is not fooling around with that whip. So it's
it is, it's it is to me, that's one of
the things that makes it so Italian, so Bava, you know.

Speaker 2 (43:51):
But with if their relationship was just slightly well, first
of all, if they weren't, you know, running around on
or if she was running around on her spouse, and
if it was, if they didn't have so much shame
about it, would their relationship be different? Because like I've

(44:11):
known people in my life that have s and M
relationships and that you know, they they whip each other,
and you know, then they go and put on a
tie the next day and go work an it job,
and they're perfectly normal in every other aspect of their life.
So like, the shame is what makes this.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
But that's not what I'm saying about the Death of
the Bad Girl, because shame made it interesting. Like you know,
like once everybody is getting exactly what they want in
a story, it's kind of that's that's just a sweet
story about a bunch of happy people, which is great.
I got nothing against that, but it is there's more
drama in everything when everything is comfortable well.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
And I'm not necessarily saying you need to remake them.
I'm not saying that at all, that you need to
remake the movie without the shame. I'm saying that that's
what makes it a horror story. It also makes a
commentary on uh prudery in society, because if you don't
feel guilty about something, it doesn't have the same level
of control over you.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
I don't know, I see a little differently, Drew. I
don't know if I see shame in Levenka. I don't
know that they do. I think I see passion, insane
passion about summoned up by Christopher Lee, who's clearly a
bastard who like rejected her, rejected everyone.

Speaker 1 (45:30):
I want to come back to him.

Speaker 6 (45:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
I don't think she's necessarily ashamed of this quirk. I
think it's secret because it's the you know, eighteen nineties
or whatever. I don't see shame. I see excitement, and
then I see her sort of sort of like it
heightened response to him, partly his sexuality, partly just him
for being like an evil bad guy.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, so what you you think that she just doesn't
want to be with a guy that's a dick essentially, let.

Speaker 3 (45:59):
Me let me add my Yeah, Mike can't take And
this is not new to anybody who's listened to the
podcast for all the episodes, is that I think that,
you know, women often are attracted to bad guys because
of the because of the fear and the excitement and
the passion, all those things things you mentioned. It's like
the idea that she's afraid because I mean, you guys

(46:19):
haven't mentioned the fear part.

Speaker 4 (46:20):
But that's real key in this is that.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
She literally says I hate you to him.

Speaker 3 (46:26):
Yeah, when she but when she thinks that she's hearing
after he's died. She's here, she thinks she's hearing the whip.

Speaker 6 (46:32):
She's afraid.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
She doesn't know if she wants to go toward the sound,
but then she does. Anyway, She's compelled, and it's that
compulsion of wanting to be wanting to be afraid because
it makes her feel something like she's feeling the excitement
and the passion because it's it's something to feel. And
that's the case with like the movie was the film
that I never remember the name of any of the
films we watched, but what was the film that we
watched where the guys are doing that the old rich

(46:55):
guys are doing the the sorcery and all that, you know,
they're like it.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
Was like a ghost story where what do we.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
Watched like a month ago or whatever it was with
three old guys who are doing their whole uh secret
ritual stuff with like daggers or whatever.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Anyway, like so many movies, right, that's my point.

Speaker 3 (47:14):
That's the point I'm making, is that people do these
things that are secret, and I don't I agree with
John that it's not shame, it's that it's it's exciting
because it's a secret, and they're like, and it's foreboten,
it's taboo, and so they go and do these things
that are scary and you know, sometimes violent, sometimes painful, whatever.

(47:35):
But it is an excitement and it's because it's the
opposite of their normal, boring, routine, proper life.

Speaker 4 (47:41):
And that's well, I mean.

Speaker 2 (47:43):
The brother seems almost a sexual like he like he
you know, even though he is in love with the well.

Speaker 4 (47:50):
We don't know.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
He might he might have really kinky sex with Katya
if they were to.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
I don't think that's perfect Vanilla's who knows.

Speaker 2 (48:01):
I think they I think maybe at most they're they're
having you know, some some vanilla sex. I don't think.
I don't think she's getting her rocks off because otherwise, and.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
It's still exciting because she's he's married and so it's
still forbidden.

Speaker 2 (48:16):
Well, she wants to be married to a nice guy. Sorry, John, the.

Speaker 5 (48:20):
Movie tells us.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
Otherwise.

Speaker 5 (48:22):
The movie keeps that big, lush romantic theme for Christopher
Leandari Lava. It only in the play when they're heightened.
Dexus is there. When it's when it's like Christian and Katya.
It's just it's it's very anodyne. It's very that that
the passion here is between those two characters, and that's

(48:43):
what that's the story we're following.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
That's the story, and the other love story is boring,
like there's no one point, like gosh, I wish those
two kids can get together. They're not even secondary. They're
d o a like they're they're boring, like like you
wouldn't watch a movie about them. You will watch a

(49:05):
movie about the freaky Gothic perves.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
If this were a if this were a soap opera,
daily soap. The episodes that have been combined to create
this movie are the ones where not much is going
on with that couple, but you could in fact create
interesting stories for them. But we don't have time because
as John mentioned, Kathy and Heathcliff are here and all
eyes are on them, you know so well.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
And and the Christopher Lee character could just as easy
if he if he didn't end up becoming a ghost
halfway through it. Uh, you know, he could just as
easily be a character and like a Bodice Ripper novel,
for sure.

Speaker 5 (49:45):
It's so the other thing I wrote was exactly that
I wrote. I wrote, Kathy Heathcliff like the first not
to because if you read Wathering Heights as opposed to
watch any of the movie versions, Weather novel is incredibly
sm m oriented. It is, you know, he give is cruel,
as cruel as as Kurt Mencliffe is, you know. And
and yet it's the heightened romance that that is wather

(50:07):
Weathering Heights. Again, it's this movie slots in so perfectly
to like, you know, to Walter Scott, to Bronte, not
to Austin, but to Bronte, Yes, to Mary Shelley in
a way as well.

Speaker 1 (50:19):
I think there was This is something that I wanted
to circle back on about Kurt is like Heathcliffe though
even though he is I keep thinking about the size
of Heathcliffe's hands, how he's always beating everybody. And she
makes a big deal of just how brusque and ape
like he is. Right, but he's also wounded. And Kurt
is very wounded, even though he's this horrible person. He's

(50:41):
come back out of pure vulnerability. He wants his place
in the family to be restored, you know, and he's
a little hurt that it's not going to be as
easy as he thought it would be, you know. And
I and even though he probably doesn't deserve any of that.
I certainly found myself compassionate towards Kurt. That's that he
wasn't that, you know, he wasn't getting the things he wanted.

(51:02):
He's so wounded though that he's an asshole to everybody.
It's an interesting character. I thought he was. I thought
he was very interesting. All right. So so let's see.
I think we've talked about a lot of the a
lot of the really interesting stuff with the moral the
moral implications and so forth.

Speaker 4 (51:22):
We can talk about that.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
I think we should talk about the crypt and the
all the ghost stuff and all the supernatural, you know,
the stuff that makes it actually horror and not just
so that's.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
A really good point. Yeah we should.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Okay, we have talked all all about the kink and
not enough about the spooky spooky.

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Yeah, isn't it funny because you take that that stuff
I suppose for granted, But you're right, it would fit
in very very well with the people.

Speaker 2 (51:48):
The people who have tuned into this episode, they'll probably
be like, this is the castle of of what?

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Right? Although I will say, also, boy do.

Speaker 6 (51:57):
They get their mileage out of the wind folly sound, because.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah, yeah, John was mentioning, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (52:06):
So much. There's so much wind. It's like that the
two w's whips and wind you got you got.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
And the and the wind actually sounds like a whip sometimes.
That tree, yeah, that's always going.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
Well the tree was but that wasn't I said that
the wigs were dumb. That tree thing was so stupid,
like that was like, do you hear the sound? No,
not at all, you hear the sound. First of all,
Jason didn't even recognize there was supposed to be whip sound.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
He's like, what is that?

Speaker 3 (52:31):
And then like I think it's supposed to be a whip.
And then she goes in and it's this vine that's
like whipping against but it's clearly it's like clearly a
person just going like this with you know, just whip,
just like waving this vine around.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
It was dumb, but yes, but I love but I
do love about in that scene.

Speaker 3 (52:51):
I love that ghost room again with the lighting, the
curious Girl lighting. It's the fact that there's this room
of ghost furniture, of all this furniture that's yes sheets
and the lighting just hits it exactly so that each
piece of furniture has like a ghost Face. Basically, I
just love that. I love that room, I love the
crypt I loved the you know, just all of the Are.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
There any other horror movies we can think of that
get a lot of mileage out of furniture covered in sheets.
I'm like, spooky addicts are a big, big deal, even
if as recently, you know, the eight millimeters or whatever
it was called the Insidious I think it was called
with the eight millimeter films in the Attic, and you know,
so addicts are spooky. But I love this, this whole

(53:38):
notion of hey, let's open up this big room and
all the all the furniture is covered and it's just
scary and we'll spend time looking at it.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
That well, it doesn't even deliver the jump scare that
you're expecting, like you're always expecting there to be a
jump scare in that.

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Ri is just a very confident use of a spooky room.
And and I I really do appreciate that very much.
This castle is I know it's imaginary, but I really
wish I could just fall asleep and wake up in it.
I love I love this whole world, just like just
like in Black Sabbath, when you're with the family that

(54:11):
has the grandpa vampire that's coming to the front door.
I love these. I love the way Mario Baba presents
this quasi European somewhere nineteenth century ish wealthy family with
a big old castle. I always love the way he
presents that stuff. I just want to run around in it.

Speaker 5 (54:32):
And yeah, it's because it's never over lit. He shows
you bits and pieces. It's like, you know, an aliviated hamlet.
He was all deep focused and he talked to Greg
told her how to do that. It's like, I just
want a staircase and that's all. I want a staircase
floating so I can do a slowly big going down
a staircase. And I think of Baba all the time
like that, saying like, don't show me the whole room,
show me half the room and a bit of light.

(54:53):
So there's always an element in Baba I find a mystery. Yeah,
it's like, you know, John Carpenter is the master negative space.
I think Mario Bobba is as well in terms of
you don't have to show it all, don't put bright
lights on anything.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Yeah, that that's very well said, Tony. I'm sorry you're
gonna say something or I thought you were. I thought, yeah,
I'm sorry, but yes, that does you know, I said,
I wanted to like wake up and run around in it.
But it's funny what you mentioned is that, actually, what
are you seeing? Very little most of it. You're imagining
how enormous this castle is and and you know and

(55:28):
and what it's like, but your only like just like
in Buffy and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the first season,
they really only had one hallway, like and they just
shot that same hallway over and over again from like
a whole bunch of different angles because that was the
only set they had, was one hallways that you could
point the camera this way or that way or anywhere
in between, and and thereby they.

Speaker 3 (55:51):
Got a whole Yeah, that's how I think they were
here with the beach, because they keep showing the beach
from either side of that peninsula or maybe even just
flipping the negative, who knows.

Speaker 4 (56:00):
But uh yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
And then the crypt, so the fact, since it's a castle,
they have their their little chapel, or I guess it's
just the crypt. In the chapel, they're on the grounds,
so you can just get to the all the all.

Speaker 4 (56:14):
The coffins that are the family.

Speaker 3 (56:17):
You know, burial is right there, and so you keep
seeing like that, Yeah, the mud which even though it
never rained, so I don't know why there was so
much mud.

Speaker 4 (56:25):
But there's the.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Muddy footprints because he's getting in and out of his
crypt supposedly. And so that's the talk about the mystery.
Uh as John said, the mystery in this is is
it a scooby doo thing? Is Christopher Lee actually alive?
Or is he dead in a ghost And you don't
find out until even when they find look open the crypt,
open the coffin and there's a body there.

Speaker 4 (56:46):
You still don't know, they said.

Speaker 3 (56:47):
They say, we still don't know if that's his boy,
because I mean, more more deteriorated than.

Speaker 4 (56:52):
I think it should have been by that point.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Because it's meant to be ambiguous as to what it's actual.

Speaker 4 (56:59):
And I this is this is.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
He thinks she's holding him, and they see that he's
not there, and then she stabs herself because she stabs her.

Speaker 1 (57:11):
Wait, we're making two points. I want to hear what
Drew was going to say about something about the body.

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Well, the body, they outright say that it's too deteriorated
to know that it's Christopher Lee. And I mean they
they lavish that prop with a lot of detail, Like
I mean, I even mentioned it in my opening thoughts,
like that is a that is a gooey, gooey skeleton.
I think it's ambiguous because yes, it could all be

(57:41):
in her head, but you know, is it really I mean,
and I think I think this is more ambiguous than
the Haunting is. You know, like like John brought up
the Haunting, you know, the Haunting still has that weird
extendo door at that one point that you know, you know,
there's there's you know this is to me, you know,

(58:02):
or maybe she's possessed, I mean, you know, like you know,
or she could just be touched in the head. I
I don't I don't completely roll out a supernatural read
of this movie. I mean, I think you're fair to
say that it's just psychological and that's that's fine. But

(58:23):
I don't know, I said, I think it's I don't know.
It just reads as much more ambiguous to me.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
But what I'm saying is, Okay, it could be ambiguous
whether she's whether she's crazy, or it's a ghost, but
it's not ambiguous as to whether he's dead or alive.
He is definitely, Yeah, he's dead.

Speaker 4 (58:39):
You wonder if he's.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
No, I don't think. I don't think it's a it's
a Mark of the Vampire situation where you you have
a person pretending to be a ghost. I think there
might be a ghost and or she might be crazy.
Those are your two options.

Speaker 1 (58:55):
But they do set that up as a possibility. But
it is. It gets although it would be change, it
would be real strange for the ostensible bad guy to
be doing the you know, to be fair.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Well, I did. I did at one point, uh the
on the first time of seeing this film, I did
wonder when I was watching it way back when if
if it because I was thinking about Mark of the Vampire,
that you know, if it was somehow like a scheme
for for Christopher Lee to get all his his you know,

(59:29):
title and everything back from the father who was also
murdered with the very ornate, fancy looking dagger. But you know,
I like I like it. I like it better that
that his that is side piece just cracked.

Speaker 3 (59:46):
And we didn't even mention the fact that you just
reminded me that it is a murder mystery too. It's
like the fact that we don't know how he he
turns up dead. He slit, His throat is slit. That's
how Christ really ends up being dead, is that his
throat is slit. And then and also that his dad
is killed. And so the question is who did it?
And so it's a who done it as well on
top of everything else. And it looks like who done

(01:00:07):
it is actually Navenka, like she did both.

Speaker 4 (01:00:10):
It seems like it does.

Speaker 1 (01:00:11):
Appear that way in the end. Yes, Actually, to be honest,
I don't remember if they ever address who did the dad,
but I'm pretty sure obviously it appears to be Navanka.

Speaker 2 (01:00:20):
Well it's Navaka. If you're if you're the ghost. Straight
to a psychological version of this, it would be Nevanka
thinking that she's kurt A binging himself.

Speaker 1 (01:00:34):
Yes, now I can dig it. Yeah, And that's really neat.
I love that he manages to choose. It's like he's
he's got a skeleton of a particular kind of story
and then he's draped it with all of this, all
of this complicated and and you know, this complex stuff.
The same way as The Haunting is ostensibly a ghost

(01:00:58):
story about a Haunted House, but it ends up being
draped with you know, all of the all the themes
that John was mentioning earlier, and yeah, I mean that,
I'm jealous. That's how you do it. It's it's pretty
great how you do it.

Speaker 5 (01:01:12):
It's like again, it's like the innocence to Haunting. This
movie boom boom boom. You know, all so so similar
yet so different, and want you know, I want to
jump on what Julie was saying. One things that I
think is like such a sort of a cout to
cinema if you will, is that last shot when you
really when you think you're in her point of view
and if there's Christopher Lee, I'm embracing Christopher Lee. And

(01:01:35):
then you're not at her point of view and he's
not there, and she stabs herself and he's so elegantly done.
And again like whether you whether you you you lean
into the Drew sort of interpretation that there is a
supernatural thing going or you lean more into the like, No,
clearly this was all in her mind of some sort
of delusion on her part. It's just it's just so
masterful fucking filmmaking, is what it is. That just that

(01:01:58):
that one minute at the end, which is then sort
of unexplained. It's all like Simon Oakland comes on and says, well,
let me tell you what Norman Bands did.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
What did?

Speaker 5 (01:02:06):
It just leaves you there in this desolate point and again,
think about the end of the Innocence, think about the
end of the Hunting, think about the end of this.
You know, nineteen sixty one to sixty three was not
afraid of chilling, cold, remorseless endings.

Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Yeah, I you know, talking about the tomb. You know
this is later or earlier in the film. I love
the hooded pallbearers, Like it's they're only in the movie
for a minute, but there's just that little detail ads
like this extra layer of creepitude because they all have

(01:02:44):
these red executioner hoods on for I love it.

Speaker 5 (01:02:52):
I'm with you, pal. It's like it's like the Inquisition
come frolls into town for one scene.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
It's so good it is that was that was truly weird. Yeah.
One of my favorite things is to take any given
Italian horror film and just grab a screenshot of it
and use it as a backdrop or an Instagram because
people will look at it and go, what the actual
what is this that I'm looking at? And that's a
good example of what I think.

Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
It's a religious thing.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
I was in Spain like thirty years ago and there
was some kind of religious thing going on. I can't
remember it was a good Friday or what it was,
but everybody was wearing white hoods like that, but not
not white. It was black black huts and it wasn't
It wasn't KKK.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
It was like blackmouts.

Speaker 3 (01:03:35):
No, it wasn't white. I was like that, kna be
white because I do I don't remember. I remember thinking
kkk ish, but not specifically KKK. But it was like
I think there were black hoods, but but yeah, it
was clearly like a religious some ceremony that was very
like a march of I don't know it was, I
don't I.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Don't care about the actual reality of it. I just
know it looks, yeah, it looks really good.

Speaker 6 (01:03:59):
Like all the those guys show up like that in
Castle cagli Istro as well at the you know, I
think it's in the wedding, it's in one of the ceremonies.
You know, the same the same idea which you know
also also to be to be fair, you know, it's oh,
it's religious, it's kink. It's like, I don't know, there's
a lot of Catholic iconography that spread turned that that

(01:04:22):
leads to kink in a lot of places, especially where
we are here.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
I mean, yeah, there is the whole sexy noun genre and.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Most of those movies are from Catholic countries like Spain
and Italy.

Speaker 6 (01:04:42):
Before we get to we're working, it's movies where we're working,
we're working.

Speaker 1 (01:04:46):
Through some stuff. Movies, yes, well, and so this that
sort of leads to my question. In a sense, what
you what you have said, is kind of what I
was about to say, which is I think we get
these really successful films when we're working through some you know,
John laid it out, these films that are ambiguous and

(01:05:06):
dealing with questions of repression and all of this stuff.
And my question is, John, I will start by asking you,
but I want anybody to jump in in twenty twenty five,
how do you find a way to tell a story
that is compelling and coming out of the psyche in
the way that these films did in the sixties. And

(01:05:27):
the reason I asked that is it seems like it's
super hard now because we are so much more free.
And maybe I'm wrong about this, but it feels like
there's no more kinks to shame, there's no more everybody's
you know, there's nothing. We're not as repressed, or are we.
I'm just trying to figure out, like, how can we
create this? All right, go for it? Tell you can.

(01:05:48):
You can answer Drew if you like, or John.

Speaker 2 (01:05:50):
I'm gonna let John go first because I will inevitably
say something smarter than me. But I'm sticking up, in
sticking up, and I'm going to come back to this.

Speaker 5 (01:06:01):
Yeah, it's it's it's yet. Shock is hard, you know.
Now nowadays it's not like we you know, it's not
like we have John you know, John Waters or Pasoline
or or you know those those filmmakers who shocked us
at a certain budget that people will go see, you know.
And we live in a really interesting moment where audiences
can be triggered so easily triggered quote unquote trigger And

(01:06:23):
I'm like, pal, my job is to trigger you. That's
what you pay me for. And maybe I can make
you happy, maybe I can make you laugh, but my
job is to is to provoke a response. So when
a great horror movie comes along that shocks people and
offends people. I'm like, amen, brother, go go, this is
this is this is what, this is, what your job is.
You know, just don't be don't be safe. Don't be safe,

(01:06:46):
you know, and people do and they're young. I mean, look,
Tony's just just back and watched like thirty seven movies.
I'm sure half of them were exactly this because they
were independent, passionately made, you know, movies that people had
had a vision to do something and it wasn't the
Hollywood norm.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:07:02):
I mean, even like you said, like I admitted it earlier,
there was a movie that the triggered me in ways,
but I also knew objectively that that's part of the art.
Like my reaction to it was a very personal thing.
But also, you know, there's this great John Waters esque
movie horror as endometriosis called Cramps, and you know, that

(01:07:25):
was fantastic and it, you know, full of drag queens
and you know feminism from the depths of Louisiana, which
has its own, you know, whole thing in the Deep South.
And that was great and I was watching it going.
You know, anybody who's offended by this is that's the point, right,
So I yeah, Andrew, I'll come back to you. But yeah,

(01:07:46):
and I think I to your question, Jason, I think
in some ways it's the pendulum because there's not the
kind of what we grew up with, like the ubiquitous
like oh I found born in the.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
Woods or all that.

Speaker 6 (01:08:00):
Like it's all on display now right right, and in
some ways you can you can read article after article
about it that in some ways that has caused a
certain amount of repression. I don't want to watch sex
scenes on TV has been a call, and so I
and I think that that that pendulum can swing back
and forth, and so you may not see it in

(01:08:22):
one area, but you may see more shock in other areas,
and that those are kind of the hallmarks that will notice,
you know, in another decade, will go oh yeah, I
want to get back to.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
These were this.

Speaker 6 (01:08:33):
But but I want to see to Drew because he's
got a lot to say too.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
But I figure I just wanted to mention that just
to you mentioned people have said that they don't want
to see sex scenes on TV. But the aubiquity of
porn has also killed the erotic thriller, because that was
a big big deal genre back in the nineties, right,
But now people are like, give me a murder mystery,
but there's porn. So those the erotic thriller, which was
always about these superheated things also in a murder Missus

(01:09:00):
Street that's gone, and it's bizarre.

Speaker 6 (01:09:03):
There's not as much reason for red shoe diaries in
a world where you can just click and say, I
would like to see this thing, sometimes even hyper specific,
but I liked I.

Speaker 1 (01:09:14):
Liked the I liked the world of those films.

Speaker 6 (01:09:20):
Yeah, I mean, and that's I mean, that's probably also
gonna be generational or maybe not.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
I don't know, but go ahead.

Speaker 2 (01:09:26):
We literally have a government that is trying to outlaw porn.
We have a government that is trying to outlaw drag queens.
We have a government that is trying to outlaw trans people.
We are so fucking up tight and repressed. This country

(01:09:48):
is fucked in the head that way. And I you know,
maybe we're more open minded. I don't think so. I
think this group of people is open minded. The average
person is a dumb sack of shit who wants to
know what somebody else is doing in their fucking bedroom

(01:10:08):
and how they can stop them from having a good time.
We are very, very very uptight about sex in this country.
In fact, that we may be the most uptight currently
then we've been in my entire fucking life.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
So that's a challenge to the premise of the question.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
I don't agree with you. You are wrong. You're a
very smart guy, You're probably smarter than me. But you
believe in people and I don't. And people are uptight.

Speaker 6 (01:10:41):
But the difference is I have tons of friends from
all over It's like Europe, and they're like, why are
your movies full of shooting people but you can't watch sex?

Speaker 1 (01:10:51):
What's wrong with you?

Speaker 6 (01:10:52):
Like that person's head got blown off and you cheered
when that person got gunned down by fifty caliber machine guns.
But yet two couples, you know, a loving couple wants
to get together, and you censor that, Like what the
hell is going on in the US? You guys like,
that's a question. So I'm agreeing with you, But also whoa.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
I don't know the answer to that.

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):
And yeah, this is a topic I get. I'm very activated.

Speaker 6 (01:11:18):
On because because the States, like again, that's what everybody
else looks at our movies and goes so that we saw.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
I can't think of a worse time, Like, I can't
think of a worse time in my life about this,
Like I I I think things. I think things were
getting better and and a bunch of people have just
decided we're gonna we're gonna set the reset button. And
we're very interested in what you're doing and how when

(01:11:50):
you're you know, with their significant other, and how can
we make that illegal?

Speaker 6 (01:11:54):
And I'm like, you're right, I'm in total agreement with you.
But yeah, but but that was that was actually my
point too, Like what's what's going on over there?

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Why?

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
Why? Well, you know, I think about this a lot
sort of thing a lot because I have a lot
of friends that are in the crosshairs of this administration.
And it bugs it bugs that, it bugs the hell
out of me. But we could go back to talking
about fun stuff like ghosts.

Speaker 1 (01:12:22):
No, No, man, I think that. I mean, this is
why we talk about these things.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
True.

Speaker 1 (01:12:26):
I was, and I was calling you.

Speaker 6 (01:12:27):
I was like, whoa, I think I'm like, I said, man,
I'm with you, like and you know, I'm just out
of convention, like I said, I just watched a movie
full of drag queens and everything, like tons of just
movies from all over where norms are being challenged constantly.
And I purposely saw all of that because I just

(01:12:48):
want to say that everything Drew said is correct. But
in the world of film as of today, as of
twenty twenty five, we are still way way more capable people.

Speaker 2 (01:12:59):
People point out Jason that in Marvel movies people don't
even often kiss each other.

Speaker 1 (01:13:04):
Yes, but it No, Sparatu was a big pervy story
about temptation and and.

Speaker 2 (01:13:10):
And I think that movie was successful because we and
I think that movie is successful because the other is
more mainstream.

Speaker 1 (01:13:18):
For sure. I think that movie is this.

Speaker 2 (01:13:22):
That movie is this movie. It's a release valve.

Speaker 1 (01:13:26):
So right now we're capable of having an Asparatu. It's
sort of what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:13:31):
And I think you're always I think you're always capable.
I mean, this movie came out in the in the sixties,
you know, like I I don't I mean that what
that movie was successful for what it was. It was
it you know, it wasn't a billion dollar film though,
it wasn't even a five hundred. No, I think it's

(01:13:52):
a good I think it's a good parallel to make.
And John and Julia both look very troubled right now,
so I feel like I should shut up, not.

Speaker 5 (01:14:00):
Trouble at all. It's like, you know, look, I'm in
the movie making business, and it's tough. It's tough to
think about the sort of razor's edge you walk between
the way I want my film to look and the
people I want to be involved with, the creative artists
I want to work with, and what that costs and
how provocative you can be and who's paying it. You know,
William Faulkner very famously when you quit the post office said, look,

(01:14:24):
I'm always going to be working for some son of
a bitch with money. I just don't have to work
for every son of a bitch with two cents for
a postage stamp. So sooner or l I think we
all have about our Faukner moment, you know, where you're like,
I got to pay my mortgage, but at what costs?
And you know it's it's Robert Eggers could make nos
for oft to because he made a bunch of successful films,
you know, and if you go to like if some

(01:14:47):
indie director in East la or Austin who wants them,
or Tobe Hooper back in the early seventies, says, I
want to do something radical and cool and sort of
make my name. That's inherently more interesting idea, and they
can take risks because the overhead is not so high,
you know, as it's also a young man's game when
it comes to provocation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
Oh totally.

Speaker 6 (01:15:08):
And by the way, to piggyback on that, the universal
Q and A, the universal solvent and Q and A
across fantastic fests, across thirty something movies in which one
of those type Q and A is it is really
hard to get a movie funded these days, by time
after time after time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:26):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:15:27):
And you know, and at the end, it was, you know,
the new like I said before, the New gurb Ravinsky movie. Uh,
he was in his Q and a's like it was
really hard, Like I had to do this indie because
I wanted something different, and I had to fight to
get this this movie that that is very different.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
You know.

Speaker 6 (01:15:42):
He's like, people want sequels, they want they want they
want to guarantee, and you can't with an indie thing.
You can't always give that guarantee. And so it was
up to him, you know that to make the movie.
He was passionate about and that was and that made
it more interesting. But I think it's true that it's
true that now it's really hard to get a movie
funded and so you'll see perhaps less of that independent

(01:16:07):
spirit until you know, you got to scrape it up
on your own and be scrappy to get that to happen,
especially in the US.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Uh.

Speaker 6 (01:16:15):
You know, other countries have some funding like uh, you know,
there's countries Canada, Europe, a few other places have a
have funding set aside for the arts, and we're slowly
removing that or not so slowly over the past couple
of years.

Speaker 1 (01:16:29):
Oh no, we're headed into Franco territory, where the where
you know, the artists of Spain or are the ones
who are trying to figure out how to do the
work while Franco's in power, you know. And we're not
at Franco territory, but it'll be. It's that kind of world.

Speaker 6 (01:16:43):
I watched the documentary about that not too long ago,
and boy did it chill my marrow. Yeah I'm not lying,
and I was like, oh no, and I knew it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
We're not there, but I think it's I think you
make Hay while the sunshines, and we're not there yet,
so now is now is definitely a time to make
our all Right, now, we should probably turn to our
final thoughts, and if anybody wants to throw in any
more about the swirling Eddy towards Franco Spain that we're
in right now, I'd love to hear about that as well.

(01:17:14):
So final thoughts, John, I know that we've gone near
and far afield and probably not even talked about the
movie as much as we probably could. But I've really
enjoyed this and I'm so glad this is a good
beginning to our discussion of Baba. So what are your thoughts?

Speaker 5 (01:17:28):
Yeah, I mean it's look I I you know, I
come from the movie. I stay for I stay for
the meandering. Yeah, as a listener and a caial participate
in the podcast. So I love it when when you know,
because getting to spend time with you guys, you're different
than me. Your imagination goes in new places that are
not my places, and so that's why I used to
listen as a fan, and that's why I love being
on with you, and almost the movie doesn't matter. I'm

(01:17:50):
glad we broke we started doing our Baba though, because
it's a lot of great even greater movies to come
that are more significant and profound in many ways. The
last thing I'll say, the whip the body. It's like,
you know what, having a whip crack twelve minutes into
a horror movie that's turning some people on is not
the worst thing in the world in this world.

Speaker 1 (01:18:10):
Thank you very much, Julia. I think that we went
to you next. Ye, so lay it on me. What
are your thoughts?

Speaker 3 (01:18:18):
Well, yeah, so when because the first whip actually, even
though she's the one who gets whipped, the first whip
is actually her whipping him chrispher Lee, Like she grabs
the whip and she whips him.

Speaker 4 (01:18:27):
And I just talk about sitting up and.

Speaker 3 (01:18:30):
Being like, Okay, this is what we're at because I
was not expecting that, and I just go, wow, that
was a choice, yes, And then it goes from there.
But yeah, a very interesting discussion. It's a super provocative film,
regardless of whether it's provocative because you're into it or
provocative because it makes you think and gets you know,

(01:18:51):
it can be disturbing whatever all of that. But I
do think just visually it's stunning. I mean, like I say,
I just the lighting just blew me away. I was like,
because I'm an amateur photographer, so to me, I'm just like,
how how do I want to make that happen? And
So that was fantastic, really interesting story, really interesting characters,

(01:19:14):
and to the point about the you know, the situation
we find ourselves in. Obviously, as an immigration attorney and
a mom of queer kids, I'm not thrilled about any
of it, and so I personally really appreciate the opportunity
to hang out with you guys and talk about a
movie because I want to escape.

Speaker 4 (01:19:32):
From all of that.

Speaker 3 (01:19:35):
If I checked out during that conversation, that's because I'm
using this as my escape time and not my think
about all the all the despair time. So I'm not
saying you can't talk about it. I'm just saying that's
why I didn't participate. But but I yes, I've really
enjoyed the conversation. I think it was really interesting, and
I'm so happy that John is here with us doing
this awesome series.

Speaker 1 (01:19:54):
Yeah no kidding, no kidding, true, tell me what's up.

Speaker 2 (01:19:58):
I'll promise I won't yell at anybody. I really was,
I wasn't I wasn't really trying to yell. I just
like I said, I get I get hot under the collar.
And you know when you and I, when I apologize,
I'm I'm already apologizing, It's already it's already happening. I

(01:20:22):
did say, though, on the onset that I am team asshole,
So I I just proved my I just proved my
my grumpitude by being grumpy on on uh while.

Speaker 3 (01:20:39):
Equals asshole, then we're all assholes. At least some of
the times.

Speaker 2 (01:20:43):
Might not be the right word. I would say, I
am grouchy. I I uh, you know, although everybody's like
you're You're a teddy bear, and I'm like, I'm a
I'm I am. I am very much not. But you
know that's that's you know people.

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
We all grapple with containing multitudes, and that's.

Speaker 2 (01:21:03):
I'm ogres are like onions. Right. Yes, I did just
quote quote Shrek, but uh yeah, this is a great movie,
and I think we had a really good discussion of it,
even though we did not work our way methodically through

(01:21:23):
the plot. I think we went through the ideas that
it brings up, which might be more important when you're
dissecting a piece of art because you know, to me,
I watch a movie for you know, the the initial
entertainment value, but a movie that stays with me, and
this is a movie that does stay with me. Is

(01:21:46):
a movie that has a lot of moving parts and
a lot of it brings up a lot of different thoughts,
and the fact that each one of us watched it
and took away a different, a slightly different interpretation just
goes to show you the genius of Mario Bava and
why we are having a whole series devoted to him.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Wonderful, Thank you very much, Tony, and I.

Speaker 2 (01:22:10):
Got through that without yelling at anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
I just know he did good. And I think my
favorite thing about that was the notion that everybody takes
something different, which gets back to johnsull thing about the
seats in the theater and everybody, or as I was saying,
the sort of vertices on a spider rod, Tony, what
about you.

Speaker 6 (01:22:29):
I like the movie, I like the discussion. I think
I personally the movie hits me more on a visual
level than anything else. But but if that's what you
have to say, I mean it is. It is just
a beautifully shot film and it's amazing. What's awesome about
that is a beautiful movie about perversion, and that's always

(01:22:51):
I think there's there's more like we could use more
of that, I think in art, I think, and I
think there's a lot of artists getting getting that done,
and that's still a good thing.

Speaker 1 (01:23:01):
So that's cool and fascinating.

Speaker 6 (01:23:04):
Is why I enjoy that we covered it, and you know,
off the beaten path for these for these actors, I
think pushing them outside of a possible comfort zone is
fascinating as well.

Speaker 1 (01:23:15):
Again, such as the nature of art.

Speaker 6 (01:23:17):
So I'm looking forward to more Bava and I'm really
glad we we did this one because there's so much
to it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:26):
It doesn't just exist on.

Speaker 6 (01:23:27):
A surface level, and again I think that's isn't.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
That the hallmark of great art? Yeah? Yeah, wonderful. I honestly,
I can add nothing more to that. I have very
very much enjoyed this, and I think I'm going to
continue thinking about some of the questions that we raised,
but I think most I am so thrilled. I've never
seen this movie before, so it was really cool to

(01:23:51):
get a chance to dig into some films that were
utterly new to me. So John, thank you very much
for recommending this one. All right, I want to get
into our recommendations because I have a weird one this
week and I'm kind of excited about that. So going
back around, John, I see, I know everybody else's themes,

(01:24:14):
what they tend they hit on, but I do not
know what it is that you tend to recommend. So
so what's on your mind?

Speaker 5 (01:24:20):
This recommendation is so easy because I'd be waiting like
a kid in a candy store for my Halloween men
Omnibus to arrive, which it did today. It's an amazing
book and a creative of course by our own Drew Edwards,
an amazing introduction by me, and it is like for

(01:24:44):
any horror fan, like digging into the Omnibus is like
walking through the horror islet Blockbuster, because there's like all
different genres of horror recommended. The art is amazing. It
is like it has such a verb to it. So
I am all halloway man Omnibus all the time.

Speaker 2 (01:25:03):
Oh I'm gonna blush.

Speaker 1 (01:25:05):
Isn't that great? That's wonderful? Thank you very very much.
All right, I can't remember what Julia, where we're with you?
What what do you what do you got going on
that you would recommend.

Speaker 3 (01:25:15):
Yes, I'm sorry. My internet's a little a little wonky
right now. I think I would recommend Task which is
I want to say, is it on HBO? I don't
want to say it wrong. I think it's on HBO anyway.
It's a Mark Ruffalo show that is one of those
that releases weekly, and so we have to wait every

(01:25:35):
week to find out what happens, which starts to be
crazy because I'm so used to binge watching things. But
it's really good and really interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
So that's mine wonderful. Uh did we go it?

Speaker 5 (01:25:47):
Was?

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
It? Was it? Tony next? I can't find it? Yeah, no, it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:52):
So mine's not a super deep kuit, but it is
a bit of a disagreement with some people that I
respect on you know, I just finished Alien Earth This
This today because I've been traveling, I haven't been I
haven't seen the last two episodes, and I loved it.

(01:26:16):
I you know, in fact, I liked it so much
I kind of wish that they weren't doing another season
because I sometimes feel like when something gets me feeling
so high, the problem with television is often they'll come
back and not hit the same high with a second season.
To me, I thought this was such a great little

(01:26:38):
compartmentalized look into a different wing of that universe, and
I just greatly enjoyed it. I know there's a lot
of people online that were more mixed on the finale,
so I'm kind of going a little bit against the
conventional wisdom, but I just love this whole series from

(01:27:00):
from start to finish. It just made me giddy and happy,
and which probably isn't the right reaction to it, but
I really liked it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
No, that's that's wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
Actually, I would have recommended that. I would have recommended
the Halloween man omibus, but somebody already did that.

Speaker 1 (01:27:15):
Where you are, Yeah, that's fantastic, Tony. What about you.
I've been watching a lot of stuff.

Speaker 6 (01:27:22):
I mean mainly I've been watching movies, so I guess
I guess we did a wrap up, so I would say,
if you really want to see what I recommend, go
back to the to our last few fantastic tests recommendations.
Rain and I actually watched something fun because you know,
she doesn't watch as much as much genre stuff, so

(01:27:43):
we watched a Hotel Castierra, which I thought was was
kind of a cool, like drama, part heist, part mystery film.
Rain's been watching a lot of mysteries because she wants
to write a mystery and that's been kind of fascinating
because she was ever a huge mystery fan. Now she's
all in, like she has her she's designing her plot,

(01:28:04):
and she's watching a lot of mysteries.

Speaker 5 (01:28:06):
So that it's the hardest goddamn thing in the world
is putting together clues. It's like impossible, Oh, John, she is.

Speaker 6 (01:28:18):
She started with it and she's gotten It's really it's
a really cool idea. Can't reveal anything yet, but yes,
She's like, and then I have to do this, And
then I'm like, yep, so so she you know, I
look forward to the time we can hang out. I'm
a little envious of Jason, Juliet and you. But but yes,
when we get to we get to come out that way.

(01:28:40):
I definitely like, wet, we want to talk more about that.
But yes, it's it's hard, but I there are so
many movies I enjoyed. And then also I've been catching
up on Peacemaker, been catching up on Task, and.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
I'm sure there's a couple of others I did think
was a shock.

Speaker 6 (01:29:00):
Oh, man, I'm I hope things go the way. I
hope they go.

Speaker 4 (01:29:07):
By the way I think I said.

Speaker 3 (01:29:08):
I think we said the thing about getting together with
John before we started recording. So just for the listener,
we get to see John next weekend.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
Yeah, cool, super cool.

Speaker 6 (01:29:18):
I was more mixed on Alien Earth, but I thought
there's a lot of really good stuff, but I found
myself frustrated by a bunch of parts of it.

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
Again the nature of art.

Speaker 2 (01:29:31):
I am completely okay with everything that happened in that lesson.

Speaker 6 (01:29:38):
Again, No, I think that that was fascinating. Actually, I
just you know, this is another discussion.

Speaker 2 (01:29:44):
But I we don't need to turn it into the
Alien Podcast. We could, we could, we we can catch
up on that via text. But I I know I'm
in a minority. I know I'm in a minority opinion.
I've seen a lot of people who were frustrated with
the finale, but I wouldn't.

Speaker 6 (01:30:03):
I wasn't even frustrated the finale. There's just stuff in it.
But but I mean as far as look and feel
and done well, like, there's a there's a bunch of
Really I'm I guess what I'm saying is I'm friendly
in the middle, which which I don't think very many
people are. But uh but yeah there, So yeah, just
check check out my recommendations for a Fantastic Quests. I
think you'll find you know, if something in that in

(01:30:25):
the that you know, three dozen plus movies doesn't hit you,
I don't know what to say.

Speaker 1 (01:30:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:30:31):
My only sadness is that for a lot of those
we usually end up covering throughout the year.

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
But I'm sad that we have to wait that.

Speaker 6 (01:30:38):
I can tell you these things are great, and now
we have to wait for a bunch of them to
get distribution. But I really am looking forward to going, Okay,
it's out, let's cover it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
I kind of want to go.

Speaker 3 (01:30:50):
Back to your last few fantastic Fests and see what
you said and then about things that I had then
ended up watching months later.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:31:00):
I think I think after Bava Fest, maybe we should
do Tony Fest and just do Fantastic Fest movies that
we that he's recommended, that we've never covered, that we've
never covered. Is it dangerous or is it dangerously brilliant? Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:31:15):
Yeah, you decide. I'm always on the h Yeah, this
has been awesome though. All Right, my recommendation I got
two things this week. We have a new book coming
out called Strain Shape of Love by hair To Feely,
and it is a thriller about about revenge porn where
this journalist who's taking a new job as a as

(01:31:39):
a correspondent in London, suddenly her career is threatened because
somebody sends her photos that she doesn't remember taking because
she took them when she was like like superstoned years ago,
and they're going to be released and she has like
a period of time to figure out who is who's
threatening her and blackmailing her. And it's really really cool,

(01:32:00):
and it's by Harta Feely, who often writes about these
these topics that have a lot to do with abuse
of the Internet and so forth. And I love it
and it's it comes out this week, so I'm super stoked.
And my movie recommendation was one that Julia and I
caught actually a while back, but it just popped into
my mind because it's a very strange presentation and a

(01:32:23):
little kinky and it's got a really great cast and
it's the Comfort of Strangers for nineteen ninety by Paul Schrader,
and it's like it's like, if you like don't look now.
It is it's like twenty years later, don't look now
in a sense where this very handsome couple now Natasha
Richardson and now I can't Rupert Everett are wandering around

(01:32:47):
Venice wondering if they like like one another, and they
run into Christopher Walkin and Helen Mirren as this weirdly
inappropriate older couple who are like wealthy and living in Venice,
and it just gets strange and kinky and violent and mysterious.
And that was Paul Schrader's comfort to strangers. That movie

(01:33:10):
is now thirty five years old and it's really good.
So that's my that's my recommendation. Oh, by the.

Speaker 6 (01:33:17):
Way, I did realize that you actually one Battle after
Another is out now and you should run run to
see that movie, like if.

Speaker 4 (01:33:29):
You if I've read really yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:33:31):
Oh it's it's Drew. Yeah, this is what you need
to see your passion. We go far in that movie.
I was only I was only slightly sad because one
of the theaters got to see it in third and
seventy milimeter and that was not the meter I was in.
And I was con because I'll probably go back and
see it in seventy milimeter, to be fair, because that's

(01:33:54):
the kind of film nerd I am. But I did
I realize that that's one you don't have to wait for,
and I'm gonna say, go.

Speaker 1 (01:34:01):
Go go all right, very cool, all right, ladies and gentlemen.
That brings us to the end. But we will be
back very soon, probably in a couple of weeks with
our next Bava film. I think it's a Giallo picture.
I am totally stoked. You'll learn more about that soon.
Everybody be kind to one another. John, thank you so
much for joining us, and you're gonna be with us

(01:34:22):
for a little while as we as we as we
dive into mid century Italy. So that's that's gonna be
a yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:31):
You know, I think next time we do one of these,
I'm going to have to like chase it with some
Italian food somehow.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you know, oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:42):
You know that. I I I I've got the craving
for Italian food. I'm gonna blame Mario Bava.

Speaker 6 (01:34:49):
Yes, it makes them sounds great.

Speaker 2 (01:34:54):
Jamie makes a wonderful eggplant parm Actually, there you go, man, there, John, John, John,
You're gonna have to come and have some home cooked
food from my wife, who is a truly amazing cook.
At some point it's it's just she's, you know, outside

(01:35:17):
of being amazingly talented in a lot of other ways
like she is you know, magical, no no pun intended
in the kitchen.

Speaker 6 (01:35:28):
I've had stuff she baked, and I can attest to
this fact. It is a fact that is not conjectured.

Speaker 1 (01:35:35):
All right, good night everyone, Thank you so much. We
will talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you.

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