November 30, 2023 • 57 mins
Aaron and Darlene watch some classic sci-fi from the 1950s and '60s, good and bad. They talk about what makes these films memorable and fun, and if you should take a trip back in time and enjoy these films as well.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I didn't electoral care at the mindbarble. You see, you see your
stupid mimes, stupid stupid Santa Claus. Long enough, we will bring him
to Mars. I've been afraid alot of times in my life, but
I didn't know the real meaning offear until until I kissed back me.
One thing, I'll be clear,it's not for man to interfere in the
ways. You've got good evening,everybody. In Welcome to Earth Versus Soup
(00:45):
Episode one, seventy seven, I'mAaron Polier, I'm Darlene. We actually
watched a pretty damn good movie today. We were surprised about it, mainly
because we had no expectations and itstarted off a little slow. And it
is a it gets under your skin. It's a horror. It is horror.
(01:11):
I don't think there's any science fictionat all in this. If there
is, it's very very nebulous.Let's say, but this firmly fits an
Earth versus Soup because this is ifa old school Twilight zoneer Outer Limits episode
(01:32):
had been made into a movie atthe time. This is I Bury the
Living from nineteen fifty eight, noteven an expiring tell Uh inspiring title no,
it's not no no, because itaccurately describes the movie. Though.
That's the thing it's it's not.It's not trying to pretend to be anything
(01:55):
that it's not, and it's actuallyreally damn good. But we need to
talk about, like the people thatmade this film before we get into it.
I Bury the Living, as Isaid, was released in nineteen fifty
eight, so this is in July. Okay. The writer is Lewis Garfunkel,
A Garfinkel, I'm sorry, andhe didn't do a ton of science
(02:19):
fiction horror. But what he didwas The Deer Hunter from nineteen seventy eight,
which is a pretty hardcore psychological film. Okay, Robert de Niro's in
it. It is a amazing moviethat is very difficult to actually watch because
of how intense it gets. Let'sput it that way. It's a good
(02:43):
movie, Darling. I know thatyou've never seen it because we tend not
to watch we tend not to watchVietnam era, well, Vietnam War movies,
but this is arguably one of themore important Vietnam movies, along with
like you know, Apocalypse Now andthings like that. Watching this movie,
(03:05):
you can get a sense of whatthe Deer Hunter the kind of intensity that
it can have. Okay, wehave two main actors in this, and
this is this is a movie thatreally doesn't have a female lead. There
is women in it, there are, yeah, but they're yeah, they're
just not there for the story.There they you know, just barely they
(03:29):
barely touch in the story. Becausethis movie theoretically could have a single character
on screen. This is a moviewhere you no, well, no,
well, you'd have to have thecaretaker. Okay, you can have two
people on screen. Ever, everyoneelse is on the phone. Yes,
(03:52):
you could do this movie as atwo person act on stage and it would
be completely doable. It would work. It would work because the movie is
not about relationships with people. Themovie is about a man coming to terms
with what he believes is his ownkind of supernatural power or a supernatural power
(04:20):
that's been forced upon him, andtrying to understand it or punish himself for
it. Does that make sense.You don't need other characters. This is
all about the actor Richard Boone,who is in a ton of stuff,
not a lot of science fiction orhorror, tons of stuff, being a
(04:43):
guy that becomes the manager of thisla. Yeah, the manager chairman of
this LA Cemetery Immortal Hills. ButI really do think it's still the cemetery
that's in La. Yeah, itis a real That's what I said.
It's an LA cemetery. It reallyis a real cemetery. That's the thing.
(05:03):
You can We just went on atrip to out east from Michigan and
we stopped at the cemetery that theyfilmed Night of the Living Dead, at
the original Knight of Living Dead,those scenes, and it's a real place.
You can go there. You canfind the stones that they stood in
front of and said, oh,this is our mother's grave, this is
(05:26):
the stone that Barbara leaned against.This cemetery is that kind of thing.
It's not that same cemetery, butI'm saying you can go there. The
only thing that I read that wasdifferent for the cemetery is the caretakers,
the management hut that was built,well, it was built for this film
and torn down after all. Idon't know. It's clearly a set.
(05:48):
Yeah, so I don't mind.But anyway, Richard Boone fantastic actor.
The only thing that's kind of scifi, fantasy, horror related that you
might know him from is he's thevoice of Smaug from the original Hobbit cartoon.
Okay, you go with that.Now, the Caretaker is played by
Theodore Bikel. He's a young manand they make him look incredibly old in
(06:14):
this. Well, I can't sayhe's a young man. He's in his
like late thirties, well mid thirties, and they make him look sixty seventy
years old, Yeah, they do. And he's supposed to be what forty
years running as the Caretaker, Yeah, something like that. You will know
him from things because he was ina lot of television, including Babylon Five.
(06:39):
Later on he was in Star Trekthe Next Generation for an episode,
but a lot of television, alot of movies in kind of bit parts.
Okay, you will recognize him ifyou see pictures of him, not
in makeup here, because he looksway too old and strange in this.
(07:00):
Yeah. He's even in My FairLady Darlene like Zoltan Carpathy, you love
My Fair Lady. So anyway,these are the two lead actors, do
they and and even before we getinto the plot, because this plot is
if you want to discover this movie, stop the review right now, because
(07:25):
this is a movie that I shouldn'tspoil for you at all. So if
you're interested in watching this before wego any further, we recommend this movie.
Yes, this is a very goodmovie. Thot movie. Yeah,
this is a thinking movie. Sostop now, go watch the movie and
(07:47):
come back. We're not gonna judgeyou for it for stopping the review,
but please come back and listen tous talk about it because you might start
thinking. Boy, I have alot to say about this movie. As
you said, Darlene, this iskind of a thinking movie. So so
let's let's get into the Let's getinto the spoilers. Now, let's get
into the actual plot of the movie. We both loved it. There is
(08:13):
a lot that works in this andeven before getting into the plot, can
I honestly, I can't think ofsomething that does not work in this movie.
This is a very effective, tightpsychological drama that has supernatural overtones.
I can't think of a single thingthat really does. The use of the
(08:35):
females really bothers me though, Ohthat they're just there to be like,
oh honey, you need you needto calm down, let's go on,
let's go on vacation. Yeah,well, I would say that they have
the one woman in this film.See I don't even know her name because
you have an Anne, right,you have the new wife of for five
(09:01):
seconds, but she gives you alaugh. Yeah, she's She is exactly
what you need to have in thatpart. There's no shame in the small
part that she played. Okay,and she did it well, Yeah,
she did well. It's the charactersand Craig played by Peggy Morror and she
is damn near forgettable in this film. That's that's the problem. And this
is this was one of her biggestroles. The problem is is in defense
(09:26):
of the movie, in defense ofthe movie, she didn't need to be
any more than the part that shewas playing. It's not like she was
written to be a major role andthen they sidelined her because she's an actress
and they want to give more meatiaroles to the guys. It's not like
(09:46):
that. It's they literally have verylittle for anyone outside of the two main
characters. I will put it thisway. If you wrote this book,
this this this thing today, thechairman Robert kap car Craft craft Craft could
be played by a roberta. No, it's exactly that is exactly how I
(10:13):
would rewrite this today. I wouldrewrite it as a woman becoming the manager
of this cemetery, okay, AndI would put the social commentary down about
sexism about women in in places ofauthority. I would actually put that subtext
in there. Okay. Would itchange the meaning of the film too much?
(10:35):
I don't. I don't think so. You'd have to be good about
it. You'd have to actually insteadof having a lieutenant that's of the local
thing, you'd have to have itto be an FBI agent. Yeah,
yeah, or c I But doyou do you think do you think the
subtext of bias against women in authoritywould be two? I mean, without
(11:00):
writing it and actually showing it isI can't say is it too heavy handed?
But do you think it would changethe meaning of the of this story
too much? We haven't even talkedabout the plot, but we're just kind
of riffing here because this is areally good movie. I don't think that
needs to be in that. No. I think you could literally just swap
out just a few conversations on thephone where she's getting irritated with because the
(11:26):
male actor in this got irritated attimes like yeah, you know, you're
right. The subtext would just bethere because of the change, I would
think, because you could keep thedialogue damn near exact. You could just
swap the under well. You couldhave her have a fiance, yeah,
(11:50):
a male, a guy that's comingin and telling her the exact same things
that and Craig told or on thephone or on the phone, and it
would actually not be sexist either,like the because what she does in the
film for the plot is to tryto slow down the descent of the main
(12:15):
character. She's trying to be thisgrounding element, and therefore she's not being
like the shrewish. You could evenhave it actually as the husband, or
she could have been the wife inthis case, in this movie, she
could have actually even been a wife. She could have been it didn't be.
That's how unimportant the outside characters are. Like, there's only one side
(12:39):
character that truly does have a littlebit of the George Uncle George. But
let's get let's just talk about theplot, because we're just riffing here.
People don't know what the hell we'retalking about. A thing on the screen,
Oh yeah, it goes. Webegin the movie in a graveyard and
a text crawl and there's a quotethat that includes science has learned man possesses
(13:00):
powers beyond the boundaries of the natural, and I wrote, no, no,
it hasn't. Like that's you know, if if science discovered it,
wing not beyond the realm of thenatural, because science has discovered it,
Like I laughed about because I satthere and watched him just sit there and
write like, oh my god,yeah, stop the film to write the
(13:22):
whole words, and then kept writingyeah, and I'm like, this is
taking a lot more longer, longerthan that. Yeah, it's because I
thought, oh, if Chriswell saidthis, that would be perfect. It's
the nonsense that Chriswell's spews in theEdwood movies. But the thing is Chriswell
has charisma and you'd be laughing aboutit, where this is just like a
(13:46):
supposed to be kind of a semiserious quote. Well it's supposed to be
a serious quote, not semi it'sa serious quote. And that ticked me
off anyway, So it started withme being kind of ticked off. It
quickly changed. So we see twomen walking into the grounds keeper's hut in
a graveyard, okay, and thatis Richard Boone playing Robert Craft and theater
(14:11):
by Kel playing Andy McKee. Okay, Andy McKee is this kind of a
Scottish guy. He's old, he'sgoing to be retiring soon. Robert Craft
is let's say, a young middleaged man who is up and coming in
the Craft family, who is knownin the local community for being what does
(14:35):
Uncle George say That they are civicminded, that with great power comes great
responsibility. He doesn't say. UncleGeorge doesn't say that. But it's basically
like, we have made money fromthis community and there as a department yeah,
department store, we've taken care ofthis community's needs. But that also
(14:56):
means that we need to give backto the community. And it's for two
reasons. Always had a person onthe board like as management for the cemetery,
because we take care of them frombirth to death. Now, the
reasons he gives of why the familydoes this is perfectly honest and fair.
He goes number one, it's goodfor business because it shows that we care.
(15:20):
Two, we care, and it'sbecause without this community we would be
nothing. Yeah, and you getthe fact in this conversation this is after
this caretaker and that. But youget a conversation that Robert Bob as Uncle
(15:43):
George, the main character. Yeah, Bob, Robert Kraft is reluctant to
be in this position. And it'snot because he's a dick. It's because
I think he's honestly uncomfortable at beingat a cemetery. I think that's it.
Like he's he seems to be actuallya very good business person. He
(16:04):
seems to be well connected in thecommunity. People seem to respect him,
not because of his family but becauseof him. So him coming off and
saying I really don't want to bein this position. After about the first
(16:25):
half hour, you kind of getthe point that, no, it's not
because he's a dick. It couldalso be the fact that he's having to
get Andy to retire. Yeah,and he didn't want to do that because
Andy has been such an important partof the cemeteries. And this is the
conversation you have. Immediately one maywalk into the hut or his office.
(16:49):
Andy is being told that it's timefor him to retire. So because he's
he's getting old and slow, he'sgetting full pension. Yeah, Robert says,
look, Andy, you are takencare of. We are going to
pay you your full paycheck for therest of your life. You will you
(17:10):
will not have to move. Yourhouse is paid for. His house is
just down the road. It's actuallyright outside the cemetery, he says,
because Andy's like, he's got aplot in the in the cemetery that was
provided for him. Like, thisfamily clearly cares about their employees. And
(17:30):
Andy is not really enthused about this. He's like, but what am I
gonna do with my life? AndRobert's like, whatever you want. And
it's not like we're throwing you outof the cemetery. Whoever we hire to
take your place. Now, whatdoes Andy do? He digs graves,
He actually carves headstones, and heprobably takes care of the grounds and he's
(17:53):
a groundskeeper. There's a lot tobe done to train whoever they bring in,
whatever young man they bring in,young man or young woman. He
actually does say, I'm sure there'stwo or three young men in the community
that would be really willing to learnfrom you. So Andy, the conversation
comes across that Andy's still going tobe actually actively working at the cemetery for
(18:15):
the next couple years, just notas the full time groundskeeper. He's training
something in Robert is giving him theability to hire someone himself. Yeah,
you make the choice, man,you make it. There is obviously a
(18:38):
lot of respect given to Andy,and honestly, all the conversations that Andy
has with people, you realize whythere's respect for Andy. He's kind,
he's considerate of other people, he'sa good conversationalist, he has a good
(18:59):
amount of humor that he's always he'salways making people smile around him. And
he says, you can't be anyother way in this business because you only
see people on their worst days.So you have to have this. You
have to be charming. And that'swhere he says, like you have to
find the right person for this jobbecause they can't be just anybody with a
(19:22):
strong back. And again, likethis is all in like a quick little
scene. This is a lot ofdialogue, but it builds these two characters
and it doesn't even take three minutes. No, this is solid writing.
This is solid writing. And thenAndy the caretaker shows Robert how to deal
(19:49):
with the map, okay, andhe shows him where the gun is kept
because sometimes unruly teenagers get into thecemetery after dark and you need to scare
them away and things have been gettingworse lately. Let's say, that's what
he says, so you never knowif you ever need it, And Robert
doesn't blink, He checks the gun, puts it away, and they also
(20:11):
have a conversation about the heat.Yeah, that the hut's always cold and
there's like a gasoline or kerosene heateror something. So the whole point it
doesn't work most of the time.The whole point of this, of this
hut is that one of the wallshas a map on it of the cemetery
and it shows the roads and bigdark lines, right and every plot and
(20:33):
every plot, every plot that iscurrently bought, has a name on it
and a pin and a pin.If the person is still alive, there's
a white pin in it in theplot. If the person is dead and
buried, there is a black pin, or at least, let's say dead,
there's a black pin in it.Otherwise it has no pin in it,
(20:56):
like it's an open plot. Soactually have a name, because that's
what happens in the first scene.The second scene, well right here,
what happens is is that no,there's already names on it. That's the
thing. There is a name onit, here because we see a couple
newlyweds come in in a really nicecar, and it turns out that it's
(21:23):
the new mister and missus Drexel.Okay, and I forget the it's Elizabeth
Drexel, and what's what's the StuartDrexel is the guy's name, and they
are young, they are just married, just married. They are now incredibly
wealthy because he the Crafts, hisfather the Crafts, and the Drexels as
(21:52):
families have known each other for awhile. But the Drexels have fallen on
hard times not because of a lackof money. It's because the father,
who was the real businessman of thefamily, had died young and left all
this money in trust for his son. Okay, and it's explained, and
I know this, this really doesn'thave much to do with the plot,
(22:12):
but it's an interesting play play byplay that Stuart couldn't get a hold of
any of the money until he wasmarried, and he bought a plot,
and he bought and it was officiallyassigned a plot for his wife in the
family's grave site. Okay, sohe had to Stuart and his wife came
(22:37):
out there to talk to Craft togo Hey, I need you to put
our pins in these two graves,because the lawyer then will know that I've
come out here to say she ismy wife. She will be buried in
the in the family plot, andtherefore the money is legally now mine.
(22:57):
I am going to go on ahoneymoon, but when I get back,
I'm gonna see to the business needsof the Drexels. Okay, great and
all through this. Elizabeth Drexels,just like I cannot believe that this is
what needs to happen for my husbandto get a hold of the money that
(23:18):
is rightfully his. She comes offof a little shrewish, but you kind
of also understand it. She's like, this is just it's not that she's
pissed that there is a hoop thathas to go through. It's that the
hoop is kind of creepy. Yeah, and she's getting a this is her
wedding present. Her wedding present isa grave. Yeah, it's it's a
little so this Scot's a little bitof comedy to it in this conversation.
(23:44):
Yeah, this is about the onlycomedy in the movie. Though it is
lighthearted. It made a smile.He drives off happiness. Okay, So
this is where we start learning thatRobert Kraft doesn't want to be in this
position, and the rest of thefamily says that he needs to do it
because the Craft family has always takenpart in community projects. This is what
(24:04):
we're already talking about. But rightbefore that scene, you have Robert putting
two black pins instead of white onesinto the Drexels plots. Yes, okay,
So Robert gets a phone call athis office and he then learns that
Stu and his new wife have died. So he goes out to the cemetery
(24:26):
and Andy is there to meet him, and he goes up up to the
map like Andy says, hey,in a car accident. Ye, from
what I understand, it was ina car accident, like very soon after
they left the cemetery. So Andysays, well, you best change their
pins. Robert goes up to themap and sees that he already had put
(24:48):
black pins in their spots, andhe thinks it's an eerie coincidence. He
doesn't like it. It's these twoyoung people died. This is where his
Robert's fiance shows up and Craig Yeah, and he ends up screwing around at
(25:15):
the map a little bit distracted byhis fiance and he ends up sticking a
black pin into because he had awhole bunch of black pins in his in
his hand basically to go and changethe pins, and then he just thumps
the map and one of these blackpins ends up sticking into another grave marker
(25:36):
call that's labeled w Isham. Andwe go to his We go to his
office, and he's a dollar maker. He's an old man who's a dollar
maker, toymaker, dollarmaker. He'ssewing a teddy bear. He's sewing a
teddy bear, so doll maker wouldn'treally work either. Okay, that's fair
fine, but he's making a teddybear. And then he's seemingly has a
(26:00):
stroke in front of us as heputs the eye in as as he puts
an eye into this teddy bear,and he dies. The next day,
we we we we're back at thecemetery and Andy is there polishing and polishing
the Direxler gravestone. He's also gottenthe heater working in the office, and
he's really cheerful about that. He'slike, oh, Bobby, look at
(26:22):
what I did. This office isgoing to be warm again. He doesn't
he calls him all the time,mister c He says, Bobby a couple
of times. He now thinks there'ssomething At this point, mister Kraft says
thinks that there's something wrong with themap because he's learned about Isham's death at
(26:48):
this point and also sees that hehad popped a black pin there somehow,
and he's like, Okay, thisis creepy. I want nothing to do
with it. I'm gonna go talkto uncle. So he goes to talk
to Uncle George and he says,look, I'm quitting, I'm done,
and he talks about how he's changedthese pins and people are dying, and
(27:11):
they both go out to the cemeteryand they test it by changing a pin
from white to black. Because UncleGeorge is completely this is nonsense. You
need to get over this crap.And we're gonna, we're gonna, We're
gonna show it. Henry throw Bridge. Yeah. So Robert calls his wife,
calls this guy's wife, his uHenry Trowbridge, and his wife answers
(27:33):
the phone, yeah, at eleventhirty, and she comes back down to
the phone because she's like, no, he's up in bed reading I'll go
get him and she comes back crying, and it turns out he's just died.
His body's still warm, but hehas just died. So police show
up at the graveyard the next morning. Obviously Robert Robert called them. Robert.
(27:56):
Yeah, Robert's like, look,I can't explain this. I think
I'm doing something. And you seethat Robert the the actor does this pretty
good. He is actually showing signsof depression of anxiety, anxiety, he's
cracking up. I believe he reallybelieves he's cursed. I wouldn't say cursed
(28:22):
because he doesn't even say cursed.He says that there's something about me and
this map that every time I dosomething with it. Well, that's how
I simplified it on that Yeah,because he's he's saying like, it can't
be this map by itself, becauseother people have used this map for years
(28:45):
and I'm sure that there's been mistakes. There's a reporter that's involved in this
too, Yeah, that that isfor the local paper, and he's very
nice to Robert, and he talksto him, going, this is this,
this can't be as something that it'sa super Yeah, it's not supernatural.
This is just walking in the graveyard and he's like, that's only
(29:07):
a piece of paper. Yeah,look, it's a coincidence. And plus,
like the two people that the twonewlyweds, Yeah that's that's a coincidence.
Sure, but the other two peoplewere old. We're very old,
and actuarily, it's not impossible tothink that they just both randomly died.
(29:32):
But then you're like, well,he randomly chose randomly hit these pins into
people's graves and just changed them toblack, and they died within hours,
like there's within that day. Butyeah, he can't really even explain it.
He just is like, this hassomething to do with me. Anyway,
(29:52):
His uncle George tells him that,look, just go on vacation.
Just go on vacation. When youget back, if you still want to
quit, then we'll talk about it. But the point is is that the
board of directors for the Craft familybusinesses is very serious about this civic minded
duties and they really would not wantyou to, uh to quit. And
(30:18):
at this point Robert's like, youknow what, I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna go on vacation, even thoughhis fiance is there and she's like,
yeah, let's go. We cando the things that we want. There's
things in Europe that we can do. And he's like, no, I
have to figure this out. There'slife and death happening here. And so
he takes it his responsibilities very heavily. He does, even though he doesn't
(30:44):
want to do that at this point. Now, the fact is is that
people have died and he feels responsiblesomehow for their deaths, and he's not
going to give up until he figuresit out again. Robert Kraft a good
guy, A good guy. Infact, I would go so far as
to say there's only one black hatin this This is this is weird compared
(31:07):
to most of the movies that we'veseen lately, where there aren't any good
there's no good people in it.Everyone in this movie is actually kind of
a good person except one. Well, and you don't know that one person.
Yeah, but I do say thatthe lieutenant is bad too. No,
No, even the reporter says,this guy is good because if it
(31:29):
was anybody else. He remember whenthey're out there talking, when the reporter
and him are out there talking,the reporter says, be glad it was
Lieutenant Claiborne that came out here.And talked to you, because if it
was anybody else, they had tolocked you away in a looney bin,
or they would have they would havetalked to the newspapers themselves and said that
you were crazy. Claiborne is agood guy, so he's understanding you're under
(31:52):
pressure and he's not gonna hold itagainst you. Again, the lieutenant is
a good guy. Yes, lateron he does one thing that is slightly
shady, but it's for a goodpurpose to prove something to everyone and to
figure out exactly what is happening.So he's actually being a good police officer
(32:13):
at that point. Let's say he'snot being a good friend, but he's
being a good police officer, andhe apologizes for it because again he's a
good guy too, and everyone likesRobert Kraft. So anyway, like this,
this movie is fantastic for this stuff. Let me go back into my
notes. Now, out at thecemetery, we have Robert putting pins in
(32:37):
and it's basically because, oh,that's because the three chairmen, the chairman
of the board are like rere requestRoberts to change all of their pins to
black because all three of us arenot together. We'll leave here go separate
(32:58):
ways, and there is no waythat if all three of us, there's
no way that all three of uscan die. I'm healthy, he's healthy.
He's healthy. And we all livein different is his uncle too,
Yeah, we all live in differentparts of town. There's no way that
this is real, and this willprove it. It's all been a coincidence.
(33:19):
So Robert goes out to the cemeteryand puts the black pins in and
the reporter calls out to the office. He thinks it's a good Uh.
They talk for a little bit aboutwhat this idea was, and the reporters
like, yeah, this is agood idea because this will put this crap
to to rest and you can geton with your life. I thought that
was uncle. No, that's that'sthe reporter. No, you're again,
you're jumping ahead of scene. Okay, that's the reporter saying this is a
(33:42):
good idea. So at this pointRobert really is cracking up, and he's
seeing the map basically getting larger andlarger on the wall. And I will
say there's a scene here that Ireally think that it happens. It's cliche
thing to happen, but what ittells you, is that a person is
(34:07):
going within themselves. Yeah, there'sthere's a couple of shots where like it
freeze frames in the like drags offinto the distance into black. Yes,
And it's very good because it's symbolicfor Robert feeling isolated, feeling out of
control, feeling surrounded by this darknessof death, and that he has no
(34:32):
ability to get out. So,even though that's I haven't seen it in
new films, was very effective here. It was very effective in here.
And if you wanted to use somethingas a film person, you'd have to
watch this movie and see how itis used. But it's very specifically used
(34:57):
because it's the person become insane.Yes. So I'm looking up who the
director is and it's a man namedAlbert Band. Wouldn't it be some photography
though? Yeah? The director,it's fine, did a lot, did
a lot, including some kind ofcrazy pitt in the Pendulum. Yeah,
(35:19):
doing some kind of crazy sword andsorcery stuff from the nineties Curse of the
Puppet Master. Wow, So Imean he's done some stuff. Let's see
here. Director of photography is FreendrickGately. Sorry I'm clicking away at I
mean, did a lot of work, but nothing that stands out to me
that I've seen really. So anyway, anyway, going back, going back
(35:44):
to the movie, we end uphaving there's lots of phone calls, and
each of the pins that he haschanged to black of this committee have died
except for Uncle George, who showsup. And George is scared because he's
(36:04):
learned about all these desks and that'swhy he like jumped in his car and
drove right to the cemetery. UncleGeorge is in a coat and the housecoat.
No, he's in a coat,but underneath it you see a housecoat,
Okay, yea and pajamas. He'sscared. He's scared. He's really
scared, and he wants to leavewith Robert, who says everyone dies on
(36:28):
the map's time, not theirs.And George his pin out of the Yeah,
he just takes the pin out,like he doesn't put a white pin
in there. But he just bringsthe next thing into question. What the
next thing is nobody can find UncleGeorge. Yeah, but during this time,
like Robert is freaking out inside theoffice hut and the thing goes too
(36:54):
small. Yeah, and this isthis is the problem he feels again.
He feels isolated, he feels outof control, and they keep the cops
keep calling him, and he keepscalling the cops, like keeping them informed
about what's going on. Yeah,he is calling from the cemetery. Everyone
(37:15):
knows where he is. Everyone understandsthat he's not killing people. And he
finally gets the courage to like leavethe room with the map and goes out
and he sees Uncle George's car stillrunning just against a tree with Uncle George
dead inside of it as he wasleaving the cemetery. So he moves the
(37:37):
body out of the driver's seat anddrives the car back to the office and
then gets on the phone and callsthe cops. I just found Uncle George.
He was dead in the cemetery.Why didn't you come out here?
And this has got to be fora while, So it's probably a while,
a few hours. It's got tobe a few hours. It takes
(37:59):
place because they were calling him tryingto find Uncle George. Yeah, so
at this point Robert really is losinghis mind. And there's some amazing cinematography
here where you have like the cameraclose in with these pins on the map,
(38:19):
like they're they're like huge soccer ballsized things. The map is like
covering the entire wall of this hutglowing. It starts looking like two eyes.
Yeah, because of the way theroads the roads are. One of
them is a spiral up to amonument. They talk about that in the
first thing. Oh, I seethis is really up to date because there's
(38:40):
the monument and then the other oneis and you could probably takes a loop
and with with something going in theroad going in the center. But he's
he's like talking to the map.He's like, you know, whytt whytt
why are you doing this? Youknow, why why do I have this
(39:02):
gift? Or or you know,how do I have this power? Because
it's not really like he doesn't.I don't think he says ever that it's
a curse. He talks about itas a power. I shortened it to
a curse up there in the thing. I don't know if he said it
or not. So finally he's he'ssweating and he's like holding all these pins
in his hands, and he's like, fine, if I have the power
(39:23):
of death with black pins, Ihave the power of life with white pins.
So he takes all the black pinsout of the grave sites that just
died, that have just died duringthis these incidents, and he puts in
white pins. Okay, And thisis where he's like imagining the map glowing
(39:45):
and it's like his shadow is beingcast behind him, like starkly from the
light coming off of this this map. Great some photography, very very good,
very good and good good acting,like very good acting. Gravestones start
falling outside and he hears them,so Robert, Robert grabs the pistol.
(40:09):
Yeah, and he leaves. Uh. He ends up. He ends up
going out into the cemetery after awhile, like he's he he blocks himself
into the office for a little whileand then gets up the courage to leave
to see what's happening outside because he'sheard all this commotion outside and it's at
(40:29):
least a few hours. Because he'sbuilt like a fire, there's like smoke
that finally kind of clogs the inside. Remember this office is cold all the
time. And in one of hisfits, he broke the heater, so
he like broke up some wood inside. It wouldn't light for him, so
he kicks it. Oh, okay, it's not that he broke it,
it's that it was He ends upgoing outside and all of the graves that
(40:52):
he had changed are now empty.They're like empty, open holes in the
ground. And that's distressing. Andhe goes back into the office like shaking.
He gets the gun out of thedesk again that's been tipped over,
and he puts the gun to hishead. But the phone right, but
(41:15):
the phone rings right when he's aboutto pull the trigger, and I'm like,
okay, here's the thing again.Oh we for did we forget a
spot where it was late Lieutenant Claiborneasked him to change a healthy man in
France's We could have, we couldhave. But yeah, there's there's another
test where he has to change somebodythat's off in Europe. That's a healthy
(41:37):
person that has that is nowhere nearthis and this is the bad thing of
We'll get to it. We'll getto it. Phone rings. It turns
out that uh, he hears thatthis guy, well, this is what
causes him to almost kill himself,is that this guy, uh, he
gets worded that this guy died inEurope, in France, in France,
(42:00):
and a healthy man in France.It turns out at this point that we
learned that Andy, the groundskeeper hasbeen killing everybody at this point that Robert
has been putting black pins because immediatelyand Andy says, I did not kill
The death in France is impossible.Yeah, the death is in France is
(42:23):
impossible because I didn't do it.And Robert's like, why did you?
Why have you been doing this?And Andy doesn't have a super good explanation
besides, like I don't want tobe put to pasture, and I,
you know, my life is tooimportant here and he seems even confused talking
(42:45):
about it, and Robert gets reallycalm and he's like, Andy, you
didn't do this. The map forcedyou to do it because I changed the
pins. And Andy's confused at thispoint because again, is what's the truth
here, Darlene. Well, wefind out what the truth is. We
(43:07):
sort of do, right, Wesort of do, but it is Robert
says, look, it's not yourfault. And Andy's gonna like he dug
the girl, he dug up thegrave, he dug up the graves to
get all these people out, andRobert thinks that it was still him that
(43:28):
made all of this happen, andAndy was angry and ends up dying here.
He ends up like having a heartattack from the stress of it all
and just kind of falls over,and there's this like great hanging light sequence,
like that's right above Andy's face,putting him in stark shadow, and
(43:49):
it's swinging like in Psycho, butthis is way before Psycho. Like this
is a fantastic thing. Oh,and I will say that we actually,
because of the graves, we actuallyknow what date it is. Oh yeah,
it's May twenty fourth, nineteen fiftyseven. Okay, So this is
where like Robert kind of slumps tothe floor and the lieutenant comes in,
(44:13):
and it turns out that the lieutenantset it up so Robert would get the
phone call about this death when itwasn't true. This guy is completely fine
in Europe. The point is thatthey wanted to force whoever was doing the
killing's hand out to make a mistake, and Claiborne thought it was thought it
(44:39):
was Andy Dooming doing it. Buthe's like, yo, look, this
is all solved. And Robert andhis wife his fiancee decide to leave.
They leave like hey, my god, I'm like so sorry for Robert being
put into this place. Oh dude, Robert, here's a therapy, because
here's the thing, Like the mapin this time, you didn't go through
(45:01):
therapy unless I know. But thepoint is is that like as they leave,
like the map falls off the wallin like a weird way that just
seems sinister. So is was itthe map causing Andy to kill? Does
it have a range? Do weknow? Question mark? But it is
a The end point is this isa This is a hands down fantastic movie,
(45:25):
hands down fantastic movie. And aswe said, like before we started
really talking, I can't think ofanything that really truly doesn't work. You
said, well, there's no realfemale parts in this the fiance she's just
so minimal. But like I said, you could do this as a two
person play. You don't need.Just the fact that there isn't a female
(45:50):
part in this makes sense because youwant to, at least for this time,
for nineteen fifty eight, somebody that'sin charge of the cemetery is gonna
be a guy, And whoever isdigging graves is going to be a guy.
Okay, now today, totally differentstory, right, whoever's likely digging
graves or as the groundskeeper still likelywould be a guy. And that's big
of a That big of a cemeterywould have more than one caretaker too.
(46:17):
Yes, today today, today,but this would be a different movie today.
You could make it very similar.But I don't you know what,
I don't want to see it thisremade like as a stage production, sure,
that's what I was thinking, Butas a movie, No, this
is perfect the way it is.I do understand what her part was was
(46:39):
to keep him from actually going totallyinsane. Yes, she was grounding him
a little bit, but Andy andthe reporter was doing the same thing.
Everyone really was doing that, evenUncle George and the committee, because they
were trying to be like, let'sbe rational about this, being irrational thinking
(47:00):
a map and you have special powers. The point is that, yes,
you could take this entire movie asRobert being irrational and Andy screwing with him
out of some sort of like misplacedrage about being put to pasture, even
though he was being taken care of, like no, we're not cutting your
(47:21):
pay. You have full pay forthe rest of your life. But on
top of that, he didn't wantto stop doing what he's doing. Yeah,
but would that really lead him toThat's the other side of this is,
does his confusion about his own rationalefor doing this lead to the idea
(47:42):
that maybe this map and Robert togetherhave some sort of power. That's the
other take on this movie, whichis possible. But me being the person
I am, I tend to goalong the lines of it wasn't supernatural at
all, that this really was justkind of confused old man who had misplaced
rage. And this is a fantasticpsychological thriller. That's what I took it
(48:06):
in a fantastic psychological thriller, becausethis doesn't need to be supernatural. This
is all inside Robert's head and Andy'smisplaced. How would you do? But
then you put your Like I said, this is a thought process. What
would happen to you if you werein Robert's place? I destroy the map
(48:29):
like the first time, something crazythat I could not explain. But that's
the thing that keeps you. Yeah, I would just like I would destroy
the map. There would be noquestioning. It's like, okay, well,
this thing is like a totem ofevil or something else. You had
to keep the information that I wason that map. If I really don't
want that position like Robert did,I'll destroy the map. Yeah, it
(48:51):
might get me some shit, butin the end, this thing is terrifying
me. I'm clearly not able tohandle this position of being surrounded by death
and no one's believing me. SoI'm just going to I'm gonna I'm going
to write exactly what I've done down. I'll try to keep all the information
about the map absolutely but that mapis gone, and you would have taken
(49:15):
the vacation or ought to have takenthe vacation, and then the movie would
have continued happening anyway as soon asyou got back from vacation, at least
with this movie. The point isthat I would have destroyed the map.
Andy would not have had any kindof uh access to it, because my
first idea would be somebody is usingthe map to screw with me. Not
(49:37):
that it's supernatural, but that mapis gone, no one's going to have
access to it, and they're assure as hell not going to be a
gun just sitting in a drawer becausesomebody's screwing with me. Like that's how
I would handle that situation. Now, how Andy would handle that at that
point, I don't know. Hewould probably have to figure out a different,
(49:59):
weirder way of dealing with it.But then again, I'm not going
to be willy nilly about putting pinsinto a board. If I think that
somehow every time I put a pinin, somebody dies, I don't put
pins in because even though I ama rational human being director, and at
that point in time that Robert wasnot wanting to put the pins in for
(50:21):
those three I wouldn't have done thatboard down. I'm not a person that
believes in supernatural stuff in general,right, So, but even then,
it's like somebody's either screwing with meor I do have the power of life
and death and I'm not going touse it to kill people. So I'm
(50:43):
just not going to put pins in. That's my solution. One or the
other, it's going to stop thisone or the other. It will end.
But it was really good writing,incredibly good writing. Incredibly good writing,
good directing, good cinematography, goodacting. It really was good acting,
(51:06):
very good acting. I don't knowwhat I would even give this out
of ten. It's really good.I can't give it. I don't think
i'd ever give a movie a tenout of ten. But this is like
a nine. It really is.It's eight. It's a nine because there
isn't anything in it that besides thatlike first line that kind of took me
(51:29):
off about, like, oh,science has determined supernatural powers, Like no,
no, it hasn't. You know, let's move on. That's silly.
You didn't need that in there.If Chriswell said it in an Edward
movie, perfect, This is notan Edwood movie, and it wasn't Chriswell.
That doesn't make sense. And itwasn't supposed to be comedy. It
wasn't supposed to be comedy. Sono, that didn't work, So I
(51:50):
can't. I can't do that.Yeah, it was even the perfect length.
It was like seventy something minutes long. It was very short, but
it worked. It's seventy six minutes. Yes, it worked, and I'm
gonna I'm gonna keep geeking out aboutthis. And it's pacing was piecing,
was it was? Yeah, wewere never bored watching it. We never
(52:12):
said when is this scene gonna end? Never did And it's because there's always
dialogue happening. That's that's moving theplot forward, even though there's a lot
of phone calling at the time.That lots of phone calls. Yeah,
yeah, Robert was after the threewhen he changes the pins for the three
(52:32):
chairmen, he stays there like waitingfor long shots. There's a lot of
long shots, but he's surrounded bythe darkness of this hut. Like it
really does well to show his isolationagain like him and even that that was
perfectly done for that small you know, everything going shrinking down into this point
(53:00):
of light as you zoom away.Yeah, this is This is going on
my list of ones to watch again. I mean like again, as in
soon again to appreciate it again.And I think this is a really good
Halloween movie. Yeah, because thisis creepy. It touches on supernatural crep
(53:22):
and cemeteries? Is it supernatural?Who knows? We're not recording this around
Halloween. Don't don't give me wrong, folks, We're not. I'm just
saying like, as a good,honestly scary movie. This is a good
scary movie without any horror, anygross group tech horror in a classic sense.
(53:43):
It does well right in the modernsense, yeah the gross, yeah
nothing, there is. A kidcould watch this, it wouldn't know what
is going on. No, Ithink I think a kid could watch and
get about the same kind of levelof horror out of it that ate an
adult would like. Because I canrecommend a no, no, no,
(54:07):
but I'm not walking. Would ateenager would get what's going on in this?
Like this is this is a verygood movie. We're recommending it.
Please please watch this movie. Wewatched it for free on Amazon Prime and
it's free and it's it's arguably oneof the better movies we watched. We
(54:29):
think we went to go watch TheCurse of the Black Widow because I've picked
it up on Prime of that,and then you found out it was a
TV movie and that got crossed outof my numbers because we don't do TV
movies just because of the way thathow it's edited for commercial breaks breaks up
(54:49):
pacing and it makes it a littlemore choppy and for Earth versus Soup.
I've always thought that it would haveto be a very special TV movie for
us to re You like, rememberthat one movie that we watched that it
was like the Time Belt that hadyou know, Captain Pike from from the
original original Star Trek that they're jumpingback and forth in time and he's working
(55:13):
for that crazy spy agency and itlooks just like an original series Star Trek
episode that was originally supposed to bea TV movie, but they re edit
it for theatrical release, and itmade sense like that, the pacing was
fine. There weren't these like cliffhangercommercial crap that that really to me ruins
it. That's why we we haven'treviewed the Flash Gordon, uh, because
(55:37):
it's the the cliffhanger crap that justdoesn't that gets too easily resolved after the
cliff A lot of it doesn't getresolved and you're in the next Yeah,
it's ignore it. And and FlashGordon. No, I see, we
love Flash Gordon, but reviewing FlashGordon for Earth Versus Soup would be a
(55:58):
nightmare. Or like, what isthis movie trying to say? It's not
really trying to say anything. It'sjust trying trying to be fun. It's
just trying to be fun. ButI think where it was coming from too.
Those were in the front of someother movie. Yeah, sometimes,
but we're getting away from this movie. Please watch watch I Bury the Living
(56:20):
nineteen fifty eight worth every moment youspend on it. Please please please watch
any other thoughts, Darlene, No, there's nothing too much to say on
something this well put together. Yeah, credit, where credits do folks?
This? This really is worth thing? And I can't understand why I beat
(56:42):
whatever it is has a what isit? Five point seven? Oh yeah,
Internet movie database has Oh no,it's six point three out of ten.
Honestly, six point three out often is way too low for this
movie. This and I'm going toput in my damn rating. This is
a nine out of ten. Ijust put it in there. Boom,
yeah, this is that is waytoo low. So I'm erin, I'm
(57:07):
darlene. You have a good eveningand keep watching the skies. At no
point in your rambling incoherent response wereyou even close to anything that could be
considered a rational thought. Thanks forlistening to this episode of This Week in
Geek Hungry For more, check outour website. If this Week in Geek
dot Net you can subscribe to thepodcast, browse our Twitter and Instagram,
(57:30):
and leave your thoughts on today's topics. If you'd like to give us some
feedback, send us an email atFeedback at This Week in Geek dot Net.
Tune in next time, and remember, lower your shields and surrender your
listenership. We would be on aif you would join us. Thank you
for your cooperation. Good night,
I didn't electoral care at the mindbarble. You see, you see your
stupid mimes, stupid stupid Santa Claus. Long enough, we will bring him
to Mars. I've been afraid alot of times in my life, but
I didn't know the real meaning offear until until I kissed back me.
One thing, I'll be clear,it's not for man to interfere in the
ways. You've got good evening,everybody. In Welcome to Earth Versus Soup
(00:45):
Episode one, seventy seven, I'mAaron Polier, I'm Darlene. We actually
watched a pretty damn good movie today. We were surprised about it, mainly
because we had no expectations and itstarted off a little slow. And it
is a it gets under your skin. It's a horror. It is horror.
(01:11):
I don't think there's any science fictionat all in this. If there
is, it's very very nebulous.Let's say, but this firmly fits an
Earth versus Soup because this is ifa old school Twilight zoneer Outer Limits episode
(01:32):
had been made into a movie atthe time. This is I Bury the
Living from nineteen fifty eight, noteven an expiring tell Uh inspiring title no,
it's not no no, because itaccurately describes the movie. Though.
That's the thing it's it's not.It's not trying to pretend to be anything
(01:55):
that it's not, and it's actuallyreally damn good. But we need to
talk about, like the people thatmade this film before we get into it.
I Bury the Living, as Isaid, was released in nineteen fifty
eight, so this is in July. Okay. The writer is Lewis Garfunkel,
A Garfinkel, I'm sorry, andhe didn't do a ton of science
(02:19):
fiction horror. But what he didwas The Deer Hunter from nineteen seventy eight,
which is a pretty hardcore psychological film. Okay, Robert de Niro's in
it. It is a amazing moviethat is very difficult to actually watch because
of how intense it gets. Let'sput it that way. It's a good
(02:43):
movie, Darling. I know thatyou've never seen it because we tend not
to watch we tend not to watchVietnam era, well, Vietnam War movies,
but this is arguably one of themore important Vietnam movies, along with
like you know, Apocalypse Now andthings like that. Watching this movie,
(03:05):
you can get a sense of whatthe Deer Hunter the kind of intensity that
it can have. Okay, wehave two main actors in this, and
this is this is a movie thatreally doesn't have a female lead. There
is women in it, there are, yeah, but they're yeah, they're
just not there for the story.There they you know, just barely they
(03:29):
barely touch in the story. Becausethis movie theoretically could have a single character
on screen. This is a moviewhere you no, well, no,
well, you'd have to have thecaretaker. Okay, you can have two
people on screen. Ever, everyoneelse is on the phone. Yes,
(03:52):
you could do this movie as atwo person act on stage and it would
be completely doable. It would work. It would work because the movie is
not about relationships with people. Themovie is about a man coming to terms
with what he believes is his ownkind of supernatural power or a supernatural power
(04:20):
that's been forced upon him, andtrying to understand it or punish himself for
it. Does that make sense.You don't need other characters. This is
all about the actor Richard Boone,who is in a ton of stuff,
not a lot of science fiction orhorror, tons of stuff, being a
(04:43):
guy that becomes the manager of thisla. Yeah, the manager chairman of
this LA Cemetery Immortal Hills. ButI really do think it's still the cemetery
that's in La. Yeah, itis a real That's what I said.
It's an LA cemetery. It reallyis a real cemetery. That's the thing.
(05:03):
You can We just went on atrip to out east from Michigan and
we stopped at the cemetery that theyfilmed Night of the Living Dead, at
the original Knight of Living Dead,those scenes, and it's a real place.
You can go there. You canfind the stones that they stood in
front of and said, oh,this is our mother's grave, this is
(05:26):
the stone that Barbara leaned against.This cemetery is that kind of thing.
It's not that same cemetery, butI'm saying you can go there. The
only thing that I read that wasdifferent for the cemetery is the caretakers,
the management hut that was built,well, it was built for this film
and torn down after all. Idon't know. It's clearly a set.
(05:48):
Yeah, so I don't mind.But anyway, Richard Boone fantastic actor.
The only thing that's kind of scifi, fantasy, horror related that you
might know him from is he's thevoice of Smaug from the original Hobbit cartoon.
Okay, you go with that.Now, the Caretaker is played by
Theodore Bikel. He's a young manand they make him look incredibly old in
(06:14):
this. Well, I can't sayhe's a young man. He's in his
like late thirties, well mid thirties, and they make him look sixty seventy
years old, Yeah, they do. And he's supposed to be what forty
years running as the Caretaker, Yeah, something like that. You will know
him from things because he was ina lot of television, including Babylon Five.
(06:39):
Later on he was in Star Trekthe Next Generation for an episode,
but a lot of television, alot of movies in kind of bit parts.
Okay, you will recognize him ifyou see pictures of him, not
in makeup here, because he looksway too old and strange in this.
(07:00):
Yeah. He's even in My FairLady Darlene like Zoltan Carpathy, you love
My Fair Lady. So anyway,these are the two lead actors, do
they and and even before we getinto the plot, because this plot is
if you want to discover this movie, stop the review right now, because
(07:25):
this is a movie that I shouldn'tspoil for you at all. So if
you're interested in watching this before wego any further, we recommend this movie.
Yes, this is a very goodmovie. Thot movie. Yeah,
this is a thinking movie. Sostop now, go watch the movie and
(07:47):
come back. We're not gonna judgeyou for it for stopping the review,
but please come back and listen tous talk about it because you might start
thinking. Boy, I have alot to say about this movie. As
you said, Darlene, this iskind of a thinking movie. So so
let's let's get into the Let's getinto the spoilers. Now, let's get
into the actual plot of the movie. We both loved it. There is
(08:13):
a lot that works in this andeven before getting into the plot, can
I honestly, I can't think ofsomething that does not work in this movie.
This is a very effective, tightpsychological drama that has supernatural overtones.
I can't think of a single thingthat really does. The use of the
(08:35):
females really bothers me though, Ohthat they're just there to be like,
oh honey, you need you needto calm down, let's go on,
let's go on vacation. Yeah,well, I would say that they have
the one woman in this film.See I don't even know her name because
you have an Anne, right,you have the new wife of for five
(09:01):
seconds, but she gives you alaugh. Yeah, she's She is exactly
what you need to have in thatpart. There's no shame in the small
part that she played. Okay,and she did it well, Yeah,
she did well. It's the charactersand Craig played by Peggy Morror and she
is damn near forgettable in this film. That's that's the problem. And this
is this was one of her biggestroles. The problem is is in defense
(09:26):
of the movie, in defense ofthe movie, she didn't need to be
any more than the part that shewas playing. It's not like she was
written to be a major role andthen they sidelined her because she's an actress
and they want to give more meatiaroles to the guys. It's not like
(09:46):
that. It's they literally have verylittle for anyone outside of the two main
characters. I will put it thisway. If you wrote this book,
this this this thing today, thechairman Robert kap car Craft craft Craft could
be played by a roberta. No, it's exactly that is exactly how I
(10:13):
would rewrite this today. I wouldrewrite it as a woman becoming the manager
of this cemetery, okay, AndI would put the social commentary down about
sexism about women in in places ofauthority. I would actually put that subtext
in there. Okay. Would itchange the meaning of the film too much?
(10:35):
I don't. I don't think so. You'd have to be good about
it. You'd have to actually insteadof having a lieutenant that's of the local
thing, you'd have to have itto be an FBI agent. Yeah,
yeah, or c I But doyou do you think do you think the
subtext of bias against women in authoritywould be two? I mean, without
(11:00):
writing it and actually showing it isI can't say is it too heavy handed?
But do you think it would changethe meaning of the of this story
too much? We haven't even talkedabout the plot, but we're just kind
of riffing here because this is areally good movie. I don't think that
needs to be in that. No. I think you could literally just swap
out just a few conversations on thephone where she's getting irritated with because the
(11:26):
male actor in this got irritated attimes like yeah, you know, you're
right. The subtext would just bethere because of the change, I would
think, because you could keep thedialogue damn near exact. You could just
swap the under well. You couldhave her have a fiance, yeah,
(11:50):
a male, a guy that's comingin and telling her the exact same things
that and Craig told or on thephone or on the phone, and it
would actually not be sexist either,like the because what she does in the
film for the plot is to tryto slow down the descent of the main
(12:15):
character. She's trying to be thisgrounding element, and therefore she's not being
like the shrewish. You could evenhave it actually as the husband, or
she could have been the wife inthis case, in this movie, she
could have actually even been a wife. She could have been it didn't be.
That's how unimportant the outside characters are. Like, there's only one side
(12:39):
character that truly does have a littlebit of the George Uncle George. But
let's get let's just talk about theplot, because we're just riffing here.
People don't know what the hell we'retalking about. A thing on the screen,
Oh yeah, it goes. Webegin the movie in a graveyard and
a text crawl and there's a quotethat that includes science has learned man possesses
(13:00):
powers beyond the boundaries of the natural, and I wrote, no, no,
it hasn't. Like that's you know, if if science discovered it,
wing not beyond the realm of thenatural, because science has discovered it,
Like I laughed about because I satthere and watched him just sit there and
write like, oh my god,yeah, stop the film to write the
(13:22):
whole words, and then kept writingyeah, and I'm like, this is
taking a lot more longer, longerthan that. Yeah, it's because I
thought, oh, if Chriswell saidthis, that would be perfect. It's
the nonsense that Chriswell's spews in theEdwood movies. But the thing is Chriswell
has charisma and you'd be laughing aboutit, where this is just like a
(13:46):
supposed to be kind of a semiserious quote. Well it's supposed to be
a serious quote, not semi it'sa serious quote. And that ticked me
off anyway, So it started withme being kind of ticked off. It
quickly changed. So we see twomen walking into the grounds keeper's hut in
a graveyard, okay, and thatis Richard Boone playing Robert Craft and theater
(14:11):
by Kel playing Andy McKee. Okay, Andy McKee is this kind of a
Scottish guy. He's old, he'sgoing to be retiring soon. Robert Craft
is let's say, a young middleaged man who is up and coming in
the Craft family, who is knownin the local community for being what does
(14:35):
Uncle George say That they are civicminded, that with great power comes great
responsibility. He doesn't say. UncleGeorge doesn't say that. But it's basically
like, we have made money fromthis community and there as a department yeah,
department store, we've taken care ofthis community's needs. But that also
(14:56):
means that we need to give backto the community. And it's for two
reasons. Always had a person onthe board like as management for the cemetery,
because we take care of them frombirth to death. Now, the
reasons he gives of why the familydoes this is perfectly honest and fair.
He goes number one, it's goodfor business because it shows that we care.
(15:20):
Two, we care, and it'sbecause without this community we would be
nothing. Yeah, and you getthe fact in this conversation this is after
this caretaker and that. But youget a conversation that Robert Bob as Uncle
(15:43):
George, the main character. Yeah, Bob, Robert Kraft is reluctant to
be in this position. And it'snot because he's a dick. It's because
I think he's honestly uncomfortable at beingat a cemetery. I think that's it.
Like he's he seems to be actuallya very good business person. He
(16:04):
seems to be well connected in thecommunity. People seem to respect him,
not because of his family but becauseof him. So him coming off and
saying I really don't want to bein this position. After about the first
(16:25):
half hour, you kind of getthe point that, no, it's not
because he's a dick. It couldalso be the fact that he's having to
get Andy to retire. Yeah,and he didn't want to do that because
Andy has been such an important partof the cemeteries. And this is the
conversation you have. Immediately one maywalk into the hut or his office.
(16:49):
Andy is being told that it's timefor him to retire. So because he's
he's getting old and slow, he'sgetting full pension. Yeah, Robert says,
look, Andy, you are takencare of. We are going to
pay you your full paycheck for therest of your life. You will you
(17:10):
will not have to move. Yourhouse is paid for. His house is
just down the road. It's actuallyright outside the cemetery, he says,
because Andy's like, he's got aplot in the in the cemetery that was
provided for him. Like, thisfamily clearly cares about their employees. And
(17:30):
Andy is not really enthused about this. He's like, but what am I
gonna do with my life? AndRobert's like, whatever you want. And
it's not like we're throwing you outof the cemetery. Whoever we hire to
take your place. Now, whatdoes Andy do? He digs graves,
He actually carves headstones, and heprobably takes care of the grounds and he's
(17:53):
a groundskeeper. There's a lot tobe done to train whoever they bring in,
whatever young man they bring in,young man or young woman. He
actually does say, I'm sure there'stwo or three young men in the community
that would be really willing to learnfrom you. So Andy, the conversation
comes across that Andy's still going tobe actually actively working at the cemetery for
(18:15):
the next couple years, just notas the full time groundskeeper. He's training
something in Robert is giving him theability to hire someone himself. Yeah,
you make the choice, man,you make it. There is obviously a
(18:38):
lot of respect given to Andy,and honestly, all the conversations that Andy
has with people, you realize whythere's respect for Andy. He's kind,
he's considerate of other people, he'sa good conversationalist, he has a good
(18:59):
amount of humor that he's always he'salways making people smile around him. And
he says, you can't be anyother way in this business because you only
see people on their worst days.So you have to have this. You
have to be charming. And that'swhere he says, like you have to
find the right person for this jobbecause they can't be just anybody with a
(19:22):
strong back. And again, likethis is all in like a quick little
scene. This is a lot ofdialogue, but it builds these two characters
and it doesn't even take three minutes. No, this is solid writing.
This is solid writing. And thenAndy the caretaker shows Robert how to deal
(19:49):
with the map, okay, andhe shows him where the gun is kept
because sometimes unruly teenagers get into thecemetery after dark and you need to scare
them away and things have been gettingworse lately. Let's say, that's what
he says, so you never knowif you ever need it, And Robert
doesn't blink, He checks the gun, puts it away, and they also
(20:11):
have a conversation about the heat.Yeah, that the hut's always cold and
there's like a gasoline or kerosene heateror something. So the whole point it
doesn't work most of the time.The whole point of this, of this
hut is that one of the wallshas a map on it of the cemetery
and it shows the roads and bigdark lines, right and every plot and
(20:33):
every plot, every plot that iscurrently bought, has a name on it
and a pin and a pin.If the person is still alive, there's
a white pin in it in theplot. If the person is dead and
buried, there is a black pin, or at least, let's say dead,
there's a black pin in it.Otherwise it has no pin in it,
(20:56):
like it's an open plot. Soactually have a name, because that's
what happens in the first scene.The second scene, well right here,
what happens is is that no,there's already names on it. That's the
thing. There is a name onit, here because we see a couple
newlyweds come in in a really nicecar, and it turns out that it's
(21:23):
the new mister and missus Drexel.Okay, and I forget the it's Elizabeth
Drexel, and what's what's the StuartDrexel is the guy's name, and they
are young, they are just married, just married. They are now incredibly
wealthy because he the Crafts, hisfather the Crafts, and the Drexels as
(21:52):
families have known each other for awhile. But the Drexels have fallen on
hard times not because of a lackof money. It's because the father,
who was the real businessman of thefamily, had died young and left all
this money in trust for his son. Okay, and it's explained, and
I know this, this really doesn'thave much to do with the plot,
(22:12):
but it's an interesting play play byplay that Stuart couldn't get a hold of
any of the money until he wasmarried, and he bought a plot,
and he bought and it was officiallyassigned a plot for his wife in the
family's grave site. Okay, sohe had to Stuart and his wife came
(22:37):
out there to talk to Craft togo Hey, I need you to put
our pins in these two graves,because the lawyer then will know that I've
come out here to say she ismy wife. She will be buried in
the in the family plot, andtherefore the money is legally now mine.
(22:57):
I am going to go on ahoneymoon, but when I get back,
I'm gonna see to the business needsof the Drexels. Okay, great and
all through this. Elizabeth Drexels,just like I cannot believe that this is
what needs to happen for my husbandto get a hold of the money that
(23:18):
is rightfully his. She comes offof a little shrewish, but you kind
of also understand it. She's like, this is just it's not that she's
pissed that there is a hoop thathas to go through. It's that the
hoop is kind of creepy. Yeah, and she's getting a this is her
wedding present. Her wedding present isa grave. Yeah, it's it's a
little so this Scot's a little bitof comedy to it in this conversation.
(23:44):
Yeah, this is about the onlycomedy in the movie. Though it is
lighthearted. It made a smile.He drives off happiness. Okay, So
this is where we start learning thatRobert Kraft doesn't want to be in this
position, and the rest of thefamily says that he needs to do it
because the Craft family has always takenpart in community projects. This is what
(24:04):
we're already talking about. But rightbefore that scene, you have Robert putting
two black pins instead of white onesinto the Drexels plots. Yes, okay,
So Robert gets a phone call athis office and he then learns that
Stu and his new wife have died. So he goes out to the cemetery
(24:26):
and Andy is there to meet him, and he goes up up to the
map like Andy says, hey,in a car accident. Ye, from
what I understand, it was ina car accident, like very soon after
they left the cemetery. So Andysays, well, you best change their
pins. Robert goes up to themap and sees that he already had put
(24:48):
black pins in their spots, andhe thinks it's an eerie coincidence. He
doesn't like it. It's these twoyoung people died. This is where his
Robert's fiance shows up and Craig Yeah, and he ends up screwing around at
(25:15):
the map a little bit distracted byhis fiance and he ends up sticking a
black pin into because he had awhole bunch of black pins in his in
his hand basically to go and changethe pins, and then he just thumps
the map and one of these blackpins ends up sticking into another grave marker
(25:36):
call that's labeled w Isham. Andwe go to his We go to his
office, and he's a dollar maker. He's an old man who's a dollar
maker, toymaker, dollarmaker. He'ssewing a teddy bear. He's sewing a
teddy bear, so doll maker wouldn'treally work either. Okay, that's fair
fine, but he's making a teddybear. And then he's seemingly has a
(26:00):
stroke in front of us as heputs the eye in as as he puts
an eye into this teddy bear,and he dies. The next day,
we we we we're back at thecemetery and Andy is there polishing and polishing
the Direxler gravestone. He's also gottenthe heater working in the office, and
he's really cheerful about that. He'slike, oh, Bobby, look at
(26:22):
what I did. This office isgoing to be warm again. He doesn't
he calls him all the time,mister c He says, Bobby a couple
of times. He now thinks there'ssomething At this point, mister Kraft says
thinks that there's something wrong with themap because he's learned about Isham's death at
(26:48):
this point and also sees that hehad popped a black pin there somehow,
and he's like, Okay, thisis creepy. I want nothing to do
with it. I'm gonna go talkto uncle. So he goes to talk
to Uncle George and he says,look, I'm quitting, I'm done,
and he talks about how he's changedthese pins and people are dying, and
(27:11):
they both go out to the cemeteryand they test it by changing a pin
from white to black. Because UncleGeorge is completely this is nonsense. You
need to get over this crap.And we're gonna, we're gonna, We're
gonna show it. Henry throw Bridge. Yeah. So Robert calls his wife,
calls this guy's wife, his uHenry Trowbridge, and his wife answers
(27:33):
the phone, yeah, at eleventhirty, and she comes back down to
the phone because she's like, no, he's up in bed reading I'll go
get him and she comes back crying, and it turns out he's just died.
His body's still warm, but hehas just died. So police show
up at the graveyard the next morning. Obviously Robert Robert called them. Robert.
(27:56):
Yeah, Robert's like, look,I can't explain this. I think
I'm doing something. And you seethat Robert the the actor does this pretty
good. He is actually showing signsof depression of anxiety, anxiety, he's
cracking up. I believe he reallybelieves he's cursed. I wouldn't say cursed
(28:22):
because he doesn't even say cursed.He says that there's something about me and
this map that every time I dosomething with it. Well, that's how
I simplified it on that Yeah,because he's he's saying like, it can't
be this map by itself, becauseother people have used this map for years
(28:45):
and I'm sure that there's been mistakes. There's a reporter that's involved in this
too, Yeah, that that isfor the local paper, and he's very
nice to Robert, and he talksto him, going, this is this,
this can't be as something that it'sa super Yeah, it's not supernatural.
This is just walking in the graveyard and he's like, that's only
(29:07):
a piece of paper. Yeah,look, it's a coincidence. And plus,
like the two people that the twonewlyweds, Yeah that's that's a coincidence.
Sure, but the other two peoplewere old. We're very old,
and actuarily, it's not impossible tothink that they just both randomly died.
(29:32):
But then you're like, well,he randomly chose randomly hit these pins into
people's graves and just changed them toblack, and they died within hours,
like there's within that day. Butyeah, he can't really even explain it.
He just is like, this hassomething to do with me. Anyway,
(29:52):
His uncle George tells him that,look, just go on vacation.
Just go on vacation. When youget back, if you still want to
quit, then we'll talk about it. But the point is is that the
board of directors for the Craft familybusinesses is very serious about this civic minded
duties and they really would not wantyou to, uh to quit. And
(30:18):
at this point Robert's like, youknow what, I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna go on vacation, even thoughhis fiance is there and she's like,
yeah, let's go. We cando the things that we want. There's
things in Europe that we can do. And he's like, no, I
have to figure this out. There'slife and death happening here. And so
he takes it his responsibilities very heavily. He does, even though he doesn't
(30:44):
want to do that at this point. Now, the fact is is that
people have died and he feels responsiblesomehow for their deaths, and he's not
going to give up until he figuresit out again. Robert Kraft a good
guy, A good guy. Infact, I would go so far as
to say there's only one black hatin this This is this is weird compared
(31:07):
to most of the movies that we'veseen lately, where there aren't any good
there's no good people in it.Everyone in this movie is actually kind of
a good person except one. Well, and you don't know that one person.
Yeah, but I do say thatthe lieutenant is bad too. No,
No, even the reporter says,this guy is good because if it
(31:29):
was anybody else. He remember whenthey're out there talking, when the reporter
and him are out there talking,the reporter says, be glad it was
Lieutenant Claiborne that came out here.And talked to you, because if it
was anybody else, they had tolocked you away in a looney bin,
or they would have they would havetalked to the newspapers themselves and said that
you were crazy. Claiborne is agood guy, so he's understanding you're under
(31:52):
pressure and he's not gonna hold itagainst you. Again, the lieutenant is
a good guy. Yes, lateron he does one thing that is slightly
shady, but it's for a goodpurpose to prove something to everyone and to
figure out exactly what is happening.So he's actually being a good police officer
(32:13):
at that point. Let's say he'snot being a good friend, but he's
being a good police officer, andhe apologizes for it because again he's a
good guy too, and everyone likesRobert Kraft. So anyway, like this,
this movie is fantastic for this stuff. Let me go back into my
notes. Now, out at thecemetery, we have Robert putting pins in
(32:37):
and it's basically because, oh,that's because the three chairmen, the chairman
of the board are like rere requestRoberts to change all of their pins to
black because all three of us arenot together. We'll leave here go separate
(32:58):
ways, and there is no waythat if all three of us, there's
no way that all three of uscan die. I'm healthy, he's healthy.
He's healthy. And we all livein different is his uncle too,
Yeah, we all live in differentparts of town. There's no way that
this is real, and this willprove it. It's all been a coincidence.
(33:19):
So Robert goes out to the cemeteryand puts the black pins in and
the reporter calls out to the office. He thinks it's a good Uh.
They talk for a little bit aboutwhat this idea was, and the reporters
like, yeah, this is agood idea because this will put this crap
to to rest and you can geton with your life. I thought that
was uncle. No, that's that'sthe reporter. No, you're again,
you're jumping ahead of scene. Okay, that's the reporter saying this is a
(33:42):
good idea. So at this pointRobert really is cracking up, and he's
seeing the map basically getting larger andlarger on the wall. And I will
say there's a scene here that Ireally think that it happens. It's cliche
thing to happen, but what ittells you, is that a person is
(34:07):
going within themselves. Yeah, there'sthere's a couple of shots where like it
freeze frames in the like drags offinto the distance into black. Yes,
And it's very good because it's symbolicfor Robert feeling isolated, feeling out of
control, feeling surrounded by this darknessof death, and that he has no
(34:32):
ability to get out. So,even though that's I haven't seen it in
new films, was very effective here. It was very effective in here.
And if you wanted to use somethingas a film person, you'd have to
watch this movie and see how itis used. But it's very specifically used
(34:57):
because it's the person become insane.Yes. So I'm looking up who the
director is and it's a man namedAlbert Band. Wouldn't it be some photography
though? Yeah? The director,it's fine, did a lot, did
a lot, including some kind ofcrazy pitt in the Pendulum. Yeah,
(35:19):
doing some kind of crazy sword andsorcery stuff from the nineties Curse of the
Puppet Master. Wow, So Imean he's done some stuff. Let's see
here. Director of photography is FreendrickGately. Sorry I'm clicking away at I
mean, did a lot of work, but nothing that stands out to me
that I've seen really. So anyway, anyway, going back, going back
(35:44):
to the movie, we end uphaving there's lots of phone calls, and
each of the pins that he haschanged to black of this committee have died
except for Uncle George, who showsup. And George is scared because he's
(36:04):
learned about all these desks and that'swhy he like jumped in his car and
drove right to the cemetery. UncleGeorge is in a coat and the housecoat.
No, he's in a coat,but underneath it you see a housecoat,
Okay, yea and pajamas. He'sscared. He's scared. He's really
scared, and he wants to leavewith Robert, who says everyone dies on
(36:28):
the map's time, not theirs.And George his pin out of the Yeah,
he just takes the pin out,like he doesn't put a white pin
in there. But he just bringsthe next thing into question. What the
next thing is nobody can find UncleGeorge. Yeah, but during this time,
like Robert is freaking out inside theoffice hut and the thing goes too
(36:54):
small. Yeah, and this isthis is the problem he feels again.
He feels isolated, he feels outof control, and they keep the cops
keep calling him, and he keepscalling the cops, like keeping them informed
about what's going on. Yeah,he is calling from the cemetery. Everyone
(37:15):
knows where he is. Everyone understandsthat he's not killing people. And he
finally gets the courage to like leavethe room with the map and goes out
and he sees Uncle George's car stillrunning just against a tree with Uncle George
dead inside of it as he wasleaving the cemetery. So he moves the
(37:37):
body out of the driver's seat anddrives the car back to the office and
then gets on the phone and callsthe cops. I just found Uncle George.
He was dead in the cemetery.Why didn't you come out here?
And this has got to be fora while, So it's probably a while,
a few hours. It's got tobe a few hours. It takes
(37:59):
place because they were calling him tryingto find Uncle George. Yeah, so
at this point Robert really is losinghis mind. And there's some amazing cinematography
here where you have like the cameraclose in with these pins on the map,
(38:19):
like they're they're like huge soccer ballsized things. The map is like
covering the entire wall of this hutglowing. It starts looking like two eyes.
Yeah, because of the way theroads the roads are. One of
them is a spiral up to amonument. They talk about that in the
first thing. Oh, I seethis is really up to date because there's
(38:40):
the monument and then the other oneis and you could probably takes a loop
and with with something going in theroad going in the center. But he's
he's like talking to the map.He's like, you know, whytt whytt
why are you doing this? Youknow, why why do I have this
(39:02):
gift? Or or you know,how do I have this power? Because
it's not really like he doesn't.I don't think he says ever that it's
a curse. He talks about itas a power. I shortened it to
a curse up there in the thing. I don't know if he said it
or not. So finally he's he'ssweating and he's like holding all these pins
in his hands, and he's like, fine, if I have the power
(39:23):
of death with black pins, Ihave the power of life with white pins.
So he takes all the black pinsout of the grave sites that just
died, that have just died duringthis these incidents, and he puts in
white pins. Okay, And thisis where he's like imagining the map glowing
(39:45):
and it's like his shadow is beingcast behind him, like starkly from the
light coming off of this this map. Great some photography, very very good,
very good and good good acting,like very good acting. Gravestones start
falling outside and he hears them,so Robert, Robert grabs the pistol.
(40:09):
Yeah, and he leaves. Uh. He ends up. He ends up
going out into the cemetery after awhile, like he's he he blocks himself
into the office for a little whileand then gets up the courage to leave
to see what's happening outside because he'sheard all this commotion outside and it's at
(40:29):
least a few hours. Because he'sbuilt like a fire, there's like smoke
that finally kind of clogs the inside. Remember this office is cold all the
time. And in one of hisfits, he broke the heater, so
he like broke up some wood inside. It wouldn't light for him, so
he kicks it. Oh, okay, it's not that he broke it,
it's that it was He ends upgoing outside and all of the graves that
(40:52):
he had changed are now empty.They're like empty, open holes in the
ground. And that's distressing. Andhe goes back into the office like shaking.
He gets the gun out of thedesk again that's been tipped over,
and he puts the gun to hishead. But the phone right, but
(41:15):
the phone rings right when he's aboutto pull the trigger, and I'm like,
okay, here's the thing again.Oh we for did we forget a
spot where it was late Lieutenant Claiborneasked him to change a healthy man in
France's We could have, we couldhave. But yeah, there's there's another
test where he has to change somebodythat's off in Europe. That's a healthy
(41:37):
person that has that is nowhere nearthis and this is the bad thing of
We'll get to it. We'll getto it. Phone rings. It turns
out that uh, he hears thatthis guy, well, this is what
causes him to almost kill himself,is that this guy, uh, he
gets worded that this guy died inEurope, in France, in France,
(42:00):
and a healthy man in France.It turns out at this point that we
learned that Andy, the groundskeeper hasbeen killing everybody at this point that Robert
has been putting black pins because immediatelyand Andy says, I did not kill
The death in France is impossible.Yeah, the death is in France is
(42:23):
impossible because I didn't do it.And Robert's like, why did you?
Why have you been doing this?And Andy doesn't have a super good explanation
besides, like I don't want tobe put to pasture, and I,
you know, my life is tooimportant here and he seems even confused talking
(42:45):
about it, and Robert gets reallycalm and he's like, Andy, you
didn't do this. The map forcedyou to do it because I changed the
pins. And Andy's confused at thispoint because again, is what's the truth
here, Darlene. Well, wefind out what the truth is. We
(43:07):
sort of do, right, Wesort of do, but it is Robert
says, look, it's not yourfault. And Andy's gonna like he dug
the girl, he dug up thegrave, he dug up the graves to
get all these people out, andRobert thinks that it was still him that
(43:28):
made all of this happen, andAndy was angry and ends up dying here.
He ends up like having a heartattack from the stress of it all
and just kind of falls over,and there's this like great hanging light sequence,
like that's right above Andy's face,putting him in stark shadow, and
(43:49):
it's swinging like in Psycho, butthis is way before Psycho. Like this
is a fantastic thing. Oh,and I will say that we actually,
because of the graves, we actuallyknow what date it is. Oh yeah,
it's May twenty fourth, nineteen fiftyseven. Okay, So this is
where like Robert kind of slumps tothe floor and the lieutenant comes in,
(44:13):
and it turns out that the lieutenantset it up so Robert would get the
phone call about this death when itwasn't true. This guy is completely fine
in Europe. The point is thatthey wanted to force whoever was doing the
killing's hand out to make a mistake, and Claiborne thought it was thought it
(44:39):
was Andy Dooming doing it. Buthe's like, yo, look, this
is all solved. And Robert andhis wife his fiancee decide to leave.
They leave like hey, my god, I'm like so sorry for Robert being
put into this place. Oh dude, Robert, here's a therapy, because
here's the thing, Like the mapin this time, you didn't go through
(45:01):
therapy unless I know. But thepoint is is that like as they leave,
like the map falls off the wallin like a weird way that just
seems sinister. So is was itthe map causing Andy to kill? Does
it have a range? Do weknow? Question mark? But it is
a The end point is this isa This is a hands down fantastic movie,
(45:25):
hands down fantastic movie. And aswe said, like before we started
really talking, I can't think ofanything that really truly doesn't work. You
said, well, there's no realfemale parts in this the fiance she's just
so minimal. But like I said, you could do this as a two
person play. You don't need.Just the fact that there isn't a female
(45:50):
part in this makes sense because youwant to, at least for this time,
for nineteen fifty eight, somebody that'sin charge of the cemetery is gonna
be a guy, And whoever isdigging graves is going to be a guy.
Okay, now today, totally differentstory, right, whoever's likely digging
graves or as the groundskeeper still likelywould be a guy. And that's big
of a That big of a cemeterywould have more than one caretaker too.
(46:17):
Yes, today today, today,but this would be a different movie today.
You could make it very similar.But I don't you know what,
I don't want to see it thisremade like as a stage production, sure,
that's what I was thinking, Butas a movie, No, this
is perfect the way it is.I do understand what her part was was
(46:39):
to keep him from actually going totallyinsane. Yes, she was grounding him
a little bit, but Andy andthe reporter was doing the same thing.
Everyone really was doing that, evenUncle George and the committee, because they
were trying to be like, let'sbe rational about this, being irrational thinking
(47:00):
a map and you have special powers. The point is that, yes,
you could take this entire movie asRobert being irrational and Andy screwing with him
out of some sort of like misplacedrage about being put to pasture, even
though he was being taken care of, like no, we're not cutting your
(47:21):
pay. You have full pay forthe rest of your life. But on
top of that, he didn't wantto stop doing what he's doing. Yeah,
but would that really lead him toThat's the other side of this is,
does his confusion about his own rationalefor doing this lead to the idea
(47:42):
that maybe this map and Robert togetherhave some sort of power. That's the
other take on this movie, whichis possible. But me being the person
I am, I tend to goalong the lines of it wasn't supernatural at
all, that this really was justkind of confused old man who had misplaced
rage. And this is a fantasticpsychological thriller. That's what I took it
(48:06):
in a fantastic psychological thriller, becausethis doesn't need to be supernatural. This
is all inside Robert's head and Andy'smisplaced. How would you do? But
then you put your Like I said, this is a thought process. What
would happen to you if you werein Robert's place? I destroy the map
(48:29):
like the first time, something crazythat I could not explain. But that's
the thing that keeps you. Yeah, I would just like I would destroy
the map. There would be noquestioning. It's like, okay, well,
this thing is like a totem ofevil or something else. You had
to keep the information that I wason that map. If I really don't
want that position like Robert did,I'll destroy the map. Yeah, it
(48:51):
might get me some shit, butin the end, this thing is terrifying
me. I'm clearly not able tohandle this position of being surrounded by death
and no one's believing me. SoI'm just going to I'm gonna I'm going
to write exactly what I've done down. I'll try to keep all the information
about the map absolutely but that mapis gone, and you would have taken
(49:15):
the vacation or ought to have takenthe vacation, and then the movie would
have continued happening anyway as soon asyou got back from vacation, at least
with this movie. The point isthat I would have destroyed the map.
Andy would not have had any kindof uh access to it, because my
first idea would be somebody is usingthe map to screw with me. Not
(49:37):
that it's supernatural, but that mapis gone, no one's going to have
access to it, and they're assure as hell not going to be a
gun just sitting in a drawer becausesomebody's screwing with me. Like that's how
I would handle that situation. Now, how Andy would handle that at that
point, I don't know. Hewould probably have to figure out a different,
(49:59):
weirder way of dealing with it.But then again, I'm not going
to be willy nilly about putting pinsinto a board. If I think that
somehow every time I put a pinin, somebody dies, I don't put
pins in because even though I ama rational human being director, and at
that point in time that Robert wasnot wanting to put the pins in for
(50:21):
those three I wouldn't have done thatboard down. I'm not a person that
believes in supernatural stuff in general,right, So, but even then,
it's like somebody's either screwing with meor I do have the power of life
and death and I'm not going touse it to kill people. So I'm
(50:43):
just not going to put pins in. That's my solution. One or the
other, it's going to stop thisone or the other. It will end.
But it was really good writing,incredibly good writing. Incredibly good writing,
good directing, good cinematography, goodacting. It really was good acting,
(51:06):
very good acting. I don't knowwhat I would even give this out
of ten. It's really good.I can't give it. I don't think
i'd ever give a movie a tenout of ten. But this is like
a nine. It really is.It's eight. It's a nine because there
isn't anything in it that besides thatlike first line that kind of took me
(51:29):
off about, like, oh,science has determined supernatural powers, Like no,
no, it hasn't. You know, let's move on. That's silly.
You didn't need that in there.If Chriswell said it in an Edward
movie, perfect, This is notan Edwood movie, and it wasn't Chriswell.
That doesn't make sense. And itwasn't supposed to be comedy. It
wasn't supposed to be comedy. Sono, that didn't work, So I
(51:50):
can't. I can't do that.Yeah, it was even the perfect length.
It was like seventy something minutes long. It was very short, but
it worked. It's seventy six minutes. Yes, it worked, and I'm
gonna I'm gonna keep geeking out aboutthis. And it's pacing was piecing,
was it was? Yeah, wewere never bored watching it. We never
(52:12):
said when is this scene gonna end? Never did And it's because there's always
dialogue happening. That's that's moving theplot forward, even though there's a lot
of phone calling at the time.That lots of phone calls. Yeah,
yeah, Robert was after the threewhen he changes the pins for the three
(52:32):
chairmen, he stays there like waitingfor long shots. There's a lot of
long shots, but he's surrounded bythe darkness of this hut. Like it
really does well to show his isolationagain like him and even that that was
perfectly done for that small you know, everything going shrinking down into this point
(53:00):
of light as you zoom away.Yeah, this is This is going on
my list of ones to watch again. I mean like again, as in
soon again to appreciate it again.And I think this is a really good
Halloween movie. Yeah, because thisis creepy. It touches on supernatural crep
(53:22):
and cemeteries? Is it supernatural?Who knows? We're not recording this around
Halloween. Don't don't give me wrong, folks, We're not. I'm just
saying like, as a good,honestly scary movie. This is a good
scary movie without any horror, anygross group tech horror in a classic sense.
(53:43):
It does well right in the modernsense, yeah the gross, yeah
nothing, there is. A kidcould watch this, it wouldn't know what
is going on. No, Ithink I think a kid could watch and
get about the same kind of levelof horror out of it that ate an
adult would like. Because I canrecommend a no, no, no,
(54:07):
but I'm not walking. Would ateenager would get what's going on in this?
Like this is this is a verygood movie. We're recommending it.
Please please watch this movie. Wewatched it for free on Amazon Prime and
it's free and it's it's arguably oneof the better movies we watched. We
(54:29):
think we went to go watch TheCurse of the Black Widow because I've picked
it up on Prime of that,and then you found out it was a
TV movie and that got crossed outof my numbers because we don't do TV
movies just because of the way thathow it's edited for commercial breaks breaks up
(54:49):
pacing and it makes it a littlemore choppy and for Earth versus Soup.
I've always thought that it would haveto be a very special TV movie for
us to re You like, rememberthat one movie that we watched that it
was like the Time Belt that hadyou know, Captain Pike from from the
original original Star Trek that they're jumpingback and forth in time and he's working
(55:13):
for that crazy spy agency and itlooks just like an original series Star Trek
episode that was originally supposed to bea TV movie, but they re edit
it for theatrical release, and itmade sense like that, the pacing was
fine. There weren't these like cliffhangercommercial crap that that really to me ruins
it. That's why we we haven'treviewed the Flash Gordon, uh, because
(55:37):
it's the the cliffhanger crap that justdoesn't that gets too easily resolved after the
cliff A lot of it doesn't getresolved and you're in the next Yeah,
it's ignore it. And and FlashGordon. No, I see, we
love Flash Gordon, but reviewing FlashGordon for Earth Versus Soup would be a
(55:58):
nightmare. Or like, what isthis movie trying to say? It's not
really trying to say anything. It'sjust trying trying to be fun. It's
just trying to be fun. ButI think where it was coming from too.
Those were in the front of someother movie. Yeah, sometimes,
but we're getting away from this movie. Please watch watch I Bury the Living
(56:20):
nineteen fifty eight worth every moment youspend on it. Please please please watch
any other thoughts, Darlene, No, there's nothing too much to say on
something this well put together. Yeah, credit, where credits do folks?
This? This really is worth thing? And I can't understand why I beat
(56:42):
whatever it is has a what isit? Five point seven? Oh yeah,
Internet movie database has Oh no,it's six point three out of ten.
Honestly, six point three out often is way too low for this
movie. This and I'm going toput in my damn rating. This is
a nine out of ten. Ijust put it in there. Boom,
yeah, this is that is waytoo low. So I'm erin, I'm
(57:07):
darlene. You have a good eveningand keep watching the skies. At no
point in your rambling incoherent response wereyou even close to anything that could be
considered a rational thought. Thanks forlistening to this episode of This Week in
Geek Hungry For more, check outour website. If this Week in Geek
dot Net you can subscribe to thepodcast, browse our Twitter and Instagram,
(57:30):
and leave your thoughts on today's topics. If you'd like to give us some
feedback, send us an email atFeedback at This Week in Geek dot Net.
Tune in next time, and remember, lower your shields and surrender your
listenership. We would be on aif you would join us. Thank you
for your cooperation. Good night,
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