Weirdhouse Cinema: Deathmoon

When you think of movies filmed in Hawaii, you probably think of vacation flicks and dramas, but has the Aloha state ever given us a werewolf film? Yep, in this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe watch 1978’s “Deathmoon” starring Robert Foxworth.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And Oh, I
feel a cool Pacific breeze ruffling the hairs on my
forearm because it's time to find the Beast of the

(00:25):
beaches in in Uh I stalled out there. We're doing
a Hawaii movie, that's right. Um Now, when when we
say Hawaii movie, what do you think of me? Maybe
you think about classic Hawaii dramas or Elvis movies. Maybe
you think of big budget films like Jurassic Park, where
they need a lush jungle environment, maybe some flyovers, so

(00:46):
they go to the Hawaiian islands. But you might be wondering,
where are the b movies? Where specifically are the monster movies. Yeah,
this is a really good question. So a lot of
movies and TV shows are shot in Hawaii because it's
a it's a convenient place to get a tropical looking
jungle location, but they're not actually set in Hawaii. I
was trying to think of movies that are set in Hawaii,

(01:09):
especially in in our sort of wheelhouse, the closest. The
first thing that came to my mind actually is do
you ever see Big Jim McClain. No, but I think
I think I remember a Mystery Science Theater jokes about it.
It was a John Wayne anti communist propaganda thriller where
he plays I think John Wayne is like an agent

(01:31):
for the House on American Activities Committee, um, and he's
just running around punching comy rats in Hawaii. Okay, No,
I haven't seen that, but that does sound part of
the course in terms of the whole Hawaii movies that
you find. Yeah. The other main thing in terms of
Hawaii B movies, I was trying to think of Hawaii
horror movies. There's almost nothing that came to mind except

(01:52):
I think Snakes on a Plane begins in Hawaii. But
the but the the thing that really comes to my
with Hawaii B movies is not be horror or be
sci fi, but be action movies. They're like seemingly a
million action movies in the eighties set in Hawaii that
are about drug dealers, and they're the sort of like

(02:13):
Bikinian machine guns sub genre. Okay, yeah, yeah, the Bikinian
machine guns genre being one that can basically take place anywhere.
But it helps if it's a if it's essentially a
vacation uh type environment, if it's tropical, if there's if
their palm trees in the background right right. The bad
guys always Dan Hadeia or somebody like that as a

(02:35):
as a drug kingpin. Yeah, so I was. I was
recently in Hawaii, and while I was there, I was
pondering this because this is what I do on on trips,
and I wonder what what kind of monster movie was
filmed here? You know? And uh, I actually I found one.
I found a good one, or a good selection for
weird house cinema. It is a werewolf movie set in

(02:58):
Hawaii and filmed excl elusively in Hawaii, entirely on the
island of Kawaii. Wow. So I don't know if I'd
go with you on good one, but it is a
good selection. It gives us a lot to talk about, well,
you know, being that I think it is the I mean,
if you don't count snakes on the plane, and I
don't really count snakes on the plane. Given that it's
like the only monster movie, and given the wide um uh,

(03:21):
the wide swath of quality that it could occupy, I
feel like it lands in a comfortable place like it's
it's watchable. Uh, it has decent actors in it, it's
competently directed. Uh sort of said, yeah, I mean it's
it's it's we'll discuss here. It's a TV movie, so
it has that that TV competency to it, you know,

(03:43):
like that there were network checks in place here. Um.
So yeah, I feel like it. It passes the litmus
test um and it it is I think the best
Hawaii monster movie. I challenge anyone to show me a
better one out of those Elvis movies count No, no, well,
those are great examples. They they're not monster movies. But yes,

(04:04):
two of of the Elvis Hawaii movies are of particular
note here in Blue Hawaii in ninety six Paradise Hawaiian style.
They were shot on the Isle of Kauai, specifically at
Coco Palms Resort, which was a famous resort of the
day with all sorts of Hollywood ties and controversy due

(04:24):
to ancestral land claims by Native Islanders. Uh this, uh,
this is actually the location the filming location of our
movie today, our Wearwolf film was filmed at Coco Palms Resort.
You see it almost all the time in the film.
Um the ruins of it are still around the day
because it was it was destroyed by Hurricane and Ikey
in the most powerful hurricane to strike Hawaiian recorded history,

(04:48):
and as of this recording, it has never been rebuilt.
There have been some efforts and some plans, but nothing
has come to pass, so it just remains ruins. This
is funny because some of the bad Hawaiian action movies
I've seen feature ruins of a multi story building that
looks kind of like this. I wonder if those things

(05:08):
were also shot here. Well, it's kind of like when
we're talking about in our our Florida movie trilogy that
you have, you have any kind of place that has
a very um in a very hot climate, and you know,
proximity to the ocean and a vacation industry, you're gonna
end up with these kind of ruins there and and
and that's just irresistible to filmmakers, especially if you're you

(05:32):
need some sort of lonely location for your monsters or ghosts.
I guess so. But but we should be clear that
in this movie that we're talking about today, the resort
is still active and intact. It is not it is
not a ruin like this, it's a place with the
golf course. In fact, it is that they show off
many aspects of the resort, almost as if maybe the
resort was was paying to be in the film or something.

(05:54):
I'm not actually alleging that, but well, it's prominently featured
in the credits. But but again, there were Hollywood connects
and there. I think it was kind of like, you know,
a number of movies have been shot here, so clearly
this was the place to shoot your movie. So this movie,
I don't think we actually gave the top line yet.
It is called Death Moon, and like many made for

(06:14):
TV movies for the late seventies early eighties, this is
a very title first kind of thing. We've we've talked
about poster first type movies, title first type movies. This
fits right in there. I am convinced that there was
a title before there was a script. It was like,
give me a TV movie called Death Moon, and the
writers said, okay, boss, yeah, yeah, a TV movie. It

(06:35):
originally aired. I looked this up May thirty one, seventy eight,
in the nine pm time slot on CBS, following an
episode of The Incredible hahul So this is a Wednesday
night TV werewolf movie. Now, if you speak English but
not Dutch, an easy way to make any film more
amusing is to watch it with Dutch subtitles, which we

(06:56):
did because the version that we found had had them
from I guess maybe it was a Dutch TV broadcast.
I'm not sure, but the but the great thing about
Dutch is if you're an English speaker, you won't understand
most of it, but you get a few cognates that
are quite amusing. And so the first thing I learned
upon watching Death Moon was that the Dutch translation for

(07:17):
the English word workaholic is work beast w e r
K b e E s T. I think technically would
be like work based, but you know, work beast. It's
what's for dinner. Yes, this this was very exciting for
me as well, because on one level, it's it's perfect,
Like if it's it actually makes the movie better to

(07:39):
have the term work beast thrown in there, because it's
about a workaholic who goes on vacation and turns into
a werewolf. Uh so it's it's perfect to think of
him as a work beast. Um, do you think it
was trying to say something I don't know. I mean,
I mean, I imagine, you know, when you translate a
film and you do the subtitles, you have a certain
amount of leeway, and maybe that was part of it.

(08:01):
They were like, you know, we could they could have
just gone with a straight translation of of Workaholic perhaps
or some other translation, you know, but they realized work
Beast was perfect. Uh so you know, you know, tip
of the hat to whoever did these Dutch subtitles back
in the day. Okay, so the reason you picked this
movie out is because it's basically the only be monster

(08:22):
movie that is set in Hawaii that you could find.
But the other thing that's important to talk about with
it is it's a It's a great example of a form,
which is the late seventies made for TV movie. Like
late seventies and early eighties made for TV movies are
very interesting to me in a lot of ways. One
that always comes to my mind when I think about
other sort of prototype examples of this is the nine

(08:45):
four Wes Craven directed movie Invitation to Hell, which is
about a family who like moves to a planned community
I think because the dad gets a new job and
they try to join a country club, but it's actually
run by eight. Okay, that sounds about right for you know,
some of Wes Craven's work that was it at least

(09:06):
got into a shallow amount of social commentary. You know, yeah,
uh and and maybe it's just me, I wonder what
you think about about this. It seems to me that
a thing that a lot of these late seventies early
eighties made for TV horror movies have in common is
that they are somewhere between a regular low budget feature

(09:27):
horror film and one of those like social trend segments
on sixty minutes and by the ladder. I mean, it's
kind of hard to define, but they often have this
element of a segment on sixty minutes that would be
like you may have noticed more urban professionals moving from
the East Coast to the Bay Area. That's because of
a burgeoning new industry based on this known as a semiconductor.

(09:50):
They're used in everything from calculators to clock radios, and
you know, and like uh and and so that they
base a movie around that, it often just feels like
it has this ephemeral connection to some kind of trend
of that people might be observing or talking about that week. Yeah, yeah,
I feel I feel what you mean. And also the

(10:10):
idea that this movie in particular came out on a
Wednesday night, just you know, just out in the middle
of nowhere, and then it's gone. You know. It's very
ephemeral in that sense. Yeah, yeah, And that they often
feel like they've got some kind of very loose news
peg or they often feel like, um, like they partially

(10:31):
exist to educate you about a subject, like a particular
place or you know, so in this example, it could
be the Hawaiian island that's talking about. Though, I think
whatever you would learn from this movie would be entirely wrong, right, Yeah.
About the only thing you could learn that would be
correct is like, here's this resort. Like I'm actually looking
at this resort, and I could at the time, I

(10:53):
could travel there and see the same things that are
werewolf sees. But like, if you're a credulous you could
get the impression that this movie is may be teaching
you something about like Polynesian religious traditions or something, which
again I don't think it is. It absolutely is not. Um.
I will say there are some some nice scenes of
them driving around, uh that that at least a little

(11:14):
bit give you an idea of the beautiful landscape there.
And then also there's some neat there's some neat scenes
of them walking around downtown in a little town there
in Kauai, which, especially given that it's the late nineties seventies, uh,
it feels like a time capsule, and ultimately, like this
whole movie feels like a time capsule, especially when you're

(11:34):
watching a VHS transfer from a like a Dutch or
European VHS release, um, you know, from back in the day.
Because I don't think we've stressed this yet. But I
don't think you can get this film anywhere today legitimately,
I think, I mean, the best you can do is
you can find it where we found it on YouTube,
where I think it's been uploaded since for people to

(11:55):
to share and enjoy. But yeah, a DVD, a Blu ray,
I don't think it's ever happy and I'd love, I'd
love for it to happen, but yeah, I think this
it remains this kind of echo from the past. Another
thing that's extremely common about these late seventies early eighties
made for TV thrillers is that they pretty much all
have something like an elevator pitch that you could deliver

(12:17):
very succinctly. There the what's the name for that format?
It's like Dracula in Miami or something, you know, just
like X in Y Yeah, and and and in that
respect it fits nicely into um into a like a
TV promo, you know, Uh, stay tuned after incredible, incredible
hawk for Death Moon, what happens if a if a
werewolf lands on a holiday in Hawaii, that sort of thing.

(12:40):
And then you're watching the film and I will say
I tried really hard to find such a clip to
find like a network trailer for this movie, and I couldn't.
I could not find anything. Uh So, if anyone out
there has it on some like old VHS or something,
I sent it to us because I'd like to hear it.
So we couldn't find a trailer or promo of any mine,
but maybe we can give you just a little bit

(13:02):
of audio from the film. Let's do it. That was
Lieutenant Court from the police. I wanted to know if
I treading think during the night not a struggle? Did
you now? I was out of it again? I crashed.
Well are you all right now? I am? But what

(13:28):
what is it? H? The lieutenant didn't tell me this,
but I overheard a couple of his men talking in
she was torn apart, torn apart. I don't know what
you just heard, presumably something really enticing. UM uh yeah,
I'll be excited to find out what it was. But yeah,

(13:51):
let's go ahead and get into the people who brought
this film to life. First up, the director Bruce Kessler
born Kesler. Really he has the late twentieth century TV pedigree.
He directed episodes of The Monkeys, Mission, Impossible, Coultrack, The
night Stalker, Barnaby Jones, Chips, night Rider, you name it,
just just about any if you watched Mystery Science Theater

(14:13):
back back in the nineties, just about any old TV
show that the Joel or and or Mike would reference
and you wouldn't know as a child what those shows were,
but you laughed anyway. Like all those shows, Kessler had
his his fingers in um. He even directed an episode
of The Master Ak Master Ninja starring Levan Cliff, which

(14:34):
there was like a movie cutoff that was featured on
Mystery Science Theater, I think earlier in his career, So
a lot of the TV work is in the seventies
and the eighties, but earlier in his career he did
a couple of exploitation films. Yeah, he directed the nineteen
sixty eight biker exploitation film Angels from Hell, as well
as a film that I haven't seen, but it has

(14:54):
a certain um uh, it has a certain mystique about it.
Nine Simon King of the Witches, which starred Andrew Pine. Yeah.
I haven't seen this either, but I've read about it.
It is supposedly a kind of hippie culture expose that
was promoted as like a Manson family type film to
cash in on that panic. But but it wasn't really

(15:15):
about that. It's just about like a guy who believes
he can do magic and he ends up hanging out
with hippies. Yeah, yeah, I think that's pretty much the vibe.
But I was poking around in Bruce Kessler's career and
found some some very interesting recurring themes. So one was
that Kessler also directed a Christmas episode of the show

(15:35):
t J. Hooker, remember the detective show starring um William Shatner,
and the the episode was called Sleigh Ride s L
A Y, which is the source of any images you
may have seen of William Shatner in a Santa suit.
I've attached one for you to look at here, Rob,
he looks the Santa is not happy. Yeah, he's intense.
And then in the same year, so these are both

(15:57):
nineteen eighty three, you mentioned that he did episodes of
Night Right or his Christmas themed episode of night Rider
called Silent Night k and I g H T. I
was unable to discover if Hasselhoff ever dressed up as
bell Snickel in this one, but he is he? In
eighty three, he did two different Christmas episodes of cop shows,

(16:18):
So I want to know the story behind that. Did
he what did he? He's like, Oh, I've got a
Christmas guy this year, you know, look up with all
the Santa suits and everything you need. Or maybe he's
just leaning into Christmas. Yeah, it's just like I'm in
the I'm in the spirit. Give me some give me
some Christmas episodes, right like he got ah, he ate
a bad candy Cane and then he just couldn't stop.

(16:39):
But in addition to Kessler's TV work and his early
exploitation movies, it seems like in the late seventies he
went on a minor binge of made for TV cinema.
So this was like seventy seven seventy eight, including this
beauty I came across called Cruise Into Terror from seventy eight.
I'm going to read the IMDb synopsis and Egyptian stark

(17:00):
cophagus that is, cargo on a pleasure cruise ship has
a secret. It contains the son of Satan, and its
effects start to make the ship's passengers behave Strangely, Now
that that lines up rather interestingly well with our movie today,
like vacation, like typical stereotypical American vacation plus classic movie monster.

(17:22):
What do you know? I mean, you're right on the money.
I looked this up, except that this movie looks even
more dreadful than than than the werewolf in Hawaiian movie.
Cruise Into Terror has on its side Ray Milan, who
played the nasty old creep in Frogs, Remember the old
man who's yeah yeah, yelling at frogs towards the end,

(17:43):
ye right, And so in this movie. I found it. Also,
this has been ripped and put up on the internet.
So I was poking around and Cruise into Terror and uh, yeah,
it just looks awful. But there was a very funny
scene of Ray Milan yelling at a sarcophagus. Al right,
well that at yeah, it's like I don't know if
it doesn't look fully watchable. But the scenes towards the

(18:04):
end where it's like a bad copy of the King
tut sarcophagus and he's just you know, he's like holding
an axe and being like you've haunted me for thirty years.
Oh wow. Alright, well, let's talk about the writers here briefly.
J Benson and George Shank. Benson was mostly a career
TV producer, and Shank did a lot of TV production

(18:26):
work as well, but but wrote a lot more. And
when I say he wrote, we're talking forty five episodes
of n C I S which you may not watch,
but somebody in your family watches it. I assure you. Uh.
He also served as ep on in C I S,
and he co wrote ninety six Future World, a sequel
to Westworld, is in C I S. The one that

(18:48):
has the it's like a lab and there's a goth lady.
I think, so yeah, and it has um Oh, I
can't remember his name. George Harmon said his name Mark Harmon.
I think Mark Harmon's in it. Maybe I'm wrong, I'm
not sure I know who that is. Yeah, I don't
know this show. I've only seen it on while visiting relatives.
Is it about goths who solve crimes? No, there's just

(19:10):
a goth on the team, on the tech team. There's
one god. It is a team including a goth who
solves crimes. Yes, okay, I think it stands for National
Crimes in Space or anyway it exists. And yeah, so yeah,
I mean it's a highly successful show, and and one
of the writers of Of of Death Moon went on

(19:32):
to be a part of it, so we know we're
in good hands. Yeah. Well, shall we talk about our
our actors then, right? Okay, So the main character in
this movie is a work beast named Jason Palmer, and
he has played by this guy, Robert Foxworth, who I
don't think I was really familiar with. Yeah, he uh,
you know, after I started looking into him and I'm like, oh, yeah,

(19:54):
I totally know this guy. But when I first encountered
our leisure suit wearing hero here, I wasn't sure i'd
seen him before. He just kind of looked like some
different people. But he's perhaps best known to modern film
fans as the voice of Ratchet in the Transformers movies,
which I don't even know what ratchet sounds like, so
I don't know if that's a good thing or a
bad thing. Well, unfortunately, all this is doing is making

(20:17):
me imagine other Transformers voice actors in this lead role,
so like Peter Cullen, the guy who does Optimus Prime,
or or oh you know that, you really could have
gotten a good movie out of the guy who does
the voice of Star Scream turning into a werewolf. At anyway,
it's a major film, so good for for Foxworth, but

(20:37):
also he uh for I guess for our older viewers,
you might recognize him as the character Chase on the
primetime soap opera Falcon Crest, which ran from one through seven.
He also played Bernard at Chinawith on six Ft Under
I don't think I watched enough six Ft Under two
to catch him on that, and he also had a
recurring role on The West Wing m but he also

(21:00):
has on The West Wing um he was one of
these characters that popped up for like three or four episodes,
I think, so I'm assuming he played a politician or
maybe a maybe a journalist, but I can't say for sure.
Senator George Montgomery. Okay, I'm not all right, Okay, but
he also has some strong TV genre credentials. He played

(21:21):
Victor Frankenstein in the nineteen seventy three TV movie, and
he guest starred in sequest DSV Babylon five, Star Trek,
Deep Space nine, and Star Trek Enterprise. He was also
in the film's Damien Omen two and was the lead
in nineteen seventy nine prophecy the Mutant Bear picture. Oh

(21:41):
I never saw that one. Uh. And the thing the
most recent thing that I definitely saw him in he
was in a really fun episode of The Outer Limits
from the nineties in which he played a bunker bound
US president during an alien attack, like a very unpleasant
US president, you know, it's very grumpy and demanding, uh,
and he's trying to deal with the fact that the

(22:02):
world is being attacked by aliens and you didn't know
if you should trust the aliens, trust his advisors, etcetera.
A fun episode. Uh. Well, I will say in this movie, Uh,
I don't know if this can really be chalked up
to to Foxworth as an actor, but the character he
plays in this film really has no identifiable vices or
virtues except for the fact that he's a work beast.

(22:24):
That's that's pretty much his entire personality. Yeah, I mean,
he he comes off likable without you know, a tremendous
amount of dimension to his character. But yeah, from it
seems like a lot of times in I don't know,
I guess you can go either way with a werewolf movie.
Sometimes in a werewolf movie, the beset individual is just cursed.
You know, they're in the wrong place at the wrong time,

(22:45):
they're out on the moors, they get bit by a werewolf,
and now they're stuck with it, and you know, it's
not really a commentary on their vices, etcetera. Is just
what they got. And I guess that's more of what
we have here with the Jason character. But but in
other cases, it seems like they you lean more into
the idea of of caanthropy as as a as a
as an overt physical manifestation of inner monstrosity. So in

(23:10):
this he's uh, yeah, I think as an actor he's
perfectly fine in this. He has amazing hair. Um, he's
a great at conveying a sort of uh, you know,
detached unraveling beneath his his style and he does. He's
really rock in the seventies style on this because he's
he's legitimately wearing a leisure suit, uh in in a
number of scenes, which I feel like it is rare

(23:30):
to really find in the wild in your cinema. You know,
there's a lot of talk of leisure suits, but you
kind of forget what one looks like. Well, behold, here's
Jason Palmer, our leisure suit wearing entertainment agent who might
just be overworking himself. He's an entertainment agent. That's what
his career is. I believe that's correct, or maybe I
imagined that. I might have imagined that I thought he

(23:53):
was in real estate. Oh wait, you're right, somebody is
an entertainment agent in this right, I believe you, But
I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong on that. Anyway, his
there's not really you're not really given much to go
on he has. I think maybe he does mention real
estate once. But basically he is a stereotypical successful American
business type. Yes, uh, with very very nice head of

(24:13):
curly hair and uh. And I gotta say the main
thing that I appreciated in this movie was the jiggle
that he does when he starts about when he's like
about to wolf out, you know, the moon cuts in
between the clouds and the synth stings start happening, and
then he just starts to jiggle and like, you know,
his face kind of wiggles and his shoulders go up
and down. He's getting into it. He's got his very

(24:35):
expressive eyes, and his face was just like the right
amount of doughey, you know, like it's not like he
he had a his kind of a baby face without
having like a full baby face, and it works well
and scenes like this. It also gives him a sort
of a boyish innocence despite the fact you know that
he's you know, he's he's got a little gray hair
in there, all right. So that's our lead. That is
our that's our work beast. We'll come back to him

(24:57):
at length. But then our second a character here who
is I guess sort of a hero in his own right,
is the character Rick Blaydon played by Joe Penny born
nineteen fifty six. He is the house detective. So I
was trying so hard to understand what's going on here.
He is a detective who works for the hotel. Yes uh,

(25:20):
and I this was not on my radar as a
thing at all. But but after we've initially talked about this,
I looked into it a bit more and it seems
like the house detective was actually a thing. Um. I
guess it's kind of been replaced to a certain extent
in modern times by more of like a full blown
security coordinator and you have a lot more technology involved.

(25:41):
But I was reading a piece for Travel and Leisure
from two thousand nine by George uh Kylo Gerax, and
basically the situation was you'd have an ex cop working
at a hotel and doing a bit more than mere
security guard stuff, so kind of overseeing, like overall security
checking on, um, you know, anybody that was being a

(26:03):
little bit fishy, uh, looking into into stuff that was
going on in the hotel. And it apparently picked up
a lot of steam in in noir works, specifically in
the works of of Raymond Chandler. Now I've only read
The Big Sleep, which was which was great, I loved it,
but it looks like hotel detectives pop up in at
least three works of his. So this is kind of like,

(26:24):
I don't know, like the Master at Arms on the Titanic,
but for a Landlobb hotel. Yeah. Yeah. For example, in
Um and Chandler is a The Little Sister from ninety nine.
There's a bit where our main character is saying. He says, look,
I said, you're gonna find this hard to believe, but
I came over here with the queen idea that you
might be a girl who needed some help and would

(26:45):
find it rather hard to get anyone you could bank on.
I figured you went to that hotel room to make
some kind of a payoff. And the fact that you
went by yourself and took chances on being recognized, and
we're recognized by a house Dick. That's the house detective.
House Dick Dick detective, you know, um, he continues, who
standard of ethics would take about as much strain as
a very tired old cobweb. All this made me think

(27:07):
you might be one of those Hollywood jams that really
mean curtains. Anyway, there's more to that, but basically, like
there's an allusion here to a house detective, the the
guy who is on the job looking out for any
kind of illicit activity. And in some cases and in
some stories, I think there's the idea too that there
maybe they can be a little bit crooked. Um, but

(27:29):
other times like they're there too, you know, they're they're
really strict and they're not gonna let any kind of uh,
you know, unsavory business slide. Well. Yeah, so they're like
a private detective, like a private dick, except they work
for the for the hotel. Right. Yeah, and that's our
character Rick here, he's he's the house detective. And you
might be wondering, well, where have I seen Joe Penny

(27:50):
for before? Well, if you ever watched Jake and the
Fat Man from seven, Joe Penny was Jake opposite William
Conrad's titular fat Man. Wait, was this the thing that
was parodied on on the Simpsons with Wigham p I?
I guess I don't remember Wigham p I offhand. Oh,

(28:11):
it was on the episode the Simpsons spin off Showcase.
It's where Chief Wigham and Seymour Skinner go to New
Orleans and become private dicks. There their private detectives there
in town. Um, that's that's probably what it was. Yeah,
that's the one with uh with the look big daddy
it's regular daddy. Oh yeah, I do remember that line. Um,

(28:31):
So Joe Penny He was also in some other TV
shows of this era and the Law, also in the
slasher film Bloody Birthday and in the night one sci
fi film Lifepod. Have not seen them, but but they exist.
And yeah, that's Joe Penny. We'll we'll talk about his
character Rick a bit more as we proceed. So question
if you noticed this about Joe Penny in this movie.

(28:53):
Occasionally he's supposed to be I think, kind of a
kind of a slick hunk, Like he's really into fitness.
He does a lot of pushups and exercise and stuff.
But occasionally you'll get a certain angle on his face
where his eyes look very Peter Lori. Yeah, yeah, he does.
He's like a fitness buff Peter Lorii. Uh, to a

(29:14):
certain extent, I think. Yeah. The fact that he's buff
and can do one handed push ups on the beach.
That's really one of his defining characteristics in this Like,
we really don't know a lot about this guy except
that he's really good at one handed pushups. He has
a microscope in his office, which I thought was very funny.
All right, there's a romantic interest in this picture, right,

(29:36):
we work Beast falls in love because, of course, if
you're a work beast, you go to Hawaii, you fall
in love while you're there, and the lady he falls
in love with is a character named Diane Yes, played
by Barbara trentam And. Um, she was and she she's
a interesting character. She would play Daphne in Ball. She
wasn't in much else, but it's worth noting. She was

(29:58):
a Monty Python member John Cleese's second wife from one
through nine nine. So she's the mother of actress Camilla Cleice. Uh. Yeah,
and I'll say she's perfectly fine in this role. She
you know, it's a standard love interest role for the
most part, but you also buyer is a highly successful businesswoman. Sure.
I mean this is kind of a straight down the
middle kind of role. She's just like, very earnest and

(30:20):
very helpful and well meaning. Right now, there's a bit
character worth noting in this, Uh, the character of Sherry
played by um uh Debrayley Scott. Uh. She's basically just
a stewardess slasher victim in this, but she's a comedic
actress who popped up in a number of notable films
of the day, and she was in nine American Graffiti.
I think she plays uh Harrison Ford's girlfriend in that

(30:45):
his character's girlfriend who was in UH seventy four Earthquake.
She was in Police Academies one in three. She popped
up on a number of TV shows, including Welcome Back Cotter,
and played a corpse in Dirty Harry. Now there's another
actor in this I wanted to mention by the name
of Brandscomb Richmond born nineteen fifty five, who plays a
character named Vince, who is I guess he's some kind

(31:08):
of security guard at the hotel. He's dressed like a cop,
but I guess that could just be a security guard outfit.
He spends a lot of the a lot of his
scenes in the movie chasing around a room thief who
has been stealing from the hotel guests. But Richmond is
actually probably to a lot of people, are gonna be
very recognizable as a character actor and stuntman because he's
been in a million movies, often playing a tough guy,

(31:31):
a biker, a bar brawler, a villain's henchman in eighties
action movies. According to his IMDb biography quote, he's been
on the receiving end of the fists of Arnold Schwarzenegger
in Commando gotten pummeled by Carl Weathers in Action Jackson
and tangled with Steven Seagal and Hard to Kill. Uh.

(31:51):
It seems like in reality, Uh, Richmond is a motorcycle enthusiast.
I've dug up a few pictures from movies he was in.
I think I found a picture or of him about
to get punched by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando. Um. You
might also recognize him from Batman Returns as a violent
crime clown who attacks Michelle Peiffer. Uh. He also apparently

(32:14):
had a small part in Star Trek three The Search
for Spock, where he played like a Klingon gunner. But
he's definitely an oh that guy kind of actor. Like.
You might not know his name, but you've probably seen
him in at least a dozen movies, especially if you've
watched action movies of the eighties. So we were trying
to figure out how to pronounce the name of the
next actress in this movie, and I actually looked up

(32:35):
an interview with her where a film historian who was
interviewing her introduced her and pronounced her name with a
with a French inflection, so he called her France New Yanky. Yeah, France,
new Yn born nine and this she plays uh to
a helpful witch. So for a film set in in Hawaii,

(32:57):
we have I think virtually no Polini Asian actors, um,
but she's the most prominent Asian actor in the film.
She's a French citizen of Asian descent. She popped up
in a number of titles before becoming a psychological counselor.
Her first film role was in nineteen fifty eight South
Pacific and she went on to appear in nineteen seventy
three Battle for the Planet of the Apes. She was
in the Joy Luck Club, and she appeared in the

(33:21):
nineteen nineties Outer Limits as well, along with some classic
track episodes and also Gun Smokes. So she was pretty
impressive filmography. Yeah, so I was poking around in her
filmography and h I found one thing that was quite odd.
So she was in a nineteen seventy three TV movie,
again made for TV called The Horror at thirty seven

(33:43):
thousand Feet and it starred William Shatner and Chuck Connors. Now,
if this is sort of tingling your brain in a
strange way, maybe this will help make sense of it.
There was also a classic Twilight Zone episode called Nightmare
at twenty thousand Feet, which also starred William Shatner. But

(34:04):
in that episode of the Twilight Zone, Shatner played a
man who sees a grimlin on the wing of an airplane.
And in this movie Horror thirty seven thousand feet, William
Shatner is a priest who must confront a demon in
a baggage compartment. It sounds great, yeah, uh and uh,
and France new Yawn plays. And she's a passenger on

(34:26):
the airplane who I think is supposed to be a model.
I watched a funny scene where some guys trying to
chat her up and she kind of gives him the
cold shoulder. But from I was reading about this movie
from the IMDb trivia quote, William Shatner described his character's
demise in the movie as one of his unique ways
of dying. Quote. I get sucked out of an airplane

(34:48):
while carrying a lit torch into the airliner's baggage compartment
to try to confront a druid ghost. Well there you go,
a winning concept. Yeah, and I got some pictures for
you to look at. Doesn't it look just gorgeous? It
looks great. So the plane has stillactites. Am I seeing that? Right? Yeah,
it's like the plane floating around. I don't know, I

(35:10):
can't really tell. I think it is supposed to be.
The plane is like morphing into a cave and it
has stalactites in the bag and they're back. All right. Well,
let's round things out here. Who did the music on
this movie. It's Paul Hijara born Japanese American composer. He's
who's been extremely prolific, composed a good one hundred film scores,

(35:31):
and these include the likes of Corman's Death Race two
thousand from nineteen seventy five, which was directed by Paul
Paul Bartel, who we've we've mentioned on the show before.
His score for Death Moon is mostly traditional, but but
I think generally effective. And we also have this really
weird electronic bit that plays when where wolf stuff happens,
and I like that. Yeah, given the modulated stings you're

(35:55):
supposed to, I think hear them and feel a little
tingle or a shiver coming out of the moon. Yeah,
the lunacy uh striking you and the soul changing you
into the wolf. Now, Rob, here's a question. Could you

(36:17):
explain why the first thing we see in this movie
is a view from the surface of the moon. It
was a bold choice. You know, maybe this helped keep
some viewers who were still hanging around after Incredible Hulk,
who are thinking about going to bed early. And then
they were like, WHOA, what's this? I thought there was
some sort of a Hawaiian werewolf movie coming on. But

(36:39):
now we're in space, right, we're in So we're in space,
on the surface of the moon, the black, black horizon
in the background, and then we get a text crawl
and I don't know if it's significant that this was
the year after Star Wars came out, but we get
a yellow text crawl across the background of space which
reads as follows wherever fearsome beasts have roamed. The legend

(37:02):
of the werewolf persists even in the tropical paradise of
the Pacific, where it is said and believed that when
the shadow of the moon is cast, he who is
cursed will be transformed from an ordinary man into a
vicious beast. So, first of all, I don't think that's true.
I do not think that there is a werewolf tradition

(37:25):
in Hawaiian legend, though there might be some real world
analogs that we could talk about later on. But second,
it says that, so normally, how do you how do
you turn into a werewolf? What happens some there's some
kind of atmospheric phenomenon, or not atmospheric, some kind of
celestial phenomenon, which is the full moon. Right, the moon
is shining with its full disc down on your side

(37:45):
of the Earth at night. This says when the shadow
of the moon is cast. I don't know what that means.
Does that mean a solar eclipse? Because there are no
solar eclipses in this movie. I think it's just ultimately
what elegant variation where they just they didn't want to
just say when there's a full moon, but then in
trying to spice it up, they end up saying the
wrong thing. Yeah, I think you're right. But anyway, so

(38:09):
we're seeing this on the surface of the moon, like
we're standing there, and then we see the Earth rise photos,
so we see the Earth from the moon, and we
get the title death moon one word not to and
so immediately you're thinking, like why it was so, where
are we going to space in this movie? Or they're
going to be aliens? And ay, Nope, not at all.

(38:30):
You never come back to the moon, never go to
space again. We just for some reason see the Earth
from space. But you immediately cut from the opening sequence
after the credits to an echoe dreamlike vision of a
ritual dance where music is playing and a man is
dancing wearing a sort of wolf hat or some kind

(38:51):
of monstrous head where where the face of the wolf
is sort of on backwards. So when his head is
turned and you look at the back of his head,
you see the wolf's face. And meanwhile there is like
a priestess chanting in the background, and then you see
a guy who looks like he's dressed like a Catholic priest.
He has a chin strap beard, So I was trying

(39:13):
to think who he looks most like. You can kind
of imagine former Surgeon General, see Everett Coope or somebody
like like like if you picture David Letterman without a mustache,
but with the chin strap beard, that's that's sort of close. Yeah,
And I believe this is Foxworth playing this character as well,
just with a stick on beard, without a mustache, a

(39:35):
post it note on his cheek that says beard. So
something happens through this ritual the man doing the dance
and the channing priestess. Basically they cause something to pop
on the priests, the like guy dressed like the Catholic
priest with the chin strap beard. Something pops in his
neck and then blood sprays out of a hole in

(39:55):
his neck. So it's like a cheaper version of Scanners,
except it doesn't appear to kill him. He just spray
his blood out of his neck, right, But it was
all a dream. And then our hero and then he
will learn his name to Jason. He snaps awake, gasping,
clutching at his heart like oh like like he like
he was having a heart heart attack, but he's wearing
a vest and tie. He was sleeping in a vest

(40:17):
and tie. That's just that much of a work beast,
is that he's just working on stop and then you
don't go to bed. You just collapse and you wake
up and you work some more. I guess. So he
was on a couch, I think. And then the very
next thing, we're in his doctor's office and his doctor
is almost has slightly kind of a grouch show marks
sort of vibe. Uh, and the doctor is telling him,

(40:38):
he's like, look, Jason, you're a work beast. You gotta
ease up, you gotta light in the load. This is
clearly a problem they've talked about before. Jason just it
seems like he's working twenty four hours a day. He
never sleeps, he never relaxes, and so and the work
beastiness of his life is killing him. And so his
doctors like, you know, you gotta take some time off. Uh.
And meanwhile, Jason what he wants is for his doctor

(41:00):
to tell him what his dream means. But then he
explains that he can't remember what he dreamed, and he
never remembers his dreams, so I don't know. Uh. And
then the doctor offers to recommend a psychologist. I had
to write this down. He says, you know, someone into
dream analysis, YOUNGI and stuff a lot of good ones
in Los Angeles. But the doctor anyway, he's like, no, look,

(41:22):
work beast, you are too obsessed with hustling deals. You
need to take a vacation. He actually gets out his
prescription paper and he writes take a vacation on the paper.
Uh so. Uh So Jason goes down to the lobby.
He gets off the elevator. He looks at a travel
poster for Hawaii. It has an illustration of a mask.

(41:45):
The illustration of the mask scares him, and then we
immediately cut to work beasts arriving at his hotel in Hawaii. Yeah,
I mean basically, something other than work made him feel something,
and he's like, oh, well, that's the sign I need
to go to Hawaii. Right, So I would say somehow
a major premise of this film is Hawaii is scary,
which doesn't really work. Yeah, yeah, it when we'll get in,

(42:07):
we'll get into more of that there. There's a lot
to potentially discussed there. Uh and and I think ultimately
there's there's some shallow exploration of some deeper topics in
this film. But yeah, at any rate, he's he's drawn
to Hawaii and yet at the same time he's a
little afraid. But of course we we get to meet
the fabulous resort where he is staying, which his room
is not right on the beach. It looks more like

(42:28):
it's sort of on a golf course and a swamp,
but a really nice swamp, very very well manicured, yet
very well. All the alligators have monocles. It would probably
be interesting for for like Big Elvis Presley or Hawaiian
movie fans to watch this film and like and and
wonder if they see the same place. It's like, oh, yeah,
that's where Elvis, his character got married in this film

(42:51):
or whatnot. Yeah, he sang a song with the ukulele
here and then, but that's where where Uh the house
detective Rick is out for a job, hug so Jason.
When he gets there, he meets a bunch of airline
flight attendants who are staying at the resort, including one
of them the character Sherry we mentioned earlier. And they're
sort of walking around commenting on the poor quality of

(43:14):
men at the resort. Uh, they don't seem very interested
in work. Beast he's They're like, what about him? And
they're like and then they're like, but there is always Rick.
And then you just smash cut to Rick, who's like
in short shorts running on the beach, showing off his
his finally tuned physique. And I guess we're supposed to
take away from this that like that, like Rick is

(43:35):
hot stuff. And Rick, as we established earlier, is the
house detective of the hotel. Yeah, which again, when when
when I watched this as well, I had no idea
this was a thing. So just like the idea, you
have a guy like full time, like on staff, perhaps
lives in the hotel, who just investigates crimes, like ongoing

(43:55):
crimes in the hotel. But I enjoy being corrected in
this way because it's one of those times where I
was like, what this is so contrived, This lacks very similitude,
And then I find out, Oh no, there, that's actually
a real thing. I get, you know, And I was
thinking to like, Okay, maybe this is only a thing
in like big casino hotels where you know, there's a lot,
maybe a lot more going on. It's just a bigger infrastructure,

(44:16):
and you could you could make a case for needing
something like this, but I don't know. It sounds like
back in the day, you know, just a reasonably sized
you know, I guess like a big city hotel, you know,
the kind of hotel where detectives are going to be
popping up and showing up. You might need somebody in
house to deal with situations. And I think also sometimes
it's implied or or overtly stated to that you need

(44:38):
somebody that is that's not the actual cops to get involved,
particularly if it's an important client of the hotel. Right, well,
I think we're Yeah, maybe that's where some of the
crookedness comes in, because it's like, you don't want to
necessarily have the law applied equally. You want some kind
of discretion. That's really you know, you're sort of like
at the service of your your wealthy paying guests. Yeah,

(45:01):
but at any rate, Rick doesn't sound Ricks just seems
like this young guy like we were. And I think
in real life the house detective would be like a
retired police officer or hired detective. Not this this young
hot guy running on the beach and doing two arms up,
doing one arm up push ups, right, not not beach
crime muscle boy. But so he's investigating beach crime because

(45:21):
that's what he does. Apparently there have been multiple break
ins at the hotel and uh, and so Sherlock Rick
starts snooping around the hotel office looking for clues, and
he finds something. I was trying to figure out what
this was through the kind of large grain visuals of
the version we saw. It looked kind of like a
partially chewed up piece of carrot. But maybe that's just
I don't know, Maybe maybe that's just my experiences with

(45:43):
dogs coloring this. It looked like maybe it could be
a cheese it. Yeah. It was something kind of large
and orange. Yeah. And then meanwhile we we see what
Jason's doing at the at the hotel. Here, he goes
a lounging by the pool. He dozes off and starts
having ominous dream visions. He dreams of a lady booming
over him ominously, and you know, and I guess you

(46:04):
wonder it's like maybe he should have just gone to
that Youngian analyst and in Los Angeles. But uh, but
then we cut back to Sherlock Rick, and he, as
I mentioned earlier, has a microscope in his lab, and
he does not a lab, it's just an office in
the hotel, but with a microscope. When he's looking at slides,
and he confers with his cop friend, I think this
is Vince. I'm not sure if I remember right. I

(46:25):
didn't make a note of who it was, but he
has a a sort of cop buddy here, and Rick
concludes that we're dealing with a professional room thief. Uh,
someone who is like a a pro at working hotels
and like making copies of keys to hotel rooms and
then going in and stealing the things that belonged to

(46:45):
the guests. Oh and this is where I think maybe
this thing that we thought was the chewed up piece
of carrot is like a piece of wax that would
have been used in making copies of keys. Yeah, all right,
that makes sense and then ultimately makes sense like if
you if you have a big enough hotel, I guess,
high profile clientele, it might make sense that you have
at a house detective to deal with this sort of thing. Yeah. Sure.

(47:08):
So later this night, we see Jason getting to know
people who are vacationing there with him. Like he's hanging
out with a couple of people watching a musical performance. Uh.
And Jason's talking about his investments and he's like, well,
I'm mostly into real estate. Uh. And It's like, I thought,
you work beast. You cannot turn off your work beast. Right,
he's here on vacation, he's still just talking about investments. Yeah. Well,

(47:30):
I mean he you know, he just got there. He's
he's going to take a little time to turn it off.
I think. Yeah. But in the background, we see another
conversation where these guys are talking to a lady and
they're like, we've got a prospectus. You can look at
time is money and so it's just I think maybe
the movie I couldn't tell if the movie knew it
was trying to say something or not, but it seems

(47:50):
like even on vacation, everyone's just trying to do business. Yeah,
I think there's this there is part part of the Again,
this shallow alchemy of this film I think is commentating
in in part on like American work culture and uh
and you know the degree to which it is poisoning
us or was poisoning us, and it it's still poison us. Well, yeah,

(48:11):
to be I mean if this was true at the
time in the seventies, it definitely seems true today that
you know, for a lot of people with their work
sort of is their life. Well, and you see that
in like the term workaholic, right, we were talking about
this a little off off Mike before we recorded here,
Like which is a better term, work beast or workaholic?
Because workaholic if you if you just actually look at

(48:33):
the word it it implies, you know, it's espresisly states
that like this is something that is harmful to you
have an illness, Yeah, I have an illness. This is
something that this is not good. I shouldn't be bragging
about being or you know, patting myself on the back
for being a workaholic. Um. Whereas work beast does sound
more fun in some respects, but also does sound monstrous

(48:54):
as well, something that just takes over your body, like
like antherpy and you know you have to go out
and slaughter the farmers, sheep herd or whatever. But I
think I ultimately like work beast best. I think people
should start using it in their job interviews and and
you know, don't be afraid to tell your boss. Look,
if if you can't handle me at my work worst,

(49:15):
you don't deserve me at my work beast. Okay, I apologize,
let's keeping no, no, no, that's fabulous. But anyway, so
the lady who's got a perspect us on her way,
this is Diane. This is who who, of course Jason
is going to fall in love with. We can already
tell just immediately when they need. They made eyes at
the pool earlier, and they start chatting and she's like, well,

(49:39):
I can tell you're on vacation instead of business, even
though he's usually on business. And uh. And so they
watch a musical number where the band plays a song,
and this is one of those things, and it's very common.
I don't know if this matches your experience. I think
it's very common and made for TV movies of the
late seventies to slightly pad out their run time with

(49:59):
musical numbers. So like, what if we had characters go
to a bar where a band was playing, and then
we just watched part of a song. Yeah, I mean
it is a good way to to lengthen the film.
I mean that it's pretty long because it contains two
songs and it's in their entirety. Meanwhile, metal Storm the
Destruction of Jared Sin a little on the short side,
could have used some full musical numbers. I would I

(50:19):
would definitely take some metal Storm songs. But this is
one where the lyrics of the song also described the
plot of the movie so far, so I wrote them down.
The lyrics go, I was just minding my own business
the way I always do. Nose to the Grindstone, heart
to the floor, when you smiled at me, A smile
that opened the door. Oh yeah. Like lyrically, it could

(50:41):
be a Jackson Brown song, though when it's not a
Jackson Brown song, I was trying to think of a
to sing like doctor my Eyes. But it's about seeing
these ominous visions. Yeah, it doesn't quite work, okay, especially
he couldn't remember the vision, so that this is the
thing that's not really making sense to me. He's being
troubled by these dreams that he's having of this ancient,

(51:03):
of this ritual. But he says that he can't remember
his dreams. So how does he know that's what's troubling
him or how does he like he It's implied that
he doesn't remember what the dreams are when he wakes up,
and it sounds like a very sort of question that
would be posting the lyrics of Jackson Brown song. I
have to say, um, but but yeah, he we have
privileged information as the viewer. We see clips of his

(51:25):
dream and but he clearly doesn't retain all of this
except for some sort of vague feeling that, uh, you know,
Hawaii is attractive yet scary. I don't know, right, right,
So Jason and Diane they get to know each other,
talking about business, they talk about achievement. You know, they're
they're like, they're like the big lebowskiter there. We are
people who are able to achieve, and they talk about

(51:47):
what schools they got into and becoming the executive vice
president at work. Uh oh, while the camera keeps cutting
to the moon, and every time it cuts to the moon,
it plays this this little synthesizer sting that's like the
finger of the moon coming down to touch you with
a little tingle and uh and every time it sends
Jason a little tingle, it makes it harder for him

(52:07):
to pay attention to his conversation. And Diane starts sending
like she's speaking from the bottom of a well, and
suddenly Jason just gets up and runs away, clutching his chest.
And then he turns into a werewolf in the bushes. Yeah,
which is great because there's a couple who like hears it.
They like, walk by this rat shaking bush and they
hear this snarling and they go immediately report it to Rick,

(52:30):
and Rick investigates and he finds wolf slashes in the
palm tree trunk. So the next morning, Jason, of course
does not remember what happened last night. I guess this
goes along with him never remembering his dreams. But Rick
is on the case. He's investigating, and uh, and we
do then get some insight into what's going on with
the room thief. I wondered if this would connect to
the werewolf thing, but it doesn't at all. There's just

(52:51):
a creep who's just stealing from the rooms. He's got
a key cutter and he's making copies of keys, and
at first it looks like maybe he's also making a
silver her bullet, Like he's got a little casting thing
and he pours some metal into it. But I think
maybe he's just making keys. Yeah, yeah, I don't think
there's any silver going on here, which ultimately yeah is
we'll discuss. It's kind of a missed opportunity. There's nothing

(53:13):
there's nothing really in the film about There's nothing special
about the slaying of a werewolf or the detecting of
a werewolf. There's nothing like that, be it silver bullets.
There's some sort of uh, you know, um like Hawaiian tradition.
Nothing right. So Jason goes to see a doctor. He's
already been to a doctor once in the movie. He
goes again and the doctor just thinks it's an anxiety

(53:35):
attack that's the product of overworking, sun exposure and alcohol,
and he's like, just you know, you need to chill out.
You need to go on vacation. Yeah, he's like I
I used to be a big city doctor and then
I came out here and I just took it down
a notch. You need to do the same, he says.
I finally learned how to relax, But surely people can
be stressed out in Hawaii to right. Well, you know,

(53:56):
I wondered if if that was part of like the
genesis for this story. It's like somebody who who was
experiencing vacation anxiety and and decided to explore it fictionally
because you know, obviously that that is a thing like
people who you know, it's just because you're you know,
you're fortunate enough to get to go on vacation doesn't
mean you you don't bring your your you know, existing

(54:18):
anxieties with you. So and I'm wonder if that was
a case where like one of the screenwriters had an
experience like this and and did some you know, fictionalizing
and and some some dream weaving around it. At least
in the modern era. I find a very important way
to avoid that is cutting off internet access. That is
like key, yeah, yeah, Otherwise yeah, it's it's always lingering, Yeah, Yeah,

(54:42):
you can always get a dose of anxiety as long
as you have the password for the rooms of Wireless. Yeah. Yeah,
you can feel bad no matter where you are. But
so also on this outing, Jason and Diane end up
going to an old church and we finally get a
little bit of backstory. They go into of this church
and they look at a picture of the guy we
saw in the vision earlier, the guy with the chin

(55:04):
strap beard, the priest, and we find out that that
was in fact Jason's ancestor, who was a missionary in
Hawaii in the eighteen seventies, which is a little I'm
wondering if he's supposed to be a Catholic missionary, he's
supposed to be a Catholic priest. Who is Jason's ancestor. Yeah,
I don't know. They gave him kind of an Amish

(55:24):
beard though, like, like's if he's an Amish missionary. But
I think maybe they went with that weird beard just
so you could recognize his face to some extent. Yeah,
so you could see the resemblance between him and his ancestor. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,
back at the hotel, uh, we see a couple not
Jason and Diane, and the other couple. I think the
people who they were talking to about, I don't know,

(55:47):
real estate investments earlier. Uh. They're watching a performance of
what we are told is an ancient Polynesian ritual dance
that was quote performed in secret until the altar was
destroyed by missionaries in eight seventy eight. A curse, it
is said and believed, haunts the descendants of the defilers.
And she's like reading this from a pamphlet. So I

(56:11):
should point out here that you know, this is obvious
weird fictioning of Hawaiian culture, though at the same time
the movie story is at least very shallowly acknowledging the
destructive force of colonialism on Hawaiian culture. UM. I should
also note that this dance sequence that we see here,
and I think we see it again, there's this bit

(56:31):
with the spinning dance with the mask on the back
of the head that creates a transformation effect. Uh. It's
actually pretty impressive. But I was wondering, like, where does
this come from? I feel like I've seen this sort
of dance before, but I I don't think i've seen
it associated with UM with with Hawaiian dance. Maybe it's
I don't know if it's associated with any Polynesian culture

(56:53):
or maybe it is. I don't know. I couldn't find
anything about it, but it's impressive. This is one of
the more impressive sequences in the film, where there's this
dance and there's this this kind of bestial mask on
the back of the head, and he creates this transformation
effect and then of course we keep cutting to him
freaking out over it, and that helps as well. Right, Yeah,
so Jason wanting he's trying to say his good nights
um to to Diane, but he immediately starts wolfing out again.

(57:17):
We see the moon and and the synthesizer stings come
in and uh, and of course it is the prelude
to wolf ing out. He stares directly into the camera
and he jiggles his body, and then there's a wolf attack.
So Rick the house detective and Sherry the flight attendant,
they're hanging out and then Rick has to go do

(57:38):
some kind of security business and then immediately work wolf
busts in Mall's Sherry. But it's one of those attacks
where it's only an extreme close up of a wolf
eye and a claw and you really don't see anything
that happens. And then the next morning there's been a
murderer and Rick is investigating. And first of all, Rick
does not seem all that upset. He just seems kind

(57:59):
of confused. And he says, uh, he says to the
other person he's investigating with, she wasn't into drugs or
anything wrong. So this doesn't make sense. And I was like,
what do people people normally get mauled by wolves as
a result of being into drugs. I mean, I guess
it's it's this is like a you know, psychedelic dark
ages thing. You know, this is the idea of the kids.

(58:21):
They'll they'll take the LSD, they'll take the mushrooms, and
then they'll maul themselves to death. Yeah. I think this
is just wor old fallacy, right, Like you you only
get torn to pieces by a wolf if you're a
bad person, must have done something. Clearly that is not true.
Sherry Cherry, the flight attendant, did nothing to deserve getting work.
Wolfed Um and the housekeeping worker, by the way, who

(58:43):
says she discovered her. There's a scene where she's talking
about it. She makes it clear that she was literally
torn into pieces. She said that half of her was
on the bed, half on the floor, and we don't
see a drop of blood. I guess this is because
it's made for TV, but it made me think about
how it's interesting what is acceptable on TV that you
can fully evoke the fact of a gruesome, gory dismemberment

(59:07):
death if you describe it in words you, but you
can't show any of it on the screen, uh, which
I don't know. I suddenly had that moment of like,
why is it like that? Like why why would TV
standards prevent you from showing the fake blood but not
prevent you from verbally describing a dismemberment. Yeah, because ultimately,
like the irony with a film like this is that

(59:29):
the description and then remembering what she looks like and
remembering like the very you know, bubbly lifelike qualities of
the of the actress, Like that's worse than anything they
could have conceivably pulled off in the film, you know,
any kind of effect they might have used with splattered
fake blood or or you know, half torso effects, anything
like that. Like, instead, the version that we have in

(59:51):
our mind is actually pretty gruesome. Of course, as the viewer,
we know that it was Jason in beast in beast form,
but obviously, once again he doesn't remember any thing, and
so the police arrived to investigate. They're sort of I
think they're sort of competing now with with Rick versus
this police detective who's sort of got a George C.
Scott vibe, and they're they're having somewhat territorial dispute over

(01:00:14):
who does this investigation. Well, I like how they're they're
quick to remind Rick, Hey, Rick, you know you're not
a real cop, right like I'm I'm the actual police here.
Uh you're not, so please, you know, don't overstep yourself.
And this is the point. I was thinking about this
when I was taking a shower earlier today. I was like, oh,
my goodness, what if all this werewolf stuff? This is

(01:00:35):
the this is the fiction in reality, um Rick is
the serial killer? Um because you know, you think about
I can't remember to what extent this is a thing
in the actual world, but I know that in various
serial murderer fiction they often point that, oh, well, you know,
a lot of times the murderer is drawn to the
world of of law enforcement, and sometimes they'll take on

(01:00:57):
a role that is, uh, you know, like a secure
the personnel or something like they want to be a
police officer, they want proximity to the world of crime
and murder. But they you know, but they don't have
it together enough to do that, so they end up,
you know, being something like maybe a house detective, um
and um. And then there's something like this version. Yeah, yeah,

(01:01:18):
there'll be some more evidence for this hypothesis later. Okay. Meanwhile,
also we get Jason and Diane frawlinking around. You know,
they're just running around on a beach, having a great
time together. They're clearly falling in love. Uh. And I
will say it's not the most convincing love story ever,
but it's probably better at establishing it than Metal Storm,
which once again I was just thinking about earlier today

(01:01:39):
and was I was laughing at that with with Dojin
and Kelly Preston in that movie, like absolutely nothing. They're
just like, well, we're in love for some reason. Now
we are they but we bind each other together. We
have known each other for five minutes of screen time.
Whereas yeah, and this, I think one of the reasons
that this film ultimately you know, works as well as

(01:02:00):
it does for me is that I do kind of
buy into their their TV love. You know, it's it's
it's made for TV love. But you know it'll work,
you know, if you're coasting after the Hulk, it's good enough. Yeah. Um.
But anyway, so there's a part that again I think
informs the backstory. Diane finds a birthmark behind Jason's ear,

(01:02:21):
and Jason says, oh, something my grandmother told me about
my great grandfather. She told me that he had a
scar on his neck, just like my birthmark. Uh. So
we think back to in the opening vision that he
doesn't remember about where the chin strap beard guy it
was spraying blood out of his neck. Ah, this is
the mark. Okay, Yeah, anyways, nighttime again another full moon.

(01:02:44):
Like in many Werewolf movies, this movie seems to think
that you just get like a weak straight of full
moons all in a row. Well, I guess there's there
keeps being enough of a full moon. You know, you
don't have to have like a full full moon, right,
It's just you just have to be close enough and
it's going to trigger the chain. Give us will do it? Um? Okay?
So and oh and then also, uh, this is the

(01:03:04):
first time in the movie where we really get anything
like a a full peak at at work beast in
wolf form. It's not great. I gotta say it's not great.
He's just very, very hairy all over and has some fangs.
And yeah, well I think we we do have to
to be fair. Uh. First of all this the whole

(01:03:25):
TV movie thing. But then also I think that the
werewolf transformation and effects in this film are ultimately, you know,
they're very old school. They're more in the vein of
Lawn Cheney Jr. As opposed to the revolution in cinematic
werewolf depictions that would come in the early eighties with
films like An American Werewolf in London, The Howling, The
Thriller Music Video, and so forth. If you think of

(01:03:48):
nineteen seventies werewolf films like stuff like stuff like Werewolves
on Wheels, you know, they all the beasts must Die.
I actually can't remember what the wolf was like in
The Beast Must Die, but it may have been more
of like a straight up wolf that they shot. Uh.
But but for the most part, a lot of the
werewolves of this era were still based on that old

(01:04:09):
school idea of Lawn Cheney Jr. In a fur costume,
you know, like that was your idea of what a
werewolf was, and it was only in the eighties that
we really moved further into this idea of a more
loopine hybrid beast. That's right, Yeah, I was thinking about
the same thing. You've got a couple of competing strains
of werewolf morphology in the movie Cannon, and one is

(01:04:31):
the one you're talking about, the lawn Cheney junior style,
which is typically full humanoid body, fully by petal, but
covered with hair, with claws and fangs, and often the
hair on the head in this style forms a sort
of rectangular shape, but it's basically a flat humanoid face.
And then I would say the major differences with the
more updated werewolf morphology that I think a really I

(01:04:55):
don't think this was the first movie to do it
this way, but it was really influential, was like you say,
I'm Erican Werewolf in London, which came out in eighty one,
and they're the big difference I think is that the
werewolf has a long snout and a more dog like skull.
That's that's the big difference. Yeah, and ultimately also a
more ambitious bit of special effects creation here, I mean

(01:05:17):
going beyond special effects makeup. Uh. So ultimately, if you
had to create one, uh go and you don't have
much to work with. The Lon Chaney junior direction is
the is the way to go? Yeah exactly. I mean
even most werewolf movies in the years since don't look
as good as American Werewolf in London. So you know
that that was a special, very special, unique achievement. But

(01:05:38):
I will say as they don't show much of the
werewolf and Deathman is especially at this point in the film,
it's kind of a flash. It's kind of then close
up on eyes, maybe teeth, and that helps it remain effective.
Now this is mid movie some so they spend sometimes

(01:06:01):
sort of waiting around in in some b plots, Rick
ens up running around after the room thief. Like there's
a chase scene that's almost Benny Hill like, uh doesn't
quite have yakety sex, but it does have trombones. Yeah.
And it's hard to be too invested in the room
thief scenario. I I mean I was staying in um

(01:06:21):
essentially like a hotel room in y at the time,
so I kind of thought about this a little bit
of like what if there's a room thief? Now, you know,
what if they're running around out there and there's a
house detective chasing them. But really it's hard to get
invested in this plot. What if there was simultaneously a
room thief and a work beast, what would you be
more concerned about? I mean, I guess ultimately the work beast,

(01:06:43):
because the workbeasts will just straight up tear you in half,
right there. Yeah, that's my point. So I think that
the room thief subplot doesn't doesn't work super well. But
but anyway, so we're back with Jason and he goes
back to the doctor again. So the third time in
the movie he goes to the doctor. He's just like,
I don't know, doctor, feel bad and the doctor at

(01:07:04):
this point, I think the doctor should just be like
in I want to reference the Simpsons again, Sir, you
need a quack, you know. But meanwhile, Rick is being
assisted now by his criminology colleague Julie, and together they're
looking for clues, and in fact, Julie finds a clue.
She discovers traces of canine hair. I think it is

(01:07:24):
at the crime scenes and Ricks like, but but we
don't allow dogs in the hotel. And another thing that
was funny is it's hard to hear the dialogue in
the scene. It's like poor audio mixing where the phones
ringing in the background are louder than Rick's lines. But anyway,
so you know Jack and Diane, their romance is still developing,

(01:07:46):
their hitting it off, and Diane is at her work conference.
She's trying to close the big deal. But Jason reveals
that he has made reservations for them as something called
the Paradise Retreat, which, from what I can tell, is
like a second order vacation. It's like, your vacation is
not vacation enough, so you take a vacation from your vacation.

(01:08:06):
Well that that sounds like a total work beast move, Like, Okay,
the vacation is not working, we need to take this
to the next level. Yes, so they're going to leave
the resort hotel and go to Paradise Retreat, which, uh,
to be fair, I think he did explain that the
major differences it's like they don't have TV and phones
and stuff. So I don't know, maybe that's kind of
like disconnecting the Internet like I was talking about earlier. Yeah,

(01:08:28):
it's it's it's even more. Uh, it's like on the
other side of the island or something, right, But before
they go to that, there's one more night at the
resort hotel. They're gonna leave for that the next day.
H So of course we're gonna get yet another wolf
out evening. So we at this point in the movie,
I will say, is somewhat repetitive because it's just another night,
another full moon due to tacks again. But this time

(01:08:50):
we get work beast versus room thief that the streams cross,
and it is not a close call. No, I mean,
they should have made the room thief the Ava Empire, right,
that would have been really that wouldn't or maybe even
another werewolf. But it's just a guy who steals keys
and makes copies of keys and then sneaks into rooms

(01:09:10):
and steals stuff. So of course he just gets torn
to pieces by our our wolf, right, and so people
find him floating in the water the next morning, face down. Uh.
And so the room thief problem that is solved. But
a thing that's funny is every morning we see Jason
in a kind of days after, you know, he's like,
what happened last night? I don't know. Usually he's in
his bed, but in this case we see him wandering

(01:09:33):
in a daze in filthy clothes where while like Moody
Wolf for Morse music plays in the background, and he
just stumbles past Rick early in the morning, doing one
handed push ups and getting pumped up. Yeah. Yeah, And
even though his clothing is grabby, it doesn't look nearly
as grabby as it should have been if he had
torn a man to pieces just a few hours prior. Yeah, agreed,

(01:09:55):
where's the blood? I guess they couldn't show that on
TV right anyway, Diane and Jason they go off to
their to their paradise retreat and so they're they're like
on the road heading off to that place. But but
but Rick is still on the case back at the
hotel and he's hanging out in the lobby when the
doctor who Jason kept going to arrives at the hotel

(01:10:16):
inquiring for for work beast at the front desk, uh
and I'm like, why didn't he just call on the phone?
I'm not sure, but Rick overhears him and he wants
to pick his brain. Absolutely no respect for medical privacy here.
The doctor just explains to Rick that he's like, well,
I've got his lab tests or or I can't believe them. Uh.
And so he explains that Jason's lab results came back

(01:10:39):
and he needs to consult with a specialist on the mainland.
And Rick says, what's wrong with him? Doc? And I
thought the doctor was going to be like, it's the
strangest thing. His blood was not human, it was work
beast blood. But he doesn't say that. He just says like,
I don't know. I just don't know. So that scene
kind of fizzles out when it could have gone somewhere,

(01:11:00):
but it's implied like the wolf, the blood is wolf blood.
There's something wolfie about this blood, right exactly. But then
Rick makes a very smart move. He's like, Okay, I've
just been looking for clues. What I really need to
do is go consult a wise sorcerer. Um. So instead
he goes to to visit this wise and powerful witch
named Tapulua, who is again the character played by France

(01:11:24):
new Yawn. And she, of course, because of course, speaks
about herself in the third person, so she's like, Tapulua
knows everything and everyone on this island. And Rick thinks
that she can tell him something about what's going on,
and uh, and she she tells him first of all.
This is a direct quote. She says, my powers are

(01:11:44):
more powerful. She says they're they're rooted deeper, they're as
old as the islands. But Tapulu ends up being cool
with Rick because she says she's watched him and she
knows that he has great love for the island. That's
a quote. Again. Have we seen any evidence of this?
Absolutely none that you know. There's only all we really

(01:12:07):
know about Rick is that he takes his position as
a house detective a little too seriously and keeps in shape. Yeah,
we don't see him, uh, you know, engaging in local
politics or standing up for the native population. We don't
see him particuting, being protective of the environment, or any
other kind of spin you might take on it. Uh,

(01:12:27):
you know, you know, even in just a film like this, uh,
it ends up having this kind of almost dark place
with Garth MARENGHI vibe to it where she's like, oh, no,
you were you were the you know, you're a good
Hawaiian citizen just because I say so. Of course you are.
You're the hero of the film. But yeah, nothing is
presented to back this up, and it's it's very I

(01:12:49):
just graduated Harvard College, jail where I got an a yeah,
so so yeah. I think there's ultimately a lot you
could unravel there about the positioning of this of a
character like this in a film like this, a film
that again at least very shallowly is contemplating uh like
the impact of colonialism on Hawaiian culture and uh and

(01:13:11):
and the on the Hawaiian islands, um, but without really
doing anything with it, like barely getting its toes wet.
And then but then they prop up this character as
as just totally okay, like nothing nothing problematic about Rick.
I mean, she'll vouch for him, so I guess we
just got to take her word for it. She she
obviously saw something that we didn't see. She was she

(01:13:32):
got to see the scenes that were cut. But this also,
this supports my serial killer hypothesis because Rick has it
seems like Rick has delusions perhaps not only not only
a strong interest in the supernatural as well as law enforcement,
but also has clear delusions about being like this, this
kind of hero of the islands without any evidence to

(01:13:52):
support it. Oh yeah, clearly, because when she's like, I
know you're good because you have great love for this island, Rick,
I think he says that's true. Uh, and she explains
to him about the werewolf curse. Um. Not that there's
much left to figure out for the audience, right, Like
the audience is up to speed, but Rick is not.

(01:14:13):
So she explains that work Beast had an ancestor who
was a brutal missionary who destroyed the altar of the
people who lived there, and they put a curse on
him and his descendants so that if they came back
to the island, they would turn into a werewolf. And
that's what's happening and weirdly localized course curse ultimately, but yes,
so it goes well, it's part of the curse also

(01:14:33):
that he would be like psychically lured back there. Like
it's not really ever explained that there's any good reason
why he came, except that he knew he had an
ancestor who was a brutal missionary here. Yeah, yeah, I
don't know. It's yeah, it's not not very well supported.
I guess he's kind of drawn back by that poster,
but who knows. Well Anyway, Rick tries to go to
the police detective, the George C. Scott type guy and

(01:14:54):
explain everything to him, and he brings a book called
The Legend and History of Like and thro Hopes, and
the detective is not buying it. And again I liked
how much crap the the actual police detective gives him
over this. It's like, come on, uh, you you were ridiculous.
You're not a real police officer, and you just brought
me a book about werewolves. Again, I think this is

(01:15:16):
this is a warning sign right here. Uh. And this
would this would later on you would see an interview
with this detective saying, yeah, we should have seen it
coming because he was he was raving about werewolves. Um,
and it turns out he killed all these people in
this hotel and was blaming it on some sort of
mythological beast. What's the name of the true crime podcast
about Rick the uh, the room thief serial killer. Maybe

(01:15:40):
it's called Paradise Retreat. Anyway. At the Paradise Retreat, Jason
and Diane are like, Wow, it's so much it's so
nice to get away from vacation. And they're giving each
other back rubs and talking about what they're gonna do
once the trip is over. I think, you know, they're like, well,
we're in love. Now, we've got to find a way
to see each other. But then oh, the move fun,

(01:16:00):
and Jason starts yet again his pro form a wolf out.
He starts jiggling in the moonlight, and he dashes away,
and Diane is like, Jason, what's happening? You know, are
you undergoing some kind of hideous transformation? And she she
chases him and he starts snarling, and I think at
one point, while he's snarling and she's gasping, he actually says,

(01:16:22):
I am a wolf now, because definitely the subtitles in
Dutch say it been wolf. I'm I am a wolf. Okay,
I mean it been work beast, it's been wolf. I
mean it's hard on vacation when you you know you're
having to share a bathroom and occasionally you turn into
a werewolf. It's everybody knows what that's like. It's really

(01:16:45):
bad sharing a bathroom with a werewolf because the drains,
the drains, i mean just just totally clogged. Oh and
then finally we get to see a full transformation scene.
I'm not sure exactly what you call this technique. It's
the kind that has match cuts where you're progressively more
wolfy in each shot. Um and as he becomes a werewolf.
One thing, I don't know if you notice the same thing.

(01:17:07):
So his face of course becomes more here suit, but
it also becomes more wrinkled. And I was wondering why
why is he more wrinkly as a wolf? M yeah,
I don't know. He ends up he does end up
looking older. I don't know if that was just part
of the just part of the design or they, you know,
if they put a lot of thought into that. But yeah,
he does look a bit a bit more aged as

(01:17:27):
a wolf. But then, of course we're into the end
of game here, so he turns into a wolf. He's
got underbyte fangs, he's hairy now, and he morphs, and
the question is is he going to kill his his
beloved Diane, And he's not really himself anymore. He doesn't
seem to recognize her, so he just runs around and
then you think he's going to kill Diane. But then
Rick arrives to save the day. Of course, so there's

(01:17:51):
a chase scene involving the three characters that is extremely
dimly lit. Uh and in the end Rick has to
shoot the work beasts to save Diane. Uh and uh,
And he's not immediately dead he gets shot and then
he starts wandering into a cave having vision visions of
the ritual again and uh, and they kind of play
it for pity. It's kind of sad, like, you know,

(01:18:12):
poor poor beast um. And then he gets shot one
last time and he turns back into Jason form and dies,
and Diane just seems kind of confused. Now they do
have a nice little bit at the end. It actually
got me because he guns down the werewolf Rick does.
He runs over and he's like, check doing that thing,
would you always do? You know, check and see if

(01:18:32):
the monster is dead. And then wolf Claw comes comes
up from the ground and grabs him by the neck,
and we get that synth music again. And I was like,
oh my goodness, they're gonna do it. They're gonna have
him kill Rick and we're gonna have this dark ending
on a Wednesday night on CBS Night. But now then
he dies, then the hand falls dead and becomes a

(01:18:54):
human arm, so that that would have been a good reveal.
So he reaches up, he he strangles Rick, and then
he revered olds that actually Rick was the killer the
whole time. Yeah, I mean, I still kind of think
it's the case that Rick's the real killer. But like
I said, Diane does not, She doesn't seem all that said.
She just seems like, what like she's very confused. And

(01:19:15):
then uh, Diane and Rick walk away together and they
stare at the moon looking at the moon like I
know it was you. And then we see the dead
Jason and his his eyeballs turn yellow for some reason.
Do you do you understand what that? What that implies
that he's not dead or the curse is not over,
or maybe it's trying to be clever and saying like

(01:19:38):
the curse is not just about Rick, it's about like
a lot like it's about our our culture as a whole.
It's about our our the way we handle work in America.
I don't know, no time to hash it out. Roll
credits yep, yep, and then we gotta we gotta cut
to the local news. Oh man, and that this is
this is so so made for TV. Yeah, yeah, absolutely

(01:20:00):
it um clearly they had to they had to land
this one in a certain amount of time. But I
feel like they told up. They told a fun story
for the most part. You know, it's very much at
wearable story. By the books, there's not nothing really in
this film that's surprising Death Moon, as we encounter again

(01:20:21):
it's ultimately just a TV monster movie, But it is
kind of interesting that it does seem to get into
some very shallow treatment of um of of some some
topics such as American work culture, stereotypical Hawaiian vacations, the
legacy of colonialism, and cultural and inherited guilt. Like there

(01:20:42):
seemed to be some of these ideas floating around in
the script and in the final product that we have
with Death Moon, they're just again very shallow, not not
really explored. But the particles are there, you know what
I'm saying. You can almost see them on the horizon
and you wonder if they're a mirage or not. Yeh.
It's one of these moments where it's like, students, what

(01:21:02):
is this movie almost but not quite saying? Or what
is this movie? Students? What is this movie? Um almost
but not saying about any of these topics? What is
it almost confronting but then shying away from completely? Oh?
I mean, that's actually one of my favorite things about
sort of lower brow movies, B movies made for TV

(01:21:22):
junk and all that is, sometimes they expose interesting kind
of vague anxieties and awarenesses that aren't even really fully
recognized by the creators. Yeah, and in and in other
cases too. It's the kind of thing where you could
make an argument that, say, a great artist could seriously
contemplate these ideas in a film, but but maybe not,

(01:21:42):
maybe not well or or you know, the bar would
be so much higher to pull it off at like
a at a like a you know, a high level,
but at the low level of the B of B cinema. Yeah,
almost anything is fair game. I got an alternate title,
Work Beast goes Well Beast. Oh no, not very good. Huh.

(01:22:03):
You mean like work Beasts goes west to the Hawaiian Islands,
or are you proposing a sequel where work Beast comes
back and goes on even further. I don't know, it
goes to Japan or something else. Oh yeah, work Beast
goes east and goes Uh. I mean work Beast takes Manhattan.
There's so many directions you could go in. Um, well,
work Beast is a great title. I want to see

(01:22:24):
someone take it and run with it. Um so uh.
You know, if if you're out there listening, go for it. Uh.
And certainly I would love to hear from any listeners
who uh you know with with with Dutch backgrounds, Uh,
you know who can who can tell it it really
fill us in about the work beast thing. Yeah, but
also if you know about any notable Hawaiian or Polynesian
horror movies or or other like be sci fi movies,

(01:22:46):
anything like that that that we didn't come across, Yes,
right us. So this is the point in the episode
where we were going to have a section discussing the
mere notion of were wolves in Hawaii, uh, the Hawaiian
islands where there have never been wolves, uh, and get
into a little related Polynesian mythology, because there doesn't seem

(01:23:10):
to be anything quite like a Western werewolf in Hawaiian
folklore and mythology for a variety of reasons. However, there
are human animal hybrids, there are animal transformations, there are
heroes and gods that have hybrid qualities. There's there's a
hog child. There, even the dog men, and even at

(01:23:31):
least one quote unquote cannibalistic dog man that is from
the work of early American folkloreist Martha Warren Beckwith So
these are not Western werewolves. And to be clear, what
we see in Death Moon is very much a classic
horror movie Wolfman, you know, a wolfman born out of
Western um were wolf beliefs and ideas. Uh So, anyway,

(01:23:56):
there's a lot to break down here, and I kept
adding information to the notes on really late did Hawaiian mythology,
and Joe was digging up some stuff as well, and
then we just realized it was getting a bit long,
and this might be might be more appropriate for a
future episode of stuff to blow your mind itself, either
focusing on Hawaiian mythology and a broader sense, or doing
a kind of survey of beast man myths in various cultures.

(01:24:19):
So if that's the sort of thing you're interested in,
let us know. Now for the rest of you, if
you're wondering, well, where can I see Deathman there there
there are three ways to go about it. One is
find yourself probably a European VHS release of this. Uh
you're not gonna find it on DVD or Blu ray,

(01:24:40):
and then have a VHS player so you can watch it,
I think, as far as I can tell. Yeah, that's
the only way it was ever released to h to
home audiences. Another way you can see this movie is
by traveling back in time to and catching it on
the Wednesday night line up on CBS, or you can
simply go to YouTube, where again, there's been a rip

(01:25:01):
of it with with Dutch subtitles on YouTube since so
I imagine it's still around. Um, nobody seems to care.
That's that's where you can watch it. Uh, and it's
it's not a bad rip, It's not perfect. Ultimately, I
think i'd love to see this film pop up on
Blu Ray. Um, I'd love to see what I mean,
if restored footage is even possible, I would like to

(01:25:23):
see it. I think it's ultimately kind of a fun
film that could do with a little more exposure. So
shout Factory if you're listening, get on it. Give me that,
Give me that that Deathman and Blu Ray the VHS
cover for whatever release this was. I guess this. This
may have been uh Dutch or Germany or something that
says wolf smand this really gives the wrong idea about

(01:25:44):
the movie. Yeah, it looks, uh, you know, very exploitive
based on this VHS box art, I can imagine the
disappointment of people who picked it up. All right, if
you want to listen to more Weird How Cinema. You
can find it in the Stuff table in your Mind
podcast feed wherever you get your podcast. Weird How Cinema
comes out on Friday's that's uh, that's our time to

(01:26:07):
put the science aside and just focus on a on
a weird movie. The rest of the time, we are
a science podcast two season Thursdays, those are our core
episodes in which we take on scientific, cultural, sometimes philosophic
topics and then yeah, on Friday, we put we throw
all that out the window and we just talk about
bad wearwolf films and the like huge things. As always
to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you

(01:26:30):
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, or just to say hello, you can email
us at contact. That's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I

(01:26:52):
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
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