Weirdhouse Cinema: The Dunwich Horror

It’s time for a hippie necronomicon extravaganza as Rob and Joe crack open 1970’s “The Dunwich Horror,” starring the late, great Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee and Ed Begley Sr.

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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 I'm Joe McCormick. And this week we
have I think we have a pretty fun film for everybody.

(00:23):
We're gonna be talking about the nineteen seventy necronomicon film
The Dunwich Horror, starting the late Great Dean Stockwell, does
a beholder make an appearance in this movie? I want
to know from somebody who has more D and D
experience than um. Yeah, Well, the depiction of the monster
in this film is very interesting. For the most part

(00:43):
is very minimal, but we do see a weird splash
of some sort of beholder esque um, you know, almost
kind of Medusa esque gorgon had creature towards the end,
but you don't really get a great look at it.
Sort of a flying ball of meat with with like
eyeball stalks and tentacles writhing. Is the color saturation flashes. Now,

(01:06):
there's a thing that's featured on the poster for this film,
and it's pretty cool poster. Um. You'll see different versions
of it where there's this kind of like um be
steal Dean Stockwell head with a bunch of of snakes
and serpents and leeches and stuff kind of like writhing
on the head. This is not exactly what you see
in the film. This is just kind of poster art

(01:27):
I think inspired by it. True though, I do like
the diversity of the different kinds of heads on the
snake things coming out of this beast. So you've got
like a cow skull looking thing with horns, but then
you've got a leech mouth and then, uh is the
one thing that just kind of looks like a raccoon.
It's not like a monstrous Yeah, it does kind of
look a raccoon. Yeah, all sorts of stuff going on there.
It's chaos. It's chaos in that creature. Um. But this

(01:50):
is the film has been been on my list for
a while, but I think a couple of things kind
of propelled it to the forefront for us to record
this month. First of all, I'm growing a mustache for
the Movember effort. You've probably heard our ads about that
and you know mentioning, uh you know where they can
go to learn more. Uh. So I wanted to watch
some films with solid mustaches in them, and Dean Stockwell's

(02:11):
mustache in this film was essential from me because unlike
the excellent mustaches of someone like Vincent Price or Oliver Read,
this one looks like the sort of mustache that I
could conceivably grow, an uncanny mustache, a mustache that at
once checks out checks off all the boxes for being
a cool mustache, but also looks somewhat uncomfortable. I don't know,

(02:33):
maybe it's just me. Well, that's the that's the essence
of Dean Stockwell's character in this movie. Because well, of course,
this is based on a novella originally by HP Lovecraft.
One way I think the movie is is very different
than the source material is the movie has more suaveness
in it. Dean Stockwell plays a guy who is ultimately

(02:53):
an occult creep who whose affinities lie in other dimensions.
But at the same time that there's some scenes where
he's kind of he's kind of smooth, he's he's kind
of got a little bit of charm. Yeah, it kind
of feels like a love story at times. It doesn't
stay that way very long, but there are a few
moments in here where you're like, oh, this is kind
of a you know, a slightly horror themed love story. Now,

(03:17):
the other thing that really propelled this to the forefront
for us is that, of course, on November seven, Dean
Stockwell passed away, the star of this film where one
of the stars of this film. So I thought, well,
that settles it. You know, we need we probably need
to cover this one. And it is kind of a
tribute to Dean Stockwell, who ums as well discussing a bet.
You know, it's been in tons of stuff over the years,
and there's some very memorable roles mixed into that filmography. Now,

(03:41):
as as you mentioned, this is a film that is
based on an HP Lovecraft story, and uh, I think
I think I long avoided watching this adaptation of The Dune,
which horror, because I had always heard that Lovecraft afficionados
did not like it. They didn't think he was true
to his vision. But I think that time has shown
us that, first of all, cosmic are doesn't always translate

(04:01):
that well onto the screen anyway. And also the more
we come to terms with what lovecraft vision really entailed, uh,
in its entirety, I think deviation from from forms sounds
increasingly okay. Yeah, Plus I saw that electric Wizards just
Oborn loves this film, so I figured, well, something must
be working in this adaptation for people not familiar that

(04:23):
sort of a house favorite. Uh doom Metal Stoner doom
metal band Um. But they yeah that they actually sampled
this movie and at least one of their songs, right Yeah.
And then there's another song that is just called dun
which which it seems entirely inspired by this movie, has
lyrics like child of Dune which rise you have your
father's eyes and and it looks like somebody affiliated with

(04:46):
the band UM actually cut together, you know, a music
video for that track using footage exclusively from this movie.
So there you go. I think it's fitting for the
band because this movie has just they're they're right sort
of bow months between cosmic menace and absolute cornball yeah. Um.

(05:06):
And by the way, that that track, that music video,
I'll include that on the blog post for this episode
at Samuta music dot com. And by the way, for
those of you that have written in and you've said, hey,
where can I get a list of all the movies
you've covered, of all the weird health episode so that
you've done that is where you will find that. Uh.
Samuta Music s E. M. U T A M U
S I C dot com. So let's get into it. Uh,

(05:30):
you know, what do we have in this film? We
have a we have like a nineteen seventies hippie necronomicon
story full of weird music Dean Stockwell. Uh and it's
produced by Roger Corman. And see the Corman connection because
it has a little bit of the same grit as
those uh, those like Corman Edgar Allan Poe movies from
around the same time. Yeah, and it also, as we'll

(05:53):
point out, a number of the people involved in this
went on to be in episodes of Night Gallery. I
feel like this if you if you dig Night Gallery,
you'll dig this film because it has that same texture,
that same that same field, that same mouth feel that
you get with Night Gallery. So how do you do
an elevator pitch on on this movie? Would you say,
like boy meets Girl, Boy wants to open an interdimensional

(06:15):
riff to summon ancient demons that ruled the cosmos before humankind,
meddling grandpas and Professor's interfere ye, generational conflict over over um,
you know, elicit books of ancient knowledge. Well, what would
happened if you rolled a Dubie with a page from
the Necronomicon. Uh. These are all ideas that were bouncing

(06:36):
around my head. Yeah. Well, we'll probably need to come
back to this later on. But it's interesting the little
ribbon of hippie culture and aesthetics running through the middle
of this movie. I mean, it's not you know, it's
not a Woodstock kind of movie except in little like moments,
and those moments are the suggestions of the the the

(06:58):
otherworldly evil. It's almost like a you might say it's
more anti hippie than hippie because like the hippie imagery
and it is the visions coming from the the unspeakable place. Yeah. Yeah,
So it's gonna be very interesting to discuss those themes
because it's not one of those films that I feel
like purchase itself, you know, perfectly between cultures of this

(07:21):
time period, where it can you know, fully be one
thing to one side of the the culture war and
then another two too, to the other side. But it
does it does seem to sort of try be trying
to have that ambiguity at times. Of course, then again
it might just be sort of uh, I don't know,
historical happenstance the same way you might imagine if if
this movie was made in the visions from the Other

(07:44):
the Other plane would involve sinister grunge people in flannel
kind of flailing around in a in a Seattle alleyway. Yeah, exactly.
All right, Well, let's go ahead and have have some
of the trailer here. Nights are darker and night is

(08:07):
when it happens in The Dunwich Horror, Come Back Old One,

(08:27):
Princes of Darkness and Repossess the Earth. The Dunwich Horror
based on HP Lovecraft's Terrifying Tale of Those Who Explore
the Unspeakable, starring Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Academy Award winner

(08:49):
Ed Begley, Sam Jeffey. I've never heard anything like that.
M all right, sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good, yep. Alright, well,
let's dive right into the people involved in bringing this
to the screen. First of all, I should know that

(09:10):
apparently this was originally going to be a Mario Bava film,
but it sounds like American International Pictures switched things up,
you know, sort of for your the sort of business
reasons you might expect with the studio, Like I think
one of Baba's previous films underperformed or didn't perform in
the way they wanted it to, so it ended up
getting shuffled around and we ended up with Daniel Holler

(09:33):
directing it. Um, this is a guy who's born in
ninety six, And weirdly enough, Hallard's directorial debut with the
nineteen sixty five Lovecraft adaptation Die Monster Die, starring Boris Karloff. Oh, yes,
that one based on the Color out of Space, I believe. So. Yeah,
I have not seen this one either. I haven't either
of it. You know, they just made a new Color

(09:54):
out of Space movie within the past year or two
and I actually never saw it yet. But it's got
Nicholas Cage in it. Oh well, well, you know it's
good then. Uh So Haller went on to from Die
Monster Die, he went on to direct a pair of
late sixties biker movies. He did Devil's Angels starring John
Cassavetti's He did The Wild Racers. This starred Fabian and

(10:17):
also featured um one of our favorites, Dick Miller in there.
Of course, you know, this movie really missed out on
having Dick Miller and it. Dick Miller would have been
great as as one of the irate townspeople you know. Yeah, yeah,
he has towns people written all over him. He could
have been the guy at the gas station. That's a
perfect Dick Miller role. Yeah, Or he could have been

(10:37):
one of the guys at the store making fun of
Grandpa when he was talking about bringing beings over from
another dimension. Yeah, yeah, missed opportunity. Anyway. Haller went on
to do mostly a lot of TV work. He directed
the pilot for Buck Rogers in the twenty Century, which
ended up being pushed out as a film, so technically
there's a film credit for him. Uh. He was also

(10:59):
production design or an art director on a bunch of
old Roger Corman movies. All right, now, the writers on
this um there there are a couple of writers that
really didn't go on to do a whole lot else,
Henry Rosenbaum and Ronald Solkovski. But Curtis Hansen was one
of the writers. He lived sixteen and this was his

(11:20):
first screenplay, but he went on to work on screenplays
for White Dog, Never cry Wolf, and l A Confidential,
which he also directed. Other directorial credits include The Hand
That Rocks the Cradle, Wonder Boys and eight Mile. Now,
I guess if you're trying to adapt a Lovecraft story
for for the screen, there's always a choice you've got

(11:43):
to make, which is sort of I would say, probably
usually prized for its dreadful imagination, you know, very imaginative
of of uh, strange and powerful imagery that that that
makes you feel small and afraid. So it's good horror
in that sense, but very often lax a human or
humane element. And so do you just sort of try
to do that in a movie and risk making an

(12:05):
alienating film that nobody doesn't really have characters anybody can
connect to, or do you try to adapt the story
into something more human with more identifiable characters. Yeah, yeah,
that is always that because yes, some generally these are
stories that are very a sexual uh you know, they
don't really have any any romance in them, and it's
all about uh in a dread and cyclopean architecture and

(12:28):
so forth. Uh So, yeah, what direction do you go
in it? Do you own like an action direction which
a number of people have gone or tried to go.
I know that's what Gayama de Toro I think has
what been wanting to do with at the Mountains of madness. Uh,
do you go in kind of a a schlocky, sexy
harror direction like you know, the the reanimator movies definitely

(12:49):
went in that direction? Or do or do you find
some other path? I would say the screenplay adaptation in
this movie doesn't step fully into making it like a
you know, like a rich, lovely world full of full
of identifiable characters that are you know fully human, But
it takes sort of a half step in that direction.
It is less barren of humanity than than your standard

(13:12):
Lovecraft story would be. Yeah. Now, Lovecraft lived eighteen ninety seven.
Poul horror author and one of the major voices of
the Weird Tales era, who became more influential and famous
after his death. His work has left an undeniable mark
on modern horror, but modern horror fans have had to
contend with the racism in his letters of correspondence as

(13:33):
well as in the fabric of many of his tales.
In the stories themselves. It's one of those things that
I feel like it's impossible not to see it once
you've seen it, you know. And and even in the
Dunwich Horror, which I did not reread for for the
purposes of viewing this film. But but even in watching
this film, there are elements that are about like people
being despised because of their lineage um and it's it's

(13:56):
just impossible to ignore, Like that's it's just baked into
so many of his works totally. And I think that's
one of the reasons I would agree with what you
said earlier, like I'm not really troubled by lovecraft adaptations
not being true to his vision. I mean, I think
you can probably take a lot of what's like cool
about the monstrous and imaginative qualities of some of his

(14:17):
stories and do something else with them, maybe even something
better with them. Yeah, and in this case, something grew here. Yeah,
So let's talk about the groovy humans involved in acting
in this film. Uh. The top build star is Sandra
d who plays Nancy uh Wagner, who lived Night issue
of nine through two thousand and five. A former child

(14:39):
model and teen actor, D was a big deal in
the late fifties through the late sixties, known for the
title role in nineteen sixty two Gidget, among others uh
and this film The Dunwich Harror was supposed to be
part of a comeback for her. But it apparently didn't
quite take off, and her work after this film was
increasingly sporadic. But she did go on to appear on
three episodes of Rod Serling's Night Gallery, which again feels

(15:03):
appropriate considering the uh, you know, the tone of this
film and the tone of Night Gallery. You know what,
I thought Sandra d did really good in this movie.
I thought her part was a little bit underwritten later
in the film. But but she does a good job
with it. Yeah, I mean, she's very charismatic on the screen.
You you instantly buy into her, into her character, just

(15:24):
based largely on on these performance Uh. But yeah, her
her character increasingly feels less dynamic and and and more
powerless and kind of like shuffle to the background of things. So, uh,
that that being said, she does a good job with it.
I was gonna say, actually, very much reminds me of
the arc of the protagonist in uh in Lords of Salem,

(15:45):
who My main problem with that movie is the that
the protagonist for the second two thirds of the movie
becomes mostly catatonic. Oh yeah, I think it was very
much a comparison to be made between the character trajectories
of both of these Uh. The these roles in both
of these films. All right, well, let's let's talk about

(16:12):
Dean Stockwell. Then Dean Stockwell plays Wilbur Lately here, so
Dean stock will live ninety six through one and uh boy,
he had a really long career. He started out as
a child actor in ninety five and continued acting for
the the next seventy years. His last screen credit was
in two thousand fifteen, so some two four screen credits. Wow,

(16:37):
So as you might imagine, there's a hold on, hold on, Sorry,
I have to ask, is that counting each individual episode
of Quantum Leap separately or just as one credit? Just
as one credit? Yeah? Wow, Yeah, because yeah Quantum Leap.
Of course, because since he did a fair amount of
TV work, and so I think a lot of people
when you think of Dean Stockwell, you probably think of
his character Al, the hologram un Quantum Leap, Uh, the

(17:00):
guy who appears to you and helps helps you figure
out what you've got to do in this weird sci
fi reincarnation of serial um situation in order to keep
passing on through other people's lives. I was a big
fan of Quantum of Leep. I remember we would it
was like a show that that my family would watch.
We would watch it together whenever it was on. So

(17:22):
that's fond memories of that. I think that was another
one that I sometimes saw at a hotel cable like vacation,
because they really they did reruns of it on the
Sci Fi channel, right, Oh did they? Okay? I think yeah,
I think you're right. I think you're right. So Stockwell
did a lot of Western's early on again, a lot
of TV work. He did the hippie picture psych Out
in nineteen sixty eight opposite Jack Nicholson. He was also

(17:45):
in Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie in nineteen seventy one,
so to a certain extent he seems to have been
very much a part of that Nicholson Hopper dern fond
a scene of the late sixties early seventies. In the
mid eighties, he had this sudden film home um Resurgence,
appearing in Vim Vender's Paris Texas four, as well as

(18:06):
David Lynch's Dune in nineteen eighty four, in which he
played dr You. Oh yeah, I forgot he was in Dune.
Yeah yeah, he's got the mustache, he's got the mark
on the forehead. Um, yeah, In nineteen eighty five, he
was in William Fredkins to Live and Die in l A.
Subsequent films include Blue Velvet, Beverly Hills Cop two. He
also had a memorable role in the nineteen eighty eight

(18:29):
Jonathan Demi comedy Married to the Mob, in which he
played a mobster. I think something like Tony the Tiger
or something. What's his name? But yeah on TV though,
I think he's best remembered for al on Quantum Leap.
He also later had a fun recurring role on the
Battlestar Galactica reboot as a John cavill and he did

(18:50):
an episode of Night Gallery. So a weird fact I
came across while while reading about this movie. Dean Stockwell
was in a second movie adaptation of the Dunwich Horror
of the novella. This movie is based on It's one
from two thousand eight that looks truly dreadful, but in
this one he's like he switches roles. So in this

(19:11):
movie he plays the guy who's trying to summon the demons,
and in the two thousand and eight movie he plays
the professor who has to battle that guy in the end.
So it's basically a switch from like playing Macbeth to
playing McDuff. And this adaptation is set in Louisiana, which
what can you really separate the stony New England nous

(19:32):
from this story that seems absolutely crucial to it. That
seems like trying to set the shining in Louisiana. Well
you say that, but then again, this film, um was
the Dunwich Horror of the nineteen seventy was filmed in
like coastal northern California. So no, that makes sense given
it and it it works, but then again it works
for this film, but yeah, it doesn't feel particularly like

(19:55):
New England. Now, I will also mention that Dean was
the son of actor Harry Stockwell, who, among other things,
was the voice of the Prince in Disney snow White,
the classic snow White animated film. And Dean's older brother,
Guy was also an actor, appearing in such films as
Santa Sangria and also nineteen sixty five The Warlord. He's

(20:16):
played the villain in that opposite Charlton Heston. Now you
mentioned the professor that that the battles wilbur H. This
is Professor Armitage, doctor or Dr Henry Armitage, as as
he's reference in the credits for for Dunwich Horror and
in this film, this character is played by Ed Bagley Sr.
Who lived nineteen oh one through nineteen seventy. So he's

(20:39):
the hero of the picture. Philosophy professor at I believe
from uh Miskatonic. Yeah, yeah, I don't know if it's
if this is like the California branch of the college
or if he's visiting. Uh, it's not really explored. Yeah,
Miskatonic University, Riverside. Yeah. Uh so Ed Bagley Senior. As

(21:00):
you may notice, this is of course Ed Bangley Junior's dad. Um.
He was nearly seventy years old during this film, and
it definitely shows he has very much the feel of
of an older guy in this which, Um. I think
it's rather rather fitting because we talked about sort of
the themes of generational um tug of war in this picture.

(21:21):
You know that it's about the old people telling the
young people they shouldn't do things, and and ultimately it
feels like it has this um uh, you know, it
makes sense that that armitage would be this grandfatherly character
who's trying to protect young Sandra d from the dangers
posed by hippie sorcerers. Oh yeah, I can see that.

(21:41):
And well, even though Ed Begley is supposed to be
on the side of good at the end of this
at the end of this movie, he plays so well
into the cranky old man archetype. I mean, and I
think he was often type cast that way. I'm not
I haven't seen all of his movie, but like, for example,
in Twelve Angry Men, he played is like the worst juror,

(22:01):
you know, he's the one, he's like the racist one.
He's he's the like nasty old guy who they eventually
went over in the end, but like it becomes clear
that he's just like a mean old crank, and he
can play a mean old crank. He Um. Yeah. I
don't know that I've really seen him and much um
or at least don't remember him from much, but he
was a major actor. He won an Academy Award for

(22:23):
Best Supporting Actor for his performance in nineteen sixty two
Sweet Bird of Youth. Um you already mentioned fifty seven
Twelve Angry Men. He was also in The Unsinkable Molly
Brown in nineteen sixty four, and he was nominated for
an Emmy Award for Inherent the Wind? Oh who did
he play and Inherent the Wind? Was he? Uh? Was
he Darrow? Or um or play cave Man? I think

(22:44):
it's been Oh okay, no, I just looked it up.
He it's it was in not the original movie adaptation
with Spencer Tracy, but another one they did for TV
and Ed Begley plays plays Matthew Brady, who is the
character based on William Nings Brian. Okay, so he's the
do not teach evolution guy? Okay, Well that that that

(23:05):
falls in line with with your your basic argument here
though that he tended to play the the cranky antagonist.
But yeah, something about it does work in this movie,
like you're saying, because I think because the like the
evil visions are inflected with this kind of like youth
and and counterculture hippie strangeness, that in the end the
day is saved by just like a like a grumpy

(23:28):
old crank. Yeah, an old guy who's like, you get
your hands off the necronomicon. That's that's not for young folks.
That's for us old that's not for the common folk.
That's for the professors like me. That's why we hide
the necronomicon behind a paywall. I get to study it.
You don't. But this is literally a conflict in the movie.
Like early on, Dean Stockwell and Ed Begley have an

(23:51):
argument about whether whether he can like look at the Necronomicon,
and Ed Begley is just like, no, it's not for
it's not for you to do, it's for me. It's
from my stuff. Date. It's like, yeah, he's not of
the mind like, no one should look at the Necronomicon,
you know, no one, not one of those. Uh. He's like, oh,
I should totally look at it. It's this is my thing. Well,
we can discuss this when we get more into the plot,
but I think the idea is Ed Begley believes Dean

(24:14):
Stockwell's interests in it are not pure, which he's correct
in actually true. Okay, So Wilbur Weightley's father is Old Weightley,
and he's played by Sam Jaffee, who lived through four
character actor known for roles in The Asphalt Jungle That
Day the Earth stood still, bed knobs and bruined sticks

(24:36):
and then her uh and you better know he appeared
in an episode of the Night Gallery. Now you know
one of the actors I was most surprised to see
in this movie was that Talia Shire shows up in
a in a very small role. She plays a receptionist
in a doctor's office who sort of uh passes along
some general folk town knowledge about the evil of the

(25:01):
Weighty family and and how you know you better stay
away from them. But I guess this makes sense because
I was like, man, this is a strange role. But
this was before The Godfather Rocky, right, Yeah, this was
only her second film credit. But yeah, she would go
on to to play Adrian. She's She's Adrian. She's the
one that Rocky is we're yelling about. Yeah, she's Connie

(25:22):
and The Godfather. She was in a ton of other movies, including, uh,
the nineteen seventy nine Mute and Bear film Prophecy, which
of course also stars our our favorite work Beast uh
Robert Foxworth based. Maybe we should start making a list
of the movies that most often get mentioned with crossover.
I feel like Prophecy somehow comes up a lot. Yeah, Like,

(25:45):
I guess we've got to do Prophecy at some point, uh,
just because it keeps coming up. It's this uh, this
this collection picture that it just collects all these other
actors that we keep referring to, and I guess it's
one that I I've never seen myself. But the VH
Jes cover is like firmly fixed in my head because
it has this like mutant bear and sort of this
embryotic state. Alright, Well, let's talk about the music in

(26:07):
this film, because this, this, this I was really excited for,
because the music, once more, is by Less Baxter. They
through nineteen sixty six. We've discussed him a few different times.
This is the king of exotica music. Um. He did
the effective jazzy score in Mario Baba's Black Sabbath. He
also did the very minimal electric blooping frog noise score

(26:31):
for the film Frogs. Okay, what always happens is Baxter
comes up and I mentioned, well, okay, Baxter has got
all this excellent exotica work that he did, um, and
then I'll say something to the effect of, well, but
this isn't really an exotica score anything, because because Baxter
did a number of B movie scores, uh, and then
went on to compose music for SeaWorld when score work

(26:52):
kind of dried up for him. So I think his
work is probably better understood as as a professional output
rather than anything like, hey, let's get that exotic a
guy to do this film because we want an exotica score.
But with Dunwich Horror, I think the elements of of
weird pagan ceremonies uh in it really provided a reason
for some of those exotica elements to flare up. So

(27:14):
we have this this fun mix of nineties seventies cinematic jazz.
We have Eastern motifs, we have weird there men and
electronic sound effects. We have foreboding drums and blaring horns. Um,
it very much feels like yeah, jazz cigarette rolled with
a page from the Necronomicon here. You know, I thought

(27:35):
one of the sonic elements of this movie that was
especially effective. And I don't know if Less Baxter did
this part, I would assume at least partially did, was that. Um,
when you are seeing the evil twin brother from the
house the I guess, would this be the titular dune
which horror or just the horror refer to like this
guy or like the whole sort of situation. I'm not sure. Um.

(27:58):
I always took it to me like the whole situation,
But but I think it could apply specifically to the brother. Yeah,
so the twin brother. There is this monstrous twin brother
who is sort of a Hugo if you will, the
Hugo of the film, who's behind a rattling door for
most of the movie. But later on in the film
he gets out, and that's when when things really get wild. Um.

(28:19):
But so when he gets out, we sort of see,
uh a Hugo cam and so we're seeing from his
perspective as he floats around over the landscape looking for
for people to terrorize. And in those sequences or when
when you're seeing people and you just know that the
twin brother is near, there's just this steady, ominous chord
and a slow kind of heartbeat rhythm. I know that

(28:44):
sounds very standard for for horror movies, but it works
really well in this one. I always really like the
sound in those scenes. Yeah. I mean, I think a
huge part of it is, first of all, they're adapting
a story about essentially an evil brother who's an invisible
space blob. So if you're going to try and portray
that accurately, you're you're already limited. So they a lot

(29:05):
of what they do is based in sound and then
also in like weird colors and stuff. Uh so the
sound is essential here and I, um, I don't know
for certain, but I suspect this was totally Baxter's deal
as well, if if for no other reason, because it
lines up with his work and Frogs, which is almost
entirely you know, electronic and like minimal ambient in that regard. Now,

(29:28):
I don't think the score for this film is widely
available in digital or physical form right now, but it
has been released over the years, and it was originally
released on vinyl in ninety under the title and I
kid you not Music of the Devil God Cult Strange
Sounds from Dunwich, and then it it's just it's a

(29:48):
wonderful title, like they seem to be going like further away.
It's not just hey, here's the score for the dun
which are by Less Baxter, Like no, here is the
Music of the Devil God Cult. And the cover of
the album is just Dean Stockwell's face with his eyes
so wide it looks like his head's gonna explode. Yeah,
this is one of his this wonderful pose that he

(30:09):
does where he puts his his hands to either side
of his face. While they're crossed. During one of his
MANI yag saga, chants oh yeah, I I like that,
So he puts yea. He puts his hands up beside
his head and he's got a ring on each pinky,
so it's like he's got a second pair of eyes almost.
But also the way his hands are out flat beside

(30:30):
his face, he looks like a cobra flaring. It's it's hood. Yeah,
it's it's it's it's excellent. Um, it's it's a great pose.
Maybe maybe maybe my wife will let me use this
pose and in the next photo. Yeah, they'd be good
for the Christmas card. Yeah, So yeah, I would say
that in general, this movie is excellent. From an audio standpoint.

(30:52):
I watched it with with earbuds in and I felt
like the weird sounds were just kind of like rolling
around me in like three D audio. It had this
these great dark ambient stretches. It has some wonderful like
like um you know, cosmic horror jazz going on, which
which I absolutely loved. So this is um, yeah, this

(31:12):
is this is a wonderful score and I really hope
someone puts it out again, not only digitally, but like
all these like crazy vinyls that we often touch on
that come out to re release these various scores, Like,
oh man, you could go in so many fun directions
with this. Yeah, I agree. I I really enjoyed the
music the whole the whole audio landscape I thought was
a was a highlight of the movie. All right, Well,

(31:41):
let's let's get into the plot for this baby. All right,
So this movie begins with a precredit sequence, but it
has some amazing animations that go along with the credits.
We should talk about those in the second But before
we get to that, there is this pre credit sequence where, um,
there there's like a bunch of witches in a bedroom.
It's kind of the it's kind of Rosemary's Baby ending

(32:02):
scene almost. Um, some some witches in a bedroom and
like a lady maybe going to give birth or having
given birth. And uh. The problem with this scene is
all of the characters are being drastically upstaged by the
decor in the rooms, which is just the busiest purple

(32:23):
wall paper I've ever seen, and like weird clocks that
look like they're made out of the like they're like
you know, trash sculpture, um strange framed photos weird like
popping sconces and and sculpture is everywhere. This house is awesome,
but the interior decoration is so busy it's almost funny. Yeah, yeah,

(32:46):
it is. It is an intensely decorated house that they
use for this film, and and that, like the color
scheme is wonderful. It's got like these weird purple's going on.
I love it now. I guess we're just supposed to
assume that something Almina has happened in the scene. Um.
But but after the scene, we we go to the credits,
and the credits are wonderful. They are these blue and

(33:08):
black silhouette animations where we're like, we're watching all these scenes.
For example, they're like these little figures that look like
wizards of some kind running around on a blue background
over the solid black terrain, and then we kind of
get a zoom out and it turns out that the
terrain is not ground, but it's like muscles on a

(33:28):
giant horned devil body, which was great. But then they're
also I don't know, there's just great imagery in it,
like these weird trees and a big snake head and
then a guy who I gotta say, in his in
his pose with his big cloak and staff, looks way
too much like the Master from Manos The Hands of Fate.
But but that's okay. Um. I agree that the opening

(33:52):
credits for this are really fabulous. Um. They also kind
of tell a story, like they kind of fill you
in and get you prepared for what's happening. It's about
some sort of uh you know, presented story about a
miraculous birth and uh, you know, the coming of a
sorcerer and so forth. It's it's nice, but okay, we
cut from here to a modern university. It's like a

(34:14):
university campus again. I guess this is supposed to be
the uh, the infamous Miskatonic University. And we see Ed
Begley as this character, Professor Henry Armitage. He's walking with
some students, having just given a lecture on this book.
The book is the Necronomicon. It is this tome of
ancient evil, uh that is stored in a glass case

(34:37):
in the Miskatonic library and plain side of everything. Yeah,
and he well, I don't know if you understood it
the same way. My read on this was that, um,
the Armitage character doesn't necessarily believe that the like spells
in the book would actually work or I was a

(34:58):
little unclear on that, but he seems to of some
kind of uh cautious respect for this book and and
its power, even if he doesn't fully buy into magic
or any such nonsense. Yeah, he's I mean again thinking
of putting kind of like a generational conflict read on
all of this. It's kind of like he's evaluating the
hippie culture and he's like, I don't actually believe in

(35:20):
you know, Eastern religion. I don't believe that, um, you
know that in all these beneficial you know, powers that
the young people say that these uh you know that
these various drugs have. I don't believe in their music,
but I believe that all these things are dangerous and
can hurt them, and therefore I need to protect him
from those influences. Oh yeah, I can see that. Well.

(35:42):
So anyway, UM sander d who plays a character named
Nancy and her friend, UM Elizabeth is that her friend's name.
They're apparently students who have been attending these lectures, so
I guess they're interested in ancient evil tomes and uh
and and ed Begley hands off the Necronomicon to sander D.
He's like, take this back to the library, and she's

(36:04):
like okay. But while she's taking it back, Dean Stockwell
shows up, and he is from the very first moment
this this powerful combination of suave and unsettling. You know,
is he is he a smooth operator or is he
a dangerous creep? Seems like he's both. Yeah, yeah, he
really walks that line. It's it's a great performance. There's

(36:26):
a lot of a lot of him staring intently at
characters and talking very calmly um about, you know, either
about some sort of esoteric topic or in this case,
he's just like, oh, yes, I understand, but can I
see the Necronomicon? Like he's very insistent. Yeah, he really
wants to borrow the Necronomicon for five minutes. Yeah, And

(36:48):
and she's like she's finally like, oh yeah, okay, you can,
just don't take it into the bathroom. Oh and also,
Sanderd immediately has a crush on Dean Stockwell. She and
she and her friend are like, wow, did you see
his eyes? He's great eyes. Yeah, he's got his father's eyes.
So Dean Stockwell takes this book, and I think he
goes to a side room or something and he's reading
aloud from it, and he's he's just enraptured. He's reading

(37:11):
these lines about yogs of thought and various prophecies about
gates and old ones and so forth. But then Ed
Begley shows up and he's like, the book please, And
Begley does not like this screwing around this. This book
needs to go immediately back to its display case. So
this whole group ends up like going out to a

(37:32):
bar and grill together to yeah, mons realistics and and
talk about ancient evil. Yeah like that. There's the conflict
is not such that it prevents everyone from going out
to the lunch, which I wish more conflicts in in
films would go like this, where there's an initial argument
and they're like, well, hey, let's do lunch. Let's talk

(37:52):
about this further. Shall we discuss yog so thought over
a shrimp cocktail? Yes? So while they're all out, you know,
talking to each other, I think we find out something
about Dean Stockwell's character's background. He is, he's a guy
named Wilbur Weightley, and he's from this famous Weightly family
that their family history is tied up in the Necronomicon,

(38:15):
this evil book. And so Wilbur Weiteley is the great
either the grandson or great grandson I think great grandson
of a guy named Oliver Weightley who was was murdered
by the town's folk of of Dunwich. I think is
domage supposed to be in Massachusetts or um something like that, yeah,
or in this case perhaps uh so northern California. Yeah, right,

(38:40):
but his his great grandfather was murdered by the town's
folk after having you know, it was mob violence, for
allegedly having done something very evil and uh. And Dean
Stockwell wants to borrow the Necronomicon so he can study
it because he says he's a student of the occult,
and he says that this book is like the Bible
to him. And Armitage is not amused by this. He's like,

(39:03):
I know enough about strange things not to laugh at them,
and so he won't let the book go and uh,
and so he heads off, and then Wilbur and uh
and Nancy, you're just hanging out Dean Stockwell and Sander
d and uh, and Wilburg's like, I can't stand pomposity,
which is funny because his character is extremely pompous, like

(39:24):
these moments where he is just making these grandiose prophecies.
I don't remember exactly how he phrases them, but I
would say that that Wilburg gets pompous, yes, but his
is the pomposity of Heath right, yeah, which is apparently
more acceptable. So it ends up where sander d drives
Dean Stockwell back to Dunwich because he misses his bus

(39:45):
and we get a taste of the townsfolks feelings about
him and his family when they stopped for gas in
Dunwich and the gas station attendant once he sees Dean
Stockwell in the car, he's like, oh, Wilbur, I don't
want anything that he says, he just wants one dollar
for the gas, and then he like leaves them alone.
And uh, apparently the animosity goes both ways. Wilburt does

(40:06):
not like the town's folk. He says, they've treated me
that way since childhood. There's still the same frightened, superstitious fools.
And true enough, everything we see of the townspeople um
from here on out, like they do seem um, they
do seem awful. So I'm i'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. When
I was watching this, I was kind of at times
wondering whose side we're supposed to be on us. So,

(40:29):
you know, it becomes clear that, you know, Wilburg does
not have great intentions for humanity through his dealings here
with the Necronomicon and it's uh, it's forbidden wisdom. But
on the other hand, the towns people suck. So I
don't know, I don't know who we're supposed to be
rooting for here. I guess Sandra D. I think. I
think ultimately the audience is supposed to be on the
side of Sandra D and her friend and professor Armitage. Yeah.

(40:52):
So anyway, Sandra D comes over to Wilbur's house for
a cup of tea or something, I think a cup
of tea, and inside it's immediately clear that this is
the house that the pre credit sequence took place in,
because again, the busiest decor of any house ever. And
I don't recall if it's like this in the novella.
My impression of the house and the novella was that

(41:14):
it was more of just a wreck. Yeah, this house
looks like it was decorated by a family of flamboyant
stage magicians. Yes, yeah, they have. For instance, they have
these wonderful crystals setting around, um that are never fully
explained and uh and are pretty fabulous. They had occasionally

(41:35):
or moved around or move on their own or suddenly
set off intense fires. It's it's great. Yeah, the house
is just wonderful. It's one of my favorite things about
the movie, honestly is the wallpaper, the little ornaments on
the coffee tables, and the and the hearth and everything,
all the wall art. It's just oh and the floor decorations. Well,

(41:56):
when you get those sudden like shots from up above,
it's just a great gray house. Yeah. Yeah, just a
complete environment that they put together here. Now. At first,
even though Wilbur has already said some strange things, we
get the impression that uh, Sander d I think likes him.
He's very uh handsome and charming and uh, I don't
know about charging. Yeah, sort of charming. I mean he's

(42:17):
at least like smooth and confident and there's something about him.
But we we start immediately seeing this is not going
to go well because Wilbur is not a cool guy. Wilbur.
Wilbur is the interdimensional creep that that you got that
hint of earlier. So he immediately sneaks out to sander
D's car and steals something from her engine, disabling the car,

(42:39):
and then back inside the house, Sanderd starts having visions
of threatening hippies and elaborate face paint and clothing, and
she sees tree limbs and waves crashing on rocks. Yeah,
and this is where we get that real sense of
hippie danger and I love it. Hippies and their magic
pose a threat to the innocent youth and it's up

(42:59):
to the the Olds to protect her from their influence. Okay,
so we already saw Wilbur steel something from her car engine,
which is bad enough, and then he gets even worse.
We see him inside the house putting some kind of
potion or substance into her tea, presumably uh to to
knock her out and keep her at the house to
keep her from returning back to wherever Miss Quatonic is.

(43:22):
But while while Wilbur's being a creep over here, Sandra
Dee somehow stumbles into Wilbur's grandfather. M Yeah, he's just
kind of just lurching around the house with his weird
funky staff. Oh yeah, that's staff. It's great. It's just
got a big occult pendant on the top. Yeah yeah. Later,

(43:44):
of course we see that it's not just around the house.
He like takes this with him when he goes to
like the gas station in town, um, which you can
just imagine, like Wilbur's like, Dad, please please don't bring
that to town again. Stop bringing that to the gas
station with you. Okay. Well, Sandra, he finds out her
car won't start, and she's getting very sleepy, presumably for

(44:04):
the sleeping powder or whatever it was that that he
put in the t So she decides she's gonna have
to stay the night at the house, and so Wilberah
gives her a guest bedroom and and she settles down,
and then she has a dream. And this dream really
reinforces those vision themes from earlier, because it's these like
eld rich half naked hippies running around grabbing at her face,

(44:27):
and then waves crashing on the rocks, and these visions
of just uh psychedelic evil woodstock and then she gets
chased into a shack and then I think that's the
end of the dream. These are great sequences because we
really don't see too much of them, uh and what
but what we do see of them is evocative and
colorful and a little bit scary. Um, I reminded. It

(44:48):
made me think back to the nineteen sixty seven film
The Trip, which was Roger Corman directed Jack Nicholson written
film about basically about character played by Peter fa going
on an acid trip. And Um, in that film, there
are a number of different psychedelic sequences, but also sequences
they go on way too long, and she used to

(45:10):
feel very trippy because you've been in them for like
five minutes and had sort of like stationary effects and
so forth. But these these feel very trippy because they
are given in like dream like flashes. Okay, So then
the next day comes along and we get two different threads.
One is that we see a professor armitage ed Begley
and Uh and Sandrad's friend Elizabeth are driving out to

(45:33):
Dunwich to find her because she disappeared the night before
and he the Weightlies don't have a phone at their house,
so she couldn't call anybody. So they're like, well, what
happened to her? So they're driving out to check on her.
But then the other half is we see Sandra de
and Dean Stockwell just hanging out walking around town, uh,
getting to know one another and and and sharing information.

(45:54):
So among the conversations they have, one is where Wilbur
and Nancy are like exploring downtown Dunwich and he explains
how the town's folk murdered his great grandfather. Uh. And
he says the reason for this is that he didn't
believe in God or the devil and instead believed in
an ancient race of beings from another dimension that came
before humanity are more powerful than us and that uh,

(46:18):
and that he could bring them back from the plane
where they sit waiting. And then he claims that they
that they put a trumped up murder charge on his
great grandfather, that a girl disappeared and they claimed that
he had murdered her in some kind of human sacrifice.
Though I think we were may be supposed to understand
that that that charge may in fact be true. Yeah. Meanwhile,

(46:39):
our Mettage and Elizabeth end up they end up connecting
with the local town doctor who might know something about
the Weighty family, and this is where we meet Tallya Shire.
She's the receptionist to the doctor's office, and she, when
speaking to Elizabeth, kind of discloses the town's beliefs about
the weightles like she tells Nancy's friend Uh that that
Wilbur never had a girlfriend before, and no girl should

(47:02):
go over to that house because that house is bad news.
And this is a nice little scene, I thought. I mean,
there's nothing groundbreaking or anything, but I feel like they
had a nice little scene together with some some well
written dialogue. Yes, and it's a funny counterpoint to what's
going on in the room next door where Ed Begley
is talking to the doctor and he's explaining, well, you know,
there are these old ones, and so it's at least

(47:22):
alleged that they can be brought back from another dimension
and then the earth will be destroyed. I also love
how it's basically armatage showing up and he's been like, hello, doctor,
i'd i'd like to. I was wondering if I could
sit down with you for a moment and you could
tell me the medical histories of this entire family. And
he's like, well, it'd better be good for a good reason,

(47:43):
and it's because of these ancient gods from another dimension.
And then the doctor is like, well, in that case, yes,
let me get out the file. Um now, somewhere in here,
I don't remember how we get into this, but there's
like a flashback of a of a scene. Or maybe
he's not a flashback. Maybe it's either a flashback or
takes place at the same time. But for some at

(48:03):
some point it must be in the past. Right, Oh, okay, okay,
you're right. Grandpa Weiteley is in a local general store
and he's just ranting about old gods I think, and uh,
and the locals are are viciously mocking him. Yeah. This
is one of those where you're like, oh, man, the
people have done which like they mostly sucks. So I

(48:24):
really can't side with them in all of this feel
bad for old way here. But somehow in all this,
the doctor and Armitage they figure out that Wilbur's mother, Lavinia,
is currently in an asylum, and they go to see
her there and she's in a padded room and her
hair is turned completely white, and she's in there screaming

(48:44):
about how my son's opened the gate, my son's and
then she says, kill them all. And so I think
it's one of those cases where a character who is
said to be mad is speaking things that are directly
informative of the coming plot, but none of the characters
realize it, so they're just kind of like, oh, what's
this nonsense. And then meanwhile, we're just seeing more stuff
with Dean Stockwell and Sandra d um uh. They're hanging out.

(49:07):
Dean Stockwell is always in a suit. Yeah, great dapper,
and I think it's implied Sandradd appears to be from
this point increasingly it's kind of hard to describe, just
like increasingly kind of hypnotized, like she's always kind of sleepy. Yeah,
I'm kind of unclear on this, but the film seems

(49:28):
to keep her in this weird place where she doesn't
seem like she's like one been kidnapped, but she's also
not one percent of collaborator either. She's not like, yeah,
let's go up there and raise some old ones wilbur Um.
It really does feel like this film aligns with something
we've talked about on the show before this late sixties
early seventies fear of hippie occult mind washing during this period.

(49:51):
So it's really as if Sandra D's character is not
she's not being held captive by the evil Wilbur. He's
not tying her to train tracks so the old ones
will run over her. Um uh. And she's also not
portrayed as like a complete doll person where she's like
I obey Wilbur and the old ones. Now, no, she's
she's just under their spell in the non magical sense,
like she's she's been caught up in all of this

(50:13):
hippie danger and that's why she needs uh Professor Armitage
to Grandpa Armitage here to jump in and save her. Yeah.
I think that's about right. So, Yeah, she's not being
portrayed as being held in dune which against her will,
but at the same time she it is suggested that
that's something she's somehow enchanted like her her her free

(50:35):
will has been compromised in some way. Yeah. And so
she and Dean Stockwell are out on these uh they're
out on a seaside cliff at some point, and they
walk up to some old stone ruins. They're like these
pillars and a staircase and a stone altar and uh.
And Wilburg says legend that says it's been here forever.
It's called the Devil's Hopyard, which is the name I

(50:56):
look this up. It is the name of a place
in Connecticut, which is does not look like this at all,
and there's no temple as far as I can tell.
But the landscape is very beautiful looking in the movie.
Yeah again it's it's clearly coastal northern California, but but
it looks gorgeous and and yeah, they're increasingly these shots,
and I think these are ultimately closing shots of the
film of of this the seaside and the waves crashing

(51:19):
on these rocky beaches, and it's it's good, it's it's
really good. And so wilbur starts talking about this ancient ritual,
ancient occult rituals here that would involve like virgin sacrifice,
and this would somehow open a gate that would allow
the old ones to come through. And then he does
the thing. He puts his hands to the sides of
his head, flares them like the cobra hood, and he's

(51:42):
got the pinky rings next to his eyes, and he
starts yelling yogs of thought. And so here we get
more weird psychedelic visions. Sander D imagines herself to be
sacrificed on the stone altar. She's surrounded by evil priests
with these black hoods over their heads, and and there's
Wilbur standing among them, so it seems like he may
have some kind of connection to these evil rituals from

(52:05):
the deep past. Oh oh. And in this whole sequence,
this is where we finally get the Wilbur chest reveal,
which is where he takes his shirt off and he's
covered in tattoos that look like hieroglyphics. Yeah, which is great.
I think in the original short story, Wilbur, for starters,
is not dashing. I think he comes off more is
like a dangerous bum and we find out that he

(52:27):
ultimately find out that he's like but he has part
monster body or something, and in this we don't have that.
Instead we just have these really cool, um, you know,
occult tattoos all over it. After this, there's a whole
sequence where we follow Nancy's friend Elizabeth, who's trying to

(52:51):
investigate you know, she she's worried about the well being
of her friends, so she's going to the Weightly house
to look around for her, to check on her and
make sure she's okay. And while she's investigating the house,
there are several times so far in the movie where
we have seen this door upstairs in the house rattling
as if there is something behind it that wants to
get out, and uh, and unfortunately it is Elizabeth who

(53:15):
opens this door and goes into the forbidden room while
she's looking around the house. And so this is the
first like attack, like the first murder scene in the movie.
But this the why Wilburg's twin, this other being in
the house, and this scene is weird. It's like it's
done with this flashing color abstract animation suggesting kind of
the flailing of octopus arms and lights from another world.

(53:38):
It does this heavy like red and blue color saturation
that goes back and forth. Yeah, like they're really I
feel like they were really going for like an LSD
trip kind of a vibe here um and and again
it comes back to the fact too, that they can't
really show the monster. They seem to have some sort
of physical apparatus that they're shooting some sort of technically
thing about they're they're not showing us much of it

(53:58):
at all, and the film works better for that. I
think it's always a better decision to show less of
the monster. I mean, you you can find exceptions, like
the thing shows a lot of the monster and it's wonderful,
but uh that that's pretty rare. Most of the time.
You're going to do better if you give suggestive imagery
rather than just getting a good long look at the suit.

(54:19):
And you know, because often if you get a good
long look at the suit or the makeup effect or
whatever it is, it starts to look less and less great. Yeah,
that the flaws become increasingly obvious. It's the Jaws principle
that they did not have a great robotic shark, but
they ended up getting really good footage out of what
they did have just by you know, clever use of it. Yeah. Yeah,

(54:39):
I mean even today when you have some tremendous c
g I effects, and granted there some pitfalls with c
g I at times as well, but like, even if
the monster is perfectly well executed on the screen, you know,
I mean, you have to remember what are monsters Historically
monsters or things that that lurk in the imagination, and
monsters are things that are not fully seen but partially

(54:59):
seen in the mist, in the dark, in the wild, etcetera.
Now there's a scene shortly after this that I think
this is more indication of that there's something going wrong
with Sandra D's volition. Um that, because there there's a
scene where Wilbur and Grandpa start arguing about whether Wilbur
is going to be successful in using Nancy to open

(55:22):
the gate and allow the old ones in. And I
think she's just like right there, she's like in the
room with them, right Yeah. And Grandpa, I guess Grandpa
has been turned against this, this ritual. He used to
be for it, now he's against it. And uh and
he swings his staff at Wilbur and misses, and then
falls down the stairs to his death. Uh. And and

(55:43):
there there was a great moment here though, where there's
these creepy sound effects, these birds in the background, and
Sandra D asks those birds, what does it mean? And
Wilburg explains, well, they were trying to capture his soul
as it left his body. Yeah, it's so weird. It's
such an interesting addition. I love it. But then, uh,
I love At the funeral for Grandpa Weightley, here there

(56:04):
was it must not be this. But for some reason
when I so, townsfolk arrived to bust up the ceremony,
and it looked to me like it was implying that
about thirty people got out of one pickup truck. Yeah,
there's just suddenly a mob of townfolk here to uh
to object to them carrying out a burial. Yeah, so
they're they're like, this is a Christian cemetery. We dispose

(56:26):
of our trash at the town dump. But then I
think eventually the police come in and they're like, okay, okay,
break it up. Yeah, I mean, we can't possibly be
supposed to to feel anything but disdain for these townfolks, right,
I mean, they this is bad. Like even if you
know wilbur is the villain of the piece, he's just
trying to bury his dad in the cemetery. Well and
someone elder gods that will destroy the world. Well yeah,

(56:50):
well he's doing that too, But this is a side thing,
you know, like like come on, come on, guys, leave
this man alone. So Wilburt, you know, he still needs
that necronomical and he's like, you know, the professor wouldn't
let me borrow the book for five minutes, so so
I guess I'm gonna have to go to the university
library and steal it. And then there's a whole sequence
where he does that. He breaks in he tries to

(57:10):
get the book, he gets into a fist fight with
a security guard, and so they have a fist fight,
and then the funny part is the guard wins, uh
kind of surprisingly, like he knocks while we're unconscious apparently.
Then he goes to the phone, I think, to dial
the police. But then Wilburg just picks up this big
weapon it's like a halberd that is on display in

(57:31):
the library and stabs the guard and the guts with it. Yeah,
it's it's a nice ending to a fight scene that, yeah,
has his unexpected twist, but it's also very like Old
West style fighting, you know, like people getting punched and
falling through tables and such. Um. So it's a it's
a fun sequence and it's it's also I think a
nice um twist on what happens in the story. And

(57:52):
the original short story, if I remember correctly, Wilburg breaks
into the museum to try and steal the book and
guard dogs kill him. Uh you know, so yeah, so,
which is clear. I mean, I guess you know, you
can argue whether that worked in the original story, but
it would not have worked in this story. We need
Wilburg to be there at the finale, we don't need

(58:13):
him to be uh done in by a German shepherd,
And it adds this additional twist. He's not only willing
to break the laws of nature and and all to
bring about this resurgence of the old ones, he's also
willing to kill for it, right right, yes, um, but
even then it was in self defense. Towards the end,
it's it's still they managed to walk this line where
it's not like he kills the cop in cold blood.

(58:35):
He grabs the spear and then the cop rushes him
and he like pulls it up in time to impale
the security guy. Yeah. So there are several scenes in
this movie where I think wilbur is presented as having
a kind of dangerous uh nitchean beyond good and evil outlook.
You know that he he believes that moral concerns are
just sort of like uh petty folly. Uh Like there's

(58:58):
a part where Grandpa's try to convince him, like, you
can't do this, you know, you shouldn't do this, and
then he says, I do what I want. Yeah, so
I think Wilburt maybe he rejects the idea of an
aught or a should you know, there there there is
nothing I should or ought to do. There is what
I will. Yeah, So at this point he's killed, he's
crossed that line. But he also has the necronomicon, right,

(59:21):
and so this sets up the third act of the movie,
which is gonna be some twin monster rampage and as
and uh and a very slow moving ritual. So the
final showdown is wilbur Is setting up uh to to
do this ritual to open the gate to allow the
old gods in, or the old ones, and they're gonna
come and destroy the world. Uh. This is probably gonna

(59:42):
involve human sacrifice of Sandra d on the on the altar.
And then meanwhile, his brother, oh he he says at
the beginning of the ritual, he's he's saying the name
of these gods. He's saying like yag so thought, and
he's got the necronomicon, and he says, I summon you,
brother of darkness, I summon you. And his brother is
his twin brother is apparently this thing upstairs in the

(01:00:03):
house that keeps rattling on the door and it bursts
forth from its confinement, and that goes out to roam
around the town and get into all kinds of mischief,
good natured mischief, some unspeakable, deadly mischief, the geometry of
which is impossible to describe. Now, I will say, in
some of these scenes where the monster is roaming around again,

(01:00:27):
we're not really seeing it. We're seeing more from its
point of view, and then getting a kind of audio texture,
that heartbeat sound that that allows that helps us know
that something very dangerous is going on. And then we're
getting these suggestive flashes of imagery that aren't I think
are not to be understood as pictures of the monster itself.

(01:00:49):
But in a way, the monster itself kind of can't
be seen or can't be comprehended with human eyes, so
it's just this presence that suggests other images. Uh and uh.
And at times they do this with like it's like
the weather, it's like rain or wind moving in it's
it's it's I thought, really effectively done. Oh yeah, there's

(01:01:10):
a really nice shot of like visions of wind blowing
dust over a winding road or wind blowing over the
surface of a pond. Yeah, but of course it's going
to attack a bunch of the town's folks, so we get,
you know, scenes of that. There's like a nearby house
that has these people. They're they're about to have dinner.
I think they're saying. They're saying a blessing over some

(01:01:31):
kind of wretched ham. It's some of the same town's
folk who busted up the funeral earlier, and they hear
these weird sounds. The house is kind of shaking. The
man grabs his rifle and he goes out to investigate,
and he shoots at something he sees in the barn,
and then it attacks the house and everything is shaking,
and we're to understand it doesn't go well. And then

(01:01:52):
this is confirmed when Professor Armitage and doctor the doctor
from the town from earlier, Dr Corey, they show up
at the house where the town's folk of gathered. Uh.
They see the remains of this family and they're like,
oh no, we got to form another angry mob because
they correctly assume that the Weightleys are responsible, or at
least that Wilbur is Wilbur and his monstrous twin brother,

(01:02:13):
and they want to go get revenge. And Armatage is like,
Wilbur Weightley might be the only person who can stop
the creature that did this, So he's trying to talk
sense into them. You know, He's like, hold on, we
need to figure out what's going on. But the shapeless
being it attacks Talia Shire while she's driving a car. Uh,
it attacks a posse who's hunting for it in the woods. Uh.

(01:02:35):
And so they're they're they're these repeated scenes where people
are sort of felled by psychedelic visual effects. And and
again I think it works pretty well. Yeah, yeah, and
again for a film that that can't or won't show,
you know, an actual monster like this works really well.
I think. I think ultimately, I feel like Lovecraft Officionadoes
are probably too hard on this film because, like they're

(01:02:57):
they're kind of pulling it off. They're they're pulling off
this this unseeable, unknowable horror that uh, you know makes
you crazy if it touches you sort of thing. Now,
of course, this all comes down to a wizard battle.
You got you gotta have a wizard battle to settle
this problem. Armitage shows up at the side of the
Devil's hop yard where they're they're going to do the
human sacrifice, and Wilbur's there, and so Armitage and Wilbur

(01:03:20):
start essentially yelling spells at each other. I think that
they're just like calling out love crafty and phrases at
one another. Yeah, and it's it's I love it. It's
super weird, especially since there are no real added effects
like it. It's the kind of thing where if you
saw actors doing this today, you would think, oh, well,
this is before they added there like the lightning and
lights and laser shooting off of them every time they

(01:03:41):
say something. But none of that was added, and they
really didn't have to because both actors are doing such
a good way of of saying I don't know, of
of of saying the magic words. I don't know, like
just their intensity as there, uh, they're belting out these lines.
It works really well, and you totally buy into the
fact that, yeah, they're they're they're they're blasting out spells here. Yeah.

(01:04:03):
I think I think you're quite right that it especially
has something to do with the audio mixing of this
scene that makes it more unsettling than you would think
a wizard battle should be. But ultimately Ourmtage wins the
wizard battle. He's yelling out these phrases. I guess he
must know from having studied the Necronomicon and Dean Stockwell, uh,
he gets sort of like he gets I don't know

(01:04:25):
something about these phrases getting his head, and he clearly
gets like foggy and confused and frustrated. And then he
gets struck by lightning and catches on fire and it
falls off a cliff from Yeah, and at the very
last we do get a vision of this unspeakable evil,
the Wilbur's brother. And this is the one moment where
when we get this this flash of its actual form,

(01:04:48):
I think it looks like a beholder, doesn't it, or
at least it looks like illustrations I've seen of beholders. Yeah,
I mean we don't. It's even it's still in the
big reveal. We don't see it all that clearly. So
there is the essence of a beholder. There's a sense
of a gorgon's head, but also it's just like color
and madness. And so then after after all the violence

(01:05:09):
is done, things are coming back down and and the
final thoughts are well, Armitage says, looks like Wilbur's twin
took after the father, So like you were saying earlier,
you know, he has his father's eyes. Um. But then
also we see Sandrada is okay, but it is suggested
she may in fact be carrying the child of an
interdimensional demon god. Now, yeah, that's right, because we we

(01:05:32):
have that pause and then the creepy music, the heartbeat
stuff comes in and we have like put an animation
of a fetus that's visible there, um, which which I
quite like because it implies like the next level of
this curse is the generation of those born in the
nineteen seventies, which, being a child of the nineteen seventies,
I like this because I'm watching the screen and like,

(01:05:53):
that's me. I'm the baby. This this is my generation
that they're they're referring to. So in a way like, um,
you know people my age, and you know and and
and younger. Um, like we are the sequel to the
dun which are the generational curse of the old ones,
is that you will give less of a crap than
any generation ever before. Uh. But it is right, It's

(01:06:17):
it's a it's ahen ominous ending. I thought it's a good,
good place to land it. There's there again. They're also
all these shots of just waves crashing on them on
the coast. It's uh, it ends in a in a
nice spot all right. So there you have at the
Dunwich Horror, which which I quite enjoyed. I found this
a very very very fun film to watch. Um you
might be wondering, will where can I watch the Dunwich

(01:06:39):
haror Well, you can buy or rent this movie most
places you get your films these days. Um uh. You
can stream it, um you know, on all the major platforms.
You can also pick it up on DVD. Is Sadly,
there doesn't seem to be an awesome vinyl rerelease of
the score, like I said earlier, but I really hope
someone does that, maybe something like nice purple vinyl or something,
or I mean really there are number of wonderful colors

(01:07:01):
used in the film, so you could swirl them all
together in there. Oh yeah, I can see that, you know,
if they put out one of those big collectors editions
of this that that comes along with merch. In addition,
it should come with a roll of wallpaper so you
can put up the weightly house wallpaper in your house. Yeah,
as you can. You can done which your your own home.
I like it. Yeah, it's a very stylish movie, very stylish,

(01:07:24):
very nineteen seventies, so I highly recommend it if This
is your sort of film, all right. If you want
to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, this
comes out every Friday and the Stuff to Blow Your
Mind podcast feed were primarily a science and culture podcast,
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with artifact episodes
on Wednesdays and listener mail on Monday's. But Friday, that's

(01:07:46):
our time to cut loose and discuss a weird picture
like this one. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
just to say hello, you can email us at contact
at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to

(01:08:11):
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