Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail. This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today it's Monday, the day of the week. We read back some messages you've sent into the show email address which is contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. If you want to get in touch you have thoughts about an episode we did, something you want to add, or just something interesting to share with us, you can always reach us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Let's see rob I think I'm going to jump in on this message about our Cauldron series from Rhiannon. Oh and this one has some Welsh words in it. I apologize in advance. I'll do my best, so Rhiannon says, OHI HOWI. I was so thrilled at hearing you guys discussed the Pyre to Denny the Cauldron of Rebirth Earth on your run of shows about Cauldron's Remember this is the robbed you can you do a quick summary of this story? What was the one of Efnisien and the Cauldron of Rebirth? So? Uh, the enemy has this Cauldron of rebirth. They're using it to rebirth their dead soldiers. Uh Ifnisien realizes this is foul play, so he hides among the dead of the enemy, and then his body is taken with the dead to this magical cauldron. One by one, the bodies are dumped into the cauldron. They come out reborn, but Um but he is thrown in alive. And since he is thrown in alive, he is able to destroy the cauldron from the inside, uh, preventing the enemy the Irish, from using it ever again against Um against his people. But in doing so he also dies. Excellent resummary Okay. So, going back to Rhiannon's message, Rannon says, Joe pondered what Efnisian's motivation may have been to throw himself into the cauldron, and if he knew it would kill him. Being the faithful Welsh teacher that I am, I dug out my copy of the adapted Mabinogion to try and answer your question. Defeed and Rhiannon Efan's version notice notes that Ethnician looks down on the pile of the dead Kedron or welsh Ish soldiers and realizes that he was to blame for their deaths. Once in the cauldron, he stretches out all his limbs and breaks the cauldron, but also breaks his own heart. M uh email goes on. But with the stories of the Mabinogion coming from the oral tradition, there's nothing to say that other uh, here's a tough word. I think it's kevar with or storytellers wouldn't have told the story in a slightly different way. This still happens now, especially with more local legends. People will often compare the versions they were told as children. That's an excellent point Rhiannon, and one we've brought up on the show a number of times before that. You know, people often, um when they're hearing about mythology, they want to know what is the canonical version of the myth because they think about it more like Star Wars canon, where there is like an authority who has like uh, you know, in in an almost economic sense, like copyright over the intellectual property, and they can say what's what's part of the myth and what's not. But with with mythology, there just is nothing like that, and they're in fact maybe no such thing as the canonical version of the myth. A lot of times what we interpret as canonical is just the version of a story that happens to appear in a surviving text that is available to modern historians. That you know, there's no reason to think that that version of the story was more widespread or authoritative than any other. Yeah, so when you watch the eighties UH production of Hercules from Canon film starring Louther Rig, now you have to realize, like, this is valid. This is just another valid version of the myth. I gets ridiculous, but anyway. Uh. Finally, Rhannon writes, I've attached to link to the National Museum of Wales digitized copy of UH. And this is a work called the liver Gwin Reethirk and UH that has handwritten copies of all four of the Mabinogion, as well as some other tales from the fourteenth century. Once again, thank you for the amazing work you do. I look forward to hearing you guys discussing the Mabinogion perhaps in future shows. Rhiannon, Yeah, yeah, I bet there's some more stuff in there we could come back to. Uh. It does seem a deep well of wonderful and magical ideas. Totally. Thank you, Rhiannon. All right, well we've already heard back from a future of folks concerning the episode Creative Writing Machines with Mike Sharp Bull's uh and particularly uh your use all of the story Machine on the website story hyphen Machines dot net if you want to try it out, uh and So we wanted to share at least some of what we heard back from you all, some of your resulting AI assisted tales. So this one comes to us from Sam Sam Wrights and says, Hey, Robin Joe, your podcast is awesome. It got me through recovery from a spinal fusion in seventeen and I've been a fan ever since. I tried out the story Machine website with the title of Ninja Cockatoos and the maku Pechu Heist and no starting text. Here's the resulting story. I thought it was quite entertaining. All right, I'm gonna I'm gonna read what he shared here. The Ninja Cockatoos had been planning the biggest heist of their careers. They had been planning and plotting for months, and finally it was almost time. They had gathered all of the supplies they would need and more ready to take on the world. They had planned the heist carefully. First, they would break into Makupichu Temple and steal the ancient treasure. After that, they would fly away to a secret location and spend their is without anyone ever knowing. The ninja cockatoos were confident in their abilities. They had spent many hours practicing their skills, and they were ready for anything. The day of the heist was finally here. The cockatoos flew into the temple and began to search for the treasure. It didn't take them long to find it. Hidden in a hidden chamber was an enormous pile of gold coins. The ninja cockatoos were a static. They quickly gathered their treasure and flew away to their secret location. There they could finally begin their life of luxury. Everyone will never know what happened to the maku Pechu treasure. The Ninja Cockatoo's got away with it, and that's all that matters. That is indeed all that matters. This is yeah, this is a I found similar experiences with various things I was trying out, and like, sometimes the story doesn't have any real conflict in it and has a nice, happy ending, and then sometimes there's some stuff that comes off a little wonky as well, like uh, the I yeather something is hidden in a hidden chamber, or that everyone will never know. That's everything everyone will never know about the Ninja cockatoos. Clearly, to me, the best part is the final phrase, and that's all that matters. They got away with it. Well, that's great, thanks Sam. Let's see Rob. Do you actually also want to do the next one because this is about one of your monster Fact episodes on the owl Bear. You're gonna have to explain this one to me. Oh, okay, do you do you know the al bear? I don't know anything about the awl bear. Oh you need to encounter an al bear or whip one out? Are you d m ng these days? I'm not d m ng. No, Well, you can find an owl bear requested summon one? Okay, okay, it's it's it's a fun creature. I mean it looks like a bear, but with an owl's hat, like a big furry um, well not fur, a feathered like a big feathery furry like land flightless owl. Is a lot of cool art of it. There's some fun minis. I'm actually just finishing up a miniature of one. It's pretty fun to paint from whiz Kids. Um. But but one of the things I got into on the episode was talking about how feasible it seems the idea that, you know, we we have examples of big flightless birds. We also may even have example of one prehistoric h flightless owl or nearly full flightless, so we're not exactly sure, not quite as big as an owl bear, but still fairly big in size. So essentially, like the concept of the owl bear is only marginally fantastic, and therefore it's it's super interesting to imagine an environment in which this kind of creature could could thrive. So anyway, Matthew writes in and says, good afternoon, team, after listening to the shortcast, that's a great name for I never thought about calling it a shortcast, the shortcast on the owl bear. I think there is another way to have owl bears in a fantasy world. Clockwork the only monster to give me a healthy case of gaming PTSD. The clockwork owl bear can indeed be disguised very well and often can pass for a natural owl bear. They can be so well disguised that a foolish bard or ranger wanted to take one as a pet and didn't realize it wasn't a natural owl bear until there was a small ballista bolt jutting from his chest and bolts for the rest of his party, including my character, and quite a few scratch marks along the way. This also could make sense for the owl bear in general, created for a specific reason, like the druids protecting the woodlands or a horrible magical experiment gone right because he doesn't love fuzzy bears with owls for a head. Thank you for the fun little episode and the fantastic flashback. I now have to write on many desks to not touch anything that is ticking out of habit. Thanks for all you do. Well, that's a fun twist. I like that. That that that twist of the clockwork owl bear. That's a good question. So if you're like a ranger and you've got a talk to animals ability or something, I guess that doesn't work if the animal is secretly an automaton. But what if the automaton is programmed to go along with it? If you start talking to it and you're a druid, I don't know, would you be able to detect the difference? Probably probably a wisdom role involved there, I see all right, Uh, I'm gonna do this next one that is a response all about April O'Neil's jumpsuit from teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This is a follow up to a discussion we had in a previous Listener Mail episode, which was mostly about fashion choices in the Ninja Turtles cartoon. Uh, the one that was on when we were kids. I know there's newer ones. So questions like why were the Mutant villains Bebop and rock Steady dressed as punks? Did this mean they were fans of punk music? And why did the reporter April O'Neil always wear a bright yellow jumpsuit? Does that have something to do with being a reporter? Is that some association from the time I didn't get as a kid. So we opened the question up to the audience and Renata got in touch to say high seth Rob and Joe. I finally got around to asking my partner if he has any take on why April O'Neil wears a yellow jumpsuit, and I wanted to share that conversation with you first. My initial reaction when hearing you bring it up, Granted it's been thirty years since I watched the cartoon, but I channeled my seven year old self, and my assumption was that she rides in a helicopter and that is an aviator suit. Oh, that makes sense. This could just be because I was really into helicopters at the time, but I feel that the late eighties and early nineties was the peak of news helicopters. I think that's right. I have no idea if she was ever actually in a helicopter on the show. I Oh, I feel certain she was, doesn't. I think we saw her riding in a news helicopter in the opening credits. That sounds super familiar. Yes. But then Renata also shares her partner Ben's thoughts and says Ben's first thought was that a solid yellow jumpsuit is easy to draw. I think this theory has a lot of merit and probably played a huge role. He also pointed out that April was a programmer and an assistant to a scientist in the comic, making the jumpsuit slightly more appropriate for those professions. I see, so it could be like a hazardous chemical, you know, protective suit in that case. So so maybe it's it's an artifact of a prior character design, possibly, but Nada has more thoughts about jumpsuits. Rob I know you're chomping at the bit for these, Okay. So we also remember that lots of characters and ordinary people in the eighties war jumpsuits. Think Ghostbusters, and of course there were plenty of fashionable styles available to the fashion of quote women of action in the eighties is a really interesting topic in itself. When the nineties hit, women's outfits and movies and comics became increasingly impractical in the way that they were too restricting and exposing. For a brief time in the eighties, you have a string of women who presented as hard working, stoic, and tough, and they got away with utilitarian outfits. Some examples of other jumpsuit clad women of the eighties include Jilly Layton from Brazil, Gadget Hack Wrench from Chippendale's Rescue Rangers, Ripley from Alien Uh, Annie Lewis from RoboCop Love Officer Lewis one of my favorite eighties movie cops, Um and then Uh and then Renata says Ben pointed out that this could be a throwback to Rosie the Riveter. It's simply so ingrained in our American consciousness that hard working women wear jumpsuits. You just don't have to explain it. That's a good point. I'd love to hear other ideas about April's outfit and examples of women in jumpsuits in pop culture. I'd also like to shout out two of my closest friends, A and C, who are getting married this month and who introduced me to your show. A and C. I hope you're listening, and I wish you many great years of listening to stuff to blow your mind together. All the best vibes as always, Renata, Yeah, congrat to say and see congratulations great email. Yeah yeah, indeed, I mean it is hard to beat a good jumpsuit in a in a film. We keep coming back to that a weirdout cinema anytime. I don't think we've had a bad jumpsuit yet, totally always love a jumpsuit alright, speaking of it, isn't that just so much more interesting than having your heroes were jeans. Whoever they are, whatever they're doing, just embrace the April O'Neil philosophy. It doesn't necessarily have to match their current cannon profession. They should just wear a jumpsuit. It's cool, all right. Well, speaking of weird out cinema, let's let's get into some some weird house cinema centric email here. This first one comes to us from Pat. Pat says, these shows are entertaining. Scream and scream again was nostalgic for me. I saw it at aited a crepit Brooklyn theater when I was ten years old. I was scared by the hand in the handcuffs suggestion in the Mouth of Madness. Thanks again, Pat, you saw it at a decrepit brook In theater when you were ten years old. Something something went wrong there. It sounds like the perfect place to see it, though, I mean, you know, we you know, mileage may vary concerning age, but uh yeah. I love to hear from from folks who saw these films on their original run, no matter what decade it occurred in. As for In the Mouth of Madness, So that's that's one of my favorites. Great cast, really enjoyable film. Yeah, Rachel and I just watched that one, I think this past October. Yeah. I keep having this, uh this urge, like if we actually do a John Carpenter film like, do we do one of the more known, well known ones, or do we we do as Elvis film. I think we have to do one of his worst movies. We could do Ghosts of Mars. Would we break the millennium seal for that? Um? I mean Ghost of Mars. There's a lot to talk about with Ghost of Mars. Um, it's not great cast, terrible movie. Yeah, it's got some it's got some things going for it, but it also has it's more than its shaff laws. Um. Cronenberg there was a similar situation. I'm like, would we would People were like, which Cronenberg movie could you do? And I'm like, well, I don't know. Um, you know, maybe maybe the correct answer is Scanners. But maybe the correct answer is his Race Car movie, you know, Like, maybe that's the direction we should go in. That one has a slightly interesting cast as well. I remember one of the funniest choices about Ghosts of Mars. This is a movie about like monsters on on the planet Mars, by the way, and one of the weirdest things about it is that they decided that ice Cube's character's name would be Desolation. Williams and the other characters referred to him by the name Desolation in dialogue, so they're like, hey, Desolation, what are you doing? Yeah, Nick, I don't like it when a nickname has too many syllables in a In a movie like um, Danny McBride has a character whose nickname is Tennessee in Alien Covenant, and I love about Alien Covenant, but no, no one would call him Tennessee. You would call him ten maybe or something like that. It could be it could be texts if he was from Texas, But I just don't think Tennessee is an acceptable nickname even in space. Do you remember all the people who were in Ghosts of Mars though, It's not just ice Cube. It's got Jason Statham, It's got Pam Greer. Pam Greer's in it. Oh yeah, I mean you got to what Nantesta hints is in it? Um, you have Robert Carradine. I mean, as long as you get one Carradeen in there, I guess you're doing all right. Um. Oh, John Carradean is in there somewhere. He's Rex Lynn. He's a great character actor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I guess we don't need to do it on Weird Test. Now we just did it. Yeah, music, It has some pretty fun music. Is there a call? I think we had Buckethead on the session. I remember watching an extra feature on the DVD about the soundtrack, and yeah, Carpenter was really into it. And I want to say that Gerald Bram, who was a wonderful fantasy artist, I believe he did some concept images for this one as well. I don't know to what extent they're represented or or you know, accurately represented to the final film. Oh man, Well, the title Ghosts of Mars sounds like the name of a fantastic pulp sci fi novel that would have great cover art, but alas instead it is. It is what it is, all right, Rob, you want to do this message from Lee? Yep, this one's from lately, says dear Robin Joe. While I have been in touch before, this is the first time I am writing about weird house cinema. First. I grew up in a rural Virginia town during the three Channels most of the time RUFE antenna era of broadcast television. We had a local Petersburg TV station that ran a locally hosted program called Shock Theater, featuring horror and sci fi movies. Our host was The Bowman Body and uh, there's a website included the Bowman Body dot Com. I checked this out and does have some some stuff about this. He kind of looks like, uh, is he sort of going for for Death from the Seventh Seal but a little bit more campy. Yeah, I think so, Like you know, you could. By the way, I love examples of this. They're like growing up, I guess my only daytime horror host was Grandpop Monster on one of the Turners stations. He would introduce shows on like on the weekend during the day and I really love that. And of course later on you encounter you know, kind of stuff like Elvira and uh, the USA Up all Night People, eventually Joe Bob and so forth. About these, you know, I love these examples of these old school like Finoogley style daytime horror hosts. They had, they had an important role to play, you know, television. I mean it goes way back to you remember like before there was Elvira, there was Vampira. Yeah, that's right. So anyway continues, sorry for the tangent. Anyway, one of the films I remember watching was Scream and Scream Again. Although I couldn't recall the title until your recent episode. Granted I was somewhere around ten at the time I saw it, but I constantly recalled scenes from the movie during other episodes, hoping to hear scene descriptions and catch the title. Well, it happened. A couple of scenes I specifically remembered were the handcuffed arm amputation and the acid pit in the outbuilding, which I always remember as a barn or a garage, and I think that's an accurate memory. It's essentially it looks very much like a barn, even though Vincent Brice's character describes it as an outbuilding. Lee continues, Now I have the title and can go hunt down the movie to watch again. Thank you, You're welcome. I guess I hope you like it. How can you not like scream and scream again? I mean, it's it's remember it's tripled as silled. That's true. Yes, uh, Lee continues on another tangent, have you ever seen any hosted movies other than MST three K of course, it's an interesting bit of pop culture history. Here are a couple more links regarding this phenomenon. One a link to the IMDb page for Virginia Creepers, a documentary on the Virginia hosts by Sean Cotts, and a link to an article Sean wrote about doing the documentary. I do enjoy the podcast and hope to solve a couple more movie mysteries in the future. Thanks again for the podcast, Lee, and uhly includes the links here. So yeah, again, I I love I love any example. Pretty much of these hosted uh film nights, uh, you know, the ones that are not necessarily nights. Again, a lot of them are daytime horror hosts. Um that. Yeah, it's it's such a fun bit of television history. Yeah. I was just thinking, it's weird how we usually, or at least I usually associate it with the kinds of movie genres that we would cover on weird House Cinema, So it's gonna be horror, sci fi, weird stuff. But there were hosted movie programs that were just for other genres, you know, comedies and dramas and stuff. I remember when I was a kid, there was one that came on TBS where they would like cook a meal and show you a movie and the meal would be based It was like a combination cooking show and so it's like imagine Elvira, except to not spooky, and she's like making a back to the Future themed pie. That's a weird I've never heard of that one. Um. I think it was called dinner in a movie. Do you remember? Oh wait, Oh my goodness. I hadn't thought of this in years, but yes, I think you're right. Yeah, this was a Turner thing, Dinner in a movie. Now, I remember at least the ads. I probably watched some of it as well. Um, but yeah, I mean it's I guess the thing is, you had these stations, especially with Turner, you had access to all these films, and they probably knew which ones would bump ratings, uh, and you know which ones would would get more viewers. But for relatively low production costs, you could get a host on there and add this extra bit of fresh uh freshness to it, a little bit more engagement. Maybe. Essentially is in the case of The Horrors, you kind of have a carnival barker for the movie, inviting the kids in, inviting folks in, like here, I have this disgusting treat for you, let's look at it together. That sort of thing. We may have mentioned this before, but I think another thing that the horror hosts do is especially like for kids who might be more inclined to think, oh, horror movie is going to be really scary, you know, and my you know, like expectation of reaction can kind of dictate your actual reaction. You expect, oh, you know, this is gonna scare me and bother me. But the host, because they're almost always approaching it from a comedic point of view, whether it's Grandpa, Monster, Elvira or whatever, they're making jokes about the movie, so you uh so that kind of like feeds in a different kind of priming, and they're like, oh, maybe these movies can also be funny and just like a fun thing to watch with your friends. Yeah. I think that's a super valid point. Yeah, informing you that, yeah, these films are fun. It is fun to watch them, and we don't need to take it too seriously. Um, it's it's fun to be a little afraid by them, and so forth. Then it breaks up the tone. And and also yeah, I I fondly think back, you know a particular particularly remember Grandpa Munster introducing um it was of course this was al Lewis right presenting giant ant movies onto on Turner Television. Yeah, I guess the upscale version of this would be PBS. Uh, particularly remembering a masterpiece theater you know where you have Oh yeah, you know, the upscale host letting you know that what's what you're about to watch? This is a this is an upper class situation. This is high brow, it's class. Yeah. And then of course on Sesame Street we had Alistair Cookie as opposed to Alistair Cook hosting Monster Theater. Yes, well, this is something I'd love to hear about from from more listeners. Did you have a weird local movie host in your meat your market? I want to know who they were, what was their deal? Yeah? And especially I mean I doubt I especially want to hear about expected horror examples, but also these weird other examples, like like the dinner and a movie thing or a masterpiece theater. What else is out there? All right, We're gonna go ahead and close up this edition of Listener Mail, but we'll be back. We publish these episodes in Monday on Mondays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on two season. Thursdays we do core episodes. On Wednesdays, we do a short form Artifact or Monster Fact episode, and on Fridays we do Weird Out Cinema. That's their time to set aside most serious concerns and just focus on a strange film. 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 topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.