Weirdhouse Cinema: Legend

Published Aug 30, 2024, 7:54 PM

In this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Ridley Scott’s dark fairy tale “Legend,” starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara and Tim Curry.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be talking about the nineteen eighty five Ridley Scott fantasy tale Legend, starring Tom Cruise, Miasara, and Tim Curry. I wanted to start off just by saying, because I mentioned it so many times on the show, that I love a good synthetic forest set like a you know, a fairytale woodland built inside a sound stage. Legend is a kind of heaven for me, because it is there's more of that in this movie than any other movie I can think of.

Yeah, they built an enormous forest for this one, inside the Double O seven stage at Pinewood Studios. That was the studio that was built for nineteen six seventy seven's The Spy Who Loved Me, And interestingly enough, it burned down shortly before filming could wrap on Legend, tragically killing the last two living unicorns.

Yeah.

Yeah, now, no, the unicorns are fine, but some of their final scenes had to be filmed in an actual outdoor location because of this, So if you're watching closely, there may be some unicorn scenes here and there where you're like, oh, that looks like maybe that's for real outdoors instead of this lush and amazing indoor forest they built. But they do a good job of making not necessarily focus on the difference.

I love that it goes back and forth and you can't always tell if you're actually outside or if this is an indoor forest.

Yeah, like they just like they are like particles floating around in the air. I'm not sure if it's like pollen or fairy dust. I mean, it's just there's a lot going on. It's a very rich visual texture.

In my opinion, this is an almost perfect example of a movie that has all the things it needs to be absolutely wonderful, but it doesn't know exactly how to use them to the greatest effect. So this movie has unbelievably gorgeous sets, some of the most amazing production design of any movie I can think of.

Ever.

It has stupendous makeup effects and costumes, has a great cast, especially in the sort of the down cheat character roles and the villain roles. It has some intriguing ideas and moments and some fun and funny dialogue in it. It's got unicorns, all the resources and technical skill that is needed to make a best of the best fantasy adventure, and yet somehow the movie always still feels like it kind of doesn't come together right, something kind of falls apart at the core of it. It's like it's not organized correctly toward a toward its storytelling purpose.

Yeah, I know what you mean, and this is going to be something we're going to discuss back and forth, I think the whole episode. But it's also I think one of the reasons that I realized that the time was right to discuss legend. We've been talking a lot about alien and alien related content on the show, and I was heavily tempted, and we may still come back and do Alien at some point. But Alien is one of those films, a Ridley Scott film that I mean, it's basically perfect, like it like everything works in that picture, and it's I don't know, it's fun to talk about films we're passionate about and that are you know, are so great that you don't really have anything critical to say about them, But I don't know, sometimes it's a little more engaging maybe to get into something like this, a film that is rougher around some of the edges in some aspects of the production.

I very much agree that Alien is basically perfect, but Legend is different. This is not the only Ridley Scott movie that could be described in the way as having so many technical elements that are just at the peak of excellence. You know, maybe has a kind of esthetic perfection, but something just doesn't all work as a narrative, It doesn't fit together in the right way. And I want to be clear that nobody's going to tag me as a Ridley hater, you know, as I already said, I think Alien is basically perfect. I'm not one of those people who thinks Blade Runner is overrated. Some people say that now I don't agree. I think it is brilliant, and I even personally find delight in some of Ridley Scott's more arguably or some would even say objectively bad films, like Hannibal or Alien Covenant. I sort of think, well, yeah, maybe they are bad, but I kind of like them anyway. But apart from that, I think it's interesting that Scott has made a number of these films that at least as I see it, pull together the best of the best in terms of all the technical elements of filmmaking. They look amazing, they sound amazing, they have beautiful and interesting things to show you. But at the same time they can end up feeling kind of disorganized, flabby, and sometimes even irritating. Exercises in storytelling.

Yeah, yeah, I would broadly agree with all that, And I think maybe a lot of it comes down to the particular way that Ridley Scott seems to command a picture, because yeah, I think he's a tremendous visual director. His storyboards, which are often called Ridley Grams. I don't know if he calls them Ridley Grahams or people who work with them call him Ridley Grahams, but I'm not sure in the origin of the term. But the Ridley Grams alone are always worth a look because on one hand, they're just I mean, they look you could say, here's a comic book past the Ridley Grahams and you would buy it. Like they don't. They don't feel as much like a rough sketch of what is to be filmed as as some storyboards, do you know what I'm saying? M Yeah, And also it's it's provides a lot of insight into how it all comes together, even though again they are essentially blueprints of everything to come. It's where he takes the screenplay written by others and projects them into a more solidified visual form. And like you say, you know that on top of that, really Scott's going to bring in just the absolute best behind the scenes crew and generally just great casting choices as well to make it all come alive. That being said, yeah, he is often criticized for being inconsistent. And I guess one of the weird things here is I'm, by by all means not a Ridley Scott completists. There are a bunch of Ridley Scott films. I haven't seen many of his Yeah, many of his historical pieces, for example, many of his dramas, even some of the big dramas like Film and Luise, I just haven't seen it. And it's it's not on my immediate to watch list. It's not something we could work into weird house, you know. But that one was critically acclaimed and nominated for multiple awards. But yeah, for my money, Alien and Blade Runner are all timers. I personally loved Prometheus an Alien Covenant and really admired Covenant more on a recent rewatch. That one's kind of divisive, but it certainly has its fans, and I think it's its faults, in my opinion, are trivial in the face of everything it does. Right. Hannibals, that's another weird one to look at. Hannibal is one I would almost consider doing for Weirdhouse as well, because I remember when the novel came out and it was I thought it was kind of a mess and kind of repellent, And if anything, the film improved matters by cutting out some of the more lurid elements and finding its own sort of strange, grotesque tale to tell again with a stunning cast, great visuals, and this kind of like you know, baroque awfulness that Scott does so well. But yeah, that's one I probably need to rewatch, but it's it's also not one I'm in a super hurry to see again.

I don't know. Ridley has a kind of magic that even when he makes a movie that I'm not going to go out and defend, I don't think is a great movie. I do want to keep looking at it. Usually, like I will come back to these movies.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean Ridley is going to bring you somewhere you haven't been before, and in all likelihood, no one else is going to bring you to, you know, And I think that's one thing I really love about Covenant. That's one thing that I even admire about Hannibal is like there have even been other adaptations of the source material for Hannibal, and that adaptation as well has its own visual flare, but it's not quite the same. You know. There's just something about the riddle is really scott approach to filmmaking that is just really going to sing.

Now, Rob, I'm curious about your your own viewing history with Legend because mine is a bit confused. I'm going to say what I think it was, but I'm not positive about this. I think the order for me goes. I saw pieces of this movie on TV growing up, so you know, running it, I don't know which cut they'd be airing on TV. Well, we'll have to talk about the multiple cuts of the film. I'd guess probably the US theatrical cut, but bits of it on TV where I was just seeing like a big devil with gigantic horns. That's very striking and hard to forget Mia Sara wearing a kind of like triangle shaped black dress with goth makeup on, and seeing Tom Cruise's legs and thinking I didn't know Tom Cruise was ever in a fantasy movie like this. I'm not sure what's going on, but it just kind of getting past me, you know. I'd see a little bit here and there, and then at some point I saw the film in full, and I don't know what cut it was, but I remember thinking it was beautiful and I was mighty impressed by it in some ways. But I do kind of remember feeling tempted to fall asleep at certain parts.

Yeah, I mean there are plenty of stretches of this film that are very hypnotic and also in places a little slow especially. I mean it depends on the cut of the film, which we'll get into there. I think two major cuts and probably four step rick cuts you could point to. But with me, it's possible I saw part of it on TV at some point, or had seen a VHS box for it certainly previously. But my clear memory was being homesick from school one day and I had a couple of movies rented movies to watch. One of them was Highlander and the other was this And I do remember from the moment the VHS type started playing the film proper. I remember, you know, getting hit with that Tangerine dream score, and then you know, the visuals began to kick in, and I realized right away there was something special about this one. You know, this was an enthralling dark fantasy world that I just hadn't seen anything like this on the screen before. You know, like you look back to this time period and like, what else, what else did you have in nineteen eighty five that really, I mean, that gave you live action fantasy at all, but much much more to the point, gave you live action fantasy that was this dark in its texture, you know. I mean, nowadays you can easily point to Peter Jackson Florida, the Rings films, which really get in there with all the more door stuff and that works in the goblins and deliver it to you know, in spades. But at the time, like this was kind of this is as deep as dark and dark as it got.

Yeah, I guess you've got the different sort of sub genres of fantasy. So like by the mid eighties you had you had Conan type stuff, which could be dark, but was more I don't know, it was more gritty and though it had magic in it was more brutal and realistic overall, and was more pitched at a I don't know if this is the right word, but a mature audience. You know, it was the original Cone and rated R. Surely not or was it?

I believe it was an R.

Yeah, oh okay, I mean so just like very violent, kind of gritty, barbarian fantasy. You had that kind of thing. Of course, you had the more animated approach off into high fantasy type stuff. But I think it's interesting that Legend is is dark fantasy that shows you a lot of scary, devilish kind of stuff, but at its core it is a fairy tale. It's not a grim, gritty, more to kind of muscle and steel fantasy like the Conan movies. It's a fairy tale with a broad fairy tale kind of brushstroke to it. But it's also very dark.

Yeah, And I think this is another thing that even early on I realized there was kind of a disconnect with because the visual style of Legend is insanely epic, the actual story that it tells is maybe it. I mean it has high stakes, like you know, the the world, it's about saving the world, but in many other respects it's less epic. The story is a little more simplified and more I think just sort of fairy tale in form. So it's yeah, it feels it feels like the visuals are like far out delivering the actual story.

Can I suggest I think a reason why it feels less epic. I think it's because it's a fairly tight character list, Like there are not we never see masses of people or armies or anything like that in this movie. It's actually quite intimate in terms of the characters. The only regular people we ever meet in the movie is like, is a single cottage full of peasants in the forest? You know that Miasarra's character goes to visit at the beginning of the movie. And so there's no sense at all of kind of the broader world of peoples and armies clashing or anything like that. I mean, we are too believe that somewhere out there there is a castle where the king Miasara's father lives and all that, but we never see them. So the characters almost kind of exist in this private, intimate kind of fantasy Forrest dream World. And so though we know that the fate of the entire world is at stake with what happens to the unicorns in the movie, we never see mighty forces coming together.

Yeah. No, I think that's a solid red.

Yeah.

Yeah, because just looking at the picture, they're less than less than twenty people in the whole world, but we know that they're out there. There's supposed to be a castle, there's supposed to be these more expansive civilizations, we assume.

Now, Rob, maybe this is a good place to address the different cuts of the movie. Because when you picked Legend for the show and you told me we're going to be watching the director's cut, which is not the cut that has a Tangerine Dream score, I was quite confused how you could make this selection. But this is preferred by most fans of the movie. They're going to say that the director's cut, which is a good bit longer and has a traditional orchestrated Jerry Goldsmith's score instead of the Tangerine Dream score. Most people say this is massively preferable to the US theatrical version.

Yeah, that's that's the vibe. I've always gotten, and so I felt like, well, if we're going to talk about Legend, even though I'm all my nostalgia and my love is built up around this theatrical cut, it's going to be a little weird if we come in and then we're saying, well, this this movie has problems, and then people are going to say, well, did you watch the director's cut, and we'll say no, no, we just watched the one that we're familiar with, so and you know, I want to. I thought, well, this is a way to experience a film that I do have nostalgia for and then I do admire in many ways. It's experiencing it in a different light. So yeah, I was like, let's do director's cut and then we can compare.

To be clear, I still think the director's cut has problems.

But yeah it does.

I will say, on rewatching it, I was expecting, you know, I sort of had this idea in my memory that it was a very beautiful looking movie that had massive narrative of deficiencies. I don't know which cut it was I saw in you know, the intervening years in between seeing Bits on TV and this rewatch. It may have been theatrical may have been Director's cut. I'm just not sure, but I thought the film was not as bad as I remembered in terms of putting together a cohesive narrative. I still think it's flawed, but it's better than I would have said.

Yeah. Yeah, I'll get into some particular examples of ways that I think that the director's cut improves upon the theatrical cut, and I do want to also go ahead and throw in here that I think there are maybe like four different cuts total that have been out there and the ecosystem of movie viewing the director's cut, which came out years later, decades later. I think there's the there's the US theatrical cut, there's the euro theatrical cut that I think is in large part, you know, reflected in the director's cut. And then there's apparently some sort of a TV cut out there that I think was US theatrical cut with some extra added stuff added in to fill out a certain run time, that sort of thing.

However, one other thing I want to say about the different cuts is that I was not able. I didn't have time to watch the US theatrical cut in full, but I watched the full director's cut, and then the first I don't know ten minutes of the US theatrical cut. And the difference is not just that there is more stuff in the director's cut that was taken out for the theatrical That is not the only difference. There is a very different style and approach. For example, in the opening scenes, the US theatrical cut just straight up shows you the villain's face, which is delayed for a long time. In the director's cut, there's a big build up. And so I perceived the US theatrical version to be significantly more clumsy and awkward in its edit from the very beginning, even without talking about major differences in what material is there.

Yeah, Yeah, Like it feels like the US theatrical cut was very much an attempt to make everything tighter and more exciting at the beginning, and like, I guess to keep people from falling asleep or leaving the theater or something. I don't know. But in doing so, yeah, they make some choices like this, like let's go ahead and show them darkness in full. Let's go ahead and show them the tree, Let's go ahead and show them the hell kitchens. We're gonna go ahead and roll out all of some of our at least a glimpse of some of our big set pieces early on, and they have this scrolling intro on the screen that really feels like the abstract from a peer reviewed science paper, you know, where it just lays out all the basics of the hypothesis, tells you what the experiments were and the findings right up top, whereas the director's cut does not do this. The director's cut lets you pick up on this or not pick up on it on your own. But the yeah, the the US theatrical cut basically force feeds it to you.

Now, on one hand, you can kind of understand the impetus behind the theatrical cut because you were saying they were trying to make it tighter and more exciting right at the beginning. I don't know if the director's cut needed to be more exciting right at the beginning, but I will say the first twenty or thirty minutes of the director's cut, it happens at a very dreamy, lilting pace, and that can feel particularly it can have a kind of sedative effect, especially when you know Tom Cruise and Mia Sarah are just kind of frolicking around in the forest and you know, looking at the flowers and stuff, I was feeling the call of sleep at those times.

Yeah. Again, it's very hypnotic and dream like as well in these sequences, and be watching all unicorn run and slow motion through an unreal forest. Yeah, I mean, you're supposed to feel at peace at that point.

I'm not knocking it too much. I'm just saying, like I can understand somebody watching this and saying the first third of it is slow. You've got to have some patience to go with it at the beginning there. But I agree that that the way they tightened it in the US version is not an improvement. Instead, it just sort of like it kind of blows the air out of the whole thing.

All right, Well, let's go ahead and hear a little little trailer audio, not the full trailer, but just a little of it to get a certain taste of it.

There is a balance to the universe. The struggle to maintain that balance is the stuff of religions. For there can be no good without evil, no love without hate. Life needs death, Innocence creeds last. There can be no heaven without hell. No light will out.

Darkness.

All right, if you want to go out and watch Legend. Well, you can stream, and I'm mostly speaking to the US situation here. I'm not sure what availability is like in Europe, where, of course there was a different theatrical cut. But at least here in the United States you can stream Legend in a number of places. You can buy it rent it digitally, but at least currently, for the director's cut, you'll need to hunt that up on disc. Fortunately, there's a great Arrow Blu ray of the film that features both the US theatrical cut and the director's cut, plus loads of extras. This is the version that I rented from Video Drome.

Yeah, I watched the Arrow Blu ray, and Robert, I don't know if you have the same thing to me. I was kind of surprised by how much grain it still felt like there was in the film, Like it seemed like something that would or could have been sharpened up a good bit, but it wasn't. And I don't know if that's for lack of effort or if that's an intentional choice about this release.

Yeah, I wouldn't sure about that either. I'm not tech savvy enough on their whole remastering scenario, but certainly we've seen some older films that have been remastered to like just a level of perfection that certainly influences your viewing of other films. You know, why why aren't other films as flawless looking as this one? So I don't know what exactly, you know, the choices or hurdles were with this one, but there was more grain than I expected. But still it did not get in the way of appreciating these visuals in the long run.

No.

I almost wonder if it's a oh, I don't know, kind of a film version of like tea staining a docum meant to make it look ancient, you know that I may maybe there was a concern that if it was sharpened up too much, it wouldn't have the kind of the dreamy fairy tale effect that they were going for.

I wonder if these, you know, I'd have to go back and rewatch. But I wonder if these were some of the restored segments in the director's cut. I know, sometimes there's a sourcing issue there, and you have to sort of make do with what you can get when you're restoring sequences and scenes that were not used in like the main cut of the film. Possibly, all right, let's get into the people involved in this one, starting at the top, of course, with Sir Ridley Scott born nineteen thirty seven, highly successful and influential English filmmaker who, at eighty six years old and turns eighty seven in just a few months, shows no signs of slowing down, is directing and producing. I mean, it's really quite an inspiring. He worked on projects as a TV production designer from nineteen sixty two through nineteen sixty five, and his first directorial credit was a nineteen sixty five episode of a police series in the UK called Z Cars.

Sounds great, yeap.

His debut film was, of course, nineteen seventy seven's The Duellists, starring Keith Carrodine, Harvey Kaiitel and Albert Finney, a serious historical drama that is cited as a key inspiration on Highlander.

I've wanted to see this for years, but I never have.

Yeah, this one kind of ends up falling through the cracks for me because it is it's a Ridley Scott period piece. And I mean I have seen some of his historical films, of course, I've seen Gladiator, but I don't know, they're just not the ones that I'm drawn to as much. So he followed this up, of course in nineteen seventy nine with Alien and then in eighty two with Blade Runner. He tackled some smaller projects during that time, including the Apple Mac nineteen eighty fourmmercial and so already a really strong genre heavy early career, and then comes Legend, a fairy tale, a fantasy, and this of course ends up proving a commercial failure upon release, and from here we see Ridley Scott veer off into historical crime and drama pictures. He doesn't return to science fiction or fantasy for twenty seven years, returning to the Alien franchise with Prometheus in twenty twelve. Then he did twenty fifteen's The Martian, which it is quite good as well based on the novel, and then he did twenty seventeen's Alien Covenant and two episodes of the super weird, very original and criminally canceled Max series Raised by Wolves, which he also produced. Now as a producer, he's also had a hand in many other great films and series, including AMC's The Terror, which I really enjoyed. The recent Alien Romulus is of course a Scott free production, and Academy Award nominations for Ridley Scott include nineteen ninety two's Film and Luise, two thousand and ones, Gladiator, two thousand and two's Black Hawk Down, and twenty sixteen's The Martian. I should note that Ridley Scott, as far as I can tell, has never directed what you'd truly call a kids movie or maybe even a family movie. This really legend for eighty five is really the best case you can make for either category. But at the same time, it is just way too dark, both visually and thematically for children.

Yeah, this is who this is one of those who is this four movies. I mean, I don't have a problem enjoying it, because I'm the kind of adults that can enjoy a fairy tale. But it is clearly it's a fairy tale which is going to make a lot of adults think, oh, this movie is not meant for me. And while the movie it doesn't have a lot of like explicit like sex or violence in it, it really doesn't seem appropriate for kids because of the way that it is. I don't know, it has kind of erotic undercurrents, and it has a lot of very scary suggestions of violence, even if you're not seeing explicit like blood and guts on screen.

Yeah, and also a subtext that I'll get back to that seems to deal with with sin and shame. Yeah, in ways that I just don't feel as fun for you know, ten and twelve.

Year olds, right, So it's like it's a fairy tale but not probably not appropriate for kids. So you're limiting your audience here.

Yeah. Now, the screenwriter on this one was William Hertzberg, who lived nineteen forty one through twenty seventeen American writer, best known for his work on this film, as well as as his nineteen seventy eight horror novel Falling Angel that was adapted into the nineteen eighty seven Alan Parker movie Angel Heart. I did read this book ages ago, and I remember liking it. I remember liking it more than I liked the actual film, all right, Now, getting into the cast, Yeah, this is a Tom Cruise movie, but it's also not a Tom Cruise movie in the sense that it from the modern perspective of what you expect from a Tom Cruise movie. It's not that it's something different, it's something a little it's like proto Tom Cruise movie.

This is from before Tom Cruise was Tom Cruise. I mean he was a star at this time, I think because he'd already been in risky business, right, that's correct. Yeah, okay, so he was like a young actor who'd been in at least one or two big movies. So like he wasn't a nobody at the time, but he also was not the like the Hollywood juggernaut that we know today. He was like a young, up and coming, good looking actor.

Yeah. I mean today Tom Cruise is someone that is known around the world. He's like one of, if not the most bankable stars in Hollywood. You know, you put him in Blockbusters. That's where he lives, that's his ecosystem, and he's one of these people too that it's like he's more industry than man. You almost don't think of Tom Cruise as an individual, but he's like an industry built around somebody that that is almost as much myth as as human, if not more myth than human, at least from our perspective. Outside of that.

Yeah, speaking of built around, I mean, now I think some of his movies they build around some stunts he wants to do. He's like, so he'll be a producer on the movie. He's like, here, I'm going to cling to the side of an airplane or something. Write a script around that.

Yeah.

So Legend was only his seventh film role. His debut part was in nineteen eighty one's Endless Love, and he also had a supporting role in Taps the same year. But in eighty two he had a starring role in the teen comedy Losing It, and nineteen eighty three was a real breakout year with parts in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders and the starring role in both Risky Business and the football movie All the Right Moves. So the time was right for Tom Cruise to do a genre film, but not a B movie, you know, not a B sci fi or horror movie on your way up, but I don't know, a lavish twenty five million dollar that, of course wouldn't quite break even at the box office. So the next year he would go on to star in the mega hit Top Gun, and I guess his legacy was assured at that point. But then again, it's kind of with Tom Cruise. It's easy to say that because he has proven to have this real staying power in Hollywood and has remained this juggernaut despite you know, various things popping up that would you know, you might expect to derail some careers or certainly the occasional film that doesn't deliver to the degree that producers would like. For the most part, he has remained stable up there, and it's still big business.

Yeah. So from what I understand, apart from weird movie connoisseurs, if you're just looking at it from the kind of Hollywood business point of view, I think Legend would have long been mainly regarded as a as an early misstep in the career of Tom Cruise. You know, it's just like a this was some weird, failed little movie that Tom Cruise did early on that critics hated and audiences hated too, and just didn't go anywhere. But then he corrected course and was in top gun.

Though it is kind of interesting that I don't think he would come back to any genre pictures like this for a while, though he would in time come back and do you know, at least some weirder and sci fi type material, but still very much like blockbuster angled material at the same time. But that was the case with this film as well. This film was meant to be a big success at the box office. That's why they spent twenty five million dollars on it.

Wait, is this the first time we've talked about either Tom Cruise or Ridley Scott on Weird House?

The first time they've come up that we've looked at something they were either involved with. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So they're both, you know, huge mainstream successes. Though when Ridley wants to go weird, he definitely I think goes weirder than Tom Cruise goes weird.

Yeah.

Well, in terms of movie plots, yes, And part of this too is like, what is Tom Cruiser's role in a picture? It is the leading man, and it has always been the leading man with you know, a few small caveats along the way, you know you're only going to go so weird in the kind of role that Tom Cruise plays. Well, maybe there's an alternate dimension where he ends up playing a bunch of villains and it's really fascinating as well. I don't know, but anyway, Cruz was twenty three at the time, and we should acknowledge that he was I think, by many estimates, dangerously hot. I was looking around for some like outside the podcast commentary on this, and I found some words from the blogger Jin at ep bot dot com, who has a post titled Legend, the thirty six year old movie that's a love letter to Tom Cruise's thighs and other thoughts.

I could not help but notice that the camera is all up in Tom Cruise's upper thighs. Yes, it's yeah, so they gave him a costume like once he gets his armor on, its basically like a short tunic. He wears no pants most of the movie, and just yeah, it's it's all up in his haunches.

Here's a quote from that post by Jen at epbot dot com. Tom Cruise was twenty two during filming, and fresh off the set of Risky Business, the movie that gave us the world famous underwear dance. Not to be outdone, the producers of Legend decided Tom would not only be pantiless the entire movie, he would also be prohibited from walking upright for most of it.

I noticed the same thing. He is like squatting or crawling or on the ground in nearly every shot of the movie.

Yeah, and I guess part of this is that he is kind of like a fairal creature. You know, he especially early on like he is a he's a boy of the woods. He's kind of a Peter Pan. Yeah, he's a little loopine, so I guess that's part of the whole attraction here. I also want to note that this is cruse prebraces, so he doesn't have that perfect Holly would smile yet, but he has like he has a smile befitting of a fairal young man in a fantasy world, which I think is perfect. He also has like a bit of a unibrow going on, like not a full unibrow, but like his brows are a little more connected, you know, which again is also perfect for a fairal young man running around the woods falling in love with princesses.

I guess.

So, speaking of that princess, the princess is, of course played by Mia Sara born in nineteen sixty seven. This is Lily, and we talked about her previously on Weird How Cinema because she was in nineteen ninety four's time cop Ah.

Yes, I was thinking this is not our first Mia Sarah film.

Yeah, this was. This was her first film role, following just of one shot I think on TVs. All in the Family Legend and Labyrinth were shooting next to each other at the same time here, and the casts and crew apparently frequently mingled. And this is where she would meet her future husband Brian Henson.

Oh okay, but was she in Time Cop?

Yes?

She was, So you can go back and check out her episode on Time Cop if you want. Now. Is this also our first Tim Curry movie on Weird House?

This is the first time we have gotten to talk about Tim Curry. There was a time when you were out in parental leave and Annie Reese came on the show and we talked about Congo.

Oh my Lord, where he plays Herkimer Hamolka, formerly of Romania, traveling the world and doing good.

Yes, another great scene chewing performance, but not as the primary antagonist, second or third level antagonist.

Tim Curry in Congo is one of the most hilarious movie acting jobs I can think of ever.

He is.

I love Tim Curry. He is just a delight every time.

Yeah, it plays darkness in this Born nineteen forty six. Yeah, just a true legend of stage, screen and TV. He was, of course doctor Frankenfurter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show back in nineteen seventy five and was in the original stage version as well. He was Wadsworth nineteen eighty five's Clue Other memorable films and Clue, Let's say There's Annie, There's the nineteen ninety adaptation of it, in which he played penny Wise, the dancing clown. And he's also done a great deal of voice work over the years. I know, outside of Weird House cinema, you and I have also discussed his triple role in the Tales from the Crypt episode Death of Some Salesman.

Oh, where he terrorizes Ed Begley Junior. Right, Ed Begley Junior is like he's like some kind of corrupt salesman or something.

Yeah, but yeah, obviously just a terrific all around performer. Been in a share of more than his share of bad movies as well, but some of the other like credits worth noting. Nineteen ninety is The Hunt for the Red October nineteen ninety two's Fern Gully, ninety three's The Three Musketeers, ninety four is The Shadow, and nineteen ninety six is Muppet Treasure Island. But like, even if it's a not a great film, you know that Tim Curry is going to be amusing in it no matter what.

Now, this movie makes an interesting decision, which is legend takes a solid gold care actor with charm for Miles and hides him behind forty seven pounds of makeup. He is under so much makeup in this movie it is hard to believe. And the makeup I think looks amazing. But yeah, it's an interesting way to like there's a trade off here, isn't there. It's it's almost like maybe they did have to cast somebody with with Tim Curry's you know, kind of not just screen presence, but stage presence almost like it's almost like it requires a type of stage acting to get through the makeup to the camera. Does that make sense?

Yeah?

Absolutely. I think it is a huge testament to both Curry and the effects crew that this works as tremendously well as it does. That it doesn't feel like you've buried Tim Curry and a bunch of prosthetics that you know, that it doesn't feel like you have something that only works in close up shots or something like. They managed to make this feel like a cohesive living being as opposed to know what it could have been.

Of course, Tim Curry plays the main villain in the movie. I don't know if we already said this, but he is like the devil essentially, he's the lord of darkness, and he has I don't know how long do you think his horns are. I mean, he's got so much horn on his head it looks like his neck muscles should be sore.

It is. I mean, if you haven't seen it, do look up at least images of this character, because it is essentially an outrageous red devil. Men aitar that. It feels like it's about eight feet tall, not counting the horns. So it is a bold design choice, and they manage to make it work.

You know who else in this movie I feel like really acts through heavy makeup and just shines right through a character design is Alice Playton as blicks.

Yes, Oh my god, she's so good in this. She lived nineteen forty seven through twenty eleven stage actor with a lot of Broadway and off Broadway credits, TV and film credits going back to sixty three. But she's often best remembered for her voice because she has this this kind of childlike voice that she can utilize and she can perfectly lean into really haunting an Uncanny Territory with it. She voiced a demon in nineteen eighty two's Amityville to the Possession. She has also voice credits and things like nineteen eighty one's Heavy Metal nineteen eighty six is My Little Pony the movie. She was also in twelve episodes of The Croft Super Show in seventy six. But yeah, in this she plays the scheming goblin blicks like just a perfect goblin that also has an outrageous design in play, you know, with the long nose and like elongated head, just so nasty, so vicious looking, and she just shines here.

Appears to be made of rot in a way, almost kind of an undead looking sort of goblin, and also speaks in rhyming couplets, which I love. I would say that, you know, it's weird because we were saying the way in which this movie falls short, despite all of its great elements, is in its cohesiveness as a story. So you might think from that the script is weak, but actually I think moment to moment, line to line, the script is pretty strong. Like the dialogue is good, and so this character speaks in rhyming couplets that are mostly I think great rhyming couplets. They're very pleasing. So like when Blick's is looking down on Princess Lily, he says, maybe innocent, maybe sweet, ain't half as nice as rotting meat. And Clayton really sells the couplets like I just believe that this is how Blicks talks.

Yes, and indeed like just such a goblin, like just delights in grotesqueness and depravity, but not within without any underlying argument for why that is the superior choice. It's just that is just the texture of Blix's life and Blix's values, and Blix is very vocal about his preferences here.

Yeah.

Now, interestingly enough, I mentioned that Alice Clayton's voice like it has this she can lean into these uncanny aspects, but she can also get kind of like a childlike voice going on as well. She actually dubs the character Honeythorn Gump.

Oh the picture that makes sense.

Honey Thorn Gump is our elf, our youthful elf guy who's helping out, played physically here by David Bennett born nineteen sixty six, a German actor at the time eighteen or nineteen years old, but he looks younger and yeah, we don't hear his actual voice. I've read that producers thought he sounded too German, which I'm kind of like, why did you cast a German actor? I didn't want him to sound potentially German. But anyway, then it is still really good in this It's still a very good physical performance even though we don't hear his voice and he's been working in German productions. For Age is still active now, started out at an early age. His other like big international credit is probably nineteen seventy nine's The ten Drum.

I think the job they did dubbing him. I didn't realize while I was watching that that was also Alice Playton doing his voice. But I think the dubbing is fantastic. It totally matches the pace of the character speaking, and instead of feeling uncanny and unpleasant, as some post production dubbing without live sound can be, instead it fits the character the way that his voice doesn't feel like it's coming like it's what should be coming out of his mouth works and makes him feel more kind of magical.

Yeah, I would agree, I would agree, So, yeah, it didn't throw me off. It's one of those things I only picked up on much later reading about the production. All Right, now, I want to probably try and speed things along here a little bit, so I'm going to spend less time than I should, perhaps on some of the additional cast members. We have a number of various Elvin folk that are involved in the plot. For instance, they're Screwball, played by the tremendous Billy Barty, who lived nineteen twenty four to through the year two thousand, three foot nine character actor who often played wise, cracking, little person roles, but he instantly stands out in any ensemble cast because he is at the heart just a tremendous character actor. His uncredited work goes back to I believe nineteen thirty and apparently includes a very small part as the baby in nineteen thirty five's Bride of Frankenstein. So one of those early scenes with the little miniature people in the vials.

Wow, I didn't realize that so.

Many credits to Billy Barty, but they include the likes of Roger Corman's The Undead in nineteen fifty seven. In nineteen eighty seven's Masters of the Universe film, he has a memorable role in that He's in eighty eight Willow, but He also did some voice acting as well, like nineteen nine he's the rescuers down under all right, some of the other folks here, we have Brown Tom, who I guess is kind of a leprechaun. He's part of the good guy Elvin Cork here. He's played by Cork Hubert, who lived nineteen fifty two through two thousand and three. A four foot eleven actor. His other credits include eighty one's cave Man under the Rainbow from eighty one and nineteen eighty nine sent Bat of the Seven Seas.

He has a real dad joke moment in the movie that I think works pretty well.

Yeah.

There's also there's a scene where he thinks he's been shot. What I'm talking about? Yeah, yah, yeah, I love that. That's great. Okay, all right, we have Pox. Pox is a pig demon and somewhere underneath all of the prosthetics for this role, there is a man by the name of Peter O'Farrell. I couldn't find any additional information about this actor in terms of his you know, when he was born and so forth by His other credits include nineteen eighty Hawk the Slayer, nineteen eighty five, Santa Claus and he has a role in two thousand and two Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. All right, we also have Blunder. We'll get into Blunder in a bit. He's kind of he's one faction then another. But he is played by Kira and Shaw born nineteen fifty six, a four foot one and a half tall actor who is Elijah Woods scale double in all three Lord of the Rings films. His other credits include two thousand and five's The Chronicles of Narnia, various Star Wars productions, The Dark Crystal, and Raiders of the Last Dark. We also have a fairy Una, played by Annabelle Lanyon born nineteen sixty British actress who has worked a lot in TV. She's our temperamental tinker Bell.

She doesn't want you don't get to know about what her powers are. That's that's for her to decide.

Yes. Oh, and then we've talked about this is a character that it comes up every now and then on the show pretty much any time we're talking about hags, because oh, we have such a hag in legend. The character is Meg Mucklebones and the actor underneath there and also I think doing a great job shining through and making this a living being. Is Robert Picardo really? Yeah? Yeah. We talked about him previously in our episode on Joe Dante's Grimlins too, because he's like the he's like one of the executives there that ends up marrying the lady Grimlin.

Right, Oh, yes, that's right, Yes, what a beautiful marriage. Yes, but he what is he? Is he like a coach on The Wonder Years, Jim Teacher or something?

Yeah, yeah, some sort of role like that. I'm wondering. There's been a while since I've seen that he was on China Beach, but most I think people would know him from like Star Trek Voyager. He's like the hologram guy on there. But his other film credits include eighty one's The Howling, eighty seven's Inner Space. Oh, he's Johnny cab in nineteen ninety's Total Recall, And he also has a role in the twenty sixteen Coen Brothers film Hail.

Season The Door Opened. You got in.

Richard O'Brien what was apparently considered for this role, and that's what led them to realizing that Curry would be perfect for darkness. Wow, all right, some behind the scenes people worth noting here. Production design Ashton Gordon, who lived nineteen thirty through twenty fourteen, worked on such films as nineteen sixty six As a Blow Up, nineteen seventy one's Get Carter in two thousands Shadow of the Vampire. The director of photography was Alex Thompson, who lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and seven. Regular camera operator for Nicholas Rogue in the nineteen sixties before becoming a director of photography in nineteen sixty eight. Nominated for an OSCAR for his work on the nineteen eighty two John Borman epic ex Caliber, which I think that shows there's definitely some great scenes in this with the lighting and shiny armor that made me think about Excalibur.

Yeah.

You've mentioned Excalibur before as a movie that is gleaming.

Yes, and yeah, we have some gleaming armor in this one as well. Thompson's other cinematography credits include Doctor FIBs Rises Again, which we've talked about on the show Deathline from the same year in nineteen seventy two, Michael Mann's The Keep from eighty three Electric Dreams. In eighty four Labyrinth in nineteen eighty six, which is like right next door, So I guess he's just walking back and forth Leviathan in eighty nine, Alien three and ninety two, Demolition Man in ninety three, and Hamlet in nineteen ninety six. Who you called this one out, Joe? What credit stood.

Out to you? It's just because I saw it in the credits as it was rolling by. So we have somebody named Vic Armstrong as he was given two titles. I don't remember what the first one was, but the second one was Unicorn Master.

Yes, yeah, it's not often you have a Unicorn Master on set, but yeah, that's Vick Armstrong. He was also the stunt coordinator born nineteen forty six, very prolific. Guinness Book of World Records has Listen listed him as the most prolific like stunt coordinator. But his earliest role is apparently an uncre credited Ninja extra part in nineteen sixty seven's You Only Live Twice.

Oh recently came up in our Ninja episodes.

Yep, he's still working well. The costumes in this are pretty great costume designer and this was Charles Node. He lived nineteen forty two through twenty twenty three English costume designer whose work includes nineteen seventy Nine's Life of Brian, the MNTY Python film, Blade Runner fourteen ninety two, The Conquest of Paradise, another Ridley Scott film, Oh, and then Braveheart from ninety five.

Costumes are great, you could mention a number of them. Mia Sarah's goth gown is just like the triangular color hood thing. I don't know what that is, but it's great.

Yes, Yeah, and then everything that Jack is wearing, from his the rags that he's wearing initially like the faral rags, to the like gleaming elven armor that he dons for the main adventure portion of the picture. Yeah, But then again we have to come back to the special effects makeup and the special effects makeup lead on this was Rob Botein, who've talked about on the show before, the Rob Botein crew as well various people working with and for him on this. He was born nineteen fifty nine, special makeup practical effects wizard who worked on such films as Squirm in seventy six, Star Wars in seventy seven, The Howling The Thing from eighty two, The John Carpenter version RoboCop from eighty seven. I think we talked about him in that one as well. Total Recall from nineteen ninety just capable of such phenomenally nasty, fleshy work. And you know, it's hard to imagine this picture with anyone else. It would be a different picture if anyone else had done the makeup effects.

Now, wait, so Robert Piccardo played the Johnny Cab. Did Rob botteen make the Johnny Cab in Total Recall?

Oh, that's a good question. I don't know for certain on that, because I mean, we know for certain some of the things that Rob Botein was doing on Total Recall, you know, but I'm not sure about Johnny Cab. But I guess it very likely.

How to split my time between a quatto and a Johnny Cab?

Yeah, yeah, he was definitely on quato duty, all right. Now, coming to the music, this film Fade famously features those two separate scores. There's the original Jerry Goldsmith's score and this is the one that is used in the original euro theatrical release of the picture, But then for the US theatrical release, they brought in Tangerine Dream to do a new score for the film. Now, I, of course is what we've been saying. Grew up on the Tangerine Dream score, and I think it's absolutely excellent. I listened to it a couple of times through while working on notes for this episode. It really connected with me when I was younger, and there are a few things that I love more today as an adult than a really good Tangerine Dream motion picture score, so this one, in my opinion, They instantly elevate anything they touch, so it was hard for me to set that aside and watch a full cut of the picture, and even longer cut of the picture that has this score by Jerry Goldsmith. Jerry Goldsmith lived nineteen twenty nine through two thousand and four. Multiple Academy Award winner, responsible for the scores of seventy sevens to Omen Alien, nineteen eighties Star Trek, the Motion Picture, and many more. Obviously, Jerry Goldsmith is no slouch. This is his score for Legend is terrific. There are times where it is maybe more is certainly more mainstream, more swashbucklery, and its scope maybe by some estimates a little hammy in an intentional way, but it's also just really great in moments as well, like the whole section we'll get into with the Hell Kitchen. Jerry Goldsmith's score here is tremendous.

Yeah, it's a very traditional score you would expect with the fantasy movie and it delivers on that front. But yeah, as I said earlier, Rob, I know your love for Tangerine Dream, for electronic music generally, but especially Tangerine Dream, goes so deep. That is why shocked that you would have us watch the director's cut. But what's the main difference in the sonic texture here? What does the Tangerine Dream score sound like in the US cut?

Oh?

I mean the Tangerine Dream cut is of course it's electronic, it's very synth heavy, but it also has this kind of ethereal, otherworldly vibe to it, you know that I think is typified by that opening bit of music that plays in the US theatrical cut, where it's like a strange elven synth flute playing to you, you know, across the dimensional barrier. Tangerine Dream is, of course a German electronic act founded by the late Edgar Frosi who lived nineteen forty four through twenty fifteen. There have been numerous lineups over time, but he was the only consistent member of the group at the time of this score. I believe Christopher Frank and Johannes Schmoling were also in the group. The band Tangerine Dream is still around. They still record and tour, but it is a younger lineup, so none of the original members. And I could be wrong in this, but I don't think any of the current members were alive when the band was initially formed. But you know, I haven't seen them that. I assume they're still great, but it is not the original members, all right. Finally, of note, we also have two different vocal tracks on the US release, We Have Loved by the Sun, a Tangerine Dream track with vocals by John Anderson, former lead singer of the band. Yes, this one plays towards the end of the very end of the picture. I don't hate it, but it's far outclassed. I think by the end credit song, which is Brian Ferries, is Your Love strong Enough?

I was trying to describe this one, and it's like, it's such a mood. It is soft, smooth, neon waves of emotion.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's a great vibe. You got fairy and his vocals. Of course, this was the front man of Roxy Music. Ridley Scott co directed one of their music videos in eighty two and then on guitars. For this track we have David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. So great track, I think, A great way to end the picture. I think is one that I overlooked this when I was a kid. I was like, I had some sort of cheesy pop song. But now now I'm like, this song is amazing and it should be it should be heard.

You ready to go to the plot, Let's do it. So note as we get into the plot that I'm going to be talking about this from the point of view of having watched the director's cut most recently. So in this version, the plot begins with a character we do not see or only see from behind, in a high backed chair like doctor Claw. This is the Lord of Darkness, and he is in a shadowy hall within a stonework palace, illuminated by fire, with fog flowing across the floor, and we hear his voice. It's deep and complex. It's almost like it was kind of made of multiple voices, or maybe it contains its own echo. And Darkness says, I am the Lord of Darkness, I require the solace of the shadows and the dark of the night. Sunshine is my destroyer. All this shall change tonight, the sun sets forever, there shall never be another dawn. So we learn that the Lord of Darkness has a plan. He wants to forever destroy the sunshine and rule over a frozen kingdom of eternal midnight. And he calls forth his most loyal, infernal servant, a foul, fetid goblin named Blicks, and Darkness says that he senses the presence of an enemy in the forest outside, an enemy that, mercifully he had almost forgotten the existence of. But now it's sort of resurging in his mind. Out it's a power that threatens him. What power could that be, well, Darkness says, looking upon these frail creatures, one would not think they could contain such power. One could rule the universe with it. And then he tells Blicks, you must find them for me and destroy them. Blicks asks what these creatures look like, and Darkness gets very angry, says, you fool, and he stabs a piece of silverware into Blix's head. Or it might be a dagger or something. So the answer is they look like this. They've got a single spike growing out of their heads, like an antenna reaching up to heaven. Now, Blix is like, okay, single horn on the head, intenna reaching to heaven. Got it. I will destroy them. And but wait a minute, how am I going to find these creatures? And here, Darkness says, you know, there's only one lure for such disgusting goodness, one bait that never fails. Blick says, what's the bait? And Darkness says, in no sense, in no sense. I can't quite capture Tim Curry's delivery there, but it is the best.

This, this is this is a great scene. Pretty much any interaction between Blicks and Darkness is golden, and I wish we had more of it, because yeah, Darkness is of course just absolute, over the top dramatic evil, and Blicks is of course also extremely evil, but in a more sniveling way. But also you know, like he like clearly Blicks canon will betray Darkness at any moment, but he also knows he could be destroyed at any moment by Darkness, so he's yeah, I love this line where he's like, what be the baby?

Please?

You teach you teach me, you know, and oh it's so good.

Yeah, Blix is your classic subordinate villain, who is who is haughty and abusive when he is out on his own with his own subordinates, but then very survive when in the presence of his of his infernal lord.

Yeah, it's it's tremendous. Great vocal performance, great physical performance, shining through the makeup.

It's a bummer that Blicks and the other goblins just disappear at some point in the movie, like somewhere in the second act. They never show up again.

Yeah, I think I read that at some point it was they'd written it so that they would come back in for the final showdown, you know, which would make sense, right, because there's especially Blick's is such a great character. This is such a great secondary villain. It's weird that he just like retires or something.

Yeah. So Blicks goes out hunting the in no sense with a couple of other goblins. One of them is a bipedal hog named Pox, and the other is a goblin whose face we do not see. This goblin is named Blunder, and he wears a cage visored bucket helmet with horns.

Yeah, he kind of looks like he could have wandered out a labyrinth down down the studio road there.

Yeah, So next we're going to meet our main characters, Lily and Jack. Lily is a princess, but we learned that she does not want to be cooped up in the stuffy castle with her servants and her glittering treasures. She wants to wander free in the countryside and roam through the forest. She hangs out with peasants in their cottages, and especially she wants to meet up with Jack, and she I think she's talking to well, I don't remember if she's talking to one of her peasant friends or to Jack when she says this, but she says, this place holds more magic for me than any palace in the world.

So Lily is, of course the embodiment of purity and innocence here, but there is something more, and it's kind of underscored at this point in the picture, especially I imagine more so in the US theatrical cut. But I think her privilege is also really key to her character, because you know, who would deny you anything princess? You know, you know, she's really sweet and she's innocent, but she does feel like she has the right to everything in the world, be it walking into a peasant's house and observing their life and feeling to some level like she gets to be a part of it, or, as we'll see in a bit, that she should be able to walk right up to a unicorn and touch it.

Yeah. The other side of innocence is naivety, and so she does not realize the consequences of her actions and maybe doesn't even consider them.

Yeah, she doesn't understand that there are things in the world that are not meant for her.

Yeah.

Now, the other character is Jack, played by Tom Cruise, and Jack, I'm not sure exactly what he is in the movie. I see if you agree with this, Rob, I think the layout is that he is biologically a regular human, so he's not a fairy or an elf or any of the other types of hidden folk that we meet in the story. But he does not seem to be a part of human society and seems to live alone in in a kind of ageless and carefree communion with the forest. He's almost a hot raticas.

Yeah, I think. I think hot ratagas is a good way of putting it. I also was thinking of him as sort of a fairal Peter Pan, you know, so he also has more than his share of innocence. He's very connected with with nature, very connected to the forces of light in the fairy folk, but this is underscored a bit as well. But he's also lusty, granted in a way that I think we're to understand is a largely in a largely innocent way, you know, part of his youthfulness. And it's not like he's manipulating Lily or anything like that. But his desire is obvious as well, so you know, it's like that's kind of that's we're setting that up to be his sin here. And I mentioned this because the plot, especially in the in the director's cut, is very concerned with the interconnectedness of light and darkness, as well as feelings of shame and our two protagonists, though it feels rather lily heavy in that regard, which I guess, you know, kind of matches up the basic story of Adam and Eden, where it's you know, far more shame is placed on the female in the scenario when really it takes two people to touch sacred fruit.

Yeah, so Jack and Lily they meet together in the forest to frolic about, and eventually Jack takes Lily to show her something very special. He sort of blindfolds her while he's leading her to a secret place, and he takes her blindfold off when they arrive. They're at this kind of hidden brook somewhere in the forest glen, and what they see there is a pair of unicorns that emerge from the trees, and then they kind of gallop about together like they're playing. And these unicorns, we understand, are sacred creatures, almost primordial, and their fates are linked to the fate of the world itself. So Jack communicates somehow, we've got to treat these creatures with reverence. You know, remember she had to be like blindfolded to go to their secret ground.

Yeah, yeah, these This matches up with some of the ideas swirling around the concept of the unicorn. We talked about unicorns in an older episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, where at times like the unicorn is presented as Christ as Jesus Christ himself in the form of a single horned horse.

Now we watch the unicorns play together and Lily becomes enraptured, I guess because of her In no sense, she does not take the proper precautions in their presence. She doesn't want to hold back and just observe them from a distant a distance like Jack recommends. She sort of runs out of hiding and touches one of them.

I think the stallion, right, And it's not so much the touch that is going to be disastrous, but it does impact other elements in play.

Right, because all along Lily has been tracked by the goblin trio. They've been they've been following the in no sense, and sure enough, the inno since led them straight to the unicorns. And I think this is around the scene where Blick says that line may be innocent, may be sweet, ain't half as nice as rotting meat. So we see where Blick's preferences lie, and they are with death and attack. So they when the goblins see the unicorns, I think Blunder yells out look ugly, one horned mule, and they take the opportunity to strike. They shoot one of the two unicorns with a poisoned dart, and the unicorns gallop away, and I think at first Jack and Lily don't realize what has happened. Like Jack is disturbed that Lily was so brazen with these holy creatures, but he is quickly distracted by love because Lily takes off a piece of jewelry, a golden ring inlaid with gems, and she throws it into the pool at the base of a waterfall where they're hanging out, and she says, I'm gonna marry whoever finds this ring, and Jack is just hot diggity he dives right in after it. Now a lot happens while Jack is diving under the water looking for the ring. The goblins catch up to the unicorn, which is faltering under the influence of the poison, and blicks his dart and they go up to it and they chop off its horn, and this instantly causes a worldwide calamity. A supernatural winter descends. The peasants are frozen solid in their cottages. Ice forms over over the pool where Jack is diving for the ring, so like when he comes up for air, he has to break through the ice. Lily is caught out in the blizzard and she runs in terror as the goblins come tramping through the new world of frosty horror that they've created. It's a scary time.

And it must have been scary to read this script and think about producing this. You know, this is it's like, we're gonna build a forest, then it's gonna be winter in the forest. We're gonna have a frozen over pond. We're gonna have somebody swimming in that and breaking up through the ice later, Like I don't know. This is one of the many places in the film where you really have to admire the what they really set out to do here, Like this is a lot.

Blick says, mortal world turned ice. Here be Goblin paradise. So the goblins are having a ball. They run around using the unicorn horn as a magic wand they're just doing all kinds of mischief and Lily eventually tracks them back to their Goblin camp, which I think his position's sort of down in a kind of ravine or a pit in the earth, and they've got a fire going and they're playing around with the horn, and this is all good stuff. I love this scene. I think this is where Blick says, higher burning fire making music like a choir, and they're all sort of talking about what they could do with their newfound of power. I think the pig goblin. I love this suggests turning everything into garbage. That's a quote. He says, why not turn everything into garbage, A big, towering mountain of slot. Wouldn't that be magic.

He's a simple guy. He knows what he wants.

Love, numb, numb, garbage.

Now, my one of my recurring questions on this rewatch of Legend, given recent changes and slaying, is this goblin mode? Does this constitute goblin mode if you're not familiar. Goblin mode, as defined by the Oxford Dictionary in twenty twenty two, is a type of behavior which is unapologetically self indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations.

You know, I would say that the goblins in this movie are not in goblin mode by default, but in this particular scene, they are going goblin mode. Okay, like Pox's desire to quote, turn everything into garbage, that's goblin mode.

That's different, right, yeah.

Yeah.

Now, at the same time, Blick's he seems he's having a big time here waving this unicorn horn wand around, and it seems like he has he has greater designs. He's thinking about the power of the wand here and what he could do.

With it I don't know, So we'll see what happens and when Darkness shows up. So Darkness arrives at the goblin camp. He's covered in a cloak, so we still don't see his face or his true form. And this is where one of the three goblins I know it's Blunder, the one with the helmet on, tries to take the horn and use it to usurp the power of the Lord of Darkness, but he's he's not strong enough. Tim Curry just like sucks it out of Blunder's hand magically and then reanimates a nearby mummy to grab up Blunder and cast him into a crevice in the earth, though we'll meet him again later.

Yeah, this is a great thing because basically, yeah, Blicks has been playing around with the wand there's really getting into it and has all these flourishes to his movements. You know clearly he's really digging this power trip. And you get the impression that Darkness has shown up really to be like, Okay, enough of this before it gets out of hand. I'm here for what's mine. So but Blix is smart enough to just drop it to the ground immediately.

Yeah.

Yeah, but Blunder is stupid, and Blunder is like, oh, there's the wand it's mine now, this is my time to shine, and as sind at the top, and he's just instantly destroyed. Yeah, or seemingly at the time.

Blunder has some good lines though, before he gets cast into the ravine when they're like they're talking about uh Lily and they're like, oh, she's so beautiful, and then Blunder's like, I know, I could eat her brains, Like jam, they.

Just don't have the same values as mortals.

Though.

Unfortunately, the mission is not fully accomplished because Darkness is like, you fools, look, Dawn is about to break. That means one of the unicorns still lives. You have to get both of them, So go find the other unicorn and bring it to me.

Yeah. Yeah, because the remaining unicorn is the Mayor And they're like what, it's just the female and Darkness is like, yeah, that one has the power of creation, you dummies, Like that's the most important unicorn.

Yeah, so you got to bring me unicorn too. Meanwhile, Jack wakes up being frozen in the Blizzard of wickedness, and when he does, when he wakes up, he is surrounded by a coterie of hidden folk. So there is a sort of panlike magical boy called Honeythorn Gump. I think he's supposed to be an elf, do they say?

Yeah? I believe so.

I don't know technically what all of the fantasy classes of these creatures of the forest are. They're all various hidden folk of different kinds. A couple of them are Brown Tom and Screwball. They will be companions along the rest of the journey. In the movie, there is a fairy creature named Una, who I think is like a will of the Wisp. Honey Thorn Gump is sort of the leader of them. He's got the most lore information in his head and seems to like kind of know what's going on. And Gump is interesting. He has these great fantasy time units that he always talks in. All the expressions of time are things like three flicks of a badger's or two hundred beats of a sparrow's heart.

Yeah, it's like you get the impression where if you were in tune with nature as much as an elf is or any of these magical fairy folk here you would know exactly what that means. You would innately know what that means. But to us mortals, we're a little lost on the particulars.

Yeah, there are some initial negotiations. When they first meet Tom Cruise, he has to answer a riddle or die. I think, is that right?

I'm always this scene kind of lost me a little bit. I'm not sure exactly what is happening in the scene. But then it's kind of like, Okay, I guess he passed the test, whatever it was.

Also, I don't understand the logic of the riddle. The answer is flowers, bluebell flowers, but I don't understand how it corresponds to the riddle itself. Anyway, they eventually decide that Tom Cruise is the Champion foretold who must defend the world from the Lord of Darkness, and so there's a scene of him being sent to raid a treasure trove and a hit barrow to get magical armor and weapons. Around here is where I first started to notice that Tom Cruise is not getting to stand up in this movie. He's always squatting or creeping on the ground.

Yeah, and now he has like a golden chain mail skirt to wear the whole time. Yeah, and a really cool shield and sword too, So he's decked out. He's gotten his plus one plus two gear from the Dungeon Master and is ready to hop into the main adventure. Yeah.

Meanwhile, there's a scene where Lily makes her way to sort of the camp where Jack originally was, but they don't meet up. Lily is there with the Unicorn Mayor and they get captured by the goblins and taken back to Tim Curry. And there's a funny moment here where Brown Tom, who was with one of the good guys, he gets shot in the head with an arrow and you think he's dead, and he thinks he's dead. When his companions show back up, he says, I was shot through the brain pan. But then he takes his hat off and he literally had a pan in his hat and it was the air went through it.

It's a great moment. When this movie wants to be silly and funny, it succeeds.

So now that Tim Curry has Lily and the last living Unicorn, that they got to turn this into a rescue operation, right, So Jack and his magical friends make the journey to the Layer of Darkness to confront Darkness and his minions, which and I thought this was interesting. It's shown from the outside and it is not your typical stone castle, but seems to be built inside a giant, ancient tree. The Honeythorn Gump describes it by saying, the Great Tree. When evil anarchy ruled the land, the wicked came here to sacrifice. That's an interesting, almost kind of biblical foundation story that, like the Cursed Play, is a place that you associate with the sacrifices made by an ancient enemy.

It's interesting too in that like what we have here in form and it looks amazing in the picture we see like the spots of carry and birds circling around it. But in many respects you could compare this to like a world tree from various mythologies, you know, connecting the realm of Earth to the realm of the cosmos. But it's corrupted and it's dark. But on the other level, numerous times we have, especially our evil characters, speak to a universe here in which darkness was the purity of existence that was then invaded by light. And therefore it maybe feels kind of fitting that the world tree here is something of the darkness because the darkness is the original structure of the universe.

Yeah, it is an interesting mythology. And again we get these statements about the necessary interconnectedness of the elements that come back in the very end as well. On the way to the castle, they've got to do battle with a swamp hag.

Right.

We brought a meg Mucklebones early on, played by Robert Piccardo in some amazing makeup and prosthetics or I don't know if there's puppetry involved in as well.

It feels like it. There's feels like there's some sort of like a device that's moving him around at the base.

Yeah. So it's like a big old Jenny Green teeth pops up out of the water and is going to eat Tom Cruise because she's like, you look delicious, and he starts trying to get out of it by flattering her beauty and she ends up saying, ooh, what a fine meal you'll make be the rest of you as sweet as your tongue.

Oh and this scene, this scene is just so perfect, but just and I'm just to touch on like some of the little things that make it great. The scene where he has the resplendent golden shield up and Meg is like close to it, half seeing a reflection in it, and her nails are tapping against it, and there's all so there's the gleam of the shield and then also there's a little bit of her sliminess on it. So it's just like visually and just sonically too, that tapping. It's just got complete overload. It's just a tremendous scene, even in this small detail.

Yeah.

Yeah, So eventually Meg is decapitated and our heroes, you know, they go on their way into the Great Tree of Wickedness, where they quickly fall into a pit and end up trapped inside prison cells. Now they will get out of these eventually released by the Fairy Una after she reveals that she had abilities that even Gump did not know of before. She's interesting because she's one of the heroes, but she's capricious, you know, she doesn't want to be pinned down. She's like, I'll do what I want, and you know, just so happens that that turns out to be helping them sometimes. But she also wants Tom Cruise. By the way, yes, but while in this prison they meet the goblin Blunder who reveals he is not actually a goblin. He takes his helmet off and learned that he is one of the hidden folk of the forest and known to Screwball and Brown Tom. But I guess he sort of went astray and now he's back on the team. But unfortunately, right after they meet him and realize who he is, he gets snatched up by their jailers and the dungeon and taken away to be baked into a pie. Because this dungeon is right next to the kitchens of Hell. This set we need to talk about the hell kitchens. Here, there's this doctor Salvador prep table in this blood Bucket kitchen, where like right in the middle of the floor there are random fires burning, so it's like a barbecue preparation area attended by like bondage axe murderers.

Yeah, they're like big ogres and execution hoods, just very physically intimidating. The fires are just raging, like just out of control levels of flame. It's like a delirious vision of hell, like a baroque mashup of Texas chainsaw massacre and a medieval wood cut. And they're also throughout like the last half or third of the picture. There are also just lots of creepy statues, Like there's a pazuzu statue from that pops up twice, I think, once in the swamp and then once in the depths of the underworld here. Sometimes those statues are actually alive and they move. So there's just a very rich, disturbing visual world down here in the hell. Kitchens are just yeah, absolutely terrifying.

Now, there's also an extended series of scenes, a kind of drama here where after Lily is brought to the palace as a captive, Darkness decides that he wants to seduce her, and he's sort of instructed by this other voice, this kind of statue or other god speaking to him. I think it says, make her one of us, and so that's his goal. He wants to take the innocence of the princess and to make her evil as well, to bring her into the darkness and make her a creature.

Of the night.

You know, it's interesting that you look at this in Labyrinth, two films being made at the same time, next door to each other. They both have very similar elements in that you have a dark lord who is pleading with like trying to seduce and ultimately just offering to be subservient to a woman. He is in love with a mortal woman. And they I'm to understand that with Labyrinth too, they were they were aware of what was going on in Legend and made deliberate choices with Jareth the Goblin Goblin King to portray him in a less like overtly satanic manner and like finding a different sort of form for him. But it is interesting that, yeah, out of the same production timeline, you're getting like these two different I guess kind of like equally iconic versions of somebody's potential supernatural boyfriend, you know, from beyond the realm of mortals, you know. So it's like, ultimately, like who do you see yourself with on the dating show? Is it Darkness the Prince of Evil, or is it Jarret the Goblin King. I don't know, your preference may vary.

But now Lily here goes through a transformation. At some point she gets a kind of spell cast on her while in the banquet hall of Darkness here, and she becomes Goth Lily. She like transforms to have this bizarre gown with like there's sort of this this we were talking about this big extending triangular hood or collar thing, and then like a big V cut in the middle of it, and her hair gets very stringy and dark, and she's got this, I don't know what you call it, the kind of a twiggy, twiggy black crown on her head. It's a it's a very strange and interesting look and props again to the costume designers there. But so there's like it's it's to symbolize that she has in a way had a spell cast over her, but she that doesn't mean she's been like hypnotized fully by the Lord of Darkness, because she's still not into him at this point. He's he's trying to make all these you know, seducing her to evil kind of moves, and she she's still screaming like no, I will do nothing for your pleasure. But in the end she does appear to make a turn. She says, Okay, I will stay with you here if you will grant me one thing. Let me be the one who cuts the throat of the last unicorn instead of you and Tim Curry. You could just see him. He's like, yes, yes.

He's like this is exactly the sort of thing I'm into and I'm so glad you are into it as well.

Yeah.

But oh but before we get to that point, I have to talk about her brow though. Oh because yeah, yeah, because yeah, the costume of Goth Lily is amazing, you know, the makeup is amazing. But they make a seemingly very deliberate choice to narrow and nearly unify her brow. So she has this very sweek monobrow unibrow going on here in a way that is of course also very like beautiful and hot. Don't get me wrong, it is enough. It is like the kind of like stylized younibrow that can make you realize, you know, it is like maybe a silly cultural thing that some of us don't think brows should grow together, because here's proof that it can look really cool. But like, first they made this decision, and I wonder like how they talked about it behind the scenes, where they're like, I really think we need to give her a unibrow here, and like maybe people were doubtful and then they saw the results and they're like, no, you got it. This is exactly what God Lily needs.

So the audience at this point may be left to wonder like, okay, has she fully been captured by the darkness? Does she want to kill the unicorn for real? But no, No, Lily has a plan, and Jack's about to get a plan too. Like the Jack and his friends. They've snuck into the palace and they're like peeking through a through a window and watching what's going on. And so Jack comes up with an idea that involves bringing light into the darkness. So they need to go gather a bunch of big shiny plates from the hell Kitchens, which have shiny plates for some reason, that they're going to use to create a series of reflector beams to bring sunlight from up above down into the darkness where it will destroy Tim Curry.

Now on the way.

At one point they get drawn into a fight with the Ogres and the hell Kitchen. I think they they beat them by like dumping out a big pot of broth. Unclear exactly how this fight is resolved.

Here now, Yeah, I'm not sure either. But while it's happening, the fight is very cool. There's a lot of running around and jumping and dodging, and of course the set is amazing.

And skipping over a few more things that go on in the Palace. Here it all leads up to this final confrontation where Lily and Darkness are down there with the last unicorn, and Lily is about to exercise her privilege to be the one to put an end to all goodness and bring on the forever night, and Jack and Honeythorn Gump are They've got the plans set up to bring the light in, and they're watching from above with bows drawn as this is about to happen, and Gump is saying, oh, no, she's going to kill the unicorn. You've got a stopper, Jack, But Jack says, no, I trust you, Lily, And so this is a sort of repeated idea that he puts his trust in her, and it was well placed because she in fact does not go through with hurting the unicorn. She instead cuts it free of its bindings, and then it kicks off a final action scene where Jack rushes in to fight the Lord of Darkness and put an end to this once and for all. The fight scene here, I'm of mixed opinions about it. It has some cool elements, something about it feels kind of thrown together in a way, but individual moments of it I like.

Yeah, I think the thing I was most impressed by is that Darkness still feels like a cohesive entity here, despite the fact that we're suddenly seeing him move around a lot more like he's swinging a giant sword. He's like shooting fire from his fingertips and in one sequence like runs like charges like a bull at jack and sort of like pins into the wall and snarls at him. And I feel like like, if the effects were not just so on point here, either this wouldn't feel believable or we wouldn't see an attempt like this at all.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And he has some great dialogue in the scene too, like while they're fighting at one point, Darkness as every wolf suffers fleas 'tis easy enough to scratch. Oh and then at the final defeat, okay, so you know, they blow the doors open with the sunlight brought in through the maze of mirrors, and it shines a big ray of sunlight onto Darkness, which is a destructive It like unleashes this destructive gale upon him that blows him out through this big sort of aperture we've seen in the wall. There's like this gap in the wall that seems to lead out into space and the night we just see black and stars beyond it. And as he's being blown out, Darkness says, you think you have won? What is light without dark? What are you without me? I am a part of you all. You can never defeat me. We are brothers eternal. But he is seemingly defeated. He's blown out into space. And I just want to point out for comparison, So the villain of this movie is destroyed by being sucked out into space? How is the Starbeast defeated at the end of Alien, also by Ridley Scott from several years earlier, blown out the airlock. Both of these movies end with the villain being the villain nor the monster being blown out into space.

That's also how Gladiator defeated Emperor Commitists in that movie, right just out through the airlock. You know.

Strangely, I would say, Thelma and Louise does have an almost kind of out into space ending.

That's true, Yeah, like into the void. I guess you could say. Yeah.

Now, after the evil is defeated, the unicorn is all right. Somehow we see the other unicorn revived, so now they're both okay. The Supernatural Winter ends, Lily is freed and everything can go back to normal. I think depending on which cut of the film you are seeing, there'll be a slightly different ending. There might be one where it seems like they're going to get married or something. I think there is one ending where we hear Darkness laughing after the happy ending, suggesting, oh, he's actually coming back. The ending of the director's cuts has them coming to a kind of bittersweet agreement where Jack and Lily conclude that Jack can't really be part of Lily's world, that he is going to have to stay in the forest. But she says, can I come visit you every day? And he says yes, all right.

I guess this getting into the the basic thesis statement that our heroes are going to have to embrace darkness and light, that they're going to have to find some balance of things, and that maybe, like the ideal happy ending isn't really in the cards. But I don't know. But then I don't know. Especially in the US theatrical cut, it does feel a lot more good conquers everything, you know, good over evil, And then we can't argue with those songs. We're hit first with that tangerine dream vocal track, and then we get your love? Is your love strong enough? And the answer is yes, clearly, the answer is yes a million times. Yes, love is absolutely strong enough?

Is your love strong enough to turn the world into garbage? One great big mountain of slop?

All right, Well there you have it legend from Ridley Scott. I'd be very interested to hear what everyone out there has to say about this film, like it, did you see it? What version did you initially see? And what were your impressions? And has it grown on you over the years, like again, like it's a film that had such an impact on me, like visually that it's always stuck with me. But it's also a film that I always come back to and realize that Hell, you know, it's a little rough around the edges in the in the end, but you know it's it's definitely developed its own cult following and has become iconic in its own right.

I can't deny there's something about it that just doesn't quite come together. And yet I'm not going to get rid of my copy. I know I'm gonna be watching it again.

Yeah, this is a great one to put on. I've played this one before, just in the background with other music on top of it, and it's always a delight.

Yeah.

All right, Well, we're going to go and close out this episode of Weird House Cinema, but we'll be back with the future installments, which air on Fridays in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. If you want to see a full list of the movies we've covered over the years for Weird House Cinema, go to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R B O x D dot com. You'll find us on there. Our user name is weird House and there's a list of all the films we've covered and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next. Also, if you're on Instagram, go to st b ym podcast. That's the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast channel handle and you'll get updates as well.

Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuffed blow your Mind dot com.

Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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