M h. You're listening to the Parallel UK Radio network and this is six
Degrees of John Keel. Hello and welcome to the six Degrees of John Heel
podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Barbara Fisher. Tonight, coming to
speak with me about paranormal films or the paranormal in film. Is Zoe Burdette.
She was here last time to talk about owls and woodlands and a wedding
dress and she's also a film person. Like I am so welcome, thank
you, so happy to be back, Barbara. Yeah, yeah, this
is this is fun. We've been trying to get together and you know,
MORGANA was like in school. I was falling down and we did we did
record once before and the internet gods said no, no, it wasn't no.
And so I gave good sacrifices this afternoon, so it should be all
right. So here we are. So, Zoe, I really before we
actually start on the individual films, what was your first film that you saw,
whether in childhood or early early adulthood, that really gave you the idea
of paranormality in film and in life, that kind of kind of bridge that
gap for you between fiction and reality. Oh, I think that would have
to be The Shining. I can see that it's a household staple. My
parents are also movie people, and my dad has had a poster of the
Big Jack Nicholson. Here's Johnny face up on his car garage ceiling along with
taxi driver ever since I can remember, and I remember identifying very closely with
Danny because I was about his age when I first watched The Shining. Oh
wow, Yes. And in addition to that, I also was a sensitive
child in the spiritual sense, although I didn't really have the vocabulary at that
point too to work with that. So watching it had that dual meaning for
me where I could identify with Danny because of his age, but also because
of what he was experiencing. Not so much to that extent, but it
gave me a context of, oh, so, I'm not the only one
right right. You know. Kubrick was really careful with the actor who played
Danny, and that's one of the things I always want to bring up.
I remember the first time I saw it, my mom was like, how
could this kid, you know be in this movie movie on this set?
Oh my god? And I found out that Kubrick and Nicholson both were really
kind to him, and and the kid really grew up never seeing the whole
film until he was like seventeen or eighteen something like that. Like he was,
you know, pretty much fully grown up, and he didn't realize it
was a horror film until he actually watched it, and then he was like,
oh, oh no, so it isn't all a nightmare kind of set
because everybody, you know, hears about Shelley Duval and how horrified she was,
and he got great performances out of her. But yeah, it was
grueling at what cost, I know, right, But I believe the same
thing happened with the child actor in The Shining or not the Shining sorry,
the Omen the Danny, and he was also kept from it until much later
when he learned really what his part was. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah,
oh I was I was satan Okay. I didn't really realize that.
I was just having fun. Yeah, I can't imagine, but it's like
i'm child actors, I mean, trying to think of myself as a child,
and you know, having to retain that sort of thing just playing may
believe, but I don't know. It's a it's a strange, strange feeling
for someone who hasn't gone through it. I guess yes, well interestingly,
and you were the one who pointed it out. All of the films that
we chose seem to have a thematic connection. Even though the first one is
about pagan traditions, the second one is about UFOs, the third one is
about I'm not actually sure what that one's about. I'll say demonic possession,
even though I don't necessarily think that's what's going on, but when we get
to it, y'alla will understand. Really. And then the third one is
about ghosts and mediums or no, the fourth one is about ghosts and mediums,
and then the fifth one is about hauntings and being haunted. But in
every one of them there's in the center of it a family or a child.
So I really think that that's one of the It's just one of the
key parts of the paranormal that people don't really talk about or think about,
is children are almost always in there somewhere doing something, you know. They're
the ones who see the ghosts or hear them. Um. They're the ones
who have the nightmares about the aliens coming through the walls, not always but
often, and they're the ones who have this great imagination that parents will often
say it's just your imagination. So I really think that's something as we go
along, we can we can talk about it. So you had you picked
the first one, so why don't you go and start with that. The
first one that came to mind when we were talking about this was The Wickerman
the original, of course. Yeah, but uh yeah, not too harsh
on the original. That will take a whole other podcast. I mean,
not the not the original remake, the remake. Yes, not too harsh
on that or in a Cage or anything. I know that's a beloved bad
movie for so many people. But talking about that could take a whole other
episode. Yeah it could. Yeah, I love I love the original as
most do, just because it captures so well the how those traditions are kept
alive and also how it's a murder mystery but it's a time capsule and it
has these two Well, it's it's folk car. I mean, we were
talking about that whole genre that's just coming back. So a lot of people
are re discovering the wicker Man and all these taken traditions that people are starting
to really talk about more and share, which is fantastic, and yet it
takes a turn at the very end of it that I didn't expect because I
was just having a grand old time with this silly policeman. Is the only
way I can talk about him, because good God, that man. He
just shows up and starts blundering, blustering like no roast beef man ever has.
And for all the British procedurals we see now and people love them,
it's so much different than I'm not sure I've never seen one of those series
if they have them in from the seventies. But he shows up by himself,
no partner, these about it's an island full of hippies, and none
of them think to ask him for a search warrant when he starts looking for
this missing child. And then you have Christopher Lee doing whatever the heck he's
doing, being charming. And one of my favorite Christopher Lee facts is that
he barely got paid anything to be in that movie. He just wanted to
be in it. Yes, yes, he wanted to be Lord summer Isle
really really badly. I don't blame him. I want to be Lady summer
Isle, I know. Right to go back in time World's Most Interesting Man.
But with that film in particular, it's it's always fun because for people
who are rediscovering neopaganism, or for people who have done it forever, just
people who have either grown up in those traditions or know a lot about them.
It's a fun little study of what it would be like if an entire
pagan community could exist on an island off the coast of England and actually work,
because in form and function, it's still a function, but it's they
have schools, they have town government, they have this whole thing. They
have their lord, who's more kind of like a not a benevolent dictator,
but he's he's like the lord of the the shire. All right, what
have you? He's the he's the Lord Grantham of summer Isle. Yeah.
Yeah, but then you get this one loud Christian in there and everything goes
right to pot. Yeah. Yeah. Although it's really funny because it seems
like the villagers, rather than being like fifteen kinds of particularly upset about him,
make it their business to make fun of the cop and pick on him
and trick him and tease him, and they and they do the whole the
whole film he gets rased, and and it is a bunch of hippies.
But at the same time they're mostly wearing traditional British like you know, middle
class and working class clothes, right, so they they look like what he
expects people to look like. You know, they look like all this is
the pub owner, and this is the this is the the chambermaid for the
end, and this is the school teacher. So all of those, you
know, check out in his mind. But then they act completely differently and
he starts to like, it's almost like he loses his footing when he realizes
none of these people are Christian. None of these people are going to cooperate
with him. I mean they do they they answer his questions, but they
you know, are not telling him anything at all. And it freaks him
out and he gets more and more weirded out. And of course the part
about him that really even when I was younger and I saw it, I
was like, how can he be so weird about sex at his age?
What is happening with this man? I mean, people in Great Britain,
people in Scotland have sax Okay, otherwise they wouldn't be sitting there on their
island. There would be nobody there, so I know that this. I
mean, maybe he just had poor luck with the ladies. Maybe he was
in the closet, we don't know. But he was really, really just
so uptight about all sorts of things. And there's plenty of boobies in the
movie, so you know, yes, it was a booby full movie.
It is it is. I think that's why, you know, Christopher Lee
needed to be Lord summer Isle. I think that was part of it,
Yes, because he could very calmly, you know, be in the middle
of ladies fully naked dancing around him and talk like he was just having a
wonderful afternoon to this crazy cop that's just completely losing it about the naked ladies.
Yeah. I think one of my favorite scenes in that movie is when
he goes out he is having a panic and then he goes outside and sees
all of the young couples just screwing in the field build. It just completely
his helmet goes flying off and everything. I just I love it. It's
so funny and it reminds me quite a bit. I always think the Monty
Python's a meaning of life. When they're sitting there, like the family next
door they're seeing the sperm song, and then you have the Protestant couple and
like, right, we have two children and we've only had sex or into
course twice, and this reminds me, well, yes, but we could
if we wanted to. You know, Yeah, that's a good that's a
good metaphor there. I like that, And it is funny. It is
very, very funny. Now I was. I wasn't as surprised at the
ending the first time I saw it, simply because of the title, because
I knew what the Romans had written about the Druids with what a wicker man
is, and that it was supposedly you sacrificed people through it. So I
knew a wicker man was coming up, you know, I knew it was
gonna I didn't necessarily know how it was going to go until he just kept,
you know, being misdirected and redirected. He didn't have sense enough to
get on the boat and go home, and they just seemed to be keeping
him there longer and longer and longer, and stringing him along. And I
was like, oh, I bet I know what's going to happen. I
bet I know who's going to go in that wicker Cage. Especially we find
out he's a virgin, so it's like whoa, yeah, yeah, it's
like oh my, And I think the underlying genius of that movie I saw
it as an adult. I didn't experience it until probably my twenties, so
I knew. I also knew that there was a wicker Man coming. But
what sris me most about that was what surprised me most about the thing,
which I also watched kind of later in life. I was kind of expecting
like a fun romp, and at the beginning it is, Yes, it
is. As he gets further and further into the maze of this situation,
It's what the brilliance of that movie is that it just encroaches upon you and
I don't know that it's happening. It just kind of closes in until things
get real weird and then real fast, real fast. And then at the
very end, like even though you know the wicker Man's coming, when they
zoom it on his face and they take the cut to this colossal structure and
you know what's going to happen, I could feel my stomach just drop.
Yeah, in a way that if if if if listeners subscribe to that genetic
memory idea where it's just like you're looking at the scaffold. It's just like,
oh yeah, yeah, and you know it's over. Yeah yeah,
I definitely. And what's interesting, even though he's been a complete and utter
pain in the butt and really nasty to the people on this island, you
know, accusing them of all sorts of stuff, which none of that actually
happened until the end, then it happens to him. Even though I disliked
him through the whole movie, I felt horrible for him at the end.
And I think that's one of the things that you're supposed to feel. You're
not supposed to feel like, Yay, they got him. You're not supposed
to feel like, um, well, he deserved it because he was an
ass. It was more like all the man was doing was his job,
and this is what happens. And I think that's that's where the horror is
supposed to come in, because you see him, he's basically an okay guy's
just judgmental, and then you see everybody else and they all seem like pretty,
you know, cool really, I mean, you know, they have
like, you know, really cool costumes that they put on for their like
spring festival, and you know, they have all of the you know,
they have the may Queen and they've got Lord summer Rile. They got naked
ladies dancing, they got you know, some singing in the pub that ends
with lots of having sex and sex in the fields and everybody's you know,
and everybody's getting along and it's lovely except for this guy who came from the
mainland who's being a pain. And yes, they seem like such nice people
until but you still think they're nice people, that's the thing. And what
is so eerie about it, even if you are of I think everyone who
has participated in the pagan community or the paranormal community or anything like that,
everyone has had that moment where you're having a great time and you're having fun
and like you've met all these new people and isn't this great way we have
a community? And then someone does something really weird, like yeah, beyond
your your bounds of even if you're the weirdest person you know where you're just
like, oh, okay. And you get that from the perspective of the
policeman when he's looking out of the wicker Man on fire and you see them
all dancing like jets, like their smiles. Yep, they're the sweetest people
alive. But they are burning this dude alive. Yeah, and along with
a bunch of farm animals. I feel so bad for the for the animals
too. Yeah. Yeah, the animals actually upset me greatly. Um the
first time I saw it, I think I was like seventeen the first time
I saw it, maybe maybe nineteen something like that. Um, I was
more, you know, in a lot of ways, I was more upset
about the animals because of course, you know, they have no concept.
But then I was like, well, maybe it's but you know what,
they could have slit their throats and then put them in the fire. They
didn't have to do that. You know. It's like just just you don't
have to do it that way. The Romans didn't do it that way.
Come on, the Romans would have done yeah, because they always you know,
you got to look at the end trails before you set it on fire,
or you can't figure out what the future holds. So and that's the
other thing that I love about this. It's counted as a paranormal movie,
but in a way it isn't really. Yeah, there isn't much actual I
don't want to say there's not much actual magic goes in, but it's all
ritual. It's all kind of the nuts and bolts of what goes into magic
rather than it's a it's a show rather than a tell, because even though
you're doing all of these they don't tell you exactly why they do all of
these other strange things that they're up to. They tell you why they have
the wicker Man and the may Queen and all that, but right, it's
not it's it's not quite like well, I think the other movie that's very
much like it now is Midsamar, where they yes, they do tell you,
but it has both the show and the tell where they do it and
they say, oh, well they this is why we do this and this
is how we live and while everyone gets more and more horrified. But you
don't really get that with the Wickerman. It's just kind of all these strange
things. And as a I mean, I wasn't alive when it came out,
so I can't have the perspective of someone who just goes and sees that
movie cold, you know, like goes to the theater because they have nothing
else to do and they're just like, what is this? And that was
kind of a lot of people's attitudes at the time when it came out,
and then of course it became a cult classic because it is actually a good
movie. It is well scripted, it's well acted. Nobody's particularly chewing the
scenery too much. I mean, Lord Summeryle has a little bit of fun
with it, but you know, not too bad. And it's what happens
is it becomes believable as as it goes on, and then you know,
you're pulled into it. And like you say, at the end, he's
looking out of the bars of this big wicker cage and he's you know,
the cage is on fire, and they are those nice people dancing around him
singing. Yeah. It's like, all how can they do this? It's
just it's such a brilliant shot too. I think I heard I saw somewhere
recently, and I could be wrong about this, but I'm gonna go with
it. They that for that particular shot, the very end shot was actually
a mistake, like they did not expect to get the sun going down when
it did, and in on it was like they didn't mean to do that,
but it worked. So in addition to everything else, it's people forget
that like that type of movie had could only be made on film, So
the editing and just the way that it was filmed, it's cinematographically fantastic as
well. So yes, yeah, so it's it's such a good start to
that. The anyone who has asked me about folk Car, I'm like,
like, watch the Kerman. It'll give you an idea. Yeah, it
really, it really puts it succinctly in your head, is to what's going
on? Um, because full cor is generally not up in your face,
splattery, smack you around it. It's a slow burn that builds up and
then you're like, oh, oh by the end, um, that's uh.
That that is a really good introduction. I think the only possible paranormal
thing that's in there is when is it britt Ekland who's the busty blonde who
sings the song. Didn't she read to row cards for the cop in the
end? I think so. I'm pretty sure she did, and I'm pretty
sure she did it without you know, setting up the cards first, because
he came in and she pretty much was like, hey, let me read
for you, and she pretty well accurately predicted. Now she of course she
knew what was going to happen, or maybe she didn't. Maybe everybody wasn't
in on it exactly. That's another thing you don't know until the end.
Maybe some of the people aren't in on it. They just know how to
answer this guy, or maybe they've done it before over and over and so
yeah, or because he's so new when they're used to sacrificing girls on the
island, they didn't really know how to approach it until they realized all the
pieces were in motion for him to be a virgin and to be alone,
yeah, to be able to just make him disappear. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, so yeah. And as far as the folk car aspect goes to
what I like about it most and this is this has been carried on.
This is what I find is most successful with this genre of film that keeps
being like people are starting to get it now and you touched at the beginning
when they're all rasinum. There's such a trickster element just to the film itself.
That's because they just nail how like with the showing not telling, especially
in folklore or in folk magic or in anything that you're doing like, there's
gonna be weird stuff going on that you're not going to be able to explain.
You may never know what it means, and you just kind of have
to accept it and keep going yes, yes them. And speaking of that,
I love how all of their costumes for the end ritual which they are
practicing up to the and ritual off and on, and kids are involved in
drawing pictures that have to do with it. It's actually kind of a complicated
movie that way. You just kind of have to pay attention. Um.
But they have the rabbit, you know, the they dress up as a
rabbit, which is the trickster um. You know, they decapitate the rabbit.
You know, there's hairs, there's rabbits, there's you know, the
green Man, there's um hobby horse. Yeah, and it's it's beautiful because
it looks so beautiful and pastoral and you want it to be beautiful and pastoral,
and it is until it isn't, and then suddenly you're like, oh,
oh okay, yeah, so yeah, that's a that's a thing.
But I think other than that tarrow card reading, there's no actual overt understanding
of the paranormal or magic as a thing. We just we know they believe
in it, but we don't know if it actually works, except that they
all seem to be pretty healthy and happy there, so nobody's starving. Yeah,
and they're so adamant about making about making this happen, this ritual will
happen with examples of success that he sees framed on the walls and the different
personifications of the may Queen. So that's yeah, that's all in there.
And then with the I mean the vibe of everyone being dressed in traditional and
working class English clothing for the it's it's the mid seventies. It's just it
just warms my, my dear little heart just say, that's totally my that's
totally my place of comfort. So yeah, I love that about it.
And how in so many ways you can either put yourself and you can put
yourself in the place of the teacher, or you can put yourself in the
place of the man himself if you or the policeman if you don't know what's
going on. And in a lot of ways that's us because when I first
watched it, I knew what was going on. But the way that they
play with the viewers sense of reality and not even just the reality, but
also just what are these people doing? Is yeah, palpable? So yeah,
he's definitely a sympathetic character, especially by the end, even if he's
a big dude, like he's a big dufist, but he's not like yeah,
but he's not mean. Yeah, that's the thing. He's judgmental and
bossy and loud, but he's not mean, and that that makes it sad
at the end. Yes, Okay, I think we should move on because
otherwise we'll never get through our whole list. So that the next one is
actually the one of the ones that morgana chose. But I've seen it and
so I can talk about it. And it's called Dark Skies, And this
is a film. It came out in twenty thirteen, and it's a really
weird film, like like you don't expect what starts happening, and they don't
really market it as the kind of thing that it maybe turns out to be
or actually turns out to be, but at the beginning there's all kinds of
questions. So it's a family, UM with two kids, younger son and
an older one. Um dad's unemployed and so he's he's kind of hanging out
in the house all the time, and the wife is a real estate agent
and they live in the suburbs, and they seem like really nice people,
you know, they really This is one of those times when you look at
the people involved and you go, man, they didn't ask for this.
You know. As it goes on and goes on, it gets weirder and
weirder. Now, this one does have paranormal stuff happening, and it really
starts. I think it starts with a bang, but that's because I have
a feeling as to what's going on. But I think the first one is
in the night, like the stuff from the drawers in the kitchen and stuff
from cabinets in the dining room gets pulled out and rearranged in these like complicated
hanging from the ceiling moving sculptures. Like how how else would you describe it
is It's like it's completely impossible, you know, And but it's so cool
looking. They did a great job with that building on the because it's like
Poultergeist the movie Pulters where she turns around and all of the chairs are in
a in a pyramid the mother and that is a bit it's a bit of
an update from that in that Impoulter Geist, like the dad's all I think
the dad's also a real estate agent, no, I think about it.
Yeah yeah, and the mom's a stay at home mom. But they seem
like just a happy, normal family that this thing just happens too, and
you're right with the family in turmoil. It's a very but in the young
children, it's a very paranormal. Anyone who's who knows anything about the paranormal
and Poulter Guist is like, oh, they are primed to be yeah,
yeah, yeah, And then they have these sculptures with just like impossible,
like these things should not be able to fit together the way that they do.
But something that's how to do it, which is you know, scares
the hell out of them. And of course they they check the doors,
they check the windows, everything's locked right, and so they decide that somebody
had to have done it within the house. So it's one of the kids,
both of the kids, or it was the dad, somebody sleepwalked something,
you know. But it's also very obvious to me that neither of the
kids could have done it because they would have made noise, they would have
fallen down, and it it came together very quickly. One of the things
I really like about this film is they play with shadows. They do it's
it's if you've ever seen the original nos Fawt, they do that that The
director Murnal fw Murnal does that too, where you use a shadow to make
the horror even worse. And it starts out. The shadow place starts out
with a very simple thing, and it's the the hanging sculpture because it's hanging
from the chandelier above and it's wine glasses and bottles and pieces of kitchen equipment
and it's all hanging there and it's kind of spinning a little bit from the
where it's hanging from the chandelier, and it casts shadows that look like a
crop circle. That was the very first thing I looked at and noticed,
and I was like, that looks like a crop circle. And in fact,
I'm pretty sure it's one of the more famous crop circles. But I
never did, like, you know, go dig it up and make sure.
If I was writing about it for film class, I would have looked
it up, but I didn't. Um but that was a that was a
tell for those of us who are in the know about things like that.
Um, I think most audiences wouldn't have caught it right, And I yeah,
and I kind of I knew going in because we had talked about it
what it was going to be, But that didn't matter because the way that
the tension builds in that film is so again kind of like The wicker Man
is just it sneaks up on you. I watched it with my name and
my mother and I when I watched movies at my parents as well. We
both have a couch, my dad has his own chair, and my mother
has a problem with flailing when she's scared. So we learned this when we
watched one of the paranormal activity movies. And I'll never forget who screamed first
something There was a jump scare and we both screamed and she like clocked me
in the ribs. Oh wow, yeah. Just And this time I was
surprised at myself because the first time we see what's going on for real,
like confirmed, Like I knew what it was and I knew what was going
to happen. But when the mom is walking around at night having heard something,
and she goes into her son's bedroom and sees the tall gray standing over
the bed, I shrieked like a little girl, and then my mother like,
so I scared my mother, and then she whacked me by accident,
just across the chest, the big thumb, and we woke up my pad
who had an invitably fallen asleep, and it was absolute chaos at the Burnett
house for a moment. And yeah, so I was surprised because I'm not
usually like it doesn't things don't usually get me that way, but that one
did and it did the same with me. Now I didn't scream, but
I did jump, and I was like, oh oh no, oh no.
Yeah, And we don't have like scream Queen Queen Scream Queen screams either.
My mother and I like if we're I think they take I think Henry
Zabrowski talks about it on last podcast a lot where if like he ever gets
attacked, he'll be a writhing, screaming mess, and that's exactly what my
mother and I are just like, so it's just it's it was bad.
But yeah, the way that that movie builds the tension, and it has
a similar kind of a similar plot structure to Poultergeist, but it does end
up in a very different place, which is surprising about it. Yeah,
yeah, Poltergeist almost ends happily compared to this one. Yes, you know,
it's almost rainbows and sparkles and loveliness. And uh, I think the
film. I would compare it too, in a lot of ways as Close
Encounters of the Third kind, which is completely different, but it tells the
same story. You know, it's just from two different perspectives. Um and
dark skies. Maybe you can tell by the name of it is not nearly
as positive as Close Encounters, and it's not nearly as beautiful. Yes,
you do see gray aliens. Um, they're better than the ones that are
in Communion, the film Communion that those were those were terrible. Um,
they still were a little bit uncanny, but they were terrible. These these
are eepy and they made you know, they made sure that the family knew
that whatever this force was that was coming into their house and messing with them,
that this kid was drawing pictures of that, this kid was like,
you know, sleepwalking, you know, and going outside at night. It
didn't show it for a long time. It didn't actually show them, and
so instead you just have this You're like, it's gonna happen it's gonna happen.
It's gonna happen, and you know it's gonna happen. But the mom
wanders around the house in the dark a few times before it happens, and
nothing happens the first two times, you know, so then you're like,
well, maybe it isn't them, Maybe it's something else. Maybe maybe one
of the kids it's it's it's poltergeistee stuff that one of the kids is having
because you have a teenage kid who's having troubles, you know, so it's
like, it's that kid, That's what's happening. He's he's psychically, you
know, putting off energy. It's repeated psychokinesis. That's what it is.
RpK. That's what it is. That's what it and and then no,
no, it's not yeah, no, no no, and it really really
really once you get close to the end and you know what's happening. Um.
You even have a a sort of John keelish guy in the investigator who
tries to help the parents, but he basically says, well, I can't
really help you because they will do whatever they want. And the most realistic
answer from a paranormal investigator I've ever seen in a movie, yes, aside
from the one in Paranormal Activity where he shows up like at the second showing
after they riled up the demon in their house and he's just like, oh
no, I can't help you and just leaves time to go. Too bad.
I can't stay I already I have an appointment with the Exorcist right now.
Sorry, we're going to lunch. You know. It was nice meeting
you. Buy Yeah, that would that would definitely, yeah. I love
that. I always forget that that actor's name. He's so good in everything
he does, but he he just played and he has a bunch of and
he's just got to look him up. I gotta look him up because it's
bugging me. Yep. Um no not the TV series, No, no,
no, Why While you're looking, I'll talk about just two movies that
it really did remind me of. And I don't I don't want to give
away the ending in Case because it was so this movie until you and MORGANA
brought it up, and it reminded me a lot of just with the aliens
and this tension building the movie signs which say what you will about M Knight
Shamalan, I happen to be an night Shamalan apologist. I like a lot
of his movies, even the ones that people think are bad. That's a
whole other show. But Signs in particular was just so good at the tension
building in that and like they're they're especially those scene with Joaquin Phoenix watching like
the children's birthday party, Like, yes, that scene should not be as
scary as it is, and yet it terrifying. Yeah, and when it
the thing stands on like he sees the things standing on the roof. Awful.
Yeah, yeah, awful, Like cornfields are scary enough. I don't
need to see an alien foot in that. Yeah, yeah, that's not.
Yeah. The actor's name is JK. Simms, Sims Simmons, and
he's wonderful, and he's wonderful in everything. Yes, and he plays a
great paranormal investigator or not even an investigate. Well he's still an investigator,
but like he's still he moved specifically to like to investigate, I believe.
But he also he has all these cats around that keep the aliens away.
Yes, and that reminded me of a friend of mine who always had a
lot of cats, because the very first time she saw a ghost was her
recently deceased boyfriend, and she said it was as if he was standing there
and it terrified. It was like three days after he died in a car
wreck, and he was standing there as if nothing had happened, and he
was talking to were. So this was her first psychic kind of experience.
And she was like, Ricky, you gotta go. You can't stay here.
You're scaring me. Ricky, you gotta go. And her cat woke
up and lunged at him, growling, And so she kept cats around her
because she felt like they could see something happening before it happened and would scare
them away. And because I asked her, I was like, I mean,
I know that you love cats, but you know this is a tiny
apartment. Why do you have like seven of them? And she said,
I don't want to be without one in the room with me, preferably two,
and I'm not going to lock them in rooms with me. You know,
they're allowed to go back and forth. But with that number and three
rooms, there's a there's going to be at least one. And I was
like, oh, okay, why is that? And then she told me.
I went all, honey, that makes perfect sense. Oh, my
God, And it makes me wonder about that apparition of her boyfriend because like
normally with that sort of thing, if a like if a spirit comes back
and has to tell someone something after a sudden death like that, animals don't
usually react that. Yeah, suspicious. Yeah, that was exactly what I
thought. And I was like, are you sure it was Ricky? And
she said, you know, it looked exactly like him. I said,
oh, but you know, if he was your boyfriend and was good to
you, why would the cat go after him? And if he if you
said, you're scaring me, you need to go, like yeah, and
she was like, oh, yeah, maybe it wasn't. Oh gotta get
another cat. You know, two of them are getting old. I got
it. Get on, you know. I was like, so maybe crazy
cat ladies, that's part of it. I don't know, Mum. Yeah,
there's a whole Yeah, there's a whole school of thought with crazy cat
ladies. But I mean the other movie it reminded me of was and that
came out I think around the same time as this was The Fourth Kind,
which it did come out near that time. Yeah, and it reminded me
a lot of that. But good God, the fourth kind scared the Bejesus
out of me, like, you know me and owls, so yeah,
my beloved barn owls and turning them into evil, smiling alien owls was just
not not nice. Yeah, that's a that's an evil movie. And I
agree with you. It's so frightening, and especially as a found footage movie,
with which again I love. I love found footage movies, but not
everyone and not everyone does. But the way that they did it was just
well done as far as manipulating footage to make it and do it presenting it
as a reenactment rather than a st Bard movie, which like this, like
Dark Skies, is very good, but it also it definitely has that Holly
hollywoodification of especially the mom. I was like she like, it was very
distracting for me. Just I know, it's twenty thirteen, but to have
a mother of two boys one's a teenager walking around in her white like her
see through wife beater with her nipples sticking out, like yeah, that was
weird, you know, trying to find them. Yeah, I know,
I didn't like that either, Like, just grab a robe, lady,
come on, Yeah, that's not her and it's not her fault. It's
you know, it's the direction, but I just yeah, so there was
that. But also in the fourth kind they have Mia Jevovovich playing who is,
you know, an evil lou Dallas, one of the most gorgeous women
in my opinion, to ever be on the screen. Yes, and yeah,
so there is definitely that element of it. But did you have anything
else you wanted to say about Dark Skuys? Uh? Basically, y'all should
watch it. It's it's really good and it Yeah, it has the paranormal
in it. At the beginning, you do kind of go is it paranormal
or is it not? Is somebody playing games with them? What's happening?
And then you go, no, this is this is bad And then you
have to figure out, well, are they going to actually show what it
is? And then you know because she goes wandering around through the house with
her nipples, looking at night to see if there's anything there, and then
there's never anything there, and then finally she walks in and there it is,
and you're all, yep, they're gonna show it. Oh okay,
yeah, and it does. Especially for me. What struck me about it
a lot was how it plays with a lot of the different trips. I
mean, we've been referencing like some of the oldest ones in the book Pultergeist,
I mean in newer movies as well. It reminded it came out also
around the time of Insidious, so it has a lot of element to it
as well. And for what presents itself very much as a generic Hollywood horror
film, it really did surprise me in a lot of wags, which doesn't
happen a lot. Yeah. Yeah, I expected it to be pretty predictable,
and it really wasn't terribly predictable. You know. Every time I thought
I knew what was happening, something else happened. Hmm. Yeah. So
okay, So the next one is one of yours, so you can introduce
it. I just watched it today, so, as you say, it's
all fresh in my mind. So we're getting as far away from Hollywood probably
as we can get with this one. It's it's definitely a cult favorite because
for so long you had to It wasn't available streaming anywhere you had if you
wanted it, you had to get a print from You had to have an
all region Blu ray or a DVD player, so you could get a European
print. It did come out on DVD recently for a Region A, but
it is now on Shutter and it is called Possession, and it's a movie.
I'm so glad that it's being put out on a wider scale now because
so few people have seen it or even know about it. And even when
I saw it, I had to get a bootleg download from someone. Yeah,
and it's just such a anomaly of a movie in my opinion. But
as someone who just watched it, like, how would you describe it to
someone just like two okay, okay in a few sentences? Okay, yeah,
all right, Well it's it is a horror movie. Um, and
you could classify it as a psychological horror movie because for most of it it
is, and it's a horror, a psychological horror movie about the breakup of
a marriage. That is the simplest way to tell it. But that's not
just what it is. But for the first talk about a slow burn this
but what I wasn't bored at all. It just it was a slow pace
and for a while you're just like, well, you know, it seems
like they might be a little bit I mean, they're really upset about like
you know, breaking up, but you know they really should just like callor
therapists, maybe get some medication. Dud's manic. Something's happen, you know,
and you you do get worried about them. Neither of them comes across
as monstrous until a little bit later, and then it just there's just so
much in there. There is just so much in there. All of the
actors are really good, like and once again we have a little boy and
a child actor. And I know that he probably didn't know how horrific this
movie is because most of the true horror, he is nowhere near the screen
anywhere. He's he's busy someplace else. Yeah, we think there's a strength
of the movie. I mean, we have all these there are very it's
great to have strong child actors and strong child characters, but there is no
place in them in that movie for a child's participation beyond what that child's had.
So he's kind of he's kind of a prop in a way, or
a plot device sort of, yea, but yeah, there's no room for
him otherwise. Yeah. So yeah, So the actors were talking about are
Sam Neil and Isabella Johnny who are their marriage is falling apart. Sam Neil
has a job that keeps him away often, and when we arrive in it,
it's a very European movie in that they're already separated, like she's all
she showed, he's like he shows up from his trip and she's like,
what are you doing here? And he's said, I thought you wanted me
back, me to come home, and she says, I still have to
think and then turns around and walks away, so with his bags. No
no, And as we get further further and into this marriage, you find
out like neither of these characters are at all sympathetic, like something definitely going
on, like he's he's manic depressive, Like he becomes manic depressive as she
leaves him and just kind of disappears. But it's and she finds and he
finds out that she's sleeping with another man and she's staying with him, and
so it really does play out for it's a fairly long movie, so like,
definitely settle in because you're right, it slow burns into from a family
trauma drama into something entirely different because sam Neil finds out what Isabella Johnny has
been up to when he meets he does meet the lover, and then the
lover doesn't know where she is either. Yeah, And like there's every time
I watch It's the type of movie where every time I watch it, I
have a different theory about like what it was supposed to be. And it's
such a it's such an artifact in that it's filmed in We couldn't decide whether
it was East or West Berlin, but it's right on the edge of the
Berlin Wall, right, And that in itself is just such a tense environment
and a very symbolic environment in the same way that Suspiria was. But of
course Susia is its own, its own thing, its own world, but
it does create that sense of enclosure and division. Yes, And as this
movie goes on, it just gets tight, Like like the other movies we've
been talking about, it just gets tighter and tighter and tighter until like it
doesn't it doesn't exactly explode, but you know, like it takes you a
while to get there, and it just draws you in until you can't get
out. Yeah, and you keep watching it because you want to know what
in God's name is happening here? You really do, I mean that curiosity
is always my greatest flaw, always gets me in trouble, and it did
with this movie because I totally didn't expect the things that happened. You know,
first off, it was filmed in nineteen eighty one, so it had
that nineteen seventies European feel to it. So if you've watched any classic films
from Germany or France or even England from the seventies, you know what it's
going to look like. It's very gray, it's very monochromatic, very dimly
lit, and then you get these spots of color that happened, and then
it really impacts you. It also does things with innocent kitchen utensils that really
amp up the just the oh no, the dread, and you're just like,
oh no, no, no. And for by the time you know,
I'm sitting there going, oh no no, it's a it's an electric
knife, which I always hate those anyway, and a regular meat grinder,
but it's an electric one. So by the time something happens, I've already
decided that they're not going to do it. I have already calmed myself and
gone, oh, they're just doing that to scare you. They're not ah,
no, you know and yeah, and then you get the bright colors
yes, um, and it's it's such a strange film in some ways,
like the wife's best friend hates her husband and the husband hates her back,
and yet when she's taking care of their son and both of them are out
wandering around trying to find each other and find out what each other's doing and
what you know, realm, he comes home and the kids in bed,
and the best friend has fallen asleep on the guest bed, and he very
nicely covers her. You know, for a second, I'm like, oh
God, because they had already said, you know, I loathe you.
You know, I can't stand the sight of you. I mean literally,
they just say that, and he just covers her up and then he leaves,
and I'm like, and he actually looks kind of like a normal nice
person there. M. Yeah. And what I want to say about Sam
Neil is he can scare me with just a look. Yes, and yeah,
I mean I love I love Sam Neil, always have. And he
another movie that he did around this time that is similar in the scary looks
is The Omen three. Did you ever see that? I never saw that
one, it's not bad. I mean you have to really love Sam Neil
and you have to really be into the series. He does a great job
as an adult Damian. And there's a scene in particular where he's on a's
because he's ambassador. He's, well, he's English in this movie, but
he there's a fox hunt where he's sticks a pack of hounds on a renegade
warrior monk who's trying to kill him because he knows he's the Antichrist. Okay,
and there it's just it's an excellency that that sounds like a cool scene.
Yeah, it's very young in this too, yes, m And the
other thing that got me is he looks like Dan Stevens from uh Downton Abbey.
Yeah, and then frocked. I never made that you said it because
but yeah, it's a very it is. It's a hard movie to discuss.
I want everyone to watch it, especially if you're listening to this,
because it's i mean not if you're if you can't handle body horror, if
this is not for you, but the way that it takes a turn,
and this is where it started, I mean it's already weird, like when
you're in it and you were saying at the very towards the very beginning,
you can really tell if you've ever dealt with someone with mental illness, if
you have mental illness yourself, all the markers are there where. It's just
like both very well done too, not overly done, but well done.
And we were talking before today. An essay just came out that Sam Neil
reposted on his Instagram. Someone wrote about how it's the first depiction in film
of how he felt as a no on catatonic, manic depressive, which in
nineteen eighty three is extraordinary to have on film, and it wouldn't have happened
in Hollywood. It had to be no. I think the director is at
Is. He's either German or Polish, but he didn't like po Yeah,
and he didn't make many films after this, if any, So he that's
he. He went on to make a few. Um, but he had
to leave Poland to make films because of course that was behind the Iron Curtain
at the time, so he went to Germany and West Germany and made films
in Europe. Um. Yeah, you're right. I've never seen a Hollywood
film from that time period that could compare to that. For showing what um,
extreme mental illness can look like. Um, you know, and that
messed me up because I thought, oh, well, there's not really paranormal
things happening in here at all. It's just it's just people are really really
mess Like I said, you know, hey, guys, please just call
your therapists. Um. And you know you've got an emergency here, you
got a medical emergency. You need to call your therapists. It's Germany,
so there's there's got to be some because that's where therapy happened and started,
So come on now, please. And I really thought that's what it was
going to be, and then it wasn't. And then I said, well,
maybe this is just the psychotic understanding of one person that this is all
in her mind and it's not really you know, happened. No, that's
not any either. Yeah, And I mean it takes a turn. It
takes a very hard left turn. I mean you're already veering towards the left
through the beginning. But the I mean isabel l Johnny as well, is
you can tell very mentally ill, as they both are. But right at
the point where you're thinking that's all it is, even up to the very
minute is the miscarriage scene. Yep, yeah, which is about I think
it's about three minutes long, and it is. It's really long, absolutely
excruciating. And do you think that's you know, you think you're she's having
a psychotic breakdown, but she is, but she is also expectorating something,
yes, And through the rest of the movie. I don't want to give
two too much away because I want people to go watch it, but that's
where it really gets strange. And I've had so many like theories about this
movie just kind of bouncing around in my head because it's got it's got everything.
It has doublegangers, it's got body horror, it's got feminist perspective,
it's you know, it has all that. And the way that I was
watching it before is like it really is a commentary on motherhood in the most
extreme way, where you have Isabella Johnny who she's got Sam Neil, she's
got her kid, and this is what she's supposed to want, right,
but you find out she has this whole different life and she has this whole
like everything bubbling up inside her even when she like when she's having the psychotic
breakdown miscarriage, when she's smashing her shopping and her eggs all over the place.
It's it's like a performance art scene. And nothing on that point.
Nothing distills that for me in the for the movie, besides the posters of
the movie. So the original, Yeah, the original was that really beautiful.
I forget the name of the artist, but he was a famous European
poster artist who died recently. And it just shows like the upper torso of
a woman with her head thrown back and it's painted with a snake coming down
and like I think it's biting her breast. But then the American release of
it was like turn it looked like a cover of Hustler. It had like
this woman her back to the camera and it just like like just a little
bit of bum crack and it's completely different than I feel bad for whoever went
to that thinking they were going to see a sexy, nudy film and got
possessions. No, it's like whoever took their date out on their first date
out to see Black Swan because it's a girls movie. I mean it is,
but maybe not it is, but yeah, but that and uh,
but watching it recently, I did get a lot more of like Jesus and
Mary type of symbolism than I have. Yeah, and this will all make
sense for whoever decides to go and watch it. Yeah, it's worth watching.
Definitely. Um, although I did yell at the screen a few times,
you know, because I was like, no, no, it doesn't
have to go this badly, y'all. It doesn't have to Yeah, because
you know, even the even the lover in the film, her lover shows
up at one point to try to talk to Sam Neil, and first off,
he's a very touchy man. You know, he's got his hands on
either side of Sam Neil's face. I'm like, are you gonna kiss him?
Dude? Is this is? Are we? I mean, that's fine
with me. It's not gonna bother me, but it might bother sam Neil.
I don't know. His character's pretty on the edge, dude, maybe
you shouldn't. And then you know, the next time you see the man,
he's he's starting to go a little bit psycho and you're like, dude,
somebody here has to have a doctor, y'all. Please don't. It
doesn't have to go bad. It doesn't, but it does. It does.
Even if they did. I don't know what the therapist would do at
that point, you know, I know, right, uh yeah, oh
my god, her boyfriend in that movie, he's like he's everything. Ye,
Like I don't I don't like digging on Americans because everyone does it.
We don't need to do it to ourselves. But he's everything that like your
average, you know, middle class American dad would think of a European if
they had never met one. Yeah, like that's just very like fluid open
silk shirt but still like completely manicured, an immaculate, suave man who lives
with his mother. Yes, it did it? Yeah? Yeah, well
yeah, but you're right, it is. He is kind of a stereotype
walking around of of a metrosexual, um euro metrosexual. Not American, No,
definitely not. And yeah and then yeah, no, that is a
really good movie. Um it again. I don't know what to tell you
except your expectations as you go along are gonna change. And then you're still
going to be going, what the hell happened here? And oh my god?
What is? What is? And there is definitely paranormal stuff happening because
yeah, part of it, you just that's just not part of our reality.
So thank god, yes, and I'm hoping also only adults need to
watch this. Yes, I'm glad. I'm glad. I wanted to mention
that to you because I know that fox like Foxes, he heard the screaming.
I wasn't going to let him watch it, but he heard screaming from
the other rooms, A mom, what are you watching? Like in the
horror film they're supposed to be screaming Honey's And he's like, Okay, I'm
not gonna I'm like, no, you're not. We're not going to go
there. Yeah, even if you have a particularly precocious teenager or something,
I would I would advise against, Yeah, just for their their brains,
especially if they're still like if their adolescents and they're still discovering their sexuality.
Don't cross the streams on this one. Just wait. No, Yeah,
that's a That's definitely how I feel about it. And really, if you
if Body Horror squicks, you don't even try. Because I'm on the edge
of being unable to watch Body Horror, but I made it, But that
doesn't mean that everybody can. So if you're on the edge of it,
just you know, maybe look it up at wikipedias. You get an idea
and then decide. Yeah, but my meter is if you can handle like
extreme Cronenberg, like if you can handle Crash, you can handle dead Ringers,
and I mean the brood is a little bit is uh yeah, if
you can handle those three, then you can handle possession. If you can't
do not, yes, yes, so yeah, and Cronenberg is actually what
came to mind for me. I was like, I thought Cronenberg was the
one that blew in my mind, but nope, nope, nope, this
director beats him out For me. I was like, uh, so,
yep, that's pretty amazing. And it does start out so banal and like
just yeah, these people are having trouble. All that's sad, So this
is gonna be a psychodrama. Oh no it's not. Oh okay, all
right, yeah, oh sorry, go ahead, go ahead. Yeah.
It just plays with so many genres in a way that I have not seen
in a film since it's really orinary. I hope that with its wide release
via Shutter and Shutter not a sponsor, but we love it. It's great.
Yeah, it's so good for so many things. Yeah, with its
right wide release, I really hope it receives more critical attention from horror people
and from film people at large, because it really has not received much attention
in that like academic or scholarly attention in that way, which is a shame.
It's always been the missing piece of me in like it even for Shutter,
like they had their they redid one hundred their one hundred scariest movie moments
or something, and like there there was no mention of Shutter. There was
no mention of Possession anywhere, and that that keeps happening. It drives me
crazy. So now now people will know the secrets are Yeah, definitely,
And uh, the other thing I was going to say was it's just maybe
maybe don't watch it when you're alone in the house or anything like that.
Yeah, if you have issue, if you have issues with anxiety depression.
Yeah, we're giving a pharmacy side effects. Um yeah right, ask your
doctor before watching, ask your doctor of possession is right for you. Yeah.
Okay, Well now that now that we've horrified people and hopefully gotten other
people interested, there is a film that you can watch with your kid.
Yeah, and it's we're gonna we're gonna come at that one next and it's
called ParaNorman. And I did not think I would love this movie as much
as I do. Um. I thought it was just another silly animation for
kids. Um. It didn't look like it was going to be of the
quality that I tend to like because I do love animation, and I watch
kids movies shamelessly. I have no shame. I will watch it. I
don't care, but only if it's really good. Um that you know,
like I'm not that fond of Hotel Transylvania, um. And you know,
stuff like that's just really geared towards kids. I like stuff that has some
adult stuff happening in there, and paranormal is or paranormal is one of them.
And yes, it has the paranormal in it, not just in the
title. It's about a boy who can see ghosts and interact with ghosts,
and it's a really it goes in so many places and you think, oh,
man, you know this kid gets bullied, and you know he has
one friend who also gets bullied, and his parents don't understand him and kind
of poop on him, you know. The dad, especially the dad's kind
of a a douche. I just didn't like it. You know, he
has a sister who is very, very shallow and she picks on him for
being, you know, a nerd. But by the end, the whole
family comes together and it's kind of like Bob's Burgers in that way. You
look at Bob's Burgers and you think, oh my god, these people are
all horrible. You know, the kids are terrible, parents are not great.
But what comes about is they all love each other and they stand by
each other. And that's actually how it happens in this movie. But oh
and the grandmother is super cool as well. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
And Norman loves to watch monster movies and horror movies, so he's one
of us, um, And he's always watching horror movies with his grandmother and
that's really cool and I really love it, um. But the basic plot
is is there is a ghost in the town, which is a town known
for having killed witches, so it's like Salem, but it isn't Salem.
And their whole tourist thing is about witches and killing witches, so it's it's
got it's kitchy stuff, you know, and that's what it is. That's
their history and they celebrate it. And uh, that's interesting, but you
know, I digress, um. But the the bullies in the school are
particularly awful. Um. And then you find out that there's all of that.
They're supposedly a curse, and then you find out what happens when the
curse actually happens, and you go, oh, no, it's not just
a story, it's a real thing. So it's a it's an adventure.
Um. There's lots of ghosts, lots of zombies, UM, lots of
adults not knowing what the heck to do. Um. There's a football player
who's the popular kid in school who Norman's sister throws herself at him, and
it turns out he's gay. And then they just end up being best friends,
which is fine, you know, and at first she's taken aback,
but no, then they become friends. That's basically the story without telling you
the operative parts of the story, and it very much has the Like I
said, there's ghosts everywhere. Norman walks to school and says hi to the
ghosts along the way, which is really cute. It was such a charming
movie that I again, I don't really watch children's movies often just because I'm
not really around children that often, so I was I completely missed this one.
I haven't seen Hotel Transylvania. I don't. I think the most recent
thing I watched I won't. I probably won't that was even close to it
was the Wednesday series, which was fine. Yes, that was fine,
Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, But this, in particular, it's
a movie I wish I had had when I was growing up because the way
that they approach this kid with abilities. Yeah, he's ostracized, he's bullied.
He even the one friend he has he tries to push away because he's
like, no, I'm too weird for you, man, like you'll just
go anyway. And then I love his friend, his friends so cute and
when he and he gains his friend by using his power in a very sad
but cute way. And what I really enjoyed about it too was the way
that they take the scary things and make them not so scary in that it
teaches people to or the viewers who are I would assume our children are teaching
them like the like the Puritan Zombies, which for me was just like it's
just like having grown up in New England and in Salem. It was very
much like in the in Scooby Doo, in The Witch's Ghost that problematic classic.
Yeah, yeah, where Oh Caven and the fake Stephen King Tim Curry
character, we'll talk about We'll talk about that at some other time. But
this this just kind of fake Salem where I think I think about this often
being in history and having the experiences that I do, where I just can't
imagine actual Purits, like the Purits is in New England showing up like just
being dropped into where they settled. Now, so many peoples they wouldn't like
I can't imagine. I can't even imagine, and they do a really good
job of showing like how they how those people would react. And then with
the conceptualization of the Witch herself, which again we shouldn't I don't want to
spoil it in case people want to go watch it, but the way that
Norman sees the ghosts and the way that he learns to empathize with this witch
and how she reconciles ultimately with herself is just so. It was so well
done, and it's a very there's scary parts, especially for little little kids,
but very gentle movie otherwise while still getting the point. Yeah, and
it's funny. There's parts of it that are just bloody hilarious. Yeah,
yeah, great time and great writing. They really did a good job.
Yeah, and there are callbacks to Scooby Doo of course, because there's a
van and there's the football player with the blonde hair, so there he is.
Yeah, and it's just so much fun and it's worth watching. And
I've seen it like three or four times now because every time I you know,
I saw it in the movie theater because Fox was too little and was
too timid to see it, but Zach and I wanted to know, so
we went to see it. We liked it, and then I had to
take MORGANA and then finally we got to watch it with Fox and MORGANA at
home, and then we watched it again Fox and I together this past summer.
So it's it's and you pick up little things every time you watch it
that you didn't quite catch the first time. So it's definitely worthwhile. And
I have to wonder too, as far as my going back to my experience
with The Shining, I'm not sure if I'll have my kids watch The Shining
at age seven or eight. Not sure, Yeah, yeah, probably not.
But the contrast of that being with something like ParaNorman, where yeah,
he finds he's the weirdo at the beginning, and by the end he's still
the weirdo, but he's been accepted and people understand it. And just the
way that this movie, as an animated film can conceptualize what a young child
with abilities would see, like just walking down the street and seeing ghosts everywhere.
I really have to wonder how many children coming up now who grew up
with ParaNorman and who see ParaNorman are going to embrace their gifts more because they
aren't afraid of them, because growing up, I was terrified of the things
that I saw, Like it took me a really long time to both accept
them and not be afraid of them because my only media interaction with them was
scary things. Yeah, and like I've had to do a lot of wall
tearing down that I just did instinctively to keep myself saying because of all the
stuff I was seeing, And there's still a lot of work to be done
in that arena. So I really had this whole positive power normal thing.
And I was just talking with a friend of about this recently seeing you know,
The Gang of There was a really cute little cartoon I saw on Instagram
of like cartoon Mothman, cartoon Bigfoot, the Fresno night Walkers, and the
Flatwoods Monster and they're all together and it just said it said on the bottom
you can sit with us, and I was like, oh, that's so
cute, so cute, and I was just like wow, Like it's very
nice now that there's more of a an accepting community around it to kind of
to build people not you don't even need to have special abilities or gifts or
perceptions, like if you're just interested in the paranormal. It's it seems like
it's so much easier now for people to get into it in a safe,
friendly way because they can find others who are interested. So I'm really interested
to see like what comes out of the generation that grew up with movies like
ParaNorman or with Wednesday. Because I didn't have it and I'm and I'm not
even that old, like yeah, and then you come over to me and
I am that old, and there was you know, nothing I I I
learned it the hard way. I watched the Universal Monster movies, so you
know, classics, and my mom gave me in fourth grade at Grellan Poe's
Tales of Terror and oh, and my dad watched um World War two documentaries
that had you know, lots of you know, footage from terrible places like
concentration camps, and so I'm kind of hardcore, right And then people wonder,
why why is she? Why does she have nightmares and night terrors?
I don't know, It's funny. Para Norman was the first zombie movie I've
watched in a really long time because in a loving horror my dad loves zombie
films. So I have seen I've seen all of them. I've seen so
many zombie movies, but I would have that's the only thing. I would
have horribly intend zombie nightmares all the way through adulthood. And finally when it
came to it was it was a combination of quarantine and like just being stuck
in the house and all that that we were watching the original George ramire Is
The Crazies, So we watched that and then my dad, my dad's always
like creature double echa, and so we turned on the original Dawn of the
Dead and the scene where the girl is trapped in the room, the storage
room with the zombie Harry Krishna. Yes, I was done. I was
like, I can't watch this anymore. And I haven't watched zombie movie since
in my nightmares have gone way down there you go. So that's that's become
my My nope is zombies because you need something, something needs to break.
But I definitely I understand what you mean as far as like I was,
I think I may be the last, or very close to it, the
last generation of kids who just gotten that one section of the Dewey decimal system
in the library and went to town because that was that was so much of
my childhood was just that one aisle. Yep, me too. And I
mean when you're let loose on that, we didn't. I mean I probably
read many of the same books you did, because growing up in like the
nineties, in their early two thousands, it was still hard to get those
books and left was like stuff from the sixties, like sixties through the eighties
is what we we all came up on. It's just like like maybe kids
aren't doing the hard research now, but they can. They don't have to
be thrown in the deep end and that's yeah, yeah, And they don't
necessarily have to, you know, suddenly start seeing ghosts and not know who
to talk about it, you know with you know, they they they have.
Yeah. I mean the Internet is fraught with danger for you know,
children, young adults and people. But still there's there's good in the ability
to reach out to somebody and say, hey, this thing happened, why
did it happen? You know, and and that's that's valuable, very much
so. And I think, yeah, there are the there's death, the
evils of the Internet and all that, but I think there's so much There
are so many people, especially like in podcasts now, I mean you have
people like like Tim Renner and even to the extent the Sasquash Chronicles and your
podcast. I think there are enough responsible, paranormal loving and weird stuff loving
adults that I like. And because we are a community. If like,
if you see something someone doing something weird like other like, there'll be three
adults who are on them in a second. Yeah. I see it all
the time, and it gives me such hope because it's like no, no,
no, not like just just form a circle around the child and usher
them away. Yeah, And it happens more often than not. Yeah,
And I appreciate that very greatly because that, you know, that's another thing
we didn't really have We didn't know who we could talk to. Hm.
You know, I talked to my librarian. She was my safe space lady
that I could talk to and she was very non judgmental, so that was
helpful. But most people didn't have that. Yeah, yeah, God bless
yeah, my God, bless the librarians of the towns in public library.
A lot of them are still there. And yeah, just the nicest ladies
who especially in the children's library, because they had the scariest, the scary
stories, telling the dark books. All those are great, all those sweet
children's librarians. They put up with so much of my bs. But they
had a great they had a great h paranormal selection for children's books. Surprisingly,
it was just meant to happen. And yeah, so moving on,
what's our next movie, because I think the last one, our very last
one, is The Others. Ah, yes, so it does tie in
with children, and it sure does. It's like we planned it. Uh
that that's this is It's another movie that is very much my core of horror.
I love the Others. I do too, mm hmm. Yeah,
we both picked The Others when we when we planned this this episode because yeah,
we both picked the Others, and we both picked the wicker Man telling.
Yeah, Um, the Others is one of I think it's one of
the best Haunted House movies. Um, there's a few others that are really
really good. Most of them are early films. This one is just beautifully
done. And Nicole Kidman is amazing as the mother in the film m HM,
who is taking care of too little kids and is alone and two two
sick little kids with a very rare disease where they can be in light.
Yes, that's right, I forgot that little detail. Yeah. It's one
of those movies that leads you along and then and you're going, oh,
okay, yeah, I know what's going to Oh I know what's happening,
Okay, and no I don't. Yes, And it's just so it's it's
another movie that I mean, you have the creepy little kids, you have
creepy little kids drawings, you have in home home intruders, you just you
have a mentally unstable mother. It's it's another one of those that has many
of the same, like similar elements. I will call i'll you know,
not so much tropes, because when this movie was made, this was like
the early two thousands, so that it was before a lot of those tropes
kind of came about. And it's just it is, it's just such a
beautifully filmed movie. It's very English Gothic, what what it um? I
know they took a lot of inspiration from The Innocence, Yeah, after Turning
of the Screw and that's that. You can definitely see that in this Yes,
which is another fantastic film and story. It's I think that's the only
I've read a lot of Henry James, and that's the only one I've read
more than once because it's short. Yes, he's very it's very talkative,
lots of lots of yeah exposition, very atmospheric though he does well with the
atmosphere. But yeah, yeah, his descriptions are fantastic. But the yeah,
and it also hearkens back a lot because it is I believe it was
an American production. I think it was Mirrormax. But it's very it reminds
me quite a bit of the English, like pre hammer horror, English gothic
movies. Yeah, yeah, as well as the stories of like Mr James,
and that's sort of school of thought. And it's a pre or it's
a post World War two movie where they Nicole Kidman and her children live in
this big manner, completely cut off from the outside world, and then all
of a sudden they get three people coming up to that have not only are
here to take care of the place and offer their services, but have been
to this house before and worked there before. And it's it's just it has
so many great elements of mystery and really just suspense. That's that. It's
so it's such a like jaw clenching movie. Even now when I watch it,
and I've seen it a hundred times, I'm just like, I find
myself curled up in a little ball watching. Yeah, it's tense, It's
very tense. One of my favorite actors is also in it, um,
Chris eccleston, and he's her husband. He shows up and they're on one
of the Channel islands that were occupied during the war. So it's either Guernsey
or Jersey. I don't remember which one, Um, but they were occupied
by the Nazis and the people who lived there lived under Nazi rule and it
was it was bad. Um. So that's part of a tension as well.
And then yes, you have you have home invasions happening, noises,
pianos playing when no one's there to play them, you know, strange footsteps
right outside the door and you open the door and nobody's there. And Nicole
Kidman is trying to protect her children. Once you realize that that she's where
where they're living, then you can get the paranoia because she's worried about an
actual invasion of soldiers from another country, and so her extreme paranoia, her
extreme fear. Then it makes sense. And then her husband, the soldier,
shows up, and then there are questions, and we don't want to
go too far because we don't want to spoil it. If you haven't seen
it, yes, absolutely, if you haven't seen it, it's definitely as
far as watching it with children goes. Because there are children in it,
I mean, doesn't qualify it as immediately as a children a children's film,
but in contrast to something like Possession or even the Shining to an extent,
i'd say, I mean, Danny is definitely a character, but the two
children in the others fantastic children child actors. They are fully fleshed out characters,
which you don't get very often in children's acting, especially at that time.
Yeah, and it also it has Yeah, it has a lot of
the qualities of the older films of that time. It reminds me also quite
a bit of Night of the Hunter and just how like that, how dreamy
it gets at some points. Yes, Night of the Hunter is a fantastic
film. It is. It is, and that's that's one where include that
I'd included in this. If you have I'd say a precocious child, because
there's nothing in it. It's tense and you don't have things. It's not
a jump scare movie and it doesn't have anything like there's no gore, there's
no nothing like that. There's nothing that would like traumatize a child. But
it's kind of a beginner's art film in the same way that Night of the
Hunter is in that like I would show a precocious child that if like I
knew, they could handle it and not have nightmares, right, because it
is. It's clean, and it's well done, and it's tight, and
it does it leads to a lot of questions. I remember when I saw
it. I saw it when it came not when it came out in theaters,
but shortly after, and I was still pretty young at that point.
But it was the first. I mean, I was still it was still
how I was kind of conceptualizing my vocabulary of trying to tell people what I
was seeing. And because I would get a lot of situations like that where
I would have something blow by me, or I would or something would move,
and I would have to explain what I saw, and that was a
type of movie that really helped me to do that. Yeah, it gives
you a vocabulary to explain your experiences. It's it's also just so beautiful and
claustrophobic. So they're in this huge house, right, but they really only
live in a few rooms of this huge house, and it just their living
space just gets tighter and tighter, and they have the the window shades drawn
and the curtains closed all the time, and the mother will freak out if
sunlight comes in because of the children's illness, which is never truly explained,
but then later you figure it out, and so she just she she just
shrinks their world down smaller and smaller, and you really feel for the kids,
you really feel for the mom, and it's it's it's also physically just
beautiful to look at. HM. Yes, it's the claustrophobia there. That's
another theme in the movies for the most part that we've picked, which was
funny, how it is the noose just tightens and yeah, it's there.
It's such a highly regimented way of life that she's set up for them,
like locking. Not only does she close the doors behind them, everywhere they
go, she locks them. And it's just there's just so much in that.
It's it's one of those movies that every time you watch it again you
see something else and it just gets packed in. Yeah. The sound of
the rattle of the keys that she carries is and because of course it's the
big old fashioned keys and it's just oh oh yeah. And the furniture with
the sheets yep. Yeah, there's a lot of trump there. Yeah.
Uh yeah, there's a lot with that and there. It plays with your
mind as well that movie, because you don't know what you're seeing half the
time, so you question it and so as as the characters are questioning.
Its educational for young weirdos, because that was the first time I ever learned
about them. The memorial photos what are they called the photos in Victorian days
when they took of the dead. Yeah, the post mortems, I like,
yeah, my post mortem or memorials. Yes, and I had never
known about those. I have since seen many. I've sold them, I've
broke with them. I don't like them. Yeah, they're there. There's
something else I understand. I get it, I understand the concept, but
that's just not not my field of collecting. Yeah, no, no.
And there's also the invisible mother photographs, where the living child is sitting supposedly
on a chair by themselves, but really the mother is in the chair with
a sheet over her holding the child. That is a messed up that That
one bothers me, almost as much as the post mortem ones, I think,
because it's just a little bit just why don't you just have the moms
sit there and hold the baby and just take the picture. Why do you
have to put her under this shroud? What? What? What is the
logic here? There isn't any I don't understand it. Maybe they just wanted
the baby and the mother didn't want to be in the photo. Maybe,
but it's kind of a whole genre of photography, so who knows. Yeah,
yeah, that's true. Yeah, my mine is. I mean,
I don't like I'm along with zombies, my embarrassing fear because ideal. I
deal with so many mccarb things, like I have friends who work for cemeteries
and people who collect human bones and different things, and my thing is wet
specimens and dead bodies I can't handle. Yeah. Yeah, the postmortems are
right out to begin with. But what gets me the most is when you
get the postmortems with a living person in them too, like they're posing with
the body, yeah, or a series of people in it. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, And that's something I have to reconcile with my
whole because I'm very death positive and I'm working on it, but I can't
like being that close to a corpse would be a no for me. I
think the differences, of course, is they had funerals at home, and
they were more in touch with death as a reality and a thing that was
dealt with at home than we are. And and so far be it for
me to ridicule you for having that feeling, because it's it's considered fairly normal
in our culture to be squipped out by that. So yeah, yeah,
and it's I conceptually, it's a thing I know of and I support,
Like I know Caitlin Dody, she supports the idea of people having burial or
having wakes at home, and I do too, and like washing the body
and spending time with the body. I fainted in my high school biology class
because I had already cut through the breastbone of a frog, and then some
people had the fatal pig. And the last thing I remember is one of
my classmates asking the teacher if they could open the pig's skull and look at
its brains, and I hit the floor. Yep, Okay, yeah,
yeah, I don't care. Is not the the the job for you,
don't it? Just don't no, So, I mean we've we've gone off
course. But yeah, definitely watch the others. Um if you're into ghosts,
if you haven't seen it, don't look up the ending now now just
watch it straight through. It's not gonna be like Possession, where you know
we had to go through the okay, body horror, this that the other
thing. You know, it's not gonna get you that way. Yeah,
now, yeah, no, it really is. It does come across as
a psychological horror film, but it's it's it's the concept of being haunted and
haunting and it's just a beautiful film. And Nicole Kidman is great in it,
and the kids are really good too. With all of these movies,
there's that's why I get so riled up, and many people do, with
horror being like the rejected genre of all the critics and people thinking that horror
movies are just trash and etc. And sure there's crap in every genre for
one thing, yes, but they're so especially in horror, you get so
much crossover with a movie like The Others or Possession or The Shining or what
have you, because there's so much that goes into all of it. But
I don't know, it's it's a thing that drives me crazy. It drives
all horror fans crazy. But like when I tell people one of that The
Shining is not one of my favorite horror movies, it's one of my favorite
films right out. Like people from distinct schools who are in a very narrow
stream, like a very narrow stream of thought, don't they can't conceptualize that.
But it's a horror movie, and it's like, yeah, but it's
also a thriller. It's also this, it's also that, like there's so
much that goes in a good movie. Yeah, it's very well crafted,
it's well scripted, uh, amazingly acted, and it tells more than one
story in a way, because it's it's a mystery, as you say,
it's a it's a horror film. It's it's it's about life, it's about
death, it's about uh talk about being you know, feeling closed in and
claustrophobic that you know they're in this huge hotel, but it doesn't matter,
because it just gets smaller and smaller because there's it's just them and yeah,
and I know there are a lot of people now and perhaps rightly so,
I understand there are people who won't watch it because of how Kuber treated Shelley
Duval, and I can understand that perspective to a certain extent. But if
you're a true film lover and you just want to experience it, like if
you really care about movies, you have to set that aside, because otherwise
you're not going to be able to watch a movie that what until like twenty
god, until movies were made incredibly recently, You're not going to be able
to watch movies because there's one director, there's one actor, there's one something
that did something awful. Yeah, and you have to learn to separate the
art from the artist in that way, if you want to experience media or
film in as an art form. Yeah, I don't you know this.
I'm just saying in general. Yeah, Yeah, that's something I hear a
lot from people who are like, oh, I don't I won't watch that
because this director did this, And it's just like, but they'll still freely
criticize it. It's like, you can't. You can't criticize the work.
You can't criticize the book if you haven't read it. Yeah, And that's
basically how I feel. I don't care if you don't want to watch it
because of what a director said did whatever. I don't care. I mean
I won't watch. You know, somebody says I won't watch Polanski because you
know of what he did to the thirteen year old girl. Fine, I
don't have a problem with that, But don't criticize the film. Criticize him
all you want. That's a matter of public record. You know you can.
You can go he was a terrible person, he's still a terrible person,
and I'll nod and go yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
But you can't say, you know, well, Rosemary's Baby was a
crap film. Right, well, unless you saw it you thought it was
a crap film. You can't say that, you know. Yeah, it
does not affect the art. It does not affect the film. It doesn't
affect any film. Like I think, what was it we were talking earlier
about Nosferatu, the one with Klaus Kinsky in it, the yeah, the
oh no, the German director's just name went right out in my head.
Oh no, it's getting late. But um uh, it's not the Murnou
film. It's the remake. Yeah, the guy not getting his name Werner
Hurtzog, Werner Hurtzogs. Yes, yes, yeah, how can I forget
him? I know, right, I was just it just I love and
my brain just went now, yeah, I just kept hearing in my head,
I want to see the baby. I want to see the baby.
I know, right, that's that's what my brain is now. Media has
done to me. But yeah, so I think, and if we've been
talking for quite a while, this usually happens. Yeah, I think I
think we're at the end because we talked about all of them. So you
know, watch these movies and you know, think about movies that you like
that have to do with the paranormal and and tell us about them because I
love to talk about movies. Um, it's kind of weird to talk about
movies on a podcast because you know, you want to have some film clips,
but then you get into copyright and all that mass. But I didn't,
you know, and I don't want to be on a video because blah
blah. But yeah, it's just tell us what you like and why you
like it, and that is you know, and maybe we'll do this again
if you guys had fun with it. Yeah, I'd love to do this
again. I'd also love to hear what other movies have introduced people to the
paranormal in that way. And I should have asked you at the beginning,
what was yours in the same instance that The Shining was for me. I
have to think about it for a minute. Oh, the tables have turned.
I have to think about it for a minute. See. I would
honestly say it has to be one of the one of the universal horror films.
I think it was probably Bride of Frankenstein because I saw that before or
Frankenstein, and so the whole concept of bringing the dead to life came from
that film. Um, in my in my Universe, and then I went
from that to reading Mary Shelley. Um. And then another one that I
saw really early on would have been The Black Cat with Vincent Price. Yeah.
We watched like horror movies with my cousins like every weekend just about so
I was seeing all this stuff, and you know, it generally didn't bother
me because it wasn't um World War two when that was actually happening in front
of me, So it was much more easy for me to deal with.
I was never afraid of monsters as much as I was of other people.
M Yeah, that's that's fair. I was always more ghosts. Ghosts have
always been my thing. But I too grew up with the universal horror,
especially Frankenstein, and The Mummy was a big one for me. Oh yeah,
that's a good one. I have such a soft spot for the Mummy
in general. But what that was the first time I remember very clearly watching
it in my aunt's living room because she had the VHS where at the very
beginning when the handsome young archaeologists just cracks. Yeah, I remember that striking
me very deeply as a kid, where I was just like, oh,
he's gone wrong. Can adults do that does that happen to adults? Yeah,
that'll mess up your worldview right there as a kid. Oh, adults
can totally lose their crap and run around being all yeah yep. And then
there was Jack Nicholson in the Shining, so we know where your brain went
speaking of being a fro hell is other people? Yeah yeah, yeah yeah,
and that's why the Shining did frighten me when I finally did see it.
So it was it was him. Now there were ghosts, but they
didn't scare me so much as he did. M hmm yeah, except that
dog mane and the man in the tuxedo he was blowing. Oh yeah that
that's yeah, that's that is some That was That was just me going what
where did that come from? Well? Thank you for coming back, um,
and thank you for you know, recording it again. Okay it stays
this time, yes, and thank you for having me back. This is
really fun. I'd love to come back and do it again, and perhaps
more Ghana can come back. Maybe he'll have another guest whoever wants to join.
I love talking about and if I may give a shout out, is
that? Okay? Yes? Please? On the day we're recording is my
boyfriend Chris's birthday, so happy birthday. That's great. And you know we
had that coincidence of Sam Neil. Sam that was his favorite movie that he's
been in, this Possession, and I can see that he did some good
work on it. So yes, especially after seeing I watched Jurassic Park Dominion
in the same weekend that I rewatched Possession. Oh wow, that'll that'll give
you. That shook me a bit. I was like, oh, Sam
Neil, come back to drama. We need you. Well that's all for
this week's episode of the Six Degrees of John Keel podcast. If you have
any questions or thoughts about the podcast, or would like to come and talk
about your experiences of the paranormal, you can contact us at six d j
K sixty seven at gmail dot com. We promised even answer you, and
we are always happy to hear from you. Thank you.