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Speaker 1: It's actually quite unlike anything we've ever seen before. A giant,
Speaker 1: very creature. Part eighte part net.
Speaker 3: In Luckness, a twenty four mile long bottomless lake in
Speaker 3: the Highlands of Scotland.
Speaker 1: It's a creature known as the Luckness Monster.
Speaker 2: Mormster. Welcome to Monster Talk, the science show about monsters.
Speaker 2: I'm Blake Smith and this is a special Patreon bonus
Speaker 2: episode that was set up by Matthew Baxter, who has
Speaker 2: himself been on the show several times as a guest. Together,
Speaker 2: we had the opportunity to interview a man who is
Speaker 2: a director, an artist, a writer, and many other things
Speaker 2: beside Larry Blamyre. Over the course of our discussion, we
Speaker 2: mentioned quite a few movies and other projects, and I've
Speaker 2: tried to put links to all that in the show
Speaker 2: notes at monster talk dot org and on Patreon, at
Speaker 2: Patreon dot com, forward slash monster Talk. So let's get
Speaker 2: onto the Mormster We're excited to welcome Larry Blamyir to
Speaker 2: Monster Talk. But who is Larry Blamyre? To answer that question,
Speaker 2: we brought on Larry Blamire.
Speaker 4: Well, it's too bad you don't have an expert, because
Speaker 4: then he can tell you right away. To the best
Speaker 4: of my knowledge, I am a writer, director, artist, playwright, actor,
Speaker 4: so I dabble in a lot of things. But most
Speaker 4: folks know me for a film called The Lost Skeleton
Speaker 4: of Cadabra, which was released by Sony in two thousand
Speaker 4: and four, and then we did several other films in
Speaker 4: that sort of genre, which was a kind of gentle
Speaker 4: spoof of old fifties black and white sci fi movies.
Speaker 4: And I'm also a painter and I've been a science
Speaker 4: fiction illustrator, so I've won a lot of hats and
Speaker 4: that requires a lot of heads.
Speaker 2: The end, nice, Well, welcome to the show, Thank you,
Speaker 2: and Matthew I should welcome you too, well.
Speaker 1: Thank you all Right off, I have to say, seeze, Larry,
Speaker 1: get a job.
Speaker 4: Don't you mean pick a job? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Well, does that make you an odd tour? I saw
Speaker 2: that word the other day and I thought, do I
Speaker 2: really know what that means? And I looked it up
Speaker 2: and it sounded like someone who wants to have control
Speaker 2: over every aspect.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've been referred to as as that because as
Speaker 4: I do on these on the films that I've made
Speaker 4: and other and short films, I have done quite the
Speaker 4: writing and the directing, and I will sometimes act in
Speaker 4: them also. So yeah, I guess it is very autori ish.
Speaker 2: Cool. Congratulations. That makes you the first self described on
Speaker 2: tour we've had.
Speaker 1: On Oh really, Yeah, well, I just refer to you
Speaker 1: as a micromanager.
Speaker 2: The closest I've come before, I think was when I
Speaker 2: went to Olive Garden and had a tour of Italy. Yeah, like,
Speaker 2: you're quite creative. I should have warned you there would
Speaker 2: be puns at my apologies if that's an issue. So
Speaker 2: you've you've created monsters for paintings, comic books, film, and
Speaker 2: and I know you probably get this a lot, but
Speaker 2: how do you come up with the different creatures you
Speaker 2: use in your works?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I want to in particularly think we've got a lot
Speaker 2: of people in the audience who are also creative, and
Speaker 2: sometimes you know they're just looking for guidance or a
Speaker 2: little nudge. You know you can do it. And I
Speaker 2: think having somebody on like yourself is going to be
Speaker 2: really great for that. But when you answer this question,
Speaker 2: I guess we're not mean like where do you get
Speaker 2: your ideas? But really literally like what are the best
Speaker 2: techniques for like generating ideas like that? In the monster space, A.
Speaker 4: Lot of the monsters I come up with it in
Speaker 4: in paintings or in my movies are sort of riffs
Speaker 4: on things that I saw as a kid because I
Speaker 4: was I was just absorbing all of the monster movies
Speaker 4: I could. And the you know, I think the gateway
Speaker 4: monster for me and probably for a lot of other
Speaker 4: kids too, is the dinosaur. I mean, kids discover dinosaurs
Speaker 4: and it's just a very strange thing because what they were,
Speaker 4: they were real, they were walking around. I mean, that's
Speaker 4: that's phenomenal. And from there, you know, dinosaurs lead to
Speaker 4: so many other monsters. But I particularly like, especially in paintings,
Speaker 4: going with things that are against nature, like sort of
Speaker 4: asymmetrical monsters where you've got because you know, nature has
Speaker 4: said symmetry. So when you do a monster with you know,
Speaker 4: with two eyes on one side and one way up
Speaker 4: in the in the corner. I mean that kind of
Speaker 4: stuff that the more grotesque, the better. And I think
Speaker 4: I like to create creatures that really kind of make
Speaker 4: people just sort of shape their head and worry about me.
Speaker 1: Of course, all kids really loved dinosaurs. But when did
Speaker 1: your passion for monster movies actually begin?
Speaker 4: The uh, the one you know, seeing them on TV
Speaker 4: was such a revelation. I mean King Kong used to
Speaker 4: run a lot when I was a kid on TV
Speaker 4: and and uh and that was certainly one of the
Speaker 4: first that I saw. And then the films of Ray
Speaker 4: Harryhausen uh where, And I to this day I love
Speaker 4: stop motion animation and I I just think it's fantastic.
Speaker 4: It's and you know, it's got such a solidity to it,
Speaker 4: and there can be some good CG. But I love
Speaker 4: the stop motion and and so I think those were
Speaker 4: probably the ones that that sort of first pulled me in,
Speaker 4: the stop motion creatures, and and it creates such a
Speaker 4: strange reality, you know, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: It does. I think Harry howse and Bradberry, who were
Speaker 2: both lifelong friends and collaborators, both also got their start
Speaker 2: and dinosaurs, I mean that was their their gateway monster
Speaker 2: as well. I think it's yeah, I bet I bet
Speaker 2: that's true for a lot of our listeners. I think
Speaker 2: what you mentioned top motion. One of the cool things
Speaker 2: about the stop motion stuff is how well it holds
Speaker 2: up on Blu ray and these high deff formats. You know,
Speaker 2: I think a lot of the CGI stuff. I don't
Speaker 2: know if this is true so much anymore, but you know,
Speaker 2: back in the day, it seemed like you could tell
Speaker 2: a difference in the pixel density between when there was
Speaker 2: a CGI effect and the sort of the film stock
Speaker 2: of the actual you know, main screen. And I don't
Speaker 2: see that issue in stop motion so much. It just
Speaker 2: it looks so other practical effects.
Speaker 4: I do too, And I think the solidity of practical effects,
Speaker 4: whether it's a man in a suit or a stop
Speaker 4: motion puppet or an animatronic creation, I think it creates
Speaker 4: more of a sense of wonder. And that's what drew
Speaker 4: me in as a kid. It's pulling me into a
Speaker 4: certain world. And now there's so much I mean, when
Speaker 4: you when you see a typical shot in a movie
Speaker 4: these days, especially a fantasy film or science fiction or something,
Speaker 4: the you know, the entire world kind of looks nothing
Speaker 4: looks real. Nothing looks real, and and I'm just not
Speaker 4: too keen on that. I mean, I don't accept that
Speaker 4: as a reality. It's not pulling me in. It's making
Speaker 4: me think, oh this, that's wow. There's some really nice
Speaker 4: artwork right there, but it doesn't pull draw me in.
Speaker 2: You're known for the Lost Skeleton of the Cadabra, but
Speaker 2: that's not all that you've been doing, and we'll talk
Speaker 2: about some of your current stuff as well during this interview.
Speaker 2: But I was curious about if did when you when
Speaker 2: you created that, were you thinking, I want this to
Speaker 2: look like a low budget movie because it has to
Speaker 2: be a low budget movie or or that sort of
Speaker 2: b nineteen fifty style, nineteen sixties sel What were you thinking, like,
Speaker 2: what were you emulating and what really makes a great
Speaker 2: film of that style in your mind?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's that was a case of really
Speaker 4: the budget was driving the idea, which was driving the budget.
Speaker 4: So it was like, you know, we're gonna make We're
Speaker 4: going to try to convincingly make something that looks like
Speaker 4: and originally we thought we'd make maybe like a lost
Speaker 4: movie you know that was discovered, so we wanted to
Speaker 4: look as authentically nineteen fifties low budget as possible. That
Speaker 4: really works out for your actual budget, which was low budget.
Speaker 4: It wasn't you know, really it was a low budget movie.
Speaker 4: So we're really like, we're really cutting corners. Now that
Speaker 4: you know, having said that, is I mean, there's this
Speaker 4: there is a heightened sense of absurdity. Absurdity is one
Speaker 4: of my my driving passions. I just I just love
Speaker 4: the absurd and really the the lascow on the cajabra
Speaker 4: is is is an excuse. The old movie is a
Speaker 4: framework for for for absurdity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you know, I think it's obviously a lot
Speaker 2: of things influenced you there. I was thinking about some
Speaker 2: of the Korman movies. You know, I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've read his biography, but it's his autobiography. I guess
Speaker 2: I should say, yeah, that's so interesting because you know,
Speaker 2: he doesn't it was about making money, like being efficient,
Speaker 2: like spending less and making more right and but he
Speaker 2: did a great job and when he actually got more money,
Speaker 2: he did better production quality.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But I was thinking about this that style, that the
Speaker 2: sort of you know, constrained by what you had when
Speaker 2: you made this. Now you made this in I think
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, right, and it shot on videotape, right, yes,
Speaker 2: And so I know a lot of people that I meant,
Speaker 2: who were curious how to break into this sort of work.
Speaker 2: Can you talk a little bit about the changes in
Speaker 2: technology between two thousand and one and now, because it
Speaker 2: feels like right now people are carrying around better cameras
Speaker 2: in their pockets on the cheapest phone than I ever
Speaker 2: had access to back then.
Speaker 4: There's no question about it. But you know, ultimately, my
Speaker 4: feeling is that it doesn't the technology doesn't matter. For instance,
Speaker 4: you can frame your shots in a certain way if
Speaker 4: you're trying to make something look like an old movie,
Speaker 4: you can frame your shots in a certain way that
Speaker 4: lends itself to that. And then you can and you
Speaker 4: can direct the actors in a certain way that makes
Speaker 4: it makes that happen too. I guess I'm saying that
Speaker 4: to me, You know, the technology doesn't matter too much.
Speaker 4: When we made a few years later, we made trailer
Speaker 4: Screen Forehead, and that has a whole different look. It's
Speaker 4: got a sort of wide screen candy technique colors sort
Speaker 4: of look to it, and we have a much better
Speaker 4: camera at that time, so that lent itself to that look.
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, I I but I think
Speaker 4: access has never been better. And that's a good thing
Speaker 4: because it does mean that you can make a movie
Speaker 4: with your phone, and really it's all about it, so
Speaker 4: much about the storytelling that I don't think the technology
Speaker 4: is going to change that fact.
Speaker 2: It does feel that way them. I mean, I see
Speaker 2: some of the stuff my wife shoots on her phone's camera. Look,
Speaker 2: some of the quality of the stuff she shoots looks
Speaker 2: as good as stuff I see on you know, high
Speaker 2: end television or movies. It's just I mean it's really
Speaker 2: I mean, for a cat video, they're amazing.
Speaker 4: It's true, Yeah, it is. It's it's it's it's gotten ridiculous.
Speaker 4: I mean, we are definitely carrying around in our pockets
Speaker 4: something better than we shot Lost Skeleton with. But you know,
Speaker 4: so and so that's it. That is a good thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, it really does mean that the kids can
Speaker 4: get into filmmaking a lot earlier than they might normally have.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: You know, and I know some who started making films
Speaker 4: as kids and making videos as kids, and it's it's great.
Speaker 1: You know, you talk about a low budget of a
Speaker 1: lot of these movies, but you actually have some pretty
Speaker 1: darn good actors in your movies, you know, Fay Masterson
Speaker 1: and Brian Howe and Jim Beaver. Yeah, what are you
Speaker 1: paying them with?
Speaker 4: What we you mean paying? I don't know what you're
Speaker 4: talking about manure. Even though Last Gill and Cadaver costs
Speaker 4: very little, we did do it on a very low
Speaker 4: budget SAG contract, right because most of us working on
Speaker 4: that were SAG actors at the time. We are working
Speaker 4: within within that confine. A couple of the cast weren't
Speaker 4: weren't SAG. But as far as the people you mentioned,
Speaker 4: the quality this, you couldn't have a better stock company. Uh,
Speaker 4: I'm just so fortunate to be, you know, to work
Speaker 4: with folks like this. A lot of them came uh
Speaker 4: from uh from a number of them came from Boston
Speaker 4: theater where I was working for years as a playwriting
Speaker 4: director and actor. And so some of the folks were
Speaker 4: friends of mine from theater and and and some of
Speaker 4: them were new folks in l a Brian Howe, who
Speaker 4: came from Boston along with me and old buddy of mine.
Speaker 4: He introduced me to a lot of the folks in
Speaker 4: LA when I came. When I got to LA, that
Speaker 4: came into our stock company too, so we kind of
Speaker 4: have a mix, have a mixture of folks from the
Speaker 4: East and West coast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the chemistry between all you guys is always
Speaker 1: fantastic and it even carries through, uh into you know,
Speaker 1: tales from the Pub, and it's just it's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to watch you guys work now with uh,
Speaker 1: with a lot of these you know, it seems like
Speaker 1: you you really kind of enjoy that that style of
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and that type of monster in these movies.
Speaker 1: Is there is there a real reason that you're keeping
Speaker 1: these kind of monsters alive, that you're keeping them around.
Speaker 4: I'm still a kid when it comes to monsters, and
Speaker 4: I really do love them, and uh, you know, it's
Speaker 4: been a there's been a pleasant surprise of having kids
Speaker 4: respond to these movies, not like it's something strange and distant,
Speaker 4: but they're enjoying it on a different level and they
Speaker 4: enjoy the monsters, which you're you know, the monsters in
Speaker 4: these movies are pretty fairly family friendly, I think, and
Speaker 4: that's just a it's a great thing to keep alive.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think monsters for me were like this
Speaker 4: will sound weird, but they're monsters are like a sort
Speaker 4: of gateway drug to existentialism. And by that, I mean
Speaker 4: that they jar us from a certain complacency, which is
Speaker 4: why I got as a kid, I got into uh,
Speaker 4: you know, after discovering monsters on TV. I'm then I'm then,
Speaker 4: you know, finding books in the library on the Abominable Snowman,
Speaker 4: Bigfoot and the Lockedness Monster, UFOs and stuff, and that's
Speaker 4: started a lifelong fascination with that. And I think these,
Speaker 4: you know, when people have sightings like this, there's a
Speaker 4: certain jarring from everyday life that actually makes us think
Speaker 4: about how weird the universe is. Because I mean, if
Speaker 4: you're looking at superstring theory and things like that and
Speaker 4: and quantum physical I mean things are weird. I mean
Speaker 4: they're weird, you know, multiverse and these are like when
Speaker 4: there's a sighting of a UFO or something. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's like a concrete, more concrete. It's a more tangible
Speaker 4: symbol of that kind of thing. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: It absolutely does. It transport says from the mundane to
Speaker 2: the numinus.
Speaker 4: Yes, very nicely done.
Speaker 2: Nicely said.
Speaker 4: Now, I want to.
Speaker 1: Talk really, really briefly about your your Steam Wars art
Speaker 1: have been lucky enough to get to see some of it.
Speaker 1: It's really, to me a huge departure from your films
Speaker 1: like Los Skeleton of Cadavra, and some of it kind
Speaker 1: of even reminds me a little bit. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you ever saw a Queen's album art for News
Speaker 1: of the World and had these huge kind of robots
Speaker 1: that were just monstrous and frightening, but completely indifferent to
Speaker 1: the people that they were kind of destroying. Accidentally, what
Speaker 1: kind of inspired your Steam Wars art?
Speaker 4: I think, you know, it's kind of hard to say,
Speaker 4: but the best I can come up with is that
Speaker 4: I remember doing a mural in high school that had
Speaker 4: a lot of things going on in it, and you know,
Speaker 4: like crazy surreal sort of things, and there was this
Speaker 4: there was this giant machine and it was sort of
Speaker 4: shaped like a as if it was a Greek armor,
Speaker 4: like like kind of like Tailo's from Jason and the Argonauts,
Speaker 4: a little bit like that, and that might have been
Speaker 4: of an influence, actually, but there were tiny little people
Speaker 4: on top of it, and that gave me the idea
Speaker 4: for this sort of alternate reality, kind of very steampunk
Speaker 4: kind of reality where war everything's the same, except war
Speaker 4: is fought on these giant machines that are manned by
Speaker 4: a crew. And the adventure that the first adventure I
Speaker 4: wrote was in the form of a of a diary
Speaker 4: kept by a crew member on one of these, and
Speaker 4: I wanted it to have that kind of POV and
Speaker 4: it's kind of I wanted to be kind of gritty
Speaker 4: and grimy, and we're talking, you know, we're talking cold
Speaker 4: driven machines here that are manned by a crew, but
Speaker 4: they're in the shape of giant warriors, and so you
Speaker 4: have some of that Victorian elegance combined with the raw
Speaker 4: steam power, you know, which is which is a contrast
Speaker 4: that I find interesting and that led me to sort
Speaker 4: of create this whole world. Yeah, it seemed like it
Speaker 4: your your sense of.
Speaker 1: Humor didn't come through nearly as much as as this
Speaker 1: this bizarre stark, you know, alternate reality, and it was
Speaker 1: really interesting to look at.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah, it was. Yeah, it's it's it's fairly serious.
Speaker 4: I mean there's a certain wry humor the way you
Speaker 4: find among the you know, the camaraderie that you find
Speaker 4: in something like Gunga Din, you know, uh, and you know,
Speaker 4: the guys who were griping it having to shovel coal
Speaker 4: and just that kind of thing. And there's humor in that,
Speaker 4: but I mean, beyond that, it's pretty much a straightforward
Speaker 4: action adventure.
Speaker 2: Since we had mentioned the Queen alt, Frank Kelly Fries
Speaker 2: was the artist on that. Editor's note, it's actually pronounced
Speaker 2: like freeze on both the Queen cover and the actual
Speaker 2: It was actually a takeoff on a Weird Tales cover
Speaker 2: he'd done years and years before, so he was a
Speaker 2: long time old Weird Tales artist. I'll put some show
Speaker 2: notes about that too. Just interesting here.
Speaker 4: He did some great stuff for Mad Magazine too.
Speaker 2: All right, but okay, speaking of Las Scoles and a
Speaker 2: Panagre all these years later, are you are you still
Speaker 2: finding new fans? Are you? Are you hearing from people
Speaker 2: who are but first just now getting in touch with it.
Speaker 4: I never stop hearing from fans. I will get, you know,
Speaker 4: on a weekly basis, a new you know, a message
Speaker 4: on Facebook or Twitter saying how much they loved the movie,
Speaker 4: how much it means to them, and and for a
Speaker 4: lot of people, it's kind of a it's kind of
Speaker 4: a comfort food. It's kind of a go to thing
Speaker 4: like I've heard people say, you know, they kind of
Speaker 4: down and they put on lost skillet. That's the best
Speaker 4: feeling I've had. People. I don't mean, I don't know,
Speaker 4: I just might not sound right, but people illing have
Speaker 4: found a comfort in the movie too, which I'm very
Speaker 4: grateful for before kids kids seem to like it too.
Speaker 4: So hey, kids like it too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, my uh, one of my friends is a huge fan,
Speaker 2: and he told I told him that you were going
Speaker 2: to be on and he wanted me to pass this along,
Speaker 2: which is that he showed this movie to his nine
Speaker 2: year old nephew and when they got to the line,
Speaker 2: oh it's you the idiot, he lost it. And apparently,
Speaker 2: even all these years later, he just continues to use
Speaker 2: that line for, you know, for his uncle there. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's to his uncle, but he said
Speaker 2: he wanted to let you know, thank you so much
Speaker 2: for that because it's led to so many fun memories.
Speaker 4: Thank you for that. That reminds me of another fun thing,
Speaker 4: which is and people think I get sick of this,
Speaker 4: but I don't. People quote from the movie all the time,
Speaker 4: and apparently there's a number of lines to quote that
Speaker 4: people remember and say frequently like around the house. That's
Speaker 4: that's very flattering.
Speaker 2: That is that's nice. Yeah, a strong the metic content.
Speaker 1: So when you're at like cons and stuff, do people
Speaker 1: yell these out to you from across the room.
Speaker 4: No, they come up to me and yell on my face.
Speaker 4: And of course if it's a lot of skeleton, you've
Speaker 4: got to yell at because he yells everything.
Speaker 1: That's that's true. A particular fan favorite line that you
Speaker 1: hear the most often I sleep, now, that would probably
Speaker 1: be it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that might be it. That might be it. I mean,
Speaker 4: there's there's quite it. There's a few, but but that
Speaker 4: might be the one.
Speaker 2: Who I was thinking about the influences on Los Skeleton?
Speaker 2: Would you say, I mean, were you influenced by ed
Speaker 2: Wood Roger Korman? Like who did you feel like was
Speaker 2: the strongest influence?
Speaker 4: It was, Yeah, And I'm asked this question a lot,
Speaker 4: and I think it comes it's really My answer is
Speaker 4: pretty much that I was like a sponge for all
Speaker 4: these movies, and and you know, I was watching all
Speaker 4: kinds of horror movies, but it was those nineteen fifties
Speaker 4: sci fi horror movies that really grabbed me for some reason.
Speaker 4: So when I wrote Last Skeleton, which was in a
Speaker 4: matter of days. It just kind of came out, and
Speaker 4: I was drawing on all this, all all of these
Speaker 4: movies that I had absorbed over the years, but the
Speaker 4: one specific, the most specific thing I would say is
Speaker 4: the Crowbar and Lattice, the alien couple are very much
Speaker 4: inspired by Aeros and ton Of from Plan nine from
Speaker 4: outer Space. So Edwood deserves a lot of credit and
Speaker 4: his his wonderful language. I mean, there's nothing quite like
Speaker 4: Edward language. And that was a big.
Speaker 2: Stupid minds, stupid, stupid.
Speaker 4: You see, you see your stupid minds, stupid, stupid exactly,
Speaker 4: you know, and uh, and that was a big influence
Speaker 4: on me and on on creating a specific kind of
Speaker 4: language for the film, not just for the aliens, who
Speaker 4: have a very unique way of talking, but but for everybody,
Speaker 4: you know. And I love words. I'm a word guy.
Speaker 4: I love words.
Speaker 1: I have to tell you. Larry. The other normal co
Speaker 1: host for the show, Karen Stoles, No, she tends to
Speaker 1: hate everything, but she really really loves your wordplay that
Speaker 1: you write. She's a PhD linguist and she absolutely loves
Speaker 1: the wordplay that you have. So she has watched everything.
Speaker 4: So well, thank you, thank you for that.
Speaker 1: Now with the Lost Kelton, the Lost Skelton himself is
Speaker 1: the main antagonist, and then you've got, of course, and
Speaker 1: while I you got doctor Roger Fleming, and then you
Speaker 1: got the Mutant himself as this extra bad guy. And
Speaker 1: it was a kind of a common tactic in these
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties B films to kind of have a team
Speaker 1: of bad guys, even if they weren't on the same team.
Speaker 4: You know, he's kind of it's I think it's a
Speaker 4: very touching finale for him, though, And I think that
Speaker 4: he as someone says he can't he sort of can't
Speaker 4: help it. I think it's Betty that says that, and
Speaker 4: so he's sort of he's sort of a mixed I
Speaker 4: think he's I think he's somewhat sympathetic, whereas the Skeleton
Speaker 4: is not at all. I mean, we actually have two
Speaker 4: monsters in the movie, the Mutant with a great costume
Speaker 4: built by my friend Courtney Skinner, and the and the
Speaker 4: Skeleton himself, who is probably the cheapest movie monster you
Speaker 4: could come up with. I mean, it's a skeleton, you know,
Speaker 4: so plastic, and I wasn't quite thinking of this intentionally
Speaker 4: until I got to the end of the end of
Speaker 4: it that that it was. You know, you've got sci
Speaker 4: fi horror movies in the fifties. Well, here's sci fi
Speaker 4: and horror in the Monsters. The Mutant is a sci
Speaker 4: fi monster. You know. I hadn't set out to do
Speaker 4: that specifically, but but there they are battling sci fi
Speaker 4: and horror battling at the end. It's like the duel,
Speaker 4: the Titanic Duel at the end of the Universe.
Speaker 1: There what a duel it was. It was amazing. Now
Speaker 1: I have to ask that I loved the sequel, but
Speaker 1: we were teased that there was going to be a threequel.
Speaker 1: If the Lost Skeleton walks among us, is there any hope, Well.
Speaker 4: There's always hope, and and that kind of leads me
Speaker 4: into something which I'm going to tell you about. I
Speaker 4: can say this because when this is heard, it will
Speaker 4: be after the date when I can announce it. So
Speaker 4: I'm gonna I can I can say this now that
Speaker 4: we are doing a We're not at Los Skeleton three yet,
Speaker 4: but we are about to put out a blu ray
Speaker 4: of the Lost Skeleton returns again with almost two hours
Speaker 4: worth of extras. There's a forty minute behind the scenes
Speaker 4: making of some wonderful footage there. There's two new short
Speaker 4: films that I'm making, similar to a film that I
Speaker 4: may called a short I may called a World Without
Speaker 4: Lost Skeleton, which you can see on YouTube. Yes, I'm
Speaker 4: making two videos like that, and we're gonna do a
Speaker 4: We're gonna do a Kickstarter for this, and you know,
Speaker 4: I think that if this Blu ray does well, we
Speaker 4: could lead to perhaps Blu rays of my other movies
Speaker 4: and uh and who knows, I mean, maybe something like
Speaker 4: this will help get the attention or whatever's need did
Speaker 4: for a Lost Skeleton three. We'll see. I'm always open
Speaker 4: minded about about number three. But we're excited about the
Speaker 4: Blu ray and it's gonna look phenomenal. So that's good.
Speaker 1: Congratulations, thank you, that's very exciting. I loved, you know,
Speaker 1: some of the again, some of the lines in both
Speaker 1: the original Loss Skeleton and the sequel Returns again uh
Speaker 1: or just great. I loved the when they were out
Speaker 1: in the woods and uh Fay Masterson's character hears some
Speaker 1: noise and uh asks the ranger what could be and
Speaker 1: he says, oh, that sounds like something from the Monster Family.
Speaker 1: That whole little section right there. I really feel Blake
Speaker 1: should be using in the intro of this show, and
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, perfect time to ask for permission to
Speaker 1: use it, because you have quite perfect.
Speaker 4: Well yeah, if you if you do want to go
Speaker 4: that route, please do yes. Awesome And you know mentioning
Speaker 4: Lost Skeleton returns again, that is more of a monster
Speaker 4: movie than the first one. Uh and it it I
Speaker 4: didn't want to do, you know, a sequel that was
Speaker 4: more of the first one. So it's a very different way.
Speaker 4: It's a jungle adventure basically, and of course it and
Speaker 4: it turns into color part way through the film, which
Speaker 4: was which was a fun thing to do. But the
Speaker 4: monsters in that, the two main monsters in that are
Speaker 4: the Graalmanopodon and the magriclob and they are each one
Speaker 4: one of them is named in the scientific manner and
Speaker 4: the other one is named in the in the more mythologic.
Speaker 4: The magriclop sounds more mythological. Graumanopodon. I think it's sort of,
Speaker 4: you know, semi scientific sounding name. I mean it sounds
Speaker 4: like a pre stort mammal name. Yeah, and again that
Speaker 4: was something I didn't like intentionally do I only thought
Speaker 4: about that after the fact that their names sort of
Speaker 4: made one science based in the other mythology based. But
Speaker 4: I was very I was very pleased with that movie,
Speaker 4: and I think I think it was I'm glad we
Speaker 4: did something that was that different from the first one,
Speaker 4: you know, because I don't I'm not crazy about sequels
Speaker 4: in general.
Speaker 2: Every time a good one comes out, people are like, oh,
Speaker 2: look a good sequel, it's so rare, and then every
Speaker 2: time a bad one comes out there with sequels are
Speaker 2: never good. So I don't really actually know what the
Speaker 2: stats are, but it's clear you at least love vintage movies,
Speaker 2: these old B movies and fifty thousand. But how do
Speaker 2: you feel about modern movies? What are the movies you
Speaker 2: really are enjoying these days?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't see everything that comes out. I mean
Speaker 4: I don't see a whole lot. If something interests me,
Speaker 4: I go check it out. I think my favorite movie
Speaker 4: in recent years was a film called Triangle, which is
Speaker 4: truly strange. And I'm interested in films that really go
Speaker 4: somewhere different and are just afraid to do that. Triangle
Speaker 4: was one of them. It's about five six years old now, maybe,
Speaker 4: and I'm gonna blank on the filmmaker's name. It's a
Speaker 4: British filmmaker and I'm sorry I can't remember his name.
Speaker 2: Triangle is a two thousand and nine film directed by
Speaker 2: Christopher Smith. No relation a link to it will be
Speaker 2: in the show notes.
Speaker 4: That was one that really stuck out from me. And
Speaker 4: there's another film called Coherence, which is really strange. I'm
Speaker 4: just I'm intrigued by high strangeness. Yeah, is it really
Speaker 4: go somewhere weird and in a subtle way? You know
Speaker 4: that that really intrigues me. I'm catching I'm still catching
Speaker 4: up with movies that I saw Hugo the other day,
Speaker 4: which I'd never seen. It was pretty wonderful, you know,
Speaker 4: and I, you know what, it didn't sound great to me,
Speaker 4: but but I'm glad I saw it.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 4: It was really good.
Speaker 1: I actually wanted to ask about two things. First off,
Speaker 1: you were talking about naming these monsters in Last Skeleton
Speaker 1: Returns Again. I've noticed over all of your work that
Speaker 1: I've been exposed to, the names you come up with
Speaker 1: seem to be pulled from somewhere different. Do you have
Speaker 1: a formula? I mean, you got a sturpy long neuter
Speaker 1: and you know, like Lattice and Crowbar. You've got just
Speaker 1: these really bizarre names. Do you have a formula for
Speaker 1: creating character names?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's the first and most important thing is does
Speaker 4: it sound good? Is it like I think of billiard
Speaker 4: balls clicking together? Does it have a certain the consonants
Speaker 4: clicking together in a pleasing manner? And if see if
Speaker 4: they do that, then it can kind of sound like, Hey,
Speaker 4: that might be a real name. I think. I think
Speaker 4: I want it to be a ridiculous name that sounds
Speaker 4: like it could be. It sounds like it could be real.
Speaker 4: You know, Truth and like Truth and Nuban, who introduces
Speaker 4: the character that Andy Parks plays.
Speaker 1: Yes, I love Truth and Nuban.
Speaker 4: I mean it sounds it sort of sounds right at
Speaker 4: first you think about it. Wait a minute, Truth and No. No,
Speaker 4: that's I think if there's a key, if there's a
Speaker 4: formula for me, I think it's that.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, speaking of Truth and Nuben. All of
Speaker 1: the tales from the pub I just I love them
Speaker 1: and people need to go to YouTube and watch these.
Speaker 1: They're each about two minutes long, and they're just great
Speaker 1: and they kind of to me, they recall kind of
Speaker 1: like little shorts of like a twilight Zone or the
Speaker 1: Outer Limits or Night Gallery or one of those old things.
Speaker 1: Was there a specific show you were kind of spoofing
Speaker 1: when you were making that series?
Speaker 4: It it comes I think the one that comes closest
Speaker 4: to is One Step Beyond Uh that John Newland hosted,
Speaker 4: and and they're available on DVD. You can you can
Speaker 4: see these and.
Speaker 1: Not the Madness song no.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the House of Fun though, you know, and
Speaker 2: uh and and there's a little bit of twilight Zone too.
Speaker 4: I think, for instance, the one called Puppet for Your
Speaker 4: Thoughts is maybe more of twilight Zone than One Step
Speaker 4: Beyond Uh right, right? But uh, but you know what
Speaker 4: I think people think when they watch these two. I'm
Speaker 4: sure some people think that I, you know, that while
Speaker 4: he's really you know, he's really making fun of these shows.
Speaker 4: But I love those shows. I really love those shows.
Speaker 4: So I I my interest is in again absurdity. You know,
Speaker 4: they're like little outlets for being just really absurd and absurdist.
Speaker 4: And I actually I have a genuine fondness for those
Speaker 4: actual shows. But they were fun to do, and they
Speaker 4: were great exercises because you got to you got two
Speaker 4: minutes you kind of in and out. You've got to
Speaker 4: make your point. You got to make the story happen
Speaker 4: in two two and a half minutes, and that's it.
Speaker 4: Which is a nice challenge. It's a nice filmmaking challenge.
Speaker 1: Do you plan to ever create a movie that's actually
Speaker 1: set in modern times or do you kind of feel
Speaker 1: like the fifties is your medium? No?
Speaker 4: You know, after a lost skill in the cadaver, I
Speaker 4: mean I was doing I was doing theater for year.
Speaker 4: That was a playwright for a number of years in
Speaker 4: the Boston area. The first thing I ever wrote was
Speaker 4: a dark western, really dark. And I also wrote a
Speaker 4: very dark play about Irish gangs in the eighteen nineties
Speaker 4: New York City. And I wrote a science fiction piece
Speaker 4: called Interface, which was set in wartimes, kind of based
Speaker 4: on the alleged Philadelphia experiment. And my point is that
Speaker 4: I'm all over the pl I mean, I love a
Speaker 4: lot of different stuff, but Los Skeleton kind of got
Speaker 4: me into a kind of covey hold me a little
Speaker 4: bit there, And you know, I followed up with another
Speaker 4: Lost Skeleton and trail Screaming Forehead and and dark and
Speaker 4: Stormy not so yeah, So I'm kind of in that.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of in that, but I'm doing all these
Speaker 4: other things. I co wrote a film with Kyle, my
Speaker 4: friend Kyle Rank and U Witch Files that oh you
Speaker 4: know you know y of course I know Kyle, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: And I co wrote that with him. That's a modern
Speaker 4: day setting. There's a film I'd like to write later
Speaker 4: this year when I get some deadlines out of the way,
Speaker 4: that is also in a modern day setting, kind of
Speaker 4: a dark comedy. So despite what it seems, you know,
Speaker 4: the labeling of Lost Skeleton, I like all this different stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a It's great because I've seen a lot
Speaker 1: of your different stuff. And I want to mention to
Speaker 1: Blake too. I don't know if Blake knows that Larry's
Speaker 1: got a lot of great artwork that uh for sale.
Speaker 1: We'll often, you know, put stuff up for sale on
Speaker 1: whether it's a Facebook or whatever. But he's also kind
Speaker 1: of available. I guess you could say, if you've got
Speaker 1: ideas for something that you would like to have turned
Speaker 1: into art. He I used to love those old magic
Speaker 1: or the Magician posters, you know, where they would have
Speaker 1: like the Magician and like the little devils and stuff
Speaker 1: around there around their heads. And stuff like that. And
Speaker 1: I contracted Larry to paint me in one of those, actually,
Speaker 1: me and Brian, and it turned out so beautiful. It
Speaker 1: was absolutely amazing.
Speaker 4: That was such a fun gig, really was awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the thing is is people need to know that,
Speaker 1: you know, they can get a custom piece of artwork
Speaker 1: done that has Larry's name down at the bottom, and
Speaker 1: to me, that just makes it so valuable in itself.
Speaker 1: But so yeah, I hit him up on Facebook or something.
Speaker 1: If you've got an idea and you want to have
Speaker 1: him do some work for you, it's it's great stuff.
Speaker 2: If you have a particular email or however you'd like
Speaker 2: to be contact, We've put that in the show notes
Speaker 2: too for for contract work.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah. The the the easiest way is my I
Speaker 4: have two Facebook pages, a personal page in the in
Speaker 4: the public page, uh and anyone could you know? I
Speaker 4: hear I get messages through my public page all the time,
Speaker 4: and the same with Twitter too, So Twitter is you
Speaker 4: know I'm available on there, and those are the two
Speaker 4: best ways to reach me. Recently, I've been doing some
Speaker 4: art for and writing for an RPG. UH. Started it
Speaker 4: last year actually, and it's been kind of a long
Speaker 4: ongoing gig and I've done a lot of writing for
Speaker 4: them too, and it's called They Came from Beneath the Sea.
Speaker 2: Oh that sounds good, and yeah, a.
Speaker 4: Very clever fellow named Matthew Dawkins got in touch with
Speaker 4: me and he came up with this for Onyx Path
Speaker 4: and I knew nothing about RPG. I still don't know
Speaker 4: a lot about role playing games, but but nevertheless I
Speaker 4: was able to do a lot of writing for it
Speaker 4: because it was fifty sci fi stuff that's sort of
Speaker 4: the base for it. And have had some real fun
Speaker 4: to illustrating for them too. So that's been that's been
Speaker 4: a nice gig that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I love role playing games, and there was a call
Speaker 2: of Cthulhu is one of these role playing games that
Speaker 2: I really like. It's based on HP Lovecraft's work, and
Speaker 2: they had a they had some modules that were I
Speaker 2: think they were called Blood Brothers and Blood Brothers too,
Speaker 2: and one of the ones they were all basically movie
Speaker 2: kind of plot, so just you know, various kinds of movies,
Speaker 2: but your characters would go through these scary scenarios, you know,
Speaker 2: based on a film type. And one of the ones
Speaker 2: they had was Mexican wrestling movies. It was so awesome
Speaker 2: to be able to sort of play around with that idea.
Speaker 2: And that's the closest I've ever come to creating anything
Speaker 2: in this space. But it is neat how you know,
Speaker 2: despite all the and all the special effects improvements they've
Speaker 2: had over the years and all these other things, you
Speaker 2: can still have such a great time in that space.
Speaker 2: And you know those movies hold up well. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: your your homage is I think it's a nice mixture
Speaker 2: of comedy and respect. Actually, I really, Unfortunately, as much
Speaker 2: as we like talking to you, this is supposed to
Speaker 2: be our last question, we'd like to finish up our
Speaker 2: interviews with. This is really our signature question. I don't
Speaker 2: know if anyone prepared you or not. So give you
Speaker 2: a little time for a couple of shows. So okay,
Speaker 2: well there you go. All right, what is your favorite monster?
Speaker 4: Well? Can I give you from two answers? Which is
Speaker 4: one from movies and one from real life as far
Speaker 4: as we know it? Sure well the one I think
Speaker 4: the one from the movies would have to be the
Speaker 4: Cyclops and the Seventh Boys of sindbad Oh.
Speaker 2: That's a good one, which the emoting.
Speaker 4: There is just brilliant. The design of him or that
Speaker 4: is more one was like nothing before it, and it
Speaker 4: was copied somewhat afterwards. But I find that to be
Speaker 4: a wonderful, wonderful monster. As far as monsters that may
Speaker 4: or may not exist, I just love the whole. You know,
Speaker 4: the Kelly Hopkinsville event in the fifties, you've heard of I've.
Speaker 2: Heard of this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, that, to me, I mean, is such a
Speaker 4: compelling story, the whole siege on the house, I mean,
Speaker 4: the whole, the imagery of it, whatever the truth behind it,
Speaker 4: it's a phenomenal tale. And so that might be those
Speaker 4: might be my favorite monsters in real life.
Speaker 2: I was probably understating it when I said I'd heard
Speaker 2: of it. Yeah, we did a three episode arc on it.
Speaker 2: It's been one of those monsters I've loved since I
Speaker 2: was a kid for the same reasons. And actually I
Speaker 2: still haven't made I've got a shot video of this,
Speaker 2: but I haven't put it together and put it online yet,
Speaker 2: and I need to. I did talk about this in
Speaker 2: Kentucky at a Cryptidcon last year. But what it is
Speaker 2: is when back in the original case work around that
Speaker 2: they one of the skeptical complaints about the whole thing
Speaker 2: was people thought that they for some reason, skeptics thought
Speaker 2: that the family had not actually shot through the window screens.
Speaker 2: They had just those were fake. They just poked a
Speaker 2: hole in the screen with sticks, right, yeah. And the
Speaker 2: think one of the complaints was that they were shooting
Speaker 2: out the window with a twenty gage shotgun. You know,
Speaker 2: it should have made a bigger hole, you know, and
Speaker 2: you know, a different pattern. And then also they were
Speaker 2: shooting twenty two, but they said that could have just
Speaker 2: been done with a pencil. So I looked, and nobody
Speaker 2: had actually done this really simple experiment. So taking the
Speaker 2: notes for how far away the people were from the
Speaker 2: screen window, I just took a twenty gage in a
Speaker 2: twenty two out in the country and shot up a
Speaker 2: screen window.
Speaker 4: Really yeah.
Speaker 2: And it turns out that what they had in their
Speaker 2: screen perfectly matches what I got in my test. The
Speaker 2: twenty gauge blows a hole about only about two inches
Speaker 2: across from the distance that they were shooting.
Speaker 4: And blastar's going to increase the farther.
Speaker 2: Distance exactly exactly it would, but at that distance it's
Speaker 2: smaller than my fist. It's just a little punch hole.
Speaker 2: And I videotape myself shooting this and I have some nice,
Speaker 2: good clear photos that just kind of so you know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't prove anything except that it continues to support
Speaker 2: the fact that, no matter what was really going on,
Speaker 2: those people were terrified and were shooting out their window.
Speaker 4: I don't think they were attacked by a gang of bowels.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, if they were owls, they probably weren't drunk.
Speaker 2: That's important.
Speaker 4: And by the way, you know, you asked me about
Speaker 4: recent movies, and I want to mention I discovered small
Speaker 4: Town Monsters last year. Oh yes, I'm a Seth Breedlove fan. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I heard your show when when Matthew asked me to
Speaker 4: be on here, I heard. I listened to that show
Speaker 4: and just I'm a big fan of those that he's doing.
Speaker 4: I think it's it's great stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, And I love the speaking of art. I
Speaker 2: love the post art that they put together that the
Speaker 2: I've got one, uh, I've actually got two on the
Speaker 2: wall up above me. Uh. The one for the flat
Speaker 2: Woods is just beautiful. That is a great post.
Speaker 4: And can I just say his recreation of flat Woods
Speaker 4: Monster on no budget was far superior to the show
Speaker 4: Blue Book that did just episode based on supposedly on
Speaker 4: the flat Woods.
Speaker 2: I don't they say don't they say inspired? They don't
Speaker 2: even say bad. It's like that's yeah, uses words from
Speaker 2: actual cases.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, plus their hearts as we say down here. Well, Larry,
Speaker 2: it's been really great talking to you.
Speaker 1: Thanks.
Speaker 4: Likewise, likewise, I'm just I'm thrilled to actually to discover
Speaker 4: monster Talk. I confess that I did not know about this,
Speaker 4: and I'm you know, I'm now I'm a fan. Awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, I bet we're going to have some new Lost
Speaker 2: Skeleton fans after this as well.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to ask really quickly, is there anything
Speaker 1: that you're working on right at the moment that you
Speaker 1: want to squeeze in real quick that we can be
Speaker 1: sure to mention?
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks, I d well the RPG I'm is ongoing,
Speaker 4: and uh that they came from beneath the seat. If
Speaker 4: folks are into RPG and fifty sci fi, definitely check
Speaker 4: that out. A lot of fun stuff there and look
Speaker 4: for the Kickstarter and there'll be an Indiegogo. As for
Speaker 4: the Lost Skeletre returns again blu Ray with almost two
Speaker 4: hours of extra never before seen before material.
Speaker 2: Monstertle, you've been listening to Monster Talk, the science show
Speaker 2: about monsters. I'm Blake Smith, and today you heard Matthew
Speaker 2: Baxter and me interview Larry Blamyer, director, artist and writer
Speaker 2: about his work as an independent filmmaker and the creator
Speaker 2: of the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra and much more. Check
Speaker 2: the show notes for links to the Kickstarter for the
Speaker 2: ten year anniversary Blu ray of the Lost Skeleton returns again.
Speaker 2: Hurry on over to that link if you want to
Speaker 2: get in on this because there's not much time left.
Speaker 2: Monster Talks an official podcast of Skeptic Magazine. The views
Speaker 2: expressed on this show are those of myself and my
Speaker 2: guests and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of Skeptic Magazine
Speaker 2: or the Skeptic Society. We hope you've enjoyed this episode
Speaker 2: of Monster Talk. Each episode we strive to bring you
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Speaker 4: Oh say you don't believe those old legends about the
Speaker 4: lost skeleton of cadaver do.
Speaker 3: You Ranger Brad, I'm a scientist.
Speaker 2: I don't believe in anything