April 3, 2025 • 51 mins
Once more, it's time for a dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener Mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I am Joe McCormick and today as Rob I
think just said, we are bringing you listener mail. Of course,
at the end of every episode we give out our
email address for listeners like you to get in touch.
That address is contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. It's been a little bit since the last one,
so we are doing some catch up on series that
(00:35):
have been a few weeks back at this point. But yeah,
please keep the email coming. We do love all the
messages we get. We're not able to respond to everything
that comes into the inbox on the show itself, but
rest assured we do read all of it. We appreciate
all that we get. And again that is contact at
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Get in touch
(00:56):
anytime to let us know your thoughts about episodes we've
done on the show, or just to suggest something for
us to cover, or even just to share something interesting,
something you think that would tickle our fancy.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, you never know. Sometimes it can we can spin
it off into an episode and some folks also choose
to take part in the Discord Server for Stuff to
Blow your Mind and Weird House Cinema. If you would
like to join that discord Server, we'll just shoot us
an email at the aforementioned address and we'll shoot you
the link to join.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
All right, well, I think we should kick things off
with some responses to the series we did called The Mysteries.
This was a collection of episodes about the mystery religions
or the mystery cults of the ancient Greco Roman world.
Let's see, Rob, Do you mind if I start with
this message from Hannah.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
This message is responding to a part of the series
where we were talking about the general context of ancient
Greek and Roman polytheism, like how the cults of those
gods were quite a bit different from what a person
today might expect, especially if that person grew up in
culture primarily influenced by one of the big monotheisms. Some
of those differences were that within these ancient Greco Roman polytheisms,
(02:06):
there was generally no expectation of exclusivity in a person's
relationship with any one god. The main public cults were
not really focused on things like faith and belief, but
instead on rituals and sacrifices, ritual sacrifices and festivals. You know,
it's a party time as well, so you know, people
would perform rituals and sacrifices in exchange for the expectation
(02:29):
of blessings from the god in question. Another thing is
just how many gods there were. There were lots and
lots of them who could each provide blessings related to
different parts of human life, things like economic situations, health
and reproduction, specific areas of geography and geographical features. And
in this discussion, Rob brought up this analogy comparing the
(02:51):
religious environment to a cheesecake factory menu except which I
thought was a good one, except with the variation that,
unlike the cheesecake fact which is centrally organized, it's a chain.
The public cults of the ancient Greek and Roman world
were not centrally organized. There wasn't really like a pope
of Greco Roman religion to make everybody do the same thing. Instead,
(03:12):
you had lots of local cult control and even tons
of local gods and local variations on the worship of
widespread gods. And so listener Hannah gets in touch to
offer a contribution to this analogy, Hannah says, with subject
(03:32):
line A variety platter of deities. Hi, again, I had
to pause the Mystery Cult episode just to send you this.
The perfect metaphor for ancient polytheism isn't a cheesecake factory menu.
It's a local diner menu. Now that's the kind of
distinction I appreciate it. Let's hear Hannah's case here. Hannah says,
(03:53):
you know how some of them can be improbably long
because they keep adding on odds and ends or recombinations
of the same and green vidience. Plus, you have some
standard diner fair you'd expect to see almost anywhere, and
then in parentheses burger slash sun God maybe, plus local
stuff parentheses grits in the South scrapple and Pennsylvania hyperlocal
(04:15):
river God perhaps, and whatever stuff from the culture of
the diner owners who maybe came from elsewhere. You've probably
been to a Greek diner or an Italian flavored diner.
Maybe these are the deities brought to a region by migration,
trade or conquest. Anyway, thank you as always for sharing
the joy and light of learning and exploring ideas. Y'all
(04:37):
are life savers and now I really want to milkshake.
Cheers Hannah. Well, Hannah, bravo. I thoroughly approve of this analogy.
I think it's great.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, our original analogy was imperfect, as sometimes our real
time analogies tend to be. This is a perfection of
the analogy, so greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
All right, let's see Rob, you want to do this next?
And from Jamie. Yeah, let's see a bit of context.
This one brings up a couple things in the episode.
One is the comparisons between ancient Greco Roman mystery cults
and Christianity. It's long been a question in historical and
religious scholarship to what extent Christianity should or should not
be thought of as one of the mystery cults or
(05:19):
influenced by one of the mystery cults. And then the
other thing is just about our use of the word
cult in the context of ancient Greek and Roman religion,
where it has none of the negative connotations as today.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
All right, then here is the email from Jamie. Dear
Robert and Joe. I'm enjoying the pod as always, and
especially the recent episode on the mystery cults of the
ancient world. I would have liked to hear even more,
not just about how Christianity may have been a kind
of mystery cult to begin with, but about how this
(05:53):
tradition has continued even to this day, at least in Catholicism.
Mysteries such as the Trinity, for example, are our essentral
part of faith, and one is encouraged to contemplate the
mysteries such as the Resurrection and Denunciation while praying the Rosary.
On another cult point, I liked how you pointed out
the call of Cthulhu version of the cultist as a
(06:15):
hooded fiend. But if you are interested in reading a
story that does an excellent job, in my opinion, presenting
Cthulhu worship as if it were a mystery cult in
the ancient sense, I recommend copying Squid by Michael Shae.
Keep up the good work, Jane.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Oh thanks, Jamie. Well maybe we should go in reverse
order here. I've only read one story ever by Michael,
she called The Autopsy. But that story was fantastic, so
I'm interested to read more. Michael Shay's a horror, horror
and fantasy writer.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, horror, fantasy, some science fiction thrown in there as well.
He lived nineteen forty six through twenty fourteen. One of
my favorite weird fiction authors. I actually got to exchange
a couple of like fan emails with him once. Yeah,
the highlight of my fan emailing career. But his Niffeline
(07:09):
fantasy tales are absolutely amazing, well worth seeking out. He
also wrote a number of great weird fiction tales, including
several that take place in the Cthulhu mythos. Coughing Squid
is a good one. I haven't read that one in years, though,
so the mystery cult aspects of it have kind of
faded for my recollection. But this one is collected in
a collection that I have demiurge, the Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales.
(07:33):
That one also includes fat Face, which is one of
his better known stories. And yeah, the Autopsy, as you mentioned, Yeah,
that is another really well known Shay story. That one
was adapted into an episode of Germeal de Toro's Cabinet
of Curiosity, that one directed by David Pryor.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Now I wonder in what sense Jamie means Coping Squid
is about Cuthulhu worship as an actual mystery cult in
the historical sense. Does that mean that it relies on
secret knowledge. I mean, I guess the grit knowledge is
sort of already there in the original story. Maybe that
it's more about the experience of the initiate like that, Yeah,
the core part.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I think. So there are there are two different Michael
she myth those stories that are kind of combined in
my memory, and I really need to revisit them to
tease them apart. But I have a vague recollection of
a story that is very much from the the cultest
or would be cultest point of view, you know, beginning
to have this initiation into the sacred rights of Cuthula.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
That's actually a great idea for a story, given the
like historical knowledge we have now about what the initiation
process was. Probably, like I'm thinking specifically of the Eleusinian mysteries,
where there's this idea that you know, everyone would have
been told that it's a you know, it's a really
powerful experience, it'll change your life, it'll let you go
without a burden into the into the underworld at the
(08:51):
time of death. And so you've heard all this good
stuff about it, but people can't tell you what it is. Yeah,
and so like what if you get there and the
truth of what the experience is is quite horrifying. But
then for some reason you have to keep go telling
people like, yeah, it's great, you got to go, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I really need to read these stories again, because again,
Michael Shay is terrific. He is one of those authors
that I will I keep coming back to and I'll
just figure out is well, what's a story of his
that I'm very fond of, but I've also forgotten most
off and then it's time to dive back in.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Now coming back to the first half of Jamie's email
about the comparisons between Christianity and mystery cults, for one thing,
extending into the comparisons of modern Christianity to mystery cults.
There's actually a significant part of the book. One of
the main sources we talked about in that series, the
book by Hugh Boden Mystery Cults in the Ancient World.
(09:45):
But yeah, so Boden toward the end of the book
has a long section in which you makes some pretty
strong comparisons between what we know about the experience of
being in an ancient mystery cult, and not so much
with Catholicism but with certain Pentecostal forms of Christianity. Specifically
like the ecstatic snake handling cults of Appalachia. But as
(10:06):
to the broader question of Christianity and mystery cults, it
is interesting, like there have long been these questions, like
to what extent does the Christian practice of baptism constitute
and initiation ritual is the Eucharist, like the ritual taking
of bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ?
Is that a mystery practice? Also questions about whether Christianity
(10:30):
began as something more like the other mystery religions or
was influenced by them and then maybe drifted away to
become a more doctrinal cult. But I think a lot
of scholars now kind of disagree with that interpretive lens
because specifically the idea that Christianity was strongly influenced by
(10:51):
the mystery cults or began as a mystery cult. And
I think one of the main reasons a lot of
historians have turned against that is that that kind of
under the particular features of Judaism as a foundational influence
on Christianity. And it's fair to point out that there
is a lot we don't know about the early years
of Christianity and its origins, but of course, that cuts
(11:13):
both ways against all interpretations, but based on what we
do know, I think the best interpretation of the origin
of Christianity is that it began as an apocalyptic movement
within Judaism, which was focused on the idea that the
Jewish God would soon come down to destroy wickedness, invert
existing power relationships like overthrow Roman control and so forth,
(11:36):
and establish a good, just kingdom on earth, sort of
right all wrongs. And then as early Christians tried to
make sense of the death and then their belief in
the resurrection of their leader, Jesus of Nazareth. And then
also as the story of Jesus began to spread among
Greek and Roman polytheists rather than only among Jews, it
(11:57):
morphed into a religion of individual salvation, being not about
the fact that God would soon come to earth and
set things right, but about the idea that you need
to set yourself right with God by accepting the saving
sacrifice of Christ. But again, there's a lot we don't
know about the early years of Christianity with great confidence,
so it's hard to be too sure about any particular
(12:19):
story of how it evolved. However, there is an interesting
vocabulary fact that I don't think we talked about in
the episode Rob let me know if we did get
into this, and I'm forgetting. But it's the idea of
the early Christian use of the Greek word mysterion, which
is often used to refer to the mystery the initiation rights,
(12:39):
the secret initiation rights of cults, like the Elusinian mysteries.
The word mysterion does appear in early Christian texts such
as the Gospels and in some of the epistles in
the New Testament, where it seems in this context it's
used not to refer to initiation rights. Instead, mysterion here
(13:00):
is always used to refer to secret knowledge, generally hidden
knowledge that has been revealed in secret to a privileged group.
So one example is like when Jesus is telling the
parable of the Sower in the Gospel of Mark. Apparently
in the Greek there is invocation of the word mysterion there,
referring to the secret interpretation of the parable that Jesus
(13:25):
gives only to his inner circle of disciples, so that
the masses only sort of hear the parable and puzzle
what to make of it. But then there is a
secret knowledge, a sort of secret reading of the parable
that is given to his inner circle. So that's how
the word mysterion is used in early Christian writings from
the first and second centuries CE, but then a few
(13:48):
centuries later, I think it's by like the fourth century CE.
Boden says, this is happening. The word mysterion is now
just commonly used to refer to Christian ritual like the
Eucharist or baptism, and there has been scholarly debate about why,
like why is the word mysterion used here. Some think
(14:10):
that it's like the influence of Greek and Roman polytheism. Basically,
it's like, you know, taking a word from one religious
context and applying it to the new dominant religion where
it once referred to these rituals. But Boden actually makes
an argument that this application of the word mystery on
to something like the Eucharist is it reflects, in his view,
(14:32):
an understanding that the Christians had at the time that
the rituals were forms of secret knowledge. So it's more
in keeping with the way the word is used in
the early Christian texts, like forms of secret knowledge that
are now revealed, So you know, the secret of baptism
and the Eucharist that was previously known only to God
(14:55):
and perhaps to some of the prophets, but now these
rituals are known to all Christians, have been revealed by Jesus.
It is a secret that has been that you have
been brought in on. And of course, Uh, there is
the long running question of comparisons between baptism and UH
and various forms of cultic initiation, including initiation to the
(15:16):
mystery cults. Uh. This could well be a legitimate sort
of common growth or or you know, a legitimate comparison here.
But of course it's worth pointing out that baptism predates Christianity,
and that's not even a controversial fact even among Christians.
Like you know, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
It's it was a pre existing practice, right right.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I can I can see that, basing it for in
part just on my own experience, like baptism as a child. Uh,
it's uh, you know, it's it's there are mysteries involved,
it's it's it's kind of frightful, like you're you have
to go in the back of the church and go
through like secret chambers. They're not really secret, but they
felt kind of secret. You have to like wear awn
(16:00):
over your swimsuit and then go into a like a
walk in bathtub with a master it's you know, and
then you're dunked. It was. It was a weird, memorable experience.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, though, as you know, we talked about, I think
a little bit in the episode, the idea that there
may have been some ways rituals were done earlier in
Christianity that tended to be more in the imagistic religious
fashion that became more doctrinal as.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Time went on.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That might not be always true in every case, but
in some certain cases it is. And I think baptism
might be a good point there, because it could well
be that baptism was something that was initially meant as
a much more overwhelming, powerful emotional experience, and then it
transitioned into something that people did with infants where you're
not even really going to have an experiential memory of it.
(16:48):
So yeah, there's less emphasis on the overwhelming emotional experience
and encounter with the power of God.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah. Yeah, And of course walk in bathtubs came later
as well.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Right, Yes, but as your story points out, of course,
I mean even later Christians and modern Christians still do
adult baptism, not just infant baptism. You know, it's just,
you know, there there are different theological points of view
on that.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Clearly we could come back at some later date and
do an entire episode on baptism and baptism related rites.
Oh yeah, absolutely, all right, I'm gonna read the next
one since, uh, since you had a long response to
that last one, give you, We'll give you a break.
This one's This one comes to us from Josh, also
a response to the Mystery Cults, specifically to part three. Uh.
I don't remember which part three really was, but I'm
(17:31):
sure the email will get into it, so Josh says, Hi,
Joe Robert at all. Listening to the Mysteries Part three,
one of you mentioned eating in the Spirit Realm in
connection with Cora and Hades. I made an immediate connection
to one of my favorite films, Spirited Away, which seems
(17:51):
to have the opposite physics. To Heroes parents were turned
into pigs, but they had eaten the food for the spirits,
and thus it was a punished whereas to hero herself
had to eat from the Spirit realm food in order
to avoid fading. Out of existence as far as the
mysteries themselves are concerned. The totality of the descriptions led
me to wonder if they were what would now be
(18:14):
considered a magic show. Obviously, if viewers did partake in
an hallucinogenic substance, it would certainly have heightened the experience.
If the rights were magic tricks, you wouldn't want outsiders
copying them because of competition, but also a poor reenactment
would possibly ruin the magic by exposing the trick.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
I think that's a good point, and I don't. Yeah,
a lot clearly a lot of theatricality was involved could
well extend to like sleight of hand or other types
of tricks.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we got into this a little
bit with Glicon too. Like the criticism of glic On
the Serpent God was that it was a like an
obvious puppet, and you know, they might have had an
ax to grind, as we discussed, but we might read
into that that like, yeah, whatever your tricks are, they
need to be convincing. But then again, are your tricks
(19:05):
going to be convincing to someone who doesn't like, willingly
want to believe and be you know, wowed. I can
imagine some folks just coming into the mystery cults and like,
do you not want to be converted? Do you not
want to have a revelation about the nature of the universe?
You just want to point at things and accuse them
of being puppets? You know.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I still think we never got an answer on the
question I had about like what was the spirit of
the criticism of the puppet, Like, was it a problem
that it's a puppet? Because in the religious context here
you've got cult statues for most cults, so it's not
like it's a problem to have a physical representation of
the God that's not literally the God's body. So what's
(19:45):
the Was it an issue of taste? Did they not
like that the puppet was animated? I don't know, Like,
I think we never quite got to the bottom of like,
what was it about the fact that it's a puppet
that is so bad?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah? I mean, there are lots of bits in churches
Protestant churches today and have been for decades. Christian puppetry
the whole realm unto itself.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
But then you had the other side where you had
like the Christian writers just trying to spoil it for people, yeah, saying, like,
what really happens in the Secret Temple is that they
have sex in there.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
All right. Well, Josh continues here and says in terms
of the idea that it may just be copulation or
some other such mondanity. If they had managed to make
a non lethal hallucinogen, and if that was not available
to the masses, anything they showed the initiates would have
been impressive. Maybe it was just the first black light
art accompanied by Rosius Floyd's Dark Side of Luna's That's cute. Nice.
(20:44):
As for Christmas, in the Netherlands, we have center Class,
which is the Saint's birthday, not Jesus's. Families do a
sort of secret Sannah where they give gifts which are
accompanied by a poem written by the giver about the
receiver from the point of view of the Saint. So,
even while believing in the authenticity of the living Saint,
children still pretend to be him and use their knowledge
(21:06):
of the recipient to further the illusion of the saints' omniscience.
They are simultaneously on both sides of the farce.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I didn't know that. I like that, I like I
say I think I talked a little bit about Santa
Claus and these episodes as well, and I feel my
own take is like, that's the comfortable space to be
in with some sort of a right like this, you know,
to acknowledge the illusion but also embrace the illusion and
have that middle space for a kind of like the
mythic Yeah. Anyway, Josh says, thanks for the intellectual stimulation.
(21:39):
Cheers Josh. By the way, speaking of gods and goddesses
and cults and mystery cults and so forth, I want
to give a quick shout out to a product that
I've really been enjoying recently. This is not a sponsor.
This is just something I like that it looks like
like not enough people have heard about. It only came
(22:00):
out a few months back. It's called Deifi, a mythical
solo role playing game by Alison de' antonio, and it's
really good. Like it is essentially, it's a game you
play by yourself, but it's also heavily based in like
creative writing prompts, and you use a tarot deck to
decide like what's happening as you follow the path of
(22:21):
a god or goddess from their emergence, you know, through
their prime years into their decline along the way, sort
of like navigating what's happening between the gods and also
what's happening with the earthly following below.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Oh interesting, So.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Check that out. If that sounds interesting to you, check
it out. You can buy this book anywhere you get books.
I'm just personally enjoying it a lot right now.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
All right, maybe let's move on to this email from
Jeff about an episode you did, Rob that was an
interview with an author about Douglas Adam.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, the episode in question was twenty twenty three's The
Mind of Douglas Adams with Kevin John Davies. Davies wrote
a book titled The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams,
detailing you know, a lot about the mind and the
life of the author who gave us The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. It was a fun little chat talking
about Adams, talking about Doctor Who, as well as some
(23:22):
other related classic science fiction and as is essential here
some video games that were related to the Hitchhikers world
and some of the other worlds of Douglas Adams and
his involvement in those games.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
That's right, So Jeff says, Hey, guys, I found this
unsent in my drafts folder.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
That's where the angry emails usually end up, right. They're like, oh,
I wisely decided not to send this one.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
How dare you? So Jeff goes on to say, maybe
not so useful for the show, given the delayed response
to a Vault episode and even more digression than normal,
But I thought you two might be personal interested anyway, Jeff,
much to your surprise, here we are here, we are now.
Jeff did have responses to a few other episodes, but
we're skipping ahead to the response to Douglas Adams here,
(24:11):
Jeff says, regarding the Vault episode about Douglas Adams, I
played the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Interactive Fiction game
back in the day, and it was indeed maddening. It
would lie to you at one point spoiler alert for
a forty year old game. You needed to impress an
AI screening device before it considered you worthy to access
(24:34):
a specific area. You had to show it something intellectually challenging.
The solution was to show it that you simultaneously possessed
both T and no ta. The only way to achieve
this was to go into your own mind and remove
your common sense, after which you could easily pick up
(24:55):
no tea while you had some tea in your inventory.
And Jeff, I sympathize. Part of the reason I wanted
to respond to this email despite your warnings was that
I also, when I was younger, played the Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy game, which was a if you never
played a game of this sort, it was kind of
like the Zork game. It was like text based adventure
(25:16):
game where you would type command so like you know,
open mailbox, pick up letter, use key, things like that,
and oh boy, this one. I never made it to
whatever situation you're talking about here. I got killed, just
over and over and over again. Much earlier in the game.
I would always get destroyed, like right in the initial invasion,
(25:36):
the Martians would come in, or I don't know if
they were martians, the aliens would come in and bulldoze
my house.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I could.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It took me forever to figure out how to get
out of the house.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Oh yeah, that's that's like that happens like right away
in Hitchhikers.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yes, I mean I think I was in middle school.
Maybe I'd figure it out better now. I don't know,
maybe having a little bit of a better sense of
the Douglas Adams sense of humor. Because also when I
played this game, I had no idea what Hitchhiker's Guide
to the cos He was. This was just installed on
a computer at school. Oh, and I didn't know what
it was or why.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Anyway, coming back to Jeff's message, while playing a different
interactive fiction game, I was completely baffled by a problem.
I couldn't just google for cheats back then, so in
desperation I wrote directly to the author of the game,
whoa store bough games could be created entirely by one
person then, And he sent back a hand typed postcard
(26:29):
I kept for many years that just said, dear Jeff,
throw the tape recorder through the window. I wonder what
the postman thought, you know, I think if you're a
postal worker, you see so much of other people's mail,
you just get bored with other people's secrets. Does it
even matter to read it anymore?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah? Nowadays they probably stop posting it on their Instagram,
Like after a couple of weeks of being a male
person Jeff continues.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
The Hitchhiker's Game was released by Infocom, probably the most
famous interactive fiction game in the company. Infocom's solution to
easing the adult brains of stuck players was the invention
of Invisicule's books. The books would include hints without ruining
the whole game for you. The questions were printed in
regular ink, but the solutions were in invisible ink that
(27:17):
would only be revealed when you ran the included magic
marker over them. So if the question is how do
I open the locked door, the first clue might be
something like did you notice the keyhole? The next, have
you encountered anyone holding a set of keys? And the
third wait until the guard is sleeping and steal his key.
(27:38):
The books had a good sense of humor and would
also mess with you. Since all the questions were immediately
visible and therefore potential spoilers, they peppered the hints with
red herrings like don't reveal the next clue until the
magic bird gives you the shovel, followed by there is
no magic bird in this game, don't ruin your experience
(27:58):
by revealing clues before where you are absolutely stuck, and
then Finally, Jeff says, well, buying and running these lost
games is difficult to do these days. There are sites
that allow you to play them now. Infocom's games are
true classics, but new interactive fiction games are still being
written today worth checking out.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah I should. I should check some of these out,
because this is a whole genre of games, early games
and contemporary games that I really don't know much about
and don't have any really any direct experience playing them.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
I can't believe I didn't think about this until now,
but I not only played a few of these text
based adventure games, I actually created some when I was
in middle school. Once again, I guess I was exposed
to these things and I was learning CE basic and
I started programming little text based adventures that I thought
were hilarious at the time. I don't know what i'd
(28:50):
think now. I don't remember what I thought was so funny,
but I was really yucking it up there on my
IBM three eighty six. Okay, should we do some weird
house cinema? Respont?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Sure? Sure? This next one comes to us from Scott.
Subject line the telephone box comments from an old Hi guys.
I enjoyed listening to your recent weird House episode on
the telephone box. Being a person who grew up in
the long ago days when telephone booths ranged the landscape
(29:23):
in their thousands, I was amused by the two of
you trying to remember if you'd ever actually used one.
In questioning the apparent incongruity of seeking privacy to make
a phone call while standing in a class box in
full view. As an official old guy, I believe I
can enlighten you. Privacy is certainly an aspect of the
enclosed phone booths of your but not in the way
you surmised. Since phone booths were commonly located in busy
(29:46):
public spaces, environmental noise was a problem. The enclosure was
to keep external noises out, rather than keeping your conversation in.
Since you generally had to have coins in hand to
use one, it was extremely frustrating to pay for the
call only to have a loud bust roll past, obliterating
what you or the other person said.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
They really should have thought of this. Yes, obviously, the
enclosure is to so you can hear your call despite
being right on the street corner.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, because nowadays we all on our cell phones, we
inevitably have that situation. I have, like a train that
runs by my house, so sometimes I'll be outside, I'll
be on the phone. Here comes a train, so I
can walk inside and get out of the noise. And
you can do that kind of thing obviously in various
urban environments as well, you know, walk around the corner,
walk inside a restaurant, maybe if they'll allow that. But yeah,
(30:35):
I should have thought about this as well. Anyway, they
continue making it out in public was a safety feature too.
By being fully exposed to view, thieves couldn't use one
to lie in ambush undetected, nor could a victim be
pulled into an opay box to be roughed up away
from witnesses. The full enclosure also protected the user from
(30:58):
the elements, keeping you dry in the rain and snow,
protected from wind, and helping to mitigate the cold. Some
had small ventilation fans to alleviate the greenhouse effect of
all that glass in summer, although one has to wonder
if the protection was for the benefit of the user
or the telephone equipment. I enjoy being entertained and enlightened
by your work.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Thank you, Scott, excellent point, Scott, Thank you very much.
For some reason, the telephone booth scene that kept going
through my head while reading this is actually the one
in Scanners where he hacks the computer with his brain
from the telephone.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yes, great scene. Yeah, we talked about that in our
Weird House episode on Scanners. I also after we did
the episode, I kept thinking about Clark Kent, of course
always goes into or used to always going to a
phone booth to transform into Superman. Or maybe he didn't
even do it all that that many times, but he
became the cliche. It became like the iconic thing, like
(31:53):
it's a place where you can go and change all
your clothes and change your identity and come out as
a superhuman, come out as your real identity, take off
your human disguise, all right.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
This next message is from Ken. Ken says, I love
the recent reviews of short films and I have a recommendation.
If you haven't heard of it before, there is a
short film called The Cube by Jim Henson of the Muppets, etc.
I think you can find it on YouTube. I saw
it on television when I was seven years old and
it really freaked me out. I also didn't understand it
(32:24):
at all. I had no recollection of what the film
was called, and years later I had to do numerous
online searches with vague descriptions until I finally found it.
Hope you find it interesting. Thanks again for the podcast. Sincerely,
Ken Well Ken Weird Minds Think Alike. This is already
on my list, It's on my running list for the show.
I've been thinking about it for months now.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Oh, I'm all for it. This is a film that
I'm very familiar with from some of the Jim Henson
documentaries I've seen over the years and exhibits to Atlanta's
Center for Pubetry Arts, that sort of thing. But I've
never seen it in full, or at least I don't
think I have. So Yeah, the next time we were
feeling the pull for some short cinema, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
By the way, for those who may be confused about
this right now, this is a different film than Cube,
the one where people awaken in a giant maze of cubes,
many of which are like full of saws and stuff
that murder them.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
But I'm up for that one as well, and I
don't think I've ever seen that one in full. I've
just seen like chunks of it, bloody chunks of it
on TV back in the day.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
I think that one's Canadian, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
It is, in fact Canadian. Yes, so they're both on
the list. Yeah, both get everything you want. Ken all right,
This next one comes to us from Lawrence. Lawrence says, Hi, Robert, Joe,
and JJ, thank you for covering The Hunger. I never
realized it was poorly received. It's resurgence in the nineties,
(33:53):
where all things vampire reign culturally supreme, was not nearly
as surprising. I'll always thought of The Hunger as one
of those non vampire vampire stories, movies that sort of
lie somewhere between sci fi blood drinkers and people who
only think they're vampires. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I do know what you mean. The only movie I
can think of at the moment where it's ambiguous where
the vampire is actually a vampire is George Rameiro's Martin.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
That's a big one. Yeah, you also see this if
we think of this as like a soft vampire film,
we do also have examples of software wolf films, and
as I recently discussed on The Monster Fact, this is
kind of an interesting category because you can get into
the history of the terminology for like lacanthropy and werewolf,
(34:40):
but especially lacanthropy is early usage being like a catch
all description for different conditions that were probably mental illnesses.
And so there's this whole realm of usage for the
term lacanthropy that is just tied to you know, actual
observations and atten to classify some forms of mental illness
(35:06):
or disease. So yeah, In fact, one of the big
ones the the Lon Cheney Junior Wolfman movie. Originally in
the script that one was going to leave it ambiguous
whether he was turning into a wolf or not, like
it was going to be a software wolf movie. And
then at some point in the production they were like, no, no, no,
we want a real wolf man. People want to see
(35:27):
a wolf man, and so it took the form that
we all know and love. It's hard to argue with
that absolutely anyway. The email continues here from Lawrence. Lawrence says,
as for Weird House Picks nineteen eighty two's Cat People
and Donkey Skin are both touched the fur movies. I
can recommend both because Criterion has a beautiful transfer of
Donkey Skin and Cat People spares showing us any Malcolm
(35:51):
McDowell Sex. Thanks thanks for all you do, Lawrence. Indeed, Lawrence,
that is all essential to know. Moving farm. All right.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
This next message is from Jesse. Jesse says, hey, guys,
I'll have to not gush here. I love you both
and I'm so grateful for your shows. And then Jesse
goes on to say some very nice things about the podcast.
We'll skip a bit here, but thank you Jesse, very
kind of you. Jesse says, I do have some suggestions
that I have not seen on Weird House Cinema yet.
(36:29):
The first suggestion is an afterthought and not why I
originally wanted to write in. However, I was watching this
movie with my kids tonight and realized with surprise that
I hadn't yet seen it come into your purview. Flight
of the Navigator. It is so obvious I am forced
to conclude that you had already considered it and decided
it just doesn't fit, which I understand with protest if
(36:51):
the case. No, I don't think we've ruled it out yet,
or I don't know if you have. I haven't looked
into it. I haven't seen this movie.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I saw it as a kid, and I have to
say flight to the Navigator. This was nineteen eighty six.
This one really unsettled me in a way I don't
think I ever quite recovered from. Like, it has some
minor spoilers, it has some plot elements and including that
involved like time dilation, and and it just gets it
(37:20):
gets a lot heavier than perhaps I expected, to the
degree to which I had any expectations going into movies
as a kid. But yeah, this one troubled me. And
I think it troubled me enough that I've kind of
stayed away from it, Like not to this extent where
I'm turning down opportunities to watch it, but I've maybe
(37:41):
just have like subconscious barriers up to rewatching Flight of
the Navigator. Therefore, I would obviously love to go back
and watch it and reevaluate it as a grown up
and as a parent and all of that. So yeah,
I'd love to put it on the list. I know
it's one that a lot of folks saw. Ask and
I wonder how many other viewers had a similar reaction
(38:04):
to the one I had.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Sorry, I was laughing during your answer because I realized
I was mixing up two movies. Really, until you started
talking about I was not thinking of Flight of the Navigator.
I was thinking of night Flyers from nineteen eighty seven,
which is the George R. R. Martin and vampire movie
with Miguel Ferraer. Wait, oh my god, no, this is
(38:29):
I double mixed it up. I was mixing up George R.
Martin's Night Flyers, the sci fi horror movie, with Flight
of the Navigator. But what I really had in my
mind was not Night Flyers. It was The night Flyer,
a film with Miguel Ferrera about a vampire that is
based on a story by Stephen King, which I was
confusing with the Martin sci fi. This is all a
(38:52):
jumble now, but either way, I was thinking about like
an R rated horror movie, not not like I made
for kids.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Oh well, I haven't seen The night Flyer, nor did
I ever read the short story that it's based upon.
But I do remember seeing the video box with that
piteous looking vampire and the airplane on it.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
It would be hilarious if Jesse wrote in like, yeah,
the other day I was watching The night Flyer with
my kids.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
All right, well, we'll put them all on the consideration list.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Next, Jesse says, the second suggestion is why I'm writing
have you guys seen the nineteen eighty five made for
TV rendition of Alice in Wonderland? Hands down the weirdest
movie I have ever seen, terrifying in parts with the
grace of such stars as Ringo Starr and Sammy Davis Junior.
The music is terrible and the movie is long and bad.
(39:47):
Whether or not you ever take the leap and do
it for the show, given your proclivities, I highly recommend
you at least check it out for yourselves, as it
is unmatched as far as zany eighties fair goes. Also,
the rendition of the Jabberwaukee in that movie gave me
nightmares for years as a kid. It is great. You
can watch it free on YouTube, and then Jesse shares
(40:09):
a link. Jesse says all my best, deepest thanks to you, guys. Jesse, Well,
thank you so much, Jesse. I really really appreciate the
email and the suggestions. I've not seen either of these movies,
but I'm going to look up the Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
I looked at it briefly on IMDb, and I did
notice that Jason Lives director Tom McLachlan plays the Jabberwakie
is in the jabberwaki suit, So there you go.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Oh my god, I just looked it up. It looks
like what does it remind me of?
Speaker 2 (40:39):
It's like.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
That that Russian rendition of Lord of the Rings, but
with much brighter colors.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
The jabberwaki costume in question does look horrifying, like in
not super JABBERWACKI e. You know, it doesn't look like
that iconic illustration so much. It looks a little weirdly fleshy.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Man says Bow Bridges and Carol Channing.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Oh wow, yeah, I glanced at the cast. It's a crazy,
crazy collection of actors.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Lloyd Bridges is the White Knight, John Stamos Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
All right. As we begin to close out here, I'm
just gonna turn to discord here. I have a few
just random short thoughts from folks here about various things,
beginning here with Thorkwall. Thorkwell writes then and says, I
(41:38):
just finished listening to part three of Hunters of the
Deep and had mentioned it to my significant other, and
she pointed out a fact I may have missed if
it was mentioned. I've never realized the Black Sea Devil
angler it was only six inches or fifteen centimeters or
so long. I too had similar posters of fish growing
up like rob and perhaps the various illustrations not drawn
(42:01):
to scale threw off my perspective. I'm glad it's not
just me.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
See, it's often hard to get scale with uh, with
sea creatures, you know. Yeah, you don't have like a
tree in the background to.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, or tape measure or a tape dispenser. That's what
you put next to things, right, all right? And then
a shadow rat rites, Senden says. I just watched and
loved La Cabina. It really reminded me of the nineties
movie Cube. Oh, with this sense that some unchecked industry
(42:34):
is just producing this horrifying death trap for no reason.
It has to have been an inspiration for.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Cube seems quite possible.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, all right, then hot Napalm death rights, Senden says, finally,
listening to the Dune episodes, one factor that you missed
when discussing the failed Jodrowski Dune project was that if
it had succeeded, we probably wouldn't have Alien or the
Alien franchise. That's a great, great point as well. I
think we did allude to the fact that that project
(43:07):
not coming together did lead to a number of different projects,
things that Jordroowski himself did, like say the Metabarons graphic
novel series. That's great in his work with Mobius there,
but yeah, so many other things kind of sprang out
of that. It was very much like a we can
almost think of it as a whale fall, a cinematic
(43:29):
whale fall. Like it did not come to fruition. It
sank to the bottom and it was consumed by all
of these other creatures and therefore fed a rich ecosystem.
All right, Taylor Wright Senten says, just finish the Hunger episode,
and it reminded me of another eternal vampire goth romance
movie that The Hunger must have inspired and would make
(43:51):
its own excellent weird house episode Only Lovers Left Alive.
Tilda Swinton and Tom Hilston are our listless immortal in
that one, which tackles a lot of the same US
against the World themes that Joe referenced and has a
great shoegaze score. Also, my wife and I watched The
Love Witch for our Valentine's Day after a few of
(44:12):
y'all here in the discord turned me on to it,
and may I say thank you, it was a darkly
hilarious treat. All real world reds are dull.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Now The Love Witch is fantastic. I think often about
the way that movie looks, which is so interesting. It
feels both reminiscent of a time gone by, like it
looks like a way that it seems movies used to
look but don't look anymore, but also feels like a
totally different visual aesthetic has been created as well.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, I recently rewatched The Love Witch on an airplane
and fell in love with it all over again. I
feel like it in its own way. It's a perfect
film in that it clearly knew exactly what it wanted
to convey and what it wanted to capture and and
seemingly pulled all of that off. So I can't recommend
(45:03):
The love Which enough. It's you know, it's maybe not
for everyone, but if it is for you, then it's
perfect all right. And finally, there was some discussion on
the discord about what sort of film we should be
considering for the two hundredth Weird House Cinema selection, which
is coming up let's see a week from tomorrow, So Joe,
you can give me some feedback here I'm just going
to run through the list of the movies that were mentioned.
(45:26):
First of all, nineteen seventy five is the Rocky Horror
Picture Show classic of course. Yeah, seventy four's Phantom of
the Paradise. Ooh, I mean we talk about that at
least every couple of weeks anyway. Yeah, yeah, Midsommer from
twenty nineteen. I haven't seen that when I can't come.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
I liked it. It's a great feel bad movie. But no,
I mean it really is good. But the vibes are
bad and it's a good film, and it I don't
know if I want to talk about that on Weird House.
It seems like it'd be a bummer of a time.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Was that a twenty four film? Yes, okay, there's I
recently with Serve some ads or maybe I follow the
account for an a twenty four film themed burless show,
and my initial thought was like, I think they pulled
it off. I think they pulled it off. I saw
later the images It's like it looked fun but I
was like, wow, that is a challenging theme for your
burless show to go with a twenty four But.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
I respect that though. That's funny and I can see
how you can make it work. But yeah, Midsommar is great,
but I kind of doubt we'll do it on Weird House.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Okay, how about the next one? Nineteen ninety nine's BeO
Wolf starting with stuff Lambert.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
I don't know, that's more possible. It's been a long
time since I've seen it. That's the one that's like
sci fi BeO Wolf It yeah, place in a castle
in the future or maybe with lasers.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, it's all fun and games until the worst CGI
thing of all time emerges. It's like Beyond the Rock
Scorpion monster.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
The Grendel I recall looks like it's made out of
CGI link sausages.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, that's the one, all right. So that one's a
maybe nineteen ninety nine's bi centennial man.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Never seen it. But is that the one that's got
Robin Williams as a robot of some kind?
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah? Yeah, I feel like we might do a Robin
Williams film eventually. He was such a great and weird
performer in his own right. But I think there's some
other Robin Williams films that are going to be a
little higher up the list. Flubber sure, all right, nineteen
ninety nine's Wild Zero, the Japanese comedy horror film.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Weirdly Enough, I was just recently looking at revisiting that
on the show. I saw that when I was in
high school. My friend Ben showed it to me, and
that was a great time. I recall it's been for long.
I barely remember it, but I recall it was absolutely nuts,
but in a great, great way.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
All right. The next one is the Romanian sci fi
animated film Delta Space Mission. This is one I haven't
seen it. I don't think you've seen it either, but
this one has been on my radar because looks super weird.
I actually I watched part of it on an airplane,
but then switch to something else because I just not
because there was anything wrong with it, but it just
wasn't the vibe I was going for at the moment.
(48:10):
But it was on Criterion Channel for a bit, and
I believe def Crocodile put it out on Blu Ray.
I have a really nice package. It looks amazing. I
don't know if it's right for the two hundredth Weird
House Cinema selection, but it is one we might come
back to. And then finally it was also mentioned that
we might consider nineteen eighty three's Video Drome, given that
we often reference the Atlanta Videodrome a rental store. Plus.
(48:34):
Videodrome is a movie that does come up in our
conversations a lot, both on Weird House Cinema and un
Stuck to Below Your Mind.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
You know, I think of it almost more like a
reference text for us than something we would feature. But
if that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
That's somehow I have similar feelings about. I'm very much
on the fence when it comes to Rocky Horror Picture
Show because it's Rocky Horror Picture Show feels like kind
of a foundation text, at least for me personally, and like, so,
I don't know. It's like sometimes I'm like, yes, we
absolutely should do Rocky Our Picture Show, and then other
times I'm like, no, It's like Rocky our Picture Show
(49:09):
is what you refer back to to make sense of
everything else.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
So I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.
That's sort of what I mean about Video Dream.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Yeah, seems more like.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
The thing that we compare and contrast the movie we're
talking about two rather than the movie we talk about.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, So ultimately, maybe we're more likely to do like
shock treatment at some point, or do some sort of
obviously a bad video drome rip off that sort of thing.
At any rate, I really enjoyed reading through everyone's suggestions
in the Discord Server. That's the sort of back and
forth you can get if you joined The Stuff to
Blow your Mind discord Server.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
I'm not promising either one, but for some reason, I
would say it's more likely that we do existens than
that we do video drome.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that would be that would be
a choice for sure. I haven't seen that one in
a while. All Right, well, we're going to keep thinking
about it. You'll find out one way or another in
about a week. In the meantime, we thank everyone for
writing in, and we just encourage you to keep writing.
We remind you The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
(50:14):
Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Again, write in
if you want to join the discord Server, look look
find us online. We're on various social media accounts as well.
Get the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and if
you're on letterboxed, you can go there and find us.
(50:36):
On letterbox our username is weird House. Follow us there
and you can find a nice list of all the
Weird House movies we've ever done.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Stuffed Blow your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener Mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And I am Joe McCormick and today as Rob I
think just said, we are bringing you listener mail. Of course,
at the end of every episode we give out our
email address for listeners like you to get in touch.
That address is contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
dot com. It's been a little bit since the last one,
so we are doing some catch up on series that
(00:35):
have been a few weeks back at this point. But yeah,
please keep the email coming. We do love all the
messages we get. We're not able to respond to everything
that comes into the inbox on the show itself, but
rest assured we do read all of it. We appreciate
all that we get. And again that is contact at
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Get in touch
(00:56):
anytime to let us know your thoughts about episodes we've
done on the show, or just to suggest something for
us to cover, or even just to share something interesting,
something you think that would tickle our fancy.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Yeah, you never know. Sometimes it can we can spin
it off into an episode and some folks also choose
to take part in the Discord Server for Stuff to
Blow your Mind and Weird House Cinema. If you would
like to join that discord Server, we'll just shoot us
an email at the aforementioned address and we'll shoot you
the link to join.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
All right, well, I think we should kick things off
with some responses to the series we did called The Mysteries.
This was a collection of episodes about the mystery religions
or the mystery cults of the ancient Greco Roman world.
Let's see, Rob, Do you mind if I start with
this message from Hannah.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
This message is responding to a part of the series
where we were talking about the general context of ancient
Greek and Roman polytheism, like how the cults of those
gods were quite a bit different from what a person
today might expect, especially if that person grew up in
culture primarily influenced by one of the big monotheisms. Some
of those differences were that within these ancient Greco Roman polytheisms,
(02:06):
there was generally no expectation of exclusivity in a person's
relationship with any one god. The main public cults were
not really focused on things like faith and belief, but
instead on rituals and sacrifices, ritual sacrifices and festivals. You know,
it's a party time as well, so you know, people
would perform rituals and sacrifices in exchange for the expectation
(02:29):
of blessings from the god in question. Another thing is
just how many gods there were. There were lots and
lots of them who could each provide blessings related to
different parts of human life, things like economic situations, health
and reproduction, specific areas of geography and geographical features. And
in this discussion, Rob brought up this analogy comparing the
(02:51):
religious environment to a cheesecake factory menu except which I
thought was a good one, except with the variation that,
unlike the cheesecake fact which is centrally organized, it's a chain.
The public cults of the ancient Greek and Roman world
were not centrally organized. There wasn't really like a pope
of Greco Roman religion to make everybody do the same thing. Instead,
(03:12):
you had lots of local cult control and even tons
of local gods and local variations on the worship of
widespread gods. And so listener Hannah gets in touch to
offer a contribution to this analogy, Hannah says, with subject
(03:32):
line A variety platter of deities. Hi, again, I had
to pause the Mystery Cult episode just to send you this.
The perfect metaphor for ancient polytheism isn't a cheesecake factory menu.
It's a local diner menu. Now that's the kind of
distinction I appreciate it. Let's hear Hannah's case here. Hannah says,
(03:53):
you know how some of them can be improbably long
because they keep adding on odds and ends or recombinations
of the same and green vidience. Plus, you have some
standard diner fair you'd expect to see almost anywhere, and
then in parentheses burger slash sun God maybe, plus local
stuff parentheses grits in the South scrapple and Pennsylvania hyperlocal
(04:15):
river God perhaps, and whatever stuff from the culture of
the diner owners who maybe came from elsewhere. You've probably
been to a Greek diner or an Italian flavored diner.
Maybe these are the deities brought to a region by migration,
trade or conquest. Anyway, thank you as always for sharing
the joy and light of learning and exploring ideas. Y'all
(04:37):
are life savers and now I really want to milkshake.
Cheers Hannah. Well, Hannah, bravo. I thoroughly approve of this analogy.
I think it's great.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
Yes, our original analogy was imperfect, as sometimes our real
time analogies tend to be. This is a perfection of
the analogy, so greatly appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
All right, let's see Rob, you want to do this next?
And from Jamie. Yeah, let's see a bit of context.
This one brings up a couple things in the episode.
One is the comparisons between ancient Greco Roman mystery cults
and Christianity. It's long been a question in historical and
religious scholarship to what extent Christianity should or should not
be thought of as one of the mystery cults or
(05:19):
influenced by one of the mystery cults. And then the
other thing is just about our use of the word
cult in the context of ancient Greek and Roman religion,
where it has none of the negative connotations as today.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
All right, then here is the email from Jamie. Dear
Robert and Joe. I'm enjoying the pod as always, and
especially the recent episode on the mystery cults of the
ancient world. I would have liked to hear even more,
not just about how Christianity may have been a kind
of mystery cult to begin with, but about how this
(05:53):
tradition has continued even to this day, at least in Catholicism.
Mysteries such as the Trinity, for example, are our essentral
part of faith, and one is encouraged to contemplate the
mysteries such as the Resurrection and Denunciation while praying the Rosary.
On another cult point, I liked how you pointed out
the call of Cthulhu version of the cultist as a
(06:15):
hooded fiend. But if you are interested in reading a
story that does an excellent job, in my opinion, presenting
Cthulhu worship as if it were a mystery cult in
the ancient sense, I recommend copying Squid by Michael Shae.
Keep up the good work, Jane.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Oh thanks, Jamie. Well maybe we should go in reverse
order here. I've only read one story ever by Michael,
she called The Autopsy. But that story was fantastic, so
I'm interested to read more. Michael Shay's a horror, horror
and fantasy writer.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
Yeah, horror, fantasy, some science fiction thrown in there as well.
He lived nineteen forty six through twenty fourteen. One of
my favorite weird fiction authors. I actually got to exchange
a couple of like fan emails with him once. Yeah,
the highlight of my fan emailing career. But his Niffeline
(07:09):
fantasy tales are absolutely amazing, well worth seeking out. He
also wrote a number of great weird fiction tales, including
several that take place in the Cthulhu mythos. Coughing Squid
is a good one. I haven't read that one in years, though,
so the mystery cult aspects of it have kind of
faded for my recollection. But this one is collected in
a collection that I have demiurge, the Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales.
(07:33):
That one also includes fat Face, which is one of
his better known stories. And yeah, the Autopsy, as you mentioned, Yeah,
that is another really well known Shay story. That one
was adapted into an episode of Germeal de Toro's Cabinet
of Curiosity, that one directed by David Pryor.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Now I wonder in what sense Jamie means Coping Squid
is about Cuthulhu worship as an actual mystery cult in
the historical sense. Does that mean that it relies on
secret knowledge. I mean, I guess the grit knowledge is
sort of already there in the original story. Maybe that
it's more about the experience of the initiate like that, Yeah,
the core part.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I think. So there are there are two different Michael
she myth those stories that are kind of combined in
my memory, and I really need to revisit them to
tease them apart. But I have a vague recollection of
a story that is very much from the the cultest
or would be cultest point of view, you know, beginning
to have this initiation into the sacred rights of Cuthula.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
That's actually a great idea for a story, given the
like historical knowledge we have now about what the initiation
process was. Probably, like I'm thinking specifically of the Eleusinian mysteries,
where there's this idea that you know, everyone would have
been told that it's a you know, it's a really
powerful experience, it'll change your life, it'll let you go
without a burden into the into the underworld at the
(08:51):
time of death. And so you've heard all this good
stuff about it, but people can't tell you what it is. Yeah,
and so like what if you get there and the
truth of what the experience is is quite horrifying. But
then for some reason you have to keep go telling
people like, yeah, it's great, you got to go, and yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:05):
I really need to read these stories again, because again,
Michael Shay is terrific. He is one of those authors
that I will I keep coming back to and I'll
just figure out is well, what's a story of his
that I'm very fond of, but I've also forgotten most
off and then it's time to dive back in.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Now coming back to the first half of Jamie's email
about the comparisons between Christianity and mystery cults, for one thing,
extending into the comparisons of modern Christianity to mystery cults.
There's actually a significant part of the book. One of
the main sources we talked about in that series, the
book by Hugh Boden Mystery Cults in the Ancient World.
(09:45):
But yeah, so Boden toward the end of the book
has a long section in which you makes some pretty
strong comparisons between what we know about the experience of
being in an ancient mystery cult, and not so much
with Catholicism but with certain Pentecostal forms of Christianity. Specifically
like the ecstatic snake handling cults of Appalachia. But as
(10:06):
to the broader question of Christianity and mystery cults, it
is interesting, like there have long been these questions, like
to what extent does the Christian practice of baptism constitute
and initiation ritual is the Eucharist, like the ritual taking
of bread and wine as the body and blood of Christ?
Is that a mystery practice? Also questions about whether Christianity
(10:30):
began as something more like the other mystery religions or
was influenced by them and then maybe drifted away to
become a more doctrinal cult. But I think a lot
of scholars now kind of disagree with that interpretive lens
because specifically the idea that Christianity was strongly influenced by
(10:51):
the mystery cults or began as a mystery cult. And
I think one of the main reasons a lot of
historians have turned against that is that that kind of
under the particular features of Judaism as a foundational influence
on Christianity. And it's fair to point out that there
is a lot we don't know about the early years
of Christianity and its origins, but of course, that cuts
(11:13):
both ways against all interpretations, but based on what we
do know, I think the best interpretation of the origin
of Christianity is that it began as an apocalyptic movement
within Judaism, which was focused on the idea that the
Jewish God would soon come down to destroy wickedness, invert
existing power relationships like overthrow Roman control and so forth,
(11:36):
and establish a good, just kingdom on earth, sort of
right all wrongs. And then as early Christians tried to
make sense of the death and then their belief in
the resurrection of their leader, Jesus of Nazareth. And then
also as the story of Jesus began to spread among
Greek and Roman polytheists rather than only among Jews, it
(11:57):
morphed into a religion of individual salvation, being not about
the fact that God would soon come to earth and
set things right, but about the idea that you need
to set yourself right with God by accepting the saving
sacrifice of Christ. But again, there's a lot we don't
know about the early years of Christianity with great confidence,
so it's hard to be too sure about any particular
(12:19):
story of how it evolved. However, there is an interesting
vocabulary fact that I don't think we talked about in
the episode Rob let me know if we did get
into this, and I'm forgetting. But it's the idea of
the early Christian use of the Greek word mysterion, which
is often used to refer to the mystery the initiation rights,
(12:39):
the secret initiation rights of cults, like the Elusinian mysteries.
The word mysterion does appear in early Christian texts such
as the Gospels and in some of the epistles in
the New Testament, where it seems in this context it's
used not to refer to initiation rights. Instead, mysterion here
(13:00):
is always used to refer to secret knowledge, generally hidden
knowledge that has been revealed in secret to a privileged group.
So one example is like when Jesus is telling the
parable of the Sower in the Gospel of Mark. Apparently
in the Greek there is invocation of the word mysterion there,
referring to the secret interpretation of the parable that Jesus
(13:25):
gives only to his inner circle of disciples, so that
the masses only sort of hear the parable and puzzle
what to make of it. But then there is a
secret knowledge, a sort of secret reading of the parable
that is given to his inner circle. So that's how
the word mysterion is used in early Christian writings from
the first and second centuries CE, but then a few
(13:48):
centuries later, I think it's by like the fourth century CE.
Boden says, this is happening. The word mysterion is now
just commonly used to refer to Christian ritual like the
Eucharist or baptism, and there has been scholarly debate about why,
like why is the word mysterion used here. Some think
(14:10):
that it's like the influence of Greek and Roman polytheism. Basically,
it's like, you know, taking a word from one religious
context and applying it to the new dominant religion where
it once referred to these rituals. But Boden actually makes
an argument that this application of the word mystery on
to something like the Eucharist is it reflects, in his view,
(14:32):
an understanding that the Christians had at the time that
the rituals were forms of secret knowledge. So it's more
in keeping with the way the word is used in
the early Christian texts, like forms of secret knowledge that
are now revealed, So you know, the secret of baptism
and the Eucharist that was previously known only to God
(14:55):
and perhaps to some of the prophets, but now these
rituals are known to all Christians, have been revealed by Jesus.
It is a secret that has been that you have
been brought in on. And of course, Uh, there is
the long running question of comparisons between baptism and UH
and various forms of cultic initiation, including initiation to the
(15:16):
mystery cults. Uh. This could well be a legitimate sort
of common growth or or you know, a legitimate comparison here.
But of course it's worth pointing out that baptism predates Christianity,
and that's not even a controversial fact even among Christians.
Like you know, Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
It's it was a pre existing practice, right right.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
I can I can see that, basing it for in
part just on my own experience, like baptism as a child. Uh,
it's uh, you know, it's it's there are mysteries involved,
it's it's it's kind of frightful, like you're you have
to go in the back of the church and go
through like secret chambers. They're not really secret, but they
felt kind of secret. You have to like wear awn
(16:00):
over your swimsuit and then go into a like a
walk in bathtub with a master it's you know, and
then you're dunked. It was. It was a weird, memorable experience.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, though, as you know, we talked about, I think
a little bit in the episode, the idea that there
may have been some ways rituals were done earlier in
Christianity that tended to be more in the imagistic religious
fashion that became more doctrinal as.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
Time went on.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
That might not be always true in every case, but
in some certain cases it is. And I think baptism
might be a good point there, because it could well
be that baptism was something that was initially meant as
a much more overwhelming, powerful emotional experience, and then it
transitioned into something that people did with infants where you're
not even really going to have an experiential memory of it.
(16:48):
So yeah, there's less emphasis on the overwhelming emotional experience
and encounter with the power of God.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Yeah. Yeah, And of course walk in bathtubs came later
as well.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Right, Yes, but as your story points out, of course,
I mean even later Christians and modern Christians still do
adult baptism, not just infant baptism. You know, it's just,
you know, there there are different theological points of view
on that.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Clearly we could come back at some later date and
do an entire episode on baptism and baptism related rites.
Oh yeah, absolutely, all right, I'm gonna read the next
one since, uh, since you had a long response to
that last one, give you, We'll give you a break.
This one's This one comes to us from Josh, also
a response to the Mystery Cults, specifically to part three. Uh.
I don't remember which part three really was, but I'm
(17:31):
sure the email will get into it, so Josh says, Hi,
Joe Robert at all. Listening to the Mysteries Part three,
one of you mentioned eating in the Spirit Realm in
connection with Cora and Hades. I made an immediate connection
to one of my favorite films, Spirited Away, which seems
(17:51):
to have the opposite physics. To Heroes parents were turned
into pigs, but they had eaten the food for the spirits,
and thus it was a punished whereas to hero herself
had to eat from the Spirit realm food in order
to avoid fading. Out of existence as far as the
mysteries themselves are concerned. The totality of the descriptions led
me to wonder if they were what would now be
(18:14):
considered a magic show. Obviously, if viewers did partake in
an hallucinogenic substance, it would certainly have heightened the experience.
If the rights were magic tricks, you wouldn't want outsiders
copying them because of competition, but also a poor reenactment
would possibly ruin the magic by exposing the trick.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
I think that's a good point, and I don't. Yeah,
a lot clearly a lot of theatricality was involved could
well extend to like sleight of hand or other types
of tricks.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Yeah, yeah, I mean we got into this a little
bit with Glicon too. Like the criticism of glic On
the Serpent God was that it was a like an
obvious puppet, and you know, they might have had an
ax to grind, as we discussed, but we might read
into that that like, yeah, whatever your tricks are, they
need to be convincing. But then again, are your tricks
(19:05):
going to be convincing to someone who doesn't like, willingly
want to believe and be you know, wowed. I can
imagine some folks just coming into the mystery cults and like,
do you not want to be converted? Do you not
want to have a revelation about the nature of the universe?
You just want to point at things and accuse them
of being puppets? You know.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
I still think we never got an answer on the
question I had about like what was the spirit of
the criticism of the puppet, Like, was it a problem
that it's a puppet? Because in the religious context here
you've got cult statues for most cults, so it's not
like it's a problem to have a physical representation of
the God that's not literally the God's body. So what's
(19:45):
the Was it an issue of taste? Did they not
like that the puppet was animated? I don't know, Like,
I think we never quite got to the bottom of like,
what was it about the fact that it's a puppet
that is so bad?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah? I mean, there are lots of bits in churches
Protestant churches today and have been for decades. Christian puppetry
the whole realm unto itself.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
But then you had the other side where you had
like the Christian writers just trying to spoil it for people, yeah, saying, like,
what really happens in the Secret Temple is that they
have sex in there.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
All right. Well, Josh continues here and says in terms
of the idea that it may just be copulation or
some other such mondanity. If they had managed to make
a non lethal hallucinogen, and if that was not available
to the masses, anything they showed the initiates would have
been impressive. Maybe it was just the first black light
art accompanied by Rosius Floyd's Dark Side of Luna's That's cute. Nice.
(20:44):
As for Christmas, in the Netherlands, we have center Class,
which is the Saint's birthday, not Jesus's. Families do a
sort of secret Sannah where they give gifts which are
accompanied by a poem written by the giver about the
receiver from the point of view of the Saint. So,
even while believing in the authenticity of the living Saint,
children still pretend to be him and use their knowledge
(21:06):
of the recipient to further the illusion of the saints' omniscience.
They are simultaneously on both sides of the farce.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's interesting.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I didn't know that. I like that, I like I
say I think I talked a little bit about Santa
Claus and these episodes as well, and I feel my
own take is like, that's the comfortable space to be
in with some sort of a right like this, you know,
to acknowledge the illusion but also embrace the illusion and
have that middle space for a kind of like the
mythic Yeah. Anyway, Josh says, thanks for the intellectual stimulation.
(21:39):
Cheers Josh. By the way, speaking of gods and goddesses
and cults and mystery cults and so forth, I want
to give a quick shout out to a product that
I've really been enjoying recently. This is not a sponsor.
This is just something I like that it looks like
like not enough people have heard about. It only came
(22:00):
out a few months back. It's called Deifi, a mythical
solo role playing game by Alison de' antonio, and it's
really good. Like it is essentially, it's a game you
play by yourself, but it's also heavily based in like
creative writing prompts, and you use a tarot deck to
decide like what's happening as you follow the path of
(22:21):
a god or goddess from their emergence, you know, through
their prime years into their decline along the way, sort
of like navigating what's happening between the gods and also
what's happening with the earthly following below.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Oh interesting, So.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Check that out. If that sounds interesting to you, check
it out. You can buy this book anywhere you get books.
I'm just personally enjoying it a lot right now.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
All right, maybe let's move on to this email from
Jeff about an episode you did, Rob that was an
interview with an author about Douglas Adam.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Yeah, the episode in question was twenty twenty three's The
Mind of Douglas Adams with Kevin John Davies. Davies wrote
a book titled The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams,
detailing you know, a lot about the mind and the
life of the author who gave us The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy. It was a fun little chat talking
about Adams, talking about Doctor Who, as well as some
(23:22):
other related classic science fiction and as is essential here
some video games that were related to the Hitchhikers world
and some of the other worlds of Douglas Adams and
his involvement in those games.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
That's right, So Jeff says, Hey, guys, I found this
unsent in my drafts folder.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
That's where the angry emails usually end up, right. They're like, oh,
I wisely decided not to send this one.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
How dare you? So Jeff goes on to say, maybe
not so useful for the show, given the delayed response
to a Vault episode and even more digression than normal,
But I thought you two might be personal interested anyway, Jeff,
much to your surprise, here we are here, we are now.
Jeff did have responses to a few other episodes, but
we're skipping ahead to the response to Douglas Adams here,
(24:11):
Jeff says, regarding the Vault episode about Douglas Adams, I
played the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Interactive Fiction game
back in the day, and it was indeed maddening. It
would lie to you at one point spoiler alert for
a forty year old game. You needed to impress an
AI screening device before it considered you worthy to access
(24:34):
a specific area. You had to show it something intellectually challenging.
The solution was to show it that you simultaneously possessed
both T and no ta. The only way to achieve
this was to go into your own mind and remove
your common sense, after which you could easily pick up
(24:55):
no tea while you had some tea in your inventory.
And Jeff, I sympathize. Part of the reason I wanted
to respond to this email despite your warnings was that
I also, when I was younger, played the Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy game, which was a if you never
played a game of this sort, it was kind of
like the Zork game. It was like text based adventure
(25:16):
game where you would type command so like you know,
open mailbox, pick up letter, use key, things like that,
and oh boy, this one. I never made it to
whatever situation you're talking about here. I got killed, just
over and over and over again. Much earlier in the game.
I would always get destroyed, like right in the initial invasion,
(25:36):
the Martians would come in, or I don't know if
they were martians, the aliens would come in and bulldoze
my house.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
I could.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It took me forever to figure out how to get
out of the house.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Oh yeah, that's that's like that happens like right away
in Hitchhikers.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yes, I mean I think I was in middle school.
Maybe I'd figure it out better now. I don't know,
maybe having a little bit of a better sense of
the Douglas Adams sense of humor. Because also when I
played this game, I had no idea what Hitchhiker's Guide
to the cos He was. This was just installed on
a computer at school. Oh, and I didn't know what
it was or why.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Anyway, coming back to Jeff's message, while playing a different
interactive fiction game, I was completely baffled by a problem.
I couldn't just google for cheats back then, so in
desperation I wrote directly to the author of the game,
whoa store bough games could be created entirely by one
person then, And he sent back a hand typed postcard
(26:29):
I kept for many years that just said, dear Jeff,
throw the tape recorder through the window. I wonder what
the postman thought, you know, I think if you're a
postal worker, you see so much of other people's mail,
you just get bored with other people's secrets. Does it
even matter to read it anymore?
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah? Nowadays they probably stop posting it on their Instagram,
Like after a couple of weeks of being a male
person Jeff continues.
Speaker 3 (26:53):
The Hitchhiker's Game was released by Infocom, probably the most
famous interactive fiction game in the company. Infocom's solution to
easing the adult brains of stuck players was the invention
of Invisicule's books. The books would include hints without ruining
the whole game for you. The questions were printed in
regular ink, but the solutions were in invisible ink that
(27:17):
would only be revealed when you ran the included magic
marker over them. So if the question is how do
I open the locked door, the first clue might be
something like did you notice the keyhole? The next, have
you encountered anyone holding a set of keys? And the
third wait until the guard is sleeping and steal his key.
(27:38):
The books had a good sense of humor and would
also mess with you. Since all the questions were immediately
visible and therefore potential spoilers, they peppered the hints with
red herrings like don't reveal the next clue until the
magic bird gives you the shovel, followed by there is
no magic bird in this game, don't ruin your experience
(27:58):
by revealing clues before where you are absolutely stuck, and
then Finally, Jeff says, well, buying and running these lost
games is difficult to do these days. There are sites
that allow you to play them now. Infocom's games are
true classics, but new interactive fiction games are still being
written today worth checking out.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
Yeah I should. I should check some of these out,
because this is a whole genre of games, early games
and contemporary games that I really don't know much about
and don't have any really any direct experience playing them.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
I can't believe I didn't think about this until now,
but I not only played a few of these text
based adventure games, I actually created some when I was
in middle school. Once again, I guess I was exposed
to these things and I was learning CE basic and
I started programming little text based adventures that I thought
were hilarious at the time. I don't know what i'd
(28:50):
think now. I don't remember what I thought was so funny,
but I was really yucking it up there on my
IBM three eighty six. Okay, should we do some weird
house cinema? Respont?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Sure? Sure? This next one comes to us from Scott.
Subject line the telephone box comments from an old Hi guys.
I enjoyed listening to your recent weird House episode on
the telephone box. Being a person who grew up in
the long ago days when telephone booths ranged the landscape
(29:23):
in their thousands, I was amused by the two of
you trying to remember if you'd ever actually used one.
In questioning the apparent incongruity of seeking privacy to make
a phone call while standing in a class box in
full view. As an official old guy, I believe I
can enlighten you. Privacy is certainly an aspect of the
enclosed phone booths of your but not in the way
you surmised. Since phone booths were commonly located in busy
(29:46):
public spaces, environmental noise was a problem. The enclosure was
to keep external noises out, rather than keeping your conversation in.
Since you generally had to have coins in hand to
use one, it was extremely frustrating to pay for the
call only to have a loud bust roll past, obliterating
what you or the other person said.
Speaker 3 (30:06):
They really should have thought of this. Yes, obviously, the
enclosure is to so you can hear your call despite
being right on the street corner.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Yeah, because nowadays we all on our cell phones, we
inevitably have that situation. I have, like a train that
runs by my house, so sometimes I'll be outside, I'll
be on the phone. Here comes a train, so I
can walk inside and get out of the noise. And
you can do that kind of thing obviously in various
urban environments as well, you know, walk around the corner,
walk inside a restaurant, maybe if they'll allow that. But yeah,
(30:35):
I should have thought about this as well. Anyway, they
continue making it out in public was a safety feature too.
By being fully exposed to view, thieves couldn't use one
to lie in ambush undetected, nor could a victim be
pulled into an opay box to be roughed up away
from witnesses. The full enclosure also protected the user from
(30:58):
the elements, keeping you dry in the rain and snow,
protected from wind, and helping to mitigate the cold. Some
had small ventilation fans to alleviate the greenhouse effect of
all that glass in summer, although one has to wonder
if the protection was for the benefit of the user
or the telephone equipment. I enjoy being entertained and enlightened
by your work.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
Thank you, Scott, excellent point, Scott, Thank you very much.
For some reason, the telephone booth scene that kept going
through my head while reading this is actually the one
in Scanners where he hacks the computer with his brain
from the telephone.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yes, great scene. Yeah, we talked about that in our
Weird House episode on Scanners. I also after we did
the episode, I kept thinking about Clark Kent, of course
always goes into or used to always going to a
phone booth to transform into Superman. Or maybe he didn't
even do it all that that many times, but he
became the cliche. It became like the iconic thing, like
(31:53):
it's a place where you can go and change all
your clothes and change your identity and come out as
a superhuman, come out as your real identity, take off
your human disguise, all right.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
This next message is from Ken. Ken says, I love
the recent reviews of short films and I have a recommendation.
If you haven't heard of it before, there is a
short film called The Cube by Jim Henson of the Muppets, etc.
I think you can find it on YouTube. I saw
it on television when I was seven years old and
it really freaked me out. I also didn't understand it
(32:24):
at all. I had no recollection of what the film
was called, and years later I had to do numerous
online searches with vague descriptions until I finally found it.
Hope you find it interesting. Thanks again for the podcast. Sincerely,
Ken Well Ken Weird Minds Think Alike. This is already
on my list, It's on my running list for the show.
I've been thinking about it for months now.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
Oh, I'm all for it. This is a film that
I'm very familiar with from some of the Jim Henson
documentaries I've seen over the years and exhibits to Atlanta's
Center for Pubetry Arts, that sort of thing. But I've
never seen it in full, or at least I don't
think I have. So Yeah, the next time we were
feeling the pull for some short cinema, let's do it.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
By the way, for those who may be confused about
this right now, this is a different film than Cube,
the one where people awaken in a giant maze of cubes,
many of which are like full of saws and stuff
that murder them.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
But I'm up for that one as well, and I
don't think I've ever seen that one in full. I've
just seen like chunks of it, bloody chunks of it
on TV back in the day.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
I think that one's Canadian, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (33:33):
It is, in fact Canadian. Yes, so they're both on
the list. Yeah, both get everything you want. Ken all right,
This next one comes to us from Lawrence. Lawrence says, Hi, Robert, Joe,
and JJ, thank you for covering The Hunger. I never
realized it was poorly received. It's resurgence in the nineties,
(33:53):
where all things vampire reign culturally supreme, was not nearly
as surprising. I'll always thought of The Hunger as one
of those non vampire vampire stories, movies that sort of
lie somewhere between sci fi blood drinkers and people who
only think they're vampires. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (34:10):
I do know what you mean. The only movie I
can think of at the moment where it's ambiguous where
the vampire is actually a vampire is George Rameiro's Martin.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
That's a big one. Yeah, you also see this if
we think of this as like a soft vampire film,
we do also have examples of software wolf films, and
as I recently discussed on The Monster Fact, this is
kind of an interesting category because you can get into
the history of the terminology for like lacanthropy and werewolf,
(34:40):
but especially lacanthropy is early usage being like a catch
all description for different conditions that were probably mental illnesses.
And so there's this whole realm of usage for the
term lacanthropy that is just tied to you know, actual
observations and atten to classify some forms of mental illness
(35:06):
or disease. So yeah, In fact, one of the big
ones the the Lon Cheney Junior Wolfman movie. Originally in
the script that one was going to leave it ambiguous
whether he was turning into a wolf or not, like
it was going to be a software wolf movie. And
then at some point in the production they were like, no, no, no,
we want a real wolf man. People want to see
(35:27):
a wolf man, and so it took the form that
we all know and love. It's hard to argue with
that absolutely anyway. The email continues here from Lawrence. Lawrence says,
as for Weird House Picks nineteen eighty two's Cat People
and Donkey Skin are both touched the fur movies. I
can recommend both because Criterion has a beautiful transfer of
Donkey Skin and Cat People spares showing us any Malcolm
(35:51):
McDowell Sex. Thanks thanks for all you do, Lawrence. Indeed, Lawrence,
that is all essential to know. Moving farm. All right.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
This next message is from Jesse. Jesse says, hey, guys,
I'll have to not gush here. I love you both
and I'm so grateful for your shows. And then Jesse
goes on to say some very nice things about the podcast.
We'll skip a bit here, but thank you Jesse, very
kind of you. Jesse says, I do have some suggestions
that I have not seen on Weird House Cinema yet.
(36:29):
The first suggestion is an afterthought and not why I
originally wanted to write in. However, I was watching this
movie with my kids tonight and realized with surprise that
I hadn't yet seen it come into your purview. Flight
of the Navigator. It is so obvious I am forced
to conclude that you had already considered it and decided
it just doesn't fit, which I understand with protest if
(36:51):
the case. No, I don't think we've ruled it out yet,
or I don't know if you have. I haven't looked
into it. I haven't seen this movie.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
I saw it as a kid, and I have to
say flight to the Navigator. This was nineteen eighty six.
This one really unsettled me in a way I don't
think I ever quite recovered from. Like, it has some
minor spoilers, it has some plot elements and including that
involved like time dilation, and and it just gets it
(37:20):
gets a lot heavier than perhaps I expected, to the
degree to which I had any expectations going into movies
as a kid. But yeah, this one troubled me. And
I think it troubled me enough that I've kind of
stayed away from it, Like not to this extent where
I'm turning down opportunities to watch it, but I've maybe
(37:41):
just have like subconscious barriers up to rewatching Flight of
the Navigator. Therefore, I would obviously love to go back
and watch it and reevaluate it as a grown up
and as a parent and all of that. So yeah,
I'd love to put it on the list. I know
it's one that a lot of folks saw. Ask and
I wonder how many other viewers had a similar reaction
(38:04):
to the one I had.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Sorry, I was laughing during your answer because I realized
I was mixing up two movies. Really, until you started
talking about I was not thinking of Flight of the Navigator.
I was thinking of night Flyers from nineteen eighty seven,
which is the George R. R. Martin and vampire movie
with Miguel Ferraer. Wait, oh my god, no, this is
(38:29):
I double mixed it up. I was mixing up George R.
Martin's Night Flyers, the sci fi horror movie, with Flight
of the Navigator. But what I really had in my
mind was not Night Flyers. It was The night Flyer,
a film with Miguel Ferrera about a vampire that is
based on a story by Stephen King, which I was
confusing with the Martin sci fi. This is all a
(38:52):
jumble now, but either way, I was thinking about like
an R rated horror movie, not not like I made
for kids.
Speaker 2 (39:02):
Oh well, I haven't seen The night Flyer, nor did
I ever read the short story that it's based upon.
But I do remember seeing the video box with that
piteous looking vampire and the airplane on it.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
It would be hilarious if Jesse wrote in like, yeah,
the other day I was watching The night Flyer with
my kids.
Speaker 2 (39:20):
All right, well, we'll put them all on the consideration list.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Next, Jesse says, the second suggestion is why I'm writing
have you guys seen the nineteen eighty five made for
TV rendition of Alice in Wonderland? Hands down the weirdest
movie I have ever seen, terrifying in parts with the
grace of such stars as Ringo Starr and Sammy Davis Junior.
The music is terrible and the movie is long and bad.
(39:47):
Whether or not you ever take the leap and do
it for the show, given your proclivities, I highly recommend
you at least check it out for yourselves, as it
is unmatched as far as zany eighties fair goes. Also,
the rendition of the Jabberwaukee in that movie gave me
nightmares for years as a kid. It is great. You
can watch it free on YouTube, and then Jesse shares
(40:09):
a link. Jesse says all my best, deepest thanks to you, guys. Jesse, Well,
thank you so much, Jesse. I really really appreciate the
email and the suggestions. I've not seen either of these movies,
but I'm going to look up the Alice in Wonderland.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
I looked at it briefly on IMDb, and I did
notice that Jason Lives director Tom McLachlan plays the Jabberwakie
is in the jabberwaki suit, So there you go.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Oh my god, I just looked it up. It looks
like what does it remind me of?
Speaker 2 (40:39):
It's like.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
That that Russian rendition of Lord of the Rings, but
with much brighter colors.
Speaker 2 (40:49):
The jabberwaki costume in question does look horrifying, like in
not super JABBERWACKI e. You know, it doesn't look like
that iconic illustration so much. It looks a little weirdly fleshy.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
Man says Bow Bridges and Carol Channing.
Speaker 2 (41:07):
Oh wow, yeah, I glanced at the cast. It's a crazy,
crazy collection of actors.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Lloyd Bridges is the White Knight, John Stamos Wow.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
All right. As we begin to close out here, I'm
just gonna turn to discord here. I have a few
just random short thoughts from folks here about various things,
beginning here with Thorkwall. Thorkwell writes then and says, I
(41:38):
just finished listening to part three of Hunters of the
Deep and had mentioned it to my significant other, and
she pointed out a fact I may have missed if
it was mentioned. I've never realized the Black Sea Devil
angler it was only six inches or fifteen centimeters or
so long. I too had similar posters of fish growing
up like rob and perhaps the various illustrations not drawn
(42:01):
to scale threw off my perspective. I'm glad it's not
just me.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
See, it's often hard to get scale with uh, with
sea creatures, you know. Yeah, you don't have like a
tree in the background to.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, or tape measure or a tape dispenser. That's what
you put next to things, right, all right? And then
a shadow rat rites, Senden says. I just watched and
loved La Cabina. It really reminded me of the nineties
movie Cube. Oh, with this sense that some unchecked industry
(42:34):
is just producing this horrifying death trap for no reason.
It has to have been an inspiration for.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
Cube seems quite possible.
Speaker 2 (42:43):
Yeah, all right, then hot Napalm death rights, Senden says, finally,
listening to the Dune episodes, one factor that you missed
when discussing the failed Jodrowski Dune project was that if
it had succeeded, we probably wouldn't have Alien or the
Alien franchise. That's a great, great point as well. I
think we did allude to the fact that that project
(43:07):
not coming together did lead to a number of different projects,
things that Jordroowski himself did, like say the Metabarons graphic
novel series. That's great in his work with Mobius there,
but yeah, so many other things kind of sprang out
of that. It was very much like a we can
almost think of it as a whale fall, a cinematic
(43:29):
whale fall. Like it did not come to fruition. It
sank to the bottom and it was consumed by all
of these other creatures and therefore fed a rich ecosystem.
All right, Taylor Wright Senten says, just finish the Hunger episode,
and it reminded me of another eternal vampire goth romance
movie that The Hunger must have inspired and would make
(43:51):
its own excellent weird house episode Only Lovers Left Alive.
Tilda Swinton and Tom Hilston are our listless immortal in
that one, which tackles a lot of the same US
against the World themes that Joe referenced and has a
great shoegaze score. Also, my wife and I watched The
Love Witch for our Valentine's Day after a few of
(44:12):
y'all here in the discord turned me on to it,
and may I say thank you, it was a darkly
hilarious treat. All real world reds are dull.
Speaker 3 (44:21):
Now The Love Witch is fantastic. I think often about
the way that movie looks, which is so interesting. It
feels both reminiscent of a time gone by, like it
looks like a way that it seems movies used to
look but don't look anymore, but also feels like a
totally different visual aesthetic has been created as well.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
Yeah, I recently rewatched The Love Witch on an airplane
and fell in love with it all over again. I
feel like it in its own way. It's a perfect
film in that it clearly knew exactly what it wanted
to convey and what it wanted to capture and and
seemingly pulled all of that off. So I can't recommend
(45:03):
The love Which enough. It's you know, it's maybe not
for everyone, but if it is for you, then it's
perfect all right. And finally, there was some discussion on
the discord about what sort of film we should be
considering for the two hundredth Weird House Cinema selection, which
is coming up let's see a week from tomorrow, So Joe,
you can give me some feedback here I'm just going
to run through the list of the movies that were mentioned.
(45:26):
First of all, nineteen seventy five is the Rocky Horror
Picture Show classic of course. Yeah, seventy four's Phantom of
the Paradise. Ooh, I mean we talk about that at
least every couple of weeks anyway. Yeah, yeah, Midsommer from
twenty nineteen. I haven't seen that when I can't come.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
I liked it. It's a great feel bad movie. But no,
I mean it really is good. But the vibes are
bad and it's a good film, and it I don't
know if I want to talk about that on Weird House.
It seems like it'd be a bummer of a time.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
Was that a twenty four film? Yes, okay, there's I
recently with Serve some ads or maybe I follow the
account for an a twenty four film themed burless show,
and my initial thought was like, I think they pulled
it off. I think they pulled it off. I saw
later the images It's like it looked fun but I
was like, wow, that is a challenging theme for your
burless show to go with a twenty four But.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
I respect that though. That's funny and I can see
how you can make it work. But yeah, Midsommar is great,
but I kind of doubt we'll do it on Weird House.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Okay, how about the next one? Nineteen ninety nine's BeO
Wolf starting with stuff Lambert.
Speaker 3 (46:34):
I don't know, that's more possible. It's been a long
time since I've seen it. That's the one that's like
sci fi BeO Wolf It yeah, place in a castle
in the future or maybe with lasers.
Speaker 2 (46:45):
Yeah, it's all fun and games until the worst CGI
thing of all time emerges. It's like Beyond the Rock
Scorpion monster.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
The Grendel I recall looks like it's made out of
CGI link sausages.
Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, that's the one, all right. So that one's a
maybe nineteen ninety nine's bi centennial man.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Never seen it. But is that the one that's got
Robin Williams as a robot of some kind?
Speaker 2 (47:12):
Yeah? Yeah, I feel like we might do a Robin
Williams film eventually. He was such a great and weird
performer in his own right. But I think there's some
other Robin Williams films that are going to be a
little higher up the list. Flubber sure, all right, nineteen
ninety nine's Wild Zero, the Japanese comedy horror film.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
Weirdly Enough, I was just recently looking at revisiting that
on the show. I saw that when I was in
high school. My friend Ben showed it to me, and
that was a great time. I recall it's been for long.
I barely remember it, but I recall it was absolutely nuts,
but in a great, great way.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
All right. The next one is the Romanian sci fi
animated film Delta Space Mission. This is one I haven't
seen it. I don't think you've seen it either, but
this one has been on my radar because looks super weird.
I actually I watched part of it on an airplane,
but then switch to something else because I just not
because there was anything wrong with it, but it just
wasn't the vibe I was going for at the moment.
(48:10):
But it was on Criterion Channel for a bit, and
I believe def Crocodile put it out on Blu Ray.
I have a really nice package. It looks amazing. I
don't know if it's right for the two hundredth Weird
House Cinema selection, but it is one we might come
back to. And then finally it was also mentioned that
we might consider nineteen eighty three's Video Drome, given that
we often reference the Atlanta Videodrome a rental store. Plus.
(48:34):
Videodrome is a movie that does come up in our
conversations a lot, both on Weird House Cinema and un
Stuck to Below Your Mind.
Speaker 3 (48:41):
You know, I think of it almost more like a
reference text for us than something we would feature. But
if that doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2 (48:49):
That's somehow I have similar feelings about. I'm very much
on the fence when it comes to Rocky Horror Picture
Show because it's Rocky Horror Picture Show feels like kind
of a foundation text, at least for me personally, and like, so,
I don't know. It's like sometimes I'm like, yes, we
absolutely should do Rocky Our Picture Show, and then other
times I'm like, no, It's like Rocky our Picture Show
(49:09):
is what you refer back to to make sense of
everything else.
Speaker 3 (49:13):
So I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.
That's sort of what I mean about Video Dream.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Yeah, seems more like.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
The thing that we compare and contrast the movie we're
talking about two rather than the movie we talk about.
Speaker 2 (49:25):
Yeah, So ultimately, maybe we're more likely to do like
shock treatment at some point, or do some sort of
obviously a bad video drome rip off that sort of thing.
At any rate, I really enjoyed reading through everyone's suggestions
in the Discord Server. That's the sort of back and
forth you can get if you joined The Stuff to
Blow your Mind discord Server.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
I'm not promising either one, but for some reason, I
would say it's more likely that we do existens than
that we do video drome.
Speaker 2 (49:53):
Oh yeah, oh yeah, that would be that would be
a choice for sure. I haven't seen that one in
a while. All Right, well, we're going to keep thinking
about it. You'll find out one way or another in
about a week. In the meantime, we thank everyone for
writing in, and we just encourage you to keep writing.
We remind you The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
(50:14):
Tuesdays and Thursday, short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays.
We set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
a weird film on Weird House Cinema. Again, write in
if you want to join the discord Server, look look
find us online. We're on various social media accounts as well.
Get the podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and if
you're on letterboxed, you can go there and find us.
(50:36):
On letterbox our username is weird House. Follow us there
and you can find a nice list of all the
Weird House movies we've ever done.
Speaker 3 (50:42):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (51:03):
Stuffed Blow your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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