[MUSIC PLAYING] This episode is brought to you by Experian. Are you paying for subscriptions you don't use, but can't find the time or energy to cancel them? Experian could cancel unwanted subscriptions for you, saving you an average of $270 per year, and plenty of time. Download the Experian app. Results will vary. Not all subscriptions are eligible. Savings are not guaranteed. Paid membership with connected payment account required. [MUSIC PLAYING] Get three coffins ready, kid. Because our latest podcast, Make My Day, is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier that is Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloween's. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation, and Clint's output is infinite. You've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Flashes, huh? What's your favorite scary movie? Um, not that one. [LAUGHING] [MUSIC PLAYING] And welcome back to horror queers. We're talking armless ventriloquist performances. We're talking elephant funeral processions. And we're talking lucha libra saints. And I'm Joe. And I'm Trace. And we're talking, I order my hands to kill her. I love it. I love culture so much. OK, so this was a first time watch for both of us. But I'm going to put my cards on the table. I kind of love this. I really liked it. I actually watched it again just before this recording. Because I felt like, you know-- sorry, everyone. I mean, you've seen the title of the episode. But we are discussing at 100 Yodorowsky's Santasongre. And yes, this was the first time watch for me. It was-- Joe, have you seen a Yodorowsky movie before? Yes, I have seen The Holy Mountain. OK, this was my first Yodorowsky. And all I knew about him was that he does very surrealist type films. And then he tried to make Dune ones. Yes, correct on both accounts. This is apparently also his most accessible film. So this is actually a good gateway entry for us. That, yes. And so I was expecting something much more abstract with this movie. And I was surprised that, yeah, the narrative was mostly-- it gets a little gonzo, and I would say the last act. But even still, it's not difficult to follow. No, I think there's going to be things we can unpack in greater detail. There's a lot of symbolism. As you mentioned, there is some surrealism. But on a narrative level, it's very much OK. Yeah, we're doing a little dash of psycho. And that's what we got. It's so funny, because before you had seen it, you took you kind of priming for it. It's like, oh, yeah, it's like Yodorowsky's Psycho. And so I was watching the first half of this movie. And I was like, OK, I mean, where is the psycho? Where's the psychoness? And everyone in this two-hour movie, it doesn't really-- I mean, again, it is a genre film. There are horror elements to it. But I found this movie more touching than I found it like horrifying, you know? Yeah, I mean, this isn't the kind of film where you're going to walk out of it and say, oh, that was scary. Oh, no. But I do think a bunch of people might walk out of it and say, oh, that was disturbing. It's-- I mean, it's an assault on the census. It's also fucking gorgeous. Oh, it's so gorgeous. I was just like, oh, I missed color in film. Right? Yeah. But yeah, so as I said, this is my first Jodorowsky. So do you like the holy mountain? Is that something that you really latched onto after a first time viewing? It was one of those ones that I had built up a lot in my mind. And I thought, oh, well, this is one of his most famous ones. Apart from El Topo, which was infamously a favorite home of John Lennon and has basically been bought up by his estate, and now you can't find it anywhere. So those were the two famous ones by Jodorowsky. So I was like, OK, well, I'm going to start with his masterpiece. I'm going to watch the holy mountain, and it is confounding. It is a very challenging film. Deeply gorgeous in the same way as this, hugely vibrant, full of color, very deep on symbolism to the point where I was just like, I don't know what's happening. Like, it's one of those ones where you might as well have the computer open next to you so that you can be reading and figuring out what you're watching as you go. That's a film too, where it's like both of that and I'm assuming El Topo works the thing where I'm like, I would rather see it for the first time in a movie theater, and I know that the Elmo draft house has screened the holy mountain like before. So I just feel like, yeah, that's how I would want to see it. Or as you said, with my computer next to me open, so I can be looking up a little bit. But again, that's going to distract me the more I watch it. 100%. That's why I watched on to Son Grey a second time too, because I mean, whenever I watch a movie for this podcast, I always take notes as you do. And I wanted to watch it without taking notes, just to be like, OK, I've taken my notes. I just want to now sit and absorb the movie. And I didn't necessarily catch anything more, but it was good to have that experience, I think, just to be like, OK, let me just like watch this movie and like level with it for a bit. Not to get hyperbolic or anything, but it does feel a bit like it's an immersive film, like something that you can really lose yourself in, if only because it is so gorgeous. And there's always really fascinating things to look at. Like, there's a lot of details here that maybe they mean something, maybe they don't, but they're always very captivating. Yes. OK, so because I am not familiar with Theodoroski at all, I wanted to do like a little bit of a deep dive, well, not a deep dive, I guess. But I wanted to learn more about him, because again, like he is a kind of this prolific filmmaker. I would maybe argue in our tour. Oh, I think so. Yeah. But yeah, it's one of those things where I was like, shit, like I feel like a bad film student, because I don't like, I'm not familiar with this. Well, we're pretty candid on the show as having admitted that we're not super familiar with a lot of Mexican cinema. You know, the fact that this guy, I guess, follows in the footsteps of Louis Boonwell, who is, you know, also Spanish. But I think this is just one of those, like it's either a film school watch or it's because you are a connoisseur and somebody said, hey, you need to get this guy into your eyeballs. Yeah, exactly. So OK, let's do a brief primer on Theodoroski. So everyone, yes, Alejandro Jodoroski is a Chilean-born French surrealist filmmaker, which, wow, but he kind of got his start. He started an experimental Theodor troupe in the late '40s before moving to Paris in the '50s to work with the French mind Marcel Marceau. By the way, so you and I both watched the "Seven Films" release of "Santa Sangre" and I poured through most of the extra features of which there are a lot eight plus hours of. Yeah, including a 90-minute documentary, which was quite helpful. But he really, really cherishes mine. Oh, OK, OK. But he made his first film in 1968 and it was called Fando Elise. And the plot of his movie is wild. So in this movie, like Fondo and his paralyzed lover, Elise, journey across a desert, looking for the mythical city of tar and encounter a collected group of people. And this is the exact plot summary I found. A gang of transvestites. It's a thing too when we say transvestites and like that time period. I'm like, oh, well, yeah, are these crossdressers or are they like transgender people, you know? I don't know if it distinguishes between the two, but nevertheless. The problem is they're always conflated. Yes, but nevertheless, transvestites, blood drinkers and a man playing a burning piano. Unsurprisingly, it was very controversial in 1968, so much so that the country of Mexico banned it until 1972. As you do. As you do. But his next film, "1970s El Topo" is what really put him on the map or brought him worldwide notoriety. You can decide. It is an acid Western, which I had to look up. It's like a mix of like spaghetti Western and traditional Western, but it's saturated with sex, violence and religious symbolism that sees the gunfighter El Topo, played by Yodorowsky himself, cross the desert with his naked son played by Yodorowsky's son, Brontees, who is in Santa San Gray as one of the nurses at the beginning of the film. Oh, okay, okay. But he leaves the sun behind to go on again, another quest for enlightenment. It's characterized though by its bizarre characters and occurrences, the use of maimed and dwarf performers and heavy doses of Judeo-Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy. But, and this is the interesting thing about this movie. Well, maybe not interesting, but controversial, but there was a bit controversy surrounding El Topo because there was a scene where El Topo rapes a woman. And I guess like Yodorowsky did an interview and like talked about the making of the scene and essentially implied that he actually raped this woman. Oh no. Well, it was a thing because he was describing how they filmed the scene. It was just me and her and the photographer and blah, blah, blah, but I, I think what he was trying to say was like, the scene was so intense, the filming of it was so intense that it was as if he actually raped her, but post me too. Like he was supposed to have this like big like exhibit at a museum and when he that quote came out, they canceled his exhibit. Oh yeah, yeah, you would. But it's also considered to be the first ever Midnight Cult movie as the only way to see it for decades was at midnight screenings in our house theaters. And it is considered by many, including Roger Ebert to be a masterpiece. Okay, okay. I'm going to say okay and I'm going to back away slowly. We're not talking about that film, but it doesn't kind of make me again, like interested to see it. Next comes 1973 is the Holy Mountain, which is again, the only one of his films that I had heard of before. But this is about a powerful alchemist, again, played by Yodorowsky himself, who leads a messianic character and seven materialistic figures to the Holy Mountain. And they again, hope to achieve enlightenment. Do you sense a theme here, Joe? Just a little bit, yeah. So it was after this that he tried to get Frank Herbert's Dune adapted to the screen and everyone, you can go watch the 2013 documentary Yodorowsky's Dune for more information on that. I highly, highly recommend it. It is fascinating. Oh, see, now that I know that I'm into Dune, like I do want to see it now. (laughs) But after that, he moved on to his 1980 film Tusk, a children's film sent me a British colonial India about the attachment between a young English girl and an elephant, both born on the same day. But the thing with this one, Yodorowsky was dissatisfied with the film's technical deficiencies and later disowned it. Though, in an interview on Santo Sangre, he pretty much says he only wanted to make that movie because he was fascinated with elephants. - Okay, as we will see in this film. - Yes, but the exact anecdote he gave, it's like, he's really into chakras. And there's some kind of like tantric chakra where like the design of like tattoos in a body. The elephant is always like in the taint area between the balls and the asshole. - Sure. - He thought he wanted to know why. So he just got really into elephants for a while and made a children's movie about it. - Oh, no. These are not words that should go together, Cheyenne. (laughs) - He goes on and be like, okay, when you ride an elephant, like it's like you're riding the elephant and like the motions and like the feeling in your taint area. I don't think he says taint, but he says that area between your balls and butthole. (laughs) - Also, let's just pursue this for a moment. Is it really gonna be that difference than riding a horse or say a camel or something? Like, is an elephant that unique? - Well, I would argue, I mean again, like you're going into mysticism here. So I think it's more so also about the animals aura and like what the spirit that they're putting out there. So the spirit of an elephant is absolutely different than the spirit of a camel, you know? - That is spare, yes. And there is a certain intellectualism that we attribute to elephants. You know, they're typically treated as wise animals who have a strong capacity for empathy and that kind of stuff. - Mm-hmm. Now it shouldn't surprise you though. So like, you know, he goes on another hiatus until he mates on to Sanghary in '89. And so for basically for all of the '80s, he developed a form of personal therapy that he called psychomagic, which combined the insights of Jungi in psychology and the tarot. He was an avid tarot reader and for years before him weekly mass readings, he even like brings them up in his interviews on this Blu-ray. - Oh my God, Trace, Yodoroski's tarot. - Yup, right? (laughing) - Somebody who actually knows what the fuck they're talking about and would give us surrealistic imagery. - Yeah, exactly. - Where's that remake? - So, okay, this is the thing. I thought he had made many more films but he really hasn't made that many films. So the genesis of Santa Sanghary kind of starts in a few places. First, Claudia Argento, Dario's brother, had been trying to track down Yodoroski in Paris. Remember, this is before the internet because he didn't know where he lived and eventually he found out that, oh, he's in Paris, I have to go there. - There we go. - At this point in time, he had split from his brother, Dario, after 1982's Tenibre. I'm not because of any bad thing. He just wanted to go off and do his own work and do his own films. - Do his own films, yeah. And one of these things he wanted to do was a project with specifically Yodoroski because he loved El Topo and the Holy Mountain. - Okay. - But he learned him to direct an esoteric medieval epic called The Templars that would have been a huge production and this idea was pretty much immediately derailed because of its huge costs and distributors didn't think Yodoroski was a bankable enough name to justify the budget. - I mean, kind of fair, the two titles that you've talked about that he's best known for are niche. They are cult. They are not going to make you a ton of money. - I mean, again, like he's known as like creating the Midnight movie. So yeah, like I don't think general audiences know this name. Also, I don't think medieval stuff is like necessarily attractive at any time period. (laughing) - I don't know. I feel like some people are not going to come at you and say, I don't know. There was a period of time where we were very much like, depends on how you want to classify 'cause even things like sword and sandals could fall into that and some of those were very popular. - Yeah, I guess I'm thinking like specifically like King Arthur type shit. Like, I guess, okay, there have been successful medieval films, obviously, but I don't think we've ever had like a wave or like a steady flow of that particular subgenre. - It's not a guaranteed box office draw. - Exactly. Look at every single attempt to do King Arthur in the past 20 years. - Okay, but most of those are shit. Let's just be quick. - Yeah, well, yeah. (laughing) But nevertheless, even though this project fell through, it at least allowed Argento to develop a relationship with Yodarowski. Now, at the same time, co-screenwriter Robertor Leoni had an idea. He had been obsessed with this concept of a demon forgetting that it used to be an angel. 'Cause Joe, I don't know if you know this, but like in Christianity, like demons are angels that were cast down from heaven that sided with Satan in the war against God. - I do know that. - Okay, cool. But this led him to wonder, you know, is it possible that someone can be so cruel and nasty enough that they can forget any home of humanity that they had, i.e., a demon forgetting that it was an angel once? Or can a serial killer involve the audience in his drama to make us feel more pity for him than for his victims? So, every Hollywood film ever. - Well, and I guess though, because this is the 80s, it's kind of like-- - It's a bit fresher. - Yeah. - Well, they don't ever mention the slasher boom too, and again, that's very much American with the slasher boom, but you know, dealing with Italian producers, we can talk about Giallo as well. So I wonder if they're thinking specifically, oh, like, you know, I wanna do a movie about a serial killer, but not like a slasher type movie, you know? - Right, and something that explores the psychology and CDs, if we can get the audience to empathize with them, which I would argue is what we're getting here. - Oh, well, so he wanted to make the public participate in the killer's tragedy. So, he wrote a story treatment with this premise and wanted to direct it himself, but he went to Argento to get the ball rolling, and Argento still really wanted to work with Jodorowsky, but he also wanted to be taken seriously internationally. So, when Leonie brought him the script, he was like, hey, like, I don't really think you should direct this, but Jodorowsky is a name that like, I think would like get people to take this seriously. - Yes, absolutely, so he was like the obvious choice. - Interesting, still not quite seeing the obviousness of it, but I do love that people respect him and his film so strongly that they immediately think, oh, well, he would bring something to the table. - Yes, so oddly enough, Jodorowsky also had a story that would merge with Leonie's story and become Santo Sangre because, okay, this is wild. To make ends meet in his early career in the mid '60s, so before he made his first film, he became a comic strip artist for a right-wing newspaper and did a page called Fabulas Panicas for five years. - Okay. - He would deliver his drawing to the newspaper every day, and one day, while he was getting coffee, this guy walks up to him, sits at his table and tells him, oh my God, I love Fabulas Panicas. It turns out this man was Goyo Cardenas, and this man was a Mexican serial killer, the first widely publicized Mexican serial killer who killed 17 women in the 1940s. - Shit, okay. - But here's a thing, so he was put in a mental hospital for 10 years and was released, got married, became a lawyer, and a novelist, and-- - I'm sorry, well, that's a backtrack. Did you just say 10 years for killing more than 12 people? - Yes. - More than 15 people. - That's the thing, so he went on to tell Jodorowsky, you know, he was a good guy now because he was granted redemption by God. And-- - Oh, no. - This was one of the first cases of this type of rehabilitation. It was widely publicized. He was like, "Look, therapy and mental institutions work. We can cure serial killers." - Oh, I mean, I do believe therapy works, but maybe not therapy driven by God. - Well, this serial killer lived a full and happy life and was a successful lawyer. - Okay. - Okay, writing books and shit, so you can probably go read one of his books. It's probably not called How to Kill Women, but, you know, wow, Trace. (laughing) This interaction fascinated Jodorowsky. And so, you know, he thought, like, how can a murderer, through different psychological or magic ways, forget his crimes and have a nice life? So, of course, he thought, well, I can make a movie out of this because Jodorowsky believes that our society is criminal. You know, we are poisoning the planet, we are killing people, we have wars, but maybe, just maybe, one day, everything will be forgiven by God and humanity will have its redemption. So he wanted to do like a micro level of that with one serial killer. - Okay, yeah, it's probably important at this point to note that all of his films do have this kind of religious component. And as you noted, it tends to intersect with a search for enlightenment or the divine. So, this is very much on his wavelength. - Absolutely. So, Argento sent Leonie's story to Jodorowsky's agent who said that he found the project interesting, but he wanted to meet with Leonie first, like just the writer and be like, "Hey, come over here to Paris and we're gonna talk and we're gonna do this." So, Leonie goes to Paris and they talked in a bar and Jodorowsky playfully accused him of stealing his idea because they had two very similar ideas. - Right. - But they got along very well and they finished an outline without any issues. Though, Leonie would frequently ask him to explain every hidden meaning whenever he wanted to add something more, and I quote, "Jodorowsky's style." For example, like the mother Konsha in the film was originally an armless dwarf, which Argento and Leonie removed, as well as softening other parts of it to make it a bit more commercial, which again, I wouldn't call this a commercial film, but compared to what it sounds like 'cause other films already is his most commercial film. - Yes, that. - But Argento did fight with Jodorowsky about the ending because Jodorowsky didn't want a happy ending, but Argento thought that they owed the audience a positive happy resolution after what they had just sat through. So, he fought for it. And eventually, Jodorowsky praised his choice and agreed to have the ending be the one where Phoenix finally comes to his senses for love. But it's a happy ending that it's a personal victory for Phoenix, but he's still going to prison. - Exactly, yeah. - When it comes to casting, okay, this is wild. - You mean half the cast can be my family members? - Well, guess who he wanted. So, Argento wanted Angelica, Houston, and Jat Nicholson to play Phoenix's parents, Konsha and Ordo. - Whoa. - Okay, that would have been interesting. - Yep, but so, hey, they wanted too much money, so it wasn't gonna happen. But Jodorowsky didn't want any famous actors, which seems to be a trend, by the way, with these high, 'cause I get a lot of Kubrick out of Jodorowsky, and that's how it feels to me. A lot of these big-time directors don't want to, or so these very visionary directors don't want to deal with quote-unquote stars or celebrities. - Well, I wonder if it's just, I'm the driving creative force of this train, and I don't need other people trying to derail it with their own personalities or the things that they think they need to do because they are quote-unquote stars. - Well, or even like, hey, if you're making a movie and it's art, like you don't want a celebrity to be like the attention grabber of a film when it's like everything else going on on the screen, you know? - Yeah, it's just, it's so contrary to how we make movies nowadays, because how do you make a movie if you can't market it using a big-name star? - I mean, I have two minds about that, though, because I mean, sometimes, I mean, obviously, movies flop, but I feel like just, it doesn't the marketing campaign, really. I mean, I don't think you need a big name for success, but they don't hurt a film, I guess is what I'm saying. - Right, yes. I guess from a suit's perspective, like from a studio and marketing perspective, you know, if you don't have a famous mug that you can put on a poster, it just, I think, makes it harder for them to envision, well, why would people come in to see this movie? - Mm-hmm. So for Phoenix, app name, by the way, you're asking his sons do it because A, he wanted to, and B, they were actually talented. So, Axel, I'm who goes by Krista Voljodorowsky, I'm who plays the older Phoenix, he went to Marcel Marceau's three-year school of mine and studied pantomime theater, fencing, acrobatics, dance, recitation, singing, like, the works. - In the word of showgirls, this movie's called Santo Sangre, it's not called all of those things. (laughing) But, sidebar, he is legitimately very good in this. - He is very good in this. - He tragically died, like, two years ago, by the way. - I know. - He was, like, in his late fifties, so I don't know what went on there. But then, Adon Jodorowsky, who plays the younger Phoenix, he had also been trained, so their father was confident in casting them, and, as I said, one of his older sons, Teo, plays the pimp in the film, who gives, like, all the cocaine to all the Down syndrome characters. He sadly died in an accident in 1995, and because of that, Jodorowsky actually can't watch this movie anymore, though he admits it is his favorite of all of his films. And, man, he also only has, like, a handful, so he doesn't have that many he can watch. - Exactly. Not really much else about the casting, although Sabrina Denison, who is the adult Amma, I do want to point out that she is actually deaf. - Oh, wow, okay, we've got some disabled representation. That feels rare. - And she's got interviews in the Blu-ray, too, with a translator. - Wow, okay, that's-- - Oh. - I'm like, when have I ever seen that? - They got-- - I think ever. - Everyone involved, like, the tattooed woman, the one that plays concha, or, yeah, because Guy Stockwell had died by that point, but, yeah, pretty much every, like, little person they could have, that was in this movie, like, they could have, like, they got to interview. But Fabiola Ellinga Tapia, who plays young Amma, she is not deaf in her life. - Okay. - But, all in all, they're about eight months between planning the film and actually shooting it. The budget they were given was not a lot. - Mm-hmm. - According to Yodarovsky, it was about four billion lira, which, today, I went on a journey with this show. It would convert to about $540,000, which, in 1989, would have been a little over $200,000. So, yeah, not a big budget film. Argento covered part of the budget and got co-financing from Mexico to cover the remaining budget. - Okay, okay. - Now, they shot on location in Mexico, in Mexico City, which was kind of a surprise, because, get this, after filming El Topo and the Holy Mountain there, Mexican authorities hated Alejandro Ellinga. (laughing) They pushed him out of the country and made him leave, so he wasn't, like, legally allowed back in the country. - He's like, "Hey, guys, look the other way. "I'm just gonna sneak in, make a cutie little movie, "and I'll be out of your way again." - So, okay, the reason there are eight hours of bonus features on those Blu-rays, because, yeah, we have the 90-minute documentary, but then there's all these interviews, and all the interviews are, like, 30 to 40 minutes long. - Yeah. - Which, I didn't realize the movie was in English, so I was pleasantly surprised that all these interviews are in Spanish or Italian. (laughing) - Wait, so, did you watch this with the English dub, because I absolutely turned on the subtitles. I was just like, "No, I'm not doing it." - Wait, there wasn't, like, this movie is in English. The dub is not a dub, it was released in English. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - Okay, I just watched it with subtitles, 'cause I was like, "I hate dubbing someone." - Wait, but, like, were they speaking Spanish when you watched it? - Yeah. - That's so, but I don't, that wasn't the default option for me. - It was not, I had to change it. - Oh, okay. - So, I think this was dubbed in English, but, like, that's how it was released, similar to how Italian yellow films are dubbed, but, like, not, like, over the, you know what I mean. - I know what you mean, and that does make sense, because I had read that this was his first English film, but then I read that it was dubbed, so I was just like, "Oh, I don't do dubbing "if I don't have to." - Right. Now, in his interviews, Yodarowski was like, "Oh, it was weird, because, you know, "Everyone cooperated with me "when I came back to Mexico, the authorities, "the Indians, I had no problems. "I don't, I guess they got over it." But, in one of these interviews with executive producer Angelo Iacono, he goes, "Oh, no, it was me. "I had the connections that allowed Yodarowski "to return to Mexico." - Hey, hey, hey, I paid off a shit ton of people so we could make this movie. - Exactly, but this shoot sounds like a trip. So, for example, Axel, the oldest brother, I'm sorry, the one that plays older Phoenix. He lived in a hotel room with an eagle for an entire month, and it was loose in the room, so he didn't keep it in the cage. Like, the room was the cage, and it shit everywhere. To the point where the staff wouldn't even come and clean the room, and it just smelled so bad, and he just lived in this room with this eagle. - As you do. - As you do. According to Argento, every little detail in situation Yodarowski put into the film was real. Like, he's actually shooting in the streets of Mexico City, and the sex workers in the film were all real. The church in the beginning was made with the money of the sex workers. - What, yeah, the local thieves were their guardians, because they were worried about everything. They were just shooting in this city, and there were thieves and violence and crime everywhere, and so they reached out, they got in touch with the head of the thieves, and they said, hey, can you have your thieves not steal our shit? Like, just have them protect us, and we'll give you X amount of money, and the thieves were protecting their equipment. - That is wild. That is a full-on gorilla filmmaking, isn't it? - Mm-hmm. Now, Argento is quick to point out, though, that Yodarowski doesn't care about realism, as he considered it a mere imitation of reality. So, I don't think you can even capture realism on film, because it's not real. - It's not real. - By putting it on film, it makes it not real. But there was also tension as well, so as I said, I get a lot of Kubrick vibes from Yodarowski. Axel says his father is very histrionic, and at one point, I'm saying, now that we have multiple Yodarowskis, I'm gonna start using their first names, but-- - Good call, good call. - But Axel says his father is very histrionic, and at one point, Alejandro was showing Axel like what to do for a scene, but Axel was like, well, I don't wanna watch you, 'cause if I watch you act it out, then I'm just gonna mimic you, and I wanna do that. - Right. - So Alejandro got really offended, and they had this big blow-up fight, and didn't speak to each other for the rest of the production. - Oh, no. - So Alejandro would tell his assistant director, hey, go tell the actor over there to do this, and the assistant director would go over and be like, "Well, the director wants you to do this," and he's like, "Well, go tell the director that I want." It was that for a good chunk of the filming. - Oh my God, no, it's like a bad game that a telephone mixed with, you know, petty school rivalry bullshit. - It's kind of, like, definitely male ego, but after shooting rap, like Axel fled to Bali, and didn't speak to his dad for a month, until all of a sudden Alejandro calls him out of the blue, actually, like, everything's fine, but like, "Oh my God, hey, like, what's going on? "How are you doing? "Oh, hey, we have to reshoot some scenes. "Can you come back to Mexico City?" (laughing) - I'm not actually apologizing, I just need you physically back on set. - And, I mean, Axel went back, and they were fine. But then, like, Sabrina Dennison, you know, who plays the adult Alma, she says how she was very frustrated during one moment of filming, because she wasn't understanding what Yodaroski was telling her to do, and apparently he's not always the best of that kind of communication. And so she started to approach him, and everyone on set was like, "Oh my God, "I don't do that, don't do that." And she basically went and was like signing to him, like, "What, like, what do you want me to do? "I don't understand." But he took that as, like, a moment of like, gumption and like, ballziness. So he and her got along really well, because he respected her. - He respected her, yeah. - Mm-hmm. - 'Cause she didn't tolerate his shit. - Exactly. - Now, towards the end of filming, they had someone on staff make a rough cut, which was eventually thrown out when they actually hired an editor. But because, I mean, again, it seems like a lot of this, like, was kind of, they were just kind of shooting on the fly, this at least allowed them to figure out how scenes worked together and like, pieced together. So, in the actual editor, Maro Bonani started editing, he was actually already editing with like, pre-edited footage, because the uncredited editor had already put some stuff together for him. - Wow. - So, I kind of clued you into this one. I was talking to you offline, Joe, but like, I kept getting big Perdida Durango vibes from this movie. - Right. - At first, I was just like, okay, well, maybe just 'cause it's a Mexican film. So like, it kind of has like kind of like, like, hot, like bright color to it. They share a composer. So, Simon Boswell, who scored Sato Sangre and Perdida Durango, and Argento's Phenomena, Baba's Demons 2, Michelle Swaby's Stage Freight, and also the Korean game, and Clive Barker's Lord of Illusions. - Oh, shit. Okay. - This is an impressive resume. - Very impressive resume. He hasn't really done much of notes since Perdida Durango, but like, that run from like, '85 to '99 was Jesus. - I am solid. - Yes. And it's not to Sangre, it got a worldwide release, which doesn't usually happen with Yodorowsky's films. It played 20 to 22 film festivals and won 12 to 13 first prizes. According to Argento, the UK release was fine. The US released saw slight cuts because they wanted to have the largest audience possible. And so, like, it was rated NC 17 for, quote unquote, several scenes of extremely explicit violence. - Okay. - An edited version was released with an R rating for, and I quote, bizarre graphic violence and sensuality and for drug content. - Okay. - But like, it didn't get a wide release in the US, so like only screening it a few theaters, like, again, familiar with Yodorowsky's previous work, but the cutting of the film really aggravated Yodorowsky because, like, distributors are asking, like, what would the public say? And his reply was something along the lines of, "I don't care about the public. I don't make my movies for them. I don't care how my movies are received." - You know what? That's the exact right response that more filmmakers should be having. - Well, yeah, filmmakers are gonna have that, but the suits are gonna have that. - Well, and the MPAA. - Well, man, for sure. And it mostly played well, though, in all the countries it was released in, but Argento limits, because, again, he's trying to, like, break into his own, like, and, like, kind of establish his name in Italian cinema, like, the same way his brother was. - This isn't gonna do it for him, is it? - Well, this movie flopped in Italy. It was the only class that it really flopped in, because, so, the distributor there didn't care about the movie and practically, like, shelved it. But when it did come out, no one liked it. Argento attributed it to the fact that he thinks, "Okay, this is the weird thing to me." So he says, "Italian viewers didn't accept how unrealistic the film was. They didn't like-- - Home on. - They didn't like how absurd and obscure it was. And he didn't, like, list off, like, certain, like, yellow films, and I was like, "Sir, those aren't realistic." (laughing) - "Sir, this is the pot calling the kettle black." - It's so wild, but either way, there were outstanding results everywhere else the film went, and it became a cult film in the US and the UK. Reception, again, was positive. We're looking at 86% on Rotten Tomatoes with an average score of 7.4 out of 10. Letterbox, you just have given it an eight out of 10. And I'll just toss in Ebert's quote here, 'cause I'm Ebert did like this movie, but he said, 'cause I wanna bring this up, but he's comparing it again to, like, the slasher boom of the time. - I read this review because they republished it. I think Ebert's, like, goes through, like, revisions, where they'll re-promote old reviews of his that the staff really likes, so this was one of them. And yeah, as always, we're doing this, like, hey, here's a back-handed compliment to horror. - So Roger Ebert said that he believed Santasangra carried the moral message of genuinely opposing evil, rather than celebrating it, like most contemporary horror films. He described it as a horror film, one of the greatest. And after waiting patiently through countless dead teenager movies, that was his name for the slasher film. I am reminded, he was reminded by Alejandro Yodarowski that true psychic horror is possible on the screen. Horror, poetry, surrealism, psychological pain, and wicked humor all at once. And I don't disagree with his assessment of this film. - Yeah. - I just hate that he comes down so hard on fucking slasher films. (laughs) - Yeah, it's the bullshit that he throws at other films. You could have just said, here's what this film is doing well, that I liked about it. You don't have to say, and I'm punching down on other films that I don't like. - Pretty much, yeah, but nevertheless, I mean, this is considered like a masterpiece of its time. It's funny though, right? I mean, so you haven't seen his other films, so you don't know how this stacks up, but we have both said, this was surprisingly commercial, you know? I don't think this is gonna be everybody's cup of tea, but what film is, it's just, it's a bit bizarre to me. Like, I don't know that I would call this film a masterpiece, having seen the Holy Mountain, because that one is so much more confronting an avant-garde, and just, it really fucking goes for it. This is a very different film. I'm not gonna say it's safer, but it does feel like, "Hey, let's get this in front of the masses, "it's gonna be slightly different." But yeah, I mean, I think if people have sampled international horror films, they're probably gonna watch this and say, "That's really interesting, it's good, "but I don't think they're gonna call it a masterpiece." - I mean, but I do think it's a film that like, I feel like most films that I would call a masterpiece, they're films, I don't like, think that immediately, because they're films that I sit with them after a while, yeah, and like, it's like the more I sit with them, yeah, multiple feelings do have, but sometimes it's even if I've just seen it once, but it's like, oh, a week later, I'm still thinking about that movie, you know? - Now, I mean, I don't wanna sound like, I don't enjoy this film. I really enjoyed this film, I gave it a four out of five, so I'm definitely in line with the stats that you quoted. For me, it's the visuals that's gonna stick with me. I think so much, like, we've already praised how beautiful it is, folks, it's a heavy price tag, but this severing release, I cannot overstate how gorgeous the transfer is. - And we are not getting paid for this. - We are not getting paid for this. - That was something else I thought too, 'cause Argento, like, he's like, he's adamant about how this movie has nothing, like, really Italian about it. It has nothing to do with Italian cinema. It's very much more of a Mexican film, but I was like, I mean, I think the tattooed woman's death screams jello. - Oh, yeah, that is by far the most horror-esque sequence, and then also, yes, the blood splatter feels like this perfect combination between '80s gore sensibility from America and then Italian jello. - But then, like, I'm jumping ahead to the end 'cause I know we're gonna start the plot soon, but whenever all the corpses come out of the ground and they're all painted white because that's his thing, like, that also felt very-- - What felt almost kabuki Japanese, yay! - Well, and I get, you know, that's the white face makeup, and I felt really bad because I thought the actress playing young Alma was an Asian actress, but it's just because she's painted white, but she's a Mexican actress. But, yeah, I was getting, yeah, kabuki, or something like Kobayashi's quite on a little bit out of that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I don't know, I saw a lot of influences here, although again, I almost feel like Yodorowsky would be offended by saying influence because I feel like this is his unique singular vision, you know? - Well, it's interesting, though. I mean, I don't doubt that he would probably say, "No, this is 100% me. "This is what I wanted to put on the screen." But when you start to dig into reviews, people draw deep in terms of comparisons to other people. Like, I've seen people say, "Oh, this has Fellini-esque elements to it." So, I may, you know what? Maybe I should walk it back. Maybe people are seeing this as a masterpiece and rightfully so. (both laughing) - I mean, it's what I was like with later masterpieces, at least. - Right. - But yeah, okay, so Joe, what happens in this movie? - Okay, folks, buckle up, here we go. So we open in what I call a zoo-like room at an asylum because it reminded me of, folks, if you've ever been to the zoo, it's, we've got, you know, plexiglass, we've got a tree, we've got a tire swing, kind of a little bit of water. It just looks like where you would throw an animal in for observation. And yeah, we're introduced to Phoenix, who was played by Axel Jodorowski. And he's naked and feral. They have to coax him out of a tree using fish. - Well, because they try to get him to eat regular food first and he's like, no, oh, Joe, I literally wrote my notes. I was like, they show him a fish that he eats like Mr. Tusk. (both laughing) - Right. - Yeah. - Then when I found out Jodorowski actually made a film called Tusk, but I'll be at a very different one. I was like, oh yes, it's a great city. - Whereas I thought Penguin from Batman and Returns. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that'll do it. But this is merely an appetizer because we have a 40 minute flashback to go through. - Truly, yes, so that's where we go. We have an eagle that flies into the city and this is our transition into the past. As we see people lining the streets for the circus gringo parade that's going by. And when we go inside the tent, we see that the clowns are watching the circus owner, Orgo, who was played by Guy Stockwell. And he is flirting heavily with the tattooed woman. - Not gonna lie, this was annoying from a note-taking perspective. I really wanted to give this woman a name. - I agree with you and a fun fact too. So obviously she is not actually tattooed. They, so the first thing they tried to do, I don't remember what it was, but it affected her body, like an allergic reaction type way, like it was toxic. So they had to switch it, but they ended up using like big color pens. But Joe, like that's not permanent in any shape, way or form. So you gotta redo it all the time. - They redo it all the time. They had to like know like how the angles of the shops are gonna be done. So they could at least touch up the part that was going to be showing. But like, you know, the other side might not be good. This woman couldn't shower for seven weeks. - Oh my goodness, no. - Yeah, like not even kidding. - This is why you take photos and you hire a professional makeup artist. - I mean, Joe, their budget was $200,000. - This is fair, this is fair. I make it like, and she's on this interview too. And she's like acting all happy about it. And she's like, oh, like when I could finally shower, like I was, it was happy. - Yeah, you would feel that for sure. - I just think about her hair too. Like, I mean, her hair must have been so disgusting. - And it's hot, we're talking Mexico. So the temperature's not gonna be particularly cool to accept maybe at night. - Maybe. - In any case, the tattoos are fantastic. Like she's called the tattooed lady because they cover almost every inch of her body and they're bright, they're colorful. You know, she's very vivacious because that's part of the deal, right? So we're seeing her mostly in a bikini for her scenes in the film. - Pretty much, yeah. - I didn't say, but this is actress, Thelma T.U. So interestingly enough, the way that Orgo and the tattooed woman are flirting is via his knife throwing act. So, you know, he's like, here, stand up on my American flag board and I'm gonna throw knives at you and you can lick them and we'll basically anticipate fucking later. - Yeah, no, like this entire sequence is basically their foreplay. - It's great, though. - Oh, it's really cool. Like I said, you said she licks it. Like, so one of the knives goes like next to her cheek and she just turns and just licks it up and down. - And of course, the final one goes right between her legs. - Between the legs. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nothing Freudian about anything in this film. - Yeah, she is very performatively moaning. I mean, you could argue she has an orgasm during the scene. - Yeah, yeah, more or less. It's graphically sexual and, of course, this is all filtered through the young Phoenix's perspective. So you get the impression that he understands but also doesn't understand because he's at that point where sexuality is still a bit of a mystery. Like he's got a crush on young Alma, but it is chase. Like we're doing it through sleight of hand magic. - I know, when we were saying like Jungian, I think there's also a bit of Freud psychoanalysis in here because a lot of what Phoenix is experiencing or seeing in this 40 minute flashback is going to play a part in the more psychedelic aspects of the last part of the film. - Well, it completely informs who he becomes as an adult. - Right, but even if there's an imagery in the back half that you're kind of like, why is that there? It's just probably because he's pulling it from his youth. - Yes, and his memories so heavily inform how he experiences the world as an adult, it's almost like he's trying to replicate moments from the past. - Very much so, yes. - Yeah, so we have talked about young Alma, she is deaf mute, she is the tattooed woman's either daughter or adopted daughter. I saw differences depending on whose reviews I was reading, but the tattooed woman clearly doesn't have a lot of love and affection for her daughter because she basically just wants her to do a flaming trapeze act and shockingly enough, this little girl is not super comfortable with it. - Not at all, fun fact too, Alma means soul in Spanish. - Oh, okay, so this is our introduction to the circus gringo, but then there's a commotion happening outside trace. So the police have drawn up battle lines on one side, they are opposing religious protesters who are dressed in these red cloaks. I'm gonna say religion, you could say culty, they're giving off similar vibes. - Yeah, I mean, I mean, all religions are cult, but. (laughing) I know cult has a negative connotation to it, but like, you know, right, right, right, right. - Well, it's because the film suggests that this is a bit of a made up religion. - Well, aren't all religions made up? - I mean, hey, you were the one who was religious, not me. - No, I don't mean made up as an, oh, it's not real, but I mean like at one point someone created, like they made up the religion, you know? - That's, I don't know. - I don't know, it's like it could get you into trouble. - Maybe it could, maybe it could. But nevertheless, yes, this feels very cult-like. Ben, you're right, the robes really play into it. Also, you know, maybe the giant pool of blood in the middle of the church. - Well, yeah, yeah. So this group is being led by Phoenix's mother. She is also the trapeze artist for The Circus, and her name is Concha, she's played by Blanca Guerra. So they're on the other side of posing these police officers 'cause they want to tear down their church. And so Tracy, just as your fun fact, so Concha is Mexican slang for vagina. - Okay, 'cause I know it literally translates to shell because like like the conch, yeah. That's really funny, vagina. - Okay, yeah. (laughs) But again, if you're reading into this from a psychological perspective. - Yeah. - But vagina's got the hold on him, the whole time. Okay, so yeah, we've got these two opposing groups battling it out, and then we've got the Monsigneur, who is played by Sergio Bustamante, arrives in his limousine in purple robes. Very, very striking. And he has come for a tour of Concha's church. So she tearfully relates the story of their saint. And the reason I said this is made up is because this is not a saint that the Monsigneur subscribes to. - Well, because the Vatican has to like assign a saint. - Right. - You can't just say someone's a saint because of whatever. They have to go through a kind of approval process after they have died. - Right, and clearly we have not done that. - No. - I think Concha has probably invited him here in the hopes that he will facilitate that process. So she tells him the story of Lyrio, who is a young girl whose arms were cut off before she was raped and she was left to die. And we see that there's a number of different tableaus as we relate this story. So yeah, they've tried to make this into a place of worship, including the aforementioned pool of blood. And the Monsigneur is very, he finds it sacrilegious because he says, well, this is red paint. And she says, no, it's not. It's santasangre, it is holy blood. - So I wanted to ask you, 'cause I actually didn't look this up. Why is the film called santasangre or holy blood? Like that's not really, and maybe I'm wrong here, but that's not really like the focal point of the film, except for this particular like plot. - Well, okay. So as I mentioned, I do think that Yodoroski is very interested in religion as well as enlightenment and so on. And I think that you could argue that both of those themes pervade the film, but I'm going to say that the holy blood in this case is actually Phoenix. He is the one who is carrying his mother's holy blood as the kind of vessel. And that's why we get a lot of Adam and Eve, right? He is the result of the sin between his mother and his father, but he carries the burden of the sins of both his father and his mom. - But why does concha have the holy blood belong to Lirio? - It does. I think this is just our kind of introduction into religion in this world and this family. - Got it. And they also have this effigy of Lirio and it's this armless mannequin. - Yep, and folks, if you thought we were going to get out of this movie without cutting somebody's arms off, you have not been paying attention to the signs. - That also was very geoloey too, right? - Oh my gosh, yeah. So I'm going to bring in a reference here. I've read an interesting article by C.N. Seng called "Sontasongre, "finding salvation in sacrilege "for a site called Blood Knife." And Seng says this, "The frescoes within the Santasongre church "are the storybook illustrations "on which concha raises her child. "Grew some scenes which depict dismemberment "as martyrdom. "Death and dismemberment we sense "are the sorts of experiences that concha would want "for her child to purify and sanctify him." - Oh. - So if you think about it, it's not just that Phoenix is remembering these kinds of things. These are very much the instrument with which he is, I guess, living his life, right? Like these are the testaments which were instilled upon him by his love for his mother because he sees such horrible things happen to him. - Right, right. Well, I mean, that's a thing, right? 'Cause like, we'll talk about it and we get to the actual, like, murdering stuff. - Right, yes. Okay, so Monsignor and Concha are fighting about this pool of blood. He ends up leaving the church's immediately bulldozed. - With Concha inside of it, so I thought we were losing her at this point in the movie. - He too, yeah. It very much seems like she would have happily gone down for it, like, I'm willing to die from my religious beliefs, except for the fact that Phoenix pulls her away and then we see her sort of walking down the street and we get a lot of parades of various sorts in this film, particularly in the early parts, but it's like her and Phoenix clutching her and then we've got these clowns that have a tendency to sort of appear and they don't have any lines because, you know, Yodorowsky and Mimes, but also they seem almost like a Greek chorus where they will accompany characters or they will provide the musical soundtrack to help guide us or sense what is happening or what we should be feeling. - I love when films employ Greek choruses, choruses. Choruses. - Choruses. Choruses. - No, no, that's like sophomore English reading, like, you know, Antigone and shit like that. - Right, yeah. And we also have another character, which is Aladdin played by Jesus Chorras and this is the, I've seen some people say that he's the, like, the little person servant of Phoenix and it's tricky because he doesn't really have a strong personality. Like, he doesn't get an arc, he doesn't really get to say or do much, but I feel uncomfortable saying that that's his role in the film because he just seems to be more of a guide. - I read him more as a friend. Like, he was his childhood friend and spoiler everyone. Like, in the present timeline, Aladdin isn't real. So, like, we only see him in this. Like, we only really have this character in this flashback, but yeah, he always, I guess, yeah, he does seem to be a support system for Phoenix, but he seems more to me as a friend than a servant, but maybe I'm wrong. - I like that. No, I'm willing to go along with that. - Yeah. - Okay, so we head back to the circus and, well, the church has been destroyed and poor conscious, you know, losing everything that is important to her. Orga and the tattooed woman are basically just still, I fucking go the whole time. - She like does this thing where she gets on, like, she bends over and puts her hands on the ground and then, like, backs up, like, shuffles back and then just puts her ass in his face. - Yeah. - It is not subtle. - It's not so. It's kind of sexy. - So, one of the other references that I saw, which I immediately thought of, and it's primarily because we are taking place at a circus, but a lot of these scenes in the flashback felt very reminiscent of Todd Browning's freaks. - Oh, Joe, I've never seen it. I'm gonna get that criteria, but I've never seen it. - Well, don't you worry, baby, because I'm going to make us program it. - I know. It's essential. - I have heard so many things about freaks. I've just never seen it. - Well, I guess the other interesting thing is that Yodoroski does often tend to employ, like, little people, quote unquote freaks, like people who have amputations or they're on the margins of society. He likes to cast them in his movies. So, I think that there's that kind of element as well, but I like that they're not treated in an other fashion. Like, they're just part of who you would experience if you went to Mexico City. You would see these people. - Yeah, I also, hey, you're gonna lie. I get a John Waters sensibility out of him, because I don't know if you remember, when we covered female trouble, you know, there's the guy that could, like, pop his eye out of his socket. - Right. - And John Waters just hired him because he wanted to put that in the movie. And that's kind of what he does with the Earless Man. I'm sorry, that's kind of what Yodoroski does with the Earless Man in this movie. - Yeah, yeah, it's like a celebration of the uniqueness that they bring to either the production or the world. - Or you could say their queerness. - Hey. - Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm. (upbeat music) - Get three coffins ready, kid, because our latest podcast Make My Day is venturing off into the wild and sprawling frontier that is Clint Eastwood's career. More movies than Stephen King has books and more genres than all of the franchises we've covered over at the Halloween's. Now, I know what you're thinking. Do they really need to start another show? Well, to tell you the truth and all this excitement, I kind of lost track myself. But being this is a podcast, the most powerful medium in the world for pop culture conversation and Clint's output is infinite, you've got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk? Find out today and subscribe to Make My Day, a Clint Eastwood podcast now, wherever you get your audio. (upbeat music) Okay, so yes, Orgo and the tattooed woman are I fucking, Concha obviously has an idea that this is going on because she does threaten them with a knife, but this only seems to rattle them up. Like, they are very much feeding on this. We're not being settled, but also we're waving our business in front of everybody's eyes. But, okay, but then what happens next is like the wildest thing. So like, I, 'cause I don't know if we knew that Orgo was like also the hypnotist of the circus. No, we thought he was the knife thrower and we knew that he was sort of in charge 'cause everybody's treating him with a lot of reverence. So, Concha, it goes off on him, does yelling at him, and then he hypnotizes her and just drags her out of the room. So this is a rape. Oh, 100% because truthfully, when I first watched this, I think I missed him hypnotizing her 'cause I was taking notes, so. - I did too. - I moved from this to like, her yelling at him to all of us had like, Phoenix is watching them fuck, and I was like, no, this is weird. Why is she having sex with him? And then I watched it again, I was like, oh! She's hypnotized into having sex with him. So full on rape in this movie. - Yeah, but it's like, okay, so we're not seeing the actual rape, I just like, we're hearing it. And then as Orgo climaxes, we hear a monkey screech, and then we just smash cut to blood spewing out of a dying elephant's trunk. - Which is, hello. - I thought this was like a dummy trunk, and, ah! Okay, so everyone in case you're worried about animal cruelty on this film, because we've covered- - As I was, I was very worried. - And we've covered films that have harm real animals, you know, thinking specifically of Wake and Fright here. - Yeah. - So I did look this up. This is from the American Humane Program, Humane Hollywood, it's also their website, humanehollywood.com, you can go check this. And they basically like, do reports. Like if you're doing a movie with an animal, look, you have to kind of like file a report with these people. - Right. - I don't know if it's mandatory or if it's optional, but like, you know, I went and looked, and you can like log your production on the site. - I think it's probably mandatory now, although I wasn't sure in a film that was made outside of North America in the 80s. So that's why I was worried. - Well, I didn't know if it was like, oh, you have to go to this particular organization, or if there's like, you know, a plethora of them that you could go to like these certificates of like, you know, hey, we didn't hurt our animals. But so this is their report on this though. It says, in one of the circus scenes, an elephant is dying and blood pours from its trunk. The scene was staged with the elephant lying on its side. The elephant drank a pleasant flavored thick liquid and expelled some through its trunk. In a later scene, scavengers break into the elephant's coffin and dismember the elephant. We'll go there in a minute. The dismember parts were fake props. Now here's the other thing, and we'll go there in a minute too, but there's a scene where chickens peck at a bloody arm and then they're picking at feet placed on a prop. Dogs lap up gravy flavored stage blood. But, you know, we have snakes and birds and puppies and horses and pigeons, but the big one is, I know, animals love this movie, but there is a scene that involves many chickens. And I think this is like one of the most like, memorable like shots from the film. But we're chickens are just dropping from the ceiling falling on the floor below. And they say, we have been unable to get any details on this scene. And because of the obvious potential for injury to the chickens, we're rating Sansa Sangre questionable. (laughing) - Yeah, so so many scenes with animals that we can for sure say they were not harm, but then there is that one. So we get a questionable rating. - Yeah, but I mean like, again, like we don't see anything bad. The only animal that has harm come to it in the film is this elephant. - Right, which we know for sure was not actually harmed in real. - Exactly, but I mean, again, I thought this was a fake trunk, so that it is actually a real elephant like spewing red liquid is kind of neat. - Well, that's the thing is this scene is frankly kind of amazing because we've got Phoenix looking at the elephant and kind of, I think, putting too much weight. Like we're basically projecting onto the survival of the elephant as though it is, maybe mom and dad's relationship or their marriage or something like that. But Phoenix is praying for this elephant not to die, and Yodoroski pulls the camera up slowly into this overhead aerial shot. And it really just, it captures the moment because we see that he's actually surrounded. He and the elephant are surrounded by the clowns and all the other people at the circus. And that's right in the middle of this busy street. It's a shot with a lot of gravity to it. - Very, oh, the overhead shot is beautiful. And again, it's been going the blood too. It just stands out because it's just so red. - It's so red. - We're big in this color all the round, but it just even really sticks out. - Yeah, it pops. - Pops, thank you. - So we are hearing music from the clowns during the scene. And then that music basically just goes through the cut. So we've got diegetic music that cuts right through multiple scenes. And we go from that to a funeral procession as we are carrying this elephant in a sarcophagus, a coffin. - I mean, but it's a big blue thing. Fuck, what is that device called? When someone of royalty is being carried around a city and it's like they're in like a little like shack thing, but like it's on bars that people are holding it on. - Right, I know what you mean and I don't know the name. - Well, anyway, there's a name for that thing, but that's what this coffin is. It's a gorgeous blue coffin sarcophagus thing that. And then I was like, oh, we're really going with this elephant here. Boy oh boy, do we follow this elephant on a journey. - Yeah, so it's a funeral march, kind of like what you might see in New Orleans. - Oh, they actually play Chopin's funeral march. - Oh yeah, okay, there we go. So we walk it down the street and then we arrive at the edge of a cliff. And we see that there are like a hundred people who have been working, they've gathered, they're very excited, they're cheering. And we just tip the sarcophagus over the edge and it falls to the bottom of this cliff. Like it's got to be a hundred feet down. - They think that the final Graboid's death in trimmers where it just like dives off the cliff, that's what happens to this elephant sarcophagus. - Mm-hmm, but it doesn't explode on an impact, it just kind of lands. And then all the people who look like workers, they look impoverished, they smear and kind of soot on themselves. So it is again, quite striking. They climb up, they beat open this sarcophagus. And then yeah, we just start ripping this elephant apart and throwing the meat out to everybody. - And again, if y'all haven't seen this, like we don't actually see them ripping the elephant apart. We don't see the elephant corpse at all, but it's more so like they go inside and then when they come out, they're holding pieces of meat. - But again, right, this sort of lends almost a religious fervor to the proceedings. Like there's something ritualistic about this where we're celebrating the death by distributing the body out to the people. So like in death, good things can come, but also the violence is kind of horrifying. - But it's like, 'cause these are also poverty-stricken people. So they actually are hungry. - They're gonna eat it. - Like they are, they need to eat it. But yeah, there's something, I think it's a thing where I could see someone looking at this and be like, well, why is this seen in this movie? Like what does that have to do with the plot of the story? (laughing) But yeah, I think it's like thematically tied into it. - Yeah, it doesn't directly inform the events of the narrative, but a lot of this movie is more about, well, I think it's also just a child experiencing that. I mean, we don't know at this point if Phoenix has ever experienced death before. So this could be the first thing in his life that he has lost and that it happens right before a shit shows about to happen is probably what helps him, or helps him is maybe the wrong term, but like leads him to becoming a psychopath. - Right, yeah. So it's important that you say we don't know if he's ever experienced death, but we do know that it makes him emotional because when the walk back to the circus, he does cry and his father takes note of this. And we've seen that he has a challenging relationship with his father. His father doesn't seem to care very much about him. It's very aloof. And I think Phoenix wants something more from the relationship. So when his dad says, you know, you can't cry, you've got to toughen up, he takes him back and we cut the cloak off of him. So everybody's in their kind of black funeral garb and Orgo cuts off this cloak with a knife, like one of his, I think, throwing knives. And then he proceeds to carve a Phoenix into his son's chest with the dagger. - He tattoos him. And this is not like, you know, the modern, like, you know, jabbie needle tattoos. This is a fucking knife. - Yeah, and Phoenix is crying, the whole time. - So interesting enough. So Adonio Durovsky who plays Young Phoenix, and he asks his dad, like, you know, should I be crying? And he was like, well, what do you want to do? And so he was like, well, I want to cry, but I need someone to help me. And so basically, like either his dad or someone was like below the table, like constantly pinching his toes to make him cry. - Kind of method, but it sounds like a gentle method. - Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's a thing where I'm kind of like, I don't know if some of this stuff would really fly in today's movie making rules, but, I mean-- - But it's also a father directing his son. So it's harder to say, oh, well, you know, he should know better or he should do it differently because, well, technically, you are the legal guardian. - Well, the son did ask for it, literally. (laughing) - Oh my God, he's not like the worst people right now. - I will say though, 'cause this is the one, so he's still alive and he's like a musician now. He grew up to be very attractive. - Oh my God, how did I know you were gonna say that? (laughing) - Terrible, beyond the point, I'm gonna bring saying back in for this particular piece. So they say, "Phoenix is chest tattoo depicting a phoenix, a mythical inscription sliced into his young body by his father, suggests supernatural rebirth." 'Cause, of course, you can't see a phoenix without thinking of rebirth. It's quite literally why we would introduce it. - Absolutely. - But it's a supernatural rebirth into masculinity from the ashes of perceived femininity. So this weakness of crying, showing emotion and so on, that the boy can only become a man once he knows what torture is, once all that sensitive and sentimental within him has been ruthlessly carved away. - Okay, that's fascinating. So that leads me to my next question then. So, okay, so, you know, you're over covering this, but then there is queerness in this movie outside of Phoenix, but like, do you read Phoenix as queer, Joe? - So, I don't read Phoenix as queer in the conventional sense where, you know, he is sexually attracted to other men or both men and women. Like, it's not as black and white as a lot of other films where we would say, oh, this person's secretly gay and they just don't know it. But obviously, folks, you know, we've already mentioned that there's a lot of similarities between Phoenix and Norman Bates because of his relationship with his mother. So, I think you can say the way that Phoenix is presented is coded effeminate, and in some cases, that's where we start to draw queerness. But I would argue it's the relationship that he has with his mom, where he seems almost to be possessed by a feminine spirit. - Yes, and the interesting though, if we're gonna compare Phoenix to Norman Bates, comparing Conchia with Mrs. Bates, because Mrs. Bates was a nightmare. Like, she did abuse Norman, and I don't, like, conscious not that, but like, that's where I find the-- - But it's Phoenix's perception of who Conchia would become. - Yes. - And I think because of her religious undertones or even overtones, that's what he has internalized and that's what he is struggling with. So, basically, this movie is very much, oh, your parents can fuck you up as a child, and it will turn you into, I don't wanna say a monster because I don't think he is. I do actually empathize with the character as an adult a while. - Oh, yeah. - But he is obviously very, very fucked up. - Well, yeah, but I also think it's because, you know, like, how she acts around the tattooed woman, that's why he absorbs the, oh, like, mother wants all women to die. Any woman I love, she wants him to die. - Mm-hmm, yeah. - When it's just like, hey, just don't cheat on your wife. (laughing) - Well, yeah, I mean, I think the other bizarre part of this movie is that we can definitely say that Conchia becomes a kind of villain because she's the one who encourages adult Phoenix to kill other women. - Right. - But he is just as much messed up by the actions of his father, Orgo. Like, even Orgo cutting this symbol of the Phoenix into his chest, but then he dresses his son in a junior version of his own costume, as if to say, you will become me. - Yeah, I actually found it fascinating that we don't get any kind of, I mean, spoiler alert, everyone, like, the twist of this. If you even want to, I mean, I think the movie just-- - I don't think it's a twist. Yeah, the film doesn't present it as such, right? - Well, but when it's revealed, like, we do get, like, you know, we get the whole, like, oh, look at all these other scenes where it's like, it wasn't, she wasn't really there, so I do think it's presented as a big reveal, but I also think it's telegraphed intentionally earlier on. - Yes, 100%. But I find it interesting that we don't have any embodiment of Orgo. - No. - When Phoenix is an adult. - Yeah, which to me suggests, like, yeah, I do think that this is where we're playing with some murky stereotypes about queerness, like young boys who have effeminate qualities, but they also have this attraction or this entanglement with their mothers, like a mother complex. It's very edipal in that way. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - But, yeah, I mean, the other interesting thing that I thought, particularly since this is a foreign film, is the fact that Orgo's costume and the board that he throws the knives at are in the colors of the American flag. - Well, okay, but you said, like, this is called Cerco del Gringo, which just translates to white people's circus. - Yeah. (laughs) - So, but again, it's in Mexico City, but I guess maybe it's meant for tourists, but although we don't really see any American tourists. - We don't really get a sense of who attends this, right? Like, we will see one performance under the big top and I can't distinguish any of the people who are in attendance because the story ultimately isn't interested in them. But this does feel like a slightly, oh, you know, if we want to talk about an authoritarian figure who is imposing very masculine, traditional qualities, I guess I just, as somebody who often looks at American culture from the outside, this felt very much like, oh, okay, we are coding almost like American imperialism onto Orgo. - Right, right, right. I'm fun fact too, so Guy Stockwell who plays Orgo, he is the brother of Dean Stockwell. I thought so, who was in Dune, David Lynch's Dune. (laughs) - But Dune connection, and of course also quantumly. - Yes, of course, of course that. I didn't watch that, but sure. (laughs) - This is so good. Scott Bakula, "A Lord of Illusion's Connection." - Yeah. - Not really, this is six degrees. - Yeah, there you go. - Okay, so yes, let's get to this big top performance. So we see Jung Phoenix, he's performing a magic act, he's using Alma as his assistant. So he puts her into the box, covers it up, and out comes Mother to which I said, "Oh, well, there's nothing Freudian about that at all." - Right, oh my God. (laughs) - I did love this moment though, so she comes out, she's in this gold bikini with her hair up in a braid, and then the braid in her hair gets hooked on to something so that she gets lifted up so that she can do her trapeze act, and it is so cool. I couldn't tell how painful it would be to be held by your hair. - It's okay, so I'm fascinated by circuses. Like I haven't been to once, I was a little kid, but I would love to go, because yeah, like these kinds of things where I'm like, "I just like, does this hurt for people?" - Yeah. - Like, has she built up a giant callus on her scalp from doing this so much that it just doesn't hurt anymore, this is all wild to me. I find it all very fascinating. - It's the pain of performance. - Yeah, exactly, but she doesn't have a great time up here. - No, because it actually gives her an aerial view of her husband, Mackie, with the tattooed woman, so she just essentially cancels the entire performance right then and there. She screams, she wants to be let down, she goes, she confronts them, she's very, very pissed off, and we just have to bring on other acts to do some damage control, but this is where it kind of goes to shit, Trace. So. - I don't know what I was expecting from this movie. - I don't think many of us expected this. - I know we maybe should have. - Well, okay, so what happens here, Joe? - Okay, so Concha locks Phoenix in their trailer, and she goes and I was gonna say she confronts Orgo and the tattooed woman, but she doesn't. She gets a jar of acid and she throws it on Orgo's dick, as well as the genital region of the tattooed woman, and Orgo gets so mad that he takes his knives, and this is honestly one of the most beautiful murder tablets I have ever seen in my life. - The overhead shot. - It's shot from overhead. - Yes. (laughing) - Jodorowsky films this, yeah, so we are looking directly down Orgo puts his wife up against his knife throwing board and just chops off both of her arms. - I mean, like he brings the knives up and just slices them up and then, yeah, we get that like arterial spray of blood coming out of her stumps, and I mean, it is everything. - I, yeah. (laughing) - And we see her, and this is one of those sort of telltale signs. She very obviously looks like she dies right here. - Well. - And the movie presumes like, no, she's not dead. She'll come back later, but it's very much like, no, she actually died here. This is when it ends for her. But we pause on her head sort of tilted to the side, and the way it's framed on the board, it looks like she has a halo. She has been turned into a saint. - I miss that. Okay, well, because she's quite, I mean, her death mimics that of Loria from her, you know, her saint. - Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm. - So it's fitting, but yeah, I will confess, I didn't, like, I didn't expect that she died here. I mean, I figured out a certain point, like, you know, once we really started doing psycho-e-type things. But I, yeah, I fully bought in the fact that she was alive later in the movie. - Yeah, yeah. So we get some sad harmonica. We get this melancholy song, and we're not done because Orgo's junk is now kind of useless. So he just stumbles into the street and then takes the knife that he has in hand, slits his own throat publicly. Well, and in full view of Phoenix, who was watching from a nearby trailer. - Yep. - So he actually doesn't witness his mother's. Oh, maybe that's why. That's why he sees his father die. He doesn't see his mother die. - Yes, he probably just hears that she has lost both over arms. - Mm-hmm. - I have a desire he does learn it, and it disturbs him so badly that he just, you know, has a dissociative break or something. - 'Cause do you think he goes to a mental institution, like, right now? Or is it, like, later in, like, we don't really get that information? - No, it's a big question mark because there's this huge gap. There's only one final moment left in this flashback, and it is that, yeah, he sees Dad die by suicide, but then he also sees the tattooed woman pack up all of her belongings, including Alma, and drive away in this VW van. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So we've lost everything in the space of One Night. - So yeah, all of Act One in this two hour movies is One Flashback, and then we got 80 minutes of the quote unquote real movie to go. - There we go, yeah. - So we're back in the present with adult phoenix, and this is when he's introduced to the hospital's group of patients. They all are down syndrome. And it's interesting, right? Like, the music continues throughout, so it feels like a kind of linkage from the past to the present. So it feels like we really haven't lost or gained any time, which I think it feels deliberate, right? The fact that we don't see, oh, here's 20 years of him in this asylum. It feels like this is the next day only he's an adult now. - Well, because I think you could argue that it's kind of linking it to Phoenix's stunted growth. Like at the end of the day, he's still a child in an adult's body. - Absolutely, yeah. Okay, so the group is meant to go see Robinson Crusoe at the movies. This is what the doctor says. It's gonna help everybody. This guy seems great, which means he's got to get the fuck out of this movie immediately. - Yeah, love, yeah. - So he drops him off in the movie theater and then leaves, which means they are promptly picked up by a pimp. This is the Yodaroski. - Okay, but wait, he doesn't leave. He gets into the car to make out with the nurse. - Yeah. (both laughing) - Like it's very Friday the 13th. Oh my God, they were making love while Jason drowned. They were making love while this pimp able these people cocaine. - Oh my God, that was when I was just like, okay, is this a foreign film? Is this a film from the '80s? Is it a film from a guy who was known for provoking imagery? - But yeah, watching a pimp give a bunch of, like they're almost like young adult or like early 20s something. - Yeah. - So watching a bunch of Down syndrome kids, do lines of coke just felt so wrong on so many levels. - 'Cause it's weird, like when normally when movies show someone doing cocaine, at least especially modern ones, it's like that close up of like the $1 bill going over the coke. I guess I was thinking of Maxine in here 'cause that's the most recent thing I've seen with cocaine. - That's the most recent example. - But we're just seeing him fully give a spoonful of this coke to these people and they just sniff it. - Yeah, and to be clear, I'm not suggesting that a person with Down syndrome doesn't have the capacity to understand what they're doing. Like, I guess it's just more the movie presents it as, they were misled, like they're there for a fun time, but they don't appear to understand like, oh, the person who is looking out for you has passed you off to a bad person and you probably shouldn't trust whatever it is that they wanna do with you. - Well, to be clear, nothing bad happens to them. They actually go have quite a fun time. - You know what, that's fair. Yeah, we do a little bit of coke. We get a little bit of sex work action. Courtesy of Dolores, who was played by Mad to Jesus, a Rens of all. - So with this too, 'cause we have a lot of extras in this scene. Alejandro Yodorowsky, he was invited, I'm gonna use the word transphosphate again, I cannot tell what he's saying if he means like drag queen or like transgender, but he was invited to judge a mistransvestite mexico pageant. And they like, they want to give something like a price to all the contestants. And so he was like, well, you wanna just come be in this movie and they had all their own costumes. He was like, we have to provide costumes for anything. They came in their own garb and like, we shot them in this party scene. - Yeah, it was curious because I couldn't figure out if we were just meant to infer that these women were all sex workers, but there is that air of, okay, these are probably unpaid extras or yeah, people that we just grabbed off the street and said, hey, let's be in this movie. - But apparently they did pay everyone, but it was like a dollar. - Ooh, okay. - Well, I mean, 99 at the time, maybe, maybe. - No, you can't say you paid them a dollar in 1989 dollar. (laughing) So I'm gonna bring in a different person. So I found a piece by Jason Shanko called "In Santasangra, life is a psychosexual circus, literally for gizmondo." And the reason I wanted to bring in Shanko here is because I was like, is it important that we're going to see Robinson Crusoe? We make a very specific reference to it as opposed to just saying, let's go to the movies. - That's so funny because there's another like movie in this movie that I was like, well, there has to be a reason for that later. - Right, and there is, there is. So Shanko says, "The choice of Robinson Crusoe is of course no accident. The world of Santasangra is populated by castaways, the wretched refuse, the misfits of society, the unworthy in the sight of God, the forgotten, the depraved, the abandoned, and the unloved." - Oh, okay. - So of course Robinson Crusoe is a shipper tale, right? So it's people who have kind of been set adrift by society and then either forgotten about or left to fend for themselves, which is very much what's happening with this group of people, but then more specifically Phoenix. - Well, yeah, because he's about to get a rude awakening. - Yeah, so he ends up not partaking of Dolores' charms, and he stays behind and sees that the pimp is dancing with none other than the tattooed woman, that bitch. - Yeah, so she is now working as a sex worker. - Yeah, she is, yeah, which is kind of awful. Like this movie really has no compassion for her as the other woman. It essentially says, oh, well, yeah, she also gets burned by the acid, but she ends up having to live this life of a sex worker. - Yeah, but yeah, she seems happy. - Well, she's a bit of a garbage person too, but we'll get it. - Well, yeah, because she's totally fine having Alma just get raped by her johns. - Yes, yes. I couldn't tell if that was because much like Orgo killing himself after his dick and balls presumably gets horribly scarred. I wasn't sure if the tattooed woman would have difficulty, I guess securing clients due to her disability. So she's like, well, I've got this perfectly great daughter, except for the deaf mute part. - I'm going to say she probably didn't have any trouble. She had like four guys on her while the other guy was off with Alma. - Well, that's fair, yeah. Let's just say this movie is not great in its depiction of sex work. - Well, no, no, no, no, no. - Okay, but we're not quite there yet because Phoenix sees the tattooed woman and it's almost like he's got this renewed jwada viv. Like we see him the next day and all of a sudden he's quite literally performing back flips. - Backflips, yes. - He's got a reason to live everybody. I've got that bitch. - That dog is just like, wow, Robin's secret so did cure you, look at you. So not coincidentally, this is also when Concha mysteriously reappears. So she calls to her son from outside of the asylum and he just climbs up that window and out we go. And to me, this was one of the first big moments where he think, this isn't real, this is in his mind because there's no fog. And then all of a sudden when she appears, there's just fog at the end of the street and we just disappear into it. - Good catch, I didn't catch the fog, but yeah, that's very clearly telegraphed. - Yeah, okay, so we jump ahead to that evening. We do see that the tattooed woman is having a good night. She's got a couple of drunken military men to hang out with and she does prostitute out, Alma. - The line she says is awful. - Yeah, she's like, you can do whatever you want because no one will hear, because she can't make a sound. - It's super duper gross. - Well, honestly, I think the most uncomfortable part of this movie is when, so this guy picks Alma up and like cradles her in his arms and she's still sleeping. And she wakes up and starts freaking out. - Yes, as you would, right? I thought it was interesting though, he, you know, very clearly is paying for sex, he's gone to a sex worker, but then his activity is almost father-like to Alma, right? You know, he picks her up and he rocks her as you would with a young child, but that's horrifying. If you're waking up in the arms of a strange man, he... - Yeah, and so she's just off running and just kind of runs into like every bad thing you could imagine on the street. - It's a little bit of, oh, you were maybe safer at home because the streets are a dangerous place. So you might run into a man who, who rips off his ear and accosts you with it. - And I will say, I know he mentioned it so like, you know, John Waters be like, "Oh, you can pop out your eye, let me put you in the movie." I get, I think that's what Yoda Roski did. He says, and I quote, "I don't understand what the ear ripping scene means in the movie." It was done with my unconscious. - Oh, okay. It's very much just the streets are a place where you might meet a variety of different people who could be threatening. - Well, because earlier with the pimp scene, there was a guy that tries to like attack the pimp and he pushes him off and then we, he knocks him out, but then we see this guy with a deformed leg who kind of like hops over to him and like robs him. - Right, yes, the streets are dangerous. - Yes, very much. - Okay, so Alma ends up climbing up onto the roof of a truck and she ends up sleeping there. And then this is where we get our first and only use of a killer POV. And this is our second very clear sign that we're doing a certain something, because we can very clearly see the long red fingernails of the killer as they approach the tattooed woman with a knife and just absolutely go to town on this woman. - I mean, this is, it goes on for a while. It's a really good death scene. Now, it reminded me of Tenabray. - Well, yeah, because they write the arm getting cut off and just spraying blow over the white sheet on the white wall. Yeah, this is arguably like the most horror-y like sequence in the film. It's masterfully done. It's gorgeous to look at. I love the lighting in the scene. - Yeah, and you're right. It goes on to the point where it almost becomes comical because we are throwing blood on every surface of this room. - And my subtitles set to exciting Calypso music. - Right? - Yes, I've got to say there's so much Calypso music and mariachi band in this movie. And I loved all of it. - So yeah, so nevertheless, a tattoo woman is our Marian Crane. - Yeah, so she's dead and then Alma comes home in the morning and finds her mutilated body. So now we know there's a killer on the loose. - But she like sees a picture of child Phoenix and his magicians out there. And I guess she's kind of like, I'm gonna go find Phoenix now. - It's weird, right? It's almost like she also has a stunted childhood infantilization complex or something. - I mean, I would argue she probably did. She didn't at least witness a death, but she did like see Orgo's body. And I would imagine she saw Conte's body too. - It's just fascinating the way that the film has no interest in chronicling the years in between the flashback and then the present, but it doesn't hurt the film. I don't think it matters at the end of the day, but it is wild that it's basically, no, these are the same characters. They really have not changed very much. - Yeah, exactly. - So she sets off to find Phoenix and then this is where we see Conte performing on stage. This, this is everything. - Every time we do this, I thought it was so. - And this is where Axl, like this comes in like, wild, handy fun fact too. Again, it would not happen today. So in particular, the scenes where they have to be really active whenever it's Phoenix acting as Conte's arms, you know, the actress, Blanca Guerra was kind of like, well, how do I like, how do I not pull away? And Alejandro Jodorowsky goes, grab onto my son's testicles from behind and that way you won't get too separated. So every time they're like in an action set piece, this act is holding on to Axl's balls. (laughing) - Into the sea coordinator? Can we get into the sea coordinator on the sea? - Hold onto my son's testicles. (laughing) - Probably likes it. Oh God, okay, so much about this movie. Not okay. It's wild. (laughing) But yeah, so folks, if you have not seen this and you're just thinking, oh, what the fuck are they talking about? So her stage production is that she still has no arms because they have been cut off. So she has her son do the arm pantomime and they are perfectly in sync. There's whole sections where you only see concha and it's only when you realize, oh, no, there's another person that's behind her that's doing this but it's a whole elaborate stage production. - Well, and this, yeah, this is a performance 'cause they're doing the story of Adam and Eve, you know? - Of course they are. - His hands as hers do like the snake. But like, for me, the most impressive part of this performance, it comes later, I think, when she's playing the piano. But there are times when they're just hanging out, they're not doing a performance, they're just like sitting around talking. And his arms like mimic her emotion at the time, you know? So she's sad, like, you know, he'll put his hands up on her cheeks, you know? - Yes. - It's so good. - It's really good. (laughing) - Yeah, and it feels like the kind of thing where they would have had to rehearse this to get the level of intimacy and detail, right? Because it is flawless, it's very seamless. - Oh yeah, which I'm sure that three years at Marcel Marso's Mime School really paid off. There we go. - Nobody ever said that miming wasn't useful, folks. (laughing) - So, yeah, the performance ends. This is clearly a big hit. Like, we've got a good audience, so we-- - We should also point out, too, that they're on like a stage that looks very extravagant. - Mm-hmm. - And we don't know where this is or what they're doing. - No, it's like, where is this theater? How did this start? How long has it been going on and so on? - Yeah. So, we head backstage, and almost immediately, Phoenix is being hit on by this woman, Ruby, who is played by Gloria Contreras, and she will eventually be revealed to be a kind of burlesque performer. So, she performs the stricties to music. And I should note that if you're even casually looking at the screen, because Phoenix is doing the arms of his mother, he has her red, painted fingernails. - Yes, very striking. I love this design choice. - I mean, yeah, it's great, but I would argue that this is why it's weird that the film wants to have it both ways, with both, oh, it's a reveal that, oh, his mother has been dead the whole time, and he's been acting on her behalf, but he's actually mentally ill, because the movie very clearly telegraphs. Like, these are the same red nails we just saw murdered the tattoo woman. - I think what you're supposed to think, though, is that, again, not necessarily that she's dead. She is alive, but they do this together. She goes to kill them, but he still has to act as her hands. - Oh, I see. - Okay, yeah, I didn't buy that. - I think that we're supposed to think. - Well, we do see it in action, so that would make sense. - Yeah, again, she's holding on to his testicles. This sequence reminded me, I'll give you one guess what this reminded me of. - Is it peeping Tom? - It is peeping Tom. - Yes, one of the first kills he does, and he practices with that woman from the red shoes after hours and then kills her. That's all this gave me. Which, also giving the fact that, you know, in that film, we're also dealing with a very sympathetic, I would argue, serial killer. - Right, okay, which is hilarious, because I saw no references to peeping Tom, and I saw a billion references to Psycho. - Well, and I want to make the distinction, because I do think that Norman Bates is a sympathetic serial killer, but we don't spin the movie with Norman Bates in the same way that we spin peeping Tom with Mark, or spending Santa's song great with Phoenix, you know? So I would argue that, honestly, yeah, I do think this is more in line with peeping Tom, which also, he's traumatized by his father in that movie. - Mm, mm-hmm, so. - Yes, and important to note, so the murder that we're talking around is the murder of Ruby. So Phoenix shows up after hours at this empty theater, and Ruby is waiting for him. Important to note, though, that Phoenix does show up in his father's costume, so he is now wearing the knife throwing outfit in the sort of Star Spangled Banner colors, and yeah, he definitely puts Ruby into a trance as he's talking her through. This is how I'm gonna do the knife throwing act, and he does a couple, and then Concha shows up, and basically says, "She's dirty, she's defiled you, "this is sinful," and she says, "Get rid of this bitch," so we throw a knife right into Ruby's chest. And what I love is because she's still in the trance, just like we saw with Concha, she doesn't realize what's even happened, so Concha makes Phoenix take Ruby out of the trance before she dies awful. - Yeah, so she wakes up and dies very dramatically, and I will argue, at this point, moving forward, this is where we start getting in a much more surrealist imagery and plot. - Why, just because we bring out a giant rabbit costume to put Ruby's body into? - Okay, but like, the burying in the ground and painting her white. Like it is. - Yeah. - Again, they still go, "Why is he painting them white?" Do you think it's a holdover from seeing Alma in makeup, so he's trying to make them all look as beautiful as he remembered Alma? - I think so, yeah, you know, in some ways, it's almost a bit of a rebellion against Mom. Obviously, he doesn't want to quote-unquote, "kill these women," he feels a sexual attraction, and that's why the mom image is encouraging him to dispatch them, but then, yeah, he says, "Okay, well, you're kind of like my true love that I lost, so he paints them white like Alma." - Yeah, and the idea, and I don't know if we've gotten there, yeah, but the idea here is that he cannot control his hands, because his hands are his mother's hands. - Yes, which is a great conceit. - Well, again, if we're comparing it to Psycho, it's great, 'cause if he's not becoming his mother, only his arms are. - Yeah, yeah, it feels so disembodied too, right? - Almost like a, Clyde Barker wrote a short story that was eventually turned into a part of an anthology film. Cannot remember the name of the short story, but it's basically, hands become sentient and chop themselves off of people's bodies and run rampant. - Is it in Books of Blood? Is it the body politic? - It is the body politic, thank you. I've read that one, what are the ones who actually read? Wild, okay, I read the first three books of blood. - Yeah, but I love this idea of, you know, we have appendages that are attached to us that we think we control, but they don't respond to us, they respond to either themselves or someone else, because that is a really scary concept. - Oh yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh, which, funnily enough, like two years before this would be explored very heavily in Evil Dead 2. - Right, just that, yeah. So important to note, when we are digging this grave to throw Ruby's body in the ground, Phoenix is dressed in a trench coat, he's got sunglasses on at night, and he's wearing very sparkly boots, so there's a level of almost campy performativity to this as well. - Well, but it's, I mean, 'cause as we'll learn, this is not the first body he's burying in this area. - Yeah, why have questions about that? - Yeah, but yeah, there's something very ceremonial about this. - Well, and you mentioned that there's a little bit of surrealism too, right? Because he, yeah, you know, there's a whole thing that we need to do with the painting, and then all of a sudden there's a light that quite literally comes out of this grave as though we've got, you know, some kind of lighting plan in there or something, and then I put that we see a goose. Is that what you saw? - I put a swan. - Okay. Some kind of bird flies out of the grave saying-- - But to me, this feels like it's his way of coping with the fact that he or his mother killed them is, like, to me, the swan is the embodiment of her soul, like going to heaven. - Yes, yeah, and we will elaborate on that when we finish the film. - Yeah. - But important to note that as Phoenix sees this, he does stretch his arms out, and this goes directly to him in bed in the morning with his arms up, but we're also seeing him praying to the elephant from the flashbacks, who are like really intercutting or collapsing these three ideas together. - Well, because then we'll also see blood coming out of Phoenix's nose, so it's like he takes on traits of the elephant, and it's clearly that traumatized him. - Yes. So I'm gonna bring Sang back in at this point. Sang says, "The murders will ferry these women "towards holiness, liberating them "so that they may resurface sinless "from the grave as purified birds "in graceful, dazzling flight." - Ah, okay. - So I guess, again, you mentioned, "Oh, it's got a kind of ritual to it." And I think so much of religion and holiness is ritualistic. - Yes, yeah. - And you're like, "Yeah, man, I can't say no to that." Okay, so if you don't buy our queer-coded reading of the film so far, let's give you a softball one, because when Phoenix wakes up in bed in the morning, he's wearing satin pajamas with ostrich feather sleeves next to his mother, who was wearing the exact same thing, song's arms. - I love, thank you for saying that, 'cause I never know what to call them. I just call them feathers, but it's like those long, like, thin, tindral feathers. So glad to know that I have a name for them now, ostrich feathers. Who'd have thought? (laughing) - So, yeah, this is where we kind of get to see a bit of their morning routine. He plays her arms as she berates him for being weak and suggesting that without her, no one will see him. And of course, we've got a giant invisible man poster on the kitchen wall. - So I'm sure you're gonna give me a read for this, but I will say, so the invisible man scene, I was incorporated into the film and suggested by Alejandro Gudorowski, because he and his co-writer, Leonie, were looking for a reference that Phoenix could look up to, something to fill his loneliness. And Leonie agreed and said, yes, we should do the invisible man, because that's something that his inner child was always fascinated by, you know? Like, and it scared him, you know, seeing when he unwraps the bandages, like, nothing was there. It was so cool and scary at the same time. So that's right. Their reason for putting it in, but what is our read for putting this in? - Well, I think this comes back to the Robinson Crusoe sort of forgotten people in the margins kind of idea, right? This idea that he only achieves a level of fame or even escapes from the mental institution with the urging or the help of his mother, right? So we saw that we were performing to this crowd in the theater, but if we're not doing the arms, then who are we? Like, you're just a set of arms. - Right. - It's her that people are coming to see. - I also think, though, it's like, oh, he's like, this is his, 'cause I mean, to be clear, he re-enacts the scene of like taking the bandages. So when he's watching this, he has like the invisible man, like Claude Raines's bandages on, the glasses and he takes it off himself. I also think it's like, well, he's a psychopath, like he's looking up to a psychopath. - Right, yeah, because when we talked about the invisible man, we were both kind of shocked at the body count in that film and how remorseless the killer is. - Oh, yeah, he's the most dangerous universal monster and he's the only one that's human. - But then we also have like, again, we're getting, this is when we get the chicken shed. Sorry, not the literal chicken shed, but like, so while he's playing piano with cone shot, you know, he has visions of a chicken eating a severed arm, but then this room where I'm gonna say he's dressed, like he's dressed to look like Christ. - Oh, 100%, yeah. - And there are chickens all over the floor and chickens like raining from the sky, like real chickens. And I watch this, it's a beautiful like image that I've never seen before, but I was like, what are we doing here? - Well, this comes right after she berates him and then, you know, we have to go through this whole rigmarole of, okay, well, come sit next to mommy, let's do our number. And I can't help but feel like it's a little literal. He sees himself as a bit of a Christ figure where he's gotta suffer all of these indignities for the sake of, you know, her fame and her ego. - Yeah, but then why chickens? - I don't know, I don't know if chickens symbolize something in particular, or if it's just like a reference point, you know, oh, we had chickens around the church because we're also seeing imagery of the church being destroyed by the bulldozers. - Right, and to be clear, y'all, there may not be a reason. I feel like Yodorowsky would like reject any like, like a strict reading of his films. So-- - He might just say, it looks beautiful, so I did it. - Yeah, 100%. - What's interesting too about this is that if you haven't caught on, the concha is a hallucination, she at this point, like we're playing the piano, we're doing our duet, and she stops because she said, like she essentially senses that he is having these hallucinations. And then we have this beautiful camera work where we do a slow circle around them so that we can kind of contextualize where they are in the geography. And then we get a full on kiss on the lips between mother and son. We sure do, and this is when we cut to him watching the invisible man, but then like, okay, so he watches the invisible man and he takes the band and he just looks at his face and he screams, but then we cut right into the back of his mother at the top of this, oh, the way this is shot by the way. So we're in this big empty room with this long staircase and concha is just sitting on the staircase in like a rocking chair and she is screaming at him. You failed again, but it's just knitting. She's knitting stockings, and so he goes up and he just sits behind her to be her arms again because she needs him to be her arms to knit. - It's a life that is not his own, right? And we've already talked about how he's kind of infantilized mentally, he's stuck at the point of those flashbacks. So truly, this is a person who is not living their own life. - No, not at all, I mean, we'll find out later, but this gorgeous looking house he's in isn't so gorgeous. - No, it's very rundown ramshackle kind of. - But it looks beautiful here because that's how he's envisioning it. - Right, good catch, good catch. So Phoenix goes out and this is one of those things where it's a bit of an odd scene because I didn't know if it was going to pay off later. Like I really didn't know where the phone was gonna go from this point on because it felt like, okay, we've established bad, possibly dangerous relationship with a domineering mother. And we know that Alma is on the lookout for him. So you know that those two are going to intersect. - Absolutely. - But then we go out to buy some groceries from Trina who is a woman played by Zonia Rangel Mora and she is hitting on him like, it's kind of funny. All the women that meet Phoenix wanna fuck him. And we should clarify, like Axel Yodoroski is a good looking guy, he cleans up well when he's got his hair in the ponytail. He does have a slightly feline, a feminine features like it's a soft look to him. So in that case, it's, he looks delicate like he might break him if he handled them too strongly. But yeah, so Trini really wants to fuck this guy. She more or less fun angles and invite and he's like, cool, okay, I'll see you later. But then when he turns around, he sees, okay, here's they're gonna get into trouble. - He pulls a big python out of his pants. - Yes, and he does that because he sees another parade going down the street except that this is in effigy of a muscular female wrestler or Saint Santa who will eventually be played by S. Rodriguez. - The snake though, I feel like this is very on the nose, right, like he is. - It's his dick. - Yeah, we're also, 'cause we did the Adam and Ethan earlier, you know, in the snake, the serpent is Satan, like you know, leading us to the station. And so yeah, he sees a female performer who will be revealed to be, I'm gonna say a transgender performer? - Well, okay, so this is the question and I really wanted an answer to this and I could not find it for all of my looking. So this is a male actor and you can see that he is wearing a breastplate. And we go to the change room to deliver flowers because yeah, Phoenix has a reaction to this individual, seeks them out, sees them performing. But here's the thing, the film doesn't ever suggest that this is a man doing drag. It's not cross-dressing. Like I do actually think that we're meant to look at this as a female lucha libre. - That's what I thought too because I, but it was, 'cause I didn't realize it was a breastplate. I thought it was actually meant to be like Saint's breast but the dub, at least on the English dub, like it's a woman's voice over this male actor. Like it's not this male actor's voice. - Okay, yeah, the voice in the Spanish track was unclear. Like it could have been a man doing a slightly female affectation or it could have been a woman with a slightly masculine affectation. - Yeah, no, the one in the English dub is very clearly like a feminine voice woman. Like it is not this person. - Okay, so I have a question then. How do you read this? Like do you read this as a female identifying character because we're not given any other context or do you see this as like a trans woman? - So I read her as a trans woman because I thought at first, okay, maybe these are exodicos, right? Like the lucha libre's that are like gay men who, I mean, if anyone saw that Cassandra, the guy I'll guess here, but all biopic from last year, I'm really good by the way, please go watch it. - It's really, really good, yeah. But yeah, so I read this as a transgender person. However, like I've seen, like the Wikipedia page says a cross-dressing wrestler. So I, there doesn't seem to be an agreement on it. And so, but with, again, what I thought was actual breasts, not a breastplate or maybe like, you know, not-- - It could have been intended to be that and it's just like we don't have the budget to do the makeup or something like that, which again is why I was looking for some kind of clarity. - Yeah, so I don't, I don't know, I don't know. But nevertheless, like, I'm glad it's not the first kill because I think if it was, you could read this. Oh, he is in love with a cross-dressing man or a transgender woman and it's queer and therefore he has to, mother wants to kill them. Like at least it's at least quote-unquote, it's the second one and she puts up a fight. - Well, the other interesting thing about this is the other women that we've seen hitting on Phoenix seem to be, I'm gonna say they're a bit floozy. It's right. - Yeah, sure. - And we spend the most amount of time with Saint Santa and it seems like they actually kind of get along. Like Saint Santa seems to go along with aspects other than just wanting to fuck him. Like she agrees to come and see his theater performance, which is in a dingy cellar and looks shady as fuck. But like they have a good chemistry and I quite liked it. Like I was disappointed because you know their concert is gonna show up and say, "Oh, you're polluting my son, you need to die." But if Phoenix actually seems to struggle with this, he tries to convince Saint Santa to run away. But of course, you know, she's got them shoulders on them. Arm, so we think that maybe she's gonna be able to like punch him in the face and just leave and that initially is the case. And then mom says, "Use the sword." - Well, 'cause Phoenix tries to call her eyes out, which is quite striking. But yeah, then this sword comes out. And well, also 'cause the way Concha is revealed on stage is he opens a coffin that's standing up and Concha's just inside. Like telling him what to do from the coffin, which is not moving. So this is one of the few times too, where Phoenix kills someone but doesn't have Concha like in front of him doing it. - Right, yeah, because like the whole idea is that he's doing this magic act on stage. So he's got a sarcophagus and he says, "Oh, I'm gonna reanimate the dead from a film perspective." So he opens a lid and oops, it's Concha and not the mummy that we thought it was going to be. But this again, very much makes sense in terms of what we've seen in terms of the ritual and the way that his memories are intersecting with the way he's living his life now. So the saying says that this is an instance of Phoenix being held prisoner by his memories, but he's also becoming a martyr, right? Like he's overcome by this religious fixation to his mother and as a result, like we do these horrible things. But, yeah, yeah. So down goes Saint Santa. - Yep, Saint Santa is out of the picture. - Okay, so well this is happening. Alma has discovered somehow where they are living. So she sneaks into a window, she finds makeup. So she reapplies her game face from the circus days. - So Alma found like a flyer for Concha's magic arms. And I guess it had the address where he was staying. And I guess she was the only person that saw this and the only one that wanted to come see it, I guess. It's one of those things where it doesn't quite work logistically, but I also don't really care. - It doesn't matter, but she finds Phoenix's vanity and then begins painting her face white, dressing up just like she was as a child in the prologue. - Yeah, so while she's doing that, we're about to intersect these storylines, but first we have to get probably the most dreamlike section of the film as Phoenix. Well, the idea is that he's now buried Saint Santa's body in the graveyard alongside Ruby, but then all of these other women in yes, the white face with marriage and/or funeral veils come out of the ground and they start basically haunting him and saying, "Why did you kill me?" - Yeah, but it's like, "You killed me." They're not speaking forcefully or angrily. This felt very Asian-inspired, but also, all bringing it back to Italy, it reminded me of Cemetery Man. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - This was, this is probably the most surreal scene in the film, just given what's going on here. All right, so you said you read this differently 'cause I read this as, "Oh, he's killed a bunch of women," like we just haven't seen it happen. - Yeah, it's a question, Mark, because we haven't seen any of the other murders and time is so fluid in the film. It's kind of unclear. I guess I looked at this as a byproduct of his fractured mind, so yes, you could easily say, "Oh wow, he's killed roughly a dozen women at this point." I read this as, this is just like the victims, like made up imaginary victims of all the women he's maybe even had impure thoughts about it. - See, and I guess the, the reason I was also reading is like, "Oh yeah, he's killed all this women, we just haven't seen them," is because it's based on the actual serial killer who killed 17 women. (laughs) - Right, well now that I know that, that doesn't make far sense. - It does not. - Either way, I don't think either reading is wrong. I think you can see it both ways. I mean, like I'm sure Jodorowsky would welcome both interpretations. - I think I'm happy to give you the win for this one because your reading makes a lot of sense. Mine is kind of like, "Oh, we didn't see the murder, so I didn't think that that made sense." - Well, and I think there's another version of this movie where it is just him going off and killing 17 women. That's your slasher movie version of this. - Yeah, I don't need that version. - I mean, I would watch it, but yeah, this is-- - Sure. - There's already seen it a billion times. - Yeah, sure. The one more visual here though, 'cause one of these ghost women brings out a white horse that has the tattooed woman's tattoos all over it. - Yeah, again, very, very striking. - Yeah, Rob Zombie would love it. - Oh my God. (laughs) - He sure would. (laughs) - A white horse. - Actually, wait. Isn't what's her face wearing white face makeup when she's riding the horse in Halloween, too? - Kinda. (laughs) Oh my God, she's not naked though, 'cause all these corpses are naked. - That is true. - Yeah. Yodoroski does not have a problem with nudity. - Not at all. - Okay, so let's come back to Alma because we're finally going to have her reconnect with Phoenix, but we should note that the house has actually begun rocking, and I'm going to attribute this to, it's very much a projection or a symbol of Phoenix's mind. So as he's trying to make his way through, it's like the house is deteriorated now, and it's starting to shift and lose its focus. - Well, and when we see Alma walking around the house, this is when we see that the house is actually dilapidated. So this is the real version of the house. We have not seen this because we've only been seeing the house through Phoenix's eyes, and it's been pristine, clean, and gorgeous looking. - Yeah, yeah, and reality. - It's not so good. - Yeah. - But they do find each other, and we get this great, nice moment where they spin, and they float, and they kiss, and it's all very cute. - Yeah, no, it's really cute until it's not. - Yes, exactly, 'cause of course, it's climax time. We gotta bring mom back, so-- - Oh, yeah. - Contrap here's, and she doesn't even want him to kill her. She wants him to cut off Alma's arms. - Well, she starts by saying, I order my hands to kill her, and then I love this again. I think Axel's miming ability here, you know, 'cause his hand seems to be possessed as he's drawn to Konsha, but yeah, right, he's fighting it. And this is when, yeah, she says cut off the arms, cut off her arms! (laughing) - And then I thought, okay, so we're gonna do this. He's gonna finally fight back against mom. He's probably gonna kill her if she's even real, or he's gonna realize, like, I fully thought he, when he stabs Konsha in the stomach, I thought, oh, he's just stabbed himself, and he's just gonna die. - Right, no, to me, that's the more cliche version of that. - Yes, so I was happy it doesn't happen, but I was surprised. - Yeah, but while this is all happening, like that female pharmacist that he bought the stuff from earlier on-- - Yeah, fucking trainee shows up, she's like, ooh! And then just runs out, and that's how we get the police. - Which, 'cause, okay, I do think it's a little silly, 'cause it's very, yeah, it's very much like, "Hello, I'm here to fuck you!" And then she's like, "Hm, oh my God!" - It's very silly, but I was happy that at least it paid off, because otherwise, I didn't know why we had that earlier scene. - Yeah, absolutely, which you could have easily just had, it'd be like, oh, the cops were called because there was a ruckus, because it's a lot of noise, or maybe the house is rocking, who knows. - But this adds a nice bit of levity in the middle of our climax. - But it doesn't rob anything from it, because I said at the beginning of the episode, I found this would be very touching by the time the credits rolled. And this catharsis of, yeah, phoenix, stab, and Konsha, but she doesn't die, though, so she goes up, she walks up to the stairs, and she starts to fade out, but she tells him, "You will never be free of me, "I am inside of you." And just starts laughing maniacally as she fades away. - Mm-hmm. - And this is when we get the flashbacks that are like, "She's been dead the whole time!" - She's been dead the whole time. Just in case you weren't paying attention, she's been dead. - Yeah. - The other interesting thing about this, and this build very unique compared to other do-do-no-dure films, Mr. Ebert, when Alma is being threatened, she never screams. She never tries to fight back. She just looks at phoenix, and, I mean, she doesn't say anything 'cause she is incapable of doing so, but the look she's giving him is, "I trust you, I love you, "you're gonna figure this out, I know you're not gonna harm me." - Yeah. Now, I will say, the one part of this reveal that I did find very surprising, so again, you're like, "Oh, she's dead the whole time, cool." So it's just him, you know, killing this woman. - Right. - He has a ventriloquist doll of his mother. - Yes, he does. - Yep. - That he's been, so really, I wanted to see more, in that, in the flash, right? Like, I wanted to see him killing the tattooed woman with that fucking, like, mannequin. This armless mannequin. - Oh, no, I think it just would have been too silly because the movie wants to go for touching. It doesn't wanna go for dumb. - But this doll also looks really creepy. Like, it is, in concept, in theory, it is funny, but it looks not right. (laughing) - Yeah, so at this point, we have Alma who has guided him back to this doll, but we also have the clowns back. We've got a lagging back, and everybody kind of gets this moment to say, "You know what, Phoenix, you're okay now. All you gotta do is get rid of this doll, be free of your mom's ghost, and then we can wave goodbye and disappear as well because none of us have been here the whole time." - Yeah. - So I'm gonna bring a saying back one last time. So they say, "Santisongre concludes not with a showdown, but with sacrilege. Phoenix, desecrating the temple, he's created in worship of his mother, incinerating her effigy, finally emancipating himself from her servitude. It's also an act of philosophical upheaval, disowning the ideology that has defined him, which replaces selfhood and exalts trauma above all else." - Okay. - So basically, it's like the whole house. You know, I kind of read it more as, "Oh, this is his fragile mind." But if you think about it, this is actually more of a shrine, right? Even down to the cellar theater performance where maybe that's where he was actually doing that initial production that we saw earlier on, right? - Yeah. - 'Cause that could have been the fantasy. - Well, yeah. - He was never performing to sold out crowds. - Yeah, that's what I thought that the first time we saw him doing it, like it's where we kill Satan, like that's what he's been performing at this entire time. It's underground like homemade stage. - Yeah, which I guess then does make sense that Alma would find a shitty looking flyer that nobody else paid attention to because it's just his home address. - Well, but it's also like, I don't even know if it's his home. Like who, like it's, I think it's just like a... - Oh yeah, it's just a house. - It's an abandoned house. He's living in Squalor. But nevertheless, the final lines of this film, so Alma and Phoenix walk out, you know, they're held at gunpoint by the cops and they're like, "raise your hands." And it's such a weird thing, you know? - I would love to know what Yodarowski's original ending was, whatever the saddening was going to be. I don't know what it was, but the last lines we get is, Phoenix is able to raise his hands on his own. And he just exclaims, "my hands, my hands, my hands." And that's the end of the movie, but it's like, it sucks. Yeah, he's gonna go to jail because he's a fucking serial killer. But yeah, there's something so cathartic and just like touching about, oh, he has his hands back. - Yeah, he's in control of his own life and by virtue of that, his own hands. But yeah, it's such a simple moment and it's so effective. We do also end with a quote from Psalms, which is 143.6 comma eight. It's very, very specific. - So I think that Psalm 143 verse six and verse eight. - Oh, I see, okay. Clearly somebody does no religion. - Normally it would be six through eight, but I'm assuming they skip seven because Parchland hasn't ellipses after it. - I see, okay. But yeah, the gist of this is more or less the idea of stretching your hands towards where souls go, i.e. heaven. So in some ways you couldn't fear, oh, well, maybe this means he's not even just gonna go to jail. He might be killed. But the fact that he, he's reached almost that religious enlightenment that Yodoroski is so keen to explore in his other films, right? It's a hard path to take, but he finally is in control of it. He's reached his destination. - Yep, absolutely. I also wanted to see what verse seven was to see like, if they, all right, here we go, here we go. What we have is my stretch out my hands to the, my soul thirst for the, like a Parchland, teach me the way I should go, for the, I should look at my soul. Between Parchland and that teach me the way we have, answer me quickly, Lord, my spirit fails. Do not hide your face from me, or I will be like those who go down to the pit. - Oh, yeah. So we're removing references to hell. And also explicit references to God. - Yeah, absolutely. So interesting. - Very intentional, very intentional. Yeah, no, I kind of just sat there and like watched the credits rolled for a while, a trash in the center. - Yeah, it's so weird, right? Because when I finished watching, I thought, that's not particularly complicated, right? It's a kid who gets fucked up by his parents, and then he ends up internalizing this trauma, and he becomes an accidental killer, or a manipulated killer, if you will. But even just having this conversation with you, describing, going through some of the visuals, unpacking some of these interactions, I do think that this is a bit of a complicated text, but it's not unassailable. Like, it's not so difficult that you look at this and say, oh my God, I can't. Like, I need my computer to unpack every little moment. - If I showed my parents this, they would be like, what the fuck are you making us watch? - Oh, of course. - But yeah, I mean, this was much more accessible and straightforward than I was expecting, based on what I knew about Yoda Rescue's filmography. - Mm-hmm, yeah, so. But yeah, that is a Santa San Gray, everyone. Joe, any final thoughts on this? - Well, like all of our film titles that are a little bit less popular, or international, or a little bit older, we don't often get the download numbers that I would like to see. So obviously, we're coming up on, you know, two hours here, but if you have not, for some reason, checked out this movie, I bequeathe you. It is worth your time. So definitely check out an unusual title. Take a chance, this one's worth it. - You bequeathe them? - Yes, I bequeathe them. - You know that, that's not the right word. (laughing) - I bequeathe them, like you-- - I beseech you, how's that? - Beseech you, yes, beseech you. (laughing) I was like, were you leaving, did you die? Are you leaving this something in your will? - Yes, I floated up to heaven because I regained the use of my hand. - There you go, there you go. - Yeah, I feel the same, smaller films like this, or less recognizable films like this, don't get the download numbers and it's expected here, but I still, I love covering these because again, this is a new film for me. I probably never would have watched this otherwise. So yeah, if you made it all this way and you haven't seen the film, please seek it out. There's a lot to like here. - And let's face a trace. This is all just fodder for your weird Wednesdays at this point. - Yeah, yeah, absolutely. For sure, and trust me, I go through our entire backlog of like, what can I screen at Terror Tuesday or Wednesday? (laughs) Oh, okay, everyone. Well, before we announce it, we're covering next week. If you wanna get in touch with us, you can reach us on Twitter and Instagram @horakwiers. Shoot us an email @horakwiers@gmail.com. Find us on Letterbox to keep track of all the films we've covered. If you want to chat with other listeners, please join our Facebook horror queries group. Leave us a rating or a review, ideally, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And if you want even more content, please support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com slash horrorqueers. If you subscribe today, you will get 321 and a half hours of Patreon content, including this month's new episodes on Hannibal season one, episode seven. A Quiet Place day one. Maxine, long legs, and to tie in with long legs, a brand new audio commentary on David Fincher's 1995 classic. Seven. - There you go. You don't have to say that one anymore because we're about to move into a new month. - Yeah, that's always my favorite time. The last week of the month. - Joe. - Yes. - What are we covering next week? - Well, we are changing gears dramatically. We're gonna come back to the US and we're going to do, I think our first ever screen horror on the main feed because we're talking about unfriended dark web. - Oh my God, yes, everyone. The sequel to unfriended. I feel like a lot of people skipped it when it hit, 'cause they got a very limited theatrical release. But I mean, look, this is a rip off of the den, but I still think it's a really good movie. - It's fun. And if you had a problem with the characters being assholes in the first film, I don't know, are they still assholes, or are they just less assholes in the first film? - I think they're all, one of them is an asshole, but like he's meant to be like the jokester of the group. But like, these are adults we're working with here. We're not doing with teenagers. - There we go. Yeah, none of these dead teenager films for us. - None of them are there. - But until next week, everyone, we can cross out. Santa's hungry. - Indeed, and cross out horror careers. 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