¶ Intro / Opening
We're in wait. SI, welcome back to Midnight Viewing. I'm father alone and actually welcome back to Fusco Fast joining me here as we run down the works of screenwriter John Fusco. He's the host of Noise Junkies and to Night, mister Walters and lover of all things Fusco. Sometimes mister HP, HP, how are you doing?
I'm doing okay if I'm alone, ready to put on my crypto zoologist hat and talk some cryptids with you?
Some cryptids, the cryptid. We're on our way to Scotland. Oh boy. Now, so far we have covered crossroads, young guns, young Guns, to the Babe Thunderheart, and now lock Ness.
¶ Childhood Fascination with Cryptids
From the company that brought you Four Weddings and a Funeral comes the story of a timeless mystery whose time has come.
You want me to go find a lot mess monsters out what you're offering me.
No, I want you to save the state of the out equipment and prove that it's the boost Hols of the century.
Now that's a monster, So.
You'll be another beastie hunter.
Yeah, that's correct.
I don't have much time, you know, I gotta get up to Greenland. The four Winter hits fine, Santa Claus, why from my monster?
I'm gonna catch your monster and I'm gonna put it on Oprah Webbreak.
There's nothing down there, there's nothing unexplained flying around the skies at night, but in a place that still believes in magic. Are you telling me you actually saw them?
It's a.
Young girl holds the keys jineheaded to get from her gentlemother, the ability to see things, sometimes.
To the greatest secret of them all. My god, it's the perfect glasmosaur.
I've got down to the ronvoy front Saints. I guess it's part of something very large, very much alive.
You've got something here, the fire up the straw, going to his assisions, maybe to find the hope?
Did you do you scared a leaf and never come back? Ted Danser want me to pretend that I didn't see this, Jolie Richardson.
There's something that meant to be left alone in the year's most Magical Adventure.
I have to say it before I complay Lois. You've got to believe it before you can see it. Oh luckness. Lock And released on February the ninth, nineteen ninety six in the United Kingdom, in September the twentieth, nineteen ninety six in the United States, written by John Fusco, directed by John Henderson, starring Ted Danson, Julie Richardson, Ian Holme, and A James Frayne. Is the story of a eight.
It is the story of a cryptozoologist you mentioned cryptozoologist at the beginning, who has been disgraced for his long lifelong dream of exposing the Yetti that's proven to be just a complete Nutter hoax, and is at the end of his academic tether. He's given the only job he can possibly pull off, which is to map Lockness to prove that there is no famed monster. HP. This's your first time seeing Lockness.
Like many of these latter day Fusco films, this was my first go round with Lockness.
Yes, did you enjoy Lockness? And what's your experience of Lockness prior not the movie? I'm talking about the idea of Lockness. Start there. Let's start there.
Sure, I will say this like many kids, I'm sure maybe you were the same way. Father Malone. I had a very I went through an obsession with cryptids like Bigfoot and the Lockness Monster and all of that. That's UFOs anything that was unexplained phenomena. So I came into this excited because I hadn't really thought about the Lockness Monster in quite a long time, and I know just from research that this project was obviously very near and dear to John Fusco. So I was excited to see this.
But as far as any direct experience, the closest I can say I was we were telling this. I was telling you the story off off the air that my wife's aunt was from Glasgow, very proud of Scottish ancestry. So I was excited to delve into this and see what Lockness had to offer. How about you, was this your first time seeing Lockness.
First time seeing the movie? I remember it came out. I was a projectionist in Santa Monica at the time, but I worked at an art house, so basically, if it was a more mainstream flick, it wasn't going to come my way. And if it wasn't coming my way, then I had to go seek it out, and that usually involved some sort of trade with another projectionist, and those were near and deer, so I wasn't going to I wasn't going to squander it on a children's movie
starring Sam Malone. Now, my experience with Lockness prior to this is, as you said, cryptids were a big deal for us, for Generation X, certainly fixation in the nineteen seventies. Most of my cryptid information was and continues to come from one source. In search Of, starring Leonard Nimoy. I have the entire series. I watched my Lockness episode again last night. It's the fucking best. Mo's in the credit sequence, the famed photo of NeSSI just that sock puppet sticking up out of the water.
I should have done that. I have in Search Of as well. I didn't think to watch that episode. Good on your father, Malone.
Anytime I'm going to talk anything supernatural or paranormal or anything, outcomes to the collection of In search of First and Foremost, and I will proudly cite that as my only sources.
A scary show at times, wasn't it. It was a little creepy the unexplained things that I don't know, Like Amelia Earhart was a scary concept for me. That she just fell off the face of the earth. No one knows what happened to her, so that could be a little frightening as a child, but I loved it like you did.
Most of the concepts on the show were really frightening. There was a treasure, a buried treasure where they kept attempting to dig for it, but the hole kept filling itself in, and so many people had died trying, and they kept going, and there was a new expedition mounting, and oh my god, I love everything about it.
In Search Of I'm going to paraphrase a Malaney joke about he said something to the effect of he thought that quicksand would be a much bigger problem when he got older. For me, I thought the Bermuda Triangle was going to be a much bigger problem when I grew up than it actually ended up being. That's a frightening concept, too, like the idea that there's this place in where planes vanish ships vanish. Eleonard Eemwoy was great.
And of course Tenasus d has memorialized him and his Bigfoot episode in any of their Sasquatch Things and The Original Things. Not only was I fascinated by Lockness the Lockness Monster from the In Search Of episode, but I have a very distinct memory in fifth grade of both the fourth and fifth grades of the Immaculate Conception School.
In our little Catholic uniforms, we were marched down the street to the local library, where in the children's section we were shown some sort of sixteen millimeter film about the Lochness Monster. It made a huge impression on me
because it made it real. The fact that it seemed to be an official school sanctioned trip to a library to watch this thing convinced me that there was a prehistoric dinosaur living in a giant lake in Scotland that had been closed off from the salt water surrounding ocean and somehow survived for hundreds of not centuries. Those are the same thing.
There's something about the way it's almost like it's academically sanctioned for you to see a film of it on a school trip. But yeah, I agree that iconic picture of the head of nessigning out of the water, which I think was eventually debunked as being fake, But I
¶ Ted Danson's Character Breakdown
don't know. Obviously, we cryptid hunters want clear footage, clear evidence, but the fact that all of these pictures are fuzzy and zoomed in and blown out just made them more stark to me, and more I don't know. There was something harsh and scary about the whole thing.
Yeah, now you can show me footage of the Locknest Monster coming up onto land and rampaging through the wilds of Scotland, and I wouldn't believe it. But that fuzzy photograph that blur, I think it could be something was definitely an actual monster that had been captured idly by some passers by.
Yeah, totally. Now.
Listen, I'm a fake priest named Father Malone, but Wallace is the actual last name. And I'm as Scottish as the fucking day is long. So anytime you're gonna make a movie and put it in Scotland, I'm probably gonna go see it. I didn't go see this one. I had my fill with Rob Roy by this time.
Was that a pun? You had your fill of Rob Roy? No?
But it does work.
It does work both the ways, doesn't it. Yeah the drink that movie, I don't know, man, that movie, it didn't It put the kibosh on my enthusiasm for Scottish things for a little. For a little while, I did not enjoy Rob roy And then of course we had they came out. Listen, I am wearing my kilt. Right now, I am wearing a HP has seen and he can attest to with Houston. He's here in the studio. I am wearing the Wallas starting today. I love all things Scottish.
I love all of their weirdo fucking myths and legends, and the kelpie in particular, the water horse that seems to show up in every region of Scotland, actually all over the Celtic map. I love all of that. And here, you know what, here's how I feel about Scotland. I will recite a verse from mister Michael Scott, not the guy from the office, but the lead singer of the water Boys, who said that of his body, England is
the spine, the backbone, and the trunk. Scotland is his dream in head, and Ireland is his heart, although his Wales is his two hands held apart. I don't want to leave out Whales. So anyway, Scotland is his dream andhead. That's how I think about Scotland. It is airy and wild and weird, and it is my goal to get there.
And so on some level, I'm going to be wired to this movie more than I should just from scenery alone, because something about seeing those stark, fucking landscapes really appeals to me on some subatomic level.
A lot of cable news sweater is being worn by townsfolk, and I.
Just tell you, can I just tell you that I hate cable knit sweaters. I know certain people look great in them, but I do not like them. And that seems to be the one function of the UK that I can really do with that.
Ted Danson looked pretty good in his cable knit sweater. It's suited him.
Yes, all right, let's talk about this movie for a second. Let's get into it. What's the movie about, HP, that's your job.
So we started to talk about this. So Ted Danson is Dempsey. He's this disgraced cryptozoologist who he's at the end of his rope. He's got no money, he's barely hanging on as a professor of some sort. His car has fallen apart. His car's literally died on the freeway.
Speaking of death, this movie opens with a man standing on the bank of the lock and getting startled as he lifts a camera and then he falls over and his cracks, his skull open and he dies.
I have a problem with that opening for the alone. I have to say, because the whole look, putting aside the advertising in the poster, which is a bit spoilerific, if there's supposed to be this uncertainty over whether the
Lockness Monster actually exists. Within the first five minutes, when you see this situation with this other researcher who dies because something comes out of the lock startles and he falls and dies after hitting his head, don't you think it kills the uncertainty of the whole situation or are we already meant to believe that it actually exists.
No, I didn't think it ruined the mystery, because in my mind it could have been as most movies that deal with the Lockness Monster him discovering the hoax and then falling and dying, and then they could have just as easily. By the end of this movie, that little girl leads ted dancing into a cave where there's a bunch of teenagers going, oh, no, you've given this away.
I wish I had that uncertainty held in my head, but I couldn't help. Maybe it's because it was tainted by the posters and by the trailer, because it basically gives that part of it away. But let's put that aside for a moment. So there's this other researcher that's
been on at Scotland researching this. He's died. So Harris Eulen plays I guess the dean of the college that Ted Danson is teaching at, and he basically gives him the assignment to go and give definitive proof that the Lockness Monster does or doesn't exist, knowing that, and Dempsey resists this. He doesn't want to go, but he has no choice. He's at the end of his like I said, he's at the end of his rope here. He's got
no other alternatives. He's already a laughing stock because, as you said, he had a famous, infamous expedition to find Bigfoot that yielded nothing, but somehow it actually made it made his name encryptid circles, but it didn't do wonders
for his career, quite the opposite. So, with no alternative, if he goes to Lockness to try and figure out if the Lockness Monster is real or if he's not, and he runs a foul of all the locals, all the typical predictable things you would expect from a sort of a romantic comedy, bent happened to him here, and that's the basic. I won't go into the details. We'll get into the details, but that's the broad stroke of what has to happen.
Let's get into some of those details. Actually, let's just get into the cast if we could, because here's something that I found really admirable in this film. Ordinarily, when you start a movie with the broke down character who gets thrust into some career that they have no business being in or no interest being, and then they find both rejuvenation in the activity and in their own life, that's across the board. That was all the nineties, right.
We saw this type of story a thousand times. This is the one where I looked at ted Dance and then went, Yep, he's broken down and very unpleasant. This character is a prick and he's unlikable, and Ted Danson
ted to dancing. Sam Malone manages to pull off what a dick he is, so by the time he starts coming around, I actually believe that as opposed to ninety nine percent of these type of movies where they're just telling us what a prick it is and it's yeah, but it's the sweet cuddly guy from all the other sweet cuddly movies.
There's two reasons why I knew that he could play a believable prick. One of them is, do you remember he had a show called Becker where that was his stees. In that show, he was basically an unlikable, crotchety guy. I never watched the show, but I was familiar with
¶ Exploring the Cast
the character.
But I bet he was. I bet he was crotchety and unlikable the way Archie Bunker was. There's an underlying like lilt of we love this guy ted Dance at the beginning of this movie, I really don't like when he's in the room with Harris Yulin and he's he's begging. Obviously I ain't doing this. I'm with Harris Ulan. I'm like, good, fuck off. Don't then sure?
By the way, the other reason why I knew he could play a believable jerk is because he was so great at playing a jerk version of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm for twelve seasons, So I knew that he could be. He's Ted Danson, so we're pre programmed to like him because of Sam Malone and so forth. Creep show in Your case, I'm sure you have a lot of affection there for him, but that part of it
that was great. But what I thought was amusing was somehow he like they gave him the hairdo from Lethal Weapon, the Martin Riggs haird the Mel Gibson, which is a
little weird, but you're right. And the thing that I also want to talk about in terms of Harris Eulen, who plays, like I said, his superior, is one thing the movie avoided, which would have been so easy not to is typically in these kinds of situations, the superior who directs their underlaying to do something can come off as a real asshole, and you're secretly rooting for them to fail. But honestly, Harris Eulen plays this character. He's very nice, he's very tolerant. He only seems to have
the best interest of the research at heart. I really that I loved about this, At least at the start.
He recognized that Ted dance AND's Dempsey character is going nowhere. He really is the laughing stock and he's not going to be able to be hired by any other university for research or otherwise, and this is his only shot, and he keeps hanging in until he accepts it. He starts making plans for his tickets for the plane flight over, while Ted Danson is still saying, No, it's great. It's a great bit of business. It's a great bit of characterization.
It's very funny. But I appreciated that they didn't make him like another antagonist for the main character to deal with. He was actually very reasonable.
I thought he's rooting for him. He seems an actual friend. Imagine that. Yeah, as opposed to I'm thinking of summer school in particular, with the principal that you're mister shup I needed a teach summer school. Yeah.
Too often those kinds of characters are it's a means to an end. They know that the main character will fail, and they're banking on the fact that they will fail. But in this case, it's the deact opposite, and I found that refreshing.
Okay, before we get to Jolie Richardson, Ian Holme and James Frain, I want to talk about Nick Brimble.
Let's talk about him. I was delighted to see Nick Brimble in this me too.
I love Nick Brimble. Right around this time period, right around the late eighties, early nineties, he seemed to have this crazy renaissance. I know, this is this movie a little bit later, this is like ninety six. Nevertheless, it's
still in that time period. I remember him first. I remember first seeing him in Frankenstein Unbound, Roger Corman's last feature film that I happened to see in the theater where he played the monster and they had a crazy, unus usual tank on the monster and he's really good in it. And then the next thing is he's in the fucking piece of that Robin Hood movie. He's fucking little John in the Robinhood Prince of Thieves movie, which they were competing Robinhood movies. Remember that at the time.
There was also there was one with Luma Thurman and Patrick Bergen.
I forgot about that one.
Was remember they were both being mounted at the same time, and then the Kevin Costa wan really started taking off and bringing all the heat. So the Patrick Bergan one still got shot, but it got relegated to television and it came out like about a month before the Kevin Costner won an attempt to circumvent it in some way. I thought there's movie. I thought both of those movies were garbage.
By the way, I my biggest memory of him was from Robinhood Little John. He has this sort of beatific face, this incredible smile, these awesome, these brilliant eyes. He's just such a friendly, warm, cajoling presence.
I love that about him as Little John. Didn't he look like an ewok, like a cuddly ewok baby.
You could have easily seen him playing Hagrid in an alternate universe version of Harry Potter.
Like, oh my god, he'd be a great Hagrid because he would have a bit of more menace than Robbie Coltrane is not capable of menace. He is, but not really. He would be kidding ultimately, Nick Brimble, you would believe he would fucking hurt you.
Yeah. Yeah. But so I saw him and I'm like, what do I know that guy from? And then when I put two and two together, I was really warmed by his presence, by a lot of the presence that a lot of the actors. I had the same reaction to.
James Frayne is the contact there, the young believer, the young researcher. I know James Frayne mainly for a few seasons he was on Gotham playing Azrael, one of the fucking villain, one of one of the Rogues Gallery villains Gallivan. I think that the villain's name is He was great in that, and then on top of that, he ends up playing Sarah on Star Discovery, so he's now fucking Spock's dad and great like the best one since original Mark Leonard.
He looked so familiar to me. I couldn't put my finger on who the actor was or what he was in. To be honest, I wasn't overly familiar with his catalog or with his roles. But what I was surprised to see. The thing that I was surprised most by was he played a character named Jarvis in the Tron sequel Tron Legacy. He is the assistant to the Jeff Bridges evil character who has he's balled with the screen that's omnipresently and over his face. He's like the slimy lackey who tries
to help the evil Jeff Bridges do his thing. Looks nothing like he does in this, of course, but what range the guy has to hear that he was in Gotham. That's crazy.
Yeah, he's got such a great face. It's a cartoon character face if anything. Speaking of cartoon characters, Ian Holme as the water bailiff apparently, so which the thing is real. There are water bailiffs who can board your ship and say, let's see your fishing license. God damn it, I'm towing this in. I'm gonna sink your craft when I get over there. No, you can't actually do any of that. Now you can search things. I don't think you could sink anybody.
So he's like like a coastguard of one on the lock.
Basically, yeah, he's like the harbor master, but like for an entire lake.
I figured, look love Ian Holme is. I'm happy to see him and whatever I'm watching. But I feel like he was the one that they brought in to class up the joint a little bit more, to give it a little more like an imprint of gravitas. That's I felt like. That's because any honestly, it's great to have him there, but any number of actors could have. Also,
it's not a very big role. Anyone else could have played it, but it's Ian Holme, so that's automatically going to make it more like I said, grounded and interesting.
How badly did they want Sean Connery.
Sean Connery, I think would have been too big for this, though he would have over It would have been about Sean Connery. That man was He had charisma for days. Not that Ian Holme isn't charismatic, but look, when Sean Connery was on screen, you're looking at Sean Connery and nothing else.
What if Sean Connery played Gordon Shules, the eccentric who claims that the monster is his.
That probably would have been a more interesting choice. But again, I just think that it's it's like having Sean Connery at the end of Robinhood Prince of Thieves, where it takes you out of the movie a little bit because all of a sudden you're like, oh, that's Sean Connery. Not that's Richard the Lionheart, that's Sean Connery up there.
How about Time Bandits? Do you feel the same when you watch Time Bandits?
No, but that could have been because I saw it when I was much younger, and he wasn't as dominating a presence for me. But it's I don't know. It was fine, I didn't have that same reaction, but maybe it's because I was younger. And less or more impressionable, and didn't really take stock of such things.
I'm not claiming they wanted Sean Connery for this movie or anything. I'm just saying he probably could have pulled off.
Oh without a doubt he could have pulled it off, but I think it would have pulled focus off of whatever else was going on onto him.
Instead, we get Ian Home.
It was great, great, getting wrong. He's awesome.
Yeah, And and Jolie Richardson in the lead. I don't think Jolie Richardson is the Scottish. I'm going to say that right now, only because it seemed like a poor accent. Am I wrong there? I might be her husband. Her husband was the producer, Tim Bevan.
You are not wrong to two interesting things to point out she was. She's from London, so she's English. She's not Scottish, so that was her. I didn't think it was. I'm no linguist, so I thought it was fine. It doesn't. It didn't seem incredibly authentic.
It seemed, you know what. It seemed like it seemed like she was thinking before every word.
Probably she I think she's pretty good in this, but she's to your point, she's not Scottish, So I think if you're looking for such things, it might be.
The luck with youssy, That's what I have to say.
I also didn't realize that she was the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave. That's interesting.
Oh she's great. Love her, I've loved her and other things. That just didn't really buy the accent.
That you didn't buy the accent, But that did that mean that you didn't buy the performance?
Ultimately, no, I did buy the performance because it would seemingly be easy to be exasperated by Ted Danson, particularly as this character ted dancing probably would be exasperating in life just in general, can constantly be trying to get you to save things.
The dark side of Ed Begley Junior with his electric car, and.
That's right, was powered by my sense of self satisfaction. These are all Simpsons jokes. I'm just stealing.
Bravo, Bravo, Where were we? Oh, Jolie Richardson. We're going through the main cast.
That is that that?
I think that is the main cast. And then there's the little girl. She's fine.
The little girl, by the way, this was her one and only role. You never did anything else after this?
That's fine.
Yeah, she's fine.
She's fine. She's she doesn't suffer from from kid actor itis. She's not precociousness in child acting is death.
No, she was fine. But ultimately it is really a three or four person story.
Right.
You have Dempsey, you have his assistant Adrian. You've got the woman with the daughter and the water bailiff who's managing things.
Her name is Kirstin Graham. By the way, no else could have played young Isabelle Sean Connery. What do you think.
I thought you were going to say? What's your name? From? Baron Munchausen.
Sarah Pole. Oh, my constant love affair with Sarah Pola that she doesn't know, she's not aware of, but we've been involved with for twenty or so years now. My god, it's been so long me and Sarah.
What a fucking smart filmmaker. She turned out to be good.
God man, She's yeah, she's fearsome as filmmaker. She her short films are fucking fantastic. One She may this one short film called last Night I Believe, which just haunts me to this day, about a couple breaking up and they that she convinces him to re experience like all of their favorite things like one last time and it just tears her heart out.
Amazing.
Yeah, but we're talking about de loch Ness era. We're talking about a man reconnecting with the hit with his cryptid past. Is that what this movie is about about finding your getting back in touch with your roots, even if your roots are based on animals that don't exist.
He's finding his mojo again. At the beginning, he's broken, he's a laughing stock. Like you said, he's got nothing going on. They I think he even is divorced. They make some mention of that. So it really has come to Scotland. Really is a bitter, angry, depressed loser who is going through the motions at first, but he does a spark is lit because they're in the They rent a boat, actually I think it's Nick Brimble's boat that they rent. Andy McClain, the character, his boat.
They soak him for many thousands of dollars, but Ted Danson don't care because the university is paying for it. And Ted Dance is a dick.
Yeah, because at every turn he tries to get lodging at this woman, Laura's place, and she soaks them for quadruple the normal rate. Nick Brimble soaks him for twenty thousand pounds to rent this boat. I don't know how much that is in American dollars, but it sounds like a lot. But every time he does that, Ted dances. I don't care. Just charge it to the university. He's a prick. You got a doctor Mercer is giving him. He's hoping that he gives his honest best shot at
finding Smunster. Why is he being such a prick? I don't know that.
Why did warm up? Why didn't Abernathy already have a boat secure with all this high tech equipment that they've sent over, like they're going to prove once and for all that there's no U lockness much. But we don't have a boat yet. That's ah, we should have written that down.
Yeah, why didn't? What was Abernathy's situation? All that I
¶ Discovering the Loch Ness Monster
saw of his equipment was a camera that he keeps a picture of them.
Abernathy was a really strong swimmer. He would just dive into the lock and snorkeling and a code act on in a zip lock, just dog paddle his way. That is a that is a scientific method for disproving cryptids.
Sure, but what I was expecting, And maybe it's unfair of me to come in with this expectation, but what I expected was a bit like like a local hero type of situation. I think that's I'm not the first person to make a direct connection between the two movies, but I had expected that this was going to be a Scotland filled with unique and outsized characters that were going to help him find his way back to the person that he always wanted to be. For better or
for worse. This is not the movie that we're given. This is the people there are actually very sensible, except for that there's.
The one guy. Don't you think that the movie, This movie seems to be working against specifically local hero by toning everybody down. And you got to remember this is also in the wake of not only Twin Peaks, but Northern Exposure. This is around that show is probably still on the air when this when they're making this movie, So the tendency to write all of the wacky characters that our lead has to wade his way through probably felt a little slack.
That's a very good point. Maybe that was John Fusco's way of kind of confounding those expectations, Like you think you're coming in for a quirky character study, but it's actually closer. Not to make a direct comparison, but the thing that I was reminded of as was watching this was Jurassic Park in a lot of ways, the kind of shock and like wonder of finding something that was thought lost forever, and even some of the directorial choices, especially when we get to the actual moment, where are
we going to just say, yes, he does. It turns out there is a there's not one Lockness monster, but there's actually two dinosaurs basically living in the lock. And eventually this little girl who shares some kind of a psychic connection to them or something. Yeah, something, it's a little it's unclear, but she takes she ted dance and gains the little girl's trust. Not he's not after anything.
He just happens to be charmed by her and they establish a friendship, and she eventually trusts him enough to take him to this castle in the lock where that's the only place you can be assured to find these cryptids, these Lockness monsters.
In a cave underneath the castle. They're not they're not hanging out on a parapet or No.
You have to squeeze through these very tight crevices and things and make your way to this flooded area, and there they are. That's there's no doubt in anyone's mind that this is the Lockness monster. So yeah, So, as a spoiler alert, they do exist. Dempsey finds them. He goes against the little Girl's wishes by taking a photograph of them, or tries to. He takes several photographs which startle the monsters like gremlins.
They don't like that.
That's right, don't feed the Lockness monsters after midnight.
Never do that. Evidently, that's the thing among cryptids is that they don't like flash photography, and who can blame them?
Did you see that that famous video of Bigfoot? He looks very disdainfully back at whoever's filming that. He says, get out of here. I don't want to see you film.
I guess cryptids are not fans of just cameras in general.
Why don't we just leave cryptids alone? I guess is what I'm driving at here.
It's too late. We need them to save us now.
He but what I actually thought was an interesting aspect to backtrack a little bit. So Dempsey, before all that happens, we're going out of order here. He's got the boat. He's on the boat with his assistant, and they're trawling the water with all this fancy sonar equipment to try and find the Lockness Monster. But they're running up against
Ian Holmes's character, the water bailiff. But the thing that I found interesting that didn't occur to me was the water bailiff, Ian Holmes doesn't want them to find the monster. And it's Dempsey's assertion, which I think is a logical one, that is, what if I can definitively prove that there is no such thing as a Lockness Monster that will kill the tourism in this area, that must be the reason why you don't want me to continue with this.
And we actually eventually find out that's the exactly opposite is the case. But before that, before we get to that point, there's an episode where some boats come and basically knock all of the equipment off of the boat, sabotaging his equipment and trying to prevent him.
Yeah, they signed. There are two boats, and they broad signed them from either side. They scrape along the hall and knock all their equipment to pieces.
¶ Evidence and Romance
Yeah, but that only serves to cement his resolve, and he basically redoubles his efforts to try and find what's going on. And I think at some point they do discover actual evidence something rams their boat, basically destroys it right out from under them.
And I think it was a rental.
Right, that's twenty pounds out the window. And I guess we're led to believe that it is the monster destroying the boat, capsizing the boat effectively, just it's in pieces.
But why would it do that if the little girl has a psychic connection with.
It that I didn't understand. It would have made more sense if it was in some way further sabotaged by because he aside, I shouldn't say, aside from this little girl, I'll say pretty much everybody on the island, at least at the outset, regards Dempsey with at best suspicion and at worst complete disdain for what he's doing and the kind of person he is. So it would have made more sense to me if this somebody, like I said, put some kind of explosive on the boat, or somehow
sabotaged the vessel. But I thought it was odd that this we're led to believe these are very gentle, sweet creatures. Why it would destroy the boat and almost kill these guys.
It would make more sense for them to have gotten to James Frayne he turned coat.
That would have they could He was so pure of heart. I don't know we have taken.
See now, he's an Englishman and he had a good Scottish accent.
He did that was shading very close to Scotty from Star Trek blah blah bahlone.
But I do it.
I'm not even going to attempt it. So anyway, So he eventually Dempsey has the evidence. He develops these pictures himself and there is definitive proof that this is that it exists, It's there, and he presents this proof where he calls his doctor, mercer Harris Ewlen's character over to They're gonna they're gonna have a big presentation in front of a lot of stuffy, old white English dudes at some fancy college in London.
Yeah, I like, can I just say, I know this isn't like the best movie, but I did like how low key this movie. It's a little bit it's a little bit of splash with the Eugene Levy trying to prove the thing. But it's also it's as if the Eugene Levy character were the lead of Splash.
It is very low key, and there are parts of it that are charming because in the midst of all of this, Ted Danson's character falls in love with Jolie Richardson's character. She's very hardhearted, she tries to keep him at arm's length, but eventually they abudding romance starts. The problem I have is the timeline of this movie is so compressed. All of this happens within the span of two maybe three days, because it's five days is the duration of his trip. He has to prove this within
five days. I don't recall why five years exactly?
Why is there a clock on this movie? This should have been more like Local Hero. It should have been he spends the entire off season on the lock getting to know everybody like it's that fucking American again, and then they fall in love and then eventually, though I don't this movie is confused in that it's trying for a Disney version of a movie in a way without fully committing to it. So it remains charming because it
doesn't have If this if Disney and produced this. There'd be some big jet ski finale, right, yeah, jet skis and speedboat somehow and whatever. So it fails to engage in that folly. But at the same time, it doesn't give itself over to what it really wants to be, which is a drama that it isn't a family movie. First. I don't know, it just doesn't feel like a family movie.
If this feels like the story of a fucking broken guy who finds himself and unfortunately they've tried to turn it into a Hallmark film.
They do this whole So he's on the train to London. They're gonna give this scientific It's like it's like a
worldwide scientific demonstration for all these scientists. And while he's on the train, wouldn't you know it, the water Bailiff is on the same train and he makes a final appeal, as only Ian Holm can do, to not do this, not present this definitive evidence that these animals do live, because think of how much it will be lost, the mystery be lost, and God knows what they're gonna do to these poor animals if the scientific world gets a hold of them. What's it going to do to the village.
What's it going to do to the residents and all that? So he makes a final appeal. This is it gets in Dempsey's head. They get to the presentation. What happens in the presentation? Father Malone, I'll let you describe the ending here.
Okay, it's it's the big stuffy room. It's like basically like an operating theater scenario. And they've got the they've got the slide projector up and he has his slides placed in And will he won't he is where we're at it? Will he reveal this and gain notoriety and clear his name and become the fucking academic god that he always thought he would be. Or does he preserve the dignity of these creatures that he's only experienced because
he was taken in by these locals. And instead of pictures of the fucking blocknest monsters, he has a he shows up a drawing that the child has done the blockness monster and the music. Swell yeah, let's continue to talk about this movie. And then let's talk about the music in this movie.
Oh yeah, ready for this? So he his conscious, his conscience wins out. He it's this spells ruined for his reputation. There's no coming back from this, but he doesn't care.
Ted Danson's character, Dempsey is happy to go back to this quaint little town and be with Jolie Richardson's character and have the daughter there, to be a little family, So that part of it, I mean, there's there was no question when Ian Holm is on the train with him and makes his final appeal, there's no question in my mind that he's not going to sabotage his own future for the sake of the town and for these animals. That I found that a little bit off putting, a
lot off putting. In fact, this was so predictable.
Two things about Ian Holme. Do you think there may be was a better location for them to have that final plea than on a train into London. Considering how water based this entire film is, could they have maybe been on a maybe been on a ferry.
That would have been a lot because that you would have felt like the Ian Holmes character was more in his element.
And you would have looked around at modern London where all of these watercraft are going and it's polluted and gross, and you could say, this is what they want with water. These days, and this is what the lock will become. Anyway, we always hear anytime you see a behind the scenes and a director is talking about working with Ian Holme, they'll always say, from take to tank, you are getting
different versions of the character. You've heard this before, right, Peter Jackson saying, you're getting different flavors of Bilbo every time. I wonder sometimes what those flavors were like if you did seven takes of this speech of him imploring Ted Danson to not give up the reality of these monsters? Were you getting a comedic version? Were you getting like a goofy version of Ian Hull? Were you getting that like.
A Jerry Lewis version?
Yeah, come on now, mister Dempse, you can't the monsters. Like, I wonder sometimes how far that goes. I don't know. I just think it's funny because everyone's every every single take. It's so distinctive, and you have so much to play with, Like how far?
Yeah?
How many? How many different flavors of him in alien? Do you suppose there is? Also because he's playing an android, right.
And he has to he had and he knows he's an android, and he knows the audience and doesn't know he's an android and he has to keep that concealed. So yeah, how many layers, how many flavors of ash where we really get it?
Yeah?
Yeah, but he's again.
It would happen if Ian Holme came up against Stanley Kubrick,
¶ Musical Missteps
Man of a Thousand Takes, would Ian Home have exploded?
It's like the classic Stephen Wright joke about putting instant coffee in the microwave and he almost went back in time. I just think the world would have ended and that would have been That would have been it. But he is really good. If anyone's going to persuade you not to sell out this community, I'd want it to be Ian Home, because he's very persuasive in the scene.
Hey everything, everything ends up happy. And I believe, like I said earlier, the transformation of Ted Danson, because I believe him as a nice guy just as much as I believe him as a prick. I also always believe Ted dancing around children, he seems genuinely interested and cares for children like I love all the interactions between him and the child here in this.
That was probably my favorite part of the movie, is this budding relation they have where they sit down at the table and he's teaching her how to play poker, and they're playing little games, and you can see this cloud lift off of the character the more that he gets to know the daughter, and obviously the daughter's the mother, the love interest. But it is very that part of it is very charming.
Even just a moment where it's like, can I just sit here with you? And then just I don't know, Yeah, charming is the word.
Like.
I found that part of the movie fantastic. Now, let's talk about a part of the movie that I did not find fantastic. Just mentioned it.
The music.
The music. Now, I know you have a particular hatred for one aspect of the music of this film. We'll get to that. First, we have to deal with Trevor Jones. I genuinely like Trevor Jones as a composer. He's composed some of my favorite scores for some of my favorite films. I don't know what he's doing here. He's scoring that Disney movie. I was mentioning, it's all bomb bass, it's all heartstrings, it's all this. You could have slapped this score.
I know you mentioned that there's a lot of like Scottish flavor in it, and there's some and yes, my heart does sing when I hear a booran, which is the sort of drum, the hand drum you play. When I hear one of those, Oh my god, it really it does. It makes me feel really good. But those are few and far between. The rest of it feels like any fucking Hallmark score for any kind of nineties sort of melodrama that this could have been any like Michelle Pfeiffer romantic comedy score.
It's every emotional beat is being telegraphed by the score in this and I found that so grating. It could have been a lot more subtle and a lot more muted, in line with the peacefulness of the setting. But it just it grated on me over time. And like I said, there's a lot of there's purposeful Scottish fla to it, which I know you said you didn't mind it, and that's fine, but for me, it just seemed like a lazy shortcut to making it feel more authentic to the setting.
And I really didn't appreciate that much. But I having said that, I agree with you. I think Trevor Jones is a wonderful composer. He did Labyrinths for God's Sake, one of my favorite scores. So he was this was an ill fitting score for him.
I think he did Time Band, It's mentioned earlier. He did a lot of Terrygo Infants, he did a lot of Alan Parker films. He did Angel Heart for God's Sake, he did ex Caliber, Rathmophobia, Last of the Mohicans. These are all appropriate for their fucking movies. Man, this one I do not understand it.
Yeah, I did not like it, but I what I hated even more Musically speaking, I don't know if you're ready prepared to talk about this aspect of it, but this was This wasn't the thick of the rock Star sound track single that was. I think it was Oscar bait at the time. Really we're I'm talking about Rod Stewart and his song Rhythm of My Heart, which the
score references it here and there. Instrumentally, you don't hear it the Rod Stewart version till the very end, But boy is it's so cloying and it's so cheesy, and it's like this was really the time of Remember we talked about Robin Hood where you have like Brian Adams doing the song you had three Musketeers.
Do it.
Ballads, ballads, ballads, It's just awful.
And Rod Stewart this was in the thick of his cheat. I guess it depends on whether you believe his reinterpretation of the American Songbook. His kind of Swan song was more or less cheesy than this, but this was his last gasp of pop celebrity.
I think before we before we continue to eviscerate, I just want to say that this terrible fucking song, Rhythm of My Heart, which was not originally recorded by him. There was another artist who wrote and recorded it, and there's a band that covered it. And if you bought the soundtrack to this album, it was that cover you were getting, not the Rod Stewart version, because he recorded
it separately on his album a few years beforehand. Anyway, point being, the actual melody of this and the structure of it is just the Bonnie Banks of local omend, which everybody knows if you watched any cartoon from the nineteen thirties and forties, which is You'll take the high road and now I'll take the low road. Now I'll
be in Scotland before ye. But me and my true love will never meet again on the Bonnie Bonnie Banks so la lomnth Okay, that is the basis for so much Scottish music, all the reels and sea shanties and jigs, Okay, they're all in there. So there's something just fundamentally that I respond to when I hear that melody. But if you put it in the fucking gravelly throat of that prick Rod Stewart and you shoot it through that late era treakily stealing Tom Waits's Midnight Train, fucking what was
the other one? Was the big hit the Forever Young, with that kid, with that adorable child, making us believe that Rod Stewart is somehow a decent human being when we all know he's not.
It.
It's also a bummer to me on a personal level because this song was co written and this is where the noise junkies, music, nerd and me comes out. The song was co written by a guy named Mark Jordan Father Malone. He is one of the formative yacht rock classic artists. This guy was responsible for a lot of great albums and a lot of great songs in the yacht rock vein on. You won't know any of them because you're not into yacht rock, said great name one his songs, dancing on the Boardwalk.
You won't know any of these.
But personally I was let down by the fact that he was into this schmaltz. It was offensive to me. I thought of him as this cool kind of singer, songwritery guy, and apparently he has a schmaltzy side too. Marina del Rey is a great song. It's about a place near where you used to live, near and dear to your heart California.
I saw a sneak preview for Needful Things in Marino del Right. Really, yeah, a test screening for it. Yeah, none of the visual effects were done.
Interesting, So anyway, he's fabulous singers.
I saw Guil Gerard at a diner, a Ruby's diner, and Marina del Rey with a much younger woman, and it made me think that he was gross.
Was that the story where he was wearing a tracksuit?
Yes, I think he told me that.
So it's the schmaltiest of the schmaltzy songs, And I guess that was for a the time and place. It just it was like, I don't know, if it was something a little more, a little less emotionally out there and big and that sort of style. I think I would have appreciated it. Something a little more muted and maybe a little more classy would have been great.
He's not even Scottish, Ron Stewart, Yeah, Stewish. He's fucking English, is he? Yeah?
Man, I didn't know that.
He's a fucking spoiled English kid. He shouldn't be saying that fucking Scottish song, fucking soccer person. He's a fucking he's a football guy. You can tell. He's just one of those What is it about this? There's a particular type of English celebrity that, like they all just want to be fucking sports stars and then they like end up at the height of some other career that they fall into. Jason Stantham was like mister diving guy and
now he's the biggest action star in the world. Like Ron Stewart just wanted to kick a ball around and ended up this huge fucking music superstar. Are I don't know. There's a lot of that jocks, jocks turning into fucking superstars. I don't approve, but you find that.
I think you find that typically more with English rock stars than you do with American rock stars. Are there any American like rock stars of that vintage who always wanted to be like baseball players or their half players, their half nothing.
I know, Okay, this isn't music, But wasn't Kurt Russell? He wanted to be a baseball player and then injured. Injury fed him back into the system, even though he had already been a child actor.
So you can find the reverse example of the actor who wanted to be a baseball an actor, but not a reversing actors. You can find examples like that. I'm saying, like rock stars, I can't think of anything. Even I'm sure you can. Like football players, I'm sure you can find a bunch of them who were they wanted to they were they wanted to be football players, they injured their knee or something, and they had to become actors by default, and they end up being big stars. But
I don't know too many. Did Bob Dylan secretly want to be a badminton player or something? I don't know. I can't think of it.
I can't think of any I wonder that's again. I'd like to know. Actually, I'd like to know some of the people at the top of their name if they had some other career in mind up until a point.
I feel like there's an element of boredom to that whole notion, because it's like someone like Rod Stewart gets the top of his game, so to speak. He's the biggest rock star of his era, but it's somehow maybe they just get bored or dissatisfied being just that and they want to go back to their childhood dream of being like a football star.
In his case, it's boredom Rod Stewart. I'd like to remind everybody that there was a moment when he was performing at Red Rocks where there was a gust of winds so strong that it ripped his two pay including the to pay tape, right off the top of his head and then buffeted away like so much garbage?
Is that?
Is there a video of that? Can I watch that?
I've only ever heard the story. If it exists, please share it with us, and we will share it with everyone, because no greater image could exist. It's already an epic in my mind, the two pay tape tearing off but struggling for a bit like ghost after gust and the tape just oh and Stewart knowing it's going but nothing he can do about it.
The music was maybe my least favorite part of this movie ultimately, Father alone, What was your how did Obviously you didn't like it, but did you think it was as bad as I did?
This song?
The song and the music over. I know you basically said that Trevor Jones was a bit of a letdown, But ultimately do you think that was the worst part of the movie for you because you liked the movie better than I did.
I did the movie quite a bit. Yeah, the big letdown is musically. Just as a fan of Scottish music, I put on bank pipes for fun, just to listen. So I'm not expecting a full on traditional score. I'm not expecting a full on orchestral necessarily somewhere in between. I don't know, like there might have been a little folk band you might have hired to do some traditional stuff here. It just felt all I'm talking about the score.
I'm talking about the Trevor Jones score that particularly more egregious to me than the song, because I think the song just plays in the credits at the end. It's a take it or leave its scenario. With that it doesn't impact the movie at all. It's much more egregious. That score is just trying to elicit emotion where there needn't be any, or it trying to heighten it or ramp it up, or I don't know, it's just it's so wrongheaded. It just bothers me. I'm really bogged by it. Yeah that's all.
Yeah, No, that's it. Look, it was, but there were a lot of ways the movie could have gone. I didn't love it. I really liked I really liked Ted Danson, thought he was great. I loved his relationship with the little girl. I liked hean home. But ultimately I found it more predictable, and that a lot I could be because of the time and the type of movie it was. I don't think it was intended to be this sort
of bit and switch for viewers. You wanted the sort of wonder of the story, and that was fine, but it wasn't maybe what I was looking for.
I was actually I did not know. Somehow avoided this movie when it came out, somehow avoided any of the artwork or the plot line of the movie. I did not know if we were going to get a lock mass monster in this film. So when it finally showed up, I was pleasantly surprised, and I was specifically pleasantly surprised by the physical creature that they have interacting with our actors. The CGI monster, on the other hand, not so great.
But the physical monster is fucking fantastic. I was blown away by it as a matter of fact.
Yeah, And the actual like the ship and all the technology they used to find it, that was all very tactile and tangible, like the texture of it I thought worked really well, and in fact, just the town itself I thought was very well rendered in the movie. But I agree that the CG was not good, and I think you could probably just assign the blame to the fact that this is a thirty year old piece of technology that we're witnessing. And I even I don't know
how it was looked at in the day. I think it's up against Like I said, I brought up Jurassic Park, that was the gold standard for that kind of CGI in a movie, I think at that.
Time, right where they had come out three years prior, so don't do it here. They The stuff with the animatronic was great. I don't know that we needed any real range of motion for the thing.
Yeah, it was. They could have accomplished the same thing without actually having so much of the CGI monster there.
I didn't mind it. I didn't mind. I didn't mind a computer generating thing when it was in the world water,
¶ Belief in the Loch Ness Monster
in the murk, that's fine because it should be weird looking under there. But when they had that fucking beautiful puppet interacting with the little girl, like why cut to a wide shot where they've got this obviously slapped on computer generated bullshit like not their image?
Yeah, agreed, Have we solved it? We've solved the missionary.
We solved the mystery of the Locknest Monster. I treat I think we have. Is it really? There?
Was it?
Ever?
There was it?
A pl sr You know what, let's wrap this up by what I want to ask you in wrapping this up on them alone. Do you believe in the Lockness Monster?
Now? Yes, now and forever because you know why? Because there are some mysteries that deserve to live, and maybe all the old gods stopped existing because we stopped believing in them. And in this case, till my dying breath, I'm going to believe in the Lockness Monster. I want it to be there. I know scientifically it makes no sense. It would have to be magic. It would have to be an actual magical animal to continue to exist in this closed environment after we have mapped every fucking inch
of that goddamn lake. It would have to be Look, I know there's this other theory that there's another cave and it goes down there, but how would it be very Okay, it doesn't make sense. Yes, it still exists, but it doesn't make sense.
I'm of the same mind. I'm a firm believe I want to believe that it exists like you do. And I guess there's so much in the world, and the world is so much smaller than it was when we were kids, and a lot of the mysteries have been exposed as during our lifetime. I do want to believe it's there, but a part of me still thinks maybe it's possible. Maybe this thing is just evading every attempt at finding it. I will say I don't believe Bigfoot exists. There's other cryptids that I'm fairly certain.
Do not exist.
I think you're the one who told me that the famous Bigfoot film was just a hoax. By John landis I think was involved, wasn't he?
No?
No, No, okay, look there, Yes, there is a rumor about the Rick Baker John landis involved in a Bigfoot film. There's also there's a pretty great National geographic special about Bigfoot where they interview a fella who was a friend of the guy who like turned in the footage to begin with, and they surreptitiously filmed this old man walking across the street on his way to the meeting, and god damned if he doesn't walk exactly like Bigfoot in
the famous footage, that might be him. Yes, but there have been sightings of Yetti in the Himalayas, there have been sightings of Bigfoot elsewhere. He's a possibility. I'm gonna still believe in that guy too. Maybe, but if I'm the one debunking it to you, I continue to believe in them.
No, But I at a minimum, I want to believe that the Lockness Monster exists, and I don't really, it's not going to ruin my life to know whether it's there or whether it's not there. But isn't life a little more fun with a little mystery, a little bit of magic of wondering it doesn't exist, and if it does exist, where is it, how does it whatever? I'm fine with that. I'm fine with some mystery around.
It me too. If there's a kelpie out there, I hope it's continuing. I hope it's continuing health in a hearty lifestyle. And also I want to mention the bunyip in Australia, which is a kind of a cousin to these water monsters. The bunyip, to me is the most
terrifying cryptid out there now. It probably because as a child I saw that film Dot in the Kangaroo and they have a nightmare sequence with a bunyip and a song called like Bunyip Moon and which is basically like aboriginal drawings come to life, and it fucked me up. HP So I just want to say, bunyip, bunyip. Those I hope don't exist. How about that? Take that bunyip.
I've never heard of the bunyip. I will have to do some research for me. I think one of the more terrifying cryptids that I've heard of. I don't know a ton about this, but I think the mothman is scary because I don't know. There's something about this creature that's flying, and every encounter seems to be happening at night when you're driving and it's raining and this thing comes out of nowhere and makes you crash the car. There's something freaky about that. What it's flying? Is it
an insect? Is it a man?
What is it?
That's the kind of cryptid that's scary to me. The chopicabra also pretty scary.
This weird.
Is it from Spain or Mexico?
Mexico. It'll suck your goats, that's right, So I.
¶ Upcoming Shows and Farewell
Love I don't know. There was something about cryptids we talked about when we were kids, in the wonder and the mystery of it all, And thank goodness, some of that mystery still live, still exists in this world. Let's not explain everything. Everything doesn't have to be explained. Let's leave a little mystery.
And on that note, on our next Fusco Festival, I don't know what okay. On the next midnight viewing that's gonna be Father Malone's weekly round up that's coming up this I apologize to everyone. If you tuned in this past Monday and I wasn't there, I'm fine. I'll explain a little bit more on the roundup itself. Till then hp hpeople will be back on Fusco Fest. Whatever that next movie ends up being should be Spirit of the Spirit the Stallion of the Cimarron. But Hidalgo we've got
coming up as well. Looking forward to both of those, Hidalgo in particular, I fucking love that movie. Anyway, till then, HP Where can people find you? All right?
I am the co host of the night Mister Walters Taxi podcast with my esteemed co host Father Malone sitting across from me here. I host the Noise Junkies music podcast for music nerds. Please check that out. And I'm an occasional guest on the Culture Cast with Chris Dashu. And finally, i have a band campsite Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com. Check that out as well. That's where you can find me.
As for me, you're hearing it here on Midnight Viewing. Check us out every Monday for Fonda Malone's weekly round up band check us out every Friday for either Towns from the Dark Snide or an Anthologies Attack or a Fuseco Fest. We've got too much going on. In fact, we've got another show coming out this fucking fall. I've already signed up for God damn it, I'm collaborating with Paul Waller. We've got a new show coming out called Little Old Lady Got Mutilated late last night, so look
for that around sometime around October. Until next time, I'm gonna leave you with a little bit from this flick, Jack the Ripper.
Was he a prosperous London surgeon, perhaps a member of British Royalty. Well, a bullshit team has unearthed spectacular new evidence which suggests that Jack the Ripper was, in fact.
The Luckness Monster.
Is it possible that Nessy murdered five street walkers before the Tourney's Luckness? Using undiscovered evidence, We've pieced together the events leading up for the first murder. Although this is a bullshit reenactment, it may have happened just this way.
Hello, dearie, show you a good time for a quid for the wife and for free old gents. Don't you want a girl to keep you warming tonight? Mom told me that would be nights like this. Oh, oh my, you are a big one. How hard you come on? Darlp my, you don't you be stepping on my feet?
Now?
What you all worry now, Will you'll be careful?
Not so?
Wait?
Is this the way it happened?
Was Jack the Ripper in fact a sixty foot sea serpent from Scotland?
Did I take this job for a quick buck? We may never know the answer to this questions.
Spasso