Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind listener mail. My name is Robert.
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and today is Monday. With the day of each week we read back some messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mailbox. If you had never gotten in touch with us before, why not give it a try. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Let's see, Rob, I think I want to kick things off with this message from Kenny in Glasgow. If you don't mind, go for it. So this is somewhat having to do with beavers, but also in response to a
previous listener mail from last week. Kenny from Glasgow says, Hi, Rob, Joe and JJ. First off, in response to Constantine's listener mail can learning Canada's national animal the mighty beaver, he remarked that the UK has the lion. However that's only England's animal. Ooh, I'm sure that is a screw up there, Constantine. I hope you find contrition about this. Kenny goes on, We Scots opted for the unicorn and the Welsh went for the dragon. If you must have an animal mascot,
why limit yourself to reality. Regarding the beaver, we reintroduced them in Scotland about two decades ago after a five hundred year absence. There's been a bit of resistance, especially from farmers, but they appear to have increased biodiversity, reduced pollution and downstream flooding. My direct experience of a wild beaver was actually in Connecticut, where I worked at a summer camp for many years. I always thought that the stump gnad to a perfect point was a cartoon trope,
but we would regularly spot these on woodland walks. One day, I took my division out on the lake in kayaks. It was very warm and the lake was mirror smooth, and the boys and I were drifting near the shore in a blissful little group. From the corner of my eye, I noticed a shadow in the water, and when I turned, I realized there was a beaver staring right at me. It was no more than a meter away, with only
its head above water. For a few minutes, we drifted in silence before, evidently bored with me, it dove, slapping the water hard with its huge tail. The lake was crystal clear and I watched it swim until I lost it in the distance. Anyway, thanks for your incredible work, Kenny from Glasgow. PS is a future topic. Maybe you could talk about the environmental effects of species reintroduction. It's a subject of some debate and I think education is vital. Yeah,
thanks Kenny, that is an interesting subject. I don't think I quite realized. I know, beaver's had been hunted to extinction in the British Isles, or at least I guess, as you say, in Scotland, I think throughout the whole British Isles. But yeah, I didn't realize they'd been reintroduced. So that is interesting and I'm glad your encounter with a beaver did not go like that like that one we read about on the show with the guy on the bridge.
And indeed, this is a good topic for future consideration. I feel like we've maybe touched on it a little bit in the past, but I don't know that we've ever done like a full episode on species reintroduction. Could be wrong, all right. This next one comes to us from Ian Ian writes in and says, Dear Robin, Joe, I wanted to write in just to say thank you to Robert for an offhand comment he made several weeks ago about getting something new out of Doom every time
he's reread it. The reason I'm thanking you for this is kind of involved, but I wanted to share. My local library has a reading program that I participate in, where each month there is a new category of books for you to read. The May's category was a book from your past, and I had not been able to
settle on anything yet. I'd been leaning towards Matter by Ian M. Banks, the first Culture series book I read, certainly a fine choice, by the way, But then when I was listening to your show, rob mentioned rereading Doune, and I knew that was the one. I first received a paperback copy of Dune as a Christmas gift from my grandfather, who recently passed away, when I was around
twelve or fourteen years old. I love of science fiction was something we always shared, and he liked to introduce me to older classic sci fi, which I always appreciated. He also gave me the complete Hitchhiker's Guide series another year. I loved Dune from the first time I read it, and have read it several times since, so the last time was when I was in college, longer ago than I care to admit. I still have the original paperback
he gave me all those years ago. Unlike the rest of the series, it hasn't even been relegated to the basement. It's on a shelf in my home office, and that is the copy I read again this time. I think it's the same edition Joe once talked about, with some portions of the typeset slightly askew and other printing oddities
like that. It had a lot of character when it was new, and even more now that it's rather the worse for wear slash Love with a beat up cover, the corners of the whole book worn to a round shape instead of a sharp corner, and water stains on the back ten percent or so of the pages. Reading it again now was very special, and in addition to getting more out of the text itself than I did when I was younger, it helped me feel closer to my grandfather. So thank you.
Yeah, oh well, that's heartwarming. Regarding that copy of down Ian mentions this came up on the show at some point, But I think what I said is that the first few times I tried to read Dune. I got stalled out. I don't know, some small amount of pages in and I think it was because of this copy I was reading had like tiny print and like weird margins and stuff. It's just not a good physical printing of the book.
And I got a better one later, and of course loved it once I actually read the whole thing.
Yeah, some of these old paperbacks, I love them. I love the field, the smell of them. But I've gotten so spoiled by my Kendall reader that it's hard to go back to some of these physical books with their tiny typeset. But at any rate, Yeah, this is great to hear Ian. Yeah, I'm madter by Inan Banks as great as well. I haven't read a culture book in a while, but at this point, but I should re explore them again, because those are some great books with
some wonderful ideas in them. And of course I love Dune, and of course, and I think it's great anytime you have a book like this, be it Dune or anything else, that has this sort of cherished, recurring place in your life and or a connection to people who introduced you to these books. That's my hot take. Reading is great.
Okay. This next message is in response to our episode on Blue Space and on fountains. Edward says, Hi, Robin Joe. I was listening to your episode on fountains. When you mentioned the calming aspects of fountains. My mind immediately went to the bucket fountain we have in Wellington, New Zealand, because I don't think it has those aspects. Water fills up the buckets, causing them to tip out their water in the general direction of the buckets below them before
they thunk back to their normal position. There isn't even any regular pattern to the buckets emptying, but it does distribute water to the nearby public, especially when it gets windy and most of the water doesn't make it into the lower buckets or the pool below them. And then Edward provides some links well, thank you, Edward. I can sense a little bit of snark in your description here. I've seen this described as a kinetic sculpture more than
a fountain. I don't know where the line between fountain and sculpture involving moving water is. A I don't know what you think about that, roub.
I mean, I don't know. I don't have a strong opinion about it. But looking at just still pictures of this particular fountain, I think it looks looks great. I have no problem with it. It reminds me of some kinetic structures I've seen. Had various splash pads in our area, you know, for kids on hot days to sort of play around and splash in the water without actually being in a pool. And some of these are a lot of fun for the kids because it's like, oh, is
it about to tip? Is it about to spill? And then it spills and you know, it splashes water all over your head, et cetera.
You know, I haven't double checked the sources on this, but the wiki tells me that during the filming of Lord of the Rings, Elijah Wood climbed on this fountain and peed in it.
Hmmm, well I can't condone that, but interesting that it's been something of a cultural epicenter for a number of different things. Oh really, I mean, like we said before, all water has been p perhaps all water has been a lot would speak and you know we should just we should just accept it.
Yeah, how long does that take? I feel like this question has come up before.
All Right, show we get into some Weird House Cinema listener mail here. This first one's pretty exciting. This one comes to us from bb BB writes in and says, Hi, guys, I love the show. I'm a truck driver who spends many hours, primarily at night, listening to podcasts, and yours is one of my very favorites. Well. I love all the episodes. I especially look forward to the Friday installments of Weird House Cinema. I've almost written in on a couple of occasions, but just never got round to it.
I saw both Phantasm and The Devil's Rain in the theater. One small detail in Fantasm scarred me for life, but I digress.
Last don't say what the detail is.
I know I want to. There's so many disturbing details in Phantasm. It could have could have been numerous things.
It wasn't the Blood Funnel. It was the performance of sitting Here at Midnight by hot As Love the Reggie what's his name band?
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a great, often underappreciated moment in the film. Anyway, Babe continues this last Saturday morning, I was listening to the Queen of Blood episode and waiting for a good friend of mine to pick me up so he could go grab a cup of coffee. The episode was just wrapping. As he pulled up, I told him about your show and the deep dive you had just done on Queen of Blood. He said, wait, what. My friend is the son of Judy Meredith and Gary Nelson.
I told him that you had some really nice things to say about his mom. She was, of course in the film. He said, how could they not. She was a wonderful person and a great actor. He went on, she was in some bad movies, but you know she had to pay the bills. It brought a smile to his face. Oh. While I personally never met Judy, I did get to meet Gary Nelson on a couple of occasions and listen to some of his stories. I also think you should cover The black Hole on Weird House.
It's very rich and deep in some ways and very cheesy in others. Fun fact, The black Hole was Disney's first PG rated movie. Thanks again for all the hard work and thorough research you put into all your subjects.
Bebe well. That is a connection I did not expect. But yeah, it makes me doubly glad that we had nice things to say about Judy Meredith, who again the limitations of Queen of Blood as a movie being quite apparent. Judy Meredith was great.
Yeah, I mean we always try and find the positive spin on the performances, and yeah, it's kind of neat to get this personal story from a listener. Not since the time we heard from the guy who was almost skewered by John Saxon also in Queen of Blood have we had this sort of listener mail.
That's all right, I forgot about that. There was a sword fight for what movie?
Oh, some sort of authorian sort of thing. As I recall, we've looked it up before. It was some low budget fair It was some maybe a little bit dodgy stunts.
Okay. This next message is from Pat subject, Son of Frankenstein. Guys, as always, thanks, Queen of Blood was a cool choice. I remember seeing this as a release in a grindhouse. Oh man, great. We always love to hear about those experiences. But Pat tells us nothing else about that experience, so maybe it was unremarkable. Pat says, you briefly mentioned Son of Frankenstein. I'm a big fan. No, the plot is silly, but this piece is character driven, and what characters Wrathbone.
I guess, referring to Basil Rathbone as Baron wolf is wonderful as the maddening scientist. I guess is that different from a mad scientist. A maddening scientist, like he maddens others, or maybe he is turning mad in the process of maddening.
I don't know, Like, you know, you need a it's like having a life for career coach. A mad scientist good needs a good maddening science, just like we saw in Bride of Frankenstein.
Right to Madden, you up exactly, Yeah, and that would make sense because much in the same way people. You know, some family names that are passed down originally the name of professions. People called Cooper, you know, they made barrels or whatever. John Madden's family, they were originally maddeners. Anyway, back to Pat's message, Pat says Bella Lagosi is creepy as the living hanged man. Igor Carloff's last turn is the monster and a weird House favorite Lionel Atwill as
the Inspector, a role spoofed in Young Frankenstein. Plenty of strange dialogue, like Baron Wolfe in his entrance explaining to his wife about the monster quote which some of the villagers actually call this monster. And then there's a break here where Rathbone's voice is overridden by the train crew announcing arrival at Frankenstein. That's a place, now, I guess. Anyway, Thanks Pat, Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I'll put that on the list. It sounds good.
Yeah, this is the for the context if you didn't listen to the Queen of Blood episode. Basically we were talking about like the original Frankenstein Classic Bride of Frankenstein even better, like a like a shining pillar in cinema and horror cinema especially.
But then the ride is the Empire strikes back to Frankenstein Star Wars.
Yeah, and then but then this, but then I guess, yeah, Son of Frankenstein is I don't know where you wouldlass. It's not even the Return of the Jedi of the series. It's the third film in that series, but it's I don't know, it's somewhere down with the Ewok movies probably, or at least I've never seen it. That's all. That's how it seems to be discussed. But I'm you know, I'm always open to be surprised. And turn it around concerning some of these films.
I think we should put it on the list fair.
Enough, all right, here's one from Liam Liam Wright Sen and says, hey, just listen to the Super Mario Brothers episode, and I wanted to flag that Big Bertha is a character named after a phish from the games. No idea why, but I guess it's an extremely forced way to incorporate more game references, albeit with no relevance. The large bucket Koopa is standing in before being made to primordial sludge also looks similar to the flying machine Bowser uses to
battle Mario in at least one of the games. Didn't hate the film, but feels like it could have been a prequel to Super Mario sixty four given proximity to release. Loved the episode all the best. Liam.
This kind of, uh, what we like, A non resonating simple reference is I think so common in comic book movies now that we've kind of like learned to ignore it, like not notice that it's strange anymore. I bet somebody has written a good piece on this, but I'm kind of interested in this phenomenon, the phenomenon of cramming a
piece of media with references to other related media. I think this is mostly understood today as you know, what people call fan service, like a series of little gifts to people who are in the know, Like, Oh, did you hear that the character was named Bertha? That's what the fish in the Mario game is called. I got that reference. And obviously some people find this very pleasing. I guess sometimes in some contexts, I also find it pleasing, though in others I just find it a little perplexing.
I'm not sure what makes the difference, but like, why is it fun to notice things like this in the cases when it is fun? And how far back does this practice go? I mean, they're doing it in this nineties movie. I would have to assume that things like
this were happening even before movies existed. In literature, there must have been people burying little references to pre existing literature that were just like fun things for people to pick up on and get and don't really have any relevance other than that.
Yeah, I'm not sure about this. This might be something to sort of keep our our eyes open for in future episodes of Weird House, you know, Like, I'm like, I'm thinking back to say the Dunwich Horror, which was such a fun, fun film based on Lovecraft stories, or one particular Lovecraft story of the Dunwich Car. But I don't recall that having any winks or nods to any other Lovecraft tales or anything of that nature. I could be wrong, but because that kind of thing is generally
it's unnecessary in order to tell the story. It's all about, like, to what degree do you want to engage a more hardcore audience or I guess sometimes it maybe feels like I don't know, maybe maybe it's just me overthinking it, but like if you have enough little nods and sort of cryptic references that it kind of creates a substructure to what you're doing, or the illusion of a substructure.
I'm not sure. I guess. Also there's a discussion to be had about how subtle it is, how forced it feels, you know, and that's just going to vary from work to work. All Right, what else do we have? This can't be the only person to have written in about Super Mario Brothers.
Oh no, we got quite a few. Let's see. Here's one from Dan. Dan says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I'm currently listening to your Super Mario Brothers Weird House Cinema episode. From a couple of weeks ago. You had asked for
Lance Hendrickson movie suggestions, and I have two. First, Stan Winston's nineteen eighty eight supernatural horror revenge movie Pumpkinhead, which stars Hendrickson, and Jim Jarmusch's nineteen ninety five art house acid western dead Man, in which Hendrickson plays a supporting role as a cannibalistic bounty hunter in a cast that also stars Johnny Depp when he was Good, Gary Farmer, Robert Mitcham, Michael Wincott, and Iggy Pop, with an electric
horror score by Neil Young, whoa Both are quite weird in their own distinct ways and would be worthy of discussion, though personally I lean more towards dead Man. Dan Well, thank you Dan. I watched dead Man back when I was in college. Weirdly, I don't remember much about the movie, but I do remember Neil Young's guitar score.
Yeah, you are a big Neil Young fan, I am. Yeah, I don't know. It might be one to consider. Yeah, I don't think i've I don't think i've seen it. I think maybe I watched like the first five minutes of it once and for some reason didn't watch the rest of it. But I don't really remember much other than noticing that it's in black and white, that it and it looks good in black and white, and obviously it has a great cast. Now.
Pumpkinhead, on the other hand, as a movie I have seen multiple times, that's one of those I have very mixed feelings about it. I think overall it is not a great horror movie, but it has some elements, especially some visual elements that work really really well, extreme strong atmosphere in certain isolated moments, and some really good creature effects and designs. But overall, I think it doesn't really work as a narrative. It doesn't really have very compelling characters.
It's it's one of those where you can see the much much better movie that it could have been.
Great monster though, no matter what a monster that that lurked and haunted so many vhs and DVD rental stores back in the day, you know, I think it's like just the form of that monster like cast a longer shadow than the film itself.
Totally agree, And again, as I said, I think almost everything that's really great about it is a visual element, which kind of makes sense because it was directed by a visual effects guy.
Yeah, so thanks for the suggestions. We'll well, we'll take both of them into account. Anytime we get suggestions, we kind of add them to the to the list. Either the I think I have two, you know, yeah, at least two like digital lists going. And then there's sort of the internal mental list, and then we kind of, you know, sometimes we look at those and consider those, and sometimes we just kind of go with our gut. But yeah, both of these sound really interesting. All right.
Here's one comes to us from Michelle. Michelle writes, Greetings, gentlemen, I appreciate your wit and wisdom. I've been trying to locate a great sci fi nineteen fifties black and white movie that I saw on TV a few years ago. I'm reminded of it whenever I think Siri. In the movie, a woman rejects her macho human boyfriend in favor of the caring robot boyfriend. It gives one a lot to think about. Do you remember what this movie is?
Thanks Michelle, Well, thanks Michelle. I do not know what this movie is, and I did try to figure it out. This description stuck in my crawl for some reason, so I was like, oh, I got to search around and try to figure out what this is, and I could not figure it out. I even thought, maybe this is what chat GPT is good for. You know, that would kind of make sense, right, to feed some plot details into an AI and it can tell you what the
movie is. That made sense to me. So I tried feeding this prompt into it several ways to see if I could identify candidate films, and you know what, I made the AI launch into a magnificent arc of hallucinations where it repeatedly identified real existing science fiction films as
containing this plot line. And as best as I can tell, this does not happen in any of the movies it mentioned, So just as one example, it was like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about the nineteen fifty six British sci fi films Satellite in the Sky, in which it told me that a character named Evelyn rejects her human boyfriend in favor of a more caring robot lover. I haven't seen this movie. It's some kind of space adventure that I
think has no aliens. Instead, it has a plot involving like a struggle over the ethics of nuclear weapons and stuff. Oh and it also has I noticed a journalist played by Lois Maxwell, who is a moneypenny in the early James Bond films. But anyway, so I haven't seen it. But in reading about this film, I could find no evidence whatsoever that it contains a robot romance. Nor does it contain a robot, nor does it contain a character
named Evelyn. And when I called this out on chat GPT, it's like, oh, yeah, sorry, I just made that up. So I don't know these are the machines that our bosses want to replace us all with. But anyway, humans out there, I think that this may be a better solution here. We can consult the wisdom of the crowd. Can any of you figure out what Michelle might be thinking of? If so, you can email us with your with your candidate answers, contact at stuff to Blow your mind dot com.
Yeah, this one doesn't ring a bell for me, but but uh yeah, I think we've we've we've timed in before on cases like this where someone sort of half remember as a movie, and I think we all have a situations like this as well. Like, like, for my part, I remember being you know, the catching movies on TV, and you'd see part of one as a kid, and you don't get to watch the rest of it, so you have even less context, but being like really floored
by it. One of them. I remember seeing part of Nasica Valley of the Wind before I knew anything about Miyazaki, and fortunately I came back around to that one and got to experience it many more times. One of my favorite movies. But then there's like another film where like there's a there are kids in a flooded house and
they're living in the attic of the house. And I've never found out what that is, but it and and I guess maybe you know minute to men and it doesn't concern me, but occasionally I'll think back and I'll be like, wow, that I remember that really impacting me, like the kids had lost their parents or something. And and I've never looked up or been able to find out what that movie was. So yeah, I think we probably all, especially in the TV ah, we all have
cases like that. And we have to add into that that, you know, the fact that our memories of movies are fallible. Yeah, y'all are other memories, so like you can easily start combining them, like yeah, like the kids were in the attic and it was flooded, and then Robert Mitcham shows up and he's got tattoos on his knuckles, and yeah, you can easily get things like scrambled into movies that never existed just within your own head, and there's no need to bring chat GPT into the mix.
One of his hands said love and the other ones said bake, so maybe he loved to bake. Does that make sense.
The other hand had babysitting written on the knuckles because he had multiple fingers on a monstrous CG a computer generated hand.
It is funny, though, whenever you do this, like you try to figure out what this memory is from the piece of media, is almost always disappointing. It's like not some epic, great film or something. It's the one that really stuck in my mind is I I saw a part of a movie on TV as a kid that really horrified me, and I was like, oh my god, what is this? And I did searching around. I finally figured it out as an adult, and it turned out it was like a Michael du dekof movie.
Yeah, Yeah, they don't altern out to be nausicaa in the end.
Oh, but hey, speaking of Nausica, that could be good for Weird House. That's a weird and beautiful movie it is.
That's Uh, that's that's one. We might have to come back to one of my favorites. And uh, and I also have the the source material here in the house, the original manga by by Miyazaki. Beautiful stuff.
All right, should we cap it there for today?
Yeah, let's go ahead and close the mail bag for today, but keep it coming. Uh, and we will come back to them in future conversations on Stuff to Blow Your Mind listener mail which publishes every Monday, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed We're primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form monster fact or artifact episode, and on Fridays we set aside most series concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Huge thanks to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi. You can email us at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
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