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 it's Monday, so we are bringing you a listener mail episode. This is the day of each week we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address, which is contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. A little announcement for most of this week, we are going to be running episodes from the Vault because we're going to be out for a few days.
So Tuesday and Thursday's core episodes this week will be Vault episodes, and we will have a Weird House Cinema rewind for you on Friday. But today it is all new listener mail messages. Let's see, rob Do you mind if I jump right in with this message from Eden via Facebook?
Yeah, let's have it.
So this is in response to our Anthology of Horror episode, specifically my selection of a Kulchak the night Stalker story, which concerned a type of Cajun bogeyman named Paramoufay, which is a monster like a kind of plant based sasquatch. It is covered head to toe in Spanish moss, and Paramoufay in this episode would attack his victims by squeezing them to death. Now I'm still not one hundred percent certain on this, because there are some sources that make
claims to the contrary. But after pretty extensive digging, I came to the conclusion that Paramoulfay is probably not a real figure from organic Cajun folklore, but something invented by the writers of the show, though based loosely on existing monsters from Cajun folk tales, for example the rugaroo. Of course, if you have any evidence to the contrary, if you do know of authentic from the people Para Malfay stories, please write in and let us know. I would love
to be corrected on that. Eden writes in at the Facebook module to say, paramou Fay may be a television bogeyman, but moss Man is a very real boogieman. Boogie spelled bogie in this case, so Eden says, the late great Steve nico is how I think you would pronounce it. It's inn icaud, I think that'll be. Steve Nicode used to dress head to toe in a costume of Spanish moss and a pair of sunglasses and would show up to Marti Gras parades and such a folk figure in
his own right while he was doing it. After that episode of Colchak, the idea of a Spanish moss bodysuit has surely occurred to many people independently throughout history. It just begs to be a costume. In fact, moss Man is the name most used for anyone who wears Spanish moss as a costume. As far as I know, however, Nico was the only one to complete the look with air of sunglasses. Nicode died in two thousand and four, and there is little trace of his moss Man on
the internet. I can't find a single photograph of the man himself. But I submit these photos of my family's Mossman poster and kids coloring worksheet. And this is some kind of framed poster for a party event or something, and it says moss Man and it shows a figure
covered in Spanish moss with sunglasses on. And then in the background there's a convertible like a car that also looks like it's covered in Spanish moss, with a bunch of trees or something poking out of it, and an alligator driving the car, and the text on the poster says, Moss is boss the most partying dude you'll come across. And also there's a page from a coloring book here that seems to be a I don't know, some kind of promotional item from the New Orleans Rhythm run nineteen
ninety three. Then Eden says, ps, you should do an episode on Christmas witches. There are a lot of them, and Louisiana as a creepy one. Oh, I hope I'm saying this right, Madame grand Dewey. The nice version of her has her using her long fingers to place gifts into children's Christmas stockings. The scary version has her living in the attic all year round, just waiting for children to misbehave so she can snatch them with her long fingers. Wow, I did not know about that one. That's really good.
So she never leaves. She's a crampus that never leaves your house. She's always there.
She's like Gary Busey and that movie Hider in the House where you have the secret Gary Busey living in your attic.
Well, thank you, Eden, I had no idea about the Moss Man. The Moss boss, the most partying dude you'll come across this. This is all new to me and I like his vibe.
Yeah, this is great. I mean this is one I haven't been down to New Orleans in a couple of
years now, hopefully i'll go go back next year. But I love all this, like local New Orleans culture stuff, A lot of it, you know, tied up with Marty Grass in a way that you know, it doesn't really come through in the like the larger public conception of Marti Gras, but you get like the early Marti Gras parades, like the you know, the different crews putting on their more localized parades that are often more political and you know, focused on local politics. And then you have a lot
of other cool stuff like that. They always do a big Crampus, or at least they did in recent years, and I know that we actually heard from listeners who were associated with it or participated in it. So yeah, there's a lot of fun stuff that goes on down there, all right. This next one comes to us from a Lurch. Lurch says, good morning, gentlemen, listening to Search for Alien Live with Doctor Frank. He references a TV show UFO
in a related Space nineteen ninety nine. UFO was a short lived series produced by Gary Anderson, who also produced Space nineteen ninety nine, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlett Stingray, Fireball XL five, and a host of other wonderful for weird house values of wonderful shows, my favorite being Space Precinct. In some shows the actors were human and others they were marionettes. All of them featured beautiful, cheap model work. In my biased estimation, it's well worth the time it would take
to Binge watch his entire library. Keep the gravy warm, lurch.
Oh, and Rob, you should probably do this next message from Sean because it's on exactly the same subject in response to yours, Adam Frank.
Yeah, Sean rides and it says, Hi, Rob love the interview, but I cannot believe you've never seen the Gary Anderson classic program UFO. Pretty hokey by today's standards, but I think the show would suit your aesthetic. The funk is strong in this one. There's a moon base of women with purple wigs just because, a submarine full of buff dudes and mess shirts. If you haven't, I implore you as a longtime listener to check it out. Sean, all right, Yeah, so UFO is a show that I do not think
I've ever seen anything. I don't think I've ever watched any of it. I have watched Space nineteen ninety nine. I'm familiar in passing with some of these other series. But look into it. Looking at some of the stills, I've definitely seen stills of these purple headed ladies before Space Ladies, and it does look like it might be a lot of fun. It also looks like maybe there have been some like recuts into something like a film, or maybe they made a UFO film at some point.
I'll have to poke around a little bit more. Maybe there is something we could consider for weird House in the future.
Oh, I had the wrong era in mind for some reason. I was picturing this as a show like from the nineties, but I just pulled it up. Yeah, the moon base with the ladies with purple hair, this looks like sixties or seventies.
Yeah. Ed Bishop, I believe, was the lead on it, a lead actor, and he was in two thousand and one A Space Oudus. He played the Lunar Shuttle captain.
Okay, why do all of the moon dwellers have purple hair. Is there something about being on the moon gives you purple hair?
I don't know. Why are they all gorgeous? I don't know these things happen, especially in sixties science fiction.
Exposure to that moon radiation turns all original shades of hair purple.
Well, thanks for the recommendation. Yeah, I'll have to check this out at some point.
Okay. This next message is from Paul. It is in response to an older episode of ours. I guess maybe one that ran in the vault or something on the three pupiled eye. Paul writes, Hi, there, longtime listener, first time emailer. I've been catching up on the back catalog of episodes, and I was certain that you'd mentioned something in your episode about the three pupil die, but to
my shock, you didn't. When Lance Henrickson was cast as the android Bishop in the movie Aliens, he had a special set of contact lenses made to give him two pupils in each eye, but James Cameron said he looked just as ominous without the lenses, so they ended up not being used. Love the podcast. Paul, Oh wow, I was not aware of that, but that makes sense. The land hit. Lance Hendrickson has a heck of a stare.
Yeah, yeah, it's a great presence. So I can understand, you know, realizing, you know what, we're just gonna trust we just to go with the actor on this one. We don't actually need to mess with the eyes. So I can imagine. It was a pretty cool looking effect in its own way. But part of the appeal of Bishop is that you grow to see his humanity, so you know, yeah, any way you shake it, I feel like that was the right decision.
That's a good point. Yeah, so in Aliens, you come in biased against him because the android made by the same company in the previous Alien movie was Ian Holme, and he like goes nuts and tries to kill Ripley to prevent her from what to prevent her from destroying the alien or something, and so there's that whole thing. But yeah, so you're expecting Bishop to be worse than he is. He turns out to be quite helpful and sympathetic.
So maybe if he'd had two pupils it would have been harder to sell that turn.
Yeah, all right, you know, we recently had some so it's about crossbows. I'm gonna read one here. This one was sent to us on discord. This is from Steve. Steve writes, the Crossbow episodes were great fun. What about Star Wars If a blaster like a gun is the analogous weapon to the crossbow, and the lightsaber to the sword, is the blaster bad Obi Wan obviously thought so in his reference to a more civilized age of lightsaber combat. Yet Han Solo is all about using blasters, as are
the majority of the Rebel soldiers. These are the kinds of hair splitting questions to keep me up at night, smiley face. Also, why did the Jedi never practice force enhanced archery with lightsaber esque arrows? Steve?
Yeah, I mean, I think it does play into the convention in storytelling that there's something more honest or virtuous or noble about a sword or a handheld weapon, even though we do see, Yeah, of course the rebel the rebel soldiers have blasters and all that, and Han Solo uses a blaster, and though he's kind of a scoundrel, he's a good scoundrel. I guess. I guess the thing is,
there's like there's like two dimensions of distinction. One is good and evil, and then the other is more sort of like ground level fighter versus your night your elite. You know that even the Jedi are called Knights, so the elite good guys use the sabers, though I guess the elite bad guys do as well.
Yeah, I mean, I guess. Obviously. One of the things about Star Wars is it's a it's a cinematic mashup. You've got elements of Knights and swashbuckler movies. You have elements of war movies and elephant elements of the Western among other things, all smashed together. And so you have combating military ethics in all of this. But to lean into the lower you know, it's like there is the nobility of the Jedi and all. And it's not like
the Jedi don't do things at range. They use their voices at range, they can use Jedi mind tricks at range, they can use telekinesis at range. And if you are a follower of the Dark Side, other abilities open themselves up to you that they may be used at range, including the lightsaber. Of course, Darth Vader throws his lightsaber and has it come back to him. We see that in his final battle with Luke Oh.
Does he I forgot about that.
Okay, yeah I didn't. I didn't really pick up on it until my son and I started playing the Star Wars war game where you have a card for saber throw, and I was like, oh, yeah, saber throw and Darth Vader's on the picture. And then we rewatched the film, I'm like, oh, yeah, he totally throws his throws his saber at one point during that battle.
That's weird that I forgot that happened.
Yeah, it's a solid battle, solid battle.
Here's my nerd brain working. I was thinking, wait, why am I aware that you can throw a lightsaber? I think I'm thinking about that from the Super Nintendo Super Star Wars or Super Empire Strikes Back game where when you're playing as Luke and you gain force powers later in the game, one of them is that you can throw your lightsaber and make it fly around the screen.
Yeah, it's become a staple of the video games, for sure. You can still throw those sabers around in some of the recent installments.
All right, would you like to do some weird house cinema messages?
Sure? What do you got?
Let's see. Oh, here's one that we previously several episodes back featured the ps from this message without the main body. But this comes from Brian and it's in response to the episode we did on Faster Pussycat Kill Kill. Brian says, I was enjoying Faster Pussycat Kill Kill a few weeks ago when I saw it on the feed and I realized that I recognized Varla's voice. Varla is the main character in the film, sort of the main villain, played by the actress Tura Sitana, and she has, yeah, an
extra dreamly distinct voice and delivery style. She kind of like just venomously spits out every line she says in the movie, no matter how mundane A legend. Yeah, Well, Brian goes on to say so he recognized Varla's voice. He says it wasn't because I had seen the movie,
but because I grew up listening to White Zombie. Like most metal loving teenagers who came of age in the early nineties, I was a big fan and their major label debut Las Sex or Cisto Devil Music Volume one, Oh Oh, Rob Zombie and You and Your Title Selections is filled with exploitation, horror and camp sound bites. Classics like quote do you have to open graves to find girls to fall in love with are so permanently fixed in my brain they sometimes just fall out during conversation.
In the days before lyrics and audio were easy to search and discover, we spent many fun weekends trading rumors and stories about where these audio clips came from. And then I think, as an example, like quote, my friend told me there's a horror movie that his cousin saw that contained the clips in thunder Kiss, and I think that's one of the songs. Was like thunder Kiss sixty five or something.
Yeah, that's the.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This would lead us to search out these movies and sparked an interesting classic horror that many of us carry to this day. It's now common knowledge that Rob Zombie grew up a fan of classic horror and exploitation films, so there's not much mystery anymore. But it's still fun to be watching something like Faster Pussycat and be able to recite I never try anything, I just do it as it comes on the screen. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Well yeah, I appreciate
this note. Brian. Whatever your full thoughts about Rob Zombie's output as a filmmaker and musician. I think it's hard to deny that his movie audio clips selection game is powerful.
Yeah. Yeah, And I really should have mentioned it because is because I think, you know, I mean, I listened to White Zombie and rob Zombie back in the day as well, and there are a number of clips like this that ultimately were my first exposure to some of these movies. They just didn't know what the sound bites
were from. But I've always been a sucker for this, whether you're dealing with metal, you know, whether you're dealing with you know, a White Zombie or Electric Wizard, or you're dealing with various DJs, you know, Depth Charge, DJ Food, DJ Chiba, wax Factor, a lot of these guys, Pete Sasquatch, you know, they I always love someone who doesn't just you know, go in and get a few clips of Kiple of easy clips. Anybody can sample Blade Runner and
it's great fun. I like the DJs and the musicians who go deeper, you know, and they unearthed that little sample that for the longest, especially before you know, the resources were that robust online, you just had no idea where they got it. They got it from another dimension and within the texture of a song or a mix, it takes on new energy and meaning.
It is one of the ways that like, the abundance of information and media made available by the Internet has made some other some types of experience is less special.
I think we've talked on the show before about how, like, you know, the easy availability of any piece of music you could want to listen to now sometimes makes it feel less special when you discover a piece of music you like and also like, even though I do appreciate being able to look up where any clip of audio comes from, in other cases, like I miss that mystery of not being able to look that up and just having it, Yeah, just be something out of the ether.
I think there are still some mysteries out there with some samples, with maybe some of the less cataloged groups. Occasionally I'll run across a sample and something and I'm like, wow, I just I can't figure out what this is from Good job, you found something obscure. All right, here's another weird house cinema missive. This one comes to us from Richard. Richard says, Hi, Robert and Joe, I have a couple of suggestions for weird house cinema movies for your consideration.
The first is, and I hope I'm saying this correctly, the title is R R R. Where am I supposed to go? I don't know.
I think it's an acronym.
I think, okay, okay, because I've I have friends who mentioned this one to me, but only over text, and I don't think I've seen any media about it, so I'm not sure how I'm supposed to tackle it anyway. Rigid continues say larger than live action slash historical drama slash musical Hollywood film written and directed by S. S. Roja Mooley. I thought of it immediately when I was
listening to your episode on Piranha Mandir. I had the good fortune of seeing R not once but twice in the theater cranked up to full volume, and was absolutely captivated by it. It's like a remix of Lawrence of Arabia, Indiana, Jones, die Hard, and a capital F for family, fast and furious Bromance. It's one of the greatest movie going experiences of my life, and I highly recommend watching it, even if you don't watch it for the show.
Oh, I'd be all four doing doing a Hollywood film at some point, so yeah, that'd be great.
Yeah, everyone seemed to love this one. I think I got a number of awards. I have friends who watched it and really loved it. Uh you know, I've heard I've heard praise from it for it from folks that don't even watch a lot of films from India. So it just seems to have like wide appeal. And I want to say, there's somebody somebody of note. Uh uh
oh yeah, Ray Stevenson, isn't it. He plays like a villain or something oh okay in one of his final performances, So uh yeah, I'd be interested to check that one out at some point. The second, he continues, is pure weird house gold. The Happiness of the Kata Kurus from extremely prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi me E k a kind of remake of the South South Korean movie The Quiet Family. While he has a number of pictures that would fit comfortably on the weird house list, Happiness of the Kata
Kurus is still one of my favorites. Part comedy, part horror, part family drama, and with a healthy dose of musical numbers and clamation scenes added in, it is fun. Highly watchable and very weird. Thanks as always for the podcast. I've been listening to you all for several years and look forward to every iteration of the show throughout the week.
All the best, Richard, Well, Richard, thank you for the recommendations and the kind words. Yes, I have. Somehow I've never seen Happiness of the categories, but I've heard it. It's been recommended to me. I feel like all my life, since I was like a teenager, people have been saying, Joe, You've got to see this movie, and for some reason, I never have yet. But what I've always heard about it is that it's great and it is super bizarre.
Yeah, I think I almost saw it several times. It's one of those movies where it's long been on my radar because I went through a phase where I did watch several me e K films, though I tended at the time, I was more into like, all right, give me the give me the horror, give me the brutal world of cinema. So I watched Audition, which is terrific and very well crafted but also just very a very
rough watch in many respects. And I also watched It'sy the Killer that was another one that you know, everybody was into back in the day, and that one's hard to watch in many places. But on the other hand, I also remember watching his yokai film. It was The Great Yo Kai War, which is a kind of goofy family Yokai movie, and that was the one that opened up my mind to the fact that, oh, yeah, this is a this is a filmmaker that paints with more
than one color. You know, he has he has a vast palette that he can use, and just international fans don't necessarily realize everything that he offers.
Yeah, I'd be really interested in seeing more mek films that don't involve just like high doses of awfulness and torture. Yeah.
Yeah, So maybe the happiness of the Kata Korus is in our future, or we look at that Yokai film. I'd be open to either one sounds great. I'm gay, just probably not audition right, watch that one on the out time.
Oh lord, okay, let's see. Should we wrap it up there?
Yeah, we'll go ahead and put a cap on it here. But we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts about current future or past episodes of stuff. Blow your mind, weird House, cinema, you name it. You can reach out to us via email. We'll share that in a second. We also mentioned in this episode that somebody had reached out on Facebook. Well they did that over the discussion module. That's our group. You can find us there. You can also just follow us on Facebook
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Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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