Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And this is Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema we are going to be talking about the nineteen eighty one Italian slasher movie Absurd, directed by Joe Demato and starring George Eastman. Now, Rob, I understand you wanted to talk about how this movie typifies a movie subgenre, maybe not defined within the movie itself, but the sort of meta subgenre of the video nasty.
That's right. We've referred to video nasties before on the show, and those of you know what we're talking about, you know, probably not in your head. And if you don't know what a video nasty is, you might have just you know,
picked up on context and on. But basically, it's essentially you can slang for films, usually low budget horror and exploitation films that were highly controversial during the nineteen eighties as they were able to enter the UK distribution market through a loophole that allowed the distributors to avoid official classification, part of a video gold rush that came with VHS technology.
At the time. This is the description given by David Coreki's and David Slater in the twenty twenty three book Cannibal Error, Anti Film Propaganda and the Video Nasties Panic of the nineteen eighties.
So this would be sort of an informal list of films that what were not necessarily illegal, but were singled out for being obscene or terrible or just worthy of moral approbate, approbation in some way.
Well you kind of get both things. There's like it does become formalized, but then there's also kind of like an informal list as well. So basically the short version of how this went down as you had and again this is a you're involving like new technology, new distribution patterns, and also changes in you know, what the public wants,
and then public anxiety about obscenity. So basically you haven't had an advocacy group called the National Viewers and Listeners Association, and it made a big outcry about these these films that we're making it into the UK on VHS, and it led to just a whole saga of politics, moral panic, censorship discussion, and the end result was the imposition of state video censorship in the UK in nineteen eighty four and the creation of a Director of Public Prosecutions DPP
list of films that would come to be known as video nasties. Though I think this term also ends up becoming especially outside of the UK and in just sort of VHS horror exploitation film circles, it becomes something of a you know, a loose term that is you for various sort of grimy, low budget often euro films of the time period.
Oh okay, So thus my confusion. So some of the things referred to as video nasties were actually targeted by the law in the UK and other things just sort of informally get that title as a kind of descriptor of what these movies tend to be.
Like, Yeah, because you definitely had a list, you had like section one. Prosecuted films included actually a few different films we've discussed on Weird House, nineteen eighty's Cannibal Apocalypse, nineteen eighty one's The House by the Cemetery, and today's film Absurd, which is also from nineteen eighty one as His House by the Cemetery. Now, naturally there's some really grimy exploitation fodder in that list as well, But there's
also plenty of stuff that I don't know. It's all subjective, but it feels, at least to me, kind of tame by today's standards. But naturally, the line between art and obscenity is always going to be subjective to a certain extent, and there's gonna be a point of disagree in figuring out what is what. But apart from these official classifications and uproars in the UK, the term video nasty again kind of becomes kind of comes to be a badge of honor for many horror films from this time period,
especially in later decades. By the time many of us were looking these up in books like the Psychotronic Film Guide, or buying bootleg VHS tapes off of eBay back in the day, or learning about them online, you know, browsing Internet movie data base, looking at various blogs forums, or today venturing around on letterbox dot com. You know, it adds that extra bit of intrigue to a title. This is a video nasty, this is a curse tape. You know, watch at your own risk.
Now that might lead you to wonder, okay, if this is one of those films that was considered so bad as to be you know, targeted by the law in the UK. Is there like, what's it about? What goes on? Is you know, is it a Texas chainsaw massacre kind of thing? I think the best way to describe obs third is that it must have been pitched as a Halloween clone. Halloween came out in nineteen seventy eight, Is
that right? Yeah, just checked, it was seventy eight, So this is a few years after that, and there were many, many Halloween clones. Halloween was a big hit, and so a lot of movies tried to copy it. In fact, some of the big slasher franchises in the American market. I think you could argue began as Halloween clones. One might sing, one might point to like Friday the thirteenth, and so forth. You know, it even picks like a day of the Years as the title. But anyway, so
I think absurd. It was imagined as a kind of Halloween clone, but much more gory and disgusting. Halloween is actually fairly light on the blood and gore. You don't see a lot of explicit consequences of violence in it. It's more, you know, Halloween is much more focused on the building of tension through proximity and terror and perspective and all that kind of stuff. Absurd gets into a lot more just gross, explicit sort of meat exercises, but
it has very similar plot dynamics. So both movies are about a seemingly indestructible killer who escapes from a facility of some kind and strikes out with random murders in a nearby neighborhood. Well, actually no, in Absurd it's not a nearby neighborhood for some reason. He goes to a different country. But in both cases strikes out with random murders in a neighborhood with no discernible motive.
Yeah, just random killings.
Both movies follow babysitters as the sort of the victims and protagonists in a way. Both movies have a kid who refers to the killer as the Boogeyman. You remember that's in Halloween, and they really emphasize that in Absurd as well. And in both cases the killer is pursued by a sort of eccentric, obsessive foreign cleric, and in the case of Halloween that's Donald Pleasant, says Doctor Loomis in this movie, it is a Greek priest. So you can see a lot of similarities, but you can see
differences as well. And one that I think is interesting is exactly what makes Halloween so so effective as horror in a way is its restraint, the way in which it really like takes its time, the way in which you know, it plays with as I was saying, distance and perspective, you know, showing things in the background of shots instead of just going for immediate jump scares and so forth. Absurd is the exact opposite. It does not play with restraint. It plays to excess.
Though it does take its time in some of the sites. That's true, yeah, but not necessarily in a good way.
I mean, it'll like really take its time showing how long a murder takes to complete. Yeah, but no, it also does take its time. I mean, yeah, it does have the killer lurking in the background sometimes as well, so in some ways you've got that element going on. It's kind of a Halloween clone, but with Italian excess sensibilities. On the other hand, I would say this is an Italian horror movie of the early nineteen eighties. And while Absurd does earn a number of superlatives, I'm not trying
to put it down here. One thing I do think it kind of makes it stand out is it does not manage to be as visually exciting as a lot of the Italian horror movies of this period that we love. In fact, I would say it almost has a pointedly intentionally drab, lifeless and colorless visual style. The sets all seem to be various shades of white, brown, yellow, and tan. There's not much, really any use of colored lighting that I can recall. There aren't any beautiful vistas or stained
glass effects or anything like that. It is an almost intentionally quite drab looking film.
Yeah, I mean de Motto gets into he gets into some creative territory with some of the shots, and he makes I think he makes pretty good use of the location in some scenes. But yeah, this is not a movie you seek out for its rich colors or its amazing production design. There's not even any monster makeup, just no grimy gore. And I think most people who seek it out aren't going to seek it out for its reputation as a low budget video nasty and stick with
it for some of its well absurd choices. You know, because despite its reputation. It's not the gorious film from this time period, nor is it the most disturbing by any stretch. It's worth noting, especially with Dematto here, that there's no nudity in this film at all, virtually no sexual content of any kind. So it's amazingly tame on
that side of the exploitation scales, I would say. Yeah. Also, despite the American title, it's worth noting that it's I don't know, you could make a strong argument that this film is not really absurd. It's not a surrealistic film, it's not psychedel But again, I think three things help it to stand out from a lot of the other slot films of the time period. It's got a fun score, there are some weird choices that are made, I think some deliberately and some just via the speed of the production.
And then you've got the screen presence, near constant screen presence of George Eastman.
Which alone puts this film in a kind of rare category. I mean, everybody, even if you don't know anything about like these Italian exploitation movies and you don't know who George Eastman is, I think if you see a movie with George Eastman in it. You're gonna remember him. You're gonna be like, who was that guy?
Yeah? Yeah, A lot of times it's a small role. He's come up in films before. He pops up, for instance, in The Hands of Steel that we watched a while back, and here he gets a chance to shine.
Now, regarding the question you said, the movie is not even that absurd, I was wondering if maybe the absurd title refers not to the more common usage like you were saying there, comparing it to something that is psychedelic or surreal. Maybe we often use the word just to
mean like weird, illogical, or unreasonable. I was wondering if it is not that usage of absurd, but the philosophical usage a lah absurdism, the core tenets of which are that the universe is meaningless and our lives are meaningless, and that much of the struggle of human life and so many of our conflicts and contradictions arise because people are trying to find the meaning in meaningless things.
All right, all right, I hear what you're laying down.
Well, yeah, so I think the movie Absurd is quite The plot is quite compatible with the view that life is meaningless. You know, the attacks are completely random. And I wonder if George Eastman's problem as a character is that he is engaged in a futile search for the meaning of life, and that search involves power drills and bandsaws and so forth.
It is interesting that he does not have a signature weapon. He just makes use of what is immediately around him and doesn't carry anything with him.
It's usually powered mechanisms, isn't it Not in every case, but that's kind of strange. He likes like a he likes a weapon you can plug into the wall.
Yeah, and he'll drag you through the house to get to it. It's not just a matter of like what's immediately around me. It's like did I see an oven earlier? Yeah, there's got to be a kitchen around here somewhere. We'll spend five minutes searching for it.
So if we haven't warned you enough already, do be warned that this movie does have some really gross violence in it. So if you're going to watch it, be prepared.
Yeah, And I also, I don't want to oversell this movie like sometimes, you know, I'm big on really championing a film and saying like there's this is a hidden gym, or there's some there are some diamonds in this one. This is a film that a lot of people don't like. Even we're into into horror, you know, we'll give it maybe like mediocre reviews. So if you're on the fence about seeing absurd there's a very strong chance you're not
going to like it. So fair warning. This might be a case where you just want to hear us talk about it. But if if you're into this sort of thing, well, you know, dive in because there's there is some absurdity. There is some weirdness here that I thought was pretty fun.
Speaking of the absurdity and the weirdness, just a few things I want to call out at the beginnings, these these strange contradictions in the movie, where there are things where I don't even know how to characterize them really because they contain contradictions. One of them is the sets in this film which have this They are simultaneously opulent and squalid, do you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, yeah, Like the one of the key, the key set in the film, the key location is this obvious Italian villa, you know, and it's clearly has old bone spacious interiors, but the way that the space is decorated at times feels very sparse and slapped together. And it's also we'll get back to this more, but this is essentially presented to us as an American home where Americans live and are ready for some American football. And i've
this with suits of armor inside that. Yes, yes, so it's it's a weird missmash And I think this is ultimately one of its charms, you know, you know, at least watching it as an American, you know, it is seeing the sort of mismatch of things.
Another thing, what is going on with people's accents in this movie. The babysitter is a great example. She seems to go from I've heard I hear English accent at some point, like a very a very formal kind of received pronunciation accent. Sometimes I hear Irish, sometimes I hear Italian, sometimes I hear American. It is all over the place.
Well, you have to remember Absurd as a prestige picture with an international cast, so you know it was you know, it's not, but it was conceived and produced not so much for native Italian audiences, but to be shipped out to various international markets, each of their own particular and shifting censorship standards, And so we have a predominantly Italian cast, but with some like UK and I guess, and I guess largely UK talent thrown in there as well as
this American setting, though again everything was filmed in Italy. Okay.
I was just thinking before we get to the elevator pitch, I was thinking of like three different ways of categorizing mad slasher villains in movies like this. One is the question we already addressed of is there a motive or not? Sometimes the motive of the slasher is like revenge or something, and other times there is no motive. This is a case of no motive, firmly on the random violence into the scale.
Yeah. Yeah, this is on the Halloween end of the spectrum, as opposed to say the burning or Nightmare on Elm Street, where there is some symbolans of vengeance bound up in the motives of the killer.
Yeah, or the original Friday the thirteenth.
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that's right. I kind of forget because he kind of becomes just a mindless killing machine and the franchise later on, certainly by the time he takes Manhattan.
Yeah, exactly. Okay, that's criteria number one. Criterion number two is the form, the form and costuming of the slasher villain. Do they wear a mask or are they physically altered in some way this case, no, he's just Georgie Sman. No, no makeup, no mask, no nothing. He's just a guy.
Yeah.
I mean an interesting looking guy, but just a guy.
Yeah. For much of it, Like he's just wearing like jeans and a shirt. Like, he's just wearing like and I'd assume he's just normal clothes. Okay.
Third distinction I would make is is this mad slasher the beneficiary of any kind of supernatural intervention or magic? And in this case, I would say, once again, no, this is a super powered slasher. But it's not like in the later Halloween sequels where we discover that Michael Myers is some kind of like reincarnated Celtic deity or something. No, he's just a guy, except we get a science fiction explanation for why he is so strong and why bullets do not stop him. It's it's because he was the
result of some experiment in a lab or. I think they say there was a contamination. They don't get deep into the explanation. But he is a product of science, not magic.
Yeah. Yeah, The explanation is a little garble. There's some contradictions there we'll get into, but essentially it's like a weapons X program. He has a mutant healing factor. It's explicitly stated. He's kind of like the Italian or I guess the Greek saber tooth here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I feel like all three of these distinctions push it more into the philosophical absurdism side of the scale, right, that he is just a man like he's not physically represented in any unusual way, that his motives are non existent, it's just random, and that there is no magic or supernatural intervention of any kind. He's just a product of a science experiment gone wrong.
Well, building on that and in lieu of an actual elevator pitch, I'm going to read a quote from Albert Camu the myth of Sisyphus. Thus, I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. Bravo wow, I mean it is revolting. So, and I think we're gonna we're gonna skip trailer audio on this one. In part because the trailer is just music and screaming. I believe, oh yeah, I would be inclined to include it if we had a narrator saying absurd, but they don't.
I'm going to go on record here and say, even for horror movies, I do not like trailers that are just full of screaming. Not a fan. I like a narrator or at least some clips of dialogue and ominous music. This is the screaming. Save it for the climax of the film. I'm I'm not interested in hearing just three minutes of screaming to preview a movie.
Absolutely all right. So if at this point you're like, okay, and I do actually want to watch Absurd before finishing this episode, well, then more power to you. Now. The thing is Absurd has circulated under various titles and with various cuts for a long time. The region free severin Films BLU ray is hard to beat, though, featuring both the original Italian cut that comes in at eighty eight minutes and the uncensored US cut, which comes in at
ninety four minutes. The discs also features a handful of informative interviews which I'll refer back to, and it has the whole the entire score on CD as a bonus disc. Now, if you are not into the physical media, you don't have access to it, don't have time, and so forth. You can also stream the US cut and it has the box art for the Severeign release, so I guess it's connected to that. You can stream it on TOV currently, at least in the United States. I own the disc.
It's great. I think once I'm done with it, I'm going to be donating it to Videodrome here in Atlanta, so if you're local, you can rent the disc there. All right, let's get into the folks who made this film, starting at the top with the director, the producer, and the cinematographer. It's Joe Tomato, who lived nineteen thirty six through nineteen ninety nine, a truly legendary name in the
realm of Italian exploitation and trash cinema. We have mentioned him numerous times on the show, often in connection to other actors who are working in eurocinema or in Italian cinema, sometimes also for things that he did besides directing. For instance, he was at least one of the producers on troll Too.
Was he involved at all in Shocking Dark?
You know, I don't think he was, but we will have a Shocking Dark connection here in just a bit. Okay. So, Joe Tomato is one of the many monikers that he used for his directorial work over the years. It's just the one that seemed to stick the most. But his birth name was Artista day Masa Chesi. We're going to
keep referring to him as Joe Tomato though. So Joe Tomano did everything in film at one point or another, in part because, you know, based on an interview, the interviews that I've seen with him, in interviews with George Eastman, who worked with him multiple times, he's a guy who loves cinema and you know, love the craft of cinema. Anyway, I think he often said that he was not an artist and did not see himself as an artist, but he clearly, like you know it, was really into the
craft of making films and all. But also he was notoriously cheap and was generally operating on a shoe string budget. You know, make it fast, make it cheap. Eastman has pointed out in interviews that like if they could do it with one take. They would do it with one take, you know. And he wasn't the type of director to instruct the actors at all. So if it was a good actor, you know, you might get a good performance. If they were green, it was going to be as
green as it came out, you know. It just wasn't his thing, Eastman says, And to instruct and build upon the performance.
One take, that's what I love that. That's like the ed would rule, right, you know, why do it again when it's perfect?
Yeah? Yeah, And we've got to We've got to crank this out, you know. Yea. So yeah. These were the defining qualities of his work, you know, is that he really loved the craft. He wanted to do everything, and he wanted to do it cheap. But he was also said to be pretty easy going, humorous about his productions, gave collaborators room to do their thing, but would, as Eastman put it, far, rather do ten cheap films than
one film with a bigger budget. De Motto himself for Variety, Yeah yeah, I mean demto himself would say, like the pay is the same, Why would I do that one big film and put all that work into it. I'll just do ten cheap films and it'll be the same for me at the end of the day. Wow. Now he's been observed that this this also really held him back because he thinks that Dematto could have had more success if he'd specialized as a producer and as a
cinematographer and like let other people direct. But he kept on directing, and when the demand for Italian genre films went south, he worked on what was internationally marketable, and that's something to keep mine with a lot of these films like this, this film in particular, it was not really made for Italian audiences. I think it did, you know,
show in theaters very briefly. It was mostly to be shipped out to other markets in various cuts, And when the demand for those sorts of films went away, it meant, you know, he had to turn to other things that were internationally marketable, which meant mostly adult films. But during his prime he shot pretty much everything, like every type of B movie anyway, from you know, from gladiator flicks
to post apocalyptic gladiator flicks. And there's a lot of garbage in there, to be sure, But if the various video nasties and cult classics worth mentioning. Here you have the likes of seventy three's Death Smiles and a Murderer seventy nine Beyond the Darkness. Oh and also there's a tour the Fighting Eagle that one. I believe that that or one of the a tour films was featured on
the Mystery Science Theater three thousand, twenty twenty Texas. Gladiators and Endgame from eighty three also very Emmanuel films in the erotic genre. In nineteen eighty he collaborated with George Eastman on the film and Throwpophagus, the predecessor to this film, and it was enough of a hit internationally that they came back for a kind of spiritual sequel, spiritual successor, and that is this film absurd.
That is one I've heard warnings about, even from people who are like hardened low budget gory horror movie fans. They're like, that one is disgusting.
Yeah, it's it's gross, it's you know, it's it's shot in grease. That it's very really grimy. So it does have Eastman as the villain, as the cannibalistic monster, though in that film he has like a bald cap and some monster makeup on, and that film famously ends with the monster being like partially disemboweled, and then Eastman's character pulls out his own guts and takes a big bite out of them and dies. So that's that's the kind
of film it is. And it had various titles as where like like the Grim Reaper.
And so forth, and they're like, for absurd, what if you take the ending of that movie and start there exactly?
Yeah, that's essentially what they do. We have a fun, fun callback to that disemboweling sequence, all right. Yeah, getting to the star, we lveray talked about him a little bit, but Georgie'sman born nineteen forty two still with us as of this recording. Not only does he play our central monster who this is one of those films where this character has both a first and last name in the credits, which is ridiculous. Mikos Stinopolis. Never is I think either name referred to?
No, they do?
They do? Do they? When they refer to Mikos Stanopolis, where the.
Detective is, oh, I can't wait to talk about him. But the detective is interviewing the Greek priest who you don't know was a priest at this point, and they're talking about the killer. They say his name is whatever, Mikos or Nicos, Stenopolis, whichever it is, and so they say his last name. But it's not the only time we have a slasher movie villain with the first and last name. I admit it also did sound funny here, But then I thought, wait a minute, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees,
Freddy Krueger, we know their first and last names. Why does it feel weird here? I'm not sure, but it did feel really funny when we got his whole name. It just seems like a character who should not have a name or something, or you wouldn't know what his name was. They would just call him the being or something. And yeah, it also I think is especially funny because it's George Eastman, and something about the way George Eastman looks in this movie is corrupted by knowing that he
has a full name. Does that make any sense?
Yeah? Yeah, so obviously the name George Eastman is also a moniker. This is the stage name, one of many stage names about ultimately the one that's stuck for Luigi Montefiori, and he is but He's always going to be George Eastman. This is the name that's going to be written in b movie lore forever. And you just have to see him to know what we're talking about. He pops up in a lot of things, Spaghetti western, certainly at first,
horror films, post apocalyptic pictures. At least in his prime he was he was at least six ' six, but I've also seen him promoted as six ' nine. It's sometimes hard to tell and show business how tall someone actually is, but very tall. Man looks very tall on the screen, lean but muscular, you know, handsome guy. But also there's like a fairal you know, like in quality. You know, there's a lean and hungry look to him that he's that allows him to like naturally lean into villain and heavy rolls.
He does not look trustworthy. He has a face that looks like a like a predatory mammal kind of wolfin.
Yeah, yeah, so you know that's what you get Oodlezov in this film. But he was in a lot of stuff. We already mentioned eighty six's Hand of Steel, Hands of Steel. He was also in let's see nineteen ninety The Bronx Warriors. Then there's twenty nineteen, after the fall of New York
Blast Fighter Rabid Dogs. He had attended film school and his acting credits go back at least in nineteen sixty six, but he also wrote screenplays, and if I remember correctly from past interviews I've watched, he was sometimes asked to work over bad scripts and make them like at least less bad. And De Motto and Eastman first worked together
on Cormac of the Mounties from nineteen seventy five. This is a film where the lead actor apparently rejected the existing screenplay, but it was but after they had already set the shooting schedule for the picture based on the old script, and so Eastman had to be brought in to write a brand new script to please the lead but also appease the shooting schedule that was already agreed upon, and it ended up at least working to some degree.
So this led to an extended writer director partnership on various exploitation films, some of them really grimy in various countries, including the aforementioned Greek cannibal film, in which Eastman starred and also was the writer. And yeah, that was enough of a success. They came back and made this film. Eastman went on to direct the nineteen ninety film Metamorphosis, but quit acting around the same time to focus on his screenwriting, and apparently enjoyed a fair amount of success
writing for higher budget Italian television projects. He also had a couple of There are also a couple of non exploitation acting credits worth mentioning in his filmography. He played the minotaur in nineteen sixty nine's Fellini Satirricon, and he plays the giant Goliath in the nineteen eighty five Biblical epic King David, starring Richard gear.
Hmm, I wonder if they reused because David's got a Chopcali It's head off. I wonder if they reused the head prop from absurd in.
That I don't know. I was wondering whatever happened to the head prop from here, Like, I hope somebody has it. It could go for a pretty penny on the open, you know, exploitation fan cinema market.
So we already mentioned earlier that this is a slasher movie villain who does not wear a mask or any special makeup. He's just a guy. And I think it was before we started recording that we were talking about actors who can actors who can pull this off where just their their unmodified look is enough to be a movie monster. You know, you got Tour Johnson, And of course sometimes they would give him like contacts in his eyes or something, but you know, mostly unmodified look can
be a monster. You got Tour, you got George Eastman. I know there are other people like this, but I, you know, I sometimes I kind of wonder, like, what did that feel like for these actors like tor and that, Like I can be a movie monster without changing the way I look.
It's interesting, you know. One, this is a a very strange comparison to make because we're talking about just an entirely different stratosphere of acting ability. But I also can't help but think of Anthony Hopkins in the Silence of the Lambs. You know, they definitely, you know, they definitely use makeup on him, but it's not monster makeup, and a whole lot of it. Of course, hinges on Hopkins'
fabulous performance in that film. Yeah, he is a tremendous actor, but he is just he is a monster, and you buy it completely in that film with minimal I would say as far as monster makeup goes minimal makeup effects to make it come of the life.
I also realized there's a fairly i think famous image of George Eastman doing this absolutely satanic grin as he like looks down at something, and that comes from this movie, in the scene where he is putting a bandsaw to illicit use.
Yeah, he doesn't maintain this energy throughout the entire performance, but in key moments it really pops. Yeah. All right, let's get into the church and state elements of the picture, because we got it. We already mentioned the claret who is chasing after our killer, and then of course we
also have to have some local law enforcement. The priest who's discredited as father is played by Edmund Perdome, who of nineteen twenty six through two thousand and nine English born Italian actor with extensive stage credits on Broadway and in the Royal Shakespeare Theater. Apparently, he had a leading role in the nineteen fifty four twentieth century Fox epic The Egyptian and was also in fifty three's Julius Caesar. He worked steadily in various Italian and euro genre pictures,
including Pieces twenty nineteen. After the Fall of New York, a tour night Child from seventy five, and in nineteen eighty four he directed and starred in the British horror film Don't Open Till Christmas.
I think what they were going for with this guy in Absurd is Greek Gregory Peck. Yeah, so he's playing a Greek priest character. And certainly I think there are elements of Doctor Loomis from Halloween in the here too, but I think they're also trying to get a bit of the the Gregory Peck vibe from the Omen and it helps that Edmund Purdham looks a decent amount like Gregory Peck.
Yeah, yeah, he does. And this is I think probably the best actor in the picture. I don't know how much evidence of that we see. I don't see if this is not a picture that really asked much of the actors present, But you know, he does bring a silent dignity to his scenes as much as is as
possible in a Joe Tomato picture. And in interviews, Eastman spoke highly of him, saying that you know, they were surprised they were able to get him for the picture, for a picture like this, and they pointed out that he's one of those actors that took his craft so so seriously and was so professional that you know, he was just super professional on set, even in a low budget genre piece like this. Like we've heard similar things about like say Peter Cushing for example.
Yeah, yeah, almost nobody in this movie has really given much of a chance to actually act. He may get the most opportunity of anyone. There are other actors who get the idea that if they had a role to do something with, they might be quite good. I kind of felt that about Hanya Kochansky, but she who plays the mom in the family. But again, you know, this is not a movie that's written for dramatic performances, right.
Right, Oh yeah, the law end of the spectrum here. Charles Burromo plays Sergeant Ben Engelman. He lived nineteen thirty three through two thousand and seven. Scottish actor who worked extensively, if not exclusively, in Italian cinema and in Italy based productions. He also did English voice dubbing. He does appear in Lady Hawk as insane prisoner.
I thought this guy was and this sort of is a class of actor, if you know what I mean. Rob the kind of actor who reminds you of about fifteen other different actors, you know, who keeps giving you notes of like, oh here, he's kind of reminding me of so and so. I would say the two most prominent likenesses for me were Robin Williams and Darren McGavin. But like a haggard Robin Williams.
Yeah, I think that works. Yeah, Yeah, he is very haggard. He's one of the stereotypical horror film police chief type character who is just really tired, but also only devoted to clearing cases. That's all he cares about.
Yeah, that's right, though I think he's also prone to taking it too personal.
If you know what you mean. Yeah. Now you mentioned Hanya Kochanski playing the mom. She plays Carol Bennett. So the Bennetts are like the key threatened family in the picture. Yeah. So she plays Carol Bennett, the mom and her two of her real life children play the daughter Katya and the son Willie. So it's really interesting when I was
looking into this. So she is a former like Croatian singer, model and actress, just a handful of credits, but she was married at one point to American actor who worked extensively in europroductions. William Berger. We talked about him in our discussion of the nineteen eighty three Hercules film. He plays King Minos in that. And so the two kids in this, one of them is is Burger's biological son with Kochanski, and the other child, the older child, he
was her stepfather. So yeah, the children Katya Berger and Kazimir Berger. Katya born nineteen sixty six, Kazimir born nineteen seventy four. And as I was looking, I saw that, okay, she's apparently a singer. Maybe I can find some information about her singing career. So I was doing some searches on her name and I ended up running across something
on the UK's National Portrait Gallery. And it turns out there are a series of nude portraits that photographs that were taken by Russian born fine art photographer Idakar, who have nineteen oh eight through nineteen seventy four. And in these photos, which you know, very tasteful, you know, art photography, here we have Hanya and she is pregnant with her son, Kasimir, the boy in this film at the time, and in one of the pictures Katya is also present.
I would not have expected absurd to have, you know, like one degree connections to fine art photography.
Yeah. And then on Getty Images, I found some images from the opening of a presentation of these images, and here we are. There's Hanya and her son Kazimir from twenty eleven. So here's the little boy from this picture as a grown man.
Well, this is so sweet. Mother and son here pictured in twenty eleven. They both look very proud stand by the photos. I guess this is it some kind of gallery showing or something. Yeah, yeah, so that's great. But I have to say this is the case always pretty much in Italian movies of this period, if they have a child character, the dubbing is so creepy. And the same thing here, the dubbing of this kid's voice, the son Willie, the character in the movie, it's so unwholesome.
I don't know how to explain. I don't know in this case if it was dubbed by an adult. It may have actually been dubbed by a child voice actor. I don't know if it was Casimir himself. But why is it that the dubbed voices of children in these movies just always sounds so wrong?
Yeah, I mean I think they are often done by like adult women, as is the case of the House by the Cemetery, so similar vibe here. Also generally, you know, with child actors in general, I mean there's sometimes a certain there's they are children. Yeah, sometimes there's just kind of a wild element too. So you know, you have a kid in this picture, you're maybe getting one or two takes and then you're having somebody dub the voice.
So the boy does feel a little bit almost fair all at times in this picture.
Yeah, I want to watch the game. Oh we haven't even talked about the game yet.
They can't wait to get to the case about the game. The dad, Ian Bennett is played by not William Berger, but an actor by the name of William of Ian Dandy. And yeah, he just had some minor parts in a few different Italian productions and did some English language translation on some pictures.
So the actor is named Ian, the character is named Ian, but in this movie he is referred to by at least one other character as Ion.
All right, three victims to profile here really quickly. I'll try and streamline these a bit. We have Annie Bella playing Emily, the nurse she lived nineteen fifty six through twenty twenty four French actress with a at the time distinctive shortcut blonde hair style that work and a lot of Italian erotic and exploitation films before I believe if I'm reading correctly, earned a degree and ended up going
into social work. Her films include nineteen eighty's House on the Edge of the Park in nineteen seventy six Is Black Velvet. Then we also have Peggy the Babysitter, played by Cindy Leadbetter, American model and actress whose credits include seventy eight, Star Crash, nineteen eighty four's Rats, Night of Terror, and The Adventures of Hercules.
Wait, was was George Eastman in Star Crash? If not? Why not? They could have used him?
I know, yeah, if he's not in there, a missed opportunity. And then finally, I'm not going to go into the depth lines. We'll come back to this guy when we look at one of his pictures. But Mikaelay Suave born nineteen fifty seven plays a biker in this, a biker who is brutally murdered by George Eaestman. This is the man who would go on to direct such films as nineteen eighty nine's The Church and nineteen ninety four Cemetery Man.
At this time, he was just an up and coming a young man who just wanted to be involved in films. And if you were, if you had this kind of enthusiasm and you didn't mind not being paid, Joe Tomato was here for you. And so Joe Tomato is one of several different directors that he worked with early on, including others included like Dario Argento and the Burgo Bava, And of course he'd also gone to work some with Terry Gilliam. So just kind of a fun little ultimately
a cameo. We get to see Suave and his motorbike in this picture.
He's one of a gang of motorcycling youths that feel almost quite lightly directed.
Yes, all right, and then finally the music here is. It's another score by Carlo Maria Cordillo born nineteen fifty two. We talked about him recently because he did the score for Shocking Dark.
Ah. Okay, there you go.
Yeah, So I'm not going to go into the full profile on him, but I will say that the I think the score for Absurd is a lot of fun, you got some synth, you got some prog rock elements. You can find the track Absurd on streaming currently. This one starts off with kind of like a wonderful, atmospheric kind of vibe and you know it very ambient, but then you know, get some organs thrown in there before transitioning into this heavy, overly dramatic prog rock build towards obvious on screen violence.
The use of music in the movie is occasionally funny because of the way it pairs this soft, melancholy melody with George Eastman just wandering around at night looking for victims. Yeah, Like it makes it almost kind of like, oh the sadness, he's so lonely.
The sever in Blu Ray, as I mentioned, includes the whole score as a CD bonus disc, and then the excellent Death Waltz Record Company put the score out on a beautiful double vinyl back in twenty fifteen, with this really grotesque and beautiful bit of cover art by Wes ben Scotter, combining two of the grisliest moments in the film. Oh You're right.
So here we have George Eastman with his guts hanging out and he his intestines are spelling the word absurd.
Beautiful. Wait beautiful?
Did we look at the I think Severn Films also puts out a sticker of George Eastman with his guts hanging out, but in the sticker they're spelling chow.
Also brilliant. Also brilliant.
All right, you ready to talk about the plot, let's do it. So after the credits we get a montage of different opening images. First of all, we see some action inside a house. There is a young woman tracing out circles on drafting paper with a compass tool. So she you know, she's got one of those, it's like the spike and the pencil attaches, so she's she's making
perfect circles on paper. But she's actually lying in a hospital bed, and so she what she's drawing on is like this pad that sort of set up over her hospital bed. And she's in a room in a large house, restrained to the cot with straps and some kind of brace around her neck, jaw and chin. I guess we could go ahead and mention the house and the other people present.
So this is sort of.
The house the villa that we were alluding to earlier. That is big full of open spaces. I think is supposed to be an American home, but it's this strange, huge Italian mansion with suits of armor and roaring fireplaces and stuff, but also just weird, as I said, kind of squalid touches.
Like the.
Dad's liquor collection we see later is like up on a mantle over a fireplace, and it just looks like a dorm room stash. I don't know.
Yeah, I was like, I haven't seen this before. Am I supposed to be doing it like this? Should I have a mantle for my liquor bottles?
So anyway, the girl in the hospital is named Katya. She is in traction to treat a spinal disorder. Her mother is Carol, her little brother is Willie, and their babysitter is Peggy. Now, meanwhile, somewhere else outdoors, someone is running in the woods. Why that's George Eastman running through
the woods. He's looking massive, shaggy, covered in sweat. He's got the beard, long hair and with the beard in the mop like haircut, he looks kind of like a giant seventies era beetle or maybe one of the begs.
Do you see that? Yeah, he looks like like the scariest dude in the disco.
Yeah, yeah, killer Beji, And he is being chased through the forest by an older man in a black trench coat. They're going to play up a mid story reveal that the guy chasing George Eastman is actually done Dundune a priest. They show that by ripping open his coat and revealing the clerical collar. But I got that he was a priest from the very first time we saw him. I don't know, He's like he's dressed in all black and his collar is hidden. There's like, you know, coming up
his neck. This was never in doubt for me. Did you feel the same?
Yeah? And plus he also he doesn't pull out a gun or anything, right, So yeah, he doesn't seem like he's law enforcement. Why are you chasing an adman?
Yeah? So, but also the priest, he sort of he clutches at his chest as he runs, so it's like he's not cut out. He's not cut out for this. Now, back at the house, the mom comes into Kachia's room and sees her drawing circles upon circles with her compass and encourages her to do something else. It's like, oh, Katya, you're you're making drawing hundreds of circles? Again, wouldn't you rather watch television or something? And I was wondering, does this ever pay off in any way or do we
get any kind of explanation about it? I know there is a payoff with the compass tool, like a something is done with that later, But I mean the drawing circles part. Is there a reason she's drawing hundreds of circles on top of each other? Or do the circle patterns ever connect to anything?
No? I don't think. I don't think the circles actually do. It made me think about that moment in The Simpsons about kids being obsessed with spirographs or how they should be obsessed with spier graphs and they're not anymore. Oh yeah, but yeah, this doesn't quite come I guess it kind of. I guess the idea is maybe it connects to other moments and other films where children drawing things does connect into the plot. But I kind of liked it as texture even if it doesn't go anywhere.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Well it just made me think, wait a minute, is Katya is she into geometry or is she obsessed with I don't know. I don't know why she's doing this. She likes circus, I guess so, well, who doesn't.
One of the best.
I agree. Back outside, the chase is still happening, but eventually the crypto priest chases George Eastman onto the wrought iron gate surrounding a big mansion, and this is the house with the people we just saw inside it. George Eastman seems to be frantic escape. I don't exactly know why he's running from the priest because, as we come to see, he's basically invulnerable, so he should I don't know. It seems like he would be doing the chasing, not
the running away. But he runs away. He climbs the gate, but he falls and ends up impaling his midsection on the cold iron spikes of this gate. After this, George Eastman what we see inside the house and there's a knock on the door and the little boy goes. He's like hanging out with his babysitter. I think they're eating breakfast. And it's sort of confusing because in this interior shot we see out the window and it's pitch black outside, totally dark, but it was just daylight when we were
so it doesn't match. But anyway, the little boy goes to answer the door, opens it up, and oh no, here's George Eastman standing here with his intestines hanging out of his stomach.
Yeah, with eyes wide, Yeah, sweaty. It's wonderful. This is our shocking callback to the disembowment scene at the end of the previous film. That is again just this is just a spiritual successor. I don't think we're to connect these characters in any other real sense.
Now, after this, we go to a surgery scene, a long surgery scene, one of multiple and George Eastman is on a hospital. He's on a hospital bed being operated on. His intestines are still hanging out. And this scene is an interesting mix of what feels realistic and what does not. So it's a full surgical setup that has a lot
of authentic looking props and apparatus. But then whenever they show a close up of the surgical action, which they're going to show quite a few, the doctors and nurses just appear to be like poking and tossing the guts around like they're moving food in a frying pan.
Yeah, they're essentially just pushing around pig flesh and calentestines here on Georgie Sman's stomach, I believe. So wow. Yeah, it is a mix of of something that looks real and is reel and in some respects, but yeah, it's also like fake.
Oh and Eastman wakes up during the procedure and they get him to go back to sleep. I think they, you know, give him give him higher dose.
Uh.
Meanwhile, elsewhere and now it's nighttime. So this is one of those movies just cuts back and forth between day and night all the time. Uh, it's nighttime and we see bikers harassing an old man named Shaughnessy. There's this old man like wandering in the middle of the street, swigging from a giant green bottle. These these young bikers circle around him and yell at him and then motor away, and then the cops come. Have a turn. A police car pulls up and we first meet our police detective
Sergeant Engelman. Engleman, leaning out of a car window, says, if I catch you drunk just once more, I'm gonna have to lock you up. And Shaughnessy, in a quite unconvincing way, says, I'm not drunk, and then takes a big swig of his green bottle. But before this situation can resolve, Ingleman gets a call on the radio that there is a badly wounded man at the hospital, so he has to go check that out. This leads back to more surgery. I hope you like this, there's plenty
of it. And then after the surgery is done, one of the nurses who is assisting with the procedure talks to the doctor. This is Emily, who we will meet again later in the movie because she moonlights as a home care nurse for the main family, taking care of Kacia and helping with her attraction. Emily and the doctor talk about this dude they were operating on. It's one of those I've never seen anything like it conversations. Apparently the issue is that quote his blood coagulated while I
was in the middle of operating on him. So yeah, I don't know. His blood's clotten up really fast.
Yeah, there's a lot of mumbo jumbo as they're describing what's up with his mutant healing factor. But it's either this scene or a subsequent scene where the doctor gives us the official medical diagnosis of absurd.
That's right, now next, we have a scene where Sergeant Engleman is interviewing He's back at the house and he's interviewing Carol the mom about the guts incident at her home earlier. He's smoking a cigarette in her living room with Willie on the couch next to him and gruffly explaining his guts were all destroyed. They don't think he'll pull through with the kids right there, and the mom says she thinks that he was a thief intent on
robbing the house. Engleman doesn't seem sold on that, but she also explains their plans.
For the night.
This is, oh boy, this is exciting. She and her husband are going to go to a neighbor's house to watch the game, the first of many references, and we get evil glares from Willie during this conversation. But they're going to Yeah, they're going to go over to the forest's house to watch the game. And they don't say here that they're going to eat spaghetti and watch the game, but that is the plan.
Oh yes, Oh my god. This is one of my favorite elements of the film. And we get this scene later on of Americans in this American home, which is actually an Italian villa, watching American football, actual American football on the telly and chowing down on spaghetti. And it's either one of these things that is like a fun little bit of humor that he's been in the motto slid into the picture, or it's a complete accident it
just happenstance. In either case, it's amazing. I am not really a football watcher a football fan, but if there was the prospect of absurd style spaghetti and football parties, I would be interested. Oh.
Absolutely, this is an amazing party. It takes place in this another weird interior. There's a couch that Ian ends up sitting on later when he's brooding about the fact that he ran over George Eastman with his car and didn't tell anybody.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's sitting there brooding on this couch. That is the pattern on the couch. It's more ornate than any picture frame in the louver. And they're just all wolfing down spaghetti with these plates. They're standing around holding plates of spaghetti in their hands, not sitting at a table watching football and shoveling the spaghetti. It's so good. Anyway, that's later.
The next thing that happens in the movie is that the police find the priest, right, so you got Engleman finds the priest who was chasing Eastman at the beginning. He's wandering along a dark road in the night, and Engleman pulls up and questions him. The priest, who we're not supposed to know as a priest yet, claims his car broke down, and Engleman says, it's a good thing you ran into me. Everyone else is watching the game tonight, oh, and he says it's Rams versus Steelers. Is that a
good game? I don't know. Is that an especially compelling game?
I don't know in the early eighties, I don't know. Football fans let us know.
So next, Engleman goes to the hospital and he finds Greek Drakmas in George Eastman's pants. They just bring him Eastman's pants and he's going through the pockets and he's like Drakmas and he connects that to the dude he just ran into who was Greek as well. It's all coming together now, and don't know what it means, but
he thinks this is significant. So Engelman is talking to a nurse and he asks to see Eastman he can't, not until he's recovered, and then he asks the nurse for a description, to which she replies, he's huge, not my type at all. What that's some writing. And then also there's an incredibly awkward flirting scene between the cop and the nurse some inappropriate comments. He hands back George Eastman's pants and then leaves.
Yeah, yeah, I love the handling of the pants. Here, these gross pants that were worn by this psychopath here that maybe they've been longered, hopefully they've been lunder.
So the nurse goes back to the operating room where Eastman is still on the table, and like another nurse comes in to check on Eastman and he says, they indicate his blood is reproducing itself at triple the normal rate. Wow, that's that's a lot of blood.
I don't know.
Exactly, And then you know it's safe somehow. Now the Greek guy, the other Greek guy is here at the hospital, and he makes his way to the room that the cop wasn't allowed to go to, and he's looking in through a window in the door at Eastman and Eastman wakes up, sees the dude and starts raging and has to be restrained by hospital staff until they can get
him sedated, and this leads to two simultaneous scenes. One of them is the scene where Sergeant Engleman gets the Greek priest into a room and he interviews him about what's going on. He's like, so you decided to come to the hospital to get your car fixed?
Is that it?
What are you up to, mister? Are you responsible for the wounds? He's got some great delivery in here, and so the beginning of the explanation is coming out here. But meanwhile there is nurse murder going on.
Yeah, this is a grizzly sequence, quite disturbing, with the shirtless Eastman emerging from the table here with the white sheet following off of him, grabs a surgical drill and uses it to slowly drill through the nurse's head, killing her, skewering her brain with a drill coming out on the other side of the head. Right.
So the cops hear the commotion, they come running, but by the time they get there, the east Man is already gone, and instead there's just like a nurse hanging out dead with a drill through her head. So here we get the first of many scenes of George Eastman just wandering through this village in the dark, and he's back in his original clothes somehow, so he got his
jeans and Charity's not in his hospital scrubs anymore. He walks the streets and we get this melancholy music, and there's more interrogation between the police and the Greek priest. So Engelman tries to intimidate him by he does this whole routine with I'm just a dumb small town cop. You better make me understand, and the priest explains. First of all, he says there is a reality we do not see that. This does not really satisfy the cop, and so eventually they call in the doctor who operated
on George Eastman to help explain. So we get a scene of the doctor putting up putting up X rays of George Eastman's brain and saying it's extraordinary. I've never seen such an extensive cerebral mass.
And yeah.
So we learn his name is Nico Stenopolis or Miko Stonopolis, whichever it is, and he is functionally immortal. His body can regenerate dead cells, and his blood coagulates quickly to heal any wounds. We also this is the scene where the cop rips open the priest's coat to reveal his priestly collar. But the priest says, I serve God with
biochemistry more than with rights and sermons. And apparently George Eastman escaped from his laboratory quote after the contamination, so they organized a great hunt, and that's how we got to where we are now. But the one piece of evidence, the one piece of useful information that the priest has is it is his brain that is his weak point.
Yeah, this of course makes very little sense because like we're looking at scans at the brain and was like, oh, look at that cerebral mass, Like his brain is doing stuff, his brain's healing or he's healed wrong. But the brain is also the weak point. He destroyed the brain, you destroy the creature, which of course is true of everything.
All right, well, this reduces very much to ramiro zombie logic.
Yeah no.
And also the priest says he is a creature of evil. The spark of God was smothered the moment the devil took possession of him. I think this is just metaphorical though, because there's no indication of devil magic in the movie. It's more like saying when I did these experiments on him and he was contaminated, that also the devil took possession of him.
Yeah. Yeah, also probably you know, a less effective shadow of some of the dialogue that we get in in Halloween from.
Loomis Yes, exactly. The evil has escaped, so we get more of the Eastman walk about the slow music, and eventually this leads up to him wandering into I believe, an abattoir where there is a guy here who's some kind of night janitor at the slaughterhouse, cleaning the floors, and Eastman first tries to attack him with a butcher knife, but then this slaughterhouse janitor runs and retrieves a gun from his apron at work and tries to shoot Eastman but that doesn't work, and then there's a long set
up to Eastman like putting this guy on a big butcher block, and then he's like, yep, gonna get you with the band saw right through the top of the head, and he does.
Yeah, eventually does. This is a scene that manages to be boring and gross at the same time, but we do get that iconic smile.
Oh I just made a connection. It's the Aphex Twin album cover. It's the George Eastman smile is quite similar.
Oh yeah, he loves his work. Then the next thing we get, of course, is that the biker murder that I think we alluded to earlier. And then so this is when one one of the biker gang members gets killed by Eastman. And then pretty much right away we get the hit and run out of nowhere where the dad accidentally clips Eastman with his car and just keep throwing.
So eventually the dad is going to come back to the house that Ian or Eon will come back, and he's preoccupied by the fact that he did a hit and run on east Man, and that leads to the scene where he goes to his liquor collection on the mantle.
But eventually the mom and the dad are going to go out to the friend's house to watch the game and have spaghetti, and so that leaves the kids home alone with first the babysitter and later the nurse, who will huge surprise, become the next victims of east Man.
Yeah, because Georgie Spen is for some reason drawn back to this house. There's no lot reason for him to come back here, but he's back here to get inside and do murders, and I mean then and again. That's pretty much what the rest of the film consists of. Let's see some one fun little There's a scene where the boy is watching television. There's some really boring looking like living room dialogue scene that he really wants to watch,
and the babysitter likes is done. You're done, and he gets a little upset.
I thought the boy wanted to watch the game.
Oh, really wants to watch the game. Is at some point watching some drama on TV and it's actually tame scenes from a really grimy nineteen eighty Dematto film, which is not a family movie. So I guess this is another sort of in joke from Dematto.
So it's not an explicit scene that we're watching, but the joke is that this is from a Demato porn film.
Yes, let's see from there. Yeah, we get so basically, we're gonna get a babysitter murder, and we're then we're gonna get the nurse murder. The babysitter murder is one of these what's that sound outside? Oh, the dog got outside. Peggy, the babysitter goes outside and gets a pickax to the head.
Now, this is one of those movies that would absolutely grotesquely violate the Gene Siskel test for movies, which is he could not stand movies that ever depicted children being in danger. For the second half of this whole movie, just children are constantly in danger. Fortunately, neither of the kids in the movie are ever harmed. They both make it to the end, but it's just George Eastman running around the house ominously threatening both of them and killing babysitters and nurses until the end.
Well, yeah, I mean de Cisco's the whole thing was like, it's a cheap trick. Yeah, and yes, of course, yeah, de Motto is going to use cheap tricks. He's cheap. Yeah, so yeah, it's it's it would be a solid criticism of this film.
But the kids get away. Who does not escape is Emily, the nurse we met earlier. There's a weird scene of she's like wandering in the woods on the what she has an encounter with somebody in the woods on the way. Oh, it's with Shaughnessy, the drunk guy.
Ye. Yes, he's like you drop this back there.
But anyway, so she wait do I actually I don't remember now does anything happen to Shaughnessy. Does he get killed by Eastman?
If he does, I don't remember it.
I don't remember it either. If he doesn't, that would be an unusual choice for a film of this kind. I mean, the old drunk man wandering around singing in the dark. Is the is your classic you know murder victim in these slasher movies.
Yeah, it seems like the sort of thing that might have been in the script, but they didn't have time to film it, or gotten left on the cunning room floor for some reason because you needed more surgery scenes. I don't know.
So anyway, there is a there's a whole setup to another big murder scene where Eastman kills Emily, the nurse. This scene, this scene is so gross and dumb.
Yeah, it takes forever, and it had it's it generally walks that line between just padded tedium and legitimate shock, like it's it's disturbing, but also it's like, man, we're still doing this. Let's let's get it over with here. Yeah.
This, So the short version is that Eastman decides to cook her in the oven while she's still alive, but she somehow survives this process. And then comes back and saves the kid from from Eastman. She like she's all burned up as she runs out and saves the kid, and then Eastman, I guess, kills her a second time.
Yeah, because you can't just stab him in the neck and expect to seal the deal. You've got to destroy the brain.
But the final showdown is between Katcha who has been in traction in this hospital bed and an Eastman who finally you know, he comes in there. He's still raging, but we get a great payoff with the compass tool, right because she jams it into George Eastman's eyes, and then we get the blinded cyclops sequence.
That's right, yeah, yeah, and this, you know, I have to say, I feel like this big sequence here is actually quite tense because you end up with the scenario where the playing field has been largely leveled, though George
Eastman's killer is still very much an overwhelming threat. So he's were like in the living room, this big, expansive Italian villa living room with a suit of armor and all the furniture, and he is blinded, you know, bloody eye sockets, and he's listening for her and grasping around at the slightest sound, and she is on her feet now, but is you know, not one hundred percent like she's been in traction this whole time. And she is trying to stay out of his grasp but get away from him.
And he's hurting her by sound. Yeah, he's hunting her by sound in some very tense moments.
And she she does clever things like turning on music really loud.
But also inevitably trips, inevitably makes an accidental sound and he gets closer.
Okay, but then the payoff, if you want to know the very ending, uh you know, spoiler alert, is they somehow they like fall into this suit of armor that has a battle axe and caughtya she gets the battle out.
Oh wait wait, but first the father shows up.
Oh that's right, yes, well the parents arrive.
Yeah yeah, well yeah, and the priest. The priest does a run in and bites it when he tries to start the killer.
So Eastman, well it's like the ending of Halloween, except if Michael Myers killed Donald Pleasance.
Yeah. Yes, So the.
Priest shows up and he saves her momentarily, and he is killed by George Eastman. But then while that's going on. She retrieves the battle axe from the suit of armor and then goes to work on him. We don't see exactly what happened until her parents arrive home. And her parents arrive home with the cops, and Willie's there and everybody's there, and Katya's standing in the doorway, and we pull back to reveal that she is holding the severed head of Eastman.
Yes, yes, she holds it up. And this is just this is great, this is just grade a shlock as young, bloodied Katya healed by violence here lifts up the decapitated, overtly fake head of the blinded monster and then we close and that's the end of absurd.
So now I've got to know if that had problem, I mean, it would be a shame, a historical filmmaking shame. If that head prop was not reused in the biblical film where he plays Goliath, it had.
Be Yeah, I hope. I mean, if not that film, surely it shows up in another film. Because they've gone to the trouble to make it. There's gonna be some other film where you might want to cut Eastman's head off or just reuse it. I mean, there are examples of, you know, from other I think there was a whole kind of a minor stink on Game of Thrones at some point, right, because they were reusing heads or something. And then sometimes, yeah, sometimes head cast get reused for
different things. I mean, actually, we go back to John Carpenter's Halloween and we have a pretty classic example of the reuse of head molds. Right.
Oh, do you mean that it's a Shatner mask.
Yeah.
Yeah, Michael Myers wears a Captain Kirk mask spray painted white, which is you can't unsee it once you see it.
Yeah, but it's become iconic. Mm hmm. All right, so there you have it. Absurd I think probably the only Joe Tomato film we're going to do on Weird House. But I'm sure George Eastman will pop up again in some form or another, but there probably won't be as much George Eastman as there was in this picture. All right, Well, we'll close it out there, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have thoughts on Absurd or other, or the video nasties of phenomena in general,
write in. We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcasts with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. And you can get the full list of films that we've covered on Weird House Cinema if you look us up on letterbox dot com. That's l E T E r boxd dot com our handle there is
weird House. You can find the whole list there. And yeah, with this episode, we're kind of launching into the Halloween season. Halloween is always a big, big month for us, a little month and some change often, so look you can look forward in the month ahead to a lot of seasonally appropriate core episodes, short form episodes, and of course Weird House Cinema selections.
Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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