Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire

of Monsters, Yeah, both great movies. Actually, this is Billy the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire. Yeah. I picked this one for rewind, not because it's certainly there are more popular episodes and more popular movies that we've looked at. But this, gosh, this is such a weird and wonderful film. I just want to help signal boost it if it all possible, you know, I'd love to see some sort of proper release of this come out in the future.

I'd love to see the soundtrack come out in some form or some fashion, which, if memory serves it never has. It's a tragedy and I never had no alligators living in me bath. Yes, so it's a fun one. We hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And the movie that we're going to be talking about today is one called Billy the Kid and the Green Bays Vampire, a film from English director Alan Clark that came out in either nineteen eighty five, nineteen eighty seven, or nineteen eighty nine, depending on which source on the Internet you check. I really was not able to figure out which one was correct. I'm gonna guess eighty five is right, but

who knows. Ye five is what's on IMDb, so that's what I take to go by, but sometimes that's that can be misleading. Yeah, that's canonical. We can just accept it. And this is, as far as I can tell, the world's only supernatural, post apocalyptic billiard sports musical and folks, this is such a fit for Weird House Cinema because this is truly one of the strangest movies I have

ever laid eyes on. Yeah, this one I think initially popped up on my radar when we were talking about Split Second, the rugger Hower movie that also features one of the actors in this film, Alan Armstrong, and I was looking into Armstrong's work and I saw this curious title and I had to And you know, every time I looked at it again, I'd bring it up occasionally, you know, I'd look it up and think, was this the week that I take a closer look at this picture?

And every time I learned a little bit more about it, I was a little more convinced. Well, I know, months ago we watched a video of one of the songs from this movie, because again it is a musical, and it was a song where Alan Armstrong is livid because there has been slander h or I guess it would be libel printed about him in a newspaper. And he appears to be a vampire in this song, but it's sort of ambiguous without having seen the whole film, and

uh oh, it was so good. I remember there's a line that is stuck in my head ever since we first watched the song where he protests I never had no alligators living in me bath. Yeah, we just Rachel and I walk around the house singing that a lot. Oh man, there's so many lines in this movie where

they would just they're they're washing over me. And I'm not sure if they're just you know you are, or were usual turns of phrase in um in British slang, particularly cockney slaying in some cases, or if this is just just pure poetry you know from the screenwriter here, uh you know stuff about There's there's one character where Alan Armstrong's UM character is talking about her and says, oh if she if you ever told the truth, it

would turn her teeth black. Like that's something almost Shakespearean about that line. But I have no idea if that's something that people say every day, or if this is it, this is the time what those words exited somebody's mouth. Same here. There were a lot of expressions in the movie, and there were multiple I think regional British sort of vernacular coming out. Like one character is clearly he's like easton London expressions. He's Cockney, that's our title Billy the

Kid character. But then the green based vampire I believe is supposed to be from the north of England. I think he's from Yorkshire or something. So there may be different sort of regionalisms. But I have to also say, I think of all the movies we have ever watched for the show, this was the hardest to understand. It's absolutely just clattering with deep British accents and expressions. I think specifically, a lot of the Cockney expressions just went right past me, and I was like, I don't know

what that meant. I mean, I get the vibe. A lot of it is insults of various kinds. This movie is thick with insults. Almost every reference a character makes to another character is an insulting one, and even with subtitles on, I often had no idea what characters were talking about, at least the first time I watched it. Yeah, I watched this on Amazon Prime with the subtitles on because I wanted to follow the dialogue and also the

lyrics a little bit closer. And there were times where the subtitles could not keep up and they would just subtitles would say speaks in a foreign language in reference to something somebody's saying. And also sometimes the subtitles were a little inaccurately, seemed to be off just a little bit. Yeah, so I want to come back to the genre designations. I made about this up at the top. So again, this is a sports movie, which is going to be

unusual for weird house cinema. I mean, usually sports movies are very kind of down the middle of main street. They don't usually get that weird. But this is a sports movie in that the main conflict is between two players of a sport, of a game called snooker, or as all the character is in in this movie, say snooker.

I think that's the British the common British pronunciation, but we're us, so we're going to say snooker and if that, if that irritates British listeners, I'm sorry, but I may have to say snooker though, because of just snooker times in my head, as i've and and certainly I've heard it while watching this film. Yeah, yeah, So snooker is a type of Q sport or billiard sport that is popular, especially in England, and I think also especially in places

where there was like a former British colonial presence. But you know, there are leagues all around the world apparently, so, but for Q sports or billiard sports, you know, imagine a game like pool. If you're not familiar, it is played on a table like that. It's a pocket ball Q type game, but it has that extra special English flare. It's got a you know, a little whiffs of afternoon tea on it. But on top of that, it's not

just a sports movie. It's a supernatural sports movie. Since one of the two players is literally a magical vampire. This is a little more ambiguous early in the film, but later on he shows off his powers and Alan

Armstrong is literally a vampire. You had the same understanding, right, I think so that this is a movie that I mean, it's how many different versions of unreality is this movie in because just by virtue of being a musical, a musical is a film in which people spontaneously burst into song and do prolonged musical numbers in order to express themselves or or sometimes not even to express what the character's thinking or what their character's motivations are, but just

to sort of to set the scene, like where are we Let's sing about the place that we're in, or you know, or sometimes it's a little more obscure than that. I'm not sure what some of these songs really had to do with the you know, over the main plot or the main characters, but I get that they kind of contribute to the vibe. I think the opening song is just about money, Yeah yeah, green tickets Yeah yeah. Uh but okay, So so it's a supernatural sports movie.

I was trying to think of other examples of that. I know there are some, but I was like, Angels in the Outfield. Maybe maybe air Bud, depending on if that counts. Yeah, well, Angels in the Outfield definitely. It's probably a good an example because that's a movie that I've not seen in a very long time. But it's about baseball, but it's also about the feelings we have about baseball and the connections we have through baseball. And so in a similar sense, this is not just a

film about snooker. It's about it's also it gets into like what does it mean? And whose game is it? Yeah, and that's where you get into a lot of the deeper social commentary that's in this picture, because ultimately it's it's a it's a pretty political picture. Yeah, well, I would say it is not nearly on the same level of sort of syrupy sentimentality as a movie like Angels in the Outfield. This is more of a kind of

nasty movie. Uh well, I don't know about nasty, but it's I don't know, it's it's harder edged, like all the characters are mean. Yeah, yeah, but I don't know. There is some some you know, London underworld types throughout the picture, but it's all I mean, it's a pretty tame picture. I don't want anybody to think that it's like a video nasty sort of a situation. No, no, no, no no, I don't mean like that. I just mean that it's just full of mean attitude. Yeah, yeah, not

not a lot of love in this picture, okay. But also the game, Yeah, it's all about snooker vibes. But it's also a musical, as we said, so everybody's constantly breaking into song, including multiple songs that are about snooker itself. And then I had to throw in also, I called it a post apocalyptic movie. Now I say that on my own accord. It's not because anything is explicitly acknowledged about that in the movie, but it just seems to me that the entire film takes place in a vast

network of fallout shelter tunnels and underground bunkers. Yeah. Absolutely, the entirety of this film looks like it takes place underground and the windowless interiors of I don't know, maybe the city of raa Keane on a racus. Yeah, there's nothing even halfway resembling a natural or outdoor environment. It's like the film's vision of London is that of a tomb,

which is fitting. Yeah, And there's only one scene I could recall in this movie where you actually see the sky and it turns out that sky is fake, because it's when the Green Bay's vampire is on a film set being shot pretending to be a vampire with longer fangs than his actual fangs, and then behind him you can see a red sky with clouds moving through it out the window of his vampire's castle. But then it

turns out, yeah, that's not a real sky. He's actually in a dark, dingy film studio and it's a fake sky going behind the back of the set. And I think, all this is perfect. I'm not entirely clear if this was like a budget situation where they had to shoot everything on a set, but I would not want this picture to have any exteriors for any natural environments like it adds to this field. It does feel post apocalyptic.

You could if you were to say, oh, well, this takes place in Mega City one from the Judge Dread comics, I would say, yeah, absolutely, it really and that would be fitting for the time period too, because these are it's part of the same sort of era of British fiction and sort of it's a sort of critique of

British society during the nineteen eighties. There's a constant sort of shoving out of the frame of a nagging sense of worldwide despair that is embodied in the fact that there are no windows in this movie, and nobody ever sees the sky, and even when characters are presumably outside, they're actually inside in some pitch black tunnel that's just sort of illuminated by these sickly street lights that kind of cast a pool of disease over whatever you're looking

at right now. Yes, absolutely, now, okay. I said at the beginning that there appears to be some confusion on the internet about what or this movie was released. I think we're going with nineteen eighty five, that seems the most plausible, but I've seen eighty seven, I've seen eighty nine. There is also some confusion about the title of this movie. Now, everywhere I could read it was acknowledged as Billy the

Kid and the Green Bays Vampire. Bays is baize. That is the name for the material that coats the top of a snooker table or a pool table. But also, if you look at the very beginning of this movie, when the title screen comes up, it says the movie is called Billy and the Vampire. And so I did not even notice this when I watched it. Yeah, I took a screenshot for you to look at. Now I see it. Yeah, so yeah, So what store of information has superseded the title given within the film itself to

make the official title. It's like, no, no, it's not Billy and the Vampire, like the movie says it's Billy the Kid and the Green Bays Vampire. I mean Billy the Kid and the Green Bays the Vampire like that song at one point. So yes, I feel like that has to be the authentic title. Um, yeah, Louise Gold sings that. Now. One other possible point of confusion with the title here is that there is a nineteen sixty six horror western titled Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. Um

has nothing to do with this picture. Um that one starred John Carradine as like an old West Dracula. Um And I think I read that John Carradine referred to this as one of his worst films, which is a bold statement coming from Yeah, but how is that possible? I don't know. Maybe you just had a particularly it was a particularly annoying shoot or something, because he was

he was in some great pictures. But as we've discussed before, he was he was in a lot of pictures, and he was in a lot of stuff that we would struggle to say with you know, was any good. He did Red Zone, Cuba mostly that's mostly stock footage. I think that one, Yeah, Night Train to Mundo. Fine. Oh wait, did they just take that shot of him singing a song and just tack it onto the beginning of the

movie like he didn't know he was in it? Possibly, but I'm assuming that there's some other reasons that this is a snooker film with a vampire in it. But I also help I can't help but imagine that just the title Billy the Kid Versus Dracula somehow influenced the shape of this picture. It just maybe help nudget in the right direction. I can see that. Okay. I feel like before we move on any further, we have to explain what snooker or snooker is, because before watching this movie,

I had no idea. All I knew was it looks like it happens on a pool table, right, Yeah, and that's that's all I knew going into it. And I do have to say, you don't really need to know how snooker works to enjoy the film. But yeah, here's some of the basics. So snooker is said to have originated among British soldiers in India during the eighteen seventies.

Q sports themselves are much older, and it's kind kind of weird to think about it this way, but there are largely thought to be outdoor lawn games that have been miniaturized and constructed for indoor play. Uh okay, so something like croquet maybe became something like pool or billiards or snooker. Yeah, based on what I was reading, like, the main connection seems to be, Yeah, there's something like croquet that was played with qes and over time people were like, well, what if we did this on a

tabletop instead? You know, maybe they were sick of having to deal with mud and whatnot, and then eventually they're like, well, what if we did this inside? Maybe I can't be outside right now, or I don't want to be outside. So that seems to be basically how it all came together.

Some form of billards was apparently in use during the thirteen forties, and King Louis the eleventh of France, who lived fourteen sixty one through fourteen eighty three, had the what is thought to be the first indoor table, and this quickly became the fashion, killing off the outdoor and

lawn variants that spawned it. So again, I just this amazing to think that that all these games that have some sort of the bays top you know, you know, pool and snooker, they're they're essentially just taking the outdoors and recreating an indoors. Like why haven't we done that with everything? Why aren't we still playing golf outside like uh like like caveman, But why can't we miniaturize that and play at inside? Well, I don't know. I'd say the majority of golf now played is probably of the

video variety Mario Golf or whatever. Yeah, well, because that's the ultimate, right, that's the next step. I mean, when you are out on the actual golf course, you cannot wear a bowser costume. If you did, people would look at you weird. Oh, by the way, one thing I read this is interesting. Popularity for Q games has apparently gone up and down over the years in different parts

of the world. But it's interesting to consider that apparently the nineteen sixty one filmed The Hustler, which is about Pool, helped boost the popularity of Pool in the US once more like like it's popularity had dipped down and movie about about the about Pool helped bring it back into popularity. Wait, that's not the one with Paul Newman? Is that seems too early for That's what's the one with Paul Newman? Is that the color of Money? I think you're thinking

about the sequel to The Hustler was the Color of Money? Right, the Hustle? Yeah, it was the sixty one. That one did have Paul Newman, but it also had Jackie Gleeson. Okay, yeah, anyway, back back to snooker. As best I can tell, it emerges a variant of existing que games in the Officers Messes of British Troops in India, British Indian Officer Neville Chamberlain, not to be confused with the Prime Minister of the

same name, allegedly finalized the rules. The word snooker was apparently slaying for first year cadets, okay, something about like, well, you know you can you know, the first year cadets, they're definitely snookers. But everybody's a snooker when you play this game, like it's I don't know something, you know, an even playing field for everybody in the British military

or something. Oh I see, that's funny because that calls to mind the themes of this movie of Alan Armstrong's character being very mad that just anybody thinks they can play snooker these days exactly. So. Snooker, like billiards, is about sinking balls into holes, and just as with American pool, you hit the white ball, but you don't want to actually sink the ball while pocketing other balls. That's what's

called scratching. I think I learned this for the first time whilst playing a video version of pool in like a Grand Theft audio game or something. I was like, oh, I guess I'm not supposed to actually make that ball go in the hole as well, But Now where it gets interesting with snooker is that involves colored balls as well, like additional colors. So the game consists of twenty two balls. You have one white ball that's the Q ball. You

have fifteen red balls, which are one point each. You have one yellow ball for two points, one green ball for three points, one brown ball for four points, one blue ball for five points, one pink ball for six points, and one black ball for seven points. Now, the main thing I noticed that was interesting about snooker in the movie was that every time you sink a red ball, I think they pull the black ball out of the pocket and put it back on the table, so you

can just keep sinking the black ball over and over. Yeah, so and again I may have this wrong, and certainly we invite anybody who has experienced playing snooker to write in and correct us on anything, and also just tell us what you thought about this movie, because I assume you've seen it. Why wouldn't you have seen it if you play the game. So yeah, I think the idea is if you have to declare if a non red ball is in play or on before you strike it, ok, and if it's not on and it gets pocketed, it

gets to come back out again again. I'm not sure. I don't think this is necessary to really understand to enjoy the movie. But but yeah, if you start watching the game really closely, you see all this in play because they had they had like snooker advisor on set to make sure that everything looked correct here. Oh man, you wouldn't want to make a snooker very similitude error. That would that would really sink your movie. No, you don't want. You don't know the snooker fans at that.

They buy back. So at the start of the game, the reds are in a pyramid and the break that's you know, there's like another pool. You know, there are que sports. You have to hit the Q ball and break up that mass of red balls. Um yeah, non red balls that are pocketed accidentally come back into play. You have to declare which non red ball is on before you strike it. And each game is a frame. Uh that's this. This is basically this is basically how

it goes. There are various other rules in play, but these are the key ones and basically all you need to know and more before enjoying Billy the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire. Well, I watched it knowing nothing about snooker, and I understood what was going on, so so so be not intimidated, right, And I think that's important because like, this is a movie there's clearly made

for snooker. I don't know that you get into a larger question of who this movie was made for, but but I guess it was made for people who knew who know what snooker is and what the basic rules are, and yet they did a good job of making it accessible for people who are not really familiar with that world. But I'm sure it's also full of little in jokes for people who do know things about snooker. In fact, it's right there in the title, like what does the

Green Bay's vampire me? And I did not know going in, But again that that is like the material on the table, right right, Yeah, it's a woolen cloth, similar, similar, It's easy to mistake it for felt, but that is what snooker has played upon. It's green, so it's green Bay's. And apparently the archaic version of the spelling in English was like bays, so it's pronounced you know, more or

less like that. It's also used in other que games and also you'll find it on like card playing tables, which I guess in the olden days we played cards on the ground, which is why do we yeah the cards they moved from lawn games to to the table to ye old base table. All right, Well, let's do the elevator pitch on this one. It's basically this in the Ultimate Snooker Showdown, six time World Champ, Impossible Vampire Maxwell Randall battles Young Cockney Upstart Billy the Kid within

the subterranean bottles of nineteen eighties London. Let's hear some trailer an Keith and the Green bas Big Jap Black, what come on? All right? And I think everybody got to hear a little bit of the music there as well, Speaking of which, I guess we haven't talked much about the quality of the music in the movie yet. I'm gonna say I'm I'm in the middle on the music part of this musical. I love how weird it is. Overall, I would say the music for me is hit or miss.

Some songs are really good and others are are kind of skippable to me. Yeah, and I would agree with that very much. I'm not a huge musical guy, I'm not even sure exactly what genre we're in. Is this kind of like sort of rock musical but sort of

musical theater. Yeah, it's a mixture. I mean, some songs feel like like rock musicals, like they could you know, come from from Tommy or anything like that, and other ones are just more traditional kind of Broadway musical style or I don't know what you'd call it, even even operatic. In fact, i'd say my favorite song in the movie, I bite Back, is more opera style. Yes, yeah, so, yeah,

I would agree. When I first started watching this, I was like, I don't know if I'm a huge fan of the music, but I fell in love with the picture the more I watched it, and afterwards I found myself coming back to at least a few of the songs. Yeah. Yeah, I also really like the supersonic Sam's Cosmic Cafe song. That one's good. Yeah. And then in our final showdown, there's a little bit of music where we call have callbacks to various previous numbers, which was nice. Yeah yeah, Okay,

So who actually directed this? This was directed by Alan Clark, who lived nineteen thirty five through nineteen ninety English director perhaps best known for his gritty and serious British dramas from the seventies and eighties, including nineteen eighty two's Made in Britain, in which Tim Roth plays a neo Nazi skinhead youth, oh as well as nineteen seventy nine Scum, starring Ray Winston as a juvenile offender. He also did a film in nineteen eighty nine titled The Firm, which

has nothing to do with lawyers. Instead, it's about Gary Oldman as a soccer hooligan. Nothing okay, so this is not the Tom Cruise John Grisham adaptation. Right. Um, he did a lot of TV work. I feel like those three films seem to sort of signify a lot of what he was about. You know, like these are three different films about like really you know, disturbed and or violent members of sort of the the you know, the

British working class. Um. A lot of his work is very political, and again, despite the weirdness and light hearted spirit, you know, more or less of this film, they're obvious political overtones as well. It's about you know, who owns this game, you know what's going on in society at the time. Uh, you know, who has who has the power,

who has the balls? Uh that that comes into play in the final the final showdown, Like there's this we'll get to it in a bit, but yeah, there's this idea of like the balls or the power of society and who has access to it and who is who is dominating the playing field to an unfair degree. Yeah

and yeah. So this is, i would say, pretty straightforwardly a class war movie, and class in the British sense of like more overtly acknowledged existence of class strata in society, where there's like a self conscious upper class that they think of themselves as the upper class, and they are very mad about the idea that you know, that that riff raff are invading their institutions. They don't want just you know whatever, guy who just stumbled drunk out of

a video arcade to come lay snooker against them. This is a gentleman's sport, don't you understand. Yeah, don't be coming in here with your green hair, all right. The writer on this was Trevor Preston, who lived nineteen thirty eight through twenty eighteen, known for such films as two thousand and threes, I'll Sleep when I'm Dead starting Clive Owen and the nineteen seventy two psychological thriller What the

Peeper Saw. Have not seen any of those. Since this is a musical, I'm going to go ahead mention the music credit on this before we get into the cast. So George Finton born nineteen forty nine has the music of credit here. Five time Academy Award nominee, responsible for numerous scores including Groundhog Day, Mary Riley, The Fisher King, The Company of Wolves, and Cry Freedom. He also scored

The Wolves. Yeah, yeah, that's the if I'm remembering correctly, that's the one where you had the wolf mouth coming out of the human mouth transformation. Right, it's a Neil Jordan film. I want to say, yes, yes, it's right. That one is very weird. Also that we can possibly talk about that in the future on the show. Finton also scored numerous documentaries, including several David Attenborough documentaries, So like The Big Banner, David Attenborough, It's like Blue Planet,

and so forth. If you've seen one of those, you've probably listened to George Finton's music. He also did a lot of theater work as well well. Like I said on this one, I would not say. The music doesn't have me across the board, but the highlights are really good. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. One of the weird things about the score for this film is, as far as I can tell, it was never released in any format. I could find no evidence of it ever coming out on vinyl or cassette, much

less on CD or as a digital album. It seems like a real shame, especially now with all these like special editions that come out of cult favorite scoors and soundtracks. Can't you imagine that the Green Bay's vinyl It just screams to be done. I don't know why it hasn't. Oh, how would they do? Well? What like right in the middle part that doesn't play, it's like the green felt or yeah, or it's even it's made out of it's

made out of repurposed que balls or something. Yeah, there's so many directions you could go, and I guess it just hasn't happened yet for one reason or another. Noah, Well, whoever owns the rights issue that thing? Yeah, all right, let's get into the cast. Uh, it's Billy the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire. So let's start with Billy. Billy the Kid is played by Phil Daniels born nineteen

fifty eight. This is our Cockney Nukar hero actor of stage, screen and TV who appeared in Quadrophenia, Zulu, Dawn, Scum, The Bride. That's the Frankenstein film that has Staying in it, among others. He was a voice in Chicken Run and he's in the music video for Blur's Park Life, in which he plays a singing salesman. So he was in I think he was the lead role in Quadrophenia, playing playing So that's another sort of rock opera from the who most people know Tommy but don't know Quadrophenia. Yeah,

I don't think. I actually like Quadrophenia a good bit better if at least I've never seen the movie, to be honest, but I love the album and I think he's the main kid in that who's also like a kind of like he is in this sort of a board slightly threatening disaffected youth. Yeah, yeah, that is he

singing in quadr Fia, do you know. Yeah, I don't know if the movie Quadraphenia is like Tommy the movie where they have like, you know, different actors come in and do the parts, or if it's just like you know that they're playing the actual album with Roger Dultry singing and so forth. Okay, Now, the character of Billy the Kid here is allegedly based on real life snooker player Jimmy White born nineteen sixty two, who's still active today and professional snooker and is a three time world

champion nicknamed the Whirlwind. Highest ranking was I think number two in the world. Now could you find anywhere or the actual snooker players that these characters are based on have commented on this movie. I did not. I couldn't find anybody really commenting on this movie. I don't know if it if it just like if it came out at a bad time, or they didn't know how to

promote it, like I was. A lot of times you'll find actors like say David Warner talking about just various small films they did and having some something to say about them. And I couldn't find anybody anybody commenting on this film. I don't know of it if it doesn't have quite strong enough of a cult following, or or

what the situation is. I mean, nobody's saying doesn't seem to be Nobody seems to be saying anything negative about it, but they don't seem to even be acknowledging that it happened. Maybe I'm just missing a juicy interview here or there. Well, well, I would also speaking of actors commenting on the roles, like David Warner going back, I would love to hear what Alan Armstrong thinks about this. So should we talk about Alan Armstrong? He plays the titular vampire Maxwell Randall,

the the the Green Bay's villain of the night. Yes, yes, Alan Armstrong are scowling Prince of darkness and snooker. So we talked about him on our Split Second episode a bit. But yeah, he has probably I think one of the best sneers in all of cinema, the best scowls he can. He can look with such disdain at the camera or at other other characters on screen in a in a way that I don't know other faces cannot. He has a true gift. Yeah, he's excellent in this. I mean

he's great in everything I think I've seen him in. Well, I don't know if he was all that memorable and Split Second, but that was not really an actor's workshop kind of movie. He was still memorable, though, he played Rudger Howerd's character's boss. He was just in a snarling rage the whole time his character and that his name was Thrasher. So they just get into argument very much like every conversation is sort of like badge, I'm taking your badge and your gun sort of a thing. You're

taking it too personal. You're off the force, you're a loose cannon. Here's your new partner. Yeah. But but Armstrong's been in tons of stuff. I think he was something of of a workaholic for a long time. He's been in TV movies, stage productions, often plays sort of scowling authority figures and the like. His first screen credit was nineteen seventy ones Get Carter, and he's had other notable

roles in such pictures as The Duellists Krall Krall. Yeah, he's kind of not as recognizable in Krall because he's he's got like his beard's grown out and he I don't know, he doesn't look as as as Alan Armstrong as he often does, if that makes sense. I remember from when I was younger, I have a very firm stamp of his face from the movie Braveheart, which is which is not a great movie, not just for its historical inaccuracy, but I think is sort of egregious in

many ways, but has a fantastic cast. I love Patrick Magoohan as the mustache twirling King in it. Yeah, yeah, he was in some big name pictures for a spell there. He was in Sleepy Hollow, The Mummy Returns Van Helsing Oliver Twist so and he's done very very well for himself, it seems. But he's exactly the sort of actor that has appeared on both Tales from the Crypt and Downton Abbey, which I think that's all you need to know about

Alan Armstrong. It like that covers sort of the sort of roles he can play and the sort of roles he often does play. But so okay, Billy the Kid was apparently at least loosely based on a real snooker player, and The Green Bays Vampire is as well. Yes, that is even more of a case with this character, The

Green Bays Vampire Maxwell. The Bays Vampire is based on Welsh professional snooker player Ray Reardon born nineteen thirty two, still alive as of this recording, now retired, but he was a six time world champion at one time ranked number one in the world. And I don't I've not read anything to indicate that this guy was a meanie or a villain in real life. But his nickname, and it seems like all these major snooker players have nicknames.

His nickname was Dracula because he had a pronounced widow's peak and kind of sharp looking teeth. Yeah, he looks like somebody who would be a Bella Legosi copycat in a parody film about Dracula. Yeah, you can see why the nickname stuck. Now, now as you're saying, though, I want to be careful this movie casts I would say strong. You know, you could even say moral aspersions on all of its characters, even the alleged hero, But I don't think that's meant to apply to this, this real life guy,

this actual snooker player. As far as I can tell, it's more of an esthetic inspiration, right, Yeah, sort of like, well, you know that guy that they called Dracula, what have he really was a vampire? Yeah, and you can imagine sort of the conversation and the brainstorming session that carried on from there. The other thing that's a parallel, which is interesting, is that in the movie, Alan Armstrong, screen

based vampire does product endorsements. So he's like filming a TV commercial where he gets up out of a coffin and then sprays breath freshener in his mouth. But you shared a video of this guy in a beer commercial, and I gotta say, great beer commercial. Yeah, Like the announcer is asking him, does does two bore gold help you play better snooker? And he's excuse me, snooker and he's like, no, I just like to drink it. And product endorsement. There you go. Anyway, Yeah, I think Armstrong

is great in this role. Um, it's uh, it's wonderful because he's he gets to be kind of a very much a vampire at times. He gets to be a supernatural menace, but he also is like this human being, you know, So he's he's not completely unrelatable, even though he is a bit nasty and egotistical and very much out for blood against this young generation of snooker player. Um, but but I don't know, it's it's it's a really good performance if you if you like this guy, this

is definitely a movie to see. Yeah, he's he's a little bit sympathetic because even though he's clearly a bad guy, he's also having a hard time, like they are printing slander about him or excuse me, libel in the newspapers, and he's to some extent being manipulated, as we'll get into as well. Yeah, all right. Another major character in this is the character t O, which stands for the One. That's another connection to Quadrophenia. Oh yeah, you know that song. No,

I don't. I'm not familiar with Quadrophenia at Oh well, look at the song I'm the One. It's a song in Quadrophine. I assume this is just a coincidence. But yes, t O, the one played played by Bruce Payne. Yes, born nineteen fifty eight. I'd say there's a very good chance most of you out there are familiar with Bruce Payne as a B movie villain, thanks to various roles in such films as The Howling six, The Freaks, Necronomicon, Book of the Dead, Passenger fifty seven, Warlock three The

End of Innocence. That's where he takes over the lead role from Julian Sands, who played the Warlock in the first two pictures. You know he looks a little bit more like Julian Sands in this movie when he's got the blonde hair. That's right. Yeah, I think most of us picture if you think of Bruce Payne, if you think of Bruce Payne at all, you picture like a bald, scowling British villain. But in this picture he's younger, you know, thinner Handsomer looks very very much came out of the

same clone that as Julian Sands. Oh, but he was also he was in Highlander in games. That's the one that had both Christopher Lambert and what's his name, Adrian Paul, the guy from the TV series. Oh, I didn't know that. I've never seen it. I haven't either. It's I don't think it was extremely well received. But he's in that more. Is it one of the more swordfighting focused ones or one of the more hand to hand martial arts ones?

I don't know. It's one where they I think they tried to bring the film franchise in the TV franchise together into like one final showdown, while also of course continuing to ignore Highlander too. The Quickney well there's your problem right there, right exactly. Bruce Payne was also in the year two thousands Dungeons and Dragons starting alongside Jeremy Irons. YEP.

I looked up because I've seen that movie and oh, I gotta say, I recall it being not good but quite a fun viewing experience because it's it's in the unintentionally hilarious category and it's got Jeremy Irons playing some kind of frothing Warlock. I remember him being it being one of the most hyperactive performances I've ever seen, and I think Bruce Payne plays like his main Warlock Henchman. He's like bald with blue lips and he's got weird

snakes coming out of his head and stuff. Yeah, yeah, I think I watched it once and it yeah, it was. I was not taken by it. It did not reflect well on Dungeons and Dragons for me. I recall it being the kind of movie that, like, when they want to show blood or some other kind of liquid, like running down a set of stairs, they had it was like CGI blood, but it was like year two thousand CGI Blood, And I was like, how much would it have cost to just like film actual liquid pouring down

these stairs. Maybe they were like, we gotta get that. We gotta get a better rating. We gotta get the kids in. So just make the blood as fake as possible. All right. So that's Bruce Payne. He's these are you good in this? Like? I say, well, this is not the Bruce Payne that most of you are familiar with. In this picture, he's singing. He's a lot more fun. He's not just a scowling villain who gets punched in

the face by a hero, you know. Speaking of the singing, I don't know if you agree with me on this, Rob, but I will say that, while in general the cast is great in this movie, most of the players do not seem to have been cast on the basis of singing ability. It's more like they were cast as actors and then it was like you can sing too, right, Yeah, don't worry about it. But I would say that the next person we're going to talk about, Louise Gold, is

probably the best straightforward singer in the cast. She sings the song where you hear the name of the movie, Billy the Kid in the Green Bays Vampire. It's during like a practice montage, and she's great, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Louise Gold playing Miss Sullivan the troublemaking journalist. Gold was born nineteen fifty six, and she's had quite a career

as both a screen and a stage act. There she was in the nineteen eighty two film adaptation of the Pirates of Penzance, but she's probably best known as a puppeteer who worked on numerous Jim Hinson productions over the years. I was quite surprised to read this. Yeah, and when I'm saying Jim Hinson productions, I'm talking the Original Muppet Show, the original The Dark Crystal. She's credited as a performer

for the Gormon Skexi's character. She also worked on the Muppet Christmas Carol, she came back to work on The Dark Crystal, The Age of Resistance, just to name a few. She also appears as a ballroom dancer in Labyrinth. I think she also did various live action dance bits on The Muppet Show in addition to her puppeteer work. So anytime they needed an actual human being moving along, maybe dancing in the background, Louise Gold was one of the people they turned to. So yeah, I would say she

is also great in this. I think she's the best singer in the cast. But also has a very good sort of cold closed affect. Is the utterly unscrupulous snooker journalist. Yep. Now she's not the only female character. We also have Miss Randall. That's Maxwell's wife, who's who's very supporting, a very I think, a strong character. She has his back, she has his side. She drives him to the Stoker Championship match there in a motorcycle and he's in the

little sidecar. A brilliant, very good staging because they're driving through green fog and the vampires wearing this helmet with and she's not wearing a helmet. Oh god, these scenes of driving, you might think, well, the driving scenes, those are the ones that are shot outdoors. No, these are shot. If you've ever watched Garth Marenghe's Dark Place, Yeah, they do those driving sequences. This is the same technique, like

I can. I don't know if there are other films or other TV shows that that prominently use this method of creating the effect of driving at night, but that I would not be surprised to learn that this was one of the reference points for Dark Place. Oh it's so dark place. Everyone's about to be Why can't she be mine? I wish I were more attractive like Daglas. Yeah. Anyway. Miss Randall, though, is played by Eve Farrett, who was

born in nineteen sixty three. British actress, comedian, singer, songwriter came up in burlesque and then appeared in such films as Haunted, Honeymoon, Absolute Beginners, which I believe also had had pain in it. But then she also pops up in the David Bowie short film music video Jazzin for Blue Jean. Yeah, she's really good in this. She always has a I think the whole movie has a toy

poodle in her arm in every scene. And there's a great scene where Alan Armstrong is having fits because a bunch of libel has been printed in the newspaper by miss Sullivan and making all these allegations about him, and he hands the paper to his wife and she's reading it and he, you know, he's like screaming, and she just says, what does it terrible turkey? Oh yeah, Yeah, she's good. And then she's got some pipes. She's, oh yeah,

kind of opera soprano singing. All right, Now we have another great character actor and this Don Henderson plays the Wednesday Man who's kind of a British underworld figure that plays an important part in the plot. I thought I recognized this guy from somewhere, and I was like, what is that strange hair beard combination? Why have I seen this before? And why do I pair it with this gravelly voice? And then I saw your note and I was like, oh, my lord, he's in Star Wars. He's

in the scene on the Death Star. Yes, he plays in seventy seven Star Wars. He plays that imperial general who's choked out by Darth Vader for his disturbing lack of faith. No, no, no, I think I think it's the younger guy, the other guy who's like, he's all about how good the Death Star is and how it's better than Vader. Yes, you're right. They look very similar except um, yeah, except for Don Henderson has has has an evil er face so and kind of a more of a you know, a rat like he has rat

like eyes. So yeah, this guy's never gonna get choked out by Vader. He's gonna he's gonna fall in line. He's only gonna be as as snotty as he needs to be. He knows how to maintain his place within the Imperial ranks. I think he's the guy who's saying, if the rebels are able to obtain a technical readout, yes, Yeah, wonderful, wonderful, little nasty role. And I think he made kind of a career of such roles. But he pops up in a number of pictures. He was in Brazil, and he

was also in the Adventures of Baron Munchausen. He was in the Island opposite Michael Caine and David Warner. He also played the Ghoul in nineteen seventy five's The Ghoul opposite Peter Cushing and a very young John Hurt. I actually looked that one up. That one looks I haven't seen it. It looks like it may be rather culturally insensitive,

but also has a great hammer style cast. Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen it either, but but yeah, the cast looks interesting and John Hurt looks I don't know how old he was when that film was made, but he's far younger than I'm used to seeing John Hurt, like

the the wrinkles had not really set in yet. Yeah, that he is a spring chicken now another actor I just want to mention, not because he really has any connections to anything, but just because he's really on in this picture is Neil McCall, who plays Big Jack Jay. What is this guy supposed to be? I guess he's like the the snooker hype man. He just comes out when the snooker game is about to begin. He comes

out to sing a song about how snooker is awesome. Yes, uh, snooker so much, so much more than just a game. That's the that's the song, and it's just such a performance and it's all about yes, we no matter what our differences are, you know, snooker is the best. Snooker brings us together. It's it's not just it's not just a game, it's the world, you know. He talks about how if you get to heaven it's going to be green bays everywhere. Yes, so anyway, it's a tremendously flamboyant performance.

Neil McCall was born nineteen forty seven. Still active. He also had a small part in nineteen eighty three's The Pirates of Penzance, did a lot of TV work, and has also done a fair amount of voiceover work in animation in video games. He's wearing a great like sort of green satin. Almost Paisley Blazer in this, and he's got a pompadour. Rachel walked through the room and she was like, oh is Morrissey in this? It's not him, but it's not. A hair is similar, but the hair

is great. One more person, just to mention, Clive Tickner born nineteen forty three, with cinematographer on this picture. We don't always highlight the cinematographer, but it's interesting because he was also the cinematographer on nineteen ninety two Split Second, which we refer to already, another movie without a sky. Really that sort of takes place all within tunnels, even when it's allegedly outdoors. Yeah, so you can see the

you can see the DNA in both of them. Okay, well, should we talk a little bit about the plot and some of our favorite scenes? Oh yes, let's do it all right. Well, as I already mentioned, it starts off saying, hey, this movie is called Billy in the Vampire. If anybody tells you different, don't believe them. So the first scenes we get of the characters are inner cutting between two different scenes in different places. So we're watching Billy the

Kid again. This is Phil Daniels are in the words of I think, in the words of the Wednesday Man, he's our cockroach, cockney cowboy. He's got a strong, curly mullet, and he's doing like late night private snooker games for big cash bets. He's making money. Yeah. And then meanwhile, t O is that's Bruce Payne. He's somewhere else. He's gambling at a card game. I think it's supposed to be poker, and it's revealed that he is in some kind of debt to a very scary loan shark. And

this is the Wednesday Man. And again, both scenes feel like they are taking place inside a fallout shelter where lightbulbs are as rare as gold, because both scenes are illuminated only by scant little bits of light and there's just flooding darkness all around. Yeah, so we're in the catacombs, and the first thing we get is that already this world is all cutthroat competition. Billy's playing snooker for high

sums of money. Ato is gambling for big pots. And I will say that from the beginning both of these, though I guess there are protagonists, sort of, they're not traditional lovable sweetheart protagonists like you might get in some other musical. Both of them already have a kind of sort of nasty, nihilistic edge, like you could imagine Billy the Kid killing somebody with a broken bottle outside a pub over an argument that started on a like Missus

pac Man cabinet. Yeah. Yeah, these are not actors who are involved with snooker because they just love the game. It's because they want the money. In fact, though, I think the first song, or one of the first songs in the picture is about the money. It's called green tickets, referring green stamps, green stamps, I'm sorry, referring to cold hard cash. Is that what it is? I thought that's what it was, but I didn't. This is one of the many things I was like, I think there's some

cultural thing I'm missing here. Could this be about some kind of coupons? No, I think it's just about cash. I think it's cash, yes, and I could be wrong, but that's that's certainly what I got from it. What else would these these guys be singing about. I don't know. Well, actually, let me clay. I think for I think t O's into the money, and I think Billy. I wouldn't say he's in it for the love of the game. I would say Billy is in it for ego. He seems to be like he wants to be the best in

the world. He wants everybody to recognize that he's number one. Right, Yeah, I mean he's he's he's taking the money, and he's he seems to be blowing all the money. Yeah, and he's but he's he's living life like there's no tomorrow. Yeah.

His relationship with the money is interesting. So it's like he wants the money, but then he also he's not trying to save up or anything, Like he gets out of his first game and he seems to be just wandering around, like handing out stacks of cash to people living on the streets, which makes him seem like nice. But he's also I think, living a life of shallow luxury, Like he just he just wants fancy cars and cool clothes and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he's not really Robin

Hood so much. It's it's more like he disdains the money as much as he disdains anything else. But again to point out that, so he's wandering around outside in the streets and it's clearly it's not outside. The outside is inside. He's in some kind of pitch black tunnel with just these little showers of sickly light coming out of something overhead. And then after this we basically get

the set up to the plot. So t O he has his gambling, he's playing cards, and after this he goes to deliver a big pot of money to settle outstanding debts with the Imperial Officer the Wednesday Man, and again some set notes, he goes to meet him in a place that looks like an underground construction site where everything is draped in tarps. Oh, and here begins a

funny thread that goes throughout the movie. So he has the money that he owes the Wednesday Man, but the Wednesday Man won't accept it because it is a couple of minutes past midnight, making it a Thursday. And the Wednesday Man apparently just like only does things on Wednesdays, and so if you don't get him his money before midnight on Wednesday, then your twenty five thousand dollar debt turns into one hundred thousand. Yeah. I love it, Like they never explain it, so it's almost kind of like

like sea level batman villain kind of weirdness. So yeah, I absolutely love this. The Wednesday Man is only going to do crimes on Wednesday. On Thursdays, no, no, no longer. Just see him next week if you're still trying to do crimes on Thursday's. Yeah, it's like I'm the clock King. I only accept payment in clock. The Wednesday Man only accepts payment on Wednesdays. And the other thing I was

thinking of. He's kind of like a Dick Tracy villain, and that's say, yes, you know you've got you've got little face and you've got the Wednesday Man and the Wednesday Man, you know, close for business six out of seven days. Yeah, I love it. But anyway, so Tio's in trouble now because he got there a little bit late. So the Wednesday Man offers him a way out. It's like,

you owe me a hundred thousand dollars. But TiO is Billy the Kid's manager, and so the Wednesday Man tells him, you know, if you can arrange a snooker grudge match between Billy the Kid and Maxwell Randall aka the Green Bay's Vampire, you're going to be off the hook. I'll let your debts go and I think the idea at this point is that there might be some kind of fixed to the match, though the it's not fully agreed at this point. Oh and he finishes up by saying,

be sure to make it a Wednesday. Yeah. Well, the Wednesday Man does not seem like a character who plays fair, so you just assume that he has some sort of scheme in mind, and we of course find out more about that as the plot rolls on. Right, So next we go to meet the green based vampire himself, Maxwell Randall O b E. And we meet him when he is filming a TV commercial. So first we just see him like pop up out of a coffin and approach

the camera and he's got these big fangs. But then he shoots himself in the mouth with breath freshen or spray. And this is the scene I mentioned earlier that has the closest thing we ever get to seeing the sky or outdoors, because there's a fake red sky behind the windows in the set. But yeah, he comes up and then they call cut and they're like, Okay, yeah, a nice job or actually not a nice job. I think they say average job, Maxwell, And he's going to come

back and shoot some more stuff later. But this is when I first had the question, like, wait a minute, is he actually a vampire or not? I have questions about the reality of this movie, like what is taken to be literal really fact within the narrative, right, because at this point in the film, it's like, Oh, he's not really a vampire. This is just his persona and he plays it up professionally, and he's definitely playing it

up for a TV commercial. But we also established early on that Maxwell Randall is a jerk and a creep, Like we see him trying to get handsy with a makeup artist. So Maxwell not cool, right, But then we follow him home and oh this is this is where we get to see that he's not just playing up the vampire persona in the outside world. It's also very much his his his home fashion choice as well. Oh yeah,

so he in his house. This is one of my favorite sets in the movie, in a movie full of great sets, floor to ceiling black marble patterned wallpaper, I mean just awesome red velvet furniture it looks like and a giant framed portrait of Bella Legosi. I was wondering, wait, is this supposed to be Maxwell Randall, but when I got a good look, I'm like, no, that's Bella Legosia. Yeah,

and no windows anywhere nowhere to be seen. Second question about the reality of the supernatural elements, is Missus Randall also supposed to be a vampire because we see that she has sharp teeth as well. I kind of get the impression that yet anyone in his circle could potentially be a vampire, though we rarely see any other signs except the fact that they never go out in the daylight because daylight doesn't exist in this None of the

kid's go out in the daylight. Yea yeah. So in this scene we get sort of the setup of both the rivalry between the two snooker players and the class war themes. So this is where the snooker journalist, Miss Sullivan comes in, and so she arrives in Maxwell Randall's house to interview him about the possibility of this grudge

match between him and Billy the Kid. Actually, I think she starts off just saying, like, tell me what you think about how snooker is going these days, And of course Maxwell hates the very idea of the younger generation of snooker players, and he hates Billy the Kid. There are a lot of great quotes here. He says, the twenty percent men have moved in with their smiles, like wet soap and their five hundred pounds suits. Ten years ago, it was still a gentleman's game. Now it's a circus.

Permed hair, open collars. What does he does? He say, luminous waistcoats. I'm not sure what that means. But then the final straw where he starts to like lose it as he says, ques that unscrew in the middle. Yeah, I had no idea that that was that was considered uncool. I always thought that was kind of cool, right their mobile, you can unscrew him in the middle. But I think that means like a cheaper one. I don't know. Like he's he's really upset that the underclasses are gaining access

to snooker. He says that one of the players has green hair. Billy the Kid is the worst of them, the worst of them all, and he starts screaming about him, and he gets so mad that he like literally becomes paralyzed, like he can't week anymore, until Sullivan just leaves. It's a great meltdown. Yeah, and so here we get our themes.

The Green Bay's Vampire he wants snooker to remain a dignified game for the upper classes, and Billy the Kid represents everything he hates, un landed riff raff from the street coming in to turn his beloved snooker into an ashtray farce. But so we've had the journalist visit the Green Bay's Vampire at home, and now we apparently are going to visit Billy the Kid at more or less his home, which is Supersonic Sam's Cosmic Cafe. Another unbelievably

weird set piece, this one. I really enjoyed this. I guess this is Billy the kids hang out and Rob how would you describe this place? It is another subterranean realm. It is like, um, it's like the Greek underworld if it were just for playing video games. But video games we never get to see. We just see the illumination of the video games on people's faces, ghastly illumination via

like primitive Atari game. And it seems very dismal. But at the same time, Billy and the others are singing so optimistically about this place that you feel like there's some weird sense of futuristic optimism about like who they are and what technology can do. And I don't know what, you know, where games are taking them. It's it's it's

a it's a weird juxtaposition. Yeah. They are in this this grizzly green tomb uh and they're singing like rapturously about how that they they have like claimed asteroids for themselves and yeah, yeah, so it's a very joyous song. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all it's like ecstasy almost. And and so you reach this place by navigating a maze of underground corridors illuminated only by horrible green light, and inside you see all these people. It's like a

military formation of Cockney youths playing arcade cabinets. And like you said, we never see the screens, just like the green glow from below. While the video soldiers are sort of jostling about as they operate the joysticks, they're all facing the camera again like a like a like a squad formation. And I just love this sequence. It's it's really imaginatively choreographed, even though nobody's really dancing. They're all

just standing at the cabinets. And swaying and jostling, but it looks great and it goes great with the song. And the scene ends with the same snooker journalist, Miss Sullivan, getting some incendiary quotes from Billy the Kid to incite the Green Bay's vampire. So she's trying to she's trying to help to get a rivalry going between them so that they'll do this grudge match. And well, let's see, I wrote down some of the good things the Billy the Kid says. He says, anyone with a name like

Maxwell's got to be a king sized prawn. And then he says, I'm going to give him a terrible turkey. But oh boy. From here onto the reaction to the article she prints in the newspaper. This is probably my favorite scene in the movie. This is the song I Bite Back, which is it starts off with Alan Armstrong getting the newspaper and you hear him screaming throughout his house slander Calumny character assassination, and he's screaming about what's in the article to his wife and she seems just

mildly amused. This is where she asks what terrible turkey means and he starts singing this song called I Bite Back. This is one where it's hard to communicate what this scene is like and how great it is without actually singing the song, which we can really do. But you can find video of this on the internet, I think, so I would suggest looking it up. It's very weird

and great. Well. While Maxwell and his wife sing, they are standing in what looks kind of like a combination of a stage, just like a you know, a stage with wooden floorboards, but it also kind of looks like a windowless bank lobby in Gotham City. Yes, yeah, very gloomy. But he's filling the space with his rage and his voice. Yes, And the song is all about how he's furious all these things that were said about him in the article are not true. And he goes through like this song

has wonderful insults. In the lyrics, he says, I may appear bizarre with my predatory features, but with little boys make noises of defamatory nature. I bite Back, And he goes through like the list of allegations as he refutes them. He says he loves the smell of garlic. He protests that he never bid a Bible salesman, or if he did it was just for a laugh, and he says, I never had no alligators living in me bath. Now I do what that means? Yeah, or the next one.

The next one's also confusing. Oh, it's so good, he says. It says here when I die in my meals, glow in the dark. I don't quite know what that is, but that's really good, and he's clearly insulted by it. He also meant. There are also a few moments in the song where he seems to be like alluding to his own humble origins, you know, to say, like, you know, I like if he says something about how he when he first started out, he didn't even know how to

spell Transylvania. Yeah, I think he's that He's ultimately pretty far from this vampire persona that he's. He's a He's a human being that's worked hard for what he has and now the upstarts are trying to drag him down. Yes, so he is taking the up eight. This match is on and in this song we also we learned that this is where we find out that t O and the the pot Stirring snooker journalist Miss Sullivan have conspired to get Billy and Maxwell so mad at each other

that the match will definitely happen. Let's see now, after this in the movie, there's a long sequence that I guess we don't need to get into because it's mostly just like backstory between Billy the Kid and t O. They're talking about how they met each other and how to is going to take Billy the Kid to the top. But I suffice to say that this whole section is cowboy themed and it takes place in some kind of windowless subterranean lounge with gold bar lights and rifles on

the wall. Yeah, they do a little target shooting. Um, it's it's it's interesting. Um And I was never sure if this was supposed to be Billy's flat or just a place they hang out, but it's it's it's it's their home turf at any rate, it's like the Cowboy hangout. Oh, now we should go to one of my favorite scenes in the whole movie. Actually, I don't know it's this might be my favorite scene in the whole movie. It's the one with Maxwell's father under the super table in

his house. Yes, this, I must have rewatched this scene about five times. It is I think the strangest scene and what it's ultimately a very strange movie. Um so to goes to Maxwell's house, which we're already seen parts of, to meet with him and propose this match between Maxwell and Billy. Um. So, you know, we already know that Maxwell's house is gloriously dark and decorated with portraits of Dracula.

But in this scene, it becomes apparent that Maxwell's father, who were told is the greatest snooker player to ever live, is himself an actual vampire, like a nos Faratu esque vampire, and he is perhaps it's hard to figure out exactly what this is supposed to be. He seems to be entombed within a glass casket that's topped with a black granite snooker table, which Randall Senior again, the entombed vampire uses to communicate from beyond the grave by like psychically

sinking balls on the table. Yes, he's like from beyond He's like it's like an Owegia board, but in the form of a snooker table, except without any bayze on it. It's like a stone toop snack table. It is a It is an alarmingly strange scene and it's played very serious, especially by Armstrong. He really brings a dramatic energy to this scene, where you like, he's very serious about about asking his father if this is a match that he should agree to, and then the balls move on their own,

and it's it's so shocking that TiO faints. Yes, it's oh, it's it's so good. Oh. Now what he proposes in this scene what the Vampire does? He says that whoever loses the match between Billy and Randall will agree to never play professional snooker again. Yes, yeah, And he's like, what do you think of that? Father? And then the ball just like shoots across the table and sinks. Oh, it's so good. This is such a weird scene. I loved it so much. Now, of course we get some

more scenes with TiO and the Wednesday Man. The Wednesday Man loves this. TiO tries to resist because he's like, you know, Billy's young. What if he loses, he won't be able to play snooker again. We can't do it, but I think the Wednesday Man kind of pressures him into it somehow. He's like, oh, the wily old sheriff versus the brash young gunslinger. It has poetic overtones, he says, and then it's implied that he's going to fix the match somehow by making sure that Maxwell the Green Bays

Vampire will not be at his best. But he doesn't explain what he's going to do there, Right, it either comes out here or it comes out later that the Wednesday Man has money on the kid, so it seems that, okay, well, you know he's gonna he's gonna show fix it. He's gonna make sure that the kid is victorious against all the odds because that's how he's going to make so much bank. And here we get a lot of jungle. Yeah, yeah, that's right, Yes, a lot of green, a lot of jungle.

But from here we go on to a practice montage that's like a song where they're going practice, practice, practice, and miss Sullivan sings Billy the Kid and the Green Bays Vampire. And I really enjoyed this because it's showing like Maxwell practicing again in the Gotham Bank lobby and Billy is in Supersonic Sam's Arcade from Hell and they're getting ready for the big match. Oh and then we see Maxwell and Missus Randall riding to the game again

through a bank of green fog, motorcycle and sidecar. She's driving the motorcycle and he's like, you know, three feet down below from her, sitting with a scar fawn in the sidecar. Yeah, so many little touches like this, like they made the exactly the right choice, like if they if there was the other way around, it would not be as as memorable, so that this was wonderful. And from here, it just from here it turns into the game. Basically.

You know, every sports movie has to end with the big showdown, the big game for for the ultimate championship, and that is what happens here, though, of course, with plenty of musical interludes and supernatural accents. Yes, yeah, we

have that big number um about about Snooker. Uh, this is the one where he's like ah ah ah ah Snooker, what's the world in a frame Like it's just uh, it's like the enthusiasm for and and of course we have people in the audience from both sides, representing both competing sides of society, and you know they're either you know, they're cheering on their man, but everyone is an agreeance

that Snooker is great. Yes, and they each like you say, they each bring their own audiences, So they're rooting for Billy the Kid is a is a gaggle of disaffected working class youth from Supersonic Sam's Cosmic Cafe. And then on the other side, rooting for the Green Bay's Vampire are a bunch of upper class blue bloods and their fur coats and things. Yeah, so they each have their entrances.

You know, it's very grandiose, a little bit professional wrestling perhaps, But once the theatrics are out of the way, once everybody's had their sort of pro wrestling esque introduction, is time to get down to those seventeen frames that will decide the fate of our hero and our villain. Well, now here, I guess we got to explain maximum break. Yes, so this is not something I knew about going in. But basically, somebody has to break in a que game.

You know, they have to hit the que ball and sort of break up the mass of balls and get things moving. But here's something that can happen in snooker. If you start sinking balls right pretty much right away, and you keep sinking balls, the person who does who breaks, who begins the game, can finish the entire game, scoring all the points without the other player ever actually approaching the table, right, And I think the amount of points you can possibly get is variable depending on like what

order you sink things in. Because again they were doing that thing where every time he sunk a red ball, they pulled the black ball back out and he could sink that again. I think, I think that's right. Snooker players, you right in the details here. It doesn't really matter, it doesn't really matter. But yes, the Green Bay's Vampire just runs the entire game and Billy never gets to touch the touch the balls. Right. Yeah, this is what's

called a maximum break. It's it's like the highest break possible. It's a flawless victory. And I was reading about this, it's pretty fascinating. During the nineteen eighties, these were apparently far less common, something like only eight maximum breaks occurred in professional play that entire decade. I don't think that the actual snooker Dracula ever scored a maximum break in professional play, but it's it's become more common, as you know,

as often happened in recent years as in recent decades. Uh, and this happens with other games as well, Like the players just get better and better. And so nowadays, if you look at the scores and the rankings of of of professional snooker players, you'll find, you know, at least one maximum break in there often multiple maximum break sometimes a maximum break achieved at a very young age. Yeah.

We were looking at who's actually like on top of the snooker leaderboards in recent years, and h's there's a guy named Neil Robertson who I think was the most recent winner in twenty nineteen of the Snooker China Open, and we were wondering, Okay, is he this generation's Billy the Kid? I don't know, but he rob I think you looked at this up and found that he's had at least for maximum breaks. Yeah yeah, and again during the nineteen eighties there were only eight maximum breaks overall.

So the idea that Maxwell's coming into this game and scoring a maximum break on the first frame, I mean, it is indeed nothing short of supernatural vocation for the game. He is just completely destroying our hero. And I have to say it works so wonderfully cinematically because they just cut to each sinking of the ball, so you have this rhythm down of the que striking the ball, the ball, striking the ball and pocketing and they just wonderful, like

just rhythm of relentless victory. But then something else also happens. So not only is Maxwell playing well, like he's just getting these flawless victories one after another, he also I think I understood a little bit less what was happening here. It's implied that he uses his vampire powers to hypnotize Billy the Kid, so that when Billy the Kid actually does have a chance to play, he doesn't see any

balls on the table. I was unsure about this as well, because we also have like a wake up in the back room where they're like, wake up, you know you're behind. You got to get back out there. So I don't know if this is kind of like a mental dream sequence where he's just desparing that he's so far behind, and there's this idea, like there's this whole bit where he's like, where are the balls? I don't have any balls to play the game with, like they've all been sunk.

And you know, this is probably one of the more heavy heavy handed moments of social commentary in the picture, where it's like, you know that how are the kids supposed to achieve anything if if all the balls are being sunk by the upper class and by the older members of society, You know, is it any wonder that they're they're having to cower around the you know, the dismal light of their video games, because what else has

have you supplied them in this world? Right? I don't even get a chance to play, like, I can't even Yeah, um and uh. And there's also some some of the class war stuff between the audiences, like the disaffected working class youth and and the blue bloods like sing at each other and this song where they keep going quack quack quack. I don't think I fully understood what all that was, but it was amusing. And then of course we get the standard sports movie arc right, because there's

a dark Knight of the soul Billy. The kid is like as far down as he can possibly be. If he screws up one more time, the entire thing has gone. The green based Vampires won eight frames out of seventeen. But then he starts to mount a comeback and Russol builds up to a fantastic ending. Yes, I love everything about this ending. So yeah, Maxwell has already busted out some what seemed like mild psychic snooker powers during one

of the musical numbers. So we're not sure if we're supposed to take those literally or not, you know, but basically, yeah, the kid has mounted a full comeback and finally we're down to the very last ball, and if the kid pockets this ball, then he actually wins, then he will be victorious. And so Maxwell's watching on. Billy hits the ball and writes it's about to go into the pocket.

Maxwell's eyes glow like this, this ghostly white color with maybe a hint of purple, and he reaches out and he psychically freezes the ball above the hole, keeping it from being sunk. And I was like, is this is this in line with snooker rules or not? Is this addressed? No, it's not addressed. But he's he's using his vampire powers to prevent it from happening, to prevent the victory from

taking place. So what does Billy the Kid do? He pulls out his six shooter, aims at first at at Maxwell, at at our green Bay's vampire, but then points it at the ball. The psychically held ball shoots the ball, which pockets it. Pockets the ball and then he wins the whole thing and we get this one last shot of Maxwell the Green Bay's Vampire eyes glowing, face scowling. It's pretty great. I guess you did have alligators living in your bath after all. Yeah, I mean it again.

You're left with a lot of questions about about this movie. I mean, it's a it's a movie that is existing in its own reality, I guess, but but is trying to say some serious things about about the real world as well. Well, that's it, Billy the kidd in the Green Bay's Vampire Again, I will stress officially one of the weirdest movies we have ever watched for the show. Yeah, I think our second musical, our first sports movie, and I have to say, I think it's one of my

favorite musical films. Now you know, I'm putting it on the list. It's okay, it doesn't take the place of Rocky Horror in my heart, but it's it's up there. It's got to be top five, huh. I've never tried to make a ranks list, so I don't know where it would go. But I did very much enjoy it. I've actually really liked both of the musical as we watched for this show. This and Ship of Monsters are

are both absolutely delightful. I think one of the things is is that if you have characters singing on the screen, singing their lines and using music to to relate their you know, their internal experience, then um, you know, you're already in kind of a weird place. You're already in a place of unreality. So you can do so many other things and get away with it. Yeah, you can have ridiculous monsters. You can have um, strange vampire powers

that are not you know, fully explained or understood. What a coincidence? Do you recall now that Ship of Monsters also had late arc revelations of vampire powers. Yeah, we didn't know at the beginning what was going on. Vampire powers revealed after the halfway point. Man, I guess I mostly like vampire themed or vampire esque musicals. That's that's my area of interest. All right, Well we're going to go ahead and call this one again. The film is Billy the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire seems to

be available anywhere you buy or rent digital movies. It's on two by so you can watch it there. If two Bees a thing. There's a DVD of the film, but I don't believe it's been released on Blu Ray at least not yet, and again sadly no soundtrack releases. This is one where I would like to see some interviews about like how this happened and what the production was like, Yeah, because I mean they it's it's snooker, Like how many of these guys like were super snooker fans.

Did they have to train? They had snooker advisors on the on the set, on the you know, they were part of the crew. So I just wonder how all of this came together such a strange film. It doesn't look like they're using snooker stunt doubles. It looks like the actors are actually shooting the shots. Yeah, and so I would be This is again where I'd love to hear from actual snooker enthusiasts out there, like, uh, you know, how do how do the actors look in this? Do

they look like they knew what they were doing? I always love to ask my wife about this regarding actors riding horses, because I'm kind of blind to it, and I'll ask this guy really know how to ride? A horse. Does she really know how to ride a horse? And my wife will be like, oh yeah, yeah this this person's ridden before, this person really took some lessons for this, or oh boy, they just stuck that person on a

horse and hope for the best. But in this I mean, to my eye, like Alan Armstrong looks, you know, very intimidating when he is he's making his shots. That it's I buy it completely. I don't know if the experts out there would feel the same. Maybe that took the place of the singing audition. Yeah, they just do a

little snooker tryout. Oh that reminds me of one little bit that I read from an interview with Alan Armstrong where he said that author Miller, the playwright, cast him in a play once without seeing him act first, just having some drinks with him and telling him that no, he didn't need to see him act. He knew he would be good because he quote had a peasant's face. He was that he was sick of casting actors with like I guess like movie star good looks. Oh he's

playing against type in this one. Yeah, anyway, good, great performances all around. Yeah, I loved this one. So I Yeah, I recommend it to anyone out there who's who's it all? Interested in snooker, vampires or musicals the subterranean life? Yes, all right as usual If you want to check out other episodes of Weird House, Cinema comes out every Friday

in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science podcast, but on Friday's we set aside, set aside most serious matters and just discuss a weird film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. 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. Stuff to Blow Your

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