Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Weird House Cinema, we're going to be talking about the nineteen sixty two fantasy adventure The Magic Sword starring Basil Rathbone, directed by bert I. Gordon, the director of another film we've covered on Weird House Cinema at least one other. Gordon was
the director of Attack of the Puppet People. Also known as Mister Big Big his initials, he was well known for shrinking and blowing up things in his movies, either making little things big or making big things little, and we get some of both in this one.
That's right. One of the things about The Magic Sword from nineteen sixty two is that it is a special effects spectacular. You're gonna there's so many special effects coming at you, some of them very noticeable and and others you can easily take for granted, especially today, where you know various things like, for instance, the magic mirror that
we see in the movie. You know, it's an impressive special effect, and it's it's one of just many, many special effects that are used to create this magical world of love and happiness, but also horror and mutilation.
Now, Bert Eye Gordon was well known for making sort of low budget, B grade movies, movies that a lot of people would would call hack but or in many ways quite enjoyable. You know, the King Dinosaur and stuff like that, movies that ended up on Mystery Science Theater three thousand.
As did this one.
I've actually never seen that episode, but this, from what I understand, is widely regarded as one of his best movies, and I can see why it it has it still has some of the hallmarks of his other stuff. Like it has some i would say, texturally or tonally inappropriate special effects that actually do look pretty good, but they
don't fit the vibe of the movie. Like the movie is ostensibly, you know, sort of a fun, magical adventure almost maybe aimed at a younger audience, aimed at kids, but it also has just absolutely unnerving, almost perverse gore in it.
Yeah, I would compare it in a way to Peter Jackson's King Kong in that respect. You know, moving made by you know, a consumant pro somebody that also had a great lot of experience with the special effects creating a film that is aimed at a very wide audience, very mainstream audience, but ends having some moments of just
extreme horror or well, I don't know. In the case of The Magic Sword, it might be a bit much to say extreme horror, but still are that does seem maybe a little out of pace with the rest of the picture, and seems to have been out of pace at the time. I mean, there were some seemingly strong reactions to this. I was reading that upon initial release the British Film Board gave it an X rating. They right, No,
you were not having any of this. And later, you know, some things get adjusted and it comes out.
It's kind of like if you imagine Disney's The Sword and the Stone, but if it included a lot of close ups of nights being melted by acid and radiation.
Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah, And in that, you know, radiation is a hallmark of other bird Eye Gordon pictures and that element is at least visually present in this that nobody's calling it radiation.
But another one of the things that I would single out this movie for is it has some deliciously hammy performances especially the ones from Estelle Wyndwood and Basil Rathbone as the two main sorcerers in the movie, they are hamming it up. It's some all time ham here.
Yeah, a lot of other bird Eye Gordon films don't necessarily have as strong of human performances, and this is a film that really has the human special effects at least in a couple of roles to match up with the the the actual special effects. So yeah, I think it is a really solid, enjoyable picture, and yeah, it is often sided just one of Burnye Gordon's best.
Now, I'm trying to think, have we done another high fantasy movie on weird house with like knights and wizards and stuff like that is the closest we've come to that, Krull.
Oh, well, I mean we did Crawl. I mean you you could. You could also think of another sword. You can think of a thrilling, bloody sword, though that's a little bit different. We of course did Conquest, uh so uh, and I imagine I'm forgetting one or two. But you know, we do touch in on the the epic fantasy of different shades now and again.
Yeah, that's a I guess all of those have elements of this, so so I would say all of the weird grotesque texture aside, which makes this movie wonderful. Just in terms of straight plot content, this is the most down the middle high fantasy we've done, and.
Yet there are a number of just real bonkers elements to it that are going to be fun to get into, like just in terms of like, yeah, like the textures are all sort of traditional mainstream fantasy, but some of the things that the screenplay does with it I ended up really admiring. All right, So what would your elevator pitch be for the magic sword?
Oh? Can I not do sword in the stone? But with radiation melting? I guess we already said that. Let's see, that's.
Olid, we can stick with it, stick with what works.
Let me try another one. Let's say George A an adventurous young lad of only twenty years old fus It's debatable in the movie whether he is supposed to be understood as a child or not. At the age of twenty, he falls in love with the princess without ever having met her. He just like observes her through magical TVs of various sorts. Then she is kidnapped by a wizard and he must come to her rescue and brave seven perils and curses along the way, and it's gonna be gross.
The curses are all amazing. The titular magic sword is probably the fakest looking thing in the whole picture. Yeah, so it is kind of weird that, like, that's the selling point. And the poster says the most incredible weapon ever wielded.
So funny because yeah, it does not look incredible. It's one of the least good props and effects in the movie. It looks very flimsy, very plastic. It's the sword is kind of lame.
Its special power is set manipulation, and it fails halfway through the picture.
Yeah, yeah, that is funny. It has the power to open doors. Wow. But you know what I do like. I like a version of the sword that completely misrepresents what it's like in the movie. The I think it's either the Italian or the Spanish poster for the movie La Spada Magica that makes the sword look really cool.
Oh yeah, it's glowing. I don't think it ever really glows like this. And you also have a great image, a great drawing of Basil Rathbone has Lodak in the background, looming large.
All right, should we do some trailer audio.
Let's do that trailer audio.
I am Sir George, possessor of a magic saw, my his powers. I will lead you on the sun great adventure.
Each one might hear the leon.
Together we will go where no man has ever gone, into the land of terror itself, where the superman of evil is king. Let no man race my seven cousins and reached the dragons. Together we will dare the demon of the green Flame. See the white hot face of the fiery rock. Enter the mammoth cave that closes behind you, where humans are trapped and tombed. Brave the volcanic inferno of the boiling crater. See the miracle of the magic Sword. Battle the gigantic ogre.
Ah.
You will be thrilled to the hill by the magic sword. None like it since the world began two thousand year old legend Hollywood waited until now to tell the Magic Sword.
All right, So you might be wondering at this point, well, where can I watch the magic Sword? Well, it is, at first glance, widely available. You know you can. You can find the mst through K version. I think Riff Tracks did a version of it. You know, usual caveats on on riff content. You know, it's like it can be a lot of fun and so forth, but you're are going to lose some scenes, especially in the MST
three K episodes. And I have to say, even though this one looks like it's streaming everywhere, I initially like marked it to stream on a on a prime channel. I went and queued it up, started watching it terrible quality. I ended up having to watch it kind of like
last minute. I found a YouTube stream that was in higher death and so I have to say my main recommendation for watching The Magic Sword is make sure you watch it in as good a quality as possible, because again, this is a special effects film, and if you watch it in high depth, it looks really nice, has some wonderful colors and textures to it, and that's just lost in the grated version. I would recommend grabbing it on physical media. Kale Studio Classics put it out on Blu Ray.
I think that's probably the way to watch it. If you can find an official stream that's good quality, great, but it looks like a lot of them are not.
Yeah, I agree, there are a lot of kreuddy rips out there.
All right, Well, let's get into the cast and crew here, or some of the highlights of the cast and crew. As usual, we can't highlight everybody that made the picture happen, but yeah, starting at the top, Bird Eye Gordon, director, producer, story credit, special visual effects, along with his wife, I believe, and he lived nineteen twenty two through twenty twenty three, the legendary mister Big, as we've been saying, an icon
of nineteen fifties B cinema. His earliest credit is producer on fifty four Serpent Island, and he moved on into the director's chair and the writing chair with his follow up, fifty five's King Dinosaur. We talked about him a greater length than our episode on the fifty eight film Attack
of the Puppet People. Other films of note include the amazing Collossal Man from nineteen fifty seven that I think we absolutely will do if we get a proper release of it and I can watch it in decent quality Earth Versus a Spider from fifty eight, Village of the Giants from sixty five, an Empire of the Ants from seventy seven.
Did we ever figure out what's going on with the rights to Amazing Colossal Man, Like why is there not a good Blu Ray of that?
I don't know the answer I checked in. I haven't checked in recently on it either, so it's entirely possible something's been announced and I haven't missed it. I try and pay attention to the various channels and so forth that would announce this sort of thing, but sometimes it slips through. I have no idea, Like Amazing Colossal Man is such a tremendously fun movie that it needs to have a proper Blu Ray release, and I don't know
what's holding that back. Far lesser films are getting elaborate Blu Ray releases.
Agreed, And I do want to emphasize again I sort of said this up top, but despite Bird Eye Gordon's reputation and the dullness of some of his other movies, this one is I would say this is a well made film like it just it's got energy. It just zips right along, and it's fun even if you're not in it. For the weirdness of the texture is the way that we are. I think you're probably not going to be bored by this one.
Yeah, the plot moves right along, and yeah, we have to give credit. Screenplay credit to Bernard see Schoenfeld, who lived nineteen oh seven through nineteen ninety American screenwriter. His first screen credit state back to nineteen forty four's Phantom Lady.
His other credits include fifty eight The Space Children. That was one directed by Jack Arnold, who've talked about on the show before, and he did a lot of TV work, including sixteen episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and one episode of The twilight Zone from Agnes with Love about a computer technician who begins to take advice from a computer that he has fallen in love with.
Wait, is that the original Twilight Zone? Oh that's original?
Yeah, yeah, I should stress that because I know there have been like thirty or four different iterations of the twilight Zone at this point. This was original Twilight Zone and also original Alphad Hitchcock Presents, because there were at least two different versions of that as well.
I guess I didn't realize they were doing fall in love with the computer stories back then.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean the various sci fi writers and horror writers of the time, like a lot of that stuff was. It still holds up today, at least from a plot and script standpoint. Yeah, so yeah, on the whole, I love the weird energy and the interwoven schemes in this picture. We'll get into all that again. It depends on a lot of the textures of traditional old timey fantasy films and likely swashbuckling fantasies as well.
But I'm just not that up on But the plotting feels pretty fresh and at times really bonkers.
It does bring just like warm jets of zaniness that just keep coming in anew. There are multiple things in the movie that, you know, I almost kind of wonder if they were actually in the script, or if it was in the original draft of the script, or if it was just like bird Eye Gordon Floor Gordon saying we can do this kind of effect. What if we had some people trapped in a tiny cage, you know, what if we had this or that and they just wanted to show it to you.
So here it is. Yeah, and this is the guy who figured out how to weave all that together into a coherent plot, because yeah, it has like all of these things, like it seems like he maybe had a checklist to work with.
Yeah, yeah, we've already done the attack of the puppet people. Let's just put some puppet people in.
There, people giants of some sort. Yeah, all right, let's get into the cast here. As we mentioned, oh, we have the wonderful Basil Rathbone in this playing the evil and vain wizard Lodac. We talked about Rathbone before. He lived eighteen ninety two through nineteen sixty seven, South African born English actor with a very long history on stage
and screen. He popped up in sixty six is Queen of Blood, but I have to say, yeah, yeah, he was in it, but very forgettable because he It's difficult to compare that Basil Rathbone to this Basil Rathbone because we get like full powered, you know, hamming it up Basil Rathbone in this picture, and what we saw in Queen of Blood was a lot more subdued.
I truly did not remember he was in that. I remember Dennis Hopper more than him.
Yeah, yeah, I don't think rath I think ratt was one of those pictures where Rathbone did his stuff in like one or two days. He's just an ultimately very small role in the picture. But in this, I mean he's in almost every scene.
He's in some scenes he's not in in this.
Yeah, yeah, his energy resonates through the picture. But yeah, I'm not going to get in all the details, but yeah. He started appearing in films during the early twenties, often in Swashbuckler's always you know, Buckling that swash. He stayed active on stage, won a Tony Award in nineteen forty eight, and he was nominated for two Oscars I Believe nineteen thirty nine's If I Were King and a nineteen thirty seven adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. He also had a
big footprint in horror and detective series. He played Sherlock Holmes multiple times, and he played Baron von Wolf in nineteen thirty nine Son of Frankenstein, the third Universal Frankenstein film, with Carloff and Bella Legosi.
I feel like Rathbone was sort of on the second tier of the great horror stars. If you have like Karloff and Legosi at the very top, that the level under that is where Rathbone hangs out.
Yeah. So yeah, tremendous talent, and again we get to see him firing on all cylinders in this picture. Very energetic performance, just captivating. And also, you know something that I think is always admirable when you have an actor of this caliber is that he does seem to bring a little extra out of the other players in their shared scenes.
Oh yeah, yeah, in every scene he's in, it feels like the other actors are having fun with him.
Absolutely, And I would say some of the most fun we have is when you have has interactions with our next actor, and that's Estelle Wynwood, who plays Sybil, the which foster mother of our hero, Sir George.
She has her own kind of excellent handiness. So Rathbones Hamminess is, Yeah, like you said, he's this arrogant, vain, you know, pompous wizard who's who's just like can't stand to have his ego pricked. Meanwhile, Stelle Winwood's sorceress is she's like very checked out. She's almost like half of her brain is not on this plane of existence.
Yeah. Well, she's been raising this twenty year old boy all by herself, and she doesn't get a lot of help from the chimpanzee or the the conjoining twins or two headed I'm not sure exactly what's going on with that character. But these these folks are not helping her out a lot around the house. And clearly, as we'll discuss Sir George, it's is a lot to handle. And yeah, so she she can't have she doesn't have her head
in her scheme all the time. And it's you know, it's also established early on, like she's not the best witch or wizard in the world. You know, Lodak is a towering figure and she rates you know, a good bit down the list. But still she's a good witch ultimately. But she's not afraid to get her hands a little.
Dirty, that's right. Well, unlike Lodak, she has the power of love in her corner.
That's right. So. Stelle Winwood lived eighteen eighty three through nineteen eighty four English actress of stage, screen and TV, who had a very long and celebrated history career here in the US. She made her Broadway debut in nineteen sixteen. In her first film roles in the early nineteen thirties, but some of her biggest, most memorable films were from the fifties and sixties, including nineteen fifty nine's Darby O'Gill
and the Little People. She plays the mom of the town bully pony, who of course gets into at least a couple of punch ups with Sean Connery. I've never seen that. It's it's tremendous fun. I mean, Stell was great in it, and then everyone else is great, and it's it's just a really fun, you know, old timey Irish fantasy film.
You've brought it up before as the I think in the context of being a pre Bond Sean Connery.
Yeah, yeah, I highly recommend it. It's great Saint Patrick's Day viewing in my opinion, or at least you know, I grew up watching it on Saint Patrick's.
Day anyway, Okay, I'll have to see it sometime.
But Winwood was also in nineteen sixty four's Dead Ringer, sixty seven's Camelot as well as the producers both two huge films in sixty seven, and her final film role was in nineteen seventy six, is Murdered by Death. Like I said, when it comes down to interactions between Sybil and Lodac, they're so much fun. Even when they're not actually in the same space at the same time. They have a wonderfully spicy interaction just via closed circuit magic mirror at one point.
Yeah, exactly, despite the fact that, I mean, this is a silly movie and it's hard to get too wrapped up in the you know, in the battle of good and evil in the plot here. But nevertheless, I did find her defeat of Lodak at the end of the movie very satisfying.
Yes, absolutely, all right, let's move on to Sir George, who again Sybil has been raising as her foster son, played by Gary Lockwood born nineteen thirty seven. Former stuntman and stand in for Anthony Perkins. He's probably best remembered as doctor Frank Poole in nineteen sixty eight two thousand and one A Space Odyssey. You know, we've talked before about actors from two thousand and one A Space Odyssey kind of like classing up the joint in pictures. We
talked about that in Gorgo right. I don't know, I don't quite get the same effect with Lockwood's presence here. This one man he plays he plays a real goober, a lovable goober, and a young boy of twenty He was actually I think twenty four to twenty five filmed old. Yeah, and then there are other weird We'll get into some of the other weird aspects about his character. What sort of home environment he has here in this Witch's Layer.
I mean, it's weird, but it's kind of sweet.
Yeah, yeah, he's sweet. He's sweet anyway. Lockwood had a memorable guest role in the third episode of Star Trek, the original Star Trek, the episode where No Man Has Gone Before from nineteen sixty six. I believe he's a
crew member who gets possessed by an alien force. His other credits include sixty one Splendor in the Grass, the nineteen sixty three Elvis movie It Happened at the World's Fair, nineteen sixty nine's Model Shop, in nineteen ninety five's Night of the Scarecrow, also in the nineteen sixty one Elvis movie Wild in the Country.
Wait, what happened at the World's Fair?
It?
What was it?
I don't know, you know. I meant to reach out to my aunt to who's an expert on all these Elvis movies, and ask her about these two and find out if these are good ones or not. I had not heard of either of them, but I didn't get the chance to reach out to her, So I have to pick up the thread on that in listener mail.
I'm just gonna choose to believe the Elvis movie It Happened at the World's Fair is about the HH Holmes murders.
Yeah, I'm sure that's it. All right, we have we've been talking about Sir George. Of course he's gonna he's fallen in love with the princess. The princess is Princess Elaine, played by Anne Hilm born nineteen thirty eight. Her biggest film was probably the nineteen sixty two Elvis movie again, follow that Dream, And I cannot tell you what the dream in question is, but this is a movie about
following it. She's also in the nineteen sixty nine horror film Nightmare in Wax, starring Cameron Mitchell as the mad wax Master. This one I have seen. This is how my movie viewing history tends to go.
I think we talked about this one in our episode on wax. Well, we did an episode on like the science of wax, but then also talked about wax horror movies.
Yeah, this is one that fels very grimy and sweaty. I remember a lot of close ups of Cameron Mitchell's face looking kind of sweaty.
He's got an eye patch in it.
Yeah, this is the one where he has an eye patch. Not the best Wax movie, but still very much an important entry in the wax Master franchise.
It's hard to beat Vincent Price's House of Wax.
Yeah, that's the absolute best.
Now, maybe we should save this for later, but I just want to say it now so I don't forget. I feel like we should do a compare and contrast on Vincent Price versus Basil Wrathbone, because I feel like they have a lot of qualities but also some hard to define differences that are nevertheless important.
Hmmm, well, yeah, I feel like Vincent Price was better at conveying kind of like the the internal mechanisms of his scheming, you know, whereas wrath Bone, especially in this there is a sense that he's he's not considering you much at all. Like his enemies, He's very dismissive of their abilities, you know. That's his level of vanity and arrogance, at least as he plays it up in this character.
And I feel like in you know, certainly Vincent Price could play some vain and evil characters but there was always a sense that no, he wasn't he wasn't underestimating you per se. He was thinking long and hard about your various strengths and weaknesses.
I think that's right. Yeah, that's very astute. I would say if Vincent Price had been in this role, I think you would have played it a little bit colder and would you would have seen him taking the stock of George and his allies more than just kind of, you know, batting at them like a gnat that's bothering him.
Yeah, he would have seen Sybil as more of a rival and not as an ant. He seems to see everyone as just mere pieces on the chessboard.
Oh but hey, Basil Rathbone is not the only bad guy in this movie. We actually get multiple Hammi villains.
That's right. We have Sir Brandon, who is a romantic rival for the princess's heart and a seemingly brave knight at first, but we get a series of twists that reveal that no, he's not here to make friends, he's not here to play fair. He'll do whatever it takes. He's here to kick you in the acid, Yes, kick you in the button, make you fall on the Acid, played by Liam Sullivan, who lived nineteen twenty three through
nineteen ninety eight. Yeah, very very fun character, and the performance here provides I think, a nice dry counterpoint to Lodac. You know, like you're not gonna have You can't have two villains that are going for that level of hammed up villainry. This is the right level for your secondary villain.
Yeah, I guess you're right about that. I did identify him also as a hammy performance, but it's in a different way than Basil Rathbone, not at the same level, and it has a different quality. It's more kind of sneering. It has a sneering, snidely whiplashiness to it.
Yeah. Yeah, still solid villain for sure. Sullivan was an American actor of TV and film. I'd say mostly TV. He did episodes of Star Trek Original, Twilight Zone, Original Man from Uncle, and his film credits include sixty Five's That Darn Cat, eighty four is What Waits Below, and the nineteen eighty six film Wisdom all Right. The next character is credited as Mignonette. I don't remember if they call her this in the film. She's a seducer, a witch. We find out some sort of a hag creature.
The false magical mask of a witch that is used to seduce a knight who is French. And they explain this in the plot. They're like, well, he's French, you know, so he's into pretty ladies. So she is the pretty lady form of the evil witch who wants to bite his neck and I don't know, drink his blood maybe, I'm not sure.
Blood blood there for sure. Yeah, And she falls into some of the other schemes of Lodak as we see. But she's played by Nielle de Metz born nineteen thirty eight, French born actress who worked in American film and television. She appeared in nineteen fifty nine's Return of the Fly, which you know, if you haven't seen, you might remember from the Misfits song, and she had a small part
in Blake edwards nineteen sixty eight film The Party. Mostly active in the sixties and seventies, she was nominated for an Emmy for a special guest part on The Man from Uncle in nineteen sixty four.
I don't believe I've seen Return of the Fly. Does she become a fly?
I don't know. I just I haven't seen it either, have just seen stills in which a fly headed man is approaching her and she is screaming. Well, so, I don't know if she's like the main heroine of the picture or if she's just like an early victim. I'm not entirely certain, but there are a number of stills of her in the picture.
Nobody likes to get cornered by a flyhead guy at a party?
No, absolutely not all right? And then finally, the score is by Richard Markowitz, who lived nineteen twenty six through nineteen ninety four. Emmy nominated composer best known for his work on such TV shows as Murder. She wrote Mission Impossible, though I knew do need to stress that he did not write the theme music for either of these series. He's the father of singer Kate Markowitz, who also worked as a backup singer for such artists as James Taylor,
Randy Newman, Katie Lang, and Warren Zevon. Her two thousand and three solo album was Map of the World. But as far as as Richard Markowitz's work goes, there are plenty of places in this score that are very traditional highlighting either like the sweeping mainstream drama of the thing or some nutty high jinks, nutty magical hijinks. But it
also gets weird and I believe electronic at times. There's some nice suspense in a later cave scene, and there's this wonderful Sibylis cooking sequence that features an absolutely bonkers track full of bleeps and bloops and monster croaking. It's fabulous.
Yeah, there's a nice mix of things. So in the traditional end, we've got the you know, the King of the Castle horns bump bump, bump, bump bump kind of stuff, and then we've also, yeah, in the funny scenes, we've got plenty of doom do Doom do doom. But I know what you're talking about with the experimental moments. Yeah, I liked those parts.
Yeah, all right, Well let's jump into the plot of the Magic Sword.
All right, Well after the credits. The credits just are pretty straightforward. They're like red credits playing over a painted backdrop that looks like Saint George slaying the Dragon, which I suppose is loosely the inspiration for this movie, but I would place emphasis on loosely. The action opens with a shot of a witch's layer So there's a bubbling cauldron and a table with a polished human skull as
a centerpiece, and it's all saturated in red light. This movie really likes the red gel lights, especially in Sibyl's sort of fortress of magic.
Oh yeah, she has so many red gels going in there. It's like a dark ring. You would think, yeah, she's developing an Eastern Kodak film in there or something.
So we pan up and we meet Estelle Winwood as Sybil the Sorceress. She's wearing kind of a sorceress dress with like the big dangly open sleeves, and she's got jewels around her neck and all that. She looks very magical, and she's talking to herself. She says, he's gone again. What good is my sorcery if I can't help my own boy? Answer me someone? So like, who's there to answer? Well,
we're going to pant around the room and see. First of all, we've got a chimpanzee dressed in a red tunic and a leather belt who's sitting at a chair at the dinner table here. He has no input, He's just sitting there scratching his head. And then Sybil says, he's not fooling me. I know where he is. He's
at the magic pool again. Now commenting on that, we suddenly hear from Sybil's other I don't know, like her coworker or friend or help her here, which is a two headed man who's two heads say simultaneous lee, love is his curse. He is in love?
Now.
One thing I noticed about the two headed man here is that the way that the two heads here they behave in a way that sort of defeats the purpose of imagining this, this creature with two heads, because they always say the exact same thing at the exact same time in unison.
Yeah, yeah, Well, I assume that they've just worked together for a very long time and it just had to They had had to come together in agreeance on a number of things here, because we don't know the origin of this character or characters, I mean, she might have made them through her sorcery at some point or another.
I guess.
So.
Yeah, Sybil says, yes, I've tried to cure him of this love? Why have I failed? Am I losing my skill as a sorceress? Doesn't my witchcraft cure snake bites chill Blaines, carbuncles, pink eye, hangnails, and unhappy memories. And I'd love to imagine who is coming to sibyls like red Witch Cave and the chimpanzee and saying I have pink eye.
I feel like the movie kind of like cut to the chimp when she said pink eye, and it was like implyed that, like this chimp is just can pink eye like crazy, like every week having to cure this chimp with pink eye.
But her two headed friend here assures her, yes, her powers are still strong, so why can't she cure her son George of his love infection. She sort of argues with the two headed guy about this that they say George is a man and he's human, so you know he's going to fall in love, but she says he is not a man. He is only twenty years old, which means he is still a child. She obviously does
not approve of his decision to grow up. At first, I didn't understand what this whole thing about, like her repeatedly asserting that a twenty year old is a child. But I think it's because she is an immortal sorceress who is I think she says four hundred and twenty years old, So compared to that lifespan, it's like, oh, yeah, he is a child.
Yeah, yeah, he should not get the keys to the car until he's like at least sixty five.
So meanwhile, we go to meet George at the magic pool that Sybil was talking about. So he's leaning over the water's edge, the water's bubbling, and he starts begging, begging the water to show him the princess. So first we see a castle, and then we cut inside the castle to the throne room, where like the whole court, the king is sitting there on the throne holding his scepter, wearing his crown, and then everybody in the court is gathered and they're just watching a belly dancer perform. Yeah,
nothing going. Princess is not there. Everybody's just like a good show.
Good. I mean, he apparently spends a lot of time just watching, spying on the castle so that he can see the princess that he's in love with. Yeah, this is our first hint at like the idea that George's whole upbringing is just weird, Like he's he's grown up in this magical crypt. He has access to all of this, you know, privacy defying, magical pools and mirrors and so forth, and then gets fixated on people he's never met.
That's right, and the privacy violations get worse because he's like, all right, she's not in the throne room. Show me the pond in the palace garden where yep, that is where she is. In fact, she's bathing in the pond there with her lady in waiting, hanging out and like, dude, respect the princess's privacy please, But you know he's just watching. Yeah, yeah, so this is Princess Helene. She gets out and starts talking to her lady in waiting, and she's talking about
how she's upset with her situation in life. She's like, you know, even though I'm a princess, I'm unhappy because I'm not allowed to fall in love. Essentially, she can't even speak to a man, she can't meet people or talk to them. She's sort of like kept away apart from the world in a tower. And she tells her lady in waiting, quote, you can do whatever you please, fall in love, fall out again, a squire one day, a stable boy the next, and the lady in waiting
does not take offense to this. She's like, it's the cost of being a princess. But suddenly a voice calls out. Oh, it's like a ghostly, otherworldly voice. It says Princess Helene. And she looks around and then sees the kind of insubstantial figure moving toward her. It's like the figure of a lady with a green veil over her head, some kind of fairy like queen. And this lady is coming toward her, and she says, Princess, I'm going to take care of you, and then her eyes flash green and
I don't think we ever see this lady again. Do we have no idea who she is?
Yeah, I mean presumably it is some sort of agent of Lodac, but not someone that is named or featured later. This is also a great scene where the ghost is coming right at the camera, right out at the audience. And there are a number of moments like this in the picture, because again, this is all about special effects. It's about thrilling the audience and so Bert's come and ride at you.
This movie would have been a great candidate for three D. I mean, I'm kind of glad it's not three D because I enjoy it in the two D format, but it has a lot of stuff coming at you. Could have been a three D option for sure. So anyway, George witnesses this magical fairy abduction of the princess through his magical spy pool. He jumps up and he shouts Helene. Then he runs back home to Sybil and explains that the princess is in danger and he's got to go
rescue her at once. But Sybil is very dismissive of this. Her points are the following, You're only a boy, You're not old enough to be in love. You can't be in love with somebody you only saw in a magic pool and have never met. That's a good point, and also just basically, like I love is silly. But I guess they're like, well, we'll get some more information. So she takes George over to her magic mirror, which is
yet another long range magical surveillance device. And this sad me wondering, wait, why did George have to go use the magic pool if they've got magic mirror at home?
You know, I guess it's like sometimes you know, you have like two TVs in the household, you know, perhaps so the dad can watch football and the kids can watch cartoons. It's like she has witching stuff she needs to do. She can't have George in the way spying on princesses the whole time.
She's got to call into her sorceress Zoom meetings. Yeah, so Sybil tunes into Throne Room TV and she sees the King, presumably done with his belly dancing session. He's talking to his court about his daughter's disappearance. Now in the scene, we're going to meet a couple of other major characters, Sir Branton and Lodak. Sir Branton we meet first.
He is this haughty, arrogant, goateed knight wearing a blue tunic with a blazing sun emblem over the top of his mail, and he explains to the King that Princess Helene cannot be found anywhere. And while they're in the middle of discussing what to do, suddenly a palace guard enters the throne room escorting Basil Wrathbone. Basil Wrathbone here is dressed in a black sorcerer's robe with a golden dagger at his belt. He's got a giant jewel encrusted
pendant on his chest. He's wearing a red and silver cloak with almost Santa CLAUSI implications. He's also wearing some kind of wound cloth head covering. I don't know if this technically is a turban or is supposed to be a turban, or if it's something else. Everything he's wearing pretty much has gold trim on it, and he just looks really smug.
Oh yeah, very smug, very colorful. Yeah, it's a fabulous presentation and just absolute confidence oozing off of them. Here.
The guard is like, we found him skulking on the castle grounds. He won't speak, and Sir says there are means to make him speak. So I love that Branton is going straight to suggesting torture with no information whatsoever on the sky. But also, look at him. This guy is going to speak. You can look at him and know he's about to speak. You don't need to worry about him not speaking.
Also, I'm gonna have to ding the script here, or at least the way the script was performed, because this is not a character that has ever skulked in his life. This is no sculptor. I think you mean to say vainly awaiting his audience with the king.
Yeah, you skulking, I think requires a down a downturned angle of the head, like you know, the head is sort of down, but this guy's chin has never even like been parallel with the ground. Right. So Basil raises his arms up. He stirs up some kind of magic. The lights go dim, thunder cracks, and he says, your most serene majesty, you can call off the search the princess. Your daughter is in my castle under lock and he So the king demands to know who this sorcerer is,
and he answers Loadak. So they know who this is. They know him by reputation. He is a bad sorcerer.
Yeah it's not Lodak the Great, the terrible. Just all you need to know is Lodak. It's great branding.
I don't know why, but I imagine I always imagine Lodak's name when I heard it here as an acronym, like it's all capital letters. I don't know what it stands for.
I mean, lord of damnation, and I don't know. Pick a sea word and you got it, I think.
So they ask him, you know, why did you kidnap the princess, and Lodak says, this is the quote. The answer is very simple. Your father executed my sister for witchcraft when she was only eighteen years old. I have waited until your daughter reached that age so that my dragon could relish the flesh of the princess. I don't know if that's very simple. It's moderately simple. I guess.
So Lodak has a dragon. He's going to feed the princess to the dragon to get revenge on the king's family, or so, he says.
Yeah, And I don't even know if we should believe him. This never comes up again. He doesn't seem to be dwelling on this too much, and Lodak doesn't seem like a sentimental type.
Yeah, it seems like if some king executed his sister for witchcraft, he'd be like, shouldn't have gotten caught. But in reaction to this, Sir Branton, he's coming out hot. He says, I'm not afraid of some warm eatn sorcerer. I'll come straight to your castle and rescue the princess. But then Lodak warns them all. He says, look, it's not hard to find my castle. It's right down the road. It's a week's journey from here, but between here and there you'll have to face Lodak's original recipe of seven
signature curses. No one has ever passed through all seven curses and survived. Then he explains that his dragon is going to eat the princess in seven days time, and he starts to show himself the door by the way he like. He turns and starts walking toward the door, toward the camera with his arms just raised up in the air, and then suddenly he changes course and then turns into a crow and flies away. That had me laughing out loud.
It's so showy, it's wonderful.
Also, right after this that I did a still frame. You can look out here Rob the King and Sir Branton, they have this look on their face, just like okay, but anyway, Sir Brandon, he's still saying he's going to save Helene. He says he does not care about the seven curses. For Helene, he would face seventy curses, and the King promises him that if he succeeds, he will receive half of his wealth and the princess's hand in marriage. Meanwhile, back in the Witch hole. George and Sybil have been
watching all this in the magic mirror. I kind of forgot about them while the scene was going on, but I guess we've been watching what they are watching. And George is not happy. He's mad. He does not want Sir Branton to save Helene. He does not want Sir Branton to marry Helene. He's the one who loves her, even though than never met. So he begs Sybil to let him go rescue the princess, and Sybil is like, nonsense, you are only a child. So here we're about to
get some backstory. First of all, we learned that three hundred years ago, Sybil's father and brother were eaten by Lodak's dragon, and they were excellent sorcerers, so Lodak is far too dangerous for them to face. She says, I fear him almost as much as I hate him. And after all, while Sybil is a sorceress who is hundreds of years old, George is a mortal and still a child. And we're also told that this is not framed as
a revelation. It's just more like, as you know, George, when you were only a week old, your royal parents died of the plague, and then I took you in and raised you as my own son. And we learned that Sybil has been a kind and loving mother to George, but being an ancient sorceress, she doesn't get him because he's mortal, so she doesn't really understand that humans are not children at the age of twenty.
Yeah, I mean, he's a difficult age right now. But on the other hand, it I think there's a lot of evidence to support the idea that Sybil has just had to do a lot of guess work in how to raise a boy, a mortal boy like he seems like maybe he hasn't been as exposed to like other kids, growing up into a wider world. He's had maybe a little bit too much access to magical items, and she's, as we'll see, you know, kind of spoiled him a
bit too. So again it makes for this George ends up being this very weird hero in this picture because you know, he doesn't have the same sort of origin story introjectory that you would expect of your Dragon Slayer character. He's lived a very privileged in many ways upbringing, but also a very there's been a lot of deprivation in his upbringing, it seems. Yeah.
Yeah. Also, this is where we get the scene where he's really he's moping. He's upset because of you know, her denials here, and then she tries to cheer him up by turning into a panther. But she doesn't do anything. It's not like she turns into a panther and I don't know, like spins plates on her head or something. She just is a panther. And then she's not.
That should be enough.
I can't do that, That's true. I can't either. What am I gainsaying this for? Yeah, okay, she turns into a panther and doesn't do anything, But that's that's pretty impressive. But he says, mother, not that trick again, Like she's like blowing raspberries on his belly or something. Anyway, this leads Sybil to take George on a She like takes him down into a kind of dungeon to show him the birthday presence she's going to give him next year
when he turns twenty one. And these presents include a magical white stallion called Bayard that is faster than any horse on earth, a magical suit of armor that cannot be pierced by any weapon, and a magic sword that has a name. I was trying to hear what I think it's called Escalon, which that sounds right, okay. Escalon defies all swords in battle, neutralizes black magic, and it can open or close any door, portcullis, or portal with a touch.
So basically, she's like, George, you're gonna be a level one character, but I have three legendary magical items for you. That's just right out of the gate. You're going to totally destroy these cobonts.
Yeah, he's a level one fighter with the with the Saber of Doors, I guess. Yeah. Oh. Also, George just starts like groaning with pleasure when he holds the magic sword. He's like, Oh, it feels like it's part of my own body. Also in the room, she just happens to mention these are not presented as part of his birthday presence.
It's just like, oh, yeah, those six night statues there against the wall, these are the six most valiant knights in the world, which were turned to stone by Sybil's brother, which makes me wonder, Wait a minute, was Sibil's brother a good sorcerer? Or a bad one.
Uh yeah, Yeah, it sounds like maybe he was the bad sort, because these are six noble knights that were evidently defeated, imprisoned, you know, made eternal servants of this Witchcraft family. Yeah. I think there's a lot to suggest that this is not a beneficial fate that was bestowed upon them.
But here George comes up with a clever trick. He manages to trick Sibyl into going down into an enchanted sub basement to I don't know what he did, just to go down there and look at it, I guess. And then as soon as she goes down ahead of him, he taps the stone trapdoor of the access to this basement and it closes behind her, trapping her inside. Now he's free to go save the princess.
Yeah, he said, barries his mama so that he can god and pursue his love.
Seems kind of cruel, Yeah, But also they do. I feel like they drop a few things to emphasize that, like, oh, she is an immortal sorceress, so it's not like she's gonna die of thirst down there or anything. But she still doesn't like it.
She's like, oh, you scamp.
So he then uses his sword to unfreeze the knights because I guess they were frozen by black magic. And we're going to meet all the knights in the next scene. But they wake up, and then there's one with a
French accent who is like, oh, thank you. But here we go straight to a scene another scene in the throne room room of the castle, where at the beginning of the scene it's just like a repeat of what we already saw, like Sir Branton is promising to rescue the princess, but at this point he kneels in front of the king he makes this solemn vow to rescue her, and the king is like, hmm, that's a strange ring with a picture of a dragon on it. Sir Branton, Well,
let's not pay any attention to that. They are interrupted by George, who is now calling himself Sir George. He barges into the throne room. He's dressed in his magical armor, he's got his magical sword, and he is accompanied by his six unfrozen cave men lawyer knights, and they all introduce themselves and show off their accents. So we've got and they're they're each like from a country of Europe. So the strange thing about this is it's not set
in like an alternate land. It's not you know, Middle Earth or something. It seems to be set in Christian Europe in Earth. So we have Sir Denis of France, they say, Dennis. I don't know if that would be Deni in real life, but Sir Denis of France, Sir Pedro of Spain, Sir Patrick of Ireland, Sir Anthony of Italy, Sir James of Scotland, and Sir Ulrich of Germany, and they all sort of like say a hello in their accents.
The German Knights. Sir Ulrich said he looks at the king and he's like mine Kaiser.
And that's actually the voice of Paul Freese, the noted voice actor who worked on such things as The Bullwinkle Show, The Last Unicorn and just tons of of of various animated shows of old like he was in you know, The Return of the King, The Flight of Dragons, you know, the Frosty Snowman specials and so forth.
Oh I did not know.
Yeah, yeah, he's a he's a frequent name and all of those.
Well, here we get some conflict because Sir George is he shows up, he stands next to Sir Branton. He's like, yeah, I'm also going to save the princess, and I'm also going to marry her. And Sir Branton doesn't like this. He tries to fight George. George doesn't want to draw his sword, so Branton strikes first, but just ends up shattering his sword on George's magical armor. And eventually the King he's he literally says, I like these knights. So he decides, well, they're all going to have to go
save the princess together. They'll have to work together, George, the six Knights, and the scheming creep Branton.
Yeah. The King sort of reminds them here that, like, actually the important thing is saving her from the wizard. We're getting a little sidetracked in the whole, like who should get to marry her things? Yeah.
Yeah. Meanwhile, at Lodak's castle, we are going to check in with the princess. Now, Princess Helene is being taken to her cell and there she meets a couple of other princesses who are sisters. And this scene sort of suggests that Lodak is running like a full time princess dragon feeding operation. Like he's processing incoming princesses on a bi weekly basis, so he always has some princesses in the hopper when he feeds the ones that have already
been there to the to the dragon. So I think he's like seasoning them in the dungeon while the dragon eats the ones that have been there already.
Yeah, and it also makes me wonder are there attached skins for these princesses as well that result in some sort of revenue income or magical item income. Yeah, it seems like a big operation because this is not some dusty old sorcerer. This man has a fabulous wardrobe, He has a big cut castle to upkeep, He has various pets and curses to take care of. You know, you gotta stay busy to keep that afloat.
It is indicated that that he asks for ransom. He doesn't for Princess Helene because he says that she is a special case. But what we're led to believe is that normally, yeah, he's got princesses coming in all the time, and he gets there, he gets their king fathers to pay money. So these princesses think that they're going to be fine because their father will pay the ransom required
to save them. Unfortunately, Lodac says their father did not pay up, and instead he sent a company of knights to rescue them, and the knights all died facing his seven curses. I have questions about this, like would there be an enough princesses to sustain this kind of operation indefinitely? Like how does Loadak not exhaust the supply of princesses at this rate?
I mean, maybe he's working internationally. We don't know, Like he's just in Christian Europe, Medieval Europe at this point, but maybe he's also jetting off to uh and to you know, to East Asia. At times he's heading he's heading to Africa, South America, like he's got a full, full global operation going here. Maybe he franchises.
I wonder if sometimes like he can't get a princess and it's just like this week, I had to feed my dragon an earl. Anyway, he tried a basil rathbone, tries to make Helene watch the other princesses being fed to the dragon, but she won't look, and we don't get to see the monster yet. So then Lodak explains, Hey, you know, there are some Knights who are coming to
rescue you, but don't worry, they will fail. First of all, he says, Sir Branton is coming, and she seems not excited by this prospect, so I guess she doesn't like him.
She's like, I'd like to be saved, but.
Not a big fan of Sir Brant.
Here.
But there's also somebody coming named Sir George, and despite having never met him and not knowing who who he is, she's like, oh, George sounds cool.
Yeah, and his main main attraction being that he's not Sir Branton.
I guess, oh, that's a good point. Maybe she's just excited that it's anybody but Sir Branton. So Lodak is like, well, I'll show you the young fool. And then once again we tune into Magical Remote Surveillance TV. So, like on a screen on the wall, Lodak shows George Branton and the other Nights approaching the First Curse. What is the first Curse? Well, you know what, I really like the set and the landscape they set up here. It is
quite creepy. So they go into this this landscape of strangely shaped trees that at first I was like, what are we looking at? It almost looks like trees that have been pulled up out of the ground and you can see the whole root structure around in this pyramid shaped kind of structure. But no, I don't think that's what it is. I think it's actually supposed to be trees that have been knocked over in some way at like ten feet up off the ground. But I gotta
give him credit. I really like this set. It does make me feel uneasy what lives here? And then we find out it's an ogre. It's a big old ogre that starts trying to smash the knights, And I also the ogre design. It's gross looking, it's creepy.
Yeah, this monster has like that. Obviously this is going to be something akin to amazing Colossal Man, but yeah, in terms of just being this giant humanoid. But yeah, also has this kind of like were wolfy wolfman quality to it, and also seems I don't know, I ended up feeling more sorry for this creature than anything because he doesn't really do much. He just kind of stands there and howls while Knights attempt he's got like.
One thing that looked creepy to me about him is that it's like he's got different kinds of teeth in his mouth, So they're not just like a row of sharp teeth. It's like he has teeth from three different kinds of creatures all in the same mouth.
This may also be the character I've read. I think Michael Weldon points out that Richard Keel is in this movie but is completely uncredited. This would seem to be the role you would have him in if you had an uncredited Richard Keel.
I wonder, But I know what you're saying about feeling sad for the creature, because it almost does seem like he's just trying to hang out in this little blasted landscape here, and then these things come in and start poking at him with spears.
And yeah, I know what's happening. Yeah, he didn't ask to be the first curse maybe, I mean, that's the thing. He's somebody who is cursed.
Yeah, that's true. So there's a long battle scene. George eventually defeats the Ogre by galloping in circles around him on his magically fast horse, and the Ogre is trying to like follow him in order to crush him, but round he goes round around in circles, and then the Ogre becomes dizzy and falls over, and then George pokes him in the heart with his sword.
Yeah. Can't be that satisfying of the victory, honestly.
Oh, and some of the Knights are killed here. So Sir Ulrich and Sir Pedro are killed by the Ogre and they have a little funeral for them and show them being buried, and Sir Brandon skips the funeral he's scouting ahead. Meanwhile, there are just like some scenes in the castle where Helene is running around. She like sneaks out of her cell and is running around getting scared by various things, one of which is shrunken people inside
a cage. There's like dull sized people in a little cage saying help us, help us, like attack of the puppet people. Yeah, a Lodax castle also has like these like blue ghules and guys with conical heads, and people in plague doctor like bird masks, and just various people being scary.
Yeah, but mostly cone heads. There a lot of coneheads.
So on the road the Knights travel on to the next curse, which is a vile, misty swamp full of bubbling acid pools. In this swamp, the Knights become separated from one another and Sir Anthony falls into a bubbling acid pool. George tries to go save him, and Branton intentionally knocks George into the pool. Somehow, George doesn't realize this later. I don't know if he thinks it was an accident or he doesn't realize somebody kicked him. I'm not sure.
But the result is pretty gruesome because we don't get You might expect it from a movie like this. You might expect it to be like that high school biology classroom skeleton rising to the surface. No, what we get is is a big grimmer.
It's like a skull with very bleached white, gritted teeth, and then where the flesh would be over the skull is just like bubble gum has been stretched over the bone.
But the bubblegum that's had all the flavor chewed out of it.
Oh yeah, it's a nasty looking And it happens like immediately Anthony's He's like swimming in the pool, going and being like help, help, and then it cuts away and then cuts back and now he's just the skull.
Done for fatality.
But George survives the acid pool. I think because of his magical armor. I assume that's the reason.
Yeah, he's indestructible on this stuff. Now.
Meanwhile, back at the witch Hut, Sybil finally escapes the basement. She realized owing her her friends there in the witchholder like playing chess, and she realizes George is in danger, so she decides she has to intervene to save him. But first she's gonna watch him on magic TV. So we see her watching in the magic mirror. The camp of the Knights after Anthony also has died, So now there are only three of the other Knights left, I think, Sir James of Scotland, Sir Patrick of Ireland, and Sir
Denis of France. And at the camp, Sir Branton is giving a speech trying to convince the other Knights to abandon the journey. He's like, go home, you, you don't have to risk your lives anymore. But the other Knights refuse, and Sir Patrick mocks him. He says his tongue is like the honey from a clover patch. Is that an expression? I've never heard that.
I've only ever heard it in this movie.
So while the other night's sleep, Sir Branton sneaks off alone to a house in the countryside, all for an illicit rendezvous with Loadak. So here we get a big twist. Turns out they have been conspiring together from the beginning. Remember that ring with a dragon on it that Sir Branton had and the King noticed and then nobody said anything about. So it works like this. Lodak lost his magic ring a while back. Sir Branton found it. Lodak wants the ring back, but he can't take it because
the ring protects itself against being taken by force. So they make a deal. In exchange for the return of the ring, Lodak will help Sir Branton win the hand of Princess Helene and the reward of half of the King's kingdom for her rescue. So he would do that by staging this abduction and then allowing Sir Branton to bring her back.
I love it. Yeah, a nice side scheme to everything here. The plot dickens.
It is a good twist and but clearly the party. One thing I like about it is that they're not just cleanly in league like the parties involved here distrust one another. They are both snakes, and they're both wondering, how will the other one try to betray me? Right?
Yeah, either one will stab the other one in the back once they have what they want.
Oh and then suddenly, while they're talking, Lodak is like, oh, Sir Denis of France is coming, you know he So Sir Denis noticed Branton leaving the camp early in the morning, and he followed him to investigate. While everybody else is sleeping. Lodak detects he's coming, but don't worry. He has a plan. It's some kind of horrible love trap, Like he sees Sir Denis coming and then he's like, ah, he's a Frenchman and so I will get him with a pretty woman.
So suddenly, a while Dennis is approaching this house that he's trying to investigate, just like a pretty lady just wanders onto the screen singing Freira Shaka, and Sir Dennis is like, there can't be anything suspicious about this. So he's just like monto more, I'm in love. He is successfully catfished by magic. I guess you would call this witchfished. And so he's like they're just sitting there smooching, and then suddenly she transforms into a witch and tries to
bite his neck. And the witch has like the witch is creepy looking, she's got like one eye melting off of her head. She tries to bite him in the neck, but Sir George comes to the rescue. Dennis is saved because George does something like with his magic shield and it like emits light that scares the witch and makes her vaporize. Oh and then I like how Dennis is He just fully plays into the Lodax assumed seo type here when he's talking to George, He's like, yeah, Lodak
got me. He must have known I was French.
Yeah. I mean it's enough to make you wonder are these knights even real? Were they really captured knights or were they just made by sorcery and therefore based on just broad stereotypes.
That's funny. Yeah. Oh, and then there's a confrontation where George and Dennis go into the house to see Sir Branton, but Branton lies his way out of it. And there's also after they leave, there's a funny scene where the witch like they have a performance review the witch does with Lodak, and she's like, I almost killed him.
I tried, but you know that's not gonna cut it. So what does he do? Bam, turns her into a spider. All right, So how far into the curses are we now, Joe, This is a good question.
I sort of got confused trying to count the curses. So the ogre is the first curse, and the swamp with the acid pools, I think that's the second curse.
Okay, we're at least two.
In third curse is I think the witch who looks like a French lady.
Yeah, okay, so that would mean we're ready for four at this point.
But when when I think about the rest of it, it doesn't add up. I'm like, what are the seven curses?
Well, the next one is definitely a doozy.
Oh my lord? Yeah, okay, So at this point I think somehow Sir James of Scotland and Sir Dennis of France like, go ahead to investigate what's down the road, and that leaves Sir George, Sir Branton and Sir Patrick of Ireland and the three of them they they they're approaching their their comrades. But the comrades who went ahead are now just like melted. They're horribly irradiated, covered in blisters. Their hair is gone, their skin is like peeling away like old wallpaper.
Is.
It's disgusting, absolutely disgusting. You see them in like a cave, I think, staring into this yellow spiral and they're shirtless and their hair is gone. And then they turn and look into the camera and they're all messed up, partially melted, and then you see their like silhouettes coming over a hilltop and then they just disappear. It's like they turn to dust.
Yeah, in a way, almost like a decade appropriate version of the Robocot melt scene, you know, because it's like they're coming right at us. They look horrible, they look in pain. And it's this moment especially where I can think, I can rationalize. It's like, Okay, I could see where some sensors might have had a problem with the tonal inconsistency of this film. One second, it's a chimpanzee playing chess, and then later on it's this.
Yeah, can't you just imagine Sir Branton here in ray wise fashion and being like, don't touch me in yeah, all right, So those nights. They're gone melted, blasted by whatever that the yellow spiral thing was. Now somewhere in here this may actually have already happened, or it's somewhere in here that there's a whole scene where Sybil back
at home, is trying to intervene to help George. She wants to like brew up a potion and do a spell that will help him somehow, but she ends up having the exact opposite of her intended effect, and she accidentally disables his magic powers instead.
This is the sibyl is cooking scene that I referenced earlier, And even though it doesn't pay off for her, it's still a fabulous sequence because again, the music just gets super weird. You got those red gels, and yeah, she's just cooking away and I love it.
And you could tell she's improvising, like she she doesn't remember the recipe, so she's you know, it's like she's playing a solo here, making it up as she goes, Yeah, well I think I need the ear of a rabbit. That's right, that's it.
Yeah, she doesn't have the recipe in front of her, she doesn't have everything prepared, but oh man, her cauldron is an upturned monster skull.
Yeah that's good.
So I love everything about this sequence, even if it doesn't really pay off the way she's hoping it will.
So after this, Sir Branton leads George and Sir Patrick Ireland, the last of the six Nights, into a cave and then he like leads him into the cave I can't remember. He kind of like taunts them somehow and makes them follow him, and then they go into the cave and then he leaves the cave and it the door of the cave closes behind him, so they're trapped inside. And
then these weird green mask ghosts come out. They're like floating in the air and wailing, and one of the ghosts kills Sir Patrick sort of just by flying into his face and then seeping into him.
Yeah, it's it's kind of a hard to follow sequence, but the ghosts are creepy, the music is good. The ghost kind of looked like shrunken heads, and like you said, also like masks. So uh, yeah, it mostly works. It does.
The one thing that works less well is that the tone of what follows. So Sir Patrick dies and he can be heard violently screaming George help me. It's like really painful to hear ragged screaming desperate. But then a ghost face flies into the wall of the cave and a door opens to the outside, so like they were trapped inside. Oh and George had tried to use his sword to open the door because it's supposed to open any doors, but it has been deactivated from afar by Sybil,
so that didn't work. And so yeah, this ghost face flies into the wall, the wall opens up yet again, and then the voice of Sir Patrick, still screaming in exactly the same way, says George.
Through the wall. Yeah, and yeah, it's hard to follow exactly what has happened here, and which character is it that then tells us in a bit here and explains that, oh, well it's Patrick's faith.
That yeah, Lodak explains it. Actually, So George escapes the cave because of whatever that was, the like face flying into the wall and the screaming voices door it opened. George gets out. There's this lingering shot of Sir Patrick's dead body in the cave as the wall closes behind George on his way out. Then we see once again somebody watching magic remote TV Loadak and Sir Branton are looking upon a magic fire scheming, and Sir Branton says,
was it magic? Loadak says, no, not magic. Sir Branton says, then how did George escape. Loadak says, I think, yes, something stronger than magic, the power of Patrick's faith.
Yeah, Like, where does that come from? We have not There's been nothing to establish that Patrick was particularly religious. All we know is that he is Irish and he doesn't even like call out to God or Jesus or anything during that final encounter, Like that alone would have been if he was like Jesus Christ, save our hero or something anything, But no, it's it's just apparently his faith was strong enough that God intervened.
I guess, yeah, I agree with all of that very strange, but I think it's funny that Lodak acknowledges that his powers are helpless in the face of like prayer, so his enemies would just like pray to God to defeat him they could win.
I guess he's kind of like, well, God only gets involved directly on rare occasions, so it's gonna happen every now and then, but not to the extent that it's going to actually derail my plans here.
Yeah. So anyway, this seems to be the last of the seven curses somehow, or maybe there's one still at the castle something like. George gallops up to.
No way, we're past five here this don't know.
Where are the others. George gallops to the castle on his white horse, and as he wanders through the deserted courtyard, a heavy wooden door creaks open by itself to allow him inside. And Lodak and Branton they know he's here. They're watching as he heads towards helene cell, and Lodak says, don't worry about it, Sir Branton, It'll all work out just fine. So George gets to Helene's cell, he greets her. Helene says, George, Oh, I must be dreaming, but you are,
George or is this just more of Lodak's magic? And he I guess he has to be like, Hi, you know I've been spying on you in the magic pool for years but we have not met. But she is happy to see him, and there's some type of parody here, because she says Lodak has been showing her visions of him just to torture her. So they like both only know one another from magical remote surveillance, and this is the first time either one has seen the other in person.
They start smooching. Of course there's kissing there, and what about Sir Branton? Who cares? So they try to sneak out, but just as they are able to reach the front door, Lodak springs a trap. His weird minions magically materialized in front of the exit, and George and Helene are caught. Sir Branton's treachery is revealed. Branton, thinking that the deal has been finished, gives the magical ring back to Lodak, and then Helene says she will happily leave with Sir Branton. Huh,
I thought she didn't really like him. Why was she so happy to go with him? I mean, I guess it would kind of make sense, you'd be happy to leave with anybody. But you know, it's surprising to the viewer. But guess what, it's another double cross. We sort of saw this coming, didn't we. You can't trust Lodak captured well in this production still that I drug rob or so Sir Branton is like embracing Helene and she it's the witch double cross again.
Hagged again, but he's not going to get off that.
No, of course, no, Loadak says, did you think I did you really think I'd keep my word once I had the ring? And Brandon seems genuinely shocked and betrayed. Did you notice like it's weird, how like surprised he seems by this?
But I made a deal with an evil wizard.
Yeah, it's like we already even talked about this, Like how does he I don't know, but Sir Branton says she belongs to me. We made a bargain, and Lodak says, I don't bargain with mortals. I destroy them. And then we get the magical destruction of Branton. What does Lodak do to him? Does he summon an ogre to crush him like a grape? Does he create another heat tornado to melt his flesh away?
No?
He transforms Sir Branton into a mounted head on the wall, like a stuffed deer head at a hunting lodge.
And the effect is pretty funny here.
Yes, it does look funny. In fact, I don't I'm not even sure it's not just the actor sticking his head through a hole in the wall.
Been it might have been that simple, or it might have been some you know, some optical special effects that especially to a modern view, or you know, we're liable to miss because we take that sort of thing for granted. Yeah.
Meanwhile, back at home, we see more of Sybil trying to help George. She is trying to remember the words to a spell that she knows she could use to save George and defeat Lodak, but she can't remember the words. She knows, like, there's like a number of lines and they all rhyme with sack, I think, but you can't remember the last word in the last line. Turns out it is attack.
I think.
The last line when she finally does remember it later, it's help my son to attack. It seems like that'd be kind of obvious, but magic's complicated, It's true. She decides to transform into a bird and fly to Lodak's castle, and she's going to figure out the spell on the way. So at Lodak's castle, Lodak brings Helene to a dungeon room where George is shirtless and tied to a rack, and he he's, uh, this part's creepy. Yeah, He's like, hmm, show me what young mortals in love dude to bid
farewell before they die. So I think he just wants to watch them make out a little.
Yeah yeah, and and and mock them. But he's like two feet away from them, maybe.
Yes, standing right there, and they're they're smooching, and then he's like, m how tender. Uh yeah, but too bad, you know, it's it's too late for love now. Now you're gonna die. Uh. So they both say they love each other, and George is the plan is he's gonna have to watch through the window as Helene has fed to the dragon, much like she was supposed to watch as the other princesses were fed to the dragon.
Now, have we had the part where Lodak and Sybil have their final zoom conference with each other and he destroys her mirror. We may we may have skipped over that by one.
I'm sorry. I think I forgot to mention that scene.
Yes, it's it's wonderfully spicy because like it's like Zdak calls in on the magic mirror and he's like, hmm, Sybil, you're looking old, and I just stop to a really toxic start between these two and they kind of talk trash to each other, and then he destroys her mirror and he's like, you're not getting interfere with my plants.
Oh, but Lodack's in for a surprise. So we get a scene of Lodac's minions preparing a feast, and one of them is supposed to go get the cage of shrunken people like the puppet people to put in the stew. But he drops the cage and they escape, and it's a repeat of attack of the Puppet People. It's literally like the shrunken people get out and start like setting up traps and wreaking havoc within the room.
It's nice they condensed all of that into a short segment in a much better film. Yeah.
Yeah, So the puppet people, for some reason, they break into George's cell and they bring him his magic sword and they use it to cut the ropes that are binding our hero. They set him free. George thanks them. He tells them that even though the sword has lost its magic, it's still a which.
Yeah, it's like an escalator, you know, it breaks down, nish Hedberg pointed out, still stares. That's a good point.
Yeah, So the dragon is coming to eat Helene and she's you know, like tied up there for the dragon to eat. She's screaming in terror. And you know what I'm gonna say, This dragon looks surprisingly good. I would say, actually shockingly good. For a Bert Eye Gordon movie. This is, without doubt the best looking special effect I've ever seen from mister Big.
Absolutely looks looks amazing. You know, obviously you see it in motion. You know that it's an effect, you know, but it's it is very well done, and it's shooting flames. It looks dangerous and wild.
Yeah. So it's like a big two headed dragon breathing fire. It has frills on its head heads. And George comes in on his horse. He's trying to save Helene, squaring off against the dragon with his lance. And then Sybil arrives. She she like parks next to Lodak, who is looking down from above on a parapet, and Lodak says, Sybil, come to watch your boy die. But Sybil, she's busy trying to remember the next line of the spell to
restore George's magic. I gotta say in the performance here, she does not seem to have the appropriate sense of urgency. She's still just doing her kind of absent minded, only half present, you know what was that next line? But eventually she does come up, she doesn't just remember it. Lodak cues her, you know. Lodak sees that George's magical weapons are not working against the dragon, and Lodak says he's even lost the power to attack. And then Sibyl's like, oh,
that's the word attack. Give my boy the power to attack, and so now I guess he's powered up once again. Oh and then while Lodak is distracted, Sybil steals Lodak's ring.
That's good, yep, yep. I'm a little foggy on how it works though, because we were told earlier you couldn't be taken by force, but I guess it can be slipped off while you're looking the other way. Too much wizard grease on your fingers there.
Now, Loadak doesn't consider himself defeated yet. She takes his ring, but he says they will still die. I curse you, curse upon curse, and so George, Oh, here's how the math works out. Now that I'm remembering it, I think the dragon itself is the sixth the curse. And then Lodak explains that the seventh curse is himself is Lodak.
That's fitting. That's fitting.
Yeah, So Lodak seems ready to blast out some kind of killing magic, but then, in a fantastic payoff to what seemed like a really pointless setup that we were even making fun of earlier, Sybil turns into a panther and mauls Lodak, killing him. It's George's favorite trick when he was a boy.
And now it's paid off once more. It's great and it's a great moment when Sybil gets her come up and see her because again Lodak has not considered her threat at all the entire time, and now she she has completely defeated him. For George, I get, you know, George is the hero. I get. I don't know. I feel like Sybil's the hero.
I mean, Sybil does most of the work, like she enchants all of the items that allow George to defeat these monsters and stuff. I would say the most the craftiest thing that George does of his own accord is actually when he tricks Sybil into going in the basement at the beginning and traps her there and his it is and most of his equipment does the.
Rest yeah, which again she supplied.
But anyway, okay, so all is all is restored, All is happy now, and we go back to the castle where the king is and Helene and George of return and it seems like the king approves of George now, so of course they're going to get married somehow. The Six Nights are alive again. They just are shown walking into the throne room. I don't think there's any explanation of how they're not dead. Did you pick up anything there?
I kind of I was thinking about this and I was like, oh, I guess it's because you know, Sybil's brother whenever he froze them, like he made them his sorceress slaves forever. So it's like, you guys are not getting out of this just because you died horribly in this quest. Like no, no, no, Sybil. You belong to Sybil forever and you have to serve her son or whoever happens to have the reins here.
It's like a Warlock pact. It's like, yeah, if you die, you still you go to your you're in a Vernas, and you still have to serve the warlock. The patron.
Yeah, they still seem upbeat about it, but I don't think they have any choice in the matter.
Well, who's complaining. We get to hear all those wonderful accents again. And and then Sybil is also hanging out in the throne room. I guess she's like the court sorceress. Now she's gonna she's gonna heal the king's pink eye. And I think that's that's as about as happy an ending as one could ask for.
It's really the rise of Sybil too, because she's gonna basically be running the place I was not super impressed by the king. Uh, Sybil is totally ruling this kingdom. Now there's a huge power vacuum left by the death of Lodak. So yeah, this is the reign of Sybil day one.
I agree with that. The king's previous most decisive moments were things like I like these nights.
Yeah, more belly dancing please. Yeah.
Well, I pledge fealty to Lady Sybil. It may she rain for ten million years.
All right. Well this one was a really fun one. Yeah. I encourage everyone out there to see this one. If if you were a fan of the old MA St three k version or the newer Riff tracks. Yeah, do that. It's a great film to enjoy rift, but it also more than stands up on its own and again, if you do seek it out to watch it, watch it in the best quality you can get your hands on.
All right, Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow your Mind is primarily a science podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but here on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see a list of all the movies we've covered over the years, can go over to letterbox dot com. It's l E T T E R B O x D dot com. Our username is weird House. We have an ongoing list of all the movies we've covered so far, and sometimes
a peek ahead at what's coming up next. We're currently if the math is all right, I'll correct here. This was one forty eight, so we're almost a one fifty.
Wow, how time goes by?
Yeah?
Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Jjposway. 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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