Weirdhouse Cinema: The Return

to dive into a little muto exploitation cinema here. As we discussed in the Suftable Your Mind episode, the cattle mutilation panic hit a peak around n And while exploitation and B cinema are generally pretty quick to get in there and uh comment on or exploit something like this for entertainment, uh, it seems like most of the pictures attempting to cash in on cattle mutilation panic didn't really come out until around nineteen eighty, which I guess maybe

makes sense given, like you, how long it takes to get a film project together. Uh, and there may have been some earlier ones that I just couldn't come across. But uh, yeah, we're gonna be talking about a prime example of cattle mutilation exploitation cinema here. We're gonna be talking about Graden Clark's nineteen eighty film The Return. Now, fans of Weird House Cinema may well recall that the very first episode of Weird House Cinema was another Graden

Clark movie. It was also a Graden Clark alien movie called Without Warning, which in many ways prefigured the plot of Predator, except with a would you say, a less gritty looking alien, a little more kind of a a classic big head alien. Yeah, very outer limits the alien in that one. That was also a film that came out of nineteen eighty. That was also a film that had Martin Landau and and it was also a film that had a lot of shots that including like terror

shots and horror scenes that take place broad daylight. Some were in the California countryside. This movie is supposed The Return is supposed to take place in New Mexico, but I believe they filmed everything in California, So you're looking at California in this film. Now, I'd say there's one major difference for me between Without Warning and The Return, and it's that Without Warning had Dean Cundy doing cinematography,

which is always a treat for me. I you know, I I love his style, even in rather mundane shots. You know, you don't have to get into the real art house framing. Dean Cundy has a really punchy way of like establishing ambient locations and stuff, and so, uh so that was a great thing about Without Warning. He was not doing cinematography for the Return, but the cinematography is still pretty good for for a cattle mutilation alien flick. Yeah, and and it also makes sense given how successful the

cinematographer for this film will go one to be. Uh And we'll get to that in a bit. But yeah. Oh, the other thing about this film about the Return versus Without Warning is Without Warning was the pilot episode and first episode of Weird House Cinema back in October. So this is kind of uh it makes it it's extra special that we're doing a return to the work of

Grad and Clark bringing it all back home. Now, speaking of the cattle mutilation subgenre of of motion pictures, I do want to at least briefly mentioned I'll probably come back to it a few times as well that Another notable film in this subgenre is Alan Rudolph's film Endangered Species, which I also watched recently. It's a pretty solid conspiracy thriller. It starred Robert Urich in featured performances by Paul Dooley,

Peter Coyote, Hohyit Acton, and Dan Hedeia Dan. All right, Yeah, it's not a big not a big role for Hedaya, but but he gets in there and and does Hedaya things, so it's, uh, it's pretty good. It's a film that falls very much on the government conspiracy end of things with cattle mutilation betrays it and I think it's about as believable terms as possible for the most part, Like it might be the most logical cattle mutilation movie you could ask for, and I think that's a big ask. Okay,

so yeah, I can see that. So the Return, I guess we will spoil the ending of this movie eventually, so warning spoilers to come if if you're planning on seeing it and haven't. But the Return ends up more on the aliens side, and uh and that that that other one does the government conspiracy side. So there's a little bit of government conspiracy flare thrown into this one,

though it's only it's only a hint. You never really know exactly how much government conspiracy there is in the return because we have like suits showing up in the third act and it has never explained how much they know or what they're trying to do. They're just sort of like there to start shooting at the protagonist. Yeah, they're not really sewn into the fabric all that well, but then that can be said for a number of

things in this field. Um, I will say one more thing about Endangered Species is that it, as with Alan Rudolph's Trouble in Mind, we also have some issues surrounding the male protagonist, and that the lead character played by Robert Uric is um he isn't as sketchy as the lead character in Trouble in Mind, but there's a fair amount of like noir esque masculine toxicity to the character that I do not think has aged well, So be

advised to that if you check out Endangered Species. But again, still it's a pretty solid conspiracy thriller and if you want to watch a decent movie about cattle mutilation, it's a pretty good one to pick up. All right. Now, there are a couple other few other entries in the CMP cinema subgenre, but uh, let's see that most of them didn't really pop out at me. It looks like there's a movie from nineteen seventy nine titled night Wing that has David Warner and Stephen Mocked in it, so

that sounds pretty good. And there's a low budget film called Mutilations, which looks like it has has developed sort of a following of due to it's like low budget. Uh you know, z grade goodness. I've not seen any

of these other movies. So the Return is my first within this sub genre, and in a way, it's kind of hard for me to imagine improving upon this formula because it's just like, what if we just take a great cast, take the premise of cattle mutilation without actually making the movie all that Gorrian grows like this, This

is not a bloody splatterfest for the most part. Yeah. Now, if you like movies where people walk up to a dead cow and talk about it in and direct sunlight, uh, this is the movie for you because we have multiple scenes like that. I think it also sort of blunts the squeamishness and grotesquery of the cattle mutilation when we discover that it is basically being performed by a small lightsaber.

Oh yes, yes, essentially a small surgical lightsaber. Uh. Yeah, it becomes clear that that is the the instrument being used, which I think is an This is one of the things I loved about the film, and once I realized that was going to be an element, and I was like, oh, well, I am in especially when you see who's wielding the lightsaber. Uh it's pretty great and I think it's almost kind of surprising nobody's come back and done that again, like

rural slasher film with alien surgical lightsaber. That's a great premise, Like it is weird. I love it. Well, it is here's something I'm psychologically curious about. Uh. I assumed that other people would probably feel the same way, but certainly, the way I reacted to this movie, the violence was a lot less icky and a lot less bothersome because it was being inflicted with a little lightsaber versus if it had just been done with like a knife or

or you know, straightforward metal blade. Yeah, if nothing else, the limitations of effects and the effects are pretty good in this film, but the limitations of what you can do or should try to do with an effect like this in meant that you're not going to get big goopy, prolonged gore scenes like you would get potentially get in a slasher movie by other directors during this time period. Like it's not even really as gory as um as

without warning. You know, we have lots of scenes of alien um you know, sucker weapons being pulled off of people's skin in that one. Oh yeah, alright. For so as far as elevator pitch for this one goes, um, I I had a hard time coming up with one

that doesn't spoil the film. I was tempted to go with cattle mutilation the motion picture, but I also think upon reflection, it could be um, cattle mutilation colon uh misconnections, because ultimately it is about miss connections with cattle mutilation thrown in there. Well wait then, Robert, we're going to try not to spoil the film. Um. I mean I

think at this point we could we could start spoiling it. Okay, okay, this is one that I would advise do not watch the trailer in full for because the trailer for this one is amusing, but it's like shows you everything, and I feel like it does. This film does have some twists and turns up its sleeve. Um. You know, that's not it's not dependent upon those twists, but they are kind of fun to to, uh to take in organically. Well,

let me turn my hand at an elevator pitch. Here it is an unhinged alcoholic cop and an uptight city dwelling scientist find the meaning of love when they come together to investigate the mutilation of livestock. All right, let's go ahead and here just part of the trailer. I think we're only gonna play like a minute of it here, but it'll give you a taste of what it's all about. Who will have the right to live on Earth? The return? I've been looking at the cattle mutilations on my own

for some time. I noticed didn't say as the precise surgical cuts. Let's freaking everybody out, and none of the other animals will even go near it. Hell, there's not even any flies or ants on it. I won't be threatened on my land to help us on these cattle mutilations, some damn scientists. I don't know that the difference between

the tower and us stairs telling us our presidents. I believe this trailer began with a line like who like who will have the right to live on Earth or something like that, which which is amazing because it has nothing to do with the plot of the film. Um, who will own the title deed to Planet Earth? Uh? Now, if you want to watch this film as well, um,

it's it's actually pretty easy to come by. I feel like when I was looking into this film months ago, it seems nobody had it streaming or I couldn't find it streaming. Video Drum didn't have a copy of it to rent here in Atlanta. So I bought the Blu ray from my believe Scorpion Entertainment. And it's a great disc, includes some extras and including a director's commentary. Uh. Great

film quality, So it definitely looks good. But as of now, however, you can stream in lease in the United States, you can stream it on to b and Pluto TV. You can rent or purchase it digitally in most places. Uh and uh yeah. And if you do go to Video Drum in Atlanta, I'm probably gonna donate the disc to Video Drums so they can add it to their Grade and Clark collection. It belongs in a museum. Well, let's get into the people. Then let's talk briefly about Grade

and Clark. We didn't talk about him in the previous episode of a Weird House that covered one of his films, But director borne Um also writer and early on an actor, best known for such films as Without Warning, The Return, Seven's Uninvited. That's a Killer Cat movies, durring George Kennedy, Oh, I don't think I realized that was great. And Clark, that's the one with the killer mutant cat on a yacht. Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but I hear hear great

things about it. Oh, my lord, Rob whoever had the idea to set a killer cat movie on the open sea like with water, It's just amazing. He also directed nineteen seventy nine Angels Revenge and Jodan Baker movie Final Justice that a lot of MST three K fans will be familiar with. That is not the movie Final Sacrifice, which I always confuse it with. Not the one set in Canada with roused Ower. It's the one set in

Malta with Joe Don. Baker is a dyspeptic sheriff. On the acting front, you'll find Clark and Will cameos in his own films, but he also had parts in the I'll see the nineteen sixty nine biker film Satan Sadist starring Russ Tamblin and nineteen seventies Hell's Bloody Devils. Uh. He also the screenplay for Satan's Sadists. That sounds like a joke title. They're trying to create a tongue twisters Satan sells Sadist down by the same shore. Yeah, um,

let's see. I he He had an interesting um filmography, working in various genres, and he directed his last film, Star Games in His autobiography was titled On the Cheap My Life in Low Budget Filmmaking. All right, well, I don't think I can vouch for the quality of Final Justice, but of his three earlier b horror movies, all three or a Fun Time, The Uninvited Without Warning and the

Return thumbs up all around on those. Now, on the writing side of things, um, two of the prime writers on this we're Ken and Jim Wheat born nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty two, respectively, brothers who also wrote and directed five e Walks The Battle of Indoor, which we previously covered on the show. I don't know if that's a movie I would single out for the quality of its writing, but Uh, I mean, how can you hate on Battle for Indoor. Yeah, it's a it's a fun

right as now on Disney. Plus. Other screenplays of theirs include The Fly too. Um, yeah, that's that's generally that's yeah, that's that's an interesting film. Um and not not as it's It's not as good as this cronenbergs The Fly obviously, but it takes it fully embraces just being a monster movie, being like a really goopy, gross monster movie. Uh. They also wrote A Nightmare on Elm Street four. Oh yeah, I remember that being the last arguably good one until

a New Nightmare. Okay. They also did The Birds Too and two thousands Pitch Black. As such, you'll see their name on all the various Riddeck movies that have come out, like Chronicles of Riddeck, because they they wrote the screenplay for Pitch Black. Characters created by Yeah. Another writer credited on this one is Curtis birch Um, and he as an editor and producer who worked on various Clark films. But okay, this thriller film needs its own dashing hero.

Who's going to be the cop who comes in to save the day. Well, it is of course going to be Jan Michael Vincent playing Wayne the Cop Jan Michael Vincent. I'm gonna say strange casting choice. Uh something about him felt a little too handsome to play this this character who again is supposed to be a an out of control alcoholic cop. But I liked him anyway. Yeah, yeah,

I think I think it's a solid performance. Um. You know, you can see why a lot of people wanted to be in the in the Jan Michael Vincent business, uh for a while there. Uh he live through nineteen handsome, very competent star actor of the seventies and eighties, known for such films as Bite the Bullet from seventy five, The Mechanic from seventy two, Vigilante Force from seventy six, and for the Airwolf TV movie and series spin off.

He's a guy who who seems to have had his share of personal problems and later in life he had health problems as well. His last film was in two thousand and two. But but yeah, in this one, in some ways, it's a little the casting is a little bit odd, but you know, you buy him in every scene that he's in, so it uh, you know, he's one of there are a lot of performances in this in this movie where I would easily say, and this is not their best work. These people did better work

outside of The Return. I haven't seen a lot of Jen Jen Michael Vincent's filmography, but it's a solid performance here. I can't follow him at all for the performance. I mean, he really sells. The scene where he shoots a guy's cassette tape player in a rage, Yeah, I mean that's the That's a good scene to bring up, because, yeah, this is a movie that I think presents various scenes that are are perhaps a challenge for actors like how do you how do you pull that scene off believably? Um?

And he does it for the most part, and not everybody maybe is uh was able to pull off scenes like that in The Return? Now the Uh. The The other main character in this is Jennifer. She is the scientist and she's played by Civil Shepherd Born. I'm torn on what to say about this performance because on one hand, it does not feel like she's really uh. It does not feel like a super effortful performance like she's you know, really reaching down to pull out every emotion to put

in this character. On the other hand, a simple. Shepherd has a has a very easy going charm, and even in scenes where she's not really doing much except kind of like looking bemuse at a cop who's acting weirdly. Uh, she she's very likable. Yeah, yeah, she's very likable. And I guess I wanted to like her performance more. I feel like the picture maybe just gives her fewer moments to really allow her her talents and her her natural

charisma to shine through. I mean, there's nothing I have nothing to about her performance in this but um, you know, we just we know that that there are better examples of her work out there. And I like how she has her as you know, has her her fun Tennessee accent out she's playing a scientist. But you know, there's just it doesn't feel like it's like quite up there

on the level you expected to be. Well, I mean, the way her character is written, I think she's supposed to be somebody who never really gets ruffled, like she she just sort of like observes everything with a raised eyebrow,

even when it's quite weird what she's observing. Yeah, So I have to know when I when I think of simpile Shepherd, I generally My mind goes instantly to TV's Moonlighting from the nine eighties during Bruce Bruce Willis or you know, I think about I think she had a nineties TV series called Sybil, And I never watched any of these shows, but I just remember, especially Moonlighting being on. It was a move, was a show that came on and I knew who was in it. But she has

has some far more impressive movies in her filmography. Her Her first film was Peter Bogdanovich's V one movie The Last Picture Show, alongside of great cast of actress such as Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Chloris Leachman, Ellen Burston, and Randy Quaid, with a screenplay by Larry McMurtry based on his own novel. I also either I didn't realize I had forgotten that she was in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver

from Oh Yeah. She plays the campaign worker for Senator Palatine, who Travis Pickele is is trying to romance in a in a very awkward way. Yeah, it does not go well, as nothing goes well? Is that movie all right? Now? Someone who does give a great performance in this I thought anyway, is Martin Landau, who was was also in Without Warning, and in this he plays Niles Buchanan, the other local law enforcement agent. I think Technico c he's

Jan Michael Vincent's boss. I think Buchanan. He goes by Buck. So his character Niles Buchanan, I think the Buck is the buque in Buchanan. So Buck is the marshal and Jan Michael Vincent is the deputy marshal. Yeah. He he seems to be having the time of his life in this row, or at least it seems that way it was. It's a very fun performance. In Without Warning, he plays a like a deranged recluse. Uh and uh and and

it's fun in that picture as well. But in this he plays a character that is um a lot more comedic without being just to throwaway comedic character. Like there's a lot of One thing you can say about Martin Landau has always had a very expressive face, and he really gets to use that face in this film. There are a couple of funny scenes in this movie between like Martin Landau and Jan Michael Vincent that are are

so are funny in such a naturalistic way. I wonder if they were improvised by the actors or if they were actually on page, I would just say that's unusually good writing in those scenes in particular, like the the hilarious doughnut beer monologue scene or the uh or the you know, we're just a couple of Yahoo cops in a jerkwater town scene like those are good. Yeah, Yeah, there's some good little scenes between the two of them.

And and again I think I think these two actors, jam Michael Vincent and Martin Landau are the ones that did really come off the best in this film. Like if this was your only example of these actors and what they were capable of, you'd be like, well, these guys are great. I want more buddy cop movies with with these two. Now, we talked about Martin Landau on

the previous episode A good but of course uh. He's perhaps best remembered for his Academy Award winning performance as Bella Llegosti and Tim Burton's ed Wood from ninety four. He also had memorable roles in north By Northwest from fifty nine, Cleopatra from sixty three, and he did a lot of TV work, including roles on the original Outer Limits, the Twilight Zone mission, Impossible and of course space. I

love of Martin Landau. I remember there's a really great classic Twilight Zone episode where he plays like a I think, like a defect or in a hotel room and he's been told that there's a secret bomb planet somewhere in his hotel room and he has to find it. I remember that episode really stuck out at me. But yeah, he's also just unforgettable as Bella Legosie and Edwood. Now playing Jennifer's dad, Dr Kramer is Raymond Burr, who lived nineteen seventeen through. Uh yeah, he's he's her boss at

the at SSR, the Science Place. Um he is. Burr is best known for roles in Rear Window, Godzilla, Godzilla nine eight five, and TV's Ironside and Perry Mason. But uh, I don't know. I would say this is probably not his best work. It's a it's a very dry performance, nothing bad about it. But it's uh yeah, it's it's there. Uh it's it's it's, it's it's I don't really don't know what to say about it. He shows up, he lays down some plot, lays down some technobabble, and then

kind of wanders off. I found him amusing. His character in this movie reminds me of the psychiatrist who does the spankological protocol on ned Flanders. You know, May God have mercy on us all. Yeah, there are some fun scenes with him, like the scene where he gets to go out and look at a cattle mutilation. He's like he's taking notes in the rancher is just getting more and more irate about everything, and he's like he's just completely non phased by the whole thing. Well, there's a

great exchange. The rancher is like, I, I, you know you're gonna tell me this is an attack by a scavenger. I've seen every type of scavenger and predator in the entire world, and I know what they do. And then Raymond Burr is just like, it is scientifically impossible that you have seen every attack by a predator scavenger. I love that. Yeah, yeah, that was definitely a laughout lot

moment for me. When they're also a couple of funny parts where he just shows up on announced, like it cuts to him and he's in the room and I don't know why. It was just like Raymond Burr incoming. It was very funny. Now we also have a very noticeable, very recognizable character actor in this U playing the deranged prospect or that that spoiler, uh we find out is the one utilizing a lightsaber in the in the New Mexico Wilderness, played by Vincent Schiavelli, who lived ninety eight

through two thousand and five. You've seen this guy in a thousand different movies. Yeah. Yeah, he's tons of work over the over the years during his career. One of his first big roles was that of Frederickson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which of course has a diverse cast of weird character actors who would go on

to uh to very noteworthy films, including Brad Dorriff. I don't remember if he was exactly this character, but I think he was associated with the with On Smallberries and the John Smallberry scene of the Adventures of Buck Rubonds. I yeah, yeah, he's definitely in that from four. He's also in Amadeus from eighty four, which I forgot about. Uh, He's in Batman Returns. He's in ninety five Lord of

Illusions from Clive Barker. He's in Ghost from nine plays a Ghost, and I do remember this role he's in seven's Tomorrow Never Dies, the James Bond film, he has a brief role as a Hinchman who I think is going to interrogate Bond but then doesn't get to. Yeah. I think they build him up as like a master torture guy, but then he just gets immediately dispatched by Bond. But yeah, he's a he's a character actor who I

think was often great and small doses like that. Um. He was in one of my favorite Tales from the Crypt episodes, more than Mess from ninety one. But he also showed up on shows like Highlanders, Star Trek, the Next Generation, and a side show episode of The X Files. Do you remember this one, Joe? This one had like Jim Rose and the Enigma in it. Okay, Yeah, Well I have to say that for for Vincent Chivelli, I don't think the return is one of his better roles.

I think he's he's still physically imposing enough. He's not unsympathetic in these in some of these areas in the film where you're supposed to feel sympathy for him, But I don't know, and maybe it's just not the performance itself, but the choice is made around that performance. He is kind of inscrutable in this movie. He doesn't talk for

most of it. Yeah, but the main thing required of him in the film is to is to look very threatening as he stands there with a worrying, glowing electric toothbrush slash lightsaber when he's about to to to muto somebody and uh, and he does that quite well. Yeah. One thing I didn't realize about him is that he was also a food writer. And he won the two thousand and one James Beer Journalism Award for his article Sicilian Summers, published in the Los Angeles Times. Yeah, you

can still pull it up. It's a it's available. It's not behind like an ad barrier or anything. I want to read, just an excerpt from it here. Quote. In the center of the of the vineyard is an ancient hazel nut tree. A collection of battered outdoor chairs is nestled in its shade. We all settled in conversation meanders, and our breathing slows like the balmy afternoon breeze. We fall into our naps, content and grateful for the gifts

of this piece of earth. One last cast member we mentioned, the rancher who's ranting about about scientists on his land and about the cattle mutilations. This rancher the main rancher, and this is played by Neville Brand who is also in Without Warning. The is a you know this guy as a face you recognize because really rugged, tough guy face.

So he played a lot of cowboys and heavies in his time, a lot of TV westerns and some classic war movies like fifty three Stalog seventeen in nineteen seventies. Toura Tora Tora also did his share of B movies

later in his career. Now we talked about the cinematographer being noteworthy in this not being um Dean Cutty, but being in this case Daniel Pearl, who was born nineteen nineteen fifty one, depending on the source, pretty famous cinematographer in music video circles at least, but he also had previously worked on nineteen seventy four is the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and uh yeah, I went on to work mostly in

music videos and some some big name music videos. Even as recently as like the last couple of years, he's been the cinematographer on major music videos. So even as like the music video world has perhaps gotten a lot smaller since the nineteen eighties, like he still seems to

be a big part of it. He also worked on the occasional film and concluding Aliens Versus Predator Requiem from Twenties two thousand and seven, two thousand and nine, Friday the Thirteenth reboot, as well as the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake from two thousand and three. Oh well, I'd say both of those two thousands franchise reboots are movies I don't really love, but the cinematography is pretty good. Yeah. And finally, the music on this one is from Dan Wyman.

Uh Yeah, the music it's pretty good in this one. It's it's more traditional at times to score, but gets more synth, synthy and great and weirder and some of the weirder moments in the film. H Wyman also scored Without Warning and later scored the films The Dead Pit from eight nine and The Lawnmower Man from He is credited as the orchestrator on John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct thirteen,

Halloween and The Fog. He was also the score supervisor on nine Apocalypse Now and get this, he literally wrote the book on the MG Synthesizer because he wrote the principal manual on the MG Synthesizer analog on the MOG Modular Analog synthesizer for Robert mug and the New Orleans Music Company. Wow, that is a truly impressive claim to fame. There's a great image I found online and it's of

Wyman and Carpenter. Uh, black and white photo of them in this like synth tech gear layer with you know, just wall alls of of synthesizers and various uh you know, by our standards, in an old fashioned recording equipment. There's a monitor on the wall. It looks looks amazing all these reel to reels behind them. Yeah, yeah, just jamming do I see in a scilloscope? Be all right, let's

get into the plot of this baby, okay, doke. First thing I have to say, uh, is about the menu, the top menu in the Blu ray that you gave me, Rob. It is funny. It looks like a birthday party invitation made by a fifth grader in word perfect in nineteen I I feel like I made things that looked like this. Uh. The way that the characters images are are on it. It has a very uh dragon drop click art quality, and it's I don't know what the font for the menu options is, but it looks almost kind of like

comic sands. Yeah, I mean having a great menu on a on a blue ray is it's a there's a fine art to it. You don't see it pulled off a lot. Oh No, I'm saying this is a great menu. I would not change a single thing, no notes whatsoever. I like the word perfect vibe. But then you push play on this baby, and you go into the movie and we we run a really on a roll there for a while with movies that started off in outer

space in the orbit of the Earth. And I think in the last episode of Weird House you were bemoaning the fact that we didn't get that again. Well, uh, surprise, we're back in space. Of course, we're in space. We get some you know, the credits are in blue starfield in the background. The credits have a certain crulish quality to them. Uh. And then we see a flying saucer right at the beginning, So there's no hiding that under a bushold it's not going to be an alien reveal.

At the end of the very first thing we see as a spaceship. Yeah, but once the crulishness subsides, we do go down to planet Earth. And what it's not the planet Earth of present day nineteen eighty, it's the planet Earth of years past. Yeah, it must be the I guess the late nine. Yeah. So we see where it's like a street on a you know, New Mexico town, late at night, and we see a you know, fifties style tank of a car pull up to the curb, and uh, a guy and a young kid get out.

And what I thought is, so the kid is dressed up like a cowboy, and he's got a little a little cap gun. You remember those toy guns with the strips of caps that had the hammer, and yeah, yeah, I had those when I was a kid, and this kid's got one of those. And so he's having a ball, I guess, with this cap gun. And I don't know if he was just like slamming those things off in the back seat of the car while his dad was driving.

That sounds really annoying, but anyway, so in fact, maybe this is what brought on the stop that we arrived at, which is that they get out of the car. And what I assumed at first was the dad was going inside, I don't know, the tractor supply store or something to take care of some business. But instead we find out the building he's going into is a bar, and he's just haveing his kid wait outside while he has a

few beers. Meanwhile, across the street, a car pulls up to a gas station and a young girl gets out. She's about the same age as the boy, and so they're both standing on sidewalks on the opposite side of the street. And then what's this? Is this a UFO flying up in the air above them, And that's right, it's boy meets girl. Boy meets UFO. Girl meets UFO.

UFO deeply scans them with hovering lights, and then they stare up into this kind of uh this like red vortex or these you know, lines that are approaching some kind of animated horizon. And then the UFO finishes its business and flies away. I really like the approach to the UFO effects in this film, and they're pretty ambitious, I think, and for the most part I love them.

We see either one of two things. It's either dazzling lights that move in strange ways, or a glimpse in almost kind of ethereal vessel that leaves some ambiguity regarding its mechanical or organic nature, and when it beams people and things, we get more dazzling lights that kind of move around, we get red liquidity effects and uh a sort of take on the like a two thousand one esque stargate uh, you know, psychedelic LightScape sequence. And I

think it mostly works. It's slightly giggle inducing at times, especially when you see the reaction shots from the humans involved, but I admire what they were going for here. They were going through something that was a little bit more dreamy, a little bit more on the almost religious side of things. Yeah, I think the dreamy stuff works. You can see it's almost like that when we see it from when we see the scene from the side, it's clearly a spaceship

hovering above the kids. But when you look up into the light in the spaceship, it's like you're no longer looking at an object. Instead you are looking through a kind of gateway into another realm. But the ship here is not just in town to visit this random boy and this random girl, uh, in this random town. They also are here to visit a random prospect or out in the middle of nowhere. Right, this UFO has business

with Vincent Chiavelli. So Schiavelli is playing a prospector who's in a cave and he's just knocking on the wall of the cave with a pick axe, singing the battle him in the Republic, and the UFO pulls up outside the cave. His dog runs off to bark at it. He goes off and stares into it. He also gets sort of hypnotized by the by the converging red horizons of light, and then he collapses on the floor. And

you're like, what's going on? Did Vincentivelli die? I mean, his dog doesn't seem harmed by it, but he I don't know, something happened to him. Yeah, the dog seems concerned though. The dogs like, what what happened? There was there were lights and then he fell over. Yeah. Then hey,

let's skip ahead about twenty five years. Yeah. Yeah, we skipped forward to the modern day, late nineteen seventies or perhaps nineteen eighty itself here in America to find out what all these characters have gotten up to since that fateful day back in the late fifties. That's right. So the two kids who saw the UFO are all grown up. And we also see Vincent Chiavelli again who and he is approximately three point five years younger than in the opening scene. But so we meet Sybil Shepherd and she

is playing Jennifer who. I think this is supposed to be not clear in the movie, but it is clear. It's just obvious who these characters are. So it's clear she's the girl from the opening scene. Yeah, they make a point in this movie. They kind of like build up to the reveal that these adults were the you know, in their realization obviously their realization that they are the kids from earlier in the film, but you know it the whole time. There's no mystery in the in the

way the film instructured, absolutely zero mystery. It's totally obvious. So this is the girl from the opening and now she's working for some kind of shadowy company. We see a modern shot of a city. She's up in a skyscraper and she is a scientist now and she's working for some kind of technical company that has something to do with saddle lights that is managed by her father,

who is Raymond Burr, the Spancological protocol guy. And she's been analyzing aerial photos of someplace near Alama Gordo, New Mexico, and she has found anomalies in these photographs and she wants to go investigate the anomalies to figure out what's going on there. I don't know if I was being dense or if the movie just really is not clear about exactly what it is she's investigating, like what the anomaly represents. It's just like these readings are off the charts. Yeah,

I thought it was. It was kind of vague to something to do with also like interference in the creation of photographs. Oh. And then also for some reason, there's some creep in the office who keeps hitting on her and she just kind of keeps pushing him away. Um, and he's like, why don't you go on a date with me? Yeah, And he's like, you can't send her out in the field alone. I should go with her. And Dad's like, you learn how to be in the field by being in the field. She can take it,

she can handle it. So that the end of the story and we don't think we ever see the creep again. I think we see the creep later, but he doesn't become not significant to the plot. So I don't know what the point of the creep was, all right, So that's our girl, our little girl, all grown up now a science woman. But then we also find out what has become of the boy, right, the boy has become Jane Michael Vincent. He is now a beer chugging cop. It's early in the morning, but he is clearly several

bottles in he's sitting in his squad car. He is. When he finishes a glass bottle of beer, he throws it at a pile of glass bottles that he has made. This cop loves littering, by the way, he never stops throwing containers into the bushes. But so, yeah, he's he's

obviously just been sitting in his police car drinking. And then suddenly a chase sequence kicks up because somebody else's joy riding, and it's some ranch guys and and a ranch lady, and they're driving around really fast, also drinking, and so he peels off after them, and there's a chase scene and he eventually runs them down in a like the driveway of a ranch. I think they drive straight through a gate, like a wooden gate and destroy it.

He goes up to the car and tries to give him what for, but the the guy in the car is like, my daddy owns this ranch. You can't do anything to me because of my daddy, to which Jane Michael Vincent responds by shooting out the car radio. This is the scene where he gets mad and he just blasts the cassette player and and that's basically when Buck

shows up. Martin Landau pulls up as Buck, and at first you you think, Okay, he's gonna be the sensible one, and he is the sensible one comparatively, but uh yeah, he's he shows up to sort of chill things out a little bit and get everybody to back down from their stance, or to try to with his outfit and the way he's got everything, like his facial hair and everything in this movie, do you think they were going for a little bit of a Levan Cliff as angel

ized look with Martin Landau here? I don't know. Maybe in some scenes, but like but clearly he's playing in the character out for laughs in others. But again it does you could wonder, like how much of that was organic these scenes where they're shooting the bold about donuts and beer, did they just add those in because you know, there was a good chemistry and they had some funny stuff to say. And if so, does that end up

changing the calibration of this character. But then again, Buck does have a lot of goofy lines later on the film, so maybe it was just always part of the characterization. I think there are multiple scenes where Jane Michael Vincent is really behaving in an inappropriate way and Martin Landau's character defuses the situation by enticing him to come to a bar with him. Yeah, so he's not like, let's

shut down all the destructive behavior. Let's just shut down this particular destructive behavior and maybe put that energy into this other form of behavior. Is right around here where we get the scene with Vincent Chiavelli where he's sitting on a hill and then he just starts yelling why are you doing this? Why? We get a little little flashes of him and what he's up to. Okay, Well, here I think we start getting a little more flavor

of life. We just see like Jim Michael Vincent and Martin Landau hanging out in a diner, where I think that's just that that is the local hangout. It's the watering hole. It's where everybody has a little bit of a little bit of colorful character interaction, joking around and stuff. There. Martin Landau gives a great speech somewhere in here about strips of bacon. Do you remember that this is the scene that should have earned him an oscar before he

did the bell lego? See that. He has a monologue about how he was at the restaurant and he ordered the breakfast plate, and they were supposed to bring him three strips of bacon, but there were only two when he gets in a big fight with the cook and then eventually discovers that two strips of bacon are stuck together as if they were one strip. It's such a boring story, and you would be bored out of your mind if anyone in your own life told you this story,

no matter how much you loved them. And yet Martin Lantop makes it amusing in this picture. I don't know, it's it's a it's a real gym. Also a thing that I noticed, Jane Michael Vincent's police car is a station wagon. I mean, I guess there is such a thing as a police station wagon, but it looked funny to me. Uh and I tried to figure out what design it was. I think I nailed it down. I believe he's driving an AMC Eagle, which I will admit is one of the more aggressive station wagon designs. But

I still found it funny. I didn't really notice the car all that much, not when they're sitting still. Anyway. There's some some vehicular stuff that happens later on, that's right. Oh, and so Simbil Shepherd, she is out in the field, uh, researching the anomalies that she discovered from aerial photographs, and she is driving down the highway coming into town. And oh the town is I think it's supposed to be near Alama Gordo, but it's not Alma Gordo. It is

a town called what is it Little Creek? Is that right? Yeah? I think so. So she's driving into Little Creek and she her car gets attacked in the dark by Vincentiavelli's dog. Yeah. This this dog is very inconsistent throughout the film because there are some scenes where the dog is like just super attack mode, like I'm gonna jump on a car and attack it. I'm gonna attack this person, But other times just sitting around like this, like a sweet good boy, uh,

just watching things occur. So it's it's really unclear exactly how we're supposed to take this dog. But yeah, the dog attack causes her to wreck her car, and this is her first meeting with adult Jan Michael Vincent, So, uh, what's the actual character's named? Wayne? Was Wayne and Jennifer.

So Wayne hears her crash her car and so he leaves the bar and goes to investigate, and he what does he do in the scene, He for some reason, he gets in her car and he's like, let's see if it's working all right, and then he like peels out in it and does some donuts or something. Here he drives in reverse really fast and then uh, and then he drives it back to her and he's like, yeah, it's okay, And she's like, what am I supposed to applaud? And these are some of the scenes where I think

Sybil Shepherd's uh vibe is good. Here she she's very unimpressed with the local local deputy Marshal Jan Michael Vincent. Yeah. Yeah, obviously they're gonna fall in love later, you know that from the get go, that's just a movie like this is gonna work but at this point they are from different worlds and they do not see eye to eye

and what is quote unquote cool. But anyway, she's there in town to plant some meters, like she's these little boxes that measure something measure I think they say radiation and uh, I don't know, something else. Just they take

some readings. And then she's also going around taking photos of things, and she takes some photos of a rock that has weird markings on it, and then she facses that photo back to the home office where all the scientists are hanging out with Raymond Burr, and they're like, Oh, what's going on with the weird marking on this rock. We're gonna have to analyze this. Yeah, in a scene where she's on the phone with them whilst faxing at

the same time. Yes, I don't know. It's not the way fax machines worked when I used them several years ago. But maybe they worked like this in some cases. Uh in n Well, it seems like the phone is attached to the fax machine she's used. I don't know how that works, so I'm not gonna try to comment on it. I don't know. Maybe it's a feature of fax machines that I just did not know existed, and I could

have been doing that the whole time. But the scientists, by the way that they're acting shady about these pictures,

they seem to be up to no good. We get a scene where I think Wayne and Jennifer are sort of remembering that maybe they met when they were kids, but they're not sure yet, and that maybe maybe it was here, because there's a part where Jennifer like stands at the gas station where she was when she was a kid and saw the UFO and Jane Michael Vincent is across the street, and then she just says to herself, she goes, it can't be possible, and then she calls

up her dad on the phone and she's like, Daddy, remember those wonderful lights I saw in the sky when I was a child? It was here? And he's like, oh, maybe it's just a coincidence. Now. Next, there is a breakfast scene at the diner where where Wayne is ordering a couple of breakfast rolls and a six pack to go. But before that happens, we see a cowboy sitting at a table eating his breakfast and he puts about six quarts of Ketchup on two fried eggs. I nearly gagged. Yeah,

and he eats the first egg just hole. So if you if if you have an aversion to uh scenes of Friday egg eating in motion pictures, Uh, this is this is one to to skip over. This is one too fast forward through for sure. I don't know why I like Ketchup and I like eggs, but watching Ketchup go on eggs gives me intense dysphoria. Oh oh oh, but this is the first part. This scene is the first time in the movie we actually hear anything about cattle mutilation, despite it being such a big part of

the film him here on out. I mean, they let you get a solid twenty thirty minutes in before it comes up at all. Yeah, and it just kind of comes up casually, right, It's like, Hey, they're also cattle mutilations going on. How about that? Well, the waitress at the diner brings it up, but she's like flirting with Jane Michael Vincent when she does. She you know, she's being kind of cute see at him, and she's like, hey,

what do you think about that cattle mutilation? But anyway, this leads to to Wayne and Jennifer meeting up at the diner h and they talk about the investigations that she's doing, and he says something like he's like, I'm not used to lady scientists running through the streets of my town and uh so, okay whatever. But then the what I have in my notes after this is Daddy incoming. Raymond Daddy Burr drops into the diner like an orbital

kinetic weapon. He's just suddenly standing there. I think he's even shot from below, so he's like this imposing figure blocking the sunlight. We had no indication that he was coming. He's just here now, yeah, yeah, looming large. And so

this goes straight to the cattle mutilation scene. Like they they go to a some ranch land where there's a creek and there's a dead cow, and one of the deputies is investigating the carcass, and Raymond Burr is very interested in the subject of cattle muto, so he's sitting there taking notes in his notebook. Meanwhile, the deputy who's trying to take photos of the of the situation, the photos won't come out right there, like blurred in the middle,

or they've got these big white smudges on them. And in fact, that's much like the photos taken of this location from orbit that Sybil Shepherd had earlier were So what's going on here? And this is where we have that argument between Raymond Burr and the rancher where he's like, I've seen every kind of attack there is. You're gonna come up here and tell me my business, and Raymond Burr is like, it is impossible. You've seen every kind of attack. Oh, and then David Crosby rides up and

tells them there's been more. You know, it's not really him, but it is a guy who looks remarkably like him and his nevill brand show up at this point to gripe at them. Oh no, he's already here. Yeah, he's the rancher. He's mad. Now here's where we're starting some slasher stuff that hasn't really happened so far in the movie. We get a shoe salesman and his wife and they're

doing dude ranch stuff. They're out riding horses on the trail and the shoe salesman guy is trying to pretend to be a macho cowboy in front of his wife. He's like, I know things about cows. Look at those cows down there. I'm going to go up to them, and she's like, oh, maybe you better not, and he's like, don't be silly, Cow's head grass. They are not carnivorous. But when he approaches them, oh, Vincentiavelli's down there, what's he getting up to? There's like a worrying noise. He's

trying to investigate what that could be. And and it turns out Vincent Giavelli is hiding behind a cow holding a device that looks like a glowing purple electric toothbrush, h kind of a dagger sized version of the mace window lightsaber. It's making the buzzing noise. Vincent is clearly doing some cattle mutilation for some reason. And then oh, he attacks the dude ranch guy and he breaks over

the barrier into human muto. Yeah, though the dude ranch guy at first it is like, oh, sorry to disturb you carry on with your obvious cowboys stuff here, but yeah, then he is, um, he's lightsabered. So after this there's a chase scene where he's chasing Mrs Dude Ranch and then she does a really impressive stunt fall where she rolls down a hill there are a couple of pretty impressive stunt falls in this movie. Somebody's rolling down an

actual hill in slow motion. But this gives way to the scene with Buck and Wayne driving in the police car and the discourse on beer can holes and donuts. Rob, would you like to explain, I was just this scene where Jay Michael Vincent is driving and uh, Martin Landau's character Buck has a don't on in one hand and a cannabier in the other, and he's bemoaning the fact that you can't the hole in the opening in the

top of the beer can. He's not large enough to permit the dunking of the donut, but he demonstrates that he's still able to cope by like dribbling some of the beer onto the donut before he eats it. And it's just another ridiculous food based monologue in this film for Martin Landau. He has chocolate icing on his face the entire time he's doing this. By the way, yeah, oh, but so they're driving along and they just happened to come across the dude ranch people. They find the dead

shoe salesman guy, and this scene is so funny. Martin Landau goes and looks at the guy, and then I wrote down his quote. He says, well, it's a mute, but this time it ain't cattle mute. It's humans. There's human mutilations now, just like it's like, not only does he point out that the body they're looking at as a human, but he says it twice. Uh. And then he says, we're gonna get into this. We're going to find out who or what's doing it, if it's Satanists

or even aliens. We're going to get to the bottom of this. Yeah, and he's excited too. It's not like something terrible is happening in our community and we need to stop it before it gets worse. It's like, let's go, let's get into it. I'm ready. Oh, he's so excited, but Jen Michael Vincent comes back with some some humbling reality. He says, hey, we're just a couple of Yahoo cops from a jerkwater town. We are not about to have

the means to investigate something like this. And then Buck says, come on way, you know, I I want to prove my theory, Like what which one was his theory? He just cast out too drastically different ideas about what this could be, right, is that the theory maybe his theory is that it's aliens or Satanists. Yeah, I don't know. It's at least still at the hypothesis stage at this point. Now, there's some stuff that goes on with the ranchers don't like

Sybil Shephard. They think that her scientific instruments are causing cattle mutilations, so they like attack her. Later that night, the hothead cattle creeps are trying to assault her in the rain to say like, we don't know what you're doing, but it's killing our cattle, and she's like no, and one of them, I think literally says to her, you

can't get away from us, lady scientist. But then just when they're about to I don't know, beat her up or something, Jane Michael Vincent arrives and he beats them up, and then the ranch daddy arrives and then he's like, I never raised my sons to hit women. And so the situation is diffused, but clearly the ranch daddy is still mad at civil Shepherd because he does think that

her wicked science must be causing the cattle deaths. Yeah, he's not backing down from that, he's like, he's like, I apologize for my son attacking Yeah, but now you need to apologize for muting my cows and and so we don't. Actually we're not really able to diffuse the situation all that much. But hey, so we've been waiting the whole movie. It's like when our civil Shepherd and Jane Michael Vincent to fall in love. Well, here's where

we get it. So they go home together. She's really impressed by looking at all the books on his shelf. It's full of like Arthur C. Clark science, science fiction and astronomy books, but also crank UFO literature. And he's like, oh, are you impressed that this this dumb cop is actually

so smart? And she's essentially like yeah, kind of. And here's the scene where we find out that, you know, Wayne's been into this stuff ever since he was a little kid, and uh, could could it be that he was the cap gun cowboys she saw out in the street that night with the UFO you know what it is? They discover it in this scene. Oh, but not not before she says that she would like a beer and he goes it's in the refrigerator. And then she's like, you're not going to get it for me? And then

he's like light or real. I was slightly disappointed we didn't get to see in the refrigerator. Those are often fun where it was like, how are they going to represent the the current life status of a particular character by showing me the on dense of the fridge. I would say the Bachelor refrigerator is one of my favorite film cliches. I think this one would have had um, mostly beer. Um, I guess mostly quote unquote real beer

with a few light beer sprinkled in there. Um, gotta be some sort of gross leftovers of some sort, like maybe, oh, I don't know if this town would have pizza, but it's something some sort of fast food that's that's maybe not even in a container, but just setting in there on on one of the grills. Well, i'd say the biggest movie Bachelor refrigerator content cliche is the old Chinese food takeout boxes. But I don't think they have Chinese

restaurants in Little Creek. Yeah, sometimes in there like a single apple or something where it's kind of like, oh, that he was going to turn his life around that week and he bought that apple, but he still hasn't gotten around to eating it. Yeah, well, in any case, we don't see it. Instead, we see them honcky talk dancing together. There is a honkey talk dancing scene that will take your breath away. But somehow this give way to them establishing firmly the UFO connection. They're like, it

was you. Yeah, it was you. I saw him too. We we saw the UFO together. So now they're they're just bonded for life. Meanwhile, there's some more kind of perfunctory just uh cattle mudo violence, like the ranch boys go out hunting for the measuring instruments on their land and they get attacked by the prospector of Vincent Chiavelli who lightsabers them, and so there's more human muto and uh, meanwhile,

Raymond Burr back in the home office. I guess he has left Little Creek and gone back to the big city, wherever that is, And we get a terrifically out of nowhere techno battles. I remember thinking that, like, they have not laid the groundwork for him to suddenly be talking about how the crystal structure of this rock is an exact map of our solar system and all this stuff, and I'm not going to try to reproduce the whole thing,

but he says, a bunch of stuff. There's a scene after this where Wayne and Jennifer are investigating one of her measuring devices and they see a mutilated cow nearby and they go to check that out, but end up in a shootout with a ranch hand, and the ranch hand ends up tumbling down a hill. Another tumble stunt, but this one ends with a head plunge straight into an open cow torso, so he straight up does the

tauntons sleeping bag, but by accident. Yeah, because there's a mutilated cat cow at the bottom of the hill and just like tumble tumble PLoP. I think we don't quite see it. It's not as gross as it sounds, but it is pretty funny, and he's not dead. He gets out of the cow and he's like he's all covered

with with semi believable cow blood. Now we're building up to the big reveal, which is that at some point Buck Martin Landau ends up heading up into the mountains to the prospector's shack to pick up one of the metering units for Sybil Shepherd and so he goes up to the shack and he knocks on the door and there's nobody home. So he looks around inside and discovers inside the shack there is a secret passage going into

a cave full of burning torches. He picks up a torch and he explores down the cavern and it ends in a purple portal. There's like an animated vortex that is swirling into nothingness and and and a dancing display of colors. And he's looking at it, like what's going on? But then he hears something. Somebody's coming in. So Buck hides and Vincent Chiavelli walks in and he walks up to the vortex and because he says, here you go,

and he chucks a cow organ into the vortex. I read that the vortex here was created with practical effects, by the way, and it looks it looks pretty darn good. Yeah, yeah, I like it. So Buck confronts the prospector with a gun. He says, know what you're doing. You're taking organs from cattle are most important food supply, that's what he says, and sending them back to your masters. But then he looks down at the Bucket that the Prospector has brought in and he says, that's not a cow organ, that's

a human hand. You're using human organs. You're under arrest. But then you know what's going to happen at this point, and it's heartbreaking for such a fun character. But no, big nobody has been able to get the drop on our our lightsaber wielding rural slasher prospector here, because he instantly whips out that lightsaber weapon and disarms Martin landaut like literally cuts his arm off Star Wars style and throws it into the vortex. Yeah, fed to whatever is

on the other side. For whatever reasons, this is happening. It's happening again, right, So buck unfortunately succumbs to death by Muto. Now, meanwhile, I mentioned earlier that there's this stuff about the FEDS there, their government agents there, and I could not tell what they actually knew or what they were up to. We just see these suits in town and we've been warned by another character that they've been asking around about Wayne and Jennifer and the Feds.

Uh say, the Feds are like on the phone with somebody and they're like, well, sir, the deputy and the scientists have come across information that could be misinterpreted by the media, Yes, sir, right away. And then they hang up, and we don't know who they're talking to or what they're gonna do. They basically just seem to exist to chase our heroes around a little bit before the final confrontation, right, and I guess we're basically at the final confrontation or

in the final stretch. So, like the prospect Or suddenly confronts Wayne and Jennifer at a motel and he seems very anguished. Actually, he's like, I tried to scare you away, but you wouldn't go. I just want to be left alone. But it ends with well, first of all, I would say, I don't understand what this was about, but this scene had extremely jarring cuts between like full daylight shots and really dark shots. Did you understand what this was about?

Not at all? Well, for whatever reason, they end up fighting, and so it's like jan Michael Vincent with a two by four versus Vincent Chiavelli with a toothbrush sized lightsaber, and they're fighting it out. At one point, Sheavelli like knocks down a pillar of a lattice roof and that falls on Jan Michael Vincent. Uh. And then the scene ends with a frame that had hilarious composition. So I actually took a picture of my TV screen and added

it to the document. Here where the Feds run up and point a gun at Jan Michael Vincent, but there's also another deputy standing there, and he's wearing a like a red uh Kentucky Fried Chicken colonel style bow tie with the like dangles on it. I don't know what you call that style of tie. It's it's very funny. This gives way to a big chase sequence where the

Feds are trying to kill Jan Michael Vincent. One point. Uh. He he gets a I think he steals a motorcycle from a motorcycle store and jumps it through a plate glass window. Yeah. Yeah, a lot of motorcycle stunts started happening in the later part of this film, you know, going through the window here, and he'll go through something else in a bit. Yeah. And meanwhile, Vincent Sheavelli ta take Sybil Shephard back to the portal with the vortex, and he's got her there and he says, he does

a monologue, He's like I've done everything they wanted. All of these years, they were supposed to keep track of us, and they needed me. It ain't fair. But now that she's here, they won't need me anymore. And I think the idea is he like he for many years, has truly actually not aged at all because the vortex has given him anti aging properties to aid in his alien servitude. And now he's afraid that the aliens are sort of retiring him and they're going to use Sybil Shepherd to

do his job. Now did you understand it that way? Um? Roughly, But this is the part where the movie really gets confusing. And I'm normally pretty quick to be able to sort of form a theory or a little headcannon about what's going on in a movie like this, but it's kind of all over the place. I mean at this point, not counting anything that comes after. I guess we're supposed to think the aliens came to him in the late fifties and said, hey, you're the chosen one. Now here

is a tiny lightsaber. We want cow parts, not the good parts, just the weird parts. Bring them to this cave and throw them into this portal in regular intervals. And if you do that then we'll grant you like eternal youth. And I guess he's like, this is a sweet gig, and now he's afraid that gig is about to be passed on to someone who is I don't don't. I mean, I can't imagine she's going to do a better job at this. I mean he has experience at this point. Yeah, he's been doing a great job from

what I can tell. Yeah, but so for some reason he's mad at her, and so he tries to use the lightsaber to kill her, but for some reason it is unable to harm her. He like stabs her with it, but it does not harm her at all. Yes, yeah, she is special. She has chosen. Uh what does it mean? We'll continue to have to try and make sense of that. So there's more Moto stunts. Jane Michael Vincent does the stunts, and then he ends up up in the cave and

unfortunately he has to fight Vincent Savelli's dog. I don't I don't want seems where he human has to punch a dog. Come on, Yeah, yeah, and the dog doesn't die. It has that going for it at least, But but it's yeah, it's very inconsistent with this dog. Sometimes this dog is attacking people. Other times the dogs just like sheepishly watching things from underneath the table. So um, it's it's all over the place. But okay, So here's where things get even more convincing. We like a new layer

of interpretation. Uh j m V makes it up there and he reunites with the Sibyl Shepherd, and Sybil Shepherd says to him, we were chosen, all of us, even him, I think, referring to the Prospector. But he wasn't supposed to kill anyone. It wasn't meant for evil. I know that, okay, but she doesn't explain how she knows this or what

this exactly means. So this is where we started getting this idea that the Prospector has just been misinterpreting alien directives this whole time, which I mean, I've got to sympathize with him at this point, like he's devoted last twenty years of his life or so to mutilating cattle and feeding a vortex underground. Um, you know, at the expense of his career, and but for what, Just because the aliens didn't get the verbage right in the signal

they were being beaming into his brain. And if they didn't want him to do this, what's he supposed to been doing this whole time? And why hasn't there been any course correction on the part of the aliens? And what is there? Just a big pile of of cow parts building up on the other end of this portal on some alien world and they're like, should we do something about this? And they're like, well, it would be rude to do something now. We should just well let

him keep doing it. And you know, in another twenty years that girl that we looked at will do something about it. I you know, I could see this really working as a plot where there are aliens and they've given humans instructions, but the humans don't understand the instructions correctly, so they're just doing absolutely useless stuff because they think incorrectly it's what the aliens want. That doesn't really come through except in this possible interpretation of what to make

of the ending here. But if you if you promised a movie more thoroughly on that, I think that could be great. Yeah, I can see that working. Like if you had a movie where somebody has been given alien signals to build something and the aliens really want them to build a communicator, but instead the person receiving the signals is just making weird art. Um you know that are are not even weird art, but just like add art instead. But they feel like it's divinely inspired because

the aliens are giving it to them. Like, I can see that working, okay, but the ending gets even more confusing after that, Jay Michael Vincent Sibil Shepherd gets sucked into the portal together, and then we see them in a padded white room together as if they are in

a mental hospital like that was. It's a weird flash scene because it does look like a mental hospital, except they're in the same room to each with each other, like holding each other, which I think is generally not what you see in scenes like this that are depicting mental institutions. And also it's clearly a human room. It's not like a white alien room like you might expect, like the White Room and Phantasm for example. Yeah, so I don't know what to deal with that is. But

then they don't stay there. After that, there are more lights in the sky and then we see Raymond Burr. I guess oh, I think I forgot to mention Raymond Burr and all his scientists buddies like flew into town because of the readings they were getting out of computer and they fly in to town. So then you're seeing Raymond Burr standing there and he's like looking up at the sky watching passing UFOs and he's got tears in

his eyes. Yeah, that was that reminds me of of a previous weird scene though, where they were they were crunching the numbers and then he's like, get the chopp already, we're going to New Mexico. But he was just in New Mexico. So it's like he kind of expected his underlings to be like, so you mean we just want to go back like you were there yesterday? We do, yeah,

where you were a few scenes ago. Yeah. Something feels very out of order about that, Like it almost feels like maybe he wasn't supposed to be in those scenes in New Mexico earlier on, but they I don't know. So the portal has eaten the prospector at this point, right, Yes, Oh, I forgot what happened to him? Yeah, I guess I think she like sabers him in the face. He says some more stuff, you know, more sort of sympathetic, like I had it wrong things, but then he gets sucked

into the portal. Uh they get white roomed back via the UFO deposited back on the earth. That's right. Yes, Then they're standing back on the earth. So we don't know how long they were gone, but they've been like beamed down and they're back in their original clothes, just standing by the prospect or. Shack. I think they're just standing out on the mountain. Uh. So I don't know. I don't know what to make of that at all. Yeah,

Like why were these three individuals chosen? Why was the prospect or feeding animal parts to a portal in a cave? How exactly did he get the surgical lightsaber? Um? You know, what was his What was the actual alien intent if they didn't want him to do those things he was doing? And why did they choose them? Were they chosen to stop the prospector from doing the things that the aliens

accidentally told him to do. I just don't get it, or I feel like it's only one big trope away from making sense, Like you need like a like a like a fateful space baby, like these two are supposed to be the parents of the future messiah that the Aliens send to bring peace to the planet, you know, trot something out like that, because as it stands, I just have no idea what the Aliens wanted out of this, what they got out of it. In the end um

though our heroes do save the day. I guess though, if you want to do a completely incomprehensible freak out ending, you could do an ending like, uh, like the Phase four one where it's like human viewers cannot even comprehend what the new ant civilization is going to be like,

so we just get abstract art. Uh. You know, I'm down with that, but this one, it feels it doesn't lean hard enough into just like incomprehensible freak out for for that to make sense as an ending, because they just end up being beamed back to Earth and it's happily ever after. Yeah. Yeah, so I'm not I'm not

really sure how to tell. It feels confusing and uh and hard to stitch together at the end um and and I'm not even sure what I change about it, because if I would, if you were to change something about it, you would have to make definite decisions that the movie didn't seem to make so I'm not sure.

I feel like one thing that would have helped it is if you definitely go clearer on the idea that Vincent Chiavelli misunderstood the instructions he was given by the aliens, and if there were you wouldn't have to be super explicit about it. But if there was even some kind of hint as to what their actual intentions had been, what did he misunderstand, I feel like that could have

made it all kind of work better. Yeah, Like even if it was even if you didn't reveal it, if you just had a scene where like civil Shepherd hands the lightsaber item to jam Michael Vincent character and they're like, now we have the real together, we have the true uh signal. Now we know what to do. Let's go out into the world and do it. You don't even have to say what it's going to be, but at least that gives us the idea. It's like, Okay, this is this is true course correction here and now we're

on the right track. Oh. Like they get the lightsaber and they're like, oh, we were supposed to use this on the on seattle, not on cattle. That I understand we were supposed to use this to make cows, not take cows apart. This was alien plan. I don't know, right, Yeah, it's a cow synthesis device. Again, it's just hard to have like what was the original instruction and then how did it get so garbled that this was the end result? Uh?

Where the It's like, we want you to wander around the countryside, uh, cutting open cattle and bringing us um some of the more useless parts. Throw it into the portal. Where does the portal go? So? I guess to the home planet, but we we just don't know. Second film in a row with an alien portal though, so we have that going for us. Oh well, baffling ending aside. I I did really enjoy the return, and I enjoyed

talking about it. Yeah, yeah, this is a fun one, and I think, yeah, if you're if you're a fan of movies of this caliber, it's definitely worth worth picking up taking a look at. And it it ties in nicely. This was a nice, nice example of a we don't do this a lot, but having a subject on stuff to blow your mind. That also ties into the film we're talking about in a weird house. Yeah, and uh, yeah. On that note, I'll go ahead and remind everybody that

we are primarily a science podcast. Here it's Stuff to Blow your Mind, But on Fridays we put aside most serious concerns and we just talk about a weird film with Weird House Cinema. If you want to follow the movies that we talk about on Weird House Cinema, you can go to one of two places. There is the Samuda Music Blog, where I do blogs posts about the movies we cover. But also if you use letterbox, that's L E T T E R B O x D

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