Spirits of the Dead (1968)

Episode 457, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd: Hello and welcome to another episode of Two Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig: And I’m Craig.

Todd: Time for another tribute episode. We’ve only gone a couple weeks since we’ve done our last five, so great. We thought we would do another one today because the guy who died this time around really, uh, was a person that I recognized quite well and really respected and loved to see in lots of movies.

Uh, this is Terrance Stamp, an English actor who started out in London on. Stage and then very quickly moved into film. Did the collector in 1965 about a, a man who abduct a woman and brings him into her. His, his basement kind of keeps her captive, which, uh, won the canned film festival award, uh, for best actor for him.

He got a Gold Globe award for his American film debut, Billy Bud, in 1962. But I remember him from the old, uh, Superman films in the 19 78, 19 80 Superman one and Superman two. He was General Zod. And much. I mean, this guy’s been in several movies a year ever since then. He was in Star Wars episode one, young Guns and Wall Street, Disney’s the Haunted Mansion.

He always just, you know, played like villains most of the time. Usually. Yeah. And he’s this’s got this face that’s just totally recognizable. I remember him way, way, way more as an older man. Then as the younger man that we see in this film and this film that we’re doing is 1960 nine’s Spirits of the Dead.

Well, 1968, but it was released in the States in 1969. It goes by a couple other names too, because this is a joint French and Italian production and is three different segments that are directed by different. Very famous directors. Federico Fellini does one. Uh, Louis Malay does one, and Roger Vadim, and it has quite a few other stars in it too.

You’re talking Jane Fonda, Bridgette Barau, Peter Fonda’s in here a little bit. I thought this movie would be interesting enough for us to do because as far as horror movies that he’s done, we did the Company of Wolves and he was in that as well. But we’ve already done that, so we thought. Well, let’s go with this one.

And we haven’t done an older film in a while, and I know this is right up your alley, Craig. So, uh, we’re gonna talk about it today and well, I guess we could talk about the three segments. Separately, right? Like, uh, just kind of walk through each one. Right. But yeah, obviously I’d never seen this. I’d never heard of it before.

It is definitely your very classic movie from this era put together because movies like this were popular at the time. Oh, what do you call ’em? An anthology, not an, yeah, like an anthology basically. Yeah. Based loosely on tales from Edgar Allen Poe. I don’t think I’d read any of the stories. No. These three movies were based on No, none of these were familiar to me at all.

They’re not your typical Yeah, I, uh, I’d never heard of it. Orson Wells was supposed to actually direct a segment in here, and he backed out. He was gonna do one on the cast, ofdo and 

Craig: well, and there was a, another famous distinguished actor who was supposed to be in it, and I can’t remember who it was.

Peter, I, I won’t be able to think of it. It, it was in the trivia, but I think Terrence Stamp ended up replacing. Whoever it was. Hmm. I can picture the guy in my head. We’ve seen, we’ve done movies with him in it, but I just can’t think of his name. Yeah, I had never heard of it and I didn’t even know what it was and like I looked it up on IMDB and there were a couple of different movies with the same title and I wasn’t sure which was, and I was like, I kind of hope it’s not the first one and it is, 

Todd: nah.

Craig: Sorry, but at the same time I was thinking, well, it’s one of those Egg Grow Poe movies, those Old Egg Grow Poe movies. You know, we’ve done Vincent Price Egg Grow Poe or two, and those are usually, there’s usually something interesting to talk about. But like you said, I didn’t recognize any of these stories and they must be fairly loosely based because the third one seemed.

Far too modern for like I, I don’t 

Todd: know. The third one, even in the credits, it says like very loosely based on 

Craig: the Edgar 

Todd: Ground Post story or something like that. 

Craig: And that’s the one that Terrance Stamp is in Uhhuh. And of the three, that was my favorite one. I have no idea what the fuck was going on. Right.

But it was. Interesting to look at. Yeah. The other two. Yeah, like I, I think that I appreciated them more in chronological order. Like I did not like the first one at all. The only thing that I liked about the first one was seeing Jane Fonda, oh God, I have no idea how old she was in 1967, but she couldn’t, I mean, she had to have been in hurt.

Early twenties, and she’s a stunningly gorgeous woman now at 80 something. Like she looks amazing today. Yeah. Life did her right man. Oh man. Yeah, and like she had the good work done. Like she never, she was one of those women who was smart, who allowed herself to continue to age and just did some little tweaks here and there.

She didn’t like give herself a whole new rubber face that looks weird. Yeah. Um, she still looks like herself. She, she looks young for her age at 80 something. Anyway. Yeah. The point is in her early twenties, she’s just one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Like, yeah. Just, just stunningly beautiful and, and these piercing, piercing eyes and a very commanding presence.

Yes. Very strong. That, that She still has, I mean she, yeah, she, I, she seems like, because I think she is a tough bitch. Yeah. You don’t wanna mess with 

Todd: her. She had just gotten off of filming Barella the same year, I think also with the same director of this segment. So, uh, are you a Barella fan? Have you ever seen that?

I’ve never seen it. Oh, it’s so funny. Is the director, 

Craig: her husband, or had, did they just work? 

Todd: I feel like, I think at that 

Craig: time they were married. I don’t remember. There was some, I’m not sure they still are or not. I No, no, they aren’t. I think she’s been married several times since then and, and they had worked together before.

Mm-hmm. And this is the only time I believe that she ever appeared in a movie with her brother Peter, which is weird because there are no love scenes at all. But they appear to kind of be star cross lovers. Yeah. Or at least she’s, she’s interested in him and not only is he played by her brother, but he in the movie is her cousin now.

Yeah. I, I know that in, I know that in, you know, the olden days that wasn’t, you know, pose time frowned upon. In fact, it was often encouraged because it, especially in wealthy families because it kept, kept the wealth in the family. Right. But it’s also weird. I was in a, I may have told this story before. My brother-in-law, he wasn’t my brother-in-law at the time, he and my sister were dating.

He was in a directing class. He was also a theater major and their capstone for their class was, they had to direct a one act, and it was like round robin style auditioning. All of the directors were in the room, and then they fought over who they wanted, and he cast. Me and my sister in a two person show as incestuous, mentally challenged siblings, and so we were like, she was pregnant with my baby.

Oh God. At one point. He wanted us to kiss and we both just flatly said, no. Yeah,

this, this is not something that’s even on the table. Like Right, you can just let it go right now, it is not happening. I would kiss my sister on the lips in a friendly way, but I’m not gonna like kiss her in that kind of way. On stage. It’s disgusting. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: There are lies, but I don’t, like I said, there are, there are no.

Love scenes in this. There are just some like longing gazes and Totally, it’s kind of frustrating actually, but beyond that. Okay, so that’s, I I love Jane Fonda. The other thing I love about this, it, it is totally incongruous with the time period, but it’s a stylistic choice that I like. The costumes in this are amazing.

Yes. I would go to like. A gallery viewing of these costumes. They’re stunning. 

Todd: Every scene she has a different outfit on. It’s like it changes from scene to scene. It’s so wonderful. 

Craig: I was trying to explain it to Alan. I was like, it’s, it’s period. Like, I don’t know. They’re like princess and princesses and counts and stuff.

So Renaissance, I guess. I don’t know. I guess I’m not good at history. Yeah, it’s hard to know for sure, really. But yeah. And, and so the pieces are very period inspired with like big shoulder frills and like, she’ll be in big, tall, white wigs and long flowing skirts. But under that she’s always in like a bathing suit.

Like, yeah, like a, like a gold. High cut, eighties bathing suit. It’s, it’s strange, and she looks fantastic. At one point she wears what looks like a wooden breast plate that, yeah. Is very closely molded around her breast. At one point she’s riding the horse. Oh my God. She’s always riding the horse. Yes. At one point she’s riding the horse in a nude body suit and I thought she was really nude.

The only way that you could tell that she wasn’t was ’cause she didn’t have any nipples. Yeah. 

Todd: Yeah. That shocked me for a second. And damn could she ride that horse? Oh my 

Craig: God. Oh my God. So this is a story about a girl in her horse. Like it’s fricking black beauty for real. Ugh. She, we’ll get to Y and everything.

It’s a very simple premise or whatever, but this is 40 to 45 minutes of Jane Fonda riding a horse, beating a horse, talking to a horse, talking to a horse with no dubbing. So like we get to watch them have a conversation, but there’s no voice over dub. So it’s just silent for us. Dancing with the horse, playing with the horse.

Yeah. Oh my God, it is. So riding on the beach, there is so much riding on the beach. I shit you not, it’s got to be a full 15 minutes of just her and this horse. It’s crazy. 

Todd: Yeah, it it is pretty crazy. The segment is called Gerstein and she basically is, is set up to be this Countess or something, but she is in control.

And in charge and brutal. 

Craig: Well, yeah. She like. Uh, she’s in charge of her estate or whatever, and she’s got this whole posse of people and they just live a hedonistic lifestyle. Like they just lay around and all day. Yeah. Sounds great. Crazy. It was Remi. I mean, sure. I’ve never seen Caligula, but that’s, I, I, I’m aware of it and that’s kind of the vibe it gave me.

Yeah. It’s just like these fan aristocrats in their, you know, various stages of undress, like laying around on the castle floor, just. You know, drape, whoever happens to be nearby, just grab 

Todd: somebody while she wanders around amongst them. And like seductively rubs a dagger over some of their cheeks and things, and, 

Craig: and she joins in from time to time a little bit, but it’s sometimes she and a male friend will chase and rape another lady, you know, just for giggles and Yeah.

You know, it happens. Yeah, 

Todd: that, that was weird. Remember when she rides in on the, and sees that there’s a guy swinging on the gallows and she just looks across at him and 

Clip: I love this place. 

Todd: It’s beautiful even. And the, the next scene, they’ve got a kid, and I mean a child. In a noose on top of a barrel, and she and a couple of her friends are there with bows and arrows and somebody kicks the barrel out from under this kid, and they’re trying to shoot the arrow at the rope to drop the kid down while he’s swinging.

It’s a little over the top showing how sadistic she is, but it was unique and kind of cool. 

Craig: Right, and they’re doing that just for their amusement. She’s so blase about it, and she’s very, I don’t know. She’s, she’s very comfortable in her authority. Like she’s no nonsense. She does whatever she wants. What she says goes, what did you think of the giant cake?

Oh, that was weird. I don’t, I, I feel like I must have missed part of it because the first time that I saw it, it looked like it would, was almost completely eaten. They had cut. Yeah. I was like, somebody had cut down the middle of it, but it was like 20 layers. Yeah. It looks to, and just in kind of off to the side of the orgy, I guess if you get hungry, you just go grab a slab of cake, grab a slab of cake.

Todd: Somebody went through a lot of effort to bake and assemble this cake just to cut it down the middle for the orgy. It was, well, 

Craig: it was, it was like they wanted to show us how extravagant it had been. They wanted us to see how tall it was. So like it was as though it was like a 20 tiered wedding cake that somebody had sliced all the way around.

So it was just like a tower of unfrosted cake. Yeah, 

Todd: it so nuts was frosting between the lyric. It 

Craig: was, 

Todd: it was nuts. I did notice that. Yeah. Maybe there’s a metaphor there. My, my other favorite part was when she and her lady friend are sitting in the tub facing each other and do they start tweaking each other’s nipples?

Craig: Yes. Just, and their, their breasts are just below the line of the bathtub, so I. But they have their fingertips extended and they come right there. Yeah. They just, they reach out with like the pinchy fingers. 

Todd: Oh my God. 

Craig: And like Jane Fonda reaches out and pinches the other lady’s nipple. And so then the other lady reaches out and pinches hers and they just keep talking.

Gives a little twist. 

Todd: Yeah.

And there’s, and there’s narration over all this. That was, um, I guess, you know, you gotta shortcut things because. All of these, uh, segments, honestly are way more interested in style than telling a fast-paced story, 

Craig: particularly this one. Yeah. And I, this one is, and I thought it was styl. This one is stylish, almost all style.

It is. And like I almost wish I would’ve watched it with the sound off. I think I would’ve enjoyed it more because there were interesting things to look at. Like the location was amazing. I have no idea where it was, but it was like this stone castle on a cliff O overlooking the sea, and like the castle is built into the cliff and there’s all these ruins that, you know, we’re getting these huge, I guess.

Helicopter shots in that era. I mean, all of those high, high shots of the coastline and her riding the horse on the coastline and stuff. Yeah, I I, unless they had some kind of amazing crane, I don’t know. But the point is, it’s, it, it is beautiful to look at, but the storytelling is kind of disjointed and the dubbing is really bad.

Like you can tell Yeah. When they were able to record. Locally. Yeah. And because it’s, it’s, it’s perfect. Yeah. And Jane Fonda’s performance is so good in those moments. And then there are other parts which it’s clear that they couldn’t get the audio for whatever reason. I don’t know. But it was dubbed and it wasn’t dubbed well, yeah, I was impressed to learn that they filmed it, I think both in French and English.

Oh. And, and she did both. I, I, apparently she speaks French and she also did the French. Dubbing, which is cool. That’s great. But just from a technical sound perspective, it sounds awful. The, it doesn’t really match up with the video. Well, I’ve seen worse but not much. 

Todd: That would explain why the lips didn’t really even seem to match the words she was saying.

I thought maybe, you know, they changed the lines afterwards or something like that. But you’re right, in the moments when she’s speaking English, it’s perfect and in the moments when she must be speaking French, but it’s. Dubbed in English. I guess it, it’s just way off, I guess. Maybe. It’s so distracting.

Especially because there’s just so much closeup on her face. Yeah. And her mouth. She’s always had this, I don’t know, I don’t know how to describe it. Just this very distinct way of talking that is very clear. Yes. And uh, you know, and her mouth just precisely expresses the words. Yes. It’s had a good way of putting it.

She’s stunning. I just love watching her in this. She’s stunning. 

Craig: You, you could watch this just to see her uhhuh. Yeah. You should really. Again, this is my least favorite one. And like I appreciate her in this role because she really does play a badass really well. And it’s not even like a physical strength thing, it’s just a, she is so confident and anyway, she just plays that really well.

But the whole plot, she basically just runs her own little kingdom and nobody ever questions her, but on a neighboring property lives her only relative, who is this cousin who is a barren from another. Arm of the family and he disapproves of her hedonistic ways, so he doesn’t have anything to do with her and he won’t even talk to her.

And when she and her posse like pull up on his farm to like point and laugh at him, like he just totally ignores them and mm-hmm. Isn’t interested at all. But then she’s taking it. Horse ride slash stroll through the forest and she steps into a bear trap, I guess. Yeah, an animal trap. Some kind of animal trap.

And who goes to free her? Willem. Yeah. And so, yeah, this guy, and this is her brother, 

Todd: Peter Fonda, right? 

Craig: Yeah. Very famous in his own right, was riding Easy Rider on the set of. Movie. Yeah. It’s crazy to think 

Todd: about. Right? He frees her. She, you know, takes her leg out. He says something about, you know, usually when you free a wild animal, they run off or something like that.

Mm-hmm. She kinda looks away and then when she turns back around, he’s totally gone. Him and his horse are just not there. And I was like, was is this like a supernatural thing? I don’t 

Craig: know. I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t think so at this point. Probably not. They meet again. They meet again. Yeah. She goes to 

Todd: this, you know, and there’s just ruins out here in the countryside and he’s sitting up feeding an owl or something in the window.

Yep. And as she rides up and gets off and, and looks at him, and then somehow her horse gets scared away and, and it takes off. And he comes down and then they have a very, very slow and long moment. And then she burns down his cottage. What was 

Craig: that all about? This, this was so stupid. She’s flirting with him and she like, it’s like I’m cold.

And he’s like, oh, sorry. And she’s like, well, where I come from, a man would offer his cloak. So he’s wearing like this big fur cloak, so he like doesn’t take it off and give it to her. He just like wraps it around her with him still in it. So he’s, they’re both in there together and she’s obviously into him and he is not into her.

And she says something suggestive and he dismisses her and leaves and she’s pissed off. So the narrator tells us. She was mad, so she saw her revenge, so her revenge. For him, rebuffing her is to burn down. Not his cottage. His stables. Right, right. And it’s a huge stables with tons of horses in it and tons of people trying to save the horses.

Horses and people alike. Burning to death in this thing. Yeah, because he rejected her advances and ultimately he is trying to free like his favorite horse, and we see the whole place just completely collapse all around and on top of him. And she’s told later that he’s died. I don’t know what she thought was going to happen.

That seemed a little excessive to me. Yeah, it was cruel because she knows that he loves. Animals. That’s his thing. Like he really loves animals, so she really went to hit him where it hurt. Bitch. I guess she just didn’t expect that he would die 

Todd: too. I guess maybe this is how she controls people, you know?

She destroys their world and makes them come back to her or something. I don’t know. 

Craig: They have established that she is, she doesn’t care about consequence, you know, with that little boy, that little boy could have easily died. She doesn’t care, you know? Yeah. It’s true. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. But then she immediately becomes fascinated with a tapestry of a big black stallion and then a big black stallion shows up.

Do you think that tapestry, like 

Todd: she just noticed it for the first time or did it appear on the wall or what’s the deal? It’s kind of weird’s. But it’s an odd scene that goes on far too long, cutting between this stallion, rushing into her castle grounds or whatever, and everybody’s trying to calm it down and it’s just going all over the place.

And she’s staring at this horse tapestry on the wall and the tapestry in her face and the horse and the people and the tapestry in her face and the horse and the people. And finally somebody comes in and tells her, Hey, there’s a horse outside that’s going crazy. Nobody can control it. He came out of the fire covered with flames.

And Gallup 

Clip: straight here. 

Todd: And who’s is he? 

Clip: No one knows. Not even the baron Wilhelm servants. No one’s ever seen him. He’s mad. No one can approach him. 

Todd: I shall. So that she goes out and sure enough, she’s able to calm it and that’s when she’s told, oh, by the way, uh, your cousin’s. Trying to save his favorite horse.

Craig: And then she goes back inside and the tapestry has burned, but only the horse part, like the horse part has just burned away. Yeah. And she tells, she tells a guy fix it, and he’s like, oh, that that can’t be fixed. And she says. You’ll do it because I said so or something like that. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: Oh boy. I 

Todd: don’t know.

It’s a whole thing with the tapestry. It is. And we keep coming back to the tapestry and that poor guy making, working on the tapestry. Meanwhile, she just, I think we just see a whole lot of her getting along with the horse really, really well. Oh boy. 15 minutes of her and that horse, she is into that horse.

Craig: And I mean the, the, the movies, the, the visuals are, even though, like I said, she’s talking to the horse and we can’t hear her. Like they didn’t dub that she’s just moving her lips. And I liked. The visual storytelling of her change in appearance. She starts, I was gonna say, she starts wearing more modest clothes.

They’re still, still, they’re still very stylized, but they’re not as revealing. Right. And they’re more natural. It’s lots, lots of like leathers and furs and her hair is wild now.

Like the wildness of the, and she’s riding on the cliffs and, and all of a sudden, whereas before. You know, she was very social in her little group or whatever. Now she’s very reclusive and she’ll still pop into the orgy every once in a while, but she’s very disengaged and just laying there. Yeah, 

Todd: she’s bored with orgies now.

Craig: Yeah. But mostly she just keeps to herself, just her and the horse. Yep. And, and I was sitting there thinking in a different movie this could go. Sideways. 

Todd: Right. A lower budget exploitation film perhaps. Yeah. She is getting real close to this horse. Roger Corman would’ve had a field day with this, let’s just put it that way.

As she is playing with the horse and hanging out with the horse, the guy inside is working on the tapestry, and as it comes up, you know, he’s working from the bottom up, but the horse he’s putting together is wearing, I don’t know what horses wear spans or strappy things with. Cloth hanging off of them. I dunno.

Whatever it is, it’s colored the same way that Will hel Will Wilhelm, right? Will Willams, yeah. Her cousin. Yeah. Yeah. Her cousin’s clothes were when she met him that day that he freed her and she notices that too. ’cause it’s a bunch of flashing back and forth on that. Finally, he completes this tapestry and she looks at the eyes and they’re red and she says, oh, you gave him blood eyes?

And she says, no, they are fire. 

Craig: Huh. And that wasn’t even her. That was somebody else because she’s out on the horse. Like she takes off on the horse. A big storm rolls in and the horse freaks out. That causes fire. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: I guess there was some lightning or something. Yeah, and the, and the horse. The horse freaks out and she goes out and gets the horse and she goes riding off into the sunset and the narrator tells us.

She will ride into the fire and die just like Wil Helm did or something. That’s it. The end. Oh my God. 

Todd: Yeah. I mean that was so, and this movie does a lot of that where there’s a lot of telling, not showing with a stupid narrator. I guess. It’s like being told a story and this is just the visual accompaniment to it.

Was, I don’t think there was, there wasn’t narration in the other two. Was there, there was narration in the second one, but it, but that one had a framing story where the narration made sense. Right. Oh, okay. So, or framing element to it. Anyway, I mean, I thought this segment was nice, but just like you said, I completely agree.

If you watch it without sound, it’s just as good. Yeah. It’s just all style. But it is beautiful. Uh, everything about it’s beautiful. It is pretty to look at and, uh, and Jane Fonda’s beautiful. Well, should we move on to the second one? Yep. William Wilson. I thought this one was kind of fun because it, it actually had more of a intriguing, I suppose, story to it.

Yes. It starts out with a guy running to a confessional and, uh, as he’s running down the street, he’s got like a cut on his face and his forehead and, and uh, we see these flashes of. Scene of a guy who looks a lot like him, at least dressed like him, falling from a tower and splatting down 

Craig: below. Oh my God.

It’s not a guy that looks like him. It is a terrible obvious dummy. Dummy. Yeah, of course. Yeah. It’s in the same clothes that he’s in, but it’s 1968 it I know. But it looks like they took his clothes and stuffed them with straw, 

Todd: flopped it over the edge of this tower and let it spin on the way down. Yeah, that’s true.

Craig: It looks really bad. Like the limbs are just kind of like. Flopping in the, huh? Okay. I get it. Whatever. It’s low budget. It’s fine. I get it. But boy, it does not look good. It looks really fake. Yeah, 

Todd: it does. 

Craig: You’re right. He runs into a church. I don’t know where this is, Italy, I guess probably. It seems like it looks like it.

Yeah. It’s like cobblestone streets. Stone buildings and he runs into this big church with a big tower and he runs in for confession and he grabs like the priest is getting ready to start mass and he grabs him and he forces him into the confessional. The priest is like, uh, I’m getting ready to start mass.

He’s like, no, no, I have to do confession right now. Then they get in the confessional and the guy’s like, tell me how to do this. I’m not Catholic.

That’s 

Todd: not how this works.

Wouldn’t he just kick you out? Sorry bud. This isn’t for you. Well, especially 

Craig: if he was getting ready to start a mass, he wouldn’t be like, okay, sure. I’ll just hang out with you while my parishioners sit out there like some stranger. Now, I would like to believe the priests that I’ve encountered if they met a man in distress, would help him regardless of his religious beliefs.

But. That was just so funny to me. And so the priest does stay in there with him and he’s like, I just killed a guy. Maybe he says maybe. 

Todd: Yeah. Oh no, he says it. He’s a stranger. And he says, well, maybe. 

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. He says, well, kind of, but not really. ’cause I’ve known him for a really long time. Uhhuh. And then it flashes back to his childhood.

Now, I agree with you of the three stories. Maybe when we talk about the third one, you can explain to me what is going on because I have no idea, and maybe I’ll appreciate it more than Uhhuh. But this one was a more traditional narrative. This one felt very a Allen Poe to me. Yes. Yes. One. Poe regularly has these first person narrators who either present themselves as a hero or a victim, and they are crazy, right?

Like they, they are the crazy villain of the story. They just are so crazy they don’t realize it. I was getting that vibe from this here. And then there’s usually some sort of creepy, supernatural, unexplainable thing going on that ultimately leads to. The narrator getting what they deserve, getting what right.

Comes to them. And so I, I liked that formula. I liked, I mean, it’s not a twist, you know, he, no, he kind of explains what’s going on from the beginning, but we are never really told exactly what’s going on. Right. A as is the case in many of post stories, like the telltale heart or whatever. I ultimately think the guy was just crazy.

Right. But I don’t know. 

Todd: Yeah. Anyway, I mean, he, he’s just, well, he’s clearly a troubled kid because in school he’s like fascinated with pouring red ink all over his stuff, you know, red ink, blood, whatnot. They introduce a new kid to the class who kind of walks to the top front of the class and, and everybody teases as they comes in.

And then this kid throws some, some red ink on him, and then they’re outside torturing him with rats. That was nuts. Yeah. Just lowering him, like where are the people at this school in charge? The adults 

Craig: I know, and like they’ve stripped this kid and put him in like a, like a flower sack or something. Yeah.

Lowering him down into a, yeah. I’m sure there’s a name for what this is. ’cause I’ve seen it in a bazillion things. You know where, where somebody’s on like a crane or something and they’re just dunking them into something terrible repeatedly. In this case, it’s a barrel full of rats. And these are kids, these are probably like 10 year olds.

Yeah, it’s wild. Yeah. And so he’s torturing this kid 

Todd: and then suddenly, as the narrator tells us, another kid arrives. With the same name. So he walks up to him as he’s doing this torture and all the other kids scatter, and he tries to scare him with the rat that he does it. It’s quite a coincidence. It’s coincidence, 

Clip: but power cannot be shared.

And suddenly I had a rival. A far too friendly rival whom I knew to be my superior in every way. Yet he did not compete. He held back. He seemed to want to watch over me. I was filled with uneasy curiosity. 

Todd: And now again, we’re told but not shown that now apparently this kid and this other kid who also looked like each other.

So he says it’s doppelganger basically. Yeah. Arrivals in some way. Uh, we don’t really get a lot of that except through the narration because it jumps pretty far ahead. Pretty quickly. ’cause now he’s an adult and in medical school he is listening to a, a lecture. You know, it’s that classic, you know, the, the med.

The med school room theater. The autopsy room theater. Yeah. Whatever they, yeah. The surgery theater. You, you know all the proper words. Yeah. The surgery, theater. Yeah. This guy is going through this long spiel about how you cut into this corpse and you free up. Its, it’s, it’s lift up, its thing and its thing, and you pull its heart out, yada, yada.

Free its spirit. I don’t know what he says, but. Anyway, it’s this long thing that’s gonna be important later because the next thing we see is that William Wilson corners a woman in the alley and she’s with his buddies. And I was like, is he gonna rape this woman? I think he did. 

Craig: He must have before you 

Todd: think?

Yeah. 

Craig: Okay. I think so because there. We end up finding her tied down in that theater. 

Todd: Yeah. 

Craig: On the table. But before that, there are a couple of really quick shots of her seemingly like, it’s like head shots, but shot upside down and like she’s writhing. I, yes. It seemed to me like she was, oh, you’re probably right.

Yeah. This, this got very sexually uncomfortable. He’s obviously a psychopath. Oh yeah. The actor who plays him at this age, and he may, I don’t think he plays him in the third age. Maybe he does, but the actor who plays him in this age has really striking blue eyes and, and, yeah. Is, is very creepy and menacing.

What’s, what surprises me about this, you know, obviously he’s psychotic, but he appears to constantly be able to surround himself with other people who are psychos because Yes. They are always perfectly willing to go along with what he’s doing. It’s as though he’s the leader, but they are totally cool with it.

Yeah. You know, raping and torturing women, I, every man in this is awful. Except for the mysterious stranger. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And he is not even a stranger like it’s supposed to be. His doppelganger. It bothered me a little bit in the beg in the first part when they were little kids and it wasn’t quite, ’cause those two little kids real, they didn’t look much alike at all.

Yeah. Yeah. They do tricks in, I don’t know, in the middle part, this med school part. The two actually do look quite a bit alike. And then in the third part, they put them both in masks, like covering up the top. So there’s a lot of creative filming to make the same 

Todd: actor, you know, look like two people. Mm.

Craig: Yeah. I mean today they would do it with computers and the same actor would play both roles, but this is fine. You get the sense of what it’s supposed to be. Right. But yeah, so I believe he assaults that woman and then she’s tied naked, completely nude to that. And it’s pre I, I was gonna say gratuitous, but it’s only because she’s fully nude and we get.

Full shots of her. A beautiful woman with a beautiful body. Yeah. But in peril tied down. And he’s like kind of like recreating the lecture that they had viewed earlier. But he’s going to cut her open. He is going to cut her heart out while she’s alive 

Todd: in front of all these people who barely look like they’re disturbed by it.

No, I think we’re supposed to see some smirks or some movement, but like not, not enough. And just as he is about to do it, who walks in? But his doppelganger, and she comes in to save her. She cuts her free. He cuts her free, but 

Craig: then she ends up getting stabbed. Anyway, I know I was confused by this. I didn’t really understand what happened because it seemed to me like she ran to a.

The bad one. Yeah. And was she confused? I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know why. And I also don’t ultimately know what happened because we see that, we see that she gets stabbed and then it immediately cuts to the next thing. Right. 

Todd: Well, it cuts to the back, to the confessional and the priest is like, did she die?

And he said, oh, I don’t know. Doesn’t really matter. Right? I need to tell you more. Yeah. And he talks about how he went into Austria, into the war and priest is even like, oh, I know. Like your regiment was well known. Apparently his regiment was well known for cruelty, I guess, 

Craig: yet for raping women. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. This is disgusting. So they’re well known for raping women. He goes into this masquerade ball he’s wearing. Well, no, he, he doesn’t even have a mask. He like punches some dude and takes his mask or something. 

Clip: Mm-hmm. 

Craig: And then he goes in and he kind of starts something with a guy and the lady that the guy is with is like, don’t mess with him.

That’s William Wilson. He’s bad and the main guy, William Wilson, takes off his mask and he is like, oh, you remember me? He’s like, I’m surprised that you could remember me. There were so many of us and you were pretty busy. Quite busy. That’s disgusting. Yeah. Her own date slaps 

Todd: her when she leaves. I mean, 

Craig: a as though getting gang raped was in some way her fault.

Like what? Yeah. Well, 

Todd: I mean, she’s calling her a slut maybe. I think. 

Craig: Yes, but the implication is that. That guy in his troops gang raped this woman. 

Todd: I thought it, she just serviced them all. I, I don’t know. I don’t know what, I don’t know what he was implying, but yeah. So then he, uh, wanders into a different room.

I think it’s the same party, right. And yeah, there is Bridget Barau sitting down playing cards and smoking a cigar. 

Craig: I know her name. I know her look and I know that she was a famous movie star, but what is she famous for? She’s famous for looking beautiful. 

Todd: Yeah, she’s gorgeous. 

Craig: She was Hollywood, a big time Hollywood star that I just didn’t know if there were any big movies that I should know that she was in or she was a 

Todd: French actress, so she was in a lot of French movies and, and not even that many I think.

Think, I think she was just more known as that beautiful woman actress slash model pin up, you know? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I’m even flipping through this right now. And, and she really kind of stopped acting shortly after about this time, like in 1973. Most of all her, her acting was done up to this point in 1968.

And, uh, from then on, I think she was just a pinup girl and already famous. 

Craig: I. Like her in this movie because she plays a woman who’s not gonna be intimidated by him. Yes. They project that by having her smoke cigars, so she has that mask because she smokes cigars. She’s, you know, like a dude and she can stand up to him.

Mm-hmm. He says, oh, you’re right. He narrates his own story. He says that he knows that her weakness is gambling, but he says, but I’ve always known how known how to play my cards. So he sits down with her and starts playing cards with her, and he’s. Cheating from the beginning. Right. Stacking the cards and sleigh of hand and stuff with the cards.

But I think initially he’s letting her win. Mm-hmm. So that he can put her in a position where she feels like she’s besting him and then later he turns it around. Yep. Kind of to humiliate her. Yep. He lets her win almost everything. Almost everything, to the point where he’s making out like bank notes or IOUs and like he offers his watch and stuff.

Right, right. Like it seems like, it seems like he’s in dire straits, but then he turns it around on her and over the course of the night wins everything back, and then it 

Todd: gets apparently to a point where she can’t pay like she owes more, I guess. Right. And so he proposes one more round. 

Clip: I propose double or nothing.

It’s your last chance. If you win, you owe me nothing, and if I lose, you still owe me nothing. But I’ll have you on me on what conditions. On my conditions as I please. 

Todd: And of course he wins ’cause he’s cheating. ’cause he’s cheating. Yeah. One of the guys who’s with him is like, alright, so I guess we’ll get outta here.

And he is like, no boys, you can stay. I want you to stay so gross. Oh man. I’m like, all these guys are assholes. And so like one of them holds her while he strips her down the back and starts whipping her. And then he turns the whip to his friend and says, your turn, Gino. And he just kind of stares at him and he’s like, oh, Gino wants something else from you.

Hey, it was so gross. But then. Once again, doppelganger walks in, he’s got a mask on this time he stops and exposes the cheat and shows some sleight of hand, which had to be, you know, closeup of a magician doing all this stuff. It was real legitimate sleigh of hand. It was quite cool. Yeah, yeah. And lets her go.

And so he gets so angry that he chases after him and there’s a big sword fight outside. He’s like, finally, I will kill you. You know, finally you have bested me once too many times, sir. And they do. They have this long sword fight and then. It’s like his doppelganger allows himself to get stabbed. 

Craig: The, the, the doppelganger wins the sword fight, but then.

The bad one plays dirty and pulls out a dagger and stabs him. It does seem like the good one should have had the opportunity to defend himself, and he kind of does just allow himself to get stabbed real quick. When he lifts 

Todd: his mask off of his face, the scars on this doppelgangers face match the cuts that the doppelganger gave him.

Oh, in the fight there was one on the forehead and one on the cheek. So it’s like he’s looking at himself and then, 

Craig: yeah, and the priest basically says. Dude, you’re gonna be okay. You’re just hallucinating and bad. Wilson is like, you’re stupid and runs out. I don’t, I don’t really know. Yeah, he, I guess he runs to the roof.

He runs up to the tower. Yeah. 

Clip: Jumps 

Craig: off and jumps off. And we see that same dummy get thrown off the tower again and the priest runs out and. Turns him over. ’cause he’s laying on his stomach. He turns him over and Yeah, he’s jumped out of the tower. But he also has that dagger in his gut. Yep. The one that he stabbed, the good one in the gut with.

Mm-hmm. And his eyes are all foggy. I don’t know what that means. Well, 

Todd: literally when he takes the mask off of this guy. His doppelganger. I’m, I’m talking about earlier when he had just killed him. Yeah. His doppelganger spoke some last words in murdering me. You murdered yourself. Oh gosh. I forgot that.

Give us some credit guys. Come on. There’s so much of that in these two, in these two segments of just, it’s, it’s overblown. But anyway, yeah, that’s the end of that. Can you parse that out? I mean, I guess it was just a creepy story about a guy in his doppelganger. Yeah. 

Craig: It was a fairly typical, it was dark. It was a fairly typical post story, and that’s kind of what I like about it.

Mm-hmm. It was simple. Felt shorter. I don’t know if it actually was any shorter, but it was more quickly paced, so it, it felt shorter. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it. All of these, aside from this kind of R rated nature of some of it, like the nudity and the violence and stuff like that, these felt like.

When we were in high school and you would read a post short story and then your teacher would show you some old film film adaptation of it. 

Todd: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. This is what they probably would’ve showed, well, they would’ve showed this in my high school. It’s a little too sexy, but, uh, yeah. Yep, yep. A little too, but, but that’s the feel of it.

Craig: Like, 

Todd: ugh, it’s old. That was exactly what was going through my head. Yes. 

Craig: Until we get to this one. Yeah. This one’s crazy. Is this the Fellini one? It sure is. Yep. Yeah, and it was giving me, I mean, I, I, I’m not a Fellini expert or anything, so I’m sure you can tell me more about his trademarks here, but this was giving me like Clockwork Orange Stanley Kubrick, surrealist.

Weird shit 

Todd: going on. It was all over the place and it was frenetic, fast paced, quick cuts, stylish out the yin yang. Looked like a lot of money went into it ’cause there is a lot of set pieces in here and a lot of hard driving music video. Yeah, honestly, it is, and it’s interesting because it’s like, you can tell this is, this is Fellini before the invention of the, of the steady cam.

He’s moving the camera around a lot, but it’s, it’s a little jerky when he does it, you know? Yes. Oh, but it’s just nuts. It’s, it’s very modern. They’re in like an airport. Well, first in, in a plain cockpit, and again, some voiceover. I don’t remember exactly what it said. Something about how I arrived and I didn’t wanna arrive, but I was going there anyway for this thing and yada, yada, yada.

It’s basically 

Craig: a, an actor. Yeah. Toby Dammit is his name, I guess. And, and that’s Terrance Stamp. In the lead in this one, and he is an actor, a famous actor, apparently on a trip to Rome and like he didn’t really wanna go, but it was a good deal. It was good money or something. Now when he gets there and he gets to the airport, first of all, everything is so stylized.

The airport kind of looks like a hellscape or it reminded me a lot of that train scene in. Dreamscape Dreamscape, 

Todd: you’re right. Where everything’s orange and kind of outside Uhhuh and Yeah. And inside it’s, it’s all bluish. And, and yeah, you’re right. Actually, I, but it’s frenetic. Like you see people praying to ala over here in the corner and you see weird people walking around in the background and people coming a going, a guy with a herd of sheep.

Yeah. Like what? And the paparazzi are shooting this guy. Like, so this, this guy, uh, now we get to Terrance Stamp. This is Terrance. Very young Terrance stamp. Very nice looking Terrance stamp, but he looks pretty ghastly. He looks like he’s Yeah. Sick. He looks terrible. Yeah. 

Craig: Like sweaty. I white face. I honestly thought, because he says something when he gets in the skirmish with the paparazzi, which I think I looked away, I wasn’t exactly sure what happened, but.

Like they meet him at the bottom of an elevator or an ex an escalator, and they’re taking pictures and then he goes up the escalator and then he’s standing at the top and he’s addressing them. And he says something about how he only dwells in the night and he’s really sensitive to the light, or something like that.

I thought he was a vampire. I do too, because he, he looks like a vampire. 

Todd: Yeah. And he looks like he’s sick and the whole time he’s going, it gets worse and worse as the whole thing goes on. But he gets ushered into this group of people who, he’s supposed to meet some folks who have promised him a Ferrari.

But these people anyway are some Italian directors and they’re talking about this movie that they want and priests. It’s funny, actually, it’s, I think that this is all meant to be pretty humorous because they usher him into this car and this woman is actually in interpreting what this guy is saying in Italian to him.

’cause he’s supposed to be, well. I mean, Terrance Stamp is British. I don’t know if he’s supposed to be British or American in this, I’m not sure. But uh, he says, uh, this is gonna be the first Catholic Western. It’s telling the story of God out in the old West. They’re going back and forth. Yeah. And like Jesus comes back as a cowboy.

It’s so crazy. But it kind of fades into the background as he’s just staring out the window and we see all this scenery go by and stuff reflected on the window. It’s just very surreal and very fast paced. But I have to say very interesting. I was really intrigued by this and I really liked the, maybe I was just wanting a change of pace from the kind of slow, stodgy second.

Craig: I felt like I was on LSD. I didn’t know what was happening, and it’s all these crazy colors and like that. This whole car ride with her translating. But them seeing all this weird stuff outside the windows and it was crazy. And then they pull up and there’s some young like gypsy woman on the street who runs around to the window and grabs the actor’s hand and reads his palm and just kind of looks at him and shakes her head or something.

And then he’s flashing to this, this creepy blonde girl, all in white, like in a white, like. Nightgown holding a big white ball, and she’s like creepily smiling at him. She’s creepy. And I know. I have no idea what’s happening. I have no, yeah, and, and then we’re not supposed to. And then he pulls a flask, I think, out of his pants.

But then the flask is like this. It’s like bigger than a gallon of milk. 

Todd: Like it’s enormous. 

Craig: And he takes a big swig off of it. Okay. Now, as I continued watching it, and it remains. Crazy like this throughout. Like he ends up at a studio and he’s being interviewed and then other things are happening and it seems like some of them are happening onset, some of them are happening offset, but I think that some of the things that are happening offset, he’s kind of imagining are happening onset.

Hmm. My ultimate interpretation of this. Is that he is being moved through all of this. Like he really did get picked up at the airport. He really did get taken to a studio. There really was an interview, but he is so up either on alcohol. Or drugs, ah, that we are kind of experiencing this whole thing through his perspective.

Todd: I think that makes sense. Yeah. He, uh, he’s, I mean, essentially he’s a down on his luck actor maybe was really famous at one time, obviously, because they’re obsessive about interviewing him and getting him in this movie and then present him an award. Banquet type thing later, but he’s just not into it. You know?

He’s struggling to get through everything and you’re right. Well, I think what we’re seeing is a lot of this through his eyes trying to put us in his mindset really. But it’s surreal 

Craig: and it’s beautifully shot. Lots of use of fog machines and what I loved was when. He would be in a scene and then all of a sudden you would start to see the crew all around the lighting and, and the directors in the background.

Yeah. Some of those times I think much of that was imagined. I think that he was just living his real life, and maybe I’m getting too, I’m interpreting it too much, but it’s almost as though he so accustomed to living in front of the camera and living under the lights that. That’s just how he perceives the whole world.

Mm-hmm. Like he’s always on 

Todd: stage. Always on stage. Yeah. Well, he only really perks up when one of the interviewers asks him a question about the devil. 

Clip: Do you believe in God? No. And in the devil? Yes. In the devil, yes. How exciting and what is he like? Have you seen him? Yes, I’ve seen him. What does he look like?

A black cat or? Go for that. Oh no, I’m English, not uh, Catholic. To me, the devil is cheerful. Agile.

Todd: He looks like a little girl and so that provides that link. Now this girl is the devil, so I feel like his time is limited and this little girl is the devil patiently waiting to finish what it started, you know, once he kind of went down this road to ruin. And so he’s always seeing her everywhere he is, and I got a feeling of impatience.

As we were watching him at the ceremony, and I thought that was brilliant because I felt like, again, we were in his mind. I mean, you can imagine this has been one long ass day and you just want it to be over with. 

Craig: Yes. But 

Todd: you’re sitting here and these lights are on you, and you’ve gotta listen to these people come up and talk.

And then the big wig comes in and we’ve gotta pay. Everyone’s gotta pretend like that he’s important and they care about what he’s doing, and then they present these awards and by this time, this guy’s head is in his hands. Yeah, he is just a nightmare. He’s messed up. Yeah, he’s messed up. He accepts his award and as he.

Leaves. I think he runs out of there, doesn’t he? Yeah, I 

Craig: think 

Todd: so. Out in the alley, a guy’s there with the keys to the Ferrari that he was promised, and it is a beautiful gold. Well, it’s a very awesome looking gold Ferrari, and he sits in there and he is like, finally, finally I got what I, what I came here for, I guess.

And he takes off on a mad speed dash through the city for quite a while. And then the countryside. Yeah, I put, 

Craig: I put in my notes Mario Kart, like 

Todd: he’s just driving. Driving everywhere. It’s 

Craig: great on these tiny Italian streets, little dirt roads. Just flying through them. I don’t know if he ever actually left that ceremony.

I don’t know if this is a fantasy because I think he ends up back at it eventually. I, I, well, I think so. ’cause I have in my notes, you know, after. I don’t know. Maybe I, I don’t know. Maybe I got lost in my notes, but one of the things that I wanted to say when he was at that ceremony, you were talking about how you were kind of getting impatient with it.

I was too, and I was also unsettled, and I think that part of that was because when he was in the car, he had a translator, but then she’s not there anymore. And so everybody is speaking in Italian and they’re not translating it for us. And there are no subtitles, right. I don’t have any idea what anybody is saying and I think that’s brilliant because neither does he.

Yes, exactly. You know, like, 

Todd: yeah, he’s as confused as we are and that puts us in his space. It was really good. Yeah. Uhhuh. Oh my God. I couldn’t, I was actually kind of exhilarated with him getting in that car. All this is shot really well. It’s a lot of quick cuts and things, but so, so interest, so, so much style and the wind is blowing through his hair and there are these shots of, of him in the car with just like smoke flying past him and mm-hmm.

He ends up out in the dark. I at a bridge and as he pulls up to the bridge, he sees the bridge. There’s, there’s a big break in it. You know, it’s, it’s basically like an overpass or something. Mm-hmm. And at the other side of the bridge is this woman, the devil. This girl with her little white ball. And so he’s kind of was out there and he stands out there and he says, I think I can make that jump.

I know I can make that jump. So yeah, he gets in his car backs away, up, goes flying through out into blackness. And then the camera kind of slowly starts to pan from the other side of the bridge, or maybe the same side, I’m not quite sure. Slowly, slowly, slowly, the darkness kind of reveals as the camera comes closer, that there was a wire stretched across the bridge.

Mm. And there’s blood dripping from the wire. Little girl tosses her ball, goes to pick it up next to the severed head down there, and she takes the head and goes away. Now the, this is based on that post story. And the post story is basically about a guy who is traveling and comes across a covered bridge and there’s a turnstile that he stopped by and the devil is with him.

He bets the devil his head, that he can leap over this turnstile and then an old man shows up and is interested if he’s capable of making this leap. And he offers him a good running start and he makes a perfect jump. But directly above the turnstile, he falls backwards and the old man quickly grabs something and then limps away.

And then, you know, the narrator checks and sees that his, that his head is gone and realizes that there was a sharp iron bar above the turnstile that severed his head. So the devil, and this old man apparently had tricked him. So maybe the old man being the devil. So I guess this is like a, a nod to the story.

That he kind of gets the same fate, but in a more modern way. That’s, see, I guess, you know, what is it? I mean, he’s been, he’s been playing with fire his whole life. He’s been, you know, the, finally he’s gotta give the devil his due. And this is what happens at the end. I don’t know. 

Craig: I dunno what the point of it is and the whole thing.

There are lots of details that we skipped. Like there’s some woman who pledges her ever loving everlasting love to him. Uhhuh. Um, he accepts an award and does a famous speech from Macbeth, which was kind of fun to see. Like that’s a really pretentious. Like audition piece or whatever, but Right. It was kind of cool to hear Terrence Stamp Do it.

Yeah. This was my favorite one. Just be, and I was so confused watching it, but it was just so visually stimulating. Yes. And I, I enjoy, and, and he’s good. I mean, he’s, he’s great. He’s weird. He’s weird and you don’t know what’s going on with him. And he’s progressively more and more like despondent and super.

Drunk, I think or Or messed up on something. Yeah. But he plays it well. He acts it well. He does a very good job. He 

Todd: does. He very well. And it was cool to see him, young man. He’s a good looking guy. Yeah. I guess Peter o, did I read this right? Peter O’Toole was originally gonna play this role. 

Craig: That that’s, yeah, that’s who I was trying to come up with at the beginning.

Oh, that’s right. And when he, when he dropped out, the director called a casting agency somewhere and said, send me your most serious actors or something. I don’t remember what it was. Yeah. They sent a couple and he went with Terrance Mann. I. Had kind of forgotten that we were doing this because it was a tribute to Terrence Mann.

And so I didn’t do a lot of research on him, but I went real quick while we were talking and looked at his, uh, IMDB and I saw that he, one of his last films was last night in soho, which I only very recently watched. He was good in that. I think that, um, a lot of people know and love him from Priscilla Queen of the Desert, where he plays a drag queen in a performance that is loved by many.

I’ve never seen that movie. I don’t know why I. Huh? I haven’t, but, uh, he just had such a un, like such a distinctive look. Yes. A look that suggested a bad guy, which is why I think he probably was pigeonholed a little bit into bad guy roles because of his appearance, maybe. But a great look, such a great look for film.

And he always delivered, you know, he had a. Stoic and commanding presence. You know, when he would pop up, he was always fun to see. I I always knew he was gonna be good in whatever he was in. 

Todd: Yeah. You got a feeling like he’s one of those guys who plays a villain where you believe there’s really something deep inside.

You know? Yeah. Not just like a cackling villain or whatever, but like seriously, like, this guy’s scary, there’s depth here, there’s something inside. And, and he just has that look to him and he was able to really pull that off. And I think that’s why he got cast in a lot of those kind of roles is ’cause he could be a, a complex, bad guy.

Well, thank you guys so much for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, please share with a friend. You can definitely go to our website, chainsaw ho.com to stream everything that we have, including all of our back episodes. You can go to our Patreon, uh, patreon.com/chainsaw podcast and for five bucks a month, you can get complete unedited versions of our phone calls that put this together.

You can get, uh, mini sos. We’ve got our book club up. There you can send us a message, uh, on our website by clicking talk to us and send us a voice message. And if you send us one of those and it’s airable, we will, we will air it on a future episode. Uh, please do that and sign up for our newsletter. We put out a newsletter once a week that just tells you what we’re doing, gives you updates on the Patreon and a little bit of news and what’s going on in the horror community.

Until next time, I’m Todd. And I’m Craig with Two Guys and a Chainsaw.