Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

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Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

David Jansen

67 episodes

15 hours ago

Send us a text As the last four years, it’s time for our annual salute to Scary Season on the pod --- a little film nosh to whet your appetite for the fun of Halloween ahead. Last season we went down one of the paths of the classic Universal Pictures lineup of horror films, with the foundational Dracula. This season, we’re headed down another path of classics from the golden days of Universal, but the third in the series of this particular horror group. Not the film Frankenstein, not Bride Of...

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Send us a text As the last four years, it’s time for our annual salute to Scary Season on the pod --- a little film nosh to whet your appetite for the fun of Halloween ahead. Last season we went down one of the paths of the classic Universal Pictures lineup of horror films, with the foundational Dracula. This season, we’re headed down another path of classics from the golden days of Universal, but the third in the series of this particular horror group. Not the film Frankenstein, not Bride Of...

Show more...

Episodes (20/67)

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Son Of Frankenstein

Send us a text As the last four years, it’s time for our annual salute to Scary Season on the pod --- a little film nosh to whet your appetite for the fun of Halloween ahead. Last season we went down one of the paths of the classic Universal Pictures lineup of horror films, with the foundational Dracula. This season, we’re headed down another path of classics from the golden days of Universal, but the third in the series of this particular horror group. Not the film Frankenstein, not Bride Of...

2 weeks ago

1 hour 1 minute

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

We’re plowing ahead five years from last month’s pod subject but staying in the low – rent, “B” picture roots of film noir, with just a bit more polish, a little more class (because of a slightly larger budget). While last month’s Detour sticks with you, it’s because of its rough edges and the kick-in-the-gut noirness of the fated fall of the protagonist (as well as the hyper – meanness of the femme fatale --- Ann Savage indeed!). This month, we look at a film that has an incredible behind-th...

1 month ago

36 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

No producer or director of the 40s and 50s set out to make a film noir. They were simply trying to put together a film that would entertain and turn a profit, dammit! During the 40s and early 50s, TV was a non-entity or a new, expensive element in entertainment --- there was no competition for the 25 cents someone spent every week going to the movies. Consequently, the output of Hollywood was prodigious and many films noir, if not viewed through a modern lens, were simply “B” pictures, inexpe...

2 months ago

37 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers

The A-bomb had contributed to this soft reign of terror. It had also fired a period of excitement and fertility in the neglected field of science fiction. Before WWII, sci-fi in film was widespread, with examples such as Lang’s hallmark Metropolis, Things To Come, the silent 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, The Lost World, and serials populated by Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. The war had shifted the focus, to combat and military films, propaganda, home-front boosterism, and escapism. The war al...

4 months ago

38 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Last month, we waltzed through mid – 19th Century Italy. Today, we jump forward a half – century --- royalty continues its decline, the middle – class and powerful industrial leaders are ascendant in Europe. It’s a new century and the dawn of a new, perhaps golden era. But is it? Where still a force, European royalty is having its last hurrah in controlling lands far beyond their borders through vicious policies of imperialism. A minor Prince in Germany (who calls himself the German language ...

5 months ago

34 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Visconti has been seen in this season as the director of the searing, accusatory film of the interdependence of the industrial class with the Nazis in Germany, The Damned. But where did this European industrial class arise, when Europe was still saddled with an immense set of royalty that began with kings and queens and spread its fingers into every aspect of the lives in their respective nations or nation-states until almost 1920? How was the transfer of power and wealth from the royals to a...

6 months ago

40 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

The Great Silence

As with Django, Corbucci wrote the film with his brother Bruno, as well as Vittoriano Petrilli and Mario Amendola. He’d been deeply influenced by the recent assassinations of Che Guevara, Cuban revolutionary who had tried to spark a Communist overthrow of Bolivia, and the US’ Malcolm X, a one-time Nation of Islam leader converted to the Muslim faith and killed at a speaking engagement. As the end of the 60s approached, Corbucci felt that the era of progressive political action was dwindling, ...

7 months ago

37 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

There’s a small set of seasons that lurk after the best of winter, but before spring is in the air. You’re emerging from the wonders of a White Christmas (TM) --- those beautiful, light, star-filled dustings of a snowfall, so picturesque. Then slogging into the wet, deep, and ongoing snowfalls that you shovel every day. And then --- worse! --- the melting of that semi-season into the wet, drippy, soggy next phase --- the season of mud. Both the slogging snow and mud seasons are drags on the s...

8 months ago

32 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Danger! --- Femmes Fatale

Last season we walked through an admittedly unscientific list of the greatest character actors in recent memory --- all men and mostly known for roles as so-called bad men. But we made the promise to rebalance the favor in this season --- so here it is --- an honor roll that by definition only women fill; the femmes fatale. The direct translation is the fatal women, but above all, a female character played in predominately film noir. Part of the atmosphere, darkness, nihilism, and hopelessnes...

9 months ago

47 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Well, Noirvember may be over, but our journey into my made-up sub-genre, atomic noir, is not. It’s a cheery continuation for the holiday season. At least the next film has some humor in it, as opposed to the sadism in November’s Kiss Me Deadly… Thanks for those memories Mickey Spillane! This month: released in 1984 by Universal, it’s Repo Man, directed by Alex Cox on a shoestring budget of $1.5M, resulting in lasting indy fame and approbation. If you look it up on Wikipedia, they label it as ...

10 months ago

45 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

It would still prove to be the American Century, but now it was overshadowed by the threat of the atom’s power. Air raid shelters were built in public buildings. Families dug and poured concrete in their backyards to construct personal bomb shelters. Food was stocked, with water, batteries, Bibles, bunk beds and lawn chairs. The US government produced films on how to survive an atomic war, and what our duties as citizens were in that event. Don’t believe me? Find the documentary The Atomic Ca...

11 months ago

42 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Nosferatu The Vampyre

Nosferatu 1922’s reputation grew down the years, especially among film lovers. One of these was German master director Werner Herzog. As the 70s ended, Herzog determined that he wanted to remake the film --- an homage to what he felt was the greatest film ever to come from Germany. In Season 1 of the pod, we’ve looked at the scope of Herzog’s work, and up close at one of his most moving films, Fitzcarraldo. Herzog is well-known for his capture of humans surviving under trying conditions, acco...

1 year ago

1 hour

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

For Scary Season 2024, we’re harkening back to a founding film in the genre of horror. In this era of the 21st Century, fans of horror are rich in the types of film they view to give themselves the creeps --- body horror, slasher films, psychological fear, the supernatural. But a film had to be the forerunner for Hollywood and the rest of the world to understand that the public wanted to be scared for their 25 cents (in 1931, probably now more like $25 --- Junior Mints included). Horror would...

1 year ago

58 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Doesn’t seem like much of a bargain. An uber-being shows and coincidentally knows what you want --- merely sign away your post-existence --- usually in blood, that might be a clue! But repeatedly, people actually sign away their souls --- in the form of their pride, their morality, their sense of worth, friendships, family. Come on --- it’s an allegory! But what a tale! Why does it occur in the stories and representations of numerous cultures, religions, and nations? Perhaps because it explai...

1 year ago

39 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

The middle and lower classes, so-called, ultimately flocked to the message of fascism, not just in Germany but even earlier, in Italy in the ‘20s under Mussolini. For a class of people who had little or less than in the past, who felt powerless, the allure of fascism was intense and compelling. But what of the intellectual class, of the already powerful capitalist members of society, what of the artists for whom fascism might lead to straited circumstances and censorship? How did they respond...

1 year ago

35 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

Sunset Boulevard

It’s the end of season one, or cycle one, or Earth one, whatever you want to call it, for the pod… We wanted to end the season on something special and this film is just so --- a veritable treasure chest of recognizable and quotable lines for film fans. Tight as a drum, unfolding an incredibly well-written story in less than two hours, with a cast of three memorable headliners and fantastic support. It’s definitely noir, though some reviewers characterize it as black comedy as well, but justi...

1 year ago

38 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

That Guy, Over There!

You may have seen Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, and if so, you know the moment in the film when Leonardo DiCaprio as Rick Dalton sees himself in a role on TV and points at the screen excitedly --- it’s a meme now. I do it all the time watching film, at least in my mind. I mentally point at the screen, and shout to myself --- “Yeah, there’s that guy! He’s great!” But who is that guy? Sometimes, I’ve seen the actor so many times I have his name committed to memory, but I’ll often have to asham...

1 year ago

37 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

The Maltese Falcon

My top noirs are Double Indemnity and Out Of The Past, in that order, but Falcon is special. Right out of the hard-boiled school of writing, the character of the unstoppable but human private detective as a noir mainstay, one of the more fatale of the femmes in the genre, the moody lighting and framing, the inevitability of the conclusion of a twisted scheme. Hey, all it lacks is a voice-over and flashbacks! Oh well. Falcon launched from one-time Pinkerton agent Dash Hammett’s typewriter in 1...

1 year ago

39 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

We’ve gone through quite a few pods on film, especially film noir and police procedurals, but this might be the first that has a female protagonist as the main character! More’s the pity! But what a protagonist! Perhaps to make up for the previous imbalance, we’re going to encounter one of the fiercest, most insightful, and action-oriented characters yet, regardless of gender. She has high EQ, high IQ, empathy, but she’s also tough as nails, and wise. Nicely enough, she was the character that...

1 year ago

1 hour 2 minutes

Those Wonderful People Out There In The Dark

When film fans speak about directors, they often go on about idiosyncratic styles or bellwether looks and techniques. You can rapidly identify a Hitchcock film. Same for something from Orson Welles. Scorsese has tendrils that can be traced through most of his films. But few directors inject themselves into the films they create to the extent that the trials and agonies of the production become legendary. Or become immortalized in a documentary. These are directors who encourage their crew to ...

1 year ago

29 minutes