Latest / Weeknight Mysteries Podcast / Ep. 122 | Creepy Folklore - The Owlman Of Mawnan & Color Out of Space - Lovecraft

Transcript

Ep. 122 | Creepy Folklore - The Owlman Of Mawnan & Color Out of Space - Lovecraft · Weeknight Mysteries Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: It was April 1979. The Melling family were spending their
0:04
Speaker 1: Easter holiday in Mornan Smith, a picturesque village in Cornwall, England.
0:10
Speaker 1: On Saturday the 17th, the two children of the family,
0:13
Speaker 1: 12-year-old June and 9-year-old Vicky, had headed out on their
0:17
Speaker 1: own to explore the area. They were passing by St.
0:21
Speaker 1: Mornan and St. Stephen's Church when all of a sudden
0:24
Speaker 1: in the sky above the bell tower, there appeared a
0:26
Speaker 1: huge creature. It looked like a man but it had
0:30
Speaker 1: the wings of a bird. The girls ran back to
0:33
Speaker 1: their parents and they were so disturbed by what they'd
0:35
Speaker 1: seen that their father cut the holiday short. Those girls,
0:39
Speaker 1: it seems, had had an encounter with the Alman of Mornin.
0:44
Speaker 1: The origins of the Alman are unclear. A lot of
0:47
Speaker 1: websites they read whilst researching this reference are a 1926
0:51
Speaker 1: article in the Cornish Echo about two boys that were
0:54
Speaker 1: chased by some sort of a large and ferocious bird.
0:57
Speaker 1: The problem is no website seems to provide any pictures
1:00
Speaker 1: of the article so you can read it for yourself.
1:03
Speaker 1: I had to go to the book The Alman and
1:05
Speaker 1: Others by Jonathan Downs to find the article and read
1:08
Speaker 1: it for myself. The bird was described as being about
1:12
Speaker 1: three feet long with a body like a duck, cream
1:15
Speaker 1: and brown colored plumage with black on the tips of
1:17
Speaker 1: the wings. Now that doesn't sound anything like an Alman
1:21
Speaker 1: to me but there's so many websites that are talking
1:23
Speaker 1: about this article and linking it to the Alman story
1:26
Speaker 1: that I had to put that in it seems more
1:28
Speaker 1: likely that the boys were chased by an angry goose
1:30
Speaker 1: rather than some sort of owl-headed cryptid. The first clue
1:34
Speaker 1: we might have to the Alman's origins is when the
1:36
Speaker 1: surrealist artist Max Ernst visited Cornwall in 1937 with a
1:40
Speaker 1: group of other artists. Apparently this group put into all
1:45
Speaker 1: sorts of weird stuff including occultism. The story goes that
1:49
Speaker 1: Ernst and his cohorts went off into some Cornish woods
1:52
Speaker 1: one night and performed strange rituals in an attempt to
1:55
Speaker 1: summon animal-human hybrid entities. Max Ernst himself had a weird
1:59
Speaker 1: obsession with birds and he often painted an alter ego
2:02
Speaker 1: called Lop-Lop a shape-shifting part-man part-bird creature. He also painted
2:08
Speaker 1: scenes that looking back on them now seem to mirror
2:10
Speaker 1: future encounters with the Almond. And take a look at
2:13
Speaker 1: this one it was painted in 1924 and it's titled
2:16
Speaker 1: Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. The weird thing
2:20
Speaker 1: about this is there are two children and a nightingale
2:23
Speaker 1: but it's also this eerie human figure hovering above the
2:26
Speaker 1: building carrying away another child in its arms. Apparently the
2:30
Speaker 1: painting was inspired by a fever-induced hallucination that Ernst had
2:34
Speaker 1: as a child but to me it reminds me of
2:36
Speaker 1: June and Vicky Melling seeing that humanoid creature hovering over
2:39
Speaker 1: the morning church. So did Ernst and Co. summon the Alman?
2:44
Speaker 1: Maybe it's some sort of surrealist Edgar something that stepped
2:47
Speaker 1: out from the picture frame and took on a life
2:49
Speaker 1: of its own. Or perhaps the Alman is the spirit
2:53
Speaker 1: of Ernst himself. It might just be a coincidence but
2:56
Speaker 1: Max Ernst died on the 1st of April, 1976. This
3:01
Speaker 1: was just two weeks before the Mellon girls had their encounter.
3:05
Speaker 1: And three months after the girls' encounter the Alman was
3:08
Speaker 1: seen again. Behind the morning church the land slops down
3:12
Speaker 1: through a wooded area until it reaches a beach. It
3:16
Speaker 1: was in this wooded area that two 14-year-old girls were camping,
3:20
Speaker 1: Miss Sally Chapman and Barbara Perry. At around 10 p.m.
3:24
Speaker 1: on the 3rd of July, 1976 the girls were awoken
3:28
Speaker 1: by a strange hissing noise. They looked around outside their
3:32
Speaker 1: tents and saw a weird figure standing among the pine trees.
3:36
Speaker 1: He was described as being as tall as a man
3:38
Speaker 1: but had the face of an owl and was covered
3:40
Speaker 1: in grey feathers. His eyes were large and glowed red
3:44
Speaker 1: and it had big pointed ears. On its feet were
3:48
Speaker 1: large black pints like claws. At first the girls thought
3:52
Speaker 1: it was someone in a costume but then the creature
3:54
Speaker 1: flew up into the air and disappeared into the trees.
3:58
Speaker 1: The following day another two girls had an encounter with
4:00
Speaker 1: the owlman in the same area. A letter was sent
4:04
Speaker 1: to a local paper from a girl saying that on
4:06
Speaker 1: the 4th of July, 1976 she and her sister were
4:09
Speaker 1: playing it in the wood behind the morning church when
4:12
Speaker 1: they saw a large creature up in a tree. It
4:15
Speaker 1: was described as being as big as a man but
4:17
Speaker 1: it had legs bent backwards like a bird's. Its eyes
4:21
Speaker 1: were red and its feet looked like sharp black crab claws.
4:25
Speaker 1: Unlike the last encounter the creature then flew upwards and
4:28
Speaker 1: disappeared above the treetops. The first two encounters were reported
4:33
Speaker 1: by a man named Doc Shields. Now Doc Shields is
4:37
Speaker 1: an eccentric character to say the least, an artist, stage
4:40
Speaker 1: magician and monster hunter with an interest in the occult.
4:44
Speaker 1: At around the time of the Almond sightings he was
4:46
Speaker 1: taking part in a hunt for the Morgra. This is
4:49
Speaker 1: a sea monster that supposedly lived in the waters around Cornwall.
4:54
Speaker 1: In March of 1976 two photos of the Morgra were
4:57
Speaker 1: sent to a local paper from someone named Mary F.
5:00
Speaker 1: Doc Shields came on a scene and DMedance that he
5:03
Speaker 1: was going to try and summon the Morgara to appear.
5:06
Speaker 1: Morgara Morgara Morgara Morgara Morgara he then orchestrated an elaborate
5:10
Speaker 1: magical ritual on the beach in Cornwall involving naked witches
5:13
Speaker 1: which were his own daughters dancing around. As you can
5:17
Speaker 1: imagine this brought a lot of press attention for Doc Shields.
5:21
Speaker 1: It was because of his reputation for hunting monsters that
5:24
Speaker 1: he was approached first by a June and Vicki Milling's
5:26
Speaker 1: father and later by Sally Chapman and Barbara Perry and
5:29
Speaker 1: they both provided him with eyewitness accounts and drawings of
5:32
Speaker 1: the Alman. Now there is a problem here. Doc Shields
5:37
Speaker 1: does have a reputation for being a bit of a prankster.
5:41
Speaker 1: Over the years he's written numerous books about how to
5:43
Speaker 1: fake paranormal phenomena for stage magicians and he has books
5:46
Speaker 1: like The Shields Effect, How to Become a Psychic Superstar.
5:51
Speaker 1: It teaches you how to create a sort of mythos
5:53
Speaker 1: around yourself which you can leverage for publicity and fame.
5:57
Speaker 1: Many people suspect that Mary F., that mysterious woman that
6:00
Speaker 1: sent the photos of the Morgara to the newspaper was
6:03
Speaker 1: actually Doc Shields sowing the seeds for an elaborate hoax.
6:07
Speaker 1: Some also suspect that Doc Shields invented the story of
6:10
Speaker 1: the Alman. As far as I can tell nobody else
6:14
Speaker 1: has ever been able to track down the Melling family
6:16
Speaker 1: or the two girls saw the creature in the woods.
6:19
Speaker 1: It's very possible that they never existed at all. Similarities
6:24
Speaker 1: between the eyewitness drawings suggest that they might have been
6:27
Speaker 1: drawn by the same person although it does say that
6:29
Speaker 1: the drawings are based on eyewitness sketches so Shields might
6:32
Speaker 1: have redrawn them himself from the children's drawings. Some people
6:36
Speaker 1: have also analyzed the handwriting between these two accounts and
6:39
Speaker 1: they think they might have been written by one person.
6:43
Speaker 1: I don't know much about handwriting analysis so I can't
6:45
Speaker 1: really say for sure but there's something about how the
6:48
Speaker 1: doctor both the eyes drift slightly to the right in
6:50
Speaker 1: both the accounts. But as I say I don't know
6:53
Speaker 1: much about the subject so I can't really comment on
6:56
Speaker 1: it myself. There's no real proof that Doc Shields invented
7:00
Speaker 1: the Alman. It could be as he says he had
7:03
Speaker 1: a reputation as a monster hunter so he was genuinely
7:06
Speaker 1: approached by people that had seen something strange. Shields seems
7:10
Speaker 1: to be a chaotic neutral sort of character. a true
7:13
Speaker 1: surrealist who deliberately soars the seeds of confusion and doubt
7:16
Speaker 1: around all that he does. It doesn't necessarily mean that
7:20
Speaker 1: everything that he's involved in is a hoax but it
7:23
Speaker 1: does mean that we should take it all with a
7:25
Speaker 1: hefty pinch of salt. After the Alman flap of 1976
7:29
Speaker 1: there were sporadic sightings. According to the book Alien Animals
7:34
Speaker 1: by Janet and Colin Board, there were two more sightings
7:37
Speaker 1: of the Alman in 1978. Once by a 16-year-old girl
7:42
Speaker 1: and a few months later by three young French girls
7:44
Speaker 1: but looking into these cases a bit more Doc Shields'
7:47
Speaker 1: name crops up yet again as the source of these stories.
7:51
Speaker 1: It doesn't necessarily mean that they're fake. I suspect at
7:55
Speaker 1: that time anyone who had an encounter with the Almond
7:57
Speaker 1: would think of contacting Doc Shields. 11 years later in
8:02
Speaker 1: 1989 there was another encounter and this time it seems
8:05
Speaker 1: that Shields had nothing to do with it, at least
8:07
Speaker 1: not directly. There was a young couple known as Gavin
8:10
Speaker 1: and Sally, although that's not their real names. They'd heard
8:15
Speaker 1: the legend of the Alman and decided to go into
8:17
Speaker 1: the woods behind Morning Church to investigate. Gavin later contacted
8:22
Speaker 1: the paranormal researcher Jonathan Downs, author of the book The
8:25
Speaker 1: Alman and others I mentioned earlier. He related his story
8:29
Speaker 1: about what happened that night in the woods. He said,
8:33
Speaker 1: we had to torch and I was shining its beam
8:35
Speaker 1: across the trucks about 15 feet off the ground. Every
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Speaker 1: couple of hours we would walk along the fringe of
8:41
Speaker 1: the woods and this was the third time that evening
8:44
Speaker 1: and it was beginning to get dark. From a distance
8:47
Speaker 1: the trees looked black but close up to branches and
8:50
Speaker 1: shrunks could be seen. We saw the animal at about
8:53
Speaker 1: 9 30 p.m. It was standing on a thick branch
8:57
Speaker 1: with its wings sort of held up at the arms.
9:00
Speaker 1: I'd say it was about five feet tall. The legs
9:04
Speaker 1: had high angles and their feet were large and black
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Speaker 1: with two huge toes on the visible side. The creature
9:10
Speaker 1: was gray with brown and the eyes definitely glowed. Unseeing
9:15
Speaker 1: as its head jerked down and forwards its wings lifted
9:17
Speaker 1: and it just jumped backwards. As it did its legs
9:21
Speaker 1: folded up we ran away. Six years later in 1995
9:25
Speaker 1: a letter was sent to a local paper. It claimed
9:29
Speaker 1: to be from a student of marine biology from Chicago.
9:33
Speaker 1: She'd been on holiday in Mornin' Smith and was walking
9:35
Speaker 1: through the woods behind a church at around 9.15 when
9:39
Speaker 1: she saw in a tree a creature described as the
9:41
Speaker 1: size of a man with a ghastly face, a wide
9:44
Speaker 1: mouth glowing eyes and pointed ears. It had huge clawed
9:48
Speaker 1: wings and was covered in feathers of silver-gray color. The
9:52
Speaker 1: thing had long bird legs which terminated in large black claws.
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Speaker 1: All attempts to track down this Chicagoan witness have failed.
10:01
Speaker 1: Many suspect the letter to be another of Doc Shields'
10:04
Speaker 1: pranks although there's no real proof either way. Sightings continued
10:08
Speaker 1: up until the present day but most don't seem to
10:10
Speaker 1: have much more information about them. So instead let's look
10:14
Speaker 1: at some unusual footage and this was captured via the
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Speaker 1: internet channel called Ghost Adventures of Cornwall. Thank you very
10:22
Speaker 1: much to Mark for letting me use your footage in
10:24
Speaker 1: my video or put a link to the original video
10:26
Speaker 1: in the description. They've decided one night to investigate St.
10:30
Speaker 1: Mornin and St. Stephen's Church but there's one bit where
10:33
Speaker 1: the camera pans across the graveyard and this figure is
10:36
Speaker 1: standing in the background. There was two people in the graveyard.
10:40
Speaker 1: the guy holding the camera and his friend who was
10:42
Speaker 1: stood behind him at the time. They didn't notice this
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Speaker 1: strange horned man until they played the footage back frame
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Speaker 1: by frame. Could this be the almond finally caught on camera?
10:54
Speaker 1: I don't know if the almond is a hoax. That
10:57
Speaker 1: could very well be the case. However, I am a
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Speaker 1: strong believer in the idea that a fictional story can
11:03
Speaker 1: take on a life of its own if enough people
11:05
Speaker 1: can be convinced that it's real. I talked about this
11:09
Speaker 1: in my ghost watch video how the fictional ghost of
11:11
Speaker 1: pipes managed to possess the minds of many of its
11:13
Speaker 1: younger viewers, giving some of them psychological effects that lasted
11:17
Speaker 1: longer after the program had finished one person even took
11:20
Speaker 1: their own life. There's also the case of the slender man.
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Speaker 1: It started out as a photoshop contest and ended up
11:28
Speaker 1: with two girls dragging their friend into the woods and
11:30
Speaker 1: stabbing her 19 times because they thought they were receiving
11:33
Speaker 1: instructions from the slender man himself. Maybe something like this
11:38
Speaker 1: could have happened with the almond. You could look at
11:41
Speaker 1: it from a purely psychological perspective. You convince people that
11:45
Speaker 1: the almond exists and next time someone hears a strange
11:48
Speaker 1: noise or sees a dark shape in the woods behind
11:50
Speaker 1: morning church, they might believe that they had an encounter
11:53
Speaker 1: with the almond itself. Oh, you could get a bit
11:57
Speaker 1: more out there. You could look at the almond as
12:00
Speaker 1: a kind of topper, a thought form made flesh. Could
12:04
Speaker 1: the strange rituals performed by shields and urns really have
12:07
Speaker 1: conjured something more solid up? Maybe hoaxing it was a
12:11
Speaker 1: method for willing the almond into existence, getting enough people
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Speaker 1: to believe in it that it actually becomes a reality.
12:18
Speaker 1: A decades-long prank and a genuine work of magic at
12:20
Speaker 1: the same time. That might go a bit far for
12:24
Speaker 1: some viewers, but I've been interested in the interaction between
12:27
Speaker 1: the mind and physical reality ever since I read the
12:29
Speaker 1: holographic universe when I was younger. I'm not sure if
12:33
Speaker 1: I totally believe that the mind can create an all-man
12:36
Speaker 1: out of nothing, but it's the sort of thing that
12:38
Speaker 1: I like to speculate on and hey, it's nearly Halloween
12:41
Speaker 1: so I'm allowed to indulge in some spooky speculation. The Almond,
12:46
Speaker 1: he might be real, he might be a prank, he
12:48
Speaker 1: might be in a elaborate work of surrealist art, or
12:51
Speaker 1: maybe he's all those things at the same time. So
12:55
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed this typically conclusionless video. I don't
12:59
Speaker 1: really like telling people what they should think. but I
13:01
Speaker 1: like giving them something to think about so hopefully you
13:04
Speaker 1: found this interesting. Oktober always puts me in the mood
13:08
Speaker 1: for a good spooky story so I hope you guys
13:10
Speaker 1: are enjoying the content. Here's some more recordings you might enjoy.
13:15
Speaker 1: Check out the creepy folklore playlist if you like this
13:18
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I thought I'd do a quicker review
13:21
Speaker 1: of a movie I recently watched called The Color Outer Space.
13:25
Speaker 1: If anyone followed me on my gaming channel, they might
13:28
Speaker 1: have seen that I was playing the game called of Cthulhu.
13:32
Speaker 1: I kind of gave up on it. I probably will
13:35
Speaker 1: return to it at some point, but the thing that
13:37
Speaker 1: made me stop playing it was that I started to
13:39
Speaker 1: reread Lovecraft and it kind of made me realize how
13:42
Speaker 1: unloved Craftian the game was. I think this is a
13:46
Speaker 1: problem that plays a lot of Lovecraft adaptations, whether it's
13:49
Speaker 1: movies or video games. You can insert as much Lovecraftian
13:53
Speaker 1: lore as you want, but in my opinion this doesn't
13:56
Speaker 1: make it a Lovecraftian horror. I think there's something in
14:00
Speaker 1: Lovecraft's writing that is extremely hard to get across in
14:03
Speaker 1: a visual medium. I think maybe that's why it's so
14:06
Speaker 1: hard for people to adapt his works. There's something unseeable
14:11
Speaker 1: or unexplainable in his writings, which is very hard to
14:14
Speaker 1: convey when you're showing the thing visually on screen. So
14:17
Speaker 1: when I started hearing reviews of The Color Outer Space,
14:20
Speaker 1: I got pretty excited. As people were saying it was
14:24
Speaker 1: one of the most faithful adaptations. It was finally Lovecraft
14:28
Speaker 1: done right, and so I was quite excited to see it.
14:32
Speaker 1: It also stars Nicolas Cage, who is kind of a
14:35
Speaker 1: lovey more hate him kind of actor, but I've got
14:37
Speaker 1: to say I do quite enjoy his films, including The
14:40
Speaker 1: Wicker Man. So I thought I would give it a
14:43
Speaker 1: go and see what the fuss was all about. Is
14:46
Speaker 1: it as faithful as people say? So I've got to
14:50
Speaker 1: say the first impression of this film and the most
14:52
Speaker 1: striking thing about it is the visuals. Every scene is
14:56
Speaker 1: just absolutely stunning to look at. It's a film about
15:00
Speaker 1: color as the title might imply, but they've just really
15:03
Speaker 1: gone to town on the color aspect of this story.
15:06
Speaker 1: It's a film that tells its story with color, I think.
15:10
Speaker 1: It seems like the color is the most important thing
15:13
Speaker 1: on the screen at all times. Everything looks like they've
15:16
Speaker 1: boosted up the saturation to maximum. Not in a way
15:20
Speaker 1: that looks wholly unnatural. It just gives everything it's like
15:24
Speaker 1: gorgeous lush look to it and it's quite an interesting
15:27
Speaker 1: choice for a horror adaptation especially with Lovecraft. I know
15:32
Speaker 1: whenever I read his stories in my head they're always
15:34
Speaker 1: very dark gloomy type of stories and that's the kind
15:38
Speaker 1: of imagery I have in my head. Generally horror films
15:42
Speaker 1: are not all that colorful. The colors in it remind
15:45
Speaker 1: me almost of the original Suspiria movie these bright clashing
15:49
Speaker 1: colors that flash in and out in the archive. There's
15:53
Speaker 1: something really important about the color coding in the movie,
15:56
Speaker 1: and I'd love to see someone go through it scene
15:58
Speaker 1: by scene and decode every use of color in the film,
16:01
Speaker 1: because as well as the alien color, there's just so
16:04
Speaker 1: much more going on. I've noticed that almost every indoor
16:08
Speaker 1: scene they seem to be using blue and this orangey
16:10
Speaker 1: brown color contrasted against each other, and then on the
16:13
Speaker 1: outdoor scenes you've got these greens and purples contrast in,
16:16
Speaker 1: and then each character seems to have their own color coding.
16:20
Speaker 1: For example, the mother character always seems to be wearing
16:23
Speaker 1: some sort of white outfits, the daughters always wearing black.
16:28
Speaker 1: The ward character who plays the narrator in the original story,
16:31
Speaker 1: he's always seems to be wearing blue. Nicolas Gage is
16:35
Speaker 1: often seen wearing this red check color, which I think
16:38
Speaker 1: might be a reference to the original story. There is
16:42
Speaker 1: a certain fate that meets his equivalent character in the story,
16:45
Speaker 1: and towards the end the red checked cloth plays some
16:47
Speaker 1: sort of role. so it's probably just a nod towards
16:50
Speaker 1: the original story, but yeah, I think there's something really
16:54
Speaker 1: important with the color, even more than obvious, and like
16:57
Speaker 1: I said, I'd love to see someone do an analysis
17:00
Speaker 1: of the color in this movie and exactly what the
17:02
Speaker 1: meaning of each color is. Even without deciphering everything going on,
17:07
Speaker 1: it's just beautiful to look at. It almost all takes
17:11
Speaker 1: place in the middle of this forest that's the family
17:13
Speaker 1: who live deep within this woodland, and so every background
17:16
Speaker 1: is just this sea of green. At the beginning of
17:19
Speaker 1: the movie, everything just starts out, just beautiful green in
17:23
Speaker 1: the background, and then you get these sort of traces
17:25
Speaker 1: of purple weaved fruit things. The idea of like a
17:29
Speaker 1: purple spiral, it always seems to represent something unnatural. For example,
17:35
Speaker 1: the purple unnatural hair dye in Levine's hair, sort of
17:38
Speaker 1: spiraling through her hair, and then when they go to
17:40
Speaker 1: where Tommy Chong's character, they go towards his house, and
17:44
Speaker 1: he's got these ribbons wrapped around to the trees and
17:46
Speaker 1: spiral shapes in the same purple color. It seems to
17:50
Speaker 1: sort of try and get this idea in your head
17:52
Speaker 1: from the start that this purple magenta color is a
17:55
Speaker 1: kind of unnatural source among the greenery and natural colors
17:58
Speaker 1: of the woodland, and it's kind of an obvious signal,
18:00
Speaker 1: but it's a nice little bit of foreshadowing. So basically,
18:05
Speaker 1: the basic plot of the story, and I'm going to
18:07
Speaker 1: try not to give too many strong spoilers here, but
18:10
Speaker 1: there will be some mild ones. A meteorite lands in
18:14
Speaker 1: Nicolas Cage's front garden, and then within the meteorite is
18:17
Speaker 1: the color from outer space, and I think when Lovecraft
18:20
Speaker 1: was originally writing the story, he wanted to convey an
18:23
Speaker 1: alien presence that was so incomprehensible to human minds, that
18:26
Speaker 1: the only way they had to describe it was of
18:28
Speaker 1: being a color. So in the original story, he describes
18:32
Speaker 1: it as a color which they've never seen before, it's
18:35
Speaker 1: like an unimaginable color, it's something that doesn't exist in
18:38
Speaker 1: our human world, it's a color that shouldn't exist in nature,
18:42
Speaker 1: obviously you can't just invent a new color, so they've
18:45
Speaker 1: used this like magenta color. but I was actually looking
18:48
Speaker 1: on at IMDB and they've got some interesting trivia about
18:51
Speaker 1: the use of the color. They use magenta because it's
18:53
Speaker 1: a color that doesn't exist from a single wavelength of
18:57
Speaker 1: light as part of the color spectrum of visible light.
19:01
Speaker 1: I don't really understand what that means to be honest.
19:04
Speaker 1: It's an extra spectral color that is already perceived by
19:07
Speaker 1: humans in a specific interaction of the optical rods. So anyway,
19:12
Speaker 1: there's an interesting explanation of why they use magenta. but
19:15
Speaker 1: obviously it's a decent replacement for the indescribable color of
19:19
Speaker 1: the original story, and it looks absolutely stunning in the archive,
19:22
Speaker 1: you've got this kind of idea of this magenta color
19:25
Speaker 1: slowly starting to invade the lush greenery of their surroundings,
19:28
Speaker 1: and first it starts out, you know, the little flowers
19:32
Speaker 1: start sprouting, and then you see like the tendrils wrapping
19:35
Speaker 1: around a tree, mirroring the coloring in the daughter's hair
19:39
Speaker 1: and the ribbons and the trees. You just get this
19:42
Speaker 1: really interesting sense, and this is where they sort of
19:45
Speaker 1: capture the Lovecraftian element and the best, there's this slowly
19:49
Speaker 1: creeping into their lives. this magenta color slowly infecting the
19:52
Speaker 1: world around them, and as it begins to infect the
19:55
Speaker 1: world around them, it starts to affect their mental state,
19:58
Speaker 1: and it's done really effectively, I would say for the
20:01
Speaker 1: first two thirds of the movie, this sort of slow
20:03
Speaker 1: creeping in of this color, this alien color, and beautiful
20:07
Speaker 1: at the beginning. Of the movie, And also there's a
20:10
Speaker 1: lot of things where they use color to signal danger,
20:13
Speaker 1: like where she cracks the egg and has blood in
20:15
Speaker 1: the egg, and the delizards with the bright colors on
20:17
Speaker 1: them to indicate that they might be poisonous or dangerous.
20:21
Speaker 1: You know, always always using these colors to signal some
20:25
Speaker 1: kind of present danger or illness or something that is
20:27
Speaker 1: out of place on natural. It's also really obvious that
20:31
Speaker 1: they are absolutely passionate about Lovecraft, there's so many little
20:35
Speaker 1: references in there, and probably loads that completely went over
20:38
Speaker 1: my head, I'm not like a huge Lovecraft fan, but
20:42
Speaker 1: you know, there's all these like references to things within
20:45
Speaker 1: the Lovecraft universe, and also how it would be in
20:47
Speaker 1: a modern world, so I really like that the daughter
20:50
Speaker 1: has the cheap paperback Necronomicon that she's reading, and it
20:53
Speaker 1: is the kind of thing that if this book existed
20:56
Speaker 1: in the real world, this is kind of the format
20:59
Speaker 1: that you would expect to get it in in the
21:01
Speaker 1: modern world. Beautiful film, I really love the atmosphere at
21:05
Speaker 1: the beginning of this creeping, invading, it feels really menacing
21:09
Speaker 1: and you don't really know what's going on, and the
21:11
Speaker 1: way it starts to affect the mentality of the family.
21:15
Speaker 1: I think towards the end it starts to fall apart
21:17
Speaker 1: slightly though, it gets to a point where it starts
21:20
Speaker 1: to get a bit too crazy. In the original story,
21:24
Speaker 1: the way they color out a space ultimately affects people
21:27
Speaker 1: and how it affects like livestock is it kind of
21:29
Speaker 1: starts to make them disintegrate, it kind of starts to
21:32
Speaker 1: change things in really subtle ways, like they describe how
21:35
Speaker 1: they keep finding animals, and they can't really tell what's
21:38
Speaker 1: wrong with them, but they've you know they find them
21:40
Speaker 1: it's like a woodchuck or something like that, and it's
21:43
Speaker 1: been transformed in some way they can't really tell how
21:45
Speaker 1: it just looks unnatural to them, and they see like
21:49
Speaker 1: a hare leaping across the road or a rabbit and
21:52
Speaker 1: it's its stride is a bit too long to be normal,
21:54
Speaker 1: it's just something when they say it they can't describe it,
21:57
Speaker 1: it's just something unnatural and uncanny about the creatures the
22:00
Speaker 1: way they've been mutated. The movie doesn't go that subtle,
22:04
Speaker 1: let me just say without getting any spoilers it's very
22:07
Speaker 1: unsubtle in its conveying of the horror. This is sort
22:10
Speaker 1: of the sum of the parts one don't like that
22:12
Speaker 1: much about the film, it starts to take on a
22:15
Speaker 1: bit of like a body horror vibe which would be
22:17
Speaker 1: fine and it's fine to them to stride a bit
22:19
Speaker 1: from the source material, but they rely way too much
22:22
Speaker 1: on computer generated effects to achieve these body horror scenes.
22:26
Speaker 1: and as good as it is I'm not being down
22:27
Speaker 1: on the people who did these CG effects, it just
22:30
Speaker 1: never looks right. You can always just tell it's not
22:33
Speaker 1: really there, even if they had a slightly cheaper looking
22:37
Speaker 1: practical effect, I just think it would look so much better,
22:40
Speaker 1: it looks so much more realistic, and it's a shame
22:43
Speaker 1: it didn't go with that, I think it starts to
22:45
Speaker 1: slightly fall apart at that point for me the movie,
22:48
Speaker 1: so I'm going to go over some of the things
22:49
Speaker 1: I didn't like in the film, the characters are all
22:52
Speaker 1: kind of a bit stereotypical. you've got Nicolas Cage playing
22:55
Speaker 1: Nicolas Cage, you've got Tommy Chong playing Tommy Chong, you've
22:59
Speaker 1: got the stoner teenagey brother, you've got the wife who's
23:02
Speaker 1: down of cancer and you've got the small child who
23:06
Speaker 1: basically acts as the creepy kid similar to the one
23:08
Speaker 1: in Poltergeist who goes there, here basically plays that role,
23:12
Speaker 1: and then you've got the the wise cracking snarky teenager,
23:15
Speaker 1: this role seems to be in every movie these days,
23:18
Speaker 1: I don't know why they always have to insert this
23:20
Speaker 1: sort of character. It's basically the snarky teenage girl character
23:24
Speaker 1: who always has a one line of every scene. I
23:27
Speaker 1: call it the Liv Huseong character, yeah they did this
23:29
Speaker 1: with the it. Movies, they always had to have like
23:33
Speaker 1: witty one liners whenever something scary happens and it kind
23:36
Speaker 1: of ended up sort of reducing the horror factor of
23:39
Speaker 1: a lot of scenes, and although it's not too bad
23:41
Speaker 1: in this movie, there is a bit of that, there's
23:44
Speaker 1: a bit of a luller random comedy, I don't know
23:46
Speaker 1: what the obsession of alpacas is, they always have alpacas
23:50
Speaker 1: in there because it's I don't know, I don't know
23:52
Speaker 1: if it's some reference that goes over my head, but
23:54
Speaker 1: it's a bit sort of oh look at us how
23:56
Speaker 1: random we are. We've got alpacas, I don't know, it's
24:01
Speaker 1: good to have a bit of light relief, but I
24:03
Speaker 1: don't know if in this film sometimes it felt a
24:05
Speaker 1: bit out of place, so yeah I was going to
24:07
Speaker 1: say it about the characters in a film, I didn't
24:10
Speaker 1: like him too much because he all felt a bit typical,
24:13
Speaker 1: but you can tell with this movie they're trying to
24:15
Speaker 1: do something very different with a horror movie and a
24:17
Speaker 1: lot of the characters felt very tropey, if you know
24:20
Speaker 1: what I mean. They felt very like you'd seen them
24:22
Speaker 1: in every other horror movie, and I kind of wish
24:26
Speaker 1: they'd done something slightly different with the characters as well
24:29
Speaker 1: as the movie itself. The final act of the movie
24:33
Speaker 1: at all feels a bit muddled, the problem is the
24:35
Speaker 1: beginning of the film builds up so well this horror,
24:38
Speaker 1: and it all sort of ends in a crescendo. and
24:40
Speaker 1: it all feels a bit sort of they're just throwing
24:42
Speaker 1: a load of things at your load of elements, and
24:45
Speaker 1: whereas I think if they went a bit more slow
24:47
Speaker 1: a bit more slow paced and subtle with the horrors,
24:50
Speaker 1: it would be more effective. For example, I think there's
24:54
Speaker 1: some genuinely creepy moments, for example, when there's something that
24:57
Speaker 1: happens to the mother and the younger son, when it
25:00
Speaker 1: first reveals what happened to them, it's pretty horrific. You
25:04
Speaker 1: feel like, oh my god, that's horrible. And the reactions
25:08
Speaker 1: of the family are really good and you kind of
25:10
Speaker 1: feel that horror along with them. And then they just
25:12
Speaker 1: kind of, they don't know much else with it. They
25:15
Speaker 1: don't explore the horror of that situation enough. And I
25:18
Speaker 1: think they could have explored this idea a little bit more.
25:21
Speaker 1: What they do with the mother and the younger son
25:23
Speaker 1: is pretty horrific. And I think they could have sort
25:25
Speaker 1: of explored the family's reaction to that a little bit
25:28
Speaker 1: more than they do. Like just go a little bit
25:31
Speaker 1: further with it. And there's another really good moment where
25:35
Speaker 1: they go back to Tommy Jong's house. and there's just
25:37
Speaker 1: this sound from outside, just the sound design at this moment,
25:41
Speaker 1: and the film is really good, it has a really
25:44
Speaker 1: sinister effect, I think. It shows real moments of horror,
25:48
Speaker 1: but it's kind of interspersed at this point with a
25:50
Speaker 1: lot of very noisy scenes, a lot of very bright
25:53
Speaker 1: flashing colors that are slightly disorientated, and I think it
25:57
Speaker 1: kind of takes away from the horror in certain scenes,
25:59
Speaker 1: it gets a bit kind of a bit over the top.
26:02
Speaker 1: I'm not being too down on the movie, I just
26:05
Speaker 1: think towards the end it could have been torn down
26:07
Speaker 1: a little bit. I understand what they're doing with the colors,
26:11
Speaker 1: but it gets so bright and psychedelic that it actually
26:13
Speaker 1: becomes quite difficult to watch. It's like I was getting
26:17
Speaker 1: a headache at some point, I remember there was a
26:19
Speaker 1: scene where there was like this a blue flashing light
26:22
Speaker 1: from a police car, and it was interspersed with this
26:24
Speaker 1: bright magenta color, and it was flashing across people's faces,
26:28
Speaker 1: and it was just like I was getting a headache
26:30
Speaker 1: from watching it, it was so disorientating. and you know
26:33
Speaker 1: it's interesting visually, but it's not horrific, it's not a
26:36
Speaker 1: scary scene. It kind of like that they tried to
26:40
Speaker 1: do something slightly different with what the color does to
26:42
Speaker 1: people and what it does to the animals, but I
26:45
Speaker 1: think if they were going to go with CG effects,
26:47
Speaker 1: I think if they stuck with what it says in
26:49
Speaker 1: the book, it would have been more interesting, like in
26:52
Speaker 1: the book, everything sort of turns gray and starts to
26:54
Speaker 1: disintegrate as if it sort of turned into ash. And
26:57
Speaker 1: I think they could have done that quite well with
26:59
Speaker 1: computer generated effects, but I think what they went. With
27:03
Speaker 1: it all looked a bit cartoony, a bit slightly silly,
27:07
Speaker 1: a lot of the CG kind of took me out
27:09
Speaker 1: of the atmosphere of the movie at that point, but
27:11
Speaker 1: there were things that they changed from the original story
27:14
Speaker 1: that I had to like, I think in the Lovecraft's
27:16
Speaker 1: original short story, in the final scene, he introduced like
27:20
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of characters that haven't been introduced in
27:22
Speaker 1: rest of the story. Like the big climax of the
27:25
Speaker 1: story involves a bunch of people that you don't, apart
27:28
Speaker 1: from the narrator, you. don't really know any of the
27:31
Speaker 1: other characters, I think they do a better job, it
27:34
Speaker 1: sort of combines two different parts of the original story
27:37
Speaker 1: to make the end of the movie, which they do
27:39
Speaker 1: that I think in a better way. All in all,
27:42
Speaker 1: I'd enjoyed the movie, I don't want to sound like
27:45
Speaker 1: I'm being down on it, I'm trying to list the
27:47
Speaker 1: things that I didn't like, but I really like that
27:49
Speaker 1: there's a modern horror movie that they've tried to do
27:52
Speaker 1: something different with. I see so many trailers for horror
27:55
Speaker 1: movies coming out and it just looks like every other
27:57
Speaker 1: horror movie I've seen for the last 10 years or so,
28:00
Speaker 1: you can tell immediately, like beat for beat, everything that's
28:04
Speaker 1: going to happen in that movie, just from watching a
28:07
Speaker 1: trailer and it's just refreshing to see them finally do
28:10
Speaker 1: something a bit different, the visuals and everything with the movie,
28:14
Speaker 1: it's completely unique. The only thing I can compare it
28:17
Speaker 1: to really is Annihilation, and I think Annihilation is quite
28:20
Speaker 1: inspired by The Color Out of Space, I think maybe
28:23
Speaker 1: Annihilation does an even better job of being Lovecraftian than
28:26
Speaker 1: The Color Out of Space does. Annihilation kind of to
28:30
Speaker 1: me is like a mashup of Lovecraft and J.D. Ballard's,
28:33
Speaker 1: The Crystal World, it's just kind of like those two
28:36
Speaker 1: books combined almost, I felt like some points this film
28:40
Speaker 1: was trying to emulate Annihilation but not quite doing a
28:42
Speaker 1: good enough job of it, but as I say all
28:45
Speaker 1: in all great different horror movie, and interesting enough to
28:48
Speaker 1: elevate it above just the slew of rubbish that comes
28:50
Speaker 1: out these days. I've really got to give the filmmakers
28:54
Speaker 1: kudos for trying something different and being brave enough in it.
28:59
Speaker 1: Like I say the first, the first two thirds of
29:01
Speaker 1: the movie, I loved the last third of the movie,
29:04
Speaker 1: I didn't like as much but I didn't hate it,
29:06
Speaker 1: it wasn't boring, it was just kind of lost, it's
29:09
Speaker 1: pacing a little bit, it kind of went a bit
29:11
Speaker 1: too much over the top for me, I say go
29:14
Speaker 1: watch it, it's interesting at least, is it the best
29:17
Speaker 1: Lovecraft adaptation? I don't know. I haven't seen them all,
29:21
Speaker 1: has it captured the feeling of a Lovecraft movie? Possibly yes,
29:26
Speaker 1: it's got the sort of weird unexplained, even towards the
29:29
Speaker 1: end of it, you don't quite know what the horror is,
29:32
Speaker 1: it leaves enough questions in your mind, this is what
29:35
Speaker 1: I like about Lovecraft is, he'll describe things in detail,
29:38
Speaker 1: but he'll leave enough out for your mind to sort
29:40
Speaker 1: of turn it over, I'll give you an example, the
29:43
Speaker 1: mountains of madness and reread in it, and the way
29:46
Speaker 1: they describe the city in the book, they give such
29:48
Speaker 1: a detailed account of the structures of the buildings, when
29:51
Speaker 1: they enter this forgotten city, they give such a detailed
29:55
Speaker 1: account of all the structures of the buildings, how they're built,
29:58
Speaker 1: what material they made, how they're all the rock, you
30:01
Speaker 1: could probably just draw a picture and accurate map of
30:04
Speaker 1: the city just from the description, but there's enough in
30:07
Speaker 1: the descriptions to know that there's something unnatural about it,
30:10
Speaker 1: that the narrator can't describe. And although you build up
30:13
Speaker 1: in your mind this accurate image of the city, it
30:15
Speaker 1: leaves something out because the narrator can't quite tell you
30:19
Speaker 1: what it is, it's just something unnatural and evil about it,
30:23
Speaker 1: it kind of causes you to turn this image of
30:25
Speaker 1: the city around in your head and ponder on it,
30:27
Speaker 1: and that's kind of I think where the horror is.
30:30
Speaker 1: it's indescribable, and I think this movie does a good
30:32
Speaker 1: job of conveying that sort of unknowable horror. It does
30:36
Speaker 1: a good job of capturing that essence of the weird
30:38
Speaker 1: cosmic horror that you can't quite place in your mind,
30:41
Speaker 1: it doesn't quite make sense to a human brain, and
30:44
Speaker 1: I think people who read Lovecraft will have their own
30:47
Speaker 1: opinion on what makes Lovecraft the Inhara, but for me
30:50
Speaker 1: it does a fairly good job. and I would recommend it,
30:53
Speaker 1: and I've heard them making like two more in the
30:55
Speaker 1: same series, so I'll be excited to see them, I'll
30:58
Speaker 1: definitely be watching them when they come out, and if
31:00
Speaker 1: you've seen it let me know what you think as well,
31:03
Speaker 1: I'll be interested to know if other people enjoyed it
31:05
Speaker 1: or not. Oh I know what I wanted to say
31:07
Speaker 1: as well as something else, you'll notice. More and more
31:11
Speaker 1: as you rewatch it, there seems to be a lot
31:13
Speaker 1: of symbolism and images in there which you might not
31:16
Speaker 1: spot on the first time round. or you might not
31:18
Speaker 1: make the connections, for example at the beginning of the
31:21
Speaker 1: film when Lavigneur is doing that weird ritual, you see
31:24
Speaker 1: these dull legs hung up in tree in a kind
31:26
Speaker 1: of swastika pattern, and then later on which I didn't realize.
31:30
Speaker 1: I didn't spot at first as they're going towards Tommy
31:32
Speaker 1: Chong's house, you see a dull hung up in the
31:35
Speaker 1: tree there, and I didn't make the connection at first,
31:39
Speaker 1: but then I think well I wonder if there's some
31:41
Speaker 1: connection between Tommy Chong's, oh he's called Ezra, between Ezra
31:45
Speaker 1: and Lavigneur that isn't quite explained in the movie, but
31:48
Speaker 1: maybe rewatching it you'll see more links between these different characters,
31:52
Speaker 1: it seems like the kind of movie where there's going
31:54
Speaker 1: to be a lot of these like little weird symbols
31:56
Speaker 1: and easter eggs and things to spot, and I think
31:58
Speaker 1: rewatch you'll get more out of it, so yeah that
32:01
Speaker 1: was another thing I think might be important, is probably
32:05
Speaker 1: a movie that requires a few viewings to appreciate fully.