INTRO
Gala On this episode of the Video Archives podcast. We have a customer!
Gala Joe Dante, director of Piranha, Interspace and Gremlins, joins Quentin and Roger in the store for a film that he believes deserves more recognition. A forgotten film from a little-known director, The Fool Killer takes place shortly after the Civil War. A young southern boy has run away from his foster home, and as he wanders the countryside, he meets various odd characters along the way. One of them tells him the story of the vengeful Fool Killer. Quentin, Roger and Joe discuss the history of the film, the striking performances of the actors, and the director’s determination to push the boundaries on the screen.
Gala Next up, they’ve got their own brand of medicine. Quentin, Roger and Joe visit the hospital where patients always come first—in The Young Nurses. In this New World Picture, we follow three nurses and a candy striper as they navigate their day-to-day activities inside of the hospital. We’ve got everything from fun romps on the beach with a sailboat captain, an overworked nurse who just wants to get things done, and stopping a gang related drug epidemic. Quentin, Roger and Joe discuss the genre of nurse films, the relationship between Julie and Roger Corman, Joe’s involvement with the film, and the scarcity of all black orgy scenes in seventies sexploitation. This movie will raise your heart rate and send your temperature sky high!
And lastly, let’s spend a night in the countryside with Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie in the film: My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie. Anton has been tasked with retrieving Susan, a famous fashion model, and bringing her back to the French Riviera for a job. Susan has other ideas. She’s chosen a hermit’s life on a dilapidated farm and has no plans of returning to her previous jet-set modeling life. When Anton arrives at the farm, he becomes enchanted with the strange characters that live with Susan. Soon he becomes caught in a web and uncovers all of the house’s mysteries. I’m Gala Avary and joining us now here is Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary.
Quentin And thank you, Gala. And this is Quentin Tarantino.
Roger And Roger Avary.
Quentin And this is The Video Archives podcast. And as Gala so charmingly mentioned, yes, indeed, we do have a customer today, and it’s the famed director: Joe Dante.
Joe Dante Well, thank you. I’m here to learn how podcasts are done.
Quentin Yeah, you’ve had an extremely successful podcast for the last three years, if not five years. With—that you co-host with a genuine Video Archives customer.
Joe Dante That’s true.
Roger Wait, really?
Quentin Yes!
Joe Dante Yes, he used to come in all the time.
Quentin Yeah. No, he totally came in. I knew who he was because he worked on the crew of Cannon movies at that time, at the height–
Roger Yeah, yeah. That would have placed him at a very revered position.
Quentin At the height of our Cannon obsession.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin And so we would, like, talk, “So what Cannon movie are you working on this week?” You know that he would tell, and we would talk about it. And yeah, no, he was great. But no, he was —
Joe Dante It was highlight of his professional life. Josh Olson we’re talking about.
Quentin We’re talking about Josh Olson. Josh Olson. Alright. So, it’s like, yeah. So, our two famous customers are Josh Olson and Danny Strong.
Roger Yeah, yeah.
Quentin Danny Strong the screenwriter who used to come in when he was 12.
Joe Dante [laughs]
Quentin So we talked to Joe about the three movies, about watching three films. He says, “Well, do I get a say in any of these?” I go, “Well, not really.” But he offered three anyway. And one that I was actually wanting to screen—cause I still haven’t watched it yet, but we didn’t have it—and that is Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962) with —
Joe Dante I’m working on it.
Quentin Vincent Price. But one of the ones that he had mentioned is a film that I had always heard of, I’d never seen—well, not always heard of, but I’d heard of—and we had a copy of it in the Eddie Brandt’s collection, which is the film The Fool Killer.
The Fool Killer
Clip from The Fool Killer Trailer And the Fool Killer about to get you, sure. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that he wasn’t looking out there right now, waiting to punch on ya. Who? Who, who, who the Fool Killer, that’s who! Who is the Fool Killer? He’s a great tall fella—8ft tall, even taller and skinny! And he goes around carrying a chopper so sharp, so sharp he could cut you in a pinch just like a cigar. What’s the chopper for? For chopping fools, of course. Now what’s he want and go and do that for? Well, that’s his line of work, boy! That’s all. That is his line of work.
Gala A rare print of Servando Gonzalez’s The Fool Killer with co-hit The Young Nurses will be playing on 16mm for one night at the New Beverly Cinema on Monday, February 6: 7165, Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 90036. For more information, visit: thenewbev.com. The New Beverly Cinema. Always on film.
Quentin It stars a very young Edward Albert—later from Butterflies Are Free (1972), but this is like when he was 12—, Anthony Perkins, Salome Jens, Dana Eclaire, Henry Hull. It’s, like, what 67 or 66?
Roger 65.
Joe Dante Well, it was shot in 63.
Quentin Oh, it was shot in 63. Okay.
Joe Dante In Knoxville, Tennessee.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Joe Dante And it didn’t make much of a ripple when it came out. The producer named Ely Landau had a company called Landau-Unger, and he was doing a bunch of pictures with mainly New York Talent, one of which turned out to be The Pawnbroker (1964), which was written by the same writers who wrote The Fool Killer. But The Fool Killer was in gestation, or in media res, or something between 1963 and 1965, ’cause it didn’t come out anywhere. I think they had one engagement in Tennessee to invite the crew and the locals and then zilch, nothing. And so, I found it for rent at Films Incorporated, which was a 16mm house when I was in college. And I noticed that it had never played in New York, it never played Philadelphia, it never played anywhere. So, I thought, well, I’ll have the Philadelphia premiere —
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante I’ll rent it in 16mm. And well, and I happen to have a great three sheet that I had found at National Screen [Service].
Quentin Oh, ah-huh!
Joe Dante And so we had the Philadelphia premiere of this Hollywood movie. And people liked it, but it didn’t exactly end up on the radar. So, over the years, I’ve tried to proselytize about this picture, which I really like. And, in fact, I’ve been looking for a trailer for it to do it on Trailers from Hell for forever. But I think there aren’t any because it, because it never played.
Quentin But, okay. Now, now, is there any indication with your three sheet that you found or about where it could have played, where that paper could have been used and what —
Joe Dante No, it was all brand-new stuff.
Quentin Oh.
Joe Dante No, no, no pinholes in it, nothing like that. I mean, these were mint and never used.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Joe Dante And eventually the picture was sold to American International, and they tried to rerelease it as “A Violent Journey”, which is the title it’s on IMDB. And that apparently played nowhere either.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Joe Dante But one thing they did do is they sold it to television.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Joe Dante So the print that I bought said American International Television —
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Dante And then came to the movie. And then in 1969, apparently, they recut the movie because there’s a lot of odd editing in the picture. There’s some upside-down shots, which I guess the producers didn’t like. And so, they recut it and opened it in New York to no interest whatsoever.
Quentin At AIP still?
Joe Dante No, this was that Landau absolve.
Quentin Oh, okay, ah-huh.
Joe Dante And so to this day, the only time it’s ever really been seen widely is in this VHS that you’ve found, which is from Republic Home Video.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Joe Dante And it’s, you know, it’s a VHS transfer, it doesn’t look great. But it’s—frankly, my 16mm print looked better, I think.
Quentin Yeah, ah-huh.
Joe Dante But I’ve always tried to interest people in this picture but then once I get them interested, they go, “Where can I see it?”.
Quentin Yeah, yeah, right.
Joe Dante “Well, I don’t know.” It’s not—I talked to Criterion, I said, “You know, you guys should put this out. It’s really an unknown movie. It’s got a… it’s a Mexican director, he’s got a following—even though he did two pictures that were released in America—and you guys could, you know…” But nobody’s interested. And it’s just it’s very frustrating, which is why I’m glad that you chose it out of the ones that I gave you.
Quentin No, it was like, oh, well, you know, I’d heard about the film before. It’s got a really cool cast and it fits into the whole criteria of I haven’t seen it and Roger hasn’t seen it. And then you’d be interesting to talk about it. Do you want to do the honors and read the back of the box?
Joe Dante The back of the box? Is the back of the box accurate?
Quentin I haven’t read it.
Roger They rarely are. [laughs]
Quentin Yeah.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin You can read it. It can be inaccurate. And then you can criticize it afterwards.
Joe Dante Ugh, No. Let me see what it says.
Quentin & Roger [Laughter]
Joe Dante Well, it starts: Anthony Perkins joins a runaway boy, well, that’s not quite the way it works.
Roger Yeah, I agree with that.
Joe Dante A runaway boy–
Quentin Okay, well, you’re already getting way too literal. You’re going to be very unhappy with the way things normally go, if that’s your problem.
Roger [Laughter]
Joe Dante Mistreated and misunderstood, George, a 12-year-old orphan runs away from his foster home. Hopping freight trains, George follows the open road to misadventure and the companionship of Dirty Jim, a crusty old kindred spirit. Jim mesmerizes young George with a fantastic tale of the Fool Killer, a mythical murderer who stands eight feet tall. Separated from Jim by sickness and fate, George finds another friend in Milo—a tall, Civil War veteran with amnesia and PTSD, obviously. Though the pair share a carefree fellowship of the highway vagabond, George slowly suspects that Milo is, in fact, the real-life ax wielding murderer of Dirty Jim’s horrific tale. It says here that it’s an enchanting lyrical drama and a tense, gripping thriller. Remarkable entertainment for all ages. It says here.
Quentin That’s actually a better description of the plot than you almost ever get around these boxes.
Joe Dante Well, maybe somebody actually watched it.
Quentin Yeah.
Quentin & Roger [Laughter].
Joe Dante But what the movie has is it’s a series of—he runs into these picaresque, weird characters. The first one he runs into is Dirty Jim, who is played by Henry Hull, who is a veteran actor. He’s the original Werewolf in London (1935) —
Quentin Yeah, exactly.
Joe Dante 1935. And he was in Lifeboat (1944), and he worked for Fritz Lang. And I mean, he’s been in a lot of movies, and he’s got a very distinctive voice. And you could really tell when you see him.
Quentin Master of the World (1961) —
Joe Dante Yeah.
Quentin I think of growing up and that—and Werewolf in London.
Joe Dante And this one, this was his next to last movie. Yeah, his last movie was The Chase (1966), the Arthur Penn movie. All the scenes with him are—they’re funny.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante They’re really clever. His rapport with the kid is quite good. And then little George meets—he runs away, as he tends to do, and he gets taken in by a family that has this weird little girl.
Roger Mmhmm.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante Named Blessing Angeline Fanshawe. And she has a boil where she sits down. And that’s why nobody—she never gets spanked. He wants to, he wants to run away, and she helps him. And once he runs away, he runs into Tony Perkins, who is not in Norman Bates mode exactly, but is obviously troubled.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Joe Dante But it seems pleasant enough, except that he has these war flashbacks.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante Which are done pretty effectively with, you know, a camera tied to his head, and it spins around and whatever. And then the other set piece in the movie is he, the kid, wants to go to a revival meeting.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Joe Dante And Tony Perkins doesn’t like that kind of thing. And so, he suggests he doesn’t do that. But then they do anyway. And the preacher played by Arnold Moss, who is another actor who is pretty familiar from his—his greatest role was as Robespierre’s second in command, Fouché, in The Black Book (1949), which is —
Quentin Yeah, yeah.
Joe Dante Which is a terrific movie. Anthony Mann.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante And he is the preacher, and he preaches—and he preaches a lot and saliva drips.
Quentin No, he’s fantastic in this.
Joe Dante And it’s a—it’s a really intense scene. And of course, he mesmerizes this entire room full of hicks, basically, and then ends up getting murdered by, I guess, who.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante And so it’s not so much the plot of the movie, which is based on a book by Helen Eustis. It’s the sort of the way the story is told. It’s very Night of the Hunter (1955). It’s the most Night of the Hunter movie that isn’t Night of the Hunter.
Quentin Well, one of the things that really kind of grabbed me with it was the fact that, you know, it does have a very literary kind of feel and it falls into a literary Dickensian literary aspect of: you have a young protagonist and then you’re following their odyssey, you’re following their journey. And so, one step of the leg of the journey takes them to this character. And then this character fills it up for 20 minutes or 30 minutes, or for three chapters or four chapters, and then they move on to another character, and that helps take the narrative. George is really terrific in it. He’s playing in what appears to be his first performance in the lead role by Edward Albert, who, you know, later become famous in the seventies—who played the blind Donny Guy in Butterflies are Free, which I always thought he was terrific in that movie.
Roger And Galaxy of Terror (1981).
Quentin Oh, later, he eventually he gets—eventually he gets the Galaxy of Terror.
Joe Dante When people are on their career downslope, you don’t necessarily want to hold that up as their greatest achievement.
Quentin Yeah…
Roger Well, I happen to like Galaxy of Terror. So…
Quentin I know! He had way to go, alright.
Roger [Laughter]
Quentin And the interesting thing about him is, actually, I showed Butterflies Are Free to an old girlfriend, and she liked it so much that I made a point to watch 40 Carats (1973), which is like his follow up movie with the same director. And I actually ended up liking that. I never thought—I’d never seen it. And I actually thought that was actually pretty good, especially because I liked him. He was a good lead in there. But then after that, I remember him for like just the slew of TV movies.
Roger He was a staple. He was in everything.
Quentin Yeah, especially the ABC Movies of the Week. I think he married Kate Jackson for a while and they did a bunch of TV movies, like Killer Bees (1974) directed by Curtis Harrington.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin Now, the period you’re talking about, the Galaxy of Terror period, that is like right towards the end of the seventies, where out of the blue—after kind of being on TV shows and guesting on this and TV movies—all of a sudden, he made a play for being a leading man again. However, it was the time of Tom Selleck, and so he grew a mustache that made him look like a poor man’s Tom Selleck. But in this guise, he actually did about four movies where it’s just him being full on Tom Selleck leading man. And one of them is Galaxy of Terror. But he’s a fantastic young lead in this movie. I mean, he helps give the movie gravitas.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Roger Yeah. It conveys this kind of extraordinary depth.
Quentin He’s an intense little fucking boy.
Roger He turns in like a cipher. And I mean, the fact that this is the Civil War —
Quentin Well, he makes the movie intense because he’s an intense little boy.
Joe Dante And he breaks the fourth wall and talks to you through the whole movie.
Quentin Yeah, he does.
Joe Dante Which is unusual.
Quentin Yeah. And he’s mesmerizing in the revival of the tent scene. You know, when he just gets caught up in the whole fear hysteria of preaching fire and brimstone and, you know, he’s wonderful in that scene. There’s also a neat aspect to that sequence, too, you know, from the time period where it takes place. Where they see—okay, the revival house, they set up the revival tent and people are coming from all around. And the kid, he wants to see it, like, “Yeah, that’s—I want to see it.” And Milo was like, “Nah, you don’t believe in what those people say.” But the kid is responding like it’s a movie. No, no, it’s something to do. We’re fucking bored to death, alright? They just put-up tent, people are showing up from all around. I mean, it sounds like there’s something interesting going on there and we got nothing to do anyway, let’s go. And so, he relents, “Okay, we’ll go to the movies.” And it kind of was a movie because it’s not like there’s this like wonderful religious epiphany that can survive the morning. Forget about like two days later in the course of the movie. But during the moment of the tent meeting, he’s right there with tears [laughing] running out of his eyes, clasping his hands together. It’s a really, really terrific, terrific sequence.
Joe Dante Yeah, yeah.
Roger It’s actually, for me, it was actually one of the most disappointing moments, not the sequence—the sequence is amazing. It’s that he’s become a fool like everybody else in the tent.
Quentin Yeah-yeah-yeah, ah-huh.
Roger And it portends his fall, basically, in some ways. And so, it’s kind of like a—it’s a, it’s a disastrous moment.
Quentin Well, but I don’t look at it—I hear your point. I think they make the point that he shrugs it off so readily the next day that, you know, no, he’s not becoming a religious fool. Alright? He’s—it’s like a movie! He just got caught up. That’s what the guy’s job is, just to catch you up, to entertain you, make you forget about your problems. You know, for that hour or hour and a half, and make you think that you got the Lord, you know, for the course of the night. [Laughing] I’m going to do everything different starting tomorrow. [laughs]
Roger Why do you—but Quentin, why do you think they make such an impressive point that he’s overwhelmed by it? Because I think it’s more than that it’s just a movie. I think there’s an implication that he has absolution and saving that he needs within him. He keeps talking about his parents. We don’t—he’s a cipher—we don’t know what happened to his parents. Are his parents dead? Did they die during the Civil War? I mean, this presumably takes place when the actual Fool Killer was around, which, 1869 or so. And so, is it possible did he killed his parents?
Quentin Well, I think at one point in the movie—no, at one point he tells what happened to his parents and then you’re kind of meant to believe it.
Joe Dante Well, he —
Roger He kind of hums and haws about my parents —
Quentin He’s ambiguous but…
Roger They both died.
Joe Dante He’s already lied about what happened before.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante And then when he finally has to come clean and, “Now, son, tell me: are your parents dead?” “Yes, they’re dead.” But he doesn’t say how.
Quentin Oh, okay, yeah—ah-huh.
Roger And so for me, the like the more—in fact, this didn’t come to me until just now, listening to you talk about this sequence, there’s a reason he’s in there weeping for God in that moment and getting lost in the rapture of salvation that’s being presented to him. And it’s because he’s perhaps also the Fool Killer.
Quentin Oh, well, okay.
Roger I mean, I’m just—I’m just throwing out a hypothetical.
Quentin No, that’s actually an interesting hypothetical.
Roger The reason his parents are dead is because he killed them as the Fool Killer.
Quentin I think that’s an interesting hypothesis. I would have to see —
Roger I’m only 70% into that hypothesis, by the way.
Quentin I understand—no, no, you’re raising it up, the flag, you’re seeing if anybody salutes. I appreciate that.
Roger Because otherwise, why make such a powerful point of that moment in particular and his being lost in it?
Quentin I still can go to my —
Roger And Anthony Perkins’ character, who is not wanting to be there, who looks at everyone in that room like they’re a fool, being drawn in like moths to the flame.
Quentin But if you’re going to go with the idea that maybe he’s the Fool Killer as far as he —
Roger Or a Fool Killer.
Quentin A Fool Killer—he, you know, he hatched his parents to death—then I think that they would be more in the character to maybe suggests that.
Roger Well, his finding a family that is going to take care of him and then suddenly they’re like, “What, no—we’re going to send him back.” Wasn’t that—”We’re going to send you back to where you came from.”
Joe Dante Well, that that’s the first family with the little girl.
Quentin Yeah, that’s the one with the weird little girl.
Joe Dante And they’re going to send him back.
Roger Yeah, the first family.
Joe Dante But then the second family that he meets are nice and they want—it’s the old cliche, you’re just as old as our son would have been.
Roger Right.
Quentin Yeah, yeah.
Joe Dante You know, and so he’s going to take the place of their kid.
Quentin Yeah, his relationship with them is normal enough that I think it clouds the idea that he actually is an axe—that he axed murdered his parents.
Joe Dante I used to have a copy of the book, but I don’t anymore.
Quentin The scene that’s the scene for the movie to me is Henry Hull’s monologue, like his three page monologue where he describes —
Roger He’s incredible, it’s the most Quentin character of this movie.
Quentin Yeah, it’s great.
Roger It belongs in a —
Quentin And it’s just that, you know, and it—it’s going for this rural mountain folk poetry. And then the character is talking this rural, primitive, but yet poetic kind of way. It’s almost like a Georgia, Arkansas, Elizabethan, you know —
Joe Dante [Laughter]
Quentin to some degree or another. And I like movies—and there’s a there’s actually a little subgenre of movies that kind of fit into this. You mentioned Night of the Hunter fits into that, Renoir’s The Southerner (1945) fits into that. Actually, Walter Hill even tries to fit into that in The Long Riders (1980)—there’s kind of this almost poetic-y mountain—folkloric mountain talk in the way they talk. None of them do it as truly poetically, except maybe a Night of the Hunter, as the Fool Killer.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin And especially in Henry Hull’s just mesmerizing—mesmerizing—reading of the legend. Do you want—do you want to say, no you’ve got the legend.
Roger Well, in a nutshell, the legend which came about around post-Civil War when they were personifying all sorts of characterizations of America —
Quentin Mm hmm.
Roger They would become personified as actual characters, and one of them was the Fool Killer. In the Milton Chronicle newspaper back east began doing anonymous stories that were supposedly relayed from Jesse Holmes, who was relaying his stories—confessions of being the Fool Killer.
Roger Okay, so is he real or was this just a way for them to discuss the ills of the day? You know, in post-Civil War America, this is around 1869. Apparently, in one of his confessions, he meets a guy. He meets a guy who tells him he’s found this woman; he’s going to marry her because her aunt has all this money and she’s sure to leave the world soon—she’s gonna die soon. And so, so the quote is, “As I put my hand on his collar, I told him, ‘I’m about the last man you want to have any business with. You would fare better to thrust your head into the angry Lion’s mouth or to tilt your pate against forked lightning.’ That he was my property and mine alone. ‘You are,’ said I, ‘pretending to be monstrously in love with a young lady. And it seems that you love her aunt’s property more.’ And thereupon I pitched into him with the savageness of skinning skunks, mauled him about right.”
Quentin [Laughter].
Roger So it was this kind of thing where he would —
Quentin That’s not necessarily a fool, that’s just a crook.
Roger Well, he looks as—I think that’s his definition of a fool, is anybody who’s abusing the laws of civility, especially in the Deep South, which at that time you can imagine everything is collapsed. And you’ve got the carpetbaggers from the north and the leftovers from, I mean, I can’t even barely begin to imagine what it must have been like in post-Civil War, except my aunt, Myrta Lockett Avary, actually wrote a book called The Virginia Girl in the Civil War and actually discusses it and talks about it.
Quentin Oh, really?
Roger Talks about it a little bit. Talks about how—what it was like, I mean —
Quentin Just unscrupulous fiancés and…
Roger Well, just everything, all of civilization briefly falling apart. People who were never allowed to drink, suddenly drinking; slaves staying and slaves hopping on the horse, the master’s horse and taking off. You know, it’s ahh—she just describes the chaos of being in Richmond, you know, after it’s destroyed and what the south was like. And it’s just a broken place. And we see, I think we see the repercussions of that to this day.
Quentin And we see, yeah, we see it in the movie.
Roger Well, everyone is—yeah, they’re damaged in the movie, and I think seeking salvation in some ways. And also, people, I mean, they’ve lost their child. They said they lost their child.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Roger I mean, he was probably a soldier in the Civil War.
Quentin What it has that, you know, the same thing as like The Beguiled (2017). It has that mix of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce.
Joe Dante That’s very accurate.
Roger I mean, they’re different in many ways, but I was feeling like the same kind of feeling I had when I first saw The Swimmer (1968) when I saw this film, in that it’s kind of episodic, you’re traveling with him through these various chapters, and as you’re traveling to these chapters, you’re realizing you’re not really—it’s not really about the journey, the external journey, it’s about his internal journey that he’s on. And I felt that about this film as well. Well, also, it reminded me a lot of those, I can’t remember his last name, Walerian Borowczyk.
Quentin Oh, yeah.
Joe Dante Nobody can pronounce it.
Roger Yeah.
Joe Dante Borowczyk, I think it is.
Roger Yeah, Borowczyk. Yeah.
Quentin Well, I also—I do like movies that have an enigmatic young man, like in it, you know, 12 or 13 or something like that. An enigmatic young man that kind of goes on an adults journey and then that child actor has to give an adult performance. He has to give a performance that is more in line with Robert Mitchum than it is asking Johnny Whitaker or somebody like that.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Roger That’s like—that’s not an easy thing to pull off.
Quentin Yeah, no, what I mean —
Roger That can come across really super cheesy, really easily.
Quentin No, but the thing about it is, you know, he makes it a serious movie by—the movie is a serious movie—but he helps make it. You take the movie seriously due to Edward Albert’s gravitas as the character. In that way, he very much reminds me of—I, to this day, I love, love, love, love Griffin O’Neal’s performance in The Escape Artist (1982).
Roger Escape Artist, yeah.
Quentin Escape Artist doesn’t quite work at a certain point, you can tell there is editing problems, but his performance is fantastic.
Roger He’s incredible.
Quentin He just carries the movie, I —
Roger And he does all the magic tricks.
Quentin That’s, yes—that’s the Robert Mitchum young kid performance.
Roger Wearing that little suit.
Roger I know, yeah, that suit through the whole time. And, you know, but Edward Albert is, you know, actually is required to do much more. And, you know, there’s an aspect about the movie that I really, really appreciated. It was—what’s their name, George? Alright, there’s a thing about George where… even this entire story, this entire tale, is kind of similar to David Carradine’s quest on Kung Fu (1972 – 1975) as Kwai Chang Caine. George is kind of a Caine kind of figure. Among every episode Caine could have totally met a Henry Hill —
Joe Dante Yeah.
Quentin Henry Hull character. And then he could have totally met the Salome Jens character. And he could have totally met that little girl, and he could have met this kid.
Roger He could have gone to the revival house as well.
Quentin He could have been at the revival house, he could have met Anthony Perkins. I mean, that’s just like five episodes of Kung Fu right there.
Group [laughs]
Quentin We’re back and joined by Gala Avary. Hi, Gala.
Gala Hey, Quentin. Hey, Roger.
Roger Hey there.
Gala And hello, Joe Dante. I’m sure everyone says this when they meet you, but I’m a huge fan.
Joe Dante Aww.
Gala And I feel really lucky to be sitting at this table with you right now, so I’ve had to just get that out of the way.
Roger I raised her on your movies. So, this is the product.
Gala My friends actually used to call me Gizmo. So, anyway…
Joe Dante Well, I look at her and it was all worth it.
Gala Oh, thank you! Anyway, the Fool Killer. As you guys talked about, the kid in this movie, Edward Alberts, what an amazing performance that he gives. Normally, like when there’s child actors, including Sidney Ann Richards, who plays Blessing, you think, okay, there’s like these kids on screen like, “Oh my God, like I have to sit through kids.” No, these kids are actually, I think, in my opinion, what make the movie.
Roger Yeah.
Gala I think his performance is so good and her performance, she’s actually my favorite character that they run into.
Roger Of course.
Gala Of course, it’s totally me. But I love when she says, “It’s like you’re getting mushy on me.”
Roger Yeah.
Gala And then when he runs away and she’s like, “Oh, he didn’t even turn back, he could have at least looked back at me.” They were such like special little moments from child actors that you don’t always get. And I liked it.
Gala Now, the voiceover—I love voiceover in movies—, I know a lot of people kind of groan at voiceover, but it’s done so well. And it’s no surprise to me because the director, Servando González, he also did The Scapular (1968), which I’m not sure if you guys have seen, but…
Roger I’ve seen Scapular.
Gala The Scapular, that movie employs really excellent just cinematography in general, and there’s voiceover in it also that just works really.
Roger Well, he’s such an extraordinary director. There is animation in that film —
Gala Yeah.
Roger That is like—you look at that animation and like, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but it’s like something I would have done (and I did do) in Killing Zoe (1993). That’s like, there’s animation, he does all sorts of crazy camera work; he’s doing all sorts of wild narrative structure. Frankly, after watching all of the Mexican directors we’ve been watching on this, I’m just like thinking how amazing and rich, you know, like Mexican cinema is.
Quentin Cinema is. Yeah, absolutely.
Joe Dante Well, but this particular, this particular director is criminally unknown.
Roger It’s unreal how unknown he is.
Quentin I haven’t seen the other movies you’re talking about. When I saw the opening credits, I was like, oh, this person—there were all these, like, recognizable names. Anybody like, “Who the fuck is that?” Alright, when the directors name showed up?
Roger I cried in El Scapular when he’s remembering the woman—I don’t want to give away the scene—but when he starts remembering, because of the music, this woman he’s in love with. It’s so visually striking and surprising, you just can’t believe that they’re going there. And it’s breathtaking. And that’s what he’s doing in Fool Killer, also, he’s doing things like talking to the camera and utilizing all these narrative tricks and beating his own narrative drum. And I can believe that the producers were ripping their hair out because shots were upside down [laughing] and things like that. They always ripped their hair out of things like great.
Joe Dante I mean there’s also some great camerawork in it and I mean just wonderful shots. You go, how did he do that?
Roger I mean —
Gala Well, the scene with Anthony Perkins when he’s rolling —
Roger Yeah.
Gala And I was watching, and I was thinking, “Woah, like, this is like, this is a camera that has actual film in it.” Like, it’s not like some like little iPhone or like some digital camera.
Roger And to do that, you have to build a wheel to put the camera in, and a wheel that will hold Anthony Perkins and strap him in so that they can both roll at the same time.
Gala Yeah.
Roger That’s like a Rémy Julienne trick.
Joe Dante Well, all I can say is that I did meet the producer, Ely Landau, at some function years later, and I told him that my, how—and he’d done some good work, he did the American Film Theater movies, a lot of really good movies. But I said, you know, my favorite movie that you’ve ever done is the Fool Killer. And he looked at me and he put his hand to his head, “The Fool Killer?!” And all I could think of was, I guess it was, quote, a troubled shoot. And then it was obviously a troubled post-production situation. And I guess they probably didn’t make any money at all. And so, he’s just never thinks about it if he can.
Roger “And we didn’t make any money. And I made sure that guy never worked again in the United States.” [Laughs]
Joe Dante Well, you know, he didn’t.
Roger I know, that’s the thing. That’s the crime.
Gala And I wish that more of his movies were available because, I mean, The Scapular is available (you can rent that on streaming), Fool Killer, you got to go to YouTube—If the video is still up—and it’s in like this terrible less than for 480p quality or you get a VHS tape, if you can find one. It was, I’ll talk about that later, it was difficult to track down.
Joe Dante There’s a site called Cave of Forgotten Films.
Roger By the way, I think VHS —
Gala Okay, Cave of Forgotten Films.
Joe Dante Which has pretty decent quality stuff and very obscure some of it, but that’s always worth checking.
Roger By the way, I think VHS is 640 by 480, and so I think it is actually 480.
Gala So whatever I’m seeing—but I must be seeing kind of compressed VHS.
Roger When transferred if you’re looking line by line, yeah.
Gala Yeah. And speaking of the camera working in this, the DP that worked on the Fool Killer is Àlex Phillips Jr.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger Yes.
Gala Which you’ll know from The Devil’s Rain (1975).
Roger Yes, Devil’s Rain.
Quentin Yeah, yeah.
Gala Also, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974), which is my —
Roger No. Devil’s Rain. [laughs]
Gala No, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is my favorite Peckinpah. Jack —
Quentin [Groans]
Gala Okay, I know you’re going to say whatever. We’ll get into that later. Jack Hill’s Sorceress (1982) and Video Archives favorite Demonoid (1981).
Gala Your guys disagreeing on things both relieves stress on me —
Quentin & Gala [Laughs].
Roger And is kind of like, I think, a favorite of people to listen to, you guys like bickering.
Group [Laughs]
Quentin Her gigantic pronouncements, “The greatest James Bond movie of all time is The Man with The Golden Gun!”
Gala That’s my favorite! That’s my favorite.
Quentin “Greatest James Bond movies of all time is!”.
Gala I said my favorite.
Roger Why is The Man with The Golden Gun your favorite?
Gala Oh, ’cause of Knickknack.
Gala ‘Cause of Knickknack.
Gala ‘Cause I love knickknack. He loves to watch. But the Fool Killer, I mean, the shots in it are amazing. Like we talked about Anthony Perkins rolling on the hill, but also when Anthony Perkins first gets revealed how it does that like dump bum, bum, bum.
Roger The pop-cuts.
Gala The pop-cuts into his eyes.
Roger Yeah, same axis.
Gala It’s like startling and kind of creepy.
Joe Dante And the shot that goes through the door.
Roger Oh, my God. That amazing pull back.
Joe Dante Down the stairs.
Quentin Oh, yeah.
Roger But also even just like where there’s a shot, where it’s just nothing, where he’s just capturing action, like them chasing a pig around Dirty Jim—is that what his name, Dirty —
Gala Oh, my god.
Gala Around the house. I mean, just imagine that day on set.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger Like, that’s the—oh, okay, what are we doing now? Oh, we’re chasing the pig around on set. That’s an amazing scene.
Gala Dirty Jim Jelliman, which is, like, the coolest name of, like, some backwoods old man that you could find. But I can’t get over the fact that he tells him the story of the Fool Killer because he wants to sweep the floor.
Group [Laughs].
Gala Like, I can’t get over that. That’s the entire reason why we get the Fool Killer story is because the kid tries to do one good thing.
Roger “That’s because you are being a fool.”
Gala “Yeah, you just plain old fool.” And he breaks the broom.
Roger “I’m gonna break that broom.”
Gala But like you want to clean the floor, let me tell you the story of the Fool Killer. And then the rest of the movie, this kid is like doing misbehaving things, but like, the one time he really like…
Roger Hey, you know what? It maybe it’s a metaphor for the Deep South at that time. The wife is dead and gone. The guy is doing whatever he wants now, he’s not going to clean up anything and don’t you even think about cleaning this place up!
Gala But I actually think the connection between the kid and Dirty Jim Jelliman is actually really sweet. Like the whole montage they have —
Roger Perhaps a little too sweet.
Quentin & Gala No, no.
Gala I thought it could go there, but I didn’t, and I was glad about that.
Roger It amazingly, it thankfully, didn’t.
Gala They have, like, a real genuine, like, father son connection in those moments or, like, uncle/nephew.
Joe Dante Well, he meets him in an outhouse.
Gala Yeah.
Joe Dante [Laughs]
Gala With his pants down!
Quentin No, but there’s a sweet thing that’s revealed through the narrative. You know, where first the kid is like, “Well, look, I’m not saying I’m going to stay the whole night. I got to get going.”
“Oh, you’re going to leave already?”
Quentin “Okay, well, look, I can stay for a couple of days, I guess, you know.”
Quentin “Okay, fine, fine. Couple of days. We’ll have a good time and it’d be great.” You know, and then it cuts to them—it makes a narrative cut, and you realize he’s been there for like two weeks or three weeks, you know.
Group Laughs.
Quentin And it’s just really—and it’s just charming and it’s sweet.
Gala Also introduced me to Gonzalez as this amazing director. And I’ve only been able to locate this movie on YouTube, which I hope the video is still up for everyone to go watch. And then The Scapular. And the rest of his movies, I’m having like such a pain in my butt trying to track down.
Joe Dante Well, it’s very hard to find.
Gala They’re very hard to find. And it’s a real, in my opinion, it’s a loss.
Quentin And I actually, one thing I was going to add, I think—I didn’t look it up on the internet or anything—but I think Àlex Phillips, the cinematographer, he did a whole series, I think, of Cannon movies. I think he worked a lot with J. Lee Thompson. I think he did Firewalker (1986) or something.
Roger Oh, great.
Quentin Okay.
Gala So, if you guys want to watch this movie, which you should, because it’s not only recommended by me and Quentin, Roger, but also by Joe Dante—I mean who doesn’t want —
Quentin Curated.
Gala Come on, curated by Joe Dante.
Roger Yeah, this is a must see.
Gala It’s available on YouTube right now. If you are lucky enough to pick up a VHS, I was able to pick up mine, it’s the same one that Quentin has from Eddie Brandt’s. I was able to get mine for $20 from a store called Video Nerd at: 1625 East Irving Place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. They are an online retailer that has tons of VHS. They’re on Facebook and they have so many rare titles. They have so many Paragon tapes, I couldn’t believe it.
Quentin Oh, wow, cool.
Gala And I searched so hard to find this VHS tape and this person pulled through. So, thank you so much, Video Nerd, and I will hold my tape dearly once I have it.
Roger Such a nerd.
Quentin Yay!
The Young Nurses
Clip from The Young Nurses Trailer Meet today’s women: liberated, beautiful, and ready for action. They are The Young Nurses and they’re growing up fast. “It’s a candy stripers job to make the patients stay in the hospital more pleasant.” “This is not what we mean by pleasant.” “It was pleasant, wasn’t it?” The Young Nurses. Join them. All you need is a private room.
Gala The Young Nurses with co-head The Fool killer will be playing on 35mm film for one night at the New Beverly Cinema on Monday, February 6th: 7165 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, 90036. For even more information and tickets, visit: thenewbev.com. The New Beverly Cinema. Always on film.
Quentin And we’re back and we’re on to our second film, which is from New World Pictures, The Young Nurses. Brought out on Charter Entertainment, which Charter Entertainment was the special division line inside of Embassy Video.
Roger It was their Lexus.
Quentin Yeah, I don’t really know exactly how it worked, but at some point in the 80s with video out there, the New World Catalogue got sliced in half between Warner Brothers Home Video and Embassy Home Video. And this is like one of their later video releases. So, this got knocked over to Charter. But I actually like the Charter logo quite a bit. I like it at the beginning of the movie, I like it on the box, I like the —
Roger The video graphic that comes up. [imitating logo sound]
Quentin I like this, in fact, I like this a lot better than the Embassy Video graphic, and then the white Embassy box with just the catalogue —
Quentin & Roger [laughs]
Quentin Square in the middle. I wanted to watch it, I wanted to bring it onto this episode for a couple of reasons. One, I really liked the nurse cycle of movies that New World Pictures did. It’s probably my favorite of their series of films. But also, I wanted to talk about New World Pictures with Joe being here, but not necessarily pick one of the classic ones like Death Race 2000 (1975) and talk about that. And I didn’t even know if he had any—it’s around his same time, so I wasn’t even sure if you had any involvement with it and naturally, yes, he cut the trailer.
Quentin So first, before I read the back of the box, let me just kind of describe the genre and the series of movies. It all started—they didn’t know they were doing a series, this is at the very, very beginning of Corman’s opening up New World Pictures, and as we talked about before, I think on another episode—so when Corman started New World Pictures it wasn’t good enough for him to—he wanted to dominate or, you know, to be a player inside of the world that he knew right away. So it wasn’t enough to have five movies or six movies. He needed a full-on year slate; he needed 12 movies. And so, he’s able to finance a group of small ones, but he’s also able to pick up from Eddie Romero and Cirio Santiago, a bunch of Filipino ones, and he’s able to pick up a couple of other ones that are on the market there. And so he can, you know, he can release 12 different movies—Creature with The Blue Hand (1967) he gets the biggest release ever of Edgar Wallace. But one of the ones that he throws into production quickly, right away, that’s a homegrown product of his, is a movie called The Student Nurses (1970), directed by Stephanie Rothman. And I don’t like The Student Nurses that much, but it does what it’s supposed to do. Anyway, the movie comes out and it’s a big hit for them. I mean, like a big hit. “So, we got to do a nurse movie next year.” And so next year is Private Duty Nurses (1971) by George Armitage, which is, I think, the best one. I think it’s the best movie. I would even take it outside of not just saying it’s a good New World Picture, I would take it even outside of the New World Picture corral that it’s in and say it’s a really good 70s movie. I think there’s a touch of Paul Mazursky to it. I mean, you could almost imagine those characters living right by Elmo, Kris Kristofferson character and Blume’s wife, Susan Anspach, in Venice. You could almost imagine them going to the same bars or something like that. There is that and there is a real feeling of the way, you know, young people vibing and hooking up in a contemporary American city like Venice in 1970.
Roger [laughs]
Quentin I think the movie does a really good job of that. Then there’s kind of the movie that almost that brought you to Hollywood, Night Call Nurses (1972) by Jonathan Kaplan, which I think is the funnest of them. Then came The Young Nurses (1973), then came Candy Stripe Nurses (1974), and then they were doing teachers and they got The Student Teachers (1973) and the Summer School Teachers (1974), and then they got the Cirio Santiago ones, Cover Girl Models (1975) and the stewardess one Fly Me (1973).
Quentin Now, what they all, what all the movies had in common is basically you’re following the adventures of three nurses, usually a blond, white one, a brunet white one, and then an ethic one, either she’s black or she’s Mexican, usually. And, you know, like something like Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) or whatever, it kind of just follows their situation. They all work at the hospital. One of them has got some situation going on at the hospital about something. They all three meet guys during the course of the movie and the guys that they meet usually involve them in some sort of drama at some point or another—or adventure at some point or another. But the thing about it is, like, the three girls are usually pretty charming in the film and you kind of get caught up and their little stories. And they’re all wonderful ways of looking at Los Angeles at that time, which I think cheap, low budget movies do better than big budget.
Roger Yeah, because they’re not using any production to hide the reality of the world.
Quentin Yeah. So, Young Nurses takes place, you know, primarily in Venice, whereas Private Duty Nurses takes place—where me and Roger are from—takes place in Hermosa Beach or Manhattan Beach.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin And then the actors are fun in it, the guys playing the boyfriends, whatever ends up being bad guys, they show up. Dick Miller is in almost all of them, he shows up for a moment. There’s always weird cameos by somebody like Sam Fuller or Grady Sutton or somebody—some weird old timer shows up.
Roger Allan Arbus.
Quentin Yeah, he’s not an old timer then, he was well —
Roger But weird to show up in this movie.
Joe Dante This was Mantan Moreland’s last year picture.
Quentin Oh, yeah! It was Mantan Moreland, yeah, exactly.
Joe Dante Now, do you know that he was almost a Stooge?
Quentin No, I did not know that.
Joe Dante When he did a picture with Shemp Howard, and it was called The Strange Case of Dr. Rx (1942), and they had some scene where they’re, I guess, they’re playing dice or something like that, and Shemp really thought that Mantan was very funny. And he went back to the other two guys, and he said, “You know, I’m not a spring chicken and I’m going to have to retire soon. I think Mantan should replace me and become the third stooge.”
Quentin Ooh.
Joe Dante And so the other two guys went, “Yeah, great, we love him.” Then of course, they took it to Columbia, and Columbia said, “But he’s, he’s black.” And they said, “Yeah.” And they said no.
Group Laughs.
Joe Dante And so they stuck him with Joe Besser.
Quentin Oh! So, that’s how Joe came into it.
Joe Dante Yeah, but Moe didn’t like Joe Besser.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante And he was really angry that Mantan didn’t get the job.
Quentin And I think Mantan Moreland’s, if I’m not mistaken, I think his big role before this was in Spider Baby (1967).
Joe Dante That’s it, yeah.
Quentin Anyway, I’m a big fan of the nurse movies for all the reasons that I said. Also, one of the things that I like about them is they’re pretty formulaic because they all follow more or less the structure that I just described. But inside of that structure, they could be quite different movies. One of them could be more serious, one of them could be more of a comedy. And it’s really kind of actually set up for a director to kind of take the movie and give it their personality. It’s one of the things that New World Pictures had, as a director would come in and—look, they didn’t have enough time usually to do what they wanted to do. They didn’t have—you know, it’s just getting it done, getting it done is the job. But hopefully they’re throwing in a personality into the piece by the actress that they chose and what they decide to emphasize. And the nurse movies were kind of set up for the director to kind of lay out a personality. And then consequently the George Armitage one is quite different from the Jonathan Kaplan one, which is quite different from the Alan Holleb one in Candy Striped Nurses.
Now, you made a Faustian bargain when you worked with Corman, and that was like, “Okay, so you’re going to make a movie in this genre and you need to give me the elements that I need in order to exploit a successful motion picture, which it could be violence and action and nudity or sexuality. Then if you can find—if you can make a movie that you want to make inside of these parameters, I’ll let you do that. And I want you to do that. I want you to make it as good as possible.” And that’s kind of the bargain. Now, the thing about it is the New World Pictures, their titles suggested—especially for their sex movies—their titles suggested rougher movies than they were. They sounded like porno movies. And then the posters looked like porno posters. And even the radio spots could have been the radio spots for an erotic film.
Roger To be honest, I thought we had a porn movie at Archives called Candy Strip Nurses.
Quentin Yeah. No, no, we didn’t. Actually, it was Candy Strip something else.
Roger Laughs.
Candy Stripe Nurse da-da-da-da. Yeah, so in something like Caged Heat (1974), you’d have a lot of nudity all the time because they’re in a prison and there are shower scenes going on. And so, Jonathan Demme was able to kind of fulfill his nudity quota without really having to build scenes around it; it’s just, it’s in the milieu. It happens. And that’s one way of handling it. Another way of handling it, like Jonathan Kaplan did when the two black characters have their sex scene, is to make it all really arty. And so, he plays around with focus, and he plays around with exposure, and he shoots through fish tanks and, you know, just plays around with like that. It makes it arty. And that’s how he that how he delivers the sex scene. But officially the two characters are naked in it, so it counts.
Now, the way that most of them handle it is they turned it into comedy. They made it part of a joke. Now all this is just absolutely fine, except it’s not very erotic. And the movies are being sold as erotic films. And when you as we’ll talk about later with our third film, when you watch a movie from Germany, when you watch a movie from Sweden and you watch a movie from Holland, or watch a movie from Italy, which there was a lot of them, and they were selling it as an erotic film, you expected to see an erotic movie. Young Nurses is different. And that’s why I chose this one. Now first, let me read the back of a box before I go into my whole take on this movie.
Quentin The Young Nurses. In this hospital, the patients come first.
Joe Dante No, I think you read that wrong. The patients come first.
Quentin Yes, you’re right.
Group [laughs]
Roger The inflection was wrong.
Quentin You’re right, you’re right, you’re right.
Group [laughs]
Joe Dante I used to do trailers.
Quentin Luscious blonde Kitty, black beauty Michelle, and stunning brunet Joanne are lively young nurses who work at a large hospital and give the sexiest treatment you’ve ever seen. This is the story of the loves and the lives of these sex goddesses who must struggle to establish themselves as professionals in medicine at a hospital where sex, drugs and violence are rampant. Whether it’s at work or on their days off, the young nurses have your cure in this action /romance full of all kinds of excitement. This movie will raise your heart rate and send your temperature sky high. But don’t worry, when you are feeling under the weather, these lovely nurses know just the remedy. Color. 177 minutes.
Joe Dante 177 minutes?
Quentin R-rated.
Joe Dante It’s not 177 minutes.
Roger How could that be?
Quentin Did I say 100? I meant to say 77 minutes, sorry.
Roger [laughs]
Quentin I meant to say 77 minutes, sorry. I don’t know where I get that hundred.
Joe Dante I think that’s cheating. I don’t think it’s even 77 minutes.
Roger [laughs]
Quentin So now, why I think this movie stands out is I think, okay, the director is Clint —
Joe Dante Clint Kimbrough.
Quentin Kimbrough. And he’s, like, a legit actor. You know —
Joe Dante He never directed another movie.
Quentin Yeah, he appeared in quite a few different things. But, I mean, I’m most—most people most know him where he’s one of the brothers in Bloody Mama (1970), right along with Robert De Niro and Robert Waldon and Don Stroud. But he’s also in Night Call Nurses, he’s got a good part in Night Call Nurses. And he was married to Frances Doel.
Joe Dante Who is the script supervisor on this movie.
Quentin Was she Corman’s assistant?
Joe Dante She was his—there are many people who believe that Roger could never have made it this far as he did without Frances.
Quentin No, I’ve always heard —
Joe Dante Between Frances in Chuck Griffith it was like these were two appendages that he really needed.
Quentin I’ve heard that when it comes to that company, it’s like she was the number two. So she was married to Clint, and he got a chance to direct his one movie, which was The Young Nurses. And we were amused by the fact that he took a slightly different name as a director, Clint Kimbrough. So I guess if he was going—if directing was going to work for him, he was going to go by the name of Clint Kimbrough. What makes this movie different is he has made a decision to make an erotic movie in a way that the other directors didn’t. There is—it’s coming from an erotic place. He’s not holding his nose and doing the nude scenes; the movies are about the nude scenes; it’s about them having liaisons and it’s about filming it. And, you know, he follows all the different adventures that the characters get into, but that usually leads them into something provocative at the very least.
Roger Does he have an ambition to do more like the other directors did? I mean, in other words —
Quentin Well, I think —
Roger Did he had the capability of, for instance, the lap dissolve, sexy scenes of —
Joe Dante He’s not a master stylist.
Quentin No, he’s a first-time director, alright. He’s doing his best, you know. And they’re bum rushing it all over Venice, you know.
Joe Dante Marina del Rey.
Quentin Yeah, Marina del Rey.
Roger It’s a great document for the city at that time.
Roger Yeah, and it’s got a regatta in it.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante I’ve never seen a nurse movie with a regatta in it.
Roger [laughs]
Quentin Well again, we’re from the South Bay, so as soon as the opening shot —
Roger Yeah.
Quentin You see Marina del Rey.
Roger You start cheering.
Quentin You’re like alright, Okay. I’m in.
Quentin He went out to make an erotic movie. He’s not holding his nose. This is why he’s doing it. He builds the scenes around them. They’re not cutaways. They’re not just filler that’s stuck in in between his ridiculous plot. I say he’s putting up with a ridiculous plot.
Quentin & Roger [laughs]
Roger Well, I mean, it’s almost the plot of Coma (1978). My note on this was like Coma on downers.
Quentin & Roger [laughs]
Roger Because I mean there’s —
Quentin Well, that’s one of the that’s one of the three plots.
Roger Deaths that are occurring that nurses are privy to.
Quentin Well, one of the things about the nurse movies is the ethnic character, either the black character or the Mexican character, she’s always the one that has the, you know, the more crime story involved.
Roger The issue oriented.
Quentin Yeah, there might be drugs or a political prisoner convict situation, but there’s, you know, there’s usually something as far as that’s concerned. But I also think that’s one of the things that makes Young Nurses interesting, too. But what did you think, Joe?
Joe Dante Am I allowed to disagree? [laughs]
Quentin No, of course you are.
Roger Yeah, after seeing the movie again after so many years.
Joe Dante I hadn’t seen the movie since 1973 or whenever it came out. To me, the auteur of this movie is Howard R. Cohen, who was the writer. He came right off of Unholy Rollers (1972) to do this. And he was kind of a go to guy for Roger, if he needed something done quickly. And eventually was scooted up the ladder and got to direct some things.
Quentin Yeah, he did, like —
Joe Dante He did Saturday the 14th (1981).
Quentin Saturday the 14th.
Roger Oh, yeah.
Joe Dante And I find it the weakest of the nurse pictures. Not necessarily because the script is so silly because it’s really not much different than the other nurse pictures.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante I find it to be a drab looking movie. I mean, it is interesting to see the locations because it’s always interesting to see the locations of 1973, how different it is. But it doesn’t have any flash, it’s kind of murky. There’s not enough fill light. Half the time you can’t see the people’s faces and you go wait, “Shouldn’t there be a light over here?” Well, I know why there isn’t a light there, but the fact is there isn’t a light there. And so, when you—the overall impression of the movie is that it’s a little shoddy. And although there is an attempt at doing something different with the black subplot, particularly when she gets dosed.
Quentin Yeah-yeah.
Roger Yeah.
Joe Dante But with drugs in this —
Quentin Yeah, I’ve been waiting to talk about that scene. That’s the sequence of the movie.
Roger Yeah, that’s the big moment —
Quentin That’s why we’re —
Joe Dante And also like moment with writhing bodies and stuff, that’s actually kind of interesting. But I think there’s a reason why Clint Kimbrough didn’t direct any other movies. I don’t think—he doesn’t look to me like he enjoyed it.
Quentin Well, that might—well, that might very well be the case. And I can imagine just making a New World Picture with all the pressures involved and doing it all and a couple of weeks is like, unless you’re really…
Joe Dante Well, it’s true, but then you get somebody like Kaplan who makes Night Call Nurses, which is a fun movie, and then says, I want to do it again. I’m going to do the student teachers, which is the same movie with teachers.
Quentin Yeah-yeah, yeah.
Joe Dante And there are a number of people like Stephanie Rothman and other people where they were ambitious.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante There’s no ambition in this picture.
Quentin Well, look, I hear what you mean. I enjoyed it more. And as I’ve stated, I like Private Duty Nurses more than I like Night Call Nurses more. And I also even like a Candy Stripe Nurses, which I think is probably the second most of the erotic ones because it kind of commits to being a sex comedy, and because it actually it commits 100% to the comedy.
Joe Dante But also it’s got Candice Rialson.
Quentin Well, it’s got the wonderful Candice Rialson.
Joe Dante And the cast of this movie, they’re all game, they’re doing their best, but there’s nobody that stands out; there’s nobody that really is very interesting.
Quentin Look, you are right. I almost think—but there’s an almost an off-brand quality, alright, to this one that I kind of appreciate.
Joe Dante It’s like a Dimension Picture.
Roger The sleepy-eyed Ashley Porter walking around, like, in a kind of dream state throughout the movie, I found myself thinking about her constantly after we left.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger That was actually kind of a strange, maybe unintentionally riveting performance for me. [laughs]
Quentin They normally cast at least one very vivacious young actress in this group. So in Candy Stripe Nurses, you know, there’s two. You got Candice Rialson and —
Group Robin Mattson.
Quentin Who I’m a big fan of, all right. All three of the girls in Night Call Nurses is terrific, especially the girl Patty Byrne, who didn’t really do —
Joe Dante Yeah, she’s really good.
Quentin I mean, she’s fantastic.
Joe Dante She’s great.
Quentin She’s really good.
Joe Dante I also thought for sure she was going to have a career.
Quentin One of my favorite lead performances—lead female performances in a New World Picture, Patty Byrne. I like the off-brand quality that these girls aren’t quite up to that level of them, but also it gets a little more friskier.
Roger [laughs]
Quentin Alright, because of that.
Roger It does, it does.
Quentin It does. It’s like, you know, it’s like, okay, why did Buñuel cast two actresses to play the same role in That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)? Well, obviously, because he wanted to have nude scenes and one of them would do the nude scenes, and Carole Bouquet is like, too classy to do the nude scenes. Some of that’s—it’s not a trick, it’s not a trick question.
Joe Dante That’s a Roger reason.
Quentin Yes, Roger reason.
Group [laughs]
Roger Roger happily uses that excuse.
Group [laughs]
Roger That’s actually using surrealism to your benefit in that moment.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Roger And what is surrealism other than the Marx Brothers movies?
Quentin Okay. But the thing that makes The Young Nurses, what makes me stand behind it, alright, that I can defend it against all comers, is that sequence in the middle when Angela Gibbs, the black nurse—who looks amazing in the movie, riding around on her motorcycle with her —
Joe Dante With her cape.
Quentin Nurse outfit.
Roger Oh, that cape is fantastic.
Quentin And her Florence Nightingale cape, alright, is just fantastic. She looks like a superhero, alright.
Roger But that’s an example: that cape is something that you might not see in a contemporary film, that watching this movie, it becomes suddenly: Wow, this movie serves as the document for that cape.
Quentin And watching her in that cape and that nurse outfit like zooming through Venice, alright, was amazing.
Roger There were quite a few costumes, which, you know, we’re probably just available clothes for them or whatever the last production was or whatever the actors were wearing.
Joe Dante Or, you never know, an up-and-coming young costume person is making a statement, you know. And I don’t know who did the costumes, or where they went, but a lot of people worked on those movies then went immediately to better job.
Quentin & Roger Yeah.
Quentin But the thing is, okay, so she has a boy—not even a boyfriend, she has a guy that she’s hooked up with before that she has this liaison with and he was passing out this drug, right? And he had done drugs before and that she saw that he had passed out this drug. And she’s investigating because the drug is kind of dangerous—there’s a dangerous quality.
Roger This is the boat skipper, right?
Quentin Yeah. It’s interesting, this dude, the guy that she’s with, because it seems like he’s all presented as extremely sketchy, to say the least.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin That he’s presented as sketchy, but she seems to kind of be okay with it. She’ll ask him about questions. She’s still playing Nancy Drew about this whole drug thing. But—and he’s part of it. And she ultimately has this laissez faire attitude about his involvement in it all and even to the point of like they’re almost kind of like, are we going to fight about it? “Ahh, hell no.” [laughs] And instead they go, and they fuck in the cab of the boat. But…
Roger It’s ’73, they’re doing a little bit of drug deals and Fentanyl got into the drugs, that’s all.
Quentin But the thing that I like about that sequence, alright, is the fact that it’s like two black actors playing it—and there actually is a soul element to that scene.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin It’s not written in a way where it’s just, oh, they get the couple of black actors and they say, “Out of sight, man.” And slap each other five and they throw a little jive around. No, there’s like, there’s a soul quality involved in the way they talk and their back and forth. And also seeing the guy on a boat watching a scene like that in Marina del Rey, alright, is also very interesting.
But then it leads to the point of no return as far as the movie is concerned. And that’s when she goes to this bar and the guys there with the bartender who we’ve seen murder a couple of people and just a couple of scenes earlier, I think. And we watched them lace her drink with the drug. And so, she unknowingly, she takes it, and she drinks it, she sits down with him and then all of a sudden, like, starts like feeling the effects of the drug. And then they get on the floor and they start dancing. And she’s having a really good time. And then she just starts having this sexual, like, either fantasy/hallucination, or is it actually happening in real life? That’s not for sure. Then all the other black folks that are dancing on the floor, it starts as a dance scene and then it turns into something out of Ken Russell, where they’ve all taken off their clothes and they’re all having this kind of orgy on the dance floor. So then they leave and she’s with the guy, and she’s still all kind of high and bopping around. And then she goes, “Okay, so you spiked me, right?” Yeah. “But you didn’t give me enough to kill me.” No, no, I didn’t give you enough to kill you. Just enough to —
Roger Loosen you up. [laughs]
Quentin Have a good time. Yeah, yeah—have a good time. And then, so you’re like, okay, so how is she going to react about this? And then, again, she takes the laissez faire, “Okay, whatever. It’s all good. It’s all good.” And then they go back to her apartment and then they have sex. And then all of a sudden, all the dancers are there. And now it’s a fucking orgy going on. And like, how much is the drug? How much is real?
Roger It all it all comes together to make for a perfectly Quentin scene.
Quentin Considering —
Roger He just loves that.
Quentin Considering—what, I love that whole sequence, alright?
Roger Yeah.
Quentin And the moral ambiguity of it is the cheese on top.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin Alright. But, again, one of the things about it that’s so special is, frankly, to tell you the truth, especially in America, black actors and characters and black bodies are not emphasized in erotic films. I mean, you might see there’s a random black actress here and there, but they don’t have scenes like this. And they definitely do not have scenes where like six naked black bodies are all together in the middle of, you know, a regular erotic film. And yeah, I think that’s a big deal. I think that’s special.
Quentin And we’re back with Gala Avary.
Gala Hello. Okay, I’m back for The Young Nurses. So Joe brought up writer Howard R. Cohen, which I’m glad he did, because he wrote a ton of Cirio H. Santiago films.
Quentin Yeah, I know. He wrote a Death Force (1978).
Roger Oh, oh—great!
Quentin Yeah. He wrote Death Force, he wrote Stryker (1983). He wrote Stryker, which —
Quentin Yeah, I forgot he did write Stryker.
Roger Which could almost be Death Force.
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Gala But he actually wrote my personal favorite Vampire Hookers (1978).
Quentin Oh, he wrote Vampire Hookers.
Gala Which I actually really like Vampire Hookers, which might be questionable, but that’s my taste.
Joe Dante And he ended up in children’s television.
Gala What a great trajectory.
Roger What a natural progression.
Group [laughs]
Quentin Like, like Rainbow Brite episodes or something. Yeah.
Gala What a great trajectory. Okay. So this VHS that Quentin has in front of him, which you guys can see on the website and the newsletter, has four young nurses on the cover. There’s —
Quentin Well, okay, there is the fourth one. She’s not really part of the thing.
Joe Dante You’re lucky when even the girls on the cover are the same girls in the movie.
Roger Yeah. Exactly. [laughs]
Gala Okay, is she the candy striped girl?
Quentin Yeah, she’s the candy stripe.
Gala So, she’s the candy stripe.
Gala She’s the candy stripper who fucks the rockstar.
Gala So, like, the first story of the first girl, the blond one, she’s so absorbed with this boat regatta, which, yes, it is like this huge—as Joe said, when do you ever see a boat regatta and one of these nurse movies? Never.
Joe Dante Well, you can bet that’s the reason they made the movie. They got a chance. “Hey, I know somebody has got a boat. We’re down at Marina. There’s going to be a regatta. We can shoot stuff for free.” [laughs]
Roger Yeah.
Gala But I just love that she’s, like, so obsessed, and she’s like, “He can’t sail with that shoulder.” And, like, I’m so obsessed with, like, him not being able to sail.
Roger Yeah, cause she’s falling for this guy who has a shoulder injury from a boating accident.
Gala Which she’s the cause of.
Quentin But now to me, it’s interesting because look at the three actresses: there’s Jean Mason, who is the blond one that you’re talking about.
Gala Kitty, right? Is that her name?
Quentin Yeah, Kitty, yeah. Then there’s Angela Gibbs as the black one. And then there’s Ashley Porter—that’s the tall, statuesque brunet who is, like, overseeding her authority; she’s prescribing things that only a doctor should be prescribing, that a nurse shouldn’t be prescribing. Now, I think it’s actually interesting of the three of them, because Jean Mason, the blonde one to me is drastically the best actress, alright, she’s carrying off her scenes; she’s doing her job, and that putzes job for him.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin Alright. Ashley Porter is drastically the least experienced actress of the three, especially compared to Jean Mason. She’s strangely the most star worthy of them.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin You find yourself looking at her. You can’t —
Roger It’s her dreamy eyes. [laughs]
Quentin She has a star quality—she has a star quality about her.
Gala And actually, she has one of my favorite moments, actually, the bikini kite. When he ties the kite to her bikini top and then it flies away. [laughs]
Quentin No, she ties the string to his dick.
Gala No, after though, just after and then it flies…
Quentin I think you’re kind of burying the lead. [laughs]
Roger No, it doesn’t fly away. Yeah.
Gala It’s very ahh dirty hands —
Quentin Yeah, yeah, okay.
Gala With the Kite thing. But I love how, though, it takes her bikini top and then she’s just, like, out there in the water. And then, yes, as Quentin says, she ties the string to his penis. And then it rises with it and flies away and all that stuff.
Quentin I thought that was actually rather provocative. Did you not?
Roger If you’re making a movie with kites and nurses and…
Quentin No but just that moment. Just that moment, didn’t you think, “Oh, Wow!”?
Roger Yeah, well now that you said it, it’s like a dirty—Claude Chabrol would have done it himself.
Quentin No, but he didn’t do it.
Roger [laughs] Yeah, well, his own version.
Quentin I’m asking you about the—but no, it’s not —
Roger Yeah, I like —
Joe Dante Claude Chabrol is no Clint Kimbrough.
Group [laughs]
Roger That’s true.
Gala You’ve heard it here first, folks.
Roger Yes, I liked it when she tied the kite to his —
Quentin Yeah, yeah. Just that exact moment, “Oh, wow!”
Roger “Oh, it’s rising.”
Quentin Yeah, yeah. [laughs]
Roger “It’s rising.”
Gala Her story, though, she’s like, kind of like a little annoying for me. Like how she’s like, “Well, there’s not enough doctors, so I’m going to do it.” Okay, great…
Roger Well, nurses are expected to, like, do all—it was also an issue, actually!
Gala Yeah, she’s showing the issue.
Roger It’s the medical struggle of these nurses and the doctors are just not pulling their weight and they don’t have the authority to do things that they should do. And then she finally has the moment where she does it and she, you know, pulls rank and does something that she’s not supposed to do and administers the medicine that she really doesn’t have the authority to administer. And all goes wrong. And the guy is almost killed. [laughs]
Gala Yeah, the tainted blood.
Roger That was actually kind of interesting. It wasn’t that she got away with it.
Joe Dante I ascribe that to Julie Corman, who is the producer of this picture. And one thing Julie was very specific about in all of those movies was she always wanted to have some social aspect of the picture. They always had to deal with some problem that people had. And the nurse pictures are often about bad hospital administrators, and you know —
Quentin No, yeah, you’re right. It’s like one storyline usually involves like the nurse that directly deals with the hospital, something going on. And then there is the socially political, you know, NOW moment, you know, storyline of one of them—usually the boyfriend brings into it—and then there’s like a romance story more or less.
Roger Thank you, Julie Corman, for giving the movie a moral center. It’s actually probably the reason we’re still talking about the film.
Gala Yeah. And I like, though, because it’s like she is like a nurse, but then her boyfriend or something is like a doctor and he’s kind of like, “Stop doing this. You shouldn’t be doing this.”
Roger Yeah, it’s like Coma.
Gala Yeah, it’s like Coma. I love Coma.
Quentin Okay, well, wait, wait. Okay. On one hand he’s like, “Stop. Do this.” But was like, “Hey, this room, this bed just got available. Hey, this room just got available.” Alright, it’s like Paddy Chayefsky going on here. It’s like looking for an empty room. So fuck it. [laughs]
Gala When I’m watching this movie, though, it’s like there are these two girls that have, like, these, like, romance stories that they’re like, kind of—I mean, the boat regatta, “He can’t sail with that shoulder.” It’s like my favorite line from the movie.
Joe Dante [laughs]
Gala It’s just, “He can’t do it!” And then, like, she’s trying to, like, maybe figure out she wants to get OBGYN, like yogurt, all this stuff. And then the black chick, it’s like actually out there investigating this drug ring.
Roger The fentanyl problem in America. [laughs]
Gala The problem in America. But I love it because it all starts when her patient dies.
Group Yeah.
Gala Because she’s been taking care of this kid —
Roger At the free clinic.
Gala At the free clinic. Who is, I think he’s blind.
Quentin Yeah.
Gala And so she’s been taking care of him, and she’s like, “I’m gonna get to the bottom of this because, like, this is like, the real social action. This is actually what I can do.” And I love that she goes and she investigates, and I just love at the same time it’s being intercut with the boat regatta. [laughs]
Quentin Yeah. [laughs]
Gala It’s so frivolous. And for those anime fans out there, there is an anime called—which I actually just watched—called Roujin Z (1991), and it is the exact same story. Her patient dies and she has to kind of go and investigate and it’s really compelling. And that’s the compelling part for me in this movie is definitely her story, and kind of the juxtaposition of the boat regatta. [laughs] Because it’s just so ridiculous for me. But, now Quentin and everyone at this table, is Coffy (1973) a nurse film?
Roger Well…
Quentin No—she is a nurse, it’s not a nurse film.
Roger Well, actually…
Quentin She is a nurse, but it’s not a nurse film.
Roger Yeah, it’s not a nurse film because there would have to be more than one nurse.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger And we don’t ever really go back to the hospital in Coffy, do we?
Gala Well, we do a little bit.
Quentin Nahh…
Roger Just a little?
Quentin Nah, not after the first 20 minutes. Once she joins King George.
Gala Yeah.
Roger You would have to end at the hospital, and you would have to have an administrator character and stuff like that.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante [laughs]
Gala So for anyone that’s interested in watching The Young Nurses after this conversation, it is available on YouTube in surprisingly amazing quality. It’s very well shot on YouTube. So probably where that movie looks the best. Not really caring about that fill light when I’m watching on my laptop, I suppose.
Roger Yeah.
Gala Quentin’s VHS lands in the drama section.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Gala And I got my VHS, it’s a Charter Entertainment for $9.88.
Quentin This would move at Video Archives, this would move on a whim to either to the erotic section under the Y’s or just would find its way into the drama.
Roger Yeah, either drama. Probably not cult.
Quentin No, no, no.
Roger Erotic.
Quentin No, no, no. We have an erotic section.
Roger I would be putting that in the erotic section.
Quentin Yeah, but sometimes I would find its way to the drama too.
My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, and Julie
Clip from My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga, and Julie trailer [Dutch] Susan! Susan. Susan? Mijn Nachten met Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet en Sandra. Mijn Nachten. Nachten. Nachten. Mijn Nachten met Pim en Wim. [English] And sex and psycho suspense mystery thriller.
Roger And we’re back with our final film tonight. And tonight’s film was one Quentin chose that he said was a Roger movie. And I think —
Quentin Did I say it was a Roger movie?!
Roger You did when you said, “This is going to be the Roger movie.”
Quentin Oh, that opening 10 minutes, that is like a Roger movie.
Roger Tonight’s film is Mijn Nachten met Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet en Sandra from 1975, otherwise known as My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie. For some reason, Peter—Piet—gets left out of the…
Quentin Well, he never really has a night with her.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin & Roger [laughs]
Quentin He has a night with the dead body.
Roger Quentin, I’m going to read the box.
Quentin Sure.
Roger But I believe you chose this movie because it was like a sex film, right?
Quentin Yeah, well, I chose it because I hadn’t seen it. And it’s one of those movies that I had seen, like the first 10 minutes of it, and I always thought it looked really, really intriguing. In fact, it looked so intriguing that I didn’t want to watch it by myself; I wanted to watch it with somebody else. And then I did a little research on these filmmakers, the producer and director, and that’s actually kind of interesting. So I thought it would be a fun one to watch. And I did like the idea that it’s released on Private Screenings, which was Media Home Videos special line for erotic films, which was almost always German or Swedish or Scandinavian.
Roger Now, I’m going to make a confession. I probably more than once put this box back onto the shelves under P —
Quentin & Roger For “Private Screenings”.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger Because the box itself —
Joe Dante Well, it looks like that’s the title, but I think there’s a caveat. This picture was shot in Techniscope, which is the widescreen process that only uses half the frame.
Quentin Mmhmm.
Roger Oh, yeah.
Joe Dante And this tape, of course, is pan and scan.
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Joe Dante And when we watched it on Quentin’s TV it zooms in because it wants to make the pictures look widescreen. Well, that meant cutting off both sides and the top and bottom of this picture. And the remarkable thing is—I never heard of this picture, I never heard of the director, I didn’t know anything about it—it played great, even though I could hardly see half the movie.
Group [laughs]
Quentin Even though half—even though any time a character stood up they were cut off at the chin. [laughs]
Roger Yeah. Okay. So, and the movie, by the way, is directed by the team—I mean, well directed and produced by the team—Pim de la Parra and produced by Wim Verstappen.
Quentin Verstappen.
Roger Verstappen.
Roger Anton, a young adventurer on his way to the south of France, stops for a rest at a small farm in the countryside. In spite of its very obvious charms, Anton discovers that this youth hostel plays host to a very different breed of women. Julie is a sweet but silent young girl who’s always sleeping. Sandra and Olga are two seductive and murderous mademoiselles with more than their fair share of experience. Piet, the village fool, is a strange woman who keeps odd secrets in her tiny cottage. And Susan is the lovely proprietress who oversees this strangely alluring household. Before his stay is over, Anton will have uncovered all their secrets. He’ll never forget his nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie. And neither will you!
Quentin That’s actually a pretty good plot synopsis, actually.
Roger Color. 75 minutes. Media Home Video but their Private Screenings label. And the title is smaller than the label’s branding: Private Screenings. I mean, I love this film.
Quentin Mmhmm.
Roger It takes place in this kind of desolate Dutch landscape of reclaimed ocean. You know, you’re on a dike, basically, and they’re literally at the edge of the ocean. And so, there’s this strange kind of empty desolation to everything that I kind of adore. And from the opening scenes where these two murderous hot girls, these hot—or hot and murderous, not they’re murderous and hot or hot and murderous—they kill this American in a car. And it’s such a great scene. I mean, that must have been the scene where you stopped and said, okay, I’ve got to watch this.
Quentin Yeah, no. It’s like I’ve seen this opening about, like, a couple of times. Sandra and Olga are walking down the road and then they hitchhike and then they’re with some American tourist who’s driving through Holland, looking at the windmills.
Roger In an American car.
Quentin In a big American car.
Roger Why the American is there with an American car? [laughs]
Quentin Smoking cigars. And there’s got some—the girl is passing the whiskey bottle around with the girl.
Roger He’s got some Elvis glasses.
Quentin They decide to have—he decides to have sex with one of them. And while he’s having sex with one of them, the other one bashes his head in with the whiskey bottle. And it’s not presented like it was a set up or it was a robbery or anything like that. It’s just like the brunet girl went crazy. Or the red head girl went crazy.
Roger Yeah, you kind of get a feeling that it’s psychosexual, like these two highly sexually charged girls —
Quentin Yeah, the one having sex with the American, alright, gives her a look, like, “What the fuck was that about?”
Roger Yeah.
Quentin What the fuck?
Roger Yeah. And It’s almost like it just kind of upsets her. I’m not even sure she intended to kill him necessarily. She just kind of bonks him with the bottle, like, he just pisses her off that he’s mounted her girlfriend.
Quentin Yeah, she’s fucking—yeah, she’s just fucking crazy, alright? She just acts like a crazy person, alright.
Roger Which makes her even hotter.
Quentin Yeah.
Quentin And then they go in a very realistic scene. This guy playing the dead body is as good as I’ve ever seen any actor play a dead body. They throw them in the swamp.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin It looks like a swamp or a marsh. They throw them in that and then, like, the village idiot, Piet, finds his body and then drags his dead body —
Joe Dante No, Piet is a woman.
Quentin Yeah, Piet’s a woman. And, you know, drags him back to her little shack and starts like building a little home with the dead body. Meanwhile, Anton shows up…
Quentin & Roger [laughs]
Quentin At the inn and then meets everybody there. [laughs]
Quentin Susan runs the house. And then she has three other people staying—two of the killer girls that no one knows that they’re murderers, Sandra and Olga—and then there’s Julie, who sleeps all the time.
Roger Yeah. Who’s, like, the mopey one.
Quentin Yeah, but then, not mentioned on the box is there’s another resident of the place, and that’s a character named Albert. He’s this young guy that apparently Susan knew a while ago and they were really good friends, but apparently something happened to Albert. And now not only is he in an agoraphobic, where he can’t leave the house, he can’t leave his room, and he’s got a room like —
Roger Where he can peep into the other rooms.
Quentin Yeah, like Bad Ronald (1974).
Roger Yeah.
Quentin All right. You know, he’s got a Bad Ronald room. So it’s like a small room, more like a closet.
Joe Dante But he uses it more like a Norman Bates room.
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Roger Yeah, exactly.
Quentin Now, one of the things about the film that I didn’t buy at all is it seemed like the girls were performing for the people, then it turns out later they didn’t know he was there.
Joe Dante But the girls just like to be naked. These girls are naked in—it’s almost as if the costume people didn’t show up. And they said, “Well, I’ll just shoot the scene anyway with no clothes.” Because they wear no clothes constantly.
Quentin I mean, especially talking about Sandra and Olga. Sandra—especially Olga.
Roger Yeah, Olga —
Quentin Olga especially—the killer!
Roger Is Olga the dark haired one?
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Roger She’s wearing that white kind of—it’s not fishnet, but like…
Quentin But he’s right, though: half the time, Olga is wearing nothing.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin She’s just stark naked.
Roger And we like it that way.
Quentin Yeah. And then it’s like, you know, frankly, to tell you the truth: this film has a lot of similarities with The Fool Killer. I mean, there is this almost regional mountain folk aspect about these Dutch characters.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin Anton seems, like, hands down, like, the most hippest of them. And he’s passing through; he’s a traveler.
Roger He’s like the Rutger Hauer character had Verhoeven directed this movie.
Quentin Yeah. Yeah.
Roger Because it actually kind of feels in some ways like super early Verhoeven.
Quentin No, well they all fit around the exact same time. I think this movie actually was made in 74, so I think actually —
Roger Turkish Delight (1973).
Quentin Yeah, it was, like, right, done the year before Turkish Delight.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin But there is this macabre mystery element kind of hanging over the movie. While it doesn’t get in the way of the sexual hijinks—and it doesn’t get in the way with the film’s kind of likability about the way that all the characters interact with each other and the way they pair off or the situations that happen with the different combinations of characters—but like the Fool Killer, there is this macabre aspect kind of hanging over it.
Joe Dante Well, it’s almost Hitchcockian.
Quentin & Roger Yeah.
Quentin And it has a very Herrmann-esque score.
Joe Dante It does, it does. And that’s interesting because Herrmann worked with these guys before.
Quentin Oh, ah huh.
Joe Dante They made a picture—or Pim did—called Obsession, 1969; music by Herrmann; screenplay co-written by… Martin Scorsese.
Roger No!
Quentin Really?!
Joe Dante Yes.
Quentin I’ve never heard of this movie.
Roger Slate it!
Joe Dante It’s a real picture. [laughs]
Quentin Wow. Maybe Scorsese did that during the time that he was in Holland shooting the special—the sex scenes for Who’s that Knocking on My Door (1976)?
Joe Dante Possibly.
Roger Yeah, that would make sense.
Quentin But I didn’t know that Scorsese was even involved with the production that had Herrmann in it before he became a director for sure.
Joe Dante It was—I was shocked to see that.
Quentin It’s interesting.
Joe Dante But that’s because I, you know, I mean, I have to say, I mean, I had never heard of this picture; I never heard of the director; I didn’t know anything about it. And I was surprised how much I liked it.
Quentin & Roger Yeah.
Joe Dante And I was particularly impressed with the lead actress.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante Whose name is, if I can pronounce it: Willeke van Ammelrooy.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger That was pretty good. We did a good job there with all those vowels.
Joe Dante People may have remembered seeing her in her later years as the lead in Antonia’s Line (1995), which was fairly popular.
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a popular movie, yeah.
Joe Dante But this is 1975 and she was the sexpot of the era.
Roger Yeah, she’s so striking.
Joe Dante And she is gorgeous. I mean, just a—it’s a pleasure to just look at her.
Roger Yeah. Her bone structure is —
Joe Dante Her bone structure is incredible.
Roger It’s perfect!
Quentin Actually, and also the thing about it is, like, and it’s even though she’s in this erotic film, she’s an actress of such substantial thing that like it seemed almost disrespectful —
Joe Dante Yeah!
Quentin You know, to call her a “sex flix star”, all right, because she actually brings a gravitas.
Joe Dante And she doesn’t take her clothes off.
Roger Yeah, and she’s absolutely not playing that sexy character in this. She’s like…
Joe Dante She’s the anchor.
Roger Yeah, she’s the anchor in the middle of this potboiler that’s occurring around her.
Quentin Well, the thing is, like these two filmmakers, Pim de la Parra and Wim Verstappen—I’ll just call them Pim and Wim from here on in—, they started a company called Scorpio Films and they started doing these series of erotic movies in Holland. And for a period of time, I think they were the most successful—for like a year or two—they were the most successful filmmakers in Holland because they had just done just a series of these movies, all done around this scale, that it had all done fairly well. And they were a true team where Wim would direct one and then Pim would produce that one, and then Pim would direct the next one and Wim would produce that one.
And by the time they’d done this one, according to Films in Filmmaking, this was like Pim’s fourth movie as a director. And Willeke, alright—who you’re talking about, the actress—, she was definitely their star; she was definitely their big star. And they mentioned that there’s another movie that they did that is apparently even better called Frank and Eva Living Apart Together (1973). And Pim directed that one that also has Willeke in it, and also Sylvia Kristal, and that actually is available on YouTube.
Roger Hmm.
Joe Dante Wow.
Quentin And under the name Frank and Eva, that’s available on YouTube in Dutch with subtitles.
Roger Oh, wow.
Joe Dante That’s great.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin And I was going to I was going to watch it this weekend, and I missed it, but I’m going to see it.
Roger I’m going to look that one up right away because this movie really turned me on.
Quentin I do want to see it. And also, one of the films that Wim directed is, a few years later, he directed one of the Rutger Hauer starring movies when Rutger Hauer was starring in stuff in Holland, and that actually got released. And one of the ones that got released, some of them got released on video in the old days, and one of them he did is one called The Outsider (Originally “Grijpstra & De Gier”, 1979). And I think that’s available on a couple of video cassettes we can find around. But this was definitely the one that falls under the category of “The three of us hadn’t seen it.”
Roger Yeah.
Quentin Well, a little, perhaps, by seeing the first 10 minutes, alright. Which, by the way, the use of the Stevie Wonder song is just perfect. It’s one of the great music drops I’ve seen in a long time, especially from back then. But I was really taken with how we all enjoyed it; we all got onto its vibe.
Quentin And we’re back with Gala Bubbles Avary.
Gala That’s close, actually. That’s close but no cigar for my middle name, Quentin.
Roger She calls you sir. She never calls me sir.
Gala Sir. Yes, sir.
Roger Sir. Yes, sir.
Gala So we’re back with My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie, and Pim de la Parra. Okay, so the interesting thing about him is he’s not only Dutch, but he’s actually from Suriname. And he made the very first movie that was ever made in Suriname, which is Wan Pipel (1976) or One People, which also stars Willeke van Ammelrooy. One People’s on YouTube. And it also stars Willeke van Ammelrooy. And it is like this touching personal love story all about the relationship between Holland and Suriname, and like the class system there, and like how it’s a really wonderful thing. So if anyone has seen My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie and liked this movie, you should check out One People because it’s really good. On this VHS transfer that you guys watch, because I didn’t want a VHS transfer, what was the color like?
Joe Dante It was okay.
Quentin Yeah, fine.
Roger It was okay, but it was very, I felt —
Joe Dante Muted.
Roger Muted, neutral tones.
Gala Okay.
Roger We’re watching a very bleak landscape.
Gala You guys are missing out because this movie pops with color when it’s not on VHS.
Roger Interesting.
Quentin Really?
Joe Dante So what did you see it on?
Quentin I, okay—so, I actually I got a rip of it from the Internet Archive. It’s an English dub.
Roger Ahh, a good source the Internet Archive.
Gala A good source, that’s one of my favorite sources for free media, The Internet Archive. It’s an English dub with Spanish subtitles.
Joe Dante Wow, great.
Gala So, I’m flexing my Spanish as I’m watching. Not really. But the color on it is striking, like, her kitchen is like this bright red kitchen.
Roger Yeah, there’s a lot of reds. That was another Roger thing, that when Roger gets an opportunity, he paints everything red.
Gala But the opening sets you up for this weird tone in the movie. Because watching it, I scrubbed through to, like, make sure I had an English version. Because the worst thing that you can do is, like, download something or, like, watch something, and it’s not like in the right language. Like when I’m watching Cry for me, Billy (1972) and it’s in German and that was a pain in my butt, but I scrubbed through and like the one line I could find —
Roger But you saw Cry for me, Billy.
Gala I did. But the one line of dialog I could find was when he throws the sunglasses after Piet is like throwing them in the window. And she comes up to me to say, “I am so horny, I never had an orgasm before.” And I’m thinking, “God, what am I getting, like, into?”
Roger That was the line you landed on?
That was the one line I landed on. I’m thinking, I’m going to have to watch like this sex movie where it’s, like, she’s, like, begging for an orgasm?
Gala & Roger Quentin!
Roger Damn you, Quentin.
Gala And dad and Joe Dante—this is what I have to watch?! Okay. The movie is not that, you guys. It like markets itself as, like, this sex movie, but it’s like this really enchanting thriller.
Quentin Okay, it is a sex movie. That’s what I like about it. Alright.
Gala But the main character doesn’t take her clothes off.
Quentin Well. Well, yeah—you have four main characters.
Joe Dante She doesn’t have to because everybody else takes their clothes off.
Gala Exactly, yeah.
Roger But is it more of a thriller than it is a sex film?
Joe Dante I think it’s more of a thriller.
Roger I think the thriller aspects overpower this—the sex film.
Quentin Okay, here—okay, I disagree. And here’s why. If, if—then you might have to come up with a new visitor visiting, alright—but if the two sisters killed Anton when they had sex with him the first time, and then we knew that that was a thing, that whenever they had sex one of them would end up killing the guy, that would be a different thing. Then the two girls would be these time bombs waiting to go off and then you’d be meeting somebody else who ends up showing up. But they, I actually think it’s part of the charm of the movie, that the movie doesn’t forget that a murder happened. I mean, I’ve never seen a murdered body been given as much agency as this murdered body.
Gala It’s a great murdered body.
Quentin Yeah. And the actor is doing a fantastic job. I mean, just truly.
Roger Yeah, he’s somehow frozen his eyes. He somehow turned off everything above his neck.
Joe Dante And he’s on for a long time, not blinking.
Gala & Roger Yeah.
Roger Or breathing. I was searching for a breath.
Quentin But oddly enough, he still kind of coming across as a person. You know, the way his posture falls makes its look real and makes him look like a real person. But the thing about it, though, is I think it’s weird, like I said, I think there’s like a macabre element, like the Fool Killer, but I’m going to get to that macabre element somewhere in the last 15 or 20 minutes. Like, for instance, while the movie doesn’t forget that a murder happened, the movie seems to forget that they’re murderers. There is like almost, well, the point being is it’s up to us to remember that they killed that character at the beginning because there’s no emphasis on that at all throughout the rest of the movie—that to even such degree, “What, did they kill them? Well, of course they did. I saw it, alright.” But, you know, the movie is not telling you that.
Joe Dante They don’t act like it. They don’t have any secrets at all.
Roger They never—there is no rationale, there’s no reason given for their murders. I mean, there could almost be a chapter that took place before this where they were sex workers in Den Haag (The Hague), and they just went off on their own.
Gala Yeah, that’s what I thought. I thought it was like a sex worker revenge thing.
Roger Because the way they’re walking down the road, like in those skimpy outfits like bopping.
Quentin And I consider it a compliment of the highest order, the fact that it can take the murder itself so seriously and then not take them seriously as murderers. That’s an achievement, that is actually hard to do.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Quentin And the film does it.
Roger Yeah.
Joe Dante I expected maybe it to be something like To Be Twenty (1978).
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what I would have thought, too.
Joe Dante Which is a movie that has, that starts out like it’s a harmless sex comedy and then becomes the most horrific…
Quentin Fernando Di Leo.
Joe Dante Horrible climax, which I think in a lot of places they didn’t run that part.
Quentin Yeah.
Joe Dante But it was, it’s truly shocking.
Quentin Yeah. No, the end.
Joe Dante I thought this was going to be a little bit like that. And it’s not. It’s its own thing.
Quentin Yeah, it’s its own thing.
Gala So I disagree with you guys that the back of the box, like, matches the movie, mostly because —
Quentin Now, I’m the only one that said that.
Quentin Okay, well Quentin!
Roger [laughs]
Quentin Oh, you could disagree with me. Okay, yeah, well, shocker!
Gala I disagree with you, what’s new?
Group [laughs]
Gala I disagree because one of the things I like about this movie is that you actually don’t really know what’s going on and how everything unfolds. Like, how they say that Julie is asleep all the time. Okay. Well, Julie is asleep all the time because she’s up with…
Joe Dante Albert.
Gala She’s up with Albert. That’s why she’s asleep all day.
Quentin Well, that eventually happens.
Gala But I don’t know if that was happening before or not.
Quentin No, no. He actually —
Gala They could have a relationship.
Quentin No, they actually say, they say—well, no. Well, the one she has her first time with Albert, that’s obviously her first time. They talk about it, I think.
Gala Yeah.
Quentin Alright.
Roger In our dubbed version.
Quentin Yeah. Yeah, in our dub version, alright. But I would imagine that.
Gala I think I was watching the same dub version; I hope.
Quentin But at the beginning, it’s like, “Oh, and this is Julie. She sleeps all the time.” [laughs]
Gala Yeah. That was funny, but like, the way I took it is it’s, like, they’re unfolding kind of these mysteries behind the girl. And I read it as, like, she’s up all night, like, conversing with him through the wall, and that’s why she’s asleep all day. And it’s like, okay. Huh? And then when the guy comes —
Quentin Oh, that makes a little sense.
Roger Yeah, that actually kind of tracks.
Gala Yeah. And then when the guy comes, it’s not what the back of the box is saying, he’s not coming to a boarding house. She’s an ex-model; she was a supermodel. Like, she talked about she had the most beautiful face in the world and she’s run away; she couldn’t handle the fame. So she’s run away to this house and he’s there to come get her for a job. Like, it’s his job to come pick her up.
Joe Dante That’s true. That’s what it is.
Gala So, that’s not what the —
Roger You know what? Gala is right.
Quentin Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Roger Actually, she’s right.
Quentin Yeah, that is true.
Gala Gala won! Yay!
Group [laughs]
Gala I did it! Yes!
Quentin I think there is a thing on the back of the box by focusing on Anton and the idea of him going through his nights with all four of these chicks, that that’s the idea.
Joe Dante Your faith in the copy in the back of the box is astonishing to me.
Gala Well, we always —
Quentin No, no. You didn’t remember the intricacies—you did not remember the intricacies of the story until she said it any more than I did.
Group [laughs]
Joe Dante You know that the people who write these things haven’t seen the movie.
Gala Well, that’s what we were talking about because normally the back to the box is so far off and Quentin has to give like this whole thing of, like, “That’s not what the movie is. This is what the movie is.” And so, this one was actually —
Quentin Well, okay.
Roger Well, this one’s close enough. This was reasonable.
Quentin The motive for him being there is maybe not on the back of the box, but everything else…
Gala Yeah, I feel like the first like two or three sentences are not right, and then it gets into it.
Roger Yeah. I mean, he’s not on his way to France on his moped. Or on his motorcycle or whatever he’s…
Gala No, he’s there to get her for a job —
Roger Unless he says—unless the job is in France.
Gala I think it’s in Montana.
Roger The job could be in France.
Gala I think it’s in Montana, but besides that though —
Roger If it’s a modeling job.
Gala Besides that, though, I like that, like, how it unfolds. Like, how I kind of don’t know what their relationship is and then, like, as it’s going, I’m learning. Okay, she’s a model. He’s there to get her for a job, but they’re kind of falling in love. And she’s been, like, afraid and she can’t run away from everything. She keeps running away from the—they all know that they murdered.
Roger Then who is this halfwit running around in the…
Gala Who is Piet?
Roger Yeah.
Gala Piet belongs to the house. That was one of the things I loved, that she says that Piet and Anton belong to the house. And it’s like, okay, what does that mean? I don’t know what that means.
Roger Well, the house is red.
Gala Yeah.
Roger The house is, uh…
Quentin No, no. Didn’t they explain something that…
Roger The house is a mythic place.
Quentin That Piet’s family used to take care of the house and—wasn’t that explain?
Gala I don’t know. But I was just, like, thinking, like, when she’s like, “Oh, yeah, Piet belongs the house. Piet wouldn’t hurt a fly.” And it’s like, okay, that’s fine. We just have a crazy person, like, running around who’s probably the least crazy person!
Quentin No, yeah. Yeah.
Joe Dante [laughs]
Quentin Well, okay. Yeah, okay, crazy person. But they’ve known each other since they were children.
Gala Yeah. Also, this poor guy who enters into this house, like, with all of these like crazy people—that freak out that Julie has when she sees the guy sleeping with the two girls is epic. That is like an epic meltdown.
Joe Dante [laughs]
Gala I’m sure I have—I’m sorry, dad—I’m sure I have experienced that somewhere in my life. [laughs]
Roger When she starts smashing things—oh, yeah. No, you know, I’ve seen you do epic meltdowns.
Joe Dante Family secrets.
Roger Yes, it happens.
Gala But she’s wearing that shirt—yeah, I felt that.
Roger Yeah, when she grabs that shirt and just suddenly rips, “I’m going to rip something! I’m going to rip this!” [laughs]
Gala I’ve done that before.
Quentin That was very convincing, her —
Gala Her meltdown is epic.
Quentin Her meltdown is very convincing, I agree with that.
Gala Yeah. And then, just the last shot of the movie—and I maybe we’ll talk about it, maybe we won’t—but of Piet with the cigar in her mouth like [comedic puffing cigar sounds]
Roger Yeah, watching the flames.
Gala We get to do the Franklin Brauner thing like the [loud mouth popping]. Yeah, she’s like watching the flames and she has a cigar in her mouth and she’s, like, smiling.
Quentin She got her arms around both dead bodies! [laughs]
Gala Yeah, that is an awesome way to end a movie.
Roger That took me back to almost every film X movie I feel like I ever went to. Like, because it seems like every European film I was watching had some kind of bleak scene like that with somebody watching something burn.
Quentin [laughs]
Gala I know, but I’m kind of cheering for Piet, though.
Quentin Oh yeah. No, I’m totally cheering for Piet.
Gala It feels like the end of Ferat Vampire (1982).
Quentin Oh, no, actually—that was actually one of the fun things is, like, they’re like, [imitating line from My Nights]. You know, their little thing and all of a sudden she says to Bonaparte “WHO!”
Group [laughs]
Quentin Yeah. [laughing] Like, “Oo!”
Roger They’re like, “Piet! Piet! Look at my tits!”
Gala No, sorry, Dad. “Piet, Piet, Piet! Look at my pussy. Look at my tits. Piet! Piet! Piet!”
Quentin [laughs]
Gala That’s like the chant they did.
Quentin So, it was something like, “Piet Piet! Oo!”
Group [laughs]
Gala I mean, it taught me—it taught me in my Internet Archive thing—taught me that the word for pussy in Spanish is “concha”. Which led me on this whole thing of like —
Joe Dante Boy, you don’t get this kind of stuff on other podcasts.
Group [laughs]
Gala Yeah, father/daughter conversations.
Quentin She’s our researcher.
Gala Which led me down the etymology of “conch” last night and “mollusk” and all these good things.
But the version that you guys can watch online for free is on The Internet Archive. It is an English dub with a Spanish sub. I think there might be a version kind of floating around YouTube, but I don’t think it’s in full.
Joe Dante Is it in widescreen?
Gala You know, I could see the full thing. So yeah, I’m going to guess it is now that I think about.
Roger Well, you can see the full—how do you know you’ve seen the full thing?
Gala Well, because their chins are, like, not the only thing in frame.
Roger So, you feel as though the framing—was it a wider screen than it was? What was the aspect ratio?
Gala I don’t think it was wide, actually. I don’t think it was wide, but like their chins —
Roger Like 1.85…?
Joe Dante It’s probably pan and scan.
Roger Mmhm.
Gala [Laughing] Thank you Joe Dante for saving me from my father asking me, “Was it 1.85?”
Roger Was it 1.85? 1.66? 1.78?! Tell me!
Joe Dante You’re, you’re brutal with that child.
Gala & Roger [laughing]
Gala Well, if you’re interested in watching, it’s on The Internet Archive—English dub Spanish subtitles. Or you can pick up a VHS. I picked up —
Joe Dante Don’t pick up the VHS. [laughs]
Gala Alright, don’t pick up the VHS. It was a Media Home Entertainment for $22.
Quentin Now it’s time for awards. Let’s give out some awards.
Joe Dante Awards, okay.
Quentin So what we do, yeah, we give out awards. I’ll throw some out for the three different movies.
Joe Dante Oh. Okay.
Quentin If there’s a best film…
Gala And don’t worry, Joe, because I don’t know anyone’s name that’s in any role. So I just say, Oh, that chick in that role. [laughs]
Quentin Okay, so let’s start with best lead actor.
Roger Okay. I just have to ask right away. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to just jump in, but I’m so excited about Henry Hull’s performance.
Quentin I think that would be supporting actor.
Roger Oh, so that’s supporting. Okay. Fine!
Quentin Okay, so—but, Roger, since you wanted to start, continue.
Roger [laughs] Well, if it’s best actor, then it’s probably Edward Albert.
Quentin Yeah, I would go on Edward Albert, too.
Roger Actually, because as a child actor giving a performance of that depth…
Joe Dante Aye for me.
Quentin Yeah, I agree.
Roger And the fact that when he looks at the camera and speaks to the camera, it doesn’t break the movie.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger He holds it together still.
Quentin I would say even of all the performances we saw in the three different movies, the acting thing stays with me. Not a line reading thing, but the acting thing is just—his possessed face during the revival tent.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Quentin Scene.
Roger That’s a lot for a child actor to do.
Quentin Yeah. And he was fantastic. It makes me want to go on a whole Edward Albert kick, all right.
Roger Let’s do it!
Quentin Yeah, absolutely. Well, what I want to watch is because we’re big Susan George fans here, we’ll watch The House Where Evil Dwells (1982), which is Edward Albert, Susan George and Doug McClure.
Roger Oh, Doug McClure!
Quentin And it’s a ghost movie that takes place in Japan and there’s eroticism involved. [laughs]
Roger It’s fantastic.
Gala Well, it hits all of our marks.
Quentin It hits all of our marks. Okay, what about you Gala?
Gala No, I agree. I think also, for me, it was so his line reading because he has this one line at the beginning of The Fool Killer where he says, like, “It’s not like getting spanked and getting beat that hurts you. It’s the shame that gets you.”
Roger Mmhm.
Quentin Yeah, yeah.
Gala And that set me up for the entire movie.
Roger Yeah, it’s an incredibly well-written and deep line —
That really was a well written one.
Gala Which should probably bring us to Best Screenplay, actually, because—like, The Fool Killer as far as I was concerned…
Quentin Nah, The Fool Killer. The Fool Killer.
Roger Easily.
Quentin Easily wins Best Screenplay.
Quentin Easily.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Roger Morton Fine and David Friedkin.
Gala Oh, you’re not going to give it to the “He can’t sail with that shoulder” line?
Group [laughs]
Gala That’s not what we’re doing here? [laughs]
Joe Dante No, no…
Quentin As much as I like that movie, I don’t think I like that part as much as you do.
Joe Dante If you want to do a separate award for —
Quentin Best Line.
Joe Dante Great line.
Roger You can do it, you’re allowed.
Quentin Well, we do it. We usually give out a best line, even though it’s not an official award. Alright.
Roger It’s official. [laughs]
Quentin No, it usually ends up not being official, alright. We just keep repeating it a zillion times. And so, obviously it won.
Group [laughs]
Gala I think, The Fool Killer, though, is definitely the best script out of the three.
Quentin Yeah.
Roger Yeah. From the novel by Hellen Eustis.
Quentin The dialogue is just fantastic in this movie. Okay, so then when it comes to Best Actress, I’ll start. Okay, to me, I think Willeke van Ammelrooy.
Joe Dante I agree completely.
Roger (pronouncing) Ammelrooy.
Gala Are we going to disagree on anything this episode? I feel like the awards that we’ve all just agreed just straight up.
Joe Dante No, once I’m gone, you can go back to fighting.
Gala [laughs]
Roger Well, this is pretty clear.
Quentin We’re choosing the anchors. We’re choosing the anchors of these particular films.
Roger I also like the Ashley Porter sleepy-eyed amateur performance.
Quentin Yeah, ah-huh.
Gala No, don’t change your vote. Don’t change your vote.
Roger I’m not. I’m not.
Gala Okay, good.
Roger I’m just, I’m just…
Quentin Leave your dad alone. Let him express himself.
Quentin & Gala [laughs]
Roger I’m just shooting her a little bit of juice just because I actually —
Quentin Leave your old man alone! [laughs]
Roger I actually appreciated it, but I would still I would still give it to Willeke.
Joe Dante Vote her for supporting actress.
Roger Okay, I’ll do that.
Quentin Yeah. Yeah, I think you could do that.
Roger I’ll do that, even though she’s not as good as —
Joe Dante The other girls.
Quentin Yeah, the other girls. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, but there’s such a thing about being a lead performance is leading—you lead.
Joe Dante Yeah.
Quentin You put a movie, you put a narrative, you put a narrative on your back, and your legs are strong enough to go down into the earth. So there’s roots. And then you carry a movie, you lead it. And that’s not just a thing. And in both of these cases, the young actor and then the actress, they’re our anchors; they carry the whole movie.
Joe Dante It’s true.
Quentin They pull you through the film in a lovely way.
Gala So what about Best Supporting Actress, then?
Quentin Okay, so Best Supporting Actress. I had initially Franulka…
Roger Heyermans.
Quentin Heyermans, alright, who played Olga, the mostly naked one.
Roger [laughs]
Quentin Alright. But partly that was because I had forgot how good the little girl was in The Fool Killer.
Gala Sindee Ann Richards.
Roger Oh, yeah.
Quentin Sindee Ann Richards.
Roger With the boil on her butt.
Quentin So, as much as I like Olga, I think I’m going to have to go with Sindee Ann Richards for Best Supporting Actress.
Joe Dante I agree.
Roger Yeah, I’ll agree with that. How did she get the boil on her butt?
Quentin I don’t know.
Gala She’s born with it.
Quentin Okay, so then now—we’ll see if we still stay in line. We already know that Roger picks Henry Hull, all right, for Best Supporting actor. I pick Henry Hull for the supporting actor.
Joe Dante I pick him.
Gala Oh, god. Today we’re all in line. [laughs]
Quentin [laughs]
Gala Joe Dante has brought order to our court.
Roger Yeah, yeah. The stars are in alignment. Yeah, Henry Hull is incredible in his delivery of the dialogues by, you know, by Morton Fine and David —
Gala “You just a plain old fool.”
Joe Dante “You’re just a plain old fool.”
Quentin [laughs]
Joe Dante It’s. Yeah. I mean, it’s—it’s a great performance. It’s fantastic delivery.
Gala Okay, guys, let’s do Best Director.
Joe Dante I think Wim [Pim] did a good job, but I would still vote for Servando.
Quentin Mmhm.
Roger I’m the same. I want to vote for Wim [Pim] de la Parra.
Quentin Mm hmm.
Roger But…
Quentin & Gala Pim.
Roger I have to go with Servando Gonzalez because the guy is a virtuoso. I mean, it’s clear that this— he’s doing things with the camera that are simply outside of what he should be able to do. And he’s doing them with ease and grace. And it’s just, it’s incredible to watch. And when you see his other work, or at least another one of his films —
Gala Yeah, El Scapular.
Roger You realize, wow, this guy was a visual stylist and a storyteller of unusual perspective.
Quentin Well… I actually think the directing of both The Fool Killer and My Nights with Susan and Sandra, blah, blah, blah, they’re very comparable.
Roger Yeah.
Quentin They’re very comparable with each other. They both do a very good job and they both feed into their strengths.
Roger They take what they’re doing very seriously.
Quentin Yeah. I’m going to go with Pim, alright? Simply because you guys have gone with the other guy. And I liked it, I liked it. I could go with the other guy, but I’m—but I like Pim as much in his own way, even though there might be things about The Fool Killer. But I’m going to go with My Nights. How about you?
Gala I still think that Servando Gonzalez gets Best Director. I think his camerawork is excellent. I think that his vision is what makes—what elevates the movie into being good.
Roger And plus, on top of it all, he was fighting, fighting these producers. Clearly, he was wrestling with them, struggling. They were against them. They’re like no upside-down shots. And he’s like, “No, you don’t understand. It must be upside down!”
Group [laughs]
Roger And they’re just not listening to him.
Quentin Okay, Best Film.
Quentin Well, I again, I have to go with the Fool Killer because Joe Dante is here.
Group [laughs]
Roger No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I have to go Fool Killer because I really—but, man, my Nights is… it really resonated with me. I really do love the movie and so…
Joe Dante I was very pleased to discover a movie I had never heard of and a director I never heard of, an actress I never heard of, and how I was just really pleased, even under the circumstances with learning about that movie. But I’ve harbored a yen for The Fool Killer since I saw it years ago. So that would be my pick. Go with the director.
Quentin How about you?
Gala I’m going to go with My Nights, with Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie. It was the movie that surprised me the most. I totally thought I was going to not like it. I mean, like I like exploitation— Quentin knows I like exploitation films—I like nurses, I like L.A. So I kind of thought that was going to be my jam this time. But no, I was really pleasantly surprised with this movie.
Quentin You know, it’s funny because I think if you were to ask me after we watched the three movies together, I would have come from the same idea that The Fool Killer and My Nights were very similar, and I probably would have thrown my lot in with My Nights, but I actually enjoyed us talking about The Fool Killer. Alright. A lot. And I think we ended up having—it was one of those kinds of conversation where we ended up having a lot to say and it just underlined the discoveries you had about the movie, made the film seem even richer than from when we were first watching it. And so, I guess I’m going to go with The Fool Killer.
Joe Dante Okay.
Gala Woo-whoo!
Quentin And I guess that brings us to the end of our episode. We want to thank our customer, Joe Dante.
Joe Dante Thank you for letting me in the store.
Gala Thank you! And now get out!
Quentin And by the way, when a customer comes down here, they got to commit to some time. They got to come to another day and watch the movies with us.
Joe Dante It’s a chunk of your life to do this, so…
Quentin It’s not a thing. [laughs] Or it is a thing.
Quentin & Roger [laughs] But I want to thank Roger.
Roger Thank you.
Quentin And I want to thank Gala.
Gala You’re welcome.
Quentin I want to thank our engineers and our producers. Hello, guys—say hello!
Gala Yeah!
Quentin And I’m Quentin Tarantino.
Roger And I’m Roger Avary.
Gala And I’m Gala Avary.
Joe Dante And I’m not here next week.
Group [laughs]
Quentin Be kind. Rewind.
Gala See you next time.
Roger Tuck. Tuck.
Clip of Gene Pitney’s “Fool Killer” Once there was a boy who left the bed he slept in. And he ran away ’cause he felt life was cruel. A killer of fools was walking close behind him. The boy was afraid that he be thought a fool…
Gala The Video Archives podcast is hosted by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary. And produced by Josh Richmond and Gala Avary. Our engineer is Devin Tory Bryant, and our executive producers are Colin Anderson and Natalie Mueller. Find out more about the show by heading to videoarchivespodcast.com. You can also find us on Twitter @VideoArchives and on Instagram @videoarchivespod.