Erik the Viking (with Michael French)

[00:00:00] Welcome to Movie Oubliette, the film review podcast for movies that most people have mercifully forgotten. I'm Dan and I'm Conrad and in each episode we drag a forsaken film out of the Oubliette. Discuss it and judge it to decide whether it should be set free

[00:00:22] or whether it should be thrown back and consigned to oblivion forever. Movie Oubliette, Movie Oubliette, Maybe review the films others tend to forget. Come with us and don't mind the Movie Oubliette. Welcome to Valhalla, I mean Movie Oubliette, episode 153 the Continental Connecting Podcast

[00:00:47] with me, Dan, really getting into house plants in Melbourne, Australia. And me, Conrad, constantly taking my car to the Garage in Cambridge, UK. No, in this podcast we discuss forgotten genre films, horror, sci-fi and fantasy because adventures

[00:01:04] involving sunken islands, preteen North gods and blowing a big ass horn are what we're all about. Oh yes. Yes definitely. Conrad your car I thought you've got an electric car right? I have yeah so basically the only thing that can go wrong with it is the wheels so

[00:01:24] apparently I drove through a pothole and dented two of my wheels. The wheels. That's the actual wheels. Is that possible? That's possible dead because the state of our roads in the UK are terrible because our government sucks. Oh no.

[00:01:44] Yeah so and what was more fun is that the garage managed to they did replace two wheels but the wrong two wheels. Oh what? Then I had to go back again for them to replace the correct two wheels and then they had the

[00:02:02] gall to say to me afterwards we're not going to charge you for the other ones. Yeah no of course not. Yes that's my life. Yours sounds much more fun with planets. Well you know it's another never ending abyss of money that I'm throwing into but

[00:02:19] yeah it's house plants. I'm trying to decipher the secrets of how to keep plants alive in my home but yeah it's an ongoing journey. Yeah I kill everything all my plants are plastic. Oh right.

[00:02:37] Yeah I haven't chosen the right season either because winter down here and it's freezing so nothing's really alive anyway. Right really see I heard from another friend in Australia that they were having a bit of a heat wave but I think that was Sydney.

[00:02:52] Sydney's having a heat wave no it's down to like zero degrees at night sometimes in Melbourne which is cold this is what we consider very very cold. Everyone's complaining about it it's the talk of headline news. All right well anything in the mailbag today Conrad?

[00:03:10] Yes indeed we heard from previous guest and director Chris McKay who said yes so glad you're doing dog soldiers. Nice. Must be a personal favorite of yours but it was great to hear from him again. LisaMD23 said as suggested I also checked out wild country.

[00:03:35] Sure it was actually a great premise and parts of it were excellent but it was mainly like a Halloween episode of Biker Grove only Scottish instead of Geordie. Oh right I don't know Biker Grove.

[00:03:49] You don't know Biker Grove the source of Ant and Dec two of the UK's greatest celebrities. No no okay that's a whole genre of TV you're missing out on. Oddly enough they visit Australia every year to host their show I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here

[00:04:07] where they put celebrities into the Australian out back to eat bush tuck affair like Sheep's Testicles I don't understand. I found that really strange when I found out that the UK Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here

[00:04:21] is in Australia like there's a show in Australia that Australians aren't seeing it's quite weird. Yes. On the black hole we also heard from Wicked Person who said as a kid I remember being very creeped out by the idea of being turned into zombie androids

[00:04:41] and wondering if zombie androids needed to poop. I think they would right I mean that's why the plant room was kept going to feed them. Yeah they must be fed muslin yeah or maybe that's why that guy's limping. He's really gone to pee.

[00:05:01] And finally we heard from Serge of Cold Crash Pictures hello Serge. Hello Serge. And he said I grew up hearing the black hole was absolutely terrible something Disney was profoundly ashamed of but really it's fine.

[00:05:16] It's greatest sin is that it's not quite as good as any of its influences or what it went on to influence 2001 Star Wars event horizon etc. Yeah it's very true. I still love it. Yeah I think it still has a place in sci-fi history. I think it does.

[00:05:36] Anyway thanks everyone for getting in touch we always love hearing from you. Yes we do. Well to introduce our film this time we actually have a very very special guest we are joined today by a friend of the pod a gentleman a straight shooter and the host

[00:05:52] of the best source of analysis of Gen X toys and media it's retro blastings Michael French. Hello Serge. Hello thank you I'm glad to be back and I always am so just

[00:06:04] I feel like one of those cartoon characters back in the day that would blush when you guys introduced me it's like oh you know I feel like a flower from Bambi just like oh so nice

[00:06:16] it's not such a welcoming podcast to be on it's great to be here. Well that's good to have you here what have you been working on recently I watched and really enjoyed your latest video on Hong Kong action cinema you're unpicking something very complicated there.

[00:06:31] I didn't realize it was going to be that complicated. I thought I was making a video about it was originally titled how to survive a recasting I was very impressed by the way they had handled the transition from Michelle Yeo to Cynthia Khan

[00:06:45] in the series without any problem. Yeah the line of duty series they look like great movies it's great they're on Blu-ray again. Oh yeah they're for the first time maybe. Yes that for the first time but such fun movies to watch and I thought that's

[00:06:59] what I'm going to make my video about and then as I started to just do a basic google search to make sure that my research was correct and I got all the names right and all that kind of

[00:07:08] stuff I found myself going down a rabbit warren of titling crazy and versioning crazy and I'm like oh never mind the recasting is going to be like the subplot the main plot is all the different

[00:07:22] titles of these movies and it was a lot of fun to make that video. It was fun to watch too yeah. Now I'm working on a video next Conrad that might be near and dear to your heart.

[00:07:31] I'm working on a video about a very rare 1985 Transformers play set that a lot of people don't know about even Transformers fans don't know about it. I remembered it from childhood seeing it on shelves the short version is that Hasbro

[00:07:50] licensed out the Transformers name to another company and that company made an officially licensed cardboard slot and tab play set fortress for the Transformers and otherwise the Transformers never really had a retail purchase play set and it's huge.

[00:08:08] I put it together for the first time just the other day. I have had it for like three years and I keep forgetting to do the video. I think it's getting bigger every time I look in the room.

[00:08:17] I think it's actually it's crazy so I'll be working on that next this weekend. Wow that sounds like a lot of fun. Well you are one of the few guests we have who is certified to enter the

[00:08:29] Ubliette and pick out a movie would you like to do it now? I'm a little trepidatious but yes I will go get the movie. I'll go get the movie yeah all right here we go. It's still through the same door right?

[00:08:41] Yeah oh yeah yeah okay okay because I know that sometimes its location is ethereal and moves it's like a TARDIS all right here I go. It smells like bad casting down here. Like what's this is awful. You know the walls down here are covered in faculty?

[00:09:01] There's like faculty all over it. You know what faculty is right? Faculty it's failure at the concept level and it's all over the walls. All right I got the movie I'm coming back I'm out of here that the

[00:09:15] bad casting smell is just vaulting all right here we go. Whoa first we're flying now we're sinking. All right here's the movie I've got the movie. What have you got? It's Eric the Viking 1989. Directed by Terry Jones. Yes directed by Terry Jones. And who appears in this movie?

[00:09:37] Tim Robbins John Cleese a lovely actress named Imogen whose last name I can never remember. Stops I think. Yes thank you. Mickey Rooney and of course Terry Jones in an extended cameo. Yeah of course give us a synopsis to set the scene.

[00:09:53] Okay so the synopsis to set this scene Eric the Viking is a comedy about Eric the Viking who wants to end Ragnarok he wants to see the sun again he wants to tell the gods to stop

[00:10:09] Ragnarok so the never-ending winter will end and everybody can move forward into broad sunlit uplands I mean I think that's just the best way to describe it. And so he convinces his village of Vikings all the warriors to set off on this expedition

[00:10:26] to find Vahala and face the gods and get them to stop this dark time in the period of their history and of course hijinks ensue along the way. John Cleese happens that's all I know it's uh yeah that's the premise.

[00:10:44] That sets us up nicely so we'll take a brief break and then we'll come back to discuss. And we're back with Michael French of Retroblasting to discuss Terry Jones' 1989 epic adventure Eric the Viking. Dan had you seen this movie before?

[00:11:09] So yeah I did mention in our last episode that I think I watched this as a child but I wasn't sure and I did watch it was familiar but I only remember one scene for some strange reason

[00:11:23] and it's a scene where they're on the island and to go to is her name Ord and the princess of the island Tim Robbins character Eric climbs a tower with knives and then she's like why don't you just

[00:11:39] use the stairs and it's just a stupid little gag and that's the only thing I remember of the whole movie and also the island sinking that's the only thing I remember everything else

[00:11:50] blanked yeah but how about you Conrad? I remember watching it on video rental I remember it was definitely rental because it was one of the big boxes and I remember thinking wow this is uh I

[00:12:03] think it was like a 12 or a 15 so I thought wow this is going to be edgier than previous Python adjacent movies and I had a complete blank I did not remember anything about it when

[00:12:18] it was picked out of the Ubliett yeah yeah I watched it when I was like nine I think and yeah completely blanked it apart from their one scene yeah so we've all seen it but completely forgot

[00:12:30] it is a movie that is in itself an Ubliett Terry Jones has managed to make a movie that forgets itself look I know that sounds brutal I love Monty Python I love Monty

[00:12:44] Python's Flying Circus I love Life of Brian I love Holy Grail Melinda really loves Meaning of Life and I love most of the troupe I have always found Terry Jones may he rest in peace I don't hate him

[00:12:57] by any stretch of the imagination I have always found him to be the weakest link in the Monty Python troupe he's always playing the same character even when he's playing totally

[00:13:09] different characters he always plays the daughtery old mom or he plays the very like oh my oh my male guy like who's just a caricature like you could literally replace him in most of his sketches

[00:13:25] and movies with Anthony Daniels and you wouldn't know that he was gone right yeah he's the same guy in every single sketch so when I heard that it was a Monty Python adjacent movie and then I

[00:13:38] heard it was directed by Terry and I got my hopes up because I thought it was going to follow with Gillam and then it said Jones and I went oh no this is like if you paid for a Monty Python

[00:13:52] adjacent movie on Wish.com and the whole movie is like a bottle rocket that doesn't go off like conceptually there are no highs and lows with the comedy the only person that's able

[00:14:05] to elevate the comedy in his scenes is John Cleese yeah and I swear the only reason he's able to do it is because he's pretending he's in a totally different film yeah there was this famous quote

[00:14:19] that's true yeah like there was this famous quote Mary Elizabeth Mastrandtonio was interviewed a few months into the release of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves they asked her what it was like working with Alan Rickman and she said you know what she said it was wonderful working

[00:14:34] with him the odd part was he was clearly performing a totally different film and I wish that I was in that movie the entire time right to me that was how John Cleese rightfully comes off in this film

[00:14:49] like he's in a totally different film and I wished the whole time that I was watching that movie but Terry Jones whole concept for this falls flat none of the scenes join up together properly

[00:15:02] it's it's like an and then script that just won't end it's like and then they get to the island and then he's sleeping with Imogen and then they're back on the boat that was sinking before but now

[00:15:16] it's repaired and we don't know why oh and then John Cleese shows up and then there's this impotent pirate fight on the boat where Terry Jones you cannot direct action may you rest in peace

[00:15:28] and I don't want to besmirch your memory but there's no excitement there's no energy there's no momentum there's no dynamism I will shut up now I know I'm killing this episode no no I won't say I mean

[00:15:43] we did watch Jabba Wacky this year as well and they are pretty much companion pieces they're both from Monty Python trying to do not Monty Python although still doing Monty Python I found Jabba Wacky a little bit insufferable with just the silly humor it was just like real

[00:16:04] crass humor all the way whereas this is again silly humor but I do feel like there is a storyline and there is a sense of we have to go here to get the horn the blow the thing to go to Asgard

[00:16:19] you know there is a sense of we're going on a journey we've got a quest whereas Jabba Wacky was aimless right he wasn't trying to do anything right Dennis was just existing in this world

[00:16:33] and somehow saves today whereas in Eric the Viking there does seem to be a point to the movie I did think Tim Robbins was very miscast were they just going for a famous American

[00:16:45] is that all they were going for I think they were I bet you there was a note somewhere that said hey we'd like to try and get this into as many American theaters as possible can you get us

[00:16:53] an American lead somebody who's popular in the American market and he was ascendant at that time he was about to do the player if that's right I can't remember yeah but he was up and coming

[00:17:03] this is like the fourth movie of his that we've covered on the podcast which I'm quite surprised by so how the duck he was in 1986 he was also in Zathura and city of Ember

[00:17:15] but yeah I guess up and coming he had been in Top Gun previously and then the following year Jacob Slatter comes out right and then Shawshake Redemption 94 obviously pinnacle yeah a bit

[00:17:28] miscast gets better towards the middle of the film but I felt like why is Tim Robbins in this movie it didn't he didn't really gel with a sort of British python-esque of the rest of the

[00:17:42] cast I dare anyone to watch this movie and then say again with a straight face that Kevin Costner is the worst example of not having an accent in a cast of accents because this story

[00:17:56] is so focused and it's all about Vikings in the dark ages basically and everybody else comes off with some except Mickey Rooney well yeah fortunately he's not in the movie that much Tim Robbins

[00:18:08] is the title character and he has to carry the whole movie I wasn't sure watching it if it was just Tim Robbins being miscast or if it was Terry Jones not directing him properly because he's a

[00:18:21] very talented actor yeah yeah so like I feel like he could have pulled this off with the right direction but when you see the fight scenes you see the way as you pointed out Dan there

[00:18:32] was a story here there was a concept there was a through line and then Terry Jones just applied jabber walkie scene construction to all of it and you go you've broken the momentum of the journey

[00:18:43] by the way you think about putting scenes together I feel like Tim Robbins may have been a victim of Terry Jones directorial style or lack thereof look I try as best I can going into movies

[00:18:57] to give the actors the benefit of the doubt because they're being chosen to operate on a level that the director decides and they have been in other projects where they have proven themselves so like for example when we saw Natalie Portman's total non-performance in three

[00:19:12] Star Wars movies but we've seen the professional she can act yeah what happened here and then we see George Lucas literally just sitting in a chair with a huge coffee behind the camera we go ah

[00:19:24] that's what happened to Natalie Portman's performance it wasn't asked for yeah it wasn't there so I keep going with Terry Jones I'm like did he direct Tim Robbins at all well Freddie Jones a lovely actor that we've bumped into before on the podcast memorably in

[00:19:42] Krull as Iniya the old one he has a lovely role in this as Harold the Christian missionary who spends the entire movie not being able to see any of the Viking mythology that's happening

[00:19:54] around because he's so in his own belief system none of it exists for him which turns out to be critical at the end of the movie but he got jokingly annoyed at Terry Jones because Terry

[00:20:09] apparently was telling everybody to play it straight to play it for verisimilitude all right and then he comes on and behaves like miss Piggy oh yeah oh kermy's one performance every time

[00:20:25] yeah and Freddie said to him hang on you've been telling us all to hold back and hear you you're camping it up all over the place yeah wow yeah I kind of understand what they were going for

[00:20:36] with Tim Robbins because although he's six foot five which is completely against what Terry Jones was looking for originally he wanted somebody who was diminutive who would be surrounded by these massive muscly Vikings he wanted yeah like a hiccup from how to train your dragon yeah

[00:20:53] with all of these big burly guys and then he gets a six foot five american guy he originally wanted to cast Tom Hulse who had just made a big splash in Amadeus but by the time they got funding

[00:21:05] five years later to actually make the movie Tom had decided he wanted to focus on theatre work right so then he went on this big shopping spree trying to find an american as a tent pole

[00:21:17] so that they could sell it in the States Nick Cage came up as a possibility oh my god so imagine that it would have definitely it would have definitely added flavour yeah I mean yeah it really would

[00:21:31] have done Cage might have actually been the one person to understand what Terry Jones was trying to pull off quite possibly because he's that like out there or he could have just phoned it in

[00:21:41] like season of the witch who knows oh yeah yeah so he ended up with Tim Robbins and Tim wanted to take it because he loved the idea of an action movie that was advocating for the end of

[00:21:52] violence because that's what the the end of Ragnarok represents the end of bloodshed and fighting which of course leads to a bit of a critique on capitalism because the people who are trying

[00:22:03] to stop him from doing it are the people who are big in the arms trade which is right John Cleese is half Dan and also the blacksmith Kettle and his assistant Loki who isn't the god Loki

[00:22:15] he's just a guy called Loki who's a bit weasley played by Anthony Scher so I think Tim Robbins was attracted to being in an action movie that was about ending violence and also a film that he

[00:22:26] claims is strangely not misogynistic which was big in the 80s in action movies although it does start off with a rave I apologize for forgetting to throw that into the premise I can now

[00:22:39] understand why I forgot it because I think everybody wants to forget a comedy sequence bit that is around that yeah I mean it feels very python though yes it does but it feels very abandoned

[00:22:53] halfway through season four python yeah sure a viking who cannot rape because he's actually a pacifist and doesn't like it he'd rather have a relationship I mean it's you know it's a funny

[00:23:05] gag but with all of these I find the movie sluggishly slow and all of the jokes painfully labored and they're not funny an example is when the Vikings are setting off on their quest they have

[00:23:19] this gag where all of the women the mothers and the wives and the girlfriends are all gathered on the dock and everything that Eric is saying like well I'm sure we won't be ripped apart by sea beasts

[00:23:32] you know it's upsetting them more and more wailing and crying even louder the more he speaks and he just keeps going and making it worse it's like well a that's not funny and b now it's

[00:23:44] going on for far you oh you're gonna do it again oh it's been three minutes now move on which brings up the issue of the edit right as far as I can tell there are three major cuts of this movie

[00:24:01] and like a 1.5 so I think the theatrical cut was 107 minutes in the US when it was released it was trimmed slightly to remove the rape to get a bbfc classification that wasn't an 18 because for some reason the British border film classification think that sexual violence against women isn't

[00:24:21] funny which is an odd stance they're a bit old-fashioned like that everybody I'm laughing at Conrad Sarkasim I'm not laughing at the idea of a rape scene okay no we're not laughing

[00:24:34] at rape scenes we're laughing at the idea that this would be a good idea for comedy but anyway apparently Terry Jones was never happy with the pacing of that cut and so when it came to video he

[00:24:45] cut it down to something like 89 minutes and then several years later when Arrow Video finally put it on Blu-ray or DVD he wanted to edit it again so he actually got his son to do it

[00:24:58] so it's called the director's son's cut and it's 75 minutes long so the movie is over in an hour and a quarter wow and yet it's not a good cut either because the people who've seen it say that there's

[00:25:13] too much cut out of it now and it doesn't feel like a movie it just feels like a test reel yeah I mean it's I'm fascinated by the trap this movie has put itself in if you don't cut

[00:25:24] enough of it the pacing is horrible and it feels interminable and you just want to put your head in an oven as the viewer you cut too much of it and it doesn't work either so you sit back and you go

[00:25:35] hmm maybe it's not failure at a concept level but definitely failure at an execution level if you can't cut it in any direction to solve the problem maybe you can't fix it yeah I mean

[00:25:48] I think the biggest problem with it is the balance between serious fantasy and slapstick comedy and it just doesn't quite get the balance right you'll have a really spectacular fantastical scene that will be completely derailed by a stupid one liner and it's frustrating because you

[00:26:14] want to kind of immerse yourself in this fantasy world but you're constantly kind of getting brought back to oh this is silly again yeah with like some dumb joke it's kind of frustrating because I did

[00:26:27] like the premise of we want to stop Ragnarok the wolf swallowing the moon by blowing this horn and being transported to the edge of the world and Asgard and all of the visuals in the sort

[00:26:39] of the second half of the movie I really loved but all the silly gags when they arrive in Asgard and everyone's just marvelling at the beauty of it and then you've got the Catholic priest just

[00:26:51] saying what why are you looking at and it's just like oh again like stop with the jokes let me just right appreciate the marvel of what I'm seeing right now yeah I appreciated the fact while

[00:27:04] watching it that I was watching a film back in the day when everything was largely either done in camera or optically there was no CGI vomit that I had to worry about yeah I appreciated very much the production design so it looked authentic especially like the Viking village

[00:27:20] looked really good and I thought Valhalla was a really great set piece yeah yeah the big dragon yeah they have to fight it looked great too like I was like wow but like you said Dan

[00:27:33] it kept stepping on its own robe yeah if you're trying to set up a comedy but you're trying to play it straight then the only person who succeeded in selling a comedy played straight

[00:27:43] in the movie is John Cleese everybody else was trying their best except Harry Jones because he can't stop doing his like T move version of Anthony Daniels but like everybody else you've

[00:27:56] got like the father and son where the dad is constantly trying to explain to his son how to be a berserker yeah and he's always like trying to you know watch his son when he goes berserk

[00:28:06] is he going berserk at the right time and for the right reason and all this kind of stuff and that could have been a funny Viking themed joke but it never quite played like there was

[00:28:15] something that just never landed with it yeah like I thought that setup would have had a bigger impact but when he does go berserk I guess he doesn't I mean he does you know take down a

[00:28:27] bunch of men but doesn't quite feel as impactful as it could have been like there was so much sort of setup for it but he doesn't really do a lot yeah like one guy dies in a battle with John

[00:28:41] Cleese's dudes the big burly like blonde hair dude they meet up with him again in Valhalla or something like that and then he just gets to leave with them and go back to real life

[00:28:51] and you're like why was he allowed the golden ticket out like what happened there and then the other one that drives me nuts Eric it's established in the really tone deaf attempted rape scene that's

[00:29:03] only saved by Samantha Bonds great performance and the fact that he's got like anxiety hangups but he's established that he's not into violence he wants to end violence he hasn't practiced with a blade he's not a berserker he's not really a good Viking warrior of any kind

[00:29:19] and then he puts on a piece of burlap over his head that actually isn't going to keep him invisible and goes up against all of John Cleese's skull helmeted wearing Viking guys and they know that

[00:29:31] they can see him they don't know what he's up to and he's just ripping through them in the worst fight scene I've ever seen and you're going there's no way he could take these guys on

[00:29:41] I know that because they established he can't take anybody on he should be dead within three seconds and he's taking out a literal boatload of these guys and I'm going this isn't playing funny either because you haven't established that verisimilitude Terry that would sell this

[00:29:56] situation yeah I think as well the whole cloak of invisibility that he thinks he has I think it goes for too long so when he finally finds out it kind of it's lost it's funny like it's

[00:30:11] not this is not funny anymore we've just watched a 10 minute fight scene like it doesn't quite work yeah for the laugh yeah that fight scene on that boat may be as long as

[00:30:23] Stuart Granger sword fight in Scaramush which up until Revenge of the Sith came out held the record for the longest cinematic sword fight in western movie history right and that sword fights actually good to watch even though it's from the 1950s it keeps you engaged I'm not sure

[00:30:39] if it's because the fight itself is actually engaging or because of his white and black vertical striped pantaloons whereas this one it goes on forever and there's no dynamism to it even the

[00:30:50] choreography is not hitting hard it's just like the way it's edited the way it's blocked I just wanted to switch over to a movie I actually hated that I could really sink my teeth into

[00:31:01] like and yet Terry Jones directed Monty Python's movies certainly after Holy Grail which he co-directed with Terry Gilliam but they found that that didn't work terribly well because they ended up at odds

[00:31:14] with each other are contradicting each other and I think in the end they split it so that Gilliam was doing the visual design and Terry was working with the actors so then he directs life of Brian

[00:31:26] which is a masterpiece. Yes absolutely life of Brian's wonderful but I have to wonder Conrad are those directorial efforts successful because at the writing and performance level it was wholly collaborative with the rest of the Monty Python cast in other words that it wasn't just a Terry

[00:31:42] Jones joint as Spike Lee would say like I don't know I'm speculating. I think the answer lies in the success of everything that he does after that so Gilliam does all of the Gilliam movies

[00:31:53] and he does personal services which is a sex comedy in 87 which he didn't write Eric the Viking which he did an adaptation of The Wind and the Willows and a film called Absolutely Anything starring Simon Pegg which I do remember watching but I don't remember anything about it.

[00:32:14] There's a trend here. There is a trend. None of these were particularly successful or retrospectively well thought of movies so I suspect they could be a strong argument for Terry Jones not being one of the most talented pythons which is not something that you want to

[00:32:32] come to lightly. No I'm not saying he's the Zepo of the Monty Python. True when he's in the right sketches in the right roles even though they seem to be the one note they knew where

[00:32:44] to slot him for maximum effectiveness. And so in those sketches and life of Brian is one of my favorite comedies of all time and he was the director. I'm not taking that away from him

[00:32:55] but it was a Monty Python movie which means there was a level of collaboration there that I think affects the outcome and in this particular case I agree with Dan that the

[00:33:06] concept of the plot had a lot of potential but the way he executed on the script and his indecision about whether or not this is a comedy or a situationally straight series of hijinks

[00:33:19] it didn't come off. It just didn't. Yeah I did find similarities to like Terry Pratchett actually because Terry Pratchett does have a silly comedy humor with his writing as well

[00:33:34] as it being a fantasy magical world. So I don't know maybe it's just a type of comedy I'm not used to also the sort of adventure of this movie felt like the Odyssey crew of men just coming across

[00:33:50] islands and weird things happening so I did really like that sort of premise and going to Asgard my only exposure to Norse mythology is Thor and the Marvel Universe so it was interesting seeing all

[00:34:05] of those elements sort of repackaged in Eric the Viking so you've got Odin and yeah Fenrir, the wolf in Asgard and Valhalla and it's all yeah it was interesting seeing it not Thor related. Yeah and Bifrost and other the mythology is there but in a completely different interpretation

[00:34:29] I mean Terry Jones is known for being a historian so for example he did a couple of series Terry Jones medieval lives Terry Jones's barbarians. I read somewhere that he wanted to not include any

[00:34:42] horned helmet so there's not that sort of stereotypical Viking helmet because apparently that wasn't a thing. Yeah his whole documentary The Crusades back in the 90s was wonderful. His historical documentary work is great and I'm so glad you brought that up and reminded me of that because

[00:34:59] I'm known around my friends for being a World War II guy but I'm also a big early Middle Ages guy and Crusades guy. Terry Jones Crusades multi-part documentary is a documentary of note

[00:35:10] yeah he's great in those areas of passion. Yeah so I think the historical accuracy I think the production design the detail of the village and all of the props and the costumes. Like working Viking boats like they look like actual constructed Viking long boats yeah

[00:35:26] oars and everything like it doesn't look like miniatures it doesn't look like green screen I mean there are some green screen parts but yeah yeah you've got some actual boats with people rowing them. Yeah filming the long boats in a 10 million gallon tank in Malta

[00:35:42] which had two of the largest tanks for filming in the world at the time and what's really fun is they built them at the coast so it's essentially like an infinity pool so they've got a controlled

[00:35:53] tank with a wave machine and they've got all the cast there and they're you know they're doing the fog and everything and there's an invisible line that you can't see and beyond that is the

[00:36:02] ocean. Oh right. So it looks like they're out at sea but they're actually not you know they can actually get off and just go to lunch at the end. Oh wow that is what a genius idea. Yeah

[00:36:13] that really is brilliant because the other day I sat down and watched the original mini series for Shogun before I watched the new mini series I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the original

[00:36:24] and in the beginning there are ships and storms sequences in a tank but the tank is like on I guess it's like the Paramount lot or something and this is like 1979 when they filmed it so when

[00:36:35] the lightning effects go off you can actually see the black scrim walls at the back of the tank. It said it at night so they were trying to mask it but I think they thought that because this was

[00:36:47] going to be on broadcast TV that you would never see that but now that it's they've scanned it right off the original 35 millimeter negative suddenly you can see all that so that tank design

[00:36:58] in Malta sounds genius masking it like blending it with the real ocean. It's a really clever idea it's like the movie triangle that we watched where they just film a ship at the end of a pier

[00:37:11] and make sure that they move the ship around so that they get the angle out to the ocean that they need. Yeah ideal. That's awesome. It is. Now it's time for Random Trivia. Okay Trivia time

[00:37:25] I don't have anything this time but did any of you have some juicy trivia found in a viking pillage village today? Well I discovered that Neil Baldwin the founder of Eurocom the Nintendo entertainment system or NES game developer revealed in 2009 that the company had developed

[00:37:49] a Zelda style RPG based on Eric the Viking. Wow. That they nearly completed but their relationship with the Japanese publisher broke down so the latest version that they submitted was in good shape

[00:38:06] and fun to play but he only has a show real ROM of it. Oh it is lost to time. Wow. There you go. Were you a NES player Michael? Oh yes yes I was. Yeah I was NES I was not Mega Drive I was

[00:38:21] I was NES all the way and and I played a lot of those Zelda type games that flew under the radars I played Legend of Zelda of course but I also played the NES port of Willow which was a very

[00:38:34] oh yeah that's a very very good Zelda type game for anybody that likes those types of RPGs that one is great too if Eric the Viking had been anything like Legend of Zelda as a game I bet you

[00:38:47] that game would have been better remembered as a great in a Nintendo game than a movie I bet you the game would have superseded the film that's too bad that that didn't get developed. Yeah definitely and that's all trivia? Yes.

[00:39:07] We've talked about some of the cast I didn't know who Samantha Bond was but she was in all of the Bond movies in the 90s as as Moneypity. Yeah it's a kind of appropriate name.

[00:39:20] She was Brosnan's Moneypity. She is great and she makes a really great impression as Helga who haunts Eric throughout the whole movie and spurs him on. It's quite eerie when she keeps showing up

[00:39:33] her sort of like pale dead bloody body in the background and those scenes were quite haunting but I don't really understand his motivation like he's so determined to save her but like

[00:39:47] she didn't like him at all. I mean I guess it's played for laughs but it's just kind of like what? Like this is the cracks of the entire movie. And you know why would she like him? I mean

[00:40:01] the only time she knew him was for three minutes when he was part of a group of Vikings destroying her village, murdering everybody there and he was trying to summon up the courage to

[00:40:12] violate her and you're like yeah this guy is broken in every way. He's going on a quest to try and endear himself to a person who he was indirectly responsible for their death

[00:40:24] and he thinks that he's in love with her? It's bizarre. It is quite strange. Yeah it's the ultimate version of the action movie trope of the only other woman in the cast must be the

[00:40:35] love interest. They must fall in love but she's not interested in him at all. I feel sorry for Imogen Stubbs character because she's infatuated like unjustifiably infatuated by him at no good reason. Yeah yeah and he's just like throwing her off as if she's

[00:40:56] you know just another woman. Yeah I was sitting there the whole time when he was saying that horrible thing to her about I'm here for someone else or whatever. I'm like dude

[00:41:05] this is not just the best you'll ever do. This is far better than you ever deserved. Like you don't deserve anybody like her and you're playing some fugazi in your mind about I'm gonna go look for

[00:41:18] this other person like who by the way hates you and everybody with a brain would know that except you because they've written the dumbest main character. The guys in dumb and dumber are

[00:41:31] smarter than this guy objectively. And then you've got his Mary band of men you've got a great cast of people you've got Tim McInerney as Sven the Berserk the guy who's constantly trying to

[00:41:44] become a berserker without his dad overshadowing him all the time. Yeah he's most famous for Blackadder of course. I know him from Notting Hill of course of all movies. You've got Freddie Jones as I mentioned Anthony Schur, Shakespearean actor he'd just been a big hit in

[00:42:02] a production of Richard the Third at the time and there he is just playing this Weasley villain in the background of this movie. And Eartha Kitt as magical black woman. Yes of course.

[00:42:14] Is regrettable but I mean she kicks it out of the park so fine. And you've also got Satumu Sakeen I've probably completely fouled that up but apparently a famous Japanese TV celebrity as a slave master in a baffling sequence that attempts to make Asian stereotypes racist

[00:42:38] stereotypes funny by reversing them and projecting them towards white people. But I'm not sure that helps. Yeah I know yeah it doesn't really age I mean it's not as bad as it could have been.

[00:42:51] No because the joke is that no one understands Japanese and they say like I would be more offended if I understood what he was saying but I mean yeah it could have been worse but it doesn't

[00:43:04] really age that well. I just have to point out that in some home video releases and various remasters and edits of this film they forgot to put those subtitles back in. Oh I found his

[00:43:17] inclusion so random. It has changed yeah I didn't understand where that came from. There were a few things that happened as a result of investors believe it or not this cost 15 million dollars this movie

[00:43:29] and they had to shop around the whole world to get a million from this company and a million from that company and so the Japanese investors insisted that this guy appear. Interesting. Interesting. For a sequence. Right. Well then I almost want to salute the movie for being like

[00:43:47] all right we will definitely concede to that stipulation because you're investing in the movie and we'll make this guy in command of the rowers and we will just make him verbally

[00:43:58] light into all of them. All right I can kind of get behind that honestly. Yeah the other one that's quite intriguing is originally Half Dan was going to be played by Jack Lemon.

[00:44:09] All right okay and he pulled out at the last minute and John Cleese was the preferred replacement by the German investors and John did it as a favor really to Terry Jones. It feels like a

[00:44:24] favor but I say that in the best way possible. It feels like he doesn't want to be there and he's doing a totally different movie but it's almost like John Cleese knew what tone the movie actually needed. I thought his performance was the standout performance

[00:44:40] small as it was in the whole film. He's actually making me chuckle when he's talking like he's making me laugh. It's the delivery yeah. It's interesting because Terry Jones directed him on that. John Cleese was originally playing it again straight so he is playing it as villain.

[00:44:59] Nasty evil man. It was Terry Jones' direction to John that he should play it as a board merchant banker who's just you know he doesn't really want to be beheading all of these people but

[00:45:12] you know you've got to keep up with the paperwork. I'd like to point out that we're all finally laughing talking about these scenes. Oh yeah I think it without doubt whenever Cleese is on

[00:45:23] the screen it livens up but that brings me to a question is this meant to be a comedy? Because it's based on Terry's children's book of 28 stories about Eric the Viking which he wrote

[00:45:35] for his son Bill who several decades later would end up re-editing the movie into a show reel. So fun adventures for kids. Right. So is it supposed to be a comedy or is it yet another

[00:45:47] one that got dragged into a false comparison with Monty Python works just like Jabberwock he suffered as a result of people saying hey it's a Monty Python movie when they desperately didn't want it to be marketed as such. If they didn't then Terry Jones made two fatal

[00:46:03] mistakes. One he cast himself as the type of character he always played in a Monty Python sketch and performed against his own directions to the other cast members. Yes. And two he directed John Cleese's role as John Cleese would often come off in a Monty Python sketch

[00:46:19] rather than John Cleese tried to as you said use the notes and play it with verisimilitude and he fell into Monty Python wagon ruts in the road directing both himself and John Cleese in the Monty Python bend. Yeah, that's true. That in of itself creates conceptual schizophrenia.

[00:46:36] Yeah I mean at the end of the movie it does say this film is not based on the children's book The Saga of Eric the Viking by Terry Jones although he hopes it will help the sales

[00:46:47] and I did hear it's not based on it really it's a completely different story but it is obviously a comedy though right there are like gags every two seconds yeah and they're

[00:46:57] not good gags but they're definitely gags it's not serious for a moment. No it's like a non- professional attempting to be funny it's like your uncle who's had a few too many drinks at

[00:47:11] a family gathering trying to be funny and laboring it too long. Yeah I mean there's a few things about it that maybe are noteworthy like the whole trying not to be misogynistic.

[00:47:23] I don't think it is for the most part although yes the female characters aren't great they're either raped or killed or the wafie like love interest that doesn't seem to be interested in anything

[00:47:36] else but love but you have got the character I think his name is Thorfinn the Skell Splitter he becomes really fair for at one point and it's kind of an interesting take on Vikings being

[00:47:47] afraid like you just don't really expect that. And then I guess like Catholicism saves everyone because you've got the priest that can walk through walls because he doesn't believe in Asgard and saves everyone so does Christianity win at the end of the day? I don't know I don't

[00:48:06] know what the themes were so there were like core values in the movie that weren't really fleshed out. Yeah thematically there are a few things going on for comedy but also for commentary there's an analysis of the alpha male fallacy around Vikings you've got a criticism of capitalism

[00:48:27] because capitalism is the only thing that's trying to keep the war and bloodshed going on and Terry made the connection between climate denial and the sinking island although that's a very modern comment that I don't think would have been on their minds when he made the movie.

[00:48:42] I think he said it was more a criticism of blind faith that they would just stand there saying nothing's happening as they sink but to me it just gave me the sense of sort of detached privileged people who would just can't believe that anything bad would

[00:48:59] ever happen to them. That was the sense that I got from it rather than anything more relevant today like climate denial although it is ironic as he slips beneath the rising tide pretending it's

[00:49:12] not happening. Yeah I mean it was triggered by the bloodshed not pollution. And that's the theme that I took away from it too which was what Dan was referring to which is in a broader

[00:49:24] sense the whole idea that humans will pave paradise you know they'll destroy paradise for our human inclinations like violence or greed or something like that and so a beautiful place is lost but I do find it interesting that he made those statements retroactively.

[00:49:40] Yeah there's stuff in there there's clearly an attempt to do something interesting spiced up with a bit of funny but I don't think it's trying to be python of course it suffered by comparison. It was completely camed when it came out by the critics and it did not

[00:49:58] do terribly well so on a 15 million budget when it was released on the 22nd of September in the US and the 29th in the UK 1989 it yielded 1.9 million in the US box office. This is at a time when the

[00:50:13] top five was Black Rain, Crime Drama, Sea of Love, Crime Drama, Uncle Buck, John Hughes Comedy, Parenthood Family Comedy directed by Ron Howard and when Harry meant Sally or Romcom. Yeah Eric placed 16th in the chart and vanished a week later. Yeah that's rough.

[00:50:35] Rough and yet deserved. I did like the score though. I think the score kind of works. Right. It's memorable, it's thematic and it's for orchestra it sounds. In places yeah sometimes it uses that trick of having a chamber orchestra doubled up by midi

[00:50:53] instruments and I can kind of hear it. Oh really? Yeah okay. It was popular around that time. But I think thematically it works there's a lot of like recurring themes that are singable. It's very British as well very woodwindy. Yes there's a lot of woodwind.

[00:51:08] Yeah I mean I don't really know the composer so Neil Innis. So he's often thought of as the seventh python because he did a lot of musical collaborations with them and with Eric Idle.

[00:51:23] I think he did try to do a score for Holy Grail but it was thrown out because it didn't sound grand enough so they ended up using the DeWolf music library that they used for Jabberwocky as

[00:51:34] well so it was overly grand and ridiculous. Right and Neil also makes a cameo as one of the high Brazilians I think? Yeah he does. I don't know which one. I can always spot him yeah. Oh yeah okay.

[00:51:48] Yeah I think he was in Jabberwocky as the guy that was playing the drum. Oh that's right. Yeah the score's okay. I liked it. I liked it. Coming to you live from the Movio Bliate Theatre it's the prestigious Mobley Awards.

[00:52:07] Hello it's that special time of the part the Mobley Awards where we nominate our favorite Viking skull splitting parts of the film in a number of high Brazil it's indubitably not sinking categories. Best quote. My favorite quote comes from the scene where the Vikings

[00:52:24] are really keen to hack up Princess Aude when they first meet her and Eric convinces them that they could try something different instead like becoming friends and Sven the Berserk says

[00:52:37] we can make friends at home. I like the precursor today one of them says we don't go through all the hardships of an ocean voyage to make friends. Yeah they've really got the wrong idea of

[00:52:53] tourism I think. Yeah I think it's one of the few lines where the comedy works it does work in that scene. Yeah how about you Michael? I think my favorite line in the film comes from my

[00:53:06] family's background. My mom is Protestant my dad is Catholic I went to Catholic school so Harold the missionary is a highlight as we've established in the film and I love the line

[00:53:18] where he says listen I've been in this dump for 16 years and I haven't made a single convert and I was thinking to myself yeah I'm like I went to Catholic school for a total of nine years

[00:53:30] and it didn't convince me to finally sign on the dotted line so I really feel his pain on that one. Right yeah. Best hair or costume? I did like the blacksmiths sort of fur layers because he did

[00:53:45] he almost looked like he just stepped off the catalog of a fashion magazine or something like he's very scared of the Navy and with his kind of long blonde locks. Yeah he looked pretty good.

[00:53:56] Yeah I thought he had the best hair by far luscious blonde hair seemingly strained with ceramic tongs and these lovely wavy fronds that frame his face like Ulysses 31 from the anime series yeah I thought he was a pretty impressive specimen and clearly the ladies of

[00:54:16] the village were very sorry to see him. Yeah most erasies movement. I thought the most 80s thing about this movie was swords yeah I don't know why we were so addicted to swords in the 80s

[00:54:29] but they really were not only in historical adventures like Terry Gilliam's time bandits and Baron Munchausen things like the Princess Bride we were also just shoehorning it into sci-fi like Masters of the Universe and time travel romance is like Highlander so just swords

[00:54:50] everywhere I don't know what we were compensating for in the 80s but we were big time yeah. My most 80s moment in this film has to be the big dragon monster thing because much like you

[00:55:02] just said Conrad about the swords the other thing that comes with 80s movies that have a lot of guys with swords is a big in-camera puppet monster and that one literally dominated the screen it

[00:55:15] reminded me of the end of Conan the Destroyer in many ways I thought man like this is an in-camera 80s fantasy moment I wish the rest of the movie reflected that but hey

[00:55:26] I appreciate the effort here and yeah that was the most 80s thing for me in the film was the big in-camera physical monster beast thing. Yeah yeah yeah always fun. Favorite scene!

[00:55:40] My best shot at picking a favorite scene I find it very hard was possibly the scene where Princess Old is trying to hide Eric in her bedroom the morning after from her dad

[00:55:53] and she's got this invisibility card that she's put over him but it's only like a tea towel so you just have the vision of a naked six foot five Tim Robbins holding his junk

[00:56:04] with a tea towel on his head while Terry Jones wanders around pretending to be Miss Piggy trying not to see him. Anyway I thought okay this is the one pointless joke that's actually okay playing long because it's mainly visual and Tim Robbins is having fun with it.

[00:56:25] Yeah my favorite scene I did like the journey to Asgard sequence actually so blowing the horn the sound of the horn I'll get into it with a favorite sound but reaching the edge of the world

[00:56:38] so you've got the waterfall and the boat just kind of teetering on the edge and then they finally let go and it lands in Valhalla you've got the rainbow bridge the Aurora lights

[00:56:49] in the background and then Asgard appeared so that whole sequence is magical and I love it it works for me yeah there's also no comedy in that scene so Mary that's my work. It's actually

[00:57:04] genuinely going for a sense of wonder which is quite nice. I'm gonna be cliche my favorite scene just from a concept level is the scene toward the beginning where John Cleese is just rattling off all those different torture sentences to all those criminals and people who aren't criminals

[00:57:24] where he's just like you said bureaucratically trying to get through his day as fast as he can he hates his position he hates his job he hates having to deal with all of it

[00:57:33] and you have all those different reactions from all those those people does it get repetitive yes it does does it play a little too long like every other scene in this movie yes it does

[00:57:44] but conceptually I did laugh on the first like you know three to five jokes I thought it worked really well because of John Cleese and that's probably the most memorable scene in the film for me

[00:57:55] so yeah yeah most cliche moment I was going to say magical music so the horn resounding has the ability to create interdimensional travel very much like the cosmic key in masters of the universe which I also mentioned when I was talking about swords Dr Strange and the multiverse

[00:58:18] of madness I think characters end up fighting each other with music yeah and in the Pixar movie Coco music enables the main character to cross over to the land of the dead so music as a

[00:58:33] magical method of travel is my cliche yeah and I don't know the interesting way of progressing a plot as well in this movie they had to blow it three times so once to get to

[00:58:48] Asgard wants to wake the gods and then once to get home so three times so I don't know I like that sort of mythology of it yeah other cliches the biggest cliche for me in this movie is the

[00:59:03] ineffectual hero just having a romantic relationship with the main ingenue in the film for no apparent reason whatsoever if you have no worries or cares and you're living on an island with far more attractive and tolerable individuals what is the appeal of a dude who brought weapons and

[00:59:24] everything else onto your island with a bunch of smelly ruffians and you're like ooh I want to get me a piece of that I don't think so I just don't think so yeah yeah yeah best special effect

[00:59:38] I actually thought the practical sinking of yeah hi brazil was a really clever special effect yeah like how did they do that is that full site like the miniatures what's going on it's full size

[00:59:51] yeah so it's in the malta tank and they just built the set inside the tank and then slowly filled the tank really wow yeah yeah it works really well and it works because it's real yeah because

[01:00:04] it's full buildings yeah it's like hey guys you know what the most effective way to do this would be let's just fill it with real water uh yeah yeah and malta is not a bad place to film your sort of

[01:00:19] sunny paradise either so yeah wow yeah yeah well it looks incredible and even the last scene where they were all on perched on a rock and that just slinks down and you slowly see everyone's here

[01:00:34] still floating in the water as well which is kind of funny yeah um terry jones suddenly realized because he's the last one to go under and he's talking while he goes under and he suddenly

[01:00:46] realized that that meant that he couldn't take a breath so he almost ruined the shot because he had to come up immediately and gasp yeah of course but so they just did a separate shot in the same

[01:01:01] spot with loads of bubbles coming up and just immediately jump cut to that and you don't notice that they've oh wow they've jumped up there yeah yeah well it's very clever if i don't count the

[01:01:12] sea monster or the dragon whatever it is as a best special effect i guess it would be their approach to valhalla because i do like the opticals that they use to make valhalla feel like this

[01:01:25] ethereal off the edge of the world kind of place you know just adjacent in the universe this heavenly place i like the practical effects of it i like knowing that it's all on the negative

[01:01:37] i i think it worked really well it certainly set a mood um and it's it's not it's not subtle but at the same time it's it's not what people would think of as special effects you know like it

[01:01:50] but it is a special effect yeah yeah no i liked it it worked really well favorite sound effect the obvious sound is is the horn right i mean it's it's the horn uh it's not what i expected

[01:02:04] because when he first blows it it's it's quite eerie it's quite breathy and very quiet and quite pure sounding and then it sort of crescendos and transitions into the score which is quite interesting

[01:02:20] so it has more of a yeah sort of a sonic transition to a big orchestral brassy horn sound which is uh not what i expected and it really worked yeah i really liked it and it sold the idea of something

[01:02:35] simple and magical that would then build into something that could crack open yeah i like the most funniest moment i'm not going to be surprised if everybody picks something of

[01:02:45] john clees but for me it was the scene when eric is jumping around with a tea towel on his head thinking that he's invisible in front of half dan and he lifts it up and says now you see me now

[01:02:58] you don't know so on and sort of taunts him and he runs away which of course we know is not working and john clees waits the perfect amount of time his comic timing is perfection

[01:03:11] and then looks up at one of his henchmen and just goes what and with one syllable john clees delivers the funniest line in this entire movie yep yep it's not even like anger or real consternation just sort of tired bewilderment like what

[01:03:36] yeah yeah it's delivery it's john clees's delivery in every scene it really works i mean yeah michael you've already mentioned it but the first scene just the delivery alone so he says i really can't

[01:03:51] give you a third chance i'm so sorry uh would you behead him please and it's just so off the cuff and just sort of throw away it's amazing and it because you have so much built up to this scene

[01:04:07] to see the big bad villain you've got people getting flayed outside you've got screaming you've got body parts hanging and then you're presented john clees it's it's amazing yeah it's great it really is good and that's our movies yeah

[01:04:31] this is kelly maroney and you are listening to movie ooblie act okay it's time for our final verdicts should eric the viking from 1989 be liberated into the world to plunder into the minds of movie lovers a praiseworthy film in valhalla or should it be

[01:04:50] stabbed in the back by loki and sink with hypozil into the murky depths of the ooblie yet never to be seen again all right gents eric the viking i have low hopes for its outcome here we go

[01:05:09] we have firmly established that this film has the inability to be remembered by people who have seen it therefore even even if we bring it out of the ooblie yet and say it shouldn't be forgotten

[01:05:24] it will still be forgotten by default because that is its magic therefore i think we should just leave it in the ether where it deserves to be because it's just going to be forgotten

[01:05:36] again anyway yeah no matter how many times you edit it yeah absolutely um it no it's rubbish i'm sorry it doesn't even deserve a final verdict it's right well i might surprise you too because

[01:05:55] i think it's not bad i i i think it's not a perfect i think it's flawed i i hated the comedy i wanted all of that just taken out of the movie but i did like the premise i think i liked the premise

[01:06:10] and the story and the mythology around it more than the movie itself maybe um i loved the fantasy elements like fantasy adventures is my jam like i love that genre of movie and

[01:06:27] yeah i don't know i i think it might get better with repeat watches and i might be alone here but i would recommend this movie and i did i have to say i enjoyed it more than jab walkie

[01:06:39] this might be a hot take wow but we should check it with our patrons we should yes so hello how yes conrad what have you been up to i've been busy generating fake news for the next big election

[01:06:53] oh that's helpful well could you count our votes please you'll never guess they want to set it oh really i thought i was alone here no you're not alone dan the patrons agree with you eddie

[01:07:08] culter says i say let them sail to valhalla i'm a fan of these python adjacent films especially eric the viking and it's a shame it's not more well known as it does some interesting twists on

[01:07:19] norse mythology and chisela says somebody call graham hankok and let him know he was right and we found out what happened to high brazil that that is a reference to his uh books theorizing

[01:07:35] that there is an anti-diluvian continent that disappeared in prehistory oh there you go as a as an indiana jones guy i have read and own a lot of the literature of graham hankok it is

[01:07:46] some fascinating if sometimes questionable stuff when i say questionable i mean like you you might not get behind some of his theories but he's not out to hurt anybody he's just trying

[01:07:56] to think about human history in certain ways he had a fascinating book on the arc of the covenant based on his own research um i'll shut up now but but his his book fingerprints of the gods

[01:08:06] is a really interesting read yeah wow yeah fascinating well good reference chisela so uh yeah 75 to 25 they want to set it free okay so that means that we're tied we have to do a

[01:08:21] coin of fate we're coin of fate so dan you're championing this movie is it heads or tails should we let michael juice right heads it's tails oh wow so setting it free it won't matter

[01:08:45] i'm not hurt by this in the least the only thing you've done by setting it free is you have kicked it out of its last home it no longer has a home and that was the ubleet at least there

[01:08:56] it was safe and it had three meals a day now it has to forage for itself and it's gonna die out the wilderness it's gonna die okay well good luck eric off you go

[01:09:09] hi so michael thanks so much for picking eric the viking for us to discuss today where can people follow you and find out more of your your filmic tastes i just want to apologize

[01:09:25] i don't often do sadistic things to my friends and i didn't intend this time i appreciate you all enduring that it was such a mistake uh you can find me at uh retroblasting on youtube all

[01:09:37] one word retroblasting on instagram retroblasting on twitter and retroblasting on facebook and uh we analyze and confront the pop culture of our generation x experience so thanks for having me on i appreciate it i love being here thanks for joining us again it's been a blast and you

[01:09:53] can follow movie oomliate on all platforms as movie oomliate and email us at movie dot oomliate at gmail dot com and if you want to help us keep the lights on then head on over to

[01:10:05] patreon where for as little as a dollar you can nominate films to appear in future episodes and get extended portions of the show and for five dollars you get access to our exclusive monthly minisodes

[01:10:16] and you get to vote on the final verdict and for ten dollars you can be an executive producer proudly named at the end of every episode like chisella eddy kulter isaac sutton dr doggie

[01:10:29] surge iconographer and ryan a potter thanks for the support uh we have mentioned i said red bubble and a youtube channel and if you haven't rated and reviewed us yet do that on all platforms

[01:10:46] Spotify for podcast it does help us get the word out it does indeed and i guess now we should review what's up next gone red what's on the plate well next time we'll be taking a retrospective

[01:11:02] look at the first film of a very famous director that celebrates its 30th anniversary this year it's the british black comedy thriller shallow gray ah yes denny boil yeah i love denny boil

[01:11:20] and it's you and ma greger yes it is i think you do a great impression of you and ma greger denny mark well yes i i do an impression of you and ma greger doing an impression of a valet gis

[01:11:34] yes uh from attack of the clones the uh the infamous hologram line it's only infamous to me everybody else is like i don't recall that line being infamous but when you hear it over and

[01:11:43] over again it's pretty funny where he says in the the reign of kamino in the hologram back to yoda they're using a bounty hunter to create a clone army i'm going to go sit in one of these chinese

[01:11:56] soup spoons now and talk to this alien goodbye and then he like walks away i thought he was in the room it's so clipped and very strange but he does sound like that when you watch it they're

[01:12:07] using a bounty hunter no jango yeah it was uh an interesting performance on the whole this one will be a very very young you and ma greger alongside christopher eccleston and kerry fox

[01:12:24] in a film written by john holge i love christopher eccleston great and that's it for another episode thanks again michael for joining us and uh you know putting us through eric viking and uh

[01:12:39] until next time i mean i enjoyed it they're not my friends anymore and i don't blame them okay bye for now everyone goodbye the movie unit stay calm this is not happening