It's called an inner life. George.
Everything is ready, my darling.
Do not be afraid. So we'll be together again.
This sandwich tastes as dry as hell.
Hello and welcome to hello. This is the Doomed Show. I am Richard.
Folks, it's probably still winter when we
release this episode. I hope because it's cold and
this movie is cold. But Lietta is
hot. Welcome, Lietta. Thank you.
Actually, it's cold in here. It's cold in here, too.
You're, like, not feeling so hot. Feeling kind of cold.
Folks, we're going to talk about The Wendigo from 2001.
Written and directed by Larry Fessenden.
Larry Fessenden. We're gonna spoil this movie.
And so since it just came out in 2001, I'll feel bad for
you people who just bought your theater tickets to see it.
Go watch the movie. But first, before any
other, here we do's, here's the trailer for the
Wendigo.
It can fly at you like a sudden storm without warning
and devour you. Consume you with
its ferocious appetite.
Deep in the woods. I'm sure not far off.
I'm glad you're sure of it, George. Hold on, hold on.
There are laws you you cannot know.
My name is George. I'm sorry about the deer, but I'd.
Like you to please stay away from the car, if you don't mind.
Legends. You cannot believe there
are spirits that. Should be feared because they are angry and
a force you cannot fight. A Wendigo.
He's a mighty powerful spirit.
That man knows where we live.
What are you, the devil?
Wendigo? Don't be scared, kiddo.
Don't be scared.
And it's time to when to stay right here. We're talking about the
Wendigo. Don't be windy. Going. I have
the beautiful artisanal
DVD here. It's from Artisan.
It's not really like a cheese or anything.
No, no cheese inside it. Although our cats,
except for cheese, are all in here. We have a cat named Cheese.
The back of the DVD claims as Kim
and George, Patricia Clarkson and Jake Weber,
or Weber and their son Miles Eric, per Sullivan,
drive to the Catskills to spend a weekend away. They accidentally
hit a deer and are run off the road. But what seems
to be a mere occurrence of misfortune marks the beginning of
a terrifying journey where myth becomes reality. And an
evil spirit, half man and half animal,
haunts a small town. Three little periods.
Color 92 minutes.
We watched it. We bought this DVD a long time ago.
Slightly misleading. Well, that's okay.
The misleading part was that I waited like two years before
we watched this movie we wanted to watch together because
we like some folklore. Sorry, our cat is being crazy.
No, it's Cheese. Oh, Cheese is here, folks.
And she's harassing her big sister Gorgon as she do.
So. Yeah, we put this off for a while, but now is the time.
This stars Patricia Clarkson, the wonderful,
wonderful woman from Easy A. The headmaster from the woods.
The woods was the next thing. The headmistress,
I guess. Yes. Which needs a Blu Ray. We need. I mean, the old DVD
of the woods is fine, but it's just such a
great movie that the people who like it, I think, just love it.
I can't imagine there's people who are like, it's kind of meh.
I watched that and I went, oof. Jake Weber,
who's in a lot of stuff, but I wrote down that he was the husband
on the Medium. Do you remember that show with Patricia Arquette where
she was a psychic? He was the husband.
Okay. We didn't really watch that show. I thought you'd find that amusing.
And we got Eric Per Sullivan. I have no idea if that's
P E A. His middle name. Per is supposed to be Per
or Pear. Either way, he's from Malcolm in the Middle.
And then I think he stopped acting, like, a while ago. He's like,
eh, I'm tired of being in the middle. John Spiridakos.
I'm hoping that's how you pronounce that. He plays Otis.
They could have gone for a less generic,
villainous hillbilly name than Otis,
maybe. Is Otis a villain name, though? I would
have never thought it would be like, Otis is maybe a really popular dog
name now. Imagine it being a bulldog or something.
Otis. The most famous Otis I'm thinking of is from Henry,
Portrait of a Serial Killer. Oh, wow. And that's.
That's the Otis I know. So maybe it's just that one role that's so ubiquitous.
What's that name? Ubiquitous. Is that the right word?
Infamous. Infamiquitous. But that guy was
in House of the Devil and some other cool horror stuff. And last but
not least, we got Christopher Wing Coop as Sheriff Tom Hale.
What the hell? He's in Stuff. He has a small
but, like, memorable role from Ghostbusters. But I
haven't seen Ghostbusters in, like 30 years,
so I don't know. He's a reporter, I guess. In the first
movie. Yeah. Okay. Are there more?
Yes, there's so many more.
We're gonna run through the plot here to spare you
and ourselves a scene by scene,
blow by blow, because this movie is actually pretty simple. It's just
people go to house after getting harassed
by some hillbilly meanies or just one in
particular. And then the message of which would
be, city people should never go to the country. Just don't go. Just don't
go. And then hilarity ensues,
Wendigo style. The end. Okay, so when
they arrive at this house after the very intense
exchange with Otis over a dead deer because you
cracked one of the horns, that was a lot of money.
And they find out where they're going, which turns out to be very
important. This house that they are renting from their friends,
that becomes a pivotal moment. We'll find out why later.
As they're settling in, dad finds a hole in
the window and then a hole in the wall.
And he takes his little pen knife out and pulls out a
bullet. So someone has shot the house, but he keeps this a secret.
Don't do that. You find that bullet, you tell everybody who will listen about
it, and then list all your enemies for them, you know,
with names and addresses. So the cops have a starting point.
When you're murdered, you know, they're hanging out. It's full
of menace. Things seem scary.
And then that night, Miles, the little boy,
he discovers, much to his chagrin, that they're not getting any channels, the cables
off, if they even get cable out there. And he
says, all the movies aren't good, which I was very disappointed.
You can't see the tapes. Oh,
that's why this is a pivotal scene for you. You can't see the
tapes he has to choose from? No, what they
do is to illustrate this. They show Miles with his
face and his hands pressed up against the blue TV screen.
And it's this really super striking image that I find amazing
because I am such a huge Malcolm in the Middle fan.
I've seen at least three episodes, maybe even
less. There's a great line of dialogue that I'm gonna put as the intro
for the show. Kim and George are talking, and she says
to him, it's called an inner life. George, I love that.
That's gonna be the intro to the show. She's a
psychologist, and she's got some analyzing to
do. That night, as they're tucking Miles in in this
strange house that he's never been to before, dad decides
to be creepy. This was a scene I did not appreciate.
It adds to the tone of the movie, but As a child, as I am
now in my current age, child age, I did not appreciate dad
doing that. He was too good at it. It's like how I don't scare you
if I can help it. I mean, I scare everyone I
meet because of how sad and pathetic I am.
I was surprised. I do look up
some synopses to warn myself about what this
thing is I'm watching. And just to
clarify, I found references that, you know,
that they were beset by darkness as soon as they entered the
house. And, you know, finding a bullet in your wall is disturbing.
Having a mom who moved to Arizona and found a bullet in her
wall and, you know, blood somewhere in the kitchen. It's just something that kind
of happens in places where a lot of shooting goes on.
Yeah, I didn't. The descriptions
I found made it seem as though the house was somehow
possessed. And that's not the darkness that
you get from watching the movie. No. I will say
this. I think our relief was palpable.
It was. It was. It was palpable. It was pulpy. Was that
this is not a home invasion movie. No.
Which folks, when you buy a house. Or home tormentor movie.
Yeah. Either way,
unwelcome guests makes us very,
very triggered because we don't want that. We don't even have like an actual
thing that happened. We're just terrified of that from movies. So the
home invasion, like subgenre of horror
has been stricken from the record from this house. Like so
many home invader movies have been purged from my movie
collection, including some favorites like the Strangers and
you're next. Those are great movies. But now we're good.
We have a home to defend now. And other than tips and tricks
we don't want to watch. That's not entertaining anymore.
And that might not be true for other people who bought a new house.
Well, bought an old ass house. Like our house is old. Having enraged
Otis on the road, he has decided
to come and hang out outside the house. George and
Kim do what 1% of
couples do, which is make the sex act.
All the babies that are born are just from that 1% of people. That's why
there's 8 billion people on. The planet on
the couch on a ground floor of a house they've never been to, with all
of the windows, like all the blinds open.
I say now that that actually lowers it down to 1% because parents
with kids, I think, are probably a little bit more secretive
about their sex act. At least my parents were. They do it under the covers
with the clothes on the door locked. And the door locked
with the lights blazing. No. So they're having sex on the couch,
and Otis is watching from the window. And he looks
what I interpreted as. Oh,
yeah, but in a scary way. And,
you know, it looked angrier. But anger and horny are the same
expressions. I'm getting a look here.
I just say things. So I get looks like that from the edits. That's why
I'm here. But we'll find out later that that had a very different meaning.
His look of rage was, you know, like actual rage and not
a boner,
presumably. I'm gonna pass this over to Lietta for this scene. The next
day, Kim and Miles are in a little grocery store,
presumably just looking around. Or it's like a tchotchke
store. They general store. The caricatures
call it a thrift store. Okay. The store itself is labeled as
a pharmacy. Oh. Because dad goes
to the grocery store, like Capital G groceries. And they're just in this other store.
Thank you. A gentleman behind the counter who looks.
Who appears to be of Native American descent starts telling Miles
about a creature. What is he talking about? Well, there's a figure. There's a small
carved figure in the glass display case that
Miles is looking at. And the man behind the counter starts telling him
about the Wendigo. He says some choice lines,
and you have to accept them as being very important because they're repeated
often through the rest of the movie. One kind of
throwaway line is that no one believes in
spirits anymore. That is quickly followed with, there are spirits
that should be feared because there are spirits that are angry.
And of course, he who hears the cry of the Wendigo is
never the same again. In his description of what the Wendigo is,
he. He makes it very clear that the Wendigo has an insatiable
hunger. And it is an angry spirit.
He's hungry for livers. And then he sends a little boy
off with a permanent reminder of the scary story.
Yeah. Which is one of the origins of this movie. So mom
barters with the lady over the figure so that Miles can keep
it. And, you know, it's like the lady looks confused.
The man. The man gave it to him. And of course she's like, what man?
And I kept making the man with the power joke.
What power? Power of hoodoo. I think
we need to do it. You can't do it yourself. You remind me. The man.
What man? The man with power. What power? The power of hoodoo. Hoodoo. You do
do what Remind me of the man. All right. And then
it starts over. See? Cary Grant and
a young, but not too young Shirley Temple.
Probably older than most people think. A teenage Shirley Temple. Young enough.
That movie is a little creepy if you think about it. But that's okay.
It's Cary Grant. He can do what he wants. Hi, Melody.
Greetings, Yogi, Doogie, Dickie. Ready, boot? Let's scoot.
Reet. Hey, you remind me of a man. What man? The man
with the power. What power? The power of Hoodoo. Hoodoo? Hoodoo do what?
Remind me of a man. What man? Man with the power. Good morning.
Greetings. Greetings. Are you out of your mind? What? What are you trying to
do on the way home? Miles. Now, he's a very
imaginative child, and his brain is filled with all
kinds of when to go fun. So he starts seeing these
reminders of the dead deer everywhere.
And he starts seeing things that could be the Wendigo or represent
the Wendigo. And, like, lots of Native
American kind of statuary things in the town and
just creepy stuff. But you saw something, and I remember
it vaguely. What was it you saw about that drive home? Well, I saw on
the drive home, they are passing several
carved figures. There are wooden Indians as
they were out in front of shops, but they're kind of standing
independently outside of shops. And there are also totems
all along the drive home. And while those are flashing,
George starts telling the story about how the lake.
They're passing by the New York Reservoir. So we kind of get the idea they're
in upstate New York now. Was formed by flooding
a village. So there's a village beneath the water. I found this
interesting just in that it adds a little bit of creepiness to it. It's a
way that this movie seems to pack in peripheral folklore and
never follow up on it. It's just an extra ghost story
that they're passing by. You know,
Bonus. After this outing, dad and
Miles go out for a fun adventure of
sledding. Which, I mean, I don't know about you, but I've seen,
you know, America's Funniest Home Videos. I know how these sledding adventures
really end with hospital visits. And that's also
true here. But the really creepy thing here is that as they're
headed down the side of this hill,
all of a sudden we think we hear a shot. And dad
falls. You know, he exclaims and then falls. And then Miles
just keeps on trucking in the sled. And of
course, Dad's been shot. It wasn't Otis who
did it. It was the Wendigo.
It was the Wendigo with his powerful rifle.
So we have some craziness where Miles believes he's
being chased by the Wendigo and he faints and
mom finds him. Which this part was the most unbelievable.
Well, they say actually he tells his mother that he ran into
a tree and knocked himself out, which I didn't see that. I thought
he fainted too. Yeah, maybe they couldn't show
that. Or maybe we just see things from Miles perspective.
Yeah, he's not gonna remember it. Maybe. I don't know. I'd remember
it, but. But yes. Woman finding small
boy lying down in a wooded, snowy area in the dark.
In the dark. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, mom finds him.
The powers of mom and she. They're running
around looking for George. They talk to the actually nice
people of this little town who are friends of Otis.
They're friends of Otis's and they kind of think he's a character
and they kind of think he's a little ridiculous. They're not really putting
two and two together, that maybe Otis is disturbed.
So mom and Miles leave there because she's,
you know, letting her probably reasonable fear
of these people getting, you know, she doesn't want to trust them. Plus they're all
covered in freaking deer blood as they're chopping up some dead deer.
Well, it's a big job. You really don't want to do it inside. You want
to do it outside on a table. So you can just hose it down.
And not with your best linens on the table.
Correct. I've actually, I've been in a house where
a deer was carved up in the kitchen. It wasn't even a house. It was
a two bedroom apartment.
And just the smell of meat.
It wasn't even cooked, it was just being carved. The smell of meat permeated
that apartment for a week. So, yeah, do it
outside. That reminds me of the luau I went to.
I don't ever want to go to a luau again. I like pork,
especially at my Vietnamese restaurant. I love the way
they prepare it. But man, the smell of a pig
cooking in that pit. Didn't care for it. Didn't care
for it. Can I help you with something?
I'm. I'm trying to find my husband. Husband?
There's been an accident. What kind of accident? I.
Have you seen my husband? What's he look like? What was
the name of the guy who left? He. He pulled out in his truck just.
Before I got here. Otis Brandon, put those
on the bench. I mean, it was you those out. On the road last night,
right? You're staying up at the Suki place this weekend.
Anyway, I. I'm sorry. I saw a light on.
I. I needed to check. Come on, Mike. Just a
minute. I mean, did you have some kind of accident? You want to tell her
something? Yeah. What happened? No, I'm. I'm sorry.
I. I was wrong. I. I'm sorry. I.
I have to run. Come on. Three. Hold on.
Jesus Christ. Just let her go, dad. Where do you want to put
them? In the freezer? Brandon. They find our pal George
shot, and they rush him to the hospital.
Although it's really funny, the. The shot of the car going
along the road to the hospital. It looks like it's going 35.
Put the pedal to the metal, Mom. It is very snowy. It is snowy.
True. They get to the hospital and we have this huge thing with George,
who believes he's dying rightfully so, you know,
just telling his family how much he loves him. It's very sweet.
It's like, oh, man. And then Kim
finds out. While George is in surgery, Kim finds out
whose house their friends have lent
them. Yes, this is. The sheriff shows up. And it
was something Kim had wanted. She initially called the hospital to tell them to be
ready. She asked them to call the sheriff and arrange it. You understand from
the short phone conversation that they were not going to do that for her.
So she had to call the sheriff on the way to the hospital.
And he meets them there. And while
figuring out where they're staying, he identifies it as it's, oh, it's the
Stuckey house. And identifies Otis when she's trying
to explain what has happened to them this weekend as Otis Stuckey.
So the sheriff then explains that Otis's parents passed
on one after the other and left the house to his sister,
who then sold it and moved away. So Otis was out his family home.
He lives elsewhere nearby. But that might be
one of the reasons why he's creepily hanging around the
house. I think the sheriff also mentions maybe knowledge
that Otis has been firing at the house.
Or maybe he does that in the very next scene where the sheriff goes to
see Otis, tells Otis, I know you've been shooting up the Stuckey
house. Which explains the bullets in the wall. Yep, yep,
yep. This technically wasn't on my scene, but it's
like right after my scene. What you got? Just this interaction
with the sheriff and Otis is probably one of the only times
I've seen in a movie where the interaction seems
civil enough. But, you know, based on how
the sheriff is asking for Otis's cooperation.
What he's not telling Otis. He's spinning a yarn.
Like he wants Otis to go in for a statement about the
deer incident. Yep. This sheriff is afraid of Otis
Stuckey. And he keeps reminding Otis that his deputy's on the
way. And, yeah. He lets it
slip. Oh, you know, I was up at the hospital.
You were up the hospital. Why were you at the hospital? It's like, oh.
And this interaction is really the only confirmation that we get that Otis
really was the shooter. Yep. Yep. Because he then kills the sheriff,
and then he grabs his gun
and just goes off. We don't know where he's going, what he's gonna do.
We don't know if he's just, like, fleeing or if he's gonna go shoot
somebody else who knows what he's doing. No. But in the midst of that,
he already hears the Wendigo. Yes. Which hearkens back. And it might even
be said in the man from the pharmacy's voice that he who hears the Wendigo
is never the same. And this is also
something else that stuck out. So he is being haunted now
by the Wendigo. And we see the creature. It's like a were deer. Yeah.
Or a were elk, which is apropos. Otis is a hunter.
He shoots them all the time. So. And there are footsteps
in the snow, which remind me of a story I
read as it comes after him in his truck. And there's
also a voice telling him to
give me back my liver or give me my liver.
Yeah. And that reminds me of yet another ghost story
that is peripheral of, you know, people in
a cabin making stew with a foxtail and being
tortured and terrorized by scratching at the wall, asking to
give them back its tail. I strongly urge
y'all to give me my tail. No, I like this.
The thing pursuing Otis and the give
me my liver is very interesting because apparently his
bullet is what was going to kill George,
but it pierced his liver. George briefly
in the hospital. Very briefly. Just a throwaway line. Yep.
Otis gets Rex's truck and gets
all crunked up from. Presumably from the Wendigo. But hey, all of these
things, everything that's happened could be explained away.
That's why I like, what the director is doing is explaining everything away
with, could this all just be hallucinations
from various characters? Miles. Especially of just, you know, these things are
just coincidences that are happening and weirdness.
But I
forgot my point. So George dies
in the hospital, and for some reason,
I love this moment. They hand Kim his boots.
Here's his boots. And she's like, ah. She doesn't really say anything,
but she also has a look on her face like, what do I do with
these boots? Well, she looks very crushed. Oh, she's kind of turning
circles and wandering away. Yep, That's. That's the good acting
from Patricia Clarkson. She's great, but she just disappears.
Not like she doesn't. She doesn't get beamed up by Scotty.
She just. We look away from her. When we look back,
Miles just sees his father's boots just by themselves
on the floor. And I really love that. That image. I thought
that was really good. And then the big moment at
the end is that they wheel in Otis, who's all
busted up. He looks like he's not gonna make it, but he makes eye
contact with Miles, and he's like,
sorry about your dad, man. I feel
bad he doesn't say anything about your dad.
You do. You do, however, hear the voice of the man from the pharmacy
once again talking about how some spirits should be feared because they are
angry, which sort of paints the Wendigo
as a spirit of vengeance, which is a little off.
Yeah. In my knowledge of folklore. Yeah. We're gonna.
When we wrap up talking about the movie, we're gonna talk about two more things.
We're gonna talk about the actual Wendigo.
The real one I saw one time. No. We're gonna talk about the myth
surrounding the Wendigo, and we're gonna talk about a very
famous short story. But before we get to that trivia
on this movie, very minimal. Beyond what
the very interesting Larry Fessenden talked about on the DVD
extras. Basically, the project started when he was a
young boy because his teacher told the story of the Wendigo
to the class. And he didn't really remember all
of it because he was very young, but it haunted him.
We see footage of him, like, five years
or at least three years before the movie came
out of him doing a test run with
the little stilts you put on your feet and wearing
a Wendigo costume and
running through the woods while his friends film it and do test footage.
So he was working on this for years. I found that
really interesting. If there's more trivia out there,
I don't know it. Well, I will add the credit sequence is beautiful.
Oh, yeah. And it brought back the footprints in the
snow. And I will say it in a very nerdy
way, because I've been studying traditional knowledge and ways of
protecting it with intellectual property schemes. I was
very happy to see that there were parts of the soundtrack that were
native singers from the area and the native singers were
properly credited. Yeah. And that doesn't usually happen.
Yeah. Fessenden is the guy who did the research and
is going to give credit where credit's due. You know,
he's the kindest auteur.
But yeah, the animated credit sequence, it's not super animated.
Just as the credits are rolling up, we're going through these trees.
So it's like a black screen and these blue trees and
it's really neat. And the footprints of the Wendigo are getting closer
and closer as the credits come to their conclusion.
And it just made me think of like all the really, really fancy credit
sequences we get now. It reminded me
a little of the one for My
Soul To Take, which I'm really glad we're
recording in this room because I could look and see My Soul
To Take because otherwise that title wasn't coming back.
I knew it was an M so goodie for me.
Who would brighten the holidays with heart pounding rides and heartwarming
shows? Who would put a twinkle in
your eye with singing trees and dancing toys?
Who would ring in the season with handmade crafts and
holiday goodies?
And who would wrap it up in the Smokey's biggest Christmas Fest from
November 10th clear through December 30th? Ho, ho,
ho. So,
Lietta, how do you like this film? It's all
right. I mean, I like, like you said, I was
vastly relieved when I found out that the threat
from Otis that was established very early on in the
film and alluded that it might be sort of a house terrorizing,
house hostage thing didn't end up
happening that way. Yeah, he was the perpetrator,
as we find out. He was definitely a threat to them.
But the movie, it oddly does a lot
that doesn't move the story forward.
Like it has those peripheral mentions to other folklore
that's not explored. Yeah, it's. I don't know,
maybe it's just there for nerds who catch on and
there's a lot of character building. So, you know, we do
learn that Kim is a psychologist and we learn that after
this weirdly even, like perfect parenting method
that she's executing throughout the film until,
like she gets angry and then she's just a box of swear and
her husband has to calm her down, you know, we find out that George
has maybe anger management issues and stress
compartmentalization issues. Right. And maybe she
likes to analyze him too much there. But it
is interesting in how much they just explain to Miles they're very
honest with him. So there's a lot of character building that. That doesn't have anything
to do with the pressure that's building in
the story. I liked this too. This is not a keeper.
The space on the shelves is too precious.
But I did enjoy this. This is my third Fessenden
movie. Of course, I've seen him as an actor
pop up in all kinds of cool stuff like We Are Still Here,
where he's particularly good. But I like this
on par with the Last Winter,
which is a solid movie about climate
change and the end of the world. It's really good, but in a horror
thing. I don't like his debut
movie. I believe it's his feature length debut called Habit.
It's a vampire movie. In its defense, it was absolutely not what I
was expecting. So I have a feeling if I watch it again,
I not dislike it. But he has this
documentary feel. Occasional moments of camera shakery,
like a found footage thing, which I don't appreciate those as much
as I do the artistic flourishes that he. This movie's
chalk full of every camera trick, editing trick,
special effects, you know, nothing cgi.
There was though, a bullet time moment. You know, the bullet time
from the Matrix movies where everything freezes and you get a 3D
pivoting there. He did that for the scene
where they were. That they show that family who was
cutting up the deer. He did that. Everything freezes and
then the camera is pivoting and he gets like 3D view of that little kid
with like holding guts like, huh? And I was
like, wow, he's really going for every single
effect he could come up with. But yeah, I think the actual craft
behind the movie was cool. I wonder if it
reminded me of some of the things that happened in the woods too. I think
it's films from this time period have a certain kind of affectations to
them. But as far as what the film's about,
man, there's tension between,
like bad blood between the natives,
the Native Americans and the settlers, which is, you know,
the history of our country. But then
on top of that, you have the bad blood
between the locals and the tourists.
So everything is off on the wrong foot from the get go.
Well, the first. The first is an implied history, right?
One character who is later revealed to
be a phantom that represents the native community,
who's providing this information about the folklore.
Other than that, you have whispers, you have Those wooden totems.
But you don't see the tension there.
You just know that it's kind of laced throughout the community. Right. And then,
yeah, country residents do not like the weekenders.
My last two notes are just, thank God there were some
laughs. I was glad there was some funny dialogue because,
man, this needed some jokes. Mainly,
you know, Patricia Clarkson and Jack Webber,
they're very funny. You know, they have some good banter between them
and the creature.
There might be more than one version of the creature. Oh, there definitely
is. Yeah. And they're all kind of janky looking. But that's not what this
movie's about. This movie's not about the cool sculpture
thing that they had laid out in latex
to make a sick creature effect. No, it was not about that at
all. But, you know, I thought I'd mention it.
But before we wrap it up, we have a couple more things.
First of all is the folklore around the Wendigo.
What did you gather about this little beastie?
Well, I didn't do deep research, so apologies if I
miss key or important components. The Wendigo folklore
comes from Native American tribe
and tribes. It's a few of them, and they're all from one area,
so they're up north and into Canada.
So the stories come from Algonquin,
Ojibwe, Eastern Cree,
Saultow, Westman, Swamp Cree,
Nascapi, and Inu stories. And they all have slightly different
versions. Mainly, the Wendigo is giant. It's like
15ft. Wow. And it's malevolent. And it's a cannibal.
It's related with wintry times, times of famine.
And the most interesting thing I find about the story is
that the creature itself is supposed to be a huge,
gaunt, sallow faced cannibal
creature with glowing eyes. But the Wendigo
can possess a man. Right. So in times of famine,
this drive to
eat your fellow man would be an indicator that you've been
possessed by the Wendigo. I love your list of all of
the different tribes that had this as their.
Like, they have different versions of it. So you see that there was
a common belief, even with the
smaller details. Yeah. So there are varieties.
It's not across the entirety of the North American
continent. What I found very interesting is there's also an identified psychosis
around the Canadian areas and the Great Lakes where people
would believe that they were possessed by the Wendigo. They would suddenly
start looking on their fellow human beings as being edible
and tasty, and they would kind of scare themselves.
And it Was a very localized psychological phenomenon. And it has
become much less common in the 21st century because cell phones maybe.
Maybe because of the interconnectedness of everybody, you don't feel as alone.
I think one of the main components of being possessed by the Wendigo was
starvation, famine. But it was also how isolated you were, right?
How maybe you were with one or two other people.
And there's a whole bunch of, like, being driven cabin
fever, being driven mad by this isolation. There are plenty of poets
who talk about, like, the winter madness that takes over people. So it's
sort of along those lines in my head. I'm drawing connections.
But, yeah, there were different. Different ideas. So in a way, the way
that the Wendigo was pictured in different ways in the movie sort
of fits with how it had many different descriptions. Nice.
That's a researcher covering his butt. So this
legend inspired the writer Algernon
Blackwood, who. Very interesting.
Of all the classic horror writers,
the. You know, the turn of the century. Oh,
my God. Turn of the last century. Last century
writers. He has some stuff that's very
mystical and very complex. Some of
his stories are like, was that scary?
What did I read? What was that? That was weird. You know, like,
he strays from traditional
horror to takes it to another place, Almost like a metaphysical
kind of thing. And I really like
the Wendigo story, which came out in 1910,
and it's one of his best known stories. Apparently that and the Willows
have been adapted multiple times. The Wendigo has
been adapted. I didn't even search for it like a keyword search because,
like, there's so many movies that have Wendigo in it, it's ridiculous.
I'm not even going to go through the whole list, although I did not surprise
find out that a recent horror movie called Antlers, one that
is inspired by the Wendigo and that looks really scary, like, actually scary.
The story is scary.
The story, although it does the ponderous
thing that writers at that time loved to do,
which is, you know, a story that could be 15
pages is 50 pages. And there's a lot of people
in the scene, be it the main person or a peripheral
character who's trying to, like, sort out this supernatural stuff
they just witnessed or they're trying to talk somebody
down, which is what's going on here with this guy
and his friends are hunting out in
the middle of nowhere. He and this French Canadian
guy go off together to track moose for them
to hunt, while the other guys go off to do something else. This is during
the French fur trading time. Yeah, that's. That's what they were hunting for.
Right? And so the one guy, the French
Canadian guy, gets taken by the Wendigo. Then this
poor dude who was with him, he saw this guy taken and he
heard it. Him, like, screaming and all this. All this stuff,
you know, this. This, like, weird poetic
thing that the Wendigo would chant as he ran away about
his feet burning. And I was gonna say, wasn't it like, my feet are on
fire? Oh, the burning. Yeah. Yeah. It's really,
really creepy and very odd. It's just really strange,
which is what I love about these types of stories, is that strangeness,
that unexplained, inexplicable things that make the story
memorable. And then they meet up. He meets up
with the rest of his crew, and the whole time they're trying to talk him
out of what he saw. You didn't see that. You were. You're dreaming.
Blah, blah, blah. We'll go find him. And the worst thing that can happen,
he comes back. This. This. This French Canadian guy just
ambles up in the middle of the night. Hey, guys. Man,
that was crazy. I saw something, and it was crazy.
But it's a little weird. He's a little different.
It's his skin, and it's someone wearing
his skin, acting like him. But he looks deflated
and weird and like, his skin's gonna fall off and
his feet look all screwed up and everything's. Man, it's terrifying
story. So they chase it off. And then
the saddest part, of course,
is when they actually find this French Canadian,
this trapper hunter guy, and he's wasted
away to nothing. Like his soul, his essence has been
stolen. And he's just like. He couldn't even keep food down. He,
like, wanted to eat moss. And that was the strangest thing, was they
kept talking about how the. The Wendigo was a moss eater in the
story, which I thought was very strange,
but read the story. I know. I just spoiled
it. Let me know there's so much that you didn't spoil them right
now. I read it much longer ago than you. Yeah. Now, the footprints
in the snow that I called out from the movie, that's. That is
very much seen in. In the story. It's a huge part of the story.
And it's related to, you know, that the feet are burning as
you hear the Wendigo. And then the
Wendigo's victim say, which I always, in my head,
I related it to the cold. Since this happens in the cold. That the story
happens in the cold. The folklore is tied to the cold. The snow.
Like your feet, when you have frostbite, it burns.
Yeah. Being too cold can feel like burning
as well. So I always thought that there was that connection there. I'm not sure
if that's exactly what it's Blackwood, right? Yeah. What Blackwood
was saying because he talks. About how fast it moves.
The speed is what was burning its feet. Like the Flash of
Marvel Comics fame. The one with Batman.
Marvel Comics.
So yes, the story is
great. I loved it. But yeah, I did think it could be
a little shorter. But then again, I think about creepypasta
stories nowadays that are our new,
you know, like urban legend things. And they're always
too friggin long. We've watched a few shows that
animate a creepypasta by reading it, reading it out loud
and narrating it and everything. And there's usually a lot of
detail that you're like,
yep, okay guys. I think they're elaborated
on. I think they're made to be longer because you're conveying a
simple but powerful idea and you
need to capture your audience. So a
lot of times if you just give your audience a simple but powerful idea,
you know, they might be half listening, they're thinking about something else.
So you build up and you embellish around it in
order to capture their attention so that when you convey the powerful idea,
they get it. It's there. When you say thinking about something else,
you mean they're on TikTok? Yeah. Or scrolling on their phone or something.
Exactly, yeah. Did I tell you about my TikTok?
My TikTok TV idea? So you know how tiktoks
are in portrait? They don't film in landscape,
they film portrait. So one day in the future, TikTok is
going to release a tv. It's going to go floor to ceiling, but it's only
going to be like 3 or 4ft wide. It's going to be this really huge
long TV for just watching tiktoks on.
And people are going to start making feature length films in
portrait for TikTok. Am I supposed to honestly say that? Yes,
you told me this many, many times. Let's just say when
4K TikTok Blu Rays hit the market,
shit's going to be real. It's litter box time
in the Schmidt house. This litter box is not in the same
room. It's. It's in another room. But cheese
scratches like she's trying to dig a hole through The Earth.
She's not done. All right, we're gonna pretend
this isn't happening. Lietta, we have a segment before I
can let you move on with your life and find a new
husband. What is a recently seen and loved film?
Or, you know, it could be any genre. You could even just say, I feel
like watching something. What do you got?
I'm very bad with these questions. Well, anything even. Even a movie you
love that you want to watch tonight. Okay, so the first thing that comes
to my mind without looking, like I said,
I'm terribly bad at this, especially when you're going to be hanging
out because I feel unwilling to push movies
on you that I pick. Why? It's our movie collection. I know
it is. I would say the one that jumps to mind is
actually Robin Hood. The animated Robin Hood, the Disney
one. Yeah. Yeah, that's a great movie. You never have to make excuses
for that. I used the melody from one of the songs
to teach myself to whistle so that I could
teach my bird to whistle decades ago,
the bird never did learn how to whistle, but I know how to
now. And that's the one song that I whistle when
I choose to whistle at all. And whistling also
will call the cats. At least two of them. Yeah,
it's a siren song. You sing a siren song and the cats come
running. I picked a very recent watch. We watch this
rewatched this last night which is Alita Battle
angel from writer producer
James Cameron of Terminator 2 fame
and Titanic, Robert Rodriguez directing.
I am a huge nerdy nerd fan of Battle Angel
Alita, the manga known as Gun
M in Japan. And I have read
it and reread it. Not the whole thing, but I reread
and read the original nine volume series. I'm a huge fan.
So when we saw it in the theaters, I was very picky.
I had a few nitpicks about it I didn't like, but I overall
I really enjoyed the film and revisiting it on Blu
Ray disc last night I was just taken
with it all over again. Still have those nitpicks
in the back of my head. There's a couple little story things they could have
done. But the most shocking thing is
that it is the most disgusting gore
I've seen in a PG13 movie. We're talking
multiple beheadings, people cut in
half, other spoiler things that are
really disgusting. That I was like, James Cameron, you can
get whatever he wants. You know when you
notice the violence. And we were talking about, it's like, is It. Because the blood
is blue. Which wouldn't be a spoiler to say that the cyborg
characters. Blood is blue right there. Cyborgs, yeah. You know what
passed without me noticing until I was thinking back there?
What they called the meat bags, right? The fully human characters.
When a meat bag was cut in two, there was no blood at all.
No. And nothing. Yeah. When a character,
a human character is stabbed and basically bleeding to death,
they barely show it. They barely show it. But that's not the thing that
makes my brain explode. It's the fact that there are
human characters with human brains
in these cyborg bodies. Not just dying off
screen, dying on screen in horrendous, sickening ways.
And it's not fair. I grew up in the 80s
when the gore, everything was censored.
Everything was the MPAA, parents groups.
Everyone was losing their mind over the dumbest horror
shit that was rated R. Anyway, Those Friday
the 13th series films, some of their
gore scenes will never be restored. They don't exist.
All we can see, a little VHS copy of a copy of what the
people making the special effects shot just as reference material.
Never expecting, you know, that their work would be thrown away. Which it
was. I mean, watch Friday the 13th Part 7. There's a
couple characters who die and you're like, how did that person even die? They just
disappear. So I'm very sensitive to someone as
powerful as James Cameron getting to do whatever he wants and
calling up his buddy at the MPAA and be like,
yo, don't say anything about this guy who's cut in
half. And we see the slime between his brain
pan as it like, splits apart. Don't. Don't notice that. Like,
that's what I'm very upset about. But anyway,
that was my recently scene. You were there, I was there.
Folks, I'm gonna say goodbye to Lietta
and we're probably gonna go watch Robin Hood, not Men in Tights.
Although that movie's fine. Thank you for listening.
Good night. Good night.
Folks. Thanks so much for listening to this episode.
If you'd like to write into the show, send an email to DoomedMoviethon.
Mail or hit us up oomedmoviethon on
Instagram or doomedmoviethon on Twitter or
oomedmoviethoniscord or go
to hello, this is the Doomed show on Facebook. And message us there
if you want more. Hello, this is the Doomed show.
Goto DoomedMovietHon.com and click the podcast button
for the archive. Or go to YouTube and look up Doomed Moviethon
and you'll find the classic episodes of
hello, this Is the Doomed Show. And if that's still not enough,
I have written some books, you know, about my love of movies
over on Amazon.com just look up Richard Glenn Schmidt
and you'll find Giallo A Moviethon Diary,
Giallo Meltdown 2 Cinema Somnambulist or
Doomed Moviethon. The book hello, this Is the Doom
show is a proud member of the Legion Podcast network.
Goto LegionPodcasts.com and check out the
other great shows over there.