Film Club 6 - Wuthering Heights (Not That One)

Time for a quick film club before we dive into series seven!

In a break from Film Club tradition we only interrogate one film this episode, to give us time to talk about something good (Emily Bronte's marvellous novel Wuthering Heights) before we crash into having to discuss something awful (Jim Steinman's MTV movie transplating Wuthering Heights to 2003 California).

Oh dear.

Keep your comments, reviews and arguments flying in to chatoutofhell@gmail.com

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Transcript

Emma 0:00

What is this?

Sam 0:01

This is Chat Out of Hell Film Club. In which we get ready for another series of Chat Out of Hell by diving into the Jim Steinman executive produced 2003 MTV adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Meat Loaf isn't in this one. But who is Meat Loaf?

Emma 0:17

Well, Meat Loaf was a singer, actor, and watcher of films. Among his favourites were Fantasia, Modern Times, the Charlie Chaplin film, School of Rock, the BFG and Beauty and the Beast. He had a well-known soft spot for animated musicals,

Sam 0:35

School of Rock,

Emma 0:37

and notice that none of these films have anything to do with Jim Steinman. Who's Jim Steinman?

Sam 0:45

Jim Steinman was a musician songwriter and occasional film producer who should have stayed in his lane. He said that Wuthering Heights was one of his favourite books and wrote the song It's All Coming Back to Me Now under its influence, whatever that means. Who are we?

Emma 1:01

We are comedians, Emma Crossland and Sam Wilkinson. Two people with arts degrees. So you'd think we'd love Wuthering Heights and we mostly do.

Sam 1:10

We mostly do. We mostly do. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to Chat Out of Hell. Film Club Bow. Now. Now, Now

Emma 1:18

ding.

Sam 1:19

And also welcome to the builders who are working on your house while we record this.

Emma 1:25

I'm having a new roof installed, which is exciting and not at all stressful.

Sam 1:33

What a way to start the series. I know. Yeah. Good. So this is Chat Out of Hell Film Club. Apologies to everybody who's just tuned, tuned in. Yeah. Apologies to everybody who's tuned in on your old timey radio and found that this isn't main Chat out of Hell. That'll be back in two more weeks. But we decided to dive into one of Jim Steinman's favourite novels converted into a foolm. A, a film, converted into a film by Jim Steinman's pen taking the classic novel Wuthering Heights set on the isolated wind swept Yorkshire moors in the 18 hundreds and transplanting them to California in 2003.

Emma 2:15

it's a natural fit

Sam 2:15

Guaranteeing that, that will be amazing. Emma, we're mixing things up for this film club, right? Neither of us have yet watched

Emma 2:22

this. No, No, we haven't seen it yet.

Sam 2:24

So what we decided to do, as we've read the book recently we've recorded a special Chat out of Hell Book Club

Emma 2:31

What is this?

Sam 2:33

This is Chat out of Hell Book Club. An even more optional, extra than Chat out of Hell Film Club. If you don't want to know what Emma thinks about one of the greatest novels in the English language, then this isn't for you. And that's fine. We'll see you in proper Chat out of Hell in a couple of weeks. Emma.

Emma 2:49

Hi Sam.

Sam 2:49

Welcome to our intellectual book salon. Ooh,

Emma 2:52

Ooh.

Sam 2:53

Describe the book salon for our listeners.

Emma 2:55

It's remarkably like my living room only slightly noisier due to having the roofers in.

Sam 3:01

right.

Emma 3:02

It's the perfect environment with which to discuss literature.

Sam 3:05

Just like the salons of fin de ciecle Paris Uhhuh, great artists, writers, poets, all mingling here, discussing the great works while a couple of men with their trousers hanging down and no underwear on on roof drinking cans of Monster.

Emma 3:22

Ahhh. It's been a really long week,

Sam 3:27

This is a little short bonus extra 'cause I got really into reading Wuthering Heights and I made you read it before we watched the film. Shall we start with how we consumed

Emma 3:34

Yes. Yes, I think so.

Sam 3:36

I read it in book form, being as I am an old school intellectual.

Emma 3:41

And as I have no attention span whatsoever I did it in audio book form. I had Patricia Routledge reading it to me, which has been excellent.

Sam 3:51

For listeners unfamiliar with Patricia Routledge, her most famous role would've been Hyacinth Bucket in Keeping Up Appearances. The

Emma 3:57

Bouquet residence, lady of the house speaking,

Sam 4:00

Which was quite massive on PBS in America. I think it's one of those shows that when they do the pledge drives, possibly not these days, but they used to be like, if you still want high quality programming,

Emma 4:12

Keeping

Sam 4:13

Up Appearances, please dial in and give us some money.

Emma 4:16

It ran for quite a while over here, didn't it?

Sam 4:18

Yeah, about five series I wanna say yes. But we're not talking about

Emma 4:23

No. We must not get too

Sam 4:24

two sides. We're not talking about Keeping up Appearances. We are talking about Wuthering Heights.

Emma 4:28

I do wonder if this particular reading of Weathering Heights has coloured my perception somewhat. Sam, can you give us a few sentences for what Wuthering Heights is about?

Sam 4:37

Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's only novel written in 1847 under her pen name Ellis Bell. And I'm throwing Wikipedia away now. Wuthering Heights is the story of two families who live out on the moors in the middle of Yorkshire, where it's proper cold and horrible and everything's miserable. And these families have decided to be absolute pricks to one another

Emma 4:59

and make sure that they live in the most isolated situation possible.

Sam 5:03

The story begins with Mr. Earnshaw walking off to Liverpool and he says, I'm walking to Liverpool. It's about 80 miles. I'll see you in two days. Yeah.

Emma 5:13

Yeah.

Sam 5:15

I'm assuming that must be a realistic assessment of how long it took back in the ye olde days. 'cause my girl Bronte ain't gonna let me down. no. Anyway, he walks off to Liverpool to do business, but he comes back with a scruffy orphan

Emma 5:28

As one

Sam 5:29

as one does who he decides to love more than his own

Emma 5:32

Yeah.

Sam 5:32

Yeah. Which causes a bit of a palava.

Emma 5:35

What a surprise.

Sam 5:36

Consequently, the orphan falls in love with his own daughter, Cathy. They have a sort of tumultuous on, again, off again romance, but then Cathy runs away to marry the other boy in the valley.

Emma 5:48

who is richer, who is rich

Sam 5:49

Who is rich and is just all around better person. Yeah.

Emma 5:52

Yeah. He's a, he's quite a nice guy.

Sam 5:54

Yeah. Yeah. There's a subplot about Cathy's brother Hindley who inherits Wuthering Heights after their dad dies. He has his own son Hareton with a third girl who comes from the outside. And consequently she dies very quickly.

Emma 6:07

Yes, she doesn't she?

Sam 6:09

The sister of the Linton kids marries Heathcliff becoming Isabella Heathcliff and then gives birth to a son, Linton

Emma 6:17

Buy some more names. She calls, I mean, she calls him ly out with spite

Sam 6:21

Yeah, there's a lot of spite

Emma 6:22

to irritate Heathcliff.

Sam 6:23

Fuck. I'm gonna have to edit so hard. I, right. Okay.

Emma 6:26

This is, See why I didn't wanna do it.

Sam 6:31

Yeah. This is the story of two houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrush Cro Thrust Crush. Fuck sakes, thrust thrush, crush.

Emma 6:40

thrush crush. That sounds like a medical,

Sam 6:47

It's the story of two isolated houses on the Yorkshire moors, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and the families who live in them who go absolutely bananas from being so isolated from civilization. The only people who come into this little community from the outside either die immediately or are treated like utter pricks.

Emma 7:08

Yep.

Sam 7:09

Yeah. And that's the whole story. The two branches of this family over two generations, intermarry in genetically dangerous ways. Yeah. Several times until you've run out of remaining cousins. But our main leads really are Heathcliff, who is the adopted son of the Earnshaw family. And he is adopted in the sense that Mr. Earnshaw goes on business one day and comes back with a scruffy orphan.

Emma 7:34

Yeah.

Sam 7:34

And then his adopted sister Cathy, with whom he's in love and she's in love with him, but they also hate each other. So out of spite they marry every other available person in the neighbourhood until everyone's dead.

Emma 7:46

Yep.

Sam 7:47

That's Wuthering Heights. I fucking loved it. What did you think of it, Emma?

Emma 7:52

I enjoyed it.

Sam 7:53

Okay.

Emma 7:54

It's a good story. It's a lot of fun. I absolutely hate every single one of the characters. They're all

Sam 8:01

I think this is the second time I read it. I remember the first time I read it I kept turning to Kat and saying, everybody in this book is a power arsehole.

Emma 8:08

Yes. They're all awful in quite spectacular ways. Yes. They're all horrible to each other. It's a tale of cutting your nose off to spite your face, isn't it?

Sam 8:19

It absolutely is. Yeah. What your favourite bits in this book?

Emma 8:23

Oh, I dunno what my favourite bits were. I don't think I necessarily had any favourite bits. There were bits that infuriated me, which I guess could be my

Sam 8:32

Okay. We could, yeah, let's talk about those. Yeah.

Emma 8:34

The one character that I really passionately hated It was Linton heathcliff the milksop boy,

Sam 8:41

So this is the son of Heathcliff and Isabella. Isabella

Emma 8:45

And Is, Isabella was Cathy's

Sam 8:49

Yep.

Emma 8:50

Who ran off with Heathcliff. They sort of eloped And only then when she got back to Wuthering Heights did Isabella discover just what a nightmare, her life was about to become. Now there's no real detail as to how badly he treated her or what he did, but she ends up pregnant and runs away with the child. And Heathcliff decides not to pursue her under the understanding that she doesn't go back to her house at Ths Croft Thrush Cross Grange. What a terrible name for a place. She lives her life out elsewhere for another 13 years until she dies.

Sam 9:27

I can't remember if it's implied or stated, but I'm pretty sure it's London that she goes to

Emma 9:31

Is it London?

Sam 9:32

which sounds like a pretty good deal.

Emma 9:34

Yeah. But she dies when the, I guess

Sam 9:37

when the boy's about 13, I

Emma 9:39

or 13. Yeah. And so he comes back to live with his family at Thrush, Croft Thrush cross, I

Sam 9:47

We're gonna call them The Heights and the Grange from

Emma 9:49

now on. Yes. Yes. He goes back to live with his family at the Grange. But Heathcliff gets wind of this and insists that the boy live with him at Wuthering Heights. Linton, when he gets to Wuthering Heights, is understandably sad and a bit of a broken boy because the only parent that he's ever had in his life has died. At this stage he's allowed to be pathetic because you would be. Then when we meet him at other points in the book, fuck me. He is the whiniest, most pathetic snivelling... I used the word milksop earlier and I fully stand by that. He's wet. He's a drip. He is sickly in a way that feels entirely self-induced. And I feel like there's a theme of this running through the book. There. There's, yeah.

Sam 10:41

Absolutely. Yeah. I hate to go all literature critic on it, but there's this, the great parallel between Linton and Hareton. Hareton is Hindley Earnshaw's son

Emma 10:51

Hareton is born and his mum dies almost immediately. Yeah. 'Cause childbirth killed women a lot back then, I think.

Sam 10:58

I think while that is accurate, you are being very generous to one of this novel's flaws, which is that when people are done in the story, they are fucking

Emma 11:06

done. Yeah. There is quite a lot of that.

Sam 11:09

And a lot of the time the characters themselves know it's coming. So spoiler alert, Linton dies towards the end of the book, but everybody's been talking about how it's coming for about 15

Emma 11:18

Yeah. It's so awful. So once HIndley dies, Heathcliff takes custody of Hareton. And as part of a revenge he's awful and make sure he is raised without education. So he can't read. He doesn't

Sam 11:37

He's raised as a He's raised as a brute. Yeah. Heathcliff puts it, but then Heathcliff also compares his own son with Hareton very negatively. He's really mad that he won't allow himself to love Hareton because Hareton is the son of a guy he hated, even though Hareton really strong and good at stuff. Yeah. And Linton is, as you say, a whining little milksop. yeah. A lot of this book is about people setting rules for themselves and then being really furious that they have to follow those rules. Early on in the book, Hindley really wants to do away with Heathcliff, but then Heathcliff accidentally saves Hareton's life and Hindley, therefore considers himself in debt And there's a weird bit where he's talking to the narrator Nelly and explaining, I've got this gun and every night, right. I go to Heathcliff's bedroom stand outside and I really wanna break in and shoot him, but I can't 'cause he saved my son. So I just get up and take my gun and stand outside of his bedroom.

Emma 12:32

So many unhealthy relationships.

Sam 12:35

I'm gonna turn to super summary.com For its personal reflection and connection section. So I've got some book club questions for you, Emma. How do you relate to the theme of revenge versus forgiveness that run throughout the novel? Have you experienced situations where you had to choose between these paths?

Emma 12:53

Oh God, I'm, have I ever exacted my revenge?

Sam 12:58

Have you ever across a multi-generational scheme.

Emma 13:02

There's still time,

Sam 13:04

a situation in which you inherit two massive houses.

Emma 13:09

Not yet, Sam. Not yet. But you know, there's still time.

Sam 13:11

still time. Right. We love the book. It's a bit of a twisty, turny interweavy plot. So I just wanna dive into two things. One, this is one of Jim Steinman's favourite books. That's why we're talking about it. Of course That's why we're looking at the movie.

Emma 13:24

Of course, Jim loves this book, Ugh.

Sam 13:28

It's everything Jim wants. It's melodramatic, it's stupid. All the emotions are turned up to 11. It's full of revenge.

Emma 13:36

There's some love in it. Some of it very misguided, some of it quite genuine. Which is quite sweet. I was quite touched at the ending. I like that Cathy two gets with Hareton

Sam 13:48

the last remaining man in the

Emma 13:50

valley. The final remaining man. Yes. I like that she softens towards him and Yeah. Develops an understanding of what he's been through having been a total bitch to him.

Sam 13:59

Yes. She has been an absolute prick to him. Yeah.

Emma 14:01

She'd horrible.

Sam 14:02

I also like that, Nelly is the narrator for most of the story, but that's nested within a narration by Lockwood, Mr. Mr. Lockwood, who is just passing through, he's a temporary tenant. Yeah. one of Heathcliff's spare houses. But there's a bit towards the end where he and Nelly are trying to get Cathy to marry him 'cause he is a suitable pairing. And the book just says, no fuck off.

Emma 14:25

I'm glad that happened.

Sam 14:26

Yes, me too.

Emma 14:28

'cause I didn't particularly care that idea.

Sam 14:31

I enjoyed slash was horrified a lot at the ever escalating cycles of dickery that went through the book, but I did enjoy a sort of sunny ending in which two fairly nice characters managed to come through with the houses.

Emma 14:44

Can we talk about Cathy One.

Sam 14:46

Cathy One.

Emma 14:47

I, that's how I've been referring Cathy One and Cathy Two. Cathy One, who is

Sam 14:52

flighty bitch.

Emma 14:53

Oh, hysterical. At times. And I hate to say that about a woman. I hate to reduce it to that, but fucking hell woman. Get a grip. She marries Edgar because of his standing, and he's seems like a nice guy.

Sam 15:06

Edgar is one of the genuinely nice characters in the book. Yeah. He's very understanding.

Emma 15:11

He's remarkably understanding, considering that she's openly in love with another man. Yeah. But also he's lovely with his own daughter. That's really nice it's slightly comforting in amongst all the horror. But yeah she marries this better prospect instead of following her heart, although her heart has, you know, fucked off elsewhere and nobody knows where.

Sam 15:30

but he does fuck off elsewhere because she rejects him as I remember.

Emma 15:34

Yeah, you're right. So he goes and when he returns, she's desperate for him. And it's horrible. She's as obsessive as he is. He's obsessive in a difficult growly man way. And she's just mad. The minute anybody objects quite rightly to her potentially going off with another man she throws a hissy fit. And so she refuses food and essentially allows herself to die.

Sam 16:06

As so many characters characters do.

Emma 16:07

But it does feel like that, doesn't it? It's not just me being No. Yeah. It feels like it's all self-inflicted, this.

Sam 16:13

Birth to Cathy Two. And then you would be expecting that she dies in childbirth in a realistic and also plot appropriate way. But she survives the childbirth and then just refuses food.

Emma 16:24

Yeah. Yeah. So she essentially kills herself rather than dealing with any of it. And what I'm saying is therapy is important.

Sam 16:35

Therapy is important.

Emma 16:38

yeah. She really irritated me. She's quite nasty at times. As soon as she found out that Isabella had a crush on Heathcliff, she was a total bitch. Just not a nice character. And I've got this horrible feeling because I've never seen an adaptation of it. This is my first dip into Wuthering Heights doing it the proper way, with the book. Albeit read to me, like I'm a child. I have looked around at reviews of adaptations. A lot of them seems to stop.

Sam 17:06

I was gonna mention this as well.

Emma 17:07

at the death of Cathy.

Sam 17:09

Which to me is mad

Emma 17:10

the second half's the better half, I've got this horrible feeling that it's going to be portrayed as star crossed lovers rather than just awful people being awful.

Sam 17:20

I think that brings Book Club to a close, but before we do finish up, we of course have to rate this novel on our Emily Bronte Book Rating Scale, which as every literary scholar knows, runs from Emily Bronte down to Emily Goodonete, all the way down to Emily Itsallgonewrongte at the bottom. What is this?

Emma 17:43

I mean, comparing it to all of her many other works,

Sam 17:46

right.

Emma 17:47

It has to be an Emily Bronte.

Sam 17:49

This is an Emily Bronte. This I think is the best Emily Bronte novel you are

Emma 17:52

Yeah. I agree with you

Sam 17:55

It was dead good. I found it very readable and quite funny in places as well, which I wasn't expecting. there's a great scene early on where Lockwood meets Heathcliff and the members of his household. He's this big city dickhead who's come down to talk to the landlord about the rent, and nobody has any time for him.

Emma 18:13

It's an enjoyable book to read, even if all of the characters are pricks.

Sam 18:18

We've read the book so that we can understand what we think Jim Steinman will have done to ruin it. This film was made in 2003. It's a contemporary adaptation of Emily Bronte's 1847 novel, adapted by Max Ensco and Annie deYoung from an original story by Jim Steinman and Patricia Knop. Produced for MTV, the film stars, Erica Christiansen, Mike Vogel, Christopher Masterson, Katherine Hegel, John Doe, and Aimee Osborne. Yeah, that's Osborne as in the Osbornes. But one of the ones that wasn't in the documentary, whatever it was, reality show. She was a serious actor. But what do we think, Emma, Jim Steinman has to this classic work of literature?

Emma 19:01

I feel like he's going to have tried to do a Baz Luhrman Romeo and Juliet kind of a thing. Yeah, that's the vibe I think he was going for. I think it's going to fail spectacularly. I'm hoping that it's gonna be at least weird and gothic in places. But also I think he's not gonna tell the full story and it's just gonna be the Cathy Heathcliff romance elements. I don't think he's gonna go into the second half, which is the good bit.

Sam 19:29

Yeah. Agreed. I've got a couple of scenes as I was reading them in the book, I thought, I know what Jim's doing to this. Knowing the way Jim's brain works, I think all of this is set in a single high school. The novel is of course about isolation and hinges on how few people there are. The entire plot is about there's only really two families around. Yeah. Plus some servants who don't count. And

Emma 19:51

Dr. Ken.

Sam 19:52

and Dr. Kenneth, sorry. Yes. But that's what sets off the mad course of events and revenge. Yeah. So this is gonna be set in a busy high school in California. The narrator in the novel is Nelly Dean, who is a sort of housekeeper. She's gonna be the unattractive best friend,

Emma 20:08

Right, yeah.

Sam 20:08

The bit where Heathcliff storms off and disappears and people speculate about where he's gone.

Emma 20:13

Is he going off on a motorbike?

Sam 20:15

Oh. Do you know, that's not even on the list. But yes, obviously he is. In the novel, people speculate that maybe he's joined the army or he's gone off to university or something to better him 'cause he comes back, kind of, a rich

Emma 20:25

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam 20:26

He's gonna go to one of those American private schools for a semester and come back a refined boy. When Heathcliff comes back, he moves into the Heights with Earnshaw. And the Heights becomes this pit of gambling and drinking and debauchery. Classic frat house scene. Yeah.

Emma 20:42

Yep. Oh yeah. I could get on with that.

Sam 20:43

And finally, I think Wuthering Heights, which is the oppressive, narrow crushing house which kind of physically bears down on everybody who lives in it, on the isolated moors, that will become a big, lovely Californian house. You know, one of those ones that's 90% window and that's either gonna be in Beverly Hills or possibly out on the coast overlooking a beautiful surfing beach.

Emma 21:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam 21:06

That's my predictions.

Emma 21:07

I like those predictions. definitely think that Heathcliff's gonna go off on a motorbike, because it's Jim. I'm wondering if instead of high school, it's gonna be centred around some sort of rock and roll a situation if it's gonna be bands and, oh, musicians. There's so much potential bullshit.

Sam 21:26

Yeah. Oh one more thing. I think that the character of Heathcliff in the novel, Heathcliff is definitely not of the same race as the characters around him in, in Yorkshire. Yeah. And that definitely feeds into how people treat him and how he reacts to that. All of that's gonna be thrown aside. Heathcliff is gonna be played by a man who basically dresses like young Jim Steinman. Yeah. Leather jacket, long silvery white hair.

Emma 21:52

No race will be involved in it.

Sam 21:54

Oh, absolutely not. no. Jim does not have the, dramatic chops to be able to handle a story about race.

Emma 22:01

Any other Jim tropes that I think we're gonna have?

Sam 22:04

It's gonna go on too long.

Emma 22:07

The fact that it exists at all is too long. I think it's gonna be more star cross lovers than people all being awful to each other.

Sam 22:18

Yeah. I suspect,

Emma 22:20

they're gonna really romanticise

Sam 22:22

the it's gonna be the incredibly mutually destructive Yeah. Relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff will just become, her dad won't let her see him.

Emma 22:31

Yeah. Or something equally trite and horrible.

Sam 22:35

Yeah.

Emma 22:36

that's kind of it, I think.

Sam 22:37

Cheer up, Emma. We're about to watch a film, so if you wanna watch along with us, don't. If you would like to go find this film, I think it's on Amazon or one of those We're gonna stream it for a couple of quid. You can do that if you want, and then come back to this podcast. But nobody's making you. Yeah. Oh, all right. Well, we're gonna go watch a film. We'll be right back. We've just watched 2003's, MTV, adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Suri Krishnamma, story by Jim Steinman and Patricia Knop. Emma, what did you think of that?

Emma 23:17

Wow. Sometimes a film really draws you into its world and you become emotionally involved in that, and the 90 minutes that it lasts feels like it's not enough. And this was not that film. It's so much worse than I thought it was gonna be.

Sam 23:35

It was a real honker. But I'm so glad that we read the book beforehand. Yes. Because otherwise you might have thought that Wuthering Heights was a dog shit novel.

Emma 23:46

Oh, it's so bad. It's not even comically bad though, is it? No. It's not like a stinker that you watch for a bit of fun.

Sam 23:54

I of the films, I mean, this is skipping well ahead to how we rate this at the end. But of the films that we've watched for film club so far, this is absolutely at the bottom. I'm watching Spice World again ahead of this.

Emma 24:06

There's no joy in it. It was so po faced and serious.

Sam 24:09

It was simultaneously po faced and serious while nothing was at stake

Emma 24:13

Yeah.

Sam 24:14

The bones of the story from the novel have been kind of carried over. Yeah. It opens with Cathy, who is Kate in this Yes. Living with her brother.

Emma 24:25

Hindley, who is Hendrix

Sam 24:27

and their father Earnshaw. Shore shore.

Emma 24:30

Earnshaw. And they all call him Earnshaw even when he's their dad. Yeah. To find disrespectful.

Sam 24:36

And they all live together In the Heights.

Emma 24:38

Yes. The Heights. Which is a

Sam 24:40

A lighthouse. Of

Emma 24:41

course it is. It's a

Sam 24:42

lighthouse.

Emma 24:43

And I guess that's been done to try and create that feeling of isolation that you probably wouldn't get in any other way, I dunno. Oh,

Sam 24:52

Oh, bless you. for trying to ascribe logic to this.

Emma 24:57

Well, it,

Sam 24:59

Yeah, I, I get that. It's okay. So, yes. They don't have the moors in California famously.

Emma 25:07

I did write down here Jim really needed to visit Yorkshire ahead of this project 'cause the, didn't capture any of the wildness. And I know coast can be wild, but this just felt

Sam 25:21

There weren't a lot of really dark stormy nights on this horrible coast. No. Um, yeah. So going back to your point that you just made, yeah. I guess if you were going to translate an isolated moorland farmhouse into American pop culture tropes. Yeah. I guess Lighthouse works. Yeah. They're out of the

Emma 25:44

But Lighthouse is also like, it's heavily used as a metaphor, as a beacon for hope. Yeah. Which it really isn't in this.

Sam 25:53

No, but it is a lovely place that Earnshaw is restoring. Didn't have to be restoring it, but he was. And I guess that is because they didn't have a massive budget for sets, so they couldn't have the lighthouse look nice early on and then ruined later.

Emma 26:09

I don't think they had a massive budget for sets or anything else for that matter.

Sam 26:15

Heathcliff became Heath.

Emma 26:17

Yeah.

Sam 26:18

Two minutes into the film, we encountered our first problem with reality because Heathcliff basically gets found in the same way that he does in the book. Earnshaw just comes across him and says, come live with us. Yeah. But this is 2003 California this isn't...

Emma 26:33

where is social services? This unregistered child.

Sam 26:37

unregistered child. who, who doesn't remember? He's like six or seven years

Emma 26:41

Yeah.

Sam 26:41

And Earnshaw says "he's been living by the road."

Emma 26:45

like a

Sam 26:45

cat.

Emma 26:46

like all those videos that appear on my social media stream. people finding cats. Yeah. there's the cat distribution system at work. Oh, it's the little boy distribution system at work.

Sam 26:59

So not another question does come up about Heathcliff's origins or the legal basis by which he goes on to live in the house with everybody else. In a diversion from the plot of the original novel, Cathy has a secret secret cave

Emma 27:13

Of course. Yes. A secret cave, not a euphemism.

Sam 27:16

And her line describing it is, "I have a secret, my very own cave. Even the light from the lighthouse can't find me here." No. Why would it,

Emma 27:27

it's not how light

Sam 27:28

yeah. I would go for the light from the Sun, which is more pervasive than lighthouse lights. But there we go. We skip ahead to them as teenagers. Didn't predict songs. Why didn't I predict songs in a Jim Steinman film?

Emma 27:42

A Jim Steinman MTV film Yeah. So we should have thought of the songs. Oh, the songs. Oh,

Sam 27:48

Oh, the songs. Three Steinman songs appear in this. Yep. We have More which we have covered on the podcast. By the Sisters of Mercy.

Emma 27:56

But this is a new version for us.

Sam 27:57

It's a new version for us,

Emma 27:59

for us, unfortunately,

Sam 28:00

Yeah. Heartbreaking that we never fit it into our episode about More. We also have, If it Ain't Broke, Break It, which I think appears on a late Meat Loaf uh, it

Emma 28:10

appears on Bat out of Hell Three.

Sam 28:12

Okay.

Emma 28:13

We've not covered it yet,

Sam 28:14

No. And we also have the Future Ain't What it Used to Be. Which Appears in a few places and there's some genuinely good versions of the Future Ain't What it Used to Be. Not

Emma 28:23

not on this

Sam 28:23

film. but there are some good ones. In this universe, Heathcliff is a singer songwriter.

Emma 28:31

He's also a surfer dude. A surfer with a shark tooth necklace.

Sam 28:35

And I do have to hold up my hands and apologise for not realising that obviously Heathcliff would be a surfer dude. dude

Emma 28:42

It's so bad.

Sam 28:43

Then the linton's, who are the rich family, across the valley. They become the super rich family. Yeah. In a massive house that you can just wander into

Emma 28:53

from not far from the deserted lighthouse,

Sam 28:57

But they've never met before. No. So we have the brother Edward, who is played by the older brother in Malcolm in the Middle. Uhhuh. And we know he's a prissy dweeb of a guy 'cause he always wears shirts with buttons tucked into his trousers.

Emma 29:09

Yeah. Not the likeable character from the book at all. A bit

Sam 29:13

a bit of a creep. He is a bit of a creep.

Emma 29:15

And his sister's even

Sam 29:16

so I kind of like what they did with Isabella.

Emma 29:19

They turned her into a bit of a bitch, didn't

Sam 29:21

Yeah. In the novel, she's a girl with a crush who gets trodden on a lot. In this, she's sort of, an manipulatrix. Yes. In the vein of cruel

Emma 29:32

That's exactly what I thought.

Sam 29:33

This was absolutely at the top of their minds when they wrote this. I'm not sure they realised it, but that's definitely where it came from. from.

Emma 29:40

Huge Cruel Intentions vibes.

Sam 29:41

And then we have an original character to the movie. Who was called Raquel.

Emma 29:47

Ah, yeah. Raquel

Sam 29:48

Raquel was played by Aimee Osborne in a couple of scenes and she was Isabella's bitch mate. Yeah. Who serves no purpose, None whatsoever No purpose whatsoever. To the plots. But then broadly the same plot beats happen. Roughly.

Emma 30:03

I mean, Isabella is instrumental in Heath's music career

Sam 30:08

Oh, sorry. Yeah. All the same plot beats. Do you remember in the novel where

Emma 30:12

when Heath recorded an album

Sam 30:17

after having one of his songs leaked to Napster? That's a thing that happened in this film.

Emma 30:23

Yeah. It's so, so bad.

Sam 30:25

The song was leaked to Napster because Isabella was just keeping him in her room at her boarding school. Yeah. Where she also had a recording studio.

Emma 30:35

I feel like there would've been more checks done.

Sam 30:38

Well, a teacher did go up and say, do you have somebody in

Emma 30:40

Yeah. But they just all said no. And that was the end of that.

Sam 30:42

Yeah. That was it. And we had a shot of Raquel giving a sort of knowing smile and walking towards the camera,

Emma 30:49

End of part.

Sam 30:52

Heath becomes a massive recording star, so that's how he gets his money in this version of the story.

Emma 30:56

Yeah. I prefer it where you don't know where it's ambiguous.

Sam 31:00

Yeah, but I think in a 20th, 21st century version, you can't know. I

Emma 31:05

I guess one of the similarities in some is Heath's desire to possess

Sam 31:11

Yes.

Emma 31:11

The women that he's

Sam 31:13

Heath is massively possessive and creepy.

Emma 31:16

Which is a red flag.

Sam 31:18

Indeed. Broadly up to date, but vaguely accurate adaptation of the novels plot beats.

Emma 31:26

I mean, it was still a bit too lovers-y.

Sam 31:29

Well, this is what I was gonna get onto, is there was nothing at stake at any point. No, because it was just about young twats being twats.

Emma 31:36

Yeah.

Sam 31:37

And in the novel, people are worried about the state of the farmhouse and there are kids various characters are worried about their health and that's why they put up with the bullshit.

Emma 31:45

There was no sort of Nelly

Sam 31:47

There was no Nelly who was like, oh, I've known you since you were kids and I don't want you to destroy yourselves.

Emma 31:52

Because there was fuck all at stake. Very hard to care about any of it.

Sam 31:56

Yeah. Not, you could have all just moved away.

Emma 32:00

As predicted, the film ended at Cathy's death,

Sam 32:04

if you was, I, I got well, a that, but also if you were to make volume two of this version of it, Heathcliff's got no revenge to take. Yeah. His entire revenge was buying the house, which he does in the book. But he does that as a result of making Earnshaw drink himself to death. Yeah. Whereas here, he just rides a motorbike in and says, I bought the house off the bank.

Emma 32:29

Can we talk about the graffiti? In the lighthouse when it's been wrecked by Hendrix. Heath rides in on a motorbike because of fucking course he does threatens Hendrix kicks him out. But there's graffiti all over the place 'cause they've been

Sam 32:45

it's been used as a

Emma 32:46

party

Sam 32:46

house.

Emma 32:47

And one bit of the graffiti just says West Ham. Is it West Ham? 12

Sam 32:52

West Ham. 11 or 12. It's sort of a bit unclear and I have tried to find out who wore the 11 or 12 shirt for West Ham. At that time. It's not easy to find out and I can't be bothered. But somebody involved in the production was clearly a West Ham

Emma 33:06

It's such a weird little Easter egg.

Sam 33:08

Yeah,

Emma 33:09

but not a nice Easter egg, like a Cadbury's one.

Sam 33:12

I'm prepared to bet that this isn't gonna get an answer. But if you do know who wore the 11 or 12 shirt for West Ham in 2003 or possibly the 2002, one to two or two to three season, I would guess do let us know. Chat out of hell@gmail.com. Any other thoughts?

Emma 33:30

I expected it to be trashy and rubbish. But this was so nothing.

Sam 33:37

It's a bit my own fault because I forgot how low budget MTV original movies were. Yeah. Particularly around then. I predicted that this would be set mostly in a high school. And I think the only reason it isn't is 'cause you'd had to pay a lot of extras.

Emma 33:51

Yeah

Sam 33:52

cause literally outside of the main cast, we got a couple of other people with one or two lines.

Emma 33:57

Again, I suppose that kind of has the air of isolation to it, whether that's a deliberate choice or a budgeting choice. I don't know.

Sam 34:08

To an extent it does isolate them, but not in a way that makes any sense. No. Where did these children go to school? Where is the hospital? Yeah, there's a car crash in it. And the result of the car crash is that Cathy just gets laid in a bed. you want some fun facts? Okay. Here are some fun facts,

Emma 34:27

Oh, are we stretching the definition of fun here?

Sam 34:29

Yeah, well they're definitely facts. Isabella was played by Katherine Heigl. Right. Who was in Grey's Anatomy for a long time. Mm-hmm. She's been in all sorts of bits of stuff, but she was nominated for a golden raspberry for her performance in this for worst actress. Amazing. Yep. That was a fact.

Emma 34:50

did this get picked up for any other

Sam 34:52

Oh, hang Hang on. One nomination, total under awards. So this is good awards, right? It was nominated for best sound editing in television, long form and music, The sound was godawful.

Emma 35:08

It

Sam 35:08

It was was a lot of mumbling. The mix was all over the place. There was an excellent bit that we noticed towards the end where there was a passionate conversation going on on a balcony outside of the house and a door blew shut noisily..

Emma 35:22

Yes.

Sam 35:23

And they clearly just couldn't be arsed to do another take.

Emma 35:27

We've had enough. We are running out of money. We're running out of light.

Sam 35:33

The director, Suri Krishna mm-hmm. Is also known for the Canterville Ghost. Yeah. You know the Canterville ghost? That TV series?

Emma 35:45

Nope. No.

Sam 35:47

He's done 76 episodes of Coronation Street. I, He's done 50 of Emmerdale I might have met him. He's done Casualty, Holby City. He's done all the UK soaps, soap. The Bill. South of the Border. Soldier. Soldier. Oh.

Emma 36:04

It doesn't surprise me at all that he ended up making a career in soapy stuff. 'cause that film that we just watched wasn't at all soapy and tedious.

Sam 36:12

Well, you know, he's busy and we are not. So what you

Emma 36:17

whatcha gonna do I mean ouch, Sam.

Sam 36:19

where's My IMDB entry is much shorter.

Emma 36:22

Oh.

Sam 36:24

been BAFTA nominated. Oh

Emma 36:25

Oh.

Sam 36:26

yeah. The best drama serial 1999.

Emma 36:29

what we just watched, there's only so much you can do with that script.

Sam 36:33

The script is by Max Ensco and Annie deYoung from an original story by Jim Steinman and Patricia Knop. Now, Patricia Knop. I'm not sure if we've come across her, but we might well have done. 'Cause she definitely is linked to a couple of things. She wrote the book for Whistle Down the Wind. Presumably that's where she met Jim. Yeah. She was also involved in the Red Shoe Diaries, which I swear has come up a couple of times.

Emma 36:55

That was the uh, the, the, the sort of

Sam 36:58

drama starring Mulder out of, uh, X-Files. Max Ensco and Annie deYoung don't have Wikipedia pages because of the shame. Oh, he does have an IMDB. He's not busy. He wrote a TV movie called Earth versus the Spider.

Emma 37:16

That sounds great.

Sam 37:17

A shy, obsessive comic book fan gets injected with an air experimental serum of a lab that is studying how to give humans the ability of spiders. Dan Akryod's in it.. Oh what? So it's a film about people who like Spider-Man. Extraordinary. Any other opinions?

Emma 37:37

just, I hate it.

Sam 37:39

Yeah.

Emma 37:39

I hate it. It's so nothing. Yeah. I would watch Spice World over that and I hated Spice World.

Sam 37:47

It was a very not thingy film. If they'd turned it up to 11 and really Cruel Intentions. It could be great. It could have been fun. Yeah. But the script was terrible, but also so was the budget. And the acting. Mm-hmm. And yeah, the the and very rote of location. The props department didn't pull their weights.

Emma 38:12

No, was all

Sam 38:15

Sorry, I've just remembered the bit where he throws a cello into the sea.

Emma 38:18

Oh my God. It could have been as you say, Cruel Intentionsed up to the nines. also could have been like schlocky, rock fun.

Sam 38:27

Yeah.

Emma 38:28

And they could have gone really gothic with it, but it was just boring.

Sam 38:32

Yeah. Yeah. So, sorry about that, everyone. We thought we'd have gold out of a Jim Steinman adapted Wuthering Heights.

Emma 38:41

Nothing.

Sam 38:43

Is it time to rate this film, Emma? yeah. Okay. So, this is a Suri Krishnamma film, which means I had to write to the Reader's Digest to get their special Suri Krishnamma rating scale delivered to me one entry at a time, over a series of several weeks, and they've all arrived now. So I can tell you this is the scale. Are we rating this Suri Krishnamma, Suri Krishna or Suri Krishna? Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, Nah. Hey, Jude, don't wash this film. What is it, Emma?

Emma 39:16

I mean, well done.

Sam 39:17

Thanks.

Emma 39:17

Really well, well done with that. Hey, Jude, don't watch this film

Sam 39:22

The whole thing.

Emma 39:25

Suri Krishna. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, No. Hey, Jude, don't watch this film.

Sam 39:30

It's a stinker of a film. just shaking. He's very bad, but.. Maybe you have opinions on Jim Steinman's adaptation of Wuthering Heights. Maybe you have opinions on Wuthering Heights in general. Maybe you just want to bring some joy into our lives. Please do. Drop us an email chat out of hell@gmail.com. Or you could let us know what you think of the songs that we've chosen for the first proper episode of the next series, which is coming along in two weeks. Don't worry, we're doing proper Chat out of Hell next time. It'll be fine. We're back on June the eighth, and Emma is gonna bring.

Emma 40:03

I'm gonna bring Stark Raving Love from Bad for Good.

Sam 40:06

While I'll be bringing Razor's Edge from Midnight at the Lost and Ooh, ooh. They're both moody songs that we could say something about that are a bit good and also a bit shit, but they are at least a bit good. So if you've got opinions on those, let us know. Chat out of hell@gmail.com. Otherwise, thanks for listening to this. If you didn't enjoy it, imagine how bad we felt watching the film. We'll see you all again in two more weeks time for the start of the next series of Chat out of hell. Bye. Bow Now. Now, Now. Ding.