Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 153 - The History of Space Horror: Part 1
Abby and Alan discuss the vast history of space horror in film and literature.
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Sources
- A New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik: The War Inside H.G. Wells from 2021
- New York Times Article by Mekado Murphy: How ‘Alien’ Spawned So Many Others from 2017
- ArtNet.com article by Tim Brinkhof: As Seen on ‘Alien’: H.R. Giger’s Biomorphic Nightmare
- War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast transcripts by HG Wells.
New Yorker Article by Dan Chiasson from 2018: “2001: A Space Odyssey”: What It Means, and How It Was Made
PublicBooks.com article by Eleanor Johnson: Speaking the Monster: Ecofeminism in “Alien” and “Aliens”
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Hello everyone, Welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour podcast. I am Abby Brinker sitting here with Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:And today we are talking about the history of space horror.
Speaker 2:That is anything bad that happens in space, or from space, or from, I mean space is everywhere.
Speaker 1:That's what I have always said.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is literally Bad Stuff the podcast.
Speaker 1:There you go. So let's talk about what space horror is right off the bat, because it can be a little tricky to define. It's a subgenre of horror, obviously, and also, I would say, in some cases, a subgenre of science fiction, depending on how you want to play it. But what we're really referring to, like Alan alluded to, is horror films that are either set in space whether that's on spacecraft, space stations or on different planets or horror films that are set on Earth, but the evil villain is something from space. So I want to just say the horror part of this is what really sets this subgenre aside from all space science fiction in general.
Speaker 2:Right, so it's either takes place off planet, sure, or something off planet is on earth yes yeah, very easy, very simple yeah or something to do with the space-time continuum, because that happens far too often. It gets all. All you know wonky hell.
Speaker 1:We watch sphere well, more to come. On sphere. I have a lot of thoughts, not very pleasant ones. All right, let's get into today's sources. We have a new yorker article by adam gopnik the war inside hg wells from 2021. A new york times article by Mikado Murphy how Aliens Spawned so Many Others, from 2017, an Artnetcom article by Tim Brinkhoff as Seen on Alien HR Geiger's Biomorphic Nightmare the War of the World's Radio Broadcast Transcripts. A New Yorker article by Dan Chassian from 2018, 2001 A Space Odyssey what it Means and how it Was Made. And a publicbookscom article by Eleanor Johnson Speaking the Monster Ecofeminism and Alien and Aliens. And, as always, we link our sources in the description of this podcast so you can follow along and check them out.
Speaker 1:From what I could find out, I believe that space horror started in the late 1800s with the Star by HG Wells, which was a story that was released in 1897. The Star is about the impending fear of a planet that is suddenly hurtling towards Earth, which is a situation we actually find ourselves in today. What there's like an asteroid or a meteor or whatever that's gonna hit Earth in like 2032, or something? There's like a 3% chance, which whatever that's going to hit Earth in like 2032 or something. There's like a 3% chance which is like the highest it's ever been.
Speaker 2:Who knows where the statistic is now. I just saw some expert talking about this. Sorry, there was air quotes when I said expert.
Speaker 1:A Reddit post, I presume.
Speaker 2:No, actually this was on broadcast news and the percentage had gone from 1% to 2%. This makes it the most statistically relevant astronomical doomsday event in recorded history.
Speaker 1:Rock and roll, talk about timely topics. So again, the star is a short story about a planet that is hurtling towards Earth right and in a very poetic way. I think the short story starts on New Year's Day and it has this very cool you can find it online and read it. I'll release it on Patreon to our followers there, but it has this really interesting lens almost of cosmic horror and themes of this like very cruel universe right. That I feel like set the scene in some ways for later space horror. It's kind of like there's tons of different versions of space horror that we're going to talk about today thematically, but one of those themes is man versus like instead of monster or whatever, like vastness of space or just the science of space, and I think this is an example of that.
Speaker 2:It reminds me of a far more modern film called Moonfall. We're going to be pretty respectful about spoilers. However, this is a terrible movie, so if you don't want spoilers, skip ahead 30 seconds, otherwise here it comes. So Moonfall is about the moon falling to Earth, right, and so you know, humanity is preparing all these things and then, of course, they do a bunch of shenanigans to divert the moon at the last minute. But the people that were on the moon diverting it, you know it comes so close to Earth that they are able to jump from the moon to Earth and then do like a little invert gravity thing. It's like 20 feet, it misses by, like you know, a coat of paint, and then they land on Earth and the moon sails by. I can only imagine that this is the exact plot of the star.
Speaker 1:Isn't it also the plot of Melancholia? Have you seen that movie?
Speaker 2:What's that.
Speaker 1:It's that Lars von Trier movie with Kristen Dunst, where there's like two sisters and there's just this planet that's slowly moving and it's about the way that the different way that the sisters are reacting.
Speaker 2:Huh, nope, that sounds way better.
Speaker 1:Perhaps I haven't seen it so I cannot say, but let's read a brief passage from the end of the Star.
Speaker 2:So it was that, presently to the European watchers, star and sun rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then slower and at last came to rest. Star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. The moon no longer eclipsed the star, but was lost to sight in the brilliance of the sky. And though those who were still alive regarded it, for the most part, with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender, there were still men who could perceive the meaning of these signs. Star and earth had been at their nearest, had swung about one another, and the star had passed Already. It was receding swifter and swifter in the last stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun. And then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky.
Speaker 2:The thunder and lightning wove a garment around the world. All over the earth was a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy, there descended torrents of mud Everywhere. The waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-stilted ruins and the earth littered like a storm-worn beach, with all that had floated and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its children. For days, the water steamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way and piling huge dikes and scooping out titanic gullies over the countryside. Those were the days of darkness that followed the star and the heat All through them, and for many weeks and months the earthquakes continued, but the star had passed and men, hunger driven and gathering courage only slowly I thought that was a haunting apocalyptic.
Speaker 2:Look at this sort of man versus space on one hand, this seemed like any bit of modern day science fiction. Sure they're talking about the geologic ramifications of a planetary body coming too close to Earth. You know things boiling off famine, like all these things. It was like completely fuck up the ecosystem Right, While simultaneously it had the syntax and diction of the 1800s and it can fuck right off because that's so hard to read.
Speaker 1:You read it very, very well.
Speaker 2:After lots of takes and lots of editing. Thank you, Abby.
Speaker 1:Another early short story that kicked off the space horror genre was also written by HG Wells. Surprise, surprise the story the Crystal Egg was also published in 1897. Highly unique, the Crystal Egg tells the story of a shop owner who finds a crystal egg that actually allows a user to see what's happening on Mars.
Speaker 2:Are there things happening on Mars? I haven't read it, but I imagine, if you look at it, you just see dust.
Speaker 1:You're going to tell us what's happening on Mars, my friend, but before we do that, there's something about the crystal egg that reminds me so much of Little Shop of Horrors. What? Because the whole premise of Little Shop is that he finds he buys this like highly unique plant which is really like an alien plant and it's just like the idea of like a shop owner finding this like magical item and having it cause like a little bit of localized chaos, you know.
Speaker 2:So it's the plot of Gremlins.
Speaker 1:Oh, that chaos becomes less localized, yeah sure I mean, I'm sorry, just something that lets you see the ongoings of mars yeah of a dead planet it's not so dead in this short story, oh let's find out will you, uh, do us the honor alan of quoting from one of mr cave's visions within the crystal egg the body.
Speaker 2:Body was small but fitted with two bunches of prehensile organs like long tentacles, immediately under the mouth. Incredible as it appeared to Mr Wace, the persuasion at last became irresistible that it was these creatures which owned the great quasi-human buildings and magnificent garden that made the broad valley so splendid. And Mr Cave perceived that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors and that the great circular windows which opened freely gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like and hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller winged creatures like great dragonflies and moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward, brilliantly colored gigantic ground, beetles crawled lazily to and fro. Moreover, on the causeways and terraces, large-headed creatures, similar to the greater winged flies but wingless, were visible, hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle of tentacles.
Speaker 1:See, there's a lot going on in Mars. Yeah, I'm skeptical. Well, it's science fiction, it's space horror, it's fair.
Speaker 2:So what he? So? He uses his little voyeur crystal to skeeve on these bugs.
Speaker 1:You heard it here. First I mean read the story.
Speaker 2:Maybe I will, it's not that long.
Speaker 1:I think you'd like it.
Speaker 2:You know it's true, a lot of science fiction and horror really lend themselves well to short form. Yeah, a lot of these things are. You know this is diminutive, but like one-trick ponies, you know they've got the hook. It's a good idea. It does not need to be a full piece.
Speaker 1:While the work of HG Wells may not be incredibly unnerving to a hyper-desensitized modern audience, you can see how these stories and other science fiction works from the time started to one lay the groundwork for major space horror themes to come, and two start to combine two existing genres into something new science fiction and horror. I want to talk briefly about who HG Wells was. Wells was born on September 21st 1866 as Herbert George Wells. He wrote over 50 novels and dozens of stories. To many he is known as the father of science fiction. Quoting from the New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik quote HG Wells is remembered today mostly as the author of four visionary science fiction perennials with premises so simple and strong that they can sustain any amount of retelling the War of the Worlds, the Invisible man, the Time Machine and the Island of Dr Moreau.
Speaker 1:Social historians recall Wells as one of the brighter technological optimists and left-wing polemicists of the early part of the 20th century. He is also remembered among Brits with a taste for evergreen gossip, as perhaps the most erotically adventurous man of his generation, the satyr of the socialists. I have done what I pleased he wrote. Every bit of sexual impulse in me has expressed itself. The case is sometimes even made. That Wells invented the word sex, that he pioneered its modern use in his 1900 novel Love, and Mr Lewis Ham as a shorthand for the totality of the activity. End quote.
Speaker 2:Can you imagine being the guy that officially invented sex? Well, the word sex I mean. Come on, you go to a bar and you're like hey, you know, I invented sex, whoa.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know if it would land the way people think it would.
Speaker 2:And then you pull out the newspaper article that says as such From the New Yorker yeah. You're like proof. That's incredible. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:But even if that fact is overstated, Wells was a colorful and vibrant figure who took interest in many different subjects and activities beyond pioneering the science fiction subgenre.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sex. I'm always curious, you know, especially with these heavy genre authors. Are they successful during their time or is it the type of thing where he becomes famous postmortem?
Speaker 1:He was in fact successful and, I would say, someone who had really made it during his time, which is particularly cool, I think, because, again, what he did was really groundbreaking. He really invented science fiction and he was immediately recognized and beloved for that.
Speaker 2:This guy really broke the mold. He was a total science fiction nerd and invented sex. It's like polar opposites.
Speaker 1:All this happened before there was a mold. He predated the mold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess when you're writing the playbook you can make it whatever you want.
Speaker 1:Another early and revolutionary space horror story was from 1934, so quite a bit later called A Martian Odyssey by Stanley G Weinbaum. A Martian Odyssey is set on Mars and it tells the story of the first landing on Mars from an Earth-based ship and the horrors that an American chemist encounters on his journey to photograph the red planet.
Speaker 2:There was a flurry of tentacles and a spurt of black corruption, and then the thing, with a disgusting sucking noise, pulled itself and its arms into a hole in the ground. The other let out a series of clacks, staggered around on legs about as thick as golf sticks, and turned suddenly to face me. I held my weapon ready and the two of us stared at each other.
Speaker 1:See, now we're really getting there, you know.
Speaker 2:He stood on legs as thick as golf sticks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Those are some. It's like a cat.
Speaker 1:Well, that's why he's very alien, is he big?
Speaker 2:or is he just a cat?
Speaker 1:No, he's tall, he's tall. Tall and golf stick legs, golf club legs. I mean, what's a golf stick?
Speaker 2:It's just a golf club, or is he talking about, like the T?
Speaker 1:Ooh, a tiny man.
Speaker 2:Tiny stick, tiny stick legs. I oh, a tiny man, tiny stick, tiny stick legs. I don't know, we don't know. If he has only four, he can take this guy.
Speaker 1:I do find it interesting, though, that so many of these really early stories describe aliens as having tentacles, and I think there's obvious reasons for that. Like we knew about that. We've talked about this all last summer with our Horror on the high seas series, but at this time we, like humans, would be hyper aware of the mystical creatures, the kraken even giant squids and octopus things that live in the ocean is kind of they're using that as a proxy because they fear those things. Right, and there's like this alienoidness about them, which is why sea horror is also so prominent.
Speaker 2:Do you remember John Carter?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So John Carter. I think it was a novel or short story, but Disney remade it as a movie and the premise is that an Earth boy is brought to Mars and because the gravity is lower but he grew up on Earth, his strength is greater than everyone else's, To the point where he's basically the Hulk. He has to fight in like gladiatorial arenas and he has superpowers because the gravity is a little bit less and he can just pummel people. So if we have a golf stick, leg Martian and you're from Earth, you can just rip this thing apart with your teeth.
Speaker 1:That's pretty fun, I mean, unless they're friendly, but it sounded like they weren't that doesn't stop you from ripping it apart with your teeth.
Speaker 1:You probably shouldn't, but Weinbaum also published a sequel to his story called Valley of Dreams four months later. And I'm just going to pause here as we sort of transition into the film section of the episode today and talk a little bit about A Trip to the Moon from 1902, because A Trip to the Moon certainly is not a horror film, but it's one of the earliest films ever made. It's from George Millais who made a lot of the really really early genre pieces. The first horror film was his. The first science fiction film was his.
Speaker 2:Was that the cauldron thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, what's that called the House of the Devil?
Speaker 2:Hmm.
Speaker 1:I find it fascinating that some of the old and these films are, like you know, minutes long at best. But I find it fascinating that some of the first films that ever existed were genre films and so, even though obviously science fiction only came about really in you know, at a certain period of time, compared to the vast history of literature, by the time film came around as a medium, genres led the way. So I find it to be really, really interesting and go watch A Trip to the Moon if you haven't seen it. It is delightfully charming.
Speaker 2:but quite trippy.
Speaker 1:We're going to jump ahead to 1953 with an early example of a space horror movie called it Came from Outer Space. The film was directed by Jack Arnold, who also directed Creature from the Black Lagoon, and written by Harry Essex, based on a story by Ray Bradbury. Similar to HG Wells, bradbury is another key player when it comes to science fiction, though he also worked in horror, fantasy and just regular fiction Drama. Perhaps Bradbury was born in 1920. Some of his most famous works include Fahrenheit 451, the Martian Chronicles, something Wicked this Way Comes and A Sound of Thunder, just to name a few, and I think, if I'm correct in my memory, a Sound of Thunder is the story that introduced the idea of the butterfly effect.
Speaker 2:Oh, interesting.
Speaker 1:The plot of it Came From Outer Space follows an amateur astronomer and writer named John Putnam. And so John witnesses a meteor crash into the desert in Arizona. He decides to follow what he you know, the trail of where he thinks this thing crashed, and he realizes that it wasn't a meteor at all but a spacecraft. But the craft ends up being buried by the sand after there's a landslide, so it kind of disappears. It slips away from him. But my favorite part about this movie is that when the locals, people who live around the crash site, they start acting very strangely and it has a very similar energy to like the invasion of the body snatchers and I think this film, for the time period, feels particularly eerie and unnerving. It has this again like uncanny valley almost in the characters, right when you realize what's going on. You start to put it together, but people look like people.
Speaker 1:And it's strange. It's on Earth, right? It's not in space, it's on Earth, yeah, and it feels like extra invasive. Because of that, it's considered to be one of the earliest sci-fi films to portray extraterrestrials as misunderstood rather than purely menacing, right, and that's something we're going to talk about a lot today.
Speaker 2:You know, as soon as you start talking about that, that got me thinking like wait a minute, this sounds kind of similar to them like the movie about the giant ants, right, kind of similar to to them like the the movie about the giant ants right because I thought it was like a meteor or something that caused them.
Speaker 1:But nope, it was just atomic radiation that's something I ran into a lot with this episode. You're like oh, this plot's so familiar, but it's just skinned with a different yep, a different science fiction trope which I mean.
Speaker 2:I feel like that is space horror, as the macro Right Is that it's fear of the other. You have some kind of unknown catalyst that causes chaos, right, and that's it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. There's so many different films in the space horror subgenre that mimic this setup and also situations by the way from real life. Alien encounter claims also mimic this. So, like the stuff going on in Roswell, area 51, like a lot of it has similar conspiracy theories to this setup that something crash landed the government saying, oh that nothing, that was from a test or that was a meteor, that was just debris, and it turns out to be a spacecraft according to these conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2:Well as someone that worked on the show was I abducted. It turns out that the real crux, it's not aliens abducting the populace, it's mostly people having traumatic childhood memories and suppressing them into unhealthy ways.
Speaker 1:Alan, you missed your time to talk about this.
Speaker 2:Why.
Speaker 1:We have two episodes with Andy where there is an open safe space forum. I believe people who have not all people, but a lot of people who have alien encounters and invasion experiences experiencers, I believe they're called, and I would encourage folks to check out Greg and Dana Newkirk and to watch the Hellier series, to read into Mothman and then we'll talk about it. I'm a believer, not of all people, but generally.
Speaker 2:These are not mutually exclusive. You can believe in Mothman and also believe that someone's dad was super creepy and also believe that someone's dad was super creepy.
Speaker 1:Sure, I believe that those things are true, but I also believe that if somebody has an experience with something like this, it doesn't necessarily only mean that they had a fucked up childhood. All right, let's talk about Sphere from 1998. And Sphere is again very similar to it Came From Outer Space in its setup, but it was made in the 90s, so it's entirely re-skinned. Sphere, with its star-studded cast, tells the story of an alien craft that is discovered in modern times at the bottom of Earth's ocean. So we are on planet Earth. So this is my favorite elements of this movie, one of the few good elements of this movie, which is that the alien craft has been dated to crashing in the ocean in the late 1600s.
Speaker 2:I thought it was 1709.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's the late 1600s.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:A group of scientists travel to the bottom of the ocean, so then they discover that there's a real life alien on board the ship.
Speaker 2:Well, they backdate it based off the coral growth.
Speaker 1:So they get a bunch of scientists who have different strengths to travel to the bottom of the ocean. I also just want to shout out to Andy back to the interviews we did with him on all this a few months ago, because in the movie I think it's really interesting the guy who's briefing them before the mission says the most. The one thing that we can count on right the most expected outcome is terror. The idea of seeing something like this just totally fucking with your head.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's spooky.
Speaker 1:Changes your perception of what reality is, though.
Speaker 2:I saw this movie as a kid and I thought, wow, this is a film. And then we rewatched it just recently for this episode and, wow, it's not good, it's not good, it's not good.
Speaker 1:Sphere stars Dustin Hoffman, samuel L Jackson, sharon Stone, liev Schreiber, peter Coyote, queen Latifah, huey Lewis and James Pickens Jr. And still it's not that good. The setup of this film has similarities to the Thing from 1982, annihilation from 2018, arrival from 2016, and Contact from 1997.
Speaker 2:Again, this idea that something alien has come to Earth and people, a group of scientists, typically need to deal with it. But in this case and you know, mild spoiler, so fast forward 30 seconds if you don't want to hear. It's an American spaceship, it's just from the future. So, like all sorts of ramifications there that they, you know, it really becomes almost like a time travel movie too. It is. It's a time traveling vessel. Yeah, that somehow got all fucked up.
Speaker 1:All of these movies, the movies that I just listed, I would say qualify as space horror, even though, again, they're broadly set on Earth because the characters are dealing with something horrifying from another planet.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad you brought up the thing, because I think that's an incredible example of space horror that takes place on Earth.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In the Kurt Russell version it's just in the permafrost and then is thawed yeah. And then wreaks all sorts of havoc and then, once it starts to not have its way, tries to go, freeze itself, and so it can like, rinse and repeat, and you know a few hundred years, right? But that is a perfect example of being afraid of the other, right? Because in this case it impersonates your friends, and if you can't trust your friends, who can you trust? And so you can trust nobody.
Speaker 1:It's a master's, a paranoia-driven story that takes place in an isolated Antarctic research station where a group of scientists encounter a shapeshifting alien that can perfectly imitate any living being it assimilates.
Speaker 2:Can it only imitate one at a time? I don't remember I don't remember either.
Speaker 1:I think so.
Speaker 2:It's that good, you don't even know In 2018, alex Garland's Annihilation was released.
Speaker 1:Adopted from the novel by Jeff Vandermeer, annihilation is vaguely about aliens, but in a very subtle way compared to most of these examples right. The thing behind the curtain, if you will, is hinted at as being from another planet.
Speaker 2:I got to watch that movie again. You and I saw it in theaters.
Speaker 1:We saw it in your apartment.
Speaker 2:We saw it in theaters? No, we didn't.
Speaker 1:I also think Arrival is incredibly similar, like it's interesting when you start thinking about films in terms of this very specific plot setup and how many of them that there are. But I think, like Arrival is an excellent movie and a lot of people reference it a lot I andy actually referenced it in our interviews about, hypothetically, a film that the government worked with hollywood on to sort of get the public used to the idea of how something might go if there is an encounter with aliens I don't think I've seen arrival I don't think you have either.
Speaker 2:It's with amy adams definitely not, then it's good, it's very good what's, what's the uh, what's the premise?
Speaker 1:so the premise is that, um, a handful of these alien craft spaceships, if you will start landing around all around the globe, everywhere, and they decide to bring in amy adams, who is this kind of very well respected linguist, linguist, hussie, she's a linguist to communicate with the aliens because she has this proficiency in communication, whatever, so she figures out how to speak to them using their language. I think it's really cool and it's also one of those things similar to it Came From Outer Space, space where the aliens start to end sphere, where the the alien thing starts to have, like this, impact on her in a in a way that she's never experienced before, because they have powers that we don't have right.
Speaker 1:So I won't spoil the rest of it, but I think it's a very strong film okay yeah, so I think that's the first category right, which is that the aliens come to earth in like a government experiment way. Another kind of right, which is that the aliens come to Earth in like a government experiment way. Another kind of adjacent category to that is the aliens come to Earth but they're not coming to fuck around and communicate with us with a linguist, they're coming to invade. So two kind of similar but separate, different versions of that.
Speaker 2:Right One is you come as an infiltration tactic, and now we have an alien invasion movies, which is you come in a full, you know, military operation.
Speaker 1:Right. So movies like War of the Worlds and Signs come to mind.
Speaker 2:Mars Attacks. Mars Attacks the scariest movie ever made.
Speaker 1:Oh, I don't know that. I've seen it. You ever see Mars Attacks? I don't think so, holy cow. Maybe, I had to watch it in film school.
Speaker 2:That was pinnacle 90s cinema.
Speaker 1:Wait, was it Brian De Palma? No, tim Burton. What is the Mars movie I'm thinking from Brian De Palma?
Speaker 2:Ghosts of Mars.
Speaker 1:You just made that up. Mission to Mars from 2000. It was Halloween night 1938 when Orson Welles' infamous radio play the War of the Worlds was broadcast to millions of Americans. Some listeners did not realize it was fictional and thought that aliens were actually invading Earth, despite several notices that the broadcast was not real.
Speaker 2:These are the things you can get away with before social media.
Speaker 1:The radio drama was based on the 1898 novel the War of the Worlds by HG Wells. The program was skinned as a breaking news broadcast, a very convincing one. The production was the 17th episode of a CBS radio series called the Mercury Theater on the Air. The beginning of the program was formatted as a series of breaking news reports that interrupted music and other sort of regularly scheduled programming. The War of the Worlds tells the story of an alien invasion that starts in Grover's Mill, new Jersey. Again, just to set the scene here, it's the late 1930s. You're flipping through the radio as you listen to right all the time. It's your common mode of entertainment with your family and suddenly there's breaking news reports that are just interrupting regular programming about an alien invasion in Grover's Mills, new Jersey, and it glistens like wet leather.
Speaker 2:And that face it, ladies and gentlemen. It's indescribable. I can hardly force myself to keep looking at it. The eyes are black and gleam like a serpent. The mouth is V-shaped, with saliva dripping from its rimless lips that seem to quiver and pulsate. The monster, or whatever, can hardly move. It seems weighed down by possibly gravity or something. The thing's raising up. The crowds fall back now. They've seen plenty. This is the most extraordinary experience. I can't find words. I'll pull this microphone with me as I talk. I'll have to stop the description until I can take a new position. Hold on, will you please. I'll be back in a minute.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Alan, for that lively retelling.
Speaker 2:Thank you, that's how they talked. Back then I tried to channel my Tom Cruise when he technically was a Scientologist, but before we all knew how crazy they were.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you know, war of the Worlds, the movie, yeah, we're getting there.
Speaker 1:So, more so than the actual public panic, newspapers took a firm stance against Wells in the following days, some outlets calling CBS and Orson Welles irresponsible and deceptive. So we all. I think it's like very common lore that War of the Worlds. Oh my God. It fooled the public and it did fool some people. But it didn't cause this like public panic as much as it was painted out to by the media. A study conducted by Radio Research Project revealed that of the scared listeners, only about a third of them realized the subject matter was extraterrestrials. The other two-thirds assumed the broadcast was describing some sort of natural disaster or a German invasion. This is a very important point to pause on, because leading up to Halloween nighteen night 1938, the american public had become dependent on radio news for the first time. Not only were they able to access more real-time information than ever before, everyone knew that the tides were turning towards a world war, and less than a year later, on september 1st 1939, the nazis would invade poland, and two days after that france and great britain declared war on germany wow yeah, it's pretty intense that's depressing
Speaker 2:because here we are again here we are again, still in the thick of it, listening to fake news, fighting nazis fighting.
Speaker 1:I mean seriously yeah it's horrible.
Speaker 2:Why can't it just be like? You know what would be a best case scenario? Tell me If Orson Welles just popped out and be like guys, it was me.
Speaker 1:I've been doing this the whole time.
Speaker 2:The Trump presidency is Orson Welles' next War of the Worlds, his giant cash grab, and I would personally pay him so much money.
Speaker 1:Despite the rumored panic caused by the War of the Worlds broadcast, modern research suggests that it was mostly exaggerated by the newspapers reporting on it. The number of angry letters directed at CBS and Wells was actually quite low compared to other controversial radio broadcasts at the time. Wells ended the broadcast by reassuring listeners that the program was indeed make-believe.
Speaker 2:Quote did he read it himself?
Speaker 1:He was part of it. Yeah, there's some great pictures from that broadcast and actually I have an article up on our website which shows the pictures. If you go to lunaticsprojectcom and just search for War of the Worlds or Orson Welles, you'll find it. But he, yeah, he was one of the live performers.
Speaker 2:You can search on our website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just added a search bar. This is kind of cool. It's pretty fun. How'd you do that? I Googled it. Wow, yeah. Wells ended the broadcast by reassuring listeners that the program was indeed make-believe. Quote if your doorbell rings and there's nobody there there was no Martian it's Halloween. End quote.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, that's just, you were too slow and the kids moved on.
Speaker 1:I love this example of space horror because it is such a unique case Even to those few people who did believe an alien invasion was happening. It must have been horrifying, right. It must have really been a very, very scary thing. It reminds me of the people in the movie theater right when the what's it called the train movie, like one of the first movies, and what's it called?
Speaker 2:Train to Busan.
Speaker 1:The Great Train Robbery is playing and they run out of the way of the train because they don't realize that it's a projector screen, because they're stupid, it's just net, new technology.
Speaker 2:So stupid.
Speaker 1:All right. In 1953, a film adaptation by Byron Haskins was released, and in 2005, steven Spielberg's version starring Tom Cruise hit theaters.
Speaker 2:Great callback.
Speaker 1:I really loved that movie when it came out in 2005. Really, yeah, huh, you didn't.
Speaker 2:Nah.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's okay, you have terrible taste.
Speaker 2:It's okay. The problem is that the ending is so stupid.
Speaker 1:Well, that's a great point, but we're going to get to that actually in a second. One of my favorite examples of alien invasions is Signs from 2002, directed by M Night Shyamalan. When Signs was released, it terrified a generation, myself included, and in my opinion, despite its problematic leading cast, it's one of his best films. Who's problematic?
Speaker 2:Well, the movie stars Mel Gibson, joaquin Phoenix, name. One thing Mel Gibson's done wrong.
Speaker 1:Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin. It tells the story of a specific family as they brace for this alien invasion that's coming. It tells the story of a specific family as they brace for this alien invasion that's coming. But it does this great job of using this horrifying situation right to tell a deeper story about humanity, family grief and, interestingly, both the War of the Worlds and Signs share a common mechanic in which the aliens are weak to water and apparently, according to my research, this is quite controversial. But I think it's a cool, I think it makes sense as a mechanic.
Speaker 2:In War of the Worlds. They're not weak to water. Yeah, they are. What are you talking about? They're weak to water. They die to the common cold. Aren't they weak to water? No, I think I'm right. No, they die to the common cold. All of a sudden, all the tripods just fall over and die because of simple bacteria. Because, despite having all of the resources of an intergalactic civilization, they don't think to test the air quality.
Speaker 1:You're right, I guess.
Speaker 2:That's why it's the dumbest ending of all time. I'm really off my game today you gotta stop drinking.
Speaker 1:Switching gears to films that take place in space. 2001, a Space Odyssey from 1968 was directed by Stanley Kubrick based on existing material from Arthur C Clarke, and it impacted science fiction and space horror in a big way. But I found this article, which I'll kind of quote a little bit from which kind of changed my opinion of this movie, of quote a little bit from which kind of changed my opinion of this movie, because looking back, I think from our generation, it's thought of, as you know, anything Stanley Kubrick touches is gold, but also it's this very cinematic and beloved film. But it's interesting the way it was initially perceived. So we're going to get into that in a second.
Speaker 1:But 2001 is really in many ways right. It's about man versus machine, more so than man versus space. We actually ended up talking about it a lot during our AI horror series from last year. But fascinating to me was that initially, 2001 was met with terrible reception, so much so that after the premieres, which I think were described in this article as disasters, they ended up cutting 20 minutes from the movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the credits.
Speaker 1:But it became popular with an unexpected crowd. According to the New Yorker article by Dan Chassian, hippies Quoting from his article, quote hippies may have saved 2001. Stoned audiences flocked to the movie. David Bowie took a few drops of cannabis tincture before watching and countless others dropped acid. According to one report, a young man at a showing in Los Angeles plunged through the movie screen shouting it's God, it's God. John Lennon said he saw the film every week, skipping ahead a little bit, little bit. The iconic star gate sequence in 2001, when dave bowman, the film's protagonist, hurdles in his space pod through a corridor of swimming kaleidoscopic colors even can be timed with sufficient practice to crest with the viewer's own hallucinations. The studio soon caught on and a new tagline was added to the movie's redesigned posters the ultimate trip end quote.
Speaker 1:It's a pretty movie it's boring, oh it's slow it's very slow and I don't have a lot of but it's not, it's not slow on drugs.
Speaker 2:I've not had the pleasure this is a movie that is often brought up as the pinnacle of visuals. It is no mystery why people loved it. Simply for that and that alone, the plot is pretty rudimentary. Sure, it's just like a trip through time. And then Dave fights with Hal about opening the stupid hatch.
Speaker 1:But still, I mean, that line gives me chills.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, hal's pretty mean I would love to see a death match between Hal and I mean, that line gives me chills. I mean, yeah, hal's pretty mean I would love to see a death match between Hal and, you know, chatgpt. I think ChatGPT is going to win because they can make cool pictures.
Speaker 1:Well, I've been thinking and I think that you should do the Scary Scuffle on Patreon.
Speaker 2:This year, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that would be fun.
Speaker 2:I think that should be a wide release for the masses. But no, that sounds like a fun idea. But it's a very important film and important films don't need to be good.
Speaker 1:They just have to be important for their time. Well, and important for a reason. I think you're right that it's important because of the visual masterpiece Right.
Speaker 2:Context is everything. The great train robbery you know what Kind of boring, you know not a lot happens. I mean it's pretty lively, Right. But between the Great Train Robbery and, I don't know, Taken, I think Taken is the better film.
Speaker 1:What about Snowpiercer?
Speaker 2:Oh, fucking Snowpiercer is amazing. It's unfair to lump Snowpiercer in with the other two.
Speaker 1:Train Horror. That could be an upcoming topic.
Speaker 2:Train horror. Sure, it's going to be short.
Speaker 1:So a lot of the success of 2001 relied on the actual science itself. So Kubrick spent time paying attention to see what NASA was doing. He was literally trying to beat the mission to the moon because he thought that if he didn't it would change sort of the perception of the movie as being this groundbreaking thing.
Speaker 2:Right, because they get there and they find a copy of the film already.
Speaker 1:But Kubrick did have the luxury of special effects right. He could bring people with him into space in a way that NASA can't. But he did beat the moon landing by one year.
Speaker 2:That's cool.
Speaker 1:And I will say I feel like 2001 feels a lot more modern than you watch it today, than it has any right to Like. This movie was made in the 60s it was over 50 years ago and I think when you watch it, it almost has this like timeless quality to it, which is something that's really hard to accomplish with science fiction and space horror, because so much of it relies on special effects right, because we're not actually filming in space and it feels really evergreen in a way, to me.
Speaker 2:Speaking of filming in space. Whatever happened with the sound stages they were building in space? I don't know, you don't know this. No, I remember people talking about it. Maybe this was pre-pandemic, I can't even remember. Maybe this was pre-pandemic, but I'm butchering my details but somebody was literally building a soundstage like, for you know, a filming studio in orbit.
Speaker 1:That's very impressive.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, it's kind of cool right it's expensive, though. That's like fuck you money that is fuck you money, yeah. No, that that's a hundred percent, is fuck you money, yeah, but being able to film in zero gravity has clear advantages, right, sure, and I think someone was racing to do the first movie that was fully in space. I really want to say this is pre-pandemic, just because this seems very much like the type of project that would completely be put on hold because, like, of a fucking pandemic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're like. You know, we got bigger fish to fry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair enough. I'm going to quote one more time from the New Yorker article. Yorker article quote the grandeur of 2001,. The product of two men, clark and Kubrick, who were sweetly awestruck by the thought of infinite space, required in its execution micromanagement of a previously unimaginable degree. Kubrick strived to show the entire arc of human life, from ape to angel, as Kale dismissively put. It meant that he was making a special effects movie of radical scope and ambition. But in his initial letter to Clark, a science fiction writer, engineer and shipwreck explorer living in Cylon, kubrick began with the modest sounding goal of making the proverbial really good science fiction movie. Kubrick wanted his film to explore the reasons for believing in the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life and what it would mean if we discovered it. End quote, which I think is interesting because the movie really ends up not being about that at all. Nope, 2001 became incredibly influential despite its lackluster initial reception, paving the way for space horror films to come.
Speaker 2:I will say that 2001,. You know, I watched it for the first time in film school and was super underwhelmed because you think it's going to be this really mind-blowing movie. But when you watch it in class not on drugs it's boring. You know, it's not for teenagers or early 20-somethings, it is for people that have seen a lot of other things or, you know, when you understand the context of the film, it's incredible.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now I later in life read Arthur C Clarke's 2001 A Space Odysseysey yeah which I think was written after the movie. So he helped write the script for the movie with kubrick yep and then afterwards turned it into a novel, which was dumb, because he already wrote something and then wrote it again. And you also don't have the visuals, because it's a book but that's something that happens all the time in Hollywood.
Speaker 1:Around right you would get horror films like Amityville and then it would get turned into a book after.
Speaker 2:By someone else as a cash grab.
Speaker 1:Right, but I'm saying right that was a standard, people almost expected it backwards then.
Speaker 2:Arthur C Clarke is a prolific sci-fi author.
Speaker 1:No, I know.
Speaker 2:I know, I know I'm just saying that was kind of the model at the time. It just for me it seemed weird that he would write this when he had so much other stuff in his portfolio. It wasn't bad, it was just kind of boring. So maybe it was really true to the source material.
Speaker 1:There you go, okay. So this is a riveting conversation, as always, alan, and I do want to say I'm glad to share with the listeners that you're alive and well. I know I've had some solo episodes, some co-host episodes with other folks.
Speaker 2:She tried to replace me, but I fought tooth and nail to get back.
Speaker 1:No, we're just trying, we're being experimental this year. You know, we've been in this game now for a few years, maybe five years, so we're just shaking things up a little bit, seeing what sticks. But he's here, he's alive, he's well, he's hanging in.
Speaker 2:You give this girl one engagement ring and all of a sudden you're off the podcast.
Speaker 1:Also just a quick announcement that our first feature film, my first feature film, is debuting in San Jose, california, on March 15th as part of the CineQuest Film Festival. I can now publicly say that, which is so exciting to even have something that I couldn't publicly say for a while. If you go to the CineQuest website, you can get tickets. If anybody is on the West Coast or in San Jose or San Francisco, I would love to see you there. It's going to be a very special evening for me personally on a lot of levels, and it's a it's a spooky little film. Alan will also be there, so he'll be able to give autographs to all of his super fans.
Speaker 2:I mean sure, but you'll have to get in line.
Speaker 1:Anyway, it's very exciting to have a film premiere out in the world and I'm very overwhelmed and figuring out all of the things still. But if you are on the West Coast, if you're in San Jose or San Francisco, we are debuting. The film is called Voices Carry, march 15, 9pm as part of the CineQuest Festival. Okay, well, thank you guys. So much for listening. We will be back next time and pick up the conversation around space horror, and you know what we're getting into next time is Alien, the big one, dare, I say, the most iconic. Stay spooky, stay well, and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 2:Bye, stay spooky stay well and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.
