Lunatics Radio Hour: The History of Horror
Lunatics Radio Hour is a non-fiction history podcast about the history of horror and the horror of history. Each episode explores real, documented events where fear, violence, survival, and the unknown shaped human lives and cultures. The show also traces how historical events influenced film, examining how real-world horrors became the stories and images that appear on screen.
Topics include dark history, psychological phenomena, folklore rooted in fact, and the historical roots of horror cinema. Most episodes focus on researched historical subjects. Occasional short fiction stories are included and clearly labeled.
If you’re drawn to the darker side of history and the real events behind horror films, Lunatics Radio Hour explores where history, fear, and cinema intersect.
Lunatics Radio Hour: The History of Horror
Episode 173 - Winter Horror: Isolation
This week Abby and Alan continue exploring the intersection of winter and horror, this time through the lens of of isolation.
Sources:
- A Medical News Today article by Danielle Dresdon: What to know about cabin fever.
- JAMA Network, scientific study by Eugene Ziskind, M.D. called Isolation Stress in Medical and Mental Illness
- PubMed study from 2021, Social Isolation and Psychosis: An Investigation of social interactions and paranoia in daily life
- Study we found on PubMed from 2008: Psychological effects of polar expeditions
- And another study listed on PubMed The role of circadian phase in sleep and performance during Antarctic winter expeditions from 2022
- Slash Film article by Danielle Ryan: The Haunted History Behind The Shinings Stanley Hotel
- SyFy article by Josh Weiss: The Thing Oral History: Cast and Crew Reveal Secrets of John Carpenter's Sci-Fi Horror Masterpiece
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Brinker. I am sitting here with Alan Kodan.
SPEAKER_03:Hello.
SPEAKER_00:And today we are continuing our exploration of the intersection of winter and horror with a long anticipated episode in which Alan will get to talk about the thing, aka Isolation and Desolation and Winter Horror.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, I have a bone to pick. As always. I love the thing quite a bit. However, why are we talking about this during isolation? The thing is like it's gonna hit almost every list of best movie monsters. Why why is it not in the monster section?
SPEAKER_00:Multiple things can be true. And that is something that we found in this series quite a bit. For example, we ended last week talking about the terror, and we're gonna start this week talking about Antarctic expeditions. So I think things get categorized in multiple columns.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, but you're killing me here.
SPEAKER_00:It's all right, it's okay. That's how it goes. You know, this isn't Harvard. We can we can get away with it.
SPEAKER_02:Uh, don't I know it?
SPEAKER_00:So we've talked about winter mythology and real life snow tragedies, but today we are continuing our exploration of winter horror through the lens of isolation, madness, and psychology. And I think the thing certainly is a great example of paranoia and some of the side effects of being trapped in a place with limited other people for a long time.
SPEAKER_02:So I will say that John Carpenter's 1982 The Thing fits this category. There are multiple other media entries into the Thing franchise, whether before or after that movie. And those are far more monster-based, while John Carpenter's is definitely psychological.
SPEAKER_00:And we're definitely going to talk about all the iterations of the thing today because I like to keep things a little bit nice and tidy, but we could definitely talk about them next week too, as they come up in the in the monster series.
SPEAKER_02:Alright, we'll see.
SPEAKER_00:We'll see. Let's talk about our sources. A medical news today article by Danielle Dresden, What to Know About Cabin Fever, a scientific study on the JAMA network by Dr. Eugene Ziskind called Isolation, Stress in Medical and Mental Illness, a study on social isolation and psychosis from 2021 on PubMed called An Investigation of Social Interactions and Paranoia in Daily Life. Another study we found on PubMed from 2008, Psychological Effects of Polar Expeditions, yet another study listed on PubMed, the role of Circadian FaZe in sleep and performance during Antarctic Winter Expeditions from 2022, a slash film article by Danielle Ryan, The Haunted History Behind the Shinings Stanley Hotel, a sci-fi article by Josh Weiss, The Thing Oral History, Cast and Crew reveal secrets of John Carpenter's sci-fi horror masterpiece. An important byproduct of winter is isolation. Especially in situations when weather is so extreme, it becomes a physical barrier between people. Isolation can induce paranoia and other psychological disorders. One of the big themes today that we're going to talk about over and over again is that isolation tends to amplify what's already there. Obviously, the shining is a great example of that. It can bring out the most extreme thing that somebody sort of has already within them.
SPEAKER_02:The different movie.
SPEAKER_00:There are so many horror films that center around isolation. The Lighthouse, The Blair Witch Project, The Descent, I Am Legend, Buried, science fiction films like High Life. But of course, for this series, we are focused on the overlap of isolation and winter weather. I think the pinnacle example is The Shining, and Alan thinks the pinnacle example is the thing. But we're also going to talk about The Lodge, Let the Right One In, and other winter horror films that rely on desolation. But first, let's establish the baseline. Cabin fever describes the psychological symptoms someone may experience if they are unable to leave a place or have limited social interactions for a period of time. There's a lot of similarities to some of the stuff we're going to talk about here with COVID and what people were in, you know, uh quarantining for COVID.
SPEAKER_02:Which COVID?
SPEAKER_00:19. These symptoms can range from general anxiety and boredom to restlessness, impatience, irritability, depression, and hopelessness. And of course, we are not doctors, we're not psychologists, we're parroting back stuff from the internet. So take that all with a grain of salt.
SPEAKER_02:Because that's a big news flash, everybody.
SPEAKER_00:It's good to have a disclaimer in there, you know? But there's more extreme mental conditions that can also result from physical isolation. There was a study done in 1958 by Dr. Eugene Ziskind that explored this very topic, quoting now from the abstract of the study on Xaman Network. Quote Sufficiently prolonged isolation from society or deprivation of sensory stimuli can produce mental abnormalities in the form of hallucinations, anxiety states, depression, and paranoid symptoms. Conditions likely to induce these phenomena occur clinically in patients kept in the dark after cataract operations, in persons with severe impairment of hearing, in poliomyeletic victims confined to respirators, in prisoners kept in solitary confinement, and in refugees handicapped by language difficulties.
SPEAKER_02:It reminds me of white room isolation torture.
SPEAKER_00:What is that?
SPEAKER_02:You put it you put your prisoner into a white room. Yeah. Everything is white, all the furniture, blinding lights everywhere. There's no shadows. The only color you can see is white. And it just causes extreme, extreme duress.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's something we're actually going to talk about in a few minutes again because we're starting with some of the polar explorations, and that's something they literally in their journals described. Like trekking into the snow for days and days with no visual breaks in what they were seeing was causing them to go crazy.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, this is a great way just to like break people for interrogation.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. It's also similar to like the the beginning of Old Boy. I was thinking about that as I was reading some of these journals where this guy is being kept in this room and you know the noise is repetitive and everything is it's just like exactly what you're saying, but in a long-term torture situation. Back to the quote here monotony and isolation can also affect certain occupational groups, such as long-distance truck drivers, monitors of radar screens, watchmen, and assembly line workers. The underlying nervous mechanisms are not yet understood, but prevention and treatment are simple. This is well illustrated by the experience with cataract surgery, which in the past has been followed by psychoses in as many as 7% of cases. Since improvements of techniques have permitted reduction of the period of bilateral bandaging of the eyes to one day or less.
SPEAKER_02:That's the fanciest way to say like your eyes are covered.
SPEAKER_00:Well, these are science people. Bilateral eye what? Bilateral bandaging of the eyes. Yeah, your eye you can't see. To one day or less, the incidence of prospective psychosis has fallen below 1%. End quote. So I think that's we're not going to do a lot of like heavy uh scientific jargon today, but I do think that kind of sets the baseline a little bit. I mean, I'll try. Yeah, don't you always? There was another study published in 2021 by a handful of researchers investigating the connection between isolation and paranoia. Their study found that patients were more likely to suffer from greater paranoia when alone than when in company. And that social company seemed to limit paranoia. So if you were somebody who was prone to paranoia or other things like that, being around people often helped with that a lot. I just think it's almost like something you and I experience on a day-to-day sometimes. Like if we don't get outside our small apartment, we have a very small apartment. If for some reason there's been a day or two where one of us hasn't gotten out and left physically, you start to feel that anxiety and that like unnamed antsiness almost creep up a little bit.
SPEAKER_02:I've known a couple people throughout my life that have pretty severe paranoia.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:First, it's like, is it a chicken or the egg thing? Because like they always end up being shut-ins. It kind of developed while they're being shut in. You know, like it makes sense. It's like you're paranoid, so you lock up, you you know, lock your door, you don't see anybody. Right. But that's not usually how it goes. It's usually it's a it's a very gradual slope, and the paranoia only sets in well after you begin to self-isolate.
SPEAKER_00:Again, it amplifies that, right? There have been many studies conducted on the effects of solitary confinement on prisoners and the impact of isolation caused by COVID-19 quarantining on society generally. During enforced self-isolation, like pandemic lockdowns, studies have linked longer isolation, lack of interaction, and limited space with increased psychotic symptoms and cognitive problems in patients. Some older clinical research describes a syndrome of perceptual and thought disturbances resulting from prolonged social isolation and sensory restriction. Research on solitary confinement, one of the most extreme real-world forms of isolation, links it to psychotic symptoms like hallucination delusions, cognitive disturbances, and emotional dysregulation, and increased risk of self-harm and long-term psychiatric damage. These effects are widely reported in sociological and psychological studies.
SPEAKER_02:Do you remember the movie Rocket Man?
SPEAKER_00:Ooh, not really.
SPEAKER_02:Let me show you the cover for it.
SPEAKER_00:Is it the Elton John movie?
SPEAKER_02:No.
SPEAKER_00:Oh.
SPEAKER_02:It's not the Elton John movie.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's trippy. He's got a small head and a big body.
SPEAKER_02:Now that is quality commentary, Abby. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:What is this?
SPEAKER_02:You never saw okay, so you never saw this movie? No. I did.
SPEAKER_00:It was It looks like a movie made for eighth grade boys.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, sure. Uh maybe a little earlier. Or at least that's who it's made for. It's a comedy about being an astronaut.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_02:To become an astronaut, you have to go you have to like effectually pass an isolation test where they lock you in an isolation chamber, uh, and you have to just be by yourself for however long, thirty days or something. I don't know. It's traditionally a a very grueling exam that not everybody passes. Even if you have all the right things, it's like when you're going into submarine work, you have to pass the claustrophobia test.
SPEAKER_00:It weeds out the week.
SPEAKER_02:Or it's like a phobia you didn't know that you really had.
SPEAKER_00:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Or you've been able to overcome it in small doses and like you've got a good constitution, so it you didn't really think it was a huge issue. But when really pushed a limit, it breaks certain people. Anyways, this movie, the guy gets locked in there for the entire length of duration. And they cause they ex they're just trying to get him out of the program because he's a total clown. And then they open the door at the end of the the isolation period, expecting him to see like like a mess of a human, and he's really disappointed that it's over because he wasn't done with the shadow puppets.
SPEAKER_00:That's fun. It's also similar, like obviously gravity is not winter horror, but gravity is a good example. Like space, there's a ton of isolation space movies we could talk about.
SPEAKER_02:Did we do an isolation horror?
SPEAKER_00:We did an episode on the history of isolation, episode 83. And I remember actually we recorded this when I was in Maine and you were in New York and we recorded it remotely. How do we do that? You sent me away with a microphone setup.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, I mailed you the drop kit. You no, you gave it to me to bring up. I didn't give it to you, you had to return it.
SPEAKER_00:All right, all right. So generally, we know that extreme isolation comes with the potential side effect of negative impact on mental health, which is a very broad statement, but one that depends on so many factors, from the individual's history with mental health to how extreme the isolation is in other circumstances, even just looking at the abundance of seasonal affective disorder or SAD. Seasonal affective disorder is a clinically recognized form of depression that follows a seasonal pattern, most often emerging in fall or winter, as reduced daylight disrupts circadian rhythms in neurotransmitter regulation. Common symptoms include persistent low mood, fatigue, social withdrawal, sleep and appetite changes, illustrating how light deprivation alone can alter mood and perception even before isolation or trauma are introduced. But as we talk through both real life cases of extreme isolation today and horror inspired by those cases, let's keep this all in mind.
SPEAKER_02:Keep what in mind.
SPEAKER_00:All these psychological elements that we just discussed.
SPEAKER_02:I will try.
SPEAKER_00:Last week, Alan talked a bit about the HMS terror, but that's one of several expeditions that ended up trapped in an inhospitable landscape. The Belgian Antarctic expedition started in 1897 and lasted for two years. It was led by Adrian de Gerlash aboard the Belgica and became a grim case study in what prolonged isolation can do to the human mind. After becoming trapped in pack ice, the crew unintentionally became the first expedition to overwinter in Antarctica, plunging them into months of darkness, extreme cold, monotony, and confinement.
SPEAKER_02:Pack ice is it's like you'd expect it, but it's also just kind of terrifying. It's frozen seawater, because like, you know, all water freezes, of course. Sure. But you think of like the ocean freezing as kind of crazy. And then like glaciers, like, is that really just the ocean? I guess so.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But still, just like the ocean freezing over seems crazy. But sheets of ice, uh obviously it's not gonna freeze all the way to the bottom, but sheets of ice across the top freeze. And like, you know, bays of course freeze, like that's how polar bears walk around. These sheets of ice, which are little pieces, normally as your your boat just kind of like bumps through them. Right. But eventually there get to be so many of them, and it's so dense that it basic basically becomes a floor. Uh oh. And then that floor eventually stops moving enough and then freezes solid. Right.
SPEAKER_00:It freezes to itself.
SPEAKER_02:And that exactly, and then you have a giant floor of ice, and now suddenly the the top layer of the ocean is frozen. Wild. So that's one of the things like you're pushing through even really dense pack ice, but it's not just like completely solid. And that's one of the things, like they talk about this a lot in the terror. As a captain, you have to be able to take one look at that, like, are we gonna get stuck in that or no?
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Because if yes, then get the fuck out of there. But if you think no, and this is how we get through it, because if you you also risk the long way around might also kill you.
SPEAKER_00:So for those stuck in the pack ice, morale very quickly unraveled. Crew members reported insomnia, hallucinations, severe depression, and this creeping paranoia. Men began to distrust one another, and tempers flared. Some sailors grew convinced that they were being deliberately poisoned or sabotaged.
SPEAKER_02:And sometimes they were.
SPEAKER_00:This psychological deterioration was intensified by scurvy, malnutrition, and the relentless sameness of their environment. A perfect pressure cooker for suspicion and fear.
SPEAKER_02:And the complete lack of women.
SPEAKER_00:Doesn't help.
SPEAKER_02:I don't understand why they say a woman on board is bad luck.
SPEAKER_00:Well, we did that whole series on sailor luck. Yeah, but Well, I think it really I mean, if I was gonna put on my conjecture hat, I would look like it looks like the cursed hat from what we do in the shadows.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, with the witch's asshole.
SPEAKER_00:But it has like a little feather on it.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh. So it's the same exact hat.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Um, so I would say that having women on board was dangerous for women, right? In those situations. When you're out to sea, yeah, don't give me that face. When you're out to sea with a bunch of men, there's there's fewer women that at these times would agree to be part of this.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not disagreeing with you. Yeah. But do you really think the male captain would care about that?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Because I think it's a distraction. I think it would be a distraction from what they are trying to do.
SPEAKER_02:I it's definitely a distraction.
SPEAKER_00:And it would cause drama and it would cause issue. And um, I think it's like a i yeah, I don't think the captains were being were like, oh, this is a safety concern for the women, which it was, but I think they were more like, this is going to it's like um there there's this whole piece of history around the history of Valentine's Day, where I forget the exact specifics, but I think the king that was the king of France at the time wouldn't let any of the members of his army have spouses or girlfriends because it was a distraction from the the wars that they needed to go fight.
SPEAKER_02:So instead they brought young boys. Exactly. Not even joking.
SPEAKER_00:The Belgica expedition is now frequently cited in psychological research as an early, well-documented example of how isolation and sensory deprivation can distort perception, foster paranoia, and push otherwise rational individuals towards mental collapse when cut off from normal social and environmental anchors. But 11 years later, Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition started in 1910 and lasted until 1913. The Terra Nova expedition is a huge piece of history, and we are going to talk about it at a pretty high level. One of the really fascinating elements is that there's photographs. There were photographs and journals recovered, which we're going to read a little bit from today, but I'm going to post on Instagram actually photos both from the Belgica and from the Terra Nova expedition because there's photos that exist. There's way more for the Terra Nova expedition. I think it's really interesting to be able to see these men in the boats and you know in some of the conditions that we're talking about today. So head to Instagram to check out those photos.
SPEAKER_02:That's it. Well, it's it's actually an interesting story. Do you know why significantly more photos exist? Tell us Terra Nova.
SPEAKER_00:It's because it's slightly later in time.
SPEAKER_02:Slightly later in time, and where their boat got stuck, they still had Wi-Fi. So they were posting constantly.
SPEAKER_00:Robert Falcon Scott led a group to Antarctica. Come on, that's quality. Robert Falcon Scott led a group to Antarctica with a handful of scientific and research goals. Additionally, the group was hoping to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole. So there's three different expeditions we're going to talk about within this Terra Nova expedition. So Scott's group did reach the pole on January 17, 1912. They found out, and sadly, devastatingly, they found out that a Norwegian team had actually beaten them by 34 days. The five members of Scott's party perished on the return trip. The five men died slowly and in different stages. Edgar Evans was the first to pass. He had suffered a serious head injury earlier in the march, likely from a fall, and as the weeks passed, he became increasingly confused and physically impaired. On February 17, 1912, near the foot of Beardmore Glacier, Evans collapsed and died, probably from a combination of traumatic brain injury, hypothermia, and starvation. Lawrence followed. He was suffering from severe frostbite and possibly gangrene, barely able to walk and slowing the group to a dangerous pace. He was aware that his condition endangered the others. And Oates made a deliberate, brave, and fatal decision on March 16, 1912. He left the tent during a blizzard, reportedly saying, quote, I am just going outside and maybe sometime, end quote. He was never seen again and certainly died very quickly from exposure.
SPEAKER_02:We don't know that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, the bodies were discovered later.
SPEAKER_02:Oh.
SPEAKER_00:Scott Wilson and Bowers survived longer. After continuing some ways, they became trapped by a blizzard just 11 miles from a food depot. Immobilized, out of fuel, and nearly out of food, they gradually succumbed to starvation, hypothermia, and extreme exhaustion. Scott's final diary entries suggest clarity, alternating with despair as their bodies failed. The three men died in their tent in late March 1912, likely within days of one another, ending one of the most harrowing episodes in polar exploration. Eight months later, a rescue team recovered the journals, photographs, bodies, and other things. The journals revealed the harsh experiences suffered by the men, including confinement, prolonged darkness, extreme cold, starvation, and of course exhaustion. Mood swings are evident in their writings, along with fatalistic thinking, irritability, and moments of disordered reasoning that today might be associated with stress induced psychosis or severe depressive states, rather than simple loss of morale.
SPEAKER_02:I do wonder, like, it's really hard. Hard to picture yourself in these situations. This is not the age of exploration, because that was like on big wooden ships going around the world. This is like the last frontier on Earth that is not underwater. It seems like through the lens of modern sensibility, going on an exploration to just do the thing. Yeah. You know, like that where you're probably gonna die. Just to say you got to the center of Antarctica, something that no one else has ever done before.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Because they keep dying. Seems foolish. Right. I don't know. Maybe I I understand to like it puts your name in the history books, and for a lot of people, that's incredibly important. But you know, Scott's crew are, you know, as they were known as Scott's Tots, uh, they they all gave up their lives for a seemingly frivolous goal.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I don't know. I mean, listen, you have people still who climb Mount Everest, even though people die all the time. You have people who are volunteer like I think the version of it today is volunteering to be on a SpaceX mission to Mars or whatever. You know, it's like there's always that new thing that's like there's a risk that the shuttle's gonna explode. There's a risk that and people do it because to your point, you're right. Like I think they want the fame of it. They have this thirst for exploration and infamy and whatever it is, and they're they're willing to take the risk.
SPEAKER_02:So the Terror was trying to find the Northwest Passage, uh a shipping route. However, what is the point when it's completely chock full of ice? You're not doing much shipping through solid ice. So it it doesn't seem like maybe it's a seasonal thing, but then I think they wanted to chart it.
SPEAKER_00:They wanted to map it.
SPEAKER_02:I see. Okay. So you map it out despite the conditions, and then once you know where it is, you can get through during Arctic summer.
SPEAKER_00:I also think to your point, it's like one of those few places on Earth at the time that was unmapped. So be able to go into the unknown, like that was one of the last times humanity could do that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I guess that's human spirit. They just want to explore. It's I don't know, I I think about this a lot because I I read tons of sci-fi, and so there's lots of dialogue with alien species, so much commentary on the human condition or the aliens' sensibilities and all these things. But it's always written by humans, of course, because otherwise, wow, what a find. And so it it's you know, it's like the the brain diagnosing itself. It is just kind of odd that the people have such a drive to uh explore into the unknown, no matter what the cost, just out of what curiosity. It's it's but it's it's human nature. It feels so normal to risk absolutely everything for possibly and most likely nothing, for even for just the slight chance of, hey, we found a thing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's like this it's like pioneering. I don't know, it's it's the allure. And I don't know, is that is that societal or is that I think that's all scientists. Like I think scientists dedicate their lives in a lot of ways, like cancer researchers. They're they're doing it because they think that there's some value to society to do it. Like people who are going into space are doing it because they think there's some value to the future state of society. I think it's the same thing with cancer researchers, disease researchers, environmental researchers. I think they feel like they're trying to solve for a problem. Yeah, I've I don't know.
SPEAKER_02:That for me, that feels far more tangible because like this is the problem we have. We're trying to solve it.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's different from like, I know I said Everest earlier. I think it's different. I think people who are climbing Mount Everest are trying to push their physical bodies to the limit to be like, I did this, right? And I think that's different from people who are like motivated scientifically, like this Terra Nova expedition, I said they were trying to reach the South Pole, but there was all other sorts of like scientific research and studies they were doing along the way. That wasn't the only thing. It's it's closer in the camp of I'm not trying to come back and be like, I ran, you know, a hundred-mile marathon. It's like I I hiked Mount Everest, I did this thing. I think it's more so I'm trying to collect this information and I'm rugged enough to go into the world and do it.
SPEAKER_02:Antarctica is such a time capsule of our planet because it's literally frozen and preserved. I was just watching a video and they were just like drilling down into a glacier, and you know, it was just a time lapse of the camera going through it, and it's like this ice is one million years old, this ice is three million years old, this ice is five million years old, and now it hit the rock underneath.
unknown:Cool.
SPEAKER_02:Every time you watch a movie about Antarctic research, they're always taking core samples.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And that means they're just drilling out a a piece of ice and studying it because that is like a little microcosm of the the the biosphere of the time.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And like, I don't know, that's kind of cool. You're getting ice that's five million years old, unchanged in the last five million years.
SPEAKER_00:It's super cool, it's super cool.
SPEAKER_02:And then you thought, and then the supervirus comes out.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's right.
SPEAKER_02:Not even joking.
SPEAKER_00:While still alive, the group pushed towards the South Pole, and isolation intensified into near total sensory deprivation. So this is kind of what you were talking about earlier. The white landscape literally blended into itself and the sky. It was likened to other sorts of sensory torture. There was no visual relief or temporal markers, which can destabilize perception. There's a few different quotes from Scott's journal on this, but I'm gonna read this one. Scott Statz. Quote: The eternal silence of the great white desert, cloudy columns of snow drift advancing from the south, pale yellow wraiths heralding the coming storm, blotting out one by one the sharp-cut lines of the land. End quote. The journals also revealed Scott's increasingly rigid adherence to plans, even as conditions deteriorated, and the group's difficulty adapting to catastrophic setbacks suggests cognitive narrowing, a known effect of extreme stress and isolation. By the final weeks, starvation and hypothermia compounded psychological collapse, blurring the line between rational endurance and impaired thought. The Terra Nova expedition stands as a haunting example of how isolation in extreme environments can subtly undermine mental clarity long before physical survival finally fails, turning the Antarctic itself into an unseen antagonist working on the mind as much as the body. I will say this though, reading the journals, the mood seems to be merry for much longer than you would expect. There's like this camaraderie, or at least the way that Scott's writing about it. He's like, you know what? Things are horrible, things are terrible, but you wouldn't know it from the drunken songs we're singing in the tent. Like there was this um for a long time in the journals, this sort of underline of morale, at least.
SPEAKER_02:Like the world's fucking on fire.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And people are like, but I live living my best self, hashtag girlboss.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think it's more similar to the musicians playing as the Titanic sank. It's like, okay, this is happening, so we can go out depressed and angry, or we can celebrate our lives, you know?
SPEAKER_02:Or he was just a like self-delusioned, pompous ass.
SPEAKER_00:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:Where like the men are freezing to death and he's like, but it's for my cause. Right, right, yeah. Side note, just you were talking as soon as you said the white desert, it reminded me of nuclear winter. Do you know how nuclear winter happens? Because it's kind of cool.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, let me let me put on my conjecture hat again. I believe that this is my conjecture, that so much of nuclear bombs are going off, and then it it causes another ice age by fucking up like the ozone layer or something like that.
SPEAKER_02:Cl cl close. Bombs go off.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Huge, huge ash clouds, debr you know.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So that it basically blots out the sun. It causes things to freeze because the the w the the it blocks the sun, the earth gets cold, it turns into winter. But it gets so much of the planet is covered in a simultaneous winter that it becomes reflective.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And then all of the white bounces the light back, and then there's not enough heat to physically thaw it. And the entire world is then plunged into an ice age because the winter continues to spread around the planet.
SPEAKER_00:Rock and roll.
SPEAKER_02:And then you're stuck like that for a long time. I don't know how ice ages end, but I guess they eventually do because we've gone through multiple. We should watch the movie.
SPEAKER_00:Ice Age?
SPEAKER_02:The great documentary.
SPEAKER_00:Quoting from Robert Falcon Scott's journal, quote, had we lived, I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions, which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. A lot of his quotes, he refers to them being Englishmen.
SPEAKER_02:The endurance was a different ship.
SPEAKER_00:These rough notes in our dead bodies must tell the tale, end quote. During Scott's Terra Nova expedition, the Northern and Western parties, which were separate field groups with very different fates, each endured isolation in their own way. The Northern Party, known grimly as the Inexpressible Island Party, consisted of Victor Campbell, Raymond Priestley, George Murray Levick, and petty officer George Abbott. In 1912, they were stranded along the coast of Northern Victoria Land after their ship failed to retrieve them. With no proper hut and minimal supplies, they were forced to overwinter in a crude snow cave dug into the side of Inexpressible Island. For months they survived on seals and penguins, burned blubber for heat, lived in darkness, filth, and extreme confinement.
SPEAKER_02:And now you have to pay for such experiences.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. The diaries recovered describe emotional volatility, irritability, and mental fog. Again, these are classic signs of prolonged isolation. Despite this, this group survived and later completed a harrowing trek back to base, making them one of the expedition's few psychological and physical survival stories. The Western Party, which was led by geologist Griffith Taylor, operated earlier in the expedition and included Frank Debenham, Charles Wright, and Edgar Evans before Evans was reassigned to the Polar Party. Their mission focused on geological and mapping work in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. Although they endured severe cold and isolation, they benefited from shorter journeys, clearer objectives, and more reliable support. Still, their writings reflect the mental strain of polar monotony and the unsettling emptiness of the Antarctic landscape. To your point, Alan, this is somebody who went out on one journey, survived it, went out on one expedition, survived, and went out on another and died, right? So there is some kind of allure here for people.
SPEAKER_02:I made that point.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you were talking about how there's some allure for people to do these extreme things.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I guess it's also your job. I don't know. Is Explorer a job?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I uh I think these are scientists.
SPEAKER_02:What year is this now?
SPEAKER_00:Early 1900s, like 1910.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry, when was the Titanic?
SPEAKER_00:1912.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so this was right around the same time. About this okay, they should have just taken the Titanic through the Arctic. Can't sink if you're stuck in pack ice.
SPEAKER_00:Compared to Scott's polar party and the northern party, the Western Party escaped catastrophe, but their experience still illustrates how even successful field work in this kind of state taxed the mind as much as the body. Together, these parties showed the expedition's full psychological spectrum, from survival through adaptability to collapse under isolation. During extended stays in polar regions, particularly during polar night, which is a period in which the sun remains continuously below the horizon for weeks to months, those living or exploring the region experience profound disruption of circadian rhythms, as external light cues that normally regulate sleep wake cycles and hormonal balances are absent, leading to sleep disturbances, mood changes, and impaired cognitive performance.
SPEAKER_02:I wonder if the blind are susceptible to SAD.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, interesting. I hadn't thought about that.
SPEAKER_02:Because I know it's like vitamin D through the skin.
SPEAKER_00:And it talks about this cataract, right? We talked earlier about the cataract. It seems very similar to that. I guess maybe it depends in some cases if somebody was born blind. This is again me wearing my conjecture hat. And maybe, you know, we're always accustomed to that versus someone going blind later in life and having to adjust to the new normal.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's it's it's interesting.
SPEAKER_00:Research on Antarctic overwintering crews, those PubMed studies that we mentioned in today's sources, have documented significant circadian misalignment, with many expeditioners experiencing shorter sleep, mood deterioration, and impaired cognitive functioning.
SPEAKER_02:It's also cold as shit. Yeah. Good luck sleeping when you're cold.
SPEAKER_00:And stressed and afraid to you're gonna die.
SPEAKER_02:And y you know you're only surrounded by a bunch of sweaty dudes that haven't like showered in months?
SPEAKER_00:Yikes. Let's jump ahead a little bit. It was the fall of 1974 when Stephen King and his wife stayed at the Stanley Hotel. The hotel was about to close for the winter. It was a three-season hotel at the time, and only a small crew was remaining to take care of it. The Stanley Hotel overlooks Estes Park in Colorado, and it is no surprise that King named his fictionalized version of this hotel the Overlook in the Shining. At the time of their stay, the hotel was having a bit of trouble attracting guests.
SPEAKER_02:A problem it does not have now.
SPEAKER_00:The Kings were actually the only paying guests at the time, and they stayed in the presidential suite, room 217.
SPEAKER_02:What the rest are ghosts?
SPEAKER_00:No, like comps or you know, whatever. They were the only g guests there.
SPEAKER_02:Paying guests.
SPEAKER_00:Paying guests. The story goes that Stephen King had a nightmare that night. He dreamt that his son was being chased down a long hallway in the hotel by a possessed fire hose.
SPEAKER_02:Freud would have a field day without one.
SPEAKER_00:He woke up in a cold sweat and went to the balcony to smoke. It is here that he came up with the idea for the shining, his third novel. This would be his first best-selling book. King's book, and of course, Kubrick's movie, have helped to inspire a resurgence in the hotel, which now, as you said, Alan, does not struggle to fill rooms.
SPEAKER_02:Now especially that you can go there and practice the Estes method.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. Look at you. Stephen King's The Shining hit bookstores in January of 1977. Kubrick's movie adaptation was released three years later in 1980. Sometimes it blows my mind how quickly the film version of something comes out.
SPEAKER_02:Yes and no. I think I I was thinking about this the other day. Just about every Hollywood movie was a book. I don't know about that. I would say the vast majority of Hollywood movies were books. I don't know about that either. Okay, well, I I'm sure. I'm gonna say yes. Okay. So the key is that people don't like adapted books. From whatever standpoint, it seems too highbrow. They want original content. So if a book comes out and it's good, rights get snapped up immediately. And they immediately want to str uh turn it into a movie. That's why things happen quick. And then you find out things like Avatar were never books.
SPEAKER_00:Right. To my point.
SPEAKER_02:And then he just then, but that's that's James Cameron money. James Cameron can do whatever the fuck you want.
SPEAKER_00:There's so many indie films, there's so many films that are not based on books.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, sorry, indie films, absolutely, because that requires licensing and rights. I said Hollywood movies.
SPEAKER_00:Still, I still think so.
SPEAKER_02:Name one Hollywood movie that's not a book. You can't do it.
SPEAKER_00:One battle after another.
SPEAKER_02:That was an excellent novella.
SPEAKER_00:No, it wasn't. Stephen King actually wrote an entire screenplay draft of The Shining, which Kubrick never read. Instead, he spent 11 weeks working on a new screenplay with author Diane Johnson. Kubrick is also known for calling King's writing, quote, weak. Despite his harsh criticism, Kubrick actually called King during the writing process. At seven in the morning, King's phone rang. Now, when he's talking about this, he reports that Kubrick asked him, quote, I think stories of the supernatural are fundamentally optimistic, don't you? If there are ghosts, then that means we survive death, end quote.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry to rain on your parade yet again.
SPEAKER_00:Here we go.
SPEAKER_02:One battle after another is a free adaptation reimagining of Thomas Pinchon's 1990 novel, Vineland.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, the next series that we're gonna have on this podcast will just be a debate between you and I, and we will bring forth our evidence.
SPEAKER_02:About what? Anything? Anything and everything.
SPEAKER_00:About this topic, about what how many films, how many Hollywood films are based on adaptations versus original material.
SPEAKER_02:Since Hollywood was founded in the early 20th century, I think there's only been about four, maybe five movies.
SPEAKER_00:Save it for the debate, Al. King countered that it isn't that optimistic if you think of hell. Kubrick simply responded that he didn't believe in hell. And of course, Stephen King wasn't wowed with the Kubrick version once it was released. This is kind of a tale as old as time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, he hates all movies and then he directs crap himself, and he's like, it's so much better now, but it's awful.
SPEAKER_00:What was that one movie he directed that we watched?
SPEAKER_02:Sorry, it wasn't awful.
SPEAKER_00:It was a car.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's uh Maximum Overdrive. Was that a good idea? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:That was wild. Yeah, it was good. That was pretty good. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I liked it, but no one else did.
SPEAKER_00:In a 1983 interview with Playboy, King said, quote, I'd admired Kubrick for a long time and had great expectations for the project, but I was deeply disappointed in the end result. Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fell flat, end quote. He specifically took issue with the casting, quote, Jack Nicholson, though a fine actor, was all wrong for the part, King said. Quote, his last big role had been in One Flu over the Cuckoo's Nest. And between that and the manic grin, the audience automatically identified him as a loony from the first scene. But the book is about Jack Torrance's gradual descent into madness through the malign influence of the overlook. If the guy is nuts to begin with, then the entire tragedy of his downfall is wasted. End quote.
SPEAKER_02:And then he goes on to play the Joker.
SPEAKER_00:These two versions of the story are notoriously different. King's version of Jack is sympathetic, but in Kubrick's version, he becomes a full-fledged movie villain.
SPEAKER_02:And the movie's better. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:In King's version, the hotel is certainly haunted. And in Kubrick's, it's more ambiguous until you kind of get to that final image.
SPEAKER_02:Sorry. It's just different. I mean, that's King in a nutshell of how the book is always going to be different than the movie. Same story, very different tones, very different ideas. That's always going to be a thing. I also don't like Stephen King's writing style. It's not for me. It's too all over the place. I feel like he always tries to put too much into every book. The perfect example, Salem Slot, where jumping her around, there's 10 trillion characters, and you're supposed to care about every single one of them. And if you don't, Stephen King personally comes to your house and punches you in the face. So it I don't know. The movie adaptation was kind of fun.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think to me, King is like I I don't dislike his writing largely, but I think it's like he's so prolific that it's like one in a hundred books I like. You know, not that's exaggeration, but one in ten I really love. I also think for me, I often feel like a loyalty to the version of the thing I experienced first. And I certainly watched the movie so many times in my life before I ever got to the book. And so, and I've read the book and and I don't dislike it, but I I don't know, to me, the film is so special and so pinnacle in horror history, and I I think it's so freaking good that it's hard to like strip that away from my brain when I'm reading this book. That's more of like the slow burn, right? When the film is so visual and interesting and bizarre, and so yeah, they're just they're just different versions of the story, and I also think you know they don't need to be pitted against each other, also.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, it's also Kubrick. It's so visually striking. Yeah, he's a master.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, they're both masters, but Kubrick is really a a master.
SPEAKER_02:That's his whole thing, is visual storytelling.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Where, you know, th there's a reason that every film student has to watch Stanley Kubrick shit night and day.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:But yeah, again, a lot of people love Stephen King's writing. A lot of people, it's a lot of people's favorite, you know, horror author.
SPEAKER_00:Which Kubrick movies did you have to watch in film school? And I'll tell you which ones I had to watch.
SPEAKER_02:I'd say the two big ones were Barry Linden. Every one is like a little masterclass in a very different thing.
SPEAKER_00:In a very different thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So Barry Linden, because they shot without movie lights for a few a few scenes. Just like The Witch. Well, yeah, but that's a modern movie with modern equipment. Back then, they like if Stan Stanley Kubrick said, I want to do a scene with just candles, and you're shooting on film with old Hollywood shit, like that just didn't happen. Right.
SPEAKER_00:They ne they uh wasn't bright enough to illuminate right.
SPEAKER_02:They literally made lenses specifically for Stanley Kubrick. They made like these super speed lenses where they only made a few copies. Some got sold to Barry Linden and the others got sold to NASA.
SPEAKER_01:Interesting.
SPEAKER_02:Then the other one being um eyes wide shut because again that was a master class in how to do mixed color temperatures. Everything is strong orange, strong blues, and like previously that's just like it breaks all the rules. But when Kubrick does it, it's like, oh, so that's the new rule because you know rules are made by the masters.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I had to watch 2001 a Space Odyssey.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, of course. I forgot about that one.
SPEAKER_00:And Doctor Strange Love.
SPEAKER_02:A movie I've never seen.
SPEAKER_00:Oh.
SPEAKER_02:Although I did see the sequel Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Um and it was not as good.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Kubrick deliberately strips away some of the exposition. This aligns with existential horror. The terror of never knowing whether madness comes from inside or outside, right? We don't know enough about Jack Torrance's mental health history in the movie to know if this is something that's caused by this hotel or if this is something that was already there.
SPEAKER_02:Meanwhile that was Stephen King's number one complaint was that it was too on the nose.
SPEAKER_00:This ambiguity mirration psychology where hallucinations, paranoia, and dissociation are common in prolonged confinement. There are quite a few conspiracy theories about the Shining movie, which are fairly heavy, so a bit of a content warning here. One theory is that the film is actually about Jack sexually abusing his son and his wife refuses to acknowledge this until the end. Again, these are theories as none of this is based in no filmmaker has come forward and said that this is true. There's an entire website dedicated to this theory and Easter eggs throughout the movie that help solidify the theory, one of them being the fact that Jack is reading a Playgirl magazine in the lobby with a cover article about incest. The theory is maintained by Rob Ager. He's collected evidence on this page, collectivelearning.com if you want to explore this more. The Shining is obviously an incredibly strong example of horror derived from winter isolation. Stephen King has repeatedly stated that The Shining is fundamentally about alcoholism and cyclical abuse, written while he himself was drinking heavily and terrified of harming his own family.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah see it's all about him.
SPEAKER_00:Isolation in winter removes external restraints no job, no social accountability, no escape. Jack Torrance's descent is not sudden madness, but in King's version the slow resurfacing of addiction and rage. The overlook functions as an accelerant not the root cause. King later said that he was quote writing about himself without fully realizing it at the time. I mean so much of King's writing features people who are dealing with addiction. That's one of the main themes because that's something he went through in his life.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah you write what you know.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly.
SPEAKER_02:People love Stephen King. It's just not my preferred writing style. If you want a more straightforward horror literary experience without you know lots of layered ambiguity check out R.L.
SPEAKER_00:Stein Goosebumps. I would say personally my favorite Stephen King novel and I'm not a total hater is Pet Cemetery. That scared me like my mom has a story about how she and my dad eloped in in New Orleans when and she had moved down there and she was living I think maybe without power like the some reason the power had gone out in their house in New Orleans and she didn't know anybody yet and so she was just sort of like reading Salem's Law and how scary and terrifying it was for her. I think my version of that is Pet Cemetery and I wasn't living in a house with no power but Pet Cemetery is a Stephen King novel that, I don't know, like moved me emotionally. I thought it was devastating emotionally but also horrifying and scary and it I think it was very successful for me at hitting all the notes that Stephen King aims to hit, which is both something that's scary but it's also emotionally devastating typically I'm trying to think if I've ever been really terrified by a book.
SPEAKER_02:And I don't think I have.
SPEAKER_00:You know the scariest book I've ever read and then there were none. What's that about? It's an Agatha Christie book. It's a very very redone theme in horror at this point but it's I think it's kind of one of the originators which is these people all receive mysterious invitations to arrive on this like private island.
SPEAKER_02:Like Glass Onion.
SPEAKER_00:With a fancy house and and one by one they are killed and they don't know what's going on and the people there's you know they don't know who lives there and they're killed and killed and there's like this twist ending at the end. But I remember I read that when I was like in my early twenties. I was living in an apartment in Williamsburg and I was up on the couch in the living room with all the lights on at night because I was too afraid to go to my room. It was it really for a book that was very old it really I can picture you standing on the couch.
SPEAKER_02:It's something you still do.
SPEAKER_00:Sometimes you just gotta stretch your legs on the floor. This is a great example of isolation being an accelerant for underlying or pre-existing mental health issues. But the film isn't just about Jack's unraveling Wendy is also isolated in the movie. Not just geographically but also mentally she is economically and emotionally tied to Jack. She's trapped Kubrick's direction emphasizes her entrapment turning the overlook into a pressure chamber for intimate partner violence. Winter removes witnesses. Another element to discuss with the shining is the historic context that Kubrick adds. Kubrick layers Native American imagery throughout the hotel, visually reinforcing that the overlook is built atop historic violence. The ghosts are not random they are American ghosts wealth, erasure, masculinity, and inherited brutality repeating across generations. The final photograph suggests that Jack has not been possessed but absorbs into history, trapped in a loop. Winter horror often frames nature as hostile, but the shining frames history itself as inescapable. The loop is both commentary on societal violence, but also the cycles of domestic violence and untreated mental health conditions and addiction. There is also a duality here between the presentation of masculinity and sensitivity. Not that these concepts are necessarily mutually exclusive in real life, but they are represented as at odds in the Shining. Jack's role as a failed writer is not incidental. Jack's rage grows as his identity collapses. The overlook offers him an alternative masculinity authority over violence and permanence through destruction. This is one reason the film resonates with anxieties about male failure and entitlement. On the other end of the spectrum, Danny is not just a victim. He represents survival through sensitivity. His shining allows him to recognize danger before adults can articulate it. An isolation psychology heightened perception can either destroy or save you Danny's ability to listen, retreat and seek help contrasts sharply with Jack's denial. And a few final quick facts about the movie. Jack Nicholson actually improvised the film's iconic line here's Johnny. And this was the only film that Danny Lloyd was ever in. At the time he didn't realize he was filming a horror movie.
SPEAKER_02:Well didn't they like change a bunch of stuff like in the script that they gave him yeah to make it more kid friendly.
SPEAKER_00:What is it? What's the kick slogan? Kid tested parent approved kicks are my favorite childhood serial it's disgusting.
SPEAKER_02:They're gross.
SPEAKER_00:No they're not no they are in the final snow scene the filmmakers used 900 tons of salt. Salt? Yeah for the snow. You know berry berry kicks those were even better.
SPEAKER_02:Okay you're changing the subject they literally salted the earth was it a studio?
SPEAKER_00:It must have been okay so it was that part of it was shot on a massive set in England using a special mix of salt and crushed styrofoam for snow and ice.
SPEAKER_02:That sounds really good for the environment. Well it was in a set but yeah still and then it all just went right in the trash.
SPEAKER_00:The shining is a great example of how winter isolation intensifies what's already there, turning personal instability and family conflict into something lethal. And just like the polar crews experienced paranoia and hallucinations from confinement, Jack Torrance's mental deterioration accelerates under isolation. John Carpenter's The Thing approaches isolation from the opposite direction, introducing an external threat that only becomes dangerous because the characters are cut off and unable to trust one another. In both stories winter is not just a setting but a condition that removes safety nets, limits escape and forces characters to confront whether the real danger comes from within the group or from something outside of it. John Carpenter's The Thing was released in 1982 but based on two previous works. Originally a novella from 1938 titled Who Goes There by John W. Campbell which inspired the 1951 film The Thing from Another World. Who Goes There was first published in the August 1938 edition of Astounding Science Fiction. The story is set at a remote Antarctic research station where a small group of scientists uncovers a crashed alien spacecraft buried in the ice. Inside they find a frozen extraterrestrial organism that is later revealed to be a shapeshifter capable of perfectly imitating any living being it absorbs.
SPEAKER_02:I want to add one detail there that I found so frickin' cool. Because first off this was 38 you said right way before Ridley Scott did all his his bullshit. I might I might be getting confused because this has been retconned multiple times through all the thing reimaginings. Sure. But I don't think it's the actual things spaceship. I don't think like that's the race of things that built it. It's very similar to the beginning of uh Ridley Scott's Alien where they find this gigantic alien body with its like chest burst open because the xenomorph had like burst out of this other species. And similar to Rid Ridley Scott where he goes back and like retcons everything and explain that that's actually like the the engineers and everything and like makes perfect explanations. Originally it was just a mystery. Just you don't know where the thing comes from. It just really cements its complete otherworldlin its complete otherness because it's a parasite even affects this spacefaring society and causes them to crash on Earth.
SPEAKER_00:As the creature thaws and escapes the station descends into paranoia. Because the alien can replicate individuals down to their memories and behaviors no one can be certain who is still human. The group attempts to develop scientific tests to identify the imitation but growing distrust undermines cooperation. At a high level the story is less about defeating a monster than about the psychological collapse of a closed group under extreme conditions. The polar setting with its cold darkness and lack of outside contact intensifies fear and suspicion turning survival into a battle against both the alien and the erosion of trust within the group in the original novella it's still unclear if this thing is like evil, you know it's just trying to survive you know when it thaws and like it thaws because humans decide to thaw it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It's like a dis uh a definitive choice that they make because they they assume it's dead and they're just there's it's it's the the human condition of the need to know and explore. Yeah. And so they want a thaw and take some samples and you know they want their names in the history books as the ones that discovered alien life. And in doing so it's both the best thing and the worst thing. The worst thing because things go horrifically wrong by the thing being freed but the best because it's in Antarctica, you know had they just transferred a ice block back to you know th the the US or whatnot into a major city and then the thing gets out and like okay now it it takes over the planet. Oh but okay anyways the thing gets out and they immediately try to kill it because like it's freaking scary. It's a scared animal right it's gonna attack and do do do what it does. And so but it's also highly intelligent. And so like what what what would you do if like humans woke up being like poked and prodded it's gonna you'd fight you'd fight back.
SPEAKER_00:Sure.
SPEAKER_02:But then things get way out of control and now it just becomes like a last man standing situation.
SPEAKER_00:The 1951 film The Thing from another world is not an exact remake of the novella. Who goes there centers on distrust, scientific reasoning and fear of imitation. The question is not how do we kill it, but who is still human. The 1951 film emphasizes military authority, action and cooperation with scientists often portrayed as reckless and the military as stabilizing. In the novella paranoia is constant and justified in the film paranoia is minimal the threat is visible and external it's a big monster walking around. I mean it's fun like the ending of that movie it it's it's almost like a Frankenstein like that's kind of what the creature looks like. And there's these really fun this isn't a spoiler but this really fun like lightning bolt shock scene which like for the 50s the technology felt pretty cool to see.
SPEAKER_02:I I this has been you know we're gonna get there eventually but it's not until the 2011 not remake but like prequel prequel yeah where you really get some good CGI technology to see the thing and what it can do. And what it first off it's just such an interesting creature. It's it's probably one of my favorite movie monsters.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah the 2011 version or the or just in general the thing in general yes and the 2011 did such a good job.
SPEAKER_02:The movie didn't do well and I was expecting to hate it because the John Carpenter version is so beloved. But it I thought it was incredible. I think it's one of my favorite prequels and it's mostly just like how they used the thing. It's such an interesting organism where it it just needs biomass. It's not gonna just attack because if it it can't survive we we see humans kill the thing monster again and again. Yeah but if just like one cell survived that's all that matters because one cell all just has to latch onto any other cell of anything.
SPEAKER_00:Which makes it a really difficult enemy to defeat. Yeah but for many reasons.
SPEAKER_02:Thank God it it's in Antarctica.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:You know if it uh they talk about this in the novella had it landed anywhere else had it splashed into the ocean it would have been you would have been screwed because it would have just started eating fish.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And then gotten whales yeah and then climbed onto land with all the mass of a whale because and you see this in the 2011 and especially in the thing video game from 2002 it's just it's all sneaky and infiltraty because it's just biting its time to get biomass.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Once it gets enough it says fuck it. We're all coming together to make a giant monster because we can. And then once it becomes a giant monster it's got enough to just attack it doesn't need to be super sneaky anymore.
SPEAKER_01:Right, right.
SPEAKER_02:So just imagine it gets a few whales under its belt and then pops up in New York and then just starts eating everybody.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. That's a lot of biomass. Yeah. But what's its end game? Because eventually at that rate it would just snowball enough to take over everything and then what? And then what does it do alone on the earth?
SPEAKER_02:Uh that's exactly what it does.
SPEAKER_00:But then once everything is gone, what does it do?
SPEAKER_02:I'm really glad you asked Abby so it's highly intelligent it absorbs the memories and knowledge of any host. Hence why it's such a good infiltrator because it's a carbon copy memory wise and personality wise it can be. It's a really good actor but in the novella there's one guy that like locks himself and actually this this happens in John Carpenter's version as well. There's one guy who doesn't trust anybody he is locked in a shed because they suspect him of being a thing. But and he's like I'm gonna lock the door from this side I don't trust you you don't trust me I'm happy this way. Great. Okay cool. Once they finally devise the test they're like should we go test him? Yeah sure let's go test him in the novella he's been alone by himself for a week and this is like this is the end of the the novella. And I'm gonna give a spoiler because it's from 1938. He's not answering the door and so they they burst in and he's all in thing mode and so they burn him. Okay, cool. They got him they say had they been just 30 minutes later they would have the earth would have been lost because this guy even despite being locked in um he's a thing. So he could just turn into a tiny little rope and sneak out through cracks. And he had a whole week to himself to build technology and this is 1938 so it's pulp sci-fi he was in the middle of building his anti-gravity jet pack. Wow they had spent all this time disabling the vehicles uh pulling out the um the the starters uh you know on on all things yeah they smashed the the the they didn't have a helicopter whatever they had they destroyed any way to leave they smashed the radios all the stuff so they couldn't call for help meanwhile this thing was building his fucking anti-gravity jet pack uh out of spare parts because he had the technology of an of alien races multiple so all he had to do was get enough stuff to like populate take over the earth and not even take over the earth just replace the earth that's all they do what is what do humans do they just exist they pro proliferate and they spread like a disease. So they have the technology to build more spaceships because they've you know consumed races that can build spaceships and now they can leave earth at any time.
SPEAKER_00:So interesting I mean I think watching the movie like the 82 movie you don't quite like it was fun for me I guess what I'm trying to say is that it was fun for me to watch the 1951 and the 2011 version because it broadened my understanding of the thing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah the the the novella is the most exposition you get sure about what's going on. And especially in John Carpenter's like that's the whole point. You get no exposition. It's just holy fuck yeah this thing sucks.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah yeah we gotta kill it. Yeah it's mimicking us that's kind of what we understand.
SPEAKER_02:And meanwhile thank God for Kurt Russell and his flamethrower because everyone else is like oh I don't know you you might be a thing or I but I don't want to hurt you and Kurt Russell's like oh fuck you John Carpenter's The Thing evolves the story even further.
SPEAKER_00:It tells the story of a research team in Antarctica that discovers a crashed alien spacecraft and a frozen creature which we know which soon thaws and begins assimilating and imitating the humans. As the shape-shifting alien spreads paranoia consumes the isolated team no one can tell who is still human. The survivors struggle to contain or destroy the creature while paranoia and fear tear the group apart, turning the battle for survival into a tense psychological ordeal as much of a fight against each other as it is against the external monster. The screenplay was written by Bill Lancaster. Of the$15 million budget$1.5 million was used on Rob Botton's creature effects.
SPEAKER_02:Hell yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I think the film grossed about 19 million in the initial box office release. And since then an extra$37 well the film was actually released initially to negative reviews shocking when we look back now and see how much of a cult classic it has become but the cult classic status really took hold when it was released for home video and TV. Now it's often cited as one of the best science fiction horror movies ever made. And just look at his hair I know Kurt Russell he's often that movie yeah the thing inspired a video game and a 2011 prequel starting with a video game which was released in 2002 and Alan has been staying up all night long every night to play.
SPEAKER_02:Trying I and every time I think I'm at the end it just keeps going.
SPEAKER_00:It's like a simulator for when you're actually there in that situation.
SPEAKER_02:Uh I mentioned this on the last episode but I do think that this is one of the best movie tie-in games ever made. Granted the real horror is only in like the first I don't even know how far I am in the game first half maybe before it becomes like far more like a milit military shooter type game. Yeah. But the the what I've gleaned from this and this is a sequel that takes place moments after John Carpenter's movie ends.
SPEAKER_00:Which is cool.
SPEAKER_02:I like that premise it's like Halloween too I like picking up the story you know uh you know a a team is is brought in to like figure out what the hell's going on a a team of like military people. Yeah and you know everything is burned out burned and whatnot and so they go they check out the the Norwegian camp similar everything is destroyed they're trying to figure out what's going on and then you know thing monsters are still rampant. I'm not sure which government was doing it but a government agency had previously discovered the the things spaceship and was studying it and they were trying to develop bioweapons. And guess what? It gets out. But not before they make some serious progress. And they were able to distill the thing biology, virus, whatever you want to call it, into a a a means of control where someone is able to become a thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:While still maintaining his human control. All the things are connected via hive mind. Talk about a super weird experience. He's simultaneously in all of the things and they're inside him, but he has control. Despite the fact that he retains his quote unquote humanity, he's also driven insane because he needs he has the thing's drive to spread over the planet.
SPEAKER_00:Yikes.
SPEAKER_02:It's a cool, it's a cool game. I highly recommend everybody play it.
SPEAKER_00:The 2011 prequel stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Joel Edgerton set at the Norwegian Antarctic Research Station, as Alan said, just before the events of the 1982 film, the thing from 2011 follows a team of scientists who uncover the remains of an alien spacecraft and a partially frozen creature. That's the theme that remains true for all of these. Yep. As they attempt to study it, the alien begins to infect and imitate the team members, spreading rapidly and unpredictably. Again, isolation, mistrust and the alien's shape-shifting abilities drive the survivors into paranoia, forcing them to question who is human and who has been assimilated, ultimately setting the stage for the events that unfold in the Carpenter classic.
SPEAKER_02:It's an excellent prequel and I think it incorporates so many of the themes of the original novella that John Carpenters did not. So like you get exposition you get to learn a bit more about the thing. You get some real good looks at it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah there's some really cool special effects.
SPEAKER_02:So cool. Especially you know like it's 2011 like by no means dated but also it's 2000 you know the effects from like the early 2000s I feel like age can age poorly.
SPEAKER_00:They can yeah these did not these did not they were scary as hell.
SPEAKER_02:The thing looks super super creepy but not just for the sake of looking creepy. Things are pretty functional. Yeah it's like yeah faces are upside down people are really twisted but that's because like the they're not using those organs at for like function it they're just vestigial because that's the biomass that the thing absorbed. And you you get to see really how it attacks with all of its like tentacles bullshit is so frickin' cool.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah it's fun I like that there's a female protagonist too I like that you know we have a refreshed version of the story.
SPEAKER_02:I really like that we have a female protagonist but in no part of the movie is there like a love story or is the romance involved just because she's a woman. Yep. No, she's just a scientist a scientist. It's great. Yeah exactly there there's one joke about her being a woman and that's about being stuck in Antarctica with a bunch of Norwegian dudes.
SPEAKER_00:It's like the same thing we just said about being on a ship as a woman. The 2000s gave us a slew of horror films that center around isolation and the winter. Wind Chill from 2007 tells the story of college students stranded on a snowy road haunted by ghosts. It blends isolation and psychological horror. The film stars Emily Blunt and Ashton Holmes and it has that distinct 2000s feel. I like this movie, I know Alan doesn't because it combines isolation with with the paranormal forcing the main characters to remain in place without resources they are stuck in place while the paranormal unfolds around them. What's different here from a movie like The Shining is that the characters are very exposed to the elements. They are literally at risk of death from the cold which adds to the tension.
SPEAKER_02:I thought this movie was dumb especially like you know we've been watching a lot of winter horror movies. It's a great theme this one doesn't even have the thing um but it it has you know supernatural antagonists.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I think it's cool. It's different. It's not like a perfect movie but the concept is refreshing.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah the concept is refreshing. It has like the low budget horror feel of like single location small cast but the the world building is kind of cool because it not only built you know adds ghosts but it adds like a time loop mechanic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Where like even when they escape, they keep waking back up.
SPEAKER_00:It's like that video game Little Hope that we played except it's wintery.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Protagonists don't know what's real. Right. That's a cool mechanic.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:The what I didn't like it's it's basically like a two character movie outside of like the ghosts and shit. And like one is like a super creepy weirdo who thinks that kidnapping a woman is a great way to make her fall in love with him. That's gross. Which okay that's part of a plot I understand. But then she like starts to sympathize with him and you get straight up Stockholm syndrome.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And like come on have some self-respect. Throw this guy out of the car. She does I mean she does but she eventually I I get it it gets cold and she snuggles in. Yeah. But like there's a way to do it. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know. I mean if you're in that desperate of a situation I think your mental prowess starts to soften.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah yeah you're it's all about surviving. I understand but also like I'd be so mad at this guy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah he's the worst. Another film that Alan doesn't love Let the Right One in from 2008 is a Swedish horror movie set in a snowy apartment complex in a Stockholm suburb speaking of Stockholm the film is adapted from a 2004 novel. The movie is set in the early 1980s. Let the Right One in follows a 12 year old kid named Oscar, a lonely and bullied boy who befriends his new neighbor Eli, a mysterious child who turns out to be a centuries old vampire. As their friendship grows, Oscar is drawn into Eli's dark world, witnessing the violence and moral ambiguity that comes with her need to feed. The story explores themes of isolation, friendship, and the desire for connection, using the vampire relationship as a lens to examine loneliness, adolescence, and the quiet horror that can lurk beneath everyday life.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, so you did preface by saying I didn't like this movie. But I think I have to watch it again. I haven't I've only seen it once. This was not too long after it came out and I went in with the expectation of like check out the world's greatest vampire movie. Well yeah and it's not I mean it's a I know this is a very beloved movie. It's like an art house film you know and I am fresh off the kick of underworld right talk about a great vampire movie. You know with vampire and werewolf bullet bullet time action uh and now bullet time action uh bullet time is a term coined by the Matrix I guess things slow down so much that you just like you see the bullets go through. Yeah and I guess also maybe it was coined by Max Payne where you activate bullet time but whatever. It's not that type of movie it's a it's a it's a think piece. It's an indie film yeah I I think I watched this on like a little screen um like on my laptop or something expecting like a big romp of a vampire movie.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Not that yeah yeah yeah it's not it's a very contained slow burn character study but it's I think it's beautiful in its own way but yeah you have to sort of be in the right mindset to watch something that's um kind of like mentally more draining than watching like a film that you can tune out and just have a blast in.
SPEAKER_02:I think this is also I watched this during a period of my life when I thought that a movie was bad because it had subtitles.
SPEAKER_00:Fair enough. Dead Snow from 2009 is a horror comedy with Nazi zombies in a remote Norwegian winter landscape. It plays on folklore and extreme cold.
SPEAKER_02:This is the exact type of movie we used to always watch growing up because every year around Halloween throughout high school we would do the the the ZM Squared or the zombie movie marathon.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:So we would pick the dumbest zombie movies we could possibly find and just watch them on Halloween. It's a lot of fun. Dead Snow uh is actually a pretty good movie. It combines the perfect trope of villains zombies which are the ultimate fodder for being able to shoot humans without having to move your moral compass and zombies and and Nazis who also fit that trope in Hollywood for many many years until the most recent times where now you're forced to ask but are they really bad? The answer is still yes folks but still for the longest time if you just needed a bad guy you just threw the Nazis in there. Look at looking at you Indiana Jones.
SPEAKER_00:But now I feel like they're horrifyingly too relevant and too active in the world again to be casually used in horror comedy movies.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah now killing zon yeah now if you're just like making something about killing Nazis people are going to be like well you know what it's important to hear both sides. Yeah. Oh fuck off. Fuck off.
SPEAKER_00:30 Days of Night from 2007 is a vampire horror set in a town plunged into 30 days of polar darkness.
SPEAKER_02:Now we have a great vampire movie set in the snow.
SPEAKER_00:There we go. It's a great example of environmental isolation heightening terror. The movie is set in Barrow, Alaska a town that experiences a month long polar night each year. Thirty days of night follow Sheriff Ebon Olsen and his estranged wife Stella as the town is attacked by a gang of vampires who take advantage of the prolonged darkness. Trapped by snow and ice with no sunlight for 30 days the townspeople must fight for survival against the relentless supernatural predators. The film focuses on isolation endurance and the psychological strain of facing an unending night where the line between life and death is constantly threatened. I mean to me this is like one of the most clever concepts of a vampire movie. Of course if vampires need to be in the darkness and die in sunlight they're gonna go to a town that's plagued by 30 days of night like it's so clever.
SPEAKER_02:I mean yeah and they're not affected by the cold. Right. It's like the perfect environment this movie comes up every so often on the podcast just because I love it so much. And because it also follows my preferred formula of like oh no oh no what are we gonna do? And then at the very end they say like you know what we're gonna get really powerful and fight back. Ugh I love it so much. Uh it also indirectly inspired my short story about werewolves on the moon.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh, I forgot about that one. We've talked about this so far in every episode of this series but Frozen from 2010 again not the Disney version is a thriller that focuses on people trapped on a ski lift playing with fear of isolation and hypothermia this movie we've talked about but I just want to mention it again because like the the entrapment in the isolation is the theme of this movie, right? They are stuck on a chairlift. They are stuck they are alone. And in 2019 The Lodge is a bleak dark horror film that couldn't be more perfect for this episode. It's a modern psychological horror movie that explores snowbound isolation, religious trauma and unreliable perceptions. The Lodge follows two children, Aidan and Mia, who are left alone with their soon-to-be stepmother Grace, at a remote winter cabin after their father leaves unexpectedly. Isolated by a blizzard, tensions rise as strange and unsettling events begin to occur. Grace's mysterious past emerges, including her involvement in a cult, and psychological horror escalates as the family becomes trapped by both the storm and their own fears. The film explores themes of grief, trauma and the destabilizing effects of isolation, blurring the line between reality and psychological breakdown. I find The Lodge to be a tough watch, but one of my favorite horror films from you know recent memory.
SPEAKER_02:I didn't see it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah well maybe time for you to take a watch been too busy with the thing. The winter snow and ice isn't the driver for causing psychosis or mental instability but it can create a situation that causes extreme isolation which often results in horrible physical and mental experiences. As we've seen winter and snow don't create madness they amplify it, isolating the mind and stripping away the familiar anchors of society, light and human connection. From polar expeditions to the overlook hotel, being alone can transform ordinary fear into profound psychological horror, turning the environment itself into an antagonist. But the terror of winter doesn't stop with the mind. Next week we'll step beyond the psychological and into the supernatural, exploring the chilling world of winter monsters, the creatures, legends and folklores that stalk the snow, preying on both body and imagination I don't really know where we're gonna go with this because we just talked about the thing we talked about vampires we talked about snow ghosts.
SPEAKER_02:I'm if it's gonna get even more wow.
SPEAKER_00:Next time on Lunatics Radio Hour
