Still Scared: Talking Children's Horror

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com.

Here is Adam's Masters dissertation I, Object: Jan Švankmajer and the Dream of the Thing

And here is Adam's article ranking the horror of Švankmajer's films.

Transcript

Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children's Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky, and disturbing children's books, films, and TV. I'm Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray. Today we're talking about Jan Švankmajer's Alice from 1988.

Ren Good evening, Adam.

Adam Dobrý večer, Ren. Good evening.

Ren Oh very good! Do you — I’m immediately diverted into asking you how much Czech you know.

Adam Nerozumím Česky. I do not understand Czech.

Ren Neither do I.

Adam Duolingo is a fraud, a fraudster, an owl fraud.

Ren Yes.

Adam A hustler who is quite good at teaching you chess, but not languages.

But nonetheless, it doesn't matter too much because the film we're talking about this evening, Something from Alice, or Alice in Czech: Něko Z Alenky, by Jan Švankmajer, well, it does have narration, but I think you could still enjoy it even if you didn't read the subtitles. Previous to this, most of Svankmajer’s animations — Švankmejer is a Czech surrealist. Known in the West largely as an animator, but he would say that foremost he's a surrealist and he works in lots of different mediums. He makes collages, sculptures, tactile poetry with clay, and also animations. And a lot of his earlier works, so this is his first feature-length film we're looking at, from 1988. So just around the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia, shortly to become the Czech Republic.

And because of that, it was no longer so easy to get state funding. So obviously under communism, while there was censorship, there was the advantage for filmmakers and animators that you could receive state grants, state funding. You might not be able to make exactly the films you wanted to make, but you would at least get some money.

Under capitalism, however, theoretically there's no censorship, but there's still the censorship of the market. And so suddenly filmmakers who'd worked under a state-sponsored system for decades had to quickly adapt to a private marketplace. And Švankmejer fortunately received funding from Film 4, Channel 4's film company.

Because back in the good old days, well maybe not good old days, but back in the 1980s, Film 4 actually had a remit to fund and provide innovative experimental content when they began. So before Big Brother and reality TV, Channel 4 actually did produce some really interesting stuff, particularly animation. So this was a project that was co-financed by Channel 4, and it was actually, I believe, broadcast on Czech state TV, but also Channel 4 in 15-minute segments over a Christmas holiday.

Ren Wow, what an interesting choice. Yeah, I mean actually I could imagine it, I could imagine enjoying it in 15-minute segments. Because it’s so dense.

Adam It's really dense. You re-watched it quite recently, right?

Ren Yeah, it was on at the Glasgow Film Theatre last month, so I went to see it for the second time I've seen it, but the first time seeing it in a cinema.

Adam Was it part of any kind of strand?

Ren It was, they were sort of doing a mini kind of puppet strand.

Adam Ah, a mini puppet strand. It sounds like a strand from a puppet, a little thread.

Ren Yeah, so there was also Little Shop of Horrors, and I think Dark Crystal, yeah.

Adam Suddenly Seymour has become the only duet that me and my friend Angharad can do at karaoke.

Ren Amazing.

Adam Yeah, I'll have to record us doing it to send it to you.

Ren Oh, I'm going to karaoke on Monday, and I'm planning on doing Grow For Me.

Adam Oh, amazing. Because Angharad mostly sings musical theatre and Disney songs, and I don't know much, if I'm honest, but I can do Suddenly Seymour, so it's really fun.

So yeah, I re-watched Alice about two years ago at the BFI. I can't remember what that was part of, but I re-watched it with Leah, when we just got together, actually, and she hadn't seen it before, and my friends, Monique and Alwyn. And I'd forgotten how dense it is, if I'm honest. It's quite a lot in a cinema.

I discovered this, actually, through Channel 4. I'm a little bit too young to have watched it on release, but Channel 4 went on to finance another later Švankmejer film from 2000, Otesánek , or Little Otik, which is more for adults, because it's more explicitly bloody, but it's based on a Czech fairy tale about a tree stump that becomes a cannibalistic wooden baby, basically, and gobbles everything down. And I actually, I used to stay up late watching Channel 4 to catch King of the Hill, mainly, and this was broadcast very late on Channel 4, and I'd never seen anything like it. I must have been 15 years old, I guess, maybe 16, and it was completely revelatory for me.

I ended up writing my MA dissertation on Jan Švankmejer and Alice, and actually my PhD is more broadly on Czech animation. So yeah, it's a film I've watched a lot of times, but it's really interesting going back to it, because I feel differently or slightly differently about it every time. So how did you find it on rewatch?

Ren Oh, I really enjoyed it. I mean, it's just like a festival of texture. It's all texture.

Adam It is a very dense phantasmagoria of textures, yeah.

Ren Yeah, I think I said to you it's going to be like our first 100% texture of the week episode, because it's just…

Adam The film is a texture. I've never seen a film with, or heard a film with so many crispy sound effects. The sound design, the foley work on this film is extraordinary. It's just got all this gorgeous close-miked foley sound effects of crackling and slurping and rattling.

Ren Clacking and creaking and crunching.

Adam Any onomatopoeic word you could think of is in this film.

(extract from Alice of creaking, clattering, whinnying)

Ren Yeah, I saw it with a friend who found it a bit much, and I was like, that's fair.

Adam Yeah, Leah found it a bit much. And did you watch this, did we watch this together when I convinced the Film Society at York to put it on?

Ren Oh, I don't think so. I'd maybe fallen out with them by that point.

Adam Oh yeah, well, I will say I mentioned this. I think on my Substack, maybe, but Ren took a stand against the University of York Film Society. It was very heroic.

Ren I did, yeah.

Adam Basically, they were so against Amelie, not because of any progressive reasons like, oh, Amelie is a bit white for a film set in Paris. Nothing like that. They just thought that Amelie was too cute and insufferable.

And so the guys, largely, running the Film Society insisted on only putting on the most punishing films by, you know, the likes of Lars von Trier and Hanneke, in which mostly women suffer horribly. Week after week after week. And I think it got to Irreversible or something particularly unpleasant.

Ren Well, I wrote a content warning on the whiteboard because they weren't going to do that. And I was like, I think people would need to know going into this film. And then you know, being proto-woke in 2008.

Adam Yeah, you were woke before woke was woke. Yeah.

Ren Yeah, I did that and they rolled their eyes.

Adam All the film bros.

Ren And I was like whatever!!

Adam Yeah, it all got pretty miserable, to be honest, watching just really gruelling films. But I will admit that in a way some people might find, and I really want people to watch this, right? I don't want to say this film is a bit gruelling because I love it. But you have to immerse yourself in a lot of dilapidation and textures that might make some people's skin crawl a bit.

Ren Oh, yeah.

Adam And I enjoy that, but you possibly have to be wired a certain way to like it.

Ren Yeah, I think so.

Adam Because I remember someone after the screening at York, a guy came up to me and said that was the worst film I've ever seen. Was not happy.

(clattering background side effects)

Ren I feel like I watched it with the dub first time.

Adam Oh, really? I'm trying to remember whether my video of it was an English dub. It might have been because it used to be.

I mean, I got hold of it on video, probably from eBay. I've got Little Otik on video and Faust, which is the follow up to Alice as well. And Faust definitely has a dub because the dubs by Andrew Sarris, the guy from Fawlty Towers who plays Manuel. And he does all the different characters.

Adam (in edit) By which I meant Andrew Sachs. Andrew Sarris wrote about auteur theory.

Adam And here you also have like one narrator do the voice of all the characters. And in the Czech soundtrack, it's the girl who plays Alice.

Ren Although those aren't her lips, I learned today.

Adam Oh, aren't they? So every time you get narration in this film, you get an intercut to an extreme close up of a pair of a girl's quite chapped lips, I noticed this time. Clearly wasn't allowed to drink water when this was being recorded.

I also asked, so I wrote down in my notes, Kristýna Kohoutová, so Kristýna Kohoutová’s lips. But I guess they're not her lips, just her narration. And her, her being Alice.

Ren Yes. Although sometimes she's a small porcelain doll.

Adam That is true. Re-watching it, I really liked her in this. And I think she's great, actually. And to memory, Švankmejer wasn't very happy with her performance.

I think she'd maybe gone to drama school or something and felt that she was too trained.

Ren OK.

Adam And she's quite stiff. But actually, that really works here because you don't necessarily want a wholly naturalistic performance. And Švankmejer has talked about how he uses actors as puppets, basically. And she is almost a prop as well in this film.

And it's odd because normally you talk about objectification as a really bad demeaning thing. But it's tricky with Švankmejer because he loves objects so much.

Ren And the objects have so much life.

Adam Exactly. He stridently believes that his job as an animator is to coax out the inner life of objects. He's talked quite insistently in an interview that he's not bringing life to the objects. The objects have inner life. And that he's like an alchemist who just coaxes that out. So, yeah, her being slightly object-like in the film is not necessarily a bad thing in the way that it would be in almost every other film.

Ren I think one of the first conversations we ever had was about Jan Švankmejer.

Adam Really? So how did it come up? Can you remember?

Ren I think it was after the Film Society and we were talking. I don't know how it came up, but I know I had the DVD, like the short film box set.

Adam Oh, the BFI. So this was also released by the BFI. And there's a gorgeous, I really recommend it actually, BFI collection of Švankmejer short films that you can get. And mine is sellotaped together at this point in the box because I've carted it around to so many places.

**Ren**Yeah, I've had mine since I was about 18 as well. But yeah, I remember that being one of our first conversations.

Adam And our love of textures only flourished!

Ren I know.

Adam And did you read or have Alice in Wonderland read to you as a kid?

Ren Yes, I have distinct memories of my dad reading it to me. I remember I got a particular case of the giggles when she's falling down the rabbit hole and is asking herself, do cats eat bats? Do bats eat cats?

Adam I’m sure there's another line I remember you liking, which she says to a nursemaid like, ‘Oh, I'll play the hungry hyena and you'll play the bone.’

Ren Yes, I do love that as well. Maybe I was just being contrary but I remember preferring Through the Looking Glass as a kid, but I did read both of them very fondly.

Adam Is the Cheshire Cat in Wonderland or Looking Glass?

Ren That's an interesting question.

Adam Because notably, the Cheshire Cat is not in this film adaptation. Which makes me feel like the Cheshire Cat must not be then.

Ren No, he is in Wonderland.

Adam Yeah, I've got my copy so I can see John Tenniel's illustration. And it seems like a very odd choice not to include the Cheshire Cat, because Švankmejer often has clackety teeth. Creatures with really biting, clacking teeth.

Ren Yeah, like the interpretation of the caterpillar.

Adam Yeah, the caterpillar is almost much more what you'd expect of the Cheshire Cat. So it's strange because otherwise it actually does stick in many regards pretty close to the events of the book. I would have watched Disney's version as a kid, which now I find a bit too pop art and a bit garish, maybe. I remember really liking the Alice in Wonderland inspired maze at Disneyland. As a kid, Disneyland Paris, that was probably my favourite part going there as a child.

But I don't think I had Alice read to me necessarily, because my mum doesn't like it. It scared her as a kid. Her mum, so my granny, read her Alice in Wonderland and the Water Babies, and they both really scared her.

Ren Oh. Damn.

Adam So I'm not entirely sure when I came to it. I do remember reading it to my little sister, Phoebe, when she was a bit older than a toddler, I guess when she was little. And I remember I had her read Alice and I read all the other parts.

And I don't know if that was inspired by this film, but that was cute. So in some ways, it's a very loyal adaptation.

Švankmejer says it's an adaptation of his experience of reading Alice in Wonderland as a child. Which is interesting because Raúl Ruiz, who is a Chilean director I really like, said exactly the same thing about his adaptation of Treasure Island. And Raúl Ruiz even said that he didn't reread Treasure Island before making the film.

I think this is close enough that I assume that Švankmejer did reread it because there's lines directly taken from the book. But I do get what he means. It's very much… Okay, so in the original Alice in Wonderland, there's a lot of game playing, especially like little philosophical jokes and puns and verbal game playing.

I mean, Charles Dodson or Lewis Carroll was obviously really intelligent. He was a mathematician, possibly a mathematics don, I think. And that's very present in the book.

There's definitely bits as a kid that you're not going to quite get, or little strange little thought experiments that might confound you a bit as a child. And it's really interesting that in Švankmejer’s version, most of that is gone. So it's much more focused on the material object world.

And it's like Alice as a dream, like structured around dream logic. But it's almost like it's pre-linguistic. Like it's almost like Alice as imagined by a child in the oral stage or something, like a really little kid.

So it's filled with like infantile, oral cannibalistic energy. You know, as I said, Švankmejer is a surrealist. He calls himself a militant surrealist, right? He takes his surrealism seriously.

And this isn't like Tim Burton, and I like Tim Burton, but it's not Tim Burton kind of pop surrealism, right? It's very much surrealism as rooted in the traditional surrealist movement, which tends to be rooted in psychoanalysis and dream work. And so there's a lot of libidinal energy in this film, certainly centred around the mouth, right? And gobbling things up and spitting things out and spewing and eating. And Švankmejer had a lot of problems with eating as a kid.

So he must have been under Stalinism, actually. So he was born around the end of World War II. And obviously Czechoslovakia was part of the Eastern Bloc, was ruled, was really a sort of Russian proxy state.

Now, it is worth saying that the Czechs voted in the Communist Party. And so the communists were democratically elected. But there definitely was a level of like, privation and oppression under Stalinism, especially.

Like, not to the degree that there was in Russia. You know, I think it's kind of easy to imagine lots of people, you know, in every Eastern European country being sent to the gulag under communism. And that wasn't necessarily the case.

But people were put on show trial. And Švankmejer himself has talked about being followed by the secret police and that his activities were definitely monitored. And there were times in the 1970s, say, where he wasn't able to make the films that he wanted to make.

But yeah, he had to go to a food camp as a child, which he's talked about as being very traumatic, basically. And, you know, you can, I guess, imagine that a sort of food camp in the 1950s under Stalinism probably would have been a tough place.

And so he sort of spoke in an interview about how that had, you know, a really formative effect on him. So there's a lot of anxiety about eating and about food in his films that you really see in Alice.

Ren Mm. And food turning into other things and, you know, opening up a tin and it being full of beetles and…

Adam Oh, when Alice is imprisoned in the pantry. Yeah. I mean, that's an amazing phantasmagoric scene. So yeah, these bread rolls, sprout nails, like they're almost landmines. And yeah, a can's opened up and it spills open with beetles. And there's slathering slabs of meat as well. Like one crawls its way out of a cooking pot.

Yeah. I mean, some of those feel like a bit of a warm-up for a couple of short films he made a few years later. So a film called Meat Love, which you can watch on YouTube and it's like 30 seconds long or something. So well worth it.

Ren And you should.

Adam It's a bit of a one gag film almost, but it's really good. And then really three short films stuck together called Food, which is one of his greatest kind of short film achievements, I'd say.

And most Švankmejer’s up on YouTube. And obviously I would recommend buying the BFI editions because they have lovely extras and they're just beautifully curated, to be honest.

But admittedly, you can watch, I think, all Švankmejer pretty easily. I think he has a lot of fans in the West. You know, a lot of people discover Švankmejer and find it exciting and want to share it with other people.

And I understand that impulse. Like, I remember getting Alice on the video and then in sixth form, like the first year of sixth form, 16, and just sharing it with so many of my friends. Had a bit of a bad influence on my late best friend, Peter, I remember.

Ren I thought of this as I was watching it.

Adam So the white rabbit in this film is a taxidermied rabbit who wears this red and gold trim uniform and a hat and also wields a very sharp looking pair of scissors, which he kind of opens and shuts in a very sinister fashion. And Peter was very inspired by this and chased me around the sixth form, like the white rabbit, sort of clacking his teeth at me and wielding scissors.

Ren Yeah, I did think of Peter as I was watching it.

Adam It's funny, I don't want to sort of go through the whole plot. I'm aware that we've already been talking for like half an hour. I will say, listeners, if you're like, ‘Oh, Adam's not letting Ren get a word in’ Ren has given me permission to talk lots this episode.

Ren I have. I have not done a master's degree at all, let alone one on this subject.

Adam You wrote a really good essay about puppets. I remember proofreading it and you talked about like Bread and Puppet theatre.

Ren I mean, I do love bread and puppet still, an enduring influence in my life.

Adam And I think out of the pair of us, you're the most like a puppet.

Ren Thanks.

Adam You know, sort of sprigly, occasionally debonair, slightly anxious puppet, you know?

Ren Well, kind of like a marionette or a…

Adam I imagine you as being a hand puppet that leaps off the hand and becomes a marionette.

Ren So what do you think about the horror of Švankmejer’s Alice?

Adam Okay, so I want to say the film starts quite deceptively, and I almost wonder if it's a bit of a joke, because it starts with this rather lovely opening shot on a riverbank, which implies that we might be getting some kind of traditional pastoral Alice in Wonderland, like outside, you know, in a garden, like most of Alice in Wonderland is. And then after that we're like, no, we're in warehouses and dingy apartment blocks.

Ren We're in the basement —

Adam We’re in the basement, get used to it. And some of those basement locations, which is Wonderland, I guess, like who would have thought a grimy basement could be Wonderland? But yeah, some of those locations are just quite creepy, because they look dirty and dilapidated and sometimes claustrophobic. And I think the central, kind of middle stretch of the film is probably the scariest.

So Alice ends up being mistaken by the white rabbit for his maidservant, Mary Ann, I think. And is tasked with retrieving his scissors. I checked in the book, it's his gloves. But Alice then dutifully goes to the rabbit's house. And here, it's like, it's a rabbit hutch.

But it's like, if you imagine someone living in a shack and they sort of model their house on a rabbit hutch. To me, there's something almost Texas Chainsaw Massacre about it. This is the bit that scares me the most, like the doors have not barbed wire, but I guess, like the kind of wire —

Ren — on a rabbit hutch.

Adam On a rabbit hutch. And then she pulls back the cover on the bed and it's covered with dirty straw and stones.

It's like a human bed, but yeah, covered with this cruddy straw or stones. It looks dirty. And then she opens the wardrobe and it's really hard to tell what exactly is in there.

To me, it looks like animal skins and furs, which would make sense, you know, in terms of an animal, I guess, wears fur. But it almost looks like a kind of serial killer's house to me.

Ren Yeah, I know what you mean, yeah.

Adam And then when Alice gets stuck in the house, so Alice grows back, like she does in the book, to her full size, and gets trapped in the white rabbit's house. And the white rabbit is really angry and affronted and starts trying to get her out of there increasingly aggressively.

And so it starts sort of pounding on the door and breaking it down. And I swear there's this bit where he sticks his head through. It almost looks like Jack Torrance in The Shining.

Ren Yeah, and I think he's trying to saw her arm off as well.

Adam Yeah, he tries to saw her arm off, which is awful. And at this point, Alice is ginormous.

And he's hurling stones at her. And he's accompanied by this coterie of… what would you call them?

Ren Bill the lizard.

Adam And yeah. I mean, they're sculptures. They're like sculptures that…

Ren A skeletal entourage.

Adam Yeah. They're these skeletal hybrids, basically. So like spines connected to the bird's heads or ribcage, like bits of fish skeleton.

And they've been kind of cobbled together into these sort of horrible living sculptures, basically.

Ren And as they ride in it's like horse hooves.

(clip from the film of horse hooves and neighing)

Adam And there's a snapping bird smeared with… It pops out of a jar smeared with some kind of mustard coloured preserve. There's a lot of preserves and pickles.

Ren Oh yeah, there really are.

Adam And it actually was quite viscerally scary for me because I was attacked the other week by a crane.

Ren Oh!

Adam I went on a safari in Norfolk. So it's a nature preserve and it's all very good and ethical. It's just got ungulates and birds, basically. So lots of deer, some water buffalo and bison and also herons and storks and cranes. And, you know, obviously all the deer seem kind of gentle. They looked like they were covered with ticks, so I didn't really want to pet any. But they seemed quite placid and friendly.

And then we went… so we were on these buggies that I guess together made a convoy. And I had assumed that all of the animals would see this convoy as some kind of apex predator, basically.

Like some kind of giant mechanical caterpillar and that they'd all be scared. But these cranes… well, if they were scared, they definitely went into the fight of fight or flight. So they, yeah, came over on their long legs and as we came past, it just lurched forward and it was snapping at me. And honestly, it was like Rod Hull with Emu. I kid you not, it was scary. Leah's mum got bitten and got her arm bruised. I was like hiding behind my bag. They were properly going for us.

Ren That's terrifying.

Adam It genuinely was very scary, to be honest. Yeah, so that bit where Alice gets sort of snapped at by a bird, quite viscerally brought that back.

Ren Oh, what do large birds have against you?

Adam What? Have I repressed something, Ren?

Ren You know, you always used to get chased by the geese.

Adam Oh, on York campus. That is true, actually. I would get chased by the geese. My dad always gets chased by chickens. Chickens don't like my dad. I don't know. Maybe us Whybrays have a certain scent that birds don't like.

But I mean, this combination of glass eyes and real animal tongues. It's tricky because I haven't eaten pigs for a long time, like since I was 12 or something, since I watched a documentary about pigs playing video games. So I find it difficult, but Czech cuisine is quite pork based. When I've gone over, I remember the scrambled egg in the morning just had bits of pork or bacon in, and it's quite traditional to have roast pig at Christmas. And Švankmejer does make a lot of use of pig's tongues in his work. And that combination of these sort of bulbous glass eyes, bulging glass eyes and pig's tongues is pretty grotesque.

Ren Yeah, the frog later on.

Adam Oh, I don't like that. I've met that frog, actually. Yeah, I went to an exhibition of Švankmejer’s work, some of his sculptures and, yeah, some props from the films in Brighton. Like over 10 years back, maybe like 13, 14 years ago at the university. And yeah, the frog page boy or butler was there.

But yeah, it's eerie and unsettling, probably rather than outright scary. What do you think?

Ren Yeah, I'd agree. And with the tone of the book, Alice isn't really being subjected to horror, but she's mostly being annoyed or being bossed around.

Adam Yes, although that's still here, right? Like Alice being bossed. I mean, it makes me think of my little sister. I've mentioned this before, I'm sure, but she did this amazing drawing of herself when she was a toddler in primary school, when she was just starting primary. And she drew herself as really sort of big and strong and had a speech bubble saying, I don't like people bossing me about like big children.

Ren Yeah, people are constantly correcting Alice's manners and instructing her to recite poetry.

Adam Yeah, well, I've written down here that this is like Švankmejer’s — I’m going to be very academic-y here — but it is like Švankmejer’s playful reflections on Foucault's Discipline and Punishment or something. And I say that only half-jokingly, because before this, he'd done an adaptation of Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky.

And that really, he said that it's a portrait of the psychosexual development of a child. And that totally checks out. It basically is like a kind of filmed version of Melanie Klein's Psychoanalysis of Children. Like the child moving through the oral stage, the anal stage, et cetera, et cetera. And it's like, it's odd because that makes Švankmejer’s films sound quite dry and theoretical, but because they're so embodied and so thing-y, they never feel like that.

And I think it's because, you know, if you could link, I guess, if anyone's interested, my MA on this, my dissertation is still online.

Ren Oh, I'll put it in the show notes.

Adam Sure. And I sort of tried to make the point that psychoanalysis often represses the role of the object. Bill Brown, who used to write on Thing Theory back in the 2000s, sort of talked about how psychoanalysis kind of doesn't quite capture the life of objects, where Švankmejer’s filmmaking is really animistic. So there's a kind of odd tension between the fact that within psychoanalysis, it's very human-centred, everything comes down to the desires of humans. Whereas in Švankmejer’s films, it feels like objects have just as equal desires to humans.

In a film like Beat or The Flat, for instance, which is another great short film with a man trapped in this sort of Kafkaesque situation of trying to escape from a flat and being unable to. And everything he tries doesn't work as it should. So it's like he goes to eat some soup and there's holes in the spoon so he can't get soup to his mouth and that he lies down on the bed and it immediately turns to splinters and collapses. And it's like the objects won't perform their roles as objects.

It's like they're disobeying, they're refusing to kind of meet him on his human anthropocentric terms. And that's the kind of world Alice is stuck in here, it's quite a brutal world. So Alice is often being kind of smacked and slapped but she gives as good as she gets, right? She's quite a violent kid herself.

Ren The recurring thing of none of the handles on the drawers, there's a lot of desks and drawers and every time she tries to open a drawer, the handle pops off and she has to stick her fingers in it.

Adam It's like an object lesson. Like she has to learn how to manipulate, like in an adventure game, how to manipulate the object correctly. She ends up having to pry them open with the scissors or she plucks off the doorknob and then sticks her little finger in and sort of hooks it around and opens it from within. And there's a really satisfying pop sound when the doorknobs come off.

Ren Yeah, it's great. I’ll tell you, I think the bit I found most disturbing was the tea party.

Adam Oh, that's really, so the tea party sequence, um, it's interesting. So Leah likes Švankmejer’s short films, but she struggled a bit with Alice and she actually fell asleep during the tea party sequence in the cinema. But I do get it. I mean, she hadn't slept much the night before in fairness, but I do also get it because it's really hypnagogic. It's quite strange, that sequence.

Ren Um, yeah. So it's the same setup as in the book. We've got the Hatter, we have the March Hare. We do get the Dormouse who's played by a mink stole.

Adam Yeah, like a scarf that, licks clean all the cutlery.

Ren And there is a repetitiveness in the book of them —

Adam — Well, repeating the same strange, strange jokes or insisting that she answers the riddle and things like that.

Ren Yeah. And they keep moving around the table. But, in this film that becomes, uh, kind of scripted to an extreme where they do the same motions increasingly fast of is it the Hatter buttering the insides of the pocket watches?

Adam Buttering the pocket watches.

(scissor noises)

Ren Oh, great. I'll get some scissors too. Okay.

Adam Yeah. Okay. Um, I'll, I'll try to do textury voices.

Ren and Adam (garbled scissory noises) Texture of the week.

Adam Yeah. Um, I think that is probably going to be what's used as evidence to put us away if, evidence is ever needed.

Ren Yup.

Adam So yeah my texture is the butter on the watches because it's a good straight-up surrealist texture, two things that shouldn't be together being put together. Um the classic umbrella on the operating table. And it's actually straight out of Lewis Carroll as well.

Because I think it's important that Švankmejer, you know, really respects this book. He's not ever making fun of the book at all. You know, he considers this one of the great works of Western civilisation, basically.

Ren Yeah. And I believe that that is also in the, the Disney film. But it’s so smooth and clean.

Adam It doesn't have the clagginess, the oily clagginess of the butter against the, the metal innards of the stopwatch. What your texture?

Ren Um, I think mine has to be when, uh, so as I said, Alice is moving between being a human girl and a doll. And then at one point becomes a sort of doll of herself.

Adam Oh, and that, that's the image that Eva Švankmejerová, um Švankmajer’s late wife, who does the art direction basically in the film — so later where we see the King and Queen of Hearts, all the cards are painted by Eva Švankmejerová. And her poster for the film is that moment of Alice breaking free of the kind of plaster cast of herself that she's been trapped inside. She's sort of cocooned in herself.

Ren I can't resist someone being cocooned in their self. Although I have to say that the caterpillar gave me though.

Adam I thought you'd go, I thought cause the caterpillar's kind of like you.

Ren Yeah. Oh, thanks. Yeah.

Adam I don't know why I thought that but the self-stitching, self-darning caterpillar would be your choice.

Ren He darns over his eye to go to sleep.

Adam Yeah. The sock caterpillar. I thought so.

I really like, um, she accidentally, so there are lots of sock caterpillars that are like inflated or something — I don't know what's been put inside them — and they crawl about and then Alice actually sits down on two socks and it's amazing because the socks look dead! And it's incredible. It's weird because there's only been like 20 seconds, if that, of these living socks and immediately it's retrained you to see the socks as living things.

It’s so strange, it really looks like those socks have been killed. She's accidentally killed them.

Like it's not like Laika’s stop motion, say, where it's digitally cleaned up afterwards. You know, everything's juddering and you can almost see the kind of frames between, between the movement. It's very obvious that stuff's been animated and yet that seems to make it more alive.

I don't quite know why but it makes it more convincing and it feels more magical somehow.

Ren As I was saying, it's a very grimy sort of setting, but incredibly magical.

Adam At the start of the film Alice says, and you almost wonder if it's Švankmejer himself talking that this is a film for children, perhaps. Perhaps. And yeah, perhaps it's children's horror, I don't know.

I showed it to my brother and sister when they were still kids and they kind of liked it. They thought some of it was funny and they were a bit scared of it.

Ren There are very whimsical moments like the rat on top of Alice's head.

Adam Yeah. So there's this funny little scene with a rat in a sailor suit. He tries to light a fire on Alice's head. And it's like simultaneously the cutest and the most sadistic part of the film.

Ren Yeah.

Adam Gets out his tiny little cans and he's got the tiny little food and all of the food, just the tiny food still looks just as unappetising as any other food in Švankmejer’s films. And he cuts off some of her hair to help light the fire and places the little stones in a circle. And I loved the fact that Alice is really patient. Alice is trying to look up and see if she could see what's happening on her head. And then eventually she says, 'this has gone quite far enough’. And I think he tries -- doesn't he try to knock the wooden post into her skull. I think he succeeds.

Ren I think he does. Yeah. But when he starts to light the fire, then she's like —

Adam ‘Well, that's quite far enough.’ And dunks her head into the water.

Oh, and later you see, you see the rat in a corner in a rat trap.

Ren I know.

Adam It's sad. I like that little sailor rat.

Ren There's a real piglet. There’s a real hedgehog.

Adam Oh, the piglet's pretty cute, actually.

I've made a list, actually, of Švankmejer’s films as horror films. I published it on Kittyy Sneezes some years back now. That goes from the mildest, something like Picnic with Weizmann, for instance, which is quite whimsical, really, has a sort of ghoulish ending, but isn't much of a horror, really, to, say, Cellini or Lunacy, which is his adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe and the Marquis de Sade, which is genuinely pretty nasty and quite a hard watch, I found. I think I've only watched it once, maybe twice, actually, because I did re-watch it in case it was useful for my PhD, I think. It’s tough.

So his works definitely do run the whole spectrum from appropriate for children to only for adults.

Ren We’re coming up to an hour, and, yeah, I see what you mean, there's so much more.

Adam Oh my gosh, Ren, I've hardly got through any of these notes. What do you think about the white rabbit being everywhere? Because that white rabbit crops up a lot, poking his head out of drawers and crops up out of the Mad Hatter's hat, I think in the dinner party scene as well. I think he's more present than he is in the original book.

Ren I think he is, yeah, I think you're right. I didn't really notice it as I was watching it, it felt sort of appropriate.

Adam Because I noticed this time, it’s not a match shot or anything, but there's a bit where he hits Alice's hands with, with his oars.

It was a painful moment. Švankmejer was great with these close mic'd foley, hyper-real foley noises, so they really do sound like they're whacking her hand. And there's a moment right at the start of the film where Alice's older sister slaps her hand away. And it is almost like a deliberate repeat of that, so I wasn't sure if the white rabbit kind of represents the adult world, or the world of authority, basically.

Ren He's much more like the Tenniel illustration than…

Adam Certainly than the Disney one. The Disney one looks quite mild-mannered and anxious.

Ren The Tenniel one does like quite anxious, but on a spectrum of cuddly to… he’s got the beady eyes.

Adam But Alice is a danger to herself, maybe she does need a bit of discipline. She’s always putting things in her mouth, glugging down bottles of ink.

Ren Yes, it’s ink in this. Ink and some quite tasty little fruit tarts.

Adam The tarts are, I think, koláče, they’re traditional Czech and Polish almond tarts. There’s a bit where one rolls around the table and I couldn’t think how he’d animated it, whether he’d had to glue it every step of the way. I couldn’t work it out.

Ren Yeah, is there anything else you want to say about this in the context of Czech animation, not to introduce your whole PhD into the remit of the podcast.

Adam Yeah, I mean, to a degree, I think it makes sense to think of Švankmejer foremost as a surrealist, right, and to kind of discuss him alongside other surrealist filmmakers. And I don't think, I honestly don't think there are many authentically surrealist filmmakers, certainly not living anymore.

Obviously, Buñuel was a surrealist, not always that keen, I think. I do wonder if I'd been raised a Catholic, maybe I'd get one of his films better, because they're just so anti-Catholic, and I just don't care that much. And I think it was important to him.

I mean, obviously, watched and re-watched Un Chien Andalou. But then, you know, I'm generally happy to consider David Lynch a surrealist, because even though he wasn't a member of any official surrealist group, his ideas came so much from his dreams and meditation. And he was a very intuitive filmmaker, in a way. I don't think surrealism is a style for Lynch. Yeah. You know, it's not like, say, Tim Burton.

I like Tim Burton, but he's not a proper surrealist, it's too much of an aesthetic. I think one of the reasons Švankmejer doesn't like seeing himself grouped in with the other filmmakers of the Czech New Wave is that he saw himself as a surrealist, and being part of a surrealist group who work collaboratively. I've already mentioned that I think Eva Švankmajerová’s work in his films is really important, actually.

That said, I think the thinginess of his works, and the attention given to objects, and exploring the potentialities of objects, like their… unlocking their possibilities, ways that they can be moved, things that might heighten their sense of texture. I would say that's present in Hermína Týrlová’s work, for instance. Now, Švankmajer dismissed her work in interview with Peter Hames as being kitsch. He said, kitsch sweetness. I think that somewhat belies an influence, to be honest. I do think her work probably is a bit of influence on his, as is Jiří Trnka's, I would say.

It's tricky, because I think Švankmajer feels his adherence is to surrealism, right? Like, very profoundly. So anyone who isn't a surrealist, I don't think he's generally… he's not going to name check. But I would say there is a tradition in Czech animation of stop motion and puppetry, basically.

And that is present in Švankmajer work. And he's very much a Czech filmmaker as well. So there's traditional marionette designs in Švankmajer. The Mad Hatter is clearly a self-portrait. It looks like Švankmajer. But it's also a traditional Czech marionette, and it's sculpted in that style.

So my understanding is that German puppet players basically came into Bavaria through the forests in the 18th, 19th centuries and did puppet plays, and that these were popular. And yeah, so I would say puppetry has been taken a bit more seriously, perhaps, in the Czech lands than it has in other countries. Like, they have their own version of Punch, Kasparek. So obviously, we have Punch and Judy shows, or used to in Britain. And Kasparek is like the Czech Punch.

I mean, quite a lot of Czech animation is more obviously for children, though, if I'm honest.

There's lots of, like, Krtek the Mole, for instance, who's like the famous… Do you know the famous mole cartoon?

Ren No, I don't.

Adam I don't think he's so well known in this country. But like, if you go to the Netherlands or quite a lot of Europe, you'll see him crop up in places. He's a cute little mole with a red nose, I think. And they're very endearing, those animations, but they're very much for children. And as ever, and it's not a comfortable argument to make, but it's true, because it's true of anime as well. You can't wholly discount the influence of Disney on some Czech animators. Now, that's not there with Švankmajer. Švankmajer's definitely anti-Disney.

But there's a whole bunch of children's animation that clearly is… like, if you look at, say, early Trnka, and, you know, Jiří Trnka is like the great Czech animator, basically. I mean, in some ways, I think Hermína Týrlová is more interesting, because she tried animating with so many different materials. Like, she animated with wool, she animated with household objects, she animated with plasticine. Just all sorts, basically.I can't list them off the top of my head, but her style changes quite a bit. Whereas Trnka really kind of honed in on a certain kind of style at a certain point. But he did make 2D animations as well as puppet animations, and he was an illustrator.

And if anyone has seen a Czech animation, it's most likely to be The Hand, or Ruka, which is one he directed in the 1960s. I think it gets used quite a lot on animation courses, about a little sculptor who sculpts flower pots, and then is intruded upon by a white gloved hand that forces him to make little sculptures of hands. And it's a very heavy-handed allegory, because of state censorship in the arts, basically.

But if you look at early Trnka, there's a bit of a Disney influence, if I'm honest. I feel like, oh, I don't want to admit that. But it's the same with anime. If you look at Tezuka's early stuff, like, say, pre-Astro Boy, there's a Disney influence, because Disney was massive. So it's a little bit tricky sometimes to kind of talk about Czech animation, as though it's wholly, hermetically sealed off from all other cultures. Because that's the kind of romantic idea, right? But realistically, I don't think that's actually true.

So yeah, I think there's a kind of Czech sense of humour, maybe, that is often a little pessimistic and self-deprecating. You know, a sense of the absurd that you see in Kafka, absurd pessimism, or pessimistic absurdity, that I see in quite a lot of Czech animation. A kind of homeliness, perhaps.

And I think it's because he doesn't have a consistent style. With Švankmajer, you can tell a Švankmajer film very quickly. He's got this kind of choppy, rhythmic, Eisensteinian editing, very much like old Soviet montage editing.

And he has those hyper-real, like cartoonishly hyper-real sounds that are very textured, dilapidated textures, often like bric-a-brac at objects he's picked up.

Ren — yes and teeth —

Adam From flea markets. Eyes and teeth, food that looks disgusting. Yeah, whereas Barta doesn't really have anything like that, to be honest. Each of his films is very distinct. He works almost a different animation kind of form each time. But his masterpiece is probably Krysař, his version of the Rat Catcher, the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Have you seen it? I can't remember.

Ren No.

Adam Oh, gosh, Ren, you should watch it, mate. I mean, it's really properly gross, because it's animated with dead rats.

Ren cackles

Adam So it is manky as anything. It is one of the mankiest films I've ever seen. But it's staggeringly good. So Hamelin is all carved out of walnut wood, as are all the figures. So really dark, rich wood. And in the style of German Expressionism, almost mediaeval woodcuts. So lots of twisted spires and sharp angles with these real rats being animated amongst them.

Ren Amazing.

Adam Yeah, I mean, it looks incredible. And properly unsettling. So yeah, in terms of Czech animation that I would label as horror, Krysař is definitely up there and totally worth watching. You can watch that on YouTube. And to be honest, it was re-released on a kind of indie label recently, so you can pick up on DVD. But that run, it was quite a short run, so it might be hard now. You might have to get it secondhand.

Ren Okay, amazing.

Adam Yeah, top tier.

Ren I think we should probably call it there, even though I'm sure there’s more you could say.

Adam Yeah, yeah. I mean, to be fair, I wrote a whole dissertation on this. Also, if you listen to the Evolution of Horror and you're a Patreon subscriber, I did an episode on Czech horror for that. It's not on the main feed, but if you're a Patreon subscriber, you can find it. I'm sure you can search the archives with Czech or Czechoslovakia or Czech Republic. And me and Mike did the deep dive on Little Otik. So yeah, if you're interested in Czech horror specifically, then that's well worth listening to, because we go through a lot.

Ren Brilliant. All right. Yeah, thank you for talking about Alice.

Adam I mean, gosh, I know I've talked a lot, so my pleasure, Ren. I mean, to be fair, next episode we're hopefully talking about Shelley Duvall and her Nightmare Classics, so that will allow you to just talk about how much you love Shelley Duvall for an hour.

Ren So much. Yeah, yeah. The release schedule might be even more erratic in the next few months as I'm moving house, but yeah Shelley Duvall will arrive at some point.

Adam And you know, it gives you an excuse to watch Shelley Duvall stuff with Mattie.

Ren Yeah. Cool. All right. You can email us, stillscaredpodcast at gmail.com and follow us on Instagram at stillscaredpodcast, where I do a collage for each episode.

Adam This is gonna be a fun one.

Ren Yeah, so yeah, check that out for what textural monstrosity I come up with for this episode.

Adam Yeah, oh my gosh, it's gonna be meat and pickles and slathery horrors, oh my.

Ren Do you have a sign-off for us, Adam?

Adam Uh, yeah, uh, check that something's safe to eat before you eat it, creepy kids. Don't just put things in your mouth, okay? Be sensible.

Ren See you next time, spooky kids.

Ren and Adam Bye!

In this episode we discussed The Amazing Digital Circus created by Gooseworx, free to watch on YouTube.

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com.

Shownotes

Ren Welcome to Still Scared, talking children's horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and TV. I'm Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray. Today we're talking about The Amazing Digital Circus!

Ren Good evening, Adam.

Adam In melting voice Good evening, Ren, I’m melting.

Ren Oh, poor Adam in the southeast of England is experiencing a heatwave.

Adam Yeah, I probably look something like the Gloink queen that we're going to be discussing in today's episode. I am lathered in my own sweat. There we go. That's a horrible but realistic description of how I am.

It is sweltering here. It's really, really hot. So I've been off work today. The school was closed for the day, so I've been marking and did so in the climate centre that I co-founded in Ipswich, in the hope that I could do my civic duty by plying the good people of Ipswich with free cold drinks because everyone looks so hot and like they're almost fainting in town. I thought that'd be nice, but I only had one person take me up on the offer. I was there for hours.

I had two people come in. One person had a drink. The other woman who came in didn't have a drink

Ren Oh, well.

Adam It got a bit overwhelming, something along the lines of because I've been injected with vaccines, I've been injected with babies, which was quite a troubling notion. So my philanthropic endeavour didn't quite go to plan. But you said people never trust free stuff.

Ren You have to really persuade the average person to take something for free. Yeah, it's a bit of an odd one. They think you're up to something.

Adam Maybe I need to make Ipswich Umbrella look more like a conference centre because I feel like people love free handouts at conference centres. They'll always take the jelly beans and little mousemats. I mean, back when you got mousemats.

Remember mousemats?

Ren It's a very relevant topic.

Adam I'm going to be on editing this one!

Ren Yeah, we need to turn this one around because we're talking about The Amazing Digital Circus.

(Clip from the first episode of The Amazing Digital Circus:

Caine: Welcome to the amazing digital circus! My name is Caine. I'm your ringmaster, and I'm here to show you the most jaw-dropping, heart-stopping, mind-bending paraphernalia you've ever laid your eyes upon.

Isn't that right, Bubble?

Bubble: That's right, Caine. I can't wait to see what you've got cooking up for today. Well, let's not waste any time and get right into the show.

Theme song: Gangle and Zooble and Kinger, too

Adam: This is the one where we hit the big time, Ren!

Ren Yeah, with our palatable mainstream opinions.

Adam Yeah, did you see what AI says about us? I mean, I don't like to listen to AI.

Ren What, no! What does AI say about us?

Adam AI's got opinions about us, I have to say. So, yeah, I looked up, self-indulgently, I admit, reviews for our podcast to see what people say.

And AI said, you know, it's a popular podcast. People say nice things about it. They like the entertaining banter between me and you and our quirky humour. But it said some people, I don't know who, some people criticise its focus on niche themes. And its unprofessional amateur production values or something.

Ren Oh, wow. Shocking.

Adam We are talking about an evil AI in this episode. And truly, that was the evil AI saying such libellous things about Still Scared.

Ren I know. My goodness.

Adam I know. I mean, you know, we discuss hot mainstream topics like the Pogles.

Ren The Mabinogion.

Adam All these things are the word on the street.

Ren So, so anyway- So we're just talking about a little niche YouTuber thing with only several hundred million views.

Adam Yeah, take that AI.

Ren And if you're listening to us, we are going to assume that you're one of the tens of millions of people who have watched this series on YouTube.

So there will be spoilers. And we're not going to recount the plot.

Adam No. And don't get angry if like I mispronounce- like I call the characters Bobble and Janks and Pomity and things like that. You know, that's fine.

Ren He's very hot, guys.

Adam Exactly. I'm really hot. I'm so hot.

Ren Yeah. Because you work with the youth.

Adam I do work with the youth. And fortunately, quite a lot of youth like Digital Circus. However, I did see the film before some of them. So I had to be very careful about spoilers because I was close to the line and kids were not impressed.

Ren So yeah. We both did go to see the final act in the cinema.

Adam Oh, Ren, did you see it in 4DX?

Ren No, I saw it in normal. But the cinema did have very big reclining seats. So that was quite nice.

Adam And I guess if someone was like kicking your chair from behind, it would basically be the same.

Ren Did you see it in-

Adam I did. I had to, I had no choice! I went along on opening day ready and eager. And I was like the only adult not accompanied by a child there. This is actually true. And there were like some kids I taught in a primary school recently, like before I got this job doing supply teaching.

They're like, oh, it's that teacher. I sort of came over like, hey, kids. Yeah, I'm ready to see the Digital Circus. I'm quite excited. And they sort of looked awkward. And then I couldn't get in.

Ren Oh, damn.

Adam Oh, it was a terrible time. And then I went to see it and I afterwards saw two of my old secondary school students and I was like, yeah, I've just seen the Digital Circus, you know, pretty good. And they're like, yeah, we've just seen The Backrooms. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ren But the humiliations continue.

Adam Because I couldn't go and see it in regular 2D. I had to pay more because I was so keen to see it in 4DX.

Ren Wow.

Adam Which meant that every time that… What's the evil AI called? Clive? Clang? Kodos?

Ren Caine.

Adam Caine. Oh, yeah, like Caine and Abel, I should remember that. Okay, Caine. Well, anytime Caine popped bubble, there was a horrible kind of poke in your back. Like you were being popped. Like imagine that your back was made of pustules and each one was being, yeah, popped when bubble was popped.

Oh, it was horrid. I didn't like it. And then the funniest thing, I didn't realise that 4DX has smell-o-vision now.

Ren Oh, my God.

Adam So, yeah, the kind of backroomsy computer offices smell were, you know, really rank. But the worst smell was, there's this stupid, like, it's fun, but a silly little throwaway joke. When Caine uses Kinger as some dental floss.

Ren No, Jax!

Adam Yeah, so it's like a 30-second throwaway joke.

So, for this joke, whoever programmed the 4DX felt it necessary to pump in the synthetic smell of a dentist into the room, and it lingered for ages. It was properly nasty.

Ren Wow, that's nuts.

Adam Yeah, yeah. Is it…

Ren Which of the dystopian novels, classic dystopian novels, is it that has a smell organ?

Adam Gosh, I don't know. Is that… It seems like the kind of thing you might get in, like, Ray Bradbury. Yeah. Like, Fahrenheit. Fahrenheit, whatever the temperature is here.

Ren No, it's the other one that I've forgotten the name of.

Adam Clockwork Orange. No. 1984. Brave New World.

Ren Brave New World, yes. Okay. Yes, thank you. So you went to see the smell organ from Brave New World.

Adam I did, but I'm glad that it was the Digital Circus and not Tarzan, because my brother Leon said, he'd gone to see a new Tarzan movie in 4DX some months ago, and he said, obviously, the whole thing's set in the rainforest, and it was just like, the water spray was constant through the film. So, he said it was just really damp, it was really unpleasant.

Ren Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That is a level of surrealism that I hadn't anticipated. No, I just saw it in normal.

Adam Was it packed out?

Ren No, no, I mean, I saw it a fair bit after it had come out. So, yeah, it was half empty.

Adam Was there any shouting at the screen?

Ren No.

Adam So, it wasn't like going to see the Minecraft movie, which I did, in which there was shouting at the screen.

Ren Yeah, what was the reaction like in your 4DX screening?

Adam Oh, lots of laughter. I think, to be fair, I'd say I didn't want to look around me too much, and it wasn't packed out for the 4DX.

I did get the impression that some of the autistic kids, maybe, were a bit overwhelmed or a bit unsure about the 4DX, which is more than understandable. But I think, generally, the kids were enjoying it. Yeah, it definitely got a lot of laughter.

And I think were, as far as I could tell, really engaged in the second half. I mean, the second half gets very downbeat.

Ren Yeah, it's emotional. It's character-driven.

Adam Listener, I cried.

Ren Yeah, I shed a little tear as well.

Adam So, yeah, the movie comprises… Is it episode 8 and episode 9?

Ren Yeah, it's just interesting in itself that that happened, that it was popular enough to get a cinema release.

Adam I mean, this is wild, right? That a basically independent animated production can go within about two and a half years or something, right? From its pilot through to a massive cinema release. And this has happened around the same time, but obviously The Backrooms and Obsession have done extraordinarily well at the cinema, and not that long after Markiplier’s Iron Lung film was released as well, which is based on a properly weird, obscure indie video game.

I mean, Iron Lung is a really, really odd itch game, right? So, yeah, I do feel like there's this cultural shift going on that I'm largely excited about.

I mean, Obsession was one of the most intense horror film experiences I've ever had in the cinema. I think it's pretty remarkable. And while I don't think Kane Pixels' The Backrooms is quite at that level, it's certainly a really assured piece of work for someone who's still in their 20s.

So, yeah, I think actually interesting things are happening in horror. And so you described in a message to me, I don't know if it was after you'd seen the film, but The Amazing Digital Circus, like a kind of interesting edge case, and you compared it to Watership Down.

Ren Yes. Okay, so I think it's definitely like, very legit to talk about it as children's horror, you know, partly because it has a very young fan base.

Adam Yeah, I mean, and not just secondary. Like, you know, at the screening, there were a lot of primary kids.

Ren But I think it has a unique niche as far as stuff I've come across. And well, partly in the very fact that it is suitable for children, like by the way that's usually judged, like whether it has sex, swearing, realistic violence, is part of the horror itself.

Adam That's really interesting. Yeah, yeah. The fact that like Zooble, for instance, is constantly trying to swear. Which is clearly just part of who Zooble is, and can't, right? They're constantly being censored.

(Clip from The Amazing Digital Circus:

Zooble: Can you toss that back up here?

Jax: I don't know. Let's ask him. Hey, Caine!

Zooble: You f***ing a**hole. *

Caine: Yes, Jax?

Jax: Look, it's Zooble!

Zooble: F*** you.*

Caine: Ah, there you are!)

Ren Yeah, and so I think, yeah, Gooseworx, the creator called this, called the digital circus the setting like in a Bluesky post, a ‘sexless sanitised purgatory’. Where these kind of, these adult humans, right? All the characters are adults. Jax and Zooble are the youngest, they're canonically 22. Kinger is 48.

But yeah, they're adult humans who are in this thing with these wacky cartoon bodies that are created without genitals. And a censor sticker with a silly sound effect covers their mouth if they swear. And so the fact that they're in this child-friendly situation is part of the horror for the adult characters stuck there, right?

Adam Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I guess the first Gooseworx thing I watched some years back now was Little Runmo. Which is worth watching, it’s just a short film. I didn't realise it was the same person until Matt, my ex's oldest stepkid, pointed this out to me. I was like, oh yeah, Gooseworx made Little Runmo.

And I actually did watch Little Runmo when it came out. And it's a very popular short film with acutesy, goofy platformer game character called Little Runmo who is trying to survive their last life, basically.

Ren Mm-hmm.

Adam So it's a Mario-style platformer, but they don't want to die and fall down the hole of eternal doom or get spiked or whatever it is. So in a way, it's very similar in having these very childlike visuals and seemingly a character who you might not expect to be animate or conscious who is then fully aware of being in this bizarre environment and experiencing deep existential terror at the fact of their existence. So yeah, I guess a very similar thing in terms of… playing with the aesthetics of children's entertainment.

Yeah. But it's being very self-reflective about that.

Ren Yes. And then there's this kind of sort of extra layer where these characters make really cute plushies and figurines and there's loads of merch. Because they are kind of adorable.

Adam Although I guess in a way that I recently re-watched Jurassic Park. But partly because at my school, things are sort of winding down and the post-16 students, some of them do film studies. So I'd stick on a film that might be useful for them.

You know, Spielberg gets discussed, they're looking at teen movies. So anyway, we put on Jurassic Park and I'd sort of forgotten how self-reflective or self-reflexive Jurassic Park is.

That obviously it's a theme park and there's lots of Jurassic Park branded bumf and objects in the film. So you see very early on all the Jurassic Park lunchboxes and so on. And a lot of the critique of the film is basically like this thing, Jurassic Park, has just been created in… Well, the main reason perhaps it's been created is to make money, right? And to be commercial.

And there's a lot of criticism of that. But obviously, it's true of the film itself that Spielberg is very deliberately making a film that he knows off the back of Jaws is going to be a blockbuster. And it very much sticks to a similar pattern to Jaws very carefully to ensure that it's marketable.

So yeah, I don't think Gooseworx is that cynical, but it is interesting, I guess, that it is so eminently marketable.

Ren Yeah, and I don't begrudge Glitch and Gooseworx the plushie dollars. It's just interesting.

Adam Yeah, I mean, you know, the same could be said of The Simpsons, right? Or South Park or lots of kind of cartoons that are on some level anti-authority or kind of make fun of people selling out and stuff like that.

Ren Yeah, there's only one Bill Watterson, really. He's a bit of a one-off.

Adam Yeah, I think that's fair.

Ren But yes, to get to my Watership Down comparison, I’m going to take a little diversion back through children's horror.

Adam Okay, are we going right back to The Water Babies?

Ren Well, I mean, if it feels relevant, you know, I'm always up for bringing in The Water Babies.

So in children's horror, most of the time, you will have a child or teenage protagonist, understandably. Sometimes they experience something kind of strange or horrific and are kind of disbelieved or ignored or persecuted by the adult world.

And this is the kind of Not Now Bernard model of children's horror, I think, where it's like the horror of there being a monster that wants to eat you. But there's also the horror that the adult world, including your parents who are meant to protect you, don't care.

Adam Sure, I mean, Grinny's like that as well, right? Grinny is a sort of robotic alien monstrous thing. And yet the parents are like, no, it's your gran. Be nice to your gran.

Ren Yeah, no, that's a great example, actually. Because we always talk about the Demon Headmaster, but Grinny is also a very good example of that kind of thing. And it can be used in kind of both sort of fantastical and kind of realistic variations, fantastical in The Demon Headmaster and Grinny.

But then like in Stone Cold, which we talked about a few years ago, it's a serial killer preying on homeless youth, but the adult world is indifferent or hostile to the protagonist's suffering.

And then we also have these kind of hero's journey narratives of children or young people leaving their community and caregivers and facing monstrous threats and testing their courage. And maybe like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, Return to Oz those kind of things.

Adam Yeah, I guess the fantasy genre does tend to lend itself towards that, the kind of Tolkien model.

Ren Yeah. And then we have quite a large subset of Children’s Horror where the protagonists are animals. The Deptford mice, The mouse and his Child, and Watership Down are some examples. And kind of children are meant to identify with the animals because children are more animalistic than adults, I guess.

Adam And I think kids do often quite like animals in fairness.

Ren But there is usually a young character point of identification. And as I said, in the Amazing Digital Circus, they are all adults. There are not any children.

Adam Yeah, but, Ren, Pomni does look little, right?

Ren Yes, yes. Pomni is a little jester and she does look very cute. And she does have to tell Ragatha at one point that she is not a child.

So I don't know if this Watership Down comparison holds any water. It just tickled me. So, Watership Down is a story of quite adult concerns, that is situated in a children's space due to being a cartoon and being about rabbits. But these rabbits, their problems are like finding a safe place to live, securing the survival of their community, escaping a military dictatorship, these sort of things.

And the concerns of the Digital Circus characters are also quite adult. Alienation and hopelessness, depression and anxiety, body dysmorphia, depersonalisation. Like, they're not exclusive to adults, but they're not things generally directed towards children.

Adam Yeah. Although maybe it's more relatable to kids now than it would have been, say 20 years ago. Um, I don't want to blame everything on the internet, but I do think the Digital Circus's relationship to the internet is really fascinating, because on one level, this is a kind of Black Mirror-like show for kids about the evils of AI, and more broadly, the digital realm, and having your whole life stuck within the digital realm without people knowing the real you.

And yet it strikes me as incredibly nostalgic for a certain maybe older model of the internet. Before we started recording, and I need to write a Substack post on this, because I've not quite worked it out in my head, but the Digital Circus strikes me as being almost vaporwave for younger Zoomers and Gen Alpha, or what vaporwave is for millennials, the digital circus is for that younger generation.

Because vaporwave is all about nostalgia for 80s VHSs and infomercials and on-hold waiting music, on-call music, that most millennials didn't actually experience, or if we did, we were too young to really understand and now remember it.

You know, I was born in 1987, I don't remember the 80s, so the version of the 80s I have is one I've got, I guess, from my parents and also the media that was still around, whether that's videos I was watching and films that come out in the 80s, or obviously things don't just shift overnight, it's not like you get into January 1st 1990 and suddenly people aren't wearing ridiculous day-glo colours anymore, right, those clothes hung around, so if you look at photos from, say, 1992, it still kind of looks like the 1980s.

And so, I guess a lot of millennials have these faint memories of the 1980s, but it's very mediated and then, I guess for kids in the West, you had 9-11, which was sort of confusing and anxiety-provoking, and obviously, I graduated in 2008, I graduated into this massive recession, and it's very easy to look back at the 1980s and think, hey, this was a time where the future looked bright, or we were promised — you know people say, we were promised hoverboards!

You look at the vision of the future, given in Back to the Future, maybe not Back to the Future 2, I would say, and that's clearly not how things have worked out, so it's like, Vaporwave is this sort of hauntological longing for a future that was promised in a time you can't even remember. So it's a very odd thing, but what strikes me about The Amazing Digital Circus is that, aesthetically, it resembles CD-ROMs, particularly and computer software from the late 90s, early 2000s, that there's no way that Zoomers and Gen Alpha kids remember, or experienced.

There are times which remind me of, say Microsoft Encarta, and Encarta's Mind Maze, and the weird, kind of, empty feeling of that, and then, particularly, 3D Movie Maker, and the Microsoft Kids games,or software that existed, and its mascot character, McZee, who, you know, McZee could easily be playing Caine in The Amazing Digital Circus, this maniacally positive but very intense, bizarre character whose face looks like a Picasso sculpture.

Ren Oh my god, yes. Sorry, I'm just googling him to remember my friend, my good friend McZee. Yeah, very much so.

Adam I was Googling him as well, and I found this great Geocities site just dedicated to McZee, and everything, everything the writer could find out about McZee.

Ren Yeah, I mean, he taught me how to paint with the Fine Artist programme.

Adam He taught me how to make films with 3D Movie Maker.

Ren Yeah, wow, what a guy.

Adam For those of you who don't know, I mean, look him up, look up McZee, then you'll know who we're talking about. A man of many talents but also quite maniacal in his way. In 3D Movie Maker, he dons various unconvincing disguises to be the all employees of a movie studio.

Whether the director, or the cameraman, or even the janitor, all of them are McZee, as easily determined by his recognisable Scottish accent.

Ren Incredible, yeah. Sorry, I fell down a small nostalgia hole.

Adam Yeah, but, but what I'm saying is I do think there was a sense of kind of exploration and maybe naivety to CD-ROMs of that period, and even the early internet.

Now, I really love the game Hypnospace Outlaw, which is a brilliant game set in a sort of alternative 90s timeline where instead of the internet, you have hypnospace, and basically all the websites look like Geocities sites from that time.

And obviously with the rise of social media and then web design sites like Squarespace and WordPress, the internet's become very visually homogenised, you know, everything looks the same,it's very controlled, whereas the internet I remember from my childhood, um, patchily, at least, you know, was weird and chaotic. I mean, the internet's still weird, but it's like websites were messy.

Ren Like, I could make my background on Neopets a massive picture of Elijah Wood's face, and then have, like, scrolling text going across it about how much I love Elijah Wood's face, and you could just do that.

Adam Yeah, I mean, my Adventure Games, point-and-click Adventure Games website, the Adventure Games Closet, had MIDI music from different Adventure Games on almost every single page, which played on loop. So, you had to listen to it, you had to listen to the music from Simon the Sorcerer if you wanted to read the review or the walkthrough.

But that is sort of what you get in the design of the circus itself, and also the character designs. They're colourful and wacky and chaotic, a bit like early Nickelodeon animations as well. They don't look, they don't look like modern cal arts animation designs, right? I mean, they are iconographic, but they're kind of messy.

Zooble’s probably my favourite character, I guess. Zooble’s very jaded with the whole thing, and really just wants to be setting up their queer bar somewhere in the real world, and is fed up, basically. But Zooble looks exactly like a real toy that I had as a kid that I'd completely forgotten about.

Can you remember what it was called? I don't know if you ever had it. It's called, I don't know, I want to say Zorb or something.

Ren Oh, I think a Zorb is something else. I think a Zorb might be the big ball that you get inside.

Adam Oh, Zolo blocks, there you go. Zolo blocks.

Yeah, so they're these chunky plastic pieces. So if you look up Zolo blocks —

Ren Oh, yeah, oh, look at them, they’re Zoobles!

Adam Yeah so they look like they've come from a kind of Nickelodeon ident, basically.

Ren Oh, those are really cute, yeah.

Adam Plastic pieces that you stick together to make characters. And it must be that Gooseworx had Zolo blocks as a kid because it really is very close to Zoobles design. And I happened to also have Zolo blocks, I’d completely forgotten, so that was a real weird, very specific nostalgia kick I got.

Ren Um, and it’s animated, like, occasionally they play with it and there are little snippets that look like an N64 game, you know, in that kind of low poly sort of thing. But it doesn't look like that all the time, it looks good.

Adam Oh, I mean, it gets smoother as it goes on. The first episode is a little janky at times. The pilot episode and then, yeah, it gets smoother and smoother. But as you say, they mess around with it.I think, is it the third or the fourth episode where they — the beach episode is really interesting.

Ren Yeah, I think that's episode seven.

Adam Oh gosh, it's later. Okay. But the graphics deliberately start breaking down. For instance, it looks weirdly like a Banjo-Kazooie level, I would say. I really enjoy all of that kind of stuff. I find that really interesting and satisfying and I could see how that leads itself to lore. Because one of the things that the youth today sure like is lore and lore icebergs. And I can see how the Amazing Digital Circus lends itself to theories basically. You know, what's going on here? Who built the Amazing Digital Circus? What exactly is Bubble? I know there was some disappointment. I don't want to go full spoilers well maybe we can a bit, I guess it has come out on YouTube now, the last episode.

But the last episode arguably simplifies or it provides certain answers which are on some level quite straightforward and looking at the fan reaction, and the Amazing Digital Circus is a very enthusiastic, but intense fandom, um, is the impression I get. I know some people are really unhappy about it, but I think ultimately it's a very character-driven piece. It's not as about the lore as you might assume at first, I would say. Really, it's about, okay, how do these characters react to being stuck in the Amazing Digital Circus and what are their relationships and what baggage have they brought with them?

Ren Shall we do a texture break before we talk about the horror? A bit more in depth.

Adam Oh my gosh. We did have a terrifying incident where it seemed like I might have lost almost the archives of the entire podcast.

Ren Yes, because I changed bank accounts and the way — uh anyway.

Adam Yes, anyway. Because we are such professionals, uh, of course I hadn't actually got most of the recordings on my hard drive. So I was thrown into panic that about 10 years worth of podcasting might just be lost.

We would have the transcripts and I honestly toyed — this is terrible — I feel bad to say it. I thought maybe I'll have to use AI to recreate the episodes.

Ren Oh god, well, glad it didn't come to that.

Adam God, I was so caught up with that. I, I don't know if I've even, even thought about textures, but I do think we have to sing Texture of the Week, um, in an upbeat circus children's TV show. Okay.

Kind of like, I don't know. digital squeaky voice Texture of the week, texture of the week.

Ren (to the tune of the Digital Circus theme) Texture of the week.

Okay. Well I did only remember this evening that I needed a texture. My texture is the abstractions, the abstracted people.

Adam Okay. So when our cast characters give into despair and they abstract, uh, how would you describe what they look like when they abstract?

Ren Um, they are multi-legged sort of flickering geometric shaped, black, but with multi-coloured glowing eyes all over them.

Um, actually I think maybe my texture is the aquarium where they are kept in at the end.

I think that's my texture.

Adam Ah, I mean, it is quite moving at the end.

Ren It’s not. They can be soothed.

Adam That's true. They can be soothed. Yeah.

Ren Yeah, very chewable.

Adam Who is the real sick man in this so-called society Ren? Is it the man who would pluck apart a children's character chewing on their various anatomies? Or is it the business man? In his suit and tie making profit from the sale of plushies.

Yeah, no, it probably is me wanting to chew on Zooble. But there you go.

Ren You have brought it up, but the Amazing Digital Circus is inspired by the Harlan Ellison short story, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream from 1966.

Adam And ye gads, this is not a story that you really want primary school kids reading.

Ren No, my goodness, no. Ho ho. Oh, that's a weird, unsettling piece of writing.

Adam Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Harlan Ellison, I think was basically like a kind of 4chan edgelorder trapped in the body of a very angry, tiny Californian dude.

So the basic premise of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is that there is a supercomputer, is it called Am?

Ren Yeah.

Adam Basically there were nuclear computers, set up in the Cold War, I think in America, Russia, and possibly China. And they end up unifying together and reaching some kind of collective AI consciousness, called Am.

And Am decides that humans really are a plague on the planet and we'd be better off without them. And so annihilates all humanity, but is so enraged by the awfulness of humanity, it decides to kind of imprison half a dozen of these unfortunate humans infinitely within itself, basically, and subject them to various digital tortures for all eternity. Which is kind of like the plot of the Amazing Digital Circus.

Ren It's told from the perspective of Ted, who's the last remaining one, because they can't kill themselves, but he realises that they can kill each other. So he sort of mercy kills the other humans with icicles and as a punishment is turned into ‘a great soft jelly thing’ with no mouth or eyes, by Am.

Adam There's a really funny little Easter egg actually that I noticed.

In one of the episodes in which Caine is really frustrated because all the Amazing Digital Circus cast are fed up with his adventures. So Caine, the AI creates these adventures, these scenarios for the humans to enjoy. And they tend to be interminable and violent and not very enjoyable for them.

And so they're obviously thoroughly fed up and refusing to go on them. And Caine just lists off a flurry of half-baked ideas, uh, like, okay, you're, you're in a wasteland and your only friend's a dog who's really mean to you. And that is the plot of Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog, which I've read.

Ren Ohhhh! claps

Adam And I do wonder if all of them are just stupid Harlan Ellison stories.

Ren Oh, I hope so.

Adam Because Harlan Ellison has some stupid-ass stories.*

I mean, he was a right jerk, Harlan Ellison. You know, he was quite a difficult man to get along with. Not a very pleasant man, always trying to sue Star Trek because he claimed they stole his ideas. Tried to sue everyone, basically. You know, really irascible.

I have actually read quite a lot of his writing. And what's sort of weird about Ellison is that by any sensible measure, he's a really bad writer. Kind of like Lovecraft is a really bad writer in a different way. I mean, Lovecraft is bad because he is constantly trying to be clever, right? Like constantly trying to show that he's as clever as Edgar Allan Poe. And, you know, he knows long words and bits of Latin too, and lots of adjectives.

Harlan Ellison is just incredibly ugly as a writer. Like, the rhythms are horrible. There's something really kind of heavy and ungainly and meaty about his writing. Do you get what I mean? You've only read that story. But like.

Ren I’ve only, I've only just read that story. But there was a bit early where they haven't eaten for a month. And it says: Three days. Three days that have been since we'd last eaten worms. Thick. Ropey.

Like, urgh. So gross.

Adam Like, the grossness, but also he has these sort of thick stumbling sentences, basically. Like they're really graceless. He's a really graceless writer.

And yet he has so much chutzpah. He has so much confidence in his own writing that this confidence alone propels him along. It's really hard to explain. He has these stupid story ideas. Some of his story ideas are just nonsense. It's like, what about gophers? I can't even remember what these gophers do.

But you know, he'd write any old nonsense that came into his head. And yet. I don't know.

Ren It feels compulsive.

Adam Yeah! He's weirdly compulsive. I think that there's just this level of anger in his writing and, and, and confidence that, yeah, this, that, I don't know. It's hard to explain, but I do find him very readable, even though I kind of don't want to find him readable. Um, anyway. Yeah, Harlan Ellison digression.

But he is fascinating. There's a really wild story he wrote called The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, which I can't even begin to describe the plot of. Like, it starts off with this sort of true crime type serial killer story, but he ends up becoming like a knight fighting a dragon in the heart of the world or something. Yeah. It's really, really trippy.

But I just remember it blew my mind when I read it.

Yeah, a cautious recommendation. Not the nicest man and there's some really graphic, ugly stuff. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream has some properly nasty violence in it. So it's definitely not suitable for kids. But it's kind of fascinating to think of it as the origin for this incredibly popular kids show.

Ren Yeah the main parallel is that of Am with Caine. And in I Have No Mouth, Am is just straightforwardly out there to torture and torment them. But throughout the progression of Digital Circus, there's a building tension as we and the protagonists realise or kind of know that the humans are at Caine’s mercy. And as Zooble says in episode four, the only thing holding Caine back is the fact that he likes us.

And this comes to fruition in episode eight with Caine’s musical number, The One who's Running The Show, about how he is God. Including the lyric, don't need to scream if you ain't got a mouth.

Adam So yeah. I actually think that the writing for Caine, Gooseworx writing for Caine, really captures the weird, ingratiating tone of AI. It's really accurate in terms of how AI sounds, if you try to use, you know, chat GPT or any of them, that they, you know, have been programmed such that they sound very eager to please.

But at the same time, they're incredibly stubborn. And, you know, make these, well, lie all the time, but you know, it's like hallucinate, right? And make all these weird claims. So it does create this really odd thing where you, it does feel like you're interacting with an overly-keen maniac, basically.

And Caine’s design, obviously, is just like this mouth and eyes. And I like the fact that on some level is a design that kind of looks fun and wacky, like, you know, the kind of wind-up teeth you get from a jokeshop, and googly eyes, but is also obviously terrifying.

Ren I was reading about, also very difficult to animate! As his teeth also have to express his feelings. His upper row of teeth are kind of eyebrows, very interesting.

Adam Yeah the character designs are very interesting, Pomni in particular because I don’t think that the jester design is inherently that cute, so Pomni has big eyes, but also looks slightly freaky and yet she is cute. I think also Pomni’s relatable because most of us would probably feel like Pomni if we were thrust into this situation, feel overwhelmed and confused.

Though notably, Gooseworx says the character she is closest to and is most like an authorial insert character is Jax, interestingly.

Ren Yes, a lot of the final episode is devoted to Jax. To some people’s consternation.

Adam I think Jax’s story is clearly emotionally important to Gooseworx, basically.

Ren And yeah, I appreciated that taking the time to really explore that, of like, why is he like that? Because it's been building, you know, why is he so resistant to getting close to any of the other characters? And in episode six, when they have guns, Pomni and Jax team up and are sort of bonding and then Jax totally rejects that or any idea that they were getting, becoming close and we learn why that is.

Adam There's this reading I've seen online that Jax is meant to be transcoded and that does make a certain amount of sense to me. I think Gooseworx leaves it pretty open, basically. I actually think Gooseworks sometimes deliberately doesn't tie down the characters' identities or… Okay, the last episode, this is a spoiler. So if you really don't want spoilers for the last episode, then stop now, or maybe go forwards till, like, five minutes before the end.

So the last episode reveals, Black Mirror-like, that the characters are all brain scans, and so they are effectively, uh, digital constructs with the memories of real people. Okay. Now, these real people obviously have gender, racial, and sexual identities, right? That are concrete and grounded in the so-called real world, the everyday world.

What is interesting, and maybe a bit confusing, but interesting, is that the characters we are left with, on some level, aren't exactly real people. They're simulacra, right? In that they are code that have the memories of real people. So, in some ways, it doesn't really make sense to talk about, say, Pomni as having a real body.

Pomni is Pomni. And in some ways, the last episode underlines this. This is how these characters are able to accept their future.

You know, which might go on, they don't even know how long they're going to exist for, basically. They're going to exist for as ever long the computer system exists, basically. Without ageing.

So, they have to kind of accept that they are who they are, right? That they are these digital beings, on some level, who aren't completely tethered to their real-life human equivalents. Which then does something very complex, because, like, you talked about, like, oh, these are characters, they're adults, and yet they've been rendered sexless, right? And that means they were always sexless, technically. They've never actually experienced having a real body, in the sense of a human body, for instance.

And that's really interesting. On some level, it's like, that's quite a troublesome message. Because, you know, we might want to say, right, what we want for the youth, generally, is for them to be able to integrate their digital selves. And to realise that your online life is sort of part of your everyday life. And have a healthy relationship I guess, between your online life and your offline life.

And what the ending kind of suggests is that your online life is just as, if not more, maybe, ontologically valid as your offline life. That it has reality in and of itself, right? That your online avatar is real. And just as real as your human avatar.

And online, you can kind of be who you want to be. Like, say, you know, I'm pretty sure that I'm a cis guy, like, for instance. Now, I could pretend to be a woman online. Now, I'm not going to do that. But I could, I suppose, if I wanted to leave comments like that. But that would be a lie. That would be fake. Because that's not me. So we know that that's not, because there's a relationship between the online me and the offline me.

You know, there is a real me. But by the end of the show, there isn't really a real them. Apart from the online version.

So what I'm saying is, it then becomes very confusing as to whether it makes sense to say that Jax is trans. Or, you know, Pomni, you know, is gay. Or, because suddenly these terms don't quite — do you get what I'm saying? It's quite a confusing thing to try to articulate.

But basically, it's like, their identities only exist within their world.

Ren Yeah. Yes.

Adam So it's quite, I don't know, I think it becomes quite odd. Because it's then we see, we see their human kind of counterparts right at the end of the end credits getting on a bus. And on some level, it's like, oh, this is the reveal, the reveal of the real them. But it's also not.

Ren Yeah. Yeah.

Adam Like, in a way, the Pomni plushie is closer to the real Pomni than any human being.

Ren Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah.

Adam And I think that's probably really important for the audience on some level, right? Because it's validating your investment in these funny looking characters, you know, in a little squidgy jester, or a creature made up of colourful parts, or that you’re invested in them in that form, that they don't need to have human equivalents.

Ren Yeah, it's also interesting, because, and I'm just like, thinking about this on the fly. But I watched the final episode, and I immediately was like, oh, this is saying to me Jax is trans femme. That is what this is saying.

But then there's also this layer of like, what does that even mean? Because, as you say, Jax has only ever existed as a rabbit guy. And then, and then we see the real person, the human being that Jax is brain-scanned from, who is also still referred to with he/him pronouns. So the transness of Jax is, is still a potential unembodied truth.

Adam Uh-huh!! It does something very very odd basically. It's like, the furry suit never contained a person.

Ren Yeah. It's quite a lot to get your head around!

Adam Yeah, to be fair, that's quite a philosophically deep idea for a kids show, right? And I actually think in some ways, it's exploring this with more depth than the, ostensibly for adults, Black Mirror does.

Ren Oh, yeah, do we want to? I have written some Black Mirror notes.

Adam Have you? Okay, yeah.

**Ren**I think as British millennials it's just very in there for us.

This digital copies territory is something that Charlie Booker covered several times. I think, did you remember the Christmas special?

Adam Yeah, of course.

Ren From 2014?

Adam Yeah, one of my favourite episodes, that one.

Ren Yeah, which introduces the idea of digital clones that people use as their own personal assistants, but they kind of have to be trained or essentially tortured into submission because they, like the characters in Digital Circus, feel themselves to be human beings. But they are made to do menial tasks for their human counterparts. And then at the end of this episode, the man who did this training is trapped in a digital egg, where he's forced to listen to Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade for thousands of years.

Adam It's similar, actually, to the way that the outies treat the innies in Severance. Have you seen that?

Ren I haven't.

Adam It's good, actually. I don't watch much TV, but I like Severance. I watched it with my parents. And in that, people's brains are kind of split so that their work self is different, has no memory of being their at home self, basically.

So the work self is stuck in a perpetual purgatory of always being at work, and the home self doesn't have to go to work.

Ren Okay, yeah. There's another, there's a 2017 episode called USS Callista. In which a man makes digital copies of his co-workers to sort of play with in his Star Trek spaceship.

And, and at one point he demonstrates his control over one of them by removing her mouth. So, you can see that influence there.

Adam Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that's interesting to me is that Gooseworx is very much a millennial creator who's made work that really appeals to a younger generation. So, you know, the influences here are the influences that a millennial would have, and some of those concerns.

And yet, it's something that clearly speaks to a massive number of young people. Clearly, in terms of their relationship, I guess, to the internet, or their uncertainty about the future, it's something that really clicks.

Ren Yeah, thanks for suggesting we talked about it. I enjoyed it. I'd seen the first couple of episodes when they came out and then sort of forgotten about it.

Adam Ah, cool.

Ren I really enjoyed going back to it and watching the whole series.

Adam Yeah, and I do think it is horror, right? Like, I don't even think it's horror adjacent. I'm comfortable in saying that it's horror.

I'm so bad at remembering which episode, but the episode where they have the horror themed adventure.

Ren Yeah, episode three.

Adam Okay, episode three, I think is, to me, very explicitly inspired by the Amnesia games.

Like, someone like Markiplier, for instance, started off doing Let's Play games of Amnesia. I mean, obviously, people think of Five Nights at Freddy's, but actually, yeah, the Amnesia games were really popular for YouTubers, Let's Play videos. And so, yeah, I find it really interesting to think, you know, the Amnesia games are very much for adults.

And yet, quite a few kids, maybe sort of older Zoomers, like those who are now in their late teens, early 20s, would have maybe not played the games, but certainly have seen people like Markiplier playing them on YouTube and seeing their reactions. Mm. So it really struck me as the aesthetics of that episode are very much the aesthetics of horror games that they would have seen YouTubers play, basically.

Yeah. And obviously, the kind of look of the kind of…

Ren It's actually, sorry, it's quite similar to a Final Fantasy XIV dungeon as well. There's a haunted manor in that.

Adam That's interesting. I was going to say that also the offices where the computer on which the digital circus is running looks like the Stanley Parable.

Ren Yes, it does, doesn't it?

Adam Like very much like the Stanley Parable. Yeah. And obviously, today really recalls the back rooms as well.

Ren Yeah. We've been talking for a little while, shall we?

Adam Yeah, we could wrap it up. I mean, it's definitely a show that I could probably talk about for hours. It's really interesting. There's a lot going on.

Ren Yeah, really enjoy talking about it. Thanks. Thanks, Adam.

Adam Oh, that's okay. Thank you.

Ren I don't think we have a plan for our next topic.

Adam No, I mean, it's your choice. It's your choice. So we can discuss it after you've finished recording. I mean, I've just… I mean, obviously, we're not going to do Robert Cormier again for probably another 10 years. But I have been watching the film of I Am the Cheese, which is really interesting.

Ren Yeah, thank you for listening. If you want to send us your credits, our intro music's by Macki Yamazaki, our outro music's by Joe Kelly, our artwork's by Letty Wilson, you can email us at stillscaredpodcast at gmail.com.

Adam I did reply to emails the other day.

Ren Yeah we eventually get around to replying and we do appreciate them. And you can follow us on Instagram at stillscaredpodcast, where I do a little collage for each episode.

Adam Oh, I'm enjoying the one for this week.

Ren Yeah, do you have a sign off for us, Adam?

Adam Yes, although I will quickly say, if you do want to review us to fight back against the AI fake news.

Ren The fake news that we talk about niche topics and are amateurs.

Adam Exactly.

Ren Can't believe they'd say such slander.

Adam Yeah. I think you have to review us on Apple Podcasts, because I'm going to admit it, I made a call out. I've never reviewed my own podcast. That would be too pathetic. But I have asked my family to do so. My dad pointed out that would require him to listen to an episode of my podcast, which I think was a bit rude, actually. He did try to review it on Spotify, but couldn't find a way. So, it seems like Apple Podcasts, whatever they call it, is your best bet, really.

Ren And remember, we've never got round to monetising this.

Adam We're never going to monetise this. We're never going to.

Ren We're never going to, because we're so principled.

Adam Yeah, we are like Bill Watterson or whatever he's called.

Ren We're like, we are the Bill Watterson's of podcasting.

Adam Yeah. So, yeah, thanks for listening, creepy kids. And don't get abstracted.

Ren Yeah. See you next time, spooky kids.Bye.

Adam Bye. Bye.

*Just a note - I was wrong about Caine's bad ideas. I guess the first one is a reference to 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' and the second is a reference to an earlier Gooseworx story apparently - Adam

In this episode we discussed The Thief of Always by the legendary Clive Barker!

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com.

Shimmering Ethernal Reverb Loop at 120 bpm by bassimat

Transcript

Ren: Welcome to Still Scared, Talking Children's Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and TV. I'm Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray, today we're joined by special guest Cat Burroughs to talk about The Thief of Always by Clive Barker. A full transcript of this episode will be available, so check the show notes for that. Enjoy!

(Intro theme plays)

Ren Good evening, Adam, and welcome to our guest, Cat Burroughs, totally unsuspicious person!

Cat I am doing everything legal.

Adam Yeah, I mean I have, I have heard some things but you know, I'm fine, I'm fine to have Cat on the podcast.

Cat Thank you, nothing has ever been proven.

Adam Well, that's the main thing, that's our policy. Okay, so let's move on! We're talking about The Thief of Always today, as written by Clive Barker, another non-sus individual. Clive Barker, of course, of the Hellraiser series!

Ren That's a really wholesome man.

Adam We're not covering the Hellraiser films, however, on Still Scared. I hear there's a lot of them. Kat, have you actually watched quite a few of them?

Cat A number. I mean, the first is just an outright good movie. The second probably has some of my favourite visuals ever. They get very, very silly, which I love, and then they get very, very bad, which I also kind of love.

But then they've done them now and now it's all really, really gory, and I'm too much of a wimp to actually watch any of the new ones.

Ren Yeah, I watched the first two in preparation for reading Clive Barker's, children’s books. And I really enjoyed them.

Adam Yeah, I mean, I was surprised, Ren, because you're not always one for sort of squishy body horror. You can get the squick. And yeah, you said you really liked them.

Ren Yeah, I don't know, maybe it helped that I was watching with a friend who kept talking about wet puppets. And that made me laugh.

Cat Good practical effects are satisfying to watch.

Ren Yeah, they're really good. They are really squishy and wet and glistening. But it's cool.

Cat Yeah, they ruined some good outfits in the first one.

Adam Yeah. So I haven't actually watched them. I've listened to some of the Evolution of Horror pod episodes on them. So I must get around to them. I also likewise own the 2001 video game Clive Barker's Undying, which again, I've not actually ever got round to. He did an FMV game as well, I think? Me and Ali have recently been playing our way through Sierra's Phantasmagoria, their notorious but wildly successful FMV game, which I have played before.*

So I'm kind of in the mood for actors having, well, not having to, but necessarily acting maybe in a very stilted way in front of green screen. So yeah, maybe I'll be playing that soon as well. Because I have to say, I loved this book! This is incredible.

Ren Yeah. So Clive Barker is known for Hellraiser and the stories that they're based on. He's also a director and an artist and he also wrote and illustrated this children's horror novel, The Thief of Always, published in 1992, which I don't think is a widely known fact.

Cat Yeah. Who knew? Well, Cat did! So thank you, Cat.

Ren Yeah. Me and Adam have been doing this podcast for a while and we're quite familiar with children's horror, but neither of us had heard of this book. And I met Cat when I was visiting my sibling Willow in London. And she said, oh, you should do The Thief of Always. And I was like, yeah!

Adam So Cat, how did you discover it?

Cat I was trying to remember this the other day, and I don't know. It sort of appeared on my radar in that way that things do. And I think I had a stepdad who was really into horror. I remember The Green Mile was coming out in serial form, like in these tiny little books, and he got all of them. So I suspect it must have come through him and actually reading it, it would make sense because I think Stephen King sort of declared that Clive Barker was the new incredible scene person on the horror scene.

And you can see a little bit of echoes. I don't think Clive Barker was like directly inspired by It, but It did come out in like 1986. And it's another one of children trying to deal with something overwhelmingly horrific and something that adults can't deal with.

And I think my love for this book, because I loved it deeply, really set up kind of my later finding Clive Barker's other work, finding Stephen King and really enjoying strong kids, especially strong girl characters, which this book has. And my life of reading good horror fantasy.

Adam Yeah, I mean, this is like what I wanted Stranger Things to be, instead of the aggressively disappointing action CGI fest that stretched on and on for what felt like decades.

Cat But you can't replicate the language. I mean, Clive Barker is one of those people that I think even like his language is so — and I guess I'll be the first one to say textured — like that honestly, you don't need to imagine anything. It's going to be intrusively in your head.

didn't reread this book so much as I remembered it and the words just sort of danced across my eyes to kind of prepare for this.

Ren I guess, yeah, what were your strongest memories from reading it as a kid?

Cat There are phrases in here that have just become part of like the things that I think, like the ‘great grey beast February’, like the first sentence is, you know, something like ‘Harvey Swick was eaten alive by the great grey beast February’. And I still think of that whole month like that.

And the moment when like Mrs. Griffin sees him and goes, Harvey Swick as I live and breathe, like there are just things in here that I have sense memories of, you know, the blue cat, with the coat of sky blue and the idea of the beetle and the worm getting into everything. Like he writes these fish hooks that stick in your brain, and you grow up with them in there. And they become these beautiful little piercings, which works because Clive Barker is a progenitor of goths, like he makes goths. You read him and you become more goth, even if you're the least goth person in the world.

Ren Yeah, that's a lovely description.

Adam And we've got we've got the same covers, Cat, because as ever my webcam does not work on Discord so you can't see me or my cover, but you kindly showed us your book cover. And it's presumably the first edition. It's hardback and it's got the house, which Harvey is spirited away to, glowing and illuminated. And then this sort of awful serpentine face emerging from the foliage below the house.

Cat Yes, and that copy has his illustrations all the way through, because Clive Barker is a good artist as well. And I love his illustrations. I was saying to Ren, when I was gushing about this book and they were very kindly listening to me monologue that I learned to draw by drawing the illustrations in this book.

Adam Oh wow!

Ren They're really good illustrations. Like they are just black ink pen, I think some of it sort of looks like brush pen. So again, textured. But sort of kind of scratchy and fluid at the same time.

Cat They are both compelling and grotesque, which is something that I love in my artwork, you know, I'm a big Aubrey Beardsley fan. And I love just good horror art. And actually I went to university during COVID and I was in Aberdeen and they've got a surprisingly good art museum there. And they have a bust that Clive Barker did and

Ren That's really cool.

Adam Your cover’s not quite as inspiring is it, Ren?

Ren No, my cover is a later edition, presumably, it's very blue. And it's got some little sparkly bits, and a boy walking into a bright light and in his shadow he has big bat wings. Which, which is fine, but not as evocative.

Adam Yeah, I'm quite excited to bring this edition into my new school because I’ve got a new job. And I definitely want to put this on my bookshelf in my classroom.

Ren So as Cat said the first sentence is a real banger of an opening sentence. “The great grey beast February had eaten Harvey Swick alive.Here he was buried in the belly of that smothering month, wondering if he would ever find his way out through the cold coils that lay between here and Easter. “

Adam It's quite Dickensian!

Cat It is, but also when it goes on, and it posits this person wondering how Harvey had died, and he'd follow through the streets, he'd sit where Harvey would sit and be bored in this way and then he would completely understand and with tears in his eyes, he would say that Harvey Swick was eaten by the great grey beast February.

And as a very melodramatic only child, I definitely had like that series of thoughts of like, this is going to happen to me and they'll wonder why and then they'll totally understand that. And they'll feel sorry for me and they will think I was such a brave little soldier.

Ren So Harvey is bored, the weather is horrible. His mother tells him don't sit wishing the days away life too short. But he is. And a strange kind of scrawny smiling figure blows through his bedroom window and offers to take Harvey somewhere out of this world. And this character is Rictus. And Rictus comes back and then Harvey agrees to go with him to Mr. Hood's holiday house.

The way I was thinking about kind of approaching this book through different children's horror tropes, because it covers quite a lot of them that that we've identified over the course of doing this podcast. And the first one, that we've already ticked off as soon as as soon as Harvey flies off of Rictus is that he's ditched his parents as soon as possible. You have to get the parents out of the way in order for the for the child to go on and have the adventure.

But I guess, yeah, we quickly get to another staple genre, which is the Weird House. Which we've encountered quite a lot in previous episodes, like Paper House and Marianne Dreams, The Haunted Mansion, the Casper movie, Monster House. And not that we've done an episode of it, but Coraline is a comparison that kept coming to mind for me.

Adam Yeah, I think that's fair. And Rictus arriving at the window is, I mean, he's not explicitly referred to as a vampire, there's vampiric imagery in here. And later Harvey is actually a character who transforms into a kind of vampire. But it's very Salem's Lot like. I mean, before recording Cat was making some comparisons to Stephen King, with comparisons to It. But that seemed like a really Salem's Lot image to me, this character arriving at the window.

But it's deliberately kind of underplayed in as much as Harvey, maybe because he's looking for some adventure, is suspicious of Rictus but not scared.

Cat And I was going to almost object and say, well, he didn't invite him in but actually he did. He said, ‘If I don't have some fun, I'll die. I'll do it. I'll die.’ And sometimes like we've learned from things like, you know, David Bowie's Labyrinth. Sometimes if you say something loud enough with an intention, it invites things, things are listening to you.

Adam Oh, yeah. I definitely felt that he'd drawn Rictus to the house.

Ren So, we come to this house. This house, we quite quickly learn is animated by a sinister presence. But it's a kind of gingerbread house of a sort in that it's deceptively beguiling.

Adam And the grounds are described as, as gorgeous, right? We spend quite a lot of time in the garden. And I really like this idea of the seasons. And you'll get into that later, I'm sure. But the seasons obviously pass very fast. It's almost like you get the best of the season. It's like the seasons have been distilled or condensed. So you get, you know, the most bright and fecund spring. And then, you know, the most dazzling, relaxing summer and the most crisp and eerie autumn. And winter just becomes Christmas. I really like the idea of the seasons being condensed down to their essence.

Cat Rereading it again, I was surprised because even though it becomes really horrifying, it really does, Clive Barker is the master at this. There's such beauty. And in the very small — because the pace is much faster than I remember it being — but he comes in at high summer, they go through a wall of clinging mist from a very grey place. And I think it's Milsap, like Barker is great at making these hideous place names, like in Abarat, it's called Chicken Town. He makes these places names that you're just like this is horrible. Like, Lurgan, someplace that no one would ever want to be, that no one wants to be from. But you escape from that. And it’s high summer and there's flowers in the tall grass and a boundless sky. And you have an open front porch and someone welcoming you in. It’s the dream, it's homecoming, you know?

Ren Yeah. And he's welcomed by Mrs. Griffin. Who’s an ancient but friendly old woman who produces all of the food that he can eat.And he meets the other children who are Wendell, who is goofy and exuberant, and Lulu, who has been at the house for the longest and is withdrawn.

Cat I love the moment where he hesitates on the threshold and he almost doesn't come in.

Ren Yeah. And I'll just read the description of them, of Harvey stepping through the wall. Unless I'm stepping on anyone's texture. There's so many textures.

Adam There's a lot of textures.

Cat Mine comes later.

Adam See, see how you go.

Ren Harvey did as Rictus had instructed, and as he came within three steps of the wall a gust of balmy, flower-scented wind slipped between the shimmering stones and kissed his cheek.

As I was reading I was putting crosses by interesting turns of phrase and textures. And there's a lot of crosses. There's a lot of interesting choices.

Cat Yeah, Barker words real good!

Ren He describes Wendell as having a spaghetti grin at one point. So the joy of the house is that you experience all of these seasons in a day. And like Adam said, there's the best of the seasons. And autumn is Halloween. There are moments of horror before we get to that —

Cat Well, there's the almost immediate death of one of the cats, which really shocked me. I forgot how soon it was. Is it the morning after or something like that? It's his arrival. And I was thinking, las he the thing that changed the, ecosystem of the house? Because before that, I think the three cats had always been there as long as Mrs. Griffin had.

Ren And it comes just after the discussion about the fish as well. Where Harvey and Wendell are talking about it being summer, and Harvey's like, is there anywhere I can swim? And Wendell's like, there is, but you know, you don't really want to go around to the lake. And Harvey asked if there's any fish. And, and like oh, maybe we could catch some and Mrs. Griffin could cook them for us. And Mrs. Griffin is really shocked by this because of what we learn later about the fish. But this really foreboding moment is almost immediately followed by the death of poor Clue cat.

Cat Which they don't linger on as much as they could. But yeah, something like a little sodden mass. It does get you.

Ren And so Harvey does go to the lake, and does find the lake quite horrible. He sees Lulu there standing by this scummy, fly-ridden, dark and dank lake. And he's like, oh, what's she doing there? So we're getting quite strong hints about what's to come.

Cat And he's deliberately setting up, Harvey does realise that the lake is the opposite of the house, the house is alive, the lake is dead, the house is changing, the lake is like stagnant and foetid.

Ren And it also sets up as Harvey being a kid who asks questions, like right from when Rictus first comes through his window, Harvey's asking too many questions. And he keeps asking questions, asking Wendell questions about the fish, like, why would he have fish like that? Everything else is so beautiful, why does he have this horrible, ugly lake? And Wendell's just like, who cares? Is his response.

But yeah, we get a cameo from Pinhead.

Adam Yeah, yeah, I was delighted and alarmed when I noticed this.

Ren In an illustration of the Halloween masks hanging on the wall, one of them is, is the Pinhead mask alongside various other creepy creatures.

Adam Yeah, there's a particularly evil-looking punch mask.

Cat Is there ever a not evil-looking punch mask?

Adam Yeah, fair point.

Ren So this is for Halloween, they get to dress up and, and choose a mask and go out and enjoy the spooky, spooky evening. And Wendell plays a trick. I guess this gives a chance for Clive Barker to just into straight-up horror.

Adam Oh no, the horrible picture!

Ren Well, yeah, the horrible picture and the horrible description!

Adam Can I read it? Okay, so, so he's outside, he's searching for Wendell. And he thinks he hears the creaking of a ladder.

"It was not a ladder he'd heard creaking, it was a rope. No, not even a rope: a noose. And in his hand, the leg of the man hanging from the noose. He let go of it and stumbled backward, barely suppressing a second shout as his eyes rose to meet the dead man's stare. To judge by his expression, he had died horribly. His tongue lolled from his foamy lips, his veins were so swollen with

Either that, or it was a pumpkin.

A fresh fountain of sparks now burst from the firework, and Harvey saw the truth of the matter. The limb he'd held was a stuffed trouser leg; the body a coat spilling bundles of clothes; that head a mask on a pumpkin, with cream for spittle and eggs for eyes.”

And in the picture, the eggs are very kind of sloppy, yoke-y eggs that are dribbling down the pumpkin's woe-forgotten face.

Cat I think it says something that when I re-read this, I just went, how do you get the eggs to stay there?

Ren It's a great question.

Cat Yes, a special egg glue.

Ren Do you remember being scared by this book as a kid, Cat?

Cat Yes, but much more compelled. Like I was scared by what came later. I'll tell you especially with, with my texture, like it's all kind of wrapped up in a scene that happens later.

But I was more compelled because Harvey isn't a Mary Sue, like he lies to his friends to entertain them. He is mischievous, he does play tricks, but he also cries when a cat dies and comforts people, even though he doesn’t have to and other people shirk the responsibility.

So I think I found the fact that for a moment, he gets very, villainous, coming up to scene when he has his revenge on, on Wendell. You feel the truth of it because you feel how much a joy you'd have at being suddenly gifted with power, especially if you're someone helpless like a small child. But yeah, I think that's why I always found him and Lulu such compelling characters.

Adam And in terms of him being gifted this power, this is when we meet the second — I don't know what you'd call them really.

Cat They're called a brood. They refer to each other as sister or brother and they say loosely we're all in the same brood. But I guess we'd call them probably underlings, henchmen, uh, igors.

Ren Yeah, so we've met Rictus and then on this Halloween where Harvey gets his revenge we meet Marr and Jive.

Cat Barker's really good for teaching you vocabulary, I find. He doesn't pander. I know this is end of childhood, early YA but it was great for like, I confidently used the word quizzical, I think after reading this. But he names people for their strongest attributes, or at least the underlings are named by that.

Adam Yeah, so Jive is twitchy and always moving.

Cat And Rictus has the huge grin, and Marr can change things.

Ren And the description of her is pretty grotesque. “Unlike Jive who looked nimble enough to walk on the eaves if the whim took him, Marr seemed to have slug blood in her somewhere. Harvey almost expected to see her fingers leave silver trails on the brick she touched, or see soft horns appear from her balding head. She was grossly fat, her flesh barely clinging to her bones. Wherever it could-around her mouth and eyes, at her neck and wrists- it collapsed in clammy folds.”

Cat shudders It's like if you've ever had like a truly limp handshake from someone.

Ren Yeah, very clammy, a clammy description.

Adam Clammy is such a good word.

Ren But she has the power of transformation and, and for this prank here she transforms Harvey into a vampire of sorts, but with fangs like a wolf and a red throat and white skin. So just this kind of fantasy, horrible creature.

Cat But one that could fly, I mean, the wings.

Adam And he does not use his new-found powers for good.

Ren No, he uses them to thoroughly frighten Wendell.

Cat One moment I was always curious about is that he doesn't take the first leap. I think Jive pushes him off the roof just to see if he can fly. And he does. And there is this moment of terrible joy where like the moon looks down on him with like the face of a mother and he’d able to save himself and he swoops.

So you wonder about the other children and how many times they had done this sort of thing to them before. How many children had been tempted, would they have just pushed him off a roof and he would have got squooshed at the bottom and that would have just been it? Like, oh, well, time for another kid.

Ren Yes, it seems likely.

Cat Yes.

Adam I liked the uncertainty and the fact it's not wholly resolved how many children have been ensnared in this place and it seems to have existed maybe forever and certainly for centuries.

Cat Well, for always!

Adam Yeah, I guess it’s been for always.

Ren So that's the transformation of Harvey, but there's also another classic children's horror trope of animal transformation. If you think about the boys turning into donkeys in Pinocchio, the protagonist turning into a mouse in The Witches.

I think we have another strong entry into the children's horror canon.

Adam Oh, and what was that Goosebumps we watched? Is it werewolf skin or something?

Ren There's definitely been some Goosebumps in there, turning into animals.

Adam I mean, Goosebumps loves its transformations, whether it's, you know, via a mask or turning into a monster, turning into some kind of animal, getting big, getting small, all of that's very Goosebumps.

Ren Shall we do texture of the week?

Adam Yeah, I think we need to, we need to say it or sing it in real monster voices.

Ren Okay. Cat, you don't have to, we don't make guests.

Cat Thank you, I appreciate that.

Adam Well, they can, but yeah, you don't have to.

Ren and Adam (in snarling monster voices)

Adam Nice.

Cat That was way more fun as an on-listener than as a participant, I think.

Ren Cat, would you like to go first?

Cat Yes, thanks. It's been living in my head rent free, since I first read this book at probably slightly too young an age. It's going to spoil a little bit of the ending, is that okay?

Ren Yeah.

Cat Okay.

Adam Yeah, so spoilers from here. Hopefully, if you listen this far and you're interested and don't want spoilers, you're intrigued enough to read it because it is really great. I think all three of us enthusiastically recommend it.

Cat Thank you. So when Harvey comes back to deal with the house, he at some point confronts Marr again and she reaches out to change him and she's going to change him into something ‘humble’. And he it has this line of ‘he realised who he was and he was happy being it’. But he asked her what she wanted to be he rejected the power that she had in her hand. So it's flowing back into her and she starts to dissolve into these big gobs of slime. And she goes, I dream of nothing, so nothing is what I'm turning to. So it's it's very much this dissolving slime, like handfuls of gobs of it coming down.

Adam Yeah. It reminded me of the Other Father in Coraline. I guess maybe the idea that that these beings never truly existed or have been created. And that idea of of the being collapsing into undifferentiated mush or slime. It's really horrible.

Ren And there's a really horrible drawing to go with it.

Cat Yes, there is.

Adam Oh, gosh, yeah.

Cat Yeah. That was the thing that really scared me as a kid.

Ren I’m not surprised!

Cat It was that and the description to go along with it. And I mean, I read his work. I've read so much of his stuff compulsively afterwards so I must like being this disgusted.

Ren Excellent texture. Adam?

Adam Yeah, so mine was just a small, vivid texture when Mrs. Griffin is first introduced at the doorway of the house.

"Harvey Swick, as I live and breathe."

He looked down, the weathervane 's white silhouette still behind his eyes, and there on the porch stood a woman who made his grandmother (the oldest person he knew) look young. She had a face like a rolled-up ball of cobwebs, from which

Yeah, I love the simile — she had a face like a rolled up ball of cobwebs.

Ren And ‘spider’s work’ as well, it’s not a common phrase. Okay, so I also went horrible with mine and this is, I don't know, as soon as we met the dark foreboding pond full of fish, I was like, oh no, I can see where this is going.

And so it was, the fish do turn out to be the children who have never left the house and Lulu becomes one of them.

Lulu had reached the bank, and for a moment the meager starlight found her. All that Harvey had feared was true, and more. A fin grew from her bent and scaly back, and her legs had almost fused together. Her arms had become short

But it was her face, glimpsed as she turned back to look at him, that was the greatest shock.

Her hair had fallen out, and her nose disappeared. Her mouth had lost its lips and her blue eyes turned to swivelling silver balls, lidless and lashless. And yet, despite their freakishness, there was human feeling in those eyes, and on that mouth: a terrible sadness that he knew would never leave his heart if he lived to be a thousand.

"You were my friend," she said as she teetered on the bank. "Thank you for that ."

Then she tumbled into the water.”

Cat I loved Lulu. I wish we'd gotten to spend more time with her. But he showed their friendship in a brief period of time. He showed that she was smart enough to figure out what was happening to her long before, and perhaps one of the only children that really understood.

And then Barker gives her kind of the killing blow. Harvey is smart, but Lulu's the smart one. So definitely one of the all-time good girl characters in horror books.

Ren She's not in it for long, but they do get a real friendship. And there's a real connection between the two of them.

Cat I think so. Because Wendell kind of proves, we didn't mention it, but when Harvey goes after Wendell, Wendell tries to get the monster, as he sees it, to attack Harvey instead of him, by going, you don't want me, I'm fat, go get Harvey.

So even though it kind of teaches you, there's like two kinds of friendship in life. There's lots of types of friendship, but this book kind of covers the loud, boisterous, like fun, lovely friendship, but then the quiet friendship that you know will have your back.

Ren So after seeing Lulu turn into a fish, Harvey is like, they need to get out of there, (him and Wendell, they need to go. And they do escape, but they're set upon by Carna, which is the remaining member of the brood, who is a winged and toothed creature.

Cat Like a gargoyle kind of thing, but horrible.

Ren And they manage to escape and get out, pursued by Carna, which smashes itself against the wall and almost destroys itself in the process of trying to catch them. And then they're out. And we get chapter 14 called Time Was, which I found really creepy.

Cat It was haunting. It's absolutely haunting.

Ren And I think this is another, I'm not quite sure how to describe it, but there's a certain sort of thing that happens in children's horror, I guess. It reminded me in tone or in kind of tenor of horror of when, I've talked about this before, probably because it terrified me, In The Moomins, when Moomintroll hides in the magic hat and comes out as a creature, like a weird looking creature, and his mum doesn't recognise him.

And I just found this so scary. And I feel like there's a similar kind of aspect here in that it turns out, and I didn't see this coming, actually, I don't know if you did, Adam.

Adam No, I didn’t actually. And you absolutely could see it coming, right? It makes complete sense.

Ren But it turns out that for every day at the holiday house,for every run through the seasons, a whole year has passed in the outside world.

Adam So Narnia-like. Or the reverse, actually.

Cat Strike that, reverse it.

Ren Yeah, so he spent a month in the house, but his parents are now 31 years older than when he left. And he knows that they've been waiting for him and mourning him and not knowing what happened to him that whole time. And it really gave me the shivers.

Cat Yeah, they kept his room the same way for the longest time, and then she said they finally redecorated it but because they wanted it to reflect the taste of a man, it's a real heartbreak.

Ren And the illustration to go with it is also haunting of his dad opening the door as an old man, looking tired and haunted and not recognising Harvey.

Cat Yeah, there's a quote, and I won't do it justice, by Terry Pratchett, where he talks about the way you do horror, the way you make something horrific is you take something very, very ordinary and you just twist it a little bit.

And if you guys ever want to, you should do the Tiffany Aching series, because there's some definite horror elements in some of those.

Adam Ooh, good call.

Cat But when she's caught in this sort of dream state and she thinks she's home but something's just a little bit off. And it's that thing of, yeah, he's gone home, he’s done the thing that should save you. And it hasn't.

Ren And of course, there is a similar moment in Coraline, when she escapes and comes home, only to find that her parents are still missing because they're trapped in the snow globe. So she has to go back.

Cat It's a really good trope.

Adam Oh, that's particularly well done in the film, actually, when she crawls into the bed, and then she makes her parents out of pillows.

Cat Yeah, this is completely out of left field, but there's also the Silent Hill movie, if you ever saw that —

Adam Oh, gosh. Yeah, when it came out, it's been a long time!

Cat There’s this bit where they come home, but it is the worst fake out. Or if you saw The Descent, the UK version, the fake out of coming home and then having it not be safe.

Ren Yeah, it's pretty powerful.

Adam Yeah, the TV series Channel Zero, which I really like, it’s a sort of horror anthology series from, I don't know, five to 10 years back. That does it a lot, really effectively. So yeah, it is definitely one of the most potent horror tropes.

Cat And I love that Wendell just shows up and is like, this is terrible, my parents got divorced and my mother's fat.

Ren He's less poignantly affected than Harvey, let’s say.

Adam Yeah, yeah.

Cat You've got to have your comic relief character, I think, in horror. You do need it every once in a while.

Adam So they have to venture back.

Ren Yeah, so they have to go back to face the big horror.

Cat To get the years back.

Ren And get the years back, yeah.

Cat I think it's interesting, they can't find the way until they've decided to fully commit to it and then the house allows them to find the way.

Ren Yeah, t's quite a long final battle where Harvey has to beat all of the brood before Mr Hood himself.

Cat Like a Scott Pilgrim thing, but in a different context.

Ren Like the Elite Four.

Cat Exactly.

Ren But quite upsettingly, he comes back to find Mrs Griffin locked in a coffin in the basement.

Cat And they killed Blue Cat, but I'm so glad they killed the cat off screen because I don't think I could have dealt with another on-screen cat death. Like, this thing was bad for cat deaths.

Adam I like that it establishes once and for all that the brood really are merciless. Because obviously Rictus puts on a fake smile, right? And seems kind of ingratiating and sort of friendly.

Cat But he gets to hear her story when she comes out. And actually, because I listened to your last episode, or I listened to, sorry, maybe the one before that, it was the Roger Rabbit one. And there had been a comment on the horror of like being young and then growing old and becoming a baby.

And this is almost the reverse because different things were horrifying to me re-reading this than they were as a child. But Mrs. Griffin has this thing where she grew up and grew old in a matter of days. So you picture her growing old in the range of what actually would have happened, so every day was a year. So she maybe had just that brief period, like weeks of youth, and then she just kept getting old. And she did it all because she was frightened of death and her cat had died and she didn't want to die like her cat.

And as an adult, and now after the experience that happens when you've been alive for a good number of decades, you're like, oh man, this is hitting me in a way it did not when I was a child and I knew I would live forever.

Ren And Harvey allows her to cry, she's never been, she's never been able to cry in all of these years she's been in the house.

Cat She wished for it. She wished to never cry again. And I love that all of her wishes became curses.

Ren Sorry, Gretchen's making noises in the background. I'm sorry, we keep talking about cats dying.

Cat The last one doesn’t! The last one lives forever in her arms!

Ren Yeah, so we've heard about Mars oozing destruction from Cat's texture. And then next it's Jive who keeps making illusions and Harvey's realised, you know, everything's an illusion.

Cat You’vee reminded his belly of what he was made of, which was dust. That was going to be my second texture. I know we don't get a second texture.

Ren Dirt and dust and ashes.

Cat And that illustration is incredible as well. If you get this book, just love the illustrations because they're wonderful.

Ren So he's making his way up to the attic as he's beating these different broods. And when, does he realise that Mr. Hood is the house? At some point he realises that there isn't a separate figure of Mr. Hood, he is the house. Much like the Monster House.

But yeah, Carna is in the attic. He's badly wounded from coming after them on their previous escape.

Adam Carna seems more bestial maybe than the rest of the brood. Maybe it's easier to pity Carna because Carna seems more like a creature.

Cat Yeah, it doesn't seem to be able to talk, it’s pretty much just something that you use as a punishment. Carna stole all of Mar's teeth it was alluded at the beginning, which you're just like, did Carna then put them in Carna's mouth? Or did he eat the teeth? What did he do with the teeth?

Adam So there's this claustrophobic, slightly wretched battle against Carna in the attic.

Ren And Harvey defeats Carna through…

Cat The power of friendship.

Ren Yeah, gentleness, compassion.

Adam Oh, like the sponge in it lives beneath the sink in Goosebumps!

Ren Yeah? I don't remember that? I mean, I do remember the evil sponge.

Adam It's the evil sponge that soaks up bad feelings. And the way they defeat it is cradling it and singing it lullabies.

Cat That's beautiful.

Adam So if you ever have a stinky, bad sponge…

Cat I am not touching that. I am not. I will microwave it, which I hear is helpful for antibacterial, but that is getting removed with tongs.

Adam You're not going to cradle it?

Cat No. But I did kind of want to cradle Carna. Like, he was very good at describing this wretched animal that is being forced to perform again and again, and it's broken and it's close to death, but it's being kept alive. And you know, Harvey has this realisation that all of these minions were just being kept alive. They weren't sentient but there was a spark of borrowed life and will in them. And Carna doesn't want to be alive anymore. And it's almost like Karna knew that by accepting the kindness that Harvey offered him, it would put an end to him and does it.

Ren And then, Harvey is like ‘I want the years back, and the children who’ve been turned into fish I want them back as well’. And Rictus is trying to distract him by with these illusions of saying whatever you want, have puppies, have parrots.

Cat ‘All the books in the world from Aristotle to Zola’ was another phrase that stuck in my head.

Adam What kid doesn't want to read Zola?

Cat I mean, I kind of did after reading this, but I still to this day have not, so I can't have wanted it that much. I like how we're deeply in the bargaining stage of grief at this point for both of them.

Ren And so Harvey realises that he needs to, to outwit Hood. And he does this through challenging him and saying, — previously because it is Christmas every day. So he got presents and he got this replica of this toy wooden Noah's Ark that he'd had as a little kid that got lost. And it’s a really uncanny moment for him, having this item back that had been lost.

So he asks for an animate Noah's Ark where all the animals are moving around and everything. And then, and he asks for a huge meadow of flowers, but every flower is different. And he's trying to wear out Hood's power, really.

And he asked for all of the food, like a mountain of food. There's disgusting combinations.

Cat Pig's feet, pig's feet was definitely in there.

Ren Snail fudge with pig's foot clusters.

Cat Growing up in the deep American South, I still remember there'd be jars of pig's feet in one aisle in there and I would always stare at it in fascination.

Ren So then Hood's like, oh, stop messing around you can have one final gift and after that, you have to accept me as your master forever.

And he says, I want, I want the seasons. I want all the seasons at once.

And Hood does it, but —

Cat Can't stop doing it.

Ren Yeah, it destroys him.

Adam I guess even God didn't give us all the seasons at once, so it's a tall order.

Cat I would have loved to have seen it though. I think I read that they were trying to make this into something and I almost wish they don't because it won't ever look like it does in my head. But I love that he finds a way to, to sap the power of Mr. Hood enough to equalise things. And he's not a magical boy. He's never shown to have any power other than just vitality, I guess, or just that quality of mind that he shows. People say that his soul burns brightly, but that isn't any power that he can use. He doesn't have the force, all he has is bravery. And I think the qualities that would make someone a good fighter pilot, you know, a little bit of foolhardiness, a little bit of ruthlessness.

Adam I mean, I think, it would be very difficult to adapt. You'd, I'd probably have to do it as an animation because it has so much transformation and so much indeterminacy and things moving from one state to another, which animation tends to be much better equipped for than live action.

Cat If Barker animated it himself, I'd be there in a flash.

Ren Add it as another project, a fantasy project for Henry Selick.

Adam Yeah, I don’t know if Selick's too soft. Because there's obviously there is whimsy in this to a degree.

Cat The cats are whimsical, before they die.

Ren But obviously the illustrations are quite dark and jagged.

Cat But we also get a good fake out with Hood.

Ren Yeah, Rictus turns up and Harvey’s like, how can you exist without the power of Hood and whne the house has disappeared? And he's like, ah, I stole a bit of magic! And he has this little globe full of magic.

Cat Which Hood carries from the grave, you know, the one hand.

Ren A hand with foot-long fingers reaches out from the rubble.

Adam Which is again, weirdly, I mean, you know, maybe Gaiman did just nick bits of this for Coraline.

Ren I mean, you start to wonder, right?

Adam It's very similar to the Other Mother, with the metallic hand.

Ren Also has cats showing kids the way.

Cat I definitely think there's cross pollination, like there was between King and Barker and, you know Gaiman is provably a man of his influences, look at Sandman, there's, not much that's original. He's a good weaver of existing influences.

Adam That’s a very good point. That is really true. But yeah we get this remaining hand.

Ren And this hand forces Rictus to pour the, the globe of magic onto the ground. So we’ve, had the man house or the house man, I don't know,

Cat It's a classic Batman, Man, Bat configuration.

Ren “His eyes were made of broken mirrors, and his face of gouged stone. He had a mane of splinters, and limbs of timber. He had shattered slates for teeth, and rusty screws for fingernails, and a cloak of rotted drapes that scarcely hid the

Cat This man would give you tetanus if you gave him a high five.

Adam I like the idea that anyone would want to give him a high five.

Cat Maybe that's all he needed to be redeemed, you know, just one good solid high five.

Adam No, he'd do a trick. He'd definitely do the, down below, you're too slow.

Cat Accidentally seal your soul, like soul five.

Ren This is where Lulu saves the day, yeah.

Cat And it's physical. Usually they let the girl out-trick it. But no, she swings a freaking four by four or something at the back of his head. And then Harvey grabs the wretched draperies covering his dark void of a heart or something. And he gets stuck into the vortex that happened where the lake is. So you're like, that is satisfying. This is a huge existential version of the person that goes on all fours behind the guy and then you push the guy and he falls over.

Ren So then he is properly done in and all the, the kids are processing out of the lake, turning back into children as they go.

Cat All naked, just naked kids. So that's fine.

Ren So they all go their separate ways and realising that they're going back into separate time zones. If it's all worked out they're going back to their own childhoods.

Adam Which means they can't be friends! Or can they?

Cat It is one of those, he writes so much about ephemeral things, things that are lost, things that can be regained. But there's a point in this book where I started tearing up. And it, it was the fact that he and Wendell have a very good and friendly goodbye, but he holds hands with Lulu, for as long as the fog lets them before they go back. Because they know that there's going to be too much of an age gap there, unless, the genders were reversed and he was Leonardo DiCaprio, it just wasn't going to work.

Ren So we just get a little ending scene of Harvey being at the park where the house was and someone comes up to him, who knows about it. And he says, oh, you know about Hood, didn't you? And says, oh, yes, but he wasn't one of them.

Cat It feels, once again, like the end of the, the child part of It, when they emerge from the tunnels and you get this feeling like the world isn't perfect, but it's better. And they've done something.

Ren It has a surprisingly sappy ending.

Cat Oh gosh, it gets real mawkish. That's the only thing about this book. Are you going to read it? Because it does give me a little bit of a cringe. I did have, like, one single solitary tear that I'm ashamed of.

Ren What do you think, should we read it?

**Cat**Do it in a fatuous voice.

Adam Aw, no!

Ren Adam, do you want to read it in a voice that you feel is suitable?

Adam The last paragraph? Well, I said it’s Dickensian in places this book and it really does sound like it's right out of A Christmas Carol.

Cat Yes.

Adam “The days that followed were unlike any Harvey had ever known. Though there was

He knew they had only the vaguest sense of what had happened to them, but they were all three agreed on one thing: that it was fine to be together again.

Time would be precious from now on. It would tick by, of course, as it always had, but Harvey was determined he wouldn't waste it with sighs and

(in Tiny Tim voice) And God bless us, each and every one!

Cat It's pure Muppet Christmas Carol for that one, I just see the bunny at the end of it. It's a great book for all that, I just feel like that could have taken maybe one more pass.

Adam Ah well.

Ren But yeah, I really enjoyed it. And I really think it belongs up there in the canon of children's horror. And yeah, with Coraline being tainted by Neil Gaiman being a scumbag.

Adam Well, we've still sort of got the film. We've still at least got Selleck and his team's animation craft.

Cat And it's especially hard for people of alternative and goth kind of vibes. We need everyone we can get. So we still have Clive Barker and we still have Trent Reznor. And we've still got The Cure. We've got a few good people that are keeping the lights on. I mean, the dark grim lights.

Ren Thank you so much, Cat, for suggesting this and for coming on the pod and sharing your insights and thoughts and memories of this book. It's been really lovely.

Cat Thank you for giving me a reason to reread it. It was glorious. And if I can say anything, if you liked this, if you like his writing, read Imagica. It's my favourite fantasy epic, it's further up than Lord of the Rings for me and I rarely ever find anyone else who's read it. And I'm glad that he created Hellraiser, I'm glad he has that notoriety but Imagica is a masterpiece and more people need to read it.

Ren Alright, onto the credits unless anyone has anything else to add.

Adam I mean, do you remember, Ren, that amazing pumpkin head Halloween scare? Do you remember when we tried to decorate a, was it like a wooden beam or something? At your parents, we tried to make a scary Halloween trick to scare the children.

Ren I don’t remember.

Adam We had a horrid, I swear we had like a horrid bear mask or something. And then we had a cast of your teeth. And we like hid the teeth with the bear mask and stood at the door and tried to scare children with it.

Ren Good times.

Adam I think we might have dressed in a boiler suit too or something. Did you have a boiler suit? One of us probably had a boiler suit. Or maybe it was a ski, maybe a ski suit. I don’t know.

Ren Cool. Thanks for listening. You can email us at stillscaredpodcast at gmail.com —

Adam Have you checked the emails?

Ren No, I haven’t checked the emails!*

Adam ‘Of course I haven't checked the emails!’ Check the emails.

Ren You can check the emails!

Adam I can’t check the emails, I don’t have the password.

Ren We’re very good at this. You can follow us on Instagram at stillscaredpodcast where I do a collage for each episode. And I will do a collage for this episode.

Our intro music's by Maki Yamazaki, our outro music's by Joe Kelly, our artwork's by Letty Wilson.

Adam Oh, yeah, well, rate and review us if you want to give us a good review, because then we'll get more listeners, apparently. I think that's how it works. And, and don't get up to any egg tricks, creepy kids.

Ren Leave your egg glue at home.

Adam All right, thanks, spooky kids, see you next time. And thank you, Cat, again!

All Bye!

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my cohost is Adam Whybray, today we’re talking about a selection of stories by the American author Robert Cormier. Enjoy!

Adam Hello Ren, we were just saying we’re veteran podcasters now!

Ren Yeah, we kind of are!

Adam We definitely are! Which means we’re super equipped, capable and connected and ready to talk about Robert Corm-i-air, or I don’t know if it should be pronounced (extra Frenchly) Robert Cormiair — since he was from the French Canadian part of Massachusetts.

RenAs will be relevant.

Adam As will be relevant. But we’ll call him Robert Corm-i-air.

Ren Well, his website says Cor-meer.

Adam Oh does, it, it tells us how to pronounce it! See we are pros, you’ve done your research, thank you.

Ren Which is good because until I read that I was calling him Cromier, which would have been embarrassing.

Adam Robert David Cromier-berg. So I discovered — I can’t remember how you pronounced it now —

RenCor-meer

Adam Cormier’s work by a Discord friend, Polygonal, who has a tendency to recommend things out of the blue, and dropped me a pdf of The Rag and Bone Shop and said ‘What do you think of this?’, so I was like ‘Oh, okay, I’ll get back to you’.

But it looked in my wheelhouse, when I looked on Wikipedia I saw that he was a Young Adult writer and it was clearly going to be horror or horror-adjacent — it turned out to be a thriller — and I was just struck by how grim it was! Reading the Wikipedia article, I liked this description of him: ‘Robert Edmund Cormier (January 17, 1925 – November 2, 2000) was an American writer and journalist, known for his deeply pessimistic novels, many of which were written for young adults. Recurring themes include abuse, mental illness, violence, revenge, betrayal, and conspiracy. In most of his novels, the protagonists do not win.’

And then I discovered that his work has been challenged and banned from many school libraries across the States and while I’m not normally sympathetic towards book bans there were moments where I could understand by parents might be uncomfortable with their children reading some of this. Which was interesting because that’s very rarely how I feel, but my gosh they go to some troublesome places!

Ren I think for this we’re leaning into the disturbing part of our ‘creepy, spooking and disturbing’ tagline.

Adam I know we interminttenly do content warnings, but these books are dark! I would not have coped with them before sixth form — I think 16/17 but before that, if I’d come across them at

He’s basically got all the Catholic guilt but without the possibility for redemption! In some way he’s got the passion and intensity of an adult Catholic novelist like Graham Greene or Flannery O’Conner, but with this gloomy atheistic belief that the world is unjust and that bad things happen, and a deep, deep cynicism about institutions, which I wonder is what led to the bans, because generally figures of authority are not to be trusted in his work.

Had you heard of him before?

Ren I think he’s one of those that I might have seen on a rotary display in a school library, but not really.

Adam My partner Leah reckons that she might have read the Chocolate War, and I think that’s his most well-known. But we were probably just that tiny bit too young for him.

Ren Yeah, he died in 2000

Adam But certainly he seems more well-known in America than in the UK or Europe. But broadly, you’ve read two of these books, I’ve read three and a bit so far, how have you found reading them?

Ren Fascinating. He’s a great writer, it’s so tense. I read The Bag and Bone Shop first which is his last novel, but it’s such a tense, sweaty little novel. It’s not quite like anything I’ve read before, and particularly not anything Young Adult.

Adam It reads more like a play or a film, a thriller, something like Seven by Fincher. There’s moments that recall the intensity of Harold Pinter’s plays perhaps. The bulk of it is a long interrogation scene and the only reference point I have for that is Martin McDonagh’s play The Pillowman which is a very upsetting read, before he moved into screenplays like In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths, which is very intense and this is similarly a very intense read.

I think my favourite of the ones I’ve read — I read that one first and then I read Fade, which is sort of atypical for Cormier because it has some supernatural or fantasy elements, arguably. It’s a complex book but it’s less grounded than some of his other novels or novellas. Then there’s I Am The Cheese which I know you haven’t read yet, which is easily my favourite I think it’s astonishingly good. But that’s the one I mentioned last time because I was intrigued by it being called I Am The Cheese, which is a reference to The Farmer in the Dell, where one version of the nursery rhyme is that the farmer’s wife wants a cat, the cat wants a mouse, the mouse wants some cheese, and ‘the cheese stands alone, the cheese stands alone, ee-i, adio, the cheese stands alone’.

I’ve started reading the fabulously titled ’After the First Death’ which is an incredible name for a Young Adult book, he’s not messing around! It does indeed start with a kid having just been shot in a terrorist attack and that is the first paragraph. And that one is controversial because Cormier likes playing around with narrative perspective and one chapter is narrated by the teenage bus driver, she’s a 16-year old bus driver, I don’t know if that ever happens! Maybe it’s work experience, I got to work at a funeral parlour, I guess some teenagers get to be bus drivers.

Ren Maybe Otto started when he was 16, in The Simpsons.

Adam Ah yeah, that would check out. Narrated by her, also I think maybe one of the teenagers on the bus, and also one of the terrorists. And I think maybe some parents weren’t okay with their kids inhabiting the point of view of a terrorist. But I respect Cormier’s humanism because I think he’s very much of the school ‘hurt people hurt people’ and that people do things for reasons, basically. That seems to be pretty he’s pretty keen to understand why humans do the things they do, and he has this curiosity towards human behaviour even at its worst. So which one do you want to start with?

Ren Shall we start with The Rag and Bone Shop?

Adam In a way, it’s a good place to start, and in a way it’s a funny place to start as it was his last novel before his death. But it is a short one and I think it’s a good one to introduce someone to his work. I read it over two sittings which is unlike me, scattered attention these days. But it’s so intense, it’s so gripping that I really did plough through it.

Ren I think I did the same. It’s about — a little girl is murdered and this master detective is bought in who is known for always getting the confession.

Adam And it seems like he’s right out of film noir, right? You can picture him immediately as this hard-bitten weary detective, he’s quite deliberately archetypal. And the main suspect is a boy.

Ren Yeah, who had been the last person, or so they think, to see the girl alive. But he’s a very gentle soul and a bit of a misfit, but he just likes doing jigsaw puzzles with this girl, they’re friends, kind of. But he’s the suspect and so the bulk of the novel is this interrogation, he thinks he’s just going along to give general evidence but he’s actually being bought in as the main suspect and the bulk of the novel is this interrogation in which the detective psychologically breaks Jason down.

Adam We’re kept in a certain amount of suspense about whether he might be the killer, right? Jason definitely seems sympathetic but we don’t know that much about him, and we are repeatedly told that the interrogater is a very good interrogater and he’s never been wrong before.

It feels like maybe — the idea of investigating what it means to tell a story is present in I Am The Cheese, for instance, which is a much earlier book, but it seems these meta elements become more present in Cormier’s later work to me The Rag and Bone Shop seems to be about why we tell stories, the power of stories, and to a degree whether stories can alter reality, or how it feels like they can alter reality even if the truth is out there.

You could almost say that it’s a novella about post-truth because once authority figures start saying something is the truth and they’re very certain it’s the truth and keep repeating it, if you’re the person in the position of not having a very clear sense of self, maybe being easily manipulated, being vulnerable, you might start to question what the truth is even if it relates to you and who you are.

Ren Shall I read a bit of the interrogation that demonstrates that?:

“What kind of books do you like to read?” Mr. Trent asked, as if reading his mind.

Jason was puzzled. He liked horror stories but he wasn’t wild about them and somehow these questions made it sound like he was some kind of fanatic when it came to horror stuff.

  “I like other kinds of stories and movies, too. I mean, adventure. Like Indiana Jones, and Star Wars.”

  Do I? Jason wondered. He had never really thought about it.

  “Do you sometimes get confused between what’s real and unreal?”

  Jason squirmed, fidgeted, tried not to show his impatience and his growing uneasiness.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

Adam It really puts you slap-bang there in the interrogation room with them, you really start to experience what Jason experiences, I imagined that I was going to start sweating myself, reading it. You start to feel the claustrophobia, or I did anyway.

Ren Oh yeah, absolutely. Trent is doing these tricks like putting him in a small cramped room, planting the idea of being thirsty and then not bringing him water, this kind of thing.

Adam From my limited experience, I've been arrested once on a climate protest which was thrown out of court, but I did have to spend a night in a cell on the charge of trespassing, we protested a petrol station.

And yeah, the police sergeant and then the person questioning me definitely played little mind games that did get under my skin. So it’s strange even being taken in the back of the police van because you can’t see out and there’s no seatbelts, which is a bit funny because normally it’s illegal not to wear seatbelts! But if you’ve been arrested you can slip and slide about in the back of a police van, and handcuffed as well so it’s hard to keep steady which feels pretty dangerous.

And if you’ve been arrested somewhere you don’t really know the journey you’re taken, you might be taken to a police station a county away, it’s not necessarily going to be taken to somewhere near where you are, so it might be quite a journey, and you can’t see out, so you feel, or I felt, quite disorientated by the time I came out.

And one of the first things the desk sergeant said to me was: ‘Don’t worry back when we used to arrest you eco-protesters I used to spit in your food. But then my daughter got involved in that kind of thing, so I don’t do that anymore.’

And of course, with plausible deniability he’s introduced this idea that he might spit in my food, he had done it before. Oh, he doesn’t do it anymore but that was a possibility. I don’t think I was offered any food anyway, but there was no way, I have OCD, there was no way I was going to eat food after that.

In the police cell there was a white spray painted arrow on the ceiling seemingly pointing to nothing, it was really odd. I kept trying to work out why that’s there — is it pointing to a crack? And I wondered is that just there to put the fear in you a bit — what’s that? what’s that relate to? Because it did, it played on my mind.

And in terms of being questioned I was being questioned at two in the morning, without having got to sleep because you’re checked in on every hour. And it was a Friday night so it was noisy, there were a lot of people in the drunk tank, people who were drunk and crying out, shouting and screaming. So there’s no way I would have got to sleep, and it was a hard bed and a thin mattress anyway.

So by the time I was questioned I was shaken up, and it was a small room so it was claustrophobic. And some of the questions they asked were tricksy — how did you feel when the fire engines arrived? And I was like ‘What? I don’t remem—‘ and I should have just No Commented, you’re told to just go ‘No comment’, but I think I’m too scrupulously honest to be able to do that, I want to be fair and give answers so I said ‘I didn’t know there were any fire engines’.

And I spoke to my partner at the time afterwards who was also at the protest and she said ‘No, there weren’t any fire engines, that never happened’. So clearly they were trying to confuse me or make me feel guilty about protesting, like ‘oh, you inconvenienced the fire service’, but that never happened that was just completely made up. And the funniest thing was they asked me if I had a religion and what I believed in and I said I was a Unitarian and they clearly hadn’t heard of Unitarians ‘Uni-what now? Uni-what now? What does that mean?’ So at two in the morning, without any sleep I was trying to explain the principle tenants of Unitarianism under interrogation, which is very difficult: ‘We um, don’t believe in the, err, divisibility of the trinity, um’.

So it did bring some of that back to me actually. The way you’re really put on the back foot in a police interrogation.

Ren Yeah that’s fascinating context, and then this is a 12 year old boy that he’s going to town on with all his interrogative skills and tricks.

Adam And I’m sure this happens, right. There are still states in America where children are tried as adults and sentenced as adults, appallingly. And it does happen, often to kids of colour. Twelve seems very young but it does happen. You can easily see how a skilled interrogater would just end up getting the answers they want to get.

Ren So I think for once we’re not going to spoil these books.

Adam No, I don’t want to say exactly what happens at the ending. It’s interesting and provocative but it’s a short read and I don’t really want to reveal the ending. I think the book works very effectively even without the ending, though the ending is very interesting. It definitely got under my skin, it’s an effective little book, and an inditement of children being treated as adults and an inditement of the justice system, I guess. I do think there is an anti-authoritarian streak in Cormier’s work that comes through here.

Ren Yeah, definitely.

Adam I’ll quickly mention I Am The Cheese, which I know you haven’t read yet but I hope you do because it’s my favourite of his books I’ve read so far. It’s one of his earlier books, first published in this country in 1977.

It has a forward in my copy, which says it began as an exercise on Saturday morning in the autumn of 1975, as an experiment with first person present tense I placed a boy on a bicycle, trying to create movement and action with words, simply because I had nothing else to create. So he’d already had a great deal of success with The Chocolate War, which is his most famous and didn’t know what to do for a follow up, so started with this semi-autobiographical sketch of the boy on his bicycle and the book then crosscuts two different narrative perspectives. You have the first person perspective of the boy on his bike, and then these interrogation scenes, possibly, or psychiatric sessions, it’s very hard to say! But these records of a dialogue seemingly between the boy and some kind of questioner about his life, and you slowly start to work out the connection between these two different narrative voices and what’s going on.

So it’s almost set up like a psychological mystery, but it has some real similarities between The Rag and Bone Shop, like what is this interviewer or interrogator doing, to what extent are they trying to work towards a certain outcome or being manipulative?

Ren What cover do you have?

Adam Oh, I have an incredibly pink cover. My cover is an incredibly garish, Windows 95, MS Paint pink.

Ren Beautiful.

Adam With a photograph of a boy, who’s been stretched and twisted so it’s elongated his arms and made him look extra quizzical and then there’s a pendant hanging down from the top of the page. And then a white, ghostly, I don’t know if it’s a silhouette exactly, but an image of a dog’ss fangs and nose coming in at the back. It’s quite striking! What’s your one?

Ren Mine is a late ‘80s Teen Tracks edition, which has that torn paper effect beloved of 80s graphic design. And the central image is a coloured pencil drawing, I think, of a boy on a bike from above, quite stylised. He looks carved, it’s quite sculptural, like he might be a wooden figurine.

Adam I’m going to have to see if I can see this now, because I don’t recognise this cover.

Ren And there’s a border above and below this central image which has a telephone receiver in the middle and little pigs on either side.

Adam What?!

Ren Yeah!

Adam Oh I can see it now, oh my gosh, you didn’t mention how green he is!

Ren Oh yes, he is extremely green! And of course the title is I Am the Cheese, so just looking at this cover I had no concept what this book was about: ‘Oh, it’s the telephone, pig, cycling book about cheese’.

Adam My favourite cover is, I don't know if it’s the original one, but it’s the incredibly grey and brown image of the boy in the cell looking incredibly haunted, it just looks like the grimmest book.

Ren Hell yeah. Oh my god, he’s like the, you know the, Ursula Le Guin, the Ones who Walk Away From Whatsitsface —

Adam Oh my god, he is! Oh no! Omelas!

Ren He’s the Omelas boy!

Adam Oh no! Yeah! So yeah if you look at that one you think ‘I’m not in for a fun time’.

But yeah it’s a beautifully written book and more dreamlike, stranger than the Rag and Bone Shop, it has some very odd, slightly trippy interactions. The whole thing has a very woozy feeling to it. Or the first person bits do, and then there are these very stark interrogative chapters.

I want to read a section from it actually because I’ve been using it in my English tutoring, because one of the questions in the UK GCSE exams that 16 year olds have to do, this is true for the AQA exam board and also for Eduqas, they’re the two main ones in this country for English at least, one of the questions is on structure. The kids get an extract and they have to say how does the structure in this excerpt create suspense.

And kids find it very hard. I find it quite hared to explain structure, I tend to say it’s the order that things happen. And I often say to them that I didn’t get structure when I was a kid, and it was only when I started looking at films and did film studies because you can understand with a film that you see one character before another, or maybe you see the location before you see the character. It’s easier to understand in a film that you see things in a different order. But anyway, it’s hard to teach and I’d been looking for extracts to use. I found this, it’s about chapter four and I think it’s a beautiful example of rising tension and suspense and just a great piece of writing, it makes sense that Cormier says it began as this exercise in first-person, present-tense with him trying to create movement with words, and I think he does a great job here.

“The dog is ferocious and I am terrified.

The dog lifts his head at my approach, alert, ears sharp, as if he is accepting a challenge. My eyes swing quickly, left to right and back again, but there are no rescuers in sight. The driveway behind the dog is empty, no cars in sight, and the house itself wears an abandoned look, as if the people have all gone away. Across the street, an open field lies behind a wandering low stone wall.

The dog makes a move, steps into the roadway directly in the path of the bike, his head lifted now, a snarl on his lips. He is silent, he has not barked or growled or maybe I can’t hear the growl as the wind rushes past my ears. I pedal hard, crouched on the bike, fingers clutching the handlebars, legs pumping away, the bike aimed directly for him, afraid that if I try to steer around him, I will somehow lose my balance and be flung to the pavement, at his mercy on the pavement. I slit my eyes and my legs slash away and I hurtle toward the dog. And at the last possible moment the dog darts aside, and now I hear his growl and then the growl erupts into short sharp savage barks and this is worst of all because the barks reveal his teeth.

The dog keeps trying to dash in front of the bike, as if he is more interested in stopping the bike than in attacking me. I take heart at this. The dog bites at the front tire and turns away as the tire scrapes his nose and the wheel wobbles frantically. And I keep yelling to myself, It’s all right, it’s all right, but my words are lost on the wind and inside I am saying, The hell with this, if I get away from this dog, I’m going home, I’m taking the first bus back, the hell with Rutterburg, Vermont, the hell with everything …

The bike is in danger of toppling now as the dog continues to attack the front wheel and I realize with horror that this has been his intention from the beginning: to topple the bike, send it askew and have me crashing to the roadway, his victim.

“Let’s get out of here,” I yell to nobody, and renew my pedaling, fear and panic having obliterated any weariness, any aching muscles. The barking of the dog grows distant as I swoop around the curve and sail steadily onward.

I am approaching the main street of Fairfield and it is hardly a Main Street and hardly a town, just a few stores and that church with the white steeple, and I speed through the street, carried by my momentum. I know I should stop but I don’t want to get off the bike. I want to keep going, to get to Rutterburg. I have a feeling that the dog will pursue me forever, will wait for me outside stores if I stop to eat or go to the john. I open my mouth and gulp air and the rush of air is sweet in my lungs and I feel strong again as the air caresses my lungs. I pedal through the town, across a wooden bridge, the sound of the slats like applause in my ears. And I say hello and goodbye to Fairfield and continue on my way, feeling as though I will never stop, never stop.”

I think that’s a pretty terrific piece of writing, a whole story in a chapter!

Ren Yeah — I wrote a short story for a prompt where the character is in motion the whole time and I wrote it about someone cycling, not being pursued, cycling in a less frantic way than this, but it’s a good writing challenge and it can really bring out a different approach than someone who’s standing… I trailed off there.

Adam But it’s true, it’s hard to make writing dynamic, and when I’m practicing creative writing with the kids they find it hard not to just paint a frozen picture. They either just do back and forth dialogue — well the younger ones just do ‘and then, and then, and then’ just a succession of stuff, but the older ones struggle to create a living scene and to get that sense of movement, so I think it is a useful example of writing.

Ren It also reminds me, there was some kind of scrapyard that I had to go past on my way back from school that had German Shepherds barking it and they would always jump at the fence and bark.

Adam I hated that kind of thing as a kid!

Ren And now I’m with Mattie and he's very fond of them, and I actually did meet a German Shepherd later who was the first dog that I ever really got to know, and she was very calm and placid and also intimidating enough to all the other dogs that they didn’t bother us, and I was like, okay, I like this one.

Adam Yeah, I think for me having the years during lockdown of living with two dogs made a big difference in terms of my fear of dogs. It made me realise that when dogs are barking it doesn’t automatically mean they’re angry or trying to get you to go away, dogs do also bark when they’re excited and happy and I think understanding that helped quite a bit.

Ren But a German Shepherd also comes up towards the end of Fade, so there might be an autobiographical —

Adam Well Fade seems the most autobiographical, he certainly is inviting that reading, because it seems to track his life in that the main character is also born seemingly around the mid 1920s and is growing up between the wars and then the outbreak of World War II. And also in the French Canadian section of Massachussetts. So it certainly seems to have autobiographical elements, this is quite a complex novel, it’s a hard one actually to succinctly —

Ren Uhhuh.

AdamStructurally it’s quite complex, but it starts narrated by a character called Paul, talking about his experiences as a teenager and then later we flash forward to many decades later at which point Paul has becomes a successful author and his agent, or publisher, discovers this lost manuscript that she realises has autobiographical element. So there’s that meta element to it where the protagonist becomes an author known for setting stories in his hometown, which Cormier does, does make it seem like it might be quite autobiographical! And Paul has hidden this manuscript away in part because it has some shameful aspects, some confessional aspects, so rightly or wrongly it does make you wonder if these confessional aspects are true to life, are there some things that Cormier is confessing to, in which case it does make it a pretty unsettling read.

Ren I will say, the beginning is quite a traditional children’s horror star.

Adam That’s an interesting point, with the photograph?

Ren With the photograph, yeah, he's talking about this mysterious photograph of his father’s family, taken before World War I in Quebec and there’s his father as a kid and his grandparents and all his aunts and uncles but one of his uncles is invisible — isn’t in the photo, though everyone swears he was there when the photo was being taken. And I feel like that’s quite a traditional intriguing start.

Adam Yeah, it’s almost like a Goosebumps start!

Ren It is, exactly! And then the rest of the novel is so weird.

Adam And then we get to — I don’t know how much depth we want to go into and I certainly don’t want to spoil too much of the book, but I will say trigger warning for squickiness. If you’re someone who’s not comfortable with um, troubling, I guess… oh gosh there’s all sorts of troubling stuff! I guess if you don’t want to read about unhealthy sexuality, I don’t know if there are any healthy displays of sexuality, maybe avoid it. It can be squicky at times. Squicky in an insightful and probably pretty accurate kind of way, in terms of looking at a teenage boy who hasn’t had much in the way of good direction? I don’t know, I don’t really know what to say. I don’t think it’s exploitative exactly, he’s not an exploitative writer it’s just —

Ren Uncomfortable.

Adam Yeah, it’s very uncomfortable. It reminded me of watching Peep Show sometimes, the Robert Webb and David Mitchell sitcom. But obviously Peep Show is for adults and this is aimed at a young adult audience. I will say basically, the main character really fancies his aunt, and we hear quite a lot about this and it doesn’t go well. It’s like some weird thing out of a visual novel, basically. I’ve said enough I’ll pass over to you Ren! What are your thoughts?

Ren It took me quite a while to read this book, I read the first Paul section and I was like: ‘right, okay, that’s some rich stuff there’. It does have this supernatural element to it because Paul discovers that he can ‘fade’, become invisible, and this is a hereditary skill/curse/.

Adam Yeah, kind of curse because it allows him to see the awful things that various people do in his town in the darkness and some of them are really grim.

Ren That’s passed down from uncle to nephew, and any hijinks inherent in this scenario are quickly curtailed with horror.

Adam Yeah, like at first it seems like it might be an episode of Round the Twist with some quirky, maybe mildly squicky or troublesome but mostly harmless fun, but no. No it is not. It’s bad. And I guess it tracks Paul’s loss of innocence, basically. Both in terms of Paul doing some really bad inexcusable things, but also witnessing even worse things.

Ren And then there’s very much that theme of trauma being passed on generationally —

Adam The uncle seems like a very haunted figure who also had his own experiences with the Fade, and Paul learns as a much older man later in the novel that he has his own nephew, who has unfortunately grown up in extreme privation experiencing a lot of abuse and so is very troubled and uses the Fade in even worse ways than Paul.

I did send you a text because I’d just finished reading that section and I was like — if you think it’s already dark, buckle up.

Ren And I was like, ooohkay, as I read the metatextual middle section, what is going to happen now.

Adam So guys, if you want to read a Young Adult novel in which a homeless person is mercilessly abused for long stretches, do we have the book for you! The thing is it’s really well-written. It’s just really grim. This is the first thing we’ve read for the podcast where that’s part of me that’s like ‘Yeah, I don’t know if this should be in a school library’. And that takes a lot for me to say because I’m not big on censorship! But I’m glad I didn’t read it when I was too young, it would have really upset me.

Ren Yeah, I think Fade is a 16+ novel.

Adam Yeah, that’s my feeling. I think if I’d read it in Sixth Form I would have got on with it because I was starting to read adult fiction then.

Ren Yeah, I mean I was reading adult fiction by about 13, but I don’t know if that was a great idea. It was certainly mind-expanding.

Adam To be fair that is true of quite a few bookish friends I have, but we’re all quite neurotic, so.

Ren The question is, do you have a texture?

Adam Oh my gosh, I do, but the question is, is it just going to be the same texture?

Adam (editing voiceover) With a serious amount of contrition and even self-disgust here, I, Adam Whybray, editing this episode of Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror that I forgot to sing Texture of the Week before providing my texture to Ren. So with that in mind, I have my guitar here.

Adam Because mine is the texture of the fade

Ren Oh, no mine is a different one.

Adam Okay cool, because there are actually quite a lot of descriptions of the experience of the Fade but all of them are pretty evocative so I’ll read the first main one:

“First of all, the pause.

Doesn’t sound like a nice time!

Ren No. I’m glad you did that one. My one was, so, Paul’s father works in a comb factory, and at one point he’s punished by the foreman or whatever by being sent to work in the Rub Room, which is the worst station in the factory.

Adam If you’ve had dreams about working in a comb factory because you like combs, this book will see to those!

So this is the description of Paul going into the Rub Room:

“You opened the door of the Rub Room at the comb shop and a blast like purgatory struck your face. The workers sat on stools, huddled like gnomes over the whirling wheels, holding the combs against the wheels to smooth away the rough spots. The room roared with the sound of machinery while the foul smell of the mud soiled the air. The mud was a mixture of ashes and water in which the wheels splashed so that they would not overheat at point of contact with the combs. Because the Rub Room was located in the cellar of the shop where there were no windows, the workers toiled in the naked glare of ceiling lights that intensified everything in the room: the noise, the smells, the heat, and the cursing of the men. On the coldest day of the year, the temperature in the Rub Room was oppressive; in the summer, unbearable. The workers there were exiles from the rest of the shop: newcomers from Canada and Italy eager for any job at all, troublemakers who needed their spirits broken, and workers who had lost favor with the superintendent, Hector Monard.”

Adam I appreciated actually the amount of focus on worker’s rights and the worker movement in this novel, I thought that was unusual for a Young Adult novel and gave it a lot more historical texture.

Ren There was also some discussion about the conflict around the next generation working in the industry, one of Paul’s brothers wants to work in the comb factory like his father but his father says: ‘no, I want something better for you’.

Adam It’s a very rich historical novel in many ways. Looking on Goodreads it’s got quite divisive reviews, which is to be expected I think. I can imagine if you were an intelligent introverted sort, with a tendency towards the dark and macabre, or Catholic navel-gazing this book would hit you hard if it came to you at the right time, but I can also understand why some people just bounce off it because it’s quite grubby. It’s pretty oppressive. He manages to write these very claustrophobic books, you often get very caught in the minds of the main characters and they’re not very nice places to be. Which might be why it reminds me of a visual novel, this one in particular, Chaoshead or some of these Nitro Plus visual novels that are quite grubby and uncomfortable.

Ren Endorsed by Stephen King on the cover.

Adam Which checks out, I think. Stephen King’s stuff is sort of appropriate for teenagers and sort of not. Because teenagers often do discover Stephen King novels and he’s quite accessible as a writer, but also quite grubby. Reading Carrie, I might have said before, I was quite surprised at how grubby and tawdry it is. There’s stuff that I thought was just in the film because it was in the film and it wouldn’t be in the book, but it was, very much, if not more so.

I’m not saying any of this to be like, cancel Cormier. Because it seems like he was a very decent guy. I found — this is the kind of thing that was probably ill-advised at the time but it’s quite nice to read about. In I Am The Cheese there is a telephone number for the main character’s girlfriend and Cormier just used his own telephone number where he lived with his family, and so inevitabley got quite a lot of phone calls from random teenage readers just trying it. Which obviously sounds like: ‘Oh my god safeguarding’. But I found a Reddit thread of people who had called him and there was a guy who was a teenager at the time who said it was really enriching for him they talked about literature and things and he was going through a really hard patch and Cormier was really kind and generous with his time, which was quite sweet. And while I don’t want to say you can tell a wrong ‘un or a good person from their face, he does has a lovely face.

Ren He does have a very nice face!

Adam He does! You look at photos of him and he looks like a very nice man. So that’s good enough for me!

But yeah, I’m glad we’ve had him on the podcast because although they don’t always fit traditional children’s horror they’re certainly some of the most disturbing and unsettling Young Adult books I’ve ever read.

Ren Absolutely. I’m glad we dipped into this, and you know, there are plenty more.

Adam I know! That’s the same with a lot of these writers, like Swindells, several of the writers we’ve covered, there’s always more. We’ll be doing this into our old age or civilisational collapse, whichever comes first. And continuing on the light note, we’re going to be doing another pretty dark book next, right, Clive Barker.

Ren I’m so excited. Clive Barker’s children’s book, The Thief of Always.

Adam I just can’t believe that Clive Barker wrote a kids book.

Ren That concept alone is worth it. But I met someone who read it as a kid and hopefully we can get her to talk about it with us.

Adam Process any feelings that came up.

Ren Uhuh. I watched Hellraiser in preparation.

Adam I’ve never done it. I think Antonia or someone told me I wouldn’t like it, like ‘it’ll make you uncomfortable, it’ll make you feel dirty Adam’.

Ren I did, I really liked it.

Adam Maybe I’ll watch it. Apparently the Hellraiser sequels are notoriously bad, Evolution of Horror did all of the sequels but Mike Muncer sounded like he’d really gone through something, he sounded really deflated. Obviously there’s a lot of bad horror sequels but the Hellraiser ones are generally seen as The Worst. It’s the worst series for bad sequels.*

Ren This is a bit out of nowhere, but speaking of bad films that people might watch for a project, it’s been a while since we’ve mentioned Cage Wisdom on here.

Adam Oh my gosh, our old blog? Well, it’s still online, so you can find our reviews of now only about a quarter of Cage’s output because obviously he continues at a pace. But I always enjoyed your review for The Boy in Blue on there because you seemed so unhappy about having to watch it.

Ren So you know, if you want to dig into our back catalogue, our pre- Still Scared project.

Adam I sometimes think I should log back in and review — I liked Pig a lot from some years back now, I could review that, The Surfer was a bit silly but not bad, an Oz-ploitation film with Cage doing his angry thing. There have been some good ones over the last 10 years.

Alright, thank you for listening. Do you want to do credits while I think of something to say.

Ren (Ren starts doing credits) You can email us at Still Scared Wisdom — oh, wait, I'm still thinking about Cage Wisdom.

Adam What?! Still Scared Wisdom! That’s not our email. Uh, [email protected].

Ren Or follow us on Instagram at stillscaredpodcast where I do Canva collages to encapsulate the themes of the episodes.

Adam Did you upload the last one?

Ren No, I need to do it, I need to do it!

Adam I wondered if your dad had objected, I know your dad is in this collage and I wondered if he said ‘No! that’s not going online!’

Ren Yeah, I used a photo of my dad at about 10 years old as a model of Matthew from Chocky. I will upload that now.

Do you have a sign-off for us Adam?

Adam Yes. Never forget that the cheese stands alone creepy kids!

Ren The cheese stands alone! Alright. See you next time creepy kids! Bye!

Adam Bye!

**Transcript: Chocky **

Ren Welcome to Still Scared: Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray and today we’re talking about Chocky by John Wyndham. Enjoy!

(Intro music plays)

Ren Good evening, Adam!

Adam Good evening and merry Christmas, Ren!

Ren Yeah, we’re recording on the 22nd of December.

Adam That checks out!

Ren So things are about to get festive.

Adam How are you doing? You said you were a little bit tired.

Ren I am a bit tired. I feel like I have lots of Christmas jobs left to do, and I don’t think I actually do. I think I just feel intangibly burdened.

Adam Like a little Gregor Samsa!

Ren Exactly.

Adam So, just to check up on you… you do rollerblading these days, you’ve got back into rollerblading, so do you do rollerblading round a track and then knocking people other?

Ren No…

Adam I thought maybe you were doing roller derby.

Ren Not the roller derby, you have to do that on rollerskates anyway.

Adam Ah, okay, because I can imagine you doing the ducking, diving and weaving around and being quite sneaky with it, but at the same time it sounds quite terrifying.

Ren Well, I go to the roller disco, which we have here in Glasgow.

Adam Well that sounds very hip!

Ren It’s great fun, I go to the roller disco and go round and round in circles and just have a lovely time.

Adam Oh my gosh, do you get the Pet Shop Boys playing and stuff?

Ren Well yeah, I’m always very into the 80s bangers, as you know.

Adam Amazing! I never did much rollerskating, I never got into rollerblading as a kid but I did go rollerskating at the tenpin bowling place and I do have vivid memories of ‘Go West’ by Pet Shop Boys playing while desperately trying to push myself towards the side, holding on.

Ren It’s a good time, I went for a birthday and got a shout out, “Ren it’s their 37th birthday” and I’m like “Hell yeah!”

Adam Oh my gosh, we’re old! How did we get old? I took my eye off the ball to be honest!

Ren Are you 39?

Adam Not quite, I’m still 38. I blame lockdown, I spent too much time during lockdown playing Sega Mega Collection and completing Sonic Spinball for the first time.

Ren Sonic Spinball, yes!

Adam With the rewind function! Which was very gracious, I think. I was suddenly able to complete Sonic Spinball, which obviously was the highlight of my life. I remember it taking an evening but maybe it didn’t, maybe it took the whole lockdown, maybe I spent the whole year and a half doing it.

Ren Aw, it’s such a good game.

Adam It’s really funny because it wasn’t made by the Sonic team it was made by a different team, so I don’t know if you remember the sprites are chunkier, it’s a chunky Sonic. But yeah, it is a very satisfying game, and it was really satisfying to complete it.

Ren Yeah, I bet! That’s worth ageing prematurely.

Adam Yeah, I agree! Thank you, thank you! So today we’re returning to an author we’ve covered before, way back near the start of the podcast.

Ren Yep, 2018.

Adam 2018 before time started to get weird. We did The Crysalids, which was an earlier Wyndham and we’re now looking at Chocky which was the last book Wyndham published before he died, though it does continue the theme or motif of telepathy that we had in The Crysalids, in The Crysalids it was these mutated teenagers, or teenagers that had this mutation that meant they could communicate telepathically, and that meant they became the outcasts in their society, whereas in Chocky it’s an otherwise normal 8 year old boy —

Ren — 11 year old —

Adam — Oh, 11 year old boy Matthew, who is communicated telepathically with by an alien, an alien presence or being called Chocky. Does Matthew name her Chocky, do we find out? Or is that how she names herself?

Ren I think that is Chocky’s own choice.

Adam Because it’s quite a diminutive name, it sounds like a pet name. Chocky!

Ren Yeah, this novel’s from 1968, there’s also a TV series from 1984 —

Adam — Yeah, quite a while later.

Ren Which we both watched the first series of which follows the events of the book quite faithfully, and then there are subsequent seasons and I don’t know what they do!

Adam Yeah, I looked at the Wikipedia articles and it sounds like they go down the government intrigue [route], I might watch them play itself [themselves] out. This was expanded from a shorter story originally, I know some other sci-fi authors of his generation could be a bit down on Wyndham as an author. I suppose he's a soft sci-fi, civilisation and how humans work and don’t work together, but he’s not really interested in the technical details of how, say, telepathy works. How humans react to certain events, and seeing those play through rather than scientific aspects. It’s tricky whether the book is children’s horror, people do read Wyndham as children, my mum read him. He’s quite similar to Ray Bradbury, he started writing for sci-fi magazines, short stories, golden age…

Ren When you could make a living out of short stories

Adam When you could make a living out of short stories, same for Kurt Vonnegut. I must have come across Chocky as a TV show in lists of ‘Which TV shows scared you as a child?’

Ren I can see that, because with the book, most of the stories [in] children’s horror, the parents are usually either dead or absent or useless.

Adam It’s narrated by Matthew’s father.

Ren And the parents learn gradually about Chocky through Matthew and their concerns are those of parents. So we do get the trope of the child being disbelieved by adults, but from the other perspective.

Adam Margaret Atwood, who wrote an introduction to the re-issue of the book, said that she had just about lost interest by the time Chocky was released, describes it as lightly humorous. I think Chocky’s really interesting in terms of genre, because Wyndham takes a long time to play his cards over whether Chocky is dangerous or not, and on the surface the narrative looks — what Matthew's mother is worried about — early onset schizophrenia, coming from inside his head on some level. So there’s uncertainty about that, and what Chocky is up to and whether Chocky is a friendly presence or a more sinister presence. It’s not scary but it’s quite an uneasy read; also how Matthew reacts to Chocky. Matthew likes having Chocky around and Chocky asks a lot of questions about human culture but is also amused by aspects of human culture, rude and mocking… Matthew is deeply upset by this. There’s a scene where Matthew's dad has a nice new car and Chocky is really unimpressed by the car, and poor Matthew is screaming “No, no!” with some serious intensity in the TV version.

(Clip: No! No! No! Go away!)

Ren Good child actor Andrew, really sells it.

Adam Went on to be a teacher and died sadly, recently, and is great. Sells what is a quite difficult role because there’s quite a lot of him basically talking to himself.

Ren Prompts Matthew’s dad to say “I know this fella from Cambridge, he’s a psychiatrist, maybe he can have a little chat with Matthew”. The character is Roy Landis, who I think comes across more sinister in the TV series.

Adam He’s quite amicable in the book.

Ren He’s quite intense.

Adam It’s quite clear to Landis that this is not in Matthew’s head because he’s able to talk about these aspects of future technology that are clearly coming from an outside source, being communicated with, he’s a cultural relativist, ancestors might have called this possession.

Ren I think that is one of the potential horror aspects, this idea of possession, and possession by what?

Adam Weird voice, whispering little reverberant voice, do find it a bit creepy.

(Clip: Alright, concentrate and I will show you.)

Ren Accompanied by a blue light

Adam That’s kind of superimposed – shall we do ‘Texture of the Week’ early? I’ve got some Waitrose cooks ingredients as taken from my mum: “Be bold with the stem ginger”.

Ren Well you have to, you simply have to.

Adam I am going to be bold with it, I’m going to shake it!

Ren Okay.

Adam We should be whispery I guess, like Chocky.

Ren

Adam So yes I thought of the title sequence they have this vapourwave horror, library music by Astral Sounds.

Ren Amazing.

Adam Library music that’s meant to evoke being underwater (clip of music plays underneath the description) and then this vapourwave prism.

Ren Mmhmm mhm.

Adam And then Matthew’s head.

Ren There’s a negative of his head, which becomes green.

Adam So I thought of that, I then later thought of Matthew’s mother’s jumper which was astonishing.

(Ren cackles.)

Adam It’s got this beautiful flower pattern on it, it’s really nice then along the top in large letters it says ‘Kamikaze!’

Ren Yeah, it does! thank you for mentioning that.

Adam So my actual texture is white fruit.

Ren Oh, white fruit?

Adam I’m glad this is a different one. Matthew ends up in what looks like a hospital, it’s not a hospital, researching that Matthew might have telepathic powers, he is kidnapped briefly and put in this facility for a week and given a truth serum and in this very white facility he is fed or given white fruit, there’s a bowl of fruit and it’s all been painted white, like white grapes, odd little detail.

Ren I think I’m going to go with Twinklehooves. Matthew has a little sister called Polly, and one of the running jokes in the book is Polly’s unhelpful interjections about her favourite fictional character, a horse called Twinklehooves. So when Matthew is kidnapped she says: “When Twinklehooves was kidnapped they tried to turn him into a pit pony!” and when Matthew doesn’t finish his dinner she says “Twinklehooves went off his food when his friend Stareyes died. It was very sad”. And I love the continuing adventures of Twinklehooves.

Adam Wyndham probably enjoyed coming up with that. She’s quite precocious – she’s quite a convincingly irritating little sister.

Ren I wondered if you wanted to read the description of Piff.

Adam “Piff was a small, or supposedly small, invisible friend that Polly had acquired when she was about five. And while she lasted she was a great nuisance.

Ren This is when Chocky first turns up, this is what they’re comparing Chocky to.

Adam Chocky is less irritating than Piff, Chocky is a scout, trying to work out if the Earth is practical for their race – I say their, but, Chocky struggles with the idea of a mother and a father and they just have one parent on their planet.

Ren This is one of the strange questions that Matthew asks his mother.

Adam Matthew and his father can’t cope with the indeterminacy of calling Chocky ‘they’.

Ren Chocky sounds a bit like a bossy older sister, doesn’t have a gender on the prog rock album cover planet.

Adam It is a very prog rock album cover planet.

Ren Matthew lets Chocky take hold of him, or use his hands to draw, so she can – she’s annoyed at his lack of drawing skills, these slightly odd paintings.

Adam I think handing over to Chocky is a bit like handing over to AI, really it’s Chocky’s work, he’s quite an honest kid and doesn’t like the idea.

Ren Quite like a young Adam, I imagine.

Adam I respected that! He’s a nice kid, it’s an 80s TV show but it’s early 80s. Our sense of a decade often comes from the mid or late part of the decade, this still feels quite 70s. The quietness is particularly striking, you do get them playing a video game, an Atari.

Ren They play an Atari, and Matthew solves a Rubix Cube.

Adam I remember Stewart Lee, in an early Screenwipe comparing, slightly unfairly, Children of the Stones to Skins. And I don’t think that’s comparing like with like anyway, but he was talking about how polite the children are in Children of the Stones; Matthew was a very polite child.

John Wyndham’s background is interesting – his full name is, he came from an upper-middle class background, and his father tried to sue his mother’s family for emotional control and failed, an early harassment case was bought against him and ruined his father’s reputation and then Wyndham was downwardly mobile and he and his mum and sibling had to move to a smaller home. I don’t think there’s much about class in it, except for the fact that they’re comfortably middle-class.

Ren I think that’s meant to be part of the ‘the very normal, look at this extremely normal family’.

Adam What did you think of the TV series as an adaptation of the book?

Ren It was very faithful to the book, there were some moments where things felt creepier than in the book.

Adam I thought it was creepier than the book.

Ren The kidnapping sequence, I think, seeing Matthew in this white room where he thinks he’s been in a car accident, and they’re injecting him with things, and it is a very benign kidnapping as they go, but it is very creepy.

Adam It’s like something from The Prisoner, do you see things from Matthew’s perspective in that scene?

Interestingly, Steven Spielberg has long held the adaptation rights to this, and is a big fan, and I think that makes sense in light of this being an influence on ET and Close Encounters, the hospital scenes in ET are quite unsettling and have this vibe of threat, I suppose. And ET’s obviously a pretty friendly alien but you're not sure at first what’s going on with him, and the same with Close Encounters. You do see the aliens eventually in Close Encounters but for a lot of the film you don’t see the aliens, they’re quite mysterious, and clearly it’s concerned like how do you communicate with an alien.

Because Chocky communicates with Matthew through telepathy but only has access to Matthew’s vocabulary, so is restricted to…

Ren Yes because it turns out at the end, Chocky talks to the father through Matthew and Chocky explains why they came to Earth and about being a scout and that humans would need to find a new source of power.

Adam Oh Chocky, it’s true! It’s true!

Ren And she’s been trying to tell Matthew about this endlessly renewable source of power, but he doesn’t understand it, and he goes to see another psychologist who hypnotises him and fobs off the father saying “it’s just a fantasy” but it’s implied he’s behind the kidnapping.

Adam I’d already, something that felt a bit uncanny, I don’t know if you saw the story the other day about a Portuguese scientist who was murdered, it’s speculated that this was an assassination basically, so that became a little bit unsettling, revisiting the end of Chocky and the TV show and to become the scientist who unlocks this potential energy source. There would obviously be vested interests, whether fossil fuel interests or others ones who would want to stop this or take it themselves, I think that is another sinister element of the book, you have this relationship or friendship that is developing between, but once adults start finding out about it it becomes more fraught, how the adult humans try to get involved

In terms of explicit horror, I think the hospital seems the most unsettling, but actually before the kidnapping, but before that there’s this accident that happens when Matthew and his family are on holiday and him and his sister are out on a jetty and a boat comes loose of its moorings and they're both catapulted into the water, this comes right at the end of episode 4, family friends’ daughter screaming really loudly and this close up on her face as she screams, and that’s the cliffhanger.

Ren For whatever reason the version I was watching on YouTube the sound cut out at the end of episode 4, close-ups of this girl.

Adam A very Stranger Things cliffhanger, currently watching Season 5, the kids – well they’re not kids anymore – the characters are put into peril.

Ren If they’ve lasted this long.

Adam Do a Blake’s 7 and kill off all of them at the end. Here’s hoping!

Ren You’ll be one of the only people to know, who’s continuing to watch Stranger Things.

Adam Oh well, you know, the first season was good.

Ren Yeah, I liked the first season. So I have a bit of a digression we can take if we want to.

Adam I think we have time for a small digression.

Ren I have been reading at the same time, Donald Winnicot’s The Piggle?

Adam So is the psychologist Winnicot [the same as the author]?

Ren Yes, and this book is a blow by blow account of a girl called Gabrielle, she was having nightmares about something called the ‘Babacar’ that was chasing her, and it was about what he did in these sessions. It’s really interesting. John Wyndham and Donald Winnicot are very close contemporaries in age, and they’re a very particular generation in Englishman, to us they would be great-grandparents. And I found something similar in tone, and a similar masculinity that I find quite appealing in Wyndham’s protagonists. I quite like Wyndham’s men, like the father in Chocky and the protagonist in The Kraken Wakes.

Adam They’re protectors, and it is paternalistic, but there’s a kind of gentle, non-patronising paternalism in the way that Matthew’s father talks to him.

Ren And if you compare, I was talking to Mattie about this, the father in The Crysalids, who is this very intolerant fundamentalist, and the father in Chocky is open-minded, and is like: “Well, Matthew old chap, why don’t you tell me about this Chocky?”

Adam Yeah, yeah. Presumably that was Winnicot’s approach?

Ren Well, it has this kind of old-fashioned masculinity, but he is also getting on the floor and playing with the child, and I quite like that. That was my digression.

Adam The Piggle? It does seem like the name of a children’s horror book.

Ren The psychologists or psychiatrists don’t come across well in Chocky, so they are un-Winnicot like.

Adam That’s true actually. Controlling his body to swim, I’m not sure if it’s that Chocky puppeteers Matthew in these instants, or Chocky unlocks this. When Matthew’s drawing he says that Chocky teaches him to see properly, it’s like the potentiality is already inside Matthew’s body.

Ren He gets a medal from the Royal Swimming Society, but he doesn’t want it because…

Adam No! It wasn’t me! It was Chocky!

Ren The book and the TV series end on this very sweet note.

Adam It is very sweet.

Ren The dad has had the medal re-inscribed so it says “awarded to Chocky for a valorous deed’. Any other bits from the TV series to mention? We’ve talked about the kamikaze jumper.

Adam It was directed by Doctor Who and Z Cars writer Anthony Read, so if there’s a slight Doctor Who feel to proceedings, that’s why.

Ren I think there is a slight Doctor Who feeling to proceedings

Adam We should probably do some Doctor Who at some point, it’s one of those things like Goosebumps where I feel like there’s so many podcasts talking about Doctor Who, and probably every Doctor Who episode that it’s like ‘eh, what’s the point?’

Ren Shall I read the description of the painting of Chocky’s home world?

Adam Ooh yeah, I really like that! The paintings of humans sound a bit like Modigliani with these elongated faces.

Ren “It was a view across a plain. As a background, a view of rounded, ancient-looking hills, topped here and there by squat dome towers was set against a cloudless blue sky. In the middleground, to the right of centre, stood something like a very large cairn. It had the shape, though not the regularity, of a heightened pyramid, nor where the stones, if stones they were, fitted together. Rather they seemed, as far as one could tell from the drawing, to be boulders piled up. It could scarecely have been called a building yet it quite certainly was not a natural formation. In the foreground were rows of things precisely spaced and arranged in curving lines. I say things because it was impossible to make out what they were. They could have been bulbous succulent plants, or haycocks or perhaps even huts, there was no telling. And to make their shape more difficult to determine, each appeared to throw two shadows.

From the left of the picture, a wide cleared strip ran straight as a ruler’s edge to the foot of the cairn, where it changed direction towards a bank of haze at the foot of the mountains. It was a depressing vista, all except the blue of the sky in unrelieved browns, reds, greys, filled with a sense of aridity and a feeling of intolerable heat.”

Adam It does sound pretty Prog Rock.

Ren Yeah.

Adam Have you ever listened to Cat Stevens very strange Prog Rock concept album?

Ren I haven’t, should I?

Adam Well yeah, once. It's sort of about Pythagorean theory.

Ren Okay great, brilliant.

Adam It’s very hippyish. It’s got a little book inside the record sleeve. It’s called Numbers and it’s Cat Stevens one and only concept album. It’s based on a fictional planet in a far off galaxy called Polygor.

Ren Mmhmm.

Adam This is Wikepdia: “The concept of the album is a fantastic spiritual musical which is set on the planet Polygor. In the story there is a castle with a number machine. This machine exists to fulfill the sole purpose of the planet – to disperse numbers to the rest of the universe: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (but notably not 0).

The nine inhabitants of Polygor, the Polygons, are Monad, Dupey, Trezlar, Cubis, Qizlo, Hexidor, Septo, Octav, and Novim. As the first lines of the book say, they “followed a life of routine that had existed for as long as any could remember. It was, therefore, all the more shocking when on an ordinary day things first started to go wrong. The change takes the form of Jzero, who comes from nowhere as a slave and eventually confuses everybody with his simple truth.”

Ren Ahhh, okay!

Adam It’s very ‘zen’ in probably heavy quotation marks, but I quite like it.

Ren Okay, I’m going to wrap it up.

Adam That’s fair, we don't need to talk about Prog Rock too much. I’ve got a couple of ideas for the next podcast, have you heard of Robert Cormier?

Ren Oh yeah.

Adam Oh you have, okay! There’s one called Fade, a kind of Invisible Man story about a child who starts doing wrong when he gets the chance to become invisible, which sounds quite unsettling. And his last Young Adult novella is called The Rag and Bone Shop, and it’s genuinely very dark.

But the reason I thought of you, and I might be wrong, I might have been thinking of someone else but in my mind I was like: ‘this must have been Ren’. So, Ren, did you used to get emotional about the fact that the cheese stands alone, in ‘The Farmer in the Dell’.

Ren (laughing) No…

Adam I remember someone pointing out that the last line in ‘The Farmer in the Dell’ is “The cheese stands alone, The cheese stands alone, Ee-i, adio, The cheese stands alone.”

I can definitely imagine you going: (distraught) “Adam, the cheese stands alone! The cheese stands alone!” To be honest, I can’t imagine anyone else I know saying that.

Ren It does sound like me!

Adam Let’s be honest, it does sound like you!

Ren I also have a couple of suggestions.

Adam Oh, I’ll just say quickly, my other suggestion was because Ava was interested, I messaged Ava because I was in a primary school with nothing to do during registration, because in this school they give me nothing to do. And it was Robin Jarvis, and the introduction to The Woven Path, and it was horrible! Oh Robin Jarvis, I forget about how horrible you are! It was nasty. So I did say, hey, Ava, do you want to do the museum ones, and Ava was keen so we should definitely do that at some point.

Ren That sounds good.

Adam What were your suggestions?

Ren Well, I met someone in London called Kat, who I mentioned this podcast and she said: “Ah! You should do Clive Barker of Hellraiser fame’s children’s book The Thief of Always!”

Adam Ooh, I didn’t know he did a children’s book, that is quite tempting. That would give me a chance to play some of his FMV games as well.

Ren Yes, so I think we should do Clive Barker’s children’s book at some point. And after we talked about Melvin Burgess last episode I bought Junk to reread, and another book of his called Sara’s Face, which I think is a horror one. It might be a bit grisly.

Adam I bet. Junk made quite the impression on me. I think these last two have been my choices, so I’m definitely up for Clive Barker, because I didn’t know he’d done a children’s book.

Ren Do you have a sign-off for us Adam?

Adam If you tell anyone about this episode, make sure you say ‘Chocky’ and not ‘Chuhcky!’ because then people will think you’re saying ‘Chucky’ and Chucky from Child’s Play is not children’s horror and I wouldn’t be putting it on the podcast.

Ren Alright. Catch you next time spooky kids!

Adam Bye!

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Ren: Welcome to Still Scared, Talking Children’s Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children’s books, films and TV.

I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray. Today we’re talking about two books by Robert Swindells, Stone Cold and Hydra.

Ren: Good morning, Adam!

**Adam: ** Good morning, Ren and it is the morning!

Ren: It is the morning, for once, we are recording in the morning! Will this make a difference to our output? Let’s see. Today we’re going back to Robert Swindells, who we last talked about in 2019 —

Adam: Oh the years they go past! They go past!

**Ren: ** They do!

**Adam: ** I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled.

**Ren: ** With an episode back then when we were young and dewy-eyed on Room 13 and Nightmare Stairs and we’re back for another double-header today with Hydra from 1991 and Stone Cold from 1993. Two quite different examples of children’s horror: Robert Swindells is a land of contrast. Shall we start with front covers?

**Adam: ** Oh yes, that’s a great call because they have a few. Let’s start with Stone Cold. My cover looks like it’s been taken from a computer screen at the back of a CSI episode. It’s just a silhouette, is yours a gauzy silhouette, with light coming in? A sinister, a possibly sinister shadow!

**Ren: ** No, I’ll explain what mine is because it’s quite striking.

So it’s an illustration by Peter Menim, we have two blond-haired young people sleeping on a city street in sleeping bags in the foreground, one turned towards the reader and the other turned away, and then looming above them is a man’s disembodied face, with a really quite strange expression - he’s slightly cross-eyed, and he’s flaring his nostrils and baring his teeth —

Adam Now you’ve said flaring his nostrils, I’m just imagining Rimmer from Red Dwarf —

Ren Yeah, yeah, the impression is a bit Rimmer, but also ‘predatory’, but also a bit puzzled.

Adam Puzzled??

Ren It’s strange. I might make it the cover image for the episode so people can see it.

**Adam: ** Yeah, it’s quite hard to imagine. I think I’ve seen this one before. When you say disembodied, it’s not like a head on a stick, is it floating in the sky?

**Ren: ** It’s floating above the ground in the street, it’s filling the whole alleyway.

**Adam: ** Oh my gosh, well that is scary. The sub-heading on my cover says: ‘Fear stalks the streets’, and it does seem like your cover captures that.

**Ren: ** Yeah, it doesn’t need to say that on mine, you can see. It also has a gold embossed Carnegie medal on the cover.

**Adam: ** Ooh. This one just says in a small font ‘Winner of the Carnegie medal’ which isn’t as good.

Ren: I was quite pleased with this cover, I think it’s a vintage early 90s one. My Hydra is a re-release that’s very ‘the year 2000’, I think.

Adam Oh, how so?

Ren Well, it’s this blurry horseshoe crab Xenemorph image. It’s the fonts, I think that’s really making it.

**Adam: ** I think I’ve got the same one. There’s been quite a lot of covers for Hydra, some of the translated ones actually have a rather better Hydra. Not that it’s called a hydra, there’s no mention of a hydra in the book at all, I don’t think. And when we do see the creature, it’s not really how I’d imagine a hydra, let’s be honest.

Ren: It only has one head, for one thing.

Adam: Yeah, surely the whole point of the hydra, right! Is that it has multiple heads! So why on earth Swindells called this Hydra, I don’t know.

**Ren: ** One other mention, this made me laugh on the back where it has the blurbs, one of the blurbs for Hydra is ‘explosive denouement’.

**Adam: ** I’m sure lots of kids are going to see that at the back, and go ‘Ooh, yes’.

**Ren: ** ‘Ooh, an explosive denouement you say’.

**Adam: ** Also not quite the Carneige medal winner — runner-up for the Sheffield children’s book award’.

**Ren: ** Well, you’ve got to start somewhere. I think we start with Stone Cold and then we can have a bit of a lighter ending with Hydra.

**Adam: ** Yeah, so Hydra is the earlier book but maybe he was warming up to the horrors of Stone Cold. But looking at the ‘also available’, he had done - was it Room 13 we did, and Nightmare Stairs —

**Ren: ** Yep.

**Adam: ** So they’re early ones and they are very much little Hammer Horror stories for children. He’d also done Jacqueline Hyde — which is obviously a reworking of Dr Jekell and Mr Hyde.

**Ren: ** gasp Is that what the tv series was based on?

**Adam: ** Well, I think it must be, right?*

Ren Oh my goodness, yes.

Adam I don’t know if that’s a future one to do, that TV series, because the Jacqueline Hyde costume was quite something.

Ren It was quite something. This is a real deep cut, children’s TV series.

Adam It’s a proper deep cut.

Ren British children's TV from the ‘90s.

Adam She was really hulking, wasn’t she?

Ren: She was, she was quite like the Honey Monster.

**Adam: ** Yeah, well, the Honey Monster was developed by the Jim Henson creature workshop, I’ve got this amazing book and the Honey Monster is in it.

Ren: Woah.

Adam Who knew?! But I suspect the company who made Jacqueline Hyde costume didn’t have that kind of money. But anyway, Swindells would then go on to do both Stone Cold and Brother in the Land. And I say that Stone Cold is harrowing, I kind of didn't want to make you read Brother in the Land because it might be too much!

**Ren: ** Maybe it will have it's own episode at some point.

**Adam: ** Yeah, we could do an episode on two nuclear wasteland stories —

**Ren: ** Wahey!

**Adam: ** For the kids.

Stone Cold as you say is a pretty grim read, I can’t remember if it was one I read in school, I think it might have been, it had won the Carniege. Do you remember what year it won the Carniege?

Ren ’94, or ’93.

Adam Yeah, I think I might have done it either at the end of primary or the beginning of secondary school, it might have been a Year 7 book. It had a real impact on me, I found it really gripping and I remember really liking it but I found it really disturbing. I honestly think it properly shaped me, I do think my tendency to chat to a lot of homeless folks might come from having read this book.

It definitely made me think about the experience of homelessness and particularly what it would be like to be young and homeless in a way that I hadn’t before, which stayed with me. Obviously I like trash, I don’t think that all children’s horror needs to be edifying or shaping kids into thoughtful socialists of the future, but I do think it’s pretty worthy in the best possible sense.

**Ren: ** You can tell from the GoodReads reviews that it is still taught in schools, there’s lots of kids griping about their English teachers

**Adam: ** Aw, I’m glad to see that kids are using Goodreads at least, get them off Tiktok and onto Goodreads!

**Ren: ** But you can see why it would be a good one to get kids to read to think about homelessness.

I was coming to this for the first time, reading it for the podcast. I feel like it was in the school library but I never picked it up.

**Adam: ** You are 2 1/2 years younger than me, so I think by the time you got to it in the school library it was probably quite dog-eared. The copy had probably fallen apart.

**Ren: ** I remember seeing Stone Cold or Brother in the Land looking very dog-eared and early 90s in the school library rotary stand and thinking ‘nah, I don’t fancy it.’

**Adam: ** You were like, instead there’s this new shiny Artemis Fowl, or something.

Ren: Well, there were all the Paul Jennings ones.

**Adam: ** Ooh, of course! With their exciting double-covers. I can see how that would have got you.

Ren: Possibly venturing into a new horror genre for us, political horror, social horror —

Adam: social-realist horror, kitchen sink horror.

**Ren: ** Because before you even get to the overt horror of the serial killer — there is a serial killer in this book — there is the horror of Thatcherism, basically. Which isn’t mentioned by name, but is otherwise quite explicitly set-up.

Our protagonist is 16 year-old Link, that’s his nickname, from Bradford, and the catalyst for his homelessness is his abusive stepfather, but the reasons why his situation becomes so bad are this spiralling combination of: lack of apprenticeships/job opportunities for young people, predatory private landlords, and the cruelty and indifference of what’s meant to be the social security system, and the messages of right-wing media, all of that. It’s quite explicitly shown to cause Link to end up sleeping rough in London.

So we’ve got this dual structure for the book, it’s very short, only 132 pages, but we have alternating chapters between ‘Link’, and our antagonist ‘Shelter’, who is an ex-Army drill sergeant, who has been discharged on ‘medical grounds’, which we quickly pick up from his narrative is code for ‘ being a dangerous sadist’.

**Adam: ** Yeah.

**Ren: ** And he’s keeping a log called Daily Routine Orders, that are numbered and are his plans to murder homeless children.

**Adam: ** And we know he’s evil from the font. Link has a nice humane serif font with curls so we know he’s nice, whereas Shelter has a sans-serif font that is really regimented and orderly, like ‘look at this inhumane robot monster!’. So I could tell just from the font choice!

**Ren: ** There you go.

**Adam: ** It’s quite useful having the two different fonts so you don’t get them mixed up.

**Ren: ** He’s got this very creepy voice that he writes in —

**Adam: ** Yeah, it’s hard to place, it’s quite insinuating.

**Ren: ** It’s probably worth reading a bit of it:

"Daily Routine Orders 2

Not so. I’m merely indulging myself. After all there’s plenty of time. The street people aren’t going to go away, and anticipation is the best part of a treat, as my old grannie never used to say. So it’s a case of wait for it, you ’orrible little man.”

**Adam: ** There’s this weird faux-friendliness to it, and this barely-contained rage. It’s good at building this horrid sense of complicity, like he’s talking to you.I think it’s really effective, actually. It’s quite cinematic, this cross-cutting between these two narratives, good for creating dramatic irony and suspense.

Obviously we care about Link and want him to be okay, and we know from Shelter’s account that he’s spotted Link and Link is one of his new targets, and he’s stalking him. And so we’re cutting to Link doing things and going about his day, and back to Shelter talking about Link. And obviously from his perspective Link is just this victim or this target, whereas we know Link as a human being. I think it’s really effective, actually, it makes the dehumanisation hit harder. It’s a really clever device and much more effective than if it was just narrated from one of those two perspectives.

Ren: So Shelter’s plan is to act the part of the non-threatening do-gooder, dress in cords and sweaters, adopt a cat, and offer street kids a bed to sleep on at his place, then kill them and stash their bodies in the ventilated space underneath the floorboards.

There’s some interesting stuff about how Shelter presents himself, the specific person he’s going from. I’ve written homosexual (unthreatening), not to jump too far ahead but when Link eventually ends up in Shelter’s flat he says that this is the kind of man that his Auntie would describe as “a Mary-Ellen’ which is not a mainstream piece of slang as far as I can find. But I think it means fussy, tidy — I think homosexual (unthreatening) is it, and there is insinuation of the other kind of homosexual.

**Adam: ** I was also reading it as how the right-wing imagines an ineffectual left-wing tweedy academic, like how so many people found it so easy to be contemptuous of Corby ‘Oh, he’s probably got an allotment!’

Ren: Yeah, that did also occur to me, the Corbyn comparison.

Adam: This idea of a soft liberal do-gooder. It’s interesting having this character adopt this persona, because it’s a figure he would be quite contemptuous of, but he’s having to adopt it to fulfil his really predatory desires.

**Ren: ** But he also has his own prissiness —

Adam That’s true.

Ren He doesn’t swear, one of his repeated phrases is ‘by golly I will’, which is really sinister and there’s that touch of this murderer who is squeamish about swearing.

**Adam: ** It’s a bit like Annie Wilkes in Misery.

**Ren: ** Ah, I don’t know it.

**Adam: ** Part of what’s disturbing about her character is that she’s willing to commit extreme violence and be homicidal but at the same time she doesn’t like swearing and uses a lot of this Ned Flanders-style euphemisms.

**Ren: ** Link is a sympathetic character, crucially he doesn’t drink or take drugs, which I think is Swindells keeping it simple in a book aimed at teenagers, people are more likely to blame addicts for their situation.

**Adam: ** I guess this must have come out around a similar time — was it Melvin Burgess who did Junk?

**Ren: ** I learned so much from that book.

**Adam: ** I’m trying to think what year - that’s ’96. That’s set in Bristol, with two homeless squatters, teenagers, who become heroin addicts. That’s more complex in terms of character identification. Both characters are sympathetic, but to memory, the male character starts becoming abusive himself — he’s had an abusive father and he hates himself as he recognises that he’s becoming like his father as he descends into the heroin addiction.

**Ren: ** I think it’s Gemma who’s the lead in Junk, I remember her being very sympathetic.

**Adam: ** Gemma really anchors it. They would be interesting comparison pieces, it’s been a little bit too long since I read it to remember clearly enough, but they would be interesting books to pair together.

Ren: It is sort of mentioned in the text, Link meets another teenager called Ginger who teaches him how to live on the street, and Ginger writes a sign for them to hold that says ‘Homeless, non-alcoholic’ and says they won’t give you money if they think you’re alcoholic. So addiction isn’t completely ignored, but Link is quite straightforwardly sympathetic, there isn’t anything to complicate that.

**Adam: ** I think that’s true. I guess it might end up being overly complex, obviously one of the complicated things about someone being alcoholic on the streets is that if you go cold turkey you go into alcohol withdrawal which is really risky, even compared to withdrawing from heroin. If you go completely cold turkey and you’re a heavy drinker, you could die. I’ve seen the argument where if you give money to a homeless person for them to buy alcohol you could be endangering their life, but you could also be endangering their life not giving them money for alcohol, to be honest!

I could see why he does it, because it’s so often what people use to not engage with people who are homeless, or give money or talk to them, like oh well they’re addicts. And let’s be honest, a lot of addicts, it does tend to go hand in hand with trauma.

Ren Oh yeah, absolutely.

Adam It would make sense if you’ve been abused or otherwise exploited or mistreated, why you might turn to substances.

Ren: As well as the trauma of being on the streets —

Adam And being cold!

Ren And we can talk about that a bit in the book, because as research Swindells went out to sleep rough in Central London and more importantly talked to homeless people. So do you want to read the bit about where he’s talking about sleeping on the cold pavement?

Adam: “If you think sleeping rough’s just a matter of finding a dry spot where the fuzz won’t move you on and getting your head down, you’re wrong. Not your fault of course – if you’ve never tried it you’ve no way of knowing what it’s like, so what I thought I’d do was sort of talk you through a typical night. That night in the Vaudeville alcove won’t do, because there were two of us and it’s worse if you’re by yourself.

So you pick your spot. Wherever it is (unless you’re in a squat or a derelict house or something) it’s going to have a floor of stone, tile, concrete or brick. In other words it’s going to be hard and cold. It might be a bit cramped too – shop doorways often are. And remember, if it’s winter you’re going to be half frozen before you even start. Anyway you’ve got your place, and if you’re lucky enough to have a sleeping bag you unroll it and get in.

Settled for the night? Well maybe, maybe not. Remember my first night? The Scouser? Course you do. He kicked me out of my bedroom and pinched my watch. Well, that sort of thing can happen any night, and there are worse things. You could be peed on by a drunk or a dog. Happens all the time – one man’s bedroom is another man’s lavatory. You might be spotted by a gang of lager louts on the lookout for someone to maim. That happens all the time too, and if they get carried away you can end up dead. There are the guys who like young boys, who think because you’re a dosser you’ll do anything for dosh, and there’s the psycho who’ll knife you for your pack.

So, you lie listening. You bet you do. Footsteps. Voices. Breathing, even. Doesn’t help you sleep.

And don’t forget the cold. If you’ve ever tried dropping off to sleep with cold feet, even in bed, you’ll know it’s impossible. You’ve got to warm up those feet, or lie awake. And in January, in a doorway, in wet trainers, it can be quite a struggle. And if you manage it, chances are you’ll need to get up for a pee, and then it starts all over again.

And those are only some of the hassles. I haven’t mentioned stomach cramps from hunger, headaches from the flu, toothache, fleas and lice. I haven’t talked about homesickness, depression or despair. I haven’t gone into how it feels to want a girlfriend when your circumstances make it virtually impossible for you to get one – how it feels to know you’re a social outcast in fact, a non-person to whom every ordinary everyday activity is closed.”

**Ren: ** Thank you, Adam

**Adam: ** I think it also captures how much of a dramatic monologue a lot of Link’s chapters are. I don’t know if this was ever adapted for stage but you can imagine it as two competing monologues on a stage.

**Ren: ** Yeah, definitely. I feel like you can tell in that extract that Robert Swindells did go and try and sleep on some pavement, obviously going to try out being homeless is not —

**Adam: ** Yeah, it’s going to be very partial.

**Ren: ** But for writing, quite useful. And as well as all those troubles, Link is having to content with Shelter, whose political project is to lure vulnerable homeless kids to his home, murder them and stash them under the floorboards as his army, where he ends up calling ‘The Camden Horizontals’ which is particularly nasty. He’s cutting their hair post-mortem and dressing them up in surplus army gear.

As you said, Shelter briefly encounters Link and Ginger early on when they ask him for money and then laugh at him, so he calls them ‘Laughing boy one and two’ and sets his sights on them’. Shelter tricks him into following him home, telling him that Link is hurt and in Shelter’s house, and when he gets there Shelter kills him.

Link is obviously upset that Ginger’s disappeared and doesn’t know what’s happened to him, but then he meets a girl in a cafe, a fellow ‘dosser’ as he calls them, called Gail, and Link is besotted enough that he doesn’t key into the clues that there’s something a bit off about her.

They start putting pieces together about Shelter, there’s a few missing homeless kids now, and someone’s seen one of them with a man in his 40s, so they’re starting to put it together. They go to the police, who go to Shelter’s door and he does his do-gooder, big softie act and totally fool them.

**Adam: ** There’s a parent looking around, a dad looking for his daughter who we know that Shelter’s killed, so that’s pretty bleak.

**Ren: ** Yeah, and that’s another moment of contrast as we’ve had Shelter’s dehumanising narrative about this girl and then we have the father looking for his beloved daughter, so that really hits home

Link ends up hanging out around Shelter’s flat, and decides that he’s got it wrong and that Shelter’s harmless, but Shelter invites him in and Link sees his watch on the side cabinet that was stolen by the Scouser the first night he was in London, and then the Scouser was killed by Shelter. Shelter drops the act and it’s quite horrible.

"The strength of the insane. I’d come across that phrase, and now I found out what it meant. I’m not a small guy and he was a lot older but I couldn’t break free. I bucked and writhed and lashed out with my feet, but he’d wrapped his arms round me and his grip was like bands of steel. My feet left the floor and he carried me across the room like he’d carried the cat, except he didn’t croon or nuzzle, and when we reached the hole in the floor he threw me down and fell on me like a wrestler. I was pinned, lying on my stomach with my head overhanging the hole. A draught rose from the hole, carrying a cloying, sweetish smell. After a few seconds my eyes adjusted to the dimness and I saw them.

There were seven, laid out in a row like sardines. He’d done something to their heads – they were all like his – you couldn’t tell if they were girls or boys – but I recognized Ginger by his clothes. His face was – well, I wouldn’t have known him from that. I gagged, twisting my head to one side. ‘Let me up!’ I screamed. ‘I’m gonna puke.’”

Ren: Yeah. Hah. Um… He's saved by Gale coming in, but she's followed by a camera crew. And it turns out that her name's actual Louise and she's a journalist who's been researching homelessness for the last few months before stumbling into the story of a serial killer murdering homeless youths and now it';s her scoop. So, we sort of end on this kind of… Link feeling deeply betrayed and… Yeah, it's a really bleak ending.Adam: It's also really interesting… as is it a mea culpa for Swindells? It's interesting. I don't know if Swindells has a discomfit with his own role as a writer and the fact that he's gone out and talked to or befriended homeless people (as Dawn did) so he can write his book. Or whether he's kind of trying to differentiate himself from a more cynical opportunistic journalistic practice, while as a fiction writer he's doing something different to what someone working for a newspaper would be probably writing. I did find that quite interesting. I don't know if it is a completely unexpected ending because we get some indications that something is up with Gail. She keeps supposedly phoning her “sister” and it is mentioned enough times that we know that it can't be – that she's doing something… talking to someone.I don't know if the betrayal is the betrayal is partly a class betrayal. So, her boyfriend is really obviously written as comfortably upper-middle class.Ren: Link's really upset and he's like, “Gosh, she saved your life/ C'mon”. He doesn't understand; and Gail tells Link her story that she had an abusive step-father as well… so, them being in the same situation.Adam: It's a really interesting ending. Shall I just read the end of it?Ren: Yeah please.Adam: 'Gail' is revealed as actually Louise and gives him some money. And she is a human being and is not some cynical jerk. She clearly does care about what she's doing and has come to care for Link. So, she gives him this wad of bank notes and says she's really sorry. Link says:“Oh, I know. I ought to have chucked the money in her face. A telly hero would have, but then a telly hero doesn’t have to live on the street. Anyway, that’s the sort of happy ending it was.

Adam: That final line seems like a final jab at Thatcher.

Ren: Absolutely. The character of Link is someone who has been shut out of every opportunity. Or, if there might… you can imagine someone saying “There must be some kind of charity that can help him”. If there is… nobody's told him. As far as he knows there is no-one to help him and nowhere to turn.

Adam: I respect Swindells for not just giving it a really cosy ending. And actually similar in some ways to Brother in the Land. Brother in the Land, looking this up… it's actually quite an early one, from 1984. So, he had already done more grounded horror – or, like, the horror comes from things that are not too fantastical. I guess you could say he operates in two modes of horror: More fun, escapist horror, and then more gritty horror. Stone Cold is not fun. Did you enjoy it — maybe not enjoy, but did you appreciate it?

Ren: Yeah, I appreciated it. It's snappy and compelling and does its job.

Adam: Yeah it does what it sets out to do. And it's short, which is always an advantage as a teacher.

Ren: Would you set this for Year 7s or 8s?

Adam: Yeah I would… there's not much for language analysis, but in terms of structure, and actually talking about structure is something that kids find very hard to do, actually. And where some kids fall down at GCSEs is that they’ve got good at the language analysis but they don’t think about structure and form at all. So actually it could be useful in that regard. And it’s a good little length.

The last two years I’ve been reading my way through Middlemarch —

Ren Oh have you! I’ve also been reading Middlemarch!

Adam It’s so well-written, right! George Elliot is so obviously a genius, and yet it’s so slow. I simultaneously feel — it’s clearly incredible, like every sentence you’re like “Oh George Elliot, you’re much smarter than me!” but also like “How have you taken village gossip and made it into a novel, and it’s this long! How!”

**Ren: ** I’ve been reading it since January and I think I’m about 60% through.

**Adam: ** Do you know what I mean, it’s kind of a weird thing to read because on one level it’s obviously incredible, it’s quite staggeringly good, it kind of makes Dickens seem a bit juvenile by comparison. Like, okay, these are real human beings, this is amazing character writing. But you’ve got to get into a different head space, or a different time space, I think.

Ren: You’re going to sit down for several hours to read this, and by the time you’ve done maybe people may have had some conversations, about who’s leaving who money in a will, or local politics, or maybe Dorothea will have had some feelings.

**Adam: ** It’s kind of like a soap, but a soap with some very low quiet drama, and written in the most sophisticated way possible.

Ren: Yeah, yeah.

Adam: But I mention Middlemarch, because amusingly, Michael Gove said that it should be on the syllabus and taught to kids, back when he was education minister.

**Ren: ** Jesus Christ

**Adam: ** I was just trying to imaginine teaching Middlemarch to a bunch of 14 year-olds or 16 year-olds, it’s not going to happen!

**Ren: ** As I’ve been reading it I’ve been thinking I’d struggle to have read this at degree level just because of the length and the denseness, you know.

**Adam: ** I think you’ve got to challenge kids, I like the idea of meeting kids where they’re at, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be some level of challenge in the reading. But you’ve got to be realistic, not Middlemarch!

I did read a lot of Hydra with my year 7s last year because we finished what we were doing, basically. We got through a whole scheme of work and there was still four weeks left at the end of the term, so I asked the head of department what we should do now, and he said, “Just chose one of the books we have a whole load of copies of that you want”. So I made my own little scheme of work based around Hydra.

Generally speaking, I’d say that the kids were pretty receptive to it. What they didn’t like, interestingly, was the romance element. And as much as this is an alien thriller, it is also something of a romance, surprisingly. Quite considerably, more than you would expect. You’ve got these characters of Ben and Midge, they are friends and they’re only kids. I can’t remember how old they are, 12?

**Ren: ** They’re talking about going to secondary school next year, so maybe 11?

**Adam: ** I think this is set somehwere with a middle school, maybe.

**Ren: ** Ah right, yeah.

**Adam: ** Anyway, they’re not that old. I've mentioned this before, but one of the fascinating things I’ve found — and it was probably always the case but it’s got more pronounced. But some of the 11 year olds will make the most awful innuendo and laugh at the mere suggestion of words they’ve heard of TikTok. I’m sure some of them have been exposed to more than that online, but some of them haven’t. But there’s a fair amount of inappropriately sexualised banter that you have to reign in and do safeguarding reports about. And yet at the same time, as soon as there is any romantic, emotional intimacy, either on screen or on the page, they freak out. Like, as soon as there was hand-holding in this book, my word! “We can’t be doing this!! this is innapropriate! Waurghh!” What on earth?? It’s so strange!

**Ren: ** Wow, that’s… huh… okay.

**Adam: ** It’s very odd. It’s very mild romance but too rich for the blood of the 11 year-olds I was teaching. Unexpectedly that caused a bit of an issue, much to my bemusement.

Ren: Bizarre, okay.

**Adam: ** We talked about Stone Cold as having a dual narrative, this is incredibly structually ambitious! Like, it jumps between a lot of characters.

Ren: It does, doesn’t it? And the first character perspective is the aliens!

Adam: It’s not first person but the narrative voice is very closely linked, I think there’s a technical term for it, like an over-the-shoulder shot.

**Ren: ** Close third, I think it’s called.

**Adam: ** Okay, close third. But as you say it starts kind of with the perspective of the alien, which is cool.

**Ren: ** Do we want to read that, maybe?

**Adam: ** Yeah.

“One.

It was sick and hungry and a long, long way from home. It had little brain but it sensed that the tank was a hostile environment and it cruised around the wall, revolving slowly about its axis, bumping the frost-rimed metal till it found the door. As the floater’s soft bulk bumped against it, the door moved.

The floater felt the motion and bumped again. Minute ice-flakes, dislodged from the hinges, drifted down, melting in the first waft of warm air as the door swung outward.

The temperature inside the tank rose a half-degree. The floaters, half-poisoned by the chemical cocktail mist on which they fed, didn’t notice. As the creature entered the airlock, the woman jabbed the CLOSE button and the door swung slowly, clunking into its housing. Smiling behind her face-mask, she opened the outer door and stood aside.

The floater moved out into the barn. Eyeless, it felt the faint pull of starlight and followed, passing through the great open doorway and drifting away in the dark”

**Ren: ** Yeaaah!

**Adam: ** And that’s a whole chapter! So one thing I like about this book, this is a longer book than Stone Cold, and yet the chapters are very short. It feels quite cinematic, we jump between these different scenes and perspectives. I think it’s a flawed book but that’s one thing I really like about it, it does keep what is actually a fairly slow story quite dynamic. And if we couldn’t picture the floater we have nice little drawings at the start of each chapter.

**Ren: ** So this is my favourite thing about the book is the illustrations by Mark Robertson, above each chapter heading of these aliens that are initially described as floaters. They start off jellyfish-like and over the first 30-something chapters they are still these jellyfish but are slowly shedding their tentacles, which is really neat. And between chapters 31-36 it transforms into it’s adult form. So my texture —

**Adam: ** Oh, okay, yep. So I was going to sing — I don’t know if this is a bit gauche — (mispronounced)

Ren Gauche?

Adam (In an aristocratic accent) A bit gauche! But do you know the song Homeless from Paul Simon’s Graceland album?

**Ren: ** Not to memory, no.

Adam Because it came into my head and you can kind of go: (to the tune of Homeless by Paul Simon) ‘Texture, texture, texture of the week’ But I’m guessing you don’t know the backing vocals?

Ren I don’t, it’s been quite some time since I’ve listened to Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Adam Well, when I go ‘texture’, you do a quieter ‘texture’ right afterwards, like a call and response thing: Texture

Ren (quieter) Texture

Adam Yeah, like that but right after it. Texture.

Ren Texture.

Adam Texture of the week. Yeah, nice! So what’s your texture of the week?

Ren So my Texture of the Week is chapter 34 in its entirety.

Adam Oh yeah, that’s probably mine too -- yeah, it’s the same, it’s obviously the best texture. I was like: “Can I do a whole chapter for a texture?” but you have too. Do you want to read it?

Ren

“It was night when the real change came. The terrestrials slept. There was no witness.

During the course of the evening the largest floater had risen till it hung just beneath the domed roof of the tank. Spikes like a crown of thorns circled its mantle. It had ceased to rotate. Instead, it began a sort of bobbing motion: ascending a little, sinking back, ascending again, like a boat on an oily swell. As it did so, a shallow depression appeared at the centre of its mantle. Gradually this deepened, so that the creature appeared to be falling into itself. As the hollow deepened, a bump appeared on the floater’s underside, growing as the depression on top became more pronounced. As the process continued, the spiked rim of the floater’s mantle was drawn in towards the centre and the creature’s diameter slowly shrank as it poured its substance into the bump which hung from its underside, elongating like a great glob of wax falling in slow motion from a melting candle. For a while, the creature resembled a monstrous, floating flower, its ring of spiky petals closing. But as the process of change became complete, an observer would have realised that the flower’s head had become a great mouth ringed with spiky teeth: that the floater, by turning itself inside out, had become another creature.”

Adam Urgh, gross!!

Ren Brilliant!

Adam “As it poured its substance into the bump which hung from its underside, elongating like a great glob of wax” That’s horrid.

Ren It really is. It’s an ambitious book, isn’t it?

Adam Yeah, for a book that’s mostly a lark, it’s not a book of great thematic depth compared to Stone Cold, it is really ambitious.

Ren It also does kill a dog.

Adam It does! I do wish that the creature had killed a few more — maybe it’s a bit bloodthirsty, but it builds up so much to this transformation, it’s like “Oh my god, it’s on now, it’s ready for a killing spree! It’s going to take over the world!” But it doesn’t get very far. Obviously the martians in War of the Worlds get a bit further, but like the martians they’re not very adapted, they didn’t think it through. They can’t cope with the climate conditions, so once they’re outside of their chamber —

Ren They dissolve.

Adam They dissolve.

Ren I was half expecting them to get into the library.

Adam That would have been fun!

Ren Because Ben’s mum works at the library and it keeps being mentioned.

Adam And as ever with the parents in children’s horror, they doubt the kids! That would have shown them what-for!

Ren And we do get a full-page illustration of the monster.

Adam Yes, we do. And I’ll tell you what the kids enjoyed. Well, this is interesting to be fair — the copies of this book dated from the ‘90s from when it came out, so they’ve probably been left in a cupboard for the best part of a decade if not more, and I was quite excited about getting to the full-page illustration. And this creature, it’s not really a hydra, it’s like a horrid newt with wings, I guess.

Ren Big teeth.

Adam The maw is quite bestial, it's like a dog crossed with an eel.

Ren It’s quite dribbly.

Adam Quite dribbly in the way a dog might be, but it’s also got these moray eel-type fangs. It’s got all this spit coming down from its fangs. It’s got horned wings with spikes coming out of them, and then there’s a kind of dorsal fin coming out of the side, would you say it’s a fin?

Ren Yeah…

Adam Well, whatever it is, that’s certainly not what —

Ren Oh. Oh okay.

Adam That’s certainly not what many young people thought it was, and they had extended this extrusion, obscenely, on many, many copies of the book. With anatomy of various shapes and sizes.

So this was to their great delight and amusement — however shocked and horrified they were by hand-holding — they were not shocked and horrified by this, quite the opposite. Kids who had copies with the graffiti were very keen to share them around and show everyone. But what really amused me, and I pointed this out to them, is that this was their parents’ generation. And a lot of kids at my school, went to literally the same school as their parents — these could have been drawn by your literal parents! Go home to your dads tonight, ask them if they remember studying Hydra in school, because if so. So I did find that quite funny — an educational bridge connecting parent and child —

Ren The generations. And that’s what we call the teacher’s insight.

Adam So that was a noisy lesson. It is a really good creature, I just wish it had been allowed to do a bit more. But I did like the fact that the drawing at the end just shows it melted, It’s just a puddle with eyes and teeth.

RenIt’s good.

Adam It’s surprisingly soppy this book, between Ben and Midge, the two child investigators, and there’s this recurring motif of Midge’s ‘Mona Lisa smile’ that Ben keeps fixating on. So it ends with Ben looking at her and seeing “That smile, that Mona Lisa smile”. And then we get the jawbone of the creature underneath it! I don’t need that association, I’m assuming that Midge’s Mona Lisa smile doesn’t look like that!

Ren “… as she unhinges her jaw…”

Adam Yeah. The villains are quite sinster, as well.

Ren We do have another adult who is quite willing to kill children, in this book.

Adam Yes, that’s true. She’s pretty nasty. What’s her name, Wanda Free. Which is a pun of sorts?

Ren Yeah, I was wondering if we were going to find out that was a pseudonym because she was on the run from having done NASA crimes, but apparently that was her name, I don’t know.

Adam Very odd. She’s a maniacal scientist type who becomes increasingly obsessed with fame and fortune to a degree, but she also becomes obsessed with letting the aliens out into the world and being able to say, “I did that! I let the alien plague upon humanity! Haha!” I think, basically.

Ren That does seem to be her deal.

Adam And she’s teamed up with a very cynical, greasy journalist type. He’s rich, he owned a newspaper. Exley. He’s the kind of character that Eric Idle would play in a children’s horror film, like in the Casper movie, the Eric Idle character in that. A completely spineless, money-craving — not necessarily actively evil but with no moral backbone whatsoever.

Ren Any other stray Hydra observations?

Adam There’s a bit, didn’t you mention this, there theres’s a food choice —

Ren — Yeah, I feel like tahini gets unfairly maligned in this book, because Exley and Wanda Free move up onto this farm and to make the point that they’re different from the locals, it says that they read the Daily Telegraph and they cook with tahini, which I found an odd combination of cultural stereotypes.

Adam I don’t know, I come from the countryside, you’re a Londoner, you and your London tahini, coming down here with your tahini!

Ren I feel like it would more be like reading The Guardian and tahini, I don’t know what I stereotypically associate with the Telegraph, what do they eat, Union Jacks.

Adam Bourbon biscuits with Union Jacks emblazoned on them.

Ren Yeah, exactly.

Adam The worst thing to eat.

Ren That’s good, end on a lighter note after the gritty realism of Stone Cold.

Adam We might always come back to Swindells because he was pretty prolific and generally worked within a broad children’s horror vein.

Ren And we were saying before we started recording that if we were a YouTube podcast, our clickbait-y image would be ‘Stone Cold - the book that stopped Adam being a Thatcherite’, with open-mouthed expressions. ‘If it weren’t for this book Adam would be a Thatcherite’

Adam Yeah, that’s how you get them. But as ever, as Thatcher was laissez-faire about economics, so we are laissez-faire about growing our listenership, assuming that the invisible hand of the market will do it for us. So review our podcast, thanks.

Ren Apparently some people have, but I can’t see them —

Adam What do you mean?? You heard on the grapevine? Rumour has it!

Ren It’s on Spotify, but it says "You have to listen to the podcast to review it”, simply making it is not enough.

Adam We’re locked out of our own podcast.

Ren It has about a four star average, which seems fair.

Adam Yeah, I’ll take it. We’re good but we’re not that good.

Ren A bit rough around the edges. So, do we have any remaining avenues of self-promotion? Yes, we’re still on Instagram, I do collages.

**Adam: ** You do collages! Are you going to combine both these books into one very strange collage?

Ren Yes, I am.

Adam Great.

Ren Also you can email us at Still Scared Podcast at gmail.com. We don’t check the emails very often, but when we do it’s nice to have an email from a listener rather than a spambot.

Adam Spambots listen to our podcast too

Ren Do you have a sign off for us Adam?

Adam Read Middlemarch but don’t eat borboun biscuits, spooky kids.

Ren Yeah! See you next time spooky kids! Bye!

Adam Bye!

**Adam: ** * Turns out, what we were both thinking of here was the CBBC series ‘Julia Jekyll and Harriet Hyde’, which ran between 1995 and 1998 and which was not based on the Robert Swindells novel. There is also a 2005 horror-comedy film called ‘Jacqueline Hyde’, but that doesn’t seem to be based on the Swindells novel either, as that book is apparently a fable illustrating the dangers of glue-sniffing.

In this episdoe we discussed the film Y Mabinogi from 2003.b

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Big thanks to Mattie who did the transcript for this episode!

Transcript

Ren - Welcome to Still Scared, talking children's horror. A podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books films and TV. I’m Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray. Today we’re joined by Mattie –

Mattie – (Mattie makes a noise imitating a dancehall air horn)

Ren – To talk about Y Mabinogi, from 2003, a film about Welsh mythology. Full transcript will be available, so check the shownotes for that.

(Intro plays)

Ren – Good evening Adam

Adam – Good evening Ren

Ren - Good evening Mattie

Mattie – HIIIIIIIIIII

Ren – Mattie is here, our Welsh correspondent

Mattie – Thanks. Like so many so-called correspondents, I know a bit of something maybe about the subject I’ve been bought in to talk about.

Ren - Perfect, that’s what we want to hear!

Adam - But Ren, I know you do Welsh on Duolingo, right?

Ren – Yes

Adam – I’m ready for some pronunciations mate.

Ren – Oh… Good.

Mattie – I’m sorry to tell you there is not a lot about parsnips in the film, so Ren is at a little bit of a disadvantage.

Ren – I am, there’s nothing about parsnips, nor leeks, or the verb To Iron

Mattie – Smwddio!

Adam – That’s fair, if I’m not talking about different coloured potatoes I can’t talk Czech very well.

Ren – It’s less hot now because it’s half seven, but it has been very hot here, so we’ll blame any lapses in concentration, or knowledge, or Welsh pronunciation-

Mattie – Or English pronunciation, to be fair, you’re gonna get what you’re gonna get. It’s live, sort of.

Adam – I guess one of the consequences of climate change which maybe hasn’t been taken seriously enough, the impact on our podcasting abilities.

Ren – Yeah

Adam – Where’s that in the UN reports?

Mattie – I like the way that you said that like those adverts for like, for £4.99 a month you can rescue this donkey from weird donkey hell, which no one is where it is or why it exists. For £5 a month you can mitigate climate change consequences against podcasters. And, like, its absolutely a money laundering scheme

Adam – So, today, as far as I can tell, things were left on a slightly uncertain note, although it was a kind of “escort you to the door” level of uncertain note. I might have managed to basically have lost a job before I actually got to sign the contract.

Mattie and Ren – (sympathetic groans)

Mattie – I mean, speedrun strats? Ohhh no

Adam – Yeah, because, you know, and this should get some subscribers, right? I’m donating a kidney!

Ren and Mattie – Yay!

Ren – He is!

Adam – Which is great, and is going to be very helpful to the recipient, but I’m afraid a HR department does not consider it so good, because it means I’d probably have to have cover for like 2 weeks. And I’m afraid that doesn’t cut it in the harsh world or HR by the looks of it. But, but, that’s okay because I’ve been cheered up by a film about some bickering siblings in ye olde Wales.

Ren – 2003, to be precise!

Mattie – So much happens! Did you watch the Welsh version?

Adam – Yeah

Mattie - Like the Welsh language version with the live bits. One of my favourite things about it is that it does demonstrate what I have asserted about Pembrokeshire. Pembroke in the early 2000s, all the fashion was current, everything else was the 70’s

Adam – okay, so, Mattie, do you want to introduce this film? Is this a film you suggested to Ren or is this a film Ren that you came across.

Ren – Mattie suggested it

Mattie - Yeah, this is my fault. Yeah, I can’t actually remember how I’ve seen this. I’ve definitely seen it multiple times. It’s possible, my secondary school had the local cinema in it, because it needed to be somewhere, and it’s possible when it came out we were all herded to watch the big animated film in welsh.

Adam – I mean, there is, lets get out the way what is the name of the film?

Mattie – It’s name is Y Mabinogi, the English translation was called The Otherworld, I’ve never actually seen a title card for it called anything other than Y Mabinogi. It’s based on a series of Welsh tales from the Middle Ages, with a, I don’t know, does it count as a modern twist? A modern bookend?

Ren – Yeah, a modern framing device? It starts in live action, ends in live action, and the bulk of the film is kind of animated, sort of rotoscope.

Adam – Yeah, so there’s bits of rotoscoping, possibly some traditional frame animation, and occasional bits of CGI

Ren – Mmmm, And rotoscoping, for people who don’t know, when you draw over the live action film.

Mattie – Yeah, you kind of film a film, then trace over it and make it cooler

Adam – Yeah, it’s why Snow White in the Disney original Snow White and the Seven Dwarves looks all kinda loosy goosey and fluid compared to some of the other characters. Or kind of loosey goosey, no, I don’t know if that quite right. Anyway, she was rotoscoped and the rest of the film wasn't

Mattie – Huh, I didn’t know that

Ren – Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings is another well known, question mark?

Mattie – Other film that is –

Adam – Did you just laugh at the mention of Ralph Bakshi’s name? Poor Ralph!

Mattie – No, Ralph Bakshi had exactly the life that he wanted, that dude is fine

Adam – Making troubling problematic weirdly animated films

Mattie – Yeahhhh. And this is a, this isn’t Ralph Bakshi weird, but it’s a pretty good… So the Mabinogion is a collection of the early, well some of the earliest Welsh prose stories, and they were compiled in the 12th and 13th century from different sources. This is basically an example of oral tradition being written down. So on one hand you have, when oral traditions are written down often there are lots of things that don’t necessarily get included cause everyone knows the story, because it’s an oral tradition. So beyond the fact that over history details get lost, or context is lost, there’s also just an amount of like, why were they being written down why were they being collected in forms, what gets written down? They’ve also gone on a wild journey of, well, the Victorians got them for one, and Victorians loved adding stuff to things. So, um, this film is brilliant, and does a, in as far as it’s a bit, it can be a little difficult to follow, that’s actually a pretty decent representation of the stories. Both in as far as, life as we live it is a bit intense, life with a bit of magic in it is going to be a little more intense, and yeah. Just the way that they’ve been transferred through history has… yeah. Does that make sense?

Adam – Yeah, that helps explain to me, I’ve written down a note of how fast things erupt into chaos. If that makes sense?

Mattie - Yeah

Adam - So, like, you’re getting characters doing something and then it’s like suddenly everyone’s killing each other. It’s like, what? It didn’t take much provocation! Things are on fire and it happens very quickly!

Mattie – Yeah, and presumably if you were telling these stories, if you were an oral story teller, if you needed to keep a bunch of people really interested for 4 hours, and if you needed to get peoples attention immediately you’d go to the bloody bits pretty quickly.

Adam – Yeah

Mattie – So, like, there’s lots of different ways of telling these sorts of stories and the people who were being told the stories knew what it meant. In the same way as, like, I dunno, the villain’s always backlit you know? We know the villain’s always backlit, and humans throughout history have had their ways of showing “this is the bad guy, I don’t need to tell you he’s the bad guy, he’s 12th century Welsh backlit”. But that doesn’t necessarily translate to someone coming in with no previous knowledge and seeing something on the screen. So it is kind of like, I really strongly recommend watching it, but it is very much one of those like, just watch it for what it is and let it wash over you. Don’t look for plot holes, don’t try, just try and experience it. Experience my weird culture.

Adam – Do you think this was made, cause I don’t know anything really about the production apart from what I read on Wikipedia, and you mentioned that you think you watched this in school. And I did note down early on that it does have a bit of a Look and Read feel to proceedings. So, for those of you outside of the UK, Look and Read was a kind of, I guess, government initiative TV education scheme that was bought into schools, primary schools, for English teaching and to increase vocabulary.

So the one that I’ve mentioned before that's really stayed with me is through the Dragons Eye, which starts off, I mean it’s all live action, but it starts off in a playground and then this girl, there’s a painting of a dragon, a mural on the outside school wall of the playground and then the dragon winks at them and comes to life, and beckons them into the enchanted realm. So they kind of go through the Dragons eye into this fantasy land, then it kind of focuses on teaching you very important words. Like vetacore, which is the source of all power within Palamir, the magical realm of through the dragons eye. So they’ll say “Vetacore, V-E-T-A-C-O-R-E. Vetacore.” But, yeah, so, this to me had, I think it was probably that live action book ending, that was sort of starting with these characters, and clearly we’re meant to realise at some point that problems in their lives are mirrored by the problems in the lives of these sort of early-Medieval Welsh characters.

So its like “Ahh!”, you know, so one of them is anxious about being pregnant and then there’s pregnancy issues going on in this. And another character finds out that his parents aren’t who he thought they were, and he’s adopted. And then we’ve got a mythical character who is adopted. So you’ve got mirroring between the live action segments and I did wonder if that was deliberately to try and say to teenagers watching, like, “hey, look, you see this stuff is relevant, not just old stories, it relates to your own lives”.

Mattie – I, well, it’s interesting you say that cause the live action bits at the start, I don’t know. So this is absolutely supposition, but they really have the vibe of teen, like Welsh teen drama. Wales has a Welsh language television channel called S4C and it is government funded and it has all the things that a television channel would have, including the Welsh equivalent of Byker Grove, the Welsh equivalent of Top of the Pops, the Welsh equivalent of Newsround. And the segments at the beginning and the end of the Mabinogi really reminded me of the admittedly quite small amount of that I watched as a teenager. Because obviously like, it’s government, it’s, I don’t mean government like “The Man is controlling your telly!”. I mean like it’s message driven television, there’s not advertiser led, it’s very like – Wales is not a big country. Anyway. Part of me wondered if the reason that was the way it was was that was how people were writing teen stuff. But, what you were saying about, what was it?

Adam – Look and Read

Mattie – Look and Read. This film was made in 2003 but it’s based on a comic book by Mike Collins which was made in 2001, and he actually worked, probably still does actually but I can’t be sure, but as a key illustrator for Welsh language school books making comic strips for reluctant learners. So I don’t know if there is a connection there other than that’s a sweet little coinkydink. But this film is based off a comic book based off of Y Mabinogion and basically any contemporary work that’s based on those texts is usually based on a more contemporary translation. Like, you can go to Aberystwyth and like, and the big ol’ books are tucked away in a library somewhere in Wales, I think in Aberystwyth, but like people don’t work off of those, they work off more contemporary translations. So again it is that, like, message through different mediums through time.

Adam – I mean I also noted that, and this is the first note I made, that it had a bit of an animated Shakespeare vibe.

Mattie – Yeah

Adam – And it turns out that it’s something like the same production company, or at least some of the people who were involved in the animated Shakespeare, I think the Tempest which is actually very good.

Mattie – Oh yeah!

Adam – And, yeah yeah, I really like that one. And A Winters Tale, was also involved in this. So yeah, there is a loose connection to Animated Shakespeare which again maybe gave it that slight educational feel.

Ren – Yeah, it’s certainly got an educational flavour to it.

Adam – Which I say, I don’t necessarily regard as a bad thing. I think on this podcast I’m on record saying that I’m very actually fond of edutainment. The animated version of The Tempest from animated Shakespeare, whenever I’ve taught the Tempest I’ve used it. I think it’s really wonderful piece of stop motion animation.

Ren – What we haven’t mentioned is that one of the young people, one of our teens at the beginning is a young Matthew Rhys, with frosted tips

Adam – Oh! I didn’t notice!

Ren – Yeah, off the Americans and other things that aren’t the Americans but I just associate him with the Americans.

Mattie – I know, just the idea of headcannon consistency that Lleu ends up defecting to Russia and ends up doing terrible things.

Adam – The live action segments, I don’t know if they’re wholly necessary. There’s another version, there are two versions of this uploaded to Youtube, one which is in its original Welsh language and another which is dubbed, and the dubbed version only has the animated segments interestingly, it doesn’t have the live action bookending. Though the live action bookending does seem to be connected to myth, and a kind of myth that reminded me of Laputa, the Castle in the Sky. I mean I know, and I only mention this because I know Miyazaki quite likes his European and his, I think of, Welsh influences, Diana Wynne Jones adaptations, obviously Howls Moving Castle and possibly Mary and the Witches Flower. But yeah, this idea of an island that kind of appears at certain times, a floating island that appears at certain times, which you have in Miyazaki. I did wonder if he took that from Welsh mythology because there’s this portal, as far as I understood it, into this realm of the past, this island that emerges, Atlantis like, from the sea off the coast of Wales or something?

Mattie – They’re at Grassholm Island, that seems to be where they’re going, which is past Skomer Island off the southern end of Pembrokeshire. And there’s a little bit of text at the end that goes into it a little bit more. I wasn’t totally clear whether the portal was an island that appears and also there’s a real island. There’s quite a few islands that appear out of west Wales, well out of the Irish sea essentially, so it’s entirely possible Miyazaki got it from one of them. Pretty sure we’ve got at least two.

Adam – Yeah, I quite liked that. And then you get this strange bit of animation where the live action morphed into rotoscoping.

Mattie – And where Matthew Rhys just cannonballs into the sea! Which I did enjoy. Just grab your knees and just fling yourself into Mythology time!

Adam – But it is quite odd, right, it’s like the live actors are just trapped in their animated forms. Partly because it’s rotoscoped, partly because it's very unclear as to whether they’re inhabiting these mythologic ancient figures, or whether they’re just observing what’s happening. It seems like they’re experiencing what they experience vicariously or something.

Mattie – If I had to guess, and I haven’t been able to find much information, but if I had to guess, the live action bits are only in Welsh because they were for a Welsh domestic audience for teens to watch on telly. And so that was just a bit of extra messaging in there and making it extra relevant and interesting.

Adam – Yeah, yeah

Mattie - Or ticking whatever “we need to tell the teens not to have unprotected sex” messaging there needs to be. Because I love that she’s “Oh no, I had sex last night, guess I’m pregnant!” Like, it’s 2003, there’s plenty of things you can do. It’s not like “Oh, I guess I’m a mum”, no, that doesn’t, alright then. But the dub, it’s pretty much the same actors doing the dub, because the vast majority of Welsh people can also speak English, and all Welsh actors can also act in English, and in Welsh if they speak Welsh. So I imagine it was either they didn’t want to re-record the live action bits in English, or this is not relevant to a market outside Wales. This is just here because we’re talking to the youth, but the grown adults buying the DVD do not need to know about this guy finding out that he’s adopted. Which does mean they miss out on one of the best bits of the whole thing, which is the film, which is the blue camo print Lada Riva estate at the start, which is the best car that’s ever existed.

Ren – See, we don’t often get car talk on this podcast!

Adam – Yeah, I mean, have you ever seen the Phantasm films Mattie?

Mattie – No? I’m excited for possible Ladas though!

Adam – Because me and my friend Andee, who is the landlord of the Brewers Arms in Ipswich and has his own podcast Beyond Graves and Stars, or possibly the other way round. But anyway, we’ve been reviewing the Phantasm franchise on there, the idea is he kind of likes to review horror series that have a whole bunch of sequels.

Mattie – So, like the Kamen Riders of horror?

Adam – And Phantasm has a whole bunch of sequels. But, doing the podcast, well one thing I’d read about Phantasm is that petrolheads really like it because apparently the models of cars are very specifically chosen and there’s quite a few car explosions. Me and Andee, neither of us drive and I don’t know anything about cars, so I’m very aware that there’s probably a whole bunch of people in there listening to it who like Phantasm because of the cars and we’re just like “don’t have any idea what model car that was.”

Mattie – Excellent

Adam – But there aren’t any cars in the animated sequences because we’re in the ye olde mists of medi– I mean what century are we dealing with here?

Mattie – errrrr

Ren – Twelfth?

Mattie - Somewhere between Dinosaur Time and now. Yeah, we’re looking medieval, these were written down, collected in the twelfth and thirteenth century.

Adam – This is clearly a period where there were clans. That’s what I gather. I’m picturing it a bit like the Scotland of Macbeth, right? That there are lots of clans who occasionally fight each other.

Ren – Yeeeeeah?

Adam – I mean, I’m no expert here!

Mattie – No, no, you are pretty much spot on, in as far as, like most, we’re sort of pre the modern concept of nations at this point. We’re probably looking at, blueeeeeeegh, about 1040 or something til about, yeah, we start knocking up against the annexation of Wales. So yeah, 11th and 12th century. And yeah, there were just a lot of different kingdoms within kingdoms within kingdoms within kingdoms, nesting like little Russian dolls.

Adam – Yeah and because of that I found it quite hard to follow some of the geography but I got as much as there seemed to be a lot of fighting between Welsh clansmen and Irish clansmen, I think?

Mattie – Yeah. So, it was broadly set in Arberth, which is in Pembrokeshire, and they were up North for, they were in Harlech for the bits with Bendigeidfran the giant and fighting the Irish, they were in Gwynedd for Pwyll (n.b Mattie misspoke here, he meant Lleu Llaw Gyffes). So they’re in three geographic areas and then ‘cause Wales isn’t very big some of the people turn up in some of the other areas. It doesn’t take long to get around to be honest. So, the three characters have the places where their stories are based, and yeah it does just kind of throw you around and exposition text comes up and says “you’re here now” and it’s just like “Cool”

Adam -But this giant, so what’s the giants name again?

Mattie – Bendigeidfran

Adam – Okay, so Bendigeid-. Sorry, Ben-Dy-Geid-Fran?

Mattie – Yeah, you smashed it mate.

Adam – Sure, okay, alright, he’s not always been a giant as far as I can tell. It seems like he started off like a regular man and then, Incredible Hulk like, got so angry he became a giant, am I right?

Mattie – I mean, he was always-

Ren – I think he was a big guy!

Mattie – He was always, like, would make the Undertaker look like a normal sized human. And when he’s mad gets like I dunno, “I’m a ship now” big.

Adam – Yeah, that’s quite a big difference!

Mattie – I think the implication is that he’s like maybe about 8 or 9 foot tall, which is pretty giant, and gets engianted when you lock his sister in a kitchen.

Adam – So, so, yeah, why did he get so angry?

Ren – Well. He gets so angry, because, this is the part that Dan is involved in, who is one of our teens.

Mattie – Love Dan. Dan’s the best.

Ren – He’s not as central to his strand of the story as the other two are. Well, he gets more important.

Adam – Okay

Ren – To begin with he’s sort of there as part of Bendigeidfran’s entourage.

Mattie – He does, well he is one of the brothers. And he consistently has the most sense out of everyone. Which I really like about his character. Cause, if you’ve got the live action bit, these three people are learning about themselves through the medium of their experiences in mythology, and mostly what Dan seems to learn is “Oh, I’m not actually an idiot, I’m just a bit late for stuff sometimes”. But he does do his best to prevent multiple international incidents.

Ren – Yeah, cause the King of Ireland, Matholwch, appears off the coast with a fleet of boats and says he wants to marry Branwen, who is Bendigeidfran’s sister. And so they’re like “Well, this does seem like this would be good for relations between our countries, so sure”, but…

Mattie – But they have a really angry racist brother called Efnysien who they’re like “I’m sure if we arrange a wedding feast to marry our sister to the Irish, who he is super racist about”…

Adam – He really, really hates Irish people…

Mattie – “…He won’t find out and do anything.” Yeah, he’s not about them. And they’re like “Ahhh, no but, this is a good decision, it’ll be fine.” Like, everyone has someone in their life who really doesn’t like conflict and thinks that if they just try hard enough, they can make reality not involve people doing unreasonable things, and this is the very extreme “No, no he’s going to lose his temper and stab all the horses”.

Ren – Yeah, Efnisien stabs all the horses.

Adam – I guess this is where the horror comes in. Cause at first I was quite confused, well not confused because it’s an interesting animated film that’s vaguely for kids, but like obviously at first I thought “this isn’t horror”. But I think the aspects that make it, and maybe it’s more dark fantasy. But I think, I mentioned how fast things erupt into chaos and I think it’s that which is horrifying. Because things are just ticking along and then suddenly things are really bloody and violent!

Ren – Mmm, horses are being slashed.

Mattie – Yeah, and it is one of those things they don’t go into because the film would be about a million years long. But for us obviously, those horses didn’t do anything wrong, that’s horrible that you slashed up those horses, you’re a bad person. But horses are incredibly significant in Irish culture, and lots of cultures. They’re big strong powerful freedom providers. If you imagine how adverts want us to feel about cars is how people actually feel about horses. They are, who you are when you’re on your horse is the true completion of you. That is agency, that is power. And, you know, connections to, cause horses are pretty, I don’t know how much time you’ve spent around horses but they are pretty magic. Destroying things that are, like, holy to you. And that it’s so wanton and violent. It’s really intense. Which they do not make a big deal of because as I am explaining I’m like “Man, I am saying too much”. So they’ve got to be like “ The man cut up the horses, it’s not good to cut up the horses”.

Adam – Okay, so, is this, and I’m sorry I’m asking so many questions. I think part of recording this podcast is just trying to make this film clear in my head. Because not knowing really any Welsh mythology going into it, it was quite a confusing experience. Not a bad experience, and as you say, like, maybe it makes sense to have the telling of these stories be rhythmically a bit weird, like rushed in some bits, and then slowing down, and then really fast, that makes a certain amount of sense. But it means the experience of watching it if you’re not familiar is sometimes a bit overwhelming and confusing. So, was the killing of the horses something that then prompted the appearance of this wicker bone headed horse monster?

Mattie -The wicker bone headed horse monster is in the other story that’s in, the first story that begins the film that’s down in Narberth. Which is funny to me because that’s the town up the road to the village I grew up in. It’s like I know Narberth, I’ve sat and drunk cider in that castle.

Adam – Does that creature have, I just thought it’s like a hobby horse, that’s the name I think when I think skeleton horses. Does that have a special name?

Mattie – Not that I can… It’s worth, as we said at the start while we were setting up and trying to work out how to make microphones work, I sound really reassuring and like I know what I’m talking about. But I want to be very clear, I am not passing on any scholarship here. I’m passing on what is in my mind and my person from being, from having all of this stuff be part of the general sea water that I was raised in, the briny soup that I rose out of.

Ren – That you were pickled in.

Mattie Yeah, it’s the pickle brine, this is the mustard seeds in the pickle brine. And I would highly encourage people to check out different translations of these stories and find out more. But, if anything I say sounds really good, just treat it like I’m just another oral story teller telling the story, that doesn’t mean I’m telling you anything accurate.

Adam – So, did anything cause that creature? Did anything make it or did it just appear like some sort of agent, is it like Grendel in Beowulf? Just this monster?

Mattie – Are you talking about when it comes and nicks that baby?

Adam – Yeah!

Mattie – Well that’s cause Rhiannon was meant to marry one dude, but she didn’t want to marry him, so she went and found the other dude and went “What up, do you want to marry me?” Well, “ What up, do you love me?” and Pwyll was like “Well, I’d be a fool to say no wouldn’t I, so yes, I do.” So there was a bit of a, it’s Red Wedding situation, actually, wherein you were meant to marry one person, and you married someone else, and the baby getting stolen was a bit of a like, wizardly consequence of that. But not the wizard later, a different wizard.

Adam – Okay, yeah, I guess I just sort of, what’s it got to do with you bone horse? You just seem to appear and be really awful. Oh my gosh, it’s just taken off this poor baby. And I’m like, Why? What’s it doing? And this is a bit of CGI animation, so it looks pretty, pretty demented.

Ren - Yeah

Mattie – Yeah, doesn’t it look so much better than it has any right to?

Adam – Yeah, it looks pretty cool. Can we do texture of the week? Cause, you know.

Ren – Yeah, yeah lets do it!

Adam – What… Is there an obvious translation of Texture of the week into Welsh?

Ren – [Villainous chuckle]

Mattie – Errrrrrrrrrrrgh

Adam – Sadly we’re not using the webcam so I can’t see Mattie’s expression at my very reasonable request.

Mattie – I mean, like, there is. Do I know it? Mmmmmm, that’s a, that’s a beautiful question.

Ren – Penwythnos. No, that’s a weekend.

Mattie – Penwythnos. So if Pen is end…

Ren – Yeah, wythnos.

Mattie – Boom, got it.

Ren – It means week.

Adam – So what do we need to say…

Mattie – Yr wythnos, of the week. Um, I cannot remember off the top of my head what texture is though. So “Tecsture”. Tecsture yr wythnos.

Ren – Eyyyyyy!

Adam – Oh! That’s nice

Mattie – Just take the English word and say it a bit Welsh. It’ll do. You can fix it in post!

Adam – I thought that sounded really nice!

Ren – Thank you Mattie.

Adam – Thank you, yeah. So mine is wicker bone headed horse monstrosity. Because especially as rendered in early 2000s CGI, it looks incredibly metal. It looks like it’s just stepped out of some kind of ridiculous nu-metal music video, straight into the medieval Welsh past to snatch up babies and cause havoc.

Mattie – Yeah, it does look like the back projection for some profoundly problematic doom metal band.

Adam – Yeah

Mattie – That thing’s just in the background destroying stuff whilst they play 40 minute long songs that absolutely slap and then you look up the lyrics and you’re like “Oh No. Oh, that man went to prison for reasons why people should go to prison.”

Adam – Yeah, but anyway, I was all there for it. You could imagine it as some sort of terrifying puppet on stage.

Ren – My texture, they have some little bits of interstitial bits of live action scenery, that fades back into animation.

Adam – Oh yeah! They do actually, it’s quite odd. There’s some kind of, I don’t know if it’s bones or just like charred ashen ruins.

Ren – Yeah, that was the bit, kind of blackened charred wood that then turns into a crows wing. I thought that was pretty textural.

Mattie – Yeah, that’s after they burned down… I love that the Irish are like “Aww, can we make up imprisoning your sister for you by building you a Big House? Build you a Big House that you fit in, and then it will get burned down.” For me, it’s right towards the end, when Lleu Llaw Gyffes has continued having the most bewildering time, just absolutely bewildering, and he’s a hawk tucked up in a tree whilst his adoptive Mum-Dad Gwydion the Wizard is like “Look mate, I’m really sorry but I love you, could you come down here so I can make it so you don’t die”. And he’s just up there like “I wasn’t equipped to deal with where we started with this and I am not equipped to deal with where it’s ended up, but actually yeah I would like a hug”. And there’s something about that that really gets me. And Gwydion just being like “I’m sorry you’ve never really had a choice and this is your first go at having a choice. Will you please come down here so I can make this better?” I don’t really know if that counts as a texture, but tree leaves and my own tears would be my texture of the week. Cause yeah… yeah, how are you meant to know how to deal with that?

Ren – This is the third strand, this is Lleu, Matthew Rhys, who in the real life beginning finds out he is adopted. So his Welsh fantasy counterpart is also dealing with parental woes.

Mattie – Yeah, there’s a lot to unwrap there. Cause there is really something to be said of Gwydion, Gwydion being the mage, or wizard, who takes care of Lleu. He kind of is that archetype of a parent who’s really really good with kids but doesn’t quite understand that one day they’ll be adults and you need to prepare them for being adults. But yeah, poor Lleu was a child born in shame who’s mother was like “I’m not having anything to do with this, get my trauma baby away from me!”. And within his culture the only person who can name a child is their mother, and the only person who can give them arms, weaponry, make them a warrior, is their mother. [ Note - Mattie is wrong here, actually Arianrhod cursed Lleu with three “tynged”, social prohibitions or taboos, on him. One that no one but her could name him, one that no one but her could arm him, and finally that no woman from any race that was on the earth then would be his wife.] His mum didn’t want anything to do with him, so Gwydion finds ways of tricking her by using illusions to make it look like the child who will be called Lleu are different people. In the first case, we were talking about it earlier, he’s clearly decided what he wants this child to be called, and so engineers a situation that's really long winded. “Ohhh,. He just pinned a sparrow to a piece of wood with a pin from 300 yards. He’s good with his hands, isn’t he. Would you call him Mr Good-with-his-hands? AHA! That’s his name now!” There really is a great deal of someone's good intentions really colliding with their lack of emotional intelligence to create a bit of a compounded omnishamble of this young man's life.

Ren – Yeah, both Lleu and Rhiannon have a difficult time in the otherworld. Rhiannon’s baby, well the skeleton horse monster tries to steal her baby, but actually the skeletons hand is hacked off with the baby inside, but they don’t know that the baby is still alive.

Mattie – So yeah, skeleton horse monster hobbyhorse, if you will, steals the baby, makes all the nursemaids fall asleep and nicks the baby, and then goes to try and steal the foal of a friend of theirs, who’s gone back to make sure his mare foals safely. And the man is there looking after his horse, horses, you’ve gotta look after them, and he hacks off the hand of the terrifying monster and is like “Ohh, a baby! Guess we’re keeping it!” Cause him and his wife haven’t been able to have children, so they’re like “well, miracle horror baby is here, might as well look after it.” And then, considering that he saw Pwyll and was like “Oh, gotta go home and make sure my mare foals alright, see you later!” and then doesn’t come back for seven years…

Ren – Yeah, when the nursemaids wake up and they find the baby gone, they decide they’re all going to stick together on the lie that Rhiannon destroyed her own baby. So they sort of, so this is some more horror…

Adam – Yeah, this is quite distressing actually.

Ren – So they get some animal blood and put it on her and her hands and she wakes up and they’re like “don’t you remember what you did?”

Mattie – Yeah, they basically gaslight her into thinking she had some sort of terrible post-partum psychosis and her husband never believes that that is the case but the court of their community finds her guilty and her punishment is to sit at the gates of their settlement and tell everyone who comes what she did. And she gobs off, as you would!, and an additional punishment is put onto her that she has to carry everyone who comes to visit the court on her back for 7 years. So, your man with the foal, who ended up with the baby, comes to visit after 6 years and is like “Oh look, this child sure does look like my old friend, maybe I did kind of know about this”.

Ren – Yeah, at which point, reunited with Rhiannon and named Pryderi?

Mattie – Yeah. In a very lovely… so Pryder is, like, a worry or a care, as in “you’ve got all the cares in the world”. And she’s just like “Well, you coming back has taken them all away. So you are all my cares, it’s all redeemed in your return.” Which is lovely, and also woooooooow, that is some taking the high road there. I do note that those nursemaids are not seen again. I don’t remember what happens to them, but they’re gone.

Ren – Meanwhile in Ireland, Branwen is being punished for the horse killing actions of her… uncle? I think he’s her uncle?

Mattie – I think he’s her brother. So, after horse-gate, Branwen has been married to Matholwch, and he’s like “Why would you do such a humiliating thing after I’ve married your sister?” and they're like “We didn’t plan this, he’s a nutter, can we just give you this ominous magic cauldron to make it up to you?” and he’s like “Yep, we’re sorted, it’s all good, we will not take any vengeance.” And that’s a recurring theme in this, because it’s something that is very important in sort-of clan based cultures, in modern times as well as in the past, is “If you say we’re good then we’re good. And if you say we’re good in front of people then we’re good. And if you go back on that…” It’s important that stories contain the consequences of going back on your word that we are forgiven. But yeah, going back to Ireland and decide “Actually, we’re not good, let’s take it all out on the sister.” So they separate her from her child, and she works in the kitchen and is abused the whole time. She nurses a starling back to health and sends that starling back over the Irish sea with a message to her giant older brother, who becomes Very large, really very large.

Ren – Yeah, and stomps across the sea.

Adam – And then becomes a bridge! And says “The one who leads must be a bridge!” And I assumed that was an emotional bridge, or some sort of moral, but no! I should have taken that far more literally. The one who leads must become A bridge!

Mattie – Fun fact! So, when I was in primary school, I was quite tall for my age which, in combination with the amount of group performance that was involved in the Welsh education system, would mean I was included in things because it was handy to have a girl that was quite big and who was quite biddable. So I featured in the school choir as the point of the triangle but wasn’t allowed to sing. And in a performance of a long spoken word poem about this, about Stori Branwen, I was Bendigeidfran and had to be the bridge. So, like, we were all stood together reciting this poem really dramatically, and at this point I would then step to the right, then lie down on the floor and be a bridge and everyone else would march. Next to me, thankfully, not over my body.

Adam – Oh good, yeah!

Mattie – But just sort of march next to me. And then I think I’d sort of get up again and then stand next to them, and then die.

Ren – Amazing.

Mattie – And all you’ve got to be is like 5 foot 8 when you’re 10 and this could all be yours!

Adam – You too could be a bridge!

Mattie – You too could be a bridge and an apex!

Ren – Yeah, when the Irish crew see this increasingly giant brother they decide…

Mattie – “Oh no. We made a mistake.”

Ren – Yeah, and they said “How about we’ll build you a giant house.” But then they sneakily decide to hide men in the house.

Adam – As bags of flour or something?

Ren – As bags of flour.

Adam – Cause there’s a horrible bit where one of them [inaudiable] “Oh, it’s just a bag of flour!” and crushes the person inside the bag to death.

Ren – This is our friend Efnisien the horse slasher. He’s not convinced by the good intentions of these Irish people.

Mattie – Yeah, he’s like “That’s some lumpy flour.”

Ren – And he just goes round methodically crushing all of their skulls, the men who were hiding in the flour sacks.

Adam – In the original Welsh version it also had subtitled sound effects. It said “Sound of body being crushed.”

Mattie – Yeah, the subtitles were a hilight for me, it was memory lane, Ceefax 888 Welsh subtitles. [n.b. It wasn’t Ceefax, it was Teletext]

Adam – I think my favorite one was “the cries of past woes”.

Mattie and Ren – Yes! The cries of past woes! Yes!

Mattie - There was also a very “Oh this is why they gave it a 12 rating” bit of animation wherein they go to like the Congratulations on your house! feast and the scene begins on one of these quote bag of flour, pans down it to a droplet, a large droplet of blood forming, which has in it reflected the scene of the room, and then the camera pans to the room. And it’s just, like, that is intense guys, that is some intense animation there.

Ren – Yeah, and then during this betrayal feast Matholwch opens these bags of flour, I guess the men are meant to jump out and start fighting. But this really quite graphically crushed corpse slides out of the bag instead. So yeah.

Adam – Yeah, just slumps.

Ren – Yeah, but…

Mattie – And Matholwch is genuinely like, at least voice acted. Really horrified. Like, “I was not expecting this. These are people I know. And we were about to do an awful thing. But I’m not thinking like the welsh are people, I’m thinking like these corpses in bags are people. It’s really quite visceral. Because, like, that’s probably a lot of members of his extended family.

Adam – Yeah, yeah

Ren – So this leads to a big fight. And they have the cauldron, because they were given it.

Adam – The Black Cauldron, which we met in the episode Mattie was on before where we talked about the Disney film The Black Cauldron.

Mattie – Yeah, you think I’m here for the Welsh episodes, I’m actually just here for the cauldron episodes. All about the cauldron.

Ren – So yeah, they have this big fight, and the soldiers start coming back to life out of this cauldron.

Mattie – Yeah, they’re coming back to life but they’re all mute, they can’t speak.

Ren – Efnisien, in the end, destroys the cauldron.

Mattie -He does also throw his nephew in a fire.

Ren – He did do that, yeah.

Mattie – He did also do that. Branwen is having…

Ren – Yeah

Mattie – This really is a myth about how men make women's lives miserable, archetypally.

Adam – Yeah, that was quite a shocking moment, the baby really goes flying. It’s quite a sort of quick, sudden, horrid thing.

Mattie – Yeah, and it’s such a sweet moment of him going and sitting in the throne and being just a regular little kid.

Adam – Yeah!

Mattie – Efnisien really represents a sort of, like a reactionary antisocial element. In many ways, he’s not wrong in terms of not trusting Matholwch means he finds the bodies in the bag. He’s an antihero, you are not meant to like him. He’s not a cool antihero, he ruined everyone’s lives by caring more about being a very particular kind of right. In a way that’s quite uncomfortable for us living at the time we’re living in right now. Yeah, we’ve got some of that going on right now. You are the worst and none of the ways you’re right matter. Yeah, so, he climbs in the cauldron and destroys it.

Ren - Bendigeidfran was hit with a poison spear. So they cut off his head and take it back to Wales.

Adam – Big head, presumably quite heavy to cart around?

Ren – Yeah, big head! And they go to a magic island.

Mattie – I would also like to say that Branwen dies of a broken heart on the beach. That also happens. She sings a very, very sad song about two islands, two cultures being destroyed because of her. She just takes it all as her fault and dies on the beach. And then all of her surviving relatives go to what I have called the Cocaine Bender Island where they wish to forget about everything they did. Which they do successfully for 8 years until someone breaks the spell and…

Ren – The cries of past woes enter the dining hall…

Mattie - And Bendigeidfran dies. Yeah, Celtic mythology is, it does not mess around. It has a very very high body count and like, actions have consequences.

Adam – Yeah.

Mattie – Yeah, how does this compare to the Black Cauldron for you? Revisiting another great Cauldron film. Like, this bit specifically, looking at The Black Cauldron, how are you feeling right now?

Adam – I think the Black Cauldron’s more of a romp than this. You know, the Black Cauldron obviously… Okay, I think it’s because The Black Cauldron, for a contemporary viewer, is working within very clear fantasy and Gothic-hued fantasy registers. You’ve got the spooky castle, and you’ve got, like, I don’t know, even the undead warriors look like something you might find in an EC Horror comic or something. It’s all kind of palatable somehow. Whereas I think you’re right that this film somehow gets across these stories… I dunno, maybe on some level how they were communicated, or how they might have felt at the time. Like, yeah, they’re not softened. I don’t know, maybe it’s the difference between a fairy tail that’s passed down through an oral tradition, and then there’s the Disney version of that fairy tail. And this is closer to the stories in the oral tradition. What do you think Ren?

Ren – I think, despite the kind of live action bookending bit of it, which is a kind of “Ohh, we’re going to wrap this up, sort of, in a way” kind of thing, but apart from that it’s not very concerned with wrapping things up neatly, or parcelling up into palatable stories. And I think the way it cuts between the three different stories, it sort of, I don’t know, feels kind of a bit chaotic and tumbling. It feels very rich and alive, but it’s not neat.

Adam – What’s your memories, can you remember your experience of watching it for the first time Mattie?

Mattie – Oough. That’s an interesting question, because it ties into something I was thinking about. Because this is very much mythic storytelling, so it’s archetypal universal things that are supposed to make you feel something about the culture you live in and your place in it. And you asking that question, I don’t remember anything factual about it, like what day it was, where, I can’t remember anything factual, but I can remember how I felt. I can remember how it made me feel. Like, I can remember feeling so sad about Branwen. I guess that’s kind of part of why I wanted to ask about The Black Cauldron, because obviously Lloyd Alexander was really impressed with the cannon of Welsh mythic storytelling, it had a massive impression on him. And he managed to work out how to take elements of that to make a narrative story that you could follow from beginning to middle to end, with people in that you know what they’re doing and what they’re about and you don’t know much about their context because you don’t need to. And I think that’s a magnificent skill, and I think it’s an important skill because a lot of culture, elements of it get preserved through that process which can be woven back in later.

Whereas this story, as we’re talking about it’s really difficult for me, at least, to follow through my notes and feel confident that anything I’m saying is going to make sense to anyone listening. Cause, look, I just felt a lot of things about these people who in some ways existed, in some ways never existed and in some ways always exist and will never stop existing. And, yeah, I feel a lot of respect for the people who made the film of the Black Cauldron, and anyone who’s ever tried to grapple with this sort of text, because how, how do you do that? Cause you’re trying to make people feel something beyond whether or not they can tell you the story in a linear way, and that’s… Humans have achieved a few miracles, I think music is one of them and I think this sort of storytelling is one of them.

Adam – Oh, thank you, that was quite moving

Mattie – Thanks, cause I was going to follow it up with also, I love that in the film of the Black Cauldron, the person who breaks the cauldron is the cute comedy scruffly little guy, and in this one it’s the worst person you have ever met, and I’m really curious as to how that decision was made.

Adam – That’s a really good point!

Mattie – I kept thinking about it whilst I was watching Efnisien doing stuff because I remembered what he was going to do, and I kept thinking “You’re Gurgi!” Your character inspired Gurgi, which inspired Gollum. What is art?!

Adam – Before we wrap up, I should mention just because it’s of interest, that the soundtrack was, I believe, done by John Cale.

Mattie – Yeah it was!

Adam – So there we go, we have Welsh co-founder of the Velvet Underground doing the soundtrack.

Mattie – Yeah, he sure gets around.

Ren – We should also mention that Dan meticulously makes a mouse gallows, just, I think that’s important to our listeners.

Adam – Oh! That is important to our listeners, you’re right. You know our listeners. Mouse gallows, to hang a little mouse that’s not really a mouse but someone’s wife.

Mattie – And it’s genuinely I think one of the best bits of the film.

Adam – That bit is really good actually.

Mattie – A guy being like “No, you cannot move me. I know what I’m doing. The reasons for it are revealed and it is resolved in a way that is good for him, everyone, it’s good for reality, reality is restored. But it’s just this guy being like “No, I don’t care if I look unreasonable, I don’t care if I look insane, I’m going to build this mouse gallows until I get what I want.”

Adam – Do you think that’s what I should have done in terms of hanging on to my new job today?

Mattie – I think it’s what we should all do at all times

Adam – I should have sat there staring at the woman from HR whilst building a tiny gallows for a mouse?

Mattie – Yeah, cause what else are you going to do? Like, literally what else are you going to do? Like, I absolutely think going home and going “Nah, I’m not dealing with this” is a really good response to that sort of situation. But, there’s no talking to them, there’s no reasoning with them, there’s no negotiating. Build a mouse gallows. Just stop responding to unreasonable people with reason. Just be really weird until they go away. I’m just going to be weird and difficult until you stop lying. Now give me all my friends back. Yeah.

Adam – Yeah, that’s a good message actually.

Mattie – Yeah, just build mouse gallows. And, we’re completely… Everyone listening, just go and watch this, it’s on Youtube. You will get the joy of knowing that someone has done a VHS rip of this, and in many ways I think that’s great because a lot of the effects, a lot of the CGI, probably looks as good as it does for us watching it because it’s from a VHS. So it’s not a DVD, it’s within the technology it’s made for. Just go watch it, it’s great.

Adam – No, you’re right though, cause it’s like when you get those Bluray editions, those 4k Bluray editions of Video Nasties, it’s like I really don’t think the visual effects were made to be scrutinised at that level.

Mattie – No! Or even worse, no, the person who made these special effects gave themselves a mental breakdown trying to work out how to make a bucket full of meat scraps look horrifying, on VHS. This was done the way it was done on purpose, it doesn’t need to be in 4k. But yeah, like, a woman is made, is bought into existence and then cast out of it to try and.. Ohhh, it’s just, Blodeuwedd. In the time of AI and people having a lot of their emotional needs met through constructed means, it’s a good story in that no-one looks good in it and also you can kind of see where everyone’s coming from. It’s a mess, again, it’s consequences. But yeah, Blodeuwedd gets done dirty. And then that leads you into Alan Garner and the Owl Service.

Adam – Ohhhh! Yeah, of course! Oh, we need to do the Owl Service at some point. Maybe you can come back and do the Owl Service at some point Mattie.

Mattie – Oh, you know what, I’ve never actually read the Owl… No! You know what, I have read the Owl Service, it’s just from a bit of my life that I don’t remember.

Adam – Have you watched it?

Mattie – Ooooh, there’s a watching format?

Adam – Yeah, there’s a TV version.

Mattie – Ooohhh, when is it from?

Ren – Oh, it’s from the 70’s. Yeah, it’s proper.

Mattie – Yeahhhhh

Adam – Cool, well that sounds like a good future project.

Ren – Well, thank you Mattie.

Adam – Yeah, thank you.

Mattie – Thank you Ren and Adam, and to you dear listeners in your homes, living your beautiful individual lives, swimming in archetypes and retaining your selfhood. Well done, that wasn’t easy, good job. Thank you for putting up with getting a bit intense about things. And also shout out Richard Bros coaches, that I loudly popped for at the start of the live action bit when one of the buses comes past and I’m like “Oh, I’ve probably been on that bus to Cardigan!” Go to Pembrokeshire, go to Wales, go to the 70’s. Someone buy me a Lada. It’s so hot….

Ren – Right, well, so, our intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, our outro music is is by Joe Kelly, artwork’s by Letty Wilson. You can email us at [email protected] or follow us on instagram @stillscaredpodcast. Do you have a signoff for us Adam.

Adam – Yeah! You too can be a bridge, creepy kids! Go and be a bridge.

Ren – Yeah, go and be a bridge creepy kids.

Mattie – Be a bridge.

All – Byeeeeeee!

In this episdoe we discussed Who Framed Roger Rabbit from 1988 and TerrorVision from 1986.

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared Talking Children's Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and TV. I'm Ren Wednesday, my cohost is Adamy Whybray, today we’re joined by special guest Ava Foxfort, and we're talking about Who Framed Roger Rabbit from 1988 and Terror Version from 1986. Enjoy!

Ren Hi —

Ava I think that was the opposite of in time — oh shit you're going straight into an intro?

Adam That's fine. Hi, Ava!

Ava Hi!!

Ren Hi Adam, Hi Ren.

Ava Hi Ren!

Adam You are Ren.

Ren I am Ren. Okay, this is setting the scene perfectly for this episode —

Adam No, no, I have made a lot of notes. I have prepared.

Ren No, that's true. Adam has prepared, Adam has prepared. Maybe Ava has prepared?

Ava Define prepared. I haven't made notes, but I've never made notes in my life.

Adam OK, so we're discussing two films —

Ren Who Framed Roger Rabbit from 1988 and Terror Vision from 1986. And we decided to do this episode a long time ago and have now somewhat forgotten our reasoning.

Adam OK, so let me explain. So. I found Terrorvision on a list of supposed children's horror films on Letterboxed, which is a lie, it’s not.

Ava It's so not!

Adam Ok, but, but — my thinking is that Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a Disney film and it's PG rated, it’s a family film that is largely not going to be understandable by a child audience. I watched it as a child and it made me feel weird and troubled. And I probably didn't follow the plot because the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit is quite complex. It's like a Chinatown film noir conspiracy with lots of references to old cartoons that most kids watching in the late ‘80s wouldn't have got.

On the other hand, Terrorvision is clearly a film made sbstensibly for an adult audience that I don't think anyone over the age of 12 is going to enjoy.

Ava So we've got definitely an adult film — one of them is definitely a horror film. One of them is horrific if you see it as a child. I imagine both of them would be horrific if you saw them as a child.

Adam Well, that’s the thing, I think both of these films have a really kind of specific squick that is going to really impact you if you see it as a kid.

Ava And like, are we just going for similarly traumatising, is that the theme that we've got here? Yeah, but you didn't see this as a kid. Was anyone traumatised by Terrorvision as a child? Out of us three, we're allowed to answer for ourselves.

Adam Oh, no, I assumed none of you had. I mean, I thought you were talking for the audience.

Ren Yeah, I assume anyone who saw Terrorvison as a child was traumatised by it.

Adam I assume they're now locked up.

Ava The thing that was confusing to me about Terrorvision was there was quite a charming, childish humour to it, woven in between all of the deeply inappropriate humour.

Adam Well, that’s what I mean! I think a really juvenile film!

Ava It's incredibly juvenile, yeah.

Adam And ostensibly the main two characters end up being the child character and the teenagers. And also, we've talked time and time again, here me out, time and time again on this podcast, we've talked about plots in which the child characters are not believed, right? In which there's some kind of monster or some kind of demonic or supernatural presence, and a child insists and insists that it's real and all of the adults don't believe them. And the child's right and bad things happen to the adults. And that is exactly what the plot of this.

Ava Yeah, it does have a really classical children's narrative. Can we explicitly not make an argument for terrorism being child friendly? Like I think on a moral level —

Adam To be fair, on a moral leve that probably would rightfully get me barred from ever teaching again, I think. And that's definitely not the hill I want to die on, I don’t want to pin my teaching career on it, it’s terrible.

Ren Right, I need to introduce Ava.

Ava To who??

Adam She’s been on here before.

Ren She has been on here before, but it’s been a while.

Adam It’s been a while.

Ava It has been a while.

Ren Ava Foxfort, veteran of the Deptford Mice series. Which maybe you should go back and listen to, because it was quite an epic undertaking.

Adam I think they’re the best episodes we’ve ever done.

Ava Yeah, I mean, there's they are like absolutely some of the best children’s horror I’ve ever read. I remember reading it when I was little and genuinely getting horror. So yeah, go and listen to me, listen to more of me, I’m great. I’m Ava Foxfort, I'm a guest today. I'm very confused as to why I'm here and what we're doing.

Ren Thank you for coming back, Ava. I also don't know why we saw these two films and were like, Ava, let's get Ava for this. I don't know why.

Ava Like, I'm offended by the suggestion that Terrorvision —

Adam Yeah, I was going to say that that's probably not going to make you feel great about yourself. I mean, I don't know, maybe I I saw that Medusa character.

Ava I think I've got Medusa vibes. You know, I would really love that kind of rubberized snake outfit that she's got, I think it's a beautiful feast of costumery that I would 100% wear out.

Adam Well, exactly. So maybe that's why, that's the only justifiable reason I could think of.

Ava And Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a beloved film when I was little, so this was absolutely my jam. So half of this makes sense. The other half, I don't know what you think of me.

Adam Just Medusa, really. But Who Framed Roger Rabbit I watched as a kid, I definitely watched it more than once, but I found it was one of those films I was fascinated by but I found quite troubling. I don't think I loved it as a kid, I think. I think it worried me. What about you Ren?

Ren I saw it for the first time two days ago. So.

Ava Oh, that's an interesting perspective I'd like to hear your thoughts are on it, which I guess is what we're here for, so that's good.

Ren Yeah, all I knew coming in was that it combined animation and live action and that there is a sexy lady called Jessica Rabbit. That was the sum total of my knowledge.

Adam That's fair. That's probably the legacy of the film, right? In terms of what someone who hasn't seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit knows about it, I would say yeah, animation and live action and sexy Jessica Rabbit is probably what most people think.

Ava I mean, it's probably the origin of my lifetime affection for Bob Hoskins.

Adam Well, I was gonna say I was thinking this episode might be a meeting of the chapter of the Bob Hoskins Appreciation Society.

Ren Oh, it absolutely is. My appreciation obviously comes from the Terry Gilliam film Brazil, in which he plays one of the Central Services heating engineers. And he utters the classic line, which I'm sure I've already said on the podcast, because it's just absolutely embedded in my head: “Machines don't fix themselves.”

Ava Yeah, connection — because I did actually read the Wikipedia this morning. So that's a level in which I'm prepared. Terry Gilliam was up to direct Who Framed Roger Rabbit for a while. He was one of the first directors to be picked and he said it looked too difficult so he didn't do it.

Ren Yeah, it would absolutely never have got made --

Ava No way, absolutely no way. And it would have been terrible if it had been —

Ren And it would have taken 20 years to not get made.

Adam Well, we know that Robert Zemeckis’ main interest in filmmaking is having increasing amounts of special effects hopefully replace the work of actors and cinematographers until I'm assuming his end point is he just wants AI to do it. But at this point he was still having to do a lot of work because this is way before The Polar Express, right? It's way before Here. This is non-digital filmmaking.

So all of this film was achieved through optical printing. So what that means basically is it's all composite shots and so it was filmed with the live actors using these awful — and I encourage you to look this up — these horrible rubber stand-ins. I would love, you know, my jam would be a director’s cut of the film that’s just the version of this cut together with the horrible rubber versions of the characters being waved around by puppeteers. While the actors have to react to them.

And there's also, you know, mechanical arms and other things. But basically they filmed with the live actors and then the animators had to use this three tier animation process. So the characters were drawn and coloured and then the shadowing was added and then the texturing and the integration of the lighting in this film.

It's a film noir basically, so we should say this is set in 1947 Hollywood. And it's very much in the mould of something like Chinatown. You know, it's the LA of corruption and seedy bars and private eyes. And Bob Hoskins plays Eddie Valiant, who is a kind of down at heel detective who's hired to find proof that Roger Rabbit's wife is cheating on him with Marvin Acme, which is a great invention of this film. So if you've ever seen a Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons, remember that everything that Wiley Coyote bought had Acme on the side and was produced by Acme.

Well, it turns out that Marvin Acme is the factory owner who invents and produces all of these gag objects.

Ava There's a really lovely sub-theme running through everything about that intersection between these things — like the concept that this isn't just that we're using animation on top of live action, it's that we're living in a world where cartoons exist as pieces of entertainment. But they’re acted, by real physical embodiments of people, right?

And so having to have Acme and having to have all of the gag props available, all of the ridiculous impossible ideas that cartoons make possible, have them be real mass-produced objects, it's a really particularly — it's going to be the first time I'm saying it — textural, a textural kind of solidity.

Adam It really is yeah. Because these objects that are kind of squishy, like there's a lot of squash and stretch cartoon physics in this film, but obviously these are also real chunky objects and there's something really satisfying about seeing things like the cartoon hammers or those vinyl-like holes.

Ren I was thinking about the holes. Yeah.

Adam And that's all really satisfying. But yeah, so the process was they then did the the lighting and then they did the textural effects. Because the important thing was that the animated figures looked absolutely integrated into the real world. And I think that is pulled off to an astonishing degree, particularly, I think matching the lighting on the animated characters to the lighting on the real life actors, which is wild.

Ava I mean, this is like a famous term that originates here. I don't know how widely it's used, but there’sthat idea of knocking the lamp, right? So there's a scene where they're in the back of the bar and Bob Hoskins walks into the room and immediately head-butts the light fitting dangling from the ceiling, which means that then for an entire — quite elaborately shot scene — the light is just swinging around randomly.

Adam Yeah, through the whole scene, there's just this constant —

Ava And this makes sense from a noir point of view, right? Like noir is very much like built on that light and shadow. And so it makes sense for them to be doing things like this. But my God, have they made it hard for themselves. And knocking the lamp on the way in is the perfect symbol of that thing. And I have heard that used as the term for when people go the extra mile to kind of sell a visual effect or anything in a way that's just like, they made so many people's lives harder for themselves by making that decision.

Adam Oh yeah.

Ava And it doesn't technically add much to it apart from making it difficult, right? I mean, it gives it more vibrancy and life and movement, so it makes sense. But there's already a cartoon rabbit constantly bouncing off the walls and Bob Hoskins playing a perfect dead straight man to this. Like there's already that kinetic energy to the scene and to just add an extra layer of random difficulty, it's delightful. I really treasure all of the like little details of physicality throughout this film.

And I think I spotted them more watching it as an adult. Looking through and just being like: God, that's such a difficult way to do that, that's so delightful. One of my favourite gags in the whole film that I don't think I ever spotted as a child is that Jessica Rabbit obviously has quite a — I can't think of the right word — a structurally impressive bosom.

Adam I’ve seen the word ‘pneumatic’ used.

Ava Pneumatic. And at one point, Bob Hoskins is picking up something off the floor and comes back up and knocks his head back into them and they make a comedy drum noise. And it's a perfect bit of slapstick that's been delivered with someone who isn't there, right? Like, someone who isn't in that room. And Bob Hoskins has just had to pretend to knock his head on something, aware that what he's knocking his head on is someone's tits. It's incredible. It's so, so stupid. It's such a stupid film that takes itself so seriously, and I love that. I love that so much.

Adam Yeah. It's really committed to the bit. And I think it's that lack of cutting corners that really, really sells it. And I think mentioning that moment, it's Bob Hoskins, mine work. I think he came from a tumbling background.

Ren gasps Incredible.

Adam Like the amount of clowning he has to do with this film is astonishing.

Ava And that is set up within the world. Like I don't think I realised when I was little that he does have a past life as a clown. It’s narratively set up that Bob Hoskins character Eddie Valiant was originally part of Eddie and Teddy Valiant, a pair of clowns who were also cops for a while. And then private detectives, and then one of them died and oh God, there's a lot going on. It's quite efficient, but it's a dense film.

Adam It is dense, especially — well, whether this is a children's film is not very clear. So this was produced in a period where Disney were going through a real slump. So we have previously talked about 1985's The Black Cauldron. Which as we talked about at the time, was a financial black hole for Disney. And Disney in this period were making live action films, you know, this was before the so-called Disney Renaissance.

And in fact, a lot of the animators who worked on Who Framed Roger Roger Rabbit did go on to work on The Lion King and those films of the Disney Renaissance. But we're not there yet. So this is a period where Disney are under new management and they're trying to find a way to broaden their appeal. And this was made in collaboration with Steven Spielberg. And the effects here are by Industrial Light and Magic.

And you know, I think you can see that it's trying to take that Spielberg family-film formula, that Spielberg had done so well with ET and films like The Goonies and it is trying to get a very broad audience in. But in a in a way that I think is much preferable to what DreamWorks would then do with Shrek. Because in Shrek you've got these two different registers of the fairy tale stuff for the kids and the innuendo for the adults. Whereas here it's much more integrated.

There is a bit of, oh, OK, it's the cartoons for the kids and the film noir stuff for the adults, but you can't really extricate them at all. It's al lso mixed together.

Ava I’m still trying to work out exactly what my understanding of Patty Cake was as a child. Right, which here is used as a euphemism for sex, but also literally playing Patty Cake doing hand games — Acme and Jessica Rabbit are found in photos — and oh my God, this is another beautiful scene as well, isn't it? Because Roger gets the photos of them playing Patty Cake on the bed and then flips through them and flips through them so fast that they turn into an animation of that scene and it's like, Oh my God. Like you just shown us how animation works through the lens of photographs taken and being interacted with by a cartoon character. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful filmmaking.

Adam I heard you make a kind of “Ooh” noise when I mentioned tumbling, Ren, was that you thinking of Hoskins later in the film where he does his song and dance routine?

Ren No, I was just enchanted by the idea of Bob Hoskins tumbling, I think. I think that's just delightful.

Ava But it was generally like, I think I saw it noted that most of his work before this was quite hard, serious acting. He was like 10th or 13th choice for this role in a way that that feels quite harsh because he does also seem completely perfect for this role.

But they like tried to get Harrison Ford in, they tried to get Eddie Murphy in who apparently really regrets not taking that role. Bill Murray was famously impossible to contact, so he missed out on the opportunity to go for this. But you end up with Bob Hoskins.

Ren Yeah, look at this list: Robin Williams, Robert Redford, Jack Nicholson, Sylvester Stallone. Wallace Shawn!

Ava There's a lot of interesting versions of this film that could have been made, each of those suddenly turns into an entirely different thing! But I'm glad we got Bob because I suspect it improves the quality of the tumbling. I can't see Robert Redford doing a good tumble.

Adam No. So the film starts actually with an animation, right? So they clearly want to set up who this Roger Rabbit is because we're meant to kind of understand him immediately as, some kind of classic cartoon character, AKA, you know, Goofy, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, etcetera. So it starts with this short cartoon with Roger Rabbit and Baby Herman.

And actually they produced three Roger Rabbit films after the release of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and they all have that same structure of Roger Rabbit being some kind of pet rabbit/slash babysitter who has to look after baby Herman who blithely gets himself into lots of danger.

And Roger is a kind of perpetual victim, basically. He's a pretty pitiful character. He tries hard, but he's very nervous and everything goes wrong and he just gets beaten over the head again and again.

What I find interesting about the animation — so the lead animator was Richard Williams. Largely known, certainly online because there have been loads of YouTube videos about it, for the much compromised, very, very long production-running film The Thief and the Cobbler, but he was a sort of legendary animator.

And so he designed Roger Rabbit. And clearly, you know, Roger’s meant to have a lot of those iconographic elements of classic Disney cartoon characters. But really, I think the three Roger Rabbit films seem closer to Tom and Jerry. And this film here is very much like a Tom and Jerry short, but perhaps stylistically closer to a Tex Avery film.

Ava I mean it is one of the interesting things here, isn't it that shows up in the production notes, but also is visibly there is that this is a homage to quite a lot of different modes of animation at the same time, right? Like it's made by Disney in collaboration with Warner Brothers, is that right?

Adam Yeah, yeah. And apparently Spielberg himself had to do all the kind of business —

Ava Yeah, but managed to get all the different production houses, or a lot of the different production houses to offer characters. So this is one of the only times you will see certain characters together, because they would never do that. And then there’s this idea that getting Daffy and Donald together meant that they had to be portrayed as equally talented pianists.

Adam And you even get some of the old Fleischer characters crop up. You see Koko the Clown walk past on the street.

Ren Ah, do you?

Adam Yeah, and then you get quite a touching little bit with Betty Boop in the nightclub.

Ava The relationship between Betty Boop and Eddie is quite charming because it feels weirdly real. There’s the detail of how she's a bit down on her luck because nobody's into black and white cartoons these days. It's really sweet.

Adam I like the little figurine of Betty Boop he has on his desk.

Ava Aw, I hadn’t noticed that. That's lovely.

Adam Yes. But the animation we get to start is like, it's clearly structurally like a Tom and Jerry film, but it looks much more like the Animaniacs to me, almost. There's a lot of whizz-bang 3D effects.

It must have been a pain to animate because you've got the camera as it were, swooping around this kitchen, right? Like diving up, diving down, lots of distortion, you know, extreme close-ups and so on. And I think the 3D effects are immediately a bit unsettling. But it's also really important that they established that the cartoon world is also the real world, right, that this is a real 3D space.

And so at the end of the short, we then immediately enter the film studio and you see the camera men, and baby Sherman turns out to be played by, I don't know — he’s a toon, she's a baby, but he's got this gruff old man voice.

Ava Does it not say at one point he's got the lust of a 50 year old and the dinky of a three-year old?

Adam The dinky, yes.

Ava Which is unsettling!

Adam So apparently Richard Williams loved Baby Sherman and insisted on doing all of Baby Sherman —

Ren Herman, Sherman's in Terrorvision.

**Adam **Herman, sorry. But yes, did all of Herman's animation himself. But I mean, was he born? Presumably these toons, they're kind of ageless, right? I mean, they're talked about as being immortal, and previously nothing's been able to kill them. So presumably he's always existed as this old-man baby.

Ava I mean maybe at one point he was a baby-baby and his internal self has simply aged normally. Oh God, that's what a hideous life!

Adam I don't know, he seems to quite like being pushed around in the pram and stuff.

Ava It's hard to have a lot of sympathy for the lecherous baby, I'll be honest with you.

Adam He is, it should be noted, a very lecherous baby, which is is quite disturbing.

Ren Yeah, watching this for the first time the other day, it starts with this animation and I didn't know what was going to happen next. And then when they call cut and it zooms out —

Ava Because that could have been a pre-feature thing, right? Sometimes films just have a little cartoon in front of them, or films of that era. So it could have been that you can read that as a fake out.

Ren So it it did feel quite surprising and magical!

Adam Aw. Yeah. I mean, it really sells this cartoon world. I mean, I guess, and this has been written about before, but it feels like the cartoons are kind of segregated, right? You have some kind apartheid, or at least sort of Jim Crow like-situation. It never really commits itself to being a commentary on racism or anything like that, but it seems like the Toons are treated as second-class citizens at least.

Ava Yeah, I mean, but whilst also being functionally immortal and allowed to do whatever they want, apart from the villain judge. I mean I don't think it's delving there, but there are definitely interesting parallels to make because it's just so strange, it's so strange everything that they do.

How exploited are these workers? Like what does it matter if the creature is immortal? I think it was something that I was reading afterwards, but it implied a sort of melancholy to Roger Rabbit’s character because he's so focused on well, people will only like me if I make them laugh, right? There's some weird stuff going on. I'm just going to leave it at that.

Adam Oh, yeah. I mean, he sees it as his existential function, right? He later says, you know, “I’m a toon! I've got to make people laugh.” And there are moments of suspense in the film where it's really imperative that Roger doesn't laugh because it draws attention to him, but he can't help himself. Every fibre in his being because he's a toon is urging him to make jokes.

But also this is clearly a commentary on the 1940s studio system. So we've mentioned we see Dumbo and actually I’d not appreciated how complex this shot is, but we see Dumbo flying outside the window of Maroon's office. And you see Dumbo through the blinds. And that sounds simple enough, but they are animating Dumbo. So they're having to animate Dumbo, right, while leaving bits of Dumbo out and make it look completely real —

Ava — and having him interact with the blinds, right. That was one of the things that struck me there, is that the blinds are moving in response to Dumbo’s trunk. Whilst not being hooked up to anything else — it’s such odd bits of puppetry because the puppetry is aimed at physical objects throughout the film.

Adam Yeah, and apparently poor sweet Dumbo has been got on loan from Disney.

Ava Along with loads of the cast of Fantasia who then show up in the next scene just as background characters and people that Eddie bumps into.

Adam Yeah, the broom. You could see the broomsticks and the little demons from the end of Fantasia. Yeah, it's all those little Easter eggs that I think make it really, really charming.

But yeah, so Eddie's hired to investigate. And as we say, he finds that Jessica is playing patty cake with Marvin Acme. And then Acme is found murdered! And I guess all fingers point to Roger as the spurned husband.

Ren So Valiant is bought into — well, 'cause he id this job of taking the photos of Acme with Jessica Rabbit but he was very conflicted about it because he said he didn't want anything to do with toons after his brother had been murdered by a toon. But he's unwittingly drawn into this, and he finds Roger Rabbit in his bed. He has a Murphy bed.

Ava Which he pulls down for a nap in broad daylight. Middle of the day is just like right, now it's time for a lie down.

Adam Yeah, because they look like just a bunch of filing cabinets where he'd keep his case notes, don't they? Yeah and Roger obviously says, you know, I'm not guilty, I'm not guilty, I'm not a murderer! and then handcuffs himself to poor Eddie, so Eddie's bound to Roger, even if he doesn't want to be involved. And soon they're being investigated by the antagonist of this film, Judge Doom.

Ren Yeah and this, this is where the children's horror comes in —

Adam With Christopher Lloyd.

Ava Yeah, Christopher Lloyd being the Demon Headmaster, right?

Ren Very similar aesthetic, yeah!

Adam So obviously he'd previously been in Zemeckis’s Back to the Future, but here he's a much less benign character. He has these nasty, very white, very fake, false teeth.

Ava I mean, it's a brilliant bit of casting just in terms of how Christopher Lloyd very much looks like a cartoon character and very much is able to perform as a cartoon character, even ignoring the twist.

Adam Yeah, so we we don't know at this stage.

Ava No, but ignoring that, still to have him be that cartoonish whilst being this villain, this nasty, uncaring, unfeeling, monstrous character who is like — oh my word, the putting of the shoe, the animated squeaky shoe in the dip. It's got to be like the most horrific kicking the dog of of any TV show, of any show ever.

Like, right, we need to establish just how evil this guy is. Oh yeah, he's just going to torture this shoe for being in the way. Which I guess wouldn't normally be a problem.

Adam But it’s a living shoe.

Ava And it’s adorable!

Ren Voiced by Nancy Cartwright!

Ava Oh my god!

Adam Little Bart Simpson shoe with a little squeaky voice. Well, not a voice, just squeaks. Adorable big eyes. And Judge Doom wants to show off this dip he's developed because before now there's been no way to kill toons and he's developed this dip which — Does anyone remember what it’s made of?

Ava It’s turpentine and acetone are the two main ingredients, which is how you clean a cartoon cel, right? Like this is completely factually accurate. If you wanted to kill a cartoon, that is what you would need.

Adam And he has these little uncanny elements to his performance that make him scarier. Like, I don't know if you noticed, Ren, but he doesn't blink once in the film.

Ren No, I didn't notice.

Adam We later see his wild cartoon eyes, but this sets that up, he never blinks in the film. And they often used a fan. When he is on screen just to make his cape move slightly. So he’s just got these tiny littl elements that make him uncanny, basically. Even before we know he's a cartoon.

Ava Knowing the ending, I liked how many clues there were throughout. I think paying alert attention to certain details will give away the twist and mystery element of the things. But it's just that thing of it being a very tight script in a lot of ways. Like everything that is said has actually got some hidden meaning or is is pointing back towards something. So you really do get that like noir conspiracy vibe running through it.

Adam Oh yeah and that screenplay was revised a lot of times over several years. And I think actually for the better here because it doesn't feel focus grouped, you know, it's still very weird. But it doesn't have any fat at all, it’s a very lean kind of film. For instance that they used to be more weasels, they had to cut those down. There were seven weasels.

So the weasels are Judge Doom’s henchman, basically, this nasty little police force and they could have helped with the interrogations. And it was meant to be based on the seven dwarfs originally, so Richard Williams designed his own weasel versions of the dwarfs and it was like: greasy, sleazy, wheezy, slimy, etcetera but they had to cut them down.

Ren There’s so much you could say about this film, I think it is a masterpiece. So much care and effort has gone into this film, which I think is just good to experience as a human. Just like, someone's put so much love into this film, and it's such a weird result!

Ava You do feel that love for the effort that's gone into it, but also it itself is a love letter to this kind of bygone era. Like, you know, film noir wasn't hugely fashionable at that point. And it's just clearly very, very in love with the whole history of animation building up to it and really wanted to celebrate that, whilst also talking about the Hollywood system and corruption in there.

One of the things that delighted me while reading the Wikipedia, I mean delighted slash horrified, is that one of the big themes of this is actually the trams, right, the red car trams that run through Hollywood. Eddie uses one of them to hitch a ride right at the very beginning and then borrow some cigarettes from some children, which is a lovely little character detail that you get there.

Like he helps a little kid get onto the front of the trolley car. But this has just been brought up by Cloverleaf, who it turns out are part of this giant conspiracy and attempting to build a freeway through LA and this is legit, right? Like this is this is one of those little details that like, to me, it just felt like, oh, it just really knows my particular like anti-car bias and my desire for public transportation. Like it references how great LA's public transport is at the beginning and says it's the best in the world. And then this is because part of the narrative is that… Well, yeah, a syndicate of motor companies bought the red car, bought the real LA red car so that they could throw it out of business, so that they could build that freeway that runs along the route that the trams previously did. Like, it's legit. Like, it knows the history and it cares about the history in a way that I love. I love that sort of thing: the layers of detail that run into this essentially very silly “Oh, what if cartoon characters were real?” And it kind of wants to delve a little bit into what that means. Like there's something about the idea that like… Well, obviously Daffy and Donald would be, like, having to supplement their income, like playing bars in between shows. And of course, they'd have like, a really petty rivalry.

I don't know. It's, it's, it's so strange on so many levels and I really appreciate it for it.

Adam Well, you're sort of suggesting that it's a very deep and textured film, so should we should we do Texture of the Week?

Ava I had actually forgotten until we sat down that I had to come up with the best texture. So yeah. But yeah, that's true. I'm sure I can come up with something

//Adam, Ren and Ava sing 'Texture of the Week' in high-pitched cartoon voices.//

Adam Maybe I should change our voices so we're high-pitched like cartoons or something. Okay, so Ren, do you want to start?

Ren Yeah, I mean, I think. It's not… Obviously there's a lot of choice and I went for quite an obvious one, but… It's just that, the monster from TerrorVision. It was just so much texture. I couldn't, couldn't snub it for 'Texture of the Week'.

Adam OK, so we'll move on to TerrorVision. Yeah, one of the the main - I guess, antagonist of of the film - although it's it's just hungry really… is this monster? And I think it doesn't redeem the film, but the latex monster, you know, it's definitely worth seeing, seeing a picture of because as you say, it is disgusting.

Ren It's so wet.

Ava I mean like I would specifically nominate the first time you see the granddad's face pull out of the mouth of the beast, right. Like, that is a texture that is a texture unto itself.

Adam Yeah, the amount of like KY Jelly they must have like slathered onto his face is ridiculous.

So, so, so mine is… We mentioned the shoe toon being dipped. And so for me, it's the shoe toon blood sludge on the black glove. So, Judge Doom wears this one black glove like a true kind of fascist when he when he does his dipping and after he's dipped the shoe, he's got this awful kind of…

Ava Yeah, I mean, it's so lovely as well in that, like, that's coded as very much coded as blood. But presumably it's just the ink, right? It's the ink that's gone into this character just being now dissolved and oozing down his hand. But. Oh. Yeah, it's a good texture.

Adam Did you, did you manage to come up with one?

Ava Well, so I mean, basically I'm just going to shoehorn in my own childhood trauma as usual. So I think… Weirdly like my texture is just the texture of cartoon… like, that clean block cell shaded - however you want to frame it, the texture of cartoons to me is so disconcerting, and so the constant pulse between the texture of like a gritty film noir and an actual cartoon… Like at that fundamental level. When I was young - I think I've told Ren this before - I might have even mentioned it on this podcast before… When I was young, one of my recurring nightmares was simply pastel blocks of colour. Just huge. Abstract pastel box of colour suddenly turning to these jagged, raw, like the same shapes but with all of the joins between them now being this like monstrously like a different way of drawing. These colours, a different texture to those colours. So this is kind of why I'm always fascinated by the 'Texture of the Week' thing, to be perfectly honest, which is why I think it might have gone before. But like, nothing represents this disconcertingness of like constantly flipping between these different textures. That is through this film. And I remember being really unsettled with this film when I was little. I remember really loving it on one level, being fascinated by it and excited about cartoons getting to be chaotic in the real world. Like, it's genuinely magic. But then even before you get to the fact that these cartoons are being dipped in it, dipped in dip and destroyed in like, really viscerally disgusting ways that are really played as horrific. They're really played as painful and torturous. Even before you get that, just that mix of textures puts me in a slightly uncanny place that means that the whole film has this texture of like, fear to it. That doesn't come through in the same way as an adult at this point. I kind of can distance myself from that by discussing the technique and the themes. But as a child, I think I was genuinely really upset by it and genuinely like had that slightly… I don't know. I had this with a lot of things that I watched when I was little where I didn't quite understand everything that was going on, where there was this kind of transgression between what I understood and what I didn't. And then this was just one of those films that I had recorded off the telly. And that in itself is another real, real odd texture of like VHS tapes that you've watched 100 times and don't quite understand.

Ren Did it have adverts in it?

Ava I don't think this one did. It will have had something in the beginning and I think I got a BBC screening of it at some point. So it was it was fine for adverts but… But yeah. Just the way it is layered is fundamentally quite disconcerting because it is a bit too real and like, like how much would you freak out if you if a cartoon walked into the room right now? Like, just think for a moment, right? Roger Rabbit walks in through the door. It's not a good feeling. Like everything that you understand about the world has just been dismantled right in front of you.

Adam And obviously this layering gets flipped. So, well, just over halfway through the film in which Eddie has to go to Toontown. So, up to this point, we've had cartoons integrated into the real world, and then Eddie has to venture across into Toontown.

Ava Like going through the tunnels [with] like genuine dread on his face, right? Like it's the central horror of having to go back to Toontown when he hasn't been there since his brother died.

Adam It's this painted black tunnel. And they painted the whole tunnel black. And then he's driving through and then there's this astonishing shot where these red curtains come up at the end of the tunnel and suddenly you're in Toontown. And it's visually really zany, really wild. Like it looks like one of those… It looks like about three old Merry Melody cartoons - like those old Disney cartoons - come to life at once. And you've got loads of these characters like skipping around and cavorting. Little bird circling around Eddie's head. You know, the plants weaving and dancing and singing, all these animals singing. It's just incredibly overwhelming. I think that tht moment, to me, it's a bit like in The Wizard of Oz when you shift.

Av But they've already established this ominiousness about it, right? Like Eddie's relationship with Toontown is complicated enough that when they first visit the factory like, and he's, he's like, “I haven't been this close to Toontown in ages”. And then they've got just got a shot over the wall. And so you've got this wall and behind it you have this cavalcade of colour and drama. And so you have that initial hint of it and then this opening up into the full, the full red curtain effect and it's all singing at you, literally singing. And Eddie is horrified - like, oh, it's lovely.

Adam And it kind of visually obviously changes as well, because this is where we have switched into blue screening and it looks a little bit like this could have been an FMV game. I did maybe think a little bit of like FMV adventure games I've played, yeah. But yeah, it's still great. They had a different animation team do Toontown, so. A lot of this film was actually interestingly filmed in Britain, so a lot of it was filmed in London and apparently it was very cold. So they're having to, you know, bring in all these palm trees and make it look like, make it look like LA, very hot LA. And apparently, yeah, it was bitterly cold a lot of the time. And then they had Industrial Light and Magic doing their stuff and then also an animation unit in California as well.

Ava I thought the animation unit was based in the UK as well.

Adam Yeah, no, the animation unit just for Toontown.

Ava Brilliant.

Ren Amazing.

Ren There's a sort of weird layer of like with Toontown that like at Disneyland, or at least one of one of the Disneyland, probably several of the Disneylands, there is a Toon town.

Adam Oh my gosh.

Ren They've made a real little town that's in the style of an animated town. Recursive layers.

Ava Everything has so many layers here, right? It is that fascinating thing of like this film has been made by projecting layers on top of each other and it's got lots of layers. It's very clever. I like

Adam But it turns out that the murder was committed by Judge Doom and his goons and that it's all part of this conspiracy to sort of take control of Toontown so he can then demolish it, basically.

Ava Demolish it and build a freeway. Like, I do really enjoy the scene of Christopher Lloyd explaining how delighted he is by the concept of a freeway. Like just the idea of like, it'll be, it'll be huge and then there'll be loads of cheap motels and he describes this paradise in this like, absolutely hellish way that has the genuine fervour for it. But yeah, I like, I like it.

Adam Yeah, and, and Eddie, of course, says that only a toon could come up with an idea that crazy..

Ava Yeah. Which again, bear in mind, it's real. Like this is a real piece of infrastructure history. I mean, sorry, to be clear, Toontown is not real. The idea of building a freeway to replace the public infrastructure that was already there is very much a real, real historical moment. So I appreciate Eddie. I like Eddie a lot. Eddie and Teddy Valium. I love that they're Eddie and Teddy.

Adam And it turns out that it was it was Judge Doom who also killed his brother. And he reveals his high cackling voice and his red staring eyes.

Ava Yeah, one of my favourite little like odd little clever script based clues here is that there's two times in which the word simoleons (sic?) is used to mean money in this film, right. And the first one is describing how Judge Doom bribed his way into office. And the second one is describing what the toon who killed Eddie's brother stole from the heist where that murder happened. So it's just, I don't know how I spotted this, but it's so lovely to me as a detail that they just used that same, like, classic noir slang just to make that connection and make it possible to kind of like, solve the mystery yourself. I love it. I love it. I love it. Sorry, I'm a bit too excited about this film.

Ren Well, no, it's great.

Adam Something that they did have to take out, though, because obviously, you know, Disney had to sign off on all of this, as did the other, you know, other film executives from Warner Brothers and the other studios, and apparently in one iteration of the script - and the screenwriters… So there's an audio commentary on the 25th (I think) anniversary Blu-ray release. Well worth getting - loads of extras. It's got a commentary with Zemeckis, Frank Marshall, Jeffrey Price, Peter Seaman, Steve Starkey and Ken Ralston. The two writers say that they wanted it to be Judge Doom who killed Bambi's mother!! But yeah, apparently Disney wouldn't let them do that.

Ava Oh, that's brilliant.

Ren It seems so unlikely that this film was made.

Ava Like, oh, well, then it must come from that fact that Disney was in such a slump at that time, right? It is interesting, the idea that like, in some ways this was part of the kick-off of the Disney Renaissance, right? Like, this was, this was a real success at the time, despite probably being, I think, the most expensive animated feature of the up-to-date [moment] as it was created and that was before it went over budget. But it was a huge success and it was popular, and it did genuinely make people excited about cartoons. And it made some of the stuff that Disney then started producing - now thought of as the Disney Renaissance – [what] it was. It was a kick start to some of that. And yeah. That's weird and amazing, right? Because this is a very… like, every step of the way decisions have been made to make something very bizarre, to commit to that thing, to make it as real and specific as it is.

I've talked/ I talk a lot about the fact that, like, for me, great art isn't necessarily about being, like, functionally good. Which, to be clear, this film is. But it's about people making strong decisions and fully committing to them. And, like, this is 100% a film that has decided to make that powerful decision of, like, “No, we are going to treat this like it is a real world where humans and cartoons coexist. And we're going to attempt to base everything on that completely. We're going to go full film noir. We are not going to, like… we're not going to stay back from that. We're not going to be coy about that in any way. We are going to make it be a film full of comedy-slapstick, because those are the elements that we're bringing together.”

And it does it, and it did it, and it was a great success as a result. Unlike the film that I'm normally talking about, unlike the Bob Hoskins film that I'm normally talking about when I say “I like a film that makes a strong decision and commits to it”, which isn of course, Super Mario Brothers 1993. I like that Ren absolutely knew that was coming.

Adam You could always. We could always have you back on the podcast to discuss that.

Ren Oh, my God. Oh, my God. That would make sense. That would make more sense than me trying to discuss TerrorVision, which we're going to have to start doing in a minute.

Adam Right. Yeah, we are. We are, so, so, so Judge Doom…

Ava (interjecting) SEGUE!

Adam [Judge Doom] has poor Roger and Jessica tied up ready to receive the dip, but is revealed as a cartoon himself and ends up being dipped himself. So in a moment that recalls the “I'm melting” scene from The Wizard of Oz, the dip is released; floods this factory. And I will say this was a real factory. So this is one of the few, few locations that isn't a studio set actually. I really love the factory's location. It's got some really bizarre background details, like there's a giant pink elephant, presumably one of the pink elephants on parade, I guess from Dumbo.

Ava I thought it was interesting how much of this physical space you're introduced to. Like, we kind of start off with an earlier spot and they do a load of ''Chekhov's cartoon mallets''.

Adam Yeah, yeah. You can see all of those props earlier.

AvaYeah, you see the props and you kind of they're just a throwaway thing, but they're almost all used in that final confrontation. Which is beautifully located within that space and really, really feeds into the nature of it, and it's horrifying. Like Judge Doom dies horrifically twice. Absolutely horrifically.

Adam (interjecting) Steamrollered!

Ava Like actually seeing someone steamrollered because they've got because they've got glued with their foot and hands to it. It's an appalling death. And then even more disconcertingly you see him have to reinflate himself, like you see himself, like, peel up.

Adam Oh yeah, that's a lovely bit of stop-motion, actually. They have have him sort of 2D sort wibbling about. And then he has to inflate himself with helium like a balloon.

Ava Which finally forces his eyes to pop out.

Adam And and then, yeah, he, he, he's melted and, yeah, I almost chose the texture of Judge Doom's corpse actually as my texture because he really becomes complete mush - like [he] liquidises and then at the end there's this awful kind of plastic latex mask of his face. Just, just, just with all the kind of goop around it.

Ren Which reminded me of 'The Substance'.

Adam Yeah, weirdly, actually, yeah. And it is is the kind of goop that we get actually in television. So that's one thing that unites these two films. They're both very //goopy//.

//Ava snortles//

Ren Yeah. From a beloved classic with an astonishing amount of effort and care put in it to TerrorVision (1986).

Adam Which is probably the groddiest film I've ever seen. I was trying to settle on the word.

Ava I think grody is absolutely the word. I think you could define grody using this film.

Ren Yeah. Which as we sort of trailed at the beginning does have a solid children's horror core to it, but is then…. Unrelentingly and Dementedly Horny. To which?

Ava Not knowing anything going into this film, right? Like, I was kind of expecting. I don't, I don't know what I was expecting, but I was expecting children's horror. I don't know if you know this podcast. I believe it's supposed to be about children's horror. And which which kind of could have held up for quite a lot of the intro. Like, you see we're in space and the beast is being disposed of, but is being turned into electricity and then beamed and bounced around the universe towards us. That all adds up and then we've got this set up with some kids staying home.

Adam Exactly! You've got two children protagonists and adults not believing them. You've got goofy humour. It's already colourful. It looks like Pee Wee's Playhouse (that someone's pointed out online). I thought, yeah, that's true. How is this not children tolerated?

Ava Well, the thing is that you step into it… I stepped into it expecting children's horror. And just found the innuendos… Quite a lot of like kids' films or family films quite often like have those little bits of innuendo for the parents.

Adam Exactly.

Ava And so like it kind of fades in in a way where it's like initially… It's like, “Okay, this is a little bit of its era, bit dated. I wouldn't really have made that reference now. Wouldn't want to talk about grabbing heinies so quickly, but I can see how they're doing that double layer thing.

Adam Excuse me, Ava – and I will quote from 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit': “50 year old's lust with a three-year-old's dinky.”

Ava OK, that's one moment of feeling like a bit deeply problematic in the middle of this film. Whereas this is just constantly that! Like, early on when I was still not quite sure what I was watching. And I mean, I still don't know what I was watching, if I'm perfectly honest. I could see that the innuendos increased. At one point I was relieved because they talked about going out to swing and then made a joke about it being they were going to some dance lessons. And it was only later on revealed to be like, no, no, we're going to see some swingers.

This is going to be a major part of the movie, like a good like 15-to-20 minute chunk is going to be the mum and dad of this film [swinging]. One thing I would say is, is Ren, in your intro, I think you referred to it as… or you implied that 'Roger Rabbit' was something where a lot of effort had been put into it. And I think you were implying there was no effort put into this? And I don't think it's zero effort. Like, I think there's been an incredible amount of set design work in particular, like the physical. The props, the scenery and all of those elements are clearly like labours of love in a way that is almost certainly the only redeeming feature of this film.

Adam I want a survivalist bunker like that grandad's, to be honest. If we're going to have to, you know, see out a complete civilizational collapse, I want his bunker. His bunker's great. It's got all the stuff in it. It's a brilliant bunker. And I want the grandpa's costume, which is a military jacket with plastic soldier toys glued to it.

Ren You're going to fit in really, really well down at the survivalist community, Adam. Just rocking up the libertarian rally. Your waistcoat coated in little army man.

Ren I did have the note – like, what is this house?

Adam It's a palace.

Ren It is some kind of mansion, some kind of erotic desert mansion.

Adam Yeah, an erotic desert mansion.

Ava It's just a classic suburban house, Ren. I don't know what you're talking about.

Adam Well, well, well, the couple who arrive, the man says, “Oh, it's very Greek”. And, you know, the husband says, “No, it's Roman”. So it's clearly got this kind of Roman influence to it. There's a lot of sculptures. There's very tasteful art on the walls.

Ren I mean, lots of it in every room.

Ava Yeah, no, their filthy art isn't limited to the pleasure dome in any way, right? In a way that is disconcerting.

Adam It's like the art is kind of like if Andy Warhol designed like erotic clip art.

Ava Is there not one thing that's just four breasts on a circle?

Adam What I kind of find fascinating about this film is, as you say, like, it's got this relentless horniness… and yet it's one of… I mean, I might like, maybe if you were a kid, like, you know, you were starting, you know, you started puberty and you watched this, like, maybe you'd find some of it appealing. But I think it's probably the least sexy film about sex that I've ever seen.

Ava Yeah. No, nothing. Nothing is sexy.

Adam Yeah. It's astonishing.

Ava Nothing.

Adam Yeah. Umm, well, and also like, it is like, OK, maybe why I felt this had a children's horror feeling is it almost… (Adam struggles to articulate a difficult point.) It's like a child's idea of sex, right? The way the characters talk about sex. Like the husband, like, you know, seeing someone's breasts, goes “Holy tomatoes!” Come on. “That bikini is dynamite!”

Ren Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good way of describing it. It's kind of… Yeah, it's kind of like an 11-year-old's view of sex.

Ava And I think it, I think weirdly it does kind of commit to that in quite a few ways throughout the process. Not least the kind of, like, the revelatory horror of the fact that all of the parents have been taken over by aliens is essentially just mum, dad, their two swinging friends, and grandpa all in bed together covered in horrible alien goop. And having the kids walk in on this in a way, yeah, and play it quite blasé. But also the kids are clearly horrified.

Adam And Sherman, the youngest kid, the boy, he says “I thought it was a monster.” And the older teenage girl says “That's OK, Sherman. Someday you'll understand.”

Ava I don't think Sherman should have to understand that.

Adam Yeah. I mean, I think child protection services probably be be getting on that.

Ava There's definitely a failure, there's an institutional failure to recognise what is going on in this house. On several levels.

Adam Sherman seems happy enough… like, he loves his granddad and he loves playing around with guns. In terms of child actor with massive prop guns, I think this this film wins out because Sherman has to spend a lot of time with really proper lmilitary grade guns.

Ren Yeah, did either of you see the 'Bojack Horseman' episode where, like… Todd is asexual and he has he has a girlfriend who's also asexual and they have to go and meet her family it's like like this kind of comedy reversal where the family are all, like, enormously sexual and at every possible instance. And they're trying to tell, she's trying to tell her parents that she's [asexual]. Yeah, I felt like they were… This family is like that family.

Ava Yeah. Sherman could have easily grown up into Todd, right? Like, I mean, maybe, maybe not the libertarian gunman [part].

Susie's hair and costuming is utterly fabulous. If we're looking for some positive things for me to say about this film, like, oh my God, Susie looks incredible in this film. Like, it's like the perfect embodiment of 80s teen neon bouffant hair in multiple layers. Those little Madonna gloves. Yeah, everything perfect about the costuming there. She also went on to play Princess Joanna in 'Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure'. Which is a significantly better 80s film I'm going to say. I'm willing to put my flag in the ground there. Do we need? Were we trying to describe the plot? The satellite is broken. I don't know. The monsters come to Earth. The parents are swinging. Grandpa's. Grandpa's exposing his child to, like, finally pornographic Medusa Horror Night.

Adam Well, so Medusa is basically like a kind of parody of Elvira, as long as I could tell. Yeah. So, you know. Buxom presenter in revealing costume who makes lots of innuendo and presents horror films. Very low rent horror films, basically. If 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' is a love letter to film noir and classic animations, you could say this film is a love letter to kind of bad 50s horror and sci-fi basically.

Ava Well, I think it's a love letter to like… I think one of the things that does explain, like, the weird kind of nostalgic perviness of this is… I think it's a love letter to growing up in the 80s, right. And it's in the sense of, like, being a child exposed to media that you shouldn't and, like, being excited to stay up late and watch horror. Like, you know, this is clearly made by people who love horror films. And I think it is a real experience of, like, kids seeing this sooner. And like, I don't think it's like a sensitive satire, but I think that there is there's a satirical nature to how it's just saying, like, this is what kind of 80s capitalism the word wrought/ makes/ creates. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to defend this film much. I did quite enjoy it. Like, I cackled a lot. There were definite moments of cackling throughout. It makes strong choices and commits to them. So I guess I think it's high quality art, so…

Ren I did like the monster. Yeah, I like the monster.

Ava The monster's very good. The monster's, like, a giant boglin with an extra eye and bonus mouths that just appear whenever they need to.

Ren Yeah. So, the story is that these… the monster is called a hungry beast. And it's a kind of house pet that people have on this planet, but they are prone to mutation. And when they mutate, they have to be exterminated, which is done by transforming them into pure energy and beaming them to the furthest reaches of the galaxy.

Ava And unfortunately, in this case, the furthest reaches of the galaxy was Earth. Which was just a bureaucratic error that like… there's a very, very worried waste disposal alien.

Ren Yeah, the sanitation captain just keeps appearing on the TV to implore the people of Earth to turn off their devices.

Ava For the next 200 years. Like, please turn off your television for the next 200 years!

Ren Which I do think is a good children's horror plot.

Adam It is.

Ren Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To come back to this, is it sponsored by Heineken?

Ava It must have been sponsored by Heineken. There was Heineken money in this. There's a lot of Heineken.

Ren Also odd, but… yeah.

Ava I mean, weirdly, the thing that that reminded me of was 'Blue Velvet', which has a scene in it where Karl McLaughlin really enjoys some Heineken and then goes for a wee and, well, satisfied-ly weeing at the urinal just shouts “Mmmmm Heineken.”

//Adam and Ren laugh uproariously!//

Ava So, like, they weren't the only people getting Heineken money. TerrorVision wasn't the only people getting Heineken money it this era, which makes me feel like they must have been being quite profligate, with some people in the Heineken marketing department who did not have a concept of quality control or, like, caring for the reputation of their brand?

Adam Well, interestingly with 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', it said on the commentary that they didn't. They wouldn't disclose. Sadly. I'm assuming it was Heineken now. There was a drinks company that really wanted it to be their drink that Roger drinks when Roger drinks alcohol. In the film, it's like his head kind of goes red and it becomes like an alarm, like a smoke, like what are they called? It's like a train-

Ava Train whistle.

Adam Yeah, yeah, like [a] train whistle. His head becomes a trade whistle when he jotters around and causes, like, the walls to shake. And yeah, that drink company really wanted it to be their drink. Even though as the writers kind of pointed out, it doesn't look like it has a very nice effect, like it would seem like one odd thing to want to drink.

Ren The monster reminded me of the toffee monster from the toffee monster book that we talked about a little while ago.

Adam Maybe there needs to be a children's horror kind of novelization of this film. I could write that. I think if you removed some of the aspects, you know, it would be a great little children's horror novel.

Ava I don't think it would be hard to… for this film to have been a really good piece of children's horror. Like I think it's, it's only that desire to transgress and be incredibly horny. And portray swinging in quite so much detail.

Adam Yeah, it is quite limited to that.

Ren Also pretty homophobic, but like, specifically against Greek people?!

Adam Yeah, that bit's really odd, isn't it? Because it feels like otherwise it's going to be a really non-judgmental kind of open-minded film. And then suddenly, yeah, the odd thing about the Greek guy, yeah, really fancying the husband, it suddenly becomes reactionary. It's really strange.

Ava I mean, I don't know whether we're supposed to, like, praise the husband in that situation anyway. Like, I don't know. I don't know if the message there was that he was being unaccepting unnecessarily. Like, it's more just like sex farce kind of stuff, but not in any way committed to… I don't know what, it's just strange. It's a strange film. I don't know why you made me watch it.

Adam I don't know, but I did, yeah. I think it would be fair… listeners to the podcast at this point. If people are, like, listening to the 'Roger Rabbit' bit, then, you know, stop the episode. I get it, like… You know, it might be that whoever made the children's horror list accidentally added TerrorVision to their list.

Ren It is 15 rated like as well, by the way. Just so our listeners are aware.

Adam OK. Yeah. I mean…

Ava And I guess that they are targeting specifically 15-year-olds as, like, the only possible demographic.

Adam No, I think 15-year-olds are too old to enjoy this.

Ava Particularly immature 15-year-old.

Adam Yeah. OK. Yeah. So basically, basically Beavis and Butthead are the target, are the target demographic for this film. So yeah, you know, if you're listening to this and you're like “My tastes are exactly that of Beavis and Butthead…” And there is a there is a guy who loves metal in this who is a bit kind of like Beavis, but he is a bit like a Butthead type character actually.

Ava He was also able to like whisper and calm the alien down by the resemblance of his metal gloves to the gloves of the caretaker of the sanitation facility. Makes no sense whatsoever.

Adam Yeah, we get a nice sort of subjective alien flashback to the alien being petted by the sanitation worker.

Ren Yeah, I did enjoy that, actually, Yeah.

Ava And yeah, and then, but then that leads to like a brief chunk of the film where, again, it's been like, now the parents have been off. Like the structure of this film is a bit off. That's what I'm trying to say.

Adam Oh, yeah, you get this 10 minutes of them just, like trying to teach the alien to talk.

Ava And yeah, like, it suddenly becomes that sort of film where it's like, oh, like, I mean, it references 'ET', right? And actually it's doing that thing of like, “This alien, like, let's teach them to talk and show them telly and music and food, the three most important things in human culture”, according to Susie. In a way that, like, genuinely delights me. Look, I'm not even saying that it's wrong.

And yeah, but then it feels like, it feels like it's going to become a satire. Like, I don't know. I don't know. It's weird. It's weird because it's doing all of that after it's spent quite a long time in the sex fast mode.

Adam Yeah, I mean, OK, so if I had the inclination (which I don't) I guess I probably could make a kind of 45-minute edit of this film, which does work as a children's horror film.

Ava Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think there's a couple of the innuendos that are just about acceptable. So you wouldn't just have to be cutting out all of the dialogue. And it would probably need to be reordered a little bit and it would probably still be quite weird.

Adam Yeah. But I don't think, I don't think it's worth it. I don't think there's a masterpiece to be salvaged here, if I'm honest.

Ava No, I did enjoy it. The theme music is incredible.

Adam By the Fibonaccis.

Ava The Fibonacci provided like a television theme song that is like a really lustrous piece of Italian pop.

Ren Can you give us some of the theme tune in the in the edit?

Adam Yes, here's the theme tune.

Ren Thank you.

//The theme tune of TerrorVision plays//

Ava I'm trying to remember it to start singing it at that point.

Adam And oh, the granddad has a good idea about eating lizard tails.

Ren Oh yeah, he's an entrepreneur. He's a dragon [dragon's den].

Adam Yeah. So that's quite good.

Ava It's a shame that Medusa… Like, it does feel like they fully like Deus Ex Machina to like solve everything and then Medusa Ex Machina to destroy and immediately murder the solution that had arrived to the whole situation.

Adam It is quite funny that they have the spaceman, the sanitation worker arrive and he's going to just sort it all out and then Medusa appears and smashes him over the head and his head explodes and then she's like, “Yeah, I'm a hero”, and then they all die.

Ava Yeah, it's a pleasing moment.

Ren Yeah?

Adam Well, look, at least you've got some good Halloween costumes from this film for the next Halloween. Like I want to be Grandpa with his jacket.

Ava I'm going to be Susie. Oh, no, I should be Medusa. I should be Medusa.

Ren Oh, OK. Oh, well, maybe I'll be Susie.

Ava I thought that you would have liked Susie.

Ren Yeah. I really… The Cyndi Lauper of all it all.

Ava Yeah, yeah, very Cyndi Lauper, yeah.

Adam Yeah, okay, so that was TerrorVision.

Ava If anyone feels obliged to watch it as a result of our discussions, I would like to apologise in advance.

Ren Yeah, we're not suggesting that, to be clear.

Ava Yeah, like while I feel we are all struggling to try and dig up as many redeeming features as we can, I don't think it's a masterpiece.

Adam Yeah. That's fair, right?

Ren Thank you for joining for us for this. For this discussion, Ava, it's been lovely to have you.

Ava Well, it's been a pleasure. It's really nice. I'm slightly distressed at what you made me watch, but I loved one of them. I loved one of them a lot.

Ren And yeah, we'll maybe have you back for some more Bob Hoskins action in the future.

Ava I mean, I definitely want to talk about Super Mario Brothers more. I'm keen on that. I don't think it's really horror, but it does have a lot of those kind of like horrific visual elements to it.

Adam Well, that's the thing. I mean, my criteria when I choose stuff is just did this or would this have horrified me as a child? And that does give us a very broad remit… The Mario Brothers film definitely did.

Ren All right, so, our intro music by Maki Yamazaki, our outro music by Joe Kelly, artwork's by Letty Wilson. You can find our details in the show notes where there's also a transcript. You can email us at [email protected] or follow us on Instagram at Stillscaredpodcast.

Adam And what's that one where people say really, like, sassy comments about films?

Ren Letterboxd?

Adam Yeah. Yeah, On Letterboxd as well.

Ava How sassy is StillScared on Letterboxd.

Adam I don't know. Fairly sassy. I basically use my movie reviews from Mubi but only for children's horror.

Ava OK, OK. I see.

Ren Do you have a sign off for us, Adam?

Adam Yeah, just watch 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit', not TerrorVision.

Ren A factual one.

Ava Very classic, down the line.

Ren See you next time, spooky kids.

//All say goodbye and outro music plays//

In this episode we talked about Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl.

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared Talking Children's Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and TV. I'm Ren Wednesday, my co-host is Adam Whybray and today we're talking about Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl.

(Intro music plays)

Ren Hi, Adam.

Adam Hello, Ren, you rascal. How are you doing?

Ren I'm doing alright, are you in the mood to talk about a weird book?

Adam Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to say about this book of random malarkey!

Ren Yeah, Charlie and the random malarkey.

Adam Yeah, it's an interesting one, and considering what an impression it made on me as a kid, I could hardly remember any of it.

Ren Well, same. Well, same. Yeah. This is Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator by Roald Dahl from 1973, illustrated by Faith Jacques.

Adam What? Oh, I've got the Quentin Blake illustrations.

Ren Oh do you? Oh, okay, so I was going to do the cover check first because I deliberately got a vintage edition.

Adam Oh, no, I've got the new edition. So I assume there’s some edits. I mean, it still seemed pretty offensive to me, so I can't imagine.

Ren Oh, OK. I'm curious to see.

Adam Yeah, I don't think it's been that edited, if it has been. You know, after all this farago about editing Roald Dahl to make him politically correct and so on. They left a lot in there if so!

Ren Yeah, we'll come to that. What's your front cover?

Adam My front cover is definitely a scritchy Quentin Blake illustration and it's of Willy Wonka, Charlie and Grandpa Joe ascending in the elevator above the planet Earth into space.

Ren And yeah, your interior illustrations are different too, that's interesting. OK, so mine is from 1978 and it has a full colour illustration on the front that shows the the whole crew: Willy Wonka, Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Charlie's parents and then the rest of the grandparents in their bed, crammed into this glass elevator, but they look quite jolly about it. And they're descending into a green pastoral landscape and being hailed by the Oompa Loompas.

Adam And and what do the Oompa Loompas look like?

Ren The Oompa Loompas are just small white people wearing loincloths.

Adam Yeah. I mean, that's similar to Quentin Blake's illustrations of them, I would say. They've got very sticky up hair, but that's pretty much how Quentin Blake does hair anyway. So what is your memory of this book?

Ren My memory of this book is just vermicious knids and Grandma Georgina becoming a minus.

Adam Yeah, same here.

Ren And that is it.

Adam And a general ambience of dread and confusion.

Ren Yeah, exactly. A general sense that it is a bad book, not in terms of quality, but in terms of being malevolent.

Adam Being a wrong book. Which it is.

Ren Yeah, that you might hide. Like you might not want it to look at you on your bookshelf, that kind of book.

Adam I felt like that about The Witches. But this is a much weirder book than The Witches. The Witches is straightforwardly scary, you know, it’s basically a horror book for kids. Now this is ostensibly science fiction, I suppose? A kind of fantastic Jules Vernes-esque romp, perhaps?

But it's probably more deeply unsettling, like existentially unsettling than The Witches.

Ren Yeah.

Adam And I think especially if you go into it expecting anything like Charlie the Chocolate Factory, because structurally it's so different because Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a really satisfying narrative progression in which you have Charlie, the good kid, and then a bunch of naughty kids going through trials which expose the naughty kids as naughty and they receive some kind of comeuppance, and then Charlie is rewarded with the Chocolate Factory at the end of the book.

Whereas this, the plotting of this book is really weird. And I think it's really hard to describe because basically it's a book in which simultaneously a lot happens, like things happen of ontologically and philosophically, massive proportions like reality- warbling proportions in terms of what's happening, and yet simultaneously it's a book which nothing happens at all and there is zero narrative progression.

Like completely zero, like it's a book of complete stasis even while this elevator is zooming up into space and then into the bowels of the earth. And I think — and that's the kind of highbrow way to explain it — but I do think that gets to why it's so disturbing as a child, this weird sense that a lot is happening and stuff is happening that makes you kind of question the way reality works, in a way that's confusing and strange. And yet it's really hard to remember what happens because really nothing happens. Does that make sense? It's hard to explain.

Ren It does make sense. Yeah, it doesn't feel like a sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It doesn't feel like a proper book.

Adam It doesn’t feel like a proper book.

Ren It feels like Roald Dahl had a weird night's sleep and jotted some stuff down and turned it into a book.

Adam Oh, yeah, it feels like if you're watching an improv show, and the improv show had gone on for 24 hours and all the performers were really sleep-deprived. And they were still trying to be funny, and some of it was kind of funny, but other bits are just confusing and scary.

Ren Yeah, it does feel like that!

Adam And stuff was happening, but it didn't really make sense.

Ren But also it's it's doing that using these characters who have become quite beloved, but just putting them in these alarming and nonsensical situations that feels quite frightening for them.

Adam And I think you'd also expect more of the Chocolate Factory.

Ren You would.

Adam You get some of the Chocolate Factory, but also it turns out that this Chocolate Factory contains a minus land, which seems to be the realm of the not-yet-born. Right. OK. So that's an astral plane. So somehow, a Chocolate Factory owned by an eccentric billionaire contains an astral plane. That is quite a lot to accept as a reader, I think.

Ren It is, I think it's a big ask.

Adam It’s like the Twin Peaks, The Return. If Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is original Twin Peaks, this is Twin Peaks The Return, where it's like: right, you wanted weird, now this is going to be weird!

Ren So this book begins pretty directly after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory left off —

Adam Oh, immediately! Yeah.

Ren With Charlie's extended family being collected by Willy Wonka and his glass elevator as Charlie's been chosen to inherit the factory. And there's his parents and there's still these three other grandparents who refuse to leave their bed, so the bed comes with them, too. But Willy Wonka insists that in order to re-enter the factory, they have to go higher first.

Adam Why? Why?

Ren Yeah, so they keep going higher and higher and, I think reasonably, Grandma Josephine panics at Willy Wonka's erratic behaviour, but it prevents Wonka from pressing the correct combination of buttons at the correct moment and oops, they are in orbit.

So, they're spotted by the pilots of a transport capsule for Space Hotel USA. Which is a a vast hotel that's that's about to be furnished with crew from this capsule. And Willy Wonka decides that it would it would be fun to beat the shuttle to the space hotel and get on board before they do. So they do. And this is where they encounter —

Adam But before the encounter, right, there's quite a long a long chapter with the president and various members of state. And I don't understand how Roald Dahl thought this would be appealing or interesting to kids. It's really odd. It reads like this kind of strange political cartoon or satire of American politics, kinda aimed for children. But what it's doing in this book, I have no idea.

Ren Yeah, who knows? The President of the United States is quite an important character in this book for no reason. And he's a very stupid and emasculated president. I don't know if this is meant to be aimed at Nixon, who I guess would have been president at the time?

Adam It doesn't feel like if it's a parody of Nixon, if it’s a parody of Nixon it’s a really weird parody of Nixon! Because if you're going to parody Nixon, right, he needs to be kind of weasley and conniving and grotesque. And this president is just a soft boy.

And there's a whole bunch of comedy business between him and his nanny, Miss Tibbs, who is, to quote: “The power behind the throne. She stood no nonsense from anyone. Some people said she was as strict with the president now as when he was a little boy.” And she even gets a strange, A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll style song about the president.

Ren She does. It's all entirely baffling. Yeah, I think the bit that has probably been somewhat edited between our versions is the exchange with the the Prime Minister of China?

Adam No, no, I don't think it's been edited.

Ren Ah, okay, cool!

Adam I mean, it's funny because I like to see myself as someone who's against too much censorship or so on. But yeah, it's not on, to be honest. It's a rough read. It's basically the kind of most corny, cringey jokes about how Chinese people stereotypically speak. Over like two pages. It's pretty bad.

Ren It's pretty bad.

Adam It's like you've just wandered into some awful Bernard Manning or Ken Dodd routine, basically.

Ren Why?

Adam And also not only is it offensive and rubbish, but also why? Like, there's no reason for it to be there at all. On any level. Narratively the whole chapter doesn't need to be there. Why is there this chapter about this soft boy president? It’s completely inexplicable.

Ren So yeah, I completely forgot all of that. I guess I probably didn't really read it very thoroughly, it probably wasn't very interesting to my 10 year-old self, unsurprisingly.

Adam After Roald Dahl's got that out of his system, then our intrepid band of explorers do arrive at the Space Hotel.

Ren And there is some malarkey where NASA is listening in to their exploration of this hotel, so Willy Wonka pretends to to speak Martian? I don't know.

Adam It's not Spike Milligan quality, this, I have to admit. You know, it's a bit like On The Ning Nang Nong, but it's basically just silly noises.

Ren Yeah, silly noises. And then when you think this book might just be a bit boring, it becomes terrifying.

I kind of want to read a fair bit.

Adam Feel free to basically read Chapter 7, frankly. This is where the children's horror really suddenly hits.

Ren OK.

"In the lobby of the Space Hotel, Mr Wonka had merely paused in order to think up another verse, and he was just about to start off again when a frightful piercing scream stopped him cold. The screamer was Grandma Josephine. She was sitting up in bed and pointing with a shaking finger at the lifts at the far end of the lobby. She screamed a second time, still pointing, and all eyes turned toward the lifts. The door of the one on the left was sliding slowly open and the watchers could clearly see that there was something… something thick… something brown… something not exactly brown, but greenish-brown… something with slimy skin and large eyes… squatting inside the lift!

Chapter Seven

Something Nasty in the Lifts

Grandma Josephine had stopped screaming now. She had gone rigid with shock. The rest of the group by the bed, including Charlie and Grandpa Joe, had become as still as stone. They dared not move. They dared hardly breathe. And Mr Wonka, who had swung quickly around to look when the first scream came, was as dumbstruck as the rest. He stood motionless, gaping at the thing in the lift, his mouth slightly open, his eyes stretched wide as two wheels. What he saw, what they all saw, was this:

It looked more than anything like an enormous egg balanced on its pointed end. It was as tall as a big boy and wider than the fattest man. The greenish-brown skin had a shiny wettish appearance and there were wrinkles in it. About three-quarters of the way up, in the widest part, there were two large round eyes as big as tea-cups. The eyes were white, but each had a brilliant red pupil in the centre. The red pupils were resting on Mr Wonka. But now they began travelling slowly across to Charlie and Grandpa Joe and the others by the bed, settling upon them and gazing at them with a cold malevolent stare. The eyes were everything. There were no other features, no nose or mouth or ears, but the entire egg-shaped body was itself moving very very slightly, pulsing and bulging gently here and there as though the skin were filled with some thick fluid.

At this point, Charlie suddenly noticed that the next lift was coming down. The indicator numbers above the door were flashing… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… L (for lobby). There was a slight pause. The door slid open and there, inside the second lift, was another enormous slimy wrinkled greenish-brown egg with eyes!

Now the numbers were flashing above all three of the remaining lifts. Down they came… down… down… down… And soon, at precisely the same time, they reached the lobby floor and the doors slid open… five open doors now… one creature in each… five in all… and five pairs of eyes with brilliant red centres all watching Mr Wonka and watching Charlie and Grandpa Joe and the others.

There were slight differences in size and shape between the five, but all had the same greenish-brown wrinkled skin and the skin was rippling and pulsing.

For about thirty seconds nothing happened. Nobody stirred, nobody made a sound. The silence was terrible. So was the suspense. Charlie was so frightened he felt himself shrinking inside his skin. Then he saw the creature in the left-hand lift suddenly starting to change shape! Its body was slowly becoming longer and longer, and thinner and thinner, going up and up towards the roof of the lift, not straight up, but curving a little to the left, making a snake-like curve that was curiously graceful, up to the left and then curling over the top to the right and coming down again in a half-circle… and then the bottom end began to grow out as well, like a tail… creeping along the floor… creeping along the floor to the left… until at last the creature, which had originally looked like a huge egg, now looked like a long curvy serpent standing up on its tail.”

Here we get an illustration, at least in my edition.

Adam Same here. What does your illustration look like, is it coloured?

Ren No, it’s black and white, it’s a line drawing of this creature in the door of the lift, in the shape of an S, with it’s one eye looking out. Quite textured.

"Then the one in the next lift began stretching itself in much the same way, and what a weird and oozy thing it was to watch! It was twisting itself into a shape that was a bit different from the first, balancing itself almost but not quite on the tip of its tail.

Then the three remaining creatures began stretching themselves all at the same time, each one elongating itself slowly upward, growing taller and taller, thinner and thinner, curving and twisting, stretching and stretching, curling and bending, balancing either on the tail or the head or both, and turned sideways now so that only one eye was visible. When they had all stopped stretching and bending, this was how they finished up:”

And here we see the full display of them, spelling out:

" 'Scram!' shouted Mr Wonka. 'Get out quick!'

People have never moved faster than Grandpa Joe and Charlie and Mr and Mrs Bucket at that moment. They all got behind the bed and started pushing like crazy. Mr Wonka ran in front of them shouting 'Scram! Scram! Scram!' and in ten seconds flat all of them were out of the lobby and back inside the Great Glass Elevator. Frantically, Mr Wonka began undoing bolts and pressing buttons. The door of the Great Glass Elevator snapped shut and the whole thing leaped sideways. They were away! And of course all of them, including the three old ones in the bed, floated up again into the air.”

Adam I think maybe why it's so effective is because things have been quite slow and sedate up to that part. And then, I mean I love the suspense built up by all the elevators coming down, that's terrific.

Ren It’s effective horror!

Adam Yeah. And it's just such a weird image these egg-like shapes. I think maybe when you think of eggs, you think of that perfect smoothness and hardness and then the fact that they're also bulging and pulsing underneath, that they’re kind of liquidy? I mean that encapsulates my Texture of the Week.

Ren Yeah, shall we?

Adam Shall we sing? I mean I was thinking there's the oompa loompa diddly do song from the film.

Ren and Adam, to the tune of the Oompa Loompa song Texture, Texture, Texture of the week. Texture, texture, texture of the week!

Ren Yeah, I mean it is basically the vermicious knids, but I got an extra one which is later when they are re-entering Earth's atmosphere with a vermicious knid wrapped around the elevator and it starts burning up. And it says it made a noise like bacon frying.

Adam How horrid. So Willy Wonka explains to them that these are these creatures are vermicious knids.

Ren They're dirty beasts!

Adam Yeah, he tells Charlie: “If they'd have got them, you'd have been a cooked cucumber. You'd have been rasped into 1000 tiny bits, grated like cheese and flocculated alive. They'd have made necklaces from your knuckle bones and bracelets from your teeth.”

And Charlie, in what feels a bit like an editorial insert says why would they tell us to scram if they want to kill us and eat us? And Wonka says, well, it's the only word they know. OK.

Adam But while they don't kill and eat Wonka and and Co, they certainly do kill and eat a lot of subsidiary characters who aren't important.

Ren They do, the poor space hotel stuff get thoroughly chomped upon.

Adam Not the astronauts, only the working class stuff, I note.

Ren The bellhops and the maids, etcetera.

Adam Yeah, which is broadcast, or the sound of it is broadcast live across the entire globe.

Ren It is. But before that the great glass elevator is chased by an enormous vermicious knid.

Adam That butts itself against the elevator with the pointy end of the egg, which turns out to be its butt. Yeah, and then there's a whole song about it’s butt. At times this is a weirdly butt-centred book.

Ren Yeah. So we can politely pass over that, I think. And then we get the nurses song, which is about the president.

Adam I don't know what the tune is, maybe I should go for it. Might be fun.

(Squeakily)

"This mighty man of whom I sing,

The greatest of them all,

Was once a teeny little thing,

Just eighteen inches tall.

I knew him as a tiny tot.

I nursed him on my knee.

I used to sit him on the pot

And wait for him to wee.”

And so on.

Ren And so on. Thank you. Yeah, it is very like the: "Speak roughly to your little boy and beat him when he sneezes” from Alice in Wonderland, yes.

Adam Yeah, it is. “He only does it to annoy —“

Ren “Because he knows it teases” Yeah.

Adam And then we get an epic space battle!

Ren And then we get an epic space battle! A squadron of vermicious knids attacks the transport capsule and the great glass elevator has to tow the survivors to safety.

Adam It's like something out of HG Wells crossed with a really obscure stupid adventure game puzzle.

Ren Yeah. And then one of these vermicious knids turns itself into a snake and wraps itself around the elevator and then the rest of them form a chain, and they're trying to to hook onto the elevator and the space capsule and draw them back. But Wonka manages to find the downward acceleration button and they end up streaking through the Earth's atmosphere and burning up all the vermicious knids. And then they crash back into the Chocolate Factory!

Adam Halfway into the book. Halfway into the sequel to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl’s best known book.

Ren Yeah. And then we sort of get reset.

Adam So basically, that first half of the book might as well not have happened. It's kind of a prologue, I guess.

Ren Yeah. So if you're feeling suitably discombobulated. You're like, oh, okay, now we're back in the Chocolate Factory. We're familiar with the Oompa Loompas, we know them. But the grandparents will still not get out of bed.

Adam And Willy Wonka has kind of strange plan to have them work in the factory? Like his main reason for wanting them out of bed is their labour, as far as I could tell, which is quite odd.

Ren Yeah, quite odd.

Adam So Charlie now owns the Chocolate Factory, and of course Charlie is going to get his bedridden grandparents to labour away in the factory until they die. I just found that completely inexplicable.

Ren In case you're wondering, Charlie's parents have next to no bearing on anything. They are just about there.

Adam Yeah, only just about there. They're quite eerie, actually.

Ren Yeah, they’re so void, it's a bit odd.

Adam They're given so little dialogue, and when they do, it's all very generic. It's really strange.

Ren So Wonka’s plan is to use his de-ageing medicine Wonkavite on the grandparents.

Adam Yeah, yeah, and if you didn't think that Willy Wonka possibly offing or killing off young children or at least putting them into perilous situations in Chocolate Factory was bad enough, here it turns out that he's been conducting experiments on the Oompa Loompas that seemingly are so horrific he won't even directly talk about them, even when pressed repeatedly by other characters.

He’s like: “It took hundreds of experimental attempts." And when they’re like: “OK, what happened”, he’s like: “No, not going to talk about that.”

Ren It's really ominous.

Adam It’s so ominous! Which I guess that's sort of the character. Like that's how Gene Wilder obviously played him in the film. I think it tips the balance from eccentric billionaire into genuinely terrifying evil scientist.

Ren Yeah. Genuine madman.

Adam It's quite disturbing.

Ren Yeah, but despite this, the grandparents do decide that they will take these pills and in fact become so keen that they each take four. Oh, an Oompa Loompa comes and sings them a song about it. And they take four of these pills each despite the Oompa Loompa quite clearly singing that they will each reduce their age by 20 years.

Adam I guess this is a bit of a callback to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in which the Oompa Loompas sing about the dangers of say gluttony, and then a child commits gluttony, or the danger of watching too much TV and then a child watches too much TV, that kind of thing.

So it's a little bit of an anti being greedy thing maybe? It feels like there was really half-hearted edutainment bits in this book. It's like Roald Dahl's editors or his publishers have said, look, Roald, you've got to put in some stuff to keep the kids on the right track because some of this is a bit, you know, keep it clean, mate. And so he's like, alright, so he just adds in a random stupid poem out of nowhere about not taking medicine from the cabinet.

Ren He does, yeah, about not taking laxatives. And I didn't design to remember that at all. So that took me by surprise.

Adam I don't know when Dirty Beasts was published, the collection of poems, but it really feels like a B side, you know, a poem from one of his poetry collections that was not very good and it's just shoved in here.

Ren Yeah, so they take these four pills, which means that Grandma Josephine and Grandpa George become babies, and Grandma Georgina, meanwhile, becomes a minus.

Adam Nooo. That's what child me goes: “nope.”

Ren I know it's so wrong, it's so horrible. And as you mentioned this means that Wonka with Charlie in tow have to go to the hellish astral plane within this Chocolate Factory that is minus land.

Adam I hate it so much. Even as an adult I still hate it. It's awful.

Ren Yes, to administer Vita Wonk, which is the antidote. So shall I not get you to read this chapter?

Adam What, the description? No, I think I should. Okay, I'll read some of chapter 17, Rescue in Minus Land.

Ren Maybe from: “Charlie stood at the open door”?

Adam Alright.

"Charlie stood at the open door of the Elevator and stared into the swirling vapours. This, he thought, is what hell must be like… hell without heat… there was something unholy about it all, something unbelievably diabolical… It was all so deathly quiet, so desolate and empty… At the same time, the constant movement, the twisting and swirling of the misty vapours, gave one the feeling that some very powerful force, evil and malignant, was at work all around… Charlie felt a jab on his arm! He jumped! He almost jumped out of the Elevator! 'Sorry,' said Mr Wonka. 'It's only me.'

'Oh-h-h!' Charlie gasped. 'For a second, I thought…'

'I know what you thought, Charlie… And by the way, I'm awfully glad you're with me. How would you like to come here alone… as I did… as I had to… many times?’”

Waurrrghh.

Ren Waurggghhh. I don’t know what he was up to!

Adam I don’t know, we’ve suddenly gone into like Clive Barker territory or something.

Ren Absolutely deranged. So they see the ghostly figure of Grandma Georgina, in the vapour, and because she doesn't really have a human form anymore, she's a minus.

Adam And to be fair to the illustrators, this is a hard task. So Quentin Blake, I think cops out a bit and basically draws a ghostly grandma. And it's like, no, that doesn't make sense because she's aged backwards. She's aged into a child and then she's the other side, so you can't draw her as old, it doesn't make sense.

Ren Yeah, this one is still — I mean, her features are very obscured by the mist, but she does still look fairly grandma-esque. A tricky job.

Adam She needs to look like some kind of impossible foetus.

Ren Yeah, he has to administer the Vita Wonk with a spray gun, to ensure that she gets enough. Although he does overdo it.

Adam He loves it, doesn't he. He's a trickster. He knows what he’s doing.

Ren He says that she may be “a teeny tiny bit over plussed” But when they leave the hell dimension and go back up, they find out that she is 358.

Adam Can I read the awful description?

Ren Yeah, Thanks.

Adam “Her tiny face was like a pickled walnut. There were such masses of creases and wrinkles that the mouth and eyes and even the nose were sunken almost out of sight. Her hair was pure white and her hands, which were resting on top of the blanket, were just little lumps of wrinkly skin.”

Ren And I've got an illustration to go with this which makes full use of the cross-hatching texture in these wrinkles. I don't think I liked this illustration as a kid.

Adam Yeah, I really like Quentin Blake. I think Michael Rosen's sad book as illustrated by Quentin Blake is one of the peaks of children's picture books. At his best, I think he is remarkable. But he doesn't quite work for Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. It might be ‘cause he doesn't tend to go in for texture as much, he mostly does line work. His illustrations for The Witches are perfect, but I don't think he’s quite the right illustrator for this.

Ren So we're getting towards the end of the book.

Adam What is this plot? What is the plot??

Ren And then they age the various grandparents back to the age that they started with, so, cool? And then Mr Wonka gets a letter from the president Inviting them all to a special celebration for saving, some of the people.

Adam Yeah, good point. They save some of the people. They save the astronauts.

Ren And that is enough to finally get the remaining grandparents out of bed.

Adam And I hate the fact that a visit to the White House is treated as more extraordinary, more exciting, more wondrous than going into space and meeting aliens, venturing into an astral plane. It's like, oh yeah, we've transcended space and time, but the really big deal here is meeting the president and getting a medal.

Ren Yeah, and that's it.

Adam That's it. That’s the book. OK, so it ends:

"A group of extremely important-looking gentlemen came toward them and bowed.

'Well, Charlie,' said Grandpa Joe. 'It's certainly been a busy day.'

'It's not over yet,' Charlie said, laughing. 'It hasn't even begun.’”

Like what? What do you mean it hasn't begun? That's the end of the book!

Ren Yeah, why did you just tell us all of this!

Adam And there's not a sequel to this book. So it definitely has begun and finished! You know, we don't get ‘Charlie and the American President’.

Ren No. Or even another book where we experience the whimsy and wonders of the Chocolate Factory. Imagine that.

Adam We've just had monstrous egg aliens and some kind of weird astral realm based on mathematics and that's it. That's it. And some really, really pointless songs that aren't very good.

Ren So yeah, thanks Roald that was —

Adam This is a hot mess of a book.

Ren It really is.

Adam I think I knew something was up with the book as a kid, but I don't think I made a quality judgement. Now as an adult, I’m like, what is this? Come on.

Ren Yeah, as a kid I was just like, this makes me feel bad. Now I'm like no, just on every level. I feel like it would be out of print if that wouldn't create more demand for it. People need to collectively ignore it, I guess.

Adam Yeah, it's a terrible thing. It's a terrible thing. Like, it’s so odd because he can write really good stories, right? He is excellent at plotting. Matilda has excellent plotting and Matilda's late, right. So it's not as though he started good and tailed off, Matilda is one of his last books, and Matilda is perfectly plotted.

I know some of the early one, like James and the Giant Peach is very much one thing after another, but it makes sense. The only thing I'm glad of is that now the Netflix own the right to all Roald Dahl, someone presumably is going to have to make a film of it. Someone, probably right now, is crying as they try to make this into a screenplay. Who would direct this, do you reckon?

Ren Oh umm, Ari Aster, I don't know.

Adam That would be great, actually. Yeah alright. I’d be up for that. Maybe Ari Aster can collaborate with with Jan Svankmejer for his final film.

Ren Let them loose on it.

Adam But yeah, as I say it's a hard to illustrate book and I suspect a remarkably unfilmable book, which makes me really want a film of it.

Ren I mean, watch this space. We're going to be we're going to be straight on the scene if there is a film of this.

Adam Yeah, the Netflix adaptation.

Ren I mean, we said they wouldn't do The Swan and apparently they did The Swan.

Adam That's a fair point.

Ren Which I haven't seen yet. Did you?

Adam Did we talk about the Netflix versions? No? Oh, Oh, I did see it. Yeah. It's all right.

Ren OK, maybe you just said that. Maybe you're just like, oh, it's alright.

Adam The Wes Anderson ones? Yeah, he's just a really odd choice for Roald Dahl because he's so deliberately textureless. I mean, I quite like some Wes Anderson, you know, I love Royal Tenenbaums and Grand Budapest Hotel was great. And so, you know, I do like him, but obviously it's all very particular and just so and clockwork-like, and that's why it's pleasing a lot of it. And the emotions just kind of show through the cracks,

But he's a very odd choice for Roald Dahl because Roald Dahl tends to be too much. It tends to be grotesque and over-textured and a bit unruly and odd. So a very strange person to be doing the adaptations.

I mean, I don't know if there's any more Roald Dahl for us to talk about. You know, the BFG scared me quite a lot as a kid, and we could always talk about the animation, obviously.

Ren It is quite well-trodden territory.

Adam True, it’s more well-trodden.

Ren I think we will come back to Roald Dahl.

Adam I mean, I don't think even we could make a case for The Giraffe, The Pelly And Me being a horror.

Ren Aw, that's nice. Let's cap this off by thinking about The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me.

Adam Which is a lovely cozy book that children will actually enjoy rather than just be confused by.

Right, let's finish. It's a bad book.

Ren That I had a good time talking about. Oh yeah it’s a bad book but fun to talk about. Do you have a sign off for us, Adam?

Adam Not not really. I normally do, but I just like, I don't know, just read The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me, creepy kids, do yourself a favour.

Ren See you next time!

Adam Bye!

(Outro music plays)

In this episode we talked about the anime and in passing the manga of The Promised Neverland written by Kaiu Shirai and illustrated by Posuka Demizu.

Our email address is [email protected] and we're on instagram @stillscaredpodcast! Intro music is by Maki Yamazaki, and you can find her music on her bandcamp. Outro music is by Jo Kelly, and you can find their music under the name Wendy Miasma on bandcamp. Artwork is by Letty Wilson, find their work at toadlett.com

Transcript

Ren Welcome to Still Scared Talking Children's Horror, a podcast about creepy, spooky and disturbing children's books, films and TV. I'm Ren Wednesday, my cohost’s Adam Wybray and today we're talking about the anime The Promise Neverland.

(Intro music plays)

Ren Good evening, Adam.

Adam Good evening, Ren. That was a very gentlemanly way of saying it. I feel like I've been delicately introduced. Good evening. How are you feeling?

Ren Umm. (sceptical noise) I am not the most prepared I've ever been. I have just finished watching the series that we're talking about, so on the one hand, it's fresh in my mind. On the other hand, it was a bit last minute.

Adam You made the exact sound I imagine a squiggly face smiley makes.

Ren Yeah (repeats sceptical noise)

Adam And when I got back into my laptop -- I've talked about Frankenlaptop before, it’s really being held together by plate metal as put into place and screwed on by my dad, after the hinge broke, and this laptop really is on its last legs now so the screen just goes black occasionally as it fancies — But, I feel generally quite guilty about buying electronic devices even though I try to get them second hand, so I'm really putting off getting a new laptop. But anyway, what happened listeners, is that my laptop screen went black. I said to Ren that I had to put the screen down, which meant disconnecting the call and when I reconnected Ren was — I don't want to say squawking, that sounds really rude — but it was. It was an arresting sound. You say you were doing your Duolingo, which I don't think means doing an impression of Duo, I imagine. What were you practising?

Ren Well, German as ever. We're currently talking about the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Adam Oh wow. I mean, your German must be pretty advanced because I remember you reading Goethe in German when we were at universities. Like slogging through Elective Affinities.

Ren Yes, uh, I wouldn't say I understood every word. It was more of an overall impression of the Goethe that I was getting, but I did read a fair bit of Goethe in German.

Adam It’s much better than my Czech where I could probably say like: I have a potato. I mean, it's all you need, but still.

Ren Speaking of potatoes, I don't know. I don't, I don't think there are any potatoes. Sorry,

Adam I think that's an audacious transition!

Ren If we were watching Attack on Titan, I know there's like a potato subplot and there's one of the characters who's really into potatoes. Like her whole thing is eating potatoes.

Adam Cool. Maybe I have to watch Attack on Titan.

Ren I’ve been thinking about it because it also has a high wall in it.

Adam Yeah, I should probably mention in my animated horror book because, like, those giants are pretty grotesque, right? The cannibal giants.

Ren Oh yeah. I mean, I actually kind of stopped watching it because I found I found it too grotesque.

Adam Wow. OK, so has it got BFG energy? Attack on Titan?

Ren I would say it has BFG energy, yeah.

Adam Yeah, so we are we are talking about another anime. It's been a while. And manga, so I've read quite a few volumes of the manga. Did you just watch the anime?

Ren Yes.

Adam Of the promised Neverland!

Ren The manga ran from 2016 to 2020 apparently, and the anime started in 2019. We've only watched the first series because apparently it gets bad.

Adam Yeah, it's almost universally slated. I think it tries to compress a lot of the latter part of the manga into just one season, and that can really kill an adaptation.

Like one of my favourite visual novels of all time is Umineko which I think probably is the best visual novel. It’s quite a claim, but to be honest, there are a lot of bad visual novels.

It is a bit like saying what's the best PowerPoint presentation, which is Daniel Hayes PowerPoint adaptation of Jeff Brundle's computer in The Fly, where he replicated the whole computer in PowerPoint form, creating a PowerPoint that was too big for his laptop to load without crashing. But still, it was the best PowerPoint I have ever seen by a long, long way. Like, I think about it quite regularly because it’s the pinnacle of the form, frankly.

But anyway, Umineko is the pinnacle of visual novels but the anime is rubbish because the visual novel’s about as long as — I think someone worked it out and it's basically the same as reading The Hobbit, The Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings 2 1/2 times through or something.

Ren Wow.

Adam It's very long and the anime is not, and I think the same to a lesser extent with The Promised Neverland. It's a long manga and I think it compresses a lot into the second season and as such kind of flattens out a lot of the nuances of the characters and rushes the plot, apparently. So I know a bit of what happens later. But I'm actually not that interested. I think this works as a really good self-contained, almost prison break narrative. So do you want to explain what the Promised Neverland is about?

Ren Yeah. So spoilers for the whole of the first season, we always kind of spoil things.

Adam We do.

Ren I never really mention it, because I don't really care about spoilers.

Adam I think we're similar. I used to really upset my my film students and I upset my secondary school students actually with it too. Really annoys me because it upset them with Romeo and Juliet. They're like: Oh, he said they're going to die! It says it in the prelude! It says it in the introductory monologue! These star crossed lovers are going to die. Pay attention.

Ren So our settings is this orphanage with thirty-eight siblings. They're not actually related, but they grew up together as siblings. They're all numbered with a five digit tattoo on their necks. And all of them will leave before they turn twelve.

But no one who leaves the orphanage, ostensibly going to a foster family, ever writes back. And they never hear from them again

Adam Because they're having such a nice time.

Ren Because they're having such a lovely time. Yeah. And it's this quite pastoral setting, these scenic grounds. But also their learning system is quite high tech and a bit Minority Report-esque. So it's a combination of some old fashioned setting alongside technology.

Adam But they seem to be having quite a lovely time. And I guess the manga takes slightly longer with this than the anime and so it's maybe a bit more convincing on this front, but like, a lot of the kids look small. I mean, one thing I appreciate here is that the toddlers look like toddlers, right? There are some pretty adorable chibi little kids in this.

Ren Aw yeah, the little chibis.

Adam And yeah, in the opening chapter, they're frolicking about playing games and tag and hide and seek, and they're really affectionate with each other. I think it does a pretty good job establishing this as at first, a safe and happy place.

Like, you never quite buy into it because you know you're picking up a horror manga, but, I don't know, it worked for me. There's something seductive about it and the kids look so cute. Yeah, I don't know. To me, even knowing that something bad was going to happen. I kind of bought it.

Ren Yeah. And I feel like maybe the setting of the house can go both ways because in one sense it’s quite gloomy and it's all dark wood and corridors and heavy doors. But on the other hand it can be quite charming and sort of farmhouse. The protagonists are the oldest kids. They're eleven, Norman, who is white-haired and intellectual, Ray who is dark-haired and cynical and Emma who is orange-haired and enthusiastic. And they are the top of the class. They have these tests, something to test their intellectual capacity and those three are always top of the class.

They have been told never to go to the fence or the gate that’s past the woods where they live because it's dangerous.

Adam Yeah, it has a very clear kind of boundaried setting that you know is going to get crossed in the same way that you get in fairy tales, right? A bit like Bluebeard. Oh, there's one room that the wives cannot go into and you know that they're going to try to get into that room - or don't stray from the path and the kids stray from the path.

Ren Yeah. But when they start, it doesn't seem like they have, but then little Connie who’s about six, is being adopted. So they're saying goodbye to Connie, and she promises to write when she leaves. She'll never forget about them. And she's dressed in her little boater, and her little blazer.

Adam And you know, it's important here, right, that the artist and the animators in the anime really sell Connie adorably cute and they do.

Ren Yeah, yeah. But she's forgotten Little Bunny.

Adam Oh no, it’s awful! This really cute bunny teddy!

Ren So Emma and Norman run after them so that Connie doesn't leave without little Bunny. And they go past the gate and they find an extremely dead Connie in the back of a truck. With some kind of flower growing out of her chest, it was a kind of blood-red hydrangea I think.

Adam And holy heck, that's my texture of the week. So let's just get out the way Texture of the Week because that there is mine.

Adam and Ren (scraping noises) (grotesque voices) Texture. Texture of the week, of the week.

Adam And listener, I gasped. So I read the manga first before I watched the anime. So you get, I believe, I'm trying to remember if it's a full splash page, but you turn the page and you see a very young, very dead child with a flower rupturing, sprouting really unpleasantly out of her body.

And I don't know, I just wasn't expecting something that nasty! And obviously I've read The Drifting Classroom which was also written for young teenagers and they had a lot of child deaths. So like I was aware going into it — The Drifting Classroom is from the 1970s. So I was aware that there's been decades of manga, you know, written for pretty young readers, or at least young teenage readers that probably go harder than you would expect in Western comics. Basically that are more graphic, or certainly more willing to kill off young children.

But it still got me. Like, I don't know why, but I just wasn't expecting such a cute, young child to be killed that quickly. And to see it like that, it genuinely shocked me. How about you?

Ren Yeah, no, me too. I think it's just so abrupt. There’s no ceremony.

Adam No, I think that's it. It's just it's there, there's a really vertiginous moment, but. Yeah, it's not even the most gory image, but I genuinely found it very shocking. And that's partly why I do think this is a horror series. Narratively, as I say it works more like a kind of prison break narrative, you know. It's quite thriller-y, I suppose, despite these supernatural elements. But because that happened so early, it just feels like all bets are off after that. You're like, right, any of these characters can get killed and it can get nasty.

And so after that, it just creates this incredible sense of fear and tension because you just know it's a completely merciless universe they're living in. Yeah, possibly a bit of an exploitative narrative mood, but it basically makes the whole rest of it work, I think.

Ren Yeah, I can't remember what the film was, but I remember watching a film where the rich people have gone to live on a moon or something. And down on Earth everything's very dystopian. But there was a point in the film where a child was about to die, and they didn't kill the child. And it was like a real narrative cop out. It was like, this would have been so much stronger if you had just killed that child. So, I mean, I've got to respect the absolute willingness to just kill the child. Narratively.

Adam Yeah. I think narratively it can be really effective because it can give you that sense that this is unsafe, right? That it’s not going to play by rules that certain characters are too young to die, like for me seeing Hereditary in the cinema, without wanting to spoil it too much for anyone who hasn't seen it, but there's the only film where I've sworn out loud in the cinema.

And if people have seen it, they'll probably know which scene.

Ren I haven't seen it, but I know the moment.

Adam Yeah. And I just wasn't expecting it. You know, I thought that the film was playing by certain rules, and then it wasn't. And after that I found it so much scarier because I was like, I have no idea what's going to happen, I don't know what set of rules this is playing by now.

And yeah, I think for me. That's why the mother and the other adult figures, or seemingly adult figures, you know, whether they’re adults or they’re demons, it’s kind of unclear from the reader's perspective for a lot of it. But that’s why they're so frightening. I mean, that does get resolved, but at first you're not quite sure exactly what or who these adults are. But you know that they are willing to kill our main characters.

I don't know. For me, say with The Demon Headmaster, which obviously I love. You're never quite sure if the demon headmaster would be willing to do that. I feel like he's clearly willing to do it indirectly, to put the kids, say with the shovelling snow, he's clearly willing to put the kids in very unsafe situations. And his minions are willing to do it, but with the demon headmaster you get the sense that he doesn't want to get his hands dirty. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah, I guess it's it's an interesting question: how threatening should you make the antagonists in a piece of children's horror?

But yeah, at this point the demons are also introduced. So do you have a texture?

Ren Umm. Yeah, it’s a bit of an odd one, but Sister Crone’s evil pirouetting? We'll talk about her. She's very flamboyant in her movements and talks to herself about her plans and she's obviously meant to come across as a bit insane. But while the mother is very buttoned up, Sister Crone is much more flamboyant.

Adam Yeah. It's very much like a lawful evil and chaotic evil, who end up somewhat plotting against each other. But the mother, as you say, is very much this sort of fascist authority figure, whereas Sister Chrome is clearly meant to be unhinged, basically, and is much more of a cackling villain, I suppose.

Ren Yes, the way she dances and pirouettes in this sort of reverie of her schemes I guess I found quite…

Adam She's kind of appealing! It's really tricky because, I mean, we will talk about her more, but she's a really problematic character. But she's also kind of likeable for some reason.

I mean, how do you feel about the kids here? I like Emma. I guess it's that sort of enthusiastic tomboy kind of character. Like, you know, you get in Enid Blyton.

Or what's that awful one that I had been interviewed about as a kid and I said I didn't like it very much — Swallows and Amazons. She's kind a bit of a classic children's book character, you know, like Anne of Green Gables or Pippi Longstocking. This red-haired, enthusiastic character who can be a bit brash, but her heart's in the right place. And she's a likeable character.

Ren Yeah, I agree.

Adam I mean the three main kids are archetypes and the impression I get from the manga is that their characters get a lot more interesting as the manga progresses because they're put in more difficult, compromising moral situations and some of them have to make some very difficult decisions and then the characters become more complicated.

But at this point they're very much little kids still and I think, I think they're fairly straightforward.

Ren Yeah, Norman's quite preternaturally intelligent, he's a genius boy, and pretty selfless as well,.

Adam Yeah, he's a pretty lawful good, you know, pure good character, basically.

Ren And then Ray’s sort of a bit of an edge lord.

Adam A bit of an emo, yeah.

Ren But. Yeah, he's all right.

Adam Yeah. I mean, the characters are fine. I don't think at this stage of the series it's really about character, I think it's about plot. And that's unusual for me to like because I'm not normally that interested in plot. But I feel like this plot is so well paced and so well structured that I just found it really addictive. So this is the point obviously, where you realise, right, they're going to have to get out of this fake orphanage, right?

Ren I don't think we've mentioned, yeah, the kids are being killed by demons. They are a luxury good. They are human meat. Raised on this farm and sold, well their brains in particular, are sold as a delicacy to demons and this demon that they overhear says there will be some high quality ones soon which means Norman, Emma and Ray.

So that's just quite a lot for them to take in, in this first episode. But even from the beginning, Emma is adamant that they're all going to survive. All of the kids are going to get out of this orphanage, this fake orphanage.

Adam What did you think of the demon design? Because they're weird looking creatures.

Ren Yeah, what do they look like? Longue tongues.

Adam Yeah, they’re kind of elongated. They look quite stone-like, almost. They have these fleshy tongues, but their heads kind of look like these elongated or ovoid stones. Sometimes their eyes are positioned oddly, like one above the other one. And then they have these very long, slightly tendril like claws.

Ren Oh yeah, you don't see a lot of them in the anime.

Adam I think you see more of them in the manga. They're quite odd looking, like it's an unusual design. I think they are quite creepy. I like that they look alien. They seem like they are a completely different species to the humans, I think that's important.

Did you ever read the novel Under the Skin, the film's based on, the Michael Farber one.

Ren No.

Adam OK, so that's about aliens harvesting humans to eat, basically. It follows the main character who's an alien disguised as a human woman as she harvests humans. And then, you know, we get the farm where the humans are kept and it works very effectively. It's vegan propaganda, basically. But one thing I liked about that is you get a description of the aliens and they’re four-legged, I don't know, it's hard to quite imagine them, but they seem almost like a shaggy haired deer or something. But with longer legs. And then the main character, this alien, has to undergo these surgical procedures in order to allow her to go undercover as a human.

And it'd be interesting if they'd done something similar with the demons here, maybe if the demons had to bridge the gap. The demon realm at this stage, at least in the manga and you see less of it in the anime it’s, kept very separate from the human realm.

And on one level I think that works because you get the idea of the demons as this sort of shadowy ‘them’. Like this conspiratorial force who are far above the humans and that these kids are like mice in a maze and the demons just so far above them. But at the same time, to a degree it removes them as a threat.

There isn't actually that much in the first season of the anime, after that first terrifying moment where they have to hide from the demons as they discover the corpse. There's very little of the kids and the demons in close physical proximity at this stage. I think there's quite a lot of that later on, and the demons are more complicated and you get factions and some demons who are ideologically opposed to eating humans. Like you get vegetarians and vegans and so on. But you don't really get that at this stage.

Ren Yeah, the main antagonists here are these two adult humans. So the mom, the mother, she has this very neat uniform. You're not quite sure if she's human at first because it does sort of seem like it could be a costume. But outwardly very caring to the children, but at the end of episode 2, Sister Crone turns up for more security. Because the mother realises that Emma and Norman went to the gate. So should we talk about Sister Crone?

Adam Yeah. So is Sister Crone the only black character?

Ren I think so.

Adam I think so too, and to be fair I haven't read all of the manga so it might be that there are more characters of colour introduced. I say characters of colour, I mean obviously this is ostensibly set in Japan. I think that becomes more apparent later. But you know, it's a Japanese series. But yeah, Sister Crone is the only black character.

Ren So there's a certain grotesquery to the animation at times, and particularly to the animation of her. She looms a lot, there's a lot of views of her from from underneath and she's shadowed a lot. But also the way she's drawn her lips are very big, her eyes are very big. And watching it, you're like, well, that is pretty, reminiscent of racist caricatures.

Adam And I think that's also maybe reinforced by the fact that she's in this mother role and she has a maid or nanny costume, almost. And I think for a western viewer it maybe recalls the mammy stereotype. But then I don't know whether that would be something a Japanese viewer would be aware of, you know, obviously there's going to be some Japanese viewers who have seen say — Umm, what’s that film I've never actually seen — Gone With the Wind. Yeah, but definitely there is anti-black racism in Japan and blackface and it does feel at least visually like the character is a racial caricature.

Ren Yeah, I think probably visually more than in terms of her behaviour. She’s quite flamboyantly mad and she has this little baby-face doll that she talks, and at one point she’s talking to the kids, and it’s kind of singing, like talk-singing. So she's quite an exuberant, villainous character.

Adam Yeah. On some level she's the character I — ‘like’’s not quite the right word, but she brings a lot of energy. The mother character doesn't because she's so still. And also she becomes perhaps at times more sympathetic. With Mother — I mean, there's some plot revelations that make her maybe a pitiful character, but still, she's a hard character to feel much sympathy for. Whereas I think with Miss Crone, you do.

Ren You find out in episode 7 that she has the tattoo on her neck and she tells Emma and Norman and Ray that girls who live to twelve have the chance to become a mother themselves, but they can never step outside the farm because they have this auto-destruct device implanted in their chest.

She’s an interesting character, she's shown to be intelligent. She's scheming, she wants to be a mother herself. So she's scheming against the mother of the house saying that she'll help the kids in exchange for getting ahead. And I think she becomes pretty sympathetic in her last episode, in which the mother realises that sister Crone made this bargain with the kids and tells her, oh, you're going to be the mother at Plant 4.

Adam You're getting promoted.

Ren You’re getting promoted, yeah. But in fact she goes to the gate and is the second, well, the only person we actually see being impaled with this flower through the heart.

And then as she's dying we get flashback of her life in this world and she says: Oh, they were in it together, I had no chance of winning from the beginning. And I wondered if there was an implication about race there because it shows her in these flashbacks and how she's always been the only black person in her class, in her orphanage, in the mother training or whatever. And all the striving she's had to do to get to the point of where she was, and how that's broken her I guess.

Adam Yeah, I found that episode quite affecting, it's definitely the episode I found the most moving. So you know, I don't want to outright defend it because if someone else watches it and says: “Nah, this is racist and unpalatable” or just finds it offensive or unpleasant, I wouldn't argue against that.

But I think there is an argument that it's trying to do something. Whether it succeeds, I don't know. But I think that at least might be deliberate.

Ren I think that visually it is like pretty dodgy —

Adam — And it's a shame, because it doesn't need to be right. Like it would be perfectly easy to have her as a character and and not use any racial caricature.

Ren Yeah, I thought it was interesting that when you see her when she's younger in these flashbacks, she looks much more straight forward. She just looks like a kid.

Adam Yeah. She looks like the other characters, basically. The style isn't different.

Ren Yeah, so it's it's like: Oh, you can do it.

Adam I guess the other main narrative is that the three kids and they recruit some other kids, but our three characters are working out the lay of the land, like exactly what the rules are, the geography of the house, there's a lot of map work basically. And precisely how they're going to escape.

Ren Yeah, they realise they have trackers, quite early on and discover because a new baby gets delivered to the house and they check on the baby where this tracker might be and find it's behind the left ear. So they know that they're being tracked and where it is, but they can't do anything about it. But Ray is working on something that will disrupt the trackers.

And there's a lot of back and forth about whether they can really escape with all the kids, which Emma is adamant that they need to but Ray thinks is impossible. And Ray himself is an interesting character, he has an interesting position. Norman realises that there is a traitor in the house somewhere, someone's feeding information to the mother, and Norman lays a little trap and finds out that it's Ray. But then it turns out that Ray's an extra-double-inside-traitor where he's giving information to the mother, but he's only doing that so they can get more information on how to escape!

Adam Yeah, that stuff's pretty fun. And then they start to train up the younger kids under the guise of just play in order to get them ready for the escape, which I quite enjoyed. You get montages of them obstacle coursing their way through through the forest.

Ren Yeah, it's good. There's bits of 3D animation in the series, like in the house. This dark, shadowy house with its doors and corridors. Which I think works pretty well.

Adam I think it's a space that you end up knowing quite well and it is an eerie space. I like the way that it both feels like the kind of boarding school you might get idyllically presented in a kids book, but also very sinister. Maybe like some of the school spaces in Diana Wynne Jones or something like that.

Ren And they find a secret cellar room at one point that’s full of the children who’ve been killed keepsakes, like Little Bunny, which is very upsetting.

Adam I mean, I think that's why I find the series interesting, right? So the drifting classroom, I guess, is different in as much as, the film's obviously very strange, but in the manga there's just peril all the way through. There's not much time for hijinks in The Drifting Classroom manga, because it's just peril upon peril upon peril. It never lets up.

Ren Upon elaborate time travelling schemes.

Adam Yeah, relentlessly dense. And on some level that's amazing. I love it because there's something really hysterical about that and ridiculous and bizarre and I love that. Like it's always turned up to 11. But it also takes the edge off the horror, because it's just constant. Whereas what I find interesting about The Promised Neverland is that it’d almost be easy for the kids to slip into pretending like everything's still OK — and that's what they have to do for the little kids.

So they have to present this scheme to escape to the little kids as though it is just fun and games. And so the little kids are still adorably cute and they're still laughing and smiling and having fun. And so. I feel like there's this really interesting tension created between the facade, which they have to on some level still keep up. And so on some level you're still getting quite a lot of cute imagery all the way through. So you have that, and then you have moments of really quite upsetting horror, like you say, this basement room with the keepsakes of murdered children. So I don't know, I find that really interesting, tonally, because —

Ren It's got range!

Adam It kind of does like because on some level it's a bit of a cosy watch, but it's also really super dark, like quite shockingly dark for something clearly aimed towards a teenage or young teenage audience.

So I find that quite interesting. It's sort of of a piece with other modern young adult fiction. Like I think you could say the same thing really for The Hunger Games, which on some level is a kind of classic adventure story, in as much as it's got characters working together to overcome odds and it's got obstacles and fending of yourself in the wild, but it's also really, really bleak and upsetting and violent.

Ren Yeah. It's got some weird, nasty stuff in there as well. Like I remember, like I think it's in the first book, Katniss and Peter are trying to escape from flesh eating hounds that have the faces of the dead kids.

Adam Yeah, yeah it's really upsetting, like wild, unhinged body horror moments. And when one of the characters I think slowly gets ripped to pieces, I can't remember, that's the first or the second book, but it's nasty. Like properly nasty.

And I guess I found that interesting because I think it used to be that you’d get that in Stephen King, say clearly that's what Stephen King is doing in something like It. Inasmuch as yes, there's the horrible Pennywise, really nasty stuff with kids being murdered, but also there's a lot of kids on bikes nostalgia.

But with Stephen King, OK, teenagers like Stephen King, but he was always marketed essentially as an adult writer. Whereas Hunger Games and Stranger Things, say, are clearly really sold to a teenage audience, like, lots of kids love Stranger Things.

And it's interesting because I'm now finding, and there's been a fair amount of moral panic over this, but lots of kids love Squid Game. Loads of kids in my school watch Squid Game, but in a way that's not surprising, right? Squid Game is only really one step up from The Hunger Games.

Ren Yeah, I mean, it's got this addictive structure, it's not surprising.

Adam Yeah, so I don't know, I just find it kind of interesting the position that stuff aimed at a teenage audience now occupies. I mean, same with films, right? I can't remember, did you see The First Omen? It's a prequel to The Omen, which came out last year.

Ren No, I haven’t.

It was really good. Well, I thought it was really good. That's not the complete consensus, but personally, like, it was one of my favourite films of the year, I thought it was brilliant. But there were some scenes in that, and one scene in particular where I couldn't believe it was 15 rated. I was like, what? What are the BBFC thinking? That's wild. I was astonished it wasn't 18 rated. Not quite to the degree of writing a letter to the BBFC, but almost.

So, it’s not something I'm massively concerned with, like I listen to Evolution of Horror and lots of listeners on there who seem like well-adjusted happy individuals talk about watching adult horror films like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, et cetera, at a very young age. So I don't think it's a massive concern, but I do find it interesting in terms of marketing and what is aimed towards a younger audience because I would have found The Promised Neverland very disturbing as as a 12 year old, maybe even as a 13 or 14 year old actually, just in terms of how unsafe it feels at times.

But then, you know, hypocritically, well, maybe not, I've got copies of the manga and I have copies in my classroom and, kids have borrowed them and like it. It's totally popular with the kids.

So yeah, what did you think of it overall? Like overall, do you like it?

Ren Yeah. I enjoyed watching just the first season as a standalone thing. I feel like I don't really need to watch anymore. They escape. But it's a very satisfying escape narrative.

Adam No, I feel exactly the same. It's funny. Like I know that there is a lot more world-building in terms of how the society came about, that there's been some kind of war between the demons and the humans, and then there's a pact that was made that the demons leave the humans alone as long as a certain number of them are harvested, basically. And some demons are on board with this, others aren't. There's the rich family who came up with the pact and run the farms, etcetera. So, you know, all of this is kind of fleshed-out and the characters get more complex. But I'm not actually that interested in finding out about it.

And I don't know why, because I do like it. It's not like, you know, there's something like Twin Peaks, for instance, which obviously, has more going on, it's a more complex series. But Twin Peaks for me, you know, David Lynch obviously died a few weeks ago and. For me there's never enough Twin Peaks, you know, I've watched the series multiple times, but also Mark Frost’s books, I’ve read The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. I've listened to whole podcasts on Twin Peaks, I’ve read countless think-pieces and essays. It's something that I I have spent hundreds of hours thinking about. And I want all that lore.

Whereas I don't feel like that with The Promised Neverland, even though I do like it. It's good.

Ren Yeah. I mean maybe it’s something like a short story, 'cause I write short stories sometimes and in speculative fiction short stories you don't have a lot of space to do a lot of world-building and all the stuff you would do in a novel, but you want to get enough to get a sense of what this world might be like and to tell your story within that kind of thing. And I think this first series does that quite well. It's like I have a sense of this world, I don't know the details of it, but —

Adam It's enough.

Ren That's enough. Yeah.

Adam So it's available on Crunchyroll here in the UK, if you're willing to put up with some short ads or obviously not if you subscribe to Crunchyroll and I would recommend it. I think it's a satisfying thing.

Ren Yeah, I would agree. I realised — this is not related — that they did a remake of The Witches in like 2020.

Adam Didn't we discuss it?

Ren No, no, I don't think so. Did we?

Adam Didn't we? I've seen it. I didn't like it that much.

Ren Maybe I thought you were talking about the original, because I didn't even realise there was a new one.

Adam I quite like the original. I mean it's flawed, but I like it. Like the one of Anne Hathaway. Yeah. Yeah, it's all right. It's not great.

Ren We don't need to do it for the podcast then.

Adam I don't know. I think there's always more obscure Roald Dahls, we need to do The Minpins, or the Great Glass Elevator.

Ren I’m actually quite no looking forward to going back to The Great Glass Elevator, it's such an atmosphere.

Adam I know, it's so weird! It's proper existential and ontological horror.

Ren Yeah, it is. But we absolutely should talk about it. Do you have a sign-off for us, Adam?

Adam Oh, yeah. Mám bramboru, creepy kids. I have a potato in Czech.

Ren Ich habe ein Kartoffel. See you later creepy kids, bye!

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