Time Babble

Episode latest the to welcome and hello.

This week we’re babbling about the extraordinary Happy End (1967), a deliriously wonderful film, directed by Oldřich Lipský. It’s a delight from end to beginning, as we explore one man's journey from death/birth to birth/death.

Mostly dismissed as a throwaway piece of lightweight fluff on release, the film now stands shoulder to shoulder with its more arty brothers and sisters as an equally incredible example of the breadth of films that Czech cinema was producing at that time.

While not strictly a time travel film as such, Happy End more than generally messes about with the concept of time, as we follow hapless psychopath Mensik, from from the guillotine to the crib. Murdered brides are reanimated, food is stolen from a hippo's mouth, there’s more geese that we could count, and an uncomfortable amount of chewing.

It’s also the ultimate example of the unreliable narrator, as what we see, what Mensik actually does, and how he describes it, are quite often at polar opposites. Delightfully inventive and funny, it’s also a surprisingly uncomfortable watch, very much exploring the darker side of dark comedy…

Episode Four of Time Babble Series Four is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

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(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

This week we’re babbling about I’ll Never Forget You (1951).

The film is a curious mix of sci-fi, noir and costume drama and was directed by Roy Ward Baker of Hammer and Amicus fame. It stars TYRONE POWER (possibly the best name on planet earth) as a man out of time, forever longing to go back and hang out with his ancestors during the ‘Age of Reason’.

And so with a flash of lightning, back to a glorious technicolour 18th Century we go. Although it’s not quite as witty and intellectual as TYRONE POWER had hoped for, as Tom, (his friendly, foppish, inebriate guide to this new world), shows him around the mud-coated Hogarth-esque squalor of the back streets of London, full of poverty, gambling and bedlam!

TYRONE POWER thinks he has read all the diaries, and done all the research. However when an unknown chinless beauty walks through the door, everything he thinks he knows is now not known, and the future/past he thought he knew, is more unknowable than when he knew what he used to know…

Join us, as we discover that being American is pretty much the same as being in league with the devil, knowing things that are just about to happen is the worst way to make friends, and olden times police investigations are thorough, but not in the way you might expect.

Thankfully, listening to Time Babble isn’t against the law yet (even if it should be), although prepare for people to accuse you of Witchcraft if they do catch you listening to us.

Episode Three of Time Babble Series Four is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

This week we’re babbling about Terror at London Bridge (1985). The film is also known by the ever so slightly better title of Bridge Across Time and was originally a TV movie directed by the unfeasibly named Egbert Warnderink Swackhamer Jr!

The film stars the legend that is David ‘The Hoff’ Hasslehoff as a troubled cop, trying to forget a traumatic incident from his past. Specifically, a rogue incident with a can opener and a tin of beans. Now based at the relocated London Bridge in Arizona, he stumbles upon an ‘almost enough to have you institutionalised’ theory that Jack the Ripper is somehow back from the dead and up to his old tricks, through some entirely unconvincing ‘reasons’. 

The film also stars genre veteran Adrienne Barbeau, alongside Stepfanie Kramer as The Hoff’s wildly inappropriate workplace-stalky-romantic interest.

To offset the endless scenery chewing, we enjoy innocent school kids pointing at bodies floating in a river, a library that seems more interested in trying to get you to go to the cinema, film extras that seem to have lost even the ability to walk naturally and you’ll also find out why the House of Horrors is only named so on the inside of the building..? And to add insult to injury (yes, it’s that kind of film) an indifferent The Hoff is also treated to a romantic meal, and no, it’s not even Mac ‘n’ Cheese!

So join us dear Babbler, as we venture trepidatiously to London Village, to see what the flip is going on.

Episode Two of Time Babble Series Four is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

Welcome one & all, to Time Babble Series Four!

To kick start this new series we invite you to join us in our attempt to change the course of world history. And when ‘we’ say ‘us’ we mean the protagonists of our ’their’ film…

This week we are babbling about LOLA (2022), which was made when the world was still in lockdown, and the great plague was rife.

The film was directed by Andrew Legge, and stars Emma Appleton alongside Stefanie Martini as two orphaned sisters who invent a magic machine that can see into the future. Well, that is anything that has been broadcast via radio or the telly box.

All goes well at first: grooving to Bowie, digging Dylan and watching the occasional moon landing (which definitely happened, just ask Mr Kubrick and the Spice Girls).

Until… footage of those pesky Nazis starts to appear.

LOLA is a great example of the found footage genre done remarkably well. So well in fact you can’t see most of the joins. Is that really Mr Hitler meeting our sisters? Yes. Yes it is.

So take a massive piss, blow up your Nazi Whores balloons, put on your marching boots and dance to a very different (but very regular) beat.

The first episode of Time Babble Series Four is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

Hey groovy cats! Strap on your time belts and join us for the final episode of Series Three. Do we have a treat for you! 

Well, when we say treat, we really mean: here is a film that no one can quite remember. And that film is Dimension 5 (1966), ‘directed’ by Frank Adreon and starring ‘old blue eyes’ himself, Jeffrey Hunter. The film was part of a series of made-for-television features, although some of them did sneak into cinemas.

Our film features not-lifts, copy-cat corridors and art galleries hiding spy headquarters. Spy headquarters, of course, with well stocked bars. Perfect for inventing, leering, drinking, and torturing your enemies.

We travel, via Pan Am (obvs) to many exotic locations, most of which (all) are situated just outside the film studio. The film features agents, double agents, not not not agents, bomb owls, a traffic jam, Genghis!, truculent waiters, booze and bikini shops, and much, much more…

There is no way you’ll want to miss this thrilling episode! It starts with fireworks, and goes downhill from there.

Time Babble Series Three, Episode Thirteen, is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

This week we have a special bonus episode for all you Babblers, as we venture nervously out into what is regularly described as the ‘real world’, for a live time travel theatre experience at the Leeds Playhouse. The Time Machine (2023) is a three person play, created by the Original Theatre company, starring George Kemp as George, Amy Revelle as Amy, and Michael Dylan as Michael. Clever stuff.

ENJOY the palpable sense of FEAR of your hosts as they experience live theatre! LISTEN to them cower in DREAD from the realities of matinee audiences! FEEL their DEEP DISCOMFORT as audience participation starts to happen! And keeps on happening. And keeps on happening.

That’s not to say we didn’t have a lovely time to bring you, dear listener, some dispatches from the front: including under-utilised clocks, over-utilised panto, and lone-sweeping, pie-eating stagehands.

Time Babble Series Three, Episode Twelve, is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

Clasp/cuddle lovingly your existential fear and dread tightly to your chest, and join us, as we explore one of the greatest films ever made: Wild Strawberries (1957), written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film stars many of Bergman regulars; Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Björnstrand, Ingrid Thulin, a small yet memorable cameo from Ming von Sydow, and Clive Dunn.

The film follows Isak Borg (masterfully played by Victor Sjöström) over 24 hours, as he journeys to receive an honorary degree. On the way Isak (almost definitely) travels back in time, to rediscover what it means to be alive and accept the inevitable journey to the next realm. That’s right dear listener - it’s fun fun fun all the way!

On the road to enlightenment (or rather, drifting off into our own existential Christmas Carol), we discuss the real influences on Stanley Kubrick’s career, discover the history of smiles, peek longingly at Zarkov shorts, and mistake strawberries for plums. 

Intrigued? You should be. Time Babble dares to go to the corners of cinema that other podcasts cower in fear of…

Time Babble Series Three, Episode Eleven, is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

Yo Cyberpunks! Have we got a chaotic treat for you! Prepare to be dragged screaming into The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo (1987), an acid lucid dream of a film from legendary filmmaker Shinya Tsukamoto. 

This was one of Tsukamoto’s very first films and was originally created as a theatre piece. We have no idea how this would have been possible, and can only dream that a time machine would transport us back to see the theatre production in the living flesh. Which indeed we have, dear reader.

The film is about a young boy with a telegraph pole protruding from his back. He is transported into the future and must somehow save the world from bad weather, Goth vampires and many, many other things that we can’t describe, things that we won’t describe, things that we… well, hopefully you get the idea that it’s indescribable (which it is).

The film was shot on 8mm and has all the trademarks of the off-kilter, left-field genius that Tsukamoto was going to unleash on an unsuspecting world. If you dare to join us, our new episode is out now.

Insert your wires… now!

Time Babble Series Three, Episode Ten, is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

Happy Easter nerds!

This week we’ve gone into EASTER OVERLOAD with the psychedelic stop-motion classic Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971).

This TV special was created by the ‘almost definitely not’ drug-crazed minds of Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin. Between them they are responsible for literally millions of seasonal classics, including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964) and Frosty the Snowman (1969).

It’s a fun-filled hour of eggstravagant mind-altering ‘storytelling’, which features Danny Kaye as narrator Seymour S. Sassafras (he also voices, the umm, ‘French’ caterpillar Antoine) and Vincent Price, as the evil January Q. Irontail. Our lazy, fib-filled hero Peter Cottontail is voiced by Casey Kasem, who was the voice of Shaggy in the original Scooby Doo cartoons.

So stare into your favourite egg and join us, as we try to work out what on our good earth is going on, and jump into the Yestermorrowmobile (? no, us neither) and fly, very, very slowly into the future (or possibly the past - we’re still not sure which direction they went in). We’ll meet spiders fired from rockets, bunnies in April Valley who deliver chicken eggs to ungrateful youths, sassy witches who just need love (like the rest of us), and talking hats. 

This is our second musical time travel film, and the whole thing is just as much fun as Brigadoon was. Honest.

So drop your chocolate, forgo your eggs and open your ears to our seasonal babbling.

Time Babble Series Three, Episode nine, is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)

Bonjour..!

This week we are babbling about Camille Redouble (2012), written and directed by Noémie Lvovsky, who also stars in the lead role. The film is a loose remake of Peggy Sue Got Married and makes a perfect double bill with last week’s episode. It takes the basic premise of Peggy, but moves the now into the 2000s and the then into the 1980s.

It’s a beautiful, more thoughtful version of the story and Noémie turns in an astonishing lead performance filled with subtlety and poignancy. The film is another fine example of the wonders the eclectic world of time travel can burp up, and how the same story can be completely different (and much improved) in the right hands.

On the way to enlightenment however, we survive a blood soaked opening scene and visit a fancy dress party filled with an almost unending list of guests, which yours truly (understandably) takes maybe a bit too long to describe (nearly) every, single, one. 

Meanwhile, we encounter weird Judi and her lover Lemmy from Motorhead as Camille’s parents, kids jumping from windows to escape the nonsense that is High School, and the creeping realisation that your school years were your best and worst times all rolled into one.

It’s safe to say we loved this film, and so will you.

Au revoir nerds.

Time Babble Series Three, Episode Eight, is waiting for you now on Podbean, Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts and other good podcast services.

If you can’t find it on your usual streaming service, please write in to the usual address.

For updates & more time-based babbling follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

(All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners and their use here is protected under ‘fair use’ for the purposes of comment or critique.)