Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

Rewind.

This is Rob Lamb and oh we have a fun one here for you.

Today we're gonna be talking about the nineteen seventy six film Rock and Roll Wolf, also known as Mama.

It is a Romanian Soviet French co production and a live action adaptation of the brothers grim tale The Wolf and the Seven Young Goats.

It is weird, It rocks, and it originally published twelve thirteen, twenty twenty four.

Let's jump in.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema.

This is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.

And today on Weird House Cinema we're going to be discussing the nineteen seventy six Romanian Soviet French produced psychotropic children's fairytale musical Mama aka Rock and Roll Wolf, directed by the Romanian filmmaker Elisa Beta Boston.

And I really mean it when I say this movie has everything.

It is so much, so fast, and so wonderful, infectiously lovable music.

Russian ballet dancer is dressed up like spiders and or sparrows.

Nearly just NonStop locomotive energy.

Maybe flags a little bit in the second half of the movie, but at least the first half is like it is.

It is a freight train, it does not stop.

It's got diverse frolicking, theeomorphs in a secret village in the deep woods.

It's got rooftop seesaws, bridges over nothing, goat boy, levitation, ice based wolf traps, strawberries coated and honeydew, a rainbow parrot with like mad auctioneer energy, plaintive donkey, solos, pendulum beds, secret passwords, red squirrel, acorn rituals, a dangerously handsome bad boy wolf man, a gorgeous angelic goat mother, and NonStop historical smoking.

Yes, this is one of those where I am definitely in how have I never seen this before?

Territory?

A rock and roll wolf is so so in my wheelhouse and I can't recommend it enough, super weird and pushes like every single sensory boundary at once.

I showed part of this to my wife at line after I'd finished watching it, and she thought it looked like an acid trip.

And her follow up question was, how did Joe find out about this movie?

And I don't have the answer.

Do you have an answer?

Can you answer it?

For this?

I wish I remember it.

No, I honestly, I don't know how this movie first came onto my radar.

I've like had it on a list of movies I was gonna come back and check out later, and then this week I did.

I looked at my list and I was like, oh, okay, what's the deal with this one?

So I know.

The one reason I became intrigued this week is that I started looking into user reviews and comments online just how people were reacting to this movie, and I noticed there were several distinct tranches of audience reaction.

One type was pretty similar to how I'm reacting now, like, wtf, I just discovered this insane movie as an adult.

My senses are overwhelmed and I am delighted and confused.

But interestingly, another type of reaction was and I think this is probably particularly common in people from certain countries in Europe.

It was a reaction like I grew up watching this over and over on TV, and it is intensely nostalgic for me.

I couldn't verify this, but I read a bit of unsourced trivia online that this movie was played every year at Christmas on Norwegian television, where I believe it would have been known as a RockA uven, meaning the rock Wolf.

And so I don't know, I guess we are in Christmas movie territory, whether whether or not we meant to be this week.

Yeah, and it's when we get into the plot later on, it does seem like there is some sort of well, you know, there is some winter folkloric magic going on here, so it does seem to fit well within like the Holiday movie universe.

Yeah, yeah, we get a winter fairy who comes and saves a little goat boy who has gotten lost in the in the wilderness.

Oh but I should mention the third major type of reaction, So we've got the this movie is is weird.

I love it.

We've got this movie is nostalgic for me.

I saw it when I was a kid.

And then the third type is my fanatical celebrity crush.

Is a weird pipe smoking wolf or a heavenly goat mother or both.

And this type of reaction could overlap with one of the other histories possibly, but a lot of people crushing on the main sort of lead animals in this movie.

Yeah, this movie has dare I say, strong furry energy to it.

If you if you at any point in your life you've really gotten into the practical makeup effects for the cat's musical or perhaps the I finally remember this show Zubli Zoo starring Ben Vereen.

This was like a kid's musical dance show, very Broadway, and all the makeup was very cats.

I've never seen Zubalizo, but I watched part of this movie with my wife and she she compared it to Zublizu as well.

Yes, strong Zubali Zoo energy, and yeah, it has a lot of attractive people dressed up as these animals.

So I did have to wonder at times like if I was bringing that energy into it, if other people were having that reaction as well, Because I just came off a couple of viewings of nineteen seventy six is were Wolf Woman.

So I don't know if I'm letting like the were Wolf Woman experience taint my viewing of a family children's Christmas story, you know, from several countries away.

No, I mean, it's not the only movie of this sort, but I think from what I can tell, everything explicit about it is you know, very it's very family friendly and it's you know, it's a children's movie.

It's a fairy tale movie.

But there's sort of a second level of interpretation that a lot of people I think, look back on it with after they grew up watching it, and in fact regarding that first type of reaction, like all the people who were saying, oh, I watched this so many times as a child, like maybe on Norwegian TV or in Norway.

Somehow this connects to another interesting thing I found online, which was a trailer for a live musical stage adaptation which played at the Norwegian National Theater in twenty eleven.

And I so wish I could go back in time and see this.

I would fly to Norway.

If they do a revival, I don't know, maybe they keep doing this thing.

But kind of interesting thing about it is the movie I think is firmly aimed at kids.

It's like a it's extremely weird, but it is a family fairy tale adventure.

Just from the trailer, this stage musical looks to me more explicitly aimed at adults.

It has slight, slight, rocky horror energy.

Yes, yes, soft, but yes, I see what you're saying like the little clips in the trailer feel like something in one sense aimed at adults who have passionate nostalgia for a movie they loved as children, but with a sense of irony about the weirder aspects.

For example, a few of the clips from the stage version really seem to press on the sexual tension between Mama Goat and mister Wolf.

Like.

I pulled out a few screenshots for you to look at.

Rob.

This is again, this is not from the movie.

This is from the stage version, where we've got Mama Goat here spanking the wolf them just like making weird faces each other.

And then here's this one scene where suddenly Mama Goat has had a costume change and she's no longer in her Romanian folk dress and is wearing some kind of black leather thing with a bunch of metal rivets.

Yeah, at this point, I feel like we're in a meat love video.

Yes, yeah, but no yeah again.

To be clear, this does not happen in the movie.

I think adult viewers will find it impossible to miss the weird tension between the wolf Titisuru and the goat mother Rata, but it's not explicit in the movie, and it's not played for laughs like it seems to be here.

So technically, this movie is a film adaptation of one version of the fairy tale known as The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids in the Brother's Grim Catalog, and we'll get to the details of that story later on.

I'll summarize it when we get to the plot, but overall the movie is quite loose on plot.

Rock and Roll Wolf is like many musicals of an experience.

It's kind of hard to communicate how much experience is packed into this eighty minute movie, the kind of time I personally had with it.

The runtime just flew by, especially in the first half, with the song and dance numbers just coming so fast, and the tone and the visual and sonic texture constantly switching up with this kind of rapid shuffling deck of cards kind of feeling.

I loved Rock and Roll Wolf, and I think it's a real shame that, as far as I'm aware, there is not like a high quality blu ray of the English version available today.

I really really want that, because this is a gem of a film.

Oh and I guess sorry.

That brings up a second impressive thing about this movie.

It is a film where the main creative inputs were Romanian and Russian.

But there is a native English version of the film, so not just subtitles, not even just to d U.

There is a version of the movie where the songs have lyrics in English and are performed in English by the cast.

Now, it might be different voice actors than the people playing the characters on screen.

I'm not sure, because I did listen to snippets of songs from the different versions.

There's at least one in Romanian, one in Russian, and one in English.

I don't know if there are any other language versions, And the voices sound kind of different to me, so I think it might be different singers.

But like one example was that I recall in the Russian version the wolf sounded a lot less suave than in the English version and more kind of rascally.

Yeah, I did notice that the English track was recorded in London, so you know, I mean, that kind of leads me to believe it is a different a different vocal cast for the English cut.

But the English cut's the version we watched.

That's at least a version that as of this recording is floating around out there.

I asked around about this movie at Video Drome here in Atlanta, the video rental store, and John, one of the guys who works there, is quite knowledgeable.

He was looking around looking stuff up and he pointed out there is a DVD version of this film or a DVD R.

I'm not sure in the technical specs there, but there is some sort of diss you can buy.

You might have to go on eBay to get it, he said, but it does exist.

But in terms of like a really nice like Blu ray edition, which clearly a film like this deserves, he said.

You know, a good place to watch out for it would maybe be the Deaf Crocodile guys.

That company puts out a number of great films, some you know, some Russian films for sure, and so that those would be the guys to pester with your with your requests for Rock and Roll Wolf aka Mama.

Well, yes, I fully endorse that please put this out because this is you can tell you can just look through.

The core of visual assets are fantastic.

This is a movie of beautiful production values.

It has these great sets.

It's set in this fairy tale animal village in the middle of a forest with all these you know strang like these Romanian folk cabins and weird sets.

But it's also got like some disco kind of sets.

Oh yeah for sure.

So yeah, the psychotropic elements dominate as well.

The costumes and the makeup are just you know, push to eleven.

It's almost constantly something something beautiful to behold.

It is definitely a nineteen seventies musical, There's absolutely no doubting that.

Like if you have ever seen like the original film adaptation of Godspell, indeed Rocky Heart Picture Show or a movie if we've talked about on the show before The Apple, which came out in the nineteen eighties, but he's still a seventies rock musical, Like this has all of that energy, the rock and rolls there, the disco elements are there, and also that kind of like bohemian vibe, you know of these troubadours and bards floating around in a troubled decade but still keeping some of that energy of the late nineteen sixties alive in their art.

Yeah.

Hey, hey, hey, Wolf's on the way.

So like I can see that comparison with The Apple and all that, and another one I saw people a comparison I saw people making online was Tommy, you know, the adamiation of the Who album.

So yeah, I absolutely see that though something about this does feel a little It has common esthetic elements, but it feels less decadent than a lot of your western seventies rock operas.

It feels more wholesome and kind of forest magic based.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is ultimately angling for children and features a lot of child characters.

So yeah, it's it's it's managing to be all these things at once.

But on the other hand, don't want to over sell the wholesomeness or make its ound bland like it does have strong Mother Goose drops acid energy.

Is that your elevator pitch?

Yeah, that's gotta be Mother Mother Goose drops acid and joins the spiders from Mars.

All right, you know, I'm not sure we actually have any trailer audio for this one, given the nature of the picture.

We'll hunt around a little bit and if we can find something, we'll throw it in here.

If not, maybe we can get JJ to sample just a tiny bit of the audio.

If not, you know, you'll never hear this part because we'll cut it down.

I should say home now you can open the door.

Don't be afraid now not any more.

He suus coucis plains, tell us an occuntation.

We lend a helping hand in suit operation.

I'm the don't keeper trincle.

He ho my brother a good kicker.

All right, if you want to see this film for yourself, we already discussed ways you might be able to find it, and perhaps find it in the future.

Who knows, but this is always the case.

We do urge you to watch it in the best quality possible, however you obtain it.

All right, Let's get into the people behind this picture, all right.

Starting at the top, we have ELIZABETHA.

Boston born nineteen thirty one, the director Romanian film director and screenwriter whose credits include nineteen sixty four's Memories of My Childhood, nineteen sixty eight's Kingdom in the Clouds, seventy two is Veronica, and seventy threes Veronica Comes Back.

She's been involved in various stage and screen projects over the course of her long career, as well as in academia concerning film.

Apparently, these Veronica movies she did are also sort of wild, sort of fairy tale fantasies aimed at children.

And I'm interested in checking those out because oh we didn't.

I guess we didn't mention this yet.

But one of the appeals of getting into this movie this week is that, of course every Christmas season, Rob and I get in mind the mind of Jack Frost or Morosco the Great the Christmas Tale of the Russo Finished Taiga, But that one I saw little echoes of that in the movie we're talking about today.

And in the screenshots I saw from the Veronica movies, I saw some comparisons one could make to moros Co as well.

So those are going to be on my radiar.

I want to come back and check them out.

All right.

As for the writing here, we have two screenplay credits.

One is a Russian and the other is a Romanian.

We have a Yuri Intin born nineteen thirty five, Russian author, a musician whose other credits include various other children's pictures.

And then we have Vasilica Istrad lived nineteen thirty four through two thousand and two, Romanian producer and writer who works several times in a writing capacity with Bustan.

And this is a good a time as any to add usual caveat my apologies for any mispronunciations of the various Russian, Romanian and French names that are going to be involved in this multi national production.

Here, all right, this film, there's no doubt about it, stars Ludmila Gorshenko playing Rata the Goat.

This is the titular Mama from the versions of the film you'll find with the title Mama, and she lived nineteen thirty five through twenty eleven.

Radiating goodness and light even when the forest is dark.

She has strong you know, she's the paladin, she's the heroin character, and she comes off as so good and so pure, even when she's like flirting with the wolf who's going to eat her children.

I mean, you very well may think that you were immune to the wiles of various satyrs and Baphamets and even mister Tumness.

But you know, you need to watch this film and see how Rada hits for you, because her charisma, her brightness or just absolute goodness shines through.

And also something about you know, she has this little button nose that seems to just work so well with the big goat horns and all.

Yeah, yeah, she does have goat horns and they do the It feels like a very Eastern Bloc style of makeup effects.

Though I think the makeup in this movie might have been done by the fringe.

I'm not sure, but.

Yeah, I think I saw at least some French credits for the makeup.

Yeah.

Well, anyway, it's something I recognized from Morosco as well, the freckles she has, which are just done.

It looks like with like a black felt tip pin, just black felt tip, little freckles on her cheeks.

Well.

Grushenko was a Ukrainian born, Russian and Soviet actress, singer, and overall entertainer.

While she at times was seen as too Western by Soviet entertainment tastemakers earlier in her career, she went on to be a highly regarded actress in Soviet and post Soviet Russia, receiving the highest acting honors during both eras she worked well into her seventies on stage and in TV and film.

She put out several albums in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, and her best known films include nineteen fifty six's Carnival Nights, nineteen seventy Nines, Sibera Day, and nineteen seventy six is Twenty Days Without War, which was apparently suppressed to some degree due to its anti war themes and wasn't released until nineteen eighty one, and that was after the success of seventy nine Siberi Day, so you know, at that point there was no stopping her.

I was exploring her filmography a bit I have.

This is the only film I've seen starring her, but clearly she's a huge name and a number of prestige pictures, like she's not an actress that you find in any like sci fi and horror pictures.

But of note, there's nineteen ninety one's Sex Kaska, which I think translates to sex story, and it's a fantasy mystery picture.

It looks like it has some like sexy aspects to it, but also seems to have a very almost kind of noir quality to the filmmaking.

The only other two films that I think fall roughly into a fantasy genre for her were nineteen sixty ones The Man from Nowhere in nineteen seventy one's Ten.

So yeah, this is my first time seeing her in a film, but it seems based on what I was reading and like the oh bit that ran in The Guardian when she passed it seems difficult to overstress how successful she was as an actress in Russia.

It seems hard to believe that she didn't do more like sci fi and genre type movies when you look at some of her press photos.

Yeah, there's one you share.

I don't know what this is from, but there's one photo you shared with me.

It's clearly from some kind of magazine shoot or something where she's I guess she's having a picnic.

She's sitting out in the middle of a field with a blanket spread out under her, and she's got you know, kind of like a ratan lined wine bottle there, but she's got several daggers in ornate sheaths.

She's wearing one of those like felt mountaineer hats with feathers in it.

She's got a flask of some guy next to her, just some kind of bunches of grapes lying around, and then a falcon in her hand like it's per she's got one those leather gloves and just yeah, falconing.

Between this image and the still I shared with you from sex Story, in which she's wearing like some sort of like she got crazy makeup on and this big furry hat like both of these images, and I really to an extent.

Also the screen cap here we have from today's movie.

If I encountered all of these and like a Google image search, I would be like, get this AI stuff out of here.

Nice try mid journey.

But I'm not believing that this is a real image of a woman with a falcon and a ceremonial dagger and a big flowery hat out on a picnck.

Yeah, somebody put into the prompt like a Russian actress as Edward scissor hands.

Yeah, but these are all real, These are actual photos.

I think I found the bird one on a blog about like Russian pop culture.

All right, so that that is our star.

That is mama that.

But on the other hand, this film was also known as rock and Roll Wolf, So who is our wolf?

Well, the character is Titisuru played by Mikhail Boyarsky born nineteen forty nine Russian actor and singer, apparently best known for some adventure films he did, especially a nineteen seventy nine Soviet Three Musketeers movie in which he played the lead role of d'Artagnan.

In fact, I think the name of that movie this may be in translation or you know international releases, but I saw it referenced as d'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, so he must have stood out from the rest of the bunch.

Yeah, well, wait a minute, No is d'Artagnan one of the three Musketeers.

I think he might not be.

He's not.

It's been a long time sin they've done Three Musketeers.

But I gotta look this up.

I'm not gonna be able to rest until I know.

Yeah, I haven't.

As a kid, I watched at least one of the versions that had Oliver Reid in it.

But yeah, it's been a long time since they interacted.

Because sometimes there are four of them, right, they're three Musketeers.

Yes, that's right, it's d'Artagnan, Athos Aramis, and Porthos.

I could.

I just looked it up.

So Porthos was Oliver Reed.

Okay, I didn't know that, but yeah, that's right.

It's like d'Artagnan appreciates these other three guys, the Three Musketeers.

All right, well, there you go.

Well this is apparently his big role that skyrocketed his career.

I believe he's.

Currently retired from acting, but apparently remains an active voice in Russian politics.

So this guy is obviously a big part of the impression this movie makes on people.

Like I think there's a reason that one of the release names, like the international title was rock and Roll Wolf, because people online have thoughts about this guy.

Yeah, I mean, I mean he's a slind, tall slender really, you know, has like kind of kind of liking you know, aspects to his his body and face already.

But yeah, he's wearing all black.

He's constantly smoking a pipe, and I mean constantly.

I don't know if there's a single scene where he isn't smoking a pipe.

Yeah, he has a real rock star energy.

Reminded, I was reminded at times of like Frank Zappa, you know.

Yes, yeah, a little bit Frank Zappa, because he's got that He's got a strong mustache and part of a little beard with with the dark hair and the heavy eyebrows.

Uh.

I'm thinking a cross between somewhere between Jerreth the Goblin King and I remember in Almost Famous, when Billy Krudip plays a rock star, there's a little bit of a resemblance there.

He's the one I'm a Golden God, right remember remember, yeah?

Right?

Yeah, So there's a good bit of that.

But he is just a just a rascally gyrate and rock star in the middle of this fairy tale village with with a twinkle in his eye so bright it would be like registered on telescopes and other other star systems.

Like he he is up to no good.

Oh and I almost forgot him in.

This is true of most of the characters in the movie, but it's especially notable in his case wearing an Amadeas style wig, gigantic voluminous wig in his case, with just these you know, kind of swishes of curly wavy hair going all over the place.

Everybody's got their own type of voluminous wig, but his is I don't know.

It looks really good.

Yeah, So we'll have a lot more to say about this performance, but at this point we're going to get into some of the supporting players and animals playing Donkey.

We have George Mihaitz born nineteen forty eight.

This is a Romanian actor and direct director, apparently a pretty big name in Romanian cinema.

His films include nineteen sixty eight's Reconstruction and two thousand and eight Silent Wedding, as well as the sci fi comedy, A Fantastic comedy from nineteen seventy five.

This was I thought one of the creepier characters in the film.

I don't know, every time Donkey was on screen, I was at least a little creeped out, in part because he falls in with the gang that is supporting mister Wolf, that's supporting Suru in his various schemes.

But I don't know, there's something about his face, like he puts out this like calm, serene kind of clown face, but he's like actively supporting the main villain.

And he's a donkey, like not this is not an animal that I would necessarily think of as, Oh, yeah, the Donkey's gonna definitely fall in with the wolf.

He's the only herbivore in the wolf gang.

Yeah, what does that mean?

Maybe it gets into I don't know, it could be something cultural.

We've talked before about about donkeys and how sometimes they are associated, at least in ancient Babylon or ancient Sumeria, with various demons and so forth.

So I don't know.

His emotional key is strange.

He's like a morose gray clown.

Where we were just talking about everybody's wigs.

His wig is great Nigel Toughnell, and he has got big donkey ears on top, though he strangely has a lot of soul at a few moments.

Do you remember the he haw song, Like the part where he's just plaintively singing he haw, he haw, he haw.

Yeah?

Yeah, and Andy gets a love interest later then I don't know why, but that was decided we needed that, so so yes, Donkey, We'll come back to Donkey.

Fascinating character in the Rock and Roll Wolf universe.

Another care this is one we're introduced to, like right off the bat, we have the character Parrot.

It is kind of a stretch to see him as a parrot.

At first, he seems like maybe he's some sort of a clown, but yeah, he's a parrot.

Played by Florian Pittis who of nineteen forty three through two thousand and seven.

This is a Romanian actor, a folk musician and general entertainer.

They mainly signal that he's a parrot just by giving him a very colorful outfit and wig.

But yeah, he doesn't have a beak or anything.

And the role of the parrot here is interesting because he's a kind of entertainer slash vender or slash auctioneer.

You know, he's kind.

Of a traveling bard or something, perhaps you know, music man.

Perhaps, I don't know.

At times I was like, it was this guy up to no good?

Is he a con man or something?

But now he's just here to tell stories and sing songs and gather everyone together inside the Magical Disco Ball.

Yeah, it's interesting the level that they go to communicate what animal each person is.

So i'd say, you know, Rada, I mean, she looks very human in one sense, but you can tell she's a goat.

She's got the clear in the ears.

There's no mistaking a parrot here.

I don't know.

Yeah, he could just be like a human clown.

And there's another one, like the Bear family.

They don't work that hard to make them come off as bears.

They just look like humans in strange makeup.

They just look like human clowns.

And in fact, I don't think the next character, Father Martin the Bear, is named in the English version that we watched, but Father Martin the Bear is played by noted Soviet and Russian clown and circus artists Oleg Popoff, who lived nineteen thirty through two twenty sixteen.

Not to be confused.

I think there's an Olegg pop Off MMA fighter right now.

This is different.

This guy's a lover, not a fighter, and a laugher not a fighter.

Maybe mostly worked in purely Russian film, but also appeared in nineteen seventy six is the Bluebird.

I wasn't familiar with this, but this is apparently an American Soviet co production, an American Soviet co production made during the height of the Cold War, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Jane Fonda.

I did not know there was such a thing.

Yeah, I don't know much about it beyond that, but that's fascinating.

As for Oleg pop Off, I'm not sure, but I feel like this is a name I had heard before.

I don't know if in the past, someone like I ran into a clowning enthusiast at a party or something and they decided to tell me about the Great Oily pop Off, But I feel like this name has come up for me before.

And this is also, by the way, a guy.

When you see him in the film, you're like, this guy's a pro clown.

There's no doubt about.

It, not at all.

In how he physically looks, but in the way that he is dressed here and the way that he acts like his physical comedy reminded me of Harpo Marx.

Hmmm, yes, all right.

Next we have a severely Kramarov playing the young wolf.

Let's see, there's another.

They refer him as something else, like little nephew Wolf something.

But he's definitely part of the villain gang obviously, I mean he's a blood relative.

But yeah.

He lived nineteen thirty four through nineteen ninety five, a Soviet actor who then ended up immigrating to the US in nineteen seventy nine at the what was apparently the height of his popularity in the USSR, and his subsequent US films included nineteen eighty four's Moscow in the Hudson starring Robin Williams, twenty ten, The Year We Make Contact, nineteen eighty six is Armed and Dangerous, nineteen eighty eight's Red Heat, and nineteen eighty nine's Tango in Cash.

I don't have to tell you that he generally played supporting Russian characters and or Russian bad guys in these pictures.

One of these days I got to watch Red Heat, not that I expected to be good.

It just seems like one of those that would be a kind of history lesson.

I think of those the films I just named, twenty ten is the one I need to see.

I haven't seen that one, and I've heard that while it's no two thousand and one, it is interesting in its own right.

Yeah, I've seen it.

It's not bad, but it's I don't know.

I just don't know if I feel like two thousand and one needs a sequel film, but I don't know, you know, go for it.

I saw Moscow in the Hudson though at a very young age, way too young.

It has as I recall, there's like a lot of naked rock and Williams in it, but I don't remember its quality beyond that.

I don't think I was at an age to understand what this movie was even about.

Let's see moving on, Okay.

This is just a very supporting character, but she stands out all the time in the scenes because she's our hot squirrel lady.

She is played by Marina Poliak born nineteen fifty one, Russian actress best known for this film.

Maybe she was a squirrel woman, I don't know, and if so, like it's it's hard to get work in serious cinema.

You mean, in real life she was part squirrel.

I think she.

I don't think she's in makeup here.

She's just a humanoid squirrel person.

There are near constant squirrel antics in this film.

You know, there'll be a scene where you're trying to focus on what the main characters are doing, but then a squirrel just like runs through the frame.

All right.

The next character is the Swallow.

I thought she was a spider when I watched the film, because the spider people like, she kind of looks like a spider woman.

I don't know, like she lives in a tree in dangles from threads.

Yeah, Like she doesn't have a beak, and she also doesn't have like mandibles or anything.

But but yeah, I thought she was a spider.

She's played by Violetta Andrei born nineteen forty one, a Romanian actress whose credits include the East German sci fi film The Dust of the Stars, which I believe I've seen and it's one that's been on the Weird House Cinema list for a while.

To come back to okay, all right, and then coming to the musical credits, we have two one's French, one's Romanian.

The French composer that's credited is Gerard Bourgeois, who lived nineteen thirty six through twenty sixteen, not to be confused with the French silent film era director of the same name.

This guy's a composer songwriter.

He composed a few songs that were made famous by Bridget Bardoux in the late sixties, and he also had a singles run as a musician in the early to mid nineteen sixties.

And then on the Romanian side, we have to Mestoicole Popa or Papa nineteen twenty one through twenty thirteen.

He's a Romanian composer who worked with the director of this film on numerous projects.

I think he scored Veronica.

I could be wrong on that, but if it wasn't Veronica, it was one of the other pictures that she'd done.

As I said earlier, I think the music in the movie is quite strong and constant.

This is so, you know, there are different types of musicals, and you know, I don't even know that I have the terminology in my head for the different types, but this is one where there are a handful of songs, but we keep coming back to them again and again, different characters singing them, also different renditions of those numbers, and it's nearly constant.

It's not one of these where all right, we've had a little dialogue and now it's time for a full blown song.

So much, but it's also not opera, you know.

Yeah, and it really varies in terms of genre.

Like parts of this are full on like rock opera.

They're like rock songs, almost prog rock.

Others feel more like traditional kind of stage musical numbers.

Yeah, and at times it's a little like we've got some almost kind of like a Caribbean drum beat going on at times.

You know, and the parrot songs, Yeah, the parrot.

Songs, which I guess that makes sense, like what's a parrot doing here?

Like it came from somewhere else, maybe we brought some different drum beats with it.

And then other times there's certainly what feels like more of a I don't know, you know, you know, Russo or Romanian like folk music kind of mentality there.

Certainly in some of like the more lullabot eccentric songs we.

Hear, Yeah, I agreed, So I figure when we start off talking about the plot, we should talk about the folk tale this is based on I mentioned earlier.

This is based on a traditional fairy tale, and so the Grim's fairy Tales rendition of this story is known as The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids.

Here, I'm going to be drawing on a translation that's available online by d.

L.

Ashleman, and the story goes like this.

So you've got a mother goat who has seven children, and they live together in a house in the forest, and one day mother has to leave home to forage for something to eat.

She warns her children that there is a wolf in the woods, and while she is gone, the wolf of the woods will come to the door and ask to be let inside, and if they let him through the door, he will eat them all up, so they better keep the door shut.

The children ask, how are we to know if it's you coming home, mummy, And so she says, if the young goat's here knocking at the door, they'll be able to know that it's their mother by listening for her soft voice and looking at her feet either under the door or through the window.

And the wolf will have a rough voice and will have furry black paws and so she goes out.

She leaves the house, and then the text reads quote, it was not long before someone knocked at the door and called out, open the door, children, Dear, your mother is here and has brought something for each one of you.

But the little kids knew from the rough voice that it was the wolf.

We will not open the door, they cried out.

You are not our mother.

She has a soft and gentle voice, but your voice is rough.

You are the wolf.

So after this, the wolf is like, hmm okay, thwarted.

So he goes to a shop and he buys a piece of chalk, and then he eats the chalk and that makes his voice soft.

Don't know how that works, but that is what the story says.

He goes back to the house again and pretends to be the mother, goat on once again.

This time the kids they hear the soft voice.

But then they look out the window and they see the wolf's black paw and they know he is a wolf, and they tell him to go away.

And then the text reads quote, So the wolf ran to a baker and said, I have sprained my foot.

Rub some dough on it for me.

After the baker had rubbed a dough on his foot.

The wolf ran to the miller and said, sprinkle some white flour on my foot for me.

The miller thought this wolf wants to deceive someone and refused to do it.

So the wolf said, if you will not do it, I will eat you up.

That frightened the miller, and he made his pall white for him.

Yes, that is the way people are morals in the middle of the story, that is the way people are.

So anyway, Now that he has swallowed the chalk to make his voice soft and gotten the flowered up dough foot, the wolf goes back to the house and tries tries again.

This time he does trick the young goats, and the little goats led him inside, and he eats all of them except for the youngest one, who hides inside a clock.

Then, satisfied, the wolf goes off takes a nap in a meadow.

Meanwhile, mother goat comes home from her foraging, and she finds the house all in disarray and her children missing.

And then she finally she locates the youngest goat hiding in the clock, who tells her what happened, and together they run to the meadow and find the wolf sleeping off his meal.

But they see something moving and jiggling inside the wolf's belly.

And then the text reads quote the mother goat sent the kid home and to fetch scissors and a needle and thread, and then she cut open the monster's paunch.

She had scarcely made one cut before a little kid stuck its head out, And as she continued to cut, one after the other, all six jumped out, and they were all still alive.

They were not even hurt, for in his greed, the monster had swallowed them down hole.

How happy they were.

They hugged their dear mother and jumped about like a tailor on his wedding day.

But the mother said, go now and look for some big stones.

We will fill the godless beast's stomach with them while he is still asleep.

So the kids go gather the stones, they bring him back.

They put the stones in the wolf's belly, and then they sew him up again, and the wolf wakes up thirsty, and he decides, well, I'm gonna go to a nearby well and get some water.

But when he begins to walk, he cries out in pain.

He cries out quote what rumbles and tumbles inside of me.

I thought it was kids, but its stones that they be.

And so the story finishes quote when he got to the well and leaned over the water to drink, the heavy stones pulled him in and he drowned miserably.

When the seven kids saw what had happened, they ran up and cried out, the wolf is dead.

The wolf is dead, and with their mother they danced for joy around about the well.

So how much does this overlap with the plot of the movie.

I would say medium moderately.

Unfortunately, in this movie they never cut the wolf open and fill him up with stones, But the major conflict of the film is the same.

And I guess because the plot here is very loose, we should just sort of summarize up top, and then we can go and fill in some texture when we talk about individual songs and scenes.

But the general plot is that Mama Goat aka Missus Rada lives in a house in the forest with her goat children.

In this case, it's within a kind of animal village where one house is full of rabbit people, one house's sheep, one house is squirrels, and so forth, and there's also a donkey, and there is a pipe smoking wolf in this village named Titisuru who he lives in town, and he spends the first quarter of the movie telling Rada that he is going to eat her children, and she tells him no, and then they dance and make eyes at each other.

Yeah, there's a lot of like, no, for real, I'm going to eat your brats, like he calls them brats essentially, and he is pretty clear, like I'm a predator there, baby goats, i am going to eat your children.

And she's like, oh, no, you won't.

But there's kind of a wink there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so in the movie, kind of like in the folk tale, there's a secret code that Mamorada uses to enter the goat castle, but in the movie, it's a song.

It's a song that Rada teaches her children, and she has to say it note for note perfect to be granted access.

And I'm sure anybody who's seen this movie will have this song burned in their brain forever.

You hear it many many times, in both its correct form and in its incorrect form.

When when crudely attempted by the wolf and his companions, but he goes MoMA's home.

Now you can open the door and it goes on with this whole thing about like I've brought you strawberries covered in honeydew and stuff like that.

And so the idea is the kids will listen, is like, is that is that Mama?

I don't know.

Let's hear yep, that's her.

Her voice sounds perfect, it's beautiful.

Then you open the door and she comes in right now.

Sue Ru spends much of the movie trying to learn to sing this song correctly.

He's like outside the house eavesdropping and writing out sheet music quickly as he hears it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, So he spends a lot of time like workshopping at with his his buddies, the Donkey, the what the.

The Links, the Lynk.

Yeah, so they're all working on it, and at times it's just, you know, it's it's too rock and roll.

You know, he is a rock and roll wolf after all, So it takes him a while to really refine the performance to the point where he can attempt to pull off this this scheme.

Yeah.

Now, there's a subplot in the middle here where one of the Goat children, the older boy Mattei, wants to escape the house and go to the fair while Mama is out even though it's dangerous and the wolf is prowling around, so he runs out and then he gets into trouble and he gets pursued by the wolf and his allies.

But that's just sort of a b plot in the middle of the movie.

Eventually, the wolf and his goons kidnap a couple of the goat kids, and even though early on it was suggested that the wolf would eat the children, he doesn't eat them.

It seems what he really wants is to hold them for ransom so that Mama Rada must pay him a bag of gold.

He's like, give me the gold.

He has this short speech about how much he wants gold.

Of what use is gold to a wolf?

I don't know, but he wants gold, gold, gold.

Well, I think one of his cronies ask him, like, what are you going to do with the gold, and he's like, I'm gonna do what everybody does with the gold, baby, which is spend it.

But I mean, again, what's he going to spend it on?

I guess I don't know.

Food.

The wolf in the Brother's Grim story does buy something.

Remember, he goes and he buys chalk and then eats it.

Okay, all right, so open question then yeah, so.

Anyway, yeah, so a couple of the goat children get kidnapped, but then Rada comes up with a plan to get her children back and get revenge.

So she first there's a lot of dancing, like ice skating and dancing around on the ice, and the whole village comes out to the frozen pond in the wintertime and ice skates around and dances and stuff.

And then Rada dances with the wolf and there, you know, it's very flirty dancing.

But then also he's like, give me the gold, and what the gold?

And so she eventually uses what I don't know if it's actually a bag of gold, but it's something made to look like a bag of gold.

She uses it as bait to trick him into falling into a trap that the villagers have made in the ice of the frozen pond.

So the wolf falls into the water, and while he's drowning in the freezing water, his co conspirators again, the younger Wolf, the Lynx, and the donkey, they sort of have a change of heart and they bring Roda's children back to her, and then mister Wolf is pulled from the water and allowed to live, and he promises he has a changed wolf, he will never kidnap her children again, and everyone lives happily ever after.

That's it, and that's how it goes down.

Nobody is cut open, no stones are implanet in anybody's body, and everyone learns their lesson.

But we cannot stress how much dancing and dare I say prancing occurs on the road?

Did this conclusion?

Oh, unbelievable amounts of gambling and gyrating about Oh, and I haven't mentioned this anywhere else, so I guess I'll just throw it in he or I mentioned that the you know, the visual textures of the movie are good, like the costumes and the and the makeup and the sets and all that are great.

But I just really want to emphasize again how much how much landscape texture there is in the village set, which is a great is a great compliment to the choreography and the dancing.

So it's in this lovely natural setting in the forest, but there are just all these interesting little things for the dancers to kind of move around and react to, all these little pathways and gates and staircases and ladders and railings and little bridges, and it's all very rustic and pretty, and it makes for a perfect landscape for these rambling dance numbers that lead the characters from one edge of the village to another.

Absolutely.

Yeah, it really the environment feels very authentic, you know, like it's almost like they these actors, as these animals lived here for months or something leading up to the actual filming.

Yeah, okay, you want to talk about the individual scenes and musical numbers.

Yeah, let's start at the beginning, because, you know, Joe, they pull a reverse Holy Mountain on us here, which is kind of interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah, So we start outside of the story with the credit sequence taking place over shots of the actors being introduced with credits as they get into costume and have their makeup applied.

Interesting choice.

Yeah, And for some reason for me, this really drove home the nineteen seventies musical quality.

I don't know why.

Maybe it's just because you're seeing, you know, guys and gals who are clearly denizens of the nineteen seventies, like in their casual clothing, being transformed into these timeless woodland creatures.

Yeah, there is a softening, kind of humanizing element to it because, for example, One of the things we see is the actor who plays the villain, who plays mister Wolf, is like sitting in a chair in his makeup chair, and the kids who play the goat children in the movie are like play They're like putting funny makeup on his face and they're all laughing about it.

So it's like, oh, okay, he's the bad guy in the movie, but in real life they're all friends.

Yeah, it's all in good fun.

Children.

Yeah, don't be stressed out by anything.

You're about to see.

Kind of interesting cinematography choice here in the scene where we're meeting all the characters is that most often sometimes we just get like a headshot where they smile at the camera, but more often we see performers making eye contact with the camera through a mirror, so the camera's over their shoulder and we're looking into their makeup mirror and connecting with them that way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Also, did you notice how in this part, basically everybody is smiling as they meet the camera except the actor who plays Donkey, who's just grimacing and looking like, you know, why go on with this masquerade of.

A well, he's method.

You know, he's Donkey from the get go.

He showed up this morning, donkey, before he even put the makeup or the ears on.

He looks like he has just about had it with this job.

I'm sick of playing donkey.

Okay, but let's go into the world.

Now.

We go into the forest, into the village of fantastic magical creatures.

And what's our first song?

Oh, the first one is I honestly don't remember what the song is, but this one is by a parrot and it's kind of an upbeat, prancing tune set to some furious, kind of almost Caribbean drumming.

You know, yeah, yeah, this is the one that goes ladies and gentlemen.

So before the song even starts, I think one of the first things we see is like the squirrel lady.

She's she's looking out at the road leading to the village and she screams like here he comes.

And then mister Parrot, a tweet voiced master of ceremonies type presence in a teal tuxedo jacket, a red cravat and a rainbow wig is riding into town on this rag and bone shop velocipede, singing a song I had to This is one of the many parts where when I went back and I listened to the lyrics more closely, I was like, wait, what is this about.

It sounds like the song is about artifacts he has stolen from various places around the world.

He says that he went to Tehran where he got a rock that shows the future, and from Bali he took something referred to as the ancient magic tree.

Well, I've got news for mister Parrett.

I feel like those artifacts and tales of their exploits are going to be lost on this crowd, because then these animals are a little more down to earth in their yeah, their needs and aspirations.

Yeah, I think they would rather have like some cakes and stuff.

Yeah, this is the shire.

In fact, this is exactly this is the shire.

Because the other thing is the implication in this song is that everybody loves Parrot.

And it's like when Gandalf arrives at the Shire in his cart, the children are all running around screeching with joy.

Parrot here does not set off any fireworks, but he might as well.

We also get several close up shots of the various like lady animals of the village watching Parrot's arrival with rapturous admiration, Like we see the lamb lady looking at him like what a honk.

But anyway, the whole number has this traveling medicine show quality to it.

He comes in on his velocipede cart and then they set up a kind of stage where he stands there singing to the crowd, and Parrot's arrival is presaging a fare that will be held I think the following day.

Now, he doesn't particularly have any role in the plot.

He's just here to facilitate dance numbers though, so unlike.

Gandalf, Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

Anyway, while all this is going on, we also see another major carecharacter, the Wolf.

He's up in his tower.

I don't know what you would call this building he lives in, but he's in this building that's like got a view up and over everything else, and he's standing standing watching the celebrations suspiciously through a wooden spyglass.

Up in his wolf tower.

So he's there with his flowing mane of hair, a strong eyebrows, strong mustache.

He makes an impression the first time you see him, and also he's keenly peering out at things going on.

He has a predator's gaze.

You know he's ready.

He's ready to eat some of the herbivores of the village, and wolf begins to watch a single family among the crowd, that of mother Goat missus Rada and her children who are on their way home.

The children are begging to be taken to the upcoming fair, and this leads into the second song, which is performed by the wolf.

Yeah, this is a bold, sauntering number that it occupies that place where comedic brass and seductive brass meet.

It's also it's basically his allow me to introduce myself toune where he tells you who he is and what he's all about.

This got funny era once again when I went and transcribed the lyrics.

He's saying, how do you do?

I'm Titi Suru, friendliest wolf you've met.

You'll hear the strangest things about me, for it's been said that I could be responsible for incidents unexplained.

People do invent the oddest tales.

That's not what I would put in my cover letter.

The first thing you're hearing from is from him is people tell a little lies about me.

M m yeah.

People will try to pin various unsolved murders on me.

But there's actually no connection.

My alibi is pretty solid.

Yeah, it's not a convincing start.

It's great when like the first thing somebody says when you meet them is like, my haters are all lying.

Yeah.

Anyway, Titisuru goes out dancing through the middle of the village with his posse, which includes his nephew, the young and as we mentioned earlier, also a lynx and the town donkey, who is a kind of dolorous clown.

And mister Wolf greets people in town and they mostly seem to regard him with naive trust.

Is that how you took this in the beginning, Like everybody seems to be like, oh, mister Wolf, Yeah, he's handsome, he's a nice guy.

He says, he's nice.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They have kind of this I don't know, you know this, this kind of like passive response to the predator in their midst is like, well, he's not attactively attacking anyone right now, so I guess we'll keep grazing.

Yeah.

But then Wolf comes up.

He squares off with Rada and her children.

Rada, the way she reacts to him is complex.

It's like she sees through this, and she knows better than to trust him, So there's no she doesn't have the naive reaction that the other villagers have, like she knows immediately what's up with this guy.

She's too wise and so she rebukes him.

But there is also a con instant, simmering underlying element of hubba hubbah.

Yeah.

I mean it's basically like, I know you're a bad boy, but I kind of like bad boy, And that's basically their tension throughout the picture with the but with the added detail that said bad boy wants to kill and eat her children.

Yeah, yeah, so he explains in the song, well, he doesn't say that at first.

Instead, at first he says, your children, uh number one, they make too much noise and they tease me and I can't tolerate that.

So he says, this is your final warning, and also I am a wolf and my wolf instinct will not be suppressed.

But then, almost as if to play down the danger, SUERU just kind of like dances off.

He does like a little tap dance number with his goons, and he's you know, running around the village dancing, and while he's off with his guys, he starts singing about how ooh, of all the children I've ever seen, missus Rawda's kids would be the finest cuisine.

So he's like, I am going to eat those goats.

So this leads almost immediately into the third song.

I guess this one's performed by Rada basically putting the wolf in his place, saying, let my children be.

Basically, we're gonna go into and out of a lot of songs in this picture at the drop of a hat, but sometimes just for like less than a minute even, and then sometimes for longer.

You never know how long they're going to sing a particular song which keeps you on your feet.

You know, you don't get that.

It's easy to get worn out with musicals where it's like, oh I hear another song coming on.

Well, yeah, you're gonna get hit with them constantly, but some of them are very short.

Okay, where are we in the plot to kidnap the goat children?

Well, I think there isn't a plot.

Yeah, we've just had the conflict between between Wolf and Rada, like they've had their their square off.

It's kind of flirting but also threatening each other.

Rada is seeing through the wolf suave exterior, but she's wary of him, but she's also kind of into him, and so that's strange.

But yeah, yeah, so so far, that's where we are.

And here we get into a medley that was one of my favorite parts of the movie because it's just sort of a string of songs that are mostly sung by the bad guys but then interrupted by some good dance numbers by the good characters.

But this string of songs by the Wolf's Gang goes on for like ten minutes and it's just one wacky, hard hitting Tommy style rock opera song after another.

And I was thinking about how, you know, sometimes people say that a Batman movie is really only as good as its villain, Like, you know, Batman's always you know, I don't want to discount differences, but Batman's always just sort of Batman.

So it's really the villain that defines the film.

Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that translates into musicals too, Like in Disney musicals, the villains always have the best songs.

In Rocky Horror, all the best songs are sung by the villains.

I guess they're villains and so forth.

I mean, yeah, if you're gonna have a musical film like this Phantom of the Opera, He's got all the great songs, obviously.

Absolutely, So I was gonna say, I think the same thing is often true about musicals, musicals and especially rock operas.

The villains get the best songs, and so it's the villain songs that end up kind of sticking with you and defining how the musical feels.

And that is definitely how I feel about this part of the movie.

So the first tune in this Bad Guy medley is the Wolf's gang singing a song about the confrontation between Rada and the Wolf, and we see all like the townspeople running and hiding, slamming their doors shut.

After watching the altercation.

The squirrely squirrel lady is very upset.

You can see she's nervous.

And it's this song.

It's the one that goes where they're singing like wahoo t tsuru's furious.

Yeah, this is the one where they're like, mother goat Rata better run away, that kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah, okay, Yeah, Rada's future is dubious.

It's sort of like like there's just been a rap battle and they're their guy lost, and so they're walking away, being like, oh, next time it's gonna be it's gonna be really bad.

We're gonna get you.

But interestingly, while everybody else runs and hides, Rada and her children do not hide at all.

They're not afraid, and they do a frenetic dance number on their front lawn.

They're very happy.

They're like sliding down this extremely splintery looking wooden plane and playing on all kinds of stuffy.

They go swinging, all seven of them on one wooden rope, swing all seven at the same time, and then they get on the rooftop seesaws, which got what.

Yeah, Like, I meant to go back and rewatch this sequence because my recollection is there's no way they fake this.

I mean, there may not be actual children up there, but there might be, I don't know.

It looks like a sizeable building with kids on seesaws up there, you know, at the most extreme height, they're what twenty thirty feet off the ground or something like.

It's intimidating.

Yeah, it's at the apex of the roof is the fulcrum of the teeter totter, and the kids are just going up and down and maybe it's adult stunt performers, but it looks not faked.

Yeah, does not look like a model.

So Rata is not one of these safety obsessed helicopter parents.

She's like children.

We will now be playing on equipment that is illegal in most countries.

And also you're going to have to defend the goat house on your own against wolf attacks while I am gone at the fair.

Yeah.

But anyway, while the children are playing, the bad guys kind of peep over the fence and watch the goats at play.

And there is an interesting moment here where we see a lot of this throughout the film, where we get a close up on Donkey and at first he's smiling.

It's like he's having a lot of fun watching the goats play.

Oh, isn't it nice?

And then suddenly his smile just fades.

It melts into the saddest face you've ever seen yours if you will, Yeah, exactly, And so this is kind of establishing a theme upon rewatching For me, I didn't catch it as much the first time, but Donkey was really emerging as one of the most interesting and subtle characters.

But from here we get into one of my favorite tracks, which is a rock number where the members of the Wolf's gang introduce themselves and sing about their loyalty to Titisuru.

I think it starts with kind of a chant where they say like one for all and all for Suru.

So there, it's very top down, you know, leader oriented kind of friend group.

Yes, hees big followers of Suuman here.

You know, we have links Donkey and oh yeah, yeah, Little Bad Wolf.

I believe he's referred to either one way or another in this bed the nephew and yeah, there's a lot of snarling, moderate cartwheels added to the general prancing.

And yeah, there's some great lyrics in here, like tears our occupation well into helping hand in Titusuru's operation.

So they're just all like trying to really get it out there that they're as close as friends.

And they also throw in some added little tidbits, like one of them's like, I've never read a book.

Okay, well they're contrasting that little I think Little Bad Wolf says I've never read a book, because he's contrasting with the fact that Donkey says he does read books.

Hmmm.

Yeah, I think they're getting a little off track in their commitment to speech here.

But okay, so we hear from the Links.

He says, I'm Rasul the Links.

My missions are nocturnal.

When your eyes start to blink, my role becomes essential.

And then the donkeys verse goes, he he haw, he haw, I'm the Donkey Patrica, he he haw.

I'm rather a good kicker, And so he's bragging about how good at kicking he is.

But then he also mentions I like to read books, and so there's tension in the gang.

Rassele, the Lynx and Little Bad Wolf mock the Donkey first of all because they think he's he's delusional for thinking he's very strong and a good kicker.

They don't agree, but they also mock him by saying I've never read a book.

The implication is like, that's for nerds, and I'm not fully grasping the significance.

I think there might be some kind of cultural archetype coding going on with Donkey, but like he's one of the bad guys, but he doesn't really fit in with them.

The other bad guys mock him, and there are scenes of him with conflicted emotions that the other bad guys don't show, or at least Little Bad Wolf and Links don't show you get some conflicted emotions from the main bad wolf.

But anyway, I just think it's interesting the way Donkeys is set apart from the other villains.

Yeah, that is something to contemplate.

Yeah, he seemed I don't know, like maybe we're really supposed to to put ourselves in Donkey's shoes.

I'm not sure.

Now we eventually go back to the house here, right, And I want to point out that the inside of the goat household it looks like a cat cafe.

If you've ever been to a cat cafe, that's kind of the vibe I'm getting here.

Lots of little shelves and places for cats or I guess goats to walk around on.

That would make sense, you know, goats like to be up high.

And then they have like cool what hanging beds or loungers here.

Yeah, the the young goats sleep in these like pendulum beds.

They're dangling from the ceiling like a I don't know, like a like a planter.

Yeah.

They put a lot of thought at the end of this.

I'm actually a little bit reminded of the kids rooms in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, you know, where they're like, what do the Martian children's bedrooms look like?

How do Martians sleep?

And so forth.

But this scene also has an interesting part where one of the kids asks Rada, why does the wolf want to take us away?

Oh yeah, and the answer is, well, because he's lonely and childless, which it's an interesting way to view predation, but that's what she tells them.

One of the children ask she says this, and one of the children says, is it wrong to be lonely?

And Rada says, no, it just makes you feel bad.

Hmm.

Maybe something's was lost in translation a bit into the English version.

I don't know.

Oh, but then after this we go straight into a psychedelic disco dance number by the Bad Guys who Oh yeah, there's no singing.

They're just like out in inside a five dimensional kaleidoscope doing some real like Saturday night fever moves.

Oh yeah, this is like the dark disco scene.

And I was really hoping this would erupt into vocalizations as well, but it's just you know, darkness prancing.

It's like a raven Mordoor or something.

I'm not sure, but it's it's fun.

I like it in some parts of the choreography here reminded me of that Okay Go Treadmill video.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, they really get into it.

They get some but.

They're like standing out on some kind of bridge in the darkness with like the night sky behind them, and sometimes there's this aurora in the sky and sometimes it looks like a giant fish pig face.

But then here we go into a lullaby sung by Rada, which we sort of go around and see all the villagers going to sleep.

I gotta say, I've been playing some of the music from this movie in my house and my toddler is obsessed with this lullaby song.

She asked me to play like ten times yesterday.

It's the night Night song to her, and she loves it.

This is the You know, one of the great things about early parenthood is you get to choose what really obscure nonsense you and jacked into your child's life that will become a part of their their wholesome recollection years later, but no one else in their friend group will share.

They'll be like, hey, did you guys watch that weird Russo Franco Romanian family animal picture every holiday?

And they're like, no, we have no idea what you're talking about.

Yeah, out on the playground, you don't know the tickets tickets song.

But okay, yeah, so this is a lullaby.

But there is an interesting moment here where the wolf comes in and sings along at the end of the song.

So it's Rada singing to her children and she's like, close your eyes, I'm here beside you.

And then suddenly the wolf is outside the house and he's like singing at Rada, And I thought this maybe is playing up on the idea that like, underneath his wickedness, he really is just lonely, like Rada was talking about.

Maybe the subtext is that if he had someone to love, he wouldn't be trying to harm the goats, which plays directly against what he himself said, which is like, I have a wolf nature and it will not be suppressed.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I also wasn't sure if we're supposed to think that she can hear him, and because she has kind of like a you know, winkie smile thing at the end here, and I don't know if that's more of her like oh suru, or if I'm just reading into it because we have been spending so much time already with their sort of teasing predator prey relationship.

Yeah, oh right.

Then we get a song about equilibrium from the children where they they're playing on a pair of enormous sea saws, and we see a lot of other children there in the scene.

They're sheep children of course, the squirrel children, Donkey grinning like an absolute maniac, Donkey, Lynx and Little Bad Wolf joining into the song.

They dance and prance around.

The dance becomes cocky and aggressive till finally what one of the kids has enough.

This may be the oldest kid, and he starts riding Donkey around and then like somebody has come break it up.

This is Matteia, the oldest goat son who will sneak out of the house later he you know, he is up to mischief.

But yeah, he rides Donkey around and I don't know, Donkey really gets put in his place.

Yeah, yeah, somebody they send the ref end to break it out there like.

Out of hand.

Rada comes in.

Rada always puts a stuff up to the nonsense.

And then the next scene is we get one of the main themes of the movie, which is the song that Rada sings teaches her children in order for them to know it's her at the door and not someone else.

So this is the mommy's home.

Now you can open the door and don't be afraid children anymore.

Yeah, it is a beautiful little number about stranger danger for latchkey kids.

You know.

It's like, don't open that door for anybody, anybody except for me.

Except for me.

I'm here to protect you, right.

So she sings the song, and meanwhile outside the wolf is listening and furiously scribbling notes on how the song goes so that he can get into the house when Rada goes to the fair.

So she goes off to the fair.

What's going on at the fair?

Oh, tickets is what's going on at That's the main thing I got.

Because we run back, we meet Parrot Guy again, and we're in this fun house of mirrors.

We're gonna spend a lot of time in this set, and it's pretty gorgeous.

It feels like it feels like we're inside a disco ball, and there's yeah, a lot of general discussion of tickets.

I don't know if you were able to make sense of this when you went back through the lyrics.

Joe, No, I did not understand at all.

The parrot is like throwing little like ticker tape, you know, bits of you know, confetti.

Basically, tickets are in the air, and he's standing in these mirrors with silver tinsel all around.

He's still in his rainbow outfit, and the lyrics are like tickets to your life, tickets to find your wife.

I think maybe the idea is that, I don't know, it's some kind of commercialization or commodification, like the parrot is selling a kind of shallow promise of good fortune.

But I don't know.

Parrot is not really presented as a villain of the film.

It's just kind of like, oh, here's what's going on at the fair.

There's some kind of there's some kind of nonsense happening.

All right.

Now.

I have to point out that at this point the episode is probably getting a little long, and I feel like I could probably talk about each and every little musical number because I made notes about all the weird little things they threw, and like suddenly there's a trampoline for the squirrels and I love it.

Yeah, so I'm going to let you drive here, Joe, and just I'm gonna follow you through your favorite moments of the rest of this film, and I'll jump in if I have some thoughts.

Well, we've already talked about the general outline, so you know that the wolf is going to keep trying to sing the song and sneak into the house.

He fails the first few times we know that Mattee sneaks out of the house, he runs around outside, he gets chased by the bad guys.

Of course, while we're here at the fair, some various things will happen.

There's a bunch of just like songs and big ensemble numbers where everybody's singing.

We get a ballet sequence where the people that you thought were spiders but I think are actually supposed to be sparrows.

These are played by ballet dancer.

I think these might be the Bolshoi Ballet or some Moscow based ballet dancers who do a very good but I don't know.

Ballet might not exactly be my thing.

But you can tell that they're great at what they do, and they do it in front of these very interesting painted backdrops.

Yeah, yeah, the effects are very cool here, like it's it's not just a performance of dance on stage.

And we've been seeing a lot of actual dance performance, but here we have high level ballet with cool effects.

And I think maybe in some parts of these songs they're like balancing on tethers or whatever you call that, tetherwalking.

Or it's made to look like I couldn't tell if this is effects or yeah, yeah, yeah.

At the fair, there's more of a wolf following Rada around, being like, hey, let's dance, and so first they don't dance, and then they do dance.

But one thing we definitely should mention is the the Sheep and Donkey song.

Mm hmm, yeah, well this is a mid movie romance between the two.

Yeah.

Would you characterized this song as like a seduction of Donkey by the Lamb character.

I think so.

I mean, he's into it, but it kind of comes out of nowhere, like I wasn't really thinking about Donkey's romantic prospects.

And likewise, you know, Lamb is one of the many cute animal ladies in the film, but you know, she's very much been in the background, and we're just like, oh, there's Lamb lady, you know, much like Squirrel Lady.

You know she's there, but I didn't know that she was actually gonna do anything other than jump around and maybe do a trampoline flip.

Yeah, So I was curious why is Lamb so into Donkey?

The framing implies that Lamb is like the most eligible bachelorette in town, but so far Donkey has been portrayed as a pitiable loser, like he is the outcast of the village's criminal gang, and yet Lamb is coming on to him very strong.

So I don't know, like what makes Donkey attractive to her?

Maybe the fact that he reads books, Like is she into a a well read ass?

Perhaps?

Perhaps you know, I want to I want to throw in here because I'm looking at one of the I'm looking at the still you have of Lamb lady, and the attention to the curling hair on her lamb ears on her sheep ears here absolutely top notch, like they would.

These costumes they do.

You know, they're very much costumes.

You're not gonna believe that this is.

This is not like you know, were wolf, an American werewolf in London here or anything when it comes to combining the animal and the human form.

But on another level, it kind of is, because look at these ears, look at the amount of tension they put into this hair.

There is.

This is something, this is something.

This is a key part of the movie's alchemy.

I'm sure.

I totally agree.

Yeah, the costuming and the makeup effects that they are all so wonderful, Like.

You didn't have to do that for this film.

But someone's like, no, no, no, these ears need to look one percent authentic.

They need to be warm to the touch.

Now, I think somewhere in here is we when we get that scene where the wolf is explaining to his goons that he no longer wants to eat the goat children.

He wants gold.

We've got to get gold, gold, you fools.

It's very out of nowhere, but I like it.

I wonder if the commercialism of the fair, like the whole tickets thing, inspires Wolf to switch his switch up, like his animal nature, his desire to just eat prey animals, and instead become a more civilized kind of villain that wants money.

Do you think that?

Does that make sense?

I guess so, and I it ties into a number we're gonna see later where we have this real after the kidnapping has been carried out, Rada has this bit where she's like, you know, why is why is the world like this?

Why do people want to hurt you?

Why are they hurting you still?

Why are they going to hurt you in the future?

And it's got kind of this real, you know, dark somber number.

But you know, it makes sense then that you would have the wolf change his predatory approach from something that is purely an animal world activity into something that is, you know, more akin to human crime.

Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

Okay, just a couple of little texture observations as we go along.

There's one scene that is obviously this came earlier, but it feels straight out of the first Lord of the Rings film where the you know, the mattee is hiding from the bad guys and they go looking out over the edge of the there's like an outcropping and they're looking out and he's hiding right underneath it.

Yes, yes, this and you know, and I think just must be an accident because I think the main framing of that that we're familiar with the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings is based on a sequence in the seventy eight animated Lord of the Rings.

But yeah, we were before that here, So this is seventy six.

Yeah.

Yeah, so it's just just I don't know, just just great framing.

I don't know.

There's it's a sad scene at some point where Rada comes home and she's been like out in a storm in the winter and she can't sing the song to get into the house.

You know, she's trying to sing the password song, but her voice is all torn up.

And yeah, she sounds like she's been hitting the bottle a little bit grief, and they're like, that's not mama.

Mama's voice is good.

I don't know what this thing is out there howling in the darkness, but we're not opening the door.

Yeah.

And there's also a very sweet part where I think it's the oldest Goat daughter.

The child sings a song for it's like an inversion of the mother's song to the children.

She sings a song about mommy.

It's extremely sweet.

Oh, and then at some point we get the song about modern decline.

The children today are not the same, Yes, I'm not the same, not the same.

Children today don't even know how to sit on a shovel.

They don't say that, but it made me think of that moment in.

Jack FROs Now there is a part here where Mattee has run out into the wilderness and gotten lost.

He's like stranded on some kind of rocky spire in the middle of nothing, and the snow is falling, and it's like, what's going to happen to him?

Well, what happens is we get one of the musical numbers from the Star Wars Holiday Special.

It's like when the old Wookie puts the VR goggles on and he sees Diane Carroll, he's singing to him that kind of thing.

Or it's no, it's those acrobats jumping around.

Yes, yes, very holiday special stuff.

But what we see instead is all these like silver ice skaters who are fairies.

These represent the presence of the Winter Fairy and they come and they help matte magically and send him back home.

Yes, the time has come for every start of shine on where you are the angels, the fairies, the stars.

And I was looking this up.

We have a lot of ice skating to round out the picture.

And I believe this is a combination of the Moscow Circus and the Moscow Ice Ballet according to the credits.

Yeah, so skipping ahead to the the final confrontation, So of course, the wolf does eventually kidnap the children.

We have this big showdown in this frozen pond where everybody's ice skating, and as we said earlier, Rada outsmarts the wolf in the end and tricks him into falling in into the water through the ice and his lackeys give up and they're like, okay, here are your kids back, and in the end the wolf learns his lesson.

That's right.

Everybody.

Everybody comes around, but they really threaten him with cold drowning in the lake.

Rod is like like, we'll just let you drown right here, wolf unless you come around like your cronies just did.

And they're like, yeah, we've changed, and he's like, you know, I've looked at deep inside myself and I realize I need to change as well.

That's right, and he does, and we kind of seasonal transition as well, don't we.

That's right.

That's right.

There's this idea that it's like we're coming out of winter now it's becoming spring.

So this alone, we alluded to this earlier.

Like this, I can see why this film would make so much sense as holiday movie, even if there's nothing directly related to you know, ideas of a Christian Christmas and so forth or Santa Claus like, no, it's still getting into that deep primal idea of the winter holidays.

Like what is the magic be it?

You know, you know, capital M magic or lower case magic that is going to help us through to the spring.

Yeah, but at the ending is a spring festival.

I'm a little disappointed that we did not put the wolf in a Wickerman Yeah.

You know, if you had had like the ritual disembowment of the wolf, the removal of the children, the insertion of the stones, and the throwing of the wolf into the water, like I guess that would have this more of a Wickerman esque ritualistic vision.

And you know, I can very much envision a sort of I don't know, Midsummer esque horror movie in which someone visits this small town perhaps in perhaps in Romania, where hey, everyone is dress as animals and they've made me wear this wolf hat for some reason, and what is this big, big festival that I've been invited to, and you know it's going to have absolutely horrifying results.

Christopher Lee in a big wig with pigtails?

Who would Christopher Lee?

Would Christopher Lee be Donkey in this.

Oh no, I think Christopher Lee would be the wolf of course.

Oh okay, so he would get sacrificed.

Well, spoilers for The Wickerman if you haven't seen it.

I mean, it's an old movie, but it is great to see it without spoilers if you get a chance.

But here they come at the end of The Wickerman.

You know the inspector.

What he yells at Christopher Lee is he says, it's you know, this is not going to save your crops, and when it doesn't work next year, they'll put you in this thing.

That's right.

I forget.

It's been a long time since I've seen it.

I forgot about that twist.

Yeah, but it is worth noting that.

Yeah, film like this, as wholesome as it is, it's really only two or three degrees removed from Full Car.

So that's one of its charms.

So that is Mama aka rock and roll Wolf.

I did not know how much I needed this in my life, but I love this movie.

A film that I feel just inevitably spread the seeds of furry fandom throughout throughout Europe.

To be clear, that's not the appeal for me.

I'm not judging no judgment there, No, no, no, that's that's not what I'm saying.

But I think it has appeal beyond that as well.

Yeah, so this is a film that can be enjoyed on multiple levels and is and is very very kid friendly.

All right, well we're gonna go ahead and close out this episode.

Yeah, I get this was a holiday episode.

We'll go ahead and make it official of Weird House Cinema.

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