Val Lewton's Queer-Coded Film Noir Masterpiece - CAT PEOPLE (1942)

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Learn more@univozpods.net hello, my name's Patrick, and I'm a scream queen.

I'm a scream queen.

And so are you.

Hello again, my beautiful screamers, and welcome to another episode of Scream Queens.

It's the podcast where horror gets gay.

Tonight, it's episode 1505, season 15, episode 5.

And we are going to be delving into a world of forbidden desires and repressed passions.

That's right.

We're looking at the 1942 Queer Coded Film noir masterpiece, Cat People.

And in order to properly explore this world of powerful, mysterious women, my special guests are two powerful, mysterious women, Tara Gardner and Casey Lowman.

But before we do any of that, please allow me to introduce myself.

My name is Patrick Walsh, and ever since 2010, I've been your guide to the weird and wonderful world of horror movies.

But you are gonna have to see them through my very, very gay little eyes.

Cha ha cha ha cha la la la.

So, hello again, everybody.

Thank you so much for joining me in these final days of the Scream Queens podcast.

I've got three, possibly four more episodes planned before we wrap things up for good.

It'll all depend on booking the guests, but we'll see how things go as things go.

I want to apologize for this episode being a bit late.

We had a couple of things happen.

First of all, the.

It was an echo problem with the recording itself, and that always takes extra time to just go through and really kind of surgically remove all the instances when it happens.

But on top of that, Hindenburg, my audio editing software had this update, and the new version is completely different.

So I had to learn a whole new system of editing, as well as trying to figure out how to get rid of all this echo.

But we're here and we did it, and that's fabulous.

If you want to watch Cat People, it's not streaming anywhere, but it is absolutely 100% worth your welcome.

If you're a patron, go check your inbox.

There's something special for you in there.

Wink, wink.

I think that's all I've got for you, so I.

Without any further ado, let's sit back, relax, and let's get ready to talk about cat people from 1942.

Meow.

Across the centuries comes this exciting story of a modern girl cursed by an ancient legend.

The legend of the Cat People.

Women whose kiss means death, whose love.

Turns them into vicious, gnarling beasts of prey.

Twice I've been followed by Something that was not human.

Something that attempted to take my life.

I believe that was the cat form of Irena.

Why should she wish to harm you all?

Because I'm in love with her husband.

It shut now.

Just a minute ago it was open.

It's locked.

Leave Mr.

Hay.

So for the length of time that I've been doing Scream Queens, the podcast where Hargaine's gay, I've wanted to talk about the movie that we're discussing today.

I've always wanted to talk about the 1942 version of Cat People, but it never seemed to be the right time.

There was always something more pressing or something that was cooler.

But now time's running out and it's the time to do it is nigh.

So you might be wondering, why do I want to do this?

First of all, it was one of my mother's favorite movies.

There's one of those ones that she would always wake me up to watch when it was on.

We're going to come back to that.

And also because it's queer as fuck.

And also it's a fabulous film.

And why do I need to explain this to you?

Because we're just going to do.

Well, you know what?

We're just going to do a show anyway.

So I'm going to bring up my two fabulous guests and we're going to get down to the nitty gritty of camp people.

So, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please welcome back to the screen, including microphone Tara Gardner and Casey Lowman.

Right.

Hello.

Hi.

Thanks for having me again.

Hello, little bird version of Tara.

That was weird.

Sorry.

Don'T do bird invitations when we're doing Cat People.

You're going to get eaten.

I know.

I'm going to get thrown to a panther.

You are.

You are.

Hello, Casey.

Welcome back.

Wel, always a delight to have you.

You're welcome.

It's okay.

All right.

So cat people, have we seen this before?

Do we have any insight going into the movie?

Like, what was your opinion before I assigned this to you?

If you've seen it before?

I've seen it before.

I saw it years and years ago when I was kind of going through a, like, classic noirish 40s binge, because a lot of people know this.

For the Luton bus.

There is a specific scene in here that gave birth to a thing that a lot of people will recognize.

They may not know where they recognize it from, but it started here.

And so I did want to see it for that.

And I also watched the remake, which is very loosely attached to this very Loosely.

The song by David Bowie is good.

Let's go that for the remake.

Okay, this.

This is a complete sideboard.

Once upon a time, there was a thing called Twilight Zone magazine.

It was basically like, short fiction and things like that, but they had.

I remember their.

Their year, the horror review of the year 1982.

And they're one of the reviews they had, like, what worked and what didn't with all the movies ever.

Like, the figure was like, what worked for the thing was no women.

What did work was no women for cat people.

What worked?

Ed Begley Jr.

Getting his arm ripped off.

What did work.

Ed Begley Jr.

Getting.

I completely agree.

He just showed up and he got his arm revved off.

It's that Begley Jr.

Don't do that to him.

He's got a cool electric car.

Anyway, sorry.

Ridiculous.

Cyber.

Casey, what were your pre.

Pre podcast thoughts of cat people from 1942?

Okay, this is probably strange for me, and it wasn't really on my radar.

I'd heard of the movie, but I didn't know anything about it, so I went in that way because I thought that was, like, the best way to go.

Like, I'll read stuff after it, right?

Really?

That's fabulous.

I figured you'd be.

You being my resident expert on lesbianics.

I figured it'd be all over this movie because it's dripping in it.

I know it is, and I could see it from watching it the first time, but I probably.

I don't know, like, yes, I'd heard of the film.

Like, I've heard the title, but, like, I never looked into it.

So, like, it was a blind spot that I'm very glad to have fixed.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

I love that.

I love that.

I love the.

Yay.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, actually.

No, no, no.

Things happen when they're supposed to happen.

Yeah.

The fact.

The fact that you're getting it done, checking it off, that's the important thing.

It doesn't matter when it happens.

The fact that it's done and you did it and.

Cool.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

So like I said, this is what I used to watch with my mom all the time.

And it just.

It struck me odd that now it strikes me odd.

The other movie that she always would wake me up to watch when it came on TV was the uninvited from 1945.

Both of these movies are dripping in lesbianica, toots.

They do have a very similar vibe.

100%.

100%.

I'm like, what mom mom, she's not here anymore, so I can't ask her.

Mom, were you a secret lesbian this whole time?

Because it would explain a lot about me, but let's just assume so.

Yeah.

All right.

So one of the things I think is fascinating about this movie and about this whole director thing.

Director Val Lewton, world famous producer was it was hard not to take notice of the huge success that horror had at Universal Studios.

And RKO Studios wanted to have their own branch of heart, but they also didn't want to spend a lot of money or time doing it.

So they hired Val Lewton to direct a whole slew of movies which they didn't have scripts for, they just had lurid titles.

And they said, here, here's a hundred thousand dollars for each of these movies.

Go crank something out.

And he made all these little art films.

And I think it's fascinating if these.

Like this film is cheap as.

But it doesn't look or feel it.

It's so beautiful, the lighting in it.

I kind of.

It's really interesting when someone is just given here is a title, maybe a poster, money and go make it.

You just have a timeline and this budget.

And when someone has just so much creativity, they're just like, I am going to make something to blow your mind.

And they do it within a very clear machine.

And it's so interesting, especially for that era.

Definitely a while ago on my little, my little, little movie night watch club we.

There's a similar series that happened based on the.

There's a bunch of movies that were based off the radio series Inner Sanctum that, that all starred Lon Chaney.

We watched a couple of them.

They're cheap as fuck and they feel cheap as fuck.

The telltale thing is like people just keep talking and talking and talking.

You never see any flashbacks.

It's like you never see any action happening.

You're always hearing about things happening off camera and the sets are garbage and you don't get any of that here.

I mean, granted this is a lot of talking.

It's 40 minutes before anything scary happens in this movie.

But it doesn't feel that way.

I think that's very cool.

But anyway, so I mentioned Val Lewton, Valutin, the other.

Some of the other movies in that series were the Body Snatcher and the Seventh Victim.

Another one that's dripping in lesbianica tudes.

That does have a link with this one by character as well.

Does it?

I've.

I haven't.

I've.

I saw it so long ago that I don't remember.

It was early on in the podcast process.

I need to revisit it.

Dr.

Lewis Judd, the psychiatrist, as in both.

Ah, that's.

I only know this because there is a title card of a quote from him.

And I'm like, who is that?

I look it up.

I'm like, oh, he is a character in this movie.

I had the same reaction on.

On this one.

I was like, oh, where?

Who's that quote from?

And I looked him up and then you're like, oh, right, he's the character.

So this is fake.

What, that title card at the end.

Oh, okay.

The one about ancient sin.

Yeah.

Yes.

Ding dong Patrick from the future here.

Tara and Casey are 100.

Right.

I have looked up the title card and yes, it is A quote from Dr.

Lewis Judd, who is a character in the movie that we're about to watch.

And it says, even as fog continues to lie in the Val Valleys, so does ancient sin cling to the low places, the depressions in the world consciousness, supposedly from the book called the Anatomy of Atavism.

And what kind of ancient sins are we talking about, Dr.

Lewis Judd?

Oh, right, we're talking about ancient girl on Girl Thins.

Bring them on back to the show.

Yes.

Yeah, because I always go back to like, oh, is it one of the Friday.

Not Friday, Nightmare on Elm streets where they apparently quote po.

But it's not a po quote.

There's some movie that does that.

And since I found that out, I always look it up.

Go.

Is this a real quote?

Is this totally made up?

Okay, it's.

It's Dr.

Day.

Doctor.

Hey, I'm Dr.

Judd.

It's like Dr.

Nick, but.

Hey, everybody, I'm Dr.

Judd.

I'm from the movie that you just saw.

And I got eaten by a cat person.

Hey, I have a weird sword cane, but yeah.

So the producer was Val Lewton, did all these fabulous things.

Director was Jacques to know.

They work together on almost all these films.

Like I Walked with the Zombie Leopard Man Curse.

He went on to do Curse of the Demon and Giant of Marathon, both of which is fabulous films for different reasons.

And comedy terror.

I've been going to sleep watching really old, like, creaky old detective movies on Tubi for the past couple months and every day.

And then I wake up at a completely different movie.

And the other day I woke up and it was I Walked with a Zombie, which I'd never seen before, and I had no interest in because I've seen enough of those 1930s zombies movies to know what I was Gonna get, like.

It's just gonna be this.

Gonna be, like, this gonna be all this stupid native stuff, and there's gonna be an offensive black character, you know, doing the shotgun and jiving and stuff.

And then I didn't get any of that.

It's this wonderful, like, dreamscape of a film.

It is really good.

Yeah, that was nothing that I expected, but, yeah, so, yeah, so they did.

They did some good stuff with this great thing.

All right.

Babbling.

Patrick is babbling.

Patrick.

Babbling.

Tara, give me.

Walk me through what, what, what.

What's the basic story of cat people from 1942?

We have Irina, who is an immigrant from Serbia.

She meets a disappointing white man at the zoo, who, within, I think, the course of a month, woos this terribly lonely woman into marrying him, even though he knows she's too afraid to even kiss him.

And after they get married, even when she goes into therapy, she is too afraid to have any type of sexual contact, since she's afraid she will turn into a cat person and kill him for the evil inside her.

And then he has an emotional affair with his co worker and within the course of months decides to leave her.

And she may or may not actually be a cat person because her psychiatrist is very inappropriate and kisses her and he dies and arena dies.

Okay, that.

Okay.

Okay.

That was okay.

Okay, okay, okay.

Very brief, very brief.

Whole story in a nutshell, but sure.

Okay.

That's okay.

Sorry.

Story.

It's okay.

And I'm going to say that Cat People is the story of four incredibly lonely people.

But mostly it's a warning about the dangers of not being true to yourself.

When you're unable to be true to yourself, it's dangerous to others, and most importantly, to you.

First of all, I love the fact that her name is arena.

And I don't think anybody pronounces it the same way twice.

There's like, 13 different ways it's said.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I had to look it up to make sure I was spelling it correctly.

Okay, okay.

My own cat person is about to invade over here.

Hi, Boots.

Not now, baby.

Do not disparage my people.

I am also a panther.

Rah.

Casey, where does arena get this idea that she's going to turn into a cat if she gives into her forbidden lusts?

It's from her village.

And there was, like, what was his?

King John.

And there were these people called the mamaluks.

Is that how they said it?

I'm sorry, they're called the what?

Mamalux.

Okay, back down.

Please.

Continue.

And they were some kind of evil Satan worshiper.

People who could turn into cats.

Like St.

John drove them into the hills.

And she's worried that she could also turn into a panther.

Yeah.

Are you admiring my statue?

Not exactly.

Who's it supposed to be?

King John.

King John?

The Magna Carta and all that stuff?

No, King John of Serbia.

He was a fine king.

He drove the Mamelukes out of Serbia and freed the people.

Well, why have this around?

Well, perhaps you have in your room a picture of George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.

Well, what does it mean?

Why is he spearing that cat?

Oh, it's not really a cat.

It's meant to represent the evil ways into which my village had once fallen.

You see, the Mamelukes came to Serbia long ago, and they made the people slaves.

Well, at first the people were good and worshiped God in a true Christian way.

But little by little, the people changed.

When King John drove out the Mamelukes and came to our village, he found dreadful things.

People bowed down to Satan and said, they are messes to him.

They had become witches and were evil.

King Jong put some of them to the sword, but some, the wisest and the most wicked escaped into the the mountains.

Now do you understand?

I still don't see what it has to do with you.

Those who escape, the wicked ones, their legend haunts the village where I was born.

It's slightly confusing, but also kind of awesome backstage.

Here's the thing.

It is confusing because here's the thing that I think is also fascinating about this movie.

This is prime.

This came out in the prime era of the Hays Code of morality, that they are completely restricted on what you can do and say and show in a movie.

And the fact they're able to do something that's about sex, that's about forbidden sex.

No one ever talks about it.

Everybody talks around everything.

There were so many scenes in here that, like, I can't believe got through based on know how.

Because I know how strict the code is.

Like, the whole thing.

When she invites him up for tea in her apartment, I was like, whoa.

I've never had anyone here.

You're the first friend I met in America.

I know lots of people in business.

Editors, secretaries, other sketch artists, you know, but you might be my first real friend.

Thank you.

I have a note.

Go Go time.

I have a note of it.

You brought a man up on Chaperoned for Tea, you hussy.

Yeah, well, yes, there's that.

And then whenever they come, like the two times we see them have tea, when they come back, they're in the dark, he's laying down.

I fell asleep.

I know.

I was watching you.

Like, you can't do that.

That's implying, say, when she comes back.

When they come back and he's asleep and she's just watching him sleep.

That implies sex happen.

Even though it didn't happen.

Because that's the whole point of the.

It didn't happen.

It's fascinating that this whole movie is about sexual tension and about sexual threat when it's never acted on or even spoken about.

It's so fascinating that this movie makes sense at all.

I mean, I was so confused by that because I was like, okay, well, they definitely had sex, right?

And then later they're like, she hasn't even kissed him.

I'm like, wait, what movie am I watching?

Like, what happened?

Like, I just sang to him in the dark for three hours.

Dave, wait.

You know I love you, don't you?

I've never kissed you.

Do you know that's funny.

Why?

Well, people in America are in love, or even think they're in love.

They usually kissed long ago.

Well.

Irina, what's wrong?

I've lived in dread of this moment.

I've never wanted to love you.

I stayed away from people.

I lived alone.

I didn't want this to happen.

But you just told me you love me.

I do.

I do.

I fled from the past.

Some things you could never know or understand.

Evil things.

Evil.

Irena, you told me something of the past.

About King John and the witches in the village and the cat people descended from them.

They're fairy tales, Irena.

Fairy tales hurt in your childhood, nothing more than that.

They have nothing to do with you, really.

You're Irena.

You're here in America.

You're so normal, you're even in love with me.

Oliver Reed, a good, plain Americano.

You're so noble.

You're gonna marry me.

And those fairy tales, you can tell them to our children.

They love them.

Which is also like.

I mean, whenever you're a lesbian dating and you hang out with someone like that, quick, all night, I mean, and then have tea.

I was like, if he was a woman, this would be just normal.

Married, right?

100%.

She wants to be a U haul lesbian so much.

Yes, exactly.

That's.

I know.

It's like, this is a U haul lesbian.

They get together so fast.

They're like, together, they're married.

I mean, like Jen and I did.

This like she just chose a man, which is wrong.

Yeah, she should have chosen that woman from the restaurant with the amazing bow.

Oh, heck, yeah.

Who wouldn't?

Oh, we gotta come back to her.

We got.

We'll come back to her.

But this is the thing.

You can't be u haul lesbian if you're dating Oliver Reed.

No, you can't.

No.

The character's name is coincidentally Oliver Reed.

He has no better Ken Smith, who's delightful in this, by the way.

I mean, he is your perfect bland American.

And it's exactly what you get.

Clueless and bland the whole way through.

Sidebar.

One of the movies that I've covered on the show and I've covered on it came the 70s is the Cat Creature from 1974, directed by Curtis Herring.

He was an out gay director at the time and he cast all his queer Hollywood buddies in it.

Everybody in it is involved from some like 1940s cat scary cat movie.

So Ken Smith is in it.

I just blanked on her name.

I love her so much.

Oh, my gosh.

My favorite sinister lesbian.

Oh, yes.

You know, I mean, was she the baroness too?

No.

Is that the different one?

Different one.

Oh, Gail's Gail Sondergaard.

Gail Sondergaard from the Black Cat?

Yeah, she ran in the.

In the movie you're talking about, she ran the shop and was just amazing.

Yeah, no, she's so good.

The thing is, he wanted, like, she was.

She was known for playing secondary sinister lesbians.

Like, she wasn't getting the Rebecca jobs.

She was the.

She was always the Mrs.

Danvers knockoffs.

But she made a career out of it.

She won Oscars for it.

And she's great at it.

He's like, I want you to run this shop and be a predatory lesbian, but play it as a predatory lesbian.

We're gonna do it after the studio.

The network was like, no.

But he's like, you know what?

Play it the same way.

Anyway, so if you watch the movie, she's like, everyone's hanging around the shop as a bulldike.

It's great.

It's so much fun.

It's a fun little movie.

Anyway, cyborg back, but Kate Smith is in that, so I know him from that.

He was also in the Spiral Staircase and a couple of other things that were cool.

How awful about Alan for TV movies.

And he was in my favorite mov.

He was Hayley Mill's shitty dad in the Trouble with Angel with Rosalind Russell running around with co.

Anyway, where were we?

We were talking about.

I got sidebarred by many things at the same time.

We talked about codes.

We were talking about all lesbians.

And then we were gonna move.

Yeah.

How she just.

If she, she chose wrong by choosing a man.

Yeah, but she, she didn't really have much.

I mean, I guess she did choose, but he, he, he invaded her, her space.

From the beginning, she was perfect.

She was living her perfectly happy, solitary life sketching panthers and littering.

And.

She'S like, fuck it.

Yeah.

Like she throws away her drawing too, which is like so perfect.

Like, that's exactly.

Like as an artist, I was like, yeah, I see you.

She's sketching.

She's like, no, it's terrible.

Get away from me.

Get away from me.

I draw horribly.

I also have to appreciate a time where once upon a time we can, instead of putting up a no littering sign, we could put up a rhyming couplet poem and expect people to understand what it means.

I need more of that subtlety.

And also a zoo that apparently you just wander in and out of at all times at night because that's where they meet.

They meet at a zoo where she is sketching a panther and there's some other wild cats and it just.

It's like a pass through of a park or something.

We've got zoos like that in New York.

We've got one such a park.

We've got one out here in Queens.

But they're.

They're a separate entrance fee.

But maybe, maybe, who knows?

I don't know.

In the 40s.

That's why I feel like it's new.

I don't.

We were trying to figure out.

Do we, Casey, do we ever know where this is happening?

I.

I guess I assumed New York, but do they ever say it?

No, because I assume New Orleans.

New Orleans because of the zoo.

The zoo structure.

And I think I got that from the remake, which is gross.

The movie is gross.

I've seen that either.

It's gross after birth off himself.

Okay.

It doesn't sound like a glowing recommendation.

Google says it's set in New York.

This.

Okay, Dennis.

New York.

This movie, this movie's all about subtlety.

This movie, the other movie's all about Michael McDowell, like, banging his dick against your face.

The whole movie just like, stop it.

Just.

Okay.

It's so.

It's so directly sexual that it's just too much.

That sounds intense.

It's incest.

Incest sex.

Because they're.

They're brother, sister, cat people.

He's like, I'm going to fuck you, sister and that's the whole.

The rest of the movie.

I think I like this one better just from hearing that.

Yeah.

It's gross.

It's gross.

But it's okay because they're cats.

That's what cats.

They.

Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, my.

Huh?

Oh, yes.

They have this meet cute in the apartment in the park.

And it's.

It's still weird.

Like, she's just.

Tell me about her.

Raina.

Tell me about her.

What?

She is desperately lonely.

Like, and she says that from the jump.

And that's just the main thing that I.

The whole way through.

I just feel so bad for her that she is willing to just time and again suppress her own wants and needs just to have someone in her life to be with her, to feel loved.

Like, at one point she just says, I like to be liked.

Yeah.

And she's.

It's just.

It's really sad because you get.

She's like, I'm.

She comes from Serbia, so you.

And if the time frame Eastern Europe wasn't having a good time.

So she probably went through a lot of trauma.

This can all be read into it, but it's just base of it.

She's just very lonely, and it's just so sad.

And I feel almost like he takes advantage of it unknowingly because he just is so clueless to other people's feelings.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you for.

Thank you for adding that.

Because I don't like, one of the things that I've heard, people get really up in Oliver's grill and he's cruel and stuff.

Like, I don't think he is.

He's just not bright.

He's never had to consider anyone else's emotions.

Because he even says, like, I've never been unhappy later because he just is just walks coast through life.

This guy goes through life.

I'm a blonde white guy.

Everything's cool.

I build ships.

I don't work in a niche market.

Yeah.

I make lots of money.

Yeah.

I'm a mediocre white man.

The world is made for me.

Exactly.

I've never been unhappy before.

Things have always gone swell for me.

I had a grand time as a kid.

Lots of fun at school, here at the office with you and the Commodore and Doc.

That's why I don't know what to do about all this.

I've just never been unhappy.

Exactly.

And.

And this is something that doesn't happen.

Wait.

This is not how things go.

You're supposed to meet people and you fall in love and you kiss and you get married and Then you do things that we can't talk about because it's a movie in the 1940s.

It's the idea that he'd ever have to work at something or help someone is completely foreign to him.

Yeah, yeah.

But there are things like the fact that he agrees to this at all.

Like this scene when they, okay, we're jumping all over the place.

It's just the way it's going to be.

We'll get to the scary stuff and this.

But this relationship is key to things.

Like they had the whole scene where she explains why, why we're not kissing, but they get married anyway.

He's like, I could deal with that.

And she just keeps saying, be patient with me.

Be patient with me.

I want to work through this.

But then she actually really shows no sign of wanting to work through this at all.

I mean, she go, he does the right thing.

At a certain point when he suggests psychotherapy, like, that's the right thing to do.

This is the correct thing to do for crazy 1940s movie.

But of course, in a 1940s movie, which I've said at our movie nights before, in old movies, whenever you have a psychiatrist, they're the crazy person, they're the threat, they're the bad person.

In the movie, the worst example of hypnosis ever.

Going, so going.

Just trying to light my face.

He's like, he just kept going on and on about cats.

Hypnosis always tires me.

Some of my patients do find it exhausting.

It's only that I remember nothing.

It's my duty to remember.

I have it all here.

Most interesting.

You told me of your village and the people and their strange beliefs.

So ashamed.

It must seem so childish.

And the cat women of your village too.

You told me of them.

Women who in jealousy or anger or out of their own corrupt passions can change into great cats like panthers.

And if one of these women were to fall in love and if her lover were to kiss her, take her into his embrace, she would be driven by her own evil to kill him.

That's what you believe and fear, isn't it?

I think you might be a lesbian.

But I'm still.

Which we can't say.

Which we can't say.

But yeah, yeah, I, I, I can even justify some of Dr.

Judd stepped, which we'll come back to talk through this.

But when it's the day of the wedding, when it's your wedding party and they get home and she's like, well, good night.

I'm gonna go my room.

You didn't even try.

It's awful.

It's awful.

What is it, darling?

I'm.

I'm going to beg.

Mrs.

Reed.

It's nice to.

To hear that.

Nice.

I want to be Mrs.

Reed.

Well, you are.

But I want to be Mrs.

Reed, really.

I want to be everything that name means to me.

And I can't.

I can't.

Oliver, be kind.

Be patient.

Let me have time.

Time to get over that fear.

There's something evil in me.

Darling, you have all the time there is in the world if you want it.

And all the patience and kindness there's in me.

Only the time, Oliver.

I don't want moment there.

Well, bye.

Good night.

I'll be in my room.

Not even a kiss on the cheek?

Nothing.

Nothing.

Well, I mean, I get it if you're scared like that.

And what I think is fun, too, is that I really didn't catch it till this last time through that, like, it's very possible that she's not turning into a leopard person at all.

This is all in her head.

Like, you can watch it that way because nobody else seems to react when they see her in her leopard form.

They don't seem to react to, like they're looking like, at a leopard.

We never see a transformation into a leopard.

And unlike other movies, like, she always comes back.

She always comes back fully dressed and fully styled.

Yeah.

You hear a noise that is apparently a leopard roar and you might see an actual leopard, but you could explain.

It away that she's crawling down the stairs.

Like, she's also kind of terrifying.

Yeah, I kind of like that visual quite a lot.

Yeah, that's the one that got me, too.

Particularly in that pool scene, like, her just coming down the stairs.

Like, I would be screaming too, if a person came down on all fours.

The coat she wears throughout the movie and then her outfits also get black.

It is like a crushed patterned velvet black coat.

So it kind of looks like the leopard's fur.

And she's always wearing that.

It's just her dresses underneath slowly get more black as well.

Yeah, no, that I wanted to come back to that code.

Like, that coat, I think is great because like you said, it's a crushed velvet pattern thing, but sometimes when it's lit, it looks like sleek, like fur.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's very distinct points in the movie where, like, she is a.

She's in her Catwoman form right now.

She's like, all of a sudden she's real comfortable that I'm stunning to stuff.

And the fact that this might all Just be coming from the fact that a bunch of shitty kids teased her in her village.

You said you didn't know your father, that he died in some mysterious accident in the forest before your birth.

And because of that, the children teased you and called your mother a witch, a catwoman.

These childhood tragedies are inclined to corrode the soul, to leave a canker in the mind.

But we'll try to repair the damage.

Because her dad died mysteriously in a forest accident.

They all decide, oh, cuz this is what according to the curse is that these witches of the town would kill their husbands as soon as they got sexually aroused.

And, oh, your father died mysteriously.

Your mother's a Marmaluke and so are you.

And she's believed it all these years, which is entirely possible.

And I'm sorry, every time I say Mama Luke, I want to say it.

A Bronx that said you.

Mama Luke.

What are you doing?

It isn't.

Get the fuck out of your Mama Luke.

And by the way, there's no Serbian legend about this at all.

It's all made up.

There's no King John, none of that stuff.

It's all bullshit.

And it kind of makes sense because why are Serbian people turning into Panthers?

It's Eastern Europe.

But whatever, whatever you can turn into whatever you want to turn into.

Ladies, you go, I live.

Live for it.

But yeah, but this whole.

The fact that this whole movie is about oppressed sexuality and we can't talk about it is also fun.

It adds to the oppression of it all.

But I could see this is much like the Uninvited when this ran all of a sudden, like these groups of women, the same groups of women kept coming back to the movie over and over and over and over and over again.

So the Catholic Church is like, since something up with this movie, we have the exact same pattern happened that all of the lesbian groups of the time found it and it spoke to them.

And all of a sudden we had a hit on our hands that nobody was expecting.

But you know, when you get.

When you feel seen, you feel seen.

There's also little like drops of other things.

Like, I remember at one point they visit a pet shop and all the animals freak out around Irina.

Oh, yeah.

And the owner is like, it happens with my sister in law too.

I'm like, your sister in law's a cat person too.

Animals are ever so psych.

Some people who just can't come in here.

My dear brother's wife, for instance, she's a very nice girl.

I've got nothing against her.

But you just should see what happens when she puts her foot inside this place.

The cats particularly, they seem to know.

So it's like she's not the only one.

It can be implied from that.

There are many.

She just hasn't met any.

Yeah.

Oh, she has.

Well, I think she has.

She's.

She's.

She says something to him, and I don't remember exactly where it is, but she talked about her past.

She's like, I've done things.

I've.

I've.

Like, it.

It sounds like something's happened before and she shut it down, I guess.

You got away from.

Like, she's gotten some.

She got too close or something.

Something has happened before that this fear has been reinforced.

That maybe she ran away and did whatever the heck she wanted for that.

That one summer, she's like, fuck it all.

I don't care.

But then all of a sudden, you know, people got eaten.

And not in a fun way or something.

I don't know.

There's something that says that she's got history with this.

It's not just the fear.

She's so scared because she seems like she knows it's going to happen and no one takes her seriously.

Like, she's like, I will turn into a panther.

She's like.

I feel like she kind of has that in her head, you know, like it's not a mystery so much to her.

I don't know.

Yeah.

It's an inevitability.

But she does string him along.

She does string him.

I'm.

She's not blameless in this either.

She's playing psychological games with him.

To that are not fair, I mean.

Because I'm sorry.

It is a marriage contract.

Certain things are expected.

Like sex.

I'm sorry.

And she's lying to Oliver about psychotherapy.

She only goes to see Dr.

Judd once, and then after that, she just keeps lying about it.

We don't talk together openly.

You're not frank with me.

I've never lied to you.

I ran into Dr.

Judd today.

You haven't been back to see him.

He cannot help me.

Well, you won't let him help you.

You won't let me help you.

You won't even help yourself.

And when she gets called out online, she basically says, you need to keep me happy, Oliver, because if you don't keep me happy, people are gonna get hurt.

We should never quarrel.

Never let me feel jealousy or anger.

Whatever is in me is held in, is kept harmless.

And I'm happy.

That's emotional abuse.

That's Emotional blackmail right there.

Now, granted, I lived with that for a really long time, so I'm hypersensitive to it.

But I just wanted to point out that it's really easy to paint Elena as the total victim in all of this, but she's playing dirty pool, too.

So nobody's really.

Nobody's really a villain here, but nobody's also the hero either.

So she's not as lily white as would like things to seem.

Also, it just occurred to me, I don't know why it took me this long to occur, that not only is this film an allegory for repression of queer love, it's also leaning heavily into asexuality.

Tara.

It's again, long engagements and being able to actually communicate what you are and aren't willing to do in a relationship.

There was a war on.

There was no time for a long engagement.

We could have been bombed out of the.

We could have.

The blitzkrieg could have happened at any moment.

You need to know the person you're marrying.

You do, you do.

When there's a war on.

You need to at least have kissed them once.

Before we get into where I really get to meaty stuff, one of the things I really love about this particular movie is the small parts are all brilliant character actors that are just selling some.

They've got their one gimmick and I love them all.

The pet store lady.

Love the pet store lady.

She's got my favorite line of the movie.

You can fool everybody but landy, dearie me, you can't fool a cat.

They seem to know who's not right, if you know what I mean.

Ding dong Patrick from the future here.

I want to take a pause here because we skipped over one of my favorite things in the film.

Is this in the first half of the film?

Yes.

It's this dramatic tension about what's going on with this relationship between Oliver and Irena.

But underscoring that is Arena's relationship with other animals and how they're illustrating that there's something very, very wrong with Arena.

Or I should say, there's something a bit unusual about Irena.

For their second date, Oliver buys her a kitten.

This is a terrible idea.

Never buy a pet for somebody as a gift, particularly somebody that you don't know.

It's not really stupid.

You know that already.

But he buys this beautiful kitten and immediately all like, oh, no, this is gonna end in tragedy.

But fortunately, it doesn't, because the cat knows, as we learn, the cat knows.

You can fool people some of the time.

But dearie, May can never fool a cat.

That cat knows there's something wrong with her immediately.

I brought you a present, you little devil.

Oh, it's all right.

It's just that cats don't seem to like me.

This is only a kitten.

It's very friendly.

When I had it in the office, Alice, that's the girl who works in our department, played with her.

Catches, don't like me.

Wonder what we can do.

You got it at the pet store, didn't you?

Yeah.

Good.

Well, we could exchange it for some other pet.

So this adorable little cross eyed Siamese kitten avoids becoming leopard food.

Instead gets brought back to the pet store.

So they exchange it for something else.

And as soon as arena sets foot inside this pet store, all hell breaks loose.

I can't imagine.

Oh, landy, dearie me.

I can't imagine what got into them.

All that caterwauling.

The last time they did that was when an alley cat got in and ate up one of my nice rice finches.

Oh, I wanted to exchange this kitten for bird.

Well, of course.

I have some lovely canaries.

One little lemon colored fellow with top notes like Caruso, as peaceful as my dream of heaven.

Shall we go back now and select just which little birdie here?

Go.

Please.

Oliver, you pick the one you like.

I'd rather stay here.

Of course.

I'll only be a minute.

So they pick out this beautiful little canary and for a while everything's fine.

Look, I'm a normal person.

I have a pet like normal people do.

See?

Everything's perfectly fine.

I'm normal.

The pet's normal.

My life is normal.

Look at me blending in.

Until one day she tries to hold the bird and reaches into the cage to try to grab it.

And that thing is so terrified, it dies.

It drops dead in fear.

So of course Rena is deeply upset by this and she's mourning the bird, but she's mourning it for so long that even Ollie notices there's something wrong.

She's like, you know what?

You're mourning this bird for an awfully long time.

But of course, it's not about the bird.

It's about what the bird represents.

It just is another confirmation that there's something not right about me.

That those things that I fear about myself are true.

And this is my favorite part of the movie.

One of my favorite parts of the movie.

Her decision.

You see her packing up the bird in a little box, you know, pretty paper.

Oh, she's gonna bury it.

But no, she goes to the one other animal that she has connection with the whole movie, which is that panther in the zoo.

Now, they've been looking at each other the whole film because, you know, they're simpatico.

They understand each other, unlike the other animals in the film.

That caged panther recognizes another caged panther.

And instead of burying the bird, she feeds it to the panther.

She throws it into the panther cage and lets it eat.

Even she doesn't understand why she did it, but.

But I love that moment.

Just because she's just.

At some level, she knows she can never connect.

She just has to feed this dark side of herself the only way that she knows how.

I can't hide it anymore.

I just have to feed it for one second.

Then maybe I can get on with my life.

Feed the monster and maybe it'll leave me alone.

But of course, no.

No, because the monster isn't the panther.

The monster is you.

If you determine to mourn that bird, we'll have a regular wake.

It's not just because the bird died.

It's me.

I envy every woman I see on the street.

They can't match your little finger.

I envy them.

They're happy.

They make their husbands happy.

They lead normal, happy lives.

They're free.

Do you know what happened to the bird?

It died.

It died of fright when I tried to take it in my head.

All right, the bird was afraid of you.

That's nothing.

I had a rabbit once that hated me.

Yet I grew up to be quite a nice fella.

Oliver.

When I went past the pandas cage, I had to open the box.

I had to throw the bird to him.

Do you understand?

I had to.

I had to do it.

That's what frightens me.

Okay, now that you're all cut up, I'm gonna bring you back to where we left off.

Which was in the pet store right after everything went berserko back to the show.

Ding dong.

That's another scene.

That's lush.

Like the amount of pets.

Monkeys.

The pet shops did monkeys.

What a different timer.

Let's tell you something.

If it doesn't rip your arm off in two weeks, it's free.

Do you want a pet that might eat your face?

Come to us.

Yeah, no, but all those character bits.

Like the cleaning lady who keeps brushing invisible ash off of her boobs.

Doesn't need to be in the movie at all.

But it's great.

They do it twice, so you know, they're just like.

We love this.

This is a bit.

We were gonna.

The two old ladies at the end when they're Rushing the apartment after the murder happens.

Sue Ellen, you know better than that.

You're not supposed to touch anything until the police get here.

You know, they're an old lesbian couple.

You know, they're.

Every time there's a murder, she has to come in and touch things.

Every time.

My favorite part of the movie, the thing that I just.

That absolutely grounds it in queerdom, we touched on it before, is the wedding dinner.

When the other woman shows up, the other cat person in the room, they're.

Like, literally saying, oh, look at that woman.

She looks like a cat.

Look at that woman.

Isn't she something?

Looks like a cat.

Also, which I think is fun, too.

Like in 1940 slang.

And calling somebody a cat is also calling them a whore.

She looks like a whore.

Which she does.

Which she does.

She's.

She's all spangles and sparkles and fur, and she's got too much going on.

She's got too much going on.

She has a cunty hair bow, and I love it.

Yeah.

The Egyptian eye makeup.

She does look like a whore.

So saying that she looks like a cat was an absolute normal thing to say.

But.

But no, tell.

Walk me through what happens at this wedding banquet at the Serbian restaurant, Casey.

Well, they're just eating at the Serbian restaurant, and this lady comes up, and I can't remember exactly what she said.

I know I wrote it down somewhere.

So if someone has it.

Do I moisturize?

Yes.

And it basically connects with her and calls her sister.

Right, My sister.

Yeah, my sister.

So.

Which is kind of funny, because, you know, lesbian calling each other sisterhood and things like that, but there's so much to it.

It's one of the best examples of gaydar that I've seen on film.

These two women just looking at each other and immediately knowing what the other one is.

Yep.

They locked eyes.

It was.

It was intense.

And I.

I mean, I wanted to follow that movie like.

Like, just.

Let's go.

Let's follow these two together.

They can both turn into panthers, I think.

You don't kill each other then.

Right?

It's just.

Or if you do.

Yeah.

Or you just have panther sex, whatever happens is gonna be great.

Ball of yarn in the apartment.

Weird lesbian witch sex.

It'll be great.

Oh, yeah, right.

Go with her.

Go with her.

No, because, I mean, it just reminded me, like, there weird times where I'd be out with my family, and all of a sudden I'd see somebody I know from Gay World, and they're like, hey.

I'm like, not now.

Never seen you before in my life.

You must have mistaken me for somebody else.

That hasn't happened a long time.

But you know that feeling, that tension.

And nobody else feels it.

That nobody else feels.

It's just the whole world.

The whole world goes away except for these two women.

And it's so.

It's 30 seconds, and it's the most intense 30 seconds of the movie.

Oh, it's one of my two favorite moments in the movie for sure.

Because I just like, freezes.

Yeah.

And then crosses herself.

And it's just like, oh, God, Oh, God, oh, God.

Like her whole face is just like, oh, no.

Oh, no.

Oh, no.

And Oliver Reed's just like, so who's that?

What'd she say?

And she's like, nothing.

No.

And even the other one, the other one's coming up with such hope to merch Fester.

Yeah.

Crosses her away.

You're one of those.

She greeted me.

She called me sister.

You saw her, Oliver.

You saw her.

She looked like.

Oh, the cat people.

She looks like a cat, so she must be one of the cat people.

One of King John's pets.

Oh, Reina, you crazy kid.

Can't you see him?

With my normal friends.

The graves just spat up a hairball at her wedding.

High school, when you.

When people, you have like, your nerd group, and then one of them goes into, like, the popular group and they're like, no, don't talk to me like I have this group now.

Not bitter about that 40 years later at all.

Not a bit.

Everything's fine.

Tell me about Alice in another movie.

She'd be an awesome girl Friday.

In this one she means well, but.

But is having an emotional affair with Oliver Reed, and for that I kind of want to smack her.

Can't help it.

I just can't help it.

I can't bear to see you unhappy.

I love you too darn much and I don't care if you do know it.

Ollie, I love you.

I'm sorry.

Forget it.

There's Arena.

You're in love with her.

I don't know.

All this trouble has made me think I don't know what love really is.

I don't know even whether I'm in love with Arena.

I know what love is.

It's understanding.

It's you and me and let the rest of the world go by it's just the two of us Living our lives together happily and proudly no self torture, no doubt it's enduring and it's everlasting Nothing can change it Nothing can change us.

Ollie.

That's what I think love is.

I do and I don't.

I see exactly where you're coming from.

At the same point, like, he's been.

He's not getting his bargain, so of course he's gonna drift and.

But, yeah, I get it.

Yeah.

If she felt this way, like, why didn't she, like, come to him before this marriage thing?

Like, they've been working together.

It's like, what are you doing bringing it up?

Because.

Because it was work.

Because it's professional.

I don't know why.

I do like the way she likes, like, well, she should be afraid of me.

I'm the new.

The new kind of other woman.

Ollie, you're going to have to solve your problems your own way.

I'm going to drink up and go home.

I think you'd better go home, too, and make it up with Arena.

Alice, you're very swell.

That's what makes me dangerous.

I'm the new type of other woman, which she is.

I'm not gonna sleep with your husband.

I'm gonna be an emotional support system for your husband because you're not there for him at all, which is also dangerous.

But, no, I love her.

She.

I think she's great.

That's what I mean by, like.

In another movie, that character is the Girl Friday and she is our main character.

Funny you should mention that.

I mentioned earlier that I keep falling asleep and waking up.

In other movies, I've discovered this detective series from the forties called the Falcon.

He's another rich, debonair guy who.

Private icons, who keeps finding himself in all kinds of crazy things.

Well, it stars Jane Randolph, who plays Alice as the sassy news reporter.

Girl Friday, best friend.

But the Falcon is Tom Conway, who plays Dr.

Judd.

Oh, they crackle together.

They're great.

It's all the 40s banner that you want from this movie, but.

But no, I think she's great.

I think all of her scenes are very complicated.

I love that she's the other woman, but she's not the other woman.

She's really not done anything wrong.

But she's also not helping.

She's not.

How.

No, she's not helping either.

But.

But I don't know what you're gonna do in a situation like that.

She's upfront with everything, which I appreciate.

She's like, listen, this is how I feel.

It's.

Again, you kind of just feel bad for everyone.

Yes.

Yes.

And at times you want to smack all of them for different reasons.

I love that they've managed to keep This a small cast because like pretty much all the scary stuff happens to Alice for the most part.

For the first, nothing happens for 40 minutes.

Then we have this fabulous park scene.

Walk me through the park scene.

Walk me through the walk into the park scene.

Well, as the marriage continues and no sexy time happens, they start to have arguments.

And so Oliver Reid one night says he's going to work and Irena calls and Alice picks up and he's not at work.

Hello, Hello?

Hello, Hello.

John Paul Jones.

Don't you hate people who do that?

He went to a diner around the corner.

Alice left.

The maid, who is an amazing character, said he's there.

So she goes to join him and Irena sees this whole thing could have.

Been solved had he ordered the chicken gumbo.

But please consider, please continue.

Another amazing character, that waitress.

My goodness, don't nobody like chicken gumbo.

Yes, yes.

And Irina watches them basically and is seething going.

And you can see in her mind she's just thinking, you lied to me.

And she's hurt because she also thinks Alice is her friend and you can understand where this misconception is coming from and these feelings.

And so they both leave and Alice goes and Irina follows her.

I'm a big girl, I can walk home by myself.

No, no, no, not tonight.

Not tonight, honey, not tonight.

Yeah, please continue.

And you see this cutting between Alice's feet and Irina's feet.

Yeah, Alice's feet, Irina's feet going faster.

Alice knows she's being followed but doesn't know by who.

And going faster and freaking out and who is there.

And then Bonnie bus.

And that is the Luten bus.

Birth of the jump scare.

The birth of the jump scare.

Come on, sister, are you riding with.

Me or ain't you?

It is not as perfectly timed as you get them now, but you can definitely see how at the time it would have been very impactful.

Cuz she's walking through fog alone in the night and it's lit so beautifully.

There's no music except the click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click of the echoing heels.

Which is so tense.

It's so tense.

I gotta say it got me.

I, I jumped.

I was not expecting it because we were in a Vibey movie and then it just was, it was great just like.

And for me, for people who haven't heard it, like what?

So a bus just shows up?

It's not just that the bus shows up.

The brakes of the bus sound like a panther hiss.

So you expect this to be the cat and it's not Just it's, it's.

It's a rescue.

And it was the.

It was the very first jump scare.

And it's well done.

The loot and buzz thwarted of her prize.

It's implied that arena goes and eats some sheep.

Yeah.

Because you see like all these dead sheep and these footprints that are really muddy that go into like.

You see, you see paw prints.

You see the muddy paw prints leading out that turn into high heels.

Yes.

That was amazing.

So her clothes shape shift with her.

I love that.

She's a lady.

She has to be walking around with Central park naked in the middle of the wear.

Come on.

And then you just see her leading.

It's like.

It's like a lamppost and she's like with like a handkerchief by her mouth being like, oh, I ate too much.

I'm so full.

Oh, that didn't taste good.

Oh, I've got so much wool in my mouth.

Well, and like, does this imply, like since it's all about arousal or sexuality, that she is turned on by Alice and then turns into the panther while stalk her?

I mean, it was, it was sensual.

It was sensuality, but also anger and jealousy could turn you into a cat person as well.

All the dark emotions.

Lesbian route.

Personally, you know what?

I love that too.

I love that.

You know what?

That's a better route to go.

I want to eat you like this sheep.

That was a terrible thing to say.

That's.

I'm just not gonna take it any other way.

Yeah.

And she gets.

When there's like mud on her coat.

Her fabulous coat.

There's mud on it.

And she's just looking drained as hell and just like walks past him.

You smell.

You smell like.

Carry on.

Yeah, I gotta take.

I gotta take one of those grief baths where I have to wash off the sin that I've been committing.

The filthy.

The filthy desires that I gave into another racy scene.

That's it.

That was a racy shot for 1940s movie.

I've heard the tube.

But the most famous shot scene in this film, aside from this park scene, is the pool scene, which is amazing.

The pool scene affects me on a level that I didn't expect it to.

And we'll get into.

Walk me through.

Casey.

Tell me about the pool scene.

She goes into the indoor pool.

Alice does.

And she gets in the pool.

She's swimming.

And then you just hear something.

Right.

Alice is getting freaked out, obviously.

And you.

I'm not explaining it as well as I should.

Someone should take this over.

It's also completely in the dark.

Yes, that's right.

That's right.

She had not turned any of the lights on.

It's late at night.

They had been at a museum, the three of them, all over Irena and Alice, and they'd basically gone, hold on.

I gotta talk about this museum for one second.

They're at a boat museum because that's what they do.

I'm sorry.

The part where she.

The part where Alice is like, oh, I'm sorry.

This must be so boring for you.

Arena was really cunty.

I'm afraid this is dull for Irena.

Well, look, darling, there's some beautiful moderns upstairs.

Why don't you take a look at them?

But I like these little boats.

I want to be with you.

Don't send me away.

We're not sending you away.

We just don't want you to be bored.

We'll meet you main lobby in an hour.

We don't mean to be pushing you aside, Arena.

You just must be really bored.

Why don't you come back in an hour?

She says, I want to be with you.

And they go, we'll go wait outside.

Yeah, go look at the other exhibit.

Right.

Like, wasn't there, like another exhibit?

Yeah, yeah.

And so after that, Alice goes, once.

You go someplace and suck less.

Okay, thank you.

Fabulous ymca.

Yes.

Oh, yeah, I love.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Great character.

But the woman at the counter is fabulous.

The woman of the.

The.

The brassy broad on the phone calling everybody, deary.

Just a moment.

Derry.

Yes.

Is Ms.

Moore in?

She just went downstairs to the swimming pool.

Would it be all right if I went down to see her?

Of course, dearie.

Right down them steps there.

Oh, gee, I can't tonight.

I loved her.

She's great.

Oh, go on and see her, dad.

You're fine, dear.

Loved all that.

But, yeah, she goes, I think it's her hotel.

It's one of those ladies hotel.

Yeah.

And did you have.

Back in the day, there's this beautiful.

You.

If.

If you only watch this scene, you should.

The lighting and the light reflecting off the water is bouncing off the walls.

So you're hearing these echoes of someone coming down of a large cat kind of growling.

And she's just in the middle of the water in perfect darkness and doesn't know where the sound is coming from because it's bouncing everywhere.

And she just starts screaming her head.

Off.

For me to get in school.

She was Mrs.

Hanson.

Oh, ComEd window.

And then her just flicks the light.

What is the matter, Alice?

Oh, hi.

Oh, hi.

Did I scare You.

I didn't mean to scare you.

I.

So cute.

That Serbian in my fur coat that looks super glossy right now.

Sometimes it looks like fabric and sometimes it looks fur.

And right now it looks like fur.

The thing about this scene that.

I don't know why, when Alice starts screaming, it's in a higher pitch than I expect.

And for some reason that gets me, like.

Gets me in my gullet.

And it like automatic.

It's not.

There's such a genuine panic to it.

And then upper register gives it this feeling of hopelessness.

I can't even talk about it without getting choked up.

I get this emotional reaction to it that I can't undo.

I have weird.

I have weird emotional reactions to things.

Well, like just tears will start spurting out of my eyes.

And it's not about sadness.

It's because of like.

I just get really panicky.

Well, that is like a panic scream.

That high pitch trying to get someone to hear you.

And the way it's bouncing off the walls is just in tense 30 seconds.

It's an intense 30 seconds, like, you're fucked, honey.

But nothing happens.

And that's okay.

Does she stay?

Does she stay in the middle of the water or get out?

Much like this movie is all about not achieving your desires, so is this movie.

What bothers Miss you is.

Dearie, are you all right?

It's nothing.

It was dark down here and Mrs.

Reed coming in unexpectedly frightened me.

I'm terribly sorry.

Now, don't go.

I'm coming right out.

Sorry to disturb you, Alice.

I missed you and Oliver and I thought you might know where he is.

We waited for you at the museum.

You'll probably find him at home.

If you don't mind, then I'll run on.

It's like you want to see this girl get torn apart right now you're not.

Oh, do you really want to see that?

You're gonna have to wait a little.

Bit for that shredded house coat instead.

Yeah.

Could I have my rope, please?

Sure.

Gee whiz, honey.

It's torn to ribbons.

That was great.

Look at that.

Look at what happened to this.

Look at this kitten did to the tail because there's a kid in the room.

The kid.

The kitten could have done the whole thing.

I also just think it like saying before, like how it's possible that none of this actually really happened.

The robe isn't shredded the way you think it would be shredded.

It looked like a person tore that up rather than claws.

Tore it up?

Yeah, like someone just with like scissors or a pocket Knife.

Just like.

And.

Because apparently panthers.

I know mountain lions do.

There are certain wild cats that when they scream or roar, it sounds like a woman screaming.

Yeah.

And you will, like, people will call and report going, I just heard a woman screaming.

And it's really mountain lions.

What's that?

It's the lions in the zoo.

One can hear them here often.

Many people in this building complain the roaring keeps them awake.

And you don't mind it?

No.

To me, it's the way the sound of the sea is to others.

Natural and soothing.

I like it.

Some nights there is another sound.

The panther.

It screams like a woman.

I don't like that.

Yeah.

So it could just be her frustrated and in a bit of a psychosis.

Yeah, but that's boring.

But that's boring.

She's turning into a panther and I don't care.

I did want to throw some extra love to the actual panther in the movie, the one that.

That's.

That's in the cage.

I love the punctuation you get.

Every now and then when she gets upset, you start to hear the panther screaming, like in the streets, like off camera.

Because she lives near the zoo.

So she's like, oh, I love the sound of the panther at night.

It soothes me.

Like the ocean.

Except when she gets upset.

So does the panther.

And the.

In the.

In the.

In the zoo down the block.

It's not something they point out, but I'm like, oh, there he is again.

He's getting him.

Second year of zips, sister.

Definitely the lighting in this movie, like the pool scene especially.

Like, I was just drawn to this movie visually, like, the entire time.

It was so beautiful.

Yeah, 100%.

And I know they did that because they did.

The smart thing is that they borrowed sets from other movies that just happened to be rapping because everything looks lush.

Because that's the big tell.

When your sets look cheap and nothing looks like it's filmed on a set.

Even the outdoor stuff looks.

Looks great.

Yeah.

Even though it's clearly all honest on an indoor set.

But everything looks great.

And the.

The.

The pulse and the lighting.

So everybody's slaying, making it look like a gazillion bucks.

When it was really like a nickel.

It's a nickel.

Go make a movie.

Yeah.

Because the scene later.

Make a movie.

Your mama Lukes.

Good luck.

Because the scene later in Oliver and Alice's workplace because they have all these giant lit tables.

Oh, yeah.

The uplift from the architect tables.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Amazingly lit.

And it is a lot of it.

Is just sound and implications.

Though if you do think about it too hard, you're like, did a panther somehow get thumbs and open and close a door twice?

But ignore that.

Ollie, let's get out of here.

I'm afraid that was Arena.

I know it was arena who called.

She could call from downstairs.

She may be on her way up now.

Get your things.

The door's open.

We can see to get out into the hall.

I'll turn out the table lights.

It's shut now.

Just a minute ago it was open.

I.

I thought that Raina came in in human form, closed the door, locked the door.

Panther.

She goes back and forth really easy.

If she does it, yeah.

But bam.

Yeah, she doesn't have to do a Wonder Woman spin or nothing.

She Bamboo crawler.

Ding Dong Patrick from the future here.

Just wanted to clarify on what goes on at this office scene, because we skipped over it.

And by the way, we're jumping all over the place, time wise, timeline wise, so.

So I'm sorry about that, but that's the way these things go sometimes.

Just the way the topics come up.

But previous to this attack at the office, Oliver has told Elena it's over.

I don't love you anymore.

I love Alice.

I didn't want to tell you this, but now, you see, I.

I have to.

I love Alice.

Irene, it's too late.

Too late.

Well, there seems only one decent thing for me to do.

I'll give you a divorce.

Believe me, it's better this way.

Better?

Better for whom?

Irena, speak.

You can't speak.

There's nothing you can say.

There's only silence.

But I love Salon.

I love Loneliness and me.

They are in me.

They're drunks.

They're warm.

They're soft.

They're soft.

Irina, you're talking like an insane woman.

Please go.

I wanted to go.

Please go, go.

And what is amazing at the end of the scene, all that dialogue at the end of the scene where she's speaking really quickly, she's collapsed into the couch and she's buried her face in the couch and she's just frantically whispering this stuff to herself, and she's coming off, like, completely deranged.

And it's so scary because you can't really understand what she's saying, but you're just seeing her eyes, like really big, but her mouth is covered as crazy.

She's just running her nails down the couch.

And as, of course, the fabric is shredding, shredding, shredding, shredding.

Because she's a cat.

And oh, by the way, we're going to be committing you.

So that's where we are there.

So these two.

So when this annulment meeting that we're about to discuss doesn't go through, these two go off to the office because that's what they always do.

And they get cornered there.

And it's.

I love this scene A, because it's the first time someone other than Alice is being threatened.

But also the idea of a jungle cat in this tiny New York office is so fucking scary to me.

Confined spaces with huge animals.

It brings me back to my smoochie days, if you know what I'm talking about.

But they're able to escape because Oliver grabs, you know, just a weapon off the wall to defend themselves.

And it's a T square because they're in an architect's office.

And.

And the silhouette of it looks enough like King John with his crucifix sword that it scares Elena off.

Because she is not just a cat person, she's also of Satan.

Leave us, Elena.

In the name of God, leave us in peace.

Come on.

We didn't talk much about Dr.

Judd.

Dr.

Judd's a fun character.

This slimy psychotherapist.

Oh, he's so gross.

He is.

But I also get where he's coming from.

This is another one of these movies where everything's not as simple as you want.

Because he said, I get where he's coming from.

He's coming because he says.

Okay.

You don't want your husband to kiss you.

You're afraid this is gonna happen if your husband kisses you cuz it'll awaken your lust.

But what would happen if I kissed you?

What would happen if somebody else kissed you?

Which is a valid question.

You say you have lapses of memory for which you cannot account.

They're becoming more frequent.

And you're afraid.

Help me.

I can't help you.

You're not truthful with me.

But I am.

I've told you everything.

I have not lied to you.

Do you sincerely believe that if your husband were to kiss you, you would change into a cat and rend him to bits?

I don't know.

I'm only afraid.

And if I were to kiss you?

I only knew that I.

I should not like to be kissed by you.

Like, what would happen if somebody kissed you that you didn't have these feelings for?

Would you still turn?

It's a valid question.

But of course, he takes it to a whole other level.

Yeah.

I love the fact that we're introduced.

Psychotherapy and it is the right thing to do.

And I think he possibly could have helped her.

But she doesn't play along.

She just goes once.

It's like, you know what?

The fact that she comes home the first time you see that coat gleaming is when she comes home from that first meeting with him.

They get a real close up of that shimmering coat.

I'm like, what woke up in her at that psychiatrist meeting.

She's like, you know what?

I don't need him at all.

Because it wasn't just them talking like a normal.

Like, hey, blah, blah, blah.

This is my issues.

It was a hypnotic situation.

And she says, I don't remember anything.

So.

And we are only kind of given his impression of what she said.

Yeah.

So it could have just been so much more.

It's like, I really like pussy.

Yeah.

The fact of having sex with my husband makes me.

I just keep thinking about that woman at the restaurant.

Yeah.

So he becomes our villain.

We don't really have a villain.

Like a flat out villain.

I mean, we have a tragic villain, but he's the.

He's the closest thing to a villain villain.

He starts lying, sets up his whole plot to get her alone and he makes bad.

Yeah, yeah.

But he's got.

He.

He's got a creeper mustache.

So he's allowed.

Yeah.

If you got a mustache like that, that's all you can do.

It'd be a creeper.

The state of mental health at the time was terrible because even like this, like Alice and Oliver and the doctor are talking at one point of like, the options.

And it is annul your marriage or commit Arena.

As a psychiatrist, I should recommend that you have her put away.

As your friend, however, I have much more reasonable advice to offer.

I think you should have your marriage annulled.

In that way, you are free of responsibility.

You two could marry.

And if Irene is sent away.

The law is quite explicit.

One cannot divorce an insane person.

If she's not well, I gotta take care of her.

It's the only right thing, Ollie.

As you will.

I'll have the commitment papers drawn up and arrange an interview with Mrs.

Reed at her apartment tonight.

Shall we say 6:00?

The.

The second one seems a little extreme.

She has not hurt anyone.

She has not said she was going to hurt anyone.

But why are they pushing for the.

Commitment to get her help?

No, because you can't divorce.

They're pushing for the annulment because you can't.

Yeah.

Divorce the committed person.

I'm like, yeah, go with that.

You can't you can't.

Oh, so let's talk about that.

You can't divorce somebody who's insane.

What?

What?

What?

At least at the time, maybe it was completely false too, but state of mind, I get it.

Yeah.

It was prevent people from locking up your wife and then being like, and now I'm gonna go marry whoever I want.

The wife was never insane to begin with.

It was to turn that happening because Lord knows that it did happen a lot.

It's like, we're just gonna commit you.

Would you care for a lobotomy?

Yeah.

And yeah.

Yeah.

Because it's just like.

Well, then just annul her.

Just say that you don't have to jump to.

And then we will commit her.

And they're just gonna do it that night.

Let's just go.

But the thing is, I think it's interesting that, you know, given the.

Just to make things more complex, is that Oliver and Alice do decide, you know, we really should commit her.

We could just get this annulled and go on with our lives.

But if we commit her, we can never be together because you're always gonna be with her if we commit her.

That is the intelligent adult decision to make is to get even though you know they're gonna be fucking around on the side.

But, you know, it's all.

But.

But, you know, nobody fucked around on the side because nobody fucked anywhere.

Anywhere.

Because it's the 40s.

In movies, sex didn't exist.

So it's so hard to talk about any of this because like I said, it's amazing this movie got made because everything, it's all about stuff that they can't talk about was probably what makes it interesting.

But then the doctor decides, you know what?

Instead of committing her, I should force her into a sexual situation to prove she's wrong.

And he made a poor choice in that.

You see, I've never believed your story.

I'm not afraid of you.

I take you in my arms.

So little, so soft.

Warm perfume in your hair, your body.

Don't be afraid of me.

Reina.

Was so uncomfortable.

It was just like crawling out of my skin.

Watching that.

He's getting closer.

So basically, she doesn't show up at home.

Oliver and Alice go off and he basically, the doctor goes, oh, I forgot my cane.

I'll go in.

And he unlocks the door and goes back.

And so when Irina comes into the home, it's the doctor waiting for her.

And he just keeps getting closer and closer.

And she is just looking up at him and in her face, niece, you can Almost say she's, you can tell she's thinking you're going to do this and I'm going to eat you.

And it's just waiting and waiting and then camera POV of Irena or cat and poor doctor getting just annihilated and trying to use his sword cane.

Yeah.

And she's over, she's, she's already cranking.

She just got thwarted at that.

The, the office.

I love the fact that like you know what it's like 9:00 at night.

We're gonna go do some work because that's what we do because we can't fuck.

So we all are gonna go do.

Some work somewhere else.

We got, we got, we gotta swab the poop decks and mizzen that mess or whatever the hell we do at our boat store.

Why is he talking about her supposed mental health struggles with Alice so much?

He's like, oh yeah.

I'm telling you about like the psychotherapy and like blah, blah, blah.

It's like such a breach of trust, you know, it's.

I think it's.

He just full on doesn't understand.

I don't think he's ever had to consider someone else's feelings and so he doesn't understand how much of a breach of trust, an invasion that is.

Yeah, I get that.

I also thinking maybe, maybe going well, I don't understand women things because I'm not going to be.

Because I'm not a woman.

Maybe I'll talk to this other, other woman in my life and be like, hey, is this normal?

Is it normal for people to be like, ew, I don't want to kiss you ever.

Is that normal?

Is that normal is like all women go through that phase.

I was like, no, because you know, they're not going to teach any of this shit in school if they're not going to talk about movies.

You don't learn about sex and stuff in school.

So God, God knows you get the basic birds and the bees and that's it.

Not the birds and bees, the cat people.

A lot of his poor choices I think come down to eventually just.

He's never really had to have such an intimate relationship before.

Yeah.

And he doesn't know how to navigate it.

Yeah, concur.

Nobody's coming from a place of malice, which I appreciate.

No, it is a lot of just naive like being naive about a situation.

Yeah.

And it all ends in tragedy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The doctor tries to force kiss Irena and she does, does like as far as we can tell, literally turn Into a panther.

Maul that disgusting dude to death.

He does end up stabbing her, though, which is sad.

And then the panther from the zoo gets out and just gets run over and it's just sad, sad, sad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I thought that was.

That was.

I didn't remember that.

That.

I remember her staggering off, like, she's got.

She's go.

Staggering off with the sword half through her.

Just like the St.

John statue.

Just like that.

History.

It just like he repay in itself.

And she is now all in black with her coat draped over her one shoulder.

Yeah.

And just looking amazing.

Look.

Standing for a woman who's about to die.

But she, earlier in the film had stolen the key to the panther cage just because reasons.

Because that guy always, always let the key.

Leaves the key in the cage, right?

Like the zookeeper or whatever.

She resists once she's planning for some mischief.

She was upset.

She knew this was gonna end this way.

And she.

The last thing she does before she passes dies is to let that panther out.

She lets that caged panther inside out it.

Yo.

If it's only for 10 seconds, I get to be a free panther.

That's the worst part of the movie, in my opinion.

Yeah.

I was just like, no, kill the panther immediately.

No, no.

But of course.

Well, they had.

It was gonna die anyway.

There was.

There was.

It was gonna get shot by cops because they're late in New York City.

Yeah.

Because as soon as the panther dies, she dies.

Yeah.

That's the end.

The movie just ends, like.

And we're done.

But also, the way Irina's filmed it, you're like, is that her or is that a panther?

Yeah.

Is that.

Because the way her coat is and everything, you're like, is it I.

Did she transform?

Yeah.

Yeah.

No.

And even, like.

Even like the sword through.

It kind of looks like a tail at certain angles and.

Yeah.

So it's the lighting and.

And the angles used throughout the film are just beautiful.

And the scene composition, all that stuff is such care has been taken for a quickie film.

It's astounding.

What I'd love to.

That this movie came out and the reviews were like, meh.

And then it just kept running and kept running and kept running and kept running that critics went back and be like, maybe we missed something.

And they were like, you know what?

It's actually a better movie than we thought.

It was great.

The people spoke.

People spoke.

But yeah, it's a sad little.

I've never seen the sequel.

Don't.

It's.

I had.

It's nothing to do with it.

Yeah, that's what I've heard.

I.

It was, I had it on a dvd.

Like one side was Cat People, the other side was Crypt.

But the Curse of the Cat People never played.

Which I guess was the curse of.

The Curse of the Cat People.

It's the same actors.

Yeah.

And I have, I did watch it once.

Maybe I should watch it again.

I don't know.

I was not impressed.

It's a lot about this married couple and their daughter and his imaginary friend who is the actress who played Irena and this sort of like the little girl being cursed and taken.

My imaginary lesbian friends.

Yes.

Her outfit is lovely in it.

It's very diaphanous, so.

Oh, well then I'm on board.

You know how I love a diaphanous outfit.

I just, I just remember it being very sort of stale kind of.

Well, I mean it, this, this, this because this was the studio cranking it out now.

Yeah.

Because of how they had a big.

Hit and they wanted their sequel.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Yeah.

How interesting.

And all the subtext going on in this film and then you have that as the sequel and you're just like, okay.

Even if it's just a spiritual sequel, it didn't really have that interest to it.

So if don't feel you need to.

Watch it, I'll watch it at some point, I'm sure.

But I also just realized that it's what's also probably happened between the two times is now the studio knows.

Oh, you got all this through the sensors.

We can't talk about any of this now.

We can't do it can't be about anything this first movie was about because they know now.

You fooled them once, you're not going to fool the, the ratings board again.

So we're going to have to make it as innocuous as possible.

No, no sexual stuff at all.

It's just about a girl and her imaginary friend.

Nothing perverted about that at all.

Okay.

I think we've done Cat People.

Yay.

Yeah.

Like again, it's one of these movies that just fascinates me because like if you're looking for a scary movie, this is not it.

It's not a scary film.

There's just this tragedy and dread to the whole thing which drives it.

Even the scary stuff isn't super scary.

But there isn't a clear cut villain.

Everyone at different times for different reasons you're mad at but you just kind of feel sad for everyone.

And a lot of it comes down to of just people Making choices because.

They'Re incredibly lonely and ill informed.

Like this is a time where people were.

Where things were not talked about.

And if things were talked about, maybe this.

Okay.

Maybe.

Okay.

Had the supernatural element not been there.

Had things we were able to talk things through.

But this was all such taboo subjects that we're never going to talk about them.

You're just weird.

Weird.

Just.

We'll make it work.

And just.

Yeah.

But yeah.

Because in the film Irene even mentioned be less weird.

There was a Serbian restaurant in the city.

Yeah.

And if she had and found that on her own and maybe connected with people who shared her culture, she wouldn't have been so lonely and this whole thing wouldn't have happened.

Right.

And maybe had an interaction with one of her kind.

Not in front of all of her.

New friends getting married.

Yeah.

At this high pressure situation.

That maybe things would have.

Would have come along differently.

That yeah.

Maybe her people might have been able to talk her down from the.

But that's true.

We never even say, hey, we.

Maybe we should introduce.

Maybe we should get some Serbian opinions on this.

People who actually know this legend maybe have dealt with this kind of thing before.

Nobody ever thinks that.

Because why would they?

Because she's the only Serbian in the world.

Because it's America in the 40s.

All right.

That's cat people.

I think we've done it.

Casey Loman, you're a designer.

Have you done any cool new Femmes of Fright designs lately?

Like, who's captured your attention?

And tell us about the Femmes of Fright.

Okay.

So the Femmes of Fright is my illustration series.

Evil Good Designs.

It's capturing strong female monsters in the simplest forms possible.

Just making striking vector versions of them.

And that's evil goods.

Design's Instagram.

I haven't made some in a while, but I have a growing list of ones to do.

So I need to get back to it soon.

I'm always.

I like to revisit every now and then and see what's new and also try to figure out some of them because a lot of them, like, I don't know who that's supposed to be.

I think I know everything.

Well.

I like to do them a little bit subtle.

You know, I just take little cues from throughout the film instead of trying to go completely obvious with it a lot of the time.

And you don't give the film name, you just give the character name.

So I think that's fun too.

I like the mystery of it all.

I'm like, who's that supposed to Be.

Because you boil these characters down to their essence, as you say, so it's their simplest form.

And I say, I gotta figure this one out.

I think it's part of that charm as well.

Tara, what's going on with you?

What's new and exciting and good words.

I got first aid trained lately, so I can help people.

Whether you're a mother or whether you're a brother.

Staying alive.

Staying Alive club does too pay.

Pony Club for the kids today.

Yeah.

For the youngins.

Yeah.

And everyone.

At the very least, learn.

Learn the basics.

Learn some cpr.

Learn the very basic first aid.

And if all else fails and you're in a situation, just call for help.

First off, and just remember, there's no such thing as the Marvin Hamlisch maneuver.

That's something else.

The high mic, not the Hamlisch.

That's not even the Heimlich anymore.

It's.

No, it's because the family wanted money for it.

Oh.

It's abdominal thrust snow.

Wow.

Well, that just sounds filthy.

Yeah, I'd rather choke.

Thank you.

So I don't know what inspired me, but it turns out I.

I'm not done with cat people because I'm adding a bonus episode.

Uncle Spooky's gonna come out to talk about Sleepwalker Chris.

It's so dumb and I love it.

This is exactly why I want to talk about it.

So dumb that I've always put it off because nobody wants to talk about it.

But, like, God damn it, Uncle Spooky wants to talk about.

I'm doing this before I go off the air.

Anyway, Tara, Casey, thank you both for being here today.

Thank you both for talking me through cat people.

Also, thanks for helping out for the show over the years.

Thank you for the dedication.

Things.

I know, Casey, I pulled you out of your comfort zone zone completely by getting you on here.

And I love that you keep showing up and you keep delivering over and over again.

Atara, from the beginning, has always been the first to volunteer for anything, any ridiculous thing that I put up.

She's like, I'll help out.

I, I that is not going to notice.

It is appreciated.

I love you both.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you, Patrick.

Now get out of here.

Stay healthy, stay healthy, Stay fabulous.

All the things that I say are cool.

I can't say that because I'm going to cry.

Okay, that was perfectly fabulous.

Thank you again to Tara Garner and Casey Loman for coming up and helping me talk about this crazy, crazy, fabulous, fabulous film.

A couple of things that struck me as I'm editing about the film itself.

There's that scene after the wedding where they get back and she's like, no, no, no, I'm sorry, Ollie, I can't.

You have to be more patient with me.

Where she turns them down on their wedding night.

I realized this time through, there's a real pain in her voice.

And I said, was she actually thinking of going through with it?

Was she actually thinking of going through with having physical intimacy with her husband on their wedding night until she ran into that other woman, the other woman who ruined everything, who exposed her for what she is, the other woman who she can't get out of her mind.

Now.

It's an interesting thing to play with.

And the other thing I want to talk about is I mentioned that whole thing with the pets and how the animals and how this journey keeps showing how.

Reina, you can hide all you want, but you can't fool anybody.

Your true nature is always going to come through, which is ironic.

I'm covering this now because, as we all know, the show's ending.

It's ending because of health reasons.

Ending because I don't have the mental capacity to do the editing and do the.

Do the editing and do the production at the pace I used to be able to.

I just don't have it anymore.

But at the same time, something's telling me, get out of the limelight.

I am an old queen.

I have fought many battles in my time.

I have been out there on the front lines fighting for equality and for when AIDS was being ignored and before it was even pride, when it was gay liberation, I was out there fighting.

And now all of a sudden, my gut's telling me, hide, because I've not seen something like what's coming.

And what's coming, we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

What's coming feels huge, and I think it's going to be extremely dangerous.

And okay, last time around, last time, during his last administration, I was bombarded daily, hundreds of times a day, with accusations of being a groomer.

They would just Google my profiles and they would see gay in it, and that's all they needed.

And back then, the social media networks did something about it, and now they're not, because it started again.

And I do, I do.

I feel like we're gonna get rounded up soon.

Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised.

And I don't have that fight in me anymore.

So making the show go away right now seems to be wise, and it seems contradictory, but I just said, you can't hide what you are.

But, yeah, I know I can't hide what I am.

But I also don't need to put a bullseye on it either.

I'm scared is what I'm saying.

And that will have to be okay because I know we're all scared.

And what I always say in the show, you know, what's.

What's the motto of the show?

Fight or flight.

Survive the night.

Make it to the final reel.

Do whatever you got to do to survive.

And I think right now what I got to do is flight.

I got to run.

I got to run, and I've got to hide.

I don't.

I'm.

I'm not 25 years old.

Not 25 years old anymore, and I'm disabled.

And my survival depends on things coming from this government that's also trying to erase me.

Through my Medicare, through my.

Through my.

I could get everything through Medicare.

And through government grants, they pay for my medication.

So if they get cut off, I'm dead.

So the quieter I get, I feel, the better for now.

And I don't know if I'm making any sense, but I'm sorry if that sounds cowardly, but right now, that's what I feel like I gotta do to get through the night.

So.

Huh.

That was heavy.

But next time, instead of doing a super classic, we're doing some super shit.

Although I think it's fabulous.

We're doing Stephen King, Sleepwalker, Uncle.

Stephen King, Sleepwalkers, Uncle Spooky's gonna be here, and it's going to be super cool.

If you've got thoughts, let me know.

You can find me on social media, you know where and until next time, my beautiful, beautiful screamers continue to make the world a more fabulously creepy place.

And never, ever forget the Scream Queen's golden rule, especially now.

Fight or flight.

Survive the night.

Make it to the final reel, and don't forget how much I love you.

All of the music for tonight's show, unless otherwise specified, has been written by Sam Haynes.

You can find all of his music@www.bandcamp.com.

Ew.