Episodes
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The Cultists are back! And in honor of The Resurrection, on this week’s annotated deep-dive, The Cutlists Present Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters (1984). A humble little film of grandiose origins (including a writer born into a family tree of generations of ghost hunters, a un-producable fever dream of a first draft, a 13 month time budget, and a die hard commitment to keeping the SNL and Second City comedy players as the B-plot to the film’s one true core purpose of introducing the doctrine of Spiritualism’s main tenants to the youth of the 1980s), Ghostbusters is one subtle but wild trip.
Notoriously simultaneously a film about everything and nothing, the finished print of Ghostbusters has prevailed through the decades as a largely nostalgic comedy. So much so thusly remembered in the larger cultural zeitgeist that it can be all too easy to overlook just how deeply rooted nearly every line of the script is in esoteric references to over a century of real world Spiritualist practices and lore…
Deep-dives include: The history of parapsychology; J.B. Rhine, Zener cards, the Milgram experiment, and other such ways to gaslight undergraduates in the name of quantitive research; Hittite vs. Sumerian myth (and where our lovable otherworldly gods of Gozer to Zul falls); Dan Akroyd’s real life family business of talking to ghosts; the plight of the EPA; Theosophy and the ethereal vs the etheric; Institutional Review Boards (and the film’s violations therein); Ivo Shandor Revival style cults and the occult appeal of selenium; the film’s myriad folklore references from the 1943 Philadelphia experiment to the Tunguska event; turn of the century cheese cloth regurgitation (or how you get ectoplasm); the film’s offhand references to trepanation, hypnotic dentistry, and menstrual psychosis; the special effects and the unapologetic cocaine-fueled frenzied genesis of everyone’s favorite childhood ghost; and how ultimately this film is, above all else, an esoteric love letter to a new turn of the century Spiritualism.
Episode Safe Word: James Randi
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On this week's five-by-five bonus interlude, London and Benji each present 5 recommendations for films with a color in the title.
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Episodes manquant?
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Baz Luhrmann’s 90s frenetic teen angst extravaganza, Romeo + Juliet (1996). Known for his kinetic color-fueled explosions of images and sound, Luhrmann's second offering in his “red curtain trilogy” put him on the film world’s map as an Auteur with a distinct and immediately recognizable style. Bright, brash, and unforgiving to anyone who prefers a more minimal Mise-en-scène, Luhrmann’s penchant for decadence was ripe for a world of high octane emotions, brawls, masquerades, and the lush arc of an epic demise. However Luhrmann’s vision of bringing the dusty pages of the oft produced Shakespearean play into the hearts and minds of the notoriously apathetic 90s teenage market was a rather unprecedented and hard sell for commercial studios at the time. Particularly when Luhrmann insisted that not only would he win over a teen audience, he would do it all without altering a single syllable of the original Shakespearean language of the play. And he would use a cast of mostly young people to do it. Luhrmann’s vision succeeded, jumpstarting a subsequent decade stuffed with Shakespearean film adaptations for teens, and yet, ‘R+J’ remains distinct among them all. A burning strange indefinable star that shall not be defied.
Deep dives include: The film’s production history, editing and cinematography; the lineage of the Romeo and Juliet literature cycle that lead to Shakespeare’s 1596 adaptation of the tale; the 1996 film’s comparisons with the exactly 400 years older play; the historical roots of the warring Guelph vs. Ghibelline factionalism that led to such constant civil brawls; how amazing it is that Romeo spends a full third of the play desperately and despondently in love with someone else; why the developing teenage mind lacks impulse control; and why even Dante personally hated the Montagues and Capulets enough to write them into his levels of Hell two centuries before Shakespeare was even born.
Episode Safe Word(s): “impulse control”
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Bernardo Bertolucci’s 'The Dreamers' (2003). Known for his “hot house” cinema, in which characters are crammed into isolated intimate spaces until they burst, Bertolucci returns again to offer up a claustrophobic yet sprawling visual love letter to his own memories of the French New wave —albeit through a lens of decadence, incest, and as many Jean Luc Godard references as one can still stuff into such an already compact space. Based on Gilbert Adair’s 1988 novel ‘The Holy Innocents’, which itself is an adaptation of Jean Cocteau’s 1929 novel ‘Les Enfants Terribles’ (The Holy Terrors), The Dreamers purposefully positions itself in a curious temporal space — one in which the continuous creative power of sex and cinema are the only realities worth living for. There’s also just a lot of twincest.
Topics include: Adair’s adaptation of Jean Cocteau for his own 1988 novel, as well as his tweaks when adapting his own work for The Dreamers screen play; The 1968 Parisian student riots; The French New Wave Movement; Auteur theory (and the cinema of Nicholas Ray); The incorporated collage of film references; Bertolucci’s seeming obsession with Jean Luc Godard; the protest-inspiring film archival and preservation efforts of Henri Langlois; the retrospective dark cloud Bertolucci’s past casts on the film today; and what esoteric reference this movie and Joel Schumacher’s 1997 ‘Batman and Robin’ have in common.
Episode Safeword: “vanilla”
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Cameron Crowe’s “indie” millennial LowFi-SciFi flick ‘Vanilla Sky’ (2001). The self described American “pop song” remake of the 1997 Spanish film, Open Your Eyes, VS was and remains a film of lukewarm division. Part of that reception has to do with early expectations. Made on a budget of 68 million, staring Tom Cruise, and marketed as a love story, the film that audiences got instead — an unapologetically unreliable plot of paranoia and bio-rapture dreams of immortality, where Cruise is either maimed or masked for 75% of the film — was not exactly what most watchers were anticipating. But when you check all those expectations, lay back, and let the film happen (depending on which of the many interpretations you subscribe to), the movie actually has some interesting things to say. Particularly when taken alongside the original as part of a larger, cyclical whole.
Episode topics include: the production and filming history; the musical inclinations of Cameron Crowe and/vs Nancy Wilson; comparisons to Amenabar’s original 1997 film, Abre Los Ojos; the subtle but blatant homages sprinkled throughout (from Kurt Russell mimicking Greggory Peck to Cruz and Cruise having distinctly French New Wave sex); the film’s original and alternative endings; the foundation of Alcor and the rise of bio-rapture philosophy; and why the most fun interpretation of this film boils down to a warning about the ways in which futurists might succeed in creating their own inescapable secular hell.
Episode Safeword: “awake”
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Bill Lustig’s controversial killer classic 'Maniac' (1980). Initially pitched as "Jaws but on land," Maniac tells the tale of Frank Zito, our man-about-town who can’t help but prowl the streets at night, scalping the women who remind him of dear old dead mom and thumbtacking his permed late-night winnings to stolen store front mannequins. And what’s more, we get to stay with him as he does it. Making the bold decision to focus entirely on our little maniac as the central protagonist, Maniac presents 90 minutes of the life of Frank. No Cops, no Campers, just Frank. And what a life it is.
A self-admitted homage to the great grind house horror flicks of Lustig’s youth, and coming out right on the first wave of a new generation of resurgent horror (with it’s first screening at Cannes even premiering the same weekend as the release of the first Friday the 13th), one would think the world would have been ready for this seedy gore fest of a lone man’s zany past time. But it wasn’t. Reviled by critics as nothing a “civilized” human could stomach, to this day there remains a camp of people who maintain that Maniac is a vile, misogynistic insult to human decency. The other camp, however, sees in its gritty celluloid frames nothing but a shinning gem of genre cinema—an under watched and under appreciated relic of something truly unique. But love it or loathe it, this film seeped into the horror cannon in a way that remains inarguably influential and important. (It’s also just a f*** ton of fun).
Topics Include: Maniac’s production history; Production notes and trivia gleaned from the multiple director commentaries; Tom Savini’s special effects; Kem-Tone film processing, F-stop pushing, and other technical reasons the film looks the way it does; The film’s pioneering of dolby stereo and hi/low frequency sounds; Comparing Frank’s passions, kills, and paraphilia to other real-life serial killers contemporary to the film’s release; and all (or at least many of) the laws and regulations this movie violated in the real world from start to finish during filming (from tricking SAG, to bribing off duty cops to distract subway attendants, to ditching a car filled with blood to disappear in Harlem); and the wonders yet unforgettable smell of rigid collodion...
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On this week's annotated deep dive, The Cultists present 'Urban Legend' (1998). A classic tale of a disgruntled heartbroken serial killer who seeks vengeance by re-enacting even more classic tales of contemporary lore, UL is the kind of film that has a surprising amount of depth lurking beneath its colorful, campy surface. Taking inspiration from the foundational urban legend scholarship of Jan Harold Brunvard and stuffing references to a wide range of contemporary tale cycles into every turn, UL’s most lasting, yet oft forgotten, legacy is that it helped bring the term “Urban Legend” out of the pages of Brunvard’s collegiate books and into the mass culture of a vernacular teenage audience. That’s right, this is the kind of film that academics (re: folklorists) love, even if no one else will admit that they do too. (We will though).
Deep Dives include: the film’s production history; the subtle but stunning lighting and camerawork; the folklore sources and evolved cultural meanings of the multitude of the film’s referenced urban legend cycles (including the static enduring threats that lurk around and under your car, the ever-shifting concern of birth control pill swapping, the Victorian marriage rituals of Bloody Mary, and the 70s flash fear of the danger of BubbleYum and Pop Rocks, etc.); the foundational folklore scholarship of Brunvard, Dundes, and Degh; why if you decide to kill a bunch of people by re-enacting urban legends it’s called “ostension” ; and how even after all that, the strangest thing of all is that this film’s top billed cast member is pretty sure he was never in it.
Episode Safeword: "veracity"
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present David Lynch’s ‘Dune’ (1984). A byproduct of nearly two decades of active studio efforts to bring to the big screen, the 1984 highly anticipated “picture event” of Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi classic was for some disappointing, for others baffling, and for a select special few the kind of sleeping celluloid wonder just on the precipice of awakening into something great. But whether you love it, hate it, or are just left simply overwhelmingly confused by its tormented world of Baroque excess, Dune (1984) remains a spectacularly cruel film on its viewers. One that despite being almost nothing but exposition, requires a knowledge of a galaxy of prerequisite reading materials to understand. So we read them.
Deep dives include: The production history of David Lynch’s Dune and the genealogy of the failed film attempts that came before; comparisons with Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel and the complexities created by opening the plot up to the rest of the often self-contradicting full book series; Frank Herbert’s extended world build (from the Holtzman Effect, to nerve induction machines, to the mutated spice-huffing, space-folding guild junkies); the cinematic dangers of working with ground glass; and why you shouldn’t ever trust a messiah, even if he can correctly put on a pair of pants.
Episode Safeword: “subdued”
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On this week's annotated deep dive, The Cultists present the Universal Studios Hollywood Horror Classic, 'Frankenstein' (1931). Helmed by the great James Whale, this first installment of a legacy of undying gems tells the well-known tale of Dr. Victor (or in this case "Henry") Frankenstein and his "Creation" - a life composited from scrapped together pieces of other men. A creature that begs the age old question: how many parts of a man does it take to make a monster? Well, Let's find out.
Deep Dives Include: The film's history and production; comparisons (and contrasts) to Mary Shelly's 1818 source novel; the mystery of Peggy Webling's 1927 stage play (upon which this film claims to be based); all those pointed homages to German expressionist classics (from the Metropolis laboratory, to Caligari's somnambulist window entry); the cinematic editions of life-granting electricity and "criminal brains"; the historical precedent for electrocuting corpses and marrying-off orphans; a slew of sequels; and why the Igor-you-know is neither a hunchback nor a lab assistant.
Episode Safeword: "vitality"
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This week on our annotated deep dive, The Cultists Present 'Tales from the Darkside - The Movie' (1990). The year was 1983 when George Romero, inspired by the EC comics of the 1950s such as "The Vault" and "Tales from the Crypt", pitched a humble horror TV anthology that would harken back to the golden age of pulp fiction. Seven years, four seasons, and a major motion picture later, Tales has accrued its own fanbase throughout time, and yet this film remains relatively obscure considering its roster. With attached names like George Romero, Steven King, Donald Rubinstein, Christian Slater, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, Mathew Lawrence, Debbie Harry (aka Blondie), David Johnson (aka "Buster Poindexter"), Michael McDowell (the dude who wrote Beetlejuice), and even Arthur Conan Doyle, this film is a zany time capsule of 20th century horror. From Debbie Harry's chipper and casual cannibalism, to Christian Slater's electric mummy carving mania, to cats on a vengeance spree from hell, "Tales" is above all else simply a whole lot of fun.
Deep Dives include: the production’s major players (from Romero, to Slater, to King); the film’s source materials, including: Arthur Conan Doyle’s "Lot 249," Steven King’s "Cat from Hell," Lafcadio Hearn's "Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things," and "Tales From the Darkside" (1983) (the TV show); The British “Egyptomania” of the late 1800s; the origin of the monstrous mummy in Mummy fiction; the three kingdoms of Ancient Egypt and the process of mummification; Zuni fetishes and the semantic evolution of “Fetish/Fetishism”; the editing techniques of 1940s action-adventures; the glory of theatrical scrims; the Japanese folklore of ghostly ice women; the mathematics of cannibalism; and whether champagne is really what you want to pair with cooked children.
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Terrence Malick’s ‘Knight of Cups’ (2015). Often regarded as a particularly “tough watch” (even by those who enjoy the film), Cups is a slow and mangled feast of images that will delight some and utterly baffle others. Adding to the challenge is that grasping the more concrete structure of the film demands a familiarity with a rather eclectic back catalogue of source materials that range from a working knowledge of the tarot’s major arcana, to John Bunyan’s 17th century allegorical novel, a spattering of gnostic hymns, and the regret-fueled works of Kierkegaard. And all this to tell what is essentially the lead-up to the beginning of a story that we don't even get to see. In other words, this film is incredibly cruel. But it’s also beautiful.
Deep Dive’s Include: The film’s production and the truly unique filming strategies of Terrence Malick; The adapted source material of The Pilgrim’s Progress and The Hymn of the Pearl; Gnosticism (or why everyone is stuck in the water when they really just want to get closer to the sky); The Knight of Cups and the film’s other Tarot chapter cards; existential angst and other Kierkegaardian philosophy; the statistical likelihood of an earthquake wiping out Los Angeles, and why, according to one of the film’s selected source materials, Christian Bale's "Rick" is the lesser, memory-addled and drugged-up twin brother of Jesus…. Maybe.
Episode safe word: “clarity”
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On this week's annotated deep-dive, The Cultists present Catherine Hardwick's wondrously absurd adaptation of Twilight (2008).
The tale of a self-loathing undead stalker who has been stuck repeating high school for one hundred years, and the clumsy death-welcoming teen of his dreams, Twilight is a wild trip. Known as the phenomenon that brought a reinvigorated interest in teen paranormal romance to the masses, Hardwick's first and only adaptation circumvents any of the potential softer angles of the genre to instead create a masterpiece of the bizarre. Three parts absurdism, two parts angst, and a healthy dash of the "imp of the perverse," this strange concoction of a film stands alone outside the rest of the subsequent franchise as something truly spectacular. (That's right, we love this movie. And we aren't even joking).
Deep Dives include:
The film's history and production; the myriad of practical effects; filming locations, comparisons with the novel source material; the joy of teen angst; the aesthetic paradox of May-December romances; Native American lore (from New Brunswick sea serpents to (the lack of) Cold Ones); and why, as even Hardwick herself claims, we have the special tonal peculiarities of this film thanks to a little thing Edgar Allen Poe once called "The Imp of the Perverse."
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On this week's annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Panos Cosmatos's 'Mandy' (2018). The anticipated (mostly unrelated) follow-up to Cosmatos's first cult film, Beyond the Black Rainbow (2010), Mandy hit the scene marketed as a heavy metal, genre-bending, "cosmic opera" of the psyche. Set in a 1983 (that may or may not be *our* 1983), Mandy is still stuffed with references, homages, and abstract nostalgia. And yet, set as it is under a plasma-churning landscape of "crimson primordial skies," swimming in Jungian mysticism, and unleashing Nic Cage wielding a giant Manowar battle axe, somehow, despite relying on a spine constructed out of the bones of so many old troupes, Mandy remains otherworldly and fresh. (Oh and it is FULL of annotations...).
Deep Dives include: Douglas Roberts and that death row opening quote; The Jungian Red Book; Abraxas and his horn; Regan's "Spiritual Awakening" speech; the primordial lens of Galactus's comic origin story; the world of Dungeons and Dragons; Tor publishing; the (failed) singing career of Charles Manson; the pale emerald light of Heavy Metal's Loc-Nar (vs. the serpent's eye); that swimming mystic Joseph Campbell quote; the paradox of mysticism and psychosis; the myriad of 80's movie references; and that "Red" storm on Jupiter...
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On this week's annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Kenneth Branagh's 'Murder on the Orient Express' (2017). The technically ambitious 65 mm adaptation of Agatha Christie's murder mystery classic, MoOE tells the tale of the magnificently mustachioed Hercule Poirot -- the world's greatest detective (also known as the man who thinks and thus suffers). Yearning for a vacation, Poirot boards the famed Orient Express, the sparkling sleeper train that historically made its trek from Paris to Istanbul, and finds himself in an opulent flick of murder, mystery, mayhem, and downright astounding production design. Say what you will about Branagh's ability to cast himself as his own star and chew up a scene; from historical flourishes to insider Easter eggs, this movie is meticulous in it's details. (And we are all about the details...).
Deep Dives include: the stunning beauty of 65 mm cinematography; the surprisingly practical set builds, next level rotoscoping with 3,000 screens; comparisons to Christie's 1934 novel; the SVU style "borrowing" of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping; the transnational-nationalism paradox of the belle epoch; the history, food, and legacy of the famed Orient Express; and how, overall, we have one of the most enduring and endearing forms of transportation all because a dude named Georges Lambert Casimir Nagelmackers once wanted to bang his cousin.
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On this week's annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Mel Stuart's 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' (1971). Considered a flop during its initial release, ‘Wonka’ has grown overtime into a beloved classic of psychedelic sadomasochism of the childhood nostalgia variety. Ostensibly the tale of a poor, starving child with nightly dreams of confectionary sweets, and an eccentric chocolatier who is primed to hand pick his heir through a very specific form of death-and-occasional-dismemberment natural selection, this movie is a trip. One that, in the words of Wonka himself, showcases how life must maintain that perfect balance of fear, anxiety, and whimsey to keep moving forward. (Even if that final destination is already pre-ordained by The Chocolate God himself).
Episode Deep Dives Include: The writing of Roald Dahl (from his childhood hits to his lesser known screenwriting creds in the James Bond franchise); comparison’s between Charlie and the Chocolate factory, the book, and Willy Wonka, the movie; All the literary quotes and references sprinkled throughout the script; The psychedelic movement in cinema (and whether ‘Wonka’ truly qualifies); and why this entire production was principally possible due to the capitalist-venturing sweet tooth of the Quaker Oats Company….
Episode Safeword: “free will”
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present Roger Kumble’s iconic “teen” flick, 'Cruel Intentions' (1999). Based on the 18th century French novel, Dangerous Liaisons (1782), about a group of bored (and very adult) aristocratic power-players living in a morality-absent void of entitlement and sociopathic values, CI hit the late 1990s YA landscape in a way no other film within the genre had quite done before. A hedonistic embrace of cold, sociopathic teenagers lavishly shot in cozy golden light, CI became a milestone of the revitalized Victorian child model, in which kids were simply seen as miniature adults—bodies to dress in adult attire and be shown off as reflections of their parents and their social class. Showcasing themes of incest, entitlement, sexual manipulation, consent issues, blackmail, assault, and even federal cyber crimes in what is technically trafficking and distributing child pornography, CI left no softcore taboo out of the reach of its highschool cast of characters, a decision that culminated in perhaps the film’s most daring choice of all: to create and accept an R rating for a film about teenagers—a demographic who wasn’t even allowed to see it in theaters as a result. (And yet see it they did).
Deep Dive topics include: CI's production history and details; the multitude of filming locations; comparisons with the OG aristocratic French novel; insights from the director’s commentary; all of the CI direct-to-video sequels; and the glorious but forgotten 2016 reboot test pilot in which Katherine returns to try and get it on with her dead step brother’s son.
Episode Safeword: “altruism”
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On this week's Five-by-Five interlude, The Cultists present the top "Dark Night of the Soul" films, as London and Benji each offer up their respective Top 5 films that all take place over the course of a single night.
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On this week’s annotated deep dive, The Cultists present John Guillermin’s ‘King Kong’ (1976). A remake of the classic RKO production from 1933, Kong ‘76 retains many of the high adventure staples popular in the pulpy 30s: the treacherous island, the perilous climb, and the classic meet cute of blonde bimbo pawn meets giant monkey during a casual ritual sacrifice. But in all its surface similarities, this Kong makes some changes. With references to the porno chic movement, the OPEC oil embargo, primate astrology, real-time bicentennial fireworks, and a slew of full-formed facial hair, there is no doubt that this film was made in 1975. However, this movie is also another film produced by our Blue Velvet (1986) man, Dino De Laurentiis, and as such, Kong ’76 spared no costs in getting things done, becoming one of the most expensive films of its day, boasting a six second near 40 foot animatronic robot, lavish set builds, and the dream team effects efforts of Carlo Rambaldi and Rick Baker (who also happens to play what can only be described as the horniest primate in cinema). In short, although very few people would claim the 76 version as their favorite Kong, this film left its mark in movie history (and not just because it features a brand new-to-the-scene Jessica Lang playing a character named…Dwan).
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In addition to our regular episodes, we are adding a new format into the mix! "Five-by-Five" eps will each be a Top Five list of films featuring different random topics, sub-genres, or objects. As we are often asked what our personal favorite episodes are, first up on the Five-by-Five front are each of our respective "top" favorite films/episodes we have done thus far and why....
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For our one year anniversary episode, The Cultists present David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ (1986). The premise is simple enough: Jeffery (Kyle MacLachlan) returns home from college to his small 1950s-tinged nostalgia town, finds a severed, moldy ear in a field, and embarks upon a self-guided odyssey into the darker parts of the town’s worn-down crevices, only to find that his thirst to drink in the dark might be stronger than he’d like. The premise is simple, but the film that unravels from beneath its surface is anything but. Relying largely on sensory instincts and “day dream logic”, Blue Velvet presents a rather loose and tangled web of threads that people love to try and straighten, only to find that the harder one pulls, the quicker the strings curl into something new. Is this film an oedipal psychodrama? A coming of age story? A heartland conspiracy? Or is it simply a mystery about mystery? Well, lets find out.
Episode Safeword(s): “red pleather”
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