"Maybe this world is another planet's hell."
Aldous Huxley
I was invited to Kyle's new show on OracleBroadcasting.com (Star Theory Radio), so below is the links to listen to me ramble. And ramble I did. At this point I have too many divergent ideas bouncing around my brain that it's hard to stick to and finish one train of thought before jumping on another! Anyways, it was fun to get back on the air and in the chatroom (for this show, it's at startheoryradio.chatango.com).
Here is the download link.Previously I had done the short Psycube interview and one of the questions made me realize that my favorite movies from my childhood all had similar themes. I ended up changing my answer to the question, but here's a slightly expanded version of what I was originally going to say:
Some movies from my childhood that always stuck with me:
They Live - I've loved this movie since I first saw it long ago. It's basically about the revelation that the world is run by a secret cabal of alien masters and their human familiars. The aliens operate from underground bases and are called ghouls. And like ghouls, they look more like decaying people rather than any idea of aliens I've ever heard of. In my answer to another question in the interview I compare the ghouls to the Strangers from Dark City who are parasites that use the deceased bodies of humans as temporary shells while they conduct their experiments.
Invaders From Mars (the 1980's remake) - The original black and white version is cool too, if you're into old B-movies, but the 1980's remake was a thing to be remembered. An apparent meteor crashes down near the house of a little boy who eventually discovers that it's really a spacecraft whose inhabitants are somehow taking over his small town. So, here's a spaceship and alien force operating from underground and, like in They Live and Dark City, they are taking over the world.
The Gate - One of my favorites from childhood which I used to get confused with Poltergeist, probably because they use the tag-line "They're here... and they want to meet the neighbors." I think I only saw this movie once before I recently found it again, but it stuck with me even though I couldn't really remember it. It turns out that the "they" in this one is not the spirits of the dead bodies under the house like in Poltergeist, but rather a demon realm accidentally accessed by a series of actions that happened to coincide with the rituals needed to open, "The Gate." Basically, this gate is a hole in the backyard leading underground to where these demons live. When the gate is partially opened, the demons can't come through but can influence the world.
Big Trouble In Little China - Next to They Live, this is my favorite childhood movie. It helps that some of it's characters seemed to match those from the arcade game Mortal Kombat. In this film, Lo Pan, an emperor from China's past, is attempting to appease the demon who cursed him. The building he and his minions utilize has untold number of floors underground, and several are meant to represent specific hells of Chinese folklore (like, "the hell of the upside-down sinners"). The path the good-guys take to sneak into Lo Pan's hideout goes underground into a world that was the surface of the earth at a time before it was turned upside-down during a war involving demons who lived on the surface of the earth.
And you wonder why I'm so drawn to all things having to do with the dead and the underworld? :D
