Kill James Bond! - S3E29: Diabolik! (2021)

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Hey everyone, sorry if you submitted ideas for movies to cover at the end of Eurospy season, we trauma bonded with the 1968 italian comic book movie Danger Diabolik and immediately committed to covering the 2020s remake trilogy. This is the first of these. Eva Kant, a wealthy south african diamond mine widow, travels to italian gotham city and falls afoul of notorious thief and murderer Diabolik... ----- FREE PALESTINE Hey, Devon here. For the past few months I've been talking to a family trapped in Gaza, working to cover their daily living costs amidst repeated displacements in the Genocide. Their names are Ahmed and Layla, and their 4 kids are Jana, Malik, Lana and Amir. Anything you can contribute would mean the world to me. They deserve to live. They deserve to survive. https://www.gofundme.com/f/a8jzz-help-me-and-my-family-get-out-of-the-gaza-strip https://www.map.org.uk/donate/donate ----- Consider supporting us on our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ WEB DESIGN ALERT Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/ Kill James Bond is hosted by November Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com

fast. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Italian Cultural Sensitivity Hour. of the Italian Cultural Sensitivity Hour. I'm November Kelly. I am joined, as always, by Miyamichi, Abigail Thorne, and Devon. Ciao! Bon giorno. How we doin', everyone? And we have watched Diabolic.

This movie rules. It's sick, it's so good! Thank you to the Nation of Italy for bringing us this, it's amazing!" This was really good, yeah. I wish I could go there in person and thank you, but you're really homophobic now. I wish, I just wish Italy were real, is the thing. That they've provided such beautiful cultural product, you know, but sadly the fantasy nation of Italy from movies like Porco Rosso is also the setting for this.

So we saw Danger Diabolic, right, the Mario Bava movie from the 60s. That we really liked, because it was inventive and kind of like a comic book, and ahead of its time people didn't really appreciate it. And it's based off of an Italian comic book character, this master thief diabolic. Well, in 2020 they made a dark and gritty reboot. Yeah. Yeah, it is remarkably dark and gritty. It's basically just like Casino Royale, but sillier? Yeah.

It's, like, even the soundtrack is very Casino Royale, which I'm all here for, actually. It's like, you know, the second is easier, and then he hits him with the knockout gas or whatever and he's like, yes, considerably. This movie Diabolic was made in 2020, during the pandemic, which was ravaging the fantasy nation of Italy as well, so like, they really made this movie under adverse conditions. SONIA I didn't know that. I mean, it doesn't show. ALICE Yeah.

I mean, this is the thing, it's remarkable for a movie that came out in 2021, filmed in 2020. SONIA That also makes it's remarkable for a movie that came out in 2021, filmed in 2020. That also makes it a really interesting companion piece to our next bonus episode, which is gonna be The People's Joker, which was also made during Covid, but doesn't quite look as good as this. I prefer the look of The People's Joker to this, but that may be because... Oh, it's great. I have a thing about this, right, which is, I watched movies under some adverse conditions

for this podcast. And because first of all, this was a trial to find. Right, like, a movie that came out three years ago is very nearly lost media. ALICE It's cool. It rocks doing this job. ALICE I would have paid for this, I would have acquired it through legal means, I would've then acquired it through illegal means.

Couldn't fucking do that either. I went on, like, a quest to find this thing and watch it, and I finally saw it in 720p with subtitles that were hysterically rude. Okay. Yeah, the subtitles were about 70% of the way there. Well, listen, good for you because what I did was I watched a beautiful, it was like a 4k rip, fantastic, no subtitles whatsoever, whole thing just in Italian. I don't know what they said.

Yes, what's up? That was going to be my next question was do you speak Italian? I don't personally speak any Italian. But I managed to put together- hey, I put it together pretty good. ZACH It'll probably be a few surprises for you. ALICE This is unironically just straightforwardly a good language learning exercise. And I got the slightly easier version, which is, I had subtitles, but they were machine

translated, and much like my parents, didn't really get pronouns. So every single pronoun referring to a person or an object was just, like, randomly incremented by one, like the Enigma machine. So... At first I thought it was quite a charming affectation, people were talking in the third person about people that were in front of them, so they'd be like, ah, here he is, and isn't he a handsome stranger? And I was like, oh wow, this is kind of like a fun affectation, then they started mixing

it up, and then it was just like, oh wait, no, it's just fucked. ALICE Yeah, I really threw my parents under the bus with that joke, they don't actually miss Jan. Anyway, the thing is- RILEY You threw me under the bus with that joke too, it was my joke that I made in the group chat earlier on, you just went and nicked it. ALICE Oh, sorry, I just stole your joke. Wow.

Okay, listen, as soon as I hit that recording button, the ethics leave my body, and I become a different and worse person. We need to go back and record some more episodes of the Ethical Society. I mean, the thing is, I will watch a movie under really fucked conditions anyway, right? I've seen really great movies that changed my life on, like, a hotel TV, you know? Yes. I'm a proud member of what I might start calling the Motion Smoothing Movie Club. I've seen, like, German art films where, you know, a woman glides across the screen because

the TV has been set up for, like, FIFA. Yeah, look, long time listeners will know I watched Octopussy on the train back to Exeter while completely gone off Soju, so like... And I wanna defend myself a little bit here. I really tried to get the subtitles working, like, I tried to rip it, I went to opensubtitles.com and I tried to find a setup here, and I just, I simply couldn't. And like, I dunno, maybe if I hadn't spent four hours this week watching Minecraft parkour content I could've had more time to look for subtitles maybe. But that does...

There are two more of these things, so... I'm hoping the others are easier. Even harder to find. I still enjoyed this, even though I watched it in fucking, here no evil mode. Okay, to be clear, this rules? It's such a good... ALICE First of all, this movie has a great aesthetic, it's a real late 60s, kind of, Team Fortress 2 spy sort of vibe, not just because of the

mask. SONIA So we open with a black E-type Jaguar, which listeners will recognize as Diabolik's car. He's being driven, he's being chased away from a bank by the cops, and he's got his gym mask on! ALICE He does. The unusually tight, kind of latex rubber mask. RILEY Yeah, rubber masks still painfully realistic.

ALICE The big widow's peak, you can see his lips through it, it's just really uncomfortable. You know, not to be, like, weird about this, but you, like, not to be like, you know, weird about this, but you have to imagine the cops are like, is this a sex thing? For this guy. And the answer is not yet, but it will be later, by the end of the movie. Do we remember a news story about a man by the nom de guerre of the Somerset Gimp? Of course I remember the Somerset Gimp. Now the Somerset Gimp, for those of you who

don't remember, was a guy who... RILEY That's actually my surname, I never revealed it. Actually, Devon Gimp. Devon the Somerset Gimp. RILEY I'm familiar with the Somerset Gimp as a fellow practitioner. ALICE The Somerset Gimp, like, I don't mean to put too much of a, like, sort of comic gloss on this, because he was scaring people. It was a guy who would dress up in, like, a full rubber gimp fit, and then sort of lunge

at people at night, covered in mud and stuff, and flail around making weird noises at them. I recall this. Okay. God only knows why. The other thing I remember about the Somerset gimp is that the Essex Gimp condemned him. And so- Thank you so much, I was scrolling through my messages trying to remember which Gimp it was.

What?! It was another Gimp condemned him as, like, betraying the shared values of Gimps. Anyway, my point with this is to say- What the fuck?! You got a Gimp school and then you turn to the dark side, what the fuck is this? He's using the power of being a GIMP for evil here. Stanislavski method of being a GIMP.

The GIMP is meant to serve the community. Yeah, the Essex GIMP was where, like, look, I'm a GIMP only with consenting partners, alright, you can't just go out there wearing a GIMP suit crawling around. That's a core principle of the gimp. Like obviously. The Essex gimp was quoted as saying, Wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww the fucking Clairville Gimp again. Yeah, we never see how he gets the nickname Diabolic. His gimping has manifested in the form of crime, y'know? Mmhm.

But they're really good car chases, very well shot. It's quite slow, I found. Wait, is that 1960s car chase? I guess so. It's fine, cars went at like ten miles an hour then. True, and plus you don't wanna damage your beautiful Jaguar E-type. The way he gets away from the cops is he uses... He uses a few things, right?

First of all, he hits them with a gas, we love a gas. Absolutely. The gas has a skull, but none of it... Which is so funny, because if he's actually killing those guys, we're like a minute in, and... I think he is. I think he is. He's commis...

Well I hope the fuck he is, right, because there's two options here. One, he has gassed three cops just out of- in order to escape a heist he's done, in like the third minute of the movie. Or, this is a knockout gas, and Diabolic is a keycaps nerd. Oh, he's just like, missing. Yeah, he's put a little custom designed skull thing on there to make himself feel cool. I think he does commit murder. I think these cops are dead. S- Yeah.

Oh no, he definitely kills people later. M- He certainly does. The other way he escapes is he uses the rarer doohickey in a car chase, which is the external doohickey. You know, where the car emits something, the car drops something, throws something, fires something. RILEY Absolutely. ALICE In this case, what he does is he hits a button, and a pre-installed ramp in the street...

RILEY Yeah, dog. Yeah, dog! Raises up, and he ramps over the roadblock. It's so, like, da-da, DA-DA! It's so good! It's so good! RILEY The fuck did you set this up, man? What is happening? RILEY He's just Batman, he's so good! RILEY What the fuck did you set this up, man?

What is happening? DARREN Cause he's just Batman, he's Italian Batman. RILEY Yeah, no, exactly. We were setting up, but this guy, he's got plans, okay, he's put stuff in effect in advance to help his escape. ALICE And he's being chased by the cops. RILEY Absolutely. ALICE In these beautiful, like, alpha-romae, we will do the Italian job very soon, sooner than you can

imagine. But one of the cops is Inspector Ginkgo. Diabolic Senegata. His nemesis. Yeah. The Tom to his Jerry. Exactly. And he drives through the gas with the simple expedient of putting his coat over his mouth.

And the thing is, the music choices in this are baffling because Jinko is driving after him with his boys in his Citroen DS and Diabolics music is the kind of like active heist music thing. And then, and then Jinko is in his car listening to what really sounds like Italian snow patrol. I liked the opening credits song. I do too, but it's such, it's so disj's so disjointed that he's got the radio on, he's listening to Patulia Della Neve, and he's fucking... it gives it the real romantic cast, actually. ALICE Yeah, it's cool, actually.

So they follow him up through the winding hills, they can see the back of his Jag, and then the back of the Jag goes over a cliff, and they pull up on it, and they realize it's a fake back of a car. He's like, he's swapped it out, and then they're just like, oh my god, he's fooled us! And we get the title, it's perfect, it's so good! Yeah, my only notice, yeah, that's some diabolic shit right there. Let's go, we're in for it, baby. He has built a fake car ass in order to deceive his nemesis. It's fantastic.

SONIA It's amazing. I love it. So after the titles, we realize we are in Clareville, which is a skiing town in the Alps in the 60s, and we meet Giorgio, who's a little guy with a moustache, he's like a political functionary, he's like, what, the junior justice minister? ALICE Yeah, he's the vice-minister of justice, and he's a little guy with a mustache, he's like a political functionary, he's like what, the junior justice minister? ALICE Yeah, he's the vice minister of justice, and he's a little creep, y'know? RILEY He's like Italian Wes Streeting.

ALICE Yeah, we see him kind of toadying up to his boss and his boss's boss at this alpine ski lodge, y'know? RILEY Yes, yeah. And then I'm afraid I've been completely destroyed and will remain destroyed for the remainder of the movie. Alright, here we go, folks. I was watching this with my wife, who, as you might be able to guess from context clues, is also a lesbian, and we were watching the bulk of this movie, like, biting down on our

hands, like, oh my fucking god. At this point, we meet Ava Kant, who we remember is not yet, because this is an origin story, but will be at some point Diabolics girlfriend. And she is played by... ALICE She's Miriam Leone, who, if you can believe it was Miss Italy. RILEY So, when we say this woman is beautiful, let's just bear in mind, we mean quantitatively. She is officially one of the most 195 beautiful

women in the world. ALICE I hate this shit when men do it, right? ALICE Probably it's smaller, cause I don't think there is a Miss Vatican City. ALICE Interesting contest. But like, to do the reply guy thing, to be like, I would crawl 18 miles over broken glass to like, throw my coat over a puddle for you tonight, Queen. That's just how I feel. Like,

she looks incredible. S- So she is a very beautiful woman, but also I have made so many detailed notes about her outfits throughout this movie. M- The fits are incredible. L- Yeah, no, the fits are unbelievable. S- MMMM- AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH- This one isn't even the best one, honestly, it's incredible, and this is a low point because it's this amazing, almost black navy dress. It's got a white section at the front, which comes right up to the middle of your thighs. So it looks like you're just pussy out. It gives the illusion of the thighs. It's also got a bit

on the waist as well. It's beautiful. And whoever has styled this actor has given her really, really small little earrings too. And she's got like one serpent necklace and like a very very high tight hairstyle that just like really accentuates her natural beauty. It's so simple, it's so Italian, mwah, beautiful. ALICE She has so many great earrings in this movie, you know, such a small detail, but like, I... Also you may have heard me mention, on Twitter or shouting at traffic, that I want surgery to get the Italian, like, Roman nose, right? I want the reverse nose surgery to give me that, right?

And she has that, and it's beautiful, it's fantastic. Anyway. RILEY Yeah, I've just paused on a profile shot of her right there. ALICE She's got an incredible profile! RILEY She was, like, what, 30... 37? 36 when this was filmed?

ALICE There is still time. I got four years to lock this shit down. RILEY Like, she's older than me, I'm like, I was about to say, how do you get your forehead to be that smooth, and the answer is you just have incredibly high, tight hairstyles, but... ALICE Yeah. RILEY Yeah. RILEY She's got a Romford facelift, I guess, throughout

the whole movie. ALICE Yeah, but it's like a Clairville facelift. RILEY It's a what facelift? ALICE Clairville. The place where we are, yeah. RILEY Clairville facelift, yeah. ALICE 720p is not enough for Italian women. Um, but so, she is this, like, socialite, she has newly arrived back in Clairville, from South Africa.

RILEY Indeed. ALICE Doing... what? Why is this white woman? RILEY In the 60s? Not clear. I just heard the name South Africa a couple of times. Yeah, this white woman has been in South Africa in the 60s doing we know not what. Uh, well she was married to Lord Kant, who was killed in a hunting accident. He was killed in a hunting accident, to give you a preview of how fucked the

subtitles were for me, this is rendered by them as he died in an accident in a big game. RILEY Mmhm. Jumanji, actually. ALICE He died in an accident at the big game, like Maud Flanders. He got shot off the fucking stadium. ALICE Yeah, Wildebeest shot him with a t-shirt. RILEY God damn.

But yeah, so, her husband is dead, she doesn't want to remarry. My husband's dead. Yeah, exactly. Only want to sell this beautiful diamond. She has this pink diamond that she's bringing back to Klevo from South Africa. Certainly the bloodiest of blood diamonds you can imagine, really. ALICE Oh, of course.

SONIA Yeah, that diamond was white when they started. But so, they also talk about, well, what's going on around town? Well there's this dangerous super criminal diabolic, and the local law enforcement, they're gonna catch him no matter what, and uh, Lady Kahn, I know you might find the thought of a super criminal exhilarating, but be sure that you never fall in love with him or fuck him." ALICE Yeah, and it's zooming in slowly on her face. NICHOLAS And she's like, I would never fuck a dangerous super criminal, and she's just like biting her lip like she's the woman who's just eating

the cum cake in The Matrix. ALICE And to be clear, they're talking about a guy, and they're like- NICHOLAS The cake that makes you cum in- ALICE They're like, by the way, he did gas three cops to death, just so you know. NARESH Yeah, he did commit murder earlier tonight. RILEY Yeah. He does wear a gimp suit as well, like, you're only telling her the sexy parts of this, you

shoulda led with the gimp suit, you shoulda led with the kill gas. ALICE I mean, maybe that is sexy to her, we don't know, I think Eva's... this is a little character study into what is sometimes called hybristophilia, the attraction to criminals. ALICE Yeah, there's a hint of misogyny, actually, in Ava's character. ALICE So, she's like walking back from the party. We see- ALICE I'm sorry, I need to stop this again. She's walking back from the party in the dress that she was wearing before, but also white

maxi length collar-fastened coat that is fastened only at the collar, with a satin bow. She also has pink to white ombre nails, which is just so simple and beautiful. It's an incredible, incredible outfit. ALICE Yeah, no. SONIA The only thing that doesn't work for me are the shoes, which are closed toe and pointy, and I'm like, mm, maybe it's period after it, but it just doesn't look very nice. ALICE We see that, um, that Giorgio, the Deputy Minister

for Justice, has, like, tried to, uh has tried to hit on her in a sort of vaguely polite way, and she's brushed him off, right? She walks home, we get a bit of pointless threat as someone is walking up behind her. SONIA It's a cool camera angle, though. ALICE True. SONIA We're behind and above, it's very nicely shot. ALICE Puts his hand on her shoulder, and it's Jinko. It's Inspector Zenegata.

Who takes her for a cup of tea. Which by the way, insane. The way this woman moves, the way she handles a cup of tea, is just like, it's giving me dysphoria five. I've blasted through the previous four, and now I'm just like, how do I learn to hold a teacup like this? S It reminds me very strongly of a time when I was dating a model, and she, I was walking in front of her and I walked down some stairs, and she stopped me in public

and was just like, no, if you walk like that you'll be clocked, this is how you walk up and down stairs like a woman, like a model. And showed me how to do it. ALICE That's so toxic, I need that. I need the fucking- ALICE It was incredibly devastating and prompted a very big argument that we had that night, but she was also correct. Yeah, there's a little bit of finishing school shit that I got from dating a model.

ALICE I see. Wow. I am willing to enroll myself in the most toxic bullshit you can possibly imagine if the price of it is I get to drink a cup of tea like this. So, Jinko's like, this guy Diabolic- I think there's online classes, I'm sure. You can just watch this movie and copy it. I'm trying.

Diabolic is the most dangerous and sexy criminal we have. And massive, massive cock as well. I'm not him! I'm not him in a mask, but he's really cool. I just took this to be pure homoerotic, because I have like, immediately cast Diabolic and Junko as like, enemies to lovers, like... Well, as we later discover, like, spoilers, but this is Diabolic in disguise, so it's not even homoerotic, it's like, autoerotic.

It's AEP, it's auto-androphelic. He's like... No, so it's AGP, he's attracted to himself as Junko! Auto-Junko-fire! But auto-Jinkophilia. Oh, fuck, okay, yeah. So anyway, Jinko, in quotes, is just like, yo, diabolic, extremely sexy criminal, huge dick, probably gonna steal your pink diamond. She's like, how does diabolic know I have a pink diamond?

And he's like, fucking informants, probably? I don't know, whatever. ALICE He's got spies everywhere. RILEY He's got guys! ALICE Don't tell anyone about this, but like, anyone you're talking to could be Diabolic. RILEY By the way, where's the diamond queen? ALICE Yeah!

And she tells him, she's like, oh, there's gonna be a fake one in the hotel safe, and I'm gonna keep the real one in my room safe. There's a lot of safes in this film. Can I keep it in my sexy bedroom safe underneath my underwear? When you're watching a film in a language you don't understand and a word keeps coming up, you will learn the fuck out of that word, and that's how I learned that the Italian for safe is casa forte. Yeah, like secure house is cute.

ALICE Strongbox. Strongbox. Yeah. And so she's like, ah, so you're going to make me the bait in a trap to catch Diabolik, and he's like, huh? I'm Diabolik! I mean, yeah, sure, whatever. RILEY Is that what?

Oh yeah, yeah, totally. 100%. She's too clever for her own good. She's sussing out plans from the shit that he made up as a pretense. ALICE By the way, this woman, we've described her a lot, but at this point the resemblance hits me and I realize she looks like Italian Kristen Stewart. Like high, high femme Kristen Stewart.

Like ultra femme, and also Italian. SONIA I think she just has cheekbones. The chin and the nose are completely different than Kristen Stewart. ALICE I love when women have cheekbones. Anyway, so she goes to- SONIA It's probably just has something about me that I can instantly conjure an image like Professor X of Christian Stewart's face, I'm just like, no, the chin and cheekbones are off.

Double checking. Get my fucking head examined anyway. She arrives at the hotel. Yep. They're choosing who's gonna be her personal waiter. Because of course, Lady Cunt will not be dining in the dining room with the fucking peasants, she's gonna be getting room service all the time. ALICE And we see that one of the waiters, the guy

called Roberto, he's kind of bragging, he's like, oh well obviously the manager's gonna pick me, cause I'm hot, right? I'm the hottest waiter here. And then we see that Diabolic is listening in on this, Roberto leaves, and my favourite piece of acting in this whole movie, it's just a really quiet thing, is that Roberto is walking like he's getting a fit off. He's funny. RILEY He is a little bit, isn't he? RILEY He's strutting, he's confident. ALICE Yeah, if you go back and watch, he's walking

like, holy shit, I'm getting a fit off, that other guy looks like shit. He's not, either, he's wearing like this little cropped leather jacket, and like a sort of v-neck sweater. RILEY He's pleased with himself this little cropped leather jacket, and like a sort of v-neck sweater. LORRAINE He's pleased with himself, cause y'know, he's gonna be Lady Kant's personal room service bot lad for the next few days, which sure makes him feel great. But in fact, he is stalked by the soundtrack to Casino Royale, and then Diabolic stabs him to death and dumps his fucking body in a sewer!

RILEY The Diabolic kills his ass. ALICE Straight up escalates to a murder. RILEY With a knife! ALICE Yeah, he throws a knife into his back, ruining his cropped leather jacket. And the thing is- RILEY He is walking like he's getting a fit off his back. ALICE He is!

RILEY He's just come back! ALICE He is, once you notice it. The other thing is, we get like, knife cam? Where we have the camera on the knife in flight? RILEY That's the kill cam that he saw after he got hit by it. ALICE Get a little Breaking Bad action with the camera on the knife in flight. RILEY That's the kill cam that he saw after he got hit by it. RILEY Good little breaking bad, actually, with the camera on the knife.

ALICE He legitimately gets his body dumped in a sewer like a hitman level as well. So then we see that Diabolic is in his lair, which, unlike the Mario Bava movie, they landlordized it, it's all gray. RILEY Yeah, it's bullshit. RILEY It's brushed steel, very clean bleed. I know. Shit little lair. It's much more like the Batcave. I don't like it as much, but it does give us a nice bit of character trait about Diabolic,

which is that he is obsessively dedicated. This is actually really cool. This is an audacious choice by the movie. Also, maybe this suggests that, like, Eva fucking femmed up the Batcave, given that this is an origin story. Anyway. Yeah.

Hopefully in the next one it's all like crazy and there's domes and coloured glass everywhere. Yeah. It's like, hey, can you get some domes? Can you get some coloured glass? Step one. You get two side-by-side showers. But so, he's got this reel-to-reel tape where he's been recording the waiters' conversation, and he is listening back to the same line

of Roberto's dialogue where he's like, holy shit, I'm getting a fit off. And mimicking him, holy shit, I'm getting a fit off. RILEY He's doing voice training! ALICE Yeah! He does this, like, 20 times until he's nailed Roberto's, holy shit, I'm getting a fit off line. And he's like, I have become him. SONIA Yeah.

He's learning to imitate him. This is all done in one shot that very gradually pulls out from the tape recorder, it's also the first time we see Diabolik's face. It's really funny that his hairline matches the hairline of his mask. Yeah, he's got the most brutal Widow's Peak in the entire world. Second most brutal, I've got mine. I wanna know if that was the actor, or whether they shaved him or whatever. Fucking Vegeta ass hairline.

So, the next day, we're at the hotel, the hotel manager is like... Ah, not yet. I'm afraid. Not yet. Oh, okay. We have to cut to a character who's gonna be important later, but who I was briefly sort of baffled by the appearance of. There are two ladies chatting in the public square. And one of them is a supporting actor.

And the other is Elizabeth. And they are chatting about their husbands. And we surmise that Elizabeth's husband, Walter Dorian, is extremely rich. She's married to Bruce Wayne, you see. But he's always away. And she hates the loneliness, despite all the money. And her friend is just like, but he's got so much money, and he's like a successful huge dicked businessman, he definitely isn't a criminal. And she's like, but I wish he was at home, not being a criminal, instead of

out doing I don't know what. ALICE Yeah, she loves him, and she misses him. It's sad. NICCO Yeah, don't get attached to this character. ALICE No. Alright, now we go to the hostel, Yeah. The next day. And we're trying to organize everything ahead of Eva's arriving, at which point I point at the screen and go, motherfucker, for a reason that's completely opaque to everyone but me, which is that I recognize the actor playing the hotel manager, an Italian character actor called Roberto Citran. I know this because of a fucking Italian TV series called Il Cacciatore that I watched. And yeah, so I just include this detail to be like,

Roberto Citran. Cool guy, good actor. Nice. Guy we love to see. Yeah, absolutely. If I had thought about this ahead of time I would have plugged that into Google Translate, but I didn't, so. There we go. Nice. Ragaz, we love didn't, so. There we go. Nice. Regats! We love to see. Yes. So, but, you know, Roberto's not here, where is he?

He's late for work. Oh, here he is, quite clearly diabolic in disguise, but played by the same actor who played Roberto because he's got the Mission Impossible mask technology. He's got the Mission Impossible mask. Yeah. Me too. I like this conceit. They do this a few times.

I like that they're getting the supporting actors to play the main character in disguise, it's just fun. Yeah, it's nice. Saves you a lot of money too, cause you don't have to have your lead actor on set all the time. They do a good job as well. They do, they do a great job. So Roberto, like, Roberto, takes her to the room, runs a bath for her, is very creepily

watching her the whole time. Black hat, cream coat, black and white mini dress, black kutch, kutch. Oh my god. Yeah, unbelievably good. Audrey Hepburn fit. Yeah, it's Audrey Hepburn coated, yeah, 100%. Black earring, like, massive. Mm-hmm.

Wonderful. Really great shot composition, by the way. I don't talk about that, like, I love the way this movie's put together, it's very comic book-y. You feel like they really, really liked the Diabolic series. There's a shot later on that really stuck out, it's a completely low-consequence shot, of a light snapping on someone's house to indicate that they're awake, but it's perfectly comic book, and it really grabbed me.

And it has a little touch, it's not as extensive as the 60s one, which is almost entirely filmed, like a series of comic book panels, but there are quite a few moments in this one where I'm like, oh, interesting. Mmhm. So as she's running a bath, Diabolic tries to crack her safe, but the phone rings, she comes out of the bathroom in a white fluffy bathrobe with gold flat slippers, beautiful, and it's Giorgio on the phone, and says, why don't you come over to my place tonight at 9.30, because we're in

Italy and that's madly deemed to be an acceptable time to start the evening. Well, you need like three hours of bathing time, two hours of hair and makeup, you know. Yeah, I do, but I just start that at 1pm. And then I'm ready for dinner at like 7, because I'm a normal person. I'm starting my dinner at half-night, are you insane? Like, that's only an hour before bedtime, are you nuts? NARES Starting dinner, like, I'm gonna order, it's gonna be 45 minutes before the food comes out, what's happening here? ALICE Yeah, I'm gonna be asleep. You wanna like

wine and dine with me and then have sex? It's gonna be like 1am before we even get back, like, no way. NARES Anyway. NARES There are things to do tomorrow. ALICE Diabolic has to flee the scene. And we see that he goes home to the Bat Mansion, to Wayne Manor, where his wife has been clearly waiting for him. And he's just standing at the window doing the INTJ pose.

And she is shocked to see him, she's very happy to see him, because she loves him, and he's like, uh, don't get attached. I'm going back out in like ten minutes. RILEY He is such an asshole to her. She's like, please stay, I love you, stay with me, I'll cook you dinner, I'll do whatever you want, and he just goes, I don't like it when you act like that. And it's like, what the fuck- fucking Seto Kaiba ass motherfucker? Yeah, I don't like this guy.

The comparison that I had for it was the, um, the sort of worst bits of Fifty Shades of Grey. Right? Yeah. Yeah, totally. It's like a bad DS relationship he's got with this woman, because she's, she does not like it, right? She's not in the kind of Petra Von Kahn situation, well, spoilers for that movie, but she's not in this situation where she's like, oh, you know,

he treats me like shit and he's very cold to me and I love it. She hates this fucking guy, and he just keeps doing it. So across town, Giorgio is setting up his 9pm dinner, he is wearing, we're not talking about costuming, the worst item of clothing I have ever seen in a film, ever. Yeah! But also, like, so well selected, because you can tell he thinks this looks great. Mm-hmm.

He's we- how to describe this... This is the jacket, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. This is reprehensible. Joseph in the Technicolor dreamcoat, on a formal dinner ass? What? LUDICROUS fit.

Looks like a bad pair of curtains have been made into a jacket here. Yeah, it's like someone ate a bunch of paisley and then threw up, it's real gross. There are blues, there are- it's gold trimmed, there are reds, it's awful. It's asymmetric. Like a tapestry. It's nice as well because it's like a- it's a guy who doesn't have a lot of money or taste. It's like a nouveau riche jacket. This is what somebody who doesn't have a lot of money thinks rich people wear, and it would

be very expensive, but it's not elegant. It's not just like a really sharply cut black suit or like a Tom Ford thing. It's just like, it's very show-offy, right? Yeah, and absolutely kicking him out of the water is over. Who's in all white, and mine is saying, is this a dress, a blouse? I can't even tell what this thing is, dog. It's got like bits cut out of it and bows and shit, I'm just like, what are you wearing, and how quickly can you take it off? This is why you have to have dinner at 9pmpm is because you need five hours to get into your shapes

And also like how are you gonna eat anything? This is Italy You're gonna be having spaghetti like it's gonna get everywhere all over that white outfit The other Italian cultural sensitivity out I got the I got the both button back as well BOOF BOOF BASTARD BASTARD If you bastard too fast it really turns into, like, moans.

BOOF. I don't wanna hear Jared let her moan. So he's shooting his shot, right? Yeah. Also, she's not buying it, and the thing is, right, you may know this about me, when a woman is slightly irritated and annoyed, ten trillion percent hotter. I'm sorry. But even the way that she reacts to his assault is so cunty, because he like, Ava, I love

you, and he grabs her and puts his hand around her waist, and pulls in as if to kiss, he doesn't kiss her, and she just goes, Georgio, please. She rolls her eyes at him. She does, oh my god. RILEY And he backs off, and it's like, oh my gosh, I'm withering. And she says, it's been a nice evening so far, don't ruin it. It's like, oh, dude!

ZACH It's over for you, man. ALICE Mm, mm-hmm. By the way, every time he meets her, he does the kissing her hand thing, but he does it too much. It's a kind of a Craig Fingersuck situation, he's not letting go of it. So, I see this guy and all I think is- PUT ON A PROPER SHOOT! David Cameron, don't laugh!

I was looking for drops, this is one of the only things I have, fucking Cameron. ALICE So, she leaves, albeit under this kind of, having had this menacing experience, where he has been pathetic, but also like, I love you, marry me. You know, I'll give you this incredible life together. I don't think he's actually explicitly threatened her yet, he's just been kind of quite aggressive about it. RILEY Well, so we cut away, and we's just been kind of quite aggressive about it. Well so we cut away, and we'll see the rest of their evening later on. So she gets back to her hotel room, oh my god, the fur coat.

The pale fur coat is so... Oh my god. I'm always just skipping forward to see this. Oh wow. Every one of those minks died for a noble cause, which is a woman looking hot. Also mink, there's loads of them. There's loads of them, they're really easy to breathe, they're really easy to keep, they're like huge carriers of Covid.

GARRETT Hello everyone. ALICE KILL THEM, KILL THEM! ALICE Take your strong pro-fur stance. GARRETT Get your second hand fur, if you want fur. ALICE It's better than microplastics! It degrades, it lasts longer, it's biodegradable. GARRETT Probably not for the mink. What?

What do you want from me? It's a socialist podcast. I know, well, it's biodegradable, it's eco-socialism. I used to date a- the same model who taught me how to walk up and down stairs also had a fur fetish. Can you teach me to do that? So I know a little bit about fur. Yes, I will. But she had a fur fetish, which is why I know about fur, cause she had several fur coats.

ALICE Like fur fetish? Like with the mink glove? Like the mink massage glove? RILEY Yes, yes! GELIC with the mink glove? Come on, we're outta here. ALICE Jel-king my shit with the mink glove. RILEY Jel-king my shit on mink glove Twitter.

So she gets by. ALICE Diabolic is never gonna get gonna crack this fucking safe. I've had a real life coming out of that. Just looking out the window right now. Had? A woman who is like 20 or 30 years away from aging into like early Cruella de Vil? No, I'm just looking back, I am still having a hell of a life, but I'm also looking back, I'm like, I've had some experiences.

I think we all have, probably. Yeah. We're doing Killjoy's one in like ten years time, you're in the full Cruella de Vil outfit, November's a cop, and I... Uh huh, yeah. What are you doing? What are you doing? Uh huh.

I don't know what my week is, I'm probably in prison. It's just like, if we're all doing the stuff that's gonna get us cancelled, you're in prison for like, pledging explicit support to ****. Yeah, that's absolutely true, yeah. Jesus. Look, it's a prescribed terror group, alright? It is, it is. You can't say, but you like it.

To the point that we'll probably have to cut that bit. Just bleep it, just bleep it. ALICE We are supporting bleep. Could be anything. SONIA Don't just bleep it, it's always funny when you bleep things. Anyway, Diabolic breaks into the hotel room, and he cracks the safe. ALICE It's getting edged by this fucking safe, right, because he opens it just in time for Aeove to come back.

SONIA Mmhm. He holds a knife to her throat, she's not afraid. Yes. No, she matches his freak, right, and this is, this is, uh, she's like, into it, you know? Yeah, no. Nah, she's not not into it. Yes.

She's not afraid. Yeah, I think she's getting into it, you know? He even says, like, you're not afraid of him, and she's like, no, I serve cunt. And then she says, you're wasting your time, the diamond is fake, the real one was sold, because when I was still married to Lord Cunt, when he was alive, before he died at the big game with a big foam finger- Lord Cunt, now, who do I have to usurp to get that title? Choking on a hot dog at the big game, hit by a packet of peanuts from a peanut seller,

the big game. I was blackmailed, because some blackmailers, some South African gangsters came to me and they threatened to reveal some things about my past to my husband, and so I had to sell the real diamond. She says, see for yourself, take it, examine it, if it's real, then come back and kill me, if it's fake, then please bring it back. Dread pirate Robert's ass. Mmhm. Yeah.

He does, right. She was like, well. Oh, so she says, bring it back, because I want to wear it and be the most admired, the most beautiful. And he says, you don't need a diamond for that. And then they almost kiss, but he vanishes. He edges her. What's that cringe?

That's so good! No, but the disappearing is good. Like, I dunno. I think if a woman this beautiful tried to kiss me, I would also do what he does, which is run away instantly and disappear, because I panic. ZACH Yeah, no, I'm reading it that way. I'm gonna go with that. ALICE He's just doing a little shuffle across the

room and diving out of the window, you know? So he goes back to the Batcave, and he examines this diamond, where he discovers that it is in fact fake, and she has not lied to him. ALICE And Elizabeth sees him coming out of the Batcave. And he fucking gaslights her. ALICE He does! 100%. ALICE He's like, you're crazy, you must have seen

things in the shadows, you're nuts, you're insane, my dear, quite insane! ALICE You know what this is, besides Fifty Shades of Grey? I personally don't know anyone who would use this as a paradigm to explore abuse and toxic relationships, it's kind of Dracula-like. Like, it's not helped by the gigantic Widow's Peak, but he's like, uh, you didn't see anything, you know? Maybe it was a shadow?

And he threatens her physically, he doesn't choke her exactly, but he puts his hand quite firmly on the front of her neck. And it's just like- On the kind of, under the auspices of checking her pulse, to be like, you seem like you're agitated. And then with the sort of implication being like, if you say, you're a double, I got you, he'll just fucking kill her. Which is not nice.

Nuts! Like, it's not like- Here's your protagonist, question mark? Yeah! Fully. I have some thoughts about how this movie does this, but she's like, you know, reading between the lines here, like, nah, I'm totally chill with this, actually. I'm insane, actually. Yeah, oh, you're right, I'll go to bed again.

Yeah. And I'm totally not gonna poke around in the garden the second you're gone. And the next day, Eva wakes up, having slept in pink eyeshadow and fake lashes, which she wasn't wearing when she came in, so that means she came in from... RILEY These are different fake eyelashes, yeah. ALICE Oh, those are her sleeping eyelashes. RILEY From dinner, took her makeup off, put different makeup on, and went to sleep in it?

Insane. ALICE She's going through, through like pints of micellar water a day. RILEY She set her alarm early so that she could wake up, get a full face of makeup, and then pretend to wake back up again for like, whoever's coming into the room at that time. ALICE Yeah. Also her hair was straight and pinned up last night, and now it's curled, so...

RILEY Yeah, obviously. ALICE Baffling. ALICE I have a slight problem here, which is, I also wrote this note in a hurry and I can't read the last word of my own handwriting, so I don't know what this relates to, it could be anything in the movie so long as it happens after this, but my note says, in Europe this is a common occurrence, he's just, and then I cannot read this fucking word, so I don't know, what is a common occurrence in Europe that happens in this movie?

RILEY I don't know! I don't know what's said in the scene. ALICE He's just... fr-frichling? What did I mean by this? RILEY Friendly? SONIA No clue. Anyway, so Roberto, in quotes, brings her breakfast in bed, and then she lifts the cloche, and the ring is underneath it. So she calls him back and is like, Roberto, have you, have you met Diabolic famous super criminal? And he's like, no, I haven't. And she's like, that's a shame because like, I would love to S that D if Diabolic, I'd love to suck that Diabolic if he was. And he says, well, wouldn't you

be afraid to meet such an incredibly big, dicked, and handsome criminal? And she's like, no, I would love it, actually. And he takes off the Mission Impossible mask, revealing his true face. Really good VFX work here. I actually think Roberto's slightly better looking, but what I... ALICE I actually agree a little. Like, he takes it off and he's like, ooh.

RIVERSO Roberto looks a bit like a really young... um, oh god, who's the guy in Brazil? Price? RILEY. Never seen him. ALICE. You've never seen him in Brazil? Jonathan Price. He looks like a really young Jonathan Price.

Um, Roberto does. Anyway. But yeah, I can't decide whether I like or am badly irritated by this kind of like, Fanta-ma shit, you know? Like, the kind of like, gentleman thief stuff. The ring under the cloche is a bit much, y'know? I like that. I don't like the misogyny thief.

Mm. The misogyny thief. You know, I hear that in Europe this is a common occurrence. Maybe. She shags him! In Europe it's a common occurrence. That is a common occurrence, I've heard. And then afterwards, she says,

how did you know about the ring? And he's like, ah, because it was me in the scene where you met Jinko. Mm-hmm. Ah-ha. Motherfucker. I was also... Everyone you've met so far has been me. All of them have gone, isn't Diabolik hot?

Isn't he a big dick? Meanwhile, Elizabeth is at home. She's in the classic, she's wearing a dressing gown that's sort of unkempt, she's drinking a cup of tea and looking at the spot in the garden where she saw the eyeball. ALICE I'm not crazy. I am not crazy. RILEY I'm looking at that shit.

I'm gonna go look. ALICE But so, she finds the Batcave, and she is horrified, not least because he's got a bunch of the latex masks just up on heads. RILEY Yeah, this is a really fun shot, because it's just of her seeing them, and she starts screaming, and then, like, almost like, Zardoz style, the rubber masks start appearing in the frame around her face. Which, yeah, interesting shot. RILEY Pretty good.

Very comic book. ALICE Oh! I remember! Fritzeling! In Europe finding the... RILEY Motherfucker. Very comic book. Oh! I remember. Fritzling. In Europe. Motherfucker. Motherfucker.

In Europe, finding the secret basement bunker of your husband is a common occurrence. He's just fritzling. God fucking dammit. Yes! She found the secret basement! Alright. Now we get it. Fuck's sake. He's just fritzling. Damn it, yes! She found the secret basement, alright. Now we get it. Fuck's sake.

ALICE He's just fritzeling. RILEY He's just fritzeling, guys. ALICE Mmhm. It's like a sort of common stage of the European male. She calls the cops, right, because she's not down with this Batman situation, you know, she thought she married Bruce Wayne. And the cops led by Jinko show up, and they stake out the place. So when Diabolic comes back to the Batcave, he is gonna get nicked.

They're gonna catch him, yeah. But he's still talking to the most beautiful woman in the world, what was her name again? Ava. Ava. He's still talking to Ava in the hotel room. And then she says, do you have a woman? And he's like, actually I'm married to this woman, Elizabeth, but like, I'm going to leave her soon and give her a bunch of money and just fuck off. Cause I don't want to be with her anymore. Which I'm like, harsh dude. And she says, I'm actually engaged-

She's being upfront about these things, I suppose. I'm engaged to Giorgio. And he's like, whaaaaat? So we have a flashback to the rest of the evening together. Which means we get to see the jacket again. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Giorgio confesses his love and says he's going to blackmail her if she doesn't marry him. Because what if, what if the deputy justice minister, me, Giorgio, investigated that death of the big game of your husband?

And what if everyone found out you, you're not an aristocratic lady at all, you used to be a nightclub performer and a criminal and a committer of industrial espionage. This does not wholly add up as a blackmail thing, but I think it's because you can't use anything spicier and keep the rating, you know? Yeah. It's like, you were a nightclub singer. And? Oh no. You know? Yeah. It's like, you were a nightclub singer. And I was like, ohhhh.

And? Oh no. But yeah, so he forces her to, like, accept his engagement proposal on pain of blackmail. Yeah. He has a file on her in his safe, and Diabolica's like, I will get this for you, Queen. He does say that, as well. Which is very funny, as well, to be like, I gotta file on you in my safe, in my office, at work, I can give you the address if you like, it's the third

door on the left. It's on my business card. But you don't have to code to the safe! Door sticks a bit, so you might need to... But so, yeah. Diabolic is like, given that this is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, it's like, well now you've seen my face, I can either kill you or trust you, and because she's completely unfazed by this, he's like, okay fine, I fold instantly, I will go and get you this file

about you. I just need to make one stop off at the Batcave. Yeah. We get some comedy where the manager of the hotel comes in and is looking for Roberto, obviously thinking that Roberto has porked the VIP guest, and to have a leg has to hide in the wardrobe. In Europe this is a common occurrence. A kind of sex comedy of errors.

They also establish that they both know Morse code, because Ava taps in Morse code on the wardrobe to signal for him when to leave. Also she changes at this point into a different bathrobe, navy blue with quilted leather lapels, love it. I think she puts a bathrobe on over her bathrobe, navy blue with quilted leather lapels, love it, beautiful. ALICE I think she puts a bathrobe on over her bathrobe, because the first bathrobe wasn't like decent enough. Which... RILEY I guess.

ALICE Insane. So, he leaves, and he heads back to the Batcave. Jinko and some cops get him at gunpoint, and he edges forwards towards a kind of like bathroom light ceiling pull cord thing, with his hands up. Yeah. Very obviously about to pull the thing. It's like, I wouldn't let him do that. No.

No. You're gonna pull the thing, aren't you? He does. Pull the string. He does. Yeah. And blinds everybody. Big flash of light.

Yeah. This is... oh, you'd hate to reach for the flashbang cord when you're going to the bathroom, you know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Middle of the night, you're like, why the fuck of the flashbang cord when you're going to the bathroom, you know? RILEY Mm. Middle of the night, you're like, ah, where the fuck is the... Pshh! Ah! See a trans person in there? Boom! ALICE The funniest thing about this scene, right, is he runs up the stairs, out of the Batcave, is immediately held at gunpoint in the same

way by two other cops, and in this moment I'm just looking for him to pull another cord that comes down from, like, the sky. LORENZO Yeah. Doesn't make it. But meanwhile, so he actually arranged to meet Niver, and she was just like, promise me you won't be late, I've met men like you before who get what they want and promise me the world that men leave, and I'm like, really? ALICE I have RSD, please do not, like...

LORENZO Maybe you should stop dating men, babe. ALICE Yeah, please keep this engagement. And he's like, I will, I promise. Diabolic doesn't break his promises. RILEY Yeah. ALICE But he gets arrested. And he gets arrested and put into the most insane handcuffs I've ever seen. RILEY Yes.

RILEY Yeah, real manacle type shit. What's happening here? ALICE Yeah, they manacle my boy. And we see that Ava is in this cafe waiting, and any time anyone comes up to her, including the waiter, she's like, yo, is that Diabolic under there? And it's not. RILEY And she's wearing a Bulgari watch, which we are shown many times.

ALICE The Bulgari Serpenti, yes. RILEY The Bulgari Serpenti, beautiful. ALICE I paused the movie in order to show this to my wife, to be like, yo, check these out. With a black coat, she's got big pearl earrings, a black jacket, white gloves, and she has like a fox fur shawl, which is just like a dead fox. It's one of those old fashioned ones where it's just a fucking dead animal. Which I don't think looks quite as good, it can work in some circumstances. ALICE It doesn't, but the Bulgari Serpenti...

ZOE Those circumstances being the 1960s in Italy. ALICE Those, I mean... Uhhh. I need to make that much money, is the thing. So we see from this beautiful watch that she waits for him for two hours. ZOE Yeah! ALICE Wow! ALICE Down horrendous.

ZOE Hmm. ALICE Down cataclysmic. Two hours is so long. Not in Italy. I guess so. The movie doesn't really have the courage of its convictions to do the whole, like, y'know, convention here. She overhears some people being like, yo, Diabolic got arrested, did you hear about this?

It's crazy. To be fair, you would be saying loudly, right, if it happened. RILEY Also, her conclusion from this is, oh my god, I've gotta help him because I really like him, and not, oh my god, I guess he's actually shit at being a thief, I should've gotten someone else. ALICE Yeah. ALICE He hasn't done the one job that you wanted

him to do, hasn't even tried it yet. RILEY And she's like, I've got infinite money, why don't I just bribe Jorgio? What am I doing? Succumbing to blackmail? Why don't I just give him a lot of money? So he goes to trial, and she's in the stands, like she's in the gallery watching him. Gold earrings, white hat, gilded cream jacket of a matching gilded cream top with gold bracelet. OH MY GOD! The public gallery is shouting like, uh, they're shouting, thief and murderer at him, and when they shout murderer

I remember, yeah I remember. I mean, that's right. ASSASSINO! I'm just like, oh yeah, he did kill all those people, didn't he? Like, what, four? Five people now? He just killed that random ass concierge, man, he took him out, like, I'm sorry. He laser targeted the hottest man in a business and killed him and dumped him into a sewer.

He was getting a fit off. He did. And killed him. And she knows this too, she knows he's like a multiple murderer and she's still like fucking Niagara down there for this guy, like, you gotta get your fucking head examined, babes. Anyway, Diabolik has refused a lawyer, he's refused to say anything. He has gone Vargas mode. He does not eat. He's gone non- he's refused to say anything. He has gone Vargas mode. He does not eat.

He's gone non-verbal. Yeah. Uh huh. He's easy. Diabolic is an autistic king. I would be pretty stressed out if I got arrested, I might go non-verbal too, let's be honest here. He is blinking in a way that his comically shit public defender is like, this is a clear

sign of insanity. But of course he is blinking in Morse code to Eva, who is extremely unsubtly tapping her own cheek to signal to him. RILEY Yeah. Not subtle. ALICE He's fucking encoding a long message here, as well. RILEY This also relies on the premise that no one

in that courtroom is looking at her, and we notice this, and it's like, no, I'm sorry, everyone in this courtroom is looking at her, and we notice this, and it's like, no, I'm sorry, everyone in this courtroom is looking at her. Have you SEEN this woman? ALICE Someone later says of her, of this character, she is not a woman that goes unnoticed. RILEY Yeah. Which is a really, like, really good phrase, actually. ALICE I'm also not a woman who goes unnoticed, but

for bad reasons. RILEY Brackets derogatory. ALICE Yeah, exactly. But so, essentially he is signaling to her, like, hey, here are the locations of all of my secret hideouts, I need you to go and get, like, X, Y, and Z from me. But she doesn't go straight there. First, she presumably must go back to the hotel in order to change into a red dress with white gloves and a tartan driving cape.

The white gloves make it look a bit Minnie Mouse. You're gonna be driving. True. Yes, that's true, yeah. She's a Minnie driver. Mm-hmm. Awful. Awful. The first Batcave that he sends her to just contains another Jaguar, which is just like a nice present, but then she goes to yet another Batcave,

where there's a big pile of cash and a secret lab of colored vials and there's a plan being put in place. But he's found guilty and sentenced to be fucking guillotined. RILEY The Foley is so fucking funny at Diabolik's Lair. Like, there are cave water drip SFX in there. What is happening? ALICE He's a really bad builder.

The other thing that's really funny about the guillotine, well there's two things to me about the guillotine. RILEY Oh yeah, sorry, I did speak of that. They're gonna kill Diabolik. Good. He's a murderer. There's two things that you need to know about the guillotine. Oh yeah, sorry, I did speak over that. They're gonna kill Diabolic. Yeah, they're on the radio, being like, they're gonna guillotine him, and the radio's like, well, that'll be a relief. It's just like a kind of passing news item, like, well, it'll be cool if we kill him. Thank God for that.

They have to build the guillotine in the situation, they're hammering it together, and I'm just like, a man has been sentenced to death in LEGO City. Build the guillotine. RIght, great shot of him just, like, building the guillotine. Oh my god. No, but that's incredible. A man has been sentenced to death in LEGO City! Hey!

If we're doing the like, fucking, LEGO Star Wars building noises, I'm like... ALICE But so, while he's Vargas mode in jail, Eva has to go to Georgia and seduce him into getting her into C Diabolic. SONIA Sorry, once again, cream coat, white gloves, salmon and white 60s top and skirt, black croc skin bag, white nails, and the tortoise shell acetate oval sunglasses, which are like very 60s, and they also look a lot like what Dita's Women's Wear range is gonna be bringing out next year. They are bringing out glasses which look very much like these.

Two sets, actually. Um, I met the designer when I was in LA, and my god, they're fucking gorgeous. Oh! ALICE So, her angle here, her angle of attack is... RILEY Look out for those sunglasses coming out soon, socialists. ALICE Not what angle of attack means. So her angle is...

RILEY It's pronounced socialites. ALICE It's such a beautiful microcosm of everything about the three of us in sequence there. RILEY I love you so much. It's pronounced socialite. It's such a beautiful microcosm of everything about the three of us in sequence there. I love you so much. What? That's really good. What was it?

What was it? Oh, a microcosm? You two arguing about the, like, ethics of acetate sunglasses and me catching myself saying angle of attack, and then realizing that that's a technical term. That's us, baby. Fucking, her move here, her plan, is to go, only a guy with a massive penis, who I would definitely get engaged to, could get me in to see Diabolic, and if you couldn't do that, well maybe, maybe I don't even care.

It's really funny that her sort of counter to the blackmail is, go on then, fuck it. Blackmail me. I don't give a shit. And he like instantly falls for this, he's like, oh, okay. You can't blackmail me. Everyone was doing it. Previous Tory government. She says to him, I'm getting my pronouns fucked now by the subtitles, she says to him, it's

not just about giving me money and power, Georgio, you have to thrill me, you have to excite me. The thing that would excite me most of all is meeting the legendary criminal diabolik on the eve of his execution, you know, what a unique experience that would be. And he says, okay, but, I'm not gonna let you go in there alone. So they go to the prison, she's changed into a brown hat, black top, black leather, knee-length coat, love it. ALICE The leather, the texture on this leather. RILEY Yeah, with like, the hot brim pull down low, gorgeous.

ALICE Looks like Carmen Sandiego, kind of. RILEY Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they say, oh, Ava's Secret Service, we wanna have a word with Diabolic before he's executed. National Security, right. And the manager's like, well, I mean, you could, but he's not said a word since he was condemned. ALICE He does not eat, he does not drink.

RILEY He does not come, he's completely passive. ALICE Mmhm. I mean, I do the last two of those, anyway. They go into a room with him for twenty minutes, we don't see it, we just see a closed door and the clock moves, and then they walk out. Simple as. They take Diabolic to the gear tune, they've just finished building. It's one of those clocks that sort of, like, it's not like a clock that moves around, it's

for like, the numbers flap down, and then they just flap down real fast, which I found to be very satisfying, for reasons I can't really put into words. ALICE I love a flappy clock, yeah. So yeah, they take him out to the newly built guillotine. They put him on the guillotine. RILEY Long established I'm neurotypical. ALICE And they fucking decaffeinate his ass. They kill this boy!

Yeah, they deconsecrate my boy! They cut his fucking head off! In this movie. As the axe is falling, Jinko is like... Jinko puts it together, he's like, oh shit. Wait a second. Yeah, because somebody says to Jinko, like, he's been silent for days, catatonic, almost weird, it's almost like he's been drugged. And then Jinko's like, someone's like, he's been silent for days, catatonic, almost, weird, it's almost like he's been drugged.

And then Jinko's like, wait, no, what the fuck?! They cut his head off, they pull the mask off, and it's fucking Giorgio! He's just been killed! They cut his head off, bitch! This is pretty fucking horrifying, right? If you think about it, that's some Edgar Allan Poe shit, you get guillotine while you're having like locked in syndrome? This is horrifying.

SONIA Yeah, yeah yeah. And we get a classic bit, this'll be classic to the heist genre that we're moving into, we get a little bit of flashback explaining as we do it, demonetage? ALICE You don't need, this is the least earned one of these, because you already kind of know what's happened. RILEY Yeah, obviously. SONIA Yeah. We're watching it in a second language and we know what's happened.

So we see Ava mixing the drugs in the Batcave, and then they inject the real Giorgio, drug him, they give him the truth serum and he says, by the way, I have a whole bunch of treasure, here's what the deal is, because I blackmailed a whole bunch of pirates, I guess, or something. They do a body swap, and then that's how they did it. And the Jinko says, okay, we need to lock this down. Keep it a secret. Diabolic and Ava think they've gotten away with it.

They're not gonna know that we're coming for them. ALICE Sure. Send two cops to... RILEY He would be so fucking embarrassed if you just cut the head off the finance minister. ALICE Oh yeah. RILEY Oh shit. I dunno, I'm looking at the current cabinet and I'm like...

RILEY Well, yeah, I guess we don't work for him. ZACH Who's Justice Minister? ALICE This is a key detail, right. Jinko takes four of his guys, who are with him at the execution, who have seen them deconsecrate the Vice Minister of Justice, and is like, two of you go to his house, two of you go to his office. Diabolic goes to the minister's office, in disguise as the minister, breaks open the safe, takes a bunch of blackmail material on Ava, and dumps the rest of it, which is like blackmail material on everybody else.

RILEY Just dumps it on the desk. ALICE Yeah. Leaves, and as he's leaving, those two cops who have seen with their own eyes that the guy they have walking past has been guillotined... RILEY They walked past and were like, oh my. ALICE You hate to do a cinema sins ding, you hate to do it, but they were in that scene. RILEY Oh, shit. He does hide his face, like he turns away from them.

RILEY A little, but like, that's... you just saw this guy get his head cut off. RILEY Failed perception check, yeah. Yeah. Goes into Hitman Absolution Instinct mode. Maybe it's like Clark Kent effect, it's just like, if you saw a guy whose head you'd just seen cut off, you'd be like, that guy looks a lot like the guy who's head I just had cut off. Yeah, but he can't be, you know, cause he's so ridiculous.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Ava is of course waiting for him outside in the blackjack, they get in and they speed away. The subtitles at this point say, don't give up on the blow? Not entirely sure what that's about. Something in Italian, I think. Yeah, it's a golpo, it's like a coup, it's like a coup d'amant, like a blow of force, the thing, right? The thing. And now, listeners, you may remember from the last diabolic movie we did, because this

might, this could be like the end of the movie, like they drive away, music, da-da-da-da-da, right? But you might remember from the last Diabolic movie we did, because this could be the end of the movie, like they drive away, music, da-da-da-da-da, right? But you might remember from the last Diabolic movie, no, there was another, we get another half a movie, because time for some eleventh hour treasure antics. ALICE This should've been TV, or it should've been the sequel, because this is where we start the second movie, an hour and a half into the first movie. RILEY Yep. Which I like, it's like a little, you know, an hour and a half into the first movie. Yep.

Which I like, it's like a little, you know, an extra present from the kitchen when you get an extra dessert. It's like the death from above level in Modern Warfare. It's not just that they've teamed up, you know, we're getting their first heist that they worked together on as well, right? Yeah, true. So, fine. So, Georgiou had a bunch of treasure hidden somewhere that he blackmailed from various

people. In a vault? Yeah, but we don't know where yet though. So Jinko interrogates the secretary, and finds that she knew something about this, she was hiding the other blackmail files, like she's got some information on this. Diabolic knows where it is because he's used the truth serum on the guy, and it's in the central bank of Genf, or whatever. And so, Jinko has to figure this out and follow diabolic steps.

SONIA Yeah. Meanwhile, a lady, a very sexy older lady, turns up at the central bank of Genf, in a white and cream fit with cowboy frames, pearl earrings, very nice. Different sunglasses this time. ALICE And I become one of those people who is obsessed with the idea that everyone in public is secretly trans, because I'm like, that's Eva. Now that you've introduced the idea of latex masks, everybody's fucking doing it.

SONIA Yeah. And so the bank, she turns up at the bank with some valuable paintings, and under the guise of like, I'm a wealthy woman who's putting some paintings in your vaults, and the bank manager explains the vault security system to her. ALICE I'd love for a wealthy woman to put some paintings in my vaults. SONIA I do like that the bank manager is a woman. ALICE I do too. SONIA It's nice that women can have jobs that aren't

just like, you're very sexy or a bank robber. ALICE They do the thing where they explain how secure the vault is, and they do the thing where they show you the blueprints of the vault, but one of them is, one slide of this, functionally, is explaining what a cube is. And I really like that. Yeah. Well, of course, comics, 2D medium, difficult to... Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's just like a square, but it's like, you know. We do get a nice bit of, I'm glad they left this in, unless a movie would have cut this out, is, as Jinko is on the trail, he talks to one of the other blackmail victims, and he says, oh yeah, I was being blackmailed by the Vice Minister of Justice because there's some photos of me. And Jinko just goes, here they are. Gives them back. So we get a nice bit of like, Jinko is a good man.

It's nice. I like that. It's cute. Yeah. And he figures it out, and he has to run down to Genf with his boys because he can't call ahead and tip them off. And so Diabolica's gonna break into this fall, and his plan is just to leave Eva behind. And she's like, well what the fuck is this?

Because it's 2021, even in Italy feminism has been invented. And so- It's 2021, 1961. Yeah, so she gets to be like, what, I'm just gonna do nothing, cook your meals for you or whatever. She brings him tea while he's preparing his evil schemes, which I think is quite simple. That is kind of cool, yeah. And he's like, no, it's fine.

My evil plan is, uh, it's pretty simple actually. He's gonna like, do surgery on a wall. He's gonna like, the painting containers have a laser in them that's gonna laser out the front of the wall, he's gonna drill through the wall. He's gonna flood the entire vault, standing in it for like two and a half hours waiting for it to flood. And then he's just gonna swim in. Short circuit the alarms and scuba moe inside.

And he's like, cool, whatever, really, I love it. You saw him use scuba as a verb. So, yeah. And he does. It's really funny, him just standing there for two and a half hours while Jinko is outside with the firefighters and the security guards just being like... He's just like playing games on his phone. He's got Bellagio on mobile now.

He's doing Wirtle. Sick. Yeah. He's doing Absurdle. The adversarial Wirtle. You gotta stop playing for your New York Times crossword. Yes, yes you do. You gotta stop.

You gotta try some other non-New York Times crossword. Yes, yes you do. You gotta stop. You gotta stop. They've, you gotta try some other, like, non-New York Times dolls. They call them the dolls, but they're nothing but. So he scoobers into them. I do also want to talk about the firefighters in this, right, because these firefighters are an incredible bunch of lads. We've got a bunch of very burly, mustachioed men, all wearing, like, ankle-length leather trench coats. And their boss, boss firefighter, has an even longer mustache and is wearing a bunch of

like, medal rippings on his leather trench coat, and I'm just like, this is an aesthetic you guys have got here, this isn't bad. You got those in the Fire Wars. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, 60s Italy, question mark, you got them in the something wars. Oh yeah. Mm. Yeah, don't worry about it.

So Ava is watching all this in binoculars, and she sees the backup arriving, Jinko is preparing a trap, and she's like, oh no, well, I'm not just gonna stay at home. So she jumps in the Jaguar, she encounters a roadblock where she gets recognized, and then she like, kills four cops. Yep, yep yep yep. Just kills four.. Yeah, she does. Yep. Yep yep yep. Just kills four. Without remorse.

With some kind of throwing knife dart thing, just kills four men. So from zero kills to four. I dunno, she's an aristocratic lady, she's probably killed before. Her husband, it's kind of implied. I guess. I guess, yeah yeah yeah. Not seen a high U-score before. Yeah yeah yeah, very true.

Hardest ones to get. Yeah, very true. Hardest ones to get. Yeah, for sure. And just as Diabolik's about to get away, Jinko shoots him in the shoulder, and makes him remove his mask. Diabolik has killed three cops on the way out, unprovoked. He's done the knife cam thing again, into the backs of three cops, and the front of the third one.

So, when Jinko shoots him, it's a little like, you shot me, it's like, yeah, also you did kill three people, like, just now. RILEY He shoots him non-fatally, and they debate the law. Shinko's just like, I will guard civilization. They do that same thing that they did at the end of that Jackie Chan movie, where they just say, no, crime is not the way, civilization requires law and order. And he's like, I can't, my dick's too big, I'm too cool,

I live outside the law. Dibolic and his massive dick back up a bit, causing Jinko to step forward. And Eva, who is climbing up the ladder of the dock to take a long swing with an awe of all things. And I lied when I said I didn't have drops from this, I have one drop from this because it's too funny not to. That's it.

She just hits him really hard in the legs, and he just falls down, like he's been shot. ALICE And Diabolic banks on the fact that Jinka won't shoot him dead. And Jinka's like, yeah you're right, I won't, because fuckin', I follow the rules and I obey the law, I'm not gonna kill you in cold blood. Even though you have done that like seven or eight times. And then Diabolic gets the gun, and it looks like he's gonna execute Jinko, but he doesn't. He lets him go.

ALICE Even doesn't say shit, by the way, she doesn't try and stop him or anything, she's fine with it. Like, she's right or die. RILEY She's like, please kill him. She's like, I'm so close, please kill him. ALICE Yeah, no. Ava's a real true believer, that's the thing. NARESH Yeah.

Dapperlikes got a little remote. ALICE And this is a case of the kind of, like, corollary to zenegasification, right? Lupinification. Which is... ALICE Absolutely. ALICE You find that you are the nemesis, and you can't bring yourself to really, like, you know...

Because if you just kill him, that's not satisfying, it's not a nemesis situation, this is another guy you killed. Y'know? Yeah, exactly. Because guys with those peak is like too pointy to kill him. Mmhm. So they sail away, on a yacht, Ava at this point is wearing just a white bikini, which is very similar to a real bikini I have, actually, and the oval ass tape frames, and

then Diabolic says, "'I got something for you, I found it in the vault, from my guy I decapitated.'" One of the many people you and I have murdered in the three days we've known each other. ALICE It's like natural born killers in this bitch, it's terrible. NICOLA Yeah. I had this, and it's the real pink diamond ring, and she throws it overboard. I thought this was sweet.

I don't need it. It symbolizes my past, and what symbolizes my future is you, multiple murderer. Yeah. And we get the ending text that is always funny in Italian, where it says, the end, but it says in Italian, which reads in English as, fine. Yeah. The movie's over and you're like, alright. ALICE Yup. Thanks for coming. I quite liked this film. NARES I've really liked it.

ALICE I've enjoyed it. ALICE It has a stab at the idea that Diabolic is not a good person, and it has a stab at the idea of feminism as well, right? And not hugely successfully. Like, the daylight between Diabolic and Giorgio is that Giorgio is a blackmailer, whereas Diabolic is the far more preferable murderer, and merely gaslights his own wife who he doesn't love. SONIA Who, by the way, disappears from the film. Don't know what happens to her. ALICE She's done. She's done. RILEY She's out of here. He just disappears from

her. Hopefully she's doing alright. ALICE Jinko has her sedated, when he gets there. Literally the first thing he says when he's out of the car is, like, sedate that woman. And it's like... ALICE 1960s. ALICE Oh, Jesus. Yeah. Yeah.

JANET It reminded me tonally quite a lot of the modern Man From Uncle film. ALICE Interesting. Yes. JANET And it's like, sexy spy, period, shit's happening. ALICE Yeah, I guess so. And I think, like the Man from Uncle, it does, it's a bit hamstrung by the conventions of the thing that it's from, y'know.

RILEY Italian guy Richie, or Ragazzo Richie? ALICE Ragazzo Rico. Yeah, no, I enjoyed this film. Would've enjoyed a lot more in higher resolution with better subtitles, but, y'know. RILEY Yeah, no, as I said, great movie, I wish I knew what anyone said. ALICE I think, unlike The Man From One Bone, even unlike James Bond, this film understands, like, yes, this is a very male-driven story,

and yes, it's kind of like, boy-sy, but the way that you make it for women and for girls and for wombs and femoids is you give your leading lady a series of astonishing fits. You just put so much thought and effort into her fits that I'm like, okay, there's something here for me, I'm still enjoying this. ALICE In some ways, you might suggest that that was internalized misogyny, or just regular misogyny from the movie, but it's way preferable to something that the man from Uncle does, which is, like, she's a girl boss. This movie also does that, but it doesn't put the, like, lampshade on it. It doesn't be like... it's, you know,

I mean, maybe it's different because you're watching it in another language, but it doesn't be like, it's, y'know, maybe it's different because you're watching it in another language and like, y'know. But it doesn't seem to put the emphasis on like, and Ava's kicking ass, it's just something that she does. Yeah, it's nice. And also, like, her fits, it's female gaze. It's female gaze shit. I think that's true. It's not like, oh, the outfits are really sexy.

They're revealing, or whatever. No, it's not. No, actually, a lot of them aren't. It's just that real fucking nice. As someone who couldn't hear anything that was said throughout the entire movie, basically I've been thinking largely about like shot composition, and like the way the cameras move, and also as a result of the completely legal website that I'm using at this present moment

to just scrub through the movie right now, it does this thing where when you pause it, it goes black and white, and I've just been scrubbing through, and this movie looks beautiful in black and white. Like, it works perfectly. ALICE I'm not even joking, do a re-release. RILEY Genuinely. ALICE The color grading is not bad at all, but like, it really benefits from black and white, I think.

RILEY It absolutely pops off her. ALICE Yeah. The color grading is not bad at all, but like, it really benefits from black and white, I think. It absolutely pops off her. Yeah. I don't know. This is, this is, this is, I enjoyed this one, and they made- I loved this movie. They made two sequels. Yeah, which we'll also see.

If we can find them, maybe, maybe we can hire, um, fucking whatever the next two are called. Surely they would have come out, like, just now. Yeah! Like, we've gotta be able to find them! You would think! 2022 and 2023, they were doing one of these a year, which is like a great work, right? RILEY Hell yeah. Keep going.

ALICE This is what I want from any movie intellectual property. RILEY Holy shit. Guess how much this movie cost to make? ALICE Uh, like, sixty dollars. RILEY More than that. RILEY I dunno, five mil. RILEY It only cost ten million euros. RI million euros. God damn. That's dead cheap.

That's remarkable. That's like, 11 million dollars. Like, this looks so good for 11 million dollars. It really does, yeah, and they do a lot of practical shit. Where were the savings?! It wasn't on the outfits! Oh, it's cause you filmed it in Italy, that's what I said, yeah, okay. Yeah.

90% of budget went to costumes, and the rest of it still holds up, it's wild. Yeah. But we don't have to... A period piece as well for 11 million?! That's a good point. Yeah. ALICE Yeah, 90% of budget went to costumes and the rest of it still holds up, it's wild. But we don't have to... RILEY A PERIOD PIECE AS WELL FOR 11 MILLION?!

God, Italians, what a secret. ALICE We don't have to, like, not quantify this stuff, because we have a science-based system. RILEY Yes. ALICE Scum. Scum. Scum. ALICE It's called the Scum System. It stands for SMAM, cultural insensitivity, unprovoked Violence, and Misogyny. On a scale of 0-7, how SMARMY is diabolic, brackets 2021?

Uhhh, the line that stands out to me is that you wouldn't need a diamond to be... CUNTY. I also, he's in disguise as other guys talking about how cool he is constantly. True. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Unbelievably smarmy from him. ALICE I'm gonna put a marker down here for Highest Season, I think that the gentleman

thief, the kind of cat burglar, is an inherently smarmy archetype. RILEY Very smarmy. ALICE Like, you're starting from a kind of high tariff, you know? I dunno. I think it's like a, like, four maybe? Or a five? RILEY He usually put it at five. Like, genuinely. ALICE Really? I dunno. I think it's like a four maybe? Or a five?

He easily put it at five. Like, genuinely. Really? Yeah. The kind of like, oh, anyone could be diabolic, waggles, eyebrows thing is pretty fuckin' smarmy. Yeah, and he is very pleased with himself in that moment. Yeah.

Alright, five? Sure. Cultural insensitivity. The only non-white people are two security guards in the hotel. RILEY True. ALICE Who are filmed together, not sure what the significance of that is, or if we're meant to, I dunno, for all I know, they're famous in themselves, but, I dunno.

RILEY Yeah, I know, exactly, we can only agree on what we know, which is that omission is what this is. ALICE Is it at least two, yeah? RILEY Is at least two. we can only grig on what we know, which is that omission, which is what this is, is at least two. ALICE It has the same thing as, I mentioned Porco Rosso earlier, and I mentioned Italy as a fictional country, that's not just me pulling something out of my arse, that's something that's been written about, about a lot of Japanese art, right, as taking Europe as this kind of fantasy continent where nothing bad really

happens and it has this kind of beautiful context to it. Occidentalism? Kind of, yeah. Okay. Wakan yosai. Western learning. It's Japanese spirit Western learning. A tendency since the Meiji period for Japanese artists to paint Europe as spectacular, while simultaneously maintaining the distance necessary to preserve

a distinct sense of Japanese identity." Well, this by accident- Like Howl's Moving Castle? Yeah, exactly. Arrives in a similar place, albeit coming from Italy, of being like, this is set in comic book land. It's not set in Italy, it's set in Clairville, which is nowhere, it's kind of Switzerland, kind of Italy.

It's set in a 60s that doesn't have the, like, years of lead in it, you know? Yeah, that's true. It's this kind of, like, nice period piece, in the same way that we might do in this country with, I don't know, midsummer murders or whatever. Yes. Definitely. Rum Custod of Cogliostro was set in a similarly fictional European country, wasn't it? Yeah. And I'm not against that in itself. I love Porco Rosso, for instance, but like, is that culturally insensitive?

I'm not sure, I don't know that I would necessarily describe it that way, but I think it's an interesting discussion to fold into that. SONIA Yeah, this kind of fantasy version of Europe, this like, Swiss, Italian, monostriger. Do you want to bump it up by one for that? We could give it three? ALICE Yeah, I'll go three. Comfortably three.

Unprovoked violence is where it's gonna do very badly. NICOLA It's gonna be pretty fuckin' high, from both of our leads. RILEY Yeah, no. Because he's just killing guys. NICOLA Yeah. I would've liked it more if they'd used the man from Uncle Gass's. ALICE Yeah, both the murder...

I mean, both the murder cops, right, which at least you can say cops are volunteering to get killed first, but like, Diabolic kills a guy for getting a fit off. He like... Yeah, that is a murder. It's very much established for Diabolic. He has a bunch of faces in his basement that he doesn't use in this, and it's pretty clear that those are all just other guys that he's killed. ALICE Something else I like is that in the kind of establishing bit where he's recording him, this is an opportunity to make the guy really

unlikable, so that you go, oh, Diabolic's killed that guy, but y'know, we don't feel that bad about it. But they don't, at least not that I could detect. He's just like, he's maybe a bit of a braggart, but he's like a totally normal guy who then gets knifed in the back and dumped down a sewer, and I like that they don't take the opportunity to take it easy out, y'know? 6? Yeah!

I think we could do 6. I think we're saving 7 for like a kind of mass casualty event, maybe? Or like an unusually sadistic murder, but like, six for just a kind of instrumental murder, a murder to get a guy out of the way so he can take his identity. Six. Yeah, definitely. And misogyny. This is a difficult one, right?

Because we kind of engage with the concept of misogyny when Eva is like, I don't wanna just do nothing, and indeed she has to save him. Diabolic doesn't really appear to learn a lesson from this or anything. That's very true. And it's just kind of assumed. We do see that Diabolic's heteronormative cover lifestyle is deeply toxic and sadomasochistic. However... We never really get into that either. No. cover lifestyle is deeply toxic and like, sadomasochistic. LWX Yeah. We never really get into that either.

It's never just like, I feel bad about the way I'm treating her, it's just like, I don't love her, I'm gonna leave her some money and fuck off. Which also, we don't see him make good on that promise. If I was Ava I'd be like, uh, I think you should treat your wife well, like, yeah, just be nice. Like, cost nothing. ALICE It's really interesting, because there are a few things where they make Diabolik an antihero, right, but they don't really engage with anything downstream of that. We see him gaslight his wife, and then kind of not much else, and he's still the antihero, he still gets away with

it, and we're still kind of meant to root for him. Mm. Because I guess the gentleman thief is supposed to be daring, right? That's the fantasy, it's like somebody who dares. And it's just like, there are some things that it would be exciting and thrilling to dare to do, to tweak the nerves of authority, or redistribute wealth, or take a very luxurious lifestyle, and there are some things that you should not dare to do, such as threaten women.

ALICE Yeah, I mean, even within that there are different shades of that. dare to do, such as threaten women. ALICE Yeah, I mean, even within that there are different shades of that. Like, their kind of knife point seduction thing is a lot more comfortable than the way he treats his wife, for instance. SONIA Yes. ALICE Not least because it gives her agency as well. I think the fact that the movie contains both leaves me not quite sure where to put it,

I don't really know what to make of this one. SONIA Yeah, it's a bit of a clash from scene to scene, actually. Four? Or maybe more? It could've been worse. Also I think the fact that the bank manager is a lady, it's just like, here's just a normal

woman doing a job. ALICE Yeah, certainly. SONIA She's not sexualized, she's not objectified, she's just a professional doing a job, but I'm like, okay. ALICE The minister's secretary has her own agency and stuff, and has her own interiority. I think the fact that it doesn't explicitly judge Diabolic for any of the horrible stuff that he does, and just leaves you to sit with it, is a weakness in the movie in some ways,

but I think it does kind of compensate for it. I think four. kind of compensate for it. I think four, all makes sense. ALICE Yeah, cool. Okay, so that gives it a total score of 18. ALICE That's not bad. ALICE Yeah, it's pretty good. I'm trying to compare it now to, so the 2015 Man From Uncle, which I said it reminded me

of, got a 20. So this is... ALICE It's a better movie, objectively, then. SONIA Yeah, it is. It's also less than a lot of Eurospy's that we've done. ALICE Oh, certainly. They've filed off a lot of the more toxic stuff. How does it compare to the 60s one, Danger Diabolic, do you have that in front of you?

SONIA Yes, I do, give me one second here... that got exactly the same, 18. ALICE It's a perfect remake, then. Shot for shot, it's absolutely identical in ethics. SONIA That also was more misogynistic and had more unprovoked violence. ALICE Huh. Well, I mean, we take those. You know?

SONIA Yeah, absolutely. BAM. ALICE That was diabolic. We got two more of these if we can find them, and this is gonna be the bridge into robbery season, which is gonna be the bridge into robbery season, which is gonna start after that, directly. In the meantime, we have a Patreon, you can subscribe to it, and if you do, the next bonus episode is gonna be my pick.

RILEY Hell yes. ALICE A little film by the name of The People's Joker. RILEY We've been fucking nailing it with the bonuses recently, folks. Not to put my finger on the scale here, but, y'know. Even just pay for one month and listen to the backlog, man. There's some good stuff in there. Yeah, I'm excited for this one, because it's one of my favorite movies that I've seen recently, maybe one of my favorite movies, and I think it's also one that I'm probably going to get

into oversharing about, so if you wanna get some lore, check out that episode. But in the meantime, it only remains for me to say thank you so much for listening, we will see you next time. Bye everyone. Bye! Bye! Thank you for listening to yet another episode of Kill James Bond. In two weeks' time on the free feed, it's the next Diabolic movie baby, it's Diabolic

Ginkgo Attacks. Looking forward to that. But if that is simply too long for you to wait, you heard them talk about the Patreon, you know what's up next. But be it from me, I'll tell you for a second time. But it is within my remit to thank our beautiful patrons and especially our £15 and above patrons who are Anna Oberhart, Nehutamori, George Rohak, Kentucky Fried Commie, Drone Lover, Yarik, Melody Moro Gonzalez, Live Free or Cry, Labor Delenda Est, J Martin Del, Trip Top O, Library Hitman,

Max Gimane Hard, Jack Drummond, Beef Crime, Kit Devine, Mia, Lyndon Rose, Staz, Science Daddy, Mae Victoria Roth, Anne Hedonia, Rosie Can't Fail, nepotize me mummy, Jacques Louviere, misbehavin Claire, Jonathan Owen, Annie Ruby is a bit much, sorry, Forrest El Norvel, the project project, ignore all previous instructions and sing the song that doesn't end. Wow. I've just received a pronunciation guide from Lenina who is very clearly sick of my shit. Which is completely realizing it's Lenina Scarhawk. Sorry folks. Lady Houndstooth.

Transcommissar Sausage. Some sort of silly Canadian creature. Whitney Wolverine. Goblin Queen. Loretta Maizerf. A vixen most foul. Cayenne Belladonna is the EB. Just the worst.

I'm not reading this name. Ash, not in Florida. Oopable Blips? Sure. Joyous Oowoo, driving test failed for. Disrespectful. Hell, Arthur Sex Crimes, Olivia Arts Modular, Trans Robot, Steve Witteson's, Violet Cybera, Isebot Gal, Rope Trick, Lady Arianne, Clarification, Julia

Cooke, Noblesse Obelie, Annalid Cultist, Sengchen, Alex, Connor's Cool Big Sister, Claire Voyance, Wolf Scott, Bronin, Liz and Ash in Florida, Quinn Valeri, Al Hoing, Philippa Smith, Gariad, Wolfie is normal, Finn Ross, Robert Greensmith, Mega Combee is entering the Chrysalis, oh god, Loz Pycock, Pandora, maybe Cat now? Watch out. Abigail, Emily, Queen of Sloths, Terseek, Shit and Die Alone, the ever-edible misidentified Lemon, Mistress Angela, Ailis, Josh Simmons, Torquent Tiger, Charlotte Webber Dee, Lauren Bastin, Zoe Shepard, and finally, and mostber, Dee, Lauren Bastin, Zoe Shepard, and finally and most important of all, parent, child, adult, babe, it is our duty to give Palestine aid. And sadly,

we're going to have to expand that out now to Lebanon as well. Kale Trang's Bond is November, Abigail and Devon our producer is the wonderful Mr. Nape of Thay, our podcast artist by Mattie Lubchanski, our website is by Tom Allen. And I'll see ya.