So... Alright - Witches to Worms

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Geoff tries a three-way, that ultimately goes wormward. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I was talking to my friend Tony at work the other day, and he mentioned that he really enjoyed the concept of the podcast I did where I did a Jawbreaker three ways. If you haven't heard it, I think it was like maybe, I don't know, a month or so ago at this point. And basically what I did was I talked about the candy Jawbreaker, the movie Jawbreaker, and the band Jawbreaker. And anyway, Tony said that he enjoyed that as a concept and or a conceit. And so I thought, well, I should probably do it again then. And I got to thinking about it. And I realized the Jawbreaker one was not the first idea I had to do that with. It was actually a band I was briefly into.

I say briefly because I'm not super into them anymore. I enjoyed them for, I don't know, three or four months. I kind of got burned out on them. But it's this band called Witchfinder General, and it's based on a movie, which is based on a book. So I thought, oh, I could do a Witchfinder General three ways, but then I never got around to it. And I think maybe part of the reason was

the band was directly inspired by the movie, which was directly inspired by the movie does feature a jawbreaker, but it's a very small part of the wealth. I mean, it's a pretty big jawbreaker and a pretty big part of the inside. It's the inciting incident of the film, right? But the film was about murder and lies and cover up, not not about candy. And also, I kind of I got over the band pretty quickly. And so I just it just lost my interest. But after Tony kind of poked me yesterday, it got me thinking again. And so I decided to watch the movie, thought about reading the book, ultimately decided not to, but decided to dive in and do Witchfinder General in three

ways. However, as I started to go through it, it turned into this huge rabbit hole. And instead of reading about witches, I was reading about worms for most of it. So let me just try to unpack that. Witchfinder General the band. I discovered when I was going through a pretty heavy Black Sabbath phase earlier last year, and I was looking for... They were so influential when they came out. They spawned a ton of like Black Sabbath clone bands that all had their own kind of dark or devilish hook and made kind of a similar droning metal and really kind of dark blues music, as it were. The Pacers just traded Buddy Heald, it looks like, to the 76ers for Marcus Morris and Korkbots. And some second-round picks. Interesting.

Today is NBA trade deadline day, 3 p.m. Eastern time. 2 p.m. my time is the deadline for any trades in the NBA season. So if you're not a sports fan, it's, it's a big, we call it F5 season where you just sit in front of a computer and refresh your screen all day long, waiting to see who gets traded. And it's been a pretty quiet trade season so far. Uh, really, really quiet. Steven Adams got traded to the, to the Houston Rockets and, uh, the Celtics picked up Xavier Tillman. And I guess now Buddy Heald is going over to the 76ers. That's about it. Usually, usually there's at least one like all star or close to all NBA caliber player who's rumored to be moving. And that really hasn't been the case this year. I

think a lot of teams are pretty happy with what they've got constructed. So we'll see. We'll see. Anyway, that's not about this. So anyway, I was browsing related bands to Black Sabbath one day on Spotify and came across them and really, really dug them. I feel like I was giving an impression earlier a bit that I've kind of gotten out of them or I don't dig them anymore. I still enjoy them. I just listened to them a bunch, got kind of burned out on it and moved on. But if you want to hear what they sound like, I'll probably update some kind of a playlist. I think I have one for this podcast. Listen to the song Free Country or Burning a Sinner. It's very fun. It's very 70s, very dark metal. As a matter of fact, I was reading about them, and I learned that they're considered some of the progenitors of doom metal, which is a genre that I have kind of slowly come to discover that I'm a fan of.

I don't know much about doom metal. Maybe I should do an episode on it someday. Maybe I should bring Bernie in, Burndog in, to do an episode with me, because he knows everything there is to know about metal. But yeah, I'm just now discovering in my late advanced age that I'm into doom metal. And I guess they were considered one of the, like I said, one of the progenitors of it. One of the founding bands of doom metal. It's a fun band. It's a gimmicky band. I think the music is better than the gimmick. And I think the music is better than the gimmick. And they were directly inspired by the film. So it's weird to talk about the band before the film, I guess, because but that's how I discovered them, right?

I discovered the band before the film. Anyway, they weren't around for very long. They put out two albums, broke up, I think got back together in the late 80s and put together another album, but with a different singer. And so and I haven't heard any of that. I only know the stuff from the first two albums, which were like early, early 80s, like 82, 83, somewhere around there. One thing I read about the band is that they were known for their offensive album covers. I guess they weren't a lot, right? They only had a couple albums. But I guess they they had an album cover that caused a lot of controversy in England at the time because it featured a nude model with her breasts out.

over a grave in a church by a bunch of men dressed like in, I guess, Cornwallian fare and like monk robes and shit. And I guess that offended a lot of people in England. And it actually helped them get quite a bit of publicity, although apparently it didn't help. Apparently the publicity, like the whole idea of any publicity is good publicity may not have been the case for them at that time. However, I read an interview with the band and apparently part of the reason it was so controversial. Apparently, they just piled into a van at like four in the morning one day and drove to a church, didn't tell anybody, didn't get any permission. And then did this whole photo shoot with this naked lady strewn about over tombstones and shit. And the church was not happy about it.

Apparently, they were very, very upset. You can imagine why. But all of that to say, it's a fun little band to listen to. It definitely scratches the black sat... That that 70s, like bluesy metal itch, if you're looking for it. I read a review, another funny thing about that band, I read a review of their first album. It's called Death Penalty, and I thought the headline was funny. The review said, a death penalty worth serving. So the movie Witchfinder General, I went back and I watched it,

which actually wasn't super easy to do because it's a, it was, the title is confusing and I'll explain why in a second and how I got off on a whole worm thing too. Witchfinder General, the film horror movie came out in 1968 starring, uh, Vincent Price, a few other people, but Vincent Price, and was directed by a guy named Michael Reeves.

It is based off of a novel that came out earlier in the 60s, I believe, of the same name, Witchfinder General, which is loosely based on a real person from 1600s England named Matthew Hopkins. Matthew Hopkins was kind of a shystory lawyer, as I understand it, who took advantage of a lot of government tumult. The government was fracturing at the time, a lot of lawlessness and confusion, and a lot of fear. People were scared of the devil. These were Puritan times. And so he went around the country convincing people that he could find

witches. It usually ended up being someone who was old or a young girl who was too headstrong or someone that the people in the town didn't like. All it took was someone to accuse them of being a witch. Then they would hire Hopkins to come. He would torture them to death. Depending on how they died, they would either be found innocent or guilty. Either way, they were dead, so it didn't fucking matter. And their last couple weeks of their lives

were purely torturous, as everybody around them, everybody that knew them and loved them, turned on them and then all stood around and watched them, you know, be drowned or burned to death or die in some really horrible way. And I guess this guy just went around England doing this and got away with it, too. Movie's a little different. It's based off a book, which is a fictionalization of that dude. So there is a, I guess, like a satisfying end in a way. Sort of not. But the plot is this girl whose uncle is the priest in this town, or the vicar, or whatever they, however they called it back then. And he gets accused by someone in the town, and so they send for the Witchfinder General, which is what his title is.

It's actually called The Witchfinder. It's a point in the movie. He promotes himself to general, decides he deserves the title of Witchfinder General. But they hire the Witchfinder. He comes to town. The priest gets accused. His niece tries to intervene and stop him from being tortured. They're going to kill him. She throws herself at the mercy of Vincent Price, who is a fucking scumbag and really detestable. I was reading about it, and he says that he thinks it's maybe the best performance he ever gave. I guess so, because he is so goddamn unlikable.

It is such a... I can't really recommend this movie. I found it to be very unsatisfying. It is such a frustrating film, and he and his henchmen are such fucking frustrating characters because they just keep a he and his uh his henchmen are such fucking frustrating characters because they just like they just keep getting away with it over and over again there's it's a really really bleak film and uh anyway he's torturing the priest he's gonna kill him

she intervenes he's clearly a lecherous scumbag. So he basically takes advantage of her to save the priest's life, leaves town. She ends up getting raped by his henchmen while he's gone, which he finds out about, which he gets mad at her about for some reason. So he decides to kill the priest. Anyway, her fiance comes home. They leave briefly his her fiance comes home finds out about all this he's often fighting the war he's a soldier goes on goes AWOL tries to track this fucker down decides he's gonna kill him uh and it just becomes this game of chase where he's chasing them around the countryside then they lay a trap for him I don't want to spoil it but it ends with essentially nobody being happy. Like it is like the most agitating ending to a film I've seen in quite a while. I love Vincent Price.

I love that era of horror movie. I love like British 60s and 70s horror. I love all 60s and 70s horror, whether it's British, whether it's gallowed, like whatever it is. This fucking movie is exhausting to watch because that you just keep you just it's so goddamn agitating you just need there to be a payoff you just they keep kind of teasing payoffs throughout the film that don't pay out and price and his henchmen just keep fucking failing forward and succeeding until the very i don't want to spoil the whole thing, but it just, it ends in a really unsatisfying way to me. Real bleak, real dark. And I don't know that I would recommend it necessarily if you're, even as a fan of those genres. I mean, it's a good film. Don't get me

wrong. It's scary. It's gross. It's gruesome. It definitely elicits a ton of emotion in The Watcher. I just found it ultimately a bit unsatisfying when all was said and done. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. Forget the pressure to be crushing your workout on day one. Just start moving with the Peloton Bike, Bike Plus, Tread, Row, Guide, or App. There are thousands of classes and over 50 Peloton instructors

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Ahem, Wednesday. Why, you wonder? Whopper Wednesday, of course. When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way. And you won't want to miss it. So make every Wednesday a whopper Wednesday only at Burger King where you rule. Turns out it's a very influential film. A guy named Adam Scovell, who was writing for the

British Film Institute, describes it as a part of an unholy trinity of horror, which they termed folk horror. I guess there were these three movies, one called Blood on Satan's Claw, which I've never heard of, which sounds awesome, Witchfinder General, and then the original W of folk horror which is not a term i'd ever heard before but totally totally makes sense and i definitely get it because that movie is something about the british countryside at dusk is fucking scary especially in like this like there might not be a scarier place in the history of earth than like any fucking country road over a field with dark, looming woods at 8 p.m. in the 1600s somewhere in England. It's just dark and shadowy and still. And you're afraid of werewolves and vampires and demons and devils and thieves and marauders and gee it must oh god damn it must have been fucking terrible to be outside at night in the 1600s in england i guess it's also

credited as helping usher in an era of pop occultism which is also a phrase i'd never really heard before pop occultism but i really really enjoy it. I think it's a great way to describe this kind of stuff, and I guess I'm definitely a fan of pop-a-cultism. I'm also, even though I'm sitting here kind of shitting on the movie, I think I'm also a fan of folk horror. When I go on back and looking at it, I really do like, I realize I like that genre, and now that I know that there's a name to it, it makes me want to go search out more, because they just, there's something desolate and isolating and overwhelming about, well, you just have to, I guess, watch the movie to see what I'm talking about. Or maybe watch Wicker Man or Blood on Satan's Claw instead because they are probably possessed of the same evocative themes, right? Oh, one thing about the movie, biggest buckles i've ever seen in my entire

life they wear like these shoulder sashes that have these buckles that are like so comically fucking large i can't imagine what actual purpose they must have served at that size other than to be way too fucking heavy to carry around but whatever also i wonder where do they film all this stuff in england In America, we have Vancouver, right? I mean, we have Atlanta now and there's a couple other places. But historically, if you wanted to film anything in the woods in America, you're probably filming it up in Vancouver. What's the Vancouver of England? Is there like a town, Bilbenshire, where they just have a ton of film lots and everybody just goes, oh, we got to go out to Bilbenshire to film the new Robin Hood thing.

I don't know. Anyway, surely somebody has an answer for that. I'd love to know what the Vancouver of England is. Also, another reason why it would suck to live in the 1600s, at nighttime, it's fucking dark everybody lived in a castle and the castle is all highly polished really really really dark wood and then they eat at these dining in these large halls with these 20 foot tall ceilings on tables that are also made of hard black polished wood so they're they just blend in and then they're the size that they would hold like 25 people and you'd have like three people eating dinner across from each other with maybe

three candles it's essentially like living in a cave i would have driven me crazy anyway i found the movie so uh i guess ultimately unsatisfying or frustrating that i decided not to read the book maybe i'll read it someday but i don't think so i mentioned earlier that i had a little bit of trouble finding it though and uh that's actually the thing that surprised me and where this thing took a more interesting turn for me. I kept searching for it. I googled it. It said it was available on Amazon. I looked. It wasn't. It said it was available on YouTube. I couldn't find it. Eventually, I found it under the name The Conqueror Worm. So, looking into it, under the name The Conqueror Worm.

So looking into it, I guess when they ported the film over to America, they changed the name from Witchfinder General to The Conqueror Worm for a very specific reason, even though this film has nothing to do with Conqueror Worms. They wanted to link it with... First off, The Conqueror Worm, I found out... I recognized that phrase before because I'd heard it in a song

by a band called Moss Icon. A song's called Liburnium Whits End. And they sing... It's almost like a dark or a satanic sermon that's kind of building over this drumbeat and the music, and it kind of builds into this crescendo, and it's this like seven or eight minute, just like escalating, amazing, thrumming,

like droning kind of just really unique, interesting, awesome song. And as the sermon builds, and it's talking about this conqueror worm destroying everything and how it's our truth and our true God. And it's really interesting. It's really fun song. I highly recommend you listen to it. I'll definitely put it into any playlist I have. So that piqued my interest when I found out it was called The Conqueror Worm, because I immediately recognized that. But I looked it up. The Conqueror Worm was a poem written by Edgar Allan Poe. I had not heard of it, which makes sense because when I was growing up, I was not into gothic horror at all. I didn't. I've read i've read edgar allen poe in high school like any like any kid i've read the edgar allen poe that i was told to read but i never really got

into like love i laid a little bit later in life i i enjoyed lovecraft a little bit but that whole kind of genre missed me and so i had never heard the edgar allen poe poem the conqueror worm however they renamed this movie witchfinder General, The Conqueror Worm, when they poured it to America because Vincent Price had already done a couple of Edgar Allan Poe film adaptations with Roger Corman, and they were trying to, I guess, ride the success of those by making people think it was like the next in that series, even though it has nothing to do with the Edgar Allan Poe poem at all. The way they made it make sense was I think they had Vincent Price read the Conquer Worm

poem at some point during the film, even though, like I said, the poem has nothing to do with the film. I've read the poem now. The poem's actually pretty interesting. It's pretty short. I could read it to you. I don't know if you would like it. You might want to fast forward through it, but I enjoyed it. Let me tell you a little bit about it.

It's a short poem, and the synopsis is that an audience of weeping angels is watching a play performed by mimes in the form of God, and they're controlled by these formless shapes that are kind of writhing and moving around behind the scenes. And then in the play, the mimes are chasing this phantom, but they can never capture it. They're just running around in circles. And then at the end, a monstrous crawling worm emerges, and then it eats the mimes.

And then the curtain comes down like a funeral pall, and it signals the end of the tragedy of man whose only hero was the conqueror worm I guess he wrote this in or published it as a standalone poem in 1843 in a magazine and it was popular and so he eventually added the poem to a revised publication of a story called Lygia and I guess he did that a lot he would like write a poem and then find a way to work the poem into another story uh interesting anyway here's the poem fast forward if you don't like literature low tis a gala night within the lonesome latter years an angel throng be winged bedight in veils and drowned in tears Sit in a theater to see A play of hopes and fears

While the orchestra breathes fitfully The music of the spheres Mimes in the form of God on high Mutter and mumble low And hither and thither fly Mere puppets they who come and go At bidding of vast formless things That shift the scenery to and fro

Flapping from out their condor wings, invisible, low. That motley drama, oh, be sure, it shall not be forgot, with its phantom chased forevermore by a crowd that sees it not. Through a circle that ever returneth into the self-same spot, and much of madness and more of sin and horror the soul of the plot. I like that part. But see amid the mimic rout, a crawling shape intrude, a blood-red thing that writhes from out,

the scenic solitude, it writhes, it writhes with mortal pangs, the mimes become its food and the angels sob at vermin fangs, inhuman gore imbued. That's kind of cool too. Out, out of the lights, out all and over each quivering form, the curtain of funeral pall comes down with the rush of a storm and the angels all pallid and wan,

uprising and veiling affirm that the play is the tragedy man and its hero, the conqueror worm. That was pretty cool. I gotta admit, I like that. I'm gonna read that story,gia that the uh the poem was was retrofitted to work in to as well now i think probably anyway they decided to rename a movie about a guy who travels around the english countryside torturing women and old men to death

for money the conqueror worm i don't know if that worked, if it helped drive sales or not. It seems like it's a pretty clearly influential film in the grand scheme of things. I have no idea how commercially successful it was. I mentioned it reminded me of a song called Liburnum Wits End by Moss Icon, which is definitely one of, I wouldn't say my favorite songs, but one of the songs that I've listened to is one of my favorite songs of the past like five or six years. And now I'm looking back through the lyrics and I'm wondering if the lyrics of the song are references to the poem. Let's see.

Rejoice. So we're gathered here for a common cause. We're gathered here to sing to a separated God. We're gathered here to hide the blind worm truth. This conqueror worm is your proof. This is our God. This is our song. So please all, all of us, let us take our God. This is our song. So please all,

all of us, let us take up our hymn books and sing. So please all, all of us gathered here, rejoice the freedom of my young Christian soul taken under God's holy wing. Rejoice the freedom of my young soul taken within mother's warm wing, taken under six feet of mother's warm wing. Rejoice and listen to the blind worm truth sing rejoice the freedom of my spirit enabled by lucifer's holy lended wing rejoice and sing to our separated god our inhuman god our unfeeling god our unknowing god our separated god our inhuman god the conqueror worm is your truth the conqueror worm is your love the conqueror worm is your acceptance the conqueror worm is your answer the conqueror worm is your acceptance. The conqueror worm is your answer. The conqueror worm

is God. It goes on. Interesting. Definitely. I mean, not lifted directly from the poem, but thematically, you can definitely see the inspiration. You should listen to that song if you get a chance. Maybe watch the movie. Maybe just watch an adjacent film that has a more satisfying ending. And also definitely listen to Witchfinder General, the band. They're pretty good, too. I'll put all that stuff on the So Alright playlist so you have an easy place to find it. And I think this should wrap it up.

I wanted to do Witchfinder General in three ways, but I ended up really just kind of going from witches to worms. All right.