Future Releases and Sequel Discussions

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You can catch Emily and I, or Matt and I , if that was gonna be you saying that on our biweekly YouTube show Viva Physical Media for video recommendations and so much more. See ya. Bye Hello there and welcome back to the official Deaf Crocodile podcast. This is the first podcast episode for the second half of twenty twenty six . Welcome to Cregory J. Rersodg and mister Dennis Field Bartalk . This has been an amazing first half of twenty twenty six. Can't wait to break into this. I hope you both are doing well, but first we have a new ish special guest , Chris Senko's never been on the podcast before, Chris, welcome. Who let this interloper in? Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Don't know, Chris is the social media guru for all of Def Crocodile. Glad to have you here. But yeah, Dennis Craig, how are you doing? How are you ? I can't get over you said Cregory . I'm gonna be calling him Cregory from now on. Unfortunately , lots of people call me that and I don't know why. Is that true? Yeah, I don't know. I thought I was being novel so now I'm wondering what the J stands for though Jehosaphat last time you heard So yeah, well I'm just looking at everyone's what's behind everyone in their screens, which no one else can see. You're listening to a podcast, but behind Ryan appropriately is a bunch of movies and behind me is a bunch of movies. And behind Chris , there's a bunch of books . See , I know gift gift of of the mind. If any of those books are good, again, who let me ? That's true. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, then Thy's in thirty days the movie. It's gonna be it's coming out soon . Yep . Yeah, this is my dining room. As you will be unsurprised to find, I have as much of a book problem as I have a blue ray problem as I have a music problem. So even in our dining room we have hundreds of books looking over at us while we eat . I think that's a wonderful thing. It reminds me when I first time I went to visit late great friend Max Rosenberg , who was co founder of Amicus Films who produced Dr. Terror's House of Horrors and Torture Garden and the original Tales from the Crypt film and all these wonderful anthology horror films . And his apartment in LA was filled floor to ceiling with bookshelves everywhere you looked . No movie posters , no memorabilia from, you know, his many years producing great films, no books . And room was packed with books and clearly that, was the great passion of Max's life . And he told me he wanted desperately to do an adaptation of Joyce's The Portrait of the Artist as a young man directed by John Houston, which unfortunately didn't happen . But I think Max would have been so happy if he could have made sort of great art house adaptations of wonderful modern literary classics, but instead we got, you know , horror hotel ring for doom service She's very proud of that tagline , you know , and he made some wonderful films , but I think he dreamed of of, you know, adapting great classics. Is that the tales from the crypt that came out in the seventies? Yeah , I just got that disc in the mail today. That's very good. Nice. Beautiful. Well, as a Mia Copa, I actually went to half price books this weekend and found a couple movie books. So one I found out was that the poet and biographer Carl Sandberg was apparently a movie critic back in the twenties . So I got a whole collection of Carl Sandberg's thoughts on the silent cinema , including what he thought of people like Theedabarra and Nezamova and other screen vamp, he wanted us to know that the summer of the Vamp was coming back, which is very exciting. And then I got a book. I got a book about B movies with the wonderful subtitle, how low was my budget ? You have to post some of Carl Sandberg's thoughts on Silent Cinema. I will absolutely. Got to post those on social media. I actually love to. I got to find a find something that would match it up absolutely. But yeah, it's a cool book . This is awesome. I love the start of this conversation . I know of just to throw out another fun fact, I guess. At least two different directors that are in the LA area that literally they both have entire apartments dedicated to home video . And they at least one of them I've seen and the other one, they've also told me that they've got like all of their kitchen cabinets in that apartment are literally full of DVDs and blue rays. It is wild . That's that's definitely when you realize you have a problem . Wow, yes . I had an old coworker that kept his books in the oven, which just to me seems like such a fire hazard. He's like, I'm never cooking. Why? He obviously doesn't cook. No . How do they taste? You wanna know ? How do this book's taste? And we have we have one, two, three, four, four, five book bookcases full . Granted a lot of them are graphic novels , but a lot of the other books, like I tend to read nonfiction. Fiction doesn't usually grab me . So for fiction stuff, I always tell people I'm like, yeah, like I said to Chris, like if it's good enough, they'll make a movie . And then everyone who sees the movie always says, Oh, you know, the book was better. I was like, Well, then don't read the book. And you haven't got to worry about being disappointed . I like that logic. I don't subscribe to it, but I like it. I like hearing . I look at that as a Philistine . Oh , that's hilarious. I love it. Oh man. Well, let's let's break into a short interview portion. Chris, how's how has it been managing social media for the incredibly esteemed deaf crocodile for the year of twenty twenty six. It's been an absolute blast . It has been a massive learning massive learning curve. Thank you for everyone who has indulged all my trials and errors , but it seems like we're really kind of hitting a good stride in terms of getting people really excited about upcoming releases here. And I think some of the key was , you know, I'm sort of a maximalist if you've seen my early posts, you'll be unsurprised everything . I crowd the frame with every piece of data because I'm perpetually unsure if I've given enough information to get people excited. D Andennis help fully was like, Yeah, more to show the video. Yeah, just show the video. Yeah, more than one piece of information and you've lost people. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Even with one. And even that one, it can't be a long sentence . Yeah , yeah, yeah. From now on I'm just gonna jinkle my keys , but no, but it's been a blast. It's been really exciting to, especially with the recent subscription rollout to just hear how many commenters say, Oh my god, I saw this when I was nine years old. I never ever thought I'd see it on home video. Oh, I've only heard about this in Legend. I can't believe it, or even I can't wait to retire my cruddy bootleg DVD of this and finally have a nice version. So you know , you get a lot of you get a lot of good feeling that way and it really kind of keeps things exciting. I got to ask what do you think has been the most surprising to you that was very popular or got a lot of clicks or impressions or engagement from everybody? Yeah, actually it's pretty recent. Excluding the Russian bots. Okay , well, all right, well, you just gave me you just gave me my answer. So I put a large thirty second clip from Hoffmaniada up there and you know, put what I thought were pretty common hash tags so as Milt Film and ETA Hoffman and Russian cinema and yeah that video has something like eight thousand likes and counting. Now by comparison most, of our post s have about two hundred to three hundred . So what it was about that all I can say is every single thing I do with Hoffmanniada, I copy those hashtags in exactly because if there's if there's a magic formula in there somewhere , we just have to keep casting that spell. Yeah. Do it for every post moving forward. Absolutely. Demigod, the same hashtags, hypos ing hashtags. You know, high up cause as put out by Soyas Maltfilm. That's right. We had a, I think we had a quite a long while ago. We had a I think it was a kinza post on Instagram that just went absolutely bonkers and we're like, what the heck? And yeah, it' its's Yeah, oh similarly I suppose it only happens to Russian films. So that's a little bit that means they love . That's messy. Exactly. They're like, I like glove puppetry, but I love stop motion from Russia. There's a difference. You know, I have somebody likes to give, you know Yeah, I mean, how do you argue with pots? That's the hard part. Well, you just asked the question of the twenty first century, how do you argue with bots? Well, if you read the disconnected comments, you can find out how pretty quickly . Surprisingly though, even those posts that clearly are blowing up unnaturally, it still ends up reaching more people because there's legitimate, there's legitimate comments on this snowball effect. Yeah. So yeah, absolutely . So not going to not going to mess with that too much. I'm just going to see if we can figure out ways to spread it out, spread it around a little bit. Well, we are we are doing our best to get at least slightly ahead of the game for the month of July when we are announcing pre orders or we're in June announcing pre orders for July. And this is earlier than usual. So at the day that you're listen ing to this, the subscription period is over and we did very well question mark. We don't know. For all we know lots of stuff can happen over the next week , but we did want to say thank you all for supporting. It's been immensely encouraging and exciting to see the same number of people commenting and engaging on post, to subscribing, to being happy about what's coming in to then possibly subscribing again . So how do we feel we're doing in twenty twenty six in this economy as those people in the memes would say right now ? I think we're doing great. I think we're doing really, really well. I have to say I love the discord for anyone who subscribes we have a private discord where people can post suggestions for films or questions of like, why haven't you released this yet ? Or you know, where is my order or you know , this is one of my favorite records of the past couple of months or you know this photos of my cats and dogs are all sorts of crazy stuff . And it's really wonderful. We post photographs and artwork is upcoming for some of our future releases and all sorts of special things just for the Discord group members. But it's become a really wonderful community and and there are some amazing characters on that discord who only we only know them by their their nom de plumes, their nom de discords, but you can you immediately kind of recognize them when they jump in and it's become a wonderful family, I have to say . We love interacting with our audience members and supporters on the discord. So if you're thinking about subscribing, I have to say that is one of the big bonuses of a subscription No good. You're going to go hey, Chris. I would say the breadth and depth of film knowledge in the discord is I got to say like unprecedented. Like I don't know if I've ever been such an algonquin round table of film fanatics. Like it just it really staggers the mind, you know, every single day , you know, why not this, this, this and this and it',s just a list of absolute, you know, hieroglyphs to me on the internet. That wishlist channel is full of like ninety five percent of that stuff I've never heard of people People always ask me that and a lot of it sounds really good. I'm like, we need to look for that one hundred percent. Yeah. I'm like, what have I been doing my whole life watching Jess Franco films when I could check out all the stuff? , we love Jess Frank. Don't let can two of us do . You know, years ago I tried the four people on this call do I know. We used to do a recent recent Spanish cinema series at the American Cinema Tech when I was programming there and I tried to convince our partners in the Spanish government and cultural bodies to do a tribute to Jess Franco and they weren't having it . That did not represent sort of quality Spanish cinema to them. And you know, I tried and of course, you know, he passed away after that. I was hoping we could get him to, you know, come over . But the irony, of course, is that so much of Jess Franco's filmography now available in beautiful blue ray additions. Same thing with Paul Nashi. I try to convince them to , you know, do a tribute to Paul Nashi. And you know times really have changed and physical media has a big role to play in that with filmmakers who previously were kind of like beyond the pale , like Paul Nashi and Jess Franco and now they are taken so much more seriously. Jean Roland is actually one of the filmmakers, I think who se critical stock has really soared in the past few years as a result of really high quality first DVD and now Blue Ray and I think even four K and four K UHD releases are for land films, which frankly shocks me that we're now seeing him on four K . But I think the availability really good versions of these films has allowed people to kind of reassess and reevaluate them as filmmakers. Yeah. And to jump back to the discord a little bit . On almost every channel that I manage, people are asking , where do I submit wishlist requests? Because it's kind of an open secret that Def Crocodile is very receptive to ideas and yeah, the best place is the discord. I mean, you can send them anywhere, like they all make it to the list eventually, but the discord the discord you're most likely to get a very specific response from either Dennis and Craig like that's on the list. That's not on the list. Never heard of that, looking into it, never gonna happen, what have you. But if you want that real time feedback, the discord is the way to go. We just updated our contact page on the website as well. So now it's got a pull down for like why you're contacting us and one of the options is the film suggestions . So those will get routed to the right person immediately. If you join the discord, you can join the train of people trying to get Dennis to leak titles early. Is what that's what I was going to say, that's that's my I think my favorite part of the discord is everyone just ragging on Dennis trying to get him to to leak information . It's fun. I've become the mole in the ministry . The fact that it's not uncommon either that you will just accidentally let something slip and it's it's genuinely accidentally usually. It's like, oh wait, I thought we'd already talked about this no Well there it is which ones we revealed and which ones we didn't. Too many too many movies to keep track of all that stuff. I do find it really funny though that often people will through sheer chismatic coinc idence , ask us or suggest a film that either we have been pursuing for many years or that we have literally just licensed like within the past week or two . Yeah, there's been this . I have to wonder like did they 've been a fixed email or like this one of the know yeah, there's been a few times on the discord where someone's suggested something that we have already signs and bite my lip and don't say anything, but I'm just like, well, they're going to be very happy I got really lucky for the first time with antenna that happened this week. Somebody DMed me and said, Hey, if you haven't heard of this movie, you'd probably like it. And I'm like, We've had that signed for about five months just haven't announced it. This is amazing. Well , speaking of revelations, we got to reveal our entire upcoming six months of our subscription. We've covered most of that, but I'm more curious now to see how you guys have responded to everybody's response to those responses. Anyways, the announcements and everybody's overall response. How are how are we feeling about the excitement level? Anything shocking that seems more anticipatory for some people ? I was surprised how excited people got about passage. I thought that one would be a little bit more under the radar, but there seemed to be a lot of excitement about that one . Not surprisingly a toe anime Frankenstein has a lot of people pretty excited . Those are the two that jumped out at me . Yeah, Frankenstein absolutely exploded the moment it launched. And yeah, a lot of people had the same follow up question that we've got no comment on, but you know, also not . I'm amazed that no one gets Frankenstein was, I think, the one title that Noon guessed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That was kind of surprising. Yeah, because yeah, yeah, on the discord We're semiconced that one or two members have hacked our emails and yeah, like every single title. So twelve twelve titles , eleven of them were guessed in the discord as to what we were releasing. Frankenstein was the only one that no one ever guessed , which that clever person probably didn't guess because they didn't want us to think they' hadcked our emails . Yeah . I mean principal deniability . Dennis any reactions? Soda pop joe, maybe . A lot of people excited about that about our fifth Petishco title Scarlet Sales . I have to say, I'm super excited that we're putting out Avid Leon G arn's Hyup Car I think that one's probably the one that's flown the most under the radar in the list that is a really great movie it's really I don't know if people are just looking at the visuals and thinking that it was a kid's movie, like it's not a kid's movie. It's a tele visa for adults. It's just it's fantastic so I hope people don't sit on that one. Yeah, I mean, I think Abbott has said it's the he feels it's the first adult animated film made in the Philippines and not adult in the sense it's like NC seventeen because it is n't , but it is about very adult themes and it's a comedy , but it is a romance and a melodrama and it's really people making difficult and maybe even wrong choices in their love lives and then having to live those down . And it's really , really great movie . And coincidentally , the Fantasia Festival in Montreal just announced that they're going to be premiering Avid's new film , which we are super excited to see ourselves, Zaza Zaturna , which is based on a much loved cult comic book in the Philippines . So we are really eager to see that ourselves because we love his work on Highup Con saving Sally so much . And we do have a actually we have a short like a teaser trailer for Zaz a Turner that will be on the disc. I oops I just let something slip about our bonus features off . There we go. I did it again Yeah, the Hypka and give you some example that it's not for kids is Hyuapka . We were initially told translates to you animal . But I've asked a couple of my Filipino friends and I looked online and did a translation and everyone everyone told me that it means you son of a bitch Basically they were softening a bit . Those rascals rascals . The other one that I think is going to absolutely blow people's minds. And this whole series so far has done extremely well for us is The Treasures of Soviet Animation . And volume four is Roman Davidov's The Adventures of Mowgli . And I have to say like scene for scene, animation self or animation self, it is one of the most spectacularly beautiful and visually stunning films I have ever seen. It's, you know, I think Marcel Yankovich is maybe the only competition in terms of other animated features we've put out where the visuals are just so glorious in the adventures of Maugli. So I think people are going to that's I still have two other films to restore before I get to that one, but I 'm itching to get to that one. Like I can't wait to start working on that . Yeah , no , it's one of those movies where you can freeze frame it and literally every shot is so absolutely ravishing that you almost feel like you 're like a little high watching it because it's so gorgeous. Yeah, I kind of was a little bummed. We didn't have better images to share when we were announcing the titles because I was like yeah that film's getting short changed . We'll see you soon enough . That was another one where I know enough about this kind of animation to know that people are going to get excited about the snow queen, people are going to get excited about Hedgehog and the fog, but I was pleasantly surprised to hear how many people comment that they saw the advent ures of Mowgli when they were a kid . And it was almost something that was like a dream that they had. They couldn't even remember where they saw it, but it just left such an impression on them. And there was always a lot of the comments had the same theme of I never thought I'd get to see it again . So I was real pleasantly surprised. I thought that one was going to be more high up cow level enthusiasm in terms of people like, I don't know what this is, but boy, a lot of people knew what it was. It's great . It's awesome . Well, we got two to deep dive into today that are coming out in July for subscribers and of course available to the general public. Gentlemen, any preference on which you'd like to speak on first ? We can talk about Yan Skolar if you'd like to do it . So Yan Skolar was one of the pioneering figures in Czech cinema in the late teens and the twenties . He was a very prolific and acclaimed screen writer filmmaker . And then later in his career turned to acting and was a groundbreaking film historian who helped to preserve save a lot of the early works of Czech silent cinema, including some of his own films . And we're including two features of his and I think the wilder and the most jaw dropping of the two is the arrival from the Darkness from nineteen twenty one . And it is this absolutely insane occult story about a rabid book collector who's played by Theodore Pist who is given an ancient manuscript and he translates it and uses it to revive his long his long dormant ancestor from the sixteenth century who after he awakes tries to steal the book collector's wife thinking she's the reincarnation of his long lost love . And it packs so much into barely an hour of running time, including the black plague and black magic ritual and medieval alchemy and time travel . And it really is one of the most astonishing and entertaining silent films I have seen in years. I think people are going to like absolutely fall in love with it when they see it . And then the second feature , which was actually the last feature film he directed , is is this sweeping medieval epic about the life of Saint Vensel who was a prince in tenth century Bohemia and later became a saint and it is in the vein of some of the kind of kind of amazing Soviet epics that we've released like Ila Morametz or Russlan Ludmilla Alexander Nevsky for people who are familiar with that And it was the most expensive and ambitious Czech movie made at the time . And it had, unfortunately, the bad luck to be produced just at the changeover between silent and sound cinema . And by the time it was finished , movie theaters had already started converting to sound cinema and audiences only really wanted to see kind of new fangled sound films. And so it was a big flop when it came out and pretty much, I think, ended his career as a filmmaker, which is really a shame . And we have a number of his short films which amazingly survive in the collection of the Noradni Film Archive who are our partners on this release but his career continued for several decades after that like I said as a film historian and as an actor in Czech cinema . So I'm really glad that this release kind of shines a light on one of the really important figures in Czech Cinema in a way like we did with our release last October of Al Raune and the student of Prague by pioneering German director and screenwriter Henrik Galin . So it's one of the things we do love to do is to kind of you know hopefully put a focus or shine a light on some of these unjustly overlooked figures Yes, and you've done that very, very often, thankfully. And mentioned, he mentioned there's a number of shorts on there between the shorts and the incredibly cool short documentary that's on that disc, it's almost two hours of shorts and extras to the length of Saint Bencis Lass I think it's there's a there's like a nerd nature. Yeah there's a lot of extra stuff on there and the absolute coolest thing I think is this twenty three minutes. Let me check yeah, twenty three minute documentary made nineteen fifty four that is a It's called How We Use To Make Movies or something similar to that. And it's a documentary about the silent era of Czech cinema and it's full of behind the scenes of these silent films being made . It's just it's footage and stuff that you just never see. It's it's absolutely incredible . Yeah, that's not it's not clips from the films. No, no, it's it's workers . It's workers made putting the sets together and it's kind of incredible. Incredible. And a number of the films that are included there, the movies themselves no longer exist , but they managed in the nineteen fifties to somehow preserve and compile this behind the scenes footage of the making of the films. And it's just glorious . Kind of amazing. This set will also continue our silent film release tradition of having absolutely stunning new paintings by Dave McKean for each title. He did a painting. They're just it's fricking Dave McKean, man. It's it's incredible the fact that he continues to say, yep, I'll do that for our rele ases is just kind of unreal . So yeah, the paintings he did once again, like he did for Al Rane and Student P ofrague, he did two paintings for St. Wancis Los and Arrival in the Darkness and they're just stunning For those listening to the podcast , Ryan literally was just had his mouth hanging open and had nothing to say . Yeah, I mean the art here is so I don't know. I mean, if you got the Al Rane and the Student of Prague Limited Edition, it is enough to blow you away. And these are , dare I say it like for me, these are a little more excit ing even than those. I have loved everything that he has done so far, but man , visually visually that St. Vincilas painting is a star. Jaw dropping. Yeah, it's really gorgeous. It is so good. I cannot wait to hold one of these and just marvel at it. Dave McCain is like otherworldly . And speaking of the discord, somebody just posted a very cool video . Yeah . Of Dave McKean talking about working on illustrating a Strugatsi brothers book. Like I was like, oh, that's world colliding once again but yeah the man is amazing just amazing Well I mean in addition to the behind the scenes compilation . have We four short films directed by Kolar . Polycarp's winner adventure is the earliest from nineteen seventeen . And it was shot most of the short is shot out doors in the winter in Prague where you see , you know, this from the era of World War One and you're seeing this incredible outdoor location footage of Prague in the in the winter , huge snow banks and of course, you know, much of the city no longer looks like that . So just from documentary historical perspective, it's an incredible portrait of long gone Prague . And then we have the Oriental languages teacher , which was co directed by Kolar and Olga Rauten Kransova . And she 's her name . She is the first Czech female director and this is the earliest surviving film directed or cod ed by a female filmmaker in Czechoslovakia . So for that reason alone, it's historically really valuable . And then we have two others, the lady with the small foot, which is a kind of Louis Foyad style d,etective thriller f antasy , half an hour. It's actually quite long from nineteen nineteen and the Torn photograph . And then just because we couldn't resist , we threw in a very short fragment of an incredible film called The Wedding Shirt . And it was not directed by Kolar , but it was co directed by Theodore Pistak who is the lead actor in the arrival from the Darkness. So there is a connection to arrival and it's unfortunately the only footage that survives from this this incredibly haunting , Czech silent horror film , which from the surviving four minutes is like on par with cabinet Dr. Kaligare. It's really gorgeous . So we were really fortunate to get new music composed for all of these shorts as well as for the feature St. Venseless Los by Ben Modell , who is a highly acclaimed silent film composer and accompanist and also a very highly regarded historian and author who is recently published , you know , a very well regarded book on silent cinema . So Ben composed all new music for all of the shorts as well as for St. Vancis Los for this release . And for Arival from the Darkness , there is a really amazing experimental music score by a film trio who perform with silent movies called hope I'm getting this right. Novere Nove Ritelno is the name of the trio and they do a really striking . Yeah, it's a pretty cool story experimental score . Yeah, it's really good . Not your typical silent film score at all . Yeah, there's a heavy contrast both in the score and you know you know, talking about all the features and so forth. It's just want to go back to just what an incredible contrast it is between the arrival from the Darkness as a movie and St. Wentsel s as a movie. You have starting at the begin ning of the twenties nineteen twenty one , one hour genre . Within seconds, someone's bringing in an occult book into the house, you know, there's just no, there's no wind up whatsoever. You're just they're just like throwing that first punch right from the first couple seconds. And then you have this beautiful , you know, sweeping epic with dozens of important characters and palace intrigue and cross and double cross and the intersection between paganism and the old customs versus the intersection of Christianity. And then you get that the back and forth between the sort of abstract music score versus Ben Modell's incredible piano piano scores and so forth. And it's it's such a beautiful contrast. It almost feels like you're looking at the entire span of like check silent film, you know, it's sort of compressed love the compilations that we are getting here. When you start looking at all the short films and combined with these , zero to one hundred nature of some of these films just make it a little more entertaining and quick. I love nights like that. So we've talked about those extras . What other extras we get on the disc there , mister Dennis? So we have a beautiful booklet with essays film historian Jan Christopher Horak who a long and illustrious career with the Munich Film Museum where he was head a number of years with the George Eastman House and with UCLA Film and TV Archive . So he contributed an essay as well as Walter Chaw , who writes brilliantly for all of our releases . And then we have a new audio commentary by film historian Peter Hames and our dear friend and partner on all of our Czech film releases , Irena Kovarova of Comeback Company in New York City . And I can't give enough credit to Irena . Honestly , I don't think we would be able to release any of the Czech films that we have without her guidance and wonderful connections . And also a huge thank you to our great friends with the Noradney Film Archive in Prague who have done such amazing work to preserve and to disseminate these films . You will see, you know, there is a big difference the image quality between arival from the Darkness and St. Venseless Los Arrival is kind of amazing that it survives at all, but it, you know, it does have kind of more wear and tear and St. Venseless Loss , you know, from the end of the silent era was much better preserved. And I think Kolar was actually still alive when St. Francis Loths was preserved. And so he was able to kind of over see and be involved with that . But it's even more amazing that the other short films survive and that so much of Jan Kolar's work is still available for us to watch , you know , over a hundred years later in the case of the early short films like Polycarp's Winter Adventure, which is, you know, it was made in nineteen seventeen That is a lot. Yeah , I mean everything on that disc is over a hundred years old except for St. Las I was just trying to think if there was something mentioned that was younger, but yeah , that is true. nineteen seventeen, eighteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty five . Yep Yeah, these aren't these aren't youngsters . And this is only the second of these classic silence collections coming from Def Crocodile. The first one obviously Arrane and the student of Prague get a very pretty incredible reaction from everybody. How are you how do you thinking people are going to respond to this one? Because Yan Skolar is not a common name for people to think of for silent film. Chris, do you have any thoughts? Again , you never know when you drop something like that that doesn't sort of have people already talking about it. But yeah again, I think also people were just are really primed after how much so many people enjoyed Aurana in the student of Prague that there is that sort of trust level of if you think I should see these silent films, I should probably see these silent films. But you know, I think there's probably a fairly underserved silent film fanatic, you know , fan base out there who is going to find out about this and get very excited about it. And that's pretty thrilling to know . Well, and we like to, you know , kind of go for silent films that are in that sweet spot for Def Crocodile, which is really the intersection between t Ar House and genre filmmaking and definitely both Arival from the Darkness and St. Ben's Loss kind of fit that mode. I mean, they have some incredible surreal imagery in a wonderful art house way, but then they're both genre films . Arrival from the Darkness is an occult mystery, time travel bl,ack magic mashup and St. Vancis's Loss is a kind of sweeping historical epic kind of you know, there are incredible batt le sequences and knights and armor on horseback. And it's it is really impressive . So we also have a go ahead. I suspect we'll these especially after Al Rani and Student of Prague, people outside of our usual fan base that are more silent film buffs perked up and were like, hey, somebody else is releasing silent films because there's not a ton of places where silent film fans can go to get more material . So hopefully , you know , some more of those people will tune in and be like, oh , they've got another set coming out and we'll keep putting them out Well, and we are big fans of the labels out there that have been putting out incredible silent releases. Flicker Alley does amazing work, Keno Lorber , Eureka Masters of Cinema has done fantastic releases , but there's so much amazing silent film. And the great thing is, you know, with the success of Alrane and Student of Prague, and hopefully this will do very well that we are already looking at and discussing silent film releases for twenty twenty seven and beyond . So we just hope that it inspires people to , you know, go out there and start searching out some of these rarities from filmmakers that have possibly slipped through the cracks . And I'd say the encouraging thing is there are a few people on the discord who when we announced it had already seen a rival from the darkness and were raving about it . So that's great. if there's more very cool genre silent cinema, you just go to contact us and film suggestion, send it to us . Amazing. Did want to shout out to Ben Model's own wonderful undercrank production? I was going to say that too . On that note speaking of sweeping battle scenes, why don't we make a trip over to Cat City ? Oh boy . Heck yeah , heck yeah . Yes , cat city and cat Cat City and Cat City two cat catcher are that is a mouthful when you say it all together Technically I think it's catcher cat city two . See, that's what we said as a vocal warmup exercise. Catch your Kent City two, catch your cat city . And it's one of those it's one of those deals where the title they gave it in English makes less sense than if we just translated what the title really was right . Right, but it's it's a little it's a little complicated because Maxcofogo, which is the Hungarian title for the first film actually translates Cat City either. No, it's not cat city. It actually translates essentially as cat catcher . But they decided to call it cat city . So the Hungarian title for the sequel, Max afogo two is and I'm not even going to attempt to to verbalize the Hungarian the second part of the title, but basically it's cat catcher the cat of Satan or Satan's cat . And in the English version that became catcher, cat city too And Craig in fact even asked me. He goes, you know , this isn't checking the isn't a translation of the title. The title comes up and I can see even in Hungarian, I'm like, yeah, that's a Satan. Satan's cat of Satan . It's like, yeah, no, that we usually, you know, we abide by what the official English title chosen by the producers or distributors were in the world. In this case, it's known as Canada Canada makes sense. Yeah from the Deifa Fairy Tale set, the Devil's three golden hairs or something . That's not even remotely the translation of the science. No. Nowhere near nowhere close . Nope. That one at least lines up with the story though, but yeah works you know what you're getting ? Yeah . So these are two wonderful Hungarian animated sci fi cat , mouse , rat comedies slash musicals slash satires . They were both directed by Baela Ternovsky , who was, you know, one of the most acclaimed and creative directors who came out of the Panonia Film Studio, which was the famous animation powerhouse in Hungary for many, many years . And the original Cat City, which we're reissuing as part of this came out in nineteen eighty six and has gone on to become one of the most beloved kind of animated cult films in Hungarian cinema, it's known throughout Europe. They do, you know, outdoor screenings of it in Budapest and thousands of people show up and it's really tremendous and it had been out of print for a little while and we knew that there was a sequel and it took a little while, but we managed to track down the producers of the Sequel which came out in two thousand seven . And the great thing about the sequel is it's one of those rare animated sequel films where the characters have been allowed to age in line with the gap of time between it's been like twenty years since the first film, so all the characters that have come back are twenty years older. They're twenty years older . And it's and it gives a real sort of bittersweet real life feeling because you're used to watching animated films like, every one of the, you know , Snoopy and Peanuts movies. Well, the kids, you know, Charlie Brown and Lucy and Linus and Snoopy, they never age . But in this it is they are twenty years older. So Nick Grab ovski, who is the former secret agent, runs an organic spinach farm and he's he's kind of paunchier and Mr. Toyfel , who is the Iron Pod villain from the original is also kind of older and creakier , but it's really delightful and it's great to be able to pair two films together . And Cat City two has never come out here in the US before, so it's never been available. So it's great that we're able to have the two of them as as a a set . It is. This is one that I'm quite excited for. Loved the release of Cat City and just adds to our catalog for animated cat films. This is always exciting to see. It is it is it wasn't, it didn't start intentionally . But now it is I think it is but honestly I, think once we had two, we're like, all right , we need to get every animated cat movie that's ever been made . Well, and now we're putting out two back to back with well actually three because we're reissuing the first Cat City. So we have the Cat City collection, two films and then Hyupaca , which comes out the next month, which has a feline hero in for Hyapa. So amazing. Yeah . And again a lot of a lot of inter species communications, you know, you have the mice versus the cats in Cat City and you have dogs and cats in Hypaca. So everyone's all kind of hanging out and there's some interesting things in Cat City about the difference between like mice and rats and the sort of social distinctions . And I also love between parts one and part two , both of them are kind of about power in an interesting way and who has the power and what they do with the power . And without giving anything away at the end of Cat City one , we can say that certain aspects of power are transferred elsewhere. And then as you come into Cat City two , you realize that the people who maybe didn't have the power and now do have the power are not necessarily better stewards of the power the original people. And that can't be unintentional . That's certainly how power works. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I feel like I've seen enough things from Pinonia Studios to think that that was in the air as well . But no, I would definitely recommend watching the two sort of act to back because there really is a lot of cool interconnections, especially for being such like twenty , thirty, forty , some odd years between the two of them. Like you said, not only is there the aging, but also sort of aspects of , you know, the old machinery not working as well as it used to and yeah people kind of moving on to other professions and it really does give you this sort of very rich world for what you know could, you know, in the wrong hands just be kind of like a Ralph Backsheet you, know , crazy stereotypes and, you know, weird songs kind of thing. But it's a lot more than that. And well, there's there's so much like visual gorgeousness when I when I had to go through the film and I did pulling stills to give to our graphic designer and , you know, we use them for press and everything else. So going through the film pulling, pulling stills and like was like I got up to like fifty stills I pulled because it was like every time I saw something that looked cool I stopped and I pulled the brain bowed and I was like this film is so full of imagery that's just mind blowing . Yeah . I have to say the kind of Uber villain in Cat City two is this ancient feline demon called Moloch and Moloch very cool. Moloch is really cool. In fact , he looks a little bit like of the creatures from Roman Davidov's The Adventures of Maudi. He's a little bit like Bagira , the Panther . I just realized that and I wonder if Bayla Ternovsky was a fan of Davidov's work on the Adventures of Mugly because the Molec incredibly kind of fluid and sleek and enormous. And there's a again not to give it away, but there is a great battle at the end that is clearly an homage to Japanese Kaiju movies of the Godzilla Gamera vein . And there's tons of kind of affectionate in jokes and references in both films to a lot of things from pop culture and other animated film. Yeah, there's 're one of the super fun things actually. Yeah, they have some they have some fun with Disney for sure in this one. Yes . As well as Lord of the Rings There's there's a lot of a lot of visual gags throughout . There's also a really neat see between especially in the first one but definitely in the second one as well. Like it never settles and I think in a good way, it never settles on whether the violence hurts or not. Like there's, you know, certain characters get, you know , mangled, say by , you know , mister Ironclaw can't think of his name. Oh, Toyfel , but then other things like will get splatted just like a like a Warner Brothers cartoon and will just be like flat as a pancake. And it really throws not only a lot of different st yles at you , but it asks you to sort of like, okay, which of these things actually hurts and which doesn't and are we going to be cartoony cute or we could be extremely violent and it never settles on a thing which I think keeps you really sort of interested and engaged in it . And I think we're taking for granted that a lot of the people who buy this have already seen the initial the original Cat City . If you haven't seen the original Cat City, wow are you in for a treat ? There's a reason why it is such a beloved cult film in Hungary. It is really fantastic. It's just so much fun. And it's got some of the most bizarre and jaw dropping musical numbers. The one with the Verby Bats is we are definitely gonna be pulling the four gangsters theme song . It's man it just is relentless. It's so good. Yeah . So you know, I have an interview as part of the bonus features that I was very fort unate to do with Bela Ternovsky from his home in Budapest for talking about the two films in particular Cat City two. And you know, it was more difficult because the first one was produced while Pennia Film Studios was still in operation . And so like the age of the great studios in the US , like Warner Bros or Universal or Fox in the thirties and forties . You know, it provided a home and a structure and a financing that allowed all of these animators to do wonderful short films and features . And then after that system collapsed , you know, it really was catches, catch can and going out and trying to raise finance wherever you could. And that was the system under which Cat City two was made. You also see a lot of differences stylistically and in terms of the technology, you start to see use of some digital animation , although thankfully most of it is still , you know, was done kind of old school analog , but there's definitely, you know , you can see the changes in Yeah, he had said on the interview interview between the two. Yeah. Yeah, he had said in the interview that all the base like drawings were done by hand and then it was finished digitally . Yeah . But we've mentioned this before in the past like that the old Soviet system they had to deal with the censorship of content , but they were free to make pretty much they wanted and the economics or the commercial viability of it was not a consideration . So that's why they were able to make so many short films and , you know, make the, you know, other things that were a little, you know , more unusual because they didn't have to worry about the commercial end of it . And then once the Soviet Union collapses now they don't have the content censorship, but they've got the censorship of it needs to be commercially viable and we need to be able to raise money to make it or we can't make it. It's the censorship of the market. So yeah, it's a it's a, you know, different pair of handcuffs . Yes , yeah. And Turnovsky talks about that when I interviewed him . And that's also, you know, I think a great reason to look at the two films back to back and consider the systems under which they were made and that they satirize because they are both very satirical films. They're very affectionate. They're comedies and they're musicals and they're really incredibly silly and great fun, but they're also they've got a lot of barbed points to make and some and in some ways you kind of need to watch them more than once and read up a little bit about the political situation in Hungary under which they were made to really start to appreciate just how, you know , pointed some of their satirical jabs are . Well, speaking of that, how are we explaining that on our disc and in our essays, Dennis? Well , the first disc has all of the bonus features that we had released with our original Cat City . And that's three animated shorts by Bayla Ternovsky from the nineteen seventies. There's a video interview with our dear friend Gorgi Raduli, who's the director of the National Film Institute Film Archive talking about the history of Hungarian animation and how Cat City fits into it. There's a commentary track by film historian Sam Degan . That's really fantastic. And then there's several documentaries that were produced by the National Film Institute the making of Cat City . And then for the sequel , as I mentioned, there's a new video interview that I did with the director Bela Ternovsky. There's a forty eight page booklet which includes new essays by film critics Dan Schindell and our great friend Walter Shaw . There's a new audio commentary by filmmaker and animator Dorian Sase. It's the first time Dorian has contributed and brings a great wealth of information of knowledge and expertise on the techniques and the art of animation because Dorian is an animator as well as a filmmaker and commentator . And then we have a wonderful new visual essay by film historian Evan Chester , who has contributed to a number of our releases that compares the two films and conditions under which they were made . So I think there's a lot of kind of supplementary material to give context to both of these films, both the original one and Cat City two . Incredible the disks here are overloaded with things. The last time that we put out one of these expanded editions was the White Piper. It came with the original disc and now you got literally a bounty of more features to make this all worthwhile. I am excited to see everything comes with the disc. I haven't seen most of it Craig, what about cat cat catcher cat city two, is that ? Just call it cat city two . Okay Cat . Cat City Dose. What about Cat City dose are you most excited about? I just love animated films. Like I said, I just checked fifty four still I pulled because I couldn't like I kept stumbling on the next incredible image . Yeah, it's and it's great to, you know there is that fun feeling of like catching up with these characters from the other fil m and it does feel more like catching up with them after time because they have aged. So it's it's it gives a different feeling than instead of watching if they were if everyone was the same age, it would feel more like I'm just watching another story that took place back in nineteen eighty six or whatever, but like because they aged them, it feels like well they've been through a lot since then too, you know and they're and they still have to do these same jobs or come back for these jobs and you know especially if you have to fight and now your waistline a little's wider and your fur is a little thinner and yeah, it's it does add a little sort of layer of profundity to it I think. And honestly the interview that Dennis did with the director for Cat City two is full of really interesting tidbits . One being that apparently the lead character originally was supposed to be a robot . And apparently there's there's still aspects of that in the original Cat City movie that if you know if you knew that you'd be like, oh, that makes sense now. Why? I guess he has like that comes out of his chest in one scene and like this 'cause he was originally supposed to be a robot . He said Robocop was out at the time and they really liked the idea of him being a robot . So yeah, it's a really interesting interview. Well, and I had to say just the fact that kind of stuck to their guns and and made a film in which the all of the anthropomorphic animal cartoon characters were allowed to age twenty years . I mean I think that shows Bayla Ternovsky and his collaborators' kind of personal ities and you know, because that's not a commercial decision that I think the financiers would have probably been like, oh yeah, let's make them twenty years older. That's going to attract a lot more people. They were probably like scratching their head saysing why, do you want to do this? But clearly that's one of the things that got Ternovsky and his colleagues excited about revisiting these characters after two decades . You know, and he talks about it, it was very difficult to get finance for any projects, but because the original Cat City was so beloved and it had become very successful and played over and over again that they were able to raise finance to make a sequel . But I think it's like if I'm going to revisit these characters, I have to do it in a way that makes it really creatively challenging and interesting for me . And that's one of the things I really like about Cat City too compared to the original. Now you're making me want twenty year on sequels for all of our animated cat films . I would like to see I would like to see a sequel to Fella Day. I was about to say that . So my god , I just care Blaubart and Francis like I could watch a dozen films with the two of them . I know. And in fact, there are a number of books that were written in the series , but because the author of the book that Felliday, the first one was adapted from has made a lot of really crazy right wing statements in Germany anti immigrants and, you know , he has become sort of person a non grata in German literary circles and society at large. So yeah, we had doubt that they're ever going to have trouble getting them convincing them to yeah, they didn't want to license license this film for a restoration. There's no way nobody's going to make a new movie . Yeah . Yeah . And when Fellow Day came out, I don't think it did very well. So even though it now has they also they also marketed it to kids to kids . I mean, they had walkouts in the theaters like no not surprisingly. I mean, they find a disemboweled cat in like the first ten minutes of the movie . Cat's having sex on screen. I don't even know if it takes five minutes for me. And that's true. When I said ten, I'm like, you know what? I don't think it's ten . Oh my god no, and they introduced one of this weedest characters who then almost immediately thereafter is found decapitated . And it's just one of those truly horrifying moments where you're like a movie but it is so good for kids. So scarred for life. Who came up with the idea of let's market this for kids I hope they lost their job . I know. It is a shame because a whole series of fellow day movies would be so wonderful and they'll they're never they're never going to do it. Yeah. That's too bad Well Tom, I don't it's twenty years later. There's Tom Law twenty seven and then Tommela twenty thirty. So I was just gonna show you a lot of gods . Tomma twenty seventy five, man, let's keep it going. It is kind of amazing when you see , you know fil,mmakers who are allowed to revisit these stories after a number of years. And I just realized that we actually are putting out two sequel films from several decades later first Cat City two, and then Tommala twenty thirty, which, yeah, we've had a number of people asking about us. Yes, it's absolutely coming out through us and it's going to come out in early twenty twenty seven seven , the producers are going to be releasing the film in Japan early in the year and they really wanted us to coordinate our release plans with theirs . So we pushed back initially we were hoping to have it out this year and before the end of twenty twenty six, but now it's going to come out early in twenty twenty seven. And it absolutely is worth the wait. Anyone who was lucky enough to see it one of at the world genre festivals it played at Tomma twenty thirty a punk cat and dark is absolutely as amazing as the first film if not even more so. So it will definitely be worth your weight . Well, not to put you on the spot, but speaking of sequels, are we going to be getting Benny Shower at any point? I wish I love Benny. I wish we love Benny what you were saying . We love Benny's bathtub . Oh maybe Benny that is one of the, you know, people ask us are there any films that, you know, you've put out that maybe didn't get the love that you thought they should. Benny's bathtub is really fantastic Danish psychedelic undersea musical adventure . It's really really delightful . Take a chance on Benny's bathtub While you can, while you still can, while we still have rights to it, please it's it's really a delightful movie. So I don't think there's any animated kitties in it though, but there are no like drunken skeletons and topless mermaids and all sorts of shenanigans going on under the wind a birdwatcher who is not a pedophile . Not a pedophile . It is a really crazy movie. We like Benny Spath a lot . So well on that note , before we come in for a landing , Chris, anything not deaf crocodile related that you have taken part in recently that you want to recommend or talk about or brag about or promote or anything . Hm , good question. This is very far afield from the home video market, but I am also the producer on a trucking safety podcast called Truck Loads of Money . You can find it on YouTube . It is a podcast AIST Safety, which is a trucking safety organization if you want to see your boy doing three camera shoots over there on YouTube, that is the place to go. Other than that, I don't know. Chicago people, if you see me at the music box, come say hi, man. I would love to meet you I got to talk to a few people when we screened Bubble Bath as part of their animation adventures series, and I believe we have possibly another one coming up soon in that series, which is exciting . I feel like I kind of got a whole new admiration for the animation community. I mean, I know people like animated films, but there was a again , a whole lot of people out at midnight who just had green sparks coming out of their eyes with excitement over bubble bath and it's pretty exciting to see . So yeah, and I'm at this music box all the day time, so if you recognize me from my profile photo , just tap me on the shoulder and say howdy, and we'll talk about Benny's bathtub. Make friends with Chris. I can test he's more than happy to drive eighty minutes to help you move. So easy . Yeah, that was and all I ask in return is a turkey sandwich . It was crazy You were on the road longer than you were actually doing the movie. Rockford doesn't feel that far away to me. . Well, it was much appreciated. It was fun, yeah. In its ways, it's a good time. Well , both of the July titles are up for pre order now. We got more to talk about throughout the year. Obviously we know about all of the titles coming since we've revealed those on social media, but it will be fun to discuss but, as per usual, deaf crocodiles, lots of surprises already waiting in the wings. And if you tap Dennis on the shoulder, just right, you might hear one of 'em everywhere. Oh cheer . Oh geez. That's why sign up for a subscription and and then you too can try to get me to , you know, make a slip of the tongue and reveal what's coming out in march twenty twenty eight. By the time they hear this, the subscriptions are closed, but you can still get a membership and get in the discord.. That's right There you go . And you can buy in an amount that will get you the next subscription. So hey, you can already prep, look at that. Or you go get the cheapest ones fifty bucks and you instantly get fifty dollars credit , so it doesn't really cost you anything and you get the discord. Why not? You get the discord, you get the members only shop in the store. So basically Movie Escrow . Incredible . Movie Escr ow is probably the name of a podcast that three white men host somewhere . Oh yeah, I wanted to promote one more thing. I'll be on Movie Escrow next week, so I forgot all about it. Sorry . Like and subscribe . The Movie Escrow, the podcast where Chris buys old movie properties and sits on them and flips them young parents. It is great that we've expanded this to four white men talking about movies though. So we're a little we're a little absolutely unprecedented in podcasting. Ooh yeah . Yeah I mean if they if the light hits just right we also, have the four different stages of hair loss . And why is it the oldest of us has the most hair? We're gonna lose it now, right ? Wow , I was on the verge a couple times early on, but now I really . All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out with us this month. We cannot wait to record next month and see what other random BSL spout. You say you think Chris I think do you think for some reason do think Chris being part of the it's more like Hollywood squares. I keep looking for Paul La w Center square, but it is for some reason I'm having a hard time. You fools Have you ever wanted to dive deeper into the horror movies you love? Beyond the Blood is a horror podcast for fans who want more than just surface level screams. We do deep dives into the movies that shaped us, digging into director commentaries , behind the scenes stories, deleted scenes, and the special features that most people skip. Each episode is a love letter to the genre . We break down how these films were made, the creative risks that paid off or didn't , and the lasting impact they've had on the genre as a whole. From seventy slashers to modern nightmares, we celebrate the craft, chaos, and characters that keep us coming back. If you're the kind of fan who rees mowvatchies with the com mentary on or you simply grew up in the video store horror aisle, The Beyond the Blood podcast was made for you. New episodes every single week. Subscribe and let's dig deep. Welcome to the Beyond the Blood podcast . Hello Filthy movie lovers . My name is Gentry Austin. I'm Casey Scott. We're the host s of the SIN Syndicate, film podcast for something weirdos , Anti Criterian bros , and Joseph Sarno Aficionados . Join us semi weekly as we peer into the adult