The Snake Pit

Watching a film set in an asylum, you... or at least I always think of other films which have made similar uses of the asylum and what they do with that setting, what kind of material they make into a film from the idea of being incarcerated in an asylum.

So I think probably the first, I was going to say the first major one was The Snake Pit, the American film of 1948, but in some ways the first is The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.

which begins and ends in an asylum and is where the central characters are incarcerated.

And the doctor is the head of the asylum.

This film anticipates all of that.

It's not really about youthful rebellion, despite the fact that the hero is a young man who's clearly frustrated and has daddy issues with his father.

It's not a melodrama in the way that Shot Corridor or The Snake Pit is.

It's not a clinical case study either.

She wants this real connection.

She wants them to go out and see a movie with her, a very specific movie, The Snake Pit.

And in seeing The Snake Pit, it would open up this opportunity for them to talk about their father and what they've lost because it's about mental illness and talk about Delphine.

They could be kind of like very real with each other in a way that Odette craves and out in the world together.

And they refuse to go meet her.

Scott Van Pelt

calls it the snake pit.

What's that?

The shell kind of works if you're a turtle.

I like the snake pit.

Why would it be the snake

pit? Because that's what Scott Van Pelt calls it.

But why does he call it the snake pit if it's a home of a turtle? You're asking

So Hamlet did win Best Picture, and it won against some pretty well-known classic films like And some, you know, maybe lesser known hidden gems.

But it won against Johnny Belinda, The Red Shoes, The Snake Pit, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

So pretty significant films and also some, you know, lesser known titles here.

Sush, of the five here, obviously you've seen Hamlet.

Seems like it'd be an interesting watch.

but maybe not as interesting as say like the red shoes or in my case the treasure of the sierra madre

yeah it's a pretty impressive lineup of five here i dare i say i don't know if this is a crazy take might be the strongest year since 1939 like this is like obviously it's hard to go against a year that has gone with the wind wizard of oz stagecoach and mr smith goes to washington but this is a pretty solid five movies none of these are bad the worst of the five is easily the snake pit in my opinion and that's still probably you know that would still probably be my second favorite from the year we just discussed like if this was out the year prior uh i'd be probably giving it much higher praise but like against the lineup here you know snake pit's a great movie it's super fun i had a blast with it but it's kind of just like a knockoff hitchcock movie you know like it's it's fun but it's also kind of crazy how we already discussed hitchcock on the podcast but like he's not going to show up for the rest of this series here like even though he has still made great films in the late 40s and even better films in the early 50s he's not going to get nominated anymore.

The only four movies he got nominated for are in the early forties, late thirties, like, like, like he's gone.

I gave Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Johnny Belinda four stars.

I gave The Red Shoes and The Snake Pit three and a half stars.

And I gave Hamlet three stars.

As I said, my least favorite of the bunch here.

Lights out, well and truly.

Uh, Jake would, uh, during his time in the World Wrestling Federation, would start hosting the Snake Pit, which would become one of the most signature interview segments of that era.

Unlike many wrestlers, Jake didn't need to scream.

As I've mentioned before, he would just sit down and look at somebody, pause, and then say something that would immediately make whoever he was speaking to uncomfortable, as well as the viewers that were watching him.

And the WWE has specifically described the Snake Pit as the perfect forum for Roberts' twisted worldwide view and ability to rile up his opponents.

This, I think is, is key because it gi- gave Jake the platform to showcase exactly how good his mic work was, how intense he could be, and just how much he, he, he'd started to understand how to work everybody in the room and anyone that had their eyes fixated on their television screens.

Jake would have several memorable encounters with Macho Man Randy Savage, including a television championship challenge against Savage in late 1986.

i have sort of an idea why the fans would cheer for elizabeth but anyway this is a segment that you know it was good it was quick but it just didn't last very long

I have a feeling that the idea of wrestling rebuttal, it may have been something as simple as we're going to have Jake do the snake pit and his set isn't built yet, so let's just have a wrestler's rebuttal as a fill-in maybe, something like that.

I mean, I actually kind of liked it.

I mean, you know, like I said, a quick minute where the wrestler talks about something generic, not the next match coming up.

He'd have some other names too, I think, along the way, but definitely

a great talent.

And now for review purposes, a segment, a brand new segment with the brand new wrestling challenge called the Snake Pit, basically Piper's Pit with Jake Roberts hosting it.

For review purposes, let's go to that.

Yeah, so the ACLU sued the state of California, and, and honestly, it does go back.

There was a book, I actually looked it up during the break, I haven't looked it up forever, uh, The Snake Pit, and it was written by a woman who apparently had some schizophrenia issues, and she was thrown into a mental institution, uh, I think in Chicago.

And, um, and it was terrible, and she wrote a book about it and how awful the whole thing was, and that started a political movement to let people out of mental institutions because not everybody in mental institutions maybe belongs in a mental institution.

And you know what, Bob? I'll bet that was true then.

Well, I'll tell you some things right after this break.

If you've come across a depiction of electroconvulsive therapy also referred to as shock therapy or electroshock therapy in any movie or TV show or video game even because it apparently there's a whole paper about like the depiction of electroconvulsive therapy in video games.

Video games.

I had no, I've never played a video game.

And at the worst, it acted as like a barbaric torture device, cruelly effective in erasing memories or bending someone to your will.

Yeah.

And there was a paper that was published in 2016 that reviewed movies and TV shows across the globe that included ECT and found that the vast majority, 81% of movies and 72% of TV shows, portrayed it inaccurately and in a negative light, which is, I mean, it's like not surprising, but it is extreme.

I think it does really kind of underline like, yeah, this is, it's not, it's not really positively depicted ever.