Throne of Blood

welcome everyone to the collector's cut i am peter and joining me as always is david you're gonna topple the walls of jericho this is a movie podcast we get together to talk about a movie it's that simple and we were doing a criterion collection season here uh many of these episodes were votes on our patreon we had a vote here for this particular episode between three kind of classic rom-coms that all are in the criterion collection and the winner was it happened one night from 1934 starring clark gable and claudette colbert so that's what we're going to talk about we'll start spoiler free if you happen to be concerned about spoilers uh for a 1934 movie it will give you one forget the spoilers and of course if you're enjoying the show on youtube hit the like button it helps out a bunch if you do and of course you can support everything over at patreon but i'll tell you more about that at the end of the episode so yeah change of pace

after throne of blood last week what no i feel like this is the natural double feature what are you talking about obviously a lot more light

hearted a lot more charm and chemistry kind of focused as opposed to you know haunting guilt and ambition this is very much on the other end of the spectrum so I had seen this one before actually which I did last week as well to be fair but like I saw this I don't know probably 10 or 15 years ago it was a while ago but I remembered like I was looking forward to watching it again am I safe in assuming that you had not seen this before

No, I had not.

We went through a load a couple of weeks ago that illustrate that a lot of it can come off as, like, having strengths and, and being a bit of a mixed bag, but never really blowing you away.

The guy you wanna get to do your Shakespeare adaptations is Akira Kurosawa, who directed Throne of Blood in 1957, The Bad Sleep Well in 1960, which was based on Ha- which was very loosely based on Hamlet, and Ran in 1985.

Those got 96, 100%, and 96 again respectively.

I noted, I've noted before that Ran was w- a film that I was forced to watch by my father.

No, I remember talking about this when we, uh, we talked about, uh, McKellen's King Lear.

Mm.

The only thing I remember positively was, uh, the, the, the geyser of blood that erupted from that, uh, lady, who actually now I think about it, that might have been in Throne of Blood.

Maybe it was Gone a Little...

And, uh, he's in a lot of hits.

He's, uh, '57, he's in Throne of Blood.

1960, he's in I Bombed Pearl Harbor.

Whoa, well, it was him.

The sound effects are sharper and more realistic than was typical for Chevrolet.

um Kurosawa had been building to this over time from like the dirty realism of Seven Samurai to Mifune's fate is a big pin cushion at the end of Throne of Blood um this also it might have been like a like a blood feast to the Wild Bunch situation but the year before Yojimbo came out uh Studio Shintoho put out its very last B-horror film before they filed for bankruptcy the disgusting and treacherous Jigoku which featured people being dismembered and flayed.

Perhaps Kurosawa thought it was safe to show a dude getting his fucking arm chopped off following some shit like that on the B-movie circuit.

Elaborating on the violence, Yojimbo's sequel film is the one.

The story still worked perfectly.

Or, you know, Kurosawa took the Macbeth code and set it in feudal Japan with Throne of Blood.

Let's actually look at Throne of Blood for a second because I think that perfectly illustrates the translation from page to screen.

In the original play, Macbeth has all these intense monologues about his guilt and his internal corruption, right?

Right.

And what's great about that also is there's other things about the movie you might not know that we'll hopefully fill you in on as time goes on.

Right, and here, a- again, you, you know, for, for those of you who, who are familiar with Kurosawa film, this again reminds me of, uh, the beginning of Throne of Blood where-

Mm-hmm

... you, you open the film with a song.

But yeah, High, High and Low I decided to watch in the end.

You know, I've, I've only seen Throne of Blood, so I'm always eager to get back into Kurosawa 'cause I really did like Throne of Blood.

Um, I think it went over my head a little bit when I watched it.

I think I watched it when I was maybe 18, 19, uh, and I didn't quite get it, and I think ...

I watched it with some family and my mum who knew more.

I think it's, it's based on a, is it Macbeth? I think it's Macbeth, or it's based on a Shakespeare play, and she was very familiar with the Shakespeare play, so she was able to help me understand more what was going on 'cause I didn't really understand it.

But I still very much enjoyed the style and the, uh, aesthetic, if I can use such a word, of, of, uh, Throne of Blood.

So it didn't put me off Kurosawa's work, and I know he has much more famous pieces than Throne of Blood that I should really watch, and if I like Throne of Blood, then I should like all these other films.

You know, Tookie Bookie, it's better than...

I'd say it's better than Throne of Blood.

Better than some Kurosawa, I would say.

Like, it's a great movie.

The only bit that I remember going, oh, I really like that, was when they...

some samurai run into a house to find, and I might be confusing this with Throne of Blood, to find one of the horrible sisters sitting there having plotted everyone else's downfall, and they chop her head off, and the geyser of blood that explodes out of her onto the back wall.

I was like, is that what happens when someone's head gets chopped off?

Is it true that there is a part on a man's head where if you hit it with an axe, it will explode?