Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Dead Mountaineer's Hotel
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Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. My name is Rob Lamb. And I am Joe McCormick.

So it's time to check another country off of the Weird House Cinema list. You know, we can imagine our global map and we're putting pins in the different countries that we visited via the cinematic output of said nation. This time we're going to Estonia. And sorry, France, we'll get to you later. That's right. Today we're going to be talking about the 1979 Estonian-Soviet sci-fi detective film,

Dead Mountaineers Hotel, directed by Grigory Kromanov, based on a story by the brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, who also wrote the source material for another one of my favorite weird Soviet films, which is Tarkovsky's Stalker. In fact, that movie was released the same year as this movie. Both came out in 1979. So a big year for the brothers Strugatsky. I had never seen Dead Mountaineers Hotel before this past week.

I was attracted to it after I saw some very intriguing stills online featuring weird sets full of mirrors and some very striking shot composition with interesting use of color. And then I read reviews characterizing this movie as a bizarre but generally quite well-liked Eastern European film noir with subversive science fiction themes and several heaping spoonfuls of what is going on.

Uh, so, uh, this, this sort of pull toward the film was, it was amplified when I went to Videodrome and I saw the, the employees there had posted a recommendation on this film. So I decided I had to get it, check it out. Um, so it was Estonian sci-fi detective week for me. And, you know, despite all of that preparation, I was still incredibly surprised by this film. Uh, I'll do a short synopsis of the setup, the, the sort of first third of the movie. It is about a police inspector named Glebski working in some country in capitalist Western Europe. Did they ever specify what country it is? I think it's unnamed.

I think it is unnamed. Yeah, it's just miscellaneous European country, which is sometimes my favorite country to go to in cinema. Right. So he's a policeman working somewhere further west in Europe in some alpine region. And he is called to a remote ski lodge up in the mountains known as the Dead Mountaineers Hotel. But once he arrives, it seems he was summoned on a false alarm. The other guests at the hotel behave very strangely and something is not what it seems.

Then suddenly there is at the same time an avalanche cutting the guests off from the rest of the world and a murder putting Inspector Glubsky sort of taking him out of vacation mode and putting him back into on-duty mode. Yeah, because initially he's like, well, it took me so long to get up here and it's a little misty out. I'm clearly going to have to spend the night here and drink some more. Exactly. But then, yeah, back on duty when the murder occurs. I'm going to have to dance to some really good Estonian prog rock. Mm-hmm.

Now, at this point, I think we're going to have to go ahead and deal with something, which is that this film has major surprises that develop across its runtime. And it would be, Rob, I think you'd agree, basically impossible for us to talk about this movie without spoiling its big twists.

Right, right. And we were talking about this a little bit off mic beforehand. This is not a film that is so dependent upon the twist that you cannot enjoy it. In fact, you might enjoy it a little bit more knowing the sort of territory it will get into. I read a blog post somewhere online where the writer was reviewing the film and said that they thought that it actually worked better if you went in already knowing what the twist would be. I'm not sure about that, but that could be the case. I went in already knowing the twist and still greatly enjoyed the movie. But if you suspect that might not be the case for you, you want your chance to duck out and not know what happens later in the film, here's your moment.

Let's do some, some spoiler avoidance, walkout music. Flee in terror from the revelations to come. Your mind is not ready. Your mind is not ready. Okay. But here you are with us to know what happens later in the film. Uh, but you know, part of the difficulty is that even the genre designation of the movie spoils the twist, uh,

Because it is called like a neo-noir or detective science fiction film. And there is nothing science fiction about the movie until the twist is revealed, which is that, well, one part of the twist is not necessarily sci-fi. It's more sort of crime thriller themed. And that is that some of the hotel guests are secretly gangsters and or terrorists. I wasn't quite sure exactly what kind of criminal this is supposed to be.

But then beyond that, some other hotel guests are robots and yet other guests are aliens. Yeah. Yeah. And I have to add, like, knowing that we selected this for Weird House Cinema, you might already suspect that there will be something speculative in the plot. But I also have to highlight that the movie is weird enough in its texture and its tone that I think we could have covered it even had it not involved robots and aliens.

Oh, yeah, because people have pointed this out about especially like the sets and the music create a very otherworldly atmosphere before any technically speculative plot elements are introduced. Like this is a ski resort in the mountains, but it feels like a set from Blade Runner. Yeah, yeah. And then the score is very abstract and electronic. We'll get into that in a bit, too. But all of this sort of.

you know, sets the board. And by the time aliens and robots come around, I have a feeling that even if you didn't know they were going to occur, they would not feel completely out of left field. You would be like, oh, well, yeah, of course. I mean, a number of human beings have to be robots and aliens. That's where I am in my worldview after experiencing this much of the thing. I mean, a lot of the characters are acting incredibly weird. And so it seems something would have to be up to explain the way they behave. Yeah.

And the films, I would say the film's themes don't fully come into focus until the final act when after the revelation of the presence of aliens and robots, the policeman Glebsky is put in a position to, to think independently given new information, even unprecedented information. And he has to choose whether to blindly charge ahead, deferring his individual judgment and performing his official duties or

Or to think for himself and act as a human being. And we see Glebski really struggling with this choice. He feels very strongly pulled to just act out his official duties as a policeman, even if they don't really make sense in the scenario and it would spell disaster for visitors from another world. Yeah, yeah.

So the making of retrospective feature ad on the Blu-ray edition that we both watched, and more on that in a minute, it shed some interesting light on the production. So first of all, just a bit of background, since we're dealing with Estonian cinema here.

At the time Dead Mountaineers Hotel was made, Estonia was the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic. This is essentially what it was known as 1940 through 1941 and then 1944 through around 1991, though asterisks by that date I'll explain in a second.

And while Estonia had its own distinct film, TV, and theater scenes, there seems to have, to a large extent, been a shared ecosystem with Moscow-based film production at the time. You had, you know, you seem to have a very Soviet film bureaucracy in place governing the production of this film and other films that were occurring throughout the then Soviet Union.

For instance, composer Sven Grunberg talks about composing music for the film on the train back to Moscow, where he then would record in the same studio that like later in the day, another composer was going to be using to score 1979 Stalker, a Soviet Russian production that we just referenced. Oh, okay. Yeah. And so given this context, one thing that I've read about the film that makes it kind of interesting is that despite its...

The weirdness and I would argue subversiveness of the final product. This is a film that was made under, from what I understand, a heavy hand of censorship. Yeah, yeah.

The film was seemingly the product of a very bureaucratic film production process. In some ways, it does seem like it held it back, and we'll discuss examples of that. But it also meant that it seems like they had everything lined up when they were about to shoot. Like when they actually went out there, it was a pretty well-oiled machine to a large extent, very streamlined production.

Um, but, uh, but yeah, the, um, it seems like it maybe did limit and in other cases almost limited the creativity of the, of the project as well. I was reading about the, the making of the film, uh, in a piece by an Estonian film critic named Carlo Funk. It was an article published by the, uh, the Estonian film Institute. And, uh, Funk was sort of writing about how there were, uh,

Certain things you could do if you wanted to tell a certain kind of story under this environment that you could have more leeway with your storytelling. For example, setting it in the West rather than setting it in Estonia or something allowed more freedom, allegedly, to depict characters as sort of flawed and conflicted in their official duties. Yeah.

Because you could essentially be saying, like, this is the kind of potential depravity that can be going on elsewhere, but not within these borders. Just a quick cap on the note about Estonia. Estonia became, I believe, the first of the then Soviet-controlled countries to declare independence from Moscow and the Soviet Union. And by 1991, I believe the 6th of September 1991, the Soviet Union recognized Estonian independence.

Now key to all of this of course is the hotel the Dead Mountaineers Hotel which will will get into we'll talk a lot about this hotel and You know, it's it's film so you have exteriors and interiors of this place And I think if you know anything about filmmaking at all, you know that These don't have to necessarily match up sometimes the the place where a film is shot the interiors We are also using the exteriors of of said location or

Sometimes you'll have exterior shots for a particular place in your film, and the inside of that place you're utilizing via another location or perhaps sets. Right.

So in this film, we have the exterior of the hotel, which does have its own kind of character. It has this kind of like boxy look that I quite like. It doesn't look completely rustic. It has sort of a modern flair to it. Yeah, it is an asymmetrical architecture that does look like, I don't know, some modern homes you would see that are like a rectangle rising up here and a slanted roof there. And it's not just like your standard sort of boxy resort hotel shape.

Right, right. And of course it is very remote and surrounded by all of these snowy mountains and all. Very captivating. But instead of using this location or some other kind of like ski lodge location for the interiors, and instead of engaging in perhaps the kind of expected rustic or perhaps well-worn interiors of an actual remote ski lodge, they said, no, no, no, this is a science fiction film. This film deals with futuristic ideas and

we need to have a futuristic set. And so they ended up building out these sets. And what we have is this highly stylized, like black and mirrored interior. There's neon. And the featurette on the disc describes this as all being very much in line with Estonian hyper-realism of the time period. I don't know exactly what that is, but it's hyper-something. It's...

Yeah, it it doesn't feel like a real hotel. Like it doesn't it does not at all suggest hospitality. Instead, it is an environment that suggests mystery and doubt.

And yet, despite this, it does still have some of the features that can make a hotel or resort an exciting location for a mystery story like the maze-like nature of hallways in a hotel, like that you never really understand what part of the building you're in or which direction you're facing. You're just going around corners. And this movie, the sets do have that feeling. There's a kind of confusing layout of the place, and it almost suggests that it's not physically plausible. Yeah.

Yeah, and it sounds like the set itself had this kind of maze-like quality they were talking about. There being lots of places that crew members could sort of hide and have a drink or snack and so forth. And it was apparently quite a struggle to get everybody to be quiet for the shoot. But yeah, it was a pretty elaborate build. It wasn't cheap. And on the other end, and certainly I have to stress that it does not...

feel like a set in that it feels like a real place like even though we are getting into this hyper realistic idea of what a remote ski lodge could be um it totally works within the context of the film and you're never like oh look at this set unless you know unless i guess you're engaging in in the film you know outside of the the film's context

But it's hard to imagine this film having the same impact or the same flavor at all if it were set in a more traditional or rustic ski lodge setting. You know, that kind of like well-worn, perhaps not as easily maintained environment that some of us may have experienced in one form or another in remote locations. It just...

I can't help but suspect if that had been the case with this movie, even if it still had the terrific score, the terrific performances, and this weird plot, this film might have been more easily forgotten. And it wouldn't stand out as this kind of shining gem of Estonian film from this time period. When you read people talking about this movie, they will end up saying a lot of things, but often the first thing they say is something about the striking visual nature of it.

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll keep touching on more specific examples of that as we go. I'll also point out that the featurette described this as being part of the first and only, at least at the time that this featurette was produced, wave of Estonian science fiction of the mid and late 1970s. So there's like this brief blip where suddenly, and we'll touch on why this might have been the case, where suddenly Estonian cinema was more concerned with science fiction and

And then it kind of dies off, though, just looking around a little bit, it looks like in recent years we have seen more Estonian science fiction come out. So it's not like, you know, Estonian creatives completely abandoned the idea of science fiction. It's more a question of like what was being funded, what was being produced, especially during this time period in which, like we already discussed, like there were a lot of bolts in place on what sort of films would see the light of day.

Okay, what's your elevator pitch for the movie? It's simple. It's Ski Lodge Madness, Estonian style. In a world where the ski lodge is full of robots, one man will be a cop and not think too much about it. Oh, I don't know. There's a lot of thinking. There's a lot of contemplative characters in this. Well, let's go ahead and hear just a little bit of the trailer audio. This is from the, I believe, the Estonian trailer. So we're not going to play all of it, but maybe just a little bit to give you some flavor.

What kind of flower do you want, Exolation?

All right. Now, before we go into the rest of the episode, let's talk about where you can watch this movie as well, especially if you want to watch it before listening to us talk about all the details of the plot. I can't speak for other regions, but currently over here, it looks like the only way to stream it legit is perhaps via cultpick.com. Looks like they have it. I'm not familiar with cultpick, but it pops up on Letterboxd as being a place you can stream it.

We watched it on the all-region Blu-ray from Camera Obscura, which also features an optional German dub. It has English subs and an interesting making of documentary that I've referred to already and I may refer to again. Yeah, this was a good disc. I liked it. Yeah, I had no problem playing it on an Xbox, for example, which sometimes isn't the case with international Blu-rays and so forth.

All right, let's get into the people who made this film.

Starting at the top with the director, Grigori Kromanov, who lived 1926 through 1984. Estonian director and occasionally actor, best known internationally for this film, which was also his last of six films. I believe this was his only genre film. Other films included the 1969-1970 historic drama, also described sometimes as a swashbuckler, The Last Relic. Yeah, that's how I've seen it described as sort of historical adventure film.

Yeah. And then the screenplay. The screenplay is credited to Arkady and Boris Strogatsky, who also wrote the novel upon which it is based. So they adapted their own novel here. Okay.

Arkady lived 1925 through 1991 and Boris lived 1933 through 2012. So they were Soviet Russian science fiction authors and brothers who collaborated throughout their careers. Their best known novel is 1972's Roadside Picnic, which Tarkovsky adapted into the 1979 film Stalker, which we already mentioned here.

This movie is based on the 1970 novel Dead Mountaineers Hotel, a detective story that veers increasingly into weird territory. Both of these books, by the way, are widely available in English translation. I think you can even get audio books of them. So, you know, they're available out there.

along with other works of theirs. And by the way, in 2009, the novel Dead Mountaineers Hotel was adapted into a point-and-click mystery video game. Joe, I sent you the trailer for this, and we were looking at this earlier. Yeah, I watched this trailer for the game. I would not have imagined this adaptation would take place. That was a surprise for me. Though, you know, it got me thinking about how

Oh man, back in the day, I really did enjoy some of those, those point and click adventure games like, you know, the King's quest and, uh, maniac mansion and things like that. This could be a lot of fun.

yeah yeah and given the source material i guess it could be like i wonder i wonder what's if you had a video game that was not only adapted from the source material but based on this particular cinematic vision of said book like what would it look like what kind of choices would you have when you pointed and clicked on characters you know would you always have the option to drink and or smoke um

Hold on, I'm just thinking, was there at some point a Blade Runner point-and-click adventure game? That sounds right. I never played any of the Blade Runner video games, but there certainly were some video games. I think a PC game of note. I mean, it seems like a genre of video game that is well adapted to detective stories and noir. You click on little clues and apply things to other things in the environment, yeah.

But yeah, so that's an interesting. So as you said, this game was adapted from the novel, so it doesn't actually pull in a lot of the aesthetic choices from the movie adaptation. So I was looking at it and I was like, this doesn't seem familiar, actually. All right. So we have our inspector here and Inspector Peter Glebsky played by oldest pooties.

who lived 1937 through to the year 2000. Uh, yeah, this is one rugged detective. I like, we get a lot of closeups of this guy's face and it's perfect. It is the perfect, like hard boiled detectives face, the lines, the,

The almost like geologic texture to his face, you know, the depths of his eyes, everything you want out of a noir detective who's having troubled thoughts. This is the guy for you. Yeah. He, I mean, we talk about square jaws on this show sometime, but this is a jaw that is like fractally square. I'm trying to think what actor I'm more familiar with to compare him to. He's almost got a kind of Jack Palance energy, you know? Yeah.

Yeah, he reminded me a bit, too, of Sean Bean. He has just his facial features and also the kind of like stern, distant eyed characters that Bean has sometimes played. Oh, yeah, I can see that because he does. There is a weariness about him. He has he very well does that thing that's familiar to us from a lot of movies now of the the police detective who's just sort of worn out and tired of it all.

Yeah. He's so ripe, he's about to fall off the tree. I think maybe that's what that line means. I don't know what that means. I accept that interpretation, yeah. Okay.

So this is easily this actor's best known film internationally, but he was active in TV and film of the region from the late 70s to the late 90s. And he was a Latvian actor. Okay. So again, absolutely strong presence in the film. A nice central performance and physical performance to base everything on.

I read somewhere online somebody saying that the casting in this movie has almost the sensibility of like a caricaturist, that the cast is really selected for extremely distinctive looks. Yeah. And I would say that's the case of the next actor and character we're going to talk about, the hotel manager, Alex Snavar.

That's right. Played by Yuri Yarvit. Lived 1919 through 1995. Playing the owner, the weird owner of the hotel. Weird owner of a weird hotel. Estonian actor who was also in The Last Relic.

and played the lead in a 1970 adaptation of King Lear, which I think is fitting given that he has a very haunted look at times in this production. And he is most famously in Tarkovsky's 1972 science fiction film Solaris. I believe he actually had third billing in that. Okay.

I don't remember exactly, but I think he's one of the scientists on the base. He's a doctor character. Yeah. Yeah. This guy, what I'm about to say might feel like it doesn't make any sense, but stick with me.

I would almost describe his energy as sweet, cuddly Kinski. Like if you could imagine a mirror image, like suck all the evil and poison out of Klaus Kinski and make a sweet, nice version of him. That's what this guy makes me think of. Yeah, I can see that. I can definitely see that. All right, the next character is Simone Simonet. He's our wall-crawling physicist.

played by Limbet Peterson, born 1953, Estonian actor, and once more, this is probably the actor's best-known film internationally. This guy's got a very nervous, kind of high-strung energy, and you really don't know what his deal is for most of the movie, but I liked him.

All right. And the next character is Hinkas. This is the only name that is ever attributed to him. Played by Mick Mickiver, who lived 1937 through 2006. Estonian actor whose credits include some of the expected sort of dramas you would imagine. Because again, a lot of more traditional dramas, less speculative work that you see in a lot of these actors' work during this time period. But also another key character

player in the short-lived Estonian sci-fi wave, as well as some Russian science fiction. He appears in the Russian 1987 film The End of Eternity, based on the work of Isaac Asimov, as well as the bonkers-looking Estonian Indiana Jones-esque sci-fi adventure The Curse of Snake Valley from 1988. You sent me a link to this one. I gotta see this.

Yeah, this one looked, it, it looks less, uh, great in some respects. Like it looks, it looks like it's more like bonkers and kind of like a B cinema in its flavor, but also looks just irresistible. Um, so if I, if I, if you said, okay, you have to do another Estonian film next week, uh, it would, it would have to be the curse of the snake Valley. I'm not sure how widely available this one is though. Yeah. I've got to see it at some point. I don't know if we'll talk about it, but I've got to see it.

And Mikover is quite great in this and has numerous places where he really gets to shine. Yes, yeah. All right, next we have a couple of Moses to consider. There's Mr. Moses and there's Mrs. Moses. Okay. And we'll start with Mr. Moses, played by Carlos Cerberus-Morales.

1914 through 2009 Latvian born actor who played Gloucester in that King Lear adaptation that I referenced earlier. And then we have Irina Krasati born 1952 as Mrs. Moses, Lithuanian actress, best known for this film, but she really gets to run wild with a kind of weird performance. Oh, does she ever? Yeah. She was one of my favorites.

Her character's fashion sense and general demeanor is basically that of a post-Zool Dana from Ghostbusters, I would say. Yes, and she really loves daredevil cops. Yes. If you're a cop, you must be a daredevil.

Next we have Lurvik, played by Sulev Luek, who lived 1954 through 1997. Estonian actor. Again, this was his first film, but he worked up until his untimely death in 1997. His other credits include 1993's Tear of the Prince of Darkness, a horror film concerning a cursed ring in the days before the outbreak of the Second World War. And that one, by the way, is from the director of Curse of Snake Valley. Sounds thematically loaded, but...

Yeah. This actor brings an intriguing sort of doomed mime energy. Yes, he does. And I believe by the time we were really seeing a lot from him, I'm like, this dude's a robot. There's no way this dude's not a robot or an alien or both. Wait, but he's actually not a robot. He's an alien. The other guy's a robot.

Yeah, but I feel like the line between robot and alien is kind of gray in this film, especially since we never get to see alien faces or robot interiors. You know what I'm saying? This is not that kind of film. It could have leaned into that a little bit, and I totally would have been okay with it, but it doesn't need it. Agreed. But yeah, you are correct that even though this guy is said to be an organic alien, he does behave like the robots. Yeah.

But speaking of robots, this ski lodge also has like hot robots. Yeah.

That's right. The first character is this guy, Olaf, played by Tidharm, born 1946, acclaimed Estonian ballet dancer turned actor who also went on to be a ballet master, ballet manager, ballet choreographer. Like this is this is a guy that's actually pretty big in the Estonian ballet scene. And I think probably well known internationally if you are like into ballet, but

This is his best-known film. He did some acting here and there. And we do get to see him dance. And he's good. You can easily, knowing that he's a dancer and watching him move, you're like, yes, this checks out. But he does mention in the extras that the set was really cramped, and so they didn't give him a lot of space to work with. So he's having to figure out how to move his body in a space that is not...

enabling him to do much. His dancing choices though are intriguing and a lot of fun because he's essentially doing ballet-ish kinds of moves to the sounds of Estonian prog rock.

Yeah. It's interesting to think about these limitations. All right, you're a famous ballet dancer. We want you to dance, but this is the space you get to do it in. And I'm also guessing they might not have even had the finished music. They'll be like, we don't know what you're dancing to yet, but just go ahead and do it. Do it in a way that's not going to harm your reputation. Imagine you're an intergalactic robot dancing to King Crimson. Yeah. Yeah.

He pulls it off, though. All right, so that's Olaf, and Olaf is kind of running around with this character, Brun. Brun is played by Lithuanian actress, Majol Oslet, born 1954.

I don't have much to add about her career, but she's very good in this. And again, this is a film that generally lets a lot of its actors play a range of different emotions, you know, from just sort of detached modern living to like a robot or alien level of detachment and also getting into fear and horrors. Yeah, the character of Brun hides behind sunglasses for most of the runtime, but then later reveals her emotions and they're quite interesting.

Yeah. And then finally, we have this character called Kesa, I believe. And she's like the housekeeper. And so she's mostly in the background in a lot of these scenes, but she's played by Karen Rad, who lived 1942 through 2014, an Estonian theater director and actor.

And then the music. This is, this is a, this was a, again, the music in this film, the score is just exceptionally effective. Um, and this is the work of Sven Grunberg born 1956. We've, we've summoned the spirit of Sven a number of times. Now we have to explain who he is.

Yeah, so the score here, it's contemplative, it's suggestively astral in its vibes. It's an electronic score, definitely a synth score, by Estonian synth master Sven Grunberg, whose career has also taken him into the realms of prog rock and also Tibetan Buddhism.

Prior to watching this film, I listened to his 1981 album, Hingis or Breath, which is widely available on music streaming platforms. So this is not somebody whose work is super hard to find. He really made a name for himself. And Hingis is quite a wonderful collection of ambient electronic tracks. And it's kind of in keeping with the music we see here.

His work is typically abstract and experimental. He's well worth looking up if you're into this sort of sound like I am. A lot of ambient DNA in his work. And Dead Mountaineer Hotel, his music plays, again, a huge role in establishing the atmosphere, both inside of this strange hotel and its many twists and mirrors, but also when we're looking

we're contemplating the exteriors when we're like looking up at the mountains and these just like,

pure blue skies and these gleaming snow banks and so forth. Yeah, the score here is just highly effective. Yeah, it's a great example of musical compositions that somehow, without even having lyrics, sound like the themes you're trying to get the audience to think of. So there is a sort of recurring theme

synthesizer theme that sounds so it'll be, it'll happen when you're like panning up over the mountaintops and seeing the snow drifts and the glaciers. And it will sound like ice in a way, almost like snow or like a kind of a freezing process, ice crackling. It has a kind of high drone, but then also as the camera sort of pans to include the sky, it's,

it morphs to suggest cosmic themes and, uh, yeah, it's, it's really, uh, as you say, yeah, it evokes the themes with the sounds quite well.

Yeah, and so it's interesting. I went into this having a taste for his music, then really appreciating the score itself, and then knowing about how other aspects of the production were so planned and advanced and all. It was kind of surprising to read then on deepbaltic.com, this is a culture blog centering in on Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, that Grunberg was kind of a last-minute replacement for

in this production for esteemed Estonian composer Arvo Part. And as a result, and since no work had apparently been done on it yet, he had a great deal of freedom. So it's like everything was already late. None of the music had been turned in. They needed music. He didn't have much time, but it also meant that he got to really open up and try whatever he wanted. I read in one of those articles I was looking at, I think it was the one by Carlo Funk from the Estonian Film Institute, where

Saying something about Soviet censors being concerned that the movie was trying to trying to get some like slip some Pink Floyd in there.

Yeah, I read this on the Deep Baltic article as well. The author here writes, quote, the tiny budget only allotted him a few precious moments with an EMS Synth 100 in Moscow. And even then, what he created almost got barred by Soviet censors who were convinced that Ball was a lesser known track by Pink Floyd. Ball, I guess, being one of the titles of one of the tracks on the score. I wonder if that's the sort of proggy sounding track that Tit Harm and everyone are dancing to.

I guess so. Yeah, I kept looking around to try and find it. I would love to see the score and or soundtrack featured as a release. I don't think it's released anywhere. I couldn't find any evidence of it. So I also couldn't find a listing of what tracks were actually called. But yeah, this might be that prog rock dance number that everybody's grooving out to. And it is a great number.

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Hey y'all, it's your girl Cheeky's and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheeky's and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys. And I know a lot of people are gonna attack me. Why are you gonna go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now, I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth.

I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies.

Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough because if he loved you, he'd be faithful.

It's going to be an exciting year, and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill Season 4 as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sonoro and iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro.

The setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? ...he actually is too good to be true.

This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Dilado painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think? After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take. Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this dog.

Trudito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Setup as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new Star Wars Rebels rewatch podcast. I'm Vanessa Marshall. Hi, I'm Tia Sircar. I'm Taylor Gray. And I'm John Lee Brody. But you may also know us as Harrison Dula, Spectre 2. Sabine Wren, Spectre 5. And Ezra Bridger, Spectre 6 from Star Wars Rebels. Wait.

Uh, I wasn't on Star Wars Rebels. Am I in the right place? Absolutely. Each week, we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series. And share some fun behind-the-scenes stories. Sometimes we'll be visited by special guests like Steve Bloom, voice of Zabarelio Specter IV, or Dante Bosco, voice of Jai Kel, and many others. Sometimes we'll even have a lively debate. And we'll have plenty of other fun surprises and trivia, too. Oh, uh, and me? Well, I'm the lucky ghost crew stowaway who gets to help moderate and guide the discussion each week.

Kind of like how Kanan guided Ezra in the ways of the force. You see what I did there? Nicely done, John. Thanks, Tia. So hang on, because it's going to be a fun ride. Cue the music. Listen to Potter Rebellion on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Well, on that note, let's start getting into the plot here.

All right, so the opening shot is ridges and peaks of the high Alps covered in snow. And there is eerie music, this synthesizer music that we were talking about already. It sounds kind of like drops and wheezes panning from one side to the other. And we see the lonely mountaintops and very cold feeling sunlight.

And we zoom in on a snow-covered road winding through the rocks, and a car comes around the corner. And here begins the voiceover. This is a man's voice. It's gruff, weary. This is the voice of Glebski, the detective. And he tells us, I was on a call driving to a mountain lodge called the Dead Mountaineers Hotel.

it was quite a difficult drive many years have passed now but on dull shifts or during sleepless nights i often recall what happened and even now i cannot decide whether i was right or not and as he narrates

We see him driving through the mountains and here. One thing that I really like is that there are some shots that include the sun facing directly into the camera. And this is obviously this is not something you would normally do, you know, when you're shooting outside is aim the camera right at the sun.

Uh, but it works here and it happens throughout the movie. I, these shots with the camera just like blasting the kit, uh, or sorry, with the sun, just blasting the camera lens, uh,

They capture the way the sun sometimes feels when you're on a snowy mountaintop where the sunlight seems colder and weirder. And it lacks that quality of gentle warmth that you might get on like a nice sunny day at sea level. Instead, it feels like just a bombardment, a blasting source of pale, hostile radiation. Yeah, yeah. It really makes this whole landscape feel alien and otherworldly. Quite fittingly so.

There's also another shot, Rob, I don't know if you noticed at the beginning here, but I liked it a lot. There's like a framing of a gap in a giant rock face that suggests gates or a gateway. And when we see this mountain gate, the soundtrack suddenly explodes with heavy synth and an emerging beat. And the narration goes on to say, what's strange is I can tell no one how it actually happened. Not my wife, my friends, or the authorities. Only I know the whole truth.

So we start with this idea already that Glebski is isolated in his knowledge of what we're about to see unfold. Yeah, luckily he's going to tell us. That's right. Let's have it.

Uh, so, uh, as Glebski approaches the hotel in his car, the narration dies away. And instead we, we just get the ambient sounds of the car ride, the sedan bumping and jostling over uneven mountain road. And there's a tiny voice chattering on the radio. It sounds like it's speaking French. Um, so made me wonder if this is supposed to, if it's suggesting this is taking place in, uh, in France or I guess also in Switzerland where parts of Switzerland, they speak French.

Anyway, Glebski arrives. He walks the snow-covered path to the entrance. He's dressed in a brown leather trench coat. And I have to say, I think he looks very cool. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, this guy's perfect. And the costuming's great. He is our weary detective who just had a grueling drive up into the mountains on, indeed, some very snow-covered and terrifying-looking roads. Now he has to look into some sort of perhaps a murder.

I just look, somebody get this manager. I just look at this guy and I think, you know what? He's going to end up taking it too personal. I think. Oh yeah. You know, uh, Oh, and during this moment, uh, interesting thing. Like we look up in the sky and we see hang gliders. So we see them swooping around sometimes apparently upside down. Uh, though it's possible that I guess the film is just upside down. Uh, and it suggests like, are these hang gliders watching him approach the hotel? Uh,

Yeah, I think they are. I think that the footage is inverted here, uh, to make it feel all the more haunting. Also, this is, this is a, we'll find out later that this is Olaf and Bruun up there in the sky tearing around. Um,

I have questions about how they got up there, but I don't know. Take it for granted that they knew how to do it. But yeah, it's an excellent weird sequence very early in the film here, especially as it is combined with the music to create this kind of horror of the empty blue sky feel that I know I've personally long connected with since I was a child. You know, there being something about like a perfect blue sky that feels kind of overwhelming and a little uncanny.

So a very creepy moment, at least for me. Totally, yes. So Glebski goes inside. The lobby of the hotel is empty. It's cavernous. His footsteps echo. This doesn't feel like what you'd think of when you think a mountain ski lodge, which you'd think cozy, roaring fire, that kind of stuff. No, this place feels...

cavernous and dank. And, uh, it's just a vibe like Rob, I attached a screenshot from the lobby that we can talk about here. There are sickly green tones over the white marble tile. There is black darkness in the recesses of the room.

In the middle of the lobby, there is a prominent portrait. It's a man with shaggy hair, wearing sunglasses, with what looks like a neon orange tube light tracing the outline of the top of his head, suggesting a sort of tech noir halo. And the inspector stops to examine the portrait. And again, something about this place feels not quite like a hotel. It feels like some other kind of place.

Yeah, it really feels like this could be a corporate headquarters from an early Cronenberg film. Yeah.

But you pointed this out in the notes, Rob. There's something about the portrait of the Mountaineer here, because we will find out that the face we see in this portrait is the titular dead Mountaineer of the Dead Mountaineers Hotel. It suggests not just like a portrait, but something almost kind of like religious. It's like a shrine or something. Yeah, yeah, totally.

So Glebski's wandering around in this weird lobby and suddenly somebody starts to speak from the shadows behind him. It's a man's voice. And he says, speaking of the portrait, that's the Mountaineer. He was caught in an avalanche. He was carried 500 meters to his death. Uh, and there's a reverse shot and we see the man speaking. And, uh, again, this just like, what is going on? I guess this is the front desk of the hotel, but it could not be less hospitable. Uh,

There's an old man in sort of a black turtleneck standing in the shadows in front of a window shutter. He looks like Count Orlok and there's a cherry red lamp in the foreground. Something about it gives, it suggests blood. And then also there is a St. Bernard panting on the, in the right of the frame, just a dog sitting there like, what's up? Blanket.

leak and drool. Enormous, enormous dog, which turns out to be a real sweetheart. But, you know, initially it's just like that dog's here. Yes. Uh, and this man who looks like maybe he just drank someone's blood. He introduces himself as Alex Snavar, owner of the hotel, as well as the valley and the surrounding mountains. That's what he says. And I was like, wait, you can own a mountain. I guess you can. Yeah.

But, you know, he actually, the same thing happens with Alex Snavar that happens with the dog because Snavar looks kind of threatening at first, but he will turn out to be a sweetheart. Yeah. We learned that the St. Bernard is named Lell and he goes to sit underneath the portrait of the Mountaineer. Snavar explains that the dog was the Mountaineer's faithful companion before the accident. So the accident can't have happened all that long ago. Yeah.

And Lell now likes to sit and gaze at the image of his old friend. So Glebski, of course, wants to know why he was summoned to the hotel. Somebody called the police and here he is. But Snavar has no answers. He claims he never called them. It must have been a guest. So Glebski, he rings up his captain and tells him, you know, it's too late to return through the mountain fog. He's going to have to stay the night at this resort hotel. And he's going to have to try some of the hotel's famous Edelweiss wine.

Yeah. So like we were saying earlier, he's kind of going into vacation mode. It's like, all right, false alarm. But I've at least got the night. No taking it too personal for me tonight. I'm going to I'm going to relax. Oh, and I like how Lell the St. Bernard is the bellhop here at the hotel. Like Snobar tells the dog Glebski's room number and the dog picks up his bag and his big slobbery mouth and takes it to the room.

Yep. Uh, so we see the inspector settling in, uh, outside his window. He sees a shadow in the snow. It looks like the silhouette, uh, of someone on the roof of the hotel drinking and throwing bottles over the edge. Uh,

So here we start to get glimpses of the other guests. Those two people hang gliding from earlier, they come in after they, they finish their hang gliding. And we learned that these are Olaf and Brun. Olaf is, is the man played by, played by the dancer, Tit Harm. And Brun is a, is the woman.

Uh, and then also up on the roof, there is a man in a fur coat, admiring the mountains. He's in like a sort of lawn chair and we meet him and learn that his name is Hinkus. And I wanted to add a note about this. You know, there's that Sven Grunberg album called Hingus, which as you said, is Estonian for breath. So I'm wondering if this is actually different or if it's basically suggesting that this character's name is breath. Yeah.

I don't know. But yeah, it's a...

can't help but make that connection. And it would be thematically appropriate because Hinkes tells Glebski that he is here at the hotel because he has tuberculosis and the doctors have told him that he must breathe fresh mountain air in order to recover. Now here comes a funny moment next because Glebski hears the dinner bell. And so on the way down to dinner with all the other guests, he encounters a man wedging himself between the walls up near the ceiling and the staircase. Hmm.

And the guy hops down and introduces himself. He says, I'm Simone Simone, commander of the cyber forces. But then he says he's a, he's a physicist actually. And this is his first vacation in four years. He says, project Midas heard of it. Top secret. Then why would he have heard of it?

Um, but Simone Simone says that he came here to climb the mountain, but there's too much snow. So he can't climb the mountain. So he climbs the walls instead. Uh, he says that the doctors prescribed him sensory pleasures.

Now at the dinner table here, Snavar introduces Glebski to the other guests. There is a young lady in an orange top wearing huge weird sunglasses. This is the woman Brun. Next to her is this handsome young man in a blue shirt and an orange ascot with a shaggy mullet-ish haircut. This is Olaf. Again, Brun and Olaf are the hang gliders. And they seem to be an item. They're kind of just smooching and cuddling at the dinner table.

We also meet Mrs. Moses, a woman in a lavender outfit with a fur stole curly hair and sort of frightening makeup.

Yeah, again, roughly post-Zul Dana in Ghostbusters. That's her fashion vibe. That's exactly right, right on the nose. And so Glebski comes in and she says, I love policemen, heroes, daredevils. Are you a daredevil, Inspector? And he's like, nope, just regular. And she says, no, no, no. Any man who looks like you must be a daredevil. Yeah.

And the next here comes Mr. Moses. He's sort of a boring seeming older man with gray hair and a gray cardigan. He, he almost kind of blends into the background. It's like, you're, you're not really supposed to notice him. Yeah. And then there's also the housekeeper of the hotel here. This is Kaisa.

So everybody settles in and the hotel manager is like, uh, anyway, as I was saying before you arrived, I am in total agreement with Mr. Eric Von Daniken. Aliens have repeatedly visited earth. And I was, I could not believe what we were in for here. I was like, I did not know we would get an Eric Von Daniken, uh, reference in the movie. This is in the real world. The author of the book chariots of the gods. Yeah. With the, with the question mark, uh,

which is a famous book alleging on the basis of incredibly poor evidence and reasoning that aliens have repeatedly visited Earth in the past and are responsible for, I don't remember exactly what he connects it to, probably various ancient stories and monuments and stuff. Yeah, the whole alien astronaut hypothesis situation, which we recorded a few episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind about a few years back.

analyzing from a, from a skeptical perspective. And then we ended up talking about like Carl Sagan's point of view on like, if aliens had visited earth, what kind of evidence you would actually expect to see and stuff like that. Yeah.

So, yeah. So Snavar, he's like, I love Eric Von Daniken. Aliens have been here. I know it. And Simone, the physicist is like, Von Daniken is a charlatan. No way. And Snavar rebukes him, basically saying that his opinion doesn't count because he is a scientist and thus biased. And he says that the question of aliens is one of poetry. Yeah.

I kind of like that. I feel like we would be better off if all alien conspiracy theorists were so honest and self-reflective where they were like, you know...

This isn't a fact-based thing. This is about feelings. This is about art. Yeah. Like, I know this doesn't actually connect with reality. This is about, like, a mythic understanding of the world or something. Right, yeah. I'm talking about this for fun because it's interesting and exciting to my emotions, not because I'm insisting that the evidence must be real. Yeah.

But already we get a little flavor here of, yeah, there's like on one hand the logical, on the other hand something that seems illogical but also might conform to a different reality or different expectations of reality. So they ask the police inspector's opinion, and Glebsky identifies himself as a rationalist, and I guess that means he agrees with Simonet. He doubts Eric von Daniken. Yeah.

So later some time passes and there are a few different scenes of the guests hanging out together. One is some kind of billiards game. I assume this is not unfortunately snooker. The, uh, the billiards game featured in, uh, what was it called? Billy, the kid in the green Bay's vampire, a previous house pick. Uh, I don't, could you recognize what game they're playing Rob?

I don't have a good eye for these related games. Yeah, it looked like they were playing with all white balls at one point. I don't know if that means anything. Yeah, I don't know what all white balls means. Yeah, pool enthusiasts can write in. But they have this conversation about whether or not the inspector is going to turn Olaf into food. Yeah.

Uh, but then interesting thing is that like Olaf is so good at the game that it's like not any fun because he just like sneak, he sinks every shot with absolute precision. So Olaf is like the ultimate billiards hustler here. Yeah. And then he's like, I'm out. So it'd be great to see him go up against the green base vampire, uh, Alan Armstrong. Hmm.

Yeah. That would have been a logical sequel, right? Green Bay's vampire versus a robot. Versus tit harm. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So later that night we get the scene where this is the dancing scene we've referred to a few times where everybody's like dancing to heavy prog rock. Olaf and Bruin are dancing with these jerky whipping movements with their arms going out. Mr. Moses is playing chess with somebody. I wasn't sure who.

Uh, and then Glebski talking to Snavar is he has questions. He's like, who is this? Mr. Moses. And Snavar says he's registered as a traveling businessman, but I have no idea where he's traveling. The road ends here. The only way is back. It's a good point. It's a great little party. We get to say, Hey, I kind of want to go to this party. Cause there's some cool dancing, great music. And if you don't want to dance, well, you know, have yourself a drink and play some chess. We've got activities for everyone.

So extroverts and introverts are welcome. Yeah. Yeah. So Glebski dances with Mrs. Moses here. Again, she seems very into him. She's got like a big white feather in her hat or on her head. He seems kind of hypnotized. I wasn't sure what this was supposed to mean. Did you get the same impression that Glebski is like sort of out of his mind here? Yeah. I mean, I assumed he was drunk. That was where I was at in it. That would make sense.

Because he did say he wanted to have that wine, and at this point, he's just like, I'm off the clock. There's no crime to investigate here. I might as well have a good time. Yeah, and so basically everybody at the hotel is partying, except for Hinkes. They say he's still up on the roof. He just doesn't come down to party. He's on the roof all the time. And somewhere in here, there's a shot I really like, like this creepy shot of a big evergreen tree backlit by the moon.

Yeah. So Glebski was dancing with Mrs. Moses, but then Simone comes in for his dance. He's like, hey, you want to dance with a commander of cyber forces? And so she dances with Simone and Glebski admitting in the narration that he was drunk. He steps away from the party. He goes outside for some night air.

And then he discovers that someone, he doesn't know who, has slipped an anonymous note into his pocket. He opens the note to read it on the snowy pathway lit by these globe-shaped lamps. And the note is cut and pasted with letters from a magazine, like those ransom notes in the movies. And it reads, Hinkus is part of a criminal organization. He is a dangerous terrorist called Owl. Owl, O-W-L. Hmm. Hmm.

That's fitting. Creepy night bird with various supernatural connotations in different cultures. Yeah. This struck me as funny when I was watching just because my daughter is currently obsessed with owls. She loves to tell us what an owl says. It says hoo-hoo. Oh, that's correct. But anyway, the note goes on to say, a murder is planned. Do something.

So Glebski is troubled by this and he looks up on the roof to see the outline of Hinkus still in the chair up there and he calls out to him. He yells, Hinkus, Hinkus, Hinkus.

But unfortunately, this shout seems to trigger something. There is some kind of rumbling in the snow covered peaks above. This was an unfortunate Hinkus. And the ominous, like there's this ominous droning sound mat, this pad underneath everything that begins here.

And Hinkes from the roof does not respond. So Glebski runs up there and when he arrives, he finds that the silhouette in the chair that he believed to be Hinkes is actually just Hinkes's coat stuffed with balls of snow. It was like a decoy snowman. So where is Hinkes? Well, the rumbling, which started after Glebski's shout begins to reach a sort of peak of intensity. And then the hotel guests see out the windows, an avalanche coming down the mountainside.

Oh, man. So first he's Ferris Bueller by Hinkes here, and then we get the avalanche. And I have to point out, they apparently induced avalanches for the sequences we see in the film. They weren't relying on stock footage or anything. Now, I don't know the full details. They may have aligned that with planned induced avalanches that were done for safety reasons. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it looked totally real. I was like, these aren't special effects. Yeah, these are terrifying because at least later in the picture, I can't remember this sequence so much, but later in the picture we get one where it's coming right at the camera. And that's a lot of snow. That's a lot of mass coming at you. Totally agree. Yeah, very effective shots.

Uh, so when the avalanche happens, the power goes out at first, uh, and we will discover that the avalanche has blocked the road and trapped them on the hotel grounds. It has also knocked out the telephone lines. And according to Snavar in a later scene, it will probably be days before, uh, the authorities can clear the road and they can leave. So Glebski is sort of on the case. He's trying to figure out what's going on. He investigates Hinkes's room and finds it empty. Uh,

He searches through Hinkes' belongings and finds a small pistol in his suitcase. And then Glebski narrates, though, that this is not the weapon of a career criminal. He thinks somebody must be trying to set Hinkes up. But who? Next thing, Snavar and Kaisa bring someone in from outside the hotel, someone who appears to be unconscious.

And Glebski goes to help. And they're like, who is this? We don't know. What's wrong? Possibly hypothermia. And they're like, get brandy. Got to have liquor. Yeah, this is one of those movies where hard spirits are essentially potions of healing. You know, they're too cold? Get them some liquor. Oh, injured? Liquor. Delirium? Unconscious? Whatever it is, surely hard spirits can solve the problem.

I mean, I don't know why Hinkus is not just taking cotton candy flavored vodka for his tuberculosis, you know. Anyway, so Snavar guesses maybe this is a friend of Hinkus because he heard Hinkus dictating a telegram earlier telling someone to come quickly to join him at the hotel. So Hinkus has summoned someone earlier in the day and we don't know who, but maybe this is who he called.

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♪♪♪

Add a little... to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply. Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new Star Wars Rebels rewatch podcast. I'm Vanessa Marshall. Hi, I'm Tia Sarkar. I'm Taylor Gray. And I'm John Lee Brody. But you may also know us as Harrison Dula, Spectre 2. Sabine Wren, Spectre 5. And Ezra Bridger, Spectre 6 from Star Wars Rebels. Wait.

Uh, I wasn't on Star Wars Rebels. Am I in the right place? Absolutely. Each week, we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series. And share some fun behind-the-scenes stories. Sometimes we'll be visited by special guests like Steve Bloom, voice of Zabarelio Specter IV, or Dante Bosco, voice of Jai Kel, and many others. Sometimes we'll even have a lively debate. And we'll have plenty of other fun surprises and trivia, too. Oh, uh, and me? Well, I'm the lucky ghost crew Stowaway, who gets to help moderate and guide the discussion each week.

Kind of like how Kanan guided Ezra in the ways of the force. You see what I did there? Nicely done, John. Thanks, Tia. So hang on, because it's going to be a fun ride. Cue the music.

Listen to Potter Rebellion on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sonoro and iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like it. You like me? He actually is too good to be true.

This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Dilado painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think? After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take. Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this job.

Chulito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Setup as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Chiquis, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Chiquis and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys next.

And I know a lot of people are going to attack me. Why are you going to go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm going to tell you guys right now. I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong?

And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me, not only with women, but also with men. What should I do?

Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough because if he loved you, he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Anyway, they give the guy some brandy and get him to say a couple of words, but all he can say is the name of Olaf. Oh, remember, Olaf's already a guest here at the hotel. This is the dancer guy. So they go to check out Olaf's room, but when they get there, uh-oh, they find him lying out on the floor, pale, motionless, dead. Olaf is dead. Yeah.

All right. So now we really have a murder story going on here. It's time for our inspector to get back on the clock. Uh, he's got some work. Yeah. In fact, Olaf is not just dead. Like his head is twisted around unnaturally. It's kind of the exorcist, uh, going on here. So, uh, so of course, Glebski concludes what strength the killer must've had. And we see him like lie down on the floor and try to mimic like twisting his head around. Um,

But they also see that Olaf's hand was stretching out toward the handle of a suitcase. So it's like he was reaching for the suitcase when he died in another room. They find Hinkas finally, but he is found tied to a bed. He says he was attacked by someone and he does not know who.

and then the weird behavior just continues. Uh, we, uh, we encounter Simone, uh, Simone Simone, the physicist he's running around in his tidy white. He is trying to hide behind a sheet that he's like holding up with his hands. That's not going to work, buddy. Um, and we get a confession from him. Mrs. Moses is dead. He swears he didn't kill her. He says that he went into her room and she was already lying cold on the floor when he went in there. Uh,

Wait, no, not lying cold on the floor. She was standing upright, but cold and dead. And then her wig fell off, revealing a bald head. Things are getting stranger.

Yeah, yeah, we're getting kind of a blue sunshine vibe going on in this one. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, maybe she took the blue sunshine acid and now she's ready to activate. But then they go to Mrs. Moses' room to check this out, and she's not dead. She's in there alive reading a book. She's fine. She smiles at them. So something really weird is afoot now, and Glebski is starting to get frustrated.

Because I think when it was just a murder, he was sort of like, he was like, okay, I'm on the case. But now everything's so weird that he's like, I don't know what's going on and I don't like it.

So back in, uh, Simone's rooms, uh, Simone showers, he tries to sober up and Glebski shows him a strange contraption that he found with Olaf. It's this weird device inside the suitcase that Olaf had been reaching for. It has this soft pulsing light and it emits low beeping sounds. And Simone says he doesn't know what it is, but it could be something military or from outer space. Better be careful. And then he runs away in fear.

So I think they lock up this contraption in a cabinet under the dog bed, and Glebski has the only key. So he's the only person who can get to this suitcase now. He goes and tries to talk to Brun, and the mystery just keeps developing. He tries to talk to Brun about what happened. She apparently saw Hinkes walking in the hall after he claimed to have been attacked.

And, uh, then we go and check with Hinkes about this, what was going on, you know, were you lying? And he says that it was him that he tied himself up. The implication here is that there is another one of him.

And this is a great scene. It's especially a great place for the actor Mick McAveer playing Hinkus to really shine because he's not just saying, oh, yeah, yeah, I encountered me and I tied him up. The character is clearly confronting this moment of horror, this moment of

of duplication where he encountered like his own double, his own doppelganger here and had this kind of violent interaction with them and is clearly just

traumatized and confused by the whole incident. Yes. Agree that McIver is great in the scene and Glebski is totally disturbed at this point. He's, he wanders through the hotel by himself thinking over the case. I like here. There's a, there's a visual motif of flickering lights, like often somewhere in the background, a light will flutter on and then flutter off on a loop throughout a scene. Yeah. Yeah.

there's also a moment in here where somebody is watching TV or at least there's a TV on somewhere like in the lobby of the hotel. And it looks like what it's showing is like news clips of people falling out of buildings. Yeah, this was very disturbing. Uh, so this is like in a, I think this kind of like circular room with one of these neat, like central circular, uh, stoves warming everything up. And there's a TV and, uh,

Yeah, it was disturbing because on one hand, I kind of have to assume this is real footage of people falling to their deaths here. So it's outside of the context of the film. It's disturbing to see that kind of thing. But even within the context of the film, why is it playing here in the lobby of the hotel? Do they just play Faces of Death on repeat here? Yeah. Do they tune into the outlaw Videodrome snuff channel as in Cronenberg's Videodrome film? It's just weird and strange.

and just adds to that level of uncertainty about where we're going in this film. Yeah, yeah.

So there were more interrogation scenes where Glebski is trying to figure out what what's happening. He interrogates Brun about what happened earlier when she went to Olaf's room. She said that they were there dancing, kissing, having a wild time. And then suddenly they see the avalanche beginning outside the window of the room. And Olaf panics and throws Brun out of the room into the hall. And then later he's found dead.

Glebski and Alex sort of talk over the mystery together. Snavar's sort of Glebski's confidant. He's playing his Dr. Watson. And Alex says that Glebski's rational investigatory tools are useless here. He says, like time at greater than light speed. That's a strange comparison. But then he says, there is nothing we can do. You are not ripe yet. And this is the moment when Glebski says, I'm so ripe I will fall off the tree soon.

I love this exchange. I assume something is lost in translation here. Like it doesn't fully translate into English from the original Estonian, but I still sort of get it. Like it still feels very true. Yeah, yeah. So in the scene also they talk about the concept of zombies and Snavar wonders if perhaps zombie is the third state of living organisms beyond life and death. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, very haunted. So Glebski falls asleep listening to Snavar talk about zombies. And then he has dreams of skiing down a vast snow-covered mountainside. And he's going so fast. He seems to be smiling at first, but then maybe it seems his expression is actually one of fear. There are weird tones on the soundtrack that sound like animals wheezing. And then suddenly in the dream, Glebski goes off the edge of a cliff.

And he falls and falls into the snow down below. And then from up above, a figure looks down at his body. We zoom on the figure and there are two figures. In fact, it is the dead mountaineer from the portrait and his dog, Lell.

Yeah, really great moment, you know, haunting and also makes us think back to that kind of the shrine like qualities of the dead mountaineers portrait, you know, is the dead mountaineer like a, even in the context of dream here is like a ghost, is it a divine force?

And I also have to point out, this may be the only sequence in the film where anybody does any skiing. Yeah. And it is within a dream. No, there is some skiing later, but it happens without skis and in the wrong direction. Yes. Yes. And by, by robots, I guess, well, we did see the hang gliding earlier and I guess maybe that involves skiing. I don't know how they got up there. Maybe they skied off of something. Not sure. Uh, well,

We'll come back to that in a minute. So Glebski is woken up by the St. Bernard Lell like slobbering on his face. And apparently the dog has brought him something. It is a gun covered in drool. So Glebski is like, where did it come from, boy? And Lell leads him outside into the snow and shows him where the gun was. Glebski deduces that it must have been thrown from the roof. So did it belong to Hinkus?

Next, Snavar brings news. Remember that unconscious guy we found outside? He's conscious now. So they go to interrogate him. And now that he's awake, he really looks like death. There's this dark makeup under his eyes. His skin is pale, even kind of blue in places. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot and he just stares ahead in a daze.

And Glebski interrogates him, finds out that his name is Luarvik, Mr. Luarvik Luarvik. He is looking for Olaf and he won't say a whole lot. Glebski is like, who are you? Are you a foreigner? And the man says, yes, a foreigner. And also in this scene, Mr. Moses, remember him? He was kind of like nondescript earlier on. He tries to sneak in on the interrogation, but Glebski chases him away.

And Lurvik on finding out that Olaf is dead, doesn't seem all that concerned. He says, uh, he, well, he still needs to see Olaf anyway, to conduct some business with him. And Glebski is like, no, he's dead. And Lurvik is like, yeah, let me talk to him. Uh,

But in this whole scene, Lurvik is dreamy, languid, kind of unconcerned, but does look like he's in a bad state. And he does identify Olaf's body. He says he recognizes him and he knew him from elsewhere. And this was one scene yet again. This is all throughout the movie, but I really noticed the presence of the modular mirrors and the sets in the scene.

Yeah, and it's fitting, especially at this point in the picture, because we have already come head to head with this, with the theme of duplication here, of doppelgangers and doubles. And so, yeah, I feel like we're constantly seeing characters in mirrors or multiple mirrors, and the hotel eventually feels like a place that's not only on the edge of the wilderness, but also on the edge of the known universe. Yeah, yeah. So, Lurvik says he's looking for the suitcase that Olaf had.

And Glebski says, I'm not just going to give it to you. You got to answer questions first. But of course, Lurvik, he doesn't want to answer questions. He just wants the suitcase. Instead of answering questions, he gets very slow and says that he must lie down. And then he just sort of slumps back and appears to go to sleep with his eyes open. Somewhere in here, there's a scene with Snavar playing the organ and he's not good at it. And Glebski is just kind of lounging, stoically smoking a cigarette and listening to the bad organ concert.

And so, you know, they again have one of their detective consultation sessions. They talk to each other about what could be going on. And Glebsky says, you know, he's nearly convinced that Lurvik, Olaf and Mr. Moses or either Mr. or Mrs. Moses, maybe both of them. He doesn't say who he says they belong to the same gang, which doesn't want publicity.

And he thinks Hinkus is somehow connected to them as well because of the gun he found. So Glebski comes up with a plan. He says he's going to stop detaining Hinkus and set him free, quote, like a fox into a chicken coop to see what happens. Meanwhile, Glebski is busy playing with a metal windup robot toy. I don't know about this plan, Glebski. Is that a good police work plan? Yeah.

Yeah, it seems like this is more like rogue cop territory, right? Yeah. So everybody comes down for breakfast the next morning, I guess, when he's going to set Hinkus loose. And Simone says, I sense the smell of death in here. And Bruin says, beautiful weather today. Poor Olaf didn't live to see it.

And Lurvik is now at breakfast with the rest of them. He has to be guided to his breakfast chair and he eats some piece of fruit, like letting this juice run all over his face. I think Hinkus arrives to breakfast wearing a tuxedo. That's kind of, that's a choice. But Glebski says, you know, quote, it appears some crooks selected this hotel as a place to settle their scores. With the help of Mr. Snavar, I sent word to the police by pigeon that

The police helicopter will arrive shortly. The criminals will get their just desserts. I advise that criminal activity be ceased. Of course, what is Mrs. Moses reaction to this going to be? Of course, she's like, oh boy, how exciting killers among us. I love it. Stop doing crimes, everybody, because the helicopter will shoot. Yes. I got the pigeon to bring a helicopter that will stop you from doing crimes. Of course, the pigeon thing was actually a bluff. Glebski knows he is on his own.

Now this leads up to the interrogation of Hinkas scene. Hinkas is like the last one eating breakfast and then Glovesky watches him and pulls him aside. He,

He's like, okay, I know about you from the note I received. You're this criminal called owl. And Hinkes says, no, I'm not owl. I don't know what you're talking about. He's asked about the gun. He denies that it's his, but then suddenly he, he sort of busts out and unleashes martial arts that he would not have seemed prepared to, uh, to deliver. Like he he's been playing like he's in poor health, but he easily beats up Glebski knocks him nearly unconscious, takes the gun with him, uh,

And then while the inspector is lying on the floor, we hear Hinkes fighting with someone else off camera. And somehow, I guess it is Simone, the physicist, like Simone bests Hinkes and then helps Glebski up. That's unexpected. Yeah. So now it's time to interrogate Hinkes once more. Yeah, round two here. And Hinkes finally spills the beans. He's like, okay, here's the deal.

Have you heard of the hit squads? That's what he says. I was a member of one of them. Something terrible is going on here. Supernatural forces are at work.

He explains that, quote, half a year ago, some guy approached us. No one knew his name. They called him Master. They assigned him the hardest jobs. Remember the second national bank job? That was his doing. But then he quit working for us, left us high and dry. Oh, yes, he was always a bit eccentric, wouldn't let us kill hostages or anyone. He said we shouldn't. That's why we had a fight with the boss. And then he disappeared, along with his assistant and his wife.

I was ordered by the boss to find them. And Glebski says, and you found them here. Who are they? And Hinka says, no, you tell me who they are. What man could get the better of me as if I were a kitten?

So you think he's talking about Simone here because Simone just like beat him up after the first interrogation and we look at Simone. But actually it goes in a different direction. Hinkes says, this woman, Moses knows I would not let him live. So he set his wife against me. She was coming right at me. You don't believe me, but I was approaching myself.

And so we see in Hinkus's flashback, Mrs. Moses in her fur coat seeming to transform into a doppelganger of Hinkus and then attack him by pushing him out a glass window. So what's going on? I don't know. But Mrs. Moses apparently can transform her appearance and become copies of people and attack them. Yeah, we have shapeshifters among us now.

So Hinkes admits he's here to hunt down this guy, the master, and his assistant and his wife. Now, Hinkes says he doesn't actually know what happened to Olaf. He says he never laid a finger on him, but...

his gang boss is coming with three or four guys to finish the job to kill Mr. Moses, who in fact, the nondescript Mr. Moses, who seemed so innocent and, you know, not even very remarkable was in fact, this, this criminal mastermind, the master who did the second national bank job. And except he got into some kind of squabble with this terrorist or criminal gang. And now they're, they're looking for revenge.

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Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new Star Wars Rebels rewatch podcast. I'm Vanessa Marshall. Hi, I'm Tia Sarkar. I'm Taylor Gray. And I'm John Lee Brody. But you may also know us as Harrison Dula, Spectre 2. Sabine Wren, Spectre 5. And Ezra Bridger, Spectre 6 from Star Wars Rebels. Wait.

Uh, I wasn't on Star Wars Rebels. Am I in the right place? Absolutely. Each week, we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series. And share some fun behind-the-scenes stories. Sometimes we'll be visited by special guests like Steve Bloom, voice of Zabarelio Specter IV, or Dante Bosco, voice of Jai Kel, and many others. Sometimes we'll even have a lively debate. And we'll have plenty of other fun surprises and trivia, too. Oh, uh, and me? Well, I'm the lucky ghost crew stowaway who gets to help moderate and guide the discussion each week.

Kind of like how Kanan guided Ezra in the ways of the force. You see what I did there? Nicely done, John. Thanks, Tia. So hang on, because it's going to be a fun ride. Cue the music.

Listen to Potter Rebellion on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Sonoro and iHeart's My Cultura Podcast Network present The Setup, a new romantic comedy podcast starring Harvey Guillen and Christian Navarro. The Setup follows a lonely museum curator searching for love. But when the perfect man walks into his life... Well, I guess I'm saying I like you. You like me? He actually is too good to be true.

This is a con. I'm conning you to get the Delano painting. We could do this together. To pull off this heist, they'll have to get close and jump into the deep end together. That's a huge leap, Fernando, don't you think? After you, Chulito. But love is the biggest risk they'll ever take. Fernando's never going to love you as much as he loves this doll.

Chulito, that painting is ours. Listen to The Setup as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all. It's your girl, Chiquis, and I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Chiquis and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys next.

And I know a lot of people are going to attack me. Why are you going to go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm going to tell you guys right now, I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom. Like that, like yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh, and I thought, what did I do wrong?

And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies. So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me, not only with women, but also with men. What should I do?

Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough because if he loved you, he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me. Listen to Cheekies and Chill season four as part of the My Cultura podcast network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right. So we've reached the secret mob members level of the big reveal here. But then there's going to be another reveal, which is – so there's a confrontation where Glebski goes into a room with Snavar and Simone. They're all here gathered in the room. And when Glebski enters the room, he sees himself. What? What?

But then the other him transforms back into someone else. He realizes that here in the room are Mr. And Mrs. Moses and someone else, Lou Arvik sitting doubled over in a chair. And, uh, Glebsky tries to say, okay, based on the testimony of Hinkus, Mr. Moses, you are guilty of the robbery of the second national bank and of the murder of Olaf. And I'm going to have to arrest you.

But Simone is there and he explains, no, no, no, you don't get it. Inspector. These are not humans. They're aliens from another planet. He says, I don't know where they're from another dimension or galaxy, but they're in trouble and we have to help them. He says, Mr. Moses arrived here as an observer, but he made a fatal mistake. He should not have contacted humans.

And Mr. Moses explains, he says, it's true. I wasn't supposed to interfere with human life, but when I saw how you were living, I broke the rule. I wanted to help you so much, but your life proved to be too complex for me. So somehow this, this part is a little murky for me, but somehow I,

Mr. Moses being an alien observer of earth who was supposed to look at human life but not interfere with it decided that he took pity on us because of all the human suffering and got involved but the way he got involved was with some kind of criminal gang I'm not quite sure I'm making the connection there.

Yeah, yeah. Maybe there's some sort of Robin Hood thing going on there, or maybe he was like, crime is doing a lot of damage. I'm going to get in there and do crime really well, but not hurt anybody. Yeah, yeah. And that was, so I don't know. You know, he's going up against very difficult societal problems and so forth. But given all the backstory we already got from Hingis, now we know that the gang bosses are hunting down these fugitive aliens. Yeah.

And so Mr. Moses is here at the hotel so he could leave the planet. They say here in the mountains is our launch pad, but the avalanche destroyed the generator that powered our robots. So Mrs. Moses and Olaf are the robot helpers of Mr. Moses and Lou Arvik. The man they discovered outside is the pilot of the alien spaceship and he was severely injured. They say his space suit is torn. He's becoming weaker every second. Um,

So, uh, so what, I mean, this, this reveal is very sudden and it's just kind of like poured on Glebski and like, how is he supposed to react?

Yeah. And again, it doesn't come with reveals of robotic interiors to human bodies or anything like that. Right. But they say that, remember that suitcase Olaf was reaching for? It actually has another battery. And if they return it, if Glebski will return the battery to them, Olaf can be revived and then he won't be dead at all. He's just a robot who's on low power and they'll give him more power and he's fine. So this won't actually be a murder. Right.

But Glebski thinks this is all madness. He says that every crime can be explained by appealing to fantasy. And this leads to arguments between Glebski and Simone. Simone is saying like, look, you're being offered proof right now. See for yourself. But Glebski says, interestingly, quote, I'm not a scientist. I'm a police officer. I've heard too many lies about the suitcase. So he's sort of saying that he operates independently.

Not just on physical evidence, but by primarily suspicion of motive, which can even override physical evidence. Hmm.

Oh, we also find out here that Mr. Moses is the one that called the police and slipped the note into Glebski's pocket. And it's because he wanted to be rid of Hinkus and he knew Hinkus was there. He was the criminal who was hunting him. And so at one point in this conversation, Mr. Moses laments, he's like, it's troubling that you won't be convinced because our robots are too convincing as humans. You know, if they were just obviously robots, then maybe you'd believe us. He says, it's a pity I can't show you my real face.

So yeah, this is kind of getting to my earlier point about this is not the sort of film that needs to show you the alien face that the robotic interior is. Again, I wouldn't have said no to it, but you can understand this choice based on this interaction. Yeah, yeah. But here we get this conflict with Glebski where he's like, no, I must turn you into the law. Yeah.

So he's conflicted and he wanders around the hotel alone. At one point, he even picks up a phone receiver and then says in voiceover narration that he wishes the phone would simply give him orders to follow because he sort of feels like he can't think for himself. He can't decide what's the right thing to do.

Uh, so he like walks out into the snow and he meets Brune out there. Remember Brune was the one who was in love with Olaf and Brune begs him to give the battery to them so they can revive Olaf. So she's read into the whole theory now and she believes it. He he's like, uh, Glebski tries to tell her this is nonsense. It's a fairy tale. Uh, but she says, if there's something that even might help him, you've got to give it a try. And she says, if Olaf is an Android, maybe she's an Android too. She says, how could I know?

So this all finally leads to a conclusion where Glebski is trying to arrest Mr. Moses and won't give the battery back. But eventually he is sort of overpowered and overruled by Simone and by Snavar, who both they they are aware of the aliens and robots and they want to help them. So they sort of restrain Glebski and they get the suitcase and they give it to the aliens so that Olaf can be powered back up.

And there are these moments in here where Simone is reflecting on the tragedy of the situation. Simone says, here is the first encounter between two worlds. Think of how amazing this is. But think that they arrive from God knows where. First, they meet terrorists, and then they meet a police officer like you, Glebsky, sort of saying like you're showing them the worst side of humanity.

but finally, as, uh, as the aliens get the, the battery back and they're allowed to escape, like the whole building starts shaking and rumbling, like something huge is coming. Glass shatters in the windows. Uh, and we hear a, uh,

voice echoing, uh, saying goodbye. Humans real contact is yet to come. And then we get one of the most striking shots in the movie, which is the aliens departing. They're like cloaked figures, seemingly skiing uphill without skis to the top of the mountain so they can get in their spaceship and leave.

Yeah. Just, just robots moving swiftly, unnaturally over the surface of the snow. Right. So Mrs. Moses is carrying Mr. Moses. Olaf is carrying Lou Arvik and they're going to escape to the stars. Unfortunately, Oh, here comes a helicopter. And at first you might think, Oh, the helicopter that's, that's going to be their rescue, right? No, it's the gang. It's the gang members. It's a Hinkus's gang arriving and,

And the helicopter buzzes over their heads. Finally, uh, Snavar sees it and says, God, forgive us all. The helicopter unleashes its guns and it kills the two aliens and the, uh, the androids and they lie dead in the snow. Yeah. Blows them right up. Uh, aliens, robots completely destroyed.

So the helicopter, we see like the St. Bernard howling in pity, the helicopter leaves, uh, silent mountain peaks with this, with again, the creepy squeaking synthesizers playing out the story. Uh, and then the end of the camera, like zooms in on the sun and then zooms out from the hotel. There is a lot of zooming of the camera, uh, in this film, uh, and a huge avalanche approaches billowing over the mountainside, finally enveloping the camera. This is one of these avalanche shots we talked about earlier. And the

And the final shot of the film is actually Glebski later in black and white, suddenly staring directly into the camera. And he asks why you're looking at them, looking at him. He insists that he acted correctly. He says by upholding the law, he performed his duty and the law is sacred. And he's sort of like, he gets defensive and angry and just repeatedly insists directly into the audience's face that he was right. He did the right thing. And Glebski,

considerations to the contrary are just being illogical. Now, according to the feature at this scene, this capper at the end in black and white, uh, with them speaking directly to the camera, this is actually footage from, this is casting footage for the film. And they added it in post because the studio thought that the ending wasn't clear enough. That's interesting. Which,

Which is, yeah, I mean, I think it still works. You know, it reminds me a bit of, you know, some of those fourth wall breaking moments in...

baraka or the ending of the mission uh you know there's a and it makes sense it's not completely out of context with the film because we get those scenes where he's narrating he's speaking to us and then it seems kind of fitting that at the end he is looking at us he is addressing us directly about this strange encounter that he had and these choices that he had to make yeah

And I, I guess that does it for dead mountaineers hotel, but, uh, I found this a really interesting film. Uh, it does actually raise interesting themes in the end, uh, but they kind of come late in the film. These themes about like, uh, can this, this bureaucratic functionary, this policeman, like make a decision that makes sense given what he's just encountered, or can he just like not accept what's in front of him and sort of act as a, as almost as a machine, as a robot himself. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's a fascinating film. I really enjoyed diving into it. I enjoyed getting into this realm of Estonian cinema. So, yeah, we'll throw it out to our listeners there. If you've seen Dead Mountaineers Hotel or if you've read the source material or are you yourself listening from Estonia, do you have additional insight about Estonian culture and cinema locations, actors and so forth? Write in. We would love to hear from you.

Just a reminder that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with new episodes, core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a short forum episode on Wednesdays, a listener mail on Mondays. But then on Fridays, we just set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want a full list of the movies we've covered over the years, go to letterboxd.com. That's L-E-T-T-E-R-B-O-X-D.com. Our username is Weird House. You'll find a list there of everything we've covered so far and sometimes a peek ahead at what's coming up next.

Our regular audio producer, JJ Posway, is out this week. So huge thanks to our guest producer, Andrew Howard, for helping us out today. Appreciate it, Andrew. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us, as always, at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com. ♪♪♪

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What's up, y'all? I'm A.J. Andrews, pro softball player, sports analyst, and the first woman to win a Rawlings gold glove. On my new podcast, Dropping Diamonds, we dive headfirst into the world of softball by sharing powerful stories, insights, and conversations that inspire and empower. It's time to drop bombs and diamonds.

Dropping Diamonds with AJ Andrews is an iHeart Women's Sports production in partnership with Athletes Unlimited Softball League and Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to Dropping Diamonds with AJ Andrews on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Brought to you by Novartis, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports Network. Hey, all you Women's Hoops fans and folks who just don't know yet that they're Women's Hoops fans. We've got a big week over at Good Game with Sarah Spain as we near the end of one of the most exciting women's college basketball seasons ever, the

the most parody we've seen in years, with games coming down to the wire and everyone wondering which team will be crowned national champions this weekend in Tampa. Listen to Good Game with Sarah Spain on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

My husband cheated on me with two women. He wants to stay together because he has cancer. Should I stay? Okay, Sam, that has to be the craziest story in OK Storytime podcast history. Well, John, that's because it's Dump'Em Week, and this user writes, Last week, we had an attempted break-in. I asked my husband, who was supposed to be at his mom's, to come over and change the locks, but his mom told me he wasn't with her. And it took me less than an

hour to find the first two women he was cheating on me with. Did you leave them? Well, to find out how this story ends, follow the OK Storytime podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.