Leave Her to Heaven (1945) with Russell Guest

Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

In this conversation, John E. Cornelison and Russell from Retro Movie Roundtable discuss the film noir movie Leave Her to Heaven (1945). They share their initial thoughts on the movie, the director’s background, and the unique elements of the film. They explore the genre of film noir and how it can be seen in different genres. They discuss the performances of Gene Tierney and Vincent Price, as well as the dark and complex character of Ellen. They also touch on the themes of obsession, possessiveness, and the tragic endings of some Hollywood stars. Overall, they recommend the movie but caution that it is a dark and heavy film.

Takeaways – Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

• ‘Leave Her to Heaven’ is a unique film noir shot in Technicolor, which was unusual for the genre in 1945.
• The movie explores themes of obsession, possessiveness, and the dark side of love.
• Gene Tierney delivers a standout performance as the complex and manipulative character of Ellen.
• The film subverts expectations by combining elements of romance, melodrama, and psychological thriller.
• The tragic endings of some Hollywood stars, like Gene Tierney, highlight the challenges and pressures faced by actors in the industry.

Transcript – Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Hey, I’m here tonight. I’m happy to be here with Russell Guest from Retro Movie Roundtable. He’s one of the knights over there, and those guys do great jobs with their movies. Welcome, Russell. All right, John. Hey, thanks for having me on. We had a blast when you came on to our Inherit the Wind episode. So I am excited to come visit you on your show here. That was a lot of fun coming on the show. It was like, well, I think we talked an hour and a half and probably could have kept on going if we if we weren’t tired.

That’s how we that’s how we go. We usually run about 90 minutes, actually. So it’s if you like those deep dives, that’s what we do. I do. I hope to don’t go that deep tonight, though. I was just noticing how just how prolific you all are over there and how, you know, I just watched the movie come out on my pod cast player and I’m I’m so far behind, but I’m watching. Oh, wow. They did that movie while they did that movie. We’ll recommend that show the retro movie roundtable to anybody out there

appreciates movies. There’s some great information. Oh, well, thanks, John. I mean, we’ve been doing this since 2018. So we are having a blast. There are five hosts. So we give different perspectives each week. It’s not just me. It’s you know, there are five of us and great team over there. Yeah. Well, we’re here tonight to talk about a film, Noir, that’s shot in color, which is one of the few. And it is a Lever to Heaven, 1945. And so we’ll just jump right in.

What are your initial thoughts on this movie Russell? You know, I hadn’t seen this movie before we covered it on our show. So I went in, I watched the movie Laura with Gene Tierney and Vincent Price in it. They’re in this movie. And to be honest with you, I really, really loved the movie Laura so much. Otto Preminger movie. It’s a great movie. You should definitely check that out. Seeing that movie made me want to see more from Gene Tierney. And this was where she got nominated for an Oscar. And man,

She was phenomenal here, too. Benson Price was great here again as well. And I had to say my expectations of what we were going to get were completely sidetracked. I didn’t know where this movie was going initially, and I did not intentionally read a lot about it. So I kind of went in blind and doing that was really enjoyable. I went I had a lot of misdirection here. I kind of feel the same way because I picked up Gene Tierney at an older movie called The Shanghai Gesture.

I’m not sure which year was, but and then I watched Laura and of course loved it. You know, great movie. Dana Andrews is one of my favorites. And and this one, I was like, yeah, what’s going on here? You know, what’s driving all this? I couldn’t really figure out what was behind everything that was happening with her. And they wrote they never really told us either in the movie. She just loves too much. She loves too much. I don’t need that kind of love. Understatement. Yeah, yeah.

So I looked up to the director, which is John M. Stahl, and it’s just really not that much. You know, he’d been there and he made some movies, but no, you know, there’s no really super back catalog to look at on him. He was near the end of his career, I thought. And, you know, I just thought there would be more to this movie. There’s three movies that I think come up with him, Imitation of Life from 34, Magnificent Obsession 35, and When Tomorrow Comes at 39. But this movie.

is a change in direction from him. His movies, and I don’t mean this in a derogatory term, it’s terms like he made women’s movies, if you will, and like in these romance movies. And this was a change of direction for him. I think there are noir elements in this movie that you don’t if you want more of that from him, you’re not going to get that anywhere. So this movie is a bit of a turn for Stahl. It’s late in his career, too, as you can tell. Yeah, so I mean.

This is unique. I wouldn’t say like if this were a musician, this would be like the one hit wonder. He’s not a one hit wonder that he never had any hits, but if you want more like this, there’s not really more like this in his catalog per se. It’s interesting for even at the time because it’s crisscrossing genres in a way. We see this more today, but at the time, you’d have elements of like a romantic melodrama. Right. But like the noir and I think there’s a sense of mystery in where this is going.

And this psychological thriller is also in there. I mean, it’s a lot of things at one time. And I think that’s that’s great storytelling. There’s a good tradition of film noir is being set in New Mexico, too. I thought that was kind of interesting if they picked that location. You’re more versed in this era, John, but I didn’t realize noir had seeped into other genres as much as it had at this part of the 40s. I mean, I think when you think of noir, I had been thinking of like The Maltese Falcon (1941),

Double Indemnity (1944), like crime. You know, this is this is a, you know, asphalt jungle, something like that, where, you know, there’s crime involved. And this is again, this is not necessarily fitting that template. But I mean, we just covered The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). There are noir elements that come into the western side. And as I’m reading and doing more homework, I’m discovering noir was so big that it just started to permeate other elements. So here we are in this romantic drama, melodrama, if you will.

I think I realized finally how big it was when I did a gothic noor called Dark Waters (1944), set in a swampy plantation in Louisiana somewhere. But yeah, so I’ve been looking at noor and trying to look at it a little differently because going to my archaeological background, like a pottery kind will type will show up and it won’t be the dominant type. And then eventually everybody’s using it. Then it tapers off.

And I’m starting to look at film noir on a much longer continuum like that and seeing like, well, they were really doing it way back here and they kept on doing it to way over here. So kind of a different thing. But I love that parallel. That’s a really good point. I mean, and I’m discovering that as well, too. So the farther you go into it, the more that it seems to permeate. And I like this place that it is because the psychological drama side of it, I mean, just shooting it in technicolor like this doesn’t feel like a noir, doesn’t have those.

high contrast, what they call low key lighting, where you get these really dark, dark colors. We just covered the third man. It’s one of the blackest movies you’ll ever see. And it’s gorgeous. It’s a beautiful movie. Really amazing movie. I highly recommend that one as well. But I mean, in that one, you have this look of noir, if you will. This doesn’t have that. Everything’s really bright. It’s almost too comforting, if you will. It’s almost too perfect. There’s another one called Niagara.

with Marilyn Monroe and it’s a color noir and people, they just don’t they don’t want to accept it. They can’t believe it’s real, you know, you know, but it is it gives you almost instead of like that dark foreboding like, oh, this is going to turn out pretty well. They’ll have a happy ending at the end, you know, and just go away together and live happily ever after because you expect that out of, you know, a color love story. I mean, this this movie.

had me enchanted with it at the beginning. I loved it. When we meet Jean Tierney on the train, she is just, she’s very charming. She’s like, I mean, it’s almost too good to be true, so to speak. I mean, a woman who’s wealthy of this stature and gorgeous. I mean, you know, looking across, striking up conversation and seemingly falling head over heels for him. I mean, at the end of the day, there’s some major red flags. I mean, she’s like, you look like my father. It’s weird that you want to…

You want to be with a man who looks so much like your father. That’s like, you know, you’re willing to call off your engagement to be with this guy. So I caught that one line when she said that and I thought, well, that’s not good. Yeah. Well, on the other hand, she is so charming and stuff at first. I mean, and she is so pretty. I mean, you’re willing to put a lot of things aside. I mean, maybe I’m just suckered in by Gene Tierney, but I was right there with Cornel Wilde going into here. And it took me a while. And then I thought the family.

did something to her father. I thought there was foul play by the mother or something like that. I thought Gene was more the victim. And there’s this weird like adoption of the cousin. And it looks like there could be something nefarious with that. But no, no, at the end of the day, you know, Ellen’s Ellen, who’s played by Gene Tierney, is the one who’s just like internally, you know, she’s crazy. She’s crazy. She’s like, she’s like, you know, what do you call it? Fatal attraction kind of level crazy. Oh, yeah.

ball the bunny, right? She’s all she’s definitely that. Yeah, she’s so beautiful, you know, and just, you know, just she’s just so striking to look at. And that other one, I was mentioning Shanghai gesture. She she’s much younger and it’s just it’s amazing how beautiful she was back in the day. I mean, John Kennedy was with her prior to running for his presidential reign. Like, you know, run. He ends up calling it off, you know, as a Catholic man. I can’t, you know, be.

marrying you and all these things like that. So politics aside, but I mean, she was she was a big deal in her time. I didn’t realize that. It didn’t pan out in the end. She has a really tragic life, unfortunately. She has she has she contracts a fever when she’s like, you know, going out and promoting the war, selling war bonds and stuff like that. And and it affects her child. And so her child is born with major.

handicaps and problems. And so it was really hard for her. So around the time that this movie hits, she’s going through a lot of enormous problems in her own life. And I think she’s able to channel some of that into this, that, you know, pain that’s within the character. I mean, I can’t if you look at where she is in her life, this is not a happy time in Gene’s life at this point. So, I mean, it takes her a long time to get happy again, because she goes through multiple marriages. She has mental

She has mental breakdown. She’s actually treated in a mental facility. She was given shock treatment and it was not it was not a it’s not a good run for Gene. But by the end, you know, by she marries somebody who is incredibly wealthy oil man, I believe it was. And she did she did have a good end of life. But I mean, I think she said kindly, it’s like, I found somebody who loves me when I’m crazy, too. Yeah. But she she ended up working like in a department store.

later on and people would be like, are you Jean Tierney? And so, you know, and so, you know, it’s a story that you see a lot. I mean, women, it’s not just Marilyn Monroe who has that tragic ending at that time. Marilyn Monroe and Gilda Heyworth. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they said that, you know, every every man thought that he was going home with the actress and they found out, you know, they were going home with her and her problems in the morning. That’s what she said.

You know, being born with all those great looks, I don’t know. I hope this generation of stars doesn’t have these sad stories. But I remember recovered Pink Panther and I remember Capucine later in life, not right then, but she throws herself off her balcony, you know, like, I mean, like, you know, on the rocks below. I mean, it’s it’s it’s amazing when you have all this talent, all these beautiful looks are, you know, but there’s there’s a painful life that runs behind that. I can only imagine that Elizabeth Taylor is a very complex character of that nature, too.

So I don’t want to get too dark. The lady that was in Angel and the Bad Man (1947) with John Wayne, I’m going to pull her name a couple hours from now, but she actually became an alcoholic and starved to death in her apartment in Hollywood. And it’s just, you know, because it seems like these stars, they’re there with the ladies, their windows are so short and then they were just tossed aside. You know, there’s so many tragic endings.

You know, you got 80 year old Harrison Ford out there still playing Indiana Jones, but Karen Allen can barely get a scene. I love Karen Allen. She’s great. I do too. Yeah. Well, let’s just press on a little bit. That was a good that was set up on the train, you know, immediately. I thought like, oh, is this a stranger’s on a train? You know, when they when they first met, you know, and she’s reading the book with Cornell Wild’s picture on the dust jacket.

You know, and she doesn’t realize who he is, accuses him of plagiarizing his own work. She says the book’s not very good either, which I particularly like. She never really… At no point does she really like his writing in this movie. Yeah. And that Cornel Wilde, he’s a great actor. He was in a few a few film noir’s himself, you know, a lot of those tights and fights movies. And he really had an amazing career. At first, in this part of this movie, I thought he was a little cardboardish, but…

I gained a lot of respect for him in the back half of this movie because he demonstrates a lot of character transformation in this. He’s a broken man where he basically loses his child. And by the time he loses his brother and this woman has taken so much from him and, you know, he’s damaged. And you see how broken he is at the end. And I had to say, especially upon subsequent rewatches, I was like, wow, yeah.

It’s not there in the beginning. He could be anybody just a handsome face at the beginning. But then later on, it’s like, he’s good. He’s got a worker. Yeah, he is a good. And so they after they meet on the train and they end up, I guess they’ve been invited to Ray Collins, his house played Glenn Roby was his lawyer. Ray Collins, I like how they set the story up and told it in reverse to make it a good, you know, a good film nor fit.

That’s always a highlight, you know, when somebody else is narrating the past. Ray Collins, of course, he’s famous for, you know, all those Perry Mason movies where he shows where he was Lieutenant Tragg. But they go out there and it meets the family. The family seems very nice, you know, very stable. She seems devoted to her father scattering his ashes and everything, like you said earlier. There was some stuff that made me question that. I wasn’t.

I wasn’t all on board with the family because like Ellen was gone for 12 hours and then just like, and he was like, should we go find Ellen? And they’re like, nah, she’s fine. She’s always fine. I’m like, this, there’s something weird here. And again, it was Ellen that was the weird piece later and then she had alienated the rest of the family because she was so attached to her dad. If there was ever a prequel to this, I’d be very curious to see, you know, the damage that she had done to the rest of her family by possessing her father in that same way. Well, you got to write that then. You got to write that yourself.

I mean, it’s not a happy story either. Yeah. So I just I just put that part off to like, oh, she was an independent Western woman. And, you know, and the you know, it’s such a vast distances out there. She’ll come back eventually. That’s what I thought. But maybe maybe that was another one of the clues that I just went right over my head. There were red flags upon subsequent watches that you can see. But I mean, at the beginning, there was just so many possibilities. And maybe it’s just me.

coming off of like I’d seen Gene and where the sidewalk ends in Dragonwick and Laura (1944) and she is not a nefarious character in any of these things. So, like, I mean, this was this was subverting what I was expecting from her. Yeah, this was the first time I watched this film, too, and it’s the only time I’ve watched it so far. So most of the time, by the time we get to talking about a film, I’ve watched it six or seven times just over my lifetime. But this one’s a new one.

So then Vincent Price, who’s always great, he said he was in Laura. He’s in Dragon Wake with Gene Tierney as well, by the way. That movie’s not nearly as good as Laura or this movie, but you know, this is their third movie that I’ve seen with the two of them together. Yeah. And he’s not thought of, he’s thought of as this horror guy, you know, thriller, you know, and to see him in these old movies like this. And he’s just he’s pretty solid, very solid actor.

Not what you think of as what he would later become known for, but he’s definitely good as that lawyer politician character in here. Yeah, and she crushed him. She crushed him terribly in that scene. So I guess that was another sign that she’s really good at destroying people. That was perhaps some signs when she was so cold and breaking that off. It wasn’t like, hey, I met this other guy and I really love him. It was just there was a coldness in how she just cast him away. You know, I mean, she’s like,

That’s a tribute. And he’s like, and I’ll always love you. Is that a threat? Like, I mean, there was something unusual how all that was going. And in fairness, he was being very political about like asking her to wait until the fall to call off the wedding. But in both ways, none of that felt natural. And so, again, there’s this unease building in you as a viewer. You don’t really know Jean’s character, Ellen, is bad until I think it’s at the doctor and she’s asking Danny not to come to the back of the moon.

the two of them because she does not want any company around at all. And she’s like, but he’s a cripple. And like really harshly and like the doctor, you know, she regains composure just like that. Says, I didn’t mean that. And the doctor is like, I’m sure you didn’t. It’s like, that’s your first time as a viewer. You’re probably over half an hour into the movie before you start to realize like, oh, he’s not all that’s not nice.

You know, I thought about the just the date of this movie, and I guess it wasn’t widely known, but you know, the the President Roosevelt going down there and swimming the same place they were filming and all that. It’s kind of odd. I guess he died around that time. Oh, the time that not the time the movie was made, but the time the movie was released. And so the brother had polio. Richard’s brother had polio, and that was one of the Hickman brothers. I didn’t realize it was Darrell Hickman and there’s Dewayne Hickman.

A couple of brothers that were around in the beach blanket bingo days, you know. He’s got a little bit of that, like, laying in on Thicke, kind of like he’s almost too nice of a kid. You know what I’m saying? Like, if you were making this today, you might not be so laying it on. Gee, oh, golly, I’m so excited. But I mean, but on the other hand, it makes losing him all the more painful because he is so swell. You know, I mean, he is so likeable. That tragic scene where they got her in those glasses just, you know, just…

Kind of chillin and slowly watching him go under. That is the most chilling thing. Like, I will never forget that from this movie. Like that is like if I go 20 more years, I’ll always remember that scene. There’s that she’s all in white. She’s got these like red lips. She’s got these dark glasses on and she does not change expression. And this handicapped young man is calling out for help. And slowly you have all the time in the world to change your mind back out of it.

Right. She stays. She just rows those paddles and the camera zooms in on her. And my goodness, I mean, I was talking about fatal traction earlier. This is up there. I mean, this is this is really like high level villainry kind of stuff here. And then she does it again later with I’ll be honest with you. It’s not as on screen, but when she throws herself down a set of stairs to cause a miscarriage in her own child. I mean, let’s just stop and think about that line for a minute. I mean, she doesn’t.

She as a mother, she just doesn’t want her own child to come between her and her husband. I mean, that’s and she the levels that she goes to. So I remember when I watched this, I thought, Whoa, and she killed Danny. We’re at the midpoint of this movie. That is a major twisting point. I didn’t know we’d go that dark. I didn’t know we’d be here at that point in time. Where are you going to go from here? And yet they still found somewhere to go. That was even darker and even more shocking. She started to have the baby because she wanted to keep her husband happy.

after the loss of Danny, and then she kills her the baby intentionally and then drives the chill will character away, which is the handyman or whatever. She was just brutal to him and drove him away. But I guess it’s nothing like being dropped in a lake. Then her family came or was somewhere in there. The family came and she was just like, berserk about it. Yeah. And I think Cornell Wilde’s character, I mean, he says some stuff about, you know, her ability to swim.

and how his brother, you know, drowned in the lake and he knows right then, you know, but he can’t let himself accept it. Yeah. Yeah. So they just, yeah, that’s I’ve seen that picture a hundred times in different places and never knew what it was all about. Question for you. Do you think Joan Crawford deserved the Oscar for Mildred Pierce over Jane Tierney here? Because that’s what happened. No, not at all. No, no, not at all. I thought.

Mildred Pierce is just she’s just doing the same character the whole way through. She doesn’t know. There’s no depth or anything to it. I think this is a really good role for a female actor to get at this point. I mean, she’s first build this movie for one. Jean’s got the top billing on this and I don’t see how she didn’t get the Oscar. I have to wonder and we’re guilty of this sometimes. I mean, if somebody is really beautiful, we don’t want to take them seriously as an actress. I know this really bothered Marilyn Monroe.

Like she wanted to be taken more seriously. She wanted not necessarily to do, you know, gentlemen prefer blondes and how to marry a millionaire. That wasn’t all that she wanted to be, although she was good at those things in fairness. But I mean, I think Gene Tierney’s striking beauty might have kept her from being taken as seriously of an actress. And I have to wonder, did that keep her from getting the Oscar? I don’t know. That’s very possible. They also have a tendency to go like, oh, it’s Jones time, you know, she’s…

been here so long and let’s, you know. Yeah, and yet they make like Leonardo DiCaprio wait like, you know, 15 years overdue at some point where like Amy Adams, where’s her Oscar? You know, I mean, when her time. So, I mean, it’s funny how these things work out to some degree. And it’s a strange system they got going out there. So, OK, so then she gets ready to she gets ready to make her ultimate sacrifice, which is to kill herself and set her cousin up as a betting by.

More than the cremation, but she was said earlier in the movie that she wanted, but she intentionally changed her will to set her cousin up and then tried to blame her husband for her murder. Now, that’s… She kind of gets away with it. She sends him to jail for two years. Right. Which is less than because, I mean, he’s like an accomplice to everything that’s going on. And I guess that he could have turned her in. I’ll be honest. He should have turned her in when he found out about the brother instead of leaving. Given the circumstances and the relationships, I’m not a lawyer.

But I can’t imagine being on any jury and given that all that he’s been through and he’s the one helping, you know, clear the air and stuff like that. And I just have a hard time believing you would go to jail for that. I mean, I guess I would just to get accepted on faith because Vincent Price was the DA and wanted him in jail so bad because of how bad he’d been hurt earlier. It’s possible. I mean, on the other hand, it makes Ellen all the greater of a villain. Yeah.

I’ve mentioned it a couple of times, but fatal attraction was going to end this way. Alex was I don’t want to spoil too much for that movie. Cut me off if I’m not allowed to. But I mean, Alex was going to kill herself and Michael Douglas was going to go to jail. They backed off of it and they did this other thing that they ended up going with in the real end. And I have to say, this is better. I like it. The villain is so committed, so crazy to the point of like Madame Butterfly style. I’m going to kill myself. And you never know if your vengeance worked out when you do it that way, you know.

I like to be around to see my vengeance play out. So you’re more of a fake your own death kind of way to go. So John’s going to gongirl you as opposed to go all the way. That was a good movie, too. Speaking of crazy, crazy people. Yes. I enjoyed that one a lot. I think I like these dark, crazy people movies. I like all these movies that we’ve brought up. I don’t know why. Might make us suspicious of all the people around us, though, you know.

So he does come back and he’s coming back home. And that’s kind of where it ends. I guess they had to put him in jail so he could return from jail. You know, that is very new to do this flashback setup, though, like you talked about at the beginning. Oh, no. You really like this movie and we recommend it to others. Other people. Oh, absolutely. Well, first of all, I would make sure that, you know, the type of person isn’t looking for a light movie. I would prepare people and say like.

You’re going to get get ready. This is this movie goes dark. And I may not tell him how dark, but I’m saying it’s a dark movie so that you I’ll be honest with you, the very first time I watched this, I kind of got done and I had been through a lot. I didn’t feel good because I mean, after everything and they watched it again because, you know, on my show, just as you do, I watched again. And I think I would I like it, but I would like to somebody to have prepared me, you know, almost in a certain way of like, there’s some stuff that’s going to come your way. Be ready. I wasn’t I wasn’t ready for that.

I guess I can’t, you know, I will watch it again one day. And that’s the thing. I was like, I just other than she loved too much, I was still looking for something. Oh, they did this like what you were talking about with the family. You know, why is she this way? She’s a sociopath. I mean, she knows what she’s doing is wrong, but she doesn’t have, you know, like she doesn’t care. I mean, it’s at least Scarlett O ‘Hara had, you know, didn’t want to go hungry. You know, she had a reason for everything, a driving force other than just being crazy.

Why does Jake Gyllenhaal do what he does in Nightcrawler? I mean, it’s just like, it’s just… I haven’t seen that. It’s too early for this, too recent for me. Well, in another 50 years, you’ll get to it in a sif -penomenal movie. But I’m just saying it’s one of those things of like, you know, she really is obsessive. You know, she only wants him and, you know, she wants to… She does kind of want to be that better homes and gardens mom who takes care of… Sorry, not mom, but wife. She doesn’t even want to be a mother. It’s just…

Just the two of them. That’s all she wants. And if he would go along with that, she might actually be happy and this whole thing might be OK. But that’s not love. That’s not you can’t cut off somebody’s family and their career and everything from them. It becomes an objective of him. Like she wanted to possess him. Having lost her father, that was his resemblance was something that comforted her. And I mean,

What I’m saying right there is a very broken, flawed character. I mean, it checks out. I mean, it’s just it’s like she’s she has an unhealthy amount of attachment to her father. Do you think that I mean, this was pretty early for a story like that? Yeah, they usually attacked, you know, a happy ending on. So I’m like, like, maybe that’s why I was thinking 1945. I’m looking for I’m looking for somebody to give me a reason, you know, spoon feed me, you know, a no gone girl. She was just.

That’s just the way she was getting her revenge. But I guess because it was an older movie, I was looking for something more. That’s why I came off of it like, huh. Well, you’re right. You’re implying that there’s some kind of abuse that must have happened to make her so, you know, obsessively drawn to her, connected to her father, like maybe her mother did something to her. No, my first thoughts weren’t there too. And, you know, in the end, I mean, there are tragic stories of somebody’s chemistry in their brain is just not.

Right. Right. And I mean, that that is a real thing. I mean, and we’re used to that now watching the nightly news. Right. But if I’m in 1945 and I go to the theater, I’m not used to that. No, I would I would come out of that numb like, oh, what just happened? Well, I mean, the war just ended, too. You’re on a high note. Everybody’s feeling pretty good here in 1945. And then we drop this Ben Ames Williams adaption on people. It’s like.

Hey, we won the war. Everybody’s happy. Baby boomer babies. Let’s let’s get on in and then like leave it to heaven. Yeah, just like we’re going to bring you down a few notches here. The studio paid a ton of money, though, for it. And I think it’s an interesting move. They technically you did not shoot movies like this in technical. That was a big epic or like kind of, you know, big spectacle kind of thing to do. And that makes this movie unusual for that to perhaps capitalizing on Gene Tierney. But I mean, on the other hand,

You didn’t do dramas like this in Technicolor here in 1945. So. Yeah, you’re right about that. That’s just super early. I like it. You’re right. You know, it does need to come with a warning, you know, to watch this movie at your own peril, because you’ll be sad when you come out of the end of it. It’s going to be heavy. I mean, even the Shakespearean line, I don’t have the exact line in front of me right now, but the Leave Her to Heaven (1945) title says there’s a…

There’s that’s the degree of this. This is truly wicked woman. You know, I mean, the character to let God deal with her, you know, I mean, it’s it’s you know, it’s it’s a lot that he’s been through on the other hand, too, though. I mean, sorry for not having the quote in front of me, but. No, no. What else are you working on now? You guys are going at full speed. I mean, on our show, we cover everything. So, I mean, retro just means 10 years or older. I mean, retro probably technically means probably a little older than 10 years, but.

And it probably doesn’t go back. At some point, movies technically become vintage or classic, but we cover everything. We’ll go back to as far as the silent movie era. So we’ve done movies in the 20s and we’ve done movies as new as 2014. So, I mean, it’s it’s everything in between. I try to treat it like a video store, you know, everything that we do, you know, we want to have something for everybody. We want to hit all the errors. We’d like to hit all the major actors.

So it’s a big task and by leaving it open, it enables us to expand our views and to go forward. Each of us on the show has our own specialization. For instance, with me, I like a lot of the older movies better and I like a lot of the comedies. But, you know, Brian’s Mr. Crime, Chad’s Mr. Horror. You know, I mean, each of us come through with our own set of things that we really like and are looking for. And that helps us cater to each episode. So we’re able to cover a very wide range of areas and very wide range of topics. So.

It’s a lot of fun and I love doing it to meet other people. So if you’re listening to the show, we love to have guests come on and we love to have people like you, John, who just love movies because it is so much fun to meet people who not just watch the movie and said that was good, but really just appreciate the whole thing of it, how it was made. You know, I mean, all the details. Yeah, I know. It’s so much fun. Yeah, I saw Breaker Morant (1980) came across the other day on the on the feed and I was like, wow, that’s a great movie they’re doing, you know.

And that’s another movie that needs a little disclaimer. Get ready. You’re going to you’re not going to leave the theater feeling good on that one either. But it is a great movie. Yeah. Well, so I really appreciate you coming on. And I, you know, I’ve been wanting to work with you guys again and anytime, anytime you. For sure, John, we’ll get would definitely get you on there for sure. I think Brian would like to come on and do a war movie with you at some point. Oh, that’d be great, too. Yeah. I need to write him back. But so, yeah, I would love to come on your show again. You come back any time you want.

on mine, you know, and we’ll we’ll do it up. We’ll find another movie that I know we’re hitting the good ones. We’re hitting the good ones between us. And so we’ll look around and find another good one somewhere. Oh, absolutely. And if you wanted to hear more from Lever to Heaven, we did an episode on that on our show. We did Laura, which also has Jean Tierney. We mentioned it brought up Strangers on a Train, I think earlier we covered that one. So, I mean, we really we really are on the mission to cover all the great stuff. We try and avoid the bad stuff when possible. Right. Well, that’s what I like about.

about, you know, retro or classic movies, you know, you’ve let it filter, be filtered, you know, and for the most part, you’ll get the decent. And once in a while you’ll find one that they missed. I really like your show too, John, because, you know, you’ve when I go through and scroll through, there’s a lot of movies I haven’t seen, many I haven’t heard of. And it’s really cool to be able to have the, you know, as a mechanism to go forward and find things on. So I really enjoy listening to you on your show as well. Well, appreciate it.

Well, Russell, anytime. Thank you very much. I’m going to keep you short tonight because, you know, I got to get my old guy. I got to go to bed. I can’t stay up this late. Sorry. I started late so I could get my little man down to bed. He goes to bed late. It’s perfect. But yeah, I appreciate it. And I’ll talk to you very soon. I’ll be in touch with you about this. Absolutely. Thanks, John. Thank you. Bye bye.