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The Marfa Lights & "Video Nasties"
28 Plays4 years ago
This week, Lauren investigates the mystifying Marfa lights in Texas. Mirages, headlights, spirits, or proof of extraterrestrial beings? Felicia tells the history of the "Video Nasties", low-budget horror and exploitation films that were banned in the UK in the early 1980s.
If you have requests for future episodes or just want to hang out follow us on Instagram @sinistersisterspodcast
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Transcript
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome
Lauren's Low Energy and Humor
00:00:13
Speaker
to the Sinister Sisters podcast. I'm Lauren. I'm Felicia. We're best friends. And we like spooky stuff. Every week, we like spooky stuff. You know what's really spooky? How low energy I'm going to be this whole podcast, because I'm on Benadryl, because I have a rash. It's very embarrassing. I was going to say, I wish it was going to be like, I don't know.
00:00:39
Speaker
Something really dramatic. An alien rash. Why am I telling the entire internet I have a rash? I don't know, but I am a little sleepy and
00:00:47
Speaker
Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's so funny because you're sleepy and I feel like I'm frantic. I was telling Felicity I just did a workout and I'm buzzing, shaking. Buzzing. So we're going to have some two different energies going on, but I guess we'll just jump into recommendations.
Movie Recommendations and Reviews
00:01:05
Speaker
We're going to get going. We're going to get ready for these.
00:01:09
Speaker
Make it happen to make it happen my two recommendations are very different i watch the burbs for the first time which is a lake eighties movie directed by the director of gremlins has tom hanks and carry fisher.
00:01:25
Speaker
and Bruce Stern. It's very silly. It's very like 80s vibe. It's also like I realized I don't think I've seen Carrie Fisher as many things besides Princess Leia. So that was kind of fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was like right after the last of the three
00:01:43
Speaker
old star wars movies i think is the timeline so she's still like you know pretty young and and i just like i feel bad for her or not bad but i just think her comedic timing is so good and obviously she does that in star wars a little bit but like seeing her in a comedy was really fun.
00:02:01
Speaker
So that was nice. Yeah. And it's also spooky. I don't know if I really said that, but like there's like, it's like these neighbors investigating like a new neighbor who moved in, who they think might've murdered people. So it's very fun. And then I also told Felicia I watched bits of
00:02:19
Speaker
Sophie, which is the new true crime documentary on Netflix about a woman in Ireland. But I can't tell you much about it because it is a calming Irish documentary and I fell asleep a few times. Yes. I was like, Lauren, I know exactly what you're talking about because I tried to turn it on the other day and I immediately fell, I was lulled asleep by these lovely tales of murder and Irish accents. What does it say about us? I do think that's what I fall asleep to most often.
00:02:48
Speaker
Murder. Murder. Asleep. Asleep. Sometimes
Palate Cleansers for Nightmares
00:02:53
Speaker
it makes me have weird dreams though. I don't know about you, but sometimes I have dreams that are like someone's murdering me. No, that's bad. You should try. You have to do a palate cleanser before sleep. That's what I try to do. I don't really do it anymore, but I used to. I used to do a palate cleanser. Little Disney, little cartoon. I don't know. I love that. What did I watch? Okay.
Discussion on 80s Censorship
00:03:11
Speaker
The thing I'll have mentioned that I watched is this movie called Sensor.
00:03:15
Speaker
which is kind of going to tie into my topic today about censorship. But it's basically this movie about this woman who
00:03:25
Speaker
it back in I guess the 80s in the UK is like works for the censorship bureau. Is that what it's called? I can't, I don't know. But basically like watches through a horror movie and marks all the parts that need to be taken out for it to be approved. So like, you know, things that are too gory, things that are too sexual, etc, etc. And so she's doing that. And there's like kind of some UK panic over
00:03:51
Speaker
this guy that killed someone and said it was after he watched a video nasty, after he watched a movie. So it's very interesting. But so she's on this story and then also dealing with some
00:04:07
Speaker
trauma from her past when she was a kid. And those two things ultimately come to a head at the end of the movie. And it's kind of spectacular. The end of the movie was very surprising. I think you would really like this one. I hadn't really heard too much about it, but Ben, who is a subscriber on my YouTube channel, had posted about it. I mentioned it, and I was like, ooh, this looks interesting. And it was really good. I would highly recommend it.
00:04:36
Speaker
It's just called Sensor. Just came out a few days ago. Yeah. That sounds so good. Yeah. I love it. Is that yours for the week? Do you have another one?
00:04:45
Speaker
What's the other one I watched? I also watched... Oh, last night I watched My Heart Can Only Beat If You Tell It To or something. It's like a very long title. But it's good. It's another horror film that just came out about these three siblings that live together. And one of the siblings is very sick. And the only medicine that works is through... I don't want to spoil it. Violence.
00:05:13
Speaker
I don't know. But it's interesting. It's a very slow, slow kind of movie, but it's definitely got some interesting horror elements in it. And it sounds romantic by the title, but it doesn't. I guess the plot is not. So it's not it's not romantic, but it is kind of like about family love and like sacrifice and like what you're willing to do for your family. It's it's interesting. It's it's a slow burn, but it's pretty good. Not mine. Yeah. Very good recommendations. Thank you.
00:05:43
Speaker
Okay, so jumping into my story this week, I did have the thought Felicia, that I wonder if we should, I kind of like this not telling each other what our stories are and then finding out in the moment. Should we try that next week? We should try that next week. We should have a little surprise.
00:06:00
Speaker
unless we literally pick the same thing, which I don't think we will. I don't think we ever will. I think that would be shocking. And if so, it could just be like an episode about quizzing who did better research. The answer is one. No, it is not. I was going to say maybe yours would be more fun to listen to then. Mine would be more factual. Yours would be more personality.
00:06:23
Speaker
Oh, thank you. I actually this week was told like how charming my personality is because you know, I'm doing interviews all the time. And my boss was like, you have to talk to people all day. This is like you're killing like you are so personable. You're so charming. And I was like, oh, you are. I would have to agree with your boss. Thank you. I really think I'm I'm good at first impressions. That's what I think I'm best at. Yeah, I love that. And then once they get to know her, they're just like, oh, no.
00:06:54
Speaker
Exactly. You had to work through that time. Yeah. I'm just kidding. Okay. What are you doing this week? I am doing
Exploring the Marfa Lights Mystery
00:07:00
Speaker
Marfa lights. So this is another unexplained spooky occurrence that happens in Texas, which is where I'm moving. So I thought it would be right. Um, you know, interesting. Very appropriate. Yeah. Very appropriate.
00:07:16
Speaker
So they are observed near U.S. Route 67 in Marfa, Texas, and they've been called many things over the years like ghost lights, weird lights, mystery lights, or oh, shoot, I saw this word earlier and it looks like Chianti, but it's actually Chinati, I think.
00:07:34
Speaker
It's a mountain range in in Marfa, but they also have named the lights to naughty lights after that. I'm so sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. Here we go. The best way to view them is on this shoulder of Highway 90, which is about nine miles east of Marfa. And you can kind of like look over across at them.
00:07:54
Speaker
And they're described as kind of these distant spots of lights different from ranch lights or headlights because of like how they move. It looks spooky and not like, you know, a direct light in any way.
00:08:07
Speaker
So James Bonnell wrote in his book, which is called Hunting Marfa Lights, you might just see mysterious orbs of light suddenly appear above desert foliage. These balls of light may remain stationary as they pulse on and off with intensity varying from dim to almost blinding brilliance. Then again, these ghostly lights may dart across the desert or perform splits and mergers. Light colors are usually yellow-orange, but other hues, including green, blue, and red, are also seen.
00:08:36
Speaker
Marfa mystery lights usually fly above desert vegetation, but below background messes. I don't even know what that word is. It's okay. This is what I get for quoting. But basically, I think this is really interesting because there's all different colors as you can hear. There's all different levels of brightness, which is cool.
00:08:57
Speaker
So people observe lots of different things. And the first historical record of these lights was in 1883, which is very important to when we talk about what it possibly could be. So there was this young cow hand, which just sounds very Texas, whose name was Robert Reed Ellison, who saw some flickering lights while he was driving cattle. And he wondered if it was campfire from members of the Apache tribe or other people in the area.
00:09:27
Speaker
having campfires. But so he started talking to other people in the area and they said that they also saw these lights frequently. But when they investigated the area, there were no ashes or other evidence of campsites. Spooky.
00:09:40
Speaker
So that's when it sort of started. And then another couple saw the lights in 1885. And these stories are found in the book History of Marfa in Presido County, which was published in 1985. So again, it's always tricky when it's like stories from that long ago, but then we didn't write about it for another hundred years, which always makes me feel a little like,
00:10:02
Speaker
How real can this be? But the first published account happened all the way back in July 1857, which was in the Coronet Magazine where they were called the Texas Ghost Lights. So that was kind of later tied to it. But the book Hunting Marfa Lights that I mentioned earlier with that guy that I read that long quote that I didn't know the word,
00:10:25
Speaker
He lists four Marfa light sightings from 1945 to 2008. And so he put up these monitoring stations starting in 2003. And he's identified an average of 9.5 Marfa lights on 5.25 nights per year, which feels very rare. But he thinks that these monitoring stations were only capturing about half the lights.
00:10:47
Speaker
So, I don't know. Very rare. But some legends claim that these lights are, of course, ghosts of the Apache tribe that spent time there or just spirits or lost souls. And there's also people who throw around UFO theories or extraterrestrial impact.
00:11:08
Speaker
But some also think it's just like ball lightning. And others say swamp gas, which I just think is a hilarious term. But swamp gas. That's why I'm going to start calling my farts. No. I love it. We're all about poop jokes here. I know. Wretches and poop jokes. That's all we have. This is a gross episode. I know. I'm so sorry.
00:11:33
Speaker
No. So skeptics think that obviously there's no paranormal or extraterrestrial, anything going on. The lights are very close to where the Marfa Army airfield was from 1942 to 1947. So with the constant observation at that time, there were lots of planes and satellites. It's kind of unlikely that something would go unobserved or untraced through that time.
00:12:03
Speaker
So another possible explanation, which is the one that I think is most likely, is that the lights are just a mirage caused by changes in the temperature and hot air coming off of the desert ground, basically. So it's at an elevation of 4,688 feet above sea level, and the temperature does range, and the air does change a lot. And I think that that's probably most likely
00:12:31
Speaker
But there were two pretty conclusive studies that happened. There was one in May 2004 that was from a group of students at the University of Texas who spent four days investigating and they had all kinds of
00:12:48
Speaker
Traffic volume monitoring equipment video cameras binoculars So they basically concluded that the highway is visible from where you can see the lights So their idea is that like the frequency of the lights does correlate with the frequency of vehicle traffic So they think it must be related to like the automobile headlights
00:13:09
Speaker
So they also saw that if they parked a car on the highway and flashed its headlights, that was visible from where you see the lights. So they were thinking that it comes completely from automobiles. And a 2008 study basically said the same thing. This was from Texas State University.
00:13:30
Speaker
So they said, when car headlights are seen through 15 miles or so of West Texas air that is unevenly heated by the ground, the light rays are bent and scattered slightly so that the headlights are fuzzy and wavering even when viewed through a telescope. So that's kind of interesting. It's similar to what I was talking about with the Mirage. It's basically like the lights from the headlights are like
00:13:51
Speaker
you know, moved through the air and seen because of the, because of the light rays are bent, it looks different than like what a headlight would look like. So because of exactly because of like the bending, it kind of affects like how the light is perceived and how big it is. So it looks bigger than a headlight should be.
00:14:11
Speaker
That feels very scientific and concluded, but the people of Marfa strongly object this solution. They feel that people are seeing those lights that are off the automobiles, but that the real Marfa lights are not headlights and that those are only seen
00:14:33
Speaker
around two dozen nights of the year. So it's like those are much more rare. So they think that like tourists will go and see lights and say, oh, I saw lights. And that is the headlights. But just because they came on the wrong night. So I love that like the town has kind of like, you know, rallied around this like rumor and or, you know, this this mysterious thing and said like, no, it's not headlights. We strongly believe something mysterious is going on.
00:15:01
Speaker
They even claim that the real lights are seen further east where the headlights wouldn't be able to shine and affect it. I want to live in a town with those kind of people. Right? Okay. Well, you have to watch. I was just about to get to you. You have to watch. There's an Unsolved Mysteries on it. Oh, nice.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah. And it's like the most, you know, I don't even know when Unsolved Mysteries was like 80s, 90s. Yeah. Something like that. And so like, something like that. So hearing like these like true Texan people in this small town talk about the lights, the best thing is that it's still so that mindset of like,
00:15:43
Speaker
We don't need scientists coming in here and telling us what our lights are. Let's not figure out what the mystery is. It's magic. It's really funny. A lot of them are like, I want to die not knowing what they are. Please don't tell me. It's like, don't ruin it for me. This is the only fun thing here.
00:16:02
Speaker
Which I just think is such a cool, I don't know, I'm such the opposite of like, I want to figure out how everything is done. And like, I love knowing like, you know, the tricks of magic and like, I'm always like, tell me how it's done. Tell me how that card trick's done. Tell me why that's floating, whatever. But I just thought it was so sweet that these people are like, no, we don't want to know. I love that. And the best part is in the Unsolved Mysteries, which like, again, as I said, is 80s, 90s.
00:16:28
Speaker
They conclude that it's a natural phenomenon and it's not the headlights. So I like that theory better even though, you know, later we got a little bit of a scientist. It's gotta be true. Gotta be true. I believe it unsolved mysteries. Me too. There's a smart people working over there. Yes. Yes. It's also on an episode of So Weird on Disney channel. Do you remember that show?
00:16:51
Speaker
I love that show. That was like my frickin' show growing up, obviously. Obviously. Maybe we should do a whole series of so weird episodes. I would love that. I mean, we could make a separate podcast where we just record reviews of each episode of so weird. And then we do Are You Afraid in the Dark? And then we do Real Monsters. I'm not against it. I'm interested for sure.
00:17:19
Speaker
I like all of those old shows. But yeah, that's pretty much it on the Marfa Lights. The only other little tidbit that I thought was funny is that James Dean is said to have been obsessed with them while he was filming the movie Giant. So he kept a telescope nearby him at night so that he could see catch glimpses of the Marfa Lights while they were shooting. Which I just thought was so sweet. That is very sweet. I'd like to see some magic. Thank you. I'd like to see some glowing orbs of light.
00:17:47
Speaker
Anyway, that's Marphalite's spooky. Yes, nice. Since we don't have official ads for the podcast yet, we'll do one for ourselves.
Podcast Promotion and Interaction
00:18:01
Speaker
We would love if you could subscribe to us and leave a review. Also, if you want some pics to go along with the episodes, follow us on Instagram at sinister sisters podcast. And now on to the next story.
00:18:15
Speaker
Okay,
Introduction to Video Nasties
00:18:16
Speaker
mine is not anything like we've done before, but I couldn't find a story I like this week. I was scrolling and scrolling through all the websites I go to for ideas, couldn't find anything of interest. Then I was like, oh, maybe.
00:18:31
Speaker
something that I don't know a lot about and honestly after researching still don't know that much about is the shipping iceberg yeah yeah typically iceberg video nasties because it's like this term that I understood as like a name for like exploitation films like that's what my brain thought like I didn't really have
00:18:51
Speaker
have an understanding that like where that term came from, or anything. And so I decided to look into it today. So here we go. So basically, in the, we're gonna be based in the UK right now. So I'm just gonna take you back a little bit in time. So in 1959, they passed this thing called the obscene
00:19:14
Speaker
Publications Act. And it was basically trying to keep obscene materials from the public. And it was amended in the 70s to also cover erotic films. There was a big movement against porn in the UK. Makes sense.
00:19:30
Speaker
Yes. And this was going seemingly well for conservatives being able to censor these types of media to people. But then something happened where people started getting home VHS players.
00:19:47
Speaker
and people for the first time could watch things in their houses and the distribution of video cassettes was very different than the distribution into theaters where people would like go see movies or like what's on tv or what's in so it was a very different thing and so then there there ended up being this kind of like
00:20:07
Speaker
political movement against all these low budget horror and exploitation films that were kind of slipping past censorship laws in the UK and going straight to home video.
00:20:19
Speaker
and stuff, you know, a lot of American films, and I'm going to go through some of the list in a little bit, but American films, some other European films, and it ended up being this kind of like political thing for the conservatives to be like, these materials, these movies are poisoning your child's brain and are going to do terrible things to them. So the term itself, video nasty, was first used in The Sunday Times. And this is also like,
00:20:47
Speaker
I didn't really understand this, but apparently like UK headline culture is like very wild. So there's a lot of wild headlines around the video nasties you can look up. But the first one was in May of 1982. And the headline said how high street horror is invading the home. And it kind of turned into this thing where people were like,
00:21:12
Speaker
There was, like, causing panic and fear around children seeing these movies that were, like, out-freeing flow. So, like, out and about, whatever. And... Can you imagine them, like, looking at us now? I know. Exactly. Exactly. So this was kind of led by, as I said, like, kind of conservative political people. Mostly, mostly seemed to be run by the name that comes up a lot is Mary Whitehouse, who was actually a British teacher and a conservative activist. And she...
00:21:42
Speaker
Well, it sounds like the most British and most conservative name. Yes. Please look up a picture of her. Like they're actually her even her Wikipedia photo is literally her like wagging her finger at you being like you bad children. Oh my wow. This has to go on our Instagram. Yeah. Unrelated. Exactly. Yeah. I'll put it on there. It's just like very it's a war about morality basically and like feeling like the children's minds are going to be poisoned.
00:22:09
Speaker
by if they see this content, they are going to become violent. It's kind of and we've seen this like a bunch of times even in the US. I remember when like grand theft auto came out and like people were like, Oh my God, the children are going to start killing people on the streets. Just this idea. Yeah, that like our minds and particularly children's minds are easily influenced by the media that they consume.
00:22:33
Speaker
So basically in the early 80s, they were like, this is like a cause. Like we have to stop this. We got to stop this. So basically they started going to video stores and seizing
00:22:50
Speaker
videos that they felt and there was at first it was like a very chaotic like the police like didn't know what they were looking for. They basically just took anything that felt inappropriate. So my favorite that is on the Wikipedia page, it says please one raid famously took a copy of the Dolly Parton musical the best little horror house in Texas.
00:23:13
Speaker
because they thought it was porn. Well, I mean, the title is misleading. The title is misleading. But there was yeah, there was just basically no rules around it yet. So in 84, they passed the 1984 act. It has to be something more concise than that.
00:23:32
Speaker
Okay, a video recordings act of 1984. Boom, there it is. It basically says the British Board of Film Sensors was renamed the British Board of Film Classification, and it became responsible for both cinema and video releases. So it basically put video releases under this act along with cinema so that they had the power to cut and edit this stuff. So I'm sure you've heard before, like,
00:24:02
Speaker
movies that had things cut out of it for to get the rating down. Like, that's a very normal thing. Like, let's get this to a, you know, rated R, like, let's get this to a PG 13. And so this was kind of a similar thing. But they're basically just trying to get anything out that they thought was like,
00:24:19
Speaker
you know, blasphemous or whatever. So I'm going to take you through some titles that were on this list. There were a lot
Cult Following of Banned Films
00:24:31
Speaker
of titles, but there's the complete 72 banned titles.
00:24:36
Speaker
I'm not going to go through all of them, but I'm going to go through that. Can you imagine? I know. I'm going to list 72. 72 movies. But I am going to just go through the ones that a lot of people have probably heard of. So one is Blood Feast.
00:24:51
Speaker
That, I will say, is graphic, but very silly gore. Like, it doesn't look real, but it's just very graphic. The Burning, which is a movie I talked about on my channel one time, but it's like a summer camp slasher kind of situation. Cannibal Holocaust, classic. Classic. Anything with, yeah, anything with cannibalism, anything with rape revenge films or like a big no-no, any of that stuff.
00:25:19
Speaker
things that mix sexual stuff with violence, they were like, no, no, no, no. Driller Killer, Evil Speak, which I've never seen, but I've heard of that one. Faces of Death, House by the Cemetery. Yeah, there's also a lot of Italian films on here. I Spit on Your Grave, The Last House on the Left, which is pretty freaking disturbing.
00:25:42
Speaker
Night of the Demon. Oh, I'm not even getting close yet. I'm just literally scrolling down this IMDb page. Bay of Blood, The Beyond, Cannibal Terror, Dead and Buried. I'm waiting for, like, Bunnies and Flowers. The Evil Dead was a big famous one. Oh. The Fun House, a Toby Hooper film. Basically, all the Toby Hooper films are on here. Texas Chainsaw, et cetera. And I'm actually getting really close to the end of the list, so I'm just going to keep going.
00:26:12
Speaker
This is a lot. I know. And well, actually, I didn't really know. But it kind of did this thing, which to me seems so obvious that would happen. But it basically created a cult following around horror films because they were difficult to get.
00:26:29
Speaker
because it felt like something you weren't supposed to see. They're like, the government doesn't want me to see Blood Feast? I have to find Blood Feast. It's like children, teenagers. It becomes a quest. They created a quest and basically a watch list of movies for people to go and try to find, which is truly hilarious to me. So it completely, completely backfired.
00:26:53
Speaker
And now all these movies kind of get to have that like stamp of like, yeah, we're video nasty. The UK government doesn't want us to, doesn't want anyone to see this film. That's how crazy it is. And that marketing technique actually comes up more and more. Like I remember when Hereditary came out, it was like the scariest movie since The Exorcist. It's like the idea of people not being able to handle a movie makes it more exciting.
00:27:22
Speaker
When people were hospitalized after Raw, we were like, let's go. Have to go see that. Have to go see that. Can I take it? Do I have what it takes to watch this movie? It's a challenge and it's exciting. I remember for a long time, I didn't watch Hostel because I was scared. I couldn't handle it. Then finally, I was like, I'm just going to watch this movie. It was like a challenge. Then I watched it and I was like, okay, that was a pretty good movie.
00:27:48
Speaker
I still have to watch it. I'm so scared. It's great. It's actually not as bad as I thought. It's not as good. Okay. Yeah, it's not as bad as you think. There's actually more than you would think there is, which is nice. Oh, that's good. But the one on this list that I have never seen and I still kind of refuse to watch is cannibal Holocaust. Yeah, just because animals were harmed in the making of that film and I just can't handle that. I know we can't stand behind it. Yeah, I don't see it.
00:28:15
Speaker
So yeah, basically the whole thing backfired and just started to relax over time. And yeah, it was just kind of like a big to do in like the 80s in the UK. But it's very fun. I want to actually Google one thing to end this section off is video nasty headlines. Yes. Okay, hold on. So boop, boop, boop. Ban video sadism now.
00:28:40
Speaker
Keep nasties from our kids. Burn your video nasty. I heard voice of video Michael with a picture of Michael Myers. Judge blames video nasties for murder. Snuffed out, cops swoop to seize 3,000 sick killer videos. Save us from the video nasties.
00:28:59
Speaker
Four children in 10 watch video nasties. It's just such good stuff. I feel like if I was a horror filmmaker, I would put those on the cover of my movie. Totally. That's how you sell it. That's how you sell it. That's basically the end of mine. I know it's kind of short, but I really was interested in it. And now I kind of want to go down and watch all of these movies.
00:29:25
Speaker
and be like, I've watched every video and asked you. That feels like a really fun challenge because there's so many movies on here that are from the 70s that I've never even heard of. And also a lot of Italian films that I need to watch. Maybe that could be, are you looking for a new thing for your YouTube? Yeah. Actually, kind of. Maybe I could do something like that.
00:29:47
Speaker
All right, maybe let's turn into a series. No promises. No promises, but maybe. Write to her if you want it. Yeah, let me know if you want a video on a series. All right, that's it. Amazing. I actually really enjoyed it. I think focusing on, yeah, I like the information of focusing on a specific creepy moment in history. Yeah, totally. And it's something that
00:30:13
Speaker
probably created some of the cult following around those movies in the first place. So it's kind of cool. They made those movies famous. Definitely, definitely. And you're exactly right that we like the challenge of can we get through this or can I handle it? So it definitely made them more appealing to us or people like us. Absolutely. All right, well, thank you for listening, everybody. Yes, we hope you have some sweet, sweet nightmares. Bye.