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An impromptu Halloween session w/ Orion St. Peter gave birth to this Nicolas Cage dbl feature—in which we discuss occult, cultic, & PTK themes in the loosely defined horror films "Longlegs" & "Mandy", tentpoles of the late Cage capitalism debt-induced “renaissance”.

We dig deep into the interplay between the "Longlegs" narrative and director Oz Perkins's personal esoteric & intergenerational familial trauma history, sussing out the sources of inspiration in his own highly strange, quasi-aristocratic pedigree. For ex, his great-grandpa "Count" Wilhelm de Wendt de Kerlor, a psychic detective cum spy in the mold of PPM usual suspects Aleister Crowley or Erik Jan Hanussen who was a member of the Theosophical Society, an avid spiritualist, and supposedly the medium who prophesied tabloid journo & anti sex trafficking crusader W.T. Stead's death on the Titanic... We discuss his Italian great-grandma, world-conquering designer (aka Chanel's rival) Elsa Schiaparelli & her affiliations with Dadaists & Surrealists like Dalí and Man Ray, not to mention the fact the de Gaulle government suspected her of collaborating with the 3rd Reich. Oh, and that she had multiple Egyptologist & "Orientalist" academic relatives. We unpack how psychic detective de Kerlor appeared on the scene in New Hampshire to "investigate" a murder that two BOI agents linked to German espionage in the Northeast during WWI, and we discuss how de Kerlor & Schiaparelli would be surveilled & interviewed, Wilhelm seemingly under suspicion of serving as a foreign agent. These fascinating, little known histories re Oz Perkins's ancestors are an obvious touchpoint for the clairvoyant FBI agent Lee Harker in the glam Satanic serial-killing-by-sympathetic-magick-or-mind-control flick "Longlegs". We also talk about how it's conceivably 9/11 as Mass Ritual pilled, seeing as Oz's mom Berry Berenson died on Flight 11 on 9/11, which gives one a headrushing vertiginous feeling indeed... Seeing as she's descended from this Theosophist spy. Her BDay is repeatedly woven into the sigilistic & algorithmic subtext of the film. And we also discuss how, on the patrilineal side of Oz's family, his Dad Anthony Perkins's confessed childhood Oedipal complex, the early wished-for death of his father, his lifelong closeted life, and his ultimate succumbing to AIDs... How all of this doubtlessly informed the emotionally-charged, cathartic film & its unspoken traumatic seeds... As we go, our analysis of the film begins to force us to confront a theory where a kind of unstated CSA blackhole is the source of the the Longlegs mystery's gravitational pull.

We talk:

Mandy dir. Cosmatos’s father George Pan Cosmatos’s final film “The Shadow Conspiracy” which concerns a pres assassination by drone; both Panos & his Dad having Pan in their names; the Mansonian failed songwriter vibes of both villains Jeremiah Sands & Longlegs; the Mandy scene where a planned ritualized orgy lubricated with “the chemist’s best batch” & hallucinogenic wasp injections derails when Mandy openly clowns on the cult leader; Longlegs’s character obvs nodding at glam Satanism, Marc Bolan, and David Bowie’s infamous “Station to Station”, Dion Fortune-informed exorcism of his possessed indoor pool in what was once stripper & burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee’s LA manse;

Longlegs’s cinematic influences - Fincher fare like Se7en, Zodiac, etc; Silence of the Lambs; Don’t Look Now; Altman; Twin Peaks; The Omen; New French Extreme; Gaspar Noe; & Phantasm

Many thanks to Orion for jumping on for this appropriately spooky dbl feature at such short notice. His death/doom outfit Ilsa are back in the studio as we speak—sound engineering doesn't come cheap. Help them lay down their new record by purchasing their most recent LP "Preyer" on Bandcamp!

Songs:

| Ilsa - "Poor Devil" |

| Matt Akers - "Kill Kit" |

| Ilsa - "Shibboleth" |

CULT OF CAGE (Pt. I): "Longlegs" & "Mandy" w/ Orion St. Peter