Episode 207 | Mystery Maniacs | Poirot | “The Lost Mine” | Strange Games, Numbers & Shops!
You're coming in loud and clear. Over. Hey,
Mark:Maniacs. Hey, Mystery Maniacs. Mystery Maniacs is a comedy recap podcast dedicated to mystery TV. Each week, we dig into an episode of the show, including the murders, the mayhem, the loonies, and everything else we love. This week, Poirot, episode 3 of season 2, The Lost Mine.
Sarah:Oh, it's lost alright.
Mark:Yeah. Oh, it is.
Sarah:There's a lot
Sarah:of things.
Mark:I'm Mark.
Sarah:I'm Sarah. I am so glad to be recording today.
Mark:Oh, I've missed doing the podcast on a regular basis. The last 2 months have been
Sarah:loony. We've missed you. We're happy to be back. We're excited. This is a really fun episode of Poirot.
Sarah:For those of you who know, 1 of our kids did have a pretty major surgery this week. He's doing very, very well. Yep. So thank you for all of your well wishes. Yeah.
Sarah:I mean, I just I could not be happier with how he's recovering. So far, so good.
Mark:All super positive and all super good.
Sarah:Olive is is almost back to normal after our few days with no power.
Mark:If you are a newsletter reader, you saw a picture of Olive in a in a towel that we took up for her.
Sarah:She decided she did not like our new dark lifestyle and wanted the electricity back on. And what do you know? It's back.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And we're back. We're gonna do 4 episodes in July. That's the plan. Promise. We're here.
Sarah:We're doing it.
Mark:Till the asteroid hits.
Sarah:Yeah. You You just never know what's gonna happen to you.
Mark:And if you wanna get in contact with us or join the mailing list, you can reach us here. If you wanna reach out to the maniacs, you can email us at mysterymaniacspodcast@gmail.com. You can join our Facebook page, comment on our posts on Twitter or Instagram, or join our subreddit. You can also message us directly. We'd love to hear from you.
Sarah:This is 1 of my favorite Poirot's from this season. It's my favorite 1 in this season because of monopoly, which it's not even the main plot. It's not even in the short story, the original this is based on, but I love the monopoly plot.
Mark:Yep. The monopoly plot is fantastic. It is does come from a short story from the twenties. Poirot gets a bunch of shares in the mine and he see and Hastings goes, how did you get them? And he tells the whole story of
Sarah:how he got them. Because the stock market subplot discussion is there in
Mark:the original.
Sarah:Right? Absolutely. We do have a few folks who are in this episode who are in midsummer's going back to our roots. Oh, we have Lord Pearson
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:Played by Anthony Bate. He's in, a season 4 episode Garden of Death. Yes. Jamieson, played by John Courting, is in death and chorus in season 9, but probably most importantly, the lobby clerk of the Saint James Hotel. Yes.
Sarah:I mean, he's, you know, key to every He
Mark:has a fantastic blue coat.
Sarah:Played by Richard Albrecht. He's in a season 14 episode, the oblong murders.
Mark:Yes. He is. Yeah. I have a trivia question for you.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:In which episode of Midsummer did they play Monopoly? You should be able to suss this out, and yes, I can answer some questions about it.
Sarah:Is it John or Tom?
Mark:It's Tom. And it's the monopoly, and that's a clue. It's Christmas. Yes.
Sarah:Yeah. It's the Christmas episode.
Mark:Which Christmas episode?
Sarah:The 1 where they're wearing the paper hats.
Mark:Yep. It's the ghost of Christmas patch.
Sarah:That's
Mark:it. That episode, they're playing
Sarah:because because he's playing it with Joyce's parents.
Mark:Joyce's parents bring the monopoly.
Sarah:Yeah. He's excited to get out of there. Oh, great. Somebody's been murdered? Awesome.
Sarah:I'm out. Rescue me.
Mark:I looked up Agatha Christie board games. There's not a lot, if any. 1 of them
Sarah:we state is very careful with what they license.
Mark:1 of them we have, which is Agatha Christie's death in the cards. Mhmm. It's like a card game. We have that game. Now, we did have a listener who asked me to review the Poirot video games.
Sarah:Oh, yeah.
Mark:And I would I think I'm gonna do this over July.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:So they're they're I think they're all available on Switch, so I can play them in the evenings while we're watching TV. Yeah. And, I will indeed try to to play some of the Poirot video games and give a review of those.
Sarah:By the way, speaking of TV, it's it's a little different than things that we usually recommend, But something we have been watching lately, and I don't think we've talked about it before, is the traders.
Mark:Never in my entire life have I ever wanted to get on a plane and go and slap someone.
Sarah:There is
Mark:Oh my gosh.
Sarah:It's a reality show. Yep. There's 1 in there's the American 1. There's Australia. There's New Zealand.
Mark:There's a British 1, and there will soon be a Canadian 1, which I don't understand. Like, oh, I'm the traitor. I'm going to kill you. I'm I'm sorry.
Sarah:So the but I think it's Scandinavian originally.
Mark:I think it is Scandinavian.
Sarah:So the the premise of this show is they bring together 20 people in a house, and some of them are traitors. And, their the goal is to accumulate money through challenges, but every day, they have a vote and they've they try to vote on who they think is a traitor. And if they're right, it's 1 less traitor.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And then there's also a murder each night where the traitors get to murder 1 of the faithful, they call them, the
Mark:non traitors. The game of werewolf if you've played it.
Sarah:Yeah. Yeah. And in the end, when there's only a few players left, if there is even 1 trader left, the trader gets all the money.
Mark:Yep. But
Sarah:if there are no traders left, then the faithful who are left split the money.
Mark:It is season 2 of the Australian trader. Watch season 1. It's fine.
Sarah:Yeah. It's great.
Mark:But season 2 may be some of the best reality TV I've ever seen, and it has the ending.
Sarah:Yeah. The ending is epic. Don't look it up in advance. Just watch it. Where did we watch that?
Sarah:On Peacock?
Mark:We watched it on Peacock. Yeah. Because, oh, we haven't even we'll talk about this for maybe next week. We haven't even begun to speak that there are Olympics coming.
Sarah:Yeah. But, anyway, if you if you like reality shows at all, it's not, like, interpersonal drama. It's not like, oh, my God. You kissed him. Oh, my God.
Sarah:There's none of that. It is all game all the time. Very strategic. The only thing I don't like about it is I really, really, really wish, and I think you do too, that there was an alternative version of each season where you don't know as the viewer who the traitors are.
Mark:You know who the traitors are.
Sarah:Try to figure it out too. But it's really fun to watch the traitors try to figure out how to not get caught and how to murder people. And it's fun.
Mark:If I watched the current season of trader Australia season 2, and I didn't know who the traders were, my head would have actually exploded at the end of
Sarah:it.
Sarah:I think it would have. So there's a recommendation for you. If you're looking for something to watch and you have any appetite for reality TV, give it a shot. Absolutely. Alan Cumming is the host of is that the US or the English version?
Sarah:The US version.
Mark:That's the US version.
Sarah:Yeah. And he's so over the top awesome.
Mark:And we prefer the regular people than the celebrities. Sometimes they're celebrities. Yeah. But we like the regular people.
Sarah:Yeah. But it's fun. Anyway, alright. Ready to talk about The Lost Mine?
Mark:Yes. Originally aired January 21, 1990, directed by Edward Bennett and written by Michael Barker Baker, sorry, and, David Renwick.
Sarah:So let's just say right off the top. This was written in the twenties, the original story for it. Yeah. Not not so racist.
Mark:Not For some
Sarah:reason, the 1990
Mark:version twenties racist.
Sarah:Yeah. 19 nineties. Super racist.
Mark:Yeah.
Sarah:Yeah. Wow. I know that they're just trying to recreate the society of the time, but I think it's even more than it need. Like, they exaggerate it. Yeah.
Sarah:Anyway, right off the bat, just wanted to get that out of the way. There's some anti immigrant crap in this episode.
Mark:We know the difference between Burmese, Chinese.
Sarah:No. They're just the Asian.
Mark:Yeah. The well, they call them all Chinaman.
Sarah:Yeah. It's just you just would not say no.
Mark:Did you see, the the young lady of the evening who finds the body, what her description was in IMDB.
Sarah:Isn't she just Asian tart? A Chinese tart. Chinese tart. Yes. Yeah.
Sarah:Me love you long time, Johnny.
Mark:Yeah. Yeah. That poor woman, did you look up that woman at all?
Sarah:No. So
Mark:okay. Good. Because I know you have a a bad movie. Yeah. She she was in the a lot of famous movies for a very short period because she died.
Mark:And I don't know how she died or why
Sarah:she died.
Mark:Young. She died. Oh, that's sad.
Sarah:Yeah. Well, she's good at saying me love you long time, Johnny. Like, she was
Mark:in the I don't know if she's a good actor. Actor. She was in the new emperor and whole bunch of movies. She was super cool.
Sarah:Let's talk monopoly.
Mark:Oh, boy. Let us talk monopoly because Before we
Sarah:before we die most
Mark:serious Monopoly players are playing.
Sarah:Before we go into the scenes of Monopoly, whose idea was it to play, you think? Hastings or Poirot?
Mark:I think Hastings brought the game to Poirot because he thought he could beat him. Yeah. And he it my theory is that Hastings beats him in the first game because then Poirot reads the rules. Right? And then the next game, Poirot is, like, flushed with money.
Sarah:See, Poirot strikes me as the kind of person who would say, I'll play this game with you, but I'm gonna read the rules first. I'm not just gonna trust you.
Mark:I would think so.
Sarah:I'm surprised that he doesn't know all the rules. He's surprised that he can't build hotels on railroads, like, because he hasn't read the rules thoroughly before he started.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:But the addition that they're playing is the 1936 edition based on the patent number that's on the board that they show. So this is a little anachronistic. This game, the version that they're playing would not have actually been released until the year after this episode is set. But my favorite thing about this edition that they're playing because I'm a dork and I looked it up and read the rules and everything. It's before Uncle Moneybags.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:So there's just this generic guy on the cover Yeah. Who looks like excited. Yep. But in the rules, if you have a question about the game, you have to send a self addressed stamped envelope to the company with your question, and they will answer it and send it back to
Mark:you. Wow.
Sarah:I wanna see the letters they got.
Mark:Yes. I also want
Sarah:to see. My uncle Henry says you can't do this, and I think you can. And we've debated over this line in the I mean, can you imagine that monopoly inspires arguments anyway?
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And when it's new, you know, I just think some of those must have been just priceless.
Mark:Exactly.
Sarah:And that would be such a fun job to reply to questions about board games back then. Not now. Not now. I wouldn't wanna do it now, but back then
Sarah:Yeah.
Sarah:It would have been fun. So you and I talked a little bit beforehand about weird additions of Monopoly because, of course, there are gazillions
Mark:So first of all, do you like to play Monopoly? I've never played Monopoly with you, by the way.
Sarah:I can take it. I can leave it. I I think it's kinda tedious, really.
Mark:It's really looked down upon in the board game community that I am part of.
Sarah:Well, there's no real strategy to it. No. It's it's it's just kind of a grind. You go around and around and around.
Mark:I'll tell you how I'll tell you a sad story about how much of a grind it is.
Sarah:How long is it game have you played?
Mark:Probably 2 months by myself.
Sarah:Oh, how many players were you playing?
Mark:4.
Sarah:Oh, I'm so sorry.
Mark:I had no 1 to play with.
Sarah:I wish I knew you then.
Mark:So it's the winter
Sarah:in Canada. Talked you out of it.
Mark:I come home from school. I've read every book in the house 15 times. I brought every book home from the library I can. I've read them on the bus.
Sarah:Did you at least pretend to have different personalities? I Like, did you have the risk averse player and the and the greedy player? No.
Mark:I did.
Sarah:Did you cheat against yourself? I did
Mark:not cheat. God, I couldn't do that. But I would I would definitely move around the table. I had 4 chairs and the card table set up. And,
Sarah:And your parents didn't think that maybe you needed help No. When you were getting up and moving from 1 chair to the next?
Mark:Did not pay attention to me yet. At the very least,
Sarah:Well,
Sarah:I'm guessing you won.
Mark:I also don't think I
Sarah:had even close to all this stuff. Like you were missing pieces?
Mark:Oh, I have 4 other 2 other brothers and 2 older sisters and an aunt.
Sarah:Yeah. The
Mark:fact of that Monopoly game getting into my hands in pristine shape was impossible. And then, like, let's be honest. Karl and Madonna didn't buy me any games. We spend enough money on books.
Sarah:So I challenged you to find the weirdest version of Monopoly that you
Mark:can find. Some strange versions of Monopoly.
Sarah:Monopoly. Well, okay. I've got a couple that I think are really, really weird too. So give me give me 1 of yours.
Mark:Okay. There's all sorts of ways that we can go about this. Mhmm. So for instance, I went personal for a 1 way of looking at this. There is no monopoly game from the small town I grew up in.
Sarah:Yeah.
Mark:But there is from a neighboring town that we have a listener in. Oh. The I there is Arnprior Appoly, where the the town of Opoly? Yes. Opoly.
Mark:Armprior Opoly. The, Chamber of Commerce of Armprior, Ontario got together and got all the businesses to sign up, and they made a Arm Prior based monopoly game.
Sarah:That they sell in the gift shop
Mark:or something. Sell.
Sarah:Town hall, whatever. It was a fundraiser? Yep. Okay.
Mark:Yep. And then the second personal 1 I have is there's an IU monopoly.
Sarah:Mhmm.
Mark:But our house is not on it.
Sarah:Aw. So Is where we work on it?
Mark:Where you work is on it. Yeah. The Kelley School of Business is on it.
Sarah:Well, you work for the Kelley School of
Mark:Business too. You work in the building.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:Okay. So you give me some of your strange ones because I'm sure we have a couple on the same.
Sarah:So I didn't. I purposefully ruled out ones that were not authorized versions. Like
Mark:I have a different section for unauthorized, so we can cover those.
Sarah:We can't go on forever about this.
Mark:We could do a whole podcast on Monopoly.
Sarah:I found Iron Maiden Monopoly.
Mark:Wow. That's spectacular.
Sarah:If you don't know Iron Maiden heavy metal band started in the late seventies.
Mark:Chris Dickinson, I believe his name is.
Sarah:It's epic. Yeah. So the board Bruce
Mark:Dickinson. Sorry. All the time.
Sarah:Instead of streets, they're, like, major, concerts that they did Oh,
Mark:that's cool.
Sarah:For dip different albums.
Sarah:That's cool.
Sarah:And the little figurines are, like, guitars and drums
Mark:They have
Sarah:a mic stands.
Mark:They have an they have a, like, a skeletal guy that's on Eddie. Eddie. Yeah. He is he 1 of the figures? Yeah.
Sarah:You can play Eddie's head.
Mark:Yeah. That's super cool.
Sarah:It's it's really if you're a fan of Iron Maiden, like, they got it right. Yeah. It's not it's not just like surface Iron Maiden. It is like heavy duty. Yep.
Sarah:I'm not a fan of the band necessarily, but I was really wrong
Mark:with that.
Sarah:I was super impressed with the depth that they went through for it.
Mark:Well, you know, heavy metal bands like KISS and Iron Maiden and a couple of other ones really know how to market themselves.
Sarah:Yes. Okay. You give me 1 of yours.
Mark:Okay. From the corporate versions. Because there's a lot of corporate versions that are given out to employees.
Sarah:Yeah. Yeah.
Mark:So there's a Bass Pro Fishing. There's a FedEx version.
Sarah:Best Buy has 1.
Mark:There's a Target edition.
Sarah:Yeah. The Target 1 even has different rules. Yeah. Yeah. There's also 1 that is, 1 I've actually seen in the marketing department at work that is, different brands.
Sarah:So you can buy, like, Pillsbury or orida or Coca Cola or I think Coca Cola is Boardwalk or something.
Mark:Okay.
Sarah:Goonies.
Mark:Goonies. Ghostbusters.
Sarah:Yeah. I would actually like to see the Goonies 1. Yeah. I love that movie.
Mark:We're gonna be watching it soon.
Sarah:Yeah. Yep. Okay?
Mark:Okay. Most expensive that you can currently buy?
Sarah:Well, there's the super, super deluxe version.
Mark:No. No. No. I mean, the Jeffrey Parker home of luxury board games version Oh. Which is made of alligator leather Oh.
Mark:Which is £700, 000. Oh,
Sarah:that's more than the 1
Mark:I'm cards are gold and silver.
Sarah:Yeah. That one's stupid. That's stupid. That My ex really likes monopoly. And so I think when we were in college, maybe for Christmas 1 year, my mom bought him the time life edition, which is a cherry wood Oh, yeah.
Sarah:Case and and every player has a drawer that you pull out that you keep your money in. Yeah. It was very nice
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:With a table that it goes on.
Mark:That's super cool.
Sarah:Canadian monopoly?
Mark:I do have Canadian monopoly,
Sarah:canoe, a moose, a floatplane, a boot, or canoe, a moose, a float plane, a boot, or Gordie Howe. Yes. Or Gretzky or whoever you wanna pretend the hockey player is.
Mark:Hockey player is.
Sarah:I was I was kind of thinking about
Mark:the of, there's a Toronto Maple Leafs version.
Sarah:Yeah. Of course, there is.
Mark:Which
Sarah:There probably is 1 for every major sports team, I would think. Yes. NFL, NHL.
Mark:The Toronto Maple Leafs version, you can play a goalie, a Zamboni, a hockey player.
Sarah:Yeah. I wanna be a Zamboni.
Mark:Skates, an NHL medallion, or I cannot believe this, a Stanley Cup.
Sarah:That's just mean.
Mark:That's just mean. They have a Stanley Cup on the front of the box. This is the reason why we haven't won a cup.
Sarah:I'm guessing they made a version of it for every NHL team. Yeah. That's those are all the same.
Mark:I'm sure they're
Sarah:all the same.
Sarah:It's just a board and box are different. Yep. There's Cthulhu monopoly
Sarah:Oh.
Sarah:Which I'd kinda like to see. But the weirdest 1 that I found that is an official version, that isn't a spin off of, like, the Simpsons or some show or whatever. There's a ton of those. Was the bass fishing monopoly.
Mark:Oh, okay.
Sarah:So you are a fisherman, and you compete to buy the best fishing spots in America.
Mark:And That's cool.
Sarah:There's little fish all over it.
Mark:I bet you the little things are fish too.
Sarah:The the tokens are fish, but I don't know why you get sent to jail in that game.
Mark:I don't know either.
Sarah:Like, for not having a fishing license? Or
Mark:Oh, for the IU game, you don't go to jail. You know where you go? Home.
Sarah:Oh, it
Sarah:should be the drunk tank.
Sarah:That's what
Sarah:really happens in Bloomington. And you get to pick up trash the next day.
Mark:That, you go home. Okay. I have 3 very strange ones.
Sarah:Okay. Quick. Because we're boring people.
Mark:Corporate version, but it's a weird corporate version, which is the Vegemite edition of Monopoly, which you could buy on Amazon. Vegemite? Vegemite.
Sarah:What are the I don't know The locations on it.
Mark:All I had was the box. Okay. I almost bought it to find it. And then, there's a Scott the waz monopoly. He's a YouTuber.
Sarah:I see. I don't even know what that is.
Mark:But the thing I did was I belong to a board game online community called Board Game Geek. Uh-huh. We have a big convention coming up at the end of this month called Gen Con, 60, 000 nerds.
Sarah:Yeah.
Mark:It's the biggest board game convention in North America. Luckily, it's an hour drive from me. Yeah. So they rank games. So I looked at the lowest ranking monopoly
Sarah:versions Okay.
Mark:From a community that hates monopoly. Yeah. Yeah. Now they rank games out of 0 to 10.
Sarah:Mhmm.
Mark:There are no zeros, and there are no point fives that are actual games.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:There are expansions that are Yeah. Listed as 0 and stuff. Coming in at number 1 as the lowest ranked monopoly version is Jojo Swilla.
Sarah:I don't know what that is.
Mark:She is a singer that's on Nickelodeon. Oh. It's 1 of these vanity brand Monopoly.
Sarah:Monopolies. Yeah. I know there's unicorns versus llamas now. Yep. Monopoly.
Mark:That that was rated quite highly. Okay. The second worst monopoly rating also coming in at 1 point out of 10 is Home Bargains. Now Home Bargains is like the dollar store in England. Oh.
Mark:It's this weird corporate version and the color scheme is like a designer threw up. It's just red and yellow but not McDonald's yellow and it's very bad. Very very bad. So those are the 2 worst rated McDonald, 2 worst rated monopoly games on board game geek.
Sarah:Well, our listeners are kinda nerdy too. So if any of you have ever played a really obnoxious version of Monopoly, let us know.
Mark:There's no Poirot Monopoly. There's no Midsummer Monopoly. There's Midsummer Pluto because that makes sense.
Sarah:That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. You would solve a mystery.
Sarah:Okay. We're actually gonna talk about the episode now. Han Wu Ling. Woah. Woah.
Sarah:Woah. Woah. Woah. Woah.
Sarah:Woah. Woah. Episode now. Han Wu Ling. Woah.
Sarah:Those teeth are not good.
Sarah:What do you
Mark:so we've we know
Sarah:this is a spoiler podcast if you didn't know. I'm assuming everybody knows that. We we find out later this is not the real Han Wuling, and that his teeth have been Black. Blacked out. What do you think he would put on them?
Mark:I don't know.
Sarah:Back then, like, maybe maybe just some coal.
Mark:I did wonder what cigarettes he was smoking.
Sarah:Those gold filtered ones? I don't know, but they're posh.
Mark:They're super posh.
Sarah:This guy shows up just on an average weekday and the tails. Yeah. You know?
Mark:Well, did you notice?
Sarah:He's fantastic.
Mark:There is a nice bit of editing here in the cold open. Hastings moves his piece to James. Which is a shoe.
Sarah:Oh, yeah.
Mark:And we see the shoe come out of the car.
Sarah:Oh, that's nice.
Mark:I didn't know that. Moves his piece, which is Top hat? The top hat, and we see him with the top hat in the hotel.
Sarah:Of the traditional pieces, which one's your favorite to play?
Mark:I like the boot. I like the race car and the little Scottie dog.
Sarah:I like the Scottie dog. Yeah. Mostly because it's really easy to pick up.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:I always found the iron difficult to pick up.
Mark:I do I do remember now that we've talked about it. Boy, we've talked about Monopoly. When I played Monopoly by myself, I did not have all the pieces, so I had to use something else like a
Sarah:Tokens from Sari or something? Tokens from something else. Checkers. Yeah. You've won £10 in a beauty contest.
Mark:How did they
Sarah:film this? Straight face.
Mark:How did they film this? Hastings is so fantastic.
Sarah:He's so
Mark:They both dress up for the game. Did you notice that?
Sarah:They're both still dressed from being out,
Mark:I guess.
Sarah:They've gone out to dinner, the theater. They're still in black tie, and they've sat down to play monopoly in the middle of the night. Yes.
Mark:Yeah. This is an all skill game, says Hastings.
Sarah:The dice in the cup. He just Yeah. He just shakes them, and he shakes them. And he I've played games with people like that. It's like, just roll the dice.
Mark:You are a wheezing grumpus.
Sarah:Will you just roll the dice? Yes. He blows on him. You know why people blow on dice?
Mark:Well, it's good luck. I don't know why they do it to put their the breath of their soul in it or something.
Sarah:Yeah. I mean, just to it's superstition or whatever. I I read tons of things that give you all kinds of theories about blowing lady luck on them or, you know, blowing your mojo on them or whatever. But the 1 theory that I am most kind of convinced by is that it might have originated with men who used to play dice in the street. Yeah.
Sarah:Because it was illegal. Right? To play dice. And they would blow on them to blow off dust and dirt that they might have picked up.
Mark:That actually makes sense.
Sarah:That makes sense. Yeah. But if you did it, and you rolled something good, maybe the next time you go, like, well, I'm gonna blow them in again because it worked last time. And then it just becomes a good luck thing.
Mark:You know, we lived in a precious time, a very precious time, and we both lived through this. We lived in a time before phones and after smoking, so we had nothing to do in meetings while we were away.
Sarah:But before cell phones Yep. And after you could smoke at work.
Mark:Yep. That that period, people just sat there.
Sarah:That meeting room, it it just blows my mind that it I I can't even fathom being in a meeting at work and somebody whipping out a stogie and lighting it. It would just I mean, they may as well, like, start juggling knives. It would just be so strange.
Mark:Like, I came in at the very tail of this. 93, 94. And I remember there being ashtrays on people's desks, but they're not using them. Wow. I remember people smoking in the office after hours because they didn't wanna get caught, but they'd still smoke
Sarah:Mhmm.
Mark:In the building. Like, the 2 French guys I played pool with all the time. After hours, they shut their door, and they smoked the whole time in there. But like I said, that ended pretty quickly in the mid nineties, and then there's nothing till cell phones.
Sarah:Yeah. Like,
Mark:that 10 year period of
Sarah:Nothing to do.
Mark:Nothing to do in meetings.
Sarah:Oh, back at this point, you could have a shot of whiskey and a cigar while you were in a meeting. No big deal.
Mark:Yep. So Poirot goes to the bank. Mhmm. This like, there is a plot to this episode. It doesn't involve monopoly or Poirot going to the bank.
Sarah:The London and Shanghai bank.
Mark:But they are the 2 best parts
Sarah:of
Mark:this episode.
Sarah:Our favorites anyway.
Mark:£444, 4 shillings and 4 pence.
Sarah:Which would be about £26, 000 today. Yeah. It's a lot of money. I understand they put this in because it fits Poirot's personality.
Mark:It makes no sense.
Sarah:That he is precise. Yep. And that he would be exceptionally aware of his own money
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And how much he has. He is he is frugal.
Mark:He shows it when he's playing Monopoly. He has it all written down in Monopoly.
Sarah:Yeah. He is frugal and tight. Yep. But he does make considerable money. He's not poor.
Sarah:No. But logistically, I don't know how he could claim to keep that balance all the time unless he has a savings account at the same bank. And anytime he spends any money from his checking account, he's moving in the precise amount from his savings account to keep it at that balance.
Mark:Which doesn't make any like, it is important to keep an amount of money in your bank account.
Sarah:It's important to know how much you have. But logistically Yeah. To keep that exact amount, I do not understand how that would be possible.
Mark:Well, it's it's for the show to make it fun. Yeah. Right? Of course. And he's overdrawn.
Mark:He's so mad.
Sarah:Especially when he thinks it's 50 and the guy comes back and goes, actually, it's 60.
Sarah:He's outraged,
Sarah:which is $500 minus
Sarah:Yes.
Sarah:What he's got. Right?
Mark:Yep. So this is then he goes home and he's angry with with Hastings because he's winning the game. Yeah. So this is continuation of Dame from the night before.
Sarah:Yeah. Because the monopoly goes on for freaking ever.
Mark:There is a great moment of irony where the bank president comes and thinks it's because of the overdraft.
Sarah:He actually thinks the president of the bank would come to his personal home to apologize
Mark:All the board of governors are so upset about it.
Sarah:For a
Sarah:banking error.
Mark:That's surprising. Even Poirot
Sarah:is like, it's not that big of a deal, but okay. No. No. You know? No.
Sarah:It's about Wu Ming being missing. Right?
Mark:Why does he go to Poirot? He's the bad
Sarah:guy. It's a good question, except that the entire board of directors has seen Wu Ling not show up.
Mark:So I guess
Sarah:So he needs to appear as if he is making an effort to find out.
Mark:And he would be a famous member of the bank. They would know him.
Sarah:Yeah. So Wu Ling is coming to London because he has a map that leads to, silver mine
Mark:The lost mine.
Sarah:That has been lost Yeah. In history, but is thought to be a great source of silver. Like, there is still considerable wealth there to be found. Right?
Mark:He talks about it's 200 miles inland from Rangoon, which is in Burma at this time, which is Myanmar now.
Sarah:Yeah. So Pearson, the president of the bank, has arranged for Wuling to sell the map to the bank, and the board of directors is there because they all have to agree. Yep. That the board that the bank is going to invest in this map, to invest in this mine. So they will all know why Wu Ling is coming.
Sarah:And when he doesn't appear, I think, Pearson has to make every effort to look like he's trying to find him. Yeah. I guess. Even though he knows exactly where he is.
Mark:Of course, he does.
Sarah:I mean, why Pearson goes to the trouble of having a fake Wuling check into the hotel?
Sarah:I mean,
Sarah:he doesn't even have to do that. He could just say, well, he just never showed up. Yeah. Like, he never got to London for all we know.
Mark:Yes. Hey, sailor. Oh, wait. It's an actual sailor.
Sarah:Yeah. Who is doing the worst drunk walk I've ever seen. Like, if you're so drunk that you can't even stay on the same side of the street, you're probably not getting home. Yes. Like, that is way across the street.
Mark:And we see
Sarah:Cobbled streets must have been so bad for young people. They fall on your face all the time.
Mark:We see a dead guy. We see a guy in a suit who's an American, and we see who Han Wuling is supposedly.
Sarah:Dead in the alley and his long johns.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:I did think and I don't maybe I'm giving them more credit than they deserve. But so the real Wuling is not a tiny man. He's heftier.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And when you see the fake Wuling, the imposter in the hotel, the suit doesn't quite fit him. Yeah. It looks baggy on him. Yeah. And I thought, oh, that's smart.
Sarah:Yep. Because they put him in a suit that doesn't quite fit because
Mark:They did a good job.
Sarah:Clearly, they've stripped this guy of his suit.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And he wears a complete set of long johns under his suit. Who does that? In August.
Mark:Back from the days of do you know what that guy looks like? I sent him a bunch of letters, I guess, maybe.
Sarah:I've never actually met him. I know he's Chinese. This guy's Chinese. It must be him. Yeah.
Sarah:Jap is special in this whole episode.
Mark:He just wants to be done as soon as possible. Yeah. We haven't even got to police technology.
Sarah:The war room?
Mark:From my notes, is this a war room?
Sarah:No. It's the surveillance room. They search Wu Ling's hotel room, find matches, a notebook that that mentions Charles Lester.
Mark:Which is clearly planted.
Sarah:Like How could it not be? Yeah. It's the only thing under the bed. Yep. And then Jap is like, come see how real police work is done.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And even the music they play, it's like Yeah. There's, like, 30 people in 1 room.
Mark:Again It's the most winning people.
Sarah:It's the most women we've ever seen in the police station.
Mark:This set is never used again.
Sarah:They're they're wearing their headsets. Yep. They've got the spidey sticks, the map
Mark:The cars. Moving the
Sarah:little cars. And the bad guy is a little black hockey puck.
Mark:Yes. The bad guy is a little black hockey puck.
Sarah:It makes me think of the later episode when the FBI come.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And they're looking for a bad guy, and Jack has to work with them and they're like calling all cars calling all cars. They need to talk up to these policemen though, these plain clothes policemen about how to talk on the radio less obviously.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:Because they're they're doing surveillance and the guy keeps lifting the handset up, which is like 4 inches across
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:To his mouth in full view of anybody going Yeah. This is unit 7 to unit 8, you know. And the 1 the 1 guy, my favorite thing about the surveillance room is that there's, like, a dais Yes. At the front with a guy sitting at, like, a podium. Like like, he's the keeper of the like like like a a an auction collar or something.
Sarah:You know?
Mark:And Jap just takes the mic from him.
Sarah:Yeah. Grabs it.
Mark:They they gave Philip Jackson the direction, which was touch this technology like you've never touched technology before, and he does a great job.
Sarah:And, like, you've just learned the parlance of radio communication
Mark:Yep.
Sarah:And you're really being strict to it. Yes. You're coming in loud and clear over.
Mark:So they find the guy they're looking for. Where is he at?
Sarah:So this is Was it Reginald Dyer? Yes. Sorry. Reginald Dyer, and he's in he's in Chinatown.
Mark:He's in the Chow Chat cat?
Sarah:Chow yeah. Chow Chat Sauna.
Mark:Cat sauna on Rupert Street.
Sarah:Now In Whitechapel.
Mark:No. It's in Soho. Soho? Yes.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:So I went to Rupert Street on Google Maps, and I went down the entire length of Rupert Street.
Sarah:I would love for Google to show me an overview of the world and all the places where you have dragged that little guy onto the map and crawled around on the street just to see all the places that you've been sneaky about to see what's actually there. So it is Is the ChowKat sauna still there, Mark?
Mark:So it is prime Soho on the north side of Chinatown. So they got the name of the street right.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:It's it is part gay district, part Chinatown. Okay. So you have things like the Cockery which is 1 of those places that sells, essentially, desserts that look like penises.
Sarah:There was a silence there because I'm just staring at you in disbelief. There's a place called The Cockery Yes. That sells penis shaped desserts.
Mark:Yes. It's closed now. But yeah.
Sarah:It's a business.
Mark:Yes. There's a it's Okay. It's right beside the bubble ology, the bubble tea place.
Sarah:You know what my response to that is? That's sexist.
Mark:I think so.
Sarah:I mean, they should have had some more shapes in there. I When you said bubble tea next door, I was like, what are they? Boob shaped bubbles or what? What's going on?
Mark:From there, I turned to look at the stores across the street from that, and there was the White Lily Massage Spa.
Sarah:Oh, so
Sarah:it is still there.
Mark:It just changed names. It's just changed names. It's still there.
Sarah:Okay. I'm thinking maybe it's, well, I would have said maybe it's a bit more reputable than the ChowKat is supposed to be, but since it's across the street from the cockery, I'm not so sure. Nope. I don't know. I'm not gonna assume anything.
Sarah:It's not
Mark:a very long street, but I looked at every business on it.
Sarah:I'm shocked that the cockery is out of business now. It is. Like, really? I mean, how could that not survive?
Mark:I think it moved locations. There's a number. If you search for the cockery online, there are a number of locations. I believe it's an Italian company because the website's in Italian. So
Sarah:But the other ones are chicken restaurants.
Mark:Yes. So
Sarah:What do you mean the cockery is Italian?
Mark:That's what I got.
Sarah:Oh, boy.
Sarah:Oh, god.
Mark:There's a poster on the wall.
Sarah:What you say, I'll go with it.
Mark:There's a poster on this wall that has a weird connection.
Sarah:Mhmm.
Mark:George White's 1935 scandals, an actual American movie. It's a movie poster.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:Has Jane Wyman in it. She plays a showgirl, which are called scandals in this particular movie.
Sarah:Okay.
Sarah:Do you
Mark:know who Jane Wyman is? She's Ronald Reagan's first wife.
Sarah:Oh that's right. Yeah.
Mark:She was in Falcon Crest.
Sarah:Not the soap. Yeah. The soap. Okay. She was
Mark:in Falcon Crest. Everyone in this episode pretends that they're Jack Nicholson talking about Chinatown. So Chinatown is a is a movie from the seventies starring Jack Nicholson. It's famous. It's very good.
Mark:It's directed by a horrible person. I don't care.
Sarah:It's noir.
Mark:The horrible person is in it and gets its nose hurt. Cheer for that.
Sarah:Okay. Who's the horrible person?
Mark:Roman Polanski.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:So the the movie is fantastic. But the whole point is that Jack Nicholson doesn't wanna go back to Chinatown. So he talks about it like, oh, Chinatown. That's a horrible place. The place
Sarah:of this trauma.
Mark:Everyone here talks about Chinatown the same way.
Sarah:But they're doing it because they're racist.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:Because it's a den of inequity and a nest of vipers and all the evil happens there because they're racist. Yeah. Speaking of racist, Charles Lester is an American. Yeah. He's American.
Sarah:And his wife is American.
Mark:She's also American. He has,
Sarah:booklets stock stock broker.
Mark:He has a booklet in his office. I was like, it's called Investing Made Easy by Charles Lester. I could make that book now.
Sarah:With all of your notebook equipment? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of investing, is he scammy, or is he just a typical stockbroker of his time?
Mark:So in the short story, he actually works for the bank and has contacted Wu Ling already, and that's what happens.
Sarah:The nameplate on his business looks classy, and he has partners.
Mark:I think he's okay for an opium addict.
Sarah:Okay. For an American opium addict who's a stock person.
Mark:Hastings really doesn't need to take any advice from anyone other than don't invest in things. You'll drive them into the ground.
Sarah:And this is in another time when I hear the word scheme Yeah. Which in America, scheme has a negative connotation.
Mark:Con men do schemes.
Sarah:Right? There is no proper investment scheme. Yes. You don't use scheme to and so I I always assume that it's negative. It's and it's not at all in the UK.
Sarah:It just means that it there's a plan. Right? It's a plan. But to us, it's always got some interesting schemes here. Well, they're fishy because they're schemes.
Sarah:Right?
Mark:Yeah. I get a method, a little modicum of revenge here because I sit clearly in Poirot's camp.
Sarah:Oh, about the date Yes. From the hotel register.
Mark:So the idea is that Poirot knows that there's something up with Americans because of the way the date is written in the register.
Sarah:Well, he suspects that the man pretending to be Wu Ling is American because he writes month, day, year.
Mark:Which is for backwards people according to Poirot.
Sarah:Very backwards people.
Mark:I I could not agree more.
Sarah:I don't know why we do it that way.
Mark:I it I've lived in the United States for 25 years. At least once a week, I write the date wrong. I just don't
Sarah:know why we do it that
Mark:way. I don't understand it either.
Sarah:Listeners. If you know the reason why Americans write it month, day, year instead of day, month, year, tell us.
Mark:Smallest to largest. It's it makes sense.
Sarah:It does. I understand it. I get it. We just don't do it that way.
Mark:Yep.
Sarah:And I don't know why.
Mark:It's funny. Every once in a while, I'll, put the date up like I put the date on the reminder text, on the reminder message and I'll get people from England going don't you mean this? I'm like yes. I do mean that. So most of our listeners are Americans.
Sarah:If you were writing it out longhand, would you write like 16th May, or would you write May 16th?
Mark:When I was taught to write the date longhand Mhmm. I was taught to write 16th of May.
Sarah:Oh, okay.
Mark:1969 or whatever date I was in school. So
Sarah:Well, missus Lester shows up because her husband is missing.
Mark:Why is she, like, I don't like her because she is a character from Sherlock Holmes.
Sarah:Yes. She's the convenient, pretty woman who's come asking for help. Yeah. I'm not sure why she knows to go to Poirot.
Mark:I I don't know either. And then she's like
Sarah:her husband went home that night and said, Hercule Poirot came to see me today. Maybe. And maybe. And then she's like, well, when he's missing, I'm gonna start there.
Mark:Here's an incredibly important clue. His passport.
Sarah:That I found in his dirty suit that he hung back up in his closet. Your husband's bad. Yeah. Phone gets turned off.
Mark:The look that he gives
Sarah:Miss Lemon.
Mark:Miss Lemon, where it's like he doesn't believe her.
Sarah:It is the most offensive thing to ever happen to him.
Mark:I I
Sarah:Like, in his head, he must think everybody on the street knows his phone's been turned off for non
Mark:payment. Beyond me no good start sheet.
Sarah:It's so embarrassing. Oh my gosh. But I just think, like, how just go back. His monthly expenses are £26, 000.
Mark:I don't know because okay. So he gets paid £500 for the case.
Sarah:Yeah. For 1 case. Well, it was a naval secrets case.
Mark:I don't care. That's 44 k. Yeah. He's okay. First of all, buy miss Lemon a typewriter.
Mark:Jesus Murphy.
Sarah:But does he live 1 case at to 1 case at a time? Because otherwise, how does paying his regular bills overdraw him?
Mark:Yeah.
Sarah:400 and well, £500
Mark:Yeah.
Sarah:On his account. Yeah. £26, 000 in between cases.
Mark:It's it's it's so weird. I don't understand. The math is not there, but the fun is.
Sarah:Yes. I'll let it go. Yeah. So the real Wu Ling's passport is in Lester's suit.
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:And she just hands it over. And Poirot's like, got it. Yes. Click. Done.
Mark:So they go find Lester.
Sarah:Yeah. At the OPM den. At the in Red Dragon Casino.
Mark:My note is JAP or the set designers are not subtle.
Sarah:No. It's big trouble in little China.
Mark:It is it is it's even over more over the top than that. Well, did you
Sarah:notice the owner has really long fingernails? Yeah.
Mark:It's not the crawl.
Sarah:It's the crawl.
Sarah:Like, I'm surprised he's not wearing, like, wizard's outfits or, you
Mark:know, like Like, with like long Fu Manchu beards.
Sarah:Fu Manchu Yeah. Mustache. Well, Wu Ling, the imposter Wu Ling has that mustache
Sarah:Yes.
Sarah:Where the sides are really long.
Mark:Yeah.
Sarah:Yeah. Press the the dragon's red eye to access
Mark:it's just everything's on the nose or the red eye.
Sarah:Wouldn't everybody in the casino see people going in and out of there?
Mark:Yeah. That's not a secret door.
Sarah:That's not a way to yeah. I don't know. But Lester's and then you're just you're back to Sherlock Holmes, like, passed out in a opium den.
Mark:Yes. Exactly.
Sarah:Is it illegal at this point?
Mark:In this no. It's not illegal. Now in the short story, Poirot has to go to the den to find Lester. Does he take opium? No.
Mark:He does not take Does he walk in and go,
Sarah:Does he take opium?
Mark:No. He does not take
Sarah:Does he walk in and go, I'm an opium addict.
Mark:Kind of.
Sarah:Look at me. Opium. Yep. Tasty. Num num.
Sarah:I want some. How much is it? I'm overdrawn already. Yes. Yeah.
Sarah:So Reggie Dyer's there because he's a scumbag, but he has nothing to do with the case. No. He's just got suitcases full of money, a skeezy lawyer, and he's dealing drugs. Yep. So he's just come back from Hong Kong and brought a whole bunch of drugs with him, basically.
Sarah:Yep. He's really got nothing to do with So
Mark:then they go away from the red dragon, then they come right back Right. To the red dragon. But this time, there's the bank president, and there's a great rut row moment.
Sarah:The bank president, I'm gonna guess, he's not used to being a criminal.
Mark:Yes. Because he's really bad.
Sarah:Because he basically outs himself. That's his passport. No. It's monopoly instructions. I meant, that that's what I meant.
Sarah:I meant I meant those are monopoly instructions. Obviously.
Sarah:That's what I meant.
Mark:Dark dreams are dreamed. Wow. Chap gets poetic.
Sarah:The Monopoly so you think it's 2 Monopoly games? Because they're playing again. Yes. And Hastings goes to jail. Yes.
Sarah:And you think he actually was being sent to jail.
Mark:Gosh. He's so upset. And then he has to pay 2, 000 to.
Sarah:Anybody who's ever played Monopoly to the actual end of the game. That moment.
Mark:That you collect up all your money and your properties, and you just throw it
Sarah:at the end of the world.
Sarah:This is everything I've got left. Now in my ex husband's family, where games are played differently
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:That would not be the end of the game. Oh. If you were short paying that debt, then now you owe me. You're in debt. House rules.
Mark:Wow. Like Like, when you're out of money when I was playing alone, I did not sit in your chair and go, oh, I'm out of money.
Sarah:Did you name the other players?
Mark:I'm supposed to name the
Sarah:other players. Like, Mark, Marcus, Marquis, and there's No.
Mark:No. They had other names.
Sarah:Oh, okay. Why not? I'm giving them real names. Yeah. So you if you played Monopoly again, there would be a note in the box.
Sarah:It said, Mark is in debt $200, and you would get that much less.
Mark:That's
Sarah:Like, you are not out of debt.
Mark:The house rules for monopoly are insane, but that's a super insane 1.
Sarah:There's also a socialism version of monopoly that's very much a parody. Where if you don't have the money to pay your debt, it comes out of the community chest. Oh. It comes out of the bank to cover your debts.
Mark:Well, actually well, actually, there's a version of communist monopoly that was produced in printed in the 19 thirties communist youth magazine, which is the game was called towards a Soviet America, in which you visit all the capitalist America's social injustices on the way to the Soviet America, the center of the board.
Sarah:Did McCarthy just show up if you bought that game?
Mark:I guess if you're getting the communist Yeah.
Sarah:I guess you're already in trouble.
Mark:You're already in trouble.
Sarah:So Pearson did it. Right? He intercepted Wuling right off the boat. Yep. Kill them or had his lackeys killed him.
Sarah:Yep. Took the map. Because the map that they present to him is, like, a page from an atlas. Yeah. They just tore out or something.
Sarah:Like, we don't get to see it, but maybe just has a big red x. It's like Yeah. Mine is here. Like, here be gold or something silver.
Mark:Here be silver.
Sarah:So he's a bad guy. He's going
Mark:away. Trying to
Sarah:frame
Sarah:Lester. Let yeah. Lester. Because Lester's passed out next to the dead body and stumbles out of the alley in the Chinese tart screams. That's what she's called.
Sarah:Yep. The Chinese tart. Then we get to the real atrocity of this episode
Mark:Okay.
Sarah:Which is that miss Lemon has basically misplaced a 500 pound check. And not deposit it.
Mark:Miss Lemon who did this. I think it's Poirot that did this. I think Poirot had the check because he gets all the mail.
Sarah:Right? No. She processes it.
Mark:She processes it, but I'm sure she gave him the letter with the check-in it to Kate to the bank because she can't take it to the bank.
Sarah:She does. She leaves right away to do it.
Mark:It's all screwed up because I don't think it's miss Lemon. I think Poirot was looking for something to write down his monopoly scores and he did it.
Sarah:So you think the paper that's with the check is notes from the monopoly game?
Mark:It is. It's that that's how miss Lemon discovers it. Is that he's writing notes
Sarah:on Oh. I didn't realize that. I thought the paper that was with the check was his invoice.
Mark:No. No. No.
Sarah:And I was like, it's handwritten, Poirot. Come on.
Mark:No. No. It says it says notes from the monopoly game.
Sarah:So have they been playing monopoly for 10 days?
Mark:I I don't know. I do not know. Now my father was famous.
Sarah:Monopoly has driven Poirot crazy.
Mark:My my father was absolutely famous for writing numbers on the backs of things that he needed to deposit. This is a thing that happened in my house. Your father forgot to deposit that check again. We have to find it.
Sarah:And he would have written, like, on the envelope that it was in, or he would have doodled on the back of the actual check?
Mark:On the back of the envelope.
Sarah:Okay.
Mark:He would have written numbers.
Sarah:Like, totaling something up, taking some taking notes, doing math on paper.
Mark:That is prime Carl Bell.
Sarah:And then the envelope is gone and the Yep. The check is in it, and it's just sitting somewhere.
Mark:I'm sure we lost some things. And I remember I couldn't leave homework on the table because I'd find numbers on the back of it. Yeah. He'd just pick up the closest thing and do number work on it.
Sarah:See now.
Mark:My poor father. My father was fantastic. I love him. I miss him. He's been gone for years now, but he never went to high school.
Mark:Mhmm. He wasn't a math wizard.
Sarah:Yeah. I
Sarah:understand working things out on paper.
Mark:He was a man who needed a calculator before we had calculators that were prevalent.
Sarah:Well, in our home, now, if you leave something out and it's on paper, it'll end up with doodles on it because we have a child who is an illustrator and without thinking just starts drawing things Yes. Faces on the side of a tax form or something.
Sarah:Yes.
Sarah:Like, who did this? Why am I even asking who did this? I know who did this. Why did you do it?
Mark:So the injustice is that Poirot should have deposited that check and forgot, in my opinion.
Sarah:Did it to his own self then?
Mark:Did it to his own self.
Sarah:Then it's not an atrocity. Yes. You know what is an atrocity? What? The horrible movie I have for
Sarah:you.
Mark:Oh, boy. Lay it on me.
Sarah:Because that is the whole story of The Lost Mine.
Mark:Good dead body, but there's only 1 of them, so we can't really pick 1.
Sarah:I wouldn't even say he's good. He's face down. He's I mean, the he's in Long Johns in the dark. It's not impressive.
Mark:John's in the dark.
Sarah:Nah. It's a
Mark:There's no Long John's in the dark.
Sarah:He didn't wave his arms around.
Mark:No. Yeah.
Sarah:That I that I saw. Bad movie me. Alright. So James Saxon, who plays Reggie Dyer
Mark:Yes.
Sarah:In this episode of Poirot is in this 1981 movie.
Mark:Oh, this is right in my wheelhouse.
Sarah:I know. Here's your summary. Let's see it. Let's see if you have seen this 3 out of 10 movie. It's bad.
Mark:It's bad as the monopoly review.
Sarah:It's bad bad. A writer suffering from agoraphobia rents an isolated house so she can concentrate on her writing. She doesn't know the house is a former brothel and is inhabited by the ghosts of dead prostitutes.
Mark:So this is not there there's a lot of I'm a writer with writer's block, so I'm in a house movies.
Sarah:Mhmm.
Mark:There's tons of these. Yep. But the brothel is the interesting part. Is this a British or an American movie?
Sarah:American.
Mark:It's an American movie. Do not know this movie.
Sarah:I'll even tell you 82. 81. 80. I'll tell you who it's directed by.
Mark:Okay.
Sarah:Armand Westing. Is that name familiar to you? No. Good. He's a porn director.
Sarah:Oh. This was his only non porn movie.
Mark:And I gotta think that probably some of these ghost ladies
Sarah:It was a little porny.
Mark:Oh, it's a little porny.
Sarah:Because they're prostitutes.
Mark:And this would have been around the time of best little whorehouse in Texas, a surprising movie about prostitutes and
Sarah:police It's
Sarah:more Amityville horror.
Mark:Oh, which would have been around the right time too. Mhmm. No. Maybe like house of the rising sun or some like No.
Sarah:The name makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Mark:Okay.
Sarah:This movie is called The Nesting. What? Cockery. It's called the nesting. I don't know why it's called the nesting.
Sarah:Don't know. Never heard or seen this movie. Don't know. All I know is the ghost of the madam of this brothel is wicked scary and in her face all the time. And then her son comes with her to this house, and he sees dead ladies.
Mark:Does he say dead naked ladies? There's a lot
Sarah:of ghosty lingerie, I think. But apparently, it's quite scary.
Mark:Has a sickle on the cover.
Sarah:Yeah. And the house that it's set in is really famous. It's this octagonal house in upstate New York.
Mark:It's on prime for a dollar 99. Guess what I'm watching tomorrow?
Sarah:The nesting. But that is a point for me. That is a horrible movie that you have not seen.
Mark:Is indeed a horrible movie that I have not seen. Booyah. Thank you for tuning in to our lovely podcast.
Sarah:We left you with a couple of questions. What's your what's the worst monopoly you've seen? Do you know why Americans write the date the way that we do?
Mark:Yep. Next week, July 15th. How how?
Sarah:Is Is it the middle of July already? The middle of July already. The Cornish mystery.
Mark:Season 2 episode 4. Mystery. Dentists and debutantes. Oh, tarts. The 22nd, the disappearance of mister Davenheim
Sarah:Mhmm.
Mark:Which I love that episode.
Sarah:It's very good.
Mark:And then, July 29th, the double sin. And it's just double sin.
Sarah:Yes. Yep. Alright. Until then, bye maniacs.
Mark:Bye, maniacs. What would they call a shop that had vagina shaped stuff? The holery?
Sarah:Well, it's if it was in England, it would be the fanny.
Mark:Yeah. I guess.
Sarah:The fanny shop.
Mark:Bye, maniacs.
Sarah:Bye. Fanny desserts? I don't know. Sweet fanny. My sweet fanny.
Mark:Thanks for joining us on the Mystery Maniacs podcast. If you enjoyed our crazy podcast today, don't miss out on future episodes. Follow us on social media for updates, beyond the scenes content, and exclusive sneak peeks. Subscribe, like, and share to spread the word. Bye, maniacs.
Sarah:But I will say I saw them on Instagram and bought them, and I'm really glad I did because my butt's very happy.
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