Stuff You Should Know - Introducing Smell-O-Vision!

Episode Date: May 4, 2023

Smell-O-Vision was a post-war movie theater gimmick that delivered well-timed scents to the noses of audiences to align with the movie. Did it work? Sort of. Did it ultimately fail? Yes. Does that mean it has gone away forever? No.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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America loves its founding fathers, but that's a tough act to follow as a founding son. I'm Bob Crawford. Join me, Patrick Warburton and Nick Offerman as we bring the sixth president to life. Was there ever witnessed such a barefaced corruption in any country before? Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. Listen to Founding Son, a curiosity podcast on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry's here. And the three of us, when you put us together, smell like cotton candy. Little known fact about

Stuff You Should Know. Uh, you know what? I gave my daughter cotton candy the first time she's ever had it. Candy floss? Just a couple of weeks ago at the zoo. I was like, you never had cotton candy. And I was like, give me some of that. I want to see. I haven't had it in so long. And boy, it's just that nostalgic blast of that stuff melting on your tongue. Did not enjoy it. I was like, Jesus. Oh, really? No, it's gross. What flavor was it? Like regular cotton candy flavor? It's all the same. Okay. The blues the same as the pink. I don't like where this is going. We had a cotton candy machine as a kid growing up, a little do it at home deal. What? Yeah. No key money bags. Yeah. Trust me. This is like a

599 Sears item, I'm sure. Did you have the Snoopy Snowcombe machine too? No. See, we couldn't afford that because it had a name brand. I think you and I were both very famous for having very unbranded childhoods. It's true, but we didn't have any kind of cotton candy machine. Yeah. We were generic family kids. So what about your cotton candy machine when you're a kid? Did you overdo it? Is that what you're saying? No, no, no. I just wanted to throw that in there. Oh, you wanted to show off. I told Ruby that I had one when I was a kid. She was like, really? Yeah. And I said, yeah, it was gross. And then we made white candy. No. So it didn't taste at all? No, just spin it. The taste doesn't come from the food coloring.

I don't know that that's true. Should we talk about smell-o-vision? Yeah. Okay. I forgot we hadn't even mentioned it yet. We're talking about smell-o-vision, which is exactly what it sounds like. It was a really neat, interesting gimmick that was tried in the beginning, the advent of the 1960s, most people say, where they tried to accompany motion pictures with smells in the exact same way that they accompany motion pictures with sounds. That's right. Like you put sound in moving pictures together. It's just so intuitive. And it's come so far that the world that we live in, you can't really imagine it otherwise. Even if you've seen the artist,

it's still tough to imagine, right? They were trying to do that, but with sense. And this was the first attempt. And unfortunately, it was not a very successful attempt, which is why we don't have smell-o-vision today. That's right. Dave Ruse, our old pal, helped us out with this. And this is kind of a fun surprise. One of our old House Stuff Works writers, Patrick didn't work in the office with us, but he was one of our long-time freelancers, Patrick Keiger, wrote a book like 18 years ago called Pop Lorica, colon, a popular history of the fads, mavericks, inventions, and lore that shaped modern America. And I think did such a good job with the smell-o-vision section that LA Times writer Martin J. Smith, again, like 17

or 18 years ago, wrote an article about smell-o-vision and used Patrick's book a lot. So we also relied on this stuff. And it was, I want to check out that book. It sounds cool. Yeah. It's a very good article or chapter, I guess, that they excerpted. And it's basically the definitive story of smell-o-vision because it's such a, it's such a narrow story. There's a few characters and it happened in like this really narrow timeframe. It's just, it has a story. It's one of those, those topics that just has its own story, you know? Yeah, absolutely. And we'll get into the story story, but the first movie that they used it on, that we'll touch on later, was called Scent of Mystery. And, you know, you get the idea, they would pipe in like, you know,

this, this someone was smoking a pipe, they would pipe in the smell of tobacco smoke. Right. Or if someone was like in a basement, they would pipe in some kind of dusty basementy smell. Smell of cadavers. Usually it was something hopefully kind of nice. Like there was a peach orchard in a scene and they, they piped in peach smells and things like that. But like you said, it was not a big hit at all. Yeah. I think Time, did you mention that? That Time named it one of the worst 50 inventions. Yeah. And this is along with DDT Agent Orange and the baby cage. So that's really saying something. What else recently was on that list? Our live show. Yeah. Our live show. The topic of our live show is on the 100 worst ideas of the century.

I thought you meant our live show was one of the first inventions of the last 15 or last 100 years. That was a good joke. It was a good joke, unintentional, but still pretty good. Yes. You're right. Our secret topic for the live show. You're exactly right. Yeah. We just gave away that if you go look at that list of 100 worst ideas of the century from Time, you will stumble across our topic, but you may not know that that's it. Yeah. And you know, it's not smell of vision. No. So then you narrowed it down a bit. Yeah. Now you got 99 other chances. So a company coming up with a signature scent is a big thing these days. Like we don't want to underestimate scent as a sense because it's very powerful. Yeah. There are very famous

signature scents of like hotels and stores and stuff like that. But as far as using odor to tie it to entertainment, they were doing this in stage plays at least in the 1800s. And I would bet before that even. Sure. Apparently they like theater owners would basically do what they could to kind of make the whole scene that you're seeing being portrayed just that much more realistic by incorporating smell along with sights and sounds, right? They didn't want you to touch the actors and you weren't allowed to lick the actors. So those were the three that they were allowed to work with. Yeah. And it's understandable. Why? Because I mean, if you think about it, like you were saying, like scent is a very powerful sense that if you could tap into that

correctly, you could really blow someone's mind with a stage production and eventually a movie. And that was the basis of this whole thing. In retrospect, it was gimmicky. It's silly. It's mid-century. Yeah. It has a name like smell-o-vision. But if you really dig down into the story, you find like this is a really earnest, genuine project that was meant to just completely transform filmmaking for the better. Yeah. I mean, like you said earlier, they thought it was going to be the next revolution, like adding sound, which is kind of funny. Like this isn't something that appeals to me, even though we'll get to 4D later on and talk about that. But the first movie theater to try anything like this in the United States was in Forest City, Pennsylvania.

It was called The Family Theater and it was owned by Roxy Rothafell. And ironically, it was a pornography theater, right? That was it. It is gullible day for you. That was the last episode and I'm still gullible. Can you imagine a XXX theater called The Family Theater? That was the joke. I was thinking from Roxy like XXX or something. I got you. I totally missed it. I'm sorry. I'm off my game. Hey, it's okay, man. As a matter of fact, I'll just retract that whole thing. No, I get it. That's a great name for a theater, Chuck. The Family Theater now showing deep throat. Exactly. All right. So The Family Theater was owned by Roxy Rothafell and Roxy is someone we talked about in our Rockettes episode because

this person would go on to open up the Radio City Music Hall and the Rockettes were originally called the Roxyettes. But in 1908, he owned The Family Theater and got a newsreel in 1916 about the Rose Bowl parade and said, hey, I'm going to pump the smell of of rose oil into this theater and fan it in there. And that was sort of the first little attempt at something like this. Yeah. And I mean, I think that was kind of one of the things when they added like interior ventilation systems, like people figured out you can not only move air around the theater pretty quickly, you can move sense around the theater. So in very short order, other theaters started trying the same thing. There was a theater in Boston in 1929. There was a

Detroit Theater in 1943. And it just kind of sporadically was was attempted at. But it wasn't until a guy named Hans Lobb, that's what I'm going with, who was Swiss, who was an inventor and an osmologist, which is somebody who studies the science of smells. And it wasn't until he came along that somebody said, I'm I'm making this work. I'm going to make this happen and really, like, dedicated himself to it. Absolutely. He had made his name removing smells. I'm not sure what chemicals he used. I was looking all over for it. Well, these days, he used stuff like ozone, which is not good at all. Well, I tell you, man, someone stole our car like three years ago. I remember that. And basically just

joy rode and wrecked it for a few days. And it smelled like smoked 3000 cigarettes in a span of three days. Yeah. And we got that thing back. And I told the insurance company, I was like, man, I don't care what you do. We're not taking this car back. There's no way it's ever going to smell the same again. Right. And they said, oh, we use an ozone treatment. And it didn't smell like cigarette smoke, but it smelled funky after that. And we fought tooth and nail with them. I was like, you know, we can't we can't drive around like this. Ozone has its own smell. And it's also super reactive. And you don't want to breathe it in. Luckily, it has a very short, like lifespan, but it's you don't want to be around ozone, basically. No.

No. That car is not in our family anymore, by the way. It had bad energy after that. So we didn't want any part of it. Yeah. I am. That's pretty understandable. I can totally see that. Yeah. So yeah, I guess he was doing ozone too. That was what I came up with. And let's just go with that. Yeah, he was he was using chemicals to remove odors. And then he said, hey, I could reverse this whole thing and add odors into movie theaters. And debuted that idea at the 3940 World's Fair in New York with his partner, Robert Barthas. And they had a 35 minute film called My Dream or Mind Traum. I guess it was in German. And they had 32 different chemical odors that they pumped out during this 35 minute film.

That's almost a smell a minute. Yes. And he called it Sinto Vision. Which is much nicer than smell a vision, for sure. I mean, they're both kind of goofy. Apparently, it generally worked too. The New York Times, which would become one of the biggest critics, I guess, of smell a vision later on, endorsed it. This is back in the yeah, 1939, 1940, years before it actually was attempted in a feature film. But they said that they call they call it a smelly instead of a talky. And they said that, you know, some of it worked. I think bacon didn't work very well. But incense worked really well. It was very convincing. And I guess they had the timing down and all that. But the projectionist was

actually running the not just the film, but also the the scent emissions as well. He was chief wafter. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Maybe we should take a break. Oh, okay. And we'll come back and talk about more smells right after this. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin. I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The one you feed has over 30 million downloads and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple Podcasts. Oprah Magazine named us as one of 22 podcasts to help you live

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All right. So, how'd you pronounce the name? Lob or lobby? Lob. Lob had a semi-successful debut at the CentoVision, but no one jumped on this thing. It was about 10 years before anyone really cared to do any more exploration. Because of a funny thing that happened over the course of World War II, before the war, movies were a very big deal. After the war, movies were still a big deal, but TV had come along by that point. Right. And sort of like the theater owners now being worried about people just streaming everything at home, they were worried that people are just going to watch TV now. So, they wanted to up the ante in the viewing in-person experience in the theater. And SmeleVision was one of those first

ideas. Yeah, they did another one. I can't remember. I think the movie was called The Chiller, but the producer installed electric shocks into the movie theater seats for the patrons. I can't remember what he called it. It was like that age, where they needed to do something that you just couldn't possibly do at home. And Michael Todd is, he actually wasn't the guy who really was like, okay, we're going to make this work. Michael Todd Jr. was the guy who ended up making it work. But his father, Michael Todd Sr., who, I saw this random bit of trivia on a website called in70millimeter.com, which is about the movie biz. Yeah. And he, the author said that Michael Todd Sr., he was born Ebram Hirsch Goldbogen. He was Polish and he adopted his son's

name. So, Michael Todd Jr. came before Michael Todd Sr. Isn't that interesting? That is super interesting. It very strange. But the upside of it is Michael Todd was a producer. He was at first a vaudeville producer, then a Broadway producer, and he eventually became a film producer. That's right. And he was, he's best known, if you've ever seen Todd AO at the end of the film. He kind of helped pioneer the 70 millimeter format and Cinerama scope. It's a, it's a widescreen format. It's probably a whole episode or short stuff on itself. But Todd AO as a company is still around, I think, in some capacity. But a very sort of inventive, enterprising guy, basically. And like you said, he came knocking around Hollywood eventually after his Broadway run.

And they, right out of the gate, had a very, very big hit with a movie called Around the World in 80 Days. And almost used this movie as the big debut for Smell-O-Vision, but decided not to. I feel like kind of at the last minute. Yeah. And very wisely too, because so Michael Todd, Junior and Senior, this is their first film production, and they won the Oscar for best picture for that year, 1957. It beat out Giant with Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Liz Taylor. And Michael Todd was seated next to Liz Taylor because they'd just gotten married a couple months before when his movie beat hers for the best picture. They also beat 10 Commandments. So it was like a big deal that these essentially outsiders had just walked in, produced such a

great movie and won Best Oscar. He didn't live very long after that. He died in a plane crash, I think the next year in 1958. Yeah. But his son just carried on the mantle. They were like actual collaborators. So there was just no question whether Michael Todd, Junior was going to continue on. But I get the impression that Junior was more into the idea of Smell-O-Vision than Senior was, because it wasn't until after Senior died that Junior said, I'm going to make this happen. That's right. So he got in touch with Laub and said, let's do this one movie. Let's give it a shot. It's going to be called Scent of Mystery. We're going to have all sorts of, you know, something that kind of bugs me. I'm not a big 3D guy. Yeah. It bugs me when they do

shots that you can tell. Like when you see the 2D version, it's like they did that thing coming at the screen clearly just as a sort of like a 3D gimmick. Like Friday the 13th, part three, did that a lot? Yeah. I mean, even modern 3D movies do it a lot. I feel like they'll, you know, have a couple of shots in there where it's like something is flying right at the camera. And you're just in 2D. It's like, you know, they did that just for the 3D. Yeah. I have to say in that movie, they did a good job with it. Like Kevin Bacon's playing with a yo-yo and the shots from underneath and the yo-yo is coming like right at you. Wait, he was in the first one, wasn't he? He was in the third one. He's the guy who does the, I think he's the guy doing the handstand

who gets like cut in half from the bottom up by Jason with the machete. Okay. I thought he was in the first one. I'm almost positive he's handstand guy. Handstand guy? Uh-huh. Is that his credit? I don't know. That'd be pretty great. I don't know. Yeah. He could have been in the first one too. He's in everything of course. Well, you don't, you're not in multiple ones unless you're Jason because you get packed up, right? Jason or Corey Feldman. Right. Was he in one of those? He was in like five or six, I think. Okay. I only saw a couple of those. Anyway, that's what they did with Scent of Mystery is they added all kinds of little gags in there to sort of take place, to time out with the smells, which, you know, you can't blame them if they're trying to debut

this new thing. They wanted to, you know, really incorporate it and they did in a big way. Yeah. They, like, they, it was the first motion picture written to have smells associated with it. As we'll see later on, there was a picture that was kind of retroactively retrofitted with smells, but this one was like, we're going to have this smell come out at this part in the script, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So the, like we said, like Loeb was a, or Loeb, I don't even remember how he said his name anymore. He was a consummate inventor. He was fairly genius from what I could tell. And he had invented what he called the smell brain, which is like the center, the central component of the smell of vision. Well, and we should say, I think you said he called it Scent

of Vision originally. Yeah. One of the stipulations of his contract with Michael Todd Jr. was that they were going to change it to smell of vision. Right. Big diff. Yeah. And apparently Michael Todd Jr. was asked, like, why didn't you change it to something more dignified? And he said, I don't understand how you can be dignified about a process that introduces smells into a theater. Yeah. I don't know what you could call it. That isn't kind of cheeky. I think Scent of Vision still worked. Yeah. I think it was great. But anyway, the smell brain was like the central component of the entire smell of vision process, I guess. Yeah. And this is one of those things that you and I both, I think, get kind of knocked out about

mechanical solutions to things. And this was that exactly. It was a big box. It had all these chemical vials with these scents in them. And that was attached to a belt that was attached to a motor. And it simply would, as the movie plays, it's timed to queue up these smells and scents. And it would just basically load up into place. The belt would rotate on queue. And then a needle is inserted into the vial and spits it into a fan that pipes it through. And this was sort of the key, I think. Yes. We'll get into more of this later. But it piped it into, ideally, would pipe it into vents that would not just go through the air conditioning or heating system or whatever, but under each seat, like miles and miles of this tubing. Yeah, for sure. And that was,

like you said, that's the key. Apparently, it worked really, really well. Michael Todd, Jr. gave Loeb a loud, that's what we've been saying, how distracting. He gave him an entire theater in Chicago to basically set up like a proof of concept. And it worked very well. I think he started working on it in 1957, 1958. There's a real, there's a discrepancy between when this whole thing premiered, as we'll see, either 1959 or 1960. But before they could get it out to market in, I think, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, they, somebody beat them to it. Right? Yeah. A guy named Walter Reader, Jr. Yeah, he had Aroma Rama. Again, pretty cheeky. I think it's better than Smell-O-Vision. Yeah, I mean, I mean, Smell-O-Vision really fit that

mid-century age, you know? Sure. So does Aroma Rama. Yeah, I think back then they both kind of went over pretty well. They're the kind of words with tail fins, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, totally. This was in New York at the DeMille Theater. And this is the one that you reference. He didn't actually make a movie from scratch to work with Aroma Rama. He bought the rights to a documentary called Behind the Great Wall. It was sort of a travel documentary about China. And he used his Aroma Rama in that way. And people did not like it critically. They said it was a stunt. I think the New York Times said the smells were elusive, oppressive, or perfunctory and banal. This is not good. The same reviewer went on to say that the treatment

in between smells that was meant to clear the air had its own sticky, sweet smell that, quote, tends to become upsetting before the film has run its full two hours. And that when the reviewer left the theater, they happily sealed their lungs with that lovely fume-laden New York ozone. It has never smelled so good. So that's not really the review you're going for when you're releasing the first smell-o-vision or Aroma Rama picture. Well, yeah. And on the bad reviews of that, they even mentioned the upcoming Scent of Mystery, which is definitely not what you want when you're following up someone who had jumped the line ahead of you. Right. He got a terrible review. Like they got a terrible review by proxy, basically. Yeah, exactly. So you want to take a

break and come back and we'll tell everybody about just exactly what happened when Scent of Mystery premiered? cliffhanger, let's do it. Regardless of the progress you've made in life, I believe we could all benefit from wisdom on handling common problems, making life seem more manageable now more than ever. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed podcast, where I interview thought-provoking guests who offer practical wisdom that you can use to create the life you want. 25 years ago, I was homeless and addicted to heroin. I've made my way through addiction recovery, learned to navigate my clinical depression and figured out how to build a fulfilling life. The One You Feed has over 30 million downloads

and was named one of the best podcasts by Apple Podcasts. Oprah Magazine named this as one of 22 podcasts to help you live your best life. You always have the chance to begin again and feed the best of yourself. The trap is the person often thinks they'll act once they feel better. It's actually the other way around. I have had over 500 conversations with world-renowned experts and yet I'm still striving to be better. Join me on this journey. Listen to the One You Feed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are you a history buff? Do you provide historical critiques while enjoying the dinner theater at medieval times? Then we have a new podcast for you. Half-hour history, secrets of the medieval world. From

the fall of Rome to the Black Plague, this show has it all. And even some things you might not know about. There are three popes. There's the Black Death. The superpowers of England and France are fighting a war. I'm Mike Coscarelli and I'll be guiding you through the Middle Ages with Dr. Christopher Bolito. Over the course of this podcast, Chris will be reframing what you thought you knew about the medieval era. It's not all jousting and tournaments and turkey legs, but nothing beats the real stories behind popes fighting with kings, the code of chivalry, and the origins of King Arthur. Listen to half-hour history, secrets of the medieval world on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. America loves its founding

fathers, but that's a tough act to follow as a founding son. If you do not rise to the head, not only of your profession, but of your country, you will be owing to your own laziness, slovenliness, and obstinacy. So we're tracing John Quincy Adams' journey from the White House to the halls of Congress. I'm Bob Crawford, basist for the Ava Brothers. Join me, Patrick Warburton, and Nick Offerman as we bring the Sixth President to life. Was there ever witnessed such a bare-faced corruption in any country before? Let justice be done, though the heavens fall. He held the union together across two pivotal errors and two visions for America. Adams stretches his hand forward to Lincoln, and in so many ways makes Lincoln possible. Listen to Founding Son, a curiosity

podcast every Thursday on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, Chuck, so we're here. It's either 1959, it's 1960, and it's time for the Center Mystery to Premiere. And Michael Todd Jr. has been talking it up. He has a famous quote where he said that he hopes people find it sensational. He's that kind of guy. And the film itself was apparently fairly well received. I was directed by a guy named Jack Cardiff, who's a cinematographer. I think he was a cinematographer for Black Narcissists, if I'm not mistaken, and won an Oscar for it. But he said he signed on to this one because he said the script was very well written and really dramatized the smells, which is, man, that's a press tour quote, if I've ever heard

one right there. I think he probably should have said, like, I needed the money. Can we all disagree on that being rotate? But he directed it. And again, it was a pretty cute little film, Daniel Melliot, beloved actor who was Indiana Jones' mentor in the first couple, I believe. You remember? Oh, what was his name? Are you talking about Marcus? Yes, he played. Oh, wow. He was the lead in Scent of Mystery. Oh, crazy. Yeah. And Peter Laurie was his sidekick cab driver. And the whole thing is set in Spain. It has its own travel log kind of quality to it as well. So the first two smelly pictures were essentially travel logs, one in China, one in Spain. But the second one had like a kind of a murder mystery plot to it with imposters and all that.

And those with gags that you were talking about, like, they really had a lot to do with the movie, like the the twist or the way the solution to the mystery that Daniel Melliot figures out is based on a smell. He could tell that the woman he's talking to is claiming to be someone else is an imposter because she's wearing the different perfume and the audience is smelling that kind of stuff. That's kind of fun. Yeah, another guy's rooted out as one of the evildoers because of the smell of the pipe tobacco that he's smoking. Like, there's a lot, you know, some of it was gratuitous. Like, they did that whole thing like you were talking about where they pull fresh bread out of the oven. Right. And I saw that they just shove it into the camera and the camera just stays there

for a little while. So you can get the fresh bread smell. But the the they really kind of went to great lengths to make it so that the smells had some they weren't all just gratuitous. They really did have something to do with the plot. Yeah, I think some of that plot centric stuff could be kind of fun. Back then, still don't know if I'd be into it today. But again, we'll get the 4D coming up. Okay. The New York Times, again, was not too kind. Had some pretty bad things to say. Patrons sit there sniffing and snuffling like a lot of bird dogs trying hard to catch the scent. And, you know, it was just a big flop, basically, overall. And this is something I couldn't verify. But Hans Laub's daughter Carmen claimed that Michael Todd Jr. cheaped out on the ultimate conversion

into the into the other theaters by not taking it to each seat, which was like we said, really one of the keys is to make sure it's got to be timed just right. Like, you can't have the scent piping in from an air duct 20 feet over your head that you smell in two minutes. When the scene is already long gone. And the real key was having it under each seat. And she claims that they didn't do that. And that's one of the big reasons why it failed. I saw kind of like indirect references that kind of support that claim that the first premieres flopped, but then they did some technical adjustments and they got it all figured out. So I'm wondering if like they went in and did the tubing because they saw that they'd really screwed up by trying to save a few bucks. The problem is the New York

Times had already reviewed it. It was, I mean, because it was a gimmick, people like to see gimmicks fail. Or I should say this, if a gimmick fails, people tend to find that satisfactory. If it's successful, awesome, it becomes legendary. And we'd be having a completely different episode right now. But if a gimmick fails, people love jumping on it. Kenny Youngman famously had a pretty great one-liner. He said that he didn't understand the movie because he had a cold. I thought it was a great one-liner. Apparently, I'm alone here. It was all right. But it just got smeared because people like smearing other people who try new things. So it had a very, very small window to be successful or not. It wasn't successful in that small window. And so

that was it. It was a flop. And then that was it for Smell-O-Vision. And not only was that it for Smell-O-Vision, Chuck, that was it for Hans Lobb and Michael Todd, Jr. as well. Yeah, they canceled. They were going to expand to 100 theaters. They canceled that order. Carmen, Hans Lobb's daughter, said that he basically died penniless or worse than penniless. He died with debts even. And he did invent something that, again, didn't bring him riches, but sort of the beta version of what you would call a glade plug-in or something today that was called best air. But that didn't work even though it was pretty ahead of its time. Yeah. And then Michael Todd, Jr. went off. He didn't produce anything else. Apparently, there were two other scripts that he

trademarked. One was called Bumpkin's Holiday. And the description I saw was that it was just a man riding a bus and that there was no dialogue of any kind. Wow. Like, what would that have been like? I would love to see somebody make that movie. Because how would you even attempt to make that interesting, you know? Maybe he was just like, with that title, I got to snap this thing up. Right. So that never got made. The other one was called Creature from the Bronx. That never got made either. So he never produced another movie again. I don't know if he died broke, penny listen with debts. I think he had some encounters still from... Right. I'm saying like Hans Lowe, but I'm saying I don't think Michael Todd, Jr. did. Oh, oh, oh, yeah. But his career petered out. I

think that is how I saw it described. Yeah. Well, that's sad. A couple of films have gone on to do something like this later on. John Waters was very famous for his 1981 film Polyester in theaters coming with a little scratch and snip card that you would use. Very, very funny and kitschy. Obviously, John Waters is going to do something fun like that. But what sense were they? Well, I mean, I think Fart was a very famous dirty shoes, skunk. It wasn't, you know, peaches and lineback. Right. Exactly. And then the Rugrats go wild movie as an homage is what they call that did the same thing in 2003 with their film. And then there have been more modern stabs at this in the way of 4D. Yeah, Dave, I think we said at the outset helped us out with this. And he

mentions the first 4D movie theater ever created was called the Sensorium. It was located at Six Flags Power Plant Amusement Park in Baltimore, which I think now is like called Power Plant Live or something like that. And it sounds about right. It was like Buckhead in the 90s jammed into like one call building from what I can tell. But back in 1984, they opened the Sensorium and Dave said he went there and like the seats moved and rumbled and they hit them with popcorn smells and stuff like that sprayed with water to simulate rain, I believe. And it just like with smell of vision with Hans Loeb in his his attempt at the World's Fair is basically proof of concept of the World's Fair. And nobody did much with it after that Six Flags closed in 1990 until 20 years later,

when South Korean company came up with the 4DX. And that's still around today. Yeah, I mean, that's the next wave. I have not tried it out yet. Like you said, it premiered in 2009 in South Korea. There are 21 effects. So it's not just smells. It's like kind of a Dave experience. It's got your seats are moving and rumbling and rocking back and forth. Seat backs can like punch you. There'll be fog or cold or hot air and plenty of smells. And there are close to 800 of these theaters opening. I'm sorry, operating in the world today. I have not gone. I want to try it out. I don't think I just want to see what it's like. I can assure you I probably won't like it. Right. But I will say that this podcast that I guess

Sonan is really great. I've mentioned it here before called Too Scary Didn't Watch. I know. It's these three girlfriends who, one of them loves horror movies. The other two hate them, but they want to know what happens. So she watches in them and recaps them. And it's a really fun show. And Sammy Smart is one of the co-hosts who has a great name. Yeah, Sammy's great. And she watches these movies, the horror movies. She's the one that watches them. And she went to 4DX for the Top Gun movie. And she said she had a blast. Oh, really? Yeah. Sammy's someone who's judgment and opinion value. So just based on that alone, I'll give it a shot. So I'm going to try out 4DX.

So my source, which is a Quartz article called I Watch Batman vs. Superman at a 40 theater, so you don't have to by Adam Epstein. It's basically the opposite. He was saying that there's a part where a character gets shot in the back and his seat punched him in the back for some reason. He said his hair was just kind of wet from all the... Well, I'm just saying, getting punched, why would you want to simulate that, you know? Oh, well, I think that's the whole deal. His point was this. This is the upshot, as he would have probably said if he were me. It did the opposite of pulling him into the movie. They reminded him exactly of where he was at every single moment, and it kept him from getting into

the movie itself. Okay. Yeah, he didn't really like it at all. And from what I've seen, basically every review is similar to that, except for apparently Sammy Smart's review. Well, I think Sammy... I don't think it was a full-throated endorsement. I think it was like she'd said I had a really good time at this movie and this experience. I got you. Cool. Which is different sometimes in saying this is awesome in the next way, if you know. Right. I'm going to. But it's hanging on. It's hanging in there. It is. And there's a... You can get this in your home now. There's a company from Spain called

Olorama that will sell you. It's a sort of a two-foot, but it looks like about one-foot box. Kind of looks like a box fan. Right. And you can load up to 20 smells, I think, for the basic $5,500 package. And it does the same thing. It syncs up with your movies through software. And I think you can go all the way up to like 20 grand if you want a 40-smell version. You can put it in your home theater. Yeah. It reminds me of the iSmell peripheral. Remember we talked about that old Apple peripheral that never took off? That's what it reminds me of. That's right. Plugged into your computer and did the same thing.

Yeah. I forgot about that. I have a little more saying if you'll allow me. Oh, please. So they went back and they kind of... I don't think they made any edits whatsoever. They just retitled the scent of mystery into holiday in Spain. It's not called scent of mystery anymore. And they took away the smelly parts, but because they'd written the script around smells, I saw that a Daily Telegraph reviewer said it took on a baffling almost surreal quality in some parts, like where the bread is pulled out of the oven

and then just kept it in the middle of the screen for a while. Interesting. It became like an art film. Yeah. It just didn't make sense anymore. I thought that was a great description of it. I want to see it now. Maybe I should watch it. Yeah. You got anything else? Maybe we should watch it together and we should just provide each other with surprising smells. Oh, that's a great idea.

You know. Yeah. That's a fantastic idea. Let's give it a shot. But they don't sync up, you know, like the bread comes out of the oven and that's when I do like motor oil or something. Yeah, he just tells me with old used motor oil. Yeah. I'm like, that smells terrible.

That'd be fun. Let's see. Yeah. I think we already asked you if you got anything else, right? I got nothing. Okay. So since Chuck said he's got nothing, that means it's time for listener mail. I'm going to call this one just a very nice thank you. Hey, guys. I've been listening to the show for about 10 years now. I want to express my gratitude. I've always enjoyed your down-to-earth humorous, clever, and intentional approach to the podcast.

Love learning about the stories, events, and concepts I've never heard of. We're hearing a more detailed look at a topic I never would have thought to explore further. I realize that your podcast has been with me through several milestones and difficult life events, grad schools, starting my career, grief, and now through my first year of sobriety. Wow. I work as a music therapist in a pretty high-strung environment, so I always appreciate how the show helps me to take my mind off things.

I quite literally can't fall asleep without listening to a stuff you should know episode, old or new, and that's not because it's boring, guys. I often use listening to current on walks as well, but something about the show helps to bring a sense of openness and appreciation for life. It helps calm my mind. So thank you to Josh and Chuck and the SYSK crew, and that is from Emily. Thanks, Emily. Yes, we take that as high praise that we help people fall asleep. I agree. If you want to get in touch with us and let us know how we've helped you,

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