What did you think Spalko did...

Meerkat

New member
...in order to win all of those awards?
I wonder what her specific achievements were, or if she could have done anything except discoveries in parapsychology.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Meerkat said:
...in order to win all of those awards?
I wonder what her specific achievements were, or if she could have done anything except discoveries in parapsychology.

I think it was parapsychology related. She probably discovered secret enemy bases using her long distance viewing skills.

She might, of course, just have slept with Uncle Joe. :whip:
 

Jack Nelligan

New member
Montana Smith said:
I think it was parapsychology related. She probably discovered secret enemy bases using her long distance viewing skills.

She might, of course, just have slept with Uncle Joe. :whip:



Maybe she slept with "Uncle Joe" remotely!(y)
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Spalko is said to be in her mid-thirties in the novel, which could mean she was born around 1922. So when the Great Patriotic War began in 1941 she would have been old enough to play a part.

The war diaries of Irina Spalko, Stalin's 'fair-haired girl', might make interesting reading.

In KOTCS we never saw much of her powers beyond telepathy, and she fought Mutt with her sword, rather than use any form of 'psychic attack'. In the realm of an Indiana Jones movie Spalko turns out to be quite understated, which puts her alongside other villains such as Toht, Belloq, Donovan, or Vogel. Mola Ram seemed to have more physical supernatural abilities - the heart removal trick (unless that was just a sleight of hand).
 

Chewbacca Jones

New member
Montana Smith said:
In KOTCS we never saw much of her powers beyond telepathy, ... In the realm of an Indiana Jones movie Spalko turns out to be quite understated,
This is one of my biggest disappointments, character-wise. And I don't really see her using telepathy, either. She comes across as a fraud, to me. Or a nut.

...which puts her alongside other villains such as Toht, Belloq, Donovan, or Vogel.
I might agree on the Donovan thing, but Toht did more with his fairly small role, and was much scarier. Belloq was far from "understated." But you go on to say...
Mola Ram seemed to have more physical supernatural abilities - the heart removal trick (unless that was just a sleight of hand).
So, maybe by understated, you mean "no supernatural powers." Since Mola would be the exception to the rule (if it's not slight-of-hand), then why parcel up groups? All you really have is Mola Ram and... every other villain.

But I love that you mention the possible slight-of-hand thing. There's never a real answer to it, and it's far cooler being a mystery. If they had found a similar way to play Spalko's supposed mental powers, THAT would have been interesting.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying overall is, "In the realm of an Indiana Jones movie" is a phrase that suggests Indy villains are usually more grand, less... fuzzy (10 points for IDing that reference). But actually, in the realm of an Indiana Jones movie, villains are usually quite grounded and normal.

Am I making sense?
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Chewbacca Jones said:
I might agree on the Donovan thing, but Toht did more with his fairly small role, and was much scarier. Belloq was far from "understated." But you go on to say...

So, maybe by understated, you mean "no supernatural powers." Since Mola would be the exception to the rule (if it's not slight-of-hand), then why parcel up groups? All you really have is Mola Ram and... every other villain.

Yes, I was struggling to think of the best way to explain what I meant earlier! My brain was struggling into first gear.

What I meant was that Spalko turned out to be quite normal - such as other non-supernatural villains (Toht, Belloq, Donovan, Vogel etc). Toht was the epitome of human evil. Belloq's high intellect made him the match of Indy. Donovan was an ambitious collector. Vogel was literally a brutal Nazi.

And Spalko... well, she's an accomplished swordswoman who failed to read Indy's mind. I haven't finished reading the novelization yet, so maybe there's more background to her abilities there. I presume she located Hangar 51 through remote viewing.

Chewbacca Jones said:
But I love that you mention the possible slight-of-hand thing. There's never a real answer to it, and it's far cooler being a mystery. If they had found a similar way to play Spalko's supposed mental powers, THAT would have been interesting.

Indy is always skeptical about the supernatural, even after he's witnessed something that can't be explained. Even after witnessing the power of the Ark, he remains skeptical about the power of the Grail, until he's seen it with his own eyes. I suppose that makes him the perfect empirical explorer. He senses there's something more to Spalko, though he doesn't let her think so.

Chewbacca Jones said:
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying overall is, "In the realm of an Indiana Jones movie" is a phrase that suggests Indy villains are usually more grand, less... fuzzy (10 points for IDing that reference). But actually, in the realm of an Indiana Jones movie, villains are usually quite grounded and normal.

By 'in the realm of' I was referring to Indiana Jones movies being full of supernatural elements - and in the realm of a series of supernatural movies, Spalko turned out to be quite understated. Which is odd, considering that so much more could have been made of her character. Which brings us back to the start of this thread: what did she do in the past that earned her the Order of Lenin?

Chewbacca Jones said:
Am I making sense?


Perfectly! :hat:
 

Sharkey

Guest
She used her arms her legs her style her side step her fingers her her her imagination. She made them see there's nobody else there, no one like her. She's special, so special, she had to have some their attention...

That or feminine intuition.
 
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Stoo

Well-known member
Montana Smith said:
Spalko is said to be in her mid-thirties in the novel, which could mean she was born around 1922. So when the Great Patriotic War began in 1941 she would have been old enough to play a part.

The war diaries of Irina Spalko, Stalin's 'fair-haired girl', might make interesting reading.
Here's what "Ultimate Guide" says:

Raised in a superstitious Ukranian village, where here psychic abilities led to her being branded a "witch", Irina Spalko was handpicked by Stalin to oversee research into psychic warfare. A former member of the KGB's Science and Technology Directorate, Spalko has been decorated with the Order of Lenin. Her powers of intuition have taken her a long way from the experiments she performed on animals as a teenager.

Montana Smith said:
In KOTCS we never saw much of her powers beyond telepathy, and she fought Mutt with her sword, rather than use any form of 'psychic attack'. In the realm of an Indiana Jones movie Spalko turns out to be quite understated, which puts her alongside other villains such as Toht, Belloq, Donovan, or Vogel. Mola Ram seemed to have more physical supernatural abilities - the heart removal trick (unless that was just a sleight of hand).
Matt, just wanted to ask if you've only seen the U.K. censored version of "Doom"? Some months ago, the heart scene was being discussed and there was huge minunderstanding because some Ravenheads were not even aware of the censored shots. It's no "sleight of hand".:eek:
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Stoo said:
Here's what "Ultimate Guide" says:

Raised in a superstitious Ukranian village, where here psychic abilities led to her being branded a "witch", Irina Spalko was handpicked by Stalin to oversee research into psychic warfare. A former member of the KGB's Science and Technology Directorate, Spalko has been decorated with the Order of Lenin. Her powers of intuition have taken her a long way from the experiments she performed on animals as a teenager.

Well, that's a tantalizing glimpse of Spalko's past. Wonder what she did to the animals? I have a book on Soviet psychic warfare - will have to see what it says on this subject...

Stoo said:
Matt, just wanted to ask if you've only seen the U.K. censored version of "Doom"? Some months ago, the heart scene was being discussed and there was huge minunderstanding because some Ravenheads were not even aware of the censored shots. It's no "sleight of hand".:eek:

I've just watched my DVD again: Mola's fingers are not shown penetrating the victim's flesh. You just see him turn round holding a bleeding and still beating heart. There's wound on the victim during that scene or when you see the cage tip backwards. It appears like sleight of hand in this version, as its the same thing witch doctors do when they say they're removing evil or cancer from a body - apart from the still beating heart!

How does the non-UK version differ?
 

metalinvader

Well-known member
Montana Smith said:
How does the non-UK version differ?

Oh my..

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Oh,It differs!
 

Chewbacca Jones

New member
I forgot about that. :eek: And I've never seen the UK version! In my own defense, I don't watch ToD that much, anyway. So, I take back comments agreeing to a possible slight-of-hand trick.
 

Montana Smith

Active member
I never saw that version before. This version cuts out the bit where we see the cage tilt backwards and the victim is seen to be unwounded. Do we see his hand go inside the victim's body? It's too dark to make out. There's a squelching sound, indicating that they do.

So Mola Ram must be one of Indy's true supernatural villains. Which means Spalko should have been able to show off more of her paranormal skills.
 
I think Spalko achieved her rank and got her reputation by manufacturing evidence against her class mates, rivals and enemies securing herself a reputation by eliminating those with contrary opinions.

She seemed one not to get her hands dirty, and appears to be simply a manipulator as J Edgar Hoover was here in the US.

I can see her having it out with a fellow cadet who in a conversation she initially spies on brands her a bitch, the other cadet says witch and she uses this perception in her Machiavellian ascent within the party.
 
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mister64

New member
I assumed Spalko was good at tracking down dissidents who fled the USSR and eliminated them. Being so good at finding people that seemed to have disappeared probably helped her reputation as a psychic, whether or not she actually was psychic.
 

Stoo

Well-known member
Montana Smith said:
Well, that's a tantalizing glimpse of Spalko's past. Wonder what she did to the animals? I have a book on Soviet psychic warfare - will have to see what it says on this subject...
Maybe she was able to make animals fight each other, similar to Chuck Heston and Jimmy Franciscus were made to do in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes"? Or made their heads explode like in David Croenenbeg's "Scanners"!:p
Montana Smith said:
So Mola Ram must be one of Indy's true supernatural villains. Which means Spalko should have been able to show off more of her paranormal skills.
It could also mean that Spalko was simply a charlatan who had fooled everyone. It would interesting to hear what your book has to say about "psychic warfare".
Chewbacca Jones said:
I forgot about that.:eek: And I've never seen the UK version! In my own defense, I don't watch ToD that much, anyway. So, I take back comments agreeing to a possible slight-of-hand trick.
Chewie! How could you forget about that?!?:whip: Not to take things off track but one thing that's evident is that the censored version has formed a, somewhat, alternate point-of-view of the film within the minds of U.K. viewers, which is unfortunate.
Rocket Surgeon said:
She seemed one not to get her hands dirty, and appears to be simply a manipulator as J Edgar Hoover was here in the US.
We need a good screengrab of her dossier from "Skull". I wonder if there are any clues in the fine print...
 
Stoo said:
We need a good screengrab of her dossier from "Skull". I wonder if there are any clues in the fine print...

I gave it a shot, and on DVD it's unintelligible...It seems they used some lite paper stock and the content of the second page make it even harder to see.

Maybe those of you with the BluRay...
 

Montana Smith

Active member
Stoo said:
Maybe she was able to make animals fight each other, similar to Chuck Heston and Jimmy Franciscus were made to do in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes"? Or made their heads explode like in David Croenenbeg's "Scanners"!:p
It could also mean that Spalko was simply a charlatan who had fooled everyone. It would interesting to hear what your book has to say about "psychic warfare".


Okay, the book is 'Psychic Discoveries: The Iron Curtain Lifted', by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Ostrander, 1997.

It's not the sort of book I normally read, but I picked it up after watching KOTCS (along with a book on CIA Psychic Warfare).

References to animals are as follows:

Testing ESP from a submarine using a mother rabbit and her newborn litter. Scientists placed baby rabbits aboard the submarine and kept the mother in a laboratory on shore where they implanted electrodes in her brain. When the sub was deep below the surface of the ocean, the young rabbits were killed one by one. At each synchronized instant of death her brain reacted.

There is also a report of telepathy between humans and animals - a showman by the name of Vladimir Durov who could allegedly communicate telepathically, He trained over 1500 animals including dogs, bears, an anteater, camels, roosters, foxes, rats, cats, raccoons, which all performed in his 'Animal Theatre'. He did away with the traditional Russian method of training animals by fear and brute punishment, and instead used a special kind of wordless, signless communication, without ultrasonic whistles.

At Kharkov University's Neurology Institute rats were killed by drugs and their brains placed in solution. Psychics were brought in to communicate with the dead rat brains and they reacted. Dead rat brains responded to emoptions such as lauighter for about three minutes.

Some of the most ultraclandestine KGB projects for developing psycic weapons were undertaken at a secret lab inside the Filatov Eye Institute in Odessa. Dr A.V. Kalinets-Bryukhanov, president of the All-Union Scientific Research Association, bombarded animal brains with specific pulsed magnetic fields. He claims the animals developed clairvoyance and could literally see through walls. But their paranormal powers were brief. Soon their brains disintegrated and they all died. Death-row prisoners went through similar tests with the same outcome.

Well, that's what the book says.

Matt
 

James

Well-known member
Montana Smith said:
Okay, the book is 'Psychic Discoveries: The Iron Curtain Lifted', by Sheila Ostrander & Lynn Ostrander, 1997.

This is actually an update of the authors' 1970 book, "Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain". It was a fairly popular work on the subject and no doubt played a large role in shaping the character of Irina Spalko. (The rabbit experiment was even incorporated into one of her deleted scenes.)

I think Spalko's psychic tendencies were simply intended to provide historical context- as opposed to presenting her as some kind of supernatural foe. Mola Ram was a high priest who dabbled in black magic. Irina Spalko was a Russian officer who believed in her intuition. There's quite a difference there.

She could've had a good success rate under controlled conditions, but that's not something that would necessarily be useful in the field. Aside from, perhaps, guessing which direction Akator was in, she was never going to suddenly morph into Jean Gray. :D
 

Montana Smith

Active member
James said:
This is actually an update of the authors' 1970 book, "Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain". It was a fairly popular work on the subject and no doubt played a large role in shaping the character of Irina Spalko. (The rabbit experiment was even incorporated into one of her deleted scenes.)

As I said, it's not the sort of book I would normally pick up, but having just watched KOTCS, and because the guy was offering 5 books for £1 just to clear them out, I bought it. It's interesting to hear that the rabbit experiment was going to be referred to in KOTCS - which script was that in? Is it in the novel? (I'm only a hundred pages into the novelization).

James said:
I think Spalko's psychic tendencies were simply intended to provide historical context- as opposed to presenting her as some kind of supernatural foe. Mola Ram was a high priest who dabbled in black magic. Irina Spalko was a Russian officer who believed in her intuition. There's quite a difference there.

She could've had a good success rate under controlled conditions, but that's not something that would necessarily be useful in the field.

So, you see Spalko more as a researcher/investigator into the paranormal, rather than a full-blown possessor of paranormal abilities. That makes her historically plausible.

I found it funny that Uri Geller wrote the Foreword to the 'Psychic Discoveries' book, as Uri has since been pretty well debunked as a fake. There was also a documentary on Geller a few years back where he was on hoiliday with his family, and was trying to say that their hotel room number was mystically significant, whilst another family member was trying to tell him he had the wrong number! Later he went up into a bell tower and said he could make the bells ring by the power of his mind - it turned out they rang on the hour anyway!

With that in mind, it does place Spalko alongside other Indy villains (excepting Mola Ram, unless he never broke the victim's skin - still want to see a clear shot of 'the moment').

But, should we read more into 'The Ultimate Guide' that Stoo quoted from: "Raised in a superstitious Ukranian village, where her psychic abilities led to her being branded a "witch...Her powers of intuition have taken her a long way from the experiments she performed on animals as a teenager."

In history there are cases where superstitious villagers have accused simple herbalists of witchcraft. Yet, the Guide states that she possessed 'psychic abilities' which appear linked to her 'powers of intuition'. This would seem to suggest that Spalko possessed telelpathic abilities, that she could control animals by the power of her brain (though maybe not so well with people, as her failure to read Indy's mind demonstrated).

Intuition also suppoeses that she instinctively knew how animals and people might act in any given situation, which would also be politically advantageous, making her rise to prominence even faster. Yet, she required Mac to leave a trail of tracking beacons for her to follow, which, again, implies that Spalko's powers were quite limited, that she was really more a very cunning, and intuitive foe.

James said:
Aside from, perhaps, guessing which direction Akator was in, she was never going to suddenly morph into Jean Gray. :D

The closest she gets is her final scene. Maybe if there is an Indy V she will return like a Phoenix from the flames... ;)
 
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