Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Black Phone 2 (2025)

the next episode of Father Malone's Weekly round Up will be the two hundredth episode of Midnight Reviewing. That will coincidentally be our Halloween episode. What a fucking perfect storm of timing. To celebrate, We'll be having special guests on the show. We're gonna have the ghost of Blake, the leper captain that my ancestor doomed to a watery grave. He's gonna stop by and let us know what he's been up to. The Cryptkeeper RSVP'd, which is basically a no,

he's so fucking pissy. Well, who else is going? Yeah, he's that guy Prick Uncle Creepy is coming. Cousin Eerie is not the creep from Creep Show sent me an enthusiastic email. Been wanting to ask me to come on for some time listening for years, which is great, But he's silent so I don't know how that's gonna fly on the radio. Maybe he'll just point to the titles of short stories that he keeps within the flowing folds

of his cerements. You know, when I was a kid, I thought it would be the coolest to be friends with Elvira or Vampiro or Gulardi. You know, the movie horror hosts. Nope, horror anthology hosts. Those motherfuckers are interesting. Speaking of horror comics, were we yes, well, we certainly will be. Midnight is going to be taking a look at horror comic adaptations in the near future. So far, the list is thus Blade Spawn, ghost Rider, Jonah Heck's Punisher,

war Zone. I know that's not a horror title, but Frank Castle is a bad man and it's completely on display in netflick. After that, we've got war Actually. Concurrently, we're going to have Clive Barker's Books of blood films. Those are on the way, HP and I have Iyaoucha Fest coming to a close pretty soon. In fact, if you want to hear us talking about Pray right now, head over to the Patreon. Also on the Patreon is Moranus Fest discussing the films of Rick moranis and starting

in December, it's Star Trek Fest. We're getting caught in a wormhole. Belay that phaser Ordor, and we're taking a look at all of the Star Trek movies. Movies, not TV, not animated, not web series, not fan film, not fan fiction, not your local starship, nor your Starfleet organization. I already know we're going to take a beating on this series, but that's okay. I know more than our critics. I was rocking a red Starfleet shirt back in seventy eight yo.

Even then I was expendable. All of those shows are or will be up on the Patreon channel, so maybe subscribe. And if any of the choices in any of these festivals aren't your liking, or rather, if you have any suggestions, let's be positive, send those to Father Malone seventy one at gmail dot com. By the way, none of those characters are appearing on next week's anniversary show. It's just

going to be me and the Mutt. Speaking of the creep show, Creep, remember that opening scene with the dad and the comic book and my boy is in all the kids. You want to know where this is going? Billy in the garbage right into the friggin garbage. Now you got any smart mouth about that. Billy was, of course played by Joe King, son of fellow creepshow thespian A,

saying the role of Jordie Verel Stephen King Joe would eventually be the Emilioesteviz to his brother Owen's Charlie Sheen, which makes Stephen King Mark and Sheen. In this scenario, he took a pen name, Joe King became Joe Hill in a distancing move that fucking worked. I know Joe Hill is King's son, but it's never my first thought when I think Joe Hill, I think some of the most interesting and frightening fiction I've read in the last

twenty five years. As such, I'm not going to compare and contrast his work with his dad's beyond saying that he is a worthy successor, and I mean that in every sense of the word. There have been a couple of adaptations of his work, Horns from twenty thirteen. There was an attempt at adapting his comic book series Locking Key back in twenty eleven, but that didn't fly. It did fly in twenty twenty with two seasons there was the Nose Farantu limited series based on his excellent fucking novel.

If you haven't read that, you have to read that. It crosses over with Doctor Sleep, and it absolutely decimates that book. Not that I'm comparing them, I'm not. It's not a contest, but if it was, and I had to declare a better author, it's Joe. And it started back in two thousand and five. Officially that was when his collection of short stories and anthology ahha, how I

love them. That book is called twentieth Century Ghosts. But before I get there, and speaking of anthologies and speaking of Tales from the Dark Side, which you may have noticed on midnight viewing, were almost done with our retrospective of that series. Well, the show ended in nineteen eighty eight, and other than the follow up movie, has Lane dormant

as a franchise ever since. And then in twenty thirteen, a new series was commissioned and the author of the pilot in several episodes within the first series was going to be Joe Hill. In fact, he was going to be the showrunner, and every episode, like the previous iteration, would be a standalone tale. However, each would present a different piece of an overall story threading throughout the entire

first season, paying off in the finale. He wrote it, they filmed it, and then CBS kicked it to the curb. But the stories Hill had written were collected into a comic book, a fitting form, I'd say, and they are all excellent. He, like his dad, Sorry, really shines into short fiction. You know. Edgar Allan Poe felt the novel was a lesser arn't form from the short story, because you'd get the entire impression in one sitting. There would be no breaks with folded down pages and picking it

up a few days later. No, it was here's the character, here's what they're going through, Here's how it ended. And like I said, Joe Hill is on fire in his short fiction, particularly that collection Twentieth Century Ghosts. That book has a story, the first fucking story in the book that still disturbs me when I think about it. In fact, I can't think of pinon buttons the same way. After that tale. He called that one best new horror. How's that for fucking bold? Although it's only bragging if you

can't back it up, and he does. And in the same volume he has one of the sweetest stories I've read in forever. That's called Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead, about a failed stand up comedian returning in disgrace to pitch Itzburg in the late seventies and getting a job as an extra in a local film production in order to get closer to the girl he'd liked

in high school. The movie he's working on is Dawn of the Dead, so already I'm on board, And I can't think of an author more worthy of fictionalizing George Romero or Tom Savini than a kid who literally grew up around them. Twentieth Century Goes spawned the recent adaptation Abraham's Boys literally recent, like I was going to review it a few weeks ago, that stars Titus Welliver as Abraham van Helsing years after the events of Dracula and living in America with his boys. The other story to

get the big screen treatment was The Black Phone. So now we leave the world of Joe Hill and enter that of director and sometimes screenwriter Scott Derrickson. He made

his feature debut with hell Raiser Inferno. Remember that one, No One does. It was the fifth in a series that now has nine sequels and a remake it's the film Doug Bradley claimed was another movie entirely and just got rewritten as a hell Razor flick at the last second when che Derrekson denies, and I believe him, but it's easy to understand why Bradley or any viewer would

jump to that conclusion. The film is not much of a hell Raiser film in either tone or execution, which is actually refreshing, and if I'm honest, I enjoyed that one. He then did Exorcism of Emily Rose, which was pretty good, although very early two thousands. Then he did that Terrible Day the Earth Stood Still remake Come on Now. But and here's where everything got interesting. He made Sinister in

an Ocean of torture porn. He gave us a supernatural shocker that felt very lived in and very real and very frightening and mean. That flick is way meaner than anything Jigsaw made in his little workshop. That would be his first interaction with Ethan Hawk. He followed that with deliver Us from Evil, which was about hot priests fighting the devil on the set of seven. Not great. But then he did Doctor Strange. Now I love Doctor Strange.

He got that character and that world so fucking right, and he solved the two idiots punching each other climax problem that every Marvel seems to suffer from. He then spent the next couple of years developing Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which when announced was very exciting, indeed, because he was crowing how it was going to be a horror movie first and a superhero flick away distant.

One of the dimensions Doctor Strange and sometimes ghost Rider find themselves in is the Dream Dimension, and it's evil ruler Nightmare. He's an immortal demon and he's found everyone over the decades, Spider Man, Captain America, the X Men. He made his debut in Doctor Strange, so it would be fitting for him to make his big screen debut there. Not only that, with the Dream Dimension open, other dimensions were offered. I mentioned ghost Rider. He was a potential cameo,

as were Blade and the Midnight Suns. Mephisto could have shown up, but then Marvel pussed out on Horror because everything they were making was crap for a while and they needed again. Everything refocused on Kang and the Multiverse saga. That turned out great, so we got a way more fantasy and cosmic Doctor Strange with only a whiff of horror. The ultimate irony is that they hired Sam Raimi to

make the less horror version. So Dereckson finally steps away and refocuses on a project he'd been trying to get a handle on for more than a decade, The Black Phone.

The short story is deceptively simple. A young boy, Finny, finds himself the latest victim of the Grabber, a serial child abductor. He's locked in a basement that has a disconnected black phone hanging on the wall. At night. When he's alone, the phone rings, and the previous grabber's victims spirits communicate with Phinny, each helping him plot and execute

his escape. It fucking packs a wallop on top of being an incredibly fresh spin on the serial killers genre, and it's incredibly spare and did not exactly feature length. Dereckson and his sinister co writer see Robert Cargill, layer in a story of a mom dead by suicide and an abusive alcoholic father and a young sister who shares her mother's gift for second sight. It's the sister that keeps the story going on. The outside once Finny has

been grabbed by the Grabber. Terrible name, perfectly appropriate for a small town naming its boogeyman. But the Grabber anyhow, budget of sixteen pulls in one hundred and sixty one. You knew we were getting a sequel. The mask alone guaranteed we were getting a sequel. The mask the Grabber wears, I'd like to mention, was crafted by Tom Savini, fellow Joe King Creepshow thespian Tom Savini. You remember him in the role of garbage Man two. It's a comic book.

Now it's a gag. You hold it up to your eyes, it makes little circles, tie it to get in sand kicked in your face. That was Marty Schiff as garbage Man number one. Do I know too much about Creep Show? You're fucking right, iye do. Derrickson has two feature films released this year, The Gorge, which I liked a great deal, and The Black Phone too.

But then we saw how that went, and we're gonna see how it goes here maddeningly anyway, the first film took place in nineteen seventy eight, so this is nineteen eighty two, and we're still with Finni or Finn and his younger sister Gwen. Both these actors are terrific. Mason Thames as Finny was fucking great in the first film, and he's just as excellent here, giving us the same guy but definitely haunted and evolved from his experience. That's something you rarely see in a sequel.

grabber stronger. Now listen, this film is shot beautifully. Dereckson has been a huge proponent of multiple media in his films. He's constantly swapping between digital and thirty five and eight millimeter and sixteen millimeter. In Lesser Hands, it comes off as film school. He used them in the first film and again here as waypoints or guideposts to subtly let you know what demension you're currently in, because reality and dream are constantly up for grabs, and there are some

solid moments of dread throughout this film. Dread is so much better than a jump scare. Even if it doesn't pay off with a shocker, just a few moments of creeping horror can elevate your entire film. And he was doing that with a weirdo dream logic loop of Gwen in her pajamas coming to the front door of her house in the early morning hours, just her in a quiet, empty street. It was creepy as hell and reminded me

of Christina Gray. Do you remember her. Her friends called her Tina, and she would also be summoned into her dreams and sometimes out of her house and into an alley where she learned the true nature of God from

a burned up maniac. And I kept thinking of Tina and Nancy and Detective Thompson, Nancy's dad, Detective Thompson in particular, because not only do we have a lead who, every time she falls asleep, poses a threat to herself and everyone around her, because she acts as a conduit as well, allowing the infernal nastiness in the form of the far more demonic Grabber to come invisibly into our world. But the plot concerns the remains of the Grabber's victims needing

to be found and given a proper burial. You want to grab elements of Nightmare on Elm Street, be my guest. Everyone has given a dream killer plot a wide berth out of respect for the past four decades. But hell, why should Freddie be the only one who gets to inhabit your nightmares? And the fact that the comic book character Nightmare had been buzzing around in Derrickson's brain makes his type a natural for this flick. So fine, grab some of Nightmare on Elm Street, but keep your mits

off dream Warriors. I mean, really, we got to put the bones to rest and then he'll have no power plot. You're gonna use that one too, and I'm gonna ignore that of all the potential plots, you have a villain who was dragged a hell by his victims, who is now using the method employed by them in the first film to taunt his still living victims. Why are we at a summer camp in the middle of winter investigating

the grabbers earlier murders? And when will the filmmakers learn that a character gliding on ice is frightening until we see the skates and then it's fucking ridiculous. Put an axe in his hand or a scythe whatever bladed thing you want, it still looks like they're fresh from the penalty box. And what the fuck are we doing on a frozen lake with a bunch of cannon fodder characters. This started as a family drama with real characters trying to make sense of their lives after a traumatic event.

When the event returns from a whole new angle and fucks up their lives further, and then the movie ends with an invisible character on skates doing a backflip while wrapping a chord around an intended victim's throat. I'm not kidding that happens. Not that the first act had the most sparkling of dialogue. We know it's nineteen eighty two, you told us with a subtitle, and everyone is dressed that way, and you're using film stock that screams this

movie is not about nineteen eighty two. It's from nineteen eighty two. You don't have to have this exchange between characters tonight. I'm gonna go down to the Civic Center and get Duran durand tickets. Duran Duran tickets. Simon lebon is so choice my treat. I was gonna buy two anyway for real, that be radical stop it. Although big shout out to Derekson for including night Flight, the television film school that USA Network used to run on Friday

nights in the nineteen eighties. How I missed night Flight. I know they resurrected it as some streaming service, but I think I'd just rather own the originals on disc anyway. Black Phone two was a frustrating affair. I found myself defending the first film a lot when it came out, so I thought this was going to be a victory lap, and it mostly is. The kids are great. I want more of them. And Ethan Hawk, the most unlikely slasher of villain of all time, is genuinely scary as the

grabber and the dead. Utilizing technology is a potent idea that very few have gotten right. I imagine the next one is going to be excellent, kind of like Elm Street three after Elm Street two, though not that you already did Elm Street three. These kids better not end up in some behavioral center for troubled youth, or there's gonna be a little chin music that means fisticuffs, you know, pugilism, puggleism. Sorry for the mispronunciation, but it now I'm threatening the

filmmakers to be more creative. That's my job, and my

job is at an end.

hundredth episode Halloween Spectacular. It's going to involve felt fans of Michael o'donnie, who will already know what I'm talking about from Ripley Jean. I'm following alone. Here's a bit of something or other, well, an authentic voodoo ball somebody already sent for.