Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - John Carpenter's The Fog, Pump Up the Volume

Maybe one engine rev like midway past, so it doesn't seem accidental. That's what's up? What else is up? Downloads of this show? So thank you one and all. I'm still knocked out any of you are interested in this nonsense, but now we're stuck with each other, and there seem to be more and more of you. So welcome to

all the new listeners. In Patreon news, there's Patreon news. Yes, we are giving away a free subscription to the Patreon channel. You have to go to my Instagram at Father Malone, find the post about the giveaway and like and comment. You're supposed to do both, but none of my followers can follow the rules, and I love that about you. If you're listening on the day of this episod so it's released, you still have time. You have like twenty

four hours. Really, I'm picking a name at a random At midnight of April twenty second, Patreon subscribers get episodes early and commercial free. In fact, everyone gets the show commercial free. I don't know if you noticed that. Maybe I should just stop advertising the Patreon channel as commercial free. In fact, one of the necessities of the Patreon channel is that I don't have any ads. At least I don't place any ads or allow any on the show.

I'm not being noble. If someone wants to specifically sponsor me, then you're gonna hear all about them. I just don't think you ought to hear online casino ads. Halfway through me ranting about swamp thing speaking of casinos and this show. Wow, that's a segue you don't get to use that often. This is way too far in advance for any merit in the knowing, but I feel like announcing it anyway.

Midnight Viewing will be doing a live show this October the Fine Folks at Nightmare in Vegas Horror Convention and Car show extravaganza. We're nice enough to have me be part of their sinister celebration at the Silverton Hotel and Casino that just so happens to be my favorite casino in Las Vegas. Why one word mermaids. They have a tank with mermaids swimming in it. Why would you go anywhere else? And and they have my favorite bowling alley

it's inside an airstream trailer inside the casino. Oh, the place is very heaven and now it's gonna get a whole lot of hell. We're gonna find out if Ripley here can handle large crowds with a flamethrower. That's not very helpful for growing a fan base. Go to a Nightmare in Vegas dot com for more information about the convention itself, and make plans to come and hang out October fourth and fifth. It's gonna be a fucking trip. Now, two more bits of business.

with one vote. Hey, listen, listeners, you realize that if you and a friend right in, you can turn this whole process on its head instead of leaving me with fucking Bakshi. And it's not even wizards, with that fucking sexy fairy. Now her boobs were appealing. Meanwhile, over in Scotland, my future home, I don't know. I've been looking at Wales with a pretty keen eye lately. Check it. I can even mispronounce some words terribly. Ronda Cunnin toff eh.

That's the valley made famous by Tom Jones. Another valley made famous by Tom Jones, the Las Vegas Valley. See I'm halfway to Welsh anyway. Ian bang our man in Scotland wrote in after the val Kilmer episode, and he invertently brought up two questions I have for all of you. Have you not seen real genius follow up? What the fuck is wrong with you? If you've seen anything by Zack Snyder more than once and real genius nuns, you need to rethink some aspects of your life. I'm not

even doing a bit here. I'm genuinely disturbed. Ian wrote into weigh in on my obsession with Blackpool, urging me that off season is the right time for me. It being quote photogenic in a bleak, wind swept way. I love that. Bleak and wind swept were my nicknames in high school. I think that's all the mail, but we still have more bits of business. Have you been watching Daredevil?

Why not? Over on Anthology's Attack, Antonio and I covered the first two episodes. Well, all nine of the first season are out and you have to see it. Superhero fatigue, Grow the fuck up. Marvel has lost the plot. Grow up, you whiny pricks. This is air Deevil, purely distilled. It works as a standalone all of the fault or all

of the previous three seasons. The inessential bits those have become even more so, and the important plot in character bits are on display here and they do it in nine episodes, as opposed to that shaggy chambalic twelve or thirteen unfocused bullshit we were getting before I mentioning it here on the roundup, because if I got Antonio into the studio, we would never stop talking about this season.

And now's your chance to catch it with minimal spoilers or hype, except this hype, and now I'm going to spoil the whole thing. No, I wouldn't. I will say, however, that if you're a fan of those books, they finally get it right here. Not that the series wasn't great previously. It had moments, but this is the big screen or

small screen, does it matter? Version of what most fans were hoping for, including the peripheral characters, most specifically the return of Frank Castle John burnhal Is in the trailers, you know the punishers in this so it's not a spoiler, and for fuck's sake, I'm telling you they get everything right this season, including the queasy morality of associating with Marvel's most hated hero. But it also gives us the absolute fucking necessity of him when the greater evil is

Wilson Fisk. Good God. Dinafrio mentioned in a recent interview that there still seems to be some sort of legal fiasco keeping Kingpin away from Spider Man as Marvel and Sony continue to wrangle. But that's fine. If all we ever get is street level Kingpin, this street level Kingpin, then all is fucking well. Having said that, I do want to see Wilson Fisk punch Peter Parker so hard he's ejected from a tall building. Now, ordinarily I like

to cover the latest of the newest here on the roundup. That's the whole reason for this show, and that was certainly going to be the case this week. I even slept out to the cinema and watched the film. But we're not going to be discussing Sinners here. It's too fucking excellent for some ten minute mini review where I go pin bowling around every aspect of the eh I enjoyed while striving mightily not to spoil anything. I'm going

to do a full episode on Sinners. It's the best movie so far this year, best horror movie in the years, might be the best action horror movie I've ever seen. That sounds like hyperbole, but that is the most outrageous claim ever made. That's a grammar joke, but not a joke, Sinners, but it is very, very funny. I'm bringing Sinners up because even though I'm not going to go in depth, I do want to encourage you and everyone you know to go see it in the theater. Sincerely. It's got

an extra creep factor you're not going to get at home. Plus, let's support good movies. It's a prohibition set vampire movie. Okay. Ryan Coogler directed it. Michael B. Jordan is twins. I'm gonna shut up about it now. No, I won't remember in Back to the Future too, when Old Doc and Young Doc are interacting near the clock tower and he hands himself a wrench, it's from behind a light pole,

and even with that, it's still super fucking awkward. In his introductory scene, Michael B. Jordan is leaning against a car beside Michael B. Jordan. One hands the other a cigarette and then he leans in and the other lights it for him, and the camera is moving and then he hands him back the fucking cigarette. And if I didn't know Michael B. Jordan was a singular human being, I would have just assumed it was twins. That's what

visual effects are four. They should be totally fucking amazing and seamless so much so that you don't even know they're happening. They do it a lot in this movie. That's nothing. It's their introductory scene. Also, their characters are called the Smokestack Twins Smoke and Stack, kind of like Bleak and Windswept, but way fucking cooler. All right, that

is enough. We're not gonna be talking about it because we have to talk about the fog. Why why are we talking about the fog?

to forget, not like they forget he made it. It's more like they forget it exists, if they've even seen it at all. Carpenter did have a fucking incredible run right out of the gate, talking Dark Star to Assault

on Precinct thirteen to Halloween after The Fog. The Thing is clearly Carpenter's masterpiece, a perfect film, although I would argue the same about Escape from New York, his dystopian western that is also perfect, and he'd still yet to do Christine or They Live or Big Trouble in Little China.

So I get it a quiet little ghost movie. Isn't as indelible as skinless Horror is reminding us that cash is our real god, or as quotable as some of Jack Burton's weird DJ routine Aboard the Pork Chop Express, Have you paid your DU's Jack, Yes, sir, the check is in the mail. Or even when he's out of the cab. Gee, sure's raining cats and dogs. Everybody relaxed. I'm here so many quotes? One more, what one will come out?

Carpenter signed a two picture deal with Avco Embassy. That's the company with the most seventies production logo of all time. It's been parodied and remade countless times with good reason. It is fucking cool. The story was conceived by himself and co writer and producer Deborah Hill during a trip to the UK promoting Assault on Precinct thirteen. Evidently, there was a mighty mist around Stonehenge when they went to visit, and it was just too damned mystical to not inspire.

The other factor they wove in was historical fact. You heard it in mister Macon's Tale of the Founding of Antonio Bay. There were similar tales of a method employed by pirates on the California coast Goletta, California, more specifically, where a bonfire would be built further south than an actual lighthouse and the ships guided there by the light would break up on the rocks and the pirates would descend and elute them. There were tails, but no actual

evidence of it on the California coast. There is a famous case of the exact same method employed on the coast of Rhode Island. However, back in seventeen thirty eight. Mister Macon, by the way, named for Welsh horror author Arthur Macon, can't get away from Wales today, but other characters would include Tom Atkins as Nick Castle, Nick Castle is one of John Carpenter's USC buddies. He wrote Escape from New York with him. Then there's Charles Seipher's as

local weatherman Dan O'Bannon. O'Bannon wrote and starred in Carpenter's first film, Dark Star, as well as writing Alien and directing Return of the Living Dead. Stevie Wayne's son is looked after by Nanny Missus. Koebrits. Richard Coebrits produced Carpenter's TV movie Someone's Watching Me. There's an exclamation at the

end of that. You all know Carpenter did TV movies in the seventies, right, Someone's Watching Me, which starred Future Carpenter, Bride and Fog star Adrian Barbo, and the fucking awesome TV movie Elvis starring future Snake Plisken. Kurt Russell. George buck Flower appears here as Tommy Wallace. Tommy Wallace being one of Carpenter's oldest friends. He was Michael Myers in Halloween or The Shape. Is there anyone out there correcting

people Frankenstein's style about Halloween? You know, the little Boy was named Michael Myers. The hulking monsters named the Shape. It says so when the credits Darwin Justin from Assault on Precinc thirteen shows up here as medical examiner doctor. I don't think I should have to explain that to you. And Hal Holbrook appears as father alone. Some will tell you his name is father Patrick Malone. Those people are fucking wrong. We'll get back to that magnificently named character

in a bit, all right. If I had to guess, I don't, because I've done the exhaustive monomoniacal thing I do with everything I love, and obsess about it and research it and turn it over and over and over in my mind. But if I had to guess, here's what happened. Carpenter took a two picture deal, figuring I've got a killer with escape from New York. The second picture will come to me later. And then Navco said, new York is a prison and the President's plane has

crashed into it. John, you know we're a small company. What else you got, uh, well, the fog? And then they were like sold and he was like, oh shit, I sold them a pitch for nothing. Thus the hastily named characters. Also the offhand way Carpenter has treated the fog ever since it was a modest hit, which might have been encouraged had he not just made the most successful independent film of all time with Halloween. Again, I

wasn't there. I can't tell you who did what, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, after providing the location and the crime and the characters named after his buddies, Carpenter didn't have a whole lot to do with the actual writing of the rest of the movie. That would be Deborah Hill handling screenplay duties. And I fucking love this script, small scale and ultimately character driven. Also,

fuck your Bechdel test. I mean, don't. I think it's a necessary tool that every screenwriter should be aware of. But the male cast of The Fog is nominal at best. This movie stars Adrian Barbo, Jamie Lee, Curtis, Nancy Loomis, and Janet Lee, with appearances by Tom Atkins, Halholbrook and Charles Ciphers, oh and John Carpenter. He's in the opening scene with hal Holbrook as Bennett. Will Bennett ever receive his salary? Here's a bit of weirdness. Carpenter is playing

Bennett Tramer. Bennett Tramer is the boy. Laurie is freaking out that Nancy set her up within Halloween. Is it the same guy? Is this shared universe? Do I give a shit? Let's talk at Deborah Hill for a moment. She put that totally unnecessary Edgar Allan Poe quote at the beginning of the film. It's from Poe's a Dream

with it a dream. The line in the film is all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream, which is a meditation on the nature of reality, and really not about pirate ghosts and lighthouse radio stations. It's atmospheric. It's just nonsense here. That's my only gripe with the screenplay, because the rest manages to juggle a dozen characters and plots and events all during the course of one day, the centennial celebration of Antonio Bay,

and it does so with escalating dread. It's a gentle movie, or at least it was. And we'll get back to that just a few more words on. Deborah Hill co wrote Halloween the Fog, Halloween two, produced Escape from New York and the Dead Zone and Adventures in Babysitting, and if not Terry Gilliams's best film, at least his most accessible. The Fisher King. She produced an entire array of Roger Corman remakes on Showtime called Rebel Highway flicks like Dragstrip

Girl and The Cool and the Crazy. She passed away in two thousand and five, so you know, fuck everything. Antonio Bay is one hundred years old because one hundred years ago, the town's founding fathers made a deal with a leper colony to allow them to settle on land close to Antonio Bay. Instead, during an ungodly fog, they built a false fire, guiding the leper's ship of the Elizabeth Dane into the rocks where they stole their gold. It's that gold they used to found the entire town.

And now one hundred years later, those lepers, led by Captain Blake, are back and they want blood or gold, or maybe both, or maybe just the gold. The rules aren't clear, but who needs rules when you have a dual masted pirate ship looming out of the fog and ghostly shapes with cutlasses and worse in their rotting hands, and between midnight and one they'll do their worst on anyone unlucky enough to open the door. These are incredibly polite,

murderous pirate gohot hoo. I'm calling them pirates. I know they're not. I'm using shorthand.

maritime reports. She's a recent transplant to Antonio Bay, having come from a successful career in Chicago, but after the death of her husband, she and her son have set up digs here on the California coast. All of that backstory is never spoken. It's all told through photographs and documents all around Stevie Wayne's house. That house, by the way, continues the trend of all the coolest shit being in

this film. Lighthouse radio station, check stilt house that sits on the water over that aforementioned Antonio Bay, and check sleepy beach resort town that seems to eskew tourism. Check if Antonio Bay weren't fictional you can rest assured there'd be no Scotland, or whales or even Las Vegas for me. I want to go there, and I've tried, believe me. I've been to Point Raeis, where the lighthouse they used for filming is located. I've stumbled around Inverness, which doubled

for Main Street. I've also walked the wooden pier of Boadega Bay, where the seagrass and the other fishing boats launch out of Bodega Bay. Incidentally is also where they shot the birds, so going there is exponentially surreal. Hell, I've been to Father Malone's church. It's in Pasadena, nowhere near the other locations. I love movie making. You forget sometimes the simple magic of two images shot at different times in locations, cut together into a seamless hole. Oh

and they went through some cutting. I told you, we get back to it, which might be another reason that John Carpenter doesn't rate this flick as high as as others. I mentioned. The film is a gentle ghost story, and it is especially forty five fucking years later. These days, the Exorcist seems pretty tame, but apparently the scares were so gentle on the fog that reshoots were out absolutely necessary, according to the studio, So back they went to film.

Well a bunch of gore. Really. Carpenter jumps up and down about the differences between the versions, But as far as I've seen, nothing got added that made anything scarier. Instead, you just got more loving close ups of maggot writhing flesh and the very definite eye gougings and corpse puppeteering that the first cut lacked. They probably should have included those from Jump. But lest we forget, there was a time when Carpenter wasn't exactly thrilled to be even doing Halloween.

He thought he was slumming with that picture. And when you think about it, after the thing, how many straight up horrors does he make? A side of the mind numbing terror of memoirs of an invisible man? Of course, John Carpenter is a frustrated Western filmmaker. It's a drag. No one ever let him do one straight up. It wouldn't even have to be straight up. Make it demonic, But give John Carpenter one last shot at redemption. Don't

let him end on the ward. Don't let that recent Walk of Fame star be the last we hear of him, you know, other than telling his own fans to fuck off. Do you know how certain I am that most people have seen the fog, because every once in a while, someone who's known me for years as Father Malone will suddenly say, hell, Holbrook, the fog, I just saw it,

which is invariably followed by so why Father Malone? Now, aside of the magnificent mane of silvery hair that watches down over an equally tinged and equally bushy mustache being reason enough, Father Malone is simultaneously the least and most important character in the film. It's through him we discover what the fuck is even happening. If he wasn't part of the narrative, this would be a movie about the fog rolling in on two consecutive nights and ghostly figures

murdering six people the end. Instead, it's Father Malone's relatives journal, Father Patrick Malone's journal. Thus why people think Father Malone is named Patrick that provides the tragic history of the town and warns of the possibilities of Blake's revenge, And in the end, it's Father Malone that restores the stolen gold and prevents further bloodshed, spoilers everybody. So all those reasons are perfect to take on his name. But here's another.

If you're listening to the day of release, then this is April the twenty first, the day Antonio Bay turned one hundred and On that night, at midnight, Blake and his crew returned and killed a whole bunch of people and tried to kill a whole bunch more. Blake and his crew returned at midnight, making it April twenty second. That's my birthday. Father Malone saves Antonio Bay on April the twenty second.

a double feature recommendation, a pairing if you will, another formative cinematic minor miracle with hints of the fog notes of it, mainly the ones consisting of characters talking into microphones and having.

party started and sitting outside. The radio conversation in general was pump up the volume, which wasn't about a loose canon DJ shaking up the uptight military, or any number of talk radio hosts preaching either mental health or armageddon. Pump up the volumes. Mark Hunter uses radio as a lifeline.

The film's plot will veer into exposure of corruption and the divide between boomer parents and gen X kids eventually, but at its heart it's way purer than any of those other films, because while radio was, and I suppose now on the Internet is an important tool for justice and exposing the venal truths in this world, it mainly functioned in the day to day lives of day to day folk as a lifeline, keeping you connected to the greater world of culture, transporting you to other climates and

points of view, musical and otherwise, and overall providing a connection to others that had the same weirdo tastes and views as you. It's not impossible to avoid those with similar interests of these days. But remember it wasn't all that long ago that if you found yourself obsessed with anything that wasn't syndicated on TV or screaming from the

top forty, you felt pretty lonely about it. A good DJ could dispel that isolation, draw you in with sounds you'd never heard and thoughts you'd never thought, And not just them, you'd hear other listeners call in or write in, and suddenly you're a community, you get that and pump up the volume, but it also gives us the DJ as just as desperate as anyone he's connecting to. I love that about this movie. Mark is basically using his ham radio to illegally take over stations that aren't in use.

Like Stevie Wayne in The Fog. He's a recent transplant, though He's from New York and found himself in one of those prefabricated Southwest communities that never seem finished and have all the subtle and welcoming ambiance of an off world colony. Mark is basically a total introvert anyway, but now that he's alone in this new environment, getting on the air is the only time he has to be himself. Boy, this is starting to strike way too close to home.

Kristen Slater is the star here, part of his rise to public consciousness with Heathers and Young Guns too, and this though really this is like his fourteenth movie. By the time he got to volume pumping, he'd already gleamed the Cube. And if you listen to the Tales from the Dark Side segment of this show, you'll know he popped up on the first season of that show. In a case of the Stubborns, and he was like twelve. If you've seen this movie, tell me if you think

he's still doing a Jack Nicholson impression. I know he got accused of that a lot after Heathers, but I'm pretty sure it was a conscious choice in that film. I think he just kind of drawls when he talks. I don't know, you tell me. The other lead is Samantha Mathis. I'd say she's the prototypical pixie dream girl, but she'd kicked that girl's ass. Whimsical she is not. In fact, she isn't there to give Mark purpose at all. He's there to help her with hers, namely that fucking

plot about the school corruption. It doesn't matter because Ellen Green is in this. Oh Ellen Green Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors, those pipes that voice such weird, sexy energy, and this is one of two radio movies she starred in. She's also on talk radio playing Eric Bogosian's ex wife. She's awesome there, She's awesome here. Watch her reaction to the cock ring. If you haven't seen the movie, I bet you're intrigued.

She's britt Ekland's voice in the Wickerman She's fucking great here she's Oh She's so evil? Are you just want?

a lonely kind of love. Actually, I met him one time in Caesar's Palace. I was running through the casino and he was just sitting on a bench by himself. I startled to a stop and like kind of freaked him out for a second. But then he got right up on his feet and he gently took my hand in his, and then I embarrassed myself with all the love I had for him. He was a very nice

a doll. Anyway, soundtrack Richard Hell is on This Iced Tea is on This Bad Brains Sonic Youth, an unreleased track from the Beastie Boys sound garden, was not was Hey wait a minute, I take that, Leonard Cohen talk back. I remember most of these fucking songs. This is a great fucking soundtrack. Listen the movie itself if you haven't

seen it, it's mainly after school special, but its heart is more than in the right place, and the performances are great, and the music and the spirit, and it has one of the most deliriously romantic scenes I've ever seen, with characters laying themselves bare to one another quite literally. In fact, I'm gonna leave you with the bit that takes place after that scene before that. Father Malone seven to one at gmail dot com or at father Malone

on the socials. If you want to drop me a line and say happy Birthday, I certainly would appreciate it. For the lovely miss Ripley Gene, I'm Father Malone. Thank you for joining us. This Friday, We've got another couple of tales from the Dark Sides. Those are Milkman Cometh and my ghostwriter The Vampire. Over on the rest of the channel HP from Night Mister Walters and I are engaged in Fusco Fest. We're going through the filmography of

screenwriter John Fusco. We've already got episodes up about Crossroads and Young Guns and Young Guns too. You can get those right now. Next Friday, not this Friday, but the next Friday. We'll be taking a look at Thunderheart. That's what Val Kilmer and I fucking love that movie. Way to Bury the lead. Check all of that out. We'll see you here again next week. Take it away, Happy Harry hard.