Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Lord of Illusions, Constantine

He's not a ghostbuster. If we're just choosing any random character that shows up in the films, We're rounding out our team with Race Dance as blowjob ghost. I can already tell she'll be a valuable asset. I'll tell you

who we can actually turn to as paranormal investigators. That's our theme this week. Because there was fuck all in new releases I was gonna go see in the theater. We're enjoying paranormal investigators that are courtesy of two of the finest UK fantasists of all time. Those are Alan Moore and Clive Barker. Fuck you, Neil Gamon. All right, we got TCB baby. That's TCB Mama. Hello, listeners follow them alone. Here this show This Toice a week that is slowly killing me is a one man band situation,

one man and one dog band. But Ripley can't make cover art or type in episode synopsis with time codes, so any help is wildly appreciated. I do not expect a dime from anyone, but if you could do the free things, just hitting follow or subscribe or on whatever device you're listening on, or give it all the stars, give it thumbs up, give it a smiley face, whatever, fucking share the show. All these help the show reach

more people. And if you're doing it, thank you. But if you do want to send a few bucks my way, that too would be appreciated. Not only am I devoting half my waking life to the show, but sometimes I even commit my own damned money. I had to go pick up a Blue Raider refresh my memory this week. There that's the end of that business. Here's some follow up, though. I've continued on with Yellow Jackets season three, and you know,

I might dip out and return next season and watch everything in a recap, or maybe I'll just check out the season finale with the recap. That's starts it. I knew the present day storyline was spinning its wheels, but now our wilderness flashback is hand in hand, just skipping around without any fucking purpose. Moreover, whatever actions the younger characters do engage in makes me hate them and therefore hate their older selves, I'm now looking forward to their

punishment as adults. If that's the creator's intent, bravo, And when it pays off, I'm going to applaud. But if you aren't trying to make me hate them, then maybe having this season basically be light comedy with their characters is a mistake. If you're uninitiated, let me try to describe the wild variance in tone. In a previous season, we discovered that one of our leads had made an altar in their basement to whatever dark God had held sway in them while they were stranded in the wilderness.

On this altar was a dog's head. Their dog said that they had sacrificed to the darkness. This season, that character engages in some playful died and dash with her girlfriend while the Sunday's Dreams lilts over the soundtrack. I know we're living in a world now where seemingly a third of the population can willfully forget shit. That's right. You can solace yourself with that little nugget of encouragement. All the super assholes in America, they are only one

third of the population and can be easily overwhelmed. They might be expecting viewers to forget, but I don't forget shit, particularly when this was only nine episodes ago. You know what, while I'm ranting about killing animals in popular entertainment, at least in yellow Jackets, that dog was sacrificed with a purpose. There's a flick from two thousand and five called Winter Passing with Ed Harris and Will Ferrell and Amy Madigan. Zooey Deschanel is the star. The movie opens with her

drowning her kitten. I guess it was a challenge the filmmakers threw down. Can she come back from that? No? Nope, fuck you. I watched the rest of the movie. I noted all the performances and the filmmaking technique, and it was worth fuck all. On the most recent anthologies, Attack Antonio and I briefly touched on the incentivizing the lionizing of villainy over the past twenty five years or so, shows like Breaking Bad and every fucking thing Dennis Leary

ever put out there. He's a cop who takes pills and cheats on his wife. Now he's a firefighter who takes pills and cheats on his wife. Now he's a sabertoothed tiger who takes pills and cheats on his wife. Gee. I don't want to say Dennis Leary's trying to tell us something, but has anyone done a wellness check on him or his wife? Shows like That or The Sopranos. What we thought was a dissection of and an attempt to understand how evil can operate ended up being a

fucking recruitment film. So maybe Zooey da Chanelle's character had a terrible upbringing with a distant father. Well, we can all relate, But in my darkest moments, it would never occur to me to hurt the thing that loves me the most. And listen, I'm a guy who believes in third and fourth chances, But when a character gleefully stomps on innocence, they're no longer something I care for beyond clinically. Yeah, fuck all these humans, and that's my yellow Jacket's update.

I said they only had three seasons in them. What are the bits of business have I been up to?

not going to play it. That fucking game feels like the first movie way more than just Look and Interactivity? Did anyone ever play that adaptation of the thing? That's a really good one too. I must sound demented. My favorite video games are driven alternatively by paranoia and dread. Luckily, those areas are the domains of our lead characters in both of our picks this week. Paranormal investigators. Everywhere you

look these days, you'll find them. Throw a rock and you'll hit one and do me a theyve a fink, throw it hard. Everyone is searching for them, spooks looking high and low, for the phantoms and the ghoules. Some people have turned it into a big business. There are entire television series predicated on exposing the supernatural, and yet somehow never doing that and staying on the air for

fuck decades. Speaking of Charlatan's, I used to be a tour guide at the Haunted Museum here in Las Vegas, where they had us all signed NDAs and then lost those NDAs. I'm serious, man, I'm shocked they've never proven the existence of the other world. Not that I doubt their sincerity, I will say that it's just their methods that are questionable. You guys know what a spirit box is. It's basically a radio receiver which cycles through radio stations,

focusing on the white noise in between the stations. Supposedly unfocused white noise acts as conduit for a particularly focused, in chatty spirit Okay, I've been around a spirit box hundreds of times. I've been around spa at boxes you've seen on television hundreds of times, and I have been weirded out by some of the words I've heard pomp out of the thing. And I'm also sure that there

is nothing preloaded on it. But as someone who's had to power that thing on in the mornings and irregular maintenance. I can tell you those sounds and words and exclamations are just snatches that it's picking up from actual signals. So here in Vegas, that was a lot of Mariachi stations and a lot of car commercials stuff like that.

I'm not saying there wasn't weird shit going on in that building, but it wasn't where any customers were seeing it, and that isn't some veiled message about anything any human was doing. I'm saying there were some unusual, unexplained phenomenon that occurred there, but it was usually after hours or at least when there were very few people in the building. What that place needed was someone like Harry de Moore. Y'all know, Harry, you will. I've got a weird history

with our first movie, but we'll get there. It's hard to remember a time before there was a hell Raiser or a Candy Man or the Night Breed, but there was a time when all of us horror fans heads spun around so hard that they might have popped off of our bodies. Thanks to a quote by mister Stephen King, I have seen the future of horror, and his name is Clive Barker. That's all any of us needed. And now we were gobbling up the books of Blood as

fast as they could publish them. By the time those books were coming out, Barker had already been a successful underground playwright in London, forming his own theater group, The Dog Company with Doug Bradley, That's Pinhead, y'all and Peter Atkins. He wrote hell Raiser two, three and four, That's the one in space that needed a few xenomrps. Am I right. Unhappy with the director of his screenplays for Rawhead, Ranks and Underworld, Barker was prompted to make hell Raiser himself.

That was followed by an adaptation of his novel Cabal, which became Night Breed, a criminally underrated feature we will be definitely talking about in the future. That film was a failure and didn't produce. The sequel that Clive Barker personally promised me was on the way. I literally ran into him in nineteen ninety two, and after all the I love you, I love your work business, I asked him if we were getting a sequel, and the man

shook my hand and said it's on the way. I promise you're a dirty liar, Clive Barker, and my impression of you is terrible. His follow up ended up being another adaptation, but this was a short story from one of them there Books of Blood, in this case from volume six. The story was The Last Illusion, about a no nonsense private investigator named Harry de Moore hired to watch over the corpse of a recently deceased illusionist to protect it from the demons that he's assured will be

coming for him. Damore would end up appearing in a clutch of other short stories, and then began to make appearances in some of Barker's novels like Weave World and The Great and Secret Show. In fact, twenty fifteen's The Scarlet Gospels is a full on Harry de Moore novel where the antagonist is the hell priest that's the actual name of Pinhead. He hates being called Pinhead Harrydmore in that first story, The Last Illusion is basically Philip Marlowe.

Marlowe always seemed to stumble into things. As such, Dmor has no supernatural abilities. When the story begins, he's just come off his first case, which has only just made him a believer, But as the character evolved over the decades, he grew closer and closer to the platonic ideal of the paranormal investigator. Who could that be? We're talking about him next Right now, We're talking about the only on screen appearance of Harry de Moore nineteen ninety five's Lord

of Illusions.

gone away. There you'll be treated to such revelations as I didn't like that character who the villain? Yeah, you weren't supposed to one of the many test screenings I went to was Lord of Illusions. In researching this episode, I discovered there were two test screenings, the director's cut, and then the MGM mandated twelve minutes shorter version. That's the version that was released in theaters. I was there for the first screening, where my fellow attendees helped to

make a much more confused film for your viewing pleasure. Ordinarily, when you hear a horror movie had a dozen minutes cut out, you figure all of it is loving close ups of viscera or impaling. Nope, ten minutes of dialogue in a sex scene starring I don't need to know any of these characters' motivations or how the plot is functioning. Don't show me people relating to one another and finding solace and mutual trauma. Get to the action, which I

will not understand. I was in the focus group. Some people did say there was too much talking and that it was boring. They don't think they were wrong, not necessarily, They just didn't know how to express what was actually wrong with the film, and neither did I at that moment. My solution was to add more of the peripheral characters. But I find that true in all of Clive Barker's films, the heroes are kind of duds, ciphers for the audience to bear witness to all the fucking bizarre shit going

on in Clive Barker's mind. Speaking of it's interesting looking back at his body of work and now realizing that, just as prevalent as the demons and creatures was a fuck ton of body horror. God damn, his work is a wash in it. I think I never really chucked him up as a body horror guy because he deviates so wildly from all the other practitioners in intent. Barker loves it. He revels in the thin line between pleasure and pain, and he wants you to revel along with him.

Leather workers of the world rejoiced when the Cenobites hit the scene, and we've all been quietly tying up our significant others ever since. Lord of Illusions has one of my favorite opening scenes of all time. I have, at various times over the years, thrown it on and just watched till the story catches up to the present day and turned it off. It's a flashback to nineteen eighty two and a cult compound in the middle of the

high California desert, the Mohave Desert. It says on screen, Nix, a magician, a real magician who can tap into the other side, is holding court with his followers and performing miracles. It's so incredibly grubby and off putting. It fucking beautiful. The entire set and then racing to the scene through fucking gales of blowing sand, are a Ford Thunderbird and a VW microbus filled with former cult members who are coming to rescue a little girl who Nix has kidnapped

and will sacrifice. And there's a fucking mandrel running around the compound. Those are those blue faced bab boons. They're fucking horrifying. It's so manson family and yet worse than anything that ever happened on that actual compound. Those returning cultists are led by Swan. If you name a character Swan, I'm showing up The Warriors, Phantom of the Paradise, Pirates of the Caribbean. This Swan is played by Kevin J O'Connor.

Most of you know him from The Mummy and Van Helsing and a bunch of other movies I actively hate. I know him from this and Peggy who got married. He's the beatnick in that No more jello for me, Ma. He's great there, he's great here, the perfect amount of twitchy and helpless and bold and detached. It's a really good performance throughout Watch Your Feet. I'm about to drop a name in this film during the present day, the

president being nineteen ninety five. The little girl they end up rescuing her adult self is played by pre x men Fanka Jansen, who around this time I ended up being crammed right up against at an after party after a cast and creuse screening of a movie you've never heard of. And yes, she is that beautiful, and my god, she's really fucking funny. Now let me just pick that name back up and put it back in my pocket.

So it's nineteen ninety five and all of Swan's cohorts are getting murdered, and Demor is hired to figure out who and what and where. And it was on the rewatch that I finally became my own Harry Demour and deciphered the mystery as to why Lord of Illusions doesn't work. Hilariously,

it's because of my favorite scene, the opening flashback. It doesn't answer all of the questions that'll take to more and more than an hour to answer, but it does cover who and what and why, leaving our hero to stumble around trying to figure out a mystery we've already solved. That's why people were saying it was boring, it was a redundant. It would be like starting Citizen Kane with a young Charles Foster Caine announcing I'm off to play in the snow with my sled that I have named Rosebud.

The rest of the movie, wo'd still be as masterful, but every time Jerry Thompson comes on screen, you'd just be annoyed that he doesn't know it's a sled. The other problem is Harry Demore. I know Scott Bacula has his fans, clearly, He's fronted how many successful television series now, and Marker is on record as saying, this is Harry Demore in looks and in attitude. I've always found him

to be bland Kevin Costner. I'm gonna say that again, bland Kevin Costner, and hearing that Barker was so gung ho over him would ordinarily make me question his sanity until I read that they first offered the role to Christopher Reeve, who I would have totally bought in the part sincerely. Who else was on the Acceptable Bankable star list along with Scott Bacula in nineteen ninety five for this movie. He is a TV actor. I know that

line is blurred these days TV and movies. Who cares not me unless you put a TV guy at the center of a movie, you know what I mean. I really like David Duchovny and would see a movie he was in, but I'm not seeking out a movie he's headlining TV guy. I'm curious how this film would play without the flashback at the start. If you put it around the one hour mark, you know, when Harry figures it all out, that might have served the story a little bit better. So the lead is a dead fish,

the mystery is given away in the opening scene. Anything else wrong with it?

the volume that won't start looking peculiar at all. Oh and Swan's Valet. Oh and other problems with the movie Swan's Valet Valentine or Valentine. He has this awful perm and goatee combo that I find deeply disturbing on a sub atomic level. As if a major domo as a character isn't off putting enough, let's slap that follicle farce onto him. Am I even recommending this movie.

the Gulfs. It's a hillacious version of the afterlife. In Lord of Illusions, Butterfield is Nix's right hand, a more stylish right hand you'll not likely find this side of Vulnavia doctor Phibes's Galfry. Butterfield, played by Barry del Sherman, has one milky eye and a closet full of the tightest gold lemet pants you've ever seen. By the end, he's got a crushed velvet gold top, which somehow doesn't

come off as matchy matchy with those pats. I am not sure why Marvel hasn't snapped mister del Sherman up for a major villain role. I love his performance here, ed, he's so stabby. He makes stabbing look actually painful. You know, sometimes in movies it's the equivalent of saying bang and

the person falling over. Butterfield and Barker are here to remind us that sharp things hurt, and Butterfield has his own right hand, an undead skinhead who looks like he stepped off the pages of John Constantine Hellblazer in fact, there's quite a bit of odd crossover between these franchises.

None pleasant, but we'll get there with ripspick. All the villain stuff here is great, particularly if you have the director's cut, where Nix's cult gets the word of his imminent return and set out slaughtering everyone associated with the normal life they've assimilated it into during the past thirteen years. It also has the mighty Daniel von Bargen as Nicks.

The previous two decades had him mostly in detective roles on TV and in film, but here as the Puritan, the dark savior meant to bring the apocalypse, he fucking shines. He's only got two scenes, but they are nothing less than memorable. In fact, that's most of Barker's work for me, if I'm being honest, A collection of some of the best scenes with some of the most interesting characters. Ever, it's just that the frame there hung on as faulty as fuck, and end up stumbling hard somewhere down the

line with greater and lesser degrees of success. Obviously, Hell Raiser is his most fully realized film as a director, though as a producer he helped gods and monsters get through the studio system. So there's that he's suffered a spate of ill health over the past decade and sworn off book signings and convention appearances in order to focus on the work. Did I mention I love Clive Barker and I will cherish the lies he told me over

three decades ago. I don't think he quite gets the love, or frankly, the credit he does, not just for turning horror on its head, but for maybe loosening the ability for most people to accept other sexual quirks, or more realistically, realize that we've all got them. It's just that some of us are willing to risk hell to achieve them. No, not you, I hope not you. I'm using the Royal Wei meeting me hit at hp.

has the paranormal Investigator for her choice of the week. That's right. He's better than Carl Colechek, better than Fox Molder, better than the Winchesters. Is he better than Jules de Granden? That's a fucking deep cut. And if you get that without googling, hit me up and I'll shout you out in the next episode. Fatherom Ma alone seven to one at gmail dot com. Now I'm talking about the smooth

talking supernatural con man from Liverpool. He looks like Sting and he dresses like a rumpled extra from the front page lead singer for a Mucus membrane. I've got venus on the heart cell on Vinyl yo. He's wanted by every king of Hell, mister John Constantine. That's the actual pronunciation according to creator Alan Moore, by the way, but I'm going to be saying Constantine strictly out of habit.

Somewhere in the world today, there's a one hundred year old comic book Nerd sneering at all of us because his formative character was Batman when he was introduced. I have no intention of getting to that lofty vintage, but if I did, I would behave exactly the same way. When it came to John Constantine. By eighty five, I was fully DC and my guy was swamp Thing. He was created by Lenuen and Bernie Wrightson and basically just

acted as a minor horror hero. When Alan Moore took over the writing for Alan Hollin, he became an elemental one with the green and the Parliament of trees, and helping him along the way on these new spiritual paths was a wise old mystic. And here was Alan Moore's innovation. The majority of humans that as movers and shakers in the realm of the occult and comic books are wizened

old crones or frail, white bearded men. Swampton's connection to the other side was a thirty five year old, street wise, hard scrabble, endlessly charming rogue. In nineteen eighty five, both Harry de Moore and John Constantine hit the scene, but Constantine is an immediate hit and begins appearing in other DC titles, and de Moore remains in only the two published stories. When DC Vertigo decides in nineteen eighty eight that they're going to give Constantine his own title, that

title is obvious to all involved. John Constantine hell Raiser or just hell Raiser, except Clive Barker has just announced that he's adapting his novella The hell Bound Heart into a feature film called hell Raiser, So now it's John Constantine hell Blazer. Alan Moore is already at war with d C and Jamie Delano has given the writing duties, with John Ridgeway on artwork and the mighty Dave McKean

supplying collage covers, which are amazing. It's run as writer and the follow up run by garth Ennis that would give us all the incredibly rich history of Constantine in the past, present in future. Delano gave us the botched demon summoning in his twenties that resulted in a young girl being dragged to hell, and gave us the rogues gallery of friends and enemies that John will eventually treat

as enemies and friends. But garth Ennis's run on the title would give us the most delicious of plot lines, what happens when a man who's damned for all of his supernatural misdeeds is laid low by a disease he's given himself. That run was called Dark Habits in the comics and is the basis for the film's actual plot from two thousand and five, This is Constantine.

look like sting in a tope trench coat. Producer Akiva Goldsman did an uncredited rewrite for the final draft and managed, for the first time ever, not to plunge the entire project into mediocrity. I've read the earlier drafts. They are very close to the final film. Goldsman's draft seems based

on budgetary constraints, switching locations and combining characters or eliminating others. Chaz, one of Constantine's oldest friends, was scaled away back in age to accommodate then hot property Shia La Buff's participation and the stupidest opening explanation title cards this side of the completely idiotic narration that was added to the television broadcast of John Carpenter's The Thing are added this is Gnol's a product of Watts. Oh, now I know who

everyone is and what's going on. Here's Academy Award winner Ifkiva Goldsman's preferred method of introducing us to Constantine. Quote, he who possesses the spear of Destiny holds the fate of the world in his hands. Unquote. It's a quote credited to no one. Okay, then it lets us note that the spear has been missing since World War Two, so that we'll automatically understand why it's wrapped in a

swastika and also how it ended up in Mexico. Great job, man, here's hoping yours is the first name on any potential sequel script now, having bagged on that, I love everything else going on in this film. Yeah, it's got a slight music video tinge to it, but that's not surprising, as this was Francis Lawrence's first feature film after a career making music videos. Ironically, on Keanu Reeves's list of director's requirements, he had specifically ruled out working with a

video music director. But other than that, there isn't much I don't like about this adaptation. I didn't mind the new backstory for John, or the fact that he doesn't use his newly found heeled self to immediately start smoking again, or the fact that director Lawrence pulled out a scene with Michelle Monaghan because it was a postcodal scene with Constantine and a half breed demon and he felt as

though that would dilute the notion of his loneliness. Mister Lawrence, if you think you can't have sex and be lonely, you are out of your mind, and it makes the film weird because she's still in other scenes it's obviously Michelle Monahan, but now she's got one line and it's expositional and sad. But all in all, I cannot recommend

the movie enough. And since DC is in full operation with James Gun running the show, how about we get a follow up? They keep threatening and taking it away, then Keanu goes to the mat. We're back on the road now. I don't know, but I am encouraging everyone to go back and rewatch or watch the movie for the first time. Maybe an algorithm will shake loose and

will get lucky. This flick taught me more than anything that as long as the character remains the same at his core, it does not matter his origin or loyalty to the original.

Anything more, young lady, bring back pop culture Jeopardy. You know we can see Colin jo just every Saturday night. I know you're asleep, but that's the only time we're watching live, which we can do now on the West Coast thanks to streaming Fuck Your Running Dress at eleven thirty NBZ. Thank you all for joining us once again. This Friday is the midnight viewing I promised for last Friday. It's tell Us in the Dark Side against Season three. We will see you there. Until then, I'm leaving you

with some of my main man nicks. Daniel von Bargin. As you listen, remember on Seinfeld he played mister Krueger, George Costanz's boss who couldn't be bothered with working. Oh me, George, oh me.