Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Marvel Zombies (2025), The Muppet Show Spooky Segments

no Rip? Pick this week? Okay, well, I guess Rip is done for the day. What about our bantering Rip come back? Well, anyway, we are celebrating our longevity and Halloween this week. So my initial thought was to do my favorite horror movie, which is also my favorite movie, and that's Dawn of the Dead. I really shouldn't have to say this, but George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead Monroeville, mal Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It's where that quote was from the Thieves and Bad Guys quote. It's the movie

that made me want to understand movies. I was young enough to feel the emotions. It was pulling me toward, but no understanding as to how. And I needed to know how. You're hearing my voice right now as a direct result of finding myself giggling through the worst living nightmare imaginable. Don of the Dead is a topic I could easily fill several hours right now with zero research. About to rattle off a bunch of obscure facts here to prove my bona fides. But I'm sure you trust

me at this point. Wait, here's one. John Ampliss, who starred in Romero's previous film Martin was the casting director on Don of the Dead, and he's got the lamentable role of the Puerto Rican gang member during the opening sequence in Philadelphia. What a great name, Philadelphia. It's fun to say Philidelphia. I might be high right now. Gang. I kind of felt like I would be cheating to just start waxing rhapsodic about Donna the Dead, and quite frankly,

I wouldn't know where to stop. I'll put a link in the show notes to frequent co host Mike White's podcast, The Projection Booth. He was kind enough to have me on to talk Don of the Dead a couple of years ago, and I say, basically everything I needed to there in the most general way possible. Trust me, if you ever want to have someone join at you for an unending amount of time, ask me about Don of

the Dead. Oh also, if you're listening to this show the week it's released, I'm going to invite you over to the Projection Booth anyway, because Mike is doing his annual schlock Toe and I'm on this week's episode, which is another George Romero flake. It's his little scene quasi supernatural film season of the Witch, originally titled Jack's Wife. I believe that's gonna be my final appearance on the Projection Booth, So check that out as well. So what do we talk about? You read it in the title

and it's related. Oh boy, is it related? We're talking

Marvel zombies.

creator so much as an innovator, kind of like Dave Feloni for Lucasfilm. If Dave Feloni handpicked by George Lucas to continue the saga and the lore of the universe that he created, chose instead to create his own parallel universe with techno knights with laser swords battling against enemy troops in white armour. Actually, for that metaphor to work, Dave Feloni's Techno Knights of the Galaxy would have had to surpass Star Wars, making it a qoint forerunner of

what most people now take as the genuine article. Because The Walking Dead is one hundred percent a ripoff of the universe created and shepherded over decades by George Andrew Romero. I don't care that Greg Ncato was in charge of effects and eventually became a producer. I don't care if there are tips of the hat or homage to the original trilogy. I wouldn't care if the ghost of George Romero himself appeared to me and told me he was

cool with it, because I'm not. I'm glad that show has employed and continues to employ, hundreds of skilled creatives. May bubb a smile benevolently upon you, but fuck that guy and fuck his comic book. Even Invincible while not being a direct ripoff of anything is an in general ripoff of everything. He's like Tarantino, just grab the bits you like and now it's yours. I hate read that entire run of Walking Dead. I don't even like his artwork.

Back in two thousand and five, as the entire world was waking up to the zombie phenomenon, someone at Marvel had the bright idea to do a mini series with undead superheroes. So they called Carlos Mincia and he delivered two five issue runs that began in an alternate use let's just call it the Zombie Universe, where a virus has spread throughout the world that turns humans into zombies and superheroes into zombified versions of themselves that retain their

character and consciousness and all of their powers except healing. Obviously, the source of the virus is never given, which I admire. I said, the humans turn into zombies, Well, there aren't a ton of those, because the super zombies have pretty much munched their way through the entire population of Earth and now spend their days hunting down whichever hero has yet to succumb. It was a fairly standard riff on

the what if comics, with the decidedly darker bent. Admittedly, it was difficult watching Captain America eat the Silver Surfer, but it had a cool open ending where all the remaining zombie heroes attack and devour Galactis and then spread out to the stars to find more food. It became an erratically released series after that, with the last issues back in twenty eighteen. I think that was Zombie's assemble, putting Kirkman and my feelings for him aside for a moment.

After all, he was an independent contractor and only wrote the first ten. Since there have been a cavalcade of talented writers and artists attached to the series, and they've gone in truly interesting directions with it. In fact, the comic book series manages to elude the main problem with any zombie piece of entertainment Romero included in any empty world movie or TV show set here in our world, not on some distant galaxy. After the initial crush of

the zombie outbreak, all hope goes out the window. Maybe not right away, you can cheat it for a while, but a world where zombies can't be cured or the phenomenon can't be stopped is no longer a world for humans, and they will never be secure until they're all eaten or zombies themselves. It's just a succession of pyrrhic victories. It took Romero until Day of the Dead to figure out he was on the zombie side all along, but he got there. Back in twenty twenty one, Marvel introduced

an animated season of What If storylines. What better way to introduce the idea of a multiverse than an anthology of tales set in different day mentions, and one of those plots they chose to pontificate upon was our Undead Superpowered Pals. But like most translations from Marvel to MCU, it is all the way different. In fact, the What If animated episodes are based on the films and not

the comics at all, which is appropriate. So what If Zombies had the virus starting in the Quantum Realm and released by Hank Pim when Janet van Dyne comes back with a penchant for human flesh, and it concerns the last living heroes trying to get the Mindstone from Vision who's alive, and Wanda who's not, so that they can get to Wakanda and reverse the curse. It has a great ending, perfectly self contained if you wanted it to be.

But then again, Marvel cried more so now, and by that I mean last year because this was supposed to come out last Halloween, but they double booked and we got Agatha all along. Boy, that was one of my first weekly roundups, and instead the Marvel Zombies had to wait till the end of September of this year, when all four episodes of the show were released. They're using the Evil Dead two fun for the title in case it seemed familiar, and the story picks up five years

after the end of that what If episode. We follow the last groups of living superpowered folk as they draw together in an attempt to simply survive. So we get a young Avengers group with Miss Marvel and Ironheart and Hawkeye. That's Kate Pierce Hawkeye Undead Clint Barton is here too, but that's her mantle now. And we get a mini West Coast Avengers with Agent Wu and Katie and Death Dealer and shang Chi who's been bitten but the power

of the Ten Rings is staving off the infection. And along the way we get barren Zimo and US Agent and Valkyrie and the Abomination, and yeah, Thor and Rocket and Groot and Spider Man show up, as well as Captain America and the return of recent go to Boogeyman

the Scarlet Witch. But what strupped me over all was how goddamn capable this so called b team of Marvel heroes is and how fucking watchable they all are interacting with one another, And given how long it's been since we've seen some of these characters, it was a welcome reminder how much I do like them. Who the fuck is the next shang Chi flick? We've had Trevor Slattery

return before we had shang Chi show back up. Speaking of waiting fucking endlessly, we get Blade in this show so far we've only had his voice at the end of the eternals that was mahershela Ali's voice, and since this is an all vocal performance, they got an actor named Todd Williams to play Blade way to keep everything simple and easy to follow, Kevin, because of those endless delays on Blade's feature debut, I don't think they've nailed down his character design yet because we don't really get

Blade here at all. We get Blade Night, remember Moonnight, Well, Mark Spector's dead here, and Conchu has bonded with Blade, so he's a day walker Egyptian deity. That's some pretty fucking high concept shit right there. But it also shrouds him to him and Moonnight's white cloaks, which is pretty badass on him. Each of the episodes, while dealing with the main plot overall, are wildly different in tone and approach,

with the first the most overt horror. Maybe I was watching it alone at two am, but there's some creepy fucking stuff they do in it, and I legitimately jumped once. The second episode is more action a la Matt Max with the West Coast team, and it all ends with an undead, cosmic, mystical reboot of Endgame that sounds potentially awful, it's not. I found a lot of the same excitement

present here. Look, the dialogue is tenured at best, but the images are so goddamn strong, and a lot of where this plot goes and where it ends up are fairly innovative for a zombie flick. Oh yeah, four episodes, four half hours. That's what you call a movie, And evidently that's how it began its life. At some point they got cold feet. But if you're gonna release all four episodes telling the whole story on the same night anyway, just make it a feature. But the fuck I'd be

down for more of this. Like the run of comics, this take on zombies isn't entirely without hope, and that's fucking refreshing. The animation style that two and a half d is a holdover from What If. It is especially effective with their villainous characters, and this series is a wall to wall villains. There is not an eye that isn't red and glowing. This is a pretty good entertainment for Halloween three in a row from Marvel after Werewolf by Night. I am an ardent defender of that flick,

but only the color version. Then there was Agatha all Along and now Marvel Zombies kudos. Now let's get that Midnight Sun's movie going Suckers whoa sneak attack? Rippick k Yeah, thank you. HP. You know the number one horror movie playing in Times Square for Halloween nineteen ninety six Poltergeist in My Pants? Okay, ripspick is them damned Muppets. The

felt I mentioned on last week's roundup. I wanted to give you a comprehensive guide of all the Muppet terror out there, but as it turns out, there isn't a whole ton of it, which I'm not sure why I was surprised by, other than the fact that I seem to remember kermit vampires and annoying bats and ghosts singing the Beatles and Uncle Deadly that aerodite looking dragon. And then I went back and I realized that's all in the Vincent Price episode. So I guess I'm recommending the

Vincent Price episode. The other and actually way more appropriate for Halloween is when Alice Cooper hosted in season three. That's not only got two performances by Cooper, Welcome to My Nightmare and schools Out, a tune that a lot of radio stations wouldn't play thanks to pressure from PTA groups. But it also has the German Larger at Muppet Labs and Sam the Eagle debating the Freako Alice Cooper, and it's got a fucking genuinely creepy pigs in space. The

laugh track for it only makes it worse. So those are the beginning to end guaranteed spooky Muppet episodes, but throughout the show they had a few other disturbing moments, like season two episode four, Rich Little was the host. There's a musical number called Glowworm, which features a mirror universe version of Kermit humming to himself and then eating inchworms as they try to pass by. It's all very off, and at the end we get a goddamned purple monster

from hell. Or how about the entire moment Chance up episode Clay Faces Yikes. The signor Wenz's episode has a traditional Japanese ghost story that is haunting pun intended, I guess not really, but it's appropriate. There are others, but the one I'd like to highlight and we'll probably go out on. This is an episode hosted by Marissa Berenson.

The song is You're Always Welcome, at our House, which she sings while dressed in a baby doll dress and skipping around the room, where everything she's describing is acted out by some fucking odd balls from the Muppet Workshop. Basically, she tells the tale of everyone who stops my her home and what her demented family of cannibals do to their guests. Boy, they don't make children's entertainment quite like they used to. But I think I'm gonna go out

now and find some more. Okay, listen up. This Friday,

Yaouchifest continues with Predator Killer of Killers. Next Friday, Yauchi Fest concludes for now with Predator Badlands. With that shift in the schedule, that means next week at this time will have the latest episode of Tales from the Dark Side, and we might actually have the following episode of Tales the following Monday after if that makes sense. Basically, we'll still have shows Monday and Friday for the next two weeks, but Ripley and I are taking a brief hiatus to sleep.

I'm not gonna lie. I'm totally fucking exhausted, and we've got even more changes coming later in the year and definitely in the new year. Exciting doings will be transpiring. Thank you all for two hundred episodes. The next two hundred will be even better.