¶ Intro / Opening
All right, listen up, Caves, I got your assignments riga six four three wheeler one four eight not eight oh four, and only you. You need to join host HP and Father Alone as they examine one of the greatest sitcoms in television history, Taxi in Night Mister Walters, a taxi podcast BANDA zero like your boxing.
Record, Frank, mister Walters, We're in.
Way, Welcome back to midnight Viewing. I'm your host, Father Alone. We discussed two particular authors a lot on this show, Harlan Ellison and Stephen King. They've appeared on two or three anthology series that we've covered. In one case, Ellison adapted King that was Grandma from the Twilight Zone eighty five, and both have made appearances on Tales from the Dark Side. In fact, later in the series, King will pen his
first for the show. The following quote is by Stephen King from the forward to Harlan Ellison's short story collection Stalking the Nightmare. I'm paraphrasing a bit. King starts with one of his mother's favorite aphorisms, milk always takes the flavor of what's next to it in the ice box. Not a very useful saying. You might think. But I suspect it's not only the reason I'm writing this introduction, but the reason I'm writing it's the way I'm writing it.
Does it sound like Harlan Ellison? It does. That's because I just finished the admirable book which follows. For the last four days I've been, so to speak, sitting next to Harlan in the ice box. I'm not copying his style, nothing as low as that. I have rather taken a brief impression of his style. If you start your period of hard writing as a teenager, you find yourself writing like whoever you're reading that week your milk, and you taste like whatever was next to you in the refrigerator
that week. That bit of wisdom came to mind when thinking about tonight's show for two very good reasons. One, we're going to be talking wal to wall Stephen King tonight, and two, what's true about authors or any creative types might be true of podcasters as well. When this show started,
¶ Discussing the Greatest Anthology Film: Creepshow
it was released sporadically monthly and then maybe twice a month. It is now twice weekly. That's a newish development, but a monumental one for me. And now the blame the horrible shame can be laid at the feet of Tonight's guest. A Year in Horror is the best horror movie podcast out there. I do several horror podcasts. I listen to all the horror podcasts. A Year in Horror is the
platonic ideal. The main show is exactly as promised, a thorough investigation into every piece of horror cinema released in a given year, but he also does standalone shows highlighting every horror project that piques an interest and pulls in guests from every field, though usually from the world of music, because he himself is a music man first. He gave his life to that industry before switching gears and careers and finding his way back to the one true path horror.
For a podcast to work, it has to be either informative or entertaining. Is both. He is both. His enthusiasm and delight for the genre is so palpable, so infectious, I myself couldn't help but become refocused on the greatest fiction genre ever created. So if the analogy hasn't been made fucking transparent already, I'm the milk, sitting in the ice box and soaking up the flavor of mister Paul Waller. Welcome to Midnight Viewing.
Paul.
Holy Smokes. That was impressive. Wow, okay, you have the best podcasting voice. I'm so jezoused. I love it.
¶ The Comfort of Rewatching Horror Classics 06:05 The Evolution of Movie Watching and Technology
Thank you, I appreciate that. But those sentiments are all true and all real, and I'm delighted that you've come to talk with us tonight. In fact, I'm delighted to be talking about what we're talking about, because I don't think I've done a podcast where we've discussed the greatest anthology film of all time. This podcast, in general, is dedicated to anthologies. The granddaddy of them all for me is Creepshow from nineteen eighty two, directed by George Andrew Romero and by mister Stephen King.
Coming soon, joting tales of horror.
Creep show from the author of Carrie the Shining and Coo Joe and the creator of Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead. You'll scream ghastly gholes, cringe.
At weird kids, and shiver at the.
Doings of evil doctors.
This design to besxtremely painfulness surveial.
Creep show.
Will I grab you, grow on you and give you the creeps.
No, this is going to be an entirely new experience.
Creep Show the most fun you'll ever have being scared.
Paul, what is your history with creep Show?
It's so long, it's so like every vein in my body has some Creep Show blood flowing through it. It's just been with me since, Like my initial stack of vhs is that I bought and I would watch it again and again and again, as you do as a child. I can tell you that there was a Nightmare on Elm Street, there was hell Raiser there, it was creep Show. And these were ones that would just be like you're getting from school, what you're going to do, I'm too
far away from my friends, my parents are working. I'm just going to stick one of these on and it would be like that for not weeks, not months, but years. So yeah, it's just one of those films that I don't need to watch again. It's like that, you know, people say I Enter Sandman or something. It's like that, you don't need to watch it again. It's just always there.
Always in the back of your mind. Yes, you know, I find it funny. I listened to a lot of podcast Poland, but what I find is people guess will come on and they'll say, this is my favorite movie of all time. I've seen it, like I don't know ten or fifteen times, and I'm like, you what that what? I watch movies on a little baby, I'm the interest what we used to comfort food. It becomes a soundtrack to my life, just the background like flurry.
It's weird. I like, since I've started doing the podcast, there have been certain films that you have to rewatch because for whatever reason, they may not stick with you even if you watched it a few months back. You'll need to give it a cursory rewatch and then you look onto let a box and go, wow, I've watched that three times in one year, and things like that that happen. But when you purposefully sit down to watch something that's completely different, there's a few, and it tends
to be ones that are on YouTube as well. So if it's late at night, it's like approaching midnight or something, and there is like this found footage thing. I think it was the very first found footage movie. It's called the McPherson Tape or something like that. And even though I've got the bells and whistles, blu ray. I also know that it's there on YouTube, and I can just click a button and fall asleep to my fifty minute, amazing, amazing film and it doesn't matter if I wake up
or just fall asleep, and that's it. I've had the
¶ Paul Waller's Horror Obsession and Podcast Journey
best time.
Do you know two things about that are great? Like, that's the best use of the technology possible, that the utter convenience do to comfort yourself to sleep with the in the loving embrace of horror.
But also.
I find myself if I happen upon something I love on television or streaming somewhere or something, and I own the better version of it, the act of convenience. Considering how you and I are of similar vintage, I'm guessing I'm a seventy three kid, nineteen seventy three. So there was a time in our lives where like those videotapes were gold, they were a lifeline because entertainment for us was as I would say, it's curated, but it really
wasn't curated. It was a bunch of programmers at whatever television stations you had available to you throwing on whatever they fucking could get on the air. Like at any given time, so the fact that you can, I could say into my television remote, now play the thing, John Carpenter's the thing, and it will come on. Oh my god, what a difference these kids today.
Man. But the awesome thing about that is when you do that, like you'll know you'd be watching the thing, and you'll know that as soon as he's poured the whiskey over the computer, that's where it would cut to ad breaks, you know. So you like because we've just watched it so many times when I recorded VHS as a kid. It's weird, but that's us, like, and I
don't I'm never ashamed of it. Like when I talk to people at work, you know, I'll go in like once a week and to make sure they know that I'm alive still, and I'll be like yeah, because it's very embarrassing if you're in a band that's had any success at all that your work colleagues we go, oh, it's the rock star. It's like, well, I can sell out a venue that holds one hundred and fifty people in London once a year. You know, I'm not a rock star.
But you know what, like they would can't do a Paul, They can't do that, so you are a fucking rock star.
Okay, yeah, I'm sure I have. But anyway, it's so it's excruciating to be there. So what I've started to do is, because I'm doing this, I will show off. I'll be like, oh, yeah, I get to go to this film festival or I went to that premiere or something like that. And it's the same thing again, but with movies. But movies are a whole different thing. It's so important to so many people because it's the one bit of the rights of growing up that we've all
found our favorite movies. You know, It's not something that you can avoid even if you like grow up and say I don't really like movies. I don't go to cinema, I don't watch films or anything, you know, Star Wars. You know, if you're of our age, you know you know these films, and it's such an essential part of our life. And I never feel ashamed of like presenting that at my job with my friends anyone that's not interested in it. I'm obsessed with horror movies. I am obsessed.
I love it. I don't ever want it to end. And I was when I started this podcast. I was worried about burnout because I did start by watching three or four a day, and I've sort of winged it down over the years to two. But still even at this rate, I'm not going to finish my podcast until I think it's twenty twenty seven, So you know, no, I've still got years to go with being this hard, isn't it? And I'm embracing it. I can't wait.
I don't you know what. I think that's a modest estimate. I think you'll actually go beyond it because the level of horror movies or the number of horror movies of recent you know, it's streaming and all this shit, and people are making their own things and throwing them up on YouTube. You're going to be employed for quite a while with this year and herror. You'll just be up to date. That's all the year and heart. It'll be a once a year thing at the end, you know, like a wrap up.
It'll be such a such a relief to do one of these things a year, Like I honestly, as soon as I finished this, I'm going down to edit for a couple of hours. And I'm sure you know, I mean you just said two, you do two a week. That's that's what that's hard work.
Yeah, it's a lot like and I thought, you know what's funny is the father them alone weekly round Up, which is just me bullshitting with my dog for twenty or twenty or so minutes, seems to be the hardest of all of them. Like just picking material, like week after we anyway, we're not here talk about me. We're tiring to talk about you. And actually when is your first It was it on VHS? Your first viewing of Creep Show?
It definitely was, Yeah, this is one that wasn't on TV, and if it was, I definitely missed it. My friends would talk about it at school in the sort of like have you seen creep Show two? And I was like, right, okay, so we know, we know now roughly when it was because I hadn't seen it before Creep Show two came out, because I remember all them posters and it made me get Creep Show one. But yeah, so with Creep Show
it was a VHS. It was a I think it was a nice Price one which over here was like four pounds ninety nine, So yeah, it wasn't like yeah, so for my I would get ten pounds a week growing up when I was like sixteen seventeen, and that's what that's what I bought. Like, oh man, I just remember being so utterly impressed with Creep Show, and I don't I was never a comic book fan, so it
wasn't that angle that I fell in love with. I was already an avid Stephen King reader, so I think it must have been that aspect of it and that hook that he's in one of these, So yeah, let's investigate. But yeah, I didn't stop.
My experience with Creep Show was in nineteen eighty two. I was nine years old in an Elmy's department store with my mother and she deposited me at the little book section so she could go shopping, and sitting there was the Creepshow comic adaptation, which for some reason was released months before the film. And if I'm sure you've seen it every if you haven't read it, everyone go get it. Artwork by Bernie Wrights, and it is fucking gorgeous.
So I sat and read it cover to cover, read it again, read it again, and on the back it said now a major motion picture. And I was distraught because I thought I had missed it somehow and but a cousin of mine, my older cousin, Susan, who I was nine, she was maybe seventeen or eighteen, maybe even older. She had gotten me into Stephen King and horror movies in general. And she assured me this movie has not come out yet, but when it does, she would take me.
And she did. And so I was there opening weekend for Creep Show at the Revere Showcase Cinemas and they had in the lobby they had a standy built for it, and it was a cardboard version of the crate and the sign said what's inside of the Creepshow Crate? In fact, I got a drinking cup at the fucking concession stand that had the creep on it. I'd sad, yeah, man like. And I became so obsessed with this movie. I bought every poster you could get of this movie. So we're
talking about the one sheet. We're talking about the Jack Cayman designed comic book cover. I'm talking the British Squad. You've seen that one with the with the creep like pointing at the at the tombstone, right, That's yeah, that's that's Bernie Wrightson is drawing from the comic book just sort of superimposed on that which I love that one that. Have you seen the French subway poster. It's the size
of a wall. It's it's the Joe King character of the little boy with the voodoo doll sitting on an open creepshow comic with the creep of his hands splayed out somewhere in the credits because it's the French poster, they advertise that there's going to be a creep show disco on a certain date. I always wondered what went on at the creepshow disco, so you can tell them. I've got some creep show bona fides. And it is one of those movies where, like you said, do I need to see Star Wars ever again?
Not at all.
It plays in my head. I can close my eyes and see it if I really want to. But more than any other movie, it's creep show for me, and I I'm seeing that it is for you too.
Yeah, it's so there's not many movies that will work that way with me or songs that I'm quite happy if I never see it again. And I've said before on my show that I'm not going to watch it again, although I did for this damn it. But I'm not gonna watch it again until I can get a really good bells and Whistles four K with all the extras because I've never gone in on any of the extras like that, so I don't know all the stuff about it, and it's one of those prized things that I'm just waiting.
I'm just gonna wait until it happens. I don't want to push it. I know there's loads of stuff on YouTube, and every time like that, something will pop up in my feed because it reads your mind and it's like, I don't click on it. Paul, wait, So I'm gonna wait. But yeah, it's going to come one day.
Well, once you get those bells and Whistles, you're gonna be very very happy. If you haven't seen Just Desserts, the documentary that they have about Creep Show, you no, no, no, oh my god, Paul Waller, Okay, yeah, that's that's something I'm gonna share my screen right now. We're gonna watch it. No no, no, but okay, look, so you're obviously obsessed with the movie as I am, so let's put that to a test.
Shell.
But you want to take a quiz, oh ship no, go for it, go for it. Here we go, baby, I'm gonna ask you for the last I'm gonna the next line. Okay, for example, here we go.
You call, so you fixed it up?
Give me that again? Give me that again? Could you hear it? I could just hear it.
Yeah, yeah, turn the volume up a bit.
You call my urb bits, so you fixed it on?
Nope, ash trade back sick.
Yeah, I can't do so bad.
We've only got four you're doing well, You've got the chance. Ready.
Okay, we kept.
Right on going, and we didn't complain the cause we were doing what we wanted to do.
¶ The Iconic Cast of Creepshow
And you understand that, well, I don't.
Even know where that's from, Yes you do. I'll play it again for you. But we kept right on going, and we didn't complain the cause we were doing what we wanted to do.
And you understand that.
It's on the television while mister Jordi Verel is lingering outside.
Oh my god, no, this is this is dep cuts.
Well that's how we that's how we were all here. Okay, we're doing them in order of the of the story. So here we go. You know, on a friend Harry's wild about Harry Richard, get it out of here, just gonting revenge, Harry.
Let me play this seat.
No, God damn it, no, all the relatives of his you ate baked and stuffed at mom Maison, Richard Vickers. He's gonna wicked, wicked, wicked mind. Okay, finally I'm gonna Paul. I have total fucking faith in you, man, and this one, this one counts for triple the points, so you could possibly win you ready.
I'm sorry, over to Anderson Hall and help me out. But as you so often say, what would I do without you? No?
Forget, forget, get out of here? What indeed, Henry, what indeed?
Clearly I should have watched this more often in recent years.
Yeah, man, you know this is one of those movies I can recite from the beginning to end, like every line of the movie, much much to the annoyance of my many partners over the years. Could you please let me watch the movie? No.
Two minutes was the most stressful two minutes I've had. That was more stressful than playing in front of five thousand people at festival last November. I was like, that was nothing compared to that. I mean, Jez Louise, I hate myself.
Oh stop, you did fine. I mean you did terrible, but you don't care. I don't like you any less.
Well, no, I have got to gain something back. You now have the right to not like me at all.
I'm not sure that that's a possibility. All right, creep Show, creep Share. Let's talk about the actors of creep Share. Who stands out to you in this cast?
I mean, I've done a I've done a top five because I didn't want to alienate my favorites and I really wanted to make sure someone got to mention that rarely does and if they do, it's just because of nepotism. So Joe Hill, my number five, is Billy in the wrap around, like so so very important to making this whole thing work and so believable. And as a kid, even though I saw it as a team, he was the one that I was like, yeah, I get that, I've been in that situation, and I really felt for him.
That's what we're talking about. The wrap around sequence for the movie, which is the young child Joe Hill being scolded by his father to the point of slapping that wiseacre of a child and then throwing away his comic book which evidently was a common refrain in the nineteen fifties with the ec comics. I think a king is playing into that there in the Centerville, USA, which if you read the screenplay, that town is named Centreville. You
know it's funny, you know. You and I talked on your show about checking things out virtually via computer with Google Maps and such. But certain things require a pilgrimage. Every pilgrim has his. For me, it's Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So I went down because of Down of the Dead. Clearly, I made a beeline for the Monroeville Mall, but just on the outskirts, if you just go looking a little bit, you'll find Carnegie Mellon University, which is Horlick's university here
in Creep Show. So I've been to Amberson Hall. But more importantly, I visited Billy's house on Creep Show. And get this, it was the middle of the night and it was trash day, so all of the barrels were out on the street. It was pretty spectacular. I got close enough that they could have and should have called the police this stranger lurking out there. But yeah, so the ramp around segment here, yes, and but to your
point about young Joe Hill. Here Joe King at the time, Stephen King's son, Joe Hill, who is a fantastic author. If he is actually my favorite horror author working today, he's better than his dad. I'm sorry, sorry, Steve, but you raised him right. He's wonderful in this movie. You would not know that it was a non actor child. This is a child performance that I love, where he just seems with it and not precocious.
I am every time I watch it. I'm stunned at how good he is. And of course when I initially watched it, I didn't know who he was. You know, for years upon years upon years, I did not know who he was. It's just someone I related to. Like I had my dad throw away Motley Crue albums. There was this band in the UK that got big called zigzigsput Nick but Nick. So they were on the front cover of a couple of magazines, and my dad, because one of them looked vaguely feminine, it was just lost
his shit that that all went in the bin. So like, I've lived that and I know that, and that makes you clutch onto it even more. And just from that simple setup, like I'm totally on board before even any of the shorts of but we're.
Also treated to this fucking horrible dad. But it's played by Tom Atkins, so he's imminently watchable and I can see his point of view, even though I don't agree with it, and I don't like the mom very much because she's really just a washrags, you know, he's just stepping all over and like, but I feel her frustration
as well. I love particularly that not only do we get that like wonderful exterior where he's actually throwing the thing in the trash and we get to hear the creep making his way there, but when he describes to her why that piece of fiction needed to be tossed out, he names the stories, so it's you know, you want him reading that stuff, you know, things coming out of crates and eating people, dead people coming out, people turn
into weeds, for christ'sake. Like, I love that there's throwing dialogue fucking ruining the movie for you right there, and you just don't even know.
Right, this is so good. I can not quote this film like you can quote this film, and that is really bugging me, right, And I'm just thinking in my head now right, Star Wars. Yeah, I can quote line for line, so clearly I must start watching Creep Show on the regular again. Yeah, I'm not having this.
You could do as I did and just tape the entire audio track of the movie onto a cassette tape and then wear that in your and then put that in your headphones for your fucking walkman, just walk around listening to Creep here. I'm not that obsessive, am I?
When I was, we mentioned V in the show in my show earlier, and when that used to come on uk TV on a Friday night over the weekend, I would tape it and then I would tape it onto a cassette and I would take it to school when I would listen to it on my walkman V all the way there, all the way back, like, oh my god, what a memory you've just hit there, bosh.
And yeah, I I if a movie, If I love that movie, then I wanted to keep experiencing the movie if I wasn't near a television set, like gotta keep I need the I need to fix the horror junkies.
I've been doing this, okay. So so at number four and at number two, actors from the crate. So at number four I've got how Oolbrooks Henry, and at number two I've put a GM Barbo as Wilma. I just think they're so so expertly read that that like it's the one short where if all the others went. Even though it's not my favorite, I would like just happily watch that again and again again. I think the performances are outstanding.
The create is the sort of standout of the movie. Obviously, it is the most character driven. I think it's the most plot driven, and it isn't based on usual anthology short story twists. There's no twist going on here. It's a it's a it's a thriller. Unfortunately, in most horror anthologies, when you get a thriller, it is there isn't a whiff of the supernatural, creep show is Wald or all fucking supernatural, even if it's just roaches, Like what are roaches?
Why are they so mad at him? So so I always appreciated that aspect of it.
Well, yeah, of course. And I would also say, just quickly about Adrian Barbeou. I talked to her so yeah, so when I got to talk to her, I knew the whole interview. I was trying to think, how am I going to get a little bit of chat about creep showing? How am I going to do it? And because we weren't talking about that, I think we're talking about Scooby Doo or something because she was in one of those.
Batman the animated series.
She's doing so much amazing stuff. But yeah, I managed to get a bit in and I was so happy with what we ended up talking about. But what was really annoying was the before you record and after you record. She was just so courteous and courteous to me. She dropped her bacade thing that you would do when you're ready, like one, two, three, showtime sort of thing that dropped,
and she just became like the mum, you know. She was so nice talking about her kids and stuff like that, and she wouldn't stop in it, Like I'm thinking, I've really got to move on to my next interview sort of thing, and yet here I am talking to her. No way am I going to stop it, So we're just chatting the shit like. It was such a lovely thing to do, completely suxtaposed with her character as Wilma as well mad.
Yeah, Wilma, she's Idrey Brother is the MVP of the movie. There are a couple of performances here where you can watch it and go, this is a comic book and it doesn't feel bad. Like if you were to say in most movies that, well, that's kind of a comic bookly performance, you'd be like, she sure, sorry about that. But Adrian Varnbaud read that character off that page, recognized Wilma as the the castrating bitch from hell and just went,
I'm gonna go all the way with this. I think you know, didn't she it's I believe she said something like, you know. Romero kept going, yeah, you can go bigger, you can go bigger, And I think that was Romero's refrain to most of the actors, like King in particular, we'll get to him, but but so like we'll get to Romero too. But like, one of the reasons these performances are so good is because it got somebody like Romero at the helm going, I know what this movie
actually needs. It needs the outsized performances to to sort of to keep it going. But at the same time, hol Hoholbrook is so fucking natural as Henry so repressed and just so genial, like what a pair, and they play off each other so well, like this is a look, we know this couple. You know this couple. Yeah, it's been around them.
In the right. Number three, I have Leslie Nilsen as Richard something to toward you I about And my number one is people are confused by it and they will often say that this is the worst performance. But for me, Stephen King as Jordie Verel, I just think it's so spot on. And it's the one character in this thing that if I was going to get a tattoo, it will be that. If I was going to, you know,
learn to quote someone perbatum, it will be him. But I just think it is a performance for the ages, like from when I was young, from teenager to now, as like I'm a year away from fifty. I would just so so impressed with what I'm watching. And you know, this was before I understand what film and cinema was and I was just watching, you know, a videotape. I wasn't into all the arts and crafts of it, like it just instantly. It is so transfixing. I love him in this, my God.
I love him when I first saw the movie. I knew who Stephen King was. I had read what minimal Stephen King they would allow me to read on my own, but I knew he wrote the movie. And while we were watching the opening credits, his name came up in the actors list, and my cousin grabbed my arm and said,
oh my god, he's in the movie. And then so we're watching and watching and watching, and it's a little while into it, so the metea is already struck, and he's already gotten the pucket of water and come and slightly when he realizes you've done it now, JORDI verel that. My cousin leaned in and just whispered, that's Stephen King.
And it was like, I don't know, like like people talk about imprinting, you know, it was just like, holy God, that's the man, that's that's the shining guy, which I hadn't seen at the time, but I saw the trailer on television and it fucking kept me up for weeks. I had seen Carrie by then, like I knew all of the books, and I knew his reputation and whatever little bit I could get, and like, here, here he is being his life and to your point, yeah, it's
the best performance in the movie. It's a heartbreaking performance. This is the community. We can just jump right into Jordy Verrel if you want, because this segment of Creep Show gets the least amount of respect from the rest
of them. It is never mentioned. When you and I first started talking and you mentioned that you wanted to talk about this segment, I was overjoyed because I feel like I'm the only other fucking human who adores this piece, and a huge part of that is Stephen King's performance. Side note, tom Atkins, dick of a Dad at the beginning, initially hired to play Jordi Verrol, and then George Romero went, oh, you know what, Eve, I think you should do it
because you are a hic from Maine. So and then Tom Akins, you'll notice, is uncredited in the movie as the dad. But I mean he wanted to he the part, but he didn't. He didn't take credit because he really wanted to play Jordy Berrell. And he might have been fine. You know, he's a good actor. I might have enjoyed his performance in a different way, but I wouldn't have believed that Jordy was as dumb as he is and for so brilliant.
Man. So I didn't know it was Stephen King. I did not know it was Stephen King when I first watched it. I just thought it was like an actor playing a hic sort of thing, you know, That's all I thought. So, yeah, I even though I'd read Stephen King, it was so you know, we didn't have the internet. I didn't know. I just can't believe you were nine watched in this stuff. That's absolutely madness to me.
Yeah, you know, listening to your podcast a lot, like I noticed, guests will come on and we'll say things like, oh yeah, I saw on this Tiner's fourteen, and you'll be like that is too young, and I'm thinking, oh man, what wait till pul gets a low to me man like this is. I was unattended, and a worse than unattended. I had a large gaggle of all older, irresponsible cousins. They took me to the drive in to see the thing and cat people, you know, like they whatever they
were into. I was the mascot that came along, none of them realizing how twisting it was from my brain. But at this point in my life, I want to thank every single one of them.
Absolutely jealous, I wonder because I was alloud music, but I think it was because of that video nasty thing that happened. Like my parents were so tight on what I could watch, So when I would get away with watching a v which had those elements in it, and when I could watch the aides team and there would be like a gun battles and things like that, it was just like there's a little curtain into like another
world sort of thing. And of course there was a certain age where I just they didn't care anymore and I went crazy. But I think my obsession, I'm like like being allowed that stuff and having it grow over time. It was just this need I needed to see all this stuff that I'd heard about. And of course I wasn't allowed to watch Stephen King films, but I could buy books my parents. But do you want me to get you misery? And I'm like, yes, yeah, people are weird.
Yeah, it's potentially so much worse when you're reading it. You know, like there's a scene in Penn Cemetery the book where most people, I don't think it bothered them, but the lead character that not Judd crandall the you know,
the Dale Midkip character from the movie. He's going He's going to the Penn Cemetery on his own, and a windigo face appears before him, and King described it as this face gibbering at him a few feet away, and I threw the book across the room, man, like I all the lights came on, you know, So to think that, like, yeah, read this book this, this will be fine. Read misery. Nothing untoward will happen in that. Definitely, don't watch an episode of Tales from the Dark Side or fucking creep Show.
For of all things, the lightest, the lightest horror entertainment is creep show and also kind of the most hardcore. We'll get to the Great Buffy eventually. Right now, we want to talk to Jordy Verrel because first of all, right, from the title, now, okay, here's the thing. Creep Show is listed as an original screenplay by by Stephen King. That is a lie the crate and a short story called Weeds had previously been published I think in Cavalier magazine.
Weeds is the story we get here. It's Jordi Verrel. It was meant to be the opening chapter of a book where plants take over the world, and after writing the first chapter, he went, well, I don't know that I can do better than that, and he's right. So what we get here is Weeds adapted into my favorite title in Creep Show, one of my favorite titles of all time, The Lonesome Death of Jordi Verrel. It's a title that tells you exactly what you're going to get
and then it delivers. And it's a little bit haunting to think because it re contextualizes your viewing experience. And at least for me, this is the comedy segment of this movie, and to me it's actually the most tragic of any of them.
From the Get Girl, I think it's perfectly pitched. That's the key to this one. We've established already in the film that this is a comic book. So we're watching a comic book unfold on screen, and I think when by the time we get to the Lonesome Death Jeordi Ferrel, what we're seeing is that comic book like leap off the page. It is so ott and as I say,
perfectly pitched in that way. Now, like Adrian Barabo said in that interview, like he was just saying, yeah, give me more, don't give me less, give me more, don't make it grounded. I don't know if Stephen King, because you know he wrote this, I don't know if it was something that he always envisions this way or he was pushed to go further this way. But whatever way it was, it nailed the performance, like so spot on, because we do need levity in this thing. It's not
a serious like scary film. It's got aspects of things that will keep you up. But like I personally just think that everything else is fantastic, it's awesome, but this just goes the extra mile. There's got this something that you can't name, and as I say, the best I can get is it's just so perfectly pitched. Everything about it is right.
Creep show, you know, on the whole is an ode to the old EC comics tell Us from the Crebt Vault of Horror or Hunt of Fear. I'm sorry, I just completely lost my train of thought. Part what was the last thing you just said about. I'm just going on about how it is so perfectly pitched, Oh perfectly pitched. The Lonesome Death of Jodany Vrown So so the whole thing is based on those, and we've gotten some film adaptations of them, and we had the tales from the
CRYBT television series and stuff. And what most of those get wrong when they go to adapt any of the stories is they think what we're looking for as a horror audience is gore, true, guilty. But they also think we need the twist, we need the sort of comedic black black comic kind of through line to sort of
¶ Nunkhead or Lunkhead?
rear its head at the end. But what they don't realize is that the stories that always stick out to us are the ones that do not follow that pattern at all, that seem completely out of left field. There's nothing ec about this story. I mean in the traditional sense of the dead person like Father's Day. Yes, that is the absolute perfect distillation of EC comics. You did a murder, You're gonna fucking pay for it. Here. There is no villain other than his own inability to act
on what's happening around him. That's remarkable. It's a one character thing. It's actually it's a two hander because we get Bingo O'Malley playing all the other people he interacts with in his fantasies, which is a whole other thing. That's fantastic. It is like it's so distinct from the others in every way. I think that puts people off
about it. I think they can't really get a handle on it, which is why they don't appreciate this one as much as say something to tide you over, which is I'm doing something bad to you, now you do something bad to me.
Yeah, I think maybe there is a lot of that. It is so straight as well, it is so overacted like it pisses it actually pisces people off. But like when there's a couple of moments in it that sort of like give you this is why he's acting in that way. This is this person. And the first thing is that he had to take a bank loan out for two hundred dollars, Like that's like I worked it out today. That's only six hundred and fifty dollars in
today's money. That's nothing. And yet he's had to take a loan out for that, and but looks for it. He's a farmer, you know, he's not got any money. He's totally poor. And then the expression nunk head, like what's a nunkhead?
Like these well, like here's the thing that that word is lunkhead. But no, but I've got again and again and patois you're getting moo hired.
Because I yeah, I with a capital N. Like and me and my brother used to quote that bit to each other like, oh, Paul, you nunkhead and like, and then I was like, right, there's no such word as nunkhead. So, like a few years ago, I would be watching it again and again and I was like, no, I'm satisfied with that nunkhead. It is so yeah, because lungerhead.
He perverted the word into something that's going to lives forever in your mind now, well mine too, because I mean, even though I know he's saying lunkhead, I can hear him saying no kid, Yeah, I want.
You to listen and try and remove the letter in It's impossible. Yeah. Well, there go vindicated, right, Okay. Also, we can't talk about this segment without the set dressing of his abode. It's fantastic, from before the Weeds to after the Weeds to the end, it's just incredibly set dressed. Yeah, And this is one of the things where when I do get my bells and whistles box set, I'm going to be like, how did they do this? What did they do here?
Can I hip you to some of the facts of this particular secm. I'm on go for it. Okay. This was filmed entirely in the gymnasium of a girl's high school that in Pennsyl Romero, you grew. You lived through the nineties, You lived through the independent film boom, when suddenly a bunch of filmmakers making movies about making movies
figured that they had created independent cinema. There was this other guy who'd been doing it for some time named George Romerow, who somehow got major studios to back him to make this fucking comic book adaptation. And he said, you know what, I'm going to shoot it here in Pittsburgh. And while we need a studio for some sense, girls gymnasium. I love him, Okay, So all the interiors are set there.
They built a house. They found like a patch of land to build the farm so they could shoot the exteriors, in which evidently threw off local pilots, who suddenly found that there was a farm where there had not been
farm before, and an aged one at that. So apparently there was some concern there and the cent interesting you mentioned is done by a fellow by the name of Cletus and who did most of Rameiro's movies, and he can be seen here as the host of the party in the crate who introduces Wilma to to Tabby and and her husband. That's okay, and his work is spectacular, like the cent dressing. Inside it does not look like a set, and that's a lot of that is Romero,
¶ Haunted Attractions and Scare Experiences
who's a fucking phenomenal filmmaker obviously, and is lighting people. But it is so particular, it is so lived in. It does not feel like a movie like ordinarily you can tell when there's a costume that just got sown or the paint is peel still drying on the walls. But here it's fucking fantastic.
Yeah, I, as I say, I've got an old DVD of this that I've had many years, and I rewatched it like very late one evening a few days ago,
so I was sort of in and out. But as I say, I know it very well, not as well as I apparently, but we'll get you know, very I can't believe I failed that so miserably anyway, So I watched it and I didn't I noticed when I watched it that the I could see now I'm so used to four K, that I could see some of like the grass when it stuck to his face before it goes really bad, like when he's pouring himself the bath, And I just thought, oh, that's going to look really
bad in four K when I get that four that's going to look bad. But right now it's okay. But like I remember on VHS, like this thing was just everything to me, like the world look lived in, Like I didn't know like about sets or anything like that when I was like even when I was like seventeen, watching this thing, like it wouldn't have occurred to me it would have been a set. I would imagine that would have been his actual house that Stephen King lived in,
you know. But my word it was it's just so gorgeous. It's so right, and yeah, it doesn't look real in any way. It looks comic book, but it's so well presented. I'm so what do you say?
His name was Cletus Peters Anderson.
Absolute genius, Like honestly hes on my neck when I think about like the things that have stood with me through through my horror loving life, which is most of my life. That's set dress. Thing in that room is like, why are you thinking about that? It's so perfect, so crazy, it's great. Well, do you ever get to the state. Yeah?
Yeah, when you've been here, have you partaken in any of our haunted attractions? To say Universal Studios.
I stayed on International Drive and because we didn't want to stay in Disney or anything like that, so it was only Florida, and we used International Drive as a base so we could do the theme parks, but we could also explore Florida itself and go to more sketchy areas and things because we just wanted to do that. So we decided to follow a roller girl team about because they were playing a few areas around in a couple of weeks that we were there, so that was great.
We did that and on one of these treks we went past this thing on International Drive which was like a big castle that was just in the middle of it just looked like it'd just been put there, and it was a scary attraction and I've never been as scared before or since. Them walking through this castle one into the other with the guy in a leather face mask with a chainsaw that I could smell fuel. Obviously it was blunt. I didn't care. I was running through that.
I did not get my money's worth. I was so scared. So yeah, I've got an experience of it. Wherever you're going, I want to know, because these are the best story These things are freaky scary.
Yeah, well, I'll get to the I'm talking scifically about Halloween Horror Nights, which is the universal yearly attraction. Starts in September, runs all September, all through Halloween, sometimes after Halloween, which is always a delight when everyone is already over it and I get I jump in there. But before I sort of became dedicated to to haunted attractions, I was actually worked in a haunted attraction here in Las Vegas.
We Eli Roth's Goratorium was a year round haunted attraction here on the Las Vegas Strip, and the inside was a decrepit casino, many many rooms, and there were many actors in those rooms who were chasing you around. I was one of those. So I've seen scare attractions from both sides. And what's funny is you're absolutely right, because you ran through, you did not get the full experience. I can't speak to. I know the actual attraction you're
talking about, because I've been to it on eyedrive. I can't remember the name of it, but because I've also been to Halloween Horror Knights at a Universal in Orlando, but I primarily go to the primarily go to the one in Hollywood. Well, in twenty nineteen, when the Creep Show television series premiered, they had a Creep Show House at Universal Studios and you walked in like the facade was the giant open comic book with all the back issues from the back of this comic book, you know.
Oh so, so you step into it and then you're basically walking through the panels of the comic book and it's all it's all the panels from the actual Bernie Wrights and things, but a lot of them from the movie, you know, the little transition animations that would that slowly dissolve from the Yeah, so all of that, and then you get you get three three rooms that are themed from the movie Creep Show, and then I think two
that are themed from the television series. So I hate to say it, but a waste of time, but the three the three Cream Show rooms you get to go through are the Father's Day one. So you go through the cemetery, past the that iconic Nathan Grantham graves down inside where he jumps out and twists off the head of on Sylvia and then he of course emerges scaring the shit out of you with on Sylvia's head on
a tray. So that's you got that. Next you got the crate, which was disappointing because not because of the set decoration. The Universal Studios is bar none the best.
It's a fucking movie studio. They should not look like a set when you want, you should feel like you're there, right, So you walk into the basement in Horlic's University where the crate is up on top of the the sort of island, the you know, the examination island, and they had perched the crate so far up so they could have an actor stand into it that it was so off putting that you were looking up it didn't match the movie in any way, shape or form. That it
was kind of a total loss of a room. But then you get into ups and Pratt's apartment with lightning going off and projections of roaches everywhere, and there's the computer and that sound, that trilling sound that his fucking stupid phone makes and you get to walk past his her medically sealed room with the body and all the roaches being disgorged. I would say I've never had a better time in a haunted attraction. But I also went through the An American Werewolf in London House, which is
the best thing I've ever been through. And I'll take it was so movie accurate because you go through the slaughtered lamb and then you're like, you go into the apartment where he transforms, You go through the tube station with the fucking escalator, you end up in the porn theater walking from the screens point of view, Hector's shooting in your eyes with a fucking giant the a full sized wolf like fucking jumping.
Out of you.
I've never been so scared in a haunted attraction. Did it? Walked out? Did? I was there early enough that I walked out? Did it again? And I got scared in all the same places. I feel like I'm ranting now
¶ Stephen King's Performance and Personal Struggles
we're no longer talking about creep show, but we're creepshow with you don't care.
It sounds bazy, it sounds absolutely nicy. Yeah, see, I hear all this positive stuff, and my one experience was too scary for me. Didn't like it. It was too much.
Well, here's the thing. When you go to like one of the attractions that have multiple houses and multiple scare zones and such, you can kind of ease your way into it and you have greater and lesser degrees of Fright.
There are plenty of times where I've gone into a house knowing I'm not getting scared at all, but I just walk staring at all of the scent decoration because it's one of those immersive things where I don't mind that it's an immersive thing, you know, my immersive theaters, like all the thing, Like I don't want to go to your living room and pretend we're fucking into your life or what you know what I mean, Like all this new immersive shit, it's just more and more and
more of it, and I don't want any of it. If they're not jumping out with a knife, I don't want to be part of your immersive experience. But it also has to be perfectly sent decorated, and they do it really well. And the Creepshow one looked spectacular except for that create.
This is the difference to say you get into horror at nine, start exploring it in my late teens that that's the difference. You can handle these things. I just run through and say, yeah, take my twenty bucks, I'm off, see ya.
Such a shame. And yes, that chainsaw was live and they just took the chain.
Off of it. Okay, Yeah, I could definitely because we were saying to each other, we can smell the petrol and we just helted it out there. Yeah. There such a.
Weird we had a we had at the Goro term. We had an electric chain saw, so it was like a foam prop basically, but it made the sound enough and it blew out smoke, I believe, so that was good enough. I accidentally brained somebody with it one time, though, still feel bad about it.
I'm sure you don't. I deserved it, all right, Yeah, nunk head.
No, here's something I noticed because I rewatched the movie again. Needn't have but you know, any excuse honestly, the scene where Jeordi makes himself the most makeshift of screwdrivers by using the entire bottle as a swizzle stick. After he sits down and has the realization that he's growing, the camera lingers on him for a while. And Stephen King usually is wearing rather thick coke bottle glasses, but here I noticed how goddamn dreamy his eyes were. Did you get that impression?
Like, yeah, it's so unusual. I totally do. Yeah, it's very strange to see him without respects on, and it gives like you can see why he was chosen for this role. Like he gives like when I take my glass off, it's much the same. You look, your face looks confused because it's not used to it. Do you know what I mean? It's just like your face has to get used to to being different. And I think what's happened there is Yeah, like his face is just
doesn't look quite right. Everything is just off with him. And yeah, his eyes are sort of wasn't he like a drunk at this time as well? So we had sort of like glassy eyes at that point. I think it was before the cocaine period or was it jeering it.
I think they're on the precipice of the cocaine period. This might in fact be the start of the cocaine period, because you know movie sets round eighty two. It's not addictive, right, it's just happy Death. Yeah, he definitely was one on one substance or another. I think I don't know how alcoholic he was at this point, just because of all the rah rah the shining as an anti alcoholic screen
that he keeps sort of banging on about. But yeah, I mean, he's not well here, doesn't affect the performance or any I'm not saying that.
Well. I think I watched I did an episode on maximum overdriving for it. I did do the do I haven't got the affinity with that film that I do for this one, So I did go and look at all the extras, and I went and looked at the interviews that he was doing around the time, and yeah, he would do that drunk thing of like you would say something you sort of remember you're saying it, but you you then start going off into a different direction while he's trying to keep focus on what you were saying.
It's like you're sort of too hazy to even know where you were. And he was doing that in interviews regularly.
And whilst it's funny to sort of watched him keep up with himself, it's so really sad to see him try and keep up with himself and like we talk about this this segment of the Creep Show being really sad, and yeah, like when you think about Stephen King and his face, his manner, his whole life, it has been such so successful and yet so sad that elements that have happened to him in this time, and like how he's dealt with it through entertaining us, like what a
hero like when he does go like it's gonna be, there's gonna I just I have nothing to compare him to in a modern day texture. I think it's going to be like a legendary great and it's nothing to do with these performances. Obviously, is to do with what he has written. But I would say, always look at this performance, Always focus on what he's done here, because it's that important. And like we said at the very beginning of this, like it just gets overlooked and poo pooed,
¶ Editing and Music in Creepshow
maybe because it is so ott I can't tell you the reason, but shocking.
I'll tell you why. It's because of the way he says be a d I think that part of it is so over the top that most people won't they won't cotton to the rest. And that's Romero's fault because as you know you said with Adrian Barbo, he was telling her to go bigger and bigger. I know from
here for this performance. He told King, you know the look that Wiley Coyote has right before he realizes he's going to fall, I'd like you to play the part entirely like that that expression, which makes sense in a way. But at the same time, the pathos of this character is really undeniable. Like the jokey parts of it are his.
The fact that Jordie Verel imagines that there's a Department of meteors who will give you two hundred dollars for a whole meteor and nothing if it's broken is so ridiculous. And the fact that a doctor has a well sanitized but still a cleaver for which he's going to take off your finger without any anesthetic. I'm guessing like those are funny bits, except when you factor in that every authoritarian figure who's coming down on Jordi is in the visage of his dead father who's been dead what christ
three years? Almost?
Yeah, yes, but on like I tell you, it's makes me feel sad like talking about it in this way, and don't no other episodes do in this is that I mentioned that there's a weight to Jordi verel that there isn't any other episodes and it's still fun. Like I I get the ott stuff like and some of the lines, and also the slap on the face. There's like a tiny sound effect. I think that like it's too clunky. You didn't need it, Like just have him
in his face like that will sound good enough. It's not quite a like buying ey eyeing, but it's like still a it didn't need to be there. It's so forgivable, Like everything about it to me is it is just perfect perfect.
This segment was all of the segments of Creep Show had different editors, which I think was which is a great idea because if you're trying to not necessarily mix up styles, there was a there was a unified this is a comic book style, but somehow the pacing of each having a different hand sort of holding the the splicer like adds a layer to it. And this one was edited by Pasqually Booba, if I hadn't already said it, who is a longtime collaborator of Romero, part of the
Romero family. He went on to edit movies like Heat and a veritable a cavalcade of like every popular taman you can think of here. And what I love about his editing here is not only is it the exact right amount of pacing for like every shot and every sort of moment or rather character beat, but Pasqually Buba is effectively the sound editor and the music editor on this one too, and more than any of the other segments.
It's almost wall to wall library music, which is his way his tipping of the hat to Romero himself, because if you watch any Romero movies, that man loves library music. He watched Dawn of the Dead. I mean, I know they've got the goblin stuff in there, but there's just as much library tracks a Knight of the Living Dead one hundred percent. If left to his own devices, and I know Romero would have copped to this as well, it would be nothing but library music, and I can't
blame him. So Pasqually Buba is sort of like saying, you know it's your thing, George, but so here, let me do it your way. I mean, there's there's some John Harrison's score in here, but I just love hearing the same tracks we've heard in a million anthology shows and horror things and whatever completely recontextualize here with this poor man who can't afford more than ripple red to drink, it's like he's.
A hot take. Like with this one. I think that the score dips for shorty Errel. I think the score for Creep Show, but as a whole is just phenomenal. But with this one in particular, it goes to fifty sci fi and too many places. Obviously you can see why, but when I listened to it taken away from from the film, it just feels out of place. It's really odd.
And coming back to it because I've listened to the score a lot more than I have in recent years than watching the film, yeah it's really nos But whereas before i'd started listening to schools completely separated from the films, I'd never really noticed, but yeah I did, so I thought it was a bit of a step down. I'm not saying it's rubbish, It's nowhere near rubbish, but I'm just saying, like, for me, the rest of it is so good.
Oh, musically this is the least of it. I mean, it is effectively library tracks, which you know, if you're a fanatic like I am, for it. You already have all of these albums and you can just go listen to them. Hearing it out of hearing those tracks out of context from the movie is more rewarding than here than hearing them included on a soundtrack, because it's the sudden like whoa hey, I'm in Creepshow all of a sudden, And yes, I do sometimes just listen to library tracks
like albums full of them. But the other thing is John Harrison, the composer overall for the movie. What he does here is what he added to the movie is just the sort of synthy kind of counterpoint stuff, and that, to me is worse than the library music, which is that Oh man, John, Johnny the Day of the Dead score, Baby, what do you what are you doing to us here?
Because uh now you said what a phenomenal soundtrack it is, This, without hyperbole, is my favorite movie soundtrack of all time, the score for Creep Show, which was initially all he
was supposed to to record. By the way, initially, Romero being Romero, wanted nothing but library tracks for the entire thing, thinking it's a comic book movie from the fifties, that'll that'll be perfect for it, and then started noticing like, well, we kind of need a theme here and there, like maybe maybe we can john something to tide you over the music in that contains to me one of the most clever things I've ever heard in music, where he has taken a theme that the one of the characters
is singing at one point, which is Camptown Races, and then he plays that song brew a synthesizer in such a mournful way. This is when ted Danson has now realized that she's definitely drowning and he's next. There's no hope at all. It's this mournful thing. It's Camptown Races, and it fucking makes me want to cry.
It's like in that there is these also I can't say any other way than gentle slams, so like they're slamming on the keyboard but gently, and it's like a throbby thing that happens during it. And I'm just like, God, how did you do that? Because I can I can feel you slamming those keys, and yet it's not come from it's not doing that at all. It's so impressive.
I've synthesizer at work. Was that it's particular to that like if you bang the fuck out of it and still come out gentle, maybe.
It's just so impressive. And I think it was a Waxworks record release that I like pre ordered, and I loved it so much that I said to them. I reached out to him and said, look, you haven't got very good distribution in the UK. I'll just buy a stack and sell them. And I did. I just bought a stack. I don't know. I haven't got any infrastructure to do this, so I just went on eBay and sold them at a normal price so I could break even on them. I just wanted to get these out
people over here. Oh god, I love it.
That's fucking noble man. Getting this music out there is what we need to be doing. You know, I bought when I was a kid. You mentioned you had like tape trading in England during the video Nasty Phans for for me. Nowadays you can get anything you want just by going on Amazon or eBay or whatever. To find
a movie memorabilia. When I was a kid required a certain amount of effort, including like if you would looked in the back of Fangoria magazine, there'd be these classifieds and you could say people would be selling movie posters, books and whatever. So you would send to them and get back, you know, the xerox thing, this is what's in stock. And there was a there was a trader in Florida, Rix Rix was it was the name of it, and he sold posters and I bought most of my
Creep Show posters from this guy. And he was always really solid. And he had the Creepshow soundtrack for sale, which I could not find on vinyl, that original Verie Saraband release. I don't know if I'm saying that right, but yeah, the standard kind of release at the time. Could not find it anywhere. He had a copy of it, sold it to me, and when it arrived it was warped from the from the mail and so I could listen to three quarters of something and then oh, like that.
And I wrote back to him and he said, no, just send it back. I'll send you a new one. And then I met him at a convention like two years after that, and I said, hey, I'm the guy who bought that Creep Show thing from you was warped. He's like, oh my god, I'm so sorry about that, you know, like, there's the new one, okay, And I was like, yeah, of course, and then he said, he said that which we're talking I'm talking at least about the campdown racist thing. He said, did you hear the
joke in something to Tide you over? And I said, no, what are you talking about? And he said, it's Camptown Races. Listen to it, and like in my head it suddenly clicked, like standing on this convention floor, like, oh, that's that's true. So but anyway, the soundtrack itself, that's my experience at
the soundtrack. Of course, I have it on CD and every track sort of I have the I have the completely bonkers like completists out there found the disco song playing during the that Don't let Go during Father's Day
¶ Savini's Special Effects Mastery
when Ed Harris is dancing around, and the footage I'm sure he wishes burned. I love all of.
Man.
I mean we talk about iconic scenes. That scene from that was one that I could remember. The rest of it, I wasn't really into too. So here's the very strangest thing with it. Father's Day was one of the ones I just wanted to get through before it would kick off. As a youngster. No idea why Ed Harris dancing like yet burned into my soul. But at the same time it was just a so so. And now when I watch it, or think about it or read about it, I want to know the most about that that set,
those characters, those actors. I get the way the comic book frames the whole thing that is really really present in that one. It feels like the most important of the whole lot like to set this film up correctly. As I say, my initial starts with it was not so not big at all. I wasn't bothered about it, but like, I wonder how other people felt about it when they were growing up. Was that one as important to you.
When I was a kid? When I was first a fan of the movie, it was actually my favorite segment in the film.
It's so simple, it's too adult.
Yeah, but the setup is so evocative of the comics of ec comics. It's it's the simplest story. You horrible person gets killed for no good reason, comes back because the or for good reason, because the people who killed him are even worse than him in some way, And like I can get behind that. I can also I
grew up in New England. I grew up in the Boston area, just north of Boston, and so I've the kind of people that Stephen King are skewering there, sort of the old money New Englanders, Like, yeah, man, I want to watch them get their heads twisted off and turned into cake, you know, like that that was I couldn't imagine a more enjoyable time than watching a bunch of richer people get theirs when I was nine, you know,
So yeah, I love this one. And particularly because most resurrection scenes for the undead, when they come crawling out of the grave. Look, you know, there's only a few instances where I can point to and go like, that's awesome. And the way that Nate comes out of that ground man, where he's tearing the tearing the sod apart and emerging, it's so fucking scary that yeah, I just loved him.
And you know, look, I'm nine years old. The fact that he took the head and decorated it and got his cake was to me like the greatest bit of comedy and horror combined. Like that. I couldn't do better
than that. And I like the rest of the streets you're talking about adult like for me, like a story like The Crate while I could you know, appreciate the horror of it, like a nine year old me didn't give a shit about psycho sexual politics or like you know, power dynamics in marriage or like you know, in inter art mental politics at colleges, like none of that. That's madness.
Like, yeah, I do appreciate like a maggot Field corpse. Like I recently rewatched on the big screen Zombie and I just think, oh God, those corpses are so dusty and like so well presented. I so believe it. And yet like as a comic book Zombie, like this is perfect, you would want it like this. Also, I need to
¶ The Perfect Anthology Film
know is it all Sevini doing that stuff? Because I know he's involved in this. Was it ill his work?
Every bit of horror special effects on cert it's Tom Savin here, So yeah, he did the sculpt on Nate. I mean he has a team obviously, but yeah, that's that's him doing that. He what took five months to do Fluffy the creature from the Crate. That's all of his work.
Oh my word, all of.
The something to tide you over the water logged corpses was him. You know, even that fantastic bust of E. G. Marshall that they have at the end where the roaches come pouring out of the chest like that. You know, all all all Savini, all the time. Now here's the thing, Paul, because not only will you get the bell and whistle of that fantastic documentary about it, but if the package that you get is worth its weight in anything, it'll include Tom Savini's home movies from the set of creeb Show.
Because Tom Savini always had a VHS camera in his hand, that new technology back in eighty two, eighty three or eighty one rather, and so he filmed a lot of the process of putting all of those things together. In fact, I know that you're going to lose your mind because he just walks around the SETHS sometimes. So you're in that gymnasium and you are walking from ups and Pratt's apartment over to Jordi Verel's house. It's fucking Boker's.
But the second time in this conversation, I've got chills. Now. So I know there's like a screen Factory four K that came out last year, but I think it was a limited edition, and before I knew about it, it was so but that what tends to happen. Is if something like that happens in America, we'll get it a year after and tends to be vice versa as well. We get something, you'll get it a little bit later on from some different company, So I know it will
be coming. But yeah, like I'm proper excited about it. I've waited years to watch this stuff. But I want to have this film presented in such a way that just like it can't be better because we don't get the chance to watch these things I know in America, And god, I wish I could remember what town it was. I should take notes. There was a drive a drive through so you could just drive your car and watch
Creep Show, like during the pandemic. That's mental that you could see Creep Show and you could drive your car and oh god, it's so lucky.
Yeah, you know, we have a drive in here in Las Vegas, which was one of the worst drive ins to go to because it was situated beside a casino with a huge, huge blinking sign that was talk about light pollution like this town is killer for light pollution. And now this is going to sound horrible, but they recently demolished like casino, and I got to tell you the experience of the drive in is up one thousand percent. Now you can actually see the movies. You know what
movie I saw there? Quarantine? You've seen Quarantine, the remake of Wreck.
Right, I don't mind it. It's okay, not.
As good as Wreck, but it was passable, except if you're trying to watch this dimly lit, basically night vision movie with a giant fucking casino light blaring behind it. I was like, I squinted the entire time. At the end, I was asked if I liked it, and I don't know. That's that cinema baby like, but good to know they're there. I'm glad you corrected me on driving. I'm not driving through through what to do with McDonald's. Yeah, sorry, that's my American top. It's about as it as my memory.
Of of course, next time we'll pick another segment and then, well, you know, i'll test you again. It'll be fine.
Oh man, you when when we get the four K, then I want the test. We'll just do a test show. It'll be great. Let's do a.
Fucking commentary when you get that four.
Ok don't, don't, oh don't, Okay, I'm gonna I want to ask you. I want to wrap this up, but we'll ask you a few things. I know we've missed a few out and I'm really sorry. I'm running out of time, but I want to know with because your show is about anthologies, like with regards to not forget the TV ones for now, but with film anthologies, is this top for you?
This is the actual perfect anthology for me. I don't find any fat in this movie. I don't find any misdirection in the movie. I think all the performances are solid, the music song. There's nothing I don't like about this movie. I mean, if you pushed me, I could probably point to one or two things that trouble me a little bit, but nothing on the on the order of I didn't like that story, or I didn't like the wrap around segment,
or I didn't like those performances in those segments. Which is the joy of anthologies for me, and obviously I cover them a lot. Is the variety and the economy. I'm of a mind where Edgar Allen Poe thought that any piece of fiction should be no longer. It should not take you longer to read than a poem. It
should be in one sitting. As soon as you break that spell and put the book down or turn the movie off for a moment so you can go to the bathroom or whatever, that whatever magic is occurring is gone. So anthologies are perfect because each of the stories can can be that, and and and it it. I'm saying it's I'm saying Creep Shows the best because it doesn't have any of the problems. But I don't care if one of the segments falls down, because the next one's
got a chance to be great. And you know, in the case with Creep Show, it it came from these. Look, it's from fucking Stephen King and George Romero. If if you're looking for the best of the best, well it's Stephen King writing it, George Romero directing it, Stephen King on set for the entire thing to do rewrites. It's this team of people like these are I can't overestimate my estimation of George Romero and his company of players down in Pittsburgh. Look, there are varying degrees. I'm not
going to argue for Jack's wife. You know, there's always vanilla, not necessarily when I'm popping in every once in a while, but I am going to watch Night a Living Dead. I am going to watch Dawn of the Dead and Creep Show and Night Riders and Monkey Shines for fuck's sake, you know, I like that movie too. But his best movie, I'll get back to why Creep Show's the best anthology. His best movie, Paul, not my favorite, But his best movie, unqualified is Martin is his vampire film seventy seven.
Have you seen that, right? Okay, yeah, yeah, I love mine.
It's grateful love Martin. It's so personal and wonderful and just rife with urban decay. Anyway, So you had George Ramira, who's got that pedigree going, and Stephen King, like I don't, I can't advertise the movie better than that, right, You think people would just be falling all over themselves to watch it. These days, they've got the Creep Show television series, which is a bit of a dilution of the original formula as far as I'm concerned, although I love it.
I mean, I just love having the creep around in any form. But here's a question for you, Paul. Do you think the creep in the wrap around segment was he there to help Billy or was he there just to kill that dad. Was he there to come with Billy in his moment? Murder? That creepy is always murder on the moment. What's your favorite anthology film? It's got to be creep Show, Baby, one hundred.
Percent creep Show. I think within creep Show there are three ten out of ten stories, the other and nine out of Ten's very panantic to rate them, but that's
¶ Wrap-Up and Final Thoughts
what I do on my show. Oh and I don't think. I don't think any other anthology has got that high a hit rate. It's got my very favorite one ever in it with Jordi Verel. I also want to mention, if you haven't seen it, have a House of Horror episode called The Silent Scream, which I give a ten out of ten. Two. It's the one with Peter Cushion and Brian Cox. I just think that is as good as the Jordi Verel story. But I was trying to think.
I was going through everything. I love Amicus's Asylum, and I think, oh, actually, that's the best wrap around that you've ever had in an anthology. I think, I think that's amazing, and then I compare it to this one, and I'm like, well, technically and yeah, probably for the story it's better, but I still prefer creep Show. You know, there's something magical about this thing, and yeah, it's got
a lot to do with my youth. But also when you try and pull it away from that, Creepshow has these targets that is trying to hit and what is trying to be and I think it executes it perfectly, and no other film executes it perfectly. Whether it's an accident or whether they just lucked out, or whether they had this thing meticulously planned from the start, I don't care. I'll find out when I get that box set, But for me right now, I just there's nothing wrong with it.
It set out to do a job, and it did it perfectly. I can't want anything more as a horror fan.
Let me just echo what you're saying here about that wrap around segment. The reason or the greatest innovation here is that they decided early on that they're going to have this ode to comic books, and then decided we're going to let the comic book tell the stories. So we do get a wrap around in how the comic comes into our view and where it goes from there,
but it doesn't interrupt at all. The problem with most anthology movies and the reason that Asylum is so good it is its own story and now we're hearing the stories from the story, and those are characters that we're following, and there's an eventual payoff here. It's the lightest of setups, which can be death for an anthology movie, but it's so definitely handled. Seeing panels of comic books just come
to life. What more do you need? And not to mention that the splash pages that we get to trapes past the you know, the muscleman, the joy buzzers and exploding cigarettes, you know, like all that wonderful business. Don't need a word from anybody. I just need a skeletal hand come in every once in a while and magically turn the page.
Man, what else can you say? Well, actually you could say a lot more. I think we could probably do another couple of hours, like just going through each bit individually. But the thing is, here's the thing. There was a magic to it, and I worry that I'm going to spoil it, which is why I haven't bought any of the Blu rays or whatever that have come since there
are certain films I don't want to Ruin. I remember ruining Star Wars for myself with all the behind the same things, and just I would satiate myself with it, and at the end it spoiled that magic. And I really don't want to do that with this one film. It's not that one film that I just want to cape. Does that sound weird? You know?
No, it doesn't, because I get that I myself am a fiend and can't not spoil everything for myself. I need to know exactly what was going on when in the greatest and most detailed minutia possible. But I do understand having something as sacred as this look if I could. I'm wondering if there's a movie that I would rather not know anything about the making of. No, No, I'm I but just flat. But I can appreciate your your
reverence for the film. But I will also say that when that day comes, oh my god, what heaven is in storm for you? Mister Paul Waller. Now, Paul, when you're not here, you're clearly over there a year in horror, But how can people find you when they want to find you? And I'm encouraging everyone to find him.
I appreciate that. Yeah, Well, First of all, thank you for the opportunity to come on and chat with you. I've loved it, and I do like getting those snippets of information as much as I've avoided them my whole life. You blow me away that it was in a gymnasium for a start, like that might be something that you
learned twenty years ago, just nonchalantly. But I'm like, what so yeah, but if you want to look for me, I've actually very much try and not sell a year in horror with the band that I was in, It's constantly how can we sell ourselves? How can we market it? And I just wanted to get away from that. I started managing bands like just before COVID happened, and it was all about that, and again it lost the magic. Music lost its magic for me because it was just businesses.
So with the podcast, I've just decided let it grow organically. Not that like people were ripping my arms off to be paid ads or whatever. But whenever it has happened, I've just shut it down. I'm not interested. So I haven't got social media. I think I started a Facebook and then never updated it. I feel really bad about that, and a weird thing about Facebook. If I delete one thing, I think I've got to delete it all. And that's not the case. I can't be bothered to work it out,
so don't go there that. I have a personal Instagram, which is woll And not Weller, So if you are interested, come along there. But wherever you listen to podcasts, just type in a year in horror and you'll get me. And if you enjoy it, keep listening. That's all I want to say about it. I've done it as a personal thing. I knew I would have a small audience because my music stuff meant that people would listen and
decide whether they liked it or not. And love lovely stuff has happened because I've discovered a horror community where I just knew there was one, cos fangoria exists, you know, and these people like you, like many of my regular guests, they're the best, and like, this is the best thing that honestly has ever happened to me apart from my marriage. You know. It's just so incredible to me all these people that feel the same way about movies as I do. So yeah, that's why I'm doing it. What else can
I say about it? It's just like if you want to find me, the best place to do is just type it into wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you don't like fair, you know whatever, it's good.
And if you are looking the links here in the comments or whatever the fuck it is the description I'm going to link to your podcast, you're not selling it. I am, ladies and gentlemen. Once again, midnight viewers, thank you for joining us here. Oh I gotta I gotta plug my own self shit. Okay at midnight viewing you're listening to it here. But all of the other shows I do. I do a half hour radio drama called Dark Destinations. I co host a podcast about the television
series Taxi called Night Mister Walters. That is HP's show. I'm his co host on that, and frequent appearance is over on the Projection Booth and the Culture Cast. Both those shows are definitely worth checking out. Everything is that weirding Way Media. If you want to support this show in any way, and we'd really appreciate it if you did, that is Patreon dot com slash father Malone. Until next time,
try to enjoy the daylight. Actually no, that's the usual sign off, but that's because we're entails from the dark side Land. What's the what's the creep show version? Oh, it's the most fun you'll ever have being scared
Ulong the hallw