Will you wait, miss.
Merry Christmas Midnight viewers, and welcome to our Christmas clip show spectacular. We've covered a lot of anthology series over the years, and odds are you're going to get some holiday themed episodes in there. For this particular holiday. We've gone back through our archives and strung together all the various segments pertaining to the Fat Man in the Red Suit. God bless us everyone. Now, I said, we've gone back through the archives, which means in the earliest segments you're
going to hear evolution at work. We've been at this for some time, so I hope you don't shudder at the quality as much as I did upon re listening. I think I'm calling in over the phone on a few episodes. It's not spectacular, but it gets better. So what we have on tap for you today, all you major dwelling creeps, are a segment from Tales from the Crypt, the television series that's and All through the House from
the pilot. Then we have and All through the House from the Amicus anthology from from the nineteen seventies that's also called Tales from the Crypt. Next up is a Rod Serling special from his series Night Gallery, we spent some time with the Messiah on Mott Street, and finally we've got an entire themed episode from Twilight Zone eighty five. Those segments are Night of the Meek, but can She Type?
And the Star from Everyone Here at Midnight viewing Mike White, Chris Statue, HP Antonio Lapour, Ripley, Jane, Jasmine Williams and myself have a wonderful holiday and a matchit crazy New Year, he.
Kitties chest, your old pal the clip Keeper having a little holiday fun. Why else would I be in this get up unless there was a clause.
In my contract.
In fact, I.
Got some Christmas goose for you, goose bumps, that is, yes, indeed, a little terror tale full of holiday fear. I mean dear of course, so good againder of a your tidio. Beyond that goes a little Sunday like, Yes, it was the night before Christmas, and all through the house.
All right, and now we're going to talk about and all through the house. The episode aired June tenth, nineteen eighty nine, the same evening as The Man who Was Deaf. It's directed by Robert Zamechis. Yes that Robert Zamechis. He actually helped produce the show as well. It's written by
Fred Decker, who also wrote Predator. It stars Mary Ellen Traynor and Larry Drake, along with Marshall Bell pulling his best weekend at Bernie's impersonation, and the synopsis for the episode is a greedy woman makes a mistake of murdering her husband while an escaped mental patient dressed in a Santa outfit is on the loose. Mike, what did you think of this episode?
This is another one I really enjoy. This is actually one of my favorite comics. And they had adapted this previously when they made the film Tales from the Crypt back in the early seventies. That particular one star Joan Collins. This one is hard to beat story wise. I mean, if you want to talk about manuse, death is kind of an anomaly in the Tales from the Crypt sort of ec universe. This is pretty much what you would expect from any one of the any one of them.
We have a deplorable character who does get their come up, and at the end it's an interesting setting and then it's a Christmas time and you effectively have Santa Claus attempting to kill your lead character. It is pretty fantastically directed by Samachis, and I really like it a lot. I think it's up there. I do think it suffers a bit from the lead performance by mary Ellen Trainor, who is who is good in small roles. Watching her try and lead this for the entire episode is a
bit of a stacked deck. I know we're not talking about the original movie that I mentioned yet, but there's something that in the comic and in the original one that they did very well, which is they made the she effectively kills her husband in order to get the insurance money. And in the original film they made him the sweetest man on earth. In this one they have turned him into a in two lines of dialogue, a total prick where you kind of like concide with her.
They kind of stacked the deck in her favor. Other than those things, those two things that I have against the episode, I think it's really good. And I think Larry Drake as these stranged man dressed in a Santa Claus outfit is a really scary.
I like parts of this episode, but I think overall, mary Ellen Trainer falls really flat. I think her scream queen thing that she's going for doesn't work very well.
Yeah, I'm yeah, No, I'm with you. I mean, I I think I just made that point, like she's she's she's not great, Like she doesn't really she doesn't engender this kind of sympathy that you got from William Sadler, who is also doing horrible things. Like, uh, she's so shrill in the role that I'm kind of waiting for Santa to kill her, and that's not something you want.
Like you can have an anti hero who does horrible things and as long as they're a bit charming, you know you'll go with them and you know, follow them to the end. Not only is her performance like really shrill, but her character as written is a dummy. She kills her husband and then the first thing she does is get the will and Testament and then call her lover and spill that she killed him onto his answering machine.
In an affectation that is so hokey it's it's beyond hoki.
Yeah, I mean it is exposition as dialogue, which is the number one crime in in films, like don't have the character tell us what they're doing, Let's see what they're doing, and like completely superfluous. We didn't need it at all. Like if she's just killing this guy and then we see her with the will, yeah, we know what's going on.
Don't do that.
And it should be noted that the guy that she's calling is answering the machine message I think is something to the effect of leave me your name, number and measurements. Like okay, so she's leaving. She's killing this guy to get the money to go with. Obviously a douchebag, and she's doing it in the stupidest way possible.
But he's the nick monster. That's what the that's right, Yeah, it's yeah. So the thing is with this episode, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect in my mind between why she's doing what she's doing and the rest of the episode, like I didn't need I don't know the jex'aposition with her killing Marshall Bell and then the killer Santa played by Larry Drake coming around the house.
There's like a disconnect in a way that the comic plays up way better, because in the comics she's like dragging the body around in the house trying to figure out what she's gonna do with it. In the episode, she like drags him outside and then he somehow survives having an ice pick or a fireplace poker driven through his skull.
Well. I kind of like that, Shaka. I like that in that one moment that you know, I mean, you know, you talk about brain injuries. Who knows that the person's actually dead, They might not be. That was fine as far as I'm concerned. Her plan to throw him into the well, however, negates her plan of him being dead and her collecting the money because he was just a missing person. It's gonna take like a year or two for her to collect, like in the comic and again
in the sort of Joan Collins original film. She's got a plan and she's affecting it. In fact, in the Joan Collins once she takes his body and just throws it down the basement stairs, like that's what happened. He fell down a flight of stairs. This one. You know, did she have a plan? I don't know, and she goes about it in like a really lame way. I
will say, however, yes, these are problems. Nevertheless, once Santa shows up and is menacing her, I think it works really good as like a nice sort of a snowy cat and Mouse episode.
Yeah, so that's that's my thing. Like I said, parts of the episode don't work, but parts of it do. I really like, Like you said, Larry Drake is great, but the way that they did it in the comic, I actually liked it a little bit more than in the episode. For in certain respects, I like what Larry Drake did with his serial killer Santa. But in the comic you've got this dread of her just looking outside and seeing him. Yeah, and then you see him right at the end. The final panel is the final shot
of the episode. They're minuted, and I think that would have worked better in some respects. I mean, I get why they didn't do it, because showing is better than telling.
And they needed twenty two minutes. Like the comic is like, you know, it's snapped your fingers and it's gone kind of a thing where there's not too much meat to it.
So I mean they had to add in these other little beats and stuff like you know, which she has to like go get the gun which she can't really reach, and she accidentally locks herself in the in the in the closet or like when she's outside, And I actually really like this beat where she has the keys to the house and she drops them onto the stairs and it falls into the snow, and then she discovers that there's actually a knothole underneath the snow and it's fallen
all the way through and she can no longer retrieve those like those little moments that that I think work ultimately it is. I like it. I think it's a good episode.
I think I.
Appreciate what's going on, even though some of the major elements are flawed.
And what I guess the biggest disappointment for me is is you've got Robert Zemeckis who's directing, Fred Decker who's writing, and this episode isn't like a superstand now, It's not like The Man Who Was Dead.
They rely a little too much on the setting and the twist of it. I'll definitely give you that. Lately, there have been a lot of like Christmas horror movies, you know, other than Black Christmas and maybe Silent Knight Deadly Night. In the early eighties, like, there hadn't been too many takes on that shiny, kind of brightly colored holiday and the horrors that can sort of lurk or come loping out of the night for you. And I
think this really worked. I mean I liked it a lot more when I was, you know, fifteen, I didn't not enjoy it while I was watching it.
Yeah, and again I think Larry Drake is great and he's kind of the saving grace of the episode.
Yeah, he's real scary. Man.
If you're a fan of the dark Man series, you know that he plays Durant in the dark Man series. He was Doctor Giggles in that movie.
The eponymous Doctor Giggles.
Yeah, he's you know, he was a great actor. He's one of the he's one of the better character actors. Again, to me, that's the one thing about this show that's very similar to a show like Twilight Zone or even Kolchak, another show that I talk about once a month. They got a lot of really good character actors from the eighties and nineties.
Yeah, it did, and it allowed them to maybe play against like, you know know what he was going to. I mean, obviously with Layer Drank the cast him, but just a couple of years later as a psychonic killer. But at the time he was mainly known as a like a basically an autistic character on La Law. Like we've gotten to know him only as sort of this gentle giant character. And I think this pre dates Dark
Man as well, where he played a villain. Yeah, that's that's that's a pretty good hallmark of the series where they allowed these people to sort of jump in and play and actually sort of like expand the public's perception of what they were as performers. I don't think anyone was expecting that performance from that guy when this episode aired.
Yeah, no, definitely not again looking at it now twenty eighteen, different story, but then completely out of the kind of blue for him as an actor.
Yeah, yeah, he's real good in the episode Mary Ellen Trainer Not so that should be pointed out that that was Robertson Meckis's wife at the time, not go well, you know.
I you know, smacks a little bit of Kate capsh to me a.
Little bit, But you know what, Kate Capsure is fucking great in Indiana Jones's Sembl of Doom. I mean, that character is shrill and awful, but that's what it's supposed to be. So that that worked, And you know, I don't I don't necessarily believe in dismissing out of hand like a filmmaker casting their spouse in something, because sometimes it works, fucking like Gangbusters, like I loved Adrian Barbo and The Fog and then Escape from New York when
she was with John Carper at that. Those are good performances from her.
Emily Blunt in a Quiet Place.
Yeah, she's really good in that movie, Like why wouldn't he cast her? And she's fucking really good actress. In this case, it speaks to Mary Ann Trainer not being that great, although he put her in smaller roles in a lot of his movies and she appeared in that.
It should be pointed out that the Tales from the Crypt themselves this series, like the executive producers behind it were in fact Robert Semkis and Walter Hill and Joel Silver who was like v mega producer in the mid to late eighties, and Joel Silver used her a lot too. She's in all the legal up in movies and of Richard Donner and that's the other guy who is sort
of behind this series. Was nice of him to like let her play the role, but like it's it was the wrong It was the wrong way to go, like Joan Collins in the original one, like John Collins is kind of like, you know, her character is kind of like the bitch character and we're not supposed to like her, but as horrible as a human being is who's killing
their nice husband in order to get the money. Like through with her in that original take on it, like from beginning to end, like one dance shows up, like I don't care what she's been doing, Like she as a person like draws me in and has that bit of charm that we were sort of discussing like an anti hero needs Marion trainor just maybe it's a combination of what we were saying where the character is so dumb and she's portraying it so shrilly that like I
can't wait for Santa to put an axe in her head. That is a terrible thing for your lead character for the audience to want. Nevertheless, there it is.
I agree. It's it feels like a missed opportunity for her in the in the episode, it's just one. It's very one dimensional and very flat.
Right And now having said that, I do think the direction in the episode is really spot on. Uh, you know, obviously Robert Beakers is a great filmmaker. I don't care what anyone says, like, you know, when he's on, he's really on, and I thought he was on in this episode. And he indulges in something at the beginning, which I really like that he does in a lot of his movies,
and nobody does this as well as him. He'll take a credit sequence where he just pans a room and just showing you the artifacts that people have in their home. He tells you their entire story, which he does at the beginning of this episode, not to the degree he will in some of his other movies. No one does that better.
Yeah, no, I I completely I completely agree. I mean again, I agree with Uzebacas is a good film film director, So you're not going to get any complaints set of me on that one. So I mean, come on, back to the future, come.
On, and he will direct in one of the later episodes. Uh is also one of my favorites. And obviously we'll talk to that about that when we get it. But so you know, he had his hand in a couple of other episodes that I thought were a little more assured than this one. But I did like coming off of Man who is death who? You know, there are horrific elements too, but it's not a horror tale specifically.
I like this one sort of coming on the heels of it and diving kind of head on into what the horror genre is supposed to be, which is Stephen King always said, like you chase the character up a tree and then you start cutting down the tree like that. I think this works on that level of horror, and so I would recommend this episode ultimately.
Yeah, I would not. Oh, I would say that the Larry Drake stuff is good, but the Mary Ellen Trainer stuff.
Is so Yeah, it's hard to get fast, I know.
Yeah, her character is so unredeemable and so boring. Unfortunately, Yeah, okay, it's yeah, it's just kind of a it's a skip, it's a soft skip, but it's not downright atrocious like some of the episodes we're gonna watch, even some of the episodes later this season.
So yeah, well we're not my friend right off the bat.
There we go.
This episode is not garbage.
By the way we're introduced to the characters.
They meet the criptkeeper after wandering off from a tour in the catacombs, even though they're told not to, and so the first story is the original telling. The first screen telling of a story that is very near and dear to your heart, and all through the house. Instead of Mary Ellen Traynor, it is Joan Collins.
Joan Collins, who is one billion percent better than Mary Ellen Trayer in this role, represents a level of sophisticated evil in all the ways that Mary Allen Traynor was kind of a bumbling fool. It completely lacks any of the sort of boring expositional dialogue that was peppered through the American version of Roberts Ecca's version. The story is effectively exactly the same. It is a wife murders her
husband on Christmas Eve. She has a young daughter. There just so happens that a mental patient has escaped from an asylum and has donned a Santa Claus costume, although in this case it's Father Christmas. Because these stories all take place in England, this movie is an English production. Amics was in the English company. All the acting, in all the settings are all in England. However, where it differs from the American one is how skillful and stylished
the whole thing is, particularly the set design. Let's sort of point to that it's sort of that retro fuere tourist early seventies, sort of passing out of the mod phase in England and into a more contemporary design.
I love the look of the house in this one.
When we talked about the American version, they I said that they kind of stacked the deck in favor of the heroine or the villain, if you will, because they made her husband to be kind of a prick, like from the get go, and in this case they don't do that. They go in just in the opposite direction. They make him like really really sweet, like he's bought her this brooch, and like he's written this sweet card.
This line always sort of sticks in my head where they're showing you the note and at the bottom he's written like an X, like for a kiss, and he narrates it in his head to us and he says and a big kiss at the very end.
What does you think of this version of it?
I mean, obviously it's much better than the Mary Ellen Trainer one, but again that's not really hard, like you said, it's You've got Joan Collins who is much more of an evil character, which I think works in this telling of the story. And it also helps that they downplay
the idea that her husband is an asshole. I think playing up the fact that she's just really mean spirited and a murderous and downplaying that he's just kind of like an asshole works in its favor, which is a lot of fun for kind of flipping the original shows or the show's premise on its head, because it's not what you're expecting if you're going into this expecting it to be similar to the show. Everything else is the
same a century pretty much, which is good. And it's also feels shorter than the episode, which is also good.
I believe it actually is.
Yeah, that was one of the problems I had with the episode is that it feels like they were padding it out for time, and in this it's pretty straight to the point. There's not a whole lot of dicking around, there's not a whole lot of wheel spinning. Straight to the point, really straightforward. I liked it a lot. I thought it was really good, and Joan Collins is really good. Joan Collins definitely is the standout.
The character in the American version, like she kills her husband and then doesn't really seem to have a place beyond that, whereas this character has thought it through. She knows that she's going to hit him in the head with this thing, and then she's going to make it look as if he tumbled down the stairs. Now, I mean,
obviously she gets some blood everywhere and that was unforeseen. Nevertheless, she's ready to scoop it all up into a champagne flute and then pour it at the bottom of the stairs so it looks as if he had just fallen down and died, Whereas the Mary Allen Trainer characters was going to take his body into the backyard and then dump him into a well, thus ensuring that she would never get the insurance money because he would just be a missing person for a couple of years. So a
much more devious character in this case. And I gotta say because of that fact, I'm actually on her side as the episode progresses, whereas the Mary Allen Trainer, I was kind of like, man, if she gets killed, she gets killed.
She's kind of an idiot. Anyway, I'm not on her.
Side because she's obviously a very malicious character. But I think that again, the only thing that is lacking is the performance by the Father Christmas. But again, kind of cutting it for time means that you don't have to really go out of your way to really play it up like they did with Larry Drake in the Tails from the Crypt TV show.
Yeah, I mean they just need the outside threat.
Yeah, it's a really good kind of opener to the movie. I think it's definitely better than the original or the TV show, which again works in its favor because you know that I'm not a huge, huge fan of the TV shows version.
I think it's interesting that they started with this, like, you know, ordinarily Christmas at the end of the year and you think this would be sort of the Kappa at the end, but they sort of they launch with it, which I like. And it's not a supernatural tale necessarily. We get a little bit of both or rather, you know, supernatural and not throughout the thing.
But it's a.
Good, nice intro to the tone that Tails from the Crypt sort of likes to balance. So yeah, no, I think this particular story is a winner.
Of course, you're all here by invitation, but don't let it disturb you if these paintings per se don't happen to be you a thing. These are rather special paintings. The kind of hanging generally put up with a noose. This painting, for example, is of a rather special world what has become perpetual in the language as the ghetto, that dismal realm of pushkins and poverty, where hopes are
stamped down like dirty shoes on snow. Death is a commonplace visitor to these somber alleys, but occasionally someone else visits. Our painting is called The Messiah on Mott Street. And this place, should you not already know, it, is the Night Gallery.
Well boy worried for Rod Sterling. Kind of an evening. The Messiah on Mott Street is written by Ron Sterling and directed by Don Taylor. He is a returning director to Night Gallery. Guys, you know the other episode he directed, They're Tearing Down Tim Riley's Bar. This one stars This is the.
Moment I wish I had the soundboard for He's a jolly good Fellow because really.
I mean literally, the only thing missing from us.
Wow, you know what, You're right?
This one stars Edward G. Robinson, the original Little Caesar, yathat Coto, Tony Roberts, and Joseph Ruskin as a fanatic. He was the man in the bottle in the original Twilight zone. He was a genie in that he was so goddamn scary. This one's a period piece set in the nineteen twenties. Oh no, wait, this is contemporary. This is a contemporary tale of a young boy looking for the Messiah on the streets of New York to help his ailing grandfather. What'd you think of this one, Mike?
Was that a mistake that it's nineteen twenties? No, it's contemporary because I couldn't tell what the hell year this was, What the hell was going on? I mean, it does feel like it feels like Grandpa's apartment building is from a whole other era as well as a lot of the people out on the street. But not everybody, because nobody seems to have any sort of issues with this little kid just going out and bringing the off at Codo home. It just seems a little weird that there's
a black guy in the living room. Are you aware of this? It takes so long for the kid to find the Messiah, like just like for him to leave the apartment. There's just so much of all of the stuff in Yeah, I did not mind this episode at all. In fact, it felt like there was a lot more to it. That had I read this as a story or even a novella, that I would have picked up a lot more. It just felt very literary with the its construction. I was really happy to see Tony Roberts
show up in this. I mostly know him. We talked a little bit about Woody Allen recently. I mostly know him from his work with Woody Allen, like Andy Hall and played against him, I mean, especially Annie Hall. So I was very happy to see him. But he feels very nineteen seventy two seventy three, And yeah, I Coto feels very nineteen seventy two seventy three. And then the rest of the story feels like it is in the nineteen twenties or thirties.
Was I was waiting for Tony Roberts to ask Edward G. Robinson if jew eat jew? Did jew eat? I distinctly heard him call me a jew. I I do not understand what in God's name the point? Excuse me, what in yf at Koto's name is going on? Here was this segment forty minutes, and somehow Rod Serling went into the tartis with it and added another forty I've never seen a segment take so long like thirty So I'm not so I was feeling hyperbolic, but more or less
correct like it. It's fucking insane. I cannot believe that somebody thought that anybody would be compelled by this. I think we all know the story that they're getting it and the message that it's trying to I guess attempt
to get out, but wrong way to go. I mean, if if Camera Obscura was a little long, if the last episode had some segments that were a little long, holy shit, this is like, this is just this is probably the worst segment I've seen on this show in terms of the length, feeling double what it actually is.
It is a sensitive take on the Jewish experience centered around Christmas time. Way to go, Rod, I don't know who Santa is. Wow, this segment is worse to me in every way than Tim Riley's bar except for the aforementioned lack of for He's a jolly goodfellow. But you know why because Tim Riley at least wasn't precious. And this is thanks to the adorable subplot of grandson Mikey wandering the streets alone to find the Messiah. By the way,
when he's not doing that incredibly dangerous thing. Evidently, this tiny, tiny child is taking care of his ailing grandfather. Is he taking himself to school as well? Is he doing the grocery shopping? That's what I'm getting out of it. Why is Tony Roberts not intervening? By the way Tony Roberts I think of him, I always think of taking a PILLM. One two three, just trying to make that ailing mayor get out of bed and come deal with the subway situation. This episode, I get where he's coming from.
It's yet another the downtrodden man. We also get this really false happy ending where the check from his long lost brother arrives and everything's gonna be okay. And you know what, yeah, fokoto. He might have been the Messiah, but he might have just been the mailman. You know, it's a bit ambiguous because we know most mailman are delivering packages at fucking one o'clock on the morning on Christmas.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. This whole thing where they had to make suit to point out the clock and that it was just about midnight, and then everything else basically contradicting that it was anywhere near midnight, and especially that the kid was just outside and it was daylight and now it's pitch black and midnight, and I'm like, what is going on? Thank you for bringing that up?
Day for another and the back lot? What a combination.
I was so confused at the I just I felt like I felt like I had fallen asleep for a minute and like missed it. It's what a choice. Let's just put it that way, as if, as if thirty six minutes wasn't enough, you needed to have a time jump inside of your segment, a couple hour time jump, Like yeah, and the story that they're telling is not
that interesting. It's just we've seen these, We've wasn't there a Twilight Zone eighty five thing where the guy was Santa Claus and it was the drunk guy with Santa Like this is that has that same just like Sacker.
Which was a remake of a segment from the original Twilight Zone.
Right night of them, it seems feels like that same saccarin bullshit that's this.
This is just so like, this is not a night Gallery segment. This is a Twilight Zone segment.
There's hat in hand, poor man bullshit constantly.
Having him having Edward g Robinson think he's like, facing the Angel of Death for two seconds does not equal a horror tale. This is a tale, fantasy and it has no place. I don't care if this is their Christmas episode, and it is because it's the aired on December the fifteenth, but I don't care if it is their Christmas episode.
I mean, they do point out that Jewish children do not know who Santa Claus is per Rod Serling. It's like, we're fucking the no, Like, that's not how that works at all. It's not how that works at all, Rod, and we know that, and you know that.
It.
I just it's so masturbatory at this point with Rod Serling, like just like I need forty minutes of this fifty minutes show to tell this story.
You know what?
Whatever, Ron, Fine, Fine, sure we'll go and shoot our segment with Josha Goodbor. Whatever.
Ron.
It's just at some point it's like when is enough too much? And where it's like thirty minutes is a little much for this show, frankly, but it's.
Good to see Ethic Codo.
Yeah.
I mean he's got like three lines, but the man is walking gravity and just that the last interaction between him and Tony Roberts's pretty good. It doesn't redeem anything.
So. This episode aired December twentieth, nineteen eighty five. It is ostensibly the first season of the show's Christmas episode and the first segment, Night of the Meek, is a a remake of the original episode also titled The Night of the Meek from the original run of the show. That episode had Art Carney in it, and it is a very similar in tone and structure to this episode.
This episode, however, is written by Rockney O'Bannon, adapted from the original story by Rod Serling, and it stars everyone's favorite lovable asshole William Atherton and Richard Mulligan from a sitcom that I am way too young to have any idea about.
Oh, I sure watch a lot of soap at me too.
But Richard Mulligan replaces the Art Carney character from the original episode, which is a man a down on his luck mal Santo, who ends up becoming real Santa for an evening and then for life, apparently, because that's the way this episode airs. Forever you didn't even have to push anybody off of a roof. Isn't that weird? So what did you guys? Think of this segment.
I was happy to see Richard Mulligan. I always liked him as Bert on soap and uh, we should make sure that people do not confuse him for the Captain on the Police Squad movies, even though there is a little bit of a similarity between the two guys. And yeah, I.
Was gonna say or confuse him for Donald Moffatt from The Thing, who actually happens to be in an episode of this show on this episode, because that's who I thought he was for Like the first couple of minutes, I was like, that's the guy from the Thing. Oh wait, no, it's not. And then when Donald Moffatt shows up later in the episode, I was like, no, that's the guy from the Thing.
Holy shit, and the guy from the Reanimator, Holy cow?
Is that not the guy from Reanimated? Oh is it?
No, that's not David Gaile. That was Fritz Weaver.
Yeah, I thought fittz Weaver was in wasn't he in one of those the Reanimator phone?
No?
No, man, he's in creep Show. He's not in Reanimator. David Gail is the is Jesus Chris?
So guess what I totally thought the same thing.
Wow.
So yeah, so lots of lots of misidentification.
Yeah, however, this episode was out to confuse us.
I will tell you I liked this segment a lot.
It wasn't bad, as did I. It was pretty predictable. I was just like, Okay, yeah, some point Athoton is going to show up and he's going to fuck stuff up, and then oh there's going to be the fur code is going to be in the bag. Blah blah blah blah blah. So I was like, Okay, I see every turn before it happens. And this is without necessarily being that familiar with the Art Curney one, but I mean it was it worked.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's standing in contrast to the last episode we watched it. There's a way to do Heartfeldt without being smallcy, and I think this kind of achieved that. I think rock New Abandoned script is actually superior in every way to Alan Brennerd's take on her Pilgrim Soul. Yeah, I you know, I found this episode to be kind of rousing and the you know, actually I leave it to be an improvement on the Rod Serling original. I liked this one a whole lot more.
The big selling point with that original one was that they got Urt Carney to do the Santa part. But I think Richard Mulligan is so much better than him here, playing both sort of down and out drunkard. He doesn't like lean too heavily into that standard sort of Advilian take on what a drunk is like we saw Robert Morse do earlier this season. I think he does well there, and then you know, once the miracles start happening, I think he remains consistent as far as his character. I
don't know. I really liked this episode a lot. I thought it was as good a Christmas thing, a happy Christmas idea, as the Twilight Zone could produce.
And I'm not gonna lie I got a little dusty in the room at the end. I mean it's you know, it's an effective heart string pulling moment there at the and when they're sitting on those stairs together.
Yeah, this one fired on all cylinders. I thought it was very solid.
Which is surprising because it feels like it could have really easily veered into saccharin just melancholy bullshit.
Oh yeah, and when you're dealing with Christmas, you already have that huge danger. I mean, you can go over the edge so quickly and just start relying on oh Christmas spirit, Oh it's a season on the holiday. But luckily they they managed to stay away from that. They managed to keep it more grounded than that than just having to rely on this being a Christmas thing.
I mean, if I had a quibble with the episode, it's when he finally does turn into Santa in the end.
I don't think we needed that.
It was a little much, A little much, maybe a lot much.
What about those incredible special effects though when he disappears, are a.
Liar, you are charlatan, you are a false profit among men. Those special effects are bad. Star Trek Tos man like with Star Trek tos without the charm, just like out of nowhere, he just demateializes and goes up the chimney.
Okay, sure, yeah.
Well and it was weird too because he was like, I want to see how he goes up the chimney, And then I don't think those little sparkle dots go up the chimney. Do they they do? Oh? Okay they do? Actually, yeah, thank goodness.
It's like Mike TV, you not a good addition to the episode.
No no, but it's a again, as I said, it's a quibble, like I didn't need it, but I wasn't exactly angry or that it happened like it, you know, it seemed appropriate but at the same time not necessary.
Yeah, I mean the way to end it is you have him look in the mirror and pull on his beard and his mustache, and then it just cuts away to you hear something William Atherton looking above the house, and you see him, you see him watching him fly away. You don't need to see everything else, like, and I think I would have been exactly fine with it, Like it's it's too much for once, it's showing too much.
Yeah, I can see that.
But let's talk about something that is just really bad, because I genuinely don't know how anyone is gonna have anything nice to say about this episode. Let's talk about but can she type?
What do you get the woman who has everything but respect? Ask Karen Billings recipient of a very unusual and definitely non returnable present, because this year for Christmas, Karen Billings received The Twilight too.
I don't know, Chris, I really like this one. What I'm sorry sorry to disappoint you, but I really thought this was kind of cute.
I like the concept of it.
Wow.
I like the idea of somebody doing a mundane job suddenly becoming a superstar in some alternate reality.
Yeah.
I like that idea and fun. The execution is bizarre.
Well, the mcguffin of this magic xerox machine is a little bit much.
But I liked all the characters in here. I like the boss was a real prick. Yeah. I liked when she went to the other dimension and Jonathan Frake shows up. I was just like, oh my god, look at young Jonathan Frakes with the beard. So good.
Yeah, but you have to do you have to do you have to know of is it fact or fiction? This alien autopsy proves to be true. I just kept waiting fact in the history of our in the history of the world.
I just kept waiting for him to sit on a chair all strange.
You mean, swing his leg over the top of the chair.
Yes, exactly, that's not strange. That's a that's the kermannue I know, pull down his top right twice. Yeah.
Yeah, idea, Like Father Malone said, what is trying to say? But I think the like usage of a xerox, just like it just feels weird.
I mean this was the era of those kind of things. Yeah, I think about the word processor in the one that Steven Penn for Tales from the Dark Side, where if he deleted people's names, I actually disappeared from the world. So I was like, Okay, yeah, it's it's a little you know, goofy and everything, but I liked it. I'd like that she went into this souther dimension that her car keys disappeared, and you know, things were different, and yeah, the whole idea of like her being treated like this
superstar because she was a secretary. I really got into that idea. And then I was so glad that she managed to go back to that world and just live in that forever and not have to worry about the shithole that she was working at. I guess going through like a lot of problems in my job right now, I just really wish that I was Pam Dauber, or could be with Pam Dauber. I wish that I was shot a thing.
You wish you were breaks chair.
That's right, throws leg over me. That'd be fantastic.
Sit on your face.
Feel that Beard.
Yeah, Jonathan Brakes is a nice guy.
And Pam Dauber was making me real thirsty. I was just really digging her this.
I do like on Jonathan Brakes's character is just referred to in the belly as single guy.
The single guy.
Yeah, single guy who wants to know if it's fact or fiction.
No need for names here now, Uh, Chris. When we talked to rock Me s O'Bannon about Shadow May, we talked about, uh, this episode, not this particular segment, but
the Christmas episode as it was. And originally Harlan Ellison was going to make his directorial debut with a segment called Knackles, which is sort of this anti Santa Claus when it was gonna be the actual horrific episode or segment of the piece, and then CBS their censors killed it like a month before they were going to start filming, And this is why Harlan Ellison left the show after
this particular episode. So in its place they put in this and the only real Christmas I mean they mentioned it's Christmas Eve and we can see a Christmas tree at one point, but that was their way of shoehorning this into their otherwise Christmas episode, because the first and the second or first and third episodes are definitely Christmas based.
But I just thought it was funny, like watching it, like just seeing the Tristan's tree in the background, going like, oh, okay, yeah, that's why they that's why this is a quote unquote Christmas episode.
Yeah. I really had to look for that, and to the point where I had forgotten until you guys reminded me. I was, oh, yeah, I guess there was a point Satia in the background.
Yeah, I mean it's like a passing mentioned like and it's Christmas tomorrow.
Okay, yeah, I mean you know, okay Christmas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I think I think Mike, you might have swayed me in your direction. I liked the episode just fine. I thought it was okay, but uh yeah, there's something sort of charming about the the mundane becoming the spectacular. But that that like the I'm a high I'm a high earning supermodel, but really what I want to be is a secretary, right.
I mean again, I like the idea. I just feel like it's not much of an episode, does that make sense. It's like it just feels it falls flat as a segment. Does that make sense? I don't know.
Yeah, I am respect I'm not a fan of the Xerox machine.
Uh well, although I do like this.
I do like the symbols transports are the end.
Yeah, cat she used it twice or something like maybe some different settings took her to another place. I mean, maybe make it like more central to the episode. And then it's like, why are these guys coming to this thing away?
But yeah, and is she the only one who can use it and go to an alternate dimension?
Right? Yeah, maybe send that friend of her someplace else.
Maybe send her boss someplace else, because that guy's a dickhead.
Yeah, yeah, that would have been nice.
I wonder what they do to bad bosses in that dimension.
Bad bosses don't exist apparently, is kind of what it seems.
Or maybe they'll run out on a rail.
Tard and feathered.
Just it was just it was just a little weird. But like at the same time, I guess like that's the universe she lives in now and now she's like a big hot shot, So there you go.
It's like it's almost like she found her way into the Twilight Zone.
Yeah, permanently. I do like these episodes where it's like and now you're in the Twilight Zone permanently. I do appreciate that.
Yeah, and it is a departure in that most Twilight Zone episodes, although you know, not recently, where the twist ends up being horrific and and damaging to the lead character. Here it's somebody who is a downbeatn downtrodden and gets what they deserve, right, And I guess we got that with the with the previous one as well.
Well.
Let's talk about an interesting third segment and what has been up until this point a very good episode or middle of good to middle of the road episode. The Star, the servation.
With John bearing with it the last legacy of a long dead people, a legacy to be kept and cherished and in time bequeathed to a world still unborn from the current inhabitants of the Twilight Zone.
So it is an adaptation of an Arthur C. Clark, one of the Titans of sci Fi, his short story The Star. It is adapted by Alan Brenner, so you know it what it's gonna be good if he adapted
it and didn't outright right it. It stars Fritz Weaver and Donald Moffatt, yes, Donald Moffatt from the Thing, not Richard Mulligan who's not in the thing, and its focuses on Fritz Weaver, who is a father as of the church, and Doald Moffatt, who is a doctor of the science, and kind of you're welcome, and it focuses on kind of an an interesting star that they come upon on Christmas in space.
Christmas in space, y'all.
But you can't figure out what's gonna happen here.
I'm telegraphed at all.
I did not.
Okay, then it works?
Am I a dumb?
No?
You're not a dumb A dumb?
Am I a dumb No? I better tell you what. Even though I didn't pick up on it, I really liked it.
Yeah, this one I wasn't as hot on just because you didn't have Riker. It's just two guys talking. And there were times where these two guys look fair different, but dressed up in their get ups and stuff. There were times where I was confusing these two characters. And then when he called him father, I was just like, is that his dad? What is going on here?
Daddy would have called him daddy. Let's be honest.
I like the I thought I really liked the idea that they were, like, you know, this is our science officer, this is our engineer, this is our navigator, and our jesuit priest, Like what what is happening on the spaceship?
It's a spaceship of value and.
Oh my god, and and you know, look, I actually do like the concepts of this episode. But the space outfits that they're wearing like straight from Lost in Space.
Oh my god. Yeah, the space outfits are really boring and like generically conventional, so shiny, not good. They're wearing a real bad Yeah.
They looked like something I could see in like outer Mongolia.
You know, Oh, they look like something they look like something that your mom would make for you when you were a kid, and you're an astronaut.
Owen, Oh boy, And you know, I hate I mean, this isn't necessarily like a dialogue as exposition, but when we open on these two characters, they're having the sort of age old science versus religion debate, and all I could think is, these two guys have been in space for god knows how long they've not had this conversation yet.
Well not on camp.
I mean, right, right.
You're welcome the thing that God me is that. So it's this whole thing of like, hey, yeah, the civilization, they seem to be great, and then they died out and their star exploded and then that ended up being the star that the mage I saw on the way to Bethlehem. And oh yeah, so science kind of caused religion or whatever. And I'm just like, but hasn't Christianity
caused nothing but problems since it was invented? So you're welcome, thank you science, right, I'm just like, yeah, had had Christianity never happened, I think we would probably be in a much better place. I don't know, you know.
And what I liked about the episode was the notion that doesn't actually pay off. I mean it kind of does, but then it gets tempered where this Jesuit priest realizes that, you know, how many billions of people ended up getting extinguished, so this star could you know, lead these people to or signified the birth of the Savior on our world? Right, But then, like I like the idea that everything in
his mind just completely shattered at that moment. But then of course the science guy, because we have to have this you know, balance of science and religion, like steps in it's like it's so because this and this and this, you know, like, no, how about just let leave this
guy a broken man. This would be very Twilight Zony if he realized that, like, you know, the birth of his savior signified the death of another billion Like that, to me would have been an interesting end to the episode, something you know, a little bit more macabre and sort of shocking. But it doesn't ever achieve that. It just kind of like stays level the whole time, where science and religion can go hand in hand.
So here's the thing. My dad is a huge fan of Arthur C. Clark and I when I was younger, my dad bought me at half price books a bunch of Arthur C. Clark books, and being someone who reads a lot, I read all of them. And this story was included in one of those like collection of short stories. The original short story ends the way you're talking about Father Malone, Oh wow, where he's like, oh my god, no, like what the fuck ever? Like the priest is all like just completely beside himself.
And like that's fantastic.
Yeah that's how it should have ended.
Well, I like that ending, but I do like the kind of poem they found in the episode in the Cave. You know it has a good message. I mean, look, in this three part Christmas episode of twilight Zone, they can't end it on a bummer, Like.
Yeah, they should have. This is the twilight Zone.
This is the Twilight Zone if you're gonna end anything on a bummer.
But but it's their fucking Christmas episode. Guys, I would agree, right, but with any other episode we've already but like, I feel like they can't send you off with that.
Well, then they should have started with this segment because the two others are so thoughtful and uplifting, like you needed a gut punch in there at some point, maybe in the middle, they could have put it.
You know what, No, I'm forget everything. I'm saying. It should have ended this way and it should have been shattering.
Listen here, Jordan appeal, We get it. You want to be edgy?
Oh stop, no no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, we get it. You have a racial agenda.
That would be if a billion black people died in order to cause Christianity.
Yeah, that's sad. That would have been the Jordan Peel episode.
The race.
You mean this star exploded and caused slavery exactly.
Do you mean Adam Scott was on the plane the whole time with a podcast.
Oh my god, my mind is blown.
I am having flashbacks.
A million, a million. Dan Carlin's died so we could get one episode of hardcore history.
Oh maybe both of us died so you could have a savior in Christ.
I fucking yeah. Twilight Zone twenty nineteen can go and fuck itself. But hey, we're getting it in twenty twenty, So what the fuck do we know nothing? We're just three. We're just three cisgendered white men. Our opinions don't matter.
Good place to end it, except we can't end it.
They're unfortunate. As much as I want to.
Sis sis
Sis sis