¶ Intro / Opening
Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology podcast. We are no longer looking at George Romero's nineteen eighties television series tell Us the Dark Night, because we finished last episode. You were there everyone. No, Instead, today we're going to be looking at towns from the Dark Side of the movie and with me to do another projection boost. Mike White.
Oh god, I don't have a line ready. Oh jeez, I'm sorry. Hold on one second. You made a promise.
There we go, There you go, and the culture cast Chris Statue, La.
La, lulie la. You're welcome for that one.
There you go. Okay and okay. As I said, we are looking at towns from the Dark Side of the movie.
¶ Initial Impressions
Here's the trailer.
Stephen King, originator of pet Cemetery, Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, Michael McDowell, creator of Beetle Juice, George Ramiro, director of Knight of the Living Dead. Now, these four masters of everlasting horror bring to the screen four tales of overwhelming terror. I won them, but I wouldn't listen to tales of diabolical fate.
You promise you never.
Tales of ghastly revenge.
Grow a light, rise a light, Come forth, a light, open his eyes.
Tales of ruthless evil. That cat has killed three people in.
This household unbelie.
Kill it. There he is and bring me its tale.
Tales are from the dark Side.
Well, I just about to take care of that.
Let come live the night of your choice. Tales from the Dark Side. The movie.
Tales from the Dark Side. The movie released on May
¶ Movie Release and Cast Details
the fourth, at nineteen ninety directed by John Harrison. Screenplay screenplay by Michael McDowell and George Romero, based on two short stories, Lot two four nine by Arthur Conan Doyle and The Camp from Hell by Stephen King and Let's face It's Quite on and starring Deborah Harry, Christen Slater, David Johanson, William Hickey, James Remar, Raydon Chaw. Cinematography by friend of the podcast, Robert Draper. And I think it looks gorgeous here here we are at the end of
the line. Gentlemen, where did you first see this movie? Was it in the theater? Either of you? Chris, you weren't born yet, never mind.
But he did go see it. I saw it's womb uter row. I think I rented this sucker, probably from the video store where I was working. I know I've had this conversation with you so many times, father alone, because I always get this one mixed up with two Evil Eyes it just because of the cat theme. But rewatching this, I'm just like, Okay, now I remember which one that says, I'm glad you said that, the Arthur Conan Doyle thing, that the Lot two forty nine was
Arthur Conan Doyle. I thought they were going for a Thomas Pinchon reference with the crying of Lot forty nine, But then I realized that's just not it.
And do you think they were doing that?
Yeah, yeah, that's not this movie. It could be, but it's not.
As we were. As I was watching this, I was really remembering, especially that first segment. It was funny. I guess it just went along as the movie went along. I was like, oh, yeah, I remember this first segment very clearly because I love Steve Buscemi, I love Julianne Moore. Christian Slater's in here as well. And then I remember the David Johansson and William Hickey thing, and then I really didn't remember the James Riemar and ray Don Jong
thing at all. Yeah, but yeah, I'm excited to talk about this one.
I meant you, Chris, why did you first see this?
For this? This now? For this right now? Yeah? Right, okay, I'm.
Worry you had never seen this one before.
Okay not even now. I still haven't seen it. No, watched it for this episode. You know it. I've had it. I've had it on my Plex server for a while, but I've never watched it. And I don't know why.
¶ Comparing 'Tales from the Darkside' to 'Creepshow'
When I watched Creep Show when I was in high school, I didn't watch this because again, this is part and parcel with Creep Show.
That shows so much better. Though it's a thousand times better than this.
I think they're checking different boxes. I think they're doing different things. Creep Show is comic book inspired and this is a finishing out of the television show and putting a kapper on the television show, so I think the intention is different. I actually think this movie is very good and I enjoyed it a lot, and there's shockingly similarly to Creep Show. I actually think there's very little
wrong with this movie. I think maybe there's some issues that are just kind of again, you have a film version of a TV show, and people that were showing up to see this had to understand that's what this was, because it does feel very disjointed, but it's just three stories with some wrap arounds. So it's if you can just get to that point with it and understand that you're watching a novella short story novella in film for cool. I really enjoyed it. I could understand why this wouldn't
be some people's cup of tea. And I think Creep Show moves through those stories a little faster and gives you more to chew on in that respect than this movie does. But they're doing different things. But I enjoyed this immensely.
Father Malone, you will hear a lot online that this is the unofficial creep Show three kind of feels like and that's because at one point Tom Savini offhandedly said, this is basically creep Show three, And of course the entire crew is all the Laurel Entertainment folk who were responsible for Creep Show. John Harrison, the director of this, composed the score for Creep Show and was the assistant
director on that film. George Romero is one of the writers on this In fact, the segment that he wrote Cat from Hell sequence was written for Creep Show two, and they figured they couldn't do it, so that was just sitting around and then he rewrote it for this because at the time that this movie is getting made, Romero wants nothing to do with Laurel Entertainment anymore. This is a situation where they where Richard Rubinstein had already negotiated like a several picture deal and one of them
was going to be Toastmadark Side. So this is Romero's basically his last involvement with anything to do with Laurel Entertainment. Now, as I said, this came out in May of nineteen ninety. I was working at the Lows in Somerville, Massachusetts. I was an usher there and this movie came out. This is the movie theater I met my wife, my late wife, and I saw this movie one thousand times.
See I saw a Creep Show probably about that much, just because it was on HBO and like VHS and those things. That's funny because I was working in a movie theater in nineteen ninety as well, but I just this one asked me about I didn't even know that this was a movie until probably three four years later, and then the whole thing with Creep Show three. I think I was on one of Josh Hadley's shows and we watch because he's fucking crazy, crazier than I am.
When it comes to oh, yeah, we're going to talk about this, so you should watch these five, ten fifteen movies. Like he keeps asking me to do a witchboard thing, and I'm just like, there's no fucking way.
I'm ever so many movies.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life watching movies. So I also watched this again back oh probably eight years ago, and even still then I was just like, yeah, like I said, it's not that memorable to me. But rewatching it for this, I was like, this is decent, and I really I don't know if it was just because I was watching like shitty VHS copy the first time, maybe subpar DVD the second time. It looks great, like this latest transfer looks fantastic, and
especially the look of the second segment. But we'll get there. When it comes to this, I thought, I have problems
¶ Wraparound Segment
with anthology movies, especially when it comes to how are they tying these things together? And this one was rough because I love Debbie Harry, but I don't think she's that great of an actress, and the performance she's giving in this wasn't that thrilled with her performance, So it was a little tough, a little awkward every single time
she was on screen. And then listening to the commentary and hearing that the segments were in a different order, I'm guessing that's why we don't see the priest, because they very specifically call out in the credits that it's the little boy, it's her, and it's the priest. I'm like, did I blink? But I think he must have been in some of the stuff that they had to cut out when they rearranged the segments.
Yeah, I believe that's the case. They did the same thing with Creep Show. Initially, the crate was the literal centerpiece of Creep Show. You would have Jordi Vero, then right into the crate and then follow it up with something to tide you over. And they realized dramatically, you just got to shift that shit around. And I believe in this one, the Cat from Hell was the original ending. They thought they were going to pull off another ups
and Pratt. They're creeping up on you from Creep Show here with the giant gross out, leave you on the floor type of ending, and then I assume wisely saw what they had and went, oh Jesus, put this in the middle.
Yeah, because it's such a weak ending with this with the gargoyle story. But I don't want to jump ahead.
All right, let's get to it. It's not this wrap around story. No.
Wait, Chris, wait, why I had something that I had something that I want to mention before we get too far in about the timing of when the show Tails from the Dark Side ended was eighty eight, when this movie came out was ninety. Something came out in between that greatly affected. I think even the way that this
looks and the tone of this. Tales from the Crypt started in nineteen eighty nine, that is the first year of that show, and this movie I think benefits from Tales from the Crypt being out and keeping that interest in horror and especially anthology horror out there. Because this movie,
like you mentioned, Mike, it looks great. I think it looks really good because it's also copying from the Tales from the Crypt's look at the time, like it is leaning into the easy comic a little bit of it, which I think works because it again, if that's the other thing that's on that's really successful at the time, why not lean into it a little bit? And this this comes out when the second season of the show of Tales from the Crypt is on.
And respectfully, I disagree with you on both those counts. I don't think this has any easy influence and I definitely don't think this has any Tales from the Crypt influence. Don't. I just don't see it at all. And I think John Harrison is an accomplished and sort of for who came out of Laurel Entertainment. He's the most muscular of the directors. He's the one with an actual eye. I think you see that in a lot of the transitions and everything we're going to see in The Cat from Hell.
I think he was the most innovative filmmaker on Tails from the dark Side. I think he came in with a plan, and his plan was to make this as stylish as he could without making a creep show, because let's face it, he's standing in George Romero's fucking shadow.
Romero's producing this movie and is on set a lot of the time, and as far as Tales from the Crypt, you got to know that these guys probably hated that fucking thing because there is no show with a creep show like they basically already did that, and now here they are with the with their million dollar budgets and everything. It's like amazing stories too for these guys. So I don't think John Harrison is looking to ape them at all.
Again, I again, I don't think I would maybe walk back me saying I wouldn't say I would say aping. I'd say, it's just it's benefiting. Let me rephrase, it's benefiting from being on. Tales from the Crypt is helping this out by just keeping the idea of horror anthology as a mainstream idea going. Would you would agree with that?
Yeah, totally.
Yeah, Yeah, And like the biggest fucking thing there for the first five years that it's.
On, Like Kils from the Crypt still is a big thing. Everyone still remembers it very badly. But all I'm saying is I don't think there's any influence going on Biley or visually here, specifically visually.
Well, Mike, you said about the people who are in the horror world not agreeing with Tales from the Crypt. Tales from the Crypt was not That was our One of our big things with Chronicles from the Crypt was that was a show not made by horror people. And that is the thing that I appreciate about everything that we've done with Midnight Viewing is the people involved are horror people or sci fi people, and they're invested in
that genre already. And yet to your point like that that is that that's a very apropos point that they would not be super thrilled and with those budgets squandering them.
You gotta be a kick in the fucking teeth, I gotta tell you.
Yeah.
But they do have George Ramiro with this, so it's it's not like they're just out in the cold. You have the King of Horror here. Oh I think that.
I think they're doing just fine.
Yeah, oh yeah, I think a lot of ways if they tail Tales from the Crypt movie, could wish in a lot of ways it was as good as Tales from the Dark Side. But the Tales from the Dark Side movie, like genuinely, oh, it.
Is so nice that they have so many not just the talent behind the camera, but in front of the camera as well. The episode with Debbie Harry wasn't that long ago? A do I remember right? That a very young Christian Slater was in like one of the first.
Season episodes, a Case of the Stubborns where his Bandpot would not believe he was dead.
Oh, the one with yeah the guy from those oh shit, those old time comedies. Yeah, that was.
Fantastics, written by Michael McDowell, who wrote his segment here.
I had a lot of crossover with this movie and a lot of the things we've watched, Steve u Semi's Entails from the Crypt. James Remar was in Tails from the Crypt that, Yeah, there's a lot of cross Like we've already said with Christian Slater, a lot of crossover.
With the Debbie Harry rap around what I was hoping for. And I know again thanks to the way that they had to rejigger this, but this whole idea of this kid, this kind of Shaherazad wrap around, where he's telling her these stories in order to keep himself alive, keep her from cutting him open and viscerating him, cooking him in
the oven and everything. I was really hoping because they prominently show that clock and I really had hoped that every time a segment was over, that clock would be moving and it would be the length of time until she had to put him in the oven. I thought that would have been a really nice thing. Unfortunately, they just couldn't pull.
That one off.
They did say an hour and a half at the beginning of a movie.
Truly.
Yeah, to your point, I was like, they're going to try to do that. You keep saying that kid, that kid, brotherly Love's own Matthew Lawrence, the most gifted of the Lawrence brothers, the true child actor amongst them, not turning in his best performance though he's just here. I was surprised it was him because when it's when they were they have that shot of her and then they reveal it to him. I was like, oh my god, it's a little distracting from someone my age because he's so precocious. Yeah,
it's a little much. I mean, Harry is not yet. She's not as good as she is in Video Drome, that's for sure. I think that we might be a one.
Off in this the rap around segment. Look, if you haven't seen it, we're spoiling the fuck out of everything. So what they do here is they try and subvert expectations.
We get like the perfect suburban housewife and she's waving to the priest and the neighbors and the mailman, and she comes home and she has a fucking dungeon with a kid in it who she's going to be cooking and eating, and the kid is trying to forestall her by reading her stories from the book of Tales from the Dark Side, which, by the way, makes Tails from the Dark Side fake.
Watching up to this point.
It reduces the series to that book.
So it was my interpretation as well, we're.
Watching Tales from the Dark Side, but they're reading talns from the dark Side. But that no longer. I don't know anyway. But what we have is a somnambulance performance by Debbie Harry and a fucking Disney Kid performance from the Lawrence Kid. And it's just a mess.
It is a mess. And again you're talking about subverting expectations when you've got the cage and all the cookies. And I was expecting that that little creature from was that season two or one, the little thing that was living in the closet. I was hoping Lizzie would make a reappearance. I was like, yeah, Lizzie and then no, here comes this stupid kid.
Yeah, but you're right, they should have had some appearances from characters in the show that would have made this a little bit better, I think.
Yeah, oh yeah, but yeah, I'm surprised that they didn't recycle segments from the show, just because they might have thought the show. The audience for the movies different than the audience from the show. I'm glad they didn't do that.
You mean, like they did with the third Tales from the Crypt movie. That wasn't a Tales from the Crypt movie, but they just put Tales from the Crypt wraparounds on it. Yeah like that? Oh okay, Yeah, that's what they did with Ritual, which I believe had James remar in it of all people. Yeah, I was gonna say about the
wrap around. I guess the question I have is, given how many of these that we've seen with wrap rounds, would it have been better to just have a host wrapping around the movie or would it be better to try and do this and it not workness, Because for the most part, anytime we've seen the three of us anyways, we've seen just someone going hello and welcome him to the show, or not even acknowledging that this is a show,
but presenting the information or the story. Would that have been better or is this trying to contextualize it within the narrative? Is that a better idea? Because this is the first time we've really seen this, though there are other things that do it just is just the first time we've seen it together.
I think to the tales from the crypt angle, having a host would have been too much, and I think Romero and Harrison talked about it the great by the way, great audio commentary, especially if you'd like to hear George Romero laugh. He's got such a great laugh, and he laughs a lot. It seems like he had he just came in and wrote a segment and necessarily have to.
There was no pain for him here.
Not a lot of pain for George for this one. Yeah. He I think he was talking about the whole idea of the true nature of having a host and all
that stuff. So I'm glad that they did the wrap round, and I'm also glad that they respect the story that it's inside of these stories, the whole idea of her being like, oh that was I almost wish that she had made more commentary about the characters, because she just says things like, oh, that was a horrible story or oh that was a good one, and I was hoping she might say, I wonder if that Mummy ever came back around. There's whatever it was.
Yeah, it's too much and not enough. Here's how I would have solved the wrap around segment problem. I would have called Paul Spearer and said, and you did, to say a lot of more spooky shit and freakd theiry fuck out of people in between segments. If I would have opened this movie exactly like the television series and then gone right in and then had Paul Spare continue to talk to us and then bring us into the first segment, it would have freaked everyone the fuck out.
You're right because they could have updated the graphics from the opening of the show, because those graphics after a while, you're just like man video toaster. Yeah it was good in eighty six, but eah, maybe not now. Yeah, I totally agree. I'm I was a little like, oh, that's nice that they did the new with the music, but I really love that score, and I especially love him
and that voiceover. Like for these the last couple episodes that we watched with our last episode, I was just like, I'm not doing skip credits, man, I want to hear these intros and outros.
Donald Rubinstein, who composed the score for the original Shoes from the Dark Side series, he does the overall score for the entire episode. And what's funny is I remember seeing the movie in the theater for the first time and the light's coming up halfway at the end when the credits are rolling, and somebody in front of me saying, where's the fucking music.
That's what I was trying to get us too, is like this movie suffers from not being what I expected from Tales from the Dark Side by not having at least even acknowledging what we've acknowledged so many times with Father Malone. You've mentioned at the end of every episode
this season, the try to enjoy the daylight. That is a memorable part of the show, that is as as memorable to me as the Crypt Keeper is from Tales from the Crypt, as Rod Serling is for Night Gallery, and not having it here does hurt, I think, because it makes it feel just like one percent less than it could have been. And this is if you're gonna call this Tales from the Dark Side, have it at some point, even have it at the end, even have the kids say doesn't everyone love a happy ending and
try to enjoy the daylight? Like just something I don't know, like.
I would have had Paul Sparro's fucking speech from the original series come in over the paramount logo in the opening, like all bets are off.
Now yeah something, and then maybe have it like cut out as like as like someone listening to diegetically on the radio or something in like a car even just acknowledge what we all are here for and then maybe change the formula low. That's all I was. It's just it's a weird missed opportunity. But I think overall like it does a very good job at playing right into Tales from the Dark Side.
And here we go to some of dark sid Let's
¶ 'Lot 249'
talk about our first story Lonch two forty nine, based on a short story by Arthur Conan Doyle. This one was, as I said, scripted by Michael McDowell, starring Christian Slater, Julianne Moore. Who else was is that it?
Step?
Oh no Christians later Steve Steve BUHAMI is the fucking star of the episode, my god.
And then the other guy, Robert Robert Sedgwick, dude who could have been pretty much anybody. And when I saw his little picture on on like the plex server, I was just like, is that? Oh God? Why am I blacoln And the guy the guy who owns everything except shoes death from Bill and Ted'spogust Journey.
Oh, William Sadler.
Is that William Sadler?
Yeah?
When I saw that, Kyra Sedgwick's brother, Oh, okay, interesting.
Kevin Bacon's brother in law. All right, no shit, yeah, really Sedgwick In this case, the Sedgwick last name is in fact, Kyris said.
Wicks, right, all right?
Interesting.
Hey you guys Heaven, thanksgiving it your house. Yeah, we're inviting to my sister and her husband. Yeah you mean chiros Edgwick and Kevin Bacon. Oh yeah.
I have two favorite pieces of Mummy entertainment. One is from Amazing Stories. The other one is this Lot two forty nine. I love a horror mummy story and I love the way this is shot. I think this is gorgeously shot. As a matter of fact, now, when we talked about the series and when we talked to Robert Draper. He was telling me about how their mandate was film noir, which was perfect for him because he loves a harsh light,
and that's what this entire movie is. He changes the palette and the sort of style from segment to segment, but it's it is all the dark side ethos going on here, and I think this one looks gorgeous. By the way, Mike, you listen to the commentary, these are sets. I can't believe that these are sets. I look so I thought this whole movie was shot on location, and to hear that today blew my fucking mind, because these are lit.
Beautifully, absolutely, And yeah, everything in this first segment has this kind of honey brown to it. It just looks so good. And they do so many smart things. There's so many times where you've got like an out of focus character in the background and an in focus character in the foreground. I remember when Buscemi's like reading the scroll and it's got that light on his glasses, and
it just he's got such a great face. And yeah, I think we're all kind of used to his face, but the very first time I ever saw him, I was just like, my god, this guy's got a beautiful face and those teeth are so prominent. He just looks like such an amazing Poindexter in this.
Yeah. I knew Christian Slater because I had already seen Heathers at this point, but I didn't know Buscemi. I didn't know Julian Moore. Actually, no, I had seen Bouschmi and he was in a Jim Jarmis movie by now, wasn't it.
Yeah. I think he had been in a few New York type movies too, with a like jar motion. But I want to say parting glances or something.
Oh, you know they had seen him into He's in Vibes, the movie with Jeff Golbet Cindy Lapper's philandering boyfriend at the beginning.
And isn't is that the one also with Peter Falk in it? Yes? Yes, okay, yeah.
Does anyone know the Spanish from Milk and Cookies? I know Milk it's leg A, he's.
Bus Shemy had been in a Bumper that was directed by Robert Longo as an MTV bumper, where he just spits out all these lyrics to songs that were out around the time. He's just like baby does this whole thing as He's like wandering around this supermodel type person, who do you love sex, drugs and rock and roll? It just does this whole monologue and that at the end she just goes beat it. And then there's this amazing fish eye shot of his face, that wonderful face
of his. And I used to like, I could never hear one of those words without going into that whole spiel that he would do.
You would think from this cast list and the filmmakers behind it that this was like an indie darling about to come out in nineteen ninety one and take over the Spirit Awards.
Yeah, soon to be Trees Lounges and Julian more of many Coen Brothers films. Yeah, and Robert Yeah.
Say Lounges is the reason we're talking about fucking the sopranos. That's where a lot of that casting comes from, is from the Yes, Steve, you sient me. This is so good. I love him and Slater back and forth. They have great chemistry opposite.
I low the Zuni aesthetics.
This is so good, so good.
He has a great look to him and I love that. Yes, this is an Arthur Conan Doyle story. Know, the story is not set in the time of Arthur Conan Doyle, but the lighting palette that they use like pays homage to that, and I really I appreciate it, Like I really appreciate that they're not going to do a period piece, but they'll use period like that's availing yourself of doing that. I think it is very impressive. And Christians later cutting up a mummy with electric knife is proper disgusting.
Oh and I love his little just in case those fuse blow out again batteries And I'm like, you have a battery run electric carving knife? Where can I get one of those?
He went out and bought it specifically for this evening. He is quite unhinged here at the end. It almost makes me think like he was gonna do a reveal because he's so excited to cut up that mummy. You think, like, what has this character been up to this whole time? Is he like a serial killer?
Like he's just been pushed to the edge by Steve b Sebby's character is what we're supposed to believe.
A mummy did just murder his sister.
It's interesting though, when you think about the politics of this episode, and I know I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but like they Steve Bushemy is this point extra type character. Everybody just has it out for him, except Christian Slater. It seems like he Christian Slater are friends. But this whole thing of Slater's best bud Kira Cedgwick's brother, and then his piece of shit sister Julianne Moore, who's going out with mister Sedgwick. It's they're awful people. They are
totally awful people. They're planting shit in Bouscemi's room, trying to get him kicked out of college, and it really feels just because they don't like him. It feels like there's nothing. And I know what, the feeling's mutual. He's probably had to work very hard his entire life. Meanwhile, these two yepp assholes are just scooting through the line of Slater where he's just like, the hardest thing you've ever done was fill out that application and the guy
and he didn't even do that exactly. That was the sister. And he's just all about that stipend money and all that. And I know that's also part of it, is that Bushmi didn't get the stipend, so I can see him getting revenge on these a holes, but Slater's kind of the innocent victim for me. Yeah, once he chops up the mummy and Boushmy makes a clean getaway, I was like, Okay,
that's the end of the story. But no, they had to tack on that little bit, which I'm not going to say it's problematic at all, because I think it's a great Tales from the Dark Side type ending. But it's just as you really didn't have to do that. You didn't have to bring back the couple from what's the one with Ted Danson and Creep Show. You didn't have to bring them back and have them attack Leslie Nielsen because he's not only Leslie Nielsen. It's not like
Christian Slater was that bad of a guy. I think something to tide you over there we go.
It's I think it's almost the Christian Slater character is almost unnecessary. If it had just been you send Me and those other two, it would have been a revenge story, and with Christian Slater it makes it less of a revenge story and more just of a guy caught in between. And then at the end of Steve U Semmi's now fuck you. Anyways, I thought the end look like Steve you send me at the end, is I like the central casting of the taxi cab driver who is straight
out of Return of the Living Dead Dead. Yeah, we lost two men with his piercings that connect to his from his ear to his nose. But it is a strange like Steve you sent me getting one over on Christian Slater's. He didn't really, It's just he was pissed off at him. But it's it's less of a revenge story and more kind of unclear what the purpose is at the end. But I still kind of liked it.
Everyone is horrible. That's the fucking message here, everybody. Yeah, welcome to tell from the dark Side.
That's why great Tails from the Dark Side ending.
Yeah, no, good dude goes unpunished. Yeah, I'm gonna let you go bad idea.
Yeah yeah. Oh, he didn't know what's his line about. He didn't know this type of role from the real thing. Alex Post, Yes, pictogram, yes, thank you. Yeah.
I love a good mummy sticking. Yeah, the hook up, the nose. I love a good mummy brain removal. We don't get those enough.
And then he stumps a bunch of fucking flowers into a wound he has just inflicted on somebody. Come on now, Yeah, I love this segment.
I do what they say in the commentary about how she wasn't screaming because she was such a cold hearted bitch that she respected the Mummy and didn't really want to give them like the satisfaction of the scream.
I was like, nice, Okay, two more, Yeah, who evidently like still compstill loving this film and appreciate it the fucking yeah, the opportunity that it gave her.
Yeah.
What's funny is she showed up in Bennie and June very quickly after this, where her character, like her claim to fame was that she was in this low budget horror movie and I was like, wow, that's really weirdly specific and coincidental.
Yeah, yeah, I almost didn't recognize her. And she must have gone from this to being bottomless and shortcuts within just a few years, because it's that like ninety three ninety.
Four, Yeah, it was ninety three.
Yeah. I love the camera work in this episode, and I know we'll definitely talk about that more with the next but especially when you've got oh, the mister Sedgwick going around, and then the camera moves and the mummies in the foreground and you see the mummies stretch out that hangar, and then the camera still keeps moving and you get a lot of back and forth. They're almost like split screen with the stairwell coming up and the stairwell continuing up. I love the way that they're doing that.
It looks so good. And there's a nice wipe in here as well, where you're just like, oh, yeah, they're really going for this back and forth of the camera. There's the cops in the one room and they move over and there she is in the kitchen, Julianne Moore with the big bloody handprint on the fridge. I'm like, oh, this is so good. Just again, I'm gonna keep sounding like a broken record. It looks like a million bucks.
Yeah, it's again. I want to say it's my favorite segment, but I think actually the last moment you don't like, Mike, is mine not to bury the lead anyway.
Yeah, yeah, I was like, my done. I don't understand why you don't like the last one already, Mike, Yeah, you've already buried the lead a little bit. What you didn't you weren't subjected to bad tales from the crip segments of James remar like we were. That's why father, he doesn't know what a redheaded James remark with what the Goldberg really looks like? Particularly speaking a particularly bad show, speaking of the worst segments of this show, Oh it's time,
¶ 'Cat from Hell'
It's time for the Cat from Hell.
Now this is based on a short story by Stephen King, and this one was adapted by Georgie Rimera. Oh okay, Now, this.
Is a show written by Stephen King, and it says based on Cat's Eye, but it's not. It's like a it's a different story than Kat's Eye.
Yeah, it's a completely different story. It's it's the story we get it's it was first published in seventy eight. You could only get it in a back issues of Cavalier magazine. It's a men's magazine, which luckily I was friends with people in the convention circuit, so they like overlooked. They were like, we we know you want the fucking Stephen King Starr. You're not here for the porn. So they were able to sell it to me. They finally serialized it, I think in two thousand and six maybe
he finally put it into print. But yeah, so based on that short story, and it's a fucking hit man hired to kill a cat who by a pharmaceutical guy who was testing cats, and it's he lives with the Gray Gardens ladies, and it's William Hicky andster Bling Dexter's landlord.
Oh Mark Margolis, Yeah he's Is he still with us? I interviewed him a few years ago and he was great.
I believe he may have passed.
Oh yeah, he passed. Yea, all right? And then yeah, having Alice Drummond as one of those ladies, I'm just like, oh yeah, ask her about her period exactly.
I was Drummond from the opening of Ghostbusters.
Yeah, just in case you guys thought that was being weird about asking about her period.
Also also from ace Ventura as well.
Weirdly talk about coming full circle. I think when I was asked to guest on your guys's Tales from the Crypt podcast, it was a William Hickey episode.
That's right, That's why I.
Was gonna say. William Hickey also from Tales from the Crypt in the Body Switch episode directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Yeah, so William Hickey has looked old his entire life that I can tell, like, I haven't gone all the way back to the very beginning, but I did go back at least two Wise Blood in seventy nine. No, actually, I take it back. He was in Mikey and Nicky, the movie that I refused.
To talk about on We've Had Colombo Show.
Yeah, yeah, but I haven't gone all the way back to the earliest part of his career when he was on the Philco television playoffs in nineteen fifty two. But he looked fucking old forever and he just knew how to do it so well. Well, this is five years north of his performance in Pritzy's Honor, where he stole that whole fucking movie. He was so good in that.
This is a year after Christmas Vacation, which is the thing that like most people I think of a certain generation know him from. And he Yeah, he's always looked old. He's a vagoda. You've always been old. You've always just looked like an old man.
And he plays it so well.
He's got the voice for it.
Oh, I love his voice. I love his looking. This just this kind of like old timey suit that he's wearing. And again not to spoil this one too early, but the camera work and especially the flashbacks in here, I love those, especially the transition to the flashbacks where it is no cuts, just lighting changes theatrics and you were off to the races.
Yeah, and that's partially a limitation from Bunchet and partially just because it's super fucking cool and we need to see that sometimes because having these characters in the flashback when you don't realize it just by tricks of lighting when using scrims to or there's a driving sequence here where there's that car never left a fucking studio and it looked great over that, and even something as simple as a transition of the close up of Mark mcgloss's
face and then an explosion of a fireplace and we pull back out of that and go, okay, I got it, that guy burned up and now here we are again.
Cool, absolutely yeah, and yeah, it looks so good. I love when they do the original move and it's just that like blue light in the background, and when they came out of it, I was like, with him rolling his wheelchair from the flashback into the present, that was impressive. I actually said that out loud we were watching it. I was just like, that looked really good. David Johansson
is such an interesting actor as well. I think I pretty much knew him first as Buster Poindexter, and then when he would show up in things like Car fifty four, Where are I'm just saying the hits Noyle, Car fifty four, Where Are You? Or The Cab Driver and Scrooge. Yeah, for me, one of my favorite movies of all time
free Jack. He's in there. He's fantastic in that. But I had no idea about the New York dollars for the longest fucking time, and then when I saw them, I was like, is that fucking Buster Poindexter in this.
Luv? That's so good?
Oh, And he looks so close to Buster in this role, but he doesn't have that big hair, he doesn't have that big here, and the big smile, the cheesy grin that he would do is Buster.
Yeah. He had clearly gotten a haircut close to production, because otherwise you could pomp that up just a little bit and we could get hot.
You know.
What came out the year after Free Jack was Mister Nanny, which is the first thing I saw him speaking of Hulk Hogan and Tails from the Dark Side. Nice It is a film starring Hulk Hogan as the titular mister Nanny. David Johanson just has an interesting look to He's got a great face.
Oh yeah, and that voice and the voice yeah wester pointexter versus William Hickey. Ah run oh, I know.
I love it, like being a ping pong ball in between the two of them, just back and forth.
And I said to you, Father Malone off off air, I was just like, I remember this being terrible, but rewatching it for the show. For this episode, I was like, this isn't as bad as I thought, Like, I not to again jump ahead, but I thought that David Johansson solved the problem by eating the cat, so.
You know, you thought that he intentionally had the cat going in his mouth.
I was thinking, this is Stephen King. I was thinking a little bit of lawnmower Man and when he like strips off all of his clothes and goes and starts to eat everything, and at one point I think it's a gopher hole, and that's a whol. E doesn't eat the hole because that would be impossible because there's nothing there. It's not, but I really thought that he At one point I pictured him in my head, almost like the cover of Ralph Bakshi's The Rock and Roll Movie where
you got the guy with the long arm. I picture Buster Poindexter with the tall hair and a hat, just like mouwing down this cat, just pushing it into his mouth, almost with like cartoon sound effects.
That would be great in this segment, because I agree with you, like I had joke back to you that this is I agree, this is a terrible segment. And then in the rewatch it, I am knocked out by the visuals. That's I was even back then. But look when Alice Drummond has a fucking cat stuck on her face and it's just this really terrible thing. And then I don't know, God blessed canby effects. Obviously they spent all of their time on the gargoyle because the effects
here at the end are so laughable. I don't what no laughable, man.
I mean there I was laughing, but with I know I'm assuming it was because.
Oh well, but they have no choice at that point. When they're given those effects, you.
Got to lean into it. David Johanson with a cat sticking out of his mouth. Is just the fact that I get to say that out loud is amazing. And then you have the bugged out eyes and the it's just it's fucking wild and it's not something you see every day. There's a lot of stuff in horror movies where it's like Michael Myers just tabbing a bunch of people sticking a knife through their neck. Okay, but we got David Johanson with a cat jumping down his throat
and then popping out of him. Don't get to see that every day.
I'll take it, I would like.
Yeah.
The music for the segment was done by Chance Jenkle, who not only is Annabel Jenkles's brother from Rocky Morton and Annabeltnkle, the creators of Max Headroom but if you remember the film.
And directors of superb Anda can't take thea away from them, But he also composed the song number one from Real Genius.
Number one is oh that song, yeah, where I was just like, what the fuck is this?
Uh?
Anything else about the cat from Hell? I don't know.
Yeah, it's always good seeing Mark Margolis show up in things, and yeah, I had a lot of fun this time, and yeah, the movie poster I was thinking of was hey good looking. So if people go look up the poster for nineteen eighty two's hey good looking and replace the words with the cat, That's what I was thinking.
So that's the best way to experience Mike's fantasy of what this movie should have been, just right down the gullet.
I'm just going to point out, having been the one out of the three of us who had never seen this before, not knowing that or the having the expectation of this might be not good. I really enjoyed it. I thought it a perfect amount of over the top. And yeah, the cat at the end, and the idea of David Johanson strangling a cat with a garat is pretty great. So we never get to see it, but he is thinking about it there for a second, and I'm like, all right, And predator vision for the cat.
Pretty great also, especially when it would go cho.
Or I guess predator vision or I guess dead eite vision. However you want to interpret it given your point of reference, Yeah, I got nothing.
I was going to say, No, I think we're good. I think we should move on to the last.
Oh you say so, dismissively. We're talking about Lovers of Ow.
¶ 'Lover's Vow'
Technically based on the short story about the Yuki Ona that appeared in Quite On. This one has written by Michael McDowell. It is about an artist who meets a gargoyle who kills a friend of his and says, hey, don't tell anyone, I'll kill you two and then he and then he keeps it to himself for a decade. For ten years.
You kept your promise.
Can I just say?
That's when you see Ricky Coogan in real life?
I told you at the end of the movie, somebody in the theater went, where was the fucking music? In this segment, they go from this hard cut from them meeting and falling in love to ten years later and somebody else in the audience I heard them go ten years That's that's too much of a leap for us.
Sorry, Yeah, yeah, that's the bridge too far. Of all the things, it's not the Gremlins or anything or gargos. I'm cram I'm just I like my gargoyles to look like the nineteen seventy two TV movie where they look so much better than a puppet with a really awkward mouth and the thing that I dislike about this isn't the gargoyles. I liked most of the actors in here. I like Robert Klein a lot. That's pretty good. Raidon Chong always leaves a lot to be desired, except for
of course Commando, where she's just impeccable in there. But it just it feels like it goes on for a long because it's just, okay, we've got the beginning, we've got the death, we've got the meeting that we go into, like the what is it their one year anniversary or something, and then the ten years later, and then it's okay, finally it pays off, just like it takes a long time to get to the twist.
Also, is James remark every time he's in one of these Hori anthology things just the most oblivious motherfucker on the planet. You met Raydon Cheng the same night you ran in his Giant Gargoyle, and you were like, is it a stretch to be like, she's the Gargoyle? Is it a stretch for him to think that her meeting him and the Gargoyle in the same evening is not I guess he assumes that it's a positive miracle a
positive anysynchronicity and not a negative one. I don't know, It's just it seems weird to me that he didn't just put to and two together. She's the gargoyle? Does?
I think you might think that for a little while, but once you settle down and start having children, that maybe she's just a human and you have luckily ran into her and what potentially was the worst night of your life.
That's fair, I guess when you're like, oh my god, the baby's crowning. Yet that's a human vagina, definitely not a gargoyle vagina.
You're right. I don't know if it were to look like a gargoyle at any time, I think it might be that moment.
In that moment, she becomes a gargoyle one in that moment.
Yeah, And I guess that's why this segment is so long, is to make us forget and to make us really have that twist be something spectacular at the end.
But who else could it be? What else could it be? Like? It never gives us it. It doesn't do the thing of even like that Colombo does, where it doesn't even give us any other option of something else it could be it's so obviously her. That's why I'm saying, like, is James Remar not the I guess because we don't see that he does have a life outside of the narrative of the story with this woman. We assume he
could have thought it was anybody else. But because we never see any of that, it's dude, it's her, because we're only seeing this aspect of the story. And it's yeah, we as the audience know from the moment we see her that she's the gar coile they're belaboring. The fucking point with the audience is more the problem, not so much the narrative.
The segment needed to be either longer or shorter.
Yeah, I talked about how much I love Steve Bushemi's face, and another guy whose face I love that he's had a career, but he's never seemed to take off as much as Boushemi is Philip Lankowski, who's in this third segment, and you see him at the bar at the beginning, and then he also comes back during the art show that the reemars character is having another just fantastic face and just that long, lanky thing that he's got going on, and he's still working today and looks he looks respectable,
but at the same time he looks a little bit like, oh sor I'm gonna make a reference to something I shouldn't. He looks like the guy is it Bricktop from Snatch? He looks a little Bricktop esque.
You know.
He reminded me of the leader of the Orphans from The Warriors.
Oh, I can totally see that, Yes, absolutely, yeah, And he was just in I guess it came out this year The Ugly Stepsister. And I keep hearing about a show called Death by Lightning and apparently is in that too.
Wow.
God, Speaking of The Warriors, James remark, Oh, yeah, there we go. Yeah, my lord, James Remar talk about a guy who's still working now, James Remar, who's ostensibly one of the leads of the IT TV show. So there you go. I love James Remar as a fan of Dexter like he obviously plays a huge part in that show. He was Entails from the Crypt several at least one time, but I think it was more than one. And again, I guess he was in the movie that that third movie.
But he's I like him. Here him and Raydon Chong are good together. But again it's just this. I think. Actually, thank father Milone, you're right if they had done more or less, but they're in this weird middle ground where they don't do either don't. But I still like it though. That's the problem because I would have liked it more. Maybe is where I'm left with.
I just love this short story, honestly. And look, if you want to see the proper version of this, do see the film Kwaidan, which is a series of ghost stories from Japan from the nineteen sixties where they this is a this is an old Japanese folk tale, and in that one, the it's a farmer and he goes out and he gets caught in a storm, and this Yukiona, which is a snow woman, appears to him and basically kills It's the same story, and then it's what happens
is it's not like the same night he meets that girl. He survives and goes back to his village and then eventually meets this girl who comes and then lives his life. But it's what you're saying, Chris, because of the time compression here, they just let's meet him, Let's have a meet at that moment. But it's such a typic to the audience, like, gargoyle here, turn around the corner, pretty girl. Oh yeah, what else is it?
I'm surprised we didn't get like a cat people transformation of a shadow of the gargoyle transforming into Raydon Jong and then walking around the corner.
They could have, by the way, they could have circumvented all of this had they just had her meet him in the bar as a female human and then she leaves, and then gargoyle and then her again, and then it's oh, okay, could be different people.
But right, speaking of the gargoyle, how do y'all feel about the gargoyle effect? Because I mentioned the Ricky Coogan of it all, it does look a little the bug eyes and the lips moving remind me of maybe not Ricky Coogan from Freaked so much, but the little kid when he becomes like the big freakasized version of him. He's got those like the weird like very I love you. It does feel a little freaked, and I'm like, it
makes it it. It's still horrifying and weird and bizarre to look at, but it doesn't make it a little I'm snickering a little bit because it is a little comical.
Yeah, I mean it's it's not. It isn't. It didn't jump off of a fucking building that you know, this gargo, this is their own design for it. I'm actually I actually saw this thing up close. I went to a Fangoria Weekend of Horrors convention in Burbank and the K and B guys were there, and they had all the props from this film on display, so I got to see the head really close up, and it's gorgeous piece
of work. It needs to talk, and what instead we're getting is that sort of puppeteering, just like up and down vocal thing instead of it speaking and vocalizing like somebody called the Henson people. If you want to do that, the thing that.
You do with the where you put some like peanut butter on the horse's tongue.
Yeah, it's a little like that.
Mister ed, I love you, please, you're the cross your heart like, oh God, Like why are you over enunciating every word British promised? It's like when British people have an American accent, they say, there are's really hard stop. We know you're a puppet. Come on, you're not fool?
Are you talking about Bennett A. Cumberbatch and The Doctor Strange movies?
Or you and McGregor in that episode of Tales from the Crip where he says his r's really hard, like really hard. Hello, they are.
Okay, they all learned they're American from Dallas in the nineteen eighties.
I think's right right on Chong though, Like I think to your point, Mike, I have only ever seen her in Commando.
I have not in soul Man, right, that's one of your favorite last.
No, it is not one of my favorite films and I've never even seen it. I've seen the trailer for it. I decided maybe see Thomas Hall dressing up as a black man wasn't something I needed to go out of my way to watch unless someone put my put a gun to my head and said let's do that.
It wasn't problematic back then. No one said anything back.
Back They said it wasn't a good movie. That's with it.
Yeah, And then I think she was also in Quest for Fire as well.
That's where I first s are lifelong fan after Quest of Fire. That was fat.
Yeah, she bears it all right there. Yeah, not nearly as good as Claning the Cave Bear. When we're talking about men movies of the nineteen eighties, a very specific sub genre which also includes a film by Ringo star Caveman, Silly Long.
That's right, baby, say Mike, what a great name for a new show. Caveman movies of the nineteen eies.
That's like the accidental pimp movement of the of nineteen eighty three, where we had night Shift and Risky Business and Doctor Detroit.
Oh, it was like all those h swap movies in what nineteen eighty eight or body swap movies.
Yeah, say it was speaking of see Thomas Howell. Oh yeah, and Raydon Chong. To bring it all the way back to her, she was married to see Thomas Hell for a year. Oh wow, Okay, soul Man. On the set of soul Man.
Around the time that this movie came out, it was still a novelty that Raydon Chong was Cheech and Chong's Tommy Chong's daughter, Ryeah.
Yeah.
You didn't see anybody saying anything about Robert Sedgwick, so yeah.
Still not talking about him exactly.
Yeah, the Bacon Brothers, good Lord.
Behind the scenes, keV Do you think I could sing a song tonight. Yeah, I'm sorry, we just don't have room.
In the bill.
I like the transformation scene with Raydon Chong at the it's gross. It reminds me of.
No honestly, when she says you broke your promise and it has like the multiple voices on it, I was like, that's pretty cool.
It's very fly. It's very fly.
Oh yeah, because it's bursting out of her. Yeah, her skin is like popping open.
And we have that like mid transformation like crying thing, which Jeff goldbloob it doesn't really cry, but we have that like melancholiness where he's like transforming and losing the last humanness of it. That is the thing though. Yeah, the gargoyle had to talk. But when the gargoyle is half lit at the beginning, it's scary, but at the end, when it's full lit, it does look really And then that we haven't talked about it. But my god, guys, gargoyle children.
Yea gargoyle. When you were talking about freaked, those were the little fuckers I was thinking of.
Those are the freaked fucker's all right, Oh my god. They're less expressive than the mother is and that's not good.
No, that was I kind I laughed when he turns around and those kids are there, and I was just like, yep, okay, that checks out.
To Mike, that checks out. Yeah, but yeah, gotta say about laughing folks. Make them laugh, make them laugh.
They thought they were ending it powerfully. They moved this segment here.
I like, can I say I think that this is one of the best tales from the Dark Side segments? Genuinely, I had a lot of fun with it. I thought it was really good. It's a little all over the place, but in terms of this kind of story, I enjoyed it a lot, and it had a lot of good, for the most part, practical effects.
I think I liked it then and I continue to like it now because it's based on that story that I like so much, and and it's shot beautifully and James Remar is great, and Raydon Chunk's serviceable, and Robert Klein is in there for some reason, but he's really good. Actually, it's a sort of disaffected agent. And I can't live on ten percent of nothing.
I did like that, But I'm going to take care of your kids for you.
¶ The Wraparound Story Finale
So as we're winding down. I want to know your guys' opinion as far as the finale of the rap Round story. Does the kid become some sort of like street controller of the universe type of thing? Is that what I'm supposed to believe when he's just and then he reached in his pocket and pulled out these marbles and she tripped and fell because he's like narrating his
own story. Speaking of Bill and Ted's s excellent adventure, it felt very like the end of Bill and Ted when they're just like, oh, and then we can travel in time and we'll do this and they basically they'll drawer yeah, like they have the whole thing of yeah, the trash can over the Dan's head and all that stuff. Because this just feels okay, he's now in charge of the story. He's the one writing this.
I thought it was a double dodge. I thought the gag was that she kidnapped the wrong kid. Oh that was my assumption, Like he I don't know you to your point, I don't think he became that. I think he always was that. And that's the twist is that's what makes it a Tails from the dark Side thing, is she's the witch but it turns out what happens when frankens, what happens when Doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde
accidentally kidnaps vampire. Oh, it's like at the movie Abigail, that same thing where it's like, what happens if X happens with Y, and then it turns out it's something else. That's That was my interpretation. Maybe I'm maybe I'm off base. I don't know.
I like your interpretation, but I don't think that is it because I think they would have leaned into it had it been that, there would have been a moment where they like zoomed in and the kid you fucked up a moment. As it is, I think this is more of an amazing stories ending than a Tannels from the dark Side ending. This is the power of storytelling ending and way out of place with Darkseide.
Yeah, to be fair that they would have also mentioned in the commentary that that were the case, and also how.
They could have ended it satisfactorily. Had he started setting the table to eat she went into the oven, like he's going to eat her now.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think they're just like lay lean into him being a precocious little shit to your point botom alone. If they just had him sitting down at the table and then just like looking Riley at the camera.
Like setting a timer.
Yeah, and like may and again, like if you want to acknowledge the audience, don't have him acknowledge of verbally. Just give him a little wink and a nod, little Tom Baker thing of the nose. Don't be that obvious. We don't need to. The show was never that obvious. The show never did that. Show never once acknowledged the audience. It's a little weird that the movie was like, that's more Tales from the Crypt, Like the crypt keeper does more or less acknowledge the audience. Same with Rod Serling.
He acknowledges this is not a Tale from the dark Side thing.
This kid breaks the fourth wall and looks hooray at us directly.
Don't you love a happy I mean not when you're punching us in the nose on it?
Come on?
Yeah. Now, before this film came out, they thought they
¶ Stephen King Adaptations and Dark Tower Discussion
had a winner, and they commissioned a screenplay for a sequel to tell Some from the Dark Side, also written by George Romero and Michael McDowell, but contains stories by Gayan Wilson and Robert Block, and then two from Stephen King where they were going to do Rainy Season, which is a horrific fucking story that they were never going to be able to film, but if somebody does that someday, it's going to be great. And they were going to
do Pinfall. Pinfall is interesting because it was initially supposed to be in the first Creep Show and then it was going to be in Creep Show two, and then it was going to be in tailsim the Dark Side, and then it got shuffled off to the Tails in the Dark Side sequel that's never going to get made. That's the one about I'm sure if you're a Stephen
King fan you know. And it's the Undead Bowling Team segment where it's based on an old ec tales from the cryptcomic actually, which is called foul Play, about a baseball team that ends up exacting revenge on one of their teammates because the teammate like spikes his spikes with poison and kills like a fellow teammate to get ahead in the game, and then they end up eviscerating him and using his entrails as baselines and stuff.
Wow.
So King was obsessed with that. I think it fucked his head up when he read it as a kid and did the story. It's the same thing but with a bowling team basically where they're bowling his head at the end and everything.
So it's pretty good. It's good. It's a good one. That's the problem. It's just it's just like rainy season, you know what's funny? Fuck man, it really speaks to the Stephen King of it all. If they had gone three for three with Tails from the Dark Side, that fucking last one would have just been all Stephen King, every single fuck that. Go look at any bookstore with the horror section, it's k and then every other thing.
It's not that it's not as much as it used to be, thankfully there's a lot of like horror out there now. But it just speaks to the Stephen King of it all that the next movie was going to be half Stephen King, and then the third one would have been three quarters, if not all, because again, he's the name in horror to speak to. The James remar And and It TV show of It All My God, currently airing right now and.
Back in the twenty fourteen, the British filmmaker trying to crowdfund a his own film version of Pinfall because it still has never been adapted, and then finally in twenty sixteen, they turned it in to a comic book, which they gave away with The Creep Show to DVD when it came out. So it's the only place you can actually read Pinfall a side of the many imboarded drafts of the screenplay, which is how I read it.
Yeah, just read the source materialist way to joy.
Yeah, and I'm familiar, unfamiliar, I should say, with rainy season. So I never made it to Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I was done. I was done with King somewhere right around Misery, if not shortly before that. But yeah, that's.
Interesting is where sorry right right number comes?
What was put in there? Yeah?
Yeah, I get for most people, like people, I guess people my age who would be reading it as a.
Collected welfare I'm trying to think where my Stephen King interests flagged.
That's an interesting question.
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna pull up.
His interest flag. You think did mister King.
After his accident? Maybe?
Yeah? Maybe?
Well for me it was it was Tommy Knockers. Actually, no, that's not true, because I did. I went through it. I went through Misery, I went through I got up to Nightmares of Dreamscape, so I know I got that far at least. But I think it's when he started doing Rose Matter and what was the other one? It was interminable Gerald's Game, Yeah.
Being a little wistful that mister King a little too wistful for one's ago.
It was mister King like reacting to the criticism that he doesn't write good female characters. So I'm gonna do all the female characters.
Now.
No, they were right, You're right, you don't write them.
What's odd.
I've never read any of the Dirk Tower stuff, and that was coming out while I was reading his other things. So I read all the way up to Thinner and then I skipped it, and then I went to Misery, and then I was done, And which is weird because
I loved Misery. I thought it was great. I was just done with them after that, like Tommy Knacker's Dark Hat, any of these Dark Towers thing needful things, Gerald's Game all the way, and then I went back with things like the Green Mile and oh gosh, I think that was it until sell?
No?
When was DreamCatcher? Dream Catcher was two thousand and one. That movie or sorry movie and book. That book fucking sucked. I hated that book.
Yeah, look, you're talking about late ninety Stephen King, where his editor basically is just rubber stamping anything that comes along. There's no pushback for Stephen anymore at all.
And I think he said, yeah, I was going to say, I think that's when he said he was just the most high of all of that.
That's what fucking really annoyed me about Tommy Knocker was that was I look, I Tommy and I was like eighty seven, so I was fourteen years old. I'm like growing up with Stephen King, and that book was disappointing. And then a couple of years later that's when he got sober and he was like, I don't even remember
writing the tom Knockers. And I was so offended and hurt by Stephen ging doing that to me that I think and that's around the time that I'm the time frame like him getting sober that I was like, fuck you man.
He didn't realize that The Tommy Knockers was one of those thick volumes that's five hundred and fifty eight pages. Yeah, miseryes three ten. My god, I remember I have read The Stand probably five six times. Maybe. I When I see a book like it, though, I'm just like, I don't want to dive into something like this.
And I think this is the best of them, though, really I think it I think is. I mean, for if you're going to talk about the long the Tome, I guess it's either it or the Stand for me, like the Stand, right, but it's either. But you see what I think it's for some people's either it or the Stand. It's those are the ones. And so I see like father Milon, and I see your reaction what I said. If you're going to do a thing about people in a main town fighting something, it's going to be it.
I honestly prefer needful things. If you're going to talk about his main towns and his big characters, because that's Castle Rock and those are all of his fucking characters from all of his stories, and it's got the Devil in it, and I don't.
Know that's fair the Devil.
Do you know that I attended a test screening of that movie? Really it was real bad.
Then, Oh, I've never seen it. I've never seen that.
Then, I mentioned earlier that I went to conventions starting very young and made a lot of friends with a lot of the dealers and stuff. Tower books were like a rumor among Stephen King fans for a little while there, and I was lucky enough to have a friend who photo copied The Gunslinger for me to read because he had a copy of that. But this is the same time that the Dark Tower Book two, the Drawing of the three, came out, so I was able to buy then and still have a first edition of that book.
And that was around the same time that Stephen King finally decided maybe I should start publishing these, So it was like the perfect moment. So I followed Dark Tower all the way through. And if you liked the stand Mike, you should. I know it's daunting because there are so many books in the Dark Tower series, but it is well worth your time. It is if there was a reason Stephen King was put here a side of horror, if he was meant to do anything else, it's this. It's a magnificent series.
Okay, yeah, it is a thing unto itself. To Father Malone's point, like, once you start it you kind of need to finish it. You need to see it, see it through. But it is unto itself, like it and the stand are that cliff, and then Dark Tower is the cliff of which you jump off because there's just so much of it.
You know what, though, why can't I just watch the movie?
I wouldn't say you can't. We're not saying here in saying don't you know better?
Insanely, that fucking movie that they put out is like a reader's digest version of the entire series.
Yeah, boy, it sure is. And they try to make that movie canonical within the scope and scheme of the series of books as well.
It was so absurd.
I know, good for them. You know what they say, when you start with Ron Howard and you end with Akiva Goldsman, what are you gonna do?
I will say this about that movie was mainly garbage, But if you read the books and all, they described the way Roland reloads a gun, this magic trick he does with his fingers, and they actually pulled that off in the movie. When Eaters Elba is just dropping rounds into the chamber while spinning it like really quickly. I was like, oh, yeah, that's what it looks like. That's the only thing I took away from that movie.
They did the thing. Yeah, hey, you know what they say, something like we alluded like you mentioned, and like we've alluded to there's just some Stephen King stuff that you shouldn't try to film, at least not in a movie. Maybe you do it in a long format like a TV show may like.
And they were planning on doing movies and TV series to supplement it. And it's like it was such a money a sort of an idea that it like, either make it a fucking television series or don't make it because it is that big. You can't condense these into little two hour back Somebody's gonna come along and prove me wrong. And I hope they do because I love the series, But I'm just saying it deserves a longer format.
If they can mine a fucking three season show out of the fucking two hundred pages of it, they can do a TV show on the Dark Tower, because that it TV show is just mining something else, like disparate parts of a book that are not being represented even correctly in the TV show. They're doing their own fucking thing.
No, you know what, I can disagree that. I've been watching the series too, and it seems to me that they're just making it.
Like you, No, I wouldn't give it the opportunity to do more it stuff, just do it again.
It takes place in the sixties now instead of the eighties. They get to remake it again.
You're on bicycles.
But they're also pulling in what was that fucking what was the horrible? They made it into a film with Hearts in Atlantis. The organization in Hearts in Atlantis is basically the other sort of aspect that that they're playing on there with this.
The military knows that Pennywise is the thing and they want to weaponize him.
Of course, yeah, that I'm telling you the it if you haven't wanted to show everybody. Dick Halleran from The Shining is in the series and he's being utilized by the military like as a like a a what is it a remote viewer basically artifact that's in the ground or something.
I don't know.
It's crazy and it's that whole thing.
He shouldn't be able to see us, but penny Wise saw me, and it's oh my god, you're just trafficking and all these other things we've seen before Stephen King, Man, they.
Just I'm having fun with that though it's weird.
It's weird. I like that, it's weird and it's doing its own thing. But man, Stephen King even now adapting his stuff Running Man's coming out like, Man, what a must be nice to have so many things people just want to adapt all the time since oh, since the seventies. My god, this year hass.
Been what four Stephen King adaptations?
I know?
There's the Monkey, there's the Running Man, there's the Law Walk, and I swear there's a.
TV Life of Chunk, Welcome Life.
Chuck, yes, and now the Welcome to Darry which is not cashing in on stranger things whatsoever.
We swear or hit which, yeah, we swear.
It's a new Stephen King of renaissance, I tell you it is. Yeah, but it's no longer a renaissance for
¶ Farewell to Tales from the Dark Side
tales from the dark Side. Gentlemen, this is the end of the road, the end of the line. We're saying goodbye to George romenro for I never said goodbout it. Georgia Merrow. I'm thinking about him right now as you should.
Just one of the better shows we've watched together. I really enjoyed it. I think it was consistent more or less throughout. There were some Higgley Piggley moments, but I think it was a good show overall. The movie was a good way to end it as well.
Yeah, the series was hit and miss, but every anthology series is hit and miss. But it was consistently hit and miss. It never just nose dived and never returned. And right, what a welcome change that was.
That was really nice. Yeah, and I felt, Yeah, there were some really strong episodes even up to this season, so yeah, good choice.
Yeah, unlike Tales from the Crypt, which had an entire season that was bad like so yeah, yeah, I guess, like the last May two and a half, I guess it's better to just have your mediocre to bad episodes spread across everything evenly, as opposed to just like load one whole season up with them and just make it interminable, to make it to the entire season, just make people leave your no, just.
Keep firing your staff until you're left with the people who don't give a shit about horror and are burned out and don't ever want to be there, didn't want to be there, to begin with. That's who was running Tales from the Crypt Sorry fans of tails CRIPT. A bunch of people who did not give a shit about Telsmcript ran that show and.
Then make financial decisions based on how cheap you want to be take the show overseas, and it continues to make the show worse by doing so, tells the dark Side never did that.
Dark Side never went to Canada.
No it didn't. Jesus, yeah, didn't go to Canada. Didn't go to the UK, which we've seen these shows do now.
For he's a jolly goodfellow for Talis Darkside.
And didn't do that either, to be fair, thank Christ.
So we say goodbye to this, to that, to the other until next time, Chris Dashu. Where can people find you if they're looking for you?
Weirdingwaymedia dot coms where you can find all the things that I work on, including this in the Culture Cast and Scary Stories we tell and Shabby Detective and Cold Check tape. So yeah, and if you want to support me financially, Weirdingway Media specifically doesn't have a Patreon, but we all have our own, so Father Malone has his at patreon dot com slash Father Malone. Mike has his at patreon dot com slash Projection Booth, and I have
mine at patreon dot com slash culture Cast. If you support Mike and I, you get access to the only thing that's not on Weirdingway Media, which is ranking on Bond, where we talk about James Bond once a month, and Father Malone has joined us on that twice. So that's where you can find me and everything, literally everything. What about you, Mike Waite?
Oh yeah, pretty much the exact same thing all the way down the line, even the Patreon. So thank you, Chris, I appreciate that. But the one Patreon we didn't talk about is Father Malones, and he'll tell you all about it right now.
He mentioned the patreon give me a money portion.
Of it, so oh, there you go there.
But as to what you get there, all the shows come out there early, and we have shows very specific to the patreon. We've got a comic book horror adaptation going on right now, We've got the Miranus Rick moranis Fest is going on, Star Trek Fest is going on. Anyway, there's a lot going on in the patreon, but you can keep it here too because Every Monday it's Father Malone's weekly round up where I look at everything that's
streaming and or theatrically released. And every Friday it's a it's a rotating you figured it out, everyone, Thank you so much for joining us here for the tales from the dark Side. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. Actually, every until next time, enjoy the daylight.
The dark side is always waiting for us to waiting to enter us. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.