Tales from the Darkside S02E03&04 (Ring Around the Redhead & Parlour Floor Front)

All right, listen up, Cave's I got your assignments riga six four three wheeler one four eight not eight oh four and only you. You need to join host HP and fatherm Alone as they examine one of the greatest sitcoms in television history, Taxi in Night Mister Walters a taxi podcast BANDA zero like your boxing.

Record, Thank mister Walters. Weird Weave.

Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the horror anthology podcast, where this season we're taking a look at George Romero's nineteen eighties series Tales from the Dark Side. Sharing the Midnight view with me are the Culture Cast Christachue.

I don't know how to tell you guys this, but I practice a lot of voodoo in my spare time.

Well that's perfect. Also joining us is the Projection Booths Mike White.

Oh this is far above the cost of rubies.

Okay, And tonight we are taking a look at two episodes from season two. Those are Ring Around the Redhead and Parlor Floor Front. Ring Around the Redhead is season two episode three. This originally aired on October thirteenth, nineteen eighty five. Written by Ted Gershoony from a story by John D. McDonald, Yes that John D. McDonald. Directed by Ted Gershoony and starring John Hurd and Penelope Ann Miller. This is the story of inventor who finds a earth

Thank god it was Mike and not me.

We never knew that john Ny MacDonald wrote sci fi, and this story kind of makes me doubt that he did write sci fi. The whole thing of how our main character is an inventor, but then he doesn't invent

I'm glad you had to answer first. Boy.

Oh, and it's all a death be a death row death row right, a death row confession. Yeah, I forgot about the framing story. Sorry about that.

Oh yeah, you forgot about the best part. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like beyond unintelligible. For the most part, I don't

Yeah, that was actually pretty good compared to this, especially.

Speaking of soprano people from The Sopranos being in anthology shows. Joe Penny in this episode, John Hurd in this in that episode, and John Heard in this episode. I I wanted to like this, but I don't understand what the point is, and the fact that it's Dave's ex earthquake is just fucking bizarre. There was an earthquake and then there was a volcano in my basement. Okay, okay. That's all I could say was Okay, it's bizarre. It's strange. They make some choices. I don't think the choices work

A death sentence in anthology television always seems to be three days after the crime, as opposed to several years of decades of trials by then. I think he might have told this story a few times. And I bet those Rubies would have been raising some other eyebrows too about what was actually going on in that house. He was convicted so quickly without actually telling a story. It's that's a bit unusual. The entire episode, the pacing of it felt as if we were watching a previously on

I liked this episode more when it was jin No Chasers moments ago. Yeah, and it has that same framing device too, a character talking directly to the camera essential so.

And you know what you're right? Mike liked, why is there even a volcano? If the ring is if you can remove it, I too thought, oh, this is part of that thing. It's like a break or something. They just take it out, go put it in your closet. How about here's that ring.

That he's doing death experiments, that's his whole thing is Oh yeah, then I'm like lowering this anchor in. Okay, it must go pretty deep. Do you ever touch ground? Like what's going on?

You know?

And then he says he committed he did one hundred and seventy probes, And I'm like, in how long this morning? What are you doing with this?

There's very little logical sense being being put on display here. I did like that, as I did not like to wrap around kind of death row bit. I did like how stormy they made the noir jail. Like a certain point they got like a lightning storm going on, which always looks bad usually, but I thought looked great here. So there are aspects of this that I liked a lot, including all of the performances, like how you could how could you not? Penelope Anne Miller? Is that her name's

Oh? Yeah, she's perfect in the gun and Betty Loo's handbag, but something like this, I'm like, this works. But yeah, when you put her in a meaty role like Carlito's Way, you're like, oh, like, she's no Michelle Pfeiffer.

Or the Relic.

Oh god, the Relic. I mean, I can't get past Tom Sizemore. He's the star of the show for me in that one. Well.

I have so many feelings about that film that have more to do with the books than anything else. But Penelope An Miller's fine here. Comparative I think.

Oh, yeah, who was Lincoln?

Rhymes those oh uh Lincoln, Uh, Preston and child there you go.

Yeah, if you like them, you're not gonna like that.

No, And Penelope Ann Miller is actually like the least offensive part of that movie. She's fine here. You said, manic Pixie dream girl. It's very much that, like a specific kind of fish out of water character. It's reminded. It reminded me of a ton of characters we've seen a million other times before. And again like the weird moment where she can stop time and intercede and stop him from being executed, Like what fuck? What the holy

Yeah, the antagonist of the piece who's been who came and stole the ring and took the rubies and took that ring? He took he took I live. He gets two scenes basically in a row taking this ring, I'm back, take this ring away from me.

And again, like we all know, in the reality of a real world, if they don't find the body, they're not going to there's jail. Some John hurd is, there's a quick turn around here. Apparently that this guy is just being executed. What you were tried convicted? Another executing you a week later? Whoa what world?

Are we?

The perfect prison system?

Apparently it's called habeas corpus for a reason.

I guess so, Mike, like you said, he's an inventor, but we never seen him inventing anything. We don't see him testing anything at all. What we do get is suddenly he's teaching her planets and English and penmanship. He's singing. He's sending here to sleep, which was not at all uncomfortable.

He invented a bucket on a rope that he could lower into a hole in the ground. He invented that. He's an inventor.

You ever see that short film with the Australian with the hole in the ground and the guy he's lowering a bucket into it, and they keep sending He keeps getting jewels sent back up to him for things that he's sending down. And at a certain point he gets in the thing and goes down and they send up

Well, and not only is it a mess, it's like it's an incomprehensible mess. I don't understand why this story took twenty two minutes to tell. It's not a blackout sketch, because we've leveled that against the show, me specifically, plenty of times. This is just one of the more just like water treading, wheel spinning episodes of this show I've ever seen. I don't understand the point of this episode. This episode is like a guy was Scott Wilson went

Yeah, if it was Scott Wilson would have had to have been Twilight Zone rather than rather than I mean he's old or was old, but not that old more.

Oh yeah, I got something more to say about this because here's the thing, like with all those sort of with all the time spent on all of these different avenues, when they could have just been telling us one story the whole time. Uh, at the end, we have time to like slow walk through the fucking prison, slow walk to the chair, and then lovingly like close ups of him being strapped in and the diodes being placed, and

Well, at the end he's saved because he's worth saving apparently, good god man. Yeah, it's just sure, Okay, I just I sometimes I failed to see what they were getting at. What's the point of the story here. Is there a something be some sort of metaphor you're getting at, or some sort of homily you're trying to get across. Nope, it's just stupid. It's just it just wastes its time and our time. And John Hurd, unfortunately, that's the biggest shame here. This is the only time John heard his

Okay, halfway through that when that guy takes the ring, when he brings it back, he starts babbling like this love crafty entail that like it's a portal to this whole other horrible place and there are things out there, and where's that while they.

Imply it with the frayed wire, that's like something fray to this cored and it's we're never gonna see it because has no budget. There's there's not a But there's a reason we didn't see what's in the portal because the budgetary restrictions may apply.

Well, i'll tell you where the budget comes in. It's that lavish last supper that it gets on death Row with two bananas and an apple and maybe some green beans on there. I mean, that looked like it must have cost a lot. And that's how I want to go out. Two bananas and an apple.

Please.

Well he requested it, you know that's how it goes.

Yeah, yeah, I can't blame.

And that order slash lawyer whoever, who just gives him the stink face like ninety percent of the time she's on screen.

What a useless character, what a whole useless like waste of expositional time. Strove me crazy. If this were not based on a previously written short story, I would assume that this was an episode hobbled together of everyone's unfilmable idea for the season, all the.

Tropes rolled into one. Yeah, that's a.

Good idea, but you don't want to do a whole episode about that. Put it in the ring around the right eyed episode.

This is like the what is it called when you go to the gas station and get all the sodas together like suicide. It's like that, it's all the things mixed together, and boy, it doesn't taste good at all.

I am curious to read the original short story just to see what that was like, because I do like John D. MacDonald so much. But I'm not Russian. I'm not rushing out to get that get it.

No, but his lawyers certainly looked Russian, all right. Next up, we're talking about parlor floor front. Parlor is spelled with the British you, so it makes it look like parlur in my mind. So every time I look at it, I got parlor floor front. Makes it very hard to say anyway, Season two, episode four. This originally aired on

We've found it the episode with the most indefensible fucking characters known to man. They're here, folks, What in God's name is going on with this show? I mean, I talk about painting with the broadest of broad brushes, my Lord Donna Bullock, and see here's the name you should have said, Father Malone. You want to keep those names up, John Colonious, which is sounds straight out of Roman Empire Central casting. Such a strange episode. The two main characters

Yeah, I mean this episode keeps trying to pull the rug out from under you. Where Yeah, these are horrible, horrible. The wife is worse than the man, but the man is pretty bad as well. This whole thing of how she sets up Adolph Caesar to what does it make her fall? And then she lies that she was carrying a baby and I'm just like what, oh gosh, that's horrible. Yeah, and she killed a cat in order to prove out that he caused a curse us and I'm like, what,

That act to be another dude.

Yeah, but a Dolph Caesar in that movie and Rollins are just freaking amazing. And it was one of those where I was like, Oh, I want to see more of this guy. And then when this episode comes up, I'm like, oh, I didn't know he did the Tales

She took the ring off of her finger gingerly apparently in letter v oh thank you here you go? I ads like, why did you what was the reason you've died? Because it seems like the ring was taken very quickly and easily.

And why did she feel that she had to take the ring? Never mind? Sorry, I'm asking for logic in this episode.

Yeah, this episode is dangerously close to it Tails from the Crypt segment from the film Poetics with Peter where people on a block are trying to oust the old man because billth the old man, and they do all these dirty tricks to get him out of there, and then he finally hangs himself. He's so ostracized and cut off from life from these assholes. That is one of my favorite segments of any filmed entertainment and anthology series is that the.

One where they end up being in the dark and there's like razor blades on the wall and the rest.

That is tails. That's the same movie Tails from the Crypt, the Amicus production. But that's a further segment.

Oh okay, Okay, that's really the only that. Isn't there

I think those are the other one that's Bulk of Horror. Okay is it Baltimore? No, it might be Test Crypt, but yeah, yeah, the Poetic Justice segment with Peter Cushing, that's the one. If if there's ever, an image shown from that movie, it's him rising from the grave the Grimsdyke zombie and that's the payoff there that sort of inspired Father's Day and in Creep Show that one, like those two are of a piece and not necessarily of equal measure, because Peter Cushing is heartbreaking in that thing.

I mean, she's like the.

Er Karen when she's complaining they're going to have Adolph Caesar inexplicably hangs himself. And that's where it gets too close to a parallel to the to the Tales of the Crypt episode there's no reason he should have done that, like maybe parted off to prison something, but that that was stupid. But nevertheless, when they're having the viewing of his body in the apartment and she's upstairs bitching about people coming to this man that she drove to suicide, Uh,

Yeah, it's fucking weird to me the way that the characters of the Upstairs people are portrayed, Because am I supposed to feel bad for them? Episode what do you want for? I'm not going to feel bad for these two white devils, Okay, Like that's the portrayal of the character. It's like very on the nose, very obvious. The only thing if Donna Bullock had been blonde and blue eyed, it would have been a little bit more exactly what

Yeah, yeah, give me that shot. No no, by no means I mean yeah. And there were times where I'm like, is the husband in on it? Because she will complain to him about things, and then later on it feels like, oh, he was aware of this the whole time, but I guess not she let him know, because there are some things where he doesn't realize that she's lying, and then other times where I think he does realize.

Right, yeah, yeah, like he's such a dope too on top of everything else. He doesn't realize it until it's effectively too late, and then he just leaves and she.

Well, and he needs his come up ons as well, because.

If it gets away, he just walks away. Okay, sure, fine, Yeah. To put it all on Donna Bullock, I'm mean, I get it from the character being the repugnant piece of shit, but it's not enough. It's not enough. It's so not enough that I don't know. They went so far in one direction they couldn't course correct enough, is what it feels like. You push the dial so far with these characters, I'm surprised they didn't have n't dropped some sort of slurf. Yeah, I mean, were they were like one step away from

No, and it network television too. I don't syndicated, but you know it. This is on Sunday nights, right right right?

Yea, Well you know how those people are one of those things.

Right yeah? I mean I was half expecting it because again, like it was trafficking in real world events, I mean things that we've heard about people have been doing, and especially in places like New York where I'm assuming this is set East Coast episode found them alone.

Oh yeah, Ernest Dickerson, I believe.

Yep, it's again. I appreciate where they're coming from, but they don't nail this at all.

Rosette le noir, Why are you just sitting there while he's hanging Call the coroner, call the end.

Oh that was my favorite party. That was like, look what you did to him, that's a body just hanging there, like.

Right there, look at my father one.

God's name, like shit. And she's already wearing morning clothes too, So did she go home after she saw him hanging there and wear black clothes so that she could be found waiting?

It? So was?

It's yep, yep, yep, nope.

And the episode is one confession after another from this horrible wife. Like every couple of scenes, she's like, oh, by the way, that was me. And then by the third or fourth time, the husband he's surprised that all I love. By the way, when he goes to leave her, he grabs his essentials to go. He takes this leather satchel and he puts in one pair of boxer shorts and he's like, I'm on my way.

I'm just wearing the clothes on my back now.

And by the way, and speaking of the ring that she needs to have back because we need to get her downstairs and in front of the body and whatever. A minute ago, she threw the ring at him like it was nothing. It obviously, let's take the fucking thing, just get out of here. And suddenly it's important why I need that back now? Don't be clumsy at the end of an already trying episode. We're trying to work with you, dark side.

Yeah, this episode feels like it is working against the audience at every turn to just again be like, well, we set up these really terrible people, but we don't really care enough to have their story lay out in a satisfying way. They could have had them really get there, come up, and they don't. We saw a guy just be forced to live forever in this episode. Let's the

So they ad all sees he breaks a vase that the husband then extorts half the price of the vase out of him, and then the wife says, no, that was my fault. I set that up, and she said, and then they believe there's a curse. So she's saying, you have to go give that money back, and he's saying, no, it's too embarrassing. Here's what I it's too embarrassing. It wasn't embarrassing to dock this man his minimum wage. You're

Can I say, though, because we I alluded to the idea of oh, you know, like you said, Mike, like those people did he have to be black? Do you

What the fuck Hodgepodge. Sure, but yeah, you know what, I honestly, if Adolf Caesar showed up in any episode like he showed up and said I'll take any episode, you would just put him in any episode like like, it doesn't need to be a black character. This should just be because this is a class thing going on here. This is right, This very well could have been any anywhere USA with these rich white assholes kicking out the locals.

It just feels worse, is what I'm getting at it. It feels worse in the episode, feels worse because of it not taking the actual steps it needs to take to have a satisfying conclusion to these two fucking clowns of characters.

Also, don't do voodoo on the stairs and closer.

When you do voodoo, is it voodoo or obeya that's the real question, or Santoria.

This is syndicated American television. It's voodoo.

It's always voodoo.

Baber saying, hid your voodoo? Or people will feel this will happen.

Where's James remar At getting his head cut off? That's all I can think of, and will be Goldberg.

We're gonna have to do it. I'm gonna have to do a special series just on the horrible Betrayers of Voodoo and all the anthology series over the years, because it is, oh, it is rife with them, right with them?

Well, you can even go back to Love and Let Die and then bull Tack episode we did forever. Oh yeah, oh my god, Horror in the Heights or no, not Horror in the Heights. I can't remember that.

The mobsters with the zombies.

Right, yeah, yeah. And Antonio Fergus I think is in that one?

Yeah, I think you're right.

Wasn't that one written by David Chase?

I think so?

Yeah?

Yeah, purveyor of Italian American.

Stereotypes, undead and ghosts.

Yeah, yeah, I to your point, bone, this is a very much a Tales from the Crypt episode masquerading as the Tales from the dark Side episode, which means it's not going to have the emotional punch that it could theoretically have. Not saying Tales from the Crypt would have done it better, because categorically they never did.

I disagree. If Tales from the Crypt had taken over for the last third of this episode, then it would have. I might be recommending this episode right now.

If oh, I'm just worst idea that they never did the voodoo stuff right though. It's more what I'm getting at.

But the practical effects that they would have reeked upon these two would have been fucking fantastic and so well deserved.

That's true, But I was more speaking to the idea that you and I both know they never did a single voodoo episode right on that show, and they had seven seasons to do it. They fucked it up every single fucking time they were Clancy Brown's episode, James Remar's episode, there was an episode with a disembodied head at one point. Every time they just fucked it up so hard.

Not as bad as this, but or is this as bad as that? I like this one more than those.

Hey, this was you know what this had and those didn't. This is only twenty two minutes long.

Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, Praise, Praise plays barn Somdy speaking a little bit let time now.

Daming with faint praise, as they would say.

On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we'll be taking a look at two more episodes from season two. These are actually two rather seminal episodes of the entire series. Those are Halloween Candy and the Satanic Piano Midnight Viewing. The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of a weirding Way media group. In their theme song was composed by HP Until next Time? What are you working on? Where can people find it? Christatue?

Well, if you want to find myself and the stage name that I go by down at the local strip club, Satanic Candy, you can find all of that over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Yeah, everything I work on can be found there. What about you like?

Quite well, it's weird. It's kind of a coincidence. Everything that I do can also be found at weirdwaymedia dot com except for the aforementioned James Bond podcast that we kind of alluded to there with a mention of Livin Let Die, and we'll have Father Malone on that episode talking about the black exploitation movie that was Livin Let Die.

Yeah, go seek that episode out. I had a really good time talking about that and Livin Let Die is great. Anyway, go check that out for them over there, and keep tuning in here to Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology Podcast or Midnight Viewing Anthologies Attack or mid Night Viewing Father Malone's weekly round Up. We got a bunch of shows and that are all available for you, but they're also available early and commercial free over at patreon dot com

Midnight Viewing. The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of Weirdingway Media. Our theme song was composed by HP with an assist from Donald Rubinstein and Erica Lindsay. If you want to hear these episodes early and commercial free, become a patron over at patreon dot com slash fatherm Alone. Not only are the episodes up early, but we have extended interviews and bonus podcasts where we spotlight the best

Real but not as brightly lit.