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Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the horror anthology podcast, where this season we're taking a look at George A. Ramero's nineteen eighties series Tales from the Dark Side. Sharing the Midnight View with me? Are the projection booths? Mike White?
Is that a comment? My glass is dirty?
It is a comet and your glasses are dirty? And the culture cast Chris Statue, You.
Know I heard that Baltimore is a wonderful town if you know someone to show you around.
Okay, Tonight, we are taking a look at two episodes from season two. They are Comet Watch and Dream Girl. Comet Watch is season two episode thirteen. It originally aired on January twelfth, nineteen eighty six, Happy New Year, Everybody, written by Harvey Jacobs, who wrote it All comes Out in the Wash, or at least the story for it, and Julie Selbo, who wrote the False Prophet based on
a story by Harvey Jacobs. This one was directed by Warner Shuck who directed Grandma's Last Wish, and stars Fritz Weaver Inside the Closet, Anthony Held and Kate McGregor Stewart, who is the censor in Scrooged. I can see a nipples that same lady that was his wife in this one anyway. This one is about an astronomer obsessed with Halley's comments return who manages to draw down a fellow stargazer who witnessed the comet in nineteen ten and has
been traveling with it ever Sids. I'm going to go to you, Mike first, because you were around in nineteen eighty six and can remember the quiet mania for Halle's comment that was going on. I certainly remember a spade of movies like Night of the Comet, Remember The Adventures of Mark Twain that was all about Halle's comment.
Yeah, well, hell, I was around in nineteen ten when it first came out.
So out the tomb situation here exactly.
Yes, I come out of my cave every fifteen years, my cave which I make out of newspapers and spit.
God, I had forgotten all about that, Thank you.
No problem. And then I eat the Petory Gland. Oh wait, no, I'm getting my col chek mixed up with my X files?
When do you marry the fifteen year old?
And all this?
Oh shit, really forgot him already done?
No, no, I scandal noted. Yeah, I had him on the show, and I was really debating. I was like, do I have a canceled person on the show? Yeah, I'll do that. Great to see Anthony Heald, especially not playing a shithead. But he plays a shithead like nobody's business. Though I guess maybe he is a little bit of a shitthead. He's just so obsessed with the stars and everything. And I can understand the commentary that only comes around like once in your lifetime, unless you're Mark Twain or
live to be seventy seven. I guess it is, but you really only really remember it the one time, I guess. But yeah, I was a little wary of the science of this one with people coming through the telescope. I wasn't exactly sure how this is supposed to go, and it's how many times have we seen the shrewish wife and we have the guy who needs the better girlfriend? And this is basically so many Stephen King short stories and so many stories that we've seen on here. It
is word processor of the gods. But rather than deleting his wife and Isaac Newton or sorry Edmund Holly, rather than deleting them, he just they eventually get taken care of on their own. What'd you think about this one, Chris?
Oh my god, when didn't we wander into? Is what it felt like like? It was such an I had to remind myself what show we were watching with this episode, because it was shockingly, shockingly tonally not what this show has been at all up until this point. And this segment really felt like something from Twilight Zone eighty five, almost a blackout sketch. I know I repeat myself a lot sometimes, but I wouldn't say it's a blackout sketch. But the idea is it's like a three or four
panel sketch from like a mad magazine. Oh you got trapped on Hailbop and whatever. This isn't Hailbob. Wait, this isn't Hailbop, right, hail BOP's another one? Is this another one? Okay? So Hailbop is the one where Marshall Applewhite took a ride. Right, that's Hailbop. That Hailbop. That's the one that I remember is Hailbop.
Allie's comment is the one that they named after Ace Freely from.
Kiss Okay, gotcha. I'm glad Father Father Malone bopped for Hailbop.
Oh God, I'm imagining this episode, which is effectively a real mantic episode where their characters are coming down on the Hilbob comic, but we're next door. Are these Nike wearing freaks around cutting off their genitals and killings.
That might have been better than what we got. This is a strange segment because for me, it just doesn't feel tonally like the show we've been watching up until this point, a show where children are being murdered and adults are being murdered by monsters and teddy bears, and I would say cell phones, landlines. So it's just a little weird. It's not what I was expecting, and it feels a little quaint even for this show. Anthony healed though, he's great, but when is he not? That's shocking. Anthony
heel's great? Who would have funk it? Father Malone? Let us know, what did you think?
I thought it was a novel take on time travel in that the character is effectively in stasis, but they're not. It isn't like she went into hyper sleep. She's just traveling with the comet and not aging because she's traveling faster than the speed of light I supposed, But no, that does make any sense because none of the science here makes sense. As you said, Mike, it's the opposite of a normal tails from the Dark Sign episode. This
isn't technophobia. This is technophilia. It's the magical device that allows us to or it's the It's not the magical device, it's the device that allows us to tap into magic. Here basically where Edmund Halley we find out has been trapped on the comet for seventy five years, and then the previous occupant of the house who built the telescope itself. So is she magic? Maybe just the telescope came together in the right configuration. It allows you to see a
window in time. Who cares? None of that matters. This was indeed word processor of the Gods. Yeah, I agree, Mike. The lead character is a bit of a dick in how obsessive he is at the beginning where his wife, who is a shrew certainly and he shouldn't be with her. She's in curlers and wearing in eating bond bonds literally for fucking on one sequence here and this is one
of those he works for her father's situations. But really she wants him to just go to a dinner party, and he doesn't want to go to the dinner party because he's gotta look at comed again. The commed will be there tomorrow night. Man, Just go to the fucking dinner party, be there for three hours, and then come back and then spend the rest of the night with the comic. It just seemed, I don't know, it seemed very silly. Why would this woman want to return to
this material worlds, this comic ghost. I guess she's stuck up there with Fritz Weaver. Speaking of Fritz Weaver, Now I had never seen this episode before, Guys, somehow this is the Tales from the Dark side that will.
Lose WHOA, Yeah, that's fucking blore. Yeah, so particularly an episode to miss. Really, yeah, you really missed a real winner of an episode.
I feel really completest.
Do you feel robbed? Do you feel robbed that your enjoyment of the show was lacking because you didn't get to see this episode originally?
What's worse is it starts and the first shown is a close up of the portrait of Edmund Halley, who is played by Fritz Weaver. So it's Fritz Weaver in a big old French wig. And for some reason, my mind went to the Marquis de Sade and I thought, oh, this is gonna be good, and then it turned into word processor of the Gods, and so that was wildly disappointing. But little things like I don't know Harvey Jacobs wrote this.
I noticed he's got his name on about eight episodes of Towns from the Dark Side's, but he shares credit on each of them, which means he's turned in his idea or something and then had to be rewritten. But none of them turn out good. Because this is a bad Twilight Zone episode. This isn't, like you said, Chris, this isn't. It's not just a Twilight Zone eighty five episode. It's a poor Twilight Zone eighty five.
So yeah, even two or three oh three, this is made in Canada. This is a Canadian episode. I can't even This reminds me that George went episode of Twilight Zone eighty five where he's like in his basement and there was like the other version of himself through the wall. It reminded me of that nan I remember thinking then, man, this is fun, and here it's I mean, look, Haley's comment or Halle's comment was clearly a thing everybody was thinking about. This is a thing that was on everybody's mind.
But to what end? They don't do anything interesting with it. And it's a love story, but this show doesn't do love stories. This is such a weird story to adapt for this show. It just doesn't work. And it's not even mean spirited. The hero of the piece gets what he wants in the end, not what he deserves.
He reminds me too of Bring Around the Redhead with just like, oh, I'm going to open up this portal to another world and this girl's going to pop out right, There's going to be danger and it's weird that the danger is his wife and Edmund Halley himself, and there's it feels like there should be more coming out of that telescope. And that's what I was thinking at first.
When she's like, oh, no, you know the telescope is still open because that's the portal and now boom, it's Edmund Halley, I was like, Oh, I was expecting like monsters or some weird creatures that lived on the commet with her, but no. Yeah, so we're thinking Father Malone. When you're explaining this, it's because it's going near light speed and that's why it's they're not aging. This is this the whole Einsteinian physics thing.
I think that's what they're implying.
Okay, so they're on an observed point and yeah.
Here's what I would have liked to have happened to the episode. This is very simple. They could have even done this with dialogue, which is they mentioned that they this window in time opens up and then the telescope becomes this conduit through this window in time and puts you on the comet and it's a it's an episode on a clock because they need to get back on
the comet. Now, what if they both got sucked into the telescope, which they close, and then they look through the telescope and then we just see their bodies floating in space because they missed the time window.
Yeah, but that would actually have a point. Well, I'm just there would have been there would have been a point to there would have been some payoff there, and that's not something the episode interested in doing. Is giving us a payoff at all? Apparently for anything.
No, it's it isn't. This isn't. It doesn't even have the teeth of word processor of the gods because he deletes that woman from existence.
And this is just oops, she fell into the telescope like he didn't even do anything. He didn't even do anything. No, he had to do nothing. She fucking she fucked off on her own by anestative.
They made it her fault because she lunges at the nineteen ten girl.
A shrew, I say, a shrew of a woman like you said, my, how many shrewish women do we need? This show doesn't do that. This is a Twilight Zone eighty five episode masquerading his Tales from the Dark Side. And I remember now why that show was such a fucking slug because these episodes are not good. This is an episode of Tails from the Dark Side. I would say you lucked out by not having seen Father Belade straight up.
It really reminds me of a bad one act, especially that they're I don't think they ever leave the room, right, it's just.
Not the house anyway.
Yeah, it's just really feels like we put this on for our high school play. We had a whole night of one acts, so we decided that we would do this particular episode of Fales from the dark Side. And yeah, it was a rousing success because we were all seventeen years old and we had the best time dressing up an old timey clothes.
I had a wig on, yes.
Oh yeah, Remember how funny Fritz looked when he was wearing that crazy get up. Yeah. Yeah, it just it's so amateurish.
Speaking of amateurish, yeah, it's kind of going to be our transition here. Our next episode is dream Girl. This is season two, episode fourteen. It aired originally on January the nineteenth, nineteen eighty six. This is written by Tim Duranan from a story by Barbara Paul and directed by Tim Duranan, starring Carolyn Seymour voice of Aisha Kendisha.
Also voice of one of the main characters in Gears of War, which I recognized her voice immeditly.
She is a massive voice actor. If you played any Star Wars games, you've heard her voice. She was in Twilight Zone eighty five in the Ye Gods episode. She was Maghera in that episode. Okay, she was Ziita in Stepto and Son.
I mostly know her from Mister Mom.
I think that's right. Yeah, that's the other big eighties thing. And then not long after she started doing voice work, actually not before that, nineteen eighty three. I think it is her first voice credit in the film Barefoot Jen. Remember that animated film.
No, I can't say, Oh it's this.
It's this horrifying Japanese film about the horrors of nuclear war. And oh yeah, yes, Barefoot Jen. Yeah, she's Jen in that in the English dub of that film from eighty three. But she has sincere.
I couldn't.
I'm sure you could tell me the number of credits she has, but it's vast anyway.
Just the voice acting alone.
Yeah, also starring John Cedar and Lou Kattel. And this is a story of a stage hand who manages to try actors in his dream where they're forced into a game of some sort Chris you go. I have zero notes on this one. This one was ohow well Zorro the Gay Blades own Carolyn Seymour.
That's the other thing she was in speaking of George Hamilton, and we just talked about recently, Mike and I did on our Columbo show. I man, this is an episode where they just throw you into the deep end, like minute one, right, and they're just like, you don't have any idea what's going on here? And neither do the characters. Yep, that's true the case. It's confusing and bizarre, and then the payoff at the end is Wow, they really thought
they were clever. Huh what a Can I just say that this might be the first time in the history of midnight viewing where I say, this is a shame that it's that this show has gotten this bad out of nowhere, because these two episodes together pretty bad, but on their own they're equally quite terrible. And this segment or this episode, I get what they were going for. I understand the idea that they're needling at here, but
it's done quite poorly. It's not very compelling. Looks like it was filmed speaking of filmed in a high school fucking theater. Good lord, this looked like it was filmed down at the local LA high school, fucking ten minutes from I don't know CBS's backlock. I have no idea.
This episode looks cheap, it feels cheap, and ultimately goes nowhere, and it wastes I think everybody's time, not at least mine and yours and Mike's, but definitely the people who worked on this episode, because this is just a strange episode to say the leak REDI, Mike, do.
You have something to add? Amazing Larry, That's all I could think of every time it was on screen, and just that amazing like head turn with those little like knots that he's got on his head, you know, the little U top notz. Yeah, this really reminds me of four characters or characters in search of an author, where
we're just like trapped in this imaginary world. And I guess the fakiness is supposed to be part of the charm because it's all to do with the theater and that it's the stage hand that is controlling everything while the director is doing his bidding.
Yeah.
I could not care less with this one. Everybody's wearing bad wigs, we've got bad backdrops, we've got really flat lighting. Feels very hazy through so much of this. I guess there's just a ton of smoke on the set. So yeah, I didn't even like the look of this episode. I just really it's a mystery for them, but it's not
a mystery for me as the viewer. I'm just like, Okay, yeah, I can pretty much tell what's going on right away, and it takes them twenty minutes to figure that the rest of that out, So it's pretty frustrating.
Lewis Kutel that worked for sixty years in the industry and passed away in twenty twenty one, which is fucking insane. He looks old here. He looks old here in eighty six.
If he wasn't on Marty Miller, that's a real big miss because he's got the perfect face for me.
He is on Barney Miller. He's been on two episodes of Barney Miller.
Good Yes, how about you, father Malone? What'd you think?
Uh?
What did I think? I? I and the last episode, as you mentioned, you both mentioned it now about how kind of felt high schooly. Yeah, this one in particular, it's supposed to be a hallucinatory dream episode, but everything looks like the real world, with just something slightly out of skew in the in the background. A lot of conversations are taking place in front of a cyclorama of
a mountain or something. And as you said, like the characters are dressed different, and she has a wig on, she has very short hair, and now they've got her dressed up in a week. And so for all the episode manages to do is keep a level of confusion going Where is that the same actress? Is that a different is this someone new? Is it like that? Kind of that's least off on it, right, because if you start asking any other questions, you'll realize there's nothing at
all going on here. They think the conceit of somebody dreaming you into their dream is enough to carry over having no plot or story, and it's and you do need one, as it turns out, because you're right, it is a bit of the four characters in search of an exit or the what was the Twilight Zone equivalent of that? Or was that the twilight.
Zone that goes all the way back to like Italian drama. Yeah, I think it's characters in search of an author is Tirandello?
You know, yeah, exactly like model things. Just oh, and we don't know any of these people, We don't what's so funny?
And it treats it like we do and it's so bizarre.
There should have been a ten minute prologue and get into the dream sequence.
We go right into it. We get we have possibly thirty seconds of real world at the beginning, during which we're being clumsily given the information that people have been disappearing lately, and then we're so confused for the next twenty minutes that we don't realize that the rest of the people in the dream are also the disappeared that they were mentioning so fucking briefly before all the confusion began.
Hey, I'd like to point out Carolyn Seymour is sexy without having a sexier up in a bullshit outfit by the way, episode.
Oh, I know exactly. I thought they were doing the opposite, Like when she's in her short hair and just dressed as she was, it's like super fun. And then they tart her up like some fucking lame show girl, and it was like.
Yesh, and he goes, oh, I didn't notice you had such good legs, like ick, give me that ick please, you've given it to me outright, you weirdos's And as a weird sexual it's like a weird sexual Sadism to the episode is what it feels like, because the auto Strog characters getting off on being this misogynist to everybody too. And you know, I don't Again, I'm not saying it doesn't work. It's just he never gets his in the end, So what's the point. The people that get theirs are
the people that that don't deserve it. And it's again, I understand we complained about the show being mean sometimes, but in this regard, in this episode, it's not even that the show's being mean. It's that the show doesn't have any idea what the fuck it's doing. Brak Plea, and so it's just high on the end is she's back in a dream. I guess maybe.
We don't know who these people are. Nope, we don't know who the stage hand is, what his relationship is to them. We're given ten like in that thirty seconds. She basically get to work kind of a thing. So we get he's brow beaten by them, and so in some way this is revenge where he's the master and they're all his puppets. But who is this man?
Why?
And why is it a theater and it's a theater. Why aren't the these dreams spectacular looking? They're just drab versions of the fucking real world.
There's a sign that says German words on it, father Malone, what are.
You talking about our high production?
High?
Oh they're high, all right, somebody was fucking high.
We even stop somewhere in the middle and suddenly they're normal again, and yeah, back to it again.
It's like, well, that must be when he's not in control of his dreams, and so we can be coherent, insane and self aware in his dreams. We get he's not aware, he's not controlling the dreams, Like what fucking explain yourself? Like, because I'm not sure what's going on here, and you're not sure what's going on here? Clearly now what this episode is.
No one knows what's going on here. And then what a novel climax. We need to wake him up to release us from the dream and then we immediately need to start dreaming ourselves to trap him. Hey, I've got another version. How about we get him to wake up and then we'll be free, and then I beat him within an inch of his life so he never dreams again.
Yeah, just a little ice pick right there in the corner of your eye.
There you go, I'm gonna go take some sleeping pills instead. Seems like a bad idea that I like it. I liked it, but like it made no fucking sense. It was.
That was so.
Weird at that point where she's like keeping my sleeping pills. Come on, and she's like swallowing, come on, do your stuff. Sleeping pills. That's the big chase scene in this episode.
Yeah, that's and as someone who's just been taking sleeping pills last month, that's how they work. You just take them and you fall asleep immediately, right, just as what.
One year after Nightmare and elm Street. I mean it, really, I was feeling vibes when it's like we have to get to sleep rather than we have to stay awake because there's a man that controls our dreams or we live in his dream.
And everybody knows that. It was either Robert England or Lou Coutel to play Freddy Krueger, I'm your boyfriend now, Okay.
There was a bit of dreaming here as well. That was also photo right. Oh yeah, we're dealing with episodes with the zeitgeist. I guess with Halley's comment and dreams, everyone was suddenly obsessed with dreaming.
All those Vietnamese boys are to dying in dreams.
I talk with these boys, where are we going?
Yeah, well, that's that was what inspired that's the yeah night Elmsree was inspired by a bunch of like Vietnamese or Lawaitian like teenagers dropping dead in the middle of the night. Like it was like a thing that was happening in the eighties for a while. And Wes Craven read.
Read an article and the article had said that one of the kids said that I can't go to sleep, He's going to get me something like that, and wow, then ended up dead. But they was not an isolated case.
And then there was the other part of the story that the parents of one of the kids found a coffee machine in his closet with an extension chord plugged in because he was just staying up all night so yeah, they were scared of luc tlatel was in their dreams. This terrible mustache in wigs. Which version of Lucatel? The Italian one, the German one.
The one sweeping the floor?
Oh, the one beat into a bloody pulp by a minute.
Mike like Mike likes a working man, exactly the sort command episode of mid nine Viewing.
We're gonna be taking a look at the next two episodes from season two. Those are a New Lease on Life and Printer's Devil. Midnight Viewing is a proud member of a weirding Way Media group, and our theme song was composed by HP with an assist by Donald Rubinstein. Until next Time? Where are you working? What's going on? Tell me everything, Mike White?
Everything? I was born a poor black child everything. I'm working on the Projection Booth. I'm working on The Shabby Detective. I'm working on the Life and Times with Captain Barney Miller. I'm occasionally guesting on other shows, including the Culture Cast. All of those are available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. How about you, Chris.
Everything that I work on can be found similarly at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, which is the place where you're more than likely finding this so good on you. Head on over to patreon dot com slash Father Malone, patreon dot com slash Injection Booth, or patreon dot com slash Culturecast to support each of us respectively. Yeah, you get something from each of us. If you do, I won't tell you what. Go find out for yourself.
And if money's sight, you can do us all a solid my giving us a five star review, Subscribe like share, just tell somebody else to listen. Thank you all for joining us here at midnight viewing. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight. Rang In
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