¶ Intro / Opening
Dark Destinations may be end Times Night's Preacher.
Why would a few more casually struggle.
Me because of their blood? Will join yours a radio drama anthology.
You are wrong how you figure Every mark on Mongo is hunting.
You down, not you, your partner, he said, I didn't
¶ Episode Overview: A New Lease on Life
have a ray gun.
Full cast performances set in the haunted corners of the globe.
Darkness is coming for you.
That's the fear that taunts me.
Dark Destinations by fatherm Alone at Weirdingwaymedia dot.
Com weird We.
Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the horror anthology podcast, where this season we're taking a look at George A. Romero's nineteen eighties series Tales from the Dark Side, Sharing the Midnight view with me are the culture Cast Chris Statue.
Prefer to go by Pete, Have you Seen My Dragon?
And joining us al as always is the projection boost Mike White. We're taking a look at two episodes from season two. They are A New Lease on Life and Printer's Devil. A New Lease on Life season two, episode fifteen. It originally aired on January the twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five. Written by Harvey Jacobs and Michael McDowell, Harvey Jacobs See Again. This one is based on a story by Adam K. Jenkins. This one is directed by John Steer Sick and stars
Mary Windsor, Robert Morothman, Ben Frank and Robert Sutton. This is a story about a man who has a new lise on live as he moves into an apartment building that is that's alive. What did you think about this one, Chris.
I didn't think the building was going to be a drect but it is. Boy, what a weird conceit for an episode of this show.
Huh.
It's pretty obvious pretty early on what's going on, like, don't touch the walls, and then the one guy goes the radiation, gets into the walls and doesn't get out. It's like, look are you talking? And so epitstill kind of plays its hand a little too early. I like the idea. I actually think it's pretty interesting. Think you could actually take this idea and expound upon it, even make something more of it, because here it feels I
don't know. Look, it's a twenty three minute episode of Tales with the dark Side, so they're making the most of what they have. I will say the Michael McDowell of it all feels like why the guy's getting fed into the monster at the end of the episode. I don't think Harvey Jacobs went that far, given what we've seen of his work it previously. I think it was a lot more fun than it had any right to be.
And twenty three minutes went by pretty fast. And maybe this is comparative to the last two things we watched, which were really not great, so this is this is a little bit better than either of those. But I enjoyed it well enough. I mean, it's it just telegraphs where it's going way too ever, But you, Mike.
I that whole telegraph too early. I think if we got a little bit more of his struggle and the whole idea of just how awful it it is to and that probably would have required at the one montage one knocking on doors, looking around at apartments, seeing the price tag, circling ads in the paper type of thing, going out and doing them and really making it so that he's desperate to find it, and he finds this amazing place, super low money in a month, he would
be entirely grateful, and maybe he should be more grateful and then certain weird stuff that having the two guys at the drag in their back or the maintenance they are, that's interesting. They're like a little comedy. Seeing Marie Windsor, I so she probably one of my favitals. She just had that crazy catwoman type of look. And I don't mean like Tamala Harris catwoman, just the eyes and everything always had that of exotic or and I just would pick up and chew on little Mike Elijah Cook Junior
and just spin him out again. I thought she was great at that. She doesn't really get a whole lot of chance that kind of thing in here, but she does really get to shine and I heard that. So yeah, I thought it was pretty close to being a good episode, just it could have gone a little bit farther too. Point. Yeah, there's twenty three minutes, but I think they could have spaced it out a little bit differently, plotted this for a little bit more.
Mike, are you telling me you didn't understand why they just set it in the hotel and the room from that smoke detector episode so they could reuse the set and just put a little panel on the wall. It's cheaper that it's like, the cheapest episode of the show is what it feels like. I feel like we've been on this set before multiples.
Yeah, and we can't even make any marks on the world.
They need it again by the end of the week.
How about you, fatherlive, At.
What point do you just sign that things are just more than weird?
When the nails pushing itself out of the wall? Was that not moment enough for you? I would have left right then and there. I'm like, I'm out of here before.
You allow yourself to be roped into two year leaves. I assume he saw the apartment more, but it does not seem that way because he's coming in for the first time and he's already signed the two year lease, which I understand at two hundred dollars. But did he not read the lease? Okay, let's back up. I just want to say, because one thousand percent mic, all they needed to do was show disheveled guy viewing a shitty apartment and it's out of his price range. He goes
back to his car. It's clear he's been living in his car and reads in the paper two hundred dollars a month and off where we go and don't have the maintenance men be so fucking freaky's up front and have all this weird bullshit like just right in his face. There might as well be a sign saying don't live here. From the way everyone is acting. And this guy is no,
he's no piece of work either. This is a man who says the words I had my mother had a special condicil in her will, leaving me that microwave of and at that point that is like.
That's what was it? Like crazy as a soup sandwich. That's like that type of like I was expecting when he says the coddasle about the micro wor is this a Harlan Ellison episode?
It's something I like his name Archie Fenton. Folks, Again, if it's not giving away that this episode has no idea in a lot of ways, it has no idea what it's doing with the character. It has a great setup, but the characters are not well thought out, especially our main character who is an idiot, like he should have just left the moment he put a hole in the wall and the nail came out, blood started shooting out
of the wall. Break your lease and leave. That's what I'd be doing, not being eaten by the building.
Okay, let's say you've put a nail on the wall and it's been ejected and icker has dripped out of it, and when the maintenance come, they're using hydrogen peroxide to close the wound that they're calling it, and then the wound disappears, and you're still like, you know what, it's two hundred dollars a month. I'm okay with this amount
of weirdness. But when your neighbor is screaming no, as they're saying you're being evicted, and as you step into the hall where you can see the impression of someone being dragged away into the darkness, and then one of the maintenance men gets in your face and says it's all a dream, and then the building begins to shake. Then you leave anything.
Five hundred and seventy five dollars, father Malone, that's how much it is in today's money. That's how much two hundred dollars a month.
Okay, but we're assuming we're in a big city, right, I'm assuming that was New York or LA. But pretty good digs close to everything for Ritzier area for five mins that apartment, I don't know. I would walk out as soon as I saw the panel in the wall with the camera.
Yeah, rubbed the rubbed the panel.
The panel. Yes, worse than the maintenance men. Is this homo erotic? Touched the flesh of the.
It's not homo erotic. You're petting an animal. It's fucking weird, is what it is. This whole episode is weird, But I like the conceit of it. I like the conceit of it because it genuinely this could be like it. I don't know if y'all have seen Monster House kind of like that in a way, but not as good and not nearly as well thought out or well written or even it's just the same idea that, like the
house is sentient, into the building is sentient. I think you could really build this out into something a lot more interesting, kind of an actual idea.
Speaking of that, Chris. A year or two after this episode aired, if You Went Too the it floated around in the magazine, but a Fangoria magazine had a feature called the Terror Teletype, which they would broadcast from the trades what horror movies were in production, and one that was listed for several years was a film called Apartment Living to be directed by George Romero about a man who moves into an apartment building that is a lie, which I assumed was inspired this episode, say I, and
for years I dreamed that that movie would be released. That script's probably out there somewhere, even if it was not inspired by this episode. It is a potent idea, and somebody out there tried it, and why haven't we gone further with it?
I think you could do it right now in the current climate of things, and it would be even more of a man Can you imagine given how fucked up the housing market is right now and how expensive everything is to be, Like just think two hundred dollars a month right now, two hundred dollars a month to live
in a building like that were. Yeah, there's just some weird ass shit going on, But I wager that anybody listening to this show might be living in digs that are equally as weird and are paying more than and their building's not going to eat them. Everywhere anyone lives has its weird idiosyncrasies. I just don't think that most places people live spe I'm just not most people's places that they live aren't inside of an animal or inside of a giant dragon, apparently a literal dragon.
I do electricity? How the water works?
Way?
Well, it's it's it's like sake, It's not even water. Sake comes out of the goddamn spigot. What does that make sense? Is the dragon magical as well?
It would have to be in order to form the shape of an apartment building?
Yeah, how does that even happen?
I think the effects guy must have had a ball here that the practical effects guy with lights exploding and faucets spraying and radiators blowing flames.
And I guess the other thing I don't understand is how do these people come to work for the building? That's the real question, right.
Where's the communication between Mary and the dragon? Maybe who knows telepathy? She dreams it a stage hand comes on and pulls the dragon and her into the dream and that they can have a conversation. What I want to know is is they're a gaping ma room on every floor or do some floors have to come down to the gaping ma room.
It's like the ice yeah, oh no, at a hotel ice machines on three and seven for the ice machine or the vending machine. It's on three or seven, three or seven? Sorry you don't have ice on your enough money for ice machine on each lease prices? Yeah, it's I would assume only one floor has the gaping mad Does the dragon have multiple mouths?
Could be, as it happened.
That mouth leaves something to be desired to quote the Bible? What that mouth? Do we find out? A pop?
I thought it was sufficiently creepy. I know that I'm reviewing this movie as a fifty one year old human being, but when I saw this episode, I was twelve, and it scared the shit out of me, and it worked like magic, because this is like a cartoon Rosemary's Baby. Basically, everyone's so odd and like you should would notice it from the get go, but as a child, they had no frame of reference other than oh, it's just weird people, I guess, and then oh, no, there's a mouth.
And is this one woman cooking all this food all the time. You're telling me other people who live there aren't also feeding the dragon? Why does she have to cook so much?
She has to she loves the dragon. Okay, that's extras treats for the dragon. She knows the dragon wants a turkey. Not everyone is giving their organic garbage in turkey form the apps.
Are they living inside the dragon then, yes.
Yeah, it's like that scene in the Empire Strikes Back when he shoots the floor and will play shakes and he finally realizes they're inside of her.
Yeah, the space work right, with a nice interior decoration though exactly.
Yeah, yeah, it was a monstro the whale from Pinocchio.
Yeah, yeah, Geppetto had a good setup in there.
I thought, yeah, exactly, listen to TV. I think I had that it'd be fine. And with this place you could because of probably the dragon conducts electric.
Yeah, and don't Rady eat the dragon. I like how we're stuck on the improprieties of the episode not explaining the dragon logic enough.
I liked it and I just went with it. I was like, eh, all right, yeah.
It makes no because it makes no fucking sense, and the episode just goes the building is a dragon, moving on. It's okay, all right, fine, you just in this universe a building can be a dragon, and that's clearly what's going on. There's no question.
You mentioned at the top the name of the building
¶ Introduction to 'Printers Devil'
is the Saint George, the Slayer of Dragons. Ironically named. But I would also like to mention that when I was seventeen years old, I lived in a building called the Saint George on Revere Beach. Revere messages. It's a little weird to here years later that that thing that freaked me out so much was shared the name of a place I would eventually live in.
But when you ate chicken legs in that place, did the building shake? No?
It didn't. But what's weird in remembering is that every floor did have the trash compact or bin that you would throw stuff down into. And I forever, every time I threw something down, thought org garbage. Dragon's coming, all right, all our next episode is Printer's Devil. This is season two, episode sixteen. It aired originally on February the second, nineteen
eighty six. Written by John Harrison from a short story by Robert Dulart, This one also was directed by John Harrison, starring Larry Minetti, Charles Knapp, Kate Charleston, and Catherine battisone somebody describe it.
A desperate, frustrated writer and a tour is convinced by a shady, oversized produced animal sacrifice that becomes successful things don't go.
Now what'd you think of it?
Now?
Junior is the main character and Alex. It's Alex that's the producer, right or the guy who's wanting the animal sacrifices. Yes, okay, because I really like that actor Alex Kellaway character Charles Knapp, love his voice, loves physicality. Wasn't he in? He was also in Tweet? But I want to say that he re quickly proxy.
Yeah, if he.
Wasn't in how Soccer Proxy? But it looks like he wasn't. Like he stopped at one died in me five, probably because of that bolting around. But my god, I love him and I love him voice. Did I like this episode?
No?
Not real. This is another one of those you're caught by a contract. You don't know if I to follow it or if I get out of it. I don't know. I just was like it needed more to it is what I felt like. Again, to quote Chris, this felt like a Blackout skit?
Chris? Would you think master of Blackout Sketches?
Oh?
I think John Harrison should stick to producing because he produced those two New Dune movies. I'm kidding, I joke. This is not his best work he has done a lot of great things, obviously, but this is not one of them. It's actually weird to be that he produced the two he was one of the EPs on the two most recent Dude movies. I know he directed the two thousands mini series, but to be involved with those movies I thought was surprising when I when I looked
into that. But look, I think ultimately something like this kind of episode of the show, I don't know. I think we've had this weird issue this season where some of the episodes have felt like other shows, and I think that this is another one of them, and this just feels like a Twilight Zone eighty five thing, and it's a retread of things, like Mike said, a retread
of things we've seen before. And maybe if we had not been watching all of these shows like this, it wouldn't be a criticism we could level against an episode like this, because I don't think this episode's bad per se. I actually think this episode well shot, well acted. I think the twist at the end you see it coming
from a mile away more or less. But I think the issue is because we've been watching all these anthology and we've been watching them, I mean, Father Malone you and I have been watching anthology shows together essentially since you and I met in.
Like seven years.
We are, yeah, like it's a lot, and we've watched a lot of anthology stuff in seven If we've watched anything more than anything else has been anthology stuff. And so I'm just used to the tricks at this point. I'm used to the things that they do and the directions that they go, and the kinds of stories that they tell. And this is yet another similar Like Mike said, guy makes a bad deal and has to stick to it.
We've seen that it's just a printer this time as opposed to the devil or the devil or the devil. I mean a lot of the times it's been the devil or like a demon, and this time around, I guess this guy is probably devil adjacent. He's doing animal sacrifices, but I don't know. I enjoyed it, but it did feel a little rote because again, just the we've been watching anthologies for so long. What about you bother?
I fucking loved this episode. I thought you can instantly see John Harrison as a filmmaker and not a television director. Honestly, in comparison to the previous three episodes we watched, which felt very, very threadbare. Hey, let's put on a show. Yeah, this it felt that it was lit correctly. It was you could though there were shot choices going on, and
he was trying to tell a story. I recently have come around to the I guess I've always been appreciative of a prick of a protagonist, particularly on an anthology show, because Larry Minetti here is he really is a no talent attack. His big dream project is called Into the Void. It's about a young man's incestuous relationship with his sister and how he was abandoned by his alcoholic I guess they were both abandoned by their alcoholic father. Oh, and
his best friend is murdered. That sounds like a real fun read. Nobody ever wanted to read that, and he was never going to get that published, and that was the only book he had in him because he was being mister Ortiz. Meeting the Devil is the best thing that could have happened. So I love how fucking cynical that one. And guys, here's something that I made me enjoy the episode because of my misunderstand a little bit
more than y'all. When he gives him that first animal to tank home, I somehow did not put it together that he was going to have to sacrifice the animal. And as the animals were accumulating in his house, as he was gaining more and more success, and his now new wife, who is attracted to him because of his success,
spell that this man is casting on him. As soon as we get to there's a young lion running around the house, and now a bear comes trundling in, and she's like, I can't take this, and she runs out. And I thought, this guy just gets to sit around this house and write all day. With all these animals, this looks like heaven. And then and then then I realized, oh, he has to kill all of these wonderful little critters again.
And I don't know.
Somehow my mistake delighted me more about the episode because it is just an okay episode. Yes, we have seen this one million thousand I did. I didn't necessarily see the twist coming. So when he says, yeah, well, stakes are gonna have to be a little higher this time, I was like, oh shit, I forgot how much I love telling from the Dark sign Because Twilight's on eighty five wasn't going to do that. Night Gallery wasn't even going to do that.
No. That is the thing about this episode that is very tails from the dark Side is the ending of the episode. I think definitely goes where it needs to, and it stops. I mean, similarly to other episodes of this show. It stops just short of showing us what's about to happen. But we know. I mean, shit, he's holding that knife right next to you. I don't understand why she doesn't just wait, what but she's toast right then and there we're one second away from him. Just bye.
We know he's done it to all these animals. I don't know what we would think would be stopping him.
It is a long and lingering and loving shan of that blade slowly coming up. It's a pretty horrific way to say good night Sunday, folks, have a good right next week.
Yeah, he's why he keeps the animals there. I would have if it was me, I probably body him or have an area, yeah, or kill them and kill them the next animal. Like, he's got cages and stuff all around the house. I don't know how good that. And then I started it in the smell and yeah, right, that wasn't good. Yeah it's one. I thought it was a stuffed fox. No, that's a real fox. These are
all real animals. Like yeah, I'm just but gosh, the Devil character, like I said, I just can't say enough nice things about him because he just seems funnest time, especially when he's giving people headaches and he's got that baby doll and he's squishing the head of the baby doll. And then his weird punk rock assistant girl who seems to be hanging around reading magazine holding baby dolls and stuff. I was just this is the fun of this.
Comes Catherine Baistone is the punk rock assistant who, as you said, changes an outfit every shot. She appears in I believe eight episodes of Challeston the Dark Sign but as voices, So keep an ear out for any time you hear a voice on the phone, it'll probably be Catherine Banistone. And she went on to be a big voiceover artist, just like Karen and Seymour in the previous Oh nice, Okay, this is a deal with the Devil episode.
You're right, Charles Nappy is fucking phenomenal here. That's something about that guy and that voice. And I knew him from Twilight Zone pretty much only. But as soon as he started talking, it's such a I don't know why he didn't do more voiceover work. It wasn't hired immediately. It's so rich. When Larry Minetti comes into to discuss his deep fucking dramatic novel, he has him basically he does.
She's just estrating. It's like a he does not scientology test to hear he like makes him have the wired can and then it turns that on and then they says, well, it's determined, you're gonna get one hundred and fifty thousand a year. Here's the book. You gotta go right. So this is not only a deal with the Devil episode. This is a deal with l Ron Hubbard.
I don't know if he's on the stage or what. But Charles Knapp was working from the time of nineteen according to dimd which is never wrong, nineteen fifty, all the way up to near his death the last role here in the Dark Backward. He was only in thirty five roles, which just screened to me, because you're right, he's got that amazing voice. He just because it sounds raspy and hoarse, but there's so much emotion behind it, and he seems like, oh gosh, Fellas, it just seems
like he's gonna say something like that. I'm like, this guy is great. Why yeah, why wasn't he a major cartoon a villain in Batman? You know, it's like him and Victor Buono. He could have been King Tut's brother.
Oh yes, Emperor whatever, Yeah, exactly.
He could have been Mark antonyl probably.
But he play fades.
Just tiny, tiny little roles in Chinatown. He's the bartender and dead runner. I mostly remember him from Dark Town Strutterer's one favorite films, where he's Officer Tubbens quldn name.
So haha. Here's what I love about him. He's having a ball oh yeah in this performance, and he's doing such a good job that he makes the the casual use of magic in the episode one d acceptable just buy it right away because he believes it.
Yeah that's fair. Yeah, it works, it works because he's doing it.
I love it.
I know he's the best. He's the best part of the episode. I think. Obviously we have seen plenty of these episodes before, but I don't think that diminishes. Good performances obvious, and to be fair, we've seen a lot of these. We saw a lot of these in Twilight Owe Lesson that was like a Twilight Zone eighty five toes. This show, it hasn't.
I think we haven't a lot of those. We got three so far. We're in season two.
This season alone, we've had three. No.
No, No, in general, Oh, in.
General, that's that's fine. Feels like we had him a lot in Twilight Zone.
We're just getting the man good.
Hey, by the end of this we'll be like, how many of we've seen it at this point? Too many?
I never get tired of a deal with the double episode.
I don't as long as it's done well, as long as it has a novel cook or something to say. If it's just a retread it it's like, we know where this gotta do something with it. And I think this one doesn't enough enough, doesn't have wrong glass?
He would make everything better?
Or who was the Dan Hadea? Did he play the devil? At one point? Yeah?
Right, all right. On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we'll be taking a look at the next two episodes of season two. Those are the Shrine and the Old Soft Shoe. Midnight Viewing is a proud member of weirding Way Media Group. Our theme song was composed by HP with an assist by Donald or Rubinstein. Until next time? What are you working on? Where can people find?
Chris Stashue Weirdingwaymedia dot Com is where you can find everything that I work on. But if you want to help myself or Father Malone or Mike quite out financially, through the magic of Patreon, Patreon dot com, slash culture Cast or Projection Booth or Father Malone will get you access to things you can't get access to otherwise, including ad free content or exclusive So go there to find those things. What about you?
Pretty much everything the same line via dot com as will find everything that I work on that's not on a Treon. How about you, Father Malone.
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¶ Final Thoughts and Next Episodes
thank you for joining us here at midnine Viewing. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.
Arrange to
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