¶ Intro / Opening
Way wait.
Ala, Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology podcast,
¶ Episode 1: The Geezenstacks
where we are taking a look at George A.
Romero's nineteen eighties television series Tanels from the Dark Side. I'm Father Malone and sharing the Midnight view with me is the Projection Boost. Mike White, Goodbye, geesen Stacks Family, Goodbye, it's a runner. Unfortunately, Chris Stashue is unavailable this evening. It's just Mike and I tonight, so we're going to be taking a look at two episodes from season three.
Those are The gezen Stacks and Black Widows. The gezen Stacks season three episode number five, originally aired on October the twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six. This was written by Nancy Doin, based on a short story by Frederick Brown, and directed by Bill Travis. Starring Craig Wasson was Wasssan Wasson, what is it, Mike, You've just wasted fucker in the past, right I haven't.
I've tried to but never got a hold for the Bobby double episode, and then I read some stories about him being a sex best so I didn't really go after it that heart oh No.
Also starring Dandy crowning Larry Pine and Lana Hersh. This tells the town uncle Richard giving young Audrey a dollhouse he found in an abandoned property, always a good idea. What Audrey discovers about the doll family seems to be happening to her own. What'd you think about this one, Mike?
I really enjoyed this. First off. I love that their last name is Hummel, which is nice because my mom used to collect tumbles, So those little stupid things are not quite precious moments. They seem to be a little less cloying than precious moments figures. But it was a nice foreshadowing. I actually did my homework on this one, and I read the Frederick Brown story and enjoyed it.
It's very different insofar as the uncle has no idea where these dolls came from, and I want to say it ends a little bit differently, so the way that they set up the whole idea of the doll house and her hearing the voices and then them eventually spoilers becoming the dolls. And then there's like this like the Russian doll, the Russian nesting doll type of thing where it's like, oh, and now here's a smaller version of the house, and I'm like, wow, what this has this
been going on for? I would like to know. It just seems like twice now, but I would almost like if there was another little house inside of the littler.
House type of thing. But this was good.
I wasson is a little much here. But I enjoyed pretty much everything about it. I really especially like Larry Pine does Uncle Richard quite a bit. Would you think botherom alone?
I again are echoing you. I really enjoyed this one a lot. This is a fan favorite the Geese and Stacks, and you can see why. It is weird enough and wild enough and very very dark side where this dollhouse just falls into their lives. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's no punishment going on here. It's not a morality play. I love when it's this kind of weirdness. Larry Pine is a Wes Anderson guy ever since the Royal Tenenbaumbs. He's in every single one of his He's
a Woody Allen guy as well. Tandy Cronin playing the mom Let's guess who her parents are?
Oh my god, I had no idea that they had a child named Tandy from me, that's absolutely bizarre. I mean it's like naming Isabella Rossolini as Ingrid Rossollini.
Yeah, that's Jessica Tandy. And here and croninstad are Sandy Cronin who. I don't know that her name is Tandy. I think it's like a Reese Witherspoon. She took her mom's maiden name, like as her first to honor her or something. But yeah, she's fine here. Craig Wasson, Yeah, man, I don't know what it is about that man. Now, hearing he's a sex pest makes sense because there's just something off about him, right, Like even in Body Double and I love Body Duble.
Oh yeah, that I think one of my favorite to Paul Musk go absolutely that is pure to Palma and he's a proxy for us.
But he's also off putting at the same time, like you can't really get behind him. And that's the same thing here, like he's just as ineffectual. He just gives off ineffectual. Is that it?
Yeah?
Yeah, well then he I don't know if he can hear the dolls too or not. There's a moment well, there's a couple of moments in here. There's one where she's talking about somebody who's been bad and they're gonna get a spanking and all this, I'm like, I didn't see any spanking in this episode. I was very disappointed
by that. And then there's talk about mister Geesenstack hitting missus Geese and Stack, and when Washington pulls back his fist, I'm like, what, you've bunch your wife effect, But then he stops themselves, so I'm like, okay, do the Geese and Stacks have absolute power over them or what's going on?
And then there's also this whole thing of the time delay too, which I thought that there was going to be like a little bit of time between when Audrey says that the Geese and Sacks are saying something or doing something, but then when they come to the mom's coat, it's like, oh, Mom's got a new coat. Oh and it doesn't have pretty velvet and shiny buttons, and boom she walks through the door. I was like, oh, there's
no time delay in this thing at all. Okay, But yeah, I didn't really get the rules or anything, but I was okay with that. But as far as the rules go, I wasn't sure what Wasson was experiencing. I didn't know if he was hearing them, or if he was just freaking out, or if he's like just listening to Audrey and like waiting for her to like translate what the Geese and Sacks were saying.
Yeah, I think it was. I think it was just a matter of him hearing her and then seeing the results immediately, just like the audience. But here's the only here's my only problem with the episode, because even though there are multiple problems, if you want to focus on them, that I don't care about because it's just it's like an argento thing. It's just like a mood piece. Ultimately, this thing is. But what drove me crazy is the
little girl asking the question. It was so grating. I wish he was just talking from one doll to the other. I know this is a quibble, but for some reason, this is what drove me over the edge for the episode. Don't do that for dialogue just Oh, so is mommy coming home with a brand new code? Oh? Does the code have nice? But does the bluh. Craig Watson has a has the right to be worried because his daughter
is a freakazoi age. He's just interrogating these dolls. And by the way, the humble joke, I love the humble joke too. Yeah, I've got a mammy collected hummels and yadro seeing those like elongated humbles.
Oh gosh, that sounds like nightmare field. I didn't realize that Giza stack means doll or strange doll. I'm not sure if that's German or were they comes from gott to be German. That feels like it, right.
Yeah.
The effect at the end where a house within a house within a house, image within an image within an image evidently called the Drost effect. Was unaware of that named for an advertisement in the Netherlands which featured a woman on a box holding a box with a woman on a box, and on and on and on and do invent me so like the Land of Lakes kind of effect? They anyway? And I was curious too, are the geese and snacks predicting the future or are they
forcing it? Because like you said, maybe they're just seeing what's happening and relating that to the girl. But then there is no other reason that he would almost punch her in the face. That was way too much.
And then also going back to my other question about can wass and hear them, it feels like the uncle can hear them when he comes into the house and their miniature and screaming and stuff, so I'm like, I can't. But then he gets strung into a doll as well, I think, I fay, yeah, but it is weird that I have no problems with these like quote unquote lapses of logic because I'm just like, that's a very effective story.
People become the dolls. But yeah, I'm like, okay, yeah, can they predict this because I'm thinking that they're another family from somewhere, But then she names them themes the little girl Audrey, and then names the uncle uncle Richard, so I'm like, okay, so it's almost like they're them in the future, but they are definitely different dolls. I don't know if that makes any sense.
Oh no, totally. And now I wonder whatever the next family that ends up inheriting the house, she'll get that same number of dolls and they'll be the Geese and Stacks, but she'll now rename them for her family, So every family becomes the Geese and Stacks in this aurable of a nightmare miniature house. And they did something similar to this on the Creep Show reboot. Well, one of the very first episodes about a miniature head. I just kept
showing it's it's really good. It's like this, and you're just like, what is going on here for the entire episode and then it ends and you're like, I don't know if I I don't know if that made sense, but I enjoyed it.
You know, I'm trying to think because I know I've read other Frederick Brown's stuff, but I cannot tell you like, oh, yeah, he's the guy that wrote this, Like looking at his filmography Martian Goat, Martians Go Home, I don't know if you remember that.
I do.
Yes, Yeah, that was one of his stories.
Wow, okay, yeah, great theme song with the Martians go Home.
Yeah, Marcians ticking over the World.
¶ Episode 2: Black Widows
Isn't that Randy Quaid in that? It was? Yes, I saw that in the theater Jesus Christ.
All right, the next Oh that's right, I'm sorry. He wrote to the Screaming mini So the movie that eventually became or with a book that also inspired The Bird with Crystal Plumage.
Oh, my god, speaking of our argenta. There you go. He's apparently a surrealist of some sort. Did they didn't give you any explanation in the short story? Did they?
No? Not really, And if anything, the short story, I was just like, wait, what just happened?
That was done with it? I'm start confusing the last few paragraphs.
Just call apart. I was like, Okay, I think the actual Tales from the Dark Side a little bit better. So one of the few times I can say the adaptation was better than the original.
Story, particular with an anthology series. My god. Yeah, all right. Our next episode is Black Widows. This is season three, episode number six, aired originally on November the second, nineteen eighty six, written by Michael McDowell, directed by Carl Epstein, and starring Margaret O'Brien, Teresa Saldana, Paul Iding and A Joe On Hold on, Joe on, Joe Doanzerio. I'm gonna do it, Joe Dongerio. All right, this is in this story. Spy are prized in this particular trailer home with good reason.
Mildred and her daughter Audrey. That's too, Audrey's in a row might might be able to relate to those spiders a little too well, which you think, Mike.
Again, I was very surprisingly tickled by this episode, and I knew it was going pretty early on. Didn't really buy Teresa Saldona being all being young enough to be Margaret O'Brien's daughter or vice versa. Whoever was the daughter was, whoever the mother was, was too young to have the daughter the age that she had.
In my opinion, I thought that she.
Should have been more like an old lady who was complaining of the aches and pains, unless she doesn't go out in those kind of things.
Because as it was.
The mom, I was like, she seems pretty spry, she's pretty young. Wasn't she out party and doing something else? But instead she just sits there in her web and waits for people to come in so she can take care of them, especially if they happen to kill one of them. Those little baby spiders around.
Don't touch the spiders in this trailer. We need a double wide and if you kill that spider, we're not gonna get it. Michael McDowell, how much I love you, but stop writing white trash dialogue just because they're in a trailer. Not everyone has to be called mama, true, Oh mama. It felt it's felt so carry like in the dialogue, and michaelmc is usually pretty good with dialogues. Margaret O'Brien is in Meet Me in Saint Louis.
Wow.
Wow, So I guess she is pretty old. But yeah, okay, seventeen years older. Okay, I'm looking at the trivia too, Yeah.
But that's negligible. And Teresa Aldona looks older than she is. Margaret O'Brien looks younger than she is, so yeah, they kind of look like, maybe not necessarily sisters, but it doesn't feel like maybe older friend or something, but definitely not mom and daughter here. Yeah, I don't I This is an episode I've seen and have confused with probably
a dozen other anthology horror stories. Every Spider story in every anthology has mixed up in my head, including one in Monsters, which the eventual sequel series to Tales from the Dark Side. They have a pretty good one, and that one is the one I was remembering over this one somehow, But it turns out I like this one better, even though that web is so fucking chumpy.
I laughed out loud when they showed that web, I was like, oh, so who ran out to the dollar store and bought all that close rope?
You know?
Oh yeah, well yeah, except it's just clothes lines, which they're saying that they were. They're hanging their clothes up anyway, they are the poor people in the are but like, oh yeah, yeah, that was terrible. The one thing I cannot recommend in the episode is the direction by Carl Epstein. This is I think this is the only credit or one of only a couple of credits, and just felt like, hey,
you're our pal, go ahead and direct this. It is not skillful, But I love seeing Teresa Saldan honestly, Like I know, I know why we didn't get more of her for so long, But it's a drag, like, oh.
You're gonna have to dish because I only really know her from the stuff she was in more in the seventies with I Want to Hold Your Hand, A Raging Bull.
I believe right around this time she was attacked to buy someone. She was slashed. Actually, oh shit, took face and spent years and years having reconstructive surgery. So oh wow, that is horrible. I didn't ye know that because I remember her popping up again in the nineties sometime, and there was a bit of fanfare at the time, like, oh my god, you know she's back that kind of thing. Maybe I'm making all this up. I don't know, cool, but I'm pretty sure that that's what happened. I hate spiders.
They're the worst. I don't like them at all. I don't even playing at them. I did that. We did not get full on spidery makeup here, given what we were given for a web, that would have been terrifying. Don't do that, you know what. I really liked about it, though. I think any other anthology series they would have strung us along for twenty two minutes and then we're spiders, as opposed to kind of giving us by the end of the first act, like here's the deal, You're a fucking spider and again.
Pretty skillful just to have those pincers coming in and taking care of the one salesman, and I'm like, oh, all right, Like I knew Spiders had something going down, but I didn't realize these people are going to turn into spiders. And then yeah, I love the whole Oh my god, when she comes out with the now dead husband's corpse and he just looks like a desiccated husk. I was very, very thrilled to see that.
Yeah, that's what we love about Berkside, right, Like they pull no punches. And compare this with say, Night Gallery Spider episode, that long fucking treatise by Ron Serlang about this spinster and they who and nothing compared to that spider.
That's that room size spider.
Yeah, that VW sized spider. Yeah this I thought I was worried Mike. Season three was really scaring me the first couple of episodes here, But I'm glad they're not leaning into more logic. If they want to keep being surreal for the rest of the series, I'm good with it because they're getting great actors. There's most of these episodes are obviously the New York ones, this one definitely, And look, they need to stop throwing favors to their pals and letting them direct and let some real fucking
directors in here. Ernest Dickerson's right there, guys, but you can let them out from behind the camera and let them do something else. He would direct the shit out of one of these. But ultimately an upward, upward a trend is what I'm thinking, and I hope I'm not wrong.
Yeah, I hope you're not wrong either, because yeah, I've been fooled.
Before, so don't break my heart.
Tales from the Dark Side.
Yeah, we're looking at you, Twilight Zone, jesus, anything else on Black Rodos.
I was glad too that they didn't show the baby. I thought that was very smart. They just showed us enough to give us what these folks are, and the rest of it is more sound effects and just kind of our imagination going wild. So all we really need to see were those two pincers coming down, and that's it.
Yeah, I remember now. By now Amazing Stories is in full swing. Alfred Hitchcock presents his back like all these big budgeted things were just making Tales from the Dark Side look like the chintziest side show freakazoid. But and on occasion, even I was not immune to that as a kid, something would come on and just be like, get the fuck out it. I'd turn it off, like really, they're not even trying, guys. And maybe that was amplified in comparison to those other million dollar in episode shows,
¶ Closing Remarks and Future Episodes
but in rewatching it now it's charming. Well, what you're saying now, watching the ingenuity of it, I don't want to see them turn into a spider. Honestly, that's not going to scare me. Yeah, if they were to do that in a modern motion picture right now, maybe it could scare me. But never mind forty years ago on a fucking television budget.
Shit, yeah, it is forty years ago, thirty nine right now, Right, that's wild to think about.
It's horrifying. It's scarier than anything in this series. All right, On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're gonna be taking a look at the next two episodes of season three. Those are Heretic and A Serpent's Tooth. Midnight Viewing The Horror Anthology podcast is a proud member of the weirding Way Media group, and 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 it? Mike White?
Well, usually I am busy working on the Production Booth, which is a podcast that I do day in, day out now weekend week out, and been doing it for going on fourteen years now. That's a lot of fun. I hope people actually tune in and listen because every week we're talking about a different movie over our production booth podcast dot com, which you can get as part of the weirding Way Media network, which is available. We're doingmedia dot com. How about you fa them alone.
I'm on the same goddamn network. And if you want to support this show, go over to Patreon dot com slash fallom alone. You're gonna get episodes early and commercial free, and you're gonna get content that you can only get there if money is tight, and I know it is. You can do us a solid by giving us a five star rating, or share it or like it, or it kindly, or tell some friends about it, maybe nerdy friends who like horror. Just saying thank you all for
joining us here at midnight viewing. Until next time, try to enjoy the.
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