¶ Intro / Opening
Wait wait, said.
Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the Horror anthology podcast, where this season we are taking a look at George A. Romero's nineteen eighties television series Tales from the Dark Side. Sharing the Midnight view with me are the Projection Booths Mike White, Well, I'm just.
Gonna break all of those ten commandments.
Also joining us is the Culture cast Chris Stashu.
I don't know if you guys know this, but practitioners of Voodoo are known to make gingerbread.
Cookies damn fine ones. Evidently, just don't dunk them.
I've heard their killer.
¶ Baker's Dozen
Tonight, we are taking a look at two episodes from season three. Those are Baker's Dozen and Deliver Us from Goodness. Bakers Dozen season three, episode number nine, originally aired on November the twenty third, nineteen eighty six, Written by George Andrew Romero from a story by Scott Adelman and directed by John Sutherland who is actually John Harrison. Not sure why the pseudonym, because I actually anyway. This one stars
Mabel King, Larry Minetti, and Vernon Washington. It is the story of an unscrupulous potential ad man trying to make a cookie manufacturer famous in New Orleans. That's as broad as I can get. What'd you think of this one?
Mike?
Oh boy, oh boy. Actually, I've gone on record many times saying how much I dislike voodoo, especially in movies. In real life, I guess it's okay, but in movies and in TV shows it's usually just so hackneyed and the whole thing of having voodoo dolls and all that stuff usually it's just not pulled off very well. But I love the meat spiritedness of this episode and just how the just the use of these voodoo doll cookies. They really played up for what I enjoyed quite a bit.
And then seeing Vernon Washington was fantastic as well. I love him and things like The Last star Fighter and other eighties things, so seeing him show up in this, I was just like, yeah, this works for me.
Where I knew him from, Oh my god, I was great. Ask you. It was the entire episode just going what I know him. I know he said something that it rings in my head, but what is it? It's from fucking Last star Fighter?
Yeah, I think it's something like keep on Dreaming or something like that.
Ah, Grace, what does you think of this one.
The amount of voodoo stuff that we've seen, Father Malone, is a lot. It's not on one hand, it could be counted on two. And I think this might be the first thing that doesn't feel clicheang yeah, but also that weird white people voodoo where it's like, this is voodoo through the lens of the white man, right, this is what I needed, Voodoo dolls and zombies. This is essentially voodoo cookies, which is a subsidiary of voodoo donuts and asshole Pacific northwesterners out there. I like the idea. I
think it works. It's bizarre, like you said, Father Moire, broadly, Yeah, it's a pretty broad idea that makes no sense in reality. But I enjoyed it. And the premise is weird tales from the dark side and its mean spiritedness. And yeah, it doesn't feel like a bunch of white people wrote a voodoo episode set in Haiti, because that's literally what we've seen. Look, it's probably they're verging on it by
setting it in New Orleans. I think we would all agree. However, if that's what they're gonna do, Okay, I'm okay with that. Just don't set it in fucking Haiti. Don't have people dancing around a fucking fire and loin cloths because that's literally tails from the Crypt and it was what's the term racist?
Yeah, that's the one you hit the nail in the hand. It's the problem with every Voodoo episode, every Voodoo story we keep getting, is because we end up in the goddamn jungle in a hut with a half naked person.
It's ridiculous, multiple half naked people and literally full naked tails from the crypts.
I'm thinking particularly of Lagoda's heads on that last season of Night Gallery.
I'm thinking of that one from season two of Tales from the Crypt where it's the bride dies and the guy's head is on the plate. You remember that one, the zombie Bride?
I do, and I know you do.
You're having fucking flashbacks like it's Vietnam or the Redheaded James Remar episode with Woo Bee Goldberg doing voodoo. How about that one?
Oh boy? You know The problem though, Chris, is that when I flash onto those episodes in my mind, I remember how good the visual effects were, and then it starts to convince me that that was a good television series. And then I think about all those people out there and social media saying, remember this show it was the best. I'm no, it wasn't. It was you are biking wrong.
Okay, remember how good this show was? Wow?
No, bring it back? Ye watch it also? No, just sit down and do a rewatch and then and then tell me how awesome it was. Here's my question, why would you make an aggressive cookie? She has voodoo flavors that will give you what they promise, So a happy one, which is all she eats, keeps her happy all day. And Larry Minette says, I had an aggressive one on the way over here, and I'm like, why is she making that for the Does she want her customers to
be aggressive suddenly? Like they can eat those in the store, Mabel.
Especially a white man in New Orleans.
Okay, I have of everything else. Pulling this out of Haiti's perfect I don't. If you didn't tell me this was New Orleans, I wouldn't have known. You could have said this was Detroit. I would have been like, okay, fine, this is some back alley right. Because the Larry Minette character has shown up, he has discovered these cookies. He knows that they have some sort of magical ingredient. He doesn't know that it's magic. He's convinced himself it's not.
He just wants to market it for them. He's opening up his own ad firm. We get too much backstory on Larry Minetti's character in this Tales in the Dark Side. His goal is simply to become her primary advertising agency, and then he gives us the mockup of her of the ad that he's come up with. And the ad copy is this little brown bags full of country sunshine to help you cope with city life. That doesn't make
me think about poop at all. That's his campaign. I would say no, because that's terrible and get out of here, like you should be ashamed of yourself.
You'd want to set those on fire and leave them on your neighbor store steps.
That's what it sounds like to me. I would like to say bravo to the editor of this episode for dealing with all the ceiling fan laid shadows on the actors actors' faces. That was a level of difficulty that that editor didn't need, but really rose to the occasion because John Harrison is constantly doing stuff like that. Again, not sure why he pulled his name off of it, where eventually going to interview mister Harrison and find these
questions out. But one thing I really did like he does this in everything he loves transitions, and in this one we don't get a transition, but we get a montage where the Rise of Cousins cookies through this advertising sequence where he has taken slides and like projected images onto like a radio. It's really cool for the limited budget they've got going in here on Dark Side. In fact, this entire episode looks really really good considering some of the recent ones we've had.
Other than the cutaways with the rat, which is obviously a budgetary thing, it's that's where it's they're getting the most out of Vernon Washington that they can, and he's doing what he can. But we go from man to woman to man, man to woman to man, man to woman to man, man to woman too, rat and she's playing with Plato the whole time.
Is what it looks like.
It's like, what's going on?
What is going on?
Then he turns into a rat. That's the only time it feels kind of cheap, but they work around it in the only way that they can. I feel like, it's the only way you work around it when you have a budget of this level.
I can't even say, like where the rest of the budget went necessarily, but there is a lot going on here, you know what, I will say where it went to. He made the episode look really good. He came in with a shot list and a design for the episode for this particular episode, and I've noticed Harrison does that specifically for each of the episodes, tailoring it to the
story at hands. Yeah, I do think it's chintzy in places, But if we're going to have chintzy be the false looking cookie dough as opposed to it's obviously a fucking set that I've thrown up some lights onto and it's a couple of actors reading lives. For him, this felt like a short film to me, with a couple of budgetary constraints.
Agreed. I agree with that, because we've seen some real clunkers in terms of the quality of the production design of the sets. Sometimes we've seen some stuff that I can't even I can't even believe that they were trying to pass off in the mid eighties as anything other than this is clearly filmed on a set. Yeah, this doesn't look like it was filmed on a set. This looks rather well done. Again, for me, it's just the
arbitrariness of the cookies in the voodoo. Oh yeah, my problem is so weird, just arbitrary and random.
My problem with the episode is Romero, in any of his writing, will always overwrite. At the beginning of an episode. It'll be a weird exposition dump. And it sometimes doesn't feel like an exposition dump, but it kind of always is, and it always frightens me. And then once the plot gets going and the characters settle in and it becomes great. But I always have the fear at the beginning of everything, and I had it again here because it is clumsy
at the very beginning of this. But what I loved about the episode is what I love about Darkseide, which is the entire time I'm thinking about this kitchen rat that Vernon Washington is playing, and I'm wondering what the relationship is here, and I'm thinking, is this like a husband thing or family in some way turns out to be Dad, and then she turns him into a rat right.
Over and over and over and over again.
Yeah, it's her term of endearment.
He's so incredibly mean here, and so at that point, because now we're watching Larry Minette, who's clearly this greedy prick and we're not rooting for him. I was kind of rooting for Mabel King's character because she seemed to like manipulate, not allowing herself to be manipulated and like gaming the system. But now it turns out she's just as bad as everyone. So at that point, I'm like, wait,
who am I rooting for? And sometimes that's great, Intel's from the dark side because everyone is terrible.
I agree. That is like twenty twenty five TV at writ large, you've got TV shows of just solely terrible people being terrible to one another, a llah Game of Thrones, House the Dragon Succession, and I'm sure the Sopranos, a lot of the Breaking bad, like a lot of that is now just like terrible. Like I don't understand why we have to root for anybody in any of these shifts.
Kind of don't feel like it's a requirement. I kind of would rather want everybody to get theirs in the end and nobody be left standing.
But that's the thing, and that's where this series is reigned Supreme because in the EC tradition, everyone's getting fucked. Doesn't matter how good or bad you were, you're the I loved the ending of this episode. God just to jump ahead, I guess. But first of all, okay, they introduced Larry Minette's wife, who I loved. This is this actress has been in two things, this is one of them. But she's just got a great face. So they introduced this character. And then we get this rise to power
of Larry Minette. Obviously he's like the king of advertising in the New Orleans area now by the time. And then the wife comes back and I wrote in my notes here she's still alive, like he didn't have her killed in some way. Even if she was, like, she'd still be with him. That's kind of silly. But then they do the old found the whole tail receipt in your pocket kind of situation here, but it's the handkerchief and oh when she crushes the oh, the cookie and.
Then yes, it's because blood, the blood in the shower.
And it's not just it's blood, it's it's chunky to the point of books. We're almost gonna get viscera. Oh yeah, and once again i'd like to remind our listeners that this television series was syndicated on Sunday nights at PF.
Wild. Yeah.
That is what really put this episode over the edge for me was that crushing of the cookie and then what happens to Mabel King. Oh man, oh my god.
And I was totally sad. They could have run the credits over the shower full of blood. But now then we got back to Mabel King who is having her skull eaten away by a rat.
It does ah, oh, and it wasn't the wife, wasn't she He kept dipping the cookie and hot coffee and she's screaming from the hot coffee. I was like, oh, that's so good.
And then he drowned someone. There's one of the things drowned. County commissioner drowns dipping a cookie in a cup of coffee. He was sick.
Fuck. Oh, I love it.
He gets what he deserves in this one, big time. They all do.
Yeah, nobody's good.
The wife collects insurance.
Yeah, she'll be okay. And you like she was. It's crazy about even she deserves something because she just thought he was cheating on her, whereas she should just have recognized what a dick. He was here was my favorite line in the movie. In the show, Mabel king to her dad, I'm gonna work you till you frazzle. Yes, wow, okay,
you gotta love a gingerbread vodoo doll. Back to the original sort of point in this episode, like as far as reimagining what a voodoo episode can be, like giving us kind of the signs and signifiers but turning them on their head a bit like Bravo dark Side and also Bravo almost mid season three dark Side. This is unprecedented in the world of thought and voluntary television for us so far. Our next episode is Deliver Us from Goodness.
¶ Deliver Us From Goodness
This is season three, episode ten, aired originally on November sixteenth, nineteen eighty six, written by Julie Selbo, a story by Susette Hayden Elgin and directed by Warner Shuck, starring Kailani Lee, Mary Louise Wilson as Steven Vinovich, and Jane Adams giving the first teenage performance on an anthology show that wasn't completely annoying but actually good. This is the story of
a mother and housewife who is an accidental saint. When her husband is running for office, her godliness is getting in the way, so she has to sin her sainthood away to ensure her husband's election. Chris, what did you think of this?
Here? Are you speaking in fucking tongues right now? Hey? It's the most exposition he shit possible. What a strange, odd, bizarre episode. Unlike the last one, feels very set downd. Unlike the last one, everyone for the most part seems perturbed by one another in some form or fashion.
And I.
The premise is so strange.
I just.
What were they on? What the fuck were they on? This is a strength the last premise was. I understood it. They're like taking the voodoo tradition with the cookie with the dolls and turning him into cookies. With this, it's a guy running for mayor his wife becomes a saint, and so she starts just becoming an immoral clown. But she could just go suck some dicks walking through the parking lot, to quote Clerks, and that's more than enough as long as it's not her husband. Per the Bible,
stou shall not commit adultery. I don't under And then this is solved like it's the concept is weird. It makes no sense. I hope that maybe I'm not the only one who feels this way. Maybe I am. I turned the floor over to Mike White.
Yeah, I'm really on the fence about this episode. I like how hyper stylized it is. You mentioned Jane Adams, who at this point in her life was twenty one years old, so and I wonder she was playing a really good teenager.
Damn it.
She does it great, though, And I mean I love her. I love her in everything that I've seen, even Orange County I thought she was great in. But yeah, I love her and happiness and everything else I've seen her. And I loved the whole thing of her and the colose things baton, yes, thank you, and yeah, she's just such a spas But yeah, I kind of like how just over the top all of this acting is our
main character just is way bigger than life. That southern accent is just off of the chain, and yeah, it's just it feels very and yeah, I think I kind of liked it. To Chris's point, it felt like once they got the point of she's a saint, but she doesn't want to be a saint, then yeah, maybe they could have had a lot more fun with that. We've seen people in movies commit a lot of sins. One of my favorites is Day of the Beast the Galicia
in Euroto. No I can't remember who directed that one, but where the priest is trying to meet the devil and so he starts doing all these horrible things so that he can hopefully conjure the devil to meet him and avert the Antichrist being born. But anyway, that was very fun. I wanted them to have more fun with this one. The Ruby character looked very familiar to me,
but I cannot place where I've seen her before. But then with her suddenly becoming a saint at the end, I was like, wait, no, she's not supposed to be a good person. She's the one that was teaching this other person how to be evil. The end of this it didn't stick the landing. Let's put it that way. What do you think fathom.
Alone about that ending? To me felt like in the end, sainthood is more of a contagion than anything. Yes, yes, so that I really liked. I really liked this episode. I know was sent bound. It's Warner show directing Warnershook mainly. An actor was in Night Riders and Creep Show. He's cousin in Father's Day, he's Richard the nephew the Oh my god, that's Warner Shook, and by now had started directing theater would end up winning a Pulitzer Prize for
the Kentucky Cycle. I believe as a director. And what we're seeing here are stage actors being directed by a stage guy who isn't that adept visually. Nevertheless, the writing is so fucking over the top in height, and everyone I think is coming up to that. I really liked to talk about high concept. Okay, mom's a saint. Didn't realize that an accidental saint, and in order for her husband to be elected mayor, she has to no longer be saintly let's go along with this, and then so
now she has to break all ten commandments. I agree didn't have enough fun with it, but then I think they're just worried that they were overloading us by that point with so much as far as plot contrivance. Nevertheless, what this reminded me of was the very economical sequence in Used Cars where Garrett Graham has to have all of the bad luck so his bull loose in the bar where he has to climb under a ladder and dump out all the salt and break a mirror. They
could have gone for that. Nevertheless, the performances across the board I really enjoyed, particularly the mom Kailanie Lee, who seemed so cartoony and yet grounded at the same time, and yet I believed everything that was going on with her. I love the fact that at a certain point Bruce Springsteen becomes a deity to be prayed to along with us, and just as far as having fun with breaking the commandments.
When the mom comes in and she's wearing Jane Adams Bruce Spinstein shirt and she's like, that's my Shirt's like, no, it's not, it's mine, and you get oh, she's lying and stealing at the same time. Okay, this is good now to the point of the adultery. She fucks the priest. It's true. What what I was. I hadn't seen this one, guys, but this is the first time for me deliver us from goodness. That floored me. That and then that it wouldn't work because I don't know if Julie Selbo or
Susette Elegin is Catholic. For Catholics intent counts. That's the sin. So if you're doing the wrong thing for the right reason, it doesn't count. I love that that was introduced.
Here, and this goes back to some of these other heightened ones that we've talked about. I guess I might just not be the biggest fan of these heightened episodes because I wasn't a big fan when we saw it on Tales from the Crypt, wasn't a big fan we saw it on Twilight Zone eighty five something about these Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. I think that's ultimately the problem with something that's hyper stylized is there will be people that falld on the outer margins that
just don't vibe with it. And I think I might be in there. I like the idea of the episode. I just think, yeah, to your point, Father Malone, like to say they don't explore it enough is maybe under selling how little they do explore it, which is not very much at all.
I think if they had more of a visual stylist working it out, making it a bit more cartoony, I think it would have been easier to accept it overall. Having said that, here's my favorite line, and oh god, what will it take for you to forsake me.
A good line.
Ah, that's a good one. And at one point Mom says God, damn it, And that again rocked me on my heels because I remember nineteen eighty six, nineteen eighty seven, you couldn't say that on TV, at least I thought not at the time, So wondering how that got through.
Yeah, that was something, because yeah, they would also have to cut away from any sort of combination of those two words together.
Or yeah, you would just hear god and they would drop out the damn or vice versa. But it's clear as day here. Maybe they could make a point to the censors that it was a necessary thing here instead of just casually thrown out. But still that was shocking. Almost a shocking was the goddamn synthesizer banjo that they had at the beginning of this.
That really hurt and it sounded so close to oh Susannah.
But wasn't right, so ultra maddening.
Yeah, that had that not been present, I think I would have given that would have been a full extra star. Let's put it that way.
Good good dou Ski apparently that's the priest. His exclamation and this.
Good goody thank you for saying it. I've been sitting here trying to remember what it was this whole time. Could Lord Lord.
Good good Dzski.
There you go.
Oh my god. Now stepping up to the plate playing board that Seattle Mariners, good Gadzoski taps his bat, his shoes type shoes of this bat. It sounds like an old baseball player, what kind of such a Again, it's so stylized that that just feeds into it. So it's just like, ugh, I don't know, I just don't vibe with it, but I get it. I want this premise to work because it's such a strange premise, Like, where else are you going to get this kind of premise
other than an anthology show. You're not going to get this turned into a full movie.
Stay out of our beach community. Good Zooski, good Zeuski, good Zeuski.
It's a good working Polish name.
I think I think both of these episodes are good. I think they're really good. I recommend them both outright. Uh, here's still hoping we get more from Tamnessman Darks. I say that every episode apparently it's paying dividends.
I would say we very well make Hey all right.
¶ Final Thoughts and Upcoming Episodes
On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're taking a look at the next two episodes of season three. Those are Seasons of Belief and Miss MAYDUSA Midnight Viewing. The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of a Weirdingway 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 it? Mike White?
You can find pretty much everything I do over at Weirdowaymedia dot com, except for the show that Chris and I do once a month with our friend Richard HadAM and occasionally with Father Malone, which is called Ranking on Bond, and you can find that at our respect to patreons, Patreon dot com, slash Culturecast in patreon dot com, slash Projection Booth. How about you, Chris as.
For me, same spieled, different voice, Weirdingwaymedia dot com, Patreon dot com, slash Culturecast or slash Father Malone or slash Projection Booth. Like Mike said, Ranking on Bond. When we're done with Ranking on Bond, we might do movies about people who are going fishing, call it Cranking on Pond. Never know who knows. Cranking on Ass till I think is the best one. We'll never do that one, or we might who knows, but those can more than likely be found on the Patreon if we ever do anything
beyond ranking on Bond. But as for now, ranking on Bond is on Patreon, so that's where you can go to find all that. So, Father Malone, what about you take us home from the promised land of self promotion.
I'd like to announce my new show, Cranking on Ass over on my patreonh yeah, hell yeah.
Brother.
Patreon dot com slash Father Malone. You're gonna get episodes like well, the one you're listening to now. You get those early commercial, free and bonus content you can only get there if money is tight. You can do us a favor just like the show, or give it a bunch of five stars, or subscribe or like it, or tell someone to listen to it. Tell someone who has to listen to it to listen to it. Thank you all for joining us here in midnight viewing. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.
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