¶ Intro / Opening
Wait, wait, say.
Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, where this season we're taking a look at George A. Ramero's nineteen eighty series Tales from the Dark Side. Sharing the midnight view with me. Are the projection Booths, Mike White, you don't know Yattering and the culture cast Chris Stashure.
You know what they say? Everybody Kay, Sarah Sarah.
¶ Episode Overview: The Yattering and Jack
Tonight, we are taking a look at the next two episodes of season four, the final season of Tales from the Dark Side. Those are The Yattering and Jack and Seymour Lama. The Yattering and Jack is season four, episode seven. It aired originally on November the eighth, nineteen eighty seven. Written by Clive Barker from a short story by Clive Barker, directed by David O'Dell, starring Phil Fondacaro. Under the Rainbow
was his first film, Something Wicked, This Way Comes. He was in Return of the Jedi, Willow Phantasm two, The Doors, The Last Action Hero. We saw him twice on Tales from the Crypt. Andy was in Bordello of Bla. He was a recurring villain on Sabrina the Teenage Witch. He's the voice a big figure in the New Watchman Animated Animated the comic and that's quite a fucking resume. Like anyway, That's Phil also starring Anthony Carboni, Tom Newman, and Danielle
Breus Bois. That is Oscar nominee Danielle Bruce Bois for Original Song twenty fifteen a song called The Lost Stars from the movie Begin Again. This is the story of a minor demon who is tasked with breaking the spirit of a seemingly unflappable girkin salesman. What do you think of this one, Mike, Ooh, it's.
¶ Clive Barker's Influence and Critique
Gonna be kind of a theme here with This could have been done a lot quicker. I'm not gonna say the words blackout skit. Oh shit, I just did so. This is what Clive Parker was up to back in the day.
Huh okay.
I don't know what it was about Anthony Carbone, who was frozen so solid it took him two days to thaw m out to do the autopsy, I believe. But with Carbone, his voice sounded so much like Darren McGavin, and at times he looked like Darren McGavin, and I just kept spending this entire episode thinking, man, I wish this was Darren McGavin. I like a good demon episode, I like a good devil episode, but this isn't a
good demon or devil episode for me. It just was like, I like Phil Fondacaro a lot, and I was really excited to see his name in the credits. I was excited to every time that he was on screen. Kind of reminded me of that like little throwaway thing that happened on The Young Ones when Neil accidentally summoned well, I can't remember the gentleman's name who was like the main guy from Time Bandits, but he summoned a demon named putumsh and he showed up and was doing all
these little dastardly things. But it was basically it was a throwaway gag. That's what this one is for me too. Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of this one. What'd you think, Chris.
For this being as from one gay man to to another gay man's thing that he wrote not gay men here, not that I know him anyways, you guys haven't taken advantage of it.
This is not as gay as I was expecting it to be.
With Clive Barker in the title. I know, obviously eighty seven. Wasn't expecting any homosexual undertones or overtone. So once there was the lack of gay with Clive Barker, because Clive Barker and gay go together like peanut butter and jelly, I thought this was yeah, like you said, Mike, it was a yeah, man, blackout sketch. Everybody, look, it's it's the thing that's weird for me is that the twist is that he knew the whole time and we're not
in on it until the end. And he's such a good liar the that we're supposed to be like, well, he's actually just like a psychopath.
It turns out.
I guess that's the moral of the story, is like the psychopath outwits the devil and more aptly, I guess, the demon less the devil. But I thought it was I thought it was fun, and yeah, Anthony Carbone does look like Darren McGavin, and I honestly thought it was there and mcavin.
But it's not.
But it would have been fun if it had been, so we could just think about that for a second.
It's still fun.
I just it's just you could have said way, You could have said the same amount in less time.
By them alone, you didn't find both Beelzebub and the Yatter Rings outfits to be the gayest thing that they could possibly had. In nineteen eighty seven on television and Sunday Night at seven pm, are you out of your fucking guard man? Like this.
Chest straps and rings on the little unfil Fondacaro's chest.
You know what I mean?
No, we just get yeah, yeah, you'd get that later in the year when hell Racer came out. So it's true, let's face it, Clive Barker really popularized very subtly s and m gear and behavior for an entire generation this episode. Now, look,
¶ Visuals and Performances
when Clive Barker hit the scene, he hit the scene really fucking hard with the Books of Blood because Stephen King very generously said I've seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker. And then suddenly every horror fan was buying those books and eating them up one after another. Now, this is his first adaptation in America. By then, he had written an adaptation of his story raw Head Rex, which is a terrible fucking film, and
he tried to take his name off of it. He had written a movie called underworld, which is separate from everything. But this is the first adaptation of any of the short stories, certainly the first adaptation of any of the books of Blood, so I had already read it by then.
I'm a huge Clive Barker fan. If you read the short story, it's a slow escalation over time, and what you're witnessing is this guy who you believed as the demon, believes that this is just the most oblivious motherfucker on earth. He is the modern Candide. Everything's fine. Oh the cat blew up. It must have been the dogs. Stupid dogs. Now I'll bury the cat. That kind of a thing. The problem here with this episode is Anthony Carbone because I never once believe that he isn't fully aware of
what's going on, and he isn't stifling rage. He just seems angry. So it undermines this idea because if that's actually how he is, if he actually is angry and just stifling it slightly, then the ending makes no sense. When we find out he's known the whole time. He should have acted even cooler the whole time. And that's what's great about the short story, and that's why the short story works and why this is so fucking bad. Plus the stuff the thing is doing is so outrageous
that you can't just say nothing's happening. When the dead turkey flies up onto the top of the Christmas tree and is flapping around and he's, I don't know, probably the wind, let's have hot chocolate, honey. It's no, sar, that doesn't worry. It might work on the page, and it does work on the page, but it doesn't work visually. It's just so insane.
No, it doesn't. It doesn't work, and it could have. And that's like you said, like it's it. I guess with hindsight rewatching it, it was. It's obviously. Then his behavior seems a little bit more like, Okay, I'm just ignoring this horse shit that's going on. But the first watch through it makes very little sense. A literal turkey, a literal raw turkey literally jumps on top of a
Christmas tree and spits in a circle. It's a great visual, yea, we get one of the greatest visuals I think I've ever seen involving a raw piece of poultry since Peter Gabriel had one dance in his Sledge Amber music video.
That's what we're yeah, yeah, exactly, but this is this is absurd and it's it's making a turkey gobbling noise at the same time, Like it's a great visual, and that's like the best part of this episode is that visual, Like the moment he walks into his house and the mirror cracks.
He's just foundation is just settling, I see.
No, yeah, must be foundation, over and over.
Swamp gas.
I tell you, you know, it's funny in the short story, as he lived in London and it takes place in England. Initially, the English phrase for that is subsidence. Instead of saying the house is settling, he just kept saying subsidence over and over again. Just one of those English phrases I don't know, like flat or fucking tube.
I've never heard of that before. So that's very good to know. I'm chuffed to know that. Yeah, which I also thought that meant I was pissed off.
I did too, And no, it just means like, I'm super proud of you. Have either of you in any
¶ Carolers and Christmas Spirit
of your years had Carollers come to your house maybe once?
Maybe one time.
When I lived in Minneapolis and Phil Hartman was my next door neighbor, and I didn't get my child a Christmas present, and I was out and I came back and the Christmas underneath phil Hartman.
Street too early in the year.
That's what I had. But that's the only other.
I can't think of another time I've seen carollers in anything other than Jingle All the Way are Kroller?
Is that a real thing? Did anybody do that outside of Scrooge's time? Did people just do it then to get out of the house.
It seems like it's a novelty that can still occur these days, but it doesn't happen with the regularity that it happens in short stories and in television shows.
Would go and walk around your neighborhood and sing at Christmas time?
If I got to dress up in period costume, your fucking air, right, I would? And I got to pick the carols?
Yes, And if I got some figgy pudding, oh yeah, man, you.
Guys put a lot of qualifiers on it.
I don't think in Las Vegas anybody's putting figgy pudding on anything. And I don't think anyone would open their door for you if you should up looking like a caroler, especially if you look like and I'm just quoting the Bible here, some sort of fourteenth century ponts. I just don't think it would have I would love to see it. I would open the door for you, but I'm not sure i'd expect you to start singing.
Remember I'm not starting this league.
I would be joking, starting as the Carollers League.
Yeah.
I love the idea that it's also the coffee can for the homeless.
Yeah, idea something for the homeless. Sure, here's a smattering of change. He's really got the Christmas spirit.
You'll go far.
Kid with your like thirty five cents that he gave. I'm sure they're gonna take it down at the local soup kitchen and go fucking thanks for nothing.
What does this take? A penny?
Leave a penny? I was I wanted this to be better than it was. But it's also a comedy bit. This is this show in comedy don't go well together, and like anthology shows in general, it's very iffy. So this is the iffiest of equations. Here is the comedy equation with these kinds of shows.
And this is a short story writer who fell into short story writing because originally he was a playwright until he burned himself out on that and he could no longer paint and then wrote a bunch of short stories and gave it to his agent, who put this book out, and then suddenly he's doing this and he's writing screenplays. Considering where he is in his career. I think the story is great, and I encourage everyone to go back and reread the Books of Blood. But this is terrible.
I really liked the Bielzaba Tom Newman. I thought his performance was good.
Has he been in here before?
This is his first Tips from the dark Side.
Stephen King is someone who I always here.
He has such great short stories and you just know how to end like a big story.
Catch me on the next episode, why don't you.
But the thing about this short story is, like you just mentioned Father Malone, I actually really love Clive barker short stories. Books of Blood is amazing, Like in terms of the compilation of short stories, it's great. So six volumes right exactly, Like it's not just yeah, it's a fair amount.
And he it's so.
Funny because if you look at critical reappraisal of Clive Barker, they thought they focus almost wholly on his novels, which admit he hasn't done any short story works since Books of Blood, but it is almost exclusively like Imagica and Weave World and Cabal. But it's rare that the Books of Blood ever get mentioned anymore, when at the time it was just like it was all the rage. I owned all of them.
Well, And that's the thing, Like I I learned about Clive Barker through hell Raiser, which was a novella, and then I read the short stories with Books of Blood. And when I went to the first and only time I've ever been to Texas fright Mare Weekend, I brought my copy of Books of Blood with me to get it signed, and then I didn't want to wait five hours to meet Clive Barker because they didn't advertise ahead of time. You'd have to wait in a five hour
line to meet him, which was fucking insane. So I have a very like personal affinity for Books of Blood, and when I saw Clive Barker's name on this, I was just like, oh God, oh no, and it does it does in fact lead me down that path of
like his stuff. The best person to adapt Clive Barker stuff, I think might be either Clive Barker or someone who gets his stuff inherently and you don't have to explain it to him, because if you have to explain Clive Barker or someone and what his deal is, I just most people aren't gonna be into it.
He's like a very specific flavor of horror.
Clive Barker needs a Mike Flanagan.
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah, and he hasn't had one, and he does not count. He cannot count for himself because hell Raisers Amazing directed the fucking thing.
Yeah. I mean, look, he's a visual stylist right above all, he's been painting now for twenty five thirty years, and his paintings are just sucking incredible. That's mainly what he's been doing. Those are novels. And he was in a coma and he's effectively not left his house.
Right, which is such a bummer.
Now that I'm like, I wish I kind of had waited in a five hour lines nothing now.
When I was eighteen, I waited in a five hour line and I got him to sign my copy of A Mad and I asked him, are we going to get a sequel to Night Breed? And he looked me in the eye and said it's on the way. I promise. He fucking liar, you liar.
Hey man, that's a good one. That is a good one. Night Breed is a good one. But yeah, I don't think we're I don't think that's happening.
Probably not. There is a sequel novel, however, there is. Yeah, there's a sequel to a ball. So I encourage everyone to go check that out, all right. From the Ridiculous
¶ Seymourlama Episode
to the more Ridiculous Seymour Lama Season four, episode eight aired originally on November the fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven. This is written by Harvey Jacobs and David Woolner from a story by Harvey Jacobs, directed by Bruce Dolan, starring Divine, J. D Roth, Kathleen Doyle, David Gail, and Kathy Lepinsky. Oh boy, they found the new Lama. He's in suburbia and he likes to knit and his dad is sometimes ahead on a dish. Chris, what do you think of this one? Yeah?
I trying to figure I'm gonna I'm gonna throw this one at you, like deal with Divine as Chung Fang.
¶ Divine's Performance
So, first off, have never seen divine in anything, so I'm not what correct?
So wow, I plays Chinese.
Men hand in your gay papers.
Wait a second, I've heard of this before. The gay police.
That's right, the gay police.
Are you police the gay now? They're currently in Washington, DC. Don't worry, they'll be coming your.
With one can only hope no. So again, like I'm a baby gay per the gay community. I've only been out for five years, so I'm still coming to terms with my gayness and also watching like gay gay things. I haven't gotten to John Waters yet. Like I would say, sue me and this day and age, don't I have
no money, so don't do it. I was gonna say, this is the first time I've actually mistaken David Gale for the right actor, because there have been so many times been like, that's the guy from Reanimator and it's not. This is the first time I was like, that's the guy from Reanimator and when I looked it up and I was like, that was the guy from Reanimator. So many times I've seen tall, white, gaunt actors with his look and complexion and gone, that's the guy from Reanimator,
only to learn it's not. This is the first time, it was guess what though this is whoof the last episode was bad. This is interminable fuck sick. I Mike, you and I and our friend Richard HadAM of Richard Hadam's paranormal Bookshelf covered the King and I on Rankin on Bass, and there was a lot of racism there, Chinese racism at the hand of Darryl Hammond doing an Asian accent. The entire movie. I had chopsack Asian accent.
This wasn't that bad, but it was close. And it was also just again a black out sketch, like what a the gag? The gag, The gag at the end is so dinky and dumb, and the whole setup is bogus at times.
I get what they're going for, but.
It's just have you said blackout sketch yet?
Yeah?
God, it is the blackout sketch to end all blackout sketches, almost like the last one was where I'm like, you know what, Like you could have explained the joke in the first five seconds and we would have had it, like down, Pat, we got it. They think that God is in this house, Buddy's actually in the one next door.
Here's the actual White panel. They're carrying them out and they and he says, oh wait, no, this is such and such. Drop them right.
Where the Griswolds and we're looking for sex. That's the fucking from European vacation. The same they and they take that gag all the way to They build that one out and they get some mileage out of it. But with this is like the whole episode. Come on now, I'm good. It's just I don't know. I wasn't here for it. It was not for me, so I'm very curious what Mike White has to It.
Was remarkable that they could let this thing drag on for as long as it did. I was just so surprised because it's just one joke that they're doing for twenty two minutes. And yeah, you've got us built up to the punchline. And I could have, like you said, I could have had that within three minutes. This whole thing. Oh,
we're here to find the new Lama. It's basically it's the opening of Life of Brian with the Three Wise Men, and they find Brian and the stable with his mom and dad, and then they realized, oh no, the star's over there, so they come back and they take all the gifts and then run out and they go to Jesus as some major that's what this is. And they settled that with very very little. It was great how Brian's mom was just like, oh, I don't really need the mr, but if you got more gold, that'd be
great kind of thing. This, yeah, it's I wasn't necessarily offended. I liked Divine with those big white eyebrows that she's got on and all that, and the very lascivious what was her name, Madam Woo that's with them, But yeah, Seymour was just a dinkist. I kind of wanted him to be even more of a dweeb. Just really go
for it kid, but just wasn't very good. And then I was trying to figure out the relationship between the dad and him and the mom and him, and I'm just like, what the Hell's what is this family dynamic? Do they hate their son? That would be something if they just absolutely if the dad just hated the son's guts so much. And then he has to sing a whole different tune and they threatened to kill him because he's insulted the new Lama and stuff. But it comes
with nothing. Yeah, I can't say that I'm a big fan of this one either.
I'd like I'd like to clarify, need.
To watch some John Waters films.
I do need to watch John Waters films. I'd like to clear flight.
Not offended, more offended that I had to watch a twenty three minute long episode that was attempting to be funny by doing the same thing.
Nothing offends me at this point.
I didn't clutching your pearls.
No, I wasn't clutching them.
This is the first time I've ever seen David Gale as a good guy, and at the start, like I was enjoying this character where he's like listening to the wind outside. This is the second Christmas episode in a row, by the way, and the second episode.
That November, which that was very odd.
Exactly that they consigned to November. I think it seems like Tails from the Dark Side after Seasons of Belief was really scared to offend people. Actually on the day they ended up dumping these here in November. But yeah, no, he's those are the voices of hell out there. I'm like, oh, this is cool, this is gonna be a fun family And then Seymour, who was a fucking dickhead comes down. The dynamic here is that the I think the mom
is adoring Seymour, the dad barely tolerates him. But the dad is wearing the sweater that he's been knitted by the sun. This is oh boy. Here's my favorite part where Divine is constantly over explaining things. And at one point it'says, last night we spent at the holiday inn. It was so hot we had to open the window, but the window wouldn't open. There was glass everywhere, and
that's it. So he's just full of these weird little non sequitis like that kept me going through the episode, and just seeing Divine doing anything always makes me laugh and I think, yeah, not offended necessarily. It doesn't seem like there's punching down going on at all here. It seems like if anyone's the butt of the joke, it's this fucking family. Nevertheless, I know this is the stupidest nitpicking of things, but like a scimitar, why would he have a scimitar if they were from Tibet?
Anyway, Wait, low pooh, Father Malone, Low low pooh, pooh, everybody, how many times can we go to that well, yeah, how many times can we lower ourselves to that, to that level of idiot shit joke?
I did like the joke we're giving you this rice and then they give him this like leatherbound Tom and they say, is this a holy book? Is just no recipes for the rice?
Now?
The best part about this episode is Divine with the fucking one liners and that's it. But I didn't need that, Like, I can clearly go watch other things that they have worked on, like John waters Fare, so I don't have to watch this. If this is like a poor fac simile of those things too, I'm sure. So it almost feels like, once again, the people whose talents are on screen are better than what they're being given.
¶ Comparing Actors and Final Thoughts
This episode made me think that David Galeen Fittz Weaver should have played brothers in something Thank You.
I also that Fritz Weaver looks so much like David Gale. We were yeah, we were covering Demon Seed. I think Fritz Weaver is in and I was just like, oh, yeah, he's so good in The Reanimator and it's no, that's not the same guy. I'm like, okay, Yeah, all these years I thought that they were the same person.
Like Harrison Ford and Steve Martin should have played brothers when they were younger.
Oh, that would be good. Yeah, especially before Steve's hair turn I like that.
By the end of it, we're led to believe that they're going to beat the ship out of their son and put him in the ICU.
For at least two weeks.
How long do we have two weeks?
What the They're gonna jump him in, They're gonna clock him.
They're lucky, that's all that.
They're lucky.
That's all the toppening. What made me crazy is like, okay, so they're gonna do everything the Sun says, and the divine and Madame Wu Kathy Lipinski are carrying out his every order. But at a certain point, he's like, go over there and eat my father's beloved baseball cards. And now we're gonna take those cards and we're gonna destroy them.
And it's yeah, okay, I get that. You guys are gonna do everything that the kid says, and we've signed him over to you, but he's not doing everything that he says around here, take him and leave.
I would have liked that on him.
Yeah, fuck that kid.
Yeah. Yeah. By the end of it, I was like, all right, he deserves it. He's an asshole.
Bier yets a bit, and we're gonna see that some more soon on the next episode of Midnight if you I mean, we'll be taking a look the next two episodes of season four. Those are sorry right Number and Payment Overdue. Midnight Viewing is a proud member of a Weirdingway Media group and our theme song is composed by HP with an assistem by Donald Rubinstein. Until next time? What are you working on? Where can people find it?
Mike White?
Pretty Much everything that I do is available on the Weirdingway Media Network, which is available at Weirdingwaymedia dot com except the one thing that Chris and I do on a monthly basis, which is a little series about James Bond, and that's available via our respect to Patreons. But yeah, come on over to Weirdingwaymedia dot Com. You don't have to pay for anything, and you get a whole lot of enjoyment. How about you, Chris Stasue.
If you want to know what I do, it's Weirdingwaymedia dot Com. Like Flather Malone and Mike Bull, thirty alluded to Weirdingway media is the place where we post everything we work on. So that's where you can go, and you should go there, And if you're not there already, you should be there soon. Get on the sandworm and come on down.
And join us.
All do the bus.
It's a doomed thing.
And it's also a beetlejuice thing. As for me, head on over to patreon dot com slash father them alone. You're gonna get episodes early and commercial free and shows that you know Patreon only, like HP Hates Me, where my partner HP picks terrible fucking entertainment to make my brain explode. Every Monday, we've got fund the Malone's Weekly round Up. That's where I take a look at whatever's newest in streaming and theatrical and every Friday it is rotating.
You're listening to this show to tell us from the dark sign. We also have a Fusco fest going on. We have a Yaucha fest going on where HP and I are looking at the Predator movies and we oh inspired by this episode. Actually, gentlemen, I'm going to be taking a look at all of the films adapted from the books of Blood Clive Barker It's going to be a Books of blood Fest, so that'll be coming soon, probably in October. Until next time, thank you all for joining us here at midnight viewing.
Try to enjoy the daylight. Everybody in
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