¶ Intro / Opening
Wait Wait, said a.
¶ Review of 'Beetles' Episode
Welcome back to midnight Viewing, where this season we're taking a look at George Ramiro's nineteen eighty series Tails from the Dark Side. Sharing the midnight view with me are the culture cast Chris Statue.
I'm part of the Beatles that was dumb.
Top of the poppermost My friend also joining us as the projection is Mike White.
I'm gonna make a reference to both episodes when I say, Mary, Mary, why you buggin'.
Wow ah nonother run DMC comes true? Got it?
Okay? God damn Now. I was trying to figure out where the run DMC was gonna come in, and boy, they had me going in the first half.
Nail Tonight. We are taking a look at the first two episodes of season four, the final season of Tails from the Dark Side. Those are Beatles and Mary Mary Beatles is season four episode one. It aired originally on September the twenty seventh, nineteen eighty seven. Written by Robert Block from a short story by Robert Block and directed by Frank de Palma, this one stars Rod McCarey, Cole Meanie,
and Donald mckeckney. This is about a wannabe art dealer who lays hands on an ancient mummy whose treasures include many,
¶ Discussion on Mummy Stories
many legs, which I think of this one, Chris, I.
Know what I should have said at the beginning of the episode. It said bugs, I hate bugs, to reference one of the best times sarcophaguses and beetles have been in a thing together, which is not this. It would be The Mummy, which scared I think most people into thinking scare of beetles eat people's brains, which I will tell you anyone who's listening, if you didn't know this, they don't, they don't, they don't know.
I've been terrified ever since I saw that guy we were talking about running into a wall last time.
Yeah, bugs, I hate bugs. This is fine. I love anything Egyptian adjacent. It's one of my like, I don't know, it's one of those things that kind of just gets after me again, to quote to The Mummy from nineteen ninety nine, that movie has a very special place in my heart. And so anything that's Egyptology or Egyptian adjacent has been something that I've been interested in since I was a king. So this was right up my alley.
I remember, I want to say Father Malone was there not an episode of Tails from the Crypt featuring a mummy which is like sacrifices.
And wasn't the one with Christian Slater.
Was it?
Yeah, ac no, no, no, no, that is it Tails from the Dark Side.
Oh from the movie this their.
By Arthur Conan Doyle.
But there is one in Tails from the Crypt that's again like about getting a woman to sat be sacrificed to a mummy and all this like wacky ass shit. Like I appreciate that these kinds of episodes exist in these I don't think this one nails all the points that I hoped it was going to nail in terms of utilizing the Egyptian theming and the Egyptology of it all.
I like Rod McCrary a lot. I think he's perfectly cast, and he looks suitably Andrew Ryan enough or of a time and of a place to pull off that kind of the mustache and the shirt and the suspenders and everything that look. I think it's fun. I just I wish there had been a little bit more to it, But I think that's been my complile now is it just feels like maybe they're expounded go further, is what I would say to the writers of the shows, give me a little bit more, just punch it up a
little bit. But this is a good way to start the fourth season. How about you, Mike? What about you? Mike? Yep?
Like this better when e. G. Marshall was playing this role and they're creeping up on you. That's all I kept thinking of. I did think of the Mummy though, as well. I liked the little twists at the end. That was nice. I just felt that this went on for a little too long. There wasn't enough again twists to it. It just felt, Oh, there's beatles, those are going to get them and just watch them get them, and that's not interesting to me. So I was really hoping for a little bit more on this. I feel
like I'm being very negative about this show. I do enjoy these and most of the time. Though the last episode, the last time we talked, I was having a little bit of trouble with one of those. But yeah, this one was decent. There's nothing for me to write home about. How about you father them?
Yeah, I thought it was okay. I thought, like you said, Chris, if you put a if you slap a layer of Egyptology on something, I'm automatically, the interest level just goes up, and I'm jars and shit, I'm not gonna hate in veins. I'm not gonna hate anything that ends up focusing on that for twenty two They're like, that wasn't a total waste of time. I saw some hieroglyphs, but that doesn't make this any good. I do think it's interesting that every horror author of a certain age had a mummy
story in them. Edgar Allan Poe had a fucking mummy story, and I'm like, now we find out Robert Block had one. I mentioned Arthur Conan Doyle he had one that will eventually show up in another Channil from the dark Side episode. And not only that, but every anthology series will We'll dip their toe into the to the Mummy. I think the best one overall ended up being over on Amazing Stories.
They had a story called Mummy Daddy, which is one of the scariest and funniest fucking half hours of television I've ever seen. This one doesn't compare to that. I do like Rod McCarey. He's just like a human cartoon. There just seems like it's a certain time and place for that type of act Duran. He might have been past his prime here, but that's what kind of makes him interesting. Weird to see Cole Meani this early on American television without a fucking Starfleet uniform.
I thought I recognized him, but I didn't go and watch look at the credits front. Yeah, that was nice to see. He fits into this world pretty well too. He I know he's played han't He played like older Irish gangster kind of roles and stuff, but like him with a I don't know. I picture him with a Derby hat and I'm just like, yeah, yeah, that's a good Cole meaning.
I always liked him in The Commitments and The Man and in The Snapper. He was in all three of those movies as that dad. He was great in those.
Yeah.
Overall, this is just an okay episode. I think it's a step up from what we were getting at the end of season three. Hopefully this is just a stepping stone to bigger things. I know there are a couple of episodes that I really do like later, I'm not that concerned. I just think I think in a case like this, when you have a teleplay by Robert Block from his shirt story, you don't really fuck with it.
No, No, I would like to say Hammad Bay like that. I like that, like we have to pay lip service to the og Mummy every time we do it. Yeah, every time I want to mention something as well, because this is the thing, Father Blon, you were expousing the mummy stories in these anthologies, most of them are the fucking same on top of everything else.
I've been seeing how many of them are comedies. How many of them are comedy, like almost all of them, right, Yeah.
They're all like vaguely comedic or because again, like in a lot of ways, mummies are. And this is the thing that it's almost like that let me grab my soapbox out that I didn't know I was gonna stand on. Mummies are scary, Yes, idea of a mummy is scary, like horror. The Mummy nineteen ninety nine is probably as good of a movie as it is for me, because it's still kind of a scary movie even now, like he's eating their body parts like it's a jeepers, creepers thing.
And I think most, if not all, of the Mummy media that I've seen since I've been doing this podcast, since I've been watching Moon enjoying them most. Nothing can live up to that nineteen ninety nine Mummy movie because they actually go down some avenues that nothing else goes down, and all these things just feel very there was it, Like even the Mummy movie from ninety nine, does it like Emo tips Forever Love kills herself and he wants
to bring her back to life. There's a lot of that, Like, yeah, there's a forbidden love and sacrifice in what feels like most of these stories. So I just I wish there was more variety to the stories of the mummies that we're getting on these shows. But I understand why there. It's not because it seems like the easiest way to go is just there's some sort of curse on the corpse itself, or that the corpse can reanimate. That's it.
Like they don't really go further than that, And it seems a little unfair because the vampires and Frankenstein's monsters get all sorts of weird shit and mummies are just given short shrift. It feels.
I will say that I think the best television anthology series was the What was the Amazing Stories? Episode? But I think teals some of dark sent actually nails the horror Mummy when we'll I mean, we're going to review the movie at the end of the season because it is the next logical state with Taels the Dark Side. But Lot two forty nine, that to me was an actual scary Mummy. That's a fun story and it has an awesome payoff.
I've never seen it, so I'm excited, Like Mummy stuff is, that's definitely in my wheelhouse. That nineteen ninety nine Mummy movie really hit the right note at the right time for me, and I am not I don't think I've ever had. There are a few highs that I've had in a movie, the one like that's rewatching it last year, Like it was a pretty high moment. Even the movies
holds up still a lot of fun. But even then, like that movie's scary, but it's also funny and fun Like they it's almost like when you have a Mummy in there, it's we can't just play it straight, Like why, I.
Know it's supposed to be funny, but that bumper sticker that says I'd much rather be watching the nineteen ninety nine cinematic masterpiece The Mummy. That is true. There's so many times where I'm watching a movie and I'm like, yeah, I'd rather be watching that, and then it gets it like that Keith shit Tom Cruise Mummy movie, Like why are you messing with perfection? There is nothing wrong with the Brendan Fraser Mummy movie is one of the highlights of cinema.
For me, give me a fourth movie, you fucking cowards.
I know a littlebody in the cast is still around and still looking good.
And would it be weird to recast a recast, to have Rachel Weiss come back after they recast her as Maria?
But why not?
I don't think has that ever happened?
I believe that well, Sabata Lee van Cleve stepped away from SAA and he came back a character.
Connery came back for one more after labieh.
Yeah, I've tried to forget that one, but that's yeah.
Sorry, it is kind of our responsibility to know, though.
Yeah, boy, it feels like it.
Uh.
Robert Block as a writer is a really good writer.
¶ Critique of 'Mary, Mary' Episode
I don't feel like this is indicative of his best work.
Oh no, like at all. And he's a better novelist than he's a short story writer, first of all, and second of all, he is not a very good screenwrid must be said, Sorry, Bob, anything else on this one?
All right?
Our next episode is Mary Mary. This is season four, episode two, aired originally on October fourth, nineteen eighty seven, Written by Julie Selbo from a story by Julie Selbo and Katerina Vitch and Katerinavitch. Directed by Katerina Vitch, starring Margaret written, Ac Weary and Fred Burstein. This is a story about a woman who relates more to inanimate objects and regular people, and then she ends up as one. There I buried the lead. This is a blackout sketch.
What the fuck I should have you know what I should have quoted at the beginning of this episode, blah blah bah because you just said it. There you're in a nanimate fucking obcheck, because that is how this episode ends. That is what a bizarre what he's a shit.
May let me just say I I hate this writerly thing where just the having a character talk to inanimate objects in their house like that thing reads good on the page, and then you see somebody doing it and it's so fucking false. It's hard to fucking imagine. When I hear people quoting lines from Batman Returns. When Michelle Pfeifer comes back to her apartment and she's talking to herself like that whole routine, I'm like, yeah, that's cute,
but it's completely fucking fake. And that's what's going on here. For twenty two minutes. I wanted to pull my own head off.
It's in suffered. This is a fucking insufferable episode.
Going from stuffed animal to stuffed animal and like, oh, well, hello, mister, what are you doing?
Hey? You know, Mike White. You know something I've learned about you as your friend and creative collaborator over the last decade is you don't like when people pretend to be movies. Yeah, you know what I don't like in movies when people pretend to talk to shit that isn't there and it serves no purpose and then the things
aren't even doing anything. It is a tired And it works in literature because often in literature it's being used to convey the unreliableness of the narrator and it's done in a way where it's injected into the story in a meaningful way. Here, it's just that's all it is. That's literally all it is. There's nothing else for twenty two minutes. To your point, Father Malone's we get it. Oh, we get it. We still get it. We didn't stop getting it and we're still getting it. And what's the reveal.
We still got it. I promise we get it.
Yeah. This whole thing of what the dating stuff that's going on? Wow, that was a real throwback for me to see these VHS tapes and these things. Such high production value on a lot of these tapes as well, really impressive for me. But god damn, just I don't want to be on camera, so I shoot this mannequin and then my creepy neighbor I would not be a big fan. Oh yeah, I got your name off the letterbox and stuff like maybe you meet her outside, don't
just randomly call this woman. But at the same time, she's such a fucking psycho. It's just, yeah, what are you doing? Oh I don't want real pets. I used to stuff the animals. Yeah, nothing worked for me in this whole thing at all. And then yeah, when the it didn't help either that the little thumbnail on plex I think had two mannequins, So I'm like, yeah, she's going to turn into me, and then we just had that Anecan episode like three or four episodes ago with yeah.
Oh no, oh god, another mannequin story.
Yes, I'm just like, what the fuck, man.
What is it with this show, with these anthology shows and mannequin TJ Castronova.
TJ Castanova knows somebody who can make mannequins that look like actors that so like, give me another mannequin episode. As far as the video dating thing, it seems like they were told that such a thing exists and then just made up their own rules, because I don't think that's the way it works. I think you make a video tape or you made a videotape because they don't do it anymore, and then one right, and then they would dupe that and then send it to prospective members
that you might match. But then you would watch that videotape and go, oh, okay, this one. It's like they're sending personalized videotapes to each other. It's like this primitive form of like direct messaging. It's so weird.
Hello me, I just want to tell you more about me.
And I'm like, what if someone throws a letter through your window?
They're a fucking yeah, you're no romantic sir.
Oh sorry, you're right. I try not to. I try not to impose my will on other people against theirs. What cuckoo ass shit were they going after when they said, here's what we're gonna show at the end of it, she's just gonna be sitting there as a man to what end?
If you don't engage in life, life will be taken from you?
What? Yes? Okay, So now she's just like Jared Padilechia and House of Wax. You're forever just in that mannequin shell. I don't even what are the logistics of what we see happen at the end of this episode? Does the episode care? Is it just we just need to see a pair of eyes moving mannequin body and we get it, We got we got it?
Okay, those are the gods wish to destroy First make mannequins.
I mean, I mean mannequins worked well. That there's the space alien that goes into people and moves around and stuff. There's a great scene in a mannequin factory in that movie, and it just really helps enforce this whole idea of false fronts and false bodies and this kind of stuff, and yes, that's great, really works with the story. I think we talked during the last Mannequin episode about the classic twilight zone where the one's alive at night and
to the mannequin during the day. There's the classic cinematic universe of the mannequin films. This is no mannequin film. There is no one that this is nowhere near of Kim cattrall level of performance.
Where's Hollywood. He's not here. He's not going to hang around with these goddamn allkins, I'll tell you that much.
Oh, this episode made me weird.
Was it GW. Bailey? Was he the villain in the first this movie with fucking with James Spader?
Is it James Spader in that?
It's so god the other guy? Right, Yeah, it's the other dude. It's Andrew McCarthy.
He's the lead. Andrew McCarthy is the lead. The villain is James Spader.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay.
Yeah yeah. I thought you were asking who the lead was.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Movie.
And g W. Bailey is like, is like number one, He's like a security I like.
I like Maniquin. I I think I've even gone on the record saying I like Mannequin when we did the episode on it, nothing's going to stop us. Now a good movie.
What are you gonna do?
I mean, you got kills a Manquan. Yeah, and it's still Getty's in there.
Yeah she is.
Stop from my mom's shoot, what is wrong with us? There is not enough time? There is you know at the problem time for everybody else.
I think the problem is that they keep throwing Mannequin episodes at us. So if they're gonna do that, I think every time we character Annequin episode from now on, we should just spend that time talking about the movie.
Mannequin or the career of a stell Getty.
I'll go with Mannequin.
You don't want to talk about Golden Girls?
What do you like?
I was just gonna say, do you want to go Girls?
Yes?
Never even seen it, Never seen a single episode.
Fantastic.
All I know is that song thank You for Being?
Have you not seen the episode with Quentin Tarantino dancing as an Elvis impersonator in the background.
Sure rather die that. Fiona Apple story about her being in the room with Paul W. S Anderser, poul T Anderson, and Quin Tarantino caused her to never do cocaine again. That's all I think of when I think of Tarantino is just him coked up, chattering in Fiona Apple's face for like an hour or so.
I don't I'm imagining p. T Anderson is actually much where oh god, probably, I mean yeah, because Tarantino is probably like having fun and making jokes, and pt Anderson's telling you how fucking serious and awesome he is.
Looked at your hands, They're like, like Kubrick film.
What the fuck? All right?
Well, on the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're taking a look the next two episodes of season four. Those are The Spirit Photographer and The Moth. Debbie Debbie Gibson Debbie Harris in that one. Midnight Viewing is a proud
¶ Closing Remarks
member of a Weirdingway media group. Our theme song was composed by HP with an assist by Donald Rubinstein. Till next Time. Where can people find You? Chris Dashu.
Weirdingwaymedia dot Com is where I work on all the audio thang, including this show with you, Father Malone and Mike who just told I have my own podcast, just all kinds of weird weirding media Weirdingway Media. Audio can
be found at Weirdingwaymedia dot com. And if you want to kick a couple dollars our way and engage financially with what we do, Patreon dot com, slash Father Malone We're aged with this show, and then slash culture Cast or slash Projection Booth and you can get some additional content. If you engage with Mike and I with Father Malone, you're just contributing to his ability to continue to do this in a meaningful way. So you know who she you should be engaging with.
Engage Mike pretty much the same stuff all the way around. That's the best place for everything that you need in your life period. How about you Father them alone?
Well, you're checking it out here. Midnight Viewing we're on twice a week. Everybody found the Malone Weekly round Up. That's every Sunday and or Monday, where I take a look at the new releases, new streaming releases, new theater releases.
And every Friday we're either doing an Anthologies Attack or a horror anthology podcast or oh my God, we're doing Fusco Fast right now with a look at the works of John Fusco and This is not till the fall, but Paul Waller, the host of a Year in Horror podcast, and I are doing a show together called Little Old Lady Got Mutilated Late last Night that starts in October.
And oh my god, folks, I've only mentioned it once over on Father Malone's a weekly round up, but Midnight Viewing is going to be doing a live show at the Silverton Casino October fourth and fifth of twenty twenty five. That's here in Las Vegas, Nevada. We're going to be participating in the Nightmare in Vegas Convention and fucking Haunted Car Show. It's going to be a fucking blast. So keep that in mind, mark your calendars, and until next time, try to enjoy the daylight.