Anthology of Horror, Volume 8

is doing great. But he's going to take a little time off from the podcast here and we'll return, uh and really basically no time at all before long at all, Joe will be back and he'll tell us all about his adventures. Yeah, but congratulations to Joe and to his wife and I guess to their new child. Congrats, congrats on being born young one. Well, today's episode is going to be a volume eight in a continuing series. This is the Stuff to Blow Your In tradition of Anthology

of Horror Um this series. In this series, what we do every year is we lay out a challenge to ourselves. In the past, it's been Joe and I, but this year, at kind of the last minute, Seth was able to jump in and uh and be a part of it as well. But the basic challenge has always go out into the world of TV anthology series, especially horror and sci fi series, and find something that is not only entertaining but also raises a question worthy of discussion on

the podcast. And sometimes that question might be very ultimately, kind of small, maybe not the kind of thing that we would normally tackle, certainly as a full blown episode. Other times it might tie into stuff we've talked about before, but yeah, kind of just a quirky challenge and something seasonally appropriate for Hawley. Has it always been television? Have you guys ever done movies or radio or any other

kind of anthology bits. I think we dipped into film a little bit because last year or the before I picked one off of an anthology film, one that had a killer cat in it. Uh So, so we have gotten a little bit into into anthology films. Haven't really got into radio. Someday, someday, There's plenty of opportunities out there and plenty of anthologies. It's a, it's it's it's a wonderful format for storytelling. I think it's a. Isn't there a new one on Netflix this year from Gilliermo

del Toro Capital Curiosities. I want to say, as of this recording. It's it's just dropped or some of the episodes have just dropped, so I'll be checking it out tonight. Ditto, ditto. But oh, but speaking of Netflix, well we'll get to that. Yeah. But the anthology series are an interesting animal because, like you said, there have been so many of them, and every year when it's time to poke around for something to cover and on the anthology of horror series, I'm

always just astounded by how much there is. How much I mean, because there are the big shows that everyone knows. I mean, everyone's familiar with the Twilight Zone and it's Multiple Resurgency. Uh, there's of course the classic Outer Limits and then the nineties Outer Limits, tons of episodes there. But there's so many additional shows that have in many cases have sort of fallen through the cracks of time,

and you there were one or two even then. I looked up for this show where I'm like, oh, that sounds like a fascinating topic idea. They really I think it was let's see, what was it episodes of a show called the dark Room or dark Room, and I could not find them streaming anywhere. Looks like NBC was streaming them online for a little bit, but are not anymore. So, Yeah,

there's just a lot of stuff out there. And of course one of the great things and the the just quirky things about anthology series is you're always going to have ups and downs. We can have those really strong episodes with great ideas, uh, and then you're gonna have the some some less impressive installments. You're gonna have the episodes that clearly got maybe a little more of the lion's share of the budget, and others that were more

you know, bottle episodes and so forth. But but I love the idea of failure because often failure goes hand in hand with experimentation, and if you never try to push boundaries, you'll never fail, but you'll never make anything great either. So I I like people swinging for the fences, going big and sometimes it doesn't work, but at least you tried, you know. And that's that's how you get

good things. Yeah. And it's the and and it is that that that varied topography of quality and going for different things, having different creators, different authors involved in a series, that the result and you're getting the ones that like really match up with your expectations and your and your in your taste. You just have to endure the ones that don't hit that mark for you personally, m for sure. So on that note, UM, you know, we've got a

couple picked out here today. I picked one out, You've picked one out in the past. A lot of the episodes of that we've looked at in the Anthology of Horror series are kind of like a lot of the films featured on Weird How Cinema stem from the twentieth century. But the first selection here today, the one I picked out, is not only from twenty first century, it's actually from earlier this year. It is the episode Bad Traveling off of season three of Love, Death, and Robots on Netflix.

I was actually really excited you picked this because typically I'm not a Netflix subscriber. It's just not you know, I subscribe to other streaming services, but just Netflix isn't one of them. And um, I had heard of this, and I had seen stuff, and as a big animation fan, I wanted to see it, but it just hadn't come up in my life yet. So this was a great excuse for me to buckle down, turn it on and

watch it. And I was I was thrilled that This was my first exposure to actually watching an episode of Love, Death and Robots. Yeah, this one. I really enjoyed this. This is a series that started in twenty nineteen. Uh. The principal show runners or Tim Miller and David Fincher. This particular episode directed by David Fincher, but also with Frank Balson, Jerome Den Jene and Jennifer you Nelson. You know more about the creation of animated material than I do,

so I don't. I it's easier to have that idea in mind, like what is the director of a movie look like? You see them setting in the movie director chair and shouting cut and so forth. It's harder. I don't have an image that I can easily go to for what does the director or directors of an animated installment or movie look like? I mean, it's it's honestly, it's It's extremely complicated and really varied from not only from project to project, but even within a project. I'll

give you an example. There was a show I was working on. Oh, if folks don't know, I have a background in an animation, mostly for television and film, and um one of the jobs I was doing, I was working on a show called Cake. Okay. It was an actually it was a kind of an anthology. It was a bunch of a quick shorts stitched together, um kind of liquid television style. This was on f x X and that you can find out in Hulu. Now it's

a great show. I like Cake. Um. But anyway, one of the shorts that I was the director on wentz and was uh clipped out of the show and then submitted to the Sundance Film Festival where it played. And I was really happy about that and everything. But because I was listed as a director for the television series, that was one distinction. But as soon as it played in theaters, the guy who had created this show had to contact me and be like, hey, Sundance is calling

me the director. Can I call you the animation director? And I'm like, I don't care, go ahead, buddy. And it's and that's the thing. It's that like there are these like little like distinctions between just just even like you know, unions and stuff like if this played on a screen, it's different than what if it's played on television. Did you direct the actors, did you direct the animators?

Did you just direct everything? You know? Did you direct a storyboard artists, which is probably the most important actual like traditional director's job there is when it comes to animation. So so yeah, it's it's very um, it's varied, and also there might be four or five different directors based upon whether or not one person actually watched all those different tasks. Well, I I've I've very much enjoyed Love,

Death and Robots, Uh, for the most part. With the caveat that it is it is an anthology series, so you're gonna get those the shifts in in overall quality and you know, stuff matching up to my taste or not. Like some of the stuff that they have on the show is maybe a little bit more mo sho military sci fi than anything I'm into these days. Uh. Some cases that the animation is is very good. Other times the animation is amazing, though amazing animation animation episodes don't

always match up with like amazing script episodes. But but that's all right. It's a it's a showcase. It's a spectacle the animation and this one is amazing though really beautiful, and um, whenever I see something like this that's really advanced computer generated animation, I often think to myself if I was somehow able to project this as a film for someone in like the nineteen thirties, nineteen forties, what would they think it is? Like? What they think that

these are just like odd oddly shaped actors. Would would they realize that, yes, it is animation, but they would have no idea how it was made. Would they just dismiss it as like, oh, this must be like the next new rotoscoping technique, and that's it. They don't think that it's actually as advanced as it truly is. It's it's it's just an odd experiment. I can never really get my head around. Yeah. Yeah, because for most of us, we've we've we've grown up watching at least some of

it play out like we've seen. If you were old enough to to see the first toy story, like you've you've been around for a certain degree of the evolution of computer generated imagery and computer generated animation. But yeah, like with um younger viewers, you've just you're just born into it and like here it is, and then how would how would people in older generations have responded to this? So each season has had it's uh, it's it's episodes that stand out to me Um. There were a couple

of Joe Landsdale adaptations in season one. I believe the Dump and the Tall Grass that might have been in the season one and reason two. There's an episode titled The Drowned Giant. There's a funny one title of the Automated Customer Service. So yeah, some of the episodes lean more funny. Other episodes get really serious, almost too serious, and and some are more just like pure artful spectacle. Now.

Bad Traveling is based on a story by contemporary English author Neil Asher, who I've I've never read, but I recognized his name from various sci fi titles that I've seen online or in bookstores. There's another episode in this series based on one of his stories, Mason's Rats. That's also quite good. Also a highlight from season three. But while that one is funny, Bad Traveling is quite serious, quite grim. Um and if you need any further evidence

of that, uh. Andrew Kevin Walker of seven Fame wrote the screenplay for it. That's nice that, Uh we got a nice little reunion then since was directing, Yeah, yeah, it's each is the voice talents of Troy Baker, Jason Fleming, uh and uh and and numerous others, and I believe Blur Studios was the principal animation studio on this one,

but Tacit Sign Studio is also credited anyway. The setting of the story is a fantasy twist on the age of sales and the age of big ships, with a crew of sailors braving an alien ocean hunting for something called a javel shark. I believe there's some some sort of a large, fierce sea creature that they're out there hunting, and later on it's revealed that they're hunting them for oil. Ships are often lost in this UH in this pursuit, and they often and then doing so, they experience what's

called bad traveling. That's the sailors slang for a bad voyage, and so of course our story is going to involve some bad traveling. The ship in our story encounters a terrible storm and is quickly boarded by a monstrous giant crab called a fanapod, which take which kills multiple crew members, takes up residents low deck and UH lots are then drawn drawn among the crew see who's going to go down and deal with the monster, and this character Torn winds up with the duty. Now this is where the

plot gets clever. The fanopod, we learn, is not just a big monstrous crab. It also can use the bodies of human dead to speak. So there's this grotesque scene where it picks up I think, just like the like the upper half of a dead sailor and begins to speak through its mouth in in like a garbled dead man's voice and uh. And this is kind of a nice twist that also seems to channel attack of the

crab monsters in a fun way. It also reminded me of that scene from the film Independence Day where a Brent Spiner playing a scientist gets captured by one of the aliens and is also used in a very similar way like a little puppet to communicate to the humans what they're actually here for, what they want. You know, it's a it's it's it's it's a beautiful little uh

little tool. You know, it makes perfect sense, and it kind of gives you kind of that logic of the babblefish where I guess babel fish depending on how you pronounce it from the Hitchhiker series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hadn't thought of those connections, but yeah, totally so This twist also changes things a bit because suddenly the fanopod is in a position to lay out what it wants to make demands, and Torn is actually in a position

to make a deal with the monster. So the fanapod says, okay, I want you to sail me to Fadeen Island, which we're told is a heavily populated island. And if we don't have to really guess at what a monster like this wants with a heavily populated island, clearly wants to eat a bunch of people. Clearly it's a bad thing. But the fanopod is making the this offer, and uh, Torn is listening to it, and they kind of come

to terms. Okay, he'll do this in exchange for his own life, So you're not allowed to eat me, fanapod. And also, I need the key that was in the captain's pocket, um, the captain that you just ate. And so the fantopod like barfs up some remnants of the captain and he gets the key, which he uses to

unlock the captain's pistol. And he then he uses the pistol, which I believe is the only pistol in the ship, to claim control over the ship UH to sort of put the mutinous other crew members in check, at least for the time being. But then he puts the question to the crew, puts it to a vote, even what are we going to do? There's this monster in the hold of the ship that wants to go to a heavily populated island and and do you know, god knows what,

but probably eat people. What should we do? Should we say, should we agree to this and yes, deliver the fantopod to Phaytan, or should we instead drop it off at a nearby deserted island. So there's a great deal of turmoil over this. Some crew members, maybe more than a few, simply want to give the monster what it wants. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that the monster has even more or

ravenous ideas in mind. The monster is clearly apparent now and the depths of the ship are soon crawling with these palid crabblings that look a lot like um like the sorts of crabs you'd find living around UH deep sea thermal events. And I'm not going to spoil how things turn out, but it's a it's a fun action horror ride. The central monster the Fantopod is a real grotesque treat, And yeah, you're left trying to figure out

where it's gonna land. Essentially, who's gonna win. Is it going to be this this monster or is it going to be the humans and is Torn or any of the other crew members going to be able to stand up and uh and and and prevent some horrible fate falling on the unsuspecting people of Fate in Ireland. It's also got a lot of really fun kind of like

logic deductive twists happening from people to people. It reminds me of like kind of like those like old um riddles where it's like, hey, someone stole these pastries at one make sure they handle this coin and put it in the bucket of water. We'll figure out who the liar is. Like, it's it's got some real like, hey, we have to figure out a way not only to cope with this monster, but cope with one another. Let's use some logic, let's use some planning to kind of

try and figure that out. And it's yeah, it's just it just unfolds beautifully. It looks beautiful. The story is fun. This the science fiction speculative fiction elements are a lot

of fun. It's it's great all around. Yeah, And I can easily recommend this one as a as a first Love Death Robots episode to watch for anyone out there who hasn't checked out the show, because, like I said, some of the episodes skew a little bit dark for my taste, uh and some are more humorous, And I feel like this one is is a serious piece but

also a good balance of of darkness. Yeah. The the only kind of like um Copia I'd give anyone is that it's it's quite gory, but it is cartoon gore, So you know, I guess that that's left up to the viewer and their own kind of understanding of themselves. But to yeah, the worst thing you Cara have to deal with is a lot of blood and guts. Cartoon

blood guts, but blood and guts. Now, when it comes to the science of this episode, I think the interesting science angle on Bad Traveling is that what we have here as a tale of a devastating invasive shipborn organism, and this whole scenario serves as kind of a fantastic exaggeration of the very real history and present reality of shipborn invasive species. They are multiple avenues by which invasive species and then includes plant species and animal species have

been and are still being spread through human activities. These as outlined in twenty eight teens Animals and Human Society by Colin G. Skeins and Samia are took SATI include species introduced for aesthetics, as game species for biological control, and for fur as popular lations of feral domestic animals as pets thoughtlessly released into the wild, and of course animal and plants stowaways uh and while these also occur via airplane uh one of the main examples throughout human history,

one of the Big Woman's has of course been ships, the holds of ships, the insides of ships, but also the the outsides of ships. Um. Now with with with airplanes though they include a specific example of the brown tree snake um and this is essentially the snake on a plane par excellence. So this particular snake is native to eastern and northern coastal Australia, eastern Indonesia, Papua New

Guinea and many many islands in northwestern Melanesia. But the brown tree snake is only mildly venomous to humans, but it's venom is apparently one times more toxic to birds than to mammals. According to biologists Brian Fry of the University of Queensland, the round snake has been particularly rough on the bird population of Guam, which had apparently reached

aboard Australian troop transports during the Second World War. Fry also points out that the United States was and I believe still is, flying military planes from Guam to Hawaii, and brown snakes have been intercepted at Hawaiian airports in the past, So the potential is there for plane based introduction of this species to the Hawaiian islands as well, if we were to say, let our guard down now.

I wasn't able to find anything offhand that that really explained, like how how are they hitching up hitching rides on these planes? But one reason might have to do with the fact that they use something called lasso loco motion, which allows them to easily climb large smooth cylinders. So it sounds to me like one possibility here is that this is a snake that is just exceptionally good at crawling on and perhaps into airplane uh and uh and is of course a curious creature on top of that.

But when we're talking about animal stowaways, especially ships again play a huge role, with rats and mice standing out is is probably one of the best and most destructive examples of creatures that have spread with humans to every continent except Antarctica, where I believe the only invasive species currently is a variety of muscle, and these likely traveled there by ship as well. I'm surprised Antarctica has one too,

but that makes perfect sense. Yeah, yeah, most things are that that we bring with us are not gonna be able to get a foothold there, but muscles seem to be the current exception. Now, when we're thinking about stowaway species, and we're often thinking about creatures that sneak aboard or are accidentally included in or on a ship and then introduced to a destination or stop upon the way. Uh So the mouse rat example isn't the only template though.

According to Grasping at the Roots of Biological Invasions by Whom at All from the Journal of Applied Ecology in two thousand and eight, quote, stowaways include organisms that foul the holes of ships, are transported as seeds or resting stages in soil attached to vehicles and in the ballast water, as well as in shipping containers, cargo and air freight.

So for instances, the authors point out the brown there's a variety of brown seaweed sargasm medicum, and this is a great example of the stowaway species thought to have spread from its native Japan to northern France, UH, the English South Coast, and to the Netherlands via first the the contamination of commercial oyster shipments, but then just via drifting plants once they were they had made it basically

to the other side of the world. The authors here also share that very that vessels provide numerous interior and exterior possibilities for species to spread. You know, oftentimes you're dealing with a big ship. You have a lot of literally a lot of moving parts, uh, lots of nooks and crannies, lots of different say, you know, examples of cargo that are being brought aboard, human beings brought aboard.

But one of the most pervasive avenues by which a creature might stow away, particularly applies to aquatic species, is that they foul the holes um of boats and ships. Quote. A detailed survey of alien species introduced by shipping into the North Sea region revealed that stowaways, mainly crustaceans and bivalves, were found in nine of whole samples, but in only thirty eight percent and fifty seven percent of ballast water and sediment, respectively. And then they site a study by

Goalash from two thousand and two. So species need not climb inside the hole to use it as a means of traversing from one far flung island to another, from one continent to another. They only have to affix to the outside of the vessel, which is, you know, ultimately this artificial island that's gonna drift rather steadily from one place to another. Now another animal that comes up though

in UH. In these UH discussions of of stowaway creatures or boreal monkeys have also been known to spread to various places as invasive species, and while there are accounts of monkeys taking up residents in ships rigging, it seems like most of these introductions were via monkeys kept as pets. But still there have been accounts even from this century of monkeys stowing away on vessels, such as a two thousand fourteen report of monkeys who boarded a cargo vessel

in Malaysia and then arrived in the Netherlands. Now I think in this case the monkeys were caught and caged in transit and then handed over to in the Netherlands to um some zoo officials once they arrived. One of the challenges to stowing away is of course being able to survive a lengthy sea voyage in often harsh conditions without any kind of dependable food sources. And this of course brings us back to rats and mice, because rats and mice have of course excelled at this because they're

great at not being seen. They're also great at finding food to eat, and so they're they're just highly skilled at living in humanity. Shadow be that shadow on land or on a ship at sea. And there are plenty of other great examples or horrible examples of invasive species uh using ships as an avenue to spread to new places, and invasive earthworms are a great example spreading via transper

reported soils and plants. Birds can also stow away. I was reading in a book on on house sparrows about how the house sparrow is thought to have spread aboard Roman ships, and this is how it's supposedly reached Great Britain. So in the real world, we don't have anything quite like the Fanta pod. That's uh that that's you know, fighting, it's a giant creature that fights its way aboard a ship and then demands that it be taken somewhere else that has like a wilful and tension of of spreading

to a known distant um destination. But I mean, on the other hand, this is these are any of these real world examples we're looking at. These are creatures that are following their genetic imperatives. They're taking full advantage of new environments. Uh they might and that might and they

might never have reached otherwise. And it's and it's also not completely without an analog in like the non human world, because of course you have uh natural rafts that occur here and there through history that are thought to have been the way that that certain animals spread say two distant, far flung islands, or or even from from a large body to another large body. And so you know, they're not it's not like the animals are doing anything sinister

as our then apod is doing something the sinister. Uh, they're just taking advantage all of their environment or there to a sense being there in a sense being taken advantage of by their environment, accidentally becoming oh ways, accidentally being cast on a ship and then cast on a

farm tour. It is fascinating to think about, uh, this natural migration of beings compared with um, you know, human influenced migration, like like like even all the way down to things like oh berries, you know where like us as humans, one of the ways that the berry seeds move is we will consume them. They passed through our our intestines and boom, you know, these plants and now move their seeds from one location to another by our

aid you know, or other animals of course. But then you just add something as simple as, oh, we invented the wagon. Oh now we can go further. Oh now these berries can go further. Oh now even vent to the ship. Now we've invented whatever. You know. Now we've mented the airplane, Now we've mented the rocket ship. Now we have brought raspberry seeds to Mars. What does that mean? You know, like just these like little little things that we're doing and not in every case it's not a

bad thing, I'm sure in many cases. This migration of species, whether they be plant or animal, is a good thing, but both for our you know, existence as as humans, but also uh, for their own ability to thrive. But the hard part is, let's let's go back to this, uh, this crab, this giant you know, semi sentient. Well, I guess it's it's it's fully sentient. It's um monstrous. Let's just go with monster crab. Let's go with this monster crab.

Perhaps wherever its original location is, where its species evolved, there was some sort of predator that kept it in check, there was some sort of environment that kept it in check. Everything was fine. But as soon as we get that giant monster crab on a boat, we put it in an area where that that other elements isn't there, and it can just you know, take our bodies and use

them as puppets. It's odd. Yeah, these are great points because yeah, yeah, clearly, in the case of especially seed spreading, but also parasites and other examples like traveling via another organisms, movement is just an evolved tactic that you'll find in

various organisms. It's just that human technology and human activity exaggerates everything and it creates radically new avenues that can then be exploited by the animal as it would exploit any any environment that it could actually gain gain a like a claw hold. And yeah, we we just have to keep an eye on it, you know. Sometimes it's good, usually it's bad. Keep an eye on it. So that's that's my selection and science tie in for this Anthology

of Horror episode. But I'm very excited about about your selection, Seth, because yeah, this is uh, this comes from a series that we haven't covered on the show before, and I had not watched any of these episodes until this year. I watched two or three of them. Yes, this is from Tales of the Unexpected. I'm guessing most people probably haven't heard about this. Maybe maybe if you're British perhaps

you've heard of it more. But um, first of all, let's let's dump things realed down for for Americans here. Rawal Doll of course, a very famous author. We all know rawl Doll. He wrote all kinds of super famous books, Matilda, the which is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James the Giant Peach. I can go on and on and on. Uh, super famous for his children's literature. What we in America aren't as familiar with He had many adult fiction, uh pieces out in the world too, dozens and dozens of

short stories and and one novel as well. And maybe maybe it's me, but I just feel like Americans didn't really get as much exposure to these these adult pieces by Rawal Dall. I think most Americans just view him as just a children's author. So well, what happened for me in particular was, Um, I was cruising around I think this is on Amazon Prime. Originally I came across this show and because you know, like all of us here on stuff to blow your mind, we appreciate the

strange and the uncanny and the macabre. So I was like, oh, Tales of the Unexpected. That sounds fun. What's that? So I turned it on and immediately you're You're greeted with rawl doll sit in like a little like leather easy chair, you know, like like like with like a writing desk on his lap, in front of a roaring fire, explaining

where this story came from. And so immediately I look it up and it turns out, yes, rawaldl has an enormous library of adult fiction, and uh, this series is primarily based on these short stories that he wrote, and it's fascinating. Um. I think they try to convince you initially that hey, this isn't for children because these opening credits.

Who they're they're they're gorgeous and they're strange. How would you describe them, Rob, It's kind of like, um, kind of a James Bond casino vibe, but a casino where the back room is filled with creepy masks and haunted artifacts. Yeah, they show your skulls, they show your guns, they show the silhouette of I assume what they're trying to imply as a nude woman dancing. Um, it's it's yeah. They they're showing you, like adult material to go, not for children,

not for children, not children. And now, to be clear, the content itself, at least based on the couple episodes I watched, uh, is nothing so extreme at least to modern viewers. Uh. In fact, that some of the content I watched was actually quite tame, like surprisingly tame. But but yeah, that that intro seems to be saying, kids, you should be in bed, get in bed before create creepy uncle Dah comes out and starts talking at you.

I I can say that UM. When I first discovered these books that this show is based on, and I read them all, raw Dal does get pretty extreme. He has um not only some some real violence, but more than that, he just gets very inappropriate in places like UM. I think he's perhaps intentionally being offensive for for the sake of literature. But but it's in there, especially there there there are some elements relating to UM, I don't know,

dynamics between men and women that are just dreadful. So so you know, just just be aware that if you do explore the adult writings of rawl Doll, there's some inappropriate stuff in there for sure. But anyway, but what we're what we're addressing today, it's a very specific episode. Uh. This one is called Royal Jelly. It's the first episode of the season two of Tales of the Unexpected. This originally aired on March first, nine eighty let's see. It

was directed by Herbert Wise. He's probably best known for directing the I Claudius mini series from nineteen seventy six. And of course, this is based on the story Royal Jelly by Ral Doll from his nineteen sixty collection of adult short stories called Kiss, Kiss and Um. I guess we've already briefly discussed who Raal Doll is, y'all get it. He's super popular, super famous, best selling, wrote amazing children's literature and adult literature too that is less well known,

at least here in America. Um. Now, this has been adapted for television by Robin Chapman. He was an actor and a writer who contributed to dozens of projects from the sixties and nineties. Ums to them are British, so when I look at his imdbeach arts and stuff, I don't know most of them, but there's tons of it. So clearly he's been very involved and very prolific. And uh, there's a very limited cast in this. It feels a

lot like kind of like a stage play. And so we only have three actors in this story, four if you count the baby. But we have Timothy West who plays Albert Taylor, a beekeeper and our protagonist. We have Susan George, his wife, who has recently given birth to a child, and she's very fraud very worried for most

of the story. We then have Andrew Ray, who plays someone named Percy Hayward appears very briefly as a television presenter, and that then we have a baby who is uncredited, and of course we have the raw Doll introduction where he of course plays himself and tells us a little story about where the story came from. Well that that intro. Really, I've been just almost alarmed by the intros that have Doll in them, basically serving as like the crypt keeper

of the shows. But also I guess it's comparable to like Ray Bradberry theater that we had in the States, And I guess part of this again it's I'm coming in from the American standpoint where I just knew him as the name that was attached to like Willy Wonka. I wasn't exposed to these other stories, and I wasn't exposed to him as a as a person, as a as like a person on the on the TV screen

that would be talking to me. And there's something about these intros like they're a little bit creepy, And I don't know to what extent they're intentionally creepy, because he's he's in that little desk by the fire chatting to you, but he has this I don't know, I get kind of a creepy vibe off of him. And there are also a lot of sort of offhand comments about either

how rich or famous he is. Yeah. Yeah, in fact, one of the so in this introduction for this episode, he's sitting there and he's talking about how when he was in America he was walking around and that this is the origin of his story. This is why he wrote the story in the first place. He saw a jar of royal jelly and like a fancy boutique shop window, and it was just ludicrously expensive and he thought, wow, like, what is this, why is this? Like what's happening here?

And so he wrote this story all about like its effects when he did like research and stuff. And then once it was published, his friend Dick Van Dyke sent him a package which was several bottles of this royal jelly. Um. Now, I believe rawl Dahl wrote the screenplay for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. So I'm guessing that's how they became friends. But yeah, so, um, I guess you'll you'll find out

when when we tell you more about this story. But it's it was very strange that the first thing that rawl Dal did when he received this these bottles of royal jelly, is he drank them. All down. That was that was his initial reaction. And U with that, I think like you were saying, is this supposed to be creepy?

Is it supposed to be funny? It kind of reminded me of the introductions that Alfred Hitchcock used to do on Alfred Hitchcock's Presents, where it is like it's leaning into them Cobb a bit, but also trying to be kind of like, you know, like, oh, I'm your friendly uncle, but I'm also gonna make some a Cob jokes in here too, Like that's that's that's the vibe I was getting. Yeah, Yeah, and there's and there's also very much a dry British wit to it as well. Yeah, but let's let's begin

this story. So, like I said, Albert Taylor is our primary protagonist here, uh that this episode begins with Albert Taylor. He's an apiculturist at k A, a beekeeper, and we see him wandering amongst the hives on his on his property and love andly examining them and and just be being a friend to the bees. You know. It all seems very very pleasant and and fun and kind of like pastoral. It seems great. Yeah, and and again Timothy

West in this role. Tremendous actor that's been in tons of things, like a lot of theater work as well. He's one of these guys where if you've watched any amount of British TV or film, you've likely seen him at one point or another. He is still active today hundred and forty two IMDb credits and he's been active since nineteen fifty nine. And then we soon we are second and pretty much only other actor in this uh.

Albert walks inside and he sees his wife and their newborn child, and um, this is Mabel Taylor, the character. She is having a terrible time trying to get their daughter to just have some milk, but you have some food. You know that she's very very worried that the daughter is malnourished, that she isn't eating, and that basically she's just losing weights, that she's not doing what babies should

be doing. They've checked with all the doctors. All the doctors say no, no, no, she's fine, just give her time, she'll come around. But but this mother is just, you know, at her wits end. She she's very very worried about this baby. And the actor here Susan George also a pretty big name for the time period. She was in such films as seventy one straw Dog Entered the Ninja. She was also in Venom. This was the Killer Snake movie with Klaskinski in it that uh we covered on

Weirdow Cinema. Uh So, Albert is very excited. He sits down and he's about to be on television. You know, he was interviewed by a local newscaster. They were doing a little story on him with his bees. So so he's like, you know what, I'm gonna watch me on television. He's kind of ignoring his wife, kind of ignoring his child. He's like, no, no, I'm on TV. Let's watch. Let's watch. The wife's like no, and she gets the baby and

she leaves. So that sits down. He's watching himself be interviewed and to talk about his bees, talk about his hives, talk about his honey, and um. He kind of the television interviewer kind of asks Hi all of these questions that start to give him in real time watching himself these ideas, particularly about royal jelly. On the show, he describes royal jelly as this substance it's it's like a nutrient dense food that you give to be larvae, but it's so powerful that it's only given to the worker

law eva and drone larva for just three days. However, the queen larvae they get just an unending supply of this throughout their entire develop developmental period and thus their increased size and development changes and all that stuff. But we'll get more into that, into the science. So so this this sparks an idea in his head and he goes, why didn't I think of this sooner? You know? And

that's that's all we see for now. Now, for future AMA fans out there, you might remember the episode where we find out where slerm comes from, the popular soda slerm. We find out that it is essentially the uh that it comes it is a product of these alien be like creatures. And then there is royal slerm, which is essentially the alien equivalent of of royal jelly. Yes, great episode. So uh, the baby is suddenly uh eating better, putting

on weights. Albert has has told his wife Mabel, Hey, I'm gonna handle all the baby's feedings from now on, don't you worry. I got this and she's exhausted, so she's she's happy for the health absolutely, and uh, this is, you know, pretty obvious. But Albert has been putting royal jelly into the baby's milk. I would say, uh, spoilers from now on, but there's really no ending to this, so there are there's nothing really to spoil. Yes, Albert has been putting royal jelly in the baby's milk, and

he's deliberately hiding it from his wife. So um, Mabel puts two and two together. She figures out that something is being added to his daughter's milk. She first suspects beer, which I think is pretty funny, but no, no, Albert reveals that he has been feeding royal jelly to their daughter. Um, and she's aghast and she's like, no, no, I'm very worried about this, you know, should you be doing this? This seems bad? And he's like, no, no, it's no

big deal. I've been consuming gallons of it for years. It's specifically, he's been taking it before the baby was born to make him more fertile and virile, and he gives the royal jelly all the credit for making him him fertile enough for them to have their child. So he's like, this, this child is thanks to the royal jelly. My, my morality, this this is all thanks to the jelly. It's all the royal jelly. And so here's my favorite

part of this, my favorite part of this. When he's starting to like go into his like reveal of all what he's been doing and sneaking the royal jelly into the into the baby's milk, consuming gallons of it himself, he starts to ever so slowly, ever so like you know, delicately make little buzzing noises, like just a little conversational like, so, what does this is. It's just like a little just a little little extra buzz now and again, and it just kind of builds and builds till by the end

he is just full blown buzzing, buzzing. And we looked down at his collar or yeah, his his cuff of his shirt, and he's got a little b hair just kind of like tufting out through like the cuff of his shirt. And it's so wonderful, and the wife's getting very scared. She doesn't know what to do about this.

He's like, no, no, no, it's wonderful. And then he picks up the baby and they turned towards the camera, and it's one of those like really corny uh freeze frame super effects filled zoom in shots on the baby where it's supposed to be like, oh no, the baby is a larva or something. It's never it's not my clear at all. Yeah, you can't really see the baby all that well, but it's like a sudden like kind of blurry graphic or PIXELI graphic effect. I don't know.

The baby maybe looks like the baby on that Black Sabbath album cuff or something. It's that more be like um but but but it's it's so sudden, and then her scream is such like I don't know. The tension builds are just right to where even though the actual effects are are basically non existent scene, it's still shocking and it's still like it's still kind of hits you. At the very end, it's like, oh god, this this is horrible. No, it's it's it's a perfect little like

horror anthology punchline, just and that's it. Nothing else to see, folks, move on. Yeah, this this was a solid ending. This is far more solid than the episode that the other episode I watched was one. I think it was called Taste, about a wine snob who essentially he ends up getting into a competition if he can guess the precise winery that a wine came from. He he's going to get to marry the other guy's daughter. So it does have like creepy misogynistic uh notes to it, but it doesn't

end in anything horrible. At the end, he's caught cheating at the game and gets wine poured on his head. So when I saw that, I'm like, well, I don't know if any of these are really going to be horror enough, but you assured me. It's like, oh no, no, this episode has it, and yeah, implied mutant be baby definitely seals the deal. If you read the story, it's um even more subtle and implied uh more or less. The the written word and this uh you know tell

television adaptation are very similar. The only differences, of course, like the internal monologue that you kind of hear from people. In particular, you can hear Mabel thinking to herself, does my husband look more like a bee today? You can hear her like in the very end, being like, oh no, my child is turning into a larva. I can see the larva elements of my child. It's all very internal thought.

It's not like, you know, monster makeup, which which would have been fun too, but definitely a different kind of story. Are there lots of zs in in his dialogue at the end? I believe so. It's been a while since I've read it, but I believe so little subtle buzzes. Uh. So, so let's get into some science. The first thing I was thinking to myself and I, this is just like, you know, one of those things. I was like, wait,

isn't honey bad for babies? I know honey isn't royal jelly, but I have heard very clearly that you should not give honey to babies. So I looked that up real quick, just to like put my mind at ease. And yes, it is widely agreed upon by new tritionalists and pediatricians that babies younger than one year old should not be given honey. Basically, it's as simple as an infant immune system isn't yet strong enough to fight some of the bacteria that a non infant anyone above the age of

one can easily handle. Uh. Specifically, it's Clostridium bacteria which can cause infant botulism, so you know, terrible. And this bacteria thrives in soil and dust, which means it can contaminate certain foods and in particular honey, So uh you know that. By the way, this also includes any processed foods that use honey like a honey, graham, crackers, etcetera. And uh. Once again, there's no risk for an immune

system over a year old. But I satisfied my curiosity by just looking that up real quick, and I was correct. Do not give honey to anyone under one year of age. But like I said, honey is not royal jelly. What what? What's the difference between honey and royal jelly? Yes, you find them both in a hive, but there's obviously big differences. Let's start with honey. Honey, as we all know, is a sweet, viscous liquid made up of nectar from flowers by the way of a multi step process involving multiple

honey bees. It's primarily used to feed the colony. Uh. This is their primary source of carbohydrates, and it also provides basically just all of the energy that the colony needs to go out and find pollen to to breed to whatever. All that stuff is fueled by honey and

in particular their carbohydrates from the honey. As an aside, I was also looking up I don't know about you, Rob, but I I have the notion in the back of my head that I would love to be a beekeeper someday, like like like I have ambitions to be um an apiculturist at some point in my life. And so I've looked this up in the past to be like, wait, if we're taking the bees honey, don't they need that honey? Like that's theirs, right, And that's part of being a

beekeeper is knowing where that that level is. If you do take too much of the bees honey that they're providing for for their their beehive, then yes, you can starve a colony, and you shouldn't do that. You have to be very careful and and and very mindful of how much you're taking from them. So anyway, that's just

an aside. Yeah, my understanding is that with the source of the varieties of bees that one is going to be raising, Yeah, there is a certain surplus level that you can harvest, but there are other varieties of bees that we don't raise for their honey, that don't produce that sort of surplus um. But but I agree with you. Like, even watching this episode of Tales of the Unexpected, the early parts before things get creepy, you see him out there,

you know, tending to his hives. And there's a great scene in it too, where it's the actor himself just out in a field among actual bee hives and without any protective gear he's opening one up and checking things out. And uh, that's scene in particular. It made me feel what you were talking about. It's like I could do this right, I could. Well, I could retire and and just raise bees in a field. This this feel appropriate, This feels like like something worth doing. Someday. I'm going

to do this someday. I've looked into it. I've looked into how much it costs for like you know, buying a colony, how much of costs like buy a b suits. I have a lavender garden here on my property that's nothing but a field of lavender, and I I think that will be make my honey. It will I will have lavender flavored honey. That's gonna be my goal someday. But but like we said, royal jelly is not honey

at all. Royal jelly is a milk like substance which is secreted from the glands and the heads of the worker bees, and it's made to feed the b larvae. So and this includes all the larvae, the drones, the workers, the queens, um and just like it was actually mentioned in the story, this was a d accurate from the story. The drones and workers are only fed for three days with royal jelly, but the queen it just is continually fed. Uh just all the royal jelly you can have throughout

their whole development process. So facts all look this up and it's absolutely true. So up to that point in the story that these are facts that Roll Doll is giving us. Royal jelly is composed of about sixty seven percent water, twelve point five percent protein, eleven percent simple sugars, six percent fatty acids, and a three point five percent

ten hydroxy two desinoic acid. There are also some trace minerals, vitamins and antibiotic components that other people have of course claimed also in this short story that are very beneficial for you. Uh so you know, I mean the nutritional input truly does have an effect from this royal jelly onto the larvae. And it's actually really fascinating because this isn't super common amongst species. A worker larva and a

queen larva are identical. From a DNA standpoint, there is no difference between a worker and a queen in let their larval stage, but because the queen larva is given more nutrients by way of royal jelly, the queen has a complete different developmental trajectory. Most importantly, the queen develops large, active ovaries, while the worker bees they are completely sterile. They have no ability to to use their ovaries for anything.

And it's it's it's it's not common. I was trying to find up other species that have this, this this process where basically you can almost turn into not a different creature, but like a different kind of being. Just basically on did you get extra nutrients when you were a child. And it's not a common thing, but it's

it's a percent true with royal jelly and these b larvae. Yeah, it reminds it reminds me of various morphs that you find, say among some species of salamanders, where they'll be certain environmental factors that may include things like like density of population or exposure to water that that can result in different morphologies, particularly a one ver I want to say, I may be misremembering this, but I think the tiger salamander that can develop a cannibal morph where basically there's

there's one salamander with an extra big mouth for eating other salamanders because it's responding to the there being too high of a population density versus available water or something to that effect. But yeah, in terms of this though, it's just like you got more of the special food than everyone else, and so now you are destined to be this uh, this this high producing reproductive morph as

opposed to a normal worker. Yeah, it's it's absolutely fascinating and uh as this story implies, and also from just Rall Doll's um you know introduction where he was given jars of the stuff by by Dick van Dyke um. Humans do consume royal jelly for a wide variety of purposes and claims. Primarily when I was looking this up, I found claims that it can help with hay fever, diabetes, menopausal administruation symptoms, obesity, and dry eyes. And I'm not going to leave you on the edge of your seats.

There is no evidence that royal jelly will help you with any of these issues or any others. People do take it there, you can buy it very easily, but from every scientific study I could find there there is no, no, no, no evidence that they actually can help you in a in a meaningful way. So, um, you know, I mean Albert was right. There's no adverse effects to consuming royal jelly and giving it to your baby, but it's also not gonna do anything for you, so you probably shouldn't

take it, you know, But that's just me. I'm not a doctor. Talk to your doctor about your taking royal jelly. Uh talk Talk to your doctor about taking royal jelly. Talk to you, to your doctor, your child's doctor before you even think about giving it to an infant, and in general, don't get your parenting advice from from a horror or sci fi anthology series. Yeah, I can say very clearly that you shouldn't give most things to an infant child, which I could just say that very very

very simply. Um. So, there are a couple of you know, adverse uh um issues that can arise by taking royal jelly, but it's it's just this typical allergic stuff. You can get hive sasthma or or even anaflexus, which you know could be life threatening and are very bad things. But it's just standard allergy stuff. So yeah, it's not gonna hurt you, probably, but you probably shouldn't take it because it's not gonna help you either, so so don't worry

about it. You know this This episode is curious though, because it it does seem to be looking at there at least a couple of themes that I see in it. I mean one, like you mentioned, a lot of these stories have something about um like strange relationships between men and women, and on this one, this one in particular, it's like the man is taking over part of the mother's role and he messes it up so badly that he's turning the child into another species or some sort

of a hybrid. There's that, and then there's also the fact that it is it deals with the consumption of an animal product and sort of paranoia over that, which is kind of interesting to think about because we as humans consume a lot of animal products. You think of the baby's bottle of milk example, for example, you know, if you're if you're if a baby is consuming well then we've been talking about formula in these cases. But just the basic human consumption of cow milk, the human

consumption of various other animal products. Um, we just take most of that for granted in our in our culture, most people don't really give this a second thought. Uh where in the many of us don't for large portions of our lives lives. But but in this case, it's like, oh, we're focusing on on the b products here, and the idea that this thing that plays a specific role in the life cycle of the b what if what if in consuming it it also changed our life cycle? Yeah, yeah, no,

it's I mean, it's speculative fixture. And uh, I think it's very successful because it's based partially in reality, but then partially of course not on reality at all. So no, I think it was very successful, fun little story and uh yeah, yeah, no, I'm glad we actually explored both of these. Uh they kind of paired well together with these uh you know, uh, humans interacting with with with uh what what could be seen as an alien species to them, whether it be a bee or a giant

therapy crab was that what it was called. Uh yeah, I know that they complimented each other. Well, this was a good, good little pairing of anthology episodes. I liked it. Yeah.

The other one about the Royal Jelly episode here is that it seems like this is a template that could easily be used and reused in other anthologies, like they like basically the the misapplication of some sort of a folk remedy, uh, using an animal product with monstrous results, Like you can imagine a scenario that involves the local smoothie shop and I don't know, turning someone into an avocad of person. I don't know, something more monstrous than that.

But it seems like a good template. Well, especially because I think there's the smallest, smallest element of reality to this. Like, for example, I've heard stories of people when they were on primarily carrot based diets that their skin turns starts to turn a little orange because of that element that is that is found in the carrot. And it's like, yeah, you shouldn't have too much of that. It can affect your appearance. So yeah, there there's like a tiny, tiny

element of reality that. Yeah, speculative fiction really, you know, thrives on you can really blow that out of proportion. Oh and then of course the human um impulse at times to take something that that is said to have health some sort of health benefit, and may well have some health benefit, but then go so all in on it that you have harmful results. Like I remember researching an episode on pickling at one point and running across people that On one hand, you have plenty of people

who are like, hey, pickled products are great. There, you know this is these are great traditions from culinary history, but also they have health benefits, And then inevitably you find like one person, at least one person out there that's like, I only eat pickled things, and even some pickling enthusiasts you're like, I don't know about that. That's

maybe a bit too far. Coincidentally, when I was watching uh this this episode, it was airing on free v, which is a free streaming service with commercial breaks, and UH I coincidentally saw multiple ads for protein powders and supplements while watching this episode. All right, well, we're gonna go and close out this episode here, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts about these two particular anthology series or the specific episodes

that we discussed. We'd love to hear from you if you have other favorites from the vast catalog of horror anthologies, either series or particular episodes that you think should be taken into account next year when the Anthology of Horror rolls back around, let us know. Um, just a reminder that, uh well, first of all, yes, Joe, Joe is gonna be out for a little bit here and uh and that he will return and in the meantime, we're still

gonna bust out some new episodes. Our core episodes come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Monday, Listener Mail, Wednesday, a short form artifact or monster fact. On a Friday Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. And yeah, thanks to Seth Nicholas Johnson for not only producing the show as he normally does, but also jumping in and uh serving as guest co host. Happy to be here, happy to fill in for Joe while he's gone for

the next little bits. And uh yeah, if if you for some reason like listening to me talk, you could find me on Rusty Needles Record Club. It's my weekly podcast about music that I do. Go check that out if you want it. I'm sure I'll mention it more while I'm around. But if you want to talk to this podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind, please reach out to us at Contact and Stuff to Blow Your Mind dr Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I

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