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So, Chris, what are some of the best devilish horror movies? How about the worst? And talk about the curse of the Devil? When you make a movie about the devil?
Yeah, I mean, I guess you know it's funny because a lot of this, of course is this hyper bowl because I mean, I'm an agostic myself, so of course I don't believe unless I see and I'm not alone. But through share coincidence, a lot of especially American films dealing with Satan, dealing with the Devil, seemed to have a lot of bad juju going around during the making of these pictures. Are the ensuing release of them. And
let's talk before we go to the ess. Let's talk a little bit about again about Rosemary's Maybe, which would keep riffing on maybe with good reason because it's a masterpiece. But again produced by William Cassell, who was a staunch Catholic, so he was apprehensive right from the get go about adapting n Eleven's book the screen, but he went along with it because Roman Polanski was this hot Polish director in Hollywood. This was his big breakthrough movie and everyone
wanted a piece of him. So Castle helped this thing get into production, and the movie gets made and it is a great movie that it is, and almost immediately Castle has a massive heart attack and almost dies and it's hospitalized. I mean, of course, believe it's because he danced with the devil making this picture. Polansky laughed it off, said, Oh, that's just that's just Bill Castle being Bill Castle, superstitious to his core. Ha ha ha. Well we know what
happened to Roman Polanski. Not even two years later, after the release of Rosemary's Baby, his beautiful wife Sharon Tate was home alone in their Hollywood Hills home, and of course Charles Manson's followers were dispatched by Manson to go to the house of what he thought was somebody that he knew that had flighted him, having no idea that Polansky and Suarantate were living in this home, they broke into the home and one of the guys who wouldn't
be assassin in texts, he announced loudly, I'm the devil and I'm here to do the devil's work, and then to butchering the entire group of friends, including Tate, and we know that that was the end of the Innocence In the late nineteen sixties, almost immediately Lansky was accused of being in league with the devil because of Rosemary's Baby, and accused of actually having something to do with his wife's murder. Of course, that was completely debugged very soon after.
But Rosemary's Baby always has that heavy kind of weight to it because.
I wonder, that is, if that didn't happen, if there wasn't the Manson connection, would we still look at it as a masterpiece or with that?
I think I think so, because you know, I have children, I've showed them. I showed my oldest son Rosemary's Baby. He just came out of and blown away. Having no idea about any the Landscare or any of the links. I think it stands alone perfectly, but having that little extra added mythough surround it just gives it a little
more gravity. Thinking with the Exorcist, which again, as we know, changed a lot when it came to the genre in the seventies, not just how it was made, how it was structured, but the kind of visceral nature of it Wills Mare's Baby's verute. That's just just not so much. We see everything and the Exorcist heads rotating chrismal language, the language exactly. That was a big, big deal. Then, yeah, language, that's what got it. It's our rating more than anything.
But it was plagued by by by misfortune. Jack McGowan, one of the actress in the films, died in the middle of production. Melan Burston's back was broken when she was thrown against the wall during one of the satanic scenes. Little Linda Blair's grandfather died in the middle of it. The entire set burned down while they were making it, and they had to install production for another six months while they rebuilt it, and the carpenter on set it
was building a set chopped off his finger. I mean, the list is long.
A lot of.
Misfortune played the Exorcist. Now there's this. I think if he really did a tally on any Hollywood movie being made up that scope, you'd see a lot of misfortune as well. But all these things when maybe you know, maybe there's something to it. I mean, you know again an agnostic, so maybe there is something.
I mean, when you look around, point Chris at some point, Chris the Agnostic, and you have to go like, okay, that's not all coincidental. I want to take a couple of phone calls because people can't wait to talk to you too, so I know you don't mind talking to your people on the wildcart Line. Let's talk to Randy in Ridgeway, Virginia, who says that the scariest movie of all time Barnunn is The Exorcist. Welcome to Coast to Coast, Randy, and you're talking to Chris Alexander.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen. I was driving a truck back out of New York, out of Queens, New York. I was eighteen years old, and I was in New Hampshire and I had to deliver with the load. That was dark at night, you know, around this time of the year, and I've seen The Exorcist was playing in the movie theater, so I could park there and whatnot, and I went in and I saw it with the huge screen in
the sound in the movie theater. When I went back out to that truck and got in it, you know, always got coffee and whatnot, and I had some coffee and I was sitting and going down the road and I was so freaked out by it that I had to go all the way down to they used to be toldos on the Connecticut pip. You had to stop pay tolls, probably the last one down by Greenwich before I was game enough, you miles, We'll say to get out and relieve myself. That's there. It was.
You know, you bring up, you bring up, you bring up a good point. I just have to just interject there, because you know, there's a whole way for people that only saw the exor System. We're raised on seeing it on television.
One of them.
Yeah, but a lot of people, younger people especially, that it's not that scary. But to Randy's point, if you have never seen The Exorcist in the theater, you haven't really seen the Exorcist. I just actually went and saw it theatrically about two years ago. I was a thirty five millimeter France. I was introdu I had never seen it theatrically, and it was like seeing it for the
first time. When you're trapped in that dark theater with those images and that sound design, it's like you're in a nightmare that you cannot escape from, and it does. It sinks into your bones and it sticks with you and me too. I left the building, Eric walk out into the night a grown ass man, and I was really, really deeply unnerved. It still has that power.
I wondered about that. I was thinking about most of these scary classics that I've seen. I saw on my parents' television in their kitchen, and you know, the lights are on, but that theater experience of something like that would completely froy my brain. Now. I know we talked about the Twilight Zone. I want to kind of bring it forward a little bit to modern times. Twilight Zone. Now we move forward to the modern times and we have Netflix in Black Mirror, which I think is a nice homage
to the Twilight Zone in a certain way. I'm wondering what you think of that series on Netflix.
I'm so glad to hear you say that, man, I honestly, I really really am, because I I'm over the mind. Because in the Twilight Zone, Purist and the Twilights won't come back. Many times came that in the eighties. There was also Twilights on the movie, which was a bit
of a failure. The eighties show had some moments, but it wasn't the Twilight So it came back in the early two thousands with Forrest Whitaker, Complete Bomb, and then recently Jordan Peele the Directed get Out, which you've mentioned earlier, tried it again called The Twilight Zone, him dressing up as Rod Sterling. It's like, you can't go back, No, you can't.
I watched it. I didn't love it.
No, I couldn't get through it. But maybe it was called something else, but I don't know about that. But to me, the air apparent of Rod Serling, the air apparent of the Twilight Zone is absolutely Black Mirror. It's the only show of that kind that I feel is evolving everything that Sirling was saying in those first you know, that first wave of the Zone. So I'm a huge Black Mirror fan, and.
It's got sort of these themes that kind of run through some of the shows. But if I wouldn't tell anybody to watch something that is terrifying, it's the one with John Hamm I think called Christmas Eve, and it's terrified. It's terrifying for a completely different reason than you think. It's not jump scare. It's just if you imagine yourself and the hell that they put the people in, like the literal hell that they put them in, it is it'll mess with your head for months. I really recommend that.
And the scene it completely changes gears right in the middle too, doesn't it absolutely?
And it's I mean, that's that's testament to the entire show though. There's a level of sophistication going on there that's you know, it's not it's not just showing you the obvious. It's gonna it's making it's a more immersive. It makes you think, it makes you do a little bit of work. I think that's why it's so successful.
There's another series that I wanted to bring up to that I thought was one of the best scary movie or series I've ever seen, And actually I was able to watch it and with a surround sound at my house, you know, with the TV on, And that's The Haunting of Hillhouse. Did you watch that?
Yeah, Mike flanagain to me, you know, he's one of the great modern masters of horror. Haunting of Hillhouse masterpiece based on the Shirley Jackson novel, a remake of the Robert Wise nineteen sixty three movie The Haunting, absolutely nerve shredding. I watched that. Here I am a man of now fifty. A couple of years ago, sitting in my living room by myself watching that show and I forget what episode it was.
It was.
We're halfway into the show and it breaks me out so much I was afraid to walk into my bedroom. And when you're a horror fan like me and you're that jaded, cynical, you're always trying to chase the dragon and try to find those movies or entertainments that make you feel like you're a six year old kid again seeing weird stuff on the TV late at night and
not understanding what you're seeing. And it's very rare that you experience that, and I experienced it with the hoting of Hillhouse and Mike findinggainst other movies, those TV shows like Haunting a Black manor has its great moment and a money mate called Midnight Mass which is sort of his riff on Stephen King. Salem's Lot hugely recommended as well and very very scary.
Who did you watch the new Salem's Lot that's on us?
Yeah?
Yeah, And actually I liked it more than most people. It's my favorite Stephen King book first of all, and the first version of it, which was a Mad for GV mini series directed by the Texas Chancellor Maskers Kobe Hooper, starring James Mason and Reggieinaldo, is one of my favorite vampire films of all times. So far was high and
I didn't hate the new one. I didn't didn't think it was spectacular, but it was close enough to the book and had a lot of really interesting King King esque elements in it that I found that better than I thought i'd find it. Let's put it that way.
I think it started off good for me, but then it's almost like they raced through the plot to get to the end scene.
Well, here's what happened. Because you like the mini series, which was, you know, a four hour picture, a three and a half hour picture. This director shot a three hour movie and the studio hacked it down thinking they were going to put a two hour picture, and so what we get is the cliff Notes version of the movie that he shot. So that feels like rush because it is rushed.
Yeah, it feels like it. It's because it's not rushed at the very beginning, because you're seeing all the nice foliage of Maine and all that, and then all of a sudden, boom plot goes into like it's almost like I hit the one one and a half time speed on my I exactly.
Suddenly it's like Vampire's Vampire Dead and that different end. Yeah, it goes really racist to the finish line, for sure.
Do you know that the one they haven't gotten right yet? And it is my favorite Stephen King book is The Stand And I've seen them do that twice now on TV and it's fallen. It's almost seemed kitchy to me. With such a incredible, incredibly deep story.
What a what a daunting book to adapt? I mean, you need the thing is you need that space. That's why I keep sending up on television, is that you need that that room to adapt it. And it's so many moving parts to the Stand. I don't know how it could ever be successfully, truly successfully adapted. But I am a fan of the first version of it, even though he has had its kitch especially with the dated
special effects directed by Nick Garris. I think there's some great moments in there, and it captures the vibe of the book. It's not every specific.
Yeah, I guess that's true. I guess I can agree with you on that one. What about Oh my gosh, what Steph King. I'm just gonna ask you about I have to come back to that where I was. I was going somewhere with the stand darn it, that was so good.
Well, there's so many hey, there's so many Stephen King books, oh my gosh, and so many adaptations good and not so good, that it's hard to you know, your brain can get the scrambled next them.
Well, you were talking about the depth of the stand in how it's like such it's got so many moving parts that it would be hard to get that right. But yet I feel like the made for TV version of it did kind of get it right.
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