Hey there, boys and girls, I've got something you'll adore. It's new
and fun and oh so cool. No need to clutch your pearls. Join
Father Malone and his palege Bet on a journey to Sunshine cap It's called Night,
Mister Walter. Isn't cost zero dollars guarantee to make you smile. Hey,
welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology podcast. I am Father
Malone and with me today on a very special bonus episode. Joining us all
the way from the Sunshine Cab Company. The host, co host owner of
Night, mister Walters, mister HP. Thank you for joining us. A
Oh, it's my pleasure following alone. Always great to talk to you.
Thanks for having me. Now on these bonus episodes, we'd like to shake
things up a little bit. We tend to focus on singular episodes of horror
anthology television, but we're gonna shake things up even more here because we're taking
a first our first look at a cinematic horror anthology. This being from nineteen
eighty five Stephen King's kats On. Stephen King, your favorite novelist and master
of modern horror, has written his first motion picture screenplay. It combines all
the elements of his creative imagination. Lovable Pets, classic cars, quiet evenings,
favorite films, Who Killed Us? Anoment that I did, adorable kids,
and of course a monster or two experience, a series of electrifying adventures,
a scene through Stephen Tings Cats Eyes, Where'd your sense of Stephen Tings
CATSI Katsi? From nineteen eighty five. This was an original screenplay by Stephen
King. Although two of the stories here are adapted. It's always interesting when
they just say original screenplay by They said that was for creep Show as well,
and yet at least one of those stories was based on previously published material.
Nevertheless, it was directed by mister Lewis t. If you didn't know
it, you certainly will within moments. It was definitely produced by Dino di
Laurentes. Also side notes music by Alan Silvestrick. We'll give you a quicker
rundown of some of the major players of the cast here. James Woods is
in this movie. Kenneth McMillan, Robert Hayes. This is his only other
role from Airplanes, so sad Candy Clark is in this James Naughton and of
course, our girl, Drew barrymar Hp you begged to be on the show
when you heard I was doing Cast's Eye, because you kept telling me this
is your favorite horror anthology. Time explain why you think that you, in
your words, that this is the pinnacle of horror anthologies. Well, yeah,
Look, you've got your creep shows, You've got your Tales from the
Crypt, You've got your Tales from the Dark Side. The movie this no
One. You know, this one is kind of deared of my heart because
it sort of comes out of that whole wave of sort of PG thirteen horror
movies around that time, movies like Gremlins. You know, Poltergeist was obviously
a lot earlier, but it shares some of these sort of suburban setting at
times of that movie. But the look and feel of it kind of it
feels like it came out of that wave of horror movies. And this might
have actually been Tales from the Dark Side of the movie came out in nineteen
ninety, but this feels like the last of that wave of kind of lighter
horror movies with a bit of an edge, you know what I mean.
There's things in this movie. The cat of course, is very much something
that kids can get behind, and it's a very you know, nice image,
but there's an edge to this movie, particularly when we get to the
final story involving the trol. But yeah, no, I hadn't seen this
movie in full in decades. Literally, I think the last time I saw
it was on cable, in fact, so that it was really nice to
get back and rewatch this because I hadn't seen it in so long. Was
that also the first place you saw it? Was it on cable? Was
it a rental? Did you see it theatrically? I didn't see it in
the movies because frankly, at that time I wasn't someone who sought out horror
movies. If they were on cable, like this movie, I would watch
them. So yeah, this was definitely because it was at that time.
This movie was on a loop with all the other Evergreen movies around that time,
so I had no doubt I saw it on HBO or one of those
channels. As for me, I was there on April twelfth, nineteen eighty
five, first day First Row Showcase Cinema's Rivere, Massachusetts, seeing Cats Eye.
You know, when horror movies aren't rated, are the horror community tends
to cluck its tongue and say how it's not hardcore enough. But I will
also say that twelve year old me was fucking stoked that this movie was PG
thirteen and I was buy a ticket, and and you know what, the
fact that this movie doesn't have the requisite number of fucks in order to get
to the R rating diminishes nothing. A lot of this movie is nightmare fuel,
particularly when you make it available to children, it ends up being a
gateway drug of horror. I think, unquestionably, I'm glad you said that
because I'm rewatching this, and like I said, it being a PG thirteen
movie, like you said, it carried a certain taint for horror fans at
that time. But I agree with you as I'm rewatching this. There's a
lot of awful things that happened in this movie. There's a lot of things
that the more you think about them, the more horrible they become in your
mind. So I was surprised actually how affected I was, even after all
this time. It's a pretty heavy movie, even though I was familiar with
the original stories that, as you said, were I think was it night
Shift? Was that the collection that these came from both. Yeah, the
two stories that are previously published were both from his short story collection Nightship,
and that the final tale is an original for the movie concocted for Dino DeLaurentis
and his mad dash to be the ultimate overseer of his New Shirley Temple Drew
Barrymore's career. As far as I'm concerned, in my humble opinion, all
the anthology series and films in the nineteen eighties are all ripples in the pond
by the stone put there by the stone that is creep Shows, and Dino
no slouch I think recognized or no, you know what I was about to
say that he recognized that Creep Show was a hit and wanted to do that
himself, But that is actually not the case. What had happened was Dono
recognized that Stephen King was a hot commodity and attempted to buy every property of
his that he could get his hands on, and managed to get Firestarter.
So Firestarter gets made and Drew Barrymore gets cast in it. She blows up
in et. Dino Delarentis recognizes that he's got a fucking gold mine here.
In both Stephen King and Drew Barrymore and approaches Stephen King to do a film
specifically for Drew Barrymore, a vehicle for Drew Barrymore, and Stephen King says,
well, I have these stories, and now I'm paraphrasing Stephen King,
who I'm sure is paraphrasing Tino Rentis, but he says, do know the
Lorentis read a few of the stories and came back and he said, Stevie,
these stories. They are horrible, but they are funny. Maybe we
can put a few together. And at that point Stephen King said, I
don't know if you saw a movie I just did called Creepshow where we did
exactly that. So so then he concocted the final story, The Troll and
the Little Girl. He had already been working on the idea. Evidently it
was supposed to be about a little boy being menaced by a tiny troll,
and after Dino's imploring that he employ Drew Barrymore, it became a girl.
And then he just adapted two of his better stories from Night Shift. And
now, interestingly those two stories had already been optioned. If you watch this
movie to the very very final credit, you will see produced by or Co
produced by Milton Subotsky, who had purchased as many of Stephen King's properties as
he could get. He's the low key American via England de Laurentis. He
was, of course the producer for Amicus Productions that produced all of the great
anthology films of the nineteen seventies. So I believe he had to receive a
credit and they paid him off. But Dino Delarentis, being nothing if not
magnanimous, stuck his credit at the very end of the like as you're getting
up and the lights are coming up, it says, co produced by Milton
Sebotsky. It's kind of a real slap in the face of lakaa. I
think know might fall it sure well. And it's the other thing. Another
thing that I was reminded of as I was watching this is in nineteen eighty
five, King was really Stephen King was really the I mean, pun intended,
the king of mass market, or you couldn't go to the supermarket without
seeing a million of his. He was publishing books at such a rapid rate,
and they were always popular, they were always on the best seller list,
and they were getting adapted at a very fast rate. Not to say
that the quality was always top notch. Of course, anyone who knows his
filmography will agree, but it just reminded me of how omnipresent Stephen King was
just in culture at that time. He was everywhere, His books were everywhere,
and it felt like he was really like the leader in mass market horror.
Mass market horror. He was everywhere. Stephen King was omnipresent in nineteen
eighty five because not only could you not turn around without tripping over a Stephen
King novel or a new paperback that had come out, but there were tons
of movie adaptations. At this point. It was brindsy. It was like
blood in the water for Stephen King properties, and he was starting to make
inroads in television. Not to mention, he kept trying to sell us an
American Express card. Tell me it's frightening how many novels of suspense I've written,
But still when I'm not recognized, it just kills me. So instead
of saying I ra old Kerry, I carry the American Express card without it,
it isn't life a little scary to a pipe of the card. Look
for an application and take one the American Express card. Don't read all it
out HB. I was thinking about this myself today, about Stephen King.
I don't remember a time where Stephen King wasn't a thing, but I also
remember a time when he was an up and comer. I remember the adults
in my life in the late seventies talking about Stephen King in hushed tones.
You know, by then, I think if you had any exposure to in
the mass media, it was probably because Carrie was turned into a film by
Brian de Palmer, which turned out to be a huge success. But I
remember those days, and I remember like people talking about Stephen King and oma
they're making the Shining, you know, they're making Salem's Lot. But it's
crazy to think that there was a time when he wasn't everywhere, because even
to this day, he's still everywhere, really he is. And I remember
as a kid, like it was so easy to get caught up on his
work because you could just go into any old used bookstore and you would go
to the horror section and they would be five six shelves worth of Stephen King.
There'd be like eight copies of pet Cemetery, three copies of Salem's Lot,
and you could get them. What I did was I got them super
cheap. You just get these paperbacks that were dog eared and they'd been reddled,
you know, pretty heavily. And that's how I sort of got into
Stephen king was. I just got into him on the cheap. I would
just go to the used bookstore and load it up. But my first experience,
but for me, I agree, I don't remember a time when he
wasn't in embedded in pop culture at large. I can't remember when he was
up and coming, but I do remember my first sort of experience with them
was the movie Creep Show being on cable, because it was so like I
was a comic book guy and I still am, and that is a comic
book in film form. It was an easy comic. Of course. I
don't have to tell you this, but that that movie had such a magnetic
attraction to me. I remember seeing the previous four it and seeing you know,
Ted Danson buried up to his head on the beach with Leslie Nielsen menacing
him, and that was so that was such those stories were so compelling and
so so so. I didn't know easy comics at the time, but that
was there was something so sort of adult yet kid liked because they were comic
books essentially that that was my first that first time I was really aware Stephen
King, and it was just from there. It was just get all of
his books, read everything I could about him, and it was you know,
but I can't never It's like David Bowie. I can't remember a time
when I didn't know of David Bowie and seeing him on MTV, I didn't.
I never remember Stephen King not being around. You know. You mentioned
Creep Show, and of course I think, to me, Creep Show was
probably my favorite movie of all time. I say it's Dawn of the Dead
when pushed, but I know I will watch Creep Show more and have watched
Creep Show more than any other film. It's one of those movies that I
am completely burned into my writina at this point. One thing that really works
in Creep Show is there's a wrap around story that there, but there isn't
a wrap around the story. It starts and ends with a parent punishing their
child for reading this comic book. The comic book is forbidden, which you
know, for children of the nineteen fifties reading ec comics, that was a
familiar seed for them. But other than that, what we're given is the
tale of the comic book. It is as it is buffeted around and by
the wind in a storm outside, as it is waiting for trash day.
And every time the comic book flips open to a page, there we are
and here's the story. So I want to ask you before we delve into
chat sign, how important do you think a wrap around story is. Well,
I would like to say that I feel like it should be important,
but I also at the same time, I feel like in most anthology films
that I've seen, they just tend to be kind of a thin veneer with
which to kind of hang the rest of the story on. As we'll see.
I don't want to get ahead of ourselves here, but I would say
that's one of the weakest parts of Cat's Eye. It was really the wrap
around is really just kind of a vehicle to get this cat from place to
place where he is tangential to most of these adventures with creep Show. I
didn't mind it because I don't know the way it's depicted. Because every time
you go to the wrap around, you remember it to kind of rotoscope the
animation, and like you said, it gets buffeted by the wind and it's
on the ground and whatever. I thought to me that that was perfect because
I didn't need some intricate story with which to hang the rest of the episodic
pieces together. So I guess, in a sense, I'm kind of going
against what I just said, which is I feel like it should be important,
but at the end of the day, I don't necessarily care about it.
As long as some of its parts is there, as long as the
episodic pieces work, I don't really care as much about the wrap around.
Well, how do you feel would you rather something be like? Would you
rather that the wrap around be almost like an extra story in and of itself.
Our friends over at Film Foundation had me on recently talking about horror anthologies
in general, and when that question was posed to me, my answer was,
a wrap around segment is either the most important part of the horror anthology
or the least, and both are equally. Except Creepshow is supposed to be
a comic book come to life. What more do I need than the comic
book flipping open to a page and taking me with it. It's all I
need, in fact. The fact that they have any sort of connective tissue
out on the street where the comic book is, we're shown its environment only
adds to the loneliness of that situation, only like makes you more of the
of that kid reading that comic book on his own. That isn't to say
that something as simple as like Vault of Horror, we all got off on
the wrong elevator and now we're telling each other stories like that have no connective
tissue at all. It's just people telling each other a story, and then
we've then they're in hell. That's the famous Amicist solution to to wrap around
I think, I honestly don't care. I would like it tied in.
I would like it to become part of the story, but I also don't
want the whole movie to hang on it being clever by doing that it.
I don't care as long as you know, like, like I say,
creepshit. So it works beautifully because it's all about the comic book. But
when you have your Vault of Horror solution, like you said, where you
know they're telling each other these stories as just a vehicle to get to the
good stuff that's you know, it kind of calls attention to the fact that
it's just you have to get for me to be. So that's the convenient
solution. But I'm trying to think of of an example where it is very
important and I can't. Well, I would say I'm not a fan of
this movie. It's probably why didn't bring it up. But Trick or Treat
manages to weave all of their anthological stories together and have the connective tissue payoff
in the finale like that become that character who we've seen to be just like
a host introducing the tales actually becomes the focus of the tales. We realized
that the whole thing has been about them all along. So I think it
can be done. But the fact that there are literally dozens of anthology films
that I would point to that are better than that film that don't have such
a clever wrap around story means ultimately the wrap around is meaningless. I read
a lot. I went back and read a lot of the reviews of Cat's
Sign when it came out in nineteen eighty five, and I did too.
Actually, yeah, A common complaint seemed to me that they kept saying that
these stories aren't related, which made me wonder if they had ever seen an
anthology before, or ever watched the Twilight Zone from a week to week,
like, wait, this isn't what happened last week? Where's Burgess Meredith?
Yeah. I don't know where they would get that complaint. I think because
in this movie, like you know, we're talking about the wrap around,
and really the wrap around in this movie is essentially the cat trying to fulfill
its destiny and protecting the girl at the end. But I didn't Again,
I didn't really care about it, and I've been so sort of immersed in
anthology, and anthology is my whole life, everything from like you said,
Twilight Zone to eventually easy comics and things like that. Maybe I'm just more
conditioned to understanding that this is just this is. They don't have to be
connected. There may be a thematic connection, thin at best sometimes, but
I don't really care, Like, I don't know what they were expecting.
Maybe all the stories they were hoping that all take place in New York and
they'd have I don't know. I think that's kind of an unfounded criticism.
Personally, I think as viewers, the more sophisticated viewership became over the years,
the less necessary a wrap around becomes. Because if you look from the
original Twilight Zone to Night Gallery to the reboot of the Twilight Zone in eighty
five. You can see Rod Serling is very very necessary for the original Twilight
Zone. It seems a lot less, so it seems more nostalgic when we
get to Night Gallery. By the time we get to nineteen eighty five,
Listen, Rod's dead at this point, but they choose not to have an
on screen narrator. In fact, they have a sometime narrator. They've decided
that some of these stories don't need narration at all, and that shit,
that's the truth about any of them. So it as far as the presentation
goes, you're right, Like, as a viewer, we're now used to
all of these shows having no connective tissue whatsoever, so it really becomes less
important. So I don't understand why a Gene Siskel is complaining that these stories
are unrelated. And I'm on the side of g of Roger Ebert for once,
who's just like, it's an anthology, felm, Like that's what it
does. Like what is the connective tissue of the previous year's Twilight Zone move
other than Twilight Zone kick that it's in a nightmare of twenty thousand feet aren't
exactly thematically matching. But what is nice to as a viewer is really what
you're describing it. It has to there has to be some umbrella under which
all of these stories sort of fall. It doesn't have to be some sort
of some definitive connection, but when you're dealing with a twilight Zone, for
example, you know that the umbrella is the sort of rod Serling vision for
this, you know, by its own universe, for lack of a better
term, you know what you're in for more or less. There there'll be
some humor, they'll maybe some science fiction, there'll be some fantastical elements,
maybe somebody getting what they deserve, maybe somebody getting what they never thought they
needed. But there you go into it knowing that it's the twilight Zone brand,
if you will. And when you come into Kat's Eye, you know
that this is a Stephen King grouping of stories. So you know, if
you know Stephen King, you know more or less what to expect. Right,
So, without even putting aside the connective bits, the wrap around and
whatever, an anthology still should have an umbrella with thematically which under which you
kind of know what to expect. I guess when it comes to wrap around
segments, HPA. The fact is this one comes close to being the greatest
wraparound sequence of all time. He almost pulls off a neat trick of having
this potentially just incidental character. He managed to weave it through each of the
stories. Almost it ends up being an incidental appearance in each of these stories
where it doesn't really matter. It only really matters in Twitters and Corporate the
first story, and it's only tangentially in the second one. But I liked
following this cat on its journey, and I liked that it was central to
the final tale to be told. I agree, and it helps that.
I mean, I'm sure there were probably, you know, a bunch of
cats that they had acting in this movie, but I got to hand it
to the cat Wrangler that they got some great cats and great performers. By
you know, by the end of the movie, you are so pulling for
that cat to to save the day. You've seen that cat through through all
this awfulness, the things that happened to it. But it's such a great
performer, even at the beginning when it's getting chased by by Kujo, which
will I know, we'll get to but but it's but it helps that.
I mean, obviously, animals are famously awful to deal with and making a
movie directing them. But I have to say, like having a great presence
like that cat, however many they had to get the job done, really
really went a long way towards making that wrap around work. I think that
cat is not credited in this in the credits of this movie. This is
a goddamn shame. Someone should retroactively fix that. I think I agree with
you. There are a few animal performers that really piqued my interest, and
this one definitely does. He's great, She's great. Which one is it?
I don't know. There's no credit. God damn you, and God
blessed the Animal Rangler. They did a great job. I will say there
are a few moments in this film which proved to be harrowing and it made
me fear for that cat. We'll get to it in the story itself,
but I cannot, honestly, HP I cannot tell if it's a visual effect
or if they just have a cat nearly being hit by cars. There are
two shots and we'll get to them. Boll We'll get to that Anyway,
let's start this show, shall we. This story begins Cat's Eye begins with
the lovely lilting tone of Alan Silvestri. Alan Silvestrie doing his work here at
HB. What do you think of his score here? His score is interesting.
I am a big I mean, anyone who's a fan of Back to
the Future and other movies you can't help but be an Alan Silvestrie fan.
His work is so distinctive and memorable and recognizable. But in this movie.
First of all, I as I was watching this and I realized that it
was Alan Silvestri, it surprised me because I had no mem I mean,
it was this long time ago when I saw it, but I had no
memory of him doing the score. And initially, I have to say,
as I'm listening to it, it almost felt a little bit kind of beholden
to what like John Carpenter. It was very it's very electronic in places and
kind of very strident and rhythmic, and it was it was interesting. But
then again, if I think about his sort of work over time, like
if I could point to a movie like Fandango, which he did the score
for that as well, it's not as well known because there's a lot of
he did. He did the orchestral bits and the bits that aren't like actual
songs from that period are it's Alan Silvestrie. There's a sequence in that where
Kevin Coster's character is having a dream about the girl that he left behind and
his Silvestri's score behind it. It's electronic and it's very ambient, and it
really captures a very specific mood and I always loved it. So that sort
of taught me that, yes, there's Alan Silvestri who has these triumphant yet
comedic scores from movies like Back to the Future, But in this I think
he's proven that. I mean, he's writing in the time period, right,
it's the eighties, so that's going to be the style that he's writing
in. But I liked it. I thought it was good. It's a
little bit over the top at times, but the movie itself is over the
top at times, so I really liked it. I think there are two
sort of themes going on here, right, there's the horror theme and then
there's the typical Alan Silvestri triumphant theme. The horror theme is the more out
there electronica stuff that you're talking about. The sort of which which also reminds
me of the score for a Silver Bullet. For some reason, the Triumphant
theme General's Theme General is the name of the cat. It sounds to me
like it's a ripoff, a bargain basement synthesizer, ripoff of the Backs of
the Future theme. But this movie actually beats Back to the Future to the
theaters. No, I agree, there's a I mean, you look at
any composer that has any any long body of work, and you're going to
hear of what they've done in various movies. You can't get around that.
I mean, John Williams, as wonderful as he is, he has some
sort of motifs that are his stock in trade. Alice of Vestri is no
different, and I think that's what you're kind of driving at. Well,
I will say, in John Williams defense, who means no defending from me,
And I've noticed people beating up on him recently and they can go fuck
themselves. But I will say that for the sheer volume of work produced by
Williams, there are very few times where I can point and go this sounds
like that. I mean, there's an overall John Williams thing. You go,
oh, that's a John Williams score. But there are very few times
where I can go, well, the Harry Potter theme is just the tinkeratory
version of the Witch's Beastwick theme, because that one's true. But like that's
a rarity. But anyway, I think Silvestri's doing great work here. So
HP, here's the wrap round, It's begun. Are you ready? We're
following a cat. Who is this cat? Where's he come from? I
don't know, You don't know, but I do know that we're suddenly going
to be treated to a ton of shout outs to Stephen King in a movie
by Stephen King, in a script by Stephen King, because as you mentioned
earlier, the cat is being chased menaced by a giant Saint Bernard that is
foaming at the mouth, a clear nod to creep to Kujo, this is
Kujo, right, And then both Kujo and the cat are nearly collided or
run over by a nineteen fifty eight Plymouth fury with a red body and a
white top, right, which not only is Christine, and clearly, if
you're a fan of King, you know that this is outrageously calling out Stephen
King. All of these references, and on the bumper of the fucking car
they have the bumper sticker that was being sold. I remember seeing it in
stores and seeing it on cars. They're saying, I am Christine, Like,
did you really need to hit the nail on the head so fucking hard
there? Yeah. I groaned when I saw that, because if it had
just been the car almost hitting the dogs and kind of you know, the
guy shaking his fist, that would have been fine, and I would have
been I would have said, oh, that's kind of a nice little callback.
But then to focus on those bumper stickers on the car was was was
a little too much, I thought too. And that while what I thought
was too much was then the cat runs between the legs of this teenage girl
covered in blood in a prom dress. And then in the next scene,
the cat is running down this hallway with this horizontal or octagonal pattern on the
floor being being changed by a guy with an axe. And then no,
it's just it's really so good anyways, So enough of Stephen King calling out
to Stephen King. And here's the thing. I read the script this morning,
HP, and the references are in there. So he actually put it
in I thought this was like Lewis Tige growing up. I thought this was
Lewis t going like, hey, there's Stephen King, look at me.
I got your pal. But no, this is Stephen King telling the director
put in these references to me, well, in fairness, far they're far
from the last because he We're going to keep seeing a lot of King references
here. Yeah, and in fairness, Lewis t did direct Kujoe, So
you know, I give the man full, you know, the full credit
for doing that because he directed that movie. But but yeah, it was
yeah, it was a lot. Yeah. So the cat is then it
eludes kujo it ends up running through a thing and here's where we get our
first look at our girl. And again, this is another thing that I
sort of that eluded me the first time I or the last time I saw
this movie. And that so I get what you're saying about the wrap around
and it's important, but like I have to say, I still don't get
all of these hallucinations that the cat is having these visions of the girl.
And it's always Drew Barrymore saying help me, help me, you have to
find this thing or whatever she says, and the cat I mean, again,
the cat's a great performer, and it's looking at the mannequin and listening,
But that was I thought that was very weird. I don't know.
You're right, the cat is completely and fully committed to understanding this girl and
realizing that it's fucking up and not getting there quicker. I totally believe it's
performance. But as I said, what this could be the greatest wrap around
of all time if you could figure out what in crazy fucking hell is going
on here. The cat stops at a retail store window, a display window,
looks up a mane. He's looking at a mannequin, a ghostly Drew
Barrymore dressed as the mannequin is superimposed and comes to life and then starts exhorting
the cat that it's getting closer. You have to hurry, it's going to
be here soon. So you've got this idea that maybe this is a psychic
girl calling out to this cat, right might be, yeah, we don't
know, but there's no time because the cat had The cat can no longer
tarry. It has to get on a truck and go wherever the hell that
truck is going. Because this is one smart cat and it takes us directly
to the heart of New York City. Baby Yeah, in New York City
in nineteen eighty five and all of its glory. We've talked about this on
other podcasts, but movies like this are a wonderful time capsule of a certain
place in time, and it was great to see New York City, or
at least that depiction of it in nineteen eighty five. HP. You're a
big fan of b roll Over on your show night, mister Walters, You'll
be happy to know that all the shots of New York here are all pickup
shots, including Atlantic City. This entire movie was filmed in Wilmington, North
Carolina. That's where Adino DeLaurentis was forging his studio, his empire, and
that explains why the Cat starts off in New York City, goes to New
Jersey, and for the final story ends up in Willington, North Carolina.
Makes it crazy, right, Okay, So now we're in New York City.
Cat is immediately absconded with by some ruffian who says, save me a
trip to the vet or something like that, and off he goes. Who
is that guy? I don't know because we're now introduced to our main protagonist
here in our first story. The story is called Quitters Incorporated. This is
adapted from a night Shift short story by Stephen King Bye and again adapted by
Stephen king himself. And we're introduced to normal human being James Woods, who's
being entreated by his friend that the way to quit smoking is through this corporation
called Quitters Incorporated, which you is not advertised. You can't really find any
hide nor hair of it. As a company. You effectively have to be
invited by a member in order to participate at it. James Woods wants to
do the right thing. He's got a wife and kid at home, he
doesn't want to smoke anymore, and and he goes. I will say this
that's interrupted for a minute, but I will say the guy that grabs the
cat at the beginning, I will say, the car that he abstungs with
the cat does have Quitters Incorporated emblazoned on the door. Right, So I
think there is some awareness of Quitters Incorporated. But at the same time,
as you're going to describe, I'm sure there's more to it that meets the
eye. Yeah, okay, So we're treated to James Woods going into this
just a nondescript lobby, a lot of artwork on the walls, anti smoking
artwork. I'm haunted by the one where it's just a it's a head that's
a full cigarette, like the smoke pouring out of it and the mouth with
another cigarette hanging out of it, although that pretty much could be a photo
of me in my night in my twenties. But the only other customer,
potential customer is a weeping man sitting on accounts and James Woods basically is going
to take off. He's not paying an effort for this, but he's intercepted
by the head of Quitters Incorporated, played mister Vinnie doctor Vinnie Donatti played by
Alan King, bors Belt comedian Alan King as doctor Vinnie Donati and the name
Vinnie Donati should give you some idea of what's behind Quitters Incorporated. This is
a mob front. What do you think about Alan King's performance here? HP,
So this was a renaissance period for Alan King because he was, like
you said, he was sort of a borsch Belt comedian. I think he
was had a little bit of Vegas edge to him, but I just remember
him like when Donimichi made Cocoon all of a sudden. Not to say this,
Alan King, this was his vehicle to greater success. But I just
remember him being around more and being becoming more popular around this time, like
Jackie Mason sort of. But I will say I knew him as that comic,
but in this segment, in this movie, he is. I loved
his performance. He is scary, he is no nonsense. He is over
the top at times, but he gets the job done. I thought he
did a wonderful job as the sort of I guess the public face of Quitters
Incorporated. I could not agree with you more. And this is my favorite
performance of his. He runs every emotion and I believe every single one of
him. When he's being sincere and chummy, I believe he's actually genuinely concerned
about James Woods's hell, and when he's threatening him, I believe he means
every word, which I mean, he pays that off. But there are
little, tiny moments, little human moments here, like he and his henchman
make a bet, are constantly betting between each other and about whether or not
a couple will reconcile or not after what they're about to do to them.
So yeah, I think he's he's great here. I agree. Like in
the eighties there seemed to be suddenly a lot of these elder comedians figured out
that comedy and drama ain't that far off. They're actually adept at both.
And I think we've discovered more and more over the years that the better the
comedian is, the better they are as a dramatic actor. If you get
most dramatic actors run for their money because they can't be funny. Absolutely,
and he you know he was. He's a funny guy. I've seen his
routines and I knew him well as a comic. But he is really fucking
scary through a lot of this movie. And like you said, you believe
that there's a part of him that is really concerned for his patients and for
this character of Dicky in particular, but the things you see him do in
the service of trying to help his clients, it's this is we were talking
about how thematically this movie gets very heavy for a PG. Thirteen movie,
and there's perhaps no greater example of that than the character of doctor Donati.
He's fabulous. Yeah, this episode in particular represents a level of black humor
that's running through this episode and Alan King is not playing anything for humor but
ends up being the funniest thing in it. And James, which should know
right from the get go what's in store for him here because he's asked to
give Alan King his final pack of cigarettes, which Alan King dutifully opens up,
lays on the thing, and then pounds the hell out of like like
he can't stand them, like they're currently on fire on his desk. And
this is when we discover that there's some mob ties behind Quitters Incorporated and that
their methods are unorthodox and they will be watching you and you will not want
to smoke at all. This is where they actually give him the demonstration of
the cat and show us the room, which is horrific. So this is
why I'm saying that the cat is more integrated into this story than the second
story, because at least it's used as a device here because Quitters Incorporated,
we're shown, have a special room, a viewing room. Is it two
way glass? Did you figure it's mirrored right? So she can't see that
she's being watched or the cat in this case King to them, it's just
to agreeable, yeah, because because you know, flashing forward a little bit.
There will be a person in that room eventually. I don't want to
spoil it, but this person can't seem to see their spouse on the other
side there, or maybe they're just so, you know, in horror at
what they're having to endure. But yeah, I landed on the idea that
it's like mirrored glass. So they put the cat in this room. The
floor is a wire mesh that they electrify, and then just to be extra
ghoulish, they play six Tiers by question Mark and the Mysterians while the cat
is in there, and it's of course being sparked, so everywhere at steps
is another fresh bit of hell for the cat. And then it's explained the
rules of quitters incorporated. Do not smoke. We're going to see it,
we're gonna know it. If that happens once, your wife will be thrown
into that room and you get to watch. If it happens again, your
daughter will be thrown in there, and you get to watch. The third
time, someone will come and rape your wife. He says it so casually,
it's so fucking scary. And then at the fourth time there won't be
a fourth time. Yeah, and he keeps quoting, you know, He'll
say like, well, seventy three percent of our clients will have a relapse,
and then he keeps you know, he keeps quoting these figures, and
I think he said, oh, don't worry, only two percent of our
clients, you know, have a failure rate at three. They relapse a
third time, but they won't be a fourth time. But it is that
that room and the juxtaposition of the music that they're playing, and he says
it's because he wants an association with the room and the music. There's this
psychology involved with this organization and this guy being forced to watch this happen in
this case to the cat. And I have to say, we were talking
about the performance of the cat and how you had said earlier that you couldn't
figure out how they how the cat. Didn't you know, did they actually
have these cars crashing around the cat as it's being chased. I was wondering,
how do they achieve this effect where the cat is being shocked on the
floor and every time there's a shock, it's a zap And I was carefully
looking. It doesn't look like these little shocks like sparks are being matted in.
It looks like they're there. Well, I will say this, that's
just a common like prop guy thing for like they would use that for welding
or something. They basically make a little gun that shoots the sparks. So
that's somebody under the set shooting sparks up. I don't think anyone is in
any danger, and I don't think that floor is electrified. If anything,
they're probably shooting compressed air at the cat, and that's freaking the cat out
and making it jump. That's what I'm hoping. They shouldn't be doing it
anyway, They couldn't have CGI in nineteen eighty five. But anyway, this
cat is a fucking trooper, man. I hope it got lots of treats.
Yeah, but I knew, or at least to your point, I
was hoping. I mean, I didn't look at the end of the movie
to see if there was one of those like no animals were harmed, and
I hope there was one, but I, you know, knowing deep down
that they weren't. They weren't going to actually shock this cat. But it's
so it's shot really well, and it's edited really well, and the effects
as practical effects are so compelling it just made you want this cat to survive
and do what it has to do to get out of there. I guess.
Thus begins a really tense rest of the story. No, you know
what before, we can't get to it. We can't get to the tension
yet because first were treated to James Woods having quit smoking. Freaking out.
If anyone out there is quit smoking, I know I quit many many times.
Those first twenty four hours forty eight hours without the nicktee are pure fucking
hell. And he's selling it to James Look, I know he's a fucking
nut job these days. He was always a good performer, always a great
actor, and he's This story would be fifty percent less effective without James Woods
in a lesser actors dance. But the reason I bring this scene up is,
first of all, we get yet another Stephen King call out. He's
watching the Dead Zone on television, and this is the scene that eventually spirals
into the dream sequence. Okay, they've lined look for a thriller where you
are being surveyed or a better song could not have come around. Then I'll
be watching you by the police, or every breath you take by the police.
Which they've licensed here. But now they have some fucking bullshit cover artists
playing right, So you get kind of excited when the bass starts up right
and that guitar and the drums. But bait the switch. Everybody we get
we're treated to a dream sequence unlike any other where they're trying to show how
enticing smoking is. Everyone is smoking, and he's supposed to be like,
I want to smoke, but it all looks disgusting. Like there's a guy
with his wife on the couch where smoke is just pouring out of him over
and over again. There's some dancing cigarette pacts. Yeah, he's at one
point, so he's talking with this sort of drunk friend of his who is
played by James Reborn. Oh yeah, I love him. He I you
know, obviously he's been in an Independence Day and meet the Parents and all
these movies and he but he's really young here, and so he's talking to
this drunk friend of his and as he's talking, the friend has more and
more cigarettes. At one point he's got both like hands are just festioned with
cigarettes and he's putting them in his mouth and they've done something to his eye,
his eyebrows where they almost look so of demonic and devil like, and
he keeps saying, how about a cigarette? How And he's just putting it
up to his mouth and blowing all this smoke and it's pulling out his ears.
And then maybe I forget me if you're getting to this. But so
the song Every Breath You Take is playing and that, and then for the
sort of climax of the sequence, oh boy, he looks over at the
staircase and there is doctor Donati. He's dressed in kind of this it's almost
like an Elvis jumpsuit and he is lip syncing the words to Every Breath You
Take. I'll be watching you, and he's like dancing and bopping around and
it is. It is so surreal and so horrific, and it's sort of
you know, cant cantid you know, camera angles and the room is all
smoky, and man, it is it is a really it kind of becomes
it. It's funny, but it's intense. The sequence. Yeah, it's
like as for dick as it is. It's so menacing. What I love
that this is sort of not really a gaff. But when Alan King,
whose lip syncing the song, says I'll be watching you. He makes the
an ooh kind of face, and then they super impose smoke pouring out of
it. I guess Alan King didn't want to didn't want to have any smoke
in his mouth to come out of there, but it comes in just a
second too late. So for a second it looks like Alan King is just
blowing James Woods a kiss. Yeah, it, but it's there's something about
the because we've all we've seen of this guy is the brutal methods that he's
using. I mean, at one point he James Woods tries to take a
swing at him to get him to stop shocking the cat, and just as
easily as anything, Danadi kind of grabs him and does this almost like this
sort of martial arts move and gets him. His arm is behind his back,
and you can see how strong and brutal and menacing this guy is.
Sort of see him doing this sort of vagasy Elvis thing. But the message
behind it is I am watching you. Don't take a don't take a smoke
because I am watching you. Very very effective, and at this Lewis t
really starts earning his paycheck because now it becomes a tense thriller, and there's
a mote. The first sort of shock is James Wood's waking up in the
night and there's lightning storm going on outside, and he's snuck downstairs because he's
gonna sneak a cigarette or he might not. And then it was that a
cough in the closet. It's a great sequence where he goes in and realizes
he doesn't realize it at first. He just opens it, sees no one
in there, and then a bunch of stuff drops out, then tosses an
umbrella into it and you hear it ooh, And then he realizes just how
serious Quitters Incorporated actually is. Anyone else in that situation would have probably picked
something else up and started swing, but he knows now what he's in for.
It's horrifying. When there's also there's this shot. I think that that
comes a little earlier, where it's in the morning. I think it's the
first morning where he is quit smoking and he kind of goes outside and he's
just trying to loosen himself up. He's a little uptight, and he sees
a jogger jogging by this sort of overweight guy who's jogging who's kind of looking
at him, and he kind of looks back at him like he's not sure
what to make of it. And then the camera cuts to the opposite angle
and you see the jogger is jogging with dress shoes in black socks. So
we as audience members know this guy's already under surveillance, Like these guys are
serious. So yeah, it very intense. In order to get to that
first moment that his wife is brought down and tossed into it, he has
to have that first cigarette, and man, oh man, they make the
perfect scenario for him to do it. He has He's out in traffic.
It's at like a drawbridge situation, so he's in a secluded area. They
couldn't possibly have gotten that they're not in his car, There's no one around
looking at him, and there just so happens to be a forgotten pack of
cigarettes. If he could just lean down and do it without anyone looking.
This is my favorite moment in the entire segment HP when James Woods lights the
cigarette, when he gets that breath of tobacco right, the moment of not
triumph of the inhale of the cigarette and feeling how joyous that is again but
the moment where he realizes he's gotten away with it, James Woods kind of
laughs to himself a little bit like, yeah, yeah, it's working.
It's working. It's not working because when he leans up, the car next
to him is one of the Quitts Incorporated guys who's staring right at him.
It's horrible. It thus begins a race home. No cell phones, folks,
if someone's coming for your wife at home, you better fucking be faster
than them or be close to a payphone. Yeah, it is scary because
he knows immediately what he did and what the repercussions are going to be,
because doctor Donati has made it very clear to him what happens if he has
a cigarette. So he, like you said, he races home and it's
just such a hard racing sequence because he gets there and there's something on the
stove it's been burning. He sees that the front door the screen has been
punched in, and he, oh, yeah, it really is because,
like you said, he thought he was getting away with something. But you
know, they do this. They've been doing this far too long for him
to put one over on them. You know, while I'm watching this segment,
I'm constantly coming up with scenarios where he could have gotten away with it.
I can obviously put myself in his situation, being having been a smoker
for as long as I was, and I keep coming to he needs to
rent a boat and have it ready for him, and then drive like a
maniac to that doc and then gut on the boat and then drive out into
the middle of the ocean and then smoke, smoke, smoke, smoke,
smoke, and then drive back in. But they would figure something out.
They would have like some sort of an ally on a fishing boat or some
way. If it was I'll tell you, if it was modern day,
they would just have a drone that, oh yeah, following him everybody.
Yes, a critics incorporated these days would be super duper scary, accessing your
home cameras and your ring and everything just to see if you're smoking, Like
they could test your air anyway. So they throw his wife in the thing.
It ain't pretty. And this is where Alan King and his minion I
believe junk is, isn't it. They had a sort of callously bet whether
or not built the couple reconcile or she'll tell him to go to hell and
leave him. I don't know that my significant other would stay with me if
something I did cause them to be tossed into a room that was electrified.
Certainly not right away. No, And actually, in fact, I think
whoever, I think doctor Donati was the one who says, well, either
gonna throw her arms around him and hug him until he gets a hernia,
or he's gonna she's gonna slap him. And he bets that she's gonna hug
him, and Junk says, no, no, no, I bet she's
gonna slap him. And it's you know, like I said, he's been
doing this long enough that he obviously has an eye for this sort of thing.
But but no, I I agree with you, like you know,
well, at this point he's in too deep. I mean, what what
could what can she do? I guess he would have to say it's the
mafia. I don't know what to tell you. There there will kill us
all. Yeah, And I think they they kind of leave the impression that
he's a bit of a sort of a for lack of a better term,
he's kind of a yuppie, and they're they're living kind of an upscale sort
of life in New York City, So there is that. I mean,
you know, she it's not as if they you know, they don't have
a comfortable life. And they kind of make it clear early on that she
she loves him because he when he tells her that he's quitting smoking, before
any of this really escalates, you know, she says, Oh, yeah,
that's great. You know, I love you too, and I'm glad
you're doing it for me, and I'm glad you're doing it for his daughter.
I think your name is Alicia, which I don't think did you?
Did you mention that sequence with mention Delicia? We haven't met Alicia yet.
Who's Melicia? Played by? Well? Alicia is played by how Girl.
It's it's it's Drew Barrymore in a bad wig. But the hell is going
on here? This isn't doctor Strange love. The the weird thing about this,
the uncomfortable thing about this sequence where at one point he drives to the
school where she's she's attending. She's a little girl, but I think they're
implying that she is special needs. Oh, they're definitely implying it. It's
it's very problematic and very cringey. That yeah, no, that that that
was cringeing. Let me just say, I remember sitting in the theater and
thinking, why are they doing this? Yeah, it was really unnecessary.
Like you, you don't. It only makes it more awful that they're you
know that that the possibility that this poor girl could be thrown into the electrified
chamber. But but yeah, it's for it's bizarre. This girl is Drew
Barrymore, the same the same one we see in the mannequin, the same
one we're going to see throughout the story. It's it's she's kind of in
a way, she's part of the wrap around story. I guess, Hey,
if you were confused by that mannequin coming to life, well here's the
mannequin fully alive, but it's a whole different character and knows nothing of a
cat moving on. In fairness, I think Stephen King was doing a lot
of cocaine at the time. No, no, no, no, no,
I'm sorry. Was that maximum overdrive? Was that would be the following
year, sir, when the cocaine trucks would begin backing up into Stephen King's
life. Ah, gotcha. We don't get to any of the repercussions.
We don't get any of this seems almost a little frustrating, like this should
have been an hour long segment writers Incorporated. It's so juicy as a concept,
and I'm curious sense to be interpersonal relationships going on when you're stuck with
with the mob who are only trying to make you better. It's really weird.
It's a dynamic kind of an idea. But anyway, Yeah, we
jump ahead and now it's been six months, eight months, and they're very
friendly. He's actually very friendly with doctor Donadi at this point because yeah,
they're weighing them and you know, talking and joking around. Yeah, their
pals. Even the guy Junk, who was really rather brutal, he's in
there kind of taking he has a clipboard and he's recording the guy's weight.
He's come on six pounds and eight months. Is that bad? No?
I think it sounds great. Yeah, So what's happening is like he's been
They quote figures that you know, when someone quits smoking, they invariably gain
willing. So there's a there's a sub section of Quitters Incorporated that's devoted to
weight loss, like maintaining weight loss, right, and that's what they're depicting
here where now there's a whole other program and they make it well, they
make a joke about it, like what happens if he gains more weight?
Oh yeah, you're going to come to my house with a flamethrower. No,
we're going to cut off your wife's little finger. Haha. You guys
are Quitts Incorporated. Here we go, we got you know obviously we now
have cut to a dinner party and it's two couples, James Woods and his
wife, and the other couple is the couple that introduced James Woods, two
Quitters Incorporated. And they're toasting. Let's toast what do you want to toast
to HP? I know what I want to toast it, Let's toast Incorporated.
Do you think, first of all, neither of the wives we're going
to toast Quittus Incorporated. Neither of the wives was toasting to Quitters. And
they'd be like they threw me into an electric room and played ninety six tiers.
Now, when the classic rock station is on, I sometimes urinate on
myself. That would be one wife's reaction. Never mind the other wife's reaction,
who is missing her finger because the fucking husband couldn't stop stuff in his
gullet and he's saying, hey, let's host to Quitters Incorporated. Nothing happened
to me. I quit smoking and I've maintained my weight. Yeah, that's
the horrifying button on this whole tale, because that's the lasting image that we're
left with, is the shot of the woman with the glass in her hand
and her little her pinky is cut off at the knuckle. And yeah,
I mean it's essentially this is the most well, I can't say it's the
most This is a very, very indebted to easy comics because that is exactly
the kind of ending that you would see in easy comics, where it's you
know that the horror is it hasn't ended, it's just beginning for these people.
Yeah. Man, this is seventy Stephen King short fiction that it's lean,
it's economical, and it has a black heart beating at its center.
I loved this story. I think it's great, definitely worthy of anthology.
Horror. Onto our next story. Where's that cat going? So the cat
is headed to Atlantic City? That what I love this does. This transition
is great because you have the shot of the severed pinky and then there's basically
kind of a dissolve to these hobos that are feeding the cat a hot dog
on a stick. So it's kind of this nice dichotomy between like the pinky
being severed and the resembling finger of the hot dog on the stick. But
we're in Atlantic City, I think. At the end, don't we see
the cat like hitches a ride on a truck or something to get out of
where because it escapes Eventually, I can't remember how it escapes. It jumps
in a cat driven by Elaine Nardo on her way to going to the art
gallery. Yeah, anyway it gets there. The cat has now brought us
to the Vegas mind the Sea, Atlantic City, New Jersey. We're introduced
to our next story and our new set of characters. Basically a crime boss
and his flunky and his flunky you know, dumb girlfriend and he's checking out
for the night. The The mob boss is played by mister Kenneth McMillan.
Now, I sorry, can I interrupt one second? I'm really sorry to
interrupt. One thing that you've glossed over is before we see this. So
the cat has now arrived in Atlantic City and it's wandering the streets after it
has a bite of the finger of the Bite of the hot Dog from the
Hogo. It stops at a in front of a store window. There's a
television playing, right, and once again, yeah, it's a commercial with
a little girl. I don't recall what she's advertising, but again it's Drew
Barrymore and superimposed on this commercial with the girl. Again we have this sort
of ghostly apparition saying you have to find me, you have to come fast,
you have to So it's the second incident of this cat hallucinating the girl.
I just felt like I had to mention that are they trying to say
that in this cant's mind, every girl is one girl? There is only
one girl in the world, My girl, my owner. Is it like
a big fish? The Tim Burton film sort of a situation where you and
McGregor basically there's the girl he's in love with, and every other girl is
basically played by Helena Bottom card right, He's basically liked there was my girl
and every other girl, which is a sweet and beautiful notion. Do you
think Lewis Tgue is employing that here in the form of Drew Barrymore in its
relationship with a Kent. I think that's probably the answer that makes the most
sense, because there's really no other explanation for why this is happening. I
guess you could reach for some sort of supernatural explanation, but then that just
leads to more and more questions and more and more confusion. So I think
that's as good an explanation as any thought alone. Well I hope. So
all right, here we go. Kenneth McMillan, baby is our mob boss.
He's planning something nefarious. He's already ordered his minion into some sort of
action that we're going to get to. But a word about Kenneth McMillan.
I fucking love him. That's what I got to say about him. This
is baron Vladimir Conan to me, you know, hb. This is actually
pointed out to It pointed to me towards an unusual phenomenon, which is,
at the time, if a celebrity or if an actor were in enough movies
that were on rotation in cable to me, they were the most famous actor
in the world. I agree, because Dune was on a lot. I
remember very seeing the trailer for Doune and where he would scream he who controls
the spice controls the universe. That's Kenneth McMillan. But yeah, I agree
it. Well, that was even beyond an actor being featured prominently. I
mean just movies in general. I mean you would see I would see like
Cannon movies that weren't really even maybe playing that heavily theatrically, but because they're
so prominent on cable TV as kids, you just get this impression this must
be a good popular movie because it's on all the fucking time, and by
extension, this actor that I'm seeing all the fucking time must be the most
famous actor in the world. Hence Kenneth McMillan. Yeah, like I said,
he was on, he was in a lot of TV, and he
was in a lot of movies. They were in constant rotation and all for
the best. You know what. In my mind he should have been as
famous as he was to me because he's always great. In particular here I
said James Woods was good in the last episode. Can't hold a candle to
what Kenneth McMillan is doing here. He is at turns horrifyingly menacing and a
delight. I love this guy. Like what he finds funny. I find
funny at the same time, I don't want to be in a room with
him anyway. What we're dealing with here is Kenneth McMillan making a bet with
his buddy because they spot that cat and they think the cat is going to
be crushed on its way across across the freeway. And this is the stunt
that I mentioned earlier, the one that is very either troubling or a brilliant
special effect, where they effectively lured the cat across the street and it cars
are crashing all around it. And it's a fantastic piece of action, no
question. It's I don't know, it's as good as Bruce Willis jumping off
of the fucking roof with the flames going up everybody, and it's worth seeing.
Except it's very troubling. It is very troubling, and like I said,
I probably should have stuck around to make sure that no animals were harmed
in the making of this movie, because not only do you do you do
you? Is? It a tense sequence because these these guys are betting on
whether this poor cat will live or die, and they're even trying to sort
of spike the bed a little bit by going you're kitty kitty here, kit
kitty, and that when when these cars are crashing and it's dashing across the
freeway, like I think it even goes to slow motion, where so you
see these cars, the impact and the cat dashing just in the nick of
time to get across it's it's it is marvelous to observe and yet completely irresponsible
as as as somebody who loves animals. Okay, now that is basically where
the cat's role in this story and other than Kenneth McMillan picks the cat up
and now they're friends and he's take care of the cat. We go back
to Kenneth McMillan's pad and our new story begins. I mentioned everything anthology is
an echo or a ripple from the stone that is creep show in the Giant
Pond. This one is one something to tie you over. It's basically the
same thing, except that without the supernatural element. Kenneth macmillan is a mob
bus. His wife has been having an affair with Robert Hayes, who is
a burned out tennis pro, and they're about to run off together. He
puts her on a bus to get her out of here and it's too late,
baby, they grab him. What's his name? Oh my god,
I forgot the guy's name, the henchman. Yes, so it's Mike Starr
and Charles S. Dutt are the henchman. It's Mike's star. Oh don't
you love Mike Starr. He's fantastic. He I couldn't point to one specific
because he was never a star, but he was always great and everything he
was in he was obviously people remember him from like Dumb and Dumber. He
was also in a show that I watched. I think it was maybe the
early two thousands. It was a decent show called Ed, which was really
good. But obviously Charles S. Dutton who has a full head of hair.
But I always knew him, and you probably too. Father alone.
He was in a TV show called Rock. He was in Rudy. Of
course, he was like the groundskeeper who takes Rudy under his wing in the
movie. He's a fantastic actor. But it might be feeling in with his
bare hands. That's right, he was an alien three. That's exactly right.
Damn right it was. And by the way, Mike Starr, if
you want some definitive stuff from Mike Star. Check out his performance in ed
Wood as the producer who ends up producing Glenn Are Glenda look ed? You
seem like a nice guy. He's great in that. Even better performance and
even more natural performance is The Summer of Sam. He plays Adrian Brodie's stepdad
in that, and he's you're right, you are absolutely right. Oh,
I forgot I remember ed Wood, but it didn't come top of mind when
I thought of Mike Starr that that is a great call out. So our
hoods are way too qualified. Hoods. Grab Robert Hayes, late of Airplane
and the television series Star Man. Remember that. Yeah, I love Robert
Hayes, but he's no Jeff Bridges anyway. Oh but it was the TV
series he was on the other TV series. I don't remember a TV series,
but he wasn't. A movie on cable called Take This Job and Shove
It. Oh my god, Well that was released in theaters with Tim Thomerson.
That, Yeah, I remember the previous for that in theaters. Baby,
I don't remember. You're gonna take your job and shove it? Take
this job? Man, I ain't worked, didn't hear no more? Yeah,
but he you know, he he was, he's iconic in Airplane.
I mean, it's unfortunate because that's his legacy, that want and only movie.
But he was so good in it. He was perfect because he's not
his only legacy. He was also an airplane to the sequel. There you
go. That's that's that's even better because that one took place on the Space
Shuttle. You know, that's a better movie. Absolutely, But yeah,
no, they didn't recycle any jokes from the first film. But he's in
all fairness, Robert Pays is good here because he's not called upon to do
much except to be really scared for what he has to endure and then be
really really pissed when all is said and done. He's fine in this.
Oh I'm having fun with Robert Hayes. I think he's great in it.
Actually, like what he's called on to do here, like shimmying around the
ledge of an entire building. That's the plot of it. Everybody spoilers,
So yeah, yeah, I think he's great. I feel every biting wind
and every pin wheeling your arms to stay in balance, and every pecking at
your ankle thanks to Robert Hayes here. So what we're given here is a
wager. This is, by the way, the second one based on a
Stephen King short story. The ledge is the name of the short story,
and the short story is effectively the same exact thing. Here he adapted himself
pretty precisely. This mob boss has found out about the affair and has planted
cocaine in Robert Hayes's the trunk of his car. He's going to have him
arrested and thrown away basically for life, or he can perform one little task,
one little wager, and if that happens, then he'll get his wife
and what ten thousand in cash, and they'll take the drugs out of his
car and he'll be exonerated and go about his merry way. The bent,
however, is that there is a what three maybe five inch ledge that runs
around the perimeter of the building. He has to make his way around the
entire building without falling. If he does that, he gets every the mob
boss's apartment or whatever is it's on, like the fiftieth floor. It's not
the penthouse, but it is so high and the effects here aside from some
really bad matting, which we can talk about later, but yeah, it's
so impossibly high and he has to clamber around this three to five inch ledge,
and he says like, I never welched on a bet in my life.
So you're led to believe that this mob boss will be a man of
his word. We already saw him make a bet that the cat's going to
make it across the road safely. So yeah, that's his only option.
The only thing he can do is dance to this man's tune and try to
make it around the building. What he doesn't mention, though, what he
leaves out with Kressner, the guy's name, leaves out is that he's not
just going to let Robert Hayes off his mary Way and wait for him to
go around the building. He is going to perform little, for lack of
about a word, pranks and tricks on him to get him to fall off
the building quickly. Yes, he's going to urge him along in the fariest
ways. I just want to keep you on your toes. Kenneth McMillon.
Baby, he's so scary and funny. I want to be his friend,
but I don't want him to come anywhere near me. He's really scary here.
But he's we talked about Alan King, who's more deadly serious in the
first episode, but in this one really Kenneth Millon leads with the humor and
the charm, but he leaves no there's no mistaking the idea that he means
business. And if this guy doesn't do what he says, it's gonna be
bad. Like he's got this guy dead to rights and he has he leaves
the guy no choice but to do this awful thing. Now, can I
just say that Here's where I think Stephen King could have tied up his stories
in a much more organic way than just random story, random story linking device
as a cat. If this mob boss had simply been the same guy from
Quitters Incorporated, like this is what he does in his off time. Like
if the Quitters Incorporated story had ended with him saying goodbye to James Woods and
then we follow him to his car and he drives off to Atlantic City,
that could have been great. It would have robbed us of one of too
great performances, but it would have I think, streamlined the movie a little
bit better. It could have. And we even have the little nugget of
doctor Donati making a bet with his henchmen about whether the wife is going to
hit him or hug so that would have thematically worked. I think I don't
know that I would have been exactly on board, because I think there's something
about the exaggerated character of Kressner and the fact that he is this Atlantic city
kind of wheeler dealer gambler type that works well here. I don't know if
the more straight laced doctor Gannatti would have been as effective, but I see
where you're going with this. I don't think it's totally off track. Well.
What occurred to me while watching Kenneth McMillan was, boy, I would
love to see more Kenneth McMillan as this character. Damn if they had only
put him in that first story, we would have gotten twice as much Kenneth
McMillan. Could he also play the troll in the final story? Okay,
so he's keeping Robert Hayes on his toes. Robert Hayes is making his way
slowly, but surely this is shot fantastically well. I don't know if this
is miniatures or rear projection or cyclorama on a it's probably some combination thereof all
of the stuff that does not involve movement of the camp in an up and
down motion looks great here, but it's whenever we sort of decide to show
the height where, which is what's crazy to me is they never he never
cuts to a shot from like the street looking up, you know. He
never cuts to even like say, three or four floors below, to give
you some sense of the scale. Nevertheless, it doesn't need it. I'm
just saying it's weird that he never does it. Yeah, you could have
at least given a sense of scale to it, But I think to your
point, it doesn't matter, because we already understand the stakes of what he's
doing, and the fact that like at one point, the closest we come
to that is at one point Kresner has like an old timey horn that he
honks at him to startle him, and he ends up like throwing the horn
out the window, and we see the horn fall and fall and fall for
probably for far too long given the actual height, but it falls for so
long and it finally hits the ground and it's just like it just pancakes itself.
So at least there that that's enough of a clue as to how high
the guy is. But I do agree that might have been a technical shortcoming
somehow, but it it. It was effective as long as, like you
said, it didn't move around, the camera didn't move around too much.
But it is harrowing him, you know, because it's you know, he
goes through a lot, even just going around that building, not just Cresner
throwing things at him, shooting a fire hose at him at one point,
because he has found this gap, little outplace, this little alcove where he
heard architectural abnormality that well, yeah, exactly, like I could just sit
here for just a little while. Oh, this would be nice. This
is after, it should be pointed out, the after the Pigeon from Hell
sequence, where this one determined pigeon willing to go to war over his territory,
consistently pecks at his ankle and you get this little spot of blood through
his white sock that only gets worse, and the pigeon keeps bullseyeing that wound.
Oh my god, he gets into that alcove and kicks the shit out
of that goddamn pigeon. It was bereful. Yeah, the pigeon was the
worst part of it for me, I have to say, just because and
again it's a good call up to these animal wranglers, because he's shuffling along.
It's not as if it's the pigeon is acting in a static shot with
this guy, Like you can see the guy's foot moving as he's shuffling along,
and the bird is moving with him right there. Way the same time.
He's pecking, pecking, pecking, and like you said, it starts
as this little red dot on his socks and he just keeps and you can
almost feel the pain that he felt because the spot gets bigger and bigger,
his sock gets horn by the pecking, and he just won't stop. And
God blessed that pigeon because it was it. I never got the sense like
sometimes you see these animals and you can almost see like the trainer waving something
in their face to get them to do something. But this bird looked pretty
autonomous to me, and it was pretty horrific to see what he did.
We needed an Avengers like team up featuring this pigeon, the cant from this
movie general. We also need that the dog from the thing. Those three
that's a good foundation right there. That was amazing. But so yeah,
so that happens, and then well, let me just say mentioning that horn
the falling horn. I think I don't know that there was a technical problem.
Maybe they were shooting this on a sound stage, so you don't want
to shoot up because you're going to see the lights. But I think they
thought the falling horn sequence would be a fine and dandy replacement for any shot
from down below. But the problem, and you mentioned it earlier, the
dodgy effects. If there are dodgy effects in this movie, they're right here.
Because it is this traveling match shot of this horn tumbling with the background
spinning past it is. It's horrifically compositive. You wonder why they just didn't
throw a horn in slow motion and follow it with a camera or something,
or put it on a string or something. It's terrible looking anyway. That's
my quibble before we move on to the juiciness. Yeah, I agree to
one hundred percent. The matt lines are so thick in this and so obviously
fake that it couldn't help. But take me out of it a little bit,
it's gonna get even worse at the end. They're going to do it
again to deliterious effect. So look, man, he's almost there. There's
really only one thing keeping him from it, and it's a gigantic fucking neon
signe Kenneth McMillan. Cressner failed to mention that part of the path was going
to be interrupted by a circular logo neon hanging off the building that he's going
to have to navigate. It's very harrowing. This could be very cheesy eighties
TV action, and instead it's it's really scary. It's it's very it feels
very realistic because there's no there's no footholds in this area where the neon sign
is. It's all very sharp and narrow corners of the lettering of this this
this sign, this lit sign. So he's got to figure out a way
to navigate it, and in the process of doing that he I think it's
like a tee or something. He ends up grabbing the top of the tee
and it's some it's like something out of I don't know, like like Buster
Keaton or something, because his block but even scarier because the length of this
thing like throws him all the way out into space. He's basically at the
halfway point across the street, and the whole time Pressner is popping in and
out of windows and leaning out and he is having the best time watching this
guy who's sleeping with his wife, you know, fumbling around almost you know,
falling off the building. He's laughing his butt off. He's loving it.
And that's that's that's pretty horrible. He really ought to be thanking,
he really ought to be thanking mister Norris here for the probably the best time
he's had in ages. Yeah. No, it's so he's deriving such glee
from this because the there's nothing we understand, there's nothing this guy loves more
than a good wager. But I suspect what he loves even more than that
is watching this you know, this tennis pro, you know funk who's making
time with his wife, getting what he thinks he deserves. And and it's
you you you feel that from him because you know it's just loving it.
And again this echoes something to tie to you over from Creep Show because there
again, the character of Richard Vickers played by Leslie Nielsen is a gleeful villain,
like just a dement human being who is doing the worst thing ever,
and yet somehow you kind of continue to like them. And that's part performance
because obviously Leslie Nailson and Kenneth McMillan, are real have fucking heavy hitters,
let's not forget. But a good majority of it is that Stephen King can
write characters. I keep saying economically, and I'm gonna say it again.
He writes them. He can write you a character within a couple of lines
of dialogue, can tell you everything you need to know about them, and
it doesn't feel like a cheat. But it's interesting because I hadn't sat down
and thought of the fact that there is such a parallel between something to tide
you over and this second sequence. But you are one hundred percent right.
It's basically a thinly disguised almost like a rewrite of it, because you have
the sort of you know, cuckholded husband, who is you know, giving
it back to the guy who is sleeping with his wife. There's no super
as you said, there's nothing supernatural about the sequence, though it's all too
real, and it that may make it more horrifying and identifiable to the average
person because this, I mean, this could I guess in theory, this
could happen. I don't know that someone would actually make it around the building
like he did, but that could happen. You know, it's unlikely that
somebody who's buried up to their neck and the sand would come back as a
water logged zombie that would take revenge. But this is so much more grounded.
It's probably more like, it's probably more likely that you would come back
as a water logged corpse than you could actually navigate around this building. Nevertheless,
Norris does it. Hooray, He's gonna get everything he came for.
He's gonna get that money. They're going to take the drugs out of his
car, and they're going to give him his wife. What's in the box?
HB long before, seven, long before? And he says, you
know, Cresner says, you know, I'm a man of my word.
Here's the money, and you get the money, and you get my wife.
And he kind of kicks the bag of money over to the guy and
what rolls out of the bag but his wife's severed head. Which again we've
talked about this. This is I am well eighty five, nineteen eighty five,
so I'm twelve years old. It's not very violent, well, I
mean, the thought of it is violent, but it's not graphic because it's
just a second or two of a severed head that you can't even really identify
except for the hair, but that the idea of that is really shocking and
horrible to think about. That this guy he was you know that he would
do this and that. And there's something in Robert Hayes. He looks at
it and he says he says it in such a way that you feel like
this guy has been pushed beyond his limits and this is like the height of
horror for this guy in this moment. That's probably what any of us would
say, given the circumstances if we saw this happen in front of us.
It really is shocking and just awful to think about the repercussions of that.
The effect isn't great. It's basically a mannequin head with some blood on it
rolling across the floor. That in and of itself is not horrible. But
you're right. The reason it works is because Robert Hayes is fucking awesome here.
His reaction is so horrified. It's a dawning realization that happens in a
moment, but you feel every emotion there. But the other component that makes
it so memorable and so menacing and so fucked up my childhood as it did
yours is the menace behind Kenneth McMillan. When he kicks the bag over,
he might as well be cutting her head off in front of us exactly.
And you know, at this point it's he has kept his word, he's
lost the bet. But there's no way that Norris is going to walk out
of that room alive. You know, he's paid up, but that doesn't
indemnify Norris from getting killed after the fact they tussle for the gun. It's
a good sequence, Okay. I mentioned earlier the James Woods moment of him
realizing he's getting away with it anti a bad boy. It is fantastic.
The other fantastic performance and this is actually probably better than the James Woods performance.
When Kenneth McMillan is begging for his life, he's crawling on the floor
on his back beneath the coffee table. There's a penthouse on the coffee table.
He stops to start reading the magazine in the middle of the begging,
like completely distracted, and it doesn't feel weird. It feels actually appropriate.
It's such a bizarre choice and it's great and it makes me love this character
all the way down to the final moment where he swishes on the ground outside
on the ledge. They make him do it. You know it all there
are no spoilers here. We've all seen this episode. It is very weird
because I was half expecting as he was flipping through the penthouse magazine, I
thought that he would throw in a line like, hey, you know,
with all your money, get one of these broads from this magazine. But
he doesn't. There's there's no there's no reason for him logically to be flipping
through a penthouse while he's begging for his life. But and yet he and
yet he does, and yet it works because the character is so demented.
It really is a brilliant performance. I it's hard for me. We already
talked about how good Alan King is, but I think you're right. I
think I think the commitment to the character. I think Kenneth McMillan might edge
him out a little bit. I think he makes me believe that the thought
of preserving his own life and thumbing through this porno magazine are of equal importance
to him. And as weird as I might find it, I believe that
character really does need that at that moment. It's fantastic anyway, right,
so on to our final deal. What's this one called? This is the
original? Well, this is I guess this is Kat's Eye, right,
I mean I don't no, no, no, no, this one is
called General. Oh, the name of it is General, because it has
to be said, there are no title cards during the movie to indicate what
the names of these stories are. So I'm actually yeah, I mean,
Cat's Eye is obviously the name of the movie, but I wasn't aware that
this was called General. But it makes perfect sense because it's the name that
the girl will give the cat as it makes its way to her house and
willing me to the North Carolina. Yes, finally, all of the fucking
bizarrow weirdness of ghosts and Drew Barrymore appearing on television and appearing on mannequins is
paying off. This is where we've followed in General to the to his final
destination, and it's in North Carolina, I guess. And it's a little
girl who has a parakeet and two loving parents played by James Naughton, who
always seems disaffected and wonderful. He's always great as a parent here, but
even better than him, Good God, Candy Clark there. She is fantastic
American graffiti, thunder Manufelt to Earth. She's wonderfulness and she's very good.
In that era, there was a very particular type of mother figure in a
movie like I already talked about Poltergeist, the sort of I don't know,
a mother with an edge who is not afraid to kind of give it back
to the husband a little bit when he's being an idiot, who is not
afraid to take matters into her own hands, as we'll see in this segment.
But she's fabulous in this she's really I believe her as the mother of
Drew Barrymore. Yeah, that particular mom from the eighties. They won't take
guph from her husband, but won't take shit from anything. Like I believe
she would knock a motherfucker out in this thing, like I've never seen Candy
Clark so feisty, and Candy Clark is all feisty. So the cat is
arriving now, just in time, but that's not its point of view.
We keep seeing. I love the camera work here, Jack Cardiff is the
DP going here. We're introduced to our final antagonist of the piece. It
is a troll out of nowhere. What we've been dealing with people dealing with
their addictions to cigarettes and their addictions to gambling. We're now dealing with a
troll who's hunting a girl. It's really bizarre. It's out of place,
I guess, I guess g and Siskel did have a point. Yeah,
it has to be said before we go any further. I will admit that,
I mean, maybe you'll you'll get to this eventually, but I have
to say up front that this it's not a surprise, maybe, but this
is This was my least favorite of the three, probably mainly because they're at
least in the other two they're grounded in something real and there's no supernatural element
to speak of. But here, this is all supernatural because it's a troll
that's living in this girl's bedroom behind the base board, and it comes out
at night and basically tries to steal her breath. But you know, it's
fine. It has moments, and I don't hate it in it of itself,
but it doesn't compare to the other two segments. It was a little
too out there for me like it equally to the other segments. It's just
different, But given what came before, it's very jarring in how different it
is because of the supernatural element. It's like, here's the horrors of man,
Here's the horrors of man, Here's a troll. It is what well,
you know, it's interesting. We had talked about earlier how you and
I had looked up reviews of the movie of the time and I was reading,
Actually, it turns out it was Roger Ebert's review, and he brought
up something that I thought was actually it hadn't occurred to me, and I
thought it was, actually it made a lot of sense. Is his take
on it was that this movie was essentially convey the overarching theme of the movie
is fear of something happening to someone you love. And when you think about
it, in the first tale, it's about the James Woods's character trying to
protect his wife during this whole ordeal, and the second one, obviously it's
the tennis pro who's trying to protect the woman that he loves, this mob
boss's wife. And in the third segment, the segment we're discussing now,
it's this cat trying to protect the little girl that he's been so desperately trying
to get through the whole movie, and I hadn't thought of it in exactly
those terms, but I think there's it actually makes a lot of sense.
What did shock you to know that these stories are out of order from the
original screenplay? Yeah, and actually the would shock me because everything seems to
be leading up to this episode with the troll. What was the order originally?
Initially it started in Atlantic City with the lenin. From Atlantic City that
got us to New York, and then we had Quitters Incorporated, and then
from New York guy that it got on it I guess took a cab down
in North Carolina and we got this story. So this was always meant to
be the show piece of the Yes story. This is meant to be a
bit of Amelia the Trilogy of Terror segment with the Zuni fetish doll, which
it obviously closely resembles when you get right down to it. Yeah, here's
the thing that the screenplay definitely does have that the movie does not. It
has a prologue where we first encounter our cat and meet its actual family.
This screenplay begins with the cat brushing against the hand of a dead girl hanging
out of her bed in her bedroom, and the sound of a bell's jingling
and the cat pursuing said jingling bells, and then so we get the idea
that this might be some sort of immortal battle going on, that this cat
is constantly pursuing this troll that is constantly killing the same girl in a weird
way. I don't know why it's got to be the same girl. Maybe
it's just a girl, and I don't know why it's targeted a particular girl.
But anyway, it doesn't explain any of that, but it at least
gives us more story for the cat and the eventual protagonist for the thing,
Like we would have at least heard the bells early enough to when it comes
back go oh yeah, that's the thing from the opening. Okay, that
would be enough. But then what happens is the girl, the dead girl's
parents. Remember this movie originally is supposed to open with a dead child.
The parents Russian. The mother freaks out, blames the cat, claims the
cat has stolen the child's breath, so it sets that up. It's like
Chekhov's gun sets up the breath stealing. And then the mom goes downstairs and
goes to the gun cabinet and takes out an oozy that's specified in the screenplay
Suburban Housewife. Mom takes out an uzi and attempts to murder the cat,
and then the cat runs away and then is chased by a Saint Bernard,
and our movie begins there. Well, I guess uozzis were kind of all
the rage in action movies. I think, like Commando, there are a
bunch of oozies. But what I think, actually, I think I like
the idea that we have some context for a while and how the cat is
gonna try and face off against this mortal enemy. But when you were saying
that, I thought what you were going to say, when I thought might
actually make some sense as well, is if this happens and the mom comes
and shoot and shoes the cat away and talks to it, and then maybe
there's another child. I thought you were going to say that the mom who
shoes the cataway is actually the mother of Candy Clark. And the third segment,
because at one point the family is sitting around the table and the father
is having some fun imitating Candy Clark's mother saying the cat vill come and it
will steal your breath. So that to me, like maybe there's still supernatural
sort of business to deal with. But at least then you have this idea
that the mother her having experienced the death of a child, then goes to
her other daughter and now is so shaken by the experience that she cautions her,
don't ever have a cat in the house, because they will steal your
breath, just like it stole my child's breath. But of course they didn't
go there. So you see how maddening it is that as earlier positive,
this could have been the best wrap around segment of all the time, could
have been that actually would have I mean just a little something, because what
we're left with is it just doesn't make any sense on a level, the
fact that this cat's seat keeps seeing this vision of this girl with no context
around it. So, yeah, it still doesn't make it here. It
still doesn't make sense why she's appearing is super imposed over televisions and on mannequins,
and why it's all the same girl. There are some mysteries I guess
we're just not meant to understand, But at least it gives us a little
bit of some backstory for general here. Yeah, no, I agree totally
on that, but you know, I think what look. I was already
a little hard on this segment by saying that it's my least favorite, but
having said that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the segment for what it is.
I think there's a lot of interesting stuff happening here. And I have to
say I love the scale work with the troll as it's because the troll will
come out of the wall and make its way around this little girl's room and
climb up on bookcases and jump on the bed and all this, and they've
clearly so. The troll is played by a little person named Daniel Rogers,
who you and I know. He was one of the Druids and spinal tap
during the famous Stonehenge sequence. Oh my god, yes, and he was
an e walk in Return of the Jedi and a few other things. So
it's a little person in a costume with this animatronically animated face that's really freaky.
But it as it's clambering around, they've made a set it's slightly larger
to give the sense of scale for this little troll that's clambering around, but
it is so believable the way the set looks, just the actual items being
larger than the troll that unfortunately that's kind of ruined by again by a lot
of bad matting, a lot of bad matt lines around things and stuff,
but that stuff. I'm sure you probably had a similar reaction. But I
loved that about this. I thought the effects work was pretty solid for this
segment. Matt work is not a friend of cats eye, but I agree.
I love a scaled upset. They've recreated Drew Barrymore's her bedroom, but
in you know, so that the bed is enormous that he's able to fall
into a jar of marbles. The jar of marbles is my only problem with
the scale work, because it's clear that it's a like a semi transparent plastic
tube they're dumping him into, whereas previously we're seeing a clear glass jar.
Like those two things don't match up, but everything else does, and they
do some clever stuff. It took me a couple of scenes to notice this.
So the troll will come out and it clambers up on Drew Barrymore's bed,
and Mosy's up to her chest and he reaches out his hand and kind
of closes her nose so that she starts breathing through her mouth. But what
they do, is that the effect is his head in slight profile is matted
in. Yeah, but they've got a mechanical hand that's physically present so that
when the hand can come out, it's actually making contact with her nose.
So it's not just a matted in hand that she has to pretend is grasping
her nose. It's an actual hand. I thought it was a brilliant effect.
Yeah, it was so cool. It's the best matt work in it
because we're not looking at the mat at all. We're looking at the tiny
hand closing Drew barrymore as nostrils so that the mouth can open so it can
steal her breath. The troll itself, by the way, is horrifying looking
and wonderful, designed by Carlo Rimbaldi, who was Dino Delarentis's go to effects
guy worked on the Giant King Kong back in the day. He would eventually
create the horrifyingly terrible Werewolves for Silver Bullet, another Dino Delarentis production of a
Stephen King novel. But he's probably most remembered for designing et and that's his
legacy right there, and he's done great work here. The troll itself is
very expressive. The mouth they have, it's like it opens four ways,
like it opens on both sides. And I think had they edited a little
bit better and we would have believed it entirely. But they always linger just
a moment too long, so you get an idea that it's an animatronic.
Yeah, it gives you time to really scrutinize the facial features and you can
almost see the mechanisms behind the mouth operating. So instead of believing that it's
a living creature, you're right. But in fairness, I suppose audiences in
nineteen eighty five don't have the ability to pause it and rewind it, and
you know, really so maybe if you're seeing it for the first time that
the suspension of this disbelief is more powerful. But it is a great design
for the creature. And there's also like a lot of interesting sound work because
as it's running around, it's making all of these almost gleeful sounds. It
all works. That part of it really works for me, you know,
the fact that it's such a mysterious, somewhat whimsical but completely scary creature.
At the same time, who's that voice? HB, You're gonna tell me,
it's how He Mandel or something. Frank Welker, Frank, no kidding,
really, the mighty mighty Frank Welker, doctor Claw, Yes, Megatron,
that's him. Also the here. Also, if you heard a bird
in any television show or any movie and that bird said anything from say nineteen
seventy to the present, Frank Welker was doing that bird. I was convinced,
because of the et connection that it was going to be Howie Mandel or
somebody like that. That would be great, good old Frank Welker and a
good voice. They occasionally lapse into like ain't it cute? Cute? See
kind of like all kind of stuff. But other than that, this thing
is purely out of a nightmare. That's the thing. Like the disparity between
the first two segments and this segments is kind of something you can't overcome.
But this segment is a perfect nightmare. It's like it's a really great children's
nightmare of a story where your parents don't trust you and they're trying to actively
suppress the thing that's going to help you. They ultimately don't believe you,
and this menace is real, you know, I don't know, I really
love the segment. Actually it's just not in keeping with what we were previously
given. I mean, that's fair. I think it was maybe a bridge
too far from myself because the previous two segments were so solid. It was
a little bit of a letdown and I but at the same time, it
was nice finally that General had his his or its moment in the sun,
because, as you said, in the second episode, particularly, General has
nothing to do. It's almost like General disappears from the movie in a sense.
So but we are We've seen these hints of what he's chasing, so
we're ready and we want to see what this is going to lead up to.
And I think it does a pretty good job of giving us the payoff
that we were looking for. I think maybe had they just included that troll
throughout that the cat was always one step behind it, you know, like
it was always one step ahead, I think that could have alleviated some of
that probable and some finesse of like you know, making these stories. I
think from what I understand, initially there was to be a fourth story,
and if they had had a fourth story, that was supernatural sort of sandwiched
in between the two very realistic stories, because it's kind of like Goodfella's Casino
Hugo as far as the order of the tales. But had it been you
know, not supernatural supernatural, not supernatural supernatural, it could have been a
nice cushion and it wouldn't have been so jarring when we get to the end.
Nevertheless, love that troll, Love this story, Love his tiny arm
and all the gore in that fan. By the way, the gore if
your barber span is spinning that fast and your child's remove it from your child's.
Yeah, that sequence where the troll finally gets its come uppans, I
could only I couldn't help but be reminded of Gremlins, because it had the
same dichotomy of what's essentially kind of a children it's your children's fable and gremlin
case. But there's a lot of cutesy fun stuff happening, but then in
the midst of that, you'll have a gremlin that gets exploded in a microwave
or something really gory and kind of gross, and that's essentially what happens to
the troll. It gets thrown into the fan. And fortunately so at that
point, the parents finally because the troll has kind of kicked the doorstop under
the door to keep them from coming in, and eventually they were able to
come in. And you're still kind of thinking, well, they're not going
to believe the daughter because you know, she's trying to protect the cat or
whatever. But that's the evidence that the parents need to realize that the daughter
was telling the truth. And the father finds the little knife that the troll
is brandishing, and there's a severed hand there, and there's just guts kind
of still rolling around in the box. Fan. It's really that was actually,
like I said, it's a PG. Thirteen movie, but there's spikes
of thematic sort of danger and in this case gore, which I thought was
really welcome for me. Is it any wonder that Halloween has become the really
the most popular holiday in America? Considering there was a time when an entire
generation were left to their own devices to watch cable television, and this is
what we watched over and over and over again. It's true, but and
this was the heyday of that because it was always it kind of in a
way, it's kind of like the menace lurking beneath the suburbs, right,
that's what you had with a movie like like I keep referencing Poultergeist, but
it was such a heavy thematic thread through a lot of these movies. Gremlins.
Obviously, it's a whole sleepy, friendly town in the middle of sort
of rock wells America that gets turned upside down by the presence of these gremlins.
Yeah, and who were we at the time, if not just kids
living in those suburbs living that reality, and it was it was sort of
it's sort of like if you were living through like the Red Scare and you're
watching all these movies like like like The Blob and all these these movies in
the fifties that are commenting on your your circumstance, but in an interesting and
in fact, you know, kind of a way that doesn't hit you over
the head with the themes. They're good movies, but they have a lot
to say about the circumstance you're living through. And not to get too over
the top with this, but I think that's part of the tradition of a
movie like Cat's Eye in particular, that final segment. Well, it certainly
was what was on my mind in the nineteen eighties. My greatest fears were
ledges, rabid dogs, trolls, tiny trolls that live in my wall.
The effect, by the way, it should be noted that the effect of
the wall splitting open and opening up and then ceiling itself afterwards is magnificent.
Whoever did it is kind of where I was doing practical effects here was doing
really really good work. It's the optical effects that were troubling. It was
it was cool because it's clearly they broke open this wall, this hole,
but then they just ran it into reverse, so it kind of it kind
of gets sucked closed. But you know, I'm actually this reminds me one
of the things that actually found a little bit. It's kind of a little
scary that I didn't notice the last the first time that I watched this movie.
The last time I watched it is after the parents come in and they've
they've saved child. I had this thought that the father then articulates and he
says to the daughter, well have you seen any does he have any friends?
Have you seen any more of them? And I could not help thinking,
what if there's a whole race of these trolls like living in this poor
girl's like wall. And there was some that the uncertainty of that really kind
of got to me a little bit. Here's the thing. I think Stephen
King, while they were making Firestarter, was toying with the idea of a
little boy who's being pursued by this troll and was thinking about turning it into
a screenplay or a novel or something. And at the same time, do
you know, d Lorenz said, I need a vehicle board They drew barrymore
anyway, Oh, I got it, I got it. Let's do it.
Because this story, even though it doesn't fit in with the other two,
has such goddamn promise. It could have been a feature. I would
like to know more about what was going on with this cat and the troll
and this weird psychic connection. What's going on here? They've been stealing breaths,
They've been apparently doing it for centuries that there are old folk tales about
them. Yeah, and there was something in the character of troll that automatically
kind of put me in the mindset of a movie that came long after It
might have been eighty six, actually maybe not long after, But do you
remember that there was a movie called The Gate? Oh yes, which is
the movie that I actually saw in the movie's true story. I went to
the movies and I tried to go to see Lethal Weapon, but they wouldn't
let us into Lethal Weapon because we were too young. He was an R
rated movie and we weren't yet old enough to see it. So our fallback
was a movie called The Gate, which I don't remember a ton about The
Gate, but but it essentially involved like a race of small troll like creatures
that emerge from a hole in this suburban house's backyard. Right, yes,
and and I have and just from a gate if you will, Yes,
the titular gate and the I think the creatures in this case were more like
clay nation, like I don't think, but but well done. Well,
here's the thing, the thing you're thinking of. At one point, this
this zombie janitor character falls forward in his body and like just bursts into these
little creatures. It's a seamless effect. And then the way the creatures are
running around is so flawless you can't believe how good the stop motion is.
But what it actually is is what they did here. They scaled up a
room and they have a bunch of people in little rubber suits running around.
So there is some clamation going on. There is some stop motion animation going
on, but there's also a good mixture of rubber suit work. Yeah,
it was. It was well done. But something about those those demonic creatures,
these small little troll like creatures, I think kind of is echoed a
little bit in the segment of the trolls. It was also what was the
movie was a Critters That was another movie that had a similar type of creature,
which was another popular movie at the time that I saw. So after
Gremlin's all bets were off there you were going to be pursued by a tiny
monster. This segment may have been was the girl imagining it? You know,
the fact that we're given the evidence of the troll at the end,
does that rob the story of anything? I'm thinking about Nightmare twenty thousand Feet
right, I was just about to say that In the original William Shatner Nightmare
twenty thousand Feet by Richard Matheson on the Twilight Zone, this is a character
who has had a mental breakdown, and it is getting out of the asylum
and is flying home, and so the idea is maybe he's just had a
break from reality and is imagining this gremlin right down to the ending. There's
never any evidence of anything at the end. It's just he knows that there
was a gremlin in the remake when for twilights on the movie, the George
Miller segment, which is in a lot of way superior to the original one,
there is no doubt there was a gremlin on the way of that plane.
At the end, the wing is completely scarred and there's like talon marks
everywhere. The engines have been ripped apart. They weren't hit by lightning or
anything. So I'm wondering if that's the same effect here. Yeah, that's
a great comparison once you once you made the case for maybe it's all in
her mind. That is to me, that's the best example of that.
And and in in in the movie case, like you said, it leaves
no doubt that, yeah, there was a there was a gremlin on the
wing of the plane, and this guy probably saved a lot of lives by
by by getting you know, scaring it off or what have you. I
always found that a little bit sort of sad about the ending of that because
he's being taken away and he's in I think he's in a straight jacket,
and and every everybody through the whole sequences has just been coming down on this
guy because he's he's such a nuisance. But he really did a service to
the whole the whole plane. I mean, he saved them, you know,
And this is what he gets. But I always hoped that maybe once
the guy reveals to his his his like superior. Hey you gotta look at
this, look at this wing, that maybe the guy might not have to
go to the asylum for the rest of his life. Probably not, He's
not gonna get to the asylum. Dan Ackroy's driving the fucking ambulance. He's
about to be murdered. Oh that's true. I want to see something really
scary. I forgot about that. I forgot. Albert Brooks is in that
movie at the very beginning too. He's the first guy to get murdered.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, playing Lucy's part. Yeah, very cool.
Yeah, that's true. That is true too. Yeah. So here we
are at the end of this Now we're given the stinger here at the end,
and we've been told cats can steal breath, and we see our cats
slowly approach Drew Barrymore. But it just loves sir. It's a happy ending.
Dino de Laurentis, Drew Barrymore, Stephen King. Y'all, this has
been cats final thoughts HP final thought is again, I hadn't seen this movie
and forever, and it was a very very pleasant experience to watch it again.
I saw a lot of things, noticed a lot of things that I
didn't as a child, which is should be no surprise, but I really
I was happy to have reacquainted myself with Katsaye. How about yourself, foughtam
alone. I think it's solid. I think it holds up. I think
I feel a lot of nostalgia when I watch it because I remember watching it
a lot as a kid. Like I said, I saw this in the
theater, like gleefully getting to see Stephen King on my own in a theater.
It was a joy. And I think these the stories each hold up
individually. I don't know that it holds up overall as an anthology film as
far as working on a theme, but it doesn't matter because each of the
segments has works so goddamn well. All of the performances are really good,
the writing is really good, Stephen King adapting himself. I love it and
enjoyable, even though you know some of the callouts to himself are a bit
embarrassing, but either way, this has been a very special bonus episode of
Midnight Viewing. I want to thank everyone for joining us, particularly I want
to thank mister h HP when you're not here to the horror anthologies. Like
I said, this is your favorite of all time. You can find it
that tonight. Where can people find you? So you can find me?
I co host a podcast about the TV show Taxi. It's called Night Mister
Walters a Taxi podcast, and my co host is my esteemed colleague that I've
been talking Kat's eye with this whole time. I also have I also excuse
me. I also co host a music podcast called Night. I also co
host a music podcast called Noise Junkies. I do that with Father Malone and
Mondo Heather's Heather Drain. Any music nerds please check that out. I also
have a band campsite called Hpmusicplace dot bandcamp dot com, so please check that
out if you so desire. As for me, if you want to hear
any of my other stuff, go to Weirdingwaymedia dot com. You can hear
well this show and you can also hear Dark Destinations or radio drama that I
write and produce. Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight midnight viewing.
The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of Weirdingway Media. Our theme
song was composed by HP with an assist from Donald Rubinstein and Erica Lindsay.
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just as real but not as brightly lit. I didn't know I was something.
I didn't know if there was no way to tell, I took a
step. I said, I didn't know how the dark it was too hard
to see. That was the night he had come on me, to stow
my soul, to present me with your cat That stop, how you coming
unaware? That how you hoping get there? That's got too. I'm gonna
tell the words you got misspectable, how you stole my redway that's coming in
N eight. That's I can never the fe aware that I spect It's like
a three only window away. Can't even scream at the red ta spend them
see you can't I do Watching that time, I would come ound like a
boy heads fans can pull the screams. I'm apt. I need you're holding
me internally in your cast. I my heart is just a move if we're
scared of us, like a hook. That's just swim. The kids hold
to baby step. How you stole my bath away? How you night cats
get away? I understand it's like a three only wind in my way.
Can't even scream at the predanity spill up to you cannot think watching that time.
My heart is just a hook every stairs like a hook. Just swim
the kids hold to baby Step. I sto