Speaker 1: Welcome back, midnight viewers to Father Malone's Week Leave Her
Speaker 1: round Up. I am Father Malone, and beside me wearing
Speaker 1: the tiniest headphones is mister Ripley. Gee, you feel in
Speaker 1: talkative this morning. I'm just gonna snarfle today. Hey, I
Speaker 1: get it, it's been quite a month. One week from today,
Speaker 1: the next episode of Father Malone's Weekly round Up will
Speaker 1: be the two hundredth episode of Midnight Reviewing. That will
Speaker 1: coincidentally be our Halloween episode. What a fucking perfect storm
Speaker 1: of timing. To celebrate, We'll be having special guests on
Speaker 1: the show. We're gonna have the ghost of Blake, the
Speaker 1: leper captain that my ancestor doomed to a watery grave.
Speaker 1: He's gonna stop by and let us know what he's
Speaker 1: been up to. The Cryptkeeper RSVP'd, which is basically a no,
Speaker 1: he's so fucking pissy. Well, who else is going? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's that guy Prick Uncle Creepy is coming. Cousin Eerie
Speaker 1: is not the creep from Creep Show sent me an
Speaker 1: enthusiastic email. Been wanting to ask me to come on
Speaker 1: for some time listening for years, which is great, But
Speaker 1: he's silent so I don't know how that's gonna fly
Speaker 1: on the radio. Maybe he'll just point to the titles
Speaker 1: of short stories that he keeps within the flowing folds
Speaker 1: of his cerements. You know, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be the coolest to be friends
Speaker 1: with Elvira or Vampiro or Gulardi. You know, the movie
Speaker 1: horror hosts. Nope, horror anthology hosts. Those motherfuckers are interesting.
Speaker 1: Speaking of horror comics, were we yes, well, we certainly
Speaker 1: will be. Midnight is going to be taking a look
Speaker 1: at horror comic adaptations in the near future. So far,
Speaker 1: the list is thus Blade Spawn, ghost Rider, Jonah Heck's Punisher,
Speaker 1: war Zone. I know that's not a horror title, but
Speaker 1: Frank Castle is a bad man and it's completely on
Speaker 1: display in netflick. After that, we've got war Actually. Concurrently,
Speaker 1: we're going to have Clive Barker's Books of blood films.
Speaker 1: Those are on the way, HP and I have Iyaoucha
Speaker 1: Fest coming to a close pretty soon. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you want to hear us talking about Pray right now,
Speaker 1: head over to the Patreon. Also on the Patreon is
Speaker 1: Moranus Fest discussing the films of Rick moranis and starting
Speaker 1: in December, it's Star Trek Fest. We're getting caught in
Speaker 1: a wormhole. Belay that phaser Ordor, and we're taking a
Speaker 1: look at all of the Star Trek movies. Movies, not TV,
Speaker 1: not animated, not web series, not fan film, not fan fiction,
Speaker 1: not your local starship, nor your Starfleet organization. I already
Speaker 1: know we're going to take a beating on this series,
Speaker 1: but that's okay. I know more than our critics. I
Speaker 1: was rocking a red Starfleet shirt back in seventy eight yo.
Speaker 1: Even then I was expendable. All of those shows are
Speaker 1: or will be up on the Patreon channel, so maybe subscribe.
Speaker 1: And if any of the choices in any of these
Speaker 1: festivals aren't your liking, or rather, if you have any suggestions,
Speaker 1: let's be positive, send those to Father Malone seventy one
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. By the way, none of those
Speaker 1: characters are appearing on next week's anniversary show. It's just
Speaker 1: going to be me and the Mutt. Speaking of the
Speaker 1: creep show, Creep, remember that opening scene with the dad
Speaker 1: and the comic book and my boy is in all
Speaker 1: the kids. You want to know where this is going?
Speaker 1: Billy in the garbage right into the friggin garbage. Now
Speaker 1: you got any smart mouth about that. Billy was, of
Speaker 1: course played by Joe King, son of fellow creepshow thespian A,
Speaker 1: saying the role of Jordie Verel Stephen King Joe would
Speaker 1: eventually be the Emilioesteviz to his brother Owen's Charlie Sheen,
Speaker 1: which makes Stephen King Mark and Sheen. In this scenario,
Speaker 1: he took a pen name, Joe King became Joe Hill
Speaker 1: in a distancing move that fucking worked. I know Joe
Speaker 1: Hill is King's son, but it's never my first thought
Speaker 1: when I think Joe Hill, I think some of the
Speaker 1: most interesting and frightening fiction I've read in the last
Speaker 1: twenty five years. As such, I'm not going to compare
Speaker 1: and contrast his work with his dad's beyond saying that
Speaker 1: he is a worthy successor, and I mean that in
Speaker 1: every sense of the word. There have been a couple
Speaker 1: of adaptations of his work, Horns from twenty thirteen. There
Speaker 1: was an attempt at adapting his comic book series Locking
Speaker 1: Key back in twenty eleven, but that didn't fly. It
Speaker 1: did fly in twenty twenty with two seasons there was
Speaker 1: the Nose Farantu limited series based on his excellent fucking novel.
Speaker 1: If you haven't read that, you have to read that.
Speaker 1: It crosses over with Doctor Sleep, and it absolutely decimates
Speaker 1: that book. Not that I'm comparing them, I'm not. It's
Speaker 1: not a contest, but if it was, and I had
Speaker 1: to declare a better author, it's Joe. And it started
Speaker 1: back in two thousand and five. Officially that was when
Speaker 1: his collection of short stories and anthology ahha, how I
Speaker 1: love them. That book is called twentieth Century Ghosts. But
Speaker 1: before I get there, and speaking of anthologies and speaking
Speaker 1: of Tales from the Dark Side, which you may have
Speaker 1: noticed on midnight viewing, were almost done with our retrospective
Speaker 1: of that series. Well, the show ended in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and other than the follow up movie, has Lane dormant
Speaker 1: as a franchise ever since. And then in twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: a new series was commissioned and the author of the
Speaker 1: pilot in several episodes within the first series was going
Speaker 1: to be Joe Hill. In fact, he was going to
Speaker 1: be the showrunner, and every episode, like the previous iteration,
Speaker 1: would be a standalone tale. However, each would present a
Speaker 1: different piece of an overall story threading throughout the entire
Speaker 1: first season, paying off in the finale. He wrote it,
Speaker 1: they filmed it, and then CBS kicked it to the curb.
Speaker 1: But the stories Hill had written were collected into a
Speaker 1: comic book, a fitting form, I'd say, and they are
Speaker 1: all excellent. He, like his dad, Sorry, really shines into
Speaker 1: short fiction. You know. Edgar Allan Poe felt the novel
Speaker 1: was a lesser arn't form from the short story, because
Speaker 1: you'd get the entire impression in one sitting. There would
Speaker 1: be no breaks with folded down pages and picking it
Speaker 1: up a few days later. No, it was here's the character,
Speaker 1: here's what they're going through, Here's how it ended. And
Speaker 1: like I said, Joe Hill is on fire in his
Speaker 1: short fiction, particularly that collection Twentieth Century Ghosts. That book
Speaker 1: has a story, the first fucking story in the book
Speaker 1: that still disturbs me when I think about it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I can't think of pinon buttons the same way. After
Speaker 1: that tale. He called that one best new horror. How's
Speaker 1: that for fucking bold? Although it's only bragging if you
Speaker 1: can't back it up, and he does. And in the
Speaker 1: same volume he has one of the sweetest stories I've
Speaker 1: read in forever. That's called Bobby Conroy Comes Back from
Speaker 1: the Dead, about a failed stand up comedian returning in
Speaker 1: disgrace to pitch Itzburg in the late seventies and getting
Speaker 1: a job as an extra in a local film production
Speaker 1: in order to get closer to the girl he'd liked
Speaker 1: in high school. The movie he's working on is Dawn
Speaker 1: of the Dead, so already I'm on board, And I
Speaker 1: can't think of an author more worthy of fictionalizing George
Speaker 1: Romero or Tom Savini than a kid who literally grew
Speaker 1: up around them. Twentieth Century Goes spawned the recent adaptation
Speaker 1: Abraham's Boys literally recent, like I was going to review
Speaker 1: it a few weeks ago, that stars Titus Welliver as
Speaker 1: Abraham van Helsing years after the events of Dracula and
Speaker 1: living in America with his boys. The other story to
Speaker 1: get the big screen treatment was The Black Phone. So
Speaker 1: now we leave the world of Joe Hill and enter
Speaker 1: that of director and sometimes screenwriter Scott Derrickson. He made
Speaker 1: his feature debut with hell Raiser Inferno. Remember that one,
Speaker 1: No One does. It was the fifth in a series
Speaker 1: that now has nine sequels and a remake it's the
Speaker 1: film Doug Bradley claimed was another movie entirely and just
Speaker 1: got rewritten as a hell Razor flick at the last
Speaker 1: second when che Derrekson denies, and I believe him, but
Speaker 1: it's easy to understand why Bradley or any viewer would
Speaker 1: jump to that conclusion. The film is not much of
Speaker 1: a hell Raiser film in either tone or execution, which
Speaker 1: is actually refreshing, and if I'm honest, I enjoyed that one.
Speaker 1: He then did Exorcism of Emily Rose, which was pretty good,
Speaker 1: although very early two thousands. Then he did that Terrible
Speaker 1: Day the Earth Stood Still remake Come on Now. But
Speaker 1: and here's where everything got interesting. He made Sinister in
Speaker 1: an Ocean of torture porn. He gave us a supernatural
Speaker 1: shocker that felt very lived in and very real and
Speaker 1: very frightening and mean. That flick is way meaner than
Speaker 1: anything Jigsaw made in his little workshop. That would be
Speaker 1: his first interaction with Ethan Hawk. He followed that with
Speaker 1: deliver Us from Evil, which was about hot priests fighting
Speaker 1: the devil on the set of seven. Not great. But
Speaker 1: then he did Doctor Strange. Now I love Doctor Strange.
Speaker 1: He got that character and that world so fucking right,
Speaker 1: and he solved the two idiots punching each other climax
Speaker 1: problem that every Marvel seems to suffer from. He then
Speaker 1: spent the next couple of years developing Doctor Strange and
Speaker 1: the Multiverse of Madness, which when announced was very exciting, indeed,
Speaker 1: because he was crowing how it was going to be
Speaker 1: a horror movie first and a superhero flick away distant.
Speaker 1: One of the dimensions Doctor Strange and sometimes ghost Rider
Speaker 1: find themselves in is the Dream Dimension, and it's evil
Speaker 1: ruler Nightmare. He's an immortal demon and he's found everyone
Speaker 1: over the decades, Spider Man, Captain America, the X Men.
Speaker 1: He made his debut in Doctor Strange, so it would
Speaker 1: be fitting for him to make his big screen debut there.
Speaker 1: Not only that, with the Dream Dimension open, other dimensions
Speaker 1: were offered. I mentioned ghost Rider. He was a potential cameo,
Speaker 1: as were Blade and the Midnight Suns. Mephisto could have
Speaker 1: shown up, but then Marvel pussed out on Horror because
Speaker 1: everything they were making was crap for a while and
Speaker 1: they needed again. Everything refocused on Kang and the Multiverse saga.
Speaker 1: That turned out great, so we got a way more
Speaker 1: fantasy and cosmic Doctor Strange with only a whiff of horror.
Speaker 1: The ultimate irony is that they hired Sam Raimi to
Speaker 1: make the less horror version. So Dereckson finally steps away
Speaker 1: and refocuses on a project he'd been trying to get
Speaker 1: a handle on for more than a decade, The Black Phone.
Speaker 1: The short story is deceptively simple. A young boy, Finny,
Speaker 1: finds himself the latest victim of the Grabber, a serial
Speaker 1: child abductor. He's locked in a basement that has a
Speaker 1: disconnected black phone hanging on the wall. At night. When
Speaker 1: he's alone, the phone rings, and the previous grabber's victims
Speaker 1: spirits communicate with Phinny, each helping him plot and execute
Speaker 1: his escape. It fucking packs a wallop on top of
Speaker 1: being an incredibly fresh spin on the serial killers genre,
Speaker 1: and it's incredibly spare and did not exactly feature length.
Speaker 1: Dereckson and his sinister co writer see Robert Cargill, layer
Speaker 1: in a story of a mom dead by suicide and
Speaker 1: an abusive alcoholic father and a young sister who shares
Speaker 1: her mother's gift for second sight. It's the sister that
Speaker 1: keeps the story going on. The outside once Finny has
Speaker 1: been grabbed by the Grabber. Terrible name, perfectly appropriate for
Speaker 1: a small town naming its boogeyman. But the Grabber anyhow,
Speaker 1: budget of sixteen pulls in one hundred and sixty one.
Speaker 1: You knew we were getting a sequel. The mask alone
Speaker 1: guaranteed we were getting a sequel. The mask the Grabber wears,
Speaker 1: I'd like to mention, was crafted by Tom Savini, fellow
Speaker 1: Joe King Creepshow thespian Tom Savini. You remember him in
Speaker 1: the role of garbage Man two. It's a comic book.
Speaker 1: Now it's a gag. You hold it up to your eyes,
Speaker 1: it makes little circles, tie it to get in sand
Speaker 1: kicked in your face. That was Marty Schiff as garbage
Speaker 1: Man number one. Do I know too much about Creep Show?
Speaker 1: You're fucking right, iye do. Derrickson has two feature films
Speaker 1: released this year, The Gorge, which I liked a great deal,
Speaker 1: and The Black Phone too.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of the Grabber? I killed him?
Speaker 1: What happened in that placement really changed.
Speaker 2: Since I had a bad dream.
Speaker 1: It was about missing kids.
Speaker 2: It's just a dream about a real place, a youth camp.
Speaker 3: You have to go there.
Speaker 2: Hello, Penny, you killed me.
Speaker 4: It took me a long time.
Speaker 2: And you are how people now.
Speaker 4: That Dad, It's just a word.
Speaker 2: Could wake up, work up.
Speaker 3: This place just brought us here for a reason.
Speaker 2: Nothing birth.
Speaker 3: Like the cold.
Speaker 2: How the tables do turn?
Speaker 4: What do you think happens when you die in a dream?
Speaker 2: It's time to find out?
Speaker 1: Which I did not ultimately, because for the first act
Speaker 1: of this movie, I was all the way on board.
Speaker 1: Minor spoilers ahead for the first Black Phone movie. You
Speaker 1: kind of can't avoid the spoiler in a way, but
Speaker 1: you can skip ahead a few seconds if you want.
Speaker 1: Evan Hawk as the grabber dies at the end of
Speaker 1: the first film. The first film is in fact a
Speaker 1: closed loop, like Nightmare on Elm Street was a closed loop.
Speaker 1: But then we saw how that went, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: see how it goes here maddeningly anyway, the first film
Speaker 1: took place in nineteen seventy eight, so this is nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, and we're still with Finni or Finn and
Speaker 1: his younger sister Gwen. Both these actors are terrific. Mason
Speaker 1: Thames as Finny was fucking great in the first film,
Speaker 1: and he's just as excellent here, giving us the same
Speaker 1: guy but definitely haunted and evolved from his experience. That's
Speaker 1: something you rarely see in a sequel.
Speaker 2: Growth.
Speaker 1: Also rare is flipping the narratives thrust. The first film
Speaker 1: was about so Gwen on the outside trying to save Finn.
Speaker 1: This film is Finn on the outside trying to save Gwen.
Speaker 1: Gwen's clairvoyant abilities have been sharpening, and sometimes her dreams
Speaker 1: and reality bleed together. Not great news when phones start
Speaker 1: ringing in her dreams from a direct line to Hell, Because,
Speaker 1: like Freddy Krueger before him, death has only made the
Speaker 1: grabber stronger. Now listen, this film is shot beautifully. Dereckson
Speaker 1: has been a huge proponent of multiple media in his films.
Speaker 1: He's constantly swapping between digital and thirty five and eight
Speaker 1: millimeter and sixteen millimeter. In Lesser Hands, it comes off
Speaker 1: as film school. He used them in the first film
Speaker 1: and again here as waypoints or guideposts to subtly let
Speaker 1: you know what demension you're currently in, because reality and
Speaker 1: dream are constantly up for grabs, and there are some
Speaker 1: solid moments of dread throughout this film. Dread is so
Speaker 1: much better than a jump scare. Even if it doesn't
Speaker 1: pay off with a shocker, just a few moments of
Speaker 1: creeping horror can elevate your entire film. And he was
Speaker 1: doing that with a weirdo dream logic loop of Gwen
Speaker 1: in her pajamas coming to the front door of her
Speaker 1: house in the early morning hours, just her in a quiet,
Speaker 1: empty street. It was creepy as hell and reminded me
Speaker 1: of Christina Gray. Do you remember her. Her friends called
Speaker 1: her Tina, and she would also be summoned into her
Speaker 1: dreams and sometimes out of her house and into an
Speaker 1: alley where she learned the true nature of God from
Speaker 1: a burned up maniac. And I kept thinking of Tina
Speaker 1: and Nancy and Detective Thompson, Nancy's dad, Detective Thompson in particular,
Speaker 1: because not only do we have a lead who, every
Speaker 1: time she falls asleep, poses a threat to herself and
Speaker 1: everyone around her, because she acts as a conduit as well,
Speaker 1: allowing the infernal nastiness in the form of the far
Speaker 1: more demonic Grabber to come invisibly into our world. But
Speaker 1: the plot concerns the remains of the Grabber's victims needing
Speaker 1: to be found and given a proper burial. You want
Speaker 1: to grab elements of Nightmare on Elm Street, be my guest.
Speaker 1: Everyone has given a dream killer plot a wide berth
Speaker 1: out of respect for the past four decades. But hell,
Speaker 1: why should Freddie be the only one who gets to
Speaker 1: inhabit your nightmares? And the fact that the comic book
Speaker 1: character Nightmare had been buzzing around in Derrickson's brain makes
Speaker 1: his type a natural for this flick. So fine, grab
Speaker 1: some of Nightmare on Elm Street, but keep your mits
Speaker 1: off dream Warriors. I mean, really, we got to put
Speaker 1: the bones to rest and then he'll have no power plot.
Speaker 1: You're gonna use that one too, and I'm gonna ignore
Speaker 1: that of all the potential plots, you have a villain
Speaker 1: who was dragged a hell by his victims, who is
Speaker 1: now using the method employed by them in the first
Speaker 1: film to taunt his still living victims. Why are we
Speaker 1: at a summer camp in the middle of winter investigating
Speaker 1: the grabbers earlier murders? And when will the filmmakers learn
Speaker 1: that a character gliding on ice is frightening until we
Speaker 1: see the skates and then it's fucking ridiculous. Put an
Speaker 1: axe in his hand or a scythe whatever bladed thing
Speaker 1: you want, it still looks like they're fresh from the
Speaker 1: penalty box. And what the fuck are we doing on
Speaker 1: a frozen lake with a bunch of cannon fodder characters.
Speaker 1: This started as a family drama with real characters trying
Speaker 1: to make sense of their lives after a traumatic event.
Speaker 1: When the event returns from a whole new angle and
Speaker 1: fucks up their lives further, and then the movie ends
Speaker 1: with an invisible character on skates doing a backflip while
Speaker 1: wrapping a chord around an intended victim's throat. I'm not
Speaker 1: kidding that happens. Not that the first act had the
Speaker 1: most sparkling of dialogue. We know it's nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: you told us with a subtitle, and everyone is dressed
Speaker 1: that way, and you're using film stock that screams this
Speaker 1: movie is not about nineteen eighty two. It's from nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. You don't have to have this exchange between
Speaker 1: characters tonight. I'm gonna go down to the Civic Center
Speaker 1: and get Duran durand tickets. Duran Duran tickets. Simon lebon
Speaker 1: is so choice my treat. I was gonna buy two
Speaker 1: anyway for real, that be radical stop it. Although big
Speaker 1: shout out to Derekson for including night Flight, the television
Speaker 1: film school that USA Network used to run on Friday
Speaker 1: nights in the nineteen eighties. How I missed night Flight.
Speaker 1: I know they resurrected it as some streaming service, but
Speaker 1: I think I'd just rather own the originals on disc anyway.
Speaker 1: Black Phone two was a frustrating affair. I found myself
Speaker 1: defending the first film a lot when it came out,
Speaker 1: so I thought this was going to be a victory lap,
Speaker 1: and it mostly is. The kids are great. I want
Speaker 1: more of them. And Ethan Hawk, the most unlikely slasher
Speaker 1: of villain of all time, is genuinely scary as the
Speaker 1: grabber and the dead. Utilizing technology is a potent idea
Speaker 1: that very few have gotten right. I imagine the next
Speaker 1: one is going to be excellent, kind of like Elm
Speaker 1: Street three after Elm Street two, though not that you
Speaker 1: already did Elm Street three. These kids better not end
Speaker 1: up in some behavioral center for troubled youth, or there's
Speaker 1: gonna be a little chin music that means fisticuffs, you know, pugilism, puggleism.
Speaker 1: Sorry for the mispronunciation, but it now I'm threatening the
Speaker 1: filmmakers to be more creative. That's my job, and my
Speaker 1: job is at an end.
Speaker 2: Oh Lord.
Speaker 1: Got to say thank you to everyone for tuning in
Speaker 1: and listening and blinking and subscribing. You're all the best
Speaker 1: and honestly a side of the dog and cat here.
Speaker 1: You're the thing that actually keeps me motivated. All the
Speaker 1: contact stuff is in the show notes. Tune in this
Speaker 1: Friday for pray, Oh Lord, HP and I have scaled
Speaker 1: the Yahoucha mountain and reached its peak. Tune in for that.
Speaker 1: And I will be back next week with our two
Speaker 1: hundredth episode Halloween Spectacular. It's going to involve felt fans
Speaker 1: of Michael o'donnie, who will already know what I'm talking
Speaker 1: about from Ripley Jean. I'm following alone. Here's a bit
Speaker 1: of something or other, well, an authentic voodoo ball somebody
Speaker 1: already sent for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can't get that. How about this? Tired of
Speaker 2: getting sand kicked in your face? Where's Billy go?
Speaker 3: Be down in a minute. I know he's Billy Stan
Speaker 3: Are you all right?
Speaker 2: I didn't get my sleep last night. Storm it's his
Speaker 2: goddamn stiff neck. I can barely move my head.
Speaker 1: You must have strangers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess I don't know.
Speaker 3: There you want me to get some being gay? No?
Speaker 3: Oh oh did you throw away my comic books? H
Speaker 3: M ready for another shot.
Speaker 2: Shot show from Shop sh Sho show Stu