Speaker 1: Weird way. Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly
Speaker 1: round up, The Spoiler Round Up. This is an anomaly
Speaker 1: of an episode in that we're going back over previously
Speaker 1: covered material, and as that title will suggests, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be fucking spoilerrific. We're gonna Rosebud all over Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis's ghost who's having lunch with Luke Skywalker's dad. Also
Speaker 1: a ghost named Darth Vader. So so if you don't
Speaker 1: know that Tyler, Dirton and Jack are the same person,
Speaker 1: you might want to leave. You know that Ed Norton's
Speaker 1: character's name, right, not narrator, Definitely not Tyler. All the
Speaker 1: books he keeps finding, I'm Jacks Colin, I'm Jack's blah
Speaker 1: blah blah, He's Jack. Anyway, got some corrections. In last
Speaker 1: week's episode, when I was discussing Alien Earth, I kept
Speaker 1: referring to the head of the Prodigy Corporation as Kid Cavalier.
Speaker 1: His name is Boy Cavalier. In my defense, I co
Speaker 1: host Knight Mister Walters, a taxi podcast, and in the
Speaker 1: most recent episode of that, Tony Banta went incognito in
Speaker 1: the boxing ring as a fighter named Kid Rodriguez, and
Speaker 1: there have been a ton of kid fighters because kid
Speaker 1: anything is a cool name. Boy would lose its luster
Speaker 1: at age sixteen, probably earlier if you're a child genie,
Speaker 1: which clearly I am not, because it's boy Cavalier. In
Speaker 1: other alien xenomorphic corrections, my mother informed me that she
Speaker 1: would have definitely purchased that eighteen inch alien figure for
Speaker 1: me had I only asked. This was a crushing revelation,
Speaker 1: as you might imagine. I mean, I'm certain forty years
Speaker 1: later and that figure would be long gone or and
Speaker 1: or destroyed by me at some point, but it could
Speaker 1: have been mine, freaking me out from the corner of
Speaker 1: my room as I tried to sleep. Jesus, I'm glad
Speaker 1: I didn't ask for it. My mother then reminded me
Speaker 1: of her one and only toy rule, no toy guns,
Speaker 1: as if I needed reminding that the only squirt gun
Speaker 1: I was allowed as a child was shaped like bugs
Speaker 1: bunny's head, humiliating in neighborhood warfare situations. And that's all
Speaker 1: the corrections, because my reporting otherwise is unassailable, and there's
Speaker 1: no Ripley here to check that well, I mean, she's here,
Speaker 1: but she's asleep. Remember a few months back, I was
Speaker 1: obsessed with Madmen because I discovered the joys of streaming
Speaker 1: services that have created entire channels populated with only one show.
Speaker 1: That's right, twenty four hours a day of the Goldbergs
Speaker 1: bad example. That show's terrible. But anyway, mad Men was
Speaker 1: like wallpaper here in the kab Lighthouse for a few weeks.
Speaker 1: And now it's MythBusters. Remember MythBusters? Remember when everyone was
Speaker 1: obsessed with how cool science is for a few years there.
Speaker 1: That was heartening, hopeful even Well, there's like eighteen seasons
Speaker 1: of that show. So that's what's on when I'm home
Speaker 1: these days. It's comforting to hear Adam Savage cackling in
Speaker 1: some portion of my home. Oh god, And it's nice
Speaker 1: to see some critical thinking for a change. All right,
Speaker 1: that's the end of the social commentary. The other thing
Speaker 1: I ankled deep in these days is the Tim Robinson
Speaker 1: show I Think You Should Leave on Netflix. I was
Speaker 1: really slow warming to this fella and his humor, even
Speaker 1: though every fucking comedian I respect has been singing his
Speaker 1: praises for years. I just couldn't crack that code. Then
Speaker 1: I watched his show Detroititer's also on Netflix, and that
Speaker 1: was the key Robinson does cringey humor, which I am
Speaker 1: generally off put by. Life is fucking awkward enough without
Speaker 1: experiencing it vicariously through others, but Robinson has elevated it
Speaker 1: into an art form. Also on Netflix. Also, I missed
Speaker 1: the Boat on its initial run. The Unauthorized Bash Brothers
Speaker 1: Experience The Lonely Island's visual poem. This is a fictional
Speaker 1: album by jose Canseco and Mark maguire set in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties. The specificity of the music is what
Speaker 1: finally grabbed me here. The beats and the rhymes they're
Speaker 1: laying on top are so fucking era appropriate that it hurts.
Speaker 1: I'm a little obsessed. It takes me half an hour
Speaker 1: to get to work. That album is thirty minutes. How
Speaker 1: many times do you think I've heard Andy Samberg as
Speaker 1: jose Conseco boast about his room full of Kathy Ireland cutouts.
Speaker 1: I got one hundred card board cutouts, the Kafy Ireland
Speaker 1: all in one room. A run through that shit naked,
Speaker 1: make them all watch me fuck myself with the broom.
Speaker 1: Oh cassies, Oh my Cathys, you're the only ones that
Speaker 1: know my pain, and you'll the only ones to see
Speaker 1: my shame and yo jusse, Come on, man, we'll live
Speaker 1: for the game. Let's talk spoilers. I generally just don't
Speaker 1: give a shit about them myself. I'll read that script
Speaker 1: for something years before it's made if I can get
Speaker 1: my hands on it. My thing is, if the totality
Speaker 1: of the entertainment is based on one surprise, then how
Speaker 1: entertaining was it? Does it stand on its own, does
Speaker 1: the twist or reveal deepen the other parts of the drama,
Speaker 1: and how fucking rewatchable is it? Anyway? My system of
Speaker 1: rules is not on trial here. I am very sensitive
Speaker 1: to those viewers who preserve the twist with their very lives.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm so hesitant to say as much as
Speaker 1: I do in the pocket reviews here on the roundup,
Speaker 1: which is me saying, turned this show off now if
Speaker 1: you're allergic to the future, And if that's the case,
Speaker 1: thank you for tuning in thus far, and I hope
Speaker 1: you'll be back on Friday, where Yaoucha fest returns and
Speaker 1: our pal HP with it. He and I are discussing
Speaker 1: the PG thirteen masterpiece Aliens Versus Predator AVP. Hey, you
Speaker 1: know me, no matter who wins, we lose. Look at
Speaker 1: that tagline, it's predicting the future. That's Friday or if
Speaker 1: you want to hear that and our review of Alien
Speaker 1: Versus Predator Requiem, you can hear them both right now
Speaker 1: on the Patreon channel, as well as the latest installment
Speaker 1: of HP Hates Me, where he made me watch Corey
Speaker 1: ham me myself and I what a fucking nightmare. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have now been sufficiently warned spoilers by still here.
Speaker 1: Our main topic is going to be weapons, but I
Speaker 1: did want to touch on some of the alien Earth
Speaker 1: to start. By the time you hear this, you might
Speaker 1: actually know more than me, because the fourth episode will
Speaker 1: be out as of this recording. I've watched the first
Speaker 1: three a couple of times. I have to talk about
Speaker 1: the fucking eyeball, you know, the one IMAGINEO the Wayland
Speaker 1: Utahanni deep space research vessel at the center of this series,
Speaker 1: the one that crashed into a Prodigy building in New Siam,
Speaker 1: has apparently been in space for sixty five years. The
Speaker 1: crew volunteered for what Ellen Ripley accidentally did to herself
Speaker 1: at the end of Alien and they've brought back five species.
Speaker 1: One is the xenomorph. One is this horrible bug thing
Speaker 1: that drinks blood until it's a swollen sack of fleshy grossness.
Speaker 1: There's a flying thing that's yet to be revealed. There's
Speaker 1: what's being called the orchid, an apt name considering it
Speaker 1: looks like an unopened orchid bud hanging upside down and
Speaker 1: promising to open and reveal something really horrifying. And it'll
Speaker 1: have to be to top the t ocellus, that's the
Speaker 1: cruise designation for the octopus eye, a giant eyeball with
Speaker 1: half a dozen irises and tentacled legs that are tensil
Speaker 1: and lethal. And the motherfucker climbs into corpses, inserts itself
Speaker 1: into the ocular cavity and then puppets their body. What
Speaker 1: the fuck, Noah Hawley. He demonstrates it with a cat
Speaker 1: one that looks like Jonesy. Holly himself described giggling as
Speaker 1: he was writing it, recognizing just how horrible the scene is.
Speaker 1: That's the correct response. As I said in the last
Speaker 1: round up, Holly understood the power of surprise in the
Speaker 1: first Alien film, and he very wisely realized he's not
Speaker 1: going to get there as far as mind chattering moments
Speaker 1: like Cain in the very first burst Chest, so instead
Speaker 1: he's stacking up so much twisted, odd and mortally questionable
Speaker 1: material that it creates the same overall effect as the
Speaker 1: chest Burster. We're lucky he's interested in loftier ambitions because
Speaker 1: I'm convinced, had Holly decided to just barrel into horror,
Speaker 1: this could be unrelenting and most likely scarring. Another thing
Speaker 1: that's kind of wackad do off kilter in this series
Speaker 1: is the young adults that are our heroes and the
Speaker 1: fact that they're actually children. The show never shines away
Speaker 1: from reminding us about these tiny kids are running around
Speaker 1: in adult synthetic bodies, nor does it shrink from confronting
Speaker 1: some of the dodgier aspects to the process and the
Speaker 1: character's own struggles with their new busy and identities. Speaking
Speaker 1: of them, Wendy, our lead, is played by Sidney Chandler.
Speaker 1: In addition to being Kyle Chandler's daughter who saw that coming,
Speaker 1: she was the best part of Danny Boyle's mini series
Speaker 1: Pistol about the rise of the sex pistols. Chandler played
Speaker 1: Chrissy Hind and she fucking killed it. That series was
Speaker 1: adapted mainly from Steve Jones's memoir of his time in
Speaker 1: the Pistols, as such as heavily freighted towards Steve Jones
Speaker 1: as the chief creative force behind the Pistols, which is
Speaker 1: great for the Chrissy Hind subplot as she was Jones's friend.
Speaker 1: But I'll let you decide for yourself the overall quality.
Speaker 1: Maybe I should watch it again. I did come away
Speaker 1: with a deeper appreciation of both Chrissy Hind and Vivian Westwood.
Speaker 1: In any event, I really like her in Alien Earth,
Speaker 1: and I particularly like the fact that Wendy and the
Speaker 1: Lost Boys are synthetic hybrids. It solves two problems elegantly.
Speaker 1: James Cameron recognized that in a hand to hand situation,
Speaker 1: humans stand zero percent chance of surviving against an alien,
Speaker 1: so he ramped up the firepower. And that's been the
Speaker 1: only solution since then in any of the iterations until now,
Speaker 1: because now our leads have no reason to fear the creature,
Speaker 1: and odds are they're just as strong. And and this
Speaker 1: is the really clever bit. If next season he wanted
Speaker 1: to jump ahead, say twenty years, and tell the story
Speaker 1: of Amanda Ripley, who's out there searching for her mom.
Speaker 1: He could do so with these characters who don't age.
Speaker 1: Jump another thirty years, and he could have them running
Speaker 1: around the Silaco while Hicks and Bishop and Ripley are
Speaker 1: slugging it out on LV four twenty six. I'm not
Speaker 1: suggesting they need to do any of this actual interaction
Speaker 1: with legacy characters. I'm just saying it's possible and exciting. Okay, weapons,
Speaker 1: not joking anymore. This isn't a series you can push
Speaker 1: a button and watch right now. So if you haven't
Speaker 1: seen weapons, here we go. It's witchcraft. There's a witch.
Speaker 1: She's kidnapping the children to feed on their life force.
Speaker 1: And by she I mean Aunt Gladys, a shrunken apple
Speaker 1: doll under a severe shocking red bob and a slash
Speaker 1: of lipstick where her mouth ought to be a character
Speaker 1: that every time she popped up on screen had be
Speaker 1: confusedly wondering who is that? She really reminds me of?
Speaker 1: Amy Madigan. Of course it is Amy Madigan, who I
Speaker 1: hope is getting all the fucking notoriety she deserves. Remember
Speaker 1: her on Carnival. She was the real evil there too.
Speaker 1: She has had a long and illustrious career. But here's
Speaker 1: the flick I always recommend. Streets of Fire. That's the
Speaker 1: Walter Hill, a rock and roll fable from nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: She auditioned for Ellen Ame and ended up taking the
Speaker 1: role of McCoy, that is, the badass, fully capable soldier
Speaker 1: of fortune sidekick that had been written for a man.
Speaker 1: That's how fucking awesome Amy Madigan is. And if you
Speaker 1: rewatch the movie, do so for one moment that involves McCoy.
Speaker 1: When our heroes have infiltrated torchies. Of course there's torchies.
Speaker 1: It's a Walter Hill movie. McCoy goes upstairs and gets
Speaker 1: one of the gang alone. The speed with which Amy
Speaker 1: Madigan draws a pistol and places it against the guy's
Speaker 1: skull is nothing short of breathtaking. See for yourself. So weapons, Aunt, Gladys.
Speaker 1: The story is that Alex, the only boy who didn't
Speaker 1: go missing, His parents inform him that a distant relative
Speaker 1: is ailing and coming to live with them. Thus Gladys,
Speaker 1: and as soon as she's in the house, the parents
Speaker 1: are different, distant odd threatening because Gladys, who claims at
Speaker 1: times to be Alex's aunt, his mother's sister, and Alex's
Speaker 1: great aunt, a sister of his grandmother, is above all
Speaker 1: a witch, one who is winding down and falling apart
Speaker 1: and needs to feed, and has chosen Alex's parents, but
Speaker 1: finds that they're not sufficient sustenance. Thus she targets Alex's class.
Speaker 1: A couple of things here, because this is the line
Speaker 1: of demarcation, it would seem amongst viewers of the film
Speaker 1: a contentious line at that early images of those seventeen
Speaker 1: children climbing out of bed and stepping out and running
Speaker 1: off into the night are so fucking evocative and so
Speaker 1: weighted with possibility that for a lot of people, finding
Speaker 1: out that it's the crazy old lady you avoid at
Speaker 1: the grocery store is kind of a letdown. And I
Speaker 1: get that, because the mystery of seventeen disappearances in one
Speaker 1: night is intriguing enough on its own, that there was
Speaker 1: seemingly no perpetrator is doubly so. And in my horrible brain,
Speaker 1: I go to lovecrafty and darkness. Those kids could very
Speaker 1: well be trapped in some hell of infinite teeth and terror,
Speaker 1: But you know, sometimes the honest thing just clicks in
Speaker 1: your mind. A puzzle piece you didn't know you were
Speaker 1: looking for just appears. Here's how the overly analytical cinematic
Speaker 1: dissection machine of a brain of mind worked. I mentioned
Speaker 1: Fight Club earlier. You know what I realized in that
Speaker 1: movie when Jack is punching himself in front of his boss,
Speaker 1: he thinks for some reason, I thought about my first
Speaker 1: fight with Tyler, and my mind went, because you've been
Speaker 1: beating yourself up the whole time. There is no Tyler. Oh,
Speaker 1: we're fallowing the journey of a crazy man. Somehow. The
Speaker 1: site of the children running in the manner in which
Speaker 1: they do, and the mystery and the title. The title
Speaker 1: specifically locked my brain in on the notion that it's
Speaker 1: witchcraft and someone is controlling these children and potentially as
Speaker 1: human weapons. That's still pretty vague, but it's also a
Speaker 1: pretty good cushion for the reveal, because had I been
Speaker 1: convinced of the limitless possibilities of what actually happened to
Speaker 1: those kids, I can see where it's a witch might
Speaker 1: be that letdown, But I was not let down. That's
Speaker 1: a scary fucking character and a scarier scenario we get
Speaker 1: five separate tales around the central mystery. Those are all
Speaker 1: peripheral characters when it comes down to it, because the
Speaker 1: only story that matters here is Alex's story. In the
Speaker 1: parallels between his ordeal with Aunt Gladys and the one
Speaker 1: children dealing with alcoholic parents or drug addicted parents or
Speaker 1: rageaholic workaholic. There's no shortage of parental distraction you can
Speaker 1: plug into this scenario. But Gregor himself has alluded to
Speaker 1: alcoholism at its route. Those parallels are largely unexplored in
Speaker 1: popular entertainment, and those are the images and scenes that
Speaker 1: keep turning over in my head. It's horrible to lose
Speaker 1: a child, I know, and it's horrible to deal with
Speaker 1: the fallout of tragedy in your community, especially when there's
Speaker 1: a mystery at the center of it. But it's so
Speaker 1: much worse for that child trapped with a monster, compelled
Speaker 1: to do its bidding and be forced into silence above all,
Speaker 1: suffering alone. God damn it, that's fucking horrible. Piggybacking off
Speaker 1: of Paul Waller's podcast A Year in Horror for a
Speaker 1: second here, Paul mentioned on his show that Creiger offered
Speaker 1: Amy Madigan two backstories for on Gladys. One she was
Speaker 1: in fact the distant relative who, in the intervening years
Speaker 1: since last they'd encountered her, had found black magic and
Speaker 1: become a witch. Or she was never human to begin with,
Speaker 1: just a demon inside a withered human suit. We don't
Speaker 1: know which one Amy Madigan chose. We don't know which
Speaker 1: one Craiger had in mind, which I love. I think
Speaker 1: it's in between. I think she's human, but I think
Speaker 1: she's impossibly old and has been pulling this I'm your
Speaker 1: long lost relative act for decades, if not centuries. But
Speaker 1: I don't suppose any of that matters, because they've already
Speaker 1: announced a prequel to Weapons, and that fills me with
Speaker 1: as much dread as some of the scenes in it
Speaker 1: look so far. Cregger's has shown remarkable restraint and thoughtfulness,
Speaker 1: so I shouldn't doubt his intentions with a prequel. It's
Speaker 1: just that prequels tend to be exposition machines for films
Speaker 1: that definitely avoided such clumsiness. Oh that's why he said that,
Speaker 1: Oh it's really a ghost. No answer is scarier than
Speaker 1: no answer, yadeg. Weapons The movie has stayed with me
Speaker 1: on a lot of levels, but it's the finale that
Speaker 1: really grabbed me by the lapels. The sight of children
Speaker 1: previously hypnotized and fed upon by a shriveled old crone
Speaker 1: who's using an arcane system of outdated beliefs and powers
Speaker 1: over them, chasing her down and tearing her apart was
Speaker 1: more than cathartic. It was joyful. It was fucking hopeful.
Speaker 1: There actual end of social commentary and end of this
Speaker 1: brief but also weird episode of the Roundup. I'm always
Speaker 1: around if you want to talk about this subject or
Speaker 1: any subject, really, check the show notes on Instagram. We
Speaker 1: are at midnight underscore viewing Oh my God. Check out
Speaker 1: our Instagram everybody. Paul Williams Rainbow Connection, Paul Williams Swan
Speaker 1: from Phantom of the Paradise, Paul Williams, emmittt Ottero's jug
Speaker 1: band Christmas. Paul Williams liked and commented and reposted one
Speaker 1: of my posts, and it's one where I'm singing one
Speaker 1: of his songs, So I now consider myself a singer
Speaker 1: with Paul Williams seal of approval. Anyway, find us there
Speaker 1: or hit me up on the email, or go to
Speaker 1: the Patreon and buy Ripley a new bag of pork
Speaker 1: medallion dog treats. Oh fuck, I said it out loud,
Speaker 1: and now she's awake and staring well for a hungry
Speaker 1: Ripley gene. I'm father Malone, see you on Friday. What
Speaker 1: I have, no trees, no baseball game. Man in the
Speaker 1: baseball and the pack ro for the skin and in
Speaker 1: the brains of the baseball, gonna run a on the
Speaker 1: fucking train on the baseball. Tell me to be fucking
Speaker 1: on the jumble. And my mother so strong now to
Speaker 1: paint so bad that my motherfucking horse a