Speaker 1: All right, listen up, Cave's I got your assignments riga
Speaker 1: six four three wheeler one four eight not eight oh
Speaker 1: four and only you. You need to join host HP
Speaker 1: and fatherm Alone as they examine one of the greatest
Speaker 1: sitcoms in television history, Taxi in Night Mister Walters a
Speaker 1: taxi podcast BANDA zero like your boxing.
Speaker 2: Record, Thank mister Walters. Weird Weave.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the horror anthology podcast, where
Speaker 1: this season we're taking a look at George Romero's nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties series Tales from the Dark Side. Sharing the Midnight
Speaker 1: view with me are the Culture Cast Christachue.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to tell you guys this, but
Speaker 2: I practice a lot of voodoo in my spare time.
Speaker 1: Well that's perfect. Also joining us is the Projection Booths
Speaker 1: Mike White.
Speaker 3: Oh this is far above the cost of rubies.
Speaker 1: Okay, And tonight we are taking a look at two
Speaker 1: episodes from season two. Those are Ring Around the Redhead
Speaker 1: and Parlor Floor Front. Ring Around the Redhead is season
Speaker 1: two episode three. This originally aired on October thirteenth, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five. Written by Ted Gershoony from a story by
Speaker 1: John D. McDonald, Yes that John D. McDonald. Directed by
Speaker 1: Ted Gershoony and starring John Hurd and Penelope Ann Miller.
Speaker 1: This is the story of inventor who finds a earth
Speaker 1: after an earthquake. A hole opens up in his house
Speaker 1: that's a portal to another dimension, and he takes a
Speaker 1: girl out of it and spends the time teaching her English,
Speaker 1: and then I don't know, other things happen too. There's
Speaker 1: a lot going on in this episode. I don't oh who,
Speaker 1: I'm going to throw it on over to you, Mike.
Speaker 2: Thank god it was Mike and not me.
Speaker 3: We never knew that john Ny MacDonald wrote sci fi,
Speaker 3: and this story kind of makes me doubt that he
Speaker 3: did write sci fi. The whole thing of how our
Speaker 3: main character is an inventor, but then he doesn't invent
Speaker 3: anything during the whole episode. Instead, a volcano opens in
Speaker 3: his floor, and there is this ring that I thought
Speaker 3: was part of the volcano. But then at one part
Speaker 3: Jimbo pulls out the ring. I'm like, oh, I thought
Speaker 3: that was part and parcel of this whole volcano thing.
Speaker 3: Because they keep twisting it around and it's opening other dimensions.
Speaker 3: I was getting a little quantumnia feel from this this movie.
Speaker 3: This episode had everything going for it. Peneloty, Anne Miller,
Speaker 3: John Hurd, I love John Hurd doing a great job,
Speaker 3: and here Johnny McDonald, which I was like, oh, great,
Speaker 3: big shot in the arm. Yeah, what a mess this
Speaker 3: one was. And then to kind of turn it into
Speaker 3: this hole, I'm going to take this girl from this
Speaker 3: other dimension and have to teach her all of our stuff.
Speaker 3: But then she's actually way smarter than I am anyway,
Speaker 3: So yeah, it just she was a little manic pixie
Speaker 3: dream girl for me, and the that he has to
Speaker 3: save her and all this and oh yeah, we just
Speaker 3: played with these rubies all over the place and I
Speaker 3: didn't even realize that was the same dimension, but because
Speaker 3: I guess there's all kinds of dimensions he can do,
Speaker 3: and it's just the one really that we interact with.
Speaker 3: And I thought for sure that we were going to
Speaker 3: get all kinds of adventures him going into the portal
Speaker 3: maybe or pulling other things out. But two things, rubies
Speaker 3: and her and then you got some busted up thermometers. Chris,
Speaker 3: what did you think of this one?
Speaker 2: I'm glad you had to answer first. Boy.
Speaker 3: Oh, and it's all a death be a death row
Speaker 3: death row right, a death row confession. Yeah, I forgot
Speaker 3: about the framing story. Sorry about that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you forgot about the best part. Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like beyond unintelligible. For the most part, I don't
Speaker 2: understand what the point of this episode story is. It's
Speaker 2: one of those things where I'm sitting here thinking to myself,
Speaker 2: you know, John D. MacDonald can write, but to your
Speaker 2: apropos point, Mike didn't fuck and would have convinced me
Speaker 2: otherwise with this horseshit like, it's really bad, and it's
Speaker 2: bad in a way that I think it makes me
Speaker 2: appreciate that that episode it maybe it was Twilight Zone
Speaker 2: or Night Gallery, the Joe Penny episode where he's like
Speaker 2: in prison and he goes back in time by playing
Speaker 2: the oh with the piano.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was actually pretty good compared to this, especially.
Speaker 2: Speaking of soprano people from The Sopranos being in anthology shows.
Speaker 2: Joe Penny in this episode, John Hurd in this in
Speaker 2: that episode, and John Heard in this episode. I I
Speaker 2: wanted to like this, but I don't understand what the
Speaker 2: point is, and the fact that it's Dave's ex earthquake
Speaker 2: is just fucking bizarre. There was an earthquake and then
Speaker 2: there was a volcano in my basement. Okay, okay. That's
Speaker 2: all I could say was Okay, it's bizarre. It's strange.
Speaker 2: They make some choices. I don't think the choices work
Speaker 2: very well. And I mean Penelope and Miller is cute,
Speaker 2: but I mean her doing a Land of the Lost
Speaker 2: character thing is o en Sino woman. I guess it's
Speaker 2: just kind of I don't know. I'm surprised they spent
Speaker 2: twenty two minutes doing this episode, that's for sure.
Speaker 1: A death sentence in anthology television always seems to be
Speaker 1: three days after the crime, as opposed to several years
Speaker 1: of decades of trials by then. I think he might
Speaker 1: have told this story a few times. And I bet
Speaker 1: those Rubies would have been raising some other eyebrows too
Speaker 1: about what was actually going on in that house. He
Speaker 1: was convicted so quickly without actually telling a story. It's
Speaker 1: that's a bit unusual. The entire episode, the pacing of
Speaker 1: it felt as if we were watching a previously on
Speaker 1: Tales from the Dark Side. That it felt like a
Speaker 1: summation of a larger, longer episode and or movie. Why
Speaker 1: did we have a wrap around segment at all? What
Speaker 1: are we wasting our time with this exposition? And that
Speaker 1: ultimately is the problem with the episode. This is a
Speaker 1: fucking radio play. They jogg us through like huge plot points. Well,
Speaker 1: then a cloud came out and attacked him. Really that
Speaker 1: sounds exciting. I wonder if they could show that on
Speaker 1: a device that I can watch in my home.
Speaker 2: I liked this episode more when it was jin No
Speaker 2: Chasers moments ago. Yeah, and it has that same framing
Speaker 2: device too, a character talking directly to the camera essential so.
Speaker 1: And you know what you're right? Mike liked, why is
Speaker 1: there even a volcano? If the ring is if you
Speaker 1: can remove it, I too thought, oh, this is part
Speaker 1: of that thing. It's like a break or something. They
Speaker 1: just take it out, go put it in your closet.
Speaker 1: How about here's that ring.
Speaker 3: That he's doing death experiments, that's his whole thing is
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, then I'm like lowering this anchor in. Okay,
Speaker 3: it must go pretty deep. Do you ever touch ground?
Speaker 3: Like what's going on?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: And then he says he committed he did one hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy probes, And I'm like, in how long this morning?
Speaker 3: What are you doing with this?
Speaker 1: There's very little logical sense being being put on display here.
Speaker 1: I did like that, as I did not like to
Speaker 1: wrap around kind of death row bit. I did like
Speaker 1: how stormy they made the noir jail. Like a certain
Speaker 1: point they got like a lightning storm going on, which
Speaker 1: always looks bad usually, but I thought looked great here.
Speaker 1: So there are aspects of this that I liked a lot,
Speaker 1: including all of the performances, like how you could how
Speaker 1: could you not? Penelope Anne Miller? Is that her name's
Speaker 1: I've run super hot and cold on her. In the
Speaker 1: right role, she's charming as fun, but and then she's
Speaker 1: in Carlito's Way and you're like, what is she doing here?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, she's perfect in the gun and Betty Loo's handbag,
Speaker 3: but something like this, I'm like, this works. But yeah,
Speaker 3: when you put her in a meaty role like Carlito's Way,
Speaker 3: you're like, oh, like, she's no Michelle Pfeiffer.
Speaker 2: Or the Relic.
Speaker 3: Oh god, the Relic. I mean, I can't get past
Speaker 3: Tom Sizemore. He's the star of the show for me
Speaker 3: in that one. Well.
Speaker 2: I have so many feelings about that film that have
Speaker 2: more to do with the books than anything else. But
Speaker 2: Penelope An Miller's fine here. Comparative I think.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, who was Lincoln?
Speaker 2: Rhymes those oh uh Lincoln, Uh, Preston and child there
Speaker 2: you go.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you like them, you're not gonna like that.
Speaker 2: No, And Penelope Ann Miller is actually like the least
Speaker 2: offensive part of that movie. She's fine here. You said,
Speaker 2: manic Pixie dream girl. It's very much that, like a
Speaker 2: specific kind of fish out of water character. It's reminded.
Speaker 2: It reminded me of a ton of characters we've seen
Speaker 2: a million other times before. And again like the weird
Speaker 2: moment where she can stop time and intercede and stop
Speaker 2: him from being executed, Like what fuck? What the holy
Speaker 2: fuck is going on here? So he is on death
Speaker 2: row because Jimbo disappeared.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the antagonist of the piece who's been who came
Speaker 1: and stole the ring and took the rubies and took
Speaker 1: that ring? He took he took I live. He gets
Speaker 1: two scenes basically in a row taking this ring, I'm back,
Speaker 1: take this ring away from me.
Speaker 2: And again, like we all know, in the reality of
Speaker 2: a real world, if they don't find the body, they're
Speaker 2: not going to there's jail. Some John hurd is, there's
Speaker 2: a quick turn around here. Apparently that this guy is
Speaker 2: just being executed. What you were tried convicted? Another executing
Speaker 2: you a week later? Whoa what world?
Speaker 1: Are we?
Speaker 2: The perfect prison system?
Speaker 3: Apparently it's called habeas corpus for a reason.
Speaker 1: I guess so, Mike, like you said, he's an inventor,
Speaker 1: but we never seen him inventing anything. We don't see
Speaker 1: him testing anything at all. What we do get is
Speaker 1: suddenly he's teaching her planets and English and penmanship. He's singing.
Speaker 1: He's sending here to sleep, which was not at all uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: He invented a bucket on a rope that he could
Speaker 2: lower into a hole in the ground. He invented that.
Speaker 2: He's an inventor.
Speaker 1: You ever see that short film with the Australian with
Speaker 1: the hole in the ground and the guy he's lowering
Speaker 1: a bucket into it, and they keep sending He keeps
Speaker 1: getting jewels sent back up to him for things that
Speaker 1: he's sending down. And at a certain point he gets
Speaker 1: in the thing and goes down and they send up
Speaker 1: like all the jewels. This was delicious send Mare wouldn't
Speaker 1: see that one really good and reminded me too much
Speaker 1: of this, And unfortunately I like that one better because
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, once he starts teaching her, I'm like,
Speaker 1: is this where we're going? Is this sort of going
Speaker 1: to be like some sort of Frankenstein thing? And like
Speaker 1: once her learning accelerated and she was out pacing him
Speaker 1: and reading all of his science books, I'm like, Oh,
Speaker 1: is this gonna be some like doomsday thing? We're gonna
Speaker 1: give us something to give us a bit of a
Speaker 1: bite at the end here, but no, they give us.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing wrong with a romantic ending if you
Speaker 1: earned that, But this thing is so scattershot and weird.
Speaker 1: It's twenty different genres like slapping up against each other
Speaker 1: for no good reason, and trying to cram it all
Speaker 1: into twenty two minutes. Like I mean, look, I admire
Speaker 1: the attempt a for effort, but this one's a mess.
Speaker 2: Well, and not only is it a mess, it's like
Speaker 2: it's an incomprehensible mess. I don't understand why this story
Speaker 2: took twenty two minutes to tell. It's not a blackout sketch,
Speaker 2: because we've leveled that against the show, me specifically, plenty
Speaker 2: of times. This is just one of the more just
Speaker 2: like water treading, wheel spinning episodes of this show I've
Speaker 2: ever seen. I don't understand the point of this episode.
Speaker 2: This episode is like a guy was Scott Wilson went
Speaker 2: to a nuclear world or something. You remember that Scott
Speaker 2: Wilson looked through the portal into the nuclear world and
Speaker 2: you remember do you remember that from Night Gallery? Was
Speaker 2: that a Night Gallery episode? This is the closest thing
Speaker 2: to that. You remember what I'm talking about where it's
Speaker 2: a world We're a world of peace now and it's
Speaker 2: all fish out of water story. It's like, why are
Speaker 2: we telling these stories? Who is this? Four?
Speaker 3: Yeah, if it was Scott Wilson would have had to
Speaker 3: have been Twilight Zone rather than rather than I mean
Speaker 3: he's old or was old, but not that old more.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I got something more to say about this
Speaker 1: because here's the thing, like with all those sort of
Speaker 1: with all the time spent on all of these different avenues,
Speaker 1: when they could have just been telling us one story
Speaker 1: the whole time. Uh, at the end, we have time
Speaker 1: to like slow walk through the fucking prison, slow walk
Speaker 1: to the chair, and then lovingly like close ups of
Speaker 1: him being strapped in and the diodes being placed, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, we got time for this too. I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's not like the end of an after school special too.
Speaker 2: Well, at the end he's saved because he's worth saving apparently,
Speaker 2: good god man. Yeah, it's just sure, Okay, I just
Speaker 2: I sometimes I failed to see what they were getting at.
Speaker 2: What's the point of the story here. Is there a
Speaker 2: something be some sort of metaphor you're getting at, or
Speaker 2: some sort of homily you're trying to get across. Nope,
Speaker 2: it's just stupid. It's just it just wastes its time
Speaker 2: and our time. And John Hurd, unfortunately, that's the biggest
Speaker 2: shame here. This is the only time John heard his
Speaker 2: entails from the dark Side. Oops.
Speaker 1: Okay, halfway through that when that guy takes the ring,
Speaker 1: when he brings it back, he starts babbling like this
Speaker 1: love crafty entail that like it's a portal to this
Speaker 1: whole other horrible place and there are things out there,
Speaker 1: and where's that while they.
Speaker 2: Imply it with the frayed wire, that's like something fray
Speaker 2: to this cored and it's we're never gonna see it
Speaker 2: because has no budget. There's there's not a But there's
Speaker 2: a reason we didn't see what's in the portal because
Speaker 2: the budgetary restrictions may apply.
Speaker 3: Well, i'll tell you where the budget comes in. It's
Speaker 3: that lavish last supper that it gets on death Row
Speaker 3: with two bananas and an apple and maybe some green
Speaker 3: beans on there. I mean, that looked like it must
Speaker 3: have cost a lot. And that's how I want to
Speaker 3: go out. Two bananas and an apple.
Speaker 1: Please.
Speaker 2: Well he requested it, you know that's how it goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I can't blame.
Speaker 3: And that order slash lawyer whoever, who just gives him
Speaker 3: the stink face like ninety percent of the time she's
Speaker 3: on screen.
Speaker 1: What a useless character, what a whole useless like waste
Speaker 1: of expositional time. Strove me crazy. If this were not
Speaker 1: based on a previously written short story, I would assume
Speaker 1: that this was an episode hobbled together of everyone's unfilmable
Speaker 1: idea for the season, all the.
Speaker 2: Tropes rolled into one. Yeah, that's a.
Speaker 1: Good idea, but you don't want to do a whole
Speaker 1: episode about that. Put it in the ring around the
Speaker 1: right eyed episode.
Speaker 2: This is like the what is it called when you
Speaker 2: go to the gas station and get all the sodas
Speaker 2: together like suicide. It's like that, it's all the things
Speaker 2: mixed together, and boy, it doesn't taste good at all.
Speaker 3: I am curious to read the original short story just
Speaker 3: to see what that was like, because I do like
Speaker 3: John D. MacDonald so much. But I'm not Russian. I'm
Speaker 3: not rushing out to get that get it.
Speaker 1: No, but his lawyers certainly looked Russian, all right. Next up,
Speaker 1: we're talking about parlor floor front. Parlor is spelled with
Speaker 1: the British you, so it makes it look like parlur
Speaker 1: in my mind. So every time I look at it,
Speaker 1: I got parlor floor front. Makes it very hard to
Speaker 1: say anyway, Season two, episode four. This originally aired on
Speaker 1: October the twentieth, nineteen eighty five. Written by Carol Lucia
Speaker 1: Satrina and directed by Richard Friedman, this one stars Adolf Caesar,
Speaker 1: Rosetta Lenoir, and Donna Bullock, which is kind of a
Speaker 1: let down to say after the previous two names. This
Speaker 1: is a story about two horrible, fucking, yumpy pieces of
Speaker 1: shit trying to oust a lifelong tenant of their newly
Speaker 1: purchased home. Oh and voodoo, would you think of this one?
Speaker 1: Chris Boy.
Speaker 2: We've found it the episode with the most indefensible fucking
Speaker 2: characters known to man. They're here, folks, What in God's
Speaker 2: name is going on with this show? I mean, I
Speaker 2: talk about painting with the broadest of broad brushes, my
Speaker 2: Lord Donna Bullock, and see here's the name you should
Speaker 2: have said, Father Malone. You want to keep those names up,
Speaker 2: John Colonious, which is sounds straight out of Roman Empire
Speaker 2: Central casting. Such a strange episode. The two main characters
Speaker 2: are fucking assholes of the highest order. They're clearly I mean,
Speaker 2: they're clearly trafficking in what was going on in the
Speaker 2: eighties in New York City with rent control and all
Speaker 2: of that, and I mean pretty apropos to be going
Speaker 2: towards real world events. I'm not sure they had a
Speaker 2: single fucking thing to say about them, but hey, they're
Speaker 2: trafficking in real world things that are happening. This was
Speaker 2: pretty well suited to be the secondary episode that we're
Speaker 2: talking about on this episode of this show, given what
Speaker 2: we just talked about. I find this to be again,
Speaker 2: what was the point of this story. We've seen this
Speaker 2: a bunch of other times, a bunch of different other ways.
Speaker 2: And this is not the best way it's been done.
Speaker 2: This is just another time, is what this feels like?
Speaker 2: What about you, Mike?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean this episode keeps trying to pull the
Speaker 3: rug out from under you. Where Yeah, these are horrible, horrible.
Speaker 3: The wife is worse than the man, but the man
Speaker 3: is pretty bad as well. This whole thing of how
Speaker 3: she sets up Adolph Caesar to what does it make
Speaker 3: her fall? And then she lies that she was carrying
Speaker 3: a baby and I'm just like what, oh gosh, that's horrible. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and she killed a cat in order to prove out
Speaker 3: that he caused a curse us and I'm like, what,
Speaker 3: oh man? It is rough. And I love Adolph Caesar.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys a soldier story. He's
Speaker 3: fucking fantastic in that movie. That's one of those performances
Speaker 3: between him and who is it Howard d Rollins that's
Speaker 3: in there, or Henry d Rollins Henry Harold Henry Rollins
Speaker 3: the punk rock singer Black Flags own Henry Rollins, where
Speaker 3: he's portraying this black soldier who's coming in. It's really
Speaker 3: weird the way that he does it all in blackface
Speaker 3: the entire time and with.
Speaker 2: That act to be another dude.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but a Dolph Caesar in that movie and Rollins
Speaker 3: are just freaking amazing. And it was one of those
Speaker 3: where I was like, Oh, I want to see more
Speaker 3: of this guy. And then when this episode comes up,
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I didn't know he did the Tales
Speaker 3: from the Dark Side. Oh, this is great. And then
Speaker 3: when he starts speaking with that Jamaican accent, it's okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna let this pass, all right, okay, And yeah,
Speaker 3: then it becomes a zombie story at the end, and
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, it's still not as scary
Speaker 3: as not seeing the zombie in the first episode of
Speaker 3: Night Gallery with Roddy McDill losing his absolute mind. I
Speaker 3: was kind of hoping that she would lose her mind
Speaker 3: in this one and that we would maybe see the
Speaker 3: results of her with her, maybe your whole fingers pulled
Speaker 3: off or something. But I wanted to see her get
Speaker 3: her come up on more than what we got.
Speaker 2: She took the ring off of her finger gingerly apparently
Speaker 2: in letter v oh thank you here you go? I
Speaker 2: ads like, why did you what was the reason you've died?
Speaker 2: Because it seems like the ring was taken very quickly
Speaker 2: and easily.
Speaker 3: And why did she feel that she had to take
Speaker 3: the ring? Never mind? Sorry, I'm asking for logic in
Speaker 3: this episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this episode is dangerously close to it Tails from
Speaker 1: the Crypt segment from the film Poetics with Peter where
Speaker 1: people on a block are trying to oust the old
Speaker 1: man because billth the old man, and they do all
Speaker 1: these dirty tricks to get him out of there, and
Speaker 1: then he finally hangs himself. He's so ostracized and cut
Speaker 1: off from life from these assholes. That is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite segments of any filmed entertainment and anthology series
Speaker 1: is that the.
Speaker 3: One where they end up being in the dark and
Speaker 3: there's like razor blades on the wall and the rest.
Speaker 1: That is tails. That's the same movie Tails from the Crypt,
Speaker 1: the Amicus production. But that's a further segment.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, Okay, that's really the only that. Isn't there
Speaker 3: a monkeys Paul in that one?
Speaker 1: I think those are the other one that's Bulk of Horror.
Speaker 1: Okay is it Baltimore? No, it might be Test Crypt,
Speaker 1: but yeah, yeah, the Poetic Justice segment with Peter Cushing,
Speaker 1: that's the one. If if there's ever, an image shown
Speaker 1: from that movie, it's him rising from the grave the
Speaker 1: Grimsdyke zombie and that's the payoff there that sort of
Speaker 1: inspired Father's Day and in Creep Show that one, like
Speaker 1: those two are of a piece and not necessarily of
Speaker 1: equal measure, because Peter Cushing is heartbreaking in that thing.
Speaker 1: What both of those things are though, are really good
Speaker 1: and this thing is really not. I did not see
Speaker 1: the twist that it was the wife doing this to ADOLFH. Caesar.
Speaker 1: I thought it was strictly voodoo occurring. So I was
Speaker 1: happily price to them, completely pissed because it should have
Speaker 1: been a fucking voodoo fantasia in this episode. They should
Speaker 1: have they could have really gone for it made something
Speaker 1: really scary instead of just evil people who need to
Speaker 1: get their come upance, Like I like, she fakes a miscarriage,
Speaker 1: Like it's so fucking craty. Oh my god, she's fucking psyched.
Speaker 3: I mean, she's like the.
Speaker 1: Er Karen when she's complaining they're going to have Adolph
Speaker 1: Caesar inexplicably hangs himself. And that's where it gets too
Speaker 1: close to a parallel to the to the Tales of
Speaker 1: the Crypt episode there's no reason he should have done that,
Speaker 1: like maybe parted off to prison something, but that that
Speaker 1: was stupid. But nevertheless, when they're having the viewing of
Speaker 1: his body in the apartment and she's upstairs bitching about
Speaker 1: people coming to this man that she drove to suicide, Uh,
Speaker 1: oh my god. I want your correct Mike in the
Speaker 1: in your early assessment that there's no come up in
Speaker 1: here even closely commensurate to who this fucking care character
Speaker 1: was in this episode. I really wanted, like the last episode,
Speaker 1: I wanted somebody to get this one. I wanted them
Speaker 1: to get it. It tells some the dark sid is
Speaker 1: really embracing the ec We said it's mean spirited, but
Speaker 1: I did find myself wondering why we're spending any amount
Speaker 1: of time with these people when we have Adolph Caesar
Speaker 1: downstairs and we could spend time with him being wounded
Speaker 1: by these people. That's where the town from the Crip
Speaker 1: one gets it right, because we spend all of our
Speaker 1: time with Peter Cushing and only peripherally we see these
Speaker 1: people plotting against him. Here they were kind of the
Speaker 1: heroes of the piece, and then they don't even get
Speaker 1: a hero's send off. They just sort of dead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fucking weird to me the way that the
Speaker 2: characters of the Upstairs people are portrayed, Because am I
Speaker 2: supposed to feel bad for them? Episode what do you
Speaker 2: want for? I'm not going to feel bad for these
Speaker 2: two white devils, Okay, Like that's the portrayal of the character.
Speaker 2: It's like very on the nose, very obvious. The only
Speaker 2: thing if Donna Bullock had been blonde and blue eyed,
Speaker 2: it would have been a little bit more exactly what
Speaker 2: it needed to be. But yeah, yeah, I don't there's
Speaker 2: so one note that you can only go so far
Speaker 2: with it before you're just like stomping the same ground
Speaker 2: over and over again. And that's what this ultimately felt like.
Speaker 2: It felt like it was just stomping down the same ground.
Speaker 2: As I get that they're terrible. I understood that from
Speaker 2: the first singular moment that I understood that from the
Speaker 2: first moment that we see them on screen. They're coded
Speaker 2: very specifically terrible. So yeah, to your point, Mike, like,
Speaker 2: I don't feel like these characters get what they deserve
Speaker 2: at all. I feel like it's just to see Donna
Speaker 2: Bullock on the bed kind of scared, stiff, is a
Speaker 2: bummer really?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, give me that shot. No no, by no
Speaker 3: means I mean yeah. And there were times where I'm like,
Speaker 3: is the husband in on it? Because she will complain
Speaker 3: to him about things, and then later on it feels like, oh,
Speaker 3: he was aware of this the whole time, but I
Speaker 3: guess not she let him know, because there are some
Speaker 3: things where he doesn't realize that she's lying, and then
Speaker 3: other times where I think he does realize.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, yeah, like he's such a dope too on
Speaker 2: top of everything else. He doesn't realize it until it's
Speaker 2: effectively too late, and then he just leaves and she.
Speaker 3: Well, and he needs his come up ons as well, because.
Speaker 2: If it gets away, he just walks away. Okay, sure, fine, Yeah.
Speaker 2: To put it all on Donna Bullock, I'm mean, I
Speaker 2: get it from the character being the repugnant piece of shit,
Speaker 2: but it's not enough. It's not enough. It's so not
Speaker 2: enough that I don't know. They went so far in
Speaker 2: one direction they couldn't course correct enough, is what it
Speaker 2: feels like. You push the dial so far with these characters,
Speaker 2: I'm surprised they didn't have n't dropped some sort of slurf. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, were they were like one step away from
Speaker 2: having them drop like a an eighties level slur. I'm
Speaker 2: surprised they didn't go there, because again, they were pushed
Speaker 2: so far in that direction that it needed to be
Speaker 2: Tails from the Crypt for them to actually get their
Speaker 2: come up, and Tails from the Dark Sides not a
Speaker 2: dark enough show for them to get the come up.
Speaker 2: And its the way these characters were painted.
Speaker 1: No, and it network television too. I don't syndicated, but
Speaker 1: you know it. This is on Sunday nights, right right right?
Speaker 3: Yea, Well you know how those people are one of
Speaker 3: those things.
Speaker 2: Right yeah? I mean I was half expecting it because again,
Speaker 2: like it was trafficking in real world events, I mean
Speaker 2: things that we've heard about people have been doing, and
Speaker 2: especially in places like New York where I'm assuming this
Speaker 2: is set East Coast episode found them alone.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Ernest Dickerson, I believe.
Speaker 2: Yep, it's again. I appreciate where they're coming from, but
Speaker 2: they don't nail this at all.
Speaker 1: Rosette le noir, Why are you just sitting there while
Speaker 1: he's hanging Call the coroner, call the end.
Speaker 2: Oh that was my favorite party. That was like, look
Speaker 2: what you did to him, that's a body just hanging there, like.
Speaker 3: Right there, look at my father one.
Speaker 2: God's name, like shit. And she's already wearing morning clothes too,
Speaker 2: So did she go home after she saw him hanging
Speaker 2: there and wear black clothes so that she could be
Speaker 2: found waiting?
Speaker 3: It? So was?
Speaker 2: It's yep, yep, yep, nope.
Speaker 1: And the episode is one confession after another from this
Speaker 1: horrible wife. Like every couple of scenes, she's like, oh,
Speaker 1: by the way, that was me. And then by the
Speaker 1: third or fourth time, the husband he's surprised that all
Speaker 1: I love. By the way, when he goes to leave her,
Speaker 1: he grabs his essentials to go. He takes this leather
Speaker 1: satchel and he puts in one pair of boxer shorts
Speaker 1: and he's like, I'm on my way.
Speaker 2: I'm just wearing the clothes on my back now.
Speaker 1: And by the way, and speaking of the ring that
Speaker 1: she needs to have back because we need to get
Speaker 1: her downstairs and in front of the body and whatever.
Speaker 1: A minute ago, she threw the ring at him like
Speaker 1: it was nothing. It obviously, let's take the fucking thing,
Speaker 1: just get out of here. And suddenly it's important why
Speaker 1: I need that back now? Don't be clumsy at the
Speaker 1: end of an already trying episode. We're trying to work
Speaker 1: with you, dark side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this episode feels like it is working against the
Speaker 2: audience at every turn to just again be like, well,
Speaker 2: we set up these really terrible people, but we don't
Speaker 2: really care enough to have their story lay out in
Speaker 2: a satisfying way. They could have had them really get there,
Speaker 2: come up, and they don't. We saw a guy just
Speaker 2: be forced to live forever in this episode. Let's the
Speaker 2: why bother. Let's not be mean about it, right, right,
Speaker 2: Let's not be mean to these two people that just
Speaker 2: got a guy to kill himself because he was trying
Speaker 2: to be evicted from where he lives and couldn't find
Speaker 2: somewhere else to live. Like, yeah, they don't deserve it,
Speaker 2: we promise.
Speaker 1: So they ad all sees he breaks a vase that
Speaker 1: the husband then extorts half the price of the vase
Speaker 1: out of him, and then the wife says, no, that
Speaker 1: was my fault. I set that up, and she said,
Speaker 1: and then they believe there's a curse. So she's saying,
Speaker 1: you have to go give that money back, and he's saying, no,
Speaker 1: it's too embarrassing. Here's what I it's too embarrassing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't embarrassing to dock this man his minimum wage. You're
Speaker 1: forcing him to accept for backbreaking work. He says, nobody
Speaker 1: else will come do this work, while, by the way,
Speaker 1: they're hounding him to leave the house that he's lived
Speaker 1: in for decades. This sweet old man. Fuck these people
Speaker 1: in the ass. That was my final notation on these
Speaker 1: characters in this episode.
Speaker 2: Can I say, though, because we I alluded to the
Speaker 2: idea of oh, you know, like you said, Mike, like
Speaker 2: those people did he have to be black? Do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? Like, if you're gonna do this,
Speaker 2: and you're gonna do this, do it all the way,
Speaker 2: or don't do it at all, and don't cast African
Speaker 2: American actors and then just halfway do this shit because
Speaker 2: you're trafficking and trading and things that are real world things,
Speaker 2: and it feels a little weak in the knees to
Speaker 2: be like, well, we're going to cast an African American
Speaker 2: actor or two of them, two African American actors and
Speaker 2: then just and then this woman just has the ring
Speaker 2: gingerly taken off of her finger after she forces this
Speaker 2: guy to commit suicide.
Speaker 1: What the fuck Hodgepodge. Sure, but yeah, you know what,
Speaker 1: I honestly, if Adolf Caesar showed up in any episode
Speaker 1: like he showed up and said I'll take any episode,
Speaker 1: you would just put him in any episode like like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't need to be a black character. This should
Speaker 1: just be because this is a class thing going on here.
Speaker 1: This is right, This very well could have been any
Speaker 1: anywhere USA with these rich white assholes kicking out the locals.
Speaker 2: It just feels worse, is what I'm getting at it.
Speaker 2: It feels worse in the episode, feels worse because of
Speaker 2: it not taking the actual steps it needs to take
Speaker 2: to have a satisfying conclusion to these two fucking clowns
Speaker 2: of characters.
Speaker 1: Also, don't do voodoo on the stairs and closer.
Speaker 2: When you do voodoo, is it voodoo or obeya that's
Speaker 2: the real question, or Santoria.
Speaker 1: This is syndicated American television. It's voodoo.
Speaker 2: It's always voodoo.
Speaker 1: Baber saying, hid your voodoo? Or people will feel this
Speaker 1: will happen.
Speaker 2: Where's James remar At getting his head cut off? That's
Speaker 2: all I can think of, and will be Goldberg.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to do it. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: do a special series just on the horrible Betrayers of
Speaker 1: Voodoo and all the anthology series over the years, because
Speaker 1: it is, oh, it is rife with them, right with them?
Speaker 3: Well, you can even go back to Love and Let
Speaker 3: Die and then bull Tack episode we did forever. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: oh my god, Horror in the Heights or no, not
Speaker 3: Horror in the Heights. I can't remember that.
Speaker 2: The mobsters with the zombies.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah. And Antonio Fergus I think is in
Speaker 3: that one?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you're right.
Speaker 1: Wasn't that one written by David Chase?
Speaker 2: I think so?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, purveyor of Italian American.
Speaker 1: Stereotypes, undead and ghosts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I to your point, bone, this is a
Speaker 2: very much a Tales from the Crypt episode masquerading as
Speaker 2: the Tales from the dark Side episode, which means it's
Speaker 2: not going to have the emotional punch that it could
Speaker 2: theoretically have. Not saying Tales from the Crypt would have
Speaker 2: done it better, because categorically they never did.
Speaker 1: I disagree. If Tales from the Crypt had taken over
Speaker 1: for the last third of this episode, then it would have.
Speaker 1: I might be recommending this episode right now.
Speaker 2: If oh, I'm just worst idea that they never did
Speaker 2: the voodoo stuff right though. It's more what I'm getting at.
Speaker 1: But the practical effects that they would have reeked upon
Speaker 1: these two would have been fucking fantastic and so well deserved.
Speaker 2: That's true, But I was more speaking to the idea
Speaker 2: that you and I both know they never did a
Speaker 2: single voodoo episode right on that show, and they had
Speaker 2: seven seasons to do it. They fucked it up every
Speaker 2: single fucking time they were Clancy Brown's episode, James Remar's episode,
Speaker 2: there was an episode with a disembodied head at one point.
Speaker 2: Every time they just fucked it up so hard.
Speaker 1: Not as bad as this, but or is this as
Speaker 1: bad as that? I like this one more than those.
Speaker 2: Hey, this was you know what this had and those didn't.
Speaker 2: This is only twenty two minutes long.
Speaker 1: Hallelujah, Praise the Lord, Praise, Praise plays barn Somdy speaking
Speaker 1: a little bit let time now.
Speaker 2: Daming with faint praise, as they would say.
Speaker 1: On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we'll be taking
Speaker 1: a look at two more episodes from season two. These
Speaker 1: are actually two rather seminal episodes of the entire series.
Speaker 1: Those are Halloween Candy and the Satanic Piano Midnight Viewing.
Speaker 1: The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of a
Speaker 1: weirding Way media group. In their theme song was composed
Speaker 1: by HP Until next Time? What are you working on?
Speaker 1: Where can people find it? Christatue?
Speaker 2: Well, if you want to find myself and the stage
Speaker 2: name that I go by down at the local strip club,
Speaker 2: Satanic Candy, you can find all of that over at
Speaker 2: Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Yeah, everything I work on can be
Speaker 2: found there. What about you like?
Speaker 3: Quite well, it's weird. It's kind of a coincidence. Everything
Speaker 3: that I do can also be found at weirdwaymedia dot
Speaker 3: com except for the aforementioned James Bond podcast that we
Speaker 3: kind of alluded to there with a mention of Livin
Speaker 3: Let Die, and we'll have Father Malone on that episode
Speaker 3: talking about the black exploitation movie that was Livin Let Die.
Speaker 3: Over at rankin on Bond, which is available via both
Speaker 3: Chris and ice Patreon, You come on over, join at
Speaker 3: the ten dollars and above level and you get to
Speaker 3: hear us talk about James Bond and hear a little
Speaker 3: bit more Father Malone there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go seek that episode out. I had a really
Speaker 1: good time talking about that and Livin Let Die is great. Anyway,
Speaker 1: go check that out for them over there, and keep
Speaker 1: tuning in here to Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology Podcast
Speaker 1: or Midnight Viewing Anthologies Attack or mid Night Viewing Father
Speaker 1: Malone's weekly round Up. We got a bunch of shows
Speaker 1: and that are all available for you, but they're also
Speaker 1: available early and commercial free over at patreon dot com
Speaker 1: fatherm Alone. That's where you can find those. Until next time,
Speaker 1: try to enjoy the daylight.
Speaker 4: Midnight Viewing. The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member
Speaker 4: of Weirdingway Media. Our theme song was composed by HP
Speaker 4: with an assist from Donald Rubinstein and Erica Lindsay. If
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Speaker 1: Real but not as brightly lit.