Speaker 1: Weird.
Speaker 2: We welcome back midnight viewers to follow Malone's weekly round up.
Speaker 2: I am follow alone and joining me here and all
Speaker 2: the navel gazing festivities. Is the pug with the puss
Speaker 2: I love the most, Miss ripley Gen. What's going on,
Speaker 2: young lady. That's right, it's my birthday and you all
Speaker 2: have to celebrate. I command you. I don't need a
Speaker 2: military parade. I want a fifty nine Cadillac Eldorado with
Speaker 2: blacked out windows to cruise ominously past my bedroom window.
Speaker 2: Maybe one engine rev like midway past, so it doesn't
Speaker 2: seem accidental. That's what's up? What else is up? Downloads
Speaker 2: of this show? So thank you one and all. I'm
Speaker 2: still knocked out any of you are interested in this nonsense,
Speaker 2: but now we're stuck with each other, and there seem
Speaker 2: to be more and more of you. So welcome to
Speaker 2: all the new listeners. In Patreon news, there's Patreon news. Yes,
Speaker 2: we are giving away a free subscription to the Patreon channel.
Speaker 2: You have to go to my Instagram at Father Malone,
Speaker 2: find the post about the giveaway and like and comment.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to do both, but none of my followers
Speaker 2: can follow the rules, and I love that about you.
Speaker 2: If you're listening on the day of this episod so
Speaker 2: it's released, you still have time. You have like twenty
Speaker 2: four hours. Really, I'm picking a name at a random
Speaker 2: At midnight of April twenty second, Patreon subscribers get episodes
Speaker 2: early and commercial free. In fact, everyone gets the show
Speaker 2: commercial free. I don't know if you noticed that. Maybe
Speaker 2: I should just stop advertising the Patreon channel as commercial free.
Speaker 2: In fact, one of the necessities of the Patreon channel
Speaker 2: is that I don't have any ads. At least I
Speaker 2: don't place any ads or allow any on the show.
Speaker 2: I'm not being noble. If someone wants to specifically sponsor me,
Speaker 2: then you're gonna hear all about them. I just don't
Speaker 2: think you ought to hear online casino ads. Halfway through
Speaker 2: me ranting about swamp thing speaking of casinos and this show. Wow,
Speaker 2: that's a segue you don't get to use that often.
Speaker 2: This is way too far in advance for any merit
Speaker 2: in the knowing, but I feel like announcing it anyway.
Speaker 2: Midnight Viewing will be doing a live show this October
Speaker 2: the Fine Folks at Nightmare in Vegas Horror Convention and
Speaker 2: Car show extravaganza. We're nice enough to have me be
Speaker 2: part of their sinister celebration at the Silverton Hotel and
Speaker 2: Casino that just so happens to be my favorite casino
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas. Why one word mermaids. They have a
Speaker 2: tank with mermaids swimming in it. Why would you go
Speaker 2: anywhere else? And and they have my favorite bowling alley
Speaker 2: it's inside an airstream trailer inside the casino. Oh, the
Speaker 2: place is very heaven and now it's gonna get a
Speaker 2: whole lot of hell. We're gonna find out if Ripley
Speaker 2: here can handle large crowds with a flamethrower. That's not
Speaker 2: very helpful for growing a fan base. Go to a
Speaker 2: Nightmare in Vegas dot com for more information about the
Speaker 2: convention itself, and make plans to come and hang out
Speaker 2: October fourth and fifth. It's gonna be a fucking trip. Now,
Speaker 2: two more bits of business.
Speaker 3: From around.
Speaker 2: That's right, it's listener mail time. Dallas Norville wrote in
Speaker 2: to cast his vote on the upcoming Noise Junkies and
Speaker 2: Midnight Viewing musical crossover. That's one vote for American pop
Speaker 2: Ralph Boxshi's animated joney through American popular music. Will there
Speaker 2: be animated boobs? Of course their will. It's Ralph Bokshie.
Speaker 2: Will they be strangely unappealing? Of course they will. It's
Speaker 2: Ralph Boxy all right. Let me check the tote board.
Speaker 2: See where we're at. American pop takes a decisive lead
Speaker 2: with one vote. Hey, listen, listeners, you realize that if
Speaker 2: you and a friend right in, you can turn this
Speaker 2: whole process on its head instead of leaving me with
Speaker 2: fucking Bakshi. And it's not even wizards, with that fucking
Speaker 2: sexy fairy. Now her boobs were appealing. Meanwhile, over in Scotland,
Speaker 2: my future home, I don't know. I've been looking at
Speaker 2: Wales with a pretty keen eye lately. Check it. I
Speaker 2: can even mispronounce some words terribly. Ronda Cunnin toff eh.
Speaker 2: That's the valley made famous by Tom Jones. Another valley
Speaker 2: made famous by Tom Jones, the Las Vegas Valley. See
Speaker 2: I'm halfway to Welsh anyway. Ian bang our man in
Speaker 2: Scotland wrote in after the val Kilmer episode, and he
Speaker 2: invertently brought up two questions I have for all of you.
Speaker 2: Have you not seen real genius follow up? What the
Speaker 2: fuck is wrong with you? If you've seen anything by
Speaker 2: Zack Snyder more than once and real genius nuns, you
Speaker 2: need to rethink some aspects of your life. I'm not
Speaker 2: even doing a bit here. I'm genuinely disturbed. Ian wrote
Speaker 2: into weigh in on my obsession with Blackpool, urging me
Speaker 2: that off season is the right time for me. It
Speaker 2: being quote photogenic in a bleak, wind swept way. I
Speaker 2: love that. Bleak and wind swept were my nicknames in
Speaker 2: high school. I think that's all the mail, but we
Speaker 2: still have more bits of business. Have you been watching Daredevil?
Speaker 2: Why not? Over on Anthology's Attack, Antonio and I covered
Speaker 2: the first two episodes. Well, all nine of the first
Speaker 2: season are out and you have to see it. Superhero fatigue,
Speaker 2: Grow the fuck up. Marvel has lost the plot. Grow up,
Speaker 2: you whiny pricks. This is air Deevil, purely distilled. It
Speaker 2: works as a standalone all of the fault or all
Speaker 2: of the previous three seasons. The inessential bits those have
Speaker 2: become even more so, and the important plot in character
Speaker 2: bits are on display here and they do it in
Speaker 2: nine episodes, as opposed to that shaggy chambalic twelve or
Speaker 2: thirteen unfocused bullshit we were getting before I mentioning it
Speaker 2: here on the roundup, because if I got Antonio into
Speaker 2: the studio, we would never stop talking about this season.
Speaker 2: And now's your chance to catch it with minimal spoilers
Speaker 2: or hype, except this hype, and now I'm going to
Speaker 2: spoil the whole thing. No, I wouldn't. I will say, however,
Speaker 2: that if you're a fan of those books, they finally
Speaker 2: get it right here. Not that the series wasn't great previously.
Speaker 2: It had moments, but this is the big screen or
Speaker 2: small screen, does it matter? Version of what most fans
Speaker 2: were hoping for, including the peripheral characters, most specifically the
Speaker 2: return of Frank Castle John burnhal Is in the trailers,
Speaker 2: you know the punishers in this so it's not a spoiler,
Speaker 2: and for fuck's sake, I'm telling you they get everything
Speaker 2: right this season, including the queasy morality of associating with
Speaker 2: Marvel's most hated hero. But it also gives us the
Speaker 2: absolute fucking necessity of him when the greater evil is
Speaker 2: Wilson Fisk. Good God. Dinafrio mentioned in a recent interview
Speaker 2: that there still seems to be some sort of legal
Speaker 2: fiasco keeping Kingpin away from Spider Man as Marvel and
Speaker 2: Sony continue to wrangle. But that's fine. If all we
Speaker 2: ever get is street level Kingpin, this street level Kingpin,
Speaker 2: then all is fucking well. Having said that, I do
Speaker 2: want to see Wilson Fisk punch Peter Parker so hard
Speaker 2: he's ejected from a tall building. Now, ordinarily I like
Speaker 2: to cover the latest of the newest here on the roundup.
Speaker 2: That's the whole reason for this show, and that was
Speaker 2: certainly going to be the case this week. I even
Speaker 2: slept out to the cinema and watched the film. But
Speaker 2: we're not going to be discussing Sinners here. It's too
Speaker 2: fucking excellent for some ten minute mini review where I
Speaker 2: go pin bowling around every aspect of the eh I
Speaker 2: enjoyed while striving mightily not to spoil anything. I'm going
Speaker 2: to do a full episode on Sinners. It's the best
Speaker 2: movie so far this year, best horror movie in the years,
Speaker 2: might be the best action horror movie I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: That sounds like hyperbole, but that is the most outrageous
Speaker 2: claim ever made. That's a grammar joke, but not a joke, Sinners,
Speaker 2: but it is very, very funny. I'm bringing Sinners up
Speaker 2: because even though I'm not going to go in depth,
Speaker 2: I do want to encourage you and everyone you know
Speaker 2: to go see it in the theater. Sincerely. It's got
Speaker 2: an extra creep factor you're not going to get at home. Plus,
Speaker 2: let's support good movies. It's a prohibition set vampire movie. Okay.
Speaker 2: Ryan Coogler directed it. Michael B. Jordan is twins. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna shut up about it now. No, I won't remember
Speaker 2: in Back to the Future too, when Old Doc and
Speaker 2: Young Doc are interacting near the clock tower and he
Speaker 2: hands himself a wrench, it's from behind a light pole,
Speaker 2: and even with that, it's still super fucking awkward. In
Speaker 2: his introductory scene, Michael B. Jordan is leaning against a
Speaker 2: car beside Michael B. Jordan. One hands the other a
Speaker 2: cigarette and then he leans in and the other lights
Speaker 2: it for him, and the camera is moving and then
Speaker 2: he hands him back the fucking cigarette. And if I
Speaker 2: didn't know Michael B. Jordan was a singular human being,
Speaker 2: I would have just assumed it was twins. That's what
Speaker 2: visual effects are four. They should be totally fucking amazing
Speaker 2: and seamless so much so that you don't even know
Speaker 2: they're happening. They do it a lot in this movie.
Speaker 2: That's nothing. It's their introductory scene. Also, their characters are
Speaker 2: called the Smokestack Twins Smoke and Stack, kind of like
Speaker 2: Bleak and Windswept, but way fucking cooler. All right, that
Speaker 2: is enough. We're not gonna be talking about it because
Speaker 2: we have to talk about the fog. Why why are
Speaker 2: we talking about the fog?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: Well, I've teased it every couple of episodes since I
Speaker 2: started the roundup. That's a pretty good reason. Here's a
Speaker 2: better one. If you are listening to this episode on
Speaker 2: the day it was released, it is April the twenty first,
Speaker 2: or the twenty first of April. Now, if you know me,
Speaker 2: you know I love a good campfire tale, particularly if
Speaker 2: it's a ghost story. Old mister Macon Love's telling ghost
Speaker 2: stories down at the beach out by Spivey Point. Here's
Speaker 2: my favorite.
Speaker 5: Eleven fifty five, almost midnight. Enough time for one more story,
Speaker 5: one more story before.
Speaker 6: Twelve, just to keep us warm.
Speaker 5: In five minutes. It'll be the twenty first of April,
Speaker 5: one hundred years ago. On the twenty first of April,
Speaker 5: out the waters around Spivey Point, a small clipper ship
Speaker 5: drew toward land. Suddenly, out of the night, the fog
Speaker 5: rolled in. For a moment, they could see nothing, not
Speaker 5: a foot ahead of them, and then.
Speaker 7: They saw a light. My god, it was a fire
Speaker 7: burning on.
Speaker 5: The shore, strong enough to penetrate the swirling mist. They
Speaker 5: stared a course toward.
Speaker 8: The light, but it was a camp fire like this one.
Speaker 8: The ship crashed against the rocks, a howl sheared into
Speaker 8: the mars, snapped like a twig, and the wreckage sank
Speaker 8: them all.
Speaker 7: The men aboard.
Speaker 6: The bottom of the sea lay the Elizabeth Dane with
Speaker 6: her crew, their lungs filled with salt water, their eyes
Speaker 6: open and staring into the darkness and above. As suddenly
Speaker 6: as it had come, the fog lifted be seated back
Speaker 6: across the.
Speaker 7: Ocean and never came again.
Speaker 5: But it is told by the fishermen and their fathers
Speaker 5: and grandfathers that when the fog returns to Antonio Bay,
Speaker 5: the men at the bottom of the sea, out in
Speaker 5: the water.
Speaker 7: By Spivey Point, rise up and search for the.
Speaker 8: Campfire that led them.
Speaker 7: To their dark and icy death.
Speaker 5: Twelve o'clock the twenty first of April.
Speaker 2: That is theatrical legend, John Housman letting everyone know exactly
Speaker 2: how to captivate. Years ago, Tim Robbins made a film
Speaker 2: called cradlele Rock about Orson Wells put on, a banned
Speaker 2: theatrical production in the nineteen thirties. Carrie Elways plays John
Speaker 2: Housman in it, and he's fucking delightful. That is a
Speaker 2: really good movie overall. But back to Antonio Bay and
Speaker 2: The Fog, or more specifically John Carpenter's The Fog. I
Speaker 2: feel like The Fog is the Carpenter flick. Everyone seems
Speaker 2: to forget, not like they forget he made it. It's
Speaker 2: more like they forget it exists, if they've even seen
Speaker 2: it at all. Carpenter did have a fucking incredible run
Speaker 2: right out of the gate, talking Dark Star to Assault
Speaker 2: on Precinct thirteen to Halloween after The Fog. The Thing
Speaker 2: is clearly Carpenter's masterpiece, a perfect film, although I would
Speaker 2: argue the same about Escape from New York, his dystopian
Speaker 2: western that is also perfect, and he'd still yet to
Speaker 2: do Christine or They Live or Big Trouble in Little China.
Speaker 2: So I get it a quiet little ghost movie. Isn't
Speaker 2: as indelible as skinless Horror is reminding us that cash
Speaker 2: is our real god, or as quotable as some of
Speaker 2: Jack Burton's weird DJ routine Aboard the Pork Chop Express,
Speaker 2: Have you paid your DU's Jack, Yes, sir, the check
Speaker 2: is in the mail. Or even when he's out of
Speaker 2: the cab. Gee, sure's raining cats and dogs. Everybody relaxed.
Speaker 2: I'm here so many quotes? One more, what one will
Speaker 2: come out?
Speaker 3: No more?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm done, No way to go? One more? Phone company. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's more a visual gag. But remember when Jack and
Speaker 2: Wang che are sneaking into low pans and they announced
Speaker 2: it with the phone company, and in order to prove
Speaker 2: that they're legit, Jack is just like holding a phone,
Speaker 2: like a phone he uncabled from a wall and he's
Speaker 2: just toning it around. Oh my god. Having said that,
Speaker 2: with all of those terrific pictures, and I love them all,
Speaker 2: my favorite is the Fog. After the success of Halloween,
Speaker 2: Carpenter signed a two picture deal with Avco Embassy. That's
Speaker 2: the company with the most seventies production logo of all time.
Speaker 2: It's been parodied and remade countless times with good reason.
Speaker 2: It is fucking cool. The story was conceived by himself
Speaker 2: and co writer and producer Deborah Hill during a trip
Speaker 2: to the UK promoting Assault on Precinct thirteen. Evidently, there
Speaker 2: was a mighty mist around Stonehenge when they went to visit,
Speaker 2: and it was just too damned mystical to not inspire.
Speaker 2: The other factor they wove in was historical fact. You
Speaker 2: heard it in mister Macon's Tale of the Founding of
Speaker 2: Antonio Bay. There were similar tales of a method employed
Speaker 2: by pirates on the California coast Goletta, California, more specifically,
Speaker 2: where a bonfire would be built further south than an
Speaker 2: actual lighthouse and the ships guided there by the light
Speaker 2: would break up on the rocks and the pirates would
Speaker 2: descend and elute them. There were tails, but no actual
Speaker 2: evidence of it on the California coast. There is a
Speaker 2: famous case of the exact same method employed on the
Speaker 2: coast of Rhode Island. However, back in seventeen thirty eight.
Speaker 2: Mister Macon, by the way, named for Welsh horror author
Speaker 2: Arthur Macon, can't get away from Wales today, but other
Speaker 2: characters would include Tom Atkins as Nick Castle, Nick Castle
Speaker 2: is one of John Carpenter's USC buddies. He wrote Escape
Speaker 2: from New York with him. Then there's Charles Seipher's as
Speaker 2: local weatherman Dan O'Bannon. O'Bannon wrote and starred in Carpenter's
Speaker 2: first film, Dark Star, as well as writing Alien and
Speaker 2: directing Return of the Living Dead. Stevie Wayne's son is
Speaker 2: looked after by Nanny Missus. Koebrits. Richard Coebrits produced Carpenter's
Speaker 2: TV movie Someone's Watching Me. There's an exclamation at the
Speaker 2: end of that. You all know Carpenter did TV movies
Speaker 2: in the seventies, right, Someone's Watching Me, which starred Future Carpenter,
Speaker 2: Bride and Fog star Adrian Barbo, and the fucking awesome
Speaker 2: TV movie Elvis starring future Snake Plisken. Kurt Russell. George
Speaker 2: buck Flower appears here as Tommy Wallace. Tommy Wallace being
Speaker 2: one of Carpenter's oldest friends. He was Michael Myers in
Speaker 2: Halloween or The Shape. Is there anyone out there correcting
Speaker 2: people Frankenstein's style about Halloween? You know, the little Boy
Speaker 2: was named Michael Myers. The hulking monsters named the Shape.
Speaker 2: It says so when the credits Darwin Justin from Assault
Speaker 2: on Precinc thirteen shows up here as medical examiner doctor.
Speaker 2: I don't think I should have to explain that to you.
Speaker 2: And Hal Holbrook appears as father alone. Some will tell
Speaker 2: you his name is father Patrick Malone. Those people are
Speaker 2: fucking wrong. We'll get back to that magnificently named character
Speaker 2: in a bit, all right. If I had to guess,
Speaker 2: I don't, because I've done the exhaustive monomoniacal thing I
Speaker 2: do with everything I love, and obsess about it and
Speaker 2: research it and turn it over and over and over
Speaker 2: in my mind. But if I had to guess, here's
Speaker 2: what happened. Carpenter took a two picture deal, figuring I've
Speaker 2: got a killer with escape from New York. The second
Speaker 2: picture will come to me later. And then Navco said,
Speaker 2: new York is a prison and the President's plane has
Speaker 2: crashed into it. John, you know we're a small company.
Speaker 2: What else you got, uh, well, the fog? And then
Speaker 2: they were like sold and he was like, oh shit,
Speaker 2: I sold them a pitch for nothing. Thus the hastily
Speaker 2: named characters. Also the offhand way Carpenter has treated the
Speaker 2: fog ever since it was a modest hit, which might
Speaker 2: have been encouraged had he not just made the most
Speaker 2: successful independent film of all time with Halloween. Again, I
Speaker 2: wasn't there. I can't tell you who did what, but
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, after
Speaker 2: providing the location and the crime and the characters named
Speaker 2: after his buddies, Carpenter didn't have a whole lot to
Speaker 2: do with the actual writing of the rest of the movie.
Speaker 2: That would be Deborah Hill handling screenplay duties. And I
Speaker 2: fucking love this script, small scale and ultimately character driven. Also,
Speaker 2: fuck your Bechdel test. I mean, don't. I think it's
Speaker 2: a necessary tool that every screenwriter should be aware of.
Speaker 2: But the male cast of The Fog is nominal at best.
Speaker 2: This movie stars Adrian Barbo, Jamie Lee, Curtis, Nancy Loomis,
Speaker 2: and Janet Lee, with appearances by Tom Atkins, Halholbrook and
Speaker 2: Charles Ciphers, oh and John Carpenter. He's in the opening
Speaker 2: scene with hal Holbrook as Bennett. Will Bennett ever receive
Speaker 2: his salary? Here's a bit of weirdness. Carpenter is playing
Speaker 2: Bennett Tramer. Bennett Tramer is the boy. Laurie is freaking
Speaker 2: out that Nancy set her up within Halloween. Is it
Speaker 2: the same guy? Is this shared universe? Do I give
Speaker 2: a shit? Let's talk at Deborah Hill for a moment.
Speaker 2: She put that totally unnecessary Edgar Allan Poe quote at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the film. It's from Poe's a Dream
Speaker 2: with it a dream. The line in the film is
Speaker 2: all that we see or seem is but a dream
Speaker 2: within a dream, which is a meditation on the nature
Speaker 2: of reality, and really not about pirate ghosts and lighthouse
Speaker 2: radio stations. It's atmospheric. It's just nonsense here. That's my
Speaker 2: only gripe with the screenplay, because the rest manages to
Speaker 2: juggle a dozen characters and plots and events all during
Speaker 2: the course of one day, the centennial celebration of Antonio Bay,
Speaker 2: and it does so with escalating dread. It's a gentle movie,
Speaker 2: or at least it was. And we'll get back to
Speaker 2: that just a few more words on. Deborah Hill co
Speaker 2: wrote Halloween the Fog, Halloween two, produced Escape from New
Speaker 2: York and the Dead Zone and Adventures in Babysitting, and
Speaker 2: if not Terry Gilliams's best film, at least his most accessible.
Speaker 2: The Fisher King. She produced an entire array of Roger
Speaker 2: Corman remakes on Showtime called Rebel Highway flicks like Dragstrip
Speaker 2: Girl and The Cool and the Crazy. She passed away
Speaker 2: in two thousand and five, so you know, fuck everything.
Speaker 2: Antonio Bay is one hundred years old because one hundred
Speaker 2: years ago, the town's founding fathers made a deal with
Speaker 2: a leper colony to allow them to settle on land
Speaker 2: close to Antonio Bay. Instead, during an ungodly fog, they
Speaker 2: built a false fire, guiding the leper's ship of the
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Dane into the rocks where they stole their gold.
Speaker 2: It's that gold they used to found the entire town.
Speaker 2: And now one hundred years later, those lepers, led by
Speaker 2: Captain Blake, are back and they want blood or gold,
Speaker 2: or maybe both, or maybe just the gold. The rules
Speaker 2: aren't clear, but who needs rules when you have a
Speaker 2: dual masted pirate ship looming out of the fog and
Speaker 2: ghostly shapes with cutlasses and worse in their rotting hands,
Speaker 2: and between midnight and one they'll do their worst on
Speaker 2: anyone unlucky enough to open the door. These are incredibly polite,
Speaker 2: murderous pirate gohot hoo. I'm calling them pirates. I know
Speaker 2: they're not. I'm using shorthand.
Speaker 1: Y'all.
Speaker 2: To call this movie formative for me is ridiculous. It
Speaker 2: started a lifelong obsession with the lighthouses and radio stations
Speaker 2: and angry ghosts and hapless priests. Adrian Barbo stars as
Speaker 2: Stevie Wayne. Is there anything cooler than a lady named Stevie?
Speaker 2: She owns the local lighthouse and has turned it into
Speaker 2: kate ABE, the local radio station for light jazz and
Speaker 2: maritime reports. She's a recent transplant to Antonio Bay, having
Speaker 2: come from a successful career in Chicago, but after the
Speaker 2: death of her husband, she and her son have set
Speaker 2: up digs here on the California coast. All of that
Speaker 2: backstory is never spoken. It's all told through photographs and
Speaker 2: documents all around Stevie Wayne's house. That house, by the way,
Speaker 2: continues the trend of all the coolest shit being in
Speaker 2: this film. Lighthouse radio station, check stilt house that sits
Speaker 2: on the water over that aforementioned Antonio Bay, and check
Speaker 2: sleepy beach resort town that seems to eskew tourism. Check
Speaker 2: if Antonio Bay weren't fictional you can rest assured there'd
Speaker 2: be no Scotland, or whales or even Las Vegas for me.
Speaker 2: I want to go there, and I've tried, believe me.
Speaker 2: I've been to Point Raeis, where the lighthouse they used
Speaker 2: for filming is located. I've stumbled around Inverness, which doubled
Speaker 2: for Main Street. I've also walked the wooden pier of
Speaker 2: Boadega Bay, where the seagrass and the other fishing boats
Speaker 2: launch out of Bodega Bay. Incidentally is also where they
Speaker 2: shot the birds, so going there is exponentially surreal. Hell,
Speaker 2: I've been to Father Malone's church. It's in Pasadena, nowhere
Speaker 2: near the other locations. I love movie making. You forget
Speaker 2: sometimes the simple magic of two images shot at different
Speaker 2: times in locations, cut together into a seamless hole. Oh
Speaker 2: and they went through some cutting. I told you, we
Speaker 2: get back to it, which might be another reason that
Speaker 2: John Carpenter doesn't rate this flick as high as as others.
Speaker 2: I mentioned. The film is a gentle ghost story, and
Speaker 2: it is especially forty five fucking years later. These days,
Speaker 2: the Exorcist seems pretty tame, but apparently the scares were
Speaker 2: so gentle on the fog that reshoots were out absolutely necessary,
Speaker 2: according to the studio, So back they went to film.
Speaker 2: Well a bunch of gore. Really. Carpenter jumps up and
Speaker 2: down about the differences between the versions, But as far
Speaker 2: as I've seen, nothing got added that made anything scarier. Instead,
Speaker 2: you just got more loving close ups of maggot writhing
Speaker 2: flesh and the very definite eye gougings and corpse puppeteering
Speaker 2: that the first cut lacked. They probably should have included
Speaker 2: those from Jump. But lest we forget, there was a
Speaker 2: time when Carpenter wasn't exactly thrilled to be even doing Halloween.
Speaker 2: He thought he was slumming with that picture. And when
Speaker 2: you think about it, after the thing, how many straight
Speaker 2: up horrors does he make? A side of the mind
Speaker 2: numbing terror of memoirs of an invisible man? Of course,
Speaker 2: John Carpenter is a frustrated Western filmmaker. It's a drag.
Speaker 2: No one ever let him do one straight up. It
Speaker 2: wouldn't even have to be straight up. Make it demonic,
Speaker 2: But give John Carpenter one last shot at redemption. Don't
Speaker 2: let him end on the ward. Don't let that recent
Speaker 2: Walk of Fame star be the last we hear of him,
Speaker 2: you know, other than telling his own fans to fuck off.
Speaker 2: Do you know how certain I am that most people
Speaker 2: have seen the fog, because every once in a while,
Speaker 2: someone who's known me for years as Father Malone will
Speaker 2: suddenly say, hell, Holbrook, the fog, I just saw it,
Speaker 2: which is invariably followed by so why Father Malone? Now,
Speaker 2: aside of the magnificent mane of silvery hair that watches
Speaker 2: down over an equally tinged and equally bushy mustache being
Speaker 2: reason enough, Father Malone is simultaneously the least and most
Speaker 2: important character in the film. It's through him we discover
Speaker 2: what the fuck is even happening. If he wasn't part
Speaker 2: of the narrative, this would be a movie about the
Speaker 2: fog rolling in on two consecutive nights and ghostly figures
Speaker 2: murdering six people the end. Instead, it's Father Malone's relatives journal,
Speaker 2: Father Patrick Malone's journal. Thus why people think Father Malone
Speaker 2: is named Patrick that provides the tragic history of the
Speaker 2: town and warns of the possibilities of Blake's revenge, And
Speaker 2: in the end, it's Father Malone that restores the stolen
Speaker 2: gold and prevents further bloodshed, spoilers everybody. So all those
Speaker 2: reasons are perfect to take on his name. But here's another.
Speaker 2: If you're listening to the day of release, then this
Speaker 2: is April the twenty first, the day Antonio Bay turned
Speaker 2: one hundred and On that night, at midnight, Blake and
Speaker 2: his crew returned and killed a whole bunch of people
Speaker 2: and tried to kill a whole bunch more. Blake and
Speaker 2: his crew returned at midnight, making it April twenty second.
Speaker 2: That's my birthday. Father Malone saves Antonio Bay on April
Speaker 2: the twenty second.
Speaker 9: Hit it HP Kail Ripley has decided to give you
Speaker 9: a double feature recommendation, a pairing if you will, another
Speaker 9: formative cinematic minor miracle with hints of the fog notes
Speaker 9: of it, mainly the ones consisting of characters talking into
Speaker 9: microphones and having.
Speaker 2: Their thoughts blasted out into the brains of listeners everywhere.
Speaker 2: It has one of the worst titles of all time,
Speaker 2: Pump up the volume.
Speaker 5: By that loaded.
Speaker 3: Everybody rolls with fingers cross.
Speaker 1: You take a pod. Everything's loaded. The environment, the government,
Speaker 1: the schools.
Speaker 5: You name it.
Speaker 1: Good guys, We're on the ninety two FM and it
Speaker 1: feels like a nice clean little man owe else using it.
Speaker 1: The price is.
Speaker 4: Right listening to this, of course I'm listening. There's nothing
Speaker 4: to do anymore, and all the great themes have been
Speaker 4: used up, turned into theme parks, so I don't really
Speaker 4: find it exactly cheerful to be living in a totally
Speaker 4: like exhausted decade where there's nothing to look forward to
Speaker 4: and no one to look up to.
Speaker 5: He's got a pirate radio station. Nobody knows who is.
Speaker 4: I could be that anonymous nerd sitting across from you.
Speaker 1: And when you turn around, he just looks away.
Speaker 4: He never looks back at you again.
Speaker 1: This is a song from the nineties, Welcome to Dorenas
Speaker 1: that you may take you please?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I want.
Speaker 1: I was deep.
Speaker 4: I like the idea that a voice can just go
Speaker 4: somewhere uninvited, like a dirty thought, a nice clean mind.
Speaker 3: I know you, not your name, but your game. Come
Speaker 3: to me.
Speaker 2: We're all come to you.
Speaker 8: So you are he.
Speaker 1: Who hits me again with the lead to fraw you
Speaker 1: out here in white bread Land it's ten o'clock. Do
Speaker 1: you care where your parents are?
Speaker 10: This radio person is the whole problem. Are we going
Speaker 10: to allow this guy? To be heard by anyone who
Speaker 10: can turn a die of ChIL trying to tell you
Speaker 10: that there's something wrong with the school, so why not
Speaker 10: do something crazy? But I have a lot more sense
Speaker 10: than blowing your friends off sec You know what that
Speaker 10: means that all.
Speaker 5: This is Martin right screwing around with you.
Speaker 2: You know, not anymore? It isn't.
Speaker 9: This is everyone's like Mark, you can't leave it like this.
Speaker 6: You're out there, boy.
Speaker 2: No one knew the internet was coming around this time.
Speaker 2: Apparently we all thought radio was going to save us.
Speaker 2: At the close of the eighties, there seemed to be
Speaker 2: an entire subgenre of radio feature films, all trumpeting the
Speaker 2: importance of voices and music traveling through the air and
Speaker 2: into your ears. Good Morning Vietnam, straight talk talk radio,
Speaker 2: airheads Hell Texas, Chainsaw m Sacre two's lead stretch is
Speaker 2: an Oklahoma DJ whose radio station is what gets that
Speaker 2: party started and sitting outside. The radio conversation in general
Speaker 2: was pump up the volume, which wasn't about a loose
Speaker 2: canon DJ shaking up the uptight military, or any number
Speaker 2: of talk radio hosts preaching either mental health or armageddon.
Speaker 2: Pump up the volumes. Mark Hunter uses radio as a lifeline.
Speaker 2: The film's plot will veer into exposure of corruption and
Speaker 2: the divide between boomer parents and gen X kids eventually,
Speaker 2: but at its heart it's way purer than any of
Speaker 2: those other films, because while radio was, and I suppose
Speaker 2: now on the Internet is an important tool for justice
Speaker 2: and exposing the venal truths in this world, it mainly
Speaker 2: functioned in the day to day lives of day to
Speaker 2: day folk as a lifeline, keeping you connected to the
Speaker 2: greater world of culture, transporting you to other climates and
Speaker 2: points of view, musical and otherwise, and overall providing a
Speaker 2: connection to others that had the same weirdo tastes and
Speaker 2: views as you. It's not impossible to avoid those with
Speaker 2: similar interests of these days. But remember it wasn't all
Speaker 2: that long ago that if you found yourself obsessed with
Speaker 2: anything that wasn't syndicated on TV or screaming from the
Speaker 2: top forty, you felt pretty lonely about it. A good
Speaker 2: DJ could dispel that isolation, draw you in with sounds
Speaker 2: you'd never heard and thoughts you'd never thought, And not
Speaker 2: just them, you'd hear other listeners call in or write in,
Speaker 2: and suddenly you're a community, you get that and pump
Speaker 2: up the volume, but it also gives us the DJ
Speaker 2: as just as desperate as anyone he's connecting to. I
Speaker 2: love that about this movie. Mark is basically using his
Speaker 2: ham radio to illegally take over stations that aren't in use.
Speaker 2: Like Stevie Wayne in The Fog. He's a recent transplant,
Speaker 2: though He's from New York and found himself in one
Speaker 2: of those prefabricated Southwest communities that never seem finished and
Speaker 2: have all the subtle and welcoming ambiance of an off
Speaker 2: world colony. Mark is basically a total introvert anyway, but
Speaker 2: now that he's alone in this new environment, getting on
Speaker 2: the air is the only time he has to be himself. Boy,
Speaker 2: this is starting to strike way too close to home.
Speaker 2: Kristen Slater is the star here, part of his rise
Speaker 2: to public consciousness with Heathers and Young Guns too, and
Speaker 2: this though really this is like his fourteenth movie. By
Speaker 2: the time he got to volume pumping, he'd already gleamed
Speaker 2: the Cube. And if you listen to the Tales from
Speaker 2: the Dark Side segment of this show, you'll know he
Speaker 2: popped up on the first season of that show. In
Speaker 2: a case of the Stubborns, and he was like twelve.
Speaker 2: If you've seen this movie, tell me if you think
Speaker 2: he's still doing a Jack Nicholson impression. I know he
Speaker 2: got accused of that a lot after Heathers, but I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure it was a conscious choice in that film.
Speaker 2: I think he just kind of drawls when he talks.
Speaker 2: I don't know, you tell me. The other lead is
Speaker 2: Samantha Mathis. I'd say she's the prototypical pixie dream girl,
Speaker 2: but she'd kicked that girl's ass. Whimsical she is not.
Speaker 2: In fact, she isn't there to give Mark purpose at all.
Speaker 2: He's there to help her with hers, namely that fucking
Speaker 2: plot about the school corruption. It doesn't matter because Ellen
Speaker 2: Green is in this. Oh Ellen Green Audrey from Little
Speaker 2: Shop of Horrors, those pipes that voice such weird, sexy energy,
Speaker 2: and this is one of two radio movies she starred in.
Speaker 2: She's also on talk radio playing Eric Bogosian's ex wife.
Speaker 2: She's awesome there, She's awesome here. Watch her reaction to
Speaker 2: the cock ring. If you haven't seen the movie, I
Speaker 2: bet you're intrigued.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 2: Tiny Seth Green is in this, Tiny, I'm at Zappa
Speaker 2: is in this and as the villain Miss Annie Ross.
Speaker 2: You don't know Annie, but you fucking should. She was
Speaker 2: part of the jazz trio Lambert Hendrix and Ross. Speaking
Speaker 2: of radio trouble, she had a song banned by the
Speaker 2: BBC in the fifties for the lyric come upstairs and
Speaker 2: have some Lovin' Ooh, sultry. Actually sultry is a very
Speaker 2: good description of her voice. She had her own jazz
Speaker 2: club in London during the swinging sixties, and check it.
Speaker 2: She's britt Ekland's voice in the Wickerman She's fucking great
Speaker 2: here she's Oh She's so evil? Are you just want?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: You far?
Speaker 2: Anyway? Annie Ross huge fucking talent. Speaking of talent, I
Speaker 2: don't know who the music supervisor was for Pump Up
Speaker 2: the Volume. Yes I do, it's Cliff martine Is. He
Speaker 2: provided a cross section of then current underground bangers, as
Speaker 2: well as some Leonard Cohen chosen by director Alan Moyle.
Speaker 2: It's funny because I can barely remember any of those
Speaker 2: hip alternative chart darling songs, but I know every one
Speaker 2: of the songs off of I'm Your Man thanks to
Speaker 2: this film introducing me to Leonard Cohen. That man preached
Speaker 2: a lonely kind of love. Actually, I met him one
Speaker 2: time in Caesar's Palace. I was running through the casino
Speaker 2: and he was just sitting on a bench by himself.
Speaker 2: I startled to a stop and like kind of freaked
Speaker 2: him out for a second. But then he got right
Speaker 2: up on his feet and he gently took my hand
Speaker 2: in his, and then I embarrassed myself with all the
Speaker 2: love I had for him. He was a very nice
Speaker 2: a doll. Anyway, soundtrack Richard Hell is on This Iced
Speaker 2: Tea is on This Bad Brains Sonic Youth, an unreleased
Speaker 2: track from the Beastie Boys sound garden, was not was
Speaker 2: Hey wait a minute, I take that, Leonard Cohen talk back.
Speaker 2: I remember most of these fucking songs. This is a
Speaker 2: great fucking soundtrack. Listen the movie itself if you haven't
Speaker 2: seen it, it's mainly after school special, but its heart
Speaker 2: is more than in the right place, and the performances
Speaker 2: are great, and the music and the spirit, and it
Speaker 2: has one of the most deliriously romantic scenes I've ever seen,
Speaker 2: with characters laying themselves bare to one another quite literally.
Speaker 2: In fact, I'm gonna leave you with the bit that
Speaker 2: takes place after that scene before that. Father Malone seven
Speaker 2: to one at gmail dot com or at father Malone
Speaker 2: on the socials. If you want to drop me a
Speaker 2: line and say happy Birthday, I certainly would appreciate it.
Speaker 2: For the lovely miss Ripley Gene, I'm Father Malone. Thank
Speaker 2: you for joining us. This Friday, We've got another couple
Speaker 2: of tales from the Dark Sides. Those are Milkman Cometh
Speaker 2: and my ghostwriter The Vampire. Over on the rest of
Speaker 2: the channel HP from Night Mister Walters and I are
Speaker 2: engaged in Fusco Fest. We're going through the filmography of
Speaker 2: screenwriter John Fusco. We've already got episodes up about Crossroads
Speaker 2: and Young Guns and Young Guns too. You can get
Speaker 2: those right now. Next Friday, not this Friday, but the
Speaker 2: next Friday. We'll be taking a look at Thunderheart. That's
Speaker 2: what Val Kilmer and I fucking love that movie. Way
Speaker 2: to Bury the lead. Check all of that out. We'll
Speaker 2: see you here again next week. Take it away, Happy
Speaker 2: Harry hard.
Speaker 6: On time Flies when you're on the rock.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna cut out now with this unusual song I'm
Speaker 4: dedicating to an unusual person.
Speaker 1: Makes me feel kind of.
Speaker 5: Unusual.
Speaker 8: MM.
Speaker 3: So many people get by loo getting so happy with
Speaker 3: a lot of news. I just wanna be with you
Speaker 3: when I give him full of kids where I got you.
Speaker 3: Why can't I f