Speaker 1: Way wait.
Speaker 2: Ala, Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology podcast,
Speaker 2: where we are taking a look at George A.
Speaker 1: Romero's nineteen eighties television series Tanels from the Dark Side.
Speaker 1: I'm Father Malone and sharing the Midnight view with me
Speaker 1: is the Projection Boost. Mike White, Goodbye, geesen Stacks Family, Goodbye,
Speaker 1: it's a runner. Unfortunately, Chris Stashue is unavailable this evening.
Speaker 1: It's just Mike and I tonight, so we're going to
Speaker 1: be taking a look at two episodes from season three.
Speaker 1: Those are The gezen Stacks and Black Widows. The gezen
Speaker 1: Stacks season three episode number five, originally aired on October
Speaker 1: the twenty sixth, nineteen eighty six. This was written by
Speaker 1: Nancy Doin, based on a short story by Frederick Brown,
Speaker 1: and directed by Bill Travis. Starring Craig Wasson was Wasssan Wasson,
Speaker 1: what is it, Mike, You've just wasted fucker in the past,
Speaker 1: right I haven't.
Speaker 3: I've tried to but never got a hold for the
Speaker 3: Bobby double episode, and then I read some stories about
Speaker 3: him being a sex best so I didn't really go
Speaker 3: after it that heart oh No.
Speaker 1: Also starring Dandy crowning Larry Pine and Lana Hersh. This
Speaker 1: tells the town uncle Richard giving young Audrey a dollhouse
Speaker 1: he found in an abandoned property, always a good idea.
Speaker 1: What Audrey discovers about the doll family seems to be
Speaker 1: happening to her own. What'd you think about this one, Mike?
Speaker 3: I really enjoyed this. First off. I love that their
Speaker 3: last name is Hummel, which is nice because my mom
Speaker 3: used to collect tumbles, So those little stupid things are
Speaker 3: not quite precious moments. They seem to be a little
Speaker 3: less cloying than precious moments figures. But it was a
Speaker 3: nice foreshadowing. I actually did my homework on this one,
Speaker 3: and I read the Frederick Brown story and enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: It's very different insofar as the uncle has no idea
Speaker 3: where these dolls came from, and I want to say
Speaker 3: it ends a little bit differently, so the way that
Speaker 3: they set up the whole idea of the doll house
Speaker 3: and her hearing the voices and then them eventually spoilers
Speaker 3: becoming the dolls. And then there's like this like the
Speaker 3: Russian doll, the Russian nesting doll type of thing where
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, and now here's a smaller version of
Speaker 3: the house, and I'm like, wow, what this has this
Speaker 3: been going on for? I would like to know. It
Speaker 3: just seems like twice now, but I would almost like
Speaker 3: if there was another little house inside of the littler.
Speaker 1: House type of thing. But this was good.
Speaker 3: I wasson is a little much here. But I enjoyed
Speaker 3: pretty much everything about it. I really especially like Larry
Speaker 3: Pine does Uncle Richard quite a bit. Would you think
Speaker 3: botherom alone?
Speaker 1: I again are echoing you. I really enjoyed this one
Speaker 1: a lot. This is a fan favorite the Geese and Stacks,
Speaker 1: and you can see why. It is weird enough and
Speaker 1: wild enough and very very dark side where this dollhouse
Speaker 1: just falls into their lives. There's no rhyme or reason
Speaker 1: to it. There's no punishment going on here. It's not
Speaker 1: a morality play. I love when it's this kind of weirdness.
Speaker 1: Larry Pine is a Wes Anderson guy ever since the
Speaker 1: Royal Tenenbaumbs. He's in every single one of his He's
Speaker 1: a Woody Allen guy as well. Tandy Cronin playing the
Speaker 1: mom Let's guess who her parents are?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I had no idea that they had
Speaker 3: a child named Tandy from me, that's absolutely bizarre. I
Speaker 3: mean it's like naming Isabella Rossolini as Ingrid Rossollini.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Jessica Tandy. And here and croninstad are Sandy
Speaker 1: Cronin who. I don't know that her name is Tandy.
Speaker 1: I think it's like a Reese Witherspoon. She took her
Speaker 1: mom's maiden name, like as her first to honor her
Speaker 1: or something. But yeah, she's fine here. Craig Wasson, Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is about that man. Now,
Speaker 1: hearing he's a sex pest makes sense because there's just
Speaker 1: something off about him, right, Like even in Body Double
Speaker 1: and I love Body Duble.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that I think one of my favorite to
Speaker 3: Paul Musk go absolutely that is pure to Palma and
Speaker 3: he's a proxy for us.
Speaker 1: But he's also off putting at the same time, like
Speaker 1: you can't really get behind him. And that's the same
Speaker 1: thing here, like he's just as ineffectual. He just gives
Speaker 1: off ineffectual. Is that it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well then he I don't know if he can
Speaker 3: hear the dolls too or not. There's a moment well,
Speaker 3: there's a couple of moments in here. There's one where
Speaker 3: she's talking about somebody who's been bad and they're gonna
Speaker 3: get a spanking and all this, I'm like, I didn't
Speaker 3: see any spanking in this episode. I was very disappointed
Speaker 3: by that. And then there's talk about mister Geesenstack hitting
Speaker 3: missus Geese and Stack, and when Washington pulls back his fist,
Speaker 3: I'm like, what, you've bunch your wife effect, But then
Speaker 3: he stops themselves, so I'm like, okay, do the Geese
Speaker 3: and Stacks have absolute power over them or what's going on?
Speaker 3: And then there's also this whole thing of the time
Speaker 3: delay too, which I thought that there was going to
Speaker 3: be like a little bit of time between when Audrey
Speaker 3: says that the Geese and Sacks are saying something or
Speaker 3: doing something, but then when they come to the mom's coat,
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, Mom's got a new coat. Oh and
Speaker 3: it doesn't have pretty velvet and shiny buttons, and boom
Speaker 3: she walks through the door. I was like, oh, there's
Speaker 3: no time delay in this thing at all. Okay, But yeah,
Speaker 3: I didn't really get the rules or anything, but I
Speaker 3: was okay with that. But as far as the rules go,
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure what Wasson was experiencing. I didn't know
Speaker 3: if he was hearing them, or if he was just
Speaker 3: freaking out, or if he's like just listening to Audrey
Speaker 3: and like waiting for her to like translate what the
Speaker 3: Geese and Sacks were saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it was. I think it was just
Speaker 1: a matter of him hearing her and then seeing the
Speaker 1: results immediately, just like the audience. But here's the only
Speaker 1: here's my only problem with the episode, because even though
Speaker 1: there are multiple problems, if you want to focus on them,
Speaker 1: that I don't care about because it's just it's like
Speaker 1: an argento thing. It's just like a mood piece. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: this thing is. But what drove me crazy is the
Speaker 1: little girl asking the question. It was so grating. I
Speaker 1: wish he was just talking from one doll to the other.
Speaker 1: I know this is a quibble, but for some reason,
Speaker 1: this is what drove me over the edge for the episode.
Speaker 1: Don't do that for dialogue just Oh, so is mommy
Speaker 1: coming home with a brand new code? Oh? Does the
Speaker 1: code have nice? But does the bluh. Craig Watson has
Speaker 1: a has the right to be worried because his daughter
Speaker 1: is a freakazoi age. He's just interrogating these dolls. And
Speaker 1: by the way, the humble joke, I love the humble
Speaker 1: joke too. Yeah, I've got a mammy collected hummels and
Speaker 1: yadro seeing those like elongated humbles.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, that sounds like nightmare field. I didn't realize
Speaker 3: that Giza stack means doll or strange doll. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure if that's German or were they comes from gott
Speaker 3: to be German. That feels like it, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The effect at the end where a house within a
Speaker 1: house within a house, image within an image within an
Speaker 1: image evidently called the Drost effect. Was unaware of that
Speaker 1: named for an advertisement in the Netherlands which featured a
Speaker 1: woman on a box holding a box with a woman
Speaker 1: on a box, and on and on and on and
Speaker 1: do invent me so like the Land of Lakes kind
Speaker 1: of effect? They anyway? And I was curious too, are
Speaker 1: the geese and snacks predicting the future or are they
Speaker 1: forcing it? Because like you said, maybe they're just seeing
Speaker 1: what's happening and relating that to the girl. But then
Speaker 1: there is no other reason that he would almost punch
Speaker 1: her in the face. That was way too much.
Speaker 3: And then also going back to my other question about
Speaker 3: can wass and hear them, it feels like the uncle
Speaker 3: can hear them when he comes into the house and
Speaker 3: their miniature and screaming and stuff, so I'm like, I can't.
Speaker 3: But then he gets strung into a doll as well,
Speaker 3: I think, I fay, yeah, but it is weird that
Speaker 3: I have no problems with these like quote unquote lapses
Speaker 3: of logic because I'm just like, that's a very effective story.
Speaker 3: People become the dolls. But yeah, I'm like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: can they predict this because I'm thinking that they're another
Speaker 3: family from somewhere, But then she names them themes the
Speaker 3: little girl Audrey, and then names the uncle uncle Richard,
Speaker 3: so I'm like, okay, so it's almost like they're them
Speaker 3: in the future, but they are definitely different dolls. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that makes any sense.
Speaker 1: Oh no, totally. And now I wonder whatever the next
Speaker 1: family that ends up inheriting the house, she'll get that
Speaker 1: same number of dolls and they'll be the Geese and Stacks,
Speaker 1: but she'll now rename them for her family, So every
Speaker 1: family becomes the Geese and Stacks in this aurable of
Speaker 1: a nightmare miniature house. And they did something similar to
Speaker 1: this on the Creep Show reboot. Well, one of the
Speaker 1: very first episodes about a miniature head. I just kept
Speaker 1: showing it's it's really good. It's like this, and you're
Speaker 1: just like, what is going on here for the entire
Speaker 1: episode and then it ends and you're like, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I I don't know if that made sense,
Speaker 1: but I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm trying to think because I know I've
Speaker 3: read other Frederick Brown's stuff, but I cannot tell you like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's the guy that wrote this, Like looking at his
Speaker 3: filmography Martian Goat, Martians Go Home, I don't know if
Speaker 3: you remember that.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, that was one of his stories.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, yeah, great theme song with the Martians go Home.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Marcians ticking over the World.
Speaker 1: Isn't that Randy Quaid in that? It was? Yes, I
Speaker 1: saw that in the theater Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: All right, the next Oh that's right, I'm sorry. He
Speaker 3: wrote to the Screaming mini So the movie that eventually
Speaker 3: became or with a book that also inspired The Bird
Speaker 3: with Crystal Plumage.
Speaker 1: Oh, my god, speaking of our argenta. There you go.
Speaker 1: He's apparently a surrealist of some sort. Did they didn't
Speaker 1: give you any explanation in the short story? Did they?
Speaker 3: No? Not really, And if anything, the short story, I
Speaker 3: was just like, wait, what just happened?
Speaker 1: That was done with it? I'm start confusing the last
Speaker 1: few paragraphs.
Speaker 3: Just call apart. I was like, Okay, I think the
Speaker 3: actual Tales from the Dark Side a little bit better.
Speaker 3: So one of the few times I can say the
Speaker 3: adaptation was better than the original.
Speaker 1: Story, particular with an anthology series. My god. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: Our next episode is Black Widows. This is season three,
Speaker 1: episode number six, aired originally on November the second, nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six, written by Michael McDowell, directed by Carl Epstein,
Speaker 1: and starring Margaret O'Brien, Teresa Saldana, Paul Iding and A
Speaker 1: Joe On Hold on, Joe on, Joe Doanzerio. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do it, Joe Dongerio. All right, this is in this story.
Speaker 1: Spy are prized in this particular trailer home with good reason.
Speaker 1: Mildred and her daughter Audrey. That's too, Audrey's in a
Speaker 1: row might might be able to relate to those spiders
Speaker 1: a little too well, which you think, Mike.
Speaker 3: Again, I was very surprisingly tickled by this episode, and
Speaker 3: I knew it was going pretty early on. Didn't really
Speaker 3: buy Teresa Saldona being all being young enough to be
Speaker 3: Margaret O'Brien's daughter or vice versa. Whoever was the daughter was,
Speaker 3: whoever the mother was, was too young to have the
Speaker 3: daughter the age that she had.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, I thought that she.
Speaker 3: Should have been more like an old lady who was
Speaker 3: complaining of the aches and pains, unless she doesn't go
Speaker 3: out in those kind of things.
Speaker 1: Because as it was.
Speaker 3: The mom, I was like, she seems pretty spry, she's
Speaker 3: pretty young. Wasn't she out party and doing something else?
Speaker 3: But instead she just sits there in her web and
Speaker 3: waits for people to come in so she can take
Speaker 3: care of them, especially if they happen to kill one
Speaker 3: of them. Those little baby spiders around.
Speaker 1: Don't touch the spiders in this trailer. We need a
Speaker 1: double wide and if you kill that spider, we're not
Speaker 1: gonna get it. Michael McDowell, how much I love you,
Speaker 1: but stop writing white trash dialogue just because they're in
Speaker 1: a trailer. Not everyone has to be called mama, true,
Speaker 1: Oh mama. It felt it's felt so carry like in
Speaker 1: the dialogue, and michaelmc is usually pretty good with dialogues.
Speaker 1: Margaret O'Brien is in Meet Me in Saint Louis.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: Wow, So I guess she is pretty old. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: seventeen years older. Okay, I'm looking at the trivia too, Yeah.
Speaker 1: But that's negligible. And Teresa Aldona looks older than she is.
Speaker 1: Margaret O'Brien looks younger than she is, so yeah, they
Speaker 1: kind of look like, maybe not necessarily sisters, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't feel like maybe older friend or something, but definitely
Speaker 1: not mom and daughter here. Yeah, I don't I This
Speaker 1: is an episode I've seen and have confused with probably
Speaker 1: a dozen other anthology horror stories. Every Spider story in
Speaker 1: every anthology has mixed up in my head, including one
Speaker 1: in Monsters, which the eventual sequel series to Tales from
Speaker 1: the Dark Side. They have a pretty good one, and
Speaker 1: that one is the one I was remembering over this
Speaker 1: one somehow, But it turns out I like this one better,
Speaker 1: even though that web is so fucking chumpy.
Speaker 3: I laughed out loud when they showed that web, I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, so who ran out to the dollar
Speaker 3: store and bought all that close rope?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, well yeah, except it's just clothes lines, which
Speaker 1: they're saying that they were. They're hanging their clothes up anyway,
Speaker 1: they are the poor people in the are but like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, that was terrible. The one thing I
Speaker 1: cannot recommend in the episode is the direction by Carl Epstein.
Speaker 1: This is I think this is the only credit or
Speaker 1: one of only a couple of credits, and just felt like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're our pal, go ahead and direct this. It is
Speaker 1: not skillful, But I love seeing Teresa Saldan honestly, Like
Speaker 1: I know, I know why we didn't get more of
Speaker 1: her for so long, But it's a drag, like, oh.
Speaker 3: You're gonna have to dish because I only really know
Speaker 3: her from the stuff she was in more in the
Speaker 3: seventies with I Want to Hold Your Hand, A Raging Bull.
Speaker 1: I believe right around this time she was attacked to
Speaker 1: buy someone. She was slashed. Actually, oh shit, took face
Speaker 1: and spent years and years having reconstructive surgery. So oh wow,
Speaker 1: that is horrible. I didn't ye know that because I
Speaker 1: remember her popping up again in the nineties sometime, and
Speaker 1: there was a bit of fanfare at the time, like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you know she's back that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'm making all this up. I don't know, cool,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty sure that that's what happened. I hate spiders.
Speaker 1: They're the worst. I don't like them at all. I
Speaker 1: don't even playing at them. I did that. We did
Speaker 1: not get full on spidery makeup here, given what we
Speaker 1: were given for a web, that would have been terrifying.
Speaker 1: Don't do that, you know what. I really liked about it, though.
Speaker 1: I think any other anthology series they would have strung
Speaker 1: us along for twenty two minutes and then we're spiders,
Speaker 1: as opposed to kind of giving us by the end
Speaker 1: of the first act, like here's the deal, You're a
Speaker 1: fucking spider and again.
Speaker 3: Pretty skillful just to have those pincers coming in and
Speaker 3: taking care of the one salesman, and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: all right, Like I knew Spiders had something going down,
Speaker 3: but I didn't realize these people are going to turn
Speaker 3: into spiders. And then yeah, I love the whole Oh
Speaker 3: my god, when she comes out with the now dead
Speaker 3: husband's corpse and he just looks like a desiccated husk.
Speaker 3: I was very, very thrilled to see that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what we love about Berkside, right, Like they
Speaker 1: pull no punches. And compare this with say, Night Gallery
Speaker 1: Spider episode, that long fucking treatise by Ron Serlang about
Speaker 1: this spinster and they who and nothing compared to that spider.
Speaker 3: That's that room size spider.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that VW sized spider. Yeah this I thought I
Speaker 1: was worried Mike. Season three was really scaring me the
Speaker 1: first couple of episodes here, But I'm glad they're not
Speaker 1: leaning into more logic. If they want to keep being
Speaker 1: surreal for the rest of the series, I'm good with
Speaker 1: it because they're getting great actors. There's most of these
Speaker 1: episodes are obviously the New York ones, this one definitely,
Speaker 1: And look, they need to stop throwing favors to their
Speaker 1: pals and letting them direct and let some real fucking
Speaker 1: directors in here. Ernest Dickerson's right there, guys, but you
Speaker 1: can let them out from behind the camera and let
Speaker 1: them do something else. He would direct the shit out
Speaker 1: of one of these. But ultimately an upward, upward a
Speaker 1: trend is what I'm thinking, and I hope I'm not wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope you're not wrong either, because yeah, I've
Speaker 3: been fooled.
Speaker 1: Before, so don't break my heart.
Speaker 3: Tales from the Dark Side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're looking at you, Twilight Zone, jesus, anything else
Speaker 1: on Black Rodos.
Speaker 3: I was glad too that they didn't show the baby.
Speaker 3: I thought that was very smart. They just showed us
Speaker 3: enough to give us what these folks are, and the
Speaker 3: rest of it is more sound effects and just kind
Speaker 3: of our imagination going wild. So all we really need
Speaker 3: to see were those two pincers coming down, and that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember now. By now Amazing Stories is in
Speaker 1: full swing. Alfred Hitchcock presents his back like all these
Speaker 1: big budgeted things were just making Tales from the Dark
Speaker 1: Side look like the chintziest side show freakazoid. But and
Speaker 1: on occasion, even I was not immune to that as
Speaker 1: a kid, something would come on and just be like,
Speaker 1: get the fuck out it. I'd turn it off, like really,
Speaker 1: they're not even trying, guys. And maybe that was amplified
Speaker 1: in comparison to those other million dollar in episode shows,
Speaker 1: but in rewatching it now it's charming. Well, what you're
Speaker 1: saying now, watching the ingenuity of it, I don't want
Speaker 1: to see them turn into a spider. Honestly, that's not
Speaker 1: going to scare me. Yeah, if they were to do
Speaker 1: that in a modern motion picture right now, maybe it
Speaker 1: could scare me. But never mind forty years ago on
Speaker 1: a fucking television budget.
Speaker 3: Shit, yeah, it is forty years ago, thirty nine right now, Right,
Speaker 3: that's wild to think about.
Speaker 1: It's horrifying. It's scarier than anything in this series. All right,
Speaker 1: On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: taking a look at the next two episodes of season three.
Speaker 1: Those are Heretic and A Serpent's Tooth. Midnight Viewing The
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Speaker 1: What are you working on? Where can people find it?
Speaker 1: Mike White?
Speaker 3: Well, usually I am busy working on the Production Booth,
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Speaker 4: Daylight station to examination
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