WEBVTT - Weirdhouse Cinema: Gargoyles 0:00:00.440 --> 0:00:06.439 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:15.040 Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:16.880 and this is Joe McCormick. 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.120 And today on Weird House, we're going to be talking 0:00:19.120 --> 0:00:25.240 about the nineteen seventy two made for TV horror film Gargoyles, 0:00:25.400 --> 0:00:29.920 starring Cornell Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall, and Bernie Casey. 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:34.080 This selection has been waiting in the wings for some time, 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.559 hasn't it. It comes up frequently on our Connection segment 0:00:37.600 --> 0:00:41.720 in multiple previous episodes, and also has been recommended by 0:00:41.840 --> 0:00:44.360 multiple listeners. It was one of the It just seemed 0:00:44.400 --> 0:00:46.440 we were faded to cover it at some point. 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:51.040 That's right. Let's see Lee Steven, Bob Tato or Bob Tato, 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:53.720 I'm not sure which his pronunciation. Are just a few 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.640 of the listeners who suggested this film in particular and 0:00:56.680 --> 0:00:59.400 said it would be a great fit. Yeah, It's come 0:00:59.480 --> 0:01:02.120 up multiple times on the show before in our Connections, 0:01:02.600 --> 0:01:06.840 and it's also one that I finally remember watching at 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:10.800 least parts of on television in the nineteen nineties, I 0:01:10.840 --> 0:01:14.680 think on the Sci Fi channel and TV again is 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:16.839 the place to watch it. This was a film made 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:20.919 for television, and it has just this great TV wasteland 0:01:21.040 --> 0:01:24.160 vibe to it. The sort of weird dated movie that 0:01:24.240 --> 0:01:27.480 like during the nineteen nineties you discover on cable when 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:30.560 you were inside on a weekend afternoon instead of going 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:33.640 outside and playing in the sun, or that you discover 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.119 late at night instead of getting a good night's sleep, 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:37.760 that sort of picture. 0:01:38.120 --> 0:01:41.080 The spirit of television flows through it, even to the 0:01:41.280 --> 0:01:44.440 extent that there's one character. We'll have to talk about 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:47.280 this in the plot section. There's one character who seems 0:01:47.280 --> 0:01:50.720 to have gotten completely different notes on how to play 0:01:50.760 --> 0:01:53.560 his character over the course of a commercial break. 0:01:54.680 --> 0:01:57.760 Can change during a commercial break, you know, it takes 0:01:57.800 --> 0:01:59.960 you out of the action. I believe we're going to 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:01.760 talk more about this later. It takes you out of 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.680 the action, perhaps takes you out of the room as 0:02:05.720 --> 0:02:08.960 you go to get your dinner, return your plate, get 0:02:08.960 --> 0:02:11.799 a snack, use the restroom, put the kids to bed, 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.519 what have you, and then you're back in and yeah, 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:16.360 it might be a different movie by that point. Like 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:19.120 sometimes it is implied stuff has happened during the break. 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:21.240 I guess that's true. The character I have in mind 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:24.880 is implied to have gotten drunk as over the course 0:02:24.880 --> 0:02:27.480 of the commercial break, but he goes from being kind 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.600 of I don't know, sly in cagey to just being 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:31.680 a complete mass. 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:36.160 Yeah, it happens pretty quickly. So yes. Indeed, this film 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:40.639 was originally broadcast on Tuesday, November twenty first, nineteen seventy two, 0:02:41.040 --> 0:02:45.480 for CBS's the New CBS Tuesday Night Movies. The made 0:02:45.480 --> 0:02:48.880 for TV werewolf movie Death Moon that we previously covered 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.840 on Weird House was also a CBS affair, though it 0:02:51.919 --> 0:02:53.040 aired on a Wednesday. 0:02:54.600 --> 0:02:57.440 Was it one of the new CBS Wednesday Night Movies? 0:02:57.800 --> 0:03:00.720 Oh, I don't recall. Death Moon came out and said so, 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:03.200 I guess I knew it had become old or standard 0:03:03.200 --> 0:03:06.200 by that point. I'm not sure. I get a little 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:08.480 foggy on how like the Tuesday Night movie would have 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:10.280 differed from the Wednesday Night movie. I just remember the 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.240 Death Moon aired, I think following an episode of The 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:16.000 Incredible Hulk. But this is a movie that certainly connected 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.320 with plenty of folks. It's a nice mix of early 0:03:19.400 --> 0:03:25.440 seventies television, monster suits cinematic weirdness. In nineteen eighty one's 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.320 Dance maccob Stephen King singled it out as one of 0:03:28.360 --> 0:03:31.160 the high points of the various one shot TV movies 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:36.720 and specials of the day, praising it as memorable and hideous. Likewise, 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:41.000 Michael Weldon in the Psychotronic film Guides highlights it as unusual. 0:03:41.960 --> 0:03:45.600 I'm a little perplexed at the amount of praise I 0:03:45.640 --> 0:03:48.160 see people heap on this movie. But I will give 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:50.640 it that it is not boring, like it kind of 0:03:50.680 --> 0:03:54.400 skips right along and is highly entertaining as to its 0:03:54.440 --> 0:03:57.839 real horror credentials. I don't know if I can quite 0:03:57.920 --> 0:03:58.320 go there. 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:04.080 I feel like it is remarkably weird to have been 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.040 on television. You know. It's like other examples will point 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:09.240 to from this time period. When you're looking at made 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.360 for TV horror, a lot of them are a little 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.280 more you know, traditional in the sense that maybe it's 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.240 like Gothic horror, and you know, not that this is 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:21.280 completely non traditional. It is based, you know, basic format 0:04:21.279 --> 0:04:23.880 of a monster movie, and it's set with a you know, 0:04:23.880 --> 0:04:28.680 an American background. But yeah, I mean these scenes where 0:04:28.720 --> 0:04:34.000 you have like reptilian gargoyle creatures like rebinon big furry 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:37.680 eggs and in an egg cave, it's it's weird stuff. 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.239 Weirder even for its time than you might think because 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:45.040 we live downstream of gargoyles. An interesting claim I came across. 0:04:45.120 --> 0:04:48.960 I can't verify this, but a claim of priority that 0:04:49.080 --> 0:04:53.000 I found referenced in the Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:58.320 Cinematic Monsters, edited by somebody named somebody named Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:04:59.120 Uh. 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:04.800 This book claims quote Gargoyles, the movie we're talking about today. 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:09.400 Gargoyles is the first work to present gargoyles as a 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:12.560 species as opposed to solitary creatures. 0:05:13.480 --> 0:05:16.880 Hmmm. Interesting, yeah, yeah, because that is how they're they're 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:20.360 positioned here. They are not statues, come alive. They are 0:05:21.160 --> 0:05:27.159 an ancient species of creatures, perhaps with some sort of 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:31.080 origins going back to Satan in the Fall, the Rebel Angels. 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:34.120 Well, it just seems kind of like a creative appropriation 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:37.400 of the word gargoyle, because otherwise they are treated as 0:05:38.360 --> 0:05:41.760 just demons. They're just demons or devils, but they're also 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:42.680 sort of greedo. 0:05:43.760 --> 0:05:48.160 Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're they're reptile men. They but they 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:52.640 are gargoyles. They're also devils. But the title of the 0:05:52.680 --> 0:05:55.120 movie is Gargoyles, and they make sure to call them 0:05:55.120 --> 0:05:56.880 gargoyles at various points in the film. 0:05:57.240 --> 0:06:01.360 I should mention that that same Encyclopedia entry also flags 0:06:01.400 --> 0:06:06.840 a short story by Harlan Ellison called Bleeding Stones, apparently 0:06:06.839 --> 0:06:11.400 also published in nineteen seventy two, in which there are 0:06:11.440 --> 0:06:16.839 gargoyles on Saint Patrick's Cathedral that are animated by pollution, 0:06:17.080 --> 0:06:20.040 like industrial waste gets into them and it turns them 0:06:20.040 --> 0:06:22.960 into monsters that attack New York City. 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:25.440 I should go ahead and mention, now that we're talking 0:06:25.440 --> 0:06:28.440 about this, if any of this sounds familiar. Back in 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.200 October of twenty twenty four, we did the Stuff to 0:06:31.200 --> 0:06:34.680 Blow Your Mind episode titled Grimoure of Horror, Volume one. 0:06:35.080 --> 0:06:38.479 We talked about a couple of short horror stories, one 0:06:38.520 --> 0:06:41.640 of them being a nineteen thirty two Clark Ashton Smith 0:06:41.760 --> 0:06:49.000 story about gargoyles in which a tormented sculptors gargoyles come 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:53.440 to life and commit crimes in this Gothic city, and 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.520 that is often pointed to as one of if not 0:06:56.600 --> 0:07:01.039 like the first stories about animate gargoyle, But then again, 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:02.880 that would be different than what we have here today. 0:07:02.960 --> 0:07:07.400 These are gargoyles that were never part of the particular 0:07:07.640 --> 0:07:13.240 of a particular architectural uh creation. They instead are said 0:07:13.240 --> 0:07:18.320 to have inspired architectural flourishes. And what are those flourishes. Well, 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.160 just a reminder we're talking when we talk about gargoyles, 0:07:21.200 --> 0:07:24.400 we're generally talking about a decorative water spout to drain 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:27.000 water away from a building. Then the term is used 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:30.640 a little loose more loosely to describe, you know, hideous 0:07:30.640 --> 0:07:33.520 monsters perching on the corners of buildings. That you get 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:35.880 you get into different terminology when you get into the 0:07:35.920 --> 0:07:40.080 specifics of all these things. But this is linked to 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:46.000 the old French word gargoue as well as the Greek gargarazine. 0:07:46.600 --> 0:07:48.760 And these words, of course may remind you of the 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:52.360 word gargyle that we use today, because you know, essentially 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:55.800 we're talking about a word used to describe the clearing 0:07:55.920 --> 0:07:57.160 or washing of the throat. 0:07:57.920 --> 0:08:00.600 Right, So, from decorative water spouts the side of a 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:05.640 building to Reptilian Satanic gredo monsters that live in caves 0:08:05.680 --> 0:08:08.480 in only a few hundred years, that's an evolution. 0:08:08.520 --> 0:08:14.760 Yes, from European cathedrals to the children of Lucifer living 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:16.520 in caves. In the Great American Desert. 0:08:16.800 --> 0:08:18.800 Now, we mentioned earlier that a lot of people have 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.840 had praise for this movie, a lot of good things 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.440 to say about it, and one thing that often gets 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:29.200 singled out for praise is the creature design itself, the 0:08:29.280 --> 0:08:33.480 monster design. They've got these great rubber masks and suits. 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:38.439 And apparently this movie won a nineteen seventy three Primetime 0:08:38.520 --> 0:08:41.480 Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup. 0:08:42.000 --> 0:08:44.360 That's right. It beat out a TV movie of Doctor 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:47.480 Jekyll and Mister Hyde starring Kirk Douglas and Donald Pleasants, 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:51.840 as well as a TV movie of Frankenstein starring Robert Foxworth, 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:55.920 who would go on to appear in Death Moon, as 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:58.400 well as the actor Bose S. Vincent, who I believe 0:08:58.679 --> 0:09:01.560 Vincent played the monster, Foxworth played the doctor. 0:09:02.280 --> 0:09:04.439 Foxworth was the work beast and. 0:09:04.559 --> 0:09:08.760 Yeah, yeah, I mean who I mean, Doctor Frankenstein. Can 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.160 you think of more a bigger work beast than that? 0:09:11.679 --> 0:09:15.480 That's right, He's the original work beast. I wonder how 0:09:15.559 --> 0:09:19.040 my feelings about Gargoyles might be different if if we'd 0:09:19.040 --> 0:09:21.720 seen it with the hard burned Dutch subtitles. I think 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:24.199 that would bring a different spirit to the to the occasion, 0:09:24.200 --> 0:09:24.760 wouldn't it? 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:28.800 Yeah, probably so. But the costumes here do look amazing, 0:09:28.920 --> 0:09:30.839 and as we'll get into in just a little bit, 0:09:31.520 --> 0:09:35.040 it's the work of Stan Winston, like fresh baby face 0:09:35.120 --> 0:09:38.600 stan Winston. This is his first big, big gig as 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.160 a makeup dude before he went on to a lot 0:09:41.200 --> 0:09:45.840 of other legendary work and legendary monster design makeup effects 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:50.280 from the subtle to the extravagant. Now, are these suits 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.079 always presented in the best light? Is the rest of 0:09:53.760 --> 0:09:56.800 the film like reaching its level? Well, you know, an 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.800 argument could be made that it is not. You know, 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:01.800 you put a suit like this in a gas station 0:10:02.480 --> 0:10:05.040 in the middle of New Mexico, it might not look 0:10:05.040 --> 0:10:08.079 as great. But I think on their own they look 0:10:08.120 --> 0:10:11.240 amazing and compared to anything else it was on TV 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:13.760 at the time, I have no doubt that these really 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:16.120 stood out and obviously touched a nerve. 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.840 I believe these suits and makeup effects could have popped 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:24.800 even more if they'd been photographed a little more carefully. 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:28.040 I don't want to insult the cinematography too much, but 0:10:28.360 --> 0:10:31.400 we get a lot of just straight up looking at them, 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:35.120 even in slow motion, sometimes in broad daylight, sometimes busting 0:10:35.120 --> 0:10:38.320 through a breakaway door into a hotel room not the 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:41.560 most creative or artful way of obscuring and keeping the 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:43.400 mystery of the gargoyle form alive. 0:10:44.120 --> 0:10:47.760 Yes, yes, yeah, they're often shot, and yeah, feels like 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:53.080 like noon sun they're out being stealthy. Just the in 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.200 broad daylight. People were like, what was that that flew over? 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:57.920 And it's like, you're in the middle of nowhere in 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:00.560 New Mexico. I think you probably could have seen it, 0:11:01.160 --> 0:11:02.680 but I don't know. There are plenty of plenty of 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.120 animals in New Mexico that managed to carry out their 0:11:06.360 --> 0:11:08.840 stealth roles successfully, so I guess an argument could be 0:11:08.880 --> 0:11:11.000 made that these these creatures do as well. 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.199 It's hard to stay stealthy when you're doing trampoline stunts 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:14.960 in slow motion. 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:16.240 True. True. 0:11:16.800 --> 0:11:19.200 So I wanted to pause here for a moment to 0:11:19.480 --> 0:11:25.240 think about the specific flavor of today's movie, because despite 0:11:25.320 --> 0:11:29.600 the different setting and subject matter, I noticed what felt 0:11:29.640 --> 0:11:34.400 like a significant esthetic overlap with the other seventies American 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:37.080 made for TV horror movie we've covered again. That was 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.320 Death Moon with the work Beast, and this got me 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:45.400 interested in thinking about these movies as their own subgenre. 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:47.959 The made for TV movie of the seventies as its 0:11:48.000 --> 0:11:51.360 own horror subgenre. So I went digging around for any 0:11:51.360 --> 0:11:55.720 academic literature that has explored this idea, and I came 0:11:55.760 --> 0:11:59.320 across a passage in a book. So the book was 0:11:59.480 --> 0:12:04.880 by Lorna Jowett and Stacy Abbott called TV Horror Investigating 0:12:04.920 --> 0:12:08.160 the Dark Side of the Small Screen. This was originally 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:11.080 published in twenty thirteen. I haven't read this whole book, 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:14.440 but I did read some reviews, and in this passage 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:17.280 about made for TV films of the era in question, 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:19.840 it seems to me the central idea of this book 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:24.440 is that wild TV has long been thought of as 0:12:24.480 --> 0:12:28.760 a poor venue for horror storytelling due to many things. 0:12:28.840 --> 0:12:32.320 You know, restrictions on content that tend to be more 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:34.680 restrictive than what you would get in the movie theaters, 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:38.440 and horror tends to be by nature transgressive and contains 0:12:38.520 --> 0:12:43.160 objectionable material. But also you can think about constraints due 0:12:43.200 --> 0:12:48.160 to format format restrictions like the need to include commercial breaks. 0:12:48.600 --> 0:12:52.079 Despite all those well known limitations, the authors argue that 0:12:52.120 --> 0:12:55.360 the medium of TV also kind of presents its own 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:59.280 unique opportunities for horror, and that horror has long been 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:03.800 incorporated it into TV storytelling, even if in cryptic forms, 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:06.800 kind of expressing itself in little ways in you know, 0:13:06.880 --> 0:13:10.559 in crime dramas on TV and things like that. And 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.520 in the words of the authors the quote relationship between 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:18.840 horror and television is one fraught with tension and potential. 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:22.040 And so when you try to think, like, what would 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:26.319 be the special potential for horror on TV as opposed 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:30.160 to other media like the cinema or in written literature. 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:32.360 One example that comes to mind for me, which they 0:13:32.400 --> 0:13:36.520 do explore in the book, is the idea that back 0:13:36.600 --> 0:13:40.040 before home video, when movies were something that you went 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.760 to see in the theater and you couldn't watch at 0:13:42.760 --> 0:13:45.679 home unless it just happened to be playing on one 0:13:45.720 --> 0:13:49.440 of the few TV stations you got, TV provided provided 0:13:49.480 --> 0:13:53.880 an opportunity to project visual horror into the domestic setting, 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:59.400 and the domestic setting changed how frightening stories were received, 0:14:00.280 --> 0:14:03.760 and to that last point. At one point in this book, 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:08.040 the author's cite the concluding voiceover from Colchak The night Stalker, 0:14:08.080 --> 0:14:10.319 which is not a movie but a sort of mystery 0:14:10.320 --> 0:14:12.839 horror TV series. We've talked about this in our anthology 0:14:12.880 --> 0:14:17.480 of Horror episodes in the Halloween season sometimes but apparently 0:14:17.480 --> 0:14:20.000 you know, at the end of this Colchak would always 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:23.400 say something like quote, So think about it and try 0:14:23.400 --> 0:14:26.040 to tell yourself, wherever you may be and the quiet 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:28.600 of your home, in the safety of your bed, try 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:32.360 to tell yourself that it couldn't happen to you. You know, 0:14:32.440 --> 0:14:36.200 the implication being, Oh, you think you're safe just because 0:14:36.240 --> 0:14:38.360 you're at home on your couch eating a hungry man 0:14:38.440 --> 0:14:42.400 dinner right now, but no paramoul fay, this moss monster 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:43.440 could come get you. 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.040 That's a great point, you know, Like you could basically 0:14:46.080 --> 0:14:48.480 have a no horror in the house rule where you 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:50.400 only go out to the theaters and see horror, but 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:52.880 then TV changes that in the same way that like 0:14:53.000 --> 0:14:55.720 right now, I think most of us probably, well not 0:14:55.800 --> 0:14:57.360 most of us. I can't speak for everyone out there. 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:00.240 I know we have some horror ficionados out there there, 0:15:00.240 --> 0:15:04.160 but a lot of us probably have an unofficial rule 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:08.480 of no haunted attractions in the house. Where we go 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:10.400 out to a haunted attraction. We go out to a 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.920 professional haunted house, but we don't bring professional gruls and 0:15:13.920 --> 0:15:17.600 goblins into our home to jump scarce randomly, you know, 0:15:17.960 --> 0:15:20.520 and if we were to do that, that would drastically 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:22.440 change the way we might think about our house. 0:15:22.920 --> 0:15:26.680 Yeah exactly. Now, of course this would change with the 0:15:26.720 --> 0:15:29.720 advent of home video, you know, that sort of reshuffles everything, 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.680 But you can still think of ways in which TV 0:15:32.960 --> 0:15:36.160 is a different video. I've said this on the show before, 0:15:36.160 --> 0:15:38.960 but I'm often very partial to medium is the message 0:15:39.000 --> 0:15:44.280 type thinking kind of mccluinist view that we really underappreciate 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:48.720 how much we're influenced not just by the content that 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:52.760 we consume, but by the format that that content takes. So, 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:56.160 you know, whatever technology or media we use to consume 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:59.480 it that shapes us almost as much as the content itself, 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:03.320 and shape shapes over time the form the content takes. 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:05.760 Yeah. Yeah, this has certainly come up before when we've 0:16:05.760 --> 0:16:08.920 talked about movies where certain changes were made because they 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.840 wanted to make sure that like the first ten minutes killed, 0:16:12.760 --> 0:16:15.080 you know, so people wouldn't leave the theater, or I 0:16:15.240 --> 0:16:17.080 seem to recall an example where they were like, well, 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:20.000 let's offset the big moment a little bit so that 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:23.400 people who are late to their seats don't miss out 0:16:23.440 --> 0:16:26.440 on the excitement. Things like that, you know, and I 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:28.680 guess with TV horre you're also probably having a factor 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:31.280 in well, some people are coming in maybe thirty minutes 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:33.520 into it. You know, there's no definite start time. It's 0:16:33.520 --> 0:16:34.520 not like they bought a ticket. 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:36.960 Yeah, we'll come back to that in just a minute, 0:16:37.160 --> 0:16:39.520 but I did want to say so. The authors here 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:44.160 have a sub section discussing horror within the history of 0:16:44.360 --> 0:16:47.680 the made for TV movie, also known as the single play, 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:49.880 a single play as opposed to like a series or 0:16:49.920 --> 0:16:53.520 a mini series, and so they write about how the 0:16:53.560 --> 0:16:57.080 made for TV movie was especially popular in the nineteen 0:16:57.160 --> 0:17:01.760 sixties and seventies, with major productions in being networks in 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:06.280 the United States like ABC and then in this case CBS, 0:17:06.720 --> 0:17:09.440 and then of course in Britain as well with things 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:12.680 like ITV. ITV actually had armchair theater going back to 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:17.480 the nineteen fifties, so we established even earlier there. But 0:17:17.560 --> 0:17:22.000 then the authors cite a scholar named Waller who cataloged 0:17:22.040 --> 0:17:26.000 more than one hundred made for TV horror films that 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:30.399 premiered on primetime in the United States between nineteen sixty 0:17:30.400 --> 0:17:33.520 eight and nineteen eighty seven, and that was kind of 0:17:33.560 --> 0:17:35.959 surprising to me that there were that many because I 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:40.800 don't think of horror as the most popular genre of 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:43.200 made for TV movies. I mean, I tend to think 0:17:43.200 --> 0:17:45.560 of made for TV movies as like, you know, your 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:49.360 kind of comedies and your family dramas and things like that. 0:17:49.600 --> 0:17:52.680 They were made for TV. Horror felt like a more rare, 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:58.120 rare exploration. But in discussing these movies, Jowett and Abbott right. 0:17:58.240 --> 0:17:58.600 Quote. 0:17:58.840 --> 0:18:02.160 These films include at daptations of Gothic novels such as 0:18:02.240 --> 0:18:07.320 Count Dracula nineteen seventy seven, Frankenstein nineteen seventy three. Oh, 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:09.560 I wonder if that's the one we were just talking about. 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:13.760 I believe, Yeah, the Turn of the Screw nineteen seventy four, 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:19.280 or original contemporary horror such as Fear No Evil nineteen 0:18:19.359 --> 0:18:23.320 sixty nine, Duel nineteen seventy one. I believe that's an 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:24.960 early Steven Spielberg movie. 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:29.600 Yeah, I believe Matheson either a script by Matheson or 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:31.720 it's based on a work by Matheson. I don't recall 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:32.560 at the top of my head. 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:36.159 Yeah, and then their final example is Gargoyles from nineteen 0:18:36.200 --> 0:18:40.760 seventy two, but the passage continues. Quote John Kenneth Muir 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:45.840 argues that in this period, television became increasingly graphic, and 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:50.720 that the turn toward darkness in TV horror represented, as 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:54.639 with cinematic horror, a shift in national mood, due at 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:58.280 least in part to the shocking and graphic news footage 0:18:58.320 --> 0:19:01.600 coming back from the Vietnam War. It was as if 0:19:01.640 --> 0:19:05.200 for the first time Americans were aware of a darker world, 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:08.560 and television reflected that shift in perspective. 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:11.720 Hmm, that's fascinating. Now. 0:19:11.720 --> 0:19:15.359 Another thing they mentioned here is about the production mode 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:17.600 of made for TV horror films, which was in some 0:19:17.640 --> 0:19:20.800 ways similar to that of a cinematic film, but usually 0:19:20.840 --> 0:19:24.640 with a lower budget and a shorter production schedule. One 0:19:24.760 --> 0:19:27.879 major format difference that we've already alluded to here is 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:34.399 the necessity of incorporating commercial breaks. Now, you might be thinking, like, a, 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:37.600 do you really need to plan out commercial breaks? From 0:19:37.640 --> 0:19:40.879 a writing perspective, maybe you just write the story like 0:19:40.920 --> 0:19:43.360 you would otherwise and let the breaks fall wherever. 0:19:43.760 --> 0:19:45.160 Okay, that's how we do the podcast. 0:19:46.520 --> 0:19:48.680 That sort of is how we do the podcast now. 0:19:48.720 --> 0:19:54.640 But like the podcast is a conversational informational exploration, it's 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:58.040 really hard to do that if you are writing a fiction, 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:02.439 a fictional narrative where you're you're trying to control tension 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:05.440 and you're trying to build to climaxes and all that. 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.480 I mean, if you just if you literally just randomly 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:12.040 place commercial breaks within a story. In fact, we've seen 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:14.479 what this is like when that happens on, like, you know, 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.800 something like you're watching a maybe illicit stream of of 0:20:18.800 --> 0:20:22.879 a movie or something, and the ads just pop in wherever. 0:20:22.960 --> 0:20:23.720 It's hilarious. 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.520 Yeah, yeah, you know, I was thinking about this recently 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:29.280 as well, not only in watching Gargoyles, which has these moments, 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:34.000 but also as a family we've been watching and for 0:20:34.119 --> 0:20:38.479 my wife and I rewatching the sci fi series Firefly, Oh, 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:40.520 which you know I love back in the day. I'm 0:20:40.520 --> 0:20:44.240 getting reacquainted with now. The footage is not the most 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:48.680 restored that I've seen, so it feels a little rough 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:50.800 around the edges and places, but still very fresh in 0:20:50.800 --> 0:20:54.320 many other ways. But it has those those obvious, baked 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.119 in commercial breaks where things lead up, you know, you 0:20:57.160 --> 0:20:58.919 get to kind of like a little crescendo and then 0:20:58.960 --> 0:21:00.840 there's just a little bit darkarkness and then you come 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:04.679 back and you know, for someone like our kids, seemed 0:21:04.840 --> 0:21:06.800 less and less of that, So they're like, what's what's 0:21:06.840 --> 0:21:08.800 going on here? Why don't we keep having these moments? 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:11.399 So they go, yeah, those are commercial breaks. Those were 0:21:11.480 --> 0:21:16.560 those were necessary, mandated and you know, clearly constructed around Yeah. 0:21:16.600 --> 0:21:18.840 So the authors of this book talk about how it's 0:21:18.840 --> 0:21:22.600 been recognized for a while that, or at least argued 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:27.440 by other scholars previously, that the need for commercial breaks 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.639 is especially devastating to horror as a as a genre 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:35.119 for storytelling because it interrupts the narrative flow and the 0:21:35.160 --> 0:21:38.720 building of tension that is supposed to take place in 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:42.760 a horror story. But also they cite again the scholar 0:21:42.840 --> 0:21:47.120 named Waller who says that it's really a problem that 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:50.080 the advertisements coming in in the middle of the story 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:55.560 quote themselves serve as reassurance that all is well in 0:21:55.640 --> 0:21:59.640 the world and I can see what's going on there. 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:02.280 But then coming back on the other side, the authors 0:22:02.280 --> 0:22:04.440 talk about how writers try to get around this by 0:22:04.480 --> 0:22:07.720 of course structuring the story with these kind of mini climaxes, 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:10.680 placing breaks after each one. That's like what you were 0:22:10.720 --> 0:22:13.480 just talking about, you know, the where even when the 0:22:13.520 --> 0:22:16.159 commercials are no longer present, you're just watching it as 0:22:16.200 --> 0:22:19.680 one continuous thing. You can feel where the commercial breaks are. 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:22.960 Yeah, and I have to admit at times watching Gargoles, 0:22:23.040 --> 0:22:24.879 I really kind of wanted to see those commercials. What 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:25.960 would they have been, you know. 0:22:27.080 --> 0:22:30.760 I want to see commercials for Towbor, the International Ladies 0:22:30.840 --> 0:22:36.080 Garment Workers Union, all the good ones. But anyway, this 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:39.159 got me thinking about how there are multiple ways to 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:41.560 write around the idea of commercial breaks. The authors here 0:22:41.600 --> 0:22:45.280 are talking about trying to structure it with many climaxes 0:22:45.359 --> 0:22:49.840