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Speaker 3: Information, the show that brings you the scary kill stories
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Speaker 2: skeletons of Scintillae, you're werewolves of wherewithal I'm Alex Halloween Gull,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 1: Am you wrote several suggestions for me. I can't take
Speaker 1: credit for these. Jordan rot Tog, which is very good.
Speaker 1: George Dead Run Dog also very good. My person my favorite,
Speaker 1: I think is Gore Dan gr Yeah run tg Yeah.
Speaker 1: All just ten out of ten knocked it out of
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Speaker 2: Halloween themed too much Information. Because we didn't get it
Speaker 2: together for last week. Whoops. Yeah, we should probably should
Speaker 2: have started this last week, but we're spookally over work,
Speaker 2: so we'll be kicking out the seasonally appropriate jams all
Speaker 2: the rest of the month. Before we get things underway,
Speaker 2: I would like to give a huge shout out to
Speaker 2: our supporters on KOFE. Still not sure that it's pronounced
Speaker 2: that way, but whatever I drop us a message, we
Speaker 2: will answer. If you have shout outs, they will be
Speaker 2: taken into consideration, unless they are weird or I don't know,
Speaker 2: I have a pretty high tolerance. Jordan probably doesn't. I mean,
Speaker 2: like sexual stuff.
Speaker 1: Have you gotten any of those now yet?
Speaker 2: Maybe after this one? Yeah, here we go. Anyway, thank
Speaker 2: you to everyone who has donated to that thus far.
Speaker 2: You know we it means the world, it really does.
Speaker 2: And now let us get to the desiccated meat of
Speaker 2: this week's episode. We are taking a look inside Tales
Speaker 2: from the Crypt, seven season strong series that terrified HBO
Speaker 2: subscribers of a certain age from nineteen eighty nine to
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six. Now, my dad was too cheap to
Speaker 2: add HBO. There was a little a sort of peripherally
Speaker 2: aware of the cryptkeeper because that dude was everywhere.
Speaker 1: Was he like selling like McDonald's stuff. I have a.
Speaker 2: Vague memory of pizza hut or like a pizza pizza
Speaker 2: related thing. Yeah, that was it. So I only got
Speaker 2: to watch these whenever they would like pop up at
Speaker 2: video stores, which wasn't that frequent, and then you would
Speaker 2: get the censored versions too if you came through Blockbuster
Speaker 2: because they were Puritans.
Speaker 1: Did you know that that Blockbuster with Puritans.
Speaker 2: Blockbuster was so powerful in the nineties that they would.
Speaker 1: Have their own cuts, right different, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they would have their own cuts. Yeah, and I.
Speaker 1: Think there are some for people who collect vhs' is
Speaker 1: like my brothers. I think some of those Blockbuster versions
Speaker 1: are like rare collectibles. Now, if I'm recalling correctly, tremendous
Speaker 1: censorship turned to commerce.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, the American way literally the point of this episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah. So I only got to watch more
Speaker 2: of these when I could, you know, torrent them. But
Speaker 2: I did buy tons of easy comic trade paperbacks, which
Speaker 2: is what this show draws from. At any half priced books,
Speaker 2: I could enter with my sweaty little myths, and because
Speaker 2: of rights issues, the show continues to only be available
Speaker 2: through less than optimal mess Jordan as a frightened child
Speaker 2: idealizing the nineteen fifties, What was your experience with Tales
Speaker 2: from the Crypt?
Speaker 1: I mean, don't forget how much I loved are you
Speaker 1: for thought that's true? So I do have I have
Speaker 1: from characteristically high tolerance for spooky stuff. That's fair. Like
Speaker 1: I just just want to say.
Speaker 2: That just just not guns n' roses.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, just much like you. I was aware of this,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have a ton of exposure to it,
Speaker 1: mostly because I couldn't figure out how to work the
Speaker 1: family cable boxes, so my HBO viewing was pretty limited.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I loved this uniquely late eighties early nineties
Speaker 1: type of show, which usually kind of sci fi leaning
Speaker 1: that felt like it was being secretly broadcast out of
Speaker 1: someone's basement, like Wayne's World style. Sure, for me, Mystery
Speaker 1: Signs Theater three thousand is a prime example of that
Speaker 1: for me. And it's not a comment on production quality,
Speaker 1: but just something about it just seemed so much weirder
Speaker 1: than anything that was on network TV. Oh and I
Speaker 1: always got a kick out of that.
Speaker 2: It wasn't TV, it was agest Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: as we'll learn later, the production quality was quite high, it.
Speaker 1: Was very high. Yeah, but there was something like throwback
Speaker 1: about oh yeah for sure, Yeah, which I always appreciated.
Speaker 1: I mean, from seeming like it was descended from the
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone, which I always loved to the kind of
Speaker 1: borsh Belt style comedy styling zone.
Speaker 2: It is so like nineteen fifties borsch Belt like Yiddish
Speaker 2: stand up stuff.
Speaker 1: It's so great, it's so so good. So I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember watching this at like friend's houses more than
Speaker 1: anything else. I remember there was one with like Malcolm
Speaker 1: McDowell was like a he was like a vampire with
Speaker 1: a conscience who worked at a blood bank.
Speaker 2: Watched it the other night the reluctant vampire.
Speaker 1: And George went from cheers like owns the blood bank
Speaker 1: he works at or something. Yeah, yeah, that was a
Speaker 1: good one. I remember that one. Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just remember thinking like, oh, this is like grown up.
Speaker 1: Are you afraid of the dark? Are you afraid of
Speaker 1: the Dark? Is like horror training wheels. But this was
Speaker 1: like I remember at the time thinking this was the
Speaker 1: real deal. I bet you if I watched it now,
Speaker 1: it would probably be pretty laughable. Does it hold up?
Speaker 1: I haven't actually watched them.
Speaker 2: It's pretty goofy and like you know, it's clearly meant
Speaker 2: to be more fun than scary. But there are some
Speaker 2: like the very first episode where Larry Drake from La
Speaker 2: Law plays a homicidal Santa is pretty out there.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, yeah, I mean I remember mostly thinking that,
Speaker 1: like the scariest part of the show was the criptkeeper.
Speaker 2: He's gross. Yeah, he's real gross looking, even when they
Speaker 2: put him in his little costumes. There was one last
Speaker 2: night where the where the cold open had him being
Speaker 2: like a Walter Cronkite like newscaster. And one thing that
Speaker 2: like one that actually made me laugh out loud was
Speaker 2: a dagger is thrown from off screen and lands in
Speaker 2: his skull and he picks it out and goes this
Speaker 2: just Ian, I was like, come so good. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: do not love that.
Speaker 1: I'm just so looking forward to this because I know
Speaker 1: you're gonna be in your glory. I mean, you've got comics,
Speaker 1: you've got horror, you've got probably or Schwarzenegger having a
Speaker 1: good time. You've got what I believe to be the
Speaker 1: prototypical cigar chompings. Executive Joel Silver, I mean, we really
Speaker 1: this touches on so many points for you, so I'm
Speaker 1: really excited.
Speaker 2: Well, from the series' tenuous connection to seventy five year
Speaker 2: old Bible comics to the historical Senate investigation that got
Speaker 2: the source material canceled to the absolutely bonkers roster of
Speaker 2: Hollywood stars and power brokers seemingly gleefully involved in the series.
Speaker 2: Here's everything you didn't know about Tales from the Cryp. So,
Speaker 2: as we alluded to at the top of the episode,
Speaker 2: the history of Tales from the Cryp really begins with
Speaker 2: DC Comics, which itself begins with a guy named Max Gaines,
Speaker 2: who's a pretty foundational figure in the history of comic
Speaker 2: books in America. Although he lacks the name recognition of
Speaker 2: your Stan Lee's or perhaps even your Steve Ditko's. Maybe
Speaker 2: you're Chris Claremont's.
Speaker 1: Nothing I knew them in descending order.
Speaker 2: According to his son William Gaines, Max was a piece
Speaker 2: of sh He would frequently beat his son with a
Speaker 2: leather belt and say you'll never amount to anything. But
Speaker 2: regarding his day job, Gaines was working as a salesperson
Speaker 2: in the year of nineteen thirty three at Eastern Color Printing,
Speaker 2: a company that printed Sunday newspaper comic strips. So Gaines,
Speaker 2: being a salesman, pitched Procter and Gamble the idea of
Speaker 2: a tabloid sized book of color comic strip reprints that
Speaker 2: would be available for five cents and or a label
Speaker 2: or coupon for any Procter and Gamble product. They initially
Speaker 2: rejected the idea, but Gaines pushed his vision through at
Speaker 2: the printing company and he produced Funnies on Parade, which
Speaker 2: was an eight page newsprint magazine reprinting several comic strips
Speaker 2: licensed from syndicates.
Speaker 1: Can we change to them of our show to Trivion Parade?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's not bad. It did retain the Procter
Speaker 2: and Gamble, though, angle, because it was sent free to
Speaker 2: customers who mailed in coupons, so his vision was eventually
Speaker 2: a spot on. From an initial run of ten thousand copies,
Speaker 2: Eastern Color Printing then went on to produce similar periodicals
Speaker 2: for my beloved Canada Dry and others, but they got.
Speaker 1: Up to runs of two hundred and fifty thousand printing
Speaker 1: this stuff. Wow, So I'll try to keep my interruptions
Speaker 1: to a minimum. But this is really fascinating to me,
Speaker 1: and I love how much you know about it. So,
Speaker 1: I mean comic books were basically born as a freebie
Speaker 1: coupon cornucopia.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you always had comic strips, right like
Speaker 2: you newspapers yeah, yeah, and so they were just in
Speaker 2: a way, they're what we call trade paperbacks today, Like
Speaker 2: if you're not a nerd about getting mint condition comics
Speaker 2: and collecting the individual issues, your average comic reader probably
Speaker 2: has trade paperbacks, which are all the collected runs bound
Speaker 2: into a single paperback edition. And that's what these first
Speaker 2: ones were pitched as. It was just like, hey, we
Speaker 2: have all of these cartoons from several different syndicates, and
Speaker 2: individual artists had contracts with different syndicates, and individual papers
Speaker 2: had different contracts with different syndicates, et cetera, and I
Speaker 2: guess fucking Max Gaines was like I'll put them together
Speaker 2: and that that blew everyone's mind. If one thing good,
Speaker 2: many things better. And these mad dollar signs, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: It was nineteen thirty three. People were dumber and poorer
Speaker 2: and poorer. In July of nineteen thirty four, Gains then
Speaker 2: published the compendium Famous Funnies, which ran for two hundred
Speaker 2: and eighteen issues and is considered they're terrible whack could
Speaker 2: do weekly You see ones get worse. I like two
Speaker 2: fisted tales. Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1: That's good.
Speaker 2: Famous Funnies is considered the first true American Comic Book.
Speaker 2: There's a collection of syndicated comics distributed through Woolworths. He
Speaker 2: then secured funding from Harry Donnenfeld, who is CEO of
Speaker 2: both National Allied Publication and this is important. National Allied
Speaker 2: Publications published Action Comics, which is where Superman debuted, and
Speaker 2: he was also CEO of the sister company, Detective Comics,
Speaker 2: which you will know is where Batman debuted, and DC
Speaker 2: Comics since has become the namesake, somewhat redundant name of
Speaker 2: that brand, and that all came together to form All
Speaker 2: American Comics in nineteen thirty eight, but by nineteen forty five,
Speaker 2: Gaines thought he saw an end to the comics craze
Speaker 2: and sold out his share to a guy named Jack Leibowitz.
Speaker 2: But under Gaines's tenure, All American Comics published characters that
Speaker 2: are still mainstays of the DC roster, like Wonder Woman
Speaker 2: for one, heard of her Green Lantern, and also Hawkman
Speaker 2: and Hawkwoman and also and oh.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it was right there. It was
Speaker 1: right there, Oh you.
Speaker 2: Jordan. They also public the original Flash and I stopped
Speaker 2: caring about which flashes are, Like, there's so many.
Speaker 1: Flashes what's the relationship between Flash and Flash Gordon.
Speaker 2: Flash Gordon precedes all of this. He was that was
Speaker 2: like one of the original action series. Yeah, Flash Gordon's
Speaker 2: cool though. I used to have a big, big collection
Speaker 2: of those really. Yeah. So anyway, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern,
Speaker 2: and again the aforementioned Hawkman and Hawk Woman all kind
Speaker 2: of date back to the guy who created Ecy Comics
Speaker 2: is period at the reins of DC, which is super
Speaker 2: kind of crazy if you think about it. So then
Speaker 2: Gaines started Educational Comics and he retained only the title
Speaker 2: picture Stories from the Bible as its flagship series, so
Speaker 2: he was bought out of the rest of DC, but
Speaker 2: kept the one about Bible Stories and yes, Horror and
Speaker 2: Gorer pioneers. Easy Comics was initially formed to sell Bible comics,
Speaker 2: and he wanted to sell other like like scientific and
Speaker 2: little like guides to the like the Kid's Guide to Electricity.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like how TLC used to be
Speaker 2: the Learning Channel before it started airing My Gangrenous Armpit
Speaker 2: and the Obese Man who Loves It? Is that offensive? No?
Speaker 1: All right, unless it's David Eslov, I mean.
Speaker 2: Zaslov is the gangridis arm pit that has sentience of
Speaker 2: its own TLC right, Yeah, I think so, or no
Speaker 2: discovery is TLC different?
Speaker 1: Who gives it another und by discovery? Un by discovery.
Speaker 2: So William Gaines dies in a boating accident in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty seven and is in hell to the immense reassurance
Speaker 2: of his son Max, who inherited the company and renamed
Speaker 2: it Entertaining Comics, with the goal focusing on his preferred
Speaker 2: genres science fiction, horror, suspense, and the military.
Speaker 1: That's a great that's a great pivot from educational comics
Speaker 1: to entertaining comics. Not a very subtle shift, but an
Speaker 1: important shift.
Speaker 2: Yeah, really mirroring the American discourse as well. It's kind
Speaker 2: of funny because it did seem like awful timing at
Speaker 2: the moment, because Universal where so many of these archetypes
Speaker 2: and stuff, and the most visible torch bearer for horror
Speaker 2: movies in the first part of the twentieth century was
Speaker 2: entering its like most fallow period, like literally dribbling out.
Speaker 2: They were well into the Abbot and Castello era where yeah,
Speaker 2: they met the Wolfman and Dracula and so forth. The
Speaker 2: only two originals that Universal produced in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 2: were The Creature from the Black Lagoon in nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: four and The Mummy in nineteen fifty five. That was it.
Speaker 1: That's nuts.
Speaker 2: But the two guys that mister Gaines hired as editors,
Speaker 2: two guys named Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, and they
Speaker 2: were the people who steered this ship ingeniously. Feldstein encouraged
Speaker 2: a roster of artists and writers to develop their own voices,
Speaker 2: among them Harlan Ellison. His first published work was through Feldstein.
Speaker 2: He's the guy who probably came up with the idea
Speaker 2: for the Terminator in a short story called Demon with
Speaker 2: a Glass Hand, just a legend of the genre. Kurtzman meanwhile,
Speaker 2: focused more on the action side of things and was
Speaker 2: actually disgusted once the horror stuff started out selling his titles.
Speaker 2: So what he did was jump ship to Mad Magazine,
Speaker 2: which was also controlled by EC and then he left
Speaker 2: that in nineteen fifty six before beginning Little Annie Fanny,
Speaker 2: a strip named Playboy for the next twenty six years,
Speaker 2: starting from nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to get a visual on this thish.
Speaker 2: You really don't it's what it sounds like oh yeah,
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: Then when Kurtzman left Mad, Feldstein came over and then
Speaker 2: spent nearly thirty years overseeing Mad Mad Magazine during it's
Speaker 2: like also it's healsy on days. So these two guys
Speaker 2: between them were responsible for not just easy comics like
Speaker 2: the horror, ecy comics, suspense stuff, everything that flowed from that, which,
Speaker 2: as I will go on to discuss, is like a
Speaker 2: huge chunk of culture. But so Mad Magazine, which was
Speaker 2: like its own enormous world unto itself, that was hugely influential.
Speaker 2: Just like those two dudes were like, We're going to
Speaker 2: direct American popular culture for the next half a century
Speaker 2: and no one will know our names.
Speaker 1: Did you used to get Mad Magazine as a kid?
Speaker 2: I didn't. I had a bunch of my dad's old copies,
Speaker 2: so I was, well, I was really confused by like
Speaker 2: who Spiro Agnew was.
Speaker 1: That's so funny, because I would get the Mad about
Speaker 1: the Fifties, Mad about the Sixties, like compendium books, and
Speaker 1: those were the ones that because all of my because
Speaker 1: I basically in many ways grew up in the fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties, so I got all the references and all
Speaker 1: they were so funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're great, I mean, and just such a rich uh,
Speaker 2: just as such a showcase of different art styles and personalities,
Speaker 2: like really the proverbial lunatics in charge of the assignment.
Speaker 1: And they're edgy like stillay, are they still publishing today? No?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, I meant those like fifties and sixties.
Speaker 2: Oh, the original ones. Yeah, absolutely. But because the comics
Speaker 2: code hadn't come in, which we will talk about so
Speaker 2: with elt Stande Kurtzman at the Helm, Easy Comics began
Speaker 2: its new trend in print, which, aside from the horror stuff,
Speaker 2: was also responsible for weird science and weird fantasy, both
Speaker 2: of which were hugely important to the science fiction and
Speaker 2: fantasy genres. Among many of the influential people who they
Speaker 2: would employ are Frank Frazetta, who is the guy. Anytime
Speaker 2: you look at a sweet nineteen seventies album cover with
Speaker 2: like a warrior on it, that's probably Frank Frazetta. Most
Speaker 2: famous one is I think thirty eight Special. But he
Speaker 2: did covers for Dust and didn't did he draw the
Speaker 2: Surf's Up cover?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Okay, Beach Boys album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, strike that from the record. Oh, Molly Hatchett, not
Speaker 2: thirty eight Special, Molly Hatchet, Dust Nazareth, all of them
Speaker 2: had these amazing I think he also did the cover
Speaker 2: of Kiss Alive. Anyway, so Frank Fizzetta was under Weird
Speaker 2: Fantasy and Bradbury actually came over because and this is
Speaker 2: what's kind of funny and shady, is that Bill Gaines
Speaker 2: would stay up. Apparently Bill Gaines like had a weight
Speaker 2: problem and he frequently dieted with like everyone did in
Speaker 2: those days, with dexadream. So he would stay up like
Speaker 2: all hours of the night just reading other science fiction
Speaker 2: and then come in the next day and give a
Speaker 2: loose synopsis of what he had read to his editors,
Speaker 2: and then they would churn out a comic. And people
Speaker 2: eventually started noticing that, like Ray Bradbury, who was like, hey, guys,
Speaker 2: I see what you're doing, and they were like, do
Speaker 2: you want to come over to give you money? And
Speaker 2: so they created the like some authorized adaptations of some
Speaker 2: of his stories, including There Will Come Soft Rains, just
Speaker 2: one of the most anthologized to Bradbury stories. Wally Wood
Speaker 2: is another guy who was on the roster. He created
Speaker 2: Sally Forth the strip, the daily strip of All Things
Speaker 2: He also drew the Mars Attacks trading cards for Tops,
Speaker 2: which later became the basis of the feature film Tim Burton,
Speaker 2: and he also is responsible for Daredevil having that distinctive
Speaker 2: red suit. Wood is also insanely horny. A lot of
Speaker 2: these guys were so so horny. And Wood is also
Speaker 2: known in comic circles for drawing the Disneyland memorial Orgy,
Speaker 2: which was a full a spread poster for the influential
Speaker 2: underground magazine The Realist, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: That's good a visual all that. Yeah, yes it is. Yep,
Speaker 1: don't know what I expected.
Speaker 2: You can google that one yourself, folks. And then there's
Speaker 2: just like another dozen or so guys who can't get
Speaker 2: into just based on space alone. But these guys were
Speaker 2: either either at easy or at mad, just like again,
Speaker 2: helping shape the latter half of twentieth century pop culture. Also,
Speaker 2: E C was actually fairly brave in publishing stuff that
Speaker 2: was about drug addiction, that was about racism. One of
Speaker 2: the most famous stories is published in nineteen fifty five
Speaker 2: with called Master Race, which portrayed a former Nazi death
Speaker 2: camp commander successfully hiding out New York before he is
Speaker 2: spotted by an eerie stranger who chases the Nazi to
Speaker 2: his death in front of a train. This marked the
Speaker 2: first time, one of the first times that the Holocaust
Speaker 2: had even been mentioned in popular media, and the whole
Speaker 2: twist behind it is that this guy is like alone
Speaker 2: on a train and he sees someone like staring at him,
Speaker 2: and gradually, throughout the course of the story through flashbacks,
Speaker 2: it's revealed that this guy was an SS death camp
Speaker 2: officer and that is a wild thing to publish. In
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty five, in a comic book Art Spiegelman, who
Speaker 2: penned Mouse, which is one of the other comics that
Speaker 2: you're assigned to in your introduction to comic books as
Speaker 2: an art form class or research period, has hailed it
Speaker 2: as like one of his favorites. Would you looking at Buddy.
Speaker 1: I'm still on the Disney memorial orgy. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what the birds are doing the Dumbo. Does
Speaker 1: that also count as interracial because the crows were super
Speaker 1: racist different birds?
Speaker 2: Ah?
Speaker 1: Okay, is that kind of a beastiality? Then if they're interspecies? Yes?
Speaker 2: Good?
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, that's just fine. Those are just facts. Alfeld
Speaker 1: scene maintains that he was the guy who pushed Bill
Speaker 1: Gaines to produce horror comics, saying the pair bonded over
Speaker 1: a love of old, spooky radio plays and horror films
Speaker 1: from radio serials. Feldstein wanted to have a character that
Speaker 1: would remain consistent from issue to issue, introducing the discrete
Speaker 1: stories within, and from there the character of the Crypt
Speaker 1: Keeper was born. He was not alone, though, the comic
Speaker 1: would feature one tale introduced by him, one from the
Speaker 1: Vault Keeper and one from the Old Witch, and these
Speaker 1: three would often take potshots at each other in the
Speaker 1: letter columns, which I love. Tales from the Crypt debut
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty and in its five year run because
Speaker 1: an enormous hit with stories, frequently complaining that they couldn't
Speaker 1: keep it in stock. And you have something to say
Speaker 1: about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is where I would make a long winded
Speaker 2: speech about the American complacency that was born of the
Speaker 2: horrors of World War Two and how it created a
Speaker 2: perfect storm for the children of war veterans to want
Speaker 2: some kind of catharsis as they grew up in a stifling, repressive,
Speaker 2: conformist society, haunted by the specter of their own annihilation
Speaker 2: by the Cold War. Anyway, just pretend that I did
Speaker 2: that and it was very good.
Speaker 1: I think you did that in one of the episodes.
Speaker 1: It might have been a razor head, oh sure, but
Speaker 1: one of the horror Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I am fascinated by people who are real serious horror heads.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by what they get out of it. It
Speaker 1: almost seems like a physiological response to it. Well, you're
Speaker 1: a real horror I could ask you.
Speaker 2: I just think they're neat.
Speaker 1: You just think they're cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean I was.
Speaker 1: I was a.
Speaker 2: Comics person before I was a horror fan. You know
Speaker 2: my dad had a big comics collection as a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 2: including his mom FROMO. She sure did.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, she sure did.
Speaker 2: All of our dads, including like many valuable, many valuable issues,
Speaker 2: and also his record collection. So that's why I don't
Speaker 2: visit grandma. No, just kidding, she's a racist.
Speaker 1: Do we think that those issues are valuable because everybody's
Speaker 1: mom threw them away? And if nobody's mom threw them away,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be valuable. Like is that supplying demand? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I mean obviously comic books? Is this own like you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't tell people that I was into them. It
Speaker 2: was still considered like there was a degree of shame
Speaker 2: Baker still when I was in school. Yeah, and only
Speaker 2: like I mean, I only saw comic books become the
Speaker 2: dominant thing and quickly become a disgusting slurry that overwhelmed
Speaker 2: the rest of American pop culture. That only happened in
Speaker 2: like the Dots two thousands moving onward. But yeah, I was,
Speaker 2: I was into comics. Uh yeah, I think I got
Speaker 2: that Flash Gordon thing when I was like I used
Speaker 2: to always just read the comics in the paper, and
Speaker 2: then I got that Flash Gordon thing when I was
Speaker 2: like maybe four or five, and then just started going
Speaker 2: in a Marvel stuff from there. Horror I think I
Speaker 2: got into because my dad showed me the movie Alien
Speaker 2: when I was like six. I think I've told this
Speaker 2: story before, but my two introductions to horror were that,
Speaker 2: which literally gave me nightmares for the next four years,
Speaker 2: and then my down the street neighbor who was super
Speaker 2: into the movie Halloween, and when we would like play
Speaker 2: as children, would just dress up as Michael Myers and
Speaker 2: stalk me through the dusk lit neighborhoods. So strong stuff
Speaker 2: that imprinted on me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. However, details from the crypt comic soon began
Speaker 1: facing a wave of copycats and in turn with the
Speaker 1: increased attention from not just America's perennially uptight class of
Speaker 1: moralists but nothing better to do, but also people sharing
Speaker 1: that mindset who had real teeth, the people in the government.
Speaker 2: So since we've been giving this mini history of comic books,
Speaker 2: you'll now have context at the time from Max Gaines
Speaker 2: publishing famous funnies to when the moral panic over comic
Speaker 2: books began to set in was not even six full years.
Speaker 1: That's really crazy. On May eighth, nineteen forty, Sterling North,
Speaker 1: who would eventually write the children's Newbery Honor book Rascal,
Speaker 1: wrote in the Chicago Daily News that quote color comic
Speaker 1: magazines were a quote national disgrace, and that parents and
Speaker 1: teachers throughout America must band together to break the comic magazine.
Speaker 2: We will break it, okay, man.
Speaker 1: The word color whenever it's used by like im morally righteous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that era is always I always get uncomfortable. I don't
Speaker 1: like that. Fortunately, World War two nip North's campaign in
Speaker 1: the bud and after the war was over, the fact
Speaker 1: that unfortunately twenty million people died so that comics could
Speaker 1: live kind of a wash. Yeah, and after the war
Speaker 1: was over, the fact that comics is a medium focused
Speaker 1: so heavily on stories of bravery with various wings of
Speaker 1: the armed forces and a flag waving in the background
Speaker 1: and a gig standing on the throat of Gerbels or something. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're we're getting dangerously closed to Howard d Yeah, that
Speaker 1: helped keep negative nancies like North away. But it's a
Speaker 1: time turned towards horror and crime across all pop culture.
Speaker 1: It must be said. Comic books caught the attention of
Speaker 1: no less than jag Or Hoover, who, hilariously on April
Speaker 1: twentieth four, twenty nineteen forty seven, published an editorial in
Speaker 1: This Week claiming in part that quote crime books, comics
Speaker 1: and newspaper stories crammed with anti social and criminal acts,
Speaker 1: the glorification of Unamerican vigilante action and the deification of
Speaker 1: the criminal are extremely dangerous in the hands of the
Speaker 1: not just any child, the Unstill, yeah, this is where.
Speaker 2: It gets like really gross, is that they were like
Speaker 2: basically the whole moral panic was like, oh if kids
Speaker 2: are already bad kids, and they read comics, they'll become worse.
Speaker 2: But like there's like a degree of socioeconomic and racial
Speaker 2: dimension to who were bad kids or predisposed to be
Speaker 2: bad kids.
Speaker 1: Antisocial is such a funny word to anti social acts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hoover's article, though, kind of just paved the way
Speaker 2: for the real enemy of the comic books, Frederick Wortham.
Speaker 2: In March of nineteen thirty eight, Wortham, who was already
Speaker 2: somewhat famous for his testimony during the trial of notorious
Speaker 2: child killer and cannibal Albert Fish, gave his symposium on
Speaker 2: the quote psychopathology of comic books. This event was covered
Speaker 2: in Colliers Weekly in late March, and Wortham himself penned
Speaker 2: an article about comic books in the Saturday Review of
Speaker 2: Literature in May of nineteen forty eight. And that's all
Speaker 2: it took. Because people were had less to do in
Speaker 2: the forties and less things to read, So by fall,
Speaker 2: the Associated Press was already reporting on a rash of
Speaker 2: comic book burnings that were happening in largely Catholic parishes
Speaker 2: across the country.
Speaker 1: Burnings are never good burning, ye just don't don't.
Speaker 2: Burn stuff among Wortham's pet theories, where that Batman and
Speaker 2: Robin were gay, Wonder Woman was a lesbian sadist, and
Speaker 2: that ads for binoculars in the back of comic books
Speaker 2: promoted children spying on their neighbors. You think he would
Speaker 2: have been I was going to say this was the
Speaker 2: red scare, that we were encouraging children to do so.
Speaker 2: Then a quickly ad hoc assembled group of comic book
Speaker 2: publishers responded by publishing their own publisher's Code that year,
Speaker 2: and they drew on the Hollywood Production Code, which is
Speaker 2: better known as the Hayes Code, which itself had been
Speaker 2: explicitly designed to get the damn government off Hollywood's back
Speaker 2: for all that sweet, sweet sex and violence it had
Speaker 2: been portraying. The Publisher's Code followed some of the language
Speaker 2: of the Hayes Code, and it forbade portrayals of crime
Speaker 2: that might throw sympathy against the law or weakened respect
Speaker 2: for established authority. Nicely, it prohibited ridicular attack on any
Speaker 2: religious or racial group, and sexy wanton comics were banned,
Speaker 2: and my favorite one, divorce was from being The act
Speaker 2: of divorce was prohibited from being treated quote humorously or
Speaker 2: represented as glamorous or alluring. Comics that complied with this
Speaker 2: were offered a seal of approval. This failed to keep
Speaker 2: the Worthams and Hoovers of the world satisfied, and by
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty four, Wortham had published his most famous work,
Speaker 2: creepily titled Seduction of the Innocence Whatever editor let that
Speaker 2: through You failed, which argued that comic books contributed to
Speaker 2: delinquent behavior in hughes now worth noting here that in
Speaker 2: twenty ten, a University of Illinois librarian and PhD student
Speaker 2: discredited much of Wortham's research as fabricated or misleading. In particular,
Speaker 2: he was identifying children who were already being treated for
Speaker 2: psychological issues and using them as the benchmark.
Speaker 1: WHOA, oh wow, that's really talk about cooking the books. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wortham was also nothing if not a greedy publicity hound,
Speaker 2: and had spent much of the years between that first
Speaker 2: symposium and the publication of his book beating the drum
Speaker 2: for this particular cause. So by the time the book
Speaker 2: was published, he'd primed the American public and in particular,
Speaker 2: the American legislature, to jump on board. So in nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty three, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency
Speaker 2: had been established and would hold its first hearings in
Speaker 2: April of nineteen fifty four. Easy Comics were particularly hammered
Speaker 2: throughout the course of these hearings, chaired by SD's kiefouver
Speaker 2: As a fifty's name if ever I've heard one. He
Speaker 2: was supposed to be quite a liberal. Actually, I was
Speaker 2: disappointed to learn that he was responsible for this, while
Speaker 2: having a somewhat at voting record otherwise. But the hearings
Speaker 2: became a landmark for repression and censorship in the US.
Speaker 2: One exchange in particular has become very famous. Senator Keith
Speaker 2: Hoever was grilling Easy Comics publisher Bill Gaines, and he
Speaker 2: asked him, here is your may issue. This seems to
Speaker 2: be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman's
Speaker 2: head up, which has been severed from her body. Do
Speaker 2: you think that's in good taste? And Gaines answered, yes, sir,
Speaker 2: I do for the cover of a horror comic. That's
Speaker 2: the quip. But the full quote, he continued, is so
Speaker 2: much better. A cover in bad taste, for example, might
Speaker 2: be defined as holding her head a little higher so
Speaker 2: that blood could be seen dripping from it, and moving
Speaker 2: the body a little further over so that the neck
Speaker 2: of the body could be seen to be bloody. And
Speaker 2: it's funny about that cover in particular, it had already
Speaker 2: been edited. The original draft of it was what Gaines
Speaker 2: was describing, a much more graphic version, and they walked
Speaker 2: it back. Gaines would later admit that he was not
Speaker 2: at his best during these hearings. He was a frequent
Speaker 2: as I mentioned, he was a frequent user of Dexaderen
Speaker 2: and just I guess was on the standalt when he
Speaker 2: was crashing from his speed bingches. But worth them has
Speaker 2: the record for the best SoundBite during these hearings. Quote.
Speaker 2: I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic
Speaker 2: book industry pause for commercial break. I mean insane for
Speaker 2: a German Man to say that.
Speaker 1: Also, I mean just of all the words he could
Speaker 1: have used to kind of make the same point. A beginner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what a weird guy he was. I'm trying to
Speaker 2: think if there's anything else, I anything else that escaped
Speaker 2: his book.
Speaker 1: Did like a comic book artist kick Sam in his
Speaker 1: face on the beach or something.
Speaker 2: No, he was quite well regarded. I mean he corresponded,
Speaker 2: visited with Freud, he actually opened a clinic that specialized
Speaker 2: in the treatment of black teenagers, financed by voluntary contributions.
Speaker 2: But man, he hated comic books.
Speaker 1: That's the thing. I never really understood the bad reputation
Speaker 1: that comic books seemed to have when we were kids.
Speaker 1: That I never got because I was just like, well,
Speaker 1: they're reading. It's not television, you know. I mean, I mean,
Speaker 1: I was, I guess, you know, early nineties and stuff,
Speaker 1: when most people were just watching TV. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: never really understood the whole like Nay Roger brain kind
Speaker 1: of propaganda that was put around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's quite funny. The other thing that Wortham was
Speaker 2: the court psychiatrist for another famous case, the Brooklyn thrill Killers,
Speaker 2: who were a group of Jewish teenagers, hilariously enough, who
Speaker 2: were just roaming around beating the people, just saying I.
Speaker 1: Was looking up Albert Fish. Earlier, you talked about how
Speaker 1: he was. He testified at the Albert Fish trial. I
Speaker 1: was going to give a quick, a quick thumbnail sketch
Speaker 1: of his crimes. And it was too Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: too yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't do that. No, I mean, the whole, the
Speaker 2: whole thrust of that trial was the fact that like
Speaker 2: worth him was like, he is insane. This man is
Speaker 2: actually live, like truly deeply insane, that is my conclusion.
Speaker 2: And then the whole thing was like, well, we all
Speaker 2: agree he's insane, but we should probably kill him though,
Speaker 2: right like. And everyone was just like, yeah, no, that
Speaker 2: actually makes a lot. Yeah, let's just kill him and
Speaker 2: everyone and everyone was in agreement because of the horror
Speaker 2: that this man inflicted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't spook easily
Speaker 1: with that kind of stuff. Well, going this way, folks,
Speaker 1: there's a after you've done googling the Disney memorial orgy,
Speaker 1: there is a letter that Albert Fish wrote.
Speaker 4: To Oh God, send that to people. Oh dude, okay,
Speaker 4: don't don't don't. Don't you look genuinely unhappy with me
Speaker 4: right now?
Speaker 2: It's gross?
Speaker 1: Well, yes, yes, yes, yes it is this.
Speaker 2: How about this?
Speaker 1: I'll you, I'll My preferred Albert Fish nugget is that
Speaker 1: he had allegedly he was into self mortification, and he
Speaker 1: had allegedly inserted so many sewing needles into his bathing
Speaker 1: suit parts that the electric share supposedly shorted out the
Speaker 1: first time they tried to give it to him. Maybe
Speaker 1: that was his grand plan. Maybe that was the goal.
Speaker 1: Maybe he was playing he's playing three D chess, we're
Speaker 1: playing checks hashtag fish tricks.
Speaker 2: He would always huge on his grind. Oh my god, yeah,
Speaker 2: oh how much is this for? Oh buddy, As you
Speaker 2: meditate on that, we'll be right back with more, too
Speaker 2: much information.
Speaker 1: After these messages, the hearings, remember that who could forget
Speaker 1: her name? Like Stzka. He was Adlie Stevens's running mate.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, These.
Speaker 1: Hearings established the Comics Code of Authority, which essentially was
Speaker 1: just a more stringent and powerful version of the previous code.
Speaker 1: Although it was technically voluntary, comics not receiving the CCA
Speaker 1: stamp of approval were essentially doomed on the newsstand, and
Speaker 1: thus was the fate of EC Comics. Wortham, for his part,
Speaker 1: remained unsatisfied by having stamped out EC Comics, and a
Speaker 1: year later returned to The Saturday Review of Literature to
Speaker 1: publish an article called.
Speaker 5: It's Hilarious It's still Murder, in which she complained about
Speaker 5: all caps lettering and the phrasing of word balloons. What's
Speaker 5: what's wrong with all caps?
Speaker 2: I believe the both of those were like things that
Speaker 2: he identified that like either hastened or contributed to ill
Speaker 2: psychiatry and children. He was like it was like the
Speaker 2: phraseology of word balloons, where there was like short internal dialogue.
Speaker 2: It was like it was still murder to him.
Speaker 1: Did he live to see Batman look like pow wow,
Speaker 1: like the TV the animal.
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 1: Well's look this up because that would have caused his brain.
Speaker 2: It's actually quite sad because he did. He was like
Speaker 2: very pro like I said, protective of children and just
Speaker 2: like helping kids. But then later his last book was
Speaker 2: published in nineteen seventy four, so he lived through Batman.
Speaker 2: He did live through Batman, and he concluded he wrote
Speaker 2: a book on fanzines. He said they were constructive and
Speaker 2: a healthy exercise of creative drives. This is crazy. He
Speaker 2: was invited to address the New York Comic Art Convention
Speaker 2: and they got there and people heckled it out of him,
Speaker 2: and of course he h he stopped writing. The reception
Speaker 2: was so bad. He stopped publishing things about comic books.
Speaker 2: It's just like what he must have been, like that
Speaker 2: peep show thing, like are we the baddies? He just
Speaker 2: did not realize that everyone hated him for doing this.
Speaker 1: Well, he lived in nineteen eighty one, so he saw
Speaker 1: like Fritz the Cat and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, so one of his big things was like eye injuries,
Speaker 2: like he repeatedly cited like damage to the eyes as
Speaker 2: a as like one of these huge sins that comics admitted.
Speaker 2: So people were then playing it up in comics like
Speaker 2: later people would have like there's a Bongo. Comics published
Speaker 2: a story called Stab, which is about eye injuries. The
Speaker 2: funny guy Bill Gains.
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, I attempt to launch a new clean line at EC. Okay,
Speaker 1: just want to quick recap EC Bible Comics horrors and
Speaker 1: then trying to scale back the horrors now with a
Speaker 1: new line called New Direction. These names it does what
Speaker 1: it says on the tin, but pretty much anything with
Speaker 1: the EC name on it was getting returned from distributors
Speaker 1: unopened because of its reputation. The company closed its horror
Speaker 1: and crime titles, with an editorial statement at the end, reading,
Speaker 1: in part, economically, our situation is acute magazines that do
Speaker 1: not get on the newsstands do not sell. We are
Speaker 1: forced to capitulate. We give up. That's sad. Bill Gain's
Speaker 1: empire was whittled down to Mad Magazine, which, though it
Speaker 1: would become a huge success, is not the point of
Speaker 1: this episode.
Speaker 2: So's horror Roster went underground, but the impact that it
Speaker 2: had on generations of creatives still can't be measured. So
Speaker 2: by nineteen seventy one there was a budget UK film
Speaker 2: company named Amicist Productions and they approached Bill Gains about
Speaker 2: a feature length adaptation. So this was nineteen seventy two's
Speaker 2: Tales from the Crypt. It was directed by Freddie Francis,
Speaker 2: who had previously won an Oscar for Cinematography for nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty's D. H. Lawrence adaptation Sons and Lovers gross Following
Speaker 2: the same anthology format, the film collected several stories and
Speaker 2: shot them all on a shoestring budget over the course
Speaker 2: of about a month, notably starring Joan Collins and Hammer
Speaker 2: horror icon Peter Cushing. Unsurprisingly, it was not good, and
Speaker 2: also unsurprisingly, it got a sequel the year after Jordan
Speaker 2: You'll appreciate this. The sequel was called Vault of Horror
Speaker 2: and it was directed by a guy named roy Ward Baker,
Speaker 2: previously best known for A Night to Remember, a nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty eight documentary adaptation of a book about the sinking
Speaker 2: of the Titanic.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites.
Speaker 2: I don't think I got a Beatles one in here
Speaker 2: that yet, so I'll find one. I bet you will. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: a collective nostalgia was growing in the hearts and minds
Speaker 2: of the boomers who had grown up on easy comics,
Speaker 2: and they were now rapidly rising to the seats of
Speaker 2: power in the country. First example of this is the
Speaker 2: wonderful cult film Creep Show, and it is one of
Speaker 2: my favorites. It's so adorable and so funny and so
Speaker 2: good and it it's a perfect example of how much
Speaker 2: people were willing to go to the mat for this
Speaker 2: stuff because they just loved it so much. And it
Speaker 2: was directed Stephen King. Hit up George Romero about this,
Speaker 2: so like, Stephen King, you know, not quite I know,
Speaker 2: he would have been at like the height of his
Speaker 2: not height what.
Speaker 1: Was his post shining yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. So Stephen King at the height of
Speaker 2: his powers, hit up George Romero and was like, we
Speaker 2: got to do something about easy comics. It was an
Speaker 2: easy comics adaptation in everything but name. This was actually
Speaker 2: Stephen King's Hollywood debut as a screenwriter, and he acts
Speaker 2: in the opening segment in a just wonderful pants that
Speaker 2: really gives no doubt that the man was composed primarily
Speaker 2: of cocaine and alcohol. At that time.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say a sterling monument to his drug abuse.
Speaker 2: But it is so good. Creep show is so good.
Speaker 2: It has Hal Holbrook, Adrian Barbo, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson,
Speaker 2: Ed Harris and naturally because it was directed by George Romeiro,
Speaker 2: it was shot in and around Pittsburgh, because, as John
Speaker 2: Carpenter famously put it, someone's got to do it. Special
Speaker 2: effects artist whiz Tom Savini handled the effects and enlisted
Speaker 2: something like twenty thousand cockroaches for one indelible segment. The
Speaker 2: film is lovingly styled after the easy comics look. Individual
Speaker 2: segments end in freeze frames that turn they transition into
Speaker 2: illustrated comic splash panels, has all these garish lightings and
Speaker 2: Dutch angles. It's so good, and crucially, because it was
Speaker 2: written by King, it was able to avoid trapesing on
Speaker 2: any eat see trademarks. The film earned twenty one million
Speaker 2: on an estimated eight million budget, and is followed by
Speaker 2: an oddly named TV adaptation, Tales for the Dark Side,
Speaker 2: Tales from the Dark Side hashtag rights issues, and then
Speaker 2: The Creep Show two came out in eighty seven, and
Speaker 2: there are Tales from the Dark Side movies. I also
Speaker 2: want to say, and once again I just have to
Speaker 2: stress how good Creep Show is. Everyone. You should just
Speaker 2: go see it or rent it. It's hilarious and it
Speaker 2: paved the way for the absolute insane roster of Hollywood
Speaker 2: movers and shakers that we are about to drop on you,
Speaker 2: who pulled their own resources for their own proper adaptation,
Speaker 2: which means we have finally gotten to the point of
Speaker 2: this episode.
Speaker 1: For a keen eyed student of Hollywood. The opening credits
Speaker 1: of the HBO Tales from the Crypt series are a
Speaker 1: gold mine. We'll get to the cavalcade of prominent guest
Speaker 1: stars that the series enlisted shortly, but the executive producers
Speaker 1: listed at the top of every episode are one Walter Hill,
Speaker 1: David Geiler, Richard Donner, Joel Silver, and Robert Zemechis. Now
Speaker 1: go ahead and hit the rewind button on your podcast
Speaker 1: platform to take that all in again. Heigel, give us
Speaker 1: a rundown on this murder's row. Tell us who they are?
Speaker 2: You got Walter Hill, director of the Warriors forty eight Hours,
Speaker 2: Streets of Fire, which is his own cult hit. Not
Speaker 2: as cool as the other two, but that's fine. You've
Speaker 2: got his business partner and other producer David Geiler, who
Speaker 2: produced and co wrote Alien Aliens, also Myra Breckinridge, Oh My.
Speaker 1: God, the adaptation of the Gore Vidal book that was
Speaker 1: probably not a very delicate handling of transgender Sure.
Speaker 2: It wasn't, Nope, and also Undisputed. David Goiler produced Undisputed,
Speaker 2: the two thousand and two prison fight flop that starred
Speaker 2: Wesley Snipes, Ving Raim's Peter Falk and beloved character actors
Speaker 2: Michael Rooker and Wes Study, and also Master p I
Speaker 2: don't know why I went so long on that. I
Speaker 2: just think it's very funny that that guy, his like
Speaker 2: career was sort of I mean, he's still working, he's
Speaker 2: still alive. But anyway, You've got Richard Damn Donner of
Speaker 2: The Omen, Superman, The Goonies, Scrooged, Lethal Weapon, and then, last,
Speaker 2: but certainly not least, you've got Joel silver Baby producer extraordinaire.
Speaker 2: He did all that with Walter Hill. He also did Commando,
Speaker 2: the entirety of the Lethal Weapon franchise. He did the
Speaker 2: first two Diehards, the first two Predators, and the fucking Matrixes.
Speaker 2: That's in Silver Baby. He's also like kind of bad, right,
Speaker 2: like we don't really he's got like a pretty bad reputation, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's got a cameo in uh Roger Rabbit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I was getting to Roger Rabbit. Oh sorry,
Speaker 2: you've got Robert Zemechiz, director of Romancing the Stone Back
Speaker 2: to the Future trilogy, two of which are good. Who
Speaker 2: framed Roger Rabbit, which whips death becomes her and then
Speaker 2: a bunch of other stuff that sucks, like Forrest Gump
Speaker 2: and the Polar Express.
Speaker 1: Oh, he did Castaway, right, what do we land on
Speaker 1: the cast Away? Yeah? Sure, Cathaway's fine, said, thought about
Speaker 1: Dick Donner. I know, we told this story in the
Speaker 1: Goonies episode about how all the kids in the Goonies
Speaker 1: tormented him, and then he flew home to Hawaii the
Speaker 1: end of the Shoot to Unwind, only to discover that
Speaker 1: producer Steven Spielberg had flown the entire cast down to
Speaker 1: Dick Donner's house for a party to surprise him there
Speaker 1: when he arrived home, which is a hilarious prank and
Speaker 1: something that only Steven Spielberg could do. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that Dick Donner's feud with kids dated back to when
Speaker 1: he directed The Omen and he asked the kid auditioning
Speaker 1: to play Damien to fight him. And so the kid
Speaker 1: quote kicked him square in the balls and then began
Speaker 1: scratching at his face so hard that his parents had
Speaker 1: to pry him off. And Dick Donner kid.
Speaker 2: Really wanted that part.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he gave it to him. Like the kids spunk
Speaker 1: awful anyway. Walter Hill was directing at Universal in the
Speaker 1: early eighties when he got lost in Russ Cochrane's hardcover
Speaker 1: reprints of the EC Comics line and became a young
Speaker 1: boy again metaphorically speaking. He called in his partner David Geiler,
Speaker 1: who similarly got caught up in the Russian nostalgia, and
Speaker 1: the same collection caught the eye of Joel Silver. When
Speaker 1: all three men were working on Lethal Weapon in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three. The three of them optioned the rights from
Speaker 1: Bill Gains, who was suitably very intimidated by several of
Speaker 1: the most important men in Hollywood approaching him for quote
Speaker 1: very little, As Silver recalls in the Wonderful Tone Tales
Speaker 1: from the Crypt the Official Archives by dig b Deal.
Speaker 1: That's a hell of a name.
Speaker 2: Digby did some real lord's work. He's also like a
Speaker 2: co biographer of many famous people, like that's what he
Speaker 2: was mostly known for. And then also this awesome it's
Speaker 2: kind of like the Big Trouble in China book. That's like, uh,
Speaker 2: it's like four hundred dollars on you know, eBay and stuff.
Speaker 1: I've been trying to track that down for you.
Speaker 2: Oh, I got it. My in law has got it
Speaker 2: for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Shouts to Charlie and Patt but yeah, uh a deal.
Speaker 2: Digby Deal did celebrity autobiographies with like Natalie Cole, Patti LuPone.
Speaker 2: He also did a CIA memoir, What a Memoir by
Speaker 2: the j Paul Getty's fifth wife. So and just also
Speaker 2: made time to pen the definitive book on Tales from
Speaker 2: the Crypt a hero.
Speaker 1: Digby Deal, we bestow upon you the honorary title Friend
Speaker 1: of the Pod.
Speaker 2: You are dead and not in hell.
Speaker 1: Oh he's dead. He's super dead now he can still
Speaker 1: be Friend of the Pod though.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Also, while working on Lethal Weapon, Dick Donner was pulled
Speaker 1: in one night after shooting in their trailer, when Silver
Speaker 1: simply said, Hey, I'm working on a Tales from the
Speaker 1: Crypt series, and apparently that's all it took. Donner later said,
Speaker 1: I have no idea what our concept was going to
Speaker 1: be or how it evolved. And there were times when
Speaker 1: everyone near and dear to my life said, don't put
Speaker 1: any more of your money into this project, but I
Speaker 1: stuck with it. Robert Tamachis, meanwhile, was swayed through a
Speaker 1: different bill game his product Mad Magazine. He recalled us
Speaker 1: Back to the Future co writer Bill Gail, introducing him
Speaker 1: to Easy Comics while the pair were roommates at USC
Speaker 1: Gail was a comics nerd who had fan letters published
Speaker 1: in Marvel's Tales of Suspense and Iron Man in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty eight, and would later write for the company. While
Speaker 1: filming Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in which Joel Silver has
Speaker 1: a great cameo as a hot headed director, Baby Herman,
Speaker 1: you were great, you were perfect. You're better than perfect.
Speaker 1: It's just rot Roger. He bow his lines, what's that
Speaker 1: tweety bird, tweety bird? What's the script saying? Stars, not
Speaker 1: tweety bird, stars. God, it's so good it's so good
Speaker 1: and if he watch that's sin well, how am I?
Speaker 1: How is that? While filming your frame, Roger Rabbits and
Speaker 1: Mecus explained, Joel mentioned that he was working on getting
Speaker 1: easy comics on cable. I knew Tales from the Crypt
Speaker 1: would never succeed on network television. They'd ruin it if
Speaker 1: it was going on cable. I told him I was interested.
Speaker 1: One of the problems was that there was a huge
Speaker 1: pale on retro anthology stuff after the disaster of the
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone movie. Higel, what happened during the Twilight Zone
Speaker 1: movie shoot?
Speaker 2: John Landis killed some kids and also Vic Morro oh uh?
Speaker 2: And John Landis told the helicopter pilot to drive closer
Speaker 2: to the explosions Jesus and they all died in fiery,
Speaker 2: screaming agony, and then John Landis maintained that he did
Speaker 2: nothing wrong for years.
Speaker 1: Did the helicopter pilot live?
Speaker 2: I want to say.
Speaker 1: Yes, oh no, actually, oh, actually, I don't know the
Speaker 1: right answer for that.
Speaker 2: Both the three actors, No, no, it was just the
Speaker 2: kids and in Vic Morro Jesus. Yeah, Steven Spielberg cut
Speaker 2: him off because of that. Really, yeah, that's what it
Speaker 2: took yeah wow. Silver told the La Times it was
Speaker 2: an unusual.
Speaker 1: Time because there have been a bunch of anthology shows
Speaker 1: and films that had all just gone in the toilet.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. Sorry. During a take three hours before the incident,
Speaker 2: the helicopter pilot, who was in Vietnam, oh yeah, told
Speaker 2: Landis that the fireballs were too large and too close
Speaker 2: to the helicopter, to which Landis responded, you ain't seen
Speaker 2: nothing yet. Witnesses testified that Landis was still shouting for
Speaker 2: the helicopter to fly lower lower moments before it crashed. Also,
Speaker 2: you know, he was also violating labor laws by having
Speaker 2: these kids work past their hours.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, weren't they like not even actors.
Speaker 1: Didn't he just like find them or something like.
Speaker 2: He was Even the district attorney was like, this guy's
Speaker 2: being gross. Like during the trial, I mean, did he ever.
Speaker 1: Like recover from that? How did he not get like Alec.
Speaker 2: Baldwins a different times he made the thriller video.
Speaker 1: It was an unusual time, Joel Silver told the La
Speaker 1: Times because there had been a bunch of anthology shows
Speaker 1: and films that had all just gone into the toilet.
Speaker 1: In the aftermath of the Twilight Zone movie incident. He
Speaker 1: was craftily pitching it too. He promised the creative freedom
Speaker 1: of non network TV and a relatively large budget, which
Speaker 1: he subsidized by selling the rights to the series to
Speaker 1: foreign markets, packaging three at a time as feature length films.
Speaker 1: That's a really good idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, smart guy, you know what can I say? Knows
Speaker 2: his way around the business.
Speaker 1: Walter Hill recalled the project stalling out for several years
Speaker 1: until getting a phone call from Silver for what Deal
Speaker 1: calls a quote classic micro conversation with Silver. This amounted
Speaker 1: to Joel Silver, basically in one breath, telling Hill that
Speaker 1: Zamechas and Donna were on board, as was HBO, and
Speaker 1: could he'll film something in five days. Joel Silver would
Speaker 1: end up making his directorial debut on the series with
Speaker 1: the episode's Split Personality, which involves a typically Tails esque
Speaker 1: murderer's row of talent. It stars Joe Peshy. The script
Speaker 1: is written by Monster Squad and Night of the creepscribe
Speaker 1: Decker Jurassic Parks David Lowry was a storyboard artist and
Speaker 1: Speed and Twister director. Yon Debont was the cinematographer to
Speaker 1: this day. It is literally the only thing that Joel
Speaker 1: Silver has ever directed.
Speaker 2: Why bother when you knock it out of the park
Speaker 2: and surest that bat true. Because of this assemblage of
Speaker 2: power players plus the nostalgia factor, TFTC as I've grown
Speaker 2: to call it in Our Friendship was able to recruit
Speaker 2: a seriously mind boggling array of guests during its run,
Speaker 2: including many Oscar winners. The full list is like three
Speaker 2: columns long on Wikipedia, so I'm not naming everyone, but
Speaker 2: it'll feel like I am. Because of how many people
Speaker 2: were involved in this show. You had your A listers
Speaker 2: like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who directed an episode and was paid
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand dollars. Everyone worked for scale on this that's
Speaker 2: what's so crazy about it. So Arnes Schwarzenegger was took
Speaker 2: over the director's chair for an episode and was paid
Speaker 2: fifteen grand while also cashing a check for ten million
Speaker 2: for total recall, Tom Hanks, who also directed, Kirk Douglas,
Speaker 2: Christopher Reeve, Martin Sheen, Patricia r Quette, Brook Shields, Bill Paxson,
Speaker 2: Steve BISHEMI then you had basically anyone who is hot
Speaker 2: in the mid eighties to early nineties, and I do
Speaker 2: mean physically as well as with your juice, if you will,
Speaker 2: Why did I say that like that? Well, Demi Moore,
Speaker 2: Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Corey Feldman, Michael J. Fox,
Speaker 2: who also directed, Kyle McLachlan, and most of the cast
Speaker 2: of Twin Peaks Lou Diamond, Philip Kelly Preston, Key Hoy Kwan,
Speaker 2: Lea Thompson, and John Stamos. You have comedians include Dan Ackroyd,
Speaker 2: Don Rickles, Rickles' episode is great. He plays a ventriloquist.
Speaker 2: It's great. Greedy's included Yeah, Dan Ackroyd, Don Rickles, John
Speaker 2: Lovett's cheech, Marin Hanks, Area, Catherine O'Hara, Whoopi Goldberg, Katie Segal,
Speaker 2: Ted Danson, and Rita Rudner. There were also a bunch
Speaker 2: of people from the music world who came over Ikey Pop,
Speaker 2: Isaac Hayes, Meet Loaf, Adultery of the Who, Slash of
Speaker 2: Guns n' Roses and also just being Slash, Tim Curry,
Speaker 2: Priscilla Presley, and also.
Speaker 1: Wayne Newton said me Loaf as if Loaf was his
Speaker 1: last name, Meat Loaf, mister Loaf, please, that was my father?
Speaker 2: Call me meat.
Speaker 1: From was it The Apprentice Apprentice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when people are trying, he's like having a tit
Speaker 2: to meltdown and like people are trying to soothe him.
Speaker 2: Like I think it's Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray is like.
Speaker 1: Meat, meat, meat me.
Speaker 2: Some of the across the Pond talent who came over
Speaker 2: with Malcolm McDowell, uh Isabella Rossellini, Bob Hoskins who directed
Speaker 2: an episode, Timothy Dalton, you know, the Bond guy for
Speaker 2: Two Things of Bond Boxing, Legend, Sugar Ray Leonard and
Speaker 2: the show also gave early gigs to a bunch of
Speaker 2: people who would go on to become a listers like
Speaker 2: Ewan McGregor, Beniso de Toro, Daniel Craig, Jonathan Banks of
Speaker 2: Breaking Bad, that tall guy from Everybody Loves Raymond. I
Speaker 2: told you about. One of my favorite Jimmy Glick put
Speaker 2: downs is from him. Jimmany says something to him and
Speaker 2: Brad Garrett's like, oh, I'm sure you got that from
Speaker 2: the website, didn't you. Like A millisecond later, sweet sweet
Speaker 2: Martin just comes out with, oh, because there's so many
Speaker 2: books written about you.
Speaker 1: As much as I hate Martin Short, I do love
Speaker 1: Jimmy Glick.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jada Pinkett. I think it's just Jada Pinkett these days.
Speaker 2: She was in there. Jeffrey Tambore in a fat suit
Speaker 2: that looks suspiciously exactly like the fat suit and makeup.
Speaker 2: They put Colin Ferrell in to play the penguin in
Speaker 2: his current job. Like Jeffrey, google it, it's weird. Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Tamber's fat suit in makeup in Nights from the Crip
Speaker 2: looks eerily almost exactly similar to the penguin right now.
Speaker 2: Obvious genre mainstays like Brad Doree, Michael Ironside, Lance Hendrickson,
Speaker 2: ar Lee Ermie shows up at one point to do
Speaker 2: his whole thing, and also saving the handsomest for last,
Speaker 2: Brad Pitt. Tom Holland, who directed Child's Play and Fright Night,
Speaker 2: was the director of the episode that Brad Pitt stars
Speaker 2: in with music by Warren Zavaughn, which is super cool,
Speaker 2: and he told sci Fi that after Brad Pitt appeared
Speaker 2: in that episode, he said, I thought Brad Pitt was
Speaker 2: so terrific in that I went out and tried to
Speaker 2: get him an agent, and I couldn't get him an agent.
Speaker 2: In the episode, he said, he smiled It's all he
Speaker 2: had to do. And when he smiled, I said, well
Speaker 2: that's a movie star, and I said light him as
Speaker 2: well as the girl. I mean, he was as beautiful
Speaker 2: as she was.
Speaker 1: I love how much you love Brad Pitt.
Speaker 2: I love Tom Holland too. He's so dim funny. When
Speaker 2: Julian Walters died, I interviewed him about how she about it.
Speaker 2: She was almost the voice of Chucky and he was
Speaker 2: he was so cool on the phone. Yeah, he said,
Speaker 2: it was just like it was a little it ended
Speaker 2: up being like a little too effeminate and then like obviously,
Speaker 2: but she had been in play Misty for me, so
Speaker 2: he thought she could convinstantly pull off a psychopath. But
Speaker 2: I think the I think the problem was that in
Speaker 2: the test screetings people were like, well chokey sounds gay,
Speaker 2: so they were like, okay, get a man to do it.
Speaker 2: And those are just all the people with name recognition
Speaker 2: in this There are so many character actors in this
Speaker 2: show where you just go that guy like it's incredible.
Speaker 2: You would die doing a drinking game if you were
Speaker 2: just like take a shot every time you recognize someone.
Speaker 1: How long is someon not seven years? I mean there
Speaker 1: weren't even like that many episodes of this too. It's
Speaker 1: pretty amazing how stacked this guy is.
Speaker 2: Just wild.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the director's list is a who's who as well.
Speaker 1: You mentioned Tom Holland, who did Child's Play, Psycho two
Speaker 1: and Fright Night, American Psycho and Pet Cemetery director Mary Lambert,
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Toby Hooper, and also hopefully Paltergeist. Right,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some debate about that.
Speaker 2: Sorry, I should have put that in. He also directed
Speaker 2: Poulter Guys.
Speaker 1: Even though a lot of people think Steven Spielberg did.
Speaker 1: Spielberg put an ad in the Trades that said he
Speaker 1: did not.
Speaker 2: We've also covered that story. Yeah, but it's it's kind
Speaker 2: of sad.
Speaker 1: Exosus director and French Connection director William Freakin, that horror
Speaker 1: show of a man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, came out and worked for Scale. I guess
Speaker 2: he really loved ec comics man.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean the fact that everybody worked for Scale
Speaker 1: just shows the affection that so many of these people
Speaker 1: had for this beloved bit of nostalgia from the childhood,
Speaker 1: or in.
Speaker 2: The more cynical reading, they were cozying up to this
Speaker 2: crazy assemblage of hot producers, directors. Sure, I'll come by
Speaker 2: and do your thing for peanuts.
Speaker 1: Good point, very good point. The budget for each episode
Speaker 1: was around nine hundred thousand dollars, which sounds high to me,
Speaker 1: especially for today. I bet you that's like close to
Speaker 1: to two and a half million.
Speaker 2: It is high for an episode of TV show.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as you said, people just loved making these.
Speaker 1: Arnold Swartzenegger told the La Times in nineteen ninety that
Speaker 1: quote it was, I would say, can you do that?
Speaker 1: I can't do the voice.
Speaker 2: It was I would say the greatest joy I've had
Speaker 2: in the whole movie business.
Speaker 1: Arnold Schwartzenegger expressing the joy is the same word is
Speaker 1: the same of him expressing sorrow.
Speaker 2: It's because his laughter is so is his laughter is
Speaker 2: so alienating, say, I can't picture his laugh, but it
Speaker 2: was I would say the greatest joy I've had. It
Speaker 2: doesn't work, man like, I'm sorry. Imagine being like around
Speaker 2: him when he expresses genuine mirth'd be like, what the
Speaker 2: Jesus does? Spake? Zara Fuster starts playing in the background.
Speaker 1: What a truly horrifying image this is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is why people pay the koffee big Bucks.
Speaker 1: Wait could do the laugh and I'll splice in the sounds.
Speaker 4: That funny sue.
Speaker 1: Then, Oh, Joe Silvera recalled in a behind the scenes
Speaker 1: featurette that Martin Scorsese actually expressed interest in doing an
Speaker 1: episode at one point, and he had a specific comic
Speaker 1: in mind to do, but I guess it never came together.
Speaker 2: No, And he said he came up. He's like, he said,
Speaker 2: the next time he saw Marty, like years later at
Speaker 2: an awards show, whatever scorsees came up to him. He's like, Man,
Speaker 2: I really wish I'd gotten to do that night a
Speaker 2: Tees from the Crypt episode. Just like people loved it. Man,
Speaker 2: it's so it had such a spirit of joy behind it.
Speaker 1: Oh. For Robert Semechis, Dick Dahner and the rest of
Speaker 1: the show's high profile producers, Tales from the Crypts financial
Speaker 1: payoff was always thought to be a move the syndication,
Speaker 1: which paid off when Tales from the Crypt was bought
Speaker 1: by Fox for a late night Saturday slot in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, which I vaguely remember. But obviously all the
Speaker 1: sex and gore wouldn't fly because this was made for
Speaker 1: HBO after all, So the episodes were re edited to
Speaker 1: include alternate takes that eliminated most of the original episodes
Speaker 1: gore and nudity. The show also had actors record PG
Speaker 1: rated versions of otherwise profane dialogue during shooting, and even
Speaker 1: though this been extra work, it also meant extra money
Speaker 1: for all concerns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just funny that they were like, take good blood, curling, scream,
Speaker 2: thank you, Let's clean up all this blood and we'll
Speaker 2: do PG one next. Everyone back to one. Donner's vision
Speaker 2: from the jump was that the show had to look
Speaker 2: just like the comics. His first episode, dig That Cat
Speaker 2: whatever it was, shot entirely with extreme wide angle lenses.
Speaker 2: He told Digby deal deliberately distorting people. He also said
Speaker 2: that he told a young editor when he got his
Speaker 2: first edits back from this kid, I want you to
Speaker 2: go back into the editing room and do everything you
Speaker 2: were trained not to do. The show picked up some
Speaker 2: of the industry's most talented miniatures and effects artists. Chris
Speaker 2: Waylis directed an episode. He's known for the fly and
Speaker 2: other disgusting things. The opening credits are really incredible. That
Speaker 2: is a mini mansion is actually a fool like a
Speaker 2: miniature that which is designed by Richard Edlund, who is
Speaker 2: a guy who came up through industrial light and magic,
Speaker 2: which again is just proof that like Hollywood is like
Speaker 2: a dozen people who all know each other and make
Speaker 2: everything happen, particularly in this era. But Donner and Zimechis
Speaker 2: took charge of sequence and actually piloted, Like I guess,
Speaker 2: it was like an endoscopy camera, like a tiny little
Speaker 2: camera on the end of a tube that they were
Speaker 2: just kind of running from above through the rooms of
Speaker 2: this little miniature mansion and down the staircase, and they
Speaker 2: disguise the cut when the door opens, and then they're
Speaker 2: in the actual set for the crypt keeper. Speaking of that,
Speaker 2: the artist responsible for designing the crypt was Mike Vosberg.
Speaker 2: He's the guy who does all the comic illustrations. Also
Speaker 2: at the top of the episode, the main FX artist
Speaker 2: associated with Tales from the Crypt TFTC was a guy
Speaker 2: named Todd Masters, and boy did he go buck wild,
Speaker 2: freed from the constraints of regular TV. It did eventually, though,
Speaker 2: find a line that he couldn't cross, and I will
Speaker 2: detail that to you now. It was for an episode
Speaker 2: starring Steve Buscemi which involved his character suffering and then
Speaker 2: dying from something called jungle Rot. Masters told Digby Deal
Speaker 2: that he could have done the shot with a model,
Speaker 2: but actually devised a way to make it look like
Speaker 2: Steve Bishemi's face was melting off in real time and
Speaker 2: disgustingly falling apart, and it looked so realistic that Richard
Speaker 2: Darner was sent the dailies, and the morning after he
Speaker 2: called them and said that was too much. But Masters
Speaker 2: said to total Digby Deal that that was the only
Speaker 2: time he was ever told to rein it in. This
Speaker 2: thing picked up a bunch of Emmy nominations that it
Speaker 2: didn't win, mostly for technical stuff, but also for wardrobe,
Speaker 2: so shout out to Warden Neil, who's the wardrobe designer
Speaker 2: for that. Kirk Douglas was nominated for his guest role.
Speaker 2: I don't know what the cable Ace awards are, but
Speaker 2: TFTC won ten, so that's cool. Danny Elfman does the theme.
Speaker 2: I bet you can guess what it sounds like, thumping
Speaker 2: John SUSA esque rhythms a melodic line that falls squarely
Speaker 2: on the beat and uses the flat and fifth and
Speaker 2: sixth from the major scale. But other musicians popped up
Speaker 2: to help with TFTC, including as previously mentioned, my beloved
Speaker 2: Warren zevonn Jazz bass Legends, Stanley Clark, Maha Vishu orchestra
Speaker 2: keyboardist and Miami Vice themed composer Jan Hammer, guitarist and
Speaker 2: musical man About Town, Ray Cooter, Titanic and many other things.
Speaker 2: Composer James Horner, and Bruce Broughton, who is most notable
Speaker 2: for composing for like a ton of stuff that was
Speaker 2: never huge, But then he was embroiled in an OSCARS
Speaker 2: controversy where while as an executive committee member of the
Speaker 2: Academy's music branch, they discovered that he was calling other
Speaker 2: members and stumping for himself for his own nomination. Ugh,
Speaker 2: as you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
Speaker 2: more too much information after these messages.
Speaker 1: Well, folks, let's be honest. The people are here for
Speaker 1: the crypt Keeper, the borsch belt style host who's puns
Speaker 1: and discussed appearance and his little costumes. As you mentioned,
Speaker 1: have this all coming back. He's descended from the rich
Speaker 1: tradition of horror hosts that I think we may have
Speaker 1: covered in another episode, people like Vampira and Zacherley, who'd
Speaker 1: essentially MC in regional markets when their local affiliates aired
Speaker 1: old schlock late at night, so the idea of having
Speaker 1: this host was a must from the get go. What's
Speaker 1: Wild was out Chuck Jaeger, not the guy who broke
Speaker 1: the sound barrier for the first time, the guy who
Speaker 1: designed Chucky from Child's Play, actually wound up for the job.
Speaker 1: Joel Silver bumped into him in a storage facility where
Speaker 1: they both had lockers, happened to see Jaeger's collection of
Speaker 1: props and so forth, and offered him the job on
Speaker 1: the spot. Now, to me, that's such a like only
Speaker 1: in Hollywood kind of thing, and I really enjoyed that,
Speaker 1: And that kind of set me down a little little
Speaker 1: rabbit hole earlier tonight about yeah, about weird ways that
Speaker 1: other people in Hollywood got discovered and I found some
Speaker 1: good ones. May I go off on the sidebar for
Speaker 1: a minute and share.
Speaker 2: Someone but careful prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Counselor. Charlie's therein was discovered while in the middle of
Speaker 1: an argument at a bank. She later told Oprah, I
Speaker 1: really needed the money. I began pleading with this teller
Speaker 1: to help me, and a gentleman came over and tried
Speaker 1: to help. What I didn't know was that I was
Speaker 1: auditioning for a guy who had ended up being my manager.
Speaker 1: On the way out, the man who helped me gave
Speaker 1: me his card.
Speaker 2: That could have just been horniness, though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kate Moss was having a fight with
Speaker 1: her dad at an airport when she was spotted by
Speaker 1: a talent agent. She was fourteen years old.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: They boarded the plane, and according to the talent agent,
Speaker 1: the signed her. As soon as the seatbelt switched off,
Speaker 1: they went over to her. Kate would later say, I
Speaker 1: was smoking. I was fourteen, and I just lost my virginity,
Speaker 1: so I thought I was the beast knees. I was
Speaker 1: in the airport puffing away. I'd got on the plane,
Speaker 1: and then CEO of the model company and her brother
Speaker 1: came up to me and said, have you ever thought
Speaker 1: about being a model? Pamela Andrews was on a football
Speaker 1: game and they projected her image up on the jumbo
Speaker 1: tron that she happened to be wearing a Labat's Beer
Speaker 1: T shirt, and the image of her and that T
Speaker 1: shirt got back to Labat's Beer themselves, who suggested she
Speaker 1: model for them. Know, so that's how that started. Everyone
Speaker 1: knows about how Harrison Ford was a carpenter around Hollywood,
Speaker 1: and he was a carpenter for a very famous casting director,
Speaker 1: Fred Russ, who kept suggesting him for different parts. Harrison
Speaker 1: kept getting turned down until eventually he was cast in
Speaker 1: his breakout role in George Lucas's American Graffiti in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three.
Speaker 2: I can't believe people turned down Harrison Ford. Did you
Speaker 2: see him? Did you look at his face and hear
Speaker 2: his voice?
Speaker 1: I could see people thinking that he couldn't act early on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what I mean?
Speaker 1: Maybe, I don't know. He's so like stoic in a
Speaker 1: bad way. I don't know. Ye on your tail. Her
Speaker 1: Joy was walking her dog when she was scouted by
Speaker 1: the founder of a top modeling agency, accord Knew. An
Speaker 1: interview she gave with James Corden, she said, my actions
Speaker 1: were very stupid, and I don't suggest that anybody do
Speaker 1: what I did. A car was following me and I
Speaker 1: started running and this guy leans out the window and says,
Speaker 1: if you stop, you won't regret it, and I stopped.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay.
Speaker 1: Tony Braxon was singing to herself at a gas station
Speaker 1: when songwriter Bill Peteway overheard her and helped her get
Speaker 1: a deal with Arister Records. John Wayne had a job
Speaker 1: moving props and filming equipment at Fox Film Corporation when
Speaker 1: the filmmakers, notably John Ford, started casting him as an
Speaker 1: extra instead. And here's my favorite. I didn't realize this
Speaker 1: as much Marilyn Monroe lore as I know. She was
Speaker 1: nineteen years old and working in an aircraft factory when
Speaker 1: a touring Army photographer took her picture. Photographer liked what
Speaker 1: he saw when he developed the photo and came back
Speaker 1: to use her as a basically a recurring model. And
Speaker 1: after a while she got so many modeling for him
Speaker 1: that she quit her factory job, divorced her husband, dyed
Speaker 1: her hair blonde, and changed her name. She was still
Speaker 1: a norma Jean Baker. Well, good, Yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: all I got.
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe though, men in cars should and airport should
Speaker 2: stop approaching underage women.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's a good that's a good takeaway. So Chuck
Speaker 1: Yeger and Joel Silver went through the typically tortuous process
Speaker 1: of sketching and casting the Cryptkeeper from clay and basically
Speaker 1: just hacking away at it, taking different parts of the
Speaker 1: face away, the hair, the lips, the teeth, though crucially
Speaker 1: he did originally have a nose, and it was Robert
Speaker 1: Simchis Dear Sweet Robert Zamekis who gave us the Polar
Speaker 1: Express and Forrest Gump and Back to the Future, the
Speaker 1: movie about the mom trying to date her son, who
Speaker 1: suggested that they take the nose away, which is kind
Speaker 1: of the most horrifying part of the Cryptkeeper. It really
Speaker 1: is bad. It really, it's real bad. It's real bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Jaeger did add one signature touch. However, the crypt Keeper
Speaker 1: literally has Chucky from Child's play's eyes, or at least
Speaker 1: the same model of false eyes that was used in
Speaker 1: Child's Blame. The other producers, Walter Hill and David Geiler,
Speaker 1: were prepared for a more human looking host, and kind
Speaker 1: of understandably initially balked when they gazed upon the horrifying
Speaker 1: visage of the crypt keyts.
Speaker 2: Somehow desiccated and moist at the same time, exist in
Speaker 2: a state of super imposition between two states like Schrodinger's Cat.
Speaker 1: But eventually they were convinced six different people actually piloted
Speaker 1: the puppet, four alone just for the mouth, eyes, and face,
Speaker 1: and two left over for everything else basically, but It
Speaker 1: was only in the third season that the Cryptkeeper started appearing.
Speaker 1: It bespoke outfits from pop culture, Dressica's Elvis, Uncle Sam
Speaker 1: or in one case Forrest comp.
Speaker 2: Yeah it's great.
Speaker 1: Wow, he has the little box of chocolates and everything.
Speaker 1: Oh cute, I love it. He's on a bench assuming
Speaker 1: of course.
Speaker 2: They had props. The one were the brad pitt one.
Speaker 2: He drives in a motorcycle. You see his little feet
Speaker 2: in motorcycle.
Speaker 1: Is really funny. Jaeger said in a Making Up documentary
Speaker 1: that there were twenty seven servo motors inside the Keeper's
Speaker 1: head alone, and they would burn out every few weeks.
Speaker 1: So the puppeteers that would keep a close eye on
Speaker 1: the micro movements of the puppets face and notice of
Speaker 1: one area was lagging or breaking down, so the motor
Speaker 1: didn't actually go up in the flames and burn the
Speaker 1: whole thing down. It's on fire.
Speaker 2: Imagine watching that thing and like, oh he started to fire,
Speaker 2: he's starting to stroke out. Nope, get to him and
Speaker 2: then he's.
Speaker 1: Just the damn face could be scarier. It was at
Speaker 1: the center of a flame.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Wow. The voice of the Cryptkeeper was a guy named
Speaker 1: John Cassiir previously best known as the voice of the
Speaker 1: raccoon in Pocahontas. Pocahontas was made the nineties, though like
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety three, Oh I guess not previously later best
Speaker 1: known John Cassier told observer dot Com about his audition process, recalling,
Speaker 1: I saw some of the other people auditioning were looking
Speaker 1: at the script copy and saying, oh my god, this
Speaker 1: stuff is terrible. They didn't get it. The crypt keeper
Speaker 1: loves saying this stuff. He's delivering it like it's the
Speaker 1: best Shakespeare. I wanted him to treat the language like
Speaker 1: it was important, so he gave him a British accent.
Speaker 1: I used to love the Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the
Speaker 1: way he would introduce those episodes with such a tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek delivery. That is pretty great. What a great
Speaker 1: way to approach that. That's so wutiful.
Speaker 2: In one of the ones we watched last night, they
Speaker 2: put him in a little Shakespearean rough because he was
Speaker 2: he was the acting episode, and he was like, He's like,
Speaker 2: next time doing Shakespeare.
Speaker 1: Is a little rough caller? Was it cuter or less
Speaker 1: cute or as cute as Wishbone the Dog and the
Speaker 1: Shakespearean rough call.
Speaker 2: Oh great, call less cute, but with a similar charm.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. Supposedly, Michael Winslow and Charles Fleischer, the voice
Speaker 1: of Roger Rabbit, also sent in tapes.
Speaker 2: Please Eddie Wait.
Speaker 1: Who's Michael Winslow, the.
Speaker 2: Police academy guy, the guy who makes all the weird sounds.
Speaker 2: He's he's in space balls. He's like, we've lost the
Speaker 2: bleeps and the bloops in that, but we've got the root.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the Man of ten thousand sound effects. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Keeper's of noxious laugh was inspired by Margaret Hamilton's
Speaker 1: Wicked Witch of the West, which caught Jaeger's ear when
Speaker 1: Casiir sent in a tape. Unfortunately, the demands of the
Speaker 1: voice weigh heavily on Casiir, as you can attest from
Speaker 1: doing the impression at the top of the episode, he
Speaker 1: could only track a few minutes at a time and
Speaker 1: was drinking lemonon honey constantly. He told Digby Deal colorfully
Speaker 1: that the intensity of the Keeper voice quote left his
Speaker 1: vocal cords like raw meat by the time we were
Speaker 1: done with a session. He eventually had to modify the
Speaker 1: voice a little as the show progressed Also during the
Speaker 1: early seasons he had to slow down his delivery because
Speaker 1: the puppet can't keep up with them. That eventually picked
Speaker 1: up as the tech got better.
Speaker 2: That's like a little shop of horrors. Rick moranis genius
Speaker 2: that he is, was performing all of his stuff at
Speaker 2: half speed when he was in scenes with the full
Speaker 2: Audrey puppet. Really yeah wow? Well, you know, as I
Speaker 2: mentioned before, or did I as we alluded to before,
Speaker 2: we even have TFTC to thank for HBO's famous slogan.
Speaker 2: The network pitched a reel of its original programming to
Speaker 2: an ad agency and when it got to the gratuitous
Speaker 2: sex and violence portion, someone from the agency said, it's
Speaker 2: not TV and I know the responded, no, it's HBO.
Speaker 2: So from that twenty minute meeting, people made like five
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars I'm sure because ad and marketing work
Speaker 2: is not real.
Speaker 1: Oh way, way more than that way.
Speaker 2: Crypt made its debut. Why did I say that TFTC
Speaker 2: made its debut? Might I say that like that Tales
Speaker 2: from the Crypt made its debut? In this casey caseum
Speaker 2: over here, Tells from the Crypt made its debut June
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Here's a letter.
Speaker 2: I'm working on it, beating out the networks in HBO's
Speaker 2: seventeen million homes according to Nielsen figures, with a twenty
Speaker 2: four percent share of the audience. You're thinking about the Yeah.
Speaker 1: I never want to see you or your boyfriend ever
Speaker 1: again again, Casey Kiss.
Speaker 2: The success of the show was so dramatic and immediate
Speaker 2: that Universal offered the team a three picture deal to
Speaker 2: be spun off the series. These were also predated, bizarrely enough,
Speaker 2: by a children's animated TV show, Tells from the Cryptkeeper,
Speaker 2: which ran on ABC and CBS until nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I forgot.
Speaker 2: I think that's where I might have I definitely had
Speaker 2: watch episodes of that. There was also a children's game
Speaker 2: show called Secrets of the Cryptkeeper's Haunted House that ran
Speaker 2: for a year on CBS. The first of the feature
Speaker 2: length adaptations was Demon Night, which was officially a subtitle
Speaker 2: with the TFTC branding as a concept. It weirdly enough
Speaker 2: predates the entire series, and it wasn't adapted from the comics.
Speaker 2: First draft was written in nineteen eighty seven, and Tom
Speaker 2: Holland initially wanted to have it be his fall up
Speaker 2: to Child's play. He then made a movie called Fatal Beauty,
Speaker 2: which bombed at the box office. The script then went
Speaker 2: to Pumpkinhead screenwriter Mark Carducci, and then a few years
Speaker 2: later was kicked to Pet Cemetery director Mary Lambert. Lambert
Speaker 2: bless Her had some radical ideas for it, including casting
Speaker 2: all African American leads, but Pet Cemetery too bombed, so
Speaker 2: she couldn't get her money to make her vision. Screenwriter
Speaker 2: Ethan Rife told Fangoria, this is when we thought this
Speaker 2: script was cursed. The joke was that the curse wasn't
Speaker 2: on us, but whoever optioned the script usually had serious
Speaker 2: career problems afterwards if they didn't make the movie. The
Speaker 2: script later went to Charles Bands notoriously low budget but
Speaker 2: scrappy Full Moon Features. It was optioned as a potential
Speaker 2: middle picture in the branded trilogy, although neither of the
Speaker 2: films on either side of it ever got made. The
Speaker 2: budget problems and headache surrounding this thing were so pervasive
Speaker 2: that they didn't know if they were going to have
Speaker 2: enough money to pull off the eponymous demons, and they
Speaker 2: were just gonna have this army of the of evil
Speaker 2: just be guys. In black suits and sunglasses like the
Speaker 2: Agents of the Matrix. Universal wisely kicked in money for
Speaker 2: the full treatment, and Ernest Dickerson was tapped to direct.
Speaker 2: Dickerson had been working primarily as a cinematographer on Spike
Speaker 2: Lee's early films, but he was coming off his directorial
Speaker 2: debuts Juice starring Tupac, great movie Surviving the Game starring
Speaker 2: Iced Tea, which is also a great movie I love
Speaker 2: in Juice like Dickerson was a huge fan of the
Speaker 2: horror genre. Interestingly enough, love like Lovecraft and everything, and
Speaker 2: you can see it in Juice, where like Tupac like
Speaker 2: pops up like Michael Myers in the frame sometimes, like
Speaker 2: there's literally scenes in which he does like the Michael
Speaker 2: Myers face just coming out of the shadows thing. It's
Speaker 2: so funny. I have to think it was a deliberate tribute,
Speaker 2: because Dickerson knew that much stuff and he jumped at
Speaker 2: the chance to play around in the genre. He said
Speaker 2: that with directorial assignments sometimes I'd be told, well, we
Speaker 2: never saw this as a black film, and he said, actually,
Speaker 2: neither did I. But with Demon Knight, I was able
Speaker 2: to put some African american Ism into it. For example,
Speaker 2: I put Jada Pinkett in the role of the heroine,
Speaker 2: and for me, this was the perfect setup as until then,
Speaker 2: if you put a black person in a movie, they
Speaker 2: would usually be one of the first to die, and
Speaker 2: she wound up being the final lady. In another interview,
Speaker 2: I saw him just say that he was happy to
Speaker 2: make the first film in which a black woman saves
Speaker 2: the world. Unfortunately, the film did just okay. It made
Speaker 2: twenty one million on a twelve million dollar budget, but
Speaker 2: that is far from a hit in Hollywood. So after
Speaker 2: Demon Knight, the Tales from the Crypt Cinematic Universe TFTCCU
Speaker 2: gets a little screwy. The story goes that Quentin Tarantino
Speaker 2: ended up writing From Dusk Till Dawn, his own screwy
Speaker 2: movie of the mid nineties, directed by Robert Rodriguez, thanks
Speaker 2: to Robert Kurtzman. Robert Kurtzman is one third of K
Speaker 2: and B Effects over this ledge and very practical effects house.
Speaker 2: His other partners were included Greg Nicotero, who went on
Speaker 2: to run The Walking Dead for many seasons, and Kurtzman
Speaker 2: came up this for this idea From Dust Till Dawn
Speaker 2: just to have a project that would be a showcase
Speaker 2: for what his effects company could do. So in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety he hired a young video store clerk named Quentin
Speaker 2: Tarantino to flesh out a twenty four page outline and
Speaker 2: paid him fifteen hundred dollars to do so. Kurtzman initially
Speaker 2: wanted to direct and so that he could, just couldn't
Speaker 2: convince anyone to let him do it until after Pulp Fiction,
Speaker 2: when Tarantino went to Mirrimax and said, the next movie
Speaker 2: I do will be From Dust Till Dawn. In the
Speaker 2: interim though there were talks about it becoming the next
Speaker 2: Tales from the Crypt movie and those broke Down, which
Speaker 2: brings us to Bordello of Blood. Bob Zemchas must have
Speaker 2: been pissed when From Dust Till Dawn escaped his clutches
Speaker 2: because he'd written a script with Robert Gail right out
Speaker 2: of film school that was strikingly similar about a whorehouse
Speaker 2: full of vampires. They pitched it to John and Milius,
Speaker 2: the insane gunnut libertarian director who wrote Apocalypse Now directed
Speaker 2: Conan the Barbarian and is the inspiration for Walter Soachek
Speaker 2: in The Big Lebowski I didn't know that.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Milius expressed interest, but the film just didn't get made.
Speaker 2: But at some point, after Tales from a Crib had
Speaker 2: done so well, the newly formed DreamWorks Pictures tried to
Speaker 2: poach Robert Zemechiz from Universal and he said, no, I'll
Speaker 2: stay with Universal if I can make Bordello of Blood.
Speaker 2: This was a mistake. Zamecas didn't even end up directing it.
Speaker 2: That chair went to Gilbert Adler, who is a producer
Speaker 2: in all of those Guys Orbits. It was the first
Speaker 2: and last time he would direct. The thing nearly went
Speaker 2: down the tubes from the start thanks to casting. It
Speaker 2: starred Dennis Miller, who had parlayed his whole shtick on
Speaker 2: sno's Weekend Update into Dennis Miller Live and Boy he sucks.
Speaker 2: H Dennis Miller sucks. He sucks so hard I hate him.
Speaker 2: Miller wanted a million dollars to make the film, which
Speaker 2: he had not made before or I believe after, and
Speaker 2: Universal wisely refused to pay. So Joel Silver wanted him
Speaker 2: so much that he cut seven hundred and fifty grand
Speaker 2: from the FX budget to pay Dennis Miller to be
Speaker 2: in this movie. Dennis Miller didn't like the dialogue as
Speaker 2: written and proceeded to improvise much of his lines, which
Speaker 2: not only screwed over the rest of the cast but
Speaker 2: the film's continuity. It was filmed in Vancouver because of
Speaker 2: Joel Silver's apparently contentious history with Hollywood labor unions and
Speaker 2: Ben selzre Yeah, and Vancouver doesn't have many night hours
Speaker 2: in July and August, which, as you might surmise, was
Speaker 2: a hindrance to filming a vampire movie. Because Miller insisted
Speaker 2: that the film shoot around tapings of Dennis Miller Live,
Speaker 2: the crew were forced to work weekends, which pissed them off.
Speaker 1: There was also the problem of Erica Aleniak, who just
Speaker 1: come off of Baywatch was hoping to launch herself as
Speaker 1: a serious actress. She also demanded rewrites for her character
Speaker 1: before they'd even gotten onto the set, though she said
Speaker 1: they were related to Joel Silver attempting to force a
Speaker 1: girl on girl's scene between her and Angie Everheart. The
Speaker 1: other female lead. Everheart meanwhile had almost no acting experience,
Speaker 1: but was dating Sylvester Stallone, who was then starring in
Speaker 1: The Assassins, produced by Joel Silver. That movie was being
Speaker 1: shot in Seattle. So yes, Sylvester Stallone basically got his
Speaker 1: girlfriend Cass as a lead in a movie to make
Speaker 1: visiting her on weekends easier because Seattle and Vancouver are
Speaker 1: fairly close to one another.
Speaker 2: That is such a dick swinging move. I almost have
Speaker 2: to respect it.
Speaker 1: Oh, I totally respect it. Hilariously, in a making of
Speaker 1: doc a Fresh out of Rehab, Corey Felban threw the
Speaker 1: pair under the bus for acting like divas, the pair
Speaker 1: meaning Everheart and Eric Eleniak.
Speaker 2: Eleniak and Miller.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Corey Felban also claimed in his autobiography, The
Speaker 1: incredibly named Corey Biography, that Dennis Miller literally told people
Speaker 1: on air on his TV show not to watch the
Speaker 1: movie before it even came out, because, as you've correctly
Speaker 1: noted before, he sucks and it's kind of so bad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well tell me, why, tell me more about why he sucks.
Speaker 2: I don't know, he's weakend up that it was always
Speaker 2: super weak. Yeah, he's like the weakest part of that show.
Speaker 2: He cannot act for sure, and just he's one of
Speaker 2: those guys who clearly thought, like, I'm cool enough to
Speaker 2: just do me throughout an entire movies. Yeah, I don't know, man,
Speaker 2: it just it's it's the smarm of Miller, and I
Speaker 2: just associated him with Bill maher Of. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: loser boomers who like came out with their shirt tucked
Speaker 2: into their dark washed jeans, and really I don't want
Speaker 2: to get out of Iran here. But women, you know, like, okay.
Speaker 1: Dude, this is going to send you into such a
Speaker 1: it's sending me into a rage. This just single line
Speaker 1: from his Wikipedia page. In nineteen seventy nine, after seeing
Speaker 1: a Robin Williams comedy special on HBO, Miller began to
Speaker 1: pursue his dream of being a stand up comedian. He
Speaker 1: saw Robin Williams, those dynamic, electrifying, colorful performers of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century.
Speaker 2: How what was he like twenty five thirty? Like it
Speaker 2: must have been like it's like watching Michael Jordans sink
Speaker 2: the shot and being like I could do that. Now
Speaker 2: I must play basketball.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, he was twenty six.
Speaker 2: M Night Shaimo on writing The Sixth Sense and looking
Speaker 2: around at pictures of like posters from like Jaws and
Speaker 2: Aliens and being like, yeah, I just have to write
Speaker 2: something as good as those but he kind of kind
Speaker 2: of did you love the sixth sense? I do? Did
Speaker 2: you see his new one?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: What a piece of movie is? Cut all that out?
Speaker 2: I don't want to get from the weird m night
Speaker 2: shamal on stands that are out there.
Speaker 1: What prick.
Speaker 2: So the pathetic five point six million dollar debut of
Speaker 2: Bordello Blood pretty much put the proverbial nail in the
Speaker 2: coffin of the further big screen adventures of Tales from
Speaker 2: the cryp So in a sense, we did get another
Speaker 2: unaffiliated movie out of it, Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, which
Speaker 2: I think is just an underappreciated little gem from the nineties.
Speaker 2: Not a lot of people know about this movie. It
Speaker 2: was completely dominated by Independence Day, but I think it's
Speaker 2: just a delight.
Speaker 1: You might say that not a lot of people know that.
Speaker 2: Yes I might. Peter Jackson and his wife Maybe not
Speaker 2: at the time, but I think now. Wife Fran Walsh
Speaker 2: wrote this idea of a psychic who uses real ghosts
Speaker 2: to fleece people into thinking that their house is haunted
Speaker 2: and then getting him to cleanse it. They were writing
Speaker 2: this in nineteen ninety two while they were also working
Speaker 2: on Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson. Then they turned the
Speaker 2: Frighteners into a treatment and sent it off. Robert Simchis
Speaker 2: found it and wanted to make it the next Tales
Speaker 2: from the Cryp movie, so he hired the two of
Speaker 2: them to turn their treatment into a full length screenplay
Speaker 2: in January of ninety three, and the pair it a
Speaker 2: year later. This script so impressed Zemechis that he told
Speaker 2: Jackson to direct it and that he would produce. Stars
Speaker 2: Michael J. Fox and a few other interesting people. And
Speaker 2: it just flopped.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: The marketing was off. As I mentioned earlier, Independence Day
Speaker 2: was its competition, so that was a fool's errand if
Speaker 2: ever there was one. But I really like it, you
Speaker 2: might too. Maybe probably not, ye you know you've said
Speaker 2: that to me a few times. Okay.
Speaker 1: I mean, anyone likes the Beatles as much as Peter
Speaker 1: Jackson does. Can't be all that he got my Beatles
Speaker 1: reference in there there. It is what killed Tales from
Speaker 1: the Crypts though was unfortunately I belove it. British Gilbert
Speaker 1: Adler told The Daily Dead, I thought if we went
Speaker 1: to England it would be great to get all these
Speaker 1: actors and directors that do tails from the Crypt. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He added that locations were a big deal to him,
Speaker 1: specifically castles. I couldn't do that in America, he said.
Speaker 1: In America, if something is two hundred years old, it's old,
Speaker 1: and England if something is five hundred years old, it's young.
Speaker 1: Also if there was a little bit of the Muppets
Speaker 1: in there too, then they shot the Muppet Show in London. Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's puppets and kind of weird, weird,
Speaker 1: kitchy Bodvillian borsch belt stuff at the beginning. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm listening key pitching, key pitching a.
Speaker 1: Muppets tails from the Crypt crossover.
Speaker 2: That has to have it has to have happened, is
Speaker 2: piggy like Karate chops him.
Speaker 1: It must have happened, like Google that while I finished this.
Speaker 1: This must this must have happened.
Speaker 2: This may have been a case of Adler's overt anglophilia
Speaker 2: before anything else though. Yeah.
Speaker 1: His wife is English and his first project was produced
Speaker 1: in London, and at one point he made a failed
Speaker 1: bid to bring The Rocky Horror Picture Show over to
Speaker 1: the US when it was just a theater production in London.
Speaker 1: Good instincts, good instincts. Yeah, unfortunately not in the case
Speaker 1: of bringing The Tail from the Crypt over to England.
Speaker 1: HBO was initially concerned about the cost, but Adler convinced
Speaker 1: them and Tail from the Crypt production took over the
Speaker 1: historic Ealing Studio in West London for six months in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five. That's when problems began. Almost immediately. Gilbert
Speaker 1: wasn't able to attract American directors to work in England
Speaker 1: because of the country's taxes. Even Roger Moore, who's you
Speaker 1: note as British as they get, told Gilbert from Switzerland
Speaker 1: call me when you get back to la I can't
Speaker 1: afford to work in London. So why in the seventies
Speaker 1: all those rock stars from England became tax exiles in
Speaker 1: la or Switzerland. Freddie Mercury, Ringo, John Lennon, Fith milling
Speaker 1: Stones just took to a yacht. Yeah. There are also
Speaker 1: the cultural differences, mainly the mandated twice daily tea breaks
Speaker 1: and the pub lunch hour each day of shooting. Also, Adler,
Speaker 1: the director, was completing production on the ill fated Bordello
Speaker 1: of Blood while working on the UK season of Tales
Speaker 1: from the Crypt, which really hung him out to dry.
Speaker 1: That said, he did end up getting his precious locations,
Speaker 1: shooting at Nebworth House Worthim and indeed dover.
Speaker 2: Castle, Nedworth House also being where they cut Zeppelin four.
Speaker 1: I believe no that was it was Headley Grange, wasn't it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: But why do I have Nedworth in.
Speaker 1: My head because of Nedworth?
Speaker 2: Like the oh the festival? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was wrong. There's a chain of chicken places
Speaker 1: near me called Mad for Chicken, and I always rooted
Speaker 1: in Liam Gallagher's voice, Mad for It. The tone of
Speaker 1: Tales from the Crypt in England also lightened up, leaning
Speaker 1: away from its trademark gore and horror, something more British or,
Speaker 1: as you write, something more constipateous. Thank you for that, Sorry,
Speaker 1: John and Lee w and all our friends over in
Speaker 1: the UK. Additionally, Bill Gains died in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: The guy had kicked this all off, and the rights
Speaker 1: to e s reverted back to his family, who simply
Speaker 1: refused to sell them back to producers to make more
Speaker 1: Tales from the Crypt episodes. There was an alleged reboots
Speaker 1: series in the works from Tell Them Heigel.
Speaker 2: M Night, Hiamela my favorite humble and talented man in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: How do you think that would have gone?
Speaker 2: Probably Doug. He would have been forcing dumb like. He
Speaker 2: would have been forcing twists into it. By the way,
Speaker 2: there is a Muppets Tells from the Crypt connection good
Speaker 2: it is. In Muppets Tonight, there was a recurring bit
Speaker 2: called Tales from the Vet which was in the intro
Speaker 2: to that mimicked the tracking shot through the old mansion
Speaker 2: with passing by a bunch of animals and cages through
Speaker 2: the Vets office while doing a work on the Danny
Speaker 2: Elfman theme.
Speaker 1: That's incredible.
Speaker 2: Muppets Tonight was one of the bad ones, right.
Speaker 1: I remember liking it. I remember watching it when it
Speaker 1: first premiered, but I was just so excited out The
Speaker 1: Muppets are coming Back came out like ninety eight, right.
Speaker 2: Ninety six?
Speaker 1: Ninety six order a full order of twenty two episodes
Speaker 1: canceled after broadcasting ten Really you remembered falsely? It was
Speaker 1: that much of a bomb. And there's the Muppet Show.
Speaker 1: What was the difference between Uppets Night and the Muppet Show? Wow,
Speaker 1: I don't knowze people hated it did taste just change
Speaker 1: because it was all like Friday Night. It was on
Speaker 1: like the TGIF lineup, wasn't it.
Speaker 2: We're so close to finishing this, don't get bogged down
Speaker 2: in the details.
Speaker 1: All right, take us home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think it really was a combination
Speaker 2: of it. It was probably the rights things, because in
Speaker 2: the limited information I could find about this they had
Speaker 2: in the original contract, it was like up to amount
Speaker 2: of time right that they had these, And when Bill
Speaker 2: Gaines died, they couldn't renegotiate it with his estate who
Speaker 2: probably realized they got fleeced initially and wanted way more
Speaker 2: money for it.
Speaker 1: And did Joel Silver say that we paid very little?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is currently why you can't watch this
Speaker 2: thing anywhere unless you they're all on YouTube, which is great,
Speaker 2: but yeah, there's there really die in for, like a
Speaker 2: big authorized Blu ray treatment or HD remaster regrade. But
Speaker 2: sad to say that is sad. Yeah, and I don't
Speaker 2: have much. And you know why that's sad, Jordan, is
Speaker 2: because the repeated theme that kept coming out in all
Speaker 2: of my research for this was just how much fun
Speaker 2: everyone had working on this. You know. It was also
Speaker 2: sad that the original comics were victim of one of
Speaker 2: America's seemingly biannual moral panics. But it just rules so
Speaker 2: hard that all of these people at the top of
Speaker 2: their respective games came together and created just a working situation,
Speaker 2: a creative environment that so many people were just completely
Speaker 2: overjoyed to be a part of. For a few years
Speaker 2: at least, Hollywood worked as it was designed to. Talented
Speaker 2: people got resources to make cool stuff, the working conditions
Speaker 2: were rewarding, and everyone walked away. Happened. That doesn't happen
Speaker 2: that much in any creative field anymore. And that's the
Speaker 2: truly scary part. But at least we can ghoulishly cackle
Speaker 2: with joy that it ever happened at all. Folks, Thank
Speaker 2: you all for listening so much. This has been too
Speaker 2: much information. I'm Alex Heigel and.
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan run Talgg. We'll catch you next time. Too
Speaker 1: Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg.
Speaker 1: The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.
Speaker 2: The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtogg
Speaker 2: and Alex Heigel.
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and The Ghost Funk Orchestra.
Speaker 1: If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
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