Ep26 - Under New Management

Hello, boils and ghouls. It's time to gather around us horrifying hunter, petrified Kristen and devish Dan crack open another cast volume of tales from the Chris. This is Farah's from the port. [laughter] [music] [music] Welcome kiddies to horrors from the vault. My name is horrifying hunter and I'll be one of the three shadowy figures leading you to the dark and haunted corridors of this very vault. Tonight we're cracking open the 10th tome of the final season of Tales from the Crypt with About Face, an episode all about scary demon face ladies. But before we can venture fully into the vault, let me introduce you to my co-host, devish Dan. Something people might not know about you is that you are a big wizarding world fan. What is your favorite film in the Harry Potter franchise? Oh, you know what? A favorite film and favorite book has to be Prisoner of Azkebin. I love the choice. I love the time travely stuff. I think that it has some of the best time travel execution done in any form of media to be perfectly honest with you. It's very well thought out. You know how I know it's good to my friend, Zach, who is like an artsy, artsy motherfucker and turns his nose up at like popular media in general. He's like, I just watched Prisoner of Azkebin on the plane and I had a fucking blast with it. I'm like, oh good, that means it's a good movie. Yep. It doesn't require as much knowledge as you might think. You can just kind of pop in. You've got freaky ass deminters. You have a werewolf. Like there's some crazy shit. A rat turns into a man. That's wild. A rat man. A bombing ash. I think you and I might have talked about this at one point, but I am a philosopher stone guy. What about you? Yeah. Book, same as Dan. Prisoner of Azkebin all the way. Movie, Chamber of Secrets is my favorite movie. I forward the Wizarding world, franchise, particularly the first eight movies. I always have like a what if sort of alternate universe if Columbus directed all of them. You know, because obviously third I was Alfonso quite all right. So, which is not a crazy by the way that crazy Harry Potter is insane. Yeah. So, I'm I'm also living in like I said, this alternate universe where I'm like, couldn't have been a lot better if Columbus did did them all, but here we are. I'm a massive, massive Wizarding world, fun, huge. Here we go. I'm not hearing a lot of praise for Mr. David Yates here, but hey, it is what it is. I'll stay and buy it. I still think that first fantastic beast film is is pretty magical. I think that they got a lot of stuff right with that first fantastic beats movie. But yeah, as far as the actual franchise, I think that just sorcerers, philosophers, whatever you want to call it, the stone movie. It is the perfect children's slash family film where it sets you up. It puts you in this universe. It's like Star Wars. It's got a complete beginning, middle and end. And if you just stop there, you are completely satisfied. The fantastic beats movie had a nice Polish Baker in it, so it gets my approval. Also, Philosopher's Stone can dress up as a Halloween movie, Christmas movie, Easter movie. It's a movie for all occasions. Yeah, yeah. I am also a big fan. They cut a lot out of it, but there is something about the tone of half-blood prints. I think it's that that C.P.A. kind of look to it that is appealing to me. That is kind of despite being incredibly dark. I still like it quite a bit as far as comfort watching. Let's not shut all over David Yates, though. He's a good workman director that just took what other people did and kind of kept it rolling. He is what Disney is doing with Sean Levy right now, 100%. It's crazy that they're like, "Dude, Deadpool and Star Wars." They're giving that man the Infinity Stones at this point, but people will strider. People will freak it. We need to talk about Mike Newell, because Goblet of Fire was an absolute mess. Goblet of Fire is rough, but I think Phoenix is rougher to be perfectly honest. I feel like Goblet of Fire is rushed is the problem. Yeah, but it's also emo haircut, boy days. That is peak mid-2000s, and I was in it. That was my fashion at the time. There's almost an argument. I feel like there's also an argument for Goblet onwards that this should be into like two paws, like definitely how those was. For sure. Yeah, we're not here to talk about Harry Potter, but we are going to continue that conversation if you're wondering why we opened up with here. Famous Harry Potter villain is an essential character in this one, and Dan will tell you all about that very soon. Let's talk about season seven, episode 10 aired on June 28th of 1996. Ash, before we talk about the episode itself, let's see you at the House of Horror as we hit this week's comic book inspiration. All right, so we are reading The Hone to Fire, issue 27 all the way back in May 1950. It was okay. It was very true-ish in parentheses to the source material. The names of the twins are a little bit different. Also, we'll get to it, but the father in the episode was a bit of a piece of shit, where in the comedy book, he's almost like a doating father where he's getting, you know, crap from his daughter, but I would say check it out if you want to see where the cut source material was from, but it doesn't differentiate itself as much from where I would say check it out. It's a skip from me. What do you think? I think that making the changes to be more transgressive with the source material was a big improvement over the comic book. I wanted the mask or the makeup effects to be more like the comic book. Oh, trust me, there is a joke in my script about this, and we will get to it very soon. So you just thought it was all right, Jim? Yeah, it's good. Yeah, I go back and forth over wanting the father to be more like the comic book or keep what they did in the episode, but we'll get to that once we get to the actual episode. The way I see it is, I feel like we've had more stories of the doating father protecting their young and their troubled youth. I think of that Zelda Rubenstein episode, not a father, but the mother with the demon baby adult thing. So I was fine with them getting a little bit more, like I said, transgressive with this interpretation. The comic version with the kindly father is makes the ending much more tragic than the actual episode. Yeah, I guess to your point, when we get there in the episode, the sudden about face that we pull here is unheard. Yeah, very good point there. Dan, top billing, let's talk about the creative team involved. Yeah, writer Larry Wilson. It's time to say goodbye to another creative talent that's been with us for a while. Alright, anyway, Larry's been previously working on such bangers as food for thought on a dead man's chest doctor for and easel kill ya. And this is his final episode for the series. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your service. Yeah, next up, we got director Thomas E Sanders. We have another production designer, the director's chair this week, and he's had his fingers in some real gothie goodness, having worked on Coppola's Dracula and Crimson Peak. This week, we'll see him work as magic on another dark, farty old house. Don't we all just want to have our fingers in some gothie. No comments. Anyway, you know who loves gothie goodness. Anthony Andrews as Jonathan. Alright, real quick. Anthony was in the King's speech as a geyser named Stanley Baldwin, as well as the grand knockout tournament with Mr. Bean, actor Rowan Eckinson got another joke in there. But really, that just gets us to the other two names this week. Specifically, Emelda Stanton as Sarah. Guys, has anyone made your blood boil more than Emelda Stanton did in her turn as Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter series? I should not hate someone who loves cats that much. Oh, great. Seriously, she plays the character in the exact way to be the perfect villain, acting and dressing all innocent, insisting that she knows better than everyone else completely confident in everything she does and refusing to listen to anyone else's reasonable argument arguments. All the while she is committing some of the most despicable acts and ruining everyone's good time at wizard school. It is strange. I was thinking about it while watching it more so on the following viewing some of the first one, but just the way that she plays in these very governmental, regimented roles as a corrupt person that is very much trying to uphold the traditional values. It's just weird that she's found herself. I don't know what the rest of her filmography is like, but it's strange that two of the roles I'm going to associate her with now, which is of course Dolores Umbridge and as Sarah in this episode, poor thing. I'm sure she wants to forget it, but it's kind of cut from the same cloth in a very strange way. Well, Ash will get to you real quick, but I will say she was also in Paddington, Chicken Run and the Maleficent franchise, not to mention everyone's favorite, Cranford. But Ash, what's your opinion on Miss Dolores Umbridge? As you mean, Umbridge, the character and Melda Stanton's role as her, yes. Oh, yeah, she was fantastic. I mean, if you get to like despise a character more than Voldemort, you've done a great job. Yeah. Yeah, she is like, like you can even kind of root for Voldemort at certain points just 'cause he's a cool looking character, but like there's just something about her where you're like, I want, I just want to stab you in the face. Yeah. To the point where they said, Hey, we are building a brand new Harry Potterland at our theme park. You know, who should be the villain of the ride? Get her back. I have a one dry, yes, and I'm a desk. Here you go. Yeah. Well, speaking of wanting to get her back Anna Frielle as Angelica, if you haven't been in love with Anna Frielle yet, that just tells me that you haven't watched Brian Fuller's pushing daisies where she plays the dead girl Charlotte Charles in all 22 episodes. It's an incredibly charming show stuffed with whimsy and Anna absolutely radiates off the screen. It's a shame that ABC decided to cut its life short and we never got the sequel comic book series that was always talked about. How do I push them daisies? That's all we got big, big three hander this week and really just two people. All right. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, let's talk real quick about that opening Crypt Keeper segments, which is Crypty as a blues guitarist. So he is feeling these sinners hype. He is fully caught in sinners media. And I think that the lyric of my ghoul thinks I'm a vampire. So she eats garlic just in case is about as good as it gets. And the line right after that where he goes, man, she smells so good. We haven't been able to really do line of the week for a while. I think man, she smells is gotta be up there. Yeah, absolutely. It's my line of the week. I did not like how he looks like the Dwight shrewt corpse with his glasses on though. That's the no-nose glasses combo where I'm like, he looks mentally handicapped. I don't care for it. Why'd you bring this up, Dan? Sorry. Oh, television's here. The episode itself. It's an orgy of an episode this week. We're talking fornicating priests, wiggling crucifixes, painful bursts and a quick boob flash. And that's all in the first 20 seconds. Dan have you added them? Oh, yeah. You know, two little boob's. Two little boob's. We suddenly flashed forward to 16 years later, where we see a young woman disembarking her carriage. Jonathan, the reverend with a successful book deal, which is an insane sentence, but yes, very true. A hero of ladies and a wife who definitely has the cat-based fine china collection of your dreams. Anyways, the young woman Angelica says she is one of a set of twins in Jonathan as her father. Her mother died during birth, and they have nowhere else to go. His wife, Sarah, is obviously outraged, knowing her husband's floranderizing in the past has finally caught up with them. He coerily invites Angelica to live with them, planning to spin the whole potential controversy as a potential popularity boost. Call corn because this is the family values tour. He asks Angelica to invite her sister, Leah, to join them. And Angelica says she is quite set with her father and refuses to come along just yet. Something is off. And there's more than one way to be too faced. You guys like that? There we go. We have our setup. I didn't take much notes on this one. I thought it was pretty straight forward until the end. Dan, what do you think, and bud? I hate organized religion, and I think the majority of people in that position are probably more like this guy, rather than someone that actually wants to help people. At least in the positions of power, yes. So I love that we tried to take down religion. I thought it was done in a fairly interesting way. There's an interesting point later on that I will follow up on that on. That was a weird sentence, but I wish it were, like you said, a little less straight forward because there's not a whole lot going on. There's not a whole lot of suspense until you get to the final scene. Ash, how you feeling, bud? Oh, I'm again, not much because I normally have like a few page of notes for each episode. I don't really have much here. No real set up, there's no real part of the, apart from when she gives birth and the sort of midwife or maybe just some random person from the next room helping her give birth. It's kind of like it's taken aback by what she sees. That's the only sort of like set up that we kind of get. I hate any sort of religious tones or kind of themes in episodes or movies, so that doesn't work for me regardless of it being pro religion or trying to tear religion down, either or just doesn't appeal to me just the presence of religion. Yeah, just like, yeah, I've got nothing against it. I'm a Roman Catholic, I've got no like, you know, I've got nothing against anything in that sense. It's just like, I don't know, I just doesn't do much for me, but yeah, not much of a set up apart from the reaction to the birth. That was it. I think there is, you know, I think going back to demonic possession and everything like that, that is something that taps into human nature and are deep-seated fears. You know, it goes all the way back to biblical times and some of the most beloved pieces of horror media are very much focused on demons and corruption and that sort of thing. But I think it's sometimes it's more interesting to take the exorcist approach as far as a person of faith coming against these challenges than doing the scumbag approach. I'm open to either. I just think that we needed to see more of the, the, the bastard nature of Jonathan for it to really feel like it's coming together. And then Dan, not to spoil it, but since you brought it up earlier, there is kind of an emotional climax that doesn't fully come together at the end and that's probably the biggest disappointment. He says flat out that he doesn't care about these girls. He just wants to profit off of it. Hey, I've got this, the secret family and pulling a davir all over here. And here they are and they're going to, they're going to spin into that good old fashioned family angle. And I think there are a lot of, you know, parallels to modern politics and religion and things like that. But just the way that they do it, it's, it's not a completely irredeemable episode. And again, it's just very bland, I would say, for the most part. I'm surprised you didn't think that they did enough to scumbag him up because that opening scene with him, having sex with the main character's mother is disturbing and disgusting at the same time. It's disturbing and disgusting, but I want them to push it further. I want them to, you need to see penetration is what you're saying. I mean, if we want to, it's the final season. Let's go ahead and make it happen. We've already canceled the show. Yeah, full on dick action. Game of Thrones isn't that far away, let's get to it. But yeah, I think that they could just do a little bit more as far as not even necessarily by actions, but emotionally making him more, I think it would be more interesting for them to show the perspective of like he actually believes he's doing the right things versus. He knows he's a scumbag, and he says he is, how would you describe it? Besides scumbag, it's our favorite word on tails. He's just capitalizing on it, right? Yeah. He's taking advantage of people who believe that he is a holy man. I wish that we saw a little bit more of the no like I'm actually doing this for the good of God. I think those are more interesting characters. That's the Dolores Umbridge take. She thinks she's in the right, even though she's doing terrible things. That's his entire character though, like capitalized, you know, something, and like, what can he get out of, what can he get out of it with his daughter, daughters? And then, you know, like it takes advantage of all these like secretaries, right? So that's his, that's his character. Yeah. And his wife is just as complicit. I don't think they do enough to demonize her either. She just kind of was like, oh, you're doing it again. You know, like, there's not enough where I feel like she's really viewed as any sort of significant character, unfortunately. Well, they almost try to give her some retribution where she's turning against him, which I kind of wish they didn't do. Yeah. I think at that point, it had gone on for so many years. It doesn't make sense for her to finally make an about face. I'm going to get as much leeway out of that one as I can. But yeah, it's, I don't know, it's, it's not the worst ridden episode of Tales from the Crypt, but I also think that they could have gotten a little bit more creative with some of its flourishes. There are kills in this episode, and they're very plain. I'm glad that there's gore back in an episode, but it's, it's not particularly exciting. It's just kind of there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Angelica comes upon Jonathan's wife Sarah in the middle of the night, but it isn't actually her. We meet Leah, the disfigured and sadistic religious twin, looking like the vain thin skin around your nut sack. She promises to cleanse the sin of her father and family. It's all the guys. She does look like a nut sack on now. She looks like a fucking testicle. And I'm fortunate. That brought down this episode so much for me. And I'm surprised. I'm the one that said it. I thought you guys would have picked up on that right away. Not until this exact moment. So if you go on the Tales from the Crypt Wiki and look at a screenshot, even if you don't watch it, they decided to do this very almost like Palpatine disfigurement, but they did these bright red veins across her face. And yes, it is unfortunate. What she ended up looking like for you fellas out there. If you didn't watch the episode, wait till you're in private, take out your nut sack. Actually, no matter where you're at, if you're driving, it doesn't matter. Put it between like your thumb and your forefinger, one of your testicles and squeeze it against. And that's what her face looks like. There you go. I was so glad. I was so glad to be able to finally find something where we could tap into what this original show was. And this one, it was like, this was me looking at Leia's face, like that Willem Dafoe meme, you know, just staring up into the heavens, being so grateful to have comedy potential. But anyways, I think this is going to be a really drill episode. This turned around really well. Good job. See, I went down. You guys just made this a five-star episode. There we go. Anyways, Sarah somehow survives the night, but Angelica has trouble convincing Jonathan to keep both of the sisters. He ultimately agrees to make it up to both of them, but Leia's distrustful of his intentions. The sleazy rev is applying his smooth moves on a woman he is pursuing for secretary and as soon spreading the gospel truth between her legs. Nutsack twin. Nutsack twin listens in and waits for the woman to leave before slicing her throat, assassins creed style. Sarah finally returns home to find the dead woman on their couch and Leia reveals she did the murder, but Jonathan takes it upon himself to crush her throat to dead women. So yes, Sarah's dead, the secretary's dead, and we get a little bit of interesting characterization. Unfortunately, I don't think the young actress is very good in this episode at all, especially when she's supposed to be mean. When she's supposed to be the evil twin, I just don't think she's very convincing, but they do some fun stuff where she is the righteous sister. She is the one where she believes she is acting upon God's will and she is the cleansing force and I do like that perspective. I just saw the performance could have been more convincing. Yeah, like she got that bit from her daddy and even though she's the ugly one, she's the evil one quote unquote, she's the more righteous of the two. I really like that lot. Yeah. Yeah. Angelica is crying in bed, holding a rosary as Jonathan approaches until she rolls over and reveals that she's actually Leia. So in case you haven't picked up on that, they did the Edward Morgerec or Dan, I know you've been waiting all episode. Yeah, from Malignant, this is very similar to that twist in that movie. Or Voldemort at the back of Coral's head. Oh, yeah. I know. I mentioned obsession last episode and this is like again, this is the second kind of thing tales from the crypt has done. Obviously they did obsession with season five with the guy making a wish and making the the woman fall in love with her. And now this is Malignant basically just much smaller scale. Yeah. It's a lot of people, I was reading some of the comments where people are like, oh, you know, this did Malignant before Malignant. It's like, well, you know, this is a this is a very old story. I brought up Edward Morgerec. That was the late 1800s. There's even a Tom Waits song about this so you could check it out. And I believe it was even reference in American horror story at one point. But anyways, I thought that it was just fun to see what, you know, kind of where they pulled some of the inspiration from here. So yeah, a nice fun tie to Malignant. Ash, did you like that movie? I did. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Yeah. That was that was a that was a COVID era film, wasn't it? It was. Yeah. Yeah. I think I watched that on HBO like not too long after I watched one of my my least favorite condolences. The devil made me do it. I believe it was called. Oh, oh, I tried that one. That one's bad, but not as bad as last rights, which my my my wrestling friend Brody King on letterboxed his full review of last rights. The Conjuring movie is poop from a butt. And he's 100% correct. Yeah. Screaming scripture and prayer. Leah stabs Jonathan several times before he grabs the crucifix off the wall and impales the sister with her dying breath. She turns her head over and reveals that she's one of two faces. And Angelica and Leah die while cursing their father. How dare he do this to them? Dan, I don't think I had really thought about it, but now that you said it, I really can't stop thinking about his, oh my god, what have I done? What have I done? Like he would not give a shit. He's gotten rid of his probably. He's gotten rid of his, excuse expression. He's gotten rid of his bitch wife. And he's gotten rid of his unfortunate situation. Like he's going to be fine. Yeah, he'll find a way out of this. I know he's got a body to clean up, but let's be honest. Over the years, I'm sure this isn't his first body to have cleaned up. So he's going to slither his way out of this without an issue. Yeah. Yeah, like I said, oh, sorry, yeah, this sort of paid off way more. Had he been the doting father from the comic book, which is the ending in the comic book, he accidentally kills his daughter, which he loved. Yeah, I'm going to have to agree with you now. Now having that context, yeah, I can back up your claim there. The actual effect though, I really like this. And I did not see this twist coming of the first time around. I watched this before I read the comic book. So I thought the ending was accidentally done. I agree with that. I thought the ending was good. It was the only real saving grace for me. Well, they didn't save the episode. Oh, I'm not kidding. Nobody there. But it was the only bright spark of this episode. The death on the crucifix was cool. And the reveal was very well done. And so I like that. But we have our story of beautiful woman and not sick. So let's go ahead and closing crypt the moment. This is just more of the blues. It really kind of comes and goes. That guitar is pretty gnarly looking though. So what are the strings made from? Yeah. Tendons. Yeah. Because then it's not quite. Yeah, I thought like in test them, but it's two. It's too thin to be that maybe. That makes just like the shittiest, crappiest guitar noise. It didn't. I think it would have been funnier to actually do like a beautiful classical guitar sound. But yeah. All right. Well, severed thumb rankings. Let's pay our last respects. This is another two for me personally. I think that there are some ideas here. I like that there's gore. But once I owned in on that makeup, it was game over for me personally. Yeah. I mean, that's a big joke. Obviously, I feel like the makeup could be better, but even beyond that, I just I don't think there's really a super compelling narrative here. I think that you do have something interesting. with Jonathan the father, you could have got into this whole blasphemous reverend angle, but that's not the story of the decided to tell, and I've just got to judge it for what it is. As you go next, because I am fluttering between two. Yeah, no problem. I would like to be articulate in my break down here, but I'm just going to say I really, really dislike this episode. I would be more than okay if this was white from the face of the earth. I never had to see it again. I was going to go half, but I'm going to bump it up a little bit because of the end sort of scene and final kill was pretty cool with the reveal, so I'm going one severed thumb up. All right. I'm still stuck. I'm going to go one and a half. I don't know if I can go a full two on this. I thought the opening was well done and disturbing. I thought the ending was excellent, but in between there is not very much at all to like. I thought that the takedown of religion could have been a lot more interesting. There are a lot of other forms of media that have done a similar story in a much better way, so give me something more to chew on till some of the creptia had it and you didn't quite do what you needed to do with it one and a half. You know what, fuck it. I'll join you. I think I can agree with all of that. And again, that was my original rating before I had considered the emotional context of what they're trying to do with the pay-off there. So yeah, I think that's completely fair. I'll hop on with you guys. Sweet. So what does that make it? 1.3 something. I did not expect this to be one of your least ever favorites, Ash. Yeah, it's got religion in it and Ash hates anything that has any sort of religion positive or negative. I mean, I wish I could. Yeah, I didn't articulate it again pretty well, but he just doesn't do anything for me. Did you hate wake up dead man? Because that has a lot of religion in it. I'd be quite glad that it was my least favorite of the three. I know you were pretty hot on it, Hunter, but it was my least favorite of the three. But I enjoyed it. I just thought it had a more compelling narrative than glass onion. I thought that glass onion had a great big idea that it didn't really delve into the whole etherich angle like they wanted to and that's where it stuck up for me. I mean, while I thought that the portrayal of I think just kind of hardness and goodness and people in wake up dead man really resonated with me because that is something I'm always seeking even if it's really hard in a world that's dark. Yeah. Anyways, we want to thank you all for tuning into Hars from Evolt. We're really glad that you're here and we hope that you continue to be here. We are rapidly winding down, but guess what? This was the 90th episode of Tales from the Crypt, which means we have done a fucking episode of Hars from Evolt. If you have a favorite episode, I'm pretty sure it's not in season seven. We've already talked about it, whether that was with a Pauling-ish and myself or with Dan and Preston, we've got you covered. And there's even a couple little Halloween and Christmas specials hidden in there too. So if you're in a little bit of holiday cheer, go check that out. Of course, we are going to be talking about the films very soon once the season wraps up, but who knows? Those might be closer to a Halloween treat. For those of you who are kind of wondering what's going on. Devilish Dan, when you were not doing the show, what's up with you, buddy? No, I'm usually just sitting staring at the wall and not doing anything else. And you can catch that on Redrite Dan on Instagram, or you know what? Fucking follow us on Instagram and Twitter and all that good shit at Horavolt Pod. I know we're wrapping up, but we might have some gems dropping, you know, even after we're done with the show. So if you've gone this far and you haven't followed us on there, do so just in case we drop something new and fresh for you and fun. So that way you're notified about it. There you go. Awesome, man. And for yourself? Oh, yeah. No, I said Redrite Dan, I like watching movies and shit. And you can check that out on Letterbox, Daniel P. Sims. We got some good stuff coming up, doing Sidious, sex and death at Camp Measma. Very excited about that. That should be out by the time this episode drops. You can check out my review on Letterbox. Hell, yeah. Yeah, you can follow me at my Halloween Horror Nets podcast, that Stan Scream podcast, all the socials. They'll have a link treat at the top. Follow that. Personally, I am @ashmb13 on all the socials. There you go. And if you want to keep up with me, the best place to do so of course is right here on Horavolt, but you can also find me on Grimgrning House and wherever else you want to find me. Just look me up. You'll come across me. I'm just kidding. I dramatically reduce my presence. Find me on Grimgrning House. Find me on Horavolt and the Letterbox at discount fence and price. I really appreciate you guys being here. We'll catch you next time. And until then, I guess it's very appropriate. Pretty. For words, why don't you put down that bass and play that weird fucking stony guitar thing that you got? Of course. Beware of kiddies because the next time you're dead to venture into the vault, you might not come back at all. Good fight!