Tales from the Crypt: Everything You Didn't Know

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Greetings, Boils and Ghouls, and welcome to tear Much interre.

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Information, the show that brings you the scary kill stories
and slashinating facts and figures from your favorite telekill vision bovies.

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can see how that got how.

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That destroyed the voice a voice.

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Yeah, we're your two grave robbers of Genale rotting your
skeletons of Scintillae, you're werewolves of wherewithal I'm Alex Halloween Gull,
and I.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Am you wrote several suggestions for me. I can't take
credit for these. Jordan rot Tog, which is very good.
George Dead Run Dog also very good. My person my favorite,
I think is Gore Dan gr Yeah run tg Yeah.
All just ten out of ten knocked it out of
the pod. Thank you so manly well done.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
And as I said before, welcome to three weeks of
Halloween themed too much Information. Because we didn't get it
together for last week. Whoops. Yeah, we should probably should
have started this last week, but we're spookally over work,
so we'll be kicking out the seasonally appropriate jams all
the rest of the month. Before we get things underway,

(01:32):
I would like to give a huge shout out to
our supporters on KOFE. Still not sure that it's pronounced
that way, but whatever I drop us a message, we
will answer. If you have shout outs, they will be
taken into consideration, unless they are weird or I don't know,
I have a pretty high tolerance. Jordan probably doesn't. I mean,
like sexual stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Have you gotten any of those now yet?

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Maybe after this one? Yeah, here we go. Anyway, thank
you to everyone who has donated to that thus far.
You know we it means the world, it really does.
And now let us get to the desiccated meat of
this week's episode. We are taking a look inside Tales
from the Crypt, seven season strong series that terrified HBO

(02:17):
subscribers of a certain age from nineteen eighty nine to
nineteen ninety six. Now, my dad was too cheap to
add HBO. There was a little a sort of peripherally
aware of the cryptkeeper because that dude was everywhere.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Was he like selling like McDonald's stuff. I have a.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Vague memory of pizza hut or like a pizza pizza
related thing. Yeah, that was it. So I only got
to watch these whenever they would like pop up at
video stores, which wasn't that frequent, and then you would
get the censored versions too if you came through Blockbuster
because they were Puritans.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
Did you know that that Blockbuster with Puritans.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Blockbuster was so powerful in the nineties that they would.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Have their own cuts, right different, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Yeah, they would have their own cuts. Yeah, and I.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Think there are some for people who collect vhs' is
like my brothers. I think some of those Blockbuster versions
are like rare collectibles. Now, if I'm recalling correctly, tremendous
censorship turned to commerce.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah right, the American way literally the point of this episode.
Yeah yeah, yeah. So I only got to watch more
of these when I could, you know, torrent them. But
I did buy tons of easy comic trade paperbacks, which
is what this show draws from. At any half priced books,
I could enter with my sweaty little myths, and because

(03:37):
of rights issues, the show continues to only be available
through less than optimal mess Jordan as a frightened child
idealizing the nineteen fifties, What was your experience with Tales
from the Crypt?

Speaker 1 (03:52):
I mean, don't forget how much I loved are you
for thought that's true? So I do have I have
from characteristically high tolerance for spooky stuff. That's fair. Like
I just just want to say.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
That just just not guns n' roses.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah, no, just much like you. I was aware of this,
but I didn't have a ton of exposure to it,
mostly because I couldn't figure out how to work the
family cable boxes, so my HBO viewing was pretty limited.
But yeah, I loved this uniquely late eighties early nineties
type of show, which usually kind of sci fi leaning

(04:26):
that felt like it was being secretly broadcast out of
someone's basement, like Wayne's World style. Sure, for me, Mystery
Signs Theater three thousand is a prime example of that
for me. And it's not a comment on production quality,
but just something about it just seemed so much weirder
than anything that was on network TV. Oh and I
always got a kick out of that.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
It wasn't TV, it was agest Yeah, yeah, I mean,
as we'll learn later, the production quality was quite high, it.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Was very high. Yeah, but there was something like throwback
about oh yeah for sure, Yeah, which I always appreciated.
I mean, from seeming like it was descended from the
Twilight Zone, which I always loved to the kind of
borsh Belt style comedy styling zone.

Speaker 2 (05:10):
It is so like nineteen fifties borsch Belt like Yiddish
stand up stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
It's so great, it's so so good. So I mean,
I remember watching this at like friend's houses more than
anything else. I remember there was one with like Malcolm
McDowell was like a he was like a vampire with
a conscience who worked at a blood bank.

Speaker 2 (05:31):
Watched it the other night the reluctant vampire.

Speaker 1 (05:33):
And George went from cheers like owns the blood bank
he works at or something. Yeah, yeah, that was a
good one. I remember that one. Yeah, I don't know.
I just remember thinking like, oh, this is like grown up.
Are you afraid of the dark? Are you afraid of
the Dark? Is like horror training wheels. But this was
like I remember at the time thinking this was the
real deal. I bet you if I watched it now,
it would probably be pretty laughable. Does it hold up?

(05:54):
I haven't actually watched them.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
It's pretty goofy and like you know, it's clearly meant
to be more fun than scary. But there are some
like the very first episode where Larry Drake from La
Law plays a homicidal Santa is pretty out there.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Oh wow, yeah, I mean I remember mostly thinking that,
like the scariest part of the show was the criptkeeper.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
He's gross. Yeah, he's real gross looking, even when they
put him in his little costumes. There was one last
night where the where the cold open had him being
like a Walter Cronkite like newscaster. And one thing that
like one that actually made me laugh out loud was
a dagger is thrown from off screen and lands in
his skull and he picks it out and goes this

(06:40):
just Ian, I was like, come so good. Yeah, I
do not love that.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
I'm just so looking forward to this because I know
you're gonna be in your glory. I mean, you've got comics,
you've got horror, you've got probably or Schwarzenegger having a
good time. You've got what I believe to be the
prototypical cigar chompings. Executive Joel Silver, I mean, we really
this touches on so many points for you, so I'm
really excited.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
Well, from the series' tenuous connection to seventy five year
old Bible comics to the historical Senate investigation that got
the source material canceled to the absolutely bonkers roster of
Hollywood stars and power brokers seemingly gleefully involved in the series.
Here's everything you didn't know about Tales from the Cryp. So,

(07:32):
as we alluded to at the top of the episode,
the history of Tales from the Cryp really begins with
DC Comics, which itself begins with a guy named Max Gaines,
who's a pretty foundational figure in the history of comic
books in America. Although he lacks the name recognition of
your Stan Lee's or perhaps even your Steve Ditko's. Maybe
you're Chris Claremont's.

Speaker 1 (07:52):
Nothing I knew them in descending order.

Speaker 2 (07:57):
According to his son William Gaines, Max was a piece
of sh He would frequently beat his son with a
leather belt and say you'll never amount to anything. But
regarding his day job, Gaines was working as a salesperson
in the year of nineteen thirty three at Eastern Color Printing,
a company that printed Sunday newspaper comic strips. So Gaines,
being a salesman, pitched Procter and Gamble the idea of

(08:20):
a tabloid sized book of color comic strip reprints that
would be available for five cents and or a label
or coupon for any Procter and Gamble product. They initially
rejected the idea, but Gaines pushed his vision through at
the printing company and he produced Funnies on Parade, which
was an eight page newsprint magazine reprinting several comic strips

(08:43):
licensed from syndicates.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Can we change to them of our show to Trivion Parade?

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yes, yeah, that's not bad. It did retain the Procter
and Gamble, though, angle, because it was sent free to
customers who mailed in coupons, so his vision was eventually
a spot on. From an initial run of ten thousand copies,
Eastern Color Printing then went on to produce similar periodicals
for my beloved Canada Dry and others, but they got.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Up to runs of two hundred and fifty thousand printing
this stuff. Wow, So I'll try to keep my interruptions
to a minimum. But this is really fascinating to me,
and I love how much you know about it. So,
I mean comic books were basically born as a freebie
coupon cornucopia.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
Well, I mean you always had comic strips, right like
you newspapers yeah, yeah, and so they were just in
a way, they're what we call trade paperbacks today, Like
if you're not a nerd about getting mint condition comics
and collecting the individual issues, your average comic reader probably
has trade paperbacks, which are all the collected runs bound
into a single paperback edition. And that's what these first

(09:52):
ones were pitched as. It was just like, hey, we
have all of these cartoons from several different syndicates, and
individual artists had contracts with different syndicates, and individual papers
had different contracts with different syndicates, et cetera, and I
guess fucking Max Gaines was like I'll put them together
and that that blew everyone's mind. If one thing good,

(10:15):
many things better. And these mad dollar signs, yeah exactly.
It was nineteen thirty three. People were dumber and poorer
and poorer. In July of nineteen thirty four, Gains then
published the compendium Famous Funnies, which ran for two hundred
and eighteen issues and is considered they're terrible whack could

(10:38):
do weekly You see ones get worse. I like two
fisted tales. Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
That's good.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Famous Funnies is considered the first true American Comic Book.
There's a collection of syndicated comics distributed through Woolworths. He
then secured funding from Harry Donnenfeld, who is CEO of
both National Allied Publication and this is important. National Allied
Publications published Action Comics, which is where Superman debuted, and

(11:06):
he was also CEO of the sister company, Detective Comics,
which you will know is where Batman debuted, and DC
Comics since has become the namesake, somewhat redundant name of
that brand, and that all came together to form All
American Comics in nineteen thirty eight, but by nineteen forty five,
Gaines thought he saw an end to the comics craze

(11:28):
and sold out his share to a guy named Jack Leibowitz.
But under Gaines's tenure, All American Comics published characters that
are still mainstays of the DC roster, like Wonder Woman
for one, heard of her Green Lantern, and also Hawkman
and Hawkwoman and also and oh.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it was right there. It was
right there, Oh you.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Jordan. They also public the original Flash and I stopped
caring about which flashes are, Like, there's so many.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
Flashes what's the relationship between Flash and Flash Gordon.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Flash Gordon precedes all of this. He was that was
like one of the original action series. Yeah, Flash Gordon's
cool though. I used to have a big, big collection
of those really. Yeah. So anyway, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern,
and again the aforementioned Hawkman and Hawk Woman all kind
of date back to the guy who created Ecy Comics
is period at the reins of DC, which is super

(12:29):
kind of crazy if you think about it. So then
Gaines started Educational Comics and he retained only the title
picture Stories from the Bible as its flagship series, so
he was bought out of the rest of DC, but
kept the one about Bible Stories and yes, Horror and
Gorer pioneers. Easy Comics was initially formed to sell Bible comics,

(12:52):
and he wanted to sell other like like scientific and
little like guides to the like the Kid's Guide to Electricity.

Speaker 1 (12:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah, it's kind of like how TLC used to be
the Learning Channel before it started airing My Gangrenous Armpit
and the Obese Man who Loves It? Is that offensive? No?

Speaker 1 (13:11):
All right, unless it's David Eslov, I mean.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
Zaslov is the gangridis arm pit that has sentience of
its own TLC right, Yeah, I think so, or no
discovery is TLC different?

Speaker 1 (13:25):
Who gives it another und by discovery? Un by discovery.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
So William Gaines dies in a boating accident in nineteen
forty seven and is in hell to the immense reassurance
of his son Max, who inherited the company and renamed
it Entertaining Comics, with the goal focusing on his preferred
genres science fiction, horror, suspense, and the military.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
That's a great that's a great pivot from educational comics
to entertaining comics. Not a very subtle shift, but an
important shift.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
Yeah, really mirroring the American discourse as well. It's kind
of funny because it did seem like awful timing at
the moment, because Universal where so many of these archetypes
and stuff, and the most visible torch bearer for horror
movies in the first part of the twentieth century was
entering its like most fallow period, like literally dribbling out.

(14:17):
They were well into the Abbot and Castello era where yeah,
they met the Wolfman and Dracula and so forth. The
only two originals that Universal produced in the nineteen fifties
were The Creature from the Black Lagoon in nineteen fifty
four and The Mummy in nineteen fifty five. That was it.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
That's nuts.

Speaker 2 (14:38):
But the two guys that mister Gaines hired as editors,
two guys named Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, and they
were the people who steered this ship ingeniously. Feldstein encouraged
a roster of artists and writers to develop their own voices,
among them Harlan Ellison. His first published work was through Feldstein.

(14:59):
He's the guy who probably came up with the idea
for the Terminator in a short story called Demon with
a Glass Hand, just a legend of the genre. Kurtzman meanwhile,
focused more on the action side of things and was
actually disgusted once the horror stuff started out selling his titles.
So what he did was jump ship to Mad Magazine,
which was also controlled by EC and then he left

(15:20):
that in nineteen fifty six before beginning Little Annie Fanny,
a strip named Playboy for the next twenty six years,
starting from nineteen sixty two.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
I'm gonna have to get a visual on this thish.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
You really don't it's what it sounds like oh yeah,
it is.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
So.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Then when Kurtzman left Mad, Feldstein came over and then
spent nearly thirty years overseeing Mad Mad Magazine during it's
like also it's healsy on days. So these two guys
between them were responsible for not just easy comics like
the horror, ecy comics, suspense stuff, everything that flowed from that, which,
as I will go on to discuss, is like a

(15:58):
huge chunk of culture. But so Mad Magazine, which was
like its own enormous world unto itself, that was hugely influential.
Just like those two dudes were like, We're going to
direct American popular culture for the next half a century
and no one will know our names.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Did you used to get Mad Magazine as a kid?

Speaker 2 (16:15):
I didn't. I had a bunch of my dad's old copies,
so I was, well, I was really confused by like
who Spiro Agnew was.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
That's so funny, because I would get the Mad about
the Fifties, Mad about the Sixties, like compendium books, and
those were the ones that because all of my because
I basically in many ways grew up in the fifties
and sixties, so I got all the references and all
they were so funny.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, they're great, I mean, and just such a rich uh,
just as such a showcase of different art styles and personalities,
like really the proverbial lunatics in charge of the assignment.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
And they're edgy like stillay, are they still publishing today? No?
Oh no, no, I meant those like fifties and sixties.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Oh, the original ones. Yeah, absolutely. But because the comics
code hadn't come in, which we will talk about so
with elt Stande Kurtzman at the Helm, Easy Comics began
its new trend in print, which, aside from the horror stuff,
was also responsible for weird science and weird fantasy, both
of which were hugely important to the science fiction and
fantasy genres. Among many of the influential people who they

(17:21):
would employ are Frank Frazetta, who is the guy. Anytime
you look at a sweet nineteen seventies album cover with
like a warrior on it, that's probably Frank Frazetta. Most
famous one is I think thirty eight Special. But he
did covers for Dust and didn't did he draw the
Surf's Up cover?

Speaker 1 (17:40):
I don't think so. Okay, Beach Boys album.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, strike that from the record. Oh, Molly Hatchett, not
thirty eight Special, Molly Hatchet, Dust Nazareth, all of them
had these amazing I think he also did the cover
of Kiss Alive. Anyway, so Frank Fizzetta was under Weird
Fantasy and Bradbury actually came over because and this is

(18:03):
what's kind of funny and shady, is that Bill Gaines
would stay up. Apparently Bill Gaines like had a weight
problem and he frequently dieted with like everyone did in
those days, with dexadream. So he would stay up like
all hours of the night just reading other science fiction
and then come in the next day and give a
loose synopsis of what he had read to his editors,

(18:24):
and then they would churn out a comic. And people
eventually started noticing that, like Ray Bradbury, who was like, hey, guys,
I see what you're doing, and they were like, do
you want to come over to give you money? And
so they created the like some authorized adaptations of some
of his stories, including There Will Come Soft Rains, just
one of the most anthologized to Bradbury stories. Wally Wood

(18:47):
is another guy who was on the roster. He created
Sally Forth the strip, the daily strip of All Things
He also drew the Mars Attacks trading cards for Tops,
which later became the basis of the feature film Tim Burton,
and he also is responsible for Daredevil having that distinctive
red suit. Wood is also insanely horny. A lot of

(19:10):
these guys were so so horny. And Wood is also
known in comic circles for drawing the Disneyland memorial Orgy,
which was a full a spread poster for the influential
underground magazine The Realist, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
That's good a visual all that. Yeah, yes it is. Yep,
don't know what I expected.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
You can google that one yourself, folks. And then there's
just like another dozen or so guys who can't get
into just based on space alone. But these guys were
either either at easy or at mad, just like again,
helping shape the latter half of twentieth century pop culture. Also,
E C was actually fairly brave in publishing stuff that
was about drug addiction, that was about racism. One of

(19:56):
the most famous stories is published in nineteen fifty five
with called Master Race, which portrayed a former Nazi death
camp commander successfully hiding out New York before he is
spotted by an eerie stranger who chases the Nazi to
his death in front of a train. This marked the
first time, one of the first times that the Holocaust
had even been mentioned in popular media, and the whole

(20:18):
twist behind it is that this guy is like alone
on a train and he sees someone like staring at him,
and gradually, throughout the course of the story through flashbacks,
it's revealed that this guy was an SS death camp
officer and that is a wild thing to publish. In
nineteen fifty five, in a comic book Art Spiegelman, who
penned Mouse, which is one of the other comics that

(20:40):
you're assigned to in your introduction to comic books as
an art form class or research period, has hailed it
as like one of his favorites. Would you looking at Buddy.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
I'm still on the Disney memorial orgy. I'm trying to
figure out what the birds are doing the Dumbo. Does
that also count as interracial because the crows were super
racist different birds?

Speaker 2 (21:05):
Ah?

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Okay, is that kind of a beastiality? Then if they're interspecies? Yes?

Speaker 2 (21:12):
Good?

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Okay, Yeah, that's just fine. Those are just facts. Alfeld
scene maintains that he was the guy who pushed Bill
Gaines to produce horror comics, saying the pair bonded over
a love of old, spooky radio plays and horror films
from radio serials. Feldstein wanted to have a character that

(21:33):
would remain consistent from issue to issue, introducing the discrete
stories within, and from there the character of the Crypt
Keeper was born. He was not alone, though, the comic
would feature one tale introduced by him, one from the
Vault Keeper and one from the Old Witch, and these
three would often take potshots at each other in the
letter columns, which I love. Tales from the Crypt debut

(21:57):
in nineteen fifty and in its five year run because
an enormous hit with stories, frequently complaining that they couldn't
keep it in stock. And you have something to say
about this.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, this is where I would make a long winded
speech about the American complacency that was born of the
horrors of World War Two and how it created a
perfect storm for the children of war veterans to want
some kind of catharsis as they grew up in a stifling, repressive,
conformist society, haunted by the specter of their own annihilation
by the Cold War. Anyway, just pretend that I did

(22:27):
that and it was very good.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
I think you did that in one of the episodes.
It might have been a razor head, oh sure, but
one of the horror Yeah. I mean, that's the thing.
I am fascinated by people who are real serious horror heads.
I'm fascinated by what they get out of it. It
almost seems like a physiological response to it. Well, you're
a real horror I could ask you.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
I just think they're neat.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
You just think they're cool.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Yeah, no, I mean I was.

Speaker 1 (22:51):
I was a.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
Comics person before I was a horror fan. You know
my dad had a big comics collection as a kid. Yeah,
including his mom FROMO. She sure did.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Oh yeah, yeah, she sure did.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
All of our dads, including like many valuable, many valuable issues,
and also his record collection. So that's why I don't
visit grandma. No, just kidding, she's a racist.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Do we think that those issues are valuable because everybody's
mom threw them away? And if nobody's mom threw them away,
they wouldn't be valuable. Like is that supplying demand? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:23):
I mean obviously comic books? Is this own like you know,
I didn't tell people that I was into them. It
was still considered like there was a degree of shame
Baker still when I was in school. Yeah, and only
like I mean, I only saw comic books become the
dominant thing and quickly become a disgusting slurry that overwhelmed
the rest of American pop culture. That only happened in

(23:43):
like the Dots two thousands moving onward. But yeah, I was,
I was into comics. Uh yeah, I think I got
that Flash Gordon thing when I was like I used
to always just read the comics in the paper, and
then I got that Flash Gordon thing when I was
like maybe four or five, and then just started going
in a Marvel stuff from there. Horror I think I
got into because my dad showed me the movie Alien

(24:04):
when I was like six. I think I've told this
story before, but my two introductions to horror were that,
which literally gave me nightmares for the next four years,
and then my down the street neighbor who was super
into the movie Halloween, and when we would like play
as children, would just dress up as Michael Myers and
stalk me through the dusk lit neighborhoods. So strong stuff

(24:30):
that imprinted on me.

Speaker 1 (24:31):
Yeah, okay. However, details from the crypt comic soon began
facing a wave of copycats and in turn with the
increased attention from not just America's perennially uptight class of
moralists but nothing better to do, but also people sharing
that mindset who had real teeth, the people in the government.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
So since we've been giving this mini history of comic books,
you'll now have context at the time from Max Gaines
publishing famous funnies to when the moral panic over comic
books began to set in was not even six full years.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
That's really crazy. On May eighth, nineteen forty, Sterling North,
who would eventually write the children's Newbery Honor book Rascal,
wrote in the Chicago Daily News that quote color comic
magazines were a quote national disgrace, and that parents and
teachers throughout America must band together to break the comic magazine.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
We will break it, okay, man.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
The word color whenever it's used by like im morally righteous. Yeah,
that era is always I always get uncomfortable. I don't
like that. Fortunately, World War two nip North's campaign in
the bud and after the war was over, the fact
that unfortunately twenty million people died so that comics could
live kind of a wash. Yeah, and after the war

(25:49):
was over, the fact that comics is a medium focused
so heavily on stories of bravery with various wings of
the armed forces and a flag waving in the background
and a gig standing on the throat of Gerbels or something. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(26:11):
we're we're getting dangerously closed to Howard d Yeah, that
helped keep negative nancies like North away. But it's a
time turned towards horror and crime across all pop culture.
It must be said. Comic books caught the attention of
no less than jag Or Hoover, who, hilariously on April

(26:35):
twentieth four, twenty nineteen forty seven, published an editorial in
This Week claiming in part that quote crime books, comics
and newspaper stories crammed with anti social and criminal acts,
the glorification of Unamerican vigilante action and the deification of
the criminal are extremely dangerous in the hands of the

(26:58):
not just any child, the Unstill, yeah, this is where.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
It gets like really gross, is that they were like
basically the whole moral panic was like, oh if kids
are already bad kids, and they read comics, they'll become worse.
But like there's like a degree of socioeconomic and racial
dimension to who were bad kids or predisposed to be
bad kids.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
Antisocial is such a funny word to anti social acts.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yeah, Hoover's article, though, kind of just paved the way
for the real enemy of the comic books, Frederick Wortham.
In March of nineteen thirty eight, Wortham, who was already
somewhat famous for his testimony during the trial of notorious
child killer and cannibal Albert Fish, gave his symposium on
the quote psychopathology of comic books. This event was covered

(27:48):
in Colliers Weekly in late March, and Wortham himself penned
an article about comic books in the Saturday Review of
Literature in May of nineteen forty eight. And that's all
it took. Because people were had less to do in
the forties and less things to read, So by fall,
the Associated Press was already reporting on a rash of
comic book burnings that were happening in largely Catholic parishes

(28:12):
across the country.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
Burnings are never good burning, ye just don't don't.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Burn stuff among Wortham's pet theories, where that Batman and
Robin were gay, Wonder Woman was a lesbian sadist, and
that ads for binoculars in the back of comic books
promoted children spying on their neighbors. You think he would
have been I was going to say this was the
red scare, that we were encouraging children to do so.

(28:38):
Then a quickly ad hoc assembled group of comic book
publishers responded by publishing their own publisher's Code that year,
and they drew on the Hollywood Production Code, which is
better known as the Hayes Code, which itself had been
explicitly designed to get the damn government off Hollywood's back
for all that sweet, sweet sex and violence it had
been portraying. The Publisher's Code followed some of the language

(29:00):
of the Hayes Code, and it forbade portrayals of crime
that might throw sympathy against the law or weakened respect
for established authority. Nicely, it prohibited ridicular attack on any
religious or racial group, and sexy wanton comics were banned,
and my favorite one, divorce was from being The act

(29:24):
of divorce was prohibited from being treated quote humorously or
represented as glamorous or alluring. Comics that complied with this
were offered a seal of approval. This failed to keep
the Worthams and Hoovers of the world satisfied, and by
nineteen fifty four, Wortham had published his most famous work,
creepily titled Seduction of the Innocence Whatever editor let that

(29:46):
through You failed, which argued that comic books contributed to
delinquent behavior in hughes now worth noting here that in
twenty ten, a University of Illinois librarian and PhD student
discredited much of Wortham's research as fabricated or misleading. In particular,
he was identifying children who were already being treated for

(30:09):
psychological issues and using them as the benchmark.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
WHOA, oh wow, that's really talk about cooking the books. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Wortham was also nothing if not a greedy publicity hound,
and had spent much of the years between that first
symposium and the publication of his book beating the drum
for this particular cause. So by the time the book
was published, he'd primed the American public and in particular,
the American legislature, to jump on board. So in nineteen
fifty three, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency

(30:40):
had been established and would hold its first hearings in
April of nineteen fifty four. Easy Comics were particularly hammered
throughout the course of these hearings, chaired by SD's kiefouver
As a fifty's name if ever I've heard one. He
was supposed to be quite a liberal. Actually, I was
disappointed to learn that he was responsible for this, while
having a somewhat at voting record otherwise. But the hearings

(31:02):
became a landmark for repression and censorship in the US.
One exchange in particular has become very famous. Senator Keith
Hoever was grilling Easy Comics publisher Bill Gaines, and he
asked him, here is your may issue. This seems to
be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman's
head up, which has been severed from her body. Do
you think that's in good taste? And Gaines answered, yes, sir,

(31:24):
I do for the cover of a horror comic. That's
the quip. But the full quote, he continued, is so
much better. A cover in bad taste, for example, might
be defined as holding her head a little higher so
that blood could be seen dripping from it, and moving
the body a little further over so that the neck
of the body could be seen to be bloody. And
it's funny about that cover in particular, it had already

(31:46):
been edited. The original draft of it was what Gaines
was describing, a much more graphic version, and they walked
it back. Gaines would later admit that he was not
at his best during these hearings. He was a frequent
as I mentioned, he was a frequent user of Dexaderen
and just I guess was on the standalt when he
was crashing from his speed bingches. But worth them has

(32:11):
the record for the best SoundBite during these hearings. Quote.
I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic
book industry pause for commercial break. I mean insane for
a German Man to say that.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Also, I mean just of all the words he could
have used to kind of make the same point. A beginner.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Yeah, what a weird guy he was. I'm trying to
think if there's anything else, I anything else that escaped
his book.

Speaker 1 (32:44):
Did like a comic book artist kick Sam in his
face on the beach or something.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
No, he was quite well regarded. I mean he corresponded,
visited with Freud, he actually opened a clinic that specialized
in the treatment of black teenagers, financed by voluntary contributions.
But man, he hated comic books.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
That's the thing. I never really understood the bad reputation
that comic books seemed to have when we were kids.
That I never got because I was just like, well,
they're reading. It's not television, you know. I mean, I mean,
I was, I guess, you know, early nineties and stuff,
when most people were just watching TV. But yeah, I
never really understood the whole like Nay Roger brain kind

(33:28):
of propaganda that was put around.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, it's quite funny. The other thing that Wortham was
the court psychiatrist for another famous case, the Brooklyn thrill Killers,
who were a group of Jewish teenagers, hilariously enough, who
were just roaming around beating the people, just saying I.

Speaker 1 (33:51):
Was looking up Albert Fish. Earlier, you talked about how
he was. He testified at the Albert Fish trial. I
was going to give a quick, a quick thumbnail sketch
of his crimes. And it was too Yeah, it was
too yeah.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
I don't do that. No, I mean, the whole, the
whole thrust of that trial was the fact that like
worth him was like, he is insane. This man is
actually live, like truly deeply insane, that is my conclusion.
And then the whole thing was like, well, we all
agree he's insane, but we should probably kill him though,
right like. And everyone was just like, yeah, no, that

(34:25):
actually makes a lot. Yeah, let's just kill him and
everyone and everyone was in agreement because of the horror
that this man inflicted.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't. I don't spook easily
with that kind of stuff. Well, going this way, folks,
there's a after you've done googling the Disney memorial orgy,
there is a letter that Albert Fish wrote.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
To Oh God, send that to people. Oh dude, okay,
don't don't don't. Don't you look genuinely unhappy with me
right now?

Speaker 2 (34:55):
It's gross?

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Well, yes, yes, yes, yes it is this.

Speaker 2 (34:59):
How about this?

Speaker 1 (34:59):
I'll you, I'll My preferred Albert Fish nugget is that
he had allegedly he was into self mortification, and he
had allegedly inserted so many sewing needles into his bathing
suit parts that the electric share supposedly shorted out the
first time they tried to give it to him. Maybe
that was his grand plan. Maybe that was the goal.

(35:22):
Maybe he was playing he's playing three D chess, we're
playing checks hashtag fish tricks.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
He would always huge on his grind. Oh my god, yeah,
oh how much is this for? Oh buddy, As you
meditate on that, we'll be right back with more, too
much information.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
After these messages, the hearings, remember that who could forget

(36:09):
her name? Like Stzka. He was Adlie Stevens's running mate.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Yes, yes, These.

Speaker 1 (36:14):
Hearings established the Comics Code of Authority, which essentially was
just a more stringent and powerful version of the previous code.
Although it was technically voluntary, comics not receiving the CCA
stamp of approval were essentially doomed on the newsstand, and
thus was the fate of EC Comics. Wortham, for his part,
remained unsatisfied by having stamped out EC Comics, and a

(36:38):
year later returned to The Saturday Review of Literature to
publish an article called.

Speaker 5 (36:44):
It's Hilarious It's still Murder, in which she complained about
all caps lettering and the phrasing of word balloons. What's
what's wrong with all caps?

Speaker 2 (36:58):
I believe the both of those were like things that
he identified that like either hastened or contributed to ill
psychiatry and children. He was like it was like the
phraseology of word balloons, where there was like short internal dialogue.
It was like it was still murder to him.

Speaker 1 (37:18):
Did he live to see Batman look like pow wow,
like the TV the animal.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
That's a great question.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Well's look this up because that would have caused his brain.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
It's actually quite sad because he did. He was like
very pro like I said, protective of children and just
like helping kids. But then later his last book was
published in nineteen seventy four, so he lived through Batman.

(37:48):
He did live through Batman, and he concluded he wrote
a book on fanzines. He said they were constructive and
a healthy exercise of creative drives. This is crazy. He
was invited to address the New York Comic Art Convention
and they got there and people heckled it out of him,
and of course he h he stopped writing. The reception

(38:10):
was so bad. He stopped publishing things about comic books.
It's just like what he must have been, like that
peep show thing, like are we the baddies? He just
did not realize that everyone hated him for doing this.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Well, he lived in nineteen eighty one, so he saw
like Fritz the Cat and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (38:28):
Well, so one of his big things was like eye injuries,
like he repeatedly cited like damage to the eyes as
a as like one of these huge sins that comics admitted.
So people were then playing it up in comics like
later people would have like there's a Bongo. Comics published

(38:49):
a story called Stab, which is about eye injuries. The
funny guy Bill Gains.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
Meanwhile, I attempt to launch a new clean line at EC. Okay,
just want to quick recap EC Bible Comics horrors and
then trying to scale back the horrors now with a
new line called New Direction. These names it does what
it says on the tin, but pretty much anything with

(39:19):
the EC name on it was getting returned from distributors
unopened because of its reputation. The company closed its horror
and crime titles, with an editorial statement at the end, reading,
in part, economically, our situation is acute magazines that do
not get on the newsstands do not sell. We are
forced to capitulate. We give up. That's sad. Bill Gain's

(39:42):
empire was whittled down to Mad Magazine, which, though it
would become a huge success, is not the point of
this episode.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
So's horror Roster went underground, but the impact that it
had on generations of creatives still can't be measured. So
by nineteen seventy one there was a budget UK film
company named Amicist Productions and they approached Bill Gains about
a feature length adaptation. So this was nineteen seventy two's
Tales from the Crypt. It was directed by Freddie Francis,

(40:11):
who had previously won an Oscar for Cinematography for nineteen
sixty's D. H. Lawrence adaptation Sons and Lovers gross Following
the same anthology format, the film collected several stories and
shot them all on a shoestring budget over the course
of about a month, notably starring Joan Collins and Hammer
horror icon Peter Cushing. Unsurprisingly, it was not good, and

(40:35):
also unsurprisingly, it got a sequel the year after Jordan
You'll appreciate this. The sequel was called Vault of Horror
and it was directed by a guy named roy Ward Baker,
previously best known for A Night to Remember, a nineteen
fifty eight documentary adaptation of a book about the sinking
of the Titanic.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
One of my favorites.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
I don't think I got a Beatles one in here
that yet, so I'll find one. I bet you will. Meanwhile,
a collective nostalgia was growing in the hearts and minds
of the boomers who had grown up on easy comics,
and they were now rapidly rising to the seats of
power in the country. First example of this is the
wonderful cult film Creep Show, and it is one of

(41:17):
my favorites. It's so adorable and so funny and so
good and it it's a perfect example of how much
people were willing to go to the mat for this
stuff because they just loved it so much. And it
was directed Stephen King. Hit up George Romero about this,
so like, Stephen King, you know, not quite I know,

(41:39):
he would have been at like the height of his
not height what.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Was his post shining yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Oh yeah, yeah. So Stephen King at the height of
his powers, hit up George Romero and was like, we
got to do something about easy comics. It was an
easy comics adaptation in everything but name. This was actually
Stephen King's Hollywood debut as a screenwriter, and he acts
in the opening segment in a just wonderful pants that
really gives no doubt that the man was composed primarily

(42:07):
of cocaine and alcohol. At that time.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
I was gonna say a sterling monument to his drug abuse.

Speaker 2 (42:14):
But it is so good. Creep show is so good.
It has Hal Holbrook, Adrian Barbo, Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson,
Ed Harris and naturally because it was directed by George Romeiro,
it was shot in and around Pittsburgh, because, as John
Carpenter famously put it, someone's got to do it. Special
effects artist whiz Tom Savini handled the effects and enlisted

(42:37):
something like twenty thousand cockroaches for one indelible segment. The
film is lovingly styled after the easy comics look. Individual
segments end in freeze frames that turn they transition into
illustrated comic splash panels, has all these garish lightings and
Dutch angles. It's so good, and crucially, because it was
written by King, it was able to avoid trapesing on

(42:59):
any eat see trademarks. The film earned twenty one million
on an estimated eight million budget, and is followed by
an oddly named TV adaptation, Tales for the Dark Side,
Tales from the Dark Side hashtag rights issues, and then
The Creep Show two came out in eighty seven, and
there are Tales from the Dark Side movies. I also
want to say, and once again I just have to

(43:21):
stress how good Creep Show is. Everyone. You should just
go see it or rent it. It's hilarious and it
paved the way for the absolute insane roster of Hollywood
movers and shakers that we are about to drop on you,
who pulled their own resources for their own proper adaptation,
which means we have finally gotten to the point of

(43:42):
this episode.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
For a keen eyed student of Hollywood. The opening credits
of the HBO Tales from the Crypt series are a
gold mine. We'll get to the cavalcade of prominent guest
stars that the series enlisted shortly, but the executive producers
listed at the top of every episode are one Walter Hill,
David Geiler, Richard Donner, Joel Silver, and Robert Zemechis. Now

(44:06):
go ahead and hit the rewind button on your podcast
platform to take that all in again. Heigel, give us
a rundown on this murder's row. Tell us who they are?

Speaker 2 (44:14):
You got Walter Hill, director of the Warriors forty eight Hours,
Streets of Fire, which is his own cult hit. Not
as cool as the other two, but that's fine. You've
got his business partner and other producer David Geiler, who
produced and co wrote Alien Aliens, also Myra Breckinridge, Oh My.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
God, the adaptation of the Gore Vidal book that was
probably not a very delicate handling of transgender Sure.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
It wasn't, Nope, and also Undisputed. David Goiler produced Undisputed,
the two thousand and two prison fight flop that starred
Wesley Snipes, Ving Raim's Peter Falk and beloved character actors
Michael Rooker and Wes Study, and also Master p I
don't know why I went so long on that. I

(45:00):
just think it's very funny that that guy, his like
career was sort of I mean, he's still working, he's
still alive. But anyway, You've got Richard Damn Donner of
The Omen, Superman, The Goonies, Scrooged, Lethal Weapon, and then, last,
but certainly not least, you've got Joel silver Baby producer extraordinaire.
He did all that with Walter Hill. He also did Commando,

(45:22):
the entirety of the Lethal Weapon franchise. He did the
first two Diehards, the first two Predators, and the fucking Matrixes.
That's in Silver Baby. He's also like kind of bad, right,
like we don't really he's got like a pretty bad reputation, right.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Yeah, he's got a cameo in uh Roger Rabbit.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yeah, well I was getting to Roger Rabbit. Oh sorry,
you've got Robert Zemechiz, director of Romancing the Stone Back
to the Future trilogy, two of which are good. Who
framed Roger Rabbit, which whips death becomes her and then
a bunch of other stuff that sucks, like Forrest Gump
and the Polar Express.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
Oh, he did Castaway, right, what do we land on
the cast Away? Yeah? Sure, Cathaway's fine, said, thought about
Dick Donner. I know, we told this story in the
Goonies episode about how all the kids in the Goonies
tormented him, and then he flew home to Hawaii the
end of the Shoot to Unwind, only to discover that
producer Steven Spielberg had flown the entire cast down to

(46:19):
Dick Donner's house for a party to surprise him there
when he arrived home, which is a hilarious prank and
something that only Steven Spielberg could do. I didn't realize
that Dick Donner's feud with kids dated back to when
he directed The Omen and he asked the kid auditioning
to play Damien to fight him. And so the kid
quote kicked him square in the balls and then began

(46:41):
scratching at his face so hard that his parents had
to pry him off. And Dick Donner kid.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Really wanted that part.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yeah, he gave it to him. Like the kids spunk
awful anyway. Walter Hill was directing at Universal in the
early eighties when he got lost in Russ Cochrane's hardcover
reprints of the EC Comics line and became a young
boy again metaphorically speaking. He called in his partner David Geiler,
who similarly got caught up in the Russian nostalgia, and

(47:08):
the same collection caught the eye of Joel Silver. When
all three men were working on Lethal Weapon in nineteen
eighty three. The three of them optioned the rights from
Bill Gains, who was suitably very intimidated by several of
the most important men in Hollywood approaching him for quote
very little, As Silver recalls in the Wonderful Tone Tales
from the Crypt the Official Archives by dig b Deal.

(47:31):
That's a hell of a name.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Digby did some real lord's work. He's also like a
co biographer of many famous people, like that's what he
was mostly known for. And then also this awesome it's
kind of like the Big Trouble in China book. That's like, uh,
it's like four hundred dollars on you know, eBay and stuff.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
I've been trying to track that down for you.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
Oh, I got it. My in law has got it
for me.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Shouts to Charlie and Patt but yeah, uh a deal.
Digby Deal did celebrity autobiographies with like Natalie Cole, Patti LuPone.
He also did a CIA memoir, What a Memoir by
the j Paul Getty's fifth wife. So and just also

(48:18):
made time to pen the definitive book on Tales from
the Crypt a hero.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Digby Deal, we bestow upon you the honorary title Friend
of the Pod.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
You are dead and not in hell.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Oh he's dead. He's super dead now he can still
be Friend of the Pod though.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
Also, while working on Lethal Weapon, Dick Donner was pulled
in one night after shooting in their trailer, when Silver
simply said, Hey, I'm working on a Tales from the
Crypt series, and apparently that's all it took. Donner later said,
I have no idea what our concept was going to
be or how it evolved. And there were times when
everyone near and dear to my life said, don't put
any more of your money into this project, but I

(48:55):
stuck with it. Robert Tamachis, meanwhile, was swayed through a
different bill game his product Mad Magazine. He recalled us
Back to the Future co writer Bill Gail, introducing him
to Easy Comics while the pair were roommates at USC
Gail was a comics nerd who had fan letters published
in Marvel's Tales of Suspense and Iron Man in nineteen
sixty eight, and would later write for the company. While

(49:19):
filming Who Framed Roger Rabbit, in which Joel Silver has
a great cameo as a hot headed director, Baby Herman,
you were great, you were perfect. You're better than perfect.
It's just rot Roger. He bow his lines, what's that
tweety bird, tweety bird? What's the script saying? Stars, not
tweety bird, stars. God, it's so good it's so good

(49:42):
and if he watch that's sin well, how am I?
How is that? While filming your frame, Roger Rabbits and
Mecus explained, Joel mentioned that he was working on getting
easy comics on cable. I knew Tales from the Crypt
would never succeed on network television. They'd ruin it if
it was going on cable. I told him I was interested.
One of the problems was that there was a huge

(50:04):
pale on retro anthology stuff after the disaster of the
Twilight Zone movie. Higel, what happened during the Twilight Zone
movie shoot?

Speaker 2 (50:13):
John Landis killed some kids and also Vic Morro oh uh?
And John Landis told the helicopter pilot to drive closer
to the explosions Jesus and they all died in fiery,
screaming agony, and then John Landis maintained that he did
nothing wrong for years.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Did the helicopter pilot live?

Speaker 2 (50:32):
I want to say.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Yes, oh no, actually, oh, actually, I don't know the
right answer for that.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
Both the three actors, No, no, it was just the
kids and in Vic Morro Jesus. Yeah, Steven Spielberg cut
him off because of that. Really, yeah, that's what it
took yeah wow. Silver told the La Times it was
an unusual.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Time because there have been a bunch of anthology shows
and films that had all just gone in the toilet.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Jesus Christ. Sorry. During a take three hours before the incident,
the helicopter pilot, who was in Vietnam, oh yeah, told
Landis that the fireballs were too large and too close
to the helicopter, to which Landis responded, you ain't seen
nothing yet. Witnesses testified that Landis was still shouting for

(51:24):
the helicopter to fly lower lower moments before it crashed. Also,
you know, he was also violating labor laws by having
these kids work past their hours.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
I was gonna say, weren't they like not even actors.
Didn't he just like find them or something like.

Speaker 2 (51:40):
He was Even the district attorney was like, this guy's
being gross. Like during the trial, I mean, did he ever.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Like recover from that? How did he not get like Alec.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Baldwins a different times he made the thriller video.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
It was an unusual time, Joel Silver told the La
Times because there had been a bunch of anthology shows
and films that had all just gone into the toilet.
In the aftermath of the Twilight Zone movie incident. He
was craftily pitching it too. He promised the creative freedom
of non network TV and a relatively large budget, which
he subsidized by selling the rights to the series to

(52:16):
foreign markets, packaging three at a time as feature length films.
That's a really good idea.

Speaker 2 (52:21):
Yeah, smart guy, you know what can I say? Knows
his way around the business.

Speaker 1 (52:26):
Walter Hill recalled the project stalling out for several years
until getting a phone call from Silver for what Deal
calls a quote classic micro conversation with Silver. This amounted
to Joel Silver, basically in one breath, telling Hill that
Zamechas and Donna were on board, as was HBO, and
could he'll film something in five days. Joel Silver would

(52:46):
end up making his directorial debut on the series with
the episode's Split Personality, which involves a typically Tails esque
murderer's row of talent. It stars Joe Peshy. The script
is written by Monster Squad and Night of the creepscribe
Decker Jurassic Parks David Lowry was a storyboard artist and
Speed and Twister director. Yon Debont was the cinematographer to

(53:09):
this day. It is literally the only thing that Joel
Silver has ever directed.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
Why bother when you knock it out of the park
and surest that bat true. Because of this assemblage of
power players plus the nostalgia factor, TFTC as I've grown
to call it in Our Friendship was able to recruit
a seriously mind boggling array of guests during its run,
including many Oscar winners. The full list is like three

(53:34):
columns long on Wikipedia, so I'm not naming everyone, but
it'll feel like I am. Because of how many people
were involved in this show. You had your A listers
like Arnold Schwarzenegger, who directed an episode and was paid
fifteen thousand dollars. Everyone worked for scale on this that's
what's so crazy about it. So Arnes Schwarzenegger was took
over the director's chair for an episode and was paid

(53:55):
fifteen grand while also cashing a check for ten million
for total recall, Tom Hanks, who also directed, Kirk Douglas,
Christopher Reeve, Martin Sheen, Patricia r Quette, Brook Shields, Bill Paxson,
Steve BISHEMI then you had basically anyone who is hot
in the mid eighties to early nineties, and I do
mean physically as well as with your juice, if you will,

(54:18):
Why did I say that like that? Well, Demi Moore,
Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Corey Feldman, Michael J. Fox,
who also directed, Kyle McLachlan, and most of the cast
of Twin Peaks Lou Diamond, Philip Kelly Preston, Key Hoy Kwan,
Lea Thompson, and John Stamos. You have comedians include Dan Ackroyd,

(54:38):
Don Rickles, Rickles' episode is great. He plays a ventriloquist.
It's great. Greedy's included Yeah, Dan Ackroyd, Don Rickles, John
Lovett's cheech, Marin Hanks, Area, Catherine O'Hara, Whoopi Goldberg, Katie Segal,
Ted Danson, and Rita Rudner. There were also a bunch
of people from the music world who came over Ikey Pop,
Isaac Hayes, Meet Loaf, Adultery of the Who, Slash of

(55:02):
Guns n' Roses and also just being Slash, Tim Curry,
Priscilla Presley, and also.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Wayne Newton said me Loaf as if Loaf was his
last name, Meat Loaf, mister Loaf, please, that was my father?

Speaker 2 (55:15):
Call me meat.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
From was it The Apprentice Apprentice.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah, when people are trying, he's like having a tit
to meltdown and like people are trying to soothe him.
Like I think it's Mark McGrath of Sugar Ray is like.

Speaker 1 (55:29):
Meat, meat, meat me.

Speaker 2 (55:34):
Some of the across the Pond talent who came over
with Malcolm McDowell, uh Isabella Rossellini, Bob Hoskins who directed
an episode, Timothy Dalton, you know, the Bond guy for
Two Things of Bond Boxing, Legend, Sugar Ray Leonard and
the show also gave early gigs to a bunch of
people who would go on to become a listers like

(55:54):
Ewan McGregor, Beniso de Toro, Daniel Craig, Jonathan Banks of
Breaking Bad, that tall guy from Everybody Loves Raymond. I
told you about. One of my favorite Jimmy Glick put
downs is from him. Jimmany says something to him and
Brad Garrett's like, oh, I'm sure you got that from
the website, didn't you. Like A millisecond later, sweet sweet

(56:19):
Martin just comes out with, oh, because there's so many
books written about you.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
As much as I hate Martin Short, I do love
Jimmy Glick.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Yeah, Jada Pinkett. I think it's just Jada Pinkett these days.
She was in there. Jeffrey Tambore in a fat suit
that looks suspiciously exactly like the fat suit and makeup.
They put Colin Ferrell in to play the penguin in
his current job. Like Jeffrey, google it, it's weird. Jeffrey
Tamber's fat suit in makeup in Nights from the Crip

(56:51):
looks eerily almost exactly similar to the penguin right now.
Obvious genre mainstays like Brad Doree, Michael Ironside, Lance Hendrickson,
ar Lee Ermie shows up at one point to do
his whole thing, and also saving the handsomest for last,
Brad Pitt. Tom Holland, who directed Child's Play and Fright Night,

(57:14):
was the director of the episode that Brad Pitt stars
in with music by Warren Zavaughn, which is super cool,
and he told sci Fi that after Brad Pitt appeared
in that episode, he said, I thought Brad Pitt was
so terrific in that I went out and tried to
get him an agent, and I couldn't get him an agent.
In the episode, he said, he smiled It's all he
had to do. And when he smiled, I said, well

(57:36):
that's a movie star, and I said light him as
well as the girl. I mean, he was as beautiful
as she was.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
I love how much you love Brad Pitt.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
I love Tom Holland too. He's so dim funny. When
Julian Walters died, I interviewed him about how she about it.
She was almost the voice of Chucky and he was
he was so cool on the phone. Yeah, he said,
it was just like it was a little it ended
up being like a little too effeminate and then like obviously,
but she had been in play Misty for me, so
he thought she could convinstantly pull off a psychopath. But

(58:08):
I think the I think the problem was that in
the test screetings people were like, well chokey sounds gay,
so they were like, okay, get a man to do it.
And those are just all the people with name recognition
in this There are so many character actors in this
show where you just go that guy like it's incredible.
You would die doing a drinking game if you were

(58:28):
just like take a shot every time you recognize someone.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
How long is someon not seven years? I mean there
weren't even like that many episodes of this too. It's
pretty amazing how stacked this guy is.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
Just wild.

Speaker 1 (58:39):
Yeah, the director's list is a who's who as well.
You mentioned Tom Holland, who did Child's Play, Psycho two
and Fright Night, American Psycho and Pet Cemetery director Mary Lambert,
Texas Chainsaw Massacre director Toby Hooper, and also hopefully Paltergeist. Right,
you know, there's some debate about that.

Speaker 2 (59:00):
Sorry, I should have put that in. He also directed
Poulter Guys.

Speaker 1 (59:03):
Even though a lot of people think Steven Spielberg did.
Spielberg put an ad in the Trades that said he
did not.

Speaker 2 (59:09):
We've also covered that story. Yeah, but it's it's kind
of sad.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Exosus director and French Connection director William Freakin, that horror
show of a man.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, right, came out and worked for Scale. I guess
he really loved ec comics man.

Speaker 1 (59:26):
Yeah. I mean the fact that everybody worked for Scale
just shows the affection that so many of these people
had for this beloved bit of nostalgia from the childhood,
or in.

Speaker 2 (59:37):
The more cynical reading, they were cozying up to this
crazy assemblage of hot producers, directors. Sure, I'll come by
and do your thing for peanuts.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
Good point, very good point. The budget for each episode
was around nine hundred thousand dollars, which sounds high to me,
especially for today. I bet you that's like close to
to two and a half million.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
It is high for an episode of TV show.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Yeah, and as you said, people just loved making these.
Arnold Swartzenegger told the La Times in nineteen ninety that
quote it was, I would say, can you do that?
I can't do the voice.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
It was I would say the greatest joy I've had
in the whole movie business.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Arnold Schwartzenegger expressing the joy is the same word is
the same of him expressing sorrow.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
It's because his laughter is so is his laughter is
so alienating, say, I can't picture his laugh, but it
was I would say the greatest joy I've had. It
doesn't work, man like, I'm sorry. Imagine being like around
him when he expresses genuine mirth'd be like, what the
Jesus does? Spake? Zara Fuster starts playing in the background.

Speaker 1 (01:00:52):
What a truly horrifying image this is.

Speaker 2 (01:00:56):
Yeah, this is why people pay the koffee big Bucks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
Wait could do the laugh and I'll splice in the sounds.

Speaker 4 (01:01:26):
That funny sue.

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
Then, Oh, Joe Silvera recalled in a behind the scenes
featurette that Martin Scorsese actually expressed interest in doing an

(01:01:53):
episode at one point, and he had a specific comic
in mind to do, but I guess it never came together.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
No, And he said he came up. He's like, he said,
the next time he saw Marty, like years later at
an awards show, whatever scorsees came up to him. He's like, Man,
I really wish I'd gotten to do that night a
Tees from the Crypt episode. Just like people loved it. Man,
it's so it had such a spirit of joy behind it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
Oh. For Robert Semechis, Dick Dahner and the rest of
the show's high profile producers, Tales from the Crypts financial
payoff was always thought to be a move the syndication,
which paid off when Tales from the Crypt was bought
by Fox for a late night Saturday slot in nineteen
ninety four, which I vaguely remember. But obviously all the
sex and gore wouldn't fly because this was made for

(01:02:36):
HBO after all, So the episodes were re edited to
include alternate takes that eliminated most of the original episodes
gore and nudity. The show also had actors record PG
rated versions of otherwise profane dialogue during shooting, and even
though this been extra work, it also meant extra money
for all concerns.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
Yeah, it's just funny that they were like, take good blood, curling, scream,
thank you, Let's clean up all this blood and we'll
do PG one next. Everyone back to one. Donner's vision
from the jump was that the show had to look
just like the comics. His first episode, dig That Cat
whatever it was, shot entirely with extreme wide angle lenses.

(01:03:17):
He told Digby deal deliberately distorting people. He also said
that he told a young editor when he got his
first edits back from this kid, I want you to
go back into the editing room and do everything you
were trained not to do. The show picked up some
of the industry's most talented miniatures and effects artists. Chris
Waylis directed an episode. He's known for the fly and

(01:03:37):
other disgusting things. The opening credits are really incredible. That
is a mini mansion is actually a fool like a
miniature that which is designed by Richard Edlund, who is
a guy who came up through industrial light and magic,
which again is just proof that like Hollywood is like
a dozen people who all know each other and make
everything happen, particularly in this era. But Donner and Zimechis

(01:03:59):
took charge of sequence and actually piloted, Like I guess,
it was like an endoscopy camera, like a tiny little
camera on the end of a tube that they were
just kind of running from above through the rooms of
this little miniature mansion and down the staircase, and they
disguise the cut when the door opens, and then they're
in the actual set for the crypt keeper. Speaking of that,

(01:04:21):
the artist responsible for designing the crypt was Mike Vosberg.
He's the guy who does all the comic illustrations. Also
at the top of the episode, the main FX artist
associated with Tales from the Crypt TFTC was a guy
named Todd Masters, and boy did he go buck wild,
freed from the constraints of regular TV. It did eventually, though,

(01:04:41):
find a line that he couldn't cross, and I will
detail that to you now. It was for an episode
starring Steve Buscemi which involved his character suffering and then
dying from something called jungle Rot. Masters told Digby Deal
that he could have done the shot with a model,
but actually devised a way to make it look like
Steve Bishemi's face was melting off in real time and

(01:05:04):
disgustingly falling apart, and it looked so realistic that Richard
Darner was sent the dailies, and the morning after he
called them and said that was too much. But Masters
said to total Digby Deal that that was the only
time he was ever told to rein it in. This
thing picked up a bunch of Emmy nominations that it
didn't win, mostly for technical stuff, but also for wardrobe,

(01:05:26):
so shout out to Warden Neil, who's the wardrobe designer
for that. Kirk Douglas was nominated for his guest role.
I don't know what the cable Ace awards are, but
TFTC won ten, so that's cool. Danny Elfman does the theme.
I bet you can guess what it sounds like, thumping
John SUSA esque rhythms a melodic line that falls squarely

(01:05:47):
on the beat and uses the flat and fifth and
sixth from the major scale. But other musicians popped up
to help with TFTC, including as previously mentioned, my beloved
Warren zevonn Jazz bass Legends, Stanley Clark, Maha Vishu orchestra
keyboardist and Miami Vice themed composer Jan Hammer, guitarist and
musical man About Town, Ray Cooter, Titanic and many other things.

(01:06:10):
Composer James Horner, and Bruce Broughton, who is most notable
for composing for like a ton of stuff that was
never huge, But then he was embroiled in an OSCARS
controversy where while as an executive committee member of the
Academy's music branch, they discovered that he was calling other
members and stumping for himself for his own nomination. Ugh,

(01:06:36):
as you meditate on that, we'll be right back with
more too much information after these messages.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
Well, folks, let's be honest. The people are here for
the crypt Keeper, the borsch belt style host who's puns
and discussed appearance and his little costumes. As you mentioned,
have this all coming back. He's descended from the rich
tradition of horror hosts that I think we may have
covered in another episode, people like Vampira and Zacherley, who'd
essentially MC in regional markets when their local affiliates aired

(01:07:15):
old schlock late at night, so the idea of having
this host was a must from the get go. What's
Wild was out Chuck Jaeger, not the guy who broke
the sound barrier for the first time, the guy who
designed Chucky from Child's Play, actually wound up for the job.
Joel Silver bumped into him in a storage facility where
they both had lockers, happened to see Jaeger's collection of

(01:07:36):
props and so forth, and offered him the job on
the spot. Now, to me, that's such a like only
in Hollywood kind of thing, and I really enjoyed that,
And that kind of set me down a little little
rabbit hole earlier tonight about yeah, about weird ways that
other people in Hollywood got discovered and I found some
good ones. May I go off on the sidebar for
a minute and share.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
Someone but careful prosecutor.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Counselor. Charlie's therein was discovered while in the middle of
an argument at a bank. She later told Oprah, I
really needed the money. I began pleading with this teller
to help me, and a gentleman came over and tried
to help. What I didn't know was that I was
auditioning for a guy who had ended up being my manager.
On the way out, the man who helped me gave
me his card.

Speaker 2 (01:08:21):
That could have just been horniness, though.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kate Moss was having a fight with
her dad at an airport when she was spotted by
a talent agent. She was fourteen years old.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
They boarded the plane, and according to the talent agent,
the signed her. As soon as the seatbelt switched off,
they went over to her. Kate would later say, I
was smoking. I was fourteen, and I just lost my virginity,
so I thought I was the beast knees. I was
in the airport puffing away. I'd got on the plane,
and then CEO of the model company and her brother

(01:08:54):
came up to me and said, have you ever thought
about being a model? Pamela Andrews was on a football
game and they projected her image up on the jumbo
tron that she happened to be wearing a Labat's Beer
T shirt, and the image of her and that T
shirt got back to Labat's Beer themselves, who suggested she
model for them. Know, so that's how that started. Everyone

(01:09:18):
knows about how Harrison Ford was a carpenter around Hollywood,
and he was a carpenter for a very famous casting director,
Fred Russ, who kept suggesting him for different parts. Harrison
kept getting turned down until eventually he was cast in
his breakout role in George Lucas's American Graffiti in nineteen
seventy three.

Speaker 2 (01:09:35):
I can't believe people turned down Harrison Ford. Did you
see him? Did you look at his face and hear
his voice?

Speaker 1 (01:09:43):
I could see people thinking that he couldn't act early on.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
Yeah, what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Maybe, I don't know. He's so like stoic in a
bad way. I don't know. Ye on your tail. Her
Joy was walking her dog when she was scouted by
the founder of a top modeling agency, accord Knew. An
interview she gave with James Corden, she said, my actions
were very stupid, and I don't suggest that anybody do
what I did. A car was following me and I

(01:10:13):
started running and this guy leans out the window and says,
if you stop, you won't regret it, and I stopped.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
Wow, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
Tony Braxon was singing to herself at a gas station
when songwriter Bill Peteway overheard her and helped her get
a deal with Arister Records. John Wayne had a job
moving props and filming equipment at Fox Film Corporation when
the filmmakers, notably John Ford, started casting him as an
extra instead. And here's my favorite. I didn't realize this

(01:10:43):
as much Marilyn Monroe lore as I know. She was
nineteen years old and working in an aircraft factory when
a touring Army photographer took her picture. Photographer liked what
he saw when he developed the photo and came back
to use her as a basically a recurring model. And
after a while she got so many modeling for him
that she quit her factory job, divorced her husband, dyed
her hair blonde, and changed her name. She was still

(01:11:05):
a norma Jean Baker. Well, good, Yeah, I think that's
all I got.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Maybe maybe though, men in cars should and airport should
stop approaching underage women.

Speaker 1 (01:11:15):
Yeah that's a good that's a good takeaway. So Chuck
Yeger and Joel Silver went through the typically tortuous process
of sketching and casting the Cryptkeeper from clay and basically
just hacking away at it, taking different parts of the
face away, the hair, the lips, the teeth, though crucially
he did originally have a nose, and it was Robert

(01:11:36):
Simchis Dear Sweet Robert Zamekis who gave us the Polar
Express and Forrest Gump and Back to the Future, the
movie about the mom trying to date her son, who
suggested that they take the nose away, which is kind
of the most horrifying part of the Cryptkeeper. It really
is bad. It really, it's real bad. It's real bad. Yeah,

(01:11:57):
Jaeger did add one signature touch. However, the crypt Keeper
literally has Chucky from Child's play's eyes, or at least
the same model of false eyes that was used in
Child's Blame. The other producers, Walter Hill and David Geiler,
were prepared for a more human looking host, and kind
of understandably initially balked when they gazed upon the horrifying

(01:12:18):
visage of the crypt keyts.

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
Somehow desiccated and moist at the same time, exist in
a state of super imposition between two states like Schrodinger's Cat.

Speaker 1 (01:12:29):
But eventually they were convinced six different people actually piloted
the puppet, four alone just for the mouth, eyes, and face,
and two left over for everything else basically, but It
was only in the third season that the Cryptkeeper started appearing.
It bespoke outfits from pop culture, Dressica's Elvis, Uncle Sam

(01:12:51):
or in one case Forrest comp.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Yeah it's great.

Speaker 1 (01:12:56):
Wow, he has the little box of chocolates and everything.
Oh cute, I love it. He's on a bench assuming
of course.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
They had props. The one were the brad pitt one.
He drives in a motorcycle. You see his little feet
in motorcycle.

Speaker 1 (01:13:11):
Is really funny. Jaeger said in a Making Up documentary
that there were twenty seven servo motors inside the Keeper's
head alone, and they would burn out every few weeks.
So the puppeteers that would keep a close eye on
the micro movements of the puppets face and notice of
one area was lagging or breaking down, so the motor
didn't actually go up in the flames and burn the

(01:13:31):
whole thing down. It's on fire.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Imagine watching that thing and like, oh he started to fire,
he's starting to stroke out. Nope, get to him and
then he's.

Speaker 1 (01:13:40):
Just the damn face could be scarier. It was at
the center of a flame.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
Wow. The voice of the Cryptkeeper was a guy named
John Cassiir previously best known as the voice of the
raccoon in Pocahontas. Pocahontas was made the nineties, though like
nineteen ninety three, Oh I guess not previously later best
known John Cassier told observer dot Com about his audition process, recalling,

(01:14:09):
I saw some of the other people auditioning were looking
at the script copy and saying, oh my god, this
stuff is terrible. They didn't get it. The crypt keeper
loves saying this stuff. He's delivering it like it's the
best Shakespeare. I wanted him to treat the language like
it was important, so he gave him a British accent.
I used to love the Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the
way he would introduce those episodes with such a tongue

(01:14:31):
in cheek delivery. That is pretty great. What a great
way to approach that. That's so wutiful.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
In one of the ones we watched last night, they
put him in a little Shakespearean rough because he was
he was the acting episode, and he was like, He's like,
next time doing Shakespeare.

Speaker 1 (01:14:47):
Is a little rough caller? Was it cuter or less
cute or as cute as Wishbone the Dog and the
Shakespearean rough call.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
Oh great, call less cute, but with a similar charm.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
Yeah yeah. Supposedly, Michael Winslow and Charles Fleischer, the voice
of Roger Rabbit, also sent in tapes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Please Eddie Wait.

Speaker 1 (01:15:09):
Who's Michael Winslow, the.

Speaker 2 (01:15:11):
Police academy guy, the guy who makes all the weird sounds.
He's he's in space balls. He's like, we've lost the
bleeps and the bloops in that, but we've got the root.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Oh yeah, the Man of ten thousand sound effects. Yeah. Yeah.
The Keeper's of noxious laugh was inspired by Margaret Hamilton's
Wicked Witch of the West, which caught Jaeger's ear when
Casiir sent in a tape. Unfortunately, the demands of the
voice weigh heavily on Casiir, as you can attest from
doing the impression at the top of the episode, he
could only track a few minutes at a time and

(01:15:42):
was drinking lemonon honey constantly. He told Digby Deal colorfully
that the intensity of the Keeper voice quote left his
vocal cords like raw meat by the time we were
done with a session. He eventually had to modify the
voice a little as the show progressed Also during the
early seasons he had to slow down his delivery because
the puppet can't keep up with them. That eventually picked

(01:16:03):
up as the tech got better.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
That's like a little shop of horrors. Rick moranis genius
that he is, was performing all of his stuff at
half speed when he was in scenes with the full
Audrey puppet. Really yeah wow? Well, you know, as I
mentioned before, or did I as we alluded to before,
we even have TFTC to thank for HBO's famous slogan.

(01:16:26):
The network pitched a reel of its original programming to
an ad agency and when it got to the gratuitous
sex and violence portion, someone from the agency said, it's
not TV and I know the responded, no, it's HBO.
So from that twenty minute meeting, people made like five
hundred thousand dollars I'm sure because ad and marketing work

(01:16:47):
is not real.

Speaker 1 (01:16:47):
Oh way, way more than that way.

Speaker 2 (01:16:51):
Crypt made its debut. Why did I say that TFTC
made its debut? Might I say that like that Tales
from the Crypt made its debut? In this casey caseum
over here, Tells from the Crypt made its debut June
nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
Here's a letter.

Speaker 2 (01:17:07):
I'm working on it, beating out the networks in HBO's
seventeen million homes according to Nielsen figures, with a twenty
four percent share of the audience. You're thinking about the Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
I never want to see you or your boyfriend ever
again again, Casey Kiss.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
The success of the show was so dramatic and immediate
that Universal offered the team a three picture deal to
be spun off the series. These were also predated, bizarrely enough,
by a children's animated TV show, Tells from the Cryptkeeper,
which ran on ABC and CBS until nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 1 (01:17:42):
Oh my god, I forgot.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
I think that's where I might have I definitely had
watch episodes of that. There was also a children's game
show called Secrets of the Cryptkeeper's Haunted House that ran
for a year on CBS. The first of the feature
length adaptations was Demon Night, which was officially a subtitle
with the TFTC branding as a concept. It weirdly enough
predates the entire series, and it wasn't adapted from the comics.

(01:18:05):
First draft was written in nineteen eighty seven, and Tom
Holland initially wanted to have it be his fall up
to Child's play. He then made a movie called Fatal Beauty,
which bombed at the box office. The script then went
to Pumpkinhead screenwriter Mark Carducci, and then a few years
later was kicked to Pet Cemetery director Mary Lambert. Lambert
bless Her had some radical ideas for it, including casting

(01:18:27):
all African American leads, but Pet Cemetery too bombed, so
she couldn't get her money to make her vision. Screenwriter
Ethan Rife told Fangoria, this is when we thought this
script was cursed. The joke was that the curse wasn't
on us, but whoever optioned the script usually had serious
career problems afterwards if they didn't make the movie. The
script later went to Charles Bands notoriously low budget but

(01:18:49):
scrappy Full Moon Features. It was optioned as a potential
middle picture in the branded trilogy, although neither of the
films on either side of it ever got made. The
budget problems and headache surrounding this thing were so pervasive
that they didn't know if they were going to have
enough money to pull off the eponymous demons, and they
were just gonna have this army of the of evil

(01:19:10):
just be guys. In black suits and sunglasses like the
Agents of the Matrix. Universal wisely kicked in money for
the full treatment, and Ernest Dickerson was tapped to direct.
Dickerson had been working primarily as a cinematographer on Spike
Lee's early films, but he was coming off his directorial
debuts Juice starring Tupac, great movie Surviving the Game starring

(01:19:31):
Iced Tea, which is also a great movie I love
in Juice like Dickerson was a huge fan of the
horror genre. Interestingly enough, love like Lovecraft and everything, and
you can see it in Juice, where like Tupac like
pops up like Michael Myers in the frame sometimes, like
there's literally scenes in which he does like the Michael
Myers face just coming out of the shadows thing. It's

(01:19:53):
so funny. I have to think it was a deliberate tribute,
because Dickerson knew that much stuff and he jumped at
the chance to play around in the genre. He said
that with directorial assignments sometimes I'd be told, well, we
never saw this as a black film, and he said, actually,
neither did I. But with Demon Knight, I was able
to put some African american Ism into it. For example,

(01:20:14):
I put Jada Pinkett in the role of the heroine,
and for me, this was the perfect setup as until then,
if you put a black person in a movie, they
would usually be one of the first to die, and
she wound up being the final lady. In another interview,
I saw him just say that he was happy to
make the first film in which a black woman saves
the world. Unfortunately, the film did just okay. It made

(01:20:35):
twenty one million on a twelve million dollar budget, but
that is far from a hit in Hollywood. So after
Demon Knight, the Tales from the Crypt Cinematic Universe TFTCCU
gets a little screwy. The story goes that Quentin Tarantino
ended up writing From Dusk Till Dawn, his own screwy
movie of the mid nineties, directed by Robert Rodriguez, thanks

(01:20:55):
to Robert Kurtzman. Robert Kurtzman is one third of K
and B Effects over this ledge and very practical effects house.
His other partners were included Greg Nicotero, who went on
to run The Walking Dead for many seasons, and Kurtzman
came up this for this idea From Dust Till Dawn
just to have a project that would be a showcase

(01:21:15):
for what his effects company could do. So in nineteen
ninety he hired a young video store clerk named Quentin
Tarantino to flesh out a twenty four page outline and
paid him fifteen hundred dollars to do so. Kurtzman initially
wanted to direct and so that he could, just couldn't
convince anyone to let him do it until after Pulp Fiction,
when Tarantino went to Mirrimax and said, the next movie

(01:21:36):
I do will be From Dust Till Dawn. In the
interim though there were talks about it becoming the next
Tales from the Crypt movie and those broke Down, which
brings us to Bordello of Blood. Bob Zemchas must have
been pissed when From Dust Till Dawn escaped his clutches
because he'd written a script with Robert Gail right out
of film school that was strikingly similar about a whorehouse

(01:21:58):
full of vampires. They pitched it to John and Milius,
the insane gunnut libertarian director who wrote Apocalypse Now directed
Conan the Barbarian and is the inspiration for Walter Soachek
in The Big Lebowski I didn't know that.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:22:15):
Milius expressed interest, but the film just didn't get made.
But at some point, after Tales from a Crib had
done so well, the newly formed DreamWorks Pictures tried to
poach Robert Zemechiz from Universal and he said, no, I'll
stay with Universal if I can make Bordello of Blood.

(01:22:36):
This was a mistake. Zamecas didn't even end up directing it.
That chair went to Gilbert Adler, who is a producer
in all of those Guys Orbits. It was the first
and last time he would direct. The thing nearly went
down the tubes from the start thanks to casting. It
starred Dennis Miller, who had parlayed his whole shtick on
sno's Weekend Update into Dennis Miller Live and Boy he sucks.

(01:22:59):
H Dennis Miller sucks. He sucks so hard I hate him.
Miller wanted a million dollars to make the film, which
he had not made before or I believe after, and
Universal wisely refused to pay. So Joel Silver wanted him
so much that he cut seven hundred and fifty grand
from the FX budget to pay Dennis Miller to be
in this movie. Dennis Miller didn't like the dialogue as

(01:23:23):
written and proceeded to improvise much of his lines, which
not only screwed over the rest of the cast but
the film's continuity. It was filmed in Vancouver because of
Joel Silver's apparently contentious history with Hollywood labor unions and
Ben selzre Yeah, and Vancouver doesn't have many night hours
in July and August, which, as you might surmise, was

(01:23:45):
a hindrance to filming a vampire movie. Because Miller insisted
that the film shoot around tapings of Dennis Miller Live,
the crew were forced to work weekends, which pissed them off.

Speaker 1 (01:23:55):
There was also the problem of Erica Aleniak, who just
come off of Baywatch was hoping to launch herself as
a serious actress. She also demanded rewrites for her character
before they'd even gotten onto the set, though she said
they were related to Joel Silver attempting to force a
girl on girl's scene between her and Angie Everheart. The
other female lead. Everheart meanwhile had almost no acting experience,

(01:24:17):
but was dating Sylvester Stallone, who was then starring in
The Assassins, produced by Joel Silver. That movie was being
shot in Seattle. So yes, Sylvester Stallone basically got his
girlfriend Cass as a lead in a movie to make
visiting her on weekends easier because Seattle and Vancouver are
fairly close to one another.

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
That is such a dick swinging move. I almost have
to respect it.

Speaker 1 (01:24:39):
Oh, I totally respect it. Hilariously, in a making of
doc a Fresh out of Rehab, Corey Felban threw the
pair under the bus for acting like divas, the pair
meaning Everheart and Eric Eleniak.

Speaker 2 (01:24:53):
Eleniak and Miller.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
Oh yeah. Corey Felban also claimed in his autobiography, The
incredibly named Corey Biography, that Dennis Miller literally told people
on air on his TV show not to watch the
movie before it even came out, because, as you've correctly
noted before, he sucks and it's kind of so bad. Yeah,
well tell me, why, tell me more about why he sucks.

Speaker 2 (01:25:17):
I don't know, he's weakend up that it was always
super weak. Yeah, he's like the weakest part of that show.
He cannot act for sure, and just he's one of
those guys who clearly thought, like, I'm cool enough to
just do me throughout an entire movies. Yeah, I don't know, man,
it just it's it's the smarm of Miller, and I
just associated him with Bill maher Of. He's like, yeah,

(01:25:38):
loser boomers who like came out with their shirt tucked
into their dark washed jeans, and really I don't want
to get out of Iran here. But women, you know, like, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:25:49):
Dude, this is going to send you into such a
it's sending me into a rage. This just single line
from his Wikipedia page. In nineteen seventy nine, after seeing
a Robin Williams comedy special on HBO, Miller began to
pursue his dream of being a stand up comedian. He
saw Robin Williams, those dynamic, electrifying, colorful performers of the

(01:26:13):
twentieth century.

Speaker 2 (01:26:14):
How what was he like twenty five thirty? Like it
must have been like it's like watching Michael Jordans sink
the shot and being like I could do that. Now
I must play basketball.

Speaker 1 (01:26:23):
You know, Yeah, he was twenty six.

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
M Night Shaimo on writing The Sixth Sense and looking
around at pictures of like posters from like Jaws and
Aliens and being like, yeah, I just have to write
something as good as those but he kind of kind
of did you love the sixth sense? I do? Did
you see his new one?

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
What a piece of movie is? Cut all that out?
I don't want to get from the weird m night
shamal on stands that are out there.

Speaker 1 (01:26:54):
What prick.

Speaker 2 (01:26:56):
So the pathetic five point six million dollar debut of
Bordello Blood pretty much put the proverbial nail in the
coffin of the further big screen adventures of Tales from
the cryp So in a sense, we did get another
unaffiliated movie out of it, Peter Jackson's The Frighteners, which
I think is just an underappreciated little gem from the nineties.
Not a lot of people know about this movie. It

(01:27:17):
was completely dominated by Independence Day, but I think it's
just a delight.

Speaker 1 (01:27:22):
You might say that not a lot of people know that.

Speaker 2 (01:27:24):
Yes I might. Peter Jackson and his wife Maybe not
at the time, but I think now. Wife Fran Walsh
wrote this idea of a psychic who uses real ghosts
to fleece people into thinking that their house is haunted
and then getting him to cleanse it. They were writing
this in nineteen ninety two while they were also working
on Heavenly Creatures by Peter Jackson. Then they turned the

(01:27:47):
Frighteners into a treatment and sent it off. Robert Simchis
found it and wanted to make it the next Tales
from the Cryp movie, so he hired the two of
them to turn their treatment into a full length screenplay
in January of ninety three, and the pair it a
year later. This script so impressed Zemechis that he told
Jackson to direct it and that he would produce. Stars
Michael J. Fox and a few other interesting people. And

(01:28:11):
it just flopped.

Speaker 1 (01:28:12):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:28:12):
The marketing was off. As I mentioned earlier, Independence Day
was its competition, so that was a fool's errand if
ever there was one. But I really like it, you
might too. Maybe probably not, ye you know you've said
that to me a few times. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:28:26):
I mean, anyone likes the Beatles as much as Peter
Jackson does. Can't be all that he got my Beatles
reference in there there. It is what killed Tales from
the Crypts though was unfortunately I belove it. British Gilbert
Adler told The Daily Dead, I thought if we went
to England it would be great to get all these
actors and directors that do tails from the Crypt. Yeah.

(01:28:47):
He added that locations were a big deal to him,
specifically castles. I couldn't do that in America, he said.
In America, if something is two hundred years old, it's old,
and England if something is five hundred years old, it's young.
Also if there was a little bit of the Muppets
in there too, then they shot the Muppet Show in London. Oh,
I don't know. It's puppets and kind of weird, weird,

(01:29:10):
kitchy Bodvillian borsch belt stuff at the beginning. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:29:14):
I'm listening key pitching, key pitching a.

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
Muppets tails from the Crypt crossover.

Speaker 2 (01:29:19):
That has to have it has to have happened, is
piggy like Karate chops him.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
It must have happened, like Google that while I finished this.
This must this must have happened.

Speaker 2 (01:29:30):
This may have been a case of Adler's overt anglophilia
before anything else though. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
His wife is English and his first project was produced
in London, and at one point he made a failed
bid to bring The Rocky Horror Picture Show over to
the US when it was just a theater production in London.
Good instincts, good instincts. Yeah, unfortunately not in the case
of bringing The Tail from the Crypt over to England.
HBO was initially concerned about the cost, but Adler convinced

(01:29:55):
them and Tail from the Crypt production took over the
historic Ealing Studio in West London for six months in
nineteen ninety five. That's when problems began. Almost immediately. Gilbert
wasn't able to attract American directors to work in England
because of the country's taxes. Even Roger Moore, who's you
note as British as they get, told Gilbert from Switzerland

(01:30:18):
call me when you get back to la I can't
afford to work in London. So why in the seventies
all those rock stars from England became tax exiles in
la or Switzerland. Freddie Mercury, Ringo, John Lennon, Fith milling
Stones just took to a yacht. Yeah. There are also
the cultural differences, mainly the mandated twice daily tea breaks

(01:30:41):
and the pub lunch hour each day of shooting. Also, Adler,
the director, was completing production on the ill fated Bordello
of Blood while working on the UK season of Tales
from the Crypt, which really hung him out to dry.
That said, he did end up getting his precious locations,
shooting at Nebworth House Worthim and indeed dover.

Speaker 2 (01:31:01):
Castle, Nedworth House also being where they cut Zeppelin four.

Speaker 1 (01:31:06):
I believe no that was it was Headley Grange, wasn't it?

Speaker 3 (01:31:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
But why do I have Nedworth in.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
My head because of Nedworth?

Speaker 2 (01:31:14):
Like the oh the festival? Right?

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
Yeah, I was wrong. There's a chain of chicken places
near me called Mad for Chicken, and I always rooted
in Liam Gallagher's voice, Mad for It. The tone of
Tales from the Crypt in England also lightened up, leaning
away from its trademark gore and horror, something more British or,

(01:31:37):
as you write, something more constipateous. Thank you for that, Sorry,
John and Lee w and all our friends over in
the UK. Additionally, Bill Gains died in nineteen ninety two.
The guy had kicked this all off, and the rights
to e s reverted back to his family, who simply
refused to sell them back to producers to make more
Tales from the Crypt episodes. There was an alleged reboots

(01:32:00):
series in the works from Tell Them Heigel.

Speaker 2 (01:32:03):
M Night, Hiamela my favorite humble and talented man in Hollywood.

Speaker 1 (01:32:10):
How do you think that would have gone?

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):
Probably Doug. He would have been forcing dumb like. He
would have been forcing twists into it. By the way,
there is a Muppets Tells from the Crypt connection good
it is. In Muppets Tonight, there was a recurring bit
called Tales from the Vet which was in the intro

(01:32:32):
to that mimicked the tracking shot through the old mansion
with passing by a bunch of animals and cages through
the Vets office while doing a work on the Danny
Elfman theme.

Speaker 1 (01:32:43):
That's incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:32:44):
Muppets Tonight was one of the bad ones, right.

Speaker 1 (01:32:47):
I remember liking it. I remember watching it when it
first premiered, but I was just so excited out The
Muppets are coming Back came out like ninety eight, right.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
Ninety six?

Speaker 1 (01:32:56):
Ninety six order a full order of twenty two episodes
canceled after broadcasting ten Really you remembered falsely? It was
that much of a bomb. And there's the Muppet Show.
What was the difference between Uppets Night and the Muppet Show? Wow,
I don't knowze people hated it did taste just change
because it was all like Friday Night. It was on

(01:33:18):
like the TGIF lineup, wasn't it.

Speaker 2 (01:33:20):
We're so close to finishing this, don't get bogged down
in the details.

Speaker 1 (01:33:23):
All right, take us home.

Speaker 2 (01:33:24):
Yeah, I mean I think it really was a combination
of it. It was probably the rights things, because in
the limited information I could find about this they had
in the original contract, it was like up to amount
of time right that they had these, And when Bill
Gaines died, they couldn't renegotiate it with his estate who
probably realized they got fleeced initially and wanted way more

(01:33:46):
money for it.

Speaker 1 (01:33:48):
And did Joel Silver say that we paid very little?

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
Yeah, and that is currently why you can't watch this
thing anywhere unless you they're all on YouTube, which is great,
but yeah, there's there really die in for, like a
big authorized Blu ray treatment or HD remaster regrade. But
sad to say that is sad. Yeah, and I don't
have much. And you know why that's sad, Jordan, is

(01:34:13):
because the repeated theme that kept coming out in all
of my research for this was just how much fun
everyone had working on this. You know. It was also
sad that the original comics were victim of one of
America's seemingly biannual moral panics. But it just rules so
hard that all of these people at the top of
their respective games came together and created just a working situation,

(01:34:37):
a creative environment that so many people were just completely
overjoyed to be a part of. For a few years
at least, Hollywood worked as it was designed to. Talented
people got resources to make cool stuff, the working conditions
were rewarding, and everyone walked away. Happened. That doesn't happen
that much in any creative field anymore. And that's the

(01:34:57):
truly scary part. But at least we can ghoulishly cackle
with joy that it ever happened at all. Folks, Thank
you all for listening so much. This has been too
much information. I'm Alex Heigel and.

Speaker 1 (01:35:09):
I'm Jordan run Talgg. We'll catch you next time. Too
Much Information was a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (01:35:20):
The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtogg.

Speaker 1 (01:35:23):
The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

Speaker 2 (01:35:26):
The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtogg
and Alex Heigel.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
With original music by Seth Applebaum and The Ghost Funk Orchestra.
If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Tales from the Crypt: Everything You Didn't Know