October 8, 2024 • 46 mins
On this episode of Movie Smash!, we discuss 1995's Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight directed by Ernest R. Dickerson and staring Billy Zane, Willim Sadler, Jada Pinkett. The film follows Brayker as he attempts to flee The Collector in his hunt for the final key to unleash hell on Earth.
Hosts: Christopher Roberts and Fergel Amayo
Guest Host: Greg Moquin of SeerNova Comics
Edited By: Christopher Roberts
Produced By: Off Panel Creations, LLC
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm like the crypt keeper.
(00:02):
I just said they're just cut them open for days.
By ideas, daubla, diablo.
I can't say that word.
And for anyone who grew up in the 90s, you knew what that meant.
Yeah, I'm not very impressed right now.
I'm afraid someone's gonna smash that bitch up.
Hello and welcome to movie-
BOOM!
Hello and welcome to Movie Smash, the show where we dive headfirst into comic book movies outside the MCU.
(00:26):
If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us.
If you've been here before, you know the drill.
Each episode, we're gonna smash through a movie with the source materials from a graphic novel or a comic.
Is it worth revisiting?
Should it be forgotten?
Let's find out.
This is Movie Smash.
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Roberts.
I'm the founder of all panel creations.
With you today, I'm Chris Roberts.
I'm the director of the comic book series.
(00:47):
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Roberts. I'm the founder of all panel creations.
With me today, I'm Fergal Amayo.
I am Fergal Amayo, owner and founder of Gotham Night Comics.
And I'm like the Crypt Keeper. I'm going to get my final cut.
And today, you sound like the Crypt Keeper.
Not that I'm doing much better myself.
And today, we have a guest host with us, Greg Moquin from Seaver Nova Comics.
(01:11):
I am the writer and co-founder of Seaver Nova Comics, and we make superhero comics, horror comics, and sci-fi comics that are all ages.
Greg, thanks for joining us.
This movie is actually our first of two Halloween-themed episodes.
That's where our movie today is 1995's Tales from the Crypt, Demon Knight, starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, directed by Ernest Dickerson.
(01:37):
Universal Pictures is proud to present the motion picture directing debut of one of America's most talented and respected artists.
Cut! Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut!
Oh, hello, kiddies. So glad you could join me.
Your pal, the Crypt Keeper, has gone Hollywood in a big way.
(02:01):
I'm directing my first feature film, Care for a Little Shriek Preview.
For my big scream premiere, I wanted lots of suspense.
Uh-oh.
Greg, you picked this movie for us. Why did you choose this one?
I never saw it, and I like Tales from the Crypt. Yeah, that's why I picked it.
(02:24):
That's a good mix. So are either of you very familiar at all with the source material, Tales from the Crypt?
It sort of falls in with House of Horrors. There was a whole run in the 50s of horror comics.
Actually, there's a lot of House of Mystery, which technically is the first appearance of Swamp Thing, one of the other very, very famous sets of books, is one of the most expensive books you can buy on the market.
(02:47):
I actually owned it at one time and sold it for an amazing profit. It's just a great series of books.
Now, funny fact, as we dive into these series from 1950, this particular book or this movie was not based on a comic. It was strictly a screenplay written for this movie.
Fun fact. I get to do a fun fact today.
Well, actually, you got a little bit wrong there, but yeah, you're pretty close. It is not originally from Tales from the Crypt. It just has that moniker on there.
(03:13):
Did you just have to be writer than me, Chris? Is that what happened right there?
I feel like, Greg, did you? I mean, I'm not just be arbitrary here. Did he just literally have to be writer? Was I just about correct?
And he was like, no.
The screenplay was not written for Tales from the Crypt. That was the thing you got wrong. We'll get more into that a little bit. It's actually went through several studio hands before it got to Tales from the Crypt.
(03:35):
So was this the first time either of you had seen this movie?
No, no, I've seen this quite a bit.
This again, as I say, it's, you know, Jada Pickett Smith. She looked really good in this movie. And Billy Zane. Is there just not anyone who doesn't like Billy Zane?
Yeah, he's cool.
There it is.
This is the first time I've seen the movie. So I have seen the 1972 Tales from the Crypt, like the original.
(03:59):
Yeah, I've seen that first Tales from the Crypt movie several times as a kid for a variety of reasons. For this one, this was actually the first time I've seen Demon Knight.
And it was not pretty. It was not that easy to locate either. I had to order a copy of it because it was not on a streaming service that I have.
Now, man, it was on Starz, which I don't have. I don't have every streaming service. But I could not find this movie until I had to go. I actually had to go pay full price on Amazon.
(04:22):
And I got the collector's edition because they don't sell the normal edition. But I'm okay with getting the collector's edition of the movie.
I will tell the audience that I saw that before this whole process. And I was like, you know, it is on Starz and it's free.
Yeah. So what I did was I Googled it because I was like, how am I going to watch this? And then I saw Amazon. I was like, oh, okay.
(04:43):
So I went on Prime and then I was like, oh, you have to sign up for a Starz membership. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Just watch it.
And then I did. But it's like a seven-day trial. So I was like, how cool. So I don't know what else is on Starz that I like.
There's quite a bit, actually. Barbarians on there. It's a good movie.
So Fergal, you've sort of touched on it. What's the history of the Tales from the Crypt comic, even though this movie is not directly pulled from that?
(05:08):
No, no. But it is published by EC Comics, 1950, 55, Bill Gaines, Al Friedstein. It's just a series of...
It came from a time in comics when horror anthology was a real thing, right? It was not just...
And horror anthology spawned a few actual crossover mainstream comics directly from that. I mean, so this was a time when you were making horror things.
(05:32):
And so they were more outrageous. You guys mentioned The 72. That was a great movie.
Wasn't that the Stephen King one with everything going green?
It's been years, decades even, since I've seen that movie.
We just aged ourselves. I don't know if that's appropriate, but let's do it.
Considering our last episode, I talked about how I was still in Western Germany in 86.
(05:53):
Right, you did. 99 Truth Balloon.
I really, really aged myself last episode. So if this is your first time joining us, just a heads up, we'll be discussing the plot of this movie.
With some of that, we may discuss some elements of the story that might be considered spoilers, so consider yourself warned.
So Greg, since you put us through this movie, why don't you give us a quick synopsis of what it's all about?
(06:14):
So Greg is a guy named Breaker. He possesses a mystical key that stops demons from taking over the world.
He hides in a boarding house where this demon called the Collector leads an assault to try to get that key from him.
Billy Zane, going after, what's his name, William Sadler?
(06:37):
William Sadler, yeah.
Which is weird because he's normally a bad guy in most movies.
And that's the thing too, there's really not much to a horror movie. They're very straightforward plots.
And the thing that makes horror movies work typically is the big bad. In this case, that's Billy Zane.
Though you may not know that in the first five minutes of the movie.
How do you guys feel about how Billy Zane portrayed the Collector?
(06:59):
Again, another fun fact with that guy. This movie sat in development hell through multiple writers, directors, until it got to Joel Silver as Silver Pictures.
And they were the ones that really wanted, they camped it out a little bit more.
So I think if you were looking for, I mean, obviously you have the Crib Keeper in there.
It's not going to be too serious. It's going to laugh at itself.
(07:20):
And I think that when you have other, wasn't the other guy from Night Court in there as well?
He's one of the actors in there, if I'm not mistaken, in the beginning part of the movie before it gets to the movie.
I think Billy Zane did a great, he was reckless.
Whereas the other guy, Michael Kernely, who played the second Collector, he actually scared the shit out of me for a second.
No doubt. He was looking up and he was like, I'll take the next one.
(07:43):
That one was like, okay, yeah, that guy's a little bit more frightening than Billy Zane. But Billy Zane was fun.
Yeah. The one thing I remember from what Billy Zane said was, he's like, you're really pissing me off.
And then just like a ray of light came from his crotch.
I was like, oh, okay. Whoa, whoa, doggy, whoa, whoa.
(08:05):
That was not a German whore. Not a German whore.
So Billy Zane definitely, for me, I felt he really just was a cartoon in this movie.
He was like the Roger Rabbit of the movie. He did a fantastic job with it.
He, in fact, in the interviews that I watched, he said this is his favorite movie of all time that he was in.
He loved how much could ham it up, do what he did.
(08:27):
This is actually the first movie Billy's in that he is bald.
And that's important because he is naturally bald.
He actually showed up to the casting day for the first shoot with a suitcase of wigs and said, which wig should I wear today?
He has alopecia. He just goes Tully Savala style. I'm trying to figure out where...
It's like me. I'm losing the hair on the front of my head. He just committed to the bit and just removed it all.
(08:50):
Tully Savala style. I got you.
This was the first movie where he is bald. And they said, you know what? It's scarier that way.
And I don't think he's scarier that way, but he definitely is more of a cartoon that way.
Every character in that movie was a cartoon. That's the... I think that's the joke. Even Breaker.
And it's interesting about this story. Joel Silver envisioned this as a trilogy.
(09:13):
And there's an interesting piece because those keys, the key that we speak about and the six keys and the seventh key, there's a whole...
I dug into a bit of a backstory on that because I was curious after...
When I realized and I saw your Steel Edition, I knew I wasn't going to compete with your commentary, so I had to come with something else.
Well, the thing is, you said it's part of a trilogy and it still was a trilogy. Bordello of Blood was the second movie.
(09:36):
Originally, Demon Knight was supposed to be the second one in that trilogy.
And the only thing common between them was actually the key. That's it. Not really connected tissues.
The key was supposed to go between them. And the key is actually in Bordello of Blood.
It is. It's how she controls Lilla.
Yeah, it reminds me of a book called Talisman back from the 90s, this Earthdawn book,
but where every story revolved around this talisman that's carried through all the stories.
(10:01):
And that's what was supposed to happen with Tales of the Crypt, was essentially follow the key, but they gave up on it.
That makes sense.
Well, Jada Pinkett is sort of the savior at the end of the story. How do you feel she did?
I assumed that she was probably going to survive just because of who she is.
And I don't know any of the other actors in the movie besides Billy Zane and Sadler.
(10:23):
So yeah, I was like, oh, well, all of those people are going to die.
She did well, I guess.
Well, so the interesting part was that Breaker was looking for her.
So I don't think I think at the first part of the movie, she was a little unsure.
And then I think as Billy Zane was acting out, she kind of played into the role.
Because as you see when the fire crotch happens at the end, she kind of plays into it a lot more.
(10:48):
You can see her hand into the role.
But the storyline is that basically Breaker has to walk around with this key and the stars on his hand,
they don't appear until they appear.
And then it sort of guides him where he needs to go.
And he'll end up with seven strangers.
And at the end of the night, the one remaining will be the one that takes over the key.
(11:09):
That's the whole that's the backstory of the backstory.
So he's like a proximity radar sort of draws him to wherever he's supposed to be at.
Yes. Seven potential successors to him because the key lets him live a very, very long time.
I think he was that he became an adult in what World War One.
He was 1990 when he got the key.
There you go. 1990. So, yeah, he is very old by this point.
(11:31):
So she is taking over that position.
So it's interesting, too, when she you know, she in the movie, she has very short hair and it's dyed blonde.
With a big old butt. Whoa. Say that on TV, because that butt was nice.
I don't know what's going on with it today. But at that point, that ass was phenomenal.
You can make change on that.
Before she when she was cast for this, she had long hair and she cut it all off like a few days before going to going to set.
(11:57):
And they said, you know, you don't look the same.
She goes, yeah, but this is what I want to look like.
You know why they let it go? Because she had an ass like that.
That's that's how it always works. And fellas, that's how it will continue to work.
Everyone wants it knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah, we know how you do casting for movies. So not in the Weinstein theory or definitely not in the Sean Deddy
Combs theory, but we definitely don't ask us get their way.
(12:20):
Now, the other character I did want to talk a little bit about, there's actually a couple more.
Uncle Willie played by Dick Miller, who is in pretty much every horror movie during that time period.
Yeah. Like what's another movies in the Gremlin series?
Oh, my God. He's the one that goes to New York. He's got the whole thing going on in New York when the Gremlins take over the building.
And you have the smart Gremlin who does news reports.
(12:42):
Exactly. By the way, best Gremlin in the whole show.
I kind of like the electric guy, but that's a whole other story.
If only that was based on a comic.
He always plays sort of like the confused old man in a movie.
Now, the last character I want to bring up is the Cryptkeeper himself.
Voiced by John Kaseer, who's, by the way, find a fact, voiced him in the other Crypt movie as well.
(13:05):
Oh, yeah, he is the Cryptkeeper without a doubt.
So this was the first movie that they've ever had or any scene involving the Cryptkeeper where he walks.
Normally, he's just a puppet.
Did you notice he was a green screen for his head?
So they had a little person walking from the director's chair forward and the green screen, the Cryptkeeper's head on it.
And it was one of the early piece of digital special effects in movies.
(13:29):
That's very 90s.
In fact, if you go look at him and you pause the movie while he's walking forward, you can see the reflection of the green screen on his collar.
Which is phenomenal, because that is absolutely a complete, complete microcosm for the entire movie.
Oh, without a doubt.
It is. It's that level of cheesiness and the fact that they left it in there just speaks to what this movie is about.
(13:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
But I thought you would appreciate this little fact for him.
The eyeballs, you know, the puppet for the Cryptkeeper and his eyeballs.
You've seen those eyeballs before.
They're Chuckie's eyes.
Those are Chuckie's eyes.
Those are Chuckie's eyes.
Funny how we're having this conversation while I meandered my ass into Home Depot last night.
And I'm thinking about buying one of them six foot tall little Chuckies just to put on my front yard.
(14:16):
Now I'm afraid someone's gonna smash that bitch up, but it is wonderful.
I was curious where you're going to take that conversation, because you're saying, Chuckie's eyeballs.
I'm walking into Home Depot.
I saw this lady.
I don't know where you're going to go with this, Virgil.
Somebody with a two by four and their eyes pop out.
I took it. I took it.
Now, if that had happened, that would have made a great story, guys.
Let's stop. That would have been a Facebook post.
(14:38):
Somebody would have posted on that shit.
It's a horror movie.
Very small sets.
Very tight roles for everybody.
It's supposed to be unlike a traditional Tales from the Crypt movie, which is really someone gets a comeuppance.
This is more of a action survival movie that really comes out of the scenes.
Are there any scenes that particularly stand out to you guys?
(14:59):
The car chase scene.
I thought that was really cool.
I kind of like that scene.
The original, like they interspersed a little bit of Breaker's background.
I thought that was cool.
That's what got me interested in digging back to where this whole thing with the key came into play and these demons that are not normal demons.
I like that.
You're talking about the flashbacks, right?
(15:21):
Yeah, the flashback scenes.
I also just really appreciated Cordelia.
When she made that changeover, when she demonized, I thought she was phenomenal.
Instead of bouncing all of them, let's start with the car chase.
Why did you like the car chasing?
Just standard 80s, 90s car chases.
That was how it was back then.
Real cars without wires and Vin Diesel was nowhere to be found.
(15:44):
Very true.
It was a, they had one shot at that one.
This movie was a very tight budget.
That car scene, they had one attempt to do it.
That's actually a real car driving with flames coming out of it.
In fact, there's a guy hiding in the back seat who is playing with the blue chain torch that lights the car up and fire goes up, fire goes out.
He's laying in the back seat of the car.
That's perfect.
By the way, if you can't tell, I watched the commentary with the special effects people, not the director, the special effects people.
(16:11):
I thought it was a better one to listen to since I only had so much time.
Chris likes to be incredibly knowledgeable about just everything we're talking about.
So you will find that out as our day goes on.
His commentary knowledge knows no bounds.
And Fergal always tries to take my job and I don't try to take your job.
I'm just trying to come with something interesting.
So they said there were six keys and they were trying to stop.
(16:36):
It gave them the ability to bring hell on earth.
And the last key, it was all divided up.
They had regained all six across millennia, but they couldn't get the seven one because that was held by Jesus Christ, which infers that there were other beings on other millennia and other galaxies that had these keys and that they were able to collect them all.
But that one, the blood in that started from Jesus and worked all the way forward to break her.
(17:00):
Yeah, the first blood in there were from the three guys on the crucifixes, all three of them.
But I don't think necessarily it was Jesus was one of the original holders of the key because that guy was confused that the blood was hurting the demon.
Well, I mean, the guy who was grabbing the blood was confused.
But keep in mind those three causes.
If you look to any iconography, am I going to say a really big word?
(17:22):
Iconography? I can't say it. It's not going to come up.
Iconography?
There it is. There it is right there.
If you look at any religious iconography, I still can't say it.
You just said it. I think it looks like a Jesus Christ cross.
Pictures. Just say pictures.
Pictures. I was trying to impress Greg.
If you just look at any old religious pictures, you'll see that that cross formation feels a lot like Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I'm not very impressed right now.
(17:47):
I can't say that word, so I'm not going to try.
Well, you started talking a little bit about how, what's her name, Cordelia?
Cordelia. How she made the conversion.
But multiple people were trying to be converted by Billy Zane.
And what he was trying to do was tempt them with their dreams and hopes to come to his side.
And when they accepted his deal, they became a demon, except for one.
(18:10):
What about the Cordelia ones took out to you?
I don't know. Maybe it's her boobs.
I got to see her boobs earlier.
Then I'm surprised you picked out the Miller one, the Uncle Willie one.
I probably would have, but just the Cordelia look, the boobs.
There are lots of boobs in that movie, but that was good boobs.
Speaking of boobs, Uncle Willie, his conversion, which essentially is he's being convinced to drink more.
(18:36):
But he's going to a bar with, it was eight, nine different women that were in there.
I remember that as I was working today.
He only has one line and during an interview with him, he said it took him 15 attempts to get that scene right.
And that should tell you everything you know about Uncle Willie.
Because he couldn't get his lines right.
He just had to keep doing the scene over and over and over again.
(18:59):
Was it real alcohol in his laugh?
Probably not.
But the thing is the fact that he was just wanting to go through the practice of doing that scene over and over and over again.
Dick Miller was a standup guy.
Actually, I'll talk too about the conversion or the temptation of Jada.
The scene where she's walking down and there's that big mural that she's up against.
(19:21):
Yes.
So they had one shot at that scene because he could only afford that print once.
The blood pours out of it.
Yeah.
And so yeah, they can only afford to try doing that one time because of how little money they had for this movie.
Her best scene was when she drew out that love thing.
He was trying to say, I love you to Jada.
(19:44):
That was probably because he was covered in the blood.
He was trying to wash her off.
And then she had drank some of that blood.
And I just thought that was like his interaction with her and this kind of the whole cover thing.
And I want to make her a queen in hell.
Like that was kind of interesting.
And then when he blew up into the real demon, did anybody else could have feeling like you were looking at the demon from the Golden Child?
(20:05):
I never made that connection.
But that's actually not the original ending of this movie.
Oh, originally he was supposed to be a floating head.
It was a floating head.
Billy Zane was a floating head at the end, trying to tempt her.
But test audiences said that's no, that's that was a bridge too far.
The goofiness.
Really?
(20:26):
Like Billy Zane himself went floating head.
Oh, yeah, they just made a flight like from Superman.
Interesting.
It might be late, Greg, we're going to get this going into some fun here.
Enjoy the laughs.
Now, what do you how do you guys feel about Billy Zane and the sponge?
Oh, it comes right out of his mouth.
Just slightly to clean up the little area like it's just handy.
(20:47):
Did he actually have that sponge in his mouth?
I'm Chris. I'm just going to ask the question.
Oh, yes.
That was his idea, by the way.
He stuffed the sponge in his mouth and then make it look like a tongue.
That was his goal to make it look like a tongue.
Was it a full size sponge? Because I'm thinking that's got to dry out your mouth.
That was a full size sponge. I mean, he had clean up a lot of blood.
And he did.
That's quite something.
(21:08):
Now, this movie was actually shot in a airport hangar, an old abandoned airport hangar.
And the reason they did that was because it's the movie is mainly shot at night.
I'm sorry. The movies mainly takes place during the evening.
So obviously, if you're doing that outside, you only have certain hours which you can film.
So by putting it inside a hangar, you can film whenever you want.
So that entire set, including the hotel, was rebuilt from the ground up.
(21:31):
So the scenes that take place in the second floor rooms are actually on the second floor of the hangar.
Now, there's some downside to that. That hangar was just all metal.
So it was incredibly hot in there.
So when you see that, like, no, there's a scene where they're on the upper floor, like after they've been chased out of the tunnel.
And they're sitting there and they're covered in sweat and nasty.
She's got her arm missing.
(21:53):
Yeah.
And she's going to serve the arm for a snack. That was great.
Yeah. And they're like covered in sweat. That's real sweat.
That's not them being misted to be more glistening or anything like that.
That's just because the fact that it was close to 100 degrees in there.
That had to be a commentary fact right there.
Of course it is.
And the other thing, too, is because it was an airport hangar, birds were roosting in the rafters.
So before they started filming, they had to fire a shotgun off every single time into the air to scare them so they'd stop cooing.
(22:19):
And the moment they started cooing again, they had to cut the film.
Wow.
And what's even more interesting about that is the DEA had the hangar next to them.
And they said every now and again, a plane would leave or come in to their hangar.
And they had to stop filming for that as well because the jet noises.
Was it because they wanted to try to snick some of the drugs the DEA were bringing in?
(22:40):
Because I don't know. It was the 90s.
Now this movie takes, this movie's about 92 minutes long, just over an hour and a half.
So it barely qualifies as a feature film.
How do you feel the pacing was?
It starts fast and stays fast. It doesn't really, it doesn't slow down at all.
I mean, I think critics said, because it got like a 43 in Rotten Tomatoes, they thought it was all over.
(23:01):
Like it was neither horror nor funny. So it was everything in between.
It didn't develop a status until much later, like Bordello of Blood.
It found an audience and it went to where it went to.
But I thought it went just fast enough.
Like if anything, it gave me enough, made me want to learn more.
And ultimately, you know, like even if you go all the way to the end scene, don't they,
(23:22):
and Chris can tell me, the Cryptkeeper teases out what was supposed to be the next movie in the trilogy.
He did it post credits on the VHS. I had the DVD, so obviously it isn't there.
But he did post on the post credits. But the thing is that movie changed.
The original tease he did was for a movie like, based on the Big Easy.
But they changed it to Bordello of Blood.
(23:43):
Interesting.
What was the name of the Quentin Tarantino movie that was about vampires?
Which one was that one?
Dawn of the Dead? No.
No. Oh my God. I know what movie you're talking about.
Oh, Dust. No, Dust.
Dust.
I knew Dawn.
I mean, come on. Somebody just need to say Selma Hayek, bro.
(24:06):
We are acting the fools here.
That was originally going to be one of the third movie in the series.
But Quentin Tarantino wanted too much money.
He was going to do the third movie of this?
And be Dust to Dawn.
That'd be perfect. With the same actors, because that's why it cost him.
This is early on in pre-production. They hadn't cast anybody yet.
Got Harvey Keitel and George Clooney.
He wanted so much money. They're like, no, I'm sorry, we can't do this.
(24:29):
So Greg, how do you feel about the pacing of this movie?
In the middle, like the midway point, I was like kind of losing it at first.
And then I was like, oh, now I'm like in it again because I was like,
kind of refused on like what was going on for a second.
And then I was like, oh, OK, because I want to go to the bathroom real quick.
And then I came back and I was like, I forgot what was going on.
(24:51):
You may have smoked a joint that would also do the trick.
But you're right. It was they were in the hotel.
They fled through some tunnels in the basement and they got back to the hotel again.
And his little sort of disjointed that way.
So no, Clinton, Tarantino.
So they had horror movies.
They really I think they die or succeed on their special effects,
(25:15):
because most of these movies are very, very low budget.
So they have to make do with what little they have.
How do you feel about the effects of this movie or were there any effects that stood out to you?
Like the green electricity from the eyes that that's right.
That just very 90s. So like, yeah, I think the little kid Horace,
you know, when he's turning page by page, that's about the best.
That's a flip.
(25:36):
Like if you're looking for something that was a throwback to Tales from the Crypt from the comic
and they don't often do this, it's hard because, again, this was not based on a comic.
So to make that change, comic page accurate all the way through in real time.
I thought that was dope.
That's funny. You said about the kid, too, on the day of the shoot for that scene,
the director and the production team had not seen what that monster had come out to be.
(26:01):
And the crew of the special effects just blew their budget making that monster
because they wanted to make a monster.
And so they were hoping that they even said the guys were joking, saying on their drive to the studio that morning,
they were afraid they were going to get fired.
They spent so much money on this 30 second scene of a kid that looks nothing like any of the other demons.
They said the tongue hanging out, the jaws missing. That is not like any of the demons we've seen previously in the movie.
(26:27):
And they're like, it just looks cool. We want to go with it.
That was a Billy Zane decision. I think Billy Zane had a hand in that.
Let's just call her.
Oh, not at all. But the thing that's funny because they knew they were on such a tight budget.
There's no going back. They couldn't say, OK, take it back.
Rechange it. No, change it. It's like whatever we do, we're committed to this.
Some of the special effects I thought that were pretty interesting, too, were, you know, Billy Zane's.
(26:49):
It's already cuts his hand open. He spills blood on the ground to summon the demons.
Yes, slapping around. So that blood, those pools of green goo are from glow sticks.
That makes sense. And what they did was they had to spend several days, according to the studio guys, to cut open glue sticks.
They could just order the materials because it is not safe.
They actually had to go out, buy glow sticks, cut them open and pour them into a jar.
(27:13):
Multiple vats of it just to make sure they had enough.
So imagine imagine being an intern and being told, OK, I need you to go to CVS, buy every glow stick they have.
I don't care. Just buy them all.
It's got to be green and bring them back and just sit there, just cut them open for days.
It depends what the hourly rate is. Does it promote me into it?
Because, I mean, Kevin Feige would have did that if he had gotten charge of Marvel and it worked for him.
(27:35):
The movies like this also, there's a lot of blood, right?
And you guys, are you familiar with how fake studio blood looks or movie blood is what's made from?
Strawberry Jam, isn't it? No, it's a corn syrup.
Yeah, corn syrup. Oh, shit.
So the reason I bring that up is because there was an actress in that movie who was on a carb free diet at that point and requested carb free blood.
(27:56):
They didn't name which actress it was, just that there was an actress who wanted carb free blood.
And they said, yeah, it's carb free because everybody gets covered in blood.
That was Cordella. Yeah. Yeah.
So that was like, yeah, I was like, yeah.
So if you notice those demons, some of the demons had hoofs.
They had like the backwards, no. And if you see they're sort of swaying all the time, it looks pretty cool.
The reason they're swaying is because they're off balance. They're having trouble.
(28:19):
They actually had the guys on the commentary talking about how they could hardly stand up.
So that swaying is just them trying to keep their footfalls and not fall over.
In fact, if you notice, there's only two physical demons.
Everything else are puppets, but the actual demons themselves, there are actually only two.
It's the same two guys in all scenes. So you see a demon blow up, it's the same guy you saw before.
Nice. I like the fact that you can only get him with the eyes. Yes.
(28:41):
You can get him with the blood. That's the only two ways you can get him.
Yeah. And actually there's a scene where was it, they take the shotgun and blow the back of the head off of one of the demons and like two eyeballs go flying out.
Yeah. I think that was the first demon.
It was one of the people converted.
That was Cordella's big haired love interest. The guy who looks like a really bad Richard Zemeckis.
The guy that goes, that wanted to go postal. Yes.
(29:02):
He's actually the voice of Roger Rabbit.
He is. So I said like Roger Zemeckis or something. He's one of these guys.
Yeah. He had to make it on something other than his looks. Let me just put it out there.
But it's kind of funny. They find a bunch of weapons in his room.
No ammo, but a bunch of weapons and a suicide vest. And he's a postal worker.
(29:23):
And for anyone who grew up in the 90s, you knew what that meant.
You want to go postal? You want to go postal?
Just went 90s right on everybody in this room.
It's not a thing anymore, but yeah. I want to talk about, I got a couple of these.
When I can find them, I do things that could have been the things they could have changed
or where they're going to change for this movie when they're going through production.
So Jada Smith's rule, Jada Pinkett Smith's rule was originally going to be Cameron Diaz.
(29:48):
Could you have seen that?
I would have liked that a little more probably.
I mean, first off, it is Cameron Diaz. Early Cameron Diaz is there is definitely something about Mary.
So yeah, she held that one pretty well, but I think it had to be Jada Pickett Smith.
I know I just don't see her as not like Jada just sort of fit in that role.
But yeah, that does make sense too.
(30:09):
Yeah, for me, Jada made sense just because she played kind of an ex-con.
Perfect person to hold this thing. Hold the thing.
Yeah, Cameron Diaz would feel just too, I don't know the word is for it, but she would seem...
Right far of what showed up at the end.
Yeah, there you go.
For what you mentioned, we sort of hinted earlier on that had the script changed hands many, many times.
It went from one company to another one.
(30:31):
The first director to look at this, first writer to look at, director writer to look at this was Tom Holland.
Are you familiar with who he is?
I saw his name, but I am not familiar with his body of work.
Fright Night, Langoliers, Child's Play.
Oh, now I'm familiar with his body of work. Those are all very good movies.
Very different tone than this movie.
Yeah.
He definitely is a little more darker of a movie than we saw here.
(30:55):
Would you have preferred to see this movie darker than it came out to be?
It's The Crypt Keeper. Probably not.
Now, the last... Well, you got to remember, this is before The Crypt Keeper was involved.
This is when it was a standalone script. This movie was originally written as a standalone movie called Demon Knight.
And that script got passed around to various companies.
In fact, The Tales from the Crypt was only added at the very last studio.
(31:17):
To be part of The Tales from the Crypt, they had to add that moniker to it.
Before that, there was nothing to do with Tales from the Crypt.
It wasn't going to be one of those type of movies.
In fact, the studio that looked at it before that was called Full Moon Entertainment or Full Moon Studios.
Are you familiar with who they are?
Puppet Master.
Puppet Master was like their one big hit. Everything else is.
They've got hundreds of really bad horror movies.
(31:40):
Yep.
Like they're known for really bad horror movies.
Go look up their body of work.
For our listeners out there, go look up their body of work if you're not familiar with them.
Full Moon Entertainment.
They've got Full Moon Entertainment. They've got some stinkers. They've got Puppet Master.
Do they do the 100 Acre Forest? Have you guys seen the new Winnie the Pooh movie?
(32:02):
100 Acre Forest? That's a scary movie. That's a mess.
That's like Nicolas Cage unfurled on air.
There's a Peter Pan movie that they're coming out with. I don't know if it's the same people.
Yeah, now that's all hit public domain. Yeah.
What was it? Blood and Honey was the one that came out a couple years ago.
Yes. Yes.
And now that Tigger's hit the public domain, they're doing the new one.
(32:23):
There's actually a funny thing too. This movie has a shared universe.
According to the directors and the writers, they said, they were asked,
is this movie part of any other universe? And they said they had an answer.
The past was Jason and the Argonauts.
And the future is a movie called Upgrade that came out in 2018.
Jason and the Argonauts. You're talking about all the way back to...
1963.
Harry Hamlin, Jason and the Argonauts?
(32:45):
Yeah, they were saying that. In their mind, that's part of the universe.
And then the newest movie would be the 2018 Upgrade with the little stem cell
that goes in the back and moves around.
I have no idea how they're connected, but how would you guys see those movies
that could possibly be connected? That's acid. And that's drugs.
That's lots of drugs, and I think that's the only way you connect those two movies.
They were at some Comic-Con or something, and they were interviewed about it,
(33:07):
and that's the question they came up with. The answer they came up with.
How many gentlemen have been to a Comic-Con? I know I have.
I'm sure you have Greg, and I'm sure you have Chris.
We're all somewhat sideways by the time we leave.
So these are how those questions come about.
For this movie, guys, what did you love about it,
and what did you think they could have done better?
I liked Billy Zane. I thought that made...
(33:28):
It's like second to the Cripkeeper, who kind of sets the stage and gives you the...
I thought the way he kind of said,
I'll get you, ho, no, poo, why'd you just give me a key?
We're gonna do this the hard way, go running out the window and start slicing.
I thought that just set the whole thing off and the whole...
I just thought that was great.
(33:49):
Now that I know the budget was so tight,
it makes sense as to the disjointed special effects.
That's the one thing, and that was actually not just spoken by me,
that was spoken by every critic that was in that movie.
Very disjointed special effects.
Yeah, like Billy Zane kind of filled the role for the Cripkeepers when he is not there.
So it made sense that he was the villain, because he was good at it.
(34:15):
The effects did look very 90s and stuff,
but if that could have been better, that would have been kind of cool.
And because the budget was so small, I understand why they only did it in a few different...
this cafe or whatever diner, and then the hotel, so I get that.
I feel like lighting the cars on fire probably subbed the budget there.
(34:39):
That was all their money.
That was actually for the fire team to come put the cars out after they filled the city.
Now that he's left it burned.
No, they're there in the desert.
Now, why work on it? Just let it do its thing.
I agree with you guys, Billy Zane is the heart of this movie.
It's a dark, disturbed, corrupted heart, but he is the heart of this movie.
It made me want to watch The Phantom.
(35:00):
I literally got done after this movie, I put The Phantom on,
just because I was like, I'm Billy Zane in it.
He did fantastic, and I think he saves the movie, without a doubt.
And the effects were rough.
Now, it's an early 90s movie, it's an early 90s low budget movie to do it.
And actually, we talked about the script changes a little bit.
There was one other script change I didn't mention.
It's about the effects.
They had the script, they sent it to the special effects guys and said,
(35:24):
hey, can you budget this out for us with all the demons and all that?
And they came back with a number and they said, no, that's not going to work.
And they rewrote the script that all the demons were like men in black, guys in suits.
And the only way they knew they were a demon when they pulled their sunglasses off.
And they sent that back to the special effects guy.
And they were like, how can you have a demon night movie?
The word demon is in the name and not have a demon that you can actually see.
(35:48):
They said, well, we got to save some money.
We can't afford it.
Now, you go out and blow a car up.
You can't do that.
And they retook it all and said, OK, how about if our two guys who are in charge,
the guys are in charge of the studio, that studio, but the special effects team,
they'll dress up.
They're really skinny.
They're like a buck, 120 pounds, buck 20.
And they'll dress up as all the demons for you.
And we'll use prosthetics instead of actual monsters.
(36:11):
In fact, as they even said, most of the time, those guys are practically naked.
If you look at the demons, they've just got maybe a mask on, maybe some gloves and their boots.
That's it.
And they did that to save so much money to get actual demons in the movie because it was supposed to be
men in black style guys walking around like they're corporate demons.
What?
That makes sense today.
(36:32):
Like that would be scary today.
Oh, yeah.
So I think for this movie, good thing Billy Zane.
He's great.
Changing it.
Greg, you sort of touched on it that it is not that it's a confusing plot, but it's a little disjointed
because they go from being in the hotel.
They find this tunnel to get out.
And now they're running back.
And somehow there are other demons in the tunnel who are the parents of the kid and the kids now part of the group.
(36:55):
And then we bring them back to the thing.
We run up the stairs.
So it's like now I understand why they did it.
They did it because they didn't have any other place to shoot.
Like it had to be in the sets they had built to save money.
I get that.
But I can only I kind of wonder what they could have done with an extra ten million dollars.
Me too.
Now, they only spent it was like less than 30.
It was a very expensive move down the number in front of me, but it was very, very small.
(37:19):
Few minutes early.
I wonder what else they could have done, especially in early 90s.
Do you know what the gross was on this?
What they ended up doing at the theater?
I don't have it in front of me, but I remember seeing that it pretty much like all these movies.
It ekes by as a horror movie.
It makes enough money to make another habit again.
But it's always the cult following at the end.
It's the guy in 2024 buying the collector's edition off Amazon.
(37:41):
He wants to see it.
Who saves this movie?
You know, the best example of that, if you haven't seen it, I'd recommend watch it.
Donnie Darko like Donnie Darko.
Donnie Darko is another one.
And I will also throw one out there in case you haven't seen it.
I just think it's dope.
Hereditary.
I've not seen that one yet.
That'll stay with you.
Tales from the Crypt movies were a thing.
There was one in the 70s and then there was you put the moniker Tales from the Crypt on a movie.
(38:06):
You know it was going to be cheesy fun, right?
It wasn't going to be, you know, I'll be unable to sleep for weeks.
It's not going to sit with me, but I'm going to have fun during these movies.
Should they bring back the Tales from the Crypt series of movies?
I think it's actually tame in today's world, to be honest with you.
You'd have to, I mean, because they have tried to bring like even the, even the New Twilight Zone is much deeper than it used to be from the original.
(38:28):
And I thought the original was the Thinkin' Man's episode, but I just, I don't know if you can get away with that kind of cheesy horror in today's world.
They would take it like 824 style.
I think that would be cool.
I like Tales from the Crypt, obviously, because they picked it.
I like Creepshow stuff, so like they brought that back, which they technically brought Creepshow back as like a series thing, like a mini series or something like that.
(38:54):
A little, a little bit.
But yeah, I think it would still work because people did watch that, I think.
I did.
Personally, I would love to see them bring that style of horror.
Right now, you sort of touched on it, that style of horror movie isn't a thing right now.
Right now, horror movies are dark, gritty.
I mean, the slashers are all gone.
(39:15):
Now it's really sort of the dark brooding thing in the darkness.
And with the budgets that they can spend, they can actually have great special effects.
Now, that being said, there are some terrible horror movies on Tubi.
You can go find them.
But they're not quite Tales from the Crypt type of horrible horror movies.
Because it had its own sort of spirit to it, its own sort of feel to it.
That's what, that, that, and if you watch Bordello Blood, you get a different complete sense as opposed to the horror movies throughout today.
(39:41):
And they don't even really fit into a category of horror movie.
They have their own juice and energy to them.
That's what makes these movies.
That's why I don't think it can remake these movies today.
I think it's like a, it's sort of the middle between a spoof movie of horror and a horror movie.
Like it's not making fun of the genre necessarily, but it's got enough jokes in there.
It doesn't take itself seriously.
It's very hard to find a movie like that these days.
(40:03):
I would love to see them do it again.
But yeah, I'm not sure it would succeed, but that's not the question.
The question is, should they do it?
And I'm not fronting the money for any of these movies.
So I think they should.
Chris, you should, my friend.
Now for this movie, now this movie is 30 years old, almost.
Should people go find this movie?
Should they set up for their one week of free stars to go watch it?
(40:27):
I did.
You can do it.
There's no greater PSA than that right there.
I already paid for stars.
I think I'm one of 10 people that actually have stars just because I like some of the
random movies that come out there.
But would you tell people to go watch this movie?
My God, I'm the person that tells you go see Big Trouble, Little China, Transformers,
G.I. Joe, the movie, Tales from the Crypt, Bordello, Blood and The Demon Knight.
(40:49):
Yes, I'm that guy.
I grew up in the 90s and the 80s.
This is a movie just like going to Blood Diner.
First we greet them, then we eat them.
I mean, it's just one of those movies.
You got to go see it.
This movie, I believe people should go watch, but watch with a group of people.
This is a different experience with other people in the room than just by yourself.
I think it's a better viewing experience when you got people around you can choke with.
(41:12):
Think of like Mystery Science Theater 3000.
That kind of feel to it.
Go in there, have a blast, have some drinks, have some nachos that are with extra nacho cheese on top of it.
Enjoy yourself.
Watch it by yourself.
Now, I watched it twice in preparation for our show today.
I watched it once, then once with a commentary.
And it's good.
I've got no problem with it.
(41:33):
But I think it probably would have been a much better experience if you were sitting next to me and we were making jokes about it as you're watching it.
That and we have a big old fat Woody right there next to us.
Let's do that.
I don't want to know about your Woody.
Not that Woody, the other Woody.
Guys, before we head on out, how would you rate this movie?
(41:54):
I'd rate this a green glow club on my hand, splashing on the wall.
That's what I'm giving it.
So about a quarter half thumb in the middle, but with green glow on every one.
That's the rating right there.
Patented Billy Zane.
I'm just going to give it to you like that.
That's really funny because I was going to read it like three and a five glow sticks.
(42:15):
So look at this.
I just met Greg and we're already simpatico.
I don't know what happened there.
I was going to give a CCH pounder left arm up rating for this movie because that is perfect.
Chris, that is absolutely perfect.
Yeah, actually, it's funny.
When I saw her this movie, I forgot who she was, like her body of work.
I remember from her from the show Warehouse 13, which came out in 2000 when she was much older.
(42:40):
So I saw her like, hey, I know who that is, but she's not that big.
They made her look bigger for the movie so they could hide the fake arm.
Yeah, they took that where that arm was coming off.
That is a classic low budget horror movie move.
Before we head out, guys, though, we do have a piece of a piece of mail bag Fergal.
So we get your take on it.
So this came in the mail recently.
(43:02):
Love the podcast gang.
Are you guys going to review non live action conflict movies like Akira?
That film is so five O's influential.
I also suggest Joker, Road to Perdition, Sin City, A History of Violence and Dread.
The Good One with Carl Urban, V for Vedetta, Dark Knight and Oldboy.
The Good Korean One, not the Will Smith remake. Cheers.
(43:25):
Every one of them are phenomenal.
Road to Perdition.
And obviously we would need to do a two part episode on Akira because it is and did, in my humble view, spawned in the entire generation of anime.
Done well, not just anime, but anime done extremely well.
A completely unexplored universe that could have gone in a thousand different directions.
And naturally have the motorcycle sitting right over my shoulder.
(43:48):
Now, some of those movies are actually already on our agenda between now and February.
So we'll be hitting a few of those.
And those are all good suggestions without a doubt.
Perfect.
As long as we review the Flintstones, Viva Las Vegas.
Oh my God.
So Greg, where can people find you?
Instagram, Facebook, our website, searanovacomics.com or just type in searanova comics in Google.
(44:14):
You'll find us very easily.
I'm ordering a copy of Space Mittens just because the title is Space Mittens.
And I'd like to see where that story takes me.
That's a barn door.
You're taking the horse out.
We're going to take that for a ride.
I want to see where that goes.
Now, do you have any projects coming up?
October 7th, we're launching our, I'm hoping it's October 7th.
I think so.
(44:35):
We're launching our flagship, Sear Chronicles.
It's the third issue in the series.
There's a total of five for the first plot arc.
I just rewrote that first plot arc like two weeks ago to make it so it's five issues and not ten.
So yeah, it launches the 7th of October and it ends like November 7th, I think.
(44:59):
Okay, so if the timing works out well, that's the day before this episode drops.
Make sure you put the links in the show notes.
That'd be awesome.
Fergal, where can people find you?
Well, Gotham Knight Comics got my Facebook page, got my Instagram page, got my TikTok page.
I am actually, funny, funny thing, I decided I am submitting some.
So a buddy of mine said, you know, you know so much about all these comics.
(45:21):
Why don't you submit a couple articles into a couple of these little websites?
So I submitted into CBR, got a click back.
So I got to submit a couple more pieces in there.
Maybe start doing some reviews of comic stories and movies because I have this whole limitless knowledge brain full of things.
I am definitely who you want to have on phone a friend in certain areas.
So for me, you can always find me at off panel creations.
(45:43):
We're always over there building some piece of nerdy furniture.
I want to thank you, our listeners, for spending some time with us today.
If you have any thoughts about Demon Knight and how it is the second best Tales from the Crypt movie,
send us a note over at movie-smash.com and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Thank you again for listening and I hope you enjoy the show.
This has been Movie Smash with Chris Roberts, Jeremy Parmentier, and Fergal Amayo,
(46:05):
produced by me, Chris Roberts, executive produced by off panel creations, LLC.
Movie clips provided by their respective studios.
You can rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
You might even find your review read on a future episode.
Got a question for us?
Visit us at movie-smash.com and send us a note.
It too can be read on a future episode.
If you haven't already, please subscribe to Movie Smash wherever you listen to your podcasts.
(46:29):
I might just do a dance or a jig, you don't know.
I'm like the crypt keeper.
(00:02):
I just said they're just cut them open for days.
By ideas, daubla, diablo.
I can't say that word.
And for anyone who grew up in the 90s, you knew what that meant.
Yeah, I'm not very impressed right now.
I'm afraid someone's gonna smash that bitch up.
Hello and welcome to movie-
BOOM!
Hello and welcome to Movie Smash, the show where we dive headfirst into comic book movies outside the MCU.
(00:26):
If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us.
If you've been here before, you know the drill.
Each episode, we're gonna smash through a movie with the source materials from a graphic novel or a comic.
Is it worth revisiting?
Should it be forgotten?
Let's find out.
This is Movie Smash.
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Roberts.
I'm the founder of all panel creations.
With you today, I'm Chris Roberts.
I'm the director of the comic book series.
(00:47):
I'm one of your hosts, Chris Roberts. I'm the founder of all panel creations.
With me today, I'm Fergal Amayo.
I am Fergal Amayo, owner and founder of Gotham Night Comics.
And I'm like the Crypt Keeper. I'm going to get my final cut.
And today, you sound like the Crypt Keeper.
Not that I'm doing much better myself.
And today, we have a guest host with us, Greg Moquin from Seaver Nova Comics.
(01:11):
I am the writer and co-founder of Seaver Nova Comics, and we make superhero comics, horror comics, and sci-fi comics that are all ages.
Greg, thanks for joining us.
This movie is actually our first of two Halloween-themed episodes.
That's where our movie today is 1995's Tales from the Crypt, Demon Knight, starring Billy Zane, William Sadler, Jada Pinkett, directed by Ernest Dickerson.
(01:37):
Universal Pictures is proud to present the motion picture directing debut of one of America's most talented and respected artists.
Cut! Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut!
Oh, hello, kiddies. So glad you could join me.
Your pal, the Crypt Keeper, has gone Hollywood in a big way.
(02:01):
I'm directing my first feature film, Care for a Little Shriek Preview.
For my big scream premiere, I wanted lots of suspense.
Uh-oh.
Greg, you picked this movie for us. Why did you choose this one?
I never saw it, and I like Tales from the Crypt. Yeah, that's why I picked it.
(02:24):
That's a good mix. So are either of you very familiar at all with the source material, Tales from the Crypt?
It sort of falls in with House of Horrors. There was a whole run in the 50s of horror comics.
Actually, there's a lot of House of Mystery, which technically is the first appearance of Swamp Thing, one of the other very, very famous sets of books, is one of the most expensive books you can buy on the market.
(02:47):
I actually owned it at one time and sold it for an amazing profit. It's just a great series of books.
Now, funny fact, as we dive into these series from 1950, this particular book or this movie was not based on a comic. It was strictly a screenplay written for this movie.
Fun fact. I get to do a fun fact today.
Well, actually, you got a little bit wrong there, but yeah, you're pretty close. It is not originally from Tales from the Crypt. It just has that moniker on there.
(03:13):
Did you just have to be writer than me, Chris? Is that what happened right there?
I feel like, Greg, did you? I mean, I'm not just be arbitrary here. Did he just literally have to be writer? Was I just about correct?
And he was like, no.
The screenplay was not written for Tales from the Crypt. That was the thing you got wrong. We'll get more into that a little bit. It's actually went through several studio hands before it got to Tales from the Crypt.
(03:35):
So was this the first time either of you had seen this movie?
No, no, I've seen this quite a bit.
This again, as I say, it's, you know, Jada Pickett Smith. She looked really good in this movie. And Billy Zane. Is there just not anyone who doesn't like Billy Zane?
Yeah, he's cool.
There it is.
This is the first time I've seen the movie. So I have seen the 1972 Tales from the Crypt, like the original.
(03:59):
Yeah, I've seen that first Tales from the Crypt movie several times as a kid for a variety of reasons. For this one, this was actually the first time I've seen Demon Knight.
And it was not pretty. It was not that easy to locate either. I had to order a copy of it because it was not on a streaming service that I have.
Now, man, it was on Starz, which I don't have. I don't have every streaming service. But I could not find this movie until I had to go. I actually had to go pay full price on Amazon.
(04:22):
And I got the collector's edition because they don't sell the normal edition. But I'm okay with getting the collector's edition of the movie.
I will tell the audience that I saw that before this whole process. And I was like, you know, it is on Starz and it's free.
Yeah. So what I did was I Googled it because I was like, how am I going to watch this? And then I saw Amazon. I was like, oh, okay.
(04:43):
So I went on Prime and then I was like, oh, you have to sign up for a Starz membership. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Just watch it.
And then I did. But it's like a seven-day trial. So I was like, how cool. So I don't know what else is on Starz that I like.
There's quite a bit, actually. Barbarians on there. It's a good movie.
So Fergal, you've sort of touched on it. What's the history of the Tales from the Crypt comic, even though this movie is not directly pulled from that?
(05:08):
No, no. But it is published by EC Comics, 1950, 55, Bill Gaines, Al Friedstein. It's just a series of...
It came from a time in comics when horror anthology was a real thing, right? It was not just...
And horror anthology spawned a few actual crossover mainstream comics directly from that. I mean, so this was a time when you were making horror things.
(05:32):
And so they were more outrageous. You guys mentioned The 72. That was a great movie.
Wasn't that the Stephen King one with everything going green?
It's been years, decades even, since I've seen that movie.
We just aged ourselves. I don't know if that's appropriate, but let's do it.
Considering our last episode, I talked about how I was still in Western Germany in 86.
(05:53):
Right, you did. 99 Truth Balloon.
I really, really aged myself last episode. So if this is your first time joining us, just a heads up, we'll be discussing the plot of this movie.
With some of that, we may discuss some elements of the story that might be considered spoilers, so consider yourself warned.
So Greg, since you put us through this movie, why don't you give us a quick synopsis of what it's all about?
(06:14):
So Greg is a guy named Breaker. He possesses a mystical key that stops demons from taking over the world.
He hides in a boarding house where this demon called the Collector leads an assault to try to get that key from him.
Billy Zane, going after, what's his name, William Sadler?
(06:37):
William Sadler, yeah.
Which is weird because he's normally a bad guy in most movies.
And that's the thing too, there's really not much to a horror movie. They're very straightforward plots.
And the thing that makes horror movies work typically is the big bad. In this case, that's Billy Zane.
Though you may not know that in the first five minutes of the movie.
How do you guys feel about how Billy Zane portrayed the Collector?
(06:59):
Again, another fun fact with that guy. This movie sat in development hell through multiple writers, directors, until it got to Joel Silver as Silver Pictures.
And they were the ones that really wanted, they camped it out a little bit more.
So I think if you were looking for, I mean, obviously you have the Crib Keeper in there.
It's not going to be too serious. It's going to laugh at itself.
(07:20):
And I think that when you have other, wasn't the other guy from Night Court in there as well?
He's one of the actors in there, if I'm not mistaken, in the beginning part of the movie before it gets to the movie.
I think Billy Zane did a great, he was reckless.
Whereas the other guy, Michael Kernely, who played the second Collector, he actually scared the shit out of me for a second.
No doubt. He was looking up and he was like, I'll take the next one.
(07:43):
That one was like, okay, yeah, that guy's a little bit more frightening than Billy Zane. But Billy Zane was fun.
Yeah. The one thing I remember from what Billy Zane said was, he's like, you're really pissing me off.
And then just like a ray of light came from his crotch.
I was like, oh, okay. Whoa, whoa, doggy, whoa, whoa.
(08:05):
That was not a German whore. Not a German whore.
So Billy Zane definitely, for me, I felt he really just was a cartoon in this movie.
He was like the Roger Rabbit of the movie. He did a fantastic job with it.
He, in fact, in the interviews that I watched, he said this is his favorite movie of all time that he was in.
He loved how much could ham it up, do what he did.
(08:27):
This is actually the first movie Billy's in that he is bald.
And that's important because he is naturally bald.
He actually showed up to the casting day for the first shoot with a suitcase of wigs and said, which wig should I wear today?
He has alopecia. He just goes Tully Savala style. I'm trying to figure out where...
It's like me. I'm losing the hair on the front of my head. He just committed to the bit and just removed it all.
(08:50):
Tully Savala style. I got you.
This was the first movie where he is bald. And they said, you know what? It's scarier that way.
And I don't think he's scarier that way, but he definitely is more of a cartoon that way.
Every character in that movie was a cartoon. That's the... I think that's the joke. Even Breaker.
And it's interesting about this story. Joel Silver envisioned this as a trilogy.
(09:13):
And there's an interesting piece because those keys, the key that we speak about and the six keys and the seventh key, there's a whole...
I dug into a bit of a backstory on that because I was curious after...
When I realized and I saw your Steel Edition, I knew I wasn't going to compete with your commentary, so I had to come with something else.
Well, the thing is, you said it's part of a trilogy and it still was a trilogy. Bordello of Blood was the second movie.
(09:36):
Originally, Demon Knight was supposed to be the second one in that trilogy.
And the only thing common between them was actually the key. That's it. Not really connected tissues.
The key was supposed to go between them. And the key is actually in Bordello of Blood.
It is. It's how she controls Lilla.
Yeah, it reminds me of a book called Talisman back from the 90s, this Earthdawn book,
but where every story revolved around this talisman that's carried through all the stories.
(10:01):
And that's what was supposed to happen with Tales of the Crypt, was essentially follow the key, but they gave up on it.
That makes sense.
Well, Jada Pinkett is sort of the savior at the end of the story. How do you feel she did?
I assumed that she was probably going to survive just because of who she is.
And I don't know any of the other actors in the movie besides Billy Zane and Sadler.
(10:23):
So yeah, I was like, oh, well, all of those people are going to die.
She did well, I guess.
Well, so the interesting part was that Breaker was looking for her.
So I don't think I think at the first part of the movie, she was a little unsure.
And then I think as Billy Zane was acting out, she kind of played into the role.
Because as you see when the fire crotch happens at the end, she kind of plays into it a lot more.
(10:48):
You can see her hand into the role.
But the storyline is that basically Breaker has to walk around with this key and the stars on his hand,
they don't appear until they appear.
And then it sort of guides him where he needs to go.
And he'll end up with seven strangers.
And at the end of the night, the one remaining will be the one that takes over the key.
(11:09):
That's the whole that's the backstory of the backstory.
So he's like a proximity radar sort of draws him to wherever he's supposed to be at.
Yes. Seven potential successors to him because the key lets him live a very, very long time.
I think he was that he became an adult in what World War One.
He was 1990 when he got the key.
There you go. 1990. So, yeah, he is very old by this point.
(11:31):
So she is taking over that position.
So it's interesting, too, when she you know, she in the movie, she has very short hair and it's dyed blonde.
With a big old butt. Whoa. Say that on TV, because that butt was nice.
I don't know what's going on with it today. But at that point, that ass was phenomenal.
You can make change on that.
Before she when she was cast for this, she had long hair and she cut it all off like a few days before going to going to set.
(11:57):
And they said, you know, you don't look the same.
She goes, yeah, but this is what I want to look like.
You know why they let it go? Because she had an ass like that.
That's that's how it always works. And fellas, that's how it will continue to work.
Everyone wants it knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Yeah, we know how you do casting for movies. So not in the Weinstein theory or definitely not in the Sean Deddy
Combs theory, but we definitely don't ask us get their way.
(12:20):
Now, the other character I did want to talk a little bit about, there's actually a couple more.
Uncle Willie played by Dick Miller, who is in pretty much every horror movie during that time period.
Yeah. Like what's another movies in the Gremlin series?
Oh, my God. He's the one that goes to New York. He's got the whole thing going on in New York when the Gremlins take over the building.
And you have the smart Gremlin who does news reports.
(12:42):
Exactly. By the way, best Gremlin in the whole show.
I kind of like the electric guy, but that's a whole other story.
If only that was based on a comic.
He always plays sort of like the confused old man in a movie.
Now, the last character I want to bring up is the Cryptkeeper himself.
Voiced by John Kaseer, who's, by the way, find a fact, voiced him in the other Crypt movie as well.
(13:05):
Oh, yeah, he is the Cryptkeeper without a doubt.
So this was the first movie that they've ever had or any scene involving the Cryptkeeper where he walks.
Normally, he's just a puppet.
Did you notice he was a green screen for his head?
So they had a little person walking from the director's chair forward and the green screen, the Cryptkeeper's head on it.
And it was one of the early piece of digital special effects in movies.
(13:29):
That's very 90s.
In fact, if you go look at him and you pause the movie while he's walking forward, you can see the reflection of the green screen on his collar.
Which is phenomenal, because that is absolutely a complete, complete microcosm for the entire movie.
Oh, without a doubt.
It is. It's that level of cheesiness and the fact that they left it in there just speaks to what this movie is about.
(13:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
But I thought you would appreciate this little fact for him.
The eyeballs, you know, the puppet for the Cryptkeeper and his eyeballs.
You've seen those eyeballs before.
They're Chuckie's eyes.
Those are Chuckie's eyes.
Those are Chuckie's eyes.
Funny how we're having this conversation while I meandered my ass into Home Depot last night.
And I'm thinking about buying one of them six foot tall little Chuckies just to put on my front yard.
(14:16):
Now I'm afraid someone's gonna smash that bitch up, but it is wonderful.
I was curious where you're going to take that conversation, because you're saying, Chuckie's eyeballs.
I'm walking into Home Depot.
I saw this lady.
I don't know where you're going to go with this, Virgil.
Somebody with a two by four and their eyes pop out.
I took it. I took it.
Now, if that had happened, that would have made a great story, guys.
Let's stop. That would have been a Facebook post.
(14:38):
Somebody would have posted on that shit.
It's a horror movie.
Very small sets.
Very tight roles for everybody.
It's supposed to be unlike a traditional Tales from the Crypt movie, which is really someone gets a comeuppance.
This is more of a action survival movie that really comes out of the scenes.
Are there any scenes that particularly stand out to you guys?
(14:59):
The car chase scene.
I thought that was really cool.
I kind of like that scene.
The original, like they interspersed a little bit of Breaker's background.
I thought that was cool.
That's what got me interested in digging back to where this whole thing with the key came into play and these demons that are not normal demons.
I like that.
You're talking about the flashbacks, right?
(15:21):
Yeah, the flashback scenes.
I also just really appreciated Cordelia.
When she made that changeover, when she demonized, I thought she was phenomenal.
Instead of bouncing all of them, let's start with the car chase.
Why did you like the car chasing?
Just standard 80s, 90s car chases.
That was how it was back then.
Real cars without wires and Vin Diesel was nowhere to be found.
(15:44):
Very true.
It was a, they had one shot at that one.
This movie was a very tight budget.
That car scene, they had one attempt to do it.
That's actually a real car driving with flames coming out of it.
In fact, there's a guy hiding in the back seat who is playing with the blue chain torch that lights the car up and fire goes up, fire goes out.
He's laying in the back seat of the car.
That's perfect.
By the way, if you can't tell, I watched the commentary with the special effects people, not the director, the special effects people.
(16:11):
I thought it was a better one to listen to since I only had so much time.
Chris likes to be incredibly knowledgeable about just everything we're talking about.
So you will find that out as our day goes on.
His commentary knowledge knows no bounds.
And Fergal always tries to take my job and I don't try to take your job.
I'm just trying to come with something interesting.
So they said there were six keys and they were trying to stop.
(16:36):
It gave them the ability to bring hell on earth.
And the last key, it was all divided up.
They had regained all six across millennia, but they couldn't get the seven one because that was held by Jesus Christ, which infers that there were other beings on other millennia and other galaxies that had these keys and that they were able to collect them all.
But that one, the blood in that started from Jesus and worked all the way forward to break her.
(17:00):
Yeah, the first blood in there were from the three guys on the crucifixes, all three of them.
But I don't think necessarily it was Jesus was one of the original holders of the key because that guy was confused that the blood was hurting the demon.
Well, I mean, the guy who was grabbing the blood was confused.
But keep in mind those three causes.
If you look to any iconography, am I going to say a really big word?
(17:22):
Iconography? I can't say it. It's not going to come up.
Iconography?
There it is. There it is right there.
If you look at any religious iconography, I still can't say it.
You just said it. I think it looks like a Jesus Christ cross.
Pictures. Just say pictures.
Pictures. I was trying to impress Greg.
If you just look at any old religious pictures, you'll see that that cross formation feels a lot like Jesus Christ.
Yeah, I'm not very impressed right now.
(17:47):
I can't say that word, so I'm not going to try.
Well, you started talking a little bit about how, what's her name, Cordelia?
Cordelia. How she made the conversion.
But multiple people were trying to be converted by Billy Zane.
And what he was trying to do was tempt them with their dreams and hopes to come to his side.
And when they accepted his deal, they became a demon, except for one.
(18:10):
What about the Cordelia ones took out to you?
I don't know. Maybe it's her boobs.
I got to see her boobs earlier.
Then I'm surprised you picked out the Miller one, the Uncle Willie one.
I probably would have, but just the Cordelia look, the boobs.
There are lots of boobs in that movie, but that was good boobs.
Speaking of boobs, Uncle Willie, his conversion, which essentially is he's being convinced to drink more.
(18:36):
But he's going to a bar with, it was eight, nine different women that were in there.
I remember that as I was working today.
He only has one line and during an interview with him, he said it took him 15 attempts to get that scene right.
And that should tell you everything you know about Uncle Willie.
Because he couldn't get his lines right.
He just had to keep doing the scene over and over and over again.
(18:59):
Was it real alcohol in his laugh?
Probably not.
But the thing is the fact that he was just wanting to go through the practice of doing that scene over and over and over again.
Dick Miller was a standup guy.
Actually, I'll talk too about the conversion or the temptation of Jada.
The scene where she's walking down and there's that big mural that she's up against.
(19:21):
Yes.
So they had one shot at that scene because he could only afford that print once.
The blood pours out of it.
Yeah.
And so yeah, they can only afford to try doing that one time because of how little money they had for this movie.
Her best scene was when she drew out that love thing.
He was trying to say, I love you to Jada.
(19:44):
That was probably because he was covered in the blood.
He was trying to wash her off.
And then she had drank some of that blood.
And I just thought that was like his interaction with her and this kind of the whole cover thing.
And I want to make her a queen in hell.
Like that was kind of interesting.
And then when he blew up into the real demon, did anybody else could have feeling like you were looking at the demon from the Golden Child?
(20:05):
I never made that connection.
But that's actually not the original ending of this movie.
Oh, originally he was supposed to be a floating head.
It was a floating head.
Billy Zane was a floating head at the end, trying to tempt her.
But test audiences said that's no, that's that was a bridge too far.
The goofiness.
Really?
(20:26):
Like Billy Zane himself went floating head.
Oh, yeah, they just made a flight like from Superman.
Interesting.
It might be late, Greg, we're going to get this going into some fun here.
Enjoy the laughs.
Now, what do you how do you guys feel about Billy Zane and the sponge?
Oh, it comes right out of his mouth.
Just slightly to clean up the little area like it's just handy.
(20:47):
Did he actually have that sponge in his mouth?
I'm Chris. I'm just going to ask the question.
Oh, yes.
That was his idea, by the way.
He stuffed the sponge in his mouth and then make it look like a tongue.
That was his goal to make it look like a tongue.
Was it a full size sponge? Because I'm thinking that's got to dry out your mouth.
That was a full size sponge. I mean, he had clean up a lot of blood.
And he did.
That's quite something.
(21:08):
Now, this movie was actually shot in a airport hangar, an old abandoned airport hangar.
And the reason they did that was because it's the movie is mainly shot at night.
I'm sorry. The movies mainly takes place during the evening.
So obviously, if you're doing that outside, you only have certain hours which you can film.
So by putting it inside a hangar, you can film whenever you want.
So that entire set, including the hotel, was rebuilt from the ground up.
(21:31):
So the scenes that take place in the second floor rooms are actually on the second floor of the hangar.
Now, there's some downside to that. That hangar was just all metal.
So it was incredibly hot in there.
So when you see that, like, no, there's a scene where they're on the upper floor, like after they've been chased out of the tunnel.
And they're sitting there and they're covered in sweat and nasty.
She's got her arm missing.
(21:53):
Yeah.
And she's going to serve the arm for a snack. That was great.
Yeah. And they're like covered in sweat. That's real sweat.
That's not them being misted to be more glistening or anything like that.
That's just because the fact that it was close to 100 degrees in there.
That had to be a commentary fact right there.
Of course it is.
And the other thing, too, is because it was an airport hangar, birds were roosting in the rafters.
So before they started filming, they had to fire a shotgun off every single time into the air to scare them so they'd stop cooing.
(22:19):
And the moment they started cooing again, they had to cut the film.
Wow.
And what's even more interesting about that is the DEA had the hangar next to them.
And they said every now and again, a plane would leave or come in to their hangar.
And they had to stop filming for that as well because the jet noises.
Was it because they wanted to try to snick some of the drugs the DEA were bringing in?
(22:40):
Because I don't know. It was the 90s.
Now this movie takes, this movie's about 92 minutes long, just over an hour and a half.
So it barely qualifies as a feature film.
How do you feel the pacing was?
It starts fast and stays fast. It doesn't really, it doesn't slow down at all.
I mean, I think critics said, because it got like a 43 in Rotten Tomatoes, they thought it was all over.
(23:01):
Like it was neither horror nor funny. So it was everything in between.
It didn't develop a status until much later, like Bordello of Blood.
It found an audience and it went to where it went to.
But I thought it went just fast enough.
Like if anything, it gave me enough, made me want to learn more.
And ultimately, you know, like even if you go all the way to the end scene, don't they,
(23:22):
and Chris can tell me, the Cryptkeeper teases out what was supposed to be the next movie in the trilogy.
He did it post credits on the VHS. I had the DVD, so obviously it isn't there.
But he did post on the post credits. But the thing is that movie changed.
The original tease he did was for a movie like, based on the Big Easy.
But they changed it to Bordello of Blood.
(23:43):
Interesting.
What was the name of the Quentin Tarantino movie that was about vampires?
Which one was that one?
Dawn of the Dead? No.
No. Oh my God. I know what movie you're talking about.
Oh, Dust. No, Dust.
Dust.
I knew Dawn.
I mean, come on. Somebody just need to say Selma Hayek, bro.
(24:06):
We are acting the fools here.
That was originally going to be one of the third movie in the series.
But Quentin Tarantino wanted too much money.
He was going to do the third movie of this?
And be Dust to Dawn.
That'd be perfect. With the same actors, because that's why it cost him.
This is early on in pre-production. They hadn't cast anybody yet.
Got Harvey Keitel and George Clooney.
He wanted so much money. They're like, no, I'm sorry, we can't do this.
(24:29):
So Greg, how do you feel about the pacing of this movie?
In the middle, like the midway point, I was like kind of losing it at first.
And then I was like, oh, now I'm like in it again because I was like,
kind of refused on like what was going on for a second.
And then I was like, oh, OK, because I want to go to the bathroom real quick.
And then I came back and I was like, I forgot what was going on.
(24:51):
You may have smoked a joint that would also do the trick.
But you're right. It was they were in the hotel.
They fled through some tunnels in the basement and they got back to the hotel again.
And his little sort of disjointed that way.
So no, Clinton, Tarantino.
So they had horror movies.
They really I think they die or succeed on their special effects,
(25:15):
because most of these movies are very, very low budget.
So they have to make do with what little they have.
How do you feel about the effects of this movie or were there any effects that stood out to you?
Like the green electricity from the eyes that that's right.
That just very 90s. So like, yeah, I think the little kid Horace,
you know, when he's turning page by page, that's about the best.
That's a flip.
(25:36):
Like if you're looking for something that was a throwback to Tales from the Crypt from the comic
and they don't often do this, it's hard because, again, this was not based on a comic.
So to make that change, comic page accurate all the way through in real time.
I thought that was dope.
That's funny. You said about the kid, too, on the day of the shoot for that scene,
the director and the production team had not seen what that monster had come out to be.
(26:01):
And the crew of the special effects just blew their budget making that monster
because they wanted to make a monster.
And so they were hoping that they even said the guys were joking, saying on their drive to the studio that morning,
they were afraid they were going to get fired.
They spent so much money on this 30 second scene of a kid that looks nothing like any of the other demons.
They said the tongue hanging out, the jaws missing. That is not like any of the demons we've seen previously in the movie.
(26:27):
And they're like, it just looks cool. We want to go with it.
That was a Billy Zane decision. I think Billy Zane had a hand in that.
Let's just call her.
Oh, not at all. But the thing that's funny because they knew they were on such a tight budget.
There's no going back. They couldn't say, OK, take it back.
Rechange it. No, change it. It's like whatever we do, we're committed to this.
Some of the special effects I thought that were pretty interesting, too, were, you know, Billy Zane's.
(26:49):
It's already cuts his hand open. He spills blood on the ground to summon the demons.
Yes, slapping around. So that blood, those pools of green goo are from glow sticks.
That makes sense. And what they did was they had to spend several days, according to the studio guys, to cut open glue sticks.
They could just order the materials because it is not safe.
They actually had to go out, buy glow sticks, cut them open and pour them into a jar.
(27:13):
Multiple vats of it just to make sure they had enough.
So imagine imagine being an intern and being told, OK, I need you to go to CVS, buy every glow stick they have.
I don't care. Just buy them all.
It's got to be green and bring them back and just sit there, just cut them open for days.
It depends what the hourly rate is. Does it promote me into it?
Because, I mean, Kevin Feige would have did that if he had gotten charge of Marvel and it worked for him.
(27:35):
The movies like this also, there's a lot of blood, right?
And you guys, are you familiar with how fake studio blood looks or movie blood is what's made from?
Strawberry Jam, isn't it? No, it's a corn syrup.
Yeah, corn syrup. Oh, shit.
So the reason I bring that up is because there was an actress in that movie who was on a carb free diet at that point and requested carb free blood.
(27:56):
They didn't name which actress it was, just that there was an actress who wanted carb free blood.
And they said, yeah, it's carb free because everybody gets covered in blood.
That was Cordella. Yeah. Yeah.
So that was like, yeah, I was like, yeah.
So if you notice those demons, some of the demons had hoofs.
They had like the backwards, no. And if you see they're sort of swaying all the time, it looks pretty cool.
The reason they're swaying is because they're off balance. They're having trouble.
(28:19):
They actually had the guys on the commentary talking about how they could hardly stand up.
So that swaying is just them trying to keep their footfalls and not fall over.
In fact, if you notice, there's only two physical demons.
Everything else are puppets, but the actual demons themselves, there are actually only two.
It's the same two guys in all scenes. So you see a demon blow up, it's the same guy you saw before.
Nice. I like the fact that you can only get him with the eyes. Yes.
(28:41):
You can get him with the blood. That's the only two ways you can get him.
Yeah. And actually there's a scene where was it, they take the shotgun and blow the back of the head off of one of the demons and like two eyeballs go flying out.
Yeah. I think that was the first demon.
It was one of the people converted.
That was Cordella's big haired love interest. The guy who looks like a really bad Richard Zemeckis.
The guy that goes, that wanted to go postal. Yes.
(29:02):
He's actually the voice of Roger Rabbit.
He is. So I said like Roger Zemeckis or something. He's one of these guys.
Yeah. He had to make it on something other than his looks. Let me just put it out there.
But it's kind of funny. They find a bunch of weapons in his room.
No ammo, but a bunch of weapons and a suicide vest. And he's a postal worker.
(29:23):
And for anyone who grew up in the 90s, you knew what that meant.
You want to go postal? You want to go postal?
Just went 90s right on everybody in this room.
It's not a thing anymore, but yeah. I want to talk about, I got a couple of these.
When I can find them, I do things that could have been the things they could have changed
or where they're going to change for this movie when they're going through production.
So Jada Smith's rule, Jada Pinkett Smith's rule was originally going to be Cameron Diaz.
(29:48):
Could you have seen that?
I would have liked that a little more probably.
I mean, first off, it is Cameron Diaz. Early Cameron Diaz is there is definitely something about Mary.
So yeah, she held that one pretty well, but I think it had to be Jada Pickett Smith.
I know I just don't see her as not like Jada just sort of fit in that role.
But yeah, that does make sense too.
(30:09):
Yeah, for me, Jada made sense just because she played kind of an ex-con.
Perfect person to hold this thing. Hold the thing.
Yeah, Cameron Diaz would feel just too, I don't know the word is for it, but she would seem...
Right far of what showed up at the end.
Yeah, there you go.
For what you mentioned, we sort of hinted earlier on that had the script changed hands many, many times.
It went from one company to another one.
(30:31):
The first director to look at this, first writer to look at, director writer to look at this was Tom Holland.
Are you familiar with who he is?
I saw his name, but I am not familiar with his body of work.
Fright Night, Langoliers, Child's Play.
Oh, now I'm familiar with his body of work. Those are all very good movies.
Very different tone than this movie.
Yeah.
He definitely is a little more darker of a movie than we saw here.
(30:55):
Would you have preferred to see this movie darker than it came out to be?
It's The Crypt Keeper. Probably not.
Now, the last... Well, you got to remember, this is before The Crypt Keeper was involved.
This is when it was a standalone script. This movie was originally written as a standalone movie called Demon Knight.
And that script got passed around to various companies.
In fact, The Tales from the Crypt was only added at the very last studio.
(31:17):
To be part of The Tales from the Crypt, they had to add that moniker to it.
Before that, there was nothing to do with Tales from the Crypt.
It wasn't going to be one of those type of movies.
In fact, the studio that looked at it before that was called Full Moon Entertainment or Full Moon Studios.
Are you familiar with who they are?
Puppet Master.
Puppet Master was like their one big hit. Everything else is.
They've got hundreds of really bad horror movies.
(31:40):
Yep.
Like they're known for really bad horror movies.
Go look up their body of work.
For our listeners out there, go look up their body of work if you're not familiar with them.
Full Moon Entertainment.
They've got Full Moon Entertainment. They've got some stinkers. They've got Puppet Master.
Do they do the 100 Acre Forest? Have you guys seen the new Winnie the Pooh movie?
(32:02):
100 Acre Forest? That's a scary movie. That's a mess.
That's like Nicolas Cage unfurled on air.
There's a Peter Pan movie that they're coming out with. I don't know if it's the same people.
Yeah, now that's all hit public domain. Yeah.
What was it? Blood and Honey was the one that came out a couple years ago.
Yes. Yes.
And now that Tigger's hit the public domain, they're doing the new one.
(32:23):
There's actually a funny thing too. This movie has a shared universe.
According to the directors and the writers, they said, they were asked,
is this movie part of any other universe? And they said they had an answer.
The past was Jason and the Argonauts.
And the future is a movie called Upgrade that came out in 2018.
Jason and the Argonauts. You're talking about all the way back to...
1963.
Harry Hamlin, Jason and the Argonauts?
(32:45):
Yeah, they were saying that. In their mind, that's part of the universe.
And then the newest movie would be the 2018 Upgrade with the little stem cell
that goes in the back and moves around.
I have no idea how they're connected, but how would you guys see those movies
that could possibly be connected? That's acid. And that's drugs.
That's lots of drugs, and I think that's the only way you connect those two movies.
They were at some Comic-Con or something, and they were interviewed about it,
(33:07):
and that's the question they came up with. The answer they came up with.
How many gentlemen have been to a Comic-Con? I know I have.
I'm sure you have Greg, and I'm sure you have Chris.
We're all somewhat sideways by the time we leave.
So these are how those questions come about.
For this movie, guys, what did you love about it,
and what did you think they could have done better?
I liked Billy Zane. I thought that made...
(33:28):
It's like second to the Cripkeeper, who kind of sets the stage and gives you the...
I thought the way he kind of said,
I'll get you, ho, no, poo, why'd you just give me a key?
We're gonna do this the hard way, go running out the window and start slicing.
I thought that just set the whole thing off and the whole...
I just thought that was great.
(33:49):
Now that I know the budget was so tight,
it makes sense as to the disjointed special effects.
That's the one thing, and that was actually not just spoken by me,
that was spoken by every critic that was in that movie.
Very disjointed special effects.
Yeah, like Billy Zane kind of filled the role for the Cripkeepers when he is not there.
So it made sense that he was the villain, because he was good at it.
(34:15):
The effects did look very 90s and stuff,
but if that could have been better, that would have been kind of cool.
And because the budget was so small, I understand why they only did it in a few different...
this cafe or whatever diner, and then the hotel, so I get that.
I feel like lighting the cars on fire probably subbed the budget there.
(34:39):
That was all their money.
That was actually for the fire team to come put the cars out after they filled the city.
Now that he's left it burned.
No, they're there in the desert.
Now, why work on it? Just let it do its thing.
I agree with you guys, Billy Zane is the heart of this movie.
It's a dark, disturbed, corrupted heart, but he is the heart of this movie.
It made me want to watch The Phantom.
(35:00):
I literally got done after this movie, I put The Phantom on,
just because I was like, I'm Billy Zane in it.
He did fantastic, and I think he saves the movie, without a doubt.
And the effects were rough.
Now, it's an early 90s movie, it's an early 90s low budget movie to do it.
And actually, we talked about the script changes a little bit.
There was one other script change I didn't mention.
It's about the effects.
They had the script, they sent it to the special effects guys and said,
(35:24):
hey, can you budget this out for us with all the demons and all that?
And they came back with a number and they said, no, that's not going to work.
And they rewrote the script that all the demons were like men in black, guys in suits.
And the only way they knew they were a demon when they pulled their sunglasses off.
And they sent that back to the special effects guy.
And they were like, how can you have a demon night movie?
The word demon is in the name and not have a demon that you can actually see.
(35:48):
They said, well, we got to save some money.
We can't afford it.
Now, you go out and blow a car up.
You can't do that.
And they retook it all and said, OK, how about if our two guys who are in charge,
the guys are in charge of the studio, that studio, but the special effects team,
they'll dress up.
They're really skinny.
They're like a buck, 120 pounds, buck 20.
And they'll dress up as all the demons for you.
And we'll use prosthetics instead of actual monsters.
(36:11):
In fact, as they even said, most of the time, those guys are practically naked.
If you look at the demons, they've just got maybe a mask on, maybe some gloves and their boots.
That's it.
And they did that to save so much money to get actual demons in the movie because it was supposed to be
men in black style guys walking around like they're corporate demons.
What?
That makes sense today.
(36:32):
Like that would be scary today.
Oh, yeah.
So I think for this movie, good thing Billy Zane.
He's great.
Changing it.
Greg, you sort of touched on it that it is not that it's a confusing plot, but it's a little disjointed
because they go from being in the hotel.
They find this tunnel to get out.
And now they're running back.
And somehow there are other demons in the tunnel who are the parents of the kid and the kids now part of the group.
(36:55):
And then we bring them back to the thing.
We run up the stairs.
So it's like now I understand why they did it.
They did it because they didn't have any other place to shoot.
Like it had to be in the sets they had built to save money.
I get that.
But I can only I kind of wonder what they could have done with an extra ten million dollars.
Me too.
Now, they only spent it was like less than 30.
It was a very expensive move down the number in front of me, but it was very, very small.
(37:19):
Few minutes early.
I wonder what else they could have done, especially in early 90s.
Do you know what the gross was on this?
What they ended up doing at the theater?
I don't have it in front of me, but I remember seeing that it pretty much like all these movies.
It ekes by as a horror movie.
It makes enough money to make another habit again.
But it's always the cult following at the end.
It's the guy in 2024 buying the collector's edition off Amazon.
(37:41):
He wants to see it.
Who saves this movie?
You know, the best example of that, if you haven't seen it, I'd recommend watch it.
Donnie Darko like Donnie Darko.
Donnie Darko is another one.
And I will also throw one out there in case you haven't seen it.
I just think it's dope.
Hereditary.
I've not seen that one yet.
That'll stay with you.
Tales from the Crypt movies were a thing.
There was one in the 70s and then there was you put the moniker Tales from the Crypt on a movie.
(38:06):
You know it was going to be cheesy fun, right?
It wasn't going to be, you know, I'll be unable to sleep for weeks.
It's not going to sit with me, but I'm going to have fun during these movies.
Should they bring back the Tales from the Crypt series of movies?
I think it's actually tame in today's world, to be honest with you.
You'd have to, I mean, because they have tried to bring like even the, even the New Twilight Zone is much deeper than it used to be from the original.
(38:28):
And I thought the original was the Thinkin' Man's episode, but I just, I don't know if you can get away with that kind of cheesy horror in today's world.
They would take it like 824 style.
I think that would be cool.
I like Tales from the Crypt, obviously, because they picked it.
I like Creepshow stuff, so like they brought that back, which they technically brought Creepshow back as like a series thing, like a mini series or something like that.
(38:54):
A little, a little bit.
But yeah, I think it would still work because people did watch that, I think.
I did.
Personally, I would love to see them bring that style of horror.
Right now, you sort of touched on it, that style of horror movie isn't a thing right now.
Right now, horror movies are dark, gritty.
I mean, the slashers are all gone.
(39:15):
Now it's really sort of the dark brooding thing in the darkness.
And with the budgets that they can spend, they can actually have great special effects.
Now, that being said, there are some terrible horror movies on Tubi.
You can go find them.
But they're not quite Tales from the Crypt type of horrible horror movies.
Because it had its own sort of spirit to it, its own sort of feel to it.
That's what, that, that, and if you watch Bordello Blood, you get a different complete sense as opposed to the horror movies throughout today.
(39:41):
And they don't even really fit into a category of horror movie.
They have their own juice and energy to them.
That's what makes these movies.
That's why I don't think it can remake these movies today.
I think it's like a, it's sort of the middle between a spoof movie of horror and a horror movie.
Like it's not making fun of the genre necessarily, but it's got enough jokes in there.
It doesn't take itself seriously.
It's very hard to find a movie like that these days.
(40:03):
I would love to see them do it again.
But yeah, I'm not sure it would succeed, but that's not the question.
The question is, should they do it?
And I'm not fronting the money for any of these movies.
So I think they should.
Chris, you should, my friend.
Now for this movie, now this movie is 30 years old, almost.
Should people go find this movie?
Should they set up for their one week of free stars to go watch it?
(40:27):
I did.
You can do it.
There's no greater PSA than that right there.
I already paid for stars.
I think I'm one of 10 people that actually have stars just because I like some of the
random movies that come out there.
But would you tell people to go watch this movie?
My God, I'm the person that tells you go see Big Trouble, Little China, Transformers,
G.I. Joe, the movie, Tales from the Crypt, Bordello, Blood and The Demon Knight.
(40:49):
Yes, I'm that guy.
I grew up in the 90s and the 80s.
This is a movie just like going to Blood Diner.
First we greet them, then we eat them.
I mean, it's just one of those movies.
You got to go see it.
This movie, I believe people should go watch, but watch with a group of people.
This is a different experience with other people in the room than just by yourself.
I think it's a better viewing experience when you got people around you can choke with.
(41:12):
Think of like Mystery Science Theater 3000.
That kind of feel to it.
Go in there, have a blast, have some drinks, have some nachos that are with extra nacho cheese on top of it.
Enjoy yourself.
Watch it by yourself.
Now, I watched it twice in preparation for our show today.
I watched it once, then once with a commentary.
And it's good.
I've got no problem with it.
(41:33):
But I think it probably would have been a much better experience if you were sitting next to me and we were making jokes about it as you're watching it.
That and we have a big old fat Woody right there next to us.
Let's do that.
I don't want to know about your Woody.
Not that Woody, the other Woody.
Guys, before we head on out, how would you rate this movie?
(41:54):
I'd rate this a green glow club on my hand, splashing on the wall.
That's what I'm giving it.
So about a quarter half thumb in the middle, but with green glow on every one.
That's the rating right there.
Patented Billy Zane.
I'm just going to give it to you like that.
That's really funny because I was going to read it like three and a five glow sticks.
(42:15):
So look at this.
I just met Greg and we're already simpatico.
I don't know what happened there.
I was going to give a CCH pounder left arm up rating for this movie because that is perfect.
Chris, that is absolutely perfect.
Yeah, actually, it's funny.
When I saw her this movie, I forgot who she was, like her body of work.
I remember from her from the show Warehouse 13, which came out in 2000 when she was much older.
(42:40):
So I saw her like, hey, I know who that is, but she's not that big.
They made her look bigger for the movie so they could hide the fake arm.
Yeah, they took that where that arm was coming off.
That is a classic low budget horror movie move.
Before we head out, guys, though, we do have a piece of a piece of mail bag Fergal.
So we get your take on it.
So this came in the mail recently.
(43:02):
Love the podcast gang.
Are you guys going to review non live action conflict movies like Akira?
That film is so five O's influential.
I also suggest Joker, Road to Perdition, Sin City, A History of Violence and Dread.
The Good One with Carl Urban, V for Vedetta, Dark Knight and Oldboy.
The Good Korean One, not the Will Smith remake. Cheers.
(43:25):
Every one of them are phenomenal.
Road to Perdition.
And obviously we would need to do a two part episode on Akira because it is and did, in my humble view, spawned in the entire generation of anime.
Done well, not just anime, but anime done extremely well.
A completely unexplored universe that could have gone in a thousand different directions.
And naturally have the motorcycle sitting right over my shoulder.
(43:48):
Now, some of those movies are actually already on our agenda between now and February.
So we'll be hitting a few of those.
And those are all good suggestions without a doubt.
Perfect.
As long as we review the Flintstones, Viva Las Vegas.
Oh my God.
So Greg, where can people find you?
Instagram, Facebook, our website, searanovacomics.com or just type in searanova comics in Google.
(44:14):
You'll find us very easily.
I'm ordering a copy of Space Mittens just because the title is Space Mittens.
And I'd like to see where that story takes me.
That's a barn door.
You're taking the horse out.
We're going to take that for a ride.
I want to see where that goes.
Now, do you have any projects coming up?
October 7th, we're launching our, I'm hoping it's October 7th.
I think so.
(44:35):
We're launching our flagship, Sear Chronicles.
It's the third issue in the series.
There's a total of five for the first plot arc.
I just rewrote that first plot arc like two weeks ago to make it so it's five issues and not ten.
So yeah, it launches the 7th of October and it ends like November 7th, I think.
(44:59):
Okay, so if the timing works out well, that's the day before this episode drops.
Make sure you put the links in the show notes.
That'd be awesome.
Fergal, where can people find you?
Well, Gotham Knight Comics got my Facebook page, got my Instagram page, got my TikTok page.
I am actually, funny, funny thing, I decided I am submitting some.
So a buddy of mine said, you know, you know so much about all these comics.
(45:21):
Why don't you submit a couple articles into a couple of these little websites?
So I submitted into CBR, got a click back.
So I got to submit a couple more pieces in there.
Maybe start doing some reviews of comic stories and movies because I have this whole limitless knowledge brain full of things.
I am definitely who you want to have on phone a friend in certain areas.
So for me, you can always find me at off panel creations.
(45:43):
We're always over there building some piece of nerdy furniture.
I want to thank you, our listeners, for spending some time with us today.
If you have any thoughts about Demon Knight and how it is the second best Tales from the Crypt movie,
send us a note over at movie-smash.com and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
Thank you again for listening and I hope you enjoy the show.
This has been Movie Smash with Chris Roberts, Jeremy Parmentier, and Fergal Amayo,
(46:05):
produced by me, Chris Roberts, executive produced by off panel creations, LLC.
Movie clips provided by their respective studios.
You can rate and review the show at Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
You might even find your review read on a future episode.
Got a question for us?
Visit us at movie-smash.com and send us a note.
It too can be read on a future episode.
If you haven't already, please subscribe to Movie Smash wherever you listen to your podcasts.
(46:29):
I might just do a dance or a jig, you don't know.
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