Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Black Phone 2 (2025)

Father Malone and Miss Ripley Jean dive into a retrospective on Joe Hill's work, including a focus on his short stories in '20th Century Ghosts' and film adaptations such as 'Horns'. The discussion includes Scott Derrickson’s horror films and the sequel to 'Black Phone', highlighting its connection to ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street.’

00:00 Welcome and Introduction
00:53 Upcoming 200th Episode and Special Guests
03:51 Joe Hill
07:44 Scott Derrickson's 
10:18 Black Phone 2
20:04 Closing Remarks and Future Episodes

FATHER MALONE
[e-mail]
@Midnight_Viewing
patreon.com/FatherMalone

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Welcome back, midnight viewers to Father Malone's Week Leave Her
round Up. I am Father Malone, and beside me wearing
the tiniest headphones is mister Ripley. Gee, you feel in
talkative this morning. I'm just gonna snarfle today. Hey, I
get it, it's been quite a month. One week from today,
the next episode of Father Malone's Weekly round Up will
be the two hundredth episode of Midnight Reviewing. That will

(01:00):
coincidentally be our Halloween episode. What a fucking perfect storm
of timing. To celebrate, We'll be having special guests on
the show. We're gonna have the ghost of Blake, the
leper captain that my ancestor doomed to a watery grave.
He's gonna stop by and let us know what he's
been up to. The Cryptkeeper RSVP'd, which is basically a no,
he's so fucking pissy. Well, who else is going? Yeah,

(01:22):
he's that guy Prick Uncle Creepy is coming. Cousin Eerie
is not the creep from Creep Show sent me an
enthusiastic email. Been wanting to ask me to come on
for some time listening for years, which is great, But
he's silent so I don't know how that's gonna fly
on the radio. Maybe he'll just point to the titles
of short stories that he keeps within the flowing folds
of his cerements. You know, when I was a kid,

(01:44):
I thought it would be the coolest to be friends
with Elvira or Vampiro or Gulardi. You know, the movie
horror hosts. Nope, horror anthology hosts. Those motherfuckers are interesting.
Speaking of horror comics, were we yes, well, we certainly
will be. Midnight is going to be taking a look
at horror comic adaptations in the near future. So far,
the list is thus Blade Spawn, ghost Rider, Jonah Heck's Punisher,

(02:11):
war Zone. I know that's not a horror title, but
Frank Castle is a bad man and it's completely on
display in netflick. After that, we've got war Actually. Concurrently,
we're going to have Clive Barker's Books of blood films.
Those are on the way, HP and I have Iyaoucha
Fest coming to a close pretty soon. In fact, if
you want to hear us talking about Pray right now,
head over to the Patreon. Also on the Patreon is

(02:32):
Moranus Fest discussing the films of Rick moranis and starting
in December, it's Star Trek Fest. We're getting caught in
a wormhole. Belay that phaser Ordor, and we're taking a
look at all of the Star Trek movies. Movies, not TV,
not animated, not web series, not fan film, not fan fiction,

(02:55):
not your local starship, nor your Starfleet organization. I already
know we're going to take a beating on this series,
but that's okay. I know more than our critics. I
was rocking a red Starfleet shirt back in seventy eight yo.
Even then I was expendable. All of those shows are
or will be up on the Patreon channel, so maybe subscribe.

(03:17):
And if any of the choices in any of these
festivals aren't your liking, or rather, if you have any suggestions,
let's be positive, send those to Father Malone seventy one
at gmail dot com. By the way, none of those
characters are appearing on next week's anniversary show. It's just
going to be me and the Mutt. Speaking of the
creep show, Creep, remember that opening scene with the dad
and the comic book and my boy is in all

(03:39):
the kids. You want to know where this is going?
Billy in the garbage right into the friggin garbage. Now
you got any smart mouth about that. Billy was, of
course played by Joe King, son of fellow creepshow thespian A,
saying the role of Jordie Verel Stephen King Joe would
eventually be the Emilioesteviz to his brother Owen's Charlie Sheen,
which makes Stephen King Mark and Sheen. In this scenario,

(04:01):
he took a pen name, Joe King became Joe Hill
in a distancing move that fucking worked. I know Joe
Hill is King's son, but it's never my first thought
when I think Joe Hill, I think some of the
most interesting and frightening fiction I've read in the last
twenty five years. As such, I'm not going to compare
and contrast his work with his dad's beyond saying that

(04:22):
he is a worthy successor, and I mean that in
every sense of the word. There have been a couple
of adaptations of his work, Horns from twenty thirteen. There
was an attempt at adapting his comic book series Locking
Key back in twenty eleven, but that didn't fly. It
did fly in twenty twenty with two seasons there was
the Nose Farantu limited series based on his excellent fucking novel.

(04:44):
If you haven't read that, you have to read that.
It crosses over with Doctor Sleep, and it absolutely decimates
that book. Not that I'm comparing them, I'm not. It's
not a contest, but if it was, and I had
to declare a better author, it's Joe. And it started
back in two thousand and five. Officially that was when
his collection of short stories and anthology ahha, how I

(05:08):
love them. That book is called twentieth Century Ghosts. But
before I get there, and speaking of anthologies and speaking
of Tales from the Dark Side, which you may have
noticed on midnight viewing, were almost done with our retrospective
of that series. Well, the show ended in nineteen eighty eight,
and other than the follow up movie, has Lane dormant
as a franchise ever since. And then in twenty thirteen,

(05:29):
a new series was commissioned and the author of the
pilot in several episodes within the first series was going
to be Joe Hill. In fact, he was going to
be the showrunner, and every episode, like the previous iteration,
would be a standalone tale. However, each would present a
different piece of an overall story threading throughout the entire

(05:49):
first season, paying off in the finale. He wrote it,
they filmed it, and then CBS kicked it to the curb.
But the stories Hill had written were collected into a
comic book, a fitting form, I'd say, and they are
all excellent. He, like his dad, Sorry, really shines into
short fiction. You know. Edgar Allan Poe felt the novel
was a lesser arn't form from the short story, because

(06:11):
you'd get the entire impression in one sitting. There would
be no breaks with folded down pages and picking it
up a few days later. No, it was here's the character,
here's what they're going through, Here's how it ended. And
like I said, Joe Hill is on fire in his
short fiction, particularly that collection Twentieth Century Ghosts. That book
has a story, the first fucking story in the book

(06:34):
that still disturbs me when I think about it. In fact,
I can't think of pinon buttons the same way. After
that tale. He called that one best new horror. How's
that for fucking bold? Although it's only bragging if you
can't back it up, and he does. And in the
same volume he has one of the sweetest stories I've
read in forever. That's called Bobby Conroy Comes Back from

(06:56):
the Dead, about a failed stand up comedian returning in
disgrace to pitch Itzburg in the late seventies and getting
a job as an extra in a local film production
in order to get closer to the girl he'd liked
in high school. The movie he's working on is Dawn
of the Dead, so already I'm on board, And I
can't think of an author more worthy of fictionalizing George
Romero or Tom Savini than a kid who literally grew

(07:18):
up around them. Twentieth Century Goes spawned the recent adaptation
Abraham's Boys literally recent, like I was going to review
it a few weeks ago, that stars Titus Welliver as
Abraham van Helsing years after the events of Dracula and
living in America with his boys. The other story to
get the big screen treatment was The Black Phone. So

(07:39):
now we leave the world of Joe Hill and enter
that of director and sometimes screenwriter Scott Derrickson. He made
his feature debut with hell Raiser Inferno. Remember that one,
No One does. It was the fifth in a series
that now has nine sequels and a remake it's the
film Doug Bradley claimed was another movie entirely and just
got rewritten as a hell Razor flick at the last

(08:00):
second when che Derrekson denies, and I believe him, but
it's easy to understand why Bradley or any viewer would
jump to that conclusion. The film is not much of
a hell Raiser film in either tone or execution, which
is actually refreshing, and if I'm honest, I enjoyed that one.
He then did Exorcism of Emily Rose, which was pretty good,
although very early two thousands. Then he did that Terrible

(08:22):
Day the Earth Stood Still remake Come on Now. But
and here's where everything got interesting. He made Sinister in
an Ocean of torture porn. He gave us a supernatural
shocker that felt very lived in and very real and
very frightening and mean. That flick is way meaner than
anything Jigsaw made in his little workshop. That would be

(08:44):
his first interaction with Ethan Hawk. He followed that with
deliver Us from Evil, which was about hot priests fighting
the devil on the set of seven. Not great. But
then he did Doctor Strange. Now I love Doctor Strange.
He got that character and that world so fucking right,
and he solved the two idiots punching each other climax

(09:04):
problem that every Marvel seems to suffer from. He then
spent the next couple of years developing Doctor Strange and
the Multiverse of Madness, which when announced was very exciting, indeed,
because he was crowing how it was going to be
a horror movie first and a superhero flick away distant.
One of the dimensions Doctor Strange and sometimes ghost Rider
find themselves in is the Dream Dimension, and it's evil

(09:28):
ruler Nightmare. He's an immortal demon and he's found everyone
over the decades, Spider Man, Captain America, the X Men.
He made his debut in Doctor Strange, so it would
be fitting for him to make his big screen debut there.
Not only that, with the Dream Dimension open, other dimensions
were offered. I mentioned ghost Rider. He was a potential cameo,
as were Blade and the Midnight Suns. Mephisto could have

(09:51):
shown up, but then Marvel pussed out on Horror because
everything they were making was crap for a while and
they needed again. Everything refocused on Kang and the Multiverse saga.
That turned out great, so we got a way more
fantasy and cosmic Doctor Strange with only a whiff of horror.
The ultimate irony is that they hired Sam Raimi to
make the less horror version. So Dereckson finally steps away

(10:14):
and refocuses on a project he'd been trying to get
a handle on for more than a decade, The Black Phone.
The short story is deceptively simple. A young boy, Finny,
finds himself the latest victim of the Grabber, a serial
child abductor. He's locked in a basement that has a
disconnected black phone hanging on the wall. At night. When
he's alone, the phone rings, and the previous grabber's victims

(10:36):
spirits communicate with Phinny, each helping him plot and execute
his escape. It fucking packs a wallop on top of
being an incredibly fresh spin on the serial killers genre,
and it's incredibly spare and did not exactly feature length.
Dereckson and his sinister co writer see Robert Cargill, layer
in a story of a mom dead by suicide and

(10:57):
an abusive alcoholic father and a young sister who shares
her mother's gift for second sight. It's the sister that
keeps the story going on. The outside once Finny has
been grabbed by the Grabber. Terrible name, perfectly appropriate for
a small town naming its boogeyman. But the Grabber anyhow,
budget of sixteen pulls in one hundred and sixty one.

(11:19):
You knew we were getting a sequel. The mask alone
guaranteed we were getting a sequel. The mask the Grabber wears,
I'd like to mention, was crafted by Tom Savini, fellow
Joe King Creepshow thespian Tom Savini. You remember him in
the role of garbage Man two. It's a comic book.
Now it's a gag. You hold it up to your eyes,
it makes little circles, tie it to get in sand

(11:39):
kicked in your face. That was Marty Schiff as garbage
Man number one. Do I know too much about Creep Show?
You're fucking right, iye do. Derrickson has two feature films
released this year, The Gorge, which I liked a great deal,
and The Black Phone too.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Have you heard of the Grabber? I killed him?

Speaker 1 (12:04):
What happened in that placement really changed.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
Since I had a bad dream.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
It was about missing kids.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
It's just a dream about a real place, a youth camp.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
You have to go there.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Hello, Penny, you killed me.

Speaker 4 (12:49):
It took me a long time.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
And you are how people now.

Speaker 4 (12:57):
That Dad, It's just a word.

Speaker 2 (13:19):
Could wake up, work up.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
This place just brought us here for a reason.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
Nothing birth.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Like the cold.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
How the tables do turn?

Speaker 4 (13:45):
What do you think happens when you die in a dream?

Speaker 2 (13:51):
It's time to find out?

Speaker 1 (14:05):
Which I did not ultimately, because for the first act
of this movie, I was all the way on board.
Minor spoilers ahead for the first Black Phone movie. You
kind of can't avoid the spoiler in a way, but
you can skip ahead a few seconds if you want.
Evan Hawk as the grabber dies at the end of
the first film. The first film is in fact a
closed loop, like Nightmare on Elm Street was a closed loop.

(14:28):
But then we saw how that went, and we're gonna
see how it goes here maddeningly anyway, the first film
took place in nineteen seventy eight, so this is nineteen
eighty two, and we're still with Finni or Finn and
his younger sister Gwen. Both these actors are terrific. Mason
Thames as Finny was fucking great in the first film,
and he's just as excellent here, giving us the same

(14:49):
guy but definitely haunted and evolved from his experience. That's
something you rarely see in a sequel.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Growth.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
Also rare is flipping the narratives thrust. The first film
was about so Gwen on the outside trying to save Finn.
This film is Finn on the outside trying to save Gwen.
Gwen's clairvoyant abilities have been sharpening, and sometimes her dreams
and reality bleed together. Not great news when phones start
ringing in her dreams from a direct line to Hell, Because,
like Freddy Krueger before him, death has only made the

(15:19):
grabber stronger. Now listen, this film is shot beautifully. Dereckson
has been a huge proponent of multiple media in his films.
He's constantly swapping between digital and thirty five and eight
millimeter and sixteen millimeter. In Lesser Hands, it comes off
as film school. He used them in the first film
and again here as waypoints or guideposts to subtly let

(15:41):
you know what demension you're currently in, because reality and
dream are constantly up for grabs, and there are some
solid moments of dread throughout this film. Dread is so
much better than a jump scare. Even if it doesn't
pay off with a shocker, just a few moments of
creeping horror can elevate your entire film. And he was
doing that with a weirdo dream logic loop of Gwen

(16:04):
in her pajamas coming to the front door of her
house in the early morning hours, just her in a quiet,
empty street. It was creepy as hell and reminded me
of Christina Gray. Do you remember her. Her friends called
her Tina, and she would also be summoned into her
dreams and sometimes out of her house and into an
alley where she learned the true nature of God from

(16:26):
a burned up maniac. And I kept thinking of Tina
and Nancy and Detective Thompson, Nancy's dad, Detective Thompson in particular,
because not only do we have a lead who, every
time she falls asleep, poses a threat to herself and
everyone around her, because she acts as a conduit as well,
allowing the infernal nastiness in the form of the far

(16:46):
more demonic Grabber to come invisibly into our world. But
the plot concerns the remains of the Grabber's victims needing
to be found and given a proper burial. You want
to grab elements of Nightmare on Elm Street, be my guest.
Everyone has given a dream killer plot a wide berth
out of respect for the past four decades. But hell,

(17:07):
why should Freddie be the only one who gets to
inhabit your nightmares? And the fact that the comic book
character Nightmare had been buzzing around in Derrickson's brain makes
his type a natural for this flick. So fine, grab
some of Nightmare on Elm Street, but keep your mits
off dream Warriors. I mean, really, we got to put
the bones to rest and then he'll have no power plot.

(17:28):
You're gonna use that one too, and I'm gonna ignore
that of all the potential plots, you have a villain
who was dragged a hell by his victims, who is
now using the method employed by them in the first
film to taunt his still living victims. Why are we
at a summer camp in the middle of winter investigating
the grabbers earlier murders? And when will the filmmakers learn

(17:49):
that a character gliding on ice is frightening until we
see the skates and then it's fucking ridiculous. Put an
axe in his hand or a scythe whatever bladed thing
you want, it still looks like they're fresh from the
penalty box. And what the fuck are we doing on
a frozen lake with a bunch of cannon fodder characters.
This started as a family drama with real characters trying

(18:11):
to make sense of their lives after a traumatic event.
When the event returns from a whole new angle and
fucks up their lives further, and then the movie ends
with an invisible character on skates doing a backflip while
wrapping a chord around an intended victim's throat. I'm not
kidding that happens. Not that the first act had the

(18:32):
most sparkling of dialogue. We know it's nineteen eighty two,
you told us with a subtitle, and everyone is dressed
that way, and you're using film stock that screams this
movie is not about nineteen eighty two. It's from nineteen
eighty two. You don't have to have this exchange between
characters tonight. I'm gonna go down to the Civic Center
and get Duran durand tickets. Duran Duran tickets. Simon lebon

(18:55):
is so choice my treat. I was gonna buy two
anyway for real, that be radical stop it. Although big
shout out to Derekson for including night Flight, the television
film school that USA Network used to run on Friday
nights in the nineteen eighties. How I missed night Flight.
I know they resurrected it as some streaming service, but
I think I'd just rather own the originals on disc anyway.

(19:16):
Black Phone two was a frustrating affair. I found myself
defending the first film a lot when it came out,
so I thought this was going to be a victory lap,
and it mostly is. The kids are great. I want
more of them. And Ethan Hawk, the most unlikely slasher
of villain of all time, is genuinely scary as the
grabber and the dead. Utilizing technology is a potent idea

(19:37):
that very few have gotten right. I imagine the next
one is going to be excellent, kind of like Elm
Street three after Elm Street two, though not that you
already did Elm Street three. These kids better not end
up in some behavioral center for troubled youth, or there's
gonna be a little chin music that means fisticuffs, you know, pugilism, puggleism.

(19:58):
Sorry for the mispronunciation, but it now I'm threatening the
filmmakers to be more creative. That's my job, and my
job is at an end.

Speaker 2 (20:06):
Oh Lord.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Got to say thank you to everyone for tuning in
and listening and blinking and subscribing. You're all the best
and honestly a side of the dog and cat here.
You're the thing that actually keeps me motivated. All the
contact stuff is in the show notes. Tune in this
Friday for pray, Oh Lord, HP and I have scaled
the Yahoucha mountain and reached its peak. Tune in for that.
And I will be back next week with our two

(20:28):
hundredth episode Halloween Spectacular. It's going to involve felt fans
of Michael o'donnie, who will already know what I'm talking
about from Ripley Jean. I'm following alone. Here's a bit
of something or other, well, an authentic voodoo ball somebody
already sent for.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Yeah, we can't get that. How about this? Tired of
getting sand kicked in your face? Where's Billy go?

Speaker 3 (20:55):
Be down in a minute. I know he's Billy Stan
Are you all right?

Speaker 2 (21:00):
I didn't get my sleep last night. Storm it's his
goddamn stiff neck. I can barely move my head.

Speaker 1 (21:07):
You must have strangers.

Speaker 4 (21:10):
Yeah, I guess I don't know.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
There you want me to get some being gay? No?
Oh oh did you throw away my comic books? H
M ready for another shot.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Shot show from Shop sh Sho show Stu