Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Marvel Zombies (2025), The Muppet Show Spooky Segments

The Father Malone's 200th Episode: A Halloween Celebration

In this episode of Father Malone's Weekly Roundup, Father Malone celebrates Halloween by discussing his favorite horror movie, George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead, and delves into the Marvel Zombies series. The episode covers the evolution and unique aspects of Marvel Zombies in comics and its animated adaptation, while also touching on various Halloween-themed content, including Muppet horror moments.

00:00 Introduction and Milestone Celebration
03:21 Marvel Zombies  
05:03 Robert Kirkman and The Walking Dead 
13:35 Muppet Halloween Specials 
15:45 Upcoming Episodes and Conclusion

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

Dawn of the Dead - The Projection Booth
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5x1lKJL65nzh8PKsYpCs9n?si=-buSV647Qpy7vVCdS-2DmA

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Wake up, suckers. We're thieves and we're bad guys. Now,
that's exactly what we are. Name that flick, name this show.
It's our two hundredth episode. What that's right? Too many
hours of bitching about long dead media. That kind of
sums up podcasting right there, bitching about long dead media.
Welcome back, midnight viewers to fond the Malone's weekly round up.

(01:00):
I am Father Malone. You know Ripley, Jean, my pug,
my pal, my bestest friend. What's up? Rip? No baby,
no Rip? Pick this week? Okay, well, I guess Rip
is done for the day. What about our bantering Rip
come back? Well, anyway, we are celebrating our longevity and
Halloween this week. So my initial thought was to do

(01:22):
my favorite horror movie, which is also my favorite movie,
and that's Dawn of the Dead. I really shouldn't have
to say this, but George A. Romero's Dawn of the
Dead Monroeville, mal Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It's where that quote was
from the Thieves and Bad Guys quote. It's the movie
that made me want to understand movies. I was young
enough to feel the emotions. It was pulling me toward,

(01:44):
but no understanding as to how. And I needed to
know how. You're hearing my voice right now as a
direct result of finding myself giggling through the worst living
nightmare imaginable. Don of the Dead is a topic I
could easily fill several hours right now with zero research.
About to rattle off a bunch of obscure facts here
to prove my bona fides. But I'm sure you trust

(02:04):
me at this point. Wait, here's one. John Ampliss, who
starred in Romero's previous film Martin was the casting director
on Don of the Dead, and he's got the lamentable
role of the Puerto Rican gang member during the opening
sequence in Philadelphia. What a great name, Philadelphia. It's fun
to say Philidelphia. I might be high right now. Gang.

(02:24):
I kind of felt like I would be cheating to
just start waxing rhapsodic about Donna the Dead, and quite frankly,
I wouldn't know where to stop. I'll put a link
in the show notes to frequent co host Mike White's podcast,
The Projection Booth. He was kind enough to have me
on to talk Don of the Dead a couple of
years ago, and I say, basically everything I needed to
there in the most general way possible. Trust me, if

(02:45):
you ever want to have someone join at you for
an unending amount of time, ask me about Don of
the Dead. Oh also, if you're listening to this show
the week it's released, I'm going to invite you over
to the Projection Booth anyway, because Mike is doing his
annual schlock Toe and I'm on this week's episode, which
is another George Romero flake. It's his little scene quasi

(03:06):
supernatural film season of the Witch, originally titled Jack's Wife.
I believe that's gonna be my final appearance on the
Projection Booth, So check that out as well. So what
do we talk about? You read it in the title
and it's related. Oh boy, is it related? We're talking
Marvel zombies.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Let's go all the Avengers are dead and they're coming

(03:51):
for us? All right, we got a world to say anymore?
Ship my god? Whoa let's saw you do that?

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Then let's discuss Robert Kirkman. Shall we not really a
creator so much as an innovator, kind of like Dave
Feloni for Lucasfilm. If Dave Feloni handpicked by George Lucas

(05:15):
to continue the saga and the lore of the universe
that he created, chose instead to create his own parallel
universe with techno knights with laser swords battling against enemy
troops in white armour. Actually, for that metaphor to work,
Dave Feloni's Techno Knights of the Galaxy would have had
to surpass Star Wars, making it a qoint forerunner of
what most people now take as the genuine article. Because

(05:37):
The Walking Dead is one hundred percent a ripoff of
the universe created and shepherded over decades by George Andrew Romero.
I don't care that Greg Ncato was in charge of
effects and eventually became a producer. I don't care if
there are tips of the hat or homage to the
original trilogy. I wouldn't care if the ghost of George
Romero himself appeared to me and told me he was

(05:58):
cool with it, because I'm not. I'm glad that show
has employed and continues to employ, hundreds of skilled creatives.
May bubb a smile benevolently upon you, but fuck that
guy and fuck his comic book. Even Invincible while not
being a direct ripoff of anything is an in general
ripoff of everything. He's like Tarantino, just grab the bits
you like and now it's yours. I hate read that

(06:20):
entire run of Walking Dead. I don't even like his artwork.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
You know.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
Back in the eighties, there was another zombie comic. It
was called Dead World, about a misfit band of young
adults on the road trying to avoid zombie hordes. And
it was great and it was respectful because it was cosmic.
They had fully coherent zombies that were inhabited by this
lovecrafty and horror from beyond the stars, so on the
same playground, but not making castles in some other kid's sandbox.

(06:45):
Back in two thousand and five, as the entire world
was waking up to the zombie phenomenon, someone at Marvel
had the bright idea to do a mini series with
undead superheroes. So they called Carlos Mincia and he delivered
two five issue runs that began in an alternate use
let's just call it the Zombie Universe, where a virus
has spread throughout the world that turns humans into zombies

(07:06):
and superheroes into zombified versions of themselves that retain their
character and consciousness and all of their powers except healing. Obviously,
the source of the virus is never given, which I admire.
I said, the humans turn into zombies, Well, there aren't
a ton of those, because the super zombies have pretty
much munched their way through the entire population of Earth
and now spend their days hunting down whichever hero has

(07:29):
yet to succumb. It was a fairly standard riff on
the what if comics, with the decidedly darker bent. Admittedly,
it was difficult watching Captain America eat the Silver Surfer,
but it had a cool open ending where all the
remaining zombie heroes attack and devour Galactis and then spread
out to the stars to find more food. It became
an erratically released series after that, with the last issues

(07:51):
back in twenty eighteen. I think that was Zombie's assemble,
putting Kirkman and my feelings for him aside for a moment.
After all, he was an independent contractor and only wrote
the first ten. Since there have been a cavalcade of
talented writers and artists attached to the series, and they've
gone in truly interesting directions with it. In fact, the
comic book series manages to elude the main problem with

(08:12):
any zombie piece of entertainment Romero included in any empty
world movie or TV show set here in our world,
not on some distant galaxy. After the initial crush of
the zombie outbreak, all hope goes out the window. Maybe
not right away, you can cheat it for a while,
but a world where zombies can't be cured or the

(08:32):
phenomenon can't be stopped is no longer a world for humans,
and they will never be secure until they're all eaten
or zombies themselves. It's just a succession of pyrrhic victories.
It took Romero until Day of the Dead to figure
out he was on the zombie side all along, but
he got there. Back in twenty twenty one, Marvel introduced

(08:52):
an animated season of What If storylines. What better way
to introduce the idea of a multiverse than an anthology
of tales set in different day mentions, and one of
those plots they chose to pontificate upon was our Undead
Superpowered Pals. But like most translations from Marvel to MCU,
it is all the way different. In fact, the What
If animated episodes are based on the films and not

(09:15):
the comics at all, which is appropriate. So what If
Zombies had the virus starting in the Quantum Realm and
released by Hank Pim when Janet van Dyne comes back
with a penchant for human flesh, and it concerns the
last living heroes trying to get the Mindstone from Vision
who's alive, and Wanda who's not, so that they can
get to Wakanda and reverse the curse. It has a

(09:36):
great ending, perfectly self contained if you wanted it to be.
But then again, Marvel cried more so now, and by
that I mean last year because this was supposed to
come out last Halloween, but they double booked and we
got Agatha all along. Boy, that was one of my
first weekly roundups, and instead the Marvel Zombies had to
wait till the end of September of this year, when
all four episodes of the show were released. They're using

(09:58):
the Evil Dead two fun for the title in case
it seemed familiar, and the story picks up five years
after the end of that what If episode. We follow
the last groups of living superpowered folk as they draw
together in an attempt to simply survive. So we get
a young Avengers group with Miss Marvel and Ironheart and Hawkeye.
That's Kate Pierce Hawkeye Undead Clint Barton is here too,

(10:20):
but that's her mantle now. And we get a mini
West Coast Avengers with Agent Wu and Katie and Death
Dealer and shang Chi who's been bitten but the power
of the Ten Rings is staving off the infection. And
along the way we get barren Zimo and US Agent
and Valkyrie and the Abomination, and yeah, Thor and Rocket
and Groot and Spider Man show up, as well as
Captain America and the return of recent go to Boogeyman

(10:43):
the Scarlet Witch. But what strupped me over all was
how goddamn capable this so called b team of Marvel
heroes is and how fucking watchable they all are interacting
with one another, And given how long it's been since
we've seen some of these characters, it was a welcome
reminder how much I do like them. Who the fuck
is the next shang Chi flick? We've had Trevor Slattery

(11:03):
return before we had shang Chi show back up. Speaking
of waiting fucking endlessly, we get Blade in this show
so far we've only had his voice at the end
of the eternals that was mahershela Ali's voice, and since
this is an all vocal performance, they got an actor
named Todd Williams to play Blade way to keep everything
simple and easy to follow, Kevin, because of those endless

(11:25):
delays on Blade's feature debut, I don't think they've nailed
down his character design yet because we don't really get
Blade here at all. We get Blade Night, remember Moonnight, Well,
Mark Spector's dead here, and Conchu has bonded with Blade,
so he's a day walker Egyptian deity. That's some pretty
fucking high concept shit right there. But it also shrouds

(11:46):
him to him and Moonnight's white cloaks, which is pretty
badass on him. Each of the episodes, while dealing with
the main plot overall, are wildly different in tone and approach,
with the first the most overt horror. Maybe I was
watching it alone at two am, but there's some creepy
fucking stuff they do in it, and I legitimately jumped once.
The second episode is more action a la Matt Max
with the West Coast team, and it all ends with

(12:08):
an undead, cosmic, mystical reboot of Endgame that sounds potentially awful,
it's not. I found a lot of the same excitement
present here. Look, the dialogue is tenured at best, but
the images are so goddamn strong, and a lot of
where this plot goes and where it ends up are
fairly innovative for a zombie flick. Oh yeah, four episodes,

(12:29):
four half hours. That's what you call a movie, And
evidently that's how it began its life. At some point
they got cold feet. But if you're gonna release all
four episodes telling the whole story on the same night anyway,
just make it a feature. But the fuck I'd be
down for more of this. Like the run of comics,
this take on zombies isn't entirely without hope, and that's

(12:49):
fucking refreshing. The animation style that two and a half
d is a holdover from What If. It is especially
effective with their villainous characters, and this series is a
wall to wall villains. There is not an eye that
isn't red and glowing. This is a pretty good entertainment
for Halloween three in a row from Marvel after Werewolf
by Night. I am an ardent defender of that flick,

(13:10):
but only the color version. Then there was Agatha all
Along and now Marvel Zombies kudos. Now let's get that
Midnight Sun's movie going Suckers whoa sneak attack? Rippick k Yeah,
thank you. HP. You know the number one horror movie
playing in Times Square for Halloween nineteen ninety six Poltergeist

(13:33):
in My Pants? Okay, ripspick is them damned Muppets. The
felt I mentioned on last week's roundup. I wanted to
give you a comprehensive guide of all the Muppet terror
out there, but as it turns out, there isn't a
whole ton of it, which I'm not sure why I
was surprised by, other than the fact that I seem
to remember kermit vampires and annoying bats and ghosts singing

(13:53):
the Beatles and Uncle Deadly that aerodite looking dragon. And
then I went back and I realized that's all in
the Vincent Price episode. So I guess I'm recommending the
Vincent Price episode. The other and actually way more appropriate
for Halloween is when Alice Cooper hosted in season three.
That's not only got two performances by Cooper, Welcome to
My Nightmare and schools Out, a tune that a lot

(14:16):
of radio stations wouldn't play thanks to pressure from PTA groups.
But it also has the German Larger at Muppet Labs
and Sam the Eagle debating the Freako Alice Cooper, and
it's got a fucking genuinely creepy pigs in space. The
laugh track for it only makes it worse. So those
are the beginning to end guaranteed spooky Muppet episodes, but

(14:37):
throughout the show they had a few other disturbing moments,
like season two episode four, Rich Little was the host.
There's a musical number called Glowworm, which features a mirror
universe version of Kermit humming to himself and then eating
inchworms as they try to pass by. It's all very off,
and at the end we get a goddamned purple monster
from hell. Or how about the entire moment Chance up

(15:00):
episode Clay Faces Yikes. The signor Wenz's episode has a
traditional Japanese ghost story that is haunting pun intended, I
guess not really, but it's appropriate. There are others, but
the one I'd like to highlight and we'll probably go
out on. This is an episode hosted by Marissa Berenson.
The song is You're Always Welcome, at our House, which

(15:23):
she sings while dressed in a baby doll dress and
skipping around the room, where everything she's describing is acted
out by some fucking odd balls from the Muppet Workshop. Basically,
she tells the tale of everyone who stops my her
home and what her demented family of cannibals do to
their guests. Boy, they don't make children's entertainment quite like
they used to. But I think I'm gonna go out

(15:43):
now and find some more. Okay, listen up. This Friday,
Yaouchifest continues with Predator Killer of Killers. Next Friday, Yauchi
Fest concludes for now with Predator Badlands. With that shift
in the schedule, that means next week at this time
will have the latest episode of Tales from the Dark Side,
and we might actually have the following episode of Tales

(16:04):
the following Monday after if that makes sense. Basically, we'll
still have shows Monday and Friday for the next two weeks,
but Ripley and I are taking a brief hiatus to sleep.
I'm not gonna lie. I'm totally fucking exhausted, and we've
got even more changes coming later in the year and
definitely in the new year. Exciting doings will be transpiring.
Thank you all for two hundred episodes. The next two

(16:26):
hundred will be even better.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
So when you come to a house a house, when
you come to our house, we will have some life.

Speaker 1 (16:37):
We will ask you to be coming and we will
take you in the kitchen.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
We will put you in the other to.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
You my jobs.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Well, come out.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
Time of the day, yes, sure always walk coming house.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
You start and we know you will star.