December 11, 2025 • 28 mins
In this episode of Midnight Viewing: The Horror Anthology podcast, Father Malone, joined by Mike White from the Projection Booth, kicks off a new season with a deep dive into the 1980 series Hammer House of Horror.They discuss the pilot, Witching Time, which involves a witch from the 17th century returning with vengeance on her mind, targeting a mentally fragile composer and his actress wife.
00:00 Welcome to the New Season
01:14 Diving into Hammer House of Horror
05:03 Comparing to Other Horror Anthologies
08:33 Memorable Scenes and Transitions
14:57 Cinematic Excellence and Direction
18:08 Character Dynamics and Plot Twists
27:17 Final Thoughts and Upcoming Episodes
MIKE WHITE
https://www.projectionboothpodcast.com/
Patreon.com/ProjectionBooth
HP
hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com
FATHER MALONE
FatherMalone71@gmail.com
Patreon.com/FatherMalone
00:00 Welcome to the New Season
01:14 Diving into Hammer House of Horror
05:03 Comparing to Other Horror Anthologies
08:33 Memorable Scenes and Transitions
14:57 Cinematic Excellence and Direction
18:08 Character Dynamics and Plot Twists
27:17 Final Thoughts and Upcoming Episodes
MIKE WHITE
https://www.projectionboothpodcast.com/
Patreon.com/ProjectionBooth
HP
hpmusicplace.bandcamp.com
FATHER MALONE
FatherMalone71@gmail.com
Patreon.com/FatherMalone
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Welcome back to Midnight Viewing the Horror anthology podcast. I'm
Father Malone and this is a brand new season, a
brand new hosting configuration. It's a brand new Cherry Flavor.
Did you see that?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Mike? What's that? Cherry?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Brand new Cherry Flavor was a TV series on Netflix.
Was interesting, quirky in the best kind of a way.
All Right, we have covered Night Gallery, We've covered Tales
from the Dark Side in Another life, we covered Twilight
Zone eighty five, and we're back to do it again.
Who's we glad you asked? Joining me to discuss all
things televisual from our friends across the pond is the
projection Booths.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Mike white oudy, Hey, thanks so much for having me
follow alone.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
My pleasure and the show we're discussing. That program, as
they would say, is the one season killer.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This was on Teams series.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
That's our series one.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Technically we're going to get into britishisms, we might as
well go as series.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
This indeed a show that asks the question. This was
on TV in nineteen eighty and we are discussing from
nineteen eighty. Hammer House of Horror now Hammer Films, of course,
founded back in nineteen thirty four by William Hines and
James Carreras. That company mainly released comedies and swashbucklers, and
a few crime flicks until about nineteen fifty eight. That's
(01:46):
when the company would gain its notoriety as the UK's
premier interpreter of classic horror when it released The Curse
of Frankenstein, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Now, for
the next twenty years, Hammer would be synonymous with lurid,
gory and suggestive horror. But by nineteen eighty the wheels
had come off this particularly gruesome cart and Hammer was
desperate to simply maintain its glory, never mind restore it.
(02:09):
Enter Roy Skegg should I say re enter Roy Skegg's
He had been a former production supervisor until he left
the company in seventy four to start his own film house.
When Hammer went into receivership in nineteen seventy eight, he
was asked back by the board of directors to take
over creatively, and his first act was to move the
productions away from Victorian subject matter and instead modernize and,
(02:31):
if at all possible, anthologize. Thus we have Hammer's second
foray into television. Hammer House of Horror now Hammer. House
of Horror premiered on August twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. That
was here in the US. This episode is called Witching Time.
This is season one, episode one, written by Anthony Reid,
directed by Don Lever. He was a TV veteran, apparently
(02:54):
having directed a bunch of anthology series in England, including
two shows called Scorpion Tales and Thriller She's Gonna have
to look into those. This one stars John Finch, Mister Macbeth,
Patricia Quinn. If you're listening to the show, and I
have to tell you, Patricia Quinn, is you should stop
listening to this show. It also starts Prunella g who
(03:15):
she was in Never Say Never Again and Ian McCulloch.
Bring on the dancing horses, Rocky and McCulloch, all right.
This is about a witch from the seventeenth century who
returns to her ancestral home with thoughts of vengeance and
possession toward its current inhabitants. A successful actress and her
mentally fragile composer husband are the ones in her sights.
(03:36):
Of course, this all might be in his mind. Mike,
what did you think of our first Hammer Horror.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
They let that on TV.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Uh, yeah, I was pretty happy. Being a big fan
of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was the side
of Patricia Quinn that I've never seen before, so yeah,
I was pretty happy about that. But more over, what
a quality cast. This cast is amazing. I love John Finch,
I love Patricia Quinn. I'm kind of curious if Susan
(04:08):
George was supposed to be in this because isn't that
her photo that is in the episode. I feel like
we're supposed to think that that's the wife, but it's
not her, right, that's no. Yeah, okay, I was very
confused by that.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Otherwise, I mean, the story is such that it it
feels a little it reminds me of like when I
was a kid growing up and there was a horror
show on Nickelodeon where it was about, like, I don't know,
a Puritan coming back and ruining the life of this
teenage girl because it's this whole Yeah, we're time traveling
(04:45):
and here's this witch and she's back.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
But I was really hoping for more.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I wanted more of a plan or a plot or something,
because she just seems so I don't know, just kind
of well corny and nothing wrong with that, and then
just mischievous. I was like, oh okay, and of course,
like things get pretty heated haha towards the end. But yeah,
I was hoping for a little bit more to this story.
(05:11):
But again I was just so impressed by the cast
and just more John Findle that guy.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Now we just spent the better part of a year
toiling and Tales from the Dark Side, And of course
I love Tales from the Dark Side, do love Taless
in the dark Side. But going back several years now
from that, because this is nineteen eighty, would you not
agree that the writing, even as a little dialogue and
this little characterization as we're given here, just the level
(05:38):
has come up remarkably right.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, this is movie quality. I was surprised at just
how well, first off, how good it looks. The cinematography
on this is wonderful. Yes, the writing is fantastic. Had
they tacked on another what ten fifteen minutes, it would
have been a feature length movie. It was just kind
of blown away by that.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, it feels very adult, It feels very mature, even
though it's delving even like further into the more lurid
depths of what horror can offer, including the massive amounts
of nudity. That's what we're talking about. Like this, I
gotta say this episode begins. It begins the series extremely
(06:23):
cleverly in that we're given one of what we expect
from Hammer, which is a period piece with women and
bodices and dressing gowns and running through a Victorian mansion
and getting naked all and being stalked by a killer.
And then to reveal that's actually just a movie that
our lead is the composer of.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yes, that was nice.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh man, I thought that was beautiful. And it also
brings us to a brand new segment here on Midnight
Viewing Mike. This is called was Brian de Palma in
England in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, this opening is very, very blowout, and yeah, just
to have the composer be our main character, it felt
a little barbarian sound studio as well for.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Me, very blow out. And then again body double, like
the let's start with the artifice of it and then
reveal that this is not this is the creators of
that thing. So this is even more realistic, Like you
can believe this even more than the old staid vampires
and or like slashers.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I love when they start with this and just pull
the rug out from under us, especially they're starting with
that kind of unknown POV which we get through so
many things, and yeah, that they get up to her
and I was expecting to your point a really horrible screamed.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, exactly. And not only Brian de Palma, but is
Jason Siegel a fan of this at all? This is
about a composer whose actress wife girlfriend is cheating on him,
and it does impose a Dracula puppet musical by the end,
because that would have really would have been perfect.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was really happy with the whole
idea of him being this composer and seeing some of
the composition scenes. They didn't go too far into that.
I was just like, Okay, this is nice. It's a
nice way to set up this whole thing. I really
like how we immediately get the idea of her cheating
on him, and him pretty much. I think he knows
(08:29):
that he's being cutcolded.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
He's yeah, I mean, his first conversation is she's definitely
cheating on me. Oh, but yeah, you know, I don't care.
He's on so many pills and he's been drinking so heavily,
which John Finch, yeah, right, art imitating life. I think
what I really liked about that was it set up
the sort of possibility of disbelief here, like that the
(08:55):
witch might be in his mind, and they go to
pains to sort of make that a possibility, but it
very well could have been a possibility, and it crossed
my mind multiple times during the narrative that they might
be pulling the wall over our eyes on this, which
would have been fine.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, and well you mentioned Macbeth, which I know he
was in, but I was reminded a little bit too
of Hamlet with this whole idea of the horse going crazy.
That's almost like what they not magical realism, but like
natural realism kind of thing where the animals are reflecting
what we feel. So you've got the dog who's afraid
of the storm, and then you've got the horse out
in the barn, and then the barn becomes this major
(09:32):
thing where it's like, okay, we need to go out
there make sure that the horse is okay, and then
that's where we find Patricia Quinn. So I like that
whole idea of nature just being a player in this
as well, this mysterious storm that comes along that it
feels like he's the only one that witnessed it because
when his wife's lover, who's also is he a psychiatrist?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, he starts to question the whole idea of like, well,
there really wasn't a storm last night, what's your problem?
And that's one of the things that tips him off
to think that our main character is little nuts.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah. And by the way, that could have also worked
in the opposite direction. It could have been because that's
the wife's lover. He's trying to make him go crazy,
because we've seen that how many times on night Gallery?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, gaslight a very intense gaslight with hiring a redhead
to hang out in the barn.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Now, my question is during the storm, his dog, Billy
runs off by the way. At a certain point, he
calls after the dog and he just says Bill, and
I thought, wow, what a great name for dog. Anyway,
are we to believe that, because we do not see
Billy again for the rest of the rest of the story,
did she become Bill? Did the dog turn into the witch?
(10:48):
Or And when he finds her, she's basically sort of
crouched down like a dog. I think he thinks it's
a dog at first, and.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, yeah, he has no idea what she is, that
she's just black mound.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Basically, I think the possibility exists that dog transmographied into
Patricia Quinn, making it the sexiest dog of what.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
God damn, she's amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Good lord. It's not the first time we've seen her naked,
though she was not. Now for something completely different from
the Meaning of Life. Meaning of Life, she's doing the
sex education scene. She's John Cleese's wife comes in to
demonstrate with it.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I think I've seen that movie.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I watch again.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Speaking of Nickelodeon, there was a making of Movies show
on Nickelodeon when I was growing up, and they just
kept playing the same four baby episodes over and over again,
and one of them was of Life. What a weird
thing to put on Nickelodeons, the Making of the Meaning
of Life. That one Dark Crystal. I can't remember the
(11:46):
other ones. But yeah, that whole thing with the guy
in bed with his leg missing. I don't know how
many times I saw that scene because it was in
that whole scene was part of the making of video,
and I just saw over and over again because I
was so into the idea of well behind the scenes
stuff that I would watch anything.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I watched those same ones. I remember those ones. Do
you remember a similar behind the scenes behind the movies
show hosted by Leonard Nimoy?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Was that lights, camera action or something?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, And I remember once they had on a special
effects guy, like like prosthetics and masks and stuff, and
there was like a second head that they placed on
Nimoy and he's talking to it and he said, and
I remembered at the time thinking it was just a
funny name for a movie. But Nimoy says to the
prop because the prop is from this movie, he says,
didn't I see you in Geek Maggot Bingo? And then,
(12:41):
of course, years later to know that Geek Maggot Bingo
is a nick Z film, like speaking of weird shit
to be putting on like kids programming, Well.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It doesn't feel it feels like nick might have taken
name rather than vice versa.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Then we'll have to look at the timeline because I'm
looking for that show and I'm unable to find that
the Nimoy one.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, oh man, that's listeners. Somebody they'll write in, Actually,
somebody please find that Nemoy show for us.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You would think it would be on my spleen dot org,
but I'm not finding it there.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Oh what else is going on in this episode? Oh?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Power of light bulbs scares the shit out of our Yeah, well,
you know, I was.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It made me happy that they made some sort of
effort to show that she would be frightened by these things,
that there was some time passed, because how many episodes
of time traveling television if we watched where people are
just like automatically accepting of everything. I think about Dave
Leiterman's top ten list of things Abraham Lincoln would say
if he were alive today, and one of them was
(13:43):
eag iron bird. Yeah, modern things would freak the fucking
people out if they came from the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And it is kind of clever to have it so
that when she comes in, it's all candlelit, and she's like, oh, okay, yeah,
like that's normal, that's solely normal for me. And I'm
surprised she didn't just she does sit there and like
flip the light a few times. I just kept thinking
that she was going to do that over and over.
It's almost like dissolved to her hours later, like still
flipping the light.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
At a certain point, John Finch imprisons her in one
of the bedrooms. He locks her into the bedroom and
all I could think was like, you don't need to
do that. Just give her like a blender or something
like you joined this thing on and off and just leave,
Go get your friend.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
What match be is this? And the next thing you know,
you just hear screams exactly, oh yeah, yeah, Well give
her a vibrator. She seems to be very amorous in
this episode.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Speaking of which, so there is there a couple of
sex scenes in this but they have the one that
is featured is there's a sequence where she's It ends
with her scratching her nails down his back and gouging
into it. And I bring it up because there's a
transition there where it goes from her digging into his
and digging these furrows in red to a little red
(15:05):
sports car wiping the frame. It was fucking awesome.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
That was nice.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah. Yeah, again, this thing is shot so well and
it's not just a simple Okay, we're gonna have two
characters in a room and we're going to lock down
the camera and have them move around. No, we're cutting, cutting, cutting.
There are so many shots on this it's really well done.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, the look is actually spectacular. And look, it's their
film division basically funneled into the television and working with
a lot of veteran television people like this director is
a TV animal. Basically he was always a TV But yeah,
I'm knocked out. I don't think there's only thirteen episodes
of this series appropriate. But I don't think we're ever
(15:49):
going to say the words. This looked really set bound.
It's just too slick.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
No, nothing in here looks like it was shot on
the set. I don't know if it was, but it
look like it, that's for sure. I really like the
shot when it is his psychiatrist's friend asking him questions
and you've got Finch laying closer to the camera and
half of his body is obscured, and then you've got
his friend with the needle in the background, and then
(16:18):
you can see the whole ceiling, which is so nice
that they are not afraid. Again, when it comes to sets,
all of these sets seems to have ceilings, so it
feels like they're shooting it.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
They definitely are. In fact, ninety percent of all of
this series is filmed in one house, the Hampton House,
which Hammer Films had purchased in Hampton. So we looked
at a map today of all of the filming locations.
It's all within twenty miles of this house. So every
time they come, there's woods right there, there's a town
right there. They do some pickup shots, like I noticed
(16:50):
in not this episode, but the next one there's some
London like shots, so there's all they London's an hour
away so they can run down and get be roll
and stuff. But it's you know me, I love economy
and the fact that they're able to pull this off
and make it look so good and we're going to
see the house over and over again and not really
recognize that it's one house because it's a gigantic mansion.
(17:11):
It's one of those old English manners.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Which I guess is appropriate for the opening and closing
of this where they just got to show the big
house and I was hoping for you. We just came
off of a show that has one of the best
books ever, and I was really like Oh, what are
they going to do for the opening of this Not
a lot. But that's my small complaint about this show.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah it's I like the theme because it's so modern
in a way, but it is just random shots of
this house and you would think maybe if there was
a season two, they could have at least cut a
montage together of creepy shit from this season, but they
just weren't there. But I agree, I'm a happy to skip.
I would never skip the opening of Tails from the
(17:53):
Dark Side, but this one, I'm like, eh, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, well it's a quick opening too.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
It's not like we're sitting there and okay, get to
the episode, and at least it's not as irritating as
the Night Gallery. That was just a little bit when
that music was like okay enough.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, when that third season theme came in, down Dune,
Dune done, run for your life, Jesus, yeah, turn off
the TV.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, she loems so sorry.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
The wife seems so clueless when she does. You talked
about the scratches. When she sees all the scratches on
his back, I'd be like, Okay, who were you fucking honey,
But instead she's just like, oh, so many scratches. Oh,
what's going on?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Really?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
How did you do that to yourself? She lets him
off the hook.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Oh god, yeah, I saw on a rake multiple times.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And I love that she's back because he's completely strung
out and in her mind hallucinatory, and she's like, you
need to relax, Let's go for a walk through the woods. No,
I don't want to do that ever, And then she's
with him downstairs, goes upstairs, finds a decapitated bird that
is fluttering around. It has just been killed, and she's like,
(19:10):
what did you do?
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yes, lady, Oh, I love that bird. I love the
bird prop and how it's just twitching its little wings.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's so nice.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
And it's got like the bone sticking out of the
neck like a cartoon bone.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
It looks like.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It was so horrified. Like yeah, and it's just these
subtle things like I don't know, but God bless hammer.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I love that bird. And I love like later where
he's burying the bird in a grave that is way
too huge. Yes, but he goes down and like makes
out with it like this is I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
But yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It turns into his wife. And then his wife is
riding along on her horse, and then you have her
holding her face, so you're just like, okay, is this
some sort of like voodoo type thing that's going on,
Like of the bird, she's being affected. And then yeah,
when he comes up, he's got blood all.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Down his face.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I'm like, oh, man, what were you doing to that bird?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Like he think he goes to crush it with his shovel,
and then it turns into his wife, and then he
goes down and makes out with her after thinking like, oh,
I might have just stabbed my wife in the face
with a shovel. Time for some tongue.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, Jesus was so strong.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Oh and at that point they still could have it
still could be just in his head because like they
cut to her, like when she's still on the horse,
they show a wound like he's caused it, and then
when they cut back to it, it's just not there.
So it could be nothing at all. But of course
it isn't because you said voodoo. Don't we get a
(20:49):
version of that here? Yes, they're playing every angle this tiny,
little hideous little thing with a lock of her hair.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I guess, yeah, yeah, I was kind of I didn't
see the part where the wife kind of twists the
doll and makes it into Patricia Quinn because I was like, oh,
I'd be afraid to throw that doll into the fire,
and it's like, oh, okay, it's the Patricia Quinn version
of the doll. Now I'm like, oh, very talented lady
to be able to swap out the the voodoo dolls.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
There, like to what you were saying earlier. Like, the
one criticism I do have of this episode overall is
that we don't really get any groundwork about what the
plan is. Like it's all just sort of happenstance. And
that's fine because we're viewing it through the lead character's
point of view, but we're the audience and we know more.
(21:38):
We know she's real, so you know, just little things
like her snatching the wife's hair no like and leading
there like this thing likes to surprise out of the blue,
like suddenly there's a voodoo doll and it's fine, we're
digging it because they have set it up and that
the wife has been in pain and complaining for a
little while. But nevertheless, like could have just little breadcrumbs
(22:02):
along the way can go a long way, because there
are sometimes where there are gonna be episodes completely predicated
spoiler for the next episode on one idea, and if
you see the idea coming from the opening, you're gonna
be in trouble. But you can at least give us
a little something because the voodoo don't ends up being
very important.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, yeah, major, yeah, talking about going back to the
nudity thing that his wife is wandering around in broad
underwear so much of this episode, like that whole middle
sequence after she comes back from a ride, she's just
broad and underwear the whole rest of the time until,
like I think it's the next act where she finally
(22:43):
puts on some clothes, and it so reminds me of
when I was a kid and watching PBS and watching
BBC shows on PBS. I mean, I thought I was
crazy because I was like, did I really see boobs
on PBS? Was that the only reason I watched Benny Hill?
And the answer is yes, Yes, that is the only reason.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Well, what's funny is Roy Skaggs was a producer of
Benny Hill.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Oh funny, Okay.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
In his time away from Hammer, he worked on the
He worked with the Benny Hills Show. Yeah, we get
the full I'm going to encourage people to watch another
series right now, but I'm going to encourage you to
do that after you've watched Hammer. House of Horror in
its entirety. There are two shows actually, obviously Garth Marenghi's
Dark Place, which is the more famous of the two,
(23:32):
and then Steve Coogan has a show called Doctor Horrible's
House of Terror or something like that.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh okay, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Now. That one is way more specific. That one is
more about Amicus and Tygon and Hammer during the seventies.
So it's this esthetic, the same sort of I don't
even know how to describe Hammer in seventies sort of
British cinema. But nevertheless, both Dark Place and the Steve
Coogan show take great pains to make fun of this esthetic,
(24:03):
and you will not enjoy these shows if you watch
those first. I'm telling you this will just be a curiosity.
It is a curiosity anyway. I'm just saying you do
need to watch those, but watch this first, please.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I will have to check those.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I've seen Garth Marenghi, of course, but I have not
seen this Doctor Terrible, so I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Have to check it out.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It's very fun. It's very specific too, like that if
you're a fan of seventies British horror at all, particularly
their anthology Horror, you're going to have a ball with this.
Which I'm a terrible host in that I don't have
the name off the top of my head.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
But anyway, yeah, Doctor Terrible's House of Horrible and yeah,
the first episode is Lesbian vampire Lovers of Lust. There
you go, all right, as someone who just watched Twins
of Evil, I can definitely get into that.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Okay, I don't know what else are you going.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Oh. I was glad that the priest character.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Seems to have his head about him very well, and
he wasn't trying to be like, oh, yeah, you're crazy,
but he kind of knew the lore. He didn't seem
to be like, Okay, he does suggest an exorcism and
that is kind of what really pushes this to the
limit and brings about the voodoo doll and all that.
But yeah, I again like, oh, pretty reasonable prest character.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
That was kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, I thought so too, And yet it ends up
being an investigation kind of thing with the wife. By
the way, It's like this was interesting to me in
it I don't think you would have gotten this in America.
She's cheating on him from the beginning, yeah, and like
and he's just a pawn of this horrible thing, so
she's effectively unleashed it. So she never really gets any
(25:44):
punishment here, like, oh, she shows up, saves the day
and gets to be a fucking hero, and it's like
you're kind of a cause.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Yeah, no, no, come up in whatsoever, which is so
weird compared to everything that we've been seeing where it's like, Okay,
there's a balance to the universe and if somebody is bad,
we need to punish them appropriately. We saw that so
much with Tails from the Dark Side. No, she wins
at the end, and I found that to be very remarkable.
(26:14):
I was just like, Okay, well, where's the twist, and
there is no twist.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
And the thing is Dark Side would have at least
brought it up, like I'm bringing it up because we
watched it and are fucking critiquing it. But like, the
story itself doesn't really play into that at all. In fact,
it as soon as she shows up, it tries its best.
It even tries to redeem her, because she has a
scene where she breaks up with the psychiatrist, like I
(26:40):
have to focus on him, like he needs me, Like okay, great,
Like you should have been doing that from the beginning,
first of all, and second of all, dark Side calling
the dark Side come in and smack her down, please yep.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, And he's the one that goes nuts and tries
to burn her at the stake, and I'm just like okay.
And for a minute there I thought that was going
to happen, because, like you said, she doesn't get come up,
and this would have been almost appropriate for a cheating spouse.
But instead, Yeah, she saves the day and wins everything.
All right, good for you.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, dark Side would have burned her at the stake
and the husband would have been on a leash being
led away by Patricia Quinn.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
That's the place I want to be.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Hell yeah, okay, anything else, No, I'm good right on. Well,
on the next episode of Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology Podcust,
We're going to be taking a look at season two,
episode two, that is the thirteenth reunion. Until then, where
can people find you if they're looking for you?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Mister Mike White, Well, everything that I do is over
at weirdingwaymedia dot com, including the show that I do
every week for the last fourteen and some years, which
is the Projection Booth podcast. So come on by and
listen to me ramble on about movies.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Oh my god, are you talking about the best fucking
movie podcast out there? I agree? Everybody go see that.
As for me, you're listening to my show, Midnight Viewing.
We're on twice a week Mondays. It's Father Malone's weekly
round Up. Every Friday we do either our horror anthology
podcast or one of our fests. We're currently going through
star trek Fest, proving very popular. Thank you all for
joining and going to the Patreon page and all that shit.
(28:18):
I don't have a sign off for this one yet.
That's exciting.
Welcome back to Midnight Viewing the Horror anthology podcast. I'm
Father Malone and this is a brand new season, a
brand new hosting configuration. It's a brand new Cherry Flavor.
Did you see that?
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Mike? What's that? Cherry?
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Brand new Cherry Flavor was a TV series on Netflix.
Was interesting, quirky in the best kind of a way.
All Right, we have covered Night Gallery, We've covered Tales
from the Dark Side in Another life, we covered Twilight
Zone eighty five, and we're back to do it again.
Who's we glad you asked? Joining me to discuss all
things televisual from our friends across the pond is the
projection Booths.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Mike white oudy, Hey, thanks so much for having me
follow alone.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
My pleasure and the show we're discussing. That program, as
they would say, is the one season killer.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This was on Teams series.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
That's our series one.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Technically we're going to get into britishisms, we might as
well go as series.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
This indeed a show that asks the question. This was
on TV in nineteen eighty and we are discussing from
nineteen eighty. Hammer House of Horror now Hammer Films, of course,
founded back in nineteen thirty four by William Hines and
James Carreras. That company mainly released comedies and swashbucklers, and
a few crime flicks until about nineteen fifty eight. That's
(01:46):
when the company would gain its notoriety as the UK's
premier interpreter of classic horror when it released The Curse
of Frankenstein, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. Now, for
the next twenty years, Hammer would be synonymous with lurid,
gory and suggestive horror. But by nineteen eighty the wheels
had come off this particularly gruesome cart and Hammer was
desperate to simply maintain its glory, never mind restore it.
(02:09):
Enter Roy Skegg should I say re enter Roy Skegg's
He had been a former production supervisor until he left
the company in seventy four to start his own film house.
When Hammer went into receivership in nineteen seventy eight, he
was asked back by the board of directors to take
over creatively, and his first act was to move the
productions away from Victorian subject matter and instead modernize and,
(02:31):
if at all possible, anthologize. Thus we have Hammer's second
foray into television. Hammer House of Horror now Hammer. House
of Horror premiered on August twenty eighth, nineteen eighty. That
was here in the US. This episode is called Witching Time.
This is season one, episode one, written by Anthony Reid,
directed by Don Lever. He was a TV veteran, apparently
(02:54):
having directed a bunch of anthology series in England, including
two shows called Scorpion Tales and Thriller She's Gonna have
to look into those. This one stars John Finch, Mister Macbeth,
Patricia Quinn. If you're listening to the show, and I
have to tell you, Patricia Quinn, is you should stop
listening to this show. It also starts Prunella g who
(03:15):
she was in Never Say Never Again and Ian McCulloch.
Bring on the dancing horses, Rocky and McCulloch, all right.
This is about a witch from the seventeenth century who
returns to her ancestral home with thoughts of vengeance and
possession toward its current inhabitants. A successful actress and her
mentally fragile composer husband are the ones in her sights.
(03:36):
Of course, this all might be in his mind. Mike,
what did you think of our first Hammer Horror.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
They let that on TV.
Speaker 3 (03:46):
Uh, yeah, I was pretty happy. Being a big fan
of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. This was the side
of Patricia Quinn that I've never seen before, so yeah,
I was pretty happy about that. But more over, what
a quality cast. This cast is amazing. I love John Finch,
I love Patricia Quinn. I'm kind of curious if Susan
(04:08):
George was supposed to be in this because isn't that
her photo that is in the episode. I feel like
we're supposed to think that that's the wife, but it's
not her, right, that's no. Yeah, okay, I was very
confused by that.
Speaker 2 (04:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Otherwise, I mean, the story is such that it it
feels a little it reminds me of like when I
was a kid growing up and there was a horror
show on Nickelodeon where it was about, like, I don't know,
a Puritan coming back and ruining the life of this
teenage girl because it's this whole Yeah, we're time traveling
(04:45):
and here's this witch and she's back.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
But I was really hoping for more.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
I wanted more of a plan or a plot or something,
because she just seems so I don't know, just kind
of well corny and nothing wrong with that, and then
just mischievous. I was like, oh okay, and of course,
like things get pretty heated haha towards the end. But yeah,
I was hoping for a little bit more to this story.
(05:11):
But again I was just so impressed by the cast
and just more John Findle that guy.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Now we just spent the better part of a year
toiling and Tales from the Dark Side, And of course
I love Tales from the Dark Side, do love Taless
in the dark Side. But going back several years now
from that, because this is nineteen eighty, would you not
agree that the writing, even as a little dialogue and
this little characterization as we're given here, just the level
(05:38):
has come up remarkably right.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah, this is movie quality. I was surprised at just
how well, first off, how good it looks. The cinematography
on this is wonderful. Yes, the writing is fantastic. Had
they tacked on another what ten fifteen minutes, it would
have been a feature length movie. It was just kind
of blown away by that.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Yeah, it feels very adult, It feels very mature, even
though it's delving even like further into the more lurid
depths of what horror can offer, including the massive amounts
of nudity. That's what we're talking about. Like this, I
gotta say this episode begins. It begins the series extremely
(06:23):
cleverly in that we're given one of what we expect
from Hammer, which is a period piece with women and
bodices and dressing gowns and running through a Victorian mansion
and getting naked all and being stalked by a killer.
And then to reveal that's actually just a movie that
our lead is the composer of.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Yes, that was nice.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
Oh man, I thought that was beautiful. And it also
brings us to a brand new segment here on Midnight
Viewing Mike. This is called was Brian de Palma in
England in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Yeah, this opening is very, very blowout, and yeah, just
to have the composer be our main character, it felt
a little barbarian sound studio as well for.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Me, very blow out. And then again body double, like
the let's start with the artifice of it and then
reveal that this is not this is the creators of
that thing. So this is even more realistic, Like you
can believe this even more than the old staid vampires
and or like slashers.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
I love when they start with this and just pull
the rug out from under us, especially they're starting with
that kind of unknown POV which we get through so
many things, and yeah, that they get up to her
and I was expecting to your point a really horrible screamed.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Yeah, exactly. And not only Brian de Palma, but is
Jason Siegel a fan of this at all? This is
about a composer whose actress wife girlfriend is cheating on him,
and it does impose a Dracula puppet musical by the end,
because that would have really would have been perfect.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was really happy with the whole
idea of him being this composer and seeing some of
the composition scenes. They didn't go too far into that.
I was just like, Okay, this is nice. It's a
nice way to set up this whole thing. I really
like how we immediately get the idea of her cheating
on him, and him pretty much. I think he knows
(08:29):
that he's being cutcolded.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
He's yeah, I mean, his first conversation is she's definitely
cheating on me. Oh, but yeah, you know, I don't care.
He's on so many pills and he's been drinking so heavily,
which John Finch, yeah, right, art imitating life. I think
what I really liked about that was it set up
the sort of possibility of disbelief here, like that the
(08:55):
witch might be in his mind, and they go to
pains to sort of make that a possibility, but it
very well could have been a possibility, and it crossed
my mind multiple times during the narrative that they might
be pulling the wall over our eyes on this, which
would have been fine.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, and well you mentioned Macbeth, which I know he
was in, but I was reminded a little bit too
of Hamlet with this whole idea of the horse going crazy.
That's almost like what they not magical realism, but like
natural realism kind of thing where the animals are reflecting
what we feel. So you've got the dog who's afraid
of the storm, and then you've got the horse out
in the barn, and then the barn becomes this major
(09:32):
thing where it's like, okay, we need to go out
there make sure that the horse is okay, and then
that's where we find Patricia Quinn. So I like that
whole idea of nature just being a player in this
as well, this mysterious storm that comes along that it
feels like he's the only one that witnessed it because
when his wife's lover, who's also is he a psychiatrist?
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Right? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, he starts to question the whole idea of like, well,
there really wasn't a storm last night, what's your problem?
And that's one of the things that tips him off
to think that our main character is little nuts.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
Yeah. And by the way, that could have also worked
in the opposite direction. It could have been because that's
the wife's lover. He's trying to make him go crazy,
because we've seen that how many times on night Gallery?
Speaker 3 (10:20):
Yeah, gaslight a very intense gaslight with hiring a redhead
to hang out in the barn.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Now, my question is during the storm, his dog, Billy
runs off by the way. At a certain point, he
calls after the dog and he just says Bill, and
I thought, wow, what a great name for dog. Anyway,
are we to believe that, because we do not see
Billy again for the rest of the rest of the story,
did she become Bill? Did the dog turn into the witch?
(10:48):
Or And when he finds her, she's basically sort of
crouched down like a dog. I think he thinks it's
a dog at first, and.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, yeah, he has no idea what she is, that
she's just black mound.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Basically, I think the possibility exists that dog transmographied into
Patricia Quinn, making it the sexiest dog of what.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
God damn, she's amazing.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Good lord. It's not the first time we've seen her naked,
though she was not. Now for something completely different from
the Meaning of Life. Meaning of Life, she's doing the
sex education scene. She's John Cleese's wife comes in to
demonstrate with it.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
I think I've seen that movie.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I watch again.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Speaking of Nickelodeon, there was a making of Movies show
on Nickelodeon when I was growing up, and they just
kept playing the same four baby episodes over and over again,
and one of them was of Life. What a weird
thing to put on Nickelodeons, the Making of the Meaning
of Life. That one Dark Crystal. I can't remember the
(11:46):
other ones. But yeah, that whole thing with the guy
in bed with his leg missing. I don't know how
many times I saw that scene because it was in
that whole scene was part of the making of video,
and I just saw over and over again because I
was so into the idea of well behind the scenes
stuff that I would watch anything.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
I watched those same ones. I remember those ones. Do
you remember a similar behind the scenes behind the movies
show hosted by Leonard Nimoy?
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Was that lights, camera action or something?
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, And I remember once they had on a special
effects guy, like like prosthetics and masks and stuff, and
there was like a second head that they placed on
Nimoy and he's talking to it and he said, and
I remembered at the time thinking it was just a
funny name for a movie. But Nimoy says to the
prop because the prop is from this movie, he says,
didn't I see you in Geek Maggot Bingo? And then,
(12:41):
of course, years later to know that Geek Maggot Bingo
is a nick Z film, like speaking of weird shit
to be putting on like kids programming, Well.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
It doesn't feel it feels like nick might have taken
name rather than vice versa.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
Then we'll have to look at the timeline because I'm
looking for that show and I'm unable to find that
the Nimoy one.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, oh man, that's listeners. Somebody they'll write in, Actually,
somebody please find that Nemoy show for us.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
You would think it would be on my spleen dot org,
but I'm not finding it there.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Oh what else is going on in this episode? Oh?
Speaker 3 (13:17):
Power of light bulbs scares the shit out of our Yeah, well,
you know, I was.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
It made me happy that they made some sort of
effort to show that she would be frightened by these things,
that there was some time passed, because how many episodes
of time traveling television if we watched where people are
just like automatically accepting of everything. I think about Dave
Leiterman's top ten list of things Abraham Lincoln would say
if he were alive today, and one of them was
(13:43):
eag iron bird. Yeah, modern things would freak the fucking
people out if they came from the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
And it is kind of clever to have it so
that when she comes in, it's all candlelit, and she's like, oh, okay, yeah,
like that's normal, that's solely normal for me. And I'm
surprised she didn't just she does sit there and like
flip the light a few times. I just kept thinking
that she was going to do that over and over.
It's almost like dissolved to her hours later, like still
flipping the light.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
At a certain point, John Finch imprisons her in one
of the bedrooms. He locks her into the bedroom and
all I could think was like, you don't need to
do that. Just give her like a blender or something
like you joined this thing on and off and just leave,
Go get your friend.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
What match be is this? And the next thing you know,
you just hear screams exactly, oh yeah, yeah, Well give
her a vibrator. She seems to be very amorous in
this episode.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Speaking of which, so there is there a couple of
sex scenes in this but they have the one that
is featured is there's a sequence where she's It ends
with her scratching her nails down his back and gouging
into it. And I bring it up because there's a
transition there where it goes from her digging into his
and digging these furrows in red to a little red
(15:05):
sports car wiping the frame. It was fucking awesome.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
That was nice.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah. Yeah, again, this thing is shot so well and
it's not just a simple Okay, we're gonna have two
characters in a room and we're going to lock down
the camera and have them move around. No, we're cutting, cutting, cutting.
There are so many shots on this it's really well done.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, the look is actually spectacular. And look, it's their
film division basically funneled into the television and working with
a lot of veteran television people like this director is
a TV animal. Basically he was always a TV But yeah,
I'm knocked out. I don't think there's only thirteen episodes
of this series appropriate. But I don't think we're ever
(15:49):
going to say the words. This looked really set bound.
It's just too slick.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
No, nothing in here looks like it was shot on
the set. I don't know if it was, but it
look like it, that's for sure. I really like the
shot when it is his psychiatrist's friend asking him questions
and you've got Finch laying closer to the camera and
half of his body is obscured, and then you've got
his friend with the needle in the background, and then
(16:18):
you can see the whole ceiling, which is so nice
that they are not afraid. Again, when it comes to sets,
all of these sets seems to have ceilings, so it
feels like they're shooting it.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
They definitely are. In fact, ninety percent of all of
this series is filmed in one house, the Hampton House,
which Hammer Films had purchased in Hampton. So we looked
at a map today of all of the filming locations.
It's all within twenty miles of this house. So every
time they come, there's woods right there, there's a town
right there. They do some pickup shots, like I noticed
(16:50):
in not this episode, but the next one there's some
London like shots, so there's all they London's an hour
away so they can run down and get be roll
and stuff. But it's you know me, I love economy
and the fact that they're able to pull this off
and make it look so good and we're going to
see the house over and over again and not really
recognize that it's one house because it's a gigantic mansion.
(17:11):
It's one of those old English manners.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
Which I guess is appropriate for the opening and closing
of this where they just got to show the big
house and I was hoping for you. We just came
off of a show that has one of the best
books ever, and I was really like Oh, what are
they going to do for the opening of this Not
a lot. But that's my small complaint about this show.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah it's I like the theme because it's so modern
in a way, but it is just random shots of
this house and you would think maybe if there was
a season two, they could have at least cut a
montage together of creepy shit from this season, but they
just weren't there. But I agree, I'm a happy to skip.
I would never skip the opening of Tails from the
(17:53):
Dark Side, but this one, I'm like, eh, I don't care.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
Yeah, well it's a quick opening too.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
It's not like we're sitting there and okay, get to
the episode, and at least it's not as irritating as
the Night Gallery. That was just a little bit when
that music was like okay enough.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
Yeah, when that third season theme came in, down Dune,
Dune done, run for your life, Jesus, yeah, turn off
the TV.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yeah, she loems so sorry.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
The wife seems so clueless when she does. You talked
about the scratches. When she sees all the scratches on
his back, I'd be like, Okay, who were you fucking honey,
But instead she's just like, oh, so many scratches. Oh,
what's going on?
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Really?
Speaker 1 (18:37):
How did you do that to yourself? She lets him
off the hook.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Oh god, yeah, I saw on a rake multiple times.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And I love that she's back because he's completely strung
out and in her mind hallucinatory, and she's like, you
need to relax, Let's go for a walk through the woods. No,
I don't want to do that ever, And then she's
with him downstairs, goes upstairs, finds a decapitated bird that
is fluttering around. It has just been killed, and she's like,
(19:10):
what did you do?
Speaker 3 (19:12):
Yes, lady, Oh, I love that bird. I love the
bird prop and how it's just twitching its little wings.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
That's so nice.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
And it's got like the bone sticking out of the
neck like a cartoon bone.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
It looks like.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
It was so horrified. Like yeah, and it's just these
subtle things like I don't know, but God bless hammer.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I love that bird. And I love like later where
he's burying the bird in a grave that is way
too huge. Yes, but he goes down and like makes
out with it like this is I don't know.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
But yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
It turns into his wife. And then his wife is
riding along on her horse, and then you have her
holding her face, so you're just like, okay, is this
some sort of like voodoo type thing that's going on,
Like of the bird, she's being affected. And then yeah,
when he comes up, he's got blood all.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Down his face.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
I'm like, oh, man, what were you doing to that bird?
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Like he think he goes to crush it with his shovel,
and then it turns into his wife, and then he
goes down and makes out with her after thinking like, oh,
I might have just stabbed my wife in the face
with a shovel. Time for some tongue.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Yeah, Jesus was so strong.
Speaker 1 (20:28):
Oh and at that point they still could have it
still could be just in his head because like they
cut to her, like when she's still on the horse,
they show a wound like he's caused it, and then
when they cut back to it, it's just not there.
So it could be nothing at all. But of course
it isn't because you said voodoo. Don't we get a
(20:49):
version of that here? Yes, they're playing every angle this tiny,
little hideous little thing with a lock of her hair.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
I guess, yeah, yeah, I was kind of I didn't
see the part where the wife kind of twists the
doll and makes it into Patricia Quinn because I was like, oh,
I'd be afraid to throw that doll into the fire,
and it's like, oh, okay, it's the Patricia Quinn version
of the doll. Now I'm like, oh, very talented lady
to be able to swap out the the voodoo dolls.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
There, like to what you were saying earlier. Like, the
one criticism I do have of this episode overall is
that we don't really get any groundwork about what the
plan is. Like it's all just sort of happenstance. And
that's fine because we're viewing it through the lead character's
point of view, but we're the audience and we know more.
(21:38):
We know she's real, so you know, just little things
like her snatching the wife's hair no like and leading
there like this thing likes to surprise out of the blue,
like suddenly there's a voodoo doll and it's fine, we're
digging it because they have set it up and that
the wife has been in pain and complaining for a
little while. But nevertheless, like could have just little breadcrumbs
(22:02):
along the way can go a long way, because there
are sometimes where there are gonna be episodes completely predicated
spoiler for the next episode on one idea, and if
you see the idea coming from the opening, you're gonna
be in trouble. But you can at least give us
a little something because the voodoo don't ends up being
very important.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
Yeah, yeah, major, yeah, talking about going back to the
nudity thing that his wife is wandering around in broad
underwear so much of this episode, like that whole middle
sequence after she comes back from a ride, she's just
broad and underwear the whole rest of the time until,
like I think it's the next act where she finally
(22:43):
puts on some clothes, and it so reminds me of
when I was a kid and watching PBS and watching
BBC shows on PBS. I mean, I thought I was
crazy because I was like, did I really see boobs
on PBS? Was that the only reason I watched Benny Hill?
And the answer is yes, Yes, that is the only reason.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:04):
Well, what's funny is Roy Skaggs was a producer of
Benny Hill.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Oh funny, Okay.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
In his time away from Hammer, he worked on the
He worked with the Benny Hills Show. Yeah, we get
the full I'm going to encourage people to watch another
series right now, but I'm going to encourage you to
do that after you've watched Hammer. House of Horror in
its entirety. There are two shows actually, obviously Garth Marenghi's
Dark Place, which is the more famous of the two,
(23:32):
and then Steve Coogan has a show called Doctor Horrible's
House of Terror or something like that.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Oh okay, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Now. That one is way more specific. That one is
more about Amicus and Tygon and Hammer during the seventies.
So it's this esthetic, the same sort of I don't
even know how to describe Hammer in seventies sort of
British cinema. But nevertheless, both Dark Place and the Steve
Coogan show take great pains to make fun of this esthetic,
(24:03):
and you will not enjoy these shows if you watch
those first. I'm telling you this will just be a curiosity.
It is a curiosity anyway. I'm just saying you do
need to watch those, but watch this first, please.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
I will have to check those.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
I've seen Garth Marenghi, of course, but I have not
seen this Doctor Terrible, so I'm gonna.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Have to check it out.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
It's very fun. It's very specific too, like that if
you're a fan of seventies British horror at all, particularly
their anthology Horror, you're going to have a ball with this.
Which I'm a terrible host in that I don't have
the name off the top of my head.
Speaker 3 (24:36):
But anyway, yeah, Doctor Terrible's House of Horrible and yeah,
the first episode is Lesbian vampire Lovers of Lust. There
you go, all right, as someone who just watched Twins
of Evil, I can definitely get into that.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Okay, I don't know what else are you going.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Oh. I was glad that the priest character.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Seems to have his head about him very well, and
he wasn't trying to be like, oh, yeah, you're crazy,
but he kind of knew the lore. He didn't seem
to be like, Okay, he does suggest an exorcism and
that is kind of what really pushes this to the
limit and brings about the voodoo doll and all that.
But yeah, I again like, oh, pretty reasonable prest character.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
That was kind of nice.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, I thought so too, And yet it ends up
being an investigation kind of thing with the wife. By
the way, It's like this was interesting to me in
it I don't think you would have gotten this in America.
She's cheating on him from the beginning, yeah, and like
and he's just a pawn of this horrible thing, so
she's effectively unleashed it. So she never really gets any
(25:44):
punishment here, like, oh, she shows up, saves the day
and gets to be a fucking hero, and it's like
you're kind of a cause.
Speaker 3 (25:52):
Yeah, no, no, come up in whatsoever, which is so
weird compared to everything that we've been seeing where it's like, Okay,
there's a balance to the universe and if somebody is bad,
we need to punish them appropriately. We saw that so
much with Tails from the Dark Side. No, she wins
at the end, and I found that to be very remarkable.
(26:14):
I was just like, Okay, well, where's the twist, and
there is no twist.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
And the thing is Dark Side would have at least
brought it up, like I'm bringing it up because we
watched it and are fucking critiquing it. But like, the
story itself doesn't really play into that at all. In fact,
it as soon as she shows up, it tries its best.
It even tries to redeem her, because she has a
scene where she breaks up with the psychiatrist, like I
(26:40):
have to focus on him, like he needs me, Like okay, great,
Like you should have been doing that from the beginning,
first of all, and second of all, dark Side calling
the dark Side come in and smack her down, please yep.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
Yeah, And he's the one that goes nuts and tries
to burn her at the stake, and I'm just like okay.
And for a minute there I thought that was going
to happen, because, like you said, she doesn't get come up,
and this would have been almost appropriate for a cheating spouse.
But instead, Yeah, she saves the day and wins everything.
All right, good for you.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Yeah, dark Side would have burned her at the stake
and the husband would have been on a leash being
led away by Patricia Quinn.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
That's the place I want to be.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
Hell yeah, okay, anything else, No, I'm good right on. Well,
on the next episode of Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology Podcust,
We're going to be taking a look at season two,
episode two, that is the thirteenth reunion. Until then, where
can people find you if they're looking for you?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Mister Mike White, Well, everything that I do is over
at weirdingwaymedia dot com, including the show that I do
every week for the last fourteen and some years, which
is the Projection Booth podcast. So come on by and
listen to me ramble on about movies.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Oh my god, are you talking about the best fucking
movie podcast out there? I agree? Everybody go see that.
As for me, you're listening to my show, Midnight Viewing.
We're on twice a week Mondays. It's Father Malone's weekly
round Up. Every Friday we do either our horror anthology
podcast or one of our fests. We're currently going through
star trek Fest, proving very popular. Thank you all for
joining and going to the Patreon page and all that shit.
(28:18):
I don't have a sign off for this one yet.
That's exciting.
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