Demon in Lace (1975)

When a series of mysterious deaths take place at a college campus, Carl uncovers the true nature of the crimes -- a Mesopotamian succubus is seeking revenge for the translation of an ancient stone tablet.

Episode Transcript

(00:46):
It was Gerta who said, welove girls for what they are. Well,
even a great Gerta could have learnedsomething from the tale that took place
on the campus of Illinois State TechMay ten to eleven or two. Don

(01:06):
Whine of the school star running backin Candidate for All American was off for
a drive. Don never didn't makeAll Americans. That was the voice of
reporter Carl Kolchak with the case thatwe call Demon in Lace, directed by
Don Weiss. This episode was releasedoriginally February seventh, nineteen seventy five.

(01:32):
I am Mike White with me asalways is mister Chris Stashe. You can
call me the Demon in Lace Chris. Everyone wants to know what did you
think of the Demon in Lace episode. I think it's nice to finally be
watching colecheck from nineteen seventy five,that's for sure. It's like a palette
cleanser. I think it's an interestingepisode. I think the effects are special.

(01:57):
It's one of these things where whenwe talk about the show, we
really have to put ourselves in thetime it came out, but at the
same time remove the nostalgia goggles thatmany of us have when watching this show.
My big takeaway with this episode ofthe show is that there are a
lot of great character actors. Thereare a lot of great performances. There's
a lot of great interaction with ColeCheck and Jack Grinnage and Vincenzo and Miss

(02:24):
Emily. The main story is kindof secondary to my enjoyment of the episode
though. As far as the mainstory, I found it to be really
super solid this time around. Ihad a lot of fun watching Demon and
Lace. Yeah, it's it's youknow, it's it's fun. It's solid.
It doesn't really go and do anythingcrazy or out of the box or

(02:46):
nuts, but it's fun. It'spretty straightforward, and you know, it
kind of checks all the boxes atthis point of what my expectations are when
we think about Cole Check to NightSoccer. We've got some great sexes here
with Colchack just humiliating the female reporter. You shut up women. Oh my
god, I am out lost it. I fucking almost lost it, man.

(03:09):
I was like, this is boy, this has not aged well at
all. Yikes. Man. Sothis episode takes place at a college campus
and there are a series of deathswhere we find that these hunky young gentlemen
are being killed. I'm not reallysure how they're being killed. Are they

(03:32):
really having heart attacks? Something ishappening to them. It is not made
clear to us what that is,but they keep saying it's a heart attack.
Something's happening to these guys. Butthe real story is that the women
that are with these guys are dead. So we've got a little bit of
a zombie thing going on here.The women die in various ways, but

(03:53):
they are also more than just dead. They are reanimated corpses from a spear
it from Mesopotamias from long time ago, and this spirit is going around killing
all of these guys who are involvedwith Professor c Evans Spate, who's played
by Andrew Pryne and Andrew pryn Man. He is rocking that ascot like nobody's

(04:18):
business. He really rocks it,and he really makes it work. He
makes it work, that's for sure. He actually literally makes it work because
he gets to pull it off atone point and cover his mouth with it.
He uses it for a purpose otherthan just looking like a dork,
which he totally looks like a dork. Yeah, you know, he was
kind of like looking at pictures ofPeter Bogdanovitch and he's like, I could

(04:42):
do this, Yeah, I coulddo this. I appreciate in this episode
that there are so many weird sidecharacters. It's there's a lot more here
than there normally. Are I reallylike that. I think that that's really
cool and like that they all kindof have a purpose and they don't really
feel some of the episodes that we'veseen it's like, Okay, sure,
here's x y Z, you know, guest actor on the show, And

(05:05):
like, I didn't feel that wayabout this episode. I was so happy
to see Keenan Wynn come back asCaptain Joe mad Dog Siska. That was
fantastic. Very angry man. Really, that name, the name says it
all. He is very very mad. He is a very madman, like
he is content to make Colchak's lifea living hell. So I have to

(05:27):
say, those conversations that he andthe coroner have, they are just information
dumps, like crazy, and Colcheckis always there to listen in or try
to record these things. And I'mjust like, guys, you might want
to like talk about that back atthe office, maybe just a little,
just a lot of it, huh, give us as much exposition as humanly
possible, because that's what we reallywant to know is just give us all

(05:50):
the exposition right here, right now. It's a little dorky, right,
it feels like a lesser show,which, like, let's be honest here,
this show has its fair number ofproblems, but the exposition dumping has
kind of always been something that Ijust kind of overlook because like whatever,
it's a show from the seventies,like there, you know, my expectation
with the show is not that they'regoing to really have some high idea of

(06:13):
writing, if that makes sense,right, And as far as like what
the mystery is, it's really notthat much of a mystery to anybody.
I mean, oh god, no, Carl figures it out pretty quickly,
gets a little help maybe from missEmily kind of like helps crystallize something.
She's not like his, like hisWilson to house or anything, or her

(06:35):
she's not Watson to his homes.But the whole thing with the crossword puzzle,
I think kind of helps out somestuff. Well, and again,
let's be honest here, I think, at least for me, and I
don't know how you feel about this, Like one of the reasons I love
this show so much is the backand forth between Vincenzo, miss Emily,

(06:56):
and Cole check and when they're allfiring on the same cylinder, like it's
so good. It is so good, Like those interactions with the three four
of them in the office is justit's fantastic, right yeah, And this
whole thing where we get to findout that Vincenzo want a talent contest and
he did an amazing version of stompingat the Savoy and it's just like,

(07:18):
yeah, give me more of thisstuff or right like he wasn't even saying
he's like a drummer or no ohyeah yeah, Like again, it's further
fleshing out this character in a waythat like felt it felt it felt realistic,
like it didn't feel like they werereally reaching. It felt a little
weird knowing where his character is now, but like I liked it. It's

(07:39):
it's great, you know, givingthese characters something to do. It is
more than Kimby said for the reboot, the two thousand and six reboot that
seemingly has no idea what to dowith the characters at all, right,
where we didn't even see their Vincenzoin the last episode, maybe even two
episodes. Who knows their Vincenzo mightas well not exist because he is just
a completely They have a Vincenzo inthere because they need to have Vincenzo.

(08:05):
And I've been reading this book,this X Files book that talks about every
single episode of the show, likecritically, and they make a very interesting
point in there that relates to coalCheck. This show and the reboot is
the rebooted version of coal Check wasn'ttrying to emulate coal Check. They were
just trying to remake The X Files, and it very much feels that way.

(08:26):
And when you watch this original versionof the show where it got lost
in translation, is weird to mebecause this version of the show is about
coal Check. That's it's very muchhis show. Darren mcavan's performance really is
what you signed up for. It'swhat keeps us coming back every week even
if I wasn't watching it for thispodcast. And he's great in this episode

(08:48):
once again, even when he's beinga sexist dick. It was almost fun
watching him be a sexist dick inthis episode because we knew it was coming.
And the reporter, she doesn't necessarilyget to her come upance of him.
You know, she doesn't get hisgoat, but I like that she
left him abandoned at the gas station. I was like, Okay, this
works. There's problems with shows thatwere made in the seventies watching them now,

(09:13):
and I don't think that I'm thefirst person or the last person to
feel that way, but you know, it is kind of what it is.
It was made at a different time, and rut Row, you could
get away with acting like an assholeto women on TV, and that's kind
of what happens in this show.And we've seen that throughout the show.
I mean, this isn't the firsttime, no, god no, not
by any like stretch of the imaginationis the first time. It's really not.

(09:37):
You mentioned some of the side charactersas supporting actors, and I was
very happy to see Jackie Vernon showup and here as a coach to me
and his whole thing about the youngmen who have not treated their bodies as
well as they could, basically thatthey all have the clap from running around

(09:58):
being with our areos. And Idon't necessarily understand the tuna fish thing,
but I was going to ask youif you understood it, because I have
no idea what the hell is goingon? No, I don't. Did
you recognize Jackie Vernon in this?I didn't, But should I have?
I grew up watching all of theRanking Bass cartoons and Claymation things that they

(10:22):
were doing stop motion animation things.Jackie Vernon is the voice of Frosty the
snow Man, So as soon asI hear the voice, I don't even
look at the face, but Ihear Frosty the Snowman every single time.
And then it was a real shockerto me when I watched the Microwave Massacre
from I think it was like eightythree or something like that, and he

(10:43):
plays pretty much a vicious killer inthere, So it was very disconcerting for
me to see Frosty the snow Manbeing this murderer in there. Yeah,
I didn't recognize him. And also, dirty little secret about my stuff,
I don't like those Ranking and Bassmovies or the TV specials or whatever you
want to interpret the mess. It'sone of those things that like, I

(11:07):
know that there are a lot ofpeople your age and my age that really
had this like affinity for them,and I just I can't get behind him.
I just don't like him. Differentstrokes, different folks. It's just
cheesy, you know, like it'scheesy and it's like almost cheesy for cheesiness's
sake, which I mean a lotof people really like that. It's just
I know, I'm a weirdo.Sorry, I'm sure you recognize the registrar

(11:30):
though that cole Chak tries to bamboozlethose played by Carolyn Jones. I can,
like, I feel like I should. Well, normally isn't blonde.
Yeah, she normally has long blackhair and she's usually wearing a very form
fitting dress. Yes, okay,yeah, because she was more Titia Adams.

(11:52):
Right, I did recognize her,but like again, it was like
so fast, right, it wassuch a quick kind of it wasn't like
you know what I mean, Likeshe she shows up and then she's gone.
It's not like Jackie Burnon where theyget this like really long drawn out
conversation. Yeah. I wish thatshe had a little bit more myself.
That's the thing about this show thatis so much fun is going back and
getting to see all of these likeactors, these really big actors from the

(12:15):
seventies and getting to see kind oflike, this is what it's like then
being in these shows and seeing theselike big character actors from the seventies and
late sixties in a show that's like, you know, kind of like The
X Files for them, except ifthis had been The X Files and they
had been guesting in the show,they would have been murdered, because that's

(12:35):
what happened to like all the guestsand the X Files, they were like
either they were the bad guy orthey were murdered. What about Alex Trebek,
Jose chungs, let's not even thisis not the podcast for that.
That's so good. That episode ofthe show is perfect TV writing. Alex
Trebeck makes that, and then you'vegot the Governor of Minteoda as well with

(12:56):
his ponytail. But that's why Ilove this show is because it has that
thing to it where it's like they'rereally utilizing these character actors in ways that
make sense and don't feel that don'tfeel like ham fisted. I will admit
the old guy who's trying to sellColchack magazines who Colecheck eventually steals all of

(13:16):
his books from him. That guy, Milton Parsons is the actor's name.
He was in like one hundred andfifty some things. I know I've seen
him in things before, but Isure didn't recognize that guy. But he
had a great face. But atthe same time, like his character,
that bit was like a little likeI was kind of like, let's just

(13:37):
get to the end. At thatpoint. His character, it was a
it was a little kind of likeokay, like he's fallen asleep and he's
kind of like anarcaleptic, like okay, But the overall mystery of it,
the whole idea of these women comingback from the dead being possessed by this
spirit, I don't know. Ijust really enjoyed that. And then having

(13:58):
Carl with his mortar and puzzle orwhatever it is, his hammer breaking up
yes, thank you, breaking upthis Mesopotamian tablet, and Prince trying to
stop him at first but eventually realizesthat all kinds of weird shit is happening.

(14:18):
I was like, Okay, thisis good, and then it gets
pushed over and breaks into a millionpieces. That woman that came in with
the I can't remember if that wasthe Mike Thompson character. Of course,
I latched onto his name because I'vegot a friend named Mike Thompson. But
when she came in and was justlaughing hysterically like that woman from the uh

(14:39):
the fashion model episode the Trevy Collection, I was like, Wow, she's
really going for it. Isn't shetoo bad about Mark Hanson? But with
him gone, I don't need anotherassistant. Life does go on. Michael
Lucon I appreciate the opportunity. Good, okay for a start, why not
go to the anthropology lab and geta copy of Quiet Hits Persua that Michael,

(15:05):
where are your manners? Who isthis incredibly beautiful creature I just met
at the bookstore. She's really sum, isn't she Maria? But please come
in, professor, this is um. This is Maria Venegas. Wow,
my pleasure. And then he goeslike, stop acting like such a weirdo,

(15:48):
like he even mentioned it I,which I thought was kind of like
a fun little thing. It's likethey're not gonna just hang a lantern on
her being a weirdo, Like they'reactually gonna like, you know, hey,
you're fucking weird, Like you're freakingpeople out. What are you doing?
And there's so much sex in thisepisode, or implied sex. It's
like that we open up with thiswoman stopping a car and that guy basically

(16:10):
just like say, it's really it'skind of a really weird episode of the
show because there's a lot of stuffgoing on that's like not what we're used
to with the show. Also,the other thing is there are a lot
of character actors, Like I keepcoming back to it, like it feels
like there's more than usual. Idon't know, I felt like we got
so many in Chopper that yeah,okay, it doesn't even phase me on

(16:30):
this one. I mean, I'mnot complaining, but yeah, I forget
kind of Chopper is like so inundatedwith like, oh, so many character
actors. I'll tell you what,this is a much better episode than Chopper.
I agree. If people were obsessedwith this one as much as they
were with Chopper, I'd get behindit. On It's like okay, yeah,
this works for me. Yeah,the obsession with Chopper just sure,

(16:55):
go ahead, Chopper. I justdon't get it because Chopper is not a
good episode. If that opinion upsetsyou, it's my opinion, in my
opinion alone, but Chopper is nota good episode. It is the effect.
The effect alone spoils the episode.At least, the effect in this
episode is like not super distracting.It's kind of distracting, but at least

(17:15):
it's not like Chopper, where it'sclearly just a guy riding around with a
motorcycle, like on a motorcycle,would like his like shirt has like the
little see through like sheen black clothso he can see out of it as
there's like a fake like stump neck. So apparently part of this episode is
going to be reused in the TVmovie Demon and the Mummy. We'll have

(17:36):
to watch that eventually to see howthey kind of threw two episodes together and
try to make it one TV movie, how they reappropriate parts of the episode
we've already seen exactly and try topass it off with something else. What
a weird thing, What a weirdthing to do? Like that would not
fly outside of like a clip showin twenty nineteen, right, Yeah,
probably not. I can't really thinkof them doing that kind of stuff.

(18:00):
But I mean, I remember yearsago finding all of these quote unquote Planet
of the Apes movies and Shaft movies, and I was like, what the
hell is this them? They onlymade like the five Planet the Apes movies
at the time they only made threeShaft movies. One are all these movies
and only to find out that theywere doing the same thing where they were

(18:21):
taking two TV episodes and smashed themtogether. I don't know if they were
doing a linear thing with that andsaying these two episodes go together, or
if they were doing the same kindof patchwork that we're going to see with
these Cold Check movies. It's honestlyreally disappointing that that is what we're going
to get with Cold Check. Right, We're gonna get this like weird amalgamation

(18:42):
amalgamation amalgamation thing where it's like,let's just kind of pick and choose from
the other stuff and make it intosomething it's like, oh God, Like
that's unfortunate. I can see itmaybe working, like if they took all
the scenes of the women seducing themen and then gave it a new voice

(19:03):
over from Carl that they were Idon't know, agents of Satan or something
else, like a new context toit. Yeah, exactly, maybe that'll
work, but we'll have to seehow it goes outside of the kind of
goofy. And I don't know howyou feel about it, but I felt
like I felt like the effect onthe succubus was a little goofy oh,
the old woman makeup kind of thing. Yeah, where it's like crack face

(19:26):
makeup, where it's like she's gotlike a cracked face. It's not as
distracting as say the werewolf. Iwas really reminded of some Hong Kong movies
from like the eighties when it cameto that makeup effect. It just looks
like when like a Chinese hopping vampiregets exposed to sun or something, it's
gonna look kind of fucked up likethat. But yeah, as far as

(19:48):
like a traditional effect, I meanit's it's uh, I mean, it's
right up there with the last CoalCheck two thousand and five that we saw.
As far as the old woman kindof thing, it didn't really impress
me as far as like, oh, this is a great special fact.
It was just like, oh,this woman's kind of fucked up. You
know. At least we can seethe monster in this episode. Some of

(20:11):
the episodes of this show, someof the episodes of the reboot, we
haven't even be able to see themonster. So at least we can see
the monster. But sometimes maybe it'sbetter to not I don't know. It's
it's this weird thing with Colcheck wherewhen they do the monsters, sometimes the
monsters has just got awful and you'relike, oh, I kind of wish
that I didn't have to see themonster to begin with. And then some

(20:32):
of the episodes were like, oh, this is really cool, and like
the monster is super cool, andthen it's just the monster's design is really
bad. Overall, I thought thiswas a pretty solid one. I thought
it was a fun it's a funepisode, and again, like the premise
is interesting that the amount of guestsactors is just it's I would say,

(20:52):
it's stunning how many people they fitinto this episode and it and again it
doesn't feel inherently like super shoehorned inand you know, yeah, I look
the thing is like just like theX Files, just like Supernatural. The
reason we come back to this showis because we like Darren McGavin's performance,
and any amount of time I getto spend extra with Darren McGavin in the
role as cold Check is good time. As far as I'm concerned, it's

(21:15):
good time and this delivers on that. So next month we will be back
with another of the original col Checkwe'll be talking about Legacy of Terror,
in which we get to see ericOstrata playing like an Aztec priest of memory
serves. Oh jeez, eric Astrata, mister nice man, eric Ostrata.

(21:36):
Eric Ostrata is a eric Ostrata isone of my favorites. He's such a
He's just great. So it shouldbe fun. Yeah, So I'm looking
forward to that. I too,am looking forward to it. So,
Chris, what have you been upto lately? Well, for me,
we are doing some Stanley Kubrick filmsover at the culture Cast. Mike,
you have joined me on one TheKilling and uh, you know we're not

(21:59):
watching In two thousand and one orThe Shining or Clockwork Orange. So if
you've seen those movies like I have, but you haven't seen some of Stanley
Kubrick's deeper cuts, even though hehad like what ten movies, knows it
Like, it's not Stanley Kubrick's filmographyis not very deep, you know,
Like there are like other directors likeSpielberger, Scorsesey. Head on over to
culturecast dot com where you can checkout that episode and the rest of Stanley

(22:23):
Kubrick Month and the rest of thepodcast over there. Also, I do
a little podcast with my good buddyMike Wallace where we talk about tales from
the Crypt. That podcast is calledChronicles from the Crypt and you can find
that over at Chronicles FTC dot com. What about you, Mike, what
I've you been up to other thantalking about Colchack, Well, other than

(22:44):
talking about Colchack and talking about thetwilight Zone eighty five, which you can
find over at twilight Zone eighty fivedot com, where I talk with you
all the time. It's how itfeels like we're talking all the time,
Chris. I you know, it'snot a bad thing, because I enjoyed
talking with you, unless we're talkingabout twenty nineteens Twilight Zone, which we
also talk about on that Twilight Zonepodcast. I'm very curious to record the

(23:07):
next episode of Dreams for Sale,just to see if we start touching more
on that twenty nineteen show. Ifwe're just going to leave it alone,
I feel like we'd be doing adisservice to not talk about it a little
bit more. But at the sametime, it's also not great, So
it's also not very good, whichis unfortunate. Well, other than talking
with you all the time. I'malso doing a podcast called The Projection Booth,

(23:29):
which you can find at projection boothpodcastdot com, where every week talking
about a different movie or maybe eventwo. You never know. I'm kind
of trixy like that, like ahobbit, you trixy like this serial.
So I want to thank everybody forlistening. I want to thank John Walker
for providing our theme music. Andyeah, if you've given us a review
over on iTunes, I haven't readit. I haven't gone over to see

(23:52):
if we've even broken our five reviewsthat will actually possibly make a dent.
Is that the thing? Or isthat like when you write a book for
Amazon, that you had to havefive reviews before they'll even start showing up.
I don't know. I mean thebooks that I read on Amazon are
like Chuck Tingle books, and thosedon't tend to have ratings because people are
normally too embarrassed. I've read them. So have you read what was that

(24:15):
Raptor has sex with Robert Muller reportin the Butt? I have not read
that one, but I have readBigfoot Butt Sammie, which is an actual
title for a real book, andit is about Bigfoot eating someone's butt,
and that guy almost wont to hugo. So we're clearly not doing anything right
with our lives. So when hewins the rondo, call me. Well,

(24:38):
when he wins a rondo, itstill won't matter. So a campus
security for us insisted on calling theChicago Police press charges against me, but
they found a sudden surprising resistance fromdoctor C. Evans Spade, who claimed
the tablet had been broken an accidentalme and despite verification by a confused and

(25:04):
frightened Michael Thompson and neither reporter MissusRosalind Winters nor I had enough hard evidence
to file a story, it hadall turned to dust. However, a
public story or not. I canonly say to you that should you ever
meet a young woman who seems justtoo lovely to be really of this world,
we'll just remember him. It wasa very good chance that she isn't

(26:04):
a boat. It is a mh m hm