Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Demon Knight

Yes, kiddies, in this episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss Ernest Dickerson’s 1995 siege movie “Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight.” Strap in for grotesque monsters, a whole host of character actors and some Crypt Keeper puns. (originally published 2/19/2021)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And of course it's vault
time here on Weird House Cinema. This episode is about
the movie Demon Night. It originally aired February. You're in
for such a treat. You're gonna be dancing with Billy
Zane in your dreams. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your

(00:28):
Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird
House Cinema. This is Rob and I'm Joe, and today
we are going to unscramble the cable signal and tune
into some Tales from the Crypt. That's right, Uh yeah,

(00:48):
we have. We have another slice of nineties genre cinema
for you this week, except this one's far cheaper than
Free Jack Um, I think, ultimately a more enjoyable film.
But it is, of course, the the initial cinematic spinoff
of HBO's Tales from the Crypt. It is Tales from
the Crypt Demon Night. From what that sounds right? It

(01:10):
looks very mid nineties. Uh so, I guess this one
and last week's are a little bit more mainstream than
than we usually go. Yeah, yeah, they're they're more mainstream,
but Demon Knight is also one. I mean, Free Jack
is definitely a film that that did not perform to
expectation and was kind of just thrown out there and
died and was forgotten by many. Uh. Demon Knight is

(01:31):
a film that I think also is, you know, we're
talking about this before we started recording, you know, maybe
a little under underappreciated, though it certainly has its following
and and you know continues to be popular to this day,
but you don't you don't hear it championed that often
as being like a great, uh piece of horror or
horror comedy from the nineties. I guess it's hard to

(01:53):
argue that it's great, but it is really fun. This
is a really fun, r rated, frisky piece of horror comedy. Yeah. Um,
it's it's essentially a siege movie. So the basic structure
is pretty uh, pretty nailed down. You know, like you're
gonna have characters go somewhere, they're gonna hold up there,
and then things are gonna try and get in and

(02:14):
get them. It's the basic Night of the Living Dead scenario.
It's Night of the Living Dead, evil Dead assault on
Precinct thirteen that that kind of thing. Yeah, so well,
let's just jump right into the elevator pitch on this one,
just now. This is the elevator pitch for the basic
movie itself. The Unholy Demon Lords have six of the
seven keys they need to drag the universe back into darkness,

(02:37):
and the only thing standing in their way on planet
Earth for that last key is one immortal drifter and
a rag tag bunch of losers in a rundown hotel
in the middle of the desert, uh huh, in a
place called Wormwood, New Mexico. I looked it up. Not
a real place. It sounds nice and biblical, though, which
is good because there's a lot of biblical uh nonsense

(02:58):
going on in this particular movie. Yeah, and this movie
is just jammed with drifters. Yeah, yeah, it's it's all.
It's braisically all drifters. I mean, and i've i've I've
actually seen it discussed in the sense that it's like
the meek shalling hair at the Earth, and this is
the meek. These are all the sorts of losers that
Jesus Christ himself would have hung out with in life.

(03:18):
Maybe not Thomas Hayden Church, He's not that meek, but
he's a scumbag in this. So yeah, that's true. So
the Pharisees come to Jesus and they say, hey, you
sit down to eat with the sinners and the tax
collectors and even with Thomas Hayden Church. All right, well,
let's look ahead. Have just a little bit of the

(03:39):
trailer audio here, and there's probably gonna be a little
crip keeper in there. You have a little. Pictures is
proud to present the motion picture directing debut of one
of America's most talented and respected artists. Oh hello, kiddies,
so glad you could join me, your pal, The Cryptie

(04:02):
has gone Hollywood in a big way. I'm directing my
first feature film, Care for a Little Shrink preview for
my big Scream premiere. I wanted lots of suspense, special effects, sex, violence.

(04:26):
It's the kind of thing you could really sink your
teeth into. Fights, camera hatcha and ladies, if you think
deep nights to browsing, yucky, thank you? All right? So yeah,

(04:57):
basically the idea here with the whole Tale from the
Crypt thing is, you know, Tales from the Crypt was
was like the show on HBO back in the day,
and We've talked about it on the show before here
on like, um, some of our horror anthology specials around Halloween.
You know, it's basically it's based on the old horror
comics and each each little story in the horror comic

(05:17):
would be about some horrible person getting their come upance,
and so each episode of Tales from the Crypt generally
revolves around that as well. Yeah. To me, the opening
theme music of Tales from the Crypt, I think it's
composed by Danny Elfman. It just sounds like the nineties,
and it sounds like being a kid in the nineties
trying to watch stuff that you're not allowed to watch.

(05:38):
It's like it's the sound of I think we may
have made this comparison before, but it's the sound of
a scrambled cable channel that you don't get that shows
are rated depravity all night and every day. Yeah, yeah,
it really does. Um And I guess one of the
interesting things about this is, like you can imagine the
studios came in there, some folks behind the scenes were like, Hey,

(05:58):
the show is really successful, we should do a movie.
The thing is, Tales from the Crypt. It doesn't really
lend itself well to that kind of format unless you're
gonna do an anthology film with just a bunch of
little stories. Um, much like the original tales from the
Crypto film the nineteen seventy two anthology picture from Amaricus. Oh,
I don't think I even knew that existed. Yeah, it

(06:20):
has the crypt Keeper in it, but the crypt Keeper
is played by Sir Ralph Richardson in like a hood.
That's nice. Um. Yeah, But so, as you mentioned, the
the standard format of the tales from the crypt episode, uh,
and you know, there's some variation, but the most common
format is that you have basically a sleazy salad of

(06:41):
gratuitous gore and nudity in which a morally bankrupt person
does something evil, they think they're going to get away
with it, and then they get their just desserts via
the the vengeful wrath of a monster, demon, ancient curse,
haunted scarecrow, chainsaw freak or whatever. Yeah, it's in a way,
it's it's like horror in a very simple form, fulfilling

(07:04):
a societal need. You know, we need the villains in
our world, in our life to suffer, and these little
stories provide that suffering along with some you know gratuitous violence,
maybe a little nudity, uh and and maybe a few
laughs as well. A lot of gallows humor finds its
way into these episodes, and a lot of puns. I mean,

(07:24):
the crypt Keeper loves to make death related puns. That's right, because,
of course, the big thing about the the HBO series
is hosted by the crypt Keeper. This wonderful puppetry creation
of a of a reanimated corpse that just gleefully uh
takes you on this journey to hear all of these tales.
You know who the crypt Keeper is. It's the preserved

(07:46):
remains of Jeremy Bentham. I couldn't stop thinking about that
this time. I mean, like god, that that rotten looking head.
It's almost perfectly the crypt Keeper. Well, let let's start
with the crypt Keeper talking about people involved in this one.
The crypt Keeper's voice is, of course John Casser born
in nineteen fifty seven. Uh. He a longtime actor and

(08:07):
voice actor, but he's most well known as the voice
of the crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt on
HBO from eighty nine through as well as the cartoon
Tales from the Crypt Keeper three uh three Tales from
the Crypt movies we'll get a touch on that in
a bit, but basically, just uh, with the Crypt Keeper,
we have a great voice coming together with an amazing puppet.

(08:29):
At least for most appearances, and all this based on
one of the EC comics horror hosts. You know. Other
hosts included things like the Vault Keeper and the Old Witch,
but those were just in the comic, right, They were
not on on the TV series. I don't think so. Though.
Occasionally the crypt Keeper has a guest that's not a
corpse in those little segments. Um. Uh. And we'll touch

(08:50):
on some of those examples as we go here. But
of course in this movie Tales from the Crypt Demon Night,
the crypt Keeper is just there to set things up
to say, hey, we can hear it is for you
a movie. Um. And the movie itself is pretty self contained. Uh.
It has a few nods to tails from the through
the crypt within it. Uh. But but but still, you

(09:11):
could watch it in and on it on its own,
without the intro or the outro, and you'd get it.
So I guess the first person we should talk about
is the director. This was directed by Ernest Dickerson. Dickerson
was born in nineteen fifty one, and he was a
classmate of Spike Lee at the Tisch School of the Arts,
and so he went on to work as a frequent
collaborator with Spike Lee as a cinematographer on various Spike

(09:36):
Lee joints including School Days, Do the Right Thing, Moment
Or Blues, Jungle Fever, and Malcolm X. He also worked
as cinematographer on films from John Saylis, the film Brother
from Another Planet, and Jonathan Demmi, and more recently, you
might have noticed his name as a director on a
number of TV projects, including multiple episodes of The Walking Dead,

(09:57):
Tremay The Wire. He se like one of those TV
directors that just works all the time, and he's also
done a lot of work in the horror genre. He
was He was cinematographer on the TV series Tales from
the Dark Side, an anthology series, and while Demon Knight
was his first horror or sci fi film as a director,
he went on to direct Future Sport, which looks interesting,

(10:19):
and the two thousand and one Snoop Dogg ghost movie Bones,
which I haven't seen, but I was reading a little
about and it it seems like it has its following,
so maybe it's worth Yeah, Okay, I mean it's snoop
is always entertaining, so so. Demon Knight, though, follows up
on Dickerson's film Juice, which started Tupac Shakur, and also

(10:41):
the exquisite film Surviving the Game. Do you remember this one, Joe,
of course I do. Surviving the I don't think Surviving
the Game is as good as Demon Night, as comparing
Dickerson's violent thrillers here surviving, but one thing that is
great about Surviving the Basically, it's an adaptation of the
short story The Most Dangerous Game about a group of

(11:03):
about like a rich guy on an island who hunts
human beings for sport. Uh. This adapts that to the
modern world, and it's a movie about a character named
Mason played by iced T who is like homeless and depressed,
and he gets offered a job by a guy who
he meets somewhere I think maybe at a like a
like a place where they're feeding the homeless, and he

(11:25):
gets recruited for this job to be a wilderness guide
for a bunch of rich dudes played by people like
Rutger Howard, Charles Stutton, Gary Busey, F Murray Abraham, John C. McGinley.
It is a real powerhouse cast, like every person who
could have played like, you know, the cocaine king of
the week in an eighties crime movie. Uh, they're one

(11:47):
of these, one of the party of the hunters in
this movie. And then of course the twist is once
they get out in the woods there they tell I see, okay,
well we're gonna hunt you now, but I see outsmarts
them all. So I remember catching this one on Able,
I think, and uh, and I remember finding it irresistible,
just drawn right into it. Yeah, And I I gotta say,
Iced Tea has a very weird charm in this movie.

(12:10):
It's hard to describe exactly what it is, but he
he plays a He plays a very rude and sympathetic
protagonist as he's like chugging along through the forest while
they're chasing him on a t v s. Yeah. So um.
So it's some some notable films so from Dickerson there
now coming back to Demon Night, Uh, there's a there's

(12:31):
an excellent shout factory slash screen factory, uh blu ray
of this film that came out, and that's that's what
I watched for this. But it also includes some some
really cool features, including interviews with Dickerson among others, and
one of the things that came out of it, aside
from him just being really chill and apparently easy to
work with um and open to some of the lunear
ideas that the actors brought to the table. Um, he

(12:54):
was also a major force behind having a more diverse
cast on this film, including the casting of African American
actors Jada Pinkett, c. C. H. Pounder, and Mark David
Kinnerlely who plays a very small part towards the end,
but also presumably First Nations actor Gary Farmer, who will
touch on here in a bit. And it's worth noticing

(13:14):
that even our secondary minority characters in this film survive
quite far into the picture right. The cliche long being
that in many horror movies it is common for the
cast to be all white except for one black character,
and the black guy dies first. So so yeah, it
seems that having having a black director at the at
the front of this thing really helped out in that regard.

(13:36):
For instance, the main character to character the Jada Pinkett
plays Jada Pinkett Smith plays in this UM like that
was I think the studio wanted Um. I forget which actor,
but they wanted a white female actor for the role um,
and he would he insisted on this, so and I
think it's a better film for it. Yeah. Now the
screenwriters on this were Ethan Rife, Cyrus Voris, uh and

(13:58):
Mark Bishop. That this trio they had written a post
apocalyptic movie called Escape from safe Haven in and that
was directed by Bishop, and Bishop didn't didn't seem to
go on to do much else in film, but Rife
and Voris went on to do quite a lot, including
two thousand and eight Kung Fu Panda. Yeah, they they
wrote that, uh, and you'll find their names attached to

(14:20):
anything involving Kung Fu Panda. They also wrote two thousand
tens Robin Hood. That's the Ridley Scott version starring Russell Crowe.
I didn't see um and Demon Knight was apparently a
spec script that they had out there and people were
you know, excited about it, and it got picked up
by this Tales from the Crypt trilogy idea, like they were.

(14:42):
The basic idea was like let's do three Tails from
the Crypt films will find the screenplays and we'll we'll
just you know, put to some Crypt Keeper at the beginning,
some crypt Keeper at the end, and you got yourself
a franchise. Now. Unfortunately, being a feature film instead of
being made for TV, it does not have commercial breaks
for the crypt Keeper to come in in the middle
of the movie and comment about what's currently going on

(15:04):
in the story. He's just at the beginning and the end.
But even with the only the beginning and the end
of Brackets, the crypt Keeper is a very welcome presence now.
Apparently I was watching some of the making of and
apparently there was some push and pull on the idea
of like what the the movie itself was going to be.
The screenwriters really thought, this is more of a hero movie,

(15:27):
this is about a hero's journey, etcetera. And then everyone
else was like, well, but it's a monster movie. It
needs to be a monster movie. It's Tales from the Crypt.
And then you know, ultimately goes back to what we
said earlier, like this is not a come uppance film.
It's not a film about a horrible person getting their
come uppance. It ends up really being more of a
hero's journey kind of a story with monsters, but with

(15:47):
the Tales from the Crypt branding. But also I mean,
I think Dickerson handles it exactly right, and that it
is not overly serious in any way, Like it is
a very loose, fun, frisky movie that does not ever
stop to take itself too seriously. And the scenes that
do get kind of serious addressing, like the you know,
the recurring hero Boti for whatever those are, those are

(16:10):
brief enough to be kind of welcome, and then it
quickly gets back to goofy gory jokes. Absolutely, Well, let's
start talking about some of these heroes. Um again, Jada Pinkett,
who would become Jada Pinkett Smith later on she plays
our hero. And this is um Jerry Jerry Line, Jerry Lynn,
like jer Lyne Jerlen. It it's one of those where

(16:30):
I got prepared for it to be pronounced a certain
way and then it was not in the film. Well, actually,
I think different characters in the movie pronounce her name
different and you might say, hey, that's not consistent, but
then hey, if you have you ever known somebody whose
name as written could be pronounced different ways, people pronounce
it different ways. But we're going with Jerlyne Jerylene. Okay, Jerylene.

(16:53):
I'm gonna trying to be consistent. I may just say
Jada pinkett Um anyway, Yep, she's in this. She had
not yet married will Smith, but she was on the
rise here. She was coming off of the Hughes Brothers
Minister Society as well as Jason's lyric and she would
apparently go on to like really break out. Uh in
is the nutty Professor. Then she was in Scream to

(17:15):
the Matrix sequels, just to name a few. I saw
that she's going to be in the upcoming New Matrix movie,
so I forget who her character is, but whoever she is,
she must survive the third film. Yeah. Now, let's see,
this is not a hero. This is our main antagonist
in the film, but we have Billy Zane as the collector.

(17:35):
Billy Zane is just wonderful in this movie. He is
he's I mean, Zane has a very punchable face and
a lot of roles and oh he's so punchable in
this he's he he just he hands it up so
much like he's great, playing like a smug, privileged s
ob and in so many other films, I mean, especially
Titanic comes to mind. Uh but yeah, he's he's like

(17:59):
a loony Tunes character in this in all the right
ways that would be in the appropriate Um, in the
appropriate ways. He was just like a cartoon character. Oh well,
you included a detail that he I think revealed in
one of the making of features. You said you were
watching that once. Once I read it, I was like,
oh my god, it's absolutely right, the one about a Laddin. Yes, yeah,

(18:19):
he He says that he approached the role like he was, uh,
playing the genie from a Laddin, except evil, And then
you see it in everything. It's exactly what he's doing.
He's almost Robin Williams, but a little bit less manic
and more smooth, but smooth in a very sinister and
silly way. He he's perfect in this role. Yeah, this

(18:42):
is This is apparently one of his favorite roles that
he did, and yeah, he really shines in it. Um.
You know, no matter what your opinion is of of
Zane in general, you know he's he's been in some
real some real stinkers for sure. Um. But yeah, this
has just the right amount of Billy Zane. And oh
and this was fun too. This was revealed one of
the treats. This was apparently Zane's first film without a hairpiece.

(19:04):
Uh so, yeah, apparently he came in to meet Dickerson
and he brought in like a little suitcase and he
opened it up, uh, and he was completely bald, you know,
and shaved down, and he showed him the hairpieces. He's like,
which one do you want me to wear for the film,
And Dickerson's like, I don't know. I like what you've
got going on there, And so that's what they went with,

(19:24):
which is bald, which yeah, um yeah, his bald head
is exquisite. And I wonder if that inspired the scenes
in the film where he's carrying around a suitcase or
maybe that was part of the script anyway. I mean,
he so we should say that in the movie we
said he's the villain, but he is the titular demon Knight.
He is a hell beast who's a kind of uh

(19:47):
smooth talking prince of the Infernal Realms who wants to
do some kind of apocalyptic magic and it involves him
frequently getting out a suitcase and asking people to put
a thing inside it. Right yeah, yeah, so he does
have case around, so presumably a very similar suitcase that
that held his many different hairs. Now you've got a
lot of films listed as Billy Zane credits that almost

(20:10):
none of which I had any idea Billy Zane was in.
Oh yeah, he was in Back to the Future. I
didn't know that he was in Night six is Critters.
I had no clue on that one. Yeah, no idea. Um,
I guess he really stood out. I guess one of
the early roles where he really stood out would be
the nine thriller Dead Calm, alongside Sam Neil and Nicole Kidman.

(20:31):
And he's he's quite good in that. I've never seen it. Oh,
it's good. It's a really really good, solid thriller. Huh.
Was that the one where he plays like a he's
like an evil guy on a boat. Yeah, it's a thrill.
That's probably oversimplifying it, but yeah, yeah, I mean I
haven't seen it forever, but I remember it as being
quite good. Um, it's like you take the end of
Cape Fear and make it a whole movie. Yeah, yeah,

(20:51):
I guess so. Yeah. Um. Zane of course did a
lot of TV work as well. He was on Twin Peaks, Um,
he was in the film Tombstone, And of course we
can't forget his starring role in Nine Is the Phantom
um because there was that whole period in the nineties
when Hollywood decided that old timey characters like Dick Tracy
and the Shadow were the next big thing, and that

(21:14):
was a weird time. I kind of wait, so was
the was the Phantom an old property that was being
revived or was it a new property in the style
of the old adventure cereals? The Phantom was an old character? Yeah,
oh okay, yeah, I know the Shadow was. Didn't Alec
Baldwin play the Shadow? And there? Yeah, that one. I

(21:36):
do not remember that one as being good, but it
had Alec Baldwin and it was directed by Russell McKay.
So I'm sure if I were to watch it again,
I would I would find some some lovable, weird things
in it, but I don't know. Uh, there are other
Moquet films I would rather see. Now. I know you
have unspeakable love for Dick Tracy. Do you want to
talk about that? Uh? Well, I wouldn't say it's unspeakable

(21:58):
love because I haven't seen it since I was a kid.
But it it was one that was not as good
as anticipated, perhaps, but it had such weird mobsters in it,
Like all the mobsters. You know, in a way they're
they're trying to create the kind of the rough characteratures
of the of the of the old comic and in
doing so, they created these monstrous mutant gangsters that were

(22:22):
just you know, irresistible and also just so weird, Like
it's so weird that the movies filled with them. Wasn't
there one called little Face who had a huge head
with a little face in the middle of it. Yeah, Yeah,
there was Flat Top, and I think there was one
called no Face who didn't have a face. There was
one called the Brow was just this enormous grotesque brow.

(22:43):
Like just tons of those type of characters, most of
which they did nothing with. Most of them are just
I think like they have like a good dozen of
them that they kill in one scene just in passing. Yeah,
they just have like the Star Wars Cantina scene, but
it's mutant mobsters. Yeah. So I feel like that kind
of and me for traditional gangster films to a certain extent,
because you're like, oh, well, you know, Godfather is good,

(23:05):
but it didn't have any mutants in it. Oh. I
like the Godfather is good, but yeah, but I'd like
to see mutant gangsters come back. I feel like that's
the that's the takeaway from Dick Tracy. I agree, a
little bit more boiling acid version of The Godfather. All Right.
We said that there was an immortal drifter in this film,
and there is the character breaker played by the the

(23:28):
always actually excellent William Sadler. Oh Man, William Sadler, he's
got one of those faces, right, That's just he has
an inherently evil looking face, which makes me assume that
in reality he must be a nice guy, because I
recall there being a bit about this in the novel
Around the World in Eighty Days, which I haven't read

(23:49):
since I was a kid, but I remember there's a
part where a police detective is talking about how people
who have criminal looking faces have no choice but to
be honest, because you know, everybody looks at them and
suspects there are criminal. It's only people who look very
trustworthy who can really get away with great crime. Uh So,
I don't know for sure, but but yeah, Saddler, he
just has that face where he looks like a devil person.

(24:13):
And there are other people like this who just kind
of naturally look like a cartoon devil, like Malcolm McDowell
kind of looks like a cartoon devil. Uh. There there's
a prosperity Gospel TV preacher named Mike Murdoch who just
looks like a cartoon demon. Well Sadler, Yeah, he definitely
has that sort of face. Uh. He's played a fairly

(24:33):
fairly diverse amount of roles. Um, I don't know, he
does tend to sort of play you're rougher characters. He's
he's played villains of differing varieties. Like he's definitely played
the suit wearing villain, but he's also played the you know,
the sort of uh, you know, dirt kicker kind of
a villain as well. Um. For instance, he's he might

(24:55):
be best known for his role as the Seventh Seal
inspired death in the and Ted movie. Right, Yeah, the Reaper.
They melvin him and uh. And also, interestingly enough, his
rendition of that character shows up on Tales from the
Crypt at one point, uh in the crypt Keeper sequence
where he's like playing a game at chess with the
crypt Keeper or something. But he was in shoshankredyption, he

(25:18):
was in the second die Hard movie. Yeah, he's the guy.
He's like the nude martial arts colonel I remember he's
in the hotel room doing like naked yogur or something,
and then he I think at some point he like
punches out a TV screen. Um. He he was on
Tales from the Crypt. He appeared in the UH in
what I believe was the pilot episode The Man Who

(25:39):
Was Death, and he also played the host of a
Tales from the Crypt spinoff, the title of the Two
Fisted Tales. This apparently wasn't picked up. They ended up
just using the three episodes. I think that they shot
using them as Tales from the Crypt episodes. But he
had this whole persona of Mr Rush, a crazy old
cowboy and a wheelchair, and if you look it up

(26:01):
on YouTube you can find clips of it. It's like
he's just completely over the top in the role as
one should be. Oh yeah, William Sadler is always like
a high tension cable, you know, He's like one of
those like steel cables that a tram car rides along. Yeah.
But yeah, throughout his career he's played very serious characters
and he's played just real live wires. He seemed to

(26:22):
have a tremendous amount of range there, but you don't
see him. I guess playing in the hero as much,
but in this in this one, because he's got an
evil looking face. Yeah, but it works here because he's
supposed to be he's a I mean, he's a guy
on the very um you know, um Margins of of
Law and Society. Yeah, alright. Some of the rest of
the cast here, cc H Pounder we already mentioned. She

(26:44):
plays a character Irene. She's a She's a talented actor,
probably best known for her role on the Shield. She
was an avatar, she was in RoboCop three and a
lot of TV work. I think she does one of
those big crime TV shows down, doesn't she like in
C I S or something. I think so. Yeah, she
that's the sort of show that she seemed to get
a lot of work on. Now. Another character actor in

(27:04):
this is uh somebody who recognize from previous episodes of
A Weird House, and that is Dick Miller, who plays
Uncle Willie. Yeah. Um, I would say this, whatever you
expect of a Dick Miller character, you will get it
from this film. He's not really playing against type or anything,
but it's a substantial role. And I found out on

(27:25):
the special features for this one. This was his first
time in his entire career, in which he wore prosthetic makeup.
I assume this is for the part where he turns
into a demon, not for his regular regular appearance, because
here he is, like you say, playing perfectly to type.
He is just a whiskey guzzlin drifter. And there's some
great drifter to drifter relations between him and William Sadler. Yeah, yeah,

(27:49):
they have, they have some good scenes. Um, apparently Dick,
like Dick Miller was, you know in all these old
older films, these Corman films and all. So apparently the
effects guys and Dickerson himself, they were just super were
thrilled to have Dick Miller on the picture because you know,
this is the guy who was in all those old
films that that they grew up watching. So, uh, that's
pretty You a vacuum salesman in a movie I saw

(28:10):
when I was a kid. Yeah, and you get taken
down to the furnace by by the Marlboro man. It's
like I've seen you die so many times, about one
more time. Um, let's see Thomas Haden Churches in this
plays a character named Roach. Um kind of Church is
kind of like a younger handsomer William Sadler in some ways.

(28:30):
Um yeah, in this movie. He so he plays this
swaggering creep, but with a swaggering creep with a luxurious
like Jethro tull roady hair. And he's also wearing a
Trent Resiner style see through T shirt. Yeah yeah, he's
he's absolutely hateable in this role and in all the

(28:51):
right ways, Like he really really makes you hate this character. Uh.
This was only his third film role though. Wow. Yeah,
he'd he'd go on to I mean he would, I
think he don't. He'd been on the show Wings and
that's what he was mainly known for. But he wouldn't
of course, being Sideways and Spider Man three. Now the movie,
of course, like any good horror movie, especially any good
horror movie from the nineties, has its share of useless cops.

(29:14):
And we have two useless cops in this one, one
of which dies pretty soon. The other is the deputy
deputy Bob Martel that that survives very long into the film.
And this is this is played by character actor Gary Farmer.
And here is your absolutely solid overdrawn at the Memory
Bank connection. Because he was in overdrawn in the Memory Bank. Really,

(29:35):
I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. Um, that of course
was American Playhouse. Um rendition of Overdrawn at the Memory
Bank that starred Rawle Julia and he just has a small,
ultimately kind of awkward role in it. Um. But he
went on to be in a ton more more stuff.
So he was born in fifty three. Uh, he's a
Canadian First Nations actor and um, let's see something like.

(29:58):
For instance, he went on to be in dead Man
the Western with Jarmusch movie yea yeah, and then also
in his film Ghost Dog Way of the Samurai. He
actually plays the same character in those two films. He
plays his character named Nobody. Okay. Yeah, And he was
also apparently under consideration for the role of Dr Gonzo

(30:18):
in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, but but I
didn't come together for some reason. Oh. That ultimately went
to um, what's his name, Benicio del Toro, Yes, Benicio
del Toro. Yes, Um, you know what. Actually, I should
go back on what I said earlier, because I I
said that this movie has useless cops and it is
a very reliable trope of horror movies, especially like horror

(30:41):
movies of the nineties. But it's it's pretty much always
there that you can just count on cops to not
be useful in them, you know, like you run up.
You never have the scene where you run up to
a cop and say, uh, there's a monster chasing us
and they whip out their gun and say where get
behind me? No, No, it's always like a calm out
and missy and then there's just like a claw sticking

(31:02):
through their face or something. Um. But in this movie, uh,
Gary Farmer's deputy Bob. He actually he becomes more useful
as the movie goes on, and then it's actually kind
of heroic by the end. Yeah. Yeah, even even though
he you know, as as a character actor, he has
this kind of like bumbling quality to him, you know
that plays well to comedy, and he does some good

(31:23):
comedy in this. But yeah, he also they do more
with the character than just have him fumble a gun
and get killed by a monster. All right. Another interesting
character we have in this is Charles Fleischer, who plays
his character Wally. Um. I think this is a character.
A lot of you may not not recognize his name,
some of you may not even recognize a picture of him,
but you would recognize his voice, at least one voice

(31:46):
that he does because he was the voice of Roger Rabbit. Wow.
And uh, outside of that, he often plays weirdos. He
has a real kind of like weirdo look to him.
You know, he plays that kind of character. Well, uh,
he doesn't disappoint in this film. He plays another weirdo.
He plays a very awkward guy in this movie. But
but he's he's I've seen even a number of things.
He had a fun role recurring role on Jonathan Ames

(32:09):
TV series Blunt Talk. So he's always a treat when
he shows up. But it doesn't seem he didn't show
up a lot and things I watched. Now we know
that Ernest Dickerson was himself cinematographer on on a bunch
of other movies. So he's directing here. Who does the
cinematography one Rick Boda or Bota b O t a
um who went on to direct not one, not two,

(32:32):
but three direct to video Hell Raisor sequels Right in
a Row, Health Seeker, Debtor, and Hell World. I believe
that's gonna be your numbers six, seven, and eight in
the Hell Raizor series. I would say that is not
a high point of the series. Um, but it's weird
because so those are not very good Hell Razor movies.
But I like his cinematography style in the movie. It's nothing, um,

(32:55):
you know, it's nothing all that artistic, but it's very fluid.
I mean like it's good in the sense that it's
the kind of good filmmaking that you don't you're not
thinking about technique. Yeah. Yeah, And it has some some
nice use of gels in places that they kind of
give it that tales from the crypt vibe without like
overdoing it. Um, Like you see a similar thing done

(33:15):
in uh what was Stephen king um creep Show, where
there was also a homage to horror comics of old
But there are scenes in that where they they just
go crazy with the gels to create these kind of
comic book colors, and there's a little of it in here,
but it feels a lot a lot more restrained. So
Hell World is the Evil Dead or not Evil Dead

(33:37):
the the I've totally forgotten what it's called Hell Razor.
Hell Hell World is the Hell Raisor movie where the
tagline is evil goes online. Oh man, it's the one
where they go to So I think it's supposed to
be that the pinhead is in a computer or something,
but then nobody ever really goes online in the movie.

(33:57):
I was talking to my friend Chuck about this not
too long. He pointed out that it's really a very
offline movie. It's about a party people. People go to
a big party at somebody's house and Pinhead starts killing him.
Oh wow, well, yeah, I never saw any of those,
those these three hell Raiser films in particular, but they
all had Doug Bradley and then at least a little bit,
so they have that going for him. I guess Hell

(34:19):
World also has Lance Hendrickson. Oh yeah, yeah, Oh, I
think I read about that where they were able they
were able to get him for the role because he
happened to be in I want to say, these were
filmed in Romania, and he was in Romania already film
filming some other role and they're like, hey, we can
get Lance Henderson. He's got another day or two on
his hotel room. And they did it perfect serendipity. Yeah. Uh. Now,

(34:41):
wen we mentioned that the cinematography of the movie is
quite effective. It's uh, it's nothing too flashy, but it's
fun and it's loose and it's very fluid and uh
and you're you're just right in there in the action.
I would say the same thing for the makeup effects
in the movie, which are quite good. Yeah. Yeah, the
the makeup and the monsters in this are great. And
we have the Todd Masters Company to think for this.

(35:02):
They did all the special makeup on the picture. They
did the monsters, and Masters was ideal for this because
he was a Tales from the Crypt veteran already at
that point, and he's he's done a lot of film
and TV work, uh, and he did a great job
on the monsters in this film as well, from like
a uh just from like a conceptual standpoint, because apparently

(35:25):
in the early stages the monsters were going to be
more zombie like or just kind of like possessed people,
and he ended up pushing for a different design, a
design that ultimately I think ended up being cheaper, which
the studio liked. But it but it leaned heavily on
body paint and lean actors uh in stilts with just
prosthetic heads and uh some interesting like growing and tail

(35:47):
features that will get to uh here in a bit.
The monsters are terrific. But Masters has been involved in
a number of different films that have great practical special
effects like Necronomicon, Book of the Dead, Uh, Hell Raiser, Bludline,
The Resurrected. The Resurrected is the the good Lovecraft movie
that I was trying to remember in a previous episode. Um,

(36:08):
he was in the fifth Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
He was in Return of not In. He did the
effects for the Return of Swamp Things, Slither Star Trek,
First Contact. He did the borg stuff in that with
the you know, the Borg queen. Uh, he was responsible
for that. And apparently he's going to direct a movie
according to IMDb, about giant leeches. So bringing the giant

(36:28):
leeches back. I think they've been absent from cinema for
what since the fifties or something. I'll bring them on.
But yeah, I agree with everything you said. I really
love the monster design in this movie. It's simple. They
look great. They've got green, glowing eyes and mouths. It's excellent.

(36:52):
All right, Well, let's jump into the film itself. Let's
let's roll through the plot. Well, so, first of all,
you have a class tails from the Crypt opening, which
is you know, your Dolly shot through the cobwebby mansion,
and then you go down a secret passageway into the
dungeon and it looks like it's the layer of Dr
faust Us. And then the crypt Keeper he pops up
out of the coffin and cackles at you. And as

(37:14):
I said before, all the sound effects here, it's the
Tales from the Crypto music is playing, and then you
get there, hey crypt keeper laugh. That is that is
such a powerful auditory queue to nineties childhood mindset. I
showed that just the opening to my son to see
how he would dig it, and he did not dig it.
He found it. He found it. They found it frightening,

(37:37):
and he did not want any part of it. That's
probably all for the best. This movie is not for kids.
And I'm not to say he was traumatized by it
or anything, but I was like, you want to check
this out for Halloween and he's like, okay, sure, and
then he saw it and he's like, no, thank you. Now.
I don't know if we even mentioned this before, but
the movie starts with an opening segment that is not
connected to the rest of the plot. I guess we

(37:59):
did mention that the were brackets, but it starts you
off in media rez with with stuff going on with
other characters you like paying up And uh, it's on
the scene of a woman reclining in lingerie talking on
the phone about how she has just murdered her husband,
like his bloody clothes are still all over the place,
and he's and we see he's downstairs dissolving in a

(38:21):
tub of acid in the basement, and she's talking to
her lover on the phone about how much they're going
to enjoy spending all of the dead guy's money. And uh, then,
of course, pretty much immediately the tub corpse wakes up,
and then it climbs the stairs and it has a
hatchet in its hand and it charges in on her
in a psycho style scene where she's in the bathtub

(38:42):
and he's like ah, And then we get a cut, cut, cut,
and it turns out it's a movie within a movie.
The corpseman is being played by John Laraquette, which is
just excellent. Wait did we already talk about John Laraquette.
We didn't, but of course he's He's most famous, or
at least for older TV viewers, for being the lawyer

(39:02):
What was the name of Felding on Night Court? I
never saw Night Court hand Fielding I'm sorry. Yeah, he
also plays a lawyer at some point on the West Wing. Yeah,
he played a lot of characters like that. But for
horror fans, he of course with the narrator on the
original Texas Chainsaw Masker, that opening scroll that sets the
tone for the film, and he did that at least

(39:23):
in the follow up in Texas Chansaw Masker too. I'm
not sure if if he did any of the sequels
beyond that. I think he did, but most notably that
first one though, really the first thing you hear in
that that picture, he's good at playing a kind of
like a thundering, conceited, pompous wind bag exactly. Yeah, that's
that's That's everything that he played to a t. But

(39:44):
in this movie, it's funny because he's just got this
bit part where he plays an actor playing a tub
corpse who's about to hatch it his his scheming ex
wife to death. And then but it turns out it's
a movie within a movie, and then we pan up
on the crypt keeper who's sitting in the director's chair,
so imagine Jeremy Bentham's preserved remains and start he starts

(40:06):
screaming at John Laraquette about how he can't act at all.
He's like, you're no Gory Cooper, You're not even a
Robert Deadford. And it was an ambitious bit of special
effects here, because they clearly had a live actor doing
some sort of like green screen head and then they
put the puppeteered crypt Keeper head over that in post

(40:29):
so it looks and it looks maybe a tiny bit rough.
You can tell there's some some ambitious special effects going
on here, but it's still amusing, which makes sense. You know,
this is Tales from the Crypt the movie. You should
go for it right, right, And it's great because so
this opening film within a film thing is is perfect.
It is a Tales from the Crypt episode. You know,
it's a ceed tale in which a bad person gets

(40:51):
what's coming to them. But so then of course we
get the crypt Keeper introducing the main story. He's you know,
I can't remember exactly what he says, but he makes
a bunch of puns and then he's like, I call
this one demon night, and then we cut to the
opening credits over a car cruising on a dark desert
highway with the most perfect nine soundtrack choice. That's right,

(41:13):
it's filters hey Man Nice Shot, which is also in
the trailer, I think, which I think, this is just mandatory.
This was just us law that if you had a
film that came out in you had to use hey
Man Nice Shot. Yeah, I was. It was hard to
contain the laughter while that was going on. And then
of course we see William Sadler driving uh and he's
you know, looking over his shoulder as if pursued by

(41:36):
the hounds of hell. But no, it's even worse. It's
Billy Zane and a cowboy hat. And it's very funny
when it first reveals Billy Zane smirking face in the
in the car that's chasing William Sadler, And so William
Sadler starts to run out of gas on this desert
highway and there is a highway showdown slash shootout, like

(41:57):
Billy Zane's riding up on him, and William Sadler gets
out a rifle it's like a lever action rifle, and
start shooting at Billy Zane's car. Eventually, the car catches
on fire, but Billy Zane, undeterred, just rams straight into
Saddler's car. Sadler gets out of it. At the last second,
and there's this huge fiery ramming explosion. So William Sadler
escapes the flaming wreckage. And I guess we're supposed to assume,

(42:19):
as as the naive audience, that Billy Zane has been
killed in the explosion, I guess, But why would we
actually believe that? I mean, would it make sense for
Billy Zane to be killed? And it doesn't, does it.
But William Sadler he looks at his palm and he
sees a bunch of dots. I think they're a little
like star tattoos on his palm, and some of them
are glowing and others are not. And then he just

(42:40):
sort of ambles on through the night. He's got he's
got drifter energy, he's got places to be. Apocalypse is
too for event, right, and so he he ambles on
into Wormwood, New Mexico, again not a real place, and
and goes up to a diner called the Halfway House
Cafe and immediately starts trying to jack cars, Like he

(43:00):
gets out of a butterfly knife and is sticking it
in the key hole of a car outside in the
parking lot, and a kid comes out and He's like, Hey,
are you stealing my daddy's car, And he's like, no,
I'm just testing the lock. Wormwood, New Mexico seems like
a very interesting place because not only do they have drifters,
it seems to be exclusively populated by drifters, Like I

(43:22):
want to meet other drifters that make up this town,
like Mayor Drifter and the rest of the post office,
like everybody is kind of like a a suspect drifter
type character. It's a drifter community. The like the characters
in the town who are not drifters, they're written in
such a way that they're like one decision away from

(43:43):
being a drifter. Yeah. I mean we all are, really,
but but especially these characters. So anyway, a bunch of
people run out of the diner. I think one of
the people who runs out as Thomas Hayden Church. But
a bunch of people run out and then they run
William Sadler off, So he's chased off into the night
where he is into Dick Miller as an old drunk,
and they share some whiskey and commiserate for a bit,

(44:05):
and then Dick Miller tells him that, Hey, I know
a place where you can bed down for the night,
and so they're funneling him towards this old church. You
can immediately tell the sort of plot mechanics that are
happening here. We're saving all of the characters into this
one fortress location. Now, fun fact about this location, Uh,

(44:26):
it looks really great, loose phenomenal. But when they went
to to put the film together, Dickerson particularly did not
want to film at night and have like really long
nights of shoots for the casting crew. So that was
one of the reasons that instead they got an airplane
hangar and in it they built that building and the

(44:46):
immediate surroundings like in its entirety so that they could
just film during the day at their leisure and have
complete control over the lighting. But there was one issue
pigeons had were we're already living in there in the
airplane hangar, and you know how pigeons are They they're
constantly making noise and making these pigeon noises. So they

(45:09):
couldn't get rid of the pigeons. But what they ended
up doing is every time before they would roll the
roll the camera, before they you know, say action, they
would fire off blank. They would fire off a gun
in order to frighten the pigeons and get them to
shut up, so they could they could have this window
of time in which they could film before the pigeons
started their ruckets. Again. Oh, that's funny. Somehow I feel

(45:31):
like I could kind of sense that it was that
it was indoor for outdoor, even though that's a fast expanse,
like you can't see the walls of the airplane hanger
or anything. But um, that's good. And I think I've
said this on the show before. I for some reason
always really enjoy a good indoor for outdoor set. Well.
It can make a very surreal environment, you know. And
it makes sense for this film because the only exteriors

(45:52):
we have are this loathsome former church in the middle
of a desert at the end of the world, and
then one flashback to the Crucifixion. So yeah, so it
makes sense that that we have this alien environment created
by shooting everything inside of an airplane hare exactly. But so,
what what is this church? Dick Miller explains to us

(46:13):
that it it's a church that isn't a church anymore.
He says they decommissioned it in the fifties due to
lack of interest. That's that's the official terminology on the
decommissioning form, right, Yeah, it was like interest on who's
part like on the Preacher there, or I think it's
the town. It's just you know, it's just a bunch

(46:33):
of drifters, just like I'm not interested in that reverend.
But so yeah, it turns into it turns out to
be this boarding house. It's like a desert hotel sort of,
and it's it's like we said, it's like the evil
Dead cabin for the movie the Fortress of Order that
will collect the characters and then fall under attack. It's
the supernatural alumo. Oh and then meanwhile we also see

(46:57):
that Billy Zane is hooking up with police, Like the
police are investigating the crash on the on the highway.
The cars are on fire. They're like, nobody could have
survived that. Those cars hit each other going a hundred
miles per hour, which we saw that opening scene they
were not going a hundred miles an hour, but whatever.
Um so. But then Billy Zane just sort of like
walks out from behind the flaming car and he's like, hey,

(47:19):
what's up, And they're all like, oh, I didn't think
you could have survived that. But so he explains to
them that he was chasing a man who stole something,
and so they're like, well, we'll help you find him,
and so Zane therefore enlists the police on his team. Initially, yeah,
he's just so ding dang charming, they just can't say no. Yeah. Now,

(47:41):
I have to say that the film does a great
job setting all this up there and there's no wasted
motion really and getting us from here into our siege
location and beginning to establish the rules for everything. Um.
And then the characters are mostly there to fulfill basic
tropes in the story, you know again, like the bumbling cop, etcetera. Um,
But that you know that, I feel like it comes

(48:02):
together rather rather well and also ultimately surprises you with
a few choices in terms of like who survives and
who doesn't. Yeah, totally alright, we got everybody more or
less bottled up inside this this old building. Who are characters? Okay,
I'm not gonna remember all of them, but so the
main ones, I guess. You've got William Sadler as as

(48:22):
this guy who will find out his named breaker. He's
the drifter. You've got Jada Pinkett playing Jerlyne, who is uh,
she is somebody who I think formerly was in prison
and now she's working for the boarding house on work release. Um.
Then you've got cc H Pounder who is playing Irene,
who is the owner proprietor of the boarding house. You've

(48:44):
got Cordelia who is a prostitute. You've got Wally who
is a male carrier. You've got Thomas Hayden Church. I
don't remember his character's name, but he's the creep. He's
the he's roach roach right. Yeah, he's like the cook
at the diner who is just a a nasty backstab
and woman Hayte and Creep, and then a few others. Well,

(49:04):
you got uncle Wally in there. Oh do we not
already talked about uncle We talked about uncle Uncle Willie.
That's that's that's stick Miller. Yeah. And then uh, and
then we'll have the police and then oh and there's
a kid who shows up later, I think, but that
that's basically it. That's it, Okay. I thought I may
have forgotten somebody. There's a great scene when we're sort
of just getting to know all the characters. There's a

(49:25):
scene of Breaker eating this food on the table. It's
just bright green slop. It looks like the slime that
they used to have on Nickelodeon. Uh, it was just
bright green liquid that he's eating with a spoon and
he slathers it and catch up. Yeah, but he's happy
to get it. He's just he's clearly Yeah. And then

(49:46):
eventually the police arrived with Billy Zane in response to
a report of an attempted car theft. I think that
was William Sadler trying to jack the car with his
knife earlier. And as soon as Billy Zane arrives and
sees William sad Lear in the sporting house, it is
just like this, like the you know, the lights go
off and he's sicking the cops on him. They've got

(50:07):
they've got William Sadler and cuffs, and Zane is looking
for what Breaker stole, which is an antiquity of some kind. Yeah,
and that's gonna be our our main plot element here.
They we're get to do in a bit. This is
the key. This is the thing that the demons want
and that the mortals in the universe absolutely cannot let
fall into their hands. Right, And then Dick Miller sells

(50:29):
him out. I felt betrayed. They've got him in the cuffs.
They're They're like, where is the thing? They've been looking
around for it. I think they come across Thomas Hayden
Church and in the middle of some kind of sex
act that involves him getting hooked up to a car battery.
Oh yeah, he has a great line, didn't He's like,
manipples are burning. Yeah, I think he says they're smoking, smoking.
Man nipples are smoking. Yeah, it's good. I hope it's

(50:53):
in his reel. Oh, it's got to be. But yeah.
Eventually they they've looked all over for this thing. They
can't find it. Then Dick Miller sells him out. He
sells out Breaker. He's like, hey, actually, the artifact is
just here under the table where everybody's standing, um, and
it's some kind of key, but it's also like a
bottle filled with some liquid, and Billy Zane won't touch it.

(51:15):
It's clear something very significant is going on. What he
wants is for Dick Miller to pour out its contents
and then put it into a suitcase for him, and
Breaker tells him not to do it, and they argue
back and forth, and eventually the cops are like, Ah,
to hell with it. Both of the cars from this
car crash were stolen. You're both going to jail and
we'll figure it out later. So they try to take

(51:36):
Sadler and Zane off to jail. But then Zane, I
think the switch flips and he comes off the leash
with an excellent punch right through the sheriff's head. Through
the Sheriff's said Ricky Oh style, Yeah, except unlike Ricky Oh,
he's got this wonderful awkwardness of the head being stuck
on his fest on his arm, so it's like having

(51:57):
to try and get that off of his hand. It's
pretty great, yeah, And then all hell breaks loose. Uh,
Billy fights to get the key, breaker burns him with it,
so it's like a vampire with a crucifix, you know.
If you touch the key to his face, it seems
to burn him. And then Billy Saying flies out the
window and then stands there while everybody watches him, and

(52:18):
he pierces his palm with a fingernail, bleeds a bunch
of green blood all over the place, and the drops
of his green blood on the earth make an army
of demons to attack the house. He throws a nice
hissy fit first though there's a there's a great but yeah,
then he starts summoning in the monsters, and man, if
you if you weren't already on board with this, once

(52:38):
the monsters pop out in this film, you're really good
to go, because these are some great monsters. Again, these
are like they're They're unlike most monsters I've seen in
other films. They're like these ghastly gaunt grave walker types
but with also with the with the glowing green eyes
that we mentioned, but also like piercings in places, but
but not in like a punk sense, and it's like

(52:59):
a seemly like antique sense, like their creatures of another
time even you know, so they have I feel like
they play against expectations in the of the typical demon
and zombie trope, like like the jewelry you might find
in like an ancient grave or something, you know, like
ancient Egypt or something who or something. Yeah, they have
kind of a gin quality to them, and they have

(53:22):
a great silhouette to them. You know. It's kind of
like when you think of um like having a good logo,
they say, well, it has to be able to work
in black and white, or you think of like a
iconic characters like Darth Vader, you can recognize him by
his silhouette, and these monsters cut a really signature silhouette,
which is key because they're often just should you see
some great close ups of them, but they're often just
in the background, in the in the shadows, kind of

(53:44):
creeping about and all. Yeah, and that's that's great also
because they provide a sort of textural setting that really
allows Billy Zane to shine because Billy Zane is the
front man doing his uh, doing his his funny stick.
He's like a you know, a burless comedian or something,
and then he's got the green eyed goblins all slinking
around behind him to back him up there his chorus line. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh.

(54:09):
Now on the feature, at one cool thing they mentioned,
I mentioned how like basically these are these these outfits
depend heavily on just body painting, like slender actors. Um,
so there's a lot of like skin involved, and they're stilts.
But then they have an awesome prosthetic head that looks
kind of like a you know, demonic pickled pig or something. Uh,
and then they then they have this uh, they're they're

(54:31):
growing in there. They're they're they're that that area is
covered up, and they have these tails, uh, these like
stunted tails that wag and apparently those were radio controlled
and the actors had to stow the battery like high
up between their legs. So it was quite a demanding
role of you know, still battery between your leg big
piece of prosthetics over your head. But the end result

(54:53):
looks tremendous. I totally agree. So so once these monsters
are in play and Billy Zanes outside trying to cause trouble,
we've got scenes of William Sadler running around the house
trying to seal up the openings, like seal up the
doors and windows with blood from this key. And then
we get flashbacks of the Crucifixion of Jesus involving green

(55:15):
eyed demons and lightning strikes. Yeah. Yeah, And again they
have a has an excellent otherworldly feel to it, like
this could be the Crucifixion on an alien world, which
especially since it seems a bit different, because I mean,
some of you, m you've ever went to Sunday School,
and you know, you ever read your Bible, you probably
don't remember the hooded demons that are showing up and

(55:36):
chasing people around at the foot of the cross. But
it happens here. History is written by the victors, you know.
The demons lost that struggle, so they got written out
of the story. This is funny because it made me
think about what is the best gold Gotha scene ever
in a horror movie? And another one that occurred to
me is Layer of the White Worm by Ken Russell,

(55:57):
which is an awesomely weird movie that we may have
to cover on here someday. Oh yeah, yeah, that one
has a good one. I feel like maybe there's at
least one other Kin Russell film that has a crucifixion
scene in it doesn't show up in US, well maybe
in The Devil's but also in the Altered States. Oh,
the one where William Hurd is sort of playing our

(56:18):
Gordon Wasson or or maybe he's playing what's his name, Uh,
the guy you did an episode about, Oh, John C. Lily. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think that one has a weird crucifixion in it.
There's also an excellent otherworldly crucifixion scene in uh The
Ninth Configuration, the film directed by William Peter Bladdie, and
written by him based on one of his novels. Yeah,

(56:41):
it's that one. That's a weird film we could discuss,
and it's got some great performances in it. So after
this part where the demons are set loose, the rest
of the movie, Uh, you could say it becomes less structured,

(57:02):
I guess, because it's just sort of like a you know,
you get different sort of vignettes within the supernatural demon siege,
Like you get uh, Billy Zane issuing hallucinatory temptations to
various characters in the boarding house. Uh. And then often
this temptation scene will be followed by demon possession of
the person, and then there will be attacks by monsters,

(57:23):
humans attempting to escape, and and so forth. Uh. And
more flashbacks about the backstory of the key. We we
we get to see Breaker in World War One. It
seems looking exactly the same age he's in the trenches.
A buddy of his gets killed somehow and is bleeding
all over the place, and the guy's like, now you
are the chosen one, and and the I guess the

(57:46):
the memory of the Crucifixion of Jesus gets like downloaded
into William Sadler's brain. Yeah, and he's now part of
this lineage of immortals that have to protect the key
and carry it through time. Right, And eventually Breaker has
to exp playing this to all the other characters and
they're like, wow, that's interesting. You're the chosen one across
time and you've been alive since World War One. And

(58:07):
Thomas Hayden Church, who I just realized earlier his his
initials are THHC. But anyway, he comes up. So he's
been a jerk the entire time so far. He's been,
you know, acting cowardly and cruel to others. And after
this story he comes up to a Breaker and he's like, wow,
I really admire what you did. I was wrong about you. Uh.

(58:28):
But then, of course, what he's really trying to do
is get Breaker to let his guard down so he
can double cross him, and he swipes the key from him. Yeah,
now he swiped the key. Meanwhile, the temptations continue because
even though Billy Zane and his demon minions are stuck
outside for the most part, uh, he can reach out
to your mind and tempt you, uh last temptation of

(58:50):
Christ style with something you want. And some of the
these make for some nice fun little sequences. For instance,
when he's tempting Jada pink Its character, um it's it's
the this is the sequence where it's like in um
it feels like it's in a parking garage and there's
this weird scene of of her face on a screen
and they're like demon hands on the other side pressing

(59:12):
against it. And then when that rips open, she's she
sees this image of breakers breaker like being torn apart
by the creatures of them eating his entrails. Yeah, well
he's I think Billy stands tempting her with the idea
that she that he could make her like rich and
famous world. Yeah, she'll see the world. Oh, it's like
it's like the vivid you know what's they'll like to

(59:34):
see the world. And it seems jay to Pinkett really
would like to see the world. Like she's interested in
this temptation, though she doesn't fall for it. She's got
the heroic constitution, uh to to resist the temptation. I'm
not sure what what would that What would that saving
throw be in d N D well, I guess that
would be they'd be like a wisdom saving throw. Okay,
so maybe a charisma I don't know, depends how you played.
Probably wisdom. She succeeds on the wisdom saving throw. She

(59:57):
resists the temptation. But what he's tempting her with is like,
it's not exactly clear, but it seems to suggest like, Yeah,
you could have your face on the cover of magazines
and you could travel to all the capitals of the
world and see Rome and everything. Wouldn't you like that? Oh?
And the whole time, the Grave digg Is track Suicide
is playing, which is a just a great beat in

(01:00:18):
the background. Yeah, that's an awesome song. I don't does
it ever get to the part with lyrics? I don't.
I don't think they use that much of it. Yeah,
they just use the intro. You gotta be looking for
it to notice it. But yeah, that is a great beat.
It does not get to the part about confront an
alligator let it eat your raw. Oh man. But there
are other temptations scenes as well, right, oh, yeah, there's
a bunch of them. There's the temptation of Dick Miller

(01:00:40):
is great because his is quite different. His is a
world of beautiful naked women offering him bottles of scotch,
and then he's just sort of like wanders through this
this crowd of ladies being like, try mine, and holds
up but they're all holding identical bottles of Scotch, I think.
And then he goes up maybe maybe Dick Miller just
dedicated to one brand. I couldn't tell what brand it was.

(01:01:02):
They've got the labels turned away. Um. But then he
he goes up to a bar, and then it turns
out Billy Zane is the bartender in this temptation dream
and he so he's a friendly bartender who offers him booze.
But I think is also supposed to be Hunter S. Thompson.
Was I mistaken here? No? I think you're right. It's
very very much a Hunter S Thompson. Look he has

(01:01:24):
going on behind the bar there. Yeah, and again it's
it's it is Billy Zane is an evil um genie
from the Disney movie Aladdin. Here and in a way
it works really well. I can't remember what Billy Zane says,
and maybe something about the golf shoes, but but it works.
Oh but anyway, this leads to, you know, as the
standard sequences, somebody has a temptation, they succumb to the temptation.

(01:01:45):
They're like, yeah, I want I want what you are
putting down. Billy Zane um and Dick Miller obviously wants this,
and so he turns into a demon and attacks some
of the characters. I don't remember all who, but I
think maybe he's fighting with Jada Pinkett and and with
William Sadler and and somehow his head gets cut off
and uh. And there's a great scene where they the

(01:02:08):
demons are vulnerable in their eyes. The way you can
put a demon down is to like shoot it in
the green eyeballs. And so the way they stopped Dick
Miller's severed head from continually commanding his body to attack
them is one of the characters grabs his head and
shoves it into the antler of a mounted stag. Yeah.

(01:02:29):
There's some great iye violence to the demons in this film. Yeah.
There's also a great scene where Billy Zane is wheeling
and dealing with Thomas Hayden Church because I remember thc is.
He's been like, hey, I've got the key, I stole it.
You know, I'll give it to you if you let
me escape. And so they're they're talking about their deal. Uh,
and Billy Zane is just walking on sunshine. He is

(01:02:50):
so light on his feet and frisky and exciting. Yeah
he is. It's it's another great scene. And it's and
you know exactly what's going to happen, you know, and
it's it's delightful. This is a scene in which it's
it's like Tales from the Crypt classic again, because you
have a horrible character that's gonna make making this choice.
You think he's gonna get away, but no, he's not

(01:03:10):
gonna get away with it because he's gonna be double
crossed by Billy Zane. He barely makes it down the
stairs before he says, actually, I lied, You're not gonna
make it away safe, and all the demons turn on
Thomas Hayden Church and terry his character to pieces. The
next thing that was really funny was that there is
a scene of the next Temptation scene is of the

(01:03:30):
kid Billy where he has turned into a violent maniac
by reading a copy of the Tales from the Crypt
comic book. I like that because on one hand, it
does it is the idea of like the corrupting comic book,
but it also made me think, you know, with the adults,
Billy Zane's character of the collector, He's like, what have
I offered you? Travel? What have I offered you all
the beautiful women in booze in the world, But for

(01:03:51):
a kid, He's like, what have I just literally turned
you into a bloodthirsty monster? Would you be down for that?
And kids like, yes, yes, I vote yes, let's do
exactly at then, and that's what happens, pure honesty. I
love it now. As the characters, it's the kind of
standard thing where in one of these supernatural fortress siege
movies where the characters are continually driven further and further

(01:04:14):
into retreat, like further back into the bailey or whatever,
and so at this point they end up retreating to
the attic, and at each point of retreat there's some
kind of battle that goes on, and uh, we we
get some chances for characters to actually be like courageous
and be heroes. So, uh, Deputy Bob and Irene at
one point like suicide bomb a bunch of the demons

(01:04:37):
with a vestimate out of grenades. Yeah, they didn't watch
an Aliens wheight, did they? Yes, they pull a Basquez
and it's kind of sweet. Yeah, it is, of course,
breaker bites it as well there after, Yeah, he gets maimed,
and then of course he's like, oh oh they got me,
they got me, you gotta become the new Chosen One
to Jada Pinkett and she's like what it she? I

(01:05:00):
guess she like catches his blood I think in the key,
and it's just understood that yep, from now on she's
just going to be immortal and and carrying this key around.
But then then Billy Zane comes in for one final
showdown with with Jada and uh so, and I gotta say,
at the beginning of the scene, he's got on sunglasses

(01:05:21):
that make him look like Riddick, but but kind of
like Riddic. Yeah, wait, what kind of Riddick like pre
Riddic this the Riddic didn't exist yet, right, Oh, I
guess not. Yeah, like maybe Vin Diesel. Eventually he saw
Dimon nine. He's like that that's the look I'm gonna
steal exactly. No, I'm not saying they're imitating Ridic Riddic.
I'm just saying he does look like him. Yeah, they

(01:05:43):
look kind of like, yeah, almost like wrap around goggles. Yeah. Yeah.
But there's another temptation scene where I guess he's trying
once again. I think he's trying to convince Jeralne to
marry him. I didn't exactly follow what was going to Basically,
it's like, well, I've won this point. I'm gonna kill you,
but if I could turn you instead, if I could,

(01:06:04):
you know, if you marry me, then I'm even more
of a success back home in the in the hells.
So he's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot the moon.
I'm going for it. You know, he's he's filling on
top of it, and uh so he makes the offer, yeah,
and Billy saying he is on broiler mode. In the scene,
he is like the energy is electric. And there's a

(01:06:27):
part where infernal lightning erupts out of his groin. I
don't know if that's explained why he's just been like
talking and then like lightning shoots out of his crotch.
That was in the featurets. It was mentioned that this
was Zane's idea for the character, and Dickerson was like,
let's do it, let's roll with it, let's give it
a shot. Good choice. Um, And then there's a good

(01:06:47):
climax that involves Jada Pinkett. The whole time that she
somehow has gotten William Sadler's blood in her mouth, and
the whole time Billy Zane is like asking her, well,
what do you say? He's trying to get her to
say something, and she won't. And then it's revealed that, oh,
she hasn't said anything because she still has the blood
in her mouth, the blood of Christ, I believe somehow. Okay,

(01:07:08):
so yeah, we can go ahead and talk about about
this real quick. The idea is that this key with
the special glass container portion of it, are they it
was used to collect the blood of Christ at the
crucifixion and yeah, yeah, and there's still a little Jesus
blood in there, but it's been replenished with other people's blood,
especially the blood of the Chosen Ones, over time. And

(01:07:31):
so I'm not sure how the genetics of that works
out or if that's important for holy blood, uh you know,
hurting demons, but that's apparently how it's supposed to work, right,
And so she's got this blood in her mouth and
what do you know, she spits it all over Billy
Zane's face and that that defeats him in the end. Yeah, great, Milt,
it's a great death scene. Because he melts a little bit,
then he turns into a puppet, he turns into a giant,

(01:07:54):
skeletal demon, and then he explodes. They just do all
the things like the f X team just they had
no chill on this film. They're just a hundred miles
an hour the whole time. And so I guess we're
just going to assume that now Jada Pinkett is gonna
live for eighty years or whatever until eventually she has
to find the next chosen One to put her blood

(01:08:16):
into so they can go on preventing Billy Zane from
taking over the world. Where I guess it's not Billy Zane.
I think he's destroyed. There's just gonna be a new
collector from Hell chasing her around, right, And we see
him at the end because she gets on a bus
and when she gets on she does the thing with
the blood that's done throughout the film where you form
a seal that the demons cannot cross. And then this

(01:08:36):
other guy that has a briefcase for the key, he
sees it and he's like, no, I'll wait on the
next bus. And so the chase continues, and and it
potentially sets up a sequel that we never got. But man,
I think it would have been good, would have been
far preferable to Bordello of Blood, which was the actual
tales from the Trip film to follow. I never saw

(01:08:57):
a Bordello of Blood, but I remember a when I
was in elementary school, a friend of mine telling me
about how his mom had a copy of that movie
on on VHS, and I was like, I did not
know what bordello meant and I and I knew nothing
of of Dennis Miller. I mean, well, yeah, it definitely
has Dennis Miller in it. I never saw that one.

(01:09:20):
There was even a third one that was I think
is even less worth seeing. I think it may have
Tim Curry in it, but it's like a New Orleans
zombie kind of a thing. How could a movie with
Tim Curry be not worth seeing. I don't know. It
just doesn't. It doesn't. I just don't. It doesn't call
out to me. Maybe other folks have have seen it

(01:09:40):
and they can tell us how it is. But I
also understand that like some releases of it didn't even
have the crypt Keeper sequences on it. They released it
as its own thing, and then other versions they put
the crypt Keeper back on but it's also not really
top shelf crypt Keeper puppetry going on. So it just
sounds it sounds like it would be sad to watch.
I'd rather stick with Demon and I it and like

(01:10:00):
the really great tales from the Crypt episodes. Okay, now, um,
in turns, we'll Larry talked to a good bit here
about the monsters and so forth. I guess it is
worth noting that we do have holy relics that or
at least alleged to contain the blood of Christ. I
was looking around a little bit. There are a couple
of relics of the Holy blood. Um, there's one in

(01:10:21):
the Basilica of Saint Andrea. There's one that at least
was at some point in Westminster in England. There's the
relic of the Precious Blood in vine Gotten Abbey in Germany.
Uh So, the idea of this key containing the blood
is it does seem to be based on actual holy

(01:10:41):
relics that allegedly contain holy blood. Yeah. I think also
this ties into the to the grail legend, like the
idea that at the death of Christ that Joseph of
Arimathea held a grail that caught the blood of Jesus
stripping from the cross, and that somehow later he brought
with him like containers of blood to other places. I

(01:11:01):
think like that that's part of the local Glastonbury legend
in Britain. Now. I don't know if any of these
have actually been used against demons though, but perhaps perhaps, Man,
there's so much they could have done with a sequel though,
you know, they could have had a thing where all right,
she's on the run as always, the demons are after
but then where does she wind up a genetics laboratory?
What do they want to do? They want to use

(01:11:22):
the precious blood in the in the key. They want
to try and clone Jesus or something, and then that
becomes a whole plot element. But then he'd be a
mutant because he'd be like part Jesus, but then also
part William Sadler and part Jaya Pinkett. William Sadler is
Jesus Christ in Demon Night too. There's still time. There's
still time, Ernest Dickerson, if you're listening, please make it.

(01:11:46):
I will watch it. I will. I will take all
my friends to see it. I will as well. All right, well, um,
before we close out, I just want to I'll mention
again that you can rent or buy this one digitally
most places these days. But that twenty of teen Blu
ray release from shout Factory screen Factory import uh is
really slick and it's loaded with cool content. So if

(01:12:06):
you're a Demon Night fan, that's worth picking up. If
you're a Demon Yeah, we rented our copy from Video Drum,
the last video store here in Atlanta, Georgia. So if
you live in Atlanta, uh, go check out Video Drum.
It's great. And if you don't, look them up online
because you can buy some of their cool merch. Oh yeah,
they got great T shirts and stuff. Oh. I was
gonna say that the T shirt I'm wearing right now

(01:12:28):
is one of theirs. It's not, but it could be.
It's of their style. Oh oh, I see it. It
says Herzog and then it has the Danzig logo. Nice
Rachel got me this one? All right? Uh? Well, anything
else we need to say about Demon Night before we
we close the crypt down this one? I think that

(01:12:50):
wraps it up. But I just say again, great fun. Yeah. Yeah.
As always, we'd love to hear from everyone out there.
Do you have do you have memories of seeing this
when it came out. We're discovering it later on. Uh.
Do you have particular episodes of Tales from the Crypt
that we're your favorite. Uh, we'd love to hear from
you about that as well, or just any of the
other elements in this be it Holy Blood or really

(01:13:10):
cool demons. Uh, it's all on the table. Dick Miller
movies that we should add to the list. Let us know.
In the meantime, if you want to check out other
episodes of Weird House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in
the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. Also, I
try to put up a blog post about the Weird
House series at Samoda music dot com. That's s E

(01:13:32):
m U t A Music dot com. It's just my
own personal blog. We don't have anywhere else to put
blog type content these days, so I'm just slapping it
up over there. Long. May you slap blogging and slapping
huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. UH. If you would like to get in
touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, or just to

(01:13:54):
say hello, you can email us at contact at Stuff
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