Episode. 42: Street of Shadows / Something in the Walls

We're hello there. I'm Chris Stashew, I'm Mike White, and this is Father Alone, and the three of us are coming to you from the Twilight Zone back in nineteen eighty five. Hey, everybody, it's the Twilight Zone. That's the most excitement we'll be showing on this episode of the show. On this episode of the show, we are going to be talking about the Twilight Zone nineteen eighty five, and we are going to be talking about the forty third and forty fifth episodes of the thirteenth or third season over all, the eighteenth and nineteenth episodes.

Streets of Shadows and Something in the Walls. A man living what Thorow called a life of quiet desperation, a man once successful, once firmly ensconced in the American dream, only to have it turn into a nightmare. Steve Cranston, a statistic whose number is about to be called from the Twilight Zone. So Streets of Shadows aired January twenty first, nineteen eighty nine. It is directed by Riisard Boujatski and written by Michael Reeves.

And it's a Ard Rizard the Wizard. I'm saying Richard. On Wikipedia, it says Riisard Bujatski. Okay, am I wrong? Is IMDb right again?

Maybe he's known as maybe Risard in Polish is Richard because he's a Polish director. It could be oh, okay, yeah, I see IMDb rise Ard and then on Wikipedia on the the episode list it's Richard. So then if you click through, it's rise Ard. Reasons these these Wikipedia people, I know, jeez, get it right. You guys spend so much time trying to take down stuff that I post, which is factually correct.

Why don't you spend more time policing yourself. That's true. Self policing is the way. Yeah. So speaking of self policing, they should have self policed this episode out of existence.

I mean, it's a what, no, come on? Before I know we have sixteen thousand times. Yeah, this makes the fucking millius one that that opening day seemed like genius, Like yeah, I mean, good God. So you have a man who's poor and he lives in a shelter with his family, and he goes and robs a rich guy and when he gets shot by the rich guy. When he gets caught, they switch places.

It is it is like the racial episode from the two thousand series. It's it's like everything we've seen on this show before. What would happen if you walked a mile in another man's shoes? Right? Cool?

That concept was cool in the original show. Maybe dead man's shoes. Yeah, yeah, back in the sixties, motherfuckers. Not loc to the new Twilight Zone. Yeah, And what's do What's he do when he switches places?

He loses his cool? I don't know what what are you talking about? Who is this? I'm gonna call the shelter. I'm gonna visit myself in the hospital.

No, he manages to fund the homeless shelter. He doesn't give his family money or anything. He shelter. Couldn't he have done both? Couldn't you just emptied the bank account of the guy into his bank account and said to the fucking loo motherfucker.

Wouldn't that be what any of us do in this situation? Like you see, he was an honest man and now he's been given a chance to wage except for the fact that he broke into that guy's house in the episode and was going to rob him. Yeah, and was like a total cunt to his wife, and you know, in a homely shelter and he tried to kill him. The guy robbing him tried to kill the guy who was robbing, right, he like took that bottle the sniffer and threw it at him. Yeah, yeah, trying to get away at that point, here's just a crystal decanter rotten.

Yeah, who hasn't thrown a crystal decanter at our boss when they're hiding, they're holding a gun on us because we've tried to rob them. Oh this, um, this episode happened me twice yesterday. Charles Haye's a good actor. This is yet another episode where we've got a really good performer who deserves better. Yeah, that's what That's what I took away from this one.

I'll make a confession. I interviewed Hate a few years ago now, and I actually went and I watched most of this episode in preparation of talking with them. I couldn't make it through the first time. As soon as you woke up, I was like, oh boy, it's gonna be one of those episodes. I think I know where this is going.

The funny thing is I when we watched the last for our last episode, I continued on and started watching this one, and then when I went to play it again today. It was at the exact spot that I left it, which is a halfway. As soon as I got shot and woke up, I was like, okay, I'm out. Yeah. And it's written by someone Matt Michael Matt Reeves, the guy who wrote Batman.

No, it's Michael Reeves, who worked on a ton of really well known animated series in the nineties, Gargoyles, Batman, Want Me for Batman? This, on the other hand, is so wrote. It's just shocking. Well, you gotta start somewhere. I guess I don't really blame the writer on this one.

I'm blaming the powers that be for letting the gatekeepers, the show runners, if you will, who continue to allow these barely their stories to get through because they have some sort of twist that is twilight Zony. I'm making air quotes. You can't see it, listener. It's What's even lazier is the like outro narration. It feels like someone wrote it on a napkin and handed it to Charles Adman, like, just fucking read this shit right.

It's been a time of changes for Steve Kranstant. Nobody cares this much. And what's funny is they have almost as the one who cuts this show together. I tend to put the trip, like the intro or closing narration in, and it's been getting less and less the longer we've been going on this show. And then all of a sudden, it pops back up, and I was thinking to myself, Man, I'm glad it's back.

And then I was like reading the narration when I was prepping for the episode, I was like, man, they don't even give a shit enough to write anything compelling in the opening or closings anymore either, Like like you said, Father Malone, I don't even know who the fuck's running the ship anymore. If really, yeah, there's two guys named and I have no idea who they are and why. Yeah, it's almost like mad libs now for the closing narration and even the opening narration. Yeah, it's like, just make sure it ends in the Twilight Zone. Yeah, say whatever you want.

It could be here, could be there, but I can guarantee you it's the Twilights. I'm like, yeah, okay, the hard times are by no means over. Yeah, the Twilight Zone. Oh good lord. I know that.

If you're a listener of this show. It's probably getting old to hear us complain, but I will tell you, as the people doing this show, it's getting old for these episodes to fucking blow. Like none of us go into this with the expectation of like this is gonna suck. I can't wait to rip it up. Part the three of us are sitting here.

I know, the three of us watch this hoping, praying, fingers crossing that they'll do something, And it's just it's like watching a car crash in slow motion and knowing you can't stop it and just hoping something happens to change the course of action. But it's just, oh my god, I'm always hopeful. Yeah, and Zone is there every time to break my heart. Yeah, swift kick right into the nuts, just bang right with the fucking full heel of the fucking toe, just or the fucking fucking foot, just right into the nuts. Reminds me that there's a Harvey Pea car cartoon where he's staring in a mirror and the thought balloon is there's a reliable disappointment, Like that's what the Twilight Zone has become to me.

And again, it's it's surprising how quickly it's fallen from that first season. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys so quick though, this is like four years later. That's fair. That's fair for us too. Yeah, yeah, we're ancient now.

Yeah when I started this, I was in high school. Wow. What none of us realizes? This is good. Just gonna loop back on itself and we're gonna start again from the beginning because we ourselves are in a really bad episode of the Twilight Zone.

We're in a season three episode of the Twilight Oh no. And there'll be no rhyme or reason to it, no lesson to be gleaned. Just all of a sudden, all of a sudden, fucking Dan Judea shows up in our zoom call. Hey guys, I'm the Devil. Yeah, I would just ask him to take his shirt off.

I've been I've been trying to get an interview at that guy forever. I'd be like, okay, so tell me about running scared. Just say just say that you're a representative of some sort of hair care company for men, because you know, he's a hairy motherfucker so he probably is used that product. Yeah, he's got a pelt as a man with the pelts. I agree.

Hey, there, we go Mike White and Dan Judea and with Pelts. I'd watched that show. Robin Williams is your patron saint. All right, Oh, you guys want to talk about the next episode. Yeah, yeah, so let's talk about the next episode, Something in the Walls.

We direct your attention to the man with a sleek later briefcase. His name doctor Mallory Craig, occupation psychologist, newly employed by the crest Ridge Sanitarium. For the last two weeks, he has been visualizing his first day, looking forward to it with eager anticipation. But there's a terror behind those cold institutional walls that nothing in his education has prepared him for. So Something in the Walls is directed by Alan Croker.

It has written once again, mister J. Michael, we love you. You're so good at writing the show. And you know, like you know, it's just so good. We just love it.

And it stars Deborah as a woman who is suffering from seeing faces in the walls, patterns my man, patterns, Freddy Krueger. Even in the Walls you think, Okay, what was that about? That was some cheap Oh I liked it. Actually I liked it, but I thought I thought that seeing the entire body sort of move out and then slowly like glide down the wall, I thought was really effective and creepy, Like that's the good thing in this episode. Everything else was garbage.

This woman, she she checks herself into a sanitarium because she's begun seeing faces popping out of the wall. New doctor arrives has to diagnose her. She's terrified of patterns, right, my many solid colors only, thank you? Right, except we get a flashback to her house where they're coming through her wall, which contains a zero pattern. It's a flat beige wall.

It is a flat wall. I was like, wait, what in the entire time, all I keep thinking about is there's a short story Charlotte can't remember her last named the Yellow Wallpaper. Yeah. All I could think this entire All I kept thinking was I want to go read that story because it was genius, and this is a really bargain bin version of it with no credit. Such a bargain bin version of it that they actually do mention on the Wikipedia page that it is a variation of that story.

Oh, I mean that's all I could think of, too. I mean, I'm sure that's all any of us could think of because it's that story is so synonymous and like just so no well known, right, everybody knows that story. I mean you learn it in high school. So yeah, yeah, exactly, and like Jay Michael Straczynski had no access to that story get influenced by it at least, like like you know, at least rod Starting had to pay a bunch of lawsuits every time he accidentally stole somebody's tail. That's fair well again, and to your point, father Malone, it's it is a easy adaptation of a very well written, well thought out short story.

The short story takes less time to read than the than the episode takes to watch, and it is ten million times better. Yeah, I mean I can. I can still conjure that one. This one hopefully will be gone by the end of this podcast. You're trying to exercise it.

I gotta go. It was just so poor and can anyone tell me? I maybe I was distracted, but we keep getting flashbacks to her life for the moment where she decided she had to check herself in right, and the faces are in her walls which contain no patterns. Then she goes into her child's bedroom where scratched into the wall is tell no one, right, do we know what happens to the child? No?

We don't, okay. And then now she's in the sanitarium. She's terrified, patterns, won't tell anybody anything. And then one night they find her there or something and she confesses to the doctor that she knows what it is and what they want and she'll tell him tomorrow. Right then, what happened?

I mean, can honestly what has possessed by or was that her in the wall at the end? Yeah? That was her? They it was like, yeah, it was a consciousness swap thing. It's lazy, don't you like it?

What did they want? They wanted her? Body's her child? Singles in your area is what they were looking for. And ladies and gentlemen they found them.

I don't have a fucking clue because again, it's this, it's this whole idea of telling someone else's story. The main character story is being told secondhand. It's it's moronic. You have the character of the doctor who is the main character that you follow, but he adds nothing. He's a sounding board for the other character, So why follow him?

Right? I actually listened to our podcast about toys of Calum Yeah the night just because it started playing on my Alex and I was like, well, listen to it. But in that particular episode, we kind of came to the conclusion that we stayed with the family like from the beginning, and so we already knew what was going on, and they had a doctor character come and try to assess it, and we were just on the family side because we already know, right, And and in that case, it should have followed her investigating the family. This is the opposite. This should have just been there should have been no sanitarium at all.

It should have been just a woman in her house with these things, trying to get through the walls and telling people about it and they all think she's nuts that I mean yeah, and then it like grandma yeah, or like you call finally the paranormal investigators and they arrived just a second too late, right, somebody who finally believe deserved sure, like that could have been interesting something I don't know what's going on here and the whole i'll tell you tomorrow thing. I was like, really, that's what you're gonna do. Yeah, it's like that, how do you keep them more on and suspense I'll tell you later. It's just lazy screenwriting, that's all it is. It's and yeah, And the sad thing about this show is is it feels like it's become a show where they see it as an opportunity to be lazy as opposed to an opportunity to elevate an anthology series.

You got twenty one minutes on a fucking TV show that's on live network TV, and this is this is your best offering. We all know how much it takes to make a fucking show like you fark this out. You're wasting everybody's time at this point, Like Straczynski seems to be writing the bulk of the series brand anyway, h like maybe he's stretching himself a little fist. I'm trying to let him off his own hook. Here, what a nice guy you are.

I was trying to add for him. I'm trying to find some light in all of this darkness. God, it's it's just so more of dot dot dot. It's demoralizing. Oh yeah, because I don't want people to watch this, Like I can't in good conscience say hey you should check this out, Like no, no, no, run the other way.

Actually, you know what, don't watch this. Just read the short story. Yeah, I read that short story that they claim is not the basis for this episode. It's not that they don't claim, it's just that they didn't give it any credit at all. Well, that to me is as well as claiming that's fair, that's fair.

I don't know if you know this, but Tarantino does that too, and movie No, I don't believe it. Yeah, you're just jealousy jealous of his talent. Don't you know that that good artists creating great artists? Steel J Michael Straczynski is a great artist. Oh well, you know what they say.

The mattress full of one hundred dollar bills that he probably dries his tears with would lead me to believe you're correct. So yeah, stap it. Yeah everybody, Yeah, this isn't watch either of these. We I feel like you know who, feels like we're in the fucking twilight zone, the three of us, because we just keep saying the same shit every week. Yeah, we're stuck in our loops now, guys, well maybe next month will be better.

Yeah. So on that note, on the next episode, we're gonna be talking about a game of pool. And Room two four two six, not to be confused with Room two three seven or fourteen hundred fourteen o eight, fourteen o eight. Thank you right, that's a good movie. Go watch that?

What the John Cusack movie? Yeah, I love that movie Orichie might or alternative. I haven't watched it. I like both endings, me too, I like equally. Yeah, that movie is good.

I actually like that movie. Yeah, no, no, no, that's a that's a the worthy Stephen King adaptation from a top from a time when Stephen King adaptations were really bad for the most part. So yeah, you know, Larry Karazuski and Scott Alexander wrote that screenplay, who to me remained the best writers in Hollywood, So that a basis a lot and wouldn't make me like the movie if it was bad. But like, they did a good job adapting that very very thin short story into a full length feature. Maybe they should have worked on this show.

Would might have been great. They were busy Problem childing at the time, that's true. Is there going to be a third season of Twilight Zone? The new one? So you're gonna ask if there's gonna be a third Problem Child movie?

Is there a third season of the new show. I know there was a second season. I don't remember reading that there was going to be one. But stranger things have happened season four coming soon of Stranger Things. Yes, yes, stranger things have yet to happen.

It's true. Oh god, until we talk about those news two episodes. Where could people find the Internet's best movie podcast, The Projection Booth, Mike, Well, you can find me over at projection podcast dot com, where every week we are looking at a different film, maybe even two sometimes and uh yeah, that's that's that's how I roll. Careful, careful guy. That's crazy talk too.

In one week it's wild wild stuff hog wild over there can get a hog wild over at the Projection. I like your podcast. Oh thank you, Now I'm on record. What about you? Where can people find you watching movies that they've never seen?

Just stay away, everybody. If you really need to find out anything about me and my point of view, go over to foom alone dot com. That's a link treaty to all my stuff, my YouTube channel where I do movie reviews and stupid little movies, and my main thing is my podcast, Dark Destinations, just a half hour radio drama that I produce um monthly, although I've been on hiatus for a little while, but I'm starting it back up, so stay tuned. By the time this day airs, then you know it'll probably have a new episode. The best radio drama on the Internet, folks, If you're not listening to it, the fuck you doing?

Yeah, man, I heard it pretty good one the other night. Action. I can't remember the name, but A Dark Destinations. Yes, that was weird. I'm looking strange.

As for me, you can find me at c Stashue dot com. Like Father Malone mentioned, that is my link tree, c stac hiw dot com. That's my link tree, so go there my stuff. I work on Culture Cast, Barney Miller Tales from the Crypt podcast that's done buried in its own tomb, so fucking creation. As for this show, Twilight Zone eighty five dot com is where you can find this show.

Big thanks is always too Abby, No, not Abby, Stabby, that's ranking and bass. Big thanks is always to Roxy Drive and Neutron Dreams for the music for the show. We'll catch you on the next episode can be said to