Father Malone's Weekly Guest Spot - Pet Sematary - 1989 - A Year in Horror with Paul Waller

But you know what the most in the world is, It's fear every year. Fine, my number one pick for a horror movie from nineteen eighty nine is definitely an outsider choice. But when I was looking down that list and I put it against the other big hitters, for me, nothing matched. How this one leaves me feeling after those end credits that at the finale itself, it's insane. But how about when Sheena is a punk rocker is blaring out of the cab of the truck as it takes that fateful journey past that Creed residence.

Or maybe when it's Lewis's first day on the job and Pascal's been hit by a truck and the side of his head is hanging out. No matter how hard the new doctor in town he tries to matter of factly fix that guy, he just simply dies on the table. God bless you, pet Cemetery. Don't get upset that IMDb scored you only six point five out of ten. We're not having it on this show, neither.

Lord. Unless you and keep you is anyone of a veried a person. I'm there He's gonna do something really bad. Sometimes, don't just better if it doesn't work, but I just put him back. Stephen King's Petey Rader r starts Friday, April twenty first, at theaters everywhere.

So a letterbox synopsis says of this. After the Creeds family cat is accidentally killed, a friendly neighbor advises it's burial in a mysterious nearby cemetery, and for an MVP, well here we are now entertain us. It's returning guest. He was last on the show just a few months ago. He was on the Patreon where we covered the video Nasty Dead and Buried.

He's the host of the Midnight Viewing podcast and a ton of wonderfully hardcore scare content on patreon dot com. Forward slash father Malone. Yeah, it's father Malone. And what a way to debut on the main show by smashing it with pet cemetery with me. I can't wait to be recording another conversation with him again soon, but for right now, listen up, listen up.

Sometimes dead is better. The Indians knew that they stop using that burial round the round web, sour. Don't think about Dylan and Lewis place skirts holier. It's the place it's evil Sometimes that is matter. This was my number two film for a long, long, long, long long time, and then I rewatched it and It's not dead.

Calm off the top for nine in eighty nine, and now pet Cemetery is my very favorite horror, horror, adjacent, horror, ish, whatever film that came out that year. So talking with me today, I've got a guest. Of course, I've got a guest for this one. It's Father Malone. Welcome back, sir.

Oh, thank you once again for having me. I'm delighted to be back again with that voice. Stop it. I honestly, people say to me, oh, you've got such a radio voice, and I'm like, you don't know, fatherm Alone, you don't know that man. Everyone was in the sound of my voice.

Come to me, that's a different Stephen King adaptation. That is, that's that final chapter of it, right, everyone's favorite talking of it. Let's talk the books first. This obviously Pet Cemetery. We're going to talk about it.

We'll get into it in a minute. But everyone's got their Stephen King origin story and like how they got into this man, and like when they started watching the adaptations and things like that. I did a whole series episode on it. I think four parter and I didn't even scratch the surface, even though I covered every film. I'd love to hear it.

What's your origin story with Stephen King and pet Cemetery? My Stephen King origin story is as inextricably linked as anything formative in my life, I think. An as I get older, I realized that this is a common story among Stephen King fans. Stephen King is not only like our favorite horror author or author or personality, but he really feels like a member of the family. He feels like an older brother.

And I think that's something he cultivated because when King was coming up in the nineteen seventies, that was when culturally, that sort of veil between the audience and the performers kind of began to slip, when we realized that those entertaining us weren't living on rarefied air. They were just like the rest of us. And King was this meat and potatoes guy from Maine who happened to love horror and write it better than anyone you could possibly imagine, and like even in the like in the prefaces for his books or the author's note. He very early started calling us constant readers and I very much consider my self a constant reader, and it's just that sort of cultivation of interplay. If Stephen King had come up in the nineties, he would have been big in chat rooms, you know, like I'm sure he would have been interacting fully with fans that because but it was the seventies, so and I'm a child of the seventies.

I was born in seventy three, so I had a large group of older cousins who were all teenagers and irresponsible, and my favorite of them was my horror loving cousin Susan, who spoke about Stephen King in hushed tones even when I was very very young five six, like keep hearing the name and keep hearing the titles of his things. And it wasn't too long afterwards that I began watching Stephen King movies. I think my first was definitely Creep Show that was eighty two, and once that gate opened, I read everything I could get my hands on. I have a first edition of The Dark Tower, uh, the Dark Tower of the Drawing of the Three, like when it first was introduced and they're like, we have a numbered number I have, I have, I have the audiobook of the Dark Tower, The Gunslinger Read by Stephen King.

Autographed by Stephen King. I bought two, just one just wanted. To listen to. Uh. I.

I grew up in just north of Boston, in a town called Revere, Massachusetts, which we're all in New England. We all know the New England Times that spend a lot of time in Maine. There's something particularly you feel a particular connection being a New Englander and being a fan of Stephen King. He's kind of speaking our language. If you read his novel Misery, when Paul is first coming to consciousness, he keeps mentioning his pain and how it resembles the tide, and it's it reminds him of the tide rolling in covering these pilings on Revere Beach.

That's my hometown. So the Stephen King connections are just infinite. Now, in nineteen eighty five, that's when the book I'm holding this first edition copy of pet Cemetery was released. Now, what the book company did was cultivate this idea, can Stephen King write a book so scary it would scare himself? That was how they sold this book as the most terrifying Stephen King book.

So I purchased it and while you see it in my hands, and it certainly was in my hands in nineteen eighty five. I didn't read this till nineteen eighty eight. I was terrified of this book, particularly when I heard one of those older cousins mention, what didn't know I was an earshot. Yeah, And then I got to the scene where the cat is back and there are bits of garbage bags stuck in its mouth because it ate its way out of the grave, and I went Jesus Christ, I can never read that book. Right for me.

Whenever a book would come out at that exact time when you're talking about, I would be there for like day one. I would know about it, and I would get it and I would like read it front to back. Some took a bit longer, remember Tommy Knockers took me at a fair bit of time. It took me forever because of the pages were so thin and was so long. But like they crammed a lot of words on those fucking pages.

But if we had the best job in the world in the nineteen eighty Stephen King's. Editor whatever whatever, Steve, and yet like the ones that you would breeze through, I remember thinner and that was quite a thin one, and I was like, I need more, Like I can't be without Stephen King for a few months now, but I've read that. What am I going to do? Read James Herbert? Come on, you know, get you back together.

And now, like when you look back at that period when we were buying these books, that's the most prolific thing. Still, that was crazy. The fact that he produced as much good wor is he did in such a short amount of time in such volume is impressive. Not only was the work of quality, he really was the one who kicked down the doors for horror as far as I'm concerned. You could continually dismiss horror as a disposable genre when it was limited to cinema, but you can't when it's literature and when everyone is reading it and everyone is saying it's good and everyone, I mean, you know, just recently he was made some chair of something or other with some poet laureate kind of an award, and there was some uproar over it, and I'm like, this is a man of letters here in the United States, Like he got so many people to read, just on that level, at the encouragement of literacy in this fucking crazy nation I live in.

What is it with horror though? Why is it deemed a lesser art form? I've never got that. Never. Some people just.

Don't like it because some people are afraid of death to the point that they don't ever ever want to think of it. And I think the more reasonable people, you and me, Paul, they're constantly rehearsing for it because we know it's coming. And what better way to do that than with the aid of Stephen King. Yeah, I tell you he made me, as a youth think about death, which I'd never done before. Always, the thoughts of my parents dying, even though I didn't really get on with them, terrified me.

Like people die. Can't handle that, pets dying, Nope, can't handle that. And he would put it in such a way where you would accept it and you can move on from there. I think because of our age when we were getting into it, I'm seventy four or seventy three, I just think that he was like a surrogate parent in a way. Like a lot of the things I could talk to my mum and dad about Stephen King will tell me and it might be like a ridiculously gross scene in it that everyone knows about.

But it might be this tender thing that Annie Wilkes is thinking in her head about Paul Sheldon. You know, it might be that. Fair enough, it does go a bit wild, but he was the person that I would go to. He was my dad. Him and Henry Rollins's that's a weird set up, but there we go.

That's it. Personally, I'm in the same boat. I mean that I was fatherless for you know, age ten on, and I mentioned Stephen King being an older brother. I didn't want to get creepy with if people didn't feel this way, but like, yeah, like he's he is sort of a father figure to all of us, like particularly us horror fans, you know, like as somebody who understands that our minds aren't preoccupied with happy bullshit. Yeah, I tell you.

The one that got me and that made me just think you're more than every other thing that I read is that Delora's Clareborne. I think it was cooled, is it Claiborne? Yeah, And that just killed me because that was a lot of my life going on there. I was a kid in that scenario, watch my parents fight and things like that, and it affected me in such a way that when you put that book down, you've not just put that book down. It's sort of like, well, I get that now, and I can move on with my life.

No one else was doing that for me. I wasn't seeing a psychiatrist or anything like. It's weird what an effect Stephen King has had throughout our lives. And if we're horror nuts, you can't avoid this man. You cannot avoid him.

This is a man who, whenever you see him interviewed, is nothing less than jolly, even in anger. He seems like a really happy dude, right right, And yet this is the man who has plumbed all of the depths of all of our worst fears in order to aid us through our own Stephen King has never lost a child, but imagined it for us, and and you know it gave us the bedrock for it. And you know, look, okay, I'm just going to say, like I read this book when I was a kid, I had no concept. The scary parts for me in pet cemetery when I was a child was the resurrection parts of it. The fact that you would that the dead would come back, and that the dead would be so mean that the dead would be so vitriolic, like I don't even It didn't bother me that that young gage was stabbing people with a scalpel.

It bothered me that he knew things that he shouldn't and was using those to taunt you and to let you know that hell exists and you're going there. That was the frightening part for me as a kid, and those parts are still fucking terrifying today. But that's not why King wrote the book. He wrote the book because his child almost got run over by a car, and recently his daughter's cat had been run over by a car, and he had the monkey's paw on his brain and he just scrambled those around and gave us this. So that was my knowledge of it then, And then, of course I saw the movie years later.

I was a young father who actually lost a child and hearkening back to what we just said about Stephen King, the sort of father figureness of it. Since that date, I don't particularly enjoy any entertainment where a child dies. Nobody does, obviously, but if it's the central point of a piece of entertainment, I'm not really interested. I've done that, so it never occurred to me the level of comfort I would receive in rereading pet cemetery and knowing that this guy, this father figure of mine, had put himself through it and dredged up the worst instincts that you can have and still let you know that that's okay if that makes sense. It does make sense.

I can't imagine what you've been through. So I'm so sorry to hear that. What I would ask about it when you revisit a film like this, like, how can you how? How does it make you feel? Well?

In this case, with this movie, the parts with the child endangerment were always tough. Young Gauge, who is an angel in this movie, Miko hughes. That truck bearing down on him is one of the most horrific images I've ever seen in any film. Insane. Yeah, it's insane, But.

You know that was when I was sixteen see in the movie. Honestly, I'm a bit inured to that. Now. I can watch a movie with these things happening, and it's not my preferred thing because I don't want to think about my own But there is a level of remove, okay, particularly with this movie. Not to make light of it, but when you asked what movie from a list of movies from nineteen eighty nine, I would want to watch huge list, right, huge list of movies.

And believe me, there are dozens that I would love to talk about. But this one I wanted to talk about because I didn't want to let anyone else talk about it, because I don't want anyone else praising the movie overly because I think this is an okay movie. I think this is a missed opportunity of a movie. There's a whole lot that's really, really good, but I wanted the opportunity to guide people back to that fucking book, because that book is a masterpiece. That book should sit on the shelf with Frankenstein and a Dracula and the Doctor Jekyl and Mister High, as purely American horror as you can get, and a very and I'm not saying this as a chauvinist in any way, shape or form, but a very very masculine tale.

You know, Stephen King accused a long time of not being able to write for women, and I think a book like Dolores Claiborne is his attempt to course correct that. Like I think he wanted to tell that story, But I think it was important to him to tell that story to let people know that he could write female characters. And I my opinion was when his characters were good, they were good, and when they were bad, they were bad, and the gender didn't matter. So you're going to get some good and some bad. But the story in head Cemetery, Rachel the wife is definitely part of the story.

But this is very much about Lewis Creed. This is a father's story, and it's a story between a father and a father figure and all the ways they can guide and misguide you. At a point in the movie, in the book, you know, Judd says like, you know, women are supposed to be the best keeping secrets, but I think men are better because men will do crazy shit like take their dead child to the fucking Mick Macaburial grounds to bring them back to life. And it's true. I want to rewind because I do think when I had this at number two, I it was nostalgia based.

It's my list, I'm putting it there. I had such a great time with it as a kid, Like I know what people think about this film, Like you say, a lot of them think it's okay, or they think it's worse. It's never one. That's like, it's a film full of terrifying scenes. Let's say you know you've got the zeldest scene you've got, You've got when Gauge goes mad.

You've got those scenes. But the reason I put it at number one, and we'll approach this conversation like everybody that's listening knows pet cemetery. Okay, I think it's the only way we could do it. Oh the what I think that the ending, the last twenty minut it's also I think it's perfect. I was watching this and I was like, how am I putting this at number two?

It's actually good? Like I always ah, this is memory good. No, this is actually good. And yeah, there are misfires everywhere. I don't care.

I don't care. When you've got an ending that had me gripped on my thirtieth watch maybe in my life, like I was like, I'm gripped last night watching this thing, like Jesus, Jesus. That's why it's my number one, because like those last I don't know twenty scenes in total probably just killed me, got me so bad. I will concede that those last twenty minutes are pretty fucking rocking. And as to the rest, you're right, it is a collection of scenes.

There rather, there are scenes that are good and then there are scenes that involve their daughter Ellie. Wow, you don't have to say it. I will blaize Bradal and her equally untalented twin pull me out of this movie so fucking hard that it's hard to bring me back in. You know, you know what, There's only one way to do it, and that's Fred Gwinn. Because Fred gwyn is perfect in this movie.

Every scene is in his magic, every fucking scene. And to think that there was a time when he couldn't get cast in things because all anyone remembered was Herman Munster. Even this, right, even this, even this, which is crazy. I encourage if anyone doubts the prowess of mister Fred Gwinn. Watched The Cotton Club.

It's not one many people remember, but he's in that. He's Bob Hoskins, like number one guy in that movie, and he's fucking great and scary. He in this was captivating from moment well, because I never really watched it critically, Why would you unless you know you're gonna chat about it or something like that. So I just watched this for fun, as I say, is something in my youth, and I put it on and I enjoy myself, but watching it critically, like even the guy that plays Lewis Creed dy Ae mid Yeah, like roupy so ropey, like just passable. We've got a coffee shop in the UK called Costa Coffee and he is that bland.

He is just what's going on? Only below the Ellie character's performance is Dale Midkiff's son ambulance performance. Here Lewis Creed needs to be fucking charming. We gotta we gotta love this guy and then cry when he goes up here. He's just a dead fish from moment one when you read that book and I used to love this as a kid.

You'd read the book and it's coming out in. Cinemas and my parents and they advertised in the local cinema so I would get free tickets and it was going to go get to see this film, And like, I just can't imagine how disappointed I would have been in watching that one. I'm I didn't. I'm glad I didn't. Because I would have been dotted well I saw this on my sixteenth birthday.

This movie came out April twenty first, nineteen eighty nine. I saw it April twenty second. I saw it with the girl I would eventually marry and have that job on. And honestly, as much as I appreciate a lot of the movie, I was crushed by this movie because I'm not I don't necessarily fan cast. When I'm reading a book, I don't picture an actor.

I just get the general sense of whatever they described, and you know, go with that, right. So I didn't have anybody in mind for Lewis Creed, but it wasn't Dale Midgiff. I don't get it. I don't know, Like you've got the job of casting director and that's your job. Like, how can you get it so wrong?

I don't know. Now here's the thing. Horror movies have a stigma, and not every actor wants to do them. They look down on them, just like the general public was looking down on them as a step down in their career. So hard to get a list actors to do these kind of things where it was anyway, you know, we live in a post A twenty four universe, But come on, there's got to be some struggling, fucking guys out there who are super fucking talented and want to be in this movie, and I want to see them.

I wanted the casting director talking about his casting as if it was a name. I didn't know who the fuck Dale Midkiff was when this movie came out. I don't know who he is now. Whether you've got someone like Denise Crosby, right, who is coming off Star Trek and she wants, she's hungry to become that film star. She wants to be the lead in a film.

But she takes this on and she gives it her all, even though like on paper like, well, all my motivation when it gets there is actually thanks to a ghost that's encouraging me to do things. You know, where's my urgency or whatever. You could just see what's going through her mind. But at the same time, at least she's giving it something. You know she's doing it, Like in that bus joy or not bus Journey, in the truck journey when she's coming back home and she's in a she doesn't care who she gets in that truck with, and you can see the desperateness in her face, like you know, she's giving it something.

But like you say, Lewis Creede's just like I'm gonna just take my son and gonna Wow. Do you think Dale Midkiff had the wherewithal to go dig up his dead child? Because that's where the rubber meets the road with pet cemetery, right Like we could all say if your child was struck down in front of you, and then you could pick them up and walk to the pet cemetery and do that. Everyone would do that. It's the moment where you get a pick axe and a shovel and you scale the cemetery wall and wait until dark to dig up your child.

I don't think Dale Midkif's doing that. No, I think you're incredibly accurate that the mere suggestion of dinner, I can't you know what I can Just if I was in that funeral parlor and I was was it Rachel was her character's name in it? If I was Rachel's dad, I would also punch him. I told him, when you were first married, you'll have all the grief you can stand and more, I said, And I look at. This, I hope you're right now.

Where Why are you When he was playing in the road that yo just just because it's him. I would wallop like whatever, Yeah, that's so funny. That's seen as like a tragedy in the book. But you're right with Dale Midkiff. You're like, yeah, man, what you had one job?

Don't be asleep while you're watching the child. Though to be fair, there was like ten of them there, it seemed, and none of them were watching engage. Even Judd was more engaged engage. You know, it's like, ah, what are you doing? But yeah, I need to talk about that scene because how devastating this is.

As I say on my thirtie very Watch or whatever, it is like I'd never noticed the way it's cut. You don't see anything at all apart from a spinning shoe afterwards. It's so cleverly done, and yet the weight that it carries to get something that heavy at that moment, and obviously this whole film depends on that moment, it's still shocking that you've gone from a nice quick setup, you're all in the field just eating a picnic, and then bang that happens. It's so crazy the way cinema was back then. I can't fathom it like watching that, Just as I said last night, it had me do a turn, you know, I was just like, wow, like, that's a scene and it's wonderfully set up actually because in the opening it nearly happens where a gauge is wandering towards a Judd intervene and it's a great jump scare, even beautiful.

And once that happens, you think, as an audience member, well, certainly that can't happen again, right, you all learned that lesson, correct? Do you know? It's funny for the first time in rewatching the movie and rereading the book, I did. I did it all Paul for this podcast, have re read the book, I rewatched the movie, I rewatched the fucking remake. I watched that fucking prequel to the remake.

This is how this is the first time I had this thought. Maybe you should put up a fence, post it note ending, you know, put fence up so our child and or pets, mainly our child doesn't get run over by the Arinco trucks which are many and are very fast. And yeah, I even expected when he goes back in after the funeral into the house to post it note on the fridge saying get fence, right, he slaps this for ah, but yeah, yeah, one hundredcent. My wife when we were watching it yesterday, the first thing she said, right, yeah, but then I guess you've got no film right now? Okay, but can I can I broach the subject of the Windigo?

Which is which is the creature living in the woods, this Native American here's the thing growing up in New England that the windgo isn't necessarily a well known it is now, but at the time was not a well known myth. But there's a scene in the book, and it's when Lewis has finally made the decision. He's going to go Berry Gage and the Micmac Burial ground, and he's he's walking his body through the little God Swamp and he hears the Windigo, this massive thing felling trees out in the distance, and it's getting closer. And then a face appears before him in the mist, and it has horns and its tongue lolls out, and he described it is gibbering crazily at Lewis as he's walking, and it always stays the same distance from him as he's walking through this scene.

Paul, when I read that, I screamed and I threw the book across the. Room, doesn't just say that that noise is like a loon. A loon? What's a loon? A loon is a bird, and they make a very terrifying call, like a scream.

And so loons are one of those birds that are purported to be harbingers of your death, like an owl. Like you hear a loon calling, it might be your death, which we've all heard loons, So that one doesn't make a whole lot of sense. That's the common way to dismiss something. Oh it's just a loon, just okay. In the film, you do hear that noise, but they don't broach that.

And it's not because of a budgetary reason. I think. I just think, oh I think it is a budgetary reason. Oh, I just think it might open in a whole can of worms that we would then have to explore that the book is free to do, because you know, you can get into a book just a handful more pages, whereas in a film that's, oh yeah, fair enough, it's a lot more money. Is the scene that I described they attempt in the film, and this is the most disappointing, even worse than both of those performances.

When he's climbing up the gravel thing and the face appears, which is, come to find out, just the prosthetic of Fred Gwynn that they used in the finale, and they've morphed it and done this weird thing to make it this like warning, like that thing is coming up and saying no. And here's the thing in the book. I'm sorry to keep comparing the two. I know I shouldn't do that. But anyway in the book, in the book, those trees are being felled, this face has appeared before him.

Right, None of it is in any way attempting to dissuade him from going. It's, if anything, attempting to make him even crazier to continue this mission to resurrect his dead child. Right in film, there is a tree that gets felled, but it falls directly in front of Lewis's creed. Everything in the film seems to keep attempting to keep him from doing this, which is the inversion of the book. It's weird when an author adapts their own work and then changes something as fundamental as that.

Because it's been a long time since the book, probably fifteen years, I would say, so, I haven't read it. For a long time. But I was thinking just that in the scene where she gets a higher car, so before she grabs onto that truck, she's got higher car, but that the pet Cemetery is trying to dissuade her from getting there, so it makes her crash and Pascal says, it's not letting you get there. I was just like, was that in the book. I don't recall that.

So the idea that the Penn Cemetery might in fact be attempting to keep her from getting there is. But of course the Victor Pasca character is not. That is an innovation for the film. He appears in the book as a ghost in one scene to say, don't go here, don't do this. I'm just saying thank you for trying to help me when I was dying bye, saying that.

As ridiculous as it is, I love him in this film. The fact he's on the poster as a kid, Oh my god, in a video shop. It was so good that they would have that, and you would always I would look because the video shop was across the road for me, and I would look out my window and I could see before I go to bed, Victor Pascal's face I loved it. Loved that. Yeah, it's a great character.

I love the innovation. I love the idea of there's a good documentary about this where they interview everybody, and the actor who played Victor Pascal kept saying I kept viewing him as a guardian angel and not a ghost, and that's great, and that's what he is. But what's great also is that his head is split open and he's fucking horrifying. Already name checked in one of our conversations, maybe this one I can't remember, but like in American Werewolf in London, where like you've got the similar thing with the dead one trying to like guide you through and like do the best thing. Yeah, I think it's like a really little great trope that isn't utilized very often.

I think it's just these two films. I love that, And yeah, I would just wish it was a bit more gross, you know, like he looked a bit more slimy and stuff, because you never really get to see apart from like the red raw brain smashed up sort of. Bit it's okay, Well, you can feel the dirty hands of the MPAA all over this film. In fact, when Victor Pascal dies they do this sort of step printing thing, which is kind of a slow mo where you're just seeing the top of his head where you get the hint of gore. Guarantee you that's like an MPAA cut, like you did this close up of the fucking brains coming out, Like you feel little things like that all through it.

And that's a drag. By the way. Mary Lambert, the director of this film, directed every great music video of the nineteen eighties. We should just point that out. Name your favorite.

Martley Crue who was smoking in the bas Yes, take it, Okay, it's got Michael berryman from the Hills, have eyes in the video. Let's talk Zelda. That's where we go. Let's talk, so like here we go. Like when I rewatch this, I just thought, oh, we've got this history now in horror that when people mention it like, ah, it's a shit film, but it's got Zelder, you know, remember it's got Zelda, and that gives me us nightmare fuel.

And yet I just thought, what rewatching it? Yeah, it's scary as a kid watching that sort of thing. It is going to be nightmare fuel. But it's completely not needed in this this adaptation. I don't think it's if anything, it slows it down.

It does because we don't get enough of Rachel as a character. If they had bothered to flash out the relationship of Lewis and Rachel and Rachel and her parents and Rachel and the children, then a scene where we explore Rachel's relationship with death would make total sense. And yes, Zelda when you're a child is fucking horrifying because Mary Lambert very wisely does that one shot where she's very very small in the back of the frame and then the camera doesn't move and you're forced to fucking watch as it creeps closer and closer. It's a beautiful shot. It's awesome, and yet why is it in this film?

Just the fact that what we've just said is the answers to why it's in the film because it is not mare Field. If you're of a certain age and you're seeing that, you're never going to forget it. I get that, but I just rewatching it. It was like, man, this is unnecessary. I want to get back into that story.

So maybe yeah, they'd given like her whole character, just a bit more room, a bit more flash maybe a backstory to when she was growing up with the parents. You know, there's that quick bit with their sort of not getting on and that I just want more of that, Like, let's feel for this family. You mentioned that it it will be budgetary restraints that stop them doing all this wonderful stuff that the book can do. But we've seen the future sequels and stuff or remakes or whatever that it's not part of it. It continues to not be part of it because they continue to not lean in that direction, which is unfortunate because Rachel is an important character in the book, but for the sake of brevity, it needn't be there.

The problem really is that Stephen King. I think I'm now on record with you here, Paul about everyone knows how much I love Stephen King. Okay, I'm getting everybody right. Okay. He's not a good screenwriter.

He's just not. Most authors are not good screenwriters when it comes to their own material. They tend to lean one way or another in parts that they think is important now that might not have been important to them then, and vice versa. So you know, Ray Bradbury add the adaptation for something Wicked this way comes and left out like a major fucking reason, like a whole point of the fucking thing, like just left it out. And I think King here wrote this screenplay, and I'm sure you know this, but maybe some of your listeners don't.

Like he wrote this screenplay immediately after the book was published to get it made, with the stipulation that it had to be shot in Maine because Stephen King's stand up guy and he wants to bring those millions of dollars to his home, which is fucking awesome. And the other stipulation was that he had to be the screenwriter on it, right, and nobody wanted it, and it sat on the shelves for years, and then nineteen eighty eight there was a huge writers strike and every studio freaked the fuck out because they realized they were gonna have huge holes in their schedule in the following year. And they were like, are there any completed scripts? And they were like, yeah, we got this pet cemetery, and so now that's why the movie got made.

But because of that, there's no rewriting this movie. The writers Guild was on strike. If you did that, you were a y. It was never going to happen. But it needed it.

It needed somebody who was not named Stephen King to come in and go, why are we introducing Zelda three quarters of the way through the movie? Aren't we dealing with the child being dead at this point? Just rearranging scenes would have made more sense. I always wonder in those conditions, like with the recent one as well, like if you're ad libbing, does that count? Like if you're doing actors are not part of the Writers Guild, And I think if they're just saying stuff on screen, then that's permissible.

And there are you know, you can get waivers from the WGA and stuff for you know, different productions and stuff. No one was going to give this a waiver this part. It makes a lot of sense you're saying that, And yeah, I wasn't aware of that, but it does make a ton of sense because there's certain scenes, especially early on in the film when it is really talky, that could have just done with even one rewhy you know, just just just one little going over chop that out. Let's add this in here, like because as I've mentioned, they do show every now and again you get a glimpse of something, and I know, like the director's answer is always, well, we don't want to treat you like kids, you'll figure it out.

But sometimes I want to be shown and you know, I want you to talk me through this scene rather than to me. All right, So they got to there because of that. But I hate that sort of shit, especially in like an eighties horror For some reason, Eighties for me is like my key shlock because I was there at the time. I want to have fun. And then when I revisit the films like I have done.

Now, fine, we'll get into the nitty gritty, but I just want to have fun. And I feel like a lot of the fun was zapped out of this one because the writing is so poor. But only in certain scenes and with certain characters, like you mentioned the kids. But when Gauge like says, I think it's to his dad, I love you, like yeah, heartbreaking, Like what a performance? How old is that kid?

Like you know, am I amazing? And yet when the daughter's talking, I want to scratch my face. She makes me want to kill myself quite frankly, and and don't bring me back if she's going to be around, do not put me in the burial ground. Another actress, there's a character invented for the film. See here's another thing.

I oh, Stephen King, Why okay? Neither adaptation of Pat Cemetery has included the character of Norma crandall, that's John's wife. Here's the thing, Paul. In the book, Norma has a heart attack. Lewis is a doctor.

He acts quickly and saves her life, and then she goes to the hospital for the rest of the novel. In thanks for saving his wife and to save him the misery of his daughter. Of Lewis's daughter realizing that their cat is dead, he says, I have another idea. It's the fucking central spark. He leaves it out, leaves her out as a character, instead invents a character named Misty the Maid who comes around by the way that actress love her.

Fans of The X Files, you know her in an episode written by Glenn Morgan and James Wong throwback call back to my episode. She's great, but like, what is she doing there? Like you said, Zelda feels out of place? What is this woman who shows up and says, my stomach hurts a bunch of times and then hangs herself so we can go to her funeral? What this is not.

In the book? He created us for the movie. Yeah, I didn't know that's necessary. You're right, and I'll give some of. That screen time to Rachel and her family.

They are maxed out. I can't even afford to buy a fence, right, and they can afford this woman coming and looking up at it. Come on, come on? Nope, no, sir. But you mentioned she's good in this, and I'm agreeing.

Like again, like I love when people were taking the job seriously in horror, especially in the eighties, because you get like clunky dialogue. Come it's sort of heartwarming rather than oh God, like that when someone's taking it so seriously in things. But when they're not because they think it's beneath them, you really don't like it. Yeah, we know that, Like we watch these things day in and day out, and we can see it a mile off. And it amazes me that, Like fair enough with the writers strike, but then why not say do that?

Can you do that? Take again? Maybe maybe not with a little girl a right, fair enough, but with Lewis Creed for sure. There was plenty of times a week go I just run through that again. But then I'm thinking, well, maybe they did run through it again.

Maybe that was the best one. Can you imagine those were the best takes. Can you imagine sitting through all of the footage of the worst takes of Dale Midkiff trying to emote when child is dead? How many takes before he screamed no in slow motion and we believed him. Do you imagine what Kubrick would have done to Dale midkifft He'll be filming.

Kubrick would still be alive. Just to get one good performance out of Dale Midkiff. He'd be parties. Check this reeal out. It goes on for four hours, but it's the best.

Yeh. We've mentioned a lot of issues. But as well as we've got Gauge's death key scene, we've got Pascal and the way he interacts very key to the film. But the bit that I loved last night so much was this ending. I'd love to talk about it a bit with you.

I forgotten how hard it goes. And it's because we love Gauge. We love Gauge and we want him to be okay when he comes back from the cemetery. But there's something inside of him and that iconic picture where he's wearing the hat like you know, whenever I so good, He's got the little scalpel. He's got the hat on and he's gonna do his parents sing.

Man, it gets me and the way he gets Judd, I, how do you feel about this rewatching it now? Does it still get you? First of all, there's something about that kid, Miko Hughes, who is so fucking adorable that once you put some pallor on him and make him just even grit his teeth, it becomes one of the most twisted images ever, the most angelic somehow now the most profane, So that still works. Fred Gwinn's terror is fantastic because he knows what's coming. Whatever plot points and details like Stephen King left out, Fred Gwinn is giving us without any dialogue at all.

He knows exactly what this thing is and how terrified he needs to be, and we feel for him because we love him so much. This is the perfect scene in the movie. If any scene works, it's this one because there are actual stakes with our favorite human and what used to be our favorite human who is now a fucking demon from hell, and it's a child and it cannot be sort of overstated that we all feel it in our heel when the scalpel goes in. I didn't know what an achilles tendon was until this film. Poor yeah, and the reaction as well, like the way Judd falls back and sort of like tries to stand on it.

It's just the worst. It's just the worst I've had. I've been on a motorbike and been knocked off the motorbike and flown through the road and landed on my side and all buckled up and everything. And yet I'm so thankful it was that and not gauge slice in my achilles tendon, like absolute right. And that's another thing, Like I mentioned earlier, this is a scene.

Sorry, a film full of scenes, a film full of moments, but what moments right, what moments? Like can't fathom how this film always gets slagged is too hard. But just like othered, it's not the one of the key ones. Let's go with misery, let's get you know. Well those are more serious in town, right, So it's acceptable on the horror level.

I think the way it escalates, it's so down all the time, it always gets worse. You know what's coming, yet you can't stop watching. It's perfectly executed, like it's fantastic direction that like it's such a great ending to a movie, and yet there's two bits, two bits that kill me every time. And I get this with films since I've been a kid, where I'm like, oh what what that's wrong? Why did that happen?

Let me talk you for him. I'm gonna mention U. First of all, right, at the end when Gauge has come back and he's been injected a heartbreaking scene, I think it's not fair or something like that as walking away and then in the movie theater by the way, no fair. Yeah, oh my god, it's a killer because you love this kid again. He's just done all that the car'n it, No, I love him again.

It was it was like a pressure release, like we're like, ah, we love your kid very well. And I see like he's walking backwards. He's like slowly winding down before he passes, and then he falls into that and it's the actor and he falls into the back wall and it must have hurt him. And yet like they've kept that scene in. I think, wow, like that that's a little kid, and like the way he fell into collapsed into that wall.

Amazing. I love that. I think I think without knowing, I think that's in reverse. Not because I thought that, but how I've sorry, this is oh well, we've done this. How the hell do you cause like the position that he ends up in, he then has to stand up and I know it's a flexible little kid, so perhaps as possible, but from that position again, if that's the case, incredible work.

Completely convinced and yeah, that was my only thought. How could they have been done? It can only be reversed? But then watch it. It's tricky, okay, but maybe he began in another position and then was getting up into a position and until he got to an awkward part and then they paused it there they cut off the original thing.

So we start off with a couple of frames of him looking like he's in the awkward position and then stands up normally, but he was already on his way to standing up normally. Somebody called Mary Lambert, Yes, we need to know. I bet you that. Horror fans are like, oh, Paul, no, no, this is how it was done. But there was another and this is really finicky, but I'm not having it.

So this has always bothered me since early watches the door, the back door where Gage comes into the house to get the scalpel. It doesn't fit in the frame properly. If you look, there is this massive gap at the bottom of the door where the door just doesn't fit in its frame. And I'm just thinking, well, that's going to be freezing in the winter. Like you would fix that door.

So guess if they haven't bought a fence, like they might not fix their door. But at the same time, that's a huge gap. Rewatch that. That is ridiculous and it takes me out of the film every time because I just think, Wow, that's gonna be cold. Okay.

Was that door directly into the house or was it onto their porch? The porch Okay, then that makes sense. Americans don't give a shit about the porch. Fuck it. During the winter, we retreat to the house and there we will remain.

Here's the part that took me out of it, Paul, the same scene. I have just disinterred my child, carried it through a forest, buried him, a return to my house, and then he takes a nap as he would. I mean, I'm sure that it was a tough climb and a tough thing, but I don't know the prospect of my undead child returning. I'd want to be awake. For especially when what's happened with the cat Church.

Especially when Church is a fucking cocksucker as soon as he comes back to life. I hate cats anyway, but I think I'm up for having a cat that gives less of a shit. Wow, that's attitude. Yeah, all right, So these scenes, little things that piss us off the film somehow that ending, as I say, it just really works for me. And that's why I put it in number one.

I asked you this, and I'm sorry to do it. Regardless of what people think of it now, it's still a talking point. It's a Stephen King property. That ip is huge. And this film came out in the eighties.

People love the eighties, especially with horror, and this is a key moment in that regardless of whether you love it, how you've seen it. So then inevitably you've got sequels, You've got remakes. This is going going on and it will continue to go on. I'm sure we'll get more pet cemeteries. How does it all stand up for you or does nothing compare or was it so weak this film that yeah, it's fine to do it.

Here's here's the best thing about pet cemetery. Too. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I made a beeline for the Man's Chinese Theater, the very famous Man's Chinese Theater, and I walked up and I said, one ticket to whatever, And that movie happened to be pet Cemetery too. I didn't stay for the entire movie. I just needed to be inside Man's Chinese Theater.

And once I realized that that was more of a remake than a sequel and lesser than the first film, I figured there was more things to do in Los Angeles. So that's how I kind of feel about that. I don't, by the way, I'm not necessarily against sequels or remakes. I think everyone deserves a shot, everyone deserves an interpretation. Clearly, I think this one needs to be reinterpreted because there's so much of the book that is meaningful and could be meaningful that they just simply jettisoned.

So I did not like the sequel. The twenty nineteen remake I was very very excited for because I like Jason Clark as an actor. I didn't know Amy Seinmitz, but I knew she would be fine. In fact, I knew we were going to be totally fine because John Lithgow had been cast as Judd Crandall John Lithgow who, By the way, if they had cast him as Lewis Creed in nineteen eighty nine, I would be singing a different tune about that film. Wow, you figure now we can correct all of the flaws of the first adaptation, right, No, Let's make a whole bunch of new ones.

Let's invent a fucking mythology where the kids all wear masks, and let's change it fundamentally. Here's what they did do. We're spoiling everything everybody in the remake. Here's the spoiler. Gage doesn't die.

Ellie dies, and then he brings her back and she like lives with him for a while and is his daughter seemingly and is asking questions about her own mortality. That one scene, that part of that movie is fucking great. The idea that it's like where was I and I it was cold and you know, like in her getting progressively worse. That's really really scary. However, it suffers all of the same problems as the first film.

I don't care about any of these people. I care about them even less. Somehow, how they didn't make John Lithkew, the most lovable fucking curmudgeon of all time is beyond me, but somehow they managed it even though he's doing a credible Maine accent. Shout out to Fred Gwynn also doing a credible main accent, as well as the actress playing Misty who forgive me for not knowing your name? I love you so also great main accent.

And they concoct a whole other ending for that movie where right where they which, by the way, I liked, I did, like if if you had. In fact, they made a prequel with jud and Norma in nineteen sixty nine and dealing with the Timmy Baderman subplot from the original film. That's fucking well, it's pet Cemetery blood lines or something. Like that lines. Wow, ooh baby.

I liked it more than the Pet Cemetery remake actually because it was I did because it was at least a flight of fancy, like if you had made the Pet Cemetery remake and not called it pet Cemetery the Tales of Pet Cemetery, and it's about this father and daughter like, okay, I'm on board, but don't attempt to readapt that fucking book and then change everything just for the sake of change. It felt like it was just for the sake of changing. And you know how I know I'm right. Because when when it's the jud versus Ellie finale, they keep showing close ups of his his ankle, like it's playing on the first film. It's not playing on the book.

So get the fuck out here. Don't that remakeers bad? That sequel is bad? I kind of like the Judd thing with Timmy Bator. What can I tell you?

I think I think they're all fine, Like they're all fine. That's that's an issue. Like I think, as Stephen King showed, you can get incredible, weighty conversations going, at least with regards to the basis of this this tale, this book is incredible. Why can't it translate to sell E Lloyd? I don't know, man, I just don't know, because it, like a lot of Stephen King's works, when you read them, like the images in your mind just your mind gets blown, and inevitably you get disappointed when watching these things.

Like there are a few that, like I actually prefer the film to the book, but not many, not many at all. Are there Stephen King adaptations? You prefer Yeah, yeah, I prefer the shining to the book. The shining very much so cool. And Tommy Knockers as a book I thought was a little bit rough.

People hate that mini series. I totally love that mini series. Man. I don't know what's wrong with me. Maybe it was the top.

Oh, maybe it's because your read that book which was garbage, which he doesn't remember writing because he was in a cocaine field page you son of a bitch that broke my teenage heart. Honestly, I found that out because I slogged through Tommy Knockers, man, and I got to the end that I was like, am I am I out of it? Like do I not understand what's going on here? And like years later, I'm like, you prick, you made me question my fucking sanity. He must have remembered a bit, but the way he just says, no, what I don't know?

Yeah, convenient right when it's the bad book, like I remember writing it. There was drugs, that was drugs, that's terrible on drugs, the shying that was me Salem's like me carry me. There was a fantastic interview around the time of Firestarter coming out, when it's still available on YouTube to watch when he's clearly drunk out of his mind trying to answer questions, he tries to get deep and philosophical about things, and yeah, it's it's a hilarious watch. But so I do give credence to you. I can't remember a few of these things, but not the whole process of writing a book.

That's crazy. That's some serious drug time right there. I think misries on par with the book I'm with you. Yeah, I've not thought about that, but yeah, definitely, And like that book is not ship. Oh, that book is a fucking master work of his.

Like what's funny to me is it does seem when he's clued into his own fears, that's when he does his best material. Fear that he's going to murder his entire family because he's a drunk gives us the shining fear that his child is going to be killed and he's going to have to suffer through. That is pet cemetery, and you know, on and on. If Steve's really troubled, we're going to be troubled. Good.

I like get it. I can't let you go. I need to plan a double bill, a double feature. So we've got pet semetry as has to be included. But this is going to be interesting where I mean a million films to choose, But what else would you pair with pet symmetry?

Okay, I'm giving you one of two options. One is Trilogy of Terror two. Excuse me, Trilogy of Terror Part two, the Dan Curtis television television movie from the nineties with Lazette Anthony the anthology one, yes, right, okay, I would pair it with that for that. I believe the middle or the ending story Winch is a remake of a Dan Curtis TV movie from the seventies which I cannot remember the name of that TV movie, but it's like something Spooky Town I don't know, and it's the same story adapted both where it's effectively the story we get here in pet Cemetery, which is a woman's child I believe drowns and she resurrects him, and she doesn't like what comes back, and it's a cat and mouse thing through this sort of massive house where the child is chasing her and taunting or and like calling her from other parts of the house.

It's horrifying. It has it's scarier than it has any right to be, so I would say either that or if you want to keep it in Stephen kingland, I would recommend speaking of things that are way better than the fiction it's based on. Fourteen oh eight, the John Cusack Samuel Jackson film, which is an adaptation of Stephen King's short story, which is slight. I mean, he admits he wrote it as like a writing exercise. It's still a great story, but the movie that's based on it is so much fucking better and actually taps into the themes that are going on in pet Cemetery because they've turned the lead character from that book into a grieving father, which is one of the levers that this evil fucking room is using against him.

And it's just as effective, that two hour movie, to me, as effective as the novel Pet Cemetery, as far as that aspect of it. You know, another weird connection between fourteen oh eight and pet Cemetery actually is Zelda, the older sister of Rachel, is played by a man because Mary Lambert thought that would be weird and off putting for the viewer. And in fourteen oh eight there's a hammer killer, which is a male character that they cast a woman because they wanted to throw people off and make it, you know, just sort of off kilter, weird. Right. I didn't even think of that till now.

Robbish, you knew that all along. It's oh, yeah, you know, the Stephen King bank in my head is full. I want you to recommend a book like one that really sort of got you and made you feel things that you didn't know you wanted to feel. Stephen King book like where would you go if pet Cemeteries are off the table? Salem's lone Automatically there's something.

It's not necessarily a revolutionary book. What he's doing with that book is building off of the foundation that Richard Matheson laid with I am Legend, which was it seemed to me the first time someone was taking American horror and dragging it out of Europe in onto our streets and in our neighborhoods. So to have the Dracula story devoid of castles and villagers and torches, and it's just a town up in Maine that I've driven through, probably that to me is very very effective. Plus it is effectively a remake of Dracula through young Stephen King's eyes. It's I think his fleetest work.

It's you could probably read it in one sitting at the same time, as complex as anything he would eventually do in twelve and fifteen hundred page fucking master works. Air quotes everybody, and I love all the characters in that and his version of evil to me is always exciting. I love particularly in that book. I love that small town America, which is prim and proper and ain't everything great, is really just beckoning the worst kind of evil to come and decimate it. I have never read the book, and I only watched the film maybe ten years ago because I was always scared the Dracula looking guy.

Yeah, always why the picture that was in Fangoria. Fuck that absolutely terrified me, not going anywhere near it. Mister Barlow, Yes, you're going to like mister Barlow. And rest assured, mister Barlow is going to like. You five them alone.

I don't know if you know this, but like I've got to say this at the end of Eper every every episode we do, because I want to make sure another one happens. So please will you come back? Of course? My God, sign me up. What do you want to do?

Let's talk what year? The opening theme seems reminiscent of like the Amateurville soundtrack with all that kid's choir type singing. It was composed by Elliott Goldenthal. He did Alien three and he did Interview with the Vampire, And I wish it didn't borrow so liberally from other sources. Yet there's something about those sharp eighties symphs that just cut as deep as gaugeous scout Win.

Those emotional beats just ramp up, you know that bit where we follow Rachel on our journey home. Also, it goes without saying the Ramones wrote that theme song pet Semetry, which can I just say I really hated it at the time, just thought the pet Cemetry song was weak, very weak. But even though I know that it's latter day pomp for them, I didn't really get into the swing of the Ramones until the late nineties, so it took like a decade for me to get with this song. Oddly, it became a Ramone set staple and performed quite well for them on rock radio in the States. Bit here it didn't make a scratch on the charts at all.

So where can you watch this one? Well? In America? If you're subscribe to Fubo Paramount Plus or MGM Plus, you're in luck. As for the UK, where are we at?

Oh? In the UK, it's currently on Sky, Netflix, Now Cinema. And as for podcasts, I very much enjoyed listening to this thing called Horror Movie Maniacs back in the day. I did. Anyway, I say back in the day.

It's only a couple of years ago. They did it in January twenty twenty three, and I really really enjoyed that. So I want to mention it here and that's it. That's my number one pick for nineteen eighty nine is pet Cemetery, A