Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - 1408, The Night Flier, The Lost Room

Welcome back midnight viewers to Father Malone's weekly round up. I'm Father Malone and the vampire bride beside me is a reply Jean hypnotize our listeners a ripley. Are you ready for the spooky season? No? I intend to speak in this manner for the entirety of the podcatar.

Maybe not. Are you enjoying the spooky season, dear listener? This episode ends up being all horror, a spookaton that actually gets its source from a pretty unlikely source, the earth Mound Angel. That was Karen Carpenter. I'm currently in the throes of research on a future episode that concerns miss Carpenter, and it got me thinking about the Carpenters in movies, and there are tons of examples of them.

Remember tell Me by. Don't you remember? Tell Me? Otherday? Coming Back is made baby All?

I love you about parenthood? Why do stars twinkle in the sky every time you walk by? Just like me? They long to be close to you, heythan. We're trying so hard to keep these kids off drugs.

Bless the beasts and children. Bless the beasts. And the children. Give from the school, say the corpridences. Music is usually employed in one of two ways.

Both are what the song intended. Happy or sad. Threatening never really seems to be in the mix. At least it wasn't until our first choice. This is fourteen oh eight.

You're not going anywhere. You're staying right here with us. As ityone dies. When Mike Kenslin lost his daughter, the afterlife became his obsession. You probably want to hear all about our hot history, but after years of searching, he no longer believes.

So you're saying there's no such thing as ghosts. I'm saying I've never seen one. Nothing would make me happier than to experience a paranormal event. Gerald Oland Man in Drill Do Dolphins, I can just get the key to fourteen o eight. In the ninety five years at the hotel's existence, there have been fifty six deaths in fourteen oh eighty fifty six the one's ever lasted more than an hour.

The first victims to Kevin O'Malley, do not stay in that. Mood, is it? Hotel rooms are a naturally creepy place. It does have the fake air of menace. Nobody lasts more than an hour.

I have to try hardher Oland. It's not what I'm seeing. That's not real. It just ain't as real as Holy held yourself. Based on a story by Stephen King.

What did you call the cops? They're in fourteen o eight, They're at empty. I'm gonna die. I warned you about fourteen oh eight, don't you? Fourteen oh eight, directed by Michael Hofstrom.

Top five. I don't know where you ranked fourteen oh eight in your list of best Stephen King adaptations for me? Top five easily. This one is an odd one. It started its life as an instructive chapter in King's nonfiction tome on writing.

It was meant to demonstrate how rewrites and drafting are done. But then King, being King, he just kept on going. It originally appeared as an audio only release in the King collections Blood and Smoke, and was subsequently released as part of King's short story collection Everything's Eventual, And like most King properties, the film rights were snapped up almost immediately. A word about those rights. Are you, by any chance a fan of the Haunting of Hill House?

No, not the Robert Wise black and white masterpiece the recent Netflix mini series, yep, me neither. Well. If you are a fan, you have fourteen oh eight to thank see. Mike Flanagan tried to grab the rights to fourteen oh eight, but was shut out, so he turned around and made Oculus, which, according to Flanagan himself, is a straight up ripoff of fourteen oh eight. Then, when he was offered the chance to adapt Surely Jackson's novel, he recognized that the book had enough material for about ninety minutes of movie, not a multi hour, multi part mini series.

So rather than do the sensible and respectful thing and say this is only enough material for a movie and move on, he decided to graft a whole bunch of Oculus onto Hill House. Instead of two siblings, it's five now. That's according to Flanagan again, so if you liked that mini series, you actually liked fourteen oh eight all along. The movie stars in John Cusack as Mike Enslen, a grieving father and once serious author who's made his living writing disposable supermarket travelogs ten Nights in ten Haunted Graveyards, ten nights in ten Haunted Castles. When he receives a warning not to stay in Room fourteen oh eight at the Dolphin Hotel in New York, he does just that yes, the numbers add up to thirteen.

The short story is slight blocking in at forty pages and at traffics in an area King seems to alight on from time to time and handle better than most authors. That's the bad place. Sure, this is, as King described it, the ghostly room at the Inn type story. But there are no ghosts in fourteen oh eight. The room, like the Overlook Hotel, or the Marston House or a nineteen fifty eight Plymouth Fury, were just born wrong.

Frankenstein is a bad place story dressed in fake science. Put simply, there are some places you're simply not meant to go. The legend of Sleepy Hollow is another. If you'd like to keep your head attached to your shoulders, don't go out on the roads through the woods of Sleepy Hollow. Simple, don't do that.

It's a potent concept, and the reason Frankenstein in Sleepy Hollow works so well is it's able to dramatize the bad place by giving it a body to inhabit, but portraying the place itself as somehow wrong. King is the goddamn king of that. I know. I'm sorry. In any event, easy to do on the page not so easy to visualize enter screenplay gunslingers Scott Alexander and Larnie Karazuski.

I mentioned them a lot. They wrote ed Wood and Big Eyes and Problem Child, and they're fucking heroes of mine. They modify the Room in that there are ghosts to be found here, echoes of previous suicides, which on the surface feels like a total one to eighty from the short story's intent. As I said, there are no ghosts in the stories. It's the room.

But then they layer in a backstory for Mike Enslin that actually reinforces the short stories intent. The ghosts are just another lever for the Room to use to crack open Mike Ensland's mind full disclosure. The backstory they concocted for Mike Ensland is dangerously close to my own. So this movie might have hit me a little harder than most. I can say objectively that this is a great film, but I can't claim you'll connect as emotionally as I did.

Cusack is fantastic and what was effectively a one man show. I'm sure whatever reservations King had about Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining can be dismissed. Out of hand. Here, Mike Ensland goes from a vaguely bored human being to an hysterical and broke and man by the end. The film came out in two thousand and seven and was immediately swallowed up in the sea of horror Flick's obsessed with self mutilation.

Boy, I'm so looking forward to the torture porn resurgence in about a decade or so. I mentioned the Carpenters as a threat at the top of this. Here they use the Paul Williams Roger Nichols pen the classic We've only just begun to ominous effect. The clock radio on the nightstand will suddenly blare to life with the lilting tones of Karen Carpenter, reminding Mike Enslin that time is a useless concept. Here in the short story, he lasts seventy minutes in the room.

I have no idea how long qsax Eenslin was in there. The line that stays with me from the film comes from the room's telephone, as Qsack is desperately trying to phone out for help, the room fourteen oh eight tells him even. In my best rooms, while. Oh if it's too spooky, huh No such thing. Is that a cheesy organ sound?

I hear a. God that ship king because it's where it takes. Yeah, that's right, HP. We've got you stationed next to the prancing fluids, not dancing waters that would be up for litigation. Prancing fluids.

Okay, little lady, what's it going to be? Do you have a Stephen King or a hotel or a Karen Carpenter related tale to drop on the halloweenies? Yes, it was supposed to be one of those three things that qualifies why are you being so weird today? And it's a wildly underrated and underseeing King adaptation. Let's take a look at the Nightflyer.

I never believe which you publish. I never publish what you believe. A man flies to the desolate airports in the middle of the night. He kills whatever Porschemark happens to be around trees, the body of the blood. There's definitely a story here that needs to be told.

Inside View is an illustration of the insane. It's a diary of the deranged and dangerously sickly. Here's the fun party. After talking to these. Crazy people all day, every single day, all the Shifter's making sense.

Your best to be capital has he ain't no man? This is great shit. I mean the fatties in the supermarket lines are gonna love this guy. God, I hope he kills more people. These stories can get to you.

They can creep inside like some kind of cancer. Isn't that what you warn me about? Look, God, ladies and sensation seekers, very bad man is coming your way. We'll read his real name and forget it. But that's okay, because what she remembers my name for him.

You gonna remember the Night Flier coming soon to a checkout counter near you. The trailer you just heard is a not of the official trailer for the film, which was total and utter garbage, just lots of quick cuts of shock scenes and text doled out one word at a time for a minute and a half. This was a fan made trailer by a YouTuber named Jim Bromley. Excellent work, mister Bromley. The Night Flier from nineteen ninety seven.

I would want you to confuse it with the nineteen twenty eight Silent film starring William Boyd. No. This was directed by horror scenester Mick Garris, and it's his best work. Hands down. I know lots of you love Sleepwalkers, and how can you resist madgin Ammick?

I can't what I'm a man, But this film just lands short footedly in every direction, where his other King adaptations tend to just lay there kind of lifeless. Night Flier has a propulsive energy that cannot be denied that might owe a bit to its lead. Oh how I miss Miguel Ferrer. He'd show up in a film and you'd know you'd be in smug, deeply felt and deeply funny hands. Do you think Chevy Chase has deeply felt anything in his life?

Shame on you do not compare them. Ferrer stars as Richard Des, a broken down tabloid journalist who's assigned a story about a serial killer using isolated airports as his hunting grounds. Is there a bit of irony in King excoriating tabloid news for being peddlars of fear and grotesquery while he himself is writing stories that trade in the same currency. I don't know anyway. Loyal King readers will recognize Richard Des from King's novel The Dead Zone.

He's the reporter of Johnny Smith chases away in that book and the tabloid he works for, Inside View appears in a slew of King books, Bag of Bones, Needful Things, Doctor Sleep. Oh. And speaking of those connections, it should be noted that the Dolphin Hotel where fourteen oh eight lies waiting, that it's just down the street from the Dixie Pig, which is a vampire lounge in the Dark Tower where humans are roasted and devoured vampires. You say, King is obviously no stranger to our fanged friends. You probably just watch Salem Slot and ultimately that's what the night Flyer is, and he is brought to life by effects from knb here in their heyday.

The design and execution are superb. I love a monstrous vampire, particularly one that's thrown off convention and said no, I will not tire myself turning into a bat and flying long distances. I will use a cessna instead. This is a fun one. Look.

You've probably watched Friday the thirteenth and Nightmare and elm Street and Halloween and the same twelve movies over and over again. Give this one h chance, and that's all I'm going to say about it, because literally anything else is going to be a spoiler. You have a spoiler for me. Let's hear it, that's me and everyone dies alone. Oh no, no, I'll be with you.

I'll be with you, I promise, which brings us to our final choice. This one's a bit of a cheat. It is hotel themed, it's on brand, but really this is just an ad for this week's Anthologies Attack from two thousand and six. This is the Lost Room. We can't go anywhere anywhere at the door.

I think, my. God, since you found the key, has your life gotten better for worse? You need you to make me a promise about to tell anyone about the room, or the key or anything else. All right? What a little girl went into that motel room that she never came out.

We're in this thing together all the way. Whatever the hell this. Thing is, there are events in motion that are greater than you could understand what happened to that motel room. If I showed you what's there, there's no going back. It will make you crazy.

Tell me you can bring her back, Tell me what's know? This is right a world on the days last Sci Fi Channel mini series of Antelo Peter Krauss Juliana marketis the Lost Room? Go to Roku or Sci Fi Channel or wherever lions Gate is streaming, and watch this right now. I'm serious. It's three episodes, two hours each, a mini series that was meant to be a continuing series but functions perfectly as its own self contained story.

Trust me, once you've seen it, it will live in your brain forever. I'm not going to get incredibly deep into it. In fact, this episode's going to be a bit shorter than my usual affair, and I apologize, but it's been incredibly hectic here with lots of great opportunities of veiling themselves and you'll be hearing those in the coming weeks. But I don't want to go too deep into this for two reasons. I don't want to spoil it, and as I mentioned on this week's Anthologies Attack, I sit down with Lost Room show runner Richard HadAM for an in depth discussion of the show show.

Richard is a hell of a storyteller and his insights into the show are priceless. Okay, I'm gonna try and do this in a nutshell. There's no nutshell big enough for this series. Uh okay, let me give you the broadest stroke. Pittsburgh Detective Joe Miller's daughter is missing and he's trying to find her there that'll do it, except she's lost in a motel room that remains frozen in time and can only be accessed by its original key, and that key can be used on any door.

That door then suddenly becomes the door to Room ten of the Sunshine Motel in Gallop, Mexico, in May of nineteen sixty one. Are you with me? Probably not. Something happened an event at that motel room, and now anything taken out of the room is imbued with power. Sometimes the powers are useful, like the key, and sometimes they are totally fucking imbecilic.

If you put an egg into the watch's banned, it'll hard boil it. Point being, no matter the use, the fact is the objects pilfered from the room are out in the world and being used for god knows what. So it's a detective procedural, it's a meditation on materialism. It's a celebration of Americana. It's a show with more on its mind with regard to superpowers than watching two similarly powered goons punching each other.

The concept itself is inventive, and then its applications are delightful. You know how, given even a cursory knowledge of a who've done it, you'll be able to, as long as the writer is playing fair figure out the story's puzzle well in advance. Moreover, you can fairly well and anticipate how the characters are going to act. Good luck here, because every time you find a hole in the plot, the writers are way ahead of you, and their solutions are never disappointing. I wish more people weren't watching it when it aired, but like I said, it's not a one sentence cell plane crashes on deserted island and the survivors are not alone.

Oooh, sounds simple. I'll watch that fourteen oh eight. Getting lost in a trend. I think this was a time when every studio wanted a mystery box TV show, and there might have been too much competition buying for your attention. But that don't mean you can't watch it right now.

Yes, I'm being abbreviated because I want everyone to luxuriate in the Lost Room, and I want you to tune in on Friday for anthologies Attack with Lost Room show runner Richard HadAM, we are signing off. We did it again. I guess sort of abbreviated uh jeez, I think we got one more in us before Halloween is upon us, so we're gonna have to make that a super special one. From myself in Ripley Jean, we'd like to thank you all for joining us once again here at Father Malone's weekly round Up. I'm gonna leave you with a bit of the magnificence that is Samuel L.

Jackson in fourteen oh eight. Now you misunderstand, whatever's in fourteen oh eight is nothing like that. That one isn't. It's an evil fucking one. What that on to what you fund along the way?

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