Father Malone's Weekly Roundup - Tickled, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, Thank God It's Friday

Here we go. Welcome back midnight viewers. Staying cool out there. I hope Ripley wants you to know she's always cool. I want to be cool.

And speaking of me, I'm Father Malone. Welcome to midnight Viewings, Father Malone's weekly round up, where we get your toes tapping and your fingers snapping to the latest available for free streaming. And if it's not free, well there's always physical media. Oh, they laughed as my DVD collection continued to grow. Who needs any of that?

You have free streaming, It's just taking up space. Well who's laughing now, huh? Or who's dancing? Is it dancing time? Is it boogie time?

Is it kickball? Chain and other dance term time it is? Or more importantly, it will be now. Ordinarily I pick a current flick. Ripley chooses a classic, but we've swapped rolls Chriss Cross.

Remember Chris Cross, Those prepubescent rappers with backwards clothing. I hope they kept those pockets full for times like now, even if they're going in the wrong direction anyway, Ripley, gene, tell these good people what your choice is for this week? Hold on, okay, what is this I'm not reading this, okay, I'll read this very hard to read. We as citizens are only as ever free as makes financial sense to corporations in the very wealthy. You watch how fast freedom becomes pass a when you can no longer provide another yacht for a cannibal billionaire.

As an oppressed member of this society, I don't see anyone putting a leash on you so you can just take a simple walk and clear your head. I think my choice for this week demonstrates this theory in weighs far more direct and clear than my poor vocabulary will allow. That was quote unquote, and that's a very deep introduction for what turns out to be a total fucking bonkers documentary. No, this isn't new, came out in twenty seventeen, but it is new to Netflix and therefore free to stream if you subscribe to Netflix. That is, we watched this one on a lark because the description was so perplexing.

Here it is David Ferrier, a New Zealand television reporter whose beat focuses on quirky and odd stories encounters online videos depicting competitive endurance, tickling, and activity in which young athletic men are restrained and tickled by each other. You're already watching it, right, That's fine. Just don't turn off this show, but definitely go watch it. I mean, that's why I'm telling you about it. That's why we're so that's why Ripley is recommending this one.

I didn't even want to watch the trailer. I just dove in, thought this is going to be hilarious. This is gonna be a fucking laugh riot. Now, midnight viewer, we're of a mind. We see eyed eye, so I'm sure you are as I was pondering the phrase competitive tickling?

How do you score? How do you keep score? Is there a referee? Is the other team being tickled or vice versa? Do they have designated tickleees?

Can they gauge how well a team has done? The fact that all of these videos featured athletic, good looking young men, and the fact that the one being tickled is effectively restrained via cuffs to the bed should have been a tip off that whatever niche corner of the sporting world they were carving out here, it wasn't going to include any endorsements from Nike. You know, I'm gonna put the trailer here because it does a much more economical job of laying it all out for you. I think you said Jane was doing our project using tickling as a military tactic. You know.

I was like, Okay, a military is going to use tickling as a torture protactic. A dude in New Zealand a reporter like happened across this Facebook page, some sort of organized sport of tickling. When did the video come back to get you? About a year? Maybe a little more.

Listen, your family better watch out like direct threats. We're shooting at doctor Maitrice. I understand you think you're doing. I don't think that you're going to be able to find the answers that you're looking for. Just walk away from it.

At least we saw the doctor. Are we going to be un once you stop? We all are? Ja o' ryan's a ghost. Nobody knows who it is, but there must be a way to find out.

Surely here if you want to stick your guy West Frost to the money's endless. I've never seen the stop coming. It's everywhere the stop tackle torture films. Very sick. There's nobody to help me.

He's a real target and believe me, and it will be really ugly. I've had po come in. We'll kill him. It's inside. Yeah, And what follows is a genuinely frightening saga that involves intercontinental stalking, multiple secret identities, blackmail, very angry ponytail man doxing, private investigation, and at the center is a devastating lesson about how unearned wealth can produce a seemingly invulnerable perch from which petty and venal people hold sway.

I guess this times when to what you were saying, A right tickled is not going to make you laugh, but it will make you gasp frequently. I'm trying to go spoiler light on all the lesser scene flicks, but I will say it's really heartening to watch how dogged and unflappable David Ferrier remains throughout the whole proceeding. It's a portrait of the profession as we knew it, as I grew up knowing it, journalism, a lone voice struggling against all odds to be heard without one's own self preservation. At the forefront, it's noble, even in the face of a story that seems to be as trivial as This one does tickled. It is available on Netflix right now.

You're already watching. Was that good? Did that live up to your scrawled chicken scratch writings? Oh good? I know what you're thinking.

He said there'd be dancing one recommendation come and gone and nary a pirouette. I think this fake priest might be a liar. You're right, it's no secret. Ripley and I are broadcasting from Sin City, Las Vegas, Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada, America's playground. But where are you listening?

Hit me up? International downloaders, UK, I'm looking at you, quite a few of you, and Ireland and Australia. What's going on? And to that one listener in Germany, here is the sum total of my German just for you, Zoom zoom zoom beach and zumh room ivl t and nikschulaida f lignah hous involden hida zoom zoom, zoom beach and zumh room. Now, if that hasn't made you turn off the program, drop me a line, Father Malone seven to one at gmail dot com.

You don't have an email. I'll read you anything that comes in. Can I go on. All right, Father Malone seventy one at gmail dot com. I'd love to hear from you, particularly if it's praiseworthy.

Go on and correspond midnight viewers, going on, Moving on serialized television, It's no longer over the air. You don't need an antenna. You don't need tinfoil adhere to that antenna so you can pick up a better signal. It's not even really on cable anymore. But with tonight's choice, all that horrifying eighties video glitching and terrible blue screen, Yeah, blue screen are fully on display, and this one is Tonight's horror selection.

Get ready to plunge into the darkest depths of a horror writer that we prefers to the term dream weaver, a horror writer's twisted and bloated imagination, Garth Marenghi's dark place. My name is doctor Rek Douglass. I'm day a woman termed green. Last night, the porter said he saw her breathe in a green gas. Could this be linked to the green cloud of gas that was directly over the hospitals of ventilation shaft.

I was cruising down to Walt B to find out I'd stopped out of my way to give Sanchez a n ash or a lift, a courtesy for which light yet to thank Ma. There's probably a fair number of you who have already been hipped to this little gem. But if you have not seen this, I am so envious of you. This show scratches every cultural media genre ititch. It's a spoof on early eighties serialized horror and those existed as we know here at midnight viewing, but shot through the lens of the show's writer, producer, director, star, theme song whistler, Garth Marengi.

The obvious analog for him is Stephen King. I think in nineteen eighty four or eighty five, Stephen King could have very well gotten a pilot produced about a haunted hospital where he was the star of the show. But Stephen King wouldn't be the elder statesman of popular American horror literature today if he gave off even one iota of Marenghi's persona. The premise of the show is we're finally being allowed to see the law or suppressed episode of Marengi's eighties show Dark Place for the first time. It's like a criterion collection presentation, including cutaways to cast and crew who are commenting on the scenes that we've just seen, or the series in general.

If you enjoy any of the comedy that's come out of the UK since the early two thousands, then you kind of owe it to yourself to watch this series. I'm not speaking hyperbole when I say that the show is stacked with cameos by some of the best comedic performers working then and now, none of which I'm going to name here. Be surprised. The whole thing started as a stage spoof for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in two thousand. Matthew Holness has been playing this cat Garth Marenghi as long as Hal Holbrig did Mark Twain.

By this point, he's ably assisted by Richard Ayowadi, who plays his publisher co star in both the show's real life and fictional life. The shows themselves, the stories set in and around Dark Plain's Hospital, play a bit like Dark Shadows, but shot through with a more modern sensibility, like the kind you'd find an Amicus flicks at the late seventies. There's video effect, some practical puppets and ghostly Scotsmen. It's delirious stuff, all done in a super arch style of melodrama. Those shows are so good, in fact, that the commentary criterion channel cutaways to cast and crew those get old are really quick, at least for me.

I know there are plenty of good jokes being delivered, but that confessional style that seemed to proliferate in the wake of the office it is exhausted. Now there has to be a fan edit of Dark Place with none of the interviews. Somebody, let me know if there is. Look, I'm making them sound worse than they are. Let me know if I am.

This is all quibbling, putting aside all the sublime, spooky genius on display. This would still be worth a watch if you're a fan of what we do in Shadows, because you get a slim, shaven, magnificently quafft early eighties version of Matt Berry. Here. I wish I was more attractive like Douglass. Still won can only dreamt down a two way lace.

It is a sight amid the fright. This is available in multiple forms on Amazon Prime and Pluto Plex. Maybe I don't know it's out there. It's free, and we're gonna be talking about Matt barrymore in the future because he has a plethora of programming to ponder. I know there was no dancing there either.

There were some musical numbers in that show, though I know it's not the same. But listen what I'm about to say. Well, more than makeup for the so far absent dancing in these recommendations, the following phrase should be tattooed across your heart, fellow wage slaves, Thank god it's Friday. Hello on the air. Hello, Hello, am I on?

You're on? What would you like to talk about? What everybody's talking about? Thank god it's Friday. Thank god it's Friday.

The movie that shows how fully splendid man can be when he's free, immaturally and he had time yet we are out for action night thirty four and you're thirty seven. Amazing. Let's think about that. Thank god it's Google home. Since he drunk, I'll take advantage of you.

I'm afraid of what's happened here. I get to look like a monkey and run the elevator, not one or the other? May everyone adder? A simple more would have sufficed. I'm Mark Boman got I'm bock of you.

Surely didn't you come here looking for some action? Yeah? I want you to get me, jack guy. She is a creek. How do I know?

How you ply? Estro? I can tell you two things about anyone you know who remembers the movie Xanadu fondly. They haven't seen it in some time because it is bad. There's, oh, calm down.

There are some good sequences. I can watch that. I'm a live sequence on a loop, but it's a bad movie. The other thing you can tell about them is they did not watch this movie growing up. Thank God it's Friday, because this is the ship.

Donna Summer is in this movie. Deborah Winger is in this movie Terry Nunn, who will eventually take your breath away as the lead singer of Berlin. She's a baby face teene in this movie. Speaking of faces, Jeff Goldblum is the villain in an American graffiti pastiche of Life amongst the disco set, this paper thin bit of pop culture silliness. Jeff Goldblum is the villain and there's not one Jeff Goldblum tick on display, all character work, and it's magnificent.

The whole thing takes place over one night Friday night, as luck would have it, at an La disco and the dozen or so characters who have misadventures in and around the zoo, A Neon and strobelet multi leveled, multi themed ultimate disco paradise one you would actually want to go to, and the one that they used used to exist on La Sienaga Boulevard over near where the Beverly Center is, though in the real world it was called Osco's and it is long gone. Thank God. It's Friday. Is a stupid film. The jokes are passable, the characters are wafer thin.

The whole screenplay has about as much weight as cotton candy. But I fucking love cotton candy. What's better than straight sugar blown out to gossamer and it dissolves on your tongue. I don't give a shit if they are more sophisticated toyase or it's out there. Sometimes cotton candy it's all you need.

And even cotton candy, as delicious as it is, doesn't sound like this. Do at Babe, to stop, Babe, to stop? Why? Yes? I do?

Own the two disc soundtrack on vinyl with a gatefold that gives you a panoramic view of what the whole movie poster should look like. It has the aforementioned Donna Summer on It and the Common Horse, but there are other tracks by d c LaRue, Diana Ross, Thelma Houston and Cameo. That script that I was bagging on, that's by Armie Bernstein. He was Kate Capshaw's pre Spielberg husband. He'd also write the Kopela flick One from the Heart, which I mentioned last week, and apparently I meant to be the champion of I'll do it, but first, thank god, it's Friday.

It's dated, it's dumb, it's delightful, but I may be wrong usually am Let's check in with some critical reaction to this ninety minute bit of mindless entertainment. Gene Siskel said it's a disco movie that's little more than a dismal record promotion guilty. Gary Arnold from the Washington Post that it is full of TV sitcom pilot boors, halfwits in low lifes who don't sustain a glimmer of human interest. Those are my people. And this movie has an Academy Award and a Golden Globe and a Grammy.

It's not an egot? Is it an ag? Maybe a gag? I'm sure a lot of you would say the latter, but they didn't give an oscar to citizen Kane or taxi driver. Thank God it's Friday, however, has a little gold statue.

It's not Friday, though, it is Sunday, the end of Sunday, which means we're gonna shut things down here and hibernate, and by that I mean Ripley and me are going to go keep our eyes glued to all the media so you don't have to, and we'll be back here next week to tell you all about it. You got anything else for the listener's rip? No, no, no, I am not reading another screed on the state of the proletariat from you dog. That's me. Thank you once again for joining us here at the weekly roundup for Ripley and myself.

We wish you a fantastic week. There's a new episode of Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology podcast this Friday, Thank God. It's where we're making our way through Tales from the dark Side. If you want to hear that early in commercial free, you can subscribe at patreon dot com slash follom alone. We've got all the shows up there early and there is exclusive bonus content we'll see you there until next time.