Tales from the Darkside S01E18&19 (If the Shoe Fits & Levitation)

Remember the stories that kept you awake at night living in that closet. Dr Benner, can you still hear the screams? I love having the children for dinner, All from your television set in the night Gallery A dark Side. Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology Podcast join hosts fatherm Alone, Mike White, and Chris Stashu as they exhumed some of the most infamous horror television of all time Midnight Viewing from weirding Way Media weird Way, Welcome back to Midnight Viewing, the Horror Anthology Podcast, where this season we're taking a look at George A. Romero's nineteen eighties series Tales from the Dark Side.

I'm your host, Father Malone, and sharing the Midnight view with me are the culture Casts. Chris Statue, you know I have heard that if the Glove Fits, you must quit. Also with me from the Project Booth, It's mister Mike White. We are very far away from Lorenzo Saint Dubois. Tonight, we're taking a look at two episodes from season one.

They are If the Shoe Fits and Levitation If the Shoe Fits. Season one, episode eighteen, originally aired on May the twelfth, nineteen eighty five. This one was written by n Ward and armand Mastriani. Story by Lewis Haveer, directed by armand Mastriani and starring Dick Sean, Harry Goes and John Zarkin. Oh boy, go ahead, tell us what this one's about without waiting right into it.

Okay, It's about a cornpone Southern politician. He checks into a hotel on the night before or the day before. Is some big political rally that's going to go on, and the hotel is I don't I don't know, I don't know. Somebody jump in. I be helping Mike, help him.

I'm taking apart the political fucking shadows being thrown here. What is this story? Worry about it? I guess it's a bellboy who didn't get his tip, so he's now torturing this guy by giving him fake clothes but also giving him hallucinations. I think that's what it is.

Well, I think he dosed this guy. Was it about the tip? Was it about the no opportunity? I mean, because nothing, there's no motivation other than you, sir, are a clown. So I'm going to dress you like a clown, but really you're not.

But you are, but you're not. I don't even remember how this one ended. I was so frustrated by this whole thing. Oh and also there's the Yere's Mimi who shows up every once in a while. Yeah it's a three cander for technically because there's also his his his campaign manager.

Can we just talk about what this is actually about? This is called don't be a politiic and politicker gotta spake the truth, don't flip flop, don't waffle. Now, boy, it's that shit right, you're you talk too fast, and we're going to show you what that means. It's like, okay, he's getting his just desserts. That could have been the name of this episode.

Crazy. I didn't get any of that corn pone stuff that you're talking about. I mean, my god, that he's a jerk, But like the name bogums, I don't know, like yeah, he just look, it's clearly supposed to be this is a politician who doesn't believe a word that he says, and he's just there to entertain the people. So what does that mean when he's a clown? So how do they dress him up literally like a clown?

But tis I can hear them hitting the high hat from over here. It is a blackout sketch. I like it so was Yeah, twenty two minutes of it too. The audacity of this show. Lord.

Last time we were together, I thoughd about how I was really feeling the commercial breaks. I was so feeling it here too, because I was every time they would fade the black I'm like, there's more of this? Is that? Oh my god, when is this going to be over? Every every black out just reminded me of how long this was.

Dick Sean is always a joy to watch, no matter what he's doing. Sometimes he gets a little long in the tooth. Sometimes he gets a little long in the tooth. There's the moment here where he's performing for the bell hop basically and like laying out exactly who he is as a human being. And it's so theatrical and so just over the top that by the time he's got his own bow tie wrapped around his head, I was expecting him to proposition the bell boy.

I can see that free sauce in every pop A lot of barbecue talk. Apparently that's how you win votes in the South as barbecue. We know we're in the South because of Dick Sewan's accent, even if the other characters don't have one of their own. I'll say I'll say it again. Yeah, I was waiting for fucking Foghorn Leghorn to walk through the goddamn door with this southern accent.

Gotta put a little bit of sugar on. It's just where the boys upstairs is. I just can't thinking of facing the crowd the Andy Griffith film where he's the corn pone guy, but he's very evil, and I was just like, man, I wish I was watching that instead. That's such a better movie. But that's the thing.

This guy is evil, right, It's just like this is I guess here's the problem. Not to get political or anything, but it's really boring when evil is this fucking stupid huh, because that's the reality. Look, all of the morons with the three letter abbreviations that sit and be fucking stupid all the time are looking at this going what's wrong? This is the kind of bullshit that I do. And that's the problem.

This is literally it's like that movie we made everybody so mad about Civil Wars. Is this funny or is this just a sad, fucking reflection on the world right now, which was technically the world when they made this. Nothing has changed. Politicians are still the same, and we're surprised when they don't act like pandering dickheads, which is exactly what he's playing. Dick Shawn is playing the most pandering of pandering politicians.

He'll say anything and do anything to get people to pay attention to him, but he has absolutely no moral standing on anything and has nothing to say in reality. Yeah, yeah, this isn't saying anything new about anything else, just putting him in a clown suit. And I'm like, okay, I could see that in a political cartoon, but it doesn't stop pushing the envelope. It's not being edgy, that's for sure, and I have a feeling they think they're being very edgy with this. Putting a politician in a clown outfit wouldn't even be edgy.

Now anyways, at this point, what political cartoon showing anybody as a clown is? Do one more please, because this is not scathing. There's no bite here. This is completely toothless. Now give me a Ron McDonald crucified.

It's that level of political sattire going on. Yeah, perrovide with French fries through each hand. I this episode was not only sent bound, it film stage back. Oh boy, remember when the HBO used to do theatrical broadcasts of Broadway performances. I saw one of Sherlock Holmes with Franklin Jell.

It was captivating. Wow. I was thinking about that a lot while I was watching this episode, because there was not really much here at all. Again, you guys said it is a Blackouts get stretched to twenty two minutes. It's absolutely absurd.

I do like that he has on Bermuda shorts that are star spangled. They seem to me. I guarantee you those are left over from the bi centennial. Somebody bout at the grip Star. That was my favorite part of this episode was those Bermuda shorts.

I asked if they were getting revenge on him for not tipping, because I wrote in my notes here, so he believed that a campaign button is a gratuity because it is not. At least he's not spending people's money unnecessarily, because there's no way that it's his money anyways. Right, Yeah, nobody's giving him gold bars or anything. He's not selling sneakers already right, Yeah, be weird if somebody were to do that. I got a total uh, stop making sense vibe when they finally get him into that clown up yes to his girlfriend is better?

Is just walks out to just fucking take me to the river? God? And actually, the thing I couldn't get past is every time they said mister Gumms, all I could think was our mister, what's the lord Thruskin? Like that's all I can think of. It's one letter away.

Oh well, and then to call somebody mister gums too sounds like he's some sort of dental freak, Like dentists do not like mister Gumbs. Now, I said, Dick Sean is like way over the top here. But I think the problem is Dick Seawan is doing his damnedest to make this comedy episode actually have some comedy in it, because the script is not helping at all. Bully that apple that the maid bit into that really pays off at the end, doesn't it? Ah?

God, why didn't he leave with his manager? His manager shows up, sees him in his regular clothing, convinces him that he's in his regular clothing, and then he says, no, I'm going to stick around with the fucking crazy mirror in this weirdo staff from the Twilight Zone. Basically, yeah, yeah. There were so many questions and so many just but I didn't care. I was like, is it the hotel doing this?

Is it the bell Boy? But then after a while I was like, I just don't care. And I kept thinking with the bell boy or that he reminded me so much of that guy from thirty Rock, and I was just like, oh, I wonder what that guy's up to, and just Jack mcbray just started like going off into this little Jack mcbreer fantasy. Oh yeah, oh yeah, do you spending other things he was good at. Yeah, so I don't like William Cat with a different face.

Yeah you kind of see that. Yeah, you know. I worked in a haunted attraction here in Las Vegas for a few years, and on occasion I would have to dress as a clown to scare tourists, and I remember putting the clown shoes on for the first time. I have thirteen inch feet, so I remember putting clown shoes on for the first time and going, Wow, these are great. Yeah.

I was about to say, that doesn't sound like a real problem. I look like I have clown shoes on when I wear giant converse. So yeah, it's a problem as it is. Also the costumes that they're wearing. One is a bell boy and then the other one is a traditional French maid.

Oh yes, but it just looks like she's cause playing as Magenta from Rocky Horror Picture Show because they have her in like the worst looking pancake makeup and she has the curly hair too. Yeah. The fact that the way the episode ends is they just trot him out into a sent essentially an empty room and go, there's people here. Crowd noises are gonna be piped in post pro. Okay, I can't believe that this was twenty two minutes because god, it only felt like fifty.

Yeah, it only call like an hour and a half. And again, if the joke is he's a clown, okay, but you don't need twenty minutes to tell that story. Just don't do you? Hear music? I hear music?

What is all this music? Sounds like there's a circus in town. I'm like, okay, And that music got really old really fast. It did. The bed that they used for the circus tunes.

Here are dreadful, and as soon as he heard that music, I wrote, oh, he's a clown. That's where we're going, I guess, And then it was just a slow slide down to the circus. I will say that, yes, they're fooling nobody by having him in a darkened room with circus noise and crowd cheering, But I did think it was kind of cool that they that they took their entire lighting package and just strung it around the room and hung gels on them to simulate like circus lighting. I actually liked that. The other thing I liked is he's been waiting for his car the whole time, so when the clown car showed up, I was like, oh, well that's kind of clever.

But when he got into it, all I could think was why aren't there three dozen clowns dogpiling onto him right now? Yes? I mean, because one man in a tiny clown car is still funny. It's a good image ultimately. But here's the thing.

This could have begun and the Tailson's dark sign, the spooky spooky Paul Spearer and then the window opens, Dick Sean in a clown car going hey, I'm a politician, the end. If this was Night Gallery, that would have been what it was, but that somehow in Night Gallery we complained that the blackout sketches were a little too long, and now it's just like we're going all in twenty two minutes. Baby, oh for the days of Jack a Laird. Oh bo yeah, oh for the days of what was that? Was it?

The one where it's that the vampire leads the woman down to the crypt and then he's like, I'm gonna take my picture that one, Like I always think of that one because I'm like, that's done right, This is just like twenty two minutes. Really, don't we have twenty two minutes to do on literally anything else? Nope, And there's no wolf Man or franken Sign or Dracula at all. No, just a clown play Dick Sean fail all right. Next episode is Levitation.

This is season one, episode nineteen. It aired originally on May the nineteenth, nineteen eighty five. Written by David Gerald, based on a short story by Joseph Payne Brennan, This one was directed by John Harrison, a stalwart here at Tales from the Dark Side starring Joe Turkle and You Have Burned so very very brightly roy. It also stars Brad Cowgill and Cynthia Frost. This is a story of a magician who once performed a levitation act that may or may not have been real, and a young, young magic fan who will not stop hounding him.

What did you think of this one, Chris? I thought that this episode was called well Cooked Hams wather Blay and you should appreciate that one. No, it's not called well Cooked Tams. That's the other magician episode that I can think of when I think of magician things from anthology shows. All I guess it was Cooked Hams and the Joe Pants one where he's like the guy with nine lives and so he's killing himself for real, He's gone.

Dig that Catty's real Gone. I am so wary anytime these anthology shows approach the world of magic, because I really have yet to see one that does this kind of thing. Well, Dig that Caddy's Real Gone is good, but for a completely different reason. I think there was one other magic based episode Entails from the Crypt with Ernie Hudson in a gorilla that he reads his mind. Yeah, that's a wild episode.

This is just in keeping with those kind of like weird Takes on the circus. This is another misplaced attempt at trying to I don't know what it's getting at ultimately, but the final gag is funny, I'll give you that. But I think for most of it, I'm just like, what's the point here are we getting at? What are we driving at? What is this kid's obsession with magic?

And then oh, this is also kind of a blackout sketch. Really, what would happen if the hypnotists It's like the setup of office space. What happens if the hipn it just dies before he can unhypnotize you. This asks the question what happens if who's levitating you dies before he brings you back down? And scene good thing it was saying open air magic.

It was a revival tent on top of everything else. Yeah. Yeah, that kid was so freaking obnoxious, especially when he starts heckling Joe Turkle and he's just like, well, show him the rope he didn't have? What about that other thing? I'm like, shut the fuck up, kid, is this how you're gonna get your way?

And he ends up getting his way and then he gets his just desserts like you said, Chris, it's a total blackout skate. It should not be twenty two minutes. It's like bing bang boom, let's get out of here. I'm almost curious to track down the short story just to see how long it goes, because I can't see it just going on for so long. Why do we need the friend?

We gotta have somebody screaming to bring him back at the end to try and convince us that this guy floating away is it better for everybody? No, we don't. The opening scene here represents something to me. I've noticed this in a couple of episodes, These tropes that bug the shit out of me in movies and television. People arriving at a location and then discussing the location.

What did you talk about on the way there? What did you talk about before you left the apartment as to where your destination was going to be? This is now not the time to discuss where we were going. You're at the fucking circus, and by the way, here's where we're going. Look up, it's the fucking circus.

You should have raised your objections earlier, and just making him a magic fan gives it no stakes at all. He's just a kid who wants to see a trick perform. Why is he not a young magician who's coming up in the ranks and knows that this trick from nineteen sixty will gain him all the fame? Tails from the Crypt would have done that. Tails from the Crypt did do that?

Well, Tails in the Crypt tried. I think that I found the story and it is literally five hundred words. Oh good lord, I could almost paste it in the chat. It's that short. I'll paste the URL to it.

But yeah, I'm I think this is the real deal. I don't think somebody expretated it for the Internet. You imagine someone doing that about this random episode of Tales from the Dark Side and the off chance that people are talking about it on a podcast, and just like, hey, we found the original text for this magician story. Got you? It's my version of the story.

What psychopath are you? Yeah? I've been laying in wait for all these years. Honestly, the story ends the same way. So the story gets us to the exact same position, which is, your friend got what he deserves?

Does anyone really deserve to float forever? That kid did? Actually? Yeah, he was a prick? Yeah, in fact, what bothered me at the end of the episode wasn't that this kid did this or that he was floating off to heaven.

It was that they had the character die like I wanted him to just be like, you want levitation, take it? And then the kid floats off, and then what are they gonna charge him with the crime? I do like that you're that you're in assumption? Is he floated to heaven? No, don't go to heaven.

They should have had those people from the Madness Room should have been like, oh, we'll just float him away, float him into the at called the Great Karma. Nice tip off, folks like going to funk with a guy named the Great Karma. So on the nose it hurts. Punched me in the face again, I didn't get it the first time. Now, as bad as the episode is, I would never want to be fixed in Joe Turkle's gaze.

I could burn a hole in Also, I think if Joe Turkle grabbed my face and started telling me to sleep, I would do anything. But oh yeah, I'm just amazed at how well preserved he was in this episode, because I'm like, how old is this guy? Because of course, when he's Tyrell, he looks ancient, especially with those huge fucking glasses. Even when he's Lloyd, he looks old. But I got he looked younger here than he did in the seventies.

He was sixty when Blade Runner came out. Wow, and he only passed passed away two years ago. By the way, Oh the ripe old age of ninety four. I tried to get an interview, but then I was told, oh, he's very cantankerous, and I said, yeah, maybe I don't need to talk with him. Then he's very cantankerous.

So he's ninety two, exactly. He has every right exactly. Can you imagine I didn't sign up to be here this long? Good old Joe, he's the best part of this episode. That's god.

Yes, he should have hosted a horror anthology show. Yeah, imagine that. And he could be a character in every single episode, even if he just showed up in the background or something. Yeah, but yeah, exactly. That Karloff who doesn't know who Harry Hoodany is?

Who deny ever heard of this? Who? Deny? Guy? He's great?

And along those lines, we all know Harry Hoodany had nothing to do with the levitation right, that's not what Tails from the Dark Side would lead me to believe. On I did like that there was a Harry the Hat playing three card Monty along the boardwalk there. That was good. You mean the back lot that they just threw some canvas tarps over and claimed was a magic was a circus because it looked like a back lot somewhere. Other than that, they're inside a warehouse.

Oh great, I'm actually impressed with the way that this one looks because I know it's a warehouse in Queens. Oh yeah, okay, then fair. Yeah, sure, this is an exterior episode films entirely in the interior, and I didn't. I never once saw we were in an interior me either. Yeah, good for them, it's just too bad it's this episode.

Here's a choice bit of dialogue. Oh man, they got freaks. That's gonna be something neat like a hermaphrodite. Hell yeah, he gets it, he gets it, he understands Yo, those freaky hermaphrodites. That's what That's what Eddie Murphy was talking about, right, freaky Hemphordi who he picked up on Bulevar.

Yeah, freak hermaphrodites. Eddie Murphy and the freaky hermaphrodite Why is that a thing? What this is nineteen eighty something not nineteen sixty five. Yeah, I don't remember. I don't remember any freaks and any around me.

Yeah. On top of everything else, why set this in the time and the place of the eighties. I'd be so creeped out if this guy was just doing guillotine action in a back alley. So where in nineteen eighty five? Okay, yeah, I mean seventy five miles to see this?

All right? It would have been pretty cool if they had actually done a period piece and made this the nineteen fifties. And I don't know why they couldn't. Yeah, make it a little bit where knightmy or alley ish well. And also then it would make perfect sense why that guy just floats away through an open air tent exactly.

Don't have to explain that to anybody. Yeah, they didn't have roofs back in the fit and it was And also by the way, that open air tent was perfectly opened where he flew out to and he can't move either, he can't grab anything. Was he hypnotized? Yeah, he's under his control? Yeah, yes, okay, sure, what hits a rafter and he just goes spinning off.

Yeah, yeah, we need to just remake this one, and if we have, we're not going to use the same goddamn circus music that they used in Alaska exactly exactly. I was like, oh my god, this is the same bed John showing off his love of scrims. Here he uses them pretty effectively. Here, He's gonna use it a lot effectively in the attempt from the Dark Side movie. Eventually.

I also think, oh, my favorite part of the episode is that he's securing his assistant into a guillotine and then cut to the kid in the audience and he says, this is kids stuff like the French Revolution. Hen's being chopped off. Bro, I know how they do that, don't you know how they do that trick? This is a fake blade that. See.

Here's the other thing. How are we supposed to like this dickhead character who is the asshole in everybody's life, who goes there's no magic. It's like, oh wow, fuck you, Like, well, actually, dear the cup, who's the fuck you? If you're that person, you don't understand what the fucking point. It's a performance and you're just an asshole.

You're like heckling a comedian. You're an idiot, except the magicians can't bring you up on the stage and punch you in the fucking face like they deserve to. That's the problem. At least comedians get to heckle you back. That's the perk of the job.

Right on the nuts and bolts level, was there no one working tech? Was there nobody manning the spotlights? Because the heckling went on way too long? Was there not security or something? Somebody in the crowd pulled this kid out of there?

There definitely was somebody working lights because at one point they shine this big light on the tircle and I'm like, that seems like very inappropriate time to be shining the light on him, or like, why wasn't it on before? So there was one person, But yeah, they weren't calling security and not taking care of this obnoxious kid. I also do love that Harry Houdini spoke to nobody, but he spoke to you. You're the line to Houdini, like this random fucking dude in a random again blackout sketches, man, what his tails from the dark side do? Oh?

And this was in fact the inspiration for the Prestige, So we have this to think. So there you go. I might like this one better than the Prestige. I'm just gonna leave you with the the that's the hottest take right there, and you're just gonna leave that one out there to fucking hang. Oh shit, fuck Chris Nolan.

I'm gonna leave you with the words of Joe Turkle here trying to lull you to sleep. Relax, Let your weight and drop from your flesh. So you should say every day when you're going to sleep, now, good night to sleep. Let your bones hit the pillow, God, Jesus, Joe Turle, the intensity that that man spoke. Yeah, have you ever heard of Peter Sarafina, which is Dalek relaxation, relaxation tape, Relax, relax you man, now is time for relaxing.

Oh man? Okay. On the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we'll be taking a look at two episodes from season one, It All Comes Out in the Wash and The Bigelow's Last Smoke. Midnight Viewing. The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of a weirding Way media group, and our theme song was composed by HP until next time.

What are you working on? Where can people find you? Chris Dash you Weirdingwaymedia dot coms We can find everything that I work on, and a whole bunch of other things that I don't, except for one thing, which can be found over on Mike's Patreon for the Projection Booth or my patreon for the Culturecast at patreon dot com slash Culturecast or Projection Booth, respectively, and that is ranking on Bond, where we spend one day a month talking about James Bond. We record it and let our Patreon listeners hear it. So ten dollars or more gets you access to that, and we're just getting started, so you have plenty of time to catch up.

What about you, Mike White? Pretty much the same thing. Everything's going over at weirdowaymedia dot com, including one of my favorite shows, Wake Up Heavy, where Mark Bigley comes on and talks about movies and talks with his daughter a lot too, which is kind of cool. So nice show, party, Warm Feelings. How about you, fatherom alone.

As for me, go over to Weirdowaymedia dot com. You can hear me on this year. You can also hear me on night mister Walters a taxi podcasts hosted by HPU, who composed our theme song. You can also hear Dark Destinations that's a radio drama that I and produce. Thank you all for joining us here at midnight viewing.

Until next time, try to enjoy the daylight midnight viewing. The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of Weirdingway Media. Our theme song was composed by HP with an assist from Donald Rubinstein and Erica Lindsay. If you want to hear these episodes early and commercial free, become a patron over at patreon dot com slash follom alone. Not only are the episodes up early, but we have extended interviews and bonus podcasts where we spotlight the best episodes of horror Anthologies from every series.

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