Tales from the Darkside S02E23&24 (Fear of Floating - The Casavin Curse)

Weary Way said in. Sad Welcome back to Midnight Viewing the Horror Anthology podcast, where this season we're taking a look at Georgia A. Romero's nineteen eighties series Tales from the Dark Side. Sharing the Midnight view with me. Are the culture cast, Chris Statue, you said there.

Would be horror horror movies on this show. Horror horror movies on this show. You can't see it listeners, But he's tapping the camera as if he's Jeff Goldblum. Mike Quite from the projection booth is also joining us. Have you seen a fat dwarf around here?

I'm a dwarfist. We all talk about dwarfs around here. We're gonna talk about her right now. We're taking a look at two episodes from season two. These are the final two see episodes from season two.

They are Fear of Floating and The Cassavin Curse. Fear of Floating is season two episode twenty three, originally aired on May the twenty fifth, nineteen eighty six, written by Donald Walner from a story by Scott Edelman, directed by John Lewis, and starring Sherman Howard and lang Leon Roussam. He was the dad in Silver Bullet, just putting that out, and yeah, and the Yardley Smith Lisa Simpson herself Sherman Howard by the way, actual name, Howard Sherman was bub, the lovable zombie from Day of the Dead, George Romero's final film in the Zombie trilogy. I'm going to say that again, the final film. Could you say that one more time?

It's like, Beatle, does you have to make sure you say it a third time? Day of the Dead is the final film in the Zombie trilogy anyway. This one is about a circus performer who seeks asylum at an Arizona recruitment station. Oh, and he can float. What do you think of this one, Mike?

This one floored me. I really want to track down the original short story. Apparently the guy who wrote this also wrote a bunch of other sci fi. He wrote episode or issues of The X Men and some other comics. I'm like, okay, Yeah, it feels like we're missing a lot, a lot because it just what we see makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

This whole thing where Yeah, comes into this recruiting station and he starts spinning these tails about the circus performance. I don't even believe that he's from a circus. I don't think he's from a circus at all, and he just makes up all this stuff. So when the real people show up and you're like, where are all these angry circus performers, it's just this fat guy in Yardley Smith pregnant Yardley Smith, and I'm just like, Okay, it feels like there was more to this, and the whole thing with him floating. By the way, I don't think that ceiling fan is nearly sharp enough or fast enough to cause the death of the Nazi commandant from Raiders of the Lost Ark type of thing to happen.

It's the Tuggy cult by the way. It's Temple of Doom. You're giving a hard. Time, you know, I'm talking about the guy from a Eh Gunner goman Z. Yeah, that guy from.

H Yeah, Mike. To that point, I've watched so many guys on Jackass jump into ceiling fans that were samped up far worse than this thing. So it was just like, come on, guys. That's rebably one of my favorite movies from the first Jackasses, when they just cut to a room and there's a ceiling fan going, the guy runs in, jumps on a little trampoline and right into the ceiling fan cut next scene. I'm like, Okay, yeah that works.

This is just yeah, it's really I was just so puzzled during this whole thing, and not like my usual confusion. People that listen to this show probably think that I'm a friend in psychopath because I don't understand a lot of things that we watch. This one. I was following it, but man, oh man, did they do some strange things, made some weird choices, And like I said, I'm just like, what's missing from this story? What was in that original short story that assume is out there that maybe they were circus people but they change when they come in the door because there's magical realism happening in here, obviously with the floating and everything.

But yeah, and I did like how how predatory the army recruiters were, which really made me think about all of the all the stuff in high school where you have to take that test and they tell you if you're good at the military, and it's just like that doesn't seem right at all at a public school to had the military coming in and giving you these tests to see how good you are, Chris? Did they do that by the time you were in high school? No? But I think it's high time we reinstate them. Sure, I say, reinstate the draft now, yeah, exactly.

These poor Army recruiters are just so bored. What else are they doing? They're just saving guys that can float. And playing homemade versions of risk. Which, yeah, which is the more important of the two.

Really? Yeah, what'd you think, Chris? I think that whatever the short story that this is based off of must be something else, as this episode reminded me of that. I forget salad, soup, lunch or wherever the fuck that episode was. Sandwich?

Yeah, does that not remind you all of this? Just like was that Twilight's one eighty five? Just something that's completely out of left field? And yeah, seeing Yardley Smith and anything always a trip anytimes the moment she opens her mouth, this woman's making millions upon millions of dollars with that voice, and it you can hear it. It's not very far away from the Lisa Simpson voice, because Lisa is pretty much just Yardley Smith at this point.

And if you haven't heard what Julie Kavner sounds like, in a long time. Go depress yourself by listening to new episodes of the Simpson because it's not good. I'll just say that much. But to this episode is also not good. It's fucking unintelligible.

And then the ending feels like an insult because to Mike's point, that fan is not going very fast and that guy is very dead by the end of the episode, I'm assuming and bull Yeah. No, I don't understand why he has to float other than to die at the end by going into the fan. It's a weird episode. I applaud it for how strange it is. I applaud it for how unintelligible the plot is.

I applaud it for having your Lee Smith in it in a role that's again very much what I've seen her in before, just there and doing just being an actress. There's nothing special about her as an actress. She's in plenty of things, but then she became the voice of Lisa Simpson and stopped having to be in stuff again. I don't think anyone in this episode is bad. I just think this episode's just out of its mind.

I don't understand what the episode wants because I don't think it knows what it wants, Father Malone, can you decipher the unintelligible mess that is fear of floating? Or did Mike and I miss the mark? It does feel like a reader's digest version of something. There does seem to be more detail that has been either left out or to me watching this, it's fucking bizarre to see Bob livid and speaking and being as smarmy and gross as he was. This makes me think that Bub before he died, was a fucking horrible human being deserves what he got instead of the heartbreaking performance he does in Day of the Dead.

The Smart Zombie begins and ends for me with Bub in that movie, and it's between ooh, no, I do not mean sorry, Big Daddy, Big Daddy's inn. It's an okay performance of an okay character, but it ain't Bub Man Like. I'm startled that they didn't have Bub leading that fucking army of zombies. That was the fucking plan, wasn't it. Then that's the point anyway, So Sherman Howard walking and talking here is freaking me out.

But I'm also completely baffled by the episode. This guy runs into a recruitment station instead of the police station because he's being hunted by a man with a shotgun who has a daughter who's knocked up, right, okay, And he's also floating because he's not facing his responsibility, which forces him to float. Okay, got it. Why didn't he go to the police station, I don't know. But he goes into the recruitment office and says, listen, these people, the circus people are after me.

I need to get out of here, and they say you can. We're looking for recruits. Why does he even show them the fucking floating ability. He could just sign paper and go like that. That would be the end of the story right there.

Oh, I'll sign right now. Can we get in a fucking car and drive out of here? Let's do that. So that, I don't know, that was once. Again giving characters choices that they should just take an over complicating.

And once again and talk about overcomplication. Okay. So he spins this year and he's been chased by these circus people want to turn him into a circus free which, by the way, I'm totally stoked for. So when they when the farmer's daughter Joke shows up instead of a dark carnival of people I was wildly disappointed, and then look, I love Yardley Smith too, and any chance to see her, we should probably talk to her. She's an anthology veteran.

She was is in Maximum Overdrink That's right, Yeah, right, And she's in Toys as well, which is a movie that I love dearly, and I know I understand the hate, but. I am mostly familiar with her work as the cashier from City Slickers, the one that Danny Marv from The Wet bandits Yeah, Daniel Stern is sleeping with Yeah. Oh, I knew Yardley spent before this episode because she was in the Legend of Billy Jean. She plays the younger sister in that. That's she's great in that.

But like I said, the Farmer's daughter joke just shows up out of nowhere. And now we're in this tale and I at the end this sort of come up and that the guy against is so ridiculously orchestrated, where now he's coming on to this woman who has shown him nothing but discussed and then oh he's floating again and up into the fucking fan. Yeah, kills him in the So I would like to read Floater, the short story that this is based on because I imagine it's a little more nuanced than what we're getting here. This just feels like the beats of some other thing. Trying to see if there's any sort of anthology of Scott Edelman's fiction that we can track down.

And it feels they're so broadly other things. It's not just like one kind of disparate thing and another dis It's like five disparate fucking things all at once, And I just what were they on? I just want to know, because it's like to connect some of this shit and then go on a circus. But then he's floating, but then he's stopped floating, but then there's a fan in the room that can kill him. And also he's in love with the military woman, but she's not in love with him.

It's what the fuck is time out episode? Like pick a lane, pick an avenue and just go there. Don't throw yourself in eight directions at once, because this is crazy, Like a soup sandwich felt like the same thing. It's it's a noir thing, but then it's a demon thing and it's not the fuck to do one, don't do five, don't do two, do one. So many of these episodes struggle with doing just one one thing right, let alone two or three or four or five, But not this show.

That's the fucking weird thing. This is not a complaint we have had with Tails from the Dark Side at all up until these last two episodes. And I'm talking about the episodes of the show midnight viewing, not the episodes of the show. It's been four episodes that have all been not great in a way that other shows we've watched together have not been great. It's fucking bizarre the show.

What at least I know I've enjoyed about it is how economical and streamlined they are. They're usually such simple stories, and that's important because pulling off a simple story and making it enthralling for twenty two minutes is a hard thing to do. So the fact that they can do it, and do it as often as they do is bitterly disappointing. When we get to the end of the season and Edith Swinson's run of episodes my own kink aside liking that the vampire episode, I'm just saying her so, it's been really bad and I feel personally responsible, gentlemen for leading you down this towns some dark side road. But I know town some dark side rebounds in season three.

They even get a fancy new logo they can pull up. This is not necessarily a death plummet. There's not a death spiral. This is not a sustained season of this shit. Yeah, that was Tails from the Crypt, that was Night Gallery, that was that was Twilight's eighty five.

It's all of them. They all question. Eventually, there's nothing that's going to prevent. Peter Peter out in that stall. You hit the stall too hard and you just can't get yourself out of it.

Yeah, there's gonna be shakeups in season three. The story editor for these past two seasons is a guy named William Tyler, and what happens next season is he goes to Amazing Stories, the Steven Spielberg series that started up over on NBC's It's going to be like a whole new kind of creative staff. But it it heers more towards season one than the end of season two. But the question that I have for you is do they move to Canada or London to start filming neither? Is it neither?

The look on your face tells me that it's neither, And I'm disappointed by that. Okay, continue to film in both Los Angeles and New York, which is another thing that I continue to adore about the show. I am so thoroughly disappointed that we do not get a shit third season that is filmed in just like somewhere completely insane, because that was the other thing from some of these other shows. They just like, now we're just a purely Canadian show, and now we only film in Britain, and it's look at all these actors saying there are is really hard, Like you and McGregor, My god, that the way he said his rs in that episode of Tales from the Crypt haunts me to this still. It's because you pointed it out, Father Malone, and I could not unhear it, because it's that that season of the show is so notoriously bad and this show is like never this is the most sustained bad episodes we've had, which is so surprising.

I mentioned keeping ground and that's what this feels like. This feels like I will let's It feels like they didn't think they were getting twenty four episode and then scrambled and then just host these off at the end. There is a significant amount of time between episodes at once. There's an episode that airs in February and then the next one airs in May. So it's it almost feels like they had to fulfill an order, right.

Yeah, from choice a choice of dreams on it. They're separated by months. The fun. Yeah, Usually that's network problems where they're just like, eh, we'll air this whenever we want to air this, and maybe there'll be some extra scene, extra episodes that we won't ever air like that. When the Colchak reboot was just petering out towards the end, it's just like, yeah, the last three episodes never aired any place.

They were just on streaming services. I always take every opportunity to mention this show, and I'll let the little cat out of the bag. But Kitchen Confidential, the original show that aired about the Anthony Bourdain book, has thirteen episodes on the DVD, and only three of them ever fucking aired on national television, and they the other nine I think it's yeah, twelve or thirteen. I think it's twelve. Yeah, the other nine only ever ran on the DVD.

And so I interviewed someone one time. It was actually Stan Winston's son who was in one of the episodes, and he was like, how did you see that? I was like, they did release a DVD eventually, But to y'all's point, that would not be surprising because they do that shit all the time. They get rid of things, they drop things, they recut things. Which of the shows was it where the show's format changed completely?

Was that Twilight Zone eighty five where it went for from an hour long to a half an hour? Yeah? And then also, don't forget the last season of Night Gallery, which we didn't cover, wasn't Night Gallery where it was that Gary Collins show or whatever where they just slapped the name onto it the sixth Sense and they changed that into twilight Zone. Yeah Gallery. Yeah, they just they repackaged a lot of earlier Ninth Gallery episodes and unaired stuff and just yeah, slapped it all together with the fucking sixth CeNSE show.

Fucking ridiculous. And like I said during the a Nike, there have to be some people out there who think that that Ninth Gallery was a narrative show with some really weird detours. They caught it right at the end, caught it the wrong time. That's the thing. If you were watching Tales from the dark Side.

I watched these four episodes with a friend of mine and I was like, I promise this show is normally better. I was like, I swear to Christ this show is better than this. I know he's not listening to this, but if he was, he would not still wouldn't believe me even now, because none of us father alone. The only episode you've really liked of the flour so far was the first one. And there's part of me that thinks that if you like the next episode we're talking about, it has to be ironic.

There's no way you could like it on ironic. Well, let's talk about the Casavin Curse. This is season two episode number twenty four, the final episode of season two, aired originally on May the eighteenth, nineteen eighty six, Written by Edith Swinson, directed by Frank DePalma, starring Joe Cortese, Catherine Parks, Scott Lincoln, and Julie Ariola. Gina is the end of her family's line and potentially the last of its cursed bloodline. Don't fall in love with her, Chris, don't.

Fall in love with that fake Michael Douglas and fake Eric Roberts either, Good Lord. Oh, fake Eric Roberts. That's perfect and fake. Michael Douglas, is it not a very specific Michael Douglas, are you looking for that? The whole time I thought of it, I thought of Eric Roberts the moment he stepped on screen.

No shit, I was like, is that Eric Roberts. It's no, it's just discount. I'm sorry, he's It's just it's too close. It's way too close. It's discount Eric Roberts specifically from the Pope of Greenwich Village.

Yeah, oh shit, oh yeah, wow, holy shit. Yeah, oddly specifically too man. They would think we don't like Eric Roberts or something. This was one of the worst episodes of this show. This is beyond beyond this performance.

You messaged us in the chat, the three of us, have you like it's worth it for the performance? Holy shit? Is it not? This is one of the wildest things I've ever seen. And fake Tasha Yar is enjoying herself because that's who she reminded me of, because I know that's not the actress.

Oh it was the haircut. That's just a haircut similarity. Yeah, it is the haircut. You don't look not like Denise Crosby. Yeah, no, And you know what, she don't act nothing like Denise Crosby, because Denise Crosby is on the other side of the studio film and something good.

Because this is real bad. This is just meant Denise Crosby at a Star Trek convention in Connecticut after the Playboy issue had come out, but before they fired her. Unofficially they parted ways with her, and she was very angry at fans who are trying to get her to sign the Playboy because she knew wow what it meant? Yeah, was she fired because of the Playboy? Okay, because I don't remember that from that documentary about.

TNG they say at the time that they parted ways amicably, that she had nothing left to do with Tashi Yar or whatever, And I'm just like, get the fuck at her. Why was she back a couple of seasons later when everything had blown over? You know what I mean exactly? Yeah, she was fantastic as romulant, oh my god, yeah, right, scary as fuck. Yeah, she's nowhere near this.

No, no fake Eric Roberts, but those yeah, I have. To say, the raiders of this probably really big fans of the Paul Schrader remake of Cat People, because that was the vibe I was getting from this whole thing with the incest and the fear of sex and the transformation and stuff. I was just like, Okay, settled down. I've seen this before, and I've seen it done much better. Every version of cat People that I've seen has been better than this one.

But they're not talking about the This is the she becomes like a zombie lady. It's very different, very different. The curse has been passed down for centuries because this guy was supposed to to he was married to a gypsy woman and then he had an opportunity to social climb and marry, marry like into wealth, ends up killing the gypsy woman and with her dying breath, curses their family that they they'll kill anyone they love. We're all over it. I'm in love with her.

So now is it a cat people think? Is it? If you have sex with the person, you're going to kill them? Is that because they keeps saying they keeps saying love. I fell in love.

I kept falling in love with the mop and bucket. Yeah. Yeah, this isn't practical magic. This is definitely mar. They're not drinking Marguerite's at Midnight.

I wish they had clarified because this is Tails from the Dark Side. Why are they mincing words? I pull the punches once again here. It's got to be the sex thing, right, And when we find her at first and the bodies all ripped up and stuff, I'm like, granted, I think he might be wearing clothes, but it just feels like as soon as the sexual urge comes in, then boom, a transformation happens. And I was really hoping for more of like her to be like Gorilla Customer or something like that, like please, she should be what's the name of the creature from Creep show that lives in the crate?

Yeah, should be much more like Buffy. Oh, I think Fuffy would have been perfect here. You're right. I do like her her spooky makeup at the very end, but ooh, that ending it was so good. So the curses that she's going to kill the person she loves, so the person she's having sex with, and then that turns out to just not be the case because she kills a random person who walks into the room and that didn't happen.

Before we get the idea that this is not an isolated incident. This is just the latest cover up that they're doing for her, for this powerful family of two, these lords of industry. I don't know, holylo As they would say. Good the lord, She's bad, right, I was not. They're in awe steer white rooms with black marble rectangles on the wall.

What doesn't scream eighties about that? Now I have my party to return to stay away from her, and yeah, weird incense stuff and like none of it is necessary, Like if. We go to Costaica, we can be married. The flying fuck it, we're. Sudden, it becomes Caligula.

When did this show become Tails from the Crypt? That's my question, straight up. It just went full ape shit in this episode, Like I Father Malone, I like you say, I like the makeup at the end. Yeah, it was very reminiscent of Tails from the Crypt. It was like it was again, not this show.

This show is so much better than this. I'm holding this show to such a higher standard because of the Romero of it all, because it's George A. Romero, because we talked about Sherman Howard, because this show has his fucking name on it. This isn't some Jordan peel bullshit where he's just I'm here, but I'm not actually doing anything. Hey, you know, and he also made Bruiser so cute Romeo.

Yes, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that this is his responsibility. I think he just did. I'm more speaking to the idea of we gave other shows like Tails from the Crypt a hard time because Zamechis and his pals were asleep, but they will per our word. Yeah, so why are we not holding Romero to the same standard.

No, he deserves a kick, and a lot of these guys deserve kicking for this last round of episodes, but I'm not going to hold it against them just yet. I'm not saying hold it against anybody. And I don't even want to say hold it against Edith Swinson because it's not her fault that something made it onto screen, that someone else didn't look over, someone approved it. These decisions aren't made in a vacuum. That's not how this business works.

There were people that sat in a room that looked at this and read this and said, Okay, we're gonna do this. This didn't just happen in a fucking space out of nowhere. People were paid time and money for this. Someone edited this. There are names on this.

A lot of decision were made to make something bad. A lot of decisions have to go wrong to make something bad, and a lot of decisions have to go right to make things good. Theoretically, but you can have either thing happen even when good and bad decisions are made. I don't know what this. This sea just seems like bad decision after bad decision after bad decision, and then at the end, the ending where she's just overacting beyond beyond it's just like, all right, so are you in on the joke?

All of them? Everyone? Yeah? Everyone's Are they in on the joke? Is?

The question at the end is are they in on the joke? Because it seems as an actor, you would know that you're being asked to overact. I think that our gypsy lady with the knife knows what knows the score? Okay, that's I think she's pitched perfectly at the end of and would be a perfect ending of a better episode. But everyone else seems to be not reaching, not batting for the fences.

Just bad. Yeah. Why did I never know until right now that George Ramiro was six foot five. Oh, I don't know. That's yeah.

He was a giant of a man. I always pictured him because whenever I see up it looks like George Romero to me, I think it's the glasses, and I always picture him as being a much more diminutive man. I never knew he was a giant. Oh yeah, towering, wow, towering over the horror scene. That's why.

That's why in that Call of Duty game where they had him as a zombie, he was like gigantic, carrying around like a fucking set light. I think even it's a huge Jay's a huge dude, like gigant or anything. But six to five puts in top like ten percent of people are more less like Jesus Christ. He was even dwarfing O. J.

Simpson when he made the Juices on the Loose. It's a good That is a good sports film. Actually, speaking of good films, this isn't one of them. I do look. My favorite part of the episode, guys.

The only thing I enjoyed in the episode was when she gets stabbed at the end and falls to the ground. The knife is bobbing up and down while she's laying it, just like from the impact of her hitting the floor. It's just like on a spring almost that that was fun. I thought you were gonna say the Wizoean love making, because that's what I would compare it to. It was very Wizoean.

It's that like weird shots with lee drapes billowing in the background and then they're shooting through that. You know exactly what I'm talking about. There might not be like the misplaced bodies like in the room, but there's definitely some like they're trying to cover up the fact that they're making love and it's like, what are you doing? This is again, this doesn't even seem like a Tails for the Dark Side. I couldn't even I couldn't even muster up hate for this episode.

It's just such a nothing episode that I know we could nitpick it to death. Like on just a basic level, you're a doctor investigating for the police a homicide by a woman who thinks she's cursed. You know, she's at least demented and is killing everyone she has sex with, and then you have sex with. Get the fuck out of here, Come on, Tails from the Dark Side. What's going on?

It's been a long season. It's eighty six and in rest, just take a rest. We'll be here when you get back. More whomen trying to stab men with ornately handled daggers, with pancake makeup on and some like ninety nine cent faked teeth, like literally ninety nine cent fucking from the Tom Savini special doing it down and dirty for fifteen fucking cents or whatever the hell, Like this is some cheap ass makeup. It is pancake makeup and some fake nail applications.

It's so lazy. I can't even stand it. I was waiting for Fifi O, herodyel Adder, go back to Party City. God, It's just so fucking wild. The amount of lazy in this episode, the amount of lazy at the end is just wow.

Congratulations. This was on national television, was televised to people live, people not live is in live live, but live enough that people watch this and probably went what the fuck at the end. I gotta assume there weren't people that were like, oh, that was good. I can't wait for the third season. This is not a this is not a good way to leave your audience.

Let's just say I was the audience, and I did think I can't wait for a third say. Fuck me all right, that's why we're here, folks on Midnight Viewing. And on the next episode of Midnight Viewing, we'll be taking a look at the first two episodes of season three. Those are The Circus and I can't help saying Goodbye the Circus, written by George A. Romero.

Midnight of Viewing. The Horror Anthology Podcast is a proud member of a weirding Way Media group. Our theme song was composed by HP with an assist by Donald Rubinstein. Until next time? What are you working on?

Where can people find it? Chris Statue? Everything can be found over at Weirdingwaymedia dot com, which is where all the audio slash video stuff that we do is located. I guess the video stuff's on YouTube. Just look up weirding Way Media.

Well sort of kind of. As they say in the industry, sometimes the place you host don't do the most, they really don't. And fuck them. It's like a fox thing. Fuck them.

They don't help us, so who fucking cares? I listen to this shit anyway, so fuck them. Fuck them in the ear, fuck them in both ears. Like rate and review shit that you listen to and you like and how you interact with your content creators. Just like rate and review everything.

Just do that because if you can't contribute financially, we get it. Times are tough. Shit's tough. Shit's real tough. So it's okay.

Just like rate and review the things that you interact with. What about you, Mike White? Where can people find the things you? Yeah, kind of the same thing. Not on YouTube, not for right now, but maybe one of these days.

I don't know. I don't think anybody was listening to the projection Booth on YouTube, so I'm not really that sad. But yeah, projection Booth everything else I do is available at wirdingmaybedia dot com. How about you fatherom alone for. Me in weirding way as well, and head over to patreon dot com slash folld them alone if you'd like to support this show.

You'll get episodes early and commercial free and bonus content you can only get there if money's tight. You can do us us solid by giving us a five star review. You can like and share and subscribe and all that shit. Just tell somebody else to listen. Thank you for joining us once again here at midnight viewing until next time.

Third season next time, try to enjoy that fucking daylight.