Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - Halloween 2020 with Joe Dante and Mick Garris

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

Film directors (and fellow monster kids) Joe Dante and Mick Garris help Gilbert and Frank usher in Halloween 2020 with a frighteningly good conversation about giant insects, evil hunchbacks, cheesy haunted house flicks, the glory days of horror anthologies and the 60th anniversary of “Psycho.” Also, Basil Rathbone goes slumming, Bogie plays a mad scientist, Anthony Perkins puts Mick to the test and Joe sings the praises of Dick Miller and John Carradine. PLUS: “She-Wolf of London”! “The Man with Kaleidoscope Eyes”! The genius of William Castle! The “Colossal” cinema of Bert I. Gordon! And Joe and Mick salute the late, great Larry Cohen! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Ontario only. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear

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the show starring Jeremy Allen White, Iowa Debris, and Maddie Matheson is ready to heat up screens once again. All new episodes of FX's The Bear are streaming June 27, only on Disney+. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre.

Well, it's my favorite time of year again, and Frank and I are hosting a special Halloween double feature this year by welcoming back two guests and two of the most original, inventive, audacious filmmakers of their generation. Joe Dante is a writer, producer, occasional actor, podcaster, and film historian, and the celebrated director or co-director of much-loved feature films such as Piranha, Gremlins, Gremlins 2, The New Batch, The Howling, Explorers, Twilight Zone, The Movie, Inner Space, The Birbs, Amazon Women on the Moon, Matinee, Small Soldiers, Looney Tunes, Back in Action, The Hole, among others, as well as the popular TV series including Amazing Stories, Eerie Indiana, Police Squad, Splatter, and Twilight Zone. He's also one of the world's leading authorities on world cinema and motion picture history and one of the founders of the wonderful old consuming website Trailers from Hell as well as the co-host of the wildly

entertaining podcast The Movies That Made Me featuring guests like Martin Short, Edgar Wright, William Friedkin, and even his old boss, Roger Corman. Mick Garris is an author, journalist, producer, screenwriter, Edgar Award winning TV writer, and the director of celebrated features and miniseries for the big and small screen, including Critters 2, Riding the Bullet, The Stand, The Shining, Quicksilver Highway, Desperation, Bag of Bones, Nightmare Cinema, Psycho 4, The Beginning, as well as Stephen King's first original screenplay Sleepwalkers. He also wrote screenplays for the original stories for films Batteries Not Included, The Fly 2, and Hocus Pocus. And he's written and directed hours of episodic television for amazing stories,

The Magical World of Disney, Tales from the Crypt, Once Upon a Time, and the acclaimed anthology series Masters of Horror, which he also created. He's the host of the essential podcast Postmortem, which has included guests such as Elijah Wood, David Cronenberg, Stephen King, John Carpenter, and his new book is called These Evil Things We Do, The Mick Garris Collection. Please welcome back for our special Halloween episode. Two true masters of horror and two of our favorite grown up monster kids, Joe Dante and Mick Garris. Well, how are we going to follow that?

I think we're wrapping it up now. Thank you. These these introductions could also be used as obituaries. I feel I'm there. How Halloween-ish of you. Now, first I'll start with Mick. You thought the Claude Rains version of The Lost World was good? I did because, what was I, 10 years old when I saw it?

And I saw it in the theater. And it was color and it had dinosaurs in it, even though they were lizards with fake gills. But sure, anything like that was great. And Claude Rains was the invisible man. So to a 10 or 12 year old, it was nirvana. Yeah, because I hated, I always hated when I'd watch a dinosaur movie and it would be lizards. And because that, even as a kid, I couldn't watch lizards there. I want stop action.

Well, there was always there was always the cruelty factor you know if you really started to think about how did they get there to do that stuff and uh you know how did they glue that stuff on them those fins and all those things uh but that all started basically with one one million bc because you know before that they'd been stop motion uh pictures like the lost world and uh and and but but when uh when hal roach decided to make uh one million bc he he he did arguably the best lizards dinosaurs that had been done and also they were they were so effective that that footage ended up appearing in movies for the next 20 years they would actually write entire movies around the footage from 1 million BC.

Because it was quite elaborate. I mean, they had their sets and they had exploding volcanoes and they had Earth falling apart and all that kind of stuff. And all that stuff ended up being used over and over and over to a point where finally I think everyone Alan when it was time to make the Lost World he said you know we our pictures in color we got to do we can do the same thing we got to do it got to do it ourselves and and yet they still copy some of the setups and some of the ways the rear screen was used in in Mummy NBC in Lost World which I

agree it was a lot of fun when I was a kid I I mean, it was like, it was a very exciting movie to see on a big screen. Dr. Challenger, after all. Yeah. And they used to, I think, stick pins in the dinosaurs to fasten the horns on them. And then they would burn them and poke them to get them to move. Oh, and roll them down the hills. And, you know, I'm now a vegan and have been for years. And so, of course.

Good for you, Mick. There was no such thing back when I was 10 or 12 years old. But, you know, I loved Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen and all their creations. But I took whatever I could get when I was a kid. I think we all did. And I could never figure out how they got them to fight. Because there's always these scenes where they're fighting, which harks back to all the underwater pictures

that are constructed around footages of octopuses and sharks fighting. Because if any low-budget producer got a hold of some good footage of animals fighting he'd just make a movie around it usually mexican yeah and also in the uh universal frankenstein pictures it was constantly scenes from previous films scenes from previous films that would pop up. Like when Glenn Strange in House of Dracula is in the fire, we see Lon Chaney's face being burned and Boris Karloff being hit by the giant thing.

And it was just old scenes from previous Frankenenstein but that was when they were you know cutting the budgets and these were they were the series was on its last legs but when those pictures were sold to television you know they were all sold out of order so you know that you did get to see the first the first dracula the first frankenstein the first wolfman the first mummy together but then after that the sequels that the guys who are programming this stuff had no idea what order these pictures were made in and And so when you're a kid, you had to piece together what the continuity of the series was. And it was hard to do because sometimes they would cheat. And he would get killed at the end of one episode, and then he'd get resurrected in the

next episode. And you'd have to figure out, oh, now this is the one where he gets burned. And then he comes back and he's got burn marks on him. And, you know, they did that with The Mummy, too. And it really got to be, until Famous Monsters came out and you could actually get somebody to write seriously about the movies, you had to just put it together in your own 11-year-old head as to what the continuity was for these movies, which the first one is, the first Frankenstein is a 1930s set movie.

It was a contemporary movie. But Bride of Frankenstein, which is this direct sequel, is a period picture. It's the same character. Strange. But now it takes place 100 years earlier. Right.

Now you got Mary Shelley. Yeah. Prologue. Gil, tell Joe and Mick the thing you bit used to do in your act about the Frankenstein castle. Yes, I used to go to the mic and go, no, don't touch that lever. It'll blow up the castle.

I had it years ago when we built the castle. The guy said, do you want a lever to blow it up? I said, you want a lever to blow it up? I said, sure. Now I got to be careful not to accidentally throw my coat on it. But, you know, the Frankenstein and Wolfman and Dracula pictures, they gave up on, at least in Bride of Frankenstein, he was burnt and his clothes were torn up. But then after that, they gave up on it.

It was different time periods, different countries. Yes. But what was really interesting about the series and all the pictures they were making at Universal in the 40s is they're all set in Europe and it's all during the war and there's no war. It's all in Vassaria, this strange land where there's no effort to worry about the Nazis or anything like that. The only picture from the 40s, monster picture that I can remember that addressed the war was Return of the Vampire, which actually takes place in a bombed-out graveyard during the war. But for the most part, they just sort of ignored it. And it was like wartime horror audiences just didn't want to think about the war. Well, they became kind of kiddie matinees, too, and they were monster mashes once it was, see Frankenstein's monsters, see Dracula, see the Wolfman, all in one big movie together.

And it really became much more for younger audiences than the originals. You know, the original Frankenstein and Dracula and Wolfman are very adult. They're dramas first that happen to have monsters in them. And later they became monster parties. that happened to have monsters in them. And later they became monster parties. And when they had the monster parties, what always made me laugh is the original hunchback of Notre Dame.

He's a completely deformed man, half blind and deaf. And then after a while, just being a hunchback made you a monster. So they'd have these people that looked 100% normal, After a while, just being a hunchback made you a monster. So they'd have these people that looked 100 percent normal, but they'd have a pillow in the back of their shirt. Well, at least when when J. Carroll Nash played it in the House of Frankenstein, he actually hung out with a bunch of real people who were deformed to try to figure out, know who they were and how they acted and how they but but by the time they got to the next picture where they used this starlet named jane adams uh to play a hunchback by literally sticking a pillow up her back and otherwise she was just

this cute girl but on the poster was like a hunchback yeah they used to go, Frankenstein, Dracula, a hunchback. Not very aware. It was kind of like someone with a learning disorder. Someone who lisps. See, the lisper. Guys, we had Rick Baker here last year, and Gilbert and I talked about a movie that comes up a lot on this show, and that's The Black Cat, which I've seen Joe write about as one of his favorites. And it's a film that's impossible to define or describe to anybody who hasn't seen it.

It's an acid dream. It's a very strange film, and Edgar Ulmer, it ruined his career, because that was the picture where he got kicked off the lot for sleeping with the wrong people. That's right. But it's a it's a it's a very, very weird movie. And it's a very dark World War One death trip. And there's various claims that it was successful or wasn't successful. It's only 65 minutes. So, I mean, it couldn't have, it couldn't have been that many single bills of,

of the black cat, but it, and it was reshot like in the middle of shooting, they just said, no, we can't do this. This is too horrible. They went back and they reshot a whole bunch of it to make Bela Lugosi into a sort of a hero because he was just as bad as karloff in it originally and he's actually we skinned him alive in the in the script there's yeah there's a description of the the skinned alive body crawling toward him you know and i don't know if they ever shot any of that stuff but by the time uncle carl got a look at it it was like wait a minute wait a minute because you know he was he was responsible for taking 10 minutes out of Dracula before it was released, much to Todd Browning's chagrin.

And if you see the Spanish version that was shot at the same time at night on the same sets with a different crew, you see all of the ends and beginnings of the scenes that have been removed from the American version. There's a great scene where the maid faints and Renfield is crawling toward her, and we figure when he gets her, he's going to, like, vampirize her or something, and it cuts away. But in the Spanish version, you see that what he was going after was that there was a fly on her that he eats. And that was apparently in the original American version, but it was all cut out.

Wow. But Black Cat still remains pretty effective and cruel for its time. It's kinky too. And it's so artistic. It's so beautiful. The use of shadows and just the horror of that scalpel and knowing that a skinning is about to take place, a flaying is underway. It's beautifully done and it's terribly, horrifyingly tense. And it's got a great music score by many of the great composers. And it's got Art Deco design and a digital clock they have in it. And it has my favorite dialogue,

one of my favorite dialogue screw-ups from Bela Lugosi, where I guess they either said tear or flay the body. And Lugosi says, now I'm going to fare the body. Oh, it's a combination. It works. Joe, I heard you talking about how you would go searching for those movies in the old days.

It was something you'd discover at two o'clock in the morning. And you were talking about how we live in an era where everything is available all the time. Everybody has access to this stuff, to physical media. Do you miss, do you think it's sad for these kids that they don't get to take part in the hunt?

Well, you know what I mean? That era was a specific era that we were lucky to be in. Lucky in that it was a bonding experience for all of us and we all have this vestigial memory of the fact that we saw these things together and discovered there were other people like ourselves out there uh and because the movies weren't that easy to see uh they you know when they were finally aggregated and put on tv as shock theater then it was like at least every friday night and saturday night you knew that these pictures were going to run. But before that, it was like if you wanted to see a movie and you missed it, you had to wait a year for them to run it again.

And if it was on in the middle of the night, you had to prop up your eyes with toothpicks and try to stay awake. And of course, you'd fall asleep. And so then you'd have to wait another year. And so it became holy grail to get to see some of these movies. And some of them were just not in the same package that your station had. And so you'd have to try to tune them in from faraway cities where there's snowy reception on your TV. But you can sort of hear it and sort of see it.

But you've always wanted to see it. And it's all grainy. It's Devil Girl from Mars, which you've never heard of. But now you don't know any more about it than you did before you tried to watch it. But today, it's an embarrassment of riches. I mean, not only do we have better prints and the people have gone back to the negatives and restored stuff, which is terrific, but because of its easy availability and because there's so much else going on and so many other opportunities for people to see things, it's just a little harder to have the kind of intense

identification of this stuff that we did. I remember going through TV Guide every week as soon as it would come in the mail and mark everything that was titled melodrama. They wouldn't have the balls to call it horror, but it was Dracula, Melodrama, or the four skulls of Jonathan Drake, Melodrama, and marked them so that I would know when they were on and be able to stay up. And like Joe said, you're at two in the morning with toothpicks holding your eyes open,

but damn it, you saw it, and you could notch it on your belt. Well, one of my worst moments as a kid was I knew there was an episode of Route 66, Owlet's Wing and Lizard's Tail, I think it was called.

And I knew it had Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr. and Peter Lorre. And I would check the reruns of Route 66 every day to see if they, and the one day I didn't check, that's the day they showed it. Damn. Damn.

And you had to wait another year, as Joe was saying. Yeah. Oh, I waited many years. It wasn't a good episode, but still. But they were in it. Or Boris Karloff in The Girl from UNCLE. I remember that. Yes, sure.

But the whole deal was he put on the monster makeup again for the first time in, you know, since forever. And it's a cute episode. I mean, it's very insubstantial. It was shot in Chicago at some, because the thing about Rude 66 is they used to go out and actually shoot it on Route 66 and in different locations. That was one of the things that was fun about it.

And they got a hold of this hotel or something, and it had a ballroom in it. And I guess they said there was going to be a convention of some sort. And the boys got together to prove that they could still scare girls or something like that. Yes, yes. It's pretty silly, but they seem to be having a good time and that's all it really needed to have. Gilbert, when you watch it today, does it live up to your childhood expectations?

No, the Route 66, I mean, I'm sure I would have loved it back then to see the three of them together, but now it's kind of, yeah, I don't know. It just doesn't work. You know, we never go to questions this early in the show, but since we're talking about universal horror films, Perry Shields, a fan, says, in Mick's and Joe's opinion,

what are the two most underrated universal horror pictures? Go ahead, Joe. Underrated. I know you like the old Arkaus, Joe. Some of them are underrated because horror pictures? Go ahead, Joe. Underrated. I know you like the old dark house, Joe. Some of them are underrated because they're not good. I mean, you know, there's not a lot of people lining up to see She-Wolf of London. I would say Night Monster is one of them.

Okay. Because it's got Bella in a red herring role that was all too common for him uh but it's it's a it's it's got a lot of creepy moments and a lot of scary cricket stop chirping kind of things going through the misty moors uh and so that's that's that's one that i always thought was uh a little better than than usual The other, if you get to the, they changed so much in the 40s because they became B pictures and so the whole assembly line kicked in

and they kept, you know, obviously they were, but they're very slickly made. I mean, they're studio pictures, even the ones that are very cheap. They don't look cheap. I mean, they look like, you know, regular movies. They're just using other people's sets and they had good good dps then the music is usually good it's usually the same music but it's always good um i don't know maybe um i've always had a uh

guilty pleasure feeling about captive wild woman captive wild woman which is built around footage from a clyde beady movie called the big cage which universal made like 10 years earlier and milt they hired milburn stone because he sort of looked a little like clyde beady kind of not really but from the back he did uh and so they could use all these lion taming scenes uh that um were kind of extraneous to the plot it just that happened to be taking place in a circus and john carradine turns this ape into this ape girl uh and uh she was popular enough to merit two sequels which is kind of remarkable the second sequel is almost entirely stock footage from from from both of the first two movies and like a bunch of scenes with evelyn Ankers and some other people sitting around in an office

talking about what happened in the previous movie. It's really not very good. But the third one is The Captive Wild Woman with Otto Kruger, and that one is a little bit better. What about you, Mick? Well, mine aren't as obscure, but I love The Raven. Once again, it was Karloff and Lugosi together. And then what was the radio dramas that they turned into movies?

Oh, Inner Sanctum. Inner Sanctum. Inner Sanctum, yeah. And Night Key was an Inner Sanctum mystery that I really enjoyed as a kid. No, no, no. Sadly, Night Key was the one where Karloff plays an inventor and invents a burglar alarm. That's right. That's right. It wasn't an Inner Sanctum, but I liked it. It was not your typical Karloff performance,

but it was something I really enjoyed even as a kid. And I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I always loved it and nobody else heard of it except Joe. So I would never... That's true of a lot of things. That's for sure. But none of my peers were into the genre and any of that stuff. So I was very much an onanistic child when it comes to that genre.

But so I just thought it was a great Karloff performance that was kind of unheralded. This is when he was in kindly inventor mode, which he did occasionally. Oh, yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. He invented a burglar. He did that in the Booge, yes. Yeah, yeah. He invented a burglar alarm. He did that in... The boogeyman will get you also. There was a weird movie with Bela Lugosi

called Invisible Ghost. And the plot of it is that Bela Lugosi and his wife were in a car, they got into a crash, and the wife actually lived, but the caretakers of the house were in a car, they got into a crash, and the wife actually lived, but the caretakers of the house, out of sympathy for Lugosi, keep his wife in the basement and take care of her,

but they don't tell him that she's alive. And so when she pops up occasionally, he gets all freaked out because he thinks she's a ghost. Driving him out of his mind. And they're doing it in a nice, considerate way, which makes no fucking sense. It's a monogram picture. You can't expect it to make sense. So both you guys started out doing a little deep research into your lives and your childhoods. And Gilbert shares this with you guys.

You were all aspiring cartoonists. That's true. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, my father had studied art in art school here in Los Angeles and never was able to make his living at it, but he was a very talented artist and had all the training and everything and did some really great comic strips that never were published. And he had a deal to do a book for King Features, a graphic novel it would be called today. But he had a nervous breakdown raising four

kids, working two jobs and doing this cartooning at night and never was able to do that. And I inherited some of his artistic ability without the training, but I thought I would make cartoons for my living. Joe is better at it than me, but it was something I could do. I've lost whatever facility I had with it, but I thought I would make cartooning my vocation until I started looking at all these comic strips and seeing that every day there was a new joke, that there was a new gag I would have a gag a day I thought I can't do a gag a day

I'm like a week so I would I would do my own card I would do my own comic books with my own cast I had my own revolving cast of characters and stuff like that uh and then I just sort of devolved into uh trying to get to art school and they said cartooning wasn't an art. So I had to take something that was similar and it turned out to be film because of the storyboards or like comic books. What was shoebox theater, Joe? Uh, because I was also a film buff.

I would draw these things out on these long strips of paper, like in cinema scope frames. And then I took a shoebox and I would cut the back out of it. So that made a little frame. I would, I would wind these things up into rolls and put them on, on sticks and then put them through the edges of the box. And then I did the same thing. You could turn the box. As the pictures appeared, it was like they were a movie. It was like each scene was a different, was a movie. And of course, I stole the plots of all the movies. I did the same thing using toilet paper rolls that would line the strips, the long strips. I'd tape together to tell a story in that way

rather than in story. And tape didn't last for a long year. No. Gil, what did you draw as a kid? I just remember like like, the first... I don't know if you two remember the first horror film. The first one for me was The Indestructible Man. Oh.

With Lon Chaney Jr. and Joe Flynn. Joe Flynn. McHale's Navy. And what's the inspector's name? Oh, Robert Shane. Robert Shane. Inspector Henderson. That's right.

You're good, Joe. And Bernie... Is it Bernie... Bernie Koppel. No, no, no. Max Showalter was one of them. Oh, Casey Adams. Oh, Casey Adams.

Yeah. Right. He comes up a lot. Yeah. Only on Casey Adams. Yeah. Right. He comes up a lot. Yeah. Only on this show. Yes. So, Joe, you wound up spending the money that you were supposed to use on art supplies to go to grindhouses? Pretty much, yeah.

And just watch this stuff, double features? It's amazing I got through school at all. Yeah, I spent some due diligence having to do the assignments. Yeah, I spent some due diligence having to do the assignments, but I was in Philadelphia, and there were these great wartime grindhouses that had been used in the war to run newsreels for people who were working in munitions and stuff. And they would go home in the middle of the night, and they want to know what happened because there was no TV and the radio was off. And so they would go to these grindhouses and they would see newsreels. And one of them, the news, had a square screen. It was at the end of a long corridor. And by the 60s, of course, they were running CinemaScope movies. So any movie they ran that was a CinemaScope movie was in Inimiscop because the two sides would be cut off and it would be a square picture.

But still, they ran a bunch of good pictures. And then there was another theater called The Family, which was ill-named. They used to run triple bills. It was right in the shadow of City Hall. And they ran pictures going back to the 30s. I mean, they ran Freaks and a whole lot of pictures you would never imagine seeing anywhere. But they specialized in movies that you couldn't go to the bathroom during because there were so many bad things happening in this theater

that the scuttlebutt got around pretty much even to college students. Don't go to the bathroom, meaning don't buy anything to drink, and don't eat any popcorn because you can't go down into the bathroom. You can't do it. And then when I saw The Day of the Earthquake fire there, they turned up the heat so that everybody would be sweating and they would all have to go to the concession stand and get liquid. It was a great theater. It smelled awful. But I spent many a happy hour in those theaters

and you said you weren't movies too he did yeah for the trades yeah we will return to gilbert godfrey's amazing colossal podcast after this baseball is finally back get in on major league action and swing for the fences with BetMGM, the king of sportsbooks. Log in or sign up to play along as BetMGM brings the real-time action. Embrace a season's worth of swings with BetMGM, your one-stop shop for all things baseball. BetMGM.com for Ts and Cs.

19 plus to wager. Ontario only. Gambling problem? Call Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. If they hear you, they want you. Run. A Quiet Place, day one, June 28th.

Get tickets now. Mick, you said you weren't a social kid, but you grew up in the Valley. Right. Yeah, and you had your own theater. What was the Burt Gordon movie I heard you say your parents dropped you off at instead of babysitting? Oh, that must have been Food of the Gods. Yeah. No, it was before that.

It was a ghost movie. Tormented. Yeah. Oh, Tormented by a Ghost Woman. That was in Reseda, I remember. But my family used to go to the Reseda drive-in because, you know, we had four kids and it wasn't easy. We couldn't afford to go to the movie theaters inside. So we would go mostly to the Reseda drive-in, which is where Peter Bogdanovich shot Targets with Boris Karloff.

Oh, yeah. But I remember seeing Psycho there with my two brothers and my little sister. And it was Mrs. Bates, Mrs. Bates, and the hand on the shoulder and turn around the body. We would do it to her relentlessly after that. Didi, Didi, Mrs. Bates, Mrs. Ah! after that, Didi, Didi, Mrs. Bates, Mrs.

Ah! So, yeah, but there was another little theater in the valley that we saw tormented by a ghost woman, and I remember it as being terrifying until I saw it again several years ago, and boy is it dull. I saw you review it on Trailers from Hell.

Oh, that's right, yes. The funny thing with Psycho is like if it was made a few years later, when they grab onto Anthony Perkins and the week comes off, that would have been the ending. And instead, it

ends. It's horrifying. It's exciting. And then it goes to Simon Oakland going, okay, what his problem was. Yeah, but you've got to remember, that was a very outré ending for 1960. I mean, they didn't talk about stuff like that. And that whole spiel is aimed at saying, well, he's not really a transvestite. He's real. And it's all psychological and stuff.

And besides, it still leads to that great payoff of him sitting there and saying he wouldn't hurt a fly. Yeah. I mean, when I saw that, it blew my mind. And I never imagined that 30 years later, I would be directing the sequel prequel to that, which was written by the same screenwriter, Joe Stefano. That's right. Well, yes, Psycho 4 has just turned 30.

Just turned 30, and Psycho, the original, just turned 60. Just turned 60. Oh, geez. Gilbert, that's your favorite Hitchcock picture? Psycho still? Yeah, yeah. The one that doesn't hold up at all, and I saw it again recently, is The Birds. It has certain parts I like, but I don't know.

Psycho holds up. Psycho does hold up. That's a movie I love. I still love The Birds, though. You know, the whole Hitchcock thing, he so created this genre himself

and the movies he made had such a cinematic personality unlike anyone else's that I can't help but love them. I got to ask you to talk a little bit about working with Perkins on Psycho 4. Do you? Yeah well also I want you to mention Olivia Hussey because Gilbert loves her. Well he's right Anyone who meets her loves Olivia Hussey. She's wonderful. Working with Tony was challenging because obviously he knew more about Norman Bates than anybody. And he had directed Psycho 3.

And critically and financially, it was such a disaster that he wanted to direct Psycho 4, but the studio wouldn't let him. And who do they want to hire but the director of Critters 2? The only feature film to my credit at that time. When you haven't seen Fuzzbucket. That's right. That would have clinched the deal. Yeah, we don't want him. But, you know, he and John Landis were close friends.

John was very much on my side. And Ned Nall, who was the studio executive then when we were making it. So I had a meeting with Tony. We had lunch and and were there for hours and everything went great. And and I was hired. But he wanted to test me. I was a young director. I don't blame him. He wanted to make sure I wasn't just shooting pretty shots or cool shots or doing a tribute to something historical, but making something new now. So I was constantly being tested by him. was, it went sort of campy. And so I would have these discussions with Tony and very carefully say things, you know, very supportive, but saying, you know, I want to kind of avoid any kind of camp in this scene. It stopped him in his tracks and it was camp. What do you mean by camp? And literally a 45 minute conversation about the definition of camp. Wow. And yeah, there was one scene that is kind of indicative of it. And the fact is, he was right. He did know this character better than anybody

else. But I was the only one who could see it from the outside in rather than the inside out, and how it related to the scenes he wasn't in, and how things had happened before and after those scenes. But we're setting up a scene and we'd gone over every page of the script together, every single page of it before we started. And we're setting up a scene where he's calling into a talk show to CCH Pounder. And he gets furious with her and he's in a kitchen and he takes a butcher knife and slams it into the butcher board there in a moment of peak. And so we're setting it up and we're rehearsing it. And then it's time for him to do that. And he says, so, Mick, this butcher knife, don't you think it's really hackneyed and hoary and been done to death and this and that?

And of course, we'd gone over it numerous times and just on and on for about five minutes about what a terrible idea it was and I said you know why don't we step off the set because by then we'd taken about 40 minutes of talking about it while the the crew is standing around waiting to do their work, waiting. And finally, we walked off the set and talked about, came up with something together. I had a suggestion that worked where he gets furious and kind of snaps an apple in half. And he really liked that. And that replaced the butcher and the butcher board. But it was a long process and I was constantly being tested. But validation came when we showed it to him at the Hitchcock Theater at Universal when it was done. He went on and on about how it was his favorite

sequel and including Better Than His and all of that. And so that's a nice outcome. It was a great outcome. It was embarrassing, but it was nice that at least that happened. So, you know, it was it was worth it. And he was great to work with because I learned a lot. I'd never worked with a movie star, especially not a legend like he was. And I learned a lot about how you work with different actors and how you learn to accommodate and encourage and develop trust together.

And he was the first real test that i'd had in that regard and i learned a lot from it and i really appreciated um working with him he was an amazing guy and had stories you wouldn't believe and was happy to share them i'll bet now can we talk about the return of Dr. X? You can see we jump around here. Why do you want to talk about the return of Dr. X? Because of the shock of hair. Yeah. Humphrey Bogart. Yeah.

The ex-zombie. I want a shot of Joe Dante's face when you brought that up. Well, what is he going to do, go on suspension? They were mad at him, and they said, here, he going to do? Go on suspension? They were mad at him and they said, here, you got to do this. And, you know, because, you know, Betty Davis was already walking off and Olivia de Havilland was going to walk off. And, you know, it was like, we can't let these actors tell us what to do. Well, we tell them what to do. And so they gave him this assignment and he was a pro and he did it. But it was supposed to be a Karloff legosi picture wow yeah and and bogart looks so out of place

but he doesn't walk through it he really he's committed his best you know and his hair really deserves an award on its own the white thing and yeah the skunk do yeah i i sent gilbert to trailers from hell yesterday and gilbert you got lost down that hole yes yeah as i told as i told you you would yeah i was watching one after the other i couldn't stop and it just makes you want to see the movies again yes and uh oh there was a movie nonhorror, that one of you brought up. I remember seeing it in the theater, and that's The Patsy with Jerry Lewis. Oh, I always liked The Patsy. Me too.

It's Perendelian. It's got like a lot. Well, it's got my favorite setup for a joke. And that's when he's meeting with, oh, what the fuck, the German guy, Hans Conrad. He's meeting with Hans Conrad, who, and they introduce it as saying, well, not only is he the greatest music teacher in the world, but he also has the largest collection of priceless antiques. And it's like, here's the joke, folks. I can't remember if it was Joe or Mick who was reviewing the Patsy trailer.

Yeah, that was Joe. Yeah. Did you ever hear the blooper reel of the commercials Jerry Lewis did for that? No. Amazing. Oh, is that the Martin and Lewis thing? No, that's different. No, no.

Oh, that's the caddy. Yeah, the caddy. The Patsy. Go see the Patsy. Oh, that's the caddy. Yeah, the caddy. The Patsy. Go see the Patsy with a big cock on it. It's the same jokes he did with Dean except he just did them himself. Some really great choices there, though. I wrote some of them down. Joe's talking about

Ghost of Frankenstein, which is near and dear to our heart. I told Joe we had Janet Angallo here a couple of years ago gilbert son of dracula and gilbert tell joe and mick what the middle name that you almost gave your son i wanted uh our son was gonna have a middle name that my wife said should has to be an a and i wanted to name him Alucard, the middle name. Going to be Max Alucard Gottfried. For some reason, she didn't go for that. My favorite band used Alucard as the name of their music publishing company, Alucard Music. What was the band?

Gentle Giant. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Here's some other ones. Mick, you talked about Karloff and Black Sabbath, which we love. A couple of castle pictures. Mick, you talked about House on Haunted Hill. Oh, sure, yeah.

How do you guys feel about The Tingler? Oh, come on. How can you not love The Tingler? It's one of the most ridiculous movies ever made. And it was made to be a gimmick movie. It was made for the gimmick of people thinking that the Tingler's loose in the theater and they shut off the lights

and they buzz every fifth seat or whatever it is. And people start to scream and people who didn't get the buzz are going, what's wrong with them? And it's like this pandemonium. And also the lights are out in the theater, which you could never do today. They would never let you put all the lights out.

Did you see it with the buzzers, Joe? Because I was too young to see it in the theater, which you could never do today. They would never let you put all the lights out. Did you see it with the buzzers, Joe? Yeah, I did. Because I was too young to see it in the theater. Well, if you've ever seen the guidebook that they sent to the exhibitors to install the buzzers, you know, I mean, it's like a phone book. I mean, I've noticed theaters, I'm not going to do this. This is ridiculous. Wasn't Bob Burns one of the guys putting those?

He told us that. Didn't he, Gilbert? I think so. Bob Burns was one of the guys installing Percept put him in there would be bob yeah and yeah and and of course vincent price screaming scream scream your life in the theater and and then it ends after he's they're all screaming and he's saying scream for your lives and they're going hysterical he goes we now return to the movie i got to meet him once when i was in college and you met vincent price yeah he had put together um this movie that was basically him telling four Poe stories, reading four Poe stories. And it was a pilot for a series that obviously was just too cheap to ever make it to the air.

But he came to the local TV station and I was in college and I heard he was going to be there. And my grandmother knew him when he was buying art for Sears. He was a major connoisseur of art. And I don't know how that goes hand in hand with Sears, but I remember that. But he he was so gracious and so kind and so polite and so tall and very tall, very tall. He towered over me and i was six feet so i met him too didn't you i i met him i met him at uh what twice a friend of mine named uh mark goldblatt did a picture called dead heat which is one of price's last pictures so i i met him on that and he was again just so much fun and uh and there was Fangoria did some tribute to him at some

convention or other whatever. And I was the host. And so I brought him up on stage and asked him a bunch of questions and stuff that mostly the Tom Weaver gave me. And it was, and it was great. I mean, he was, he was, he was, one of the reasons I liked the Tingler is that he is the character in the Tingler. I mean, that's that's he didn't even bother playing anybody. It's like that's that's who he really was. That was that was just his persona. And it was and it was it was just so much fun to be around. And I met him twice.

The first time was on Alan Thicke show, Thicke of the Night. And I had just done some bits uh where i was doing imitations and when i sat down uh i felt a hand on my shoulder and i turned around it's vincent price and he goes i loved your peter lori and then a couple of years later i ran into him at some horror award show and i said look you probably don't remember this but we met on thick of the night and he goes oh yes that was a terrible show mick well i want to talk I want to talk about matinee and Joe's wonderful matinee, the tribute

to Castle, but why do you love House on Haunted Hill so much? In a merjo. Did you see it in a merjo, by the way? I did not. Again, I was a little too young to catch it in the theater when it came out. But I just love haunted house movies.

You know, this one, it doesn't really hold up. It's really to catch it in the theater when it came out. But I just love haunted house movies. Me too. And, you know, this one, it doesn't really hold up. It's really slow and not a whole lot happens. But when somebody gets thrown into a vat of acid and arises as a skeleton, what kid could not love that? Even though the skeleton is on with no cuts on and on and on. So it's obviously a full size marionette and it just looks fake as can be. But it just was so much fun. And the screaming hag in the in the in the attic and, you know, it just and it was Vincent Price. And, you know,

one of my pet peeves is movies that are supposed to be supernatural and turn out not to be. And they were all planned to scare somebody to death instead. And it's one of those. But it's the one that hit me when I was a kid. And it just had an impact because it had all those elements. Watching it now is kind of a tedious experience. And Bill Malone's remake of it is really good, especially the opening sequence. It doesn't have much to do with the original movie at all, but it's really good.

Anyway, it's just one of the formative films of my youth. And with Trailers from Hell, I always like to talk about a movie that affected me personally in some way. Sure. Yeah. I think, Joe, you did talk about The Tingler on Trailers from Hell. I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah, yeah. Gilbert, you remember the old film Forum when it used to be down on Watt Street? Oh, yes. They did a castle

festival, and they tried, bless their hearts, they tried so hard to recreate a Merjo with a clothesline. They weren't going to wire the seats, though. No percepto. You know what I've never seen but heard is good? I saw the non-3D version.

They were two or three Three Stooges movies that were done in 3D. Well, they were shorts. Yeah. Pardon My Backfire is one, and Spooks, I think, is another one. They used to run them at the Tiffany Theater when the Tiffany was running old movies. They had a whole big 3D festival, even before the one they did at the Egyptian. And they would run, they ran it, came from outer space and Creature in the Black Lagoon and all that. But they always ran the Stooges shorts because they were so popular and they're and it's such basic 3d i mean they just

throw things at you it's it's you're going like you want to get your eyes poked here's here's ah yes yes here's mose right at you it's not that weird that weird uh 3d revival in the 80s gilbert with what was it coming at At Ya? Coming At Ya was the first. Oh, yes. And Stewardess's 3D. Yeah, Stewardess's, yeah. Softcore porn. Giant mammaries coming at you in 3D.

The Stewardess is one of the crummiest 3D movies ever. One thing about 3D is if you have no money and all you can do is stand people against a background, don't put them against a wall. Put them against a window. Put them against something that you can see through. But it's just a tragedy of

3D proportions. What I found with the early 3D, like House of Wax strikes me that way, it looked like there was depth in the scene, but the characters and furniture and actors all looked like a pop-up card. Yeah, like Viewmasters.

Yeah, exactly. Yes, yes. They look like one of those cards that pops up. So the actors looked flat. But you got to love the paddle ball, man. Yeah. That was the only really effective part of House of Wags. Yeah.

Joe, I got to bring up matinee. And I wish movies were in a Tomovision, by the way. I wish there were movies in theaters at all. But it's a passion project, obviously. I mean, you won't find a movie that's more of a Valentine than that. I understand loosely based on Castle. But was the Castle family fond of the picture? I met his daughter.

She seemed to be very happy with it. They must have been. It's such a love letter. It's a rosy picture. It's not unlike, I mean, the character that John Gooden plays is not unlike the spirit of Castle and the things he wants to do and the way that he wants to bring his art to the masses. But it's not just Castle. It's also Ray Dennis Steckler, who did those live-action monsters

jump out of the screen things. And there's a little bit of Corman in there. And we cheat because he's making a giant bug movie. And by 1962, they really hadn't stopped making giant bug movies. But we just took the license. It's got a lot going for it. It's got a Jerry Goldsmith score. It's got Dick Miller. It's got William Shallert. It's got Jesse White, for Christ's sake. It was a nice movie and we almost didn't get to make it because the money ran out when we were shooting in Florida and Universal came in and saved the day and picked up the movie. But of course, then they sold it like it was a Universal picture, which meant that it had to open in a zillion theaters all in one day.

And it wasn't that kind of movie. It was one of those movies where you're supposed to open it slowly like Miramax used to do so people can find it and then you talk about it. And, you know, but instead it was like here on one weekend and gone the next but um but like like so many movies from that period um home video it's a movie a lot of people love and now more people have seen it on video than ever saw in a theater Roger Ebert's website RogerEbert.com they had a lovely uh write-up about it not uh for the for the uh if you haven't seen it, for the 25th anniversary. Really a sweet picture. You mentioned the big insect movies, and the first of those, I guess, would be Them.

And then there was a direct rip-off, Tarantula, which I think is a better movie than Them. No, I love Tarantula, but it's not a better movie. Yeah. Empirically. To me, it's so much fun, Tarantula. And Clint Eastwood in it, too. Yeah. But he's covered up.

You can't see him. You can see him better in Avenger the Creature. He has a mouse out of his pocket. Speaking of giant bugs and giant things, I can't believe Amazing Colossal Man is not covered on Trailers from Hell. This is clearly an oversight. It's something that has to be rectified.

You have to find people who like these pictures. Well, you talked about Cyclops, and Mick talked about the Tormented. Yeah. So Burt Gordon is represented. You have two things. You've got to like the picture and you've got to find a trailer. A trailer with decent enough quality to be able to use.

And some of these trailers have just gone MIA. I mean, there are movies I would love to do. I'd throw some hell in with The Black Cat I'd love to do. There's no trailer for The Black Cat. There's not even a reissue trailer for The Black Cat. I mean, most of these things just you know by the wayside so we're we're a little stymied and you know the and what we can do and what we can't do i've got i've got a really good commentary on the incredible shrinking man by eliana douglas and i don't want to run it until i can find a better trailer because the trailer

for that picture is just all fuzzy and crappy looking and i just i hate to voice that kind of stuff on people. So we've had this thing in the can for over a year, and I'm still looking for a better trailer. It's such a great movie, too. Yeah, it's a fun movie. And for Colossal Man, and then followed by Colossal Beast, it's so funny because the effects were so cheap,

you could see through the monster. He was like transparent. Well, that was true of the 55th Amendment as well. Yeah, yeah. FX was so cheap, you could see through a monster. He was like transparent. Well, that was true of the 54-year-old as well. Bert's still with us in his, what is he, 98? Bert is still with us, and we wanted to get him to do Trailers from Hell, and he said, I don't look back. I only look back.

We got the same response when we looked into having him. But somebody we did have here is a friend of both of you guys, and that's the late, great Larry Cohen. Oh, Larry. What a raconteur. What a character. Oh, complete. Can I tell you my favorite and the ultimate Larry Cohen story? Please do.

The director, Bill Malone, and I were very good friends with Larry. I'd known him for decades. and we knew it was close. The end was near, and we both wanted to see him at his home. I talked to him on the phone. He invited us over. His daughter had us come up to his room. We went into his room. He's up on one elbow, waves to us, says,

Goodbye, goodbye, and then collapses and then starts to giggle. He was fucking with us. And he died the next day. So that was the kind of guy Larry was. Anything for a laugh. Larry was

a great guy. he used to do a bunch of trailers from hell for us and one day he came in and he did whatever he was supposed to do and he said you got anything else you want me to do and I happen to have a trailer for the Ten Commandments which which is a it says will be de Mellon introduced in the movies ten minute long trailer Larry I said do you want to see it before you do it no just run it he extemporaneized for 10 minutes on the 10 commandments did not get a single thing wrong filled with facts a rate a wonderful um dissertation on the 10 commandments and

it's one of the few trailers that we've lost when we upgraded it to our new site, and so now it doesn't exist anymore, but it was just such a thrill to watch him do it. When we had him on the podcast, when we were wrapping up, you could tell he wanted to stay. He would have stayed for a few more months. We did almost two hours with him, and he didn't want it to end.

He said, that's it. He was a worst-belt stand-up. I know. He was amazing. He is missed. Wonderful. And Boy, God Told Me To is such a good movie. Oh, what a wild film.

Yeah. And when you'd listen to him, you'd go, I wonder if this story is total bullshit. It might have been. Well, some of them got him embellished as he went on. Remember we had Tony Lobianco on the podcast, Gilbert? We asked him about God Told Me To. He said he grabbed Larry Cohen at the premiere and he said, my mother's here! And there was that movie it did,

House, not House of Wax, the other Wax one, with what's his name? Why do I forget his name? Mystery of the Wax Museum? Oh, yeah. The guy, we've had him on the podcast. The king of

the cheap... Roger Corman. No, no. The actor. Oh, we had Dick Miller here. Dick Miller. Oh, yeah. That one where he's killing people. Oh, Bucket of Blood. Bucket of Blood. Yeah. A lot of fun, that movie.

That's great. Torturous as it was to arrive at it. But I'll take the segue. Why don't you guys tell a Dick Miller story? Joe, you were close to him. Joe knows him best. You were close. And let's plug that Dick Miller book, too, by the way.

Yes. And the documentary. Great documentary. It's a very good documentary. We loved having him here. He's, you know, we're only talking about people that we miss now. This is depressing. He was, you know, I'd always enjoyed watching him in movies.

And when I got a chance to make a movie, I wanted to put him in my first movie. And then we got along and I decided i wanted to have him in every movie and so for the most part i was able to every every script i would read i would read for two reasons one is am i going to do it and two is there a part for him and sometimes it'd be a big part sometimes be a little part but he was that kind of actor you know he could just it didn't it didn't matter and he always made an impression i mean he's he's in the terminator for like, I think, two minutes, if that. And it's one of the best scenes in the movie. He never lets you down.

And that's why it was, I guess, doubly unfortunate that when he went to see Pulp Fiction, to the premiere of Pulp Fiction, which he was in, Quentin turned to him and said, hey, what are you doing here? Because nobody had reminded, nobody had told him that he wasn't in the movie anymore. Oh yeah. That's what happens when you're like a character actor, you know, is there a story?

Go ahead, Gil. No, I was saying, I saw the scene, they showed it on something and it was a scene with him and Harvey Keitel, which was great to see the two of them together. I think it's an extra on DVD. When you're doing research for a

show like this, as you guys both know, because you have your own podcast, you know, some shows are more fun to research than others, and doing the Dick Miller research, you know, even finding stuff like the ventriloquist bit that was cut from Amazon Women on the Moon, Joe, that you shot, where he gets stuck with the French dummy.

He's great in that. Or his scenes in The Howling, where he just, he's a terrific actor. Yeah, that's why he's in my movies. I just enjoyed watching him, and he wasn't in enough of other people's movies. And then when I started using him, he was in other people's movies. And then he told us a story he was doing a picture that was so low budget it was a western so he actually shoots himself because he's a cowboy firing a gun oh it's Then as an Indian, he falls over dead. That's meta.

That's called meta. We will return to Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. But first, a word from our sponsor. Navigating adulting isn't always easy. You're not just working. You're working late. And dinner dates are all, what's your five-year plan?

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In minutes, PC makes any culinary adventure an on-budget breeze. Mick, tell us something about working with one of Gilbert's favorite character actors in mind, Charles Durning. Oh, God. Charlie was the best. He would come onto the set. I've worked with him twice in Desperation and a miniseries called The Judge. And he played the judge. And he would come on the set singing and dancing and happy. And, you know, we would sing together in a duet. I would be the tenor to his also tenor. And he brought up everybody. He made everybody, and he was there. He had studied. He

knew everybody else's parts as well as his own. And just one of the happiest men I've ever known in my life and could turn on a dime. And if there was something, some kind of change you felt was necessary for the scene you were going to do, he was there for you. I never saw him complain in my life. He was just the kindest and really good you know yeah could do anything desperation it got very emotional his part and he was attacked by a cougar in that and i don't mean an eager middle aged woman but but we actually had a mountain lion on the set and of course he didn't battle with the mountain lion but he did with the fake mountain lion head and arms and everything. But he's rolling around the floor and struggling with this stuffed beast.

And he just was so game for everything. And it was going to be a happy day if Charlie was going to be on the set. One of our favorites. He had such an interesting life, too, because. Oh, yeah. But Tan. Yeah. Yeah.

World War II hero. And then he was a dance instructor and a price fighter. And a great dancer. But do you know the Bataan story? No. He was in the Battle of Bataan on the shore and he was stabbed in the neck. He's got a he had a big scar on his neck from that happened. And he had to lie still. Motion was under piles of dead bodies to keep from being slaughtered.

That was how he got out of it. He maintained a death-like stillness under piles of corpses at that time. And that's how he survived Bataan. Well, we understood he didn't like talking about it very much he didn't like talking about his war experiences no he did talk about that with me when we were shooting and it was astonishing and horrifying and you could tell he still felt it very very deeply but he was a really wonderful guy and greatly missed we're talking about all these people

we really miss. How old are we? Wait a minute. It's a Halloween episode. It's got to be a lot of dead people. We're a nostalgia show. We'll bring them back. Here's a question from a fan, Marty Richardson, for both of you. What are each of your

favorite Hammer films and why? And James roman wants to add to that would you please talk gilbert out of his dislike for hammer films well gilbert gilbert is not alone my friend tom weaver uh who is a big horror movie buff uh he does not like the hammer films either he's a universal guy uh but um i think that's kind of short-sighted personally um i mean one of the reasons that we still have a genre is because it was revitalized by these guys in the 50s and uh the the the success of those pictures led directly to the poe pictures and to a lot of stuff that happened in the 60s um and they were just a little small company that managed to have a couple of hits

and they realized well Maybe we should capitalize on this and let's find some people who know how to do it and like this kind of stuff I saw a curse of Frankenstein when it came out and it gave me nightmares I saw horror of Dracula when it came out and it gave me nightmares and I'm old enough to have seen them when they were New and believe me the impact was amazing I mean these pictures were not like anything else you had seen and this was pre all the old universals going to television so this was the first frankenstein and dracula pictures i had seen oh um and they made an indelible impression um and my favorite hammer films oddly enough are not

are not those pictures i i like the uh the quater mass pictures uh the two quater mass pictures i think are great and um a picture that josephzi made called These are the Damned, which is a science fiction picture, which is a great underrated movie. But they made a lot of movies and a surprising number of them were really good. And obviously they benefit from the fact that they had this really good acting pool of really good people who could do Shakespeare and then could also do Bram Stoker if they wanted. The technical quality in the book movies is really good, even though they're cheap. And I just, I think it's, they didn't give them the Queen's Award for industry for nothing. Yeah. There you go, Gilbert. You've been schooled. Yes. The Nanny is a Hammer film, but it's also great. The Nanny is a Hammer film, but it's also great.

The Nanny is one of my favorites. It is never thought of or talked about as a Hammer film because it doesn't have Peter Cushing or Christopher Woody in it. But yeah, I saw them on TV first because I wasn't old enough to see them in the theater in 1957 and 1958. But when I did see them in color, it was a revelation because they were the first people to do horror movies in color. And it was striking the richness of the production design and all these things that normally are very expensive in movies. But these were films made very cheaply, all at the Bray Studios and everything but the most underrated

maybe Horror of Dracula is my favorite but I think The Nanny is a masterpiece it is tense every moment of it and this is not true of everything of the period but it's captivating there's not a dull moment in it the acting is wonderful

and Bette Davis is so reserved in her performance at a time in her career when a lot of it was grotesque overstatement. And in this, it's very subtly played and it gets deep. And she's really committed to it and really good at it. And that's something, Gilbert, if you have not seen that, I cannot recommend it enough. I saw that on TV like but it was a thousand years ago you can look up you can look up my trailers from hell commentary and you'll learn lots of interesting things about it oh and another movie because we were talking about those monster mash movies of house of you know house of frankenstein house of the mashups. And the one that is the biggest,

better than House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, I think is Abbott and Costello made for Frankenstein. Even though it killed the universal horror movies because nobody could take them seriously anymore, I think it's fantastic. And it's the movie, other than A Hard Day's Night, it's the movie I've seen most. Wow.

Yeah. And, oh, another film that had all the actors there, so it was fun to see them, even though they were all at their worst, was The Black Sleeve. I knew you were going to say that. Joe, I warned you about The Black Sleep. As soon as you said that, they're awest.

There's a trailer from hell about The Black Sleep. Basil Rothbunt isn't at his worst. He's actually really good in that movie, considering the material. But it's a pretty ridiculous movie. And it is kind of a throwback, because at that time, they weren't really making those kind of movies anymore.

And I guess all these guys were happy to get the job. I do remember there was a lot of photos of them all going to lunch at the Tale of the Cock restaurant, which used to be on La Cienega, as part of some publicity thing. And they were all in makeup. When they got dumped off in front of the place, people must have been screaming and running up the street. You name another podcast that's going to ask you about the black sleep, Joe.

I can't think of a single one. This is the one. I want to talk about horror anthologies, too, because we talked, the last time you were here, Mick, you're sort of, as I was telling you through email, you're sort of the keeper of the flame with horror anthologies. And Joe was talking about the amicus ones, the great British ones that we grew up on. House that Dripped Blood and Torture Garden.

I guess Tales from the Crypt. Tales from the Crypt. What's the one, Burgess Meredith? Tales that Witness Madness. Oh, and in the theater, I remember seeing Dr. Terror's House of Horror. Oh, yeah. That was the first one. Yeah.

Yeah. I really miss them. But, Mick, you brought it back with Masters of Horror. Well, it was a little different. with Masters of Horror? Well, it was a little different. I had directed a couple of anthologies on a couple anthology series. First, Amazing Stories and Tales from the Crypt

and Freddy's Nightmares. But I loved anthologies because it was a different story every week. It wasn't serial. It didn't continue. You wouldn't have to have seen every episode. But in this case, it was hour-long movies, but it was also giving great filmmakers the freedom to do what they wanted,

the way they wanted to, without interference. And so even more than it being an anthology, I was an enabler to these filmmakers who often did not get an opportunity to make films that were really personal to themselves. Said, here's two million dollars in 10 days. Do it on time and on schedule. You can do whatever you want. And it it really seemed to bring out the best in in people like Joe and, you know, Toby Hooper and John Carpenter and Takeshi Miike and all that. and, you know, Toby Hooper and John Carpenter and Takeshi Miike and all that. And I have another couple of them planned, and Nightmare Cinema, the movie, which Joe also is a part of.

Another anthology. Had the same philosophy, only get people from around the world who express their vision with a personality unlike everybody else's. Something, everybody who has a unique cinematic personality. And we're working on maybe turning my book into an anthology series as well. But it's just a format that I think is exciting because it offers different points of view. And, you know, when it was Tales from the Crypt,

great show, but it was the boobs and blood show. And they had a style and a look that was fairly consistent throughout. And it was self-mocking and, you know, tongue in cheek often. But the idea of just going to people and having standalone stories that they want to tell, whether they were their ideas or we brought stories to them that they responded to. Joe brought in both of the ones he did for Masters of Horror, and they were two of the most popular. And Homecoming. I just watched Homecoming last night. It's wild. At the Torino Film Festival in Torino, Italy, which is not a genre festival, it got a 10-minute standing ovation.

I can imagine. Amazing. And timelier than ever, I might say. Homecoming. Yeah, I agree with you. Right? Don't you think, Joe? That kind of stuff never goes out of style.

Seen it facing the crowd lately? Yeah. I know what you're talking about, but a great Ann Coulter parody. And a movie that's just a nightmare in itself. And that's Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn girl. It's a Dante. It's on trailers from hell. Yes. Of course.

With Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo. Petrillo. Joe covers it. Scary. Scary how much he was a clone of Jerry Lewis. Well, he was hired by Jerry to play Baby Jerry on the Colgate Comedy Hour. And then when he went off and started to do Jerry as a schtick and then hired this other guy who is sort of like Dean Martin,

they were not amused. And when I was a kid, I saw that picture on television under the title Boys from Brooklyn, and I thought it was a Martin and Lewis picture. He looks and sounds exactly like the young Jerry Lewis. So strange. My dad knew Duke Mitchell very well. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that.

Wow. Yeah, just throwing it in from the same part of Brooklyn. I'm impressed. I'm going to tell our listeners, too, to check out Masters of Horror. I watched your first season segment, Mick, Chocolate, which is totally disturbing, and I don't know how your mind works and how you come up with things like that. I will use the word unsettling, and Joe's homecoming is with the great Robert Picardoardo who was an american treasure like dick miller yes true you should have him on the show he's very funny we

gotta have a website you got to go to his website he does these characters i mean i see the piano the piano the lounge lizard that he plays on twitter right but there's he's he does an italian count that he does and he's we gotta have him on. And in COVID, he plays a whole bunch of characters and interacts with himself. And I remember I met him, and I went up to him and said, you know me, but I don't know you. Why is that? Right. I got to talk quickly, too, about the Howling, which is turning 40 next year.

One of our favorites, Gilbert and mine. And Joe, you say werewolves, werewolf movies never go out of style. Why? Well, you know, they really weren't in style until like the early 30s. And yet the lore has been with us for you know like 100 years before that um i guess it's it's an atavistic thing uh the idea of people turning into animals was which was the producer of uh of the howling was a guy named dan blatt and um he thought that this was the greatest thing ever the idea he thought that nobody had ever made a movie where it was turned into an animal.

He was so excited by this idea. Groundbreaker. I had to sit him down and try to explain that this is actually part of a whole thing. And in fact, when I was working at Avco Embassy doing publicity on this, they avoided showing that it was a werewolf movie because they thought it would be too old-fashioned.

Old hat. They thought it was old hat. They were afraid it was going to look like something from the late, late show. You guys met on The Howling. We met before then. We met at Universal, actually. Okay.

He used to have a little cubbyhole office down at the bottom of the Hitchcock building. Yeah, under the commissary. And I knew what was for lunch every day by stink. Gilbert, why don't you share your theory, since Joe is talking, and Joe talks about connecting a werewolf to adolescence and puberty. Why don't you share your fascinating theory with the Horror Masters? Well, it's like Frankenstein is a baby.

He's like, comes into the world, and he's scared, and he just wants love. The Wolfman is someone not in control, like, oh, their body and voice and everything changing. So that's adolescence. And Dracula is just what every man wants to be. You know, he's got control over women. He's got control over everything.

And the mummy is old age? The old age. This was a theory he came up with one day. I like it. He's hit all the life marks. Yeah, it's insightful oh there there's another movie that uh are on one of your things and i remember i saw it it's a strange one bride of the gorilla i did that one here yeah lon jenny jr raymond burr and barbara payton and i you know it's funny Yeah, Lon Chaney Jr., Raymond Burr, and Barbara Payton.

And, you know, it's funny because The Wolfman was originally written to be like a psychological horror that you didn't know if he was actually turning into a werewolf. Universal said, no, we want an actual monster and that's what he he wound up doing bride of the gorilla and made it like psychological or tried to it's still got a gorilla on it oh yeah yeah right yeah right wasn't god burns sheep gorilla suit and um and i did a whole episode about those gorilla films. Remember, Gilbert? Yes, yes. If you do an episode about gorillas,

you got to invite John Landis and Rick Baker. Well, we had Rick. Yeah, yeah. We'll get John in at some point. We did... What was it? Murders in the Runeborg had an ape, didn't it? Oh, yes.

Yeah. It had two apes. It had a guy in a suit. That's right. It had a real ape. But the guy in the suit yes. It had two apes. It had a guy in a suit and a real ape, but the guy in the suit is creepier than the real ape. Ain't that the way. The Three Stooges

had a bunch of ones, the Mox Brothers and at the circus. Gorillas were very popular, and that gorilla suit saw a lot of wear. I mean, there were two or three guys who specialized in gorillas. Was Crash Corrigan one of those guys?

Yeah, Crash Corrigan was one of them. Yano Gamora is another one. That's right. They all had their own suits. That's right. Bob Burns had a suit. Bob Burns used to play a gorilla. And Don McLeod.

Yeah. Correct. Yeah. On the subject of the howling, and we don't just want to talk about deceased people, but we can't let you go, Joe, without telling us something about the great John Carradine. Well, you know, at this time he was taking anything that came down the pike, you know, because he often didn't even see the movies he was in.

He just took it. And he prided himself on his memory because he was, he could come in and have learned the wrong part. And if you sent him over into a corner, he'd come back in 20 minutes and he'd learned a new part. And so he was, he was a pro, you know. And in this picture, I tried to get him in Piranha, but to play the part that Keenan Wynn ended up playing,

but he didn't have a high enough tvq which is uh at that time you had you couldn't hire people for movies that didn't have a network okay because most of the movies if they didn't make it theatrical they had to make it when they sold it to a network and that's when they would go into profit so you had a specific set of people that you could hire and he didn't make the cut on that one but on this one um i i i everybody in the cast was exactly who i wanted and uh and he was um he was just a total pro except he came to work all the time and he would he would bring his own food because he was so used to being short-changed on the sets of some of these crappy movies that he was doing wow and he his the heat was off on

his trailer for like you know three days three days and he didn't tell anybody because he figured nobody would fix it anyway. Oh, wow. But he was a lovely guy. And I ended up doing the slates on that movie so that I could hear stories from him. And he would go on while they were doing the lighting and stuff and I'd sit there and wait.

And then we'd be just about to do a take and I'd go action through the slate and then I'd realize I have to do a take, and I'd go action through the slate, and then I'd realize I have to do another take or else I wouldn't hear the end of the story. My mother used to see him walk down Hollywood Boulevard rehearsing Shakespeare out to the public, just out there to nobody on Hollywood Boulevard. This was in the 1940s.

Yep, he used to do that. He's a Shakespearean actor. I don't think anybody has a longer IMDb page than John Carradine. No, he doesn't. I'm sure. You know, watching the howling last night, Joe, to prep for this, and I see these people. I see Forrest Ackerman.

I see your friend. I see Slim Pickens up there. I see Dick Miller. You saw me. Yes, you're the guy on the couch at the end with the TV guide. I saw you. I screamed when I saw you. I mean, these are treasures. They're irreplaceable people.

But here's your reward, Joe, for telling that story. Gilbert is going to do his Maria Uspenskaya for you. The way you walk is thorny through no fault of your own.

But as the rain enters the soil, the river enters the stream. So tears go on to a protestant end. Find peace for a moment,

my son. What a memory. Are you disturbed by that? Let's talk about you. Go ahead, Gil. Oh, Chico's daughter went to Maxine Marks. Yeah, Maxine Marks, Chico's daughter went to Maxine Marks. Yeah, Maxine Marks, Chico's daughter, went to Maria Spinskaya for acting lessons.

And talk about wanting a moment in history that I wish someone had filmed. Maria Spinskaya went out to dinner with chico marks and to me that's like why wasn't that on camera it should have been the cover of photo play yeah as we wind down i'm gonna have you guys plug your podcast, but congrats are in order. Mick, you were rewarded the Master of Horror Award from the Overlook Film Festival. Congratulations. And the Grim Fest Life.

He usually brings it with him, but he's probably going to have it. He's getting up to get it. He's getting the axe. We're not a visual podcast. Oh, that's the pun. I'm getting the axe. Is that a real axe? It is indeed a chrome axe. Oh, that's the pun. I'm getting the axe. Is that a real axe? It is indeed a chrome axe.

Joe has one too. I had to try to get mine home on an airplane. Mick, you also won the Grimfest you were awarded the Grimfest Life Achievement Award. Congratulations. Thank you. It was an amazing weekend and it was very humbling, particularly the Nightstream Acts Award, because Joe and a bunch of other filmmakers I

admire tremendously were there to to give their best wishes at that. And it was, you know, kind of humbling and exciting. And forgive me the sin of pride for those awards, but it was pretty amazing. And Joe, you were recently given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Luca Film Festival in Italy. Yes, I was. It makes you start thinking about how many years you've got left. Lifetime Achievement means you're done.

And you were honored by the Salem Horror Fest and the Chat Film Fest Lifetime Achievement Award. They just love me as long as I'm alive. Let's plug these wonderful podcasts. Mick, Postmortem. Postmortem is in its fourth season. We've been down since the demise of Fangoria, which is rising again from the flames with a different owner.

But this is an exclusive for you. We will be back Halloween week for the first time in several months. Wonderful. And we have some killer people coming on, and I probably shouldn't say, but Patton Oswalt is among them. Whoa, we love Patton.

Yeah. He's the greatest and knows this genre so well and loves it so deeply, and it was a great coup to get somebody unexpected for our show. Yeah, I heard Joe Dante on that podcast. He was pretty good.

Yeah, we've had him on a couple of times, once with John Landis. Obviously, I'll do anybody's podcast. He was pretty good. Yeah, we've had him on a couple of times. Once with John Landis. Obviously, I'll do anybody's podcast. Obviously. He did one on horror and politics with John Landis that was our second show ever. Got him a lot of hate mail. Only two.

The only two bad reviews were that one. Because all three of us kind of got political. Yeah, I know. And I know where you guys stand. Bless your hearts. You're on the you're on the right side of things. Joe, talk about the movies that made me a wonderful show with you and Josh Olson. Josh Olson came to me and said he wanted he thought we should do a podcast for Trailers from Hell. And I said, that sounds like a lot of work. And he said, no, no, no, it's not. I'll do the work. I'll book it. And I won't even tell you what it's about.

no, no, it's not. I'll do the work. I'll book it. And I won't even tell you what it's about. You just show up every week and meet the guests and it will surprise you with what the topics are. And that was, I think we just did our hundredth podcast. It's a terrific show. And we also got our millionth view, I think. Wow. So it turned out to be much more popular than I imagined. And the quality, ironically, has gone up since we stopped recording in person, because now we have access to more people than there are that want to go to Burbank.

That's the double edged sword, but you get the audio challenges of doing it at home. It's true. It is an audio challenge. But as you guys have learned um you know there there is um there's some merit to being able to have access to people who don't live in the same town you do and now this is the the the horror movie year 2020 the year that wasn't um we've all got uh a lot more people under our belt than we would if we had to drag them kicking and screaming into our presence sure yeah we yeah that's how we got alan arkin we wouldn't have gotten stephen king if we had to drag them kicking and screaming into our presence. Sure. Yeah, that's how we got Alan Arkin. We wouldn't have gotten Stephen King if we didn't do it remotely. We wouldn't have gotten Guillermo del Toro for a postmortem. And it really is, it's a mixed blessing, but it's

mostly good in that we have access to people like Joe said that we never would have otherwise had. Because people are home, because they're not working. That's right, they're not working. And that gives them more time to listen to podcasts. Ironically, though, most of the time they listen to podcasts used to be in the car. And now since most of them aren't going anywhere in the car, they have to just sort of sit down and, you know, listen to the podcast while they're vacuuming or something.

I hike five miles a day, so that's when I do it. they're vacuuming or something. I hike five miles a day, so that's when I do it. You know, two other guests I just thought of that we've had on the podcast. Well, one, Dee Wallace. Dee was great. What a great guest. Terrific.

And the other one, we interviewed Donnie Donegan. Oh, right. Yeah, well, the last living cast member of Son of Frankenstein. And he was terrific, too. Well, hello! That is so idiotic. What resemblance

does Donnie Donnigan and Basil Rothwell... Hey, listen, Basil Rothwell is playing a part they asked Peter Lorre to play. Yes. Is there anybody who doesn't look like Colin Clive more than Peter Lorre? Gil, you got to do a little Peter Lorre for Joe and Mick. Yeah. But, no, it's you who ruined it.

You and your stupid attempt to buy it. Kevin found out how valuable it was. No wonder he had such an easy time getting it. You idiot. You blundering fathead. Actually, you think that was him, but it was actually a real recording of Peter and Maltese

Mothman. Gilbert's been doing this for years. There's a lot of call for this, by the way. Gilbert gets tons of requests for his John MacGyver. Before we let you guys, go ahead, Gil.

Everything in this company must be done according to schedule. We will not have any slackers working here. I am the captain of this ship. You were saying?

Do you guys know Andrew Bergman, the director? Never met him, but certainly know who he is. Director of the In-Laws. He cannot get enough of Gilbert's John MacGyver impression. Who can? Before we get you guys out of here, a couple of plugs. Amazon Women on the Moon coming to Blu-ray. Yes. In couple of plugs. Amazon Women on the Moon coming to Blu-ray. Yes.

In November. Yeah. And Gilbert actually did roast a dead person, Joe. Oh, Abe Vigoda? Yeah. The scene in the movie where Harvey Pitnick, played by the great Archie Hahn, gets roasted. Gilbert actually did this. So it is life imitating art.

Yeah, I roasted. I was at Abe Vigoda's funeral. And I was standing over the coffin insulting Abe Vigoda. He must have earned it. I taste his timeless. What's the HBO Mogwai project? Oh, it's called Secrets of the Mogwai. It's an animated prequel about Mr. Wing, the Key Luke character, when he was a little boy in Shanghai and how he got involved with the Mogwai gizmo.

And I've seen the first three episodes, and it's pretty cool. It's, I think, a little unexpected. I don't think it's quite what people think it's going to be, but it's really charming. I think it's going to be good. It's probably not going to be on until next year. Okay. So, stuff going on. And what is the status, if there is status, on the man with kaleidoscope eyes?

It's where it was in February, and then it just stopped, like everything else. And we're hoping that once we get out from under this cloud, this toxic cloud, and I don't just mean the disease, that we will be able to get back to what we were doing. All of us. Well, there's a Herman Mankiewicz movie coming out. So there should be a Roger Corman. No, I agree.

I agree. Yeah. Mick, tell us about the book. Ah, These Evil Things We Do. It's my second novel and four novellas put together for the first time, one of which is new. They are all rather intense in different ways, and we've had very kind responses and quotes

from people like Stephen King and Clive Barker and Joe Dante and other esteemed members of the horror gentia. And it is available at Amazon as a paperback or an e-book, a Kindle book. And I'm pretty excited about it. It's being really well received. And let's plug that Dick Miller book, Joe, which is called You Don't Know Me, But You Love Me. Right. We've done a pretty good job

of moving books here on this show, so I'd like to get the word out. Books need to be moved. Yes. Yeah. And Mick, what is the status of Jimmy Miracle? Will that ever happen? Jimmy Miracle was something, an idea that I'd had decades ago, and it helped get me work at the beginning of my career, and I've just recently reworked it. It is about to go out to producers right now, and my managers are kind of, it's mainstream, you know.

It's not a horror story. It has slightly supernatural elements, but it's something very character-driven, and it's a period movie set in 1936, and it will be going out in the next week or two, but it's a brand-new take on an older idea that I— You guys are busy in a pandemic. Yeah.

Somebody's got to be. Impressive. I want to tell our— Well, what's the choice? I tell our listeners to find Nightmare Cinema, which was great, and also Masters of Horror. And if you haven't seen Matinee, please see Matinee. And Mick, I loved Writing the Bullet, too. Oh, thank you.

Which is obviously a perfect— My lesser-known Halloween movie after Hocus Pocus. A personal film. And yeah, Hocus Pocus is back. Boy, number one at the box office. Yeah. 27 years after the fact. Gilbert, want to let these men get on with their lives?

Oh, not really. Oh, go ahead. Let's. Okay, before you go, Joe, dealer's choice, or not dealer's choice, but one story quick about either Christopher Lee or Brother Theodore. Well, I'll do Brother Theodore because he's less known, but he was so deaf that we had to be very careful when we mixed the movie because the other actors would have to speak up really loudly for him to hear his cues.

So sometimes we would have to go back and do looping to hide the fact that they were giving him extra loud cues. There's a better Theodore story. The Burbs is a big following, by the way.

It does. It's huge. And rightly so. Yes, it's huge. We want to thank you guys for doing this and being part of this Halloween show. And we'll tell our listeners, too, to find your podcast. They're great. The Movies That Made Me with Joe and Josh Olson and Mick's wonderful post-mortem, which continues for you, Mick, a career of interviewing people.

Yeah, started early, including Christopher Lee back in 1979. Malcolm McDowell was on the podcast with us last week and told us some wonderful Christopher Lee stories that we'll send you guys. Great. I actually did a scene with him, acted in a scene in John Landis' The Stupids, but the scene got cut.

Oh, no. I played one of his henchmen. And the stand is on Blu-ray too now, Mick. And now it's a documentary. Yes, exactly. It looks better than ever. They actually went back to the negative and went and did a high def transfer.

Which is great because you don't often get that with things that were cut on video. Yeah, it was standard def video shot on 16 millimeter film, which was very uncommon at the time. But it looks better than ever. And the new version of the stand is coming out in December. So I can't wait to see that. And I actually have a cameo in it.

Fantastic. You guys are everywhere. Thank you for doing this. Gilbert's going to do a sign off. And as a monster kid, I thank you both for coming on. Thanks for having us. Yeah, because nothing I like talking about more than old monsters. And so this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast

with my co-host Frank Santopadre. And we have been talking to Joe Dante and Mick Garris. A couple of monster kids. Happy Halloween, gentlemen. Thank you for doing this. You too. All the best. Take care and stay safe. S.A. Sous-titrage MFP. © transcript Emily Beynon