Santo vs. The Vampire Women

Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro (also known as Samson vs. the Vampire Women) is a 1962 horror film starring the wrestling superhero Santo. A lot of you may know it because it was also a 1995 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was brought to the US by one K Gordon Murray, who was responsible for a lot of kids matinee material in the 60s. 

COOL BONUS: This week we're joined by Jen and Dawn of the amazing Women in Caskets Podcast!

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And Then There Were None (1945)

This week we have a standalone episode inspired by our recent discussion of Friday the 13th, the 1945 film AND THEN THERE WERE NONE based on the play and novel by Agatha Christie.

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Remembering Peyton Place

Over the course of a couple of years I watched Peyton Place, the TV series, from its launch on September 15, 1964, to the departure of the show's breakout star Mia Farrow in August of 1966. That's 263 episodes, from a time when the 30-minute, half-hour soap was broadcast three nights a week in prime time. I found my way to Peyton Place because I'd read the book by Grace Metalious, then seen the two Hollywood films of the 50s. For years I put off checking out the TV show because I understood that many of the characters were different. But finally I made the plunge. I'd watch a few episodes at a time, then none for a period of months, then back.

Peyton Place, the novel, takes place in the 1940s, and tells the story of a small town as seen through the eyes of Allison MacKenzie, a girl who wants to be a writer. The whole thrust of the book is one of hope in the face of cynicism, for Peyton Place is a nasty, forbidding place full of shameful secrets. Today people have kind of written the book off because while it was considered racy at the time, it's nothing compared to the trashy soap fiction of the 70s. What's lost, I think, is a genuinely good novel from a genuinely talented, observant writer who died too soon-- Grace Metalious, awkward and uncomfortable in interviews and loathe to get along with Hollywood, died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1964, just eight years after the publication of Peyton Place.
The films Peyton Place and Return to Peyton Place, released in 1959 and 1961 are the stuff that technicolor dreams are made of-- they make the shabby little town beautiful, and though they tap the brakes a little on the adult content, they don't do it by much. Most of the original characters are in place and the movies follow the plots of the books more or less. Allison the girl becomes Allison the writer in Return, and we see her (in a very meta Metalious move) write the book that would become Metalious's own.
Peyton Place the TV Series was a different animal, an attempt by producer Paul Monash to create a "high-class anthology drama" that would play in prime time and look and feel much more like a movie than a soap. And it does-- watching the first couple of seasons, I was struck by the way that expert composition of shots was simply standard on this black-and-white show. And the scripts tend to be literate, even poetic.
There are plenty of plot differences between the TV series and its source material. Selena Cross, the troubled girl from the wrong side of the tracks whose trial for murder occupies most of the film Return to Peyton Place, is nowhere in sight. The characters run from the comfortable middle class to the wealthy, and virtue is generally to be found among the middle class. Whereas the movies had been about the secrets of a small town that was inherently corrupt, the TV series-- dominated by Mia Farrow as the wide-eyed, wispy-voiced Allison-- is about how small towns are always fighting to reveal their essential goodness. The doctors, lawyers and executives of Peyton Place have everyone's best interest at heart. It's like a mirror-mirror universe version of the movie Peyton Place, except the movies are the bad side. That sounds like a critique but it's not, it's a way of understanding where this show is coming from. It's just a nicer small town. But there are still secrets and lies, such as Allison's birth out of wedlock or Betty hiding a miscarriage to keep a husband who doesn't want her.
But man, do we have great performances on this thing. Mia Farrow is so unforgettably odd that it's impossible for her to follow the earnest trajectory of the book Allison. Here, Allison is a quaverying, delicate thing, unable to cope with the drama of life, demanding to shape the world to her own vision. But before she gets so completely strange, you get to see a lot of Allison and Rodney (Ryan O'Neal) as the original supercouple.
 
Dorothy Malone as Constance is a woman who can act with her eyes, a useful talent when many times her eyes are supposed to tell you she doesn't believe someone's lies. Ed Nelson will make you believe a doctor can single-handedly run a small town on moral rectitude alone.
Leslie Nielsen plays twins. Twins!
It's not for a season or two that we get anything at all like the unhappy Crosses of the book, when Norman is accused of murdering the working-class bully Joe Chernak. That's when the show begins to take on some gray, when its class consciousness emerges and we meet the always-sweet Rita, played by LA attorney Patricia Morrow as a smudge-faced, hardworking angel who marries well. Rita is sweet like Tara on Buffy was sweet-- impossibly, dangerously sweet. Her polar oppostite was Betty (Barbara Parkins)-- who begins as conniving and winds up wounded and striving. Parkins, within a year or two, will kill in Valley of the Dolls.



A lot of these roles are so well-handled it's amazing to think they were putting out three episodes a week. Lee Grant returned from a long, unfair acting absence to play Stella, the angry, wounded sister of the deceased Joe. She's simply amazing.
I watched until the end of Allison's tenure, episode 263, August 26, 1966, when Allison walks around Peyton Place like David Tennant on his way out of Doctor Who, peering through windows at everyone before she disappears up a road, gone for good.



There will never be another Peyton Place.

Castle Talk: Bridget Nelson of RiffTrax on The Teen Agers Series

Bridget Jones Nelson is a writer and comedian known for her work on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and for the past several years as half of the RiffTrax audio commentary team Bridget & Mary Jo, where she and comedian Mary Jo Pehl riff on features, industrial shorts, often with an eye on the social lives and mores of the United States in the mid-century. Her new short is VACATION DAYS, a 1947 entry into a series about and called TEEN-AGERS.

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IT Chapter 2: The Stephen King Retrospective

This week we return to the Stephen King Retrospective we’re talking about IT Chapter 2 directed by Andy Muschietti. We talk about the meaning of it all, compare this version with the 1990 Tim Curry vehicle, and more. Let us know what you think on our Facebook page!

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Castle Talk: PJ Hoover, Author of The Hidden Code

PJ Hooover is the prolific writer of the new book from CBAY, The Hidden Code.
Eleven years ago, Hannah Hawkins' parents disappeared while traveling abroad. Presumed dead, Hannah and her uncle are shocked when a letter from her mom arrives right after Hannah's sixteenth birthday. By piecing together cryptic hints from the note and other clues left behind, Hannah realizes her parents disappeared while trying to find the mysterious Code of Enoch, an artifact they believed could hold the key to curing disease—or creating it. Hannah's parents had been determined to destroy the Code, no matter the cost. Now with the help of her uncle, her best friend, and another cute but not entirely trustworthy guy, Hannah sets out to discover what happened to her parents and if the Code of Enoch is real.

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Castle Talk: Patrick Greene, author of GRIM HARVEST

Patrick C. Greene is a lifelong horror fan who lives in the mountains of western North Carolina. He launched his Ember Hollow series with Red Harvest and is currently working on the third novel in the series. He is also the author of the novels Progeny and The Crimson Calling, as well as numerous short stories featured in collections and anthologies.

GRIM HARVEST from Kensington Books is the gripping second installment of Greene’s Haunted Hollow Chronicles, continuing a year from where the first book left off. Faced with a monster desperate for revenge and out for blood, this town might just realize the killer is one of them. 

Set in a fictional town loosely based on Asheville, NC, this chilling return to a town cursed by a dark and twisted evil will have you scrambling for the lights.

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Castle Talk: Spooky Spectacle Director Brandy Herr

Brandy Herr is the co-owner of Spooky Spectacle, a convention featuring horror, paranormal, sci-fi, cosplay, fantasy, etc. Spooky Spectacle 2019 will be held September 14 and 15 at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, Texas. This event will feature Ken Sagoes from A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 & 4, the Giant Green Goblin Head from Stephen King's Maximum Overdrive (making its first ever Texas appearance!), as well as a Pet Sematary reunion with Dale Midkiff and Miko Hughes.

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Castle Talk: Rob Zombie, Director of 3 From Hell

3 From Hell is the long-awaited followup to the crime film The Devil’s Rejects, itself a sequel to the nightmarishly bloody and phosphorescent House of 1000 Corpses. 3 From Hell follows the remaining members of the Firefly family as they run from the law and try to make sense of their future. The film debuts on September 16 in select theaters from Fathom Events, and comes to DVD and Blu-Ray on October 15. We talk about media commentary in 3 From Hell and the value of a director's vision.

Hosted by Jason Henderson, editor of this Summer's Castle of Horror Anthology: Volume 1 and author of the upcoming Young Captain Nemo: Quest for the Nautilus.

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Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla (2002)

This week we have a special edition of our Godzilla series in honor of this week’s Death Battle episode, for which our own Tony Salvaggio is on the writing team; we’re talking about the 2002 film GODZILLA AGAINST MECHAGODZILLA, part of the Godzilla Millennium series from Toho.

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Friday the 13th (1980)

This week we have a special look at the 1980 movie Friday the 13th directed Sean S Cunningham. Along the way we try to discern how the movie might have appeared in 1980, and similarities and differences between this and its next of kin, the original Halloween.

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