Spooky Season Classic: Tales from the Crypt with Benny

We're resharing one of our all-time most-popular episodes all about Tales from the Crypt with our friend and superfan, Benny.

In this version, you'll hear the original episode followed by the patron-only bonus episode tagged on at the end.

Join us all spooky season long!

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Transcript

Why A Repost And What’s Coming

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey listeners, it's Katie. We do not have a new episode for you today because uh, well, life uh kind of happened last week, which I know all of you completely understand, but we didn't want to leave you empty-handed, so we're reposting one of our most popular spooky season episodes, as well as the bonus tagged on at the end, which you normally have to pay to hear. And it's with our friend Benny, and it's all about Tales from the Crypt. Please enjoy, and we'll be back next week with a brand new episode. If that theme song brings back fond memories for you, then you will love our episode today. If you like your horror mixed with a little bit of camp, lots of great puns, and a cackling cryptkeeper. You might be a Zenial and a Tales from the Crypt Super fan. Hi, I'm Katie. And I'm Danny, and I just messed up our set together. You did. I'm just going with it, man. I do this all the time. I highlight it. I'm in yellow. Katie's in blue. We've been doing this for a year, and I still read your lines. It's okay. At least, but then I'm Ron Burgundy. And you are Ron Bundy. If you give me words, I will say them. And I did not say hi, I'm Danny. You're so good. I know, I'm getting back. We're back on track now. Okay. Hey, I'm Katie again, and you're listening to Generation in Between, a Xennial podcast, where we remember, revisit, and relearn all kinds of things related to our 80s childhoods and 90s teen young adulthoods. And today we are continuing on with our October episodes of Spooky Thanks. Um, and we have another horror super fan here with us in the studio. Um, it is the one, the only, the legendary Benjamin, aka Benny Benya, um, who is a self-professed, or I said he is, um expert on Tales from the Crypt.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

I would say it. I'd say it now. Okay. Recording. Now I'll say it.

Meet Benny: Trivia Titan And Horror Fan

SPEAKER_02 2:00

All right, awesome. Got it. Um, so Katie, why don't you tell us Ben's little bit of his bio that we just wrote in about three minutes? Yeah, we sure did. So Ben is a hospitality manager at the Henniger by night and a subcontracts manager for a major rocket company, not the one you're thinking of.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Not the one you're thinking of.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

By day. He used to work at Disney and he's a huge pop culture fan, which is absolutely perfect for having him as a guest on the show. He knows y'all don't even, I don't think, understand. If you know Ben, then you know he knows so much stuff about so many things. Sports, everything, especially wrestling.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yep. Um I'll be back later for a different episode of the street.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah, we'll have to do one on 80s wrestling.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

Um, he also knows so much about music and um well's a music history minor and and spent some years working uh at the college radio station. So big ups K-A-S C, The Blaze, 1260 a.m.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

I don't know what any of that means.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

It's 13 30 now, but okay.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Um so he knows so many things about so many cool things. So um anyway, so we're so excited that Ben's here. Uh we know Ben because he's another person that we met at the Henniger. Yep. I've been bartending under Ben's lead for the past couple years. Lots of fun. I can just imagine.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Lots of work, lots of getting yelled at, I think, really.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

For real. For real. Lots of that. Okay, so Ben, are you a zenial?

SPEAKER_00 3:25

So I know the definition of of zenial, uh, I think is a little is a couple years actually before me, technically. Yeah, okay. So I was born in 87.

SPEAKER_02 3:33

Yeah, so you're technically a millennial. Yeah. But I feel like Ben has a lot of xennial knowledge because a lot of the things that you're into are relevant.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

I was raised and inundated very early in my life on things that were already no longer topical by the time I was raised on them.

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

I had a lot of catching up to do.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Yeah. Did you have older siblings or was that your parents?

SPEAKER_00 3:55

No, I was an only child.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:56

This is this is like years and years and years of we're driving anywhere, and my dad's just gonna quiz me on every song on the radio, every everything on TV, just constantly trying to get me to brush up on my knowledge. So seeing?

SPEAKER_02 4:10

It paid off. No one can beat you at wherever that place is. Oh, that was before we started recording. Yeah, we gotta tell that story. So, like I said, Ben is a fountain of knowledge of endless information that is very entertaining. You don't ever want to play trivia with Ben because he was telling us before we hit record.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Tell uh there's a brewery uh about 45 minutes north of where we are right now in Titusville, um, that does trivia, has done trivia for the last several years on Monday nights, and you always get rewards if you finish in first or second place. They literally put a post up uh on their board today that's with their revolving menu for their advertisement for Monday Night Trivia that says uh Monday Night Trivia, you can win prizes if Ben is not playing. Uh which I think is hilarious. It's very, very kind of them. Nice praise, uh, but I hate to admit that, you know, I'm trying to be humble about it. It's trivia. There's nothing humble about trivia. Like the truth is we go, I'll look at my wife, Melinda, and I'll say, okay, you know, we don't have to try to win, let's just have fun tonight. And then maybe like one category in, we've run the board, and I said, We're not losing. We're not we're not giving this up to anybody. Plan change. We're winning right now.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Yes Oh my gosh. I love that. I know. So if you ever if you ever go to a bar and you see Ben is there playing trivia, just give up. Like it's you're not gonna win. It's just not gonna happen. And if his wife is singing karaoke, don't even like she'll win that.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

So we're hyper competitive in weirdly different ways.

Xennial Vibes And Upbringing

SPEAKER_02 5:43

Yes, I love that. So, anyway, okay, Katie, before we get into Tales from the Crypt, yes, you are not a horror fan, and there were some things that you were not exposed to when I was, right? Right. So, have you ever seen Tales from the Crypt? I have not.

SPEAKER_05 6:00

Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Ever. Ever. Okay. I know who the crypt keeper is. Okay, yeah. Because I at least recognize I'm alive. So, so Ben, I was grew up in a very conservative household. Like we barely watched TV. We weren't allowed to watch stuff. So as an adult now, I've gotten into like true crime. Um, I mean, I've been an adult a long time. I was like, but I just true crime is beneficial. Actually, to that point, I just started reading my first Stephen King book.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

I know. It's all downhill from here. I know.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

I think I was given my first Stephen King book when I was about eight, nine. I was like nine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:40

Yeah. I've got a lot of catching up to do. It's okay because you know, we talk about on this podcast, we revisit, remember. And sometimes we learn for the first time. That's right. And the thing is, I I love spooky stuff. Like, I love it. Like once I started to kind of like be like, oh, this is okay. This is kind of fun. This is kind of cool to feel scared or whatever. I'm like all in.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:03

I've just never encountered this program. There's and I am 95 years old.

EC Comics Origins And The Comics Code

SPEAKER_00 7:10

I suppose I'll give you a pass because in in our age where we're in, where access to information is is instant and it's everywhere. You've actually touched on a franchise that lays dormant and has for over almost 20 years at this point, uh, and a little bit longer. And there's you know, if we want to get into it, if you want to wait, we can. There are tons of reasons for why, many of which are boring, and I can try to sum them up as quickly as possible. But like as we go through it, so you know, historically, show's based on a 1950s comic book.

SPEAKER_02 7:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Which I brought. I did bring some some that is so cool.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

No, I'm excited. We do have show and tell, we'll have pictures of all the fun things he brought. Don't worry, everyone's very careful.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

EC's the name of the you don't have to be careful, the reprints. They're not they're worth exactly what they say they're worth. Um three dollars. Three dollars on the six dollars on the next one, though. That was money for comic. Um, because at one point that was near mint until I started reading it. But uh the EC Entertaining Comic Company, which was a pet project for William M. Gaines uh and his co-producing partner Al Feldstein, they made these comic books back in the 1940s. They were educational comics. Oh and they were doing like Bible stories and war crimes and like uh law and order prior to law and order in comic book form. You had, you know, eight pages to tell a short story, you'd tell three or four of them. 50s hit, they're not really enjoying, they're not seeing a lot of the fruits of their labor. They change the name of the company to an entertaining comic, and they start inserting horror stories into their comics, and then they just say, We're going pure horror stories. So um they do the three main horror lines, which would become they would first release The Crypt of Terror, which would become Tales from the Crypt, and then they would have The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror. Uh, they did science fiction comics, they had Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and then one that was just called Weird Science Fantasy, just the three of us ones. And then they they also um had what were called suspense stories. Um they published, you know, churning out four, five, six titles a month in all of these lines in the 50s. And prior to television being a problem, prior to video games being a problem, you know, America's youth getting their hands on these comic books made them more popular than ever, but also like the enemy of the state. So they ended up getting shut down. Uh the comic book code, the comics of authority code basically was launched out of their demise, in which we can't have kids reading violent, gory, bloody, you know, people getting their heads up cut off on on comic book covers or marketing to children.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

But weren't they making Bible stories? Because there's a lot of that there.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah, but those weren't selling because they're I don't think the Bible gets like Frankenstein in it, you know.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

You know, yeah. Yeah, it's not exactly the same.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

So uh for many years the franchise was known. You know, many of the greatest horror legends today, Stephen King, um, grew up idolizing the horror stories in the 1950s, and but these were the comics that they all loved. So there was a movie made by uh Amicus Films in the 1970s that had Peter Cushing in it. It's very boring, it's very dry, and it's very British. And they did a Vault of Horror movie as well, um, which were all based on the stories that were in the comics that were owned by William M. Gaines. Fast forward in the 80s, uh early, early 80s, so 1982, Stephen King and George Romero, who made Night of Living Dead, uh who's you know, the godfather of zombies, uh, got together and collaborated. They both had a love for these comics, and they made a film that was a love letter to them called Creep Show.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Oh, yes! We forgot to talk about Creep Show when Hunt was here. That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Creep Show, Creep Show, by the way, uh Leslie Nielsen's first or one of his last rather serious acting roles before he started to become the, you know, he was a serious actor for a very long time. But it wasn't until uh, you know, Naked Gone and Airplane and and uh all of those um naked weapon uh loaded weapon uh loaded weapon. Those naked gaps.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Did you say naked weapon? That's it, but that's something else. She's in a different section of the video story. Yeah, come on back, Danny.

From Film Attempts To HBO Greenlight

SPEAKER_00 11:36

But uh so they make creep show, and creep show is very much a love letter of the comics. There's comic book wraparounds and an intro and an exit with a a host, a ghost host, so to speak. Um in the late 80s, it's uh uh Titans of the film industry at the time and producing partners. Joel Silver, um, who's made a ton of stuff as an executive producer, you'd find his name attached to. Uh David Gyler, Walter Hill, um Richard Donner, who did Superman 2. Uh Walter Hill, by the way, did The Warriors, among other things that he had directed. And then the big, the big fish, the one I say for last, is Robert Zemachis. And Zemekis was fresh off of Back to the Future, which is what everyone knows Robert Zemakis for. Um so Bob Zemekis, Joel Silver, all these guys, they get together as executive producers and they they want to pitch doing an anthology movie that again resurrects these comic books. They end up scrapping the movie and they say, let's do a TV series, let's do an anthology series, and let's pitch it to HBO, which is relatively new at the time, home box office channel. But HBO doesn't have to, it's cable television, it doesn't have to live within the guidelines of network TV. So you can get away with nudity, you can get away with profanity, and you can get away with blood guts and gore, which is exactly in the wheelhouse of what these comics are are trying to tell, the story that they're trying to tell. And it premieres in 1989, runs for seven seasons, 93 episodes, uh, and the legacy of Tales from the Crypt well outweighs the 93 episodes themselves.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

For real.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

It has a children's television show spin-off, which is it's crazy to think that the thing that was being banned in the 50s ended up getting a certified educational for children label to be produced for three seasons in the late 90s as a kids' TV show.

SPEAKER_03 13:35

Um with the Crypt Keeper.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

With the Crypt Keeper in it.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

Wow. Um you should look it up. Google it, it's funny.

SPEAKER_00 13:41

I will I will let you know that uh Tales from the Crypt Keeper, which is the name of the kids' show, um, all the episodes are on Tubi if you decide you want to watch them.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

Okay. Now I will say, I'm gonna pause you for one second because we're at the origin of the HBO show. I, my mom was like a horror fan, and I was born in 1980. So I was like 910 when that when Tales from the Crypt came out, and I watched it with her and we loved it. It was great. He likes the Crypt Keeper. My mom like loved him because he always has like these really funny, like ridiculous puns in the beginning and end of the show. Like, and it always has something to do with the title of the episode. And um, they are great. And I during the hurricane recently, I knew we were doing this episode, and I was like, I wanna I need to find some of these um Tales from the Crypt, and they're nowhere, they're on YouTube. I found them on YouTube, and so I went through the first season, and then I was like, Well, now I want to go find like some of the episodes I remember, and I just kept watching them and watching them, and I'm like, man, this show holds up, it's still good.

The 1989 Series: Format, Tone, Legacy

SPEAKER_00 14:46

So the craziness of of how you can't that's just it. Accessibility is is so weird because the licensing issues for where this is now, there were VHS releases of like compilations of episodes, right? But they never released, you know, in the days of VHS, you weren't getting home video releases of any show. You know, we tend to we tend to take it for granted now, but like no shows are available in their entirety on VHS. But then in 2005, they did start releasing every couple of months one of the seven seasons, Warner Brothers, had the distribution rights from HBO. HBO had put it in syndication on like sci-fi and chiller and other channels, but all those channels had to edit for content.

SPEAKER_03 15:31

So you weren't getting the full episodes.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

Um in the last 15 years, there's been a number of attempts at rebooting it, there's been a number of attempts at new licensing. When Bill Gaines died in the 90s, you know, he would have let him, he would have let anybody do whatever he wanted with his content. But his family in Tales from the Crypt Holdings is a lot more stringent. So like the copyright legality of the adapted stories are all still owned by the Gaines family. They don't license it out, they don't make it available, so that falls through. HBO still has the rights to the original episodes, but that's distribution through Warner Brothers Discovery, whose president hates media, if you didn't know. Um Warner Brothers Discovery wakes up every day, and I think everybody feels like they're already six feet under. Um the movies are owned by Universal. The kids' show ran on ABC and CBS, and it's owned by a third-party group, so like they can do whatever they want with it. Okay. So like the likeness of the Crypt Keeper is the only thing that gets put into any new style of production.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Ah.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

The likeness of the Crypt Keeper on the live action.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Is so that's you know, it's so bizarre because YouTube is the one place.

SPEAKER_03 16:53

The one place, find them all.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Anytime anything either slips into a the public domain or B, like completely unfindable in a physical media. Yeah, YouTube will just post it on YouTube. So it's it gets taken down, it gets put back.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

But more often than not, you can find it.

SPEAKER_02 17:08

That was what I was wondering. That was gonna be one of my questions. Like, where do I even watch it? So I guess YouTube. But I will say I think you'll enjoy it. And they're short, you know, they're half a month. They're 30 minutes, yeah. 30 minutes. They're great, they're hilarious. Oh, they're scary, but but also funny. My favorite episode I found and from the first season was when I don't know if you'll you'll remember because Ben also has a photographic memory, so he remembers everything. So the episode, I think it was called Nine Lives, and it was the guy who dig that cat.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

He's real dog.

SPEAKER_02 17:39

Dig that cat, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

That's the name of the episode.

Licensing Hell And Why It’s Hard To Stream

SPEAKER_02 17:41

So the guy, there's a guy who is like a mess, and he's homeless and on drugs, and he needs money. And so a scientist finds him and offers him a deal. Like, I'll give you all this money if you let me perform this experiment on you. He didn't care. He was like, whatever, give him the money. So, what what he did was he replaced correct anything, I'm gonna mess up because I'll mess it up. He replaced a part of his brain with a part of a cat's brain that gives the cat nine lives. So as soon as he per finishes it, he shoots the guy to see if he lives, and he does. So he's like, Okay, you have nine lives. Long story short, without running the whole episode, he ends up working for like a sideshow.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, Ulrich the Undying.

SPEAKER_02 18:22

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 18:23

It's like the name of the character, and he does basically bits where every he's killed in front of everyone in a very extravagant way.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

And then he comes back to life. But the whole but the episode starts, he's being buried alive, and it's he's like, This is my last big, um, my last big one. Like, um, this is gonna make me the richest person ever, and he's talking to you like as he's in his coffin. Well, then at the very end, he realizes he miscounted because the first time the cat had to die in order for him to get the gland. So he's gate. He's like, Oh no, and so that's the end of the episode. He's like, shit, I'm like really dead. And so anyway, yeah, it's awesome. So it's like those are it, they're really good. They're they're funny, they're sometimes kind of risque.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

They're what you and a lot of them. I mean, every single episode, with uh two exceptions of the 93 are adapted from one of the EC comics. A lot of them are modern, modernized, but some of them are directly adapted. The comics are all what's called um preachies or uh funny for a company that was making Bible comics, yeah. Uh, or just desserts, meaning do bad things, bad things will happen to you, generally in an ironic or fitting manner.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

So in in the sense with Ulrich, though he wasn't a horrible person, he was a scumbag. He was attempting to escort extort his uh uh the gram his circus showrunner of of funds, and he had a lot of issues. So yeah, I mean he miscounted greed, yeah, cost him everything.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Got him in the end. But anyway, it's good. I mean, I think I watched some, yeah. There's some episodes I don't like the one with the Santa Claus. That was I was like, I hated that episode.

SPEAKER_00 20:07

That's another one of the that's probably the most infamous episode of the show.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

And I hate it.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

It's the one that's it was done in the 72 film, and it was done in the um first season. It's and all through the house.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

It's a very, very, very popular episode. The first episode, Robert Zemeck is directed.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

Yeah, I'm I'm I'm on I'm on the outskirts of this one. Most people like it.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Technically, the pilot episode. Oh so not all, you know, Ulrich the Undying, dig that cat. Like that's that's a very fantastical concept that really can't exist in the real world. Right. It fits very much in the horror mold. But there's probably 40 or 50 episodes that could be very real. Yeah. That could be that are real life situations based on irony. And then this one, um, there's a woman who kills her husband with a fire poker on Christmas Eve.

SPEAKER_04 21:00

While her kid's upstairs in bed.

Where To Watch And What Holds Up

SPEAKER_00 21:02

You know, she lives out in a desolate cabin out in the middle of nowhere. So she's got a mascot in front of her kid. She goes to take him to like throw him down the well out in the front yard, it's snowing, and there's radio reports coming in that there's an escaped lunatic in her area dressed as Santa Claus. And the whole episode is a cat and mouse. She can't call the cops. She killed her husband.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

She's gotta find a way out of this situation, and her daughter is in jeopardy. Well, the crux of this is that just when she thinks she's safe and everything's fine, uh, her daughter lets Santa, the deranged psychopath with an axe, in through the front door.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Because she thinks it's Santa.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

She thinks it's Santa. And it doesn't, it it just implies an end. And that just ends. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

She screams and it ends.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Yeah. I mean, the the first season's massive, it's only six episodes. Yeah. But they then they didn't intend for it initially to be more than that. They they were just like, we'll do a mini-series for HBO. And HBO was now like, we love it. Do more. And they got 87 more episodes.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

Dang. So good. And I I think it used to come on like Sunday night.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

That's right. Did it?

SPEAKER_02 22:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

It was part of HBO's original Sunday night block. That like moonlighting. Yeah. That was all in there.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

We I remember sitting down with my mom. We would just sit there in my living room. I was like, well, but I think by the time I got really into it, there had been a couple seasons. Like it had probably like the second or third season. So it was probably 12, 13. But we would watch it on Sunday nights. But um, okay, so you're a little bit younger than we are. So did you see Tales from the Crypt when it originally aired?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

So, and that's controversial to I'm I'm sure I saw the look that happened there.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Katie, Katie did she would have loved to experience all these things. It was just her parents were not allowing that at the time.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

My parents were very much of the if you want to experience something, be prepared to handle the consequences of those experiences.

SPEAKER_02 23:00

It's a nineties. That's kind of what we I did too. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

You know, nightmares and and things like that, they exist. If you're a child, your your your brain's gonna manifest. But um I saw most of the episodes in their original run when I was a kid.

SPEAKER_05 23:13

Okay.

Episode Deep Dive: Dig That Cat… He’s Real Gone

SPEAKER_00 23:14

And what happened was there was uh my love of it where it really built from you know the era of VHS. We had VCRs, and what do VCRs do? They record things. You've got a blank tape, there's six-hour tapes, right? So one Halloween night in uh either '91 or '92, HBO ran a six-hour marathon. And it was basically just episodes from season three.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

I mean, there were a couple others, but it was basically just all the episodes in season three in sequence, which I wouldn't learn until you know much later in life. And I kept this tape for, and I kept this VCR for, you know, a decade afterwards, at the even in the 2000s. It wasn't not getting rid of the VCR, you know. I would just watch this tape because it was also the only way I had the physical media to watch episodes. So I could watch those, I mean those 12 episodes, I could probably say every word of if I was pressed to do so because it's just it's in your mind, it's stuck at all times.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

So you were pretty young. You were like eight, as long as you said.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

I was I was probably four or five when I was exposed to it, to be perfectly honest.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Yeah, the early nineties. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

We're talking 91, 92, I would have been four or five. Right. Watching through the the the show ran through '96.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Yeah. Um so then you were a little older. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

It's really crazy because the show's the peak of like popularity and the peak of eyeballs watching this show and this product and seeing the crypt keeper become a crossover. You know, he's he's in he's in Casper.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

I was showing that the other day. It's behind the bar. He's he's a cameo in Casper. Totally about that. Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Um, you know, he was everywhere. He was like in beer ads, right?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

He was in Bud Light ads, that's right. There's Bud Light ads that still people still sell them online. Joining for a cold one with him holding up two beers.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:02

I mean, he was he was a crossover icon.

SPEAKER_01 25:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

But that is mid-90s. That's when they canceled the show.

SPEAKER_03 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

Uh, and the reason for canceling the show is insane. They did it because they wanted to do two things. The executive producer said we want to transition this back to the way we wanted it, which is his standalone movies. Oh we'll do movies. Um, and they intended to do a trilogy of films, but that got I don't know how much time we have. That got blown up.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

It's our podcast. We have as much time as we want.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

The the first they did a movie called Demon Knight, which is one of my favorite films of all time.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

I remember Demon Knight.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

I have here the novelization of Demon Knight.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Nice.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Um, which was not an easy find because there's not a lot of copies of something like this.

SPEAKER_02 25:49

Yeah, where'd you find it?

SPEAKER_00 25:50

Uh many years of searching eBay and Amazon and then haggling with someone to sell it to me. Um, that's more than I've ever paid for a paperback in my life. That's just I mean, that's that's amazing. It's like$35, which is not a lot, sure, but it's a lot for what is clearly a$4 paperback. Right. Um, so Demon Knight's actually a very enjoyable film. People love Demon Knight, myself included.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

It is fun.

Real-World Horror Vs. Fantastical Tales

SPEAKER_00 26:15

They did a second movie called Bordello of Blood, um, which was about vampires in a brothel. Who was in that? Dennis Miller was in that.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Yeah, that's definitely.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

And the movie was it bombed spectacularly for many reasons. They put it out in August instead of like October. And it wasn't even the best vampire film in a brothel that year. Yeah. Because that was the same year that From Dust Till Dawn came out, which is spoiler-free, amazing film.

SPEAKER_02 26:39

I know. Um you've seen that. I've seen that, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

But I mean, uh, after that had happened, the other reason that they wanted to cancel Tales from the Crypt is they optioned up a different series. They said, okay, we've done 90 episodes of the horror comics. Let's do the science fiction comics now. And they did a season of a show called Perversions of Science. And it's also on YouTube if you want to look it up. I did not. This has no home media releases ever.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

Really?

SPEAKER_00 27:05

It's dreadful.

SPEAKER_02 27:07

Oh, it's bad?

SPEAKER_00 27:08

Really bad.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

The name is terrible. Well, the highlight I mean, I wonder if people ever find it thinking it's gonna be something else.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

It's intended to be that way because you know, this is a first run 10 p.m. on a Sunday night on HBO. Right. So, you know, you can watch that or you can watch Skinemax, like that's your options at the time. They did a digital rendering of a very well-endowed um Fembot. Was the post was that was their cryptkeeper of that show. Oh and she was voiced by uh Maureen Tifey, and the only thing she's known for is being the little shut-in girl in fame. Oh who ends up busting out of her shelter in the midnight of Rocky Horror.

SPEAKER_02 27:50

So okay.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

That's the only thing she's known for, and she's in that.

SPEAKER_02 27:54

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

But that show's really bad. It was 10 episodes. What's it called? Perversions of science.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

In case y'all missed it, listeners, look it up. I'm gonna totally Google that when we're done. Katie's like, I'm not gonna go.

SPEAKER_00 28:04

Good luck getting through the 10 episodes of that.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

I just wanna, I just wanna just wanna see one. Okay, so you were young. So so what was it that when you first saw it that you loved so much? Like, were you already into horror at that young age?

SPEAKER_00 28:16

The first time I can remember watching horror movies, uh, I was four. And my parents around the yeah, we watched a double feature. It was Friday the 13th, part four. Uh, and Night of the Demons is just the two movies that happened they happened to put on back to back. Shouldn't have watched either one of them. Uh, because I uh nightmares. Night of the demons. What did you say?

SPEAKER_02 28:36

Did it scare you?

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Oh, there's a scene in Night of the Demons where this girl rips uh this guy's tongue out while she's making out with him. And I'm four years old, I barely understand the concept. She's kissing here. So I I think for years I went to sleep, and if I was like feeling scared that night or upset about a boogeyman or whatever, I was like forcing my jaws shut because my thought is the first thing you're gonna try to do is make out with me and rip out my tongue. Who knows?

Stars Behind The Camera And On Screen

SPEAKER_02 29:02

Foundational memory, man. Well, I mean I remember the first time I saw like Freddie Krueger movies at Lightmore and Elm Street, I was terrified to go to sleep because he comes and kills you in your sleep. And the one scene where he comes up through the bed, forget that.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

No, there's a culture in in the Tales from the Crypt uh episodes that's familiar because they got tons of big name stars.

SPEAKER_02 29:23

Yeah, that's the other thing.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

They have lots of cameos, not just on screen, but behind the camera.

SPEAKER_02 29:28

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

I mean, they're episodes directed by Tom Hanks, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael J. Fox. But they also got tons of popular directors. They got a lot of people maybe before they had just hit it big. Um, seventh seasons, the last season is not good. Uh most of the episodes are very bad. And as a cost cutting measure, they filmed all of it in London. But in doing that, they also got like um Ewan McGregor and Daniel Craig before they had ever really done anything. Like, you're talking about Obi Wan. Kenobi and James Bond before they were decades before they were either those things.

SPEAKER_02 30:05

That's so cool. So then the Crypt Keeper, is he like a narrator, or does he literally show up at the beginning and the end?

SPEAKER_00 30:12

The beginning and the end. He's in the wraparound segments. He doesn't narrow only because I'm being a nerd and flexing the nerd muscle. He does narrate one episode of the show.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Uh, which is the very last episode. It's also the only animated episode of the show of the main series.

SPEAKER_04 30:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

I did not know that. And it's one of only two that's not based on the comics. It's uh called the Third Pig, and it's a very macabre retelling of the three little pigs. Oh, I love the Cryptkeeper's voice by John Kassier, uh, who had won Star Search in the 80s. He beat Sinbath, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 30:48

He was a comedian?

SPEAKER_00 30:49

Yeah, he's a stand-up comedian. He did voice impressions, but he's obvious he's his whole career is associated with being the Cryptkeeper.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

The Crypkeeper, of course.

The Crypt Keeper: Voice, Puppet, And Tech

SPEAKER_00 30:58

Um, and the Cryptkeeper himself was, you know, it's not cheap. You talk about it now when you talk about behind the scenes. They had five puppeteers to work the Cryptkeepers, hands, legs, and then three just to work the facial movements of how the technology worked. He was designed by uh Kevin Yeager, who's the same designer of the Chucky Child's Play puppet. So uh if you didn't know this, this is a fun fact for you. Uh the Chucky doll and the Crypt Keeper doll uh both have the same eyes.

SPEAKER_02 31:28

I was just gonna I was just gonna say it looks like they have the same eyes. Look at them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Like uh this is I see it now. This is my Hawaiian. This did talk at one point.

SPEAKER_02 31:37

Oh my god, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 31:38

Um, this was they did two of these. They did one in the suit and then one in this Hawaiian outfit.

SPEAKER_02 31:42

I love Ben's starting his show and tell, and this is amazing. Yes. Okay, I'm excited to see this guy because it's got Crip Keeper and an electrocutioner chair.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

This is a motion activated device. Love it. I did put new batteries in it. I got this off a woman on Facebook Marketplace uh about a year and a half ago in its original box. The box had been water damaged to you know to high hell. But you know, I said, Does it work? And she said, Yeah, it works. And I was gonna buy it from her anyway. Um, but I met her in the parking lot of Del Taco on Wickham and Sarno.

SPEAKER_02 32:14

Hey.

SPEAKER_00 32:14

Uh so I know the one. This uh one Del Taco. It's the one a good day's meal and a crypt keeper.

SPEAKER_03 32:21

So my god.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

It does light up.

SPEAKER_03 32:24

I love this.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

You ready for it?

SPEAKER_03 32:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Gotta give it a second. Yeah. Normally it shakes. Oh my god, that's so great.

SPEAKER_02 32:38

I hope do you think they can hear the laugh? I hope so. I don't know. Put your mic, do it again and put your mic closer. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:47

So um good. Oh no, he's not shaking.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

He's not gonna shake for us.

SPEAKER_02 32:51

Oh, come on, Cripkeeper. Lang. Oh, I love it. Okay, yeah, we got that one.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

That one definitely got picked up, but um, what you would normally do is, you know, he he would shake and move and uh in the electric chair. So they I mean they made so much like Cript Keeper merchandise at the time. This was uh topper for um, you know, like uh the Christmas candy canes that would have like 10 Reese's in the plastic.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Yeah, and they have to have little toys on top like that.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

One of those. This Cript Keeper. There's also one as Elvis, which I don't have because it's like$55 now, and I can't I just can't justify that cost.

SPEAKER_03 33:30

That's so great.

SPEAKER_00 33:31

Um, and then the last little bit that I brought, uh the cover's tattered. This is the world of Tales from the Crypt. This is a DD Tales from the Crypt game. Oh, this is the Dungeon Master's guide to play DD if you wanted to play DD in the Tales from the Crypt world.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

That is so many Xennial things in one. All in one.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

Like they knew who their audience was.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

Oh, for sure. Right. You know, it's so funny because the Crypt Keeper is like he's like an icon now. I feel like I can't think about Halloween from the 90s or anything spooky without thinking of him. And uh Katie, okay, so you've been pretty quiet this episode. You're absorbing what's going through your brain. I'm learning. Are you excited to learn? I am excited. I actually do want to watch these. Okay, cool. And we're getting close to Halloween, so it's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 34:23

And and I could easily give you like a here's 10 episodes to watch.

SPEAKER_02 34:28

Okay, let's do that now. Tell us, well, let's not maybe not 10. Tell us your top three for somebody like Never. Which one, which one would be the very first one I should watch? I'm gonna type it to. Yeah.

Show-And-Tell: Toys, Merch, And D&D

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Um, I mean. Oh boy, okay. You're a theater person, so I'm gonna be I'm just gonna be nice. Uh season five. Okay. I think it's the first episode of season five. It's the death of some salesman. Death of some salesman. The death of a salesman, death of some salesman.

SPEAKER_05 34:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

There are two actors in this episode. Uh, one of them is Ed Bagley Jr., yes, playing a door-to-door uh swindling traveling salesman. He is he is absolutely just a hustler.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

And the other actor playing every member of a rundown, uh not so simple, simple farm family. He plays Ma, he plays Paw, and he plays the daughter. It's Tim Curry.

SPEAKER_02 35:24

Oh my god. Tim Curry has come up in every one of our episodes for the past month. Every spooky episode. Which I know you know, because it started with Labyrinth. I think Labyrinth is spooky, though. Oh my god. Is Labyrinth spooky?

SPEAKER_00 35:37

I mean, you do have a you have a lead villain named the Goblin King.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

Thank you. So every time I say that, she's like, well, that one doesn't count. But that one that kicked off our spooky season. Okay, okay. All right, whatever. But Tim Curry was talked about there. And then we've talked about legend. We talked about legend, which I haven't seen.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Another 80s Tim Curry.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Which I haven't seen, but apparently I need to because he's hot. He's a hot Satan. Just saying. I'm there.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

You don't get many hot Satan's.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Well, you really don't, although Hades from Hades Town is really having seen that.

SPEAKER_00 36:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 36:05

So maybe it's a thing, but that's neither here nor nearly. Either here nor Tim Curry is very curry. I'm there. I'm there. I'm gonna watch that one.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

That would be that would be a top, that's a top tenor for sure. I mean, I can give you a hundred episodes.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Um give me one more.

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Uh I'm gonna give you one that you wouldn't think. It's season three, because again, it's it's okay. So I'm giving you this specifically because you're a theater person. It's called Top Billing. Oh uh, and it stars John Lovitz, uh Bruce Boxleitner from Babylon 5, and uh John Aston, who's the original Gomez Adams. And it is about uh Lovitz is a struggling actor, and Bruce Boxleitner is not, and despite the fact that Lovitz thinks he has more talent and ability, he can't seem to get a part because he doesn't have the look. And this is brought up over and over again. And he finally goes on auditions for this off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off, off Broadway production of Hamlet that's being directed by John Aston, who is insane. He's unhinged, he's an amazing part of the you ever you ever want to work with a director uh and think they're a nightmare, work with John Aston in this episode. And uh he goes to audition for him, and Bruce Boxleitner goes to audition for him just to prove that he can get the role over him because he has the look, and he does get the role, but without any spoilers, remember it's it's Hamlet.

SPEAKER_04 37:30

Oh, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

So the the jealousy puts Lovets into overdrive. So while it's based in some level of reality, the ending that Preachy is just so over the top, you know, balls out insane.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:45

It's really fun. It's funny. I will give you we'll give you one more, one more, one more.

SPEAKER_02 37:49

We've said three. That was only two. Yeah. Yeah. Give us another one.

Starter Episodes: Benny’s Top Picks

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Uh the finale of season six, which also means it's the last great episode of the show. Um called You Murderer. And it's very specifically You, comma Murderer, which is also a play on words. This is like Robert Semechis' Magnum opus. He had just finished doing Forrest Gump, which was lauded more than anything for a lot of the technological and and cinematography advances Semechis had made to have Forrest in with you know regular people of the time, JFK and such. And it was it was flawless at the time to see on cinema. Now we don't think anything about it. You Murderer stars Humphrey Bogart, except that Humphrey Bogart is very obviously dead for many years, and it also has Isabella Rossellini in it. Oh wow, yeah, as a wonderful callback. But the whole episode is a love letter to Casablanca and Humphrey Bogart, done from Bogart's point of view. Great episode.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

That's awesome. Great episode. Okay. Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 38:57

And really just a showcase for Zemeckis to say, look at all this technology on the city. How amazing I am. Yeah. Um, the episode also has the beginning of the episode is a Forrest Gump parody where the Crypt Keeper, you talked about as puns, he calls himself Fearest Gump, and he offers you uh would you know, if you'd like uh something from his box of chocolates.

SPEAKER_02 39:17

Oh my god, yes. That's awesome. I freaking love it.

SPEAKER_00 39:21

He offers it to Alfred Hitchcock, by the way. Because that's that's the other punchline. Is it's it's you know, this show is in the same vein as Alfred Hitchcock presents and the Twilight Zone.

SPEAKER_02 39:30

Yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

So it's but for a modern age, you know, not to knock those that are classics. Tales from the Crypt has a lot of things that have held up because we like monsters, we like Mad Men, we like Mayhem, we like boobs, butts, and gore. Like that's and you're getting all of it.

SPEAKER_03 39:46

Well, there you go, it's true.

SPEAKER_00 39:47

Societally, you didn't get all that stuff back when, but now you do.

SPEAKER_02 39:50

Now you do now you do. I love it. Nice boobs, but kicked that door open.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

The 80s kicked the door open, and then Tales from the Crypt held it open for other people.

SPEAKER_02 39:57

That's right. I love that. Freaking love that. Okay, so that's some of your favorite episodes. What are Seth? And you said season seven, not good.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Season seven's rough.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Um, your absolute least favorite episode.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

It is a season seven episode. It's called Kidnapper, The Kidnapper.

SPEAKER_02 40:12

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 40:12

Um, and it's Steve Coogan, who is mostly known for comedy. Okay. You'd recognize him if you saw him. He was in Tropic Thunder and he did a lot of other stuff, but um he's narrating the whole episode about how he desperately wants to spend time with this girl who walks into his uh secondhand shop.

SPEAKER_03 40:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Um and so uh she's pregnant, she has nowhere to go, he takes care of her, but she has she is I'm not gonna say she's friend zoned him. She's made very clear this is not to be any kind of relationship, and he cannot get past that. So he hires like an underground syndicate to kidnap her baby.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Oh, geez, lovely.

SPEAKER_00 40:57

So that the baby can be out of the picture and it can just be the two of them because he feels like that's when they were closest together. It all goes awry, and she's more miserable than ever. So he goes and plans to kidnap someone else's baby and bring it back as hers. It's just extra you know the thing is, there's and there's a number of episodes that do this. A lot of some episodes are just very miserable and you're waiting for the come up ins. And even though the characters get it, it's not satisfying because a lot of it was kind of just upsetting to begin with. And that that for me is it's he's not likable. She's not really all that likable either. Nobody in the episode, the baby maybe is like I don't know. It's just you don't have anyone you're really rooting for the whole episode, and you're like, okay, well he got what he deserved, I guess. Um, but it also just that whole thing doesn't really fit in the crypt narrative. You know, yeah, that's just not not that I should be this critical, like nobody dies. Nobody, nobody gets, you know, nobody gets a head cut off or anything like that.

SPEAKER_05 42:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 42:01

It's all just yeah, it's uh it feels like an episode of uh Special Victims Unit.

SPEAKER_02 42:06

Like so nobody dies in the whole episode?

SPEAKER_00 42:08

No.

SPEAKER_02 42:09

Weird.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

No.

SPEAKER_02 42:11

Okay. That is weird. That is weird. Um, all right. So now I can't wait to ask you this because you've already gave us some, but I know there's gonna be some more fun ones. So tell us some like super obscure facts or trivia about Tales from the Crypt, because I know you probably have endless amounts.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

There are there are some pretty obscure ones that you'd like. You read I brought up the Cryptkeeper's Eyes and Chucky's Eyes. People read about that. That had that one's really well known.

SPEAKER_02 42:39

And then once you say it, you can't not see it's obvious, it's totally obvious. And he would probably even sound like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

In the original pitch reel for Tales from the Crypt onto HBO, boardroom of executives for HBO. This is all this is a real story.

SPEAKER_03 42:58

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 42:59

Um, when they when the producers came in and they pitched Tales from the Crypt, they showed them the reel of the first season. And you know, so they're seeing blood, gut, score, profanity, sex, violence, and all these things you can't show on TV. And one of the board members immediately objects at the end of it says, You can't show that on TV. And the response he got from people pushing to put the program on TV was, Well, it's not TV, it's HBO. Which, as you are aware, for decades was HBO's slogan. Yeah. That slogan was born out of a Tales from the Crypt pitch real media.

SPEAKER_03 43:38

That's crazy. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

That's where the slogan came from. It's not HBO.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 43:42

Um, Tales from the Crypt also had, in the midst of you know, the comics and the the spin-offs and the children's show, there is an extremely short-lived, like maybe maybe eight episodes, maybe fewer, um game show.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

What?

SPEAKER_00 44:01

That was like Legends of the Hidden Temple.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Oh stop.

SPEAKER_00 44:05

It's called Secrets of the Cryptkeepers Haunted House.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Oh my god. What network was that on?

SPEAKER_00 44:11

I think that was on either ABC or CBS as well.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

I have to look that up later.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Um you can probably watch a couple of episodes. They're real cringy. But the the goal was it was always two teams against each other, and then in the finale they would do what was called skullduggery, and they would run through the Cryptkeeper's house, finding like skulls to collect to try and win.

SPEAKER_02 44:36

Uh so campy and dumb. I love it.

Obscure Trivia: “It’s Not TV, It’s HBO”

SPEAKER_00 44:38

One of the grand prizes, by the way, was an entire volume of encyclopedias. It was it's very specifically because I'll never forget John Kasir, you know, reading pitches. He's like, Gralia's new book of knowledge. I'm like, uh, you can you can say it any way you want to say it. I'm like, it's still 26 books I don't want.

SPEAKER_02 44:58

But look, that was expensive. Those were, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:00

Encyclopedias?

SPEAKER_02 45:01

Crap, that's how we used to have to do papers. I was trying to explain this to my kids one time, and they just looked at me. I was like, I had to go to a library.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

You better hope that that library has the five pages on the thing you're about to write.

SPEAKER_02 45:15

And it needed to be recent because they came out with new ones every few years, and like the ones in my house were from like 1970, and they were not helpful. And so my kids were just like, What? Like, yeah, it was a and remember microfiche where you had to go through the stupid anyways. Um, okay, but there's something else I thought of. There's a Crypt Keeper Christmas album that Ben plays in the bard.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

Have yourself a scary little Christmas.

SPEAKER_02 45:42

It's so good.

SPEAKER_00 45:43

I I own multiple copies of that. Um it if you want if you want a copy, I'll I'll gladly make you a CD of it.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

I would love that. Me too, we too. I would love that.

SPEAKER_00 45:56

So so here are the songs that are on it. Uh We Wish You'd Bury the Missus is on there. Um instead of O Tannenbaum, it's Mo Tidlebaum, and he sings about how uh you know it's Mo Tidlebaum, Mo Tidlebaum, you did embalm my dad and mom. And then you learn you learn that he had a sister and a brother. Um or he claims he does in some weird distant cryptkeeper lore, that he has a sister Kate and a brother Tom. And and those names for many years never resonated with me as also being a pun. He's the crypt keeper. So his brother's name would be Tom Keeper, like a timekeeper. Oh. And his sister would be Kate Keeper.

SPEAKER_02 46:42

Like a gatekeeper.

Spin-Offs, Game Show, And Christmas Album

SPEAKER_00 46:44

I hate it so much. It took it took so long. So he does that. He does uh Should Old Cadavers be forgot, um, uh Juggle Bills, which is about Santa going broke. So he barbecues his reindeer to the tune of jingle bells, uh Deck the Halls with Pots of Charlie, bits of Bruce and Hunks of Ani's. That's just like a cannibal song to deck the halls.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Cannibal song.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

But it's all very light and irreverent, hilarious, fun, and uh my wife hates it. Oh god, I think it's absolutely hates it, and we'll have to listen to it sometime in the next six weeks.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

Absolutely hates this song, though.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Oh, we forgot to say, speaking of Christmas, oh yeah, we did. We are all in a Christmas story, the musical schedule. We are, and Ben is playing Gene Shepherd himself, the narrator of the whole show, and he's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

If you hate the way stories have been told to you in the last 45 minutes of this podcast, you might not like the show.

SPEAKER_02 47:44

Correct. No, you'll you're gonna love it. But if you've had so much fun, then you're gonna love it. Anyway, yeah. I wasn't trying to end the episode, I just had to throw that in a channel. She plugs in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We all we have we are all in it. So, um, all right. Any other trivia or obscure facts? Because I know you have endless.

SPEAKER_00 48:01

This is my favorite thing about Tales from the Crypt.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

All right.

SPEAKER_00 48:06

The show, the physical media show and the comic, everything, has never ended of its own graces. It has been canceled every single time. It was canceled when it was a comic book. The amicus films, they were gonna make a third one they never did. The TV show, cancelled. They were gonna make a third feature-length film. Technically, there's a direct to DVD movie that they threw wraparounds on, but it has nothing to do with and was never a crypt film called Ritual. It it also stars Tim Curry. Um, and Jennifer Gray from Dirty Dancing. Oh, interesting, but not worth watching uh at all. And the Crypt Keeper segments are at worst campy, or no, excuse me, at best campy and at worst racist. Um yeah, he does j it's a Jamaican Crypt Keeper. Oh and it's real bad. Oh, I um so don't watch it.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

All right.

SPEAKER_00 49:00

Got can't but then the animated show ran for two seasons, then got canceled, then got picked up for a third season by a different network and got cancelled again, and then the game show got canceled too. I want to think about They never just gradually ended their run. They got canceled every time.

SPEAKER_02 49:14

People are just like, no more. I do remember the cartoon, but the game show I have to look up. I know you hate cartoons, Katie, but you might have to look it up. I might have to. The game show sounds great.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

It is educational. The first two seasons of the animated show are still what's weird is that the first two seasons are still based on the comics. Third season, that newest one, is all original stories. And it's very, very leak. There's an episode called All Booked Up that is basically about a kid who doesn't want to do his book report. And in the third season, the Cryptkeeper, he's animated. He's he's very green and blue and has yellow hair, he's different looking. Um but in the third season, he doesn't just do the wraparounds, he's like constantly a pivotal character in the episodes as well. And he plays the librarian. So when the kid comes to the library to check out books, it's uh I think it's Huckleberry Finn, uh, The Man in the Iron Mask, and Frankenstein are the three books he has to choose from, and he doesn't want to read any of them. So then the Cryptkeeper gives him this mystic book that opens and opens a portal and tries to suck them in. And when the kid's like crying for help, he's like, Oh, help, the book's sucking me in. The Cript Keeper, as the librarian's like, Yes, good literature has a tendency to do that. Like just letting this kid fall to his face. And then he goes through all three books and he learns a bunch that's not in the movies, right? And all that. And it's like, yeah. It's educational. Tricked me.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 50:43

I thought I was just having fun.

SPEAKER_02 50:44

That is so great. See, see cartoons, Katie, they're not bad. I didn't say they were bad.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

It has value.

SPEAKER_02 50:53

Yeah. What do you want to ask, Ben? Oh gosh. Well, I wanted to ask about the episode, so that was really, really good. Yeah, so have you found any other franchises um, I guess in horror or just in real life, that you like as well as this one?

SPEAKER_00 51:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:10

Okay.

Memorabilia With Meaning And Meeting Kassir

SPEAKER_00 51:10

Um, I love the Child's Play franchise. Okay. I love the Chucky movies. Um, a lot of that, and then the television show, and even though it's off the rails most of the time and and way far gone, a lot of that comes from the fact that the series creator, Don Mancini, has been with it throughout its run, and that he has, you know, everyone he casts in these movies and and episodes of this show are family. He's got Academy Award-winning people like Brad Durof and nominated people like Jennifer Tilly, who just follow him through all of this and are amazing actors doing, you know, playing loopy killer dolls. Like it's so stupid, it's funny. Um, but I would I would put up a lot of stuff. I mean, I have a room in our house. There's it's you know, a man cave to most people, but we call it the crypt.

SPEAKER_01 51:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

And it is dedicated to horror science fiction media.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Um nice, it's really cool. Troy when we walked in there last year around this time, Troy was like, Oh my god, this is so cool. And like, because Troy has his own lore, but like not every like he he doesn't get to display as much as Ben does, and it's like he was like, It's supposed to be a guest room.

SPEAKER_00 52:20

There's technically a futon in there.

SPEAKER_02 52:22

It's it's really cool. Do people like to sleep in there though?

SPEAKER_00 52:25

The lights are off. You can't see any of that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 52:27

It's all psychological, but it's there, and he also has a bar in there, too.

SPEAKER_00 52:31

I mean, he has a bar in there. So if it comes, if it comes right down to it, you can knock yourself out, you know.

SPEAKER_02 52:35

Like the whiskey. Um it's not there.

SPEAKER_00 52:37

I love the Friday the 13th franchise. Okay, even though it it's historically one of the most derivative franchises, not just of its of its source material, but of itself. Um, you know, it's just copy paste. Every film is the same film, it's just copy paste. Uh I I love the nightmare stuff. I I've gotten to love Halloween more, um, but I talk endless shit about Halloween.

SPEAKER_02 53:00

That's my least favorite of those franchises. I I'm not a Halloween.

SPEAKER_00 53:04

Well, that's one where the producing partners stayed through it. You know, Mustafa Kad did the whole series, but everyone who made the films just scrapped what happened in the last film, so there's no continuity whatsoever. And there's like time rifts, and I'll I'll draw a picture when we're done. Yeah, and you'll see what I mean. People people who know me really intensely know how much I love drawing this line graph.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

So I'm excited. Well, I love a line graph, don't worry. You know, our next guest that we're having next next time is um he is a horror fan like you, and he's coming on to talk about how the 80s and 90s slasher films have true crime, real life, like true crime connections. So I'm see, I don't like true crime, I like fake stuff. So I'm Katie's excited because she loves true crime. Yeah. I'm not getting it. I will clarify, I don't love that crime happens. No, I know, I know, I know, I know. But I'm fascinated.

SPEAKER_00 53:57

There's a fascination with the actual, you know, yeah. Because you see these things in movies and television, but then when you actually hear about it, you're like, this is wild.

SPEAKER_02 54:06

Yeah, that's it. It's like, like I said, I I like the which is why I think I'll enjoy this this show, Tales from the Crypt. I just love like a good story that sucks you in and is told well.

SPEAKER_00 54:18

And the best thing is if you find an episode or two that you're watching and you don't enjoy it, it's over in 22 minutes.

SPEAKER_02 54:23

Right. That's also very good. Not a huge commitment level there.

SPEAKER_00 54:26

You don't have to you don't break a sweat.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

Being like, oh well, whatever. I guess that wasn't my favorite one. I'll go to my next one.

Wrap-Up And Patreon Bonus Tease

SPEAKER_02 54:31

But it's also super easy to binge because they're short. Because they're short. You're just like, oh yeah, let me watch one. That's like during the hurricane. I just watched my laptop died. I'm like, okay, well. I guess I'll take a break. Um, I was gonna ask, oh, I know. I have one more question because we've been talking to him for an hour, so we'll we'll catch you. Oh, we also forgot to say that Katie's AC is broke. I have like parts of me are sweating. Like I have not seen we're at the studio, so it's not at my house, thank God, because children and pets, but yeah, anyway, it's so sorry. Katie was saying she's like, Oh, we gotta love that we have a guest on and the AC is broke. Hunt came on last time, and a giant cockroach like jumped out of the kitchen. Yeah, just like out of nowhere. I was like, wow, people are really gonna want to keep coming back to my place. Yeah. Oh yeah, it's Florida. What are you gonna do? Yeah, I don't know. You have no don't tell our next guest. Yeah, I don't know. That I don't know, anyways. Okay, my fa my last question for you, Ben, because you have so much fun tales from the crypt items. Um, and then if you have anything you want to add, please do, because I know you have your little note.

SPEAKER_00 55:36

Um my my notes are inconsequential. That was just a list of episodes. That was a list of episodes to remind myself if I forgot anything.

SPEAKER_02 55:42

Um, what is your favorite piece of Tales from the Crypt memorabilia that you own?

SPEAKER_00 55:48

Uh it's that's super easy.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 55:51

It's very, very easy for me to name. So uh I own and I own a lot of Tales from the Crypt memorabilia.

SPEAKER_01 55:58

I know.

SPEAKER_00 55:58

And I think up until that six-hour VHS got destroyed over time, the answer easily would have been that an unlabeled tape that holds so many memories that my parents let me record. Like that was really something. Um, some years ago, one of my best friends uh who I worked with at Disney, her name was Connie, um, she's a fantastic artist. She hand sketched a picture of the Crypt Keeper for me on like eight by ten. She just did a pencil drawing of the Crypt Keeper, and I got it framed and kept it on my wall. And then when I went to go, we went together to uh Spooky Empire one year to go hang out and and meet you know celebrities back before a lot of the con scene had become almost unlivable with the amount of people that go now. Yeah, uh, we went and I talked to John Cassier for like 45 minutes um because I I you know was nerding out. I don't like to do that with celebrities, but like with you know, people will people will pay thousands of dollars for Taylor Swift tickets, and I'm like$75 to talk to John Cassier for 45 minutes or something.

SPEAKER_02 57:03

I think that's amazing. I'm the fangirl over what we've talked about that in pre- past episodes. I am I would anybody that I love that I could pay$75 and talk to for uh 45 minutes, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

It was completely nerd out. He he autographed it. Um it was the piece I brought with me. Yeah, she was like, of all the things you don't you're not gonna bring any of your posters or your laminates. I'm like, no, this is this is much more personal. Um so it was it was really, really cool. If I ever meet him again, I I will bring with me. My mother made this um, and I'll show it to you at some point. Uh kind of a demon night drive-in uh theater background art piece that she made uh a couple years ago. And if I ever meet him again, that's the next thing I'll have him go sign.

SPEAKER_02 57:44

That's really cool. So yeah, that's so nice, that's so special. Like you got to meet him, plus your friend made you this thing.

SPEAKER_00 57:51

It's it's probably weird sometimes because I'm sure people sign all sorts of things. That it's not.

SPEAKER_02 57:56

That's probably not the weirdest thing that he signs.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

No, no, that's the that's the good thing. It doesn't rank as high as like sign my personal flesh or something like that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 58:05

Exactly. Exactly. That's very cool though. Well, thank you, Ben, for coming on. I think we've already got like a zillion spin-off ideas for when he's back and the AC's working. Oh my god, I promise. And we're gonna keep Ben for a couple more minutes uh for our patron episode for our bonus bonus. If you're not a patron yet, you can find us on Patreon.$8 a month because we're 80s babies. So is Ben.

SPEAKER_00 58:30

Easy money.$8 a month. That is two trips to the vending machine.

SPEAKER_02 58:34

Come on, come on, guys. Exactly. We got to keep Katie's rank going so we can have 80. Oh, right. Um, yes, exactly. But um, we we were saying like recently we upgraded our domain and our website. We were able to use our Patreon money for that, so that was really helpful. So actually goes to the podcast and um helping us get it out there. So um thanks, Ben, for being here. Hopefully, we'll have you back. Do we have a little witty line at the end? I do. Oh, you have one. All right, let's hear it. All right, until next time. Keep it creepy, boils and ghouls. He said that on episode.

SPEAKER_00 59:08

That'll make more sense to you. That'll make that'll make a lot more sense to you.

SPEAKER_02 59:15

He looks into it.

SPEAKER_00 59:15

You'll know.

Bonus: Working In A Funeral Home

SPEAKER_02 59:19

This is when we need to have the video for I know everyone everyone keeps telling us Ben. I hope you when are you guys gonna have video? We'll get there. When we're when the AC's fixed, first of all, because we're too many to register right now. Yeah, but also he always has fun like goodbyes, like and that was on one that I just watched. So keep it creepy, boys and ghouls. All right, that was not all right.

SPEAKER_00 59:40

All right, somebody little horse looses.

SPEAKER_02 59:43

Hi guys, thanks. Welcome to our bonus episode, our bonus after show. Never forget. Fear Benny is still here, or maybe you should fear.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:04

I'm getting my second wind. Another hour coming up.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:08

Maybe not. Sometimes it goes long. I mean, there have been times where we're like, oh yeah, we're doing patron right now, not like a real one. Yeah. Well, so whatever. Go where the wind takes you. That's right. And when there's no wind in here, so that means you're gonna sit here. Reminder the air is very still. Um there was one time they were putting a roof on when we were recording. Do you remember that time? Yeah, we're really and then there was like one time weird sounds were just coming through, but that's a different story. Danny doesn't like to think about that this room might be haunted, but sometimes there's a piano over there, sounds come through the piano. It's fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:44

No, there's a you gotta have a certain school of thinking about what is and isn't haunted, though, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:48

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:49

But that's like certainly for a place to be haunted, someone would have had to have died in that place.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:54

Right. Right. Which I don't think anybody's died. You don't know that. I don't know. I should look. You know, like poltergeist had like it was like on a burial ground. That's a good point. You don't know. Maybe in this unit exactly. See? Oh, I didn't think about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

The real estate agent in poltergeist who sells in the land is James Caron, who plays uh Frank in 1985's Return of the Living Dead, which is one of my five favorite. He was also the Maytag man for a little while.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

Wow. That is a super fun piece of Xineal trivia. That's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

More reasons to just not play trivia against me ever.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:32

I know. If y'all haven't listened to our episode, our full episode yet with Ben, um, please go do that. You know what? I didn't even ask you. I've been calling you Ben the whole time. I should ask if you want me to call you Benny instead.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

No, it's too late to edit it.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:44

I know. I'm fine with whatever. Apologies.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:46

Just don't call me late for dinner.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

Apologies. Oh my gosh, geez. All right. So what are we chatting about? Okay, so when we stopped recording the other episode, I explained to Benny, I'm gonna call him Benny. I know I've hooked it up for the past hour and a half. Fine. Fine. I just said on the after show, we just kind of like talk about either something adjacent to the topic or something totally different. And it turns out Benny has something adjacent, which is that he used to work at a funeral home.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:17

What did you do at the said funeral home?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:19

If I was a funeral assistant, uh, which means you assist with funerals. Wow. And uh it means that you work in the business of could be daily tasks if you're in office. Um, you would perform services like going and picking up death certificates. Okay. Uh maybe going on flower deliveries, maybe setting up uh for funeral services, whether they're in the uh funeral home chapel or they're at an adjacent church where everything's been scheduled, um, possibly going to the burial site or going to the cemetery, and if that's where the proceedings are, there. Uh and then the part that I'm obviously leaving out, you would perform removal services.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:01

What's that mean? You would go get dead people.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:04

Go get them.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:05

Okay, was this like a depressing job?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:08

It can be. I will I I will save uh a lot of the details of what about it can be. There were when I first started doing the job, um, for the first five or six months, and I and look, the reason I did it is the reason a lot of people do odd jobs like that. I needed money.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:25

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:26

Um, and it was a good job, and I knew the uh owner, and he's a very nice guy, a gentleman named Courtney. Uh, love him, and I got along with all the funeral directors, uh, Dave and Eric and and um Darcy, who unfortunately has passed recently, but uh these were the guys I would work with every day. And uh Jay over at the cemetery, they were great guys, um, and great people just in general. But you know, they tried to keep it a little bit lighter just around what you had to do and treat it like a business, but not morbidly so. But when you're first working there, you definitely have to check yourself. I mean, there were a couple of services we had performed, and I again I won't go into the details of those because they are depressing and sad that weigh on you when you get done with them.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:15

But then there were other items that that didn't do that, right? Uh, and there were other things that were that were kind of funny about the job because you tend to learn that the dead aren't the problem.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:25

No, of course.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

It's it's the living. So you would when you would perform removal services, it could be during the day. You know, if you got the call, that was drop what you're doing. You're doing laundry, you're folding sheets right now, like uh it can wait. You're washing you're washing the hearse right now, uh stop washing the hearse. Gotta go get the van, go get them. So you'd go to either hospitals, uh, hospice care centers, or households. Those would be the three places you could go to.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:55

Oh man. Now I don't think I realize that dead bodies, if you died in like a house, they didn't go somewhere before they went to the funeral home. Like they go straight from the house.

Night Calls, Tough Lifts, And Dark Humor

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Well, it depends. Because the the fourth place that I didn't mention doesn't begin with an H, and that's the medical examiner's office. Oh, if you if you went to the ME, you were picking someone up who, you know, maybe it was a roadside collision or mysterious circumstances.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:24

Okay. So when you go to a house, you'd get the first you get the phone call. You'd get the call says, I'd like to report, we need somebody to come perform removal services. And if it was a hospital calls. Uh depends. If it's a hospital, it'll be a nurse or doctor or uh practicing member there. And 99% of the time when you're going to a hospital, they've already been moved to the morgue of the hospital. You're you're not interacting with anyone, you're going to the back door, you're in and out.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

Yeah, you know, weird side story with a morgue. I like as you're saying this, I'm remembering my mom growing up, she was an ER nurse. She was like head nurse of the ER. So her office, I hated having to go stay in her office because it was smaller than this room. It was like an old closet that they just made an office. But right next to her office was the morgue because there's an outer door. And so I could hear them coming to pick up when that door outdoor door was open. I knew that there was a body coming out. When I heard the wheels turning instead of going straight down the hall, I knew that they were bringing a body. So I would always know when to just sit there and not come out. Terrified me. Which my mom would always tell me the same thing. She's like, they're dead.

unknown 1:06:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:32

What are you scared of? Like, I don't like not to be insensitive, but you know. Right. No, I mean anyway. So as you're talking about Morgan, I'm thinking I'm like, if I'm visualizing that hospital and you like beep beep deep beep deep coming here comes to that door. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:49

So when you got the call, if it was a nurse or or a doctor, you'd be like, it's fine. Probably going to, you know, like after very rarely. Not to say that it doesn't happen, you're gonna get somebody off of an operating table, right? Like very rarely. You're not you're you're gonna be going to the morgue almost every single time.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:07

Like the only time you would get somebody in that situation, truthfully, is if they didn't have space in the morgue for whatever reason. Because we're not the only we're not the only game in town, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:16

Yeah. Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:17

People's just dying to get in there. So um, yeah, didn't we? They're not all winners, Danny. They're not all winners.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:24

And we're a drum set. Where's my drum set?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:27

Uh um it came in later. When you'd go to a hospice care facility, uh you would be called by again a practicing nurse or or someone on staff. Um families might be there, you may have to greet them. It's when your feeling about the job morphed, when you realize you were you were working for you know a better purpose for people, you were you were providing them support in a time where they weren't necessarily good with the support or good mentally, you know, things have just happened. Generally, when you went to a hospice care facility, though, you were dealing with very reasonable, very good, very nice people. Because, and I maintain this if you've ever had a loved one, myself included, in hospice previously, uh, the worst feeling is admitting them into hospice in the first place. Right knowing that you lost the battle. Right. Or that you are losing, that you're at the point of we cannot change what's going to happen, but we can try to make them comfortable.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:22

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:23

Um that's much worse. Going to a house or a residence is a mixed bag. You might have gotten a call and it might have been an in-home hospice. So, same situation. You're not worried about it. But then you'd get the call, uh, and and there would be plenty of times you'd get the call, and it would be uh, yeah, this is Officer James from the police department. We've got one. I'm like, are they in bed? Are they on the floor? Are they at the bottom of a staircase? Are they in the shower? Are they in a position where they're easy to lift? How much do you think they weigh? Uh, because you never knew. Now the rule of houses was whereas with uh hospitals and hospice care facilities, you'd only only one person would go and you'd do the job by yourself. You needed to send two people. It's a security thing and also just uh a measurable thing. So again, uh you would that would be during the day shift. If you worked the night shift, the rules were very simple. 5 p.m. to 8 a.m., you're on call. Stay in town and stay sober. That's all we ask you to do. At any point between 5 p.m. and 8 a.m., you could get called. If you don't get called, you're gonna make a minimum amount of money every night just for being on call.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:40

You're automatically paid this amount every night for being on call. If you do get called and the call takes you 30, 45 minutes to complete, oh, that's fine. We're gonna pay you two hours, right? If it takes more than that, we're gonna pay you up to that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, I mean, there were plenty of nights where you could get no calls and nothing would happen. You'd rest easy. And then there were nights where you'd get a call at six, you'd get a call at 10, you'd get a call at four. And like, that's disruptive sleep, pretty bad, but you probably did like three hours of work for and got paid maybe eight or nine hours of work. So you're not you're not in bed. You know, you look at those as positives. You always get you always get the call at 2 a.m. You gotta put on, and if you if you don't know, you know, I'm not just going out there in a tank top and shorts, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:28

Hey, I'm here to uh pick up the body hanging out of your mouth.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

So I'm getting up, you brush my teeth, comb my hair, don't have time to shower, I gotta go, you know, put on the three-piece suit, spray down my funk and and my my body so that I don't smell horrible. Not that carting around a dead body is gonna help.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:47

It's weird the things we worry about. Uh yeah, I know.

Mourning, Rituals, And Cremation Talk

SPEAKER_00 1:10:50

So you you get and you get in the van and you're like, oh, they're out in the middle of a field and you know, or they're they're in some farm 25 minutes away. They're not conveniently five minutes from where the van is. Of course. And you're the whole time in your brain, you're selfishly, you're like, oh, I'm so tired, I hate this, this sucks, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you get to the house and you you put on the professional face, and you and they open the door, and they'll say something to you like, we're just so thankful that you're here. And all of your self-absorbed narcissism washes away when you realize someone is having a worse day than you are.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:24

And you are here to help them. And there were plenty of times I ended up in places with people who I knew, uh, and it wasn't it wasn't awkward because it was a professional environment. I want to tell you really quickly about uh a very specific trip that I had made. Uh, I could tell you two of them, but one of them involves a new guy who refused to grab a pantsless man around the ankles because it was, you know, so it gets two of us. It's a big guy. He had had a heart attack in his home.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:55

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:56

He clearly had a heart attack trying to put on his pants.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:58

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:59

He was going commando under the pants. So, like he had like he's on the bed, back down, you know, he's face up, and uh, he's got like one leg up, his pants around his ankle, and he's just hanging out. He's just hanging out.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:13

I mean, what else?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:14

I mean it's the human anatomy in its most natural form.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:18

Correct.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:18

Uh Dead and Flaccid. I was gonna say Dead and Flaccid's name of my third studio album.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:25

That's our next hashtag.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:26

Live and dangerous. You've heard of Live and Dangerous, it's Dead and Flacid. Yes, I love it. Um so we go to pick him up, and it's gonna take two of us to pick him up. And this guy was kind of a I had had a lot of problems with his etiquette already with the way that he would present himself because he would he would do a lot of talking in front of the police officers at different places and be like, you're not showing any level of decorum. Like the family's right over there. Stop shooting the shit with the cops.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:50

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:50

Our job is to literally get in and get out and give them the card so they can call in the morning. Also, like we're getting paid for two hours if we're out for 20 minutes. Let's get in and get out.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:02

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:02

And so if I'm home and the next call comes in, that starts the two-hour clock over again. Yeah, it's not a continued, like, use your head.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:09

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:10

Uh he had done not a lot of removals. He was clearly self-conscious about picking up a body, as some people may be, but like at the end of the day, there's it's it's not going to bite you, it's not a zombie, it's not gonna suddenly like repel vomit on you. That's not how this works. It is true, people expel themselves, but that has already usually happened.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:31

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:32

So so you may deal with that, but like, well, whatever. You wrap people in a sheet, you're fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:38

I don't think I could be fine. I would panic. I don't I would not mean by dead people. I think you'd be okay. I think you'd be alright. It's it's an adjustment.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:47

I asked him what he would rather do pick up the legs or pick up the torso. Torso's got a lot more weight on it, but the legs he's got a he's got a penis pointing at him. And he could not get past it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:00

Well, he has a penis, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:01

Yes, but it it's not the dead penis he's looking at. So he goes to pick up the legs and he basically like almost instantly drops. And I'm like, I said to him flat out, I said, if you don't man up and do this. Like man up, I was like, if you don't do this, like I will switch the legs and you can take the torso. But I want to be really clear if he hits the floor, you're going to call the funeral director and you're gonna do this by yourself.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:34

Never went on a removal service with him again.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:36

So what did he do?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:37

Because he manned up, he did it, but you know, it was like you're not it's not like you're it's this isn't a hook that you're gripping. You're not carrying it. But he was a bigger guy, so the she kept kept on done, so it like kept winking at him. Oh my god, and that's he just couldn't handle it.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:54

That was that I mean I just wouldn't want to see that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:58

We got we got called out to a-like, well no, I mean I wouldn't either.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:03

That's what I meant.

Closing Thanks To Patrons

SPEAKER_00 1:15:05

We got called out to a house in a in a farm area once, um, and it was maybe 6 p.m. Sun was barely going down. Like it was like an hour after the on-call had started. And it's myself and this guy, Jay. Uh wonderful guy, heart of gold, face of stone. Nothing could break Jay. Nothing could break Jay. He was a great guy. Uh, and we get called out to this farmhouse where they have he was a hospice care removal old man. Fine. Should be easy. Drive out there 25, 30 minutes. We get there. We walk in, and there's it's a big main room. There's a half wall right here next to the door we walked in. There's a half wall, and they've got just all this food, all these people. Uh, you know, it's like potluck style. They got music on in the background. It's a big, big wall back. So I'm thinking, you know, he's probably out back, and everybody's over. We're not gonna mourn his death, we're gonna celebrate his life. And I'm like, great. I love your attitude, love your spirit, love all that. So uh, you know, we get in, we talk to the guys, they're like, yeah, you know, everybody's just over, we're sharing memories, having a good time, having food. I'm like, cool. Uh you know, the food spread's going all the way back and around. It's just this big hall with the with the half wall to our left. And uh we say, okay, can you take us, can you take us to him so we can remove him? U-turn around the half wall. He's in the room with all the food. He's in the room with all the celebrating. His he, you know, and you die, you lose your jaw muscle. So he's in the room. Oh laying there, and they're just having a party around him.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:50

Like having a cocktail with grandpa just died right there.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:55

Uh and so my so when when we're there to remove him, you know, it's time to remove him, his wife is there, and you know, we say to her, you know, you want to take a moment, the hospice nurse is still there as well. And she takes a moment, it's very nice, people kind of watch and congregate, and then she steps back and it's fine. And uh we go to wrap him, everything's fine. We've got like 30 people watching us. We wrap him, we get him on the gurney, and um he had been it's not always requested, but there are times where they'll ask us to do the flag for service. Um, and at that time, I believe we had one to do. So we go to put the flag over top as we're gonna wheel him out, and his wife just like all of a sudden catastrophically faints. Oh and as she does, four or five people go gather around her. We've got them strapped down at this point, and the hospice nurse. I look at Jay like, what do we do? Jay looks at me, Stoneface is like just throws his hands on like, I don't know. And the hospice nurse, like, go, just go, just go, just go. We get out, we get it, we get him loaded in, we start driving back, and Jay, five minutes in, total silence, looks back at me and says, probably could have hung around for a few more minutes, would have gotten a twofer. It was the first time I'd ever heard him crack a joke in my life, and it broke the tension because the whole situation was so bizarre.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:22

I mean, I'm just picturing like what would you do in a situation like that? Like, party around a dead body, then the wife passes out, everybody's watching you, trying to do your job. I don't know. Yeah, and your job is that's so to remove the person who's already deceased. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:41

And you're you're being delicate to a point, obviously. Like, I need to be forceful with someone who's, you know, I'd recovered little old ladies who were probably 70 pounds at the time of their passing. You know, they were very old. They were they were they lived a full life. So, you know, you get back to put them into refrigeration and you're you're just clutching the sheets and bent, you know, press top shelf. You're not hurting them, you're not doing anything like that, but it's it's it's part of the nature of the business. Like it's what you're you're doing, but you're very careful. You make sure to take care of people's loved ones.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:14

You hear about it all the time, like, oh, well, you know, we're gonna take them into our care. That literally means our care.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:20

You know, we're not gonna sit here and it's what I said to the guy when he almost dropped him. Like, you ain't you're we're not you're not allowed. This is not an option. Yeah, that's it. So what do happens if we drop them? That's not an option. Dropping it's not an option for two reasons. One, having to explain it. Two, physically getting someone off of the floor, the literal terminology of dead weight. I wouldn't have to be dead body.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:47

No. No, no, no. Oh my gosh. Have you seen the and and maybe it's not that funny now that I'm listening to you now, but the recent SNL skit where they have the dead body on the water slide?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:58

I don't think I have. I don't think I have.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:03

But essentially, it's um they're standing at the top of the slide, and a guy, an old man, walked all the steps. The skit is at this man walked up all these steps and then had a heart attack at the top. So he's at the top of the water slide. So there's the two lifeguards and the EMTs, and they're like, Wow, sure a lot of stairs. And the one lifeguard. The one lifeguard's like, uh, you are not pushing him down the slide. This is a human being. And they're like, Oh, we know, we know. But now that you mention it, and it's like a whole thing, it just made me think of that. But she's saying, like, the things you're saying. She's like, This is a human being with a family. Like, you're not pushing him down a water slide. But also, if I died at the top of a water slide, I'd be fine. They just put it on. What about the EMT say that? They're like, Well, I think he really wanted to go down the water slide, wanted to go on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:53

It's it's a real thing. Like, right. Look, if it's gonna make the job easier, I can see how this would be uh we I had a I had a recovery once on a um we had to we had two cots in the back of the van. We had to remove one of them. We put in the specialized cot that we had that was intended to bear more weight. He was probably four hundred pounds.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:18

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:18

Um and there's just two of you two of us and the nurse. Getting him onto the cot was a struggle, but we got him.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:29

And like that at that point, it doesn't steer or the stretcher, it doesn't steer, it doesn't do anything. Now, the way those are designed, when you shove them into the back of a van, you do need to shove with just a little bit of force. But you have a lever you release as you shove that releases the wheels. So if you do it with the right timing, you push right over the lip of the van, the wheels collapse, and it's now flat in the back of the van. It's not easy to do when you got a 400-pound guy. So, like we had to I had to go right up to it, line it right up, and then like as soon as I release this handle, shove with all your might. And if he's crooked, I don't care so long as he's in the back. Like and and that's what it was. Because it's like you have to do that.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:16

Yeah, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:17

But you also have to do it without being like, if if I release this handle too early, then this whole thing comes crashing to the ground. And he's still on the gurney, but now the grurney's on the ground.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:27

Oh, yeah, so you gotta, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:29

And that's not gonna happen. I could call the firepower at that point.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:33

I feel like with a job like that, too, every I mean, every call's different. Yeah. You just describe these wildly different stories. You literally don't know what you're walking into. Maybe if you're going to the morgue or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:47

Most of the time, yeah. I mean, you don't know what to expect when you get to the stories I'll save you from are the ones when you go to the ME. Because interestingly enough, those are the stories where you are 100% fully told and aware ahead of time what you're walking into.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:01

Dang.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:01

And I will just leave it at, and that doesn't make it easier. No, no. I will say this. The ladies who work in the ME, the uh they're fantastic. One of them goes to my gym. We talk all the time. Um they're really great people who do some of the easily the worst work you can possibly do.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:20

I can't imagine.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:21

I they do amazing work and they're very wonderful people.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:24

I say, and it's important work. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think I could ever, I don't know. Uh some of our family friends, the house I grew up in down the street, they owned one of the local funeral homes that they still own to this day. It's still in their family. And that was their like they everybody loved them so much because they made sure they all their employees like cared for people in the way you're talking about. But I my sister used to, they had a daughter who is my older sister's age, and they would go to work sometimes and play in the display room. They would play hide and seek in the caskets, and they would get in trouble all the time. Yeah, they'd be like, Terry and Tara, are y'all playing hide and seek in the casket room again? Not again. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:13

I don't run for my history with it. I uh they do um they still do usually once a year around Christmas, they'll do a candlelight vigil at the um because it's co-branded funeral home and cemetery that they that they work at. Um, and they'll do a vigil at the cemetery. And if I'm not, you know, obligated to anything, I will go every year for it uh and and attend and support them. Well, that end they also have hot cocoa there. I mean, I mean they have a recipe for hot cocoa that's really something. Free hot cocoa, you know, they're not just they're not just you know funeral directors and and people well they make hot cocoa at the time when I was working there and and assisting, because you also help in the prep room with a lot of prep. Yeah, gotta make people look good. You know, uh Link Abraham Lincoln is the whole reason we love embalming so very much in this country because they took his body on tour instead of just giving him a nice, you know, dignified burial.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:10

Isn't that weird?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:11

They put him on tour, they embalmed him and put him on tour. And the main the main takeaway from it was people were like, he looks good. For for being for being shot in the head and bleeding out over several hours.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:22

Let me ask y'all a personal question then. Do you want to have an open camp? This is so fucking morbid. We never do this more show. When we record after dark, this is the first time we recorded after dark. The hot switching it's like my sister and I were talking about this because I was like, I don't want I just want to be cremated. Like, I don't want you to waste the time nor money. But my sister's like, hell no, make me look good, put me on display and cry over my casket. Like, we're so different. So I'm curious. Gosh, that's tricky. Really? I feel like I feel like your sister in a way, because I'm I think you do want you want to be like, I think it depends when it happens, but I think my kids would want that. I think they'd want to see me again that way. See, and I but I don't know, like, but the practical side of me is like just cremate me. Who cares? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:13

Cardboard box is$75 for a six-foot human-sized cardboard box weekly. So what is probably gone up in less.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:19

What is your personal opinion? Do you want to be like in cremated? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:24

Just throw me in the oven.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:25

That's what I say too. You know, donate my parts, what can be used, and then just burn me up. Put me back in the and then find like the best pictures of me ever. Oh, I don't care how old they are. And then do a little slunch. I told Tori, I said, if if I go before you and I you have a celebration of life for me, make everybody wear a costume. Oh, that's so great. And have and only play fun music. Yeah. Like, do not have some lame ass ad thing. I don't want that.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:52

That's what we that's what we did for my my dad's thing, was always celebrate when we went to his favorite restaurant. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:56

Oh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:57

I was given the option when I flew in. His wife at the time, not my mother, but uh my at the time stepmother. Now now she her name is also Connie, just happens to be. Um, and she'll be down here in a couple of weeks for a Christmas story.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:11

Yay! Welcome, Connie.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:13

Um but uh when when he passed, she gave me the option when I flew up uh to see him, and I thought about it, and I it really hurt me because just thinking about it. Did you see him? And I said no. I didn't. I didn't either when I I because I I and I won't get into the top story, but like I had known what he had gone through in the last couple, it was very sudden to everyone, but when you look at how he lived his last six or nine months on Earth, I uh don't think it was that sudden to him. Yeah, I just think he held on to it knowing that his time was up. I really do believe that. But yeah, we cremated him, and um Courtney, again at the time, was very helpful in that he helped me find the exact urn that I wanted to put him in, uh, which I have in my house, and the reason you never notice it is because it is the same urn that the character Paul Bearer uses for the pro wrestler, The Undertaker. So he helped me find that exact model of urn.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:06

I love that.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:06

I I will also tell you, uh, I'll I'll give you this as my last thing, I swear.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:10

Okay. We're ready.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:12

So we we took some of my father's ashes uh to spread to a few places that he requested them be spread.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:19

One of the places he requested them to be spread was in Disneyland in California. Now, in case you're not aware, you're not allowed to enter the park with human remains.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:29

Oh, well, I mean that adds up for obvious reasons. Well, right.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:33

Uh, and and certainly there would be an easy way to verify that. My actual mother, Marg, who will also be down in a couple of weeks, they're friends, by the way, they get along. Um, Margo and Connie do. She put him in rolling papers.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:47

Oh my god. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:49

And we managed to get him in a couple of places.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:52

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:54

But that was a much more successful route than he had married Connie in front of the Bellagio fountains.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:00

Aww.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:01

So we went to go, we were in Vegas as well, and we went to spread him in front of the Bellagio, uh, the fountains, just a little bit. And it was it was emotional. I was there, my best friends were there, Melinda was there, uh, my mom and Connie were all there. It was also uh windy. And there's this no one's near us, right? Like no one's near us. But about 15 feet away, 10, 15 feet away, there's this family of like three or four um tourists uh standing there, can't understand us, or from I uh guessing Asian. I'm not gonna guess past that, you know, like a they're they're uh from somewhere else. They they don't see what we're doing or anything like that. But I mean, we're all very quiet and and you know, having a moment, and as I'm spreading, the wind just takes one handful. And throws it right into their faces.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:02

No way. Oh my God. That's what you said.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:06

It goes from this emotional, clairvoyant moment to don't laugh. Oh. Don't laugh. Don't laugh. Mark Mark, my father's name is Mark. It's like Mark just threw himself in their faces. He got one more for the road. You know, like you can believe in it all you want, but that's that's what happened because from then on, it was, you know, we're trying to go into the shops or somewhere to go get a drink and relax, but we're pissing ourselves, laughing.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:31

I would die.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:32

Because we're like, oh my God, those people we just threw my dad in their face.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:37

Oh my god. Just caught it. Oh my gosh. Oh, maybe that's what I want. Be cremated and then just carry me around in your pocket and throw me at people. There you go. But only people you don't like.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:49

And dogs. That's dead Danny Combs. How you feel now? I hope I hope that resonates with you. I hope that sticks with you forever.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:00

I'm gonna think about that. I really care. You don't have anywhere special you would want them to be. What does it matter? I mean, when I'm dead, I'm dead. I feel like though, but like listening to you, it's it's again, it's something for your family. If they would like to do something with them, that's fine. They can decide that. I have no preference because it doesn't mat like we said, funerals and all that, that's not for the dead person. That's for the people who are living.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:23

Well, I've been told I'm on a I've also been told that there was many years ago a purchase of a family plot done by my wife's side of the family, so that I potentially am part of that lot regardless. So my response to it is always is well, I'll be dead. I guess doing what I want or doing whatever you want doesn't really matter.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:39

Right. That's true. That's true.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:40

I don't I don't suddenly get an afterlife voice to to you know overrule it.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:45

As I go home and like I know start typing up all these things, I'm like Land. Yes, I'm ready. I'm ready. I don't know. Like I, you know, I lost my dad at a young age, and I didn't I didn't want to see him. I didn't like the idea of funerals. I didn't, I was 11, I was young, but like I even at that young age, I was like, but see, that's not my dad now. Like he's away, and so I didn't need I don't know, like I didn't need a different thing. Because my sister did, she did need that process, like uh, so I think you're always different, but also like I don't care when I'm dead, I'm dead. So like just shove me. You heard it here first. If you want to keep me, put me.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:29

190 on the freeway and just right out the side.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:31

That's fine. But I'm not gonna care. I'm dead. So you wouldn't be mad if I was blaring country music with all my dogs in the car. Bitch, I'm dead. It's all right. If that makes you celebrate my life for some weird.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:47

I suppose the question is like, okay, now let's say your spirit is seeing this and has decided suddenly that it's got unfinished business.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:55

That's then I shall haunt you forever. That's what I would do. Then I will fuck up your keyboard forever. It'll be like, Katie, you are hearing things. It's Danny. Oh man. Don't worry. We'll make my sister said, because you know, there's some people who like you can pay to like mourn at your funeral, like at funerals, like they're paid, seriously, that will go and wail and mourn. And my sister is like, you better do that if I die before you. And I why would you do that though?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:24

When I go to funerals, I take bets on who's gonna ugly cry first. I would I prefer that.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:28

My sister's like, I want you to throw yourself on my coffin and make like just be so ridiculous. And I'm like, all right.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:35

Yeah, make it as much about you as possible.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:37

That's what today is.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:38

That's what today is.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:40

The thoughts and prayers crowd at its best. I know you're having it hard, but don't forget about how hard I dab things.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:44

Yeah, exactly. I was like, I mean, if you really want me to thought you're like, I can do it. I I take direction well. Well, that was a fun little uh weird. That was funny. All right. Well, thanks for sticking around, Benny.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:57

Tell us what buys you stories like these. I know.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:00

Seriously. It does. And we have one after every episode. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:03

It's bonus content I don't always open up about.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:05

I love it. It's true. Honestly, though, thank you for sharing that because that is like a whole new side of things that most people probably wonder about for sure. I have more questions, but I'll save them. All right. Well, thank you, patrons. Uh thanks for keeping the lights on and maybe the air conditioning fingers crossed. Uh, by next time, and uh we will uh see you on our next after show. Bye guys. Bye.