The Soul's Midnight: On Cursed Pop Culture
Added 2020-05-22 22:20:35 +0000 UTCWith The Soul’s Midnight, a Patreon exclusive series, the Losers put down Stephen King for a moment and talk about some real-life spooky tales. This time around, they're discussing the ways pop cultured become cursed and stay with us forever...
Comments
Regarding the Conqueror, that one got both Agnes Moorehead (Samantha's mom on Bewitched) and John Wayne. Radiation's a bitch. Oh and on Wizard of Oz, Buddy Ebsen, aka Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies, was the original tin woodsman. He got poisoned from the lead paint used in the make-up and almost died. He had to drop out of the film. My parents lived next door to him in the 60s on Balboa Island. He was a classically trained dancer and used to do ballet in the back yard.
Bill Bradley
2020-06-02 23:20:17 +0000 UTCI love this episode! So glad to see Mel is back. These sock puppets used to come on MTV at night and I would always turn them on and I was fascinated and scared of them when I was a kid. I still have little memory glimpses of them at odd times. If you look them up and watch them they aren't scary at all, but my kid brain just couldn't fully process them.
Amanda Potter
2020-05-29 17:53:31 +0000 UTCI'm about halfway convinced I pulled a Mandela on myself at some point -- but if not and you can help me figure it out, I will be eternally grateful!
Bryant Burnette
2020-05-29 01:48:24 +0000 UTCWhat the hell. It was referenced on the episode, and I think it’s Mel’s favorite movie. It’s The Fly (1986). So here’s the story: Picture it, Philadelphia, 1986. I was 8 and no slouch - I read Christine in six weeks right around that time. I loved horror. Then I saw the commercial featuring a very nice man turning into a mottled mess of shit. Scared the hell out of me. Fast forward to 1988 or so, my parents thought it was a good idea to take me (then 10) to see DEAD RINGERS. wtf. Previews started, cue baby monitor, Fly II teaser trailer. That was it. My first real panic attack. I was done. Faked stomachaches through 1989 - Working Girl, Last Crusade. Ghostbusters 2, Batman ... as Elaine said “fake fake fake fake.” Didn’t fool anyone. It continued for years because I just knew that part 3 was coming out ... no internet to check. I know the plot and have seen Brundlefly gifs, but I still won’t watch the movie. Maybe because I am an OCD hypochondriac - one little slip up and boom.
Brett Littman
2020-05-27 23:46:57 +0000 UTCYeah, reading his intro on Ripley's made me realize how time-appropriate this episode was.
The Losers' Club
2020-05-27 22:57:14 +0000 UTCWhich one??
The Losers' Club
2020-05-27 22:56:40 +0000 UTCWow. Can't figure out what movie this is... been stewing on it too. Lemme ask some pals.
The Losers' Club
2020-05-27 22:56:10 +0000 UTCYep. That's the one!! Terror fuel.
The Losers' Club
2020-05-27 22:55:31 +0000 UTCIt creeps on you.
The Losers' Club
2020-05-27 22:55:19 +0000 UTCSadly, college work took over and she couldn't make it to the cabin.
The Losers' Club
2020-05-27 22:55:03 +0000 UTCI'm kind of soured on cursed media stories, I think because of creepypasta - there are some excellent examples of it from early on, but it became a formula on Reddit pretty quickly, and a lot of writers seem to have taken the wrong lessons on what made them effective. Ultimately I think it's the eerie / obscurantist quality and "Mandela Effect" weirdness of Candle Cove or Dead Bart that make them work. I decided to try out the NoSleep podcast a few months ago and the very first story was... a haunted Donkey Kong knockoff arcade cabinet. I was not impressed. It's a little funny, having just wrapped up Nightmares & Dreamscapes for the first time and seeing King indulge in his own bit of "haunted ____!" madlibs in his short stories. "Chattery Teeth" and "Sneakers", most prominently, but he'd gone to that well at least as far back as "The Mangler".
John Wm. Thompson
2020-05-26 01:02:57 +0000 UTCIn terms of absurd things that scared me as a kid, I had recurring night terrors for years about weird flying heads and guys bloating up with steam and exploding. Then in high school, when I finally got basic cable, I was channel surfing one afternoon and flipped upon my greatest nightmare... John Carpenter's "Big Trouble In Little China". I had evidently seen it as a toddler. I was also consistently freaked out by the music from a CD-ROM encyclopedia entry on The War of the Worlds. I think it was just a theremin MIDI patch.
John Wm. Thompson
2020-05-26 00:51:15 +0000 UTCThere’s a certain well-regarded movie from the 80s that scared me so much that I wouldn’t watch commercials for fear that a commercial would be on advertising its sequel, and I would leave the theater during coming attractions for the same reason.
Brett Littman
2020-05-25 20:00:17 +0000 UTCI saw part of a movie when I was a kid that absolutely wrecked me. I canNOT figure out what the hell movie this is, either, and it drives me nuts. The way I remember the scene, it's got something to do with a woman running around on a farm or in the country or something like that. She's obviously being terrorized by someone. She runs into a body -- which is presumably someone she knows -- that is hanging on some kind of pole, and as she is looking at the body hanging there, the head stays in place but the rest of the body kind of sloughs off from it and falls to the ground. This scene fucked me up for WEEKS afterward. And until I can figure out what it is, it's gonna drive me a little nuts. Thing is, I don't really know if I'm remembering it accurately -- or, to be honest, if it even exists at all. For all I know, it's a dream I had and then later on remembered being a movie.
Bryant Burnette
2020-05-25 10:24:39 +0000 UTCRandall, when you were talking about not being able to watch anything with blood in it when you were a kid, you may as well have been talking about me. I'm convinced that's why I started reading Stephen King; to get over it. Which I mostly did, but even now there are some bridges I won't cross with gore.
Bryant Burnette
2020-05-25 10:21:16 +0000 UTCI literally just logged on to type that. Excellent!
Bryant Burnette
2020-05-25 07:53:00 +0000 UTCMike, is Sleepwalk by Santo and Johnny the song you were thinking of?
Anita Yantz
2020-05-25 00:25:48 +0000 UTCMel!!!! I’m so happy!!!
Kyle Whitfield
2020-05-23 05:31:24 +0000 UTCThis episode gave me the daytime creeps. That Simpsons description! Love it.
brandon leonard
2020-05-22 23:46:12 +0000 UTCAwesome! I was sad to see she wasn’t on the Geralds Game episode, I remember during I think the Misery episode she had a lot of thoughts about Geralds Game.
Conner McGovern
2020-05-22 22:43:11 +0000 UTCShe'll be back a lot.
The Losers' Club
2020-05-22 22:40:33 +0000 UTCGlad to see Mel back on the pod!
Conner McGovern
2020-05-22 22:30:34 +0000 UTC
