Editorials
[TV Terrors] Remembering Joe Bob Briggs’ “MonsterVision”
Horror and science fiction have always been a part of the television canvas, and constant attempts have been made to produce classic entertainment. Some have fallen by the wayside, while others became mainstream phenomena. With “TV Terrors,” we take a look back at the many genre efforts from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, exploring some genre TV that took genuine approaches to creativity that became cult classics, and others that sank in to obscurity.
We begin… with “MonsterVision.“
- Aired from 1991 – 2000
- Aired on Turner Network Television
Once upon a time, cable television was an escape for various audiences that went in search of programming tailored toward them. The super stations though were a platform for whatever programming the networks could afford, allowing them to air blocks of movies and animated series that could fill time. Mornings on the USA Network saw airings of obscure kung fu movies, and on Saturday nights if you stayed up late enough you could entertain yourself with a classic horror or sci-fi film hosted by Joe Bob Briggs.
“Monstervision” was once mainly a creature feature programming block that aired late night with hosts Penn and Teller, but in 1996 it became a playground for the one and only Joe Bob Briggs. Briggs (real name: John Bloom), a very experienced newspaper columnist and satirist, was brought in fresh from The Movie Channel to host “Monstervision” after years on “Joe Bob’s Drive-In Theater.” After a short time the show became synonymous with Joe Bob, who used the platform to deliver his own off the cuff rants about society and instill priceless nuggets of information and trivia to his fans.
“Monstervision” came at a time when the internet was still in its infancy, so Joe Bob’s information was often fresh and surprising, as well as incredibly funny. Probably my all time favorite episode of “Monstervision” was the airing of “The Warriors,” where Joe Bob laid out a map of New York City and showed the trail of the Warriors from the Bronx to Coney Island. There’s even the time he was scolded by Anne Francis during a screening of “Forbidden Planet.” TNT “Monstervision” allowed the Joe Bob character to emerge from his trademark trailer and cop a squat on his lawn chair.
With his own beer in a koozy, he’d introduce the pair of movies for the night. Oftentimes they had their own themes, and they’d come on late. One week Joe Bob aired a Dracula night where he aired 1992’s Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” alongside Mel Brooks’ “Dracula Dead and Loving It.” He also had “Joe Bob’s Summer School” which allowed him to interview folks like Clint Howard, Linnea Quigley, and Roddy Piper. He also sat down with army veterans questioning the credibility of “Red Dawn,” as well as a pet psychic. He could also be found at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant while hosting “Willy Wonka” and even did remotes for Superbowl weekends, hosting movies like “The Longest Yard” and “Semi-Tough.”
Who can forget the all night marathon of “Friday the 13th” films, sans “The Final Chapter,” which was an especially hard pill to swallow for Joe Bob, who would constantly call out TNT during the marathon. Joe Bob always had a punk edge to him, which made it tough to work within the confines of TNT; the network was increasingly cleaning up its image for a more family friendly section of the audience.
That said, Joe Bob was able to skirt the censors, constantly pointing out the scenes that were cut for sexual content, and never held back on what he thought of specific movies. Watch as Joe Bob spends the entirety of “The Fog” mocking its premise, and harping on how Carpenter is just so much better than the film itself. He even visibly suffers through 1995’s “The Howling: New Moon Rising,” giggling most of the time out of sheer incredulity at the film’s awfulness.
Joe Bob was just such a refreshing part of the late night cable experience, because he often seemed to be working without fear of reprimanding from his superiors. This meant we were almost always given a crusty Joe Bob, and always assured a dirty or funny joke as the show drew to a close. Joe Bob basically kept his format and good old fashioned shtick even when TNT retooled Monstervision to “Joe Bob’s Hollywood Saturday Night.”
There, the concept of Monstervision stretched in to films like “A League of Their Own,” “Look Who’s Talking Now” and “Twins,” but Joe Bob never ran out of quips and comebacks. Without much preamble, Monstervision ended in 2000. “Monstervision” remained a favorite for years, with Joe Bob constantly re-visiting memories of filming the show for fans during conventions and various interviews. The show ended when TNT retooled its entire network in the early aughts; but though it was cancelled, it never died in the hearts of movie buffs.
With the internet age, it garnered a ton of retrospectives and tributes, and inspired a new wave of horror hosts that carried the torch for Joe Bob.
Is It On DVD/Blu-Ray? No, but the segments featuring host Joe Bob Briggs have been made available online, and the “Ice Cream Man” segments were made exclusively available to buyers of the Limited Edition of “Ice Cream Man.” After almost twenty years off the air, Joe Bob is returning for a movie marathon on the popular horror streaming service Shudder TV this Summer, and will surely breed a new generation of horror fanatics who have yet to learn about the horror gospel of Joe Bob.
The great Ernest Dickerson turns seventy-five years old this month, so we’re looking back at his most memorable contribution to the horror genre – 1995’s Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight!
The film hit screens while the Tales from the Crypt series was winding down its run on television, and it stands apart with a story that feels a step or two removed from the franchise norm. That was the smart play, though, as the show’s stories – and those from the original EC comics – work best in short bites. The result is a film that holds up beautifully as a gory good time.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
Commentator: Ernest Dickerson (director), Michael Felsher (moderator)
1. Dickerson was in post-production on Surviving the Game when he got a call from his agent saying that producer Gil Adler wanted to meet about a Tales from the Crypt feature film. It went well, so Dickerson met with Joel Silver next and secured the job.
2. The original screenplay for the film came to the producers as a spec script wholly detached from the Tales from the Crypt brand. They added the Crypt Keeper (voiced by John Kassir) bookends to make it fit.
3. Dickerson was more familiar with the original EC comic books having read them as a kid, but he had watched a few episodes of the HBO series, so he knew what the current vibe was for the project.
4. Adler directed the film’s wraparound segments, meaning Dickerson never actually got to work with the creepy puppet. “Gil and the Crypt Keeper had a great relationship,” he adds, “they worked together for years.”
5. While he was new to the Tales from the Crypt family, Dickerson had previously worked as a director of photography on the Tales from the Darkside anthology series. That show is underappreciated in my humble opinion, and I will go to bat for both it and the equally underloved Monsters.
6. A big appeal of the horror genre for Dickerson is the idea of dark mysteries that challenge our imagination. For this film, that came down to the mythology being created between the characters.
7. Five executive producers are listed in the opening credits, but Dickerson says the only two he had dealings with were Silver and Richard Donner. The other three were Walter Hill, Robert Zemeckis, and David Giler.
8. Dickerson had only ever seen Billy Zane in movies with a full head of hair, so he was surprised when Zane showed up on the first day with a bald head. “He had this case, and he opened up the case that he had all these hair pieces in, and he says, ‘So which one of these do you think I should use?’” Dickerson looked at him and suggested he just go bald for the character.
9. While the bulk of the opening exteriors were filmed in a desert just outside Los Angeles, the shot of the old church at 11:26 was created on a warehouse hangar soundstage where the film’s interiors were shot.
10. When he had read the script, Dickerson pictured the character of Jeryline (Jada Pinkett Smith) “as a little, tough lady.” He had recently seen Smith in Menace II Society, and while the producers had someone else in mind for the role, he fought to get her instead.
11. Just as Zane surprised Dickerson with his hair (or lack thereof), Smith arrived on the first day with her hair dyed platinum white. He “liked the idea” but asked her to please get it tweaked so it looked more yellowish blond. “It’s definitely a statement.”
12. He had seen Brenda Bakke in the 1989 sci-fi/action film from Japan, Gunhed, and thought she’d be great here as Cordelia. The rest of us might recognize her from Death Spa or Trucks.
13. Felsher comments that the film’s setup does a good job not telegraphing who’s going to live or die, and he uses the “nice guy” (Charles Fleischer) and “the kid” (Ryan O’Donohue) as examples. “You don’t play by those rules here,” he says, and Dickerson replies that he wanted to subvert those rules. That extends to Smith as well because she’s Black, “and usually in movies like this they’re the first folks to die.”
14. Dickerson says they had forty days of filming, “which, the way I’m used to working, was a very generous schedule.” It was budgeted at around $10 million.
15. This probably won’t surprise you, but Zane improvised the bit at 26:25 after he jumps out the window and says, “Fuck this cowboy shit! You fuckin’, hodunk Podunk, well, then, motherfuckers!”
16. In the original script, the demons that The Collector (Zane) raises from the dirt actually looked more like the people they used to be. “They were more human,” but the very smart decision was made in pre-production to make them look far more unique instead.
17. The demons are killed by shooting their eyes, but Dickerson felt there should be one more element to it. “Shoot out their eyes, you gotta duck because the souls come shooting out, and if it hits ya, boom, it can kill ya.” This is a fun touch.
18. He’s been asked more than once if these demons are where Peter Jackson got the idea for how the orcs would look in his Lord of the Rings movies. “They do look like orcs.”
19. He recalls having seen Ronny Yu’s The Bride with White Hair shortly before going to work on Demon Knight, and he hoped to bring some of that staged style into his own film. An example of that in practice is Brayker’s (William Sadler) brief flashbacks to Christ on the cross.
20. Character deaths were mostly based on the idea that “each person’s downfall was going to be predicated by their weakness.” The Collector discovers someone’s weakness and then uses it against them. Cordelia wants to be loved, Jeryline wants to travel, Uncle Willy (Dick Miller) is a horndog for both liquor and ladies, Danny loves horror comics, etc.
21. Dickerson says that plenty of genre classics were in the back of his head while making the film, including Assault on Precinct 13, Alien, Aliens, and more.
22. Cordelia is possessed into a demonic form, and Dickerson’s idea for how she’d look was originally a bit different. “Since Cordelia was a prostitute, I thought that her mouth should actually be a vertical slit that was in her stomach… which would open up with teeth and a tongue.” It was nixed, he says, when “the wife of one of the producers read that and said ‘no way you’re putting that in the movie.’”
23. The key makes an appearance in the followup, Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, but it wasn’t originally meant to. Apparently, early test audiences expected it to be a more connected sequel to Demon Knight, so the filmmakers added it in to appease them. This is where I go on record saying that Bordello of Blood is a fun time. Can’t touch Demon Knight, obviously, but it’s more entertaining than its reputation suggests.
24. They had to film Uncle Willy’s bar scene “dream” twice, once with the women topless and once with them in bikinis, to have versions for both theaters and television broadcast. “Dick’s a pro.” (To be fair, Dickerson says this in regard to Miller having to endure the makeup application, but the sentiment fits both situations, so…)
25. Dickerson says he’s “always amazed at the love that people show this film,” and adds that fans bring it up to him incredibly often. This is great to hear, as we should always be telling artists how much their work means to us while they’re still alive and able to hear it.
26. Zane also suggested the gag at 1:08:21 with the sponge coming out of his mouth. The beat reminds Dickerson to praise the actor even more, adding that he was an “ally” to the director when “bad ideas” came down from the studio suits.
27. He didn’t get any pushback on killing little Danny. He did insist on one added element, though, as he wanted to immediately follow the boy exploding in the air with a shot of his bloody and torn sneaker hitting the ground below. “And the sneaker had to be a hightop.”
28. Dickerson says there’s “something kinky sexy about” Smith being covered in blood, and then the two commentators go quiet for almost two minutes out of respect for the scene. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on how Dickerson had previously mentioned Alien and Aliens as films being in the back of his head during filming, and how two scenes here reflect that – Jeryline stripping down to her underwear for the final confrontation feels like a nod to Ridley Scott’s film, while an earlier scene with Irene (CCH Pounder) and Dep. Bob (Gary Farmer) realizing they’re surrounded and choosing to blow themselves up alongside some of the demons is something of a callback to the air vent sacrifice in James Cameron’s film.
29. Asked about the film’s critical reception at the time of release, Dickerson says it received good reviews from horror-loving critics and then talks about the importance of horror in general. “Horror has always been a great way of putting out ideas, of talking about some of the things that affect us as people. Some of the best horror, like the best science fiction, talks about what it’s like to be human. Some of the best horror gets very political.”
30. The original ending would have featured The Collector showing “his true self, which is a demon made of fire.” They spent a lot of time trying to make it work, but it was “extremely difficult… back in the day of analog effects.” It was rewritten into the faceoff between him and Jeryline featuring the dancing, the crotch fire, Zane’s attempts at saying “love,” and his eventual demise from her bloody spit.
31. They both agree that a direct sequel to Demon Knight could be a lot of fun, but Dickerson says he’s unaware of any talk on the possibility.
32. Dickerson was super excited about this new Scream Factory Blu-ray in 2015, and he mentions that before its release, he had imported a Blu-ray from Germany presumably to enjoy the film in HD. He’s just like us! (Or am I the only one here who’s imported a German Blu-ray of the much maligned werewolf flick Big Bad Wolf…)
Quotes Without Context
“I was so happy to get Dick Miller for this movie.”
“There was a time when guys used to put ketchup on everything.”
“I’m a big student of Hitchcock, and the best way to make a moment of horror work is to lull the audience into a false sense of security.”
“A villain should always be the most interesting person in a movie.”
“They were a really great bunch of performers who were performing on these little leg-extension stilts wearing a diaper that had a radio-controlled tail that was being manipulated by a special effects tech right out of the frame.”
“It’s hard to direct air; it doesn’t do what you want.”
“The only censorship problem came from the producer’s wife, who didn’t want the vagina dentalis [sic] in the movie.”
“One of the executives wanted to know why the devil didn’t try to have sex with Jada.”
“It always starts with the script.”
Keep up with more horror commentary breakdowns here.
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