Sup VNPeeps? Oliver here, in an effort to give you guys more
content to enjoy between instalments of the show, I thought I'd actually start
using the blog as more than just a means to host episodes.
Hope you all enjoyed the Troll 2 episode and if you haven't
listened to it yet, go ahead and check them shits out at all the usual avenues.
What this post concerns is the long lost first Halloween episode that we
released for about forty minutes last year. We actually talked about it briefly
during the recording of Troll 2 but I cut it out due to time constraints. I
thought a full blog post detailing what exactly the episode was about and why
it was only online for such a short time would be somewhat entertaining to Vid
Neg completists. So sit back, pour yourself a mug of something suitably
Halloween-related and enjoy.
Last October, Tim, my girlfriend Becky and I went to a
screening of Pet Sematary. I'd slacked on getting into the Halloween spirit,
and was the first time in about five years that I hadn't dressed up. This film
screening was a means of rectifying my unseasonal mood, and I was nevertheless
looking forward to it despite my state of undress. (Wait, that sounds like I
attended the screening naked - I didn't). Anyway, the organisers were touting
all week the availability of pumpkin beer that they were brewing. First red
flag - the beer sucked. A picture posted by the film collective screening the film revealed it was
literally just pre-existing ale and tins of tinned pumpkin splodge, which I
guessed they just mushed together. Great job on the brewing, guys.
I'd attended a screening put on the collective before - a
riotous screening of Peter Jackson's Braindead at Manchester's much missed
Cornerhouse - which is still one of my fondest cinema going experiences. At
that screening, they'd played old, trashy trailers of horror movies to get
everyone in the mood. At the Pet Sematary screening, they did the same thing
and it was easily the highlight. From memory, a hearty stew of campy toy
adverts, a few trailers including the '81 horror flick The Burning and a
bizarre excerpt from a horror film of a young boy killing his father with a
gardening hoe - I shit you not. Everyone laughed heartily, but there was one
guy who had to laugh longer and harder than everyone else which was pretty
irritating after the 50th time. Sidenote: If anyone thinks the way I conduct
myself on the show is some sort of persona they are sorely mistaken - I really
am a crotchety misery guts in real life too.
Anyway, Pet Sematary started. After drinking everyone else's
beer, I needed the toilet as soon as the credits flashed up. Laughing boy had a
nice chuckle at the production logo (it was the Paramount ident in case you
were wondering) which signified himself as a grade A moron. I left to go to the
toilet. On my way back, I tried to sneak up on Tim and scare him, but he
clocked me creeping up on him, putting an end to my nefarious doings. So
bladders relieved, the film started proper. I don't remember much about the
film, but around 15 minutes in, it dawned on us all that you could barely hear
anything. The audio was muffled to oblivion, compounded by the fact that one
character, I seem to recall, deliberately mumbled his dialogue.
An uncomfortable feeling started to sink in. I flicked up
the running time on my phone: 103 minutes. I wasn't prepared to ride this one
out for that duration. I texted Tim "if you want to leave now, I'm fine
with that". After a very, very brief pow-wow, we decided to peace.
Awkwardly, we had to walk past the organisers, to whom Tim said: "thanks
for a great night". That was that, we went to a bar and got drunk.
The next morning, and sporting cracking hangovers, Tim and I
sat down to record the previous night's events. Obviously Dan wasn't with us
and at the time, we used to record on his Mac. So instead we recorded basically
what I've recounted above on my laptop instead, presenting it how we usually do
i.e. name of director, previous filmography, budget, etc. It was a pretty fun
episode, you got more of a sense of how we conduct ourselves as people in
public and despite being pruned up on the inside after a night of beer there
was some funny bits - sample intro: "A dreaded sunny day and I'll meet you
at the cemetry gates - the Pet Sematary gates that is" (yeah hilarious,
you had to be there).
It was a very brief episode, around 20 minutes, but the
audio quality wasn't the best - even compared to our older episodes. Tim went
home and I tried my best to try and improve the audio quality. I managed to get
it to a point that was somewhat presentable and uploaded it to soundcloud. Slight
tangent: a few days earlier, I'd emailed a podcast Tim and I are big fans of
for advice. Around the time I put the Pet Sematary episode up, he replied. A
large reply in fact, but with one snag. He'd based all his advice upon hearing
our latest and not-so-greatest episode. Basically it consisted of "it was
hard to hear, you need to get a microphone". Such indignity. I doubt he
ever checked back a few months down the line to see how we were doing.
It turns out, Soundcloud had completely mangled the audio
quality to the point where it was just unlistenable, reversing my attempts to
improve the quality. I had no other choice - I had to take the episode down,
I'd rather listeners not have to suffer through and strain to hear what was
just reporting on a disastrous night out.
So there you go. The story of the first attempt at a
Halloween episode. I'm not sure I even have the episode anymore but suffice to
say, I'm not going to upload it. I'm not even sure why I even wrote this, but
maybe some folk'll get a bang out of hearing about it.
This year, we're going to see a double bill of The Addams
Family and The Burbs. Stoked.
Happy Halloween, peace.
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