TWT Pocket Size #4: Urban Legends
Creepy literary houses, terrifying true(ish) crimes, and one infamous Hollywood myth... Scotty and Amelia take you into a few of their favorite urban legends for this latest Pocket Size spooky season entry.
Scotty FAMOUSLY hates Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" (1980). He hates it so much, in fact, that he's never even bothered to ask Amelia what she thinks about it. This week they rewatch and discuss the filmmaker's take on the classic Stephen King novel, talk about how it works as a horror movie and as a film in general, and then tackle Mike Flanagan's divisive 2019 adaptation of King's bizarro sequel, "Doctor Sleep."
Will Scotty change his mind? Will Amelia add this film to her recent Favorite Scary Movies list? Will anyone ever come up with a better screen name than Scatman Crothers? Listen to find out.
WARNING: This episode contains COPIOUS spoilers.
Spooky season continues on The Weirdest Thing. This week Scotty delivers four tales of uncanny automotive accursedness from around the world--from ghostly headlights signalling the presence of an undiscovered roadside fatality in the UK, to a malevolent VW Beetle haunting a famously deadly Malaysian highway. But the primary focus is the Black Volga, a (possibly?) demonic luxury car stalking various nations of the former Soviet Union and stealing away their children for unknowable and diabolic purposes.
CONTENT WARNING: This episode talks about various road disasters, and touches briefly upon sexual assault.
In our second Pocket Size episode, Amelia continues to celebrate spooky season with her list of her top 5 scary movies. These are all such bonafide, indisputable classics that even a horror dork like Scotty can brook no argument here.
WARNING: Again...these are all CLASSICS. So don't come complaining to us about spoilers.
Amelia kicks off Fall--and spooky season--with the story of the wild life, tragic death, and VERY strange after-death of Argentina's famed first lady Eva Perón. Evita's corpse was "missing" for nearly two decades, and Amelia unpacks the bizarre myths, outlandish rumors, and macabre urban legends that surround its extraordinary journey to its final resting place.
CONTENT WARNING: This story discusses terminal illness, abusive medical practices, and disturbing allegations of violations committed upon Perón's remains. Listener discretion advised.
Eva Perón died of cervical cancer at the age of 33. The Weirdest Thing Podcast wants to remind our listeners of all genders that September is Gynecological Cancer Awareness Month (GCAM). Please get your HPV vaccine! For more information, visit the following sites:
https://foundationforwomenscancer.org
https://www.ashasexualhealth.org/gynecological-cancer-awareness-month/
https://igcs.org/gynecologic-cancer-awareness-month/
Wait, what's happening? An episode on an off week? And on a WEDNESDAY?!?
It's fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes! Volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together...MASS HYSTERIA!
Actually, Scotty and Amelia have just decided they can't get enough of talking to each other on microphone...and that means talking to y'all, of course. So on the weeks where they're not doing a main episode, they've decided to keep the conversation going. About what, they don't exactly know. Trust them; they'll figure it out. Probably.
So welcome to the first episode of The Weirdest Thing...POCKET SIZE!
Consider these episodes a little research-lite pop-culture nugget to help get you through the rest of your week. Movies, music, TV, trivia, whatever subject they'll feel like yakking about on any given Wednesday, they'll be bringing it right to your earholes.
This week, Scotty's here to tell you about his top 5 favorite romantic comedies. See? It's not all murders and monsters with that guy (all right, all right..."The Princess Bride" DOES have the Rats of Unusual Size).
Enjoy!
Scotty goes scatalogically nostalgic this week with the story of the rise and fall of one of the 1980s' most notorious pop-cultural phenomena: the Garbage Pail Kids (and, of course, their dark doppelgängers, the Cabbage Patch Kids). Do you like all things phlegmy, pukey, poopy, and designed to piss off your parents? Then this is the episode for you!
Amelia takes us back to the tragic and infamous 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese and explains how it contributed to the development of the emergency "911" telephone system--but she also talks about how the bureaucratic bullsh*ttery of this episode's title has lead to flaws which continue to plague that system to this very day. Plus, Scotty and Amelia spend a few minutes at the top of the episode talking about Aaron Sorkin's sometimes brilliant but often frustrating 2012 "West Wing"-followup "The Newsroom" (available to stream on Max). And Amelia gets Scotty excited about the upcoming Jason Reitman film "Saturday Night," about Saturday Night Live's debut episode.
The watch the "Saturday Night" trailer, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ9O_tl5Npk
This week Scotty and Amelia discuss two deeply beloved films...well, beloved by them, at least. These are movies that received a shocking amount of (at best) apathy or (at worst) hatred from fans and critics at the time of their release. But your cohosts have taken them into their homes and hearts like abandoned puppies in a snowstorm.
Scotty's pick is the 1997 film "The Rainmaker," based on the novel by John Grisham, starring a fresh-off-the-apple-truck Matt Damon, and co-written and directed by a then down-on-his-luck Francis Ford Coppola. Critics didn't hate the movie, but audiences largely didn't care. Scotty, however, has seen it at least fifteen times.
Amelia's pick is the 2004 film "The Village," written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan and starring Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix--and widely seen as the movie where fans began to turn on the auteur director who had been so praised just a few years before for his smash hit "The Sixth Sense" (1999). Many people will tell you this film is a pretentious mess. Amelia is prepared to fight those people.
SPOILER WARNING: We go deep into the plots of these movies--so if you haven't seen them in awhile, fair warning.