“Hello, the Teller here again, to terrify you with – oh, wait, we talked about that last week. I’m not actually all that terrifying. At best, I have a greasy continental look about me, like a bad guy from a movie from the early Sixties about a chanteuse who ends up on a cruise ship with a repressed accountant. I’d be played by Phil Hartman in the tongue-in-cheek ironic movie version of the book. Would’ve been, anyway.
“But enough about me, this week I want to introduce you to the first two of my four story-narrating subordinates…
“
Freddie Demon, my pocket incubus, who was in charge of all the stories that were ‘spine-tingling tales of the occult, of the macabre, and the bizzare (sic)!’ I don’t know how that differed from all the other stories in the book, but the guy never asks me, so I never ask nobody else. I dunno, he seems happy, look at that eager grin.
“
Garry Ghoul is what Garry Shandling is now (sorry, it’s clearly too soon), but is also the second of my assistants. Dressed in a plastic diner tablecloth, this little house elf supposedly focused on the stories that were ‘tidbits from the world of the dead … tales of tormented souls.’ That actually sounds relatively unentertaining, even if it’s the Hieronymus Bosch kind of tormented souls. I have no idea what the narrative would even be – “Oh no, the bird pope is pooping me out and I’m going to fall from his high chair into that lake where there’s a naked lady with a bird on her head! So many birds!” I mean, points for creativity …
“I’ll save my other two fiendish factotums for next week. In the meantime, here’s a gory bit of history from The Thing vol.1 No.2 (no relation to the big orange guy), a Bob Forgione tale entitled …”
Kind of a weak adaptation of Poe there. I'll stick with the Roger Corman/Vincent Price movie...
ReplyDeleteGary Ghoul kind of looks like Gary Coleman as Etrigan. Still would've been a better casting decision than Keanu as John Constantine.
ReplyDelete