SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019)
With special guest Clay McLeod Chapman
Intro, Math Club, and Debate Society (spoiler-free) 00:00-30:00
Honor Roll and Detention (spoiler-heavy) 30:01-1:02:58
Superlatives (so. many. spoilers.) 1:02:59-1:21:11
Director André Øvredal
Screenplay Dan Hageman & Kevin Hageman, screen story by Guillermo del Toro and Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunston, based on the books by Alvin Schwartz
Featuring Austin Abrams, Gil Bellows, Javier Botet, Zoe Margaret Colletti, Natalie Ganzhorn, Michael Garza, Troy James, Dean Norris, Gabriel Rush, Mark Steger, Lorraine Toussaint, Austin Zajur
Released August 11, 2019
Budget $25 million
Box office $69 million US/Canada | $104.5 million worldwide
SPOILER-FREE SYNOPSIS
It’s Halloween 1968 in Mill Valley, Pennsylvania, a town best known for its Mill and its Valley. Friends Stella, Auggie, and Chuck decide to take revenge on some local bullies, led by Tommy, who’s dating Chuck’s sister Ruth. After removing his feces from the toilet to hand to Tommy, and throwing the requisite eggs at his car, the bullies track the friends to a drive-in movie theater showing Night of the Living Dead. That’s when Stella, Auggie, and Chuck hop in the car of Ramon, a mysterious drifter who has come to their town to escape the draft. Afterwards, the four make their way to a dilapidated home on the edge of town that once belonged to the wealthy Bellows family, who mysteriously disappeared shortly after the town’s titular mill shut down. The Bellows’ daughter Sarah was, we learn, a prolific teller of stories who was hidden away in a cellar by a family hellbent on keeping a terrible secret at bay.
SPOILER-FREE GUEST BIO
Clay McLeod Chapman is the author of novels Ghost Eaters, Whisper Down the Lane, The Remaking, and miss corpus, story collections nothing untoward, commencement and rest area, as well as The Tribe middle-grade series: Homeroom Headhunters, Camp Cannibal and Academic Assassins. His new novel, What Kind of Mother, arrives on September 12, 2023. Other projects include Quiet Part Loud, a 12-part horror podcast series from Jordan Peele and Monkeypaw Productions, written by Chapman and Mac Rogers. Chapman’s story late bloomer was adapted into a short film, directed by Craig William Macneill. An official selection at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, the short won Best Short at the Lake Placid Film Festival and the Brown Jenkins Award at the 12th Annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival. Their second short, Henley, based on the chapter “The Henley Road Motel” from Chapman’s novel miss corpus, was an official selection at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. It won Best Short at the 2011 Gen Art Film Festival and the 2011 Carmel Arts and Film Festival. The Boy (SXSW 2015), a feature-length adaptation of Henley, co-written with director Macneill, was produced by SpectreVision (Elijah Wood, Daniel Noah, and Josh C. Waller) in 2015. In comics, Chapman is the writer of the Marvel series Scream: Curse of Carnage, and has written Absolute Carnage: Separation Anxiety, Iron Fist: Phantom Limb, Typhoid Fever, as well as for Edge of Spider-Verse and Venomverse, The Avengers, Amazing Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, American Vampire, Scream: King In Black, and ORIGINS among others. Chapman is the creator of the rigorous storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. In the twenty years of its existence, it has performed internationally at the Romanian Theatre Festival of Sibiu, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, New York International Fringe Festival, Winnipeg Fringe Festival, Edmonton Fringe Festival, Minnesota Fringe Festival, Dublin-based thisisnotashop art space, IGNITE Festival, Women Center Stage Festival and Impact Theatre Festival. His story-monologues birdfeeder, undertow and the wet echo have been featured in The Best American Short Plays anthologies. Chapman was educated at the North Carolina School of the Arts for Drama, the Burren College of Art, and Sarah Lawrence College. He currently teaches writing at The Actors Studio MFA Program at Pace University. Favorite recess snack: saltines and peanut butter.
EPISODE NOTES
Music from “Scary Stories” by Marco Beltrami & Anna Drubich
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TRAILER
SUPERLATIVES
The Gaspar Noe Award for Most Disturbing Scene
Clay: The Pale Lady in the red room
Eric: Spider zit
Bradford: Auggie’s dinner of one
The Ellen Ripley Award for Character Who Most Deserves to Live
Clay: Chuck Steinberg
Eric: Auggie Hildenbrandt
Bradford: Chuck Steinberg
The Michael Myers Award for Character Who Most Deserves to Die
Clay: Roy Nicholls
Eric: Chief Turner
Bradford: Tommy Wilner
The Ken Russell Award for Most Baroque Screen Moment
Clay: Flashback about the Bellows family
Eric: The first appearance of The Jangly Man
Bradford: Stella, Chuck, and Auggie vs. Tommy Wilner
The Brad Dourif Award for Character Who Could Have Been Played by Brad Dourif
Clay: Chief Turner
Eric: The Jangly Man
Bradford: Roy Nicholls
FINAL LETTER GRADE
Clay: B
Eric: C+
Bradford: B