Fantastico Disasterpiece Theatre: Good Adams Family Fun
Gringo Fantastico is a retired luchador presenting Troma films from the safety of a deteriorating recreation center tucked into chaotic Tromaville. He is begrudgingly accompanied by the French-Canadian demon piñata Francois who criticizes and disparages Fantastico throughout each episode. This week’s special guests are the Adams family (Wonder Wheel Productions). New episodes release on the first of each month on Troma NOW.
Chapter Tres
Fantastico Disasterpiece Theatre returns for Chapter Tres with “Hellbender and the Mixologist’s Mirror.” Initially premiering on October 1st, Gringo Fantastico (Nate Turnpaugh) hosts Charles Kaufman’s Mother’s Day (1980). The film is based around a rape-revenge plot and is Toby Poser’s personal pick because the “vengeance in it is satisfying.” This one very much deserves a content warning for being a prime example of a Troma film.
Behind the Mask
Cutting into footage that once again feels ripped directly from the past, the episode begins with Fantastico apologizing for his prior poor behavior. Rather, he emphasizes he has been “told to apologize.” Things appear to go well before agitation kicks in and Fantastico attacks the interviewer. Better luck next time, I guess.
Fantastico’s anger is once again centered around his mask. Audiences can feel the growing desperation to free himself from his alias. Throughout these segments, Turnpaugh crafts a surprisingly emotional look at Fantastico’s psyche. Who among us hasn’t wanted to rip off the socially-acceptable mask they’ve created to reveal the feral human beneath it? I never thought I’d relate to a luchador so much.
Humor and Hijinks
Entering Tromaville’s recreation center, the audience can see Halloween decorations. These touches help the set feel lived-in and create mental images of Fantastico and Francois bickering over their placement. Bringing in another Halloween tradition, Fantastico looks into a mirror and repeats “Bloody Mary” three times. Imagine my surprise when he walks out with an actual bloody mary. Which Francois promptly turns to “just a goddamned V8.”
Speaking with Turnpaugh, he reveals the entire episode’s script came out of him thinking of this particular joke. “I’m not going to waste this joke just as a throwaway gag.” When his wife learns of his intentions, she apparently says, “That’s really funny. You’re really stupid.” The joke expands and changes throughout the episode, and leaves me laughing each time.
Humor and fun is a key tenet when it comes to Turnpaugh’s production style. As he puts it to his crew, “We need to do it and we need to do it well, but it needs to be fun for everyone.” His primary concern with production is always ensuring he’s meeting his crews needs. With this episode in particular, he wanted his guests to have the best possible experience. He even calls in a mutated janitor to set up their chairs.
The Adams Family
Toby Poser, John Adams and Lulu Adams are three-fourths of the family which makes up both the film company Wonder Wheel Productions and the band Hellbender. Zelda Adams is unfortunately unavailable to join the rest of the family for their interview. When Fantastico asks how they made it through Tromaville to the rec center, they assure him they’ve had plenty of “inoculations.”
The Adams family has previously been interviewed on The Last Drive-In, albeit in a different configuration in season three. Toby, John and Zelda are present for that interview and it is Lulu who is unable to attend. Turnpaugh’s interview style gives Joe Bob’s a run for the money when presented with a comparison between the two. The most notable difference which works in Turnpaugh’s favor, is his choice to have all present members of the family together from the start of the interview.
Hoosier Hospitality
The family does seem to be a little too excited to be in Indiana, where Turnpaugh films Disasterpiece Theatre. John says, “We’ve driven through Indiana so many times and we have to look at it. Now we’re part of it.” Turnpaugh reveals in our interview he had treated the family to a full course of Hoosier hospitality in a very short amount of time.
“I had a one day window to get them in, shoot them in, and ensure they got back in time,” he says. After picking them up from the airport, they all go to a restaurant for what should be a quick meal before bed. It instead turns into a three-hour conversation over food and drinks. When the family is in need of good coffee and tea the next morning, Turnpaugh knows just where to go.
“I drive them out and I take them to my parent’s house.” He describes the ensuing encounter much like any between family friends, despite just meeting each other. Lulu plays with the family dog, John discusses carpentry with his father, and Toby and his mother share conversation. “My parents have been big supporters of this show, which helps.”
Good Bones
All of this culminates into a fantastico interview with the trio that feels like a good conversation between friends. The family fully buys into the conceit of the show, often throwing in references to Tromavilla and jabs at Francois. At one point Toby offers to kill Francois for Fantastico and the demon piñata is actually speechless.
As the family answers Fantastico’s questions, they build effortlessly off of each other. They tell stories about their family, past travels and productions and future plans. It is obvious they have a solid foundation of admiration and respect for each other. Wonder Wheel Productions itself gets its name from a series of sentimental family moments which they share in the interview. When they need more bodies for their films, they joke “How many cousins do we have?”
Future Releases
Toby, John, and Lulu also discuss their upcoming works Where the Devil Roams under Wonder Wheel Productions and Hell Hole under Blood and Honey Pictures. Where the Devil Roams is a film “with more our DNA in it” according to Toby, while Hell Hole is the largest production they have worked on.
Where the Devil Roams was originally set to be a Tubi exclusive, but it appears it will be premiering in independent theaters on November 3rd before becoming available to rent/buy the digital version on November 7th. Release information for Hell Hole is not yet available.
Punk Rock is an Attitude
This episode marks the first in-person guest interview Turnpaugh has done as Fantastico. He and Toby have built a friendship over time, and Toby believes Disasterpiece Theatre is “like watching your favorite band in a dive bar.” The show is punk-rock as fuck.
I can’t agree more. In its absolute defiance of normalcy, it is endlessly entertaining and informative. Fantastico’s development as a character is paying off and Turnpaugh’s abilities as showrunner, producer, host etc. continue to shine.
My rating for Chapter Tres of Fantastico Disasterpiece Theatre:
(4.7 / 5)
Follow @realfantastico on the platform formerly known as Twitter to know when to join in with the rest of the Fantasticats as they live-tweet each episode.
We’ve now reached the end of Fallout, season one. As I mentioned during the last review, I was heartily concerned that this show, like so many others, was going to drop the ball at the finale and ruin an entire season.
Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. This episode was everything it needed to be and more.
Let’s discuss.
The story
We begin our story with Maximus returning to the Brotherhood of Steel compound. He has a head, which he is claiming is the real head of Wilzig.
I don’t know why he thought that was going to work.
Of course, it doesn’t. The elder cleric is about to kill Maximus until Dane says that they hurt their foot.
Because of this, the Brotherhood is sent out to get the head. Or rather, what’s inside of it. They head to the city run by Moldaver. This happens to be the same place Lucy and The Ghoul are headed.
There, Lucy does manage to find her father. What she ends up finding is so much more than she wanted to find.
What worked
The first thing I have to discuss is how seamlessly the storylines of the series combined.
Each of our four main characters has been on their own journey. Lucy is trying to save her father. Maximus wants to become a knight. The Ghoul wants to find his family. Norm wants to know what’s going on in Vault 31.
I sure wasn’t expecting all of these stories to come together in the way that they did. And to preserve the ending, I don’t dare say more. I will only say that yes, all four stories tie in perfectly with one another. By the end, two characters end up having the very same goal.
As I hinted before, I did not see the twist ending coming.
Yes, we might have guessed some things from the last episode. We of course guessed that Lucy’s dad was involved in some nefarious and probably sci-fi way. But the way this story twists at the end is nothing short of serpent-like. Which is why I cannot go into too much detail here. If you haven’t seen it yet, you need to experience it blind.
Finally, I can give the Fallout season finale the most important praise I can ever give a finale. It did its number one job, getting us excited for season two. We have answers, but now we have new and more exciting questions. And even better, we have a desire to see vengeance done.
What didn’t work
Now that the season is done, though, I can bring up something that bothered me through all eight episodes.
I don’t buy Lucy and Maximus’s relationship.
Maybe because it’s rushed. Maybe because the two actors don’t have a lot of chemistry. Maybe it’s because I’m not sure even now either character could tell you a single thing about the other. There is just no spark between the two. So their love story feels tacked on. I honestly feel like their love story could have been removed from the show entirely and it would have no negative impact.
I also didn’t buy Dane’s confession. This is a minor spoiler, but it comes up early in the episode. Dane confesses that they hurt their foot so that they wouldn’t have to go into the wastelands.
And at first, I kept expecting Maximus to thank them later. I honestly thought that they were just lying to save Maximus’s life. But no, as it turns out, they were not.
But it just doesn’t make sense. The motivations don’t jive. I honestly think it would have been better for the story if they had lied to save Maximus’s life.
At least then there’d be one other Brother of Steel who had some nobility.
In the end, this first season of Fallout was everything I could ask for. So far as I can tell, it was everything fans of the Fallout franchise could ask for. There wasn’t a bad episode in the bunch. Honestly, the only real complaint I had was that the season was so short.
I’ll be counting down the days to season two, and I hope you’ll be joining me then. Because war, war never changes.
(5 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Episode seven of Amazon’s Fallout is the penultimate episode. This is often when a series goes off the rails and starts to mess things up. After being burned so often recently, I was apprehensive when this episode began.
Thankfully, this was a fear that did not come to pass. And so far, Fallout’s finale is doing just fine.
The story
A lot happened in this episode, so we’re just going to skim over some of the more important storylines. We’ll start with Lucy and Maximus, in Vault 4. Lucy has discovered what she believes is a secret collection of monsters. But of course, it turns out that it’s simply people that the vault dwellers discovered and are trying to help heal. But her meddling around was enough for them to kick her out of the vault. With two weeks’ worth of food and water, of course.
But Maximus assumes they’re going to do something much worse. And so he steals their power coil to fight through the perfectly innocent people and save Lucy.
Meanwhile, we dive further into The Ghoul’s past, when he was still Western star Cooper.
After attending a Communist meeting, he’s approached by Lee Moldaver. She suggests that Vault Tech is hiding something, something terrible. And she tells Cooper that his wife Barbara knows more about this than she’s letting on. Moldaver gets Cooper to bug Barbara’s Pip Boy, and listen in on an important meeting.
Poor Cooper hears far more than he wants to.
War, war never changes.
What worked
I would like to first point out that this was one of the funniest episodes so far. I mean, it got incredibly tragic and sad by the end. But it also had some great laugh-out-loud moments. This should be a surprise to no one, with such an array of comedians guest starring. Chris Parnell was in the last episode as well but is now joined by the incredibly funny Fred Armisen as DJ Carl. This is of course not his first foray into the funny and spooky world, as he also played Uncle Fester in Wednesday.
Most of what makes this episode funny is the character’s understated and deadpan responses to wild situations. When Maximus returns the energy coil and is greeted by a simple thank you. When Thaddeus gets an arrow through his neck, and slowly realizes that hey, he might be a ghoul. These were hilarious because they could have been truly dark moments. But because this world is so dark, and the characters have already been through so much, they’re simply done. They take all of this in stride because of course that’s what’s happening. It’s par for the course for them.
On the other hand, we’ve finally seen the full extent of The Ghoul/Cooper’s past. And it’s so much worse than we could have imagined. I assumed that he’d lost his beloved wife and daughter in the atomic blasts two hundred years ago, somehow not dying with them and instead turning into a literal and figurative monster. The truth is so much worse. I’ll do my best not to spoil the ending. But I will say this. There is nothing more painful than mourning someone and hating them at the same time. And it’s easy to see how Cooper turned into The Ghoul. That sort of pain could drive anyone mad.
This balance between comedy and tragedy is one of the reasons why this episode worked so well. It’s one of the reasons why the series is working so well. It manages to combine the core tenets of theater in a way that never compromises the strengths of either. The eventual downfall of Thaddeus is a great example of this because it’s both tragic and funny. We’ve seen what happens to ghouls, and it’s a horrible end. But as he’s hardly been a sympathetic character, we can all get a good laugh at his predicament as well.
The sheer amount of good old-fashioned gore doesn’t hurt either, of course.
What didn’t work
All that being said, there was one thing that bothered me about this episode. And it was the reveal of Vault 4’s big secret.
Honestly, I was expecting the Vault 4 storyline to go way darker. I wanted it to go way darker. While I’ve never played these games myself, I know enough about the story to say that these vaults are not the bastions of safety and morality that they have so far been portrayed as. And while that has certainly been alluded to, we haven’t seen it.
We haven’t seen the depravity in these vaults. And it’s there. But maybe we just haven’t gotten to it yet.
In the end, The Radio did exactly what it needed to do. It set us up to have most of our questions answered in the season finale. And I can’t wait to see how it all ends.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
Amazon Prime’s Fallout has continued to be a suspenseful delight. And with the last episode’s dramatic cliffhanger, I was certainly looking forward to this one.
Thankfully, it did not disappoint.
The story
We start our story with Lucy and Maximus waking up in a decontamination room in Vault 4. They’re welcomed guests, once they’re done with decontamination.
Vault 4 at first seems very much like Vault 33 to Lucy. She’s surprised, however, to find that a lot of people who live there are actually from the surface. And the people who live in this vault are, well, a bit mutated. Their overseer, named Benjamin and played by the hilarious Chris Parnell, has just one eye in the middle of his face. Some people have extra limbs or missing ones. And yet it’s clear that everyone’s living together in peace and companionship.
At least, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. There is, after all, the matter of the weird cult the surface dwellers seem to have formed. And, the small matter of the vault level no one is supposed to go to. It should come as no surprise that, of course, that’s exactly where Lucy finds herself before the episode is over.
Of course, this episode wouldn’t be complete without checking in with the Ghoul. And his part of the story is, honestly, more compelling.
We see him apprehended by people referring to themselves as The Government. And while he appears to be a prisoner, it’s clear soon enough that he’s the one in charge.
Far more compelling are his flashbacks to his past. While his wife, Barb, is starting to be more secretive, he learns more than he wants to about Vault Tec. He also learns that the Communist party in Hollywood might know more about what Barb does for a living than he does. And it’s clear soon that she never wanted him to know.
For good reason.
What worked
I first want to draw attention to the excellent way we are learning about the Ghoul. As we learn more and more about his past, we can see how he’s become the monster he is today. It’s clear that once upon a time he had everything he could want. A lovely home, a family he lived for, and a successful career. And he lost all of that, even his dog. And with those losses, he lost his humanity in more ways than one.
But I also think we’re seeing signs that his humanity at least isn’t as lost as he thought it was.
On a lighter note, I loved Maximus’s response to the vault. While he’s apprehensive at first, he is swept away by the welcome basket. He’s lived his whole life hungry, barely surviving, and suddenly he has food. Good food. Caviar and oysters. He has a warm robe and TV and a safe place to exist. It must have been like stepping into a fairy tale for him. And while it wasn’t exactly helpful for Lucy, it’s completely relatable that he decided to sink into a chair and have a snack in front of the TV for a while.
What didn’t work
While this episode was mostly good, I do have one complaint. When Lucy is first meeting with Overseer Benjamin, we see him accidentally drinking a cup of coffee that has gotten moldy.
Now, this makes perfect sense in our world to convey someone too busy and forgetful to clean up old mugs. But it’s hard to fathom someone living in a Vault in which every resource is carefully monitored, letting something like coffee go bad. It’s a small detail, and it was funny. Also more relatable than I’d like to admit. But in this instance, in this world, it was jarring.
So far this season has been intense. There’s a lot of intrigue and mystery. There’s a lot of high emotions. And there’s a lot on the line for everyone. Maybe, for one character, more than we’ve ever realized before.
Good thing we still have two episodes to discover what’s happening.
(4 / 5)
If you like my work, you can check out my latest science fiction/horror novel, Nova, launching on May 17th. Pre-orders are available now on Amazon.
