Back in March when I did my annual watch of Irish horror movies, I had intended to include an Irish themed chapter of my horror blog. That was not in the cards however when real life interfered and I didn’t have the time. As luck would have it, Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy featured two Irish horror films on their most recent episode of The Last Drive-In. So, six weeks late, I present to you this Irish themed horror blog that happens to coincide with Walpurgisnacht.
If you don’t watch The Last Drive-In (you should have been this whole time, horror fan, because there are only three episodes left before the series is over), Walpurgis Night is Joe Bob’s favorite holiday. This German holiday originated during a time when rabies and whooping cough were prevalent and fear of witchcraft was hyperbolic to say the least. Christians prayed to God through Saint Walpurga to protect themselves from witchcraft and the other ailments that threatened their health. There are parts of Europe who still light bonfires to ward off evil spirits and witches on Saint Walpurga’s Eve – April 30. In England, rural communities hung cowslips to ward off evil spirits on Walpurgis Night. The tradition unfortunately faded out during the second half of the 20th century.
Like many a horror fan, Joe Bob uses this holiday to celebrate how witches and witchcraft are utilized in film. Horror filmmakers love using witches in stories about revenge or women finding the delicious evil in the craft or the occult in general. Irish horror film Oddity uses witchcraft as a way of getting revenge.
What I’m more interested in, however, is how this little Irish film uses yellow. It starts at remote country house newly bought by a young couple, Ted and Dani. Dani is home alone when one of her husband’s patients – he’s a psychiatrist – shows up to warn her to leave because a stranger has infiltrated the house. Inside the room she occupies, a yellow tent has been erected because apparently furniture isn’t bought yet. Inside it, a lamp casts eerie light on the surroundings, turned yellow by the color of the tent. This light lands on this patient who has a glass eye as he peers through a window in the door. It makes him look ill, both psychologically and physically. Was unsettling seeing this in the theater.
Dani does not trust him, to her own detriment, and refuses to open the door. She hears a noise and ends up trying to hide in the tent. It ends up being the place where she dies horrifically. Later, we see her blood is spattered on the inside of the tent, red set against yellow. The sickly yellow lighting combined with the false safety that the yellow tent was supposed to provide are further poisoned by red. The color of anger. Hatred.
The patient, named Olin, is blamed for her death and is later found with his head bashed in. Ted finds the glass eye after Olin’s death. A year later, Ted brings the eye to Dani’s twin sister Darcy who owns a Cabinet of Curiosities shop. She also happens to be blind (brain cancer) which allows her to sense the presence of evil spirits in certain objects. A sixth sense. She has her own collection of oddities set against a sickly yellow light showing both the evil that lurks within the objects and the lingering grief that Darcy feels about her sister’s death.
Darcy ends up going to the old country house uninvited and Ted leaves her alone with his new girlfriend, Yana. With her she brings a trunk containing a life-sized wooden golem – a wooden human shaped object. A gift, she says, that would have been a gift one gives for a fifth wedding anniversary. It was a gift that a witch had given her mother on her fifth wedding anniversary. Side note – the wood anniversary was also used in Gone Girl during which the wife presented her husband with Punch and Judy dolls that ended up implicating him in her (faked) death. A popular anniversary in film, apparently.
While Ted is away at work, Darcy reveals to Yana what she believes happened to her sister. When Ted gave her his glass eye, she saw that Olin had overheard Ted hiring an orderly at the hospital he works at to kill Dani so he could be with Yana AND keep the house. Which explains why Olin arrived at the house to warn Dani out of the house. That eerie yellow lighting that looked sickly was really meant to show safety. Olin had every good intention. We just didn’t know it at the time.
Yana finds this information and the golem to be unsettling as it appears to move positions of its own accord. When she examines it, eerie yellow lighting all around, she finds five objects within its head that include locks of hair and photographs of Dani and Darcy. When Darcy demands the objects be put back and Yana sees what she believes to be Dani in the house, she leaves. It’s then that Ted returns and Darcy admits that she was the one who killed Olin believing he had killed her sister.
Ted tries to prove his innocence by saying that he will bring an investigator to the house. He leaves his cell phone with Darcy but puts it on the other side of a hidden trap door in the floor so when he calls it later, Darcy falls through the door in an attempt to retrieve the phone. Ted sends the hospital orderly to make sure Darcy is dead from her fall, but ends up being injured himself by the golem. Ted has the man admitted to his hospital hoping that it would keep people from listening to the ramblings about the golem.
Back at the house, Ted receives a package from Darcy’s curiosities store that contains a bell. The kind that hotels use at their front desk. Darcy had told him early in the film that the bell had the spirit of an evil bellhop in it. Ted, believing his rational world view would prove that Darcy didn’t really see things within these objects, he rings the bell. Unaware that the bellhop is now standing behind him, Ted begins to relax. End scene.
What I love about this type of supernatural justice is that Ted was beginning to believe in everything Darcy had told him, but being a psychologist, he needed to right the world that had been turned upside down why his sister-in-law. He needed to know he was the rational one. Even as he thought he had proved this to himself, the bellhop was still there. Waiting.
Every time I watch this film, it gets better. New details emerge. It takes what we assume that yellow means in the context of this story and flips the script. Olin represented safety not illness, but the lighting gave us a false impression. Darcy, too, thought Olin was guilty until she realized he wasn’t. This is a film that demands you pay attention. It demands you put away your devices and watch or else you’ll miss something. A detail in the background. A trick of the light. The position of the golem. That is what makes it so great.
I was thrilled when I saw that Joe Bob and Darcy were including this film on their show. I’ve been watching The Last Drive-In since its debut in 2019. Unfortunately, Shudder and its parent company AMC have cancelled the series. When that news dropped, many of us wondered why. Now we know, however, that the reasoning for this was so Shudder could acquire the rights to Tales From the Crypt. That series has been absent from streaming this whole time and not even HBO Max had it available – surprising since it originally aired on HBO back in the 1990s. Getting the series and the signoffs for all the copyrights wasn’t easy, or cheap, so I guess I understand.
I’ve owned Tales From the Crypt on DVD for the better part of two decades so I could have done without it landing on Shudder if it meant losing The Last Drive-In. Joe Bob and Darcy introduced viewers to obscure horror films that many of us either never heard of or would never have watched had they not presented the films in such a fun and knowledgeable way. In that regard, Shudder is losing something special. Something that brought many together every couple weeks on social media to watch to show united in horror. We are the Mutant Family. We buy the shirts featuring art made for the show from Fright Rags and show up when Joe Bob and Darcy travel to different cities to speak live. They were just in Minneapolis this past winter for a showing of the original My Bloody Valentine. It is during these times that I realize how many horror fans there are. How big of a family we are. Joe Bob brought us together. It is sad that Shudder has cancelled that.
That said, if introducing Tales From the Crypt to a broader and younger audience for the first time is what Shudder wants, then I guess I can’t complain too much. It was a series I watched a lot of back in the 1990s. Gateway horror at its finest. So, definitely check this series out when it lands on May 1st. It certainly has a place in horror history.
If you want to check out The Last Drive-In, it is still streaming on AMC+ and Shudder. Only episodes that feature films currently streaming on Shudder are available, but they are all worth watching. Becky says check it out.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
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Becky Tyler Art and Photography 
Chapter 18
Back in March when I did my annual watch of Irish horror movies, I had intended to include an Irish themed chapter of my horror blog. That was not in the cards however when real life interfered and I didn’t have the time. As luck would have it, Joe Bob Briggs and Darcy featured two Irish horror films on their most recent episode of The Last Drive-In. So, six weeks late, I present to you this Irish themed horror blog that happens to coincide with Walpurgisnacht.
If you don’t watch The Last Drive-In (you should have been this whole time, horror fan, because there are only three episodes left before the series is over), Walpurgis Night is Joe Bob’s favorite holiday. This German holiday originated during a time when rabies and whooping cough were prevalent and fear of witchcraft was hyperbolic to say the least. Christians prayed to God through Saint Walpurga to protect themselves from witchcraft and the other ailments that threatened their health. There are parts of Europe who still light bonfires to ward off evil spirits and witches on Saint Walpurga’s Eve – April 30. In England, rural communities hung cowslips to ward off evil spirits on Walpurgis Night. The tradition unfortunately faded out during the second half of the 20th century.
Like many a horror fan, Joe Bob uses this holiday to celebrate how witches and witchcraft are utilized in film. Horror filmmakers love using witches in stories about revenge or women finding the delicious evil in the craft or the occult in general. Irish horror film Oddity uses witchcraft as a way of getting revenge.
What I’m more interested in, however, is how this little Irish film uses yellow. It starts at remote country house newly bought by a young couple, Ted and Dani. Dani is home alone when one of her husband’s patients – he’s a psychiatrist – shows up to warn her to leave because a stranger has infiltrated the house. Inside the room she occupies, a yellow tent has been erected because apparently furniture isn’t bought yet. Inside it, a lamp casts eerie light on the surroundings, turned yellow by the color of the tent. This light lands on this patient who has a glass eye as he peers through a window in the door. It makes him look ill, both psychologically and physically. Was unsettling seeing this in the theater.
Dani does not trust him, to her own detriment, and refuses to open the door. She hears a noise and ends up trying to hide in the tent. It ends up being the place where she dies horrifically. Later, we see her blood is spattered on the inside of the tent, red set against yellow. The sickly yellow lighting combined with the false safety that the yellow tent was supposed to provide are further poisoned by red. The color of anger. Hatred.
The patient, named Olin, is blamed for her death and is later found with his head bashed in. Ted finds the glass eye after Olin’s death. A year later, Ted brings the eye to Dani’s twin sister Darcy who owns a Cabinet of Curiosities shop. She also happens to be blind (brain cancer) which allows her to sense the presence of evil spirits in certain objects. A sixth sense. She has her own collection of oddities set against a sickly yellow light showing both the evil that lurks within the objects and the lingering grief that Darcy feels about her sister’s death.
Darcy ends up going to the old country house uninvited and Ted leaves her alone with his new girlfriend, Yana. With her she brings a trunk containing a life-sized wooden golem – a wooden human shaped object. A gift, she says, that would have been a gift one gives for a fifth wedding anniversary. It was a gift that a witch had given her mother on her fifth wedding anniversary. Side note – the wood anniversary was also used in Gone Girl during which the wife presented her husband with Punch and Judy dolls that ended up implicating him in her (faked) death. A popular anniversary in film, apparently.
While Ted is away at work, Darcy reveals to Yana what she believes happened to her sister. When Ted gave her his glass eye, she saw that Olin had overheard Ted hiring an orderly at the hospital he works at to kill Dani so he could be with Yana AND keep the house. Which explains why Olin arrived at the house to warn Dani out of the house. That eerie yellow lighting that looked sickly was really meant to show safety. Olin had every good intention. We just didn’t know it at the time.
Yana finds this information and the golem to be unsettling as it appears to move positions of its own accord. When she examines it, eerie yellow lighting all around, she finds five objects within its head that include locks of hair and photographs of Dani and Darcy. When Darcy demands the objects be put back and Yana sees what she believes to be Dani in the house, she leaves. It’s then that Ted returns and Darcy admits that she was the one who killed Olin believing he had killed her sister.
Ted tries to prove his innocence by saying that he will bring an investigator to the house. He leaves his cell phone with Darcy but puts it on the other side of a hidden trap door in the floor so when he calls it later, Darcy falls through the door in an attempt to retrieve the phone. Ted sends the hospital orderly to make sure Darcy is dead from her fall, but ends up being injured himself by the golem. Ted has the man admitted to his hospital hoping that it would keep people from listening to the ramblings about the golem.
Back at the house, Ted receives a package from Darcy’s curiosities store that contains a bell. The kind that hotels use at their front desk. Darcy had told him early in the film that the bell had the spirit of an evil bellhop in it. Ted, believing his rational world view would prove that Darcy didn’t really see things within these objects, he rings the bell. Unaware that the bellhop is now standing behind him, Ted begins to relax. End scene.
What I love about this type of supernatural justice is that Ted was beginning to believe in everything Darcy had told him, but being a psychologist, he needed to right the world that had been turned upside down why his sister-in-law. He needed to know he was the rational one. Even as he thought he had proved this to himself, the bellhop was still there. Waiting.
Every time I watch this film, it gets better. New details emerge. It takes what we assume that yellow means in the context of this story and flips the script. Olin represented safety not illness, but the lighting gave us a false impression. Darcy, too, thought Olin was guilty until she realized he wasn’t. This is a film that demands you pay attention. It demands you put away your devices and watch or else you’ll miss something. A detail in the background. A trick of the light. The position of the golem. That is what makes it so great.
I was thrilled when I saw that Joe Bob and Darcy were including this film on their show. I’ve been watching The Last Drive-In since its debut in 2019. Unfortunately, Shudder and its parent company AMC have cancelled the series. When that news dropped, many of us wondered why. Now we know, however, that the reasoning for this was so Shudder could acquire the rights to Tales From the Crypt. That series has been absent from streaming this whole time and not even HBO Max had it available – surprising since it originally aired on HBO back in the 1990s. Getting the series and the signoffs for all the copyrights wasn’t easy, or cheap, so I guess I understand.
I’ve owned Tales From the Crypt on DVD for the better part of two decades so I could have done without it landing on Shudder if it meant losing The Last Drive-In. Joe Bob and Darcy introduced viewers to obscure horror films that many of us either never heard of or would never have watched had they not presented the films in such a fun and knowledgeable way. In that regard, Shudder is losing something special. Something that brought many together every couple weeks on social media to watch to show united in horror. We are the Mutant Family. We buy the shirts featuring art made for the show from Fright Rags and show up when Joe Bob and Darcy travel to different cities to speak live. They were just in Minneapolis this past winter for a showing of the original My Bloody Valentine. It is during these times that I realize how many horror fans there are. How big of a family we are. Joe Bob brought us together. It is sad that Shudder has cancelled that.
That said, if introducing Tales From the Crypt to a broader and younger audience for the first time is what Shudder wants, then I guess I can’t complain too much. It was a series I watched a lot of back in the 1990s. Gateway horror at its finest. So, definitely check this series out when it lands on May 1st. It certainly has a place in horror history.
If you want to check out The Last Drive-In, it is still streaming on AMC+ and Shudder. Only episodes that feature films currently streaming on Shudder are available, but they are all worth watching. Becky says check it out.
Discover more from Becky Tyler Art and Photography
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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