Episode 40 – In the Vault & The Descendant
It’s our 40th episode and we’re having a lock-in! Wanna join?
Thanks to excellent reader Anthony Tedesco, as well as musician Troy Sterling Nies for allowing us the use of his music again!
Next week, Cool Air!
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I *love* the show, but with this episode the music is a bit loud and distracts from the readings, I think.
I hope the technical issues on iTunes get rectified, also.
Connie
Wonderful that you are back. The coldest winter in years over here in Sweden has certainly been a lot easier to bear with some Lovecraftian despair served through your podcast. Love the music and reading as well, hats off for making some off Lovecraft’s worst work almost understandable. Looking forward to the next show…
Yeah, the music did seem to sit a bit high in the mix. Regardless, it was another great podcast. In the Vault isn’t great, but I like it anyway.
Oh, and I would totally watch Roger Corman’s Two Men and a Baby.
Excellent episode as usual. I’m so looking forward to next week! Cold Air is going to be a good one!!
He TRAMPLES PUPPIES! Wretched zombie fiend! And Tedesco is going for broke at the end of “In the Vault” and it’s an epic win, too. It’s not one of HPL’s most imaginative tales – to understate the issue – but for my money it works, regardless. By the way, the old Knife in the Grave story was a Twilight Zone ep way back when.
Sure wonder where THE DESCENDANT would have gone, if it had gone, but it didn’t, so it wouldn’t.
I agree, music too loud. Eagerly awaiting Cool Air! Also, sideline tales of acclimating to life in Ol’ Blighty would be interesting to us Anglophiles (of which HPL was one).
-The Gneech
Oh, and yes, the knife-in-the-grave story was a Twilight Zone ep., with Lee Marvin, Lee Van Cleef, and James “Roscoe P. Coltraine” Best. Part 1/3 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5Um2gMMZWw
Great stuff. 🙂
-The Gneech
Love this classic “Vault of Horror” E. C. comics style story. A good solid chiller with a great ending. H.P. is in his stride and is making this look easy. The idiot editor who turned down this story was a fool. Time has shewn HP to be all that Horror stories could hope for…. and more.
Hi guys! The voice mix was MUCH BETTER this time. I felt that you were both in the same room. For some reason the pace seemed quicker, however – maybe the result of editing? Anyway I enjoyed it. Looking forward to some Cool Air.
Aw, nuts! Guess I got a little overzealous with the scoring. But it’s so good! Oh, well…
Yes, I think the voice mix was better this time – there are some process things with the Atlantic divide we’re still working out, but I think we’re finally back to the new normal.
And just in time, as there are some EXCELLENT stories coming up!
To the best of my knowledge, HPL described the “Old Ones’ signs” in INNSMOUTH, not the Elder Sign, and he described them as swastikas. I don’t know of any Lovecraft story that describes the Elder Sign. He did DRAW it in a letter to Clark Ashton Smith; it looks like a pine branch.
I think when he talks about the “association of the homely and the wholesome,” he’s not referring to, you know, ugly people. I’m pretty sure he means “homely” as in “familiar, simple, ordinary,” that sort of thing. He’s basically restating his argument from “The Picture in the House” that ordinary, “wholesome” New England scenes can be as weird and horrifying as any spooky eastern European ruins or the like.
Other than that, bang up job, chaps.
It’s great to have the podcast back! It is an honor to have my music partnered with it. Thank you!
Great Podcast – it sounds great – the first story was great – Anthony Tedesco was great again … man this was .. well .. great!
I was just reading a collection of 1950’s horror comics called “four color fear” and there’s one by Jack Cole (of “Plastic Man” fame) called “Custodian Of The Dead” and it’s just a really hammed up version of “In The Vault” (which is pretty bad considering how hammy “In The Vault” is). It has a different, rats-in-the-wallish ending, but it has the thieving undertaker, the stacking of coffins to escape and the leg chewing!
Another great podcast.
From the Descendant the Gray’s Inn isn’t actually an inn. This is from Wikipedia:
‘Gray’s Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London which are the professional associations to one of which every barrister in England and Wales must belong. The Inns also provide libraries, dining facilities and professional accommodation. Each also has a church or chapel attached to it and is a self-contained precinct where barristers traditionally train and practise, although growth in the legal profession, together with a desire to practise from more modern accommodation[citation needed] caused many barristers’ chambers to move outside the precincts of the Inns of Court in the late 20th century.’
I think the surrounding area may also be known as Gray’s Inn.
[…] mentions was in an episode of The Twilight Zone. (Thanks, The Gneech!) Folks, we are all up […] HPPodcraft.com – The H.P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast Comments […]
“It’s shaped like a star with a little flame inside!”
“No, it’s a tree, it’s got branches on it!”
“I’m telling you, it’s a star!”
“Use the star one and you’ll be fighting off the Old Ones with your bare hands, it’s a tree!”
“Star!” “Tree!” “Star!” “Tree!”
(Tentacles!)
Meh it’s an Elder Sign