INSIDE THE FEAR - WHO IS RAMON? (AND OTHER UNINTERESTING QUESTIONS)

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[00:01:34] What? Oh God, it's you. Well, you've just caught me urinating in some bins all the way from sunny

[00:01:45] Brussels, but that's sleepwalking. And since you're here, why not continue your deep dive

[00:01:55] into the minds of my minions with our latest House of Fear roundtable rant? Co-creators and scribes

[00:02:03] Alex Lynch and Sam Tomers, merge with composer and sound scapegoat Odin Ornhill Marson to discuss

[00:02:11] how the House of Fear first met Ramon. I'm glad it meant something to them. I'll freely admit

[00:02:20] I was probably trying to rob them. Now what? Oh, you're hungry for more actual

[00:02:28] teratigs. Listen, I'm still digging but you can quit. You're crying. It's shameful. We're on it.

[00:02:34] Oh, it's coming like a pervert on a washing machine. So until then listen on.

[00:02:48] I suppose there's a question of how Ramon got involved. I just happen to know him.

[00:02:55] Of course, Sam knew him. Let's say he's the horror connoisseur and he knows all the really dodgy

[00:03:01] people. Well, he was working. I think it was yeah, well, I first encountered him in the

[00:03:05] toilets in GAY late. He was what I thought he was doing was handing out towels, but it turned

[00:03:11] out he was just stealing perfume and we got chatting and he sort of then wandered back through

[00:03:17] Central London and told me all about how it's going to hurt me. And I knew then I'd found my man.

[00:03:24] And it turns out he lived in an abandoned castle. Great. When did you find out?

[00:03:31] Channel. Yeah, no, just the English channel. English channel. When did you find out he was

[00:03:35] actually into horror? Round about the time he stopped punching me. He was definitely

[00:03:41] yeah, it turned out he was more a fan of the older stuff. He didn't own a television,

[00:03:45] which was quite confusing, but he's impressive. He just said it was remarkably easy to break into

[00:03:50] cinemas and especially the smaller the town, the easier the task, which was inspirational. So

[00:03:56] yeah, that's it. And you met him quite soon after, but you've never actually

[00:04:00] shaken hands with him or touched him in any way? No, I always kept a distance. At the time,

[00:04:05] I was blaming COVID and lockdown and everything. And now I'm rapidly running out of reasons to not

[00:04:14] be in such close proximity. Well, since the way he introduces himself with, I can break your fingers

[00:04:19] in 17 different ways, you just don't want to shake his hand. He does say that a lot. Yeah.

[00:04:25] No. And I'm very, what's the word, brittle? Sure. Sure. Yeah, you need a pain threshold,

[00:04:32] I think, to enter into any kind of. But we suffer, we suffer his oddities for because he provides a

[00:04:40] very important aspect to the show. He knows where we live. Yes. Yes, we do have to. He is remarkably

[00:04:48] like quite the constant professional once the kind of things are rolling once things are rolling.

[00:04:53] Yeah. And get him in a velvet and he's on. He's on. Yeah, he's absolutely on. Yeah.

[00:04:58] Roaring fire, a nice big deep seat. Yeah. And we managed to sort of accommodate his entourage.

[00:05:04] Yeah. Oh, wow. Which who you'll have heard in like the languages,

[00:05:11] languages, sponsorships and the women that occasionally follow him around.

[00:05:16] Amazing. They just drift in and out of his house.

[00:05:19] Because it's him that sorted the language as sponsor. We wouldn't have been able to make

[00:05:23] the show if we didn't have the sponsor from languages. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:05:28] Closely related to Mrs. Freshly's, I think as well, the British version, I think,

[00:05:33] Mrs. Freshly's is one of the very, you know, they're both able to produce high quality products.

[00:05:40] Yeah. And they're very good. I think they've been trying to work out some kind of collaboration.

[00:05:44] But for what is a mystery? Well, it's difficult. You can't really,

[00:05:49] you can't really contest languages reach. They do so much. They're very good.

[00:05:53] Yeah, their lawyers are very good. They have to be. Yeah.

[00:05:58] So talking about the influences for terror tapes, what were you guys sort of cite as being

[00:06:05] sort of influences for the format, the tone, all the sorts of things that we find in the show?

[00:06:12] Where did all of those things come from? Well, we had a pretty clear starting point for the

[00:06:17] format. I've always been a fan, I know Alex too has been a fan of Innocent Mysteries, which is a

[00:06:23] really old, I think it's a 50s 40s, 40s, 40s radio series with a lot of co-stars including,

[00:06:30] and you might be able to see him here, Boris Karloff not in makeup. But it was,

[00:06:35] it was a sort of a mystery of the week series where you had a rotating cast. The biggest

[00:06:42] influence was probably languages because they had a deal, a sweet deal with Lipton Ice Tea.

[00:06:47] And Colgate Tooth Powder. Colgate Tooth Powder.

[00:06:51] So it was powder. Yeah, they'd have a sort of a body in the boot of a car episode and then,

[00:06:55] you know, they'd go, you know what? It reminds me of the need to clean your tea.

[00:07:02] You know what he needs? A nice cool refreshing iced tea.

[00:07:06] But also there were some episodes where it would be like,

[00:07:08] there would be like an assistant kind of thing. So it's like, you know, sort of going,

[00:07:15] oh, you know, if there was a ghost in the house, what would you do? Well, I want to make sure I

[00:07:20] was wearing this jewelry. Yes. So that's definitely been aped with languages.

[00:07:26] Yeah. And wrapped up to a psychotic extent. I mean, and in terms of the, even the format

[00:07:33] with the host, there was a host of the week. They, I can't remember his name.

[00:07:37] They changed it, but it was the same creepy voice over. So when we found Ramon, we just thought

[00:07:43] it was perfect. Yeah, captured it. Yeah. And it's just, but I mean, they didn't

[00:07:48] manage through people's bins. But no. And the host of the inner science and would kind of do

[00:07:54] the sort of like terrible puns and then kind of go, yeah. Yes. Yeah. It was fantastic.

[00:08:01] And the production values as well were really quite high in the 40s. Obviously, the radio was a much

[00:08:06] more prominent medium. Sure. And it's actually like, I mean, it's very obviously very melodramatic,

[00:08:12] but it's like, it's done well. Like it's really, really good. I mean, there's a reason they're

[00:08:17] quite hard to find. There are loads on YouTube. Outside of the internet. Yeah. There are loads

[00:08:21] on YouTube that you can listen to, but yeah. And yeah. And so the lights out is another one.

[00:08:26] Lights out is a really good alternative. And so we, you know, I think that was primarily the format,

[00:08:34] but then in terms of the content we did, we didn't want to make something that seemed

[00:08:39] classic comedy per se, not always the format, the links were going to be quite classic and

[00:08:44] old fashioned, but with the other influence, the big influence was Gialo. Gialo. Some people

[00:08:51] call it Gialo. And Argento in particular. Oh, completely. Yeah. Der Argento as I said before,

[00:08:59] like that was kind of my gateway into, into like, just, I don't know, just it was very different.

[00:09:08] I loved how bright and colorful it was. And like the aesthetic of it was just so like.

[00:09:15] And there's a campness and added to the sort of the sound, the dubbing is wonderful. The complex,

[00:09:22] weird dubbing. Yeah. It's just, just fabulous. I mean, they're really all, and again you have that,

[00:09:29] that slight, I mean, the bonkersness of, I mean, looking at it now phenomena.

[00:09:33] Oh yeah. Yes. Oh, and even you, and but deep red was probably the starting point.

[00:09:39] Yes. Like, Suspirion and deep red were the two that I absolutely like loved and still do they like

[00:09:46] my favorite Argento films. But yeah, things like phenomena like it's Donald Pleasance and a chimp.

[00:09:50] I mean, it's just, it's so game show lost a time. But then like, but then also I'm like,

[00:10:00] you know, big sorts of like British comedy nerds. So I love things like

[00:10:05] Shaun the Dead, Garth Meringue, League of Gentlemen and all of that sorts of

[00:10:11] very British stance on like these, on like big sort of high stakes scenarios.

[00:10:21] Yeah. That's what we're sort of coming up with. So like Lisa, like for example,

[00:10:25] was the first story I came up with because it was that thing of combining a

[00:10:31] someone in like a rented property, the sort of very mundane problems of living in rented property

[00:10:38] combined like high stakes of a zombie epidemic kind of thing. So I really wanted to do that with

[00:10:44] the show and with like all the stories really. And yeah, just I guess also just

[00:10:54] the more the more I got to know Sam and the more we rode the more like I was watching more

[00:10:58] horror and he was introducing me to more really strange classic stuff. Like, yeah, like Amicus

[00:11:06] Amicus was a big influence as well. As opposed to appointment, it reminds me more of the sort

[00:11:15] of the episodic weekly TV shows like Tales of the Unexpected and House of Horror.

[00:11:21] But things would weave themselves into the scripts. I mean, dogs, as we just mentioned,

[00:11:26] became we haven't released it but mutts. Yeah, we've got a trailer for a fake film called

[00:11:30] mutts might might be loosely related. Yeah. Yeah, just just loosely. Yeah. Yeah. And British

[00:11:38] horror has got such a lineage and it's the freakery as well. And the everyday horror is quite

[00:11:45] compelling. And actually, the funny good thing you mentioned the trailers actually because

[00:11:49] that was something that I've always like, I don't know. I've always so this is a ridiculous but

[00:11:56] umbrellas the kind of horror film called umbrellas is a joke I came up with the trailer in episode one

[00:12:04] in episode one. Yes, there's a fake Hitchcock star horror film called umbrellas. Now, I mean,

[00:12:09] that was a joke I came up with when I was 1213. And I made I made like on PowerPoint,

[00:12:17] I made like a poster trailer for this horror film called umbrellas. So I've always been really and

[00:12:23] then when you saw things like it's like, you know, in Tarantino and Rodriguez did Grindhouse.

[00:12:29] Yeah, they had the fake the trailers that were done by Eli Roth and Edgar Wrights and

[00:12:36] okay, forgive me. I can't remember who the rest of them were but they were really good.

[00:12:40] And I really wanted to do something like that. There's also just something really funny and

[00:12:43] like some of those old horror trailers when you watch them, they're either so long and give away

[00:12:51] everything or they make absolutely no sense. Like when you get the foreign films that have been

[00:12:57] repackaged for like an American audience and you're just like, what the hell is this?

[00:13:01] And we really wanted to do I really want to do something like that. And especially that hadn't

[00:13:06] been done. Yeah, it's a very visual thing. I wanted to see if we could do it on right

[00:13:12] audio. Yeah, I mean it's such a lovely pairing in the first place. The idea of the framework being

[00:13:17] really old fashioned and traditional and the content being like it was so very started with

[00:13:22] Argento but it went everywhere. So it's yeah because obviously the charlatan came out of

[00:13:29] I suppose more paranoid things. Yeah, the charlatans definitely had from a different space.

[00:13:33] Yeah, I think they all are. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I think yeah, they definitely definitely

[00:13:41] got more fish food was me basically trying to write my own kind of Argento style

[00:13:49] horror. Yeah, second on aquarium. Yes, exactly. But I think yeah and also the thing about the

[00:13:56] fake trailer is having having it's so much fun writing those because you just picked the

[00:14:02] most bizarre lines of dialogue with no context and what's even better is when you give them to

[00:14:06] the actors, you don't give them any context. Yeah, just to what you want with it really.

[00:14:13] Yeah, yeah, they give you various variations on it and we've even done for our new trailers,

[00:14:20] we had a reward in our crowd funder where if you paid a certain amount,

[00:14:25] you could have your own voice cameo in one of the trailers. So we have a few of our backers

[00:14:30] doing just random lines. Some of them are wonderful. Yeah, we're so lucky. I'm looking

[00:14:37] looking forward to some of the lines especially coming back, test some friendships, it'll be great.

[00:14:43] I think also like the other thing is like the horror is like, I mean, going in the anthology

[00:14:47] direction as well things like Twilight Zone, Twilight, what am I talking about? The Twilight Zone.

[00:14:53] And Twilight. And Twilight. I love Twilight Island. Twilight, you know, I cried.

[00:14:59] Yeah. A lot. The Twilight Zone and Creepshow.

[00:15:04] Yes, well, yeah, the twilight zone stuff is really good as a starting point. It's really

[00:15:11] I think that's definitely my biggest anthology entry point of that era. Like Twilight Zone.

[00:15:16] I watched a lot of the original series. And obviously before then, you know, came to

[00:15:21] know it through things like The Simpsons or Futurama because it's so parroted,

[00:15:26] it's so embedded in popular culture. And so I just had to see what it was all about.

[00:15:32] And I found it all and yeah, Twilight Zone is very special and that Rod Serling presence.

[00:15:39] It stands up. He's aged so well that I mean, physically not so much.

[00:15:45] Culturally, yes. But he's definitely. I mean, the Ted never do age.

[00:15:50] Oh, shit. Yeah. And we should say so Rod Serling in the Twilight Zone, he is sort of the presenter.

[00:15:56] He you hear his voice and in a lot of the episodes, you actually see him there smoking

[00:16:00] a cigarette in a black suit in the scene. But sort of on. If you will. Yes, exactly.

[00:16:05] Yeah. He's that guy. And it's just so iconic. And the stories are so well written as well

[00:16:12] because it feel you feel like a lot of the writers were just just just people who who who penned

[00:16:20] stories and story was such a huge part of their lives before TV, you know, it's

[00:16:25] it's the people they brought in were incredible. Incredibly nice and writing for them.

[00:16:30] And Serling stuff stands out. It's just yeah, it's his stuff. I remember one of the other

[00:16:35] big writers who was there throughout is called Charles Beaumont, I think and his stuff

[00:16:38] is some of his episodes are incredible. So like some of them are super strong. And then

[00:16:43] obviously you also have the music there as well and the subject matter, they went everywhere,

[00:16:47] you know, went from thriller to horror to sci-fi. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:51] And that reminds me we definitely I haven't mentioned the other two shonky American

[00:16:56] follow up not follow ups descendants of Twilight Zone tales from the dark side.

[00:17:02] Oh my God. Tales from the crypt.

[00:17:03] Yes. Yes.

[00:17:05] The crypt keeper in particular, but tales from the dark side that intro.

[00:17:08] Tales from the dark side. Yes.

[00:17:10] Again, the gravelly voiceover was a fan. Yeah. Not quite the Twilight Zone,

[00:17:17] but I mean pretty cool anyway.

[00:17:18] But this is the yeah, but you know, yeah, yeah, sorry.

[00:17:21] Kind of we can kind of that's what we wanted. We wanted to kind of mix again the kind of two.

[00:17:25] So you make it it's sort of like we're showing we're paying homage to those things, but we're

[00:17:30] also doing it in this kind of slightly shonky way as well and very kind of like

[00:17:37] what would it look like if a British, you know, company did it.

[00:17:44] And there you have it, Curtain Twitchers, a leery look behind the curtains of feel.

[00:17:52] And if you liked that, if you had the temerity to miss an episode,

[00:17:57] or if you want to follow me like a security guard in a supermarket,

[00:18:01] go to upterrotape's pod on Instagram or Facebook.

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[00:18:13] and get your hands on the good stuff, the precious merch, the shiny things.

[00:18:19] Keep the fear in your ear.

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