Stranger Things conformity fans are dying by the day, but every time a new announcement comes along, even we get that little tinge of excitement — maybe this is it. Maybe they’re finally going to announce that hidden ninth episode from Season 5 that will somehow make everything better again.
But alas, it is not.
Instead, Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 is coming back with more episodes beginning September 17.
The animated series takes us back to Hawkins and the world of Stranger Things during the period between Seasons 2 and 3, essentially giving Netflix a way to continue exploring the original era of the show without trying to physically de-age a cast that has obviously grown up. On paper, that actually makes a lot of sense. Animation opens up Hawkins in ways a live-action production probably couldn’t, and it allows these characters and this particular point in the Stranger Things timeline to continue indefinitely if Netflix wants it to.
And to be fair, a lot of people have taken to the cartoon. It has its fans, and there are certainly people who are happy to have any opportunity to return to Hawkins.
But the excitement surrounding Tales From ’85 certainly isn’t anywhere near the level the original show acquired — and for us, despite actually liking the concept of an animated Stranger Things series, it just isn’t hitting the same.
Maybe part of that is because Stranger Things was never simply about Hawkins, monsters, the Upside Down or even the mythology. It was those actors. It was the chemistry between them. It was watching those kids grow up together while the audience grew older right along with them. You can recreate Hawkins. You can recreate the bikes, the synth music, the Demogorgons and the 1980s atmosphere. Recreating that strange chemistry that made the original series a cultural phenomenon is a much harder thing to do.
And then there’s the question of canon.
For those who accept Tales From ’85 as another legitimate chapter of the Stranger Things story, there is obviously more Hawkins to explore and hopefully plenty to enjoy. But for us, this one feels more like an interesting alternate extension of something we loved rather than something we feel compelled to add to the Stranger Things story in our heads.
Good luck with the program, and sincerely, good luck to the fan base that accepts this as canon.
The urgent search for a masked man terrorizing people in Philadelphia has now made national news .. police have been searching and surveillance has caught his mask.. at this point public leads but several witnesses have described their run-ins with this character ..
.. however can we correct a record that the news has reported?
This is not a Chucky mask..more…
Philadelphia police have received a number of tips as they attempt to identify a masked man who is terrorizing people in Center City.
“This happened right outside of City Hall, so you think we’re not going to do our darndest to try and locate this individual?” Captain Jason Smith, with the Philadelphia Police Department, said.
Hayden Panettiere, the star of popular TV series including Heroes and Nashville, along with several horror movies such as as Scream 4, has died at age 36.
Panettiere’s father, Skip, announced the actor’s death in a statement provided to ABC News on Sunday. “It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden. She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen,” his statement said.
Eventually today information was revealed that it was cardiac arrest which killed the star. A lot of people have subsequently went online to conspire and theorize of some other more dreadful reasons for her demise, including a story she recently told about being on a boat and having to perform acts against her will to a famous person..
Something very disturbing is developing in Philadelphia, and this is a story we’re going to be following.
What started as an investigation into a bizarre house in the Olney section of Philadelphia is beginning to raise a much bigger question: Are investigators potentially uncovering the remains of a serial murder case?
We’re going to be careful with that question because, at this point, nobody has been charged with murder and police have not called Eugene Horsch a serial killer. But the details coming out of this investigation are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
But perhaps one of the most concerning developments is what investigators are finding as they continue going through those hundreds of thousands of files.
Police say they have been attempting to identify people appearing in the images and videos. Some have been located and interviewed.
Others are still missing.
Investigators are now comparing information involving missing women and have not ruled out the possibility that additional victims could be discovered.
A friend of a friend of a friend said that Dick Cheney may have .. Let’s thrust to Grusch..
David Grusch, who testified before Congress in 2023 about alleged secret UFO crash-retrieval programs, made the claims Thursday during an interview on “The Dr. Phil Podcast” Dr. Phil saying US officials had communicated telepathically with alien “pilots” pulled from some of the dozens of UFOs, between 25 and 100, that he believes are in the government’s possession.
MORE…
“I know people who had direct interactions in a detainment situation, which sounds very Star Trek and sounds very crazy, but it is true,” the former Air Force intelligence officer said on The Dr. Phil Podcast on Thursday.
“I spoke to a former cabinet member who directly worked the issue for a particular former vice president. You can guess which one. Darth Vader.”
The End of Oak Street, and I have some mixed feelings…
4 out of 10.. we will justify why..
First things first: SPOILERS. Lots of them. We’re basically going to spoil the entire movie here, so read at your own peril.
I went into this movie expecting something closer to a horror comedy. Instead, the comedic value was surprisingly low, the suspense was actually pretty high, and at certain points the whole thing somehow felt more like a really expensive direct-to-streaming movie than a major summer theatrical release.
I will say a plus here: JJ Abrams and company allowed us to really enter a world where it seemed feasible that dinosaurs would attack humans, and how they would be without mercy in their eating habits..
Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor lead the cast, alongside Maisy Stella and Christian Convery. Hathaway has been a star in huge movies.. McGregor as well.. .
JJ Abrams is one of the producers through Bad Robot, the company behind projects connected to Lost, Cloverfield, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. And the movie was actually written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, the filmmaker behind It Follows. So there are a lot of people involved here who know how to make a movie.
All of that is star-studded..
Which makes some of the decisions in The End of Oak Street even stranger.
x x x
SPOILER ALERT
Let’s start with what I liked most: the dinosaurs.
The violence of the T-Rex was fantastic, and there was something genuinely frightening about the quiet surveillance of the Titanboa stalking Anne Hathaway’s character until eventually it is almost right behind her. For real–this may have actually been the scene of the film with tension and silence. It worked perfect..
The dinosaurs, for the most part, looked shockingly good. I actually thought the visual effects were one of the strongest parts of the movie.
Except the dog.
I don’t know what happened with that dog. Maybe they couldn’t put an actual dog through everything required for the scene, but whatever combination of CGI or digital effects they settled on looked amateur compared to the eloquence of the dinosaurs..
And now let’s just cut to the biggest spoiler of all:
They kill Dad.
Of course they kill Dad. They kill Dad in pretty much every movie anymore, so why not this one too?
Except there’s a twist. And if you really want to know the ending, everything ultimately turns out okay.
Happy ending, I guess?
The basic concept is actually pretty interesting. We’re in 1982, meaning there are no cell phones, no internet and very limited ways of figuring out what is happening. When things start going wrong, you’re relying on radios .. and during this movie even the radio isn’t picking anything up, of course.
Eventually we learn that some sort of cosmic event or wormhole has essentially ripped Oak Street out of 1982 and thrown the neighborhood into a prehistoric world.. At least soon to be dead-dad theorizes this and his son agrees while the others doubt.. It turns out it was true. They knew a light was from something, so it HAS TO BE the wormhole..
Despite dad nailing it, the dinosaur also bit his leg off and devoured him in front of his shocked family.. as a dad I guess I take personal offense to this death scene.
There are also a lot of references to Cornell University and Carl Sagan through the daughter, Audrey. Eventually she gets her happy ending too, complete with the Cornell shirt. Of course, before getting there she has to experience the minor inconvenience of watching her entire town get destroyed and her father get eaten by a dinosaur.
College admissions essays should practically write themselves after that. But here’s where I had one of my biggest problems with the movie: the marriage.
Dad is certainly flawed. He’s secretly lost his main job, he’s working side jobs trying to keep the family afloat, he’s hiding things from his wife, and he’s taking a sips of whiskey and apparently reeks of alcohol when dinosaurs attack–mom decides to ask during the end of the world why he drank..
Meanwhile, Mom has apparently written an entire manuscript about leaving him and leaving the family.
And when the basement floods and the manuscript is destroyed, her misery factor goes through the roof.
Lady, DINOSAURS ARE EATING YOUR NEIGHBORS.
Your husband and children could die at any moment. Your entire neighborhood has apparently been sucked through some sort of cosmic wormhole and deposited into prehistoric hell, and we’re having an existential crisis over the manuscript about abandoning the family?
It just felt incredibly self-centered. That’s why I had trouble liking Anne Hathaway’s character for a large portion of the movie.
The film seems to want us to understand the breakdown of this marriage, but sometimes it felt as though the marriage problems mattered more to these people than the impending extinction of everyone around them.
Eventually she gets her redemption, realizes she can save everybody through a phone booth, and things improve considerably for her husband’s fate..
And somehow we’re eventually going to have to explain to Dad why there’s photographic evidence of him standing there giving a thumbs-up in front of two dinosaurs having sex.
Which brings us to THAT scene.
This is a PG-13 movie, so apparently we’re not going to have sex scenes between humans.
The dinosaurs, however?
The dinosaurs got it on. And they didn’t just give us a quick two-second visual joke and move along.
Oh no. We got angles, movement, and noises..
We got considerably more information about prehistoric reproductive behavior than I was expecting when I bought my ticket to the point where I felt somewhat vile afterward.
There are other moments that help redeem the movie. The crazy loon neighbor swinging a gun around and indiscriminately shooting before eventually being attacked by pterodactyls was entertaining. He kind of a Murray-ish role from Stranger Things. So was the surprise attack involving the librarian blowing away the prehistoric alligator-like creatures before they could devour him.
When The End of Oak Street embraces the insanity of its premise, it’s actually great.
It’s when it tries to make the collapsing marriage the emotional center of everything that I started checking out.
And then there’s the son. This poor kid gets the shaft.
The girl he’s apparently in love with ends up being interested in his sister instead. That angle gets thrown into the story too, and considering we’re talking about 1982, good luck to everybody involved navigating that situation once they get home.
But here’s where I think the movie missed its biggest opportunity.
I wanted a crazier ending.
Imagine they finally go through the wormhole except instead of simply restoring everything, Oak Street lands in 2026.
These people walk outside dressed like it’s 1982, completely bewildered by what they’re seeing, while everyone standing around the neighborhood immediately pulls out a cell phone and starts recording them.
Or go even further.
What if they arrived in 2026 and discovered that their older selves already existed there? Suddenly you’ve got this bizarre Back to the Future situation where the younger versions of these people are meeting the lives they were supposed to have.
Or, better yet, give us one final shot.
Everything is fixed.
Everyone is safe.
The portal closes.
Happy music.
Camera pans toward the trees.
ROAR.
One dinosaur made it through.
CUT TO BLACK.
That’s the ending I wanted.
Instead, J.J. Abrams, David Robert Mitchell and company decided to send us home feeling reasonably good about everything. Dad’s okay. The family apparently has another chance. The daughter has her Cornell future. Oak Street survives.
Happiness somehow pervades the bleak landscape of this once dinosaur-infested town.
And that’s fine.
I just wanted something a little more daring.
So all in all, I’m going 4 out of 10 for The End of Oak Street.
It’s not terrible. There are actually some really good suspense sequences, the dinosaurs look surprisingly fantastic, and there are enough completely insane moments to keep you entertained. But the plot is goofy, the emotional center didn’t work for me, some of the characters came across as bizarrely self-absorbed considering DINOSAURS WERE ACTIVELY EATING PEOPLE, and for a movie with this cast, this budget and this much talent behind the scenes, it sometimes strangely felt like something made for streaming.
Still, this is one I’d say you should see once in a theater, because the dinosaur sequences and visual effects benefit from the big screen.
We’re hunting down the lost footage from Halloween II.
And we’re probably not going to find it but still try anyway..
We’ve reached out to Trancas International Films and the Akkad family, and we’re thinking about who else we could possibly reach out to in an attempt to solve a little Halloween II mystery that’s been sitting around for more than four decades.
And before we go any further, there’s an important distinction here.
We’re not talking about the deleted Halloween II scenes that are already out there. We know those exist. We’re talking about footage that was apparently shot but, as far as we can determine, has never actually surfaced publicly.
Over the last couple of years we’ve seen plenty of supposedly “lost” Halloween images floating around online that turned out to be AI generated. But there are legitimate production stills from Halloween II showing material that isn’t in the finished movie, and one particular missing sequence has fascinated us.
The made for TV movie version may have excluded the boob-shot but it definitely had in other scenes that made more sense when considering… In theatrical cut we didn’t get why Laurie was seemingly drugged and the hospital was dark.. it was the made for TV scenes that explained she was drugged by the doc and the power was cut by Mike..
These scenes, if included, would have made our favorite Halloween movie even better..
The children’s ward scene is what we’d really love to see..
In the deleted scene, Michael wandered through rooms of sleeping children before accidentally activating a cymbal-playing toy monkey. Nurse Karen heard the noise and investigated while Michael hid nearby, nearly being discovered before she walked away.
The sequence was ultimately cut as the film was tightened in editing, along with several other scenes. The children’s-ward footage has never officially resurfaced
But the photo from Warlock’s collection proves there was at least one more scene we never saw–presumably more than that..
In the behind the scenes photo, Warlock as Mike making a kid laugh, is surprisingly wholesome..
Director Rick Rosenthal has actually discussed it.
On material associated with Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, Rosenthal described a deleted sequence involving Michael Myers hiding in a closet in the hospital nursery. A nurse comes into the room and nearly opens the closet where Michael is hiding. The suspense builds because you expect her to find him but ultimately she doesn’t open it.
The scene was cut.
As far as we can determine, the actual footage has never surfaced publicly.
There’s also a sequence involving reporter Robert Mundy and a television news crew arriving at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital that was reportedly scripted and filmed. Production stills survive from that material, but again, the actual moving footage appears to have disappeared.
So where is it?
We all know the complicated history of Halloween II. John Carpenter didn’t particularly want to make another Halloween and has certainly never hidden his feelings about the sequel. The second movie also became considerably more violent and gory than the original .. although compared with today’s standards, it’s really not very gory at all.
Then television came calling.
When Halloween II was prepared for TV, some of the nudity and gore couldn’t exactly make the trip to network television, so material had to be removed and other footage was used to fill out the running time.
That’s where things sometimes get confusing when people talk about “deleted scenes” from Halloween II, because some deleted footage absolutely does exist and has been released.
There are additional hospital scenes, Michael cutting the power and, most memorably, the alternate ending.
Laurie is being taken away in the ambulance when suddenly somebody under a sheet behind her starts moving.
One last scare!
Except it’s just good old Jimmy.
So calling all Carpenters and Akkads.. we are searching and want the nursery scene.. and that television crew arriving a the hospital.. Maybe there is another Dana Carvey hidden gem somewhere in the pile of deletions..
Is there a reel sitting on some film rack somewhere or an unmarked box in a studio archive that nobody has opened since Ronald Reagan was president?
Is something sitting in a basement or storage facility belonging to the Akkad family?
Did Donald Pleasence take the film to the grave?
We’re not claiming that these reels still exist. We’re not claiming that somebody secretly has them. We’re just acknowledging something that makes this mystery worth pursuing: there is evidence and testimony that scenes were filmed that, more than 40 years later, apparently nobody in the general public has ever seen.
And that’s fascinating.
This goes in phases.. right now this is in an active phase again with fans talking about this deleted scene on social media..
We’ve sent out some messages, including reaching out to Trancas International Films, and we’re thinking about who else might be worth contacting. If we get responses, we’ll let everyone know what we find — even if the eventual answer is simply, “Sorry, that footage is gone.” We anticipate no responses.. but if there was some miracle, maybe someone out there will get lucky.
But we’d also love to hear from everyone out there in Internet Land.
Has anyone else ever gone hunting for this footage?
Did anyone contact people involved with Halloween II years ago and get an answer?
Has anyone ever claimed to actually see the nursery footage?
Was something shown at a convention decades ago? Did somebody have an old workprint? Is there an obscure interview, photograph, VHS tape or story from someone involved with the production that we’ve somehow missed?
Maybe they’re resting in that strange final resting place of lost cinema.. existing only in production stills, scripts and the increasingly distant memories of the people who were actually there.
Because now we’re left with a very Halloween version of an old philosophical question:
If Michael Myers hid in the children’s ward at Haddonfield Memorial Hospital, but the scene was cut and nobody ever saw it… did Michael Myers actually hide there at all?
Due to social media life cycles, a lot of people are constantly about Lanmaoa asiatica.. it all sounds completely made up until you realize.. it’s not.
It’s a mushroom eaten in southwestern China, particularly Yunnan Province, where it’s known as jian shou qing. Apparently it’s delicious.
There’s just one small problem.
You better cook the thing long enough.. if you don’t, you might start seeing little people.
And this isn’t just a hallucinogenic mushroom that makes people see random things. We’re not talking about the usual psychedelic experience — colors changing, walls breathing, strange patterns appearing or somebody seeing a dragon dancing across the ceiling.
No.
Little people. Like the smurfs..
Tiny humanlike figures have been reported walking across plates. Climbing furniture. Marching around rooms. Going underneath doors. Sometimes dozens or even hundreds of them, apparently existing right there alongside the normal world.
They’re known as Lilliputian hallucinations, named after the tiny inhabitants of Lilliput in Gulliver’s Travels.
People in Yunnan are so familiar with what can happen when these mushrooms aren’t properly cooked that making sure they’re thoroughly prepared is simply part of eating them. Researchers have described restaurants where timers are used before the mushrooms can be eaten, with diners being warned about what could happen if they don’t wait long enough.
Hospitals in the region have treated mushroom poisoning cases involving these hallucinations, and researchers have documented this strangely specific recurring experience.
If ten people took some random hallucinogenic drug, ten wildly different experiences might be expected. One person sees geometric patterns. Somebody sees a dragon. Somebody thinks the ceiling is melting.
But with this mushroom, one particular theme keeps showing up:
Little people.
Not everyone who becomes sick from the mushroom sees them, so that part shouldn’t be exaggerated. But among people who experience hallucinations, reports of tiny humanlike figures have appeared often enough that researchers have specifically taken notice.
Which brings us to the completely scientifically irresponsible portion of today’s program.
What if the mushroom isn’t making people see things that aren’t there?
What if it’s temporarily allowing people to see something that’s.. already there?
Maybe somewhere beside ordinary human perception — fourth dimension, fifth dimension, sixth dimension, take your pick — thousands of tiny people are going about their tiny lives while completely unaware that we’re here.
And every once in a while somebody in Yunnan doesn’t cook the mushrooms long enough, looks down at the kitchen table and suddenly realizes:
No, there is absolutely no scientific evidence that Lanmaoa asiatica opens a portal into the tiny-people dimension.
But until scientists figure out exactly what is happening inside the human brain when this mushroom is eaten undercooked — and why such strangely similar imagery keeps being reported —
The Washington Post reports that Donald Trump was secretly moved off Air Force One and onto another military aircraft during his trip to Turkey last month amid an Iranian assassination threat, as he feared for his life.
Trump publicly boarded the legacy Air Force One, but was then reportedly smuggled off using an airport catering truck and transferred to a smaller military plane. The original Air Force One continued on as a decoy carrying journalists and White House staff who believed Trump was still aboard.
Trump’s actual plane reportedly flew to Britain under a nondescript call sign with its tracking systems disabled, concealing his location for hours.
The White House, meanwhile, publicly maintained that Trump had traveled aboard the legacy Air Force One.
This appears to be the order of operations according to media reports:
Trump flies to Turkey on the new Qatari-gifted Air Force One for the NATO summit.
An Iranian assassination threat triggers a secret “deception operation.” Security officials devise a plan to conceal which aircraft Trump is actually traveling on.
The Qatari-gifted Air Force One leaves Turkey first, without Trump.
Trump publicly boards the legacy Air Force One in Ankara, walking up the stairs and waving for cameras, creating the appearance that this is his plane home.
Trump secretly exits Air Force One through the other side of the aircraft and gets into an airport catering truck raised to the plane’s door.
The catering truck drives Trump to a smaller Air Force C-32A, a modified Boeing 757 parked nearby.
7.. Trump secretly boards the C-32A. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also boards separately.
Reporters and some White House staff board the legacy Air Force One, apparently unaware Trump is no longer aboard. They are instructed to close their window shades. (Remember all that reporting from the time?)
The legacy Air Force One takes off as a decoy and eventually uses the “AF1” call sign despite Trump not being aboard.
Trump’s actual C-32A flies secretly to Britain under the nondescript call sign “Reach 18,” with its normal flight-tracking systems reportedly switched off.
Trump arrives at RAF Mildenhall in Britain on the C-32A, shortly before the decoy Air Force One arrives.
Trump somehow transfers back onto the legacy Air Force One after landing. The Post says exactly how this transfer occurred remains unclear.
Trump then emerges from the legacy Air Force One in front of cameras, making it appear as though that was the aircraft he had flown from Turkey.
Trump boards the Qatari-gifted Air Force One in Britain and finally flies back to Washington with the press and staff.
The rumors you hear are true: Halloween: The Game, coming out this September, has essentially been banned in two countries — Australia and New Zealand.
Okay, cue the jokes, because surely you’re thinking the game was banned for the bloody depictions of gore, the endless slashing of Michael Myers, or perhaps just the generally inhuman nature of all those murder scenes.
Nope.
Marijuana.
The official Halloween: The Game account announced that the upcoming video game has been denied classification by the Australian Classification Board. And without a classification, the game cannot legally be sold physically or digitally in Australia … with the decision also keeping it off the market in New Zealand.
And apparently the problem isn’t Michael Myers stalking people through Haddonfield with a giant knife. The problem is a controlled substance featured in the game … reportedly cannabis, which can actually be used by players as part of the gameplay.
So apparently Michael Myers can stalk you, slash you and brutally murder you, but heaven forbid somebody lights up a joint while he’s doing it.
The game is still scheduled to arrive September 8 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, but Halloween fans Down Under are apparently going to be left out of Haddonfield for the time being.
Which brings us to a much bigger question:
What does this mean for GTA VI?
Because if the drug use in Halloween: The Game was enough to run afoul of Australia’s classification rules, the government censors Down Under probably haven’t seen anything yet.
And suddenly Michael Myers might be the least of their problems.
