We also talk about our good friend (and frequent podcast guest) William Bruce West, who - we learned the day after recording this - recently suffered a stroke and is currently in the hospital. We hope and pray that he's going to be okay, but in the meantime, there's a GoFundMe campaign in progress for Will and his family as they start to navigate the uncertainty of what lies ahead for them. We hope that you'll consider donating.

Be sure to check out Tyler's new graphic novel, The Last Spartan: Red Tape, co-written with Christopher Priest.

And we also talk a little about the movies Nosferatu (2024) and I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957).

We also discuss the movies Smile (2022), Talk to Me (2022), Eyes Without a Face (1960), and Kuroneko (1968).

 

If you especially like movies about ghosts, this makes a phantasmic follow up to Episode 286 where Michael, Jess, and their friend Darla discussed three other ghost movies: Poltergeist (1982), The Orphanage (2007), and The Woman in Black (2012).

But first, discussion of other horror (or horror-connected) movies: Gretel & Hansel (2020), The Midnight Meat Train (2008), The Sadness (2021), The Belko Experiment (2016), The Mean One (2022), and Poor Things (2023).

It stars Adam Scott and Toni Collette, is occasionally funny, occasionally scary, and as Evan points out, actually pretty important.

Unlike Tangential Christmas movies, these are undeniably about the Holiday Season, but without a lot of fantastical elements like Santa or his elves and reindeer. If there's magic, it's going to be subtle or ambiguous. There are a lot of these movies though - it's easily the biggest category that we talked about on Sleigh Bell Cinema - so we're going to be running an episode a day for the next couple of weeks. 

 

To kick this off, we want to start with a movie that Rob and Michael keep referring back to. In fact, it's come up in the last three episodes on the show. From 1949, it's Holiday Affair starring Janet Leigh, Robert Mitchum, and Wendell Corey. And featuring Colonel Potter himself, Harry Morgan, in a small role. It's one of Michael's favorite Christmas movies, but you'll have to stay tuned to find out what Rob thought. So please listen and enjoy and let us know whether you're Team Steve or Team Carl.

And stay tuned for a spoiler-filled discussion of Hannah Waddingham: Home for Christmas at the end.

Dungeon Master Ben Graham leads Rob Graham, Jeff Somogyi, and Michael May in their first full Dungeons & Dragons adventure together. Be sure to check out Episode 183 for the players' discussion of their histories with the game and the introduction to Ben's world.

 

And visit the After Lunch website to see maps from the adventure: The City of Trellan and a sketch of Jackson's exploration of the Drop Inn.

The episode begins in a cemetery as we dig into "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Masque of the Red Death," and "The Raven," with side-trips to other Poe stories and favorite adaptations of his work.

Note: It was windy at the cemetery and the sound overwhelms the discussion a few times during that section of the episode. We cleaned it up as best we could, but if it's bothersome, you might want to skip ahead to about 21 minutes into the show. At that point we've moved inside and the audio is clear for the remainder of the episode.

(Special thanks to Shawn for the name: 'screaming service'.)

In this episode, they dig into their favourite video games and Autumn traditions, various podcasts (including the impressive, new Remember That Show?), Jimmy Buffett, the second seasons of Foundation and Good Omens, Justified, X-Men and Star Trek comics, Asteroid City, Werewolves Within, The Menu, 1917, Attack the Block, Twitter vs Bluesky, Early Autumn by Robert B Parker, The Cincinnati Kid, John Hughes movies, and Hardy Boys shorts. 

 

 

After that, the panel returns to the official Bond film series with Sean Connery's first last appearance in the role. And they are not in agreement about the quality of this film. They'll talk about why before wrapping up with more trivia, this time about You Only Live Twice.

All of this, plus a new Ask Us Anything segment thanks to listener voicemail from our pal Jody Collins.

Full Tilt promises to be a unique story in a beautiful package and there are currently no plans to publish it traditionally, so please be nice to yourself and order your copy on Zoop right away.

And again, lots of spoilers in this episode.

 

And stay tuned at the end of this episode for important information about the After Lunch dress code.

Theorizing one can get a few things off his chest, Carlin Trammel leaps into the podcast time stream. His only guide on this journey is Robert Zerbe, a fellow observer of the new Quantum Leap TV series airing on NBC. So both podcasters find themselves watching each episode of the new series and extensively making notes on what can be done to put right what is going on and hoping that Scott Bakula will also leap home! 

 

Be sure to check out the King Thunder Stickers and other King Thunder merchandise!

Finally, the loungers are thinking about Christmas movies. Specifically: what makes a Christmas movie, favourite Christmas movie characters, and the future of Christmas movie discussions on After Lunch.

And be sure to check out Mike, Rob, and Michael's Advent Calendar House discussion from earlier this season about the 1971 cartoon that brought back Alastair Sim as the voice of Scrooge.

And if you want to hear even more on The Ref on this very feed, check the old Nerd Lunch Extra Helping episode from December 2012 where Jeeg talks about it with Carlin Trammel.

 

If you haven't seen Doc Strange 2 and would like to be unspoiled, it's best if you see the movie before listening to this episode. But if you'd like to listen to the rest of the podcast and skip the bulk of the Doctor Strange discussion, the biggest spoilers are between 00:32:35 and 00:51:07, and then again from 01:13:31 to 01:32:10. Though we can't promise that something didn't sneak in outside those time frames.