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Episode 412 - The New Catacomb (Patreon)

Published:
2018-07-20 20:22:00
Edited:
2025-05-18 02:28:42
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

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Content

Join us as explore The New Catacomb by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!

Here is the Wellcome Library blog article on this story.

Next up: A Story Told by the Sea by W.C. Morrow

Comments

Wulf Mungus

Since it's Arthur CONAN Doyle, does that count for Thew-ly!?

William Rieder

The revenge tale is an episode from the Amicus anthology film "Tales from the Crypt" called "Blind Alleys".

Gregg A Helmberger

I think the "flight of two and return of one" refers to Kennedy leaving Rome with Miss Saunderson and coming back alone.

MonsterTalk

So... The news story at the end. Is that a Poe-Script?

Forrest Rush

The thing I really want to know is how much soap this moved.

Steven Moore

Pretty sure that was Chris Mackey playing Chad playing the German uboat commander. I expected him to go all pervy at the end of a few sentences. Must admit I’m a little sad it didn’t.

Hermagoras (pronounced HerMAgoras)

Chad's German accent sounded a little bit Dutch. But that's not a criticism -- as we all know, there's nothing scarier than *the Dutch language*

Shanna Syn

I thoroughly enjoyed this mode of presentation! It was a welcome step out of the show. Also, it is great to hear some more of Doyle's slightly horror works.

Kevin Roy

Loved the radio drama style. I'd kill for some more Mr. Kicks and Doctor Go!

Sweatin' to the Great Oldies

Just wrapped a little radio drama for students learning English. Looking for a new script and *this* happens... Had a good time listening, but I don't think I'd like this every show. On the other hand, my reaction is probably 90% down to the story being, well, not so good. So if you can find a real corker of a story, by all means go hog wild on the dramatization and terrifying accents. :)

Jamie Evans

Really enjoyed this one! I could tell you guys were having a lot of fun with it! Maybe I'm naive but I genuinely didn't see the twist coming, and it was refreshing to have a compact story with a straightforward narrative - and one which I thought was well constructed despite Conan Doyle presumably knocking it out in an afternoon on the back of a soap flakes box. Sometimes the strict focus on weird tales inevitably means that you have to scrape the bottom of the barrel a bit, which can lead to episodes where you guys don't seem to be enjoying yourselves as much (even though the podcast is always quality and thought provoking entertainment regardless). If it means we get more joyful episodes like this I'm totally in favour of being flexible with the format and content from time to time.

Raoul Kunz

Really loved this one! Not so much for the story which was ludicrously predictable, but your presentation, especially wiss zee mild german akzent - this is after all roughly how I sound anyway... not very much the cliche German accent but a mild echo in the pronunciation ;). If the story is boring or sub-standard, please by all means go ahead and resolve the conundrum like this!^^ At least the German bloke was an ambivalent villain, unusual for the late 19th and early 20th century British fiction ;). Of course he is only PARTIALLY German ;). Best regards Raoul G. Kunz

Andy O'Dowd

For anyone interested in the UK who has access to the Horror Channel (Virgin, Sky and Freeview I think) the Tales from the Crypt movie with the story mentioned in this week’s episode is on this evening at 22:40.

Chris Austin

I loved this episode! i would like to see more of this style. Please do it again!

Richard Horsman

Not the greatest story, but I loved the description of the catacomb, and I loved the approach you took. Speaking of not the greatest story, I just finished reading A Story Told by the Sea and hoooooooo-boy. Hoooooooo. Boy.

Ben A

Sounds like you both had a lot of fun putting this episode together. It certainly was entertaining listening to it! Though you missed the opportunity to call it a soap opera! (And I kept waiting for Chris Mackey to show up and punch out the German to save the Brit.) It’s definitely a fresh and fun way to present the podcast, and you have the vote of a few folks from my neck of the woods to do more. Perhaps you could also do another live video reading like the Masque of the Red Death? (With a guest, like Andrew or Ken, as well?) This definitely isn’t one of Doyle’s strongest stories (I read it years ago and thought then it was a Poe rip-off), but other authors’ works would make great dramatic reads. I’m thinking of some Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, and Fritz Leiber stories, among others. Ray Bradbury wrote some great dialogues, too.

Michael Cunliffe

The dynamic in this one actually reminded me a lot of HPL: a pair of male academics with one more dominant and worldly than other. However, while HP would have the socially weaker one meekly follow the other, acting only to record how the dominant one was punished for their hubris, Doyle gives all the agency to the ‘weaker’ character, in the less-cosmic equivalent of lending them the Necronomicon for the weekend.

Ben Mund

Story title was honest. Above-par acting. However, needed more werewolf ghost. Would recommend.

Hannah Kollef

Nice shout out to the Wellcome collection. One of my favorite places in London. The medical oddities collection is amazing and highly recommended to any fan of the weird and Lovecraftian. Who needs horror when you can see Victorian forceps!

Ilker Yucel

I was about to type out that the story reminded me of The Cask of Amontillado (my favorite Poe story) right at the moment that you declared it to be a rip off. Jinx! =) LOL, wonderful show, as always... loved the dramatization of the dialogue between you two; great to hear elements of your theatrical talents in the show. Hope to hear more of that in future episodes.

Nickthulhu

Doyle not only ripped off “The Cask of Amontillado,” but he also PG-13’d it up! He basically took Poe’s work and romanticized it. Not that it makes the murder any more just, but it gives us a more understandable motive behind the action of the story’s antagonist, Burger — that of a crime of passion, committed out of anger over his lost love interest. And, as we know, many a nobleman in history and literature have had duels over the same type of thing. Hell, Andrew Jackson killed a man in a duel because he insulted his wife! So, it seems Doyle took Poe’s idea and made it more cliché, in my humble opinion, by saturating the revenge in unrequited love. The motives behind the actions of Poe’s characters are certainly more abstruse, more disturbing because they seem to evade an understandable justification. Montresor kills Fortunato simply because of some unnamed insult (the fact it lacks mention gives it even less importance), and this doesn’t seem enough to warrant the grisly murder committed— not that any murder is warrantable, as mentioned above, but it’s certainly less reason than losing a love interest! I receive insults all the time on my commute home from work in Metro Detroit and murder usually never crosses my mind, even when I get the double middle finger — how do they do that driving 70mph!? Another of his characters, the maniac from “The Imp of the Perverse,” secretly poisons a man for no apparent reason, just to get away with it. And, perhaps the most famous of his characters, the unnamed narrator from “The Tell-Tale Heart” kills an old man for a reason that is completely out of the old man’s ability to change — the physical defect of his deformed eye. These characters, from whose viewpoint we receive the story, become so alienated to us because of their lack of understandable motivation that they are essentially what makes Poe’s tales so infinitely mysterious, terrifying, and forever interesting. Sorry to vent… Don’t get me wrong, I love Doyle! I just think he took one step forward and two steps back on this one. He removed the quintessential ingredient that made the “The Cask of Amontillado” so Poe-tent!

feedergoldfish

Chad mentioned a segment called, Blind Alleys, from the Tales from the Crypt anthology. The residents of a home for the blind exact revenge on the villainous director of the home (or maybe he was just a terrible administrator) in a creative and disturbing manner. After subduing him and the staff, they construct a narrow maze lined with razor blades. The director is let into the darkened maze, which he manages to navigate without too much damage, until his starving dog is released at the other end. I hated that they starved the dog. But, at least they finally gave it a meal.

Runninghead

I'm loving the performances! More dramatised readings please! The Fog Horn intro scene is one of my favourite parts of any HPPLP show. I think every show should start like that.

Nadia Astorga

Loving this! It’s perfect for the content, reminds me of old radio dramas, but without the over-acting and sometimes silly music. Something like what Vincent Price did in the 1960-70s.

Benet Devereux

Late to the party here (catching up after a podcast hiatus) but I enjoyed the dramatization a lot. Sure, you could see the ending from miles off, like a plane coming in to land on the Prairies, but the atmosphere was great. I have to take some exception to Julius Burger's math towards the end, though. When he says there are 2000 wrong turnings between the altar and the stairs, presumably he means there are 2000 points where you have to make a choice, and at least one of the choices is wrong. That's going to make the odds *way* worse than 1 in 2000! For instance, if at every point there are 2 choices and one is wrong, and Kennedy chooses randomly, then at that point the probability of him choosing correctly is 1/2. To get out, he must choose correctly 2000 times in a row! The odds of *that* are (1/2) to the power of 2000, which is an extremely small number -- if you write it out as a decimal, there are over 600 zeros after the decimal point.