- Boo! It's me, Adam!
And welcome to-- Ah!
That's better. Welcome to Corpse Talk,
the show that brings the dead famous to life!
Tonight, it's the Halloween special,
but there's not tricks, just treats.
We've dug up a vampire
and a monster,
and a mummy!
But which one is the scariest? Let's find out!
(cheering)
♪ Corpse Talk ♪
♪ A history chat about this or that ♪
♪ Corpse talk ♪
♪ Corpse Talk ♪
♪ Where the dead famous come to life ♪♪
- Please welcome our first guest.
She's the woman who created a modern monster,
the author of
it's Mary Shelley!
(applause)
Welcome! And I see you got the note about dressing up.
Nice and gloomy, uh...
Very gothic.
- What note? All my clothes look like this.
- Oh, okay. Moving on to my next guest.
Cling on to your crucifixes and order the extra garlic bread,
he's the creator of Dracula,
it's Bram Stoker!
(applause) (evil laughter)
Oh! You could've told me you were coming dressed as Dracula too.
- Well, I did create him.
(menacing laughter)
- Fair point, sorry.
- Is there really garlic bread? I'm starving.
- Are there any biscuits? - No!
Sorry, can we just get on?
Finally, our third guest.
He discovered the tomb of Egypt's most famous pharaoh, King Tutankhamun
and survived the deadly mummy's curse.
It's Howard Carter!
(applause)
(grunts)
- Oh, look what I've discovered.
Am I the first to lay eyes on it?
What is this place?
- Um, it's the Corpse Talk studio.
- It's so gloomy.
- Uh... thanks, I guess.
So um, as it's a special night, we've got something new.
To find out which of my guests' famous monsters is the scariest,
we'll be checking out my fright level throughout the show
on our very own Corpse Talk scare-ometre.
(beeping) (spooky exclamation)
I just... hope it works. (electricity crackling)
(sinister laughter)
(Adam screaming)
(beeping)
- Ah! - Yup! Seems to be working.
Sorry about that, Bram. (whistling)
Okay. Mary Shelley, you're famous for creating
a horror classic.
But in reality, your life started out pretty horrifically too.
- If you mean that my mother died shortly after giving birth to me
then my father married a horrible woman, then yes.
Bit of a downer.
- Well, luckily, your dad introduced you to famous, romantic poet Percy Shelley.
- Percy, oh! I'll never forget our first date.
- Oh! Where was it? Theatre? Nice restaurant?
(Mary): Graveyard. Visiting my mother's grave.
- Ha! Of course! That would've been my third guess.
- What rhymes with burial? Ferial...
Marial... Marial! Can I call you Marial? It's quite close to Mary.
- Uh, did you know straight away that Percy would be your future husband?
- Yes. Unfortunately, he was still married to someone else then.
(woman): Percy! Percy, where are you?
- Oops. - I know!
But we were young and in love. We ran away together.
(whistling) (woman): Percy?
- Woah!
(Mary): We travelled through Europe.
- And ended up in a spooky Swiss villa.
- The weather wasn't great.
But Percy's friend, Lord Byron, had a terrific idea.
- Game of cards? Charades?
(gasps) No, wait! Karaoke?
- I say, let's all write ghost stories.
- Sure! - Ah! Nothing says "holiday fun"
quite like writing a horror story. Indoors.
(thunder crashes) Pretty Halloweeny, though. I suppose.
So where did your story idea come from?
- I'd heard about scientists doing experiments on animal corpses
using electricity. Here, I'll show you.
(gasps) - So realistic!
Looks just like a real dead frog!
- That's because it is.
- Ugh!
(screaming)
Oh, I think you'd better tell us about your novel.
(♪♪)
(thunder crashing)
- Frankenstein is about a genius scientist who tries to create new life
by reanimating a body stitched together from different corpses.
(♪♪)
- It's alive! It's alive!
- Ow!
Ow, me head. Shocking!
- By the way, viewers, Frankenstein is actually the name of the doctor,
not the monster.
You've might not know that.
- Literally everyone knows that!
- Even I know that, and I was just born.
(birds chirping)
Hello! Lovely day!
(exclamations)
(man): Run! He's so ugly.
- That's not very kind, hurting my feelings.
- Realizing that no one would ever love him,
the monster forced the doctor to make him a bride.
- Oh! I love a happy ending.
- But the doctor went back on his promise.
(screaming)
- Ooh! So what happened next?
(Mary): In a rage, the monster kills Frankenstein's wife,
and the doctor swears he will kill the monster.
The doctor chases his creation halfway across the world.
But dies before he can get his revenge.
And in the end, the monster was doomed to wander the Arctic alone.
For ever.
- Hello?
(♪♪)
- Ooh, chilling! Maybe Dr. Frankenstein was the real monster after all!
But the book made you famous,
and you and Percy lived happily ever after?
- No, not really. Percy drowned in a boating accident.
- Mary, that's so awful.
- But he did leave me this.
- Oh! What's this?
- It's one of Percy's last poems.
- Oh, that's so lovely!
(Mary): Which I used to wrap up his heart.
(screaming)
(grunts)
- That's disgusting! - Thanks.
- Stop making hold bad things! Ah, okay.
Bram Stoker, I guess you're used to a bit of blood and gore,
because you also wrote a horror classic.
Should we sink our teeth straight into your scare-athon?
- Wait a second! What about my life story?
You spent ages talking about hers.
- Excuse me? I am right here.
- Yes, the-the thing is Mary's life was full of drama and...
death and tragedy. - Mm-hmm.
- Whereas yours was kind of... What's the word?
- Oh, I know this one. Dull. - Hey!
- No, you're right! Why don't you give us some background?
Ideally in less than 10 seconds.
- Very well. I started out as a civil servant in Dublin, Ireland.
- Uh-huh.
- And then, I moved to London.
(yawning) - Boring!
- Go on. - Um, well. Er...
Ooh! I wrote a couple of books before
- Really? What was the first one called?
- The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland.
It was a legal textbook.
You've probably heard of it.
(snoring)
Fine, let's do
- What? - Phew!
- It all starts with a property lawyer, Jonathan Harker.
- Uh, not a gripping start, if I'm honest.
(Bram): One day, Harker is summoned to a faraway land called Transylvania,
to meet a mysterious new client.
(Adam): Ooh, ooh! That's more like it!
(ominous music)
(wolf howling in the distance)
- Welcome to my humble home, Mr. Harker.
I am Dracula.
- You seem friendly.
- I've been dying to meet you.
(laughter)
- Uh, silly question, Bram, but why isn't Harker running for the hills?
- You enter of your own free will?
- I mean, this guy is clearly a blood suck-- Vampire.
Check out my scare-ometre!
- Ah, but he didn't know that yet, did he?
Vampires only became famous because of my book.
- And now, thanks to you, everyone knows about vampires.
(screaming)
- Oh, come on! Just a little bite!
- Well, he seems to have figured it out pretty quick.
- Ah, but the story doesn't end there. Oh no.
Next, Dracula travels to England.
Where he attacks Harker's wife, Mina.
- Oh, that's gonna leave a mark!
(burps) - It certainly did.
It meant Mina would become a vampire herself.
So Harker hires a vampire hunter, Dr. Van Helsing.
- A-ha!
(grunting) Where is he?
The vampire, huh?
- Not me! That's him, over there.
- Oh, sorry.
(evil laughter)
- Ah! Ooh! Get away!
- You like the bat thing?
All the old legends had fangs and blood drinking and garlic,
but turning into a bat, that was all me.
- Stop panicking! He's not scared of you!
- Uh, I seriously doubt that.
- Just stop flapping around!
- I've got to hand it to you Bram,
you really knew how to write a scary story.
How does it end? - Well,
Dracula is pursued back to Transylvania,
where Harker finally ends his reign of terror.
- Oh, that's gross.
(Bram): And Mina is free at last.
(♪♪)
- Oh, an actual happy ending. Terrific.
- Ha! If you like that sort of thing.
- And what is that supposed to mean?
- Well, your villain is some scary foreigner,
and the damsel in distress has to be rescued by all the men.
- Oh, look out, bit of healthy debate between the guests.
- It's all a little, you know, cliché.
- How dare you?
I bet Dracula could make minced meat out of Frankenstein!
(all): The monster... - Yes, yes.
He could wipe the floor with your monster any day.
- I'd like to see him try. - Uh, actually,
this is getting a little out of hand.
It's time to settle who's the scariest. Dracula or Frankenstein's monster?
In the Corpse Talk Monster Mash Up!
- Player 1, choose your monster.
(Mary): Frankenstein's monster.
Special power: regeneration.
- Player 2, choose your monster.
- Dracula. Special power: bat flight.
- Players, fight!
- Oh! - Ha, ha! Yeah! Take that!
Vampires hate garlic, so eat this!
- Ha, ha! Feel the sting of my take down!
- Oh, that seems to have done the trick. Now, funnily, we come to my third guest.
Howard Carter, Egyptologist and archeologist.
Oh?
Argh! Howard!
Hello? Uh, can we do the interview now?
(grunting)
- Sorry, old boy, couldn't resist having a bit of a dig around.
(chuckles) You were saying?
- You came face to face with a real mummy.
- Absolutely! Took me a while, though.
I'd been travelling to Egypt since I was 17.
The Egyptian Government had put me in charge of excavations
in the Valley of the Kings.
Trouble was grave robbers had already got there hundreds of years earlier.
Every tomb was empty.
Come on, follow me.
- Need water. Too hot.
Too sunny for a Halloween special.
Ah, that's more like it! Ugh! - Sorry!
My team and I were on the trail of the tomb of a largely unknown pharaoh
called Tutankhamun, when something truly horrible happened.
(gasps) - You were struck by the mummy's curse?
- No, the money for our expedition ran out.
Bloody worse, if you're an archeologist.
Anyway, this was our last chance to find something.
- And just three days into the dig, all your hard work paid off.
(gasping) What do you see?
- Wonderful things!
- Can you be a bit more specific?
(gasps) A solid-gold throne.
A treasure chest.
Dazzling jewelry.
Ugh! Howard!
I wish you'd stop doing that.
(♪♪)
- It was the most staggering find in the history of archeology.
A worldwide media sensation!
Even if I do say so myself.
- Ha! I'd loved to have seen some of those treasures up close.
- Sorry, it's not like I just carry Tutankhamun's treasures around with me.
- Oh. - Only joking.
I might have just one or two things.
Oh, and these.
- Ugh! Are those Tutankhamun's underpants?
Bit weird!
- He was buried with 145 pairs for the afterlife.
(gasps) - Weren't you afraid he'd put
the mummy's curse on you?
- Poppycock! After my discover, I went on to live a long and healthy life.
- Shame, I was hoping that would be our biggest scare yet.
- It was all made up. I'm telling you, there was no mummy's curse.
- Oh! Quite sure about that, Howard?
Why don't we just ask him ourselves?
- Uh...
(dramatic music)
(screaming)
(door creaks)
(♪♪)
(growling)
- Hey! I was just about to win!
- I think you'll find it was me.
(gasps)
(sneezing)
- Oh, easy on the dry ice, guys!
(applause) - King Tutankhamun
meet Howard Carter.
He really digs you.
- Pleased to meet you, again. You look... well.
- Ah, thanks! You can worship me as a god if you like.
That's what people tend to do.
Wait a second, is that some of my stuff?
What are you doing with my underwear?
- Finders keepers?
- Give that to me!
(grunting)
- Oh no, never make an Egyptian Pharaoh angry!
- Careful, you'll tear them!
There! Ha, ha!
- Oh, brilliant! He's gonna put the mummy's curse on you now!
I wonder...
(screaming)̄
- For stealing my underwear,
I will curse you both!
(screaming) Mummy!
Mummy! I want my mummy!
- You mean that one? - Uh, oh.
- Game over.
- Well, we might not have discovered who's the scariest monster,
but we did find out who's the most petrified presenter.
It's me!
Join us next time on Corpse Talk,
the show that brings the dead famous to life!
(cheering)
♪ Corpse Talk ♪
♪ A history chat about this or that ♪
♪ Corpse talk ♪
♪ Corpse Talk ♪
♪ Where the dead famous come to life ♪♪