Forgotten Fiction

Paris brings a 1989 film that almost nobody has seen and yet somehow Tommy has. Riverbend follows a Black Vietnam veteran and his men who hide out in a Georgia town being terrorized by a racist sheriff and decide to fight back. Shot in Texas, buried on VHS, and rescued from obscurity by a filmmaker who put it on YouTube. It is Red Dawn meets The Color Purple run through an 80s action filter and it is a wild ride.Then Tommy concludes his series on books Ella really dug. The Phantom Tollbooth. A father daughter road trip. A surprise audiobook. A kid who was already in chapter two and did not want him to turn it off. Narrated by Rainn Wilson. Written by Norton Juster who violated his Ford Foundation grant by doing so. Publishers said the wordplay was too much for kids. They were wrong.

Paris brings Tommy a Stephen King adaptation some constant readers haven't even seen, The Dark Half, directed by George A. Romero in 1993. Two horror legends. One forgotten film. Then Tommy brings a book his daughter Ella called one of her favorites she's ever read... after it sat on her shelf for over a year. George Selden's Cricket in Times Square belongs in the same conversation as Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little. Most people have forgotten it exists. And almost nobody knows about the six sequels.

Before Blue Ruin. Before Green Room. Before anyone knew who Jeremy Saulnier was, he made a micro-budget horror comedy in Brooklyn with his friends about a lonely meter maid who finds a Halloween party invitation on the sidewalk and really should have stayed home.

The show that kept a generation of kids up at night sits next to the 1819 novella that invented the modern vampire. Tommy makes the case for John Polidori, Lord Byron's personal physician, who wrote the first aristocratic vampire story at the most famous literary gathering in history. These remembrances will have everyone saying, "I'm Cold."

Paris and Tommy kick off Forgotten Fiction the way they do everything... by ignoring the plan. What was supposed to be a simple introduction turns into a deep dive on Tim Curry playing in a forgotten Tales from the Crypt episode, and Tommy's rabbit hole into why you can't actually stream a complete season of Beavis and Butt-Head anywhere. Rights issues, physical media, and the specific kind of nostalgia that hits when you realize the thing you remember most clearly has been quietly erased. Welcome to Forgotten Fiction.