Candela strikes again, and I am happy it wasn’t a warning shot! I have to respect a cat who can take old B movies and whip out some super fresh original material that not only pays homage to the source material, but generally as a rule, out does it a well. Here his idea is pretty simple. Slap together a couple of creepy short stories together and emulate those old drive in sensibilities. Sorry if you are too young to remember Drive-Ins, but theaters also had the Double Feature bills, the yjust weren’t as fun. The only thing I wish he had included was a short short story between them that could have been the stand-in for the old Let’s All Go to the Lobby interim commercial. You can’t tell me that there isn’t some ripe material for a Hot Dog trainer with a whip that Candela couldn’t crush like a lemon being turned into lemonade.
Either way, I LOVED the nod to the amazing Capra classic, Lost Horizon, which also features a character who jumps ship. BTW, who doesn’t adore time travel stories? This is the second one of Candela’s that I have been lucky enough to listen to and I have to say that he has a firm handle on temporal mechanics, and a viscious mind to make it fun. Suckers was very reminiscent of the old ’77 flick Tentacles, which was a cash grab made to capitalize on the Jaws craze of that period (much like the movie Orca, yes I have seen a lot of movies and read a lot of books!). This too is ridiculously fun, and as much as I can respect a semi-reformed criminal acting heroic I will ALWAYS root for the monster. You will too! After all, no one watched Jaws or Piranha in the hopes of seeing swimmers escape being eaten.
Gary Bennett does a fine job narrating, and does a good job playing things straight and making you care about the characters, even if it means you are supposed to dislike them. I enjoyed his work, and am glad that Candela managed to secure yet another good narrator for his stories. I don’t know how he gets so lucky.
In summary, solid writing, great stories, and excellent narration. I really don’t know what more you could ask for from two people (writer and narrator). The best thing about this is you only invest a little time into this project, a real double Bill would suck up about 5 hours of your life just at the theater. grab some popcorn, a bottle of pop, turn down the lights, and listen to the best double feature you can find today. Even though I did receive a promo code for this review it in no way influenced my considerations of the material, and in fact, inspired me to be more honest. Getting a code generally makes me harsher as a reviewer as I am more often concerned what someone like Me will decide based on my review.
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