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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 1, NO. 20 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL |
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PICKS THE ALL-TIME WORST TV HORRORS |
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WHEN TV DECIDES TO SCARE YOU,
BE AFRAID, BE VERY AFRAID!
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
Because of its widespread "lowest common denominator"
thinking, TV can do almost anything worse than any other medium--and
usually does. That's never been more apparent than on those occasions
when it attempts horror movies.
For
one thing, the "standards and practices" offices at
most TV networks usually think it's a violation of the public
trust for TV to really scare the audience, so the producers
aren't allowed to do anything too frightening for fear pressure
groups will file complaints with the FCC, sponsors will cancel
their ads and the network will be denounced on the floor of Congress.
So, TV usually just pretends to scare us.
That's a primary reason why TV has produced some all-time rotten
horror shows, but it isn't the only reason, as you'll see below
when you check out my all-time worst TV horrors list, starting
with:
1.
FRANKENSTEIN (1952)
Of
all the many versions of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein"
that TV has attempted over the past 50 years, the 1952 live version on
ABC's "Tales of Tomorrow" science-fiction series probably
was the most disastrous--even though it starred Lon Chaney, Jr.,
one of the icons of Universal studios' Golden Age of Horror Movies.
The limitations of live television didn't help: Sets had to be
constructed so that they could be moved swiftly and exterior
scenes always looked incredibly fakey because they always were
painted on flat surfaces. But Chaney himself probably deserves
most of the blame for the awfulness of this production, even
though he had played Frankenstein's monster before in "The
Ghost of Frankenstein" in 1942 and acquitted himself rather
well that time. As legend has it, Chaney prepped for his performance
by soaking up quite a bit of booze, so when The Monster comes
staggering into the scene, roaring like an adenoidal lion who
had just washed down his dinner with maybe a half gallon of rye,
the effect is more comical than frightening. While watching the
kinescope--a film record of the live show made by photographing
the TV image--one can almost see Chaney's co-stars hoping the
big galoot doesn't walk right through the paper-thin "stone"
walls and bring Dr. Frankenstein's castle crashing down on them,
the cameramen and sound guys, too. As a performance, it ranks
right with Peter Boyle's Monster in Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein,"
but without the soft shoe number.
 Lon Chaney's 1952 "Frankenstein" stumbled around more than usual. |
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2. SWAMP THING--THE SERIES (1990-93)
"Swamp Thing" was a popular comic book hero of the 1970s--the vegetable version of scientist Dr. Alec Holland, who was the victim of a scientific experiment gone wrong. It turned him into a walking compost pile, but an agile and powerful one. I never swore allegiance to this hero because I always felt he was ripped off from a comic book hero of my youth in the 1940s--The Heap, a former World War I aviation ace whose plane crashed in a swamp where some sort of chemical process kept him alive, but only as a man-sized stack of putrescent vegetable matter. Horror director Wes Craven brought "Swamp Thing" to the screen in 1982 and it was successful enough to merit a sequel, "Return of Swamp Thing" (1989), notable today only because it features a young Heather Locklear. The TV series ran on the USA cable network for 72 episodes--and quickly degenerated into a cheap formula action show for kids. Dick Durock provided the voice coming out of the tangled mess that was "Swampy," a most unconvincing "good" monster who never scared anybody over age 6.
3.
HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN 1997 (1997)
NBC
got the bright idea to update and continue some of the classic
Universal horror series as television events and started with
this two-part miniseries that borrowed the title of the original
1944 "House of Frankenstein," a Karloff-Chaney-Carradine
classic, and its then-unique feature: An all-star monster roundup.
NBC then turned it into one of the stupidest, most inept productions
ever seen in network primetime. Rather than figure out what makes
the original Universal Frankenstein series still appeal to new
generations of fans--its Gothic fairy tale flavor and serious
approach to the material--the NBC show turned the House of Frankenstein
into a Los Angeles night club run by a vampire, had Frankenstein's
monster somehow disappear into L.A.'s homeless underground and
converted Chaney's Wolf Man into a sexy girl who's having a romance
with the detective hero. The reception to this was so bad that
NBC buried its grand plan for reviving the Universal monsters
virtually overnight.
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4.
GARGANTUA (1998)
Maybe the Fox network thought it could jump on a giant monster
bandwagon and beat the big budget American "Godzilla"
remake to the marketplace in 1998. Whatever the motivation, "Gargantua"
was an enormous mistake because it was just a lame recycle job
of old giant monster movie cliches, part "Godzilla,"
part "Gorgo" and part "Gilligan's Island"
(That's the part where everybody human seems to have misplaced
his or her brain.) The story has scientist Adam Baldwin discover
a large baby reptile creature that seems to be a salamander that
has bumped way up in size because of toxic chemicals dumped into
a bay off this remote Pacific island. Sooner or later, the Mama
Gargantua comes out of the deep to reclaim its baby--and fill
in the rest yourself. Not one iota of a thrill to be found. Critics
watched and fired their salvos, but nobody else tuned in.
5. THE BEAST (1996)
Peter
Benchley has been selling the same story for 25 years: Giant
shark terrorizes small isolated seaside community. When he called
it "Jaws," it was absolutely horrific--especially after
director Steven Spielberg milked all the possible thrills and
chills out of the concept. In 1996, NBC mistakenly concluded
there were unmilked thrills and chills remaining, even after
all those big screen "Jaws" sequels, and adapted Benchley's
novel "The Beast" into a four-hour miniseries. But
changing the locale from the East Coast to the West Coast and
the giant white shark into an even bigger giant squid didn't
refresh anything--and this turned out to be one of the longest
bore-jobs ever perpetrated on the American television audience.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. "Tales of Tomorrow: Frankenstein" is available on video from Englewood Entertainment. "Swamp Thing" photo is © 1990 by USA network. "The Beast" artwork is © 1996 by NBC Productions. The giant monster cartoon is from IMSI's Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, 94901-5506, USA.
RON MILLER is the author of "Mystery! A Celebration." In his 40 years as a journalist, Miller has written about really bad TV movies and famous monsters for such publications as TV Guide, Castle of Frankenstein, Cavalier and more than 100 newspapers. To learn how to get autographed copies of his book, click on SHOPPING MALL below.
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