Growing up in an area that didn’t have access to cable TV, I can’t even begin to tell you how excited my family was to get satellite television service in the 90s. No more tweaking antennas on Friday nights for TGIF. No more being forced to watch local news stories on CBS instead of NBC because it was partly cloudy. Television beaming straight from outer space into our humble living room was a revolution. Not to mention access to a plethora of basic cable channels! This is a story from that era. A little story I like to call…
Tales Of TV Horror – A Lesson In Fear and Betrayal.
A few years back, I talked about my escapades with satellite radio through the service, but one of the funniest instances was the night my sister and I had a horror movie marathon. The year was 1993 and as summer came to a close, green leaves turned to orange and the night air got crisp. The days were getting shorter and all sorts of ghoulish decorations began sprouting up in department stores and the yards across the neighborhood. Halloween season was upon us.
And for a kid obsessed with the cinematic macabre and access to the best TV horror basic cable had to offer, it was the most wonderful time of the year!
Just a few years earlier, Tales From The Darkside was my introduction to horror. You know, the horror I’d watch late at night by myself and end up being too scared to sleep anyway. But at this point, I was 10 years old. Double digits! I wasn’t afraid to watch scary movies alone. In fact, I was already bonding with my Dad by staying up late on weekends watching the original Night Of The Living Dead, or the classic Universal Monster movies. We already had countless horror-related VHS tapes, but I was at an age where I started experimenting on my own. And by “experiment”, I mean whatever the basic cable stations ran after hours in all their edited glory.
My sister was also into horror movies. Being a year younger than me, I’m assuming I was some sort of safety net for her.
One of our favorites was Tales From The Crypt. Mind you, this is a show not intended for children. There was a lot of expletive language, sexual innuendos, and gross depictions of gore to boot. But the episodes we saw weren’t on HBO but hilariously edited versions adjusted for TV. There was no foul language, absolutely no gratuitous explicitness, and next to no blood. What was left was 20-minute abruptly edited tales of dark humor, bad puns, and campy bad people getting what they deserve. Very tame and embarrassingly pathetic cuts leaving the show a shell of what it was supposed to be.
The network would show 2 episodes of Tales From The Crypt back to back at 10 p.m. taking up an hour of programming (with probably 20 minutes of that being commercials). But it was always fun. It may have been void of everything the show was supposed to be but it was still edgy enough to make my sister and I feel like we were really doing something big.
Back in those days, satellite TV had a program grid that would let you know what was coming on a few days in advance. Being only 3 colors of wording, slow as molasses, basically pixelated trash, it was as rudimentary as you can imagine. But to us, it was an incredible advancement in technology. Scrolling ahead to the weekend, our eyes couldn’t believe what we saw…
2 episodes of Tales From The Crypt at its usual time, followed by The Amityville Horror at midnight, then what looked to be a 2-hour block of Tales From The Crypt at 2 a.m.!
Neither of us had seen The Amityville Horror but heard it was a true story so sitting through that would be good fun on its own. But 2 hours of Tales From The Crypt? That had to be at least 4 episodes! This was an event of a lifetime! It was an event that called for snacks, the comfiest of pajamas, the toastiest of blankets, and our designated sides of the couch. A night of weird, dark humor and true ghostly tales. Our Friday night was planned.
Permission was no big deal. It wasn’t a school night and as long as we got along and didn’t make too much noise, our parents really didn’t care how long we stayed up. Had they known our main event started at 2 a.m., Mom probably would’ve had something to say. But even if she knew, she probably thought we’d both be fast asleep on the couch before midnight. Maybe that would’ve been true any other night.
On the menu, we had microwave popcorn (a tried and true staple of all movie viewing), nachos made with the finest of microwavable Velveeta, and Cherry Coke. (it was 1993 so it was likely the obnoxious purple label). We also had a delectable mixture of gummy bears and sour worms for the sweet tooth. Ah yes, junk food and horror, the matrimony of TV binge-watching. After Mom, Dad, and my older brother went to bed, my sister and I hopped onto the couch for our night of horror show goodness.
The opening Tales From The Crypt episodes were standard TV horror fare. I honestly can’t even remember which episodes they were. Now it was the main event: The Amityville Horror!
The Amityville Horror tells the story of a middle-class family purchasing a rather expensive but mildly priced home in upstate New York, only to find out that it’s not only extremely haunted but demonically possessed. Although mostly a work of fiction, it was based upon the allegedly true events the Lutz family experienced after buying where the previous owners were murdered.
The accuracy of the family’s telling of events has been controversial since day 1. Their 1977 book was debated and all but debunked as exaggerated. Clearly, the 1979 film adaptation took its own liberties for drama and cinematic purposes. But I have to remind you, we watched this movie in 1993. This was years before the internet in every home was a thing so there was no way to investigate the story in a short period of time.
When you’re 9 and 10 years old and you see the caption ‘based on true events’, you take that as cold hard gospel. And we did.
The opening scenes show an entire family, man, woman, and children getting shot to death. Children. This movie wasn’t messing around! From then on out, things get dire and more dire. On the surface, The Amityville Horror is a tried-and-true, trope-ridden haunted house story. But it’s elevated by a cruel and mean-spirited execution. From the Lutz family, their friends, law enforcement, and religious figures, the evil of the house is seemingly unstoppable. And all of this (to us kids) was documented and true.
Needless to say, it scared the pants off us. So much so, that we were too scared to get off the couch to turn the lamps on, let alone get more snacks!
As we sat on the couch speechless from fear as the credits rolled, we let out a sigh of relief remembering Tales From The Crypt was about to start. Surely, the campy, dark-witted sight gags of that show would lighten the mood for us. Right? Well…
After a network call sign and a bumper for a production company, the living room was illuminated by the TV’s depiction of an old medieval-looking church in broad daylight. As the speakers blasted Bach’s “Toccata & Fugue in D Minor”, it was obvious this wasn’t Tales From The Crypt! Then the title screen came up.
It was in fact, Tales From The Crypt. Just not the one we were expecting.
Tales From The Crypt is a 1972 British anthology horror film that tells the story of a group of individuals lost in the catacombs of a museum. When they stumble upon a mysterious monk, they are reminded of each of their nefarious lives leading up to their visit. Much like the HBO adaptation nearly 30 years later, each character of questionable morals gets their comeuppance. However, unlike the HBO series, there is no camp, laughs, or fun to be had. While not particularly gory or scary, Tales From The Crypt is a bleak affair with a foreboding atmosphere and the air of a bad dream.
I think if it weren’t for the combination of betrayal by the TV guide and the over-stimulation of unexpected terror seeing The Amityville Horror, my sister and I would’ve fallen asleep during this iteration of Tales From The Crypt.
But there was something about the clashing of TV horror styles that had a serious effect on us that night.
The Amityville Horror is a mean-spirited film from the start. Not only does it take liberties with true events (and exaggerate, already exaggerated events) but it constantly shows people in spiritual and emotional peril. A window falls on one kid’s hand and another kid falls down the stairs. There are subplots questioning faith in God, and even a surprising dose of domestic violence. That’s not even counting the opening sequence. The overall message of the film states that unexplainable evil exists and there’s nothing you can do about it but run and hope you can stay out of its way.
On the other hand, Tales From The Crypt repeatedly says people will always get what they deserve no matter what. No thanks to either film being subtle or nuanced, their respective messages were heard loud and clear. Especially to a 9 and 10-year-old who just wanted a night of junk food and cheap frights. It was a different kind of horror. Depictions of both the over-sensationalized and the thought-provoking. If The Amityville Horror was all true, it was leaps and bounds scarier than Tales From The Crypt. Then again, the message of ‘we’re all going to die’ from the latter, felt more concerning than the former.
By the time Tales From The Crypt ended, the sun was peeking through the living room windows, birds chirping in the trees. My sister and I had survived the night of TV horror.
Soon, Mom was in the kitchen making coffee and getting ready to start the day. Over the last 8 hours, my sister and I experienced a marathon of junk food, distraught, disappointment, and existential dread. As we sat there on the couch staring blankly at the TV as Mom changed it to the Today Show, we not only reflected upon our decision to pull an all-nighter but maybe a little about the horrors themselves. It’s fun to be scared by a killer on TV, bad puns, and dark humor. But what about the horrors beyond that?
Whatever it was, we made an unspoken vow to not sit up and watch horror movies alone. At least until we were a little older. Well, I’d like to think we decided on that anyway. In reality, I think we fell asleep not long after Mom changed the channel. I’m also sure we were right back on the couch for those TV edits of Tales From The Crypt the very next weekend. I miss those days.
All original art by Ricky Vigil. For more information on Ricky’s artistic endeavors, please visit Super Cool & Stuff!