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Danse Macabre :: Кинг Стивен
Страница: 199 из 359Although it was presented, during its first run, in what is now considered "the family hour," a change in mores has made it one of those "iffy" programs for the independents, who feel safer running sitcoms, game shows, and movies (not to mention the old put-yourhands-on-your-TV-set-brother-and-you-will-be- healed ! bit).
And by the way, if you get it in your area, warm up the old Betamax and send me the complete catalogue by way of the publisher. On second thought, you better not. It's probably illegal. But treasure the run while you've got it; like Thriller , the like of The Outer Limits will not be seen again. Even The Wonderful World of Disney is going off the air after a twenty-six-year run.
*For much of this material I am indebted to the entry on The Outer Limits in The Science Fiction Handbook , published by Doubleday (New York: 1979). The entry (p. 441 of this huge volume) was written by John Brosnan and Peter Nicholls.
4
We'll not say from the sublime to the ridiculous, because TV rarely produces the sublime, and series TV has never produced it; let us instead say from the workmanlike to the atrocious.
The Night Stalker .
Earlier on in this chapter I said that television was too homogenized to cough up anything that was really charmingly awful; ABC-TV's The Night Stalker series is the exception that proves the rule.
It's not the movie that I'm talking about, remember. The film of The Night Stalker was one of the best movies ever made for TV. It was based on an abysmal horror novel, The Kolchak Tapes , by Jeff Rice-the novel was issued as a paperback after the unpublished manuscript landed on producer Dan Curtis's desk and became the basis of the film.
A short side trip here, if you don't mind too much. Dan Curtis became associated with the horror field as producer of what must have been the strangest soap opera ever to run on the tube; it was called Dark Shadows. Shadows became something of a nine-days' wonder during the last two years of its run. Originally conceived as a soft-focus ladies' gothic of the type then so popular in paperback (they have now been largely replaced by those sweet/savage love stories a la Rosemary Rogers, Katherine Woodiwiss, and Laurie McBain), it eventually mutated-like Thriller -into something quite different from what had first been intended. Dark Shadows , under Curtis's inspired hand, became a kind of supernatural mad hatters' tea party (it even came on the air at the traditional hour for tea, four in the afternoon), and hypnotized viewers were treated to a seriocomic panorama of hell-a weirdly evocative combination of Dante's ninth circle and Spike Jones. One member of the put-upon Collins family, Barnabas Collins, was a vampire. He was played by Jonathan Frid, who became an overnight celebrity.
And by the way, if you get it in your area, warm up the old Betamax and send me the complete catalogue by way of the publisher. On second thought, you better not. It's probably illegal. But treasure the run while you've got it; like Thriller , the like of The Outer Limits will not be seen again. Even The Wonderful World of Disney is going off the air after a twenty-six-year run.
*For much of this material I am indebted to the entry on The Outer Limits in The Science Fiction Handbook , published by Doubleday (New York: 1979). The entry (p. 441 of this huge volume) was written by John Brosnan and Peter Nicholls.
4
We'll not say from the sublime to the ridiculous, because TV rarely produces the sublime, and series TV has never produced it; let us instead say from the workmanlike to the atrocious.
The Night Stalker .
Earlier on in this chapter I said that television was too homogenized to cough up anything that was really charmingly awful; ABC-TV's The Night Stalker series is the exception that proves the rule.
It's not the movie that I'm talking about, remember. The film of The Night Stalker was one of the best movies ever made for TV. It was based on an abysmal horror novel, The Kolchak Tapes , by Jeff Rice-the novel was issued as a paperback after the unpublished manuscript landed on producer Dan Curtis's desk and became the basis of the film.
A short side trip here, if you don't mind too much. Dan Curtis became associated with the horror field as producer of what must have been the strangest soap opera ever to run on the tube; it was called Dark Shadows. Shadows became something of a nine-days' wonder during the last two years of its run. Originally conceived as a soft-focus ladies' gothic of the type then so popular in paperback (they have now been largely replaced by those sweet/savage love stories a la Rosemary Rogers, Katherine Woodiwiss, and Laurie McBain), it eventually mutated-like Thriller -into something quite different from what had first been intended. Dark Shadows , under Curtis's inspired hand, became a kind of supernatural mad hatters' tea party (it even came on the air at the traditional hour for tea, four in the afternoon), and hypnotized viewers were treated to a seriocomic panorama of hell-a weirdly evocative combination of Dante's ninth circle and Spike Jones. One member of the put-upon Collins family, Barnabas Collins, was a vampire. He was played by Jonathan Frid, who became an overnight celebrity.