The Complete Dork's Guide to Horror (TV)

This time in Dorkville we’ll pick a few TV shows. Not that these are dorky shows; in fact, us dorks consider them more worthy than some of the usual horror suspects. You just gotta be careful what company you’re in when you admit to it. Some diehard will go all Saw on you.

1) Mentioned this under the movie section but Dark Shadows deserves a second mention in its true arena—TV. Not just the original but the 1991 Revival series. Lysette Anthony’s cleavage alone in the new series is enough to get it on the list, but it was a genuinely moody and well-done show. Ben Cross, again severely under-rated, was born to be a tortured vampire. Not sure what was up with Maggie doing the wild thing with Roger, but since she was wearing a see-through T-shirt I never thought to question it.

2) Since so many remember this show fondly, I have to put Night Gallery on the list. One of the creepiest shows of its and any other time. That growing brooch that swallowed a woman…that was worth weeks of nightmares as a kid. I never was really sure if Rod Serling was actually alive during those opening sequences. I suspect maybe not.

3) Ghost Story/Circle of Fear. This show scared the hell out of me every Friday night for about a year. Sebastian Cabot (fresh off that other Horror classic, Family Affair) hosted the first half of the season until it became Circle of Fear. A woman’s whose dead husband kept crawling out of the well in the cellar, a spirit of a dead sea captain in cement, ghostly bonded twins…it didn’t get much better in Dorkville than that. Not on DVD yet, unfortunately.

4) The Sixth Sense. No, not the movie with the little creepy kid who saw dead people. The early ‘70s series that starred Gary Collins as an ESP investigator. One episode where a woman moved into a house and start experiencing visions of scenes from Edgar Allen Poe stories still sticks in my mind to this day. Should note this series was syndicated a few years back as part of Night Gallery, though they chopped a half hour off the show and mutilated it beyond belief. Not on DVD but a cool show.

5) Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. Not technically horror, because the show ventured into sci fi and espionage, but a number of episodes included werewolves, mummies and really bad looking monsters of all kinds. Dork heaven.

6) Friday the 13th. Again, not the movies but the TV series from the ‘90s starring singer/model Robey and somebody or other else. I say that because I could barely get past the perky nipples in the opening credits. Um, anyway, the first couple season were a lot of fun, the premise being the lead characters ran an antique shop had to get back a slew of cursed objects doing all sorts of naughty to their owners. A cursed cradle from the Titanic, a quilt whose owner could dream people to death and the obligatory creepy little doll. Not on DVD, either.

7) The Night Stalker. The original series, not the dreadful remake. Some dubbed it monster of the week, but you know when Karl Kolchak was sewing shut that zombie’s mouth in the back of a station wagon (we now know what happened to at least one of the Brady kids…) and the creature opened its eyes…one of the scariest TV moments ever. Very partial to the Ripper episode myself.

And for guilty pleasures….

1) Me and the Chimp. Well, yes, not technically horror but for anyone who sat through it…you know what I mean. Still, I like chimps…

2) The Groovy Ghoulies. Saturday morning cartoon terror? Oh, yeah. Just because you couldn’t get the infectious songs out of your head for days qualifies it and hey dorky Frankie and Wolfie…

Hmmm, I wonder if the Banana Splits should be on this list…nah, I’ll let Snorky be for the moment…

Oh, and as an addendum to the horror movie list, add The Norliss Tapes—a 1970s TV movie by Dan Curtis that came out around the same time as The Night Stalker, but didn’t quite catch on the same way. Pretty moody stuff.

Ok, dorks and dorkettes, lemme hear your choices…

Puffin' What?

Ever wonder just what kind of drugs your mom was slipping into your Apple Jacks when you were a kid to make you actually enjoy some of the Saturday morning shows you did?

Some of you out there will probably have no idea what I am talking about, unless you were somehow subjected to repeats on some obscure cable channel or ticked off your parents enough to buy the DVD collection. But one word:

Pufnstuf.

Or is that three words? Meh.

H. R. Pufnstuf. Mr. Can’t-Do-A-Little-If-He-Can’t-Do-Enough. Whatever the hell that means.

Now, here is the acid nightmare of those lovable Saturday morning stalwarts Sid & Marty Krofft and the only thing it had going for it, from an adult perspective, was it was a step above Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (and we all KNOW you stole the kid from Family Affair for that little car wreck, don’t we, Mssrs. Kroffts!?) and The Bugaloos.

But back to Pufnpants. Er, Pufnstuf. Now just what does that mean anyway? Is that some secret code for what Sid & Marty were doing when they created the show? We they Puffin’ some stuff? Something illegal, no doubt? Or is it worse than that and we don’t want to know just what of their stuff was puffin’?

Shiver.

Now let’s put aside the fact that Mr. Stuff lords over his own island and a bunch of creepy little “stuffs”. And the fact he’s got this one adolescent boy…nope, not even going to go there.

But what’s up with that sinister little neutered flute, anyway? I mean, come on, has anyone taken a real close look at that flexible little…um, nevermind. Just take a look at Freddy the Flute’s lips and tell me there’s not something unmentionable about that “instrument”. There’s a reason the island main crag hag, Witchy Poo, wants that flute so bad. Ah-hem.

So just who or what is H. R. Pufnstuf? Some mysterious visitor from another world? A distant relative of Tinkie Winkie? Some perverted Build-a-Bear reject? Does he even OWN a pair of pants?

Alas, I fear we’ll never know. I’m having a hard enough time just figuring out why he held me spellbound as a kiddie all those many moons ago…