Swan: Madame, Swan here. I want you to answer a question for me. Madame: Yes? Swan: What would you give me for a starring role in a syndicated sitcom? Madame: Anything you wanted, sweetheart. Swan: Anything? Would you give me… your spot on Hollywood Squares? Recommended listening: The devil is real and spent the better […]
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I’ve been filling out my October smörgåsbord of spooky fare with selected episodes of Night Gallery, thus triggering my umpteenth reassessment of that three-season and oh-so-early-1970s attempt to recapture some of that ol’ Twilight Zone magic. Was it a supernatural counterpart to Love American Style‘s mix of celebrity guest stars and cornball black-out gags? Was […]
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Please, if they were real witches, they wouldn’t be casting hexes on Starsky and Hutch while intimidating a small rural community. They’d be endlessly arguing about closed practice or how much to charge for their handmade herbal satchets at next weekend’s street fair. (“Satan’s Witches,” originally broadcast on 2/8/1978, is actually pretty fascinating because it […]
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It’s like my grandpa used to say: “The only thing worse than a haunted muscle car is a haunted racist muscle car.” Multiple problematic aspects aside, this episode (“The Ghost of General Lee,” 10/29/1979) creeped the heck out of me as a kid, even though it was clearly established as a hoax out of the […]
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Between The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)… …and The Devil’s Rain (1975)… …the once and future Captain of the USS Enterprise didn’t fare well in his early 1970s encounters with the occult. Come to think of it, he didn’t do much better against spiders, either. Recommended listening:
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In Search of… has to be near the top of my personal list of formative TV viewing experiences. The syndicated series covered all manner of topics under the expansive rubric of “strange phenomena,” which was quite the cultural obsession during the uncertainty and turbulent 1970s. The legend of Dracula one week, Amelia Earhart the next, […]
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All right, my fellow fiends, it’s time to descend into a realm of truly tragic horror… …otherwise known as “mid-1970s primetime television.” “Vampire,” a second season episode of Starsky & Hutch originally aired on October 30, 1976, is part of the long if not proud tradition of tossing some modestly macabre plot into the mix […]
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About five years back I caught some fortunate breaks which increased what the beancounters would call my “discretionary income.” Being a sober and pragmatic middle-aged man, I used that windfall to chase down various childhood artifacts of deep personal significance. This was not some wild spree, however. Taking a page from my renewed record collecting, […]
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And before you jump into the comments and ask, Johnny Cash is canonically a vampire.
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