RESONATING EVILS AND SINISTER INSPIRATIONS: CHILLER THEATER by Eric

During the next couple of weeks leading up to Halloween, I may post a few thoughts related to the horror genre. I was and still am a Horror/Monster movie nerd. In fact, my whole love of film was the resulting expansion from the thrillers I obsessed over as a kid. I cannot recall what the first horror film I saw was, but I definitely know which one had the first, initial impact on me at the time. It was CHILDREN SHOULDN'T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS, a rather infamous cult flick by the directing/writing team of Bob Clark and Alan Ormsby. Both gentlemen would go onto greater success unleashing the PORKY'S series to the world. Bob Clark himself had directed another cult classic, the antithetically family friendly A CHRISTMAS STORY. Obviously this displayed a great versitility in a man who met an untimely death by car accident only two years ago.

To an eight year old CHILDREN SHOULDN'T was just the ticket to imprint mental scarring and mess one up for life. Outwardly dark and grim, I was too young to recognize the attempted humor or satire embedded in Ormsby's script. Simply, this impressionable young mind witnessed a visual nightmare featuring a group of stage actors attempting a prank-ritual on an isolated, island graveyard. Nor did I acknowledge the utter cheapness of the film. As a kid, the poor lighting contributed to it's spookiness. The crappy photography added a sparse, vérité feel that looked real to me. And then there were the zombies.

While this may not have been my first horror movie. It was definitely my first ZOMBIE movie.

The concept that the dead can come back and eat you. Or, better yet, infect you enough so that you would become one of them and then turn on your friends and loved ones was absolutely terrifying to me. Never mind the fact that I had never heard of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD at the time, and CHILDREN SHOULDN'T was an obvious cash in. And there was no way to know that as I grew older, I would become more and more accustomed to the conceits of the genre and it's subgenres to the point where I would recognize CHILDREN SHOULDN'T was not a very good film at all. So why bring this up? Besides the obvious nostalgia factor?

CHILDREN SHOULDN'T was among many movies that initiated my education into all things horror. And that teacher... crypt keeper if you will... was a local television program called CHILLER THEATER. According to Wikipedia this aired on WPIX-TV in the tri-state region at around 11:30pm or 2am. But that confounds me because as a child there was no way I could have stayed up that late to watch it. I have a distinct memory of seeing it at around 11:30 or 12:00 in the afternoon. On Saturdays. CHILLER was usually followed by another movie show called SCIENCE FICTION THEATRE but my memory is pretty hazy on that. Let's just say I had my Saturday routine of watching the usual children's shows and cartoons which would all conveniently lead up to the eagerly anticipated weekly installment of CHILLER. It was a portal to horror movies of all kinds. And looking back at it, it somewhat surprises me how recently released some of those films were.


Granted, a lot of those flicks were edited for content. But this was around '76 or '77. And I swear I saw things like CHILDREN SHOULDN'T, COUNT YORGA: VAMPIRE, Bob Clark's other horror DEATHDREAM (aka DEAD OF NIGHT, which -- unlike CHILDREN -- I still think is brilliant to this day), possibly TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE along with some Hammer horror films, the occasional Euro thriller like HOUSE THAT SCREAMED, 1950s Monster movies and the odd classic like THE WOLFMAN or BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. In fact, the classic horror films (the ones released by Universal Studios during the late 1920s through 1950s) weren't too well represented on CHILLER. You were more likely to view Jesus Franco's COUNT DRACULA than the Bela Lugosi/Tod Browning version.

But damn did I love CHILLER! Especially that crazy, animated opening sequence:



Now that opener had a Pavlovian effect on me. The music. The creepy hand. I'd be rocking back and forth like a junkie who hadn't had a fix in over a week. But then the love-hate dread would set in. Because once that title oozed on the screen, my eager excitement would morph into a masochistic, self inflicted fear. And while I knew I was gonna' love what followed next, I also knew it would be effed up. And it would NOT be good.

CHILLER THEATER stopped broadcasting in the early to mid 1980s. But there has been a slow resurgence. Utilizing my web research skills, I am informed of a one night only, Halloween broadcast during 2008. Whether this was a repeat of the 1970s show or an update is not clear. The show also inspired a popular convention, The Chiller Theater Expo. Apparently, Johnny Ramone had attended this almost every year since the mid 1990s. Good bedfellows indeed.

UPDATE!!! Turns out CHILLER THEATER will return this Halloween.