The Fives: Fright night on TV begins with the Twilight Zone and ends with X-Files

By Todd Williams, Journal staff Saturday, November 01, 2008

For the last in a trilogy of Halloween week columns, I turn to the tube.

Over the history of commercial television, there have only been a handful of regular series in the horror genre that have lasted beyond, say, 10 episodes.

There are several reasons. First of all, its difficult to create characters that could even slightly plausibly be in situations where the supernatural and paranormal are part of their normal reality.

Many of the successful shows simply detoured around this problem by simply keeping the narrator the same. One of my favorite scary series from my youth was Night Gallery, a Rod Serling creation in which he would introduce each week's show by discussing a painting in a gallery of gothic and spooky art. The stories had little in common other than Serling introduced them and they scared the bejeezus out of us -- or at least me. Of course, I was 4 when the show started airing, but the repeats keep me coming back.

Other shows, such as "Millennium" and today's "Medium", managed to keep the main characters by using a seemingly unending trail of crimes to keep the series moving along.

And still other shows, such as "Buffy: The Vampire Slayer", simply discarded the need to keep the show remotely based in reality and pushed forward into the marvellously unusual.

Remarkably, though, these are the shows that I remember most fondly over the years. From my young grade school days when my mother would return from work on a late Saturday night with Sammy's Pizza and RC Cola and wake me up late at night to watch scary television to my last TV series love, "The X Files," the shows that send chills down the spine remain the most cherished in my TV log.

Here are five that are standouts among the few good ones that have graced the TV.

5. "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"

Still around in repeats, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" was among the best in all of television in its eight year run on television.

The funny and droll introductions by Hitchcock himself gave little warning about what was to follow. Now, Hitchcock's works may have been a bit cerebral and character-driven for today's audiences, but they stand the test of time not only against great scary shows of all time, but of television programming in general.

But if you don't like cerebral, there's always ...

4. "Tales from the Crypt"

Hey, this HBO series that also had an eight year run (1989-1996) followed the somewhat humorous introduction like Hitchcock, but what followed bore little resemblance to Hitchcock's works.

Other than the fact that they could be downright scary.

What "Crypt" did well was take absurd characters and put them in unusual situations that forced a resolution that generally turned out bad for the characters involved.

Based on the EC comic book series, the show was remarkable because it was one of the first horror series to run beyond the reach of FCC regulation and took advantage of it by being able to use the gore and unsettling content sometimes necessary to make "spooky" happen.

That being said, it rarely was excessive, at least in context of the story.

3. "The Twilight Zone"

Perhaps no old-time TV show is more fun watching than the "The Twilight Zone."

Narrated by the legendary Rod Serling, the show shifted from week to week its characters and situations, tied loosely by the thread that there were strange things afoot in the universe and Serling was there to clue you in.

One way Serling and company got viewers to check back in -- beyond the remarkable scripts and knack for pulling off ironic endings -- was by offering up some top notch guest actors. Today, part of the fun of watching "Twilight Zone" repeats is trying to spot younger versions of later famous actors as they toil with Serling's scripts.

The best testament to the "Twilight Zone" impact on American pop culture is that it has been twice revived for TV series, movies have been made, songs have been written and even pinball and video games created in the effort to recreate Serling's original vision.

They have often fallen short, but at least its an admirable pursuit.

2. "The X-Files"

As aforementioned, this may be the last show on television that I really, really liked. (With the possible exception of the short-lived "Freaks and Geeks".)

Using the device of following crimes, the show simultaneously followed a story line -- Fox "Spooky" Mulder and Dana Scully's search for the truth behind a plan by aliens to infiltrate the human race and take over the world -- and a series of unrelated investigations.

Although I appreciate what the alien story line did to keep the series moving along -- and the movie actually helped fill in a lot of the gaps in the story -- it is the individual episodes that had nothing to do with the overriding theme that were among the best.

Whether it was the explanation behind the mythic El Chupacabra or the classic episode "The Post-Modern Prometheus", the X-Files wasn't perfect, but when it was good, it was often great.

The same cannot be said of most series of such unusual subject matter.

1. "Kolchak: The Night Stalker"

Somewhere along the way, I worry that I got into journalism because of this show.

It's not that when I began writing for magazines and newspapers in my teens that I wanted to do stories about the existence of mythical monsters, but this was THE favorite show of my youth.

If you're not familiar with it, it starred Darren McGavin as a washed up newspaper reporter who chased mythological creatures around Chicago. The most memorable episode was the one in which he chased a Kinshasa ( a doppleganger that could shift into shapes of loved ones) through the city as it killed off a long line of folks.

In the end, the Kinshasa takes the form of the elderly societal writer from the office, and Kolchak musters just enough courage to fire a crossbow into her chest, thus transforming her into the doppleganger's original form, a hideous bigfoot like beast.

Like I said, this show stuck with me.

Unfortunately, only 20 episodes were made, but they are immortalized on DVD for fans of the future (ahem, Sophie and Brewer) to view when they get a little older. Like 9-years-old.

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