I’m talking about this hideously bad ’70s portrayal by comedian Marty Allen (filmed as one of the — alas, almost-always unfunny — comedy bits used as filler on Night Gallery). Not even Looney Tunes voice actor Mel Blanc (performing, uncredited, as the raven) could save this skit from bombing.
(Note: Thanks to Chris Brown of the Night Gallery Podcast for providing a synopsis and review of each and every Night Gallery story…even real turkeys like this one. If you haven’t checked out the podcast, I encourage you to do so. Fascinating stuff.)
Back in the days when a firecracker constituted a "special effect".
Nowadays, I loathe television. But it wasn’t always so.
The first television show I remember enjoying — I mean, fanatically enjoying (as in, had to see it every Saturday night) was NBC’s 1979 show Cliffhangers. It was an odd duck for TV back then — an attempt to bring back the old “serial” style of storytelling (along the lines of the old black and white features that would be shown in movie theaters in the 1930s).
Each show was divided up into three serials. “Stop Susan Williams” told the story of an investigative journalist uncovering an international conspiracy (meh). “The Secret Empire” told the story about a old west lawman who discovers that there’s an underground city run by super-advanced aliens (meh). “The Curse of Dracula” found the Transylvanian nosferatu settling into a life as (wait for it…) a Bay Area college professor who teaches only night classes! (Definitely not meh). Yeah, the set-up might seem a bit cheesy to our present day sensibilities (I’m imagining dialogue along the lines of “Turn on, tune in, and let me drink your blood”), but to a five year old in the 70s, it was super stuff! I suspect my love for “The Curse of Dracula” had something to do with the serial format. In retrospect, I can see how the 20 minutes segments were ideal for a five year old’s attention span.
For years I’ve wanted to find this on DVD. I think a small video company had it for sale once, but that was back when I was living in some pretty reduced circumstances and couldn’t afford it. Now I look for it on Amazon and can’t find it. For years I’ve assumed I’d never again see the TV show that I loved so much.
But with Youtube, all things are possible.
Imagine my delight when I searched Youtube this morning and found a video clip from the series. After over thirty years. It’s like getting a little piece of my childhood back. Perhaps taking a cue from Star Wars (which started in the 70s with Episode IV — much to the confusion to those who saw it in theaters), Cliffhangers tried to accentuate the idea that you were seeing a serial “in progress” by starting each of them in media res. Hence, the first episode aired is “Chapter 6″. In a sense, Cliffhangers was doomed. It tried to tell stories in serial form 40 years after the popularity of that form in movie theaters and 30 years before the popularity of that form would return on the web (in shows like Dr. Horrible, The Guild, etc.)
Wikipedia (the font of all knowledge) tells us that the idea behind the show was to serve as a testing ground/incubator from which one of the shows could emerge as a spin-off. Unfortunately, the expense of running three different crews mounted quickly, and the show’s ratings (up against Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley, the number 1&2 shows in all of TV at the time) didn’t make it cost-effective. NBC pulled the plug after only a few months. “The Curse of Dracula” was the only one of the three serials to complete the entire story during the initial run of episodes in the U.S.
Now that I’m writing about this, I wonder if this might have partially inspired my homage to 70s TV, Ferret Force Five in How To Eat Fried Furries.
Anyway, without any further ado, I thought I’d post a link to the Youtube clip posted. There are several others from all of the serials posted, too. This is “Chapter VI” of The Curse of Dracula (which, as you’ll recall was actually the first episode in the serial). When I watched this, it actually occurred to me that it wasn’t all that bad, for its time. Towards the end of this clip, actor Michael Nouri plays the Count right there on the edge between a seductive/sympathetic and malevolent portrayal.
