Duel.
Here’s Duel, from 1971. Famous as Steven Spielberg’s feature-length directorial debut, Duel is about a guy menaced by a mysterious truck that he can’t shake.
The movie does a lot with a little and there aren’t any wasted moments. I’ve seen mixed reactions to Duel over the years, but it hit me pretty hard and I thought it was way effective. Scary, too.
(But I still think it should’ve been called Fuel.)
Star Crystal!
From 1986, Star Crystal is an odd duck. It begins as a horror movie — an Alien clone, in many ways — but then, almost on a dime, it turns into something more closely resembling a family-safe sci-fi movie.
It’s not too much of a spoiler to mention that the movie features an alien, and my God do I love the design of that guy. He kinda looks like an inside-out E.T., covered in Jell-O.
Star Crystal had some fun moments, but make no mistake, it was still a horror movie! (Well, more sci-fi than horror, but people bleed!)
Enjoy. It’s pretty perfect for a lazy Saturday night.
Old Infomercials!
At its core, Dino Drac After Dark is a tribute to those lost, lonely nights of youth, when I’d grab at whatever was available to add a little noise to the silence. In a world without the internet, the pickings were slim!
Case in point: I used to treat infomercials like “real” TV shows, and came to count on their hosts as surrogate friends. Every weekend, or perhaps even every single day during my summer vacations, I’d spend the late hours watching pitches for fad diets and psychic hotlines, not so much “entertained” as merely comforted by the fact that I had something there to make lights and sounds.
I only “half-watched” them most of the time, using the infomercials as background noise as I putzed around in my bedroom. Still, I saw some infomercials so many times that I ended up memorizing every single line in them. Here are a few that I remember most:
Ronco Showtime Rotisserie!
Richard Simmons’s Deal-a-Meal Program!
Anthony Robbins: Personal Power!
Jack LaLanne Power Juicer!
Watching ‘em again now is such a trip. I need my old blankets and flannel shirts, and a sleeve of Ritz crackers, and maybe some well-worn issues of Wizard Magazine.
Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me.
I know I’ve been overdoing it with the horror anthology episodes this week, but if you’ll indulge me, I have one more.
(Well, ten more, but let’s say one.)
Actually, this particular episode wasn’t from an anthology series, but it may as well have been. From 1998, it was a 2nd season episode of Millennium, and I only found that out today. It took serious Googling for me to track down this scary television show that I absolutely remembered watching back in the late ‘90s, and lo and behold, it was part of a regular series.
I can’t tell you much (or really ANYTHING) about Millennium, but it’s immaterial anyway. From the little I’ve read, this specific episode — Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me — acted a oddball standalone.
Four adorably cranky old men gather at a coffee shop, and it’s soon revealed that they’re actually DEMONS, who exist solely to fuck with humankind in whatever ways they see fit.
While they look like biblical devils in their true forms, the demons can assume human disguises, which they use to subtly encourage people to do terrible things.
I originally caught this episode midway through, and even that one single half-viewing managed to stick with me for the better part of 20 years. Trying to recall the specifics in the years since, I would’ve sworn it was an episode of The Outer Limits or something. Between its horrific imagery and cynical attitude, it feels like what might’ve happened had Tales from the Darkside gotten a late ‘90s reboot.
I know that few of you will drop everything to watch some random episode of a random TV show at this precise moment, but if you look back over this week’s Dino Drac After Dark posts, there’s enough for you to have a nice little horror marathon this weekend. Give this stuff a shot, if only for curiosity’s sake!
