A L I E N S.
Tonight’s subject: ALIENS.
To get you in the mood, here’s a rip of an old Sightings video, which is absolutely perfect right down to the boldly plain “Feature Presentation” intro. Remember that one?
(Paramount used to slap it on EVERYTHING. It got to the point where I’d hum that little theme all day long.)
Sightings was awesome. While never managing the production value or eerie ambiance of Unsolved Mysteries (which Sightings was clearly built to resemble), it had the advantage of dealing with spooky stuff 100% of the time. No “Lost Loves” segments, here!
Often enough, the show favored entertainment over legitimacy, allowing people who were so obviously lying to tell their stories, and sometimes even crafting reenactments of their tales. As a kid, I ate it up.
I didn’t grow up only half-believing these stories. I was all-in. I may have approached ghost and monster stuff with some skepticism, but I absolutely believed in UFOs, and can hardly remember even one alien story that I didn’t take at face value.
Even if I’ve since been forced to confront the very real possibility that most of them were bullshit, I still love extraterrestrial exposés. At any given time, we have six or seven of them on our DVR. They’re great for those nights when we want something spooky, but never screaming.
So, tonight’s questions:
1) Do you (or did you) believe that people have seen, been in contact with, or even been abducted by aliens?
2) Any childhood memories of the space alien craze? How did it affect you? (Me personally, I’ll never forget the time I let my imagination get carried away and actually called 911 to report a sighting of what I now realize was just a helicopter.)
3) Did any particular alien story/movie/whatever really “shake your foundation” way back when? (I still can’t deal with the flashback scene from Fire in the Sky, for instance.)
Answer one or all, or just run with the topic of aliens and talk about whatever!
Monster Mayhem.
I love monsters, you love monsters.
Let’s share monsters!
This is the Knobby White Spider. He’s part of the Star Wars universe, but moreover the *supplemental* Star Wars universe. (You never saw one in any of the movies, though as you’re about to find out… you actually kinda did!)
These beasts were native to Dagobah, which you’ll remember as Yoda’s retirement home, most prominently featured in The Empire Strikes Back.
Dagobah was basically a planet-sized swamp, looking like an extra fanciful version of our own earthly versions. It was home to many gnarltrees, like the one shown above. These were ugly, twisting trees that sprouted up from the bog, often leaving a kind of organic, woody clubhouse at ground level.
But the really interesting thing? Those horrifying Knobby White Spiders were actually mobile roots that acted as part of the gnarltree’s lifecycle!
They’d break off of adult gnarltrees and spend time acting as indiscriminate predators, before finally taking root to grow into new gnarltrees themselves. So creepy and SO cool!
Read more about the Knobby White Spiders on Wookieepedia, but not before participating in tonight’s discussion:
In the comments, talk about weird monsters from movies, television, games and books that just charm the hell out of you… especially if they’re mostly unknown to the general public.
They needn’t necessarily be “scary” or “evil,” either. Monsters come in all forms. Some have fangs and eat human flesh; others look like Play-Doh and hoard cookies.
Spooky Amusement Park Rides.
Tonight’s topic:
SPOOKY RIDES.
In the comments, talk about the scariest amusement park rides you’ve ever been on. (Or at least the ones that were meant to be scary.)
Longtime readers can probably guess my pick…
Castle Dracula, from Wildwood, New Jersey.
Wildwood hasn’t been the same since it burned. Everyone’s all “Ferris wheel Ferris wheel Ferris wheel,” but to me, Castle Dracula was the real heart of that boardwalk.
Even if a portion was merely cosmetic, this still appeared to be a literal castle-sized castle, its dark grey bricks interrupted only by a few windows that bathed in eerie red light.
Years before I’d even consider entering Castle Dracula, it tormented me from a central position on the boardwalk, perpetually blasting Toccata and Fugue in D minor from an unseen but apparently monster-sized stereo system.
There were two versions of the ride. More famous was Castle Dracula’s walkthrough, where groups of a dozen victims were led through a series of increasingly terrifying rooms — including one where the walls slowly caved in on you.
It was quite a show, but I much preferred Castle Dracula’s dungeon boat ride, which you can experience by watching that video. Though less of a production, it was so much spookier than the walkthrough. Hell, even without the animatronic ghosts, monsters and corpses, just riding on a tiny boat through what felt like half a mile’s worth of dark tunnels was scary enough on its own.
But man, with them? So much worse! Remember, this was the early ‘90s on a New Jersey boardwalk. Seedy wasn’t so much a side effect as a lifestyle. Crude and bloody, the moving statues depicted all forms of murder and torture, with very little deemed too tasteless to show.
It was awesome.
Course, the boat ride’s biggest scares came from its live actors, peppered throughout the dungeon. Even someone who’d been on the ride ten times never knew exactly when to expect a ghoul to jump out.
Trust me, when you made a bunch of dudes wear robes and paint in what was essentially a very large oven, they were definitely in the right mood to scream at people.
God, how I miss Castle Dracula.
To this day, whenever I’m trying to get into “Halloween mode” by allowing various spooky images to swirl around my brain in an unfiltered way, Castle Dracula remains prominent. I only ever saw the place during the summer, but it was October 31st personified.
In the comments, talk about YOUR favorite spooky rides!
Thunderstorms and Garbage Pail Kids.
Wow!
I figured that Dino Drac After Dark would do okay, but I definitely didn’t expect the first entry to blow past 200 comments!
Course, that one was attached to the Halloween Countdown’s big intro. We’ll see how many of you remember to visit this place without such heavy prompting. 😳
During last night’s survey about background noise movies, a few of you mentioned things that were really just background noise. Hey, that works too! Take the video above, for instance. Several hours’ worth of thunderstorm noises, set to one static image.
I loooove videos like this. They’re great to go to sleep to (seriously, try it), but they’re just as awesome when you wanna make things like drawing or reading a little less infuriatingly quiet. Read More…
