For
horror and sci-fi fans growing up in the 1980s, TV was the best place for a
quick fix if you were looking for something ghoulish and ghastly to watch. In
addition to Twilight Zone reruns (always on somewhere) and later, The Outer
Limits, there were several syndicated shows that promised at least an
entertaining story, if not a scary one. Now in the age of dvds and streaming
content, you can get what you want when you want...well, mostly. There are a
number of shows, smaller, more obscure, that have yet to find their way to a
blu-ray near you.
It’s
hard to talk about horror anthologies on television without mentioning The Twilight Zone (1959-1964). As a
fledgling effort, The Twilight Zone
is lionized, and perhaps a little too slavishly, for its innovative approach
and subject matter. Keep in mind, however, that for every instance of, say,
Richard Matheson writing “Nightmare at 10,000 Feet” there was an episode that
was a gentle or whimsical fantasy with no horror or terror or freakout by
William Shatner in it. A lot of the stories were informed by the politics of
the Cold War, and some were outright science fiction think pieces. None of this
is a criticism, mind you. It’s just to say that while the show was overall a
hit, not every episode of The Twilight
Zone was a home run.
