Monsters

I loved Monsters! Everyone in my family thought I was weird. I know they thought it but they wouldn't say it. Monsters was just a great low-budget, third-rate show but it never let me down. The plots were very silly at times. For example, I remember one about a human-eating bed!!! What were these writers thinking?? Now and then I check out the sci-fi channel to see if they could re-start showing the re-runs but unfortunately no such luck. Someone email me if they know what channels are running re-runs please...

It's easy 20 years later to forget this very low-budget horror anthology series ever existed. It was not up to competing shows of the period like TALES FROM THE CRYPT or even DARK VISIONS. But the occasional episode hit a home run, as readily evidenced by a recent rerun of many of the episodes on the CHILLER channel. There was usually a twist ending and some low-rent guest star or rising young star to liven things up. My favorite of those I saw recently: a middle-aged woman (Karen Valentine), not without her charms, is married to a crippled inventor. Her missing first husband, a real Tarzan type, shows up very much alive after years away, and the nasty fun begins. Valentine, who often played a goody two-shoes on TV, spends a lot of time in a flimsy negligee and has a silly yet oddly arousing sex scene with a headless body! Another truly creepy episode had two boys (one of whom, Matt LeBlanc, would go on to fame on FRIENDS) messing with alleged vampires in a barber shop. Better they should have stayed away. Or just gotten their hair cut. Yet another episode, starring a very young Tori Speling and Ashley Laurence of "Hellraiser" fame, has a quartet of teens conjuring up the long-dead and very evil owner of an old mansion. He soon returns to take back his mansion. The grue quotient for many of these episodes ran pretty high. MONSTERS may have appeared to be strictly for the kiddies, but not always. I recommend the series to all horror fans.

I picked up on this show towards the end of its original 3 year run and loved it. I continued watching well on until the reruns finally disappeared entirely.

Made by essentially the same people who made "Tales From The Darkside", (minus one major player), it was just as good, I thought. While "Tales" was the darker, more sinister show, with the creepy organ music and negative film forest shot intro, "Monsters" was both more humorous and more disturbing than "Tales".

The premise of the show was basically the same, borrowed idea from "The Twighlight Zone", featuring weird stories, some that made me feel creeped out when I'd turn out all the lights to watch, and some that were downright silly and made me laugh. They were all very entertaining.

I wish reruns would air again.

I caught this show on Sci-Fi a few times a several years ago and was very surprised that it wasn't half bad. If I remember correctly they usually had twist endings a la Tales from the Crypt which I genuinely love. I'm having trouble remembering specifics about the plots to the episodes I saw but I think they usually had a way of showing that the real monsters were ordinary people who did horrible things, pretty cheesy and predictable but entertaining nonetheless. One show, however, sticks with me years later, an adaptation of the Stephen King story "The Crawling Finger". Its about a guy who, for no real reason as is frequently the case in King's short fiction, finds a finger coming out of his bathroom sink drain. He tries several different ways to dispose of the finger, learning along the way that a) it takes a very, very long finger to make the journey through the pipes and into his sink, and b) there are five fingers on a hand. It was truly creepy and made the story that much better since I actually got to see how disturbing having an alien appendage coming out of one's plumbing would be.

Truly one of the best! I remember watching this in my late teens when it originally aired and I just re-found it online. If you love the old school horror stuff, you'll love this. Younger folks who prefer multi-million dollar special effects instead of an actual story probably won't. Because this is pure Old School. A good story, solid acting and cheesy special effects and costuming. It's backed by a solid cast. Over the 3 season run, we saw TV greats like: David Spade, Meat Loaf, Adrienne Barbeau, Linda Blair, Abe Vagoda, Robert Lansing, Tori Spelling, Kent McCord, Billy Drago, Marc McClure, Barbara Billingsley, Leif Garrett, Steve Buscemi, Jerry Stiller, David Sage, Tony Shalhoub, Morton Downey Jr, Tina Louise, Pam Grier, and many others. {Let's not forget Darrin McGavin, of Night Stalker fame. He's got a Monsters episode}