Season One of Elvira's Movie Macabre

On September 26, 1981, Elvira's Movie Macabre aired for the first time on KHJ-TV in Los Angeles. The debut movie, Grave of the Vampire, might be seen as an odd choice in retrospect in that it was legitimately gory and violent, whereas many of the subsequent episode feature more tame, even campy or schlocky films with far more humor and much less violence.

Movie Macabre replaced the popular Fright Night that had been hosted by Larry Vincent, who had died six years earlier. The show was an immediate smash, resulting in a lawsuit by Maila Nurmi, who had hosted a similar show in the 1950's as the character Vampira. Although Vampira had originally been tapped to consult for the revival, she bailed out when her choice to succeed her, Lola Falana, was not hired. Cassandra Peterson was instead cast out of a cattle call of 200 applicants, and when chosen quickly began to work on her Elvira character, portraying her as a smart-alecky valley girl type who was generous with her jokes and her cleavage.

Season one of Movie Macabre spanned 46 episodes, featuring such movies as Deathdream, The Brotherhood of Satan, The Baby, Blacula, and The Devil's Rain. The series ended after 140 episodes in 1986, ending in a bang with Nightmare City. Movie Macabre originally aired on KHJ-TV channel 9 Los Angeles 8-10 PM Saturday and was rebroadcast 4-6 PM Sunday.

By 1985 Elvira, Mistress of the dark was a household name, and marketing force, appearing everywhere from Coors Light commercials, Wrestlemania 2, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and during the week of Halloween was virtually ubiquitous, appearing nightly at Knot's Berry Farm. Thriller Video decided to capitalize on the popularity of Elvira by releasing 24 title hosted by Elvira. These were movies not shown on Movie Macabre, and included The Monster Club, The Silent Scream, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, and Alabama's Ghost. Many of the tapes had been fifty minute episodes of Hammer's House of Horror series, often with some deleted material not seen by the British audience.

The cancellation of Movie Macabre did nothing to hurt the popularity of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, as she has released two movies, a series of records, and Movie Macabre was revived in syndication and ran 26 public domain films in 2010-2011.

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Why The Sixth Sense Starring Gary Collins Deserves a Second Look If You Saw It On Night Gallery

If you're a fan of the Rod Serling show Night Gallery, and you see an episode and think to yourself, "That doesn't fit in with what I come to expect from Night Gallery at all," you're probably right, because you're probably watching an episode of a show called The Sixth Sense that was added to Night Gallery to create enough shows for syndication. Now, if you're watching a Sixth Sense episode of Night Gallery and you think to yourself "This episode of The Sixth sense really doesn't make any sense," you're also probably right, because in order to create thirty minute episodes for Night Gallery, what were hour long episodes of a show called The Sixth Sense, that had originally aired on ABC television in 1970-1971 as their own stand-alone show were chopped up in ways that often left the viewer confused and asking themselves why are these episodes of Night Gallery so bad? The answer being because they're not episodes of Night Gallery, and they're not really even episodes of The Sixth Sense. So, let's be fair to the show The Sixth Sense and rewind things a little bit.

"I'm Rod Serling, and this is The Night Gallery, or The Sixth Sense, or whatever the hell it is, just send me a check in the mail."

After the success of a 1971 television movie titled Sweet, Sweet Rachel, the plot of which entailed a psychic expert trying to save two attractive women from a psychic assassin, ABC showed interest in a television series with such a theme. The writer of Sweet, Sweet Rachel, Anthony Lawrence teamed up with producer Stan Shpetner to quickly knock out The Sixth Sense, a show starring Gary Collins as parapsychology expert Dr. Michael Rhodes. In each of the 25 episodes of the Sixth Sense Rhodes would investigate some facet of the paranormal, ranging from astral projection to witches to cryogenics to automatic writing. In every episode an attractive woman was involved, and no romance ever developed between Collins and the female guest star. Anne Archer, Stefanie Powers, Mary Ann Mobley, and Mariette Hartley were some of the young actresses who played the damsel in psychic distress in episodes of the show. Despite many talented writers and directors passing through, like Harlan Ellison and DC Fontana, most of the behind the scenes talent clashed with Shpetner and found themselves unable to continue working under his ridiculous guidelines.

It's a shame that team of talent wasn't able to gel and transform The Sixth Sense from a good kernel of an idea to a full-fledged television show exploring topics of the paranormal in an in-depth way they never had before. We know the interest was there because The X-Files went on to become one of the most successful shows in television history. Gary Collins was more than capable in the lead as Dr, Michael Rhodes, portraying himself as zen calm in the face of apparitions, ghosts, and physical danger from the real world that would have caused most to blanch in horror. I find his performance increasingly impressive the more episodes I watch, and the end result more and more frustrating as the writing and direction failed to keep pace with the promise of the premise.

As with other horror anthology shows like The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and Thriller, many talented young actors put in notable early performances on the show, including William Shatner, Cloris Leachman and Lee Majors. Also a standout were the special effects. Whatever limitations and flaws The Sixth Sense had I think fans of this genre will find a good amount to entertain, even provide some shocks and thrills, in its 25 full hour episodes.  

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