“That was a very naughty song, Crystal! You should be more careful” – The Sin Stalker
Once upon a time, the powers-that-be at Another World conspired to make country goddess Crystal Gayle the final girl with the longest tresses ever! In the spring of 1987, Gayle, who was a huge fan of the daytime drama, guest starred on the show for a week. While she performed plenty of musical numbers during her stay in Bay City, the producers also worked this raven-haired singer into a major plotline by making her a target of the Sin Stalker, a ghoulish entity who was terrorizing women that struck him as being anything less than moral.
Finding some of Gayle’s sweet pop ballads a bit too suggestive, the peeved stalker wrote her threatening letters, spied on her in her dressing room bathtub and eventually, disturbed beyond all measure, went in for an aggressive kill. But this momma fixated psychopath should have known better than to count this satin voiced yet rough-hewn country gal out. Fighting back with a ferocity, this slasher reminiscent scenario found Gayle leading the killer through a myriad of unoccupied hallways and backrooms of the hotel she was booked in – trying to, desperately, escape him. Her extremely luxurious locks floating, spirit like, in her wake, she eventually clobbered the killer with a fire extinguisher. Momentarily stunned, this malicious entity was, ultimately, scared off by the arrival of Adam Cory (Ed Fry), the show’s handsome police detective. Determined not to let this lurid attack offset her life, Gayle rounded out her run on the program by performing its new theme song with her duet partner, fellow hit maker and future Broadway star Gary Morris.
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“I’m going to sing. No one’s going to get the best of me!” – Crystal Gayle
Nicely accentuated by the participation of a sweet character named Lisa Grady (Phantoms’ Joanna Going), a young psychic with a strange connection to the demented marauder, the story developed further horror film references as it continued. Much like Psycho, the twisted exterminator here was soon being egged on by the voice of his dead mother, a demented audio presence that encouraged him to kill. Unfortunately for dedicated viewers, a surprise victim of those sadistic monologues was one of the show’s elegant, longstanding citizens, Quinn Harding (Petronia Paley). Thankfully, while devotees mourned her departure, the talented Paley later found work on Guiding Light, playing the matriarchal Vivian Grant for 7 years in the ‘90s.
“Good boy! You knew she was living with that lawyer.” – The Sin Stalker’s Mother after Harding’s Murder.
Happily, for the curious, portions of this macabre undertaking, including the entirety of Gayle’s run, can be found on YouTube.
Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!
Big Gay Horror Fan 