Being cinema obsessed and growing up in a small town without movie theaters was pretty bad. The fact that my parents weren’t horror lovers made it even worse. Thus, on one rare celluloid outing as a family, we were treated to the diminished (if nonexistent) delights of the big screen adaptation of Annie as opposed to John Carpenter’s The Thing which was released the same summer. Thus, I took my genre hook-ups where I could find them – usually on my favorite television programs.

Thankfully, the character of Nikki, as enacted by the now legendary Melody Thomas, on The Young and the Restless was always a reliable source of the luridly suspenseful. Throughout my preteen years, she faced down one psychopath after the other. The most significant to me was the obsessive Edward, as subtly and powerfully played by actor Paul Tulley. At first creeping anonymously, Edward purposely drove away Casey (Roberta Leighton), Nikki’s protective sister. This allowed him free access to his true target – her supple, younger sibling, who (at the time) was making her living as an exotic dancer. Edward eventually became so obsessed that he shot paternal restauranter Jonas (Jerry Lacy), Nikki’s kind confidante. (This episode was particularly thrilling for me. Jonas, Cash (John Gibson), Nikki’s sleazy employer & a fellow stripper, and the matriarchal Katherine Chancellor (Jeanne Cooper) were all presented as possible targets during the show’s pre-credits. Jonas wasn’t revealed as the shootee until the show’s final act. Thankfully, he survived – only to be written off the show soon thereafter. A common soap indignity.) Naturally, upon being discovered, Edward acted dramatically – blowing himself up, offering a fiery end to his reign of terror. 

After surviving harassment (and baby-napping) from the mother-in-law from hell, the very disapproving Alison Bancroft (Lynn Wood), Nikki was next set upon by the charming yet deadly Rick Daros (Randy Holland). A revealed wife killer, Rick eventually took Nikki to St. Croix to complete his latest dastardly deed. Besides offering a fabulous location shoot, this plotline also served as a great catalyst for future story. Daros revealed that Nikki’s daughter, the previously stolen Victoria, was actually (mainstay businessman) Victor’s. After helping to rescue her from Daros’ water logged clutches – he was trying to drown her – Victor (the commanding Eric Braeden) and Nikki became the serial’s most popular, albeit off and on, couple.

Fast forwarding to the ’90s, during a downtime in that tenuously long partnership, Nikki’s marriage to a physician named Joshua Landers (Heath Kizzier) was seemingly going strong. That is, until it was sabotaged by the unwieldly, psychotic Veronica (Candice Daley). The ex-wife of Landers, she brought a hail of bullets down upon the spouses after they discovered who she really was. Nikki, un-alarmingly, survived while her betrothed did not. The escaped murderess eventually confronted Nikki in her estate’s stables – leading to a showdown that ended with Veronica perishing on the topside of a pitchfork.

Over twenty-five years later, a recent (on going) storyline has found Nikki facing off, diva-to-diva style, with As The World Turns‘ iconic Colleen Zenk. Zenk, as the crazier-than-thou Jordan, not only abducted Genoa City’s grand matriarch, but she also sadistically put her, as a recovering alcoholic, on a vodka drip during her imprisonment. Nicely, their ultimate showdown in an abandoned barn, involving a very shaky Nikki, not only brought back memories of the Veronica-era, but provided plenty of delicious scenery for the two pros to chew on, as well. As Jordan is still lurking around the canvas, it looks like there may be even more delicious savagery in the future.

Surprisingly, as pertinent as those past storylines are to me, I actually found there were very few mentions of those gothic rundowns online. Thomas does describe Tulley’s niceness behind the scenes as contrasted with his believably demented presence onscreen in her memoir, 2020’s Always Young and Restless. But it was impossible to track down any photos or significant mentions of that particular scary arc in the show’s admittedly very rich, decades long history. 

Thankfully, my own scrapbook of memories is still intact. To the shock of no one, that Edward storyline made me a huge fan of Thomas. Very hopefully, I wrote her that summer (of 1981) and, to my grand surprise, she quickly responded. Over the next few years, our correspondence was a vital part of my existence. As an impossibly awkward gay kid in a small farm town of 600, corresponding with a glamourous actress in Hollywood was practically a lifesaver. What was also incredibly thrilling to me was that Thomas’ onscreen adventures were not limited to the daytime airwaves. As a young actress her film credits included The Car, wherein she was the blackly ravenous vehicle’s first victim. She also played Amy Irving’s confident schoolgirl friend in The Fury and one of the lead camp counselors in Joe Dante’s classic original Piranha. Of seeming cinematic import, she was also enacted the murderous young version of Tippi Hedren’s character in Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie.

As if you even had to ask, I saw none of these cinematic wonders in a movie theater. They were all discovered, akin to those long-ago Y&R adventures, on our small black and white TV, my very own wonder box of artistic discovery.

Until the next time, SWEET love and pink GRUE, Big Gay Horror Fan!

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