'80s TV

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Shark Bait Retro Village: Haunted by her Past

Published April 18, 2023 by biggayhorrorfan

If you’re going to decimate an evil, mirror dwelling sorceress, its best to do it in a hot red teddy! Just ask Susan Lucci! After a weekend of tortured nightmares and heated bodily possession, in the 1987 made for television fright fest Haunted By Her Past (AKA Secret Passions), that is exactly how daytime drama’s most famous diva eradicates the evil spirited temptress that has been torturing her character’s fragile psyche.

The character in question here is the usually mousy Karen Beckett. After taking a detour on her anniversary weekend with her devoted husband (John James) and her best friends (Marcia Strassman, Robin Thomas), Beckett winds up at a tiny inn that soon seems to tie into her violent (yet previous unknown) history. Beguiled into a closed off room at the establishment, she is captivated not only by its furnishings, but by the evil Megan (Finola Hughes), who resides in the wooden looking glass that dominates the space.

As often happens in the course of these potboilers, the more Karen falls under her spell, the stronger Megan grows. In one of the film’s most ludicrously fun moments, a poor manual laborer is sent flying to his death merely by the reflected menace of this century’s dead wraith.

This project also nicely glances back at film’s golden age by featuring the indomitable Madeleine Sherwood as the town historian. Best known as Sister Woman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the veteran actress provides subtle nuances to this traditional role. As the provider of much needed backstory, she is a revelation of economic fun.

Horror buffs will also be happy to spot Page Fletcher as the cad who causes Megan’s downfall in the movie’s flashback sequences. Fletcher, of course, was the titular character in the terror anthology series The Hitchhiker. Interestingly, his first film appearance in the slasher semi-classic Humungous closely echoes his role here. There, in the opening moments, his character violates a young woman, ultimately helping to creating the havoc raising beast that serves as the film’s unstoppable backwoods killer.

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

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Flashback: Crystal Gayle Meets the Sin Stalker

Published January 18, 2022 by biggayhorrorfan

“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!

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