I know I'm a couple of weeks late to be writing a Halloween
blog about what scare me, but go with me here.
First off I don't like horror movies, definitely not the
modern ones, and certainly not the slasher films. All my teen friends would go
see those, and I had no interest at all. Splatter blood across the screen and
you've lost me.
As a kid I enjoyed monster movies. The original monster
movies, if you will, the Universal Monsters at the top of the list.
Frankenstein, his Bride, the Wolfman, the Mummy, and Dracula (he got plenty of
women and didn't ever sparkle.) I also enjoyed the b-movie monsters that would
follow.
None of those scared me as a kid. I was the Mummy one year
for Halloween, and Dracula at least twice.
So what terrified my little mind? Would you believe it was a
sitcom?
And it was in all black and white.
This past Wednesday afternoon I tuned into the internet
radio show STU'S SHOW. A great program that interviews people from the golden
age of television. This episode's guest was Carl Reiner, actor, writer,
director, and producer. The multi-award winning Carl Reiner.
As they were talking about "The Dick Van Dyke
Show", the show Reiner created, a flood of memories struck me.
There are two television programs that terrified the little
me of many years ago. Even then both series were in rerun syndication for many
years.
One of which was "The Dummy" episode of The
Twilight Zone. I always love ventriloquist shows, but the concept of the Dummy
coming to life freaked me out; far more so than Talk Tina. She was trying to
kill Kojac after all. The Dummy was just
plain freaky and scary, and would haunt some of my nightmares.
The other show; really scary to a child who had loving
parents, was an episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show. It was called "It May
Look Like A Walnut." Even thought
it was a comedy, it was actually a story about fear, and how television and
movies can scare the audience. It begins with Rob and Laura (Dick Van Dyke and
Mary Tyler Moore if you didn't know) watching a late night movie in bed (let's
not get started on why they were in separate beds), the movie is terrifying
Laura but Rob is complete engrossed in it and can't stop talking about it. The movie
is homage to the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (I
wouldn't see that movie till years later). Instead of Pod People, these aliens take
over the humans through walnuts. (This
has nothing to do with why walnuts are my favorite nuts, right?)
Rob's obsession eventually goes too far until he dreams that
the movie is real and his friends and family have been taken over by the aliens,
and the world is filling with walnuts. In one scene Laura parts her hair to
reveal to Rob she has eyes in the back of her head. No such eyes are shown on
camera, but Rob's reaction was enough. Even after all these years the terror I
had as a child came rushing back seeing it again. Every parents and teacher
tells kids they have eyes in the back of the heads, don't they?
I was frightened because Rob was so scared. Even when he
wakes up from this crazy dream, he was acting and feeling the same way I did
waking from a nightmare and called out for my mommy.
It was all played for comedy; even with guest star Danny
Thomas adding to the laughs, yet it is one of the most frightening shows I had
seen in my young life.
Watching that show last night I saw what great quality writing
and acting went into to make it dramatically scary while remaining funny all
the way through.
Today's TV shows could learn a lot.
There is also another level of fear that Reiner included in
the story, one that he and his fellow writers probably experienced regularly,
as do I: the fear of losing his imagination and being unable to write. That would truly be a nightmare.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
(Off to look for walnuts, I'm hungry)
