Just what is it about old movies and television that capture our attention? I guess it could be nothing but a nostalgia thing. As of late, I’ve been wrapped up in watching some of my most favorite oldie moldies on that great channel, Antenna TV, which specializes in showing syndicated reruns of shows ranging from the 50’s to the 90’s. I especially love Barney Miller, All in the Family and Wings, just to name a few. And on other channels, I’ve found classic favorites such as the Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits and Ouantum Leap. As for The Outer Limits, it ran for two seasons, 1963-1965, a total of 49 episodes, all of which I’ve seen and still have stored on my DVR. The Twilight Zone was on for 5 seasons, 1959 thru 1964, for a total of 156 episodes, all of which I’ve seen. And I was fortunate enough to have seen the pilot episode of the Twilight Zone, “The Time Element“, which aired in 1958 but was not put in syndication with the series. That episode featured a young Martin Balsam and William Bendix whose fame came from his appearance in the WWII movie Wake Island, for which he received a Best Supporting Actor nomination, and The Life of Riley, that ran from 1953 to 1958, which I remember watching as a kid. Also appearing in “The Time Element” was a very young Darryl Hickman, the brother of Dwayne Hickman of the series Dobie Gillis.

Just recently, though, my attention was drawn to old horror movies. This occurred over the week of Halloween when TCM, Turner Classic Movies, ran many of the classic horror films. I remember watching them when I was a kid. But being an adult now, I viewed them in a different light. One that really fascinated me was The Wolf Man, starring Lon Chaney, Jr., whose father Lon Chaney, Sr. was known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces” for his groundbreaking artistry with makeup in such films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, silent film classics. In viewing The Wolf Man, I found the plot to be of more importance than the scary scenes which all kids remember. Other movies I watched that week were The Invisible Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein and The Thing From Another World.

A clip from the ‘Thriller’ episode “Pigeons From Hell”. On the right is Brandon deWilde. He, unfortunately, died an early death at the age of 30 in a car accident.

An interesting fact about the Frankenstein  role Boris Karloff played was the fact that he suffered from chronic back trouble for most of his adult life, the result of the heavy brace he had to wear as part of his Frankenstein costume. He didn’t let that slow him down though. An interesting fact about Karloff is that despite all the horror roles he played, he was a quiet, bookish man off- screen, a true gentleman with many friends, both in and out of show business, and he was particularly fond of children. Another of my favorite TV memories is the anthology series Thriller which was hosted by Karloff, introducing the episodes just as Rod Serling did on the Twilight Zone. I have on my DVR a Thriller episode that according to Stephen King in his book Danse Macabre many consider to be the single most frightening story ever done on TV, “Pigeons From Hell”, starring Brandon deWilde, who at the age of 10 had became the youngest nominee at that time in a competitive category for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in the famous Alan Ladd movie Shane. And what an eerie story “Pigeons From Hell”  is (you can see it here), though Stephen King himself nominated the final episode, “I Kiss Your Shadow” (see it here), of the mostly unknown series Bus Stop as his most scary ever.

Though The Thing From Another World could be considered more science fiction than horror, it certainly was scary, especially when I was a kid. I’d always called that movie “The Thing” and in 1982 it was remade simply as The Thing, starring Kurt Russell. And it is actually now considered one of the greatest horror films ever made as opposed to being science fiction, though I consider it and the original to fit in both categories. An interesting fact is that in the 1951 original, the title character Thing was played by James Arness, who later became famous in another classic TV series, Gunsmoke.

One of the greatest things about watching old movies and television is seeing actors in some of their first roles, before they became household names. I’ve certainly seen my share of those over the years, though I didn’t realize at the time I was seeing soon-to-be famous actors. And who knows what lies ahead for those I’m now seeing for the first time on the screen. Whatever it may be, I wish them luck and maybe a future blogger will tell his story about first seeing them.