The Tuesday Top 10: Least Frightening Vampires

10. Evil Ed
Yeah, maybe he's kind of freaky when you're about ten years old, but all I can think of now when I look at him in Fright Night is, "I could totally kick this little dweeb's ass..." Besides, he was much scarier in 976-EVIL.... Anybody...?

9. George Hamilton
Captain Coppertone's performance as Dracula in Love at First Bite is right up there with Leslie Neilsen as one of the screen's silliest Counts. The only thing scary about him is his disco dancing, and bizarre attraction to Susan Saint James.

8. Stuart Townsend
Just when I thought Tom Cruise's Lestat was foppish enough, along comes Stuart "Not Good Enough to Play Aragorn" Townsend in the abominable Queen of the Damned. Speaking of vampires I could totally layeth the smacketh down upon...

7. Mark Kendall
Ah, Jim Carrey: The Early Years. Before The Riddler, The Mask, Ace Ventura or even Fire Marshall Bill, Carrey did his best Jerry Lewis impression as the virginal prey of MILFilicious Lauren Hutton in Once Bitten.

6. Eddie
Stephen Root (b.k.a. Milton from Office Space) was heartbreaking as this sad, doomed couch potato bloodsucker on True Blood. The prisoner of humans far more monstrous than he, Eddie is easily the most sympathetic vampire this side of Anne Rice.

5. Rudolph Sackville-Bagg
God love my sweet little daughter, but it truly was a sign of my unconditional love that I managed to sit through the turdtastic The Little Vampire with her from beginning to end. I kept waiting for the scene where the dorky kid from Jerry Maguire gets his throat torn open, but it never came.

4. Grandpa Munster
I never knew that Dracula could be played as a flamboyantly gay Catskills comedian until I witnessed Al Lewis' timeless performance on The Munsters. I think the main reason Lewis got the part was that he was the closest in age to the real thing.

3. Bunnicula
Unlike in James Howe's original kids novels, in the cartoon version Bunnicula did indeed possess "vampiric" abilities, including sucking the juice from vegetables and turning them into veggie-zombies. Yes kids, this was made in the 1970s.

2. Count Chocula
What do you expect from a character designed to push teeth-rotting marshmallow breakfast cereal on kids? Along with his cohorts Frankenberry, Boo Berry and yes, even Yummy Mummy, the Count demonstrated just how far these classic monsters had devolved from their originally fearsome positions in our culture...

1. Edward Cullen
You can take your pick: Is it the pouty lips? Perfectly coiffed yet made-to-look-like-I just-got-out-of-bed hair? Ability to sparkle like Rainbow Brite under direct sunlight? Maybe it's the brooding, I'm-so-misunderstood, bargain basement emo routine that was old in 2004. Or the fact that he's more likely to pounce on a squirrel for sustenance than anything else. Whatever the reason, this poster boy for the "supernatural romance" genre of drugstore fiction would fit in better cradling a buxom wench Fabio-style on some plantation in the cheesily painted cover of a novel my great aunt would read, rather than pretending to be a vampire.

*HONORABLE MENTION*
Count Von Count
I really should be flogged for leaving this guy out. Although I feel the need to point out that he used to be a whole lot creepier back in the '70s. Don't believe me? Check this shit out. But yeah, Sesame Street's resident undead muppet is totally harmless. Now if only someone had told my kids that before they met him at Sesame Place...

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The Munsters As You've Never Seen Them Before

Fans of that charming family from 1313 Mockingbird Lane have great reason to rejoice in a little less than two weeks, when The Munsters: The Complete Series DVD box set will be released. But of course, if you already have the individual season sets, then it's really nothing new for you.

Unless, that is, you have an interest in seeing the original Munsters for the first time... in color. You see, the new collection will also include the first season episode "Family Portrait" in a brand new computer colorized version.

Now, before you start raving about "double-dipping", rest easy--because Universal has done the right thing, releasing "Family Portrait" individually on a separate DVD the very same day.

Most people serious enough about home video to buy an entire TV series are likely to be the same people who viciously object to the colorizing of old movies and TV shows. Usually, I agree. But I have to give it a pass in this case. For one thing, it's The Munsters for crying out loud--and it's only one episode. And furthermore, I really believe that The Munsters is the kind of show that was meant for color, and most certainly would've been in color, but for the fact that TV production hadn't completely made the switch yet from black-and-white. Also, from what I've seen, the colorization process has made great strides since the era of Ted Turner's crude defilements of classic films.

Yet I also sympathize with those who would argue that colorizing it detracts from the original intent of the show to be a parody of the old Universal monster movies of the 1930s and '40s. Still, this just seems like it's all in good fun to me. Hopefully it's not some kind of "testing of the waters" for broader colorization down the road.

Screen grabs courtesy of DVD Talk.

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Terror Comes of Age: A History of Horror TV, Part 2

The 1950s was a time of experimentation in television, during which the medium was stretching its wings and trying to figure out exactly what it wanted to be. Much of the early programming could be rather basic in approach and concept. But by the end of the decade, the onset of pre-taping technology allowed for a more cinematic style, and the programming began to mature.

For the horror genre, that maturation took the form of a truly groundbreaking show which to this day remains among the most well-known--if not the most well-known--genre program of any kind. Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone (1959-64) began as a rejected pilot submitted to CBS in 1958, which thankfully was reconsidered and greenlit the following year.

Mostly written by Serling, each episode was narrated by the writer himself, and utilized a brilliant formula that set the standard for all anthology shows to come. Blending elements of horror, science fiction and fantasy, The Twilight Zone presented tales of the bizarre and unsettling, in which nothing was as it seemed. The conclusion of each installment would bring a shocking twist that was sure to keep the audience coming back week after week.

In classic episodes such as "Time Enough at Last", "Eye of the Beholder", "To Serve Man", "The Hitchhiker" and "Terror at 20,000 Feet", genre elements were used to both comment on the culture of the day and creep the holy hell out of viewers. With Serling at the helm, The Twilight Zone was one of the best written, directed and acted shows ever seen on television, and remains a benchmark in genre entertainment.

Naturally, such a successful formula did not go unnoticed, and it wasn't without its imitators. And although devotees of the show may object passionately to its description as such, The Outer Limits (1963-65) was by far the best of them. Focusing more on sci-fi than The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits still never failed to deliver nightmarish monsters each and every week, and its iconic opening ("There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture...") is arguably even more famous than that of its higher profile counterpart.

As innovative as Twilight Zone and its copycats may have been, they still fell within the tried-and-true formula horror had stuck with since the birth of TV: anthology. But by the mid '60s, programmers were finally willing to try something different.

It began with a pair of horror-comedy series which both debuted in the fall of 1964: The Addams Family (ABC) and The Munsters (CBS). The former was based on Charles Addams' morbid series of New Yorker cartoons, which had by then been running for 30 years. The latter was produced by Universal, and spoofed their famous movie monsters by placing them in a family sitcom setting. Although both shows ran for only two seasons, they have since been immortalized in syndication (and now DVD), and will forever be inextricably linked in the popular consciousness.

Still, it remained for television to produce a serious, non-anthology horror series. Ironically, when it finally did, it was almost by accident. When Dark Shadows debuted on ABC in the summer of 1966, it was a gothic soap opera, airing in the afternoon. But a year into its run, it introduced the character of Barnabas Collins, played by Jonathan Frid, changing the landscape of the show and sending its ratings through the roof. The reason was that Collins was a vampire. From then on, the show took on a supernatural horror theme, thus adding teenagers to its traditional audience of housewives. The brainchild of horror TV maven Dan Curtis, Dark Shadows ran five days a week until the spring of 1971, comprising 1,245 episodes in total.

Although perhaps on the wane by the end of the decade, anthology TV was far from dead. In fact, six years after the end of The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling brought a color follow-up to the small screen: Night Gallery (1970-73). With a pilot episode that marked the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg, Night Gallery followed a similar format to the Zone, except that it often combined more than one story in a single episode. It also had less input from Serling, instead featuring short story adaptations. Unfortunately, Serling never matched the success of his first show, and was disappointed by his lack of control over the series.

With the level of sophistication for productions higher than ever, it looked for a time like the future of the genre on television was the made-for-TV movie. The late '60s and early '70s saw a bumper crop of quality examples. Among them was the 1968 adaptation of Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde, produced by Curtis and starring Jack Palance (they would resume their partnership with even greater results five years later.) A young Michael Douglas starred in the 1972 movie When Michael Calls, an ultra-creepy offering about a long-dead boy making contact with the living via telephone. Among the very best was Gargoyles (1972), featuring some of the earliest work of the late special effects legend Stan Winston.

By the early 1970s, horror on television had come a long way from the radio adaptations of 25 years prior. Nevertheless, it was facing an unprecedented challenge from a motion picture industry that was less restricted than ever before. Horror was changing, and although TV remained largely constrained by network censorship, it nevertheless found a way to stay relevant and innovative--as exemplified by a short-lived series that would prove to have a profound impact on the entire genre.

Other major shows:

• Thriller (1960-62)
• Late Night Horror (1967-68)
• The Sixth Sense (1972)

Soon to come: Part 3 - How to Scare Without Losing Sponsors

Part 1: Fear Invades the Living Room

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The Munsters..."In Living Color"!

Bloody-Disgusting today picked up on a very interesting tidbit that was rather quietly broken earlier this month. In an exclusive interview with Moviepicturefilm.com, Shawn Wayans stated that he and his brothers Marlon and Keenen Ivory Wayans (the minds behind Scary Movie 1 & 2) are working on a big-screen adaptation of the popular 1960s television show The Munsters.

The height of '60s cheese TV, The Munsters sitcom chronicled the lives of a friendly monster family trying their best to fit into suburban America.

Wayans was quick to point out that he and his brothers are writing and producing the film, but will not be starring in it (*whew!* - The Honeymooners, anyone??). Rather, as Shawn says, they're "going to get some white people and paint them green."

The Wayans are "contemporizing" the show for its movie treatment. They also plan to write it for a PG-13 rating. I'm curious about that one, since I wouldn't imagine The Munsters to be anything harder than a G. Perhaps they're giving it a little more of an edge, a la The Addams Family movies? I wonder just what they mean by "contemporizing"...

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