Stop Susan Williams

I, too, remember this television series and I was a devoted fan. I never missed one single episode, I remember how much fun it was to watch and how I looked forward to each segment from week to week, and I was furious when the final episode was NEVER AIRED!!! It was astonishing, the whole point of the show was that you didn't know what was going to happen until the following week, and there was never any resolution to two of the stories. Fortunately the Dracula story, which was my favorite one, did get an ending, and it turned up several times later on cable networks edited together into a full-length movie, but I never saw the "Susan Williams" story or the "Secret Empire" story resolved, nor have I seen them on cable.

I always looked forward to Tuesday nights to see the latest installments of the three stories. Of the three, my personal favorite was "Stop Susan Williams"...and it was great fun watching Susan Anton as the heroine getting herself out of every situation thrown at her. I was very disappointed when NBC cancelled the series (at least "The Curse of Dracula" ended beforehand; the whole purpose of that was to begin a brand-new "Cliffhanger" story while "The Secret Empire" and "Stop Susan Williams" conclude and another new story would circulate in place), but at least I got the chance to see the full-length movie version of "Williams" (as "The Girl Who Saved the World"). I would love to see this show again...maybe Sci-Fi Channel would consider rerunning it for awhile.

I always knew the Cliffhangers series was a trilogy, but for some reason I can't remember "Susan Williams." Could be that they never showed that series too often on our local station. I'm quite sure, however, if I were to see it again it would all come back to me.

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed "Secret Empire" and the best "Dracula" movie ever, with one of the greatest actors of all times, Michael Nouri. Do you remember him in "The Sands of Time" by Sidney Sheldon? He's just so brilliant!! Talk about nostalgia!! To watch Cliffhangers again would be like a dream come true. My family, particularly my sister and I never missed a beat, especially when "The Curse of Dracula" was showing.

If someone, anyone knows where I can find the DVD or VHS for these series/movies, I would be most grateful.

I am writing this as I am working a security shift and as I was checking the boiler room at a specific building (at a local college) I had a flashback to a TV show I remember my mother watched in the late 70's where the main character was walking around in a basement boiler room and was being stalked by a green monster. I tried to recollect the name of this series when it finally hit me that the series was called 'Cliffhangers'. I am amazed how many people remember this short lived series from the 70's. Is it out on DVD? As a kid I was always in tune with good sci-fi and horror and if I remember this series had much of that genre. It would be amazing if the Sci-Fi channel could show this series as I remember my mothers disappointment as they did not show the ending.

Susan Anton starred in STOP SUSAN WILLIAMS, one of three segments in the CLIFFHANGERS series, which was just a great show. The other two segments were about a cowboy living in the 1880s who discovers an advanced civilization living under the American prarie(this segment was filmed in black and white), and the other was about Dracula, living in modern day L.A. and pursuing a woman whose mother he had bitten and killed years before. To be honest, the Dracula segment held my interest more because I was in the 3rd grade and crazy for monsters and ghosts at the time. To my best memories, each storyline got about 20 minutes during the hour-long show and, as the title of the show indicates, each segment ended with some sort of life and death situation(one segment ending that I remember from the Susan Williams segment: Susan unknowingly takes a bubble bath as a cobra slithers across the floor toward her bathtub!)Despite being a sure-fire hit for kids, the show doesn't seem to have done too well; I remember that the last episode containing the resolutions of the Susan Williams and cowboy segments was never aired, the series presumably being cancelled due to low ratings. Isn't that infuriating? I took some consolation in the fact that the Dracula storyline was resolved, with a great climatic ending in a wax museum that Dracula had selected as a make-shift lair, with a great fire ala HOUSE OF WAX! Come to think of it, there were several rip-offs of other horror movies, like a sequence where the heroine is partially vampirized by Dracula and taken to a convent where an exorcism is performed on her! I'm sure the show would show it's seams now, but back then it was just great! It would be fun to see it again.