I used to think that my love of (fear of?) horror movies could be traced back to a slumber party my sister had in her teens. I think that may be incorrect, however. Let me explain that further.
My sister and I are four years apart in age. Early on I realized that she was able to do things that I wasn’t simply based on this fact. She used to have friends over regularly and I would try to hang out with them and be one of the “cool kids”. In my eyes, she was the coolest because of this. I see the same thing in my two kids that are roughly the same difference in age. I remember sneaking into the room where my sister and her friends were and watching Friday the 13th part VI and Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, without them knowing. I don’t remember being scared, so much as being mystified by all the things happening on the screen in front of my pre-teen eyes. I can remember vividly two scenes from both movies and this has long been the reason that I figured I was so infatuated with horror movies. For better or worse, one of those movies was, and still is my all time favorite horror movies. I have posters, memorabilia, and every movie from the Friday the 13th series, in multiple formats.
The thing is, I don’t think that is where my love of scary things started. I think it actually can all be traced back to an obscure (attempted) spinoff of You Can’t Do That On Television called “UFO Kidnapped”. I used to watch YCDTOTV every time it came on. I loved the dumb jokes and one-liners, and all the stupidity that came with this show. Even to this day my family still quotes it randomly. Some seasons in, they did a random one-off episode (that I only learned as an adult was intended to be a spin-off) that had NOTHING to do with the rest. It was one continuous story and was all out of the normal studio they used for YCDTOTV and even had out of studio scenes. All of the cast members were there, but they weren’t pretending to be in a comedy sketch show.
Honestly, it was terrifying. I recently watched it again and it is so jarring to see it mixed in with the rest of the show. It was originally created to be another series, and this was the pilot. The series wasn’t picked up, and this is the first and last episode. The thinking was that they already had all the set pieces, cast, and writers, why not try something a little different and possibly capture a new audience. The studio was using some “new” special effects and camera tricks, which for their time worked well, but obviously, audiences didn’t like it or like it enough for it to be picked up.
I’m not honestly sure what made me so scared of it back then. Looking back on it now, other than the fact I was about five years old, it wasn’t horrific in what it was portraying. Granted it was a bit creepy to see Kevin Kubusheskie and Alasdair Gillis be hunted down by aliens in a spaceship and taken from their home, but it wasn’t violent. Even the aliens were just kinda weird looking and not overly gruesome. Either way, it stuck with me, and even now thirty-five years later, I still remember how freaked out I was watching it.
I don’t really remember a lot of movies, horror movies especially, between that point in my young life and the earlier mentioned films. I’m sure I saw many a movie that probably scared me in some way or another, but they have faded with time, much like so much else. I own a bootleg collection of all the You Can’t Do That On Television series, and recently started working through them again. The person that made the collection –which is just a transfer from old VHS tapes, sometimes complete with commercials– included UFO Kidnapped in the collection. When I watched it again and started really thinking about it, I surprised myself by realizing this… THIS is where it likely all began for me.
If you have never seen it, but you know of YCDTOTV, here is a oral history of the show from Nick Knacks on YouTube. It was truly something else.
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