Editorials
Why “Monsters” is Still One of the All-Time Best Horror Anthology Shows [TV Terrors]
Horror and science fiction have always been a part of the television canvas, and constant attempts have been made over the years to produce classic entertainment. Some have fallen by the wayside, while others became mainstream phenomena. With “TV Terrors,” we take a look back at the many genre efforts from the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s, exploring some shows that became cult classics, and others that sank into obscurity.
This month we revisit the nostalgic charms of late 80s/early 90s series “Monsters.”
- Aired from 1988 – 1991
- Aired in Syndication
The 1980s were filled with an abundance of great anthology horror both in theaters and especially on television. Even when the series were considered failures like “Amazing Stories,” they still managed to age pretty well. One of the most unique anthology horror series of the eighties (and one of my top five anthology horror series ever) is “Monsters.”
Developed by Richard P. Rubinstein (Creepshow, Tales from the Darkside, Pet Sematary, Dawn of the Dead), “Monsters” was a syndicated anthology horror show that often told short form stories that delved in either straight faced horror or dark comedy horror. “Monsters” has one of the most interesting opening intros of all time, as the camera pans down to a normal suburban household one evening. What we assume is going to be a normal nuclear family is actually a suburban family of monsters.
They’re preparing for family night (monsters have those too!), and much to their surprise their favorite show “Monsters” happens to appear on television. Despite never really changing a thing about this prologue, it’s surprising how re-watchable this opening is as there are so many subtle nuances, including the strong monster make up and the tongue in cheek humor.
“Monsters” had one mission and that was that every episode had to feature a monster (or monsters). There was never a single episode that didn’t have some kind of beast or creepy crawly in it. Despite the concept demanding the writers concoct ways to introduce new monsters, the series was pretty fantastic and almost always delivered. As mentioned, “Monsters” was a show that leaned heavily in to dark horror comedy, or just straight faced horror. When it was tongue in cheek, it managed to be very clever, but when it offered up straight faced tales of terror, the series excelled at being pretty scary.
Even today a lot of my favorite episodes from the show give me the willies. Some of my all time favorite episodes include “Cellmates,” centered on a spoiled rich American man who is jailed in South America for hitting a kid with his car. Expecting to be bailed out and rescued by his father’s lawyer, he realizes that he may not make it out as his mate in the next cell may be something otherworldly. This is a great, often creepy look at an affluent racist man getting what’s coming to him. The darkly comic “Small Blessings” works like It’s Alive as a sitcom focusing on the domestic life of a young couple (Kevin Nealon and Julie Brown) caring for their mutated flesh eating baby, Eric.
As people around the neighborhood begin turning up dead, the exhausted mother wonders if there’s a psychopath on the loose, or if Eric is going out at night to eat. This one is pretty fun in all of its demented humor, and includes a very early appearance from David Spade.
“The Hole” is one of the many Post-Vietnam horror tales from the decade involving a platoon of American soldiers that are forced to raid an underground tunnel, hoping to garner some information on the enemy. While in there, they come across a wounded Vietnamese Soldier who warns them that the dead are lurking within the walls, and are ready to take anyone that enters the hallowed ground.
Tense and claustrophobic, this is a classic horror tale that feels ripped right out of EC Comics. My favorite episode though is the bleakest of the series, “The Waiting Game.” Centered on two soldiers watching over a nuclear bunker overnight, the two stir crazy men are horrified when unexplained circumstances force them to launch nuclear warheads from the silo. Setting off a chain of nuclear explosions around the country, they learn that they’re draped in nuclear winter with the bunker their only safe haven.
As they fight off boredom and anxiety, they begin to realize that someone or something is lurking outside in the darkness. Before long, they realize something horrible just might have survived the apocalypse. Even worse, it’s trying to lure them out. This is a pitch black horror tale filled with biting tension and some top notch performances. It’s all topped off by an absolutely perfect and bleak final scene. I vividly recall watching “The Waiting Game” as a kid back in 1990, and it kept me up all night.
“Monsters” was considerably lower in budget than anthologies like “Creepshow” and “Tales from the Darkside,” so many of the episodes were confined to one setting, often feeling a lot like stage productions. Nevertheless, the series excelled in unique horror stories that made great use of its resources. The production crew also offered up a plethora of creative monsters like sentient lab rats, subterranean mutants, a vengeful Indigenous deity, a man eating bed, and a monster that feeds on cancer patients.
After ending in 1990, “Monsters” lived on for a long time in syndication on cable television, garnering a long run in the 1990s with repeats airing constantly on The Sci Fi Channel (Now Syfy), and in the aughts on (the now defunct) Chiller TV. “Monsters” was very much in the tradition of “Creepshow” and “Tales from the Darkside” in that it owed a lot of its twists and mood to EC Comics and their offbeat horror stories. The production wasn’t always spectacular, but the series still holds up shockingly well in the annals of horror anthologies.
Is It On DVD/Blu-ray/Streaming? In 2014, Sony released a great DVD set of the entire series. It’s sadly out of print at the moment. However, the entirety of “Monsters” can be found streaming on Amazon Prime Video, and The Roku Channel.
Steven Spielberg has always been conversant in the cinematic language of the horror genre, despite relatively few credits in the genre. His contributions as a writer and producer on things like Poltergeist are legendary, and films like Duel and Jaws certainly wield the horror genre in remarkable, often chilling ways. He may not be a horror filmmaker, but he knows when he needs to scare us, and he has the tools to make that happen.
I didn’t go into Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s alien epic, expecting outright horror, and indeed the film leans much more into thrilling than frightening. This is not a horror film, but for a few minutes in the middle, much to my surprise, it became one.
Spielberg has filmed more than his fair share of scary scenes over the years, but with Disclosure Day, he directed a new contender for the scariest scene of his entire career.
SPOILERS AHEAD for Disclosure Day!
Josh O’Connor in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
Among the various alien secrets laced throughout Disclosure Day are a trio of palm-sized rods, the color of pencil graphite. These rods, originating from another planet, can be used for a number of things, but for the purposes of this scene, the most important is “diving,” gripping the rod in one bare hand and using its power to “dive” into the mind of another person.
The person holding the rod in this scene is Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of shadowy cybersecurity firm Wordex, who is hellbent on keeping human knowledge of extraterrestrials secret from the general public. Scanlon’s trying to find whistleblower Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), who’s got all of those alien secrets tucked in a backpack while he’s on the run, and while Daniel’s more experienced mind is protected from diving, his girlfriend Jane’s (Eve Hewson) is not. So, monitored by medical personnel at Wordex headquarters (diving is dangerous), Scanlon pushes his way into Jane’s mind to find the location of Daniel’s safe house.
A telepathic invasion is scary enough on its own, but Spielberg doesn’t stop there. When Scanlon dives into Eve’s mind, he appears to her to be sitting across the kitchen table, like he’s in the room. Her bright blue eyes turn Scanlon’s dark brown, and she loses much of her control over her own body, not to mention her mind. Moments before, Daniel finally shared with her the secrets in his backpack, so Jane is shocked, conflicted, deeply vulnerable when Scanlon slips inside her head. This is not just telepathy. This is possession.
Spielberg underscores this not just through the visual language of the scene, as Jane breaks out in a sweat and struggles to sit upright as Scanlon invades her mind, but through Jane’s background. As she revealed to Daniel earlier in the film, Jane is a former novitiate nun who left her convent when she began to question her calling. She still believes firmly in God and, more importantly, believes that perhaps proof of alien life should be kept secret from the public because, in her eyes, it would upset the entire balance of faith in the world. God is a defining factor for humankind, Jane argues, and showing humanity proof of creatures from the stars would undercut that in dangerous ways.
This context, combined with the crucifix necklace Jane’s holding in her hand at the time of the dive, makes this scene the closest thing Spielberg will ever shoot to something out of The Exorcist. It’s not just a battle of wills, but a battle of faith. As an amoral technocrat worms his way into her memories, her beliefs, her faith, Jane turns the crucifix into a weapon, squeezing it until her hand bleeds when she discovers that a pain response can momentarily push Scanlon out of her head.
Of course, when you put a crucifix and a bloody hand together, it conjures images of stigmata. Screenwriter David Koepp pushes the allusion further by having Scanlon quote Christ on the cross to Jane by way of convincing her that she must be the one to stop Daniel by any means necessary.
It’s easy to see why this is scary, right?
On a very basic level, you have a powerful, wealthy man subduing and assaulting an innocent young woman, which is frightening enough. Then, the layers of the scene kick in. Scanlon doesn’t just assault Jane, but possesses her, seizes her memories, her knowledge, and finally her own free will, all while Jane literally clings to her faith in an effort to fight back. Disclosure Day is, among other things, a story about who has a right to the truth, and Scanlon believes that he should be the arbiter of that truth. Not just the truth as he sees it, but the truth as Jane sees it as well. If they don’t see eye to eye, he’ll make her.
But the possession, as it turns out, cuts both ways. Using the rod to dive is, for a normal human being, an intensely strenuous process. Scanlon admits that previous attempts almost killed him, and for some members of his time, so much as touching the rod results in a near-death experience. Even accessing an unprepared mind like Jane’s takes a lot of Scanlon, and when she kicks him out by squeezing the crucifix – again, so much meaning embedded in the details here – his team holds him back and tries to offer medical intervention. But Scanlon persists, pushing them away, and keeps diving back in.
This means that Jane can’t escape him because he just won’t stop pushing back through her defenses, but it also means that each time Scanlon enters her mind, and thus the safe house, he looks more monstrous. By the end, through a combination of lighting and makeup, Firth barely looks human, conjuring up images of the possessed Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist.
Colin Firth (center, standing) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
On a pure, visceral craft level, all of this is quite frightening, but the real trick to making this scene into Spielberg’s most terrifying lies in the more existential horror surrounding all of this. Disclosure Day is a film about the battle for the truth over extraterrestrials, but it’s also about a fight against an impossibly powerful surveillance state, the devaluing of human and alien lives in favor of some nebulous collection of assets, and the value of the individual in a world that increasingly lumps people into demographic boxes and writes them off.
In this scene, the surveillance state becomes supernatural, a human life is worth less than a piece of information, and an extragovernmental technocrat would rather sacrifice his own humanity than see reason. In 2026, few things could be more terrifying than that. Spielberg knows this and wields it mightily, proving once again that, while he’s not a strictly horror filmmaker, he can direct horror with the best of them.
Disclosure Day is in theaters now.
Eve Hewson (second from left) in DISCLOSURE DAY, directed by Steven Spielberg.
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