I've been down with the dreaded swine flu, and I highly recommend astragalus to anyone who comes down with it. I was diagnosed too late for Tamiflu to do me any good, but once I finally started taking the astragalus I began to improve rapidly.What better activity for forced bed rest than watching the boob tube? Scariest Places on Earth is a smorgasbord of horror show talent wrapped up in one guilty pleasure package. Like a trashy movie burrito, if you will.
First, Linda Blair slinks out of the shadows of a gothic set to introduce the segment with as many Creepshow-esque puns as the writers could sneak in there. Then, Zelda Rubinstein of Poltergeist fame provides the voice-over history for the spooky location of the episode. To top it all off, Alan Robson shows up to scare the bejeesus out of the credulous American family who are there to spend the night in the haunted mansion. It's like The House on Haunted Hill with scaredy-cat-cam.
They always send the biggest scaredy-cat deep within the bowels of the mansion, alone. Then, the bravest family member is sent way the heck out on the house's grounds, also alone. This is so that when the spooked family member finally has a screaming breakdown, Braveheart has to go on a quest to catch up with the other family members who are stumbling in Spooky's general direction. The whole thing becomes a montage of shaking, yelling faces, which is way more entertaining than it has any right to be, considering the lavish production values have been shrunk down to close-ups of poorly-lit, non-union performers. But never fear! For Alan Robson will soon be back to scare the family one more time into wondering if a ghost will follow them home, and then Linda Blair will deliver the punny coda.
Some people like chicken soup with crackers. I like trashy movies and b TV.
