Bad Influences: This Is Horror

This is Horror and related releases were a late 80s series of repackaged video press kits, showing movie clips, interviews, and behind the scenes footage.  John Simmons is the name that comes up the most as the responsible parties.

It started with Stephen King's World of Horror, a straight to VHS release.  Some sources have this as 1986; the copyright of this version is 1988.  Note that many uploads with this title are actually the later This is Horror.



This was expanded into the syndicated series This is Horror, which uses the King interviews as bookends.  I believe there were 13 episodes, copyright 1989, and they were all over cable TV.  I saw them on MTV.  This exact version isn't readily available on the internet - the closest thing is a two DVD set with Dutch subtitles.

These were re-edited further into a three VHS set title This is Horror.  I believe only the first was released in the US.  All three are currently available on YouTube.








There was another release under the title Encyclopedia of Horror - I don't know if these are exactly the same or another re-editing.

Finally, the same clips with the same narrator was repacked as Shadow Theater, with host clips by Robert Englund.

Bad Influences - Night Flight

Night Flight wasn't so much a show as a programming block, airing for four hours late Friday and Saturday nights on the USA Network from 1981 to 1989 before moving to syndication and finally the internet.

The show centered around music videos, of the artier persuasion, but also had animation, short films, features, and general psychotronic stuff.  Notably, it showed clips from the Subgenius film Arise!  As cool as you can get on basic cable.

I think I watched the show mostly during sleepovers, and the only specific memories I have of it are seeing Duran Duran's Wild Boys video and a kung fu movie where someone has to drink virgin piss and chases around little boys trying to pee in alleys.  I must have watched much more - I recognize presenter Pat Prescott's voice more than my mother's - but I remember very little.

Bad Influences: Max's Mondo Madness

Max Headroom is one of those formerly ubiquitous cultural artifacts which society collectively decides to scrub from it's consciousness, like Gangam Style or Zach Galifianakis.  Either it's time has come again or I have lost all sense of taste, but I think it holds up well today, at least the movie and TV series, if not the Coke commercials.

In 1986, Max hosted a series of what were then called "mondo" or "midnight" movies.  I recall very little of it, except that's where I taped Reefer Madness and The Forbidden Zone featured prominently in the intro, though I may be confusing it with Night Flight.

This show has almost no internet fingerprint, but it's likely called "Max's Mondo Madness", a term that I am now ruining the googlewang for - it's only reference is at Max Headroom Notes.