Sometimes you come across an old show that’s in a category you like and wonder “how have I never heard of this?”
Joe Flaherty's eye
Really Weird Tales is one of those. It was made in 1986. Somehow, it went under my radar, although it’s the sort of thing I would normally have made a point of watching.
The format is a parody of anthology shows like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, with Joe Flaherty as the Rod Serling style host. Flaherty was also the producer, and seems to have called in some of his best SCTV connections to get the series made.
Only three episodes were made, and it aired on HBO in the US. (I'm not sure where it was on in Canada.)
“All’s Well that Ends Strange” stars Martin Short as a sleazy lounge singer who gets caught up in a world of sexy androids.
“Cursed with Charisma” stars John Candy as a sort of modern-day Music Man, a charismatic stranger with strange powers for promoting get-rich-quick schemes.
“I’ll Die Loving” was probably the strongest of the three. It stars Catherine O’Hara as a woman with an unusual problem – if she loves someone, they explode. John Hemphill (who appeared in SCTV as “Happy Marsden”, host of "Six Gun Justice") is great as Mervis, her obnoxious co-worker.
They were trying something different – a comedy anthology horror show. While shows like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits have often parodied, the spoofs are generally presented as sketches within a sketch show, or self-contained episodes of a show that normally has a different style, like The Simpson's annual "Treehouse of Horror" episodes. But although there are enough "Treehouse of Horror" to fill out three seasons of a regular show, The Simpsons haven't spun it off into its own show. Perhaps it's too difficult to sustain the joke.
A UK series that tried was Doctor Terrible's House of Horrible (2001), where Steve Coogan (as Doctor Terrible) introduced a different episode, in the style of the old Hammer horror films. It had a strong cast, but wasn't popular with viewers.
The UK series Garth Marenghi's Darkplace (2004) was another parody horror series, not an anthology, but parodying shows like Stephen King's (single-season) Kingdom Hospital. Again, Darkplace had a strong cast, but it didn't attract a big audience when it was first aired.
One challenge with this type of show is that it horror builds tension, and comedy knocks it down. It's very tempting to make jokes at the expense of the horror story. That sort of joke can work in a two-minute sketch, but if it's part of a longer story, it's hard to hold the viewer's interest. Some productions have managed to hit a sweet spot. An American Werewolf in London found a nice balance, but it was more "horror with some comedy" than a parody of horror.
There are various issues you might point out with Really Weird Tales – the video looks cheap, the sound isn't great, and the pacing is often slow. But it is also stuck in that valley between comedy and horror, often staying close enough to the comedy side that it's hard to care about the characters, so the sections feel like overlong sketches rather than comic stories. Catherine O'Hara's "I'll Die Loving" story has more heart than the other episodes.
Catherine O'Hara and John Hemphill in Really Weird Tales
The series has a strong cast – not just the well-known SCTV people, but also people like Sheila McCarthy, Don Harron, John Hemphill, Paul Soles, and Jayne Eastwood (who I later worked with on Train 48). It’s also interesting to see some of the locations. The Catherine O’Hara episode takes place in a Bi-Way store, a chain that disappeared decades ago.
About ten years later, Catherine O’Hara appeared on an episode of the real Outer Limits, “The Revelations of Becka Paulson,” based on a Stephen King short story. Outer Limits was usually serious, but in this story it took a diversion into the comedy-horror valley. O'Hara plays a woman who accidentally shoots herself in the head, then starts seeing visions. Again, it's hard to navigate between the two, but there were some very funny parts, and overall it was an interesting combination of comic and tragic-horrific.