Mon 13 Oct 2014
MONSTERS FIGHTING EVIL, A Special Halloween TV Column by Michael Shonk.
Posted by Steve under TV Science Fiction & Fantasy[8] Comments
by Michael Shonk
October means Halloween and Halloween means monsters. Fiction is full of scary monsters, evil monsters, but hero monsters? TV alone has more than its share of stories with humans fighting monsters. BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER, SPECIAL UNIT 2 and X-FILES are just a few of the TV series with monsters as the villains, but what about the shows with a monster as a good guy? Its time we scream for those monsters willing to change sides.
If you are going to mention monsters you have to begin with vampires, and what is it about cops and PIs that attract vampires?
ANGEL. (WB, 1999-2004) Buffy didn’t slay all the vampires as the vampire with a soul, Angel (David Boreanaz) was on her side from the beginning. At one point he moves to Los Angeles and opens his own PI agency.
BLOOD TIES. (Lifetime, 2007-08) Female ex-cop turned PI, Vicki Nelson (Christine Cox) gets help from a cute Vampire, Henry Fitzroy (Kyle Schmid) as they solves crimes and she deals with her jealous boyfriend and former police partner Mike (Dylan Neal). Based on books by Tonya Huff.
FOREVER KNIGHT. (CBS, 1992-96) Vampire Nick Knight (Geraint Wyn Davies) who wants to go straight becomes a Toronto Homicide cop on the night shift. The link is to the first episode.
MOONLIGHT. (CBS, 2007-08) Vampire PI Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin) solves crimes as he tries to resist falling in love with human reporter Beth (Sophie Myles).
Where would monsters be without mad scientists seeking answers Man is not supposed to know, those scamps are the stuff of horror legends…and crime fighters. H.G. Wells’ Invisible Man has been a popular choice for a TV good guy.
THE INVISIBLE MAN. (CBS, 1958-59): Imported British series featured scientist Peter Brady. Brady’s experiment turns a rat invisible but there is a leak and he becomes invisible as well and unable to return to his natural visible state, thus cheating the actor whose face is never seen out of an on air credit (reportedly he was Tim Turner). Brady would use his invisibility to fight crime and help the government. Link is for the first episode.
THE INVISIBLE MAN. (NBC, 1975): Scientist (David McCallum) creates a machine that turns things and people invisible. He destroys the machine to keep it out of the hands of the military but his antidote fails and he is unable to become visible again. He and his scientist wife (Melissa Fee) go to work for the Klae Corporation where he handles security missions for the company while he and his wife search for a cure to his invisibility.
GEMINI MAN. (NBC, 1976): Government agent Sam Casey (Ben Murphy) works for the U.S. agency Intersect. While on a mission he is exposed to radiation that turns him invisible. Scientist Abby Lawrence (Katherine Crawford) creates a DNA stabilizer that allows Sam to control his invisibility. But if Sam stays invisible for longer than fifteen minutes he will remain that way forever. The link is for Part One (of Five) of the episode “Minotaur.â€
INVISIBLE MAN aka I-MAN. (Sci-Fi aka Syfy, 2000-02): Comedy action series. A mad scientist uses his brother, career criminal Darien Fawkes (Vincent Ventresca) as the test subject for a government funded experiment. Things go wrong (don’t they always?) and Darien, who now has the ability to make himself invisible, is forced to work for a secret agency in exchange for regular doses of an antidote that keeps him from going insane. The link is for the pilot episode.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LrrB3rjnPU
Sure, we all overcome obstacles every day in our lives, but these characters didn’t let a little thing like death stopped them from fighting evil.
BRIMSTONE. (Fox, 1998-99): Dead Damned good cop Zeke Stone (Peter Horton) murdered the man who escaped justice after raping Stone’s wife. Stone ends up in Hell. He is offered a deal by the Devil (John Glover), recapture 113 escaped demons from Hell and Stone gets a second chance on Earth. The link is for episode three.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmi0jj62D6s
G VS E aka GOOD VS EVIL. (USA, 1999/ Sci-Fi aka Syfy, 2000): Dead Cop Chandler Smythe (Clayton Rohner) joins “the corps,†God’s police force. With his dead partner Henry (Richard Brooks) a cop from the 70s, they hunt “Morlocks,†demons from Hell who are on Earth disguised as humans. The link is for Part One (of Five) of the first episode.
Witches and Wizards, like humans, can be found on both sides of the line between good and evil.
DRESDEN’S FILES. (Sci-Fi aka Syfy, 2007): Loosely based on the books by Jim Butcher. Wizard and PI Harry Dresden (Paul Blackthorne) solve crimes involving the supernatural with curious cop Connie Murphy (Valerie Cruz) trying to discover the truth.
TUCKER’S WITCH. (CBS, 1982-83) Married couple Amanda and Rick Tucker (Catherine Hicks and Tim Matheson) work together as PIs solving mysteries with the help of her yet to be totally mastered witchcraft. Mystery*File review here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLPqyrmYOc8
There are times a monster rises above our prejudices and remind us that not all scary ugly monsters are alike.
SWAMP THING (USA, 1990-93). Professor Alex Holland (Dirk Durock) is a victim of a murder attempt by mad scientist Anton Arcane (Mark Lindsey Chapman). Turned into a monster that is part man-part plant, Holland protects his swamp home and friends from Arcane and various other evildoers.
Saturday morning TV has been a place for an endless number of good guy monsters including SWAMP THING (Fox Kids 1990-91). The link is for the episode “Un-man Unleashed.â€
FANGFACE (ABC 1978-79) was one of the endless cartoons inspired by Scooby Doo, this one with a werewolf.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GysCevSEOM
MONSTER SQUAD. (NBC 1976-77) was a live action show done in a style similar to the 1960s BATMAN TV series. The night watchman at a Wax Museum brings Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and Werewolf back to life so they can do good and make up for their earlier bad behavior.
Today we have no shortage of “monsters†fighting evil including Grimm’s monster sidekick Monroe in GRIMM (NBC), the risen from the dead Ichabod Crane in SLEEPY HOLLOW (FOX) and a growing groups of clones in ORPHAN BLACK (BBC America).
October 13th, 2014 at 3:20 pm
Monsters fighting evil, I suppose technically Vincent from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST qualifies despite his ‘beautiful soul.’ There was WEREWOLF and TEEN WOLF, and likely more if we went far enough afield.
October 13th, 2014 at 6:01 pm
David, I suspect there are more I missed. Both BEAUTY AND THE BEAST would qualify. The better known 1987 version had the Beast aid and protect Beauty the assistant D.A. More of a romantic adventure, I suspect the D.A. role had them battling evil on occasion. The recent CW version dealt heavy in a good versus evil conspiracy and the Beast looked human but had an altered DNA that made him act like a Beast.
WEREWOLF was more like the FUGITIVE, with the young man wanted for murder on the run while hunting for the original werewolf. TEEN WOLF focused on teenage comedy/drama in high school.
Two other possibles I rejected were WITCHBLADE (more superhero) and NEW AMSTERDAM (immortal cop but not really a monster). It would be easy to drop SLEEPY HOLLOW for a similar reason except they get help from some supernatural witches such as his wife (or is she helping?…).
October 14th, 2014 at 1:13 pm
I have dipped my toe into the water, so to speak, but I have discovered that Vampire Detectives and I are not compatible, so I’ve never given any of Michael’s first grouping a tumble.
The shows with crimes solved by Invisible Men are another matter, however. I’ve obtained the DVD sets for at the David McCallum series, which so far I’ve found a lot of fun. I’ll have to check out GEMINI MAN, though, which I missed knowing about when it was first on, and I’ve managed to maintain that ignorance ever since — until now.
I tried the most recent attempt, though, the one with Vincent Ventresca on the SciFi Channel, but after the pilot episode, the producers did not seem to have any idea of where to go with it from there. I gave up and got rid of my copy on Amazon as a third party seller.
October 14th, 2014 at 4:15 pm
For some reason certain videos have rejected embedding here and tell you to visit YouTube. So here are the links to those three.
GEMINI MAN
PART ONE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpomVCImOf0
PART TWO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC7BUvaFnxA
PART THREE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4YhfhRuaNM
PART FOUR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOR9fiZC3R4
PART FIVE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT-EbSg1B2Y
BRIMSTONE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jmi0jj62D6s
G VS E aka GOOD VS EVIL
PART ONE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz6-2brzHlk
PART TWO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm-SIaKDVm0
PART THREE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BsMzX9xOZI
PART FOUR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dhrrr4JHAU
PART FIVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYLIqMazJns
As for what to watch. If you liked BUFFY then you will most likely enjoy ANGEL. BLOOD TIES was aimed at women and much like the romance suspense paperbacks. FOREVER KNIGHT and MOONLIGHT had their moments and have fans but really nothing special. The 50’s version of THE INVISIBLE MAN was typical TV crime/spy series for the era. THE INVISIBLE MAN with McCallum took an anti-military liberal of the 70s and had him a slave to big corporation – for fans of 70s TV only. GEMINI MAN was so bad that its “movie†(two episodes stuck together) aired on MYSTERY SCIENCE THREE THOUSAND (MST3K). I-MAN pilot is good but like Steve said the series was a mess, cause mainly by problems with the network SyFy. BRIMSTONE is the best of the lot. G VS E is camp over the top fun but too often too weird for its own good, but has some great pokes at 70s cops. DRESDEN FILES went too far away from the books and was a disappointment. SWAMP THING was comic book TV nonsense.
October 15th, 2014 at 1:24 pm
I may have said this before, but…
In the 1950s the old Universal films were re-released en-masse and then sold to television, where they were gobbled up by kids & teenagers, who undoubtedly noticed that the nominal heroes of these movies were a bunch of dull guys in suits; the most interesting character was always the monster or mad scientist, who was invariably played by the more charismatic actor.
The kids of the 50s grew into the teens of the 60s & 70s, still identifying with the hairy outcasts — and that’s how Hippies came to be. Now that the hippies have grown and spawned adults of their own, it’s only natural that the monsters they identified with have become the heroes of another generation.
But somehow I preferred it when the monsters were politically incorrect enough to drown a small child, and the scientists (“They booted me out of the Academy for my unorthodox experiments with the human brain!”) not only mad but often possessed of a dirty mind directed at the heroine.
Now that Monsters have become more sympathetic I somehow find them much less likeable.
October 15th, 2014 at 6:04 pm
Dan, I find today’s monsters more complex and less simple. The days where things were black or white, good or evil are virtually gone. Monsters have changed with the audience, from Universal Monsters questioning the moral changes of man to being Mom approved safe for kids jokes to today’s audience identifying with the monster struggles.
The original intent to make monsters good was it was an easy twist to surprise the audiences/readers. Then it became a heavy handed moral about what is beauty and how ugly could be good.
The Vampire continues to appeal. Helped by the violence and blood and gore audiences love, the modern vampire can be pure evil or (like the heroes in the post) guilt ridden and seeking redemption or the peace of death. It has a permanent place among the tragic romantic figure.
The Werewolf has had some success recently (UNDERWORLD film series). Another monster featuring violence, it is also often a victim. Fighting man’s basic violent nature, cursed genetically or by another monster, viewers can identify with these monster/victims struggle to be good.
It is that inner struggle to be good that forms the basis of most monster turned hero. It is that struggle that keeps them interesting to fans.
In today’s geek culture that embraces science instead of fearing it the Mad Scientist is a hero to many and plays a vital role in the rise of the genetic formed monster. One of my favorite cartoon series was SHEEP IN THE BIG CITY. One of the characters was a scientist who often screamed he was not a “mad” scientist, he claimed instead he was an “angry” scientist. Now whenever I hear the standard “I am not Mad!!!” speech from the scientist character I shout back, “No, he’s just Angry!! An Angry scientist.”
October 17th, 2014 at 6:25 pm
Michael I don’t think Monsters are any more interesting today or that they were “black/white–good/evil” back in the old days.
The appeal of the old-time Monster Movies (for me anyway)was that they were getting away with something subversive. Ostensibly they end with the Monster dead and “Good riddance!”cries the crowd, while Ralph Bellamy, Robert Lowery or some even more forgettable guy-in-a-suit walks off with the girl. But we kids knew that someone (or some Thing) very interesting had left the screen, and we anticipated his/its unlikely resurrection in the next sequel. The thematic tension between the superficial Happy Ending and the duller world it portended struck us even then. And still calls to me today.
October 17th, 2014 at 8:57 pm
Dan, it can be a difference of opinion or timing as when we watched the Universal Monsters. I was born in 1954 and always found the Universal Monsters laughable, from funny accents to slow moving monsters still able to chase our heroes because they (especially the girl) kept falling down.
I don’t find the modern monsters much better just gorier. Today’s monster characters are usually more complex than the old simple ones but that is not always a good thing.
I am not a horror fan so my opinion may be out of touch. Why, I haven’t even watched THE WALKING DEAD. I do believe there have been zombie detectives in print, but I don’t think they’ve hit TV yet.
I will agree many of the old Universal Monsters offered better cinematography than today’s horror special effects films. Horror is not always better in color.
And my favorite horror film of all time is YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. So I am grateful to the old school monsters for that.