Something strange and terrible invaded our home sometime around 1976 or 1977. Like a vampire given permission to enter our premises, it sauntered in, pulled each of us under its spell, changed forms, and never left. We loved it under the masks it wore: good times, entertainment, familial bonding, excitement and adventure. It was a false messiah masquerading as our friend, as our savior. It was the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
It was cable teevee.
Now, in the beginning my parents kept it under tightly enforced lock and key. That great big box, half the size of a shoebox, connected to a thick cord that ran to the back of the television. In those days channels were numbered 2 to 13, then lettered up to “P” if my memory serves me well. That’s 28 channels. I think it had fourteen big rectangular buttons you pushed down, plus a master switch that pointed up or down, necessary to get all 28.
Some channels my parents did not purchase. These were the channels that brought … let’s just call them adult movies into our house. Those channels were scrambled. But with a little experimentation, word spread throughout the neighborhood kids that if you depressed such-and-such buttons simultaneously, you’d get image resolution. When that didn’t work, we unscrewed the back of the box and twisted the silver dials with a screwdriver to unscramble those movies. After a while the cable companies caught on and that no longer worked.
I saw my first murders around this time. I know this may sound quaint compared to the hardness of heart our children now have with the great media complex swooping in claiming their innocence, but it was very traumatic for me at the time. I remember watching a distasteful movie with my parents, Homebodies. A group of senior citizens, not wanting to be evicted from their rest home, go on a murder spree. I’m sure it was meant as tongue-in-cheek, a “black comedy” or whatnot, but that’s not how I experienced it. I saw a gentle old lady run a young woman through with a twelve-inch kitchen knife, and watched her agonizing death. I wanted to throw up.
Before long I was sneaking out of my bedroom late at night, creeping into the hallway, watching what my father, reclining on the couch before me, watched on cable. He had no idea I was there. I watched A Clockwork Orange in its entirety. Now, I’ve since read the book (twice) and regard it as a masterpiece. I even own the DVD. But back then it was all quite confusing and more than a bit disturbing.
It was not entirely all bad. I, along with my friends, now could watch much more cartoons aimed at our level. There were also true family movies and shows I remember watching. For some reason we watched that movie Midway like a hundred times. It was even on while we were celebrating Christmas. It’s on the teevee in the background of some photos that first year.
Why the semi-sanctimonious condemnation of cable teevee? I guess to rail against unnecessary and unenjoyable warpage. And the saddest part of it is that it’s just a fraction of the warpage that my kids and your kids will have to deal with when they’re adults.
As a form of therapy, one thing I like to do is revisit all the movies that either
a) scared the hell out of me
or
b) confused the hell out of me
as a wee young lad. I don’t have a master list, mind you. But when something comes across the radar, something else clicks in my brain. There’s a hole-punch card that shoots down one of those vacuum tubes to my cerebral cortex, where the captain picks up that acoustic horn thingie and shouts, “Engine room! All engines full stop!” And as if by magic I blink, snap my fingers, and say, “I need to see this movie again!”
This happened to me last weekend. The movie was Damien: Omen II, and thirty-two years ago I watched it stealthily on the cable teevee when no one was around. It not only scared the hell out of me, it not only confused the hell out of me, it completely freaked the living daylights out of me.
With steel courage I watched it again late last Friday night. From start to finish. My recollections of my youth was a slick, colorful movie with a confusing plot where lots of innocent victims die suffering in many horrible ways. The boy, Damien, is super creepy, and emanating from him was a palpable evil that suffused the entire film. I don’t think I was able to watch the whole thing. As a matter of fact, I do remember the elevator scene made me sick to the point of nausea.
Just in case you’re not in the know, there were three Damien movies between 1976 and 1981, each less successful artistically and financially. Damien is the antichrist, as Hollywood understands him. The first movie had Gregory Peck to anchor it and give it some street cred and class; this one has William Holden. Their plots are similar. As Damien grows from an infant to a teen, his identity is gradually discerned, and those discerners are dispatched off to their eternal reward in ever-more-violent and ever-more-Rube-Golbergian ways. The last one to confront the existential-eschatological horror are the dads, who are killed before they can kill their devil-spawn son.
Whew.
So, in Damien: Omen II, there are something like eleven major character deaths. My scorecard reads
- 2 buried-alive-burials
- 1 psychic heart attack
- 1 by eighteen-wheeler-smackdown-after-eyes-plucked-out-by-crow
- 1 by taking the phrase skating on thin ice a tad too literally
- 1 toxic chemical casualty
- 1 bisection-by-broken-elevator-cable
- 1 psychic embolism
- 1 by train sandwich
- 1 by the old twelve-knives-in-the-gut trick
- 1 by exploding-boiler-itis.
Double whew.
I actually laughed at a few scenes, and marveled at how old the movie looked. So much for the slick, modernized pastel of evil, with Bill Holden talking on shoe-sized telephones and Lee Grant parading around in pantsuits. The elevator scene was still disgusting and jolting, but tame by today’s standards. That’s what struck me. How far we’ve come in cultivating the art of portraying horrible deaths onscreen. This is one pillar of our society’s self-immolation, this fascination with violence in all forms. But I digress. I made it through the movie, and the movie lost its power over me and my memories.
Now, if anyone knows when Homebodies is playing, let me know so I can DVR it!
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