Raised by Cable TV's Women in Peril
In the early 90s I grew up watching made-for-TV thrillers on USA Network that regularly featured Women in Peril. Think Kathleen Quinlan in Trapped, Morgan Fairchild in Writer's Block, and Jane Seymour in Are You Lonesome Tonight? These were substitutes for the R-rated movies I couldn't yet see in theaters. Every week I studied TV Guide and drooled over the black-and-white ads for the various "Movies of the Week" (MOW) that attempted to lure in viewers with their provocative imagery and ridiculous taglines ("He was calling for a good time. It might be his last.")
Suffice to say, this wasn't your average media diet for an 11-year-old at the time. And of course, I was well aware of the other MOW offerings from the big broadcast networks that were usually "based on a true story," with other women in other forms of peril – long before "true crime" was coined. But there was something about USA's TV movies that felt more dangerous and...sleazier. Instead of tuning in to see a pre-Melrose Place Heather Locklear duke it out with a post-Jeannie Barbara Eden in Her Wicked Ways (CBS, 1991), I preferred to watch Mädchen Amick wear a cursed dress and turn into an evil seductress in I'm Dangerous Tonight (also starring – gasp! – Anthony Perkins). And my apologies to Meredith Baxter-Birney for skipping out on A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story (CBS, 1992). I was all about Teri Hatcher conspiring with Bryan Brown to help drown his wife in a lake in Dead in the Water.
USA Network, for those of you born after 2000, was THE place to find not only soft-core erotic thrillers but late-night B-movies. Comedians Gilbert Gottfried and Rhonda Shear co-hosted Up All Night, a programming block on weekends that showcased schlocky, low-budget fare that became my gateway to everything horror. Staying up past midnight on a Friday or Saturday introduced me to titles like 1988's Cheerleader Camp (murder by pom-poms!), 1988's The Nest (carnivorous cockroaches!), and 1980's Island Claws (attack of the giant crab!).
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| No longer tied up in Knots (Landing) |
But back to those women-in-peril thrillers: Why was I drawn to these weekly pieces of murder-filled melodrama? Why did my 12-year-old self have the TV appetite of a 42-year-old housewife? My guess is as good as yours.
I was an only child who needed to entertain himself in any way possible, and the pages of my R.L. Stine paperbacks could only hold my attention for so long. Maybe I was fascinated by how evil and f**ked-up adults could be. Perhaps I was preparing myself for an adulthood filled with deception and disappointments. Yeah, let's go with that. The lessons I learned as a preteen didn't come from "a very special episode" of Saved by the Bell or Growing Pains. They came from the harrowing stories of women played by former primetime soap stars. Infidelity, extortion, and murder were my reading, writing, and arithmetic.
And I've made peace with that.
Now, if you'll excuse me. I have to go stalk my neighbor's husband to make sure his mistress isn't aware of my vengeance plot...
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