Name those B-Movie-esque TV Shows!

[Mark]

The folks at the WB might have produced more shows for this list than any other...

 

[Agamon]

The Flash was one of the best superhero shows this side of Smallville. And let's not forget England's finest export since The Beatles, Red Dwarf.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

There was also the latest Tarzan series starring Casper van Diem.

But the show that beats them all is Dark Shadows. While not on a small network, DS was just too bad (on a technical level) not to be considered.

On a technical level, DS almost makes Plan 9 from Outer Space look like Star Wars.


From a review by Joe Dante (Gremlins, etc.) in Castle of Frankenstein magazine:

The show itself has become a compendium of horror movie cliches, brought to a boil by concentrating all the action, mostly culled from old Universal pictures, upon one family. DS's characters have suffered moreshocks and horrors than three generations of Universal contract players; yet whenever they supernatural rears its shaggy head, they react as if it were intruding on an uneventful existence in Scarsdale. Thus we have Barnabas, himself a reformed vampire who has been killed and revived at least a number of times, participating in various magical and monster-making experiments, shifting back and forth in time innumerable occasions, watched a friend turn into a werewolf, and seen Mrs. Stoddard return alive and unharmed from entombment alive after six weeks, greeting every occult plot twist with puzzlement and the inevitable "...it can't be possible!"

. . .

The budget apparently doesn't allow for re-taping, so every fluff, camera misdirection, visible crew-member and production error is left in, endowing the show with some of the excitement and human interest which made live TV so much fun back in the dear, dead Fifties. Nothing arouses audience empathy more than the sight of a harried actor groping for forgotten lines while trying to steal a discreet glimpse of the cue card.

And from Kate Jackson:

Kate Jackson described an on-set mishap to People magazine in 1991: "I had to say this long speech explaining why I was back from the dead," she said. "I was standing in an 1800s dress, with candles all around, and the back of the dress caught fire. I was already messing up the lines and all I could think was, "Why is David Henesy dancing around back there?' He kept me from having to scream, 'Aaaaaaah! My dress is on fire!'"

And, finally, from Joe Dante's blurb for a DS book:

"This book is for all of us who stared in hypnotic fascination for nearly five years at TV's only vampire soap opera, ever anxious lest its Gothic splendor be undercut by the sets falling apart on camera. A real insider's look at a show whose endurance has amazed even its creators."

 

[Mark]

I've got to add the mid-70s When Things Were Rotten to the campy side of the equation...

 

[Aeolius]

Salvage One

Lucan

Man From Atlantis

 

[Villano]

I don't think anyone's mentioned these, yet, but:

6 Million Dollar Man

Bionic Woman

Buck Rodgers

Dracula: The Series

Knight Rider

And wasn't there a Kight Rider rip-off series in the early/mid '90s? I think it was called Viper or something like that.

Also, there were two comedies from the late '80s/early '90s about aliens. I can't remember the names of either, but, the first was actually pretty good and was about a teenage girl who was the daughter of an alien. She could stop time by touching her fingers together. Also, she could talk to her father through some clear, plastic cube-thing.

And Troy McClure starred as her non-alien uncle. Er, I mean, Doug McClure.

The 2nd series was about two goofy alien guys who are sent to Earth by their parents to go to college here. However, they instead decide to "see the world" and bum around. The military finds out about them, and a general and his aide were always trying to capture them.

Overall, it was pretty stupid, but I do remember that the girl from ALF was on an episode as a sexy nerd.

It also gave me one of my best tv moments. There was an episode where another race of aliens, all women, were trying to take over the world (on a side note, any man that has sex with them turns into green dust).

At one point, the guys were captured by the women (who were going to have sex with them to kill them), when the general bursts in, brandishing his gun.

An alien women says something like, "Your puny Earth weapons are powerless against us."

To which, one of the alien guys responds, "Actually, that's a common misconception among alien races. You see, the general's gun there can blow a hole in you the size of a grapefruit."

I don't know why I consider that funny.

 

[Mark]

Oh, yeah! What about the series based on the movie Alien Nation? I think that was fairly low budget...

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Also, there were two comedies from the late '80s/early '90s about aliens. I can't remember the names of either, but, the first was actually pretty good and was about a teenage girl who was the daughter of an alien. She could stop time by touching her fingers together. Also, she could talk to her father through some clear, plastic cube-thing.

"Would you like to swing on a star,
Carry moonbeams home in a jar,
...."

That television show?

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

And let's not forget that the show Cliffhangers had a "The Curse of Dracula" segment starring Michael Nouri (Flashdance) as our favorite vampire.

 

[Villano]

"Would you like to swing on a star,
Carry moonbeams home in a jar,
...."

That television show?

Yeah, that's the one! Do you kow its name?

And, now that I think about it, the one with the 2 alien brothers was called They Came From Outer Space.

And, speaking of aliens, there are 2 more I just remembered:

The first starred one began as a mini-series and starred one of the D'abo sisters as a telepathic alien who gets drunk on caffine. She was a doctor, I think, on a prison ship carrying a shapechanging monster. It escapes, causing them to crash on Earth, where everyone but D'abo is killed.

The mini-series had her teaming with a cop to track it down and kill it. When it went to a full series, it was a mixed bag. It had a few sci-fi aspects, but it was mostly a cop drama, as I recall.

It did have a cool episode with a killer ventriloquist dummy, though.

I think it was called Something Is Out There.

The 2nd series was about an alien (who looked like a robotic version of Predator) who gets in trouble on his homeworld and is turned nto a human and banished to Earth, with a floating orb, or something, which monitored him.

It was action series and kind of reminded me of the Hulk. Y'know, a guy with superstrength versus mobsters and such, although it did have some sci-fi stuff happening. I think the woman who played the Rosanne's sister on her show was on an episode or two as an evil alien.

I want to say it was Doing Time On Planet Earth, but I don't think that's it.

On a completely unrelated note, how cool would it have been for the Hulk to have had a crossover with 6 Million Dollar Man? The Hulk vs the Bionic Bigfoot!