Samhain Project 5: Being Scared of "Eight is Enough"

Now, I'm no stranger to being frightened by what would normally be saccharine television.  Check this shit out:  A Very Brady Nightmare.  

But!  I wasn't alone!  Observe: Kindertrauma.

Always nice to have corroboration.  

Anyfrigginway, when I was a young tyke,  Eight is Enough, as cornball as it was, was adored by the female members of my family, and thusly I remember catching more than my fair share of episodes, so I got an Eight is Enough contact buzz. Thanks, Linda.

One January in 1979, ABC aired an episode of the program entitled Horror Story.  Seems all kinds of creepy shit happens to the Bradford family, just scattered about town instead of all of them being sequestered in Tom & Abby's house to face these dangers.  The crux of what spooked me was that one of the daughters, I believe Nancy, has a blind date arrive who strikingly looks like Tony Perkins. 

Now I guess I wasn't ready for horror quite yet, as my dip into Stephen King filmwork began with Salem's Lot, which was 11 months down the road.  I guess in that stretch, I somehow developed the gearwork for scary programming.  

But here there was horror imagery, meant to be an homage, I guess in a comic sense.  However, it was as George A. Romero said of Frankenstein, "bothering me a little bit, there".

Not a lot sticks out in my mind in terms of details, other than a pair of sisters walking down the stairs with a candle in the dark, as there is a storm-induced power outage.  The coup de grace, the silhouette of a massive butcher knife highlighted against kitchen curtains from outside by a flash of lightning, was the money shot that stuck with my poor little eight-year-old brain for quite some time. 

It's slightly less stupid to be frightened by an episode of Eight is Enough than The Brady Bunch, but kids are kids and their minds operate a certain way.  You can't blame them for the way their brains process things.  I just remember this particular episode of family TV scaring the shit out of me. 

They should have aired this in October. I've believed that for years.  Check out this fuckin' promo.  It's like the trailer for a Friday the 13th movie for chrissakes.  Maybe that planted the seed, so that I had no choice but to be scared once it ran. 

The episode is available on Tubi.  IF YOU DARE!!