Bizarre shows you saw as a kid. . .

[AD]

I remember watching a bizarre TV American sci-fi show which may, or may have not existed -- the show was in the mid/late 80s with a family of four, maybe five who were archelogists or exacting some pyramid or egyptian building in the middle of a stormy desert.

I think they uncover some kind of device which sucks them to a different world, and the rest of the series is them trying to get home - it stared some blonde/brown haired guy who seemed to pop up in a lot of TV shows during that year - but I can't remember if the show existed, what it was called or anything.

I don't even know if they got home...

[odinn7]

Hmmmm....perhaps this movie was "Theater of Blood", I will have to look into this.
Thanks.

[Ozzymandias]

There was a show I liked when I was very small call Uncle Croc's Block . Charles Nelson Riley was a supposed kiddie show host, who dressed as a crocadille. The station manager was Mr. Bitterbottom, played by Jonathan Harris. He showed really lame cartoons and had "celebrity guest." They were parodies of other TV shows.  My favorite guest were the $6 man, who would fall apart. Another was Capt. Marbles, who would come out as a Peter Fonda-looking guy who would mouth off before saying the "magic word." When Capt. Marbles appeared he was a fat guy with glasses and red underwear.

According to a reference book I have, ABC cancelled because they felt the show was too adult for children. Without having seen the show in years, the only thing I can figure is the show was modeled after comedy routines by Lenny Bruce, Bob Newhart, Firesign Theater, Alan Sues and even a Mad Magazine story by (I believe) Al Jaffe.    

I would love to see these again but supposedly they have been lost.

[petrol_lunatic]

i remember a show calledhard times on planet earth. it was about some guy that had a giant eye follow him around. I think it was on in the late 80s or early 90s.

[Steve Byczek]

Ozzymandias.    I remember "Uncle Croc's Bloc". I found it to be a very cute and funny parody of the Sid and Marty Kroft "kiddie shows" popular around this time such as "H.R. Pufnstuf" and "Lidsville". I wonder why they considered it to be too  "adult"? Oh well...like you I would have to rewatch episodes of it, and analyze it from an adult's perspective to make my opinions. Gee..there are so many TV shows out there we have not seen in years. Not everything is on DVD,yet. I guess only time will tell.


Sincerely,Steve.

[Deej]

Susan wrote:

> Also I hate to mention it but "Voyagers", i've never met one
> person in my actual real life who has ever heard of this show.

I remember "Voyagers"...kind of a time travel show right? With the kid from The Bad News Bears and The guy who accidently shot himself....my memory for names sucks.

Does anyone remember MANIMAL? It was an adventure program in which the lead character went around solving crimes and righting wrongs using his ability to change into an animal. Goooood Watchin'!!



Post Edited (05-18-05 10:49)

[Susan]

Deej - yep. I think that was punky brewsters brother as i recall. I always found it kind of silly that here are these two people travelling through time, the kid wants to learn all about history while the real time traveller basically wants to make it with every chick he can.

Manimal sounds familiar. I fear i missed out on alot of american tv from the late 70's to early 80's being overseas. By the time we got the tv shows they were a year old. And i think we only got certain shows, not sure if it was based on the network or what. I'm not sure what real live non-animation shows kids watch now but i back then that's all we watched because cartoons only came on saturday morning.

I still think it would be a cool to have a cable station that showed nothing but tv shows that never made it past the first or second season. Then we can truly enjoy all the crap! How long did BJ and the Bear last? ;-)

[ulthar]

Susan wrote:

> How
> long did BJ and the Bear last? ;-)
>

Let me be the first to say it:  too long.

[Deej]

Susan wrote:


> Manimal sounds familiar. I fear i missed out on alot of
> american tv from the late 70's to early 80's being overseas.

I also grew up overseas , Karlsruhe Germany, and watched whatever THE ARMED FORCES NETWORK happened to have on it's line up. I grew up, pretty much on a steady diet of Star Trek and Hee-Haw. It sucks to have one English-language channel. You mentioned BJ and the Bear, I remember that was shown on AFN, as well as Starsky & Hutch and The Misadventures of Sherrif Lobo(itself a spin-off of BJ and the Bear), and The Master. Around '86 , we began getting more current programming,  The Cosby Show, Moonlighting, Mr. Belvedere,  we even got Letterman once a week!

Of course, German programming was an option, but in the 80's, the German tv industry was pretty lame, mostly dubbed American movies. We moved to the states when I was 13, and I was more impressed with commercials than any actual program....I loved COMMERCIALS...especially Jocko, the Australian  Energizer battery pitch man...."Too right, the extraordinairy Energizer...OY!!".

[Susan]

Deej - i guess we were more lucky. We also got stuff like hee haw and dallas, this was late 70's early 80's tho so i remember stuff like "Incredible Hulk",  "Dance Fever", "Wonder WOman", "Dukes of Hazzard", "Grizzly Adams" along with with typical game shows.  They probably picked whichever shows topped the nielson ratings.

Thank god they also had stuff like Three Stooges and alot of older B&W shows. The cool thing is Filipino tv picked up alot of programming from Hong Kong. I saw alot of creature features, kung fu theater and anime. Not big on anime these days tho. But loved nearly everything else, and it was alot of B-tv. Since we only  When I came back to the states i was so amazed with all the tv channels

[BoyScoutKevin]

Yeah, I do, if that is the program, where Vincent Price narrates what is going on, while they show footage shot in various castles around Europe.

As for my own choice of bizarre TV programs for kids, and this has been mentioned on various other sites. . .  Do  the names Sid and Marty Krofft mean anything to anyone? I swear, those guys must have been on acid, when they thought of some of their ideas for kids' programs.

[Bargle5]

AD wrote: the show was in the mid/late 80s with a family of four, maybe five who were archelogists or exacting some pyramid or egyptian building in the middle of a stormy desert.

That was Otherworld starring Sam Groom. I watched a few episodes but gave up when the bad guys were clearly a bunch of pseudo-Nazis. They wore Nazi style garb, but with made different colors. I figured any series where they couldn't up with a better set of villains than badly redressed Nazis wasn't worth my time.
The Sci-Fi Channel reran it a while back. I watched it and was surprised to find it was better than I remembered. Here's the IMDB listing for it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088587/

I remember Manimal. The big problem with the show was due to budget limitations, they could only show him changing into 3 animals. So it was the same tranformations over and over again and it just got boring.

The first host kid on YCDTOTV was, yes, Christine "Moose" McGlade.
She also appeared on another show produced by, I think, the same company. It was called "Turkey TV". The show was a combination of original skits and clips from European TV shows. Moose and Les Lye did a series of sketches called "Nichols and Diane" where Les was a businessman and Moose was his secretary. Some other original running sketches were "Those Good Ole Kentucky Boys" and there was another one that was conversations between 2 young teenage girls. It was the first place I saw Dana Carvey, before he went on SNL. They had a clip of him doing his 'Chopping Broccoli' bit. Only lasted one season.
(A late correction of myself. Turkey TV lasted 2 seasons.)

[Susan]

we found a dana carvey fansite at work with soundbytes and played Chopping Broccoli several times, it's quite catchy ;-)

[saintmort]

I just bought Pete and Pete Season 1

That was a Bizarre show if I ever saw one

[Dustin Turnmyre]

Well, for instance, I remember an episode starring (I think) Vincent Price
in which he has a daughter who is auditioning for a part for a movie or
perhaps a theatrical production.  The scene opens in an agent's office.

Price demonstrates her talent by telling her a joke at which time she
begins crying.  He then spanks her and she breaks out in gales of
laughter.  He brags to the agent at her ability to control her performance
under any circumstance.

After audtioning, they are outside in a street which is obviously in
a backlot.  The father is struck by an out-of-control speeding vehicle.
Dying, and from his POV, he sees the daughter looking down at him.
As his eyes dim, the last thing he sees before death overtakes him
is his daughter laughing uncontrollably.

As yet, no one I know has any knowledge of this episode and I can
find no reference to it.  It may have been on a show like Alcoa Presents???