In the final episode, “Not Fade Away”, broadcast in May, Angel signed away his last chance of becoming human again as the vampire-with-a-soul and his team took on the Circle of the Black Thorn and Wolfram & Hart’s Senior Partners in a final showdown that revealed some genuine surprises and included the deaths of two major characters.
One of the hottest new shows of 2004 was ABC-TV’s Lost, which premiered in September. Created by J.J. Abrams (Alias), the survivors of a plane crash found themselves trapped on a mysterious Pacific island menaced by unseen forces, including what appeared to be a monster.
Also on ABC, Craig Baxley directed every episode of Stephen King’s ambitious thirteen-part, fifteen-hour Kingdom Hospital, loosely based on Lars von Trier’s 1990s Danish TV series about a haunted hospital. With talking animals, headless zombies and a central plot built around the author’s own near fatal hit-and-run incident, audiences stayed away in droves and viewing figures plunged from fourteen million to just five million in three weeks. As a result, the network quickly moved the show to an impossible time slot opposite CSI and Will & Grace, before temporarily putting it on summer hiatus in May and then airing the final four episodes from the end of June.
“I realize now, we were asking viewers to give us a week or two, maybe three,” revealed King, “and that was more time than most were willing to give.”
Bill Paterson starred as the leader of a Glasgow-based parasychology research team in Sea of Souls, a dull co-production between BBC Scotland and Sony Pictures. The three two-part episodes involved identical twins with a psychic link, a child who remembered a previous life and voodoo magic.
A co-production between Sky and Sony, Hex was a silly five-part series set in an English boarding school where psychic teenager Cassie (Christina Cole) unleashed an ancient voodoo curse. She inadvertently called up seductive fallen angel Azazeal (Michael Fassbender), much to the chagrin of the ghost of her lesbian friend Thelma (Jemima Rooper).
Even worse was Channel 4’s Garth Maranghi’s Darkplace, a six-episode sit-com set in the cursed Darkplace Hospital. Incredibly, this lame spoof of 1970s and 1980s TV shows, starring the supposed bestselling horror author (Richard Ayoade), was even more unfunny than the stage show that inspired it.
CBS’ CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and NBC’s Crossing Jordan both had episodes featuring fake vampires, while CBS’ futuristic legal series Century City was set in 2030 and quickly came and went.
Five Days to Midnight was a Sci Fi Channel original miniseries in June in which Timothy Hutton’s physics professor was sent a police file from the future detailing his own murder. Premiering in July, the USA Network’s “event series” The 4400 was a trite blending of The X Files and Taken, as government agents Joel Gretsch and Jacqueline McKenzie investigated the sudden return of the eponymous number of abductees. The rambling plot eventually turned out to have something to do with time travel.
There was a definite nod to Barbara Eden and I Dream of Jeannie when Phoebe (Alyssa Milano) became a genie in a bottle in the sixth season of the WB’s Charmed. Having killed his mentor to save his and Piper’s newborn devil-child, Whitelighter Leo (Brian Krause) began the seventh season in a bad way. Meanwhile, Angel’s Charisma Carpenter turned up in the recurring role of a scheming seer, and Nick Lachey (Mr Jessica Simpson) joined the cast as a romantic attachment for Phoebe.
The third season of UPN’s The Dead Zone opened in June with Johnny Smith (Anthony Michael Hall) being arrested for murder and ended with him discovering that his telepathic powers may be killing him. Meanwhile, time-traveller Christopher Wey (Frank Whaley) from the year 2016 shed some light on the roles Rebecca (Sarah Wynter) and Greg Stillson (Sean Patrick Flanery) would play in the forthcoming Armageddon.
The sharply written Dead Like Me returned to Showtime for a welcome second, but final season in July, in which 18-year-old slacker George (Ellen Muth) was still dead and still a not-so-grim “Reaper”. In the Halloween series finale, George recalled fond childhood memories while a serial killer kept the soul-takers busy.
In the two-hour season finale of Fox’s struggling Tru Calling, Eliza Dushku’s character discovered that her friend Jack (mid-season addition Jason Priestly) was actually a Grim Reaper working against her ability to turn back time to help dead people. In the second season, Priestly’s character teamed up with Tru’s evil father, after knocking off her boring boyfriend Luc (Matthew Bomer).
In Fox’s quirky Wonderfalls, inanimate objects began talking to store clerk Jaye (Caroline Dhavernas), urging her to help others by surrendering to her own destiny. Even executive producer Tim Minear’s attempts to stir up support on the Internet failed to save the critically-acclaimed show, which was cancelled after just four of its thirteen episodes were aired.
In September, the second season of CBS’ Joan of Arcadia continued on from Joan (Amber Tamblyn) discovering she had Lyme disease and believing that she hallucinated all her conversations with the many guises of God. The star’s father, Russ Tamblyn, guest-starred in the first series as a dog-walker God.
After a welcome return appearance by Christopher Reeve as reclusive scientist Dr Virgil Swann, the third season of The WB’s Smallville ended on a cliffhanger with the apparent death of Chloe (Allison Mack), while the fourth season opened with Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) surviving being poisoned and Lois Lane (Canadian newcomer Erica Durance) arriving for thirteen episodes to help Clark (Tom Welling) investigate her cousin’s supposed demise. As the show thankfully returned to its supernatural roots, other guest stars included another Superman alumna, Margot Kidder; Michael Ironside as Lois’ father, and Jane Seymour as an uncharacteristically evil mother.
After the Enterprise tracked down the alien Xindi responsible for attacking Earth, UPN’s disastrous Enterprise sent Captain Archer (Scott Bakula) back in time to a Nazi-occupied United States for a desperate fourth season. Meanwhile, Family Guy creator Seth Mac-Farlane turned up in a cameo, Robert Foxworth and Joanna Cassidy played Vulcan adversaries, and The Next Generation’s Brent Spiner guest-starred in three episodes as Dr Arik Soong, the scheming ancestor of Data’s creator. Reports suggested that Paramount reduced the amount it charged UPN for the show so that it would have enough episodes for syndication.
While Stargate SG-1 entered its eighth season on the Sci Fi Channel with Richard Dean Anderson’s Jack O’Neill promoted to general, the new spin-off series Stargate Atlantis introduced the vampiric blue-skinned Wraith as the major menace to the human explorers stranded in the Pegasus galaxy.
The Sci Fi Channel’s “re-imagining” of the 1970s series Battlestar Galactica (shown on UK television before its American debut), proved to be the most gripping new SF show of the year, as sinister cyborg cylons returned to wipe out the twelve colonies of man.
Replacing Gloria Reuben, Vivica A. Fox joined Caterina Scorsone and newcomer Mark Consuelos on the second season of Lifetime’s psychic-FBI series Missing (originally titled 1-800-Missing), which premiered in July.
When he died for ten minutes after being shot in the head by a man in a ski mask, San Francisco Organized and Serial Crimes Unit detective David Creegan (Jeffrey Donovan) woke up with horrific visions in the USA Network’s Touching Evil, based on the UK miniseries of the same title. The show’s executive producers included the Hughes brothers and actor Bruce Willis.
For soap opera fans, Leigh Taylor-Young and Richard Steinmetz joined NBC-TV’s goofy Passions as two previously-dead characters. Arch-villain Alistair Crane was almost killed by a poisoned cigar, and androgynous axe-wielding psycho Norma escaped from the asylum and tried to murder Tabitha in a Christmas homage to EC comics.
Meanwhile, both NBC’s Days of Our Lives and ABC’s One Life to Live featured rival serial killing sprees.
Martin Clunes and Fay Ripley were among the live-action stars of the BBC’s three-part animated British/Canadian co-production Fungus the Bogeyman, based on the classic children’s book by Raymond Briggs.
The Simpsons “Treehouse of Horror XV�
� opener to season sixteen on Fox featured a Fantastic Voyage spoof, in which the dysfunctional family explored Mr Burns’ insides to rescue a miniaturized Maggie; Ned Flanders had premonitions of death and destruction in “The Ned Zone”, while the Holmesian Eliza Simpson and her sidekick Dr Bartley investigated the mystery of London’s Ripper-like Mutton Chop Murderer in “Four Beheadings and a Funeral”.
Timid teen Danny Fenton was transformed into a half-human, half-phantom who used his superpowers to protect his friends and family from ghosts in Nickelodeon’s animated series Danny Phantom.
The Batman arrived on the Kids WB! Saturday morning line-up and featured a grim animated caped crusader in his twenties battling a dreadlocked Joker and other foes. Nineteen sixties live-action Batman Adam West voiced Gotham City’s mayor. The Cartoon Network’s Justice League Unlimited teamed-up Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Supergirl and Green Arrow.
Comedy Central’s Drawn Together combined cartoon characters and reality TV for an adults-only audience.
As part of the Fox Movie Channel’s “13 Nights of Fright” leading up to Halloween, a bearded Neil Gaiman played horror host (complete with coffin and vampish assistant) to introduce such films as Tales from the Crypt, The Alligator People, The Fly remake, Edward Scissorhands, The Norliss Tapes, Phantom of the Paradise and other titles. The comedy may have been lame, but viewers were also offered the opportunity to win signed Gaiman books from the station’s web site every night.
For its eight-day “Monsterfest” over Halloween, AMC presented Entertainment Weekly’s Scariest Movies, hosted by Bruce Campbell and featuring the magazine’s choice of the top twenty horror films of all time. Campbell also hosted Boogeymen II: Masters of Horror, another clip-heavy Halloween show on Sci Fi Channel featuring interviews with Tobe Hooper, George Romero, Wes Craven and all the usual suspects.
Meanwhile, over on E!, True Hollywood Story: Scream Queens was hosted by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark (Cassandra Peterson). Along with interviews with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Brinke Stevens, Jennifer Tilly, Dee Wallace Stone, Julie Adams, Janet Leigh, Linda Blair, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ashley Laurence and many others, the show also contained (often brief) contributions from writers Nancy Kilpatrick, David Skal, Stephen Jones, Clive Barker, Séphera Girón and Edward Bryant.
The busy Elvria also hosted Hollywood’s Creepiest Creatures and Nature’s Vampires, two documentaries shown on Animal Planet, as well as Elvira’s Movies to Die For on Lifetime.
On Starz! Hare-Raising Halloween Marathon, rabbits appeared in spoofs of Freddy vs. Jason, Scream and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in-between the films.
Made for the Discovery Channel, True Horror With Anthony Head was a short-lived series that featured the Buffy actor wandering around Eastern Europe investigating the historic proof for vampires and werewolves. Among those he consulted were Dr Tina Rath and the Reverend Shaun Manchester.
In BBC Radio 4’s half-hour show Fear at the Flicks, comedian Michael Roberts took a personal look at horror film history with the help of his impersonations of Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Peter Lorre.
Eponymous peasant Mort became Death’s unlikely apprentice in Radio 4’s four-part adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s fourth “Discworld” novel, dramatized by Robin Brooks and narrated by Anton Lesser.
Cathy Sara starred in Neville Teller’s dramatization of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw for Radio 4.
Miriam Margolyes portrayed Annie Wilkes, who kept her favourite author Paul Sheldon (Nicholas Farrell) prisoner in an adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery broadcast on the BBC World Service in September.
Emma Fielding read an eight-part adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House on digital station BBC 7 for Hallowe’en. Over the same period, Radio 4’s Ghost Stories featured five tales by mystery author John Connolly, about a haunted inkpot, pagan gods, creepy clowns, a spinster vampire and a haunted house, read by Freddie Jones, Ian McDiarmid, Alun Armstrong, Jacqueline Pearce and Niall Buggy.
In December, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a ten-part abridged version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, read by actor David Rintoul (the werewolf in the 1974 film Legend of the Werewolf), while the same month also found Dougray Scott reading an eight-part abridgement of Wilkie Collins’ Gothic thriller The Woman in White on BBC Radio 2.
Over Christmas, Radio 2 broadcast Christopher Lee’s Fireside Tales, a late-night collection of five fifteen-minute readings of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Black Cat”, Jerome K. Jerome’s “The Man of Science”, E. Nesbit’s “John Charrington’s Wedding”, Ambrose Bierce’s “The Man and the Snake” and W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw”.
During October, “The Rolling Darkness Revue 2004” was a performance book tour of American West Coast stores by authors/musicians Peter Atkins, Dennis Etchison and Glen Hirshberg. Issued to coincide with the tour by Dog Run Studios, Hirshberg’s Flowers on Their Bridles, Hooves in the Air was a handsomely-packaged CD of the novella read by the author, illustrated with an evocative series of photographs by Jonas Yip and a booklet containing the complete story. It was limited to just seventy-five copies.
Meanwhile, Don’t Turn on the Lights! The Audio Library of Modern Horror, Vol. 1 was the first in a new digitally recorded CD series. It featured Dennis Etchison reading his stories “The Dog Park” and “Inside the Cackle Factory”. Produced by Dark Country Productions, a special signed and numbered “Preview Edition” was limited to 100 copies.
From The Hollywood Theater of the Ear and Blackstone Audio-books on CD, actor John de Lancie starred in a full-cast audio play of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari written, produced and directed by Yuri Rasavsky and inspired by the classic 1919 silent film. With a running time of around eight hours, and also issued by Blackstone and compiled by Rasavsky, Tales for a Stormy Night: A Pandora’s Box of Classic Chillers was a seven CD set of fourteen stories by Henry James, H.P. Lovecraft, H.H. Munro, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Wharton, Edgar Allan Poe, Lafcadio Hearn, Robert Louis Stevenson, Guy de Maupassant and others.
Despite being first published in 1975, it took almost three decades for Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot to be turned into an unabridged, seventeen-hour audio book, read by Ron McLarty.
The National Theatre’s epic adaptation of Philip Pullman’s trilogy His Dark Materials finally opened to mixed reviews in London in January after technical difficulties resulted in a delay of two weeks. The two-play, six-hour marathon starred Timothy Dalton as Lord Asriel and Patricia Hodge as Mrs Coulter.
In early February, a week after its sixteenth anniversary, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera became the second-longest running musical in Broadway history. Webber’s latest production, The Woman in White, was loosely based on the Gothic novel by Wilkie Collins and directed by Sir Trevor Nunn. It opened in London in September to decidedly mixed reviews and featured Webber’s original Phantom star Michael Crawford as the obese Count Fosco, all but unrecognisable beneath a fat suit.
Tom Hewitt starred as the undead Count in Frank Wildhorn’s critically-panned Dracula: The Musical, which opened at New York’s Belasco Theater in August under the direction of Des McAnuff. Meanwhile, Paul Nicholas toured the UK in the title role(s) of Wildhorn’s earlier Broadway adaptation of Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical.
Inspired by a National Enquirer cover and first mounted off-Broadway in 2001, potholers discovered a half-man, half-bat creature (a pointy-earred Deven May) in Laurence O’Keefe’s Bat Boy: The Musical at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London.
Diana Rigg starred in a revival of Tennessee Williams’ Suddenly Last Summer at London’s Albery Theatre. Dennis Potter’s 1976 drama Brimstone and Treacle, which was banned by the BBC for eleven years, was revived at London’s Bridewell Theatre in July, while Penelope Keith played medium Madame Arcati in a generally well-received revival of Noël Coward’s classic 1941 comedy Blithe Spirit, which premiered in Bath in August before moving to London’s Savoy Theatre.
In an echo of Britain’s “Video Nasty” f
iasco of two decades ago, there were calls from the right-wing media in July to ban the ultra-violent Manhunt game on PlayStation 2, following the conviction of a 17-year-old boy for the fatal stabbing of a 14-year-old in Leicester. Although the killer was said to have been obsessed by the game, the police and the courts maintained that it had no connection with the case. The victim’s parents planned a £50 million lawsuit against Manhunt’s Edinburgh-based creators and console maker Sony.
Meanwhile, id Software’s science fiction/horror game Doom 3 was described as the most bloodthirsty computer game yet made. In early August a pirate copy of the eagerly awaited game was leaked on Internet file-sharing networks and newsgroups. Set on Mars, it involved Marines battling demons accidentally released from Hell by a scientific experiment.
The Japanese-inspired Forbidden Siren was set in a small town where the dead walked the streets, while two teenage sisters found an abandoned village filled with vengeful spirits in Project Zero II: Crimson Butterflies.
The Suffering was another horror survival game, about a prisoner trying to escape a correction facility invaded by creatures from Hell, and players were trapped in a locked apartment with a gateway leading to other dimensions in Silent Hill 4: The Room.
In Beyond Good and Evil, female photographer Jade had to get pictures of aliens to make money, while Curse: The Eye of Isis was set in Victorian London and involved some Ancient Egyptian artefacts in the British Museum turning victims into zombie-like killers.
First launched in 1987, the latest in the Castlevania series, Lament of Innocence, pitted the player against Count Dracula in a castle full of monsters.
Take 2’s The Haunted Mansion was based on the Disneyland theme ride, featuring timid ghost-hunter Zeke.
The Van Helsing game for PlayStation 2 and X-Box was as disappointing as its cinematic inspiration, while Catwoman from EA Games was even worse than its big-screen version, despite utilising the voice of Halle Berry.
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16 Page 10