This two part episode from season seven of the wholesome family Western TV show from the 1970s is the oddest inclusion in this list by some stretch. Youre already wondering, arent you? Well. It essentially sees a schoolgirl stalked and raped by a maniac in a clown mask. Like no episode of the show before or since, Sylvia owes more to the Italian pulp giallo of potboilers and the slasher movies that they would inspire. Thats right, its a Little House On The Prairie story with a debt to Dario Argento. Words cannot express how odd that is to type. The episode doesnt just incorporate giallo imagery, but almost all of the tropes of the genre: point-of-view camera shots purporting to be the POV of the killer, the mystery identity of the killer (spoiler: its Irv, the blacksmith), the assault on the victim at the moment of her innocence its like someone on set was ticking off a checklist. And that someone? None other than Michael Pa Landon himself, the man in charge of the show, who wrote and directed both episodes, as he frequently did. This wasnt some aberration forced on the show by some network executive with a death wish. This was the idea of the most wholesome man on television. Words fail everyone.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
