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Scary Stuff: Some of TV's Best Shockers
 Halloween is the traditional time for frights, but on television, they don't necessarily have a specific season. Almost as long as the medium has existed, series, miniseries and TV movies have been sources of scares. Here's look a some of our favorites: "The X-Files": "Squeeze" and "Tooms," first-season episodes of the long-running FOX series, both star Doug Hutchison as Mulder and Scully's (David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson) yellow-eyed nemesis Eugene Tooms, whose unique genetic makeup allows him to squeeze through tiny spaces but also forces him to eat human livers to survive. The search for Tooms was harrowing enough in the first episode, but his gruesome demise in the second still causes viewers to have the wiggins. Kudos to writers Glen Morgan and James Wong and to directors Harry Longstreet ("Squeeze") and the great David Nutter ("Tooms")."Lost": The constant sense of dread instilled by one of ABC's biggest hits in years qualifies it as a home-screen classic, barely a month into its second season. Questions such as whether Jack and Kate (Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly) are destined for romance take a back seat whenever this show goes for the maximum terror it can, and frequently does, provide."The Twilight Zone": No series beats Rod Serling's classic for sheer chills, delivered for the most part with sinister subtlety rather than beat-you-over-the-head shocks. There are exceptions, however. One is the unforgettable "Eye of the Beholder," in which a woman is hospitalized for plastic surgery to fix her disfigured face. When the bandages are removed and the doctor proclaims the surgery unsuccessful, we gasp at the revelation that her perfect features -- displayed by lovely Donna Douglas ("The Beverly Hillbillies") -- are considered ugly in her world, where hideously deformed faces are the norm.Another "Twilight Zone" facial fright comes at the end of "Long Live Walter Jameson." The eternally young title character (Kevin McCarthy) is a history professor who actually witnessed the Civil War; he is shot and transforms into an old man, then to dust, before our eyes.Still in "The Twilight Zone," subtler shivers are delivered in "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street." Strange occurrences in a quiet suburban neighborhood fuel residents' suspicions, then their outright hostility and violence toward one another. It's all a plot by aliens to destroy us by turning us against our own."Duel": Penned by the great science-fiction short-story writer Richard Matheson and directed by a young Steven Spielberg, this 1971 TV movie is still haunting -- especially for those who must deal daily with nightmare traffic. Dennis Weaver plays a business traveler who tries to pass a rusty gasoline truck while driving through California and becomes the target of a positively satanic case of road rage."Dark Shadows": Until "Passions" came along, no other daytime serial used the supernatural so much as a principal element. The saga of vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) and company was enough to keep back-of-neck hairs raised daily, and many partakers were youngsters who raced home from school ... then tried to keep Mom and Dad from finding out what they were watching. "Night Gallery": Rod Serling revived his "Twilight Zone" style of nightmare inducing with this 1970s offering, which may not be as fresh in many minds as the eternally rerun "Zone." Two episodes that remain so are the mermaid story -- in which a seagoing beauty gets legs but loses her human head and upper body, turning into a large, ugly fish -- and the infamous earwig tale, exploiting the urban legend of the bug that gets into one's ear and eats its way through the brain."The Night Stalker": Produced by Dan Curtis ("Dark Shadows") and again written by Richard Matheson (from a Jeffrey Grant Rice story), this 1972 TV movie -- available on DVD with its equally entertaining 1973 sequel, "The Night Strangler" -- inspired both "The X-Files" and a new ABC remake. Irascible, dogged reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin) tries to revive his flagging career by pursuing a vampire on the seedy streets of pre-Steve Wynn Las Vegas. It's plenty cheesy, but it still packs both horror and humor punches."Salem's Lot": Television has served up many Stephen King stories, and one of the earliest was the 1979 miniseries about a town of vampires, truly one of the scariest attractions ever put forth by broadcast television. TNT remade it last year, but the update didn't have nearly as much punch, nor did it have the distinctive touch of original director Tobe Hooper."Trilogy of Terror": Directed by Dan Curtis, this 1975 TV movie is composed of three segments, all starring Karen Black, but it's the final one that makes it memorable. Again written by Richard Matheson (and based on his short story "Prey"), "Amelia" casts Black as a neurotic young woman forced to fight for her life against a toothy African doll possessed by the spirit of a vicious hunter. Seemingly unstoppable, the doll terrorizes Amelia to an ending that manages to be both scary and funny."The Dark Secret of Harvest Home": Directed by Leo Penn (father of Sean, Chris and Michael) and based on a novel by Thomas Tryon, this 1978 drama originally aired as a two-part TV movie, although a truncated version is available on DVD. David Ackroyd, Joanna Miles and Rosanna Arquette star as a family that moves to the seemingly idyllic New England town of Cornwall Combe. There, they meet the enigmatic Widow Fortune (Bette Davis) and discover harvest time is a lot more sinister than apples and pumpkins."Bozo": Television's most famous clown was scarier to a certain 4-year-old's psyche than the notorious Pennywise of the miniseries "It," who still evokes virtual shudders on television-related message boards. Blame it on the cameraman's pre-commercial-break zoom shots, which made it look as if Bozo's garish visage was coming right through the screen. On a traumatized-childhood scale of 1 to 10, Pennywise rates only a 3 ... but Bozo gets a 12.
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