Monday, January 21, 2008

80's Flashback TV


One of my favorite shows to come from the 80's was "Unsolved Mysteries" which premiered 20 years ago on NBC,and went to the CBS network in 1997,where actress Virginia Madsen cohosted.It was cancelled in 1999 and resurrected again by Lifetime in 2001 for one more year.It featured re-enactments of mysteries ranging from ghost stories to reunited family members to crimes and appealed to the public for any tips on the cases.Quite a few old cases were solved after being rerun many years later on Lifetime and when that happened,Lifetime would add an update to the end credits.The spooky theme music and Stacks voice was enough to give you the willies before you even watched the show.They did alot of UFO related stories if I recall.
If you were home alone,the scary re-enactments were just too much to take lol but you still watched anyway.I really miss this show,so I was psyched to learn that both HBO and Spike TV have expressed interest in a revamped version of "Unsolved Mysteries" and rumors are flying that James Earl Jones will lend his talents to the HBO show.Great choice,but he is no Robert Stack!
I remember they had one mystery on the show that was local-a man in Sussex County came home to find his mother dead late one night at the hands of a hitchhiker he left on the road earlier after a scuffle.He had picked the guy up at an Arbys in Harrington and if I am not mistaken,there was new info in that case not too long ago.It was a great show and I would love to see it brought back-it has value,just like "Americas Most Wanted" does.Most of the episodes are available on DVD in volumes 1 thru 6,each volume with approximately 30 episodes each and organized by genre-UFO's,ghosts,miracles,etc.

No comments: