The Haunt of Fear: Television Terror!

[metadronos]

Here's a televised tale of broadcast brouhaha, as only EC Comics could deliver it.

Warning for suicide.


From The Haunt of Fear #17 (=#3, Sep.-Oct. 1950). Script and art by Harvey Kurtzman. 2 1/3 of 7 pages.

An "average American" family tunes in to the live documentary show, Hunting with Hunt, starring the cheerfully skeptical host Al Hunt. Joining Al for this episode, on location just outside the Creedmore Mansion, is the surely not ominously-named Professor John Poltergeist, whose specialty is psychic research. The prof fills Hunt and the viewers in on the history behind the abandoned house.







Hunt, still all smiles and laughing tic, explains that he and Poltergeist will enter the mansion alone. Hunt himself will be operating the portable camera with attached lighting, all connected by cable to the power truck outside.

Once inside, the prof heads upstairs to investigate while Hunt gives the viewers a tour of the ground floor, featuring creepily glowering depictions of Mr and Mrs. Creedmore. These, together with the unnaturally chilly indoor temperature, gradually wipe the smile off Hunt's face as he gives way to fear.







There are times when leaving the full details of a horror-story climax to the imagination is the right way to go, and this is one of them. We never see the ghostly Creedmores, the already-dead professor, nor Hunt's psychotically cackling face as he meets his end. We do get to see the faces of the family watching it all from the "comfort" of their home, and that adds to the horror. There's also Kurtzman's clever choice to frame most of the story within the claustrophobic confines of a then-standard small TV screen.

Comments

[thanekos]

" .. Mr. Creedmore.. and Mrs. Creedmore.. and [her] lover.. " implies that the remaining spirits of those three have settled the spite between them in the common cause of killing people.

[cygnia]

Proto-Ghostwatch!

[angelophile]

Was just about to say the same thing. It wasn't an original idea, but that show still managed to scar a generation.

[huntleyhaverstock]

There's an episode of the radio show SUSPENSE like this -- a cheerful, chuckling ghost hunter and a psychically sensitive expert volunteer to broadcast live from a haunted house, and we listen as the ghost hunter slowly loses his marbles, and then his life. It aired in June 1949, so maybe it inspired a deadline-strapped Kurtzman. But his execution's still amazing, as is the idea to shift to it TV. Harvey Kurtzman invented the found-footage horror film!

[cainofdreaming]

"You want me to hang myself? Well, sure, I wouldn't want to be a rude guest!"

[superfangirl1]

Nice of the ghost to provide the rope to hang himself with also. At least he will have company in the afterlife.

[cyberghostface]

The TV series adapted this. It was one of the scarier episodes.

[metadronos]

With Morton Downey Jr. perfectly cast as the smarmy host!