REMEMBERING EERIE INDIANA: A CULT CLASSIC FROM MY YOUTH…

Recently, nostalgia has manifested itself in a wealth of posts and TV revivals about the ’60s through to the 90s in Lost in Space, Riverdale, (I AM SO HAPPY) with Stranger Things (thank you, Netflix’s). But let’s not forget the adorable ’90s, especially the quality kids TV programming (truly, it was a golden age). You had Are You Afraid of the Dark? Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Clarissa Explains It All…

Man I’ve been dying for someone to make something that harkened back to this golden age of film and TV for youths. I thought for so long that Hollywood had just plain forgotten how to make quality in these genres.

Half of my enjoyment was ‘I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M WATCHING SOMETING LIKE THIS AGAIN!!!

JOY JOY JOY!’

Anyway, I got a real strong feeling of Eerie, Indiana from Stranger Things – a TV show from the early 90s, kinda like a quirkier, Twighlight Zone for kids. A bit campier than Stranger Things but kinda similar in tone, you should check it out if you can!

The show ran on the Network: NBC, between September 15, 1991 – April 12, 1992 Sky (Disney channel) in the UK. The series was created by José Rivera and Karl Schaefer, with Joe Dante serving as creative consultant. A total of nineteen episodes were produced.

And each episode was strewn with in-jokes and references to old films, particularly horror films.

The Premise: Turn The X-Files into an Encyclopedia Brown-style mystery about a smart but existentially depressed kid and a strange town where anything can happen.

That’s Eerie, Indiana.

A 13-year-old’s Twilight Zone

“Back in Jersey, Halloween was my favorite holiday. When else can a non-adult wear a disguise and roam around after dark forcing people to give you candy for no good reason, and then trash their house if they don’t? But here in Eerie things are different. There’s no telling who or what you’ll bump into around these parts. Simon and I had to be prepared for anything.”

–Marshall Teller, the newest resident of Eerie, Indiana

In America, Eerie, Indiana was sold as the “family” version of the previous season’s big hit, the mysteriously odd Twin Peaks. Airing on Sunday nights in the “family hour”, the show really was a kid’s Twilight Zone, with a continuing cast instead of an anthology format.

The show took place in the quirky, off-kilter town of Eerie, Indiana (which we find out, from the air, is shaped like the Bermuda Triangle). The plots ranged from scary to sweet to heart-breaking, just like the original Twilight Zone. Eerie wasn’t straight up kid-horror like Are You Afraid of the Dark or (later) Goosebumps … it did have a Twilight Zone sort of feel.

But it seemed that the only people in the town who were aware of the strange goings-on were best friends and neighbors Marshall Teller (Omri Katz) and Simon Holmes (Justin Shenkarow).

Whatever sense of normalcy exists is provided by Marshall’s family…

But even their lives are occasionally touched by the strangeness of the town, whether it’s father Edgar (Francis Guinan) developing a computer “personality” program for an ATM that decides to give all the town’s money to Simon, or mom Marylin (Mary-Margaret Humes) being “adopted” forcefully by someone trying to create the perfect family for themselves.

And although sister Syndi (Julie Condra) can sometimes be the bane of Marshall’s existence (as most sister/brother relationships can be in the teen-age years), she hopes to someday be a reporter, edits the school newspaper, and occasionally helps Marshall with information, even though she is unaware of its connection to the fantastic things Marshall and Simon encounter.

Marshall and Simon’s adventures included everything from a trip through a time warp to encountering a storm-chaser obsessed with a “recurring” tornado, a la Captain Ahab.  They fought off werewolves and a mummy that had been transported out of a horror movie, too!

They even helped long-lost loves to reunite, even beyond death.

Although they tried to convince the rest of Marshall’s family that something wasn’t quite right with the town, the boys remained the only ones who were aware of the wild, wonderful, and weird occurrences going on in their town.

1. The episode where his friend’s giant retainer meant he could hear what dogs were really saying and uncovered a dog conspiracy to ‘bite the hand that feeds us’

2. the episode where the mother keeps her family really young and fresh by storing them in tupperware

3. the episode where a bad kid dies and his heart is donated to some other kid, and he starts becoming bad like that kid

so many great epsiodes, those ones really stuck in my mind and I think about them pretty frequently.

Above: the wonderfully odd ‘John Astin’ of The Addams Family.

And then there was this strange store in town called “World O’ Things”, that carried the oddest stuff you ever saw… and seemed to have everything you’d ever need, even if you didn’t know you needed it.

The proprietor was a Mr. Radford… although halfway through the series, it turned out that the real Mr. Radford had been tied up in the basement all this time, and a “serial impersonator” was pretending to be him—running his store during the first half of the season’s episodes. (As an aside, this has to be one of the best solutions ever for “writing an actor out of a series” and replacing him with another actor/character), especially when the replacement was played by the wonderfully odd ‘John Astin’ of The Addams Family, Brisco County fame. This show didn’t even replace characters normally.

Also in the second half of the season, another character was introduced named Dash X (Jason Marsden).  This “grey-haired kid” also seemed to be aware of the strangeness going on in town, and probably rightfully so.

His odd name was taken from the unusual marks on his hands, and it was hinted that he might actually be, at least in part, of alien origin.  Dash brought even more unpredictability to an already unpredictable presentation, and served as a continuing storyline tying together the series mythology.

One of the formative creative minds behind the show was Joe Dante. (Known for his quirky body of work, Dante has directed the Gremlins movies).

The show’s inventiveness and anything-can-happen feeling allowed actors, directors, and writers to stretch their creativity beyond anything on a normal television show, and although occasionally limited by budgets, Eerie, Indiana had no scarcity of storytelling imagination.

If Eerie, Indiana had aired a year later, it might have developed a true following, instead of becoming just a cult favourite. The first books in the Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine appeared a few months after the cancellation of the series, and jump-started the “youth-horror” genre, leading to shows like Nickelodeon’s successful Are You Afraid of the Dark?

That show and Are You Afraid of the Dark? Were both really good. But the episode of Eerie that still stands out for me is where every town except Eerie participates in daylight savings time, causing Marshall to be chased by some strange garbage men.

Anyway, the two shows definitely come from a similar vein. So many creepy things about this show. And when it came to it, that last episode played out like The Truman.

Where it came to be that Marshall found out his whole life was the TV show? It kinda traumatized me as a kid.

There’s the signpost up ahead… Eerie, Indiana, just a normal little suburb somewhere near The Twilight Zone.

Oh, and if you happen to stop by someday, say hi to Elvis for me…. he’s on Marshall’s paper route.