E8 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2019 S LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
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Jay Leno’s Garage Leno
pays homage to vehicles
influenced by the science
of flight then goes on a
flight piloted by John Tra-
volta. 7 and 10 p.m. CNBC
The Masked SingerFour ce-
lebrity singers face off. 8
p.m. Fox
NatureThis nature anthol-
ogy series returns for a
new season with “Octo-
pus: Making Contact,” a
close-up look at an animal
that is among the smart-
est of all sea creatures.
This episode chronicles
the experiences of an
Alaska marine biology
professor and his daugh-
ter who observed the
quirks of a pet octopus. 8
p.m. KOCE and KPBS
Schooled Lainey (AJ
Michalka) has high hopes
for Coach Mellor’s (Bryan
Callen) love life in this new
episode of the spinoff
comedy. Tim Meadows
also stars. 8:30 p.m. ABC
SEAL Team The heroic
team is on an urgent mis-
sion in Serbia to track
down and quash an or-
ganization that is linked
to the bombing of multiple
American military out-
posts in the season pre-
miere of the action drama.
David Boreanaz, Max
Thieriot, Neil Brown Jr.,
A.J. Buckley and Jessica
Paré also star. 9 p.m. CBS
Modern FamilyClaire (Julie
Bowen) wants to get ev-
eryone out of the house
before they make her look
bad in front of a reporter
from a women’s business
magazine who wants to in-
terview her at home. 9
p.m. ABC
Almost Family Brittany
Snow (“Pitch Perfect”)
stars as a woman who has
gone through her life be-
lieving she’s the only child
of her father, a fertility
doctor (Timothy Hutton).
She’s completely over-
whelmed to learn her dad
secretly used his own
sperm to impregnate
many of his patients.
Megalyn Echikunwoke
and Emily Osment also
star. 9 p.m. Fox
S.W.A.T. Hondo (Shemar
Moore) and the team help
Lt. Lynch (Amy Farring-
ton) stop a bomber who is
using drones as detona-
tion devices in the season
premiere. 10 p.m. CBS
Wild MetropolisThis new
series documents how
wildlife adapts to living in
cities around the world. In
the premiere pythons sur-
vive in Bangkok and Gold-
en jackals thrive in Tel
Aviv. 10 p.m. KOCESPECIALSiHeartRadio Music Festi-
val Night 1Ryan Seacrest
is host for this two-part
special (concluding
Thursday) drawn from
the annual concert.
Among performers are
Camila Cabello, Tim Mc-
Graw, French Montana,
Halsey and Steve Aoki. 8
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The Muppets(2011) 1 p.m.
Starz
The Death of Stalin(2017)
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Adam Lambert performs.
(N) 9 a.m. KABC
The ViewHillary Rodham
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The Talk Shemar Moore.
(N) 1 p.m. KCBSThe Dr. Oz ShowA new
study challenges some
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(N) 1 p.m. KTTV
The Kelly Clarkson Show
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KNBC
Dr. PhilA woman’s family
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(N) 11 p.m. KCET; mid-
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The Daily Show With Trev-
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Singh Meghan Trainor.
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ton Capitals visit the St.
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Water of Lake Champlain”
to the final episode of the
horror anthology, which
Savini directed. The six-epi-
sode first season, which pre-
miered Sept. 26 and releases
new installments on Thurs-
days, features 12 vignettes
inspired by the ’50s-era hor-
ror comics that the film and
its 1987 sequel sought to
evoke. Helmed by “The
Walking Dead” executive
producer Greg Nicotero, the
series shares the same
campy, accessible — but still
scary — tone that made the
original film popular and
features a bevy of stars like
David Arquette, Kid Cudi,
Big Boi, Giancarlo Esposito
and Tobin Bell, among oth-
ers.
Actress Adrienne Bar-
beau is another holdover
from the original, starring in
the series’ first vignette,
“Gray Matter,” based on a
short story by King. John
Harrison, who served as an
assistant director on the
first movie and composed its
theme song, also returned to
direct multiple stories. For
Nicotero, who himself did ef-
fects work for “Creepshow 2”
alongside Savini, paying
homage to the original was
more than just fan service.
“The original ‘Creep-
show’ was the first movie set
that I ever visited when I was
16 years old,” he said. “I never
realized until then that you
could actually get hired to do
that as a job. ‘Creepshow’
was kind of the movie that
redirected my career path
from being a doctor to get-
ting into special effects and
creature design. It made me
realize that this was not just
a hobby but a viable profes-
sion.”
With its playful tone and
emphasis on gore,
“Creepshow” is unlike the
“elevated” horror films that
currently dominate the box
office.
In fact, Nicotero leaned
into the show’s campier el-
ements in recognition of the
genre’s long journey to its
current status: mainstream
acceptance and popularity.
“Back when I was a young
kid, nothing like this would
have ever been on televi-
sion,” he said. “Even in mov-
ie theaters, horror stuff was
kind of lowbrow. Like, if you
were going to see a horror
movie, seven out of 10 people
would be like, ‘Why would
you go see that? What’s
wrong with you?’ ” Horror
veteran Arquette, a main-
stay of the “Scream” films
who stars in the story
“Times Is Tough in Musky
Holler,” was an early fan of
the genre and saw the origi-
nal “Creepshow” “a ton of
times.”
“I’ve just always loved
horror,” he said. “I think as a
kid if you like movies and be-
ing scared, you see a few of
the classics. There’s some-
thing really exciting [about
horror] when you’re young-
er.”
“People are just now
understanding the genre a
little more and having fun
with it,” Arquette added.
“When ‘The Omen’ and ‘The
Exorcist’ and ‘Halloween’
came out, that was another
renaissance time period for
horror films. The fact of the
matter is, if things are mak-
ing money, [filmmakers have
access to] better writers, stu-
dios, producers, directors
and actors. It’s like television
now. People used to never do
TV and then they started
making really high-quality
television.”Genre’s splintering
But while horror and tele-
vision have both grown in re-
finement and popularity, the
genre has largely splintered
into two tonal subgenres,
each of which thrives in a dif-
ferent medium. While psy-
chological horror movies like
Ari Aster’s “Hereditary” and
“Midsommar” and social
thrillers like Jordan Peele’s
“Get Out” and “Us” have
found major success on the
big screen, campier, more ac-
cessible horror projects like
“Creepshow” and “American
Horror Story” dominate the
realm of TV.
“There’s obviously room
for very intense, elevated
horror,” said Hill. “The hor-
ror of high ideas and exist-
ential terror, stuff like ‘He-
reditary’ or this story called
‘In the Tall Grass’ that I
wrote with my dad for Net-
flix. Those kind of very in-
tense David Cronenberg-ian
explorations of the psycheand the soul.
“I think really relentless,
heartbreaking, in-your-face,
grubby horror might wear
people out,” he added. “It’s
one thing for two hours, but
another for 10. But that said,
great filmmaking and cin-
ematic storytelling will
thrive in any media. I think
elevated horror can succeed
on TV, but I think the fun
horror might find a better
footing.” Either way, horror
fans stand to benefit. The
proliferation of streaming
services and the increase in
original series make for a
greater swath of options in
the genre.
“There’s a lot more for ev-
ery niche taste,” said Hill.
“There is now a fairly large
horror space where before, in
the ’90s, you just had ‘The X-
Files’ on TV. Now you’ve got
‘NOS4A2,’ ‘The Terror,’
‘Creepshow’ and ‘Stranger
Things.’ ‘Handmaid’s Tale’
in some ways could arguably
be defined as horror. It’s cer-
tainly horrifying. So the ex-
plosion of all the streamingoutlets only means there’s
more demand so more hor-
ror content is inevitably get-
ting made. But I think may-
be the one surprise is how
good most of it is. There
hasn’t been a lot of stinkers.”
(“NOS4A2” is based on the
novel by Hill.)Lowbrow ambition
One reason to emphasize
the genre’s lowbrow aspects,
according to Hill? The genre
performs best, artistically
speaking, when it includes
elements of comedy — its un-
likely but close relative.
“If you sit down and
watch the Three Stooges
and you see Larry hit Moe
over the head with a sledge-
hammer, you laugh,” he said.
“If you watch ‘The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre’ and
Leatherface hits a teenager
with a sledgehammer and
blood flies everywhere, you
scream. What’s interesting is
they’re both the same scene,
but they speak to your rep-
tile brain, the deep brain, in a
different way. And
‘Creepshow’ is a space where
you can do both, get the
laugh and the scream within
moments of one another.”
With so many new oppor-
tunities for horror story-
telling, many of King’s sto-
ries have been granted a sec-
ond life. Nicotero suggested
that the seemingly endless
stream of King adaptationsis a result of the author’s
first-wave fans finding them-
selves in a position to intro-
duce a younger generation to
his work.
“A lot of them are very
much like me,” Nicotero said.
“I was really, really inspired
by ‘Pet Sematary’ and
‘Salem’s Lot’ back when I
was a kid.”
“He’s always been popu-
lar but there have been these
pulses where his work has
seemed absolutely electrify-
ing, a little prophetic and ab-
solutely necessary,” said Hill.
“And we’re going through
that again. The other thing
about Stephen King fiction
is, as a society, we’ve come to
love big, shared universes.
We learned from Marvel
films how much fun a big,
deep, well thought out,
shared universe can be. And
I think there’s only one
shared universe in the last
150 years that could compete
with what Marvel’s done and
that would be the work of
Stephen King.” As with
comic-book films, a new
wave of acclaimed horror
properties has led to the
genre being taken seriously
in quarters where it might
previously have been dis-
missed.
“I never really felt that
horror fell out of favor, I just
feel like it goes on these cycli-
cal waves,” Nicotero said.
“When ‘Silence of the Lambs’won best picture, nobody
ever would’ve called it a hor-
ror movie. Everybody
would’ve called it a psycholo-
gical thriller. It’s literally a
horror movie about a guy
who’s skinning people.
“The resurgence of the
modern zombie movie and
TV show I feel is 100% based
on video games, and so are
the superheroes,” he contin-
ued. “If you really think
about ‘Resident Evil’ and
‘House of the Dead,’ as soon
as the player was able to put
themselves immersively into
the world, it became a differ-
ent scenario. I think now
horror is much more person-
al and much more immersive
and I think that’s why people
love it.”
For Hill, the reason for
the genre’s latest surge in
popularity is more likely to
do with the political climate.
“I think in uncertain
times, people are drawn to
rehearse their reactions to
frightening scenarios and
they turn to horror fiction to
help them do that,” he said.
“We’re living in a period
where a lot of our sources of
security have been swept
away. As a nation we can’t al-
ways even agree on what’s
true anymore.”
He highlighted the popu-
larity of Cold War-era horror
films like 1954’s “Them!” and
1955’s “Tarantula” during
the nuclear arms race.
“You saw this whole rash
of movies about giant ants
and insects that had been
made the size of tanks by nu-
clear tech,” he said. “That
was obviously a case of hu-
manity trying to wrestle with
the terror of the bomb. And
now we see the terror of what
happens when our govern-
ment can no longer be
trusted and turns against us,
when lawlessness becomes
law. You see that in movies
like ‘The Purge.’ Subjects of
systemic racism and econo-
mic inequality are explored
in pictures like ‘Get Out’ and
‘It Follows.’ And ‘Creepshow’
may do some of that [as
well]. Horror stories can
often wear their larger socio-
logical themes lightly. But I
think first and foremost
something like ‘Creepshow’
is looking to give you a shot
of terror followed by a burst
of laughter.”Plenty of chuckles, creeps in new series
“GRAY MATTER,”the first episode of Shudder’s horror anthology series
“Creepshow,” features Giancarlo Esposito in a tale based on a Stephen King story.Shudder[‘Creepshow,’from E1]
‘Creepshow’
Where:shudder.com
When:Anytime
Rated: TV-MA (may be
unsuitable for children
under the age of 17)