These were the shows that scared the heck outta me when I was young. I can still hear that eerie music from Twilight Zone that told me we had entered a new dimension and I for one was frightened to death to be there! The crazy cacophony that ended in the blast of music from that sounded like a trio on the trombone No score has ever had a more profound effect, it brought instant fear, like I was Pavlov's dog or something.
And the shows, like the one where William Shatner saw a gremlin, or whatever the heck it was, destroying the wing on the airplane. It would hide whenever anyone else looked but he, by the end of the flight  Mr. Shattner's  character was insane!

Rod Serling had a voice that just gave me the shivers, just hearing it. Then when he told you the story, darn was I scared, every single time!! And the man wrote and produced almost every one of the scripts for each show. Rod Serling's seminal anthology series focused on ordinary folks who suddenly found themselves in extraordinary, usually supernatural, situations. The stories would typically end with an ironic twist that would see the guilty punished.Fantastic!

But then, then came the scariest of all TV shows. 

The Outer Limits!

I'll never forget it, when it came on, I would panic...

.

WWwwW

Who hasn't laid in their bed with hands over ears and humming. But you could still hear it. It really creeped me out. An anthology of street episodes, sometimes with a plot twist at the end. All I know is they scared me, so bad that I had night terrors for years. But the one thing that was the scariest for me ever was the move,

A Picture of Dorian Gray

His picture aged instead of him. When I saw the picture on TV I thought I would have heart failure. The best in classic Gothic horror! Oscar Wilde was at his best when he wrote this story in which a man sells his soul to stay young. The portrait is a grim reminder of every sin that he has committed, the soul of a man whose spent his life in debauchery. And he looked bone ugly in the oil painting of himself when he finally looked at it. 

Now I know that A Picture of Dorian Gray is a wonderful classic and should be read when one is not going to be up all night scared to death!

And nothing scares me in the movies now. Nothing, it ain't easy to get me to laugh out loud either So What do you have to say. Remember any of this anybody?? 

Not much romance huh?
What movie scared you the most when you were very young? Can anything scare you now?

To influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.

Oscar Wilde

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, 1891

I am charged with keeping the home fires going while most of our Pink Fuzzies are off to the RWA Nationals this week. Our own Beth Trissel is a finalist in the Golden Heart. Fingers crossed for her!

I couldn't attend this monumental event because I'd elected to go to Homecoming, another blog about cars, so be forewarned, therefore, forearmed.

I am a great fan of Oscar Wilde and often post quotes from the Wilde. His contemporaries never knew whether to take him seriously. Over a century after his death, we don't know what to make of this witty man but his legacy has kept The Picture of Dorian Gray continuously in print.

As an anecdote about the man himself, the following is quoted from The Wit & Wisdom of Oscar Wilde: "Men of Wilde's size (a bulky six-foot-three) typically dress down to take the edge off their imposing physical appearance. Oscar dressed up. He wore knee breeches, red waistcoats, velvet jackets, and a massive fur coat. A hairdresser waived his hair daily. He chain-smoked gold-tipped cigarettes. His ring featured a large green beetle. The buttonhole of his jacket was invariably decorated with some expensive flower."

The following quotes are "Wilde's Wilde", witticisms from Oscar Wilde about Oscar Wilde.

I am never in during the afternoon, except when I am confined to the house by a sharp attack of penury.

I have blown my trumpet against the gate of dullness.

If I were alone, marooned on some desert island and had my things with me, I should dress for dinner every evening.

I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do—the day after.

I am afraid I play no outdoor games at all. Except dominoes. I have sometimes played dominoes outside French cafes.