Horror and the Soap Opera

[Gray Bunny]

Well we had Tom Horton's head haunting Marlena back when she was the Salem serial stalker slasher slayer killer (she was never given an exact killer title)

[EricMontreal22]

UGH I forgot all about Tom's head. Just, UGH. LOL

[Paul Raven]

The 1944 classic movie 'The Uninvited' works for me as a ghost story that could play on a soap

.Couple move into isolated house,there are strange noises,chills in the air etc and a young girl who is the daughter of a dead woman and seems possessed by her. Couple uncover the truth of her death and that gets rid of the malevolent spirit.

The whole thing was played straight and as a mystery to be solved,with a love story thrown in.

[EricMontreal22]

GREAT old flick (random bit of useless trivia, Dodie Smith helped with the screenplay, before writing the original The Hundred and One Dalmatians). TCM often shows it back to back with its sequel, The Unseen which is fun but not in the same league.

[DRW50]

I think it has more to do with wanting to try to pat fans on the head while also reinforcing to them that the character is gone. That seemed to be the point of GH Alan's appearances. John on Y&R, who knows. I think that's mostly about using him to prop characters and stories.

I guess one of the first to do this was Ryan on AW, and probably one of the more effective. AW also did this with Bridget. And Frankie.

I guess none of this counts as horror though - unless you count the shi!!y exit stories - so apologies for going off topic.

[quartermainefan]

I don't think the soap audience would accept horror stories. Just look at the way people describe the spy and action genre as applied to soaps from the 80s. When they left that behind for more real world concepts they were said to have matured and grown up--as if genre is somehow immature and less valid. DOOL would be the perfect soap to go horror, and why not have Vivian raise her beloved nephew from the dead? The 1.8 audience would drop to a 1.7? Doesn't strike me as all that much to lose.

[Mitch]

I think some of the soaps have tried this, with GL's "Cabin Mystery," coming the closest. That story had a villian (over the top Susan Pi-PAR, which kind of ruined the story, there is no way a woman like Piper would have been running around Springfield, she made Reva seem quiet) a couple murders, faked hauntings, all combined with a real haunting. The supernatural elements were used sparringly, (the real ghost was never really shown, Annabell's psychic "powers," were subtley worked in.) The unfortunate thing was a good story was ruined by killing off Hillary Bauer, and the solution to the mystery was a retcon of a very important moment in GL history (Brandon Spaulding, evil patriarch finally dies) and the black Spauldings were quickly thrown into a closet.

I do think that an interesting way to do a story like that would be for a show like GL or ATWT to use a character and incident from its "real," history as the source of the ghost/haunting. Off the top of my head, I always found it interesting that ATWT never used the fact that dour matriach Ellen Stewart was a murderess. A good story woudl have been for Ellen's victim (the maid Fannie) relatives to come and gas light Ellen for revenge. But what if Emily moved into the house that Ellen had killed Fannie in, and the ghost was "awakened," by a Stewart living there.

[All My Shadows]

I would love a horror-themed soap. I would welcome a horror-themed soap. But that's the thing. A horror-themed soap. GH, DAYS, OLTL, AMC, Y&R, and B&B were not conceived as horror-themed soaps. Their premises were successfully established over decades. I don't see a need for vampires or witches or werewolves on AMC. Ghosts are different because enough people in real life believe in ghosts so it wouldn't seem terribly out of place (unless, of course, the ghosts were proven with concrete evidence to be "real").

If these shows were allowed to die naturally, then there'd be more room for variety, IMO.

[DRW50]

I think it's about more than a show's lifespan or a show's theme. There was a soap which replaced a dead soap, Passions, and even that show soon went from supernatural stuff to being about psychos and rape.

[quartermainefan]

I just don't see why all the soaps have to abide by the same rules of reality. There are six soaps on the air and you have pretty much said you want some supernatural on your soap--except for these six. And why couldn't you have a soap have a position that concretely ghosts are real? It just seems to me that there is an audience for realistic fare with medical dramas and whatnot, and that audience is not large enough to support six soaps. So what is the logic of the remaining six all clinging to the exact same formula and parameters? ATWT, GL, and all the others had the exact same premises and where did it get them in the end? Did it make sense that neither said "screw it, lets jump on this vampire craze and see if we can make something of it--we're being canceled anyway most probably."?

[DRW50]

ATWT wasn't close to being canceled when the vampire craze was in daytime.

I think GL did sort of try to cash in on that with the Maryanne Carruthers story.

[quartermainefan]

no, not in daytime...in the entire entertainment spectrum. Twilight, True Blood, Vampire Diaries...and here you have a soap doing 1.6 in the ratings on life support. What would Barnum say about trying to fill the seats? And what was the logic in those P&G soaps deciding to just stick with the same family/romance formula that not only was failing them but failing all the soaps around them?

[DRW50]

I think that type of thing probably wouldn't have attracted more viewers than what they had. Soaps managed to do well for years by focusing on family and romance. If anything they have moved too far away from that to be what they aren't.

[quartermainefan]

but what good does "probably" do them now? P&G could have easily had one go classic and the other go for every hail mary they could think of. Soaps managed for years on family and romance it's true, but at one time the western dominated prime time also. It makes no sense whatsoever that every single soap cling to the same theories of what it means to be a soap opera. One of them should have decided to go crazy a long time ago and try and tap into whatever was going on at the time in the larger culture. GH when STARMAN was a movie, wasted no time in writing in an alien. Silly? Perhaps, but the attempt was made to get people watching. I see no attempts by any of the soaps today to grab me with some wow factor. If any soap wrote in a werewolf I would of course at least take a look out of curiosity, and then it would be up to the soap to keep me.

[ghfan89]

I don't know about that. Sure, neither had supernatural elemnents per say and sure, the last 15 years or so all the soaps became homogenous but I think GL and ATWT in their day had their own distinct voices. GL, for instances had always had more of an eccentricity to it.