Chiller (1986, Exidy)

By 1986, I was in high school with a still wet-from-the-printer driver's license, and on Saturday nights my friends and I would drive past several perfectly suitable video arcades to get to the one on the other side of town that had a Chiller machine.

Chiller was the latest in a series of arcade shooters produced by Exidy in which you aimed a mounted light-gun at animated video targets. Previous entries in the series were family friendly Crossbow (in which you shoot to defend a party of Renaissance-Fair adventurers) and Cheyenne (same concept, but set in the wild west).

Chiller took this play mechanic and plopped it in the middle of a haunted castle, complete with a spooky hallway, a graveyard, and medieval torture chamber. Make that TWO medieval torture chambers!

Players accumulated points in timed rounds by shooting ghosts, monsters, rats, trapdoors, skeletons, and tombstones, accompanied all the while by an unsettling symphony of digitally sampled moans, groans and shrieks.

But what made Chiller stand out from other games of the day was the explicit, gory violence. You are required to shoot repeatedly at helpless human victims strapped into various torture devices. Each direct hit bloodies the victim and illicits additional screams.

You can also use your gun to activate the torture mechanisms themselves, like releasing a guillotine blade, tightening a clamp against a person's head, or slowly lowering a dangling victim into a river of blood and the snapping jaws of an alligator. (This blog page has some excellent close-up animated .gifs to illustrate what I'm talking about.)

Even by today's standards, this was pretty gruesome stuff. Between levels, a screen displays the various special targets you must shoot to achieve maximum points and earn a bonus level. It's like a game of bingo played in Hell.

As you take out the special targets, they disappear from the bingo card to reveal a picture beneath.

Sharp-shooters are rewarded with a bonus round--this repulsive slot machine in which the jackpots are severed heads, brains, and other body parts.

I have to admit, as much as I enjoyed the game, I always felt a little dirty after a few rounds with Chiller, and had to feed some quarters into clean, happy games like Super Sprint, Rolling Thunder or Space Harrier afterword to cleanse my soul.

Chiller game flyer found at The Arcade Flyer Archive.

Monsters In My Room (Tales From the Darkside, 1985)

One of my favorite Tales From the Darkside episodes just happens to be a Christmas episode. It's Monsters In My Room, which first aired in December, 1985.

Third-grader Timmy (Seth Green) is a sensitive child who is more interested in playing piano and looking at his bug collection than watching the big game with his new stepfather, macho jerk Biff.

It's Christmas Eve, and Timmy blesses everyone (even Biff) in his prayers, but what he's really hoping for is that Santa will bring him... a "Cuddle-stuff" panda bear.

Okay, in fairness to Biff, maybe this kid could use a little toughening up.

But Timmy has other issues beside his obnoxious stepdad throwing footballs at his head. His room is infested with monsters. There's a boogeyman in the closet...

...a glowing-eyed octopus under the bed that can reach out its horrible tentacles...

...and a giant spinning circular saw-blade.

These night terrors pop out of their hiding places to menace little Timmy just long enough to cause him to cry out for "Mommy!" (and reinforce Biff's feeling that he's inherited a sissy-boy.)

Christmas morning, Timmy gets his coveted Cuddle-stuff panda...

...but propped up in the bedside rocking chair that night, it seems more creepy than cuddly.

But the scariest moment of this episode doesn't involve the rocking panda, the bedroom monsters, or even this hideous cackling witch that pops up out of the bathroom later that evening.

The scariest moment is when Mom has to take presents to a neighbor, leaving a nervous Timmy home alone for a few minutes with a drunk and surly Biff. We listen with Timmy as we hear Mom get in her car, watch as her headlights beam through his bedroom window...

...and slowly pass along the wall as her car pulls away...

...only to reveal, wait for it...

... BIFF, standing over Timmy's bed, determined to teach Timmy a few lessons in manhood before Mom returns.

Monsters In My Room can be found on Tales From the Darkside: The Complete Second Season.

The Wonder Book of Christmas (1951, Lou Myers)

Nothing spooky, here. Just a charming little Christmas book that, in what could only be described as a Christmas miracle, has somehow managed to travel from Frankfurt, Germany, 1955, to Phoenix, Arizona, 2011, in nearly mint condition. Warren F. Buxton, if you're out there somewhere, drop us a line and let us know how you're doing. Your Wonder Book is in good hands.


The complete title is The Wonder Book of Christmas Including The Night Before Christmas and Other Stories, with illustrations by Lou Myers (complete contents listed below). Enjoy these selected scans.

Santa Claus (poem)
Who Is Santa Claus?
The Night Before Christmas (Clement C. Moore)
The Animals' Christmas
The Christmas Story
The Friendly Beasts (Twelfth-Century Carol)
Santa Claus's Workshop
Jingle Bells (J. Pierpont)

Remember to wash your covers once a day, kiddies, to keep your library clean and healthy!

Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons (Walter R. Brooks, Don Bolognese, 1950)

A young boy celebrates Christmas with a ghost in Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons (1950, Walter Brooks, with illustrations by Don Bolognese.)

The "vanishing lessons" are among several supernatural tricks taught Jimmy by a friendly ghost found living in the long abandoned home of his grandfather. He is also taught how to make his eyes glare with fire (as pictured above), the perfect thing to brighten up Christmas morning.

They first meet when Jimmy Crandall decides to investigate the dark and gloomy neighborhood haunted house to prove it isn't really haunted at all.

To Jimmy's surprise, there really is a ghost, but the unnamed spectre is more frightened of Jimmy than he is of it!

Eventually a delicate friendship develops, and the ghost offers to teach him a few supernatural tricks, like floating through keyholes.

Later, Jimmy invites the lonely ghost back to his house to meet his Aunt.

I've always liked the illustrations of Don Bolognese, who has lent his talents to a few other prominent titles from my childhood, among them The Book That Jason Wrote, The Ghost of Windy Hill, and The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden (a.k.a. The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House).



Jimmy Takes Vanishing Lessons is still in print.