Don't go in there, kid!

October 10, 2011 9:08 AM

What movie or TV show was this? This has been nagging at me for years! Around 1978 or 1979, when I was 7 or 8 years old, I remember seeing a creepy teaser on TV for an upcoming movie, or episode of something, in which a man wearing dark glasses is speaking to someone off-screen. He says something like, "Don't go in there, kid, unless you want to end up ... like this!" And then he removes the dark glasses, and instead of eyes he has two things that look like raised, white ridges with horizontal slits cut into them. Something like Inuit snow goggles, but set into the eyes instead of connected in the middle. I never saw the show and this is literally all I remember about it. A friend of mine thinks it might be The Omega Man, but I'm pretty sure it isn't.
posted by Ratio to Media & Arts (6 answers total)

Was it They Live (dir. John Carpenter)? Sorry that I can't link now.
posted by Tylwyth Teg at 9:29 AM on October 10, 2011

Response by poster: Nope, it was definitely not They Live which was made about 10 years later.
posted by Ratio at 9:38 AM on October 10, 2011

I remember this too! I think it might be Dark Secret of Harvest Home (but I'm having a hard time confirming it via Google).
posted by marimeko at 10:07 AM on October 10, 2011

Was it the 1953 film version of Invaders from Mars? The alien's eyes look a lot like that.
posted by Hanuman1960 at 10:09 AM on October 10, 2011

Best answer: This might be it. (at 1:07)
posted by marimeko at 10:22 AM on October 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Marimeko: that's got to be it!

In my memory it's a little different -- a close-up of the guy's face, and slits in the whites of the eyes -- but in 1978 I would have watched it on an old, tiny, hi-contrast black & white TV which might account for that part. And the close-up, if it even happened, might have just been part of the particular promo I saw.

Mystery solved! Thanks!
posted by Ratio at 1:14 PM on October 10, 2011