Early 1980s TV show intro featuring woman-zombie in ballroom

May 29, 2021 11:08 PM

When I was a wee lad, my babysitter watched a show (more than once, eventually she had to send me to bed because I'd freak out when it came on.) The intro terrified me because it featured a crowded ballroom and a zombie lady.

In the ballroom, people are dancing, fancy clothes. The music for the show is fairly staid, but it hits a jarring note and one woman (dressed in a red dress maybe?) turns to face the camera. At that point, it's revealed that she's a zombie or ghoul type person, all rot and death.

I was really young, and this show made one hell of an impression on me (not a good one.) I assumed it was Fantasy Island, Love Boat, or some mainstream TV show, but now that I'm looking on Youtube I don't actually know what show it was.

Timeframe would be early/mid 1980s, evening (but not super late), Willamette Valley Oregon (PST/UTC-7). I assume it was a regular TV show, but my sleuthing hit a wall.

posted by jibberish to Society & Culture (18 answers total)

I'm coming up blank, but I suspect that this was either a movie (and not TV) scene or it was a lot less hardcore than you remember. If this was an American TV show intro in 1980, they weren't going to put a rotting zombie lady in the opener every week. Maybe she was a skeleton or a spooky vampire lady or something, but broadcast/syndicated TV just wasn't doing that kind of goopy horror stuff then and if they did it DEFINITELY wouldn't be in the titles every week. (Here's where somebody links to a Youtube clip of some 1982 show with a big gory zombie in the titles, just to make me look dumb!) Shows like Tales From the Darkside would get pretty nasty just a few years later, but even they didn't put the goopy stuff in the titles.

Do you remember anything else about the show? Are you sure it was a series intro, and not a scene from a movie your babysitter watched more than once? Could it have been some foreign import show, or maybe some weird anthology on cable?

Here's the TV Tropes page for Face-Revealing Turn. Maybe something in there will help.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 11:32 PM on May 29, 2021

Werewolves, not zombies - and film not show - but the description puts me in mind of the wedding scene from Company of Wolves. Definitely a "babysitter freakout" scene!
posted by rongorongo at 5:08 AM on May 30, 2021

This is probably not it, but I'll throw it out there: any chance it's a slightly dramatic recollection of the credits for Mystery?
posted by eponym at 5:34 AM on May 30, 2021

Did your family own a VCR? Is it possible she was watching/rewatching a movie?
posted by TWinbrook8 at 5:37 AM on May 30, 2021

Any chance it was V and it was lizard people and not zombies? The show had several intro sequences and a couple have reveals of women’s faces with skin torn off to reveal the scales underneath. There was one in particular that I was afraid of as a kid but couldn’t find it on YouTube.
posted by Fuego at 9:42 AM on May 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

There were a LOT of wacky sci-fi shows on back then, and the intros are all plentyyyyy weird. Have you looked through the prime time schedules of the era? Here's the 82–83 TV season for example; perhaps a title will jog your memory.
posted by Charity Garfein at 9:49 AM on May 30, 2021

That was Fantasy Island. The particular episode the intro was playing a clip from was an episode where the guest was from a family where the women all died young. There was more to it, but all I really remember as an impressionable child was the shock of the contrast between the ballgowns and the faces!
posted by Knowyournuts at 10:42 AM on May 30, 2021 [3 favorites]

Knowyournuts, Fantasy Island Season 3, Ep. 15 ("Elizabeth") is described here: "[Tina] Louise did a commendable job as both Lisa Corday AND the evil Countess Elizabeth Bathory, who's famous for killing several young women hundreds of years ago. A few aspects worth mentioning is the eerie candlelit castle where the ghost resides, and the same ghost rising from an old bed covered with cobwebs; these tidbits really added to the creepiness of this story." Does that ring any bells?
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:05 AM on May 30, 2021

Yes, MonkeyToes, I think that could be it! Storyline I found here thanks to you, fits.
The dream part, the castle, the dread of turning a certain age all match up to my memory of that episode.
posted by Knowyournuts at 12:56 PM on May 30, 2021

I don't think it's Elizabeth -- the episode is on YT here. I'm not sure if it's viewable in all countries, but I took a quick spin through and didn't see anything like the OP described -- cool episode though! It seems like all/most of Fantasy Island is on there (without credit sequences mostly) so maybe the sequence Knowyournuts is remembering is from another episode...?
posted by profreader at 1:27 PM on May 30, 2021

(Elizabeth Bathory bit, burnt, starved, beat, froze, stabbed and mutilated her way through possibly over 600 murder victims to hold the world record for the most killings ever by a woman. Really helped put Transylvania on the map.)
posted by rongorongo at 1:34 PM on May 30, 2021

D'oh! The link I posted before goes to the end of the episode ... just after the escape from the castle. Rising from cobwebby bed is here (if I've done it right -- 23:27)
posted by profreader at 1:45 PM on May 30, 2021

It sounds like this person was looking for the same scene, and someone identified it as Fantasy Island, season 6 episode 1, Curse of the Moreaus. Sounds like a prettty accurate match to your memory.
posted by Kriesa at 7:19 PM on May 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

Ah, “Curse of the Moreaus” could also fit. Especially with the men killing their wives... in this episode, is the couple afraid to marry because they fear fulfilling the curse? (And have I conflated two or more episodes over the last forty years?)
posted by Knowyournuts at 7:58 PM on May 30, 2021

I can't grab a screenshot, but "Curse of the Moreaus" is it. It's on Tubi here. It's at the 44 minute mark. (Interestingly, on Tubi the episode is Season 5 Episode 21)
posted by profreader at 11:56 PM on May 30, 2021

Screenshot success! and video clip.

And that totally would have freaked me out - !
posted by profreader at 12:23 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]

That’s even scarier than I remember!
posted by Knowyournuts at 1:39 PM on May 31, 2021

That's got to be it, but it definitely wasn't part of the series intro. Fantasy Island had a pretty famous intro that was anything but scary, with Tattoo yelling "Da plane, da plane" from the tower and all that. I'm guessing this clip was in a commercial for the show, and that was repeated a bunch.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:48 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]