American Gothic: The Complete Series (DVD)
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Shaun Cassidy has a hit series on his hands right now with the alien-thriller Invasion, but ten years ago it was a harder row to hoe with his demonically-inspired weekly show American Gothic. At the time, CBS didn’t give the series its due — they not only dropped entire episodes out from the middle of the story-line without ever airing them, they often preempted the show for weeks on end. After slapping the viewers’ faces time and time again, CBS found that fans turned their TV attentions elsewhere.
When it was airing, American Gothic was one of my favorite shows. And I’ve never quite forgotten it; it’s one of those series like
But how does it hold up? Despite some rather dodgy special effects and the occasional heavy-handedness, American Gothic holds up very well. It’s much bolder and far more addictive than Cassidy’s current Invasion, as a matter of fact. Some of the greatest little signature touches about the show include the catchphrase, “Someone’s at the door”; or the way Sheriff Buck always just shows up out of the blue as if dropping from the sky (or maybe coming up from someplace else); and Caleb’s ever-furrowed brow and the way he said “Daay-dy”.
One of the best shows early on in the DVD is “Meet the Beetles” — it’s a standalone episode and will remind many of an X-Files episode. The opener of the show is a bone-rattling bang when Caleb and his friend Boone are looking through the charred ruins of what was once Caleb’s family home — a skeletal hand seemingly latches onto the boys’ ankle and tries to pull him underground. Throughout the episode, Caleb is haunted by visions of his own grave.
It turns out the remains belong to Hack Weller and that, even though he’s been reduced to bones, the philandering husband has been dead for only two or three days. Much to the pithy Sheriff Buck’s consternation, the State Police send square-jawed Lt. Drey (Bruce Campbell) in to solve the mysterious and potentially deadly case. It’s an episode that will keep on “bugging” you even after the final fade.
The actors would later go on to do other remarkable roles — Cole in Office Space; Black in Sling Blade; and Jake Weber in TV’s Medium — but it’s the genre-blending American Gothic that discerning horror fans will always remember them for.
The DVD features deleted scenes and commentary on pilot episode from Cassidy and producer David Eick. Cassidy admits he hasn’t seen the series since it aired 10 years ago, and too often it shows — there are some rather unfortunate long lapses of silence as he watches the show. There are a very interesting tidbits revealed; for example, Cassidy reveals that the “Someone’s at the door” scene sold the pilot as he acted it out for CBS execs.
The pair jokes about the prominent Elvis pillowcase shown in the pilot, and they complain about the stock music they were forced to resort to in certain sequences. They also mention wannabe Prez Bob Dole’s then-ongoing anti-violence-on-TV campaign a few times, then they never utter a word about Dole during a scene in a which a certain character is found dead with an expensive writing instrument thrust into his windpipe (remember Dole’s trademark pen?).
Eick and Cassidy also talk about how producer Sam Raimi came in with a lot of visual ideas, and how he gleefully said that yes, Buck is the Devil (while Eick and Cassidy say they wished to keep the Sheriff’s identity more ambiguous — however, one of them does laughingly say during the commentary, “This is not Touched By An Angel — it’s Touched By Satan!”).
They don’t go into too much detail about the show’s cancellation, but Eick does say, “We knew we were dead early enough to be able to plan our own funeral,” in regards to being able to wrap up the loose ends in the series finale.
It’s absolutely wonderful to the have the American Gothic series on DVD, finally. However — be warned that the order of the episodes is not sequential and that there is nothing on the DVD package to indicate this. The four unaired episodes are piled on the last disc, but actually the show should be viewed in this order:
Pilot
A Tree Grows in Trinity
Eye of the Beholder
Damned if You Don’t
POTATO BOY
Dead to the World
Meet the Beetles
Strong Arm of the Law
To Hell and Back
The Beast Within
Rebirth
RING OF FIRE
Resurrector
Inhumanitas
The Plague Sower
Dr. Death Takes a
Learning to Crawl
ECHO OF YOUR LAST GOOD-BYE
STRANGLER
Triangle
The Buck Stops Here
Requiem
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Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson