You are now listening to Postmortem with Mick Garrus, where the most influential voices

in horror cinema will spill their guts to the renowned horror director, writer, and producer.

Now here's your host, Mick Garrus.

From Nysky Productions World Headquarters overlooking the glamorous San Fernando Valley, I'm Mick

Garrus, and this is Postmortem.

When I began directing in the late 80s and into the 90s, true horror was a rarity on television.

Most televised horror fair on the networks at the time was watered down, tailored around

commercial breaks, and had to have sponsor approvals so as not to scare away the viewers

for their products.

The network standards and practices departments looked for anything that might smack of transgressiveness,

which could sneak through the innocent eyes of delicate viewers.

They would do our parenting for us, right?

The TV movies and series that were brushed with horror were not, for the most part, made

by people with a passion for and understanding of our beloved dark genre.

There were exceptions, of course, as with any rule, but mostly they were written by the

same people who wrote and directed the TV nighttime soaps, westerns, courtroom dramas,

and more mainstream fair, making these dips of the toes into horror mainstream themselves.

Horror was for the big screen back then, and though I was lucky enough to begin my career

at a time when Stephen King and his fans and acolytes were being accepted in prime time,

it was still a battle royale to get true horror on the airwaves.

But oh, how times have changed.

Even before the pandemic changed the way America consumes its entertainment, horror had become

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