Whenever people learn of my avid interest in cult/horror films, especially those that I’ve only recently met for the first time, it invariably seems that the question they most often want to ask is, “What’s the scariest movie that you’ve ever seen?”

The fact of the matter is, I’m usually hard pressed to give them a definite answer, or at least the kind of answer they expect (I think most folks assume that my response is going to sound a lot like theirs most likely would, which usually means The Exorcist or The Shining or some other similar, well known mainstream shocker, but that is definitely not the case).

For as long as I’ve been infatuated with horror movies, which has been my entire life (or at least as far back as I can remember), I’ve never really found them that frightening (with a few rare exceptions, of course), and still don’t. At this point it’s surely because I’m desensitized to them, having easily seen hundreds in my lifetime (and still going!), but even as a youngster they never really had that effect on me.

Instead of my nightmares being brought on by films that were intending to do just that, I was more often terrified of small parts in those that were supposedly meant to be lighthearted fun and appropriate for the whole family. I could sit and watch Jason Voorhees butcher his way through dozens of teenagers in countless sequels without flinching, but I had to cover my eyes at Large Marge’s ghostly claymation freakout in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure or when the flesh melted off the faces of those a-hole Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark (I even remember a brief stint where I was afraid to open the shades in my room after watching Star Wars, mainly because I thought that there would be Jawas staring back at me through the window, but that’s a whole other story).

Anyway, my point here is that sometimes the films that are geared at a wider audience, or even those made specifically for children, can be scarier than even the most bloodcurdling horror movies. It’s got something to do with the unexpectedness of it; the total shock that comes from a horrifying scene in what we assumed was going to otherwise be a perfectly innocent, harmless movie.

Such is the case with the 1982 television production of The Electric Grandmother (an adaptation of the Ray Bradbury story I Sing the Body Electric, which had previously been filmed as an episode of The Twilight Zone in 1962), although in a slightly different, more subtle way. While the other films I mentioned feature one or two deliberately startling scenes for effect, The Electric Grandmother is not meant to be scary at all, but somehow it still manages to be incredibly creepy and unnerving.

Poor Henry (Edward Herrmann, probably most famous, at least as far as the average Radiation Sickness reader is concerned, as Max, the head vampire from The Lost Boys) is having trouble helping his three children, Timothy, Tom, and Agatha, cope with the sudden loss of their mother. One morning they get a rather unexpected invitation (flown in by helicopter) from a mysterious corporation called Fantoccini, Ltd. and soon find themselves guests of the eccentric, Willy Wonka-esque Guido Fantoccini, the company’s owner, at his bizarre, psychedelic headquarters.

As it turns out, Fantoccini is quite the philanthropist, and he offers to build the family it’s very own electric grandmother, a robot which will help take care of them in the place of their mother as long as they may need it, but on one condition, that every member of the family is completely satisfied with her performance after 30 days.

Of course she has the house back up and running to total efficiency in no time at all, and everyone seems to be returning to their normal, happy lives. Everyone that is, except for Agatha. She just can’t help but think that this machine is trying to replace her mother, and no one will ever be able to do that. But will her doubts cause the family to lose their new grandmother for good? Or will she find it within herself to have a change of heart and learn to love her as much as the others have?

So what could possibly be so disturbing about a silly kid’s movie about a robotic grandmother who does household chores and looks after some children you ask?

What’s NOT disturbing about it is more like it. This thing is just dripping with creepiness, from the completely glossed-over death of the children’s’ mother at the opening (the 60 minute running time is most likely responsible for this, at least in part, but it still adds to the downbeat atmosphere) to the sad and depressing conclusion disguised as an upbeat ending, with a slew of moments meant to come off as fantastic and whimsical, but which are really just weird and unsettling, in between.

We get to see her initial “delivery” where she is dropped off on the family’s snow-covered lawn in an Egyptian sarcophagus dangling precariously from a helicopter. We get to see her respond to one of the children’s questions by instantaneously baking the answer into a muffin (on a tiny slip of paper, like a fortune cookie) which she pulls out of her pocket, piping hot. And undeniably the most horrifying thing of all, we get to see her dispense milk and orange juice for human consumption FROM HER FREAKING FINGERS!!!

(insert shivers down my spine here)

But these oddball touches are definitely what make The Electric Grandmother so interesting, and loads of fun. Without them we’d have just another watered down, overly sentimental, sappy dose of heartwarming Hallmark crap as opposed to the eerie, whacked-out Mary Poppins that we’re presented with instead.

And thank goodness for that.

As far as to how it stacks up against the original short story…well, I don’t mean to be “that guy”, but needless to say the source material holds up a little better, and definitely comes off much stronger and more thought-provoking than this version (which feels a little dumbed down, I suppose because they thought it might be too heady for children otherwise), regardless of the fact that the teleplay was also co-written by Ray Bradbury. Then again, I’m sure it’s hard to pack in even as much character development as they managed to when you’re working with a running time just under an hour. So watch the movie first for some lighter entertainment and then read the story for the more eloquent translation. You’ll be glad you did. Especially if it ever comes up in conversation. Then you can be “that guy” too, and make yourself seem more intelligent by telling everyone “oh, the book was so much better!”