Kids today, with their Snapchats and Discords, could never fathom kids of the 80s and 90s calling a 900 hotline just so they could interact with their favorite horror icon. I’m also willing to bet they would never think that these phone calls caused us a swift ass-kickin’ in most cases when the phone bill came in- but unlike today, we had an entire month to plan our escape if needed until that paper bill came in the mail.
The horror hotline and basic 900 number dared young millennials to dial between your favorite programming, specifically aiming at kids that, as mentioned above, could cost you your left nut. But goddamn was it exhilarating. It sure as hell gave you a sense of living dangerously, and no doubt a few strands of pectoral hair sprouted on your chest when you ate the forbidden fruit if you actually mustered up the courage to call the “$2.99 a minute and $0.99 for each additional minute” numbers. And with the peak of Freddy Mania in the late 80s, it was only natural for the world’s most notable homicidal insomniac to cash in on some poor kid’s wallet and the excitement of actually talking to Freddy over the phone!
After the release of DREAM WARRIORS, the 1-900-660-FRED was launched, and soon after, alongside DREAM MASTER and the syndicated FREDDY’S NIGHTMARES, the more infamous 1-900-909-FRED, with 1-900-860-4-FRED following after in the early 90s, which included the infamous sweepstakes contest to win a walk-on role for at the time, was just titled as “Nightmare 6“.
If your memory is as shitty as mine, you probably don’t remember much if you were one of those brave souls who called those numbers, but lucky for the blessed internet, YOUTUBE Channel Movie and Video Game TV Spots has uploaded the entire original collection of Springwood stories you heard on the other end of the line. Shoutout to the buddy, HERE LIES for sending me the video!
When you called, Freddy greeted you with a prerecorded message, then we got some fuckwad resident of Springwood talking about some weird tale or another that occurred in Freddy’s hometown. Finishing up with Freddy, urging you to go behind your parents’ backs some more and call again tomorrow. Which was way more terrifying than any story Freddy could come up with.
Breaking news coming to light today after months of speculation and rumors, as it’s been brought to the surface that A24 is digging their farmhands deeper into the slasher legacy with a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE SERIES.
STRANGE DARLING filmmaker and THE LONG WALK screenwriter JT Mollner is spearheading a TV series based on the iconic Tobe Hooper property, with Glen Powell and Dan Cohen executive producing. along with Spooky Pictures’ Roy Lee (Weapons) and Steven Schneider (Paranormal Activity), Stuart Manashil (His House), Image Nation’s Ben Ross (Late Night with the Devil), and Exurbia Films’ Kim Henkel, co-creator of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
Per Deadline, Mollner said, “I’ve said publicly that I’m not interested in remaking perfect films, and the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a perfect film. Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel created something bold, transgressive, and truly seminal that holds up even today as the gold standard for horror. When the opportunity for a long-form exploration into this world arose, I saw it as a fresh way in, as well as a way to honor the existing folklore. I can’t imagine better partners for this approach than A24. This is truly an honor.”
A movie is also in early development with the same producing team and ImageNation, however, Mollner isn’t attached to that project. The movie isn’t packaged yet, and it’s not clear if it’s headed to Netflix as previously reported.
Looks like A24 is becoming the new legacy slasher home, with CRYSTAL LAKE premiering later in 2026 and the Sawyer TCM series following sometime next year.
The year is 1990. NASA had launched the Hubble Space Telescope, the Undertaker made his national debut at the WWF Survivor Series, and one of Stephen King’s greatest (and most controversial) novels was adapted into a visual nightmare that premiered as a two-part miniseries on ABC on November 18th, 1990. And to put it mildly, kids of the ’90s were never the same after seeing Pennywise on their large, boxy floor television set.
I remember quite vividly as a kid, being hyped up for this television horror event, and while my peers were entangled with the brand-new series Beverly Hills, 90210, all I could think about was this upcoming Stephen King movie about a killer clown. Mind you before you come at me, at this age, I had yet to read the book nor know anything about the story other than what I had seen via TV previews, as afterword I was to discover that Pennywise was more than a clown, and as a young horror nerd, I liked what I saw. So my eyeballs were ready, and after the first night of Part 1, I was both traumatized by a clown with a million teeth and my prepubescent body was enchanted by a young Jonathon Brandis. It was quite a new experience for a movie to both disturb me and set my loins aflame. Rather impressive, actually.
Outta my way, Bev. My heart burns there too.
My pre-teen admiration aside, STEPHEN KING’S “IT”, at the same time set the world on fire and brought about a resurgence in Coulrophobia (fear of clowns) in both young and old; however, for kids my age it begat a fear we never thought we may have, or much thought about and because of Tim Curry’s masterful performance, it ignited a long-standing match against anyone with a painted face of nightmares. I mean, let’s talk turkey since it’s November: I don’t know if it’s the makeup hiding their real faces; if it’s the sense of enforced fun, this idea that you’ve got to be laughing; or maybe it’s just that we don’t like anything that tricks us repeatedly, and makes us keep coming back for more. Clowns are fools who enjoy making others look foolish, after all. Nothing more distrustful and downright disrespectful than that. It’s as if this fear was hidden in our subconscious and awakened by Stephen King himself. So if clowns didn’t bother you before the premiere of 1990’s IT, they most likely had some sort of uneasy impact on you. Those are just facts.
And if you read the book after watching the miniseries, as many of us did, that didn’t help the cause much.
As long as the miniseries was, clocking in a total of 3 hours and 12 minutes, the experience of watching it seemed like an eternity, but in the best of ways, as Pennywise torments the Losers’ Club through his favorite clown apparition, a werewolf, a sewer-dwelling slime monster, and shape-shifting into seemingly normal inhabitants of Derry. Even IT’s final boss image of what is closest to his true self, a giant spider, with those awful effects that were almost unforgivable even in 1990, all that was merely background noise to Curry’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown and to this day if I were to ask you to paint me a picture of a scary clown, chances are you’re going to show me a picture of Pennywise.
The miniseries itself wasn’t a massive hit at first, but at the time, after the television airing, it was a whisper between kids at the playground that in turn fed into curiosity and ultimately a discovery of one hell of a new fear of clowns. The IT miniseries, among many of Stephen King’s works of the 90s, being adapted into television events like THE STAND, THE LANGOLIERS, and THE SHINING, outclassed them all regarding cult horror classics and mainstay power, and that is largely due to Tim Curry’s Pennywise performance at the end of the day with becoming a larger than life icon in the horror genre. So much so that when the remake was announced back in 2016, the million-dollar question was, “Who exactly has the balls to fill Tim Curry’s clown shoes as Pennywise”? It was Curry’s role and both charming and utterly terrifying rendition that gave an entire generation of kids nightmares and a lifelong fear of clowns. Curry’s ability to articulate the absolute joy in scaring the crap out of the children; children (the Losers’ Club) whom many of us could relate with in one way or another, is to this day unmatched. No matter how much budget you out into a movie, and I’m in no way knocking Skargard’s rendition of IT, but you can’t deny Curry’s study of this otherworldly monster and the impact he had on an entire generation and beyond. He was perfect.
Be proud of that, Tim. Fuck those kids.
Stephen King himself acknowledged, “his novel ‘IT’ probably contributed to your lifelong fear of clowns”, via the Los Angeles Times, and follows it up with, in so many words, “calm your tits, folks”. Real easy coming from a guy who also wrote in an extremely graphic child orgy into said novel. I think it’s safe to assume not a lot of things bother that man. And the resurgence of clown scares before the release of IT (2017), only validate that the character of Pennywise itself, harbors a tremendous influential power over our own psyche. That, in itself, is terrifying enough. To boot, we all know to steer clear of storm drains. Just another added phobia of sewers that at least half of 90s kids have.
