On a series DVD commentary, director David Vassar admits, "In the early episodes, if there were any reenactments, we actually had the real people play themselves. For starters, there were those reenactments. Good luck getting the sounds of, "A popular girl has been abducted - and possibly murdered" or "The charred remains were eventually identified" - out of your head when you're drifting off to sleep and there is definitely a creaking sound coming from right outside the house.īut there was so much more to the "Unsolved Mysteries" successful, terrifying formula than Robert Stack's world-weary deadpan. The schtick may sound a little cheesy, but if you've ever actually watched the show, you know how spookily effective it was. Dressed like McGruff the Crime Dog and channeling his same traumatizing diction, Stack was an essential component of the show's eerie tone. When NBC picked it up as a series, Stack became the show's permanent - and to many of us, definitive - host. "Unsolved Mysteries" began its life as a series of specials, hosted by actors known best as fictional crime fighters - "Perry Mason" star Raymond Burr, "The Streets of San Francisco's" Karl Malden, and Robert Stack of "The Untouchables." Each episode would take on a few different cases, combining interviews, narration, and re-enactment to present mysteries that you, the viewer, were then invited to help solve. I only gave up on the show when I eventually moved in with my then-boyfriend - not because I felt safer, but because all things true crime made him squeamish. I watched even when I was living alone in a not great neighborhood and checking under my bed every night. And watch it I did, for years and years and years. (My grandmother, meanwhile, channeled her true crime obsession into all things mob-related.)īy the time "Unsolved Mysteries" launched in 1987 - squarely between the Preppy Killer case and the disappearance of Tara Calico - I was a ready-made natural audience for it. I also had a mother who could offhandedly reference the acts of Richard Speck, Zodiac, the Boston Strangler, and the Manson Family the way other parents reel off baseball stats. As a child, I watched the sagas of Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, and the Atlanta Child Murders unfold on television in real time, right before my young, impressionable eyes. I grew up in an era that seemed uniquely rife with serial killers and disturbing crimes. But the lo-fi original can still scare the pants off you. Combined with HBO's "I'll Be Gone In the Dark," Netflix's "Unsolved Mysteries" makes for abundantly chilling summer content. The long-running and oft-rebooted series arrived this past week in its newest incarnation, tailor-made for the same viewers who turned "The Jinx" and "Tiger King" into surprise hits. For legions of us, "Unsolved Mysteries" delivered all three. Or perhaps it was an ominous TV theme song, the kind that could make the hairs on the back of their necks rise. Or it was a crime so shocking it made national news. Maybe it was a "That could have been me"-style case, often involving someone close to their own age. When you ask true crime fans to trace what first awakened their obsessions, you'll notice certain recurring themes. The original "Unsolved Mysteries" is available to stream on YouTube and Amazon Prime.
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