The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Fifth Annual Collection

NBC’s new series, “Eerie, Indiana,” is tenaciously clinging to life. It’s about a kid’s-eye view of weird things happening in a little midwestern hamlet. It’s good. Then there’s Fox, always eager to field a new high-concept potential success. “Hi Honey, I’m Home” (what if the Nielsens—as in the TV ratings—were a real family who were moved to a real neighborhood by the Sitcom Relocation Program) scored about what you’d guess. “Charlie Hoover” (an adult male nobody has a miniature alter ego who’s trying to help him become a somebody) and “Herman’s Head” (a young guy actually has four personified components of his personality— conscience, intelligence, sensitivity and lust—duking it out for control inside his mind) both have some substance going for them.

Stephen King’s “Golden Years” had a lot going for it as an 8-hour miniseries on CBS. This melodrama about a man growing younger after an industrial snafu maintained some excitement and some interesting characters. Then there was the pilot for a Fox series, “Blood Ties,” a multigenerational vampire saga, which just couldn’t get it together.

The highwater mark of made-for-TV movies of the fantastic was probably HBO’s Cast a Deadly Spell starring Fred Ward. This is a noir-style parallel-worlds period piece in which the wonderful, but all too frequently overlooked Ward plays a detective named Harry P. Lovecraft in a Los Angeles inhabited by magic-users. The low-water mark was probably ABC’s To Save a Child, a movie-pilot aimed at introducing a series once called The Craft. The melodrama about a young woman whose child is kidnapped by southwestern witches was clearly designed to be a Run for Your Life!Fugitive-type chase series. Even Anthony Zerbe, as one of the villains, couldn’t save it. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Wiccans lobbied to keep the show from being seen and picked up. Disastrous writing and production accomplished what political action could not.

Let’s switch gears and look at some music. This is a truly patchwork area for me this time, but beyond that, I won’t apologize. Expect some truly idiosyncratic choices. During the year I didn’t encounter any albums that had the same conceptual impact as previous years’ Transverse City by Warren Zevon or Bloodletting by Concrete Blonde. One nicely downbeat all-around compilation was the score from Wim Wenders’ new feature, Until the End of the World, a film I’ll be talking about next year. The soundtrack album was released in advance of the movie. The performers contributing to the film include Lou Reed, k.d. lang, R.E.M., U2, Peter Gabriel, Neneh Cherry, Talking Heads, Depeche Mode and a lot more. It’s a solid catholic collection.

Warren Zevon’s new album, Mr. Bad Example (Giant) isn’t overtly science-fictional, but it sure feels right. It’s got the dystopian, winding-down-to-the-end-of-the-millennium feel, the sensibility. And “Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” is certainly dark fantasy.

I want to thank Kristine Kathryn Rusch for turning me on to Mark Germino’s Radartown (Zoo). This is a nicely edgy and political album, rock in the Zevon/ Hyatt/Prine style. The title song is a postindustrial dystopian/depression rocker that could become the anthem of the Rust Belt. John Wesley Harding’s Here Comes the Groom (Sire) is much in the same vein. His “The Devil In Me” would make a terrific under-the-end-credits piece for the pending feature film of Dan Simmons’s Carrion Comfort.

Contemporary folk artist Kristian Hoffman has an album out called, not surprisingly, Kristian Hoffman (52nd Street). This is solid, innovative, melodious material, boasting both social conscience and some witty playfulness. But then what else would you expect from the brother of fantasist Nina Kiriki Hoffman?

If you want to brighten your holiday season, slap a copy of Lumps of Coal (First Warning) in your player. This Christmas compilation ranges across “Little Drummer Boy” (Hoodoo Gurus) and “The First Noel” (Crash Test Dummies) to “Kings of Orient” (The Odds) and “ ’Twas the Night Before Christmas” (Henry Rollins). Without lapsing into parody, it’s fresh treatment given to tired material.

Live music? I hope you all went to see Queensryche’s tour. Along with the new stuff, they performed—and extraordinarily effectively—the entirety of the Orwellian Operation Mind Crime.

And finally . . . live theatre. This is especially short, since I’m a long way from Broadway out here in Denver. Actually we do have a major thoroughfare named Broadway, but it’s known much more for thousands of antique stores than for musicals and drama. So what can I say? I didn’t fly to New York or London for Return to the Forbidden Planet. I’m afraid this reviewer’s budget is a bit too limited. But I did catch the touring production of Phantom of the Opera. Kevin Gray played the Phantom very well indeed, as the production inaugurated the Denver Center for the Performing Arts’ new, state-of-the-art, Temple Buell Theatre. Every aspect of the play was lavish. I spent the first act admiring the how and the look of Phantom. In the second half, I was a bit surprised to find myself caught up in the human story. So it worked. The best summary line comes from A. J. Moses, local cultural observer, who said of Phantom, “It’s the Terminator 2 of musical theatre.”