If your buddy gets you a job and the employers seem a bit sinister, you might want to start looking around for hidden cameras. You may just be about to be scared. Though don’t be too frightened, you might just be on Scare Tactics.
Scare Tactics is another in a long line of reality, hidden camera shows. However, Scare Tactics takes on more of a horror movie inspiration than others usually do. Those others are just horrific because of the people being filmed. I’m not a fan of reality television, though it appears to be a thriving genre. I think that the horror movie situations may be what turned me on to Scare Tactics.
The show is currently hosted by comedian Tracy Morgan (Shannon Doherty hosted season one and Stephen Baldwin hosted season two), who does a goofy shtick as the “crypt keeper.”
A typical bit of business usually follows the same pattern. Morgan comes on to tease the segment, the person who set up the victim offers some lame excuse for pulling their pal into the show’s clutches, and then the fun begins. The most famous bit may be the devil baby gag.
A hapless victim is told that she’ll just be helping out answering phones at a night clinic. A very pregnant woman and her husband zip into the clinic and the victim is called in to help with the delivery since the clinic is so short staffed. The husband had made some odd phone calls in front of the victim and also phones their priest.
The priest turns out to be a rather sinister looking fellow and when the woman gives birth the daddy turns to be…. Could it be Satan! Of course, all is revealed when the victim is scared out of their wits and everyone has a laugh.
The show goes on with several spooky situations (a spa has a sanguinary secret ingredient in their youth formula, a gated community insists you try their pie, and a prison escapee ends up taking you on a wild ride to name a few). This set features the thirteen episodes that have aired during season three, with the next set airing on SyFy this October.
Scare Tactics is presented in fullscreen. Disc one contains 5 minutes of “Too Hot Footage” that mainly feature nudity (Boobies! My favorite!) and disc two contains 3 minutes of bloopers from Morgan’s intros.
The show is also uncensored so you’ll hear a lot of profanity that wasn’t featured on the show when it aired on SyFy. I would’ve liked to have both tracks included so little ears could listen to the censored audio track.
Scare Tactics is a goofy show, but I had a bloody good laugh. Morgan does some pretty bad jokes, but he also looks like he’s having fun. It didn’t change my low opinion of reality programming, but being a horror movie fan I liked that they’ve looked to the same for silly inspiration.
Scare Tactics: Season 3, Part 1 (Uncensored: Too Hot for TV) is now available at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for this version of the DVD in the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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