There’s something about Eerie, Indiana that brings out even more early ’90s nostalgia than a pair of MC Hammer pants or A.C. Slater slamming you into a locker. Right up there with Are You Afraid of the Dark? as some of the all-time best gateway TV horror for kids, Eerie always felt like a must watch if you could catch it on Disney or eventually Saturday mornings on Fox Kids Network. The show idea was simple and easy to relate to when you were a kid because every adult in suburbia seemed weird as fuck at the time. Hell, they still do.
In the show, Marshall Teller (Omri Katz) and his friend Simon (Justin Shenkarow) investigate the weird and possibly sinister happenings of their neighborhood and as usual… the adults never believe them.
Eerie, Indiana is jam packed with Halloween atmosphere and horror goodness and it just so happens that all of the episodes are now available for free streaming on both YouTube and Tubi.
But if you don’t have enough free time for all nineteen episodes right now, I’ve compiled a list of five episodes that I consider quintessential…
Episode 1: “ForeverWare”
One of five episodes in the series directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling), “ForeverWare” has a cinematic quality about it that stands above the rest of the series. It also lays the groundwork for the rest of the show. Right after Marshall and his family move in, Betty Wilson (Louan Gideon) shows up hawking forever-ware; a scientifically impossible Tupperware that keeps food fresh. Forever. Literally.
The episode is a hilarious play on how awkward it is to move to a new town and how it’s always horrifying to have neighbors who sell MLM products. Marshall’s Mom (Mary-Margaret Humes) agrees to go to a ForeverWare party and when I tell you it’s cringe inducing, I mean you will want to jump out of a window into a pit of tigers with rabies to escape the awkwardness. What’s worse is you could totally imagine this Awkward Mom Cult existing in real life.
Much like the rest of the show does so masterfully, the pilot takes something that happens in real life that’s kind of stupid and weird that adults do… and adds a little extra weirdness to it. As if you’re seeing it from a kid’s point of view. A point of view that is often far more sane than the adults with all our agendas, beliefs and insecurities.
Marshall senses just how weird these ladies all seem, so he investigates. He finds out that Betty’s twins (who look like mini versions of Otho from Beetlejuice) are the victims of something horrible directly involving their mom’s sales products. The entire plot (twist included) is absolutely batshit and would never hold up to the slightest microscope of realism. Which is exactly why the show works…. it doesn’t have to explain itself. Shit is weird here in Eerie. That’s all you need to know.
Episode 14: “Mr. Chaney”
A fantastic homage to classic horror, “Mr. Chaney” does almost too good a job of showing just how helpless kids can be to the “traditions” of our family and the communities around us. Whether it’s being forced to sit on a stranger’s lap at the Mall during Christmas or being named “Harvest King.” Which means you have to go sit in the woods alone with a strange man during a full moon until you see a werewolf. That’s what happens to Marshall here and that man is none other than Mr. Chaney (played by amazing character actor Stephen Root).
Any werewolf storyline worth anything has to feature a decent transformation scene. “Mr. Chaney” features not only a pretty cool one but a shockingly decent full blown werewolf (especially for a show that doesn’t use much in the way of FX). We’re not talking Fright Night or American Werewolf here but I’ve definitely seen worse in big budget movies. Not to mention, any show that ends with someone drinking a shake made of “Two scoops of freeze dried liver of an Amazonian vampire bat, a quart of fresh chicken blood, whipped cream and the eyeball of Vlad the Impaler” is okay in my book.
To go along with it, “Mr. Chaney” is also home to a nice Halloween atmosphere.
But not as much as our next episode…..
Episode 5: “Scariest Home Videos”
Marshall and Simon are packing a bag full of everything from towelettes (in case they get egged) to fresh underwear (in case they get scared) to hit the town on what’s bound to be the weirdest night of all, in the weirdest place of all: Halloween night in Eerie, Indiana. Their plans are spoiled when Marshall’s Mom has to leave after his Dad (Francis Guinan) suffers a car break down and they have to stay and babysit Simon’s little brother Harley Schwarzenegger-Holmes (ironically played by Dominic from Kindergarten Cop, Christian Cousins). Bummed out, the boys decide to break out a camcorder and fake a “Funniest Home Videos” tape, which all ends in Harley getting sucked into the TV while they watch a classic mummy movie.
The kicker? He replaces the mummy in the movie and the mummy replaces him in the living room.
There are many episodes of Eerie, IN that feature some awesome Halloween atmosphere but Scariest Home Videos takes the pumpkin spice cake. The entire episode is dripping in Halloween atmosphere from the constant trick or treaters (one wearing a literal Halloween IV Michael Myers mask) to the decorations around the house, to an actual old school mummy stalking around as they all pause to scream at the camera in total ’90s fashion before a commercial cut. There’s a huge hat tip to the monster-verse of old in this episode (and throughout the series) as we get to know the man playing the mummy, Sir Boris von Orloff (Tony Jay) in quite the rad meta twist.
Throw in the Stay Tuned storyline and Scariest Home Videos is an absolute banger of an episode strong enough in the ways of the Samhain to put anyone in the Fall spirit.
Episode 10: “The Lost Hour”
One thing the town of Eerie, IN does that I completely and totally agree with is ignoring Daylight Savings Time entirely. But as usual in Eerie, there’s a supernatural downside to it. When Marshall decides to set his clock back an hour anyway, he wakes up like Kevin in Home Alone. Only instead of just his family, the entire town is gone; save for a teenage girl (Nikki Cox) and a team of garbage men who look more like secret service agents. Oh, and the local Milkman. Probably the last person I want to see in that situation. I’ve seen Fear Street. I know what’s up.
The Lost Hour is absolutely the 28 Days Later of Eerie, Indiana. This episode has it all. Parallel dimensions, characters taking advantage of horrible situations to experience once in a lifetime fun, shady dudes in uniforms, missing time, Milkmen. The ideas touched on in The Lost Hour could honestly be stretched into an entire series all by themselves. Hell, the guys who made Lost could probably stretch this episode into eleven seasons. You won’t find another television show that can cram as many subgenres and wild ideas into a 25 minute episode as this one.
Episode 18: “Reality Takes a Holiday”
Wes Craven would be proud. Years before Scream put the meta in meta there was good ole’ Eerie, Indiana with Reality Takes a Holiday. In this episode, Marshall finds a script in his mailbox that directly scripts out his entire day. From his conversations with his family to everything around him. Everyone in the show starts to refer to him as Omri (his actual name in real life) and his home is merely a TV show set on a studio lot. His parents are just the actors who play his parents on the show and nobody knows what the hell he’s talking about. Then he realizes the script ends with him being killed off and replaced. He has to find a way to convince the actual writers of the show to not kill off his character so that he doesn’t die in real life.
Did you get all that? It’s wild!
The episode is lighthearted and entertaining but like many others, actually becomes rather freaky when you think about it. Imagine having a dream where your entire family is fake, trying to kill you and smiling like none of it’s real.
Reality Takes a Holiday aired towards the end of the show’s short run and was a really cool opportunity to let the entire crew have fun with their characters and the work they’d been doing on the show. It was extremely cool the way it humanized the folks who had been working there without becoming cheesy or jumping the proverbial shark. For fans of meta writing, Reality Takes a Holiday is a must see.
Well, there you have it! Tag this article and put it into our evidence collection. Maybe one day the adults will listen to us when we tell them that Eerie, Indiana is no ordinary place and that it should totally be brought back for the next generation of little weirdos to enjoy. This is my quintessential list but don’t let it deter you from checking out the other episodes!
There’s plenty of cool stories, horror movie throwbacks and cameos (including Danielle Harris) to enjoy in the other fourteen episodes of Eerie, Indiana. This town is well worth a visit.