Remembering 6 of Dan Haggerty’s Horror Films
John Campopiano
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We’ve lost several legends this year–one of them was actor Dan Haggerty. On January 15, 2016 Haggerty succumbed to his battle with spinal cancer. He was 73 years old.
And while Haggerty was best known for playing the title role in “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams” he also starred in some pretty oddball horror films over his storied career. Some of these films are remembered by committed fans of the cult/horror scene, while others have faded with time. Nevertheless one thing is for sure: Haggerty dabbled in many genres including: romantic thriller, horror, low-budget action, TV adventure, sleazy drama, and made-for-families.
For now, though, we’re only concerned with his spooky stuff. So, here’s our list..along with some accompanying VHS artwork! Which ones have you seen?
RIP, Grizzly!
Terror Out of the Sky (1978, a made-for-TV sequel to the 1976 film, The Savage Bees)
Haggerty played: Nick Willis
This TV sequel to “The Savage Bees” features more rampaging insects. This time a marching band and a school bus get in the path of the bees.
Terror Night (1987)
Haggerty played: Ted Michaels
Lance Hayward, a silent movie star, appears as various characters, killing quite a handful of unfortunates, using various weapons.
Night Wars (1988)
Haggerty played: Dr. Mike Campbell
Two Vietnam Veterans have realistic nightmares about the war. So real are these nightmares that they start getting injured in them, and bringing things back that they had in the dream. They then buy weapons and go in to try and get one of their friends out that originally died in a POW camp during the Vietnam war. This is made harder by a traitor from the US Military Corps.
Elves (1989)
Haggerty played: Chain-smoker Mike McGavin
A young woman discovers that she is the focus of an evil nazi experiment involving selective breeding and summoned elves, an attempt to create a race of supermen. She and two of her friends are trapped in a department store with an elf, and only Dan Haggerty, as the renegade loose-cannon Santa Claus, can save them.
The Chilling (1989)
Haggerty played: Sergeant Vince Marlow (co-starring Linda Blair!)
Universal Cryogenics is doing a booming business in freezing the bodies of the recently dead in the hopes of defrosting them later when science has discovered a way to cure what ails them. Things are going well until the storage facility loses its power during a storm, threatening their frozen clients. To make matters worse, a lightning strike causes the bodies to revive as homicidal zombies. What has the cryogenic lab been doing to its customers to cause this kind of change, and can they stop the zombies before their rampage goes out of control?
The Channeler (1990)
Haggerty played: Arnie
Pam gathers a group of college students to join her in a trek to an abandoned mine on a remote, forested mountain. Though her companions believe they are going to help reclaim and restore the area’s environment, Pam knows of strange events in both the distant and recent past. Her interest appears to be more in the line of folklore and parapsychology than the environment. The group experiences a number of misfortunes and mysteries before arriving in the area of the mine. They soon encounter a hermit (Haggerty) living alone in a cabin and he seems to know quite a bit about the sinister nature of the region. All must confront and escape the evil that has lurked at the mine since a tragedy there in 1845.
Categorized:News Retrospectives
