When I was about eight years old, Land of the Lost began broadcasting Saturday mornings right after Tarzan but right before American Bandstand. With this sort of lineup and DVRs non-existent, I didn’t look up from the television until it was time for lunch.

Land of the Lost was one messed up show and it creeped me out right from the opening credits! Here was Will, Holly and their dad panicked as their drifting raft got caught up in river rapids. Then, they death-plunged over a waterfall and ended up in a strange land. Pterodactyls flew overhead and Holly looked terrified. Since I was younger than Holly, I was super-terrified! The freaked-out family finally made it to land only to realize that the tremors they felt were not due to an earthquake, but were actually the footsteps of a gigantic tyrannosaurus rex, coming to feed upon them.

After running for their lives, they miraculously found a cave entrance and scooted safely inside. But T-rex made sure to chomp at them from the cave’s entrance, roaring with anger when he missed dinner. End of opening credits. Opening credits! What more could possibly happen to this family?

Although they never showed Will and Holly’s mom, in my young mind I could see her safely back home in her ranch-style home, wringing her hands and anxiously looking out the window for her family to come home. I imagined her crying at night and worried to death about the kids. I commiserated with the (imaginary) mom and with Holly as I couldn’t imagine being separated from my own mom at that age, knowing she would be worried sick.

And then along comes Chaka, a pre-pubescent Chewbacca-type creature who learned how to speak to the family and became their friend. I finally started to relax. The family always escaped T-rex and seemed to be learning the tricks of dino-land survival. I even laughed at my silliness of being caught up in the drama as it was obvious they were going to be alright. But then, something horrible happened to the Marshall family –

Sleestak!

The sleestak were dormant lizard people who would somehow only wake up when the family was trying to sneak past them. They ambled about zombie-style and made horrible hissing noises. Sometimes they would catch the kids in their web-like hands. Will and Holly would then have to fight them off and make another run for it out of the dark cave.

This was too much for me, I was done watching Land of the Lost. I purposely found something else to do during that ½ hour and then returned to the family room in time to watch Dick Clark. My older sister would make fun of me but I didn’t care. The sleestak were starting to show up in my nightmares. Once, I could have sworn that I saw a sleestak in the Bandstand crowd of kids, grooving to Stevie Wonder’s Sir Duke in white bell-bottoms and a flashy vest. I gasped! But the camera panned too quickly and I lost visual contact with the zombie-lizard. Did I imagine that…or maybe the sleestak were slowly infiltrating my non-dino world, looking for Will and Holly or any kid they could torture! MOM!!!!!!!!!!

Land of the Lost has now been remade in to a feature film starring Will Ferrell and Anna Friel, and will be in theaters this July to terrify a new generation of small kids. But this time, Chaka, T-rex and the sleestak will just have to help/harm the family without me because I’ve never really forgiven Mr. Marshall for taking his kids on an obviously unsafe rafting trip.