Love & Curses Logo 'Curiosity Killed the Cravitz'

by Lee Goldberg
and William Rabkin
Ian and Randi

Randi gets a frantic phone call from her college friend Ellen Cravitz, who claims that her neighbours are aliens – but before she can learn more, Ellen is abruptly murdered by a troll-like creature. Randi immediately resolves to fly to Los Angeles to investigate her friend’s death, and to her surprise, Ian decides to accompany her: it seems the university is phasing out his department, and with unemployment looming, Ian wants to follow up on the progress of his script at Monumental Pictures. After bidding goodbye to the Matheson family, Ian and Randi soon arrive in L.A., where they pose as a married couple (Ian and ‘Edna’) and move into Ellen’s now-vacant house. While Randi spies on their neighbours, the oddly-behaving Mark and Cathy Brady, Ian discovers that his publisher, Skip Seville, is now running a network, KBLA; to Ian’s further surprise, Skip offers him his own TV talk show, ‘How Strange’, dedicated to the occult, the supernatural - and sex. Back at home, Randi is attacked by trolls, who pull her through the floor of her closet and down into a network of underground tunnels; working here are the real Bradys, who, along with the rest of the neighbourhood, are being forced to work for a gang of evil, television-obsessed trolls. These trolls were once banished to the centre of the Earth by a great wizard; however, they have since built a ‘Transformamatic’ machine that allows them to assume the forms of their victims and take their place up on the surface. Randi is replaced by a Troll duplicate, but Ian quickly sees through his ‘wife’s’ uncharacteristic behaviour, and suspects foul play. Then the wizard, Baldrick, arrives on the scene – can he and Ian stop the trolls from taking over the world, or is Randi doomed to a life of subterranean slavery…?

Kate Hodge (Randi Wallace), Neil Dickson (Professor Ian Matheson), Milton Selzer (Baldrick the Wizard), Paul Williams (Harvey the Troll), Eileen Seeley (Cathy Brady), David Alan Brooks (Mark Brady), Dan Gilvezan (Skip Seville), Mary Ellen Dunbar (Sara Cravitz), Scott Fults (Julian), Jean Challis (Mum Matheson), Arthur Cox (Dad Matheson), Dorothea Phillips (Aunt Elsa)

Directed by Brian Grant
Produced by Chuck Murray
Executive producers Bill Finnegan, Pat Finnegan and Sheldon Pinchuk


TX (US): 6th March 1991

Notes:
*Featuring Randi Wallace and Professor Ian Matheson