Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: Series episode

For six Sunday evenings in 1978, Radiotelevisione Italiana (Rai) TV in Italy aired a series which was a marked break from a channel that until now had only shown conservative Christian Democrat programming. By establishing a secular channel, Rai 2, the network was hoping to encourage experimentation and “a marked exploration of new languages ​​of communication.” These were the national channels of Italy and somehow, Stryx made it on the air, if only for a very short — and thematically perfectly numbered — length of time.

Named for a combination of the legendary vampire owl of legend and the Italian term for witch, strega, this was created by Enzo Trapani, Alberto Testa and Carla Vistarini. In interviews, Trapani said that he was inspired by a meal of salami and figs, saying “Begone milquetoast rhythms and family-friendly songstresses with round cheeks and heart-shaped mouths,” as he sought to change TV.

Or, as he also claimed, he got a phone call from the devil.

With the words, “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Devil,” an entire salon of demons, goblins, singers, dancers, human sacrifice victims and people willing to get naked and weird emerged into the psychedelic and smoke-filled cave in which this show is set. By the end of the first episode, the switchboards had lit up. Even if Italians are used to nudity and some level of violence, they weren’t ready for the dependable Rai to send outright Satanic imagery into their homes.

I can’t even begin to imagine what people thought — Italy is a country that has Vatican City, the heart of the Roman Catholic empire, directly inside it and a population that is 75% Catholic — when “Lucifer, Emperor” and “Beelzebub, Prince” were introduced and walked out on screen, presiding over the inquisition, women dressed as cats, live animals including a lion, cats, hawks, dogs and a chimpanzee as well as more women, some half-naked, many fully nude and quite a few being tortured and even mock burned alive.

That said, Stryx still has the trappings of the variety show. There are continuing characters, such as a witch named Ludmilla (Ombretta Colli, a singer, future senator and actress in the Fulci film Getting Away with It the Italian Way and Antonio Margheriti’s War Between The Planets), who keeps trying to transform a toad named Franz into a prince and always having him become into boring accountants played by Walter Valdi; a mime played by Hal Yamanouchi (Endgame, Warriors of the Year 2072) and Gianni Cajafa, playing a magician named Furcas who teaches the audience how to read their fortunes and banish the malocchio or evil eye.

Do you love strobing? How do you feel about dry ice and fog? How about liberal use of chromakey? This has all of that and so much more. Money was spent — lots of lira — to make it feel like this show exists inside its own world. I mean, let’s be honest, this is the Hell of the dreams of metal kids who smoke skunk weed in the high school parking lot and say, “Man, it’s going to be a party.”

Well, it was a party.

The first episode aired on October 15, 1978. Just take a look at the music guests:

Gal Costa “Sea Rain:” Gal Costa was a Brazilian pop superstar who had a fifty-year career in which she released more than five hundred songs. She’s the only singer from Brazil to be in the Carnegie Hall Hall of Fame.

Angelo Branduardi “Dance in F sharp minor:” Known as The Minstrel, Branduardi created a new musical genre that combines medieval and Renaissance music with Celtic, Germanic, British and French folk music. He plays the devil’s instrument — the violin — as Death itself dances with villagers.

Amanda Lear “Enigma (Give a Bit of Mmm To Me!):” Amanda Lear is a source of fascination to me. At once the muse of Bowie and Dali, now a disco queen who famously played with the question of whether she was even a she. This song features the lyrics “Are you devil or angel? Are you question or answer?” Lear also appears in the movie Crazy Nights for Joe D’Amato and is on the cover of Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure. In the 2024 reality where people are still regularly losing their minds over sexual gender, Lear was breaking ground nearly fifty years ago and looking incredible every step of the way. This short article can’t contain her majesty.

Patty Pravo “Handsome:” This sentence alone should explain to you why she was on this program: “Her peculiar low and sensual timbre, her provocations and excesses have made her an icon of transgression.” Along with Mina, Ornella Vanoni , Iva Zanicchi and Milva, Pravo is considered one of the five major protagonists of Italian song. She’s also the first mainstream artists in the country to embrace funk and new wave with her 1976 album Biafra. At this stage of her career, she embraced the androgynous look of Bowie. Future performances would see her carried by goblins as a human sacrifice and another where she was given shock treatment while performing.

Grace Jones “Hunger:” Do I even have to write of how incredible Grace Jones is? How vital? Or how perfect Jones was for this show, a feral force of nature stalking the stage and somehow being the most supernatural thing in a world teaming with demons and devils?

Rockets “On the Road Again:” A French Space Rock band, Rockets used to land on stages filled with smoke and lasers, emerging with metallic faces and spacesuits, looking like Destro meets KISS. They were super dangerous, too, as they used to shoot a “fireworks bazooka” into the audience, more than once hitting audience members and setting their clothing ablaze.

The other episodes — not many of which survive — also feature Mia Martini, Asha Puthli, Area and Anna Oxa.

As the calls continued from angry viewers, the show only averaged nine million viewers, not enough to continue airing. Trapani followed up with another controversial show, C’era Due Volte (Twice Upon a Time), during which adult film star and future senator Ilona “Cicciolina” Staller retold fairy tales in ribald ways. It was delayed by a year and remained too controversial to live.

Sadly, in 1989, frustrated by the idea of aging and unable to get his visions on TV, Trapani would shoot himself in the mouth, languishing in the hospital for over a week.

There’s is supposedly a seventh episode, which never aired. I dream of seeing it.

Resources

Wikipedia Italy: Stryx.

Atlas Obscura: Stryx.