Sci Fi's 'Scare Tactics' Faces Lawsuit
Mon, Feb 17, 2003 04:44 PM PDT




LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - A hidden-camera show called "Scare Tactics," scheduled to premiere in the spring on the Sci Fi Channel, is facing a lawsuit.

And no, it doesn't involve host Shannen Doherty.

A Los Angeles woman named Kara Blanc is suing the cable channel, "Scare Tactics" creators Scott Hallock and Kevin Healey and two actors who took part in the stunt in which Blanc was unwittingly involved, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Blanc claims she suffered physical and psychological trauma as the result of witnessing a violent encounter with a "space alien" -- one of the performers on the show -- that she believed to be real.

"Scare Tactics" puts a supernatural twist on the "Candid Camera" premise by staging events like alien abductions or hauntings and films the reactions of the people who aren't in on what's happening. Hidden-camera shows typically film a stunt, then get permission from the "marks" after the fact; if someone refuses to be shown on camera, the footage is scrapped.

In her lawsuit, filed Friday (Feb. 14), Blanc alleges she was told she'd won an invitation to a party at a desert resort. On the ride there, however, the car broke down and she was told by the people with her -- actors on the show -- to run away from an alien who was about to attack them.

Blanc says she suffered injuries and psychological trauma that hospitalized her several times and caused her to miss work. She's asking for damages and an injunction that would stop the show's producers from "surreptitiously recording the traumatized reactions of any other persons in the future."

Sci Fi Channel representatives couldn't be reached for comment.




What goes around comes around.
Go Bonnie!

I can't wait to see this show. Seeing people get scared by bigfoot is gonna be hilarious!

No doubt this "lawsuit" is just a way to get free publicity for the show...

already? This show has not even had it's first broadcast yet!

I've always wondered about the knife edge that shows like this walk. Is it really legal to scare people out of their minds? I don't know but it really isn't too ethical.

That being said I might still catch it to see what it is about.

Or are we still boycotting SciFi

Gee, let's just have a show where we make people think we've chopped off their arms and legs...

Or let's just point guns randomly at real people in the street and film them screaming...

I mean, no harm done as long as it isn't real...

Disgusting.

Yeah. Down with Sci-Fi....

Well, I better get back to watching Fear Factor where they are going to be eating cow rectums and pustulated blood balls!

Quote:

Originally posted by Seantn
Yeah. Down with Sci-Fi....

Well, I better get back to watching Fear Factor where they are going to be eating cow rectums and pustulated blood balls!

adamblast is right.

At least someone that appears on FF KNOWS what they're getting into. If the challenge grosses the contestant out too much, they have the opportunity to back out. If they're in the middle of the challenge and feel that they can't complete it, they can opt out.

"Scare Tactics" is far from that.

Unless, of course, every "victim" is an actor and this is Hammer's lame attempt at controversy to garner ratings for shows that aren't prefaced by "Steven Spielberg Presents...".

It's all fun and games until someone has a heart attack. I hope the plaintiff wins and burns 'em to the ground.

What happened to that show on MTV where the couple sued because they thought they saw a dead body? I believe Anton Kushner was the host.

Wasnt there a movie a few years ago where they went around shooting each other for real for a Reality program??
Talk about ahead of its time.

Series 7 is the name.

While it can frighten people, I think that a rationally minded person would know better than to believe in ghosts, bigfoot, aliens, etc.

Please let this woman win her case, makes SciFi pay a ton of cash, and force Bonnie Hammer into exile.

D

You haven’t seen that one yet? They play the hell out of that commercial. I gotta admit it gets a laugh out of me just because the costume is so bad. Haven’t these people ever played jokes on their friends or visa versa? I’d go super tingly and yell maybe until I could focus on monkey boy, and then I’d just say. “C’mon.”

To me there is nothing short of something that I couldn’t ethically watch that reality shows could do to interest me. It’s a catch 22.

I really do hope that this woman wins an exorbitant amount of cash and sets a precedent that will wipe this messed up fad from the face of entertainment.

(assuming that this lawsuit is real.)

Then how do you explain the fact that the National Enquirer is still publishing?

I have to admit that this lawsuit sounds pretty silly. However, I'm rooting for the plantiff anyway, hoping that she'll win and shut down Bonnie Hammer and her network for good.

Hey, could we, the viewers sue SCiFI for the mental anguish we suffer when we tune in to see actual science fiction, but instead see "Meet Joe Black?"

I love the SiFi channel. If something is crap I just do not watch it like any other TV show.

Whenever these topics are discussed in Otter, the believers outnumber the non-believers by a huge margin. There's a lot of "open your mind, man" posts.

More or less true, but a rationally minded person would also be facing the seeming evidence of his own senses, and a ton of adrenaline... These people are being confronted with phony life-threatening emergencies... When an emergency is actually occurring--once your flight impulse is up and running--does one stop to ponder how likely or sensible the emergency seems?

While I won’t say I love SciFi, I’m not a member of the anti-SciFi cabal by any means. (Big surprise.) More often than not I’ll be watching something they have on and am waiting patiently for “Tremors: The Series.”

It’s just a TV station, after all.


adamblast, very good point. It doesn’t really matter what the situation is. SciFi, it seems, have made this seem to belong on their channel by using the Bigfoot/aliens angle, thereby making it “sci-fi.” Which doesn’t make any sense, seeing as how they show stuff that one would have to REALLY invent new rules to consider it sci-fi (John Edwards, The Wet Dream Team…).

I’m not interested in that type of show (regardless of what channel it’s on). What I am interested in is how many different ways they try to make a sci-fi connection. I mean, just how many different monster suits can there be at Costumes-R-Us?

It is now. Just a couple of years ago it really was a channel devoted to sci-fi programming.