Um, did any CAF members catch Rodney Alcala's episode of "The Dating Game" when

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…it first aired? If so, did Alcala come across as a creepy guy even then?
 
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Dude, Rodney Alcala was on the Dating Game in 1978. That was almost 40 years ago. At that time, the Dating Game was a game show that aired at least once a week and often multiple times, and I believe there were also multiple rounds of it on the show with different bachelors, so there were like 8 new people at least on each show. Many of the people who appeared on it seemed weird or were doing something to try to get attention because they were aspiring actors or just the kind of attention-seeking people who’d want to go on a game show.

The point being, unless you were a relative or friend of Rodney Alcala, there was nothing about him that would have stood out from the other thousand people who appeared on Dating Game, and furthermore nobody is going to remember the original show with him on it 40 years after the fact. He was just another no-name whack job on that show. What people remember is the rerun footage that aired when he became known as a serial killer.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
Many of the people who appeared on it seemed weird or were doing something to try to get attention because they were aspiring actors
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Yea, most “game shows”, especially back then, were/are like this. But The Dating Game was probably at the top of the heap as far as attracting weirdos and aspiring actors. The whole show comes off as creepy by today’s standards.

This sort of reminds me of The Newlywed Game . The producers of the show needed to squeeze in the phrase “make whoopie” at least 2 or 3 times in each show.
 
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I seem to recall The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game were running as a one-hour “package” for a while.
Similar concept, those two shows and Hollywood Squares were really just excuses to get away with making cutesy sexual innuendoes on the air, back in the day when sex on TV was very much frowned upon.
 
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I always wondered if “Hollywood Squares” existed solely for the purpose of giving Paul Lynde something to do (other than the voice of Templeton in the animated “Charlotte’s Web” and an occasional guest spin on “Bewitched”, I don’t recall seeing him in anything else.)
 
Paul Lynde was in a lot of TV shows and movies in the 1960s and was also in a bunch of failed TV pilots. Him being on “Bewitched” was a big deal, as that show was huge. He was also a regular voice on a LOT of Saturday morning cartoons. And he had about 10 TV specials in the 1970s. His Halloween special is probably best remembered by my generation because it featured KISS who back then were considered this weird new thing and every junior high school boy was nuts about them.

I always enjoyed Paul but I think between his alcoholism and the incident in the mid-60s where some young actor he’d picked up decided to jump out of his high rise window, and of course the fact that he was so obviously gay in an era when that wasn’t accepted, he was doing well to be on as many things as he was. His voice will forever remind me of Mildew Wolf and the Hooded Claw, and his rendition of “Kids” from “Bye Bye Birdie” is the best thing about that movie (Except maybe “The Telephone Hour” which reminds me of my teenage years when we were still doing that because no cell phones or AIM yet.)
 
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We used to say that people would start on the Dating Game, go to the Newlywed Game, then the Baby Game, and then Divorce Court.
 
If you want to talk about a creepy game show in the same vein as The Newlywed Game, try Three’s a Crowd. Each episode featured three men, each with their wives and secretaries. The host would ask the men questions with the wives and secretaries off-stage. Then (a la The Newlywed Game) the secreatires would be asked the same questions. Matching earned the secretaires points. Then the wives would come on and answer the same questions with the secretaries sitting on the other side of the men. At that point the show would get catty, unconfortable, or usually both between the wives and secretaries.

Shows like The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game have their issues, but they at least involved people who were either making a connection or already made one. 3’s a Crowd was destructive, heavily implying infidelity in some cases.
 
Dating and the like is already awkward enough in real life. Why would you want to watch it on TV?

I just feel a little too nosey watching any reality TV show. Unless it’s about buying houses. How much drama can that bring?

Uh, a lot apparently…
 
It was ten years before I was born, so I did not. I do like reading about serial killers, as psychology is an interest of mine, so I do know about it.
 
0Scarlett_nidiyilii said:
Which was funny because he had neither hood nor claw.
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Yeah, I never got that either. I sensed something very weird about the Penelope Pitstop show even as a child. As an adult with an Internet, I found plenty of blogs willing to point out all of its subliminal references to sex and not-so-subliminal references to bondage.
 
Yeah I think the artists and scriptwriters were having way to much fun with some of it…

But I loved all the goofy cars on the Wacky Races
 
On this page, a user with the handle Lavender Moon says the following:

“Two of his victims from 1977, Georgia Wixted and Jill Barcomb were apparently found in areas that were not far from Pacific Palisade. The information JusticeWillBeServed found for us certainly points toward the abomination that is Rodney Alcala. I viewed the YouTube clip of his Dating Game stint. I thought I was smelling the smoke of Hell’s fires when I looked at him and heard him speak.”
 
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