Tubular Terrors: Wes Craven’s ‘Chiller’

By K.E. Roberts / October 29, 2026 Chiller Directed by Wes Craven CBS (1985) Those of a certain age know of cryonics because, for many years, we believed Walt Disney’s head was frozen when he died so that one day, God willing, medical science would advance to such a degree that his brain would be reanimated and attached to some kind of fantastical Imagineered puppet-body, perhaps 10 feet tall and dressed like a pirate, in which the fun-loving Übermensch would endeavor to remake our drab and dangerous real world into a utopian playland where there is no more pain and no one ever dies. In the ‘80s, the idea that the near- and far-flung future would be a pleasure to wake up to was pretty commonplace—even our dystopias looked cool. Today, as the actual dystopia of Trumpland metastasizes, not so much; and instead of the quaintly laughable pursuit of freeze-drying human bodies to chase immortality, we get calculating and creepy tech millionaires who attempt to “conquer death” by consuming…