Viewmaster horrors: Electra Woman and Dyna Girl in the dark

 

I can not understate how much Electra Woman and Dyna Girl freaked me the hell out. I never saw any of the TV series, all I had was the Viewmaster reels when I was five years old, and I looked at them hundreds of times and had no goddamn idea what was going on.

One thing I always found weirdly creepy about Viewmaster was the silence of the things, and the way you could only hear your breathing as your vision was fully immersed in the eyepieces. It gave everything an eerie sheen, even the most kid-friendly of reels

I had dozens of them, including an excellent Hulk one (the best part was the change, where one eye saw green and the other saw flesh tones, so you got a weird effect of both), but Electra Women was the freakiest by far.

I didn't know what the TV show was, or who any of these people were and decades later I can still remember my confusion over what Spider Lady had to do with Spider-Man. He was a good guy, and this was obviously a villain, but she had a clear rip-off of the Marvel hero's costume. 

And then there were the weird stages they were prancing around on, and the darkness of the images, the detail of the tarantulas on the boot. I never forgot any of them, and only recently found them on the terrific gray flannel suit blog. 

Looking at them now, I feel a bit traumatised all over again. Nobody involved in the making of this ridiculously silly TV show could have any idea how much they would still haunt me decades later, but good job all round, gang.