to experience fear when you’re young because it opens up a floodgate to imagination.” The Gate was a financial success, which enabled him to secure funding for his follow-up, 1989's I, Madman, an unusual horror film which combined elements of film noir and pulp fiction (of which he was a collector). I, Madman was followed by a sequel, The Gate II: Trespassers, in 1990. It was less financially successful than its predecessor. In the 1990s, Takács moved into television, directing episodes of Red Shoe Diaries, the 1995 revival of The Outer Limits, Police Academy (the series) and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (including the 1996 pilot movie for the latter and its 1998 sequel). During the same decade, he continued regularly directing feature films as well as TV, including action and sci-fi films starring Lorenzo Lamas, Mark Dacascos and Rutger Hauer. In 2000, he directed Once Upon a Christmas, following it the next year with a sequel. In the early 2000s, he began to increasingly direct made-for-TV movies, primarily for the SyFy Channel (including Mansquito (2005), The Black Hole (2006), Ice Spiders (2007), and Mega Snake (2007)) as well as the Hallmark Channel (where he has directed multiple Christmas-themed films). Selected directorial filmography Metal Messiah (1978) The Tomorrow Man (1981) The Gate (1987) I, Madman (1989) The Gate II: Trespassers (1990) Tropical Heat (1991) TV Series Red Shoe Diaries "Double Dare" (1992) TV Episode "Borders of Salt" (1994) TV Episode Bad Blood (1994) The Outer Limits "Blood Brothers" (1995) TV Episode "White Light Fever" (1995) TV Episode "The Voyage Home" (1995) TV Episode "I, Robot" (1995) TV Episode "If These Walls Could Talk" (1995) TV Episode Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996) Showtime original movie Sabotage (1996) Redline (1997) aka Deathline aka Armageddon Earth: Final Conflict "Pandora's Box"(1998) TV Episode "If You Could Read My Mind"(1998) TV Episode Sabrina Goes to Rome (1998) (TV) The Crow: Stairway to Heaven "Through a Dark Circle" (1999) TV Episode "The People vs. Eric Draven" (1999) TV Episode Once Upon a Christmas (2000) Nostradamus (2000) Twice Upon a Christmas (2001) Tornado Warning (2002) Killer Rats (2003) Mansquito (2005) Nature Unleashed: Earthquake (2005) The Black Hole (2006) Kraken: Tentacles of the Deep (2006) Ice Spiders (2007) Mega Snake (2007) NYC: Tornado Terror (2008) Lies & Illusions (2009) Meteor Storm (2010) My Babysitter's a Vampire "Double Negative" (2011) TV Episode "Smells like Trouble" (2011) TV Episode "Die Pod"