When Michael Calls (also known as Shattered Silence) is a thriller-drama television movie directed by Philip Leacock and starring Elizabeth Ashley, Ben Gazzara and Michael Douglas. It was adapted from John Farris’ 1967 novel of the same name.

Single mother Helen (Elizabeth Ashley) is going through a relatively amicable divorce from Doremus (probably over his name – played by Ben Gazzara from Anatomy of a Murder and Bloodline) but otherwise lives a perfectly humdrum middle-class American life on a cosy farm in New England with her young daughter, Peggy. Flitting around in the background is her nephew, the equally inoffensive Craig (Michael Douglas – yes, that one – in a very early film role) who is a psychiatrist working with emotionally troubled youngsters in the town.

Aside from the by-numbers fraught post-marriage arrangements, the only blot on the horizon are a series of phone calls Helen keeps receiving. Not the heavy-breathing sort, these are an entirely different level of weird – they are coming from Craig’s long-dead brother. Michael had perished in a Vermont snowstorm over a decade ago after running away from home; this sent Craig and Michael’s mother into a spiral of mental illness, leading to a short spell in an asylum before she committed suicide. The phone calls begin as confusing and progress to alarmingly intense. Not only that but the calls spark a wave of family members being murdered, leaving Helen to doubt both her sanity and who exactly is at the end of the phone.

This oft-remembered TV movie, held by some in the same esteem as the likes of Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark and Bad Ronald, rests on two principles:

1. Telephones were now the most terrifying household appliance since showers (When a Stranger Calls, Don’t Answer the Phone, Black Christmas)

2. A good percentage of American children were medically mute (Candy Snatchers, Suffer, Little Children)

The latter in this film is a slightly goofy device for spanning out the drama an extra few minutes but the first comes with a real sting – the killer line being a young child sobbing to Helen, “I’m dead, aren’t I?” It really works, though a tough crowd may claim that beyond the odd line like this, there’s little substance and a pretty thin cast numbers-wise. It is worth remembering that this was only a TV movie and is still stronger than many appearing on the silver screen.

Ashley is little more than adequate as the rather slight lead female, her soon-to-be ex-husband coming across as a good egg all round (played by a far stronger Gazzara). Douglas is, naturally in convenient retrospect, the strongest card though is given such a sappy character that it’s almost quite exciting when he starts smoking. Director Philip Leacock was an old hand at television drama to say the least; Bonanza – check, Gunsmoke – check, Hawaii Five-O – check, Buck Rogers and so on, the man was a television Goliath. Equally as deft was the writer of the original novel, John Farris – aside from his career as one of the greatest exponents of Southern Gothic novels, he also wrote two successful screenplays, Dear Dead Delilah and Brian De Palma’s The Fury. The TV movie is adapted for the screen by James Bridges, also extremely accomplished with a typewriter but also as a director, his most famous film being The China Syndrome.

Screened as one of ABC’s Movies of the Week, it was rather bafflingly released as Shattered Silence on DVD in quite appalling quality, adding to the sinister grime but doing little raise its profile, doomed forever to be ‘that film with Michael Douglas smoking, on the phone to his dead brother’.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

‘A chilling tale of vengeance from beyond the grave.’

Crowhaven Farm is a 1970 made-for television film directed by Walter Grauman (Are You in the House Alone?) and starring Hope Lange (Death Wish; A Nightmare on Elm Street 2), Paul Burke (Valley of the Dolls) and John Carradine (House of Frankenstein, The Monster Club).

Maggie Porter (Hope Lange) and her husband Ben (Paul Burke) inherit a farm in Massachusetts after the mysterious death of Maggie’s uncle (actually not that mysterious, we see him crash into a tree after he is distracted by a character we meet later). As soon as they arrive, Maggie is startled by several instances of deja-vu – the instant discovery of secret rooms within the house and flashbacks to vaguely familiar scenes are almost too much for her. The visions become ever more vivid and involve her been surrounded by a group of costumed locals and having large stones placed upon her. Putting it down to reincarnation (!), she is soon brought up to speed by local neighbour and know-it-all Harold Dane (Cyril Delevanti looking close to death, though he hung on a couple more years to appear in Soylent Green) who explains that though the area was no Salem, it had its witchy goings-on in years past, the guilty females crushed under a wooden panel heaped high with large stones of the kind their house is constructed.

Maggie longs for a child and their search for a foster child only brings one response, Marcy Lewis (Virginia Gregg, The Amazing Mr X) who due to a terminal illness wishes to off-load her own foundling, Jennifer (Cindy Eilbacher, Slumber Party Massacre 2). Despite the couples’ reservations (Jennifer is already ten, opposed to their desired new-born), they are soon won over by her personality. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll note that it was Jennifer who caused poor old uncle’s car to career off the road.

Her arrival coincides with Maggie becoming pregnant but from here, events begin to spiral out of control – the images of her 15th century self are becoming frighteningly real and young Jennifer is not all sweetness and light as they hoped, aided and abetted by their handyman, Nate Cheever (John Carradine doing his best sinister leer). Eventually life and visions combine and the Maggie’s worst fears are realised.

It must first be said that this television film is highly-regarded by many and was responsible for many sleepless nights for watching youths right up until the later screenings in the mid-80’s. Perhaps time has been unkind or this reviewer is missing something but it does come across as needlessly overwrought, made worse by the fact that Maggie’s alarm at the farm is so instantaneous that you do rather lose sympathy with her. The threat in the film is ultimately wrapped up in Jennifer, played admirably by young Eilbacher but a level beneath the angelic Heather O’Rourke in Poltergeist or as truly wicked as Rhonda (Patty McCormack) in The Bad Seed – in truth, there isn’t strictly a place for a part that is anything less than either of these. The truly ancient-looking Delevanti is worth watching just to make sure he gets to the end of his sentences and Carradine is fun, though pitifully under-used. There’s a slight nod to a very under-age relationship between Ben and Jennifer which is mercifully quickly forgotten but the recurrent ‘threat’ of witchcraft just isn’t a substantial enough hook to truly drag you into Maggie’s plight.

Grauman’s direction reflects his career in television but smacks even more of televisual miasma Aaron Spelling’s (Love Boat, Dynasty) production, with every character pausing slightly after their lines, just to ensure the audience ‘gets it’. There’s enough to keep you watching until the end and, without spoiling it, we are at least saved any ‘it was all a dream’ shenanigans. If you have a morbid fear of being slowly squashed by some costumed-loons, there could be food for thought here yet.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Dead Still is a 2014 American horror film directed by the Booth Brothers and starring Ben Browder (Farscape, Stargate SG1), Ray Wise (Twin Peaks, Jeepers Creepers), Gavin Casalegno (Noah, When The Game Stands Tall) and Elle LaMont (Dusk Till Dawn, Machete Kills).

The film has a $2 million budget and first aired on Syfy on October 6th 2014 as part of the channel’s 31 Days of Halloween.

Plot teaser

Upon the death of his grandfather, Brandon Davis, a wedding photographer inherits an antique camera famous for taking victorian death photography. After photographing his subjects they start to die from horrible, bizarre deaths, then reappearing as eerie death portraits. One by one Brandon begins to lose people very close to him as he struggles to uncover the haunting mystery behind the cursed camera. When his eleven year old son goes missing, Brandon discovers the camera has supernatural powers and has trapped his son inside of it. He must now risk all and journey beyond the realm of all imagination, to fight the hideous entities within, save his son and reverse the deadly curse that plagues them before they all become….Dead Still.

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The Mummy can, in many respects, hold claim to being the most unloved of the classic movie monsters – if not, then surely the most inconsistently served. The oft-quoted line from Kim Newman, that the issue lies with “no foundation text” upon which to base the creature, certainly carries some weight, though Mummies had certainly been written about in the 19th Century – notable works include Poe’s short story, Some Words With a Mummy (1850), Conan Doyle’s Lot No. 249 (1892), the latter establishing the Mummy as a malevolent predator seeking revenge, as well as touching upon elements also explored in later films, such as the methods of resurrection and the supernatural control of a ‘master’.

Poe’s tale is rather more barbed, the bandaged cadaver reanimated by electricity and quizzed upon its ancient knowledge (or lack of), a side-swipe at both modernist self-aggrandising and the Egyptomania which had swept through both America and Europe since Napoleon’s Egyptian Campaign of 1798-1801. The fascination of the general public in all levels of society lasted throughout the Victorian era, peaking again when Howard Carter uncovered Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. This obsession didn’t stop with the collection of Egyptian artworks and an influence on fashion and architecture – it was not uncommon in both America and Europe (though England especially) for the upper classes to purchase sarcophagi containing mummified remains at public auctions and then charging interested parties to a literal unveiling at what became known as ‘mummy unwrapping parties’. Though many of these were under the slightly dubious guise of scientific and historical investigations, the evidence of publicity material listing admission prices for children rather suggests a more obvious parallel of the fascination with freak shows, as well as the ever-popular grave robbing and body snatching.

It is such unbalanced factors which contributed to the Mummy onscreen as such a difficult to pin-down character. Bram Stoker’s 1909 novel, The Jewel of Seven Stars, concentrated on the attempts to resurrect a mummified Egyptian Queen but is full of the author’s own clear obsession with the subject, detailing minute features of objects and environment. Even looking at these three texts, very different perspectives are offered:

1. The curse
2. The resurrection (either via electricity, potion or supernatural means)
3. Love across the ages
4. The exotic nature and history of Egypt

Mummy films are somewhat doomed to pick one or more elements of this and then factor in the very nature of a Mummy – a zombie with bandages with a grudge. Most films dealt with this threat as a singular foe, one with pre-determined victims in a relatively limited environment (either in his native Africa/South America or relocated to a museum elsewhere). Fundamentally, it’s not easy the share the fear of the pursued – the regularly featured greedy archaeologist or treasure hunter clearly would not have many rooting for them, the similarly omnipresent character of the innocent damsel being mistaken by old clothy for his bride from B.C. is often equally wretched.

The first documented films concerning Mummies are 1899’s Georges Melies‘ Cleopatra (French: Cléopâtre), also known as Robbing Cleopatra’s Tomb, which, at only two minutes in length, is pretty much the synopsis, action and epilogue all in one. Despite a false alarm in 2005, no copy of the film now exists, a fate shared by another French film, 1909’s The Mummy of the King Rameses (French: La Momie Du Roi). Though literature was raided for ideas in some of these early efforts, in particular 1912’s The Beetle, based on the Rich Marsh 1897 novel of the same name, the general tone was of mystery, over-egged comedy and slushy drama, the long-lost tombs of nobility and monarchy gripping audiences without the need for too much in the way of ravenous corpses.

1932’s Chandu the Magician just pipped Universal to the post as an Egyptian villain stalked America’s screens with a recognisable actor in the role of the baddy, Bela Lugosi kidnapping all and sundry in a bid to possess a death ray (he later appeared as the hero in the follow-up, 1934’s Return of Chandu). As with so many of Universal’s introductions of classic monsters, many elements of 1932’s The Mummy leeched into films right up to the present day. For first-time viewers, the biggest surprise is the incredibly short screen time of the bandaged one, though the slowly-opening eyes of the revived Mummy is one of the great moments in horror film.

It is as the reawakened Ardath Bey that Boris Karloff spends most of the film; Jack Pierce’s excellent make-up giving ‘life’ to a cadaverous-featured, be-fezzed Casanova seeking his love whom he believes has been reincarnated. The Egypt of the film is populated by aloof and cultured Westerners working in a land of subservient and befuddled locals, including Horrorpedia favourite, Noble Johnson as ‘The Nubian’ and can be seen as a view of a colonial viewpoint of ‘foreigners and their strange ways’, sometimes quasi-religious, at others playing on the public awareness of the so-called Curse of King Tut’s Tomb, an event only a decade prior. Egypt is still as remote, uncouth and dangerous as the forests of Romania and the invented village of Vasaria – the notion that this place actually exists and that tombs were still being uncovered lending an extra, illicit thrill, modern science at war with religious belief and customs. Bey/Imhotep stalks his beloved in a more stealthy manner than that of Dracula, the quick nip on the neck replaced by a rather more sinister, unspoken threat of capture, death and sex, the latter two being interchangeable. This, of course, remains unspoken but presumably an inevitability, Universal instead charging the film with shots of unbridled romance, both in set-design and, importantly, a specifically-composed score by James Dietrich and Heinz Roemheld, the first for a Universal Horror. This was underpinned by passages from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, another nod to Transylvania.

Though a success at the box office, it was a full eight years before Universal unleashed a Mummy again, the 1940 film The Mummy’s Hand not being a sequel but rather a reintroduction of the monster. Universal flex their creative muscle here, rather like 1941’s The Wolf Man, their invented lore (the poem of how a man is doomed to turn to beast) it is a given ‘fact’ that a Mummy can be brought back to life and indeed sustained by a potion of ‘tana leaves’. Evidently aware of the lack of an actual Mummy in its 1932 effort, the studio pushed the bandaged monster to the fore, plot and backstory being secondary to getting him on screen and tormenting people. It was a simple enough conceit that it was this Mummy, Kharis who would appear in the film’s sequels, The Mummy’s Tomb, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse, all of which would feature Lon Chaney Jr as the monster, the quality always sinking ever lower but still with Pierce’s sterling work on the costume and make-up, much to Chaney’s chagrin.

If the lack of genuine horror in the films wasn’t enough, the ever-present comedy or cartoon featuring Mummies again gave the character a persona that was not to be taken seriously. No matter how hard you tried, if you put bandages on a violent, ever-living zombie, there was a danger of farce.

This can be evidenced with attempts such as the RKO-distributed Wheeler & Woolsey film, Mummy’s Boys (1936), The Three Stooges’ We Want Our Mummy (1939) and Mummy’s Dummies (1948) and on to Abbott and Costello’s encounters in Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy (1955), a threadbare affair in both costume and entertainment – comedy often leaned on the fact Mummy is an un-threatening sounding word with two meanings as well as the opportunity to sing and dance in a manner audiences might expect from Egyptians (or not). Bandage unravelling was a given.

It would be two other countries which would rescue the Mummy from the filmic doldrums, at least in sparking an audience’s interest. 1957 saw the release of two Mexican films – The Aztec Mummy (Spanish title: La Momia Azteca) and The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (Spanish: La maldición de la momia azteca), neither likely to win awards for outright quality but giving Mummies in new life in a new environment, the ancient Aztec culture and wacky wrestling superhero (in this case El Ángel) marrying easily with the tropes already laid down by the earlier American films. The films offered enough promise for Jerry Warren to recut, dub and add additional scenes for an American audience. The films were a success in both markets and led to two further sequels, The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy (1958) and Wrestling Women vs.The Aztec Mummy (1964).

Britain’s bandaged offering, inevitably from Hammer, was 1959’s The Mummy. Here, Hammer borrowed heavily from Universal (again, overlooking the studious 1932 film and cutting straight to the monster-driven sequels) but brought out the big guns; Terence Fisher directing and the double-whammy of Lee and Cushing. For all the film’s faults, and there are several, the film finally gives the monster the strength and terror that his complex evolution and background demands.

Here, Lee towers over the other characters both literally and metaphorically, emerging from a swamp in a scene which should be considered as iconic as any in Hammer’s canon. No longer a shuffling bag of bones, the Mummy here is athletic and merciless, with the strength and stature of Frankenstein’s Monster with the eternal threat of Dracula.

Two of the sequels misfired quite badly, 1964’s Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and 1971’s Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb yet both have the odd moment of inspiration (the latter’s scenes involving voluptuous Valerie Leon in particular!) but running out of things for the Mummy to do. On the other hand, Hammer’s The Mummy’s Shroud (1967) is instantly forgettable.

Interestingly, Egypt’s own attempt at filming its own national monster feasted liberally on Abbott and Costello romping, the result being 1953’s Harem Alek (literally ‘shame on you’, retitled as Ismail Yassin Meets Frankenstein). Shrieking and gurning abound in a very close relation to the American comedians in their meeting of Frankenstein, the mummy in question being much nearer to the bolted creature.

One of the oddest appearances for a mummy was a narrator – voiced distinctively by Valentine Dyall – for Antony Balch’s 1969 British low budget anthology film Secrets of Sex aka Tales of the Bizarre. A healthy dose of dark humour, plus copious nudity from both sexes, has ensured that there is still a cult following for this eccentric entry.

Grabbing the monster by the scruff of the neck was Spain’s Paul Naschy, never one to tip-toe around a subject. 1973’s Vengeance of the Mummy (Spanish: La vengance de la momia) is gory, lurid and enormous fun, the hacking and head-crushing monster being completely self-governing and with the added bonus of an alluring assistant, played by Helga Liné, though sadly her rumoured nude scenes have yet to surface. Naschy played the Mummy once more, in the all-star monster fest of 1988’s Howl of the Devil.

The Mummy often appeared as part of an ensemble of monsters, giving the film-maker an answer as to what to do with it – from singing puppet mayhem of Mad Monster Party? and 1972’s animated semi-prequel Mad Mad Mad Monsters to encounters with Scooby Doo and rock band KISS, the monster remained an also-ran and supporting character. Though managing to get on screen in Fred Dekker’s The Monster Squad (1987), missing out on the action in comedy horror anthology The Monster Club (1981) suggests his standing in the pantheon of monsters was less than stellar.

The Awakening (1980) was a latter-day attempt at filming Stoker’s novel – though managing to visually capture a sense of antiquity and some pleasing shots of Egypt, it lacks fire and threat and once again a classic monster is reduced to dreary, slow-paced banality. On the other side of the coin was Frank Agrama’s 1981 brutal guts and gusto Dawn of the Mummy, which sees the restless ones reanimated by the hot lights of a fashion shoot. This at least forgives lots of manic running around and a conflict between the modern day and the ancient, gloves off and with little regards to sense or history. The title alone should lead the audience to expect a more zombie-based event and though frequently silly and frayed, largely due to the low budget, it does at least give the sub-genre a shot in the arm.

Later films perhaps tried too hard – 1982’s Time Walker pitched the Mummy as actually being an alien in stasis; 1983’s baffling and boring Scarab throwing Gods, Nazis and scientists into the mix but only ending up with a mess; Fred Olen Ray’s breast-led 1986 effort, The Tomb. None came very close to succeeding in any sense.

The 1990’s was possibly the most desperate time for Mummies worldwide – whether it was the schlock of Charles Band (The Creeps, 1997), the critically-mauled 1998 film Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy or Russell Mulcahy’s flying Mummy of Talos the Mummy (1998), the monster suffered more than most at the hands of those trying to use new technology at the expense of plot and character to succeed. Only in 2002 with Don Coscarelli’s film Bubba Ho-Tep did The Mummy make a meaningful return, pleasing both fans of Bruce Campbell and too-cool-for-school scouts for cults as they happen, as well as horror fans desperate to see their bandaged hero as a tangible threat.

When Hollywood finally decided to throw some money at a reborn franchise, there was to be disappointment – the Indiana Jones-type action of 1999’s The Mummy, as well as its sequels and spin-offs were an exercise in CGI and tame thrills. Speakers were blown, images were rendered but whatever fun audiences had, omitted the scare factor.

2014’s R-rated The Pyramid promises Rec-style horrors and a return, successful or not, to the concept of a straight-forward monster released from its tomb. Further field, Universal have promised/threatened to relaunch their entire world of monsters, beginning with The Mummy from 2016.

Daz Lawrence, Horrorpedia

Mummy Filmography: 

1899 – Cleopatra

1909 – The Mummy of the King Rameses (aka. La momie du roi)

1911 – The Mummy

1912 – The Mummy

1912 – The Vengence of Egypt

1912 – The Mummy and the Cowpuncher

1913 – The Egyptian Mummy – comedy short

1914 – Naidra, The Dream Worker

1914 – The Necklace of Rameses

1914 – Through the Centuries – short comedy

1914 – The Egyptian Princess

1914 – The Mummy

1915 – The Dust of Egypt

1915 – When the Mummy Cried for Help

1915 – Too Much Elixir of Life

1916 – Elixir of Life – comedy short

1916 – The Missing Mummy – comedy short

1917 – The Undying Flame

1917 – The Eyes of the Mummy

1918 – Mercy, the Mummy Mumbled – comedy short

1921 – The Lure of Egypt

1923 – The Mummy

1923 – King Tut-Ankh-Amen’s Eighth Wife

1926 – Mummy Love

1926 – Made For Love

1932 – Chandu the Magician

1932 – The Mummy

1933 – The Ghoul

1934 – The Return of Chandu

1936 – Mummy Boy

1938 – We Want Our Mummy

1940 – The Mummy’s Hand

1942 – Superman ‘The Mummy’s Tomb’ (animated short)

1943 – The Mummy Strikes

1944 – The Mummy’s Ghost

1944 – A Night of Magic

1945 – The Mummy’s Curse

1953 – The Mummy’s Revenge (Spain)

1953 – Harem Alek (Egypt)

1954 – Sherlock Holmes ‘The Laughing Mummy’ (UK TV episode)

1955 – Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy

1957 – Curse of the Aztec Mummy (Mexico/USA)

1957 – Castle of the Monsters

1957 – Curse of the Pharaohs

1957 – Pharoah’s Curse

1957 – Robot versus the Aztec Mummy (aka “La momia azteca contra el robot humano, Mexico)

1958 – El Castillo de los Monstruos

1958 – Dos Fantasmas y una Muehacha (Mexico)

1958 – House of Terror (aka “Face of the Screaming Werewolf,”  Mexico/USA)

1958 – The Man and the Monster (Mexico)

1959 – The Mummy

1960 – Rock n Roll Wrestling Woman vs the Aztec Mummy

1962 – I Was a Teenage Mummy

1963 – Attack of the Mayan Mummy aka The Mummy Strikes

1964 – Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb

1965 – Mummy’s Dummies

1965 – Orgy of the Dead

1966 – Death Curse of Tarta

1966 – Carry On Screaming!

1966 – Mad Monster Party?

1966 – The Mummy’s Ghost (short)

1967 – Get Smart ‘The Mummy’ (TV episode)

1967 – The Mummy’s Shroud

1967 – Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea “The Mummy” (TV episode)

1968 – El Santo and Blue Demon vs. the Monster (Mexico)

1969 – The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? “Scooby-Doo and A Mummy, Too” (TV episode)

1969 – Secrets of Sex aka Tales of the Bizarre

1970 – Santo in the Vengeance of the Mummy (aka Santo En La Venganza de la Momia, Mexico)

1970 – Dracula vs. Frankenstein” (aka ‘Assignment Terror, Italy/Spain/Germany)

1970 – The Mummies of Guanajuato (Mexico)

1971 – Blood From the Mummy’s Tomb

1971 – Santo and the Vengeance of the Mummy (Mexico)

1972 – El Castillo de las Momias de Gaunajuato (Mexico)

1972 – Mad, Mad, Mad Monsters

1972 – The New Scooby-Doo Movies “Sandy Duncan’s Jekyll and Hyde” (features The Mummy)

1972 – Dr Phibes Rises Again

1972 – El Robo de las Momias de Guanajuato

1973 – Love Brides of the Blood Mummy

Las Momias de San Angel aka Terror en San Angel (Mexico)

1973 – Vengeance of the Mummy (La vengance de la momia, Spain)

1973 – The Cat Creature

1973  – Chabelo y Pepito vs. los Monstruos (Mexico)

1973 – Son of Dracula

1974 – Voodoo Black Exorcist

1975 – Demon and the Mummy (US TV Movie). A compilation of two episodes from the TV series Kolchak: The Night Stalker: Demon in Lace and Legacy of Terror

1975 – Doctor Who ‘Pyramids of Mars’ (TV episodes)

 La Mansion de las 7 Momias (Mexico)

1978 - KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park

1980 – Fade to Black

1980 – The Awakening

1980 – Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo “Mummy’s the Word” (TV episode)

1981 - Dawn of the Mummy

1981 – The National Mummy (La Momia Nacional, Spain)

1981 – Sphinx

1982 – Secret of the Mummy (Brazil)

1982 – Time Walker

1982 – Scarab

1983 – The New Scooby and Scrappy Doo Show “Where’s Scooby Doo?’

1984 – The New Scooby Doo Mysteries “Scooby’s Peep-Hole Pandemonium” (Maid Mummy)

1985 – The Tomb

1985 – Dear Mummy (Hong Kong)

1985 – Transylvania 6-5000 (US/Yugoslavia)

Amazing Stories ‘Mummy, Daddy’ (TV episode)

1987 – Night of the Living Duck (US animated short)

1987 – The Monster Squad

1988 – Howl of the Devil

1988 – Saturday the 14th Strikes Back

1988 – Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School

1988 – Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf

1988 – Waxwork

1989 – Encounters of the Spooky Kind 2 (Hong Kong)

1990 – I’m Dangerous Tonight (US TVM)

1990 – Tales from the Darkside: The Movie “Lot 249″

1990 – I’m Dangerous Tonight

1992 – I was a Teenage Mummy

1992 – Nightmare Asylum

1992 Franky and his Pals

1992 – Bloodstone: Subspecies II

1992 – I Was a Teenage Mummy

1993 – Bloodlust: Subspecies III (US/Romania)

1993 – The Mummy Lives

1993 – The Mummy A.D. 1993

1993 – The Mummy’s Dungeon

1993 – The Nightmare Before Christmas

1994 – Stargate

1995 – Goosebumps ‘Return of the Mummy’ + ‘TV Mummy’ (TV episodes)

1995 – Monster Mash

1996 – Bone Chillers ‘Mummy Dearest’ (TV episode)

1996 – Bordello of Blood

1996 – Le Siege del l’Ame (France)

1996 – The Mummy (Pakistan)

1996 – Birth of a Wizard (Japan)

1996 – La Momie Mi-mots” (aka “Mummy Mommy, France)

1996 – The Seat of the Soul” (aka “Le siege del Time, Canada)

1997 – The Creeps

1997 – Bram Stoker’s The Mummy aka Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy

1997 – Mummy’s Alive

1997 – Under Wraps (TV Movie)

1997 – 1998 – Mummies Alive! (animated series)

1998 – Legend of the Mummy

1998 – Mummies Alive! The Legend Begins (animated feature)

1998 – Trance

1998 – Talos the Mummy aka Tale of the Mummy

1999 – Ancient Evil: Scream of the Mummy

1999 – Ancient Desires

1999 – The Mummy

1999 – The Mummy (documentary narrated by Christopher Lee)

Mummy Dearest: A Horror Tradition Unearthed (documentary)

1999 – The All-New Adventures of Laurel & Hardy ‘For the Love of Mummy’

2000 – Curse of the Mummy

2000 – Lust in the Mummy’s Tomb

2000 – The Mummy Theme Park (Italy)

2001 – Mummy Raiders

2001 – The Mummy Returns

2001 – The Mummy: Secrets of the Medjai (animated series)

2002 – Bubba Ho-Tep

2002 – Lust in the Mummy’s Tomb

2002 – Mummy Raider

2002 – The Scorpion King

2003 – Mummie (Italian short)

2003 – The Mummy’s Kiss

2003 – Scooby-Doo! Where’s My Mummy? “Mummy Scares Best”

2003 – What’s New, Scooby-Dooo?

2004 – Attack of the Virgin Mummies

2005 – Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century (TV episode)

2005 – The Kung Fu Mummy

2005 – Legion of the Dead

2005 – The Fallen Ones

2006 – Monster Night

2006 – Seven Mummies

2006 – The Mummy’s Kiss 2: Second Dynasty

2006 – The University of Illinois vs. a Mummy

2007 – Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy

2007 – Mummy Maniac

2008 – Day of the Mummy (short)

2008 – Mummies…

2008  – The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

2008 – My Mummy aka My Mummy: The Tomb Is a Drag Without Her

2008 – Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior

2009 – Cry of the Mummy (comedy short)

2010 – Creature Feature (adult video features a mummy)

2010 – The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

2010 – Pink Panther and Pals ‘And Not a Drop to Pink’ (TV episode)

2012 – Hotel Transylvania

2012 – Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption

Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H (animated series features N’Kantu the Living Mummy)

2013 – Isis Rising: Curse of the Lady Mummy

2014 – American Mummy

2014 – Day of the Mummy

2014 – Doctor Who “Mummy on the Orient Express” (TV episode)

2014 – Dummie the Mummy

2014 – Frankenstein vs. the Mummy

2014 – Mummy, I’m a Zombie

2014 – The Mummy Resurrected

2014- Scorpion King 4 – Quest for Power

2014 – The Pyramid

“In an urban society, everything connects. Each person’s needs are fed by the skills of many others. Our lives are woven together in a fabric. But the connections that make society strong also make it vulnerable”.

Threads is a 1984 British television drama, produced jointly by the BBC, Nine Network and Western-World Television Inc. Written by Barry Hines (Kes) and directed by Mick Jackson (Volcano) , it is a docudrama account of nuclear war and its effects on the city of Sheffield in northern England.

The primary plot centres on two families, the Becketts and the Kemps, as an international crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union erupts and escalates, mimicking the real-life tensions but allowing the threatened Cold War to escalate beyond the hypothetical and into a fully-blown attack. As the United Kingdom prepares for war, the members of each family deal with their own personal crises, the rigors of family life, not least the unplanned pregnancy of Ruth Beckett (Karen Meagher; 28 Weeks Later) and urgent requirement for some new wallpaper not halting, as a much larger-scale danger develops. As Ruth and her boyfriend, Jimmy Kemp (Reece Dinsdale, best known for his role opposite John Thaw in the deadly dull sitcom, Home to Roost), we observe the political angle, members of Sheffield City Council, on the orders of the Home Office, setting up northern headquarters in the basement of Sheffield Town Hall, closely monitoring news reports of an American submarine going missing off the coast of Iran and the mobilisation of Russian troops on the ground.

With the Americans launching a counter-offensive, occupying Iranian oil fields, tensions in the UK begin to spill over, the populous involving themselves in demonstrations (ironically, not just pro-CND but demanding more jobs) or looting shops and businesses. Nuclear exchanges are reported near the Russians’ base in Masshad, Iran, after which a flimsy truce is declared. The civil defence arrangements become increasingly panicked and stretched as it seems the worst scenario is looking evermore likely. After an American attempt at diplomacy is rebuffed, the conflict appears to quieten, though UK civilians fruitlessly attempt to withdraw their savings and take to the roads in a bid to find safe ground, the consequence being endless traffic jams and further unrest.

At 8:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. in Washington, D.C.) on 26 May, Attack Warning Red is transmitted, and Sheffield’s air raid sirens sound. A warhead air bursts over the North Sea, obliterating many communications systems, then another hits RAF Finningley, 20 miles away from Sheffield. Although the city is not heavily damaged, chaos breaks out. Jimmy is last seen attempting to reach Ruth. Shortly after the first strike, Sheffield is hit by a one megaton warhead over the Tinsley Viaduct, causing enormous destruction. A title card states that strategic targets, including steel and chemical factories in the Midlands, are attacked, with two-thirds of all homes being destroyed and immediate deaths ranging between 17 and 30 million.

There is chaos at the Town Hall, partially demolished in the blast with the surviving civil servants trapped beneath, armed with little, though conflicting information, dwindling supplies and inevitable communication problems. We are also reminded that they too have loved ones on ‘the outside’, their fates unknown. Having witnessed the devastation of the blast; from melting milk bottles, to fires taking hold, to fried cats, we now see the nuclear radiation and its effects on the survivors, already struggling to escape the rubble but now faced with agonising illnesses, lack of running water and medical supplies and a fractured government authorising killing squads to shoot looters and deserters on-sight.

We re-visit the affected after a month, then a year, the dead remaining unburied, the country’s infrastructure almost non-existent, disease rife and the on-set of a nuclear winter, the perpetual dusk destroying crops. Later, the sun returns but only to highlight the squalor the remaining injured must endure. With much of the ozone layer decimated, cancer and other conditions are commonplace, the search for food and shelter remaining the overriding concern.
Many years later, Britain is depicted as having returned to the Dark Ages; ragged clothing, primitive farming techniques and a mangled version of language being employed by a population reduced from 11 million people to 4. The film ends with no redemption and little hope, the future bleak for all and life forever changed.

30 years on, Threads remains one of the most shocking and affecting film shown on British television. Coming 20 years after another nuclear parable, The War Game (ironically, originally not shown on the BBC under orders from the Wilson government), Threads is far more unflinching in its assessment of a nuclear attack, using a largely unknown cast (including many who weren’t recognised actors at all), an ‘anywhere’ location and the depiction of very real fears and logistics. To compound the unremitting tension, the action is interspersed with genuine news reports, Civil Defence announcements and public information films (Protect and Survive, an upsetting watch at the best of times), are a reminder that the mid-80’s were still shrouded in Cold War tensions, Threads serving as a stark picture of a very real possibility.

Mick Jackson was hired to direct the film, as he had previously worked in the area of nuclear apocalypse in 1982, producing the BBC Q.E.D. documentary A Guide to Armageddon. By undergoing rigorous research to capture the actual plans in place should such a catastrophe take place, the documentary feel overtakes the film from the very start, though some may find the later scenes of grey ruins and uneducated survivors a little too stretched and film-like. The film was shot on a budget of £250,000–350,000, much of the budget going on a rare depiction of post-attack scenes, the majority of previous efforts only showing up to and including the dropping of the bomb. Remarkably, Jackson went on to have mainstream success as the director of Hollywood smash, The Bodyguard.

Allegedly viewed after broadcast by then-US President Ronald Reagan, as well as Party Leaders in the UK, the initial screenings in Britain, America and Australia were accompanied by studio discussions, debating the issues raised in the film. Although distinctly anti-nuclear, the events are shown as being part of a much bigger picture, the lack of preparation and planning by the Government being as damning as the hopeless brinkmanship of the Americans and Russians. Threads was also shown in British schools, both as an example of storytelling and the use of documentary-style filming. Though having been released briefly on two occasions, the use of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” has left licensing rights a huge stumbling block to the definitive release this film deserves.

Daz Lawrence

Good Against Evil is a 1977 American ABC TV movie directed by Paul Wendkos (The Mephisto Waltz) from a screenplay by Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster (Dracula; Paranoiac; Fear in the Night). The film was a pilot for a TV series that was not subsequently commissioned.

Cast: 

Dack Rambo (Nightmare Honeymoon), Elyssa Davalos, Richard Lynch (The Premonition; Puppetmaster III; Halloween (2007)), Dan O’Herlihy (Halloween III), John Harkins (Amityville 3-D), Jenny O’Hara (Wishmaster; The Sacred), Lelia Goldoni (Hysteria; Blood Fiend; Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Peggy McCay (Amityville: The Evil Escapes; An Irish Vampire in Hollywood), Peter Brandon (Altered States), Kim Cattrall (Modern Vampires; Peter Benchley’s Creature), Natasha Ryan (Kingdom of the Spiders; The Amityville Horror; The Entity), Richard Sanders (Lover’s Lane), Lillian Adams (Tormented), Erica Yohn, Richard Stahl (Beware! The Blob).

Plot teaser:

A travel writer, Andy Stuart (Dack Rambo), teams up with an exorcist, Father Kemschler Dan (O’Herlihy), to battle Satan, and a group of Devil worshipers led by Mr. Rimmin (Richard Lynch)…

Buy Good Against Evil + The Severed Arm on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

” … the film’s opening sequence is rather tense, with director Paul Wendkos in full command. The remainder of the movie fluctuates between romantic drama and horror, with the horror used to retain the tension of the beginning. There are some attempts to use cats as a horror element, and these work okay, although the cats are far from cooperative.

The exorcism sequence is done as well as can be expected, although hardcore horror fans will find it lackluster.” Examiner.com

“The thing you’re likely to remember the most about this movie is how relentlessly unoriginal it can be. The opening sequence suddenly turns into the ending of Rosemary’s Baby. Later, a long sequence exhaustively copies the style and content of the exorcism sequence from The Exorcist. Perhaps if a series followed this movie pilot, it would’ve been rip-off of the week.” Jabootu’s Bad Movie Dimension

Buy Good Against Evil on DVD from Amazon.com

“A cat attack, halfway through, is the camp highlight. For quality, you at least get the presence of the underrated Richard Lynch (The Premonition), some decent music and some cute San Francisco locations. The pacing is fairly brisk, especially in the first third.” David Elroy Goldweber, Claws & Saucers

Buy Claws & Saucers book from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Choice dialogue:

“All men are demanding. All men are self-serving. All men are insensitive.”

Amusingly inappropriate Devil Doll DVD artwork for this 1977 TV movie!

IMDb | Image credits: The Dwayger Dungeon

Count Dracula is a British television adaptation of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Produced by the BBC, it first aired on BBC2 on 22 December 1977. It is among the more faithful of the many adaptations of the original book.

Directed by Philip Saville, the 150 minute production stars Louis Jourdan (Fear No Evil; Ritual of Evil; Swamp Thing) as Count Dracula and Frank Finlay (The Deadly Bees; Murder by Decree; Lifeforce) as Van Helsing, plus Susan Penhaligon (House of Mortal Sin), Judi Bowker, Bosco Hogan and Jack Shepherd.

Plot teaser: 

Lucy Westenra’s sister Mina bids farewell to her fiancé Jonathan Harker, who is leaving for a business trip. Harker, a solicitor, is travelling to Count Dracula’s castle in Transylvania to expedite his purchase of Carfax Abbey and other properties in England.

At the door of the castle, Count Dracula himself welcomes Jonathan. Abandoned by superstitious locals, Harker was forced to accept a lift there from an anonymous passing coachman. Jonathan agrees to stay for a month to help the Count with his English. Dracula is urbane and gracious, but also vaguely sinister, and casts no reflection. After a series of disturbing events, Harker explores the castle, finds the Count asleep in a coffin, and tries (ineffectually) to kill him with a shovel…

Buy on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

‘A nice plushy production with much galloping off in all directions and sulphurous smoke effects, a pleasant sensation of space and time and money. Something of a hole in the middle though, like a vampire after remedial treatment.’ Nancy Banks-Smith, The Guardian

‘ …a classic for its concentration on acting and a more literal treatment of the Dracula story. Louis Jourdan turns in a terrific performance as the legendary king of all vampires … Much like the book, the Dracula character is only used sparingly to great effect. The longer running time makes the story feel complete, and the English cast play everything serious and tight.’ Brett Cullum, DVD Verdict

‘ …has a rich gothic drama atmosphere that avoids falling too far towards melodrama. It does fail to be horrific, generally, but when it achieves it, such as with the staking of Lucy, it seems so more effective due to the gentile dramatic quality imbued within the production.’ Taliesin Meets the Vampires

‘ …the most careful adaptation of the novel to date, and the most successful.’ David J. Skal, Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen

Buy Hollywood Gothic from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Cast:

• Louis Jourdan as Count Dracula
• Frank Finlay as Abraham Van Helsing
• Susan Penhaligon as Lucy Westenra
• Judi Bowker as Mina Westenra
• Jack Shepherd as Renfield
• Mark Burns as Dr. John Seward
• Bosco Hogan as Jonathan Harker
• Richard Barnes as Quincey P. Holmwood

Wikipedia | IMDb | Image thanks: Taliesin Meets the Vampires

Dracula on Horrorpedia:

Assignment Terror aka Dracula vs. Frankenstein | Aurora Movie Monsters (model kits) | Batman Fights Dracula | Blood for Dracula | Blood of Dracula’s Castle | Bram Stoker’s Dracula | Count Dracula uses ATM (advert) | Count Dracula’s Deadly Secret (ice lolly) | Count Dracula’s Great Love | Dario Argento’s Dracula | Dracula (1931) | Dracula aka Horror of Dracula (1958) Dracula (2013 TV series) | Dracula A.D. 1972 | Dracula II: Ascension | Dracula 2012 | Dracula 3000 | Dracula and Son | Dracula Blows His Cool | Dracula: Dead and Loving It | Dracula Exotica | Dracula Glow Putty (toy) | Dracula Has Risen from the Grave | Dracula in Istanbul | Dracula in the Provinces | Dracula Lives! (comic) | Dracula Sucks | Dracula: The Dark Prince | Dracula: The Dirty Old Man | Dracula: The Impaler | Dracula: The Undead (video game) | Dracula Untold | Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) | Drak Pack (animated TV series) | Drakula halála | Fangs of Dracula (advertising campaign) | Fresh Garlic: Dracula’s Worst Nightmare (food) | Gallery of Horror | Genuine Soil from Dracula’s Castle (merchandise) | Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? | Hammer Presents Dracula with Christopher Lee (album) | The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Meet Dracula | I Vant to Bite Your Finger: The Dracula Game | Kali: Devil-Bride of Dracula (Hammer projects) | Lady Dracula | The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires | Mego Mad Monsters (toys) | The Monster Squad | Nocturna: Granddaughter of Dracula | The Satanic Rites of Dracula | Scars of Dracula | Son of Dracula (1943) | Son of Dracula (1973) | Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends: The Brides of Dracula! (animated TV episode) | Spider-Woman: Dracula’s Revenge (animated TV episode) | Taste the Blood of Dracula | Tender Dracula | The Batman vs. Dracula (animated) | The Tomb of Dracula (comic) | The Vampire Happening | Vincent Price’s Dracula | X-Men: Apocalypse vs. Dracula | Zoltan… Hound of Dracula

Do You Like Hitchcock? – original title: Ti piace Hitchcock? – is a 2005 Italian television giallo thriller film directed by Dario Argento. It stars Elio Germano, Chiara Conti, Elisabetta Rocchetti, Cristina Brondo and Ivan Morales and features a score by Pino Donaggio (Tourist Trap; Dressed to Kill; The Black Cat).

Plot teaser:

In 1990, as a boy, Giulio was chased through the woods by two women after spying on them practicing witchcraft. Now a young film student in Turin, he watches his neighbors in the flats across from his third floor apartment, especially Sasha when she’s naked or arguing with her mother. Giulio’s girlfriend is disgusted with his voyeurism, but, after a murder occurs, Giulio is convinced that two relative strangers, just as in Hitchcock and Highsmith’s Strangers on a Train, have agreed to murder each other’s bête noir. He follows his suspects, ends up with an intruder and a broken foot, and may be in real danger. Is he more than a peeping Tom?

Aside from Strangers on a Train (1951) and Dial M for Murder (1954), there are several references to Hitchcock films in this movie: the attempt to murder Giulio in the shower is a reference to the famous scene from Psycho (1960), the protagonist’s broken leg and window-peeping are a reference to Rear Window (1954), and the scene on the roof is very similar to the ending of Vertigo (1958).

Buy Do You Like Hitchcock? on DVD from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“Do You Like Hitchcock? is an ambitious attempt by Dario Argento to deconstruct the narrative trappings of the giallo genre and to question the nature of voyeurism. It is, at the same time, a bloody and bare chested romp with plenty of twists. While no way his best work, it is no doubt an interesting little experiment.” Horror Digital

“The scenes that are the most appealing in the film are the ones in which Giulio spies on the various characters who are integral to the murder mystery. It is amazing what Argento is able to achieve when one considers that it was made for television. Overall Do You like Hitchcock? is daring and provocative film that exceeded my expectations.” 10,000 Bullets

“Had Do You Like Hitchcock? carried the name of an unknown director, its reputation would be sturdier, perhaps as something of a minor gem. With Argento at the helm, however, expectations unfairly raise the bar. While there is no way this one can compete on the level of his early works — the so-called “animal trilogy,” in particular — it is a satisfying thriller exuding real love for the movies and the voyeurism they inspire.” Flick Attack

Wikipedia | IMDb

WH

Night Gallery is an American anthology series that aired on NBC from 1970 to 1973, featuring stories of horror and the macabre. Rod Serling, who had gained fame from an earlier series, The Twilight Zone, served both as the on-air host of Night Gallery and as a major contributor of scripts, although he did not have the same control of content and tone as he had on The Twilight Zone. Serling viewed Night Gallery as a logical extension of The Twilight Zone, but while both series shared an interest in thought-provoking dark fantasy, the lion’s share of Zone‘s offerings were science fiction while Night Gallery focused on horror and the supernatural. Serling’s time serving The Twilight Zone came to an acrimonious end in 1964, ultimately selling the rights to the programme to CBS, his creation now riddled with endless outsider tampering, schedule shifts and budget wrangles. Work was never in short supply – he immediately began production on an unconventional Western, The Loner, omitting the usual gunfights and macho posturing in place of more thoughtful character studies. Inevitably, the critics loved it but CBS were unforgiving and the series was cancelled half way through its first run. From here, a less meaningful career as a television game-show host, a popular documentary narrator and writer of television films developed (though a huge ratings-hit, 1966’s The Doomsday Flight unfortunately prompted numerous copycat airline bomb threats). This was punctuated by Serling writing three drafts of the hugely popular Planet of the Apes (1967), though these in turn were re-written to prevent the budget spiralling. Nevertheless, it provided the impetus and the raise in profile for NBC to green-light a TV movie in November 1969, The Night Gallery, which showcased three tales, two of which came from Serling’s own collection, The Season to be Wary. Rather neatly, this saw both the directorial debut of Steven Spielberg (Duel; Jaws) on the episode, Eyes, which also featured the final screen role of acting legend, Joan Crawford (Strait-Jacket); a poignant, yet unintentional, passing of the baton from one master of the art-form to another. Unlike the series, in which the paintings merely accompanied an introduction to the upcoming story, the paintings themselves actually appeared in the three segments, serving major or minor plot functions. It was a success, so a weekly television series was commissioned. Rod Serling’s Night Gallery was initially part of a rotating anthology or wheel series called Four in One. This 1970–71 television series rotated four separate shows, including McCloud, SFX (San Francisco International Airport) and The Psychiatrist. Two of these, Night Gallery and McCloud were renewed for the 1971–72 season with McCloud becoming the most popular and longest running of the four. Serling appeared in an art gallery setting and introduced the macabre tales that made up each episode by unveiling paintings (by artist Thomas J. Wright) that depicted a key scene in the stories.

Buy Rod Serling’s Night Gallery book from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

The hour-long running time allowed for up to four different tales. Typically idiosyncratic introductions included: “Good evening and welcome to a private showing of three paintings, displayed here for the first time. Each is a collector’s item in its own way—not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare”

“Welcome to this morbid mortuary of oddities in oil…” Night Gallery regularly presented adaptations of classic fantasy tales by authors such as H.P. Lovecraft and Fritz Leiber (Conjure Wife), as well as original works, many of which were by Serling himself or that other titan of the twisted tale, Richard Matheson. All was set for another seminal television series but this was never quite the package Twilight Zone was. Weary of the endless tribulations that dealing with the television network brought, he relinquished production and editorial control, under the assumption he would still be consulted over any major changes, given that his name was writ large over the titles. This was not the case and almost immediately episodes were screened with huge chunks omitted and clumsy re-writes evading thoughtful dark meditations in favour of more basic, schlocky scares.

Buy Night Gallery Season One on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

Throughout its existence, the show featured a sparse, eerie electronic theme tune composed by Gil Mellé, a master of catchy atmospherics on both the small and silver screens, from Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Killdozer to Blood Beach and The Sentinel.

Pitted against not only NCB and CBS, Serling was also up against the might of Universal, who handled production. By the series’ second year, Serling was even having his own scripts rejected and was becoming, in their eyes, an annoyance who had already served his purpose and would continue to do so until the series was cancelled in 1973, his name bound up in the rights with no means of escape. Despite the fluctuating quality, there were still many stand-out episodes and a raft of famous stars making appearances. These included such genre stars as E.G. Marshall (Creepshow); Vincent Price (Witchfinder General; The Abominable Dr. Phibes); Victor Buono (The Mad Butcher; The Evil), Cameron Mitchell (Blood and Black Lace; The Toolbox Murders) and Michael Dunn (The Mutations; Werewolf of Washington).

Memorable episodes included: The Pickman’s Model – H.P. Lovecraft’s classic tale of a painter who is dedicated to painting only what he sees – but how does that explain the ghoulish subjects of his artwork? A Certain Shadow on the Wall – Written by Serling, as if the title didn’t give that away, Agnes Moorhead (The Bat), in one of her final screen roles, plays an elderly lady who proves more than a little difficult to forget. The Devil is not Mocked – Francis Lederer (The Return of Dracula) play a vampiric count whose castle is invaded by Nazi soldiers in World War Two. Written by Manly Wade Wellman, the veteran writer of such pulp tomes as Weird Tales and Astounding Stories. The Caterpillar – Possibly the most beloved of all the stories, a man is determined to win the hand of his best friend’s girl, even if it takes murder… even if that murder takes a small garden creepy crawly to do the dastardly deed. As you might expect, Tom Wright’s paintings which are featured in the series now attract impressive sums of money at auction, often commanding up to $10,000. Wright himself became a successful director of television programmes, including The X-Files and The Wire. Daz Lawrence

Buy Night Gallery Complete Series on DVD from Amazon.com

Buy Terror Television book from Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Buy Night Gallery by Rod Serling from Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com

Montague “Monty” Rhodes James OM, MA, FBA (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936), who used the publication name M. R. James, was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King’s College, Cambridge (1905–18), and of Eton College (1918–36).

Though James’s work as a medievalist is still highly regarded, he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are considered as among the best in the genre. James redefined the ghost story for the new century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James’s protagonists and plots tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests. Accordingly, he is known as the originator of the “antiquarian ghost story”.

James was born in Goodnestone Parsonage, near Dover in Kent, England, although his parents had associations with Aldeburgh in Suffolk. His father was Herbert James, an Evangelical Anglican clergyman, and his mother, Mary Emily (née Horton), was the daughter of a naval officer. From the age of three (1865) until 1909 James’s home, if not always his residence, was at the Rectory in Great Livermere, Suffolk. Several of James’s ghost stories are set in Suffolk, including Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad (Felixstowe), A Warning to the Curious (Aldeburgh), Rats and A Vignette (Great Livermere).

In September 1873 he arrived as a boarder at Temple Grove School, one of the leading boys’ preparatory schools of the day. He eventually settled in Cambridge, first as an undergraduate, then as a don and provost, at King’s College, Cambridge, where he was also a member of the Pitt Club. The university provides settings for several of his tales and its insular world informs many of the often drifting souls he characterises. Apart from medieval subjects, James studied the classics and appeared very successfully in a staging of Aristophanes’ play The Birds, with music by Hubert Parry.

His academic career saw him cataloguing and translating many medieval works, the hidden texts and found knowledge echoing several of his published fiction work, as well as being very highly regarded by his academic contemporaries. He later became a director of Cambridge’s Fitzwilliam Museum before seeing out his final years as Provost of Eton College, the town where he is now buried. As with his time in Suffolk, his Cambridge surroundings, especially those within University walls, are featured in several of his tales; A School Story, Temple Grove, East Sheen and A Tractate Middoth.

Many of James’s ghost stories were written for public performance, specifically for reading to a small group of assembled friends (and occasionally, choirboys) as part of spirit-fuelled polite revelry on Christmas Eve in his private quarters at the University. Such precise and well-orchestrated behaviour is a reminder of the very Victorian quality of James’s writing, and he as a person – it was also an excuse to display his acting skills, as well as to assert his dominance in an environment of constant one-upmanship.

From his own recollection, his first written and published ghost story was Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook, which appeared in National Review magazine in 1894, with Lost Hearts appearing in Pall Mall magazine the following year. These, plus a further six tales were collected into one volume, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary in 1904:

• “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book”
• “Lost Hearts”
• “The Mezzotint”
• “The Ash-tree”
• ” Number 13″
• “Count Magnus”
• “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad””
• “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas”

The first edition of this collection featured four atmospheric illustrations by James McBryde, a friend of James’ and one of the few who were present at the stories first Christmas readings. It was intended that McBryde would provide illustrations for each featured story but his premature death meant only four were completed. A distraught James, whom, it is said, harboured romantic feelings towards his friend, refused to allow the publisher to use images supplied by anyone else to complete the unfinished work.

The success of this volume led to three further collections:

More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911)
• “A School Story”
• ” The Rose Garden”
• “The Tractate Middoth”
• “Casting the Runes”
• “The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral”
• “Martin’s Close”
• “Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance”

A Thin Ghost and Others (1919)
• “The Residence at Whitminster”
• “The Diary of Mr Poynter”
• “An Episode of Cathedral History”
• “The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance”
• “Two Doctors”

A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925)

• “The Haunted Dolls’ House”
• “The Uncommon Prayer-Book”
• “A Neighbour’s Landmark”
• “A View from a Hill”
• “A Warning to the Curious”
• “An Evening’s Entertainment”

Despite the subjects of his stories, James claimed neither to have any real belief in ghosts or the supernatural, nor to have witnessed anything himself which could not be rationally explained. Although operating in an era when literature had several of the great practitioners in full effect, notably, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, James honed both a style and structure which were distinct and memorable. Relying on neither the actions of wicked, misguided individuals (much of Poe) nor the unimaginable horrors of Lovecraft, James wrote of unassuming (if, often, well-to-do) individuals who by circumstance found themselves the victim of restless spirits, none of whom were in the least welcoming or benign.

The classic Jamesian tale usually includes the following elements:

• A characterful setting in an English village, seaside town or country estate; an ancient town in France, Denmark or Sweden; or a venerable abbey or university
• A nondescript and rather naive gentleman-scholar as protagonist (often of a reserved nature). Few women appear in his tales, romance even less.
• The discovery of an old book or other antiquarian object that somehow unlocks, calls down the wrath, or at least attracts the unwelcome attention of a supernatural menace, usually from beyond the grave
• A mundane, contented life disturbed by an initially innocuous presence or occurrence, leading to a more malignant force.

Analysts have suggested that James’s sexuality and his inability to come to terms with it leant a detached malaise to his tales; a lack of, or even fear, of human contact quite a noticeable theme. Whilst this is possible, what is undeniable is the influence of Sheridan Le Fanu’s writing, which James was never slow in praising.

On the other side of the coin, James himself was no stranger to praise from high places. Foremost of these was H.P. Lovecraft, saving significant reverence for James in his extended essay, Supernatural Horror in Literature, first published in 1927. He also wrote:

“M.R. James joins the brisk, the light, & the commonplace to the weird about as well as anyone could do it—but if another tried the same method, the chances would be ten to one against him. The most valuable element in him—as a model—is his way of weaving a horror into the every-day fabric of life and history—having it grow naturally out of the myriad conditions of an ordinary environment…”

Other admirers of his work include Sir John Betjeman, Paul Theroux, Ruth Rendell and horror fiction heavyweights, Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell. More keenly, Kingsley Amis used James’s signature motifs for one of his most famous works, The Green Man. James’s character-led tales have made them ideal for television and film adaptation.

Buy Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories from Amazon.co.uk

Television:

1951 – Lights Out – “The Lost Will of Dr. Rant”. A clear adaptation of The Tractate Middoth, starring Leslie Nielsen
1966-1968 – Four teleplays were broadcast on ITV in the UK, all of which are now considered lost in their entirety.
1968 – Whistle and I’ll Come to You – perhaps the most famous TV adaptation of them all, directed by Jonathan Miller for the BBC

Buy on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

1971 – The Stalls of Barchester. From 1971, in a tradition James would most certainly approve, each Christmas saw a James tale dramatised, each directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark.

1972 – A Warning to the Curious

1973 – Lost Hearts

1974 – Treasure of Abbot Thomas

1975 – The Ash Tree

1976 – The Signalman

1977 – Stigma
1979 – Casting the Runes. Clark again, this time for ITV.

Buy Casting the Runes on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

1980 – A slightly more grown-up version of Jackanory, Spinechillers, saw three James tales read by Michael Bryant (The Stone Tape); The Mezzotint, The Diary of Mr Poynter and A School Story

1986 – Robert Powell’s partially dramatised readings of The Mezzotint, The Ash-Tree, Wailing Well, Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad and The Rose Garden were screened on BBC2 for an even older audience.
2000 – Christopher Lee took the reading reins for another series of James re-tellings, this time in front of a roaring fire with a suitably-attired small audience. These are still regularly screened around Christmas time. With Lee playing the role of James reading his own stories, the 30 minute episodes produced by the BBC include The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral, The Ash-tree, Number 13 and A Warning to the Curious

2005 – BBC4 screened updated adaptations of both A View From a Hill and Number 13
2010 – A new version of Whistle and I’ll Come to You was developed for broadcast around Christmas. Starring John Hurt (Alien), most consider it massively inferior the Miller’s earlier film, which starred Michael Hordern in the same role.

2013 – Horror fan and writer Mark Gatiss directed The Tractate Middoth, up-keeping a Christmas tradition now eagerly anticipated.

Film:

1957 – Night of the Demon (aka Curse of the Demon). Jacques Tourneur’s masterful adaptation of Casting the Runes.

Buy Night of the Demon on DVD from Amazon.co.uk

1989 – The Church (La Chiesa). Michele Soavi’s film, co-written with Dario Argento but taking significant influence from The Treasure of Abbot Thomas.

Buy The Church on DVD from Amazon.com

Forthcoming – Joe Dante has been linked with a new adaptation of Casting the Runes for several years, having already adopted the Jamesian curse for his 2009 film, Drag Me To Hell

Radio:

The performed origins and suggestive scares have made James’s work some of the most performed horror on radio.

1947 – CBS Radio – Escape – Casting the Runes
1973 – BBC Radio 3 – Lost Hearts, read by Bernard Cribbins (Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.)
1974 – CBS Radio – This Will Kill You – Casting the Runes, starring E.G. Marshall
1981 – BBC Radio 4 – The Hex – Casting the Runes, starring Conrad Phillips (Circus of Horrors)
1997–1998 – Radio 4 broadcast The Late Book: Ghost Stories, a series of 15-minute readings of M. R. James stories, abridged and produced by Paul Kent and narrated by Benjamin Whitrow (repeated on BBC 7, December 2003–January 2004, September–October 2004, February 2007, October–November 2011). The stories were Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book, Lost Hearts, A School Story, The Haunted Dolls’ House and Rats.
1982-92 – A series of four double audio cassettes was released by Argo Records, featuring nineteen unabridged James stories narrated by Michael Hordern. The tapes were titled Ghost Stories (1982), More Ghost Stories (1984), A Warning to the Curious (1985) and No. 13 and Other Ghost Stories (1988).

ISIS Audio Books also released two collections of unabridged James stories, this time narrated by Nigel Lambert. These tapes were titled A Warning to the Curious and Other Tales (four audio cassettes, six stories, March 1992) and Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (three audio cassettes, eight stories, December 1992).

2007 – Tales of the Supernatural, Volume One, an audiobook presentation by Fantom Films, featuring the James stories Lost Hearts read by Geoffrey Bayldon (Tales From the Crypt, Frankenstein Must be Destroyed), Rats and Number 13 by Ian Fairbairn, with Gareth David-Lloyd reading Casting the Runes and There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard.
2007 – Radio 4 – The tradition of James’s ghost stories for the festive period returned once more, with a series of adaptations of his most popular tales. Each lasted around 15 minutes and was introduced by Derek Jacobi (The Medusa Touch) as James himself. Due to the short running times the tales were fairly rushed, with much of the stories condensed or removed. Stories adapted included Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad, Number 13 and Lost Hearts.

2007 – A Warning to the Furious. Forty-five minute play, written by Robin Brooks, concerning a film-making team setting out to make a documentary about MRJ on the Suffolk coast.
A series of seven tales billed as Doug Bradley’s Spinechillers were released as audio downloads, read by Pinhead himself

Spinechillers

Comics:

Anna Sahrling-Hamm – Hearts/Wailing Well. Online adaptations

Scott Hampton – Spookhouse Volume One. A compendium of tales, also featuring W.W. Jacobs Monkey’s Paw, James’s The Mezzotint is included.

Kelley Jones – Eerie – Volume 6, 2014 – The Ash Tree

Daz Lawrence

‘Pray he’s not hungry’

Monsterwolf, also known as Monster Wolf, is a 2010 American Syfy television supernatural horror film directed by Todor Chapkanov (Copperhead; Ghost Town; True Bloodthirst; Asylum) from a screenplay by Charles Bolon (Swamp Shark).

Busy actor Griff Furst is the also the director of Lake Placid 3; Swamp Shark; Arachnoquake; Ghost Shark and Ragin’ Cajun Redneck Gators

Main cast:

Leonor Varela (Blade II), Robert Picardo (The Howling; Munchies; Gremlins 2), Marc Macaulay (All Saint’s Eve), Steve Reevis, Jason London (Dracula III: The Legacy; Snow Beast; Zombie Shark), Jon Eyez, Griff Furst, Ricky Wayne, Nicole Barré, Amber Bartlett.

Buy for £2.99 on Amazon.co.uk

Plot:

A group of people who represent an oil company find a new place to drill in Louisiana. However, when they set off an explosion, it unleashes a wolf-like creature that kills all the workers…

Buy: Amazon.com

Reviews:

A reasonable cast, elevated by Robert Picardo’s seething portrayal of a stop-at-nothing oil company villain (and he knows something about evil werewolves as he was Eddie Quist in the original The Howling!) struggle with the kind of clichéd depictions of small town rednecks, displaced loyalties and Native American supernatural legends we have all seen so many times before.

The Monsterwolf itself is one of the worst CGI abominations to grace even a Syfy movie but at least the editing and action is swift during the attack scenes and if you expect nothing more than a mindless time-filler (though it was part of the channel’s 2010 Halloween highlights!) then you could do worse. And it’s a very cheap beast on disc if you miss catching it on TV.

Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia

“Wolf attacks are presented with flashy editing that allows for better use of practical monster prosthetics, though there are too many instances of spotty computer effects to dampen the effectiveness of certain moments.” Dread Central

Trailer:

Wikipedia | IMDb | Facebook | Twitter

Amityville: The Evil Escapes is a 1989 American television supernatural horror film produced by NBC. It was written and directed by Sandor Stern (Pin) from a novel by John G. Jones.

Stern previously wrote the supernatural possessed house TV movie The Strange and Deadly Occurrence (1974) and the original Amityville Horror film (1979) that began the series.

The film is also known as The Amityville Horror: The Evil Escapes and Amityville 4: The Evil Escapes.

Main cast:

Patty Duke (Night Gallery: “The Diary”; She Waits; Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby; The Swarm), Jane Wyatt, Fredric Lehne, Lou Hancock, Brandy Gold.

Plot:

A stormy night at the infamous Amityville house: Six priests, led by Father Manfred (Norman Lloyd) start to exorcise it. Father Dennis Kibbler (Fredric Lehne) is in an upstairs bedroom and begins to bless it when he sees a glowing brass floor lamp.

A burst of energy emerges from the outlet, through the cord, and into the lamp sending the priest flying.

A demonic face appears in the large round bulb…

A few days later, Father Manfred believes that the evil spirits are finally left the house and the real estate agency decides to have a yard sale. Helen Royce (Peggy McCay) comes across the lamp and buys it for $100. She sends it to her sister as a birthday present, explaining that ugly gifts are a running joke. While checking the lamp, Helen cuts her finger. As the day goes on, Helen’s finger begins to get infected and discoloured.

A week later, the lamp arrives at Helen’s sister, Alice Leacock’s (Jane Wyatt) house, in a small Californian town called Dancott…

Buy: Amazon.co.uk

Reviews:

“… Jane Wyatt’s household is terrorized by all the horror clichés from the previous Amityville entries. Patty Duke looks totally lost as she joins with priest Frederic Lehne to fight the wicked lamp.” John Stanley, Creature Features

“What’s most interesting here is that… well… this TV Movie doesn’t suck NEARLY as much as it could (and possibly should) have. Let’s face it, in spite of its name-recognition and longevity, the Amityville Series isn’t exactly a saga packed with great films. It’s hard to believe that the fourth in the series (and a made-for-TV-movie at that) would be more logical and better-made than the theatrical releases that preceded it.” World’s Greatest Critic

“Many of the scares have to do with other appliances – such as tea kettles to chainsaws and disposals – that turn themselves on. Stars Patty Duke and Jane Wyatt are spared the most embarrassing moments.” Mike Mayo, Videohound’s Horror Show

“But it’s not too boring, which I had feared, since the Amityville films aren’t known for their body counts (and, as I mentioned, the villain is a friggin lamp). Stern (or novelist John G. Jones) at least had the good sense to add a whole bunch of peripheral characters to the movie, since Duke and her 3 adolescent children certainly wouldn’t be killed (Wyatt was fair game though).” Horror Movie a Day

Buy: Amazon.com

Release:

In the US, the film was released on home video by Vidmark Entertainment, then released on DVD twice by Allumination Filmworks in 2003 and 2007.

Cast and characters:

• Patty Duke as Nancy Evans
• Jane Wyatt as Alice Leacock
• Fredric Lehne as Father Kibbler
• Lou Hancock as Peggy
• Brandy Gold as Jessica Evans
• Zoe Trilling as Amanda Evans (as Geri Betzler)
• Aron Eisenberg as Brian Evans
• Norman Lloyd as Father Manfred
• Robert Alan Browne as Donald McTear
• Gloria Cromwell as Rhona
• James Stern as Danny Read
• Peggy McCay as Helen Royce

Trailer:

Wikipedia | IMDb

Posted in tribute to actress Patty Duke who died March 29, 2016.

‘Join Vincent Price on a suspense-filled journey to the supernatural!’

Escapes is a 1986 American fantasy horror film made for TV. It was written, produced and directed by David Steensland. The ‘film’ is actually an edited together anthology of six supernatural video shorts, each originally produced separately and shown on HBO and the Sci-Fi Channel: “Something’s Fishy,” “Coffee Break,” “Who’s There,” “Jonah’s Dream,” and “Think Twice.”

Wraparound footage of Vincent Price, who allegedly received $10,000 for a few minutes of work, was later added to link the individual tales together to provide an overall running time of 69 minutes. A “director’s cut’ with sixteen extra minutes was also released on VHS.

Buy VHS: Amazon.com

Reviews:

“Young Matthew (Todd Fulton) receives a mysterious videotape in the mail titled, you guessed it, Escapes. Hey, it stars Vincent Price, he figures, so how bad can it possibly be? As it turns out, pretty damn bad.” The Bloody Pit of Horror

“I can’t fault Vincent Price for anything, as he’s on screen for a grand total of maybe four minutes, but if he hadn’t been it at all, I would definitely not have suffered through till the end. There is no violence or gore, no outright scares, weak scripts, a pitiful budget, etc.” Satanic Pandemonium

“Overall, this anthology is more tame than the entire series of Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark and possesses even less creative storytelling. If you pass this one over, you’re not missing much, but if you’re an anthology buff, you may want to suffer through it.” Hollie Horror, Letterboxd

“Five stories in the tradition of The Twilight Zone but not as satisfying.” John Stanley, Creature Features

“The end concept is copied from Dead of Night … Price wasn’t choosing his projects with much care at this point.” Michael J. Weldon, The Psychotronic Video Guide

Whole film:

IMDb | Image credits: Video Wasteland

Trilogy of Terror II is a 1996 American horror anthology made-for-cable film, a sequel to the 1975 television film, Trilogy of Terror, both directed by Dan Curtis.

The film was co-written by Curtis and William F. Nolan (The Norliss Tapes; The Turn of the Screw; Burnt Offerings) except for ‘Bobby’ which was scripted by Richard Matheson.

The sequel follows the formula of the original, with one female lead, in this case British-born Lysette Anthony (Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde; Dracula: Dead and Loving It; Tale of the Mummy, playing parts in each of three segments – Karen Black starred in the original 1975 movie.

This first story is based on Henry Kuttner‘s eponymous short story, albeit considerably altered.

The third segment, about the Zuni fetish doll, is a direct sequel to the third segment of the original Trilogy of Terror, “Amelia”.

The Graveyard Rats:

A wealthy man by the name of Ansford (Matt Clark) discovers his young wife Laura (Lysette Anthony) having an affair with her cousin. Having video proof of the pair having sex he threatens Laura to be faithful or he will turn the video over to the news stations and cut her out of his multimillion-dollar will.

Meanwhile, her lover Ben (Geraint Wyn Davies) comes up with the idea to murder Ansford and collect all his money. After Ansford is pushed down the stairs and killed, Laura and Ben are more than happy to collect their winnings, however all doesn’t go as planned…

Bobby:

It has been some time since Bobby “accidentally” drowned, leaving his mother Alma (Lysette Anthony) depressed and guilty. However, while her husband is away on business, she determines to raise her son from the dead.

Armed with a magic book and a “Key of Solomon” (in this case, a talisman rather than a book), she conjures dark forces to bring her son back. Before going to bed, a vicious thunderstorm approaches the luxurious beach mansion. Hearing a knock, she opens the door to discover her son…

He Who Kills:

After finding the double homicide of Amelia and her mother from the first movie with the Zuni Doll at the scene, the local police drop off the doll to local Dr. Simpson (Lysette Anthony). As she begins to examine the doll she learns that the doll comes to life when a gold chain is removed from his neck and that the Zuni Doll has a desire for flesh. It also seems to regenerate (the idea itself initially laughable to both Dr. Simpson and her assistant) as when she chips away the charred wood, the Zuni Doll seems to be brand new…

Reviews:

“Anderson might not be an icon in the vein of Black and far from an actress many could identify by name, but she performs adequately here … It’s of far lower budget than the original Trilogy of Terror, but its commitment to understatement is its greatest asset.” Alan Vallows-Dancy, 2 or 3 Things I Know About Film

“Lysette Anthony is a spirited protagonist in all three three. Curtis directs with an appreciation for the material. Forget the self-consciousness of Scream. These are unashamedly old-fashioned stories meant to frighten. Turn out the lights and enjoy.” Mike Mayo, The Horror Show Guide

Buy: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.ca

” … it’s hard to judge Anthony in comparison to Karen Black, if only because the former isn’t given much of a chance to exhibit all that much range. She’s either terrified and frantic or conniving and deceitful, and this hardly feels like a showcase for her. Instead, Trilogy of Terror II just feels like a quick way to cash in on a well-known property…” Brett Gallman, Oh, the Horror!

“I actually prefer Trilogy of Terror II over the original. It’s far more even in quality and more entertaining on repeat viewings (whereas the first two segments from the original film are a chore to sit through a second time).” Mark Pellegrini, Adventures in Poor Taste

“This is a solid sequel … Curtis revitalizes the formula with three new horror yarns all starring Lysette Anthony, a gifted actress who carries all the mini-chillers successfully … Definitely a keeper.” John Stanley, Creature Features

Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca

Cast and characters:

• Lysette Anthony as Laura, Alma, and Dr. Simpson
• Geraint Wyn Davies as Ben (also in American Psycho 2; Cube 2)
• Matt Clark as Ansford (also in The Horror Show; Candyman 2)
• Geoffrey Lewis as Stubbs (also in Moon of the Wolf; Salem’s Lot; Human Experiments; The Devil’s Rejects; Wicked Little Things aka Zombies)
• Blake Heron as Bobby
• Richard Fitzpatrick as Jerry O’Farrell
• Thomas Mitchell as Lew
• Gerry Quigley as Akers
• Dennis O’Connor as Brig
• John McMahon as Taylor
• Alan Bridle as The Minister
• Brittaney Bennett as The Waitress
• Norm Spencer as Officer #1
• Bruce McFee as Officer #2
• Joe Gieb as The Dwarf Bobby
• Alex Carter as Breslow
• Philip Williams as Pete
• Tom Melissis as Rothstein
• Aron Tager as Steve
• Durward Allen as Spaulding
• Peter Keleghan as Dennis

Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | Amazon.ca

Choice dialogue:

Ansford: “Ew, this is going to be fun. Watching you attempt to cool off those hot little panties of yours.”

Alma: “If your father could see us eating tuna fish, at this hour!”

Wikipedia | IMDb

Dr. Strange is a 1978 supernatural fantasy television film based on the Marvel Comics fictional character of the same name, created by Steve Ditko. It was written and directed by Philip DeGuere. Stan Lee served as a consultant on the film, which was created as a pilot for a proposed TV series.

Plot:

Hell: The Nameless One (David Hooks) discusses with Morgan le Fay (Jessica Walter) her failure to overcome a wizard to allow the demon access to our world.

The demon tells le Fay that the wizard is now old and weak, and must transfer his position and powers to his successor. Le Fay has three days either to defeat the wizard or kill his successor. That successor is psychiatrist Dr. Stephen Strange (Peter Hooten)…

Review:

To many, this production of Dr. Strange is the lop-headed child of too-closely related parents, superheroes and horror. The anomalous offspring (now, ironically, the progenitor) is usually thought of as a failure because of the hesitance over this perceived muddled lineage and befuddled critics offering up little more than foamy quips in place of real scrutiny. A closer viewing of the telefilm, however, highlights the competence, earnestness, and (in some cases) elevated skill that went into its making.

This odd film was born into a heady stew of recently prioritised metropolitan realism (due to the “Great TV Rural Purge” earlier in the decade), occult detectives pursuing the latest ghoul of the week, and CBS’s whiplash embracing of four-color mayhem. In September of 1977, the network not only launched The Amazing Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk, but felt so strongly about the genre, they took over production of ABC’s live-action cartoon, Wonder Woman. Their relative success with these programs encouraged the network to take a massive leap sideways into a netherworld of supernatural heroics with the release of this satisfactory, if not luminous, production.

For Dr. Strange‘s musical score, Paul Chihara (Death Race 2000; Death Moon), displays his impeccable skill at setting psychological place through mood; he starts the film off with the right touch of unease, his music exploding to life with grinding, metallic notes plucked from an electronic instrument preposterously named the “Blaster Beam” (later used by Jerry Goldsmith for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and by Chihara’s student, James Horner, in several of his scores); at the opening, a blood-red text appears over a blackened screen, accompanied by shivering violins and subtle brass undertones which well up underneath the repeated molten electronic accents of the aforementioned Blaster Beam; sprinkled after slower scenes, Chihara wisely uses this disquieting motif throughout the rest of the film in order to revive a regularly lost tension.

The chilly opening text admirably opens up the otherworldly plot of the movie, referring forebodingly to the “known” and “unknown,” the battle between good and evil taking place “beyond the threshold” that separates the two, and how certain people through time are called on to take part in that battle; in this case, that certain someone is, of course, Dr. Stephen Strange (played sincerely by Peter Hooten).

After the opening credit sequences, which are eerily enriched by ominous shots of burning candles, occult iconography, and faux grimoires, the film opens up onto an infernal region of cosmic vistas, deep shadows, and blood-red landscapes.

In workmanlike fashion, the rest of the plot is fleshed out as council between a chesty Morgan La Fey (portrayed with gusto by the always admirable Jessica Walter) and what appears to be a very large, very moist demon created by the special effects team of Thomas J. Wright (a prolific TV hired gun, directing several episodes of NCIS, Castle, and Supernatural) and Mark Wolf; with the exception of an odd trapdoor mouth, the demon is convincing, yet wisely obscured by clouds of billowing smoke.

La Fey is charged by the demon with eliminating his centuries-old enemy, sorcerer Thomas Lindmer (imbued with appropriate weariness by John Mills, probably best known to genre fans as the titular character in ITV’s Quatermass, 1979), and his successor, Dr. Strange, identifiable by a ring he wears displaying the ancient symbol of light.

Art director William Tuntke applies skills developed on such films The Andromeda Strain (1971) to ambitiously depict this dark realm “beyond the threshold”; in a Baroque attempt to elevate a subdued script, he expertly uses free-floating planetoids, star clusters, gaseous landscapes, and canal-lined, bloated orbs to deliver a wonderfully dark, empyreal world which is obviously an attempt to pay homage more to the 1974 Frank Brunner comic book run than to Dr. Strange creator Steve Ditko’s original material.

Equally impressive is Tuntke’s inspired vision, in the following scene, of the elder wizard’s Sanctum Sanctorum; claustrophobic and subterranean in feel, the sanctum is composed of a tangle of cramped and stuccoed passageways linking Hobbity chambers which are archaically cluttered with set decorator Marc E. Meyer, Jr’s inspired choice of antiquarian bric-a-brac and Yarek Alfer’s emulated occult props; such design also smartly points up the symbolism of the dwelling as a desiccated heart in hibernation, waiting for the new blood of new sorcerer, Stephen Strange, to bring it back to life.

Lindmer tasks his assistant Wong (executed with subtle aplomb by Clyde Kusatsu) with finding Strange and prepping him for the forthcoming battle against La Fey. Shortly after, the battle begins in earnest when La Fey takes possession of Clea Lake (played thoughtfully by Eddie Benton aka Anne-Marie Martin) and uses her to attack Lindmer. The attack fails, but sets up the expected thrusts and parries that draw the film to its anticipated conclusion.

Although dominated by traditional two-shots and close-ups, the cinematography by Enzo Martinelli (The Sixth Sense, 1972) is nicely enhanced by high-angle shots in Lindmer’s sanctum, and cleverly used bridging shots of the sun, fire, and candles, playing up the symbolism of light that runs throughout the film; to maintain momentum, several tracking shots are effectively used, and moodiness is bolstered through murky darks and ominous establishing shots. However, a few low-angle shots, pans, subtle tilts, and the occasional hand-held, over-the-shoulder shots could have drastically bumped up the unease quite a bit.

Though a respectable and enjoyable production, it does have its drawbacks, most notably in fledgling writer/director Philip DeGuere’s earnest, but wobbly, attempt at counterpoint; it shows the uncertain hand of an inexperienced director being overwhelmed by the necessity of telling a linear narrative while, at the same time, having to create the oblique sense of disquiet that supernatural horror requires. In his attempt to make the unreal seem more concrete, he made the narrative stronger in the occult sequences, and the more mundane settings of the normal world are infused with opaque disjointedness, as if strangeness were breaking through into reality. This only results in a muting of the whole affair and a dampening of the already limp suspense.

This early experiment in cross-genre pollination is well worth anyone’s time, especially when compared to similar, weaker entries from the same time period.

Review by Ben Spurling

Cast and characters:

• Peter Hooten as Dr. Stephen Strange
• Clyde Kusatsu as Wong
• Jessica Walter as Morgan Le Fay
• Anne-Marie Martin (credited as “Eddie Benton”) as Clea Lake
• Philip Sterling as Dr. Frank Taylor
• John Mills as Thomas Lindmer
• June Barrett as Sarah
• Sarah Rush as Nurse
• Diana Webster as Head Nurse
• Bob Delegall as Intern
• Larry Anderson as Magician
• Blake Marion as Department Chief
• Lady Rowlands as Mrs. Sullivan
• Inez Pedroza as Announcer
• Michael Clark as Taxi Driver
• Frank Catalano as Orderly
• Michael Ansara as Ancient One (voice, uncredited)
• Ted Cassidy as Demon Balzaroth (voice, uncredited)
• David Hooks as The Nameless One (uncredited)

Choice dialogue:

Dr. Strange: “You haven’t seen my face, it makes this look like Heaven.”

Release:

The film was released twice on VHS in the United States, in 1987 and 1995, and also had multiple foreign releases. As of June 2016, the film has not been officially released on DVD.

Wikipedia | IMDb

Daughter of the Mind is a made-for-television American horror suspense film directed by Walter Grauman (Are You in the House Alone?; Crowhaven Farm) from a screenplay by Luther Davis (Arsenic and Old Lace; Lady in a Cage).

The film was first broadcast on ABC on December 9, 1969 as the ABC Movie of the Week. It has never been released officially on VHS or DVD, although a number of pirate versions have circulated over the years.

Main cast:

Don Murray (The Stepford Children; Conquest of the Planet of the Apes), Ray Milland, Gene Tierney, Edward Asner and Pamelyn Ferdin (The Toolbox Murders).

Plot:

At the request of a colleague (George Macready), psychologist and ESP researcher Alex Lauder (Don Murray) investigates leading cybernetic expert Dr. Samuel Constable’s report that he has seen and spoken with his young daughter, Mary (Pamelyn Ferdin) — who died thirteen weeks previously. Keeping an open mind, Lauder decides to take the case and see wherever it may lead…

Review:

Daughter of the Mind, based on Paul Gallico’s 1964 novel, The Hand of Mary Constable, is not only one of the earliest offerings from the classic ABC Movie of the Week program, but it’s also one of the earliest made-for-TV examples of what has become a pop-culture stalwart: the “scientific” paranormal investigator. ABC was beaten to that conceptual punch, though, when NBC aired only ten months before, in March of 1969, Fear No Evil, starring Louis Jourdan as Dr. David Sorell, a psychiatrist turned occult researcher.

However, where the Jourdan vehicle spawned a sequel, Daughter of the Mind did not; but, unlike Fear No Evil, this ABC production became part of a more enduring TV legacy by prepping the network’s viewers for a more abiding supernatural detective legacy.

Ray Milland guest stars as Samuel Constable, the cyber expert whose work is being syphoned off by the military for use in weapons development; only weeks before, his daughter, Mary (Pamelyn Ferdin), died in a car accident, leaving Samuel distraught, confused, and easily manipulated. Looking for answers, Dr. Frank Ferguson (George Macready), a friend of Constable’s, asks for the assistance of his colleague in paranormal investigation, Dr. Alex Lauder (Don Murray), who occupies virtually the same fictional space as Dr., Sorell from Fear No Evil. Lauder arrives at Constable’s house asking questions of the occupants and gently probing for possible material explanations of the supernatural events while engaging in tempered debate over the origin and legitimacy of paranormal experiences.

Though relatively open-minded on the subject, Dr. Lauder comes off as a more determined skeptic than other occult researches of the time; his focus is objectivity, his goal is the truth, regardless of where that leads, and he won’t stop his line of materialist inquiry until a detached conclusion has been reached, all of which gives him a slightly more scrupulous persona than his later heirs tend to have.

His skepticism becomes bruised, however, when he hears Mary’s voice and sees her ghostly image for himself while staying at Constable’s house for investigative purposes. After Constable is awakened in the middle of the night by Mary’s plaintive calls, Constable arouses Lauder via radio, telling him that his daughter is back and calling for him again; in the deeply shadowed hallway, they hear her voice, but this time it’s coming from the room Constable’s wife, Lenore (Gene Tierney), used for sculpting before her hands became too arthritic for such work. Once inside, they watch Mary’s floating image as she tells Constable that an unnamed “they” on the other side say that his “war work” is wrong, and “they” won’t let her come back to visit him if he doesn’t stop. Both Constable and Lauder are speechless as she gives them this oddly pacifist warning before vanishing.

It’s at this point that the viewer begins to feel a twinge of the inauthentic; are we being played? Is all this being staged, perhaps by Lenore who may want Constable to end his work and pay more attention to her? Later on, more encounters follow, sprinkled in between scenes involving cold war machinations associated with near nervous breakdowns, Lauder’s race to discover what’s really going on, and more claims from an apparitional Mary that the mysterious “they” on the other side desperately want her daddy to stop all this “war work”.

Cinematographer, Jack Woolf, expertly keeps the visuals murky and the shadows ubiquitous, and, at times, even partially shades the actor’s faces; this reinforces the mysterious tone of the film, causing the viewer to subconsciously wonder whether all of this ghost talk is legit or not while simultaneously experiencing a distinct chill factor.

Director Walter Grauman, no slouch when it comes to high-quality TV production, turns in a fine directorial effort once again, pulling out a nice, even pacing and competent performances from the cast, especially the two leads, Don Murray, who’s character exudes soft edges but an uncompromising mind, and Ray Milland, who brings his lifetime of solid acting experience into a role that could have easily been clunky; Milland’s sincere delivery of lines about an alligator, a teddy bear, a turkey, and a stuffed squirrel are emotionally real and earnest without being cloying and silly. Pamelyn Ferdin’s turn as Mary Constable is natural and heart-felt, expressing a longing and sadness one would expect from a forlorn ghost, although Milland does seem to be a bit too old to be her father.

Luther Davis, another highly capable and long-standing hand in the entertainment business, contributes a thoroughly solid script based on Gallico’s book. While the plot from the novel is necessarily truncated, Davis gives the characters enough room to breathe while keeping the uncertainty prominent, the tension building, and the unease prevalent.

The one let-down of the film is the ending; while satisfying for some who don’t buy into the creep-factor and like their ghost stories nicely cleaned-up and put to bed at the end, it winds up being a major disappointment for those who prefer their paranormal investigations with a little more shivery bite. Fortunately, it’s worth it to ignore the finale as if it never happened, and enjoy the rest of the movie for the top-notch genre entertainment that it is.

Ben Spurling, Horrorpedia.com

Other reviews:

“On its somewhat flat made-for-TV surface, Daughter of the Mind is simply a cold war mystery with a paranormal twist but Ray Milland’s sensitive portrayal of a grieving parent gives it an unexpected poignancy. At one point Tierney’s character describes her husband as a man who “wants so badly for the dead not to be dead” and over the course of the film you become keenly aware that she quietly shares his pain. At its core, this a movie about the complex ways in which we mourn and our inability to abandon the ones we love, even after death.” Kimberly Lindbergs, Movie Morlocks

“It makes sense to me that many of those who saw this flick in their youth have zero recollection of the whole “world peace hangs in the balance” espionage sub-plot that makes off with the movie like a thief in the night. The supposed supernatural elements, the seances, the visions of that little girl lost in an unexplainable other world are truly haunting and linger long after the scientific explanations fade away.” Kindertrauma

“The ending is not what it should have been, but I remember getting the shivers when first watching it.” Michael Karol, The ABC Movie of the Week Companion

Buy: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Cast and characters:

• Don Murray as Alex Lauder
• Ray Milland as Professor Samuel Constable
• Gene Tierney as Lenore Constable
• Barbara Dana as Tina Cryder
• Edward Asner as Wiener
• Pamelyn Ferdin as Mary
• Ivor Barry as Dr. Cryder
• Virginia Christine as Helga
• George Macready as Dr. Frank Ferguson
• William Beckley as Bessemer
• John Carradine as Bosch
• Cecil Ozorio as Devi Bessimer
• Frank Maxwell as Augstadt
• Bill Hickman as Enemy Agent

Wikipedia | IMDb | Image credits: Movie Morlocks

Frankenstein is a 1981 Japanese animated television film based on Mary Shelley’s novel and the Marvel comic book Monster of Frankenstein.

In this Toei Animation 98-minute adult-oriented film, the creature was portrayed as a misunderstood monster, who only wanted to be loved. The original title is Kyōfu Densetsu Kaiki! Frankenstein (恐怖伝説 怪奇！フランケンシュタイン). It was directed by Yûgo Serikawa from a screenplay by Akiyoshi Sakai, based loosely on Mary Shelley’s novel.

The film was dubbed and released in the United States by Harmony Gold in 1984. This dubbed version was advertised as both Monster of Frankenstein and Frankenstein: Legend of Terror.

Plot:

In 1860, Victor Frankenstein after creating the monster together with his partner Zuckel, the monster attacks the assistant and falls from a cliff.

Assuming the monster is dead, Victor returns to his wife Elizabeth and daughter Emily. A police inspector named Bellbeau investigates some mysterious mutilations killings, and Victor is blackmailed by his former assistant, who lost an eye in his fight with the monster.

Victor grows more and more paranoid, having terrifying nightmares about his creature, believing him to be pure evil. The monster survived his fall, and stole clothes and food from the villagers, who he killed in his confusion, including Zuckel. Victor’s daughter, Emily, spends time with her grandfather, a wise blind man who warned his son Victor about his experiments.

When the monster finds his way to the grandfather’s cabin, he becomes good friends with Emily and the old man, because they can see that he only wants to be loved, and they give him the name Franken.

Victor wanted to rid himself of all the evidence of his experiments, so he decided to hunt the monster down and shoot him. From Emily, the monster learns about God. When a fire breaks out in the woods, Emily’s mother is killed, and Franken can only rescue Emily’s grandfather. When Philip tries to shoot Franken, he is accidentally killed by the monster.

Emily thinks Franken did it on purpose and shoots his hand, and Franken is once again alone. He seeks refuge in a church, where gazes upon the crucifix, and notices that both Christ and himself has a hole though their hands, he breaks into tears, and begs god for forgiveness. Victor believes that his creation killed his wife, he finds him the church, but Franken escapes.

The grandfather tells Emily that it was not Franken’s fault that her mother died, and she sets out to find him. At the mountains, Inspector Bellbeau and his police force open fire on the monster. Emily comes to his rescue, and for the first time, Franken speaks her name. Tired of a life he never wanted, the monster commits suicide by throwing himself off of a cliff. Victor, driven mad by all the terror he caused, shoots himself in the chest. Inspector Bellbeau visits Franken’s grave, as the red scarf Emily gave the monster blows away in the wind while Emily now lives with her grandfather.

Reviews:

“Throughout the film it has a very somber tone to it, with moments of horror during the first act, but those fall away in the second and third acts as it becomes more of an allegory. It’s still not a great film by any means, the animation is very cheap looking and dated, and the voice acting is passable, more so if you’re a fan of the original Akira dub, but the story itself has enough good moments that carries it through.” Flights Tights & Movie Nights

” …Monster of Frankenstein is just as poorly animated (most of the time the camera is just panning over static panels), badly dubbed and sluggishly paced as Tomb of Dracula, though it does have a rather fetching looking monster to its name. As with a lot of anime, the design work is first rate, but the annoying kids, immobile “animation” and lack of atmosphere kill the production stone dead.” Kevin Lyons, EOFFTV

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘Daddy’s been working in the garden… again!’

Stepfather III – aka Stepfather III: Father’s Day – is a 1992 made-for-TV British-American slasher horror film directed by co-producer Guy Magar (Children of the Corn: Revelation; Retribution) from a screenplay co-written with Marc B. Ray (The Severed Arm; Scream Bloody Murder). It is also known as Stepfather 3.

Main cast:

Robert Wightman (Impulse), Priscilla Barnes (Trailer Park of Terror; Ed Gein; The Devil’s Rejects), David Tom (The Hazing), Season Hubley (Children of the Corn V; Humanoids from the Deep, 1996) and Christa Miller.

Opening plot:

Gene Clifford (Robert Wightman), escapes from the same institution in Puget Sound, Washington he was placed in four years ago. He seeks out a back alley plastic surgeon (Mario Roccuzzo) to alter his appearance, using no anesthesia.

After a few days, Gene kills the doctor by slitting his throat with a bone saw and makes his way to Deer View, California, where he acquires a new identity, “Keith Grant”, as well as a small cottage and a job at a plant nursery.

Nine months after crafting his new life, Keith meets divorced school principal Christine Davis (Priscilla Barnes) and her psychosomatically paralyzed son Andy (David Tom). Keith and Christine begin dating.

When Christine’s possessive ex-boyfriend Mark Wraynal (Stephen Mendel) follows Keith home and confronts him, Keith offers to have a chat. Keith kills him with a shovel and buries the body in his garden…

Reviews:

“Wightman, with that prissy, scary, whiny voice makes a good fist of it, and seems more barmy than ever. The violence is genuinely gory, and climaxes with a death in a garden threshing-machine that surely defies all efforts at restorative surgery.” Time Out

“Film lurches on without much credibility. Young David’s plight works up some tension, but characters are mostly flat (though Barnes makes the hard-luck Christine almost acceptable), motivations telegraphed, the story predictable. As for dialogue, it’s routine horror pic stuff.” Tony Scott, Variety

” …poorly scripted, all-too-familiar chiller — continuing a serial killer’s search for the perfect family — with gory plastic surgery, savage violence, and even some effective Boo! scenes. But robotic Wightman … is a weak substitute for previous death-dealing dad Terry O’Quinn.” Entertainment Weekly

“Ultimately the movie’s faults come down to Wightman, who is no substitute for O’Quinn. Stepfather III is a 110 minute bad joke. Insipid acting, laughable dialogue and an incredibly cliched story. At times it overcompensates with it’s gore, to make up for it’s lack of everything else.” Robert Grimes, Unseen Films

“The script by director Guy Magar and Marc B. Ray fails to exploit a sub-plot in which Wightman’s new stepson suspects him and uses his home computer to investigate. The use of a leaf mulcher does provide this excursion into bloody violence with a memorably sickening climax.” John Stanley, Creature Features

Cast and characters:

• Robert Wightman as The Stepfather/Keith Grant
• Priscilla Barnes as Christine Davis
• Season Hubley as Jennifer Ashley
• David Tom as Andy Davis
• John Ingle as Father Ernest Thomas Brennan
• Dennis Paladino as Mr. Thompson
• Stephen Mendel as Mark Wraynal
• Jay Acovone as Steve Davis
• Christa Miller as Beth Davis
• Mario Roccuzzo as Plastic Surgeon
• Joan Dareth as Bernice
• Jennifer Bassey as Doctor Brady
• Adam Ryen as Nicholas Ashley
• Mindy Ann Martin as Tiffany Davis
• Joel Carlson as Pete Davis
• Sumer Stamper as Maggie Davis
• Brenda Strong as Lauren Sutliffe
• Mort Lewis as Funeral Priest
• Adam Wylie as Easter Party Boy

Wikipedia | IMDb

‘The world will quake in fear’

Arachnoquake is a 2012 American made-for-television horror film directed by prolific Griff Furst (I Am Omega; Wolvesbayne; Mask Maker; Lake Placid III; Swamp Shark) from a screenplay by Eric Forsberg (Ghost Shark; Mega Piranha; Snakes on a Train) and Paul A. Birkett (Night Wings; Haunted High; Hellhounds).

The Active Entertainment production premiered on the Syfy cable television channel on 23rd June 2012.

Main cast:

Megan Adelle (Straw Dogs), Gralen Bryant Banks (Beast of the Bering Sea; American Horror House), Paul Boocock, Edward Furlong (The Zombie King; Brainscan), Tiara Ashleigh, Tracey Gold, Bug Hall, Olivia Hardt, Grant James, Ethan Phillips, Lucky Johnson, Earl Maddox.

Plot:

A massive earthquake unleashes hordes of fire-breathing albino spiders and they embark on a murderous rampage through New Orleans. Worse still, some of the spiders are becoming bigger and bigger…

Buy: Amazon.com

Reviews:

“While the effects aren’t as terrible as the usual Syfy CGI, the are certainly cheesy enough to laugh at. That’s the point though. This isn’t a movie that was made to be serious. This was made to be fun and it really is a success on that factor. It’s one of those rare B-movies that is just as enjoyable without a group of drunk friends making fun of it.” Dead Derrick’s Horror Movie Reviews

“Unrealistic endings are commonplace in films, but the plan which eventually brings down the spiders is perhaps the most ridiculous in the history of motion pictures … Arachnoquake has its problems, but if you’re searching for the worst film ever you won’t find it here. You might even enjoy it, so it back and prepare for 86 minutes of jumping, fire-breathing mayhem.” Alex Morrison, That Film Guy

“It’s broad, dumb, obvious, and (almost) entirely predictable. It’s nothing more than yet another Saturday night cable TV time-filler, and it’s quite possibly the silliest movie you’ll see all month — and yet, if you’re a monster movie enthusiast (and I’m guessing you are), you may just find a few stray threads of relative amusement here.” FearNet

Buy: Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com 

“In the wake of Speed and The Faculty, there are few bus-based action possibilities that have not been explored, and Arachnoquake doesn’t even try. Things perk up briefly during a doomed attempt to defend a supermarket with bug spray, and there’s an entertaining water-based chase, but little else to get excited about.” Jennie Kermode, Eye for Film

IMDb

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Related entries: Arachnoquake | Big Ass Spider! | Curse of the Black Widow | The Giant Spider Invasion | Highgate Cemetery | In the Spider’s Web | Kingdom of the Spiders | Mesa of Lost Women | Nude for Satan | This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse | The Web of Fear: A Brief History of Spider Horror Cinema

Dead of Night is a 1977 American made-for-television anthology fantasy horror film directed by Dan Curtis (Burnt Offerings; Dark Shadows; The Norliss Tapes; Trilogy of Terror). It originally premiered on NBC on March 29, 1977.

The film consists three stories written by Richard Matheson (although the first segment, “Second Chance”, was adapted from a story by Jack Finney). The third story, “Bobby” was recycled by Curtis and Matheson for Trilogy of Terror II (1996).

Dead of Night was released on DVD by Dark Sky Films in 2009. The extras include a 1969 TV pilot episode, “Darkness At Blaisedon”, for a Dead of Night television program.

Main cast:

Ed Begley Jr. (Ghostbusters; Transylvania 6-5000), Anjanette Comer (Netherworld; The Baby; The Night of a Thousand Cats), Patrick Macnee (Masque of the Red Death; The Howling; Incense for the Damned), Horst Buchholz (The Savage Bees), Elisha Cook Jr. (Messiah of Evil; Black Zoo) and Joan Hackett (The Possessed; How Awful About Allan).

Plot:

Second Chance: A young man named Frank (Ed Begley Jr.) restores a 1926 Jordan Playboy roadster and finds himself transported back in time…

Ed Begley Jr. as Frank
E.J. André as Mr. McCauley
Ann Doran as Mrs. McCauley
Christina Hart as Helen

No Such Thing as a Vampire: Alexis (Anjanette Comer) is a noblewoman who seems to be actively terrorised by a bloodsucking vampire. Her husband, Dr. Gheria (Patrick Macnee), attempts to deal with her terror by engaging the services of a friend, Michael (Horst Buchholz)…

Patrick Macnee as Dr. Gheria
Anjanette Comer as Alexis
Elisha Cook Jr. as Karel
Horst Buchholz as Michael

Bobby: A grieving mother (Joan Hackett) uses black magic to resurrect her drowned son, Bobby (Lee H. Montgomery) and the lengths she will go to see him again.

Joan Hackett as Mother
Lee H. Montgomery as Bobby

Reviews:

“Bobby” is a fright-filled gem, and even though Matheson’s story somewhat relies on the familiar Monkey’s Paw theme, it’s a gratifying segment — with a truly terrific final shock — that’s in a class with “Amelia” from Trilogy of Terror. As a whole, Dead of Night runs a brisk, enjoyable 73 minutes, and it’s admittedly the last segment that makes it all worthwhile.” George R. Reis, DVD Drive-In

“A pitch-perfect miniature, “Bobby” is a perfect example of how to tighten the screws through skilful performances and taught, imaginative writing … Everyone’s at the top of their game here, and the story manages to wrap up with the single most terrifying moment ever broadcast on network TV.” Nathaniel Thompson, DVD Delirium 4

” …this made-for-TV anthology features three tales; two of which are only fair and the last good enough to make the rest of it worth sitting through.” Justin McKinney,  The Bloody Pit of Horror

“Good performances highlight this solid trilogy of telehorror from director Curtis … Hackett is especially superb in the memorably creepy Bobby episode…the last image a haunting capper.” The Terror Trap

“My favorite bit involves a mocking, paranoia inspiring phone call from the never seen Dad. It’s a classic moment of all-consuming dread that really gets under your skin. As mediocre as Dead of Night begins, this last tale more than makes up for it. “Bobby” is not only classic Dan Curtis, it’s some serious classic Kindertrauma as well.” Kindertrauma

“Dead of Night is an enjoyable anthology, it never emerges from the limitations of this form of storytelling, but it has at least one stand out segment, and in all honesty, that’s a pretty good result for an anthology horror film.” Shaun Anderson, The Celluloid Highway

Wikipedia | IMDb | Image thanks: Parlor of Horror