Written by Richard Matheson and directed by Dan Curtis, this would be the second collaboration between Curtis and Jack Palance after 1968’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

This movie has a big impact on Dracula lore: Francis Ford Coppola’s version seems to take two cues from this film, which had never appeared in any other version of Stoker’s story: Dracula is Vlad the Impaler and that he is convinced that Mina is the reincarnation of his dead wife.

Also — Gene Colan based his Dracula in the comic book Tomb of Dracula on Palance years before this movie was made.

Palance is an incredibly convincing Dracula. He battles a Van Helsing played by Nigel Davenport, who is also in the oddball 70’s insect film Phase IV.

Playing Lucy — and Dracula’s dead wife Maria — is Fiona Lewis, whose genre credits are plentiful, from The Fearless Vampire Killers, Dr. Phibes Rises Again and Tintorera to The Fury, Strange Behavior/Dead Kids, Strange Invaders and Innerspace.

Mina is played by Penelope Horner and one of the vampire brides is played by Sarah Douglas, Ursa from the Superman movies, Queen Taramis in Conan the Destroyer, Lyranna in the second Beastmaster movie and Elsa Toulon in the third Puppet Master movie. Man — this is full of people with full-on horror pedigrees!

Don’t believe me? Dracula’s other brides are played by Hammer actress Virginia Wetherell (Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, Demons of the Mind) and Barbara Lindley, who appeared in Benny Hill and Monty Python sketches.

As for inventing that Dracula looking for his reincarnated wife plot, Curtis merely laughed and said that he was stealing from himself. Indeed, Dark Shadows and its vampire folklore informs this movie quite a bit.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Between producer Dan Curtis, director Lela Swift, writer Sam Hall, Robert Cobert’s music and Thayer David and Louis Edmonds in lead roles, this pilot for a TV series seems like you’re watching an episode of Dark Shadows. Trust me, that’s not a bad thing.

Angela Martin (Marj Dusay, who was on All My Children and Guiding Light) is a young woman with a haunted house named Blaisedon on her hands. Luckily, two ghost hunters named Jonathan Fletcher (Kerwin Mathews, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) and Sajid Rowe (Cal Bellini, born in Singapore as Khalid Ibrahim, who enjoyed a quarter century of playing any minority that Hollywood needed; he was that ethnically ambiguous) are on the case.

It has many of the hallmarks of Dark Shadows — long forgotten relatives, ghosts, possession and the idea that nearly every housekeeper has some dark, sinister secret. The fashions are also pretty great

While the series wasn’t bought by ABC, they did air it on August 26, 1969. You can catch it as an extra on the Dead of Night DVD or watch it on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Originally airing on ABC on January 16, 1973, this sequel to The Night Stalker was just as popular as the original film. Richard Matheson would come back to write, Dan Curtis would produce and direct, and Darren McGavin would be Carl Kolchak again.

While the TV version is only 74 minutes, there was an international version that played theaters at 90 minutes with extra footage added.

This time, Kolchak has been run out of Las Vegas and found his way to Seattle, where fate has put his former editor Vincenzo (Simon Oakland, Psycho, Chanto’s Land) has also ended up. He’s arrived just in time, as a series of exotic dancers have all been strangled and drained of blood. And oh yeah — there are traces of rotting flesh on their necks.

A researcher (Wally Cox, the voice of Underdog) discovers that this isn’t the first time the Emerald City has dealt with murders just like this. It happened in 1952. And in 1931. And every 21 years since 1889, with a series of murders occurring over an 18-day span.

Our hero figures out the truth, but the story gets suppressed again. He deals with it about as well as you’d imagine. He teams up with an exotic dancer (Jo Ann Pflug, one-time wife of Chuck Woolery who also is in Scream of the Wolf) and tracks down the night stalker (Richard Anderson, The Six Million Dollar Man) to his lair, where the truth is revealed: he’s actually a man named Dr. Richard Malcolm who has discovered the elixir of life, but must kill six people to make it. To make things even creepier, his family died long ago and are mummified nearby.

Carl smashes the mixture and is attacked, but soon, the night stalker ages into dust before he kills himself. Out of a job, Carl and Vincenzo are forced to drive to New York City together.

A third film, written by Mattheson and William F. Nolan (Burnt Offerings) called The Night Killers was to be set in Hawaii, with Kolchak again walking into a cover-up, as UFO’s, nuclear power and androids replacing humans would have all figured into the plot. There was also the rumor of another script where Kolchak was going to discover that Janos Skorzeny was alive and making others not so well in New York City.

ABC passed on the third movie and gave Kolchak a series without Matheson or Curtis involved.

But that’s a story for another day.

The Night Stalker is everything great about made-for-TV movies, with plenty of quality actors showing up, like The Wizard of Oz star Margaret Hamilton, John Carradine (like you can keep him away from a horror movie made in 1973), “Grandpa” Al Lewis in a funny role where you assume that he’s a bloodsucker but just ends up being a homeless person, Nina Wayne as a dancer named Charisma Beauty, Kate Murtagh (The Car), Ivor Francis (the mortician from House of the Dead) and Anne Randall (Playboy Playmate of the Month May 1967, who also appears in the Al Adamson movie  Hell’s Bloody Devils).

If you love The Six Million Dollar Man, you have to appreciate the irony that both McGavin — as Oliver Spencer — and Anderson — as Oscar Goldman — would play the handler of Steve Austin.

You can watch this for yourself on New Castle After Dark. Or grab the blu ray from Kino Lorber.

I’m loving these Dan Curtis produced ABC Wide World of Mystery TV movies, which are shot on video and appear like maniacal soap operas but are infused with so much murder and menace that you’re shocked that they played on regular TV.

Eileen Brennan (Mrs. Peacock from Clue) stars as Mary, a housekeeper who yearns for a man of her own. But she realizes that she’s not the most attractive fish in the sea, so to win over her handsome boss Walter (George Maharis, TV’s Route 66), she blackmails him. Sure, he might be a murderer, but he’s attractive and has seen so much more of the world than she ever will.

Look for Nick Ferrari (Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off), Charles Macaulay (who was the Dracula who turned Prince Mamuwalde into Blacula), Alan Napier (Alfred from TV’s Batman) and Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans from Curtis’ Dark Shadows).

This was directed by Pittsburgh native Burt Brinckerhoff, who also helmed plenty of episodic TV like Lou Grant, Remington Steele, 7th Heaven and Alf, as well as the TV movie Can You Hear the Laughter? The Story of Freddie Prinze. He started his career as an actor and appears in The Greatest Story Ever Told.

I really dug this one — it feels like an Americanized giallio — minus the directorial flourishes, but certainly with the twists, turns and psychosexual drama inherent within the genre. There’s a great scene where Mary asks Walter about his experience with orgies and drugs. You can really sense that she both wants to know everything and wants to hear nothing. It’s really well done.

You can order this from Modcinema or watch it on Amazon Prime.

Dan Curtis wrote this movie all about his childhood in Bridgeport, Conneticut (it was shot in Echo Park, California for budgetary reasons), inspired by many of the people he’d grown up with. However, he did not have a sister. That character is based on co-writer/producer Lee Hutson’s sister Sarah. The two would also work together on 1980’s The Long Days of Summer.

Here’s the best fact I can tell you about this movie: It was Matt Groening’s first job in Hollywood. He’s an extra that you may or may not spot.

In 1937, 12-year-old Daniel Cooper (Chris Petersen, The Swarm) and his 10-year-old sister Sarah (Katy Kurtzman, The New Adventures of Heidi) are enjoying their summer. The kids have been taught to think for themselves and that leads them to protect Albert “Snowman” Cavanaugh (character actor Geoffrey Lewis) from bullies and finally, the court when he’s accused of murder. Thet convince their attorney dad (Dean Jones, That Darn Cat!) to take the case.

Michael Pataki shows up, which is always a delight. So does former pro wrestler Hard Boiled Haggerty, Charles Aidman (House of the Dead), Henry Wilcoxon (the bishop from Caddyshack), Scott Brady (the sheriff from Gremlins) and soap opera star Louise Sorel.

This was obviously a project near and dear to Curtis. You can watch it on Amazon Prime and Tubi.

Directed by Charles Jarrott (Condorman), written by Ian McLellan Hunter (he won the Oscar for Roman Holiday, which was really written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo; Hunter was later blacklisted as well) and produced by Dan Curtis, this made for ABC TV movie originally aired on January 7, 1968 as part of ABC’s Wide World of Mystery.

Rod Serling wrote the original draft of the script, with Jason Robards set to star. The actor was unhappy with the script and there was a technician’s strike in London, so eventually, Robards just walked away and Jack Palance took over the role.

Palance — born Volodymyr Palahniuk — had the tough guy edge to be a perfect Hyde. His Jekyll is what really makes this role, that he can be two totally opposite sides so well. Credit also goes to Dick Smith, who not only created satyr-like makeup for Hyde, but subtly fixed Palance’s nose so that he appears more handsome as Jekyll.

Denholm Elliott — later to be Marcus Brody in the Indiana Jones movies — shows up, as does Torin Thatcher, Billie Whitelaw (Mrs. Baylock from The Omen!) and Welsh entertainer “Two Ton” Tessie O’Shea.

If you watch the later scenes in this movie, you’ll notice that Palance is only using his right arm. that’s because he broke his left during a stunt gone wrong.

Dark Shadows viewers will pick up on the fact that most of the music in this comes directly from the show. When Jekyll goes to the bar for the first time, listen for “Quentin’s Theme.”

You can watch this on Tubi.

Danna Forester (Anjanette Comer, The Baby) is a rich woman in a kept relationship with the much older Mark (Jason Evers, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die). They’re both having affairs, including her way close friendship with Mark Brolin (a very young Tom Selleck). One night, as she returns home, sinister messages are painted all over the walls of their house. The cops can’t help, but perhaps ex-cop Styran (Claude Atkins!) can put it all together.

Then again, maybe Danna isn’t all that tightly wound as it seems. Or perhaps she really is and all of this is one big ploy.

Herbert Kenwith is mainly known for his long associations with Norman Lear (Different Strokes, The Facts of Life, Good Times, One Day at a Time) and Mae West, for whom he directed theatrical presentations. He had an amazingly rich directing career, even if it was mainly for the stage and television. Reading his IMDB biography brought a smile to my face.

Writer Larry Brody’s career has plenty of interesting cartoon scripts on it, including the pilot for the European Diabolik cartoon, Spider-Man Unlimited, Silver Surfer, as well as live action shows like Super Force and The Fall Guy.

This is another Dan Curtis produced episode of the ABC Wide World of Mystery. There aren’t many episodes that have survived, but this is one of them. It’s wild — shot on video and filled with the twists and turns of a soap opera.

Good news — you can watch it on Amazon Prime.

Gene R. Kearney wrote one of the first made-for-TV movies, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, as well as the movie Night of the Lepus and scripts for several TV shows, such as Night Gallery and Kojak. He was joined by Merwin Gerard, who wrote the TV horror film The Victim and several episodes of One Step Beyond to create this 1974 TV movie.

It was directed by Pittsburgh native Burt Brinckerhoff and an uncredited Dan Curtis, who was also the producer.

Carol Enders (Meredith Baxter from Family Ties) is having more than a bad day. No sooner than her boyfriend tells her that he can’t be engaged any longer, a man emerges from the woods and attacks her. She ends up in the hospital, where the spirit of a dead woman named Diana Bernard must find her ex-husband Dr. Peter Bernard (Charles Aidman, who narrated the 80’s Twilight Zone reboot) to figure out who killed her.

Fans of Italian genre cinema should check this out, as Christopher Connelly (Night of the Sharks, Atlantis Interceptors, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Manhattan Baby) and Tony Russel (The Secret Seven, The War of the Planets) both appear in this movie.

Dark Shadows fans will also be pleased to learn that John Karlen (Willie Loomis from the Gothic soap opera and Daughters of Darkness) plays David Hastings, the angry second husband of the dead woman and prime suspect.

I love the look of this video-shot movie, which has a very soap opera feel. It’s like a self-contained Dark Shadows arc, which you can get through in a little over an hour.

You can watch this on Tubi.