Jack Smight, known for his exceptional directing in films like No Way to Treat a Lady, Airport 1975 and Damnation Alley — well, maybe not movie — brings his talent to this TV movie. Working from a short story by Ray Bradbury, he delivers a quick and suspenseful reminder of the unique cinematic style of 1970s TV movies, a style that could truly get under your skin.

Olivia De Havilland plays Laura Wynant, a wealthy former mental patient who has gone to the country to continue healing. That’d be easier if she didn’t keep hearing the pleas of a woman who has been buried alive on her property. Arthritis has robbed her hands of the ability to save the woman and as she brings others in to help her, her family starts to think that she is losing her control over her sanity again.

De Havilland, Cotten, and Pidgeon deliver stellar performances that elevate the movie to another level. Their talent and dedication to their roles are evident, making this TV movie a must-see for any classic TV movie enthusiast.

This is a movie that masterfully builds its suspense, keeping you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. It’s a rare gem that doesn’t let up, a testament to the captivating storytelling of TV movies from this era.

*Merwin Gerard wrote the screenplay. I’m a big fan of another TV movie he wrote, The Invasion of Carol Enders.

Man, Dennis Weaver can’t catch a break when he’s in a Paul Wendkos movie. In The Ordeal of Dr. Mudd, he’s imprisoned for treated John Wilkes Booth. And in Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction, McCloud is blasting nose candy right past his trademark mustache. But here, it’s Last House on the Left or Straw Dogs as a TV movie, with Weaver and his family — argumentative son who doesn’t want to go to college, wife who feels frumpy and nascent women’s libber daughter (Susan Dey!) — going up against an ersatz Manson Family on a beach vacation.

The leader of this group, Jerry, is played by Scott Hylands, who would much later play Dr. Mercurio Arboria, the kindly creator of The Arboria Institute in Beyond the Black Rainbow. He uses psychological warfare, bugs in the family’s RV and a PA system to drive the nuclear unit to madness and eventual revenge.

The cast also includes Michael Christian (Eddie from Poor Pretty Eddie), Roberta Collins (Matilda the Hun from Death Race 2000), Jacqueline Giroux (Snow White in Cinderella 2000 and Linda from Gary Graver’s Trick or Treats) and Carol White (Spider from Chained Heat). If you ever wondered why I love TV movies so much, it’s because there’s such a crossover between them and the exploitation trash I love with an equally impure devotion.

This never gets as crazy as it should, but the scene where the hippies sing back the nursery rhymes that the family had been singing in the privacy of their RV is really unsettling. This could have been even stranger, but hey — it was a movie you got to watch for free.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Written, produced and directed by Joseph Stefano, author of the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Eye of the Cat, Home for the Holidays, Snowbeast and The Kindred, this was originally a pilot for an anthology series for CBS called The Haunted. Sadly, it was never picked up*.

Nelson Orion (Martin Landau) is an architect who has an affinity for the occult. His fiancee, Vivia Mandore (Diane Baker), is haunted by the mother of her first husband. If they want a future, the past must be dealt with.

This is way better and cooler than it had any right to be and man, I wish we could have seen more of Orion — housebuilder by day, ghostbuster by night — in more adventures.

*One theory is that the network received complaints that the movie was too scary and disturbing, so the project was canceled. Another — and potentially more likely situation — was that CBS president James T. Aubrey had originally greenlit the show and when he stepped down, they had no one in power who was interested in the series.

You can watch this on YouTube. It’s also available on DVD and blu ray from Kino Lorber.

Margaret Rutherford may have ben in more than 40 films, but she is best known for playing Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple in four movies and Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit. She also dealt with some family craziness, as before she was even born, her father killed his father by beating him to death with a chamber pot. After seven years in a mental ward, he was released. After starting his new family, changing his name and moving to India, his wife killed herself, leading Margaret to be raised by her aunt. She was told her father was dead, despite him trying to reach her for years.

Once she began acting, she was pretty much protected from the world by her husband — and frequent acting partner — Stringer Davis. There have been rumors that the two never consummated their relationship, but they did adopt a child of sorts by taking in a young man named Gordon Langley Hall who eventually had gender reassignment surgery and became known as Dawn Langley Hall, the name she used when she wrote the biography of Rutherford, Margaret Rutherford: A Blithe Spirit.

In 1965, Margaret — who suffered bad spells and electroshock therapies in her life in an effort to stay away from the madness she thought infected her family — Stringer Davis and Tom Corbett visited the haunted homes Longleat, Salisbury Hall and Beaulieu for an NBC special based on Diana Norman’s book The Stately Ghosts of England.

Honestly, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen, an absolute delight of old English manners, famous British actors and just plain goofball haunting silliness.

NBC promoted this show with articles in the New York Times and Show Magazine. There was plenty of William Castle-level BS in these, including all manner of ghost antics like slamming doors, ruined footage and broken cameras writer, producer and director Frank De Felitta asked for the ghosts to give him permission to film them.

Great story, right? Well sure, but De Felitta also wrote the novels Audrey Rose and The Entity. So he knew a great ghost story when he heard one.