EDITOR’S NOTE: This movie originally ran on our site on March 8, 2018. We’re sharing it again as Kino Lorber has released it on blu ray and we’re beyond happy that more made for TV movies are coming out on home video and want people to buy and support the companies that are putting them out. This new release has a revised 2K master, commentary by Troy Howarth, a TV commercial and new art by Vince Evans.
The ABC Movie of the Week for November 24, 1973, Scream, Pretty Peggy was directed by Gordon Hessler, who was behind films as diverse as The Oblong Box, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park and Sho Kosugi’s introduction to the U.S., Pray For Death. It was written by Jimmy Sangster (who directed Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire and wrote The Curse of Frankenstein, Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? and many more), so this film has a much better pedigree than you’d expect.
Peggy is a college student who wants to be an artist, so she applies for a job at the home of noted sculptor Jeffrey Elliott (Ted Bessell, TV’s That Girl) and his mother (Bette Davis!). Peggy is also one of the most annoyingly chipper heroines ever.
Let me give you some advice, in case you are a young girl and looking for a housekeeping job and find yourself in a 1970’s TV movie. If the house you’re working in has an Old Hollywood actress in it, run (refer back to my past rules of always avoiding Old Hollywood actors and actresses). And if you find out that there’s a room that you aren’t allowed to go into, don’t try and go into that room. Just get away as fast as you can.
Peggy is too dumb to do that. No, she finds all of Jeffrey’s crazy demon sculptures. And she meets George Thornton, whose daughter used to work in the house. And she runs afoul of Mrs. Bette Davis and you simply do not do that.
Turns out that Jessica, Jeffrey’s sister, is living in that room above the garage that Peggy isn’t allowed into. Again, get out. Now.
No, Peggy decides she wants to make a new friend. And what if that friend is really Jeffrey, who killed his sister and has split his personality with her inside his head? Oh Peggy. You brought this on yourself.
Scream, Pretty Peggy is a fine little slice of 70’s TV movie thrills. Any time you have Ms. Davis deigning to be in a TV movie, you’re going to get something good. But seriously, I wish these girls would wise up. There are better things to do in this world than live in a house of maniacs!
B&S About Movies 
Like you, I’m glad that KINO is rescuing these old TV movies from YouTube purgatory. Scream Pretty Peggy is a fun little thriller.
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Absolutely. My love of TV flicks is only matched by Sam’s (who wrote this one). You’d think the web platforms of the “Big Three” networks would raid their libraries and put all of these movies online. For example: the free-with-ads Pluto TV belongs to CBS, is my understanding: put all of your TV flicks from the ’70s and ’80s up. NBC, who as all of Universals’ stuff, has all of the 6M Dollar Man and Battlestar Galactica: TOS episodes online. They even have old Night Gallery episodes on there — I found my cherished episode with Artie Johnson (TV’s Laugh In) as a DJ at Satan’s radio station. NBC’s movies were, for me, the best of the three networks. Put ’em all on there, I say.
We have a few “Lost TV Movie Weeks” on the site. If you plug that into the search, you’ll find ’em. Even “TV Movie” should do the trick. Me, personally, I did an entire week of “Airline Disaster” TV movies, of which there are many.
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Agreed. I don’t understand why the Networks don’t take advantage of their extensive (TV) movie libraries. There is a market for them. I have long suspected that the people in charge don’t really understand what they have in their hands.
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Nope. It’s all young kids — well, against the old Hollywood guard — running the studio. They don’t appreciate the “heritage” of the network they overlord.
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