Originally airing on May 21, 1977, this show was co-written by Gene Roddenberry and Star Trek writer Samuel A. Peebles and directed by Clive Donner (What’s New Pussycat, the Get Smart reboot The Nude Bomb (which had Sylvia Kristel in it!) and the 1981 Charlie Chan reboot Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen).

I solemnly swear that I am not The Gorn.

William Sebastian (Robert Culp, I Spy, The Greatest American Hero) used to be a criminologist but now he studies the occult so that he can explain why humanity is evil. On one of his past adventures, the demon of lust Asmodeus cursed him, leaving him with a heart in need of constant medical attention from his live-in nurse and housekeeper Lilith (Majel Barrett, Nurse Chapel from Star Trek and Roddenberry’s wife). He asks an old colleague, Dr. “Ham” Hamilton (Gig Young, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?) for help with a case.

A woman claiming to be Anitra Cyon comes to tell Sebastian that her family no longer requires his services. It turns out that she’s a succubus, or a demon who basically sexually devours men to death, and he defeats her using the Apocryphal Book of Tobit. Then, Mitri Cyon (John Hurt, The Elephant Man, Hellboy) takes them to London, but not before their plane almost gets taken out of the sky.

In London, they discover that Dr. Qualus, one of Sebastian’s associates, has already been killed. His house was on fire, he was mauled by wild animals and his body was found partially inside a pentagram. Then, they are rebuffed by Sir Geoffrey Cyon (James Villiers, Asylum), who has turned Cyon Manor into place of sex, drugs and devil worship.

Mitri gets attacked by dogs and when our heroes go to investigate the Manor, they come to believe that Asmodeus has taken over Geoffrey’s form. The truth is that Mitri is really the monster and that Geoffrey is his pawn who will sacrifice his sister. Of course, Sebastian stops the ritual and the curse is removed.

The Cyon family gives Sebastian a painting as a way of saying thank you, but the symbol of Asmodeus shows up in the corner of the piece, proving that his fight against evil is not finished.

But sadly, it was. This was intended as a pilot for a TV series. However, an extended theatrical version was released in the UK with additional footage that includes nudity during the Black Mass finale. There was also a novelization published in 1979.

Much like Ed Sanders’ book The Family, Sebastian believed that Charles Manson, Richard Speck and the Boston Strangler were all connected by invisible forces. Plus, every occult reference you can think of gets crammed into this. Also, there’s a lot of exploitation in here, as two demon women (one a dominatrix and the other a schoolgirl) call Ham daddy and try to hump him to death on a waterbed!

I would have liked to have seen what would have happened had this become a series. Within five years, Satanic panic would descend on America and movies and shows that took the 1970’s view of the occult would be passé. This is kind of a time capsule of that era.

Spectre isn’t available outside of YouTube and the grey market. That said, you should hunt it down. How else will you ever see John Hurt, one of the most talented actors of any generation, turn into a giant lizard man?

A girl named Alice Woods and her sister Zoe have come to the town of Garrett in the hopes of escaping the madness that destroyed their mother. However, there are staircases to nowhere and the Peach family to contend with, even if the rest of the world believes they’ve been gone since the 1950’s. Welcome back to Channel Zero. Things are about to get weird all over again.

From the beginning of the first episode and the strains of “Crucified Woman” by Riz Ortolani (from the film Cannibal Holocaust), you know that this season, you’re in for it. Throw in Rutger Hauer as the leader of the Peach Family and you have a recipe for what is fast becoming the perfect horror show.

Ever since the death of the Peaches’ youngest daughters, they have left our world behind and become part of a side world called Slaughterland, which lies behind the many doorways and staircases to nowhere that show up randomly in Medallion Park. There, they are immortal thanks to the Pestilent God, who randomly asks that children be sacrificed to him.

Alice is the exact opposite — a social worker trying to save people. But soon,  a little girl named Izzy and her mom disappear from her care in broad daylight. Her sister Zoe begins to continually hallucinates the face of the Pestilence King, seeing him no matter where she goes. The Peach Family calls to her to join them, demanding that she help sacrifice Izzy as part of their covenant.

Meanwhile, the girl’s landlady is writing a book all about the horrors of the area now known as Butcher’s Block. Of course, she knows way more than she lets on. And then there are the children of the Peach clan, one of whom is arrested and promptly eats his cellmate before being released by the police with no charges.

Think things are crazy? Get ready — the elder Peach cures Zoe of her schizophrenia by drilling directly into her brain, then invites Louise and Alice to a feast that ends up being Izzy’s mom. Two episodes in and this season has eclipsed all of the Channel Zero terrors that have come before!

The Peaches want Zoe to consume human flesh and become one of them, but she refuses, instead subsisting by eating her own flesh. And Alice? By now, she’s seeing visions of herself as various creatures that look like giant puppet-headed Alices.

What I loved about this season is that the heroines’ roles are reversed by the last few episodes, begging the question of who will save who. And you can understand the motivation of the Peach family, as they went away to avoid the rapidly changing horrors of the world but ended up being changed into something even worse.

There are also goblin children, a meat servant, two generations of policemen forced to face the sins and compromises of the past, 1950’s housewives, a crazy scissors lady and so much more, you’ll wonder how six episodes is enough to contain it all. Unlike the bloated seasons of American Horror Story that rely on stunt casting and deus ex machina endings season after season to increasingly worse effect, Channel Zero has only improved with every successive tale.

I don’t want to spoil anything else for you. I insist that you simply watch the entire season now on Shudder.

I think I’ve figured out the difference between today’s “elevated horror” and the more traditional horror that we so often write about on these pages. The slasher killers of my childhood didn’t have complicated backstories or motivations, at least at first. The Shape killed because he was a killer. Leatherface and his family killed and ate because that was just their life. Sure, Jason was a mentally challenged child who drowned in a lake and somehow lived on the bottom of it for some time before coming back three movies in and wearing a hockey mask, but his mom, for all her faults, loved him.

The terrors of today’s horror? It all comes down to bad parenting. The Graham family of Hereditary was doing more than dealing with the King of Hell, they were dealing with years of family madness and secrets. Jay Height wasn’t just dealing with a sexually transmitted demon in It Follows, she was dealing with parental neglect. And in The Babadook, the real beast was just the crushing boredom of that film. It was that Amelia Vanek is a mother that blames her child for her husband’s death. She is, you guessed it, a bad mother.

There are times when you want subtext and reasons behind things. And other times, you just want to be scared. After all, when you’re looking for significance where there should be none, Freud would like to remind you that “Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar.”

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of “elevated horror” or trying to find the meaning behind everything — ironic as I spend a good chunk of my days debating movies right here. It’s more that I hate when people have agendas and force them into every movie. Sometimes, I just want that cigar. to be a cigar. Sometimes, I just want to watch a scary movie.

So it was without no small trepidation that I entered into the ten-hour commitment that came with watching Netflix’s new The Haunting of Hill House, an adaption of Shirley Jackson’s 1957 book (which was already made as 1963 and 1999’s The Haunting).

In the summer of 1992, Hugh and Olivia Crain plan on flipping an old mansion, just as they have with several other homes. Along with their five children, Steven, Shirley, Theodora, Luke and Eleanor, they go face to face with the paranormal, barely escaping with their lives (well, I lied, not all of them make it out as Olivia dies). Nnearlyalry a quarter of a second later, another death in the family brings the Crains back to Hill House to confront a lifetime of an absent parent, a lost mother and the ways that they’ve tried to handle so much grief and pain.

The story starts with Steven Crain (Michiel Huisman, Game of Thrones), the author of the book The Haunting of Hill House, which details his experiences in the house, as well as those of his brothers and sisters. The fact that he’s written this book — and made the money from it — has been a point of contention between he and his family ever since. That may be because of all the Crain family, he was the only one who didn’t see anything. His books and a lot of his life have been lies. At the end of the first episode, he finds his sister Nell hiding in his house. That’s when he meets a ghost for the first time — his sister has committed suicide inside Hill House hours before.

Each episode introduces us to another member of the family, from control freak Shirley (Elizabeth Reaser, Ouija: Origin of Evil and Annabelle: Creation as an adult; Lulu Wilson from  as a child) to child psychologist and psychic sensitive Theodora (who is married to director/creator Mike Flanagan, working with him on his other films like the aforementioned Ouija: Origin of Evil and Gerald’s Game) and Nell’s twin Luke, who struggles with addiction. Their lives and stories intersect and build upon one another, showing how the house and what happened on one night have ruined their lives in one way or another.

I’ve always had a theory that ghosts aren’t real. What we see in these apparitions aren’t things that go bump in the night, but moments where reality has been recorded over and over, like an old VHS tape, with the more horrible moments of life eating through the layers of reality, replaying over and over again. Hill House works that way, with the ghosts the children saw in the past simply being their future. I really want to discuss the moment that Nell realizes who the ghost she has seen her entire life is, but doing so would completely ruin this show if you haven’t seen it yet.

I was surprised by just how emotional this show made me. Credit for that is due to Timothy Hutton, who I’ve always known is an incredible actor, but he really proves it all over again as the father of this brood (the same role in 1992 in played by Henry Thomas from E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial). Carla Gugino is wonderful, as usual, as the mother who may never go away. I loved the long cuts that the actors got to use, which really added to the emotion of this. For example, the first fifteen minutes of episode six are all one straight take with no edits or cuts (there are only give cuts in the entire episode!). And bonus points for having Russ Tamblyn in here, as he was Luke in the original The Haunting!

I love that people are reporting sleep disorders and anxiety attacks after watching this show. Have we really grown so weak as a species that shows like this can trigger — that word! — us in such a way? I enjoyed this show, but I don’t enjoy reading clickbait articles like this that basically collect the tweets of people who should never, ever watch Cannibal Ferox. Just let a cigar be a cigar. Just enjoy scary shows for what they are.

But don’t just take it from me. No less of a voice in horror than Stephen King had this to say: “THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, revised and remodeled by Mike Flanagan. I don’t usually care for this kind of revisionism, but this is great. Close to a work of genius, really. I think Shirley Jackson would approve, but who knows for sure.” You watch it for yourself on Netflix.

A group of call girls all decide to quit the business when one of them is killed. They change their names, leave town and make lives for themselves over the next 13 years. Then, one of them is killed and the rest soon learn that her killer is looking for the rest of them.

Originally airing on April 2, 1984, this TV movie is pretty much a giallo without black gloved hands or tremendous amounts of gore and nudity. But stylistically, it’s very close in tone.

Terry (Barbara Carrera, Never Say Never Again) was once the leader of the girls, but now she’s fighting for custody of her son. The other girls have all grown into different lives, like Paula (Kim Cattrall), who is a doctor that is being considered to run a hospital, Patrice (Kirstie Alley), an actress and Clarissa (Debbie Boone), who sings gospel music as part of a televangelist’s ministry. None of them can afford to lose their station in life by the — SINS OF THE PAST — coming back.

Anthony Geary from General Hospital is also on hand as a detective that somehow worms his way in Barbara Carrera’s pants. This is one of those films where cops can be total pricks and still lead with the heroine because it was the 1980’s and that’s how writers thought women acted.

Director Peter H. Hunt also directed adaptations of Danielle Steele’s Secrets. This is a very similar type of story, with plenty of red herrings, like the father who killed his daughter that caused all of the girls to go into hiding. This is difficult to find, but there’s always YouTube if you want to check it out.

With so much of television now just fodder for streaming services, we may never have the days of Halloween specials and strange movies like this ever again. The world is a worse place for this.

Originally airing on ABC on Friday, November 1, 1985, The Midnight Hour is all about five teenagers causing hijinks in Pitchford Cove. Those kids, Phil (Lee Montgomery, Davey from Burnt Offerings all grown up!), Mary (Dedee Pfeiffer, Vamp), Mitch (Peter DeLuise, son of Dom), Vinnie (Levar Burton!) and Melissa (Shari Belafonte, Time Walker) steal all manner of costumes and artifacts from the town’s historical museum. But then they go too far and read a spell in the cemetery, which causes the dead to rise, led by Melissa’s great-great-great-great grandmother Lucinda Cavender.

While everyone else is having fun at a Halloween party, Phil hooks up with a mystery girl named Sandy who ends up being an undead cheerleader. Lucinda is also turning everyone into vampires to the sounds of “How Soon is Now?” by The Smiths, which is pretty amazing music for a 1986 TV movie (yes, I am that Charmed used this song too, but this is only one year after it was released and long before the mainstream found it).

The only way our heroes can stop the curse is to find a spirit ring that is in the grave of witchhunter Nathan Grenville, who is, of course, Phil’s great-great-great-great grandfather and perhaps more troubling, the former slave owner of our main villain. If Phil and Sandy don’t stop the spell by midnight, the town will be cursed until the end of time.

I can best describe this movie as a combination of recognizable talent like Cindy Morgan (Lacey Underall from Caddyshack), Kurtwood Smith (sure, he was on That 70’s Show, but we remember him best as Clarence Boddicker from RoboCop), Dick Van Patten, Wolfman Jack and Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ Kevin McCarthy with musical numbers and comedic scenes while also containing some truly horrific and frightening scenes. It’s a mishmash. A monster mash?

It’s interesting to say the least. It’s the kind of movie that wouldn’t get made today, a movie that crosses genres and emotions while trying its heart out to entertain you. Director Jack Bender has gone on to direct episodes of Lost, The Sopranos and Game of Thrones.

This was released on DVD in 2000, but has become really hard to find, with prices as high as $400 on ebay!

Here’s a drink for the movie.

Sandy’s Jacket

• 1 oz. pineapple vodka
• 1 oz. rum
• 2 oz. orange juice
• 2 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 tbsp. passion fruit simple syrup
• 1 tbsp. cream of coconut
• Club soda
• Maraschino cherry

1. Pour all ingredients in an ice-filled glass.
2. Stir and top with a cherry. This one is easy and still casts a spell.

On a rainy night, six priests battle the infamous Amityville House until a demon finds its way into a lamp. That lamp is later sold in a yard sale for $100 to Helen Royce (Peggy McCay, TV’s Days of Our Lives) and her friend Rhona. That very same lamp gives Helen deadly tetanus, killing her nearly instantly. If you’re still with me after that incredibly stupid beginning, well, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t get much better. But hey — that doesn’t mean this movie can’t be fun.

Originally airing on May 12, 1989 on NBC, this continuation of the Amityville Horror series doesn’t even need the house, not when it has that evil lamp, which is now in the home of Helen’s sister, Alice Leacock (first wife of Ronald Reagan, Jane Wyatt). Alice’s main character quality is that she is a bitter bitch who instantly judges nearly every single person in this film.

Her daughter Nancy (Patty Duke, who once lost control to a hot dog) and her three kids Amanda, Bria and Jessica have all moved in with Alice. The lamp causes some arguments in the family, but Jessica is drawn to it. Soon, it’s doing all sorts of incredible things, like putting birds into toaster ovens, cutting off boyfriend’s hands with the garbage disposal, drowning plumbers in tar and making their cars drive away, and vandalizing people’s bedrooms.

The police and the church get involved as they all battle the lamp. Let me remind you of that one more time — they all fight a lamp. This is also a movie where a small child nearly wipes out his family with a chainsaw. Of course, the lamp is destroyed, but it finds its way into the family cat. Such are the depths that the Amityville franchise has sunk to. Writer/director Sandor Stern might get some of the blame, as he also wrote the original. But let’s cut that dude a break. After all, he was behind one of the oddest films ever, Pin!

This one is hard to find. I got mine for $1 at an Exchange store, so you might get lucky, too. Or unlucky. It depends on your POV on bad sequels and made for TV films.

UPDATE: You can watch this on Amazon Prime or Tubi. Or, if you want the ultimate non-cannon Amityville experience, you can grab this movie as part of Vinegar Syndrome’s astounding Amityville: The Cursed Collection set, along with Amityville: A New Generation, Amityville: It’s About Time and Amityville: Dollhouse.

Also known as Stranger in Our House, Summer of Fear is based on Lois Duncan’s 1976 young adult novel. Duncan also wrote the books that the movies I Know What You Did Last Summer and Killing Mr. Griffin were based on.

Originally airing on October 31, 1978 on NBC, this Wes Craven-directed film is all about Julia (Lee Purcell, Necromancy), who has lost her parents and housekeeper to a car crash. Her aunt Leslie (Carol Lawrence, ex-wife of Robert Goulet), uncle Tom (Jeremy Slate, The Dead Pit) and their kids Peter (Jeff East, the teenage Superman in the 1977 film), Bobby and Rachel (Linda Blair!). Rachel and Julie quickly become friends, which helps Julie escape her shyness and even get a makeover.

You know who doesn’t like Julia? Rachel’s horse Sundance. But everyone else seems to love her. However, stuff just doesn’t add up. Like why does she have human teeth in her room? Why did she steal a photo of Rachel, who suddenly gets hives (poor Linda, always having to be in makeup)? Why doesn’t she have a reflection? And oh yeah, why does she get away with stealing Rachel’s boyfriend Mike (Jeff McCracken, who wrote his own Wikipedia page obviously)?

To say that Rachel’s life turns into shit is putting it mildly. She loses her boyfriend. She loses her best friend (a young Fran Drescher). She loses her horse, which flips out in competition and needs to be put to sleep. And she even nearly loses her one confidant, Professor Jarvis (the man once known as the King of the B’s, Macdonald Carey), who believes her when she says that Rachel is into black magic. Oh, it gets worse. Julia is planning on getting with her father and killing her mother!

Of course, everything works out well and it’s revealed that Julia was really Sarah, the housekeeper. But perhaps more frightening is the fact that she survives another accident and becomes a nanny in a new household. Her evil isn’t finished yet.

This is a slow burner, but once the occult madness kicks in, it gets pretty fun. Then again, I’m a sucker for Linda Blair. Made a year after The Hills Have Eyes, it fits well into the 1970’s TV movie milieu.

After playing on NBC and CBS, this film was sold theatrically to Europe, where it got the title Summer of Fear. It was re-released in 2017 by Doppelganger Releasing.

You can also watch the entire movie hosted by the guys from New Castle After Dark right here.

If seeing the names Robert Urich, Joanna Cassidy, Susan Lucci and Wes Craven all together on one movie doesn’t get you interested, I have no idea why you’re reading this site. This movie is everything ridiculous and awesome and wonderful about why I watch these kinds of movies. To wit, Robert Urich donning a spacesuit so that he can see who is a demon and who isn’t as he descends to hell through the country club he probably shouldn’t have joined.

Originally airing May 24, 1984 on ABC, this is the kind of movie that starts with Susan Lucci’s character Jessica Jones getting run over by a limo driver distracted by bikini girls, rising to her feet and roasting the man alive. It gets better from there.

Just watching the credits is enough to make one get excited. Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers! Joe Regalbuto from Murphy Brown! Michael Berryman from, well, every 80’s direct to video movie and The Hills Have Eyes! The Bad Seed herself, Patty McCormack! And look — Punky Brewster herself, Soleil Moon Frye!

We’re not done yet! Here comes the hero of The Never Ending Story Barret Oliver! Sid Fields, who Jerry adopted on Seinfeld, also known as character actor Bill Erwin.

If this looks better than a run of the mill TV movie, that’s because it has Wes Craven in the director’s chair, during the same year he made A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Hill Have Eyes Part II. It was written by Richard Rothstein, who also brought us Universal Soldier and Human Experiments. Dean Cundy was the cinematographer, so again, this makes the movie look way better than you’d think.

How did this all come about? Well, when Lucci renewed her contract with ABC in 1983, she was guaranteed a movie of the week in the hopes that after years of her gimmick of being always nominated for the lead actress daytime Emmy and not winning, she’d get to win a real Emmy. This film was specifically written just for her.

Whoever saw this movie as award fodder had to have been doing the best drugs that 1984 could produce. Aerospace engineer Matthew Winslow (Urich), wife Patricia (Cassidy) and their two young kids (Oliver and Moon Frye) are reaping the benefits of his big promotion for inventing a fireproof spacesuit that will take man to Venus.

So, of course, his family wants that good life, which includes the Steaming Springs Country Club that keeps you young forever, possesses young children to destroy their toy bunnies and turns wives into sex-crazed maniacs.

Lucci is Lucci in this, out of control and dressed like a character out of V, as Urich dons that suit — it’s actually a G.I. Joe figure for most of the effects — and battles her. That suit comes from the MGM Studio collection, the only one of its like that had official NASA suits at the time. The suit they got was missing a backpack, which had to be designed and made so that Urich didn’t overheat. For this and more insane behind the scenes stuff, this movie’s IMDB trivia page shames nearly every other IMDb trivia page.

Why would the Devil be Susan Lucci? Why would they put the gateway to Hell in a health club? Why wouldn’t Urich just leave his wife when she callously kills the family dog? Why is everyone close to him getting replaced and he’s just fine with it? Why doesn’t anyone realize that the grown up and more dangerous than Satan Rhoda Penmark is in their midst? Aren’t 80’s computer graphics the best?

Most importantly — why are you not rushing to Amazon to buy this?