First viewed : 20 September 1980
This series of hour long chillers from the famous film studios pepped up the Saturday night schedule during the autumn of 1980. Not all of them had supernatural elements ; in some the horror came from the human capacity for evil.
I didn't get to see them all but the ones I did featured a degree of titillation and no guarantee of a happy ending . The one I remember most fondly, The Carpathian Eagle ticked both those boxes and featured Suzanne Danielle in varying states of undress as a novelist-cum-serial killer despatching lechers ( including a young Pierce Brosnan ) with a curved blade.
The other ones I caught were :
- The Thirteenth Reunion A health farm is found to be a front for cannibalism
- The Silent Scream Peter Cushing, an ex-Nazi, torments ex-con Brian Cox and his wife Elaine Donnelly. They think they've turned the tables on him but when they get home they find he's turned their house into an electrified prison with no way out. That's the one that spooked me the most.
- Children of the Moon Christopher Cazenove and his wife stumble on a family of werewolf children being nannied by Diana Dors. She apparently had a really nasty side to her personality and you can believe that from her performance in this.
- Guardian of the Abyss Ray Lonnen gets into real trouble when he tries to help a young woman escape from a Satanist coven.
- Visitor From the Grave An interesting twist on the old "drive the heiress insane" plot line where the conspirators get a taste of their own medicine.
Thirteen episodes were made and producer Roy Skeggs said that a second series was in the pipeline but Lew Grade 's ITC Entertainment who were part-funding it had to pull the plug because of the losses suffered by the film turkey Raise The Titanic .
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