TV on DVD What are you watching now?

[Monsters For Sale]

Polished off another series:


Hammer House of Horror, 1980

Hammer Studios produced this hour-long British anthology series that ran for only 13 episodes.


This short series has tales about Satanic cults, serial killers, witchcraft, cannibalism, African voodoo, werewolves, haunted houses, human sacrifice and the like.

The all British cast features mostly actors that American audiences not be able to name, but whose faces are familiar.  Peter Cushing and Denholm Eliot appear in two of the stories.


The episodes:

The Witching Time
The Thirteenth Reunion
Rude Awakening
Growing Pains
The House That Bled To Death
Charlie Boy
The Silent Scream
Children of the Full Moon
Carpathian Eagle
Guardian of the Abyss
Visitor From the Grave
The Two Faces of Evil
The Mark of Satan


The quality of these shows is pretty uneven.  Some are not so great, but there are a few real stand-outs.  I was disappointed that the nudity that graced a couple early episodes was not continued in later shows.

[Monsters For Sale]

Dead of Night, 1977 - Anthology made-for-TV movie with a trilogy of weird tales.

1.  Second Chance - Ed Begley, Jr. Restores an old car  and is transported back in time.

2.  No Such Thing As a Vampire - Anjanette Comer is convinced she is being attacked by vampires.  He husband brings in a consultant to sort it all out.

3.  Bobby - Joan Hacket wants her recently deceased son back.  Sound familiar?



The Dead of Night DVD I bought also contains a bonus feature:

A Darkness At Blaisedon, 1969 - An unsold TV pilot about a woman who thinks her house is haunted.  She hires a couple ghost hunters to check it out.


Dated material, but kinda fun.  I wish there were a lot more anthology movies.

[ChristineBCW]

Because of reading this thread and yesterday's "weather day", we watched the first Kolchak episode with McGavin.  And then over to an Outer Limits episode.

[Memphremagog]

Doctor Who: The Keeper Of Traken(1981)
Voyage To the Bottom Of the Sea: The Last Battle(1965)
Lost In Space: The Keeper Pt 1 & II(1966)
The Time Tunnel: Kill Two By Two(1967)
Land Of the Giants: Deadly Lodestone(1969)
Night Gallery: Pamela's Voice/Lone Survivor/The Doll(1971)
Batman: Batman's Anniversary/A Riddling Controversy(1967)

[Monsters For Sale]

I'm about half way through this series and really enjoying it:

The Ray Bradbury Theater, 1985-1992 - 65 episodes.

Episodes are introduced by Bradbury and the credits for each say they are "based on an original story and written by Ray Bradbury".

It is fun revisiting some of the classic short stories that I first encountered in books, on radio (X Minus One, Dimension X) or on TV (Twilight Zone) and seeing the author's own adaptations.

Available in a 5-disc DVD set with pretty decent picture quality considering how many episodes are on each disc.

The complete series also can be seen on YouTube:

https://tinyurl.com/j4wdauv

A few clunkers, but a surprising number of really well done stories.

[Monsters For Sale]

Maters of Science Fiction, 2008 - Anthology TV Series that showed promise, but was ended after only 6 episodes.

No "Twilight Zone" or "Outer Limits".  But I wish it had been given a couple seasons to mature and find its legs.  TV gives up too soon on some shows.  There are plenty tales of shows that got off to a slow start only to become big hits. 

Think about "Seinfeld".  It ended up in first place in the ratings, but it sure wasn't there in the first few seasons.

[marsattacks666]

The Munsters

[Memphremagog]

Voyage To the Bottom Of the Sea: The Indestructible Man(1965)
Lost In Space: The Magic Mirror(1966)
The Time Tunnel: Idol Of Death(1967)
Land Of the Giants: Genius At Work(1969)
Doctor Who: Earthshock(1982)
Night Gallery: Since Aunt Ada Came To Stay/With Apologies To Mr.Hyde/The Flip Side Of Satan(1971)
Black Scorpion: Out Of Thin Air(2001)

[Anthony Caranci]

The Outer Limits (new series):

Trial By Fire - 1996
Worlds Apart - 1996
The Refuge - 1996

[Lunkenstein]

Still chugging along at Dark Shadows. Watched a chunk of episodes from about 554-564.

Adam wants Barnabas and Julia to create a bride for him; Willie doesn't want to dig up dead bodies; Angelique has been turned into a vampire by Nicholas and is ruining the life of Joe Haskell.

Pretty normal day in Collinsport.

After watching HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS (1970), I felt very nostalgic and decided to look up the series on Amazon Prime. During its original run, I starting watching when Barnabas entered the story and became hooked. I just watched the very first episode and though I'm not sure if I can commit to all 1,248 shows, it will be fun to see how far I can go. Man, I still love that music and the downbeat, other-worldly atmosphere of the series.

[Monsters For Sale]

Just finished watching:

Amazing Stories: Season One. 1985 - These are said to be little ideas from Stephen Spielberg that never got fully fleshed out for full-length movies.  Not horror and not much sci-fi, but they are nice little half hour fantasy pieces.

I especially like the episode "Mummy Daddy" about an actor making a mummy movie who is called away from the set so suddenly, for the birth of his first child, that he doesn't have time to take off his makeup and costume.  Along the way, he has considerable trouble from the locals.

Not bad diversions.  I am looking forward to watching Season Two.

[Creepy]

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - watching this again I figured out why I liked it so much as a young boy. The episode Vegas in Space started with a beautiful woman in a baby doll nighty being kidnapped, and had a lounge girl wearing a "dress" that was basically a strip of material down the front, and a strip down the back, nothing on the sides. Man I love that show.

[Mike Scott]

I especially like the episode "Mummy Daddy"

One of their best!

[Monsters For Sale]

Polished off:

Amazing Stories: Season Two, 1986 - Last season of this series.

For me, the outstanding episode was "Welcome To My Nightmare".  A horror-obsessed teen finds himself playing both Norman and victim in a way-to-realistic "Psycho" re-inactment.  Cleverly done, using the actual Universal sets.

[Lunkenstein]

AMAZING STORIES is definitely on my list of series I want see again. Also, that '80s TWILIGHT ZONE reboot. I remember that had some pretty decent episodes.

I can't believe how much I'm enjoying DARK SHADOWS again. It's nice with Amazon Prime and no commercials. At 21 minutes a shot, it's fun to throw a couple on here and there in between other things. I'm finding the acting pretty good here in these early episodes which I hadn't seen.