Weren't made-for-TV movies better in the 70s and 80s? Especially the scary ones!

I had a vague recollection about a film which featured little people living under the floorboards. The babysitter let me, my brother and sister stay up and watch it. It completely freaked me out...

Well, I've just found out an hour ago that it was called "Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark" and people are selling dodgy DVD copies on eBay!!!

There was also a film starring Robert Urich about his family moving to a new town and being invited to join a Country Club called Steamy Springs. The sauna within Steamy Springs was actually a portal to Hell!!!

Why don't they make films like this anymore?

What wasthat film when the guy had a ventrilicist (sp?) dummy and it came to life? Scared the shit out of me.

Also, I remember some scary film about gargoyles.

bkw said:

There's a few films like that. There were two I can think of in the 70s though... I think one starred Bill Bixby and the other starred Anthony Hopkins.

Justin1972UK said:

Yeah, i vaguely recall there being two as well.

There was also this film about a woman who looked like Karen Carpenter and was kidnapped and buried alive! Her captors kept her alive by feeding her through a tube but they'd sometimes throw spiders down the tube instead!

It scared the shit out of me!!!

Oooh yeah! There were alot of creepy movies back then. I saw a really scary one...well I saw it a long time ago. Forgot the name, forgot alot about it but it was about this creepy controling mother and I think she locks her son in the closet then she dies and he is kept in there for a while then a new family moves in and he becomes infatuated with the teenage daughter and then at the end of the movie he attacks her or something. The whole family didn't even know he was there. It was most definatly from the seventies.

And the last house on the left. Gross, blah very disturbing.

Also let's see ever see that movie....oh god it really was like Scary movie of the eighties. It was a comedey that made fun of horror movies. It REALLY freeked me out...it was funny but scary! The killer was called the "Breather" because everytime you saw him the you saw his feet but never saw his face and he was breathing like a pervert and having a little dialogue with himself. It was a creepy movie.

Oh and what eles....Mother's day. Freeky movie.

But omg Sleepaway Camp was the creepiest. Omg that ending freeked me out. If you ever watched you you KNOW what I'm talking about! YUCK!

Anthony stared in Magic...the trailer was alot more scary than the film though, and i still remember the tagline:

Abracadabra i sit on his knee
presto chango and now he is me
hocus pocus we take her to bead
magic is fun.....your dead.

For me' there were 2;

Trilogy Of Terror.
Which I rented last year, & boy! Does it ever look dated & cheesy now.

Also, there was another Trilogy type movie which I can't recall the name of (TOT-II ?), & had a story of lady whose drowned son returns one day from the ocean.

Not just scart movies, but kids movies and stuff were freaky. I was freaked out by the My Little Pony movie Fraggle Rock had me hiding behind the sofa when those big monsters came on screen, and don't get me started on Labrynth. It's OK to watch now, but all puppets are freaky.

When I was a kid,I remember watching this TV movie in 1976 and being freaked out by it


John Travolta played a guy who had some weird disease which prevented him from interacting with people.He was forced to live inside this big plastic bubble.I haven't seen this film since I was a kid,I forgot how it ends.But I recall being spooked by it,for some reason.

lazycrockett said:

I couldn't be in the same room as that trailer when I was a little kid!

There were some great awful/creepy TV movies in the 1970s.


Stranger in Our House (later retitled Summer of Fear for its European theatrical release). It was one of Wes Craven's earlier directorial efforts. From the Terror Trap entry:

Wes Craven directed Stranger In Our House for NBC in 1978. After helming two films which had garnered notoriety, The Last House On the Left and The Hills Have Eyes, Craven relished the chance to make a more mainstream movie, one that would be shot in 35 millimeter...as opposed to the 16 he had been used to.

The result was so good, the film was re-titled Summer of Fear for theatres in Europe and its DVD release.

The story concerns a young woman named Julia (Lee Purcell) who goes to live with her aunt's family after she loses both her parents and their housekeeper in a tragic car accident.

Upset at the sudden death of her sister, Leslie Bryant (Carol Lawrence) takes the young woman (on break from school in Boston) in for the summer.

Although they haven't seen her in ten years, Leslie's husband Tom (Jeremy Slate), her son Peter (Jeff East), daughter Rachel (Linda Blair) and youngest son Bobby (James Jarnigan) are all eager to make the new member of the house feel welcome.

Rachel is especially thrilled at the thought of having a girl her age around the house. She even offers to split her bedroom with the cousin.

Julia seems painfully shy. The family takes note of her strange accent. It's not the way most people who live on the east coast speak. Even though her parents lived in the Ozarks in Missouri, isn't that a southern accent they detect? Trying to open up a bit, Julia gets a makeover and develops a more sophisticated façade.

Let's just end that description there.


Stephen King's Salem's Lot, 1979
I've loved this one since I was young. It scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it! When that boy levitated in front of the bedroom window...I was a goner! Probably my favorite TV horror. The remake from a few years back wasn't bad either, but this one's tops!


Satan's School for Girls, 1973
What more can you say?



Trilogy of Terror, 1975


Duel, 1971
Spielberg's first feature, and one that is still copied to this day.



busted ass org edit
[Edited 2/28/06 6:21am]

how about the warlock movies ?

XxAxX said:

Love those pieces of doo doo! They weren't made for TV, though. You'd never guess it!

I can remember watching this when i was very young and being really freaked out. I think it's only been shown on British t.v a couple of times but i recently got it off ebay. It's still pretty cool, from 1971 i think.

RipHer2Shreds said:

true they weren't

RipHer2Shreds said:

Summer of Fear.....no comment.

I saw Salem's Lot when I was really little as well, and that also scared the crap out of me. Of course I read the book as well, and that particular scene is one of the scariest in the whole book. TO this day, I can still freak myself out in the summertime if I'm lying in bed and think of that part.

Do you own Satan's School for Girls? Because if you do, I HAVE to see it! I love all things from '73.

And speaking of Trilogy of Terror, my older sister watched this on TV when she was 5 (she snuck out of her room and watched it secretly from the hall) and she's never been the same since. She refuses to even think about watching it again, so about two weeks ago I e-mailed her with a photo attachment saying it was a cute photo of my cat. It was actually this:



She e-mailed me back with just one word: thanks.

And I haven't heard from her since. I think she's actually really pissed at me for doing that! I should call her.

minneapolisgenius said:

You've offed your sister with a fetish doll! I don't own Satan's School for Girls...yet!

Krystal666 said:

Is that first movie you're talking about possibly "Flowers in the Attic"?

"Last House On The Left" was a little too violent to be made for TV LOL.

As for the 80's parody of horror movies, only two come to mind, "Return To Horror High" and (I think this was actually early 90s) "Possessed" starring Linda Blair.

Sleepaway Camp was a fun movie. I liked the sequels even more. They were silly but fun to watch, especially the person who gets buried up to their neck and their head run over with a lawnmower.

Are we even talking about TV horror anymore, or just crappy/creepy horror?

there was an alfred hitchcock movie, or show.... i cant remember which, it messed me ALLLLL up...

it was about a woman that wanted to get out of prison, she got the guy that worked in the graveyard i think to take her out and bury her with the next body to go out... and then come dig her back up.

turns out, when she lit a match or something after she had been in there for quite a long time, the man she was buried with was that guy

when the camera pulled back, you could hear her screaming while looking over the graveyard....


SCARY !

RipHer2Shreds said:

I know. Now I'm worried about her. She's going to call me up now and invite me over for no particular reason.

Tom said:

The one she's thinking of is Student Bodies from 1981.

JediMaster said:

Somebody's altered that image, because I don't think it originally said "the laugh cunt begins."

RipHer2Shreds said:

OMG I was JUST going to post that! I thought it was my eyes. You know, being old and all.

Salem's Lot was too scary to watch for me back then!!!!

RipHer2Shreds said:

Wow! I dindn't even catch that! I was just looking for a good pic of the DVD cover!

I watched a whole lotta shit I had no business lookin at as a kid because of this one right here...



and her fluffy ass titties. Mainly I remember Killer Tomatoes and Klowns from Outer Space.






Nightmares on top of nightmares. All cause of those titties.

HEY... I thought this was about TV movies!

JediMaster said:

OMG this is the movie I was talking about!