For some reason something called “One Step Beyond” came recommended to me on Youtube. A haunted U-Boat episode with Werner Klemperer. I keep meaning to stop it, but its pretty good.
I think I’ve only watched one “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”. Of course I’ve seen any number of cheesy 70’s ones like “The Sixth Sense” And all of the excellent in its own way “Night Stalker.”
Any stand-outs you all can think of from various series?
I just remembered one that made my jaw drop from I think “Goosebumps” of all things. My kids are watching it and I’m not paying much attention til the end when some creature which is doubling as a school mascot has swallowed two friends of the main kid. You can see a cutaway of the kids in its stomach screaming and then the credits roll. I thought for sure that must just be part one and in part two the creature is defeated.
I never watched either of these so I don’t really know much about them or how they’ve aged, but when I was a kid Are You Afraid Of The Dark and Tales From The Crypt were both pretty popular.
The OP mentions the old ones I wa going to say, but there’s a newer series I’d recommend – Tales from the Dark Side. It was developed by George Romero (of Night of the Living Dead fame), and when I firsdt caught an episode I hadn’t heard of the series, but I was drawn in. Superbly written and directed, it felt like a good episode of the old Twilight Zone, but it was too modern.
as with Twilight Zone, several stories were adaptations from the works of noted writers. It starred several good actors (Fritz Weaver, Danny Aiello). And, while it was overall a low budget production, they clearly spent some money on some episodes.
the first one I caught was “The Odds” , with Aiello and Tom Noonan.
The one and only thing I remember about the short lived show Darkroom is it had an episode about toy Army Men coming to life that stuck with me for years and was definitely not an episode of Tales from The Darkside like I thought it was.
Speaking of Tales From The Darkside, I think most people into sci fi and horror around my age remember both “Trick or Treat” and “Inside the Closet”
To this day I still remember the pilot episode of the 80s remake of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. A woman is raped and after her husband takes her home from the hospital she sees her attacker walk past their car. The husband chases him down and kills him, only to find his wife was actually so traumatized by what happened she thinks everyone is her attacker.
I watched every episode of Tales From the Crypt but all my memories of it are of the credits and the Crypt Keeper.
It wasn’t as famous but I also liked the syndicated show Monsters. A few episodes I can remember are one where a guy gets pool hustled by a beautiful vampire and one with a finger coming out of the sink (based on a Stephen King Story).
This is also the pilot episode of the original 1955 Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “Revenge”, directed by Alfred Hitchcock himself. Unfortunately, he didn’t appear in these episodes. It does include Frances Bavier (Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith Show).
Indeed it is. Although the last season was lackluster.
I fear that they may have exhausted the “trapped consciousness” scenario and are now scraping for other material and coming up short. But yes, on the first 2 seasons alone, it earned its role as the bar against which the genre should now be judged.
I was going to mention this one, but I found some of the old shows on some weird cable channel, and they’re just not as scary as I remember them. Seriously cheesy, too.
One Step Beyond had a lot of shows that were seared on my memory for years (the clown from the circus who showed up in reflections? the diamond necklace that would strangle the wearer? the ESL teach who started writing in an unknown-to-her language?). Haven’t seen them in years, but I replaying them in my head I think they hold up better than the Thriller shows – just saw one last night with William Shatner (thin!) chewing the scenery.
Dust on YouTube has great short sci-fi videos, many are dark. Check out Bad Peter. They are also grouped into anthologies so you can watch a butch with a similar style.
The Alfred Hitchcock episode Lamb to the Slaughter is very well known. A man was killed from a blow to the head by a blunt object in his home but the police can’t find the murder weapon. The weapon was the frozen leg of lamb his wife was cooking in the oven while the police search the house. Barbara Bel Geddes, best known for the role of Miss Ellie on Dallas played the wife.
Another great episode, again directed by Hitchcock himself. It’s fun seeing who wrote each story in the series; this one was written by Roald Dahl (“James and the Giant Peach”), and according to wikipedia Lamb to the Slaughter, the story was suggested to Dahl by his friend Ian Fleming. It also mentions the British series “Tales of the Unexpected”, which I now think would be interesting to see. This episode is here on Youtube (as are the rest of them). They’re also on Amazon Streaming.
I also love “The Jar” episode, based on Ray Bradbury’s story and directed by Norman Lloyd, who apparently was also a producer of the Tales of the Unexpected…
I rather enjoyed the short-lived Dimension 404 series - it’s more quirky sci-fi than horror but there are some horror elements thrown in (particularly in “Cinethrax” and “Polybius”).
Tales from the Darkside is worth watching just for the intro alone
“*Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But… there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit…
*”
If we are talking favorite episodes, my favorite Tales from the Darkside is Seasons of Belief (aka the “Grither” episode). I remembered it well from back in the day and for a while watched it on YouTube a few Christmases in a row until it was taken down.