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I’m something of a made-for-television movie connoisseur. That means, in operational terms, simply that I watch a lot (a frightening amount) of made-for-television movies. Principally, the scary ones. I’m discussing classics from the BBC and ABC Horror Movie of the Week programming list. Sweetly, I first got into them with my mom, who considered them a cornerstone of my horror education. I couldn’t understand the genre without first witnessing wall-crawling goblins in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark or being Bewitched by Elizabeth Montgomery in The Victim.

I’ve seen the good, the bad, and even the ugly, and narrowing down my favorites isn’t straightforward. After all, my list looks considerably different than our own Tyler Doupé’s on the same topic. However, I am willing to concede that Richard Lang’s Don’t Go to Sleep ranks among the best. It’s haunted me since I...

Let’s face it: Most horror made for TV isn’t really scary, is it? I mean, we talk about these shows or movies frightening us as kids, but we could say the same about watching a PG rated flick that contains a few good jolts or disturbing themes. The bottom line is a lot of things scare us as children, including real life. And every once in awhile, someone will come strutting along and boast of a TV movie from their youth that they insist is genuinely scary. And when they say genuine, they mean that it still casts a spell today, unvarnished by time. Well, having finally seen it for the first time, I can say that Don’t Go To Sleep (1982) fits the bill, offering up a few for real scares, a sense of unease, a clever teleplay, and an ending that’s still sticking to me like unwanted psychic residue.