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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.

Cult movie classic ‘Pretty Poison’ filmmaker Noel Black dead at 77 (photo: Tuesday Weld and Anthony Perkins in ‘Pretty Poison’) Noel Black, best remembered for the 1968 cult movie classic Pretty Poison, died of pneumonia at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital on July 5, 2014. Black (born on June 30, 1937, in Chicago) was 77. Prior to Pretty Poison, Noel Black earned praise for the 18-minute short film Skaterdater (1965), the tale of a boy skateboarder who falls for a girl bike rider. Shot on the beaches of Los Angeles County, the dialogue-less Skaterdater went on to win the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film and tied with Orson Welles’ Falstaff - Chimes at Midnight for the Technical Grand Prize at the 1966 Cannes Film Festival. Besides, Skaterdater received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Short Subject, Live Action category. (The Oscar winner that year was Claude Berri’s Le Poulet.) ‘Pretty Poison’: Fun and games and...

By Erin Lashley, MoreHorror.com

When Michael Calls - 1972

Helen begins receiving phone calls from a troubled child who claims to be her nephew Michael. The problem is that Michael died fifteen years ago.

Phone calls from beyond the grave are bad enough, and these sound mighty eerie, if you are affected by sounds in horror films the way that I am. But what really has the potential to be chilling is the idea that, if it’s not a ghost calling, then someone has to be absolutely batshit crazy to perpetrate a hoax like this. Not only that, but they’ve managed to coerce a living child into making the phone calls.

Michael Douglas is here in an early role, and if you’re a fan of Falling Down then you know that he does disturbed characters very well.

When Michael Calls stars Ben Gazzara, Elizabeth Ashley, and Michael Douglas,...