Ghost Story/Circle of Fear - Season Two Part Two

THE GRAVEYARD SHIFT
(1973)
Dir - Don McDougall
Overall: GOOD
 
Executive producer/B-movie camp maverick William Castle finally appears on screen in a speaking role for his Ghost Story/Circle of Fear series after merely providing a Hitchcock-esque, blink and you'll miss it cameo in the show's first episode "The New House".  "The Graveyard Shift" finds John Astin as a former actor who nonchalantly settles for a security gig at his old film studio stomping grounds after suffering a career-ending injury years earlier.  Ghostly activity begins to take place as the due date for he and wife Patty Duke's first child approaches, and these scenes are handled with spooky haunted Halloween house flare by director Don McDougall.  The reveal as to who the unwholesome specters are and what they are doing is absurd on paper, but as usual, the presentation never winks at the audience.  Astin and Duke sell the meta-adjacent material and on that note, Castle's appearance as a studio head actually serves as the exposition tipping point to wrap everything up.  The finale is anticlimactic, but that is the only fault that can be found in an otherwise clever and properly atmospheric bit of small screen ghoulishness.
 

SPARE PARTS
(1973)
Dir - Charles Dubin
Overall: MEH
 
Jimmy Sangster and Seeleg Lester collaborated, (or both worked on the same script separately), for the first of two times on Circle of Fear with the odd possession tale "Spare Parts".  A clever title considering that no, this does not have anything to do with automobiles.  Instead, it concerns three different people who are given hand, eye, and vocal chord transplants from a lone donor, a donor with an unwholesome agenda from beyond the grave.  Meg Foster makes her second appearance on the program here as the former blind lady, joined by Alex Rocco whose brand new voice is dubbed by Don Knight's bad guy.  There is a fun comeuppance twist worthy of a Tales from the Crypt rug pull, and it has the usual continuous minor key musical accompaniment plus plenty of atmospheric ambience to spook up the scenes where Knight's ghostly visage appears to the people who have inherited his appendages.  Susan Oliver sadly turns in a lousy performance as the targeted widow, and this follows the show's trajectory of unsatisfactory endings, but the unusual premise and set pieces are not without their merit.
 

THE GHOST OF POTTER'S FIELD
(1973)
Dir - Don McDougall
Overall: MEH
 
The second Ghost Story/Circle of Fear episode to feature doppelgängers, "The Ghost of Potter's Field" is one of the least successful of the series.  This is not because it is egregious or ludicrous, (there are plenty of the latter installments that came before), it is just because things never pick up steam.  Premise wise, the concept of a wronged-spirit taking the form of a random guy who happens upon his grave site and then targets that random guy is not one that is frequented much in supernatural fiction, but that may be because it is not that interesting.  As our hapless protagonist, Tab Hunter spends most of the story as a stick in the mud who is prone to temper tantrums and while that is explained in Bill S. Ballinger's script, it still makes for a lousy guy to spend fifty minutes with.  The plot follows a monotonous structure where Hunter's malevolent twin arbitrarily appears to cause him misfortune, including murdering or near-murdering several acquaintances of his.  Competent yet bland and with no spooky set pieces, it all leads to a finale where in this universe, a ghost can simply be shown a photograph of their former selves and given a speech in order to go away.
 

THE PHANTOM OF HERALD SQUARE
(1973)
Dir - James H. Brown
Overall: GOOD
 
Coincidentally appearing as a man named James Barlow when he would face off against the immortal Kurt Barlow six years later in the Salem's Lot miniseries, David Soul dons a brown leather jacket and shows off his dreamy blonde hair in the final Circle of Fear episode "The Phantom of Herald Square".  Thankfully, this is a strong one that has a heart-string-pulling finale and takes on some new subject matter, namely the lingering turmoil suffered by those who bargain with their souls and sign Faustian packs.  Soul plays such a chap here, but James H. Brown's teleplay wisely only gingerly dishes out the information so that we are thrust right into such an uncanny scenario with no expository safety net.  Granted this is hardly a tricky script to figure out, and viewers will do so long before Soul's hapless love interest Sheila Larken finally gets it all explained to her.  Yet this works to the story's advantage, where well-versed genre fans will quickly be able to make connections that our likeable characters, (plus one no-nonsense supernatural bureaucrat portrayed by Murray Matheson), have to merely endure.  There is nothing spooky or atmospheric going on here, but as a romantic Twilight Zone excursion, it resonates more than it has any business to.

Ghost Story/Circle of Fear - Season Two Part One

DEATH'S HEAD

(1973)

Dir - James Neilson

Overall: MEH

 

Returning as Circle of Fear and removing the bookending Sebastian Cabot segments, the second season of what was once Ghost Story gets right down to it with "Death's Head".  A-lister Janet Leigh plays a cooped up housewife who hates bugs, which is odd since she is married to Gene Nelson's entomologist, a guy that is as passionate about his work as she is annoyed by it.  This leads to Leigh and Nelson's partner Rory "Always Standing and Walking" Calhoun spending more time together until some huckster gypsies offer Leigh a potion and eventually her husband's framed bug collection starts to do things that a framed bug collection should not be able to do.  One of the last projects for veteran television director James Neilson and the only screenwriting credit of any kind from William Castle assistant Rick Blum, it goes in a different direction from the usual "haunted place + gaslit woman" yarns, but the narrative hinges on some flimsy domestic drama.  Also, the would-be "scary" bits are poorly staged, using the occasional insect on a string gag yet mostly relying on incessant music, plus some sound effects and Leigh waving her arms around frantically.

 

DARK VENGEANCE

(1973)

Dir - Herschel Daugherty

Overall: MEH

 

Credit where it is due, Circle of Fear took on some off-kilter stories for their second season, with "Dark Vengeance" revolving around a sentient killer toy carousel horse of all random things.  As one could guess, the premise is too "Umm...sure" to properly deliver the chills, despite the sincere presentation and both Kim Darby and Martin Sheen taking the daft material seriously like the professional thespians that they are.  At first, Darby is plagued by dreams of floating eyeballs, rolling wheels, and horse noises while her husband Sheen tries to open a box that he found on a construction site and turns into a bit of an asshole in the process.  The reveal of what is inside of the box and in turn causing all of the domestic turmoil is bound to make viewers chuckle, but director Herschel Daugherty never winks at the audience.  Instead, the toy horse with a mind of its own, (and the ability to fluctuate in size depending on how angry, horny, or threatened it feels), is treated as if it is a deadly demon to be feared.  It gets an A for effort in this regard, but the explanation as to why this particular toy horse is terrorizing this particular couple is as dopey as the concept of an evil toy horse in the first place.

 

EARTH, AIR, FIRE AND WATER

(1973)

Dir - Alexander Singer

Overall: MEH

 

With a script by Star Trek legend D.C. Fontana that was based on one of her and overall science fiction legend Harlan Ellison's stories, one would think that the resulting "Earth, Air, Fire and Water" would have come out better.  Conceptually at least, it is a refreshing addition to Circle of Fear by containing few if any of the previous tropes that the program had been doing to death already, offering up a unique supernatural element, (or a series of elements), besides ghosts and the like.  Six hippies rent out an ideal storefront space to sell their artwork, only to get possessed and consumed by some jars that house ancient forms of malevolence.  Details are kept vague as to provide some unsettling ambiguity, but the story is low on set pieces and the one-note characters all blend together.  They behave strangely, argue, and/or disappear until the final shot confuses things further where the last hippy standing has morphed into...something.  Maybe it is the lack of star power or Alexander Singer's uninspired direction, but such singular ideas seem to get lost in the stock presentation.

 

DOORWAY TO DEATH

(1973)

Dir - Daryl Duke

Overall: MEH

 

Another Jimmy Sangster-penned story and his first for the second season of Ghost Story/Circle of Fear, "Doorway to Death" features a nifty hook of a door in a San Fransisco apartment building the leads out into the snow-covered woods where a man with an axe is doing stuff outside of a cabin.  None other than future teen idol/VH1 Behind the Music pioneer Lief Garrett is the first one to find this door, eventually trying to convince his older sister Susan Dey to check it out and meet the mysterious cabin man.  Oh, Dey also has dreams about him, dreams involving an axe and a burlap sack with blood on it, which is never a good combination.  There is a lot of howling wind on the soundtrack, (as well as a lot of incidental music to provide all of the atmosphere), and ultimately the tale asks a lot of the audience, namely to believe that even kids would be so gullible as to befriend an unwholesome fellow with an axe who never talks and no one else ever sees.  Also with a weak finale and an obligatory exposition dump just to make sure that viewers has no further questions, it is one of the series' more underwhelming entries.

 

LEGION OF DEMONS

(1973)

Dir - Paul Stanley

Overall: MEH

 

A live hand in a desk drawer, a woman trapped in a bottle, hovering coworkers chanting rituals, one of them wearing a spiked dog collar for some reason, another one wearing a giant boar mask, yet another one with green monster hands, a frog in a devil cape, a clandestine thirteenth floor of an office building, and a night time drive in a car that inexplicably turns into a roller coaster ride, a trek through the mountains, a helicopter dive on a lake, a ski descent, and a crash into a train car with a dynamite label on it, "Legion of Demons" throws everything but the kitchen sink into its barrage of nonsensical and tripped-out set pieces.  The second Ghost Story/Circle of Fear episode to be written by Anthony Lawrence, (the premonition nightmare "At the Cradle Foot" being the other), this one takes its clear Rosemary's Baby influence into the workplace where Shirley Knight's shy young receptionist gets targeted by nearly every person at her job.  It is actually too relentless with the one-note torment sequences suffered by Knight, trying to make up for its threadbare plot yet becoming monotonous and silly in the process.  Plus the finale is anticlimactic, with a square-jawed hero dashing in to save our heroine because poor gaslit women always need one of those.

Ghost Story/Circle of Fear - Season One Part Two

HALF A DEATH
(1972)
Dir - Leslie H. Martinson
Overall: GOOD

 

Authored by prolific small screen writer Henry Slesar, "Half a Death" suffers from a lackluster ending and some obvious ADRed dialog during its opening scene, but it is otherwise a better Ghost Story installment than many from the first season.  This is helped by scream queen Pamela Franklin in the lead, technically playing a set of twins even though one of them is dead from the onset and only shows up in ethereal flashes as a see-through specter in a white robe.  Franklin was getting as much work in horror-tinged projects as anything else at this point in her career, and she hides her British accent better than she hides her initial annoyance at her mother for keeping her and her identical sibling apart for the entirely of the latter's life.  As a twist to the gaslighting formula, Franklin is not the only character who sees visions of her deceased sibling, and her, her mom, and her new potential love interest even bring in a phony mother/son psychic team to conduct a seance that actually proves successful.

 

HOUSE OF EVIL
(1972)
Dir - Daryl Duke
Overall: GOOD

 

Heavyweight screenwriter Robert Bloch is on board for "House of Evil", one of the highlights in Ghost Story's first season that also features a young Jodie Foster playing Melvyn Douglas' deaf and mute granddaughter.  Douglas makes a sinister presence as an old geezer with a vendetta against the man whom he blames for his own daughter's death, that man happening to be Foster's father.  How he goes about exacting his revenge by way of a doll house and some "family members" made out of cookies is the quirky and unsettling part.  The audience can guess what Douglas is up to before he spells it all out, and the specifics of his voodoo-esque powers and how he obtained them are never explained.  Yet the moments between he and Foster telepathically communicating with each other remind one of Scatman Crothers and Danny Lloyd's exchanges in The Shining, plus director Daryl Duke maintains a steady and humorless tone of dread throughout.  Douglas is the highlight here though, turning in a cold performance that only hints at his sinister intentions, intentions which are only detectable to the few people who merely sense them.

 

CRY OF THE CAT
(1972)
Dir - Arnold Laven
Overall: MEH

 

Deadly felines and rodeo shenanigans, together at last.  "Cry of the Cat" follows the Ghost Story/Circle of Fear trajectory of exclusively Caucasian actors working with prolific television directors and stories by prolific television writers.  The cast should be recognizable enough to anyone familiar with small screen programing from the time, and this would be Arnold Laven's only work from behind the lens for the show.  The same goes for screenwriter William Bast who pens a tale about a wild cougar that terrorizes a local ranch, or so they believe.  The horror angle i.e. culprit is broadcasted early, and thankfully we do not spend the entirely of the episode just waiting for every character to catch up.  Unfortunately, this also lead to a meandering watch.  Not that every story needs a compelling mystery to keep one invested, but the lack of one here leaves little for everyone on the screen to do besides act concerned or miserable at their Cat People scenario.  The tragic finale is easily foreseeable as well since these werewolf-adjacent yarns always end badly for all involved.

 

ELEGY FOR A VAMPIRE
(1972)
Dir - Don McDougall
Overall: MEH

 

Ghost Story/Circle of Fear finally gets around to the undead in the apply titled "Elegy for a Vampire".  Two years away from landing the title role in Barney Miller, Hal Linden portrays a college professor who succumbs to vamprism through means which are never explained and worse yet, never shown.  Linden writes in his journal about the torments that he is facing by being unable to control his spontaneous blood lust, becoming a serial murderer in the process that everyone chips in to track down, including him.  The only evidence that we get of his unholy exploits are a couple of shots of his bulging eyes while his female victims scream at him.  Screenwriter Mark Weingart, (working from a story by Elizabeth Walter, who would have three more of her tales adapted for the program), does his best, as does director Don McDougall who still manages to stage some menace during the night time campus scenes  Yet the television presentation is simply too neutered for the material.  See the same year's The Night Stalker for evidence of how to do small screen blood-suckers right.

 

TOUCH OF MADNESS
(1972)
Dir - Robert Day
Overall: MEH

 

A partially successful spookshow excursion for Ghost Story, "Touch of Madness" once again ventures into a haunted abode where a woman's sanity is questioned by the gaslighting people around her, as had several episodes previously.  The good part is that some of these moments prove memorable where specters from the past play out their death, making a wide-eyed Lynn Loring pull out her hair in frustration as to their validity.  It does not help that her eccentric aunt and uncle, (Geraldine Page and Rip Torn, the later in some unconvincing old man makeup), dismiss Loring's terrified pleas as sleepwalking, gently insisting that she drink her tonic as to not cause so much fuss.  The house in question also changes appearance here or there, but this ultimately follows a type of arbitrary logic that is wrapped up unsuccessfully, as if several scenes are still missing.  Screenwriter Halsted Welles would also pen six Night Gallery episodes around the same time, but his work here merely shows promise while coming off as half-baked in such a setting.

 

CREATURES OF THE CANYON
(1972)
Dir - Walter Doniger
Overall: MEH

 

The least interesting entry in the first season of Ghost Story, (soon to change titles to Circle of Fear), "Creatures of the Canyon" finds Angie Dickinson fending off the supernatural advances of her recently deceased husband's cherished Dobermann.  Either that or a small statue of two K9s engaging in battle has somehow come to life.  Either that or Dickinson's other dog is possessed by the aggressive one.  Maybe all of these things are happening at once.  The lack of clear specifics is usually not a problem in ghostly tales so long as the set pieces are creepy and/or there is enough of an emotional hook to keep the viewer invested in the our struggling protagonist's ordeal.  Yet the formula of "aggressive barking = Dickinson looks scared" done on repeat causes more of a yawn than any unease, plus it is hard not to laugh when a stuffed Poodle lurches at her while she screams.  John Ireland also shows up as a crotchety neighbor who takes care of the Dobermann due to Dickinson's dog not getting along with it, but he gets little to do besides behaving in an anti-social and scowling manner.  It is lackluster enough that even dog owners will be bored.

 

TIME OF TERROR
(1972)
Dir - Robert Day
Overall: GOOD

 

The first season of Ghost Story ends on a high note with "Time of Terror", the first episode to take a Twilight Zone approach to its otherworldly subject matter.  Scripted by Jimmy Sangster, (Hammer's premier screenwriter during their golden era), it takes us to a different hotel besides the Mansfield House where host Sebastian Cabot introduces each tale, a hotel where its occupants seem to pass the time gambling until their lottery numbers are called, at which point they are taken to a separate room and occasionally leave their better halves bewildered and behind.  Patricia Neal finds herself here under increasingly hazy recollections after her husband inexplicably checks out solo, and eventually both her and the audience are able to put together what form of unsettling business is in fact going on.  The viewer will get it before Neal does, making for a premise that overstays its welcome in its roughly fifty minute format, but it is still a creepy enough concept that is handled in a beguiling manner for as long as possible.  This would also mark Cabot's final appearance on the program, as his presenter character was retired when the show came back the following year as Circle of Fear.

Ghost Story/Circle of Fear - Season One Part One

THE NEW HOUSE

(1972)

Dir - John Llewellyn Moxey

Overall: MEH

 

Kicking off the first season of Ghost Story was the pilot episode "The New House".  Written by heavyweight Richard Matheson and directed by John Llewellyn Moxey of City of the Dead and The Night Stalker fame, the series was also produced by William Castle, bringing together various personnel who had already cut their teeth in the horror genre, and successfully so at that.  This introductory segment laid out the formula for the first run of episodes where British thespian Sebastian Cabot stands-in for a role that would have ideally suited Orson Welles, playing a swanky hotel owner to introduce each story by talking directly into camera.  Cabot is hardly the Crypt Keeper, but he has an inviting enough charm that fits the slow-boil and lightweight material.  Here, Barbara Parkins plays a newly pregnant housewife who hears noises in her "new house" that was built on an old execution site, sounds that of course her well-meaning yet gaslighting husband never hears himself.  Atmospherically it is a mixed bag, (the dark and stormy night finale works and has a sufficient twist, but too many lights are kept on elsewhere), plus the plot has some silly character cliches and Parkins performance is uneven.

 

THE DEAD WE LEAVE BEHIND

(1972)

Dir - Paul Stanley
Overall: MEH

 

Just shy of six months after the pilot aired, Ghost Story begins its initial run properly with "The Dead We Leave Behind".   The only episode authored by teleplay writer Robert Specht and directed by Paul Stanley, (no, not THAT Paul Stanley), this one features a notable and top-billed guest star in Jason Robards, appropriately so as he is our main character that is stuck in a rotten marriage with Stella Stevens.  Robards plays a annoyed forest ranger who takes his job seriously, and his wife is a bored couch potato that never turns the TV off, leading to an accident that answers the question raised by host Sebastian Cabot concerning the television set of what if "what we were compelled to see was...absolutely astonishing".  Things escalate quickly as Robards makes one bad, panicked decision after another, and the ending is one of those that seems preordained upon discovery.  The production makes swell use out of atmospheric wind, and the TV gimmick is a unique if goofy one that never seems to drive Robards to proper madness.  Instead, he just seems exhausted at his unfortunate predicament, though he does finally snap and take an axe to the ole soapbox in a futile attempt to stop the supernatural shenanigans.

 

THE CONCRETE CAPTAIN

(1972)

Dir - Richard Donner

Overall: MEH

 

Three episodes in and Ghost Story was already retreading the well-worn motif of a woman hearing supernatural things in the middle of the night while her husband does not believe her and doctors are called in to check her mental stability.  "The Concrete Captain" has an odd yet ultimately lackluster premise of, (as the title would suggest), a sea captain who was buried in concrete out in the ocean that has attached his embittered spirit to a woman with extra sensory perception during her and her husband's honeymoon.  The plot meanders around with minimal set pieces and similarly offers up few chills, even of the muted TV variety.  That said, the personnel on had was certainly qualified.  Future A-list director Richard Donner already had a slew of small screen work under his belt by the time that he got behind the lens here, and the teleplay was by Hammer mainstay Jimmy Sangster, reworking a story by horror writer Elizabeth Walter.  Veteran TV thespians Gena Rowlands and Stuart Whitman do their professional best as well, but still, the lack of both intrigue and spookiness is a detriment.

 

AT THE CRADLE FOOT

(1972)

Dir - Don McDougall

Overall: MEH

 

Taking on the concept of premonitions that are revealed in dreams and permeate to a point of obsession, "At the Cradle Foot" starts off on well, a promising foot.  Screenwriter Anthony Lawrence and director Don McDougall were both in the middle of a steady career in television, and both would work on Ghost Story/Circle of Fear again.  Sadly, the material ultimately fails to impress.  The prominently tanned James Franciscus takes his foreboding omens seriously after his father died in the exact manner that he witnessed before it happened, prompting him to do everything in his power to thwart his recent premonitions of his young daughter being murdered twenty years into the future.  This leads to some questionable character behavior, not just from Franciscus' protagonist, but from others as well who act in a manner that foregoes plausibility in place of moving the plot along to its next increasingly farfetched moment.  Even though the series had yet to deliver any sufficient goosebump-ridden moments, this one is the tamest yet in such a regard, though the slow motion nightmare sequences have an ethereal aura to them at least.  Also, a young Meg Foster shows up, so that is always something.

 

BAD CONNECTION

(1972)

Dir - Walter Doniger

Overall: MEH

 

Three years before Dan Curtis' Trilogy of Terror, future scream queen Karen Black made her first foray into the horror genre as the lead in "Bad Connection".  This would be the only Ghost Story contribution for both director Walter Doniger and screenwriter John McGreevey, the latter retooling a story by series regular Richard Matheson about a woman who is plagued by whispery and threatening phone calls from beyond the grave.  Similar to other installments in the program thus far, the focus is once again on a woman who is driven mad by supernatural forces, so there is an air of redundancy setting in.  Black always did her best with even the worst material that she was given, and though this is far from an abysmal stain on her filmography, it still does not leave her much to do besides bouncing between screaming and merely being annoyed at her unearthly prankster.  The finale is anticlimactic, but the road to get there is not any more engaging to begin with.  Production wise, the program was still slick and not unable to produce some properly sinister mood setting, but it was also proving to be a pale comparison to Rod Serling's concurrently-running Night Gallery.

 

THE SUMMER HOUSE

(1972)

Dir - Leo Penn

Overall: GOOD

 

The most conceptually interesting episode thus far of the first season of Ghost Story, "The Summer House" finds Carolyn Jones revealing the same cycle of events surrounding her husband's murder.  As the title would dictate, such events take place at the couple's summer house, one that Jones seemingly arrives at before her better half, much to the confusion of her friends and fellow townsfolk who swear that they saw him there the day before.  It is clear from the onset that Jones is hiding something, and exactly what it is becomes even more clear before the first commercial break hits.  Seeleg Lester's script has a topsy-turvy structure though that keeps the viewer on edge as to non-linear way in which Jones' troubled protagonist seems to be going about her troubled ordeal, turning repeated scenes into increasingly unsettling ones.  The inevitable full flashback reveal, (Or is it a flash-forward?), spells out the specifics, but the repeated theme of inanimate objects, (in this case the house itself), having a malevolent agenda is not pulled-off convincingly.  Instead, we have a Groundhog Day scenario, just one that throws the set pieces up in the air and puts them together willy-nilly, which it turns out is enough to elevate the material.

 

ALTER-EGO

(1972)

Dir - David Lowell Rich

Overall: MEH

 

When it comes to subject matter, few are more unpleasant than a rotten kid who gets away with literal murder, amongst other things.  Ghost Story's "Alter-Ego" unfortunately goes this route for the duration of its running time when a young, lonely boy is recovering in a wheelchair and inexplicably conjures up an evil twin version of himself.  How the boy stays in his room all day while his double goes to school, terrorizes his teacher for weeks, and his parents never catch any wind of this information is never explained.  Worse though is the antagonist brat himself.  Actor Michael-James Wixted does a fine job in the dual role, but the stuff that his Reverse-Spock version pulls of is just all kinds of loathsome.  He murders two pets, destroys sentimental items, and ruins the career of his teacher six months before she could retire, and then does even worse to her after that.  The alter-ego of the title does get his inevitable comeuppance in the end, but it is through random supernatural logic that springs up out of nowhere just to get us to the finish line.  The episode is harmless entertainment for those who do not expect much from the small screen, but for others who are immediately irked by both The Bad Seed-esque scenarios as well as loose plotting, then this one is better left avoided.