(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.
(1972)
Dir - Paul Stanley
Overall: MEH
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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
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