(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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.
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