What’s Your Favorite…Made-for-TV Movie!

by in Misc. Ramblings

night stalker

For me, growing up in the early ’70s, Made-for-TV Movies were the shit! So many great ones coming through the airwaves into our home. Granted, many of them were thanks to Dan Curtis, but that is beside the point. What was one that you saw on TV, that was MADE for TV and you would consider it your favorite?

Dial in and post your answers below.

26 thoughts on “What’s Your Favorite…Made-for-TV Movie!”

    • I watched Salem’s Lot the day after I finished the book so immediately didn’t like it because I was comparing it so much. Once I got over that, it really is good.

      And Night Stalker and Trilogy of Terror will always be classics.

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  2. Salem’s Lot and Gargoyles are my two favorites because I saw am as a kid and they’re some of the very few films that actually scared the shit outta me!! Lol!
    IT ranks fairly highly for me as well. Dark Night of the Scarecrow and Trilogy of Terror would be two that I saw as an adult that I also really enjoy.

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  5. For me it’d be SNOWBEAST, with Big Bo Svenson ‘walking tall’ against a sasquatch terrorizing a ski resort (I’m a die-hard skier, so…). A close second would be DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK, which creeped me the hell out when I saw it on television as a kid. -Bryan

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  7. While I absolutely love a lot of the options listed above, I’m going to go off the beaten track again:

    1) There was a TV-movie from 1983 called SPECIAL BULLETIN that played out in a kind of “War of the Worlds” format, telling a fictional story as though it was a real newscast. The scenario was that a small group of terrorists had was holding a television reporter and her cameraman hostage, demanding that the superpowers yield the detonators to all their nuclear weapons or the group would detonate an H-bomb. While I knew it was fictional – the network even ran little disclaimers between commercial braks saying that it was all fake – I thought it was really well done and the ending REALLY messed me up. (I won’t spoil it here, but anyone else who saw it knows what I’m talking about.)

    2) There was a 1982 filmed version of the stage play WAIT UNTIL DARK starring Stacy Keach and Katharine Ross. It’s more “suspense” than horror, but again, the ending really freaked me out. The fact that I’ve only seen it the one time and I still remember it clearly to this day speaks to its effectiveness. It played on HBO back in the day, so maybe some other folks saw it as well.

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      • Pretty sure that Special Bulletin got a VHS release at some point (and I just looked and it is widely available on YouTube). The Keach/Ross version of Wait Until Dark looks to be a little harder to find, but if you track it down let me know!

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  8. There were SO MANY damned good made for TV movies back in the day! I don’t know if I could name just one that I could call a ‘favorite’. I’ll add one that hasn’t been mentioned as yet. ‘Spectre’ from 1977. Written by Gene Roddenberry as a pilot for a possible series, this movie was a wild ride into the occult. And surprising ‘adult’ for television at the time.

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    • I don’t remember Spectre from when I was a kid, but a friend of mine who is forever stuck in the ’70s turned me onto it and I really enjoyed it. Would have been great to see that turned into a series.

      Speaking of which, since it hasn’t been mentioned yet, I would have loved to have seen Norliss Tapes made into a series but it never was picked up.

      And what about Duel???

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  9. I am going to have to go with Salem’s Lot. I saw it when it originally aired, so I was maybe seven—waaay too young to not be freaked out by a dead kid scratching at a second-storey window. I loved it! 💕

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  10. Another one that ranks very highly for me is the ’85 film Fortress from Australia that stars Rachel Ward and Vernon Wells. My sister and I taped it off of tv when it was shown as part of their week of scary movies for Halloween. The masks that the gang of bad guys wore were/are super creepy! Watched it again within the last decade or so and it still holds up!

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      • If you can’t find it to stream, there’s a DVD out there, which I have, just ignore the super generic horrible cover. Lol! The disc looks really good for a dvd as well! It’s a very basic but effective story. I wouldn’t call it a hidden masterpiece or anything, but I’ve always really liked it and recommend it whenever I can.

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