31 Days of Halloween- Day 10- Tales of the Unexpected (TV series)

Sunday nights in the late 70's/early 80's here in the UK were great for TV. In my household we'd religiously watch That's Life, a weird hotchpotch of hard hitting investigations into very dark subject matters with lighter fare which was designed to make the audience titter and guffaw (they loved vegetables that just happened to …

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31 Days of Halloween- Day 9- Plague of the Zombies (1966)

This has one of the most crazy plots of any Hammer film I've ever seen. I won't give away everything that happens though. A Cornish village is suffering from some sort of plague that is bumping people off at such a rate that the local doctor asks an expert friend to investigate what is happening. …

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31 Days of Halloween- Day 7- Piranha 2- The Spawning

I actually saw this back in the 80's when it was called Piranha 2: Flying Killers. Theres really not much plot except that there is a shoal of piranhas who have wings terrorising a resort. Pulitzer Prize worthy stuff. The lead female character seems to have been based on Stevie Wayne from The Fog if …

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31 Days of Halloween- Day 6- Sleeping With The Enemy (1991)

A wife fakes her own death to escape from her rich abusive husband. She then flees to the mid-west to try to rebuild her life under a different name so that he can't trace her. Will she succeed? This is a Julia Roberts movie. If there isn't a big enough warning to stay away I …

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31 Days of Halloween- Day 5- Day of the Triffids (1963)

I remember so well the 1981 BBC1 adaptation of Day of the Triffids. It may now be dated but, by Christ, it gave me plenty of sleepless nights as a 6 year old boy. Years later I discovered the work of author John Wyndham who is now one of my favourite writers. Day of the …

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31 Days of Halloween- Day 4- Burnt Offerings (1976)

A family rent a huge house for the summer from it's brother and sister owners who have one condition for the rental- that their elderly mother stays in the house and they provide her with meals. Things then start to go crazy for the new inhabitants and it's almost as if the house is alive …

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31 Days of Halloween- Day 3- Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)

From IMDB- In the XVIII Century, in the countryside of England, the landsman Ralph Gower finds a skull with one eye and fur on the field. He summons the local judge to see his finding but it has disappeared. Meanwhile the local Peter Edmonton brings his fiancée Rosalind Barton to his aunt's house to marry …

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Article- The Motherlode: Prisoner Cell Block H on ITV

Exactly 30 years ago today, something extraordinary happened. Let me elaborate. I grew up in York in the UK. My local TV station was Yorkshire Television who were the first UK regional station to transmit twenty-four hours a day. Because of this during the night and early hours of the morning, they would show some …

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31 Days of Halloween- Day 2- Witchfinder General (1968)

I remember when I lived in London I loved perusing the list of films being shown citywide in the listings magazine Time Out. In those days (the mid 90s) there were plenty of funky little cinemas showing all manner of films old and new, renowned and obscure. I remember going to see Witchfinder General and …

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