Writer David Norliss is employed to write about his scepticism regarding the supernatural and the self-proclaimed spiritualists who are currently in vogue. However, he goes missing. His publisher discovers his research in the area on a series of tapes at his San Francisco home and decides to listen to the first one. He hears the case of a woman called Ellen Cort who says that her deceased husband had come back to life and tried to attack her. Shortly before his death James had become involved with the occult and was wearing a ring given to him by an occult member.

I first learnt of The Norliss Tapes after stumbling across a thread on my Facebook feed. I’m glad that it’s on YouTube and so I could see if it really was as scary and unsettling as the horror hounds of FB would have me believe.

And after seeing it I can confirm that they’re right! The Norliss Tapes has some very frightening moments and reminded me how brilliant and genuinely unnerving some horror TV movies of the 70s were. The undead figure of James Cort is something that would have given me sleepless nights for sure if I had seen the movie on television as a kid. In fact, the whole movie made me reminisce to seeing such fare as Tales of the Unexpected, Thriller and Armchair Thriller as a child and how those programmes scared the bejesus out of me.

The Norliss Tapes is well-directed, brilliantly paced and if that wasn’t enough it even stars the ever brilliant Angie Dickinson. San Francisco is also photographed beautifully although it always looks stunning in films and on TV.

This TV movie has aged incredibly well and I’m so glad it’s remembered by the horror fraternity who were lucky enough to see it first time around.

4 stars out of 5