The 15 Best Horror TV Movies of the 1970s

Just as people began to get really keyed up about Satanism, possession, Bigfoot, the Bermuda Triangle, ghosts, serial killers and ESP during the 1970s, a surge of made-for-TV movies attempted to cash-in on the public’s appetite for the occult. With many of these movies finally available again either on Blu-ray/DVD or YouTube, we thought we’d take our readers back on a serious nostalgia trip with a list of The 15 Best Horror TV Movies of the 1970s, which you can check out in our gallery below!

Our list was kicked off this past summer by the terrific new TV movie compendium titled Are You in the House Alone?: Growing Up with Gargoyles, Giant Turtles, Valerie Harper, The Cold War, Stephen King & Co-Ed Call Girls. This wonderful guidebook to TV movies (click here to purchase!) from 1964 to 1999 features countless reviews, plus fun essays on various subgenres like small-screen scream queens, eco-horror, Wes Craven, superheroes and more. The book’s editor Amanda Reyes also provided a commentary track on Scream Factory’s recently-released Blu-ray edition of 1977’s Carrie-esque psychokinetic high school girl TV movie The Spell, which features Lee Grant and a very young Helen Hunt! It’s an above-average shocker with some killer set pieces, and a crisp transfer for a movie that surely never looked better.

Click here to purchase The Spell on Scream Factory Blu-ray!

Other TV movies of the era not found in our list below that we heartily recommend digging up for continued study include Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (later remade by Guillermo del Toro), Snowbeast, Satan’s Triangle, A Howling in the Woods, Good Against Evil (a failed TV pilot featuring Kim Cattrall), The House That Would Not Die, Dan Curtis’s Dracula (starring Jack Palance!), Trilogy of Terror (includes the famous Zuni fetish doll segment), The Norliss Tapes (a way more serious version of Kolchak), Moon of the Wolf, The Bermuda Depths, Something Evil (directed by Steven Spielberg!), Bad Ronald and Summer of Fear (directed by Wes Craven!), also recently out on Blu-ray!

What’s your favorite horror TV movie of the 1970s? Which one on our list do you want to see the most? Let us know in the comments below!

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