Terror on the Airwaves

In the 1960s, American television networks opened a new front in their cold war with Hollywood: instead of licensing existing films, they would make their own, offering viewers the chance to see new feature-length movies without having to leave home. By the early 1970s, made-for-TV films were regularly broadcast by all three networks, cranked out on low budgets by new talents who would soon find their place in Hollywood, veterans who had aged out of it, and skilled craftspeople who rarely worked outside of the small screen.

Much like the B movies of the 1940s and 1950s that preceded them in spirit, runtime, and budget, made-for-TV movies included a lot of dross and dullness, and you could drive yourself mad if you took in every disaster-movie knockoff, failed pilot, and reactionary domestic comedy that aired during the decade. But, like those earlier theatrical films, the made-for-TV movie produced a bounty of simple and sometimes unexpected pleasures—if not as much subversion, thanks to the restrictions of the FCC and the whims of sponsors.

On any given evening during the 1970s, you could watch films written by James L. Brooks (Thursday’s Game), Melvin Van Peebles (Just an Old Sweet Song), or Joan Rivers (The Girl Most Likely to . . .); be introduced to the directorial talents of Steven Spielberg (Duel, included here) and Michael Mann (The Jericho Mile); or, if you were really paying attention, notice that some frequent helmers like John Llewellyn Moxey (Nightmare in Badham County) and Lamont Johnson (That Certain Summer) often turned out work that was a cut above.

And though TV movies were made in every genre, those that lasted the longest in the cultural imaginary—thanks to their often-traumatizing impact on younger viewers—were the horror and thriller films. Gentler cousins to the independent horror pictures then playing drive-ins and grindhouses, the best made-for-TV thrillers were modest nailbiters that carried on the legacy of anthology series from the fifties and sixties like The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (Indeed, many of the talent associated with those programs continued to work on TV features, most notably screenwriter Richard Matheson, who wrote Duel.)

Some of the era’s emerging indie-horror auteurs made work for the small screen during the decade as well: our series includes John Carpenter’s Someone’s Watching Me! (1978) and Tobe Hooper’s two-part Salem’s Lot (1979), which foreshadowed the run of nineties network miniseries adapted from Stephen King novels. Though certainly more restrained than Halloween (1978) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), these works provide a glimpse into the more classical aspects of each filmmaker’s style, and the skill and craft that were sometimes overlooked in the initial critical reaction to their breakthrough theatrical features.

Broadcast networks would continue airing TV films well past the 1970s, and while there are highlights to be found in later years—Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981), included here, is one the last great network TV terror films, and The Day After (1983) scarred a generation with its vision of nuclear war—their golden age is generally thought to have ended by the 1980s. The form largely shifted to cable, and the films aired by the likes of HBO, Showtime, USA Network, the Disney Channel, and, most prominently, Lifetime and Hallmark reflect subtle but significant shifts in production, content, and viewership.

Despite its richness—and the heroic scholarship of champions of the form like Amanda Reyes—the made-for-TV movie remains a largely unexplored cavern of cinema history, doomed to oblivion by the complexities of licensing. Considered more disposable than theatrical features or episodic television, produced by a mixture of long-defunct production companies and subsequently conglomerated studio divisions, and often contractually uncleared for theatrical exhibition or “new media,” most classic made-for-TV movies remain lost and abandoned in a world where streaming and physical media seem capable of even the most unlikely resurrections.

Fortunately, that situation does not apply across the board, and we’ve been able to put together a creepily compact collection of highlights from the golden age of the TV terror film for you to enjoy on the Criterion Channel—and you still won’t have to leave home to watch them. Here are two of my favorites from the series.