Used to scare the living hell out of my brother and I. It came out on DVD again lately and I bought 2 copies. One for each of us.

Funnily had to turn it off when my 6 year old came in, because it did the same to him.

Whenever I hear the HTV signature it takes me right back.

The old ones are the best.

I've never seen The Changes but that looks terrific and terrifing for kids tv. You just don't get this stuff anymore.

I'd get this on DVD myself.

Good stuff.

Back in Diana Rigg days, if memory serves me right. The opening scenes are indelibly imprinted on my mind...

Picture this.

Opening credits. Fade to...

A public house, in a lonesome, desolate spot. A bearded, Faginesque figure playing bar skittles before leaving, hurriedly.

The night is dark. Our character's route takes him across a churchyard. A graveyard. As he passes through, there is movement at one of the graves - a tomb above the ground. The lid slips to one side and a ghostly apparition appears...

At this point young Paul decides that bedtime is infinitely preferable to his planned late night with the grownups...

40 years later, the memory still haunts me.

You have just dragged up a long forgotten - possibly healthily suppressed - memory of this show. I was about 10 or so - and terrifying doesn't come close! I had completely forgotten the name. Did it all have something to do with King Arthur in the end - can that be right? Try showing it to children today and you'd be probably be locked up.

I tended to think that when my sister and myself hid behind cushions when we watched this in the 60s that it would probably seem laughable and tame now. But these clips make me wonder if that really is the case. This works better than many epsiodes since it's more suggestive and does not feature a badly made alien. That weird hairy hand is quite worrying! As are the two screaming stooges.

I would also mention Thriller - seventies ITV series (I think the music had a lot to do with it) and Doomwatch 'Tomorrow, The Rat' - carnivorous rats take over and eat people! I remember these shows so well from when I was a child.

I even got residual shivers just embedding that pic.

Jesus, that's one dark piece of children's entertainment. A metaphor for the kind of political nightmare that Pink Floyd would have devoted a whole double album to.

Oh, actually, they did...

Must have been 1976-77. Every time i see a rock i'm reminded of this series.Seriously scarey when you are 13.
Iain Cuthbertson as some looney Lord of the Manor. Blake, minus his Seven, as the hero. Freddie Jones as the Village idiot DAI.
wonderful stuff. Was on tuesday teatime i seem to remember, after Lift Off i think.
Lift Off a whole new Thread entirely.
Have just ordered 2 copies as well.One for a mate in Australia.Not that 'll thank me mind.He'll be too scared.

There was one Episode called Blue and Green. Where every one was in either of these two groups and they wore either a Blue badge or a Green one.These badges made people really violent towards people of the other colour because the Aliens who made the Badges needed Negative energy(Think GHostbusters 2). Still don't like Badges to this day.

Tales of the Unexpected had some genuinely scary moments... the one with the Nun (or more accurately an empty nun's habit) in the rocking chair scared me to death.

Also the 70's TV adaptation of "Salem's Lot" which had me sleeping with the light on for weeks.

Scared shitless back in the 50's. Only time anything on TV frightened me.
Big old machine found in the underground at Hobbs Lane, with monsters inside.
Wouldn't mind seeing it again, though.

Marianne Dreams
Filmed as 'Escape Into Night' , the girl whose drawings came to life in her dreams (large stones surrounding abandoned houses). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_Into_Night

Carries War
Mr Johnny had me on the bolt every time he entered stage left.

Alternative Three
Seen by me and about three others at school and terrified all of us. Think tanks on the moon, kidnapped scientists, fake moon landings and global warming all in a dead pan 'mockumentary' from '77

Two programmes of yesterday used to cause brown trouser time in the Trigger household : the aforementioned Changes and a kids programme on ITV called "Into the labyrinth" wherein two magicians - played by Ron Moody and the quite beautiful and exotic Pamela Salem - tried to respectively help and hinder a couple of children who were descending underground through various caverns and coming across weird pockets of people in the search for some magical gimcrack. It was utterly fantastical and absolutely terrifying - a check on Wiki a few months hence revealed it was Ms Salem and not Rula Lenska who starred in it, thus correcting an error of mine held for years. Anyone else remember it?

Actually a trailer for Doomwatch where the plastic on the joystick / wheel on an airliner started to melt in the pilots hand. Haunts me to this day. On a similar theme, the 'Twilight Zone' episode with the goblin on the wing attacking the plane's engine.