MovieChat Forums > Sapphire & Steel (1979) Discussion > Does anyone else recall a similar-lookin...

Does anyone else recall a similar-looking British show?


Or it might been later episodes of this one. I never could make it past the start of series 2.

But the lighting and set decoration were very similar. So I would place the production in the late 70's/early 80's. I saw it on PBS in my childhood during that period; it was definitely British. It was about a lodger who moved into a boarding house with a long balcony/landing in the middle of the set. The plot line was very similar to the lyrics from "Hotel California". There was a cult that met in the lower-level storage room of the building where presumably an evil spirit resided. The landlord (or landlady) would ensnare new tenants into the occult. Everyone that was assimilated would walk around saying "Splendid" with their hands folded together - index fingers extended upward and touching at the tips.

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That is a first season episode of Thriller, titled Someone at the Top of the Stairs:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070715/

It's on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygd98YUEmrw

Enjoy!

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omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg!

I didn't imagine it! There is the door at the top of the landing just as I remember. And they said "mahvelous" not "splendid". I guess my sister and I changed that when we used to do it to creep our mother out. But that is the show!

You rock! One distant memory fragment solved.

Now if only someone would help me figure out another show/movie I remember from roughly the same period. A group of college friends or scientists stay at an old ancestral mansion on an island in a lake (or on the coast). They become trapped there and a monster occasionally emerges from a small puddle of black mud (or tar) to kill them off. At one point, some of the people capture fish but are told that the mercury levels in the surrounding water are much too high for them to be consumed. So it seemed to involve an environmental pollution message. It had the look and feel of a Bionic Woman episode - the Vincent Price one in particular. But it could have been a low-budget horror movie along the lines of The Nesting or the Burning.

Anyway, many thanks again.

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You're welcome.

As for the second film, three possibilities come to mind:

Prophecy (1979) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079758/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PppxRKpKkQs&list=PLF3A7769BD4F93104

Or, Tower of Evil aka, Horror of Snape Island (1972):

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068716/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMHhZzWCoxw


Or, Bloodtide (1982): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083661/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZicqskKT5rU


Prophecy is directly about the potential horrors of toxic mutation.

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Thanks! I can rule out your European suggestions as the setting was definitely North American - northern US or southern Canada, within a couple hundred miles of the border, either inland or coastal.

So Prophecy definitely has potential.

Another possibility I just found was a TV pilot called The World Beyond

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzjM40LU8XI

I will have to watch them to see if I haven't conflated several similar past experiences into one muddled memory.

It also appears that someone else has been looking for a similar movie: http://www.best-horror-movies.com/archive?name=black-tar-creature-puts -heads-on-stakes-on-island-in-70s-film.html

I don't recall the heads-on-pikes part. But if neither of these has that element, I have something else to search on.

Thanks again. A lot of my nostalgia for this time period is wrapped up in made-for-TV movies, after-school specials, Saturday morning anthologies, SFM holiday airings, PBS imports, and weekend film marathons sponsored by aluminum siding companies. There was a one-off about a haunted house and a creepy red orb. Another was a mystery about gold treasure hidden in a weathervane. Another about an early computer geek who tortures his bullies in the neighborhood by remotely hacking into their TVs and sending fake alien invasion broadcasts. Of course the cautionary tale of Mazes and Monsters - young Tom Hanks staggering around the sewers after a D&D-inspired psychotic break. That one is priceless.

Gotta love the stuff you remember from when you were a kid.

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Prophecy does seem the most likely one.

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