Some of the best television ever created has come in the form of anthology horror. FromThe Twilight ZonetoThe Outer LimitstoTales from the CrypttoBlack Mirror, the standalone scary story format has been shown time and again to have a unique way of connecting to and affecting its audience.
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But for every game-changing anthology horror show, there are a dozen that never caught on and have faded from collective memory. Those shows may not have been overflowing with fantastic tales that could rival even Rod Serling’s best, but their failure to plant a flag in the cultural consciousness does not necessarily reflect accurately on the quality of the shows themselves. In fact, there are some great forgotten anthology horror gems haunting the dark hallways of the Internet right now.
8Night Visions (2001)
Where to watch:The entire series is on YouTube
Notable episodes:“A View Through the Window” and “If A Tree Falls”
Night Visionsoffers a more-than-solid collection of creepy tales with elements of sci-fi and psychological horror, even if it only lasted a single season and needed to be picked up by Sci-Fi after Fox refused to even air it. Hardcore punk legend Henry Rollins plays the role of stone-faced narrator, which is a strange but fun choice, and a number of familiar faces pop up through the 26 unique stories, including Natasha Lyonne, Bridget Fonda, Bill Pullman, Timothy Olyphant, and many more.
Where to watch:Many episodes are on YouTube
Notable episodes:“The Killer” and “Square Deal”
Before HBO struckanthology horror pay dirtwithTales from the Crypt, they had a fair amount of success withThe Hitchhiker. While this show rarely dabbled in the supernatural and leaned more into mystery and suspense than outright horror, there were plenty of moments in its 85 episode, six season run, that were aimed at sending a cold chill up the viewer’s spine.
Each standalone tale is connected by the narration of the mysterious and potentially supernatural Hitchhiker, played mostly by Page Fletcher, who always seems to find his way to the scene of some awful occurrence in which a character is made to face the terrifying consequences of their own actions. Those characters very often had familiar faces, like those of Kirstie Allie, Willem Dafoe, Brad Dourif, Gary Busey, and more.
6The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985-1992)
Where to watch:The entire series is streaming on Peacock, IMDb, The Roku Channel, and PlutoTV
Notable episodes:“The Town Where No One Got Off” and “The Playground”
This awesome anthology series is not entirely horror, but some of its finest episodes absolutely fall under the creepy and unsettling category. Ray Bradbury is one of the most renowned and prolific short story authors in American literary history and many ofhis best works are adaptedfor the screen in the six seasons ofThe Ray Bradbury Theaterthat aired on HBO and USA between 1985 and 1992. It hasn’t aged all too gracefully, but lovers of late-80s early-90s atmosphere will not hold that fact against it at all.
Look for a ton of well-known actors, like Jeff Goldblum, Drew Barrymore, Eugene Levy, William Shatner, and more.
5Darkroom (1981)
Where to watch:6 of 7 episodes are available on The Internet Archive
Notable episodes:“Uncle George” and “Siege of 31 August”
With a mere seven-episode run on ABC,Darkroommight appear on paper like the kind of show that was so poorly made that it’s better off forgotten, but that’s really not the case. There are some petrifying gems within this collection of 16 individual episodes brought to you by actor James Coburn, who plays more of a host than a narrator and has a deep and foreboding voice reminiscent of the sinister creak from the towering front doors of a haunted mansion opening by themselves.
Look for Helen Hunt, Billy Crystal, and David Carradine, among other familiar faces, and check out the movieNightmares(1983) if you’d like to see the four segments of the show that never aired because they were deemed “too intense.”
4Freddy’s Nightmares (1988-1990)
Where to watch:The whole series is on Tubi and The Internet Archive
Notable episodes:“No More Mr. Nice Guy" and “Freddy’s Tricks and Treats”
One of the great shames in horror history is the fact thatFreddy’s Nightmaresdidn’t quite work out. An anthology series hosted by andfeaturing Freddy Kruegerwith the legend himself, Robert Englund, on board to play him sounds too fun to fail, and yet it never became the touchstone for horror television it should have. But the failure wasn’t necessarily on the show itself: daytime cable just wasn’t ready for something so sinister and yet it was aired at 4:30 in the afternoon upon its original release.
Freddy’s Nightmaresis no masterpiece, but it’s definitely a lot of fun, and it’s essential viewing for fans of 80s horror. A super young Brad Pitt even makes an appearance, and Tobe Hooper directs an awesome telling of Freddy Krueger’s nightmarish origin story in the first episode.
Where to watch:The whole series is on YouTube
Notable episodes:“The New Nanny” and “All Night Diner”
Anyone who has ever heard the one-of-a-kind voice of late actor Rip Torn and thought “he should host an anthology horror show” got a brief chance to see it in action onGhost Stories.This collection of 44 supernatural tales that favored twist endings was aired on The Family Channel in the late 90s and has since been mostly forgotten.
Like any anthology horror series, it has its share of misses, but the ones that hit are likely to have viewers double-checking their door locks and pulling their feet beneath the blankets later that night.
Notable episodes:“Panic” and “Planely Possible”
It’s not necessarily common knowledge thatTales from the Crypthad a sci-fi spin-off series, and that’s probably because HBO’sPerversions of Scienceonly lasted ten episodes and was, as the name suggests, off-puttingly sexual at times. Instead of the Cryptkeeper introducing each story, viewers got Chrome, an innuendo-loving, anatomically accurate female robot. It was an unusual choice that distracted from some pretty fun and eerie stories, which were almost entirely adaptations from the EC Comics series’Weird Fantasy,Weird Science,andIncredible Science Fiction.
Tobe Hooper, Sean Astin, and William Shatner each directed their own episodes, and Jason Lee stars in Hooper’s really fun “Panic” alongside Jamie Kennedy and Harvey Korman.
Notable episodes:“Gramma” and “The Shadow Man”
The fact that it’s a revival of one of the greatest shows of all time means that the80s version ofThe Twilight Zonewon’t be totally forgotten any time soon, but what does seem to have been forgotten is the quality of some of the better episodes… and the fact that the Grateful Dead faithfully created the updated theme song and score.
This rendition of the legendary show wisely did not attempt to replace Rod Serling, instead opting for a voice-over narrator that came and went depending on what each episode called for. It also wisely stuck with Serling’s concept of adapting the work of incredibly talented writers such asStephen King, George R.R. Martin, Roger Zelazny, Ray Bradbury, and Charles Beaumont. Results were mixed, and it obviously never reached the heights of the original, but there are plenty of 80sTwilight Zoneepisodes that should not be lost to time.
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