Underrated Horror Episodes That Are Truly Terrifying
#1 Pilot - American Gothic (1995)
As a teenager I was in exactly the right place and time when the tragically short-lived American Gothic had its one and only season. The pilot of American Gothic, even by today's standards, is dark. And by dark, I'm talking about child murder, murder disguised as suicide, words written on walls in blood, ghosts, alcoholism, mental illness - you know, all the charming trappings of a day in a small Southern town.
Give the pilot a watch if you'd like, and see if you can ever hear the words "someone's at the door" without a shiver again.
#2 The Tale of Laughing in the Dark - Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1992)
As a child I was truly and horrifically scared of clowns. The Tale Of Laughing In The Dark from Are You Afraid Of The Dark? Is one of the creepiest stories because it involved Zeebo the clown. He also haunts the kids who steal his nose by whispering in the dark and leaving balloons with messages on. He is so inherently creepy he turned up another five times! Basically if he and The Ghastly Grinner were to team up I'd have to run away and hide for a very, very long time.
#3 Conversations With Dead People - Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2002)
Each of the episode's cleverly interwoven strands are tonally distinct, Andrew and Jonathan's scenes are very funny, for example, while Willow's are heart-breaking but the overall feel is subtly unsettling.
The fact that even at episode's end we still don't really know what's going on, or what connects the various strands, adds to a sense of unease that lingers long after the credits roll.
Andrew and Jonathan's scenes are the most straightforwardly scary, with horrific visions of her mother, blood-spattered walls and that awful banging.
#4 Hush - Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1999)
Hush are among some of the scariest monsters ever created. Dapper, painfully polite, and forever wearing hideous grins, these levitating chaps rendered Sunnydale mute before proceeding to slice-and-dice various unlucky citizens who were now unable to call for help, or even scream.
But the scariest aspect of the show? Not just being deprived of a voice so often taken for granted but also the ability to scream
As their victims watch those suited monsters take a scalpel to their abdomens, all they can do is watch. The loss of such a basic human mechanism is part of what makes Hush one of the scariest TV episodes ever made.
#5 The Tall Knight’s Folly - Dark Towers (1981)
The Tall Knight of Dark Towers had been teased, and it was an inevitability that he'd turn up.But what a rug pull: rather than saving him for the end, his appearance became a cliffhanger just past the half-way point of the series. He appeared, uttered some words that to this day I can't remember, and then the music played. We practically lynched the teacher to let us watch the next episode there and then, and scoured the TV listings to see if we could find it ourselves. I needed it too: even though the Tall Knight turned out to be a friend, the image of his first appearance remains etched on the insides of my eyelids. Shudder.
#6 Born Free - Dexter (2006)
Adrenaline in Dexter always came from the constant threat of him being caught in the act, as right from the start there was a care and investment in his character. But the end of season one started to really up the stakes when you realized that his actions and very existence could start to cause harm to others.
There's also the constant fear that regardless of where The Ice Truck Killer's plans may be leading, that potty mouth Deb will force his hand ahead of time, not helped by such blackly comic moments such as her screams from the trunk over classical music that show exactly how emotionless the killer is "I'm sorry, but you're drowning out Fred's radio and he was kind enough to lend us his wheels", he says as she's flails hysterically next to Fred's bloody corpse.
It's the final kill that carries the weight though, in a scene that manages to be upsetting even though both characters are devoid of normal human emotion, as Dexter himself says "My tragedy is that I killed the one person I didn't have to hide from." Born Free mixes some conventional horror tropes, with some slightly non-conventional situations, but is no less heart-pounding as a result.
#7 Magic Life - The Enchanted Castle (1979)
First couple of episodes of The Enchanted Castle was giving the fear to the audience; part three of the episode went the full hog with horror.
These monstrosities were the invention of the children themselves. Putting on a play to entertain their maid, the little darlings decide they want an audience.
All these make it. From old jackets, shoes, clothes, mop and paper-plate faces. They assemble the audience. And then the inanimate bastards come to life - the Ugly-Wuglies are born!
Sleep well kids!
#8 Fringe – Marionette (2010)
One of the creepy well TV series was Fringe, whether it was producing something icky to turn your stomach or something chilling like Marionette. In this episode, the team investigates the deaths of people who had recently received a transplant, only for their killer to take that heart back again.
The case soon leads them to a young girl, Amanda, who had committed suicide and whose organs had then been donated.
The most chilling scene is when the killer rigs up the still-deceased Amanda to a pulley system to make her dance again, giving the episode its name and one of Fringe's most haunting sequences.
#9 Stephen King’s It – TV movie (1990)
One TV movie, upon release in 1990, became the topic of discussion for weeks in every school playground. It is one of the most terrifying things ever broadcast by a major network. Everyone talks about it the next day. This could be anything from series finales to TV movies.
Popping up to talk to Georgie from inside the sewer is bad enough, but later on when the kids are looking through the book at Pennywise's history, then he comes running through the old photograph to pop his face out at them, it's positively pants-soiling. It's unexpected and brilliantly performed, particularly by the youngsters.
You heard enough about it even if you didn't watch It live.
#10 Rm W/A Vu – Angel (1999)
Angel could be pretty creepy more than other tv serials. There are many other serials which make your skin crawl for different reasons like I Fall To Pieces and I've Got You Under, , but I'm particularly fond of classic ghost story Rm W/A Vu.
Angel episode starts out as a fairly standard poltergeist story, but the ghost in Cordelia's apartment becomes much scarier when her modus operandi is revealed not physically attacking people, but emotionally torturing her victims in an attempt to make them commit suicide, but cordelia manages to fight back and the other ghost in her apartment.
However, the episode's scares aren't over yet, because the truth about what happened to Dennis and his mother is more horrifying than anything else in this story.
#11 Echo House – Teen Wolf (2014)
The majority of Teen Wolf season three was an exercise in doing teen horror really, really well for television, but if you were to pick an example of how the show was using elements of the genre to scare its audience silly, it was Echo House. It says a lot that its the only episode of the show to get a "Viewer Discretion Is Advised" precursor, especially when you consider how far it pushes things on a weekly basis.
There was so much in this episode, in which Stiles checks himself into the kind of creepy, old-school psychiatric hospital you only see on TV. The trouble is, he has to stay awake in order to keep the Nogitsune the season's big bad from possessing him, and the rest of the episode keeps the audience in a vice grip of suspense.
The hour begins by reminding us of the character's age when his father drops him off and realises he's forgotten his comfort blanket. Five minutes later, a patient has hanged himself off the stairwell. It's all helped along by the fantastic creature design of the Nugitsune, portrayed by the same actor as the hospital's chief orderly, which pops up throughout the episode.
#12 Amelia - Trilogy of Terror (1975)
Karen Black and Richard Matheson were two of the biggest names in the 70s, so it's only natural that the pair came together for the ABC TV movie Trilogy Of Terror. While the first two segments are good by TV movie standards, the third segment is one of the most frightening things in television history, and it's all thanks to the puppet known as the Zuni fetish doll, AKA He Who Kills. All giant mouth, pointed teeth, and stringy black hair, the doll is creepy from its first appearance, and when it comes to life, the end results are terrifying. Karen Black gets a show piece here, screaming for all she's worth and either fleeing from or violently assaulting her surprisingly formidable opponent. Director Dan Curtis does a brilliant job of covering for the limitations of technology, by using his camera as a swooping, diving stand-in for the killer puppet, relentless in his pursuit of Amelia. The surprise ending somehow manages to be more disturbing than everything that comes before it, which is a testament to the skill of all parties involved, particularly Black. The enduring legacy of the Zuni fetish doll is proof that terror comes in small packages.
#13 Prey - The Walking Dead (2013)
Being a fan of the late seventies/early eighties golden era of slasher movies, as well as zombies, there was an absolute thrill to watching director Stefan Schwartz channels the best elements from both into the cat and mouse stalking that dominates the second half of Prey. The combination of Andrea's desperate attempts to stay quiet and hidden, while negotiating through a clattering warehouse peppered with the ever present undead makes for some fine thrills, punctuated by The Governor's haunting whistle (echoed from an earlier scene) and explosions of manic violence.
Better yet, like any classic horror movie, just when you think escape is within reach it's snatched away and the playing of Voxhaul Broadcast's, You Are The Wilderness over the closing moments make for a perfect end, to a perfect episode.
#14 Home - The X-Files (1996)
There are many, many brilliant episodes of The X-Files, but chief among them is one of the scariest, goriest hours ever broadcast on network television. Indeed, it was only one of two X-Files episodes to receive an audience warning over its disturbing content, and disturbing content is an understatement.
Home is a tense, atmospheric creepshow that refuses to pull any punches, from the cold opening in which a woman gives bloody birth to an infant that is buried alive by three mysterious, raspy-breathing monsters to the very final shot of a Cadillac driving away to the strains of Johnny Mathis's Wonderful, Wonderful. James Wong and Glen Morgan wrote the episode to set the tone for their return to the X-Files fold, mixing brutal violence with black humour and emotional intelligence. Director Kim Manners crafts some of the most memorable visuals in the show's run, particularly the slaughter of Sherriff Andy Taylor and his wife by the bat-wielding Peacock Brothers. Home, with its sandlot baseball games and peaceful solitude, serves as a great counterpoint to the monstrous Peacocks and their crumbling, antebellum homestead.
If David Lynch and Tobe Hooper could join forces to direct an X-Files episode, the end result might be something like Home.
#15 Squeeze - The X-Files (1993)
The X-Files, Squeeze introduced the world to Eugene Tooms, an organ-eating, body-contorting mutant played by with chilling poise by Doug Hutchison.
Our first glimpse of Tooms as a pair of glowing yellow eyes watching their victim from a storm drain had a distinct whiff of Stephen King's IT about it, which, in 1993, stood my Pennywise-traumatised brain to attention. The episode that followed saw an elongated Tooms stretch himself (effects created using a mixture of CG and a real contortionist) down lift shafts, air vents and chimneys - memorably and terrifyingly unscrewing some vent cover screws from the inside to gain entry to a victim's house and snack on their liver.
The first and only X-Files episode directed by Harry Longstreet (extensive reshoots were said to have been required by writers James Wong and Glen Morgan), Squeeze established a monster that would not only return later in the season with Tooms, but would remain one of the creepiest in The X-Files' long history.
