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Post by ripper on Jul 8, 2013 10:20:58 GMT
John Stride also starred in the final Ghost Story for Christmas production, The ICe House, in 1978. Julia Foster played the reporter in The Hammer House of Horror episode The 13th Reunion and ended up as main course for a group of cannibals.
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Post by pulphack on Jul 8, 2013 13:54:44 GMT
Sterling work, Dem and Rip - thanks for the link. Rip, I've just googled Wild Alliance meself for the book, and can add that it was aSphere paperback. I didn't Mackintosh was the writer on The Sandbaggers, which you've mentioned before, and which was a great show. What way to disappear, too - a little like one of his scripts. And if Wilde is a crime writer, then Stride was definitely a barrister in The Maine Chance. I wouldn't mind seeing either again...
Did some digging on Virtual Murder, too, and found it has its own Wiki entry and a load of bits on Youtube, which for something that only lasted six episodes ain't bad. Enn Reitel was not the star - it was Nicholas Clay, and he was indeed a psychology prof eccentric genius type. Kim Thomson was his sidekick, though it doesn't say what she was. I must watch the youtube bits and find out! I looked at Enn Reitel's imdb entry and was relieved to find that he was in one episode, which must be what I remember - much relieved to find out that the memory isn't quite as shot as I thought!
Lynne Truss, in her TV crit days, called it 'The Avengers made by someone who's heard of the Avengers but never actually saw it' (I'm paraphrasing a bit), which seems to have been the general concensus, but from its net presence the people who liked it really liked it. Heavy mentions of the occult in the wiki entry, so probably worth investigation.
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Post by ripper on Jul 8, 2013 15:04:22 GMT
Just checked...Mackintosh, his girlfriend and a mate, who was the pilot, vanished after sending a distress signal while flying over the Gulf of Alaska. He created the BBC series Warship while still a naval officer. His disappearance meant that other writers had to be drafted in to write episodes for The Sandbaggers (series 3 I think and possibly one or two of series 2). I don't know if the Wilde Alliance book is a novelisation of episodes or a brand new story or stories. Mackintosh also wrote a novelisation of The Sandbaggers, based on episode scripts. There was a second novel, with an original story, written after Mackintosh's disappearance, by Donald Lancaster (William Marshall).
I don't think I have seen any of the Virtual Murder episodes, so will have to check them out :-).
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Post by dem bones on Oct 15, 2013 16:19:17 GMT
Not supernatural, but caught a neat sci-horror, nature is revolting episode of The New Avengers on ITV 4 yesterday, Gnaws, first screened shortly before Christmas 1976. Shame this one didn't make it into the paperback adaptations.
Nice but careless Mad scientists Thurnton and Carter are conducting growth experiments with radioactivity at the Ministry of Agriculture, determined to end world famine with super-crops. A spillage into the sewers spells disaster for the usual luckless tramps, maintenance crew, and courting couple, who come to grief at the fangs and claws of a giant rat. Purdey, Gambit and a comedy Russian venture underground to confront the flesh-eating rodent with ju-jitsu and rocket flares.
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Post by ripper on Oct 20, 2013 10:45:53 GMT
I also caught that New Avengers episode. Gnaws...surely only a coincidence that it rhymes with the title of an obscure little movie about am oversized fish :-).
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Post by jepersonoatcake on Oct 21, 2013 22:19:01 GMT
Ripper - I think that you're remembering Mr. Piper there: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_PiperAlso, although I haven't seen it... F Troop - V Is For Vampire. Guest-starring Vincent Price, no less! A sinister Transylvanian gentleman arrives at the Troop's fort. But is he or isn't he a real vampire? This one's up on YouTube... www.youtube.com/watch?v=VupCtL8_8Zk
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Post by ripper on Oct 22, 2013 13:32:58 GMT
Thank you, Jepersonoatcake, that's the series I saw. I had thought it was Alan Hale starring in it for some reason, but the title Mr. Piper definitely rings some loud bells :-). I used to enjoy the programme but always hoped it wouldn't be the one with the ghost that would be shown that day. Reading the Wikipedia entry reminded me of the magic tricks he would perform plus the animals, which I found a little creepy.
F Troop was shown on one of the satellite channels in the 1990s, but sadly I didn't see the episode with Vincent Price.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 18, 2014 14:44:47 GMT
another unlikely foray into (seemingly) 'supernatural' territory, The Devil Rides Out, a 2008 episode of deceptively genteel community police series, Heartbeat. Dirty mean greasy 'sixties Satanic cemetery desecration! Rev. Peggotty, the Vicar of St. Lukes, Eltering colludes with members of a defunct Satanic biker rock band, Hounds of Satan, to raise money for a new church roof. Drug peddling, mild cemetery desecration, and attempted murder ensue. In an unrelated plot, Paul Hammond, a new fangled alt-psychiatrist, much influenced by the teachings of R. D. Laing, tries to persuade recently bereaved Gina to try LSD. Dirty mean greasy 'sixties Satanic rock music! Dirty mean greasy 'sixties Satanic biker!
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Post by madeleymade on Feb 27, 2014 11:22:49 GMT
Yes, MacMillan and Wife had Loch Ness. Vincent Price was in a haunted house ep of the Bionic WOman.
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Post by ripper on Feb 28, 2014 9:02:07 GMT
The Loch Ness episode was from series 3 "Death of a Monster...Birth of a Legend." In the series 2 episode "Night of the Wizard" a ghost was featured, though I am unsure if it was just a Scooby Do type or supposed to be real.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 16, 2014 16:12:05 GMT
Inspector Blake (AKA "Hitler", "Dracula", "Blakey") comes face to face with his doppelganger in an early episode of On The Buses[/center] Not seen the episode in question, but arriving in England in 1975, Dr. Sam Beckett , the time travelling, body-hopping scientist with a hologram for a best mate, reputedly tackles crazed vampire cultists in Blood Moon (1993). Also, among the QL tie-in novels (of which there are several), Sandy Schofield's ( Loch Ness Leap (Boulevard Books, 1997). As a side note, it was nice to see a number of Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural titles feature in Liberty Diversity Depravity, the first episode of the BBC's recent The Art of Gothic: Britain's Midnight Hour documentary series.
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Post by ripper on Nov 5, 2015 14:22:00 GMT
The Young Ones episode 'Nasty' featured Alexei Sayle as a South African vampire.
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Post by bobby on Nov 13, 2015 4:11:19 GMT
This was something I came across purely by accident: a Halloween-themed episode of a sitcom originally titled Two Guys, A Girl And A Pizza Place but later shortened to Two Guys And A Girl. I originally saw just the last few minutes of it while waiting for the show after it to come on. The one guy had two heads (though it was painfully obvious that an actress was standing behind him with her head propped on his shoulder) and the other guy appeared to have leprosy. (The girl looked normal, but it turned out that she now had a penis.) I looked at the episode title ("The Satanic Curses") and waited for it to repeat so I could see the whole episode. It turned out that a witch came to their door on Halloween, but the trio rudely threw her out, and thus got cursed by her. At the end of the episode they try to get the witch to remove the curses, and after a puff of smoke it looks like all three are back to normal. But it turns out they've been shrunk and are inprisoned in a shoebox. (The witch was carrying shoeboxes when she came to their door.) As the end credits roll, they manage to knock the shoebox off the shelf and try to escape, but the witch's cat gets them.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 15, 2015 16:35:23 GMT
Thanks to Rosemary Pardoe for the following guest post.
..... As far as I could see - I may well be wrong, in the thread about unexpected spooky episodes on TV shows, no one seems to have mentioned the (unrationalised) ghost story episode of Knots Landing. I think this was in season three and it owed a fair bit to The Haunting, which was very appropriate as one of the stars of Knots Landing at the time (who featured prominently in the episode) was Julie Harris who was of course, in The Haunting. Also, while it's not actually an individual spooky episode as such, I wonder if anyone else has realised that there is a continuing supernatural being (unexplained, though there are hints) in the brilliant Sons of Anarchy. She first appears in season one and turns up from time to time in every following season, and features significantly in the final sequence of the final episode in season seven. I bet no-one else can beat Sons of Anarchy as an unlikely place for the genuine supernatural to appear. (Search for Sons of Anarchy and "homeless woman" if in doubt - she's discussed in various places in the Net!).
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Post by bobby on Nov 16, 2015 1:21:01 GMT
There was an episode of Happy Days in which the Fonz had an encounter with the ghost of a woman who died in a wrecked car that he was going to restore. But they used the old "it was only a dream" ending.
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