Very well executed

Admirable film.

Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Anthology series featuring stand alone episodes centered around supernatural and horror themes weren't all that common in television in the 60s 70s and 80s and the longest running one was the often dire TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED sarcastically referred to by some people as Tales Of The Bloody Obvious . They do however stick in the mind of a people of a certain age often down to the fact we remember good ones and quickly forget he bad ones . they're often very variable and my personal opinion is that the best anthology show was JOURNEY TO THE UNKNOWN a syndicated British show produced by Hammer films . Hammer were the world kings of horror film making in the 60s and 70s and mindful of their output they produced this well remembered show which was broadcast in 1980 What struck me about watching this series after a gap of many years is how parochial everything is . Unlike JTTU which due to finance constraints had to shoe in a American lead in to each and every episode , and to a lesser degree Brian Clemens THRILLER from the mid 1970s there's no real attempt to make characters identifiable to an audience outside Britain and the cast are almost exclusively those actors and actresses who you instantly recognise even though their names don't come readily to mind . Possibly the best known actor - and with a nice touch to the studio's past - is Peter Cushing in THE SILENT SCREAM where he appears with a totally unknown Scottish actor called Brian Cox . . This parochial thinking shouldn't be taken as a criticism however and the stories do have a strong though slightly quaint feeling of Britishness rather than trans Atlantic gloss The episodes themselves are some what variable the outstanding episode being The House That Bled and the clear wooden prize winners jointly being held by the very predictable Visitor From Beyond The Grave and demonic child Growing Pains according to opinion here but my own opinion is Children Of The Full Moon being the worst down to it's rather silly storyline . Interesting too that episodes seen divided between macabre mystery and out and out horror tale . Watching the show you're struck by how limited the horror genre is . We thankfully don't get any horny teenagers in peril type stories but much of the themes here have been done before and probably better . This seems to have split opinions on this page quite markedly judging by the comments and I suppose to enjoy this series in the spirit it was meant you'd have to be home every Autumn Saturday in 1980 . A second series was planned for broadcast in 1982 but a behind the scenes production deal led the series to mutating in to HAMMER HOUSE OF MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE which was financed by 20th Century Fox which meant we had shoe horned American characters and very hap hazard scheduling in Britain which meant that show became very obscure

The first disk contains 'Witching Hour'. This tale of a witch who teloports to the 20th century while simply OK, is still the best on disk 1 of the set. the second episode ' the Thirteenth Reunion' is as slow paced as molasses, but nice performances and the ending doesn't make it a total loss. Next we have 'Rude Awakining' I find that tale of a man suffering perpetual nightmares to be the weakest of the episodes on Disk one. Certainly the weakest opening. On to Disk 2 begins with the atrocious possession show 'Growing Pain' (the worst of the series), the much better 'the House that Screamed Blood', and the best of the trio, the voodoo-themed 'Charlie Boy'. Disk 3 begins with the best show of the series 'Silent Scream' then a sharp drop in quality with the extremely lackluster 'Children of the Full Moon', and the underrated 'Carpathian Eagle' Finally disk 4 holds 'two lackluster efforts ( Guardian of the Abyss', 'Visitor from the grave') the best of disk 4,'Two faces of Evil', and the simply alright 'The mark of Satan' (woulda been better as episode 9 though). All in all a much much better swansong to Hammer, than their last released theatrical movie.My Grade: B DVD Extas: Disk 1) History of Hammer text; Hammer Filmography; and stills gallery.Eye Candy: Patricia Quinn (most known as Magenta from Rocky Horror) gets topless briefly in 'Witching Hour'; Lucy Gutteridge of "Top Secret!" fame, shows very brief left nipple in 'Rude Awakining'; Rachel Davis gets topless in 'the House that Screamed Blood'; blink and you'll miss nipple's from Angela Bruce in 'Charlie Boy'

Hammer House Of Horror, with its Spinal Tap's 'Stonehenge' soundalike theme tune, casts of soon-to-be-famous actors and commendably nasty flair for nihilism and genuine nastiness slithered onto British television (on Saturday nights, too!) in 1980 and carved indelible scars in the collective subconscious of an entire generation. Sure, not all the episodes were up to the same standard, but the ones that worked - well, they were classics.THE HOUSE THAT BLED TO DEATH is one of the most memorable episodes, and rightly so. I think this would have made a decent feature-length film. An apparently unsuspecting family moves into a house with a grim recent past and quickly realize that all is not as it should be. A series of horrible incidents (animal lovers should not even consider watching this episode) culminate in the notorious blood-soaked birthday party and the family moves away, but even that isn't the end of their problems. This episode has one of the most shocking and disturbing final scenes of the whole series and would make a nice companion piece to Romano Scavolini's NIGHTMARE (1981), released the following year. SILENT SCREAM is another excellent series entry, with Peter Cushing at his creepy best as a seemingly innocuous pet shop owner who turns out to be a former concentration camp guard with a penchant for unpleasant experiments involving "prisons without walls". The finale is extremely creepy and haunted my dreams for a long time when I was a child. THE TWO FACES OF EVIL goes all out to disturb, with creepy electronic music, claustrophobic camera angles, dopplegangers, nausea-inducing shocks and another troubling ending. It's the closest the series comes to straight horror for its own sake, and should NOT be watched alone!After the excellent opening salvo of three brilliant episodes, the rest of the series can seem like a disappointment, but CHARLIE BOY, WITCHING HOUR, GROWING PAINS, THE MARK OF Satan and VISITOR FROM THE GRAVE are all fine stories (the latter boasting a completely wacko final scene that will have you muttering "what the hell was THAT?!"), RUDE AWAKENING is as bizarre as anything the late Dennis Potter ever came up with, THE CARPATHIAN EAGLE boasts the gorgeous Suzanne Danielle, THE THIRTEENTH REUNION is well-acted and macabre if a little predictable, and the remaining few episodes don't quite come off. Nonetheless, it's a pleasingly varied series that's consistently entertaining, and a reminder of a time when television treated adults like adults and had yet to dumb down to the levels of dreck like Freddy's Nightmares.

These 13 episodes are very much a mixed bag. I'll just list the ones that are bad, the ones that are OK and the ones that are excellent.Bad: Rude Awakening, Children of the Full Moon, Carpathian Eagle, Visitor from the Grave.OK: Witching Time, 13th Reunion, Growing Pains, House That Bled to DeathExcellent: Charlie Boy, Silent Scream, Guardian of the Abyss, Two Faces of Evil and Mask of Satan.All in all, I wasn't too impressed by these short 1 hour episodes. Even the best ones had some bad acting and long, drawn-out scenes. Also, none were really scary or bloody like the Hammer films of the 1960s and 70s. Still, they're worth seeing--especially for horror fans. At least try to see "Silent Scream"--it stars the late, great Peter Cushing and has a very spooky ending.