Extraños hechos de muerte

Yes, I remember this movie because of the headless dummy scene. It scared the c**p out of me too and I would have to rank that up there with the hand coming out of the grave scene from "Carrie" as one of the scariest moments in filmdom (even if this was a Television Movie).

I've seen "The Strange and Deadly Occurence" twice in my life; in 1983 and 1985. Both showings were late-night on a Friday and regrettably we did not own a VCR at the time.

It's quite an eerie film with a good build-up of suspense which unfortunately concludes rather ridiculously. A lot of those TVMs now languish in scheduling purgatory which is a pity. Some enterprising individual should release a bunch of them on VHS (some films just don't suit DVD)--e.g "Vanishing Act" with Elliott Gould and "One Of My Wives Is Missing" starring Jack Klugman.

If anyone has any of the above on VHS please mail me.

In summary then: Some parallels with "Caddyshack"

While I can't comment too much on this movie in detail, I do remember it scared the hell out of me as a kid when I first saw it. The "headless" mannequin dummy and the eerie pounding is what I remember about it that was so scary. I also remember the ending, which I won't give away here of course. (Not that you'll ever get to see this movie.)

NO ONE, I mean NO ONE remembers this movie. The fact that I'm the only one with a comment here so far for this movie attests to this. This TV movie scared me as much as DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK and TRILOGY OF TERROR. Almost everyone remembers those though. I even saw DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK on video at my local Blockbuster, but NEVER this one ANYWHERE EVER.

I haven't seen it in at least twenty years. I'd like to see this again somehow and my searches turn up nothing. It's not even listed in Leonard Maltin's fat movie book. If anyone knows where this can be found on video. Please email me.

In THE STRANGE AND DEADLY OCCURRENCE, Michael and Christine Rhodes (Robert Stack and Vera Miles), along with their daughter, Melissa (Margaret Willock), are settling in to their new, rural home. Odd things begin happening almost immediately, like unexplained power outages, weird furnace trouble, and an eerie, heavy-breathing presence!

Christine soon learns of the house's dark past. Could some paranormal phenomena be afoot? And, who's the bizarre guy that insists on buying the house? As the inexplicable events grow more frequent and dangerous, the Rhodes' start to question the wisdom of their investment.

Michael believes that some flesh and blood perpetrator is up to no good. The Sheriff (L.Q. Jones) is unconvinced that anything serious is taking place. Then, a life is lost, and a secret is uncovered. This all leads to the big, shock finale.

This made-for-TV movie is an effective mystery / thriller with a nice, ironic ending. Both Stack and Miles are convincing in their parts.

Watch for the inimitable Bill McKinney as Pratt...

I had this movie for a long time in a Betamax tape bought by my father just after buying our first color TV (a Sony KV-2142R) and Betamax (Sony SL-8600) back in mid 1978. Dubbed to Spanish and re-titled "La Casa Embrujada" ("The Haunted House"), I consider it a promising movie with a really bad ending, but anyway I'd love to have that Spanish-dubbed version just for memories from when I was eleven. It was recorded from a Panamanian TV broadcast, commercials included. I used it a lot (specially Dr. Gillgreen's face) to adjust the TV's hue and color settings, at a time in which color TV broadcasts hadn't arrived to my country (Color TV was officially launched in Colombia on Saturday Dec. 1, 1979 at 7:00 PM GMT -5). The only worry in life back then was school...