Destination Nightmare

Destination Nightmare, is a series of four short films hosted by Boris Karloff. He also plays roles in each of them. From what I learned when researching this film, the individual sequences were meant to be episodes for a proposed TV series that was never sold. The episodes weren't meant to be horror movies but series of supernatural stories based on supposed real life occurrences. They were meant to make you wonder and perhaps give you a little chill down the back of your neck. It reminded me of the successful TV series "One Step Beyond". Where did this series fail when "One Step Beyond" succeeded? The films in Destination Nightmare just didn't have the atmosphere to give them that spooky feeling. They lacked the dramatic effects that the plots and music had in "One Step Beyond". I think Destination Nightmare had potential but they needed just a little bit more, which these episodes just didn't have. Viewing Destination Nightmare is still somewhat entertaining and is fun to see a bit of late 50s nostalgia. It's nothing to go out of your way to view but nothing to turn your back on either.

It's easy to see why this never became a successful show, even with Boris Karloff attached to it.

"Destination Nightmare" is actually a collection of four TV episodes of about 25 minutes apiece. The writers apparently had very little creativity when compared to such classics as "Twilight Zone" or "Amazing Stories".

The first episode is about a teenage girl who goes to visit her mother's childhood home. When she gets there, she is overcome with the spirit of a girl who had died ten years earlier. This is the best out of the four, but that really isn't saying much.

The second episode is about a young man who sees a ghost while he is flying a plane. The ghost tries to make him crash.

The third episode is too similar to the first. A young Indian woman has been reincarnated and she remembers her past life. She shocks people by knowing things that only her previous incarnation could possibly know. The fact that white people are trying to portray Hindu Indians adds to the tackiness.

The final episode is kind of hard to explain because it is so utterly illogical. In general, a gentleman encounters a young blonde woman having car trouble. He senses that she is in some sort of imminent danger. I won't spoil the "twist" for you but it makes everything that occurred earlier in the episode lack any sense whatsoever.

If these stories were the best that they could come up with at the start, then I would hate to see what they would've come up with if the show was around for a while. 2/10