Let’s talk horror/y fiction anthologies of the 60s, 70s and 80s. Many of these were a big influence on my own writing. Obviously, the original Twilight Zone is the GOAT of anthologies. I watched it in afternoon reruns in the late 60s, early 70s. as I was too small for the original. My first episode that I remember watching was Five Characters in Search of an Exit, which is Bergmanesque from top to bottom. I also love Boris Karloff’s Thriller from the early 60s, which I watched on YouTube as an adult. One of the best eps is The Hungry Glass, starring William Shatner as a Korean War veteran with PTSD moving into a haunted house. Shat flips out much the same as he did in his famous airborne TZ ep. Another favorite is Rod Serling’s other show, Night Gallery in the early 70s, my favorite show as a kid. The creepy first episode, The Dead Man, gave me nightmares, and like every other kid I knew, I loved Green Fingers, starring Elsa Lancaster, an exceedingly macabre and darkly funny ep. I also love the pilot movie, especially The Cemetery segment with Roddy McDowell and Ossie Davis, which also gave me nightmares. My other favorite show of the era was Ghost Story/Circle of Fear, intended as CBS’s competition for Night Gallery, and produced by horror greats William Castle and Richard Matheson. My favorite eps are House of Evil, starring Melvyn Douglas as a polite but menacing warlock trying to corrupt his granddaughter, a very young Jodie Foster, and Legion of Demons, starring Shirley Knight as a new secretary at a corporation where worshipping the Devil is the main route to a promotion. Around the same era. I discovered Journey to the Unknown, a Hammer/Fox Television joint effort that was mostly shown on British tv, through a US TV movie made up of two episodes joined together and hosted by a drunk/stoned Joan Crawford. The best eps are Matakitas is Coming, starring Hitchcock alum Vera Miles as a journalist trapped in a night library, and The New People, which stars a pre-Brady Robert Reed. The New People has one of the creepiest opening scenes ever. I watched all the eps on YouTube a few years ago. Next up is another British show, also called Thriller, which also had some American involvement as it stars many Hollywood alums like Donna Mills. Lacking a host, Thriller ran the gamut from murder mysteries to vampires and devil-worshippers. My favorite ep is Someone at the Top of the Stairs, starring the aforementioned Mills and Sock-it-to-Me girl Judy Carne as two ingenues who rent a room in a very strange rooming house. Thriller is currently streaming on Prime. Also streaming on Prime is 1980’s Hammer House of Horror, another anthology show produced by Hammer. There are only 13 eps but the quality is very high, and the best episode stars Hammer great, Peter Cushing, called Silent Scream. This episode is notorious for its cruelty and macabre plot. It’s really worthy of the fabled Hammer name. Another British series I love is called Shadows, from 1975. It’s aimed at young teens and pre-teens, but it’s plenty interesting for adults. My favorite ep is a folklore-inspired tale about a dying rural grandfather visiting his grandson in London, called The Inheritance, which has a very creepy, Wicker Man vibe. Unfortunately the Shadows box set doesn’t seem to be available in a N. American format. I watched the whole series on YouTube in 2014 but it seems to have been wiped since then. What about you? Did you watch horror anthologies? If so, what were your favorites and your favorite episodes?