For as many memorable frights as the big screen has given horror fans over the years, the number of folks freaked out from what’s been on their television sets seems nothing to sneeze at either. The made-for-TV chiller fanbase is a sizable one indeed, comprised of members who flipped on the tube one night and were greeted by creepy sights that made them into instant genre fans. Be it the infamous fanged doll from Trilogy of Terror or Dark Night of the Scarecrow’s titular homunculus, these movies proved that you could be as terrified in the comfort of your own home as in the theater, a notion not overlooked by the Scream Factory gang. Having made it their mission to provide genre aficionados with the flicks they know and love, Scream Factory has done the same for small-screen scares with TV Terrors, a set of two 1978 features that made living rooms a whole lot spookier back in the day.

ARE YOU IN THE HOUSE ALONE?

A high schooler (Kathleen Beller) becomes the target of a stalker whose threats soon turn even more dangerous. While not a rousing success at what it sets out to do, Are You in the House Alone? does a good job of tricking you into thinking it’s a different kind of picture than the one it becomes. Its opening scenes are about as plain and unremarkable as it gets, an excursion into When a Stranger Calls territory that seems so bland, you’d be forgiven for thinking it wasn’t a thriller altogether. But as it turns out, slow and steady is just what the movie needed to really sell its fear factor, as the villain’s deranged screaming pierces the domestic drudgery and truly sends a chill down your spine during his phone calls. The film goes one unsettling step further by unveiling the creep’s identity around the halfway mark and makes the third act a harrowing ordeal for Beller’s protagonist. But as noble as it is of Are You in the House Alone? to avoid sleazing up the subject matter so that it can condemn a broken system that doesn’t always favor victims of sexual assault, its delivery feels pretty botched. The story’s abrupt finish undercuts the power of its message, as does a climax that sees Beller using Nancy Drew-style trickery to catch her attacker in the act. Though I applaud it for not giving in to exploitative impulses that must’ve been tough to ignore, Are You in the House Alone? stumbles too often to really wow viewers like it could have.

THE INITIATION OF SARAH

Meek college freshman Sarah (Kay Lenz) joins a sorority whose house mother (Shelley Winters) seeks to control her psychic powers. It’s easy to dismiss The Initiation of Sarah as something like Carrie Goes to School, but the film at least takes the time to try its own thing. Despite sharing an awful lot of story beats similar to that of Stephen King’s tale of supernatural vengeance, this flick takes a more subdued approach, which actually makes a world of difference. The relatively grounded mood enables Sarah’s painful shyness to come across convincingly, thanks in great part to Lenz and her fitting performance. Even Morgan Fairchild’s character, the queen bee of a rival sorority, isn’t as one-dimensional as it could’ve been, resulting in an insidiously nasty antagonist instead of a cartoon. But the same can’t quite be said about Winters, whose off-kilter acting has served her well in cheesy fare like Cleopatra Jones but nearly kills the atmosphere here. For each genuinely heartbreaking scene of Sarah’s emotions being toyed with for no good reason, we get one of Winters weirding up the place and dragging it down towards the depths of campiness. Her final showdown with Sarah loses a decent amount of suspense because of it, although it’s still a fairly intense finish overall. The Initiation of Sarah could have walked away a winner had it stuck to its serious guns, but the film exhibits unexpected emotion and more chilling content than a lot of thrillers made for broadcast all the same.

(Released by Shout! Factory; not rated by MPAA.)