No single film has affected my life more than a humble made-for-TV movie from 1973 called Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, which served as the scary movie deflowering of many impressionable young minds of Generation X. It seemed to run at least one Saturday afternoon every month of the 1980s on WPIX channel 11. Whenever it did, my older brother and I sat transfixed on the basement’s loop pile carpet (in three tones of brown), filled with dread.
Spoiler alert--but if you didn’t watch this movie as a child, it’s already spoiled.