Yuku free message boards

I just watched the whole series and found it very hard going.

I did think the Sebastian Cabot intros were very good in the GHOST STORY episodes and there were a few tolerable episodes (eg: The pilot, The CAT PEOPLE rip off Tom mentions above, or the TWILIGHT ZONE-ish one with Patricia Neal called Time of  Terror) but the series was a big drag for the most part.
Although many good actors were hired, there was hardly anything original and it seemed aimed at what the producers thought horror fans would like.
I hope Castle didn’t have much to do with this as he is one of my favorite directors, but I can hear the TV honchos saying:

“These knuckleheads who like this kind of crap will love it!”

"Lets do one with a killer..uh..doll house (House of Evil),

Or killer jars (Earth Wind Fire, Air.  Man I hated this episode!),

Or killer jars with people stuck in them (Legion Of Demons. This was even worse!!),

Or a killer hobbyhorse with buckteeth (Dark Vengeance.  No kidding a poorly superimposed hobbyhorse is supposed to be scary?? This was, hands down, the WORST episode for me.  It has perhaps the DUMBEST script ever produced for TV and it starred an actress who always makes me cringe: Kim Darby at her most pixie-ish),

Or killer ghosts of movie characters in bad makeup (Graveyard Shift. One of the better episodes with John Astin and William Castle in very good bit but it has another really dumb script).  

It was one boring episode after the other.  Every one seemed to stop dead with endless padding.  There was always this sleep-producing passage with the squeaking clean lead actors endlessly walking around in the dark with "scary" music on the sound track. I used the fast-forward constantly.  Perhaps the series would have worked better in a half hour format.   Or even better, a 5 minute format.
Another tedious trend throughout has every episode with a close-up of the lead actress doing a phoney wide-open mouth scream. I never saw so much dental work!!
The music (except for the Ghost Story theme, which is excellent) was horrible. That cliché reverb thing is still used today and it was annoying even then.  DIDDLE DEE DINT…De Dint….de dint……de dint….
I actually do remember this series not being very good and this re-visit confirmed it. It’s just a lot of spoon-fed '70s TV pap.
 
Then suddenly the last few episodes seemed to be effective. (Spare Parts, The Ghost of Potter’s Field, and especially THE PHANTOM OF HERALD SQUARE)
The very last episode aired was a haunting love story that recalled the best elements of THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET. The music was mostly a very pleasing acoustic guitar folksy tune. The acting and script were both top notch.  I would call this one episode excellent.

I should also say that the quality was so good that people thought I was watching a blu ray disc.