Warner Archive gives nostalgic fans of 1970s TV horror movies a reason to shiver with their Blu-ray of DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK.

Sally Farnham (Kim Darby, BETTER OFF DEAD) has just inherited a mansion from her grandmother, and has insisted on living there even though her up-and-coming businessman husband Alex (Jim Hutton, THE GREEN BERETS) would prefer a high-rise apartment and it will cost a fortune to makeover the house from her aunt's "conservative" tastes. Sally wants to make use of her grandfather's locked study and its bricked up fireplace in spite of the warnings of handyman Mr. Harris (MY THREE SONS' William Demarest) who bricked up the fireplace and bolted over the ash box at her grandmother's request, and her husband agrees with Harris citing the cost. Naturally curious and stubborn, Sally unbolts the ash box and inadvertently unleashes a trio of demonic homunculi (THE ADDAMS FAMILY's Felix Silla, GHOULIES' Tamara De Treaux, and UNDER THE RAINBOW's Patty Maloney) who start terrorizing Sally and have her, her husband, and even her best friend Joan (IRONSIDE's Barbara Anderson) questioning whether she is a lonely housewife "making imaginary mountains out of emotional molehills" or genuinely having a nervous breakdown.

A TV movie from a more daring era of television, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK is simultaneously nightmarish and comfortably cozy, surprisingly mean-spirited while also seeming to be very much of its time in its rather chauvinist treatment of the heroine (at a time when a "hysterical" female protagonist who victimization by a real person or supernatural entity always seemed to be symbolic of her not of her subconscious subjugation and oppression as a housewife, mother, or daughter but of her trespasses in transcending those roles). Sally gets little sympathy from Alex about her fears and anxieties, actually seeming to be the one who placates her husband when she says things along the lines of him possibly being right about the atmosphere of the house getting to her or the strain of the renovations (of which we only see her telling decorator Pedro Armendáriz Jr. to move lamps to the right or the left). While the storyline of the disappointing Guillermo del Toro remake was altered from the original – and thoroughly spoiled in the opening credits an hour before the heroine gets to have it all repeated to her – there are some shared scenes which were more violent but less effective in the later film. Director John Newland was one of the pioneers of bringing hysterical female protagonists to the TV screen as the host of ONE STEP BEYOND. The credit seems to have been an extraordinary outlier in the career of writer Nigel McKeand, who also provided one of the demonic voices, whose other films included such youths battling life-threatening disease TV movies as ERIC and ALEX, THE LIFE OF A CHILD. Composer Billy Goldenberg would go on to score the supernatural series THE SIXTH SENSE (episodes of which were chopped down by half and turned into syndication episodes of NIGHT GALLERY) and CIRCLE OF FEAR. Cinematographer Andrew Jackson later provided some similar craning and prowling camerawork to the eighties TV slasher DEADLY LESSONS.

Released to ABC television in 1973 stateside and theatrically in Europe (under the title NIGHTMARE), DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK was subsequently a late night television staple and also one of the more accessible TV movies of this period with a big box VHS release from U.S.A. Home Video. Warner Archive released the film on burned-on-demand DVD-R as a barebones edition in 2009 and then an HD-remastered DVD-R in 2011 with a commentary track (see below). Warner Archive's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.33:1 pillarboxed fullscreen Blu-ray is sourced from a 4K scan of the original camera negative and is simply stunning. The film's omnipresent darkness made scenes unreadable on video but the choices of lighting and color gels seem quite deliberate here. While the amount of blue in the image at first might seem like revisionist grading, the balance of the other colors remain true, and it is more obvious than ever that the blue gel night lighting comes up as a dimmer effect whenever the practical lights are shut off. The creepy green and red gels used on the monsters look even more hellish here, and the John Chambers (HALLOWEEN II) make-up is easier to appreciate even in the darkest shots. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track effectively delivers the dialogue, whispers and demonic voices, and Goldenberg' s score, and optional English SDH subtitles are available here (which were not present on the earlier editions).