10 TERRIFYING Made-For-TV Horror Movies

After Carrie put Steven King on the Hollywood map, you can bet that a mad scrabble to option his next pulp masterpiece came swiftly. It would take Kubrick himself to unlock King's true potential but then Salem's Lot is a much simpler affair than The Shining. It also inspired as much as it borrowed, leaving a slew of copycats in its melodramatic wake.

Sexy seventies writer (keep those eyebrows raised high) Ben Mears has returned home to Salem to write a book about the local haunted house that scared him as a kid. He attempts to rent it but too late, James Mason has just moved in with a lot of antiques, including a suspicious coffin-shaped box that must live in the padlocked cellar. When a few locals turn up as vampires, he and sexy seventies teacher (keep those eyebrows up) and plucky seventies kid must begin sharpening their stakes.

Ok, everyone is in this film - David Soul (Starsky And Hutch), Bonnie Bedelia (Die Hard), Ed Flanders (Exorcist 3), Geoffrey Lewis (High Plains Drifter), Kenneth McMillan (Dune), Fred Willard (Anchorman) and Barbara Babcock (Star Trek).

Salem's Lot also manages to rip off Murnau's Nosferatu and directly inspire 1985's Fright Night, even down to the set design. The production was a nightmare, over budget and undecided on whether this was a film or a miniseries, even with veteran Tobe Hooper at the wheel. Despite that, the image of the child vampire Danny Glick scraping at the windows provides a genuine chill forty years on.