I saw this on the old Prism cable network in the Philadelphia/South Jersey area in the early to mid 1980’s. It was a low budget affair, possibly independent, possibly a student production. It was in color and in English.
It seemed to have been filmed in a couple of abandoned locations, including some creepy ruins of a building overgrown with vegetation. I have the impression they may have written around the areas they had available. There were, I believe, three stories, framed by a group of young people (probably college students) telling them. The image that sticks in my head all these years is of a guy hovering and dazed under a single bare, blue light bulb in a very small, grey, dingy room. The point to that story, if I recall, was how someone had previously been found like this and a guy decides to investigate and winds up sharing the same fate.
I don’t remember anything else, really, but my impression is that it was a competent amateur production. It certainly creeped out my 12 or 13 year old self! Prism used to show some interesting stuff (I first saw Werner Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu there when I was maybe 11 and I became a lifelong fan of Herzog from the experience.) Early cable was without a net!
Any help would be appreciated, but I have a feeling the film I’m looking for was way under the radar… Here’s hoping! Thanks!
“Blood Bath”(1976)?
Part of your description sounds like the 3rd story in this low budget anthology, it involves a vault. Here is the IMDb page:
Blood Bath
http://imdb.com/rg/an_share/title/title/tt0074222/
My comment below was supposed to be a reply directly to you…I blame my cat…
Thanks Livinghead…but sadly it definitely isn’t “Blood Bath.” The film I remember didn’t have an exploitation aesthetic to it and the cast were all pretty much college-aged amateurs (which is why I suspect it may have been a student film). I don’t recall any overt gore–just creepy tales filmed with a naturalistic color pallette in found locations. I fear it may have been picked up locally by the nascent Prism so that channel may have been the extent of its distribution. :/ If you come across anything else that might shed some light please let me know. Thanks!
Ok Brad, I will keep looking.
Crikey! I just found it, and boy, does it look like a stinker! It’s called “Screams from a Winter Night.” The sequence I remembered is called “The Green Room,” so I had the light bulb color wrong, amongst other things. It’s funny how a movie can seem competently made and effectively scary when you’re 12 and look like utter amateur crap when you’re an adult. I’ll probably watch it again anyway just to see how forgiving a critic I used to be. 😛 I appreciate your help, Livinghead. Not enough folks get back on here to thank you folks for your effort in tracking these things down. 🙂
That’s great Brad! It may be a stinker, but it has quite a cult movie reputation, I heard it can fetch 2 or 300 dollars for a vhs copy on Ebay!
Glad you found it Brad and thanks for letting us know!