5. This House Possessed

This made-for-TV movie came out in 1981, which means it predates Poltergeist but not The Amityville Horror—though its haunted-house trappings come with a high-tech (for 1981) twist: the titular California manse, a mid-century marvel, is solar-powered and equipped with then-unusual things like security cameras and a central control panel that runs all the lights, air conditioning, door locks, etc. This House Possessed also goes through some fairly amusing plot mechanics to get its protagonists into the home, following a cheesy rock star (The Hardy Boys’ Parker Stevenson) who hires a private nurse (Beverly Hills Cop’s Lisa Eilbacher) to look after him following an on-stage collapse, then spontaneously decides they should move into you-know-which dwelling after viewing it on an apparently aimless road trip. We say “apparently” because from the beginning the house has somehow been keeping tabs on the singer—the TV flicks on, somehow broadcasting from his life in real-time—but then it becomes clear that the nurse, whose name is Sheila but starts hearing a voice whisper “Margaret” on her first night living there, is the object of interest for this “house of the future” that’s also, shall we say, quite stuck in the past. This House Possessed is very much a made-for-TV movie in terms of production values, and its big “reveal” doesn’t make a ton of sense. But it also has a surprisingly robust supporting cast (including Dr. Strangelove’s Slim Pickens as the rocker’s manager, and Dark Shadows’ Joan Bennett as a mysterious local woman who Knows Things), as well as a handful of creatively harrowing death scenes.