User Reviews

A very small cast surrounds this story of a mysterious chained box found in the construction site worked on by Martin Sheen which leads to the revelation that his wife, Kim Darby, used to visit there as a child in the now demolished house. Going through old family albums she finds a picture of herself as a child holding the exact same horse which has come to haunt her in dreams and the audience with hideous sounds of winnying at random.

They try to destroy the horse (which was accompanied by a broken mirror in the box), but the lucky horseshoe ain't on their side. Sheen and Darby provide great performances as the frightened couple as they get closer to the truth, and they don't have long to stop it. Truly chilling use of a single prop as an element of terror.

This was supposed to be Devil Story but I got so excited after I watched it that I jumped the gun and posted it, thinking that surely I'd find another movie to fit the bill.

I spent almost this entire month trying to find another one.

This is an episode of the show Ghost Story, which changed its name to Circle of Fear midway through its one season. Executive produced by William Castle, the original idea for the show was to have Sebastian Cabot play Winston Essex, the owner of a mysterious hotel called Mansfield House, which was really San Diego's Hotel del Coronado where Wicked Wicked was filmed.

By episode 14 of 22, the show was retitled and Cabot was out and the show still suffered poor ratings, despite featuring writers like Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, D. C. Fontana and Jimmy Sangster.

Episode 15 was Dark Vengeance, which was written by Peter Dixon (whose career was all over the place in TV, working on everything from the Superman 1950s TV series to the Masters of the Universe cartoon) and directed by Herschel Daugherty (The Victim).

While working at a construction site, Frank (an incredibly, near imposible young Martin Sheen) finds a box that can;t be opened. He becomes obsessed with it and finally is able to break into it, revealing only a broken mirror and a toy horse that upsets his wife Cindy (KIm Darby, queen of the TV movie supernatural heroines) to increasing mania.

Of course Cindy would have a past with the horse. But how do you get it back in the box or even destroy it when it can even survive being set ablaze?

There's no way a goofy wooden horse should be so damned frightening, but everyone is beyond committed to making this happen. Man, after seeing this episode, now I have an entire series to devour. This show suffered comparisons to Night Gallery, but after all, shouldn't every anthology show made ever after Serling's masterwork suffer that fate?

I have been having fun lately revisiting all the old movies and television series from my youth. I was delighted to find Circle Of Fear's Dark Vengeance. This was made after they renamed the anthology series. Originally it had been called Ghost Story and Sebastian Cabot as the host, Winston Essex.

Martin Sheen and Kim Darby play a young married couple, he is a construction worker who finds an old box buried in the site where he is working. She is a childcare worker running a daycare from their house.

Bringing the box home, he opens it and finds a beautiful toy horse inside. That is when their nightmares and strange visions begin.

Not many shows could pull off a toy horse on wheels being frightening, but this show managed perfectly. The scenes were suspenseful and the acting was great. The horse at times appeared genuinely terrifying. I watched his episode as a child and I always remembered the scene with the horse battering its way into the garage seeking its revenge.

It is definitely one of the better horror episodes and one that will make you look at your kids toys in a different light.