Thriller “Pigeons From Hell” (June 6, 1961)

This adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s pulp story deserves its reputation as one of television’s scariest hours.  It’s a lean, no-frills haunted house tale, in which two stranded motorists and one unflappable Southern sheriff (taciturn Crahan Denton) do battle with the spirits that inhabit a dilapidated mansion in the middle of a swampy nowhere.  One of the young men takes an off-screen cleaver to the head, then somehow resurrects himself and turns lightning-fast on his brother (Brandon de Wilde), Night of the Living Dead-style.  A trek into the swamp leads to an ancient voodoo priest, obviously terrified by some unseen force, who foresees accurately his imminent death by snakebite.  But the most chilling bits are the simplest: De Wilde’s halting voice as he reads aloud a diary which reveals that the fates of the house’s previous inhabitants were far more gruesome than the locals had thought; or the lawman’s throwaway line that he hasn’t seen pigeons in these parts for decades, just after we’ve seen the birds bewitch one of the young men towards a ghastly fate.  What’s missing is the usual barrage of horror-movie skepticism from some denier of the supernatural; these demons are corporeal, efficient, and capable of so much measurable damage that even the hard-headed sheriff concedes mighty fast that something’s amiss.  There’s no time for disbelief: writer John Kneubuhl and director John Newland have too many nightmares to unfurl.