Beginning of the Golden Age of Television Movies

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO AUNT ALICE (1969) is one of a handful of well-done, suspense, mystery, gothic thriller movies of 1969 that started the Golden Age of, made-for-television Fright Movies, the era approximately 1969 to 1974. These movies are a lost Hollywood art, proving that low-budget, direct-to-televison could produce, decent, well-scripted, well-filmed suspense mystery gothic thrillers that included well-known actors from screen and television.

There were but a few of these early movies in 1969. Among those I can recount, SEVEN IN DARKNESS, which was about a group of survivors, all blind people on their way to a convention for blind people who survive a plane crash in the Sierra Nevada but anybody who could see on the airplane were killed and the blind people had to find their way out.

These movies were mystery and suspense, often gothic thrillers, and either contained supernatural elements, or pseudo-supernatural, that is, someone faking the supernatural for nefarious purposes, a la, Scooby Doo-like. Everybody's favorite from this time frame is, DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK (1973) which psychologically scarred viewers under the age of 12, and left many people afraid to let their feet and hands dangle off the edges of their beds forever. And there was no blood and gore in that tv movie!