The 15 Best TV Movies Of All Time

How great would it be if all made-for-TV movies were top-notch? Ponder it for a second. To catch an entertaining and invigorating film during its initial run, you have to plunk down upwards of fifteen bucks, and that’s not even including a flat soda ($5), a tub of high-calorie popcorn ($6-$7), and the gas money required to drive to and from the nearest theater. But with TV flicks, the only financial burden is the monthly cable bill, and that fee also includes all of the sitcoms, hour-long dramas, sporting games, and mindless reality shows that you consume on a daily basis.

It’s a damn shame, then, that most boob-tube films are of the lowest-common-denominator variety. Histrionic B-movies starring has-beens like Tori Spelling or box office pariahs such as Jennifer Love Hewitt, lazily directed and written with an emphasis on melodrama.

But like any medium stricken by inefficiencies, there are always the recommendable exceptions. For example, there’s the 1973 horror pic Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark, which aired on NBC and still rivals many of the decade’s theatrically released in eeriness. This weekend, genre luminary Guillermo del Toro’s remake opens nationwide, and, sadly, it’s not quite as effective as ABC’s original movie.

Perhaps the best thing about the new Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark is the fact that del Toro’s collaboration with first-time director Troy Nixey has inspired many to seek out its fairly obscure instigator. With that revelatory spirit in mind, we’re here to shed light on other significant works of its type. Flip your middle fingers at buttery popcorn vendors as we count down the 15 Best TV Movies Of All Time.

Network: HBO
Director: Michael Cristofer
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Faye Dunaway, Mercedes Ruehl, Elizabeth Mitchell

For credibility’s sake, let’s acknowledge HBO’s stellar, 1998 made-for-TV biopic Gia for its cinematic merits. The film that made Angelina Jolie a star, playwright-turned-director Michael Cristofer’s award-worthy production takes an uncompromising look at the troubled life of an oft-overlooked supermodel, Gia Carangi. With her openness toward nudity and smoking looks, Carangi ascended to the top of her industry, but a failed love affair with a nearly-as-hot agent (played by Elizabeth Mitchell, now of Lost and V fame) led the model into a spiral of coke, heroine, and other drugs. Jolie, in what remains her best performance, holds nothing back, fearlessly showing her birthday suit throughout and embodying Carangi as a tormented, fragile, and fascinating case study in showbiz tragedy.

Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let’s add upon the “fearlessly showing her birthday suit throughout” point. Our shallow side can’t ignore the truth that Jolie has rarely looked sexier than she does in Gia; her steamy, where’s-the-rewind-button love scene with Mitchell certainly has something to do with that. As we always say, a little girl-on-girl action can put an already superb movie over the edge of greatness.

Network: ITV Network (in Britain); A&E (in America)
Director: Herbert Wise
Stars: Adrian Rawlins, Bernard Hepton, Pauline Moran, David Daker

Next year, Harry Potter himself Daniel Radcliffe will make his first official leap into post-Hogwarts leading man territory with The Woman In Black, a Gothic chiller directed by British filmmaker James Watkins (whose 2008 horror flick Eden Lake deserves your eyes) that, based on its teaser trailer, looks quite good. Radcliffe’s ghost tale, about a lawyer who’s stalked by a ghostly old lady while investigating a case, also seems to abandon its source material, author Susan Hill’s same-titled 1983 novel, quite a bit.

For a more faithful adaptation, check out this 1983 made-for-British-TV creeper, a dread-soaked bit of Victorian terror that benefits greatly from freaky-looking actress Pauline Moran, who’s skeletal face and baleful eyes give each of her scenes an incredibly ominous quality. Director Herbert Wise’s take on Hill’s book might feel a little dated today, with its at times patient-testing slowness, but, for those able to appreciate slow burns, The Woman In Black ’89 disturbs right down to its unbelievably downbeat ending. We’ll be shocked if Harry Potter’s version ends the same way.

Network: ABC
Director: John Newland
Stars: Kim Darby, Jim Hutton, William Demarest

The biggest problem with writer-producer Guillermo del Toro’s new take on Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark is that it’s way too forthcoming about its creatures.

In ’73, director John Newland wisely took the opposite approach. Tasked with a premise that’s inherently goofy (silly-looking, miniature demons torment a housewife), Newland conceived a creepy-old-house flick that’s consistently eerie largely because very little is actually shown. Like the film’s haunted protagonist (played with vigor by Kim Darby), the viewer doesn’t see much of the little ghoulish bastards—she only hears them. That is, until Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark’s final act, when the film’s predominantly bleak tone makes up for the monsters’ somewhat laughable design.

Network: HBO
Director: Jay Roach
Stars: Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Laura Dern, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt

Recount is a great example of the importance of the made-for-TV medium. Had director Jay Roach’s lively account of the miscounted Florida votes that decided the George W. Bush/Al Gore presidential election debuted in theaters, it would have most likely tanked; political dramas, much like Iraq War flicks, are, more often than not, box office poison. But on cable TV, where domestic and worldwide grosses aren’t the measuring sticks for success, Recount thrived quite well.

And for good reason. Starring a buoyant Kevin Spacey, as well as a vibrant ensemble of showy co-stars, Recount presents a topic that could have been played dryly, and strictly for stuffed-shirt MSNBC viewers, as a slapstick flick without any actual pratfalls or physical comedy—the laughs come from painful realities, such as how the ineptitude of a few people ultimately led to moronic George W. Bush’s presidential victory. Whether that makes you giggle or weep depends on your political stance.

Network: ABC
Director: Nicholas Meyer
Stars: Jason Robards, JoBeth Williams, John Lithgow, Amy Madigan, Steve Guttenberg

To fully appreciate The Day After’s power, one has to put the film in its proper context. In 1983, ABC’s massive television event depicted a nuclear missile attack with such intensity and cold-heartedness that the network immediately followed its broadcast with help-lines for viewers to call into if they were too emotionally distraught to function by film’s end. And it wasn’t like viewers has a choice, either; as the story goes, teachers required their students to watch the movie as a homework assignment.

Revisiting The Day After today, it’s understandable if folks chuckle a little bit at such a melodramatic anecdote; before the destruction commences, the film’s characters are all quite hokey interpretations of America’s heartland types, an obvious maneuver on the producers’ part to scare good ol’ boys and girls in the audience. Once the bombs drop, however, The Day After settles into an alarming, quasi-horror movie demeanor that’s darker than your typical made-for-non-cable movie.

Network: CBS
Director: Bill L. Norton
Stars: Cornel Wilde, Jennifer Salt, Grayson Hall, Bernie Casey, Scott Glenn

Gargoyles is a unique inclusion on this countdown. Unlike the other films here, this campy TV movie is one that requires an ample amount of nostalgia; without it, Gargoyles most likely seems like a cheaply made and unbearably silly romp. Those who first watched the flick as kids, though, reserve a special place in their ghoul-loving hearts for this tale of an anthropologist and his super-hot daughter (Jennifer Salt, bless her 1972 self) who run across a gang of green goblins after uncovering a mysterious skeleton.

The plot, after starting off controlled and suspenseful, eventually veers off into a ridiculousness, and the gargoyles themselves mostly look like football players in rubber suits. But the main villain, the Gargoyle King (played by former NFL participant Bernie Casey), is an imposing, Satanic force, and, again, Jennifer Salt looks fierce in her belly shirt. Tack her sexiness onto the fact that Gargoyles also happened to be the late special effects master Stan Winston’s debut gig and you’ve got a genre classic for apologetic viewers.

Network: HBO
Director: Roger Spottiswoode
Stars: Matthew Modine, Alan Alda, Richard Gere, Ian McKellen, Glenne Headly, Richard Masur, Saul Rubinek, Lily Tomlin, Anjelica Huston, Richard Jenkins

HBO has long been television’s best outlet for remarkable TV movies, and in 1981, the cable brand proved its ability to embarrass damn near every other remote-control-destination with the timelessly important And The Band Played On. Powered by an outstanding ensemble cast, director Roger Spottiswoode’s vigorous small-screen drama depicts the early rise of AIDS and HIV through several characters who all acquire the diseases before researchers have pinned down its causes and effects.

An underlying theme of the film is that, at the time, ignorant professionals thought that the new ailment only hits homosexual men. As the movie’s players learn something we now all know by the end credits, though, AIDS isn’t the least bit prejudced. And The Band Played On remains one of HBO’s greatest productions.

Network: NBC
Director: Daniel Petrie
Stars: Sally Field, Joanne Woodward, Brad Davis, Martine Bartlett

Dealing with women is hard enough in a one-on-one setting, so just imagine how overwhelming it’d be to confront sixteen crazy ladies all at once—that’s enough to send any playboy running straight into priesthood. Minus the dating angle, that’s the premise of Sybil, an award-winning drama about a deranged woman, the titular Sybil (a career-making performance from Sally Field), who undergoes several intense treatments for her multiple personality disorder.

What sounds like an atypically intriguing Lifetime Movie is actually a harrowing look at festering traumas that was exceptionally intense for its time, when TV in general wasn’t as open to taboo-smashing imagery as it is today. Sybil’s fractured psychosis is the result of childhood abuses at the hands of her moth (Martine Bartlett), a religious extremist who sexually violated her daughter under the ruse of religious tactics. Thinking Sybil is a sappy chick flick is like labeling The Last House On The Left as a domestic drama.

Network: ABC
Director: John Llewellyn Moxey
Stars: Darren McGavin, Simon Oakland, Barry Atwater, Carol Lynley, Claude Atkins

With so many vampire movies and TV shows currently in vogue, it’s rather surprising that no one has announced a “reboot”—a word that send chills down genre purists’ spines, as well as makes them want to pimp-slap a Hollywood producer—of the 1972 TV flick The Night Stalker. Anchored by a funny and charming lead character who’s an investigative reporter and old-school bloodsucker mythology, it’s a property that’d fit right at home in today’s TMZ times if given a modernized tweak or two. Fortunately, though, there’s no Night Stalker remake in the cards—the original is badass enough to satisfy any horror lover.

Darren McGavin owns the role of Carl Kolchak, a conniving reporter who suspects that a string of brutal murders in Las Vegas is the work of a vampire; it’s a simple premise, but one made genuinely scary and often funny by screenwriter, and fiction writer extraordinaire, Richard Matheson. The Night Stalker spawned a 1974 television series, which had its fair share of moments, but director John Llewellyn Moxey’s original TV film is Kolchak’s finest hour.

Network: CBS
Director: Delbert Mann
Stars: Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, Ian Holm, Patricia Neal

In recent years, HBO has solidified itself as TV’s epicenter of war cinema, strong-arming Emmy and Golden Globe awards for such awe-inspiring miniseries as Band Of Brothers, Generation Kill, and The Pacific. But the Home Box Office network isn’t the only channel that’s earned its place in the battlefield drama ranks.

Back in ’79, CBS enlisted with a powerful adaptation of German author Erich Maria Remarque’s seminal anti-war novel All Quiet On The Western Front, about a reluctant young soldier, Paul Baumer (Richard Thomas), fighting for the German army during World War I. The film’s centerpiece is Baumer’s tragic, and tautly staged, encounter with a French combatant, but All Quiet On The Western Front is also notable for its depiction of how a psychologically battered soldier’s time spent back home can be just as traumatic.

Network: HBO
Director: Billy Crystal
Stars: Thomas Jane, Barry Pepper, Anthony Michael Hall, Richard Masur, Chris Bauer, Christopher McDonald, Jennifer Crystal Foley

As much as he’s a great actor and master showman, Billy Crystal has never been shy about his lifelong fanaticism for the New York Yankees. A native of the Big Apple, Crystal is a regular talking head in Yankee documentaries, but his ultimate love letter to the ball players in pinstripes came in 2001, when he directed the excellent HBO made-for-TV sports drama 61*.

Strongly acted by Thomas Jane and Barry Pepper, it’s the story of home-run kings Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, who, in the summer of 1961, chased down Yankee great Babe Ruth’s single-season homer record, much to the simultaneous delight and anger of NYC’s die-hard fans. Crystal and screenwriter Hank Steinberg went to great lengths to ensure historical accuracy, a clear indicator of Crystal’s immense fandom, but the strength of 61* is the director’s willingness to not romanticize Mantle and Maris; they’re faults are on display alongside their superlative game-playing competence.

Network: ABC
Director: Dan Curtis
Stars: Karen Black, John Karlen, George Gaynes

In the horror genre, the anthology format has yielded some kick-ass flicks, from 1945’s heavily influential Dead Of Night to 1982’s Creepshow. The notion of tying three or more stories together into one film is a risky endeavor, with one or two of the inner tales often paling in comparison to the flick’s best installment; some anthologies, though, get the whole shebang right, such as Dan Curtis’ unfairly slept-on Trilogy Of Terror, a failed pilot for a Twilight Zone-like series that ended up airing as TV-movie-of-the-week.

Regardless of the circumstances, at least it made it onto idiot boxes. Comprised of three stories, all starring an on-point Karen Black in different lead roles, Trilogy Of Terror flips three random Richard Matheson short stories into uniquely dark segments. The first, “Julie,” finds Black playing a murderous English professor; “Millicent And Therese,” the second and admittedly weakest of the bunch, has Black doubling up as mentally unhinged twin sisters; and “Amelia,” the final entry, pits Black against a homicidal and totally batshit Zuni fetish doll come to life inside her high-rise apartment.

Based on Matheson’s dynamite short story “Prey,” Trilogy Of Terror’s Zuni doll portion is by far the movie’s strongest point, a claustrophobic, visceral, and playfully sadistic exercise in cat-and-mouse thrills. “Amelia” alone makes Trilogy Of Terror an all-time classic.

Network: CBS
Director: Ralph Nelson
Stars: Jack Palance, Anthony Quinn, Keenan Wynn, Kim Hunter, Ed Wynn

Thanks to the ever-brilliant The Twilight Zone, TV icon Rod Serling is typically associated with twisty genre tales that either drill home social messages or unpretentiously work to induce viewers’ unease. And while such a description is apt for Serling, it’s also slightly underselling the man’s greatness; as evidenced by his screenplay for the 1962 sports drama Requiem For A Heavyweight, Serling was a master at rich characterization.

Originally airing as part of CBS’ theater-inspired anthology series Playhouse 90, Requiem is arguably the greatest boxing flick of all time (yes, we see you, Rocky), centering on a down-and-out pugilist, Mountain Rivera (Anthony Quinn), who, in addition to suffering from fighter’s dementia, unwillingly becomes a wrestler to help pay off his irresponsible manager’s (Jackie Gleason) gambling debts.

Full of pathos and boasting one whopper of an in-ring fight sequence (an opener that pits Rivera against Cassius Clay), Requiem For A Heavyweight is one of Rod Serling’s most impressive achievements, which, trust us, says a lot.

Network: ABC
Director: Buzz Kulik
Stars: James Caan, Billy Dee Williams, Jack Warden

Want to see a grown man cry? Show him Brian’s Song, the widely praised 1970 made-for-TV weep-fest about pro football great Gale Sayers (Billy Dee Williams) and his Chicago Bears teammate/best friend Brian Piccolo (James Caan). On its surface, Brian’s Song is a rousing football flick, telling the in-depth story of a three-time Pro Bowl MVP; beneath its pigskin exterior, though, it’s an emotional rollercoaster for sports-loving men of all types, specifically any guy who’s ever forged a bond with a fellow athlete. Shoulder pads and Kleenex sold separately.

Sayers and Piccolo were the first-ever interracial roommates in the NFL’s long history, an unlikely living arrangement that established a BFF relationship. Piccolo wasn’t exactly a stud, so Sayers helped him along and helped to turn his white teammate into a contender. But then Piccolo developed cancer, and that’s when the tears will start a-flowing for the toughest of male viewers. Women have Terms Of Endearment, and men have Brian’s Song.

Network: ABC
Director: Steven Spielberg
Stars: Dennis Weaver

Before E.T. ever phoned home, or Indiana Jones saved his first day, there was one randomly pissed-off truck driver. All icons have to start somewhere, and, for Steven Spielberg, the road to filmmaking prominence kicked off with 1972’s Duel, a bare-bones suspense vehicle about a businessman who, for no reason, is terrorized on the open road by the unseen wheelman of an enormous rig. In spots, Duel is just as intense and white-knuckle as Jaws, the now-classic killer shark movie for which Spielberg used Duel as an audition tape of sorts.

The then-24-year-old director certainly had great source material to work with; Duel’s screenplay was written by Richard Matheson, based on his own short story. Matheson, for the genre-illiterate, is one of horror fiction’s most prolific authors, getting his breakthrough as a main writer for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and going on to write such seminal books as I Am Legend and The Haunting Of Hell House.

Paired with Spielberg, Matheson delivered a minimalist nightmare with Duel; fast-paced, mean as hell, and well-acted by Dennis Weaver, it’s a pulse-pounder that still holds up nearly 30 years later.