User Reviews

The death head moth becomes her. That's what Janet Leigh becomes bugged about in its first appearance onscreen prior to "Silence of the Lambs". She's unhappily married to Gene Nelson who shows off his "follies" by spending time with framing all sorts of hideous insects, and she's had just about enough, to the point where she wants to begin an affair with their friend, Rory Calhoun. Trying to spice up their marriage at Calhoun's quest, she gets some sort of bug-filled concoction from an ocean front shop owner which promptly kills Nelson and creates visions for Lee seeing the creepy looking flying critter. Visions of the hippie like shop owner has her becoming a hag like witch, and now Leigh's more bugged out than ever.

Like the roach hating man from "Creepshow", Leigh tries to smite every creepy crawly she sees, and she's becoming truly obsessive with every sound she hears, every shadow she imagines. Glamorous in a 70's Lana Turner way, Leigh isn't an evil woman, just more neurotic than calculating, but her obsession is obviously going to be her doom. It's the same year she fought giant rabbits in "The Night of the Lepus", so it's her "Psycho" past catching up with her. This is truly an eew inspiring episode, and one you may not want to revisit, but it's fun for one little "Raid". If you're like me, you'll be looking around your TV area for bugs and hopefully don't find any.

I remember seeing this back when it first aired. There's a scene where Janet Leigh runs around the house in her nightgown screaming and waving her arms. It reminded me of a similar scene in the French movie "Diabolique". I'd have given Ayn Ruymen, who plays the creepy but pretty, young gypsy a bigger part.

Slip in a lesbian subtext and create a relationship between her character and that of Janet Leigh. Nothing overt, because after all, it's a TV episode. A subtle gay or lesbian subtext is always guaranteed to turn a pedestrian movie into a cult classic. You'd have had posters argue about it for years on this board. Ayn Ruymen would have had a bigger career.

Like "Diabolique", the two women should have conspired to knock off the annoying husband. If you've seen this episode and "Diabolique", one of several twist endings will occur to you. __________________________________________________

Possible Spoilers; don't read any further if you haven't seen "Diabolique!:

Instead of the actual ending, make it so the husband isn't really dead, and wind up with the gypsy woman, like in "Diabolique"! Or have the Gypsy woman wind up with Rory Calhoun's character!

First off, you have to buy the idea that Janet Leigh is bored to death with Gene Nelson, who I've always thought was mega-cute with his blond hair and blue eyes. He's pretty creepy in Death's Head though, and any man who is obsessed with his bug collection to the point of letting the bugs run loose in the house, and even showing up in the bedroom, would be a guy who would turn me off, no matter what he looked like. Also, I would have been constantly concerned that I'd bake a beetle or two into a casserole or that an arachnid would show up in my lingerie drawer. Leave this guy for Rory Calhoun? Definitely not. I would have thought his bug-like eyes would have creeped out Janet Leigh, but apparently not. Rory does loom over everyone else though, and at 6 foot 4 (I looked it up.) one can see why. At any rate, Janet Leigh is a neglected, sex-starved wife whose husband would rather fondle his insect buddies than fondle her. No wonder she's looking for some extra-curricular entertainment and thinks flitting about with Calhoun would be fun. Leigh has already seen that she if she shows up in Nelson's study/bug bungalow. bug museum in the middle of the night in a sexy nightgown, she can distract him to the point of making him wiling to do the deed with her, so why murder him? Instead, she interrupts the barely begun foreplay to fix him a cup of coffee...yucchy instant coffee, no less. He's willing to drink this cheap brew, probably so they can get on to the main event, but alas Leigh has put enough poison in the coffee that he immediately drops really and sincerely dead. She's finally free to pursue Calhoun...except that he's not interested. To add to her unhappiness, Nelson's prize death's head moth now is sporting Nelson's head instead of its usual skull. Personally, I would have gotten Bug Dude into therapy to see if the marriage could be salvaged. I think building a nice bungalow, with permanently closed windows and a well-sealed door, on the property to house hubby's bug collection would have been a better alternative to murder.

With episode 14 of this series, the title was changed from Ghost Story to Circle of Fear. Host Winston Essex (Sebastian Cabot) and the Mansfield House are gone, leaving this horror anthology with no host. It's a shame, because that was the thing that made this show stand out.

For the first episode of the revised show, Janet Leigh plays Carol, an unsatisfied wife in the true EC Comics style who hates two things: bugs and her insect-loving husband, Steve (Gene Nelson). She plans on using a gypsy potion - the gypsy is played by Madeleine Taylor Holmes and her young assistant is Ayn Ruymen, Cheryl from Private Parts - to take care of him and open the door for a relationship with his business partner Larry (Rory Calhoun). But now, a death's head moth is stalking her from beyond the grave.

You may have heard me say before that this show is all about peaks and valleys. Sadly, this is one of those valleys. This episode was written by Rick Blum, who was the assistant to William Castle for all 22 installments of the series. It's the only episode of the series to be directed by James Neilson, who also made The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh.