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Sequential television programs don’t readily lend themselves to fright, because the same characters usually come back every week and can only be put in so much peril. Anthology shows had more license to torment their victims, particularly Rod Serling’s ingenious “The Twilight Zone” and his more feverish “Night Gallery.” In one of “The Zone’s” best gotcha moments, from “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” a squirrelly mental patient (William Shatner) on a malfunctioning aircraft looked out his plane window only to see a gremlin’s bestial face staring back at him. (The adaptation from the uneven movie is good, too.)

“The X-Files” at its best proved highly effective at presenting new hauntings and alien abductions each week, and showed the influence of the 1970s short-lived, much-beloved monster-hunting show “Kolchak: The Night Stalker.” In a way, “The X-Files” served as a “safer” version of “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch and Mark Frost’s night-time soap opera with an ironic hybrid of lurid twists and ironic humor. “Twin Peaks” wasn’t always violent or horrific, but its darkest moments may never be surpassed at terrifying viewers. “Peaks” hit its monstrous heights when Lynch directed the nightmares and criminal acts that set the demonic spirit called “BOB” lose against helpless victims. In a sadistic joke on the show’s loyal audience, “Twin Peaks” concluded with BOB taking possession of wholesome FBI agent Dale Cooper. Here’s one of the show’s most disturbing visions from the end of the second season premiere:

I should also mention a TV show that doesn’t quite “count,” but comes first to my mind when the phobia-inducing subject comes up.

“Trilogy of Terror” was a three-part anthology film written by Richard Matheson (who, coincidentally, also wrote “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and numerous “Zone” episodes, as well as the teleplay for the original Night Stalker film in 1972). Karen Black played the four heroines (including a pair of twins of the three chapters). I don’t remember the other two, but the “Amelia” chapter, based on Matheson’s story “Prey,” scared the bejesus out of me as a 10 year-old. Amelia has the misfortune to be stalked by a homicidal, resourceful, and wickedly fanged African doll that comes to life in her apartment. I only saw it the one time in 1975 and am reluctant to see it again, partly because I’m afraid it won’t scare me — and partly because I’m afraid it will. It supports my new theory that the 1970s was the scariest decade ever:

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