Historias para no dormir (1966–1982)
9/10
Great Spanish series, a classic masterpiece of suspense
26 August 2020
Narciso Ibáñez Serrador (NIS) is truly the Hispanic Hitchcock. To develop this "Historias para no dormir" he actually was inspired by the famous British series "Alfred Hitchcock presents". NIS was the first one who introduced this genres into Spanish TV.

In some chapters he adapted tales by Edgar Alan Poe or Ray Bradbury. In others, he created his own stories. He was a real genius, clearly a visionary filmmaker. One of the chapters of this series has a very similar plot like Carpenter´s "They live"... and was made years before! So Carpenter maybe saw this (or heard about it), and got the idea thanks to NIS.

Anyway, I´m not sure if there is some version with English subtitles of this series out there. In Spain, this was on TV in the ´60s, ´70s and first ´80s. Some of the episodes, like the Bradbury-style dystopic science-fiction, look quite prophetic if you see them now (kind of a pre-"Black mirror" maybe).

By the way, there is a book that reviews and analyzes all of the chapters of the series, and also the two feature films by NIS (unfortunately he only made two, "The house that screamed" and "Who can kill a child"). It looks like the book is only in Spanish for now, but if you speak this language and love intelligent horror and science-fiction, it could be interesting for you. The book is "Historias para no dormir: ...y otros inquietantes mediometrajes televisivos de Narciso Ibáñez Serrador" and you can find it in Amazon (ebook and paperback).
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