Category: short films

Three Dead Souls Trapped in an Apartment – Mystery 80s Drama (IDENTIFIED – WE THINK!)

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 5 Comments

Today’s UWTV entry comes from a member of the Weird British TV Memories group on Facebook, James Fish, who recalls a strange production on TV back in the 80s about three people trapped in an apartment, possibly in purgatory.

Over to James…

“I have a vivid memory from something fairly unnerving I saw some time during the 80’s in the UK with my family.

It starts off with a guy alone in an apartment. He is soon joined by 2 women and all 3 have no memory of how they got there. As they try and work it out, they get flashbacks of horrible deaths. The insinuation is that they are all dead.

I recall my mum explaining this next part to me because I was too young to understand. One of the women and the guy are gay. The other woman is straight. The gay woman takes a shine to the straight woman and the straight woman takes a shine to the gay man.

It’s obvious that none of them can be happy together because of this dynamic. Moving closer into despair, they all decide to leave the apartment but they emerge into what seems like an endless expanse of pitch dark corridors. They speculate that if they leave, they may wander round for ever and never find their way back. That’s where it ends.

So, does this ring any bells for anyone? I’m erring on the side of it being an episode of Tales of the Unexpected or Play for Today but I’ve looked through episode guides for them and cannot find anything even close. Thanks.”

Does anyone else recall this, or can anyone help James identify and locate this production? If so, please leave a comment below or email us!

07/11/23 – An update to this entry; it seems like this UWTV memory may have been identified!

It seems likely to be the TV movie Vicious Circle from 1985, which was adapted from Jean-Paul Sartre’s play Huis Clos, known in most English-speaking countries under the title No Exit.

Vicious Circle – IMDb entry
No Exit – Wikipedia entry

As of the present moment, the film seems elusive, but we at UWTV are on the search for a copy; if you can help us locate it, please get in touch with us via email, Twitter or the comments below!

James is satisfied that this is the production he recalls; so big thanks to Twitter users The Earlham Review and Ian Winterton, and our followers Kevin Lyons and A Smith who commented below, for suggesting Vicious Circle!

In the meantime, we’d like to say a huge thank you to Feedspot, who have featured this blog in their list of Top 25 British TV Blogs on the web! Huge thanks to all at Feedspot, and to all our followers and contributors – we couldn’t have got this far without you!

Top 25 British TV Blogs

Animated short: Anthropomorphic Dog on the London Underground

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 1 Comment

Today we continue our exploration into the dark recesses of televisual and psychological do-they-or-don’t-they-exist mysteries, with this UWTV memory submitted by one of our followers, Kirsty Asher, of a strange animated claymation short film about an anthropomorphic dog, seen on TV around the turn of the millennium.

Over to Kirsty!

“I have searched and searched for evidence this animated short exists because I definitely remember watching it, but haven’t managed to locate any stills or IMDb clues. It would have been late 90s, possibly early 00s. No idea what channel it was on I was probably about 7 or 8 when I watched it.

It was a claymation short about an anthropomorphic dog (I think he was a black labrador?), living in London and he gets on the Underground with his CD Walkman. All the other background characters were some form of anthropomorphic animal, at least as best as I can remember. Puts his headphones on when he gets on the tube and falls asleep, has weird, trippy nightmares that he thinks are really happening, then when he wakes up he realises the tube’s reached the end of the line and he’s locked in the carriage. I remember it ending with him all stressed and banging on the doors of the carriage.

I realise this is such a vague synopsis to go on but I’m hoping someone might remember!”

As this sounds like a particularly intriguing, and possibly disturbing production, it would be well worth identifying and locating this animated short.

Does anyone else recall seeing this? Or does anyone know the title or have access to a copy?

UPDATE (03/04/25) – It seems someone else remembers this production and is looking for it, going from this thread on Reddit (click to read). According to this Reddit user, the dog’s dreams featured him in a time machine controlled by a computer, travelling to three different periods in the future, the final one of which features a meteor falling from the sky, which hits before the dog can get back into his time machine, causing him to wake up. The ending apparently sees the dog running out from the tube carriage yelling “I need to tell people about my prophecy!”

As of yet, other users on the thread above have not been able to identify this piece of lost media.

If you can help us out, please respond below or send us an email!

Image Credit: “Metal Dog” by oliva732000 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Unidentified Short Film: Man Trapped in River

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 2 Comments

Today’s UWTV memory comes from one of our blog followers, Stephanie Owens, who is looking on behalf of a friend for a strange short film or sketch, thought to have been shown on Channel 4, about a man trapped in a river.

This one may be slightly outside of our usual 1970s-90s range as the person who saw this thinks it was around 2002-2005 that they saw this. But it is certainly weird and seems to echo of classic Hauntology-era TV weirdness, so it is definitely worth an entry on UWTV.

So over to Stephanie, to relay the memory from her friend:

“Some time in the early 2000s – probably around 2002 – 2005 is a good time frame – there was a TV sketch (I think it was a Channel 4 thing) that revolved around a man that needed to be rescued from drowning. 

It is daytime and this man stands with water above his waist in a still river or canal, and is unable to move. Two men approach, walking along the towpath, wearing what seems to be Orthodox Jewish clothing. The man in the water asks for help, the two men realise that as it is the Sabbath they cannot help unless he is in danger. The man in the river considers his situation but does not think he is in immediate danger. The man in the water comes up with several suggestions including throwing the lifesaving ring, but the other men still say that as it is considered work, they can’t do that. The three enter into a dialogue to discuss the situation and to explore if there is an alternative. I believe it ended with no solution, and the man is left standing in the river.” 

This piece of lost media seems to echo of the much-emulated classic La Cabina, with its themes of someone becoming trapped, and unhelpful passers-by. Though it sounds from the description as though this one may have taken a more comedic approach as opposed to horror like the latter film and its many imitators.

Does anyone else recall seeing this film/sketch/clip, or know what it was or where to find it?

If you are able to help us identify this piece of lost media, please respond below or email us!

The Clown Whose Make-up Wouldn’t Wash Off… (Weird stop-motion short film) IDENTIFIED!

~ UnidentifiedWeirdTV ~ 7 Comments

(Above: Random public domain image of a scary clown – NOT a still from the film we’re looking for)

We’ve all seen a good deal of weird stop-motion animated films from the 70s-90s era, often screened on Channel 4 in between programs or films. Some were fairly innocent. Others were downright weird or disturbing and not really “kids’ stuff” at all even if some sadistic TV execs were insistent on screening them as that. Paul Berry’s The Sandman from 1991 is one of my personal favourites in the latter category… here it is for anyone who wants to relive that particular nightmare…

But I digress… onto the main purpose of this blog entry. Over at the Weird British TV Memories (70s-90s) Facebook group one of the members, David McCarthy, has brought our attention to this particularly disturbing-sounding stop motion film, apparently from the mid-80s, about a circus clown who finds his make-up won’t wash off, and later hangs himself…

As David recollects:

“Saw it on Irish TV but I think it was British. It was about a circus clown who after a performance is in his dressing room and finds that his clown makeup won’t wash off. He goes to a funeral with a scarf over his face, the scarf falls off and the (unseen) mourners laugh at him. He runs through the streets trying to hide his face and we hear people laughing at him. The final scene shows him in the circus ring having hanged himself. It’s been driving me mad for years trying to find out what it was. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen on TV…

“I’m not sure that it was aimed at kids. The whole tone of the thing was very bleak, I don’t think there was any music. Had almost no dialogue except for a bit where the clown (minus makeup) calls to a chemists. That was before the scene where he was unable to remove the makeup. It was about ten minutes long.

“I think he might have been smoking as well in the dressing room scenes. There was a sort of cynical world weary vibe to the character. The whole thing had this sort of existential vibe. Its possible it was European, there was some dialogue in English in the scene where he calls into the chemists though that could have been dubbed. I’m pretty certain there was no music at all and some of the sounds in it stood out, for instance where we see him having hanged himself his body is slowly spinning on the noose and you hear the rope loudly creaking.”

“Just another detail about the funeral scene. It was an open coffin and you see the corpse in it, the clown (think he was wearing an overcoat and hat) goes up to the coffin and starts weeping over it. Its then that the scarf over his face slips off and his clown make up can be seen. Unseen mourners then start laughing at him and he runs out. (It was just a dark room from what I remember)”

This sounds particularly disturbing, and something that very much belongs in the archive of weird and twisted TV that scarred the minds of The Haunted Generation. Definitely something that needs to be preserved on YouTube I think.

So this post is an appeal to identify exactly what this elusive piece of weird TV could have been… if you have any recollection of this short film or know what it was, please let us know by commenting here or emailing us… and feel free to share this post far and wide, ask your friends etc., in the hope it reaches someone who knows the answer!

UPDATE 28/08/25

Thanks to David McCarthy’s continued searching, this elusive production has finally been identified – it is a Czech production titled Con una sonrisa – S ÚSMEVEM. Thanks to the members over at the Cookd & Bombd forum for identifying it for David!

And here is the film itself:

Great to have another UWTV mystery solved!