13 Demon Street

13 Demon Street is a horror anthology TV series that aired between 1959 and 1960 in American syndication. Thirteen 25-minute episodes were produced in Sweden, although the language, and cast, is English. Lon Chaney Jr. was the host, introducing each episode from his 'home' at 13 Demon Street. Condemned for some shockingly atrocious crime, Chaney's purpose in relating the series' stories was to convince viewers that the crimes presented in them were worse than his, thus freeing him from his purgatory. This was hard for audiences to judge, however, because Chaney's original crime was never specified. The series was originated by Curt Siodmak, who also wrote some of the scripts and directed several episodes. He had previously written Chaney's 1941 film The Wolf Man. Three episodes of the series were edited together to make a theatrical feature called The Devil's Messenger in 1961, in which Chaney's character was reconfigured as Satan himself. Chaney filmed new wraparound segments as Satan in Hell to link the chosen episodes, which were 'The Photograph', 'The Girl in the Glacier' and 'Condemned in Crystal'. Several of the show's stories were derivative in nature. 'The Black Hand', for example, was modelled on The Hands of Orlac, while 'The Photograph' is an updated version of the M R James story The Mezzotint.