This is more of a request to help me find an old episode of something that scared the hell out of me. Here is what I remember. I think it may have been an episode of the 80's cable Hitchhiker series. But it could have been another.
Here is what I remember. The setting is a man and woman in the midst of some sort of romantic tryst in, I believe, a hotel room. The woman suggests they play "Gotcha" (though it could be another name I am sure this is it). Anyway, she goes and hides while he stays on the bed. As the film goes along he becomes increasingly paranoid. Feeling extra strange as it seems she has only gone to hide in the bathroom, we see him sitting on the bed sweating and generally freaking out. The climax comes when some horrid disfigured harpy-type thing descends upon him from the ceiling fan directly above him (whose repetitive turns have been marking the increase in his anxiety), saying "Gotcha!" Then we see that it was just his girl all along sneaking up to the side of the bed. One of the best jump scares I ever had, but sadly from my wee lad days. If it wasn't The Hitchhiker, it was a similar '80s serial. Could even have been drawn from an anthology film but I doubt it.
The couple, the room, the game, the first person camera to guy's anxiety, the figure descending from the fan, and his shock from the vision of seeing his girl beside him going basically "boo." These are the threads I remember. Can you find it for me? It has been plaguing me for years. Airtime on Showtime or HBO would have been circa '84-'88.
RT,
We got your answer thanks to a tweet from @SPZanti.
It's the Ray Bradbury Theater episode "Gotcha" and it's on Youtube!
That was fun… though I was kind of enjoying it for the 80's romance angle.
I'm didn't get what the ending was all about… some metaphor for lost love?
Knowing what I did from R.T.'s description, I was expecting a variation on the old "girl with the ribbon around her neck" story…And now having seen it, I'm not sure…Was she actually spooky or was she just messing with him and the parts that seemed supernatural were in his mind?
In any case, that was a *killer* jump scare.
She was just messing with him lmao.
I remember this episode. That harpy scene has stuck in my mind. Why was she a harpy? (Oh wait it was all in his mind)