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I saw half of this movie or episode when I was a kid in the early 80s (since I never watched the ending I don’t know its length).

This family of three members, father, mother and young kid (like 10 years old) wake up one day and their entire house is covered by an iron wall. They try opening all doors and windows, but all face this mysterious wall. The phone is not working, and the TV only shows a weird logo or sign.

This iron wall is a couple feet away from the house. One of the things I recall is that, despite the father and mother's frenetic attempts to figure out what's going on and find a weak spot in the wall, the kid tries to go out to play, getting trapped between the house exterior wall and the iron wall. His parents had to talk him into calmness and then convince him to walk back to the house (none of the adults could fit in the space between walls).

Last thing I saw is that the father takes an axe and goes to the attic, thinking that the iron wall might be weaker and breakable there. As he is climbing the ladder we see a tattoo in his arm, that is actually the same logo that is being mysteriously displayed on the TV. I would say that this logo looked like a secret society sigil, but maybe this memory has been "corrupted" in all these years, so maybe is not a fact to take into account.

I don’t know if it was a movie, an episode of a series or what. Anything that could lead to identifying this story or how it ended would be much appreciated.

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  • Duplicate of this question: movies.stackexchange.com/questions/24245/…
    – user18979
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 2:27
  • @WumpusQ.Wumbley, a duplicate from a different stack? True that is a TV episode, but due to the nature of the episode this question is well suited for SFF stack, and I'm not a member of Movies Stack.
    – Kreann
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 14:34
  • Apparently I haven't absorbed the highly specific meaning of "duplicate" in stackexchange culture. It was an ordinary non-pejorative sense I was thinking of. Note: the question I linked to is also a duplicate of an earlier one on the same site. That episode left an impression on multiple people that made them want to find it 30 years later.
    – user18979
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 14:48
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    @WumpusQ.Wumbley, I'm not complaining about you comment. It seems that it actually lead to an answer to my question. I was just pointing out that I would have never looked for a previous similar question in a different stack in which I'm not a member. Thanks again for your help.
    – Kreann
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 15:04
  • FWIW, Await Further Instructions is a much darker take with a larger family. Different ending too.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented May 26, 2020 at 20:52

1 Answer 1

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Since we don't do cross-stack duplicates, I'm turning the comment by Wumpus Q. Wumbley into a CW-answer.


This movie is Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense: Season 1, Episode 12 - Child's Play which is available on YouTube (for now) in English and Spanish.

The secret society sigil is actually

the manufacturer's mark, since they are the dolls in an advanced (automated) doll house.

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  • 1
    Amazing. Checked a couple minutes of the video and and the TV logo and the scene of the ladder are what I remember, so this is it. Great job and thank you very much.
    – Kreann
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 14:30

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