Flicker Fusion

I don’t know what it was that first got me scared, but I do remember being terrified by a mid-seventies TV broadcast of Whistle Down the Wind. I must have been about five. It was the moment when the kids find Alan Bates stranded in a field and ask him who he is. He looks up menacingly and says: “Jesus Christ!” From then on I was scared of anything to do with Jesus.

This fear was compounded some months later when Jesus of Nazareth was screened. Kids of my age tended to hide behind the sofa when Dr Who was confronting the Daleks; I leapt for cover when Robert Powell was dishing out loaves and fishes.

When these religious traumas had finally subsided, I sought more orthodox thrills. I quickly found out that ‘horror’ was much more scary fun than the New Testament. Horror had blood, fangs, claws, rubber foreheads, pointy ears, mad scientists and hysterical music. At the age of six, all this seemed much more palatable than Heaven and Hell.

My real ‘horror education’ began with Dennis Gifford’s book ‘A Pictorial History of Horror Movies’. I gawped at its pictures of deformed monsters and evil doctors for hours on end, usually in the front room while my mum played Abba records. So much so, I can’t listen to ‘Fernando’ now without thinking of Lionel Atwill. But one thing frustrated me: where could I see these fantastic faces in action??

In the late 70s I got a portable TV for my bedroom. It wasn’t because I was spoiled, it was because I talked about TV so incessantly, it seemed like I might become mentally impaired if I didn’t have one. Switching the TV off on me was like trying to put Rain Man on a plane. Needless to say, I was overcome with excitement when it was installed. And it wasn’t long before that excitement was justified, because I soon discovered BBC2’s summer Saturday late-night strand: “Horror Double Bill”.

This strand had been running since 1975 (it ended in ‘81), and sported a number of umbrella titles, including ‘Masters of Terror’ and ‘Dracula, Frankenstein and Friends.’ Whatever the title, it immediately became the icing on my summer holiday cake. It didn’t matter that the films they showed were often old (and I mean old: highlights included The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Devil Doll (1932) and Doctor X (1932)). In the pre-home video days, a TV screening of a horror film from any decade was a cause for celebration.

It was Horror Double Bill that really provided me with an exhilarating introduction to Lon Chaney, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Vincent Price, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, as well as to Tod Browning, Val Lewton, Ray Harryhausen, shrinking men, giant ants and beasts with five fingers. There was something darkly magical about those misspent summer nights. So I was thrilled to see that Second Sight are honouring, perhaps unwittingly, that short-lived but never-to-be-forgotten TV tradition with their release this month of the Karloff/Lugosi vehicles The Black Cat (1934) and The Raven (1935) (which formed their own double bill, if you’re interested, during the 1977 season). I recommend you watch ‘em on a Saturday night, preferably one straight after the other.