... or "TV programmes that scared the bejeesus out of you but were too afraid to ask"
There are two TV programmes I recall vividly as a child that I found terrifying. Really terrifying, not just a "ooh look a cuddly monster, I'll hide behind the sofa" style, but the "I can't sleep, cos if I shut my eyes it'll get me, soaked in sweat, gripping duvet cover for dear life" sort of way.
And recently I've managed to track them both down, and now possess both on DVD. Unwatched thus far, of course.
So, to make it clear, I never found Dr Who scary as a child, and I never watched it from behind the settee. It's just not that frightening (well, some of the recent Moffat episodes have been, but let's not wander too far from the path. You'll be able to pull me up on the 'wandering' thing shortly. Trust me).
Anyway, back to those programmes. Well, not actually. Whilst I'm in the general area I'll mention three films that left a great impression on me, and I think they are still quite effective today. But they were all first watched as a child, so bear with me. The first is 'Quatermass and the Pit'; it's the scene in the house towards the beginning, when the policeman is explaining that the house has always had a strange feeling and was generally empty, and the explanation of the origin of the street name - Hobbs Lane (being the name for the Devil I think?). The second is 'The Haunting' - the Robert Wise black and white version. Too creepy to go into details. It just is. And then there's "Something Evil" one of the TV movies Speilberg made before his big movie breakthrough came. Unlike 'Duel' this is a straight-forward horror movie, along the lines of several made in the mid- to early-70s ... couple move into farmhouse, strange things happen, turns out to be occupied by demons. In this incarnation the wife is played by Sandy Dennis, with Darren McGavin as her TV producer hubby. As is typical, 'she' is convinced something's afoot, but 'he' is more dismissive; the key scene is at the studio when he's reviewing some test footage taken at his house earlier in the day. "Wait, what was that? Rewind back for me." And behind his wife, from inside the window of his house, a pair of demonic red eyes glows then fades, as we zoom in. Unnerving.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes ...
So, as a child I loved lego. The proper, hard to take apart, sharp and hard as glass stuff, not that flimsy collapsing inferior rubbish you often were treated to. And when I was but seven of eight my uncle gave me his son's lego collection (it was the yucky stuff by and large), in a lovely box he'd made himself (my uncle that is). About a metre square by four centimetres high, with a sliding cover made of hardboard. Beautifully painted on the cover was a road layout, around which you could build and place lego buildings, and there were a few cars in the box too. It was very, very nice. Lovely little compartments for your lego to be sorted into. Great stuff. However, on the back of that lid (on the rough criss-cross underside of the hardboard), if you could locate that box today - and I can; I don't "hand-down" my lego to no-one, not no how, no way, bud - you'd find a drawing of a house. A simple, childlike drawing; four windows, two up, to down, each divided into four 'panes'; door in the middle; chimney pot; fence; path; gate. You know the sort of thing. However, the 'garden' of the house unusually holds a number of rather unpleasent looking monoculus rock-like blobs. And the windows of that house ... well, someone has scribbled over them in some sort of pique.
It's all a bit sinister. Or not. As I did that drawing, echoing what the main protagonist of terrifying TV programme number one did. Although her actions had much more interesting consequences, other than merely defacing a fairly nice present. So, this is (I got there in the end) 'Escape into Night'. Based on the book 'Marianne's Dream' it's about a young girl, who whilst off school with a broken foot, draws a house in a sketchbook. Then when she falls asleep she awakens in the garden of that house. But it's a house with an occupant. A sickly, wheelchair-bound boy, who might just exist in real life. One who perhaps can't walk because he was never drawn with legs. In one encounter etched on my memory they argue, and when she wakes up she scribbles over the house. When she returns to the house in her next dream, black bars cover the windows, exactly mirroring the arced lines of scribbled lead she had made earlier that day. There's an out-of-tune radio that whispers to her; a grandfather clock with but a single hand; the rock-like sentinels in the garden with their light beams issuing from their single eye, slowly advancing on the house; and then, finally, the boy's lost father, set to return to the house in the final episode, blind, furious, and utterly deranged.
All this in the 4:20 slot for 'younger children' preceeding the likes of fluffy Magpie, and happy-go-lucky Blue Peter in the scheduling. I would watch it (on Wednesdays I think) on my own. Like all series at that age, it seemed to last forever, yet was only six episodes. Lost to time I thought (no-one else at school ever watched it ... in recent years I've almost doubted the memory) but it's now on youTube (illegally?), and those nice people at Network DVD have it for sale! Me bought. So, of course, it's terribly dated, with 'jolly hockey-sticks' children saying "mummy, mummy, whhhyy don't the poooor children like us?" yet imagine this as a children's programme, when you're seven.
If I have the wit I'll include a link or two below:
(watch the opening seconds, if only for that "dum dum dummm, darr da-darrrrr" of the ATV logo!) ... watch from 6:30 in for about 5 mins, until Marianne leaves the house again. This is just after she argued with Mark (the boy) so rubbed him out in her pad, and drew her friend in to take his place. #Fail, were she around today! Oh - and do watch the end credits, for more creep-out time :)
The second programme was a much shorter, but much much scarier memory. For which I blame my mother. All I recall of it was this: there's a scene set in Victorian times, I guess, of a man recounting a tale of terror. He claims that his house (or family) is haunted by the ghost of a horse. The man's house is by the edge of some moors. As he tells the tale, we cut to a view of the moor at night, the camera panning as though following something, before we switch to a view as though from a horse, the image bouncing up and down, the sound of heavy horse breath, the pounding of hooves. The scene switches to inside the house. A man is walking along the hallway away from the door. He stops, apparently startled by something. He turns. We are outside again, seeing as the horse, pounding towards the house, galloping down to the doorway. Back to the man, he opens his mouth as though to scream, but before he can a splintering crash breaks the silence. We're the horse again, in the house, the man before us, we bear down on him, then rise as though preparing to kick and trample him to his death ...
At which point, my mother says, "Oh I think this is a bit frightening for you, better get to bed." Oh yes, that's a good plan. Now I only have my imagination to terrify my for the rest of my life. Much better than seeing the whole thing and having the suspense dispelled.
So for (possibly) about forty years I've had that in my head, and it's really been a bit too scary for me to look into. And I didn't think that searching for "TV ghost horse Victorian" would be much good. But then again, I was wrong. So I now have in my possession series one of a short-lived thing called "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes", a series of independent stories featuring other Victorian era detectives, who never enjoyed the Baker Street occupant's fame. And episode 5 is entitled, "The Horse of the Invisible" with plot synopsis: "A ghost detective enters the gas-lit shadows of the Higgins family in search of an invisible horse which haunts them." Now that sounds 'promising' (if that word is appropriate). And it even stars Donald Pleasance, and I have the vaguest of vague recollections of seeing him in the show. It's almost as though the more I consider it, the more I recall. The watching itself might take the odd stiff whisky ... or daylight. Plenty of daylight.
Well, there you have them. Two 'moments' from my childhood. Forgive me my rambling, but the context is quite crucial for these things.
What were the 'killer creepies' of your childhood? And have you laid those ghosts to rest, or do they still haunt you?
