I had originaly planned to do a list of top ten t.v horrors (it may still happen at some point) but this would have been top, it was all inspired by and comes down to this small BBC1 show, aired one Halloween when I was younger. Billed crucially as a serious documentary, featuring all the names you would expect from that, not fiction, the sense of realistic dread has never been matched. Did anyone else see this? For those that did it remains in the memory, lodged like a nightmare made real, more effective than many horror films, all the more so because we believed it. In this way it was like a precursor to the likes of The Blair Witch Project. The sad fact is it would never be allowed to happen now, misleading the viewers in such a way. Still it worked fantastically and may have even scarred a generation a bit, in a good kind of way.
To those unfamiliar the show as it was had been billed as lasting a whole night, featuring a man in the studio (I remember Sarah Greene's husband and Michael Parkinson both doing this) linking to outside broadcasts of reporters, including Ms Greene (leading to a chillingly terrifying moment later as husband and wife were separated by a power loss), Craig Charles and others. These people were supposedly investigating "real" supernatural occurences and interviewing the families of supposed hauntings, filming things and collecting evidence. Nobody expected what came next, as I said it's worthy of a horror movie. We had a frightened group of children claiming that a ghost named "pipes" (even the name and thinking about it still makes me shudder) was haunting their house, causing weird noises and appearing at times. Nobody would have thought it serious at first but gradually we were sucked into this world of odd occurences, children's drawings of the ghostly creature, his back story and then, the piece de resistance, the outside link was cut off by an unseen, unknown force, Parkinson began acting strangely, Auntie had been taken over for one night only (though we didn't know that). I was too young to truly appreciate it at the time but looking back what a brave experiment and a great little narrative, if you haven't seen it think yourself lucky and try and hunt it out, maybe for this weekend.
**** (5/5)
Special mention to the other shows that would have featured including the seriously scary Childen of the Stones, great episodes of The X Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (you may snigger but Der kindestod and The Gentlemen are monsters who springs to mind here as genuinely disturbing) and various anthologies like Tales From The Crypt.
I would say more but there is a monstrous figure leaning over me, that's weird, no, wait, I was kidding, what's that? aaaggghhhhhhhhh!!!
Happy Halloween!!!
I'm sorry, couldn't resist.
MM
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