Masters of Terror

It's back! The unhuman thing that would not die!! From the poisonous pens of Conan Doyle, Bram Stoker and Dennis Wheatley, it's the third blog on BBC2's late night horror double bill summer seasons!!! I've been itching to post this image since it's so evocative of the films and very well-remembered:

 But first, for viewers in Scotland, some music. Here are the sounds of the summer of 1979: The Boomtown Rats' I Don't Like Mondays, Gary Numan's Are Friends Electric? Silly Games by Janet Kay, Girls Talk by Dave Edmunds, My Sharona by the Knack, Beat the Clock by Sparks, Supertramp's Breakfast in America, Chuck E's In Love by Rickie Lee Jones, Gerry Rafferty's Night Owl and Judie Tzuke's one-hit wonder, Stay with Me til Dawn. Lovers' Rock, Power Pop and AOR ballads. The anarchy in the UK that the likes of Staurt Maconie and countless C4 clip shows evoke in these years wasn't reflected in the charts in reality.

 At Marvel Comics, it was my second John Byrne summer. I got these books in Glasgow the week after my dad's car was involved in a smash when we went for a meal for my 16th birthday. I've never been a good passenger since then! DC comics were looking a bit tame and staid by comparison although this JLA storyline was the catalyst for the brutal, ugly Identity Crisis series of the Noughties.

That summer, BBC Scotland got a network showing of its occult conspiracy series The Omega Factor, a tartan X-Files starring Louise "Leela" Jameson. Lots of Who directors worked on it and it also starred a Scottish actor from Kirkcudbright, rejoicing in the splendid name Brown Derby. In the middle of that run, the double bills began. BBC2 called the series 'MASTERS OF TERROR'. It's a pallid thing, however- two Sherlock Holmes and a sci-fi B movie...

14/7 Dr 'X'/Curse Of Frankenstein Cannibalism and synthetic flesh!
21/7 Sherlock Holmes Meets The Spider Woman/Hound Of The Baskervilles Gale Sondergaaard IS the Spider Woman!
28/7 Night Monster/The Devil Rides Out  Charles Gray IS Mocata!
4/8 Black Friday/The Mummy ('59)
11/8 The Strange Door/Blood From The Mummy's Tomb
18/8 The Mummy's Hand/Satanic Rites Of Dracula Freddie Jones IS deeply disturbing
25/8 It Came From Outer Space/Quatermass & The Pit  Next to Frankenstein, probably the best film this season

Again, I don't have my 1979 diary in Elgin but since I had no recollection at all of Black Friday, I thought we might have been on holiday that week. But, as I said last time, we would always have been home in time for the movies. My recollection is that our family holiday was the week before school started.

 That year, we spent a dank, wet week in Arran, in a hotel in Lamlash. I've been back to "Scotland in Miniature" twice in the last ten years and it rained both times then too. The scenery is often spectacular but the island doesn't delight me like Bute. My abiding memories are of the ferry crossings, reading Starburst magazine on Bakshi's Lord of the Rings:

 I'm still quite fond of the animated version, even though it only tells about half the story. The Arran holiday also saw my first dip into ERB's Venus series. New English Library made this one look far more racy than it really is:

 One other important point about television this summer is that ITV was off the air from August. High inflation in the 70s  led to higher pay claims and the independent network went on strike for ten weeks. That's the reason Dr Who's Seventeenth Season won its high ratings - no competition. It's possibly another reason why Masters of Terror is well -remembered. The transmission of the spooky Sapphire and Steel railway station story, meanwhile, stuttered to a stop during our holiday and was repeated when the industrial action was over.

Next term, I would be leaving all my friends- Alistair, Andrew, Katie, Isobel, Caroline and Margaret- to go to Hamilton Grammar School, a move I quickly regretted. We spent the summer having very chaste parties with grape juice and barbecues on Isobel's farm outside Stonehouse. Up the Junction by Squeeze always reminds me of toasted marshmallows and Dylan's Budokan album.
Verity Lambert's Euston Films screened its bleak vision of Quatermass IV  in October 1979, when the industrial action was over. It's a real document of the anxieties of the time-  energy crises, deprivation,  rioting and the attraction of cults were all news stories in the late 70s and early 80s.

 I went into Sixth Year after the summer of 1980  because I hadn't settled in at Hamilton Grammar and began truanting quite regularly; consequently, my Higher results were poor. I had nowhere else to go- I wasn't capable of getting a job: what could I have done?
The Master of Terrors season began two days before my seventeenth birthday. Aside from the opening pair, which are both disturbing because of their psychological horror elements, it's chock-full of gimmickry and campery.
28/6/80 NIGHT OF THE DEMON/THE GHOUL (1975) An unsettling pair of chillers
5/7 THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS/CHAMBER OF HORRORS
12/7 THE MAD GHOUL/DR.TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS
19/7 DEVIL DOLL/DAUGHTER OF SATAN Cross-dressing shrinking- formula madness in Paris
26/7 CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF/FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE (On holiday in Morecambe this week)
2/8 PARANOIAC/CAPTAIN KRONOS VAMPIRE HUNTER Olly Reed and Brian Clemens
9/8 BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS/NIGHT OF THE LEPUS Ludicrous giant rabbits!
16/8 THE BAT/LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF
23/8 TOWER OF LONDON/THE SKULL Moody historical with Karloff and Rathbone
30/8 THE BEAST MUST DIE

 In this year, we went back to Morecambe for our family holiday, between Curse of the Werewolf and Captain Kronos. Radio 1 was playing Xanadu by ONJ, Funky Town, Roxy's slinky Over You, Oops Upside Your Head and Stacy Lattisaw's Jump to the Beat. So while rap music was beginning to surface, the UK-or more precisely the English- still had a weakness for novelty records: The Piranhas' Tom Hark and Two Pints of Lager by Splodginessabounds. Oh, and due to the popularity of the tv series, lachrymose late 60s ballad the Theme from MASH was Number One. The charm of the UK charts was ever thus.
I think I saw The Empire Strikes Back one afternoon in Morecambe. I do remember that Peter Sellers died  on the 24th of July, just prior to our holiday. I knew of him of course from Casino Royale and my mid-70s tapin of Goon Show scripts with Alistair Scobie. I had become quite the follower of BBC radio comedy, after Andrew Watters introduced me to the Hitchhiker's Guide. Another cult series which I listened to faithfully was The Burkiss Way, which I heard again on Radio 7 last year:

Burkiss had a complex and witty structure as the programme temporarily left one sketch to join another, often returning to the original sketch much later. Fake endings and continuity announcements were also regular occurences.

One of Marvel Comics' most famous storylines began that summer and I also cast a desultory eye over Steve Ditko's work. I really admire it now but back then, I found his work child-like and primitive:

 

 Marvel UK continued a tradition which is now largely lost but one I recall warmly: the Summer Special.

One day, I will blog about the UK's own Merrie Marvel icon.

Meanwhle, DC Comics, while becoming indistinguishable from the House of Ideas, had regained its confidence after the Implosion two years earlier and was about to run back-up features. Here, one writer Mary-Sues the JLA while another tries to deal with a racist caricature:

 Mr. Starlin, the Nuclear Man aside, I don't think the JLA ever looked better.

Tom Baker's last season of Doctor Who began on the 30th of August 1980 and I remember watching it and The Beast Must Die at Martin Southern's house, the old Post Office in Chapelton, with our friends from Strathaven. Later that autumn, we would visit Andrew Watters' house near Strathaven Academy and watch Hammer House of Horror, which began on the 13th of September.

 Classic Victorian and Edwardian horror stories were broadcast on BBC1  for older teens as part of the Spine Chillers series. I first heard of The Mezzotint, The Stolen Bacillus and The Flowering of the Strange Orchid in this series of ten- minute readings in the closing months of 1980.

 Looking at these two summer seasons of horror pictures, we can see they've fallen far from the Gothic glory of 1977's epic Frankenstein, Dracula and Friends. Many of them lack style, some are risible; but I think I'd happily sit and watch them all again- well, maybe not "Night of the Lepus"-because they remind me so sharply of family, friends and my awkward adolesence when I was so shielded from life.

 I think the transition to HGS and my subsequent unhappiness, separated from friends until the weekend and unable to integrate into new classes as a greasy sword-and-sorcery nerd, not only marked the end of my childhood but also shaped me as a reader and a writer. Escaping into the pulps of the Twenties and Thirties- and literally escaping from school most days, even drinking coffee in Hamilton's cafe bar the Sands (with its hugely camp statues of Wilson, Kepple and Betty!)- gave me the basic skills to turn my results around and finally led me to teaching in a secondary school in Moray.

Anyway, enough maudlin reflection. This is the result of a week of trying to teach W2 writing to Intermediate students! Next time, I'll look at the 1981 horror double bill, as I left school at last for University and Heavy Metal took over Britain.
Next : Man Made Monster
The Legal Bit: this is a blog for nostalgia, fun and comment. All images are presumed cpyright of their respective owners. Transuranic, heavy elements may not be used where there is life.