A Warning to the Curious

Greetings, My friends! We are giving you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimonies of the miserable souls who survived this terrifying ordeal...Friends, can your hearts stand the shocking facts about  grave robbers from outer space?

  This is the last blog on my summer holiday viewing on Saturday nights in the late 70s and early 80s. It's also the fiftieth!
In my dad's house in Chapelton, I had a b/w portable tv in the room I shared with my brother but given that he's four years younger, I probably watched the majority of these movies downstairs. 
The pattern of screening was a black and white film, probably Universal, followed by one in colour from Hammer, AIP or Amicus. Staying up late after the cricket was the only way to get to see these classic movies in an era immediately prior to video cassette home taping. In a way, there's a sense of community for those of us old enough to view tv in that way.
At the very end of the winter, Tom Baker had regenerated into Peter Davison. One notable sci-fi/ horror production from the  BBC in this year was The Nightmare Man, set in Scotland; filmed in Cornwall.

In the mornings, during weekdays, Simon Bates would still be presenting the Golden Hour. But what was the year? McEnroe beat Borg; IRA men went on hunger strike in the Maze; there were riots in London, Liverpool and Manchester. I would go on to act with Kirsty Miller who starred as "Maggie" on BBC2. This was the era of the New Romantics: Tainted Love and Girls on Film. Adam Ant would Stand and Deliver in June and Stars on 45 was massive. There were still novelty records, of course, like Bill Wyman's Si, Si, Je suis un Rock Star.  I abandoned Tom Ferrie on Radio Scotland for Radio Luxembourg. Trevor Eve, Dr. Who's nemesis was Eddie Shoestring; the British Were Coming with Chariots of Fire and I was one of about ten people in the Odeon in Hamilton who went to see Polanski's Tess. It was 1981.

 I will be blogging about the Sword-and -Sorcery paperback boom in the near future. As I've said before a decade of C4 pop culture clip shows has given a rather skewed impression of the 80s. Certainly, at the beginning of the decade, there's little difference from the fag-end of the 70s. But what has been forgotten, I think, is the massive influence of Heavy Metal: Whitesnake, Rainbow, Saxon, Motorhead, Judas Priest. That musical genre goes hand in hand with fantasy (like Dungeons and Dragons) and horror.
My recollection of the second movie in the opening pair is watching it at Andrew Watters' house in Strathaven probably with Caroline Frame, Margaret Morrison, and Martin Southern:


I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE/ZOLTAN-HOUND OF DRACULA - 4/7/81
CAT PEOPLE/MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM - 11/7/81
THE SEVENTH VICTIM/RACE WITH THE DEVIL - 18/7/81 Don't recall seeing RACE at all
ISLE OF THE DEAD/THE CRAZIES - 25/7/81 A second outing for The Crazies!
BEDLAM/BUG - 1/8/81 Goldfinger steals a shock from Bedlam...
THE SHUTTERED ROOM/THE LEOPARD MAN - 8/8/81 Lovecraft-lite with Ollie Reed
THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE/EYE OF THE CAT - 15/8/81 Curse is actually a sweet & sad tale
THEATRE OF BLOOD/THE BODY SNATCHER - 22/8/81 Who ate all the pies?
 This season isn't as schlocky as the previous year, with some moody, well-directed films on this list.

  We had a family holiday in Amsterdam that summer- I'm guessing in mid-July, since I don't remember seeing The Seventh Victim until sometime in the last decade. It was my second visit; I'd been there with my dad for a pigeon fanciers event in the icy January of 1979. I can remember a saxophonist playing Ravels' Bolero under that central arch of the Rijksmuseum ; visiting Volendam and Marken in Waterland; and buying a Lin Carter paperback in this store, the " Beehive":

Ain't it Just Like Belgium?

I was buying comics by mail order for the first half of the year. I can remember reading these two in the back of my Dad's car, racing pigeons in Coalburn one weekday afternoon:

 I also liked the Flash Gordon-esque worlds of the Microverse and the respect that Jessica Drew was getting:

  
I had left HGS at last that summer and had been accepted at Strathclyde University for an Arts and Social Studies degree. I was going into Glasgow much more regularly but it's hard now to visualise a cityscape without the St. Enoch Centre, Buchanan Galleries, Merchants Square, et cetera.

 Concept of Kentigern. Removed from Buchanan Street in 1999 and never replaced.

I've mentioned before that Lewis's department store had a spinner rack near the Deli section on the ground floor, where some of these came from. DC was going through a bit of a boom with the post-Shooter Marvel diaspora:

 Replace Wild Huntsman with The Seraph and that's a good-looking JLA!

The horror season seems to have skipped a year in 1982. I have absolutely no recollection of the 1983 season but, for some blogging reason, I do have my 1983 diary here in Elgin and I was watching every week.

DRACULA/FRANKENSTEIN -9/7/81

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN - 16/7/81 No info if there was a second film...

DRACULA'S DAUGHTER/SON OF FRANKENSTEIN - 23/7/83
THE MUMMY/THE GHOST OF FRANKENSTEIN - 30/7/83
FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE WOLFMAN/THE WOLFMAN - 6/8/83
SON OF DRACULA/HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN - 13/8/83
THE MUMMY'S HAND/THE HOUSE OF DRACULA - 20/8/83

 I was also watching Soap and Hill Street Blues.  HGS put on Fame as the school show and I went back on my brother's ticket so I must have had some long-forgotten fondness for the place. I bought Synchronicity by the Police and this album: 

 I also met Roy's first wife Karen Law once or twice when I was hanging about with Garry Wilson. I was now drinking in pubs- the Weavers in Strathaven, the Yeoman  in East Kilbride and a place called Centre Court at the Charing X end of Sauchiehall Street. This was the first year I missed the family holiday-in Arran again- but I had been in London, where we saw Wrath of Khan, the previous summer.
I still think of 1983 as my last great Golden Age for comics. Marvel UK had a dazzling burst of creativity, predating Alan Moore's success with Watchmen:

The US lines weren't too bad either!

 Will Power Boy finally join the LSH this year? I think he deserves it.

I bought Sgt.Pepper for the first time that summer and I was drifting away from the Strathaven crowd as our individual studies and interests became more significant. By the autumn I was becoming the somewhat-more flamboyant flattop actor-wannabe who would decide to take Roy's room on Kent Road in the mid-80s.It appears there was a Hammer season on BBC2  around 1985/86 but I had no tv set at that time. So, for my personal chronology, the last season that matters was 1981.

Looking back over these movie seasons, I feel very connected to my teenage self . By contrast, the drunken 90s -acting, call centre employment and mortagages- seems very strange and distant. During this year's summer holidays, I'm going to use Amazon and ebay to reacquaint myself with the Masters of Terror!

Next: Hear the Lamentation of their Women

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