TV MEMORIES # 4 - HAMMER HOUSE OF HORROR

It's Saturday the 13th of September 1980 and 6 year old me is getting bored. The reason for this ? There's nothing interesting on TV on Saturday nights anymore. 

Up until a few weeks ago I'd had the horror double bill on BBC 2 to watch (a series which opened up my mind to the horror genre and made me a lifelong fan) but now there's nothing except gameshows and drama series for me to watch. Dull, dull, DULL !!!

My parents are watching ITV. At that time the "third channel" as it was sometimes referred to was run by several different networks that where divided into regions. So for example, if you lived in East Anglia then Anglia TV would be running your ITV channel. What this meant was that you'd get a mixture of mainstream programming that was common to all regions in the network but you'd also get region specific shows as well. We where living near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire so (for some bizzare reason) our regional ITV station was Yorkshire Television (even though Nottinghamshire isn't in Yorkshire - I think it was just how our house was positioned in relation to the transmitter, we got a better signal from Yorkshire than from Midlands Television which was our supposed actual ITV region). Anyway, the Yorkshire TV ident comes up on screen, so far business as usual...

The ident then dissolves into this title card, instantly my horror loving interest is piqued...

The continuity announcer informs us that starting tonight at 9.30 is a new series - The Hammer House Of Horror. FINALLY something interesting to watch on a Saturday again.

Hammer House Of Horror was an anthology show that ran for 13 episodes in that Autumn of 1980. Every week audiences would be treated to an hour long tale of terror bought to us by Hammer films. The show told tales of Voodoo, witchcraft, Werewolves and vengence from beyond the grave amongst other things and it was absolutely great. It featured lots of familiar faces from TV and films of that time, Peter Cushing even turns up in one episode playing a Nazi war criminal in hiding. It was an all round quality package and is remembered fondly by horror fans to this day.

Unlike the more familiar movies, the TV show would largely dispense with the gothic trappings that we associate with Hammer horror. These stories where all set in the then present day world of 1980 (cheaper to film I suppose). This was a 1980's Britain of chip shops, smokey pubs, newsagents that advertised cigarettes in thier shop windows and where everyone seemed to drive either a Ford Cortina or a Ford Escourt. This was Thatcher's Britain. This was the Britain where I grew up. This familiarity only added to the show's effectiveness, the sense of normality just made the fantastic horror seem even more frightening. This - the show seemed to be telling us - could happen to YOU !

We sat down to watch the first episode "Witching Time". This story told the tale of a time displaced witch (Patricia Quinn) who uses her malign influence to enslave a modern day man. It all ends in a big fight involving a voodoo doll. The doll gets thrown onto a fire and the witch burns to death, her chilling agonised screams play over the soundtrack to an image of the melting wax doll. Six year old me loved it.

Turns out so did lots of other kids. When I went to school on Monday morning Hammer House Of Horror was the main topic of conversation amongst us kids. It seemed like EVERYONE had watched it and we where all eager to see what came next.

Week after week we tuned in for our weekly fix of terror and every Monday morning at school was the same - lots of eager little kids saying "Did you see it ? Did you see it ? Wasn't it brilliant !!!!"

One of my main memories of the excitement the show generated for us kids came after the broadcast of the fourth episode "Growing Pains" (broadcast on 4th of October). The episode told the story of a scientist who's son dies after drinking some poisonous chemicals in his lab. (I always used to HATE scenes where kids died from doing something stupid as my Mum and Dad always used to turn to me and say "You'd better not do anything silly like that", I know they where only looking out for me but it always felt like I'd just gotten into trouble due to some fictional kid's stupidity). A year later, the scientist and his wife adopt an orphan boy to be thier "new" son. The new kid starts being haunted by the ghost of the dead boy who is looking for revenge on his negligent Dad. As you can imagine it doesn't end well...

The scene I can always remember the most is set in a graveyard. We see the dead son's gravestone. it is night-time. An unearthly and unnatural wind whips up in the deserted cemetery and the gravestone wobbles and vibrates as its buffeted by the supernatural gale.

This scene REALLY fired my imagination. The following Monday at school it was raining heavily. As a result of this we weren't allowed out at dinner time. I always used to prefer the rainy lunchtimes as that meant one of two things - either the comic cupboard was opened (which meant I could spend an hour reading lots of black and white Marvel UK Star Wars comics) or the art cupboard was opened and we could spend an hour drawing whatever we liked with coloured pencil crayons.

That rainy dinner hour me and my mate Neil opted for the art cupboard.  We spent the whole break drawing graveyard scenes with lots and lots of VIBRATING GRAVESTONES. It was glorious, but we did get some funny looks from the dinner ladies and I dont think our teacher was very impressed when she saw what we'd been up to.

The following week's episode gave us what was probably the most memorable moment in the entire series. The episode was "The House That Bled To Death" - the tale of a haunted suburban semi-detached house. The scene in question involves a kid's birthday party.  Lots of excited little kiddies are playing with toys and eating birthday cake when suddenly a pipe detaches itself from the wall and proceeds to spray the children with gallons and gallons of bright red blood...

Now THAT'S how you provide quality entertainment at a kiddies birthday bash. Beats a clown anyday...probably a lot safer as well. Needless to say, this scene is very fondly remembered and is still being talked about by fans 43 years later.

My next big memory of the series concerns the episode "Children Of The Full Moon " which tells the story of a young couple whose car breaks down in the middle of nowhere causing them to spend the night in a strange house inhabited by a family of Werewolves.

The main memory of this story is a scene where our heroine goes to close the bedroom curtains and sees the terrifying face of a Werewolf staring back at her as it watches her through the window...

I'm not going to lie but that bothered me. I think it bothered a lot of my school friends too as this scene was spoken of in much more hushed tones than previous scary moments had been.

Worse was to come though. Much worse...

On 29th of November "The Two Faces Of Evil" was broadcast. It is widely regarded as being the best and most terrifying episode. It tells the tale of a family who pick up a hitchhiker (never a good idea), the hitchhiker attacks the husband who is driving the car. This causes the car to crash. The family come round in hospital, the husband is severely wounded, he's had to have glass removed from his throat. As he is sent home to recover, his wife begins to suspect that this is not her husband, especially when she notices that he has acquired the same long, dirty overgrown fingernail that thier attacker had. What follows is an hour's worth of "Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers" style paranoia. 

Everything about this episode is just so off kilter and plain WRONG. The agonising gargling noises that the husband uses to communicate with due to his slashed throat, that horrible pointed dirty fingernail but worst of all is the hitchhiker when we first see him. He's dressed in a bright yellow fisherman's hat and plastic raincoat - he just looks so sinister and out of place. There's absolutely no way that ANYBODY in thier right mind would pick this bloke up...

I went to bed shortly after watching this episode. That night I had the most vivid nightmare I've ever had in my entire life. I dreamt that I was sat on the toilet at home when suddenly the toilet door was kicked open. Standing there was a man in a yellow fisherman's hat and plastic raincoat - this man! He had a big carving knife in his hand and the yellow plastic of his coat was smeared with blood. The toilet was small and cramped, barely the size of a small cupboard. I had nowhere to run. The raincoat man stabbed me with his big sharp knife. I woke up screaming...

I wasn't allowed to watch Hammer House Of Horror after that. It didn't much matter as the following week's episode was the final one anyway. The series never returned for a second run despite it's ratings success. 

It just shows how well done that episode was to give me such a vividly realistic dream. Usually dreams fade seconds after you've woken up but that bloody nightmare is as clear in my mind's eye as it was all those decades ago. Thanks Hammer House Of Horror for giving me night terrors that went on to plague me for a year afterwards. It was worth it though. 

Moral of the story - never pick up creepy looking hitchhiker's and never let small children watch gritty horror anthologies, but you probably knew that anyway...

Oh, just a quick mention of the episode "The Carpathian Eagle" which features a ridiculously young Piers Brosnan in a "before he was famous" role. He gets stabbed to death by a serial killer. I guess that makes him "Pierced Brosnan"...