Few things are sadder than the horror of being lost to time. The most typical example is Todd Browning1927 London after midnightthe last known copy of which was destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire. It’s a silent horror whodunit about an old murder that may involve a vampire. Essentially, it has become its own myth because so little of it has survived. For example, the following image Lon Chaney Donning a cloak, a top hat, and a wide, jagged smile, all suggest the birth of a uniquely terrifying creature (although in this case, it has become iconic). Unfortunately, they can only offer a hint of the terrible joy we are denied. In this case, the brain will unleash its darkest imagination to try and piece together pieces that don’t exist. In terms of horror specifically, we are imagining fear at its highest level.
Britain has its own lost horrors, but none as painful or tragic as the BBC’s first color horror series: late night horror. The show aired in 1968 for six episodes, each 25 minutes long, and each episode was cut from the same story. big puppet Cloths that later fascinated storytellers, e.g. Robert Bloch (mentally ill), william castle (house on ghost hill), and alfred hitchcock (mentally ill movie adaptation, Rebecca).
Like many other British horror anthologies (most notably Christmas ghost stories), late night horror Adapted from a short story. Among them are some of the best works of literature, Robert Aikman, Roald Dahland Arthur Conan Doyle among them. Even more impressive, though, is the fact that the show has two groundbreaking female directors on its creative team; Paddy Russell and Naomi CaponeWith all the sexism and abuse we’ve come to expect from both, we’ve come to expect whenever female trailblazers take their place in a male-dominated space.
All sets the stage for a series that will continue to be rerun and revisited, celebrating not only its bold nature but also the women who contributed to it. Unfortunately, the horrors shown in these six episodes will inspire viewers and moral advocates to lodge complaints against the BBC for showing such horrific images on television. These complaints led to its demise. The story goes that shortly thereafter, the tapes recording the episodes were erased and other shows occupied them. And just like that, an important part of horrific history was forgotten.
Then, 2016 came along and brought us an extremely sinister little miracle. Dear vintage TV collectors Chris Perry and Richard Tang An ad was seen in a media catalog from the 1980s, which offered a single episode of the infamous series, albeit in black and white. The episode is titled “The Bodies Cannot Play,” and it’s a particularly nasty story that is considered by many to be the best of the six episodes (although “Hell’s Bells” is often seen as competing for first place).
The play is adapted from John Burke‘s short story “Party Games” centers on a boy’s birthday party. This boy is a textbook bully. All his friends were there and they were just there to play the games he wanted to play. Then a sad boy arrives who wasn’t invited to the party. The optimistic child saw the opportunity for considerable torture on his special day. Then the party games started to get weirder and crueler.
Director Paddy Russell takes aim at the ugliness of the privileged in British culture. The chaos at the party is representative of this, especially how it devolves into a chaotic mess of screams and laughter that affects the adults taking refuge in the kitchen. Their acceptance of the fact that they have little authority over themselves hints at a deeper problem with parenting and the consequences of spoiling children. This is further cemented by how quickly the party descends into brutality after the uninvited boy arrives. Entitlement becomes one of the story’s monsters, and it’s responded to in a smart and satisfying way.
The existence of “Corpses Can’t Be Played” only illustrates this point: late night horror More tempting. It’s indicative of another, more intense horror atmosphere captured in the remaining five episodes, and they have timeless power. That said, without the source material, what we come up with is bound to be scarier and scarier than the real thing. The mind will not be satisfied with anything reasonable. It fills the void with a wonderful but often exaggerated sense of possibility. The upside, though, is that the mystery keeps the memory alive. This leaves us holding on to some hope that we’ll get another dark blessing in the form of a lost episode that might be hiding somewhere in the attic. While we wait for this to happen, we are left to make do with whatever our disturbed imaginations can come up with.
