'Scarred For Life, Volume One: The 1970s'

[studpuppet]

How about Armchair Thriller...

I think I told the authors on Twitter about how I once locked my entire family out of our caravan after I got left home alone in front of one of the episodes with James Bolam in it.

Speaking of caravans, I was reminded inadvertently of Hedgehog Flavour Crisps earlier today. Luckily they're in the Great British Tuckshop book so I'm not making them up.

https://flic.kr/p/T7cheS

https://flic.kr/p/UoA7QH

On the back of the packet was a history of how gypsys used to bake hedgehogs after covering them in clay, and then crack them open so the spines and skin came away with the clay!

Obviously living in a caravan[nb]I was actually thoroughly middle class - my parents renovated a Grade II listed building and planning permission took three years instead of six months...[/nb] I was called 'gypo' a lot at school. [nb]But never 'pikey' - that wasn't common currency in the late 70s/early 80s.[/nb]

NEW PAGE PIKEY!

[scarred]

Our interview played on Radio Merseyside this morning. We don't actually sound that Scouse in reality, it's very odd.

[Sydward Lartle]

I don't quite know why, but this advert for Hacks throat lozenges scared the crap out of me when I was about four or five. Something about the way that animated frog moved.

[Glebe]

How about Armchair Thriller, and in particular this scene, featuring Ian McKellen

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFdkkFTjLc8

Spot on, PL, in the TV horror anthology thread from awhile back, I inquired as to what that very scene was from, having been disturbed by it as a kid!

[Sydward Lartle]

I'm awfully glad you asked me that, Lloyd...

[Brundle-Fly]

I'm awfully glad you asked me that, Lloyd...

Wrong thread?

[Sydward Lartle]

I want you to imagine something.

It's late on a Sunday evening. The final episode of the third series of Spitting Image is coming to a close. They've saved an absolute belter of a song to play under the closing credits, the 1986 should-have-been-a-hit Santa Claus is on the Dole. It looks like the series is going to end on a relatively upbeat note.

Yet there's one sketch still to come, between the end of the credit roll and the Central logo which traditionally marks the end of the programme. Twelve year old Sydward Lartle is expecting another healthy LOL before being packed off to bed with another boring week of school in front of him.

However, there will be no laughs tonight. There will be only nightmares.

All thanks to this.

Fluck and Law could be absolutely fucking merciless sometimes.

[Sydward Lartle]

Another post-credits bit (not really a sketch, more of a 'jump scare' or a 'screamer'), this time from Hale and Pace, 1988. One last 'up yours' to all the people who complained about the cat in the microwave sketch. Somehow the loud screeching noise made it worse.

[studpuppet]

One from the eighties was the Tyne Tees series 'Barriers' with Benedict 'Beau Geste' Taylor and Robert 'Guy of Guisbourne' Addie. It a sort of Junior Choice Smiley's People for Sunday teatime (it certainly shares the same pace and look). It had an eerie beginning to each episode featuring a old Mercedes crashing through the Austro-Hungarian border and being shot at and exploding, as an unidentified passenger bails out unseen. The music is especially haunting.

You can watch beginning here:

https://youtu.be/pFaTODjhkwI

[Glebe]

All thanks to this.

I knew it!

[studpuppet]

Codename Icarus was another series that took the early eighties fear of Armageddon ball and ran with it. Why would you use theme music like this other than to scare the shit out of the audience?

https://youtu.be/uSYgnIUvdZc

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Codename Icarus was another series that took the early eighties fear of Armageddon ball and ran with it. Why would you use theme music like this other than to scare the shit out of the audience?

https://youtu.be/uSYgnIUvdZc

I found the themes to Panorama, Mastermind and I, Claudius all incredibly creepy as a child.

[kidsick5000]

I found the themes to Panorama, Mastermind and I, Claudius all incredibly creepy as a child.

World In Action. Titles and music that said "Settle in because  IT'S ALL GOING TO HELL!!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nKpWywZUo8

[studpuppet]

I found the themes to Panorama, Mastermind and I, Claudius all incredibly creepy as a child.

The Blake's 7 theme bears more than a passing resemblance to The Ascent Of Man which sounds if anything slightly creepier.

[AsparagusTrevor]

How about Indelible Evidence? If the ethos behind Crimewatch was 'Don't have nightmares, do sleep well', then the ethos behind its more grown-up BBC2 counterpart (hosted by Ludovic Kennedy for added gravitas) was most definitely 'Do have nightmares, fuck you'. The first episode sees the series beginning as it means to go on, with the frankly horrible sight of a woman crawling away from the wreckage of a car bomb, dragging her useless and mangled legs behind her. Subsequent episodes included more of the same, and someone's uploaded the whole bloody lot to YouTube.

Argh, that fucking saxophone music used to shit me right up as a young 'un.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

World In Action. Titles and music that said "Settle in because  IT'S ALL GOING TO HELL!!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nKpWywZUo8

I used to really love that, though I found it more atmospheric than creepy.  The same, too, for the Weekend World theme, below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2dpq4sExgs

[Brundle-Fly]

This 1970s TV theme takes the crown with its menacing musical tendrils

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71s_Y37_KYo

[Sydward Lartle]

Argh, that fucking saxophone music used to shit me right up as a young 'un.

The second series has a slightly less atonal theme (still performed on saxophone), but makes up for it with the title sequence. Literally the first fucking thing you see when the programme begins is a naked female corpse face-down in the woods. Horrible.

[Peru]

This moment from an episode of Taggart (forgive the tiny image) scared the almighty shit out of me as a kid.

https://youtu.be/f7v-fbAZe14?t=1h38m16s

[worldsgreatestsinner]

No, it was a one-off Christmas annualy-thing with mostly horror-type stories and some "fact" pages about "weird coincidences" and "haunted places". It was like "Ripley's Believe it or Not", but for kids, and with action-adventure comic art.

Just a thought about this, might it be the Dracula Annual mentioned in the book? I just grabbed a pdf copy of the Dracula book and there's a recurring comic called Wolff, a Conan style fantasy adventure. Just wondering if there might be a slip of the memory putting that as the book title in your mind. It doesn't seem to fit with the fact pages you mention though.

[scarred]

If anyone wants to listen to our dulcet tones we were interviewed on BBC Radio Merseyside on the 2nd. You can download the interview here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/9a4jw8b6nbju49o/AUD-20170501-WA0000.mp3

[Sydward Lartle]

"Polish a floor, put a rug on it..."

This is one of the less scary PIFs, granted, but Troughton's delivery of the words 'man trap' - and the cross-fade to an actual man trap - filled me with utter horror when I was four or five. It's such an evil-looking thing, and the very thought that such a thing even existed was enough to have me shitting raw fear. Good job I didn't get to see Straw Dogs until I was eight[nb]Only joking. Twenty-nine I was when I saw Straw Dogs for the first time.[/nb].

The 'fully grown man' birth scene from Xtro nearly had me throwing up my fish fingers as well. It's on YouTube but you have to sign in and confirm your age to watch it. No thank you.

[Pinckle Wicker]

I used to really love that, though I found it more atmospheric than creepy.  The same, too, for the Weekend World theme, below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2dpq4sExgs

Yeah, I really enjoyed those title songs and sequences especially WIA, I always feel something Biblical with music and image but I was scared by it.
Does anyone remember the 1980's BBC drama The Mad Death? The opening was always enough for me to be shaking and expecting some awfulness before going to bed.
Also some of the 'Young Filmaker' entries on Screen Test left me with sleepless nights. I have mentioned one in particular several time on various CAB nostalgia TV threads in the past.

[Sydward Lartle]

.
Does anyone remember the 1980's BBC drama The Mad Death? The opening was always enough for me to be shaking and expecting some awfulness before going to bed.

Approach with caution...

I recently bought all three episodes from the BBC's online store thing and I've yet to watch them. I'm a fucking wimp.

[scarred]

Also some of the 'Young Film maker' entries on Screen Test left me with sleepless nights. I have mentioned one in particular several time on various CAB nostalgia TV threads in the past.

Just to let you know, Ste is a big fan of the Screen Test films you've mentioned and they are definitely on the list of things featured in the Eighties book.

[scarred]

World In Action. Titles and music that said "Settle in because  IT'S ALL GOING TO HELL!!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nKpWywZUo8

I'm writing a piece in the second book about a very specific World In Action programme because I experienced its subject matter first hand.

[Glebe]

World In Action. Titles and music that said "Settle in because  IT'S ALL GOING TO HELL!!!"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nKpWywZUo8

I've actually mentioned that twice, recently... the end theme is like Jimmy Page coming down from a bad trip. Visons of H-Blocks and undernourished 1970's urchins, ahoy!

This 1970s TV theme takes the crown with its menacing musical tendrils

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71s_Y37_KYo

Yikes... cold, cruel and terrifying. If Ken Russell, Derek Jarman and Peter Greenaway did a collaboration, they could use that as the score. There's a mocking oddness to part of it that recalls this Hale & Pace theme music.

The 'fully grown man' birth scene from Xtro nearly had me throwing up my fish fingers as well. It's on YouTube but you have to sign in and confirm your age to watch it. No thank you.

Here's an Xtro thread wot I did

Approach with caution...

I recently bought all three episodes from the BBC's online store thing and I've yet to watch them. I'm a fucking wimp.

Mentioned that in the PIF thread.

[Phil_A]

I've just remembered how terrified I used to be of the Doomlord photostrips in the 80s Eagle. the grainy black and white photography combined with all the dubious goings on perpetrated by the titular Doomlord as he inveigled his way into a suburban household seemed to me as a youngster to be the apex of terror.



Unfortunately, time has not been kind to these attempts to replicate the classic Italian photostory style (likewise when Nemesis The Warlock had a short-lived excursion into Fumetti Land). Doomlord's alien garb resembled someone's mum's dressing gown, and his terrifying skeletal visage was a rubber mask from a joke shop, while the other characters are clearly friends and family of Fleetway employees pantomiming for all they're worth.

[kidsick5000]

I used to really love that, though I found it more atmospheric than creepy.  The same, too, for the Weekend World theme, below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2dpq4sExgs

I felt more cheated than scared of Weekend World. There's this thrilling music which transitions to...Brian Walden sat by himself in a studio.

I've actually mentioned that twice, recently... the end theme is like Jimmy Page coming down from a bad trip. Visons of H-Blocks and undernourished 1970's urchins, ahoy!

An extra layer of mournful bleakness. "Just remember, it will never be okay. There is no hope"

[Sydward Lartle]

An unexpectedly sweet segment in Scarred for Life is the authors' respective memories of visiting the Doctor Who exhibition in Blackpool, in particular their unbridled joy at the sheer amount of merchandise available in the gift shop. Now, I tend to side with Johnny Mains in the foreword as far as Doctor Who goes - I don't give a toss about it, and I don't care if Tom Baker was your favourite, he was just a loud mad git - but one of the very happiest days of my childhood was visiting a gift shop in Coventry (en route to Blackpool) that was crammed solid with all manner of Peanuts merchandise, books included. I simply didn't know there was that much Peanuts-related stuff you could buy. It was marvellous. I could have spent the whole day in that shop.