Things were different when I was a kid.
Not more innocent so much as more ignorant. We didn’t have your Google and your social media and stuff so we couldn’t look things up easily if we weren’t sure of things and there was no instant replay or catch-up so you always had to rely on the memory of witnesses and their ability to understand what on earth was going on. And we were crap at both of those.
When I was at school the most terrifying film ever made — even scarier than Dracula and Frankenstein and that bloke with the bandages…
Even scarier than them was this film that none of us had ever seen. It came on the telly once a year at silly o’clock at night when we were all in bed. Except for the ones that crept downstairs and found their mum and dad fast asleep in front of the telly. They got to see five or ten minutes’ worth before one or other woke up and told them to get back to bed. Only they didn’t know who anybody was, or what had happened and they weren’t so much watching the telly as watching their mum and dad for signs of waking up so that they had time to pretend to be sleepwalking so that they wouldn’t get told off. So they didn’t get to see much of the film and what they did see didn’t make any sense. But it was dead scary.
The next day at school we’d piece together the fragments and try to make sense of it all. As far as we could tell, it was set in a far-off land where everyone runs round the streets with burning sticks and shout a lot. And this bloke had been tortured to death and made to walk round the streets with his jumper over his head and all he was allowed to say was: “The bells! The bells!” And lots of people died and it was dead scary.
And we couldn’t have another look at the film to see if we were right because it wouldn’t be on for another year and we’d have forgotten the bits anyone had actually seen and could only remember the bits we’d made up to fill in all the gaps. We couldn’t go foraging on Youtube for it. We tried at the library: “Please miss, have you any books about horrible monsters in the films what wear their jumpers on their heads and kill people?” “There’s some new books about the Wombles over on that shelf over there.”
And then someone would come into school and say: “That film was on last night and I know what happens ‘cos I saw a bit near the end where everyone dies.” What happened? What happened? “That bloke what’s been tortured to death, they make him sit on the roof with his jumper over his head and he has a magic world what kills everyone and they’re all mangled and screaming and everything.”
And what was the magic word?
“Esmerelda!”
Esmerelda! How impressive was that? Some of the more twisted little boys tried the magic word on wasps but it didn’t work, even if they pulled their jumpers over their heads.
Imagine my disappointment when I finally got to see “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” for myself. I have great regard for Charles Laughton as an actor but there wasn’t so much as a tank top.
All these slasher movies, they’re proper gory and downright horrible but they don’t really do it for our generation because there’s no really terrifying knitwear in them. We’d been conditioned from an early age. “Your Auntie Maureen’s knitted you a new pullover for your birthday. Put it on, let’s see how you look in it. He’ll grow into it… Don’t slouch! Stand up straight or you’ll make it look all baggy and peculiar looking. Well, don’t make it any worse than it is. Has that arm always been that long?” In no particular order we were scared of Jack the Ripper, the nit nurse and the lady from the wool shop.
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