Here's a horror documentary I first saw in 1979; a few years before I would own a VCR so I audio-recorded it by putting my Radio Shack tape recorder up to the TV's speaker! Sometime in the mid-1980's, I stumbled across this audio tape and by then I had no idea what the show was called (the title is never spoken) and had no recollection of when or where I taped it. Now, decades later, I found it again. Nowadays, THE HORROR SHOW: 60 MAGICAL YEARS OF MONSTERS, MAYHEM & OTHER CREATURES OF THE NIGHT plays as a fairly standard, basic horror film doc but in 1979 this was one of the very first mainstream examinations of horror movies attempted . . . and narrated by Anthony Perkins yet! So you've gotta give it up for that, at least. Produced by Universal Studios (which accounts for the preponderance of Universal movie clips therein), this CBS Special Presentation begins with the silents, then continues through Universal's golden age of monsters, Hammer Horror, the fifties sci-fi-tinged creatures, a tad bit of Hitchcock, the 70's animals attack genre and the post-apocalyptic future. The previous year's horror hit HALLOWEEN by John Carpenter doesn't even earn a mention! That's how old this documentary is! Slasher films weren't even a thing yet. All in all, THE HORROR SHOW is a nice little Horror 101 for the 20th century's three-quarter mark.
3 comments:
Not sure if I saw this or not, was very young then. But sounds quite fun and would have been rapt viewing at the time.
I love how you used a tape recorder to record the show. This is how it was done back in the day! Also how we recorded the top 40 off the radio!
Yes it was a lot of fun seeing it again after all these years! And yes, that's how we ancient cryptkeepers rolled - all we had at our disposal was a Realistic tape recorder from Radio Shack . . . and also I had a reel-to-reel tape deck to use as well. The truly scary part is . . . .I still have BOTH tape decks and they BOTH still work perfectly!
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