Some old scrapbooks rediscovered have brought back memories of a youth misspent watching horror films … or was it training for this website?
RECENTLY I returned to Australia for a holiday when I went through a big box full of horror film books in my lockup and found some old scrapbooks.
These two scrapbooks recorded part of my high school heyday of horror films.
In 1988, our Year 8 English teacher gave us a Frankenstein-themed project, which I enthusiastically undertook and from there began researching everything I could on horror films and this bloke I came across called Boris Karloff.
It was at that time I noted that Frankenstein (1931) was playing on late night Channel 7 and asked my Mum if I could videotape it.
From that point on, I was hooked and the rest of my high school years were “wasted” watching horror films when I should have been drinking and chasing girls.
To log my journey on this horror film watch fest, I put began some scrapbooks.
These old exercise books, which you can see are dainty decorated with hand-coloured stills (no such thing as coloured photocopiers for mere mortals in those days), contained my favourite films, such as Frankenstein, London After Midnight and The Ghoul. (I was obviously enamoured with lost films – The Ghoul was still missing back then.)
I was very old-school back in high school and other than a hand-drawing of a Jason Voorhees Friday The 13th type character at the back of one of the books, it is all Americana, Universal.
Book one has a picture of Boris Karloff as The Ghoul on the front, dated “14/9/88” – the other with a Garbage Gang “Dead Ted” sticker is dated “17/9/88”. The difference between the books was The Ghoul one was more general and the “Dead Ted” one was for “newspaper clippings, horror movies on TV”.
My sister said recently that I was too early for Tumblr – which is probably the best way to describe these exercise books.
They were filled with photocopies of film stills and chapters from different books, most notably The Horror Film Handbook by Alan Frank and The Horror People by John Brosnan.
Both these tomes were excellent and not owning a copy until years later meant I infringed copyright and photocopied far more than was probably legally allowed. (I am sure I must have bored the shit out of my best mate by getting him to test me as I recited the cast and crew lists from The Horror Film Handbook.)
As you can see, I was obsessed with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney. I think that I was able to see most of the Universal Monsters on Channel Seven each week was why I was more inclined towards them than Hammer Films.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing but it was easier to see Universal and Vincent Price than any Spooky Isles-type fare back in the pre-internet days.
The biggest surprise unearthing these exercise books last month was the lists inside them.
I have always loved keeping a list and I would diligently tick off every horror film (thanks to The Horror Film Handbook) that I saw – with special sections for Karloff, Lugosi, Price, Cushing and Lee.
I have discovered films checked off that I could have sworn that I have never seen!
These forgotten films include:
- The Haunted Palace (1963)
- The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
- She (1965)
- The Curse of the Crimson Altar (1969)
- Scream and Scream Again (1969)
- Cry of the Banshee (1970)
- Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
- Twins of Evil (1971)
- Theatre of Blood (1972)
- The Ghoul (1975)
But according to the list I have seen them. No doubt, I saw them once late at night and watched half a dozen films in the one week.
(For instance, I have seen Carl Dreyer’s classic Vampyr (1932) but I literally remember being half asleep while watching it and it being an almost out-of-body experience. So to be fair, I can’t really say I have seen Vampyr.)
So I am much more learned and experienced in horror films than even I had thought.
Maybe I can now boast things like: “I have forgotten more about horror than you will ever know!”
Truth is I was gorging myself on classic horror and didn’t know how good I had it.
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