The 1970s was a genuinely terrifying time to be alive. I’m not talking about the three-day week, the so-called 'Troubles' or Margaret Thatcher in full-on Iron Lady mode either. I’m talking about television, the movies, comics and just about everything an impressionable young person was force fed in that glumly grim era.
Terror waited around every corner for unsuspecting pop-culture consumers in the decade that humanity forgot. Be it bleakly dystopian sci-fi, trauma-inducing kids TV, slacks-soilingly scary public information films or even hugely dubious board games (a quick stab at the family vampire game I Vant To Bite Your Finger anyone?) the 70s was stuffed with the kind of scares that could leave the impressionable scarred for life.
My moment of pre-teen terror came courtesy of Lonely Water, that infamous public information film that featured a habit-wearing weirdo who hangs around murky ponds watching scruffy little scallywags playing dangerously near the water and muttering “I’ll be back-ack-ack” in the chilling tones of Donald Pleasance.
The purpose of this decidedly menacing short 1973 film that would be crowbarred into the TV schedules at every available opportunity was to dissuade youngsters from hanging around rivers without due diligence. The effect it had on me was traumatic – even today the very thought of it makes me feel slightly queasy to the pit of my stomach.
The reason I mention it is it features heavily in Scarred For Life: Volume One The 1970s, a new doorstop of a book from Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence. A glorious celebration of all things terrifying in that decade, it covers TV, film, literature and even confectionary and it’s 700-plus pages of pure cult heaven and clearly a labour of love for its authors.
This is a lovingly crafted look at the oddness of the era that gave us TV series like Children Of The Stones, a kind of Wicker Man for youngsters that ran outrageously in a pre-tea time slot on ITV, and Richard Allen’s outrageously violent Skinhead novels.
There’s are studies of long forgotten kids comics like Misty and reminders of the casual sexism and slimy tattiness of shows like On The Buses. The darkness of mainstream horror movies like Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is reappraised and while there’s much fun to be had recalling the unexpected nastiness of shows like Worzel Gummidge – it was the constant head changing that did it for me – there’s also a dark side on show here as well.
Take The Black And White Minstrel Show, a family entertainment concept as grim as it sounds, that weaved its way across Saturday night prime time schedules for most of the entire decade looking like some kind of future League Of Gentlemen sketch without the jokes. It’s shocking to see now and scary in both its casual racism and its genteel delivery. Perhaps the most terrifying thing is how we accepted it so easily.
:: Scarred For Life Volume One is available now from Lulu Press.
