Mark Gattis - The History of Horror BBC4 Monday

mike65

Just aheads up for this frankly short history (3 x 60 mins) which is starts tonight and repeated Thursday. No continental input at all, alas.

Series in which Mark Gatiss celebrates the greatest achievements of horror cinema. He begins by exploring the golden age of Hollywood horror, from the late 1920s until the 1940s, the era of Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Mark explains just how daring and pioneering these films were, and traces how horror pictures evolved during this period, from camp and subversive to dark and perverse, before a final flourish with the psychological horror of RKO Pictures' films.

Tied in is a slew of classic horror flicks - The Bride of Frankenstein (tonight & Thursday), Cat people (Wednesday), I Walked with a Zombie (Thursday) plus Gods and Monsters the fictionalised story of director James Whale on Sunday.

Week two is British classics and week three is the late 60s to early 80s. So Stuff like Quatermass, Bride of Dracula, Dawn of the Dead (the 126m cut) and Scanners.

who the fug

Makes want to pay my license fee

losthorizon

I had just posted on this a few second ago. Apologies for not seeing the original post. It sounds really good. Bride of Frankenstein is a classic.

humanji

It's not a bad show. A little self-indulgent on Gattis's part, but he admits as much in it. It's not really must see tv, but interesting enough.

mike65

Final part tonight - US horrors of the late 60s to the early 80s. Followed by Dawn of the Dead 1978, the so called directors cut/Cannes edit as judged by the slot for it.

humanji

****!!! I completely forgot about this after the first episode.

pixelburp

Damn; I had completely forgotten about this show, annoyed I missed the previous parts. Even so, I caught that final episode & it was an interesting dip into the history of horror cinema. I found Gattiss' coda particularly relevant to myself as it's pretty much how I feel about horror cinema - that they don't make 'em like they used to and now it's just gore, gore and more gore.

mike65

You can catch all three episodes this weekend I think, (saturday night/sunday morning I think).

He twittered -

Thanks for all your lovely messages re #AHistoryofHorror. Delighted. Would love to do a Euro-Horror follow up!

dfx-

Just watching the start of the third episode now on BBC four..very watchable..

Phony Scott

Haven't seen this, but I see there is a repeat at 12.55am on BBC2!

mike65

bump, repeated again from tonight on BBC4 at 11.25pm

mike65

If you somehow missed it, another repeat from 9 pm tonight.