Time to get...SUPERNATURAL (BBC1, 1977) stories from 'The Club of the Damned'
Stephen Arnell
Broadcast/VoD Consultant for TV & Film, Writer/Producer (Bob Fosse, Alex Cox, Prince, Sinatra etc), Media/Culture Commentator (BBC Radio, magazines, newspapers) & author (novel The Great One published November 2022)
"The idea was to tell the kind of Gothic tale that we don't have on television, something akin to the old horror films of the 1920s and 1930s. What we get now are thrillers set in modern times with lots of blood and violence. There is no blood and no violence in this series. They are tales about ghosts, vampires, werewolves, that sort of thing. Highly romantic and highly charged with fear and menace." Series creator Robert Muller in 1977
'Unfortunately, Supernatural 1977 did not prove a success at the time of broadcast and has never been repeated in full. Perhaps, audiences of the 1970s required redder meat in their horror diet and were not satisfied with such predominately bloodless fare with its emphasis on plot and mood.
It is equally possible the transmission dates (the 'Summer of Punk' UK heatwave) were a contributory factor in the programme failing to spark with the public. The series lends itself very well to viewing on dark, winter nights as opposed to the height of summer when it was released.
Every prospective Club of the Damned member is required to tell a horror story, their application for membership based on both how frightening and truthful it was.
Oh, and if your tale of terror fails to impress/convince the club, you are killed.
Ghosts of Venice
The Werewolf Reunion Pt I
The Werewolf Reunion Pt II
Mr Nightingale
Recommended by LinkedIn
Lady Sybil - Unpleasant playwright John Osborne (Look Back in Anger) plays the debauched Edward Manners; he also was the nasty Cyril Kinnear in Get Carter (1971).
Viktoria
Night of the Marionettes - Vladek Sheybal won the Dracula Society's Hamilton Deane Award for his performance as Herr Hubert, an Austrian innkeeper with a thing for life-size puppets.
Dorabella
Actor John Justin (917-2002) plays the vampiric father in Dorabella. Two years later in 1979, he was the ghoulish lover in the BBC's Christmas ghost story Schalcken the Painter, based on the Sheridan Le Fanu's 1839 tale. Jeremy Clyde, Walter Von Lamont in Dorabella, starred as Schalcken.