Back in the mid-1970s, ITV used to show a horror film every Friday night. One week it would be a still relatively contemporary Hammer release. The next it would be a classic from the 1930s or 1940s. I have shared sweet memories with the League of Gentlemen comedy team about first setting eyes on Bela Lugosi in Dracula or Lon Chaney jnr in The Wolfman. They were watching Tyne Tees in England. I was, at the same time, watching UTV in south Belfast. You can sod your blue remembered hills, AE Housman.
My contemporaries used to be a bit snitty about the older films. In the age of The Exorcist and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – not that we’d yet seen either – the classic Universal releases seemed, to them, quaint an
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