Friday Fright Night and the Origins of Writing
- WriterJackGilbert
- Sep 17, 2019
- 4 min read
I was nine years old and the Friday Night Fright Movie started at ten o'clock. Mum and dad were out til midnight and my brother was 'in charge'.
His terms were simple, "You can watch the movie as long as you never tell mum and dad."
"Ok," I nodded.
"Never tell," he reiterated, "or else."
"I promise."
That first week there was a grainy black and white movie about an old decrepit millionaire who had lost his legs during a surgery which saved his life. This unfortunate but kind old man, by way of thanks, had invited the whole surgery team to his mansion for the weekend. Interestingly, he also had a personal assistant of red Indian descent, who practiced some kind of ancient magic and could make things appear out of nothing. The doctors all laughed at his cute party tricks.
Until one of them got murdered.
None of them were laughing then, and when a second was murdered, things descended into panic.
Unable to leave, numerous suspects were accused, even detained, but the murders continued.
And nobody suspected the old millionaire who had no mobility, although he did have a motive as he blamed the doctors for the loss of his legs.
In the final act the millionaire was revealed as the killer, assisted by his Native American Indian friend and accomplice who had created the new legs he needed to prowl the corridors and stalk his victims.
It was atmospheric, haunting and suspenseful, all of which I could take. The thing that stayed with me was the loss of limbs. I couldn't comprehend how a person could continue with their lives without their limbs. How would I cope with that?
The following week was a movie that I have completely forgotten about, except for one recurring scene.
Completely unrelated to any of the movie that preceded it, the scene is a guy wakes in a hospital bed. He starts to stir and becomes distressed. His arms are connected to machines by tubes and wires and he eventually gets them free enough to throw back the sheets. He is horrified to see that his left leg has been amputated below the knee. Judging by his shocked response, I guessed that this was an unexpected turn of events for the post-op patient.
His shouting and screaming alerted a matronly nurse who entered the room and adjusted a dial on a bedside monitoring machine.
"Please! Help me!" he screamed.
The nurse smiled, but there was no offer of help.
"Where am I?" he asked. "Where am..."
Then the anesthetic kicked-in and the nurse left the room.
The movie resumed and shortly returned, as I suspected it would, to our patient.
The scene played out almost identically, but this time there were two stumps instead of legs, much to our patient's chagrin.
We returned on another two occasions and each time he lost an arm. In the final scene, the camera follows the nurse from the hospital room to reveal that the building is not a hospital at all but a disused office block.
These two movies, and others like it, would haunt me for years. It wasn’t anything in the movie that horrified me as such. It was the fact that my fate had been revealed to me and it was sealed, inevitable and unavoidable: One day, sooner or later, I too was going to be an amputee. The only question, apart from when, was which limb would I lose first, and would there be more?
This was real. I wasn't scared by a bogeyman, Dracula or Casper the Friendly Ghost, but a true life horror.
It haunted my sleep every night. My imaginings were crystal clear, all that remained were the phantom-limbs, that victims like I was to be, felt in their minds.
It simply wasn't fair. Why was I subjected to this cruellest of fates?
And I could not talk to mum and dad. I had promised, or else.
This ended when I was 14. My phobia had reached its peak, triggered by a movie where a police officer lost his arms in a barrel of acid (an even worse fate than the surgery of an insane madman).
What violent accident or act of violence would it take my limbs?
I was lying in bed, screaming, hysterical, balling the house down.
My dad came upstairs, into my room. "What's the matter?" he asked. I sensed disappointment in his voice.
I tried to explain, but I was convinced that talking about my fear out loud would bring it about all the sooner.
But I had to talk to someone. It was driving me crazy, quite literally taking over my life.
"There was a movie-" I managed to splutter, but I couldn't say any more. The words just wouldn't come.
"A movie?" dad asked, "What movie?"
"An old movie," I said.
Dad shook his head, the disappointment very evident now. "You're a bit old to be scared by a horror film, but let me tell you something about scary movies and books."
And I wanted to explain that my fear was real and not an irrational phobia. It wasn't the movie I was scared of. My fear was absolutely rational.
"When people make a horror movie, or someone writes a spooky book, it's their job to think up things that will scare the living crap out of people."
I thought about what he was saying, and said, “OK.”
“So that’s all movies and books are: someone has a job to think up ways of scaring people.”
I forgot about amputation. All I could think of was, 'Wow, there's a job where you get paid to scare the crap out of people!’
“Dad,” I said and composed myself, “I want that job! "
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Email: writerjackgilbert@gmail.com
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