A TV Halloween show which shocked the nation when it hit the airwaves in 1992 and is said to have inspired the cult classic film The Blair Witch Project is set to be screened in Nottingham on Friday.
Ghostwatch, a horror mockumentary which starred legendary interviewer Michael Parkinson alongside then-TV presenters Mike Smith and Sarah Greene, is being shown by the Notts Good Movie Club nearly 31 years after it first appeared on prime-time BBC1.
The event, which is being hosted at Annie’s Burger Shack in Broadway and is a sell-out, has been organised by one of the club’s founders, Will Bailey, who described Ghostwatch as the show “that scarred a generation”.
Ghostwatch has never been shown on British TV ever since it fooled an unsuspecting television audience into thinking that a live paranormal investigation at a house in Northolt, Middlesex, had gone terribly wrong.
In the show, Michael Parkinson, who died in August, is the main presenter in a TV studio and regularly cuts live to Sarah Greene who has volunteered to spend a night in the house, which is reputed to be haunted by a poltergeist going by the name of Pipes.
Comedian Craig Charles – then at the height of his Red Dwarf fame – spoke to neighbours in the street to find out ore about the area’s violent history while a psychologist, Dr Lin Pascoe, played by British actress Gillian Bevan, spoke with Parkinson about the poltergeist phenomenon.
For a pre-internet TV audience the show took the form of an episode of Crimewatch, with viewers even invited to ring in with their own ghost stories, until things start to go awry as more of the history of the house is uncovered and events inside it take a sinister turn – with the studio itself eventually becoming under control of the poltergeist.
In the aftermath of the show the BBC fielded some 1,000,000 telephone calls, from people either complaining or complimenting it on the programme, and it is believed to have inspired the innovative filming techniques of the Blair Witch Project and Channel Four illusionist Derren Brown’s later show, Séance.
All of this will be discussed this Friday, with the programme’s original director, Lesley Manning, also set to join the audience at Annie’s on the night.
Will said: “I distinctly remember my Mum letting me watch this at the time, even though I was only six, although if she’d known what was going to happen, she would never have let me.
“It scarred a whole generation and it’s never been seen on TV since that night but it’s got a real cult following among horror film fans and I’m thrilled that we’ll be showing it and that … will be taking part in a Q and A too.
“Many of the people there will have seen it before but many won’t, so we’ll be recreating the spirit of 1992 with music and adverts as well. Looking back, it’s like a different world, there was no streaming and only three other channels to choose from so this was a real TV event and it’s no surprise that it made such a huge impact.”
The Notts Good Movie Club is the sister event to the Notts Bad Movie Club, which was launched by Will and friends Gareth Winterman and Chris Barnes two years ago to bring people together to watch films that are famous for being terrible.
The Notts Bad Movie Club will also be holding its own Halloween special at Annie’s on Saturday, where it will be screening Leprechaun and Killer Klowns.
For more details on future meetings of both the Notts Good Movie Club and Notts Bad Movie Club visit www.anniesburgershack.com.
