Shock and Gore 2012

Dear Readers, I was busily writing my blog but then Thursday Hulse started playing Alice: Madness Returns and the expletives coming out of her mouth were at best vulgar and at the very worst a tour de force of unwomanly descriptives. Anyway my point is I got very distracted.

So without further ado here is my rather brief review of part of this year's Shock and Gore Event at The Electric Cinema.

Now into its second year, The Shock and Gore event organised by The Electric Cinema in Birmingham aims to treat fans to a wide array of features predominantly out there to shock and scare viewers. Last year I had the privilege of watching Hobo with a Shotgun (a brilliant film if you ever get the chance to view it) while rather intoxicated on Absinthe.


Included in this year's line up was the BBC Original drama 'Ghostwatch', shown as part of its 20^th anniversary celebrations. Having only been introduced to Ghostwatch a couple of months ago by a still traumatised friend, the showing of the programme and subsequent Q&A session with the writer, Stephen Volk, and the director, Leslie Manning, offered the audience a unique insight into the programme and the fallout after it first aired on Halloween night 1992.

Ghostwatch was broadcast on the BBC as if it were a 'live' event, with only a brief writing credit at the start. It focussed on the investigation into paranormal activity inside the Early's family home in North London. To give it an air of authenticity the show was fronted by Michael Parkinson with 'live' reporting by Sarah Greene and Craig Charles. Gillian Bevan joined Michael Parkinson in the TV studio as the psychologist who had studied goings on at the house. Throughout the programme, the audience was introduced to Pipes the ghost, the main protagonist of the spooky events in the household and the audience was left to watch as events at the house and inside the studio got more and more scary.


Obviously watching it from a revisionist point of view takes away part of the shocking appeal this broadcast would have had at the time it was aired. I dread to think how I would have reacted if I had tuned in after the start of this show because there was no way you would have been able to tell this was a dramatisation. Its a sorry fact that a show like this couldn't be made in modern society as social networking and the internet would ruin the element of surprise that worked so well for Ghostwatch. 


After its broadcast, Ghostwatch received a record number of complaints from traumatised viewers, both Stephen Volk and Leslie Manning were unsure as to the precise numbers but at least 25,000 people had contacted the BBC about the show. It was really interesting to hear them talk about the way they were frozen out by the BBC after the show was broadcast, with the BBC allegedly putting a stop to the show being nominated for BAFTA awards. 


All in all Ghostwatch is very much a product of its time in terms of hoodwinking its audience into believing it was real. I believe the DVD is available to buy and I would highly recommend it. I have embedded a video showcasing the sighting of Pipes throughout the show but its worth watching the show if only for Craig Charles and the use of the phrase 'Glory Hole'.