Frightmare (1974, dir. Pete Walker)

I watched Pete Walker’s 1974 film last night, ahead of reading about the film in Jonathan Rigby’s English Gothic, and thinking about Kim Butcher’s Debbie - British Cinema’s worst JD, M. Emmett Walsh’s line in Blade Runner came to mind: “Talk about beauty and the beast... she’s both”. In a film where all the principle characters are falling inexorably into a black hole, the directionless Debbie at least discovers her true calling in life, albeit to the whirling sound of a black and decker power drill.

Revisiting Frightmare after some years, I was surprised by the sheer nihilism of the film, and no doubt Pete Walker and David McGillivray delighted in sending audiences shuffling up the aisle of the cinema in awkward silence at the film's merciless climax. And speaking of awkward silences, seeing the film again remined me of a feature in the Spring '93 issue of UK quarterly fanzine Monstroid, containing a report from the Festival of Fantastic Films, held in Manchester the previous year. The organizers had come up with the brazen idea of reuniting Pete Walker and David McGillivray for a Q&A – brazen because both men had at that time not spoken to each other in 12 years, their partnership ending acrimoniously after Schizo. According to Paul Higson’s account it was a tension-filled night, with both men throwing jibes at one another, and Walker losing his cool at one point over a disputed claim in David McGillivray’s 1992 book Doing Rude Things that Walker’s films lost money. “I never said that” offered McGillivray, to which Walker, finally losing his cool, screamed: “YOU DID!” I wonder did Pete Walker and David McGillivray speak since ?