The Fear Factor

Were you scared by Dr Who and its most recent episode, The God Complex? That was surely the intention as the action was amped up around a cosmic minotaur, a shape-shifting hotel, rooms full of latent anxieties, clowns, dummies and even a bellowing gorilla. But for all of the frenzy and the seeming allusions to The Shining, Dead Of Night and 1984, there was barely a particle of terror.

Great mythology aims for the archetypal blast and the uttermost fear. The God Complex was merely busy. But it did prompt me to recall the programmes that did it for me as a child.

Many people of my generation will shake an involuntary spasm at the mention of The Singing Ringing Tree, a vicious East German production with a surplus of expressionist energy. Others will cite The Owl Service, The Changes or Children Of The Stones. All were alarming in their time. But they were surely not so weird or so affecting as Escape Into Night.

This ran over six episodes in early 1972. It was about a sick girl called Marianne who would make drawings of some macabre reality. There were stones, each with an enormous eye. They were encroaching on the girl's space, surrounding the house. There was a boy, drafted in to share the fear, plus boarded up windows and a deal of lucid dreaming. The soundtrack was oppressive. Juvenile heads were melted.

After the tradition of the day, the tapes were apparently erased. Still, I hear there's a black and white version out there, and occasional dollops of information on the web. I'm not sure I want to measure those old tapes against the infernal version in my head, which resonates, still.