A film buff found a lost 1968 British TV movie about vampires that sparked a legend it was so terrifying it was marked for destruction, a preservation group announced.
“No Such Thing as a Vampire” — one of six episodes from the short-lived 1960s BBC anthology series “Late Night Horror” — has been missing for more than half a century after it scarred viewers and caused an uproar that prompted the network to not only kill the show.
But what is now believed to be the last surviving copy of the gory movie was recently discovered by English film-buff and cinematic engineer Darren Payne, the film preservation group Film is Fabulous! announced on Saturday.
“I am really passionate about this episode being seen again,” Payne said, according to the group.
The newly re-discovered horror film will screen publicly for the first time since 1969 at Europe’s “Grindfest” horror festival this September, the group said.
From the 1950s through the 1970s, BBC routinely erased old broadcasts to reuse expensive tapes, a cost-cutting policy that wiped out an estimated 70% of its programming throughout those two decades, according to an estimate by the British Film Institute.
But the total disappearance of Late Night Horror’s six episodes, which was canceled by the BBC after numerous viewers called in to the network complain it was far too horrific, fueled a darker theory that the network deliberately destroyed the copies because the content was too disturbing at the time, according to Atlas Obscura.
The lost vampire episode, which was shot in color but preserved in a black-and-white copy, was written by legendary horror writer Richard Matheson, who is best known as the author of “I Am Legend” and roughly a dozen episodes of the classic series, “The Twilight Zone.”
Another missing episode of the series was written by the great Roald Dahl. One other episode, “The Corpse Can’t Play,” previously resurfaced, leaving four still missing.
“The recovery of ‘No Such Thing As A Vampire’ was purely by chance,” Payne said, according to the group.
A board member of The Regent movie theater in England turned up a small collection of mystery reels that had been in storage for years and asked Payne to check them out, he explained.
One of the film canisters was scrawled with the words “Late Night Horror” in handwriting, and as a self-described horror aficionado, the name rang a bell, he said.
Film is Fabulous! is also attempting to restore the episode’s original color using a “colour recovery” process, though success isn’t guaranteed, they said.
Payne, however, said the episode will terrify audiences and is “more than capable of sending shivers down spines,” even if it’s shown in black and white.
The digital scan and original 16mm print will also be returned to the BBC Archives and the episode will screen at a future Film is Fabulous! event alongside other recent recoveries that have yet to be announced, the organization said.
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