Stories about cinematic lost media are always fascinating, but they rarely have a happy ending. After all, it was only relatively recently that folks began treating film and television like respectable art forms worthy of preservation.
Even then, the profit-driven machinations behind film distribution can still result in movies becoming unavailable to legally stream or purchase – and that’s not even mentioning the recent trend of studios scrapping completed projects in order to guarantee a bigger tax break.
However, for every Batgirl and The Golem, there’s a case where dedicated fans have managed to unearth elusive media and make it available for everyone. This month had one such pleasant outcome when dedicated cinephile Darren Payne announced via film preservation FB Group Film is Fabulous that he’d recovered a long-lost episode of the BBC’s 1968 anthology series Late Night Horror.
Directed by Paddy Russell and written by I Am Legend scribe Richard Matheson, “No Such Thing as a Vampire” is a 25-minute short following a doctor’s wife who becomes ill and soon suspects that she’s actually being visited by a blood-sucking vampire. What follows is a gruesome tale that pushes the limits of 1960s horror programming with a surprising amount of disturbing imagery.
This story is only the second of Late Night Horror’s six episodes to be recovered (with Russell’s other grim tale, The Corpse Can’t Play, having been found back in 2016), as the program’s terrifying reputation led to the BBC scrapping and allegedly destroying the show entirely after receiving numerous complaints from sensitive viewers.
As Doctor Who fans are sadly aware, the BBC also had a nasty habit of taping over “unwanted” recordings as a cost-saving measure back in the day, so the fact that Payne recovered a private 16mm telerecording of the show after inquiring about a collection of mystery reels at England’s Regent Theater is nothing short of a small miracle.
That being said, while No Such Thing as a Vampire was originally broadcast in color, the surviving copy is limited to black-and-white (though Payne guarantees that the film remains just as terrifying without the added color). There’s also talk of an experimental color recovery process being planned for the print, though there’s no guarantee that it’ll work out.
The high-resolution digital scan of No Such Thing as a Vampire is set to make its public debut during this year’s edition of the UK’s Grindfest on September 20, with the footage then being returned to the BBC for a wider release!
