Streaming Kino: "The Corpse Can't Play" (1968) - The "lost" episode of "Late Night Horror"

"Late Night Horror" was a short lived British BBC horror TV series, released in 1968. We don't know a lot about it - but it appears to have been just too nasty for public viewing. 

Among the writers for the series are Richard "I Am Legend" Matheson and Roald Dahl, which gives us an indication of the tone, and quality the series had. But reception was mediocre, viewers complained - and in a surprisingly bold move, it seems as if the entire series was simply deleted, gone forever. 

We don't know why precisely this happened, but, thankfully, the tides of time helped give us another clue to what the series was like: In 2016, a black and white copy of one episode was found, namely "The Corpse Can't Play", written by John Burke.

In that sense, "lost" episode is nonsense. In fact it's the exact opposite, with, sadly, all of the other episodes still being lost. Which makes this "found" episode an even rarer, more valuable piece of media. 

So here it is, the only surviving episode of "Late Night Horror". And, well, if this episode is representative for the entire series, then maybe you'll agree: Ohyeah, it is quite nasty indeed. You can't show this to your kids. Or can you? In 1968? Did this create serial killers roaming the streets?

We don't know. But we can assume it didn't. Of course mothers, and probably some fathers, had to intervene: Kids, by no means even think of trying this at home! But English literature always had a good amount of black humor and the macabre. Maybe the series took it a tad too far for a general TV audience, but it's still somehow within British educational shock-therapy culture ("The War Game" (1960), "Threads" (1984), ...).

If you like the stories of Roald Dahl, but always wanted them to be a tad more "horror", then "The Corpse Can't Play" is absolutely for you. For real horror geeks, the found episode is a great piece of film history - and quite an enjoyable one.

Watch "Late Night Horror: The Corpse Can't Play" (1968):

video source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk9kjvtps1Y
Major Dolby's Cat 

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More information about BBC "Late Night Horror":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_Night_Horror

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