Willand vs Hungerford
As if growing up on the mean streets of South Warwickshire wasn’t horror enough, it was during the 1970s and 1980s that horror movies were at their apex.
At a time when a teenager had no access to a dozen streaming services, and a torrent was still a body of water, the only way for an under-18 to watch anything more disturbing than Tootsie was via VHS. And that meant video nasties.
But you couldn’t just sit down and watch a video nasty. It was a military operation that involved an empty house, an older brother or an uncle, and a family that trusted their teenagers enough not to pay for a babysitter.
Of course, video nasties were a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they brought kudos and playground notoriety. On the other, they opened the door to a murky underworld of dubious distributors, lurid cover art and films that seemed specifically designed to give you nightmares well into your twenties.
By the early 1980s, Britain had developed something of a moral panic about these cinematic horrors. Newspapers railed against the supposed dangers of violent videotapes, politicians expressed grave concern for the nation’s youth, and the phrase “video nasty” entered the national vocabulary. According to the Daily Mail, civilisation itself was only ever a badly shot zombie film away from collapse.
Films such as The Evil Dead, Cannibal Holocaust and The Driller Killer became notorious, their covers often considerably more alarming than anything you might actually see on screen.
In 1983, the Director of Public Prosecutions published his infamous list of suspected video nasties. Eventually it ran to 72 titles. Naturally, all this fuss had precisely the effect you might expect and rather than discouraging curious teenagers, the controversy transformed these films into forbidden fruit. If a newspaper was telling you that a film was too depraved for decent society, you could hardly be expected not to wonder what all the fuss was about.
And so, amid the grainy pictures, dodgy soundtracks and occasional tracking problems, we discovered that horror could be funny, inventive, disgusting and genuinely frightening, sometimes all within the same five minutes.
Eventually the newspapers and politicians moved on and the moral panic subsided. The films, however, survived. Some became classics; others remain gloriously indefensible. But for a generation raised on VHS, they were more than movies. They were forbidden territory, and we couldn’t wait to get in.
Forty years later, the door’s wide open, and I’m not sure there’s anything worth seeing inside.
Modern horror seems to work from one of two templates. In the first, nothing happens for eleven minutes, then a door slams, a violin screams and something lunges at the camera. Repeat five times, roll credits. In the second, the monster turns out to be grief. Or trauma. Or a difficult relationship with your mother, which is frightening, admittedly, but not in the way I’d hoped when I paid for the rental.
Which brings me to the latest incarnation of Resident Evil. I watched it recently and laughed considerably more than I shuddered. Not, I suspect, what the director intended.
Somewhere, Michael Myers is turning in one of his many graves.
Following the horror show at Westbury midweek, Ben Watson was hoping to avoid a Halloween repeat as Hungerford made the trip to Silver Street. With an increasing injury list, the Willand manager made a number of changes to his starting line-up, including recalls for Ford, Morgan and Williams.
Opponents Hungerford, sporting a kit that would repel even the most heinous Hollywood monster, came into the game with an eye firmly on the play-offs. Having scored 13 goals in their last five games, they arrived in Devon in excellent form.
The game started brightly for the visitors, with Nwachuku twice finding space in the opening five minutes, first dragging an effort wide from outside the box and then seeing a deflected shot spin behind for a corner. Seedhouse was kept busy as Hungerford took the initiative.
Against the run of play, it was Willand who struck first. On 16 minutes Morgan’s shot found its way to Bateson, who took a lovely first touch and slotted it past Clarke to give Rovers the lead.
The goal settled the hosts, but the game soon broke down into a scrappy affair, with so much shirt-pulling that both clubs’ social media feeds felt compelled to remind the culprits that replicas were available from their respective club shops.
It was the visitors who finished the half strongly, with Rovers defending stoically. The closest chance came from Nwachuku, who let fly with an effort that looked destined for the corner, only for Seedhouse to tip it round the post.
Half Time: Willand 1-0 Hungerford
Hungerford came out with intent after the break and had the bulk of possession, but a disciplined Willand defence restricted them to half-chances. Clark turned sharply in the box but shot straight at Seedhouse. On 74 minutes Franklin cut inside and curled one narrowly wide of the far post.
Two minutes later, a strong challenge from Hungerford substitute Stallard sparked a melee involving players from both sides. When the dust settled, two yellow cards had been brandished.
With time ticking down, the visitors saved their best chance for last. With 90 minutes on the clock, substitute Marcus Bucknell found himself with the goal at his mercy, beat the keeper and watched his effort crash against the crossbar and over. It was the one genuine fright of the afternoon, and Rovers held on for a hard-earned three points.
Hungerford will feel aggrieved to leave with nothing, having kept the ball well and come within the width of a crossbar of a point. But this was a Willand performance built on organisation and character, and after Tuesday, that may prove as valuable as the result itself.
The budget was tight, the plot was thin and the script occasionally descended into shirt-pulling, but then it was never going to be a Hollywood production. The Willand faithful were relieved they weren’t subjected to a video nasty.
Full Time: Willand 1-0 Hungerford
