Me & Mom & Horror (and More)

Some memories of mom as we approach the 20th anniversary of her death…

I got my love of horror from mom. Where mom got it from, who knows. But she was hooked on weird stuff fairly early on. One of my favourite stories that she liked to tell also explains her approach to me and horror movies when I was a kid.

In the summer of 1958, the UK was buzzing with the release of Hammer’s first entry in their Dracula series. Starring Christopher Lee as the Count and Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, the word was that this movie was seriously, hard-core scary and maybe, too, a little bit (GASP!) sexy!

Mom was 15 years old on August 15th 1958. Dracula was an “X” certificate—she was too young to see it.

Yet, she and her pals were really eager to catch this intriguing, exotic slice of forbidden cinema! In fact, they were gonna see it. They planned to get in by dressing up and wearing make-up that made them look older.

Mom (left) with pals Jo & Wendy in 1958. They’re planning to see forbidden cinema.

On the early evening she’d arranged to meet her pals to see this movie, as she headed for the front door (very obviously trying to look older), her mother (my nan) emerged from the lounge. She looked mom over and said, “I hope you’re not planning to sneak into that Dracula film. If you do, you won’t be going anywhere else for a good while.”

Mom denied it vehemently and indignantly, and left.

But as she sat on the bus heading for the cinema, nan’s words played on her mind. She knew she would be subjected to an intense interrogation when she got back home; she also knew that trying to fool nan was a mighty challenge. She was gonna be found out. No doubt about it.

Finally, she cracked, and jumped off the bus near to a local fleapit cinema. She decided to see a different movie. This cheapo dive was showing something called The Mole People. She’d not heard of it, but it looked vaguely interesting, and it wasn’t a naughty “X” movie.

When she got back home, nan did indeed interrogate her. “Swear to God you didn’t see that movie,” she demanded. They were a fairly religious family. She swore she hadn’t. Truthfully.

Then she proceeded, with no small amount of triumph, to bore nan senseless with the most detailed synopsis she could muster of The Mole People! All was well!

Fast-forward to my childhood. I’m allowed to watch horror movies. Including all those Hammer films. As she told it, within reason she didn’t want to forbid me seeing this stuff—nan stopping her seeing Dracula seemed, to mom, silly and pointless… and when she finally saw the film on TV in the ’60s, it was almost a disappointment compared to the hype that surrounded it in 1958.

She used nan’s mistakes (as she saw it) as a guide to being a mother herself. Another example was my being left-handed. Mom herself was born left-handed, and as most of you will know, this used to have a terrible stigma. As a result, nan forced mom to become right-handed when she was a young child.

When it became apparent I had inherited mom’s left-handedness, the first thing nan said was, “we need to correct this.” But mom put her foot down. She was not going to force me to be right-handed. I was born left-handed and I would stay that way!

In fact, mom always felt, as I showed artistic promise, that she might have been a good artist herself if she’d been allowed to be left-handed.

Even so—she actually wasn’t bad. The above 1979 drawing of Hammerstein from 2000AD was drawn by mom—with her right hand!