In 1968 the BBC aired Late Night Horror, a six-part anthology produced by Harry Moore and one of the corporation's first experiments in colour television terror. Viewers complained it went too far. The press piled on. The series vanished from the schedule within a couple of years and then vanished in the fuller sense: the tapes were wiped, as was standard practice at a broadcaster where tape was expensive and posterity was not on the budget. For decades, exactly one episode was known to survive.
Make it two. Film preservation charity Film is Fabulous announced in May that a print of the series opener, "No Such Thing as a Vampire", has been found in a storage area of The Regent, a 1930s art deco cinema in Christchurch, Dorset. A board member had flagged a small collection of reels that were close to being thrown away; projectionist and engineer Darren Payne went through them and found the one every guide lists as destroyed. It is a black-and-white telerecording, a film camera pointed at a studio monitor, which in that era was the only way broadcast television got kept at all. The episode, adapted from Richard Matheson's short story and directed by Paddy Russell, was taped in September 1967 and broadcast on April 19, 1968. Payne reports the print is in startlingly good health, with "good blacks and decent contrasts". The charity is investigating whether the original colour can be coaxed back out of the black-and-white film. Yes, that is a real thing that archivists can sometimes do, and no, we do not intend to explain it here without lying at least twice.
The episode gets its second premiere on September 20 at the place that kept it by accident, during Grindfest at The Regent. A tape the broadcaster judged too frightening to exist, screened in the building that forgot to destroy it. We have reserved our seat.
Two of six episodes now exist. The other four are out there, mislabeled, in somebody's attic, garage or projection booth. Check your cans.