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The late, great Jet Harris

Hello Allan,

In Molesworth’s Musings in Infinity #47 he wonders why film seasons similar to the BBC’s Horror Double Bills of the late 70s/early 80s aren’t run on free-to-air channels. Perhaps this article has been ‘waiting in the wings’ to be published for quite a while, because...

Talking Pictures TV have been delighting horror and mystery fans on Friday nights for months with double and often triple bills under the umbrella title “The Cellar Club”, hosted by Caroline Munro (born one day after me in January 1949 - and may I say, looking in much better shape than me).

The extended season has included many of Roger Corman’s Poe pics for AIP, including Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven and The Premature Burial and at the time of writing, A Comedy Of Terrors , Cry of the Banshee and The Tomb Of Ligeia yet to come. They’ve also shown titles rarely screened on TV such as Curse of the Faceless Man, Diary of a Madman and The Town That Dreaded Sundown.

To add to this cornucopia of creepy cinema, TPTV has also started a science fiction season on Saturday lunch times, which goes down great with a bacon baguette and a pot of tea. No sugar for me, thank you very much.

Last weekend they showed the no-budget quickie, shot on sets left over from Otto Preminger’s Saint Joan, The Man From Planet X, and this coming week The Monster That Challenged The World, which I remember from its screening on BBC 2 years ago is disappointingly nowhere near as gigantic as it appeared on the original poster, which was often the case with 50’s monster movies.

You mentioned Jet Harris in your editorial. As a spotty 13-year-old Shadows fan, living somewhere so nondescript that even people in the sticks felt pity for us, the idea I’d ever meet any of them one day was unthinkable.

And lo! One Sunday morning, 20 odd years later, at Her Majesty’s Theatre where I was working for Jimmy Tarbuck, Jet Harris popped in to see him in the dressing room. I was in awe, of course, but Jet was going through one of his down periods and told us he was now a photographer, because...“Every time I pick up a guitar I get p*ssed!”