Pull up your bean bag chair, boys and girls, Uncle Tim is going to tell you a story as to how he became a famous horror movie director at the tender age of fifteen. Okay, scratch the famous part, but every other word is true. I wouldn’t lie to you.

But first, a little background. My fascination with the writings of Mr. Howard Phillips Lovecraft goes back to 1970. In that year, I saw the trailer and ad for The Dunwich Horror when it played at the local drive-ins. I noticed a credit on the movie poster that proclaimed: “H. P. Lovecraft’s classic tale of terror and the supernatural”. Being the horror, fantasy, and sci-fi nerd that I was, I ran down to the local branch library in my suburban shopping mall to see if they had any books by him. Nope. Not a one. It wasn’t until months later that I found the source for Dunwich in a collection of ghost stories. Years later, I discovered the Ballantine collections of his stories. One of which was The Shadow over Innsmouth, which scared the pants off me.

About the same time, I found an ad for Kodak’s Teenage movie awards. I’d already made some stop-action experimental films with a cheap 8mm Brownie camera. The ad for the awards sent Todd Browning images through my adolescent head. If other kids could enter a movie contest, why couldn’t I do it too? I’d already read the Lenny Lipton book on independent filmmakers and felt I knew the basics. All I needed was a budget, script, ambition, and a better camera.

The better camera was a Bell and Howell model with a 3-to-1 zoom lens. It couldn’t focus, but I’d work around that issue. I had a paper route to supply my Fotomat budget. A script I could write by hand.

I decided on The Shadow over Innsmouth as inspiration. I couldn’t use the original title, as, even at 15, I knew about copyright laws. Most of the story is told from one person’s point of view, which meant I could get away with one actor. My local neighborhood and parents’ basement would supply the sets.

Somehow, I managed to convince my good friend Mark, also 15 at the time, to be the star of this experiment in the macabre.

Principal photography commenced in the fall of 1973. This would later become an issue as the weather didn’t cooperate and it got cold. So cold I had to have “the bicycle rider” wear a jacket. For continuity’s sake, I shot a scene where he entered a clothing store and emerged with said jacket. Thank Cthulhu the snow didn’t hit until we were ready for the outside shots.

Every weekend I had a chance, I’d run over to the local photo kiosk and drop off the latest fifty-foot cartridge of film. A few days later, I’d run back down and pick up the developed roll. I would then thread it through my little projector and watch the dailies. Eventually, I cut all that film into a completed five-minute feature.

There’s several scenes I omitted from the final cut. The bicycle rider enters a hotel lobby and signs a register before he goes to his room. I cut this scene as I failed to create a realistic hotel lobby in the basement. I don’t think my mom liked her part as a hotel clerk, so no great loss. I cut an image of a “mutant” hand knifing the bicycle tire because it was too dim. My biggest loss was the flying saucer I paid another friend to build. It looked good, but not good enough.

The brief scene of the mysterious figure who observes the bicycle rider on a remote screen is the one for which I’m most proud. I accomplished this by positioning a dummy in front of a home movie screen and projected an image. I bounced the light off a white ceiling to light this effect. Like John Carpenter, I anticipated future technology and made it happen with practical effects.

I staged several premieres for Nightmare in the same basement where much of it was filmed. I gave my friends cards to fill out, none of which survived. At least one friend picked up the Innsmouth references.

And then I sent it to the Kodak Teenage Movie awards. I waited in intense anticipation. And, at last one day, my little masterpiece came back in the mail. Nope, didn’t win a thing. Maybe if I’d figured out a way to include a soundtrack. Well, that was outside my budget. Oh well, maybe next year…

I attempted a stop action space opera on a kitchen table the following year. Likewise, it never made it to the final selection committee.

And that’s the story of Nightmare. Years passed, I forgot about my cinematic adventures. One day I decided to get them transferred to VHS. The original elements were lost, but the VHS remained. Two weeks ago, I was able to get the VHS digitized. I cleaned up the image best I could and added a soundtrack.

I hope you’ll enjoy 1973’s Nightmare. It may not be “London After Midnight”, but after fifty years, it holds up as a prime example of what a teenage Lovecraft fan could accomplish on a limited budget.

You’ll find Nightmare here on my own channel, if you haven’t seen it.