I recall watching this late one night in the early '80s on BBC1
I was probably only just a teenager but I found it quite absorbing.
shareDitto only when I first saw this at the same time I was aged 9 and it scared the pants off me! Also seem to recall that it was a Sunday night and the same year the BBC landed themselves in very hot water over the screening of Threads on BBC2 one quiet Sunday night - 1983.
shareThat's about right. I was 15 and remembered it well, and indeed have just seen it for only the second time - pretty certain it's not been on UK TV since - tonight on the big screen at the BFI/NFT. Brilliantly good still; the plance crash, post-9/11 of course, is scarier now and the cathedral climax literally could not be bettered today.
The flasback-within-flashback structure is very effective and the cutting between time periods excellent. Sharp dialogue too.
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@chris-rogers2 Lucky you getting to see this masterpiece on the big screen! I have to admit that doing precisely that is now on my Bucket List.
What makes this so terrifying is no CGI meaning that this film normalises with our minds quicker as it seems and feels more real than a blatant CGI fest ... Ready for the elements of surprize and the unexpected to make it seem and feel all the more scarier psychologically. Not that I am now going to demolish the film with a brain-basher of an essay about these aspects of it but these are points IMHO which are worth making. Especially in this day and age when the first thing people are liable to think is 1978 ... I wasn't even born then if not Well where's the remake then. Instead of what we are thinking and that is From 1978 ... So what.
But like Blazing Saddles of totally the opposite genre from The Medusa Touch NOBODY must touch this film in terms of a remake. It is timeless and priceless genuine horror.
I have got a feeling that Channel 4 screened this in the UK around ten years later during April or May 1994 but I COULD be wrong. It has been available on Youtube as a full film with subtitles between 2014 and this year when I noticed it had been removed in February. The Trailer remains on Youtube and I feel this does actually portray the film well even now. 36 years on ...