In his interview for Golden Fun fanzine (Winter
1979) the artist referred to the strip as his major success at IPC and also the
most rewarding one. Mr. Walker praised the Editor Bob Paynter for a good piece
of editorial planning: the editor tailored the formula to suit the artist’s
strong points, i.e. the ability to create atmosphere, architectural settings,
organise a crowd of characters visually, cope with complicated action effects,
etc. The illustrator recalled that before he started it he was given a general
formula upon which he could build, i.e. there had to be an Innkeeper and a
family of ghosts and there had to be an old inn setting. Each week somebody had
to try and stay in the haunted bedroom for a prize of a million pounds and each
week they got chucked out – and the rest was left to the illustrator. Brian
Walker told the interviewer he evolved all the characters and the setting from that outline. He
also designed the Scream Inn itself – doing a near architectural drawing of it
so he could get the whole setting right all the time. In addition to the
entrance hall and the Haunted Bedroom upstairs, there was a torture chamber, a
kitchen and Spooks’ Common Room where resident ghosts spent their leisure time
doing jigsaw puzzles, playing pool or ping pong (using shrunken skulls for
balls).
In the GOLDEN
FUN interview Brian Walker recalled that Roy Davies did the first three scripts
and then Cliff Brown took over. Cliff lived quite near him and would come over
to Brian’s studio for a day each week and they’d go over the script together.
Cliff did the writing but it was nice to have Brian on hand for comment, so it
was very much of a mutual effort.
Following readers’ suggestions, both the artist and the writer of Scream Inn tried spending a night in the Haunted Bedroom; complete episodes with Brian Walker’s self-portrait and Cliff Brown’s portrait can be found in Part Two of Artist Self-Portraits Series that I did earlier on this blog.
Following readers’ suggestions, both the artist and the writer of Scream Inn tried spending a night in the Haunted Bedroom; complete episodes with Brian Walker’s self-portrait and Cliff Brown’s portrait can be found in Part Two of Artist Self-Portraits Series that I did earlier on this blog.
The
business side of the venture didn’t make much sense. Guests of Scream
Inn were never charged a fee for staying at the property, which would
have been a reasonable ask – a kind of a lottery where you pay something in
hope to win the jackpot while the organisation earns enough to make a living. Instead,
Scream
Inn operated as a charitable enterprise driven solely by the challenge
not lose the million. How on Earth they managed to cope with their bills remains
a mystery unsolved…
Part of the
success of the story came from the fact that it was a reader participation
feature where readers were encouraged to send their story ideas and receive
cash prizes. Here’s the call for story ideas that accompanied the early
episodes of Scream Inn:
The
response must have been overwhelming. This is how Brian Walker illustrated it
in the first panel of the episode in issue No. 15:
Readers’
reaction prompted the Innkeeper to make an unusual announcement in issue No. 13.
The call for story ideas was resumed only after SHIVER AND SHAKE ended and the
feature was transferred to the new combined WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER AND SHAKE.
Now let us
take a look at how the feature developed over its relatively short run of
79-weeks in SHIVER AND SHAKE. It is interesting to note how the illustrator experimented
with the lineup of monsters inhabiting Scream Inn. The Innkeeper was there
from the outset (of course!) and so were three other spooks who later formed the
core of the team: the ghost, the skeleton and the devil/demon. All three didn’t
have names at first. A headless cavalier with a sword driven through his chest emerged
in the third episode. So did a sad-looking fat bloke who had an axe sticking
out of his forehead; a few episodes later he mutated into a circus clown before
making himself scarce after a couple of weeks. From the tenth week the headless
cavalier was “enhanced” with a ball and chain and inherited the axe-split bonce
from the mystery fatso clown character who was no more. This was also the time when a blobby banshee
joined the roster of Scream Inn resident spooks and made
it more or less complete. As weeks went by, their names were revealed to the
readers: the ghost came to be known as Bertie Bedsheet, the devil – as Dennis
the Demon (later Dennis the Devil), the skeleton – as Boneypart, the phantom
headless cavalier – as Suffering Sam and the bubbling blob banshee – as Gilbert
Gunge.
That said,
the roster was a loose formation, joined occasionally by other phantoms such as
the invisible Percy Poltergeist, a mummy, a phantom bloodstain, Freda the flirtatious
fruit bat, Old Agata – Scream Inn’s own Iron Maiden, and Drippy Doris. Not to
mention numerous mystery monsters whose eyes stared and fangs shone out from
dark passages, corners and doorways of Scream Inn as well as creepy
crawlies and rodents swarming the floor.
Those of you who
followed Scream Inn later on in WHOOPEE! are now probably wondering
about Cooky (Cookie) – Scream Inn’s resident cook. The
witch made her first brief appearance in issue No. 17 and was then forgotten
for quite a long time before joining the main roster a year or so into the run
of the series and gradually ousting Gilbert Gunge the banshee. In addition to
being a cook, Cookie had a whole farm of exotic pets that came in handy when
other spooks failed to frighten that week’s guest and make him/her/it flee the
haunted bedroom. Some of Cookie’s pets included a dragon, Okky the octopus and a
pet piranha.
Sid and
Cyril, the pair of talking spiders that became a trademark of the strip when Scream
Inn was transferred to Whoopee!
shared their first gag in SHIVER AND SHAKE issue No. 37, albeit one of them went by a different name initially:
One of the many
things that make Scream Inn such great fun to read is Today’s Menu. First seen in issue No. 4, it soon became an
inseparable attribute of the opening panel every week. The board with today’s
menu was usually placed next to Scream Inn entrance and advertised
some truly weird dishes. At first random humorous gross and gory dish names
were used, later on Today’s Menu was often
spiced-up with dishes themed specifically after that week’s visitor. Very
inventive and funny, check out a selection of examples below:
The b/w
2-page feature had a permanent slot on pages 6 and 7 in Shiver section of the
paper. It didn’t miss a single week and was always illustrated by Brian Walker
who initialled or signed a number of sets towards the end of the run in Shiver and Shake. Here is the last one:
Popularity
of the strip easily secured it room in the combined WHOOPEE AND SHIVER AND
SHAKE after Sh&Sh was cancelled. The feature was given a new masthead and a
couple of new characters. It was business as usual at Scream Inn until 1st
October, 1977 when the Innkeeper won the prize and used the money to set up Spooktacular
7 (inspired by The Magnificent Seven film). Spooktacular 7 continued
until 22nd July, 1978 and that was the end of Innkeeper and his team. Thus, the
79 episodes in SHIVER AND SHAKE make up only a fraction (less than a third) of the
whole Scream Inn ‘file’. I will not go into details of the Whoopee! run because the focus of
this series is on SHIVER AND SHAKE comic but I may very well return to it when,
and if, I do a similar series dedicated to WHOOPEE!
Although Scream
Inn enjoyed a long and successful run in WHOOPEE!, the feature never appeared in a WHOOPEE! annual or holiday special
but stuck to its original title instead (the only exception was a reprint of
the first ever episode of the series in 1978 WHOOPEE! Annual). Here is the list
of Scream
Inn appearances in Shiver and
Shake holiday specials:
- Christmas Holiday Special 1973 (Ebeneezer Scrooge comes to visit)
- Holiday Special 1974 (illustrated by a different artist)
- Holiday Special 1975 (Mrs. Grumble, President of Irate Ladies’ Association pays a visit)
- H0liday Special 1979 (Innkeeper and his crew enjoying a holiday at the seaside).
And here is the list of Scream Inn appearances in Shiver and Shake annuals:
- 1974 Annual (Christmas episode with Santa Claus)
- 1975 Annual (illustrated by a different artist)
- 1976 Annual (Christmas episode with Gatecrasher) plus 1 puzzle page
- 1977 Annual (Dear Little Potty Poetess) plus 1 puzzle page
- 1978 Annual (reprint from Sh&Sh No. 4)
Scream Inn is another
British strip that deserves to be collected under one cover. It would make a gorgeous
fat coffee table book of some 600 pages that would look something like this.
It’s amazing what one can find on eBay these days!
Scream Inn
will receive three more posts here over the coming days. The next two will contain
the list of Scream Inn guests in the order of their appearance, illustrated
by the odd complete episode. I also happen to have a page of Brian Walker’s
original Scream Inn artwork which I intend to save for the last post.
