“Decades after it was shot on 28 December 1976, Chris Walpole’s 3½ minute horror film The Hairy Hands is receiving an unexpected world premiere at Chagford’s Globe Inn, after being selected for showing at this year’s Chagford Film Festival.
Filmed in the snow near Postbridge at the exact Cherry Brook bridge location where the Hairy Hands manifestations were reported in the 1920s, the film lay unwatched at Chris’s Belstone home for all those years until the festival organisers came calling. After a frantic search in the attic to find the small reel of Super 8mm film, some re-editing to include extra footage found on another reel labelled ‘Hairy Hands Out-takes’ and the dubbing of some horror music, spooky sound effects and screams, the newly-digitised film was ready for viewing.
The Hairy Hands themselves were played by Chris’s mother Lorna Sheppard who, perhaps unwisely, let the director use Uhu to glue some camel hairs pulled from a carpet in their lounge onto the back of her hands. The unfortunate victim of the hands was played by his cousin Liz Sheppard, who spectacularly crashed her bicycle in the snow before coming to a grisly end.
The film will be screened at 7pm on the evening of Wednesday 25 September as part of ‘Dartmoor Day’, when walks, talks and films will celebrate all things cinematic on the moor. The full evening show, which also includes tales about the Hairy Hands from popular Dartmoor raconteur Tich Scott and several films from renowned Dartmoor photographer and author Chris Chapman, starts at 6.30pm. See the festival brochure or www.chagfordfilmfestival.com for details of all the week’s events.”
