Halloween Countdown ’08: Just Lock The Damn Thing, Berk
Sometimes after school or early on a Saturday morning, I would turn the television on to watch the childrens shows on the ITV channel. ITV over the years had a number of shows based on creepy ideas made fun, from the puppets of The Spooks of Bottle Bay which was intended for small children, to Count Duckula for young kids up to Knightmare, a game show in the style of Dungeons and Dragons, none were really that scary or coming anywhere near to scary kids shows like Children of the Stones or BBC’s Century Falls, the latter that still creeps me out a bit. Amongst the ITV mainstay was a small series of shorts: The Trap Door.
Deep within this dank and uninviting place lives Berk, overworked servant to The Thing Upstairs.
But that’s nothing compared to the horrors that lurk beneath The Trap Door.
For there’s always something down there, in the dark, waiting to come out… “
Such an ominous opening when placed in to text, invoking images of dark seclusion and frightfulness, it might come as a surprise then to actually see the opening, more than read about it.
The Trap Door doesn’t seem so scary once you know that it’s composed entirely of brightly coloured, stop-motion animated creatures. The series featured around the blue plasticine character, Berk, a servant to The Thing Upstairs – a creature that is never fully seen, but his appearance is hinted at by shadows and comments from the other characters. Berk does all the chores around the castle, though his main duty is preparing meals for The Thing Upstairs. Berk lives in the servant quarters with Boni, a talking skull who frequently moans about the goings on, and Drutt, a pesky spider.
All of the adventures in the forty episodes of the series involved something held beneath the trap door breaking loose, or wandering loose if Berk had just been careless. Under the trap door, lived a variety of monsters and creepy crawlies, which would wreak havoc within the castle until captured or otherwise stopped. The monsters ranged in styles and features, as the closing lyrics suggested “Creepy, crawly, slimy things that stick onto your skin; Horrid things with tentacles that want to pull you in; Squirmy, worms, slugs and snails that lie there in a goo; They’ll wait down there forever till they get their hands on you”.
The Trap Door was a great series, running from 1984 to 1986, and was a marvellous blend of simple animation at it’s most effective and great voice talent – especially considering that only one voice was used, the late Willie Rushton. The series also spawned a video game during the 80s that was released on the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and the Commodore 64.
The episodes were only five minutes long, so have easily found their way on to YouTube, allowing those of us who saw it as kids to watch it again, and to let those who weren’t kids with us to enjoy it for the first time. So, for those of you who didn’t get to see it, grab some Monster Munch or a Fudge bar, and an Um Bongo and let’s just chill.
Not sure what an Um Bongo is but this looks like a good show to watch with a bowl of cereal to.