The fine art of testing (or losing) a friendship with horror movies...

Good horror movies have been bringing couples together since there were any good horror movies to watch. Shared tension, broken hand-bones under vice-like grips and a guarantee of physical intimacy - and who knows that it might not develop more pleasantly later? So long as you don't jump higher than your date when the 'big shock' happens. This is partly why the genre is harder to kill than an O'Bannon zombie.

But sometimes the stakes aren't so high. Sometimes you're watching some movie on TV that you've already seen, but with a friend who hasn't seen it. Hopefully you're not ruining the entire f***ing experience for them by making them do this just before a really 'good bit' that you know is coming up...

...but there is definitely a certain pre-emptive pleasure in knowing what's in store for your mate a few minutes before the beast jumps out of the closet and attacks our heroine.

Trouble is, your friend knows it's a horror movie already, so they're expecting that kind of thing anyway, and we can't hope for too many spilt cups of tea (is this why my friends stopped calling? Oh well....).

But every once in a while, a really choice opportunity for a 'zinger' comes along...

In 1989 the UK's Granada television had a go at muscling in on the BBC's virtual monopoly on M.R. James-style period chillers. You know the kind of thing...misty estates...grand stairwells...ineffectual country parsons...mysterious squires...footsteps at 2am on the flagstones. Atmosphere pieces to chill the blood without actually showing any.

It was an adaptation of Susan Hill's 1983 novel (and the highly successful theatrical version first staged in 1987) The Woman In Black. The reconstituted Hammer Films are now remaking it in 3D.

Woman In Black is the story of a young solicitor sent to the East of England in the 1920s to attend the funeral of a mysterious widow and set her estate in order. But as soon as he arrives, he begins to hear - and later to see - strange things...

The tale bears all the hallmarks of M.R. James' parochial English chilliness. The typical period fare that is still often made in the UK with a profitable Stateside audience in mind. It's all very comforting and far from the modern world. No chainsaws, torture-chambers, rape or murder. Just the possibility of ghostly presences haunting lonely locales on country estates, perhaps voices from the ether at midnight...

And then, against this relentlessly genteel and slow-moving pace, one hour and sixteen minutes in, this happens...

Can you imagine that coming at you in 3D?

So one day a couple of years after I had seen the TV film, and had jumped out of my skin at this forebear of imagery from The Grudge, I happened to be watching TV with a friend...and he zapped onto a repeat of The Woman In Black, which had not long started. He asked me if I'd seen it and I said no, but that maybe we should give it ten minutes to see if it livened up a bit...

The Woman In Black (1989) is beguiling, but slow, and he wasn't in the mood. My 'zinger' seemed foiled, and we went zapping again. Luckily there was little else on, and we decided to leave Woman In Black on in the background, half-watching and half-chatting.

Around the time of the 'bed scene', I kind of 'lost interest' in our conversation and started watching the screen idly; so my friend did the same. Why not? Nothing else to watch...

Within five minutes, something very like this had been added to the ceiling...

Have you ever been this wicked with a friend when watching movies? Did you have as much fun as I did?