It wasn't until 2001 that I started to use the internet. Soon after I found a website about Thriller produced by a British fan called Peter Culley. This was certainly a useful source, as indeed it was to many trying to find information about the show. Early the next year I found another very important and more in-depth site by German fan Werner Schmitz. The biggest breakthrough though came soon after when I came across a site by Australian fan Black Nun. His site went on to be hugely important in the early 2000s in Thriller fandom and was an absolutely essential resource allowing many people including myself to learn so much more about the show.
The internet though wasn't just useful as a place for fans of Thriller to learn more about the show and discuss it. There was clearly no substitute for actually seeing the episodes and the internet was a great way for fans to try to obtain recordings of episodes they hadn't seen (and sometimes to get better quality copies as some of the recordings in the videotape age were decidedly creaky). Fortunately I was able to make contacts and start to get tapes of the many episodes I didn't have. These were usually three episodes per tape and were either recordings of the UK repeats in the early 1980s or non-UK repeats which went on later into the 1980s and 1990s. From around Spring 2002 until November that year I managed to get all the twenty-nine episodes I didn't have. I've been able to piece together the order in which these came (and their order on the tapes) although I'm not quite sure the order of the final five episodes which I think arrived together:
The Double Kill; I'm the Girl He Wants To Kill; The Eyes Have It;
If It's a Man - Hang Up!; In the Steps of a Dead Man; Dial a Deadly Number;
A Place To Die; Death To Sister Mary; Screamer;
A Killer in Every Corner; Ring Once for Death; Won't Write Home Mom - I'm Dead;
Sign It Death; Only a Scream Away; Where the Action Is;
Murder in Mind; Good Salary - Prospects - Free Coffin; K Is for Killing;
Night Is the Time for Killing; The Next Victim; Murder in Mind;
Nightmare for a Nightingale; A Midsummer Nightmare; File It Under Fear;
The Crazy Kill; Kill Two Birds;
The Next Scream You Hear; Once the Killing Starts; Kiss Me and Die.
This viewing / acquisition order mainly reflected the episodes I most wanted to see combined with recommendations but there were occasional instances where ones I wanted to see earlier (like Once the Killing Starts for nostalgic reasons) were held back until a better quality copy was found. Those fans who watched Thriller back on original broadcast in the 1970s or when it was repeated would have had their viewing order largely in line with the transmission order although the episodes they missed and later picked-up would have followed a different sequence.
Almost all the copies were of the movie versions except for The Double Kill and Murder in Mind which were Bravo repeats in ATV format that I'd missed. For all their dodgy and often painfully-slow titles I was grateful to have any versions of Thriller and like many fans of the 1980s and 1990s those movie versions are key parts of our Thriller memories for all their faults. Inside a year I'd gone from just fourteen episodes to having a full set which not long earlier had seemed impossible.
Those tapes certainly got a lot of play but the movement in the early 2000s was also to disc so I was able later to get some disc versions including of the ITC movie versions of the ones shown in ATV format on Bravo. This may seem odd but to Thriller fans it was still fascinating to see what strange efforts had been made on the titles on "movies" such as "Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill" (A Coffin for the Bride) and Someone at the Top of the Stairs. The latter were very well-done in my view - backed by excellent chilling music - and often the highlight of seeing the movies was to hear what sounds were chosen.
Therefore by 2004 I had seen all the episodes and all the movie versions on tape or converted to disc. What I and other Thriller fans though really wanted was to see the show on an official DVD release. This still seemed very unlikely given that the VHS releases had stopped at two tapes but we were about to be very pleasantly surprised....
Final recollections to follow....
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