Here’s a timely question. What’s the connection between William Friedkin, and Knightmare?
The answer isn’t to be found in anything which was actually broadcast. Because Knightmare had two unbroadcast pilots. One called Dungeon Doom, a 15-minute proof-of-concept recorded in early 1986, and the other, actually called Knightmare, which was a full episode recorded in January 1987.1
And the title music for that second pilot was “Betrayal” by Tangerine Dream: the main theme to Sorcerer, directed by Friedkin in 1977:
The music was also used in the trailer for the film:
It has to be said, what an absolutely wonderful choice of music that was for the Knightmare pilot. I wouldn’t trade Ed Welch’s incredible theme for anything, of course, but “Betrayal” perfectly captures the mood of the series: dark, foreboding, electronic. It could easily have been used as incidental music in the show proper.
But how do we know that second pilot used “Betrayal” for its main theme? Sadly, despite people’s hopes over the years, neither pilot has ever actually leaked online. Which is something that has become increasingly bizarre. The show has a still-active fandom over at Knightmare.com, and next January that site will have been going for 25 years. It’s something which feels like it should have made it out there by now… but hasn’t. Maybe one day. Preferably before I snuff it.
We do, however, have the next best thing. Back in 2010, Billy Hicks got hold of the script of that second pilot, wrote about it, and uploaded the full thing. And as part of that script, we’re told:
Title Music – Tangerine Dream ‘Betrayal’/E Froese, C Frauhe, P Bannman/MCA Records Inc/MCL 1646/Sd2/NV2
The script itself is fascinating, and not just because you can spot the differences between the pilot and Series 1. It’s close enough to the first broadcast episode of Knightmare that it really gives an insight into how the show was put together in those early years. The multiple responses needed by actors must have been absolute agony to learn.
So when you get a moment, give that script a read, and try listening to “Betrayal” in the background. It’s almost as good as actually watching that unbroadcast pilot for real.
Almost.
See Tim Child’s How Knightmare Began for the full story. ↩
As pointed out to me on Twitter, the script manages to misspell both Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann’s last names. ↩
3 comments
Calum on 19 August 2023 @ 9pm
I was the right age for Knightmare, and I was a computer nerd who played loads of adventure games. I should’ve loved it, but I always just found it incredibly naff.
Billy Hicks on 3 September 2023 @ 1pm
Thanks for this article, I contributed a lot to that website over the years but finding that pilot was definitely the most special! I actually acquired it back in 2006, the result of a few minutes of typing ‘Knightmare’ into Google and just scrolling through the results until I ran out of pages. It was listed for sale on the website of the actor Richard Bonehill, someone who only acted in the pilot and not the full series, and along with the script he sent over some memories of working on the pilot and the special effects needed. I wrote an article about it at the time, but for various reasons it took me another four years before I scanned in all the pages and got the real thing uploaded on the website.
Richard sadly passed away in February 2015, so I’m grateful I was able to get in contact with him when I could and obtain this fascinating part of Knightmare’s history.
John J. Hoare on 13 September 2023 @ 9am
Cheers Billy. It truly is one of the most valuable things anybody has ever done regarding the show online.
It would be nice if there were other scripts out there, but I wonder how they would be formatted – I seem to recall after a while, actors would learn separate “Level 1”, “Level 2” and “Level 3” scripts, rather than chucking away whole quests. I wonder how that would translate into the camera scripts!
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