For over a month I've been watching the late-night horror flicks on Channel 56. And I've discovered that the makers of horror films stick to a pretty strict formula. As I sat frozen in front of these tube chillers, I found that time after time after time the nastiest ghouls and spectres did not make their appearance until the waning stages of the film. Well, it's just like the movies for the Harvard basketball team, because as the season winds up the meanest and nastiest of them all are about to make their appearance.

There are two games left on the Crimson basketball schedule. And while some people would claim (and have claimed) that the season has seemed like an overdrawn horror show, the perversities that could occur this weekend could make the rest of the year seem like a revival of "Ozzie and Harriet." The ghoul of this weekend's feature is the Penn/Princeton double header, also known as the Quaker/Tiger, and, as far as the rest of the league is concerned, it is the baddest of the bad among the Ivies.

Ah yes, Penn and Princeton. These two teams have been three-year nemeses to the Harvard seniors and the major source of frustration for Crimson coach Bob Harrison during his career here. The Quaker/Tiger has held a powerful whammy over the Crimson for quite some time, using the Harvard squad as stepping stone to high Ivy standing each year. Well, it's on hand again to top off the Harvard schedule, or, if you're of another school of mind, to drive the last two nails in the coffin of Harvard hopes.

In January, the Quaker/Tiger made its annual hunt into the Cambridge Jungle and, as predicted, it returned sleek and well-fed after fattening up on two triumphs at Harvard's expense. On the sinister evenings of January 5 and 6 Princeton edged out the Harvard cagers, 71-70, with a convincing display of discipline and cautions basketball, and Penn completed what has come to be a "traditional" sweep of the weekend back-to-back encounters, 66-61.

Well, all teams that were involved in that skirmish in January have traveled a "fur piece" (as the Down East saying goes) since then. And an examination of the record might suggest that Harvard has made the longest--and saddest--journey of all.

In the last six games, the Crimson has looked as little like the title contender many thought the team would be, as the food at Kirkland House looks like a Locke-Ober's entree. Harvard has lapsed back into its distinctive brand of sloppy ball which it perfected at the beginning of the season, losing three times to such Ivy "luminaries" as Columbia (oh God, even New Yorkers have given up on the Lions) Brown, and (the biggest embarrassment of all) Yale. While it may be argued that Brown has come into its own, the other two losses came at the hands of Ivy misfits that would, as my high school coach used to say in his more irascible moments, have trouble beating St. Mary's School for the Blind.

Penn and Princeton, despite a loss apiece to Brown, are once again at the top of the League. They still are mean, and they still have the power of the old snaffoo over Harvard. The Crimson really looked whipped in its last three losses, both physically and psychologically, and face another gruelling encounter with the Quaker/Tiger. There is not much hope that the trend will change. I wouldn't go so far as some folks and say that the season has been a complete horror show. But after the weekend it might be appropriate to have the 1972-73 basketball promotional film done up by Channel 56.