| Author | Message | ||
     Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Last night I watched an episode of Nigel Kneale’s BEASTS from 1974 and realised that people like Kneale were already saying what a lot of horror writers are trying to say now decades ago, but with more style and less bombast. Some of these old 70s genre plays are simply miraculous – The Stone Tape, The Exorcism, Beasts, Hammer House of Horror, Thriller. Pure. Unadorned. No flash and lots of substance. Despite the dated look and the low-rent shot-on-video feel, they’re great – actually, they’re great because of all that. No ominous soundtrack telling you when to be scared; no expensive special effects or big set-pieces. Just imagination and great storytelling. Last night, watching “Baby”, I was genuinely unnerved by the sight of an actor in a cheap black rubber mask, making strange wailing noises whilst sitting in an armchair suckling a furry pig. Genius. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
>>an actor in a cheap black rubber mask, making strange wailing noises whilst sitting in an armchair suckling a furry pig. DOH! Now I'm obsessed with seeing that image! You image dangler! I'll have to recreate it with real people. Which means I'm going to get arrested again! | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
I was chatting to a mate of mine yesterday about the fact that the 1970s dramas seen more 'real' because of their lack of flashy camera techniques. A bare room, a static camera and some actors is actually far more effective. Today's stuff is so busy you are constantly being reminded that you are watching something that has been artificially created for your entertainment, which is something I don't find anywhere near as much in older material | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
Spot on! That thought should frame our art from now on. I'll just draw up a manifesto... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Exactly, Lord P. Watching The Exorcism recently I was struck by the same thought. I try to reflect this agenda in my writing: the uncluttered realism. In real life there are no soundtracks, no nice camera angles, no neat passages of expositional dialogue...no "closure" or resolution. Have you seen any of the Dogma 95 films? Lars Von Trier did some grteat work with this, particularly with Dogville, IMHO. | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
Ah - no I haven't. That's a good point, I should check them out. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
He's an interesting director, John; flirts with horror, but never quite takes the leap into that genre (apart from "Kingdom", the crazy Danish series about a haunted hospital that Stephen King neutered for the U.S. remake). Breaking the Waves and Dogville are occasionally brilliant, but both are often tough to watch. | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.244.67 |
No soundtrack, but the music of lyrical prose... No nice camera angles, but the careful choosing of a verb or an adjective... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
MNy prose is more a cacophony is indutrial machines disemboweling a rat than music, Albs. And what's a verb? Do you mean Anthony Verb, the renowned character actor? | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
Zed have you just had a bang on the head? Or elsewhere? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
Er, I typed that a bit fast - my attention is elsewhere. :-/ | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
;-> | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.199.123 |
I entirely agree with you, Zed. Baby was a very effective piece in places, especially the ending and the scene at the pool. The slow pace and gradual accumulation of eeriness really sets these old productions apart from much of what is being made today. Not everything, of course; good stuff is still being made - The Orphanage and several Asian films such as A Tale of Two Sisters and Dark Water are good examples - but, by and large, everything is faster-paced, jerky, more hurried and blatant compared to the horror most of us here on this board grew up on. Have you watched all of Beasts yet, Gary? I was disappointed by the series on the whole, though it has its moments. The acting, and, in particular, the delivery of dialogue by some of the male actors in certain of Kneale's works has always struck me as strident, sometimes jarringly so. The Stone Tape, in particular, springs to mind in this regard. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.199.123 |
Is The Exorcism available on DVD, by the way? I got my Pete Walker coffin boxset today, along with an old British film called The Ghost Train. Still no sign of Thieving Fear, though. I'm beginning to think it may've been thieved by the postman... | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
What's the weather like in Thailand, Huw? | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.199.123 |
How's yer pancreas today?  | ||
| Griff (Griff) Username: Griff Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.100 |
*Tuts* You're no fun today, H.  | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.214.35 |
Huw - let me know what you think of the Walker set | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 83.93.30.31 |
Von Trier might be doing a satire /horror picture called Anti-Christ- sources say... I am also a fan of the more patient 70's style camerawork, but the Dogme movement did introduce some interesting ideas. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 85.158.137.195 |
Is The Exorcism available on DVD, by the way? Don't think so, Huw, although I think I still have the copy I took from my PVR thingy... | ||
| Albie (Albie) Username: Albie Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.195.236.131 |
My attention is always elsewhere. I don't know where. Maybe one day I will find out. | ||
| John (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.4.67 |
I've got the DVD of Beasts here but so far I've only got as far as watching "Baby". Agree with everything that was said above - it was a hugely effective, slow-burn full of slightly creepy suggestions ("A thing like that would have needed to have been suckled..."). I'll get around to the rest eventually, but the general consensus is that the rest of the series isn't as good. Although I believe that one of the tales involves the ghosts of Dolphins which I really have to see! "Flipper! Why?!" | ||
| John_l_probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 90.208.214.26 |
I still think 'Barty's Party' is a classic, and 'The Dummy' isn't bad. 'Buddyboy' is interesting for its haunted aquarium, and by having its central character be the owner of a chain of porn cinemas, which you wouldn't see at 9pm on a Friday on ITV these days. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Watched two episodes so far - 'Baby' & 'Buddyboy' - and absorbing intellectual horror/fantasy is the only way to describe these fabulous scripts. Kneale was so far ahead of his time that he does deserve to be called a visionary imo. I actually find the low-key, largely studiobound production standards of 70s British TV plays helps the viewer concentrate more on the strength of the story and committed performances. I'm reminded again of why 'I, Claudius' pees all over the recent 'Rome' series, for all its extravagant spectacle. Start watching one of these plays and you can't help but be drawn in and lose all track of time... the actors become those characters in a way modern TV, with its flash and bombast, can't begin to emulate (but for the odd exception, like that recent adaptation of 'A View From A Hill'). 'Baby' made me share the growing paranoia and isolation of its pregnant female protagonist every bit as much as 'Rosemary's Baby' but there all similarities ended. A wonderfully subtle and genuinely unsettling spin on the old "couple move into their dream cottage in the country that hides a dark secret" yarn that ties together the themes of marital unhappiness leading to mental breakdown with the power of ancient superstition intruding on the present. On first viewing last week the ending seemed abrupt and unsatisfactory, after the excellence that preceded it, but after watching it again last night I actually found it more powerful without the weight of expectation and find it haunting my thoughts this morning. That poor woman... and what a thoughtless bastard Simon MacCorkindale was, eh. 'Buddyboy' I watched two nights ago and found it having the same haunting effect all day yesterday. A truly original and weird ghost story worthy of Robert Aickman in my view. A story about a disused aquarium haunted by the wailing spirit of a dolphin might sound like something even Stephen King would struggle to make convincing, nevermind scary, but this story manages to build up a sense of transcendent terror I have rarely seen so well portrayed on TV. Martin Shaw plays a tough guy purveyor of sleaze determined to turn the place into a porn cinema and just about as unphased by the supernatural as a character can get, until... the ending again seems abrupt but by this time I was expecting that and went to bed afterward thoroughly chilled to the bone. Shows like this make me yearn for a return to the quality, slow-burning, adult entertainment, that respects the viewer's intelligence, that I took too much for granted when I was young - I think we all did. It's putting me in the mood for a complete rewatch of my 'Thriller' box-set by that other master of the form, Brian Clemens. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.19 |
Stevie - don't know where you're based but Clemens is giving at least two interviews at the National Film Theatre in July. I believe one's a general one about his working life (possibly similar to the one at FCon last year, which was great) and one solely about The Avengers. I'll be there! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Clemens is the man when it comes to the golden era of 60s/70s TV and I'd dearly love to make that, so thanks Mick. But being based in Belfast makes getting to the National Film Theatre a bit of a major undertaking, sigh... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
Watched 'The Dummy' tonight and found it a splendidly acted psychological thriller showing, in riveting detail, the final complete mental breakdown of a washed up alcoholic "actor" cursed by a "lack of presence" into playing the monster in the rubber suit in cheap sub-Hammer horror movies. The idea of a man in a laughable monster suit going mad and rampaging in a murderous frenzy through the film studio could have come across as ridiculous with a less sober and matter-of-fact treatment. As it is I found the play another little gem of understatement and this time without a hint of the supernatural but no less disturbing for that. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
I loved "The Dummy"! What a fantastically fun concept and handled perfectly. I also loved "During Barty's Party", though the title led me to expect a different ending. I had pictured the finale showing people listening in horror to the broadcast as rats overran the station. Still, that one was surprisingly effective for me. I'm not at all scared of rats (as kids my brother and I used to act out scenes from Ben and Willard with our pet rats!) but I'd probably have jumped if I'd seen one immediately after! | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.170.180.134 |
I thought I saw the concept of Dummy in Shyamalan's The Village. I wasn't nuts on Beasts as a kid - too subtle for me, much of it, though I did like the odd one. Yes - rewatch time. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I'm surprised that none of the episodes so far have struck any memories with me so I must have missed this series as a kid. I'm finding it a joy to experience fresh. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.253.174.81 |
'Beasts' absolutely terrified me when I was nine, especially the 'Baby' episode, which I'm sure has led to more than a few of my stories being set in isolated farmhouses. 'The Dummy' is a great satire on BritHorror (and even feature Michael Caine's ex Patricia Haines - she of 'Virgin Witch' which was a really rubbish BritHorror indeed) while being a serious horror in its own right - another example of how good Kneale was at getting everything to work on a number of levels. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
The 'Baby' episode did it for me when I was young, too. Utterly terrifying. It's still brilliant. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I envy you guys your memories. There is one supernatural British play from the 70s I have terrifying childhood memories of that also featured a young couple moving into their dream home in the country. I thought 'Baby' would turn out to be it but was actually pleased to find it completely new to me. I've watched it twice within a week and got more out of it second time without the expectations - unsettling the first time, truly frightening the second to the point it haunted me for days afterward. Anyway, the play I remember (and hope one of you can identify) featured the wife, and only the wife, haunted by the sound of sobbing come from the attic. Her husband, like MacCorkindale in 'Baby', was a boorish oaf (if memory serves me right) who dismisses her fears as feminine hysteria. So she ends up having to investigate on her own. I remember a scene where she has a premonition of what appears to be her own death and the ending when she finally investigates the attic alone terrified the bejesus of me as a child. Name that play, please!! | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.166.117.210 |
is it Exorcism? I saw that again recently and it's still superb. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I've no idea what it was called, Zed. I think the wife was blonde and looked a bit like Wendy Craig but that could be my imagination. It's one of those things remembered on TV from childhood that has subliminally haunted me all these years. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Looked 'The Exorcism' up, Zed, and it sounds fantastic but I don't think it's the one I remember - was there a sobbing coming from the attic? Is that 'Dead Of Night' series available on DVD? I can't get enough of this stuff - pure quality! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
SUCCESS!!!! I've discovered the play I remember and it was a part of the same series. It appears only three of the seven episodes still survive (what a fucking crime!) but 'A Woman Sobbing' is one of them. Somehow I have got to see this again... DEAD OF NIGHT 5 Nov - 17 Dec 1972 (7 eps) / BBC2. Producer: Innes Lloyd. An anthology of chilling tales: (1) The Exorcism. (2) Return Flight. (3) Bedtime. (4) Death cancels all debts. (5) Smith. (6) Two in the morning. (7) A Woman Sobbing. See below for details of surviving episodes. THE EXORCISM 5 Nov 1972 / BBC ("Dead of night"). Writer & Director: Don Taylor. Two couples spend christmas at a country cottage where they encounter the ghosts of a destitute family who had lived there years before and had starved to death. Events move to an unexpected and deadly conclusion. With: Clive Swift, Anna Cropper, Sylvia Kay, Edward Petherbridge. Screenonline. RETURN FLIGHT 12 Nov 1972 / BBC ("Dead of Night"). Writer: Robert Holmes / Director: Rodney Bennett. A modern-day airline pilot has a ghostly encounter with a wartime bomber crew. With: Peter Parkworth. A WOMAN SOBBING 17 Dec 1972 / BBC ("Dead of night"). Writer: John Bowen / Dir: Paul Ciappessoni. A young woman hears noises coming from the attic at night. With: Anne Massey, Tommy Boyle, Ronald Hines. It pains me to think of the excellence, now lost forever, in those other four eps... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
On the evening of Sunday, 17th December 1972, when I was irrevocably terrified by 'A Woman Sobbing', I had just turned 7 years old. I think that may have been the same Christmas 'The Lost Hearts' went on to petrify me even more witless. Could that holiday period have been the very time (weaned on a weekly dose of 'Doctor Who' at its finest) when HORROR became forever hotwired into my brain as a frighteningly pleasurable experience. That's made me feel quite weird...  | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Looks like someone on iOffer.com has the DVD for sale, Stevie. I've found quite a few out of print things on there. Pirates, obviously, but of films that aren't otherwise available, so fair enough. | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Damn - the site seems to be down! Most annoying, as I'm still waiting on a couple of DVDs from a seller there! I hope they haven't been rumbled.  | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.159.131.159 |
-On the evening of Sunday, 17th December 1972, when I was irrevocably terrified by 'A Woman Sobbing', I had just turned 7 years old.- Shouldn't you have been in bed young man? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.17.252.126 |
I'm about to break every one of my rules and watch the next episode of 'Beasts' right now! I need another fix of quality supernatural drama... this one is called 'Special Offer'.  | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.159.131.159 |
Turn down the lights. Pour a glass of wine. Let yourself be transported back to a forgotten era of 3 channel quality!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Sean, either someone must have been babysitting (most likely my Aunt Rita - who would let me stay up to watch the late film, while sworn to secrecy) or the play was on early enough in the evening to pass muster with Mum. The low-key treatment and lack of violence probably made it seem okay for me to watch but how wrong she was lol... 'Special Offer' has been the most relentlessly chilling episode of 'Beasts' so far with an almost unrecognisably young Pauline Quirke giving the performance of her career (imo) as a repulsive and educationally subnormal teenager obsessively infatuated with her supermarket manager boss - to a level of clammy, implacable unshakeability that becomes truly disturbing. The blank look of dumb fixated adoration on her face will haunt me for some time... Of course she also happens to possess unconscious Carrie-like psychokinetic powers that start to play havoc with the displays of tinned goods, etc - all put down to the privations of a half-glimpsed animal dubbed Briteway Billy (echoes, for me, of Jody in 'The Amityville Horror'). Toppling cans and exploding bottles of ketchup, again, might sound easy to turn into unintentional farce but the understated slow-build treatment here is so impeccably right that all disbelief is suspended right up to the spectacularly apocalyptic finale - with the expression on that loathsome face never altering. Brilliant stuff and one of the most memorable renditions of the scary teenager/poltergeist theme I have seen (again for the first time). | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Stevie, the site's back up if you want a copy of Dead of Night: http://www.ioffer.com/i/dead-of-night-bbc-1972-131225673 | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Thanks, Kate, you're a star! I don't suppose there's much chance of this ever getting an official release so, what the hey... | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.159.131.159 |
I see on this site Boris Karloff's 'Thriller' complete DVD set for just £10 !! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
I think I'd rather hold out for an official release of that near legendary series, Sean. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Hang on, £10 you say...!!!  | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Watched 'What Big Eyes' over the weekend and having thought long and hard I now consider it one of the bravest dramas Kneale ever wrote because of how it deliberately plays on all the old clichés of the werewolf & mad scientist genres to lead the viewer completely up the garden path - because that's not what this episode is about at all. Patrick Magee is as manically riveting as ever as the obsessed old nutcase performing horrific experiments on live wolves to prove his theory that lycanthropy is more than just a fairy-tale, Michael Kitchen is wonderfully sympathetic as the outraged RSPCA inspector determined to bring him to justice and Madge Ryan is outstanding as the painfully devoted daughter who is the real focus of the horror on show here. The ending gave me a delicious frisson of fear followed by bemusement and then a growing sense of tragedy and I can say no more than that... another outstanding, and not a little surprising, "supernatural" drama. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.106.220.19 |
I've just bought BEASTS and have watched the first two episodes so far. I'd agree with all the good comments above about "Baby"; extraordinary stuff, and quite unsettling at times, in spite of MacCorkindale's somewhat over-the-top performance. "Buddyboy" was ok, but I'm hoping that "Baby" wasn't the highlight of an otherwise pedestrian series! | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Mick - for some reason I'd assumed you'd seen these. There's more fun to be had yet - 'Barty's Party' is excellent, 'What Big Eyes You Have' was a lot better than I remembered it, but probably the one that's the best is 'The Dummy', viewed with the context of mid-70s Brit horror film-making in mind it works on all sorts of levels. The one set in the supermarket's not very good though It's basically Carrie at Fine Fare. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
*** SPOILERS *** Never got round to writing up 'During Barty's Party' but it's the episode where Nigel Kneale most obviously goes for the jugular. An outstanding piece of claustrophobic terror all filmed within one set and with a cast of two, Anthony Bate & Elizabeth Sellars, giving perfectly nuanced performances that switch from hysterical nervousness to terror to calmness in the face of a crisis (on her part) and from cocky irritation to nervous outrage to cringing terror (on his part). All this is set against the inspired device of having a cheesily light-hearted radio chatshow playing in the background, that they have rung into in desperation, pleading for help. The cause: they find themselves besieged within their own home by an army of frenzied killer rats that are slowly gnawing their way in without ever a one of them being seen.. but the noise they make... You'll be swept along by the intensity of the acting until you too will be jumping at every flitting shadow and odd creak or rustle. I agree with JLP, for sheer frightening power this episode probably is the highlight of the series. Next up, 'Murrain', the criminally overlooked one-off play that preceded 'Beasts'. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.49 |
Lord P. - nope, pretty sure I missed BEASTS on its showing on TV and never got around to buying the set until now. The Dummy is the next episode, so I'm looking forward to that, although the story sounds familiar; maybe I did see one or two of the series originally. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.131.109.221 |
Anyone seen this? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghost-Story-DVD-Penelope-Keith/dp/B002OM63MG/ref=pd_sim_ d_h__10 | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.49 |
Yep, got that Tony. I think it was discussed on here ages ago. Strange but a good little film; well worth the asking price. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.122.209.76 |
Ghost Story is an interesting picture. Stephen Weeks lives near us at Penhow Castle but when I was there I didn't really know what to say to him when I saw him (I Monster was...ok? Ghost Story was...interesting? Sword of the Valiant was...really rubbish?) So I kept quiet. It does feature Vivian Mackerell who was the inspiration for Withnail, so that's a reason to watch it in itself! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.177.115.49 |
Watched THE DUMMY tonight - again, good stuff. As others have mentioned, lovely to see a story take its time, using long takes - very play-like in its development. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
*** SPOILERS *** 'Murrain' was the big unexpected pleasure of this box set imo. An absolutely cracking one-off play, from the 'Against The Crowd' series (1975), that plays loosely with the supernatural while really being about superstitious fear among poorly educated communities - of the type that led to the witch burning craze that blighted Europe in the 15th-17th Centuries. An eager young vet is called out to a remote rural community plagued by animal sickness and discovers, to his horror, that the locals blame it all on a mad old woman who lives alone in a shockingly run-down hovel on the edge of town. She has been outcast by the entire village to the point that they refuse to serve her in the local shop (for local people) and she is slowly starving to death! In his attempts to help her our hero, the wonderfully sympathetic David Simeon, ignites the wrath of these belligerent country bumpkins and the tension builds into a simmering rage that finally explodes in a shocking climax that sees hundreds of years of civilization discarded in a hate and fear filled frenzy. The ending, however, is one of Kneale's most sublime dramatic double bluffs, in my opinion, and grows more chilling as one thinks about it afterward. What really made this play stand out, though, is the sheer quality of the acting, particularly from Una Brandon-Jones as the "witch", and that it is all atmospherically shot on location, rather than largely in the studio, as with 'Beasts'. A forgotten classic of rare quality and one of the very finest scripts Nigel Kneale ever penned imo. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
This is how I'd rank the 7 episodes, though every one is superb imo: 1. Baby 2. During Barty's Party 3. Murrain 4. Special Offer 5. The Dummy 6. What Big Eyes 7. Buddyboy Typically intelligent, slow burning and unpredictable scripts, great understated acting and direction and fabulous use of jarring sound effects to garner chills, over OTT visuals, are what make this series stand out as one of the finest of its kind ever produced in Britain, or anywhere else for that matter. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.183.203.223 |
I've just completed watching BEASTS, although I've yet to watch MURRAIN. I thought BABY & DURING BARTY'S PARTY were two of the best pieces of TV drama I've yet seen - wonderful stuff, and highly recommended to anyone yet to see the series. | ||
| Protodroid (Protodroid) Username: Protodroid Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.79.63.107 |
Sweet baby Moses. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/03/cthulhu-pet-giant-isopod-photos-sea-mons ter-reddit-attached-underwater-robot.php |