| Author | Message | ||
     Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.0.89.141 |
I'm sure I saw a clip for this on the BBC's Christmas trailer last night. I was a bit distracted - putting the decorations up and all that. But it looked like John Hurt is starring. Can anyone cast light? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.225.41 |
No, but I can cast runes. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I spotted a quick mention of it in that trailer too, but I wasn't taking much notice either. It would be nice to see John Hurt in it though. Actually, I'm an idiot - what am I thinking of? I've just bought a copy of the Christmas Radio Times. I'll take a look and report back later ... | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.0.89.141 |
What a joy that used to be. In the pre-satellite, pre-video era, when the Christmas Radio and TV Times used to arrive, and as soon as you got home from school you spent the whole evening drawing up a list of which amazing programmes you were going to watch over the holiday - and then watched almost none of them because you were having too much of a good time. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I know! The Christmas RT is the only one I ever buy now - and I still enjoy planning my Christmas viewing with it!  Yes, it is John Hurt who's starring in Whistle .., along with Lesley Sharp, Sophie Thompson and Gemma Jones. But the write-up of it in the RT makes it sound like our worst fears about this remake will be realised - it sounds like all the suspense and sense of dread has been taken out of it. Still, I'll be watching it anyway, just to see what they've done to it. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.0.89.141 |
When it is on, Caroline? | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.220.6 |
BBC2 Christmas Eve, Paul, at 9pm | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.147.0 |
What a joy that used to be. In the pre-satellite, pre-video era, when the Christmas Radio and TV Times used to arrive, and as soon as you got home from school you spent the whole evening drawing up a list of which amazing programmes you were going to watch over the holiday - and then watched almost none of them because you were having too much of a good time. Paul that's so true! But I always watched the spooky stuff - my first memory is of watching Laurence Gordon Clark's The Treasure of Abbot Thomas & then switching over for a Tales of the Unexpected with Moray Watson and the lovely Cherie Lunghi that got me addicted to Xmas TV | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.0.89.141 |
My fave memory of Christmas TV is watching THE SIGNALMAN the first time it came on. I watched it alone with my mum, and I'm not sure which of us was more scared. Showed it recently to some relatively new horror fans, and I don't think they were too impressed. Can understand why, I suppose, in the age of glossy, gory CGI horror. But I still think it's a classic. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.220.6 |
You see, this is why I like coming on RCMB...I feel I'm among very like-minded friends. I love chatting about the old British tv we talk about - Hammer House of Horror, Ghost Story for Christmas, Beasts, Shadows, etc. Over the past few years BBC4 has repeated many of the classics. I think my favourite would have to be the original Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You. Michael Hordern's reaction at the end never fails to raise the hairs on the back of my neck. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.147.0 |
My fave memory of Christmas TV is watching THE SIGNALMAN the first time it came on. I watched it alone with my mum, and I'm not sure which of us was more scared. My mum introduced to me a lot of horror. Probably my first memory of my dad going off to the pub and leaving my mum and myself to televisual pleasure was the first TV showing of Robert Fuest's Wuthering Heights. Shortly after that Nigel Kneale's Beasts started its six week run and the rest is history... | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.0.89.141 |
We followed a similar path, John. I was late on in middle-school when BEASTS first aired, but I still remember us all leaving whatever we doing early on those Friday evenings (be it hanging out in the park or apple-scrumping, or whatever) so we could go and watch BEASTS. I also owe my dad a debt of gratitude, as in the very early 70s, he used to stay up to watch APPOINTMENT WITH FEAR on Monday evenings, while my mum would go to bed. Dad always fell asleep in front of the telly, so I could sneak down and watch large chunks - if not all - of the horror movies that were screened from the doorway of the living room. Those I remember clocking up during those halcyon days include HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (Cushing and Lee), CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF (Reed), and the original HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (which kept me sleepless all night - that blind woman in the cellar!!!!). I owe him even more of a debt of gratitude though because he called me down to watch NIGHT OF THE DEMON with him - he reckoned such a classic had to be seen and appreciated by a youngster before said youngster became a callow, unimpressed teenager. How right he was. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.147.0 |
With me it was the above, then finding a copy of Dennis Gifford's Pictorial History of Horror Movies in the book tent (!) of the Abergavenny & Border Counties Show, then asking my mum if I could stay up to 'watch one', which she said I could as long as I did my piano practice. That's how I got to see my first horror movie - Kurt Neumann's The Fly. Over the next few weeks I got a lot better at the piano, too  | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.0.89.141 |
Dennis Gifford's was the one with the green cover, right? Karloff on the front, Price and Cushing top right and top left? John, you and me really are Welsh and English versions of each other (only you're a bit more of a genius - okay, i'll give you that). | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
A couple of days ago Paul asked: "When it is on, Caroline?" Sorry, Paul, I was AWOL for a couple of days - taking up carpets! But I see you got your answer from Steve anyway. Yes, spooky things on TV at Christmas - just what I used to love about it too! | ||
| Degsy (Degsy) Username: Degsy Registered: 08-2010 Posted From: 86.142.2.252 |
From the BBC website... "Directed by Andy de Emmony, the one off drama will be a cinematic, moody, poignant and unsettling spooky addition to the Christmas schedules, taking its lead from L'Orfanto, The Shining and Japanese horror movies." Despite my initial revelations this is beginning to look quite promising (saw the very brief trailer with John Hurt today and the relentless figure on the beach looks suitably eerie). One TV tradition from my youth that hasn't died out yet is the Saturday afternoon western - I'm still finding lost gems on Channel Five of all places! But the late-night Friday horror slot seems to have vanished completely. (You were always guaranteed to get a Hammer classic or something similar on ITV - now it's just flipping TV bingo!) | ||
| Seanmcd (Seanmcd) Username: Seanmcd Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 217.39.94.165 |
Well 'Night of the Demon' was on a few weekends ago. BBC2 If i remember. Just like the good old days! | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.0.89.141 |
I must admit, I'm not really liking the sound of this adaptation. According to the Radio Times, key aspects of the story have been removed, leaivng "a dull, low tale", though apparently it does have a few good shock moments. It never ceases to amaze me how often people insist on fixing things that aren't broken. When it comes to writers, it would take an immense ego to think you can improve on one of the scariest ghost stories ever written. | ||
| Tony (Tony) Username: Tony Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.202.203 |
And they've taken the whistle from it! It's going to be 'tasteful', isn't it?  I remember staying up with my mum to watch The Haunting. The one I've seen since is not the same one I saw as a kid (I'm not talking remakes, btw), if you get my meaning. The films we saw as kids don't exist in the same form, in some ways. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
>>The one I've seen since is not the same one I saw as a kid (I'm not talking remakes, btw), if you get my meaning. The films we saw as kids don't exist in the same form, in some ways.<< That's true. They say you never forget your first, don't they? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.220.33 |
The John Hurt film was better than I expected. Genuinely thought-provoking and scary. A variation on a theme of MR James. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.103.153 |
Well, I've just watched this. I made a conscious effort to put both the original story and Miller's TV version out of my mind, and to just watch it on its own terms, and I really liked it. It was intriguing and very creepy indeed, and it had fifty times the atmosphere of the last two televised M R James adaptations, No. 13 & A View from a Hill. | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 86.31.118.252 |
Watched it last night and again at 4am this morning when the house was srill asleep - I really thought it was a very plodding, washed out, soul-less adaptation which seemed to ignore the source material and it should have developed John Hurt's astronomy career instead of trying to give us his background with a few whimsical philosophical mutterings. I dunno, I think Whistle tried too hard to force atmosphere down the viewer's necks, but saying that there was really one creepy moment where everyone is utterly silent in the nursing home and the wife is the only one speaking. A wasted opportunity and it's a shame that someone did no service to the M.R. James tale or to that matter the Robbie Burns poem which I post here if you haven't read it before. WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD Robert Burns O Whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad, O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad, Tho' father an' mother an' a' should gae mad, O whistle, an' I'll come to ye, my lad. But warily tent when ye come to court me, And come nae unless the back-yett be a-jee; Syne up the back-stile, and let naebody see, And come as ye were na comin' to me, And come as ye were na comin' to me. O whistle an' I'll come, &c. At kirk, or at market, whene'er ye meet me, Gang by me as tho' that ye car'd na a flie; But steal me a blink o' your bonie black e'e, Yet look as ye were na lookin' to me, Yet look as ye were na lookin' to me. O whistle an' I'll come, &c. Aye vow and protest that ye care na for me, And whiles ye may lightly my beauty a-wee; But court na anither, tho' jokin' ye be, For fear that she wile your fancy frae me, For fear that she wile your fancy frae me. O whistle an' I'll come, &c. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.147.163 |
Well, I just saw it. LOVED the atmospheric photography and scene lighting. Not fully convinced by the storyline (I prefer the ancient evil in MR J's original), yet all in all worth viewing. It felt a lot like modern japanese ghost movies like Ringu. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.77 |
Yeah, I thought the same as Tom and Mick. Even the Radio Times was downplaying its merrits so I wasn't expecting much. Left the film feeling it had genuine spooky and chilly moments. SPOILER WARNING: I thought showing his missus on the bed and having her speak, rather than leave it somewhat ambiguous, was a mistake. As soon as you show the ghost/monster/deranged killer, you lose something and it can be dealt with. But yeah, overall approved of it. And I'm sure GCW will have enjoyed, cos it was written by the guy who wrote Luther. | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.2.41.218 |
Finally got see it. Effectively creepy moments in the hotel, though those scenes owed more to THE HAUNTING than to the original story. That was my main problem with it. If they didn't want to do OH, WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU, why call it that? Why not just make an original psychological horror about a guy struggling with the knowledge of his wife's illness? | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.68 |
Exactly, Paul. Perhaps they needed the title to get the project funded. If I'd seen the film under another title I would have thought it contained just a passing homage to the James. Oddly enough, I thought it had rather more in common with a tale of mine, "Double Room". I also thought the business with the classical bust made no sense, given that the ghost is still striving to enter the room. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
>>That was my main problem with it. If they didn't want to do OH, WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU, why call it that? Why not just make an original psychological horror about a guy struggling with the knowledge of his wife's illness?<< Agreed, Paul, but I did enjoy it. It owed nothing at all to the original MR James story, of course, but as a creepy piece in its own right, I thought it was pretty good. The atmospheric lighting - shadows and dark, the subtle use of sound, etc - I thought they all had echoes of the Lawrence Gordon Clark Christmas Ghost Stories. And they couldn't have chosen a better lead actor - Hurt was superb. My only gripe? I reckon if you're going to write/direct a piece with a nursing home setting you need to at least visit a nursing home. The inside of that place, the "uniforms" of the patients, the quietness, was nothing like I've ever seen inside a nursing home. In fact, I think it was simply formed from cliched opinions of what nursing homes are like. But I enjoyed the story overall - creepiest bit for me was when the hands started coming under the door in the hotel.  | ||
| Paul_finch (Paul_finch) Username: Paul_finch Registered: 11-2009 Posted From: 92.2.41.218 |
There's no doubt that those bedroom scenes were scary. I particularly liked the shocking revelation that Hurt had been alone in the hotel all during that terrible night. But I see Ramsey's point about the bust. It didn't really serve a purpose, and even if it had been added merely as a prop to try and enhance the atmosphere, it wasn't used properly in that respect. We never got a really good look at its face. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.111.142.151 |
"creepiest bit for me was when the hands started coming under the door in the hotel." Yes...Caroline, that was creepy. >>That was my main problem with it. If they didn't want to do OH, WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU, why call it that? Why not just make an original psychological horror about a guy struggling with the knowledge of his wife's illness?<< That is what it all felt like to me, too. I've had more fun with the Scarifyers on Radio 7 this Christmas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarifyers | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
I think I *did* see the point of the bust. Think about it - you're alone in a strange hotel room, strange noises around you, etc. In the gloom, there's this disembodied white face staring at you. I think I'd have got out of bed to stick it in a cupboard myself!  So what it did, for me, was to serve to help show his state of mind at the time. Thinking about it, I think that's why the story worked so well for me. Possibly due to a combination of the excellent acting and the setting, I was able to *be* that character myself. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
>>I've had more fun with the Scarifyers on Radio 7 this Christmas.<< I've been enjoying the de la Mare and le Fanu readings on Radio 7 myself. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.111.142.151 |
Ha! A woman with good taste | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Yes, a contradiction in terms, isn't it? | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!!! Well, I just watched it and thought it was bloody excellent. Maybe it's because I've been working a bit with folk who care for people with dementia-related illnesses. I dunno. But what I do know is that - MASSIVE SPOILER!!! - the notion of a haunting from a 'ghost in the machine' - the absent person inside a still-functioning body - made for a chilling materialist reading of the ghost story, which problematised the traditional division between Cartesian spirit and the dumb body. Here we have quite a new thing - not a ghost in the standard sense, yet terrifying all the same. Indeed, as Parkin says, this illness is more terrifying than any supernatural encounter. And then the tale goes on to demonstrate that by blurring the boundaries between his own materialism and the supernatural tale as we know and understand it. An ambitious piece, which I personally loved. Btw, I don't think the grinning bust was a bad addition. Parkin's final decision to shut it in the wardrobe is a symbolic act, surely intended to denote his transformation from materialist non-believer to superstitious believer. His grief has eroded his reason. His solitude and perceptual encounters finish off what grief has started. The bust keeps on smiling his way, just like the nurse on the phone. He's too rational - an astronomer, not an astrologist - to believe in such things, and tolerates the face smiling his way night after night, perhaps as an attempt to keep his existential dread at bay ("just rats"). But then it overwhelms him . . . and we get that horrific final scene. I don't agree with Mark: I think that repeated message from his wife was frightening and haunting. "I'm still here. I'm still here. I'm still here." I've spoken to many people lately who wrestle with this problem daily. It scares me, too. Just my tuppence worth. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
In other words, how do you cope with the death of a loved one when s/he still needs feeding? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Just watched this and I agree with Gary F - actually, I thought it was quite brilliant. A wonderful reinterpretation of the James story that came across, as Tom notes above, as being just as influenced by J-Horror as it was by the original story. Wonderful stuff, and genuinely scary - the clutching fingers under the door, the absolutely shit-pantingly creepy stuff with the bust, Hurt's terrifying speech about an empty body that has survived its owner being far more frightening that a ghost or a ghoul, the dead wife perched on the end of the bed. Brrr... Loved it. Btw, I thought the bust was a representation of Hurt's crumbling belief in the rational. It also began to symbolise his sense of dread - whenever he turned on the light he looked straight over at it, and personally I began to dread those moments - not because the bust might have mnoved, but simply because it was there, smiling and implacable. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.78 |
SPOILER I thought showing the ghost was a mistake because it was too in-your-face. It had to be perfectly filmed and balance the rest of the movie. Visually, after the suggestive stuff, it diminished what the muted tones had achieved earlier. **** Short ghost story. My grandmother suffered dementia. Because of a variety of circumstances, I was the only person in my family who could offer her regular care and attention. She was eventually admitted to hospital (I could rant about the NHS here as well as social services and care for the elderly but that's a different debate) and then sent on to a care home. At this point my father and his sister were more involved than I was. My grandmother was taken to the care home, my dad accompanied her. My dad went home, leaving her there. She'd little notion where she was and hadn't been sure of my father's identity. That evening, my mum later told me, she was watching TV and the living room door opened, where my dad was standing pale and distressed. He beckoned her over, unable to speak at first. My mum went to him and he reported what had just happened to him in a state of fear and some bewilderment. He'd been in the kitchen, washing up (as my mum wryly pointed out, a strange enough beginning to any story involving my dad), and he'd just washed out the milk bottles. He then went to the house door and put the bottles on the doorstep, for collection next day. As he put them out he glanced behind him and saw my grandmother, dressed in the clothing she'd habitually fallen into wearing since the dementia kicked in, standing further back in the hallway. She did not speak. She did not smile or seem to be casting any emotion his way. (She was an unexpressive women in that regard when alive.) she was simply watching him. Startled, he stepped back, glancing at her after moving his head. And she was gone. My mother, who'd never got on with my grandmother, calmed my dad, while, as she put it again quite wryly, she was thinking, 'Oh great, that's just what I need: HER in my halway for ever.' My gran lived another year. Her body did anyway. As for that intangible commodity we might call the self or the soul...who knows where that was during that time. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I thought showing the ghost was a mistake because it was too in-your-face. I have to disagree, mate - I'm with GF on this one. I was watching this in the dark, all alone, and when we got that shot of her perched on her haunches on the bed I actually moaned in fear. Really affective, I thought: everything before had been leading up to this, and it genuinely scared me. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
I'm actually a bit reluctant to go to bed now... Always the sign of a good ghost story, IMHO. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.78 |
I'm afraid I moaned in annoyance at that point, Zed. But I certainly 'enjoyed' being spooked and creeped out to that point. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.171.129.78 |
What I did find sad was the promo write up for it in the Radio Times, which suggested it was dull and plodding with the odd creepy moment between yawns. Everything's pace, pace, bloody pace these days, isn't it. James bloody Patterson sorta thing. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.180.184 |
I went into this with an open mind, and was VERY pleasantly surprised. I'm not a huge admirer of the Jonathan Miller version of the story - hey, I've given it the old college try three times, and each time I come away thinking 'Oh, dear' - so when I saw a few advance reviewers saying 'Not a patch on the Miller version' I thought 'Okay, might be all right, then.' Sorry, that's the way my mind works. . . . Anyway, I thought this was a good stab at James's story, or at least the basis of it: lonely man, on his own, finds unsettling goings-on at a seaside resort. I hesitate to say it, at the risk of enraging die-hard Jamesians here, but the addition of something like psychological depth and emotional underpinning lent a good deal to the story (and, as a woman, it was nice to see a nod to the fact that women do, in fact, make up a fairly vibrant one-half of the human race, something one wouldn't necessarily get from a reading of James's oeuvre). The idea of Parkins 'taking a break' from being the sole caregiver for his ailing wife is one that resonates with the times, and the fact that it's now a ring - wedding? engagement? - he finds, and which brings on such dire consequences, makes sense in our day and age, with its implications of things promised and not fulfilled until much later, and by someone else entirely. The bit with the bust: well, that creeped me out, frankly. The idea of something like that watching me. . . . I'd have turned it away, or put it in a cupboard, first night. And I kept watching for it, wondering if it had changed position since we last saw it (which was a wonderful way, I think, of evoking Parkins's state of mind). In short: yeah, of course, I'd love to see a straight-on adaptation of the story James actually wrote. But - if I saw it, would it be as good as the story itself, which resides on my bookshelf, and can be read anytime I choose to read it, with my own casting and stage directions? I'd rather an innovative adaption such as this one, than a preserved in aspic version. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.180.184 |
I don't know that I ought to post it here; but if anyone cares to go to YouTube and search for 'Oh, Whistle And I'll Come to You, My Lad' they'll find a link to the first part of the Robert Powell version, which is as fine a version of James's story as is available. Enjoy. . . . | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
SPOILER >>>I thought showing the ghost was a mistake because it was too in-your-face. It had to be perfectly filmed and balance the rest of the movie. Visually, after the suggestive stuff, it diminished what the muted tones had achieved earlier. I certainly see your point. But it was the wife's tangible anger and sudden lucidity (after her earlier silence and confusion) which chilled as much as her supernatural appearance. Immediately afterwards, I imagined what it would feel like to care for someone for years who remains uncommunicative and then to have her suddenly look up at you and say, angrily, that the faith you're losing is a betrayal. More terrifying than any mere ghost. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
SPOILER The more I think about it, the more that grinning bust becomes associated with the Lesley Sharpe nurse character. Sharpe played the nurse quite explicitly with a permanent smile and upbeat bearing. That's what folk try and do in such difficult situations: keep smiling at the person who's struggling to deal with it, as if to say, "Don't worry, everything's all right, we'll get through this." So the bust becomes a representation (as the nurse was) of this fauxly smiling world. And Parkins' rejection of it - his putting the bust away - is an subconscious acknowledgement of the fact that this necessarily upbeat message is a lie: everything isn't all right and he won't get through this. And the same night, of course, he doesn't. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
>>>The idea of Parkins 'taking a break' from being the sole caregiver for his ailing wife is one that resonates with the times, and the fact that it's now a ring - wedding? engagement? - he finds, and which brings on such dire consequences, makes sense in our day and age, with its implications of things promised and not fulfilled until much later, and by someone else entirely. I like the idea that the ring can be taken as a wedding band. Didn't occur to me. But it fits. One speculates as to whether the couple's "childlessness" was his choice. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.209.220.6 |
It was excellent, wasn't it? I think the Radio Times lowered my expectations enough for me to appreciate it. SPOILERS - *********************************** The scenes where the figure was chasing him on the beach were well done, even though they weren't that original. I think it held enough of the James feel to warrant the title. When I heard it was a contemporary adaptation I was fearful, but everything was done well...the hotel looked older than the one in the Miller film, and the place where the beach scenes were filmed seemed suitably creepy. AND WE SHOULD ALL THANK THE LORD THAT THERE WAS NO OVERBLOWN USE OF CGI... | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
One other thing about the bust: it probably kept changing position because the hotelier shifted it that way while cleaning the room each morning. Perhaps she thought she was trying to help her melancholic patron. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
What's all this with the Radio Times? I thought they were partisan and bigged up the Beeb? | ||
| Johnny_mains (Johnny_mains) Username: Johnny_mains Registered: 04-2010 Posted From: 86.31.118.252 |
This review says it better than I could - but I agree with it wholeheartedly: http://tychy.wordpress.com/2010/12/24/television-review-whistle-and-ill-come-to- you/ | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Remember the elderly at Xmas? That's what the reviewer took from the message at the end? No way, man. The message from the spook was far more than that. As I asked above: how do you cope with the death of a loved one when s/he still needs feeding? It's defies logic. But folk who care for people with this condition have to do so. They grief, while the deceased lives on. A Derridean knot. And Parkins brings to this a dyed-in-the-wool materialist mindset (to wit, the Cartesian spirit is a lie) whose logic rules out the possibility that there's anything left inside his wife. So the woman's message is a violation of latter-day empiricism which asserts that, if there is no spirit, there is no person. It's a refutation of such reductionism. A person isn't just a mind. A person is a body. A person is his/her past acts. A person lives in others' memories. She's still there. Don't let her die in your simple-science mind, Parkins. In short, the message at the end isn't simply a plea to society to deal with the elderly more compassionately. It's a plea to widen the focus of our understandings of what constitutes a person. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.220.33 |
Exactly, Gary. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Now, via free speculation, I can picture Parkins' and his wife's former life together. His schizoid preoccupation with academia. Her complicity because he's a respected fellow and a good provider. Their quiet, solitary, "rambling" lives. Their childlessness born of his inability to cope with emotion. Her illness. His struggle to handle it. And then the events of this tale. I don't think, in Parkins' mind, his wife existed very much in the first place. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
. . . and her anger isn't just about his treatment of her since she died. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
You really liked this, didn't you, GF? This is thre most I've ever seen you discuss a TV show, I think. I like your comment about the bust being associated with Lesley Sharp's nurse - yeah, I didn't think of that, but it works. I think that reviewe misses some important points and the comment about remembering the aged at Christmas is, frankly, silly. I'd rather an innovative adaption such as this one, than a preserved in aspic version. Hear-hear, Barbara. Miller's version was innovative, too: really weird and rather surreal in parts (I love his adaptation, btw). | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.169.220.33 |
As you get older as a married couple, some of this makes more and more sense. And I did get much of this seeping through the production as I watched it in real-time on Christmas Eve. Thanks for articulating it, Gary | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Philosophical horror, Zed: my 'bag'. My (ahem) pleasure, Des. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Gary - I knew you'd like it as I was watching it. It touched upon a lot of themes you hold dear, dear. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
The bottom line, for me, is this: dementia is a going to be a massive challenge for this generation and those which follow. And we think that, because we don't believe in ghosts, we're somehow more sophisticated than our forebears. But we're not. We're still caught up in Cartesian dualism. We've just replaced the ghost/spirit with some vague notion we label the person/the self. But that's not what bbeing human is. Being human is about being embodied and eveything that flows from there: our memories, our interrelations, and more. In understanding dementia, we have to get beyond a reductionist Cartesian model of the human condition. And if there's any moralising in this tale, then it's all to the good in this sense (IMHO). | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
Agreed. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Surely it's no coincidence that the ghost of his wife appears in the place in which they enjoyed some of their best times. That's what still exists: his wife and what she once did. She's still there, in his memories. She's not dead. Scary shit, dude. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.147.0 |
We've just watched this at Probert Towers and while I cannot hope to match Dr Fry's academic insights I do agree with Zed that it's good to see our resident psychologist waxing so lyrical about horror TV I have to say I was surprised and delighted by this, a BBC TV play that was more a 21st Century 'Play for Today' ghost story than a faithful MR James adaptation, and was all the better for it. The film lulled me skilfully into a deliberately slow pacing which was exactly the speed at which the story needed to be told. The Jamesian touches were well handled and the subtext, far more eruditely discussed by GF et al above, told a ghost story from the kind of human angle that MRJ, for all his academe, would never have been able to acheive. So well done BBC - Lady P jumped and we both cried. I almost felt like I was an 11 year old watching good telly again. Oh how marvellous. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.76.188 |
I can only hope someone wiil have the sagacity to put it in Youtube soon. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Wow, it's great to see how much this touched and affected you all - it was IMO a brilliant play, well executed - and you guys manage to express it so much better than I can. BTW it gave me nightmares the night I watched it too, and has stuck in my mind ever since - always a good sign of something I watch or read being great. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.147.106 |
Technically, the fingers under the door and the appearance of the ghost at the bed were quite similar to the unstoppable Sadako, don't you agree? | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.253.77 |
a BBC TV play that was more a 21st Century 'Play for Today' ghost story than a faithful MR James adaptation That's exactly, it, John - yep, I agree totally. Tom: I commented on the J-Horror influence (but I've always thought a lot of J-Horror is influenced by James anyway). | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.147.106 |
> Tom: I commented on the J-Horror influence (but I've always thought a lot of J-Horror is influenced by James anyway). Ah, yes, I had overlooked your comment. Regarding J-Horror being influenced by mighty MRJ - I agree. I always thought that Ringu was the best MR James movie I ever saw, even if it wasn't based on his stories. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 220.138.166.2 |
I don't think there is much, if any, real direct influence from James on Japanese/Korean/other Asian horror cinema. From what I've seen and based on my own readings of classic Asian literature and folklore, the influence is more from their own rich tradition of ghost stories, from the Yotsuya Kaidan and Liao-Zhai through to Ugetsu Monogatari and the writings (themselves often based on existing lore) of Lafcadio Hearn. That isn't to say there are not echoes and similarities, though. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.76.188 |
James is one of the handful of true master craftsmen, hence it stands to reason you will find echoes of his work in contemporary horror. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
>>>That isn't to say there are not echoes and similarities, though. Perhaps we have here a case of convergent cultural evolution. Just as two species of birds can developed the same body-structure despite being separated geographically, so too can different cultures generate the same metaphoric material. They're all responses to certain ecological/social determinants and we shouldn't be surprised by regular overlap. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.214.196 |
Huw, I do agree with your observations. In the case of Ringu, I simply thought that the whole atmosphere and approach was very MRJ like (ok, with a woman in the main role), if he would have written stories today, they could well be in the style of Ringu. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 92.0.142.240 |
I liked "Whistle and I'll Come To You". It's as simple as that. tight, clever and truly unnerving. Not so much M R James as a "Poe's Progeny" James. Cheers Terry | ||
| John Forth (John) Username: John Registered: 05-2008 Posted From: 82.24.1.217 |
While I think the new version of O WHISTLE was too removed from the original story to carry that title, I think it succeeded massively in its core purpose - to frighten. It's been a while since I've been subjected to quite so many shudders, even if most of them were nicked from THE HAUNTING. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.180.184 |
One problem with adapting a classic, well-known, and much-loved work for TV or film is that there is absolutely no way you're going to please everyone. If you take a 'Just the facts, ma'am' approach and try to stay absolutely true to the story - in setting, tone, pace, character, incident - then you risk ending up with something that doesn't work in the medium of film, because something written for the printed page isn't necessarily going to translate to the screen without changes. You'll also annoy the people who pictured so-and-so, or the setting, or a certain incident, in a certain way; what's on screen doesn't accord with their mind's eye view, and so what's on screen fails. On the other hand, stray too far from the source material and you'll annoy some people for a whole different set of reasons. I see this time and time again with Sherlock Holmes on film, particularly in the case of film versions of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES, of which there have been many (some two dozen or so, now, by my reckoning). It's the actual Holmes adventure that's been filmed the most, so of course there's a canonical reference point, and anytime a filmmaker deviates from the canon you get Sherlockians grumbling about it. 'Why did they add a tarantula/a seance/eliminate Laura Lyons/eliminate Lestrade/make Stapleton's wife his sister/make Beryl Stapleton a fiery femme fatale/turn Dr Mortimer into a red herring' etc., etc., until the cows come home. Well, people, it's called adapting a book for film, and anytime that happens - you're trying to turn a 200 page novel written a century ago into a 100-minute film - something has got to give. If you want the HOUND as ACD wrote it, the book's there on the shelf, and it isn't going anywhere, so have at it. Let the rest of us enjoy the various film versions for what they are, not what they're not. It also, I think, comes down to judging a work ON ITS OWN MERITS. A fair number of people dislike the film version of GHOST STORY because - well, lots of reasons, but they usually boil down to what the film lacks when compared with the book. If you can stand back enough to look at the film as something that exists in its own right, and stop comparing it to Straub's novel, then you'll find a very effective and haunting film with an awful lot going for it, and an awful lot done right. Same, for me, with this version of "Oh, Whistle". Judging it as a ghost story made for television, I think it worked very well, while preserving enough of James's original that I didn't feel cheated. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.182.24.98 |
To go off at a slight tangent, but still on the subject of adapting books for the screen, I recall Jackie Collins being asked what she thought of the liberties Hollywood had taken with one of her novels. "Darling", she replied, "they gave me two million dollars for the book; they can do what the fuck they like with it". | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
She's one classy lady . . . not. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.180.184 |
Mick: it's rather the attitude Conan Doyle took when William Gillette bought the rights for the play he wrote that became SHERLOCK HOLMES. Gillette cabled ACD and asked 'May I marry Holmes?' (meaning could he have Holmes romantically involved during the course of the play). ACD replied 'You may marry him or murder him or do what you like with him.' | ||
| Kate (Kathleen) Username: Kathleen Registered: 09-2009 Posted From: 86.142.147.0 |
Spot on, Barbara!  Both your long posts put it into words beautifully. | ||
| Tom_alaerts (Tom_alaerts) Username: Tom_alaerts Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.176.214.196 |
> Well, people, it's called adapting a book for film, and anytime that happens - you're trying to turn a 200 page novel written a century ago into a 100-minute film - something has got to give. If you want the HOUND as ACD wrote it, the book's there on the shelf, and it isn't going anywhere, so have at it. Let the rest of us enjoy the various film versions for what they are, not what they're not. Usually I find it largely ok if the director and writer succeed in adapting the "feel" of a novel to the screen in a good movie, it is less important that all details are translated correctly. A few examples: - L.A. Confidential translated the atmosphere of James Ellroy's mammoth novel perfectly to the screen. - The Ninth Gate dropped one of the two main story strands, yet it still feels right. I read the novel The Dumas Club after I saw the movie and thought it was well redacted for the screen. - a counterexample, I thought that the Watchmen adaptation was too precise, and the movie rhythm suffered from it. - The Shining exists in a loose translation (Kubrick's) and a pretty precise made for TV version. Kubrick's is in my opinion much stronger, elevating the pulpy material. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 216.232.180.184 |
Tom: precisely! If you look at - to go back to my Sherlockian example - the ACD version of HOUND, the scene in the hut on the moor is very stagnant; the dialogue reads all right on the page, but if you try to say it aloud it falls flat. In the 1939 version, with Rathbone and Bruce, screenwriter Ernest Pascal has taken the TONE of the scene but cast it into very different words, which work perfectly on the screen. If you tried to film the scene with ACD's dialogue it would be dull as ditchwater; Pascal realised that, and gave us something true to the spirit of Conan Doyle, but not in his actual words. And the film is, I think, all the better for that. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Yes, the two media demand a different approach. That's why being an adapting screenwriter isn't just a case of copy-pasting the dialogue from book to script. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.186.114 |
James is something of a one-trick writer – nobody cares remotely about his characterisation, his dialogue is useless, and his settings and framework narratives are unremarkable. Without those pitch-perfect sudden evocations of nightmarish, disorientating strangeness, there'd be nothing worth reading in his stories. But for those alone... '"Oh, Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad"' is a stunning example, and so is 'A View From a Hill'. Needless to say, there'd be no point in reading the great James passages in isolation from the stories they belong to. But I must admit I tend to read through the formula openings and the sub-Dickens parodic dialogue with a feeling of "Oh, get on with it..." | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Yeah, the boy had "the touch" and no mistake. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.233.253 |
P.S. I'd make an exception (to my criticisms above) for 'Martin's Close', an atypical James story in many ways and one of serious merit throughout. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
Whatever you say, Joel, all the tales are eminently more readable than his academic output. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.52.199 |
"Martin's Close" somehow sticks in the mind, doesn't it? I find the witnesses' tales just about the strongest stuff James ever wrote, on a par with the chase scene on the beach in "Oh Whistle". Totally illogical behaviour on the ghost's part, but there is an inherent dream logic which makes the reading experience of these accounts acutely special. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.230.65 |
'Martin's Close' would be a great title for a gay porn movie. As M.R. James would not have said. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.230.65 |
For next Christmas, I gather the BBC are planning an hour-long compilation of clips from past M.R. James adaptations, with a soundtrack by Slade. It's called Blasting the Tunes. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.52.199 |
Maybe the double meaning was intentional. The ghost of the murdered girl tries to re-establish contact with her erstwhile lover Squire Martin - frantically looking for opportunities to do so when he is in the vicinity, in other words when Martin's close. Yet another interpretation: Martin's end (where close = a conclusion, a finish). | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.142.147.0 |
Joel - I think M R James would also have been the last to suggest that 'Count Magnus' would also be a great name for a gay porn film set in a turn of the century academic institution. And I hear that Ready Steady Cook is to revamped to become a programme about constipation relieving diets called Smashing the Prunes | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 91.110.168.145 |
Hubert, I'm sure you're right – specifically the alternative meaning of 'close' as 'end'. Thanks! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.182.24.98 |
Curse you, Lord P. - I'd come up with the title "Basting the Prunes" but I can no longer use that! | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.12.225 |
And there's the great line in 'Science Fiction Double Feature' from ROCKY HORROR, a clever nod to both James's story and the movie based on it: 'Dana Andrews said prunes / Gave him the runes / And casting them used lots of skill . . .' | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
I still mean to write my story about an ice hockey mask once worn by a referee in the game who has lately died. This ghostly garment keeps appearing during subsequent matches, haunting the players who'd disliked the man's strict governance of the game. The story will be called THE MASK OF THE DEAD REF. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 78.21.23.32 |
Several years ago I stumbled on a well-thumbed missal in a second-hand bookshop with pictures of naked boys pasted in at regular intervals. I guess one might have called this An Uncommon Prayer Book. | ||
| Barbara Roden (Nebuly) Username: Nebuly Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 142.179.12.225 |
The only problem with that idea, Gary, is that referees in ice hockey don't wear masks. . . . | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.202.102 |
They would if I were playing . . . | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.153.239.197 |
<<while>> ============== It's perhaps interesting to speculate if many would have connected it with the MRJ story if it had been entitled, say, "The Hurting"? |