"Analyse a spook?"

DEAD OF NIGHT - THE EXORCISM (1972)
THE STONE TAPE (1972)

Anna Cropper plays Rachel in the DEAD OF NIGHT episode THE EXORCISM. Cropper also appeared in the 1975 West End stage version of the story, after Mary Ure died from an alcohol and barbiturate overdose following a disastrous opening night.

DEAD OF NIGHT was a series of self-contained supernatural stories broadcast on BBC2 in 1972. Taking its name from the Ealing portmanteau film of 1945, this incarnation ran for seven fifty-minute episodes, and only three - THE EXORCISM, RETURN FLIGHT and A WOMAN SOBBING - are known to survive in the BBC archives. RETURN FLIGHT - shown on the 12th of November - is a surprisingly banal and predictable aviation-based story from the pen of Robert Holmes; A WOMAN SOBBING - shown on 17th December - is a solid yarn which greatly benefits from the wide-eyed performance of Anna Massey as a bored housewife and mother who hears a female voice crying from the attic space. The two programmes under consideration here have a fluid association with the series: THE EXORCISM was conceived as a stand-alone work but shown as the DEAD OF NIGHT opener, and THE STONE TAPE was included in the same production block for "internal" reasons, but was broadcast as a singular play on Christmas Day.

THE EXORCISM begins with Edmund (Edward Petherbridge) and his wife Rachel (Anna Cropper) showing Dan (Clive Swift) around their recently renovated cottage. As Dan's partner Margaret (Sylvia Kay) helps prepare Christmas dinner, Rachel plays a clavichord, but realises that she has no idea what the tune is. There is a power cut, and the telephone is also suddenly inoperable. After digesting their meal, all four suffer shooting pain; Dan finds that the door won't open, the windows can't be unlocked, and the outside has been plunged into total blackness. Rachel falls into a trance, and relates the experiences of a woman whose husband was hanged when trying to obtain food for her and their two starving children, while the squire and his family indulged in sumptuous meals. We learn that the wife locked herself and the children in their house and waited to die from starvation, hoping that the house would recall the injustice of their deaths.

After appearing uncredited as a six-year-old child in Hammer's film version of THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, Jane Asher is reunited with the work of Nigel Kneale in THE STONE TAPE.

Written and directed by Don Taylor, THE EXORCISM is the standout surviving episode of DEAD OF NIGHT, and different in tone to the famous run of ghost stories made by Lawrence Gordon Clark for the BBC in the 70s. Instead of the seeping vistas of M.R. James and Charles Dickens, THE EXORCISM is reminiscent of Luis Buñuel's absurdist 1967 comedy THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL. A socio-political spook story, the programme is highlighted by some choice but resonant dialogue; after Dan surmises that the couples "should concentrate on how to be socialists and rich", he later tells Margaret not to be afraid as they have been privileged. The coda, where a newscaster reports that the four friends have been found dead apparently from starvation, provides a chilling conclusion to a real time, claustrophobic play which has been enhanced by a sparse but solid cast: Swift is particularly suited to his role, and Cropper's performance in her possessed state is alarmingly believable.

THE STONE TAPE has Peter Brock (Michael Bryant), head of Ryan Electrics research, working on a new recording medium. Scientists move into Taskerlands, an old Victorian mansion, that has been renovated to act as their facility. Foreman Roy Collinson (Iain Cuthbertson) says that the refurbishment of one of the rooms remains uncompleted, as builders refuse to work on the grounds that it is haunted. The researchers explore the area and hear the sounds of a woman followed by a scream. Computer programmer Jill Greeley (Jane Asher) - who is susceptible to the paranormal - sees an image of a woman running up the steps in the room and falling, apparently to her death. Inquiring with the local villagers, they learn that a young maid died there, and Brock realises that somehow the stone has preserved an image. Becoming more desperate under mounting pressure to deliver results, Brock wipes the image. Jill realises that the maid was masking a much older recording, and is confronted by a malevolent presence. Transported to a proto-Stonehenge, she falls to her death, with the elder force claiming a replacement for the ghost girl.

The BFI's STONE TAPE DVD of 2001 includes an audio commentary by Nigel Kneale moderated by critic Kim Newman. Containing an array of interesting trivia and asides, Newman states that this programme - however dated in equipment and fashion - remains seminal because it portrays a technological development we are still living through.

Written by Nigel Kneale and directed by Peter Sasdy, THE STONE TAPE is a landmark slice of supernatural television. A central theme in Kneale's stories are conflicts that stem from some primal yearning, effecting the past, present, or future. In fact, THE STONE TAPE can be considered the final part in a trilogy of Kneale tales - together with QUATERMASS AND THE PIT and his lost masterpiece THE ROAD - that refine and counteract the notion of haunting by applying scientific evaluation. It was also one of the first stories to promulgate the hypothesis of residual haunting, that ghosts may be explained as recordings of past events made by the physical environment. Amazingly, this science babble has come to be known as the Stone Tape Theory by parapsychological researchers, and in the 2004 BBC7 Radio Serial Ghost Zone, a character refers explicitly to the theory as an explanation for the way an invading alien intelligence is "replaying" scenes from the past. For what is ostensibly a ghost story, THE STONE TAPE explores the living; how humans interact in such a situation - particularly in relation to business and money - and, if indeed, a human presence is required to amplify the process. This is effectively bought to the screen by an excellent ensemble cast, whose intense performances often border on the melodramatic.

Hammer Monster Mash

THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955)
THE GORGON (1964)



"All Earth Stands Helpless!" Aware that the Quatermass name held no weight in the United States, THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT was retitled SHOCK! then THE CREEPING UNKNOWN, and cut by United Artists. The movie was released with THE BLACK SLEEP, which featured Basil Rathbone as a mad scientist opening the brains of his victims to discover a means to cure his wife's tumour. It was alleged that this double-bill literally scared a nine-year-old boy to death, who died of a ruptured artery during a showing in Illinois.

HAMMER were always happy to capitalise on established hits; having drawn on radio (Dick Barton, PC49), the studio looked towards television with a truncated version of Nigel Kneale's THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT. While most British production houses regarded the X certificate as a kiss of death for the box office, Hammer hoped that the title change to XPERIMENT would be a marketing ploy to help the financially stricken company. Thankfully the film was a hit; without THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, it would be doubtful that Hammer would have survived to create the celebrated Gothic horrors that are so entrenched in our heritage.

The film begins with experimental rocket ship Quatermass 1 crash landing at Oakley Green. This opening - where the phallus-like craft plunges into the ground breaking the monotony of two coy lovers - is a fitting allegory for the arrival of Hammer horror. In this instant, the domesticity of the British feature film makes way for a new order of directness. Professor Bernard Quatermass (Brian Donlevy) - the British rocket group scientist responsible for launching the ship without official sanction - discovers that two of the three crew members have disappeared. The sole survivor - Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth) - is suffering from low blood pressure, pulse and heart rate. As Carroon's condition worsens, the astronaut plunges his fist into a cactus, starting a consumption by an alien organism which mimics the plant form. Quatermass tracks the creature to Westminster Abbey, and before its spores can spread, is electrocuted.

Richard Wordsworth's alien-infected Carroon in THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT is an unwilling martyr to Professor Quatermass' abrasive scientific crusade. The actor would later bring similar sympathetic tendencies to the role of the feral beggar in THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF.

In keeping with a long-established pattern, a Hollywood star was contracted for the benefit of stateside distribution. Fading heavy Donlevy was selected much to Kneale's horror (Donlevy's alcoholism reducing the actor to read off cue cards) and in 1995 the writer was still vociferous of the actor's portrayal: "I may have picked Quatermass' surname out of a phone book but his first name was carefully chosen: Bernard, after Bernard Lovell, the creator of Jodrell Bank. Pioneer, ultimate questing man. Donlevy played him as a mechanic, a creature with a completely closed mind. He could make nothing of any imaginative lines, and simply barked and bawled his way through the plot. A bully whose emotional range ran from annoyance to fury." Donlevy's Quatermass is indeed pointed and bullish, refusing to waste time even when considering Carroon's increasingly catatonic suffering ("there's no room for personal feelings in science ... some of us have a mission").

As well as the wayward Donlevy, American Margia Dean plays Carroon's wife Judith. Suffering from indifferent post-synching, Dean was imposed upon director Val Guest because she was reportedly the girlfriend of American co-producer Robert Lippert. Thankfully the British cast feature strongly: David King-Wood as Dr Briscoe, Harold Lang as private eye Christie and Thora Hird as Rose the baglady are uniformly excellent, with Jack Warner's Inspector Lomax shadowing his trademark role in DIXON OF DOCK GREEN. Wordsworth's heart-rending performance, however, is the highlight; communicating an unbearable loneliness through mime, the success of the actor's illustration of a once intelligent man consumed by forces beyond his control was key to Hammer when contemplating their re-imagining in THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Discovering body horror years before Cronenberg, Wordworth's poignancy matches Karloff's Frankenstein, particularly in the scene with a little girl (Jane Asher), which mirrors Karloff's lakeside encounter with Maria (Marilyn Harris). It is this sequence that we glimpse Carroon in human form for the last time, as if the innocence of the child evokes a last note of sympathy.

The girl who befriends Carroon in THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT is played by Jane Asher, who seventeen years later would star in Nigel Kneale's THE STONE TAPE.

Many characters and sub-plots are inevitably missing when compressing the television serial to feature length - for example, the intriguing notion that the alien ether had made Carroon absorb the other two astronaut's minds - but such trimming makes THE QUATERMAS XPERIMENT a fast-paced thriller which is made even more immediate by Guest's gritty, semi-documentary style. Perhaps one constriction too many was the change made to the Westminster Abbey conclusion; instead of the explosive climax in the film, on television Quatermass appeals to the human consciousness within the alien, which wills itself to death. Totally lost upon the feature is the teleplay's framing of this climax within a fictionalised live BBC broadcast - which must have raised a few eyebrows of those tuning in late - but although THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT loses this particular faux realite, Guest's feature does incorporate one of the earliest examples of found footage in cinema history: a silent video feed shows the bombardment of Q1 by the cosmic rays which cause Carroon's transformation.

While the changes to the teleplay are in the interests of producing a box office success, the cuts made by United Artists for the Americanised THE CREEPING UNKNOWN release are, in fact, insulting. Nearly three minutes of footage is removed - mostly cheapening the London Zoo sequence - but the devil is in the detail: Donlevy and Dean receive above the title billing opposed to Donlevy and Warner in the British version, and the titles also downplay the importance of Kneale's play. Furthermore, American prints eliminate acknowledgments to the BBC, The Air Ministry, the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Co, The British Interplanetary Society, The Post London Authority and General Radiological Ltd, as well as replacing the closing "A Hammer Production, produced at Bray Studios" with a simple "The End."

Having exhausted the gallery of classic movie monsters, Hammer turned to mythology for inspiration, resulting in THE GORGON being one of the studio's most poetic and haunted achievements.

When THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN was unleashed, it set in motion an initial burst of robust Hammer Horrors that focused on dominating male characters. THE GORGON, however, made seven years later, started a trend towards predatory yet well-spoken female parts that fundamentally weakened narrative. Hammer's later move from Bray to Elstree was detrimental enough, but this gender shift resulted in a hit-and-miss series of films which portrayed murderous but sexualised lead woman: for every measured entry like FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN and HANDS OF THE RIPPER, there was THE WITCHES and LUST FOR A VAMPIRE.

The last Hammer film to combine the talents of stars Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and director Terence Fisher, THE GORGON is overwhelmingly fatalistic.  Set in 1910, the film focuses on the village of Vandorf, which has been suffering a series of mysterious deaths for five years. However, the local doctor Namaroff (Cushing) has been concealing that the victims were all turned to stone, and suspects that the derelict Castle Borski is housing Megaera, the last of the legendary Gorgons. When an artist's model and her unborn child are turned to stone, her boyfriend Bruno (Jeremy Longhurst) hangs himself, which results in the boy's grieving father Professor Heitz (Michael Goodliffe), his second son Paul (Richard Pasco) and Paul's mentor Professor Meister (Lee) investigating.

Barbara Shelley in THE GORGON. Ballet dancer Prudence Hyman played Shelley's monstrous alter ego with the infamous stiff snake-hair.

Ambiguities add to this dream-like storyline. Hammer may have looked to mythology for new monsters, but the Greek Megaera was not even a Gorgon, rather a deity who causes jealousy. It is unclear why The Gorgon only appears during the full moon, as is the question of why - after thousands of years - the spirit has possessed a human, Namaroff's assistant Carla (Barbara Shelley). Although her back story is never elaborated on, Carla was an amnesia victim who came to Vandorf for treatment, the doctor exhibiting both concern and deeper feelings for his patient. Shelley brings her usual grace and strength to the role, but the inversion of Cushing and Lee's usual screen persona's creates mixed results. Cushing plays the stern, humourless authority role that Lee would normally be presented with, Namaroff a tormented variation of Cushing's Frankenstein as he struggles with guilt and unrequited love. Lee, however, seems uneasily cast in an unflattering greying facade.

The doctor's observation "the most noble work of God, the human brain, is the most revolting to the human eye," underlines Fisher's grim approach. With only some humorous asides from Meister to relieve the gloom ("don't use long words, Inspector; they don't suit you"), the director's emphasis on the pain of romance has great depth, with the central love triangle being the most poignant to be found in Fisher's oeuvre. Despite THE GORGON being considered a second-tier release by Hammer historians, It is an intimate picture which uses its careful pace as a necessity of its mood. Indeed, there are scenes that rank with the best of Fisher: Heitz's call to the Castle Borski, for example, and the sequence where the doomed father attempts to pen a letter to Paul during his gradual petrification.