Echoes from Beyond

BBC2 PLAYHOUSE - THE BREAKTHROUGH (1975)
BBC2 PLAYHOUSE - MRS ACLAND'S GHOSTS (1975)
BBC2 PLAYHOUSE THE MIND BEYOND (1976)

Irene Shubik's Play for Today: The Evolution of Television Drama is an account of her career that has become the standard reference work on the subject. Shubik had devised ABC's OUT OF THIS WORLD before moving to the BBC, where her influence on the development of the single play encompassed OUT OF THE UNKNOWN, THE WEDNESDAY PLAY/PLAY FOR TODAY, WESSEX TALES and PLAYHOUSE.

DAPHNE Du Maurier's THE BREAKTHROUGH tells of Saunders (Simon Ward), sent to a remote government lab to help prove a theoretical energy. The experiment involves a subject close to death, as well as in a computer-induced hypnosis and telepathic communication. The person is a mentally deficient but psychically gifted child - possibly affected by the death of her twin - who can report the dying sensations posthumously. Lacking any resolution and suffering from studio sets and stifled performances, there is too much scientific speculation for the drama to breath; THE BREAKTHROUGH reminds of THE ASPHYX, which also documents spirits and near-death experiences before similarly descending into absurdity. Far more interesting is William Trevor's MRS ACLAND'S GHOSTS, where Mr Mockler (John Bluthal) receives numerous letters from stranger Mrs Acland (Sara Kestelman). The woman tells of how the three ghosts of her childhood siblings have continued to make appearances to her; Mockler discovers that Mrs Acland is in a mental institution - placed there by her husband - and was in fact an only child. The notion of ghosts showing themselves on the basis of yearning and suggestion is far more embracing than THE BREAKTHROUGH's babble, with Kestelman giving a heartfelt showing of emotional neglect.

After these tryouts, BBC2 PLAYHOUSE mutated into THE MIND BEYOND. In the first three tales Meriel the Ghost Girl explores the contradictory nature of psychic experiences, opening with George Livingston (Donald Pleasence) witnessing a convincing séance, only for the authenticity to be questioned in a film noir pastiche and re-evaluated by young reporter Robina Oliver (Janet Street-Porter, of all people); Double Echo sees autistic teenager Alison Fisher (Geraldine Cowper) treated by Harley Street Dr Mallam (Jeremy Kemp), only for the pair to develop a telekinetic bond that can see into the future; and in The Love of a Good Woman, after the death of his first wife, Henry Ridout (William Lucas) remarries and builds a new life in a harbour town. But his dead wife's restless spirit communicates with him through his young daughter.

Penguin released The Mind Beyond to accompany the series, which was edited by Shubik. All the writers provided prose versions of their teleplays, with the exception of Stones, which was adapted by the producer herself.

The second half of the series starts with The Daedalus Equations, where mathematical variables from a dead scientist are channelled into money-grabbing psychic fraud Eileen Gray (Megs Jenkins), yet the equations continue; Stones details the plans of a Stonehenge relocation to Hyde Park to boost tourist revenues, with academic Nicholas Reeve (Richard Pasco) realising that the disappearance of three children is linked to their fathers ownership of the last-known copies of Stonehenge Defended; and The Man with the Power is a second coming of a (black) Christ story, where Boysie (Willie Jonah) embarks on a divine quest, leaving his girlfriend, home and job.

The opening titles of THE MIND BEYOND usher the viewer into a world of haunted faces and electrical impulses, a twilight domain away from rational human senses. The eight PLAYHOUSE's under consideration here typify the giddy pseudoscientific and paranormal so prevalent in 70s BBC drama, but the centre staging of mentally-disturbed characters - and Livington's questionable interest in the naked Meriel the Ghost Girl - clash with the more conventional yarns of mysteries better left alone; and in The Man with the Power, religious allegory seems a leap too far. But the productions are a goldmine for familiar faces: Anna Massey is the brittle wife of Henry Ridout, Linda Hayden's sister Jane admits to being Meriel, and Michael Bryant and Peter Sallis appear in The Daedalus Equations as earnest professor and lurking intelligence man respectively.

Escape from the Asylum

GHOST STORY (1974)
KILLER'S MOON (1978)

Even though GHOST STORY won Best Picture at the Sitges and Paris Film Festivals, it was never released theatrically, languishing on late-night TV before resurfacing on home video a decade later under the title MADHOUSE MANSION (to avoid confusion with Peter Straub's best-selling novel Ghost Story, which was filmed in 1981).

STEPHEN Weeks' GHOST STORY and Alan Birkinshaw's KILLER'S MOON are two films that feature Droog-like asylum escapees, but in very different styles. M.R. James meets P.G. Woodhouse in GHOST STORY, where three mismatched ex-university chaps are haunted in a stately house. Weeks' slow-burning chiller is set in 1930s England, where McFayden (Murray Melvin) invites former college associates Duller (Vivian Mackerell) and Talbot (Larry Dann) to spend a few days at his recently inherited isolated mansion. McFayden eventually reveals rumours that the house is haunted and it is the sensible Talbot - rather than spiritualist Duller - who becomes susceptible to a demonic antique doll and a supernatural gateway which shows Robert (Leigh Lawson) incarcerate his sister Sophy (Marianne Faithfull) in a nearby asylum for incestuous desires. The institution is run by Dr Borden (Anthony Bate) and Matron (Barbara Shelley), and when Sophy's former servant Miss Rennie (Penelope Keith) attempts to free her, the inmates (all played with relish by members of a hippy commune) accidentally escape and run riot.

Tired of behind-the-scenes complications on I, MONSTER and GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, Weeks co-wrote, produced and directed the picture under his own "Stephen Weeks Company," so he would have full artistic control. Shooting most of the film in South India gives GHOST STORY a fittingly otherworldly detachment, where the colonial architecture and sun-baked locations act as a backdrop to an exaggerated, dream-state Englishness which is further enhanced by its time-lapping narrative and an atmospheric, experimental score by Pink Floyd collaborator Ron Geesin. The performances are all first rate, especially a post-Rolling Stones Faithfull - who arrived five weeks late on the shoot with her heroin-dealing boyfriend in tow - perfectly cast as the doomed innocent, and GHOST STORY can also boast the only major role of the late Mackerell, Bruce Robinson's inspiration for WITHNAIL AND I. Unsurprisingly, the actor talks like Richard E. Grant, and you can hear traces of Withnail in his indignation at being served a jam sandwich.  

Imagine a film fused with the backwoods sleaze of LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT, CARRY ON CAMPING, Linda Hayden's sister Jane, and a shot of the old ultra-violence, you would arrive at KILLER'S MOON.

In comparison, KILLER'S MOON is a notorious, badly misconceived slice of Britsploitation. A coach populated by the kind of people who only would appear in 1970s British films - a driver from ON THE BUSES, prim and proper school teachers, and a group of school girls all played by actresses in their twenties - are on their way to a singing contest in Edinburgh when their vehicle brakes down on a backwoods country road. A local groundskeeper leads them to a hotel where they can spend the night, run by Mrs May (Hilda Braid). The bus driver (comedian Chubby Oates) isn’t so lucky, as he meets four men as he goes back to sleep on his stranded vehicle: Mr Smith (Nigel Gregory), Mr Muldoon (Paul Rattee), Mr Jones (Peter Spraggon), and Mr Trubshaw (David Jackson). The men are escaped mental patients in an induced LSD-addled state, who are convinced they are living a shared dream in which they are free to rape and murder.

Exactly why this LSD state is good therapy for the escapees is one of the film's many mysteries. In fact, it is difficult to conclude what is the most unbelievable element: is it the fact that the film actually enjoyed a theatrical release after being granted an uncut X certificate by the BBFC, or is it the debacle was co-scripted by Birkinshaw's sister Fay Weldon, who goes uncredited. Or is it the crass dialogue, which includes "all men want to kill their mothers - isn't that what they say?" and "look, you were only raped. As long as you don't tell anyone about it, you'll be alright." Fittingly for such a demented release, Hannah - a three-legged Doberman Pinscher - gives the best performance. Supposedly attacked by the escapees at the beginning, in reality the dog was awarded the canine V.C. in 1974 for defending her master in an armed robbery - during which she was shot and had to have a leg amputated. Hannah's bravery hit the headlines when her owner - the landlord of the Cheeky Chappie public house in Brixton - was held at gun-point after closing time.