Green and Unpleasant Land

PLAY FOR TODAY - ROBIN REDBREAST (1970)
THE SHOUT (1978)
THE MAD DEATH (1983)

Esteemed TV players Bernard Hepton and Anna Cropper's different world's collide in the rural horror ROBIN REDBREAST.

BROADCAST as part of the BBC's PLAY FOR TODAY strand, ROBIN REDBREAST is a folk horror rarity that acts as a precursor and influence to the more hard-hitting THE WICKER MAN and BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW. Written by John Bowen and directed by James MacTaggart, it is the story of Norah Palmer (Anna Cropper), a London-based TV script editor who temporarily escapes to the country in order to recuperate after a break-up. But with mice scurrying in the walls, birds coming down the chimney and local eccentrics like housekeeper Mrs Vigo (Freda Bamford) and Mr Fisher (Bernard Hepton) dispensing weird customs, Anna becomes increasingly isolated and lost within her new environment. When she falls pregnant after a one-night stand with SS-obsessed gamekeeper Rob (Andrew Bradford) - who she first encounters practising karate in the woods wearing only his underpants - Anna is embroidered in a conspiracy to prevent her leaving the village.

The class struggle theme is amplified by Anna being such a liberated, modern woman and Rob a himbo who looks to the history of the Third Reich to generate monosymbolic conversation. They have nothing in common but sleep together in the onset of fear, instincts which adhere to the programme's yearning to turn back to more straightforward times. The countryside may be full of shunned micro societies, but can the urban development of "civilised" post-war Britain - and the intrusion of the outsider - really ever erode the colour of tradition and ritual from a brutal prehistory? Talky but engrossing, ROBIN REDBREAST's slow burning dictum - and the inclusion of snobbish London friends Madge (Amanda Walker) and Jake (Julian Holloway) - makes a case that our green and unpleasant land will always govern our prudish endeavours.

The soul of a housewife is manipulated by a magical stranger in THE SHOUT; reverting to an Aboriginal state, Rachel scuttles on all fours through her cluttered kitchen.

Though THE SHOUT is connected with Aboriginal Outback culture, and was the first British film of Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, Englishness seeps through every frame. Shot in and around Braunton Burrows and Saunton Sands in North Devon - a stone's throw from this writer's home - the film shows a cricket match between the staff and inmates of an asylum. One of the patients, Charles Crossley (Alan Bates), is running the scoring hut, where he tells Robert (Tim Curry) a strange story ("every word of what I'm going to tell you is true. Although I'm telling it in a different way, it's always the same story … I vary it a little because I like to keep it alive.") Told in flashback, we see married couple Anthony (John Hurt) and Rachel (Susannah York); Anthony is a Church organist/composer, and Rachel a staid housewife. Crossley appears and announces that he has returned from eighteen years in the Australian outback, where he lived among the Aborigines and studied their magic. Even though the stranger tells the couple of him killing his own children, Crossley moves in with Anthony and Rachel permanently, establishing a spell over the household.

An ambitious but ultimately perplexing film, THE SHOUT opens with the featured couple asleep on a beach, both having the same dream of a witch doctor in a tailcoat. Crossley explains this was one of his teachers, and we learn more about the strangers powers: the ability to take another man's wife by simply keeping an item of her clothing - in this case a sandal buckle - and the secret of The Shout, a cry so despairing that it can kill. Crossley creates a disquieting, intimate awkwardness, made the more terrifying because his incantations are introduced naturally into country village life. The production's otherworldly quality is further enhanced by its use of an electronic and avant-garde score by Genesis linchpins Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. In fact the film's haunting central theme 'From the Undertow' was the opening track on Banks' solo debut album A Curious Feeling released a year later.

The THREADS of the Rabies world, the BBC Scotland drama THE MAD DEATH was made two years before its eventual transmission date.

In this age of bird flu and ebola, it is easy to forget that in the 80's Rabies was the virulent virus. The BBC had already featured the condition in a third season episode of SURVIVORS - MAD DOG by Don Shaw, screened in 1977 - which provided the already decimated population with another catastrophe, but THE MAD DEATH tackles Rabies full-on. Based on the Nigel Slater book of the same name, writer Sean Hignett and director Robert Young examine the effects of a notional outbreak of "the mad death" on our shores. Opening with a titles sequence where a voice whispers 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' over a distorted image of a fox, the terror begins when an infected cat is smuggled by her owner from France into Scotland. When the feline is run over by a car, its body is eaten by a fox. The spread amongst the animal population goes undetected until the first human, womanising American businessman Tom Siegler (Ed Bishop), befriends the infected animal. After Siegler is confirmed with the disease in hospital, the government calls in leading Rabies specialist Michael Hilliard (Richard Heffer) and Doctor Anne Maitland (Barbara Kellerman). Maitland's jealous partner Johnny Dalry (Richard Morant) creates a tepid love triangle which fails to hold interest against a number of alarmingly brutal scenes.

By addressing humanity's fear of disease with a love of animals, THE MAD DEATH has a solid premise. While most commentators mention the shopping centre containment in episode two as the highlight, the slow-burning demise of Tom in the first part is more dramatically satisfying. Benefitting from focuses on the declining health of the businessman for a continuous large portion of running time, we follow Siegler through the various stages of the disease, starting off with headaches, disorientation, and blurred vision; and in medical care, having hallucinations of being strangled, as hydrophobia takes hold. If the story seems pedestrian after the shopping centre sequence, it only serves as a foundation to the barnstorming final act, which depicts a still difficult to watch cull and creepy scenes within the home of Miss Stonecroft (Brenda Bruce) - the obligatory demented pet-obsessed loner - which includes the capture of Maitland and Stonecroft's attempt to feed her cat food and milk. Of the performances, Bishop shines as the charismatic American, as confident and chatty as the English cast are reserved and stiff upper-lipped. 

Crash and Tyburn

LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF (1975)
THE GHOUL (1975)

LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF on the cover of the last issue of Monster Mag (Vol 2 #4, August 1976).

SON of cinematographer and director Freddie Francis, Kevin Francis founded Tyburn in an attempt to recreate the Hammer Horrors of his childhood. A slaughterhouse employee turned Hammer staffer - he had provided the outline for TASTE THE BLOOD OF DRACULA - the problem was that it was 1973, and horror cinema was becoming immersed in a new realism. Freddie would helm the two pictures here, yet his well documented disdain for the genre - and even greater contempt for its fans - would be mixed with a problematic working relationship with his son. LEGEND OF THE WEREWOLF sees wolves adopt a young boy named Etoile, who is discovered by a freak show fronted by Maestro Pamponi (Hugh Griffith). After growing up, Etoile (David Rintoul) makes his way to Paris where his ability to communicate with animals impresses a zookeeper (Ron Moody) who offers him a job. When Etoile becomes infatuated with prostitute Christine (Lynn Dalby), his resentment for her clients makes him transform into a werewolf. Piecing together the mystery, police pathologist Professor Paul (Peter Cushing) becomes convinced that a man-wolf is responsible.

As with CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, the picture is based on Guy Endore's 1933 novel The Werewolf of Paris, and is also written by Anthony Hinds. It was originally announced under the misleading title of PLAGUE OF THE WEREWOLVES, and even though the film may return the story to its Parisian setting, this tepid production portrays its wolf attacks with suitably mundane rapid cuts, red-tinted POV shots and close-ups of bloodied fangs. Thankfully the performances are earnest and entertaining: Cushing is unsurprisingly the star as he gradually unravels the crimes, Dalby gives a sympathetic performance as the archetypal tart with a heart, and Moody passes amicably as the abrasive zookeeper. Of the supporting players Roy Castle is typically irritating as a squeamish and bumbling photographer, while Michael Ripper makes the most of his cameo as "Sewerman."

Don Henderson as THE GHOUL. Prior to becoming an actor, Henderson was a detective sergeant with Essex police; ironically his most celebrated role was as fictional crime stopper George Bulman, who appeared in three TV series: THE XYZ MAN, STRANGERS and BULMAN.

Taking advantage of sets built for THE GREAT GATSBY, THE GHOUL is a much more feverish affair. The film opens with four upper class twits - Geoffrey (Ian McCulloch), Angela (Alexandra Bastedo), Billy (Stewart Bevan) and Daphne (Veronica Carlson) - embarking on a car race to Land's End. But as fog closes in on Daphne and Billy, the blonde is whisked away by unhinged gardener Tom (John Hurt) to the remote mansion of defrocked clergyman Doctor Lawrence (Peter Cushing). Lawrence has returned from India with a family secret and a mystical servant (Gwen Watford), and unbeknown to Lawrence’s visitors, his son (Don Henderson in sandals) resides in the attic and suffers from uncontrollable bouts of stabbing and cannibalism.

Moving between misty marshlands and interior splendour, THE GHOUL exists in a hazy otherworld, with Cushing's commanding performance providing the actor with several art-imitating-life moments as he mentions his departed wife. As with the Vulcan favourite CITY OF THE DEAD, THE GHOUL shares striking similarities with the structure of PSYCHO. We have a strong-willed blonde literally racing cross-country before stopping to rest at a location where she is murdered; even the killing is Hitchcockesque with a knife cutting shower-like curtains (here, it is mosquito netting that surrounds her bed). Daphne's car is also disposed of with a push (here a cliff rather than a bog) and Geoffrey is disbatched Martin Balsam-like falling backwards down stairs. The production also plays like a recycling of Hammer's THE REPTILE, with its English family corrupted by an evil Indian sect.

"Who Knows?"

DOCTOR WHO - SILVER NEMESIS (1988)
DOCTOR WHO - THE NIGHT OF THE DOCTOR (2013)
DOCTOR WHO - THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR (2013)

Playing the seventh incarnation of the Time Lord, Sylvester McCoy contrasted a bumbling buffoon with the mentality of a behind-the-scenes manipulator. Similar to Patrick Troughton's Second Doctor McCoy appears scatty, but becomes focused in extreme situations.

THE official 25th anniversary DOCTOR WHO story, SILVER NEMESIS is a tired and amateurish three-parter that throws together aimless plot threads and characters. Shot entirely on location, the serial sees The Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and companion Ace (Sophie Aldred) arrive in 1988 England where Cybermen, a group of neo-Nazis led by Herr de Flores (Anton Diffring), and 17th century sorceress Lady Peinforte (Fiona Walker) all seek to control a statue that is in fact a Gallifreyan super-weapon (a notion similarly explored in REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS). The three components to the statue - a bow, an arrow and the figure itself, made from the living metal Validium - were separated by The Doctor in 1638 and the statue launched into space on an asteroid, to foil Peinforte's initial plan to capture the item. With the Nemesis figure now cash-landed near Windsor Castle, the Time Lord must deal with the sorceress, the Nazis and the Cyber-fleet.

Since their TENTH PLANET induction in 1966, the Cybermen have never fully developed the potential of body horror beginnings, instead the emotionless metal menaces have been generic invaders prone to anger management amid incoherent continuity. They have also become easier and easier to kill; here only a slingshot from Ace is required, and their ray gun aim is frightfully lacking. What should have been a showcase for The Doctor's second greatest foes is cheapened by endless in-jokes (for example, Peinforte's mathematician is played by Leslie French, an actor considered for the First Doctor) and self-gratifying cameos, which include the Courtney Pine Jazz Quartet, Nicholas Courtney, Queen lookalike Mary Reynolds and even golden age Hollywood star Dolorey Gray appears as an American tourist.

Clare Higgins as Ohila in THE NIGHT OF THE DOCTOR. This mini episode sees the return to the screen of The Sisterhood of Karn for the first time since THE BRAIN OF MORBIUS. However, these protectors of the Sacred Flame have been in other areas of the Whoinverse, such as Terence Dicks' novel Warmonger, and Big Finish audio adventures Sisters of the Flame and The Vengeance of Morbius.

Re-launched in 2005, DOCTOR WHO has become embarrassingly smug, saccharine sweet and playfully incomprehensible. In the Classic Era, the Doctor maintained a remoteness; he was an intergalactic Sherlock Holmes, portrayed in a show that strived to be straightforward. In contrast, there is no room to breath in the Modern Era, a visual soap opera which drowns under endless story arcs, overblown scores, and the rushed nature of a 45-minute time slot. Guest star Timothy Dalton expertly described Russell T. Davies's show-running tenure as 2001 one moment, CORONATION STREET the next. Since Steven Moffat took over as head writer and executive producer in 2010, the show has become a brand. The best science fantasy explores the responsibilities and fears of the human race, but Moffat has made DOCTOR WHO a fairy tale; he argues that the programme isn't really sci-fi, rather stories that take place "under children's beds," amid his masturbatory world where he is much cleverer than you are.

On the 14th November 2013 a 7 minute minisode THE NIGHT OF THE DOCTOR was released, acting as a taster, companion piece and revelation to the 50th anniversary celebrations. Written by Moffat and set during the Time War, the short shows the previously unseen last moments of the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) and his artificially-controlled regeneration into the War Doctor (John Hurt). After crashing on Karn, the Doctor is taken in by The Sisterhood and revived; they convince him that there is no way to avoid being a part of the War, and so he subsequently consumes a potion which will ensure his incarnation into a warrior. Second to the unveiling of Hurt as the long-rumoured "unknown, evil Doctor", there was genuine surprise in McGann's dialogue mentioning companions in various Big Finish audio dramas, moving them into canon and marking a rare instance that characters created for licensed product being referenced in a series proper.

 THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR sees the visible return of the Zygons after numerous appearances in print and on audio; previously the body-snatching aliens were included in the Modern era episodes THE PANDORICA OPENS and THE POWER OF THREE, but without being shown in their natural guise.

The official 50th anniversary story THE DAY OF THE DOCTOR followed on the 23rd November - a 75-minute one shot - and was announced and subsequently advertised like The Second Coming. Yet against most expectations it is a triumph, with Moffat delivering giddying references to both WHO eras while maintaining a momentum for the final days of The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith). Clara Oswald (Jenna-Louise Coleman) receives a message from the Eleventh Doctor and returns to the TARDIS, which is by royal order airlifted to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. Preserved instructions from Elizabeth I are shown to the Doctor, along with a 3-D portrait entitled "No More" or "Gallifrey Falls", and other paintings. It transpires that the shape-shifting Zygons, preserved in old images, are invading. Meanwhile, the War Doctor watches Gallifrey falling to a Dalek invasion, and decides to trigger a weapon of mass destruction - the sentient "galaxy eater" the "Moment" (Billie Piper) - which will destroy both races. The Eleventh Doctor meets the Curator (Tom Baker), and is told that the painting's actual name was "Gallifrey Falls No More", hinting that a plan to freeze Gallifrey had worked, and the Doctor's future involves finding it.

The scenes set in Elizabethan England with the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) and a young Elizabeth I under threat from Zygons are a joy, exploding from the TARDIS on a horse - in a TIME BANDITS kind of way - and later declaring his stature to a rabbit. There are several laugh-out-loud moments as the camaraderie increases, but Clara's ever-increasing scope  - even though she has existed at all points in time - seemingly extends to an inspirational power to make even three Doctors pause for thought (another piece that grates are the scenes on Gallifrey, which look like they were shot on an industrial estate). But the future, amazingly, looks bright; dialogue of the Curator seems to suggest that the Doctor will again get a chance to choose his regeneration, as from McGann to Hurt, and not only that, he’ll be able to "revisit a few" if only "the old favourites." 

"Who is this who is coming?"

OMNIBUS - WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU (1968)
A PLEASANT TERROR: THE LIFE AND GHOSTS OF M.R.JAMES (1995)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU (2010)

Montague Rhodes James (1862-1936) - provost of King's College, Cambridge, and later Eton - was a medieval scholar, antiquary, expert on Bible apocrypha, and the Father of the Modern Ghost Story. His tales often depict malevolent forces enveloping Edwardian male camaraderie.

SET against backgrounds that are scholastic or ecclesiastic, often apparitions in the fiction of M.R. James are connected with, or evoked by, material objects, such as the bronze whistle from the ruins of a Templars' preceptory in 'Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' - James' famous short story which was first collected in his Ghost Stories of an Antiquary of 1904 - and the Anglo Saxon crowns that prevent invasion in 'A Warning to the Curious'. In several of his stories there are also hints of bygone Satanism; like the warlock Karswell in 'Casting the Runes', James conjured unfathomable, ancient manifestations into a more rational age. As Tony Earnshaw states in the September 2012 issue of Sight & Sound, "James sets his horrors on the periphery of his protagonists sight and understanding, [thus James] forever changed the face of modern horror with his penchant for fateful inevitability."

Even though James' ghost stories are set within credible historic tableau, they are also classics of psychological terror: his phantasms are presented so vividly and effectively as to evoke physical shock. For the son of a parson - and a lifelong member of the Church of England - his ghosts are surprisingly outlandish, and are described by a precise framing of language that sits to evoke imagination. Kim Newman notes in Fortean Times #292 (September 2012), "his ghosts are hairy, wet-lipped, capriciously violent, smelly, all too tangibly there even when they're unseen." For example, in 'The Tractate Middoth' we meet a spectre with thick cobwebs over its eyes; an unnameable thing in 'The Uncommon Prayer Book' resembles "a great roll of old, shabby, white flannel"; and in 'Mr Humphreys and his Inheritance' there is a form "with a burnt human face" that emerges "with the odious writhings of a wasp creeping out of a rotten apple."

In the 1968 version of WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU, the mind of Professor Parkin (Michael Hordern) erodes like the subsiding graveyard where his troubles began.

Jonathan Miller's adaptation of 'Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad' for the BBC's OMNIBUS is a seductively slow drama of a man being haunted by his own repressions. Professor Parkin (Michael Horden) - a fussy, absent-minded bachelor from Cambridge - goes on holiday to a small seaside hotel. While walking he finds a graveyard and picks up a whistle lying in the undergrowth. That evening he discerns a Latin inscription on the side of the instrument - "Who is this who is coming?" - and blows the whistle. Next morning over breakfast, he has a pivotal conversation with The Colonel (Ambrose Coghill), where the Professor scoffs at the notion of ghosts. The Colonel replies with a Hamlet quote, "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," to which the Professor counters, "there are more things in philosophy than there are in heaven and earth." That night Parkin suffers a nightmare in which he is pursued by a shape across the beach, and in the morning the maid queries why both beds in his room appear to have been slept in.

The best visual treatments of James' works are almost silent films, showcasing an elemental struggle that seeps into landscape, character and setting. Miller's work emphasises Parkin as an outsider by showing people conversing by mumbles and snatches of words, as if the viewer is listening to others the way Parkin does because of his years of scholastic solitude. The climax - where the Professor is horrified to see bedclothes rise and attempt to form a shape - leaves a spectral chill while mimicking one's expectations of ghosts under white sheets. It also illustrates the importance of the breakfast conversation, as it is The Colonel who tries to calm Parkins' hysteria and mask the "dangers of intellectual pride" as spoken by Miller's opening narration.

The 2010 version of WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU - where Parkin (John Hurt) struggles with his materialism - was a refreshingly austere inclusion to the Christmas TV schedule.

Directed by Andy de Emmony and written by Neil Cross, the 2010 version relocates the story from Suffolk to the West Country coast. Inexplicably replacing the whistle with an encrypted ring, this time Parkin (John Hurt) is a married man but tormented by his wife Alice (Gemma Jones)'s dementia ("a body that has outlasted the existence of the personality: more horrifying than any spook or ghoul.") After placing her into a nursing home, Parkin - a "scientist" - is riddled with guilt, and embarks on a walking holiday. Before long he is seeing a shrouded figure on the beach, and being kept awake at night by increasingly disturbing sounds. Similar to Miller's version, de Emmony is not concerned with dialogue; menacing rattles fill a sparse sound scape, as isolation of loss is explored, rather than the isolation of an unattached academic. It is a relentlessly desolate adaptation, offering no hope and no afterlife: "There is nothing inside us" Parkin states, "there are no ghosts in these machines. Man is matter, and matter rots."

In December 1995, Anglia TV broadcast the fifty-minute A PLEASANT TERROR: THE LIFE AND GHOSTS OF M.R.JAMES. This astonishingly insightful documentary is part talking heads and part dramatisation, and attempts to address two key questions: if James viewed his prose largely as entertainments - which started as readings to pupils and friends - why do they resonate so deeply; and was there an occurrence in the author's personal life that influenced such an educated man to look beyond this world. Interviewees include Christopher Lee - who clearly speaks from the heart of his affection for the tales - and Jonathan Miller - who surmises that James' tactile descriptions provide a universal air of dread. Although the programme uncomfortably detours into James' sexuality at the half-way mark, we soon reach the real meat: the events described in 'A Vignette', which was first published in a November 1936 edition of The London Mercury. This short "confessional" piece was written shortly before his death, and hints at an unnerving experience in James' childhood.

Houses of Horrible

BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH (1983)
DR TERRIBLE'S HOUSE OF HORRIBLE (2001)

"What in hell is going on at Headstone Manor?" One of the most baffling things about BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH is why Cleo Rocos doesn't take her clothes off.

BY 1983, Kenny Everett was one of the major stars of British television. Made to exploit this popularity, BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH is a brave failure that sees the zany comedian play Dr Lukas Mandeville - a former surgeon with an on-off German accent and a metal leg - the spearhead of a group of scientists sent to investigate the strange activity at Headstone Manor ("Businessman’s Weekend Retreat and Girls’ Summer Camp"). Unknown to them, their presence is about to incur the wrath of a local coven of bumbling but determined Satanists, led by a 700-year-old disciple known only as The Sinister Man (Vincent Price).

Written by Ray Cameron and Barry Cryer, the film flopped disastrously in Britain but was a box office hit down under; in an interview to promote the film on Australian television, Everett attributed its lack of home-ground success to the fact that the British "have no class." But the main reason was the suicidal decision of giving the film an 18 certificate, alienating Everett's young fans but simultaneously fully exploiting its tit humour and comedic gore; in a tour-de-force scene of excess, for example, Mandeville attempts to retrieve his monocle after it drops into his patient during a flashback surgery sequence.

The Countess (Ronni Ancona) bares her fangs in Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust, from DR TERRIBLE'S HOUSE OF HORRIBLE.

BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH is best viewed through a nostalgic haze; its all a juvenile mess, but an entertaining one, leading to a suitably perplexing climax. The cast is a checklist of familiar faces; the "distinguished international team of specialists" include Gareth Hunt and Don Warrington as the most bemused-looking gay couple in cinema history, Sheila Steafel as a butch lesbian, Pamela Stephenson, John Fortune, and Cleo Rocos, the latter redefining the meaning of non-actress. The film also revels in a lengthy list of movie parodies: Steafel in a school uniform (CARRIE), Stephenson being invisibly raped (THE ENTITY), a public house straight out of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and Everett writhing on the table like John Hurt in ALIEN, before finding relief in a prolonged belch. 

When Steve Coogan's DR TERRIBLE'S HOUSE OF HORRIBLE first aired on the BBC in the winter of 2001, critical and public reaction was muted. Fans expecting a comedy akin to Alan Patridge were instead confronted with six quality homages to 1960s and 70s British horror, brimming with in-jokes and notable guest stars. And Now the Fearing apes the Amicus anthology, Frenzy of Tongs takes us back to yellow peril potboilers, and Curse of the Blood of the Lizard of Doom parodies the scientific-experiment-gone-wrong sub-genre. Lesbian Vampire Lovers of Lust is a sumptuous ode to the 70s Hammer vampire canon, Voodoo Feet of Death takes on the body-part-transplant movie, and Scream Satan Scream! is firmly ensconced in Tigon territory. Unlike the buffoonery of BLOODBATH AT THE HOUSE OF DEATH, there is a genuine love for the material being spoofed, which makes the series an incredibly affectionate viewing experience.