Short-Lived Revival

A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - A VIEW FROM A HILL (2005)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - NUMBER 13 (2006)

Mark Letheren is haunted by unearthly vistas in A VIEW FROM A HILL.

THE BBC GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS strand from the 1970s returned with these two entries. Both add a layer of weird science to their ghostly goings-on, as the laws of physics are played with fancifully. A VIEW FROM A HILL - adapted from M. R. James by Peter Harness and directed by Luke Watson - sees young Fitzwilliam Museum curator Dr Fanshawe (Mark Letheren) discovering some homemade binoculars while cataloguing the archaeological collection of the late father of debt-laden Squire Richards (Pip Torrens). The field glasses - created by deceased local watchmaker and amateur necromancer Baxter (Simon Linnell) - give Fanshawe visions of Fulnaker Abbey in all its splendour and a gibbet on Gallows Hill, in reality locations now dissolved. It transpires that Baxter's "very peculiar ... 'abits" of boiling the bones of condemned men resulted in a noxious fluid, some of which has remained sealed inside the binoculars. 

Never previously adapted on film or television, A View from a Hill was first published in the May 1925 edition of the London Mercury, and in the same year formed part of the A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories anthology. Harness and Watson successfully evoke the washed-out landscapes and corner-of-the-eye creepiness of the best 70s output and it is also beautifully played; moving James' Edwardian setting to the post-WWII decline of country estates, social status is reflected as weary condemnation. When Fanshawe makes clear to Richards that he is an archaeologist and a doctor, the Squire caustically responds "have to get you to take a look at my feet."

Greg Wise is more Indiana Jones than M.R. James in NUMBER 13.

NUMBER 13 - adapted from James by Justin Hopper and directed by Pier Wilkie - had been brought to the screen on two, presumed lost, occasions: as part of NBC's GREAT GHOST TALES of 1961, and as a second season episode of MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION in 1966. Originally appearing in the 1904 Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, the location of the story is moved from Viborg, Denmark, to Winchester Cathedral, where Oxford academic Professor Anderson (Greg Wise) is sucked into a spatial-distorting hotel room occupied by a sixteenth-century diabolist. It seems somewhat out of place that Anderson is a handsome adventurer, and the Phantom's hand is black-gloved like a Dario Argento serial killer. NUMBER 13's other frissons are similarly abstract: the English hotelier using the centre panel of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, and a mention for Witchfinder General Matthew Hopkins.

Paint It Black

OMNIBUS - SCHALCKEN THE PAINTER (1979)
ITV PLAYHOUSE - CASTING THE RUNES (1979)

Dou (Maurice Denham), once a student of Rembrandt, sells his niece to a Sepulchral for a casket of gold in SCHALCKEN THE PAINTER.

THE first incarnation of the BBC's A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS strand ended with pretentious episode THE ICE HOUSE in 1978. The two programmes here attempt to carry on the tradition, the first often confused as an official entry, and the second directed by the series' talisman on ITV. Actually screened as part of OMNIBUS, Leslie Megahey's SCHALCKEN THE PAINTER is a fictional exploration of real life seventeenth-century Dutch artist Godfried Schalcken. Adapted from Sheridan Le Fanu, Schalcken (Jeremy Clyde) is a student of Gerrit Dou (Maurice Denham) and admirer of Dou's niece Rose (Cheryl Kennedy); Schalcken is as lifeless as the canvas he devotes himself to, and loses Rose's hand to deathly stranger Vanderhausen (John Justin).

If the story has a message at all, it is that females can become detached objects and property; when Rou's niece is bound to the cadaverous Vanderhausen, it serves as a metaphor on the cruelty of woman as breeding stock. The slow narrative and detached composition has flatteringly been likened to Kubrick, but the programme stands more as a companion piece to another OMNIBUS adaptation, Jonathan Miller's WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU. Whereas Miller takes M.R. James and reflects supernatural image as mental breakdown, Megahey sees Le Fanu's tale as an artist's shattering loss of hope.

CASTING THE RUNES was released on Network DVD in 2007. This disc also included ITV Schools' rare adaptation of Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance, and the documentary A PLEASANT TERROR: THE LIFE AND GHOSTS OF M.R. JAMES.

In M. R. James' Casting the Runes - first published in 1911's More Ghost Stories - Edward Dunning is a researcher for the British Museum, who has recently appraised The Truth of Alchemy by occultist Mr Karswell. He begins seeing the name John Harrington wherever he goes, and learns that this individual had also reviewed Karswell's work, but died in a freak accident. Following the celebrated 1957 film version NIGHT OF THE DEMON directed by Jacques Tourneur, the story was adapted twice on British independent television: in 1968 as a third season MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION, and again as an eleventh season PLAYHOUSE.

Directed by A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS regular Lawrence Gordon Clark, CASTING THE RUNES was another attempt at a contemporary updating. Shot on videotape and 16mm film, the central protagonist is a woman, Prudence Dunning (Jan Francis), the producer of an investigative television programme that is critical of the practises of Karswell (Iain Cuthbertson). With a limited running time, this take suffers from scenes which have previously been so effective in other adaptations - there is no séances, and no Halloween garden party - and what remains creates an imposing but underdeveloped demonologist; Karswell is reduced to building a model dolls house and putting a live spider in one of the beds to satisfy this particular brand of curse.

Ghost Stories Not for Christmas

A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - STIGMA (1977)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - THE ICE HOUSE (1978)

The woman who bled to death: STIGMA moves the BBC Ghost Story strand uncomfortably into the modern era.

FOR the 1977 BBC GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS, director Lawrence Gordon Clark wanted to adapt M.R. James' Count Magnus, but instead made STIGMA on a freelance basis. Scripted by Clive Exton, it concerns a family who remove an ancient standing stone from their back garden. As the menhir is lifted a curse is unleashed, causing mother Katherine (Kate Binchy) to bleed uncontrollably. This body horror trapping made STIGMA a controversial departure, with its shift to a modern setting and loss of period detail lacking the resonance previously created by the series; it also results in a more mechanical tale, away from the myth and tension created by, say, time shifts between researchers and protagonists in more polished entries such as THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER and THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS.

STIGMA can too easily be labelled as a meditation on the male fear of menstruation, but nothing can disguise the fact that it is pretty nasty story; the first image the viewer sees is an out-of-focus red dot which morphs into the family's red Citroen 2CV, predicting the blood to come. Katherine's nude scene is unsettling rather than salacious, as she frantically tries to stop the endless flow, but there is a more unnerving sequence when husband Peter (Peter Bowles) is awakened to find a strange communion between an onion and a knife, hinting at the vegetable's role in pagan folklore as a symbol of protection and purification. The tale ends openly, as Katherine dies on route to hospital, and it is hinted that daughter Verity (Maxine Gordon) may be converting to the black arts.

Geoffrey Burridge comforts John Stride in THE ICE HOUSE.

If STIGMA is a straightforward horror story, it is difficult to describe THE ICE HOUSE other than a hazy, pretentious muddle. Directed by Derek Lister and written by John Bowen, it brought the original GHOST STORY strand to an oblique close before its short-lived revival in 2005, 2006 and 2013. The most experimental yet maligned of all the episodes, Paul (John Stride) has recently parted from his wife and moved to a residential health spa located in a country house. The disappearance of a masseur and the behaviour of the brother and sister who run operations (Clovis and Jessica, played by Geoffrey Burridge and Elizabeth Romilly) seem to be governed by a strange vine growing in an ice house. While the older residents go about their stately business, Paul is the centre of attention for the siblings; why is never made clear, perhaps he is just the latest in a line of guests for which they draw vitality (Jessica enjoys "having people"). Clovis and Jessica's connection to the overpowering scent of the vine is also open to interpretation; in fact the duo remind of pod-people with their otherworldy directness.

"Perfectly dry"

CROOKED HOUSE (2008)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH (2013)
M.R. JAMES: GHOST WRITER (2013)

CROOKED HOUSE stands as a fine companion to the BBC's celebrated GHOST STORY strand of the 1970's.

AIRED over three consecutive evenings on BBC4 in the lead-up to Christmas 2008, CROOKED HOUSE - written and produced by Mark Gatiss - merges the gravitas of M.R. James with the playfulness of the Amicus portmanteau. The three stories concern Geap Manor - a house with "an interesting reputation" - enveloped by a framing story which sees a museum curator (Gatiss) share his research of the Tudor mansion with history teacher Ben (Lee Ingleby), who has brought in an old door-knocker found in his garden. The first tale, THE WAINSCOTING, sees Joseph Bloxham (Philip Jackson) renovating Geap in 1786 after capitalising on an investment which ruined a fellow speculator. As the building work comes to an end Bloxham hears noises behind the interior wooden panels, which have been sourced from gallows. The second story, SOMETHING OLD, is set amongst a lavish 1920's costume ball at the Manor, where Felix (Ian Hallard) announces his engagement to underling Ruth (Jennifer Hignam). However, this happy event is linked to a tragic wedding day and a ghostly bride. And in the modern day final part, THE KNOCKER, Ben discovers that his property is set in the grounds of the demolished Manor, which sees sinister figures from the past pray upon his new born child.

Director Damon Thomas works wonders with a limited budget, and the cast includes a number of individuals in roles they are relishing, such as Andy Nyman (THE WAINSCOTING), Jean Marsh (SOMETHIND OLD) and even illusionist Derren Brown (THE KNOCKER). Geap is portrayed as a constant threat whatever its condition (the house "drew evil to it like a sponge draws in water") and situations are infused with wry humour (the builders ever-expanding schedule, Ruth's family background "in fish.") While the first two tales are entertainingly creepy, the show saves the scariest till last, containing not only a masterful twist but a swath of 1970's-tinted nastiness. It is, however, the abomination - played by 7'3" John Lebar - conjured out of an Elizabethan crib, that will leave you scurrying for safety.

The elemental menace of THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH is stylishly photographed by Steve Lawes.

Gatiss penned - and made his directorial debut - with THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH, a faithful adaptation of James' story first published in the 1911 collection More Ghost Stories. Young librarian Garnett (Sacha Dhawan) has a vision of a skull-like entity while searching for an old tome for John Eldred (John Castle). Garnett takes some leave in the country where he meets Mrs Simpson (Louise Jameson) and her daughter Anne (Charlie Clemmow), who tell him of a missing will that would make them heir to a sizeable inheritance. Unfortunately the document has been written in an obscure book, linking the librarian to late priest Dr Rant (David Ryall): "twisted, he was, twisted, while others had a soul, he had a corkscrew; don't trust him in life or death." On the written page the first appearance of "the figure" is an upper face which is "perfectly dry" with deep-sunk eyes covered in cobwebs; the prosthetics on screen are very much in accord with this suitably crusty visage, and the climax - the second "monster of the week" moment - is effectively carried out in broad daylight.

THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH on BBC2 Christmas Day 2013 was followed by Gatiss' M.R. JAMES: GHOST WRITER. What is most striking about this documentary is how secondary in his life the ghost stories James wrote were; they were almost a hobby, a pursuit after his astonishing achievements as a medieval scholar. Gatiss paints a picture of a sexually repressed man who also viewed his tales as a social device, particularly for readings at King's College's Chitchat Society (where James enjoyed sessions of "ragging," essentially floor-bound genital-grabbing). It is a compelling piece, where we follow James' journey from happy childhood - fascinated with the historical and the supernatural - to his studies, his infatuation with James McBryde, and increasing disillusionment with The Great War.

"Mine shall inherit"

A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - THE ASH TREE (1975)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - THE SIGNALMAN (1976)

Jolting nudity in THE ASH TREE, an extraordinary tale reminiscent of WITCHFINDER GENERAL.

THESE BBC ghost stories - both directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark - hit the ground running with their ambience of dying curses, bleak moorlands and impending doom. THE ASH TREE - from M.R. James' 1904 collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - tells of eighteenth-century nobleman Sir Richard Fell (Edward Petherbridge), who inherits a stately home dominated by an old Ash tree. The seat has been cursed since the day his ancestor Sir Matthew (played in flashback by Petherbridge) condemned Mistress Mothersole (Barbara Ewing) to death for witchcraft. More a tale of resurrection and an exploration in the aching loss of fertility, writer David Rudkin energises James' prose by discarding the original set of narrators in favour of a singular descent into madness, and also emphasises sexual awareness with Fell's free-spirited muse Lady Augusta (Lalla Ward). The species of Ash has inspired numerous cultural myths: in British folklore it is said that ill children could be cured by passing through the cleft of the tree; here it is a vessel that acts on the sorceress' battle cry ("Mine shall inherit"), as its branches unleash grotesque spider-babies into Sir Richard's bedroom.

Based on a Charles Dickens' short story first published in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round, THE SIGNALMAN was greatly infused with the writer's own involvement with the Staplehurst rail crash of June 1865. The most critically acclaimed of all the BBC ghost stories, Andrew Davies' script creates a strong sense of foreboding, where the phantom is a time displacement which portends the death of a signal operator (Denholm Elliott). Very much the embodiment of the Victorian innocent, the signalman tells his story to a traveller (Bernard Lloyd) who initially scoffs at the premonitions. If James' ghosts aim to infiltrate and scar, Dickens' spectre is one that personifies overwhelming fate; the systems and technology that man creates also can suffocate and lead to unfathomable dread to come (such as the railways leading to Auschwitz, for example).

The fleeting appearance of THE SIGNALMAN's open-mouthed phantom mimics the railway tunnel and forewarns the terror to come.

If the signal operater is a tortured soul, the mystery of the traveller adds more spice to the story. Taking a cue from Dickens' original text, Davies' line "I've been confined but now I am free" leads the viewer to surmise if the character is referring to his working background, a spell in prison, or even he has escaped a stifling marriage; as David Kerekes states in Creeping Flesh Volume 1, "maybe there is something in the latter, given that Charles Dickens wrote The Signal-Man following his own escape from a bad train wreck ... in the company of his mistress." The television adaptation is at times so ambiguous and in limbo it adds to its surreal vacuum; even the inn where the traveller is staying is shrouded in fog, and no other guests are present. Lloyd's role may well be "the straight man," but by the end his face takes on the attitude of the phantom, perhaps signifying that the traveller himself is a visitation and harbinger of death.

"Traces of uneasiness impinge"

A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (1971)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS (1974)

Of all the celebrated BBC ghost stories, THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER remains closest to its source material.

IT is argued that Christmas supernatural fiction can be traced to the Victorian era, a time when magic lanterns and stage magicians milked the population's craving for thrills and sensation - in contrast to the stereotypical staid prudes. With technology making printing cheaper and more accessible than ever before - not to mention fascination with spiritualism and Egyptology - Charles Dickens became the architect of things snowbound and spectral. But telling scary stories while huddling around a festive fire can be traced back in several layers: Joesph Glanvill's 1681 treatise on witchcraft Sadducismus Truimphatus had harsh words for those who dismissed the existence of unearthly powers as "meer Winter Tales, or Old Wives fables," and William Shakespeare even titled his 1623 tale of magic and transformation The Winter's Tale. Looking back to the previous century, we find Christopher Marlowe using the same notion in his 1589 play The Jew of Malta: "now I remember those old women's words, "who in my wealth would tell me winter's tales, and speak of spirits and ghosts that glide by night.""

Although THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER started the BBC ghost story strand proper, a template was in place with Jonathan Miller's 1968 OMNIBUS take on M.R. James' 'Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad'. Not so much a supernatural tale than an exploration of a deteriorating academic mind, this was a loose adaptation which plays like a satire on James himself. By doing so, the production dispenses with "James' original dialogue [which was] ludicrously stilted" - to quote Miller - and consequently paints a different picture to director Lawrence Gordon Clark's take on these stories. With Clark, even in weaker moments, there is always an underlying conviction to the heritage of 'The Father of the English Ghost Story'. Yet the Jamesian ghost is hardly a spirit at all, rather demonic beings determined for retribution; as Denis Meikle states in his article 'Now is the Season to be Chilly' (The Dark Side #157, Jan/Feb 2014), James' ghosts "...were the harbingers of threat - to his faith, his beliefs, his whole way of life."

Michael Bryant in THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS rivals Denholm Elliott in the 1976 GHOST STORY entry THE SIGNALMAN as the strand's outstanding performance.

THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER - based on James' 'The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral' from his 1911 collection More Ghost Stories - was also penned by Clark, and is the most ecclesiastical of all the BBC stories. Dr Black (Clive Swift) - whilst cataloguing the Barchester Cathedral library in 1932 - is shown a diary detailing the events leading up to the death of former Archdeacon Dr Haynes (Robert Hardy). The diary implies that Haynes caused the demise of his aged predecessor Pulteney (Harold Bennett) and was haunted by carvings (of the Devil, Death and a cat) made by artisan John Austin ("they say he was blessed with second sight.") Filmed entirely on location at Norwich Cathedral, the programme adheres to James' phrase "movement without sound" with its half-seen terrors and foreboding back story. Hardy gives a staunch performance as a guilt-ridden man in increasing isolation, but scratches inflicted by a spectral hand mean this is in no way an abstract haunting...

THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS - based on James' story of the same name from his first 1904 collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - is a slow-burning cryptography tale; shifting its Germanic origin to Wells Cathedral, Reverend Somerton (Michael Bryant)'s arrogance cannot overshadow a thirst for treasure - which literally meets a sticky end. Somerton is the archetypal James anti-hero: a character punished for his curiosity and disrespect towards the unearthly. James' most intricate story, John Bowen's script opens it up considerably by including a young foil (Peter, played by Paul Lavers) and sly nods to the English fascination with comfort food (slab cake and grilled chops). James' experience of the rise of spiritualism in the 1890's also sees a sardonic adage, as Somerton debunks fake mediums through the power of pure intellect. Overall this is an underrated episode, but the climactic slime has all the effectiveness of X THE UNKNOWN.

"What a strange evening it is"

A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS (1972)
A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS - LOST HEARTS (1973)

Peter Vaughan plays a treasure hunter stalked by an ancient protector in A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS.

EACH Christmas from 1971 to 1978, the BBC broadcast late night, self-contained supernatural dramas which would become known under the umbrella of A GHOST STORY FOR CHRISTMAS. The first five episodes were all based on stories by M.R. James - THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER, A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS, LOST HEARTS, THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS and THE ASH TREE. Charles Dickens' THE SIGNALMAN was chosen for the 1976 episode, but the final two installments were original teleplays in contemporary settings: Clive Exton's STIGMA and John Bowen's THE ICE HOUSE. The first seven entries were directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, and the transmissions under consideration here are two of the most fondly remembered and pivotal in the evolution of the series. A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS is a masterpiece and, considering it was broadcast between 11.05 and 11.55pm on Christmas Eve 1972, attracted an astonishing nine million viewers. Because of its critical and public success, all subsequent entries were shifted from General Features to the BBC's Drama department proper, and as Clark has lamented, despite larger budgets, his vision for the tales was suddenly imposed upon by screenwriters and script editors.

A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS tells of Mr Paxton (Peter Vaughan) - a clerk who has lost his job in the great depression - travelling to the East Anglian coast hoping to discover a last surviving Saxon crown, one of three that were put in place to protect England from invasion. Following in the footsteps of an archaeologist who was murdered twelve years previously searching for the crown, Paxton boards in a hotel which only has one other guest, Dr Black (Clive Swift, playing a returning character from THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER). Increasingly haunted by a mysterious figure, which may be the ghost of William Ager whose job was to guard the relics, Paxton actually finds then - with the aid of Dr Black - returns the crown, only to be bludgeoned to death at the point of excavation. Black leaves on a train, with the station guard opening the carriage door under the misapprehension that there was someone wishing to board the same compartment...

LOST HEARTS ghost children Giovanni and Phoebe - played by Christopher Davis and Michelle Foster - peer through windows with their Chinaman's Fingernails, drawing on the age-old fallacy that fingernails continue to grow after death.

Inspired by the bleak open beaches and dreamy isolation of Jonathan Miller's OMNIBUS adaptation of James' 'Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad,' A WARNING TO THE CURIOUS works both as a classic ghost story and as an enduring piece of drama. As David Kerekes notes in Creeping Flesh: The Horror Fantasy Film Book Volume 1, the chilling shot of a man hunched over in Paxton's hotel room predates the finale of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT by close on thirty years, and the sequence where Paxton encounters a machete-bearing farmer is an illustration of how an effectively-staged scene can win over anything effects-laden. What makes Paxton's demise all the more starling is that you feel for a man who just wants to make a name for himself, driven by hurt pride rather than by any malicious intent. Surprisingly, the biggest change from the source story is Paxton himself: far from Vaughan's down-trodden, working-class adventurer, the Paxton of the original tale - first published in 1925 - is young and scholarly, but without personal connection. This leaves another layer to the printed story's undertones of post-WWI invasion and young lives lost.

LOST HEARTS, written by Robin Chapman, is based on one of James' earliest and less subtle tales. In fact, the writer once told his illustrator James McBryde that he "didn't care much about it," and the story was only included in his first collection at the insistence of the publisher. Stephen (Simon Gripps-Kent), a young orphan, is sent to live with his eccentric relative Mr Abney (Joseph O’Conor). Stephen is haunted by the spirits of two children - both orphans like himself who had briefly lived at the house - and learns that Abney dabbles in ritual sacrifice to seek immortality. The ghostly children are wondrous, swaying in unison to ethereal hurdy-gurdy music, but away from the obvious Faustian element there is a child abuse sub-text that won't go away, no matter how often Clark denies this oft-made reading. Instead, the director sees it as a children's fear of monsters and that "[their] father or mother may turn into an ogre or a witch."

"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.

"It's in the trees ... it's coming!"

NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957)

Despite being book-ended by appearances of a crudely
animated monster, NIGHT OF THE DEMON
is an effective exercise in atmosphere.

IN 1957, British horror cinema exploded into life with the garish, Eastmancolour THE CURSE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Terence Fisher's box office sensation was the starting point of Hammer's domination, but Jacques Tourneur's NIGHT OF THE DEMON - which started filming on the same day as Fisher's classic - was shot in black and white, and unlike Hammer's emphasis on physical violence, owes more to the power of suggestion. Tourneur's stylish project - an adaptation of M.R. James' Casting the Runes - predicted an anti-Hammer stance in the early 1960s that produced a triumvirate of successful monochrome horrors based on works of supernatural fiction: THE INNOCENTS (from Henry James' Turn of the Screw), NIGHT OF THE EAGLE (from Fritz Leiber's Conjure Wife) and THE HAUNTING (from Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House).

Scenes such as the storm invoked by black magician Julian Karswell (Niall MacGinnis), dressed in clown's makeup for a children's Halloween gathering, are genuinely unsettling, and this garden party suddenly interrupted by demonic intervention anticipates THE OMEN. As in that film, the leading protagonist is an American - here, Dr John Holden (Dana Andrews) - coming to terms with what he initially sees as bunkum. This theme of the modern, rationalist American adrift in a world of superstition can be traced through several films, including AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, and even back to Universal's cycle of the 1930s and 1940s, were settings were often in generic old Europe.

Columbia's 2002 R1 DVD of NIGHT OF THE DEMON was sold as a "double feature" with CURSE OF THE DEMON, the film's Americanised, truncated version which cut fourteen minutes from the running time.

Screenwriter Charles Bennett crafts a meditation on the conflict between science and superstition, embodied by the personality clashes between Andrews' psychiatrist and MacGinnis's occultist. One of James's most important achievements was to redefine the ghost story by dispensing with many of the Gothic trappings of his predecessors, and replacing them with more realistic, contemporary settings. By using this trait cinematically, NIGHT OF THE DEMON sometimes seems somewhat dry, but this is a small price to pay for a movie that takes its subject matter with an utter conviction rarely seen.

Tourneur was a master of implied terror, his visual style the perfect film equivalent of James' prose; Holden's eerie encounters alone in forests, empty hallways and desolate farmhouses evoke a paranoid atmosphere. Ken Adam's production design is an effective blend of British antiquity and modernism, rendering library corridors and railway carriages as endless passages which need to be conquered. It has become a cliche to point out that Tourneur cut his directorial teeth on three of producer Val Lewton’s brooding 1940s horrors (THE CAT PEOPLE, I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE, THE LEOPARD MAN), but NIGHT OF THE DEMON seems to be Tourneur's attempt to recreate the Lewton formula: the emphasis on solid scripting, the use of shadows, and belief versus skepticism. But none of the Lewton-produced films ever endorsed the supernatural; in fact, such beliefs were often equated with mental illness. Holden is not portrayed as a man sinking into madness; in fact, acting on his new-found knowledge saves him from death, and it is interesting that Andrews' wooden performance loses up as he gets closer to supernatural enlightenment.

Video Watchdog #93 (March 2003) featured a "duelling critics" piece where Kim Newman and Bill Cooke assess Columbia's DVD release, as well as detailed analysis by Cooke of the cuts made to produce CURSE OF THE DEMON.

A 1960s Mad magazine article pointed out that movie heroes and villains often act against type: villains are courteous, charming and open-minded, while heroes are bad-tempered, bigoted and thuggish. NIGHT OF THE DEMON illustrates this theory expertly. James' Karswell is a melodramatic character akin to George Zucco, but MacGinnis plays the Devil-bearded disciple with a touch of Celtic whimsy, treating his enemies with exaggerated politeness. The odd relationship between Karswell and his mother (Athene Seyler) is one of the many off-beat aspects of the film, suggesting that the magician is an insecure mother's boy who shows none of the insidious interest in the opposite sex so commonly demonstrated by screen devil worshippers. This hint of homosexuality doesn't progress further, leaving Karswell as a paunchy, balding character whose resemblance to Aleister Crowley is closer than any other actor.

Tourneur crafted NIGHT OF THE DEMON to exist in a shadow world which would evoke feelings of dread through expressive lighting and sound rather than any sensationalised effects such as a man in a monster suit. Bowing to pressure from executive producer Hal E. Chester, the director agreed to reveal the demon for a few frames in the finale. Much to Tourneur and Bennett's horror, Chester re cut the film so that Karswell's fire demon (a combination of a puppet, suit and a mechanical bust influenced from medieval woodcuts) was shown extensively at the beginning and end of the feature, and was on all publicity materials. For decades, the debate has raged whether Chester's use of the demon cheapens or enhances the overall product. Dubbed as a "monumental blunder" and "atrocious," the monster is over-used at the climax, but overall beneficial to the narrative though not perhaps the overall facade.

Hammer's Cornwall Classics

THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES (1966)
THE REPTILE (1966)

The stunning Jacqueline Pearce, fresh from RADA, gives standout performances in both of these Hammer favourites.

FILMED back-to-back, and utilising much of the same production crew and sets, THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES and THE REPTILE were both directed by John Gilling. Each picture portrays an anti-colonial stance, and Hammer’s renowned class dynamic (that is, treading a noble path between the ignorance of the working class, bound by fear and superstition, and the unfettered power craving of the upper class). But the notion of the aristocracy as carriers of infection is crystallised in these two releases. Using the same basic story conceit as the Bela Lugosi favourite WHITE ZOMBIE, THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES belongs to the list of genuine classics in the studio’s back catalogue. Here, Sir James Forbes (Andre Morell), Professor of Medicine at London University, receives a letter from former pupil Dr Peter Tompson (Brook Williams). Now practising in Cornwall, Tompson tells of a mysterious malady which has overrun his village. The rash of deaths in the district, of which Tompson’s wife Alice (Jacqueline Pearce) is one of the latest victims, is ultimately traced to local Squire Clive Hamilton (John Carson). After returning from Haiti, Hamilton has become a black magician, using voodoo to reactivate the dead to staff his inherited, reopened tin mine.

Maximising its desolate setting, THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES is a model of economy and invention. The rural English setting, far from the usual Central European milieu, allows Gilling to use the pre-existing class structure to frightening effect; a film in which an aristocrat murders his lowly subjects in order to put them to work in daddy’s tin mine, unpaid as well as undead, would appear to operate on levels deeper than that of schlock horror. Indeed, the zombies' appearance, dressed in ragged brown robes, even suggests a link with medieval peasantry. The director shows sensitivity to Christian themes that characterised Terence Fisher’s work for Hammer; the Squire's enterprise is an immoral subversion of the Christ-story, and Tompson's recollection of his dream - "I dreamed I saw the dead rise; all the graves in the churchyard opened, and the dead came out" - is an allusion to Matthew 27:52-53. The great strength of the film, however, are the three performances from Morell, Pearce and Carson. Morell projects a moral bedrock that is necessary to carry the picture, expertly combining unflappable suavity with a deeply felt moral outrage. Pearce’s account of the living but ailing Alice is one of the most delicate performances in any horror film, and her all-too-brief reincarnation is one of the most terrifying. And Carson’s persona, a cool magnetism mixed with chilling repugnance, inevitably invites comparison to Christopher Lee.

THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES’ lumbering ghouls preceded NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD by two years. Squire Hamilton’s dilapidated characters opened the way for the armies of increasingly malevolent living dead that flowed in their wake; the first zombie appearance on the nocturnal hillside, together with the celebrated nightmare sequence - in which the undead dig their way out of the ground and advance with outstretched hands - are both highly influential.

THE REPTILE - scripted by Anthony Hinds - opens with a lengthy pre-credits sequence, in which a young Cornish landowner is lured across a moor by exotic music, only to be bitten to death by a lethally poisonous assailant. His property is inherited by his brother, Harry Spaulding (Ray Barrett), who learns that he died of causes described by locals as "The Black Death", symptoms of which are identical to those bitten by a King Cobra. In fact, neighbouring theologist Dr Franklyn (Noel Willman)’s daughter Anna (Jacqueline Pearce) has been cursed by the Snake People of Borneo, to transform into a half-human snake creature as punishment for her father’s professional exposure of their religious cult.

Slower and more stately than THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, THE REPTILE nonetheless is rich in atmosphere, and its carefully orchestrated tension belie its support feature status. Pearce, in another splendidly intense performance, makes for a fascinatingly sympathetic character, despite her clumsy – but oddly endearing – transformation make-up. The actress transcends the papier mache face mask by investing the Reptile with a sinuous grace, encased in a black gown of watered silk and a pony tail slithering incongruously down her back. Appearing as if to have strayed into the lurid landscape of Hammer Horror, Franklyn is more suited to M. R. James’ stories in which antiquarian scholars pay a terrible price for their academic zeal. The theologist’s Malay manservant (Marne Maitland) seems like the conventionally negative ‘Yellow Peril’ figure, but it is worth pointing out that though the evil in the film originates in the East, it only chooses to infiltrate England thanks to the blundering presumptions of a Westerner. Unlike Squire Hamilton, Franklyn hardly seems a villain at all, but both characters are tainted by their exposure to other cultures; as these two releases appear to illustrate, time spent in a foreign country invariably corrupts an Englishman's soul.