Twisted Tales

SUPERNATURAL (1977)
INSIDE NO. 9 (2014 - )

SUPERNATURAL based two of its episodes around creepy dummies. After the death of her mother, and her father's re-marriage, a young girl becomes obsessed by a doll in the Peter Sasdy-directed VIKTORIA.

SUPERNATURAL was a BBC anthology devised by Robert Muller, who wrote seven of the eight tales. Muller intended the show to rekindle the flavour of early horror cinema, subtle tales of fear based around The Club of the Damned. Each week, a prospective member will tell a true tale of terror; if successful, they will be given lifetime membership, if they fail, murder awaits. It is certainly a series of two halves, with the first four stories suffering from verbal diarrhoea and two excruciatingly loopy lead performances by Robert Hardy (as a haunted actor in GHOST OF VENICE) and Jeremy Brett (who falls under the spell of Lesley-Anne Down in MR NIGHTINGALE). Amazingly the series then opens up considerably: Denholm Elliott and John Osborne expertly play brothers living with their paranoid mother in LADY SYBILL, and NIGHT OF THE MARIONETTES has Gordon Jackson a biographer of Byron and Shelly. Unfortunately this momentum is lost with DORABELLA, a straightforward Gothic where two travellers are ensnared to provide a new vampire blood line. The exterior scenes breath some fresh air, even though it relies heavily on matte shots from Hammer's SCARS OF DRACULA.

Inexplicably broadcast on BBC1 in the summer - and scheduled to clash with BBC2's popular Horror Double Bills - SUPERNATURAL was shot on then industry-standard videotape, and suffers from visible ghosting (the muted colours of the gloomy castles and Victoriana add to its tired façade). Muller's intentions may well have been "to set the viewer's mind into action" with a set of archetypal examinations, but the series was not re-commissioned, despite strong supporting roles by Ian Hendry, Cathleen Nesbitt, Catherine Schell and Vladek Sheybal. The Club of the Damned is also disappointedly underdeveloped, with members displayed as stuffy armchair dwellers rather than bloodthirsty Turks all too eager to literally wield an axe.

Graham Humpreys' poster for THE HARROWING, the final episode of INSIDE NO. 9 series one. Here, a unsuspecting schoolgirl housesits a Gothic mansion, but is actually the centrepiece for a demonic transfer.

During the Radio 4 documentary HOUSES OF HORROR, the observation is made that the main difference between Hammer and Amicus is that Amicus's dour, modern settings were what is revealed after Hammer's large-bosomed damsels and mist-enveloped castles evaporate into your romantic mind's eye. One of its commentators, Reece Shearsmith, really takes this to heart for his INSIDE NO. 9 - co-written with Steve Pemberton - a series of stand-alone thirty minute dramas that feel like TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED melded to PLAY FOR TODAY. The twelve episodes so far have been noteworthy for their eloquently dark writing and almost cinematic staging, with stellar casts bringing to light every sickly twist and turn. The tone has also been refreshingly irrelevant; SARDINES, for example, sees Tim Key cast as a victim of paedophilia, exacting his revenge on his tormentor, family and associates while they are all locked in a wardrobe, while A QUIET NIGHT IN focusses on physical comedy. The highlight of the second series is THE 12 DAYS OF CHRISTINE, a tight-as-a-drum emotional journey of a young woman beautifully played by Sheridan Smith.

The Old Familiar

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA (2013)
THE WORLD'S END (2013)

"I'm Siege Face"; at last, Norfolk's finest is brought to the big screen in the uproarious ALAN PATRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA. 

ALAN PARTRIDGE: ALPHA PAPA sees self-proclaimed broadcasting kingpin Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) working as a DJ in the mid-morning slot at North Norfolk Digital, together with Sidekick Simon (Tim Key). When the station is taken over by the Gordale media conglomerate and renamed Shape ("The Way You Want It To Be"), Alan finds himself defusing a violent siege set in motion by the firing of fellow North Norfolk DJ Pat Farrell (Colm Meaney). Using the situation in an attempt to boost his own career, Partridge acts as mediator between Farrell and the police, with hostages caught in the crossfire. Written by Coogan, Armando Iannucci, Steve Baynham and Rob and Neil Gibbons, ALPHA PAPA successfully takes Partridge's long-standing entertainment persona and fully injects it with a claustrophobic yet cinematic scale. Fans will love to see regulars like harassed PA Lynn Benfied (Felicity Montagu) and Michael the Geordie (Simon Greenall) well into the mix, and Coogan's portrayal of his most famous alter ego is totally at one with the environment.

The most painfully endearing character created by Iannucci and Chris Morris for radio's 'ON THE HOUR' - which morphed into the prophetic TV hit THE DAY TODAY - Partridge started as an inept sports reporter, a man able to grasp only the rudimentary aspects of communication. Coogan - a renowned comedic perfectionist - made Partridge a true great of British comedy, and his acute embarrassing situations, which included shooting a guest dead on his chat show KNOWING ME, KNOWING YOU, set the scene for the next masterstroke of squirmedy, Ricky Gervais' David Brent. In fact, Partridge has been under siege all his life, a car-crash of an existence that has been undermined by terminal - but chirpy - interpersonal skills and a trademark 'sports casual' look. It is a career that has mirrored the rise of media and consequent decline in any real value; radio, TV, mockumentaries, webisodes and now film have all danced to his deflatory tune for over twenty years, illustrating a fluidity in format that has helped keep the character fresh.

The boys are back in town: old school friends aim to revive past glories in Edgar Wright's disappointing conclusion to the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, THE WORLD'S END. 

On the more abrasive comedy scale, THE WORLD'S END - Edgar Wright's completion of the loose trilogy started with SHAUN OF THE DEAD and continued with HOT FUZZ - tells of Gary King (Simon Pegg), who has always regretted failing to finish 'The Golden Mile' on his last day of school (a circuit of twelve pubs in his uneventful home town of Newton Haven). Obsessed with the idea that completing the task would make up for all his mistakes, he persuades his original 'Mile' mates - over two decades later - to abandon their respectable lives and recreate the crawl. Car salesman Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), estate agent Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), architect Steven Prince (Paddy Considine) and lawyer Andy Knightley (Nick Frost) are drawn into the venture, despite festering resentments towards Gary. When King has an altercation with a youth in the Gents who turns out to be a blue-blooded robot drone, it becomes apparent that the whole town - except for a few willing collaborators (including one played by Reece Shearsmith) – have been replaced by replicants under the control of aliens called The Network. These beings have guided recent technological advances for the human race and are determined to enforce conformity across the universe.

At a time when numbers of the quintessential British public house are ever diminishing, THE WORLD'S END takes the notion of the pub crawl and turns it into a quest of almost Arthurian nature. Although an entertaining romp, awash with the director's trademark editing frenzy, there is nothing new here despite cast and crew proclaiming how profound its message. Individuality is - quite literally - King, forced home by the use of Primal Scream's soundbyte from THE WILD ANGELS ("free to do what we want to do"). The climactic verbal melee between Gary, Andy and Steven with The Network ultimately ends with the aliens giving up trying to talk to the humans and telling them to "fuck it". By Gary convincing the aliens that mankind is not worth winning over - and in a flat coda Andy, in London ruins, explaining to children that the alien withdrawal led to an apocalypse - the film drowns in its aura of fractured relationships and failed opportunities. Whereas THE WORLD'S END ticks the boxes of its own making, ALPHA PAPA takes its own dysfunctional family and moulds a far more successful whole.

Mystic Albion

SIGHTSEERS (2012)
A FIELD IN ENGLAND (2013)

"A man with a ginger face and an angry woman." Comedians Steve Oram and Alice Lowe wrote - and star in - SIGHTSEERS.

DIRECTED by Ben Wheatley, SIGHTSEERS is a jet-black comedy that merges NUTS IN MAY with an anorak NATURAL BORN KILLERS. Thirtysomething Tina (Alice Lowe) - suffering from guilt over the death of her dog Poppy by knitting needle - embarks on a north-country caravan holiday with new boyfriend Chris (Steve Oram), despite reservations from her neurotic mother Carol (Eileen Davies). Introducing Tina to his "world," the break takes in Crich Tramway Village, Keswick Pencil Museum, Kimberley Stones and the Ribblehead Viaduct. However, Chris' overtly strict rules and class resentments result in a number of brutal killings, and Tina herself turns feral, which includes pushing Martin (Richard Glover) and his beloved mini-caravan invention - the Carapod - off a cliff. When the couple burn their caravan and ascend the Viaduct in a suicide pact, at the last moment Tina lets go of Chris's hand as he falls to his death alone.

SIGHTSEERS blends that favourite strand of British comedy - the comedy of humiliation - with our wondrous environment that we too readily dismiss of exploring because of the bloody weather. As we follow Chris and Tina, wildness grows as the world opens up from their suburban strait-jackets. Among this landscape-based coming of age story the two leads are effortlessly naturalistic, and Laurie Rose's widescreen photography fully captures the depth and wonder of the countryside, but there are too few laugh-out-loud moments and developing ideas, particularly for a film which has had such a long gestation period. The killings are of comedy-sketch stereotypes: a litterbug oaf, a drunk bride-to-be, snooty walkers and ramblers ("I never thought about murdering an innocent person like that before") and a cyclist all perish during the running time, as Chris eloquently notes on his nerdy BONNIE AND CLYDE set-up that he only wants "to be feared and respected - that's not too much to ask for from life, is it?"

A FIELD IN ENGLAND is the latest in a long line of films that aim to tap into the mysteries and dark forces of the English environment. The field is a character itself, an ethereal and disorientating space cinematically similar to the windswept marshes of Kaneto Shindo's celebrated ONIBABA.

Wheatley's following film - A FIELD IN ENGLAND - is a weird and wonderful Civil War art-horror which was simultaneously released in cinemas, on DVD, on Freeview and VoD. It has a spectral Englishness that evokes the dying loyalty of WITCHFINDER GENERAL and the seeping arcania present in BLOOD ON SATAN'S CLAW. Here, Rose's monochrome photography echoes Peter Watkin's CULLODEN, especially in the opening chaotic skirmish, where Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) escapes from battle and is soon joined by deserters Jacob (Peter Ferdinando) and Friend (Richard Clover). When Cutler (Ryan Pope) appears, he leads the three into a large field encircled by mushrooms. Here we meet alchemist O'Neil (Michael Smiley), of whom Whitehead identifies as the man he has been pursuing for having stolen manuscripts from his master, a black magician in Norfolk. When O'Neil reveals that there is a hidden treasure in the field, Whitehead is led to O'Neil's ramshackle tent and - after a prolonged bout of screaming - emerges roped and in an eerie, hypnotic trance...

The simultaneous release ploy - previously tried to a lesser extent by horrors THE EVIL DEAD and MUM & DAD - perhaps is the future, but particularly suits this picture as its genre-mashing doesn't fit anywhere. A FIELD IN ENGLAND is filled with authentic dialogue and a tiredness towards conflict and God ("I know what God is punishing us for ... for everything"); indeed, the Civil War is merely a hook for the smoke and mists, and the picture plays out like a road movie, where the developing friendships are more important than the end result. Even the supernatural undertones of runic stones, magic mirrors and mushroom circles are left without explanation. Instead the viewer is in an otherworldly landscape ("There are only shadows here") where the characters may have all been killed on the battlefield (inexplicably, Friend is even resurrected later on), or that Whitehead hallucinates the situation, either by eating magic mushrooms or suffering concussion. 

Hunter turned hunted: Reece Shearsmith plays A FIELD IN ENGLAND's Whitehead in this impressively haunting trip into the English psyche.

Greatly benefiting from his time with THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, Shearsmith makes for an engaging sorcerer's apprentice, while Clover gives a vague performance as the underling Friend, who provides the film with its most humourous lines; after being shot, he urges his comrades to tell his wife that he hates her, and also inform of his repeated carnal activity with her sister. Another example of black humour is a scene that reminds of the squalor of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL ("Dennis, there's some lovely filth down here") where Whitehead - using that staple of British horror the magnifying glass - inspects Jacob's penis after his genitals were stung during an emergency shit. And the psychedelic trip sequence - as Whitehead sees a black planet slowly engulf the sky, amid blurring and interconnected images of faces, trees and O'Neil's swirlingly sinister cloak - is spellbinding.

Dawn of the Doctor

AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME (2013)

William Hartnell's Doctor Who - played by David Bradley - among a Dalek, Cyberman and Menoptera, in this promotional image.

WRITTEN by Mark Gatiss, this nostalgic drama made to celebrate DOCTOR WHO's 50th anniversary reveals how the show was nearly exterminated after just four episodes. On the 22nd November 1963, John F. Kennedy was assassinated, plunging the world into deep mourning; the following day the Time Lord debuted at its Saturday tea time slot between GRANDSTAND and JUKE BOX JURY, and even viewers in the mood for such escapist entertainment couldn't necessarily tune in because a power cut blacked out parts of Britain. But there were also tensions behind the scenes; the BBC Head of Drama, Canadian Sydney Newman, ordered the first episode to be totally re-shot to make it more child-friendly, and his decision to assign the BBC's first female producer to the venture - partygoer Verity Lambert - caused frictions between the stuffy crew (though Lambert forged an alliance with young Indian director Waris Hussein). Syphoned off to the depths of Lime Grove Studio D, the team struggled to make the crudest of facilities - and the oldest of cameras - work in their favour. Even Doctor Who himself, William Hartnell, was an aging, grumpy, heavy drinker and smoker, yet he formed a close bond with Lambert, turning around the show's fortunes which was ignited by the introduction of the Daleks (which, in itself, went against Newman's instructions for "no bug-eyed monsters.")

In this docudrama, Verity (Jessica Raine) initially struggles to impress Newman (Brian Cox) with her handling of the project, but eventually wins him over with a new-found brutality and verve, standing by Hartnell (David Bradley) as he struggles with the scientific scripts and the realisation that his film star credentials are now being played out on a children's show. When Hartnell's health declines and his memory is affected, the actor becomes even more frustratingly angry and disorientated, forcing Newman to re-cast the lead role fortuitously creating the notion of regeneration (Patrick Troughton is played by Reece Shearsmith in a Three Stooges wig). One wonders that if Hartnell's health had not deteriorated with arteriosclerosis, the legacy of DOCTOR WHO would have been cancelled after five years or so without the notion of regenerated ever having to be considered.

Daleks over Westminster Bridge; an iconic recreation

from THE DALEK INVASION OF EARTH.

The professional Hartnell/Lambert relationship is at the heart of AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME, but this ninety-minute love letter to the past is too fractured and obvious, dialogue-dropping worn facts into a strained sentimentality. Feelings and situations are portrayed like snapshots from a photo comic strip, breezing through the First Doctor's tenure like a fanboys' wish list. And as AN ADVENTURE IN SPACE AND TIME seemingly grinds to its digest-friendly halt, a real gut punch is delivered. There is a moment when Hartnell activates the TARDIS and then, looking across, he sees The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) lovingly caressing the console. This silent, poignant interchange says much about Hartnell’s place in the ever-evolving DOCTOR WHO canon.

Comedy of Terrors

SEVERANCE (2006)
THE COTTAGE (2008)

If only former BROOKSIDE actress Jennifer Ellison had remained gagged for THE COTTAGE’s entire running time…

TWO jet-black humoured horrors set within the backwoods, and made by second-time directors, SEVERANCE and THE COTTAGE will never approach the finesse of SHAUN OF THE DEAD in the comedy stakes; both are grimmer, more shocking, and considerably less amiable. SEVERANCE tells of seven Palisade Defence employees on a team-building weekend in Hungary: there's Steve (Danny Dyer) the laid-back stoner-slacker, Harris (Toby Stephens) the golden-boy sales champ, Gordon (Andy Nyman) the overly enthusiastic corporate pawn, Richard (Tim McInnerny) the odious upper-management tyrant (“I can’t spell success without u…”), Maggie (Laura Harris) the sex-object, Jill (Claudie Blakley) the practical-minded girl with glasses, and Billy (Babou Ceesay) the token black PA. When Jill spots a masked figure outside their run-down bunker, it is only the start of a fight against a group who have more than axes to grind.

Christopher Smith - who previously made the London Underground chiller CREEP - adds underlying themes of dubious arms trading and exploitation of Eastern Europe, but any such commentary is overwhelmed by the gallows humour, including an encounter with a bear trap and a severed head rolling away still reacting in surprise. It is a thoroughly entertaining piece of work with one standout comedy moment - the accidental blowing up of a passing plane by Palisade’s American boss George (David Gilliam) - and the dwindling survivors are characters who are up a fight, even though the gun-toting call girls are more Russ Meyer than survival horror.

Claudie Blakley shortly to become toast at the hands of the Flamethrower Killer - one of the many denizens haunting the backdrop of SEVERANCE.

Contrastingly, THE COTTAGE feels like a cheap cash-in. Writer/director Paul Andrew Williams - whose debut was the critically acclaimed LONDON TO BRIGHTON - unleashes a unrelentingly violent and uneven sophomore effort. Two brothers - David (Andy Serkis) and Peter (Reece Shearsmith) - kidnap nightclub owner’s daughter Tracey (Jennifer Ellison) and hold her ransom in a secluded country cottage. When her dim-witted step-brother Andrew (Steven O’Donnell) - who is in on the scam - delivers the ransom, they find out that not only have they been tricked, but Andrew has been followed by his father's bloodthirsty Korean henchman. As the blackmail spirals out of control, Tracey manages to turn the tables on her kidnappers and escapes with Peter as her hostage, fleeing into the woods; it isn’t long before everyone faces a desperate battle against a disfigured local farmer (Dave Legeno in see-the-join make-up).

Williams claims THE COTTAGE explores the bond between brothers, but while early scenes of Serkis and Shearsmith show potential, this quickly gets lost amid the director’s insatiable appetite for humour and gore. The brothers spend too much time bickering to endear themselves, and Ellison’s expletive-heavy Liverpudlian is every bit as monstrous as the main killer himself, resulting in a priceless understanding glance between the farmer and Peter. In a role written especially for Shearsmith, the LEAGUE OF GENTLEMAN star shines brightest of all; the butt of continual violence, and permanently bloody-nosed, the deadpan Royston Vasey-stalwart completely understands this undiluted strain of Amicus-like weirdness.