Ghost Stories For Christmas Volume 2 (1974 - 2006)

Just under a year following their release of Volume One of the BBC's GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS which I reviewed here, the BFI are bringing out Volume Two, which completes the annual series of stories that went out under that title, and includes some worthwhile extras as well.

Before I get into the detail of what's on the discs, it's worth saying upfront that if you're a fan of the BBC Ghost Stories then this set is going to be a must have. The picture quality of each episode is a major step up from previous DVD releases and each of the original series stories comes with an excellent new commentary. If that's all you need to know then you can order this with confidence, but if you need a bit more, then read on. 

The set consists of three Blu-rays, the contents of which are as follows:

Disc One: The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974) and The Ash Tree (1975)

The set kicks off with a personal favourite M R James story, filmed in and around Wells Cathedral and featuring the attempts of Michael Bryant's crusty academic (aided by Paul Lavers as his assistant) to locate a hidden treasure by decoding Latin clues (one of the most delicious elements for us classics students back in the day). Needless to say his efforts are rewarded with something horrible that comes to get him.

The Ash Tree is David Rudkin's adaptation of M R James' tale of the witch Mrs Mothersole (Barbara Ewing) who takes a terrible revenge on the family of the witchfinder who executed her using spiders that live in the tree of the title. Previous DVD transfers have always been too dark but the BFI's new version finally allows us to see the special effects spiders very nicely and they're a perfectly creditable TV screen monster of the period. 

Abbot Thomas comes with a commentary track from Simon Farquar which is full of facts about the episode, including cast, crew, locations, and even the music score. The Ash Tree's commentary is by Jon Dear working from notes by Johnny Mains and is also excellent.

Other extras include director Lawrence Gordon Clark introductions to both stories (20 minutes in all) and a 16 minute video essay from Nic Wassell that points  out all kinds of interesting details about all the Christmas Ghost Stories. 

Disc Two: The Signalman (1976) and Stigma (1977)

Time to switch from M R James to Charles Dickens and Clive Exton. The Signalman stars Denholm Elliott at his twitchiest as the title character with a terrible sense of foreboding, while Stigma is an original story filmed in Avebury (location of the previous year's Children of the Stones) about the unleashing of a vengeful witch's spirit.

The commentary on The Signalman is from Jon Dear with special guest Mark Gatiss, while Kim Newman and Sean Hogan provide commentary duties on Stigma, with kudos to Mr Hogan for managing to get a PSYCHOMANIA reference in there.

Extras on disc two are limited to two Lawrence Gordon Clark introductions (19 minutes in all)

Disc Three: The Ice House (1978), A View From A Hill (2005), Number 13 (2006)

The main feature on disc three is The Ice House, John Bowen's weird Aickmanesque story of the strange events that befall a man (John Stride) when he attends a health spa. It's very different from the way the series started off in 1971, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact both The Ice House and Stigma are superb examples of the television horror short story form for the late 1970s and it's a shame that there weren't more like them.

Kim Newman and Sean Hogan are on hand for another excellent commentary, and this time the special features consist of two of the more recent Ghost Stories For Christmas - A View From a Hill and Number 13, and you also get the 2000 version of Christopher Lee reading Number 13 as well. The set also comes with a booklet that includes new essays on all of the classic original series episodes on the set. All top quality stuff

GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS VOLUME TWO is out in a three disc Blu-ray set from the BFI on Monday 20th November 2023

Penda's Fen (1974)

It’s a little bit difficult to know where to start in reviewing something like PENDA’S FEN. Not that I’m alone. Its own director, Alan Clarke, was quoted as not being entirely sure what David Rudkin’s script was about. That’s not to say PENDA’S FEN is bad - in fact, far from it, and it definitely deserves its inclusion in Time Out’s 100 Best British Films list that it published back in 2011.

Britishness - that’s a good place to begin. PENDA’S FEN is as much (if not more) about the changing of British attitudes as it is about the attempts of the government to change the country’s landscape, their insidious method of doing it from beneath the ground perhaps more of an allegory than we first realise.

The narrative of PENDA’S FEN follows a young man, Stephen Franklin (Spencer Banks). Stephen is the son of a parson, lives in the tiny country village of Pinvin, and attends the kind of all-boys public school that provides several of the attitudes both Rudkin and Clarke were probably keen to hold up a mirror to. Stephen is a staunch Christian, loves the music of Elgar, and is starting to have strange dreams involving angels and demons (beautifully and disturbingly realised even with the limits of 1970s BBC technology, by the way). 

But there are other weird things going on in the outside world. A local church hall meeting is concerned with a nearby secret underground government development. A local man ends up horrible burned and scarred as a result of an interaction with...something...on the fen that the government are keen to keep quiet. All through this, Stephen is coming to question every value he has ever believed in or felt confident about, including his own sexuality. 

It’s no accident that Pinvin is an actual village in the Malvern Hills, or that Stephen gains comfort from listening to The Dream of Gerontius. Elgar, often considered the most English of composers, derived much inspiration and comfort himself from the area around Malvern, and it’s the perfect place for David Rudkin to set his story. Like Alan Clarke, I can’t claim to understand all of what’s going on in PENDA’S FEN, but it remains a vital, and still very relevant, piece of British television.

How excellent, then, to have this Blu-ray release from the BFI. Most British TV of this period was shot on 16mm film, but the Blu-ray transfer makes this look the best it must have ever done, with the English summer landscape looking absolutely glorious. The only extra is a short sixteen minute new making of, featuring interviews with David Rudkin and producer David Rose. You do get the usual excellent BFI booklet essays as well, though. 

David Rudkin's PENDA'S FEN is getting a DVD and limited edition Blu-ray release on Monday 23rd May 2016. It will also be part of the massive 13 disc Blu ray Alan Clarke box set DISSENT & DISRUPTION which comes out on 6th June 2016

Doomwatch (1970 - 1972)

Coming across like a more adult, more eco-angry version of Jon Pertwee-era DR WHO, all the remaining episode of this early 1970s BBC TV series are coming to DVD courtesy of Simply Media.

I say all the remaining episodes because out of the original 38 that were made, 14 got deleted. But the remaining 24 are here, spread out over seven discs. For those of you who need to know which, we get eight episodes from Series 1, 13 from Series 2, and only 3 from the final third series. Apparently this is where the series went downhill anyway, so perhaps it’s a blessing in disguise.

Don't worry - this is in colour on the DVD

To those unfamiliar with the programme, DOOMWATCH details the activities of a government department set up to deal with potential ecological disasters around the globe. As is typical for a British conception of such an idea, the department is understaffed, underfunded, and subject to constant attempts to shut it down from a government that might actually be responsible for many of the things the Doomwatch team are investigating. 

Episode one sees new recruit Toby Wren (Robert Powell) joining the already established team of serious Nobel Prize-winning  scientist Dr Spencer Quist (John Paul), lothario lounge lizard scientist John Ridge (Simon Oates), and bloke in a lab coat scientist who plays second fiddle to the main team Colin Bradley (Joby Blanshard).

The first episode is called The Plastic Eaters, which introduces the novel concept of a virus that can eat plastic by showing us its effects on an aeroplane which crashes. It’s all a dastardly hush-hush government project (of course). The effects are of the cheap-but-oddly-disturbing variety as the plane literally melts around its passengers’ ears in a grim and sludgy way rather than the CGI that would be used now and which I would argue would still remain less effective.

Then it’s straight onto episode four and one of the best remembered episodes - ‘Tomorrow, the Rat’. Sexy scientist (it’s the 1970s, remember?) Mary Bryant (Penelope Lee) has been breeding intelligent flesh-eating rats (did James Herbert see this?) which escape from her laboratory (of course) and get to threaten a baby in a pushchair before the credits have even rolled. Sadly, the best known clip is the one that has been played on moronic television comedy shows where obviously fake rats have been glued onto Robert Powell’s trousers, but stay tuned for the ending of this one, which is utterly grim.

        Extras are limited to a recent half-hour BBC documentary The Cult of Doomwatch. I’m not going to reveal the plots of any more episodes as hopefully that should have given you an idea if DOOMWATCH is for you. As I’ve said above, if you like Jon Pertwee DR WHO, THE STONE TAPE, or any other of the BBC’s early 1970s SF and Horror shows this is going to be the release of the year for you. It’s everything that was good about early 1970s British SF TV - entertaining, creative, and designed to rattle a few cages. Excellent stuff. 

The BBC's DOOMWATCH is out on a seven disc DVD set from Simply Media on 4th April 2016

Culloden / The War Game (1964 & 1965)

Two of Peter Watkins’ blisteringly brutal black and white anti-war films get a new release on this dual format Blu-ray and DVD set courtesy of the BFI.

    CULLODEN (1964) reconstructs the last battle to take place on British soil (between the Jacobite forces of Charles Edward Stuart and the loyalist forces commanded by the Duke of Cumberland) on 16th April 1746. The opening narration prepares us for what is to come, as the narrator introduces us to the Jacobite military command: “Sir Thomas Sheridan, Jacobite military secretary. Suffering advanced debility and loss of memory. Former military engagement, 56 years ago. Sir John MacDonald, Jacobite captain of cavalry. Aged, frequently intoxicated, described as 'a man of the most limited capacities.' John William O'Sullivan, Jacobite quartermaster general. Described as 'an Irishman whose vanity is superseded only by his lack of wisdom.' Prince Charles Edward Stuart, Jacobite commander in chief. Former military experience: 10 days at a siege at the age of 13."

    After that it comes as little surprise that the opening titles inform us that, as well as being the last, this was one of the most ineptly executed battles in British history. The film could stop there, its message told, but instead, for the next hour or so, we see in grim detail just how ghastly the battle of Culloden was. At the time the idea of treating it as an ‘on the spot’ TV docudrama was revolutionary, and even though the format has been used since, nobody does it quite like Watkins. CULLODEN is a brutal and exhausting piece of television, and you may well need to watch something cheery after it.

   You certainly won’t want to go straight on to THE WAR GAME (1965) unless you really want to give your nerves a battering. This infamous docudrama was intended for broadcast on the BBC but banned for being too shocking. It deals, like the later THREADS (1984) which followed it, with the concept of what a nuclear strike on Britain might look like, the damage that would be caused, and how those who survived might (fail to) cope. Still tremendously effective, television doesn’t get much grimmer or bleaker than this, although if you still aren’t sufficiently depressed and / or terrified then by all means pop THREADS in the player to make a triple bill of ‘War Is Hell’. 

    The BFI’s new release comes with a number of extras. Both films have commentaries - CULLODEN by John Cook and WAR GAME by Patrick Murphy. There’s also a short interview with editor Michael Bradsell (who also worked on the Ken Russell documentaries just released by the BFI), as well as eight minutes of colour footage of CULLODEN’s location shooting, and a nineteen minute film about the controversy that surrounded THE WAR GAME. The 1967 Sphere paperback that was published to accompany THE WAR GAME is also included and is a very valuable record indeed of a now difficult to find publication. Finally, there’s the usual excellent booklet with new writing on both films. 

The BFI are releasing Peter Watkins' CULLODEN and THE WAR GAME on a single dual format DVD & Blu-ray set on 28th March 2016

And Then There Were None (2015)

"Superb adaptation of an Agatha Christie classic"

Probably Agatha Christie’s most famous novel not to feature either Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple gets an absolutely cracking new television version courtesy of the BBC, now available on DVD from RLJ Entertainment.

England, 1939. Eight people who have never met one another are invited for a weekend on an isolated island retreat just off the Devon coast. On arriving they, and the two servants who have been employed to look after them, are informed by a recording that they are each guilty of a murder for which they have gone unpunished. As the weekend draws on their numbers dwindle as they end up murdered in a variety of gruesome ways. Who is the killer? Why is there an odd poem in everyone’s room? What is the significance of the ten jade figurines on the dining table that decrease in number by one every time someone is killed? And who exactly are Mr & Mrs U N Owen who invited them all there?

Filmed before in 1945 and 1974 (on that occasion by Peter Collinson under the auspices of Harry Alan Towers), it’s a delight to report that the BBC’s new version is by far the best of the lot. Indeed, if this was a new movie release it would be an early contender for one of my top ten films of the year. 

Agatha Christie wasn’t known as the Queen of Crime for nothing, and while her 77 novels are well known for influencing much of modern crime literature and cinema (and especially the Italian gialli of the 1970s), one of the movies I was most reminded of during this was John Carpenter’s THE THING. There’s a deliciously gloomy feel to the proceedings, and even though the running time is nearly three hours, this allows the mounting feelings of suspicion and paranoia to be wound tighter and tighter, with the tense atmosphere being regularly punctuated by some gloriously splattery murders.

Always an opportunity to put together an all-star cast, this particular Christie adaptation puts together a fine collection of familiar faces including Toby Stephens and Sam Neill (Bond villain meets Damien Thorn!), Charles Dance channelling Christopher Lee so beautifully you just wish he had more screen time, Aidan Turner and Douglas Booth as the eye candy, Anna Maxwell Martin superb as the housekeeper (I’d love to see her in a Sheila Keith role), Noah Taylor as the butler, and Miranda Richardson deliciously objectionable as a hypocritical religious zealot. Add in TORCHWOOD's Burn Gorman and an appropriately haunted-looking Maeve Dermody and the ensemble is a treat. 

RLJ’s disc has a couple of picture galleries and a Behind the Scenes as extras. AND THEN THERE WERE NONE was broadcast over Christmas on the BBC and a right treat for television viewers it was. In a marketplace swamped by Christie adaptations over the years, this stands head and shoulders over almost all of them. Highly recommended, and if I see a better TV adaptation of novel this year I’ll be very surprised indeed. Top marks, BBC. 

RLJ Entertainment are releasing Agatha Christie's 

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE on Region 2 DVD on 11th January 2016

The Green Man (1990)

The BBC’s three-part version of Kingsley Amis’ 1969 experimental genre-mixing novel gets a DVD release courtesy of Simply Media. Anyone coming to it blind, solely on the basis of the title, and expecting a serial filled with Pagan and Machenesque influences are going to be disappointed. If, however, you’re familiar with the novel you’ll know to expect a not-entirely-straightforward ghost story.

Heavy drinker Maurice Allington owns and manages The Green Man, a posh country hotel outside Cambridge. He lives there with his second wife Joyce, teenaged daughter Amy, and his elderly father. Maurice’s life revolves around how many of the middle-aged female clientele he can get in to bed (or at least, how many he wants to). His plan to involve Joyce in a threesome with local doctor’s wife Diana (who he meets up with for illicit rendezvous in what must be an unseasonably warm forest) gets interrupted by what seem to be supernatural goings-on at the inn.

The hotel dates back to the fourteenth century, but it’s the seventeenth century owner, Thomas Underhill, who seems to want to get in touch with Maurice. Underhill was a Cambridge scholar who dabbled in the occult and was rumoured to have killed his wife. As Maurice’s life becomes an increasingly alcohol-fuelled haze he finds himself digging up Underhill’s grave at midnight, in bed with two women, and in danger of losing everything he holds dear.

An interesting mix of Jamesian ghost story and bedroom-hopping comedy romp, with a hint of a more disturbing sexual subtext beneath, the BBC’s version of THE GREEN MAN does a fine job of melding the different storylines and switching tones without any of them disrupting the other. This is of course, in part, due to a fine cast, many of whom have an excellent exploitation pedigree. Albert Finney (WOLFEN - I bet that never normally gets cited as one of his credits in reviews) has all the gravitas to lead us through Maurice’s story, and he’s ably supported by Linda Marlowe (BIG ZAPPER and ZAPPER’S BLADE OF VENGEANCE), Nicky Henson (PSYCHOMANIA!) and Sarah Berger (the BBC’s THE CRUCIBLE from 1980). 

The direction is admirably restrained for the most part, resisting the urge to make the sex comedy bits too Benny Hill but giving us some very pleasing scary trees and all the stuff in the graveyard is just fine, as is Michael Culver’s portrayal of the cadaverous Dr Underhill, who looks as if he could have just stepped out of an unfilmed Amicus follow-up to FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE. 

         Simply Media’s DVD is bare bones, with no extras at all other than subtitles. 

Simply Media are releasing the BBC's version of 
THE GREEN MAN on Region 2 DVD on the 5th October 2015

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015)

Hot on the heels of the final episode being broadcast on network television, here comes the DVD & Blu-ray release of the BBC’s adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s mammoth historical fantasy novel.

It’s the year 1806 and we’re in an England of an alternate timeline where magic is acknowledged to have existed but is now no longer used. A group of Yorkshire theoretical magicians (which sounds like a cue for a Monty Python sketch) learn to their surprise that a practising magician called Gilbert Norrell (Eddie Marsan) exists, with a library full of books and a set of magic skills ready to prove his abilities to them. Norrell travels to London to re-establish magic as a practical art and himself as its authority in the country. 

        After summoning a fairy called The Gentleman (Marc Warren) to assist in the resurrection of a cabinet minister’s deceased fiancee, Norrell fails to realise he has awoken the world of fairy to the world of men once more. Meanwhile there are prophecies in England of the return of the Raven King, while abroad Britain is having a bit of trouble fighting the Napoleonic wars and some magical input would be extremely helpful. Step forward Jonathan Strange (Bertie Carvel), the only other individual in the country capable of matching (and possibly excelling) Mr Norrell’s own skills, and it's not long before a rivalry develops between the two.

A hugely ambitious undertaking for anyone to adapt (New Line Cinema’s own version is still in development hell) it’s a delight to report that our very own BBC have done a fantastic job in bringing Susanna Clarke’s 1000-plus page gothic literary pastiche to the screen. The BBC has a long, if intermittent, history of adapting classic fantasy, including LORD OF THE RINGS for radio and John Masefield’s BOX OF DELIGHTS for children's television in the 1980s. In the past, however, such productions were often hampered by budgetary restraints (the title creatures of 1981’s DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS adaptation came in for some ridiculing at the time). 

JONATHAN STRANGE, however looks nothing less than sumptuous. Every now and then the CGI is a little obvious, but no more so than in other similarly gothic-themed fare such as PENNY DREADFUL. As one would expect from a BBC production, the acting is excellent across the board, with splendid turns from Bertie Carvel and the always-reliable Eddie Marsan, as well as a host of character actors, some of whom will be familiar to fans of British comedy of the 1970s onwards, including Brian Pettifer (GET SOME IN!), Paul DENNIS PENNIS Kaye, Vincent Franklin (THE OFFICE) and John Sessions (WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY).

Where JONATHAN STRANGE really scores points, however, is in its general mise-en-scene, which cannot help but evoke to those of us of a certain upbringing the glorious period British horror films of the early 1970s. One episode will have Amicus fans playing spot the FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE references, the two magicians working together at the climax is evocative of Peter Newbrook’s THE ASPHYX, and any number of gloomy carriage rides and grim forbidding locations are reminiscent of the very best of Tigon and Hammer. Vincent Franklin as Drawlight even seems to be channelling Aubrey Morris.

Blu-ray was made to showcase gothic splendour such as this, and RLJ’s transfer looks as excellent as one might expect. The two disc set also includes over twenty minutes of behind the scenes footage, deleted scenes, a few bloopers and some picture galleries. Vast, complex, and an utter delight to watch for the entirety of its seven hour-long episodes, the BBC’s JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL may well be the television drama event of the year, and if you haven’t already read the book you’ll want to by the time you’ve finished watching this. 

RLJ Entertainment are releasing the BBC version of Susanna Clarke's JONATHAN STRANGE & MR NORRELL on Region B Blu-ray and Region 2 DVD on 29th June 2015

Sherlock Holmes (1965)

I would never admit to being an expert on Sherlock Holmes. After all, there are far too many of those out there already, self-professed and otherwise. But I have always enjoyed the adventures of Conan-Doyle’s creation. I watched all the Basil Rathbone Universal series when I was a lad, loved Peter Cushing in the role, and have thoroughly enjoyed the latest modern version starring Benedict Cumberbatch. Oh, and I also happen to have read all the stories.

I have to confess, however, that I had never heard of the series under consideration here until the BFI flagged it up for review, so I’m guessing there will be a fair few Holmes fans who will also be unfamiliar with it. To put it into context, in 1964 the BBC filmed a one-off hour-long adaptation of the short story The Speckled Band, starring Douglas Wilmer as Holmes and Nigel Stock as Dr Watson. This was well-enough received that a full series followed a year later, and that’s what we have here - all eleven surviving episodes of that show, plus two reconstructions similar to the excellent work done on the BFI’s OUT OF THE UNKNOWN box set, spread over four DVDs.

The selection of stories to be adapted is interesting, and it's actually quite refreshing to come across a Holmes series that doesn’t do the usual old standbys. There’s no Hound of the Baskervilles in here, but we do get a version of The Six Napoleons (filmed in the Universal series as the marvellous pseudo-horror SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE PEARL OF DEATH) and some excellent Cornish horror featuring guest star Patrick Troughton in The Devil’s Foot. Otherwise it’s a collection of lesser-known Holmes stories which actually just makes this release all the more worthwhile. 

But are the episodes themselves any good? Well bearing in mind they are of the grainy, stagey, slightly camera-wobbly era of British television, they’re actually very good indeed. The Speckled Band feels like an early 1930s horror film with some good sets and a fine atmosphere, and this series is perhaps most going to suit you if you’re a fan of the Rathbone Universals rather than later colour adaptations. Some good location work helps add to the atmosphere as well.

And what of the leads? Wilmer actually makes an excellent Holmes in the classical mode, and Nigel Stock is far more Andre Morell than Nigel Bruce in his portrayal of Watson. As with many of the shows of this era, fans of British TV and cinema will enjoy playing spot the guest cast member, and overall I have nothing but good things to say about how enjoyable this particular series of SHERLOCK HOLMES is for the right kind of fan.

Extras include commentary tracks by director Peter Sasdy (The Illustrious Client) and Peter Cregeen (The Abbey Grange), as well as actors David Andrews and Trevor Martin (The Red-Headed League). Best of all, 95 year old Douglas Wilmer, still going strong, provides commentaries for the Devil’s Foot and Charles Augustus Milverton episodes. There’s also a Spanish audio version of The Speckled Band and an alternative title sequence for The Illustrious Client which incorporates images of the mighty Peter Wyngarde, as per his guest star contract. There’s also an excellent booklet with notes on the restoration, a career profile of Douglas Wilmer, and more. Another absolute classic television winner from the BFI.

The BFI are releasing the BBC's 1964-1965 series of SHERLOCK HOLMES in a 4 DVD set on the 30th March 2015