Taste The Blood Of Dracula

Offspring Breakers

Taste The Blood Of Dracula
UK 1970
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Hammer/Warner Archive Blu Ray Zone A

Okay, so the time has come for me to revisit the very first of the Hammer Dracula films I saw as a kid. I think I was about six years old when Taste The Blood Of Dracula got it’s first TV screening in the UK but it was a big deal as I think I’d only seen the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula before this. I remember it was one of two films (the other being Dr. No) where we actually walked up one night to the next street from where we lived back in those days, to my uncle’s house... as he was one of the few family members who actually possessed a colour television set as opposed to our black and white model. I really liked this film then and, as a consequence, despite being somewhat less thrilled by it this time around, it’s always going to be the Hammer Dracula movie that holds a special place in my heart for this reason. Not my favourite (that would get a release in 1972, I review it here) but certainly the one that most brings with it a strong sense of nostalgia.

And though it is actually quite a ploddy film in a way, I have to say that the way the story evolves over the course of the picture is yet a slightly different angle into the various ‘Dracula killing sprees’ which are the prime ingredient of the movie.

The film actually opens just before the end of the last movie, Dracula Has Risen From The Grave (reviewed here), with a travelling salesman, played by British comedian Roy Kinnear, being knocked unconscious and abandoned on the road following a somewhat traditional Hammer opening of a stage coach filmed in the local forest. When he awakens, he stumbles into Christopher Lee’s Dracula’s death scene from the last movie and, it transpires later, collects the amulet, the cloak and some of the powdered remains of his blood for their ‘resale value’.

We then switch to the plot proper, as three disloyal fathers, played by Geoffrey Keen, Peter (It’s cheese, Gromit!) Sallis and John Carson meet on the last Sunday of every month in their little three man secret circle, to while away the rest of the evening in the company of the charming ladies of a bordello (including the young Madeline Smith in her first role for Hammer), run by Russell Hunter (who played ‘Lonely’ in TV’s hit show Callan, opposite Edward Woodward). As importantly, we meet their respective children played by Linda Hayden (from Blood On Satan’s Claw, reviewed here), Isla Blair and Lucy Paxton. And also Anthony Higgins as Ms Hayden’s worried and disapproved of boyfriend.

We then get into some business where the three brothel boys fall in with the son of a lord played by Ralph Bates, in the first of his films for Hammer. He dabbles in black magic and gains the aid of the three, in the guise of providing them with thrills beyond what their now jaded minds can think of. In this case, he urges them to purchase Dracula’s cloak, amulet and powdered blood at great expense so they can sell their soul to the devil but, when things take a dark turn and only he drinks Draculas blood mingled with his own, before being beaten to death by the others, he is abandoned at the site of the ritual.

However, because of his loyalty to Dracula, his body is suddenly covered with some special spooky dust, which forms a kind of shroud around him, before he rips free of the shroud and is revealed to be a reborn Christopher Lee as Dracula. Now, I suspect Bates must have felt a little hard done by at this point because he was originally supposed to be playing the lead role after Lee’s reluctance to return to the character but, the distribution deal with Warners Seven Arts would go up in smoke without Lee in the part so he was, eventually, lured back to the role and the story rewritten for the return of the original Dracula.

After that, the film becomes a simple cat and mouse game as Dracula takes revenge on the three who beat his ‘servant’ to death by mind controlling their offspring to kill their relevant fathers, before Ms. Hayden’s boyfriend finally rescues her from his clutches and somehow kills Dracula in a bizarre moment which I had to look to Wikipedia to explain to me and, well I’m still not really sure why he dies here but it is spectacular, despite not really being reliant on the forces of logic. It’s a bit of an unsatisfying ending, to be honest but, I liked it well enough when I was six years old so I’m not going to start knocking it now.

The film is, as I said, a little bit ploddy... for instance, it’s over a third of the way in before the characters and supernatural elements are set up enough to be able to credibly bring Dracula back from the dead for the audience. However, there’s some nice photography in this to keep the visual interest up throughout. Sasdy manages to deal with crowded frames quite well... for instance, when the three fathers are all crammed into a shot with Bates and Kinnear, Sasdy positions them so the three fathers are vertically aligned in terms of height in the frame on the left of shot with the other two more to the right of the shot... which gives it a nice sense of balance.

This is also the first Hammer Dracula film in my memory (I might be wrong in this so please hit me up in the comments if I am) to feature a solitary, bare female breast for a few seconds in the bordello scene... so that’s kind of interesting. I was a little disappointed that the fathers are more or less marked as ‘bad people’ for two timing their wives to visit their monthly fix of scrumptious harlots... thus making their later murders morally acceptable to an audience... but I guess they weren’t quite there yet when it came to completely innocent bystanders being killed (although, certainly, one of the daughters meets an untimely demise at the hands... well, at the teeth... of Dracula himself).

The film is significantly bolstered by a score from James Bernard, who wrote the original Dracula (aka Horror Of Dracula) score for Hammer, so he uses his three note motif for Lee’s vampire all over the show, to great effect.

And there’s not much more for me to say about this Proustian rush of a movie that is Taste The Blood Of Dracula. A bit dull in places but ultimately an entertaining entry in the series and, while not one of the best it’s certainly not the least of them either. The film has a great title too, ushering in a tag line parodying the British milk adverts of the time... Drink A Pint Of Blood A Day... so, yeah, it’s a nice little slice of Hammer Dracula, make no mistake. I’m not looking forward to the next one in the series so much though, from what I remember of it.

The Monster

Dwarf Spirit

The Monster
aka I Don’t Want To Be Born
aka The Devil Within Her
aka Sharon’s Baby
UK 1975 Directed by Peter Sasdy
Network Blu Ray Zone B

Warning: This one has all the spoilers.
If you don’t want to know, don’t read.

I’ve been wanting to see I Don’t Want To Be Born aka The Monster aka The Devil Within Her aka Sharon’s Baby for some time now and regular readers of my blog can probably guess why... yeah, that’s right. One of my favourite people in the world, Caroline Munro, is in this one. So when Network brought out a Blu Ray edition of the film last year, I was very keen to get my hands of a copy (thanks @cultofthecinema and a Merry Christmas 2021 to you too). Now, although it’s been released under the title The Monster by the company, I’d only ever heard of this as I Don’t Want To Be Born. Trying to find it under any of these titles on the IMDB though (at time of writing) proves a bit of a slog. You’ll find it listed there under the completely ludicrous title, Sharon’s Baby. Why is that a ludicrous title? Well for starters, there’s no character called Sharon in the movie so... yeah.

Okay, the film starts strongly with a pregnant Lucy, played by Joan Collins, screaming her head off as the credits roll and Dr. Finch, played by Donald Pleasence, tries to extract her baby from her. The kid puts up quite a tussle and it’s at this point that Dr. Finch exclaims to his assisting nurse (played by none other than a very young Floella Benjamin), that it’s like the baby doesn’t want to be born. Something which, later on in the movie, he’s reminded of when someone says that, um, it’s like the child never wanted to be born. All I can say that, even at the first utterance of this, I was pretty sold on I Don’t Want To Be Born as being the one, truly genuine title for this film. I mean, I’ve talked about the non-existent Sharon but, did I also mention the baby Lucy gives birth to is a boy? So, you know, calling it The Devil Within Her is a little over the top if alluding to the child and, if it’s not, then it’s certainly only in Joan Collins character for about two minutes before it’s born into the world. Born into the world and, apparently, half scratching Lucy’s face off and looking like it wants to drink more of her blood. So, yeah, this is not the best delivery the good doctor’s seen in recent years.

Okay, so Lucy’s husband Gino, played by Ralph Bates attempting to do an Italian accent, collects gal and sprog but it’s not long before the little tyke is causing a ruckus and, eventually killing people. Lucy’s friend Mandy, played absolutely brilliantly and naturalistically by my heroine Caroline Munro (it’s got to be one of her best performances... she doesn’t just hold her own with Joan here, she acts her off the screen), can’t really suggest much in the way of help but maybe her boyfriend Tommy (played by John Steiner, with a brilliant cockney accent here) whom she works for as a stripper, may know what the answer is. Well, Lucy remembers it might be something to do with when she used to work and sleep with Tommy at a strip show too, where she rejected the advances of Hercules the dwarf (played by George Claydon) and so said little person put a curse on her.

Meanwhile, Gino’s sister Albana (played by Eileen Atkins), who really is a sister with her nun’s habit and holy ways, recognises something amiss with the little darling child. Maybe it’s the fact that it manages to somehow go on a killing spree and do things like chop Donald Pleasence’s head off with a couple of well placed blows with a garden spade... or that time it killed its dad, Gino, who has apparently ‘gone missing’. At the end of the film, after the toddler who shouldn’t be able to even crawl yet has chased mummy with a knife and stabbed her to death, Sister Albana exorcises the demonic spirit from the baby... which also somehow affects Hercules (who somehow was manifesting as the child... not sure how that works), causing him to die of a heart attack on stage at the strip show, due to having his dual spirit exorcised from the kiddies body. It makes about as much sense as anything else in this movie but, well, here’s the thing...

Call it a guilty pleasure, if you like, but I really had a good time with this one. It’s not the fact that Sasdy’s use of camera movement to wander away from a honed in set up to pan somewhere else (which I’m sure I’ve seen him do in some of his Hammer films) or his interesting compositions are all that special. It’s not even the acting which, was quite good from some people and not great from some others... honestly, Caroline was the best thing about this movie for me... and it’s not even super cool Ron Grainer’s wildly catchy but, let’s be honest here, mostly inappropriate score for the movie (which I would love on CD please record companies?). It’s the fact that it’s such a wildly ambitious idea to have a killer baby going on the rampage before CGI was even a thing. I mean, this is literally, you see a knife coming at the camera or a spade coming down towards camera or a window or cot bashed apart and then... cut to cute picture of a completely immobile toddler to somehow show that it was the baby committing all these crimes. It’s just so wildly funny... I hate to say it but, it’s hugely entertaining because of how silly the execution of the premise is (and there have been much better killer baby movies done in the intervening years, of course).

But there you are... a film with some strange influences at work in its genetic make up... intentionally or not. So obviously trying to ride the wave of The Exorcist but, also, that Grainer music is played through in a way almost against the visuals and running as an accompaniment rather than an illustrative score... much like Italian groups like Goblin or Libra might provide for a giallo or horror movie. I thoroughly enjoyed... hmm... I’ll refer to it as I Don’t Want To Be Born... and Caroline Munro looks absolutely stunning in this, as well as being at the top of her game. So, there are good reasons to have this title but, for me, it’s just a fun experience.

Hammer Horror - The Warner Brothers Years

We’re Warner Git You Sucka!

Hammer Horror -
The Warner Brothers Years
2018 USA Directed by Marcus Hearn
Screened 26th August at FrightFest 2018

Hammer Horror - The Warner Brothers Years is the latest in a series of documentary films written by the director, Marcus Hearn, about certain sections of British cinema and TV heritage from times gone by. He has written a number of books, too, on his specialist areas of interest such as, amongst others... Amicus Studios, The Avengers, Doctor Who and, of course, Hammer Studios. So he’s definitely one of the main people you could want researching, writing and directing a documentary like this which, it has to be said, certainly has a very specific, honed down subject matter. That being the films Hammer made with money flowing to them from Warner Brothers/Seven Arts. This was during the last ten or so years of the original studio’s last hurrah although, there were also other films being made with other distributors before, during and after this which obviously don’t get much of a mention here.

So this one doesnt quite cover the last few years of Hammer’s descent into non-existence (in that particular incarnation) but it does show them as they are attempting to change the way their movies are produced and in turn perceived by a target audience that was clearly changing. So this covers mostly films such as Taste The Blood of Dracula, Dracula AD 1972, The Satanic Rites of Dracula, Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires but doesn’t talk about some of their films with other distributors in which they were also trying to have a hand in changing their image, so to speak.

The film is, as you would expect, as series of talking head shots of various surviving creators and actors/actresses such as Veronica Carlson, John Carson, Madeline Smith, Peter Sasdy and the incomparable Caroline Munro, all interspersed with clips from the movies (and even rare behind the scenes footage) and interviews with such modern experts on the phenomena including author Jonathan Rigby, director Joe Dante and Sir Christopher Frayling.

There is a lot on offer here with, perhaps, not a lot of time to cover the ground the documentary so obviously wanted to try and get to. Consequently, I’m sure most people will find that not enough of their favourite movie from this, admittedly, somewhat short selection of films is being covered... which is not particularly a fair criticism, to be sure, because you’re always going to get that kind of thing happening. For instance, for me personally, there were some issues with the documentary which really only rang true for me and I’m sure everyone will have a very personal response to what has been covered.

Caroline Munro states here that a lot of people are warming up to Dracula AD 1972 after it coming under fire a lot over the decades and even in Kim Newman’s introductory interview with Marcus Hearn before the film screened, he put in a good word for it. I dunno, I somehow found it hard to believe that, despite the treatment of the gothic, church bound Dracula in this movie, which various interviewees rightly pointed out, none of the people in the documentary realised that Dracula AD 1972 is, indeed, the greatest Hammer Dracula film (followed closely by The Satanic Rites of Dracula and Taste The Blood Of Dracula). It might also have been nice to get Michael Kitchen’s view on his role in Dracula AD 1972 too, I think but... maybe it’s not a film he looks back on as fondly as some others.

And while I’m on the subject of that particular film, nobody in the documentary addressed the glaring continuity problems with the Van Helsing character created by the opening, pre-credits sequence in Dracula AD 1972 and the later movie The Legend Of The Seven Golden Vampires. Neither did anyone address the astonishing differences between the two actresses playing the character of Jessica Van Helsing in the two movies... Stephanie Beacham and Joanna Lumley. Nor indeed why that transformation occurred in the first place.

Another problem for me was the relatively short amount of time spent on Moon Zero Two (reviewed by me here) and When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth. The latter because it’s one I’ve never got around to seeing and I’m kinda interested in it and the former because, frankly, asides from the various Quatermass adaptations that Hammer did, I personally think Moon Zero Two is their next best movie. I would have loved to have had more insight into the making of that one, to be honest and, also, the way that I suspect it must have influenced Gerry Anderson when he came to make his live action TV show, Space 1999.

All this being said, Hearn clearly knows which noggins to tap for this particular story and it was truly a pleasure to watch the likes of Frayling and Rigby talk about some of this stuff at a variety of locations including the Cinema Museum and the Natural History Museum. It was also great that Hearn managed to talk to Peter Sasdy, who I don’t quite recall seeing before in one of these kinds of productions. In fact, one of the things Hearn pointed out in his introductory interview with Kim Newman before the movie played was that with the Hammer films of this period, now, it really is almost a race against time because at some point all the people who have first hand knowledge of working on these things will depart this earthly plane.

The one thing which did surprise me a little is that, given some of the books I’ve read about Hammer over the years (including some by Hearn, no doubt), there was only a hint of the problems behind the scenes with the various producers and studio heads at Hammer at that time. The death of the company was looming but it was perhaps not quite as chaotic or damning at the time these particular films were made to really taint the story of this period with the negativity which would later engulf the studio and rip it from this world. I did, however, notice a certain resistance on the part of some of the interviewees who starred in these films in that they weren’t all that enamoured of the direction that Hammer was taking but, as others pointed out both in the film and in the pre-screening talk, it was definitely something Hammer had to do. Hammer was being perceived as a somehow cosy and toothless brand of horror compared to some of the other, American, bigger budget horror movies which were coming out at the time and they really did need to change the way they wrote and produced these kinds of 'dark fantasies'. After all, as this film points out, 1973 was also the year when The Exorcist hit cinemas and so Hammer really were beginning to be perceived as the quaint, cutesy alternate to what I’m sure many people of the time were thinking was ‘real horror’. Alas, it becomes obvious at some point that they clearly weren’t doing enough to change their approach and it’s also made abundantly clear in the documentary that, when Warner Brothers withdrew their money and support from Hammer, it was the beginning of the end for the company that had fairly recently won the Queen’s award for best British exports.

As the director himself pointed out in his introduction to the film at FrightFest, this documentary is really an attempt to put together an ‘extra feature’ which is sadly absent from various Hammer DVDs and Blu Rays and it certainly has the look and feel of other extras he’s been involved with (and yes, it does often reference Mike Vicker’s main title score to Dracula AD 1972 throughout... a bit of a go to track for a lot of ‘Swinging Hammer’ documentary spots, it seems to me). That’s certainly fine with this audience member, though, as it’s solidly entertaining and certainly informative in a few places to boot. If you’re an admirer of the Hammer Horror brand with a fondness for this period in their celluloid history then Hammer Horror - The Warner Brothers Years is probably something that you need to see. I, for one, hope the director might consider doing another such documentary on some of the other films that Hammer was producing at that time, sometime in the near future before the well of the legacy of talent dries up.


FrightFest 2018 @ NUTS4R2

The Most Assassinated Woman In The World

Luciferina

Hammer Horror - The Warner Brothers Years

Videoman (aka Videomannen)

Crystal Eyes (aka Mirada De Cristal)

Hands of the Ripper

Ripping The Velvet

Hands of the Ripper
UK 1971
Directed by Peter Sasdy
Hammer/Network 
Blu Ray Zone B

Okay. Now for some reason I have a strange block on Hands Of The Ripper, which turned up in the form of the new Network Blu Ray transfer at Christmas. The thing is, I can’t remember if I saw this as a kid or not. I saw a heck of a lot of Hammer movies on TV, from the age of around 7 years up to and around 14 years of age, when they were still shown regularly on British telly, and this movie certainly did ring a few bells at the back of my mind somewhere. I can’t say I honestly remembered anything specific about it though and, certainly, if it was something I watched on TV in the 1970s, then I suspect it would have been in a fairly censored version, if this uncut edition is anything to go by.

The film is directed by Peter Sasdy, who directed the first ever Hammer film I saw, Taste The Blood Of Dracula. This one is a strange concoction, though, and while it’s not something I enjoyed as much as the same director’s foray into the world of the popular vampire, it’s got a certain charm to it and the film isn’t wholly unremarkable... although it is a bit dull in places.

The film starts with the back story of one of the main characters, Anna, played throughout the rest of the movie by Angharad Rees but who is, in the opening sequence, depicted as a little girl in a cot. A man escapes an unruly mob by giving them the slip and returning to his wife and his daughter, the aforementioned Anna. He is, in fact, Jack the Ripper, and he murders the girl's mother in front of the daughter. The sequence continues as the opening credits play out with some rather dated and ultimately unpalatable freeze frames which stop the action whenever a new name appears from the cast or crew. Then we get into the movie proper...

It’s 15 years later and Dr. John Pritchard, played by Eric Porter, is accompanied by his son Michael, played by Keith Bell, as they attend a seance given by a character played by Dora Bryan. She has the grown up, teenage version of Anna representing “the spirit world” by talking as a ghostly contact through a grate in the wall and the illusion is easily seen through by the Pritchards, although one lady and her husband are besides themselves by the events they believe are transpiring before them. Once the party is over, so to speak, Michael Pritchard, who Keith Bell seems to be channeling the exact looks of Edgar Allan Poe for, takes a waiting cab to his stag do (he is getting married within the week) while Dr. Pritchard waits opposite the house with the seance for another carriage to come along.

Meanwhile, Dora Bryan’s character has taken money from a higher up member of parliament to have sex with young Anna. When Anna sees a shiny object, however, and is in close proximity (aka the “cuddle zone”) to someone who is getting a bit too intimate for her comfort, she goes into a trance and gets all stabby with people. Doctor Pritchard hears the screams and when he finds the stabbed to death Dora Bryan and the higher up official fleeing the scene of the crime, he seems to realise what is going on with Anna, to some extent... being as he is interested in the workings of the human mind and has been following the words and reputation of a certain Dr. Freud. So he springs her from jail the next day and asks her to live in his home... the same day that Michael’s fiancee Laura, played by Jane Merrow, comes to stay.

Now here on out it becomes a bit of a body count movie, with Doctor Pritchard constantly discovering Anna has just murdered somebody else and then having to dispose of each body and cover up for them as he can... including covering up for Anna too, who seems to have no idea or memory of what has happened once she’s gone into her trance.

The film is, it’s true, a predictable mess of clichés and, when we discover that Michael’s fiancee is also blind, we are just waiting for the scene to come when she is left alone with Anna and blindly trying to escape the... Hands Of The Ripper... so to speak. We seem to be waiting for certain scenes to appear throughout the movie for a lot of the time, it has to be said. It’s not a great film by any stretch but that certainly doesn’t stop director Sasdy from trying to be a little creative with his shot set ups and having fun with them and there are a number of instances of beautiful photography in the movie.

One of the director’s penchants, for example, is to sometimes have a vertical block splitting the screen just to the left of the centre of the shot. He even does this with people quite a few times and he’s certainly not afraid to have characters filling up the screen in mid-shot, creating the same off centre, vertical shapes as some of the other elements in the shots throughout the movie. Of course, this means he can then transcend to another shot and reflect these vertical blocks with something else in order to not jar the eye of the spectator as the sequences are cut together and this seems to work very well.

It doesn’t do anything to temper the general malaise created by Christopher Gunning’s somewhat less than typical Hammer score, though, which is not one of my favourite scores for the studio, to be sure. It somehow seems a little too subtle, almost, for the material and pacing that the director has created here. Perhaps, away from the confines of the film itself, it may be a little more robust and listenable but I don’t think it does the film too much good when pitched against the images, in all honesty.

Highlights of the movie would be the levels of goriness on display in this one, I guess. I don’t remember ever seeing a Hammer movie as bloody as this one and, though the scenes of violence are brief, they are effective and the old “Kensington gore” that the studio is known for gets a good work out here. The reveal on Dora Bryan’s character who the Doctor finds standing by a door, only to realise she has been affixed to it with a poker skewering her though her stomach as the door swings back into place with her still on it, is a nice little visual idea and the scenes where a “working girl”, played by none other than Open All Hours’ Lynda Baron, gets some knitting needles through her hand and into her eye ball as she tries to defend herself against the attack is another... if you’ll pardon the expression... eye opener in the movie.

Actually, Lynda Baron is one of the highlights of the movie for me and it’s great to see her as a younger woman in this, although the character she is playing, Long Lizzie Stride, makes no sense since Long Lizzie is one of the Ripper’s original victims (played by Susan Lynch in The Hughes Brothers go at the Ripper, From Hell, for example) and the film is clearly set 15 years after the original serial atrocities which have attracted so much interest in the intervening years. Indeed, anachronism seems to be a common feature in this film which seems to make mentions of the attitudes of Queen Victoria, even though she had clearly been dead for two years before this movie is set, the main body of which appears to take place in 1903.

Not a mistake, as such, but a disappointment, is the films climax taking place in the whispering gallery in St. Pauls cathedral... except you only seem to see one bit of fake looking wall and a shot down from a balcony which could have been filmed anywhere... which it turns out it was. The film’s producers had sought permission to film in St. Pauls, it transpires, but had been flatly refused, hence the ersatz nature of the clichéd but potentially effective finale. Which is a bit of a shame really because the film is quite watchable and nicely off kilter in certain places.

And off kilter might also be a good description of Eric Porter’s performance in this movie. He barely cracks a smile, playing the main male protagonist with a sense of someone with a void left in his heart. This lack of joyfulness of life is remarked on at one point by one of is housekeeperss and it seems to stem from whatever might have happened to his wife, who seems to be the only person not present in the family unit. Since he offers Anna one of his wife’s dresses, one can only assume that she met with a tragic end at some point before the opening of the movie, although I couldn’t detect any real reference throughout the film. I suspect there was either some footage cut or part of the script which explained the reasons behind Porter’s dour but effective performance left unfilmed and, therefore, not included in the final product. At least that’s my guess.

And there you have it. A movie which seems a bit of an odd fit in the Hammer filmography and, though not completely effective, certainly does have its moments and fans of the studio might well enjoy this one. The new Blu Ray transfer by Network is certainly a nice addition to the library, although I’m not 100% sure that some of the wispy cinematography is seen in its best in a high definition format, in all honesty. Still, definitely one to have if you want to spend some quality Hammer time with a movie which will probably slowly grow on you as the years go by. Not the best jumping on point for the studio’s thriller product and more as something which can be savoured and enjoyed once you’ve seen all their higher profile pictures. An acquired taste for the discerning fan, perhaps.

The Stone Tape

The Stone Ranger

The Stone Tape
Airdate: 25th December 1972 UK
Directed by Peter Sasdy
BBC DVD Region 2

Okay, so I’m really not that happy about having to write this review. It’s not going to be what people want to hear from me on this particular TV drama and I can’t tell you how dissapointed I feel about this.

The Stone Tape is a very highly thought of phenomena in terms of classic British horror TV and, honestly, I can see why. It’s got a good script and the acting is mostly not too bad... definitely of its time (“Alright, luv?”). Why does 70s TV acting seem to date more than any other decade, I wonder? I am more shocked and surprised that I didn’t personally think a little more of the show given its pedigree and the fact that I absolutely love things like this normally.

This aired when I was four years old and I don’t believe I saw it at the time. But I wish I had done because, when I was four, it would have frightened me silly and given me nightmares (just like other shows and movies by this writer did) and I would probably have very fond memories of this indeed. It comes from the pen of one of my all time favourite genre writers, Nigel Kneale, responsible for terrifying me with the Quatermass films and serials (without which, frankly, there would be no shows like Doctor Who on the air today... at least not in the way we are familiar with) and also such landmarks as the Peter Cushing TV adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 and various other, quirkier things, like a comedy show called Kinvig I used to watch (goodness knows what that looks like these days).

Also, it’s very much kin to two TV shows which used to terrify us kids in the late 70s and which were always the ‘talk of the playground’ the next day at school - The Omega Factor and Sapphire and Steel.

So it really surprises me that The Stone Tape felt just a little less than my expectations of it had allowed for, but I can’t really put a finger on just why it didn’t quite jell for me.

I thought some of the acting was good but Jane Asher, although she was definitely locked into a specific and fairly intense performance, was a bit misplaced with her acting choices, I thought. She seemed to be a touch too over the top in the portrayal of the sensitive nature of her empathic condition and while this might have been the best way to go with the character, I felt the style of the performance didn’t really fit in with a lot of the other actors around her. And its strange because she’s doing brilliant and not very easy things in the role and congratulations to her in some ways (because I think the problem lays a bit more in the editing and pacing, rather than her talent) but it feels like it should have maybe been toned down a little in relation to the claustrophobic, in your face feel of the “haunted room” atmosphere which so fascinates the many characters crammed into their new research facility.

The Stone Tape tells of a group of researchers trying to discover the next big recording technology device and, when they relocate to larger premises, the stumble across a ‘haunted’ room. After experienceing a few audio and visual hallucinations which can’t be picked up on their equipment, they try to find out what makes this phenomena tick so they can harvest the results in their race to find the next best recording medium. This is after they realise the stones in the room have obviously recorded the death of a maid from another century in the very material of their walls... The Stone Tape of the title.

Now, I’ve had a bit of a think about this and I have concluded that maybe the writing on this is a little bit ambitious for the hour and a half running time. Certain sections and jumps seemed a little too rushed for my liking.  I’m very much a fan of slow creeping dread as opposed to other kinds of horror but I do like a less speedy appointment with tales dealing with a “haunting menace” and The Stone Tape just felt a little too pacy for me. Although, some of the scenes were quite eeire I just felt... well, let me put it this way. I’m fairly squeemish and quite easy to scare when it comes to ghost stories and I watched The Stone Tape on my own in the dark one evening, and I didn’t feel scared or chilled once. Didn’t look around in the dark to see if anything “against nature” was creeping around the house with me as a direct result of my viewing experience. It just didn’t make much impact on me.

Which I do feel is really strange. The 1963 version of The Haunting, for example, never fails to chill me no matter how many times I see it... and nothing much actually happens in that.

My other problem is that The Stone Tape not only has a very predictable fate for its main female protagonist, but even the final little ‘twist” is so obvious that you are kind of waiting for it to happen from very early on in the programme. Which is a shame because I’m used to Nigel Kneale being a lot more mind blowing than that, to be honest. This ending was just so expected, even used as a way of haunting a character, brilliantly played by Michael Bryant, who has progressed into more of a villain by the end of the play (indeed, the subtle ruthlessness of the character’s driven obsession reminded me of the way Brian Donlevy used to mis-play Quatermass in the first two Hammer adaptations from Kneale’s original serials... but in The Stone Tape that’s the right tone to go with for that character, I think).

All in all I’m glad I saw the play finally. It’s not without its charm and its certainly a time piece which will remind older viewers of the British attitude towards life back in the 70s and, possibly, provide comical amusement for less older viewers. I will even be watching it with the commentary included on the DVD at some point so I can try to decode why it’s held in such high regard. Alas, on this viewing, my body temperature only dropped to lukewarm and was, it has to be said, far from chilly.