is there a name or a phrase for or anything much written about that distinctly British CREEPY VIBE prevalent in TV shows and movies of the '60s/'70s? (e.g. The Prisoner, Sapphire and Steel, Baker-era

Some magnificent stuff on this thread recently - a broiling chthonic upsurge of undead UKILx in itself.

I was just thinking, the obvious antecedent for "The Prisoner" is G.K. Chesterton's "The Man Who Was Thursday", right? Which has nothing of the pastoral, really, but it has that dreamlike (sub-titled "A Nightmare"!), somewhat supernatural vibe that makes "The Prisoner" so different from any other spy fiction of that era, which is usually concerned with post-nuclear Cold War reality, be it glamourising (Fleming) or attacking (Greene, Le Carré) it. I think this sort of whimsy (far more benign in Chesterton than in "The Prisoner") can maybe be traced back to the nonsense of Carrol and etc, which provides the connection to the pastoral stuff? Might be wrong.

And as far as things that don't really belong in this thread go, Baker-era "Doctor Who"? What I've seen lines up more with a post-Hammer sensibility of gothic camp than anything else...

I wld also say that visually the Prisoner takes lots of cues from psychedelia/Sgt Pepper, which is obv drenched in Victorian whimsy, and overt references to all the druggy aspects of Alice, so it all fits.

I'm sure aldo and sic know this stuff better than me, but yes, Doctor Who transitioned from Quatermass/Pertwee to Hammer/Baker (tho after a while the Who production team were under pressure from Mary Whitehouse etc to tone down the Gothic/horrific elements.) Dcotor Who goes Gothic at almost exactly the same time that Hammer starts to die away - so another transition, from film to television, from adulthood to childhood.

Stewart Lee's short radio documentary on The Children of the Stones from a few years back is still on iPlayer (seemingly available for eternity)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01n1rbx

Found The Stone Tape disappointingly un-unheimlich. 90 minutes of 1970s businessmen in flares shouting at each other, doing comedy Japanese impersonations and assuming all women are fragile creatures on the verge of a breakdown, with two minutes of ultra vague lovecraftian not so horrible horrors at the end.

day of the triffids was good though (bbc4 repeats to tie in with sci fi season)

Don't think I can agree on The Stone Tape. Although it never breaks out into full-on creepy it does unsettling very well although probably never hitting unheimlich levels. It's definitely a more focused exploration of ideas Kneale probably explores better elsewhere though, I would argue.

Anybody watching C4's recent Gor Blimey Guvnor Wasn't The Seventies Racist And Sexist And That Innit clipfest would have seen the segment on public information films. It sort of centred on Apaches (and showed all four deaths) but also featured Robbie, Kite and The Finishing Line - but no Lonely Water, which is one of my favourites.

Yeah I'll give some other Kneales a fair go, and the Triffids which I vaguely remember from the time.

I rewatched the BBC version of The Invisible Man from 84(?) the other day. The criticisms normally levelled at it are the pacing (which I agree with, there's at least on episode break which seems to be in completely the wrong place) and that it's overly faithful. I'm not sure I can agree with that - Griffin's relationship with Kemp is quite different - but I think it's a lovely curio. I might try and get hold of the 70s David MacCallum version at some point.

I think this weekend is time for the Nightmare Man, a Bob Holmes adaptation of a David Witshire book directed by Douggie Camfield. IIRC the first time I watched it it was 95% titting about on a golf course, so it's probably due a refresh of my memory.

My recollection differs slightly! I remember some good *taped sound effects* of alien noises. Remember feeling it was a bit tame ultimately, but that might just have been my bloodthirsty younger self.

ledge I'd definitely check out 'Baby' from Beasts, The Year of the Sex Olympics and Quatermass and the Pit. I like the other Qs as well, but I think that's probably my favourite.

Watching Artemis 81 at the moment. It's not Penda's Fen, but is very enjoyable.

2 quatermass films on this week, also as part of sci fi season.

The Nightmare Man is pretty good--slow pacing of the era, but some genuinely creepy stuff.

Can anybody tell me if the BFI 'Out Of The Unknown' box set is worth getting?

Saw Carol Morley's The Falling tonight, which flirts with a Wicker Man-y, Owl Service-y vibe in places, but doesn't really commit to full-on supernatural otherness. Thought the film, and Tracey Thorn's score, was all too much of a pastiche-y mishmash; it needed a more rigorous mise-en-scene, and a better developed script.

not seen yet but am all for film-makers not committing to full-on supernatural otherness

Sometimes yeah, a distanced ambiguity is more provoking than the clearcut monster in the closet (eg Rivette); but sometimes it can feel like a fear of genre

sure, it's a case by case thing, hadn't seen this pitched as a ghost story tho

edge of darkness?

Edge of Darkness def relevant as a kind of Quatermassy thriller that skirts round concrete sci-fi/supernatural plot elements while retaining lots of generic trappings.

I don't want to spoilerise The Falling - and I can easily imagine ppl getting a lot more out of it than me - but the film's most overtly supernatural moment is featured strongly in the trailer, and it is more witchy/occult than ghostly, tho' that is there too (along w/ lots of other stuff like If... . I also saw Kermode talking it up as a veiled horror film on his BBC film slot, more fool me for watching that, I know I know

And Edge of Darkness would have definitely been in there if the original ending had been used.

(Main character turns into tree, that is)

yeah def, tho I can't decide if that would have been great or not, possibly youd have to rework it all the way back and make the writers intent a lot more explicit throughout...

Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin is doing an eight-film series about British Folk Horror at the moment, so I'm getting to see some of these on the big screen over the next couple of weeks... tonight was Robin Redbreast, Wednesday is the Wicker Man (I am hoping they got the new print to screen), and in a few weeks is the Stone Tape.

I loved the Adonis/Fisher King stuff, and I thought it was interesting how the birth control and abortion aspects of the plot were so matter-of-fact? Can't remember the last time I've seen a diaphragm actually shown on the screen, if ever. I take it they're not the preferred form of birth control now, but still.

Does Moondial fall into this genre or was it too late in the day? I associate it with Children of the Stones, probably because we watched them together.

In an old annual my dad owned, there was a picture of Worzel Gummidge lying in a barn full of dummies. I used to find that image so hard to look at. Really terrified me.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LmQZjKMcPcA/hqdefault.jpg

the crowman off that was legit crepey

There was always something a little bit unsettling about Geoffrey Bayldon as an acting presence, even as Catweazle. It's easy to see why he was considered for the lead in Doctor Who when it started.

Speaking of Catweazle, Richard Carpenter is another name which could be mentioned here. As well instilling multiple generations with an instinctive dread of weirdos in long macs via The Boy From Space, his Robin Of Sherwood really played up the folkloric/supernatural aspects of the character in a way that hadn't really been seen before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alCuaPBIB4A

Bearing in mind RoS doesn't really fit the criteria of this thread, I'll also mention King Of The Castle, which definitely does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tSS22TNT3g

His Robin Hood series also introduced the Moor as a member of the Merry Men, as far as I know, which was picked up in pretty much all of the subsequent film/television versions!

Nigel Kneale's Beasts was taken down off YouTube for awhile but all the episodes are up again now from a different user. I have accordingly burned through Baby, Buddyboy, What Big Eyes, & During Barty's Party in the last week or so, along with the similar in spirit Murrain from a different series. What Big Eyes is the only less than great piece among them, otherwise blown away by this stuff. Stone Tape doesn't seem to be around but Sapphire and Steel is so that's up next.

Ps I am American so this is strictly grown up discovery time for me, no uncanny recollections from school days.

as others have said the stone tape is probably the weakest NK. although it doesn't really belong here if you see Year of the Sex Olympics anywhere, snap it up!

you already know my feelings about Assignment 2 of S&S as one of the finest pieces of TV ever made but it's worth starting from the first (which is also decent if a little silly at times) just to get some badly needed context for the whole S&S shebang.

Assignment 3 (SPOILER excepted) is probably my favourite I think, but I could make a case for all of them apart from Assignment 1.

incidentally, watching Artemis 81 again and it really is excellent. there's a wonky YouTube rip of it. also it's got sting in. but otherwise it's marvellous.

Noticed that on yt, was going to ask about it in this thread!

don't ask me, i was sent to bed and not allowed to watch the second half on the grounds that it was "a right load of old rubbish"

i saw your post upthread after i posted NV. I'm pleased to say it is definitely a load of old rubbish.

one of the major drawbacks of encroaching senility is when i post the same story to ilx twice :/

keeps things fresh and helps avoid a pass-agg "as I said upthread".

speaking of senility it's my birthday today and i might treat myself to rudkin's adaptation of the ash tree which i didnt realise was rudkin until i saw your earlier post.

Happy Birthday!

creepy thread to wish it on but marking the passage of time ties in nicely i guess

perfect thread for it. I'm hoping my incipient decay takes the form of a frail degeneration in the face of some sort of cosmic onslaught from the past.

and thanks!

Hb!

Hey Happy Birthday!

cheers everyone! no creepy vibe yet, just a day with gf around london, couple of galleries maybe (that thing helen dewitt contributed to) and some wine and food definitely. but who knows what lurks etc

http://images.tvrage.com/people/14/39008.jpg

Happy 21st Fizzles!

If you want a birthday pint I'm not rushing home after work tonight.

What's the Helen Dewitt thing? xp

Happy Day!

(If I'm remembering the stone children correctly)

thanks one and all. am sitting in my garden right now drinking wine so won't make that post-work drink today - but soon, soon.

http://i.imgur.com/uwEkYzc.jpg

substantial lol.

oh my

hehehe

apologies for late night poor quality photoshopping

!!!

The Stone Tape is getting a radio adaptation this Halloween, to be directed by Peter Strickland (mentioned at the end of this article):

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2015/jun/17/duke-of-burgundy-director-peter-strickland-radio-play-len-continuum

that's great news. every chance he'll do a better job than the original imo. this makes sense in terms of triangulating the PS aesthetic i think.

Just got hold of a DVD of The Changes, an old 1970s sci fi for children. It looks fantastic. Can't wait to watch it.

i remember seeing that around my cousin's at the time (was itv iirc, we were a bbc household. no magpie for us...)

New radio version of The Stone Tape on Friday by Peter Strickland (Berberian Sound Studio).

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06g63fh

Thanks for the reminder, aldo. As I said upthread, have a certain amount of expectation this will be better than the original.

It was but I still have reservations. Sound design was superb and genuinely scary, even in not 3D. Horrifying 1970s banter was toned down (I wondered if they were going to give it a modern day setting but I suppose no-one could ever be excited anymore by the prospect of a new recording medium.) The ending still felt weak though and I'm not sure it would have made any sense to anyone who hadn't seen the original.

this seems relevant:

Haunted half-hours – how the BBC made Christmas creepy

http://gu.com/p/4dmgq?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

there's a 6 disc box of bbc christmas ghost stories, featuring a shedload of MR James and a bunch of stuff i don't remember.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B009XD7M2Y

has nobody mentioned the Amazing Mr Blunden?

That BBC box is great.

Stone Tape was really well done but, yes, I think you needed a little familiarity with the original for it to work properly.

Saw The Owl Service mentioned as a see also on some page about Penda's Fen so decided to watch it while waiting for the latter to download (still waiting). (I never read the book, always assumed it was owl service like postal service.) For a kid's show it's certainly far out there. The sexual undercurrents are very confusing given that the kids are supposed to be teenagers, they're played by actors in their 20s, and they behave like 12 year olds. The first episode is creepy and weird enough - aided by the fact that the stepmother, theoretically a significant character, is never seen or heard but has her pronouncements issued via other characters - but it soon succumbs to the deathly slowness of yesteryear; aside from occasional plot snippets over half the episodes feel not just dispensable but downright irritating, lovesick teenagers mooning about or being insufferable snobbish pricks. No holds barred for the batshit final episode though: torrential rain and muddy pratfalls, oilskin-clad gurning loony villagers, a darth vader moment, and a climax that seems to foreshadow The Exorcist.

is there somewhere i can download penda's fen online?

started watching the Children's serial 'Box of Delights'. It's weird and unsettling and makes very little sense.

I had to torrent it, one seeder.

Box of Delights definitely a favourite of my childhood, I can still remember the theme. One major caveat though which I won't spoil.

I think I got pendas fen by downloading it from YouTube a couple of years ago when there were still iOS apps that'd do that

Penda's Fen is getting a DVD release in May, if you're willing to wait/would rather obtain it legally.

Just watched a VHS rip on YouTube last night

Another big tick for Box of Delights. It hit me squarely at the right time, when I was six or seven and in the lead in to Christmas. Have a strong sentimental attachment to it, and will still occasionally watch at Christmas. Both that and The Midnight Folk have similar 'anything anywhere' magic - with a very mutable human form and spirit that gives access to a total possible immersion into all corners of nature, time and mythology. It's quite appealing in one way - Raymond Lully escaping Troy but captured by medieval pirates, with Edwardian schoolboy in attednace - but has a knock on effect that the progress of events-in-settings are incoherent, the lack of restriction somehow dispersing a train of emotional investment. That's much less a problem in the TV series though, and the theme music is quite magical, I'm not sure it will ever leave me.

never watched it but vividly remember the trailers for it (and even then i thought the sfx were shonky looking)

"Come, be a beast with me in my wild wood..."

wouldn't get away with that today...

Just looked up the main title music. Fantastic. It's taken from A Carol Symphony by a composer named Hely-Hutchinson (looks like there is a recording on Naxos)

oh ok. that's interesting! will seek out. it's so totally bound up with childhood that I'm incapble of fair critical assessment, which is always quite an enjoyable state.

It's The First Noel, right? I thought everyone knew that tune?

yes, but it's incorporated into a slightly sinister even sour sounding theme, which is what I'm assuming Jon is referring to.

Yes it's some time before the first Noel really emerges and I like that opening material quite a lot

It's quite interesting how that music modulates into the carol, yeah.

What is the show that's being referenced as 'Tlentifini Maarhaysu' on Look Around You? I definitely remember a show like this being broadcast a little bit before the children's programmes came on during the 80s, and I thought it might be Box of Delights, but now I don't think so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8NUwZUlgV8

It's the title sequence from an old BBC2 documentary strand "The World About Us."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGTnZ0mAhMY

It's quite disturbing how much the obnoxious posh lad in the Owl Service resembles a young David Cameron, although appropriate given the class-heavy overtones of the story.

Thanks Pheel.

I do love a heavily processed flute, I must say...

For those interested in this sort of thing, I can recommend the Facebook group 'Folk Horror Revival'

Woke up this morning with an image in my mind from what I think was a TV show of this ilk. Two or three or four sinister figures loom supernaturally large over a landscape, peering down at our plucky protagonists. Large heads in the sky at the top of the screen, dark robes fading down to the horizon. Any ideas?

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0001/750/MI0001750654.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Like this?

Sort of, the figures a bit more spread across the top half with the normal world down in the bottom half.

don't know.. sorry.

incidentally, you can now watch full episodes of Jigsaw on Youtube, if you dare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFKCuF9w6OM

Looks like the BFI are putting out a DVD of Pendra's Fen eighteen days from today, which I'm excited about because I've never seen it (and indeed only know of it because of the raving of ILXors).

yeah i'm looking forward to that too.

i went through a huge huge 'weird 70s britain/folk horror' phase a few weeks ago and binged on films and even music, but ended up genuinely freaking myself out.

thought this thread bump would be for the radiohead trumptonshire wicker man remake...

Penda's Fen also included in mouthwatering box set of complete TV works of Alan Clarke

Been watching the Witches and the Grinnygog on YouTube this past week (link to episode one), which is a very relaxing sort of uncanny. Patricia Hayes does a great job as Miss Bendybones, and it also has a great theme song! Love the interplay in the handful of scenes between the churchman and witch, reminds me of the Dark is Rising.

I am reading Thomas Tryon's novel Harvest Home, which was being written about the same time the wicker man was being filmed, and is maybe the only example of American Pastoral Uncanny of that era (for sure an influence on children of the corn). Really good stuff.

http://www.tor.com/2014/06/13/summer-of-sleaze-thomas-tryon/

In this instance, do read the comments afterward. There's a good one.

loooooove harvest home
the widow fortune will stay with you forever!!

just saw thomas tryon as an actor in the book of ruth (don't ask why i was watching that)

I love Harvest Home!

If I ever ended up someplace like Cornwall Coombe or Summerisle, I think I would just go with it. Like, sign me up to be the Corn Maiden!

too late for me, lol
maybe i can get in on the action as one of the cooperating crones

Ha, yeah, I don't think I was successful in the maiden or mother phase, so here's hoping cronedom works out for me.

My ppl!

I went to a used book sale today and found THE CRONE'S BOOK OF WISDOM ha ha ha.

Really enjoyed Penda's Fen. It's so unusual to see television so dense with those kind of references. I wonder how many people watching that on first broadcast could piece much of that together?

So I just finished watching the Owl Service and while it was quite compelling I must admit I have no idea what the hell was going on during the final two episodes. This, much moreso than a Doctor Who episode from the same era, really feels like something from half a century ago.

I think there were a lot of social cues in the story that everyone was reacting to that just went right past me? Or maybe it was just, as noted upthread, that their approach to depicting teenagers was to average out twentysomething actors with preteen behavior.

And they kept showing that shot of the stepson in short shorts bouncing a ball menacingly against a tree in every recap and it cracked me up every time.

Fans of this thread should check out the 'Folk Horror Revival' Facebook Group, and also the blog writing of this guy Howard Ingham who's been writing about everything from The VVitch to the Wickerman to Look Around You to Watership Down and many other obscure films and shows of this kind

http://www.room207press.com/

Hey thanks for that! I've followed the Huantological Society blog but it seems to have gone tumblr only (and I don't do tumblr)

I'm in the Folk Horror Revival group, sadly it has sort of rendered the creepy and unheimlich mundane to me. But that's facebook for you.

Bought Penda's Fen a few days ago, can't wait to watch :D

Should also consider following Scarred For Life on twitter and buying his self-published book:

http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave-lawrence/scarred-for-life-volume-one/paperback/product-23116461.html

I loved Paciorek's Beautiful Grotesque blog, it opened my eyes to a lot of amazing art. It's a shame this folk horror thing is mostly happening on facebook because I don't go there.

we don't have a thread on children of the stones, do we?

recommended it yesterday and started watching it on youtube. it is fucking terrifying, it's also hilarious.

wow, i've never heard of this. the theme music alone scared the shit out of me there.

some suggestions also on this thread: I was trying to find a copy of the Sight & Sound article on FILMS OF OLD WEIRD BRITAIN but all I found was this poxy list

Bit of crossover from ILG, but We Happy Few is a early access video game (from Quebec developers) that attempts to recreate the vibe of The Prisoner in a number of ways.

I really REALLY want clean mp3s of the title theme and any of the choral cues from children of the stones. Some of the most striking scoring I’ve ever heard

Happy day

I watched COTS a year or two ago, loved it. Then went to Avebury and met the stars of the show :)

there's some (too much?) detail of the music on wikipedia page for the composer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Sager#Children_of_the_Stones

Ha I was reading that old weird Britain thread earlier this year(?) when I was looking for any discussion on akenfield

i still have this thing on my to read pile:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51axkpKDB1L._SX319_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

I really REALLY want clean mp3s of the title theme and any of the choral cues from children of the stones. Some of the most striking scoring I’ve ever heard

it is so odd. the whole thing is just marvellous - the beautiful shots above the town in the intro. bbc had so much money and freedom back then.

the bit in the first episode where the old woman appears on the road is scary but also like i was doubled over laughing at it. also when the balding tory landlord bloke just appears in the house as if from nowhere.

Happy days. I think I'm going to watch this again, perfect time of the year too. Must've been ten years. Marvellous series.

This is worth while imo, doc from BBC Radio4.

Theme song here. "The music was composed by Sidney Sager who used the Ambrosian Singers to chant in accordance with the megalithic rituals referred to in the story."

Children of the Stones an HTV rather than a BBC production.

This (different) BFI list tries to expand - or settle - the folk horror canon a little:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/where-begin-folk-horror

Timely thread revival, we've just been watching Sapphire and Steel this week. Never seen Children of the Stones, I'll have to see if I can find it.

Also reading some of those folk horror links makes me think Twin Peaks fits more easily there than anywhere else, genre-wise.

i always say twin peaks is the first time the US caught up in the folk horror arms race, TP is profoundly FH imo but in a deeply american way

I never really considered that idea but I think the noir elements are much stronger, particularly in the third season. Strange to think of folk horror noir.

X-Files had a fair amount of country settings.

Noir is an urban version of the unheimlich, I reckon

Yeah I mean Twin Peaks ultimately comes back to the woods and the trees. Not explicitly pagan, but I think you could make a good case for Weird elements in it.

Twin Peaks obv isn't like UK "folk horror" at all; it's American. I get the enthusiastic instigation to pass it off or file it under English 70s folk/horror/hauntology, or have it relate to it, but it's still miles away. I mean really, the only thing in common is "weird". Which is not enough to make a connection between the two imo. I love TP, love 70s freaky horrorhaunty English series even more, and they circle around each other in some ways, sometimes, but both are very much products of their country of origin; ie inherently different.

A lot of olden American folk horror is very close to the British folk horror feel though.

xp that's what i was saying. it is deeply american folk horror. pastoral uncanny if you like. it's not like uk folk horror!

Then I got you! :)

Disagree with Robert Adam Gilmour entirely. They are so far removed from each other aesthetically, roots-wise, storytelling-wise. Everything wise tbh.

The Vvitch feels kind of British to me and a lot of 1700s-1800s American ghost stories do too. Maybe I'm mostly thinking of writers from aristocracy who lived a lot like European aristocrats.

I guess the aristocratic stuff isn't really folk horror.

Sleepy Hollow is based on European legends.

Trying to think of more old American folk horror but blanking.

You're trying too hard. No harm in acknowledging UK and US ghost stories have different origins.

I can think of legends like bigfoot, Jersey Devil and stuff like that but not a lot of stories right now.

i'm with LBI here I think. wrote a far too lengthy thing upthread on where i think the US and UK traditions go post 19th century (so doesn't include the older stuff you mention, Robert).

I think that some of the creepy folk pastoral horror vibe is a response to a fear of nuclear war and in a wider sense of military science. the return to primitivism, or a resurgence of primitavist power that stone circles imply is - well one reading of it is - the implication of society having to start again from scratch.

that's very present in the last quatermass with its stone circles, decayed society, and movement of people trying to unlearn words because that's where the bad stuff started creeping in. you see a bit of it in penda's fen. as well, with the porton down references.

a related reading is of course that there was a strong stranding in 60s and 70s counterculture of being at one with nature, through crafting and cultivating, and not abusing it with technology.

in other words these are very late forms of romanticism.

there's also the whole chariots of the gods reading of alien or mystical power and knowledge present in the henges and circles and ley lines of britain.

teasing out these strands would require some time and care - does stone circle/science/alien stuff share the same influences as the malign pastoral folk of the wicker man to take one example.

I inclined to think a lot of folk-horror both romanticises feminism and nature cults, and abhors them.

Obv the circles of skyclad (or nearly so) druidic priestesses are motivated by the exploitation market, but a lot of the neopagan literature I came across in the early 90s (it was a short lived relationship, with a coed who bought candles in bulk) is very feminist, very pro- exposure, and deals endlessly with the historical oppression of witches.

I inclined to think a lot of folk-horror both romanticises feminism and nature cults, and abhors them.

Obv the circles of skyclad (or nearly so) druidic priestesses are motivated by the exploitation market, but a lot of the neopagan literature I came across in the early 90s (it was a short lived relationship, with a coed who bought candles in bulk) is very feminist, very pro- exposure, and deals endlessly with the historical oppression of witches.

again one of the reasons penda’s fen is so good is its play with this trope of innocence and sexual awakening through landscape. jocelyn brooke is also v representative in the image of a drawn sword and the dog at clambercrown but i’m back on my hobby horse again and off topic.

don't know if this ever got linked but there's some interesting stuff in this robert macfarlane piece:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/10/eeriness-english-countryside-robert-macfarlane

Fizzles pls ride horse freely itt

the BBC's film of A View from a Hill should still be on iPlayer for a couple of weeks. it's a good one imo, nicely told.

it has taken me 32 years to see penda's fen. obviously it is the best thing ever made

all the pep talks are the best pep talks in moving picture history

It is grand.

so elegant how the protagonist's initially self-denying radicalisation is slowly channeled into something positive and ultimately salvation

Shadows?

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398561/
Anthology series of scary stories for children. 1975 - 1978.

i don't remember this but Talking Pictures TV is currently showing them.

i watched Robin Redbreast the other day, which was excellent. The subject matter, especially after the Wicker Man (three years later), is highly familiar now, and was in the water then, but execution, script and performances are all really good.

there’s enough opacity about the malign forces to ensure it’s distributed into a generalised sense of unease. (so much about these sorts of sensations feel analogous to a hangover - a hangover in the countryside - why are they looking at me like that? what if the phone line gets cut/network drops out? what does that pebble on the windowsill mean? *oh god a fucking *bird** etc).

particular shout out to central performances metropolitan scriptwriter character, recently split from her partner, and her obtuse, effective, and omniscient cottage housekeeper.

Bernard Hepton is particularly good in it.

Rob is an almost perfect cipher of stereotypical masculinity, with his karate and ss obsessions, not equalled until Pex turns up in Paradise Towers.

not equalled until Pex turns up in Paradise Towers

now that phrase surprised me

For me he's the best character - the Kangs are more than a bit disco dad, the Rezzies are the closest High Rise archetype, but Pex is tremendously well written. He does what he's supposed to do, against a behavioural code that never really existed but everyone of course remembers, and had a proper heroic journey. (The scene where he bends the light to impress Mel is her best scene imo.)

And Rob/Edgar is the same. He's studied the war because it's the right, manly thing to do of the time and is supposed to feel upset that he couldn't do his part (as the likes of Bernard Hepton presumably did). But despite this he's slightly more interested in the Germans to fulfil the 'girls love a bad boy' trope (and as a sidebar, giving a bit a lie to the punk/greaser 'shock the older generation' notion).

Karate was a desperately exotic and of its time way of keeping fit, which would attract the metropolitan woman to him because she would realise he wasn't just a country bumpkin but up with trends, like her.

I need to watch both again and compare! Pretty sure I have the Paradise Towers DVD.

not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere but a Robert Holmes science fiction / dark scots island community radio series Aliens in the Mind, from 1977, with Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, is being repeated on Radio 4. Catch up here.

If you don't want to wait, or you're not in the UK, the whole thing is here: https://archive.org/details/rhaitm

tbf BBC radio is available globally for free on web or app, and listening to things on non-bootleg send the message that you would like to hear more things like that

otoh i couldn’t sleep last night and was able to listen to episode 2 - thx james! (of course, you’re right, sic - and radio 4 extra is their archive mining channel so probably lots of good stuff in there)

it has taken me 32 years to see penda's fen. obviously it is the best thing ever made

― imago, Monday, May 13, 2019 10:23 PM (one month ago)

Yeah. I loved it from the first time I saw it, but over time it has cemented itself as one of my all-time favourites. I still find new elements to think about whenever I watch it.

I listened to Aliens In The Mind just now (on BBC Sounds like a good citizen) and yeah it's good, a somewhat generic this thread thing but the performances pull it off. Loved the Boys Own vibe. Vincent Price not very convincing as a yank but that just adds to the charm.

I listened to /Aliens In The Mind/ just now (on BBC Sounds like a good citizen) and yeah it's good, a somewhat generic this thread thing but the performances pull it off. Loved the Boys Own vibe. Vincent Price not very convincing as a yank but that just adds to the charm.

i mean its not a masterpiece or anything obv but v enjoyable. as always with these things the soundscape is excellent too. actually that goes for penda’s fen as well. you wonder how much television also lost when it lost deep and inventive radio drama expertise.

Vincent Price not very convincing as a yank

Haven't listened to this yet, but - Vincent Price was American? Do you mean Cushing?

Learn something new every day! Don't I feel the fool now.

iirc he had a strong Mississippi accent when he started and sort of anglicised as he went on, so it did end up as a kind of unique, ultra-theatrical mid-Atlantic mishmash.

Yeah, I feel like maybe in this he's dropping the mid-Atlantic to seem more american? But I've shown my ineptitude at identifying accents already so shouldn't chance it.

i did know he was american but going to double down by saying his voice sounds quite wobbly, but maybe that’s just next to cushing.

Just spotted the Box of Delights chat upthread. My 4 year-old watched it at Christmas. Not sure if that was a good call or not but he seemed to enjoy it.

Am currently enjoying this highly entertaining romp through 'the flip side of British film and television', including many obscurities and oddities that are relevant to our interests here:

http://strangeattractor.co.uk/news/the-bodies-beneath/

Got that on my wishlist but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

The chapters on TV and PIFs in this are gold:

http://www.lulu.com/gb/en/shop/stephen-brotherstone-dave-lawrence/scarred-for-life-volume-one/paperback/product-23116461.html

Those of you in the UK may be interested to know that Sapphire and Steel is being broadcast on Forces TV (Freeview 96) tonight at 11

Good spot. 2 episodes, nightly.

(I should watch the DVDs again)

Hold on, I don't get channel 96, wtf?

the distinctly british CREEPY VIBE of realising you don’t get channel 96

Might need a retune but I've got a friend with an old Freeview box who doesn't get all the high numbers.

Don't think I've watched them since first broadcast, not quite as creepy as they were when I was a kid but bless them, they try. And for all its daftness it at least zips along.

I think different regions get different channels, Scotland does anyway.

Yeah that was my other thought, there's a regional slot at number 7 but I doubt it's the only one

(Only noticed this was on cos I watch PBS a fair bit)

Forces TV is odd but sometimes useful. They showed the entirety of Space 1999 recently and most of UFO alongside Goodnight Sweetheart and Get Some In. Now it's all Bless This House and the Dukes Of Hazard with Weapons Of War.

I always felt like I'd missed out by not having seen S&S as a kid. Saw it later in life and still thought it was brilliant, for all its flaws.

If your Freeview doesn't go that high and you need to see it, they're all up on youtube iirc

Is it called Forces TV to support are troops

kinda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Forces_Broadcasting_Service

S&S is also available on Amazon Prime

TPTV has been repeating Quatermass, the tv series, which is probably thread adjacent. featuring Toyah, pre singing career(?) (actually, i think it finished last night)

my DVDs of sapphire and steel have been spoiled by sunlight getting into the transparent cases and one episode of assignment 1 and one of assignment 6 won't play. so i'm hoping to fill the gap with the Forces TV broadcasts. currently halfway through Assignment 2.

Toyah, pre singing career(?) (actually, i think it finished last night)

Largely finished by 1986 IIRC.

Quatermass
Original release 24 October – 14 November 1979

but i now realise that was a joke 8)

she's been in news lately iirc. did a lockdown thing with mr fripp?

Assignment 3 of Sapphire and Steel (which started last night) is the one i remember making my mum watch (it was on at 7pm on itv, a summer replacement for Emmerdale). she wasn't impressed. it seems like a change of direction - is more sci-fi than the previous two.

Forces TV needed re-tuning today. Hopefully it's done and tonight's episodes will record.

Assignment 4, man with no face, ok
Assignment 5, tea party in the 1930s not so great

Assignment 6 starts tonight and I remember it as creepy more than anything. 3 still my favourite

This seems to be the closest thing we have to a folk horror thread, so I just wanted to mention that I watched most of the Punchdrunk 12-hour livestreamed episode of The Third Day w/Jude Law yesterday. Incredible stuff, can still be watched on the Sky TV facebook page I think.

I wondered what the story was on that when I passed by it and saw that it did seem to be 12 hours long.
I was on the way to something else as I stepped through the channels.
Hadn't realised the tv show itself was on a channel I got

Stumbled across it and looked up what was going on

Enjoyed what I had on, cos I love slow TV, don't think I'm bothered about catching up with another Wicker Man retread tbh

Don't want to spoil it for you or anyone else who might be thinking of dipping their toes in, but I will say that the basic premise is v different from The Wicker Man.

yeah that wasn't fully serious tbh but i'm guessing the filmed eps are not quite as strange a proposition as yesterday's programme?

I haven't seen those yet tbh, I'm playing catch-up as usual!

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/oct/05/jude-law-live-for-12-hours-the-third-day-autumn-pushed-boundaries-but-was-it-good

what a stupid question

Listened to half of the BBC radio adaptation of Children of the Stones, I think they've done it really well. The whole 'investigative journalist podcast within a podcast' thing is definitely overplayed but so far not hampering my enjoyment. You can find it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08sy3qx

ooooh ty

Made in 2018, repeated today so up for replay for 28 days: a radio adaptation of a twice-lost* 1963 Nigel Kneale TV play, The Road. While the programme itself was wiped, the original 1963 sound effects tape was unearthed by Radiophonic Workshop flame-keeper Mark Ayres, and used in this production.

* it was remade in Australia a year later, and also not archived.

I watched 4 of the non-12-hour-episodes of The Third Day and thought it was okay. The first couple felt oddly like a indie video game - following your Jude Law avatar around as he finds a clue inside a box, overhears a conversation, etc etc. Not much thrill power & didn't hit my pleasure centres at the spots it seemed to be aiming for - folklore/ritual uncanny & lingering images.

I don't have any great enthusiasm for finishing watching it but I probably will. tbh the 12-hour thing sounds more interesting.

Also finally watched the Mackenzie Crook Wurzel Gummidge & thought of this thread. I liked it better than almost anything roughly in the zone for a while, I think because it feels like it enjoys the countryside & enjoys telling a story more than it likes the creepy vibe, ie too many of these things reach for the vibe first and don't take a bit of time hanging out, enjoying the landscape (like they are more interested in the Wicker Man than the world). Refreshing to see the creepiness embedded in pleasure-in-nature (& it helps that it's actual kids/family TV, & so has to be relatively straightforward).

The long performance was wonderful just for existing

curiously, Sapphire and Steel is being shown on two different freeview channels at the moment. ForcesTV has been showing it daily with a 6-episode omnibus on saturdays and LondonLive has been showing it in it's 19:00 slot, which is around the time i remember it being on originally, the summer replacement for emmerdale.

i've also just finished reading The Owl Service, the tv series of which would fit here, but i have no memory of it.

I rewatched the owl service within the last year, and still can't remember anything...

there is some discussion upthread.

The Owl Service is brilliant. It does get pretty dark and sexual for a children's TV programme though - I went in expecting more of a Children of the Stones "v spooky but family friendly" vibe and remember being really surprised by it.

the titles are amazing though, aren't they?

I don't get ForcesTV on Freeview?

You should from the December retune I think. It's way up in the 90s channels - 96?

96, yes. i think about half my devices get it, half don't. helps if the weather's good when you retune 8)

it's on Multiplex com7 - ARQC - Arqiva C which says
"Broadcasting to 20.6m UK homes from 30 masts (77%)"
same mux as bbc4hd and bbcnewshd

https://ukfree.tv/transmitters/multiplexes

I don't get ForcesTV in Glasgow. Or London Live, obv

The last time I read The Owl Service, the use of the word 'n*g-n*g' (as a childish insult) screamed out at me - I wonder if it's been removed for more recent editions. It's pretty much the only blemish in the bk, and the TV series is a dece attempt at it.

wasn't in my version (50th anniversary, pullman intro)

i love the Owl Service but I don't think I've seen the show.

if anyone's interested in this stuff and you're on Facebook, join the Folk Horror Revival group

Retuned. Still no Forces TV.

your tv knows you didn't clap for major tom

Who says I didn't?

not our words, the words of Forces TV

I assumed Forces TV was endless repeats of Soldier Soldier and Get Some In!, but it's hard to discern a military theme (or any entertainment value) in Sapphire & Steel.

it's all things like Robin's Nest and Bless This House, Sikes, Dukes of Hazzard, Chips. they've showed Space 1999 and UFO before now. it's an odd mix.

also a lot of Leni Riefenstahl movies

Royal It's a Knockout.

The Blue Light on it? Dont think I get this channel either

Xp re riefenstahl

No I was just drunkenly calling soldiers nazi sympathisers, Forces TV would never show anything as aesthetic as a Riefenstahl movie but if you want to watch 237 episodes of Never The Twain bob's your uncle

Leni Riefenstahl's Royal It's a Knockout is a big favourite with our boys.

I definitely catch sight of Bless This House and George and Mildred when I flick through Freeview of a morning, I think they're on ITV4 too - along with things like The Sweeney and The Avengers (often the Diana Rigg colour episodes). I miss the Kojak repeats, which seem to have dried up at the moment.

Oh haha, bit slow today xp

> The Avengers (often the Diana Rigg colour episodes)

it was actually the emma peel / tara king handover episode on friday.

emma peel is, i recently realised, outside my 'half age plus seven' range now.

This YouTube channel seems to have quite a few video obscurities that are of interest to this thread. I came to it by looking for - and finding – the 80s TV adaptation of Robert Aickman's brilliant short story 'The Hospice'. It doesn't really capture the original's queasily dark laughter at the hell of English cuisine and hospitality, but it's pretty faithful to the text and def has its moments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLitwlP-m7c

oooh thanks for the heads-up

I treated myself to a couple of 80s kids shows that are minor players in this/Scarred For Life scene in the recent Network sale.

King of the Castle is very Baker & Martin, with a surreal version of a boy's life after moving to a tower block where there are bullies and the workshy nature of his jazz musician dad jars against his 'ideas above his station' (which seem to amount to singing in a choir), all played out in a broken lift shaft and/or medieval tower. Talfryn Thomas and Milton Jones as the main players should tell you a lot about it.

Raven is bang in this territory, or Alan Garner land, with Phil Daniels as someone who may or may not be King Arthur reborn investigating and trying to stop nuclear waste being dumped in a cave system mapped to the zodiac while letching after Debbie Out Of EastEnders. It's definitely missing something, hence the relative obscurity, but worth the limited runtime.

The Clifton House Mystery, I hate to say, doesn't actually have that much going for it except when Peter Sallies turns up. For fans of This Sort Of Thing it's utterly predictable - and fails to go The House That Bled To Death when given the opportunity, probably because of being screened in the middle of the afternoon. The girl of the children is sidelined in favour of briefcase wanker Justin Bennett Out Of Grange Hill but most annoying of all THE HOUSE IS CLEARLY IN HOTWELLS AND NOT CLIFTON.

Into The Labyrinth was the most fun of all though, at least for the first two seasons with Ron Moody - although the third lets the wonderful Pamela Salem chew the scenery without competition. A sort of Quantum Leap performed as a pantomime, the kids go on a fetch quest while the adults dress up in period costumes and Rep-approved regional accents as they pretend to be ignorant of the plot. There's a genuinely amazing episode where Moody is Holmes and Salem is an 'actress' in Victorian London that's more camp than Duncan Norvelle slap fighting with Charlie Hawtrey. I'm not convinced it's for everyone though...

i am still haunted by a barely remembered scene from King of the Castle which i can't elaborate on right now probly cos it's Friday pub time but there's a weird incestual scene that burned into my head at time of broadcast, couldn't even remember what the show was called for decades after

There was a sampling platter of these shows on my DVD of Children Of The Stones. Months later I saw a kid proclaim themselves king of the castle and was like "oh fuck they're still at it".

https://www.faber.co.uk/blog/the-magic-box-viewing-britain-through-the-rectangular-window/

From the author of Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music comes a riveting journey into the psyche of Britain through its golden age of television and film.

Growing up in the 1970s, Rob Young’s main storyteller was the wooden box with the glass window in the corner of the family living room, otherwise known as the TV set. Before the age of DVDs and Blu-ray discs, YouTube and commercial streaming services, watching television was a vastly different experience. You switched on, you sat back and you watched. There was no pause or fast-forward button.

The cross-genre feast of moving pictures produced in Britain between the late 1950s and late 1980s – from Quatermass and Tom Jones to The Wicker Man and Brideshead Revisited, from A Canterbury Tale and The Go-Between to Bagpuss and Children of the Stones, and from John Betjeman’s travelogues to ghost stories at Christmas – contributed to a national conversation and collective memory. British-made sci-fi, folk horror, period drama and televisual grand tours played out tensions between the past and the present, dramatised the fractures and injustices in society and acted as a portal for magical and ghostly visions.

Dunno, I'm going to be overly skeptical from the start and say I've read a lot of these (not least Johnny Mains' excellent Scarred For Life). It's bait for me so I'll probably still get it but..

A Canterbury Tale is 1944-ish so maybe somebody could've done some research

Hopefully book is more accurate than blurb.

I had ordered and just received Scarred for Life volumes 1 & 2, and...dear god, I somehow failed to notice the page count on these things. They're massive! Something like 1300 pages between the two of them? I'll be exploring their riches for some time to come.

Also vol 2 is part 1 of vol 2, he realised there was too much for one volume.

Do not go on Network dvd after reading the TV sections, especially when they have a sale on.

I've been hip-deep in the first book for weeks now. Soooo many public information films watched, soooo many shows added to the must-see list.

I just tonight found an American analogue that ticks many of the boxes and must've absolutely traumatized a lot of '70s youngsters on our end of the ocean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWWN3tSsgF8

(I've watched a lot of In Search Of and it's mostly very dated and mildly ooky cheese but this is a rare instance where they likely succeeded in freaking young viewers out.)

I only had vague memories so it took me a while to find, but it seems the 70s version of The Phoenix and the Carpet was verily terrifying

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kECGc79rek

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omega_Factor

starts on Forces TV (ch96) on monday. i don't remember anything about it, only that it gets recommended on amazon when you buy things like tomorrow people and children of the stones.

i remember being v into it as a kid and i think i read the novelization at least once, i never remember to tune in to Forces TV consistently tho

Been watching all of the Quatermass TV series with a friend, just finished the last season, and jeeeesus. So much better than the Hammer films. That last one is a fantastic blend of apocalyptic dystopia, sci-fi and folk horror, and surprisingly bleak.

that last one is one of my v favourites. but yes, an incredible set of tv series.

Do you mean the last one made in the late 70s? Not seen it but always been curious about that one.

Yep, Quatermass IV. It is brilliant, I highly recommend it.

(with added toyah)

Is that only on DVD? I see that some of the episodes are on YouTube

It was on my old Netflix DVD queue for several years, but never materialized

it is also, for any fall fans, where the LAY LAY LAY LAY intro to Lay of the Land comes from.

i think it may be my favourite of the quatermass series too. brings together a lot of pastoral and science fiction elements. also has simon maccorkindale bawling all his lines at point blank range to his interlocutors ofc.

There's a Region B Blu-Ray of Quatermass IV that includes the chopped down 'TV movie' version:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47546/the-listeners

I'm coming down to London in a couple of weeks for this Nigel Kneale centenary celebration:

https://www.nigelknealecentenary.com/

heh - wrong link!

https://networkonair.com/all-products/2248-quatermass-blu-ray-pre-buy

Yeah I scored that blu at a second hand store recently - but was assuming Andy meant "DVD only" as in "not streaming anywhere".

I watched Quatermass and the Pit yesterday (the original serial). I knew the bit about finding the insectoids in the ship but I thought that was the climax of the whole thing, not the cliffhanger of the middle episode - possibly I watched that episode when it was shown by itself in 1986 - so that was a surprise. The top brass being the bad guys was also unexpected.

Started on IV and wow this is a different thing altogether, heavy Riddley Walker vibes - a book I found hugely depressing.

The initial entry into the Academy might be the hardest part? Or at least the most chaotic (that outdoor area with all the skeletons and dogs).

There's a Region B Blu-Ray of Quatermass IV that includes the chopped down 'TV movie' version:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47546/the-listeners🕸

I'm coming down to London in a couple of weeks for this Nigel Kneale centenary celebration:

https://www.nigelknealecentenary.com🕸/

There's a Region B Blu-Ray of Quatermass IV that includes the chopped down 'TV movie' version:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47546/the-listeners🕸

I'm coming down to London in a couple of weeks for this Nigel Kneale centenary celebration:

https://www.nigelknealecentenary.com🕸/

This YT channel is a good little resource for obscure TV from past decades, found some mad Canadian sci-fi series with Kier Dullea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCk78MjZcIF

Okay fuckit, it's called - 50's Sleaze, 60's Ease & 70's Cheese From London

That's a shame Fizzles, would've been v cool to see you there. You don't mention The Stone Tape in your note, which is possibly my favourite because it really does foreground folk tradition v modern technology so well, and Jane Asher being there to introduce it on the Saturday was enough to sell me a ticket.

BFI are just about to reissue his 1984 adaptation on disc:

https://shop.bfi.org.uk/nineteen-eighty-four-dual-format-edition.html

And I keep meaning to pick up The Crunch disc from Network, which rounds up three different one-offs:

https://networkonair.com/features/2019/10/31/lesser-known-nigel-kneale/

It occurred to me today that Arthur C Clarke's Childhood's End (1953) has a couple of elements seen in Quatermasses Pit & IV - racial memory of demonic looking aliens, and a kind of alien induced mass hypnosis of children.

Also was surprised to see the figure in The Pit with sixfold symmetry (sevenfold in the film) described as a pentacle - then was delighted to learn (via Wikipedia) that traditionally a pentacle can be any kind of magical symbol and is probably etymologically related to pendant (and [pit and the] pendulum!) , not greek penta/5.

I was going to say 'The Crunch is excellent although you probably don't need' then reminding myself what's on it I remembered all three are great in their own way. The Gentlemen's club one is the most predictable, the gentrification one the most contrived but they're all very watchable.

The Stone Tape is probably my favourite Kneale and The Witches is his best adaptation.

Is that only on DVD? I see that some of the episodes are on YouTube

Quatermass IV is easily findable on archive.org, as is Quatermass and the Pit. Otherwise finding some of this stuff to stream, legally or otherwise, is annoyingly difficult, I would have thought that some of the ones released on DVD in the last few years (Penda's Fen, Robin Redbreast) might be available somewhere but apparently not.

The Stone Tape is of course also a parable about the superiority of physical media.

Ha! Maybe he was bitter at the loss of the first Quatermass serial.

One final Quatermass IV thing - watch out for a poor extra getting seriously knocked over by the van when they try to escape the stone circle in Ep 1, 47 minutes in.

_Is that only on DVD? I see that some of the episodes are on YouTube_

Quatermass IV is easily findable on archive.org, as is Quatermass and the Pit. Otherwise finding some of this stuff to stream, legally or otherwise, is annoyingly difficult, I would have thought that some of the ones released on DVD in the last few years (Penda's Fen, Robin Redbreast) might be available somewhere but apparently not.

And I think Artemis 81 is available in its entirety on youtube? yep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Rn7LmYfiD8

Ah right, I did look on the BFI site - definitely not available there - and I tried to look on Amazon but for some reason it's not easy to search these things if you're not signed up. Penda's Fen may be available on Britbox via Amazon but I couldn't confirm this either.

it does puzzle me that they think people will sign up before they can see what they're signing up for.

i can only find britbox US links, nothing in the UK. as you said it was reissued a couple of years ago, i think mine was £5 from fopp. (just don't ask me where it is)

pendas fen isn’t available there afaict. odd about robin redbreast, it comes up when i search but… i’m not sure if it’s *actually* via the BFI catalogue or just a general “available to buy” thing.

anyway still amazes me how patchily available a lot of these things are.

and yes, got The Stone Tape on dvd - it’s v strong in terms of the themes, though for some reason it didn’t quite do it for me overall. maybe a rewatch is due.

that last bit a belated response to ward fowler!

The Stone Tape is verrry hammy in places, more so than the usual amount of charming ham you get with most of these pieces. But the good bits make it incredibly special, imo.

I was looking at a blog that focuses on this kind of thing but with a broader remit - http://www.wyrdbritain.co.uk/ - and found two shows I'd never heard of before: Leap in the Dark (BBC) and Shades of Darkness (ITV), the former featuring Russell Hoban and Alan Garner as writers, the latter dramatising classic tales and probably more straightforwardly supernatural than the stuff in this thread. Perhaps forgotten for good reason, certainly I'm not particularly keen to give them a go, but maybe of interest to others here.

Hoban and Garner??? OK, am intrigued.

Here's a more helpful link: http://www.wyrdbritain.co.uk/search/label/Leap%20in%20the%20Dark

the Hoban and Garner episodes are on youtube

Artemis 81, um, not for me. Far far too deeply embedded in its niche, too ponderous and obscure and too much unsaid for my liking - of course what is left unsaid can be a major aspect of this genre and what can seem to one person vague or empty can to another seem loaded with implicit or potential meaning. I did lol when i was wondering what, if anything, it all meant, and Harlax said "a story is a sequence of fictitious events! how can it mean?" - and then Gwen proceeded on a long expository speech explaining precisely what it meant - well, one aspect of it anyway.

The strange city probably the best bit, though unfortunately too dark in the youtube version. Reminiscent of Lanark I think, though it's a long time since I read that. Note that if you do watch the youtube version, there's a somewhat important scene missing at 1:54, which can be found on another full version on youtube in even worse quality.)

I watched the first half of Artemis 81 at original broadcast but it annoyed the fuck out of my dad, o got sent to bed and I've never watched the second half

I mean he was probably otm but this is my memory

quatermass xperiment on tptv tonight

i liked artemis 81 but it is ponderous af. the simultaneous suicides is a good sinister opening, and the alternate city also good. there are many laboured bits and im not sure it really makes any sense but the whole thing seems so wild as a thing to get from mind to screen im delighted it exists.

Yes, any air of mystery it has for me is nothing to do with the content and all to do with "how did this ever get made?", and though I didn't particularly enjoy it I don't mean that at all disparagingly.

When I get back from hols I'll start on the other Nigel Kneales on youtube, and see about getting hold of Robin Redbreast, and Penda's Fen for a second viewing.

I enjoyed it at the time, my mate was over (I guess his family wasn't going to watch it), my mum (fairs fair it's her house) and maybe my sister..

I don't remember much of it, there was a foreign town which was supposedly hell or purgatory or some such, although it looked like Prague or some such..

I've not seen it since, and I don't remember seeing it available on video or dvd etc. Unless it's just you lot have good memories!

Oh there it is, upthread on YouTube!

I watched Penda's Fen for the first time last night. It's weird how certain obsessions can revolve around a text you've not read or a film you've not seen and this is right up there for that - a kind of ur-text for landscape mysticism or whatever you might want to call it. What a beautifully strange film. This is undoubtedly recency bias but I've convinced myself the landscape shots in Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir are homages to Penda's Fen. Something in the hovering stillness, the interaction with the voiceovers.

One person I've not seen mentioned here is Derek Jarman. Something about the way he shot landscape and blended ideas of disobedience, oppression and that sense of the ungovernable chimes with Penda (and Hogg, who worked for Jarman in the 80s). I first saw his A Journey to Avebury in a gallery and couldn't take my eyes of it. It's stayed with me and I can't really say why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yalyDdSGn-I

Just in case anyone was still thinking of attending the Nigel Kneale fest on Saturday, it's apparently sold out now.

Watched By Our Selves yesterday, which sort of fits here. It's an Andrew Kotting film from 2015, tracing one of his and Iain Sinclair's obsessions: John Clare's escape from the asylum in Epping Forest and his subsequent four-day odyssey back to Helpston to find the love of his life, Mary Joyce (who'd been dead three years, incidentally). It's black and white, features a silent moon-faced Toby Jones as Clare on his hopeless walk, and also Jones' dad - who played Clare in a TV play in the early 70s - reading some of Clare's accounts of the walk. It does start to feel its 80 minutes by the end but it has something about it. It's on Amazon Prime if that's your thing.

Did anyone go to the Kneale thing in the end? Any good?

By Our Selves sounds good, will steal

I think I should give that a go too.

rewatched penda's fen ahead of listening to the Uncanny Hour podcast thing that robin ince does (or maybe did, i an over a year behind). still don't know what to think (and it was £6 rather than 5 from fopp but was a blu ray)

Did anyone go to the Kneale thing in the end? Any good?

I did and it was good. Well organised etc. I think for a lot of the attendees, myself included, it was the first affair of this kind they'd been to since lockdown so the overall vibe was friendly, positive, upbeat. A celebration of Kneale rather than a rigorous critical interrogation, although most of the speakers had good things to say and there some genuinely funny moments. I learned some things I didn't know before (a lost tv one-off called Chopper with Patrick Troughton and an evil motorbike; Kneale working on a TV adaptation of Brian Aldiss's Non-Stop!) The lost radio play reading wasn't the absolute worst of its kind I'd seen, but it went on too long and was undermiked (the main technical flaw of the day).

I knew all the films/ tv progs on the bill, although it was nice to see them on a big screen. Larger projection did really reveal the limitations of BBC budgets. The special effects in the Stone Tape are just really shoddy, even for the time.

I was utterly ambushed by unexpected emotion when they introduced Jane Asher with a clip from the first Quatermass movie - I'd totally forgotten that she was the little girl who gets her dolly broken by the space man-monster, very nearly 70 years ago. It's all about time, innit.

I watched By Our Selves. I only really enjoyed the documentary bits, most everything else seemed a tad sterile to me. I knew nothing about John Clare so I would have enjoyed a straight documentary more. I'm curious about the director's other film This Filthy Earth.

Cool little BBC feature on Quartermass:

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220427-quatermass-the-terrifying-sci-fi-that-changed-tv-forever

oh, i have a question.

what if anything does this have to do with ^ that quatermass? is there a wider meaning of the name?

https://dockstader.bandcamp.com/album/tod-dockstader-quatermass

Kneale got Quatermass from the phone book - one of the researchers at that centenary thing said they'd even tracked down the particular phone book in question, with a Mrs Quatermass listed.

Don't know how Dockstader came by that name tho

Going to do The Edge of Darkness here, even though it doesn't fit for a number of reasons – it doesn't have the CREEPY VIBE and it's from 1985. tho I think it's closer to the type than it looks on first inspection. Apologies, I couldn't be bothered to work round SPOILERS, so all spoilers I guess. You should watch this though. It's incredible.

BOB. PECK.
The line from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy about Jim Prideaux being made 'by the same firm that did Stonehenge' applies perfectly to Bob Peck. He seems bigger even than Joe Don Baker, which if you've seen Charley Varrick sounds like a hell of a statement. Wikipedia tells me he's actually an inch shorter at 6'1". still, Bob Peck looks he doesn't need to move for anyone and this makes his placidity potent and his portrayal of grief feel subterranean, a huge, implacable motive force. He's very still. This is all very important for his symbolic role, I think. The direction and editing show his mild eyes noticing everything. Other people spar off him, weighing him up with uncertain glances, unclear about his meaning and purpose.

The Sources of Information
This is very noticeable watching it now. It's in a middle place between computer databases and everything still being on a hard copy somewhere. Phone calls still needed. Having to go to places to collect information. It made me wonder how modern writers manage to move their characters about at all. What is the motivation to move someone from one place to another when an awful lot of essential information can be garnered online. It becomes more esoteric. Less about necessity.

This is from a time just before that conundrum is posed, so that phone calls and rendezvous and travel are all required. People may not be contactable when you need them. How Craven navigates the world of information is interesting. Detection doesn't happen as such – he is just *driven* (as Jedburgh says of him in the final episode) to acquire whatever he needs to get to the centre of the web. Craven finds recordings, notes, interrogates, interviews, a computer database, he uses psychic contact with his dead daughter, Emma, and talks to himself, he exists in a web of surveillance, data security and information secrecy, odd secret service functions. Colleagues consider him on the edge of sanity – one version of the 'edge of darkness' at play – and he himself wonders what territories he is walking in, especially when he loses the link with his Emma. It is becomes increasingly clear his role as a policeman is becoming entirely absorbed by an emotional quest. Quest? Yes, the motives behind the drive are sexualised, animistic, mythic, arthurian.

Sexualisation
His daughter, the absence of the mother, there's something going on here. You notice it in the car in the first episode - it's not entirely clear whether she's his daughter or his young girlfriend. It's in the notorious and powerful episode where he sniffs his dead daughter's dildo, working his way round her bedroom, trying to find, recover, feel her presence.

then there's his very peculiar interrogation technique, of one of the pair who was involved in her death, in the hospital where the mother died. He whispers tenderly and softly to the unconscious terrorist, near death, comforting and sensuously courting him, in order to get the information he needs.

So much!
It's super super dense, the writing, the direction, the acting - it all contains so much. the politics of energy and post-industrial environment, nature v humankind, a psychological portrait of grief, a nuclear era psychomachia - these themes in particular link this to something like Penda's Fen or Quatermass – all connected with Thatcherism, London, mining, masculinity. High relevant to emusk for example. But also the faces in this are alive with abrasive interaction, power plays, sizing each other up. There's an extremely memorable moment where we cut from Jedburgh (Joe Don Baker) in a combat jacket, running around in crisis mode, to him standing, cheerfully grinng, raising a stetson to a sworn enemy flying in from the States. People are not what they seem and are willing to play parts in the dance that's taking place. ie this programme doesn't take its viewers for fools, thank god.

As a by the bye – there's nothing like this era tv ('70s, '80s) for better conveying a grey London in the rain.

psycho psycho machia

so yeah about that. Jedburgh is basically Christianity; that's fairly heavily trailed. He is of course an extraordinary character – Chestertonian in his Christian exuberance to do good, a rather militant good, and to live life and kill enemy. He is clearly co-opted by state authority in the beginning, but recognises this and breaks from it into a sort of Manichean entity, driven to bring about Armageddon. Holding up the plutonium in his extended hands in the form of a cross at the conference. Craven is, as Jedburgh himself says, 'freeze-dried from some earlier epoch'. His an animistic world, variously portrayed as a tree and a stag. He represents the earth, and the Gaia theory, and survival beyond nuclear war. Pastoral v Nuclear makes it very much of that period of drama. And It's interesting to see this conversation – of nature being part of and surviving within the ambit of human's capitalistic behaviour – worked through by The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

How the show contains all this in an integrated way is something else that adds to its density, makes it potent like v good whisky.

i haven't seen the hollywood remake, though i'd like to, once i've rewatched this a couple of times.

Thanks Fizzles, a perceptive and insightful post as always! No it doesn't have the creepy vibe that this thread is all about but I think it's adjacent. The creepiness of the shows in this thread is obviously supernatural, whereas edge of darkness is trading on the very real idea of nuclear terror, which it does it subtly and creepily (the occasional shots of trains of nuclear waste rattling through the night) as well as much more explicitly (sluicing the tunnels with radioactive water, the dead body in the radiation suit at the hot cell). And not to throw the net of creepiness too wide but there's the idea of higher powers (governmental or extra governmental) always watching even when you don't know it - AZURE!

I have to say Jedburgh = Christianity passed me by on my previous viewings, if I rewatch I'll look out for it. I guess I would have characterised him as chaotic neutral.

I have no interest in seeing mel gibson's remake.

i do think there's an explicitly supernatural element, but yes, this is firmly in the nuclear space. there's a few things that cause me to locate it perhaps more closely to the vibe that might seem appropriate, but they're all fairly subliminal.

- the spring magically appearing where his daughter dies (Jedburgh quotes Hamlet when he sees it: 'Oh Jepthah, Judge of Israel, what a treasure hadst thou' which suggests biblical allusion on his part, but it can also be read as a sacred grove).
- the figuring of craven out of policeman into an avatar of nature, and his final mystical transformation into a stag (it's how he's last seen, and we only hear how he just disappears at the same time as a distant cry)
- the daughter as just on the edge of psychic projection and autonomous ghost
- christianity v nature worship allegory (if you do watch it again i'm interested in your thoughts – there are various key moments throughout, the co-opting and working with the state in the first place, but becoming a radical millenarian by an end seems to me deliberately allegorical)

i guess you could see it as a reverse of penda's fen, where nuclear and military appropriation and potential destruction of the land are a meaningful backdrop to the supernatural events. in this it's the reverse, the supernatural is a deep, unemphasised background to the nuclear and energy political thriller.

TKM should overruled Peck and turned him into a tree, as intended.

I've never seen The Edge of Darkness

Genuinely one of the greatest TV series ever, real justification-of-the-form stuff. I cannot imagine the circumstances which would lead to me watching an American remake.

There is something both supernaturally and actually-in-reality terrifying about dying of radiation poisoning (it’s invisible! but it kills you grotesquely). Proper horror

And obvs the Clapton/Kamen score is an incredible bullseye use of their limited ranges

Okay watching Mike Hodges' The Tyrant King on youtube (thanks Soref for the recommendation) and it has a distinctly creepy UK vibe - I think this would have disturbed me as a kid, especially with the Pink Floyd freakout jams.. it's not very supernatural (so far) but has sinister adults chasing children all over London

https://www.quartzcity.net/ilx/edgeofdarkness1.jpg
https://www.quartzcity.net/ilx/edgeofdarkness2.jpg

(I recently rewatched EoD and discovered a rich vein of screencaps)

Fizzles' analysis above deserves more space. I didn't pick up on Jedburgh = Christianity either, but admittedly I'm biased by the American style of Atomic Christianity/apocalyptic which would have told the story from Joe Don Baker's p.o.v. or something.

Anyway, back to pining away for the lost recordings of the original A For Andromeda

one of my friends recommended me two books called "Scarred For Life" by Stephen Brotherstone and Dave Lawrence, i've found them to be genuinely excellent considerations of all aspects of this kind of thing

Thread revival made me look up Sapphire and Steel and damn, is it as great as it sounds?

There was a vibe so many of these programs had which tripped me out when I’d catch them as a kid. For some reason my local PBS station (iirc) would air Blake’s 7 late at night and the atmosphere and style of it just felt very creepy and odd to me. I don’t know how creepy it actually is, this was something I was watching as a 9 or 10 yr old in the mid eighties.

sapphire and steel is a very slow by 2023 standards. it's also made all the weirder when you consider it went out at prime time early evening back when there were only 3 TV channels available.

and the various cases are wildly different

Sapphire and Steel is slow and of its time, yes, but it's wonderfully weird and entertaining. If you don't like the first episode, you can safely bail on the rest.

I would actually say that if you don't like the first episode, try going straight to the second season. The first season is good fun but a bit shonky, the second season is amazing imo. I can't remember quite how much you need to watch to get the 'lore' of the show, but I think you can do it this way without missing too much.

Just finished EoD. Extraordinary - thanks for highlighting it!

on reflection I think emil.y is right ... S1 of S&S is scary but has two cute kids getting lots of screen time; many would prefer the child-free horror of S2

Lots of quibbles about stuff but I would simply like to say I watched the first 2 stories at time of broadcast and the second one was the one that stuck

second one is extraordinary i think. it’s worth watching the first just to experience how deep and hard the second one goes. it’s pretty long.

I often wonder if this is why Space: 1999 failed to catch on. Lew Grade's business model involved selling UK shows to the US audience, which worked with The Saint and Danger Man because despite starring British actors and being written by British people everybody knew the brief. Meanwhile Gerry Anderson wanted to get into live action.

So his first show was UFO, which was a weird mixture of dayglow wigs and downbeat plots where the heroes always lost. And the Space: 1999, which had some awesome spaceships but every episode consisted of Martin Landau looking worried and Barry Morse looking worried and at the end of Landau would look at the camera and say "there's no hope for any of us, or for the people watching at home, because it's 1975 and there's just no hope, no hope at all".

Every single episode. They just couldn't suppress their Britishness. The Britishness leaked through. To this day I haven't seen Moonbase 3 but from what I've read it was much the same but without even aliens. Like Star Cops but ultra-70s.

I remember reading about a show called The Nightmare Man, which had Celia Imrie, and was one of those six-part one-offs made by the BBC. But with four parts. Adapted by Robert Holmes from a novel and shot on location with murky, creepy videotape:
https://www.thisishorror.co.uk/a-halloween-blast-from-the-past-the-nightmare-man/

I would have been five when it was on TV so my parents would not have let me watch it. I wasn't allowed to watch The Day of the Triffids either, although it was apparently marketed as action-packed fun for the family (with a Radio Times cover). Apart from the shot-on-video-in-the-rain look I think the complete lack of irony, the utter seriousness of it all, was the key thing that made shows like that work. The portentousness. And in the case of Sapphire and Steel, the measured pace.

Taggart. I remember that being unusually grim as well. It wasn't sci-fi or fantasy, or even set in an alternative world, but it was nastier than other detective shows.

I remember being aware of Edge of Darkness. It was apparently repeated on BBC1 almost immediately after it was broadcast on BBC2, which didn't happen often. I would have caught a repeat in the 1990s, by which time it was famous. I remember that beyond the subtext it also worked as a pacy action thriller - it felt cinematic in a way that stood out. I still remember the cliffhanger where Craven tries to find a working telephone. Wasn't the evil corporation's goal a space station?

The Nightmare Man is v good tho i recall being slightly underwhelmed. Got it on dvd somewhere, years since i watched it. Will dig it out and have another watch.

otm about the seriousness of it all. that isn’t a mode or tone you get so much These Days.

And! While I'm hyperactive I remember that Whoops Apocalypse - the TV show - was utterly unfunny but had a grim, almost joyless air to it. And given the casual racism and toplessness it now feels like an artefact from an alien planet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mwWhWtvJAw

Off the top of my head the ending was played completely straight as well, with Barry Morse - again - doing some acting. There was a film but it was basically slapstick.

second series of space 1999 was rejigged for an American audience - swapping out grumpy Barry Morse for the shape-shifting woman, slightly lighter, more romance.

first season is better imo

(did they ever explain where Barry Morse went?)

Back to Canada I assume.

So his first show was UFO, which was a weird mixture of dayglow wigs and downbeat plots where the heroes always lost. And the Space: 1999, which had some awesome spaceships but every episode consisted of Martin Landau looking worried and Barry Morse looking worried and at the end of Landau would look at the camera and say "there's no hope for any of us, or for the people watching at home, because it's 1975 and there's just no hope, no hope at all".

Ok, I've never had any desire to watch this before but now I'm sold!

Barbara Bain looks worried too.

'Black Sun' is my Space 1999 Series One go-to, absolutely batshit and bleak, until this brilliant 2001-style third act.

Really nice spooky feel to several season 1 eps in Space: 1999; there's the episode where Big Jim Sullivan is playing a coral sitar recital for the team, and that music underpins the rest of the show. Lots of ultra-wide angles, shadows and voids, and age-inappropriate scares. In season 2, the ambient lighting and colour palette get brighter, Maya solves everything by turning into an insect or whatever, and they all have a good laugh in the epilogue at Tony Anholt's homebrew. Not good!

xp

I'd have sold a kidney to own this. pic.twitter.com/NxmJUHQKWh

— Scarred for Life (@ScarredForLife2) March 20, 2023

^ all three of them looking worried

lol yes I love how despite all the attempts at HEY KIDS TOYS advertising that clip still feels bleak a f

Space 1999 is a good call, I can't think of too many contemporaneous U.S. shows that had something of that sinister vibe but that one did.

I watched the movie The Wonder (currently on Netflix) the other night on a giant TV with motion smoothing turned on, and the digital made it look very much like a low budget 70s or 80s BBC production. I thought it really added something, so if you're thinking about watching the movie, I recommend seeing it that way if possible.

Any good cultural studies type writing on the British archetype of the guy who knows more than everyone else and is a total asshole about it? Sherlock Holmes, old school Who, Saphire & Steel...

Henry Higgins …

finally trudging through The Omega Factor after being unimpressed with the first couple of eps when i first bought the DVDs years ago - it is pretty thin gruel, really terrible writing and blah characters - Louise Jameson's presence and outfits probably the high point - there SHOULD be an excellent show here, secret govt department investigating paranormal goings-on in 1979 ought to be a fuckin cracker but it just doesn't work, what a shame

Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland? was on bbc4 yesterday

I love this! I always associate in my mind with Spike Milligan's The Bed Sitting Room (I think Peter Cook is the only person who's in both?)

it's reminding me of Valerie and her Week of Wonders a bit

the Ravi Shankar soundtrack reminded me of this thing in some of Milligan's work where he was raised in India, and there was this idea of India as this exotic, foreign place with strange customs, and the UK as being 'home' and normality, but ofc from his point of view it was India that was home and the UK that was was the strange exotic place - this perspective of the UK as a weird alien civilisation with odd customs

I've known about the 'Dodleston Mysteries' of the early/mid 80s for a while, having come across a few mentions of a book about the events, but here is a very deep dive on YT that goes into a great deal of detail.

Very entertaining and well worth checking out, if an extremely English poltergeist story colliding with time-travelling, numinous beings from the past and future (and here is the best part) all communicating via a borrowed school BBC Micro sounds like your kind of thing.

It could have easily been a late John Wyndham novel.

And if it is a hoax, then it's a rather brilliant, complex and very creepy one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRh28A54HF4

I saw something about this a couple of years ago but I can't remember where - I don't think it was a six hour youtube series though.Time travelling poltergeist or hoax... hmm tough one. (Not to diminish the weirdness of the story!)

"100 Years of Horror" on talking pictures tonight. from 1998, fronted by Christopher Lee. no idea of contents.

watching Men which is decidedly creepy but the folk horror aspect seems a bit too knowing, like a formula has been applied.

the last hour of that, it turned into a different film almost. the supernatural thing saved it, i think. when it was possibly just men being men it was uncomfortable. when it all went cronenberg, it did that quite well.

and it made the tacked-on-seeming folk horror aspect less important

YouTube sidebar served me up some 80s Give Us A Clue episodes. There is a subtle creepiness to it, like everyone’s being forced to be jolly at gunpoint.

Eg. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKUvPSJfyn0 but mostly for Bruce Grobelaar’s cardigan

https://www.instagram.com/p/C6jsS60pxHQ/

Also, misread Dodleston upthread as Doodletown. #onethread!