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

there's some old good k-punk posts limning this stuff, aren't they? or maybe it was just a long parenthesis whilst talking about the Fall again. but mentioned the stone tape and the later quatermass.

one wonders if you could include: those creepy public info spots ('apaches' etc); the wicker man; i had a third, but i have forgotten whilst writing this sentence. m.r. james? enh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xur13R23Qlk

In a similar vein: never saw the second half of this because my dad sent me to bed on account of it being "a right load of old rubbish". He may well have been right but apparently thanks to the magic of Youtube i can find out.

xp I think the stories of M.R. James play into this but the production values on the stories they filmed make them not quite the same thing maybe?

xpost - sorry -

oh, my original third was dennis potter

op: 'characterized by spartan production values (which are generally made a virtue of)'

i was just trying to work out whether you could draw a line around the era being talked about in terms of whether the bbc was using video or film but i don't think it quite works

but i think mb. the organising principle is that (if we accept for the moment that a lot of the effect of horror -- well, of this sort of creepiness -- is the whole unheimlich palimpsest thing, the idea that this stuff underwrites quotidian experience) this is a period where people in tv are starting to know how the conventions of tv drama have settled down, and are willing to game them -- tho not to the level of, say, the totally silly baker stories with the candy monster, or of 'ghostwatch'

so the formal characteristics of this particular vibe are on some level identical to their thematic ones, is what lends it its odd power

however i am mostly familiar with this stuff at second hand so i may well be talking out of my arse here

I've mentioned this before on other threads, but the Open University mnemonic is my all time pant crapping childhood memory and for what reason I still don't know.

The flatness of 70's video cameras goes a long way towards the vibe imho.

yeah I thought about Potter, particularly Blue Remembered Hills. Altho he is arguably working in a less explicitly supernatural way - even in something like Brimstone and Treacle - i think he is exploiting similar themes of the uncanny. Rather than Invasion, which the UK didn't really experience during WWII, I wonder how many of the writers were expressing anxieties about displacement, and specifically the displacement of city kids evacuated to a sinister-seeming countryside during the war. as well as the rearrangement of the cities caused by bombing etc.

and I suddenly remember Penda's Fen which again is a deal better than the campier end of this stuff but rocks the England's Ancient Evil line to brilliant effect. No DVD apparently and i seem to have agonisingly lost my avi of it but copies are out there i think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_m5To7_kzvs

and a quick wiki search reveals that it was written by the guy who wrote Artemis 81 and the adaptation of James' "The Ash Tree" so duh

i was just trying to work out whether you could draw a line around the era being talked about in terms of whether the bbc was using video or film but i don't think it quite works

Well, a huge part of this aesthetic for me is the use of video for interiors and film for exteriors. When I saw Doctor Who on PBS as a kid that was one of the most immediately jarring and almost distancing elements for me. I obviously didn't know technically why it was happening but I remember that distinct feeling that parts of it felt like some kind of old educational documentary and other parts felt like a really bad public access TV show.

Or actually, a soap opera is a better point of reference for that weird live video look.

If you want something scary from the 1970s, you can't beat public service information films. This still gives me the creeps, 38 years after seeing it for the first time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sg6IVUvVsAs

I wonder how many of the writers were expressing anxieties about displacement, and specifically the displacement of city kids evacuated to a sinister-seeming countryside during the war. as well as the rearrangement of the cities caused by bombing etc.

Interesting idea. One thing that strikes me is the sinister sort of cuts both ways -- you get this sense of lurking pagan forces, but also the idea that "normal," middle-class postwar life is fundamentally hollow, covering over all this other stuff. Which is just normal suburban anxiety in a way, but takes a different form in a country and culture with so much history (as opposed to American suburban anxiety, where the suburbs are hollow because there's nothing underneath, no history, no anything -- or if there is, it's something recent and specific, like the Amityville Horror).

This still gives me the creeps, 38 years after seeing it for the first time.

Jeez, yeah.

but takes a different form in a country and culture with so much history (as opposed to American suburban anxiety, where the suburbs are hollow because there's nothing underneath, no history, no anything -- or if there is, it's something recent and specific, like the Amityville Horror).

yeah, that's what i was getting at earlier. occurred to me when thinking about the 70s-era US boom in occult-themed horror - for example, the brotherhood of satan, which i watched just a few days ago. it's set in a small, isolated town that seems to be collapsing in an orgy of unmotivated violence. turns out that a secret satanic coven is behind things, no surprise, but you never get the sense that the looming evil, however ancient the forces it might draw on, has any real history or deep connection to place. it seems, in fact, more like a foreign invader - or a commie/druggie plot from within, not to put too fine a point on it...

rosemary's baby, perhaps because it was directed by an "old world" european, positively reeks of occult history, but here even history becomes a sort of threat from without. the movie consequently seems like a battle between a placeless and superstitious anciency and the ostensibly rational modern world. to pare it down even further: between corrupt wisdom and innocent naivete, age and youth, europe and america.

upthread, wk says that, "the ancient indian curse seems like such a cliche that it would be impossible to list how many times it was used," but i'm not so sure about that. it's certainly a familiar device, but i'd hardly say that it's dominated the imaginations of american horror filmmakers over the last 50 years. and films like pet sematary and creepshow 2 (both stephen king adaptations, oddly) have often used the idea of the "indian curse" without any perceptible investment in the significance of history or landscape. poltergeist seems more interesting in this regard, given the political implications and the eventual eradication of suburban property as a sort of penitential sacrifice. then there's the shining, which allows any number of readings, but remains maddeningly vague.

i like the idea of an american horror film in which a presence or purpose coded into the landscape, something that predates european settlement, enacts itself in ways that destablize "ordinary" american life. maybe not because the presence/purpose is evil or aggrieved, but simply because its ends are different. there must be examples of this, but i can't think of any offhand...

i dunno. maybe i'm giving pet sematary short shrift. though it's not as direct as poltergeist in its suggestion that american comfort is built on genocide, it does invite similar interpretations. the contemporary nuclear family existing in a state of constant existential peril, threatened from one side by the very things that supply its material comforts (the road with its long-haul trucks), and from the other by a terrifying forest that conceals an explicitly forbidden history, stinking of death.

The Dark and Lonely Water, Billy Dods up here is sending shivers down my spine... Perfect example!

voiced by donald pleasance too...

Even Disney got in on this -- Watcher in the Woods is probably the first movie like this that I saw growing up in Ohio. It was really really scary at the time.

Also, The Shining to thread (re: uh oh burial grounds).

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_D1ZZyTOG7tQ/SureA53-vvI/AAAAAAAAFwU/5eUKUJ9Tg8s/s400/Watcher+in+the+Woods+Lynn-Holly+Johnson+Bette+Davis+Kyle+Richards.jpg

Oh, and speaking of Bette Davis, what about The Dark Secret of Harvest Home?! (The book was really good, too btw)

http://www.go4film.com/thumbs/586ec9539c37d994933f50b051181b96.jpg

The cover is pretty cool -- has the same most dreadful sacrifice theme as Wicker Man, only it's set in a quasi Peyton Place sort of atmosphere. The Widow Fortune is sort of like Lord Summerisle, I guess?
http://worldsstrongestlibrarian.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/harvest-home-208x300.jpg

Haha, we own so many of these things. In fact, just watched Penda's Fen again last night for film club. Such a strange and beautiful film.

I think the Britain = internal/forgotten histories/nature and USA = external/eradicated history/urbanity thing is spot on, actually. I want to agree that the Indian burial ground plot is a very common trope but can't think of many more examples than those already mentioned. I guess America does also have the natural spookiness of vast desert landscapes etc but I'm unsure if that's *uncanny* or something different. I guess it's less centred on the homeliness of the small British island and more on exploration of the unknown?

feel like the vibe y'all are talking about got expressed in the US via dystopian future fantasies like phase iv and the like

for some reason equivalent US examples I can think of are TV movies

dark night of the scarecrow
don't be afraid of the dark
crowhaven farm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kgZ-0hTPdM

thinking of some other "ancient evil" type US films of the 70s

burnt offerings
let's scare jessica to death
the other
lemora: a child's tale of the supernatural

I saw some of these series in the early 80's, and from the perspective of an Italian 10-yr old they seemed extremely eerie, exotic and mysterious. Sapphire & Steel and Children of the Stones were, for lack of better words, just terrifying, but as pointed out upthread even series like The Avengers seemed to have a certain, not-quite-there aura that was puzzling and fascinating.

How was Tomorrow People? I think I saw it, but I'm not sure about it.

that tomorrow people sequence was heavily nostalgic for me but I can't remember a damn thing about the show itself

feel like the vibe y'all are talking about got expressed in the US via dystopian future fantasies like phase iv and the like

Yeah. I was thinking Westworld, e.g.

The closest i can think of from the US might be Twin Peaks. There was a lot of explicit nastiness going on which doesn't necessarily fit easily with the theme but the underlying idea of something ancient and evil in the woods intruding into small-town life has a lot of parallels. It's interesting as i don' think it was ever fixed at a point in history (native American curse, etc). I got the impression it predated that, in a way i'd normally associate with British or European mythology.

^ very good call

Looking to present a night of creepy-ass UK children's programming from the 70s/80s. Can anybody give me suggestions as to available stuff? This would be much easier if I could just plug a laptop into the video projector, but as it is, I'm stuck with DVDs.

I'm thinking stuff like the Tomorrow People or, if available(probably not), Children of the Stones or The Third Eye.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Tomorrow-People-Set-1/dp/B0007WFUGU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341789969&sr=8-1&keywords=tomorrow+people

http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-Steel-Complete-Joanna-Lumley/dp/B00061QJIA/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1341790043&sr=1-1&keywords=sapphire+and+steel

http://www.amazon.com/Doctor-Who-Daemons-Jon-Pertwee/dp/B0072BNJGC/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1341790078&sr=1-1&keywords=doctor+who+and+the+daemons

Ace of Wands

http://youtu.be/TAAyt7-yQ8w

now on DVD!

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg593/scaled.php?server=593&filename=chocky.jpg&res=landing

Looking to present a night of creepy-ass UK children's programming from the 70s/80s.

Where are you doing this because I'll book a plane ticket right now. When they used to show that weird block of UK shows on Nickelodeon it was pretty much my favorite thing on television.

Northeast Portland, naturally.

Yeah, Nickelodeon showing these in the early 80s during the Peter Davison era on PBS were a source of immense terror growing up.

children of the stones is (was) out on dvd, i have a copy...

and an amazon search for them turns up a lot of stuff in a similar vein, Shadows, Owl Service, TP, S&S...

see also the various public information films of the time... BFI have recently put out a dvd...

"Follow follow follow follow follow woof woof WOOF!
Follow that dog, woof woof
Follow that dog, woof woof
solving crime is an asset
which aint too bad for a long eared bassett
Follow that dog, woof woof
don't follow that cat, meow meow..."

Cheapest recorded tv theme tune ever?

This seems to be a cheap source of public information shorts:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Charley-animated-classics-Information-archives/dp/B0001HK0JI/ref=pd_sim_d_h__1
Lonely Water very fitting. Apparently no Apaches on there tho' :(

here's the BFI version, with apaches

http://www.amazon.co.uk/COI-Collection-Vol-Stop-Listen/dp/B0041LLD8M/ref=pd_bxgy_d_h__img_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87NHueHBHwY

I remember that thing! Not particularly strongly but I don't recall being creeped out, although it is fucking weird.

The ugly-wuglies scene in The Enchanted Castle by Elizabeth Nesbit definitely qualifies, although the rest of it is distinctly uncreepy. No videos available.

The Stone Tape

http://youtu.be/veGrGk0uBd4

My search for ugly wuglies brought me here. Totally agree with that creepy quality that came up in 70s/80s stuff on UK TV. Good call on Nosey Bonk, Ugly Wuglies and Sapphire and Steele.
I'd also add to that list:

- the "Boy from Space" episodes on Look and Read
- Hickory House. Some kid of possessed house where presenters interacted with an alive elephantine cushion and a mop end with a red nose: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu7w0BeZ7IY
- the big-eye-browed serial killer narrator on Words and Pictures
- Vision On(with Tony Hart/Sylvester Mccoy) - furry alive caterpillar things darting around and a guy with a white-line painter paiting pictures.
- Davros from Dr Who - I once had a highly pleasant dream where he was torturing me with hyperdermic needles.
- The blonde-mulletted hippie woman off Music Time.

These are probably completely off-topic but creeped me out also:

- Wizbit, though it's later and not quite in the same league as the above stuff. Still the disturbing product of a deranged criminal mind.
- The Dick Emery show full stop.
- most of the BBC2 Open University stuff I inadvertently stumbled on in the 70s/80s
- Horror films I shouldn't have been allowed to watch: The Ghoul, Horror Express, Island of Terror, The House that Bled to Death
- The Belfast Gang on Why Don't You(sorry but they just did)

Oh and I forgot Wurzel Gummedge, though I was never a fan - but the bits I saw were deeply DEEPLY disturbing. Always found it odd any kid could in all honesty enjoy that messed-up horror show.

~How did I miss this fucking thread? This is totally my thing. Just got the Wicker Man s/t on vinyl and have been rinsing it.

What was the kids show with a puppet called Pob who used to blow on the screen?
Also, WRT kids TV, Noseybonk from Jigsaw

And a recent honourable mention (even though it's set in Italy) - Berberian Sound Studio

oh we mentioned noseybonk.used to scare the shitejesus out of me.

What was the kids show with a puppet called Pob who used to blow on the screen?

pob's programme

love this thread.

"If in my programme you would be,
Wind the wool and follow me.
Wind it slowly, wind it fast,
A secret you will find at last."

I mean, what. the. fuck. If that's not some sort of pagan incantation I don't know.

*jimmy saville reference*

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