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

Very glad you found this thread Fizzles. I believe that Rob Young is working on a bk about all this kind of tv stuff.

I recently read some Machen for the first time and was struck by how in The White People, the main bulk of the narrative reads like Joycean stream of consciousness, complete with a strong female/erotic narrative pov.

I want to insert into yr history, somewhere, the English working class roughies, tho' I don't really know much anywhere near enough about Penny Dreadfuls etc to offer any kind of content analysis. But somebody like James Herbert seems to me as 'modern' in his way as Ballard. Herbert really brought gore cinema aesthetics - which are of course predicated on SHOWING YOU IT ALL - to the previously rather gentlemanly literary tradition. His early books were published by New English Library and have some of the same sensibility as a 'Richard Allen' - urban, crude, exploitative, some tough goddamm stuff - but also very flash and conceptual, as befitting Herbert's background in advertising. Of course, as he got more respectable and technically more polished, he ending up writing rather ho-hum haunted house stories and the like, but his first four or five books all packed a real punch and are, in their way, inimitable (tho' not, I concede, particularly ineffable - something like The Rats deliberately pisses on the English pastoral tradition, and goes out of its way to avoid shadows, mystery, the spiritual-cosmic.)

This kind of disreputable/cynical/outsiderish attitude is all over the roughest/cheapest English horror movies, from all eras. To mention Michael Powell again, the early Soho-set scenes in Peeping Tom, complete with an appearance from English nudie queen Pamela Green, are Powell kissing off his more whimsical pastoral past in favour of Freud, modernity, inner horror (Anglo-Amalgamated, the studio behind Peeping Tom, also gave us Horrors of the Black Museum and Circus of Horrors, cheapies that capitalised on, but did not emulate, Hammer's fairytale Gothics, which were already looking a little...tame...by 1960, and Psycho/Peeing Tom).

The White People is great - that stream of consciousness side of things is very heavily deployed in the very strange The Hill of Dreams, which is not really horror, but an interior monologue of mental obsession and delirium. I think The White People is considered Machen horror canon though, and I'd forgotten about that main narrative ... it's a diary isn't it? being so fluid and childlike - very effectively so iirc.

James Herbert! yes. I tend to dismiss Clive Barker as 'effectively American' in his manner, but I'd completely forgotten about James Herbert, who is definitely UK/London. Only read the first Rats, and that when I was about 12, so should go back and have a look. Haven't seen Horrors of the Black Museum of Circus of Horrors, but will see if I can seek them out.

mentioning Penny Dreadfuls does make me wonder what was around in the way of horror for station paperbacks at the time of stuff like Bulldog Drummond. Seems hard to imagine there wasn't anything - feels like it might've been Yellow Peril or Rider Haggard stuff.

Guy N Smith is, I think, the touchstone for the Richard Allen comparison (acknowledging Crabs probably only became publishable because of Rats). Ramsay Campbell stands fairly tall as the primary Brit involved in tying folk horror and Lovecraftian HORROR <SHUDDER> together, and Colin Wilson's fiction works are definitely in this field - I have a real soft spot for Return of the Lloigor, which plays heavily on the sense of isolation in the 'wrong' community on the Welsh/English border.

Horror seems to have taken a dip in the post-WWI era, or at least not have been pushed into the mass market. Yellow Peril, or at least the expansion of the concept into other 'unexplored' areas seems to have been the main theme and it's probably out of that we see the first reference to Zombies in The Magic Island. They caught on quickly, especially in the US and probably because of their proximity to Haiti (leaving aside the whole aspect of preying on fears that you couldn't know whether the black people around you weren't from there) - so much so that White Zombie was released just three years later.

There's probably a thematic link with the end of the war and just not wanting to read about more people dying - or at least not chaps of the right sort (since the Hodder Yellow Jackets, for example, still had lashings of violence and death for the types that deserved it i.e. furriners)

Yep, I wanted to mention ppl like Guy N Smith, Shaun Hutson, Brian Lumley, definitely all modern inheritors of the pulp/station paperback tradition.

Fizz, I wouldn't go out of your way to see Black Museum or Circus of Horrors, unless you have a particular fondness for mildly sensational cheap British horror movies of the late 1950s (personally I like the idea of their post-war flash harry, sexy soho, fly-by-night quality - their marginality to mainstream British cinema - more than I actually like watching the films themselves.)

Another name I was groping for last night - Tod Slaughter, who unites the British horror film with staged, theatrical terror, which also seems key to the visual horror tradition (Stoker working for Henry Irving, the first Universal Dracula and Frankenstein being based on stage adaptations, grand guignol, etc etc)

I really like Circus of Horrors, but agree with you that it's not necessarily for all and certainly that the idea of it - the "distinctly British seedy vibe" if you will - as much as anything else. It's always the people involved in these sort of things that intrigues me and draws me in (see, for example, Michael Winner's early nudie-cutie work); CoH, for example, has musical work by Tony Hatch and one of the songs ends up on a Heinz album.

I'd argue that Peeping Tom straddles the line between the CREEPY VIBE and the SEEDY VIBE aspects, and probably pushes the line into the latter. It's true that sensationalism is a major trend in some of the progenitors to the CREEPY VIBE material but there's probably a defined split into the pulpier (and therefore seedier) aspects and creepier ones in the early 70s. (? citation needed)

Theory: girl's comics fall into the CREEPY VIBE in a way that boy's comics didn't.

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