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

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.