Dr Who: Horror of Fang Rock

Dr Who: Horror of Fang Rock

Director ~ Paddy Russell

1977, 4 episodes, UK

Writer ~ Terrance Dicks

Stars ~ Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Colin Douglas

It’s the claustrophobic lighthouse setting and sense of unseen dread lurking outside that makes this one. Originally a Terence Dicks vampire story (that emerged as the later story ‘State of Decay’), a hangover from the series’ previous glorious run of Gothic Horror pilfering, it features a superior chamber piece of disposable but vivid characters and an alien threat that provides the only vivid colour and light to the damp drabness.

Tom Baker is playful, charming, bullying and arrogant, whose high voltage and sometimes inappropriate smile and eccentric approach always makes the Doctor compelling. His glee at delivering the announcement, “Gentlemen, I've got news for you: this lighthouse is under attack and by morning we might all be dead. Anyone interested?” is a highlight. But it’s Leila that gets several great moments here, rolling her eyes at and not at all fitting in with the turn-of-the century’s learned helplessness construction of femininity. Louise Jameson’s excellent line-reading cannot be underestimated, making a character that will almost always be out-of-place (that is, more than usual for a companion) credible and dignified, as eager to learn as to vanquish enemies, never stupid as her “savage” origins might have her. See her explain lasers to an early Twentieth Century lighthouseman.

The cast, character interactions and insider trader backstory provide some meat as the alien menace is simply a fluorescent green blob and the showdown his mostly an argument on the stairs. Still, it is surely the shipwreck that is the most lacking, effects-wise, rather than the alien, which is at least striking (which I always misremembered from childhood being like a green bubble-wrap sleeping bag). It is the under-siege scenario with the atmosphere of creeping menace and the Doctor and Neela running around solving things that we came for, and there is plenty of that to enjoy.

You can debate what the war between the Rutans and Sontarans would look like afterwards for extra fun. 

  

Lost Hearts

Lost Hearts

Director ~ Lawrence Gordon Clark

Writer ~ M.R. James, Robin Chapman

1973, UK

Stars ~ Simon Gipps-Kent, Joseph O'Conor, James Mellor

 

I’m a big fan of M.R. James, the granddaddy of the modern ghost story, straddling the oral tradition to its more modern shadings. Originally Montague Rhodes James wrote these stories to tell audiences at Eton and Cambridge University at Christmas in the early Nineteen-Hundreds, so it seems appropriate that he became a fundament of the BBC Christmas Ghost Story in the Nineteen-Seventies. He is master of the erudite, slightly aloof slow-build that delivers a sudden shock, not only of ghosts, but demonic and folk-horror unspeakables. They still shock.

 

‘Lost Hearts’ was broadcast on BBC1 on Christmas Day 1973, directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and written by Robert Chapman. It makes great use of Lincolnshire locations and unforgettable library hurdy-gurdy music. As a story, it is an example that James was a far grislier author than assumed from his status as a purveyor of the Victorian Ghost Story. There is cruelty, brutalised corpses and psychology that doesn’t age, giving the influence of his short stories a longevity and permanence. The brief gore imagery and horror hokum of this adaptation reminds me of the crudity and disgust I felt as a child at the Horror top Trumps: something unpleasant and visceral.  

 

As a TV short, this ‘Lost Hearts’ adaptation has a Seventies execution that makes its tacky Halloween costume elements as disquieting and grim as only TV budget can achieve. It also casts an everyday drabness to a lost era rather than ornate set design, adding to the mundane atmosphere shocked by horror that captures the aura of MR James, a trait throughout the series of adaptations. 

 

There is a big English house, fog, clueless staff, the real threat of abuse and the jangly vengeance. Presiding over this is Joseph O’Connor outdoing the eccentricities of Michael Hordern’s mumbling-to-himself performance from Jonathan Miller’s ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to You’ ~ the 1968 black-and-white short film that started the MR James Christmas franchise across the Seventies. He is wonderfully ripe as a bumbling older peculiar academic whose performance is outlandish until it isn’t. There’s a distinctly spooky edge, the sense of something truly unspeakable, and the imagery of grinning ghosts mixed with almost antithetical hurdy-gurdy music is likely to be unforgettable.

 

Dead of Night

Dead of Night

Directors ~ Alberto Cavalcanti, Charles Crichton

Basil Dearden, Robert Hamer

Writers ~ John Baines, Angus MacPhail, T.E.B. Clarke

1945 ~ UK

Stars ~ Mervyn Johns, Michael Redgrave, Roland Culver

‘Dead of Night’ was Ealing’s first post-war release and their only horror, despite other-wordly elements in others. Although preceded by the German film ‘Waxwork’ (1924), this is generally considered the precedent for the portmanteau genre. Amicus and Hammer owe an obvious debt, and its template can be sensed through to the recent ‘V/H/S’ franchise, but it would seem there really wasn’t a cohesive British Horror genre beforehand. There was Tod Slaughter as Britain’s first Horror star, barnstorming through ‘Maria Marten’ and ‘Sweeney Todd’, but no genre properly established. Previously a lot was being derived from theatre, and this certainly seems to be the case when we start here with a drawing room drama with cut-glass received pronunciation.  

The over-arching tale of Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) driving up in a in a 1938 Sunbeam-Talbot Ten drop-head coupe to a farmhouse to meet six people with an intrusive sense of déjà vu is strong. It’s not just bookending, it is an intrinsic narrative element itself, setting in motion the storytelling of the characters and justifying the incidental, anecdotal nature of the tales told. Where there are tonal shifts – creepy, romantic, dated comedy – the over-arching story keeps a momentum and cohesiveness that many anthologies don’t manage. The datedness offers the crisp Received Pronunciation dialogue, which is smart, spritely and engaging, endearingly old-fashioned. Drawing room debates punctuated by spooky anecdotes proves solid and arguably bolsters any slightness in the stories themselves. If wordy, educated slightly pricky drawing room banter appeals to you, ‘Dead of Night’ is rooted in this.  

A notable omission is a lack of reference to the very recent war. During wartime, horror films had been banned in Britain, and by extension this has the air of asking to be let back in if we don’t mention it. Conspicuous by omission, perhaps, but Jamie Russel’s BBC synopsis is helpful:

"Best remembered for their classic British comedies, Ealing Studios broke all the rules with this spooky psychological thriller, their first post-war release. Released in 1945, its dark tales of neurosis and obsession proved the perfect response to the trauma of the war years with five stories by four different directors capturing a brooding menace that's quite at odds with the middle-class world of the stiff-upper-lipped characters."

Indeed, premonitions of death, fear of latent violence, suicide and cracked mental health all feature. Also at the time, the second story would have had period echoes of the infamous case of Constance Kent, a teenager who murdered her brother. There’s a lot of trauma lurking.

Although Googie Withers and Ralph Michael stand out, it is Michael Redgrave’s performance as the ventriloquist that steals the show in the film’s most renowned episode, although . It’s one that especially nods to the psychological basis and interiority of the Horror genre to come and not just the failing reality and hauntings of the other stories. All along, the film is in debate with its only foreign element, the German psychologist Dr Van Straaten (Frederick Valk) who insists on scientific explanations, but its agenda is definitely spookiness in showcasing several writers and directors. With the mirror and ventriloquist stories coming latterly, only interrupted rudely by the dated misogyny and buffoonery of golfers’ episode, the film only gets better as it goes on.

Much of the pleasure is the period detail and set-design, full of bric-a-brac from a different era, and it retains a timeless sense of atmosphere and some genuine eeriness. Having vanquished its symbol of rationality, the film succumbs to its nightmare logic. Along with its sense of a supernatural bubble-trap, its denouement not only gives a genuine nightmarish conclusion but also excels by giving the stories a second ending which, especially for the ventriloquist’s dummy episode (three chilling endnotes, by my count), proves a neat trick and greatly satisfying.