The Ghost of Greville Lodge

I have to say that I am not a fan of George Cole. That aside this film has the quality of the films of the Golden era. If this was in black and white you would think it was an oscar winner.

The acting is good and direction clear, the flashback effect is good and gives a lovely feeling of memories.

All in all a great film and one that should get more notice from the "bosses" in the industry.

I taped The Ghost Of Greville Lodge when ITV screened it one morning during the Christmas holiday of 2004. I found it rather spooky and very enjoyable.

A teenage boy who has lived in a children's' home for most of his life is invited to stay with his Great Uncle at his manor house, Greville Lodge at holiday time. What the boy doesn't know is that the manor is haunted. When there, he explores the manor and its grounds and comes across its many secrets. These include sealed doors and he opens one of them one night and we then learn of Greville Lodge's many secrets...

I found this movie very spooky at times, especially the night time scenes.

The cast includes veteran stars George Cole (Minder) and Prunella Scales (Faulty Towers). The teenage boy is played by Jon Newman. All play good parts.

The Ghost Of Greville Lodge is worth seeing if you get the chance.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

The Ghost of Greville Lodge is directed by Niall Johnson, who also adapts to screenplay from the novel Down Came A Blackbird written by Nicholas Wilde. It stars George Cole, Prunella Scales, Kevin Howarth, Jon Newman, Billy Smith and Rebecca Weeks. Music is by Sam Parker and Craig Johnson and cinematography by Gordon Hickie.

Teenager James Greville (Newman) has spent most of his youth living in children's homes after the death of his parents when he was just six years old. Out of the blue he gets an invite to stay for Christmas with a Great Uncle at Greville Lodge. Once there he settles in quickly and spends his time exploring the vast lodge and the quaint village nearby. Soon, though, James comes to find that Greville Lodge holds some secrets and that he is in fact the catalyst for those secrets to come out in the open.

Anyone who is familiar with, and likes, The Amazing Mr. Blunden from 1972, will have no problems enjoying this delightful family friendly ghost story. Blending its supernatural heart with a time travelling scenario, film goes exactly where you would expect it to go. It's not the scary kind of ghost story to chill the spine, though there is an ethereal eeriness about certain passages that should make the younger viewers tingle with a suspicion of the unknown. The acting is very competent and the period design for the 1939 segments is splendid in its eye appealing efficiency. A film of this type lives or dies by its ending and thankfully the finale here is excellently put together and hits all the right emotional notes. So have a Kleenex handy just in case.

Really well put together and narratively strong, this is very much recommended to those in search of a Mr. Blunden type ghost story. 7.5/10

I had never seen this film on television here in Canada and I purchased the DVD solely based on the reviews found at Amazon UK. After all who doesn't love a Christmastime ghost story. I just finished watching this with my wife and we were not disappointed. The story builds slowly but with suspense. A young lad, James (Jon Newman), is reunited with a great Uncle (George Cole) he never knew he had. James travels to the country to Greville Lodge where his uncle lives. Both James and his uncle are very nice people but the uncle is somewhat somber.

James soon begins to have dreams that are connected to Greville Lodge. He dreams he is a lad much like himself and he befriends a boy and a girl who worked at Grenville Lodge many years before. Why are these strange dreams happening? There is a mystery for James to unravel. Something happened many years ago that still affects his uncle. Eventually James comes to believe that if he can unravel the past perhaps he can bring some joy to his solemn uncle.

This is not a horror film with exploding skulls and gargoyles (Thank heavens). It is a gentle ghost story, superbly written and well acted. I recommend it highly as a family Christmas movie.

James Greville is a teenager who has lived in children's homes ever since being orphaned as a child. He has always assumed that he has no living relatives, so is surprised when he learns that he has a great uncle who has invited him to stay at his home in the countryside, an old manor house named Greville Lodge. James does not, however, find life at Greville Lodge much to his taste. His great uncle is a quiet, lonely and reclusive old man, living with only his elderly housekeeper Sarah for company. His manner seems to hint at some great sadness in his distant past. Apart from Sarah, the only friend James makes is Billy, the eccentric gravedigger at the local church, who has a strange, unsettling manner.

To make matters worse, James becomes convinced that the house is haunted and that mysterious figures are watching him. He begins to have strange dreams in which he is another James Greville, in this case the son of the owner of the house back in 1939. This James Greville has formed a close friendship with Ben, an orphan who has been employed by his father as an assistant to the gamekeeper. James, however, needs to keep this friendship a secret from his autocratic father, who would not approve of his son fraternising with members of the servant class. As the film progresses we learn about the tragedy which struck the house one Christmas and which explains the sorrow which has haunted James's great uncle for so long.

Jon Newman, who plays James in both his modern-day and 1939 incarnations, is not particularly memorable, but there are good contributions from two senior members of the British acting profession, George Cole as Great Uncle and Prunella Scales as Sarah. The film is an intriguing mixture of ghost story and period drama, a sort of M R James meets L P Hartley. There is a strong narrative drive; the story is clearly and succinctly presented and the action builds inexorably to its shattering climax when we discover the tragic secret of Greville Lodge. This is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of entertainment.

A goof. The modern-day scenes are supposed to take place around Christmas, whereas those set in 1939 , apart from the climax, take place in late summer and autumn. The entire film, however, must have been filmed in summer, because we see trees in full leaf even in those scenes which are supposed to be set in December.