Someone at the Top of the Stairs

'Thriller' ran for six series on ITV between 1973 and 1976.  The title of the series is pretty self-explanatory but amongst it's 43 episodes there were a couple with a supernatural aspect, including 'Someone at the Top of the Stairs'.

When Chrissie Morton (Donna Mills) and Gillian Pemberton (Judy Crane) rent a room in an old, dilapidated boarding house filled with initially kindly but increasingly odd residents - including a prepubescent peeping tom (Alan Roberto), an underwear stealing Colonel (Peter Cellier) and a mysterious man in the attic (David de Keyser) - the pair find themselves drawn into a devilish web.

Writer Brian Clemens - who has a Wyrd Britain pedigree like no other having written movies ('Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde', 'Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter' 'And Soon the Darkness') and TV shows ('Danger Man', 'The Avengers', 'The Professionals') for the likes of Hammer, ITC and very many others - digs deep into the gothic bag of tricks to confront us with a smorgasbord of occult hi-jinks and it works, it works well, all the way to the big reveal where it unfortunately falls a little flat.  Until that point the show develops at a perfect pace and I cant shake the feeling that had this been a movie script the extra half hour would have allowed them to make good on the suspense, fill in some of the plot holes, allow Donna's character to develop completely and to have worked that ending into the one it should have been but it is what it is and what it is is a fun, minor, occult oddity but it could, and maybe should, have been marvellous.

 

The Witch's Bottle

When Jill (Georgina Kean) and Steve Lancaster (Jasper Jacob) go to stay at their Uncle Mark's house Jill finds herself repulsed by the old oak tree in the garden and troubled by visions of flames.

This, the third episode of the mid 70s Thames Television series 'Shadows', is to my mind one of the gems of the entire run.  Written by Stewart Farrar, author of "What Witches Do" and perhaps the chief popularist of Wicca during the 1970s and 80s this is a light hearted and slightly frivolous tale of a, sort of, haunting and an old wrong remedied which showed that Farrar was willing to embrace the funny side of his obviously deeply held beliefs.

Director Vic Hughes made something of a career out of scaring kids with stints working on 'The Tomorrow People', 'Chocky' and the 'Spooky' first series of Dramarama and here he crafts a gentle spell punctuated by a seance scene that's guaranteed to put the wind up any watching young uns with a fine performance from Kean who would later be seen in kids fantasy programme 'King of the Castle'.  The cast is rounded out by two minor Doctor Who alumni ('The Ice Warriors' & 'The Time Monster' respectively) with a solid, if brief, appearence by Neville Barber (as Uncle Mark) and an enjoyably enigmatic performance from Wendy Gifford as the "herbalist" next door.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Bewitched

With not a nose wiggle in sight this 1983 adaptation of Edith Wharton's 'Bewitched' from her 1926 collection 'Here and Beyond' was made for the mid 80s ITV series 'Shades of Darkness' which made use of several of her stories alongside stories by Agatha Christie, May Sinclair (The Intercessor), Elizabeth Bowen (The Demon Lover), L.P. Hartley (Feet Foremost) and Walter De La Mare (Seaton's Aunt).

Mrs Rutledge (Eileen Atkins) calls the leading men of her village - Reverend Hibben (Alfred Burke), Sylvester Brand (Ray Smith) and Owen Bosworth (Gareth Thomas) to her farm with the claim that her husband is bewitched and consorting with Brand's dead daughter who is slowly draining the life from him. With discussions of the area's history of witchcraft the 'good' men of the village spring into action and tragedy ensues.

Like the other episodes of the series 'Bewitched' is sumptuously produced thanks in no small part I imagine to the presence of executive producer Michael Cox the man behind the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series.  The story is quick but within it's denoument are layers of mystery and intrigue of witchcraft, vampirism, superstition, conspiracy, murder, madness and revenge. 

(The episode is only the first 50 minutes of the video below)

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance (1976)

'Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance' is a short story written by M.R. James that was included in his second anthology 'More Ghost Stories'. It's my understanding that it was written to bulk out that collection which would make sense as it really does pale in comparison to most of the other tales in that collection.

The gist of the tale is obvious from the title with the inheritance in question being a large house and it's accompanying maze; a maze it seems only Mr. Humphreys can easily navigate and which has at it's centre an enigmatic, inscribed globe.

This adaptation was made in 1976 as an ITV schools programme - for those not raised in the UK in the 1970s these were shows made and shown during the daytime with an educational bent that could be used by teachers to distract the kids as they had a sneaky tea and cigarette break - as part of a series called 'Music Scene' whose purpose was to highlight the importance of incidental music to a production which in this context puts modernist tootling over typically Jamesian imagery. It sometimes makes for an odd fit but, for me at least, made a nice change to the usual overblown, portentous, pseudo classical violin sawing that film-makers often smother everything in.

With a run time of only 17 minutes the makers have amalgamated many aspects of the source material and discarded others entirely but they've created an engaging little film that manages to conjure up some nicely claustrophobic sequences within the maze - the point where the incidental music is at it's most effective - and a nifty and creepy animation sequence that looks like the opening of a 1970s Doctor Who episode but with the Doctor replaced with Peter Pratt's melty face version of The Master.

The show is available as an extra here - Casting the Runes [1979] [DVD] - or you can watch it below.



..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Calculated Nightmare

Anthology series Tales of Unease was broadcast during 1970 and was adapted from the series of books edited by John Burke who also wrote this particular story.  Much of the show seems to have gone the way of all things with only this (the 2nd episode) and the 1st (Ride, Ride) apparently having survived.  - EDIT: The rest of the series has been found.

Unlike the other episode there's nothing supernatural here and instead we have a science fiction ish piece tapping into fears about the advances of technology, the callous nature of capitalism and that good old staple of the TV play, class.

Michael Culver (a Wyrd Britain TV regular but most famous as the unlucky Captain Needa in The Empire Strikes Back) and John Stratton (Quatermass and the Pit, Doctor Who) play 'Johnson' and 'Harker' two executives trapped in their office by a disgruntled employee (Peter Madden - who also featured in a host of Wyrd Britain TV faves but is probably most recognisable as the undertaker from the opening credits of The Prisoner) who has discovered himself on a list of soon to be ex-employees and so manipulates proceedings to his own ends.

At less than 30 minutes it's a quick, easy and enjoyably mindless watch that uses both the limitations of it's idea and it's run time well with a fast and snappy script that paints it's characters with the broadest of strokes and doesn't waste a second in escalating the threat level up to it's inevitable conclusion.



..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Murrain

Screened in 1975 as an episode of the, for the most part forgotten, ITV series 'Against the Crowd' and written by Wyrd Britain legend Nigel Kneale, 'Murrain' (an old term meaning a disease affecting animals) is a TV play exploring that most Kneale of topics the clash of science and the supernatural, the modern and the archaic, the logical and superstitious.

The story tells of a visit by veterinarian Alan Crich (David Simeon) to a tiny, rural village to investigate a mystery illness affecting the pigs belong to Mr. Beeley (played by James Bond's boss, Bernard Lee).  The poorly pigs aren't the only problem in the village with drought, and sickness amongst the villagers adding to their woes.  Spurning the scientific minded approach of the outsider vet the villagers have already decided on the cause of the murrain, local odd bod and suspected witch, Mrs. Clemson (Una Brandon-Jones).

For a show with a runtime of less than an hour it maintains a fairly leisurely pace filled with extended silences as Beeley's bumpkin workforce slowly process even the simplest of tasks and questions. The lack of soundtrack is an unexpected joy that allows ambient sounds to add to the growing air of bucolic menace.  The cast all give a fairly strong account of themselves with Brandon-Jones' lonely, persecuted and unhinged Mrs Clemson being the standout performance and the very downbeat ending leaves a satisfying ambiguity.

In discussions of Kneales' work 'Murrain', if mentioned at all, is often relegated to a footnote, eclipsed by it's more exuberant siblings like 'Quatermass', 'The Stone Tape' or 'Beasts', but sometimes there's gold in a footnote and I think that's the case here.  'Murrain' with the constraints of it's obviously limited budget makes for a tightly controlled and concentrated exploration of Kneale's interests bereft of the more overt science fiction and horror elements of later work such as 'Baby' and 'The Quatermass Conclusion' and is all the better for it.

Murrain is included in the box set of Kneale's series 'Beasts' which you can buy here - Beasts - The Complete Series [DVD] [1976] - or you can watch it below.



..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

The Horse of the Invisible

Broadcast in 1971 'The Horse of the Invisible' is so far the only live action adaptation of one of William Hope Hodgson's 'Thomas Carnacki' stories.

Created as an episode of the TV series 'The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes' a series which featured an adaptation of a different Holmes contemporary in each episode such as Guy Boothby's 'Simon Carne' and Emma Orczy's 'Polly Burton'.

In the story Carnacki (played by Donald Pleasence - forever beloved of Wyrd Britain for being the voice of the 'Dark and Lonely Water' public information film) is engaged by Captain Hisgins (Tony Steedman) to save his daughter, Mary (Michele Dotrice, who amassed an impressive Wyrd Britain pedigree in her early career) from the family curse, an invisible horse that begins to terrorise her on the night of her engagement.

Pleasence is, of course, excellent but personally I've always pictured Carnacki as a younger and more dynamic man so Pleasence's portrayal as a rather sedate, distracted and bookish character took a little getting used to.  The screenplay is faithful to the story and the ending looks every bit as daft in reality as I pictured it when I first read the story but you do get to see Carnacki's trademark electric pentacle in action (kind of).

It is a well-mannered and fairly placid example of early 70s TV that was obviously made on a pretty tight budget but the cast all throw themselves into the story and the end result is entirely enjoyable and makes one wonder why no one else has taken the opportunity to bring Carnacki to the screen.

Buy it here - The Rivals Of Sherlock Holmes - Series 1 [DVD] [1971] -  or watch it below.

..........................................................................................

If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.

The Witches and the Grinnygog (1983)

Made in 1983 and based on the novel of the same name by Dorothy Edwards published two years earlier, 'The Witches and the Grinnygog' is a 6 episode supernatural, time-slip story for children made by TVS (the ITV channel for south east England).

The story tells of five very nice kids, Colin and Nan Sogood and Essie and Dave Firkettle (who grew up to be Eastenders' Ian Beale) and their little brother Jimmy who, whilst setting up the local museum (see, I told you they were nice), start to notice strange things happening in their quiet little village all of which seem to be connected the Firkettle's Grandad's (John Barrard) garden ornament, an odd, gargoyle-like statue that quite literally falls off the back of a lorry just missing Mrs. Firkettle's head.

Things get increasingly unusual for the quartet with the arrival of an enigmatic African anthropologist, Twebele Alabaster (Olu Jacobs), three eccentric and seemingly magical old ladies Mrs. Ems (Sheila Grant), Edie Possett (Anna Wing - who later became Ian Beale's great aunt Lou) and Miss Bendybones (Patricia Hayes) and finally a lost and lonely young girl called both Margaret and Daisy (Eva Griffith - who some of you will recognise as the young blind girl who tries to convince Bill Mason to stay and carry on looking after 'his' group of blind people in the brilliant 1981 BBC TV version of 'The Day of the Triffids').

'The Witches and the Grinnygog' is a very well mannered sort of affair lacking the air of disquiet and menace that is palpable in many of the more well known supernatural shows like 'Children of the Stones'.  Unfortunately, there's no actual jeopardy in the plot.  The kids run around trying to solve the secret of the statue and village's unpleasant past even though Miss Bendybones tells them (and others) on several occasions that everything is fine and its all going to work out on the day.  Kudos to the makers for not falling in the trap of 'demonising' any one here, followers of all the religions featured - both orthodox and less so - are portrayed as well intentioned and kind and contributes towards making a show that is, in almost every way possible, nice and which probably goes some way to explain why 'The Witches and the Grinnygog' is considerably less well known than many other TV shows of this ilk.

It is though still an intriguing and enjoyable watch.

Enjoy.