The Return

Stephen Royds arrives very late at the front door, where Mrs Park greets him and offers refreshment. He explains his train was delayed, but insists he still wants to see the house with a view to buying it.

It baffles me how so many of these little plays were produced, and yet we've let them sink into the archives like forgotten treasures. This is exactly the sort of chilling gem that makes digging around in the early '70s worthwhile.

This one is a deliciously dark ghost story - quiet, unsettling, and intriguing. You're never quite sure why Royds has turned up at such an hour, or who Mrs Park really is, which is precisely where the tension lives.

It's clearly made on a shoestring, but the gloomy lighting, sparse score and careful period touches give it real atmosphere. The tone is wonderfully sinister without ever being overwrought, and the whole thing rests beautifully on the shoulders of Peter Vaughan and Rosalie Crutchley, who are both superb.

It isn't a thriller or a horror; it's a ghost story through and through - all suggestion, unease and slow-burn tension - and for that, it works.

And as for whoever wrote the IMDb description... did you really need to gift-wrap the entire plot?

8/10.

The Return seemed as though it might be my cup of tea, since I strongly enjoy 1970s horror and crime thrillers, especially atmospheric films that feature old houses and sometimes supernatural elements.

However, The Return seems taken from a brief stage play or even hints to being an extremely watered-down early chapter of Wuthering Heights. If you've read the latter novel you know that a well-to-do gentleman traveler finds himself in a strange but fine house in inclement weather with a stern and practical middle aged woman who has been employed as a high-level, trusted servant for most of her life and is not "taken to fancy." This seems almost like blatant plagiarism of the classic tale of child abuse, dysfunctional families, and obsessive love that reaches beyond death. But it stops there. The tale in this 1973 flick is short and milquetoast, and the aftermath twee and unsatisfying.

I did not even find the house especially visually pleasing or atmospheric. There was too much reliance on dialogue i.e. "Aren't you nervous?....Don't you fancy you hear things?..."

Entirely skippable unless you're some kind of completist.