The Exorcism

One of the few surviving episodes of the 1970s BBC series Dead of Night, 'The Exorcism' is the story of a dinner party gone very wrong indeed.

Writer / director Don Taylor's story places two bourgeois couples Clive Swift & Sylvia Kay and Edward Petherbridge & Anna Cropper at dinner in the new country cottage home of the latter pair slowly being consumed by the pent up anger of the past that permeates the walls of the house.  The power fails, the lavish food spoils and the wine turns to blood as the house tries to exorcise itself of these unclean spirits and give voice to those that had lived and died there before.

With his directors hat on Taylor never quite manages to instill any notable sense of trepidation and in his writer's hat his socialist leanings are given voice in a sometimes slightly heavy handed way in a story about poverty, injustice and class warfare rescued by some good performances from a dependable cast, hauntily atmospheric music and an easy, unhurried pace.

We've featured another episode from this series on Wyrd Britain before which you can watch here - A Woman Sobbing.

Buy it here - Dead of Night (DVD) - or watch it below.



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