Ghost of Venice

The 1977 BBC anthology series 'Supernatural', created and almost entirely written by Robert Muller, was intended to be a return to old fashioned gothic tales and the classic creatures of horror.  The series found new prospective members of the 'Club of the Damned' telling a sufficiently terrifying tale that would grant them membership or death.

This, the first episode, takes ageing Shakespearean actor Adrian Gall (Robert Hardy) whose maniacal rage at a theft only he remembers many years before during a performance in Venice returns him to that city to face the ghost of his past in the form of Leonora (Sinéad Cusack).

Filled with flowery monologues and a hysterically hammy performance from Hardy that will have you chuckling and cringing in equal measures.  The studio bound setting of the production makes everything feel a little cheap and the script could certainly have done with some judicial editing to curb it's more floridly bombastic aspects.  The series is generally regarded as a bit of a failure; already old fashioned in tone and in production values upon release it certainly hasn't aged well but personally I quite like a noble failure even if it's just for it's unintended comedy value of which there is plenty here.

You can find another episode from the series here - Night of the Marionettes.

Buy it here - Supernatural (2-disc DVD set) - or watch it below.



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