Although published in 1952 it was the Hitchcock movie adaptation eleven years later that thrust Daphne du Maurier's short story of a world held hostage by angry avians, 'The Birds', firmly into the wider public consciousness and gave every sighting of a flock a degree of menace.
Unlike the movie du Maurier's original story revolves around the family of a disabled farm labourer, recently returned from the war, and struggling to find work in Cornwall and this adaptation by Melissa Murray for Radio 4 , featuring Neil Dudgeon ('Midsomer Murders') and Nicola Walker ('The Last Train'), keeps that premise whilst making some judicious changes to the narrative, both narrowing it's focus and widening it's scope, but retaining the essential character of the original in a bleakly claustrophobic story.
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John Bolton is a British artist known for his work, predominantly in the horror field, for British comics like 'Look In', 'House of Hammer' & 'Warrior', US comic publishers such as Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, card games publishers Wizards of the Coast and White Wolf, his paintings of vampiric ladies and, perhaps most crucially to Wyrd Britain readers, for his drawings of the ghouls in the graveyard in the movie 'The Monster Club'
The film is presented as a roughly cut documentary, fronted by Marcus Brigstocke, focussed on the first gallery exhibition of Bolton's vampire paintings. Bolton - who appears in the film as an interviewee at the exhibition launch - is played by actor John O'Mahoney, and is shown as socially awkward and reticent of both the gallery show and the film eventually relenting to allowing Brigstock access to his studio located in the crypt of an old church at the centre of a suitably gothic graveyard.
Developed from his own fictionalised biography ('Drawn in Darkness') this mockumentary written and directed by Neil Gaiman - who's worked with Bolton several times on stories such as 'The Books of Magic' & 'Halequin Valentine' - is, in his words, "an investigation into where artists get their ideas from". Gaiman's status as a novice film-maker works to his advantage here and the occasional clumsiness plays to both the mockumentary form and the 'unfinished' nature of the documentary and the end result is a fun, tongue in cheek tribute to Bolton and his influences that owes a debt to H.P. Lovecraft’s 'Pickman’s Model'.
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Graphic designer and musician David King met future Crass drummer Penny Rimbaud and artist Gee Vaucher at college in the 1960 and later moved into the Dial House commune with them and many of the other Crass members. Once there he designed, what became, the bands iconic logo that has adorned a milliion bus shelters and underpasses, a design that mixed a cross, the ouroboros, the Union flag, and a swastika.
Whilst this short film predominantly focuses on King and his logo it would be as remiss of me as it was of the film makers not to highlight the importance of the work of Gee Vaucher, the visual artist to the Crass music. Vaucher's designs for the group were every bit as essential to the experience as the words and the music. As profound as they were provocative and as insightful as they were incisive her artwork was the perfect visual catalyst to the musical storm. They provided a visual element that enhanced and deepened the listening experience and I cannot even begin to quantify the amount of time I have spent lost in her work.
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Newly weds Michael (Jonathan Cake) and Phyllis Watson (Saira Todd) have, via his job for the English Broadcasting Company (EBC), intermittent front row seats at the beginning, middle and end of the end of human civilisation as they know it as they pursue the apocalyptic theories of the vilified scientist Dr. Alistair Bocker (Russell Dixon) with regard to the arrival and intent of the extraterrestrial visitors who have taken up residence at the bottom of the ocean.
This BBC Radio 4 adaptation of John Wyndham's alien invasion / monsters from the deep / ecological disaster classic was made in 1998 but sounds far, far older which is testament to the care of the creators but does give it quite a dated feel. It is though a solid performance of what I personally think to be a prescient but fairly stodgy book as Wyndham weaves a slowly unfolding story of goverment misinformation and misdirection and the general public's inability to react appropriately in the face of an obvious threat. Some narrative corners are cut, not entirely successfully, particularly in the middle when Michael 'goes on holiday', but they tell the story concisely, conclusively and enjoyably if perhaps just a touch too reverentially.
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First published in 1928 D.H. Lawrence's 'The Last Laugh' is the story of a manifestation of the God Pan in Hampstead on a winters night.
Miss James and her friend Marchbanks, along with a young policeman they meet on their journey, are walking home through the snow when they experience the God's return, an event that impacts them all in profound ways.
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There were only three TV shows that scared me as a kid, Assignment 4 of Sapphire & Steel (the photograph one), the shadow sitting in the armchair in the opening titles of Armchair Thriller and, when I was thirteen and off school ill, watching the Dramarama episode, 'The Exorcism of Amy', which freaked my fever riddled brain right out.
The story is partly narrated by Elizabeth (Annabelle Lanyon) an only child whose family gives a home to a troubled young girl named Amy (Lucy Benjamin - Eastenders' 'Lisa Fowler') who brings with her, Amelia (also played by Benjamin), her malevolent imaginary friend who has spoiled all her previous homes.
Made for the 'Spooky' series that preceded ITV's long running 'Dramarama' series, written by Paula Milne ('Gemini Factor') it hasn't aged as well as some of the things we feature here but appearing to be filmed in a translucent, minimalist, dreamscape complete with a nightmarish fancy dress party, a shattering sting in the tail and with strong central performances from the two girls it was certainly fun to revisit and a reminder of just how much film-makers of the time loved to terrify their young viewers.
The vital and materialist young doctor is disturbed in his lodgings on several escalating occasions by his enigmatic downstairs neighbour, Smith, a source of mystery to the other residents, which culminates in a terrifying midnight rescue and, perhaps worst of all, an unreturned book.
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A.M. Burrage was the author of numerous stories of the supernatural but, with the exception of a couple of well known tales that have often appeared in ghost story collections - 'Smee', 'The Waxwork', 'One Who Saw' and 'Playmates' - and having been chamioned by such ghost story luminaries as M.R. James and Richard Dalby he has remained outside the awareness of many readers. Happily this seems to be changing with the British Library's recent Burrage collection, 'The Little Blue Flames', placing him in a series of releases that stands him shoulder to shoulder with the likes of James, Algernon Blackwood and Edgar Allan Poe.
Benign but aloof historian Stephen Everton unexpectedly adopts, Monica, the daughter of a distant, and dissolute, artist aquaintance. Everton's whim is to allow the child to essentially raise and educate herself by providing for her needs whilst allowing her free access to his extensive library. Within this loveless environment Monica slowly matures exactly as one would expect until that is a relocation of the household to the countryside elicits a change in the girl as she discovers new playmates.
'Playmates' was first published in Burrage's 1927 collection 'Some Ghost Stories' and is a gentle and rather lovely story that only hints at a darker world beyond. It's primary concerns are far more earthly and it tells a story of the importance of love and companionship and it's long been my favourite ghostly tale.
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Taken from the 1975 Doctor Who annual and read by Geoffrey Beevers (The Master in 'The Keeper of Traken') this is a lovely little daft Third Doctor and Sarah-Jane Smith tale. Here Doctor Who (as they call him here) and Sarah-Jane are held captive by farmers whose crops have died due to "fire from the sky". Given only until nightfall to help make the ground fertile again the doctor does so in the most unscientific way possible.
It's a story very much from another time and for another audience but you have to kinda love the charm of these old stories written to entertain a sugared out kid three quaters of their way through a selection box on Christmas Day evening while the parents sleep off their dinner.
It's fun but rubbish, or perhaps that should be, it's rubbish but fun or possibly both, just take it with a pinch of salt.
'Barrowbeck, in the north of England, has a reputation for strangeness. It is a place that brings out the sin in people. But despite the dark isolation, people have lived there for centuries until the river got the better of them.'
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Here we have a no budget black and white short film from 1967 that would have possibly been of no interest to anyone beyond being an early curio in the filmography of director Michael Armstrong (future director of The Haunted House of Horror and screenwriter of House of the Long Shadows) but for the casting of a 20yr old David Bowie, still two years away from 'Space Oddity', in his first film role.
The film purports to be "a study of the illusionary reality world within the schizophrenic mind of the artist at his point of creativity" and I have no intention to gainsay it and what we get is a silent, staring Bowie enigmatically tormenting the artist (Michael Byrne) of the painting from which the elegantly beautiful young man seems to have emerged.
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First published in 1911 in 'The Chronicles of Clovis', 'The Music on the Hill' tells the story of Sylvia who, having finally coaxed her new husband Mortimer away from town to his country home, falls foul of the God Pan after she spurns his existence and interferes with his shrines.
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'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, '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 developed 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.
"Seeing," they said, "that old-time Pan is dead, let us now make a tomb for him and a monument, that the dreadful worship of long ago may be remembered and avoided by all."
So said the people of the enlightened lands. And they built a white and mighty tomb of marble. Slowly it rose under the hands of the builders and longer every evening after sunset it gleamed with rays of the departed sun.
And many mourned for Pan while the builders built; many reviled him. Some called the builders to cease and to weep for Pan and others called them to leave no memorial at all of so infamous a god. But the builders built on steadily.
And one day all was finished, and the tomb stood there like a steep sea-cliff. And Pan was carved thereon with humbled head and the feet of angels pressed upon his neck. And when the tomb was finished the sun had already set, but the afterglow was rosy on the huge bulk of Pan.
And presently all the enlightened people came, and saw the tomb and remembered Pan who was dead, and all deplored him and his wicked age. But a few wept apart because of the death of Pan.
But at evening as he stole out of the forest, and slipped like a shadow softly along the hills, Pan saw the tomb and laughed.
........................... Lord Dunsany from 'Fifty-One Tales', 1915
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'The Chrysalids' was the third of the 'John Wyndham' novels published in the 1950s after 'The Day of the Triffids' and 'The Kraken Wakes'. It's the story of a group of telepathic children living in a post-nuclear Canada in a fundamentalist Christian society that practices an extreme doctrine of genetic purity following the 'Tribulation', a nuclear war that has left much of the world devastated and the remnants subjected to the vicissitudes of the fallout. Eventually forced to flee their home the telepathic teens are introduced to a wider world potentially every bit as extreme as the one they are running from.This version was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 1981 by Barbara Clegg - later to become the first woman to write a 'Doctor Who' serial, 'Enlightenment' - and stars, amongst others, Stephen Garlick ('The Dark Crystal'), Spencer Banks ('Timeslip' & 'Penda's Fen') and Michael Spice ('The Brain of Morbius' & 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang'). It's an obvious labour of love that has been assembled with a real care for the source material. There is an argument to be had over the use of adults voicing the children's parts but that's a quibble with what is otherwise an excellent adaptation.
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