|
|
If walls could talk...
The BBC has been well known for producing spine-tingling programmes especially during the festive season and 1972 was no exception. But instead of the normal diet of Wilkie Collins, Dickens or M.R. James they turned to renowned scribe Nigel Kneale to produce the annual offering. Kneale had been responsible for some of television's most astonishing science-fiction/horror material, blending tension and scares with incredible technological foresight and intelligent, literate scripts. His groundbreaking The Quatermass Experiment gripped the nation and its big screen remake transformed the future of Hammer studios. When broadcast The Stone Tape was an unqualified success but was never shown again. Now available on video and DVD after nearly thirty years, it is ripe for rediscovery.
Ryan Electrical Products have a basic (if internationally volatile) desire to "Put the boots in the guts of old Nippon" by coming up with the next generation of recording technology. Setting up their scientific research facilities in a stately home is a doddle, with the exception of one disused room that was once a US Army store. Now all it contains is a flight of stairs to nowhere, 30 tins of Spam, a letter to Father Christmas and the parapsychological ectoplasmic residue of 19 year old who died there and was unsuccessfully exorcised. The ghost's screams are deeply disturbing but some of the team, notably programmer Jill (Jane Asher), can see the tragic figure as well. All attempts to record the hideous wails prove futile, as they do not register on tape. However Peter, the team co-ordinator, is convinced that solving this conundrum will have commercial resonance in their search for the ultimate recording equipment.
Despite the Dr Who style shot-on-video cinematography and the occasional acting histrionics The Stone Tape is still a compelling and taut supernatural drama. Key to much of Kneale's work is the blending of science, speculation and the supernatural and this is no exception. By rationalising or investigating apparently supernatural phenomena the modern audience can have their chills without needing to suspend disbelief to any great extent. The real trump card is that inevitably the outcome is neither what the rational scientists nor the audience expect. Scientifically The Stone Tape addresses a modern audience - where the use of computers, and talk of crystal storage devices and solid state recording technology seems incredibly far-sighted, despite the realities of ticker-tape programming and transistor controlled hardware. But this is removed from Hollywood's cinema of techno-babble and relies instead on more literary sources to create its thrills. The basic haunted house story is not new, but Kneale's work here seems more than a touch reminiscent of the work of M.R.James as well as Shirley Jackson's similarly themed The Haunting. The link to elder beings far before our time and beyond our comprehension can be seen in the works of H.P. Lovecraft, but again here these horrors are used in a believable, rationalising context as opposed to Lovecraft's 'brink of madness' fantasies. It is this aspect of the story that is quintessentially Kneale - the story's progression unravels the past, like the memories of the stones themselves, each level that is scraped away revealing events further back in time. When the scientists finally manage to penetrate the stone they find a recording of something beyond their comprehension - "so old, so shapeless" - that leads to the film's shocking conclusion.
The Stone Tape is a classic slice of television drama - believable, engaging, scary and thought provoking. The only real questions to ask are 'why wasn't it released before now' and 'have they got any more?'
Reviewed by Michelle Le Blanc & Colin Odell
Also released in the BFI's Archive Television series are Ken Russel's Delius: Song of Summer and Jonathan Miller's M.R. James adaptation Whistle and I'll Come to You
Reader comments about The Stone Tape
Peter Houston (Email address withheld) writes:
Christmas Night 1972 this was broadcast. At 28, having just experienced a failed marriage, I was temporarily living back at my parent's place in the wilds of Cheshire :) They were away over Christmas so I was alone in the house with the nearest neighbour not within shouting (screaming?) distance.
I can't remember what else was on that night but this really stuck in my memory. Great story, well told, well acted and the ending had the hairs on the back of my neck (and arms, legs & just about everywhere else) standing on end.
When I heard it had been released on video I just had to get a copy - that must be about 4 years ago now (now being April 2006.) The story still stands up (for me) but the made-in-a-tv-studio look detracts from the effect somewhat - however the ending still had the hair (what's left of it) on the move.
Not being particularly interested back then in who wrote, directed etc. what I was watching, it's interesting now to discover that, of the few programmes that stick in my memory from all those years ago, most of them were written by Nigel Kneale - the Quatermass series, Year of the Sex Olympics, The Road and The Stone Tape.
The Road, sadly, is one of those BBC programmes of which there is no surviving copy. It was interesting in that it turned around the traditional idea of a ghost story - that being that someone in the present sees or experiences happenings from the past. The haunting in The Road is of people in the 18th century hearing sounds that we, as the viewers, recognise as coming from the 20th century. The ending being the sounds of modern day people trying to escape from a nuclear attack.
Anyway, if you like a good chiller, get yourself a copy of The Stone Tape. Look beyond the early Doctor Who type production & focus on the story. I think you'll like it - I know I did.
Add your comments about The Stone Tape [About]
|
