1 November 2024

SET IN STONE

The Stone Tape (1972) Peter Sasdy (Director) 101 Films – Blu Ray (To be released on 9th December 2024)

Nigel Kneale is a master at fusing the genres of horror and science fiction. He often claimed he wasn’t writing genre TV and film drama but simply good drama. At one level he’s right. Although he does employ generic tropes what’s far more interesting is his engagement with speculative ideas (both paranormal and ‘normal’) and the psychological conflict of characters observed with great empathy, satire and irony.

His 1952 radio play You Must Listen was recently produced for Radio 4 extra. It’s about a haunted telephone line and prefigures his BBC 2 Christmas ghost story offering, The Stone Tape. The first was more containable as a crossed-line nuisance turning into a psychic menace. At a surface level The Stone Tape is a psychic thriller/ghost story. But probe its script and a lot more is revealed.

A research team have moved into a partly renovated country house. They are attempting to discover a new recording medium that will supersede standard recording tape. Scientist Jill Greely (Jane Asher) encounters the ghost of a young maid who died in 1890. Peter Brock (the excellent Michael Bryant) the head of the team thinks this isn’t a ghost but that the stone in the room has preserved an image of the woman’s death. And this stone tape could be the new recording medium they have been seeking. Jill is disturbed by the maid’s presence. She investigates further to prove that the stone is actually recording incidents that go back thousands of years to reveal an unknown malevolent power.

Jill is brilliantly portrayed by Jane Asher. She represents an intuitive sensitivity, feminist determinism and also a deeper scientific curiosity that the male boffins round her lack. Jill is ambitious but more importantly she’s anxious to discover the truth of the horror they’ve experienced. And that’s imprinted in the stone tape – the fabric of a building that has recorded the energy of extreme emotions over a long time.

Peter is a macho leader who wants results. At first he pursues the idea of a ghostly recording device (“The room holds an image. A recording of what’s happened.”). Yet when he and team appear to have wiped clean the menacing sounds and the sight of the screaming ghost (“The vibration thing.”) Peter drops their research, returns to orthodox work practices and forbids everyone from continuing along the psychic phenomena road. But Jill persists.

Technically you have to allow for the fact we have 1970s special effects and The Stone Tape was shot on video (normally a terrible looking medium for drama). Yet the results stand up as well as earlier studio television drama with filmed location inserts. But perhaps the most powerful aspect of Kneale’s film (directed by the skilled Peter Sasdy) is the contribution of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It’s quietly effective score and the recording of intense ghostly screams continues to startle and chill: the notion of such a sophisticated soundscape, for a one off TV Christmas special ‘treat’, was then very rare.

Through the eyes of Jill The Stone Tape critiques the casual sexism of the seventies; its characters are well rounded and never become ciphers trailing behind its ideas; the set is atmospheric; a subplot about the commercialisation of science (A manic leader of a team developing an improved washing machine) is effectively ridiculed; the tense strain put on the scientists’ rationality well directed and above all the tragic consequences of interfering with paranormal phenomena are impressively conveyed in a uniquely disturbing story.

The Stone Tape is a TV classic and one of Nigel Kneale’s finest scripts.

This Film 101 blu-ray is a strong upgrade with an excellent film extra documentary called 'Children of the Tape' packed with enthusiasm for a high concept project that people felt privileged to be part of or simply viewers (writers, filmmakers) who were, and still are, inspired by the originality of Kneale’s vision.
  • Alan Price
Originally published in https://londongrip.co.uk/

15 October 2024

HOLD THE BOILING OIL!


James Wright. Historic Building Mythbusting; Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology. History Press, 2024

There's always a hidden tunnel, isn't there? Whenever you are being shown round some old mansion, castle, church or even there will be someone who tells you about the hidden tunnel.
πŸ”½

6 October 2024

A CASE OF DEJA VU

Starve Acre (2023) Dir Daniel Kokotajlo BFI Blu Ray.


At the beginning of Starve Acre a young boy named Owen cannot sleep. When his mother speaks to him he says that the whistling has gone now. The next day, when his parents are resting, under a tree, near a cricket pitch, they’re disturbed by a young girl’s scream followed by the cry of a distressed horse that’s just had one of its eyes injured. The attacker is Owen holding a bloodstained twig.
πŸ”½

24 September 2024

LITERARY CRITICISM

Joshua Blu Buhs. Think to New Worlds; the Cultural History of Charles Fort and his Followers. University of Chicago Press, 2024.

In the days of the long forgotten UFO UpDates Internet discussion group, ufologist and Fortean Jerome Clark described much of Magonia's output as 'literary criticism'. He felt that, rather than studying the 'actual existing phenomena', we were more concerned about the manner in which they were described and written about and their influence on society, rather on examining what it is 'up there'.
πŸ”½

13 September 2024

RECOVERING THE OUTCASTS

The Outcasts (1982) BFI Blu Ray / Flipside. Robert Wynne-Simmons (Director)
(24 September 2024.)

Very few films have a genuine Celtic/Pagan sensibility where environment and characters possess a mysterious and magical charge that feels authentically rooted in myth and legend. The cult favourite The Wicker Man is an obvious first choice. Then Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s still underrated Gone to Earth. 
πŸ”½

7 September 2024

SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE BOOKS

I have been involved in the UFO/Fortean scene for 56 years, contributing to, editing and publishing MUFOB and Magonia as print magazines, and continuing with the on-line Magonia Review. This is something which I have enjoyed greatly, and which has introduced me to many interesting and entertaining correspondents across the world, who have all contributed to the Magonian legacy.
πŸ”½

30 August 2024

TRACKING THE GRIFFIN

A. L. McClanan. Griffinology, the Griffin's Place in Myth, History and Art. Reaktion Books, 2024.

A book previously reviewed in Magonia (1) suggested that the image of this mythical beast was created in Greece and the ancient Near East as a result of travellers finding the fossil remains of prehistoric creatures, particularly the protoceratops. These bones were often found on or near the surface in the areas to the north of the Caspian Sea, and the story of the griffin was built around them.
πŸ”½

16 August 2024

DRAINING THE NAZI UFO SWAMP

Maurizio Verga. Flying Saucers from Naziland. The Real Story of the Nazi UFOs. Volume 1. Verga, 2023.

The 'Nazi UFO' stories have been haunting ufology and ufologists, even from before the official birth of the saucers in 1947. Promoted by a coalition of naΓ―ve ufologists, cynical exploiters, conspiracy theorists and actual real-life Nazis, they have created a hugely complex network of myth, rumour, fraud and political intrigue.
πŸ”½

2 August 2024

YOURS SINCERELY, CHARLES FORT

Chris Aubeck (Editor). Letters of the Damned; the Forgotten Investigations of Charles Fort. Aubeck, 2024.


We are all familiar with the four 'canonical' texts of Charles Fort, and mostly aware of, if not familiar with, his earlier literary works such as The Outcast Manufacturers and the lively short stories depicting working-class New York tenement life, which were published in magazines and newspapers.
πŸ”½

22 July 2024

SCREENING SATAN

The Satanic Screen: An Illustrated Guide to the Devil in Cinema by Nikolas Schreck. Headpress, revised edition 2024.


“True to its mirroring nature, the satanic cinema has often portrayed the Devil as whatever force was perceived by consensus consciousness as embodying cosmic maleficence at the time.”