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/
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