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.

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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.

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THE DIFFICULT THIRD ALBUM

Short Sharp Shocks: Volume 3 (Flipside 47) (2-Disc Blu-ray Set) BFI. 2023.

And so we reach Volume 3 of BFI Flipside Short Sharp Shocks. Volumes 1 and Vol 2 were hugely successful. If you have them you’ll certainly want this set. However perhaps your purchase will rest on the basis of being a series-completist because content-wise Volume 3 is probably the weakest. It’s not that it’s bad but more surprising than shocking.

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A VERY HAUNTED CHRISTMAS

Ghost Stories for Christmas Vol 1 (BFI Blu Ray Box set - 3 discs)

I first picked up an M.R.James story when I was thirteen. But I didn’t finish reading it. Casting the Runes proved too disturbing. So I pulled the duvet over my head and tried to sleep. Aged sixteen I bought a complete M. R. James collection, still found them scary but they no longer kept me awake. I thought my boyish anxiety of the supernatural had gone. 

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FROM THE FILING CABINET

Pentagon UFO Files. On iTunes, Amazon Prime, Google Play & Microsoft

The press release for this documentary feature states: ‘For decades, secrets have been kept from us. Kept from us by the powers that be. After years of silence and secrecy the US government has finally revealed evidence of extraterrestrial life which could shatter our very perception of mankind’s place in the universe.

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THE ROCKET THAT BOMBED

Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon. Don Sharp, director. Studiocanal 2021.

Originally released in 1967, this is a new restoration of Jules Verne’s Rocket to the Moon. Taking enormous liberties with Verne’s original 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, it is set in Victorian England, where a series of scenes of British efforts at pushing the frontiers of science are shown to be comically incompetent.

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PARANORMAL TV

The Omega Factor: The Complete Series. BBC. Simply Media 2017. (12)

The Omega Factor was a short-lived conspiracy thriller set in the murky world of psychical research, broadcast by BBC Scotland in 1979. James Hazeldine played Tom Crane, an investigative journalist specialising in the occult and paranormal.

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DO THE MATHS

UFO. Director: Ryan Eslinger; Writer: Ryan Eslinger; Stars: Alex Sharp, Gillian Anderson, Ella Purnell. Story Mining and Supply Co., 2018

This is an intelligent look at UFO contact, which centres on a UFO sighting at the Cincinnati International Airport on 17 October 2017. A real TV report tagged on to the end of the film, shows that the story is loosely inspired by the well-known UFO sighting at Chicago O’Hare International Airport on 07 November 2006, to give it a touch of authenticity.

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2036 < 2001

2036 Origin Unknown. Director, Hasraf Dulull; Writers:, Hasraf Dulull, Gary Hall. 

It starts with a manned space shuttle making the first ever landing on Mars, which almost immediately gets destroyed by an ‘electrical disturbance.’ As a result of this the United Space Planetary Corporation (USPC) makes most of its staff redundant and relies on hyperlight communication networks and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) systems for space missions in 2036.
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IT'S RENDLESHAM CAPTAIN, BUT NOT AS WE KNOW IT

The Rendlesham UFO Incident. Directed by Daniel Simpson. Written by Daniel Simpson and Adam Preston. Starring Danny Shayler, Abbie Salt and Robert Curtis. Running time: 83 mins. Altitude Film Distribution, 2015.

I picked this up expecting it to be a dramatic 'retelling' of the supposed 1981 Rendlesham Forest UFO encounter, complete with assurances that it's all true and based on fact, but this is actually rather better than that. 

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