1970s British Horror Part Thirty-Three

HAUNTED: THE FERRYMAN

(1974)
Dir - John Irvin
Overall: MEH

The first of two supernatural films done by ITV's Granada Television for a short-lived program called Haunted, (aired during Christmas time in a similar vein as BBC's more popular annual A Ghost Story for Christmas strand), The Ferryman adapts a Kingsley Amis short story and serves as a meta take on impending doom via supernatural means.  Jeremy Brett plays an author who goes on holiday with his wife to a location that is populated by characters from his latest novel, a novel that features a ghost selecting a victim by the finale.  Brett is borderline unlikable in the lead, coming off as ill-tempered, pompous, and uncharismatic here or there, but the situation that he finds himself in would irk anyone, particularly when his spouse keeps saying that everything is a coincidence and that he is making too big a thing of them seemingly being transported to a possible alternate dimension that has one foot in their own world and one foot in Brett's written imagination.  There is a lone spooky set piece and the climax hints at bizarre tragedy, but most of the presentation is less intriguing than it should be.

 

HAUNTED: POOR GIRL
(1974)
Dir - Michael Apted
Overall: MEH

 

Airing a week after The Ferryman, Poor Girl would end up being the second and last in the short-lived Haunted strand of Yuletide scheduled supernatural movies made by ITV's Granada Television.  It is also the weaker of the two, barely qualifying as a ghost story or any kind of horror-tinged tale at all.  On paper, the source material by Elizabeth Taylor, (not not THAT Elizabeth Taylor), is a variation on Henry James' celebrated and often filmed novel The Turn of the Screw, when a young governess goes to live with a wealthy family to educate their spoiled and manipulative young son.  It plays the same psychological game where our protagonist Lynne Miller experiences odd disturbances and visions, but there is no compelling or malevolent mystery afoot.  Instead, Miller's bouts of being distressed seem arbitrary, as does her eventual hookup with the womanizing man of the house which ultimately spells her dismissal.  Matthew Pollock is persistently annoying as the young benefactor who wields his privilege with a combination of overbearing politeness and an ignorant lack of personal boundaries.  If anything, his behavior should be the sole factor that pushes Miller away, but the accompanying mild melodrama and barely-registered otherworldly moments add up to little if anything.

 

CASTING THE RUNES

(1979)

Dir - Lawrence Gordon Clark

Overall: MEH

This installment of the ITV Playhouse anthology series sees director Lawrence Gordon Clark continuing his work from A Ghost Story for Christmas which had wrapped up the previous year.  Another M.R. James adaptation, (contemporary set and based on the 1911 short story of the same name), well-versed genre fans will also recognize the tale from the famed Jacques Tourneur film Night of the Demon, with this version changing the central protagonist to a female journalist who works for a television station that is interested in occult pieces.  It is shot on both film and video, (as was typical for small screen British programs for many decades), which unfortunately lessens Clark's ability to convey a consistent aura of dread.  There are also some unintentionally embarrassing set pieces where a man is attacked by either a stature or a monkey in a field, and a sequence where Jan Francis shrieks in terror at some stuffed animal spider legs in her bed.  Necessary incidental music is used to spruce up static SOV scenes, and the fifty minute running time rushes things along more than would be preferred.  Still, Clark pulls off what he can under such confines, and Iain Cuthbertson's Karswell is a more mysterious figure here than Niall MacGinnis' in the Tourneur film, given limited screen time which regrettably includes an anticlimactic ending.