The Stone Tape

Cast: Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, and Iain Cuthbertson 

Director: Peter Sasdy 

90 minutes (12) 1972

101 Films Blu-ray   

Rating: 9/10

Review by Peter Schilling 

[Released 9th December]

Once a highly sought after item of genre telly from the pre-VHS era, The Stone Tape was eventually released on DVD by the British Film Institute, for their range of archive TV productions. Written by Nigel (Quatermass) Kneale, as a Christmas ghost story commission, it has long since passed into SF media legend as, perhaps, the most thought-provoking British TV drama about a scientific investigation into the supernatural.

It starts, unassumingly enough, as a research team from Ryan Electrics, led by the manipulative Brock (Michael Bryant), establish their workshop in Taskerlands, an old country house with a sinister history. When Brock learns that renovation of one particular end-room, intended for data storage, has stopped because of recalcitrant workmen, he becomes determined to analyse the reported cause of this dissent. The dark place seems to be haunted, and several members of the technical staff hear, feel, and see things that they cannot explain. Computer specialist Jill (Jane Asher) is highly sensitive to the room’s weird phenomena. Others hear uncanny screams and shiver at sudden chills, but only Jill becomes convinced that she has seen the ghost of a Victorian servant girl.

In a brain-storming session, Jill suggests the room itself is a recording medium, so Brock urges his scientists into action, hoping to prove the theory, and exploit this discovery as a shortcut to the revolutionary ‘digital crystal’ recording system that he imagines will soon replace videotape. Is such a thing as ‘stone tape’ possible? Is the ghost in the room simply a mass of data to be studied, offering access to vivid holographic history? Or is the room a gateway to the ‘spirit world’?

Kneale explored the sceptical  intersections of science and superstition in his earlier drama, Quatermass And The Pit. Here, similarly imaginative ideas are sharply focused upon something far less apocalyptic, but certainly a lot more personal. And yet, the ancient protean force is still lurking there in ambush.

Asher is excellent as Jill, the psychic who is rather more concerned about the ghost - preferably not - being self-aware than anyone else: “I couldn’t bear it if she knew!” The script uses SF jargon with care, and tends to foreground the relationship between Jill and Brock. This skilfully avoids all the ghost-busters clichés that might have sunk this drama in tragicomedy, presenting us instead with a play about solidly real people confronting the inexplicable. 

Peter Sasdy directs The Stone Tape with commendable sincerity, sustaining a controlled energy throughout, and drawing outstanding performances from the whole cast - relatively large for a one-off TV show - bringing all the scabbed-over conflicts between insightful characters to life. And, in the process, demonstrating with a pace and panache, rarely matched in genre TV of the 1970s, that, despite its many perceived wonders, human science does not have all the answers... yet.

Disc extras: 

• Commentary track with filmmakers Jon Dear and Sean Hogan
• Commentary (2001) with Nigel Kneale and Kim Newman
• Children Of The Stone Tape - documentary on the lasting legacy of The Stone Tape
• Out Of Darkness: A Visionary Manxman - short film on Nigel Kneale
• Art cards
• Script booklet
• Booklet including Placememory by Andy Murray, and Weird Science: The Stone Tape At Fifty by John Doran

Elvira's Haunted Hills

Cast: Elvira, Richard O’Brien, and Mary Scheer 

Director: Sam Irvin

90 minutes (12) 2001

101 Films Blu-ray 

Rating: 6/10

Review by J.C. Hartley      

[Released 2nd December]

In this review I will be abandoning all pretence of gentlemanly conduct when considering a lady’s age and her physical attributes. This is the second movie outing for Elvira, the sepulchral-coated creation of actress Cassandra Peterson, whose first big feature was Elvira, Mistress Of The Dark (1988). In that, the eponymous heroine and hostess of a TV horror show, hoping to hit the big-time, relocated to the suburbs in search of an inheritance where her larger than life liberated attitude came up against middle America. 

The thrust of the first movie was the situation of a weirdo in ‘straights-ville’, USA, and the contrast of two violently clashing lifestyles. Sequel (but narrative prequel), Elvira’s Haunted Hills has the same vampish creation, but located in the horror-heavy Carpathian mountains, where every snaggle-toothed yokel has a werewolf on his father’s side, and consequently the original gag is much diluted.

 

Elvira and her peckish maidservant Zou Zou (Mary Jo Smith) are en route for Paris where they are mounting their touring can-can show, forced to escape from their boarding house when asked for rent, they hit the road and are picked up by the Vincent Price look-alike Dr Bradley Bradley (“So good she named you twice”) who, in between copping a feel and getting his nose trapped in Elvira’s cleavage, offers them the hospitality of Castle Hellsubus, where he will be making a house call. 

At the castle, Elvira and Zou Zou meet the tormented Lord Vladimere Hellsubus (Richard O’Brien, from The Rocky Horror Picture Show), his suspicious wife Lady Ema (Mary Scheer) and his swooning cataleptic (“fear of cats?”) daughter Roxanna (Heather Hopper). Elvira discovers that Vladimere’s first wife Elura became depressed on entering the castle and eventually committed suicide and, on encountering a portrait of the latter, it transpires that Elvira and Elura bear an uncanny resemblance. 

Here we are in Edgar Allen Poe country, and particularly that domain as realised by the great Roger Corman, and graced by the magnificent Vincent Price in the 1960s. The references abound... Castle Hellsubus has a great crack running through it like the cursed domain of The Fall Of The House Of Usher, a dinner is disrupted by a hypnotism demonstration, which suggests a spirit possession, as in The Tomb Of Ligeia, and Vladimere has some interesting accessories in the cellar, as in The Pit And The Pendulum.

 

Elvira minces and sways through the film scattering corny smut, and looking like a cross between Fenella Fielding in Carry On Screaming, and Anjelica Houston in The Addams Family - if played by Cher impersonating Mae West - or vice versa. Elvira isn’t as sexy as Fenella Fielding, but doesn’t take herself as seriously as Houston, so that’s alright, but the film does bring to mind an old Johnny Carson special where a lot of sweating leering male dancers simulated lust while the walking blancmange that was Mae West sang a song. Peterson looks fantastic and has a terrific, if unlikely, figure, but by my calculations she’s was around 50 then, and the make-up gives her a plastic, if not waxy, aspect particularly in the region of her curiously static bosom, and given the choice of an erotic encounter with her or the ample Zou Zou I’d plump (ouch!) for the latter.

 

As the plot shudders to its inevitable climax, Elvira has a roll in the hay with Adrian the stable lad, whose chest is as impressive as her own, and attempts to rescue Roxanna from the grim fate of the family Hellsubus. The revelations of the rather grisly denouement are as expected, but the original PG-13 certificate still seems an over-reaction even for the ‘land of the free’. There’s a mucky song listing Elvira’s adventures in the sack but for all that she’s rather strait-laced, like your best mate’s flirtatious aunty who would come over all priggish if you ever suggested playing strip scrabble.

 

The reason I’ve rated the movie six out of ten is because it’s all good silly, dirty fun. As an affectionate tribute to Poe/ Price/ Corman, its heart is in the right place, and Ms Peterson ended up funding the thing herself. 

Blu-ray disc extras:

• Introduction by Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
• Commentary with Peterson, Scheer, Smith, actor Scott Atkinson, and director Sam Irvin
• Making-of featurette
• Transylvania Or Bust featurette
• Elvira in Romania featurette
• Interview with Richard O’Brien
• Outtakes
• Photo gallery