Jonathan-9

Normally, I like Leonard Maltin and can sympathise with his reviews but he seems to have watched a different film here entirely. It is not really a revenge story, "by-the-numbers" or otherwise. There is a man with a mission here but cheap vengeance isn't his goal. The leads do an excellent job of portraying antagonistic personalities coming slowly to the boil in the claustrophobic world of the fencing salon as the characters evolve. And they do evolve.

As for Errol Flynn doing it better, that is a fatuous comment in the extreme. Apart from his swordfight on the beach with Basil Rathbone in "Captain Blood", his fencing always looked very stagy to me. The last fight in "By the Sword", by contrast, is the single most vicious fencing combat I've ever seen. It is the only time I have ever had the impression that the combatants actually intend to kill one another. A brilliantly choreographed sequence.

One of a spate of M.R.James adaptations that the BBC shot from the late 'sixties to the early 'eighties. All of them were memorable but this is comfortably the best. Michael Hordern is the hapless academic who goes to the coast for a short holiday and accidentally awakens something unnatural while pottering around in the remains of a Templar preceptory.

This isn't a story about a monster, though, but rather something that stays at the edge of perception. The supernatural events are alternated with the mundane day to day life at the boarding house where Hordern is staying. Everything seems commonplace but he -- and the viewer -- are troubled by the feeling that there are some things that should be left well alone. Finally, his nightmares become concrete and... Well, see the TV adaptation if you get the chance or read the short story upon which it is based (in which form it has the addendum of "my lad" on the title).

I'm not in the habit of handing out scores of ten with abandon but I can't think of anyway that this could have been improved. Unlike some of the other adaptations, Miller resists the urge to gild the lily, staying close to the original storyline and the production is all the stronger for it. James would certainly have approved. I just wish the BBC had the courage and imagination to make things like it now.