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An electronics firm sets up shop in an old country mansion, only to discover that one chamber is haunted. Company manager Peter Brock (Michael Bryant) decides to use all of their cutting-edge equipment to record the ghostly visitations, but computer programmer Jill Greeley (Jane Asher), who seems to be the most psychically attuned person there, thinks that they are meddling in something that they should not.

I've read that this ranks among the most well-liked British TV fright films. I always enjoy when a story brings together the worlds of hard science and the supernatural, and Kneale, the noted creator of the Quatermass stories, is one of the best at it. This is no exception, and the film's title has become shorthand for a certain type of haunting in parapsychology circles. However, the movie loses a lot of appeal whenever it deviates from the main plot and tries to throw in some corporate maneuvering. I also wasn't crazy about most of the performances, which were often played too big and on the verge of hysteria. Lead actor Bryant seems to shout 90% of his dialogue for no good reason. Still, haunted house fans should probably give this one a watch if it comes there way.

Please, for the love of God, please quit screaming. Please!

This would easily be a genre specific 9. But for the god damned yelling. 15 middle aged seventies British men in a small room screaming as loud as they can most of the time. For fun. Bro style. Not scared. Just yelling.

Ok. This is is a classic. The story is great. It's all great. Yadda yadda yadda.

If you can stand being yelled at for ninety minutes and want to know more about seventies British horror then this is a must watch.

I first saw The Stone Tape during its original television airing around Christmas 1972. The show's stories and images haunted me, discussing the programme with friends, I found that they were also impressed with its premise and presentation: A very rational group of scientists confronting the irrational situation of a haunting.

I spent years hoping to see Stone Tape again, then at a SF convention, Stone Tape was on the programme, so I dragged a bunch of friends along to watch. The verdict from everyone was: Totally excellent! An amazing piece of thought provoking entertainment.

Today we have the X-files, so we are used to spooky views of the supernatural, but I still think The Stone Tape would stand up to the scrutiny of a modern audience. This was a unique piece of television.

BBC four showed a tribute to the great Nigel Kneale entitled THE KNEALE TAPES and followed it with a screening of the 1972 teleplay THE STONE TAPE . I enjoyed the profile but couldn`t help thinking I would have preferred seeing the groundbreaking 1984 or even QUATERMASS 2 but never look a gift horse in the mouth

I enjoyed THE STONE TAPE far more than I expected but there is a slight flaw to it - It`s highly derivative of Kneale`s other scripts from the past , especially his masterwork QUATERMASS AND THE PIT . Without giving too much away I was instantly reminded of the events of Hobs Lane with a terrified character running away and a minister turning up with a bell , book and candle

THE STONE TAPE does thankfully manage to stand on its own legs and works as a haunted house story . It`s also very clever even if it`s not amongst Kneale`s greatest work though some viewers may be put off with the unsympathetic characters especially Peter Brock , but remember Kneale`s not the sort of guy who paints people black and white . Director Peter Sasdy`s direction may be a little flat but that`s not really a criticism and he does bring a certain amount of atmosphere to the play , check out the scary title and end credits . My only criticism of Sasdy is that the acting is a little over emphatic , which strangely seems to be a problem with some of Nigel Kneale teleplays no matter who the director is .

But it`s still pretty good stuff from a time when watching television was a great experience ,and I`d be very interested in what people who have never seen QUATERMASS AND THE PIT thought of it .

And if you`re reading this Mister Kneale I`d like to say thanks for all the outstanding drama you`ve given us over the decades

Intriguing idea, but would have been better compacted into a one hour format.

As it is, a significant amount of screen time is taken up by conversations involving the main male protagonists patronizing and condescending to the main female protagonist by virtue of a painfully sexist dimension to the plot. Additional screen time is taken up with another minor but still pointless and sexist subplot involving the main male protagonist's philandering.

These distractions detract from the suspense and the atmosphere, which are sometimes quite good. Furthermore, the movie suffers considerably from the kind of melodramatic overacting peculiar to some British television of the 50s through the 70s.

However, the intriguing main plot line, plus a conclusion that packs a punch, make this movie worth watching for fans of ghost stories, particularly made-for-tv horror.

If you like a lot of earnest, desk-thumping middle aged men dressed mostly in brown or orange, shouting in each other's faces in a small room, being horrifically condescending to the token sensitive hysterical lady, with lots of overplayed 70s head-clutching, bulging-eyed hysteria on top of all that, plus a sprinkling of casual racism...you'll absolutely love this.

I should make it clear that the 70s is my favourite period for film and television, but this is very difficult to watch. I don't know whether those earnest men were actually shouting 'DAMN IT, man!' but it felt as if they probably were. There was definitely some 'fist slamming down on desk' action during all the SHOUTING. It's in a similar style to Doomwatch which I also find very hard to enjoy, for the same reasons. Unfortunately it has none of the subtlety or creepiness of the BBC's Christmas Ghost stories from the same era.

Not even a tiny bit frightening.

A remarkably creepy and subtle evocation of dread, from a typically nuanced Nigel Kneale script. What if ghosts are simply phenomena that have simply been poorly described? That's just what a team of computer specialists, on the trail of a new recording medium, attempt to do when they discover that the old mansion in which they are conducting their work is haunted by the ghost of a victorian maid. Unfortunately, they discover too late that a rational explanation does not mean an end to the terror... TV drama as it should be done – sadly, we'll probably never see its ilk on British TV again. Still, at least those nice chaps at BFI have released it on DVD.

Made the same year as the powerful horror "Doomwatch", this one it's more claustrophobic, all the action is happening in an old building haunted by a ghost. Peter Sasdy did a good job with this story too, stirring some thrills on the spinal cord. In a small role, a young man James Cosmo.

I remember seeing the original television showing of The Stone Tape at the tender age of 11 and the vivid memory is of being scared out of my wits. I have never seen it since,I don't think it has ever been repeated except the following Christmas,why I don't know. Early BBC productions may be notorious for thier flimsy sets and low budget productions but the acting skillsbase and quality of material has always remained second to none and this is no exception. Nigel Kneale is a master of his trade and this script (which is well worth downloading before viewing the play)shows why.The idea is original and the viewer(or reader) just cant help but engage thier imagination.No monsters,no fancy special effects(although it does get noisy!) ..just good,honest story-telling at its best. I gave it a 10(well worth it) By the way if you get the chance see Woman in Black,also by Kneale.

The actual movie is pretty meh. The people constantly shouting at each other rather than trying to communicate got annoying as hell. I appreciate subtle and atmosphere with the best of them--enough to recognize that this isn't really it. The most annoying part is that this isn't all that bad, but it isn't really all that good either, when it easily could have been. The end result is something I'd probably not be interested in ever watching again. In that regard, I wish I'd been able to just rent this.

There is a DVD release with remarkably poor authoring--incredibly amateurish. It looks like it was converted from a video tape using share-ware digital recording. Worse, when moving from one track to the next, the video visibly jumps by about half a second. This is slightly jarring during scenes of people just walking about, but it also affects the dialog, as jumps sometimes happen in the middle of a sentence or even a (shouted) word.

All in all, not a sound investment of time or money.

I've been looking forward to seeing The Stone Tape ever since I happened across it in an IMDb list that enthusiastically promoted the telemovie as a high point in British Television horror. I had only good expectations when I realised Nigel Kneale wrote it... I very much liked the various Quatermass miniseries/films.

I don't dispute that this is a very good British television horror/sci- fi production. It's really quite good, but it hasn't aged very well. There are lots of little things that work against The Stone Tape and the atmosphere the movie is pushing. The sets are at times too obviously constructed on a sound-stage, and evoke Doctor Who rather than victorian haunted house. There is also an unsettling theme of misogyny and sexism that runs through the narrative but is never seriously dealt with or reprimanded - it's something that also makes the whole setup incredible, since it's hard to believe that this group of men who carry on like they're on a boy's school outing are seriously professional audio and electrical engineers who are trying to challenge "the Japs'" and their technology companies. Overall it's hard to find anybody to like or care about in the story. Jill is somewhat like-able, but she is all too incredibly frustrating the way she is written as a woman who seems to be overly dependent on men...

Unfortunately for those looking for a scare, the mix of science fiction and ghost mystery works to the detriment of anything really scary... The way the sci-fi is worked into the ghost story is interesting, but at the cost of it completely eliminating the possibility of truly scaring the audience.

If you're not still stuck in the 70s this will be underwhelming... but it is still appreciable as a product of its time.

"The Stone Tape" is a real oddity - how can a sci-fi/fantasy drama of this high standard go unnoticed for so long.

Transmitted at Christmas in 1972 and repeated the following year, nothing has been seen of this classic piece of TV until earlier this year when the BFI released it on both video and DVD.

Written by Quatermass scribe Nigel Kneale and directed by TV/film veteran Peter Sasdy, "The Stone Tape" is an example of all the elements working together to produce a masterpiece.

In brief, the story concerns a group of scientists staying in a converted manor house to carry out research into a new recording medium to replace magnetic tape. One of the analysts, Jill Greely, has visions of a ghost in the one room of the house the workmen refused to renovate. The rest of the team then set about surveying this ghost and come to the conclusion that it is the stone of the room which has captured the image of the woman and the presence of certain receptive people, namely Jill, has triggered its playback, hence stone tape.

This is a well written and well directed piece of fantasy drama mixing the right amount of moody lighting and music with Peter Bryant and Jane Asher's kitchen sink romance to create something instantly believable as well as disturbing.

TV favourites such as Iain Cuthbertson and Tom Chadbon are present to make up the numbers in the impressive supporting cast.

A spooky masterpiece - go and buy the video or if your budget will allow, the DVD for Nigel Kneale's interesting and revealing commentary.

One of the best horror movies for television in history is "The Stone Tape", an incredible film written by Nigel Kneale and that leads us once again to ensure that ghost and haunted houses movies have great charm in English productions. This time the story of the film shows us an interesting theory about what ghosts and haunted places are, a theory that has gained strength in these fifty years since the release of "The Stone Tape." The performances of the entire cast are good, with a theatrical emphasis typical of retro television. The cinematography is well done and accentuates the gothic setting of the film's main location. A classic that does not lose strength.

One-- It's from 1972-ish. So that means, hey, it's the 70's! Expect the Acting of that era, and the FX-- which is Bare Minimum.

Two-- It's British. Which means there a lot more Talking (Or in this case SHOUTING!!!) than Spooking than you would be used to seeing from a movie done today.

The angle of this spook movie...once you accept the 'Hand-wavium pseudo-science'...is the notion that 'Ghosts' aren't actually Spirits...but energy recordings. And in this case, the recording is captured in Stone and gets replayed again and again and again. (Hence, explaining why CASTLES are the source of Ghost stories) Enter in a corporate inventor and his team of scientists who set out to quantify a 'Ghost' they find in a castle room.

Sort of a Para-normal GhostHunters done in the early Seventies...but without the camp.

All in all, what struck me about this old flick was that it had the suspenseful flavor of another British flick 'Quatermass and the Pit' AKA '5 Million Years to Earth'.

If you're willing to patiently ride with it, it's a pleasant little horror trip from an era that had to rely on suspense, hints and dialogue in the absence of modern CGI FX. And if you really let the concept run its course, the 'Deeper' story about what the 'Stone Recording' can actually be a little chilling at the end.

This movie isn't a 'Main Event' by any means. But it's an entertaining spooky-touch for a cold Sunday Afternoon Viewing.

This Atmospheric, Claustrophobic, Dank Display of an Ancient Structure, is Discovered to Have a Live-In "Ghost".

A Group of Tech Entrepreneurs Decide to "Out" the Screaming Apparition and 1 Hypothesis is that the "Ghost" is Actually Embedded in the Stone-Structure and is "Playing-Back" the Stone's "Recordings"...It is a "Breakthrough" that the Group Thinks will Revolutionize the Industry.

It's Quite an Odd Bit of Formulation for a Ghost-Story. A Sort of Science and Supernatural Blenc that Celebrated Writer Nigel Kneale Worked into His Award Winning "Quatermass" Series and Movies.

Although, it Doesn't Quite Work Here, but Almost.

It's Held Back by a Minuscule Budget, some Bad and Over-the-Top Acing, and a Hyperbolic Intensity that, Considering the Close-Quarters Becomes Intolerable at Times.

There is a Great Deal of Shouting (Michael Bryant) who seems to Explode Every Other Minute for Some Reason or Another.

There is a Great Deal of Crying (Jane Asher) who is On Edge Most of the Time and seems Ready to Break Down for Some Reason or Another.

The Melodramatics from All are a Bit Much, and in that Sense the Film hasn't Dated Well.

But There's Enough Here in the Story and the Physical Atmosphere that Makes it Intriguing and Off-Beat Enough, that with Low Expectations it's...

Worth a Watch

Note...This is considered by many to be one of the best BBC Movies of all time and has a huge Fanbase.

After mistakenly being allowed to watch 'Quatermass and the Pit' in the late 50's when I was about 7 years old, I've been a Kneale fan. His stories are not only unsettling, but often quirky and challenging too. 'The Stone Tape' falls into the same category, but for some reason the BBC opted to produce it for about £50, and it shows. The whole thing feels flat and 'numb', with the actors doing their best to show how freaked out they are by the stones of the building playing back events from the past. The climax is er...an anticlimax, with more over-acting and a very cheap special effect spoiling the show. With a bit of expansion and shot on film (and a considerably bigger budget), this could have made a decent teleplay. Sadly it was not to be.

The writer who conceived this masterpiece, Nigel Kneale, is the most brilliant living writer of supernatural fiction. Were it not for the fact he has mainly written TV scripts, he would be hailed as the new Algernon Blackwood.

This BBC TV drama from the early 70s is one intelligent, subtle and utterly disturbing. It is very well directed and (mainly) well acted but it is the power of Kneale's genius as a writer that elevates it to greatness.

I understand it is soon to be (or is now?) available on a BFI DVD, well worth seeking out.

Unfortunately not as good as I thought it might be. Quite slow and cluncky. The acting doesn't overcome the cardboard set. If you like British '70's horror there's loads better to watch such as Tales of The Unexpected or anything with Diana Doors! It's good fun to see old actors in their youth such as James Cosmo and John Forgeham but apart from that I couldn't recommend it. We bought the dvd. I think if we'd seen it on a streaming service we might not have been so disappointed. I have 38 characters left to fill so I'm just waffling now blah and whatever. If you like Dr Who you may like this. Hurray!

This is another triumph for Nigel Kneale. The writing,acting all combine to create a story that is genuinely creepy and has a brilliant atmosphere. The plot concerns attempts by a group of scientists in investigating a supposed Haunted House. I can highly recommend this one if you enjoy Ghost stories.

The budget for this "film" looks like it was about twenty dollars. It's made-for-television BBC at its lowest. I was raised on PBS, I have seen great BBC productions - including old historical movies and mini-series - that were much better than this. The "house" is obviously a series of dreary sets. Nothing looks Victorian, the rooms are more like the inside of a cave. Or an abandoned windowless factory.

I guess some people would call that atmosphere, but it's more like a whole lot of blah. I say this as someone who LOVES horror from the 1970s, it's my absolute favorite era for haunted houses and ghost stories.

The Stone Tape is British in the worst possible way. Like classic television programming to guide you into a deep depression.