The Stone Tape

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.

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.

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.

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.

The re-release of this, arguably Nigel Kneale's most effective piece of work, will hopefully give his underrated contribution to horror and science fiction another boost. Made on a low budget, with cheap sets, primitive audio and visual effects, and variable acting from a solid cast of British TV and character actors, it still intrigues all these years later. An original demystifying approach to psychic phenomena which still packs a punch even now. This is intelligent and spooky and a great example of the way TV can be used for this kind of story. Recommended to any horror/science fiction fan with an interest in the history of the genre.