The Gourmet

Like others, I remember seeing this late at night as something to fill out the end of the schedule in the days when TV turned off for the night in the UK.

Charles Gray is a favourite of mine, often not the star, so it was good to see him take the lead in this morality comedic supernatural tale. Today it would be an episode of something like The Twilight Zone.

Again, like others, although quite short, and only shown once I think, it has stuck in my mind ever since. I often use it as the basis for telling a spooky story. Low budget, but it had something that made it truely a haunting little film.

I saw this on TV back when London-area ITV would show random oddities like this late at night. In the many years since then I have occasionally come across people who have also seen it, but unsurprisingly not many. The title character prides himself on having eaten everything there is to eat in the world, and becomes gloomy when he thinks there is now nothing else to try - until an acquaintance convinces him to eat something NOT of this world.

For such a short film that I only saw once it has stuck in my mind so it must have had something going for it. I felt there was a general message of how we can always remain unsatisfied if we keep trying to push our boundaries.

By the way, something else that stuck in my mind - the IMDb entry lists Charles Gray's character as 'The Gourmet'. But the character does have a name, one of my favourite character names in fact - Manley Kingston. Somehow, that really does sound like a gourmet.

Charles Gray plays a gourmet who has eaten practically everything in the world; animals of every description. At one dinner evening - where something unusual (possibly unique) has once again been served up, a fellow diner mentions to him that it is possible to eat a ghost.

He manages to trap a ghost. It must eaten quickly so he uses a frying pan being used by some down-and-outs by the banks of the River Thames. He finds the experience unsettling.

It is a strange outing for Charles Gray, even though he surely didn't mind appearing in outré films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show. He is essentially the only person in this film and he is superb. He is actually perfect as the dissolute gourmet.

The film is a little like an episode of The Twilight Zone with a much larger budget. Unlike The Twilight Zone, however, your chances of seeing this film are about 10% - with a bit of luck. I am relying on the memory of a single viewing 25 years ago for all of this!