On holiday, a young man borrows a pair of binoculars when his own are broken. But they seem somehow bewitched, showing things that could only be seen with dead men's eyes... visions from the past. And using them could lead to a sinister rendezvous on Gallow's Hill.
UK
UK
Onwards to the newer, revival Ghost Stories for Christmas and backwards to M.R. James.
Museum curator, Dr. Fanshawe, borrows a pair of binoculars seem to show scenes from the past and thus starts a tale of the dissolution of the monasteries (nicely linked to the decline of the aristocracy in the early 20th century), obsession, hangings and rural horror.
Casualty's Mark Letheren puts on a good show as the uncomfortable fish-out-of-water Fanshawe. Pip Torrens as the local squire reminded me a bit of Hugh Laurie's characters from his days in Fry & Laurie and as Bertie Wooster. David Burke deserves a special mention as the stoic butler, Patten who provides the much-needed clues that bring past deeds to light.
There's some…
After watching most of the BBC's A Ghost Story for Christmas teleplays from the 1970s, A View from a Hill looked and felt strikingly different to me. Instead of the soft 16mm look of Lawrence Gordon Clark's films it has the coldness and hardness of digital.
However, the interesting thing is that enough time has passed at this point for the digital filmmaking on display here to be its own kind of quaintness. So much has changed in 15 or more years that this looks like the product of another age, as much as the '70s films do.
As for the film itself, it's excellent. Instead of the mannered format of M.R. James's original story, this features three sharply drawn…
A decent pastiche (too short-lived a run to say a return) of the 1970s BBC series of adaptations of M.R. James short stories. I say pastiche rather than continuation as it carefully employs the tropes, techniques and style of the earlier sequence (those mainly under Director, Lawrence Gordon Clark) without ever quite emerging from those shadows. Then again like a lot of modern television it doesn’t want to: happy to piggy back on a winning formula or, as here, a fondly remembered strand. The Mr Benn of horror.
Nevertheless it's a welcome balm in a television landscape of jarring noise, frenetic editing and prowling camerawork, if not attention to the scripted word.
Despite the derivations, the hints, possibilities and the briefest of actual sightings are well judged. More please, but alas a very sporadic recent diet (to date).
The BBC's first attempt to reignite A Ghost Story for Christmas in the 21st Century gets at some important parts of the original run down cold: stuffy Englishmen, an uncanny sense of England's history clawing its way horribly into the present, an academic whose bold curiosity would benefit from being tempered by quite a bit more caution. It's mood is more about the lonely clamminess of an autumn day than being actually "creepy" or "spooky" or "scary", but that's still a very fun vibe for a ghost story to have; also, this benefits from three terrific central performances from Mark Letheren, David Burke, and especially Pip Torrens, who plays his officious toff as something like the mirror universe version of…
"Something stirred in the blackness, and then, to his intense horror, a hand emerged—a clean right hand in a neat cuff and coatsleeve, just in the attitude of a hand that means to shake yours. He wondered whether it would not be rude to let it alone. But, as he looked at it, it began to grow hairy and dirty and thin, and also to change its pose and stretch out as if to take hold of his leg. At that he dropped all thought of politeness, decided to run, screamed and woke himself up." - MR James, "A View From a Hill", from A Warning to the Curious, and Other Ghost Stories (1925)
MR James understood that the path…
One of the rebooted BBC Ghost Story for Christmas short films, A View from a Hill was a 2005 adaptation of the traditional MR James narrative that was the backbone of the 1970s BBC Ghost Story for Christmas films. A View from a Hill is an effective chiller, in the MR James mould, about a stifled academic and his eventual inability to cope with the supernatural aspects of English countryside and the history contained there within. A tremendous little Edwardian, cold as early morning, thriller.
The older Ghost Stories were so much creepier and had that 70's grain about them that seemed like they were filmed in an entire different time and place, which I guess technically they were. The episodes from the 00's are not nearly as spooky, but are still fun late night watches. I also find myself wishing that nearly all of these were just a tad longer.
I was in the mood for something short and creepy, and stumbled upon this (currently free to stream on FilmRise, but it's probably on YouTube too). Perfect! Made a cup of tea, got a blanket, my cat snuggled up next to me and I really enjoyed this chiller.
Lawrence Gordon Clark has said that he considered adapting A View from a Hill for the original run of A Ghost Story for Christmas, but didn't think it would make for a very interesting film.
Lawrence Gordon Clark was not wrong.
Pretty standard introduction to this new run of MR James adaptations, in that it's clearly more concerned with showing how this series can still work in the modern age of horror than with telling its own story, but it does do that very well indeed to be fair.
Fuck me this was DULL. I think I'll stick to the 1970s versions in fear of being bored to death.
On the BFI release of the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas, Lawrence Gordon Clark reveals that he briefly considered adapting M.R. James' A View from a Hill but believed it wouldn't make a very interesting film. The BBC did come to adapt it in 2005 when they tentatively renewed the tradition of adapting James for Christmas, but I'm afraid to say that Gordon Clark's opinion was perhaps right all along.
Adapted by Peter Harness, the film updates James' tale to the postwar years. Our central protagonist, Fanshawe (Mark Letheren) is tasked to make an inventory of Squire Richards' collection of artefacts. The squire, played by Pip Torrens with his the usual sardonic, haughty manner, has found himself - like many…
