Ghost Stories for Christmas with Christopher Lee ‘Number 13 by MR James’ (2000, Eleanor Yule, 30 mins) I think you are under the impression negatives must be 24fps. This is not the case. The negatives are whatever frame rate they were shot at. The Turn of the Screw (1898), a novella by Henry James (no relation to M. R. James), was adapted as a feature-length drama by Sandy Welch and broadcast on BBC One on 30 December 2009. [56] Title An amateur archaeologist travels to a remote seaside town in Norfolk to search for the lost crown of Anglia, but after unearthing it he is haunted by a mysterious figure. [9] After a break of several years, this 2005 adaptation of the M.R. James story of the same title was the first film in a sporadic revival of the Ghost Story for Christmas strand. There appears to have been a conscious effort on the part of writer Peter Harness and director Luke Watson to recapture the essence of the early Lawrence Gordon Clark films, and despite the odd distracting burst of hyperactive editing, they come captivatingly close to achieving their aim. Changes are made to James’s original text, notably in the relationship between the lead character and his host, and more especially in the manner in which the story climaxes and concludes, but the core elements of the tale remain the same.

The supremely affable Clark, who directed seven of the BBC's Ghost Story for Christmasfilms, including three of the titles here, talks about how The Stalls of Barchesterallowed him to make the move from documentary to drama, his love of the writings of M.R. James, selecting his main location, casting Robert Hardy (also an M.R. James fan), and the importance of being able to frighten your audience.

Leap in the Dark: ‘The Living Grave’ (1980)

A View From a Hill is one of M.R. James’s less widely known works (it’s certainly not in the first collection that I bought), but it bears a fair few of the author’s hallmarks, and there are strong similarities here to key early entries in the Ghost Stories for Christmas series. The basic premise of an academic who journeys to a rural location far from his home, and who inadvertently awakens supernatural forces through the acquisition of an old and possibly cursed artefact, is one you’ll also find at the core of more celebrated works like Whistle and I’ll Come to You and A Warning to the Curious.

If like me you loved watching Ghost Stories for Christmas over the years then you’re in for a treat this Christmas. with consistent dialogue in the uncompressed transfers. BFI offer optional English subtitles on their

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Commentaries and the 2020 adaptation of Whistle and I’ll Come to You aside, all of the special features have been sourced from the previous BFI DVD releases and are in standard definition. Repeats of the original series on BBC Four at Christmas 2007 included The Haunted Airman, a new adaptation of Dennis Wheatley's novel The Haunting of Toby Jugg by Chris Durlacher, although this film was originally screened on 31 October 2006. [55] The filming of the adaptations took place at a variety of locations. Clark notes that James gave him "a wonderful excuse to discover...places where you could best impart tension and atmosphere." [23] East Anglia, where M. R. James set many of his stories, was the location for the two first films. The Stalls of Barchester was filmed at Norwich Cathedral and in the surrounding close. [24] For A Warning to the Curious, "Seaburgh" (a disguised version of Aldeburgh, Suffolk) was filmed on the coast of North Norfolk at Waxham, Holkham Gap, Happisburgh, Wells-next-the-Sea and on the North Norfolk Railway. [25] [26] Clark recalls filming in North Norfolk in late February, with consistently fine cold weather "with a slight winter haze which gave exactly the right depth and sense of mystery to the limitless vistas of the shoreline there." [17] Before Clark's films came under the remit of the BBC Drama Department it commissioned a Christmas play from Nigel Kneale, an original ghost story called The Stone Tape, broadcast on Christmas Day 1972. With its modern setting, this is not generally included under the heading of A Ghost Story for Christmas [52] and was originally intended as an episode of the anthology Dead of Night.

The remaining five Ghost Story for Christmas films plus A View From A Hill (2005) and Number 13 (2006) were remastered from the original film negatives by the BFI and are to be released on Blu-ray disc as Ghost Stories for Christmas: Volume 2 in November 2023. [63] See also [ edit ] The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974): directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, original story by MR James, starring Sheila Dunn, Anne Blake, Frank Mills It begins with 11-year-old Stephen (Simon Gipps-Kent), dressed in respectable clothing and a Brunelian top hat, being transported through the Lincolnshire countryside to the stately home of his elderly cousin, Mr. Abney (Joseph O'Conor). As his carriage approaches the hall, Stephen briefly sees two wan-looking children (Christopher Davis and Michelle Foster) standing in a field, their arms slowly arching in a synchronised wave. Seconds later they are gone. A Warning to the Curious, The Signalman and Miller's Whistle and I'll Come to You were released as individual VHS cassettes and Region 2 DVDs by the British Film Institute in 2002 and 2003. [57] [58] A number of the adaptations were made available in Region 4 format in Australia in 2011 and The Signalman is included as an extra on the Region 1 American DVD release of the 1995 BBC production of Hard Times. For Christmas 2011, the BFI featured the complete 1970s films in their Mediatheque centres. [59] A bold and intriguing experiment from director Derek Lister and respected writer John Bowen, The Ice Houseis strong on suggestion and disquiet but teasingly short on explanations. While I found it quietly compelling, it seems likely that such intriguing ambiguity will not work for some. Others, quite reasonably, might wonder if this particular entry into the BBC's Ghost Storiesstrand is actually a ghost story at all. sound and vision

A respected theologian and his protégé unearth clues to find the hidden treasure of a disgraced monk in an abbey library. Should he have heeded his own advice not to go treasure-hunting? [34] detail and color rendering seems the dominant feature of the vastly improved higher resolution upgrade. Particularly impressive is Clark's handling of the dual timeline structure, with Sir Matthew's story initially unfolding as brief visions (or perhaps inherited memories?) that become more substantial as the film progresses. There are no date captions or voice-over clues to these temporal switches here, the trips into the past sometimes signalled only by differences in costume and hairstyle, coupled with subtle alterations in vocal delivery and language. Fisher, Mark (15 April 2007). "Bleak and Solemn ..." abstractdynamics.org. Archived from the original on 20 August 2010 . Retrieved 22 August 2010. In two programmes from the BBC's four-episode series from 2000, Christopher Lee plays M.R. James in his role of provost of King's College Cambridge at the dawn of the last century and relates two of his ghost stories to a small gathering of masters and students as they sit sipping sherry around a coal fire on Christmas Eve. Gold-tinted visuals of Lee and his attentive, over-privileged audience are intermittently peppered with stylised imagery from the tales themselves, none of which is a problem when you have a storyteller as compelling as Christopher Lee. A constant joy to listen to, he is also worth watching for his sometimes visually expressive delivery. Even the sinister notes of music do not detract from these very fine readings.