The Stone Tape: Great Old School Sci-Fi

Here is a great old piece of British Sci-Fi almost forgotten, and never really known in the States. It was the first teleplay to connect the nature of ghosts with a sort of temporal static loop, a recording from the past, rather than the spirits of the dead still roaming about. For its time it was a rather fantastic concept.

            This was written by the great British Sci-Fi writer Nigel Kneale (whom we discussed in an earlier post The Year of the Sex Olympics), known for bringing the first sci-fi drama to television in The Quatermass Experiment, then for his TV adaptation of Orwell’s 1984 (starring a young Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasance).

            Kneale was approached to write a play for the Christmas season and quickly that, in keeping with Christmas tradition, he would write a ghost story, but with a difference – ancient spirits would interplay with modern science. The concept of mixing the supernatural with technology had been a feature of some of Kneale's earlier work – most notably, his 1952 radio play You Must Listen, which concerned a telecommunications engineer who discovers that a telephone line has somehow preserved the final conversation between a woman and her lover before her suicide.

Micheal Bryant in The Stone Tape

            The story is as follows: Peter Brock is the head of a research team attempting to develop a new recording medium. The team moves into a an old Victorian mansion that has been renovated for their use. After arriving, they discover that the overhaul of one of the rooms is unfinished, the builders having refused to work in it because it is supposedly haunted.

Jane Asher in The Stone Tape

     The room, with its stone walls, is a remnant of the original building, with foundations dating back to the Saxon era. Curious, the researchers explore the room and hear the sounds of a woman running followed by a gut-wrenching scream. Jill an emotionally sensitive computer programmer, has a vision of a woman running up the steps in the room and falling to her death. Some research uncovers that a young maid died in that room during Victorian times and that an unsuccessful exorcism had previously been performed on the property.

Brock hypothesises that it is not a ghost, but that somehow the stone in the room has preserved an image of the girl's death—this "stone tape" may be the new recording medium they have been seeking. Their scientific devices fail to detect any evidence of the phenomena the team experience, and team members encounter varied degrees of the phenomena: most are able to hear sounds, Jill can also see images, but another member of the team experiences no sensory input. Jill suggests that the "tape" does not produce actual sound or light, but instead interfaces with the human nervous system to create the impressions sound and vision, and some individuals are more sensitive to this than others. She surmises that the recordings are imprinted in moments of extreme emotion, like a kind of telepathy.

Excited by the possibilities presented by a recording medium which uses a person's own senses as the means of recording and playback, Brock and his team move into the room. They bombard it with their technology, hoping to find the secret of the "stone tape" and have it play on demand. When they repeatedly fail, a last desperate attempt "wipes the recording" and some team members break under the strain. Brock's failures are compounded when he is informed by his superiors that the facility is to be shared with a rival research team working on a new washing machine.

Embittered, Brock no longer wants anything to do with the project. But after researching the failed exorcism from the 1800s, Jill presents the theory that the stone tape can be recorded over again and again and that the maid's death was simply the most recent recording. Jill discovers that the maid's death was masking a much older recording, left many thousands of years ago. Brock cruelly dismisses her findings, and forces Jill to take a two-month leave to prevent her from continuing her research.

     Returning to the room one last time, Jill's senses are besieged by a powerful, malevolent presence from the much-degraded older recording. Like the maid before her, she dies while frantically trying to escape it.

During an inquest, Brock tries to save face by claiming that Jill was mentally unstable. He then destroys all of her research without reading it. He makes a final visit to the room and discovers to his horror that the stone tape has made a new recording—that of Jill screaming his name as she dies.

The Stone Tape really is a remarkable film and it has one of those rare endings that stay with you long after viewing. It is a masterpiece of intelligent horror sci-fi. No jump scares here, just a steady increase of tension which does not let up. Like the room itself, the more exposure you have to The Stone Tape the deeper your perception of the possibilities are.

                                         The Stone Tape- Full Movie

For more sci-fi fun try Spiff Blasthandy: Behind the Screen

Ken Russell's The Devils- An Overlooked Masterpeice

            One of the more controversial films ever made, it is based on The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley, published in 1952. The book itself is based upon actual events in the French city of Loudon in the early 17^th century. In it, accusations are made against Urbain Grandier, an outspoken Catholic Monseigneur, who is accused by the local order of cloistered nuns of witchcraft and trafficking with the devil. This is parlayed by Cardinal Richelieu (the go-to villain of French period pieces) into a political struggle to demolish the city’s walls, the last metropolis in France to retain such fortifications. This is a move which Grandier vigorously opposes and which results in him being burnt at the stake.

            Oliver Reed plays the lead, Urbain Grandier, in a more restrained manner than his usual scenery chewing style, but is still able to express incredible intensity even when absolutely still. He and Ken Russell worked well together on several projects. So well in fact that Russell cast Reed in a leading role on his next film Tommy, a musical, despite the fact that Reed couldn’t sing. While Reed eventually gained a reputation (deserved or not) of being an abusive alcoholic jerk- or just being a standard Englishman- and was reduced to making terrible TV movies, before dying on the set of Gladiator, The Devils was shot when Reed was at the high point in his acting prowess, and it shows. The final scene, when we learn Grandier's fate, is perhaps one of his finest performances.

            Playing opposite him is Vanessa Redgrave as a hunchbacked abbess of a convent of cloistered nuns, Sister Jeanne. She develops a lust for Reed’s character and when it is not returned, she leads the charge against Grandier, accusing him of canoodling with the devil and causing her and her fellow nuns to be possessed. Her character mainly conveys hysterical tendencies and sexual frustration with which she gives a no-hold-barred performance, managing to standout in a film that is already over the top. Her character’s fantasy scenes (most of which were originally cut) contain much religious iconography with some not-at-all subtle sexual innuendo and what really gave the film its reputation.

            Russell, as always, manages to do more with less. This was a fairly low budget film, but you would never know it from the richness of the atmosphere, the costumes, and the pseudo-decadence of pre-revolutionary France. The sets were modeled after Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and were crafted to give the possessed nun scenes an alien quality, which distorts the reality of the situation. Russell often juxtaposes the nun’s writhing and other bizarre antics with scenes and peace and beauty. This comes is especially effective in one scene where Reed is performing the sacrament of communion by a peaceful river, interspersed with scenes of the nuns running riot in a cathedral.

            The Devils initially received very mixed reviews and some very strong emotions due to its sexual and religious content. Some called it “a grand fiesta for sadists and perverts” while others claimed it was Russell’s “most brilliant cinematic achievement.” But no one ever states that it is a boring film. The possessed nun scenes are its most notable part, and the cause for its acclaim and X rating in both America and Britain- dooming it at the box office.  The controversy has stuck with the film over the decades. So much so that the parent company (Warner Brothers) refused to release it on DVD, even after film critic Mark Kermode discovered 20 minutes of missing footage (including the infamous “rape of Christ scene”) which would guarantee sales amongst fans. Eventually Warner Brothers relented, but only after a lengthy online petition and with a very limited run.

            The new edition of The Devils is still edited and censored from the original cut. To get past the X rating (NC-17 for you millennials) all of the male nudity had to be cut (a flapping penis is only acceptable if the character is blue apparently) and much of the full frontal variety from the cathedral scenes, a more grotesque version of the enema from the first exorcism attempt, a few frames of Grandier’s legs being crushed, and some overdubbing of the nuns yelling “cunt” and “fuck me.” But a lot has been added to make The Devils a much more striking film than it was before.

For more fun try books by Rex Hurst

I call it a must see!