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

The Year of the Sex Olympics- Old school Sci-Fi at its best

          This is an interesting obscure little film originally made for the Theater 625 program for the BBC in 1968, it had achieved some cult status for being ahead of its time narrative and predicting the rise of reality TV some forty years before it became dominant.  

Nigel Kneale

          It was written by veteran British Sci-Fi genius Nigel Kneale 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). He continued on with other projects most notably, Quatermass 2, Quatermass and the Pit, The Abominable Snowman, The Quatermass Conclusion, and The Stone Tape (which I will be covering in a future article).

          Originally filmed in glorious color, unfortunately that version is lost and, except for a few stills, all we have is the black and white copy. Still that is good enough. The drama takes place in a time "sooner than you think..." when all the basic needs of the world have been met and successfully automated, mankind has nothing to do with itself, leading to an overpopulation problem.

          World peace had been achieved through the use of television and “apathy control”. Society has been divided into two types of people, low and high drives.

Future versions of you.

The low drives sit around watching it all day and the leaders (high drives) realized that they can control their behaviors by what they present on the tube. All of the redundant tendencies of mankind (referred to as “tensions”)- love, war, hate, religion, loyalty, family- are shown on the TV as a substitute for the real thing. Thus they have the “Hungry Angry Show” to reduce those attributes and “The Sex Olympics”, “Sportsex” and “Artsex” shows to allow people to leisurely masturbate over the beautiful people and avoid the real thing, thus reducing the surplus population. As the show puts it “gotta make ‘em think, ‘I cannot do that. Sex is not to do. Sex is to watch.’”

          Along with the limiting of thought on the small screen, the language has also been culled to exclude such old time concepts from being transmitted onto future generations. To aid this thus all children are raised separate from their parents and marriage has been abolished.

Nat Mender, who has a bit of thyroid condition

          The story revolves around Nat Mender, a television producer, who is bored with his life and yearns for something that he cannot understand or even conceive of. To top it off, the rating are lower as the populace has become immured to the constant diet of sex and violence. Nat is contacted by his ex-girlfriend Deanie about their child who is not doing well. The pair go to visit the girl only to discover, to Nat’s horror, that she has been classified as low drive and will be sent out to dwell with the unwashed masses. To top this off Deanie’s new boyfriend, Lasar, is a moody artist type who wishes to express himself in images of horror, but that would cause “tension” so it is not allowed.

          It is then determined that in order to get the audience back interested humor has to be reintroduced into their programming lineup, but all of their attempts to do so fail with a huge cringe factor. But then Lasar, attempts to break into the Sex Olympics to show his horrible images and falls off a rope killing himself. This unexpected accident sends the audience into peals of laughter. Giving the studio heads a new idea.

Leonard Rossiter in Year of the Sex Olympics

          Nat fed up with his life comes up with the “Live Life Show” were he, Deanie, and their daughter are put on a deserted island to attempt to survive in a stone age existence, having only a medieval type cottage provided for them. He feels that this is something which could reconnect him to a spiritual life that has been lost of modern society. All of this is broadcast 24/7 back to the audience. But unknown to Nat, the producers also place a homicidal lunatic on the island with them, because as they say “it’s a show, somethings gotta happen.”

          I won’t spoil the ending for you, but allow me to say that no one I have ever shown this to has ever been disappointed. It is a truly “holy shit” ending that will cause you to remember this fil for years to come.

          Enjoy and Caveat Emptor!

                                                     Full Version is here.


For more weirdness try Across the Wounded Galaxy by Rex Hurst