Ghost Stories for Christmas - The Definitive Collection (5-DVD set)

Product Information

The passing of time, of course, has provided some pointers here, and there will surely be few for whom the prospect of an old man inviting wayward young orphans back to his isolated house to stay does not set off a small bell of alarm. An orphan moves into the house of his older cousin, but is disturbed by visions of a pair of ghostly children. Since the arrival of Blu-ray and HD streaming services, I have to admit to rarely playing discs from my still vast collection of commercial and review DVDs.

In this respect, he makes excellent used of his lead actor and some striking locations to create an unnerving sense of a disrupted normality in which undefined dangers seem to be stalking Parkin even in daylight.

In 'The Ash Tree' (1975) Sir Richard Fell (Edward Petherbridge) inherits his uncle's manor and grounds. Here he is a married man in late middle-age, and his isolation is not self-imposed but the result of his wife's steadily deteriorating dementia. This is brought home through Miller's refusal to over-dramatise key moments, with the discovery of the whistle and the reading of its inscription presented in an almost everyday manner, and no dramatic music or creepy camera movements to hammer home their significance.

For Christmas 1979 the BBC produced a 70-minute-long adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's gothic tale Schalcken the Painter, directed and adapted by Leslie Megahey. Haynes (Robert Hardy), which outlines his arrival in Barchester and his eventual ascension to the position of Archdeacon after his predecessor, the elderly Archdeacon Pulteney (Harold Bennett), takes a fatal fall down the stairs of his house. The remit behind the series was to provide a television adaptation of a classic ghost story, in line with the oral tradition of telling supernatural tales at Christmas.As Paxton’s torch lights up the trees in dense woodland in the darkness of night, he suddenly blurts out, “ Ooohhh!

Unfolding as a dual timeline, with Haynes' diaries dramatised in flashback, the film is over a third of the way in before the first signs of supernatural activity put in an appearance. A truly great ghost story always leaves much to the imagination and does not rel on special effects like rubbish films from USA! A bold move perhaps, but what makes the written word and Miller's adaptation work as well as it does is not down solely to a few key components, but the manner in which they combine and unfold, and the unsettling ambiguity of the possible threat. Rapidly growing larger, it, too, declared itself as a figure in pale, fluttering draperies, ill-defined. Each instalment is a separate adaptation of a short story, ranges between 30 and 50 minutes in duration, and features well-known British actors such as Clive Swift, Robert Hardy, Peter Vaughan, Edward Petherbridge and Denholm Elliott.After a young couple move into a remote country house in the middle of a stone circle workmen disturb an ancient menhir, unleashing a supernatural force. Using long lenses to flatten the scenery and make the ghost indistinct in the background, John McGlashan's fine cinematography brilliantly conveys the ageless, ritualistic determinism of Ager's pursuit and signposts the inevitability of Paxton's demise. It’s the sort of preview of the threat to come that, while relatively fresh back in 1972, has since become a staple component of modern film horror. Author and horror specialist Jonathan Rigby gets to grips with The Stalls of Barchester, suggesting up front that director Lawrence Gordon Clark was an altogether better fit for adapting M. Clark is less complimentary of the adaptation of The Ash Tree, which he felt didn't make Mistress Mothersole an effective villain, as a result of both his and adaptor David Rudkin's sympathy for witch trial victims; "We know so much about the hysteria of the witch trials and the ignorance and downright evil that fueled them that it was well-nigh impossible to portray her as James intended.

It enables those new to James’s work to judge how both adaptations compare to the original text, and intriguingly, despite some differences between the original story and Miller's adaptation, the reading runs almost the exact same length as the film, being just 18 seconds shorter.Later locations include Ormsby Hall and the Pelham Mausoleum at Brocklesby, Lincolnshire for Lost Hearts, Wells Cathedral, the Orchardleigh Estate, Frome and its 13th century church for The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, [27] Prideaux Place near Padstow for The Ash-Tree [28] and the Severn Valley Railway near Kidderminster for The Signalman.