31 Days of Horror continues with this review by Jon Lyus of HeyUGuys. Send me your horror reviews.
‘I look into the dark place and I see the shape of things not there.’
Steven Volk – 31/10
I’ve written about Stephen Volk’s Ghostwatch before and when I saw the good folks at Live For Films were celebrating their 31 days of horror I knew that no celebration of All Hallow’s Eve would be complete with a return to Foxhill Drive, and that cold October night eighteen years ago.
The ninety minute television play was set up to mimic a investigative documentary, happening in real time via live broadcast on BBC One on Hallowe’en night. Daytime TV’s golden couple Sarah Greene and Mike Smith were drafted in to assist host (in more ways than one) Michael Parkinson in the investigation of a North London house, whose poltergeist activity had attracted some local media, and was now the focus of the good ship Beeb.
Writer Steven Volk’s command of the conventions of the live broadcast allowed the programme to do two things: pass itself off as a genuine live investigation of the supernatural, and scare the face off of the viewers once they were caught up in it.
The build up is fairly pedestrian on the surface, with the presenters mucking around, stilted contributions from the public, technical explanations, innocuous halloween games and the story so far from the bewildered family, but beneath the mundane surface seeds are being planted and a feeling of dread begins to enter the arena. Studio bound Michael Parkinson plays cynic and the various paranormal experts give their take on what may be caused the occurrences (whose effects are very real) and the evening progresses with no real indication of what will become of them all.
It may seem churlish to tell you that things do go wrong, very badly wrong, but an avoidance of spoilers will not change the reaction to the Ghostwatch effect. I’ve seen it so many times now, and seemed to not so much peep behind the curtain as draw them completely, and it stills has the power to unsettle and terrify.
As a piece of television Ghostwatch is almost unparalleled in its ability to seduce you into an involving and initially benign investigation of a housebound spook before trapping you in the house, turning off the lights and induce wave after wave of panic and fear.
Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape made excellent use of sound design to give form to the things we couldn’t see, and the rhythmic, sudden thuds of the suburban poltergeist in Ghostwatch hark back to Robert Wise’s 1963 classic The Haunting and are just as effective. The point is – we are with the besieged family when the lights go out, and Hell breaks loose.
Controversially disowned at the time the BBC it’s an annual tradition now to relive the Ghostwatch experience and a few years ago the much needed DVD release meant that my old video which captured the original broadcast in 1992 could be enjoy its well earned retirement. Eighteen years on it remains one of only a handful of landmark television programmes which transcend the medium to become a true horror classic.
The success of Paranormal Activity and its recently released sequel attest to the lure of the normal in paranormal. Found footage is the cinematic equivalent of the live broadcast device of Ghostwatch, and lacks the immediacy, the ability to spellbind in quite the same way. A 1994 science fiction TV movie called Without Warning told the story of possible extra-terrestrial contact through the device of a 24 hour news station, with disbelieving news anchors and breathless reporters across the world documenting the story.
Even now, watching Ghostwatch eighteen years after the fact the live television broadcast hasn’t changed in nature and years of the shadowplay of the Most Haunted pantomime haven’t dulled the dread as the evening’s events unfold. It has the same power as Peter Watkins’ controversial The War Game, which uses the format of a news commentary programme to tell the story of the build-up, attack and aftermath of a nuclear war. Deemed too horrifying for the medium of television and unseen for over twenty years it shares with Ghostwatch the dubious honour of being too dangerous (or too effective) to be shown.
Writer Steven Volk returned to Studio One a few years ago in his sequel of sorts 31/10, published in Dark Corners, a collection of delicious and disturbing short stories, and the author has generously made this story available online (you can find it here), as part of his website. It’s well worth reading and it is the only thing I’ve ever read which genuinely sent a chill through me at one particular moment.
My advice is to seek Ghostwatch out, you can even watch it online, and enjoy a landmark in television horror, one that will stand alongside Orson Welles’ Hallowe’en War of the World broadcast in 1938 as a true classic.
