Ghost Story

Despite this film being described as 'little seen' it was regularly shown on British TV through the late 70s and early 80s and was well known to teenage horror fans who would stay up late to watch it in the days before video recorders were readily available. Made on next to no budget with a tiny cast the film veers between a comedy of social manners and straight up psycho horror (though there's not much money in the kitty for gore and prosthetics) and remains inventive and stylish throughout. The principal trio of Larry Dan, Murray Melvin and Vivian Mackerral who play people with little in common other that having once been undergraduates together are wonderful. The social hierachy of the trio is established in the opening scene in a London station (played entirely against a plain wall - that budget again) and Dan's attempts to forge a friendship with Melvin and Mackerral generate both comedy and pity as he is continually rebuffed, patronised and condescended to. The horror begins when they reach the spooky house and Dan's psychic sensitivity to the horrible events in the house's past prefigure the core of Kubrick's The Shining made a few years later. The final scenes in the local asylum are splendidly grotesque and left me at age 14 with a perpetual fear of straight razors. The story rattles along with hardly a pause for breath, all wrapped up in just about 90 minutes. I love this film!

The DVD transfer is adequate: sound is OK and the picture is a bit shonky, but watchable.

Trivia time: Vivian Mackerral was the real life model for Withnail in Withnail and I. This was his only major film appearance before his untimely early death.