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

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Such conditions can magnify the power of the pieces, adding to their creepiness and helping the tales imbed themselves within impressionable minds.

I’m just scratching the surface of the busy and consistently engaging conversation that takes place here. With a courage which I do not think can be common among boys of his age, he went to the door of the bathroom to ascertain if the figure of his dreams were really there. He reveals how the ghostly apparition on the beach was created and provides a more accurate translation of the Latin message on the whistle than the one in the film – inflection apparently really matters here. They note that this marked a slight change of direction for the series as it was the first to fall under the control of the BBC’s Drama department, and they discuss how actor Joseph O’Connor brings so much to character that was two-dimensional on the page.

In the region surrounding the Norfolk coastal town of Seaburg, legend has it that three Anglo Saxon crowns were once buried to protect England from invasion. A young squire, John Martin, is on trial for murder in a court presided over by hanging judge George Jeffreys, but the girl he is accused of murdering has been seen after her death.

Black from The Stalls of Barchester (again played by Clive Swift), whose relaxing holiday is severely disrupted when he becomes inadvertently caught up in Paxton's predicament. 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.

The BFI released the complete set of Ghost Story for Christmas films plus related works such as both versions of Whistle and I'll Come to You on Region 2 DVD in 2012, in five volumes as well as a box set, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of M. So far no cause whatever for the fear of the runner had been shown; but now there began to be seen, far up the shore, a little flicker of something light-coloured moving to and fro with great swiftness and irregularity. In 'The Ice House' (1978) Paul (John Stride) goes to stay at a spa resort to help him get over the breakdown of his marriage. The sixth film, The Signalman, is an adaptation of a story by Charles Dickens published in his magazine All the Year Round in 1866. 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.

That the story has been relocated from East Anglia to Devon is never an issue, but that the object Parkin finds is a ring rather than a whistle most definitely is. An orphan moves into the house of his older cousin, but is disturbed by visions of a pair of ghostly children.For A Warning to the Curious, "Seaburgh" (a disguised version of Aldeburgh, Suffolk) was filmed on the coast of North Norfolk at Waxham, Holkham Gap, Happisburgh, Wells-next-the-Sea and on the North Norfolk Railway. For The Signalman, a replica Great Western Railway signal box was erected in the cutting on the Kidderminster side of Bewdley Tunnel, and Highley signal box was used for the interior shots. 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.

Elements that have a ring of the cinema of Mario Bava are identified, Lawrence Gordon Clark’s unsung status as a key director of British horror is championed, and they remark on the sympathy for working class characters in the series that is not in James’s original text.Unusually for a BBC television drama of the 1970s, each instalment was filmed entirely on location using 16 mm film. In the story, he is a young innocent who stumbles across the legend by chance whilst making architectural studies of local churches, whereas in the film he is an older, more secretive man who arrives in Seaburg with the very specific intention of locating and retrieving the crown.