GHOST STORIES FROM THE BBC - The one with 'The Signalman' etc. I thought this was great. For some reason I always think UK TV from the 70s has a really haunting quality about it anyway. The three stories included in this volume differ in approach, but all share a similar desolate and enigmatic vibe. 'The Signalman' projects a feeling of claustrophobia and isolation, in part due to its setting, a railway tunnel at the bottom of a wintery ravine. Loved the creepy synth drone soundtrack which somehow worked in the context of a 19th century Dickens adaption. And the eyeless ghost was wonderful. 'Stigma' was possibly the high point of the set for me - contemporary setting, really spare in its unfolding, very bleak vibe. The unseen ghost of a witch subjects a woman to a darkly menstrual fate. Again, great soundtrack which somehow captures the chilly awe induced by just the sight of ancient stones. Very disturbing, despite the presence of Peter Bowls.
'The Ice House' came in a close second. Enigmatic and cryptic to the point of bafflement, this one had my mind reeling for a while afterwards, despite the obviousness of the main theme. A lonely psychiatrist visits a health spa run by a mysterious and slightly incestuous sibling pair. There's a sinister ice house. But what does it all mean? Put me in mind of a strange three way hybrid of JG Ballard, Ian McEwan and M R James. When I was very young I saw a repeat of this on TV one christmas, and I remember being transfixed by the creepy frozen man in the ice house. Watching it now, the whole piece was equally fascinating and unnerving.
BLACK PAST - Olaf Ittenbach's first feature, shot on video in the late eighties. It's a weird blend of partial boredom and extreme gore. I say 'partial' boredom as, during the uneventful bits, the awfulness of early SOV aesthetics at least lends a wonky charm to the proceedings, as do the eighties elements ie. mullets unsurrounded by quotation marks. The storyline is nothing original, with a possessed mirror inspiring violent dreams in a teen who lives in a house with a 'black past'. Culminates in slimy demonic transformation, just because. When it hits, the gore is pretty relentless. I wish my former teenaged gore-hound self had seen this twenty years ago - I feel a bit past this kind of stuff these days, but there's an undeniable energy at work. And I keep returning to Ittenbach's movies without really knowing why, because probably they're not all that good, but there's just a certain quality (possibly Ittenbach's straight faced approach to absurd material) which makes me like all his stuff apart from 'Premutos'.
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