In short: Casting the Runes (1979)

Apparently, the great Lawrence Gordon Clark, the main driving force behind the initial run of BBC Ghost Stories for Christmas, couldn’t quite let go of ghost stories, or the works of M.R. James, even after the BBC did, so we got this James modernisation made for ITV – curiously enough broadcast in April, but then, TV programmers do tend not to understand how these things generally work.

Unlike Clark’s modus operandi in those of the Ghost Stories that were adaptations, this updates the plot of the tale into then contemporary times, so instead of Academic journals, we get a TV documentary raising the ire of Mr Karswell, and our not terribly antiquarian protagonist is actually (gasp!) a woman (Jan Francis in a fine performance with the right mix of disbelief, desperation and courage). Pleasantly, all of Clark’s updates make very good sense for the tale at hand, making it more modern without lessening its core joys and Francis’s Prudence Dunning is a believable heroine for the tale – provided with slightly more character as was James’s style, of course – whereas Iain Cuthbertson really hits the right note of sinister self-centeredness for Karswell.

Working on a TV budget in 1979, this is of course not as great a movie as Tourneur’s Night of the Demon but it is a closer adaptation of the story, despite the changes and some omissions. This being a Gordon Clark joint, there are some surprisingly effective scenes of horror, some very well chosen landscapes for the exterior locations, and a general sense of being in the hands of a filmmaker of pleasant intelligence working for the old pleasing terrors. That the interiors simply don’t look terribly good in the manner of contemporary 70s British TV, and that some of the special effects have aged somewhat badly doesn’t really change anything about that impression.