Knee deep in feathers
We need something to cheer us up. Well, I do, as I'm fed up after my first week back at work. So, classic humour which is not at all supernatural, merely super:
'The Chapel of Infernal Devotion'
This is a running review of the book Spirits of the Dead. Find out more here . My opinion on the penultimate story in this collection has not changed since I first came across it 2015 in a collection of works inspired by Arthur Machen. So... Ron Weighell's 'The Chapel of Infernal Devotion' is not just an erudite horror story but an extended essay on Machen's cultural significance. It follows a book collector who fails to secure a particular illustration at an auction. His researches reveal a link between the mysterious artist, who used the name Adam Midnight, and Machen. Midnight, whose real name was Philip Youlden, seems to have had a more than purely aesthetic interest in the occult. Our hero is inspired to try and find out more. Thus begins an odyssey that takes the protagonist from the relatively comfortable world of book dealers to the strange house of Plas Gwyllion, where an elderly musician guards Youlden's bizarre and dangerous legacy. Along the way we e...
Comments
So what did you think of the last part of Crooked House?
Since you ask: I'm afraid I was more than disappointed with the whole exercise. Like Mark Gatiss, and so many other children of the time, I was deeply effected by the 1970's BBC adaptations; and of course few pleasures can compare with first reading an M R James story.
It is interesting to speculate why it seems no longer possible to pull off either straightforward adaptations or heavily influenced original works?
BBC 4s "A View From The Hill" was I thought far better perhaps simply because, with all due respect to Mr Gatiss (who has done marvellous work), it had better source material. Even so it was not at all frightening.
With Crooked House (which I sincerely wanted to enjoy) I'm afraid I thought the first Episode was just awful; the second had a good script (but was, sorry Dame Jean, execrably performed); and the third the scariest, best plotted, had a very weak ending.
Having failed to enjoy them together, I pursuaded my teenage daughter to watch "A Warning To The Curious" (available as you will know from the bfi) and we were in contrast deliciously spooked. Like me she thought Crooked House was rather overwhelmed by its writer effectively starring in the production; by the Dr Whoishly camp execution; and by effects and performances that were sometimes very unsubtle. The honorable exception being the lead actor who was the best thing in the series.
A Warning is a marvel. Almost no dialogue, and strange but believable performances. More Beckett than LOG. Nature choreographed and threatening, barely a dropped note in soundtrack of manipulative genius; and a horrific ending acheived chiefly with a swinging light bulb.
It seems that the original adaptations have become artefacts of the great master in their own right. They use modest resources delicately to realise MR James' compelling evocations of the past. They were made with high seriousness. They get more frightening as any sense of their actual historicity (the 3 day week, the IMF crisis), and even the identities of the cast, fade from memory.
Perhaps the prevailing (post post)modern tone of comforting self-satisfied irony is deadly to the creation of that exquisite sense of apprehension (on Christmas Eve) that seems to have been there purpose.
An irony itself given James's own extensive but brilliant use of the same tropes.
PS If you want another, and modern, Christmas Poem try Alice Oswalds "Various Portents" from Woods etc (2005). Read aloud it will make people cry.
I think 'Warning' worked very well because of Peter Vaughan's solid performance and the general understatement. The only problem I have with it is the over-physicality of William Ager, hacking away at his victim on the tumulus (oo-er, missus). That was unsubtle and spoiled it a bit for me.