Blog-O-Ween 2025: The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale: Day Seven — The Stone Tape

It is day seven of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale. Seven is considered to be a lucky number. Let’s hope that bit of folklore holds firm for us today. We’re gonna need it. Why? Well, because we are joining a group of engineers who are in search of brand new recording medium. Wouldn’t it be lucky for us if we were to get in on the ground floor of such a technological development? Sure, it would! And you know what that would mean...

On the other hand, Lady Luck can be a fickle mistress. We may discover that our brand new recording medium is not so brand new as we think it is. It may be something that’s been around for a long, long time, and it may have recorded some events that we wouldn’t want to revisit.

Intrigued? Well then it is time to hit “play” on...The Stone Tape.

The research team for Ryan Electric Products has moved into an old Victorian mansion in hopes that they can discover a new recording medium that will give the company an edge over their competitors. The real estate agent in charge of the house has told team lead Peter Brock (Michael Bryant) that everything at Taskerlands has been refurbished for his company’s needs — all except one room. This stone room is believed to be from the Saxon period. It is a remnant of the original building, with the rest of the house having been added to it over the centuries. Work was halted in this room because the builders refused to go inside. They claimed it was haunted.

Being curious at such a story, the research team investigates and in the midst of their explorations they hear the scream of a woman. Jill Greeley (Jane Asher), a computer programmer for the company, sees an image of a woman running up the stone stairs then falling to her death. Jill seems to be the most sensitive of the research team, as not everyone in the group witnessed the event.

After discovering records that tell of a maid falling to her death in the room in 1890, Brock thinks that the stone walls of the room acted as a sort of tape — the very thing the team is looking for. Jill, however, believes that whatever has been recorded in the stone of the room can only interact with  the nervous systems of certain, highly sensitive viewers. She believes that it is a form of telepathy.

Brock and his team try and try again to trigger the images in the stone, but to no avail. Jill believes that the stone tape has been erased. Having failed at developing the recording medium that Ryan Electric Products wanted, Brock is told to make room for a new team at Taskerlands — one that is coming up with a new washing machine.

Meanwhile, the local vicar has unearthed evidence of an exorcism that took place not in the 1890s when the maid died, but in the 1760s, before the house was constructed. Jill thinks that the stone walls of the room have been recording events much longer than just the 1890s. The stones act like magnetic tape — recording new events over older ones. The recording of the death of the maid, then, was masking a much, much older event — one even older than the 1760s. One that Jill believes may be thousands of years old.

What does Jill find when she returns to the stone room one last time? What is the recording beneath the maid’s death? What does Jill find recorded on. . .The Stone Tape?

The Stone Tape was originally broadcast on 25 December 1972 on BBC2 as their annual Christmas ghost story. Christopher Morahan (Head of Plays at BBC Television from 1972-1976) asked his old friend Kneale if he would be interested in doing a Christmas ghost story, but, “Only if we could do a ghost story which had an altogether different twist — such as going at a ghost with science.”

Could he have asked a more perfect person for such a story?

This was an assignment right up Kneale’s alley. As we’ve seen in the previous stories of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale, our hero seems to be most at home in the space where science fiction and horror overlap. (And we shall see even more examples of this coming up!) The Stone Tape is a perfect blend of these two genres, and it’s always fun to watch these two worlds collide.

The Stone Tape is on DVD, so perhaps your friendly neighborhood public library has a copy you can check out. It may even be on one of the streaming platforms that your local library is associated with (Hoopla or Kanopy, for instance). For those of who can’t wait to see what it is that Jill experiences in that ancient room, you can watch the film here:

BBC Radio 4 broadcast an audio drama version the The Stone Tape on 31 October 2015. Directed by Peter Strickland, it is quite different from the filmed version, but just as creepy. You can find it here at the Internet Archive.

Let’s hit the stop button for today, Blog-o-weeners. Remember to be kind and rewind. We only have two days left in this year’s celebration, but I think they may be the best yet. Tomorrow, for day eight of The Nine Days of Nigel Kneale, we will be looking at Kneale’s most famous creation: Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group. Although the good professor’s adventures spawned four series over nearly thirty years, we will be looking at one in particular. Set in London, workers have unearthed something strange, something not of this world, something that carries with it the lost history of the human race. Come back tomorrow to find out what is buried in...Quatermass and the Pit.

As always, Blog-o-weeners, watch where you are going, watch the skies, and...

Blog-o-ween 2024: Day 27

Lots of ‘Salem’s Lot

Free Day #4

Drawing Lots:

Adaptations of Stephen King's 'Salem's Lot

Sunrise: 7:08 AM

Sunset: 6:04 PM

Well, Blog-o-weeners, we are cutting it close today, aren’t we? I’m usually very conscientious about posting these entries earlier in the day. Writing a daily blog means, to me at least, posting soon after having that morning cup of joe. Anything less would be…well…I’ll let my friend Charles Barkley fill you in…

I’m not one to hand out weak excuses about being behind schedule or not having time to write and post and all that happy-crappy…which is why I’ve got a really good, strong excuse! Yesterday, I attended my first Horror-thon at the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica, CA. Last night’s was the 19th iteration of that time-honored tradition of watching movies in a packed theatre from dusk to dawn. All in all there were six films screened from 7:00 pm Saturday to 7:00 am Sunday: Species (1995), Devil Times Five (1974), Flesheater (1988), Bug (1975), Sleepwalkers (1992), and Black Roses (1988). In between these cinematic gems, there were skits, A.I.-generated insanity, appearances by Corn Gorn (the Living God), Mecca Corn Gorn, Telly Savalas, Abraham LinkedIn, Bill (the Business King of Red Roof Inn), and much, much more. We visited Duluth, got candy from Randy, and many (many!) puzzles of Dallas were handed out. A good time was had by all—except those who like washing machines.

(Don’t ask.)

So, instead of getting up this morning at 8:00 am, going for a walk, then coming home, making some coffee, and sitting at the computer to get some work done, I was walking out of the Aero, going to Dogtown Coffee in Santa Monica for a Munchie Burrito and a coffee, then driving home, and putting my tuchus to bed!

I am all kinds of out of whack, kiddies, but goshdarnit, I am here to put things right. You were promised the last free day of Blog-o-ween 2024 and that’s what I am here to deliver. It is kind of fitting that I spent all night watching horror movies, because that is what we are going to be talking about today—specifically the filmed adaptations of Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot. There are quite of few of them, so let’s jump right into the fanged fun, hmm?

First up, is the king (pun intended!) of the ‘Salem’s Lot adaptations: Tobe Hooper’s 1979 made-for-tv movie. This one is a beloved (and/or terrifying) memory for most Monster Kids of a certain vintage. Producer Richard Kobritz thought that one could not do justice to King’s epic novel in a standard feature film format. Ninety minutes was just not enough time. Instead, Kobritz suggested to Warner Bros. that he and screenwriter Paul Monash be allowed to create a television miniseries. They were given the go ahead, and after completing the script, choosing Tobe Hooper (thanks to a screening of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), and being granted a $4 million budget, the miniseries went into production in July of 1979 and wrapped a month later in August. The finished product hit the small screens of America in November of 1979.

As with any adaptations, changes were made and liberties taken with the source material. Instead of the urbane, suave vampire of the novel, we are given a grunting, growling version of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). Certain characters are combined into a single one. For example, there is no Dr. Jimmy Cody in the miniseries. That character is combined with Susan’s father, Bill. It is just the nature of the beast when it comes to adapting a large scale story to television. There just is never enough time or money to make an exact replica of a novel.

For all of the changes, however, there are many scenes that are branded in the brains of all those who witnessed them as kids. We’ve talked about a few — Ralphie Glick’s visit to his brother Danny, Mrs. Glick waking up on the mortuary slab, Larry Crockett getting found in Bonnie Sawyer’s bed by her husband. Even though these are moments from a made-for-tv movie, Hooper is able to infuse them with quite a bit unease and terror. David Soul makes a great Ben Mears, Bonnie Bedelia is a lovely Stan Norton, and Lance Kerwin is everyone’s favorite Monster Kid, Mark Petrie. It is James Mason as Rickard Straker that is the casting coup of the production. Mason’s Straker is every bit as oily and dangerous as the one in the book—albeit with more hair!

Because of the changes rendered to King’s novel in 1979, fans of ‘Salem’s Lot hoped that things would be different when it was announced that a new version was in production in 2004. Made as another two-part television miniseries, this time for the American cable station TNT. Written by Peter Filardi and directed by Mikael Salomon, this version of ‘Salem’s Lot takes place in the 2000s. The cast is a good one — Rob Lowe as Ben Mears, Rutger Hauer as Barlow, Donald Sutherland as Straker, Andre Braugher as Matt Burke, and James Cromwell as Father Callahan — but the overall effect of the series is a bit bland. This one takes even more liberties with King’s characters and situations, some interesting (Father Callahan, under the control of Barlow, kills Matt), others not so much (the frame story of Ben and Father Callahan fighting and falling out of the window of a homeless shelter).

Maybe it was the bad taste left in the mouth of the 2004 remake that set ‘Salem’s Lot up for another remake in 2021. Written and directed by Gary Dauberman, this version of King’s tale was announced in 2019, filmed in 2021, then shelved until its eventual release to the streaming service Max in 2024. That timeline of events does not make one confident in the final product. Even the author’s enthusiastic review of the feature film wasn’t enough to encourage Warner Bros. to put into theaters.

Could this poster look more "meh"?

(Disclaimer: I have not seen this movie, so I don’t know whether it's good, bad, or meh.)

This version of the story is set in the 1970s, making it contemporary with the novel’s time. It stars Lewis Pullman as Ben Mears, Makenzie Leigh as Susan Norton, Alfre Woodard as Dr. Cody, Jordan Preston Carter as Mark Petrie, Pilou Asbæk as Richard Straker, Alexander Ward as Kurt Barlow. To be fair, aside from the great Alfre Woodard (see my reviews of the television mystery series Tucker’s Witch to find out how I feel about Ms. Woodard) and William Sadler as Parkins Gillespie, I couldn’t pick the rest of the cast out of a police line-up. Not that having a cast full of (relatively speaking) unknowns is a bad thing, I just think some more recognizable faces would have helped the whole production find its audience in the theater and not on a dumb streaming app.

If you recall Free Day #2—the one where we discussed the other short stories by Stephen King that feature the Lot—you may recognize the name Chapelwaite. This was the name of the ancestral home of main character Charles Boone, the one that had the strange sounds of rats in the walls (amongst other things!). It is also the name of a ten-episode, single-season television series that aired on Epix. Written by Peter Filardi (the same writer as the 2004 miniseries) and his brother Jason Filardi, this series features Adrain Brody as Charles Boone. Here, Boone is a sea captain who moves his children to Preacher’s Corners, Maine, after the death of his wife.

(Disclaimer: I have not seen this series, so I don’t know whether its good, bad, or meh. It’s got Adrian Brody, who I find interesting, and it is set in the 1850s, so it can’t be all that bad, right?)

My personal favorite adaptation of ‘Salem’s Lot is neither a theatrical film or television series. It is a seven-part BBC Radio 4 dramatization broadcast in 1994. Like the other adaptations of King’s novel, there are slight changes here and there, but for the most part, this version is the most faithful to the source material. Dramatized by Gregory Evans and directed by Adrian Bean, this ‘Salem’s Lot will make your skin crawl. The sound design is spot on, and the music by Elizabeth Parker of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop is wonderful. I wish more novels got the BBC Radio drama treatment. You can find all seven episodes on the Internet Archive (natch) here.

Well, today’s free day discussion was better late than never, was it not, kiddies? I’m glad we got the chance to talk about all of these adaptations. Let me know which one is you favorite and why. I’d love to know!

Tomorrow, we pick back up where we left off yesterday. Please read Part 3, Chapter 14: The Lot (IV), Sections 33-40. We’ll see more horrors unfold for the people of the Lot. We’ll also see what happens when people don’t learn the lesson of not splitting the party the first time. (Guess what? It’s still a bad idea!)

Remember: whichever version of ‘Salem’s Lot you decide to watch (or listen to), it’s best to…

Blog-o-ween 2023: "Minuke" by Nigel Kneale

Look, I gotta come clean with you good people who show up everyday to Blog-o-ween looking for guidance. I owe it to you to tell the truth, to lay it all on the line. So, here goes: Yes, monsters are scary — what with the waving tentacles and the dripping goo and the gnashing teeth in the multiple mouths that are set vertically instead of horizontally all over its body and I don’t know what else — but, and this is just between you and me, monsters aren’t real.

I know, I know...but someone had to tell you. Monsters aren’t real. There are people who act monstrously, sure, but monsters? What with the waving tentacles and the dripping goo and the gnashing teeth in the multiple mouths that are set vertically instead of horizontally all over its body and what not? Monsters? They don’t exist except in the pages of horror stories and on the big- and small-screens. And once the author or the filmmaker shows you the monster? It’s not as scary anymore. You can deal with it.

The best horror, I think, is grounded in the more mundane, universally felt, everyday fears and anxieties: the fear of death, the anxiety of not being able to make ends meet, the fear of the dark, the anxiety of walking back to your car late at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood, the fear of waving tentacles and dripping goo and gnashing teeth...the usual stuff that everyone has experienced in their lives.

Let’s take for an example the anxieties that come with homeownership. Part of the American Dream is to own your own home. Me, I’m a renter. Always been a renter. Always will be a renter. The thought of owning a home and having electrical problems or plumbing issues or a leaky roof and having to pay for those repairs sets my flesh crawling. Not to mention dealing with the infestation in the basement of things with waving tentacles and dripping goo and gnashing teeth...but that’s a whole other thing.

Owning a home and being only one poorly soldered pipe away from disaster and financial ruin is probably what drove people to the cinemas in 1979 to see The Amityville Horror. Sure, living in a house where a guy once killed his entire family is pretty scary — and those two red eyes of “Jodie” floating outside the daughter’s second-story bedroom window certainly are — but as Stephen King points out in his 1981 history of the horror genre, Danse Macabre, the real horror in Amityville has less to do with the events of the past and more to do with the house that the Lutzes now own lock, stock, and barrel. Upon reevaluating the film after leaving a screening where he noticed the average age of the attendees was closer to middle age than the usual teenager, King writes:

“Here is a movie for every woman who ever wept over a plugged-up toilet or a spreading water stain on the ceiling from the upstairs shower; for every man who ever did a slow burn when the weight of the snow caused his gutters to give way...

“‘Think of the bills,’ a woman sitting behind me in the theater moaned at one point...but I suspect it was her own bills she was thinking about...[T]he main reason that people went to see it, I think, is that The Amityville Horror, beneath its ghost-story exterior, is really a financial demolition derby.”

Today’s short story is also steeped in the fears and anxieties of home ownership. Let’s take a trip to post-war Britain with writer Nigel Kneale and hear the story of a house that is on the market for a song. It has a strange past and an even stranger name. Let’s take a open-house tour through "Minuke."

“The estate agent kept an uncomfortable silence until we reached his car. ‘Frankly, I wish you hadn’t got wind of that,’ he said. ‘Don’t know how you did: I thought I had the whole thing carefully disposed of...’”

It is after the Second World War in England, and an estate agent is driving the unnamed narrator to see a house. At first glance, the narrator seems to be someone who is in the market for a home, but as the estate agent’s story of the house unfolds, the reader quickly gets the sense that the narrator is simply a curiosity-seeker. No one could possibly want the home that the estate agent is describing. What’s wrong with the house? Well, for starters, the name.

“It was taken by a man named Pritchard. Cinema projectionist, I think he was. Wife, a boy of ten or so, and a rather younger daughter. Oh — and dog, one of those black, lop-eared animals. They christened the place ‘Minuke’, M-I-N-U-K-E. My nook. Yes, that’s what I said too. And not even the miserable excuse of its being phonetically correct.”

The house was built in a hurry along a coast-road overlooking the sea during the interwar period, and that’s when the estate agent says he sold the house to the Pritchards. Everything started out fine until little things began to go wrong. First, the plumbing seemed to go haywire. Then, the plaster on the walls in the bedroom crack from floor to ceiling. Next, Mrs. Pritchard is injured when a hatch door between the kitchen and dining room comes down on her wrists. The funny thing about that, said Mr. Pritchard to the estate agent, is when he tried to lift it off of his wife’s arms

“...it wouldn’t come! I got my finger under it and heaved, but it might have weighed two hundredweight. Once it gave an inch or so, and then pressed harder. That was it — it was pressing down!”

And that’s just the start of the Pritchards’ troubles with Minuke.

What is the cause behind these problems? What does one of the men who helped build the house have to say about the enormous flat stones that were found on the site and used as the foundation of Minuke? And what of the old Norse — or older! — burial mound?

Nigel Kneale was born in Barrow-in-Furness, England in 1922. In 1928, his family returned to the Isle of Man, and it was there that Kneale was raised. In the 1940s, unable to enlist in the army due to photophobia (a sensitivity to light), Kneale moved to London and worked for BBC Radio. He acted in radio plays and wrote stories for magazines such as Argosy and The Strand. In 1949, he published a collection of his tales, Tomato Cain and Other Stories. In 1950, it won the Somerset Maugham Award.

After this success, Kneale began to write scripts for radio and television. It was in the early 1950s that he created his most enduring character: Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British Experimental Rocket Group. Quatermass would be the main character of four television serials over the next twenty years. Beginning in 1953 with The Quatermass Experiment, the professor’s adventures would continue in Quatermass II (1956), Quatermass and the Pit (1958), and the final, melancholy chapter of the professor’s life, 1979’s Quatermass.

Outside of the Quatermass adventures, Kneale was busy with other serials of the weird and supernatural. Beasts (1976) was a six-episode character-based anthology series. The Stone Tape (1972) was a scientific ghost story about a group of engineers in an old mansion trying to find a new recording medium. Instead, they find something in the old stone walls of the house. He also wrote an episode of the ITV series Against the Crowd called “Murrain.” (I’ve, uh, written about it before...you can find my blog entry on it here.)

Kneale’s list of projects that came to fruition or died on the vine is too lengthy to go into here. To learn more about these projects, I urge you to look for a copy of Andy Murray’s biography Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale. Tomato Cain and Other Stories (of which “Minuke” is but one) has been brought out in a new edition recently by Comma Press. If you are just interested in today’s story, then look for anthologies such as Classics of the Supernatural (edited by Peter Haining) and A Classic Collection of Haunting Ghost Stories (edited by Marvin and Saralee Kaye).

If you need to know what happened to the Pritchards and Minuke right this very instant, well you are in luck. Here is a reading of the story from Tony Walker’s excellent Classic Ghost Stories Podcast:

So, that’s it for today, Gentle Reader. Come back tomorrow for more tales of the macabre. That knocking sound in the walls? Probably just the pipes. That’s nothing. It’s the fact that it’s knocking in Morse code that is disconcerting. Anyway...pleasant dreams? Hmmmm? Heh-heh-heh!