THE WOMAN IN BLACK @ 35

Arthur, a young solicitor, is tasked with settling the deceased Mrs Drablow's affairs out on the west coast of England. On the way to her funeral, he steps in to save a child from death via a trucking accident. Then, having been told there would be no mourners, spies a woman in black in the church who vanishes as quietly as she appeared. She's there at the burial and the walk through the cemetery. When he points her out to the local lawyer he refuses to look, falling into a panic. Local carrier Ketwick gives Arthur a lift to the  deceased woman's house, across a causeway, mostly submerged in seawater. He goes to the house and starts work among a mess of papers. Then he hears the sounds of a carriage crashing into the water and a child's screams. When the fog lifts there's nothing there. And he thought it was going to be a boring routine job in the country.

This adaptation of Susan Hill's early '80s novel was produced by the ITV network in the U.K. in 1989 and remains the best filmed version. The 2012 take with Daniel Radcliffe retools the subtleties of the source material to feature angry local yokels and chucks unearned jump scares at a rate of something like ten minute intervals. It was made to fit its time and feels far more dated than this older version. Watch it after you've seen this and you will never watch it again.

Nigel Kneale's adaptation of the novel compacts much but provides a clear logical narrative line. Kneale is a past master of mixing perceptions of time and history and manages to solve the epistolary form of the novel's middle section by using era-appropriate recording technology, wax cylinders, to allow Mrs Drablow's voice to provide essential narration. Adding electrified light to the 19th century house in the mid-'20s shows Mrs Drablow's wealth and canniness. She is not a fanciful witness to the supernatural incidents she reports. This adds veracity to what might have otherwise been a standard if effective haunting story.

Director Herbert West piles on the atmosphere, offering some enjoyable urban period detail, a cosy stream train journey, market town with all but smellable livestock and pubs and a location of a haunted house in a forbidding setting. The electricity that Kneale gave to the story offers comfort by joining the early '20s to the viewer fifty and more years later. After one chilling encounter, Arthur goes through the house, turning on every light he can find and we're glad of it.

The look and feel is uncinematic and claims no greater level than broadcast but the intensity of the staging is powerful. There's a broken family graveyard outside the house that Arthur inspects as a kind of curiosity. In a single shot, he responds to an intense sensation and turns around to find the woman in black standing behind him, close but metres away. Sure, the actor was hiding behind one of the headstones and popped up when the shot covered her to "suddenly" appear, but it works and how. I was so wary of seeing this after my first viewing (on home video) that I'd tense up if I showed it to anyone else. The sound of the carriage accident in the fog also works and intensifies later when it is shown not to depend on the fog or even time of day. The notion that ghosts might only be triggered playbacks of elemental records was something Kneale had based a whole television play on over a decade before. Here it links up to the wax cylinder recordings and discomforting incidents in the house. This adds up to a terrifying closed world and continues beyond its bounds.

The lesson here is big ideas working even with scant means. I have twice missed the theatrical version of this story in which a heavily minimised cast is used to great effect. That this television telling is so effective will come as no surprise to anyone who has schooled themselves in the BBC's Ghost Stories for Christmas which remain effective and always punched above their weight. The problem is that this is hard to get in front of, these days. For a long time there had only been a U.S. DVD available on online platforms due to discontinuation. In 2020, I took delighted delivery of a special edition but that label (Network Restoration) went bust. There is vague news of that edition resurfacing next year through another label. I hope that's true. In the meantime, there is the possibility of the play turning up near you. I'll recommend the novel. The 2012 James Watkins directed waste of time is a series of jump scares and cliches not present in the source material. It's the only film version currently available but must not be pursued. Somehow, I hope readers can find themselves in front of this, effective, spooky and satisfying tale.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK @ 35

Young London solicitor Arthur Kidd, travels to a remote coastal town to see to the estate of a local aristocratic woman. While in town, he rescues a child from death by crushing logs and, attending the woman's funeral sees the figure of a woman in black in and around the church when he'd been told there would be no mourners. At the house, he makes his way through the masses of paper to find anything that might need action. 

Routine stuff but on a stroll around the house, he comes upon a small ruined graveyard and, stung by a sense of dread he turns to find the spectre of the woman in black glaring at him with pure malevolance. He runs back to the house and locks himself in. At the end of the day, as he waits outside for his ride back into town, the seamists roll in and in the white void he hears the sound of a carriage crashing into the sea and the screams of a child. When the air clears and old Kekwick clops up on the transport. Rattled, Kidd goes back to the Inn in town, determined to unravel the mystery.

The Woman in Black, set here in the 1920s, was a novel from the '80s with a vaguely turn of century setting. Heavily original thinker in horror and sci fi, Nigel Kneale, wrote this adaptation for television. The post war setting is poignant, allowing Kneale some ways out of writer problems. Quite a lot of the novel is given over to letters. Even as late as the '80s the worst way of doing this was to narrate them over scenery or perhaps action but this forces considerable truncation and the burden of this correspondence is taken up with a complicated backstory. Kneale puts the narration on wax cylinders. Antique by the '20s, this device nevertheless lets us hear Mrs Drablow's storytelling, Arthur's own journaling and hints at the wealth and engagement with the world by the Drablows in having such a luxury to record their days and ways. 

The period also allows us to see Arthur as a compassionate professional in taking the difficult case of an ex army officer damaged by gas attacks in the Great War. He winces at the sound of the laboured breathing in the office but he is kind and forthright with the client. Kneale is pointing to the worldly horrors of war technology, how they are matched by the otherworldly ones at Eelmarsh House.

The backstory of the causeway haunting and the vengeful ghost that emerged from it must be pieced together by the alert viewer. This can go against the dense atmosphere of the production but the good news there is that as long as you have the basics you can easily sit back and enjoy this one. I only got the full story of it when I finally read the novel (in advance of the blithering 2012 feature film) and was happy to read through all the letters. By the time you're following Arthur running down the house's corridors or hearing with wide eyes the clopping of hooves through the mist, you're taken up with the thrill of it which allows only so much backstory concern to seep through.

The other side of this atmosphere is a very cosy warmth in scenes of vintage train travel, country inns and town markets. One of Kneale's (and director Herbert Wise's) admirable restraints here is to follow the source novel and dismiss the old Hammer Horror traits of the grumpy local yokels warning the city slickers "not to gaaaugh there! We told yer. Don't gaaaaugh therrrrre!" The people of the town might be a little roughshod but they're not cliches. James Watkins' 2012 Hammer production shoehorns this rubbish into it, along with a mass of cattle prodding jumpscares which were in high cinematic fashion at the time (and now used by the laziest minds in cinema). Kneale's Woman in Black has one (count it) jump scare which is fully earned and silences the most jaded genre fan when seen for the first time.

I seen this too many times to really be affected by my favourite scare (in the manorhouse cemetery) which is a sudden appearance. It happens in one long take and the ghost appears behind Arthur. The entire effect in those pre-CGI days would have been about physical blocking; the actor would have hid behind a prop headstone and, with the camera and Adrian Rawlings in the right places, was suddenly and terrifyingly there. Even the close ups, which you don't expect, of her blue glaring face which might be goofy, are unnerving. I couldn't watch the scene in isolation for years, even in a brightly lit room. The effect has waned on me a little but there's a trace of it still there and when I saw it again for this, I braced myself when the scene approached.

 For me this is a rainy night standard, especially when showing it to someone for the first time and best if it's cold enough for an open fire. It might help if you aren't too spoiled by the 4K pristine images of streamer movies and can settle into a vintage look and feel. It's not quite as bane bones as a '70s Dr Who episode but it's not the over egged garbage of the 2012 remake. What you'll get, if you're happy to settle into a well told ghost story, is a purely pleasurable journey into dark intrigue with atmosphere to bottle. But you must be ready to settle, that's how it gets you and that's how it works. And this still works.

Viewing notes: I have sad tidings bout this one. I first saw this in the '90s on a VHS rental. A little later I got a copy of the U.S. DVD release, by then out of print. During the plague in 2020, I was delighted to get the beautiful restoration on Blu-Ray from U.K. label Network Releasing. Finally, a respectful and well presented high def way to watch. What's more you had a choice of seeing it in a tastefully reframed widescreen or the original tv ratio of 4X3 with ad spacers (I watched it this way to see it closer to the original way, without the ads, o' course). Did you notice my use of the past tense there? That's because Network Releasing who were great for a host of U.K. tv and cinematic physical media, went bust last year and their back catalogue was either destroyed or distributed otherwise, not to be taken up by any other label. So, that will leave U.K. Prime for the streaming or (just checked) a second hand copy of the Network disc for over $200 AUD. Meanwhile, the jumpscare crazy bullshit version is there to play at a click on most  streaming services. But, not even for giggles should you watch that one.