CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES # 5 - THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS (1974)

DIRECTED by Lawrence Gordon Clark 

SCREENPLAY by John Bowen based on the short story "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas" by M.R. James 

STARRING  - Michael Bryant as Rev. Justin Somerton,  Paul Lavers as Peter - Lord Dattering,  Frank Mills as Mr Tyson,  Sheila Dunn as Mrs Tyson,  John Herrington as Abbot Thomas, Virginia Balfour as Lady Dattering.

PLOT - The Reverend Somerton is a rational man of both God and science. After debunking a pair of fraudulent psychic mediums with his protégé Lord Peter Dattering, Somerton sets out upon his next intellectual challenge - to find the lost cache of gold left behind by disgraced former Abbot Thomas, a man said to have sold his soul to the devil to become an alchemist.

Somerton and Lord Peter slowly unravel the cryptic clues and eventually uncover the location of the lost treasure but in his arrogance Somerton has not taken into consideration the presence of the treasure's unholy guardian...

DIALOUGE  - Rev. Somerton - "It is a thing of slime, I think...darkness and slime."

PERFORMANCES  - There's definitely a precedent that has been set for the main characters in M.R. James's stories by this point. Typically we have them as being  academics (or at least knowledge seekers of some kind) whose curiosity has gotten the better of them. They also seem to possess some unshakeable sense of rationality which is usually the first thing to crumble when they inevitably cross paths with the supernatural entities that populate these stories. Michael Bryant's depiction of the Reverend Somerton is no exception.

Perhaps the best scenes with Somerton are earlier on when we see him exposing and ridiculing a pair of fraudulent psychic mediums. He uses almost Sherlock Holmes style deduction to figure out the nature of thier false claims and seems to be gleefully enjoying himself in the process. He's arrogant, uncompromising and extremely smug. You can't for one minute make the claim  that he's a likeable character - but he IS an interesting one. He's also a character that you just know is going to be satisfying to watch come apart at the seams when his pompous worldview is eventually shattered. Bryant captures this smug pomposity brilliantly and also delivers when we see the after effects the haunting has upon him.

Upon awakening the treasure's unholy guardian and receiving several terrifying night-time visitations Somerton is absolutely shattered. He becomes a frail and sickly shadow of his former self, he's wheelchair bound, his voice shakes as he speaks, his confidence completely broken. You almost feel sorry for him...almost.

Lending a hand to Somerton we get the character of Peter, Lord Dattering played by Paul Lavers. Peter is a dashing young aristocrat. He clearly has a lot of respect for Somerton  -who is more or less his mentor - but this is tinged with a healthy dash of cynicism regarding some of his motives. 

At one point Peter points out that Somerton's interest in the treasure has "nothing at all to do" with the treasure's financial value (he has a big smirk on his face when he says this), Somerton quickly responds by saying that he's interested purely for academic reasons and seems a bit embarrassed to have been called out on it. I think if you where dealing with someone like Somerton on a day to day basis you'd have to take the piss out of him at some point, it'd be the only way you'd be able to cope with him.

Peter - of course - is the one who has to return the treasure as Somerton is too afraid to do so. He manages to get away with it too (unlike poor old Dr. Black in ''A Warning To The Curious''), Somerton isn't so lucky though as he gets a visit from the ghost of Abbot Thomas himself at the story's close.

The Abbot himself (John Herrington) is a shadowy and mysterious figure who we only see in glimpses. You get the impression he's always lurking around somewhere, never far away from our two treasure hunters. He could be any one of the cowled monks shuffling around in the background...listening in...waiting for his moment to strike. He's omnipresent and it works to the story's advantage.

SFX  - Funilly enough on the DVD introduction to this story director Lawrence Gordon Clark cites his favourite and least favourite special effects in this film...and I completely disagree with him.

Clarke says his favourite effect is when Somerton is "attacked" on the top of a church roof by some kind of winged entity. We just see the creature's wings and Somerton thrashing about - utterly terrified. This "effect" was achieved by Michael Bryant thrashing his black cloaked arms around in front of the camera - for some reason Clark seems really proud of this effect but its obvious that it's just a man waving his arms around frantically. It really doesn't work and the moment takes you out of the story.

The effect that Clark then says he's not happy with is the one which I think is the most effective - the demonic slime itself. Clark says that he'd like to go back to it and CG it up with modern technology but I think this would be a mistake. It looks absolutely fine the way it is - we really don't need a George Lucas style "special edition" of this film. Just leave it be.

VIOLENCE  - Theres no violence in this story, the damage done to Somerton is purely psychological, although I'm not so sure that he'll come out of his final meeting with the abbot in one piece but the end result of this is left to the audience's imagination.

RATING  - The Treasure of Abbot Thomas is unfortunately one of the weaker entries in the BBC'S Ghost Story For Christmas series. It's certainly not terrible by any stretch of the imagination - the performances are nice, the atmosphere is spot-on - but it's just lacking something compared to the earlier entries.

I think one problem is that the story is just too similar to "A Warning To The Curious". Both stories involve a search for forbidden treasure that is guarded by supernatural forces, its just that "A Warning To The Curious" does it a lot better. The characters here are less likeable, the supernatural guardian is a bit more nebulous and less well defined than the spectral figure of Ager who guards the lost crown. The "supernatural vengence" aspect also seems a bit half-arsed compared to the earlier film - in "Warning" Ager's ghost doesn't stop until everyone who's uncovered the crown is dead, whereas Abbot Thomas just gives one of them a bit of a scare (we don't even know if he's definitely going to kill Somerton or not at the very end). 

The story also spends a bit too much time delving into the process of the actual treasure hunt itself - There's a just a bit too many scenes of Somerton and Peter unravelling cryptic clues. To be fair to this adaptation its a flaw that's present in the original story, so at least it's faithful to it's source material, but in a 40 minute film it does serve to slow things up considerably.

I'm giving this 3 and a half slime beasts out of 5. It's pleasantly entertaining but Clark and the BBC (and James himself) have given us much better than this in previous entries.

ART -