CHRISTMAS LEFTOVERS - CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES # 8 - STIGMA (1977)

DIRECTED by Lawrence Gordon Clark 

SCREENPLAY by Clive Exton

STARRING  - Kate Binchy as Katherine,  Peter Bowles as Peter,  Maxine Gordon as Verity,  Jon Laurimore as Dr. Hall,  Christopher Blake as Richard,  John Judd as Dave.

PLOT - The middle class Delgado family have recently moved into an old cottage located in a sleepy village. The cottage is located next to an ancient Megalithic stone circle, there is also an ancient stone in the garden of the Delgado's home. Husband Peter has paid some workmen to remove the stone but this is proving to be difficult.

Eventually the stone is removed and an ancient curse is unleashed. A curse which seems to have attached itself to Katherine Delgado. Katherine begins to bleed the wounds of a stigmatic...and the bleeding won't stop. Perhaps some things are better left buried...

DIALOUGE  - Peter - "OH NO !!!!!!!!" - His anguished cry as his wife slowly bleeds to death...a bit understated really considering what's happening...

PERFORMANCES  - Kate Binchy plays the doomed Katherine. At first she's just an ordinary everyday middle-class housewife and mother - she's left at home to do her household chores and fend for herself whilst her husband Peter (Perter Bowles) works away in the city. Katherine also has a slightly fractious relationship with her teenage daughter Verity (Maxine Gordon) - nothing too bad, just that lack of communication that usually comes to a head between an early middle-adged mother and her slightly surly teenager.

All in all life seems quite normal - if somewhat bland - in a comfortably middle-class sort of way. That is until the ancient stone in the back garden starts to be disturbed and an unnatural force begins to have its way with the unsuspecting Katherine.

Binchy gives a strong performance as a sheltered woman whose cosy little world is shattered as she begins to fall victim to the ages old curse. Her disbelief and fear is believable as she slides from occasional fugue-like states to outright shivering terror as she watches the mysterious unnatural wounds spring open on her body as she starts to slowly bleed to death. At times she desperately tries to fool herself into seeking innocent explanations for the bleeding (at one point she ALMOST convinces herself that the bloodstains on her clothes are from spilt red wine - until the bleeding begins anew). Basically, we're watching a woman coming apart at the seams - literally and metaphorically.

Peter Bowles and Maxine Gordon are also good as Katherine's husband and daughter respectively - they don't really get a lot to do but they both play thier roles in a believable and natural way.

SFX - There's a halway decent skeleton prop once the "Witch's grave" in the Delgado's back garden is opened and the effects for the bleeding are very convincingly done.

VIOLENCE  - Lots of close up shots of Katherine's bleeding wounds with authentically red and clotted looking blood...

Obviously poor old Katherine's body can't hold out against this kind of treatment for long and she slips into a coma. Eventually dying in the back of Peter's car as the puzzled local G.P. tries unsuccessfully to revive her on the way to hospital.

RATING  - Stigma is another strong entry in the BBC's Ghost Story For Christmas series. It's also something of a departure from previous entries being as it is an original piece of drama rather than a literary adaptation. Unlike previous entries Stigma is not a period piece and is instead set in the then modern day world of the 1970's. I think this makes the horrors that we see feel closer to home and more upsetting. 

Rather than being an actual ghost story as such Stigma is more of a "Folk Horror" type of story - some of the earlier M.R. James adaptations had some Folk Horror elements too but Stigma with it's backdrop of stone circles and ancient curses is much more on the nose.

Stigma also marks the departure of Lawrence Gordon Clark from the series who had been there from the very beginning. Its good to see him go out on such a high as this an excellent entry in the series.

5 cursed stones out of 5 - an early and overlooked classic of the Folk Horror sub-genre. Well worth a look.