CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES # 2 - CASTING THE RUNES (1979)

 DIRECTED BY Lawrence Gordon Clarke 

SCREENPLAY BY Clive Exton based on the short story Casting The Runes by M.R. James

STARRING - Jan Francis as Prudence Dunning,  Bernard Gallagher as Bernard Gayton,  Joanna Dunham as Jean Gayton,  Edward Petherbridge as Henry Harrington,  Iain Cuthbertson as Julian Karswell,  Christopher Good as John Harrington.

PLOT - TV journalist Prudence Dunning has just had her most recent work broadcast on nationwide television - an expose of the criminal practices of international occult celebrity Julian Karswell.

Karswell seeks Prudence down and secretes upon her a piece of paper containing runic symbols that will call upon a supernatural curse that will strike her dead in one month's time.

Learning about the curse from the brother of it's previous victim, Prudence must find Karswell and hand the runes back to him before she becomes the curse's latest victim - but finding the elusive Karswell may prove more difficult than it seems, and even if she does succeed in removing the curse, the consequences of doing so may be more terrible than Prudence can bear...

PERFORMANCES - As regular readers of this blog have probably guessed, this short TV drama is adapted from the same M.R. James story as Night Of The Demon which I reviewed on here last week. However, although the two productions have sprung from the same imaginative well thier separate ways of telling the story differ quite a lot, so I thought it'd still be interesting to take a look at this little oddity.

Casting The Runes was directed by Lawrence Gordon Clarke who throughout the 70's was best known for directing the BBC'S annual Ghost Story For Christmas (many of which where also based on stories by M.R. James - I reviewed them all on this blog last Christmas). By the end of the decade Clarke had switched his alliengences to rival TV network ITV, so this short film was broadcast as part of thier ITV Playhouse series but it's really a hidden entry in the Ghost Story For Christmas series in all but name.

Comparisons between the main characters/performances between this and Night Of The Demon are unavoidable - so I'm just going to run with it...

Prudence (Jan Francis) is a vastly different main character to Demon's Holden (Dana Andrews) not just due to the fact that her gender and nationality have been flipped but also in terms of the character's outlook. 

Whereas Holden was shown to be cool and unflappable under pressure (almost to the point of bull headed stupidity), Prudence is a lot more traumatised by the supernatural curse that has been unleashed upon her. There's several points where she totally loses it and breaks down in tears (as you probably would do if an ancient demon was coming to kill you). Rather than ruin the character by making her seem "weak", this actually makes Prudence a lot more believable and realistic. She also manages to rise above her fear (more out of necessity than due to any ingrained natural courage) and starts to show quite a devious side when she begins to play Karswell at his own game. Ultimately she wins this battle of wits but at a massive cost...

I really liked Dana Andrews' cheesy 50's charm but Prudence is an altogether more rounded, realistic and satisfying main character.

Iain Cuthbertson plays Karswell this time round and whilst he makes a decent stab at it he's not a patch on Niall McGuiness in Night Of The Demon.

Karswell is another character who's had his nationality flipped in this version (he's an American this time round). He's an altogether more shadowy figure than McGuiness' Karswell. He gets very little screen time, so we don't get to know the character as well. Half the time we just see glimpses of him and he's usually wearing a long dark coat and fedora hat giving him a dark and shadowy presence. He's basically the stereotypical "sinister man in black". When we do properly get to meet him he seems a lot more unhinged than McGuiness' Karswell ever was.

He plays with voodoo dolls and laughs maniacally to himself - he also takes great pleasure in describing to Prudence just exactly how the curse is going to do for her. He's almost Bond villain-esque in places. It's an interesting take on the character but I miss the more humanised and restrained version of Karswell that we got in the original.

SFX - As with Night Of The Demon we do get to see the entity that kills on Karswell's behalf. Obviously with this being a TV production with a fraction of the budget and the original Demon being so iconic, the Demon here can't hope to possibly compete but... he's still pretty cool in his own way.

What we get here is basically a gargoyle statue that attacks and kills in the blink of an eye. We never see it move as such, it just appears and kills - it puts me in mind a bit of the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who and is similarly creepy and effective. It does make me wonder if the Demon here was an influence on the Weeping Angels.

VIOLENCE - The Demon only kills one person on camera during the prologue scene. John Harrington has recently managed to get himself on Karswell's shit list. The Demon chases Harrington and kills him. We see Harrington crumple to the floor screaming in agony as the (invisible to everyone else) Demon kills him by apparently breaking every bone in his body.

At the end of the film Prudence fools Karswell into taking back the runes (thus causing the curse to backfire on him) by posing as an airport worker and slipping the runes into his plane ticket. This has the unfortunate side effect of the Demon causing the plane to crash - killing Karswell and everybody else on board the plane. We don't see this happen (the budget wouldn't extend to a plane crash), we instead see Prudence's horrified reaction upon hearing the news. The implication is clear - she's succeeded in saving her own skin but has caused the deaths of innocent people in the process. This one's on her and she's just going to have to live with the guilt for the rest of her life. Harsh...but it's a bloody good ending all the same.

RATING - All in all this is a decent adaptation of M.R. James' original story, if anything it's probably closer to the James' tale than Night Of The Demon was (despite it's modernised setting). Some parts of it are nowhere near as good as Night Of The Demon, whilst other aspects actually manage to surpass it. It's never going to supplant Tourneur's film in the affections of classic horror fans but I do think that it sits comfortably alongside it and holds its own admirably.

Before I go, there's another aspect of this film that I really loved and that's the outdoor photography of snowy late 70's/early 80's locations. 

It really puts me in mind of what British winters where like back then - the rows of snowed in cars, the grimy looking houses blanketed by soft white snow. It's both cosily nostalgic and bleakly atmospheric and I love this aspect to bits. 

For some reason it just reminds me of trudging home from Primary school knee deep in snow or my mum scrapping ice off her car windscreen in the morning. For a kid who grew up back when we still had proper winters this is all very evocative. It's an added bonus to an all round excellent little film.

4 and a half runic curses out of 5.

ART -