NIGEL KNEALE'S BEASTS - BABY (1976)

DIRECTED by John Nelson-Burton

SCREENPLAY by Nigel Kneale

STARRING - Simon MacCorkindale as Peter Gilkes, Jane Wymark as Jo Gilkes, T.P. McKenna as Dick Pummery, Mark Dignam as Arthur Grace, Norman Jones as Stan Biddick

PLOT - Peter and Jo Gilkes are a young couple who have just moved into thier dream home - a cottage in the countryside.

Peter has taken up a post as the nearby village's new vet, whilst Jo is pregnant with thier first child.

Life is looking good for the pair...BUT - upon carrying out renovation work on thier new home they find sealed in the walls an ancient urn. Inside is... something.

Something that isn't quite human, isn't quite animal but appears to be long dead and mummified.

Jo believes the thing to be unnatural and somehow evil. Very soon a series of unnerving events begin to plague Jo.

The ancient 'mother' of the strange dead beast is out there...and she wants her unholy 'child' back...

PERFORMANCES - As I've been watching Beasts I've noticed something of a running theme that occurs with all the main male protagonists so far... basically they're all, to a man, complete and utter DICKS !!!

Whether you're dealing with sleazy, supermarket manager Colin Grimly in Special Offer, Wannabe gangster pornographer Dave (who's idea of "romance" is offering to cast his girlfriend in a porno movie) from Buddy Boy, right through to "stiff upper lip" tosser/rat's dinner in waiting Roger Truscott in During Barty's Party, one thing you can guarantee is that the male characters all share one thing in common - being deeply unlikeable, overbearing twats. They all seem to delight in putting down and oppressing the female characters that are unfortunate enough to have fallen into thier orbit. In fact, if I was from Gen Z I'd probably describe them as suffering from "Toxic masculinity", but I'm not from Gen Z, I'm old skool, so I'll just repeat my earlier description and describe them for what they are... overbearing twats

So, bearing this in mind it'll probably come as absolutely no surprise to you that Simon MacCorkindale's character - Peter - is indeed something of a twat who happens to be overbearing. In fact - he's probably the worst offender seen in the series so far.

Pretty much from the moment we meet him Peter is rude and constantly unpleasant to his pregnant wife Jo (Jane Wymark). It's almost like she's not allowed to have an opinion on anything lest Peter flies into a frothing rage. At times Jo seems afraid of him - and although we never see him raise a hand to her, you can easily imagine that one day he'll cross that line, and you can tell that Jo damn well knows that.

Peter seems to rule the house with a rod of iron and Jo seems to be constantly treading on eggshells around him as a result. The man's a bully, he's also conceited and arrogant clearly seeing himself as being somehow above the country locals that he now has to deal with on a day to day basis.

Peter is constantly and I mean CONSTANTLY only one bad remark away from flying off the handle. It's actually quite funny to watch - you could actually play a drinking game based on this guy. Take one shot for every time he screams into Jo's face and I guarantee you'll be having your stomach pumped down at A&E once the forty minutes or so runtime is done and dusted. I don't own the DVD box set for this show so I watched it on YouTube. One of the comments on there describes Peter as a "pent up ball of 1970's rage" and I really can't argue with the accuracy of that statement. It's a truly memorable performance. At one point Peter storms in apoplectic with rage because his colleague Dick laughed at him when he fell into a pile of cow shit - "I'M FINISHED WITH DICK !!!!" he yells. Hmmm...maybe there's something Petey-boy isn't telling us, maybe THAT'S why he's so frustrated and angry all the time ?...

For her part Jane Wymark is good as the oppressed Jo, you certainly connect with her desperation, fear and anxiety. You really want her to get on board with all the supernatural stuff that's going on on the background, so that hopefully she'll become empowered and kick Peter's miserable backside into next week. Sadly she doesn't...she just remains scared and fearful. A missed opportunity I think.

VIOLENCE - None. It's more a tale of creeping dread than bloodshed and that's perfectly ok.

SFX - Probably the most we've seen in this series so far.

For starters we've got the weird mummified "baby", which almost seems to resemble one of those old Fijian "mermaids" that you used to get in old sideshows. It's only a simple prop but it's suitably creepy looking all the same.

And then - in the very final scene - back from beyond the grave - we see the ancient witch who presumably "gave birth" to the mummified creature. She's absolutely freakishly horrible...

A superb makeup job - and to make matters even worse we see the re-animated "baby" suckling from her. It's a great moment.

RATING - Baby is a strange episode. In many ways it's the highlight of the entire series - it's the one everyone always seems to remember if this show comes up in conversation amongst British horror fans. It's well acted, extremely atmospheric and that ending is one of the greatest jump scares in 70's British horror.

BUT - as good as it all is, the story doesn't quite hang together. You get no sense of why the evil witch is coming back except for...well...just BECAUSE she's evil. Also, other than the fact that she clearly looks utterly horrific there's no actual real indication of the level of threat she actually represents. Is she going to consume 70's England in an apocalypse of fire and brimstone ? Is she going to kill Jo and (hopefully) Peter ? Or is she she just going to sit there looking like a boz-eyed vagrant making Jo's lovely cottage look untidy ? Your guess is as good as mine.

Basically the entire story is all just a set up to THAT final jumpscare, and although it's a good one I do feel the lack of any further context does make the story seem like a bit of a missed opportunity.

So, all in all 4 suckling mummies out of 5 (it would have gotten the full five if it wasn't for the lack of a satisfying explanation to the ending). Well worth a watch all the same though.