NIGEL KNEALE'S BEASTS - DURING BARTY'S PARTY (1976)

 

DIRECTED by Don Taylor 

SCREENPLAY by Nigel Kneale

STARRING - Elizabeth Sellars as Angie Truscott, Anthony Bate as Roger Truscott, Colin Bell as Barty Wills.

PLOT - Roger and Angie Truscott are a middle aged, middle class couple living in a remote country cottage.

One fateful night, Angie becomes afraid when she hears the sounds of rats scurrying about in the basement of her home.

Angie becomes even more afraid when she turns on the radio to listen to her favourite radio show -Barty's Party - and hears reports of giant sized, super intelligent rats that are slowly making thier way across the local countryside.

Roger dismisses it all as nonsense, but those sounds coming from beneath the floorboards are getting louder.

The rats are getting nearer...

It's time for Angie and Roger to become very afraid...very, VERY afraid !...

PERFORMANCES - Elizabeth Sellars and Anthony Bate who play the hapless Truscotts aren't actors that I've think I've ever come across before but judging by thier performances in this they're both extremely good.

The two basically carry the entire episode (they're the only two characters you actually see onscreen - Barty is only a voice on the radio and the Truscott's next door neighbours are just voices we hear from off camera). This helps to give the story more intimacy and aids the claustrophobic atmosphere as the unfortunate couple's situation becomes increasingly fraught and dangerous.

To begin with the Truscotts just seem like your average middle England couple that you see in lots of shows from this era. They're resolutely middle class, they live in a luxurious country retreat and they both seem very reserved and extremely conservative in thier attitudes.

Angie appears to be somewhat jumpy (not helped by the fact that she can already hear the sounds of the rats scratching about underneath the floorboards) and it's kind of implied that she's recently had some kind of nervous breakdown from which she's recovering.

Roger, for his part, doesn't seem entirely supportive or even sympathetic towards his wife's anxiety. In fact he seems downright scornful of her. He's not an immensely likeable character in the first act - he comes over as stuffy, pompous and very self righteous. He's clearly a self made and successful man with an old fashioned "stiff upper lip" mentality. I'll bet he's a total dick to work for.

This dynamic doesn't last for long however as reports start coming in about the rampaging giant rats on the radio (hats off by the way to Colin Bell as the radio D.J. Barty for creating what is quite possibly the most smugly annoying disk jockey I've ever seen being depicted onscreen - honestly if you had to genuinely sit and listen to one of his shows you WOULD end up flushing your radio down the toilet). 

As the reports continue and the scratching beneath them gets increasingly loud, Angie and Robert become even more terrified. Bizarrely - despite his earlier scornful reserve, Roger is the first to crack and descend into outright frothing at the mouth fear and panic, Angie, by comparison, starts to become more level headed (although still absolutely shitting herself), it's almost as if she has to start being stronger for the pair of them as Roger's nerve crumbles and the stakes get higher and higher and the couple's prospect of survival becomes bleaker and bleaker.

Flawless performances that completely sell the story.