Mr Nightingale

'Mr Nightingale' is an episode of the 1977 BBC1 series 'Supernatural' where an initiate tells a story ro gain membership of the 'Club of the Damned' and here it's the story of an Englishman (Jeremy Brett) in Hamburg on business staying with a local family who discovers he has a double or does he?  Dum Dum Duuuuum!

With very limited sets but a solid cast pulled from the supporting casts of such Wyrd Britain delights such as 'Countess Dracula' (Lesley-Ann Down), 'Doomwatch' (Bruce Purchase & Donald Eccles) and 'The Tomorrow People' (Mary Law) and a workable, if slightly hackneyed, story it could have worked but unfortunately doesn't and the lion share of it's failure must be borne by it's lead.  Brett is very much of the Vincent Price school of acting and has never seen a piece of scenery that he didn't want to chew.  Here he's dialled all the way up to 11 and utterly manic in the role of the increasingly doolally title character but his performance elicits cringes and sniggers rather than any empathy .

I hadn't intended on posting this here as in all honesty I thought it was really quite awful but as it would have been Brett's 89th birthday this last week I thought I'd embrace the opportunity and besides someone may enjoy it.

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Dorabella

'Dorabella' was the final episode of the 1977 BBC series 'Supernatural' that consisted of eight episodes of gothic horror that harked back to the classic horrors of the 1930s but to my eyes more closely resemble the gothic delights produced by the Hammer Studio in the early 1970s. Each episode featured a prospective member of the 'Club of the Damned' as they made their case for admittance by telling a terrifying true story of their encounters with the supernatural.

Written By Robert Muller (who wrote 7 of the 8 episodes) 'Dorabella' tells the story of an enchanting vampire and of the two young men who have fallen for her charms as they follow her across the country, for the most part ignoring the carnage left in her wake.

Like the other episodes from the series that we've featured in these pages the episode is beautifully produced but suffers from a slightly histrionic script and features a cast with a penchant for leaving teeth marks in the scenery. Ania Marson does make for a suitably bewitching lead though, at times positively oozing malice, and this is one of the better episodes of a series generally regarded as a bit of a noble flop.

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Ghost of Venice

The 1977 BBC anthology series 'Supernatural', created and almost entirely written by Robert Muller, was intended to be a return to old fashioned gothic tales and the classic creatures of horror.  The series found new prospective members of the 'Club of the Damned' telling a sufficiently terrifying tale that would grant them membership or death.

This, the first episode, takes ageing Shakespearean actor Adrian Gall (Robert Hardy) whose maniacal rage at a theft only he remembers many years before during a performance in Venice returns him to that city to face the ghost of his past in the form of Leonora (Sinéad Cusack).

Filled with flowery monologues and a hysterically hammy performance from Hardy that will have you chuckling and cringing in equal measures.  The studio bound setting of the production makes everything feel a little cheap and the script could certainly have done with some judicial editing to curb it's more floridly bombastic aspects.  The series is generally regarded as a bit of a failure; already old fashioned in tone and in production values upon release it certainly hasn't aged well but personally I quite like a noble failure even if it's just for it's unintended comedy value of which there is plenty here.

You can find another episode from the series here - Night of the Marionettes.



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Night of the Marionettes

Created and mostly written by Robert Muller the 1977 BBC anthology series 'Supernatural' was an attempt to make a series of - even then - old fashioned gothic horror tales filled with vampires, werewolves and the like.  Each episode revolved around the telling of a scary tale by a prospective member of the 'Club of the Damned' who, if their tale proved sufficiently terrifying would be granted membership, if not then their lives would be forfeited.

'Night of the Marionettes' tells of a writer (Gordon Jackson - 'George Cowley' from 'The Professionals') obsessed by Lord Byron and the two Shelley's - Mary in particular - who, with his wife and daughter in tow,  takes lodging at a deserted Swiss hotel where he becomes convinced that the source of his obsession had lodged before him.  Indeed, it soon becomes clear that the exuberant marionette show performed by the innkeeper (Vladek Sheybal) and his family may have had quite the profound effect on the young Mary.

The end result is a flawed attempt at an interesting idea.  Sheybal gives his usual wonderfully alien performance but Jackson and Pauline Moran (most widely known as Poirot's 'Miss Lemon' and who also played the titular character in the Nigel Kneale adaptation of 'The Woman in Black') who plays his daughter - also called Mary - are both hamming it up something terrible and only seem comfortable in their roles when engaging in some incestuous flirting.  The old, wooden hotel is a great setting though and there's a wonderfully Hammer Horror graveyard visible through the window and in more capable hands this could have been a gothic classic rather than just an interesting flawed attempt at revitalising the genre.

Buy it here - Supernatural (2-disc DVD set) - or watch it below.



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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much appreciate a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain