Ripping Yarns: The Curse Of The Claw

Ripping Yarns was a series of, well, ripping yarns created and written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones to pastiche the 'Boys Own' adventure stories of their youths.  Among their targets were staples of the genre such as PoW stories, country house murder mysteries, public school hi-jinx and, in the case here, curses from the remote parts of the British Empire.

Taking a playful swipe at W.W. Jacobs' 'The Monkey's Paw', 'The Curse of the Claw' is the story of Sir Kevin Orr, newly widowed on his 60th birthday, who receives unexpected visitors who break his lonely vigil and to whom Kevin tells the story of the curse.

It's a gentle and fairly typical piece of post-Python comedy, very much of it's time and certainly not the best of the series but it retains much of it's charm and Palin is always very watchable.

Buy it here - Ripping Yarns - The Complete Series[DVD] [1976] - or watch it below.



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The Monkey's Paw (1988)

One of supernatural fictions most well known tales, W.W. Jacobs' 'The Monkey's Paw' has, since its original publication in 1902 in 'The Lady of the Barge', been parodied, pastiched and adapted many times in shows as diverse as The Simpsons, The Twilight Zone, Ripping Yarns, The X-Files, The Monkees and perhaps most recently Inside No. 9.  It's three wishes storyline and theme of being careful what you wish for has obvious and very enticing appeal for storytellers but has rarely been bettered in the telling than in Jacobs' story.

The version presented here is a fairly low key production from 1988 with a cast of little known actors of whom perhaps the most recognisable is Alex McAvoy who played the teacher in Pink Floyd's 'The Wall'.  It's a faithful adaptation with a nicely claustrophobic setting that despite its limited run time isn't afraid to strike a leisurely pace and allow the tension to build to its dread climax although it does perhaps miss the mark slightly in reproducing the horror of that moment in the original.



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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 welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain