GHOSTS - THREE MILES UP (1995)
The weird tales of Robert Aickman (1914 - 81) have a psychological and expressive richness which have gained comparison with M.R. James. Still relatively unknown, four of his stories were adapted for NIGHT VOICES: The Hospice, The Inner Room, Hand in Glove and The Trains.
THE obscure HTV anthology NIGHT VOICES was produced by Patrick Dromgoole, a coordinator of fondly remembered ITV programmes such as SKY and CHILDREN OF THE STONES. THE HOSPICE was directed by Dominique Othenin-Girard, who would go on to very little notoriety by helming franchise entries HALLOWEEN 5 and OMEN IV: THE AWAKENING. THE HOSPICE is based on a story by the master of strangeness, Robert Aickman, and beautifully adapted by XTRO scribe Robert Smith. A bizarre purgatory tale, Maybury (Jack Shepherd) finds himself in the eponymous building, a lavish country house filled with ambiguous and eccentric characters such as the maître d’ (Alan Dobie) and an alluring young woman (Marthe Keller). Maybury begrudgingly accepts the offer to stay the night and is put in a room with Bannard (Jonathan Cecil), but a surreally restless night continues to an evenly more unsettling dawn, as he at last escapes the confines by being given a lift in the back of a hearse.
Like all great artists and writers, their essence is difficult to pin down; on the written page The Hospice begins "It was somewhere at the back of beyond," a good place to start in the unravelling of Aickmanesque. The six episodes of NIGHT VOICES were made in 1987 and 1988 but not broadcast until 1993, creating a fitting state of flux richly illustrated in the author's netherworlds. Aickman’s characters often find themselves trapped in a series of poetic events unconnected by logic, and few stories end clearly. A driven conservationist, Aickman had a disdain for modern living, and his draw to the supernatural can in some part be explained by giving him a platform to unmake an ordinary world. Yet for a person who preferred the past, this did not seem to include conventional gender roles; Aickman’s best stories feature women as liberated protagonists, while men suffer from varying strains of anxiety and repression.
Blackpool-born Jacqueline Leonard commands the GHOSTS episode THREE MILES UP. Leonard has been one of our leading television actresses, which has included runs in PEAK PRACTICE, EASTENDERS and CORONATION STREET.
GHOSTS was another six episode series, this time on BBC1 primetime in January and February 1995. THREE MILES UP is an adaptation of a story written by Elizabeth Jane Howard, which first appeared in the 1951 collection We Are for the Dark, co-authored by her then lover Aickman. Directed by Lesley Manning - best known for GHOSTWATCH - Billy (Douglas Henshall) and John (Dan Mulland) are estranged brothers who aim to repair their relationship after the death of their mother. They decide to go on a houseboat holiday, and after Billy blows an old whistle that the mother said to use if they were in trouble, they soon discover Sara (Jacqueline Leonard) sleeping under a fallen tree. As the trip becomes increasingly dreamlike - together with a recurring vision of the brothers as boys watching the mother drown in a freak cellar flood - Billy and John both fall under Sara's measured spell. When she recommends taking a route unmarked on the map, the brothers also succumb to a watery demise.
With Billy's history of mental illness and John resenting all the years he had looked after him, this premise is already alienating and underlyingly hostile. The passing landscape of a waterways journey adds to the detachment, and apart from one effective jolt scare THREE MILES UP is a slow-burning descent into impending doom. Henshall and Mulland are functional at best, and it is Leonard who carries the story, eerily glacial as her particular Mother Earth overpowers thoughts and processes. It is a fitting entry for both Aickman and Howard; Aickman co-founded the Inland Waterways Foundation, where Howard was a part-time secretary.