Poltergeist! (Part I of II)

WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT (2010)

"Based on a true story of the most terrifying poltergeist haunting in British history," WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT lacks any unease or scares, but has authentic 1970's hairstyles and beige décor.

THE word poltergeist is not only derived from teuronic poltern (to make sound) and geist (ghost), this mischievous spirit also originates from the first reported case in 856AD Germany. For an entity that enjoys the movement and levitation of objects - furniture and cutlery have always seemed favourites - this troublesome ghost often mirrors the prankster nature of its protagonists. In studies of anomalistic psychology, such occurrences can be explained by illusion and wishful thinking, and over the years unverified scientific research has referenced everything from unusual air currents, underground water and even ball lightning. Writer David Parson and author Sacheverell Sitwell have equated significant resemblance between poltergeists and the Nazis; in Parson's article about the supernatural at war, he surmises that "both are manifested in a subconscious uprush of desire for power ... both suck like vampires the energies of adolescents" and "Hitler speaks best in a state of semi-trance." Sitwell has also written of the Toadpool Poltergeist, a pebble-throwing spirit once based at his brother's farm.

Britain's premier ghost hunter Harry Price carried out tests on the so-called "Poltergeist Girl" - thirteen-year-old Romanian peasant Eleanore Zugun - at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in South Kensington during 1926. With Zugun sporting facial scares and bitten by unseen teeth, Price claimed "it was not until I brought Eleanore to London that the word poltergeist became common in the British press." Price was most famous - some say notorious - for his studies of the 1928 Battersea poltergeist scare, the Isle of Man's talking mongoose, the Brocken Experiment (a magic ritual involving a goat) and Suffolk's Borley Rectory, "the most haunted house in England." The backbone of the Borley legend was a nun found guilty of unchastity, walled up in the basement and left to die of starvation. Poltergeist deeds was necessarily pulled into the mix with flying crockery and the spirit ability to materialise lead pencils and mark interior walls.

Tasha Conner is the standout performer in this formulaic programmer.  

Pat Holden's WHEN THE LIGHTS WENT OUT is "loosely" based on the Black Monk of Pontefract manifestations, which allegedly took place at the home of Joe and Jean Pritchard between 1966 and 1969 (Jean was actually Holden's aunt, and the director's mother - a local psychic - frequented the house). During the paranormal action crockery and household ornaments were smashed, pools of water appeared on the kitchen floor, crashing noises shook the building, and a strange white dust drifted down from the ceiling. The case is unusual because it also includes the sightings of a physical apparition, a tall faceless monk dressed in black, said to be the ghost of a sixteenth century brotherhood (the monk's most noteworthy act was to drag the Pritchard's daughter Diane upstairs by the neck). Although the case was well-known locally, it was Colin Wilson's 1981 book Poltergeist! that widened its scope.

For the film, set in 1974, the poltergeist is portrayed as a warning. Jenny (Kate Ashfield) and Len (Steven Waddington) Maynard move into their new property with thirteen-year-old daughter Sally (Tasha Conner). From the start Sally is haunted by the spirit of a young girl, who she later learns was murdered by a monk. A séance reveals that both the girl's and the monk's spirits exist in the home, and after an exorcism seems successful, the monk returns for Sally, who eventually banishes the apparition using the dead girl's pendant. It's all by-the-numbers, with the only memorable scene having Jenny spooked by some suitably garish 70's wallpaper; in fact, it's this authentic smell that makes the feature palatable at all, with its misty clubs and creepy use of retro toys (Slinky and Buckeroo). Conner and Hannah Clifford - as school friend Lucy - are the pick of this dramatis personae, and in more disposable roles Martin Compston plays a concerned teacher and Gary Lewis is the disgraced Father who oversees the unintentionally comedic exorcism, which is further blighted by cheap CGI.

Alien Encounters

PREY (1977)
LIFEFORCE (1985)

A dog-nosed alien terrorises rural England in PREY, the strangest British horror movie of all time.

EXISTING in tandem with Hammer's decline was a vibrant sub-culture of independent filmmakers working with minuscule budgets but inspirational levels of enthusiasm. One such director was Norman J. Warren, who followed SATAN'S SLAVE with PREY, shot in ten days at Shepperton for around £50,000. A triumph of minimalism, with a principal cast of three, the film is the story of hesitant shape-shifting alien Kator (Barry Stokes), who adopts a human guise (and the name Anderson) from his first victim and finds himself stranded on Earth in the care of an unstable lesbian couple in their isolated home: possessive Josephine (Sally Faulkner) and childish Jessica (Glory Annen). Unnervingly bleak, PREY plays out its bizarre triangle with several moments of inspired weirdness: Anderson is forced to dress as a girl for a highly uncomfortable dinner party, and when the alien discovers he cannot walk on water, there is a seemingly endless slow-motion struggle in an improbably filthy stream. And when Anderson finally gets to go to bed with Jessica, Warren unleashes a truly shocking entrail-wreathed climax.

Josephine is more sinister than the alien, and has already killed one of her lover’s potential male suitors; Faulkner doesn't overplay this, and keeps the character at least two steps from insanity. PREY was Annan's first movie and despite a very halting style of delivery it is appropriate that she doesn't have the strength of Faulkner. Stokes is also memorable, his limited resources as an actor paying dividends where he's meant to seem awkward and an outsider. When he changes into his true form, however, Stokes looks less like a dangerous alien than a badly made-up dog on children's television. But considering the budget and the schedule, PREY is astonishingly effective and certainly deserves more attention. It’s also got one of the great final lines of any British horror movie.

Mathilda May's background in ballet lends her a certain onscreen elegance in the SF fiasco LIFEFORCE.

LIFEFORCE (commonly known as Lifefarce) is a film light years away from the intimate inventiveness of PREY, so conceptually ambitious that it bites off far more than it is ever capable of coherently presenting. Loosely based on Colin Wilson's 1976 novel Space Vampires, its tale of three sleeping humanoids brought back to Earth and draining London of its lifeforce plays more like a Quatermass scenario. Directed by American maverick Tobe Hooper, the film is remembered mostly for French actress Mathilda May - billed as Space Girl - who spends the entire film undressed. May is possessed of such a spectacularly statuesque physique that she could probably have conquered all of mankind even without her special talents, which include a form of electroshock vampirism and the ability to inhabit other bodies.

Hooper pays homage to his hosts, drawing on the British tradition of sci-fi drollness (tea is served as the country burns to a crisp), and much of its wryness is in the sincere performances: Peter Firth representing military authority and Frank Finlay playing the scientist ("well, in a sense, we are all vampires"). Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus sank a then substantial $25 million into the production, clearly seeing LIFEFORCE as the next SF blockbuster. Hiring ALIEN co-scripter Dan O'Bannon and STAR WARS visual supremo John Dykstra, the film however was a box office disaster. In fact, LIFEFORCE and Hooper's other two Cannon projects - the INVADERS FROM MARS remake and THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE 2 - ended up almost single-handedly sinking Cannon's finances and forced Golan and Globus to declare bankruptcy by the 1990s.