How sad is this?

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

There is definitely an excellent idea hidden in the background of the film. Unfortunately, it's difficult to find it.

One-- It's from 1972-ish. So that means, hey, it's the 70's! Expect the Acting of that era, and the FX-- which is Bare Minimum.Two-- It's British. Which means there a lot more Talking (Or in this case SHOUTING!!!) than Spooking than you would be used to seeing from a movie done today.The angle of this spook movie...once you accept the 'Hand-wavium pseudo-science'...is the notion that 'Ghosts' aren't actually Spirits...but energy recordings. And in this case, the recording is captured in Stone and gets replayed again and again and again. (Hence, explaining why CASTLES are the source of Ghost stories) Enter in a corporate inventor and his team of scientists who set out to quantify a 'Ghost' they find in a castle room.Sort of a Para-normal GhostHunters done in the early Seventies...but without the camp.All in all, what struck me about this old flick was that it had the suspenseful flavor of another British flick 'Quatermass and the Pit' AKA '5 Million Years to Earth'.If you're willing to patiently ride with it, it's a pleasant little horror trip from an era that had to rely on suspense, hints and dialogue in the absence of modern CGI FX. And if you really let the concept run its course, the 'Deeper' story about what the 'Stone Recording' can actually be a little chilling at the end.This movie isn't a 'Main Event' by any means. But it's an entertaining spooky-touch for a cold Sunday Afternoon Viewing.

After reading the positive reviews here, I was expecting the work to have the caliber of say, "The Innocents", or "The Haunting of Hill House", ... I couldn't be more disappointed.Even science fiction/fantasy has its limits of credibility. Typing furiously into a teletype to 'program' a computer to recover 7000 year old events recorded into stones is not an intelligent premise or believable in my book, especially when the computer didn't really tell us anything more than what the human beings perceived. This group of supposedly hot shot research scientist then thought this was a breakthrough opportunity in the technology of recording medium. That just sent me howling.Now if the characters were convinced that the hauntings were nothing but recorded signals from the past, why were they so frightened by it? Finally the ensemble of actors must thought that they were performing a Greek tragedy in an open air amphitheater. You see, they enunciated loudly and clearly to one another all the time even when they are in a small room. It gets very irritating quickly.Approach it as a comedy if you must watch this.

Nigel Kneale of QUATERMASS fame wrote this intriguing tale of an electronics crew striving to create an alternative recording medium to magnetic tape and inadvertently discovering that a haunted room might provide the solution to their quest. Capably directed by Hammer Films veteran Peter Sasdy, though fairly slow through the first half of the feature and a bit heavy on exposition (and thick British accents). The chilling climax makes up for any initial shortcomings. A must-see for fans of intelligent ghost stories...

WARNING - ACUTE SPOILERSA team of free-marketeering research scientists move into their new R&D premises: an old English mansion house. Before they have even unpacked their equipment, the ghostly, shrieking apparition of a long-dead chambermaid besets them. The scientists' curiosity overcomes their fear and they set out to investigate. They discover that the phenomenon has a hard-science explanation; the "impressions" of past occupants have been recorded in the very stones of the house. These "mineral recording" are triggered by the emotional stimulus of anyone whom enters their vicinity. The scientists realise that a new and highly lucrative recording medium has been discovered. However, a particularly psychic-sensitive member of the group delves deeper into the mystery and discovers that the stones hold an even more ancient and deadly "recording".After watching The Stone Tape again after a gap of thirty years, I realised that I had just revisited an old friend. Friend or perhaps foe because my first encounter with it, age six, left me with lingering nightmares of which I had long forgotten the source. But looking again at this play left me in no doubt. I had found the culprit!Many regard "The Stone Tape" as Nigel Kneale's finest achievement, although that accolade is perhaps more rightfully retained by the Quatermass stories. However, this television play from 1972 is an outstanding piece of work that bristles with ideas, urgency and passion. It's typical Kneale in that respect. It also revisits one of the author's strongest conceits; that inhuman evil can invade our planet from both the skies above and the earth below. The nature of the evil in The Stone Tape is never explained. That's no cop-out. It's a device which gives the play the unbreakable logic of a nightmare. Perhaps these creatures are an unimaginable life-form from Earth's primeval past. Who knows? They are simply THERE.Another Kneale preoccupation, swinish, over-bearing authority figures, gets a good going-over here in the form of Brock, the head of the research team. Brock is a grade-A b****rd: driven, driving, callous, greedy for power and glory. A sociopath in other words, but the stuff of great corporate cultures nonetheless. He is also, as Kneale himself pointed out, a very weak man whose arrogance hides his fear of failure and blinds him to the truth.As with other Kneale works, the foil to this dangerous ambition is a more humane and sensitive figure, in this instance Jill Greely, a computer programmer. Her emotional compassion is matched by her psychic sensitivity, both of which are abused unto death by Brock and the dark forces within the house. In Kneale's book, good guys and gals finish last but always to the cost of wider humanity. Will we never learn?The Stone Tape is very ably directed by Peter Sasdy, a director more closely associated with the same period's Hammer films. Thankfully, the (tedious in my opinion) gothic Hammer house-style is largely absent here. Instead, Sasdy opts for a brisk but imaginative approach more in keeping with Kneale's writing.The performers give their monies worth. Michael Bryant portrays Brock with the necessary viciousness and energy. Bryant was a very familiar face on British television in the seventies. I remember him being a quite subtle actor. Here, however, he gets the bit between his teeth and gnaws. Perhaps a tad too much. He certainly makes Kneale's point though. The real acting revelation is Jane Asher's portrayal of Jill. Asher is now something of a celebrity TV chef and soap star, but in this production she shows an amazing grasp of character that goes some way to fill a few motivational gaps in Jill as written. Bravo, Ms Asher!Today, audiences starved of quality drama are brainwashed into thinking that a bucket-load of CGI effects will suffice. The Stone Tape had priceless writing and an effects budget of about ten pounds. But the effects work! In fact, as I watched the DVD recently, it was the effects that rekindled my childhood horror. The genuinely nightmarish scenes of Asher being chased up a set of stone stairs by a swarm of un-named, malevolent creatures hit me like a bullet. Swaying, shapeless green blobs with red, firefly eyes, and Asher's anguished struggle up those nasty stairs... only to fall, and fall, and fall... horrifying. I recalled almost nothing from the rest of the story except these images. And I remembered them PERFECTLY even as they replayed before my eyes. Memories and images can indeed lie dormant until the right stimulus awakens them. Nigel Kneale does it again!