Quarter 4 Reviews - 6/13

008 Horror – Old

You might have expected more horror in Quarter 4, given that includes October and November.  And When You Sleep You Remind Me of the Dead was quite freaky.  Originally from 1987, it starred Graham Padden as Ross, who had been involved with Angela (Natasha Pyne) once.  Angela came to him to ask for his help with her daughter, Tracy (Romy Tennant).  Tracy kept having a recurring dream.  It distressed her because the people involved were so anguished.  John, the man in the dream, was dying in a shell hole in WWI (Tracy didn’t know this but eventually it became obvious).  A little girl was trying to wake her mother up, and they were somehow related to John.  Eventually, Ross—who was a private detective—discovered that the previous owners of the house had been a couple—the man had died shortly after being sent off to WWI, the woman had died of a heart attack, and the daughter had found her dead.  Ross’ private detection skills are tested when he becomes involved in a séance.  Well-directed and very eerie. It was written by Trevor Walker and directed by Peter Windows.

I had some difficulty categorizing A Call from the Dead, but eventually I placed it in horror.  Dr Edward Elmore (John Shrapnel) gets a call in the middle of the night from his former patient, Stephen Warburton (Nick Dunning), who had always been troubled by fears of being confined, of premature burial.  When Stephen calls, he claims he has been accidentally buried alive and that he is calling from inside his coffin.  It’s possible—mobile phones are in use by 1997.  Stephen’s performance certainly fits a man in a panic expecting to die the way he was always afraid he would.  Dr Elmore hangs up on Stephen eventually, believing it’s just another relapse.  His wife suggests it might be worth checking it out.  Since Stephen gave very precise details of where he’d been buried, Dr Elmore does call the specific church.  He speaks to Rev “Nev” (Christopher Scott) who tells them they did, indeed, bury Stephen Warburton that very day.  Some very good performances and an audacious piece of radio. The drama was written by Carey Harrison and directed by Sally Avens.