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darchildre) wrote2015-11-03 08:22 am
darchildre) wrote2015-11-03 08:22 am
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So, I realize Halloween is over and you guys may be out of the market for spooky, but in case you're not:
BBC Radio made a pretty cool audio adaptation of The Stone Tape and you can listen to it streaming for the rest of the month. And you totally should, because it's pretty great.
What is The Stone Tape, you may be asking? Originally, it was a made-for-tv BBC movie, written by Nigel Kneale, so you know it's going to be gorgeously unsettling sci-fi/horror. It concerns a team of researchers, set up in an old Victorian mansion, trying to develop a new recording medium. They discover that the house is haunted - the basement room occasionally contains a woman in Victorian dress who screams, runs up a set of stairs, and falls to her death. The head of the research team decides that this vision is itself a recording and the focus of the team's research shifts to investigating it. It is one of the best examples of cosmic horror I've ever seen filmed and it's wonderful.
And now there's a radio drama version! I like the audio version, and it's free right now (so you can start with that), but it's not quite as good as the original movie for two reasons. One of them deals with the climax of the story, and that shouldn't be spoiled, so don't click the cut unless you've seen it.
1) The original was actually made in the 1970's while the adaptation is merely set in the 70's. I feel like this rather undercuts the feminist subplot of the story. The original has some pretty biting things to say about what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated workplace. The adaptation, since it's essentially a period piece, allows the listener to think, "Oh, things were really bad back then, but we're so much better now!" And of course, that's not really the case, as anyone who's read anything about women in tech (to name but one example) could tell you.
2) The climax of this story is one of the few places in media where I feel like you really need a visual. I mean, it shouldn't be a coherent visual because that's not how cosmic horror works, but the horror in that last moment is really due to how much bigger things are than they were previously imagined to be - the stairs are suddenly infinitely high, the basement opens up into an endless void. Maybe this is a lack of imagination on my part, but audio drama always feels intimate and close. I never get a sense of huge spaces, no matter what the sound effects do, and I wanted that at the end.
Despite those two things, this is a fun and properly unsettling radio play. Highly recommended.
BBC Radio made a pretty cool audio adaptation of The Stone Tape and you can listen to it streaming for the rest of the month. And you totally should, because it's pretty great.
What is The Stone Tape, you may be asking? Originally, it was a made-for-tv BBC movie, written by Nigel Kneale, so you know it's going to be gorgeously unsettling sci-fi/horror. It concerns a team of researchers, set up in an old Victorian mansion, trying to develop a new recording medium. They discover that the house is haunted - the basement room occasionally contains a woman in Victorian dress who screams, runs up a set of stairs, and falls to her death. The head of the research team decides that this vision is itself a recording and the focus of the team's research shifts to investigating it. It is one of the best examples of cosmic horror I've ever seen filmed and it's wonderful.
And now there's a radio drama version! I like the audio version, and it's free right now (so you can start with that), but it's not quite as good as the original movie for two reasons. One of them deals with the climax of the story, and that shouldn't be spoiled, so don't click the cut unless you've seen it.
1) The original was actually made in the 1970's while the adaptation is merely set in the 70's. I feel like this rather undercuts the feminist subplot of the story. The original has some pretty biting things to say about what it's like to be a woman in a male-dominated workplace. The adaptation, since it's essentially a period piece, allows the listener to think, "Oh, things were really bad back then, but we're so much better now!" And of course, that's not really the case, as anyone who's read anything about women in tech (to name but one example) could tell you.
2) The climax of this story is one of the few places in media where I feel like you really need a visual. I mean, it shouldn't be a coherent visual because that's not how cosmic horror works, but the horror in that last moment is really due to how much bigger things are than they were previously imagined to be - the stairs are suddenly infinitely high, the basement opens up into an endless void. Maybe this is a lack of imagination on my part, but audio drama always feels intimate and close. I never get a sense of huge spaces, no matter what the sound effects do, and I wanted that at the end.
Despite those two things, this is a fun and properly unsettling radio play. Highly recommended.