The Ash Tree

The Ash Tree (1975)

Man of leisure Sir Richard receives notification that his Uncle has died, bequeathing him his stately country manor and all its lands. On his return to England he immediately sets about taking stock of all legal matters concerning his new property, but during these dealings Sir Richard seems to be more than a little distracted, he hears strange noises from the ash tree outside his bedroom window.

Date of release
1975-12-23
TMDB
6.3 / 10 (21)
Runtime
32m
Genres
Mystery, Horror, TV Movie
Director
Lawrence Gordon Clark

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: The Ash-tree

The Ash Tree is a short film which is part of the British supernatural anthology series A Ghost Story for Christmas. Written by David Rudkin, produced by Rosemary Hill, and directed by the series' creator, Lawrence Gordon Clark, it is based on the ghost story "The Ash-tree" by M. R. James, first published in the collection Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904), and first aired on BBC1 on 23 December 1975.

Production

Clark is less than complimentary of his adaptation of "The Ash Tree", which he felt didn't make Mistress Mothersole an effective villain, as a result of both his and adaptor David Rudkin's sympathy for witch trial victims; "We know so much about the hysteria of the witch trials and the ignorance and downright evil that fueled them that it was well-nigh impossible to portray her as James intended.

Clark gave his writers a lot of leeway in their interpretation of James's original stories, and Rudkin's "television version" changes the well-off Mistress Mothersole (Barbara Ewing), who has property of her own, into a younger and more attractive woman, hinting at a sexual attraction between her and Sir Matthew that would have been unthinkable in James's original 1904 story.

Clark relocates the Suffolk scenes of James's original story to Cornwall, with Prideaux Place near Padstow featuring as Castringham Hall. The scene of the hanging of the witches was filmed at the Cheesewring on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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