The Stone Tape

The Stone Tape (1972)

A research team from an electronics company move into an old Victorian house to start work on finding a new recording medium. When team member Jill Greeley witnesses a ghost, team director Peter Brock decides not only to analyse the apparition, which he believes is a psychic impression trapped in a stone wall (dubbed a "stone tape"), but to exorcise it too - with terrifying results...

Date of release
1972-12-25
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (44)
Runtime
1h 30m
Genres
Horror, TV Movie, Mystery, Drama
Director
Peter Sasdy

Casting

Interesting facts

The Stone Tape is a 1972 British horror drama television play written by Nigel Kneale, directed by Peter Sasdy, and starring Michael Bryant, Jane Asher, Michael Bates and Iain Cuthbertson. It was broadcast on BBC Two as a Christmas ghost story in 1972. Combining aspects of science fiction and horror, the story concerns a team of scientists who move into their new research facility, a renovated Victorian mansion that has a reputation for being haunted. The team investigate the phenomenon, trying to determine if the stones of the building are acting as a recording medium for past events - the "stone tape" of the play's title.

Background

Nigel Kneale was a Manx television playwright who had first come to prominence in the 1950s thanks to his three Quatermass serials and his controversial adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, all of which were produced by the BBC. Going freelance in the 1960s, Kneale had produced scripts for Associated Television and for Hammer Films.

In the middle of 1972, Christopher Morahan, who was Head of Drama at BBC2 and who had directed Kneale's 1963 play The Road and the 1965 remake of Kneale's adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, approached Kneale asking him to write a play to be broadcast over the Christmas period.

For the research facility at "Taskerlands", Kneale was influenced by a visit he had paid to the BBC's research and development facility which was based at an old country house at Kingswood Warren in Kingswood, Surrey. Similarly, the researchers working at Kingswood Warren influenced the portrayal of the members of the Ryan research team in The Stone Tape.

Kneale delivered his script, initially titled Breakthrough and later renamed The Stone Tape, in September 1972. Because of its subject matter, it was felt that the play would be best handled as an instalment of Dead of Night, a supernatural anthology series produced by Innes Lloyd. In the end, The Stone Tape was broadcast as a standalone programme but production was handled by the Dead of Night team under Lloyd.

Recording of The Stone Tape began on 15 November 1972 with the exterior scenes of the house, "Taskerlands". These were shot at Horsley Towers, East Horsley in Surrey. This was once owned by Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and sponsor of computer pioneer Charles Babbage. Production then moved to BBC Television Centre between 20 November 1972 and 22 November 1972.

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

Recommended