Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (97 page)

Lee himself had actually met the author in 1935, while he was a schoolboy at Eton during James’ last years as Provost. As he later recalled: “The first
thing I saw was a mummy in a glass case. The second was a little old man in glasses with a skin like parchment. This was the Provost, M.R. James. I knew that he was a master of the macabre, and I knew
Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary
very well. And so did all my form mates.

“Of course, I heard all about the fact that he used to recite his ghost stories to groups of colleagues and occasionally boys on winter evenings, but I am afraid I was never lucky enough to be among those fortunate people—although apparently they were almost scared out of their wits by his masterful storytelling!”

In 2005, BBC Four briefly revived
A Ghost Story for Christmas
with a version of “A View from a Hill” directed by Luke Watson and starring Mark Letheren as the owner of a pair of cursed binoculars. It was followed the next year by Pier Wilkie’s forty-minute version of “Number 13,” in which Greg Wise’s Professor Anderson discovered that his lodging house contained a ghostly room next to his own.

Originally broadcast by BBC 2 on Christmas Eve 2010, Andy de Emmony’s misguided
Whistle and I’ll Come to You
starred John Hurt and was billed as a “modern reworking” of M.R. James’ classic story. Unfortunately, scriptwriter Neil Cross seemed to mistakenly believe that he could improve upon the original, while the author’s name was banished to the end credits.

Made by Anglia Television, Clive Dunn’s documentary
A Pleasant Terror: The Life and Ghosts of M.R. James
(1995), co-written by the director and Michael Cox, featured dramatized extracts in which Michael Elwyn portrayed the author. Despite some unnecessary speculations about James’ sexuality, the excellent hour-long documentary featured contributions from Christopher Lee, Ruth Rendell, Jonathan Miller, Daniel Easterman and Laurence Staig.

Peter Lawrence’s
M.R. James: Supernatural Storyteller
(aka
M.R. James: The Corner of the Retina
, 2004) was a half-hour documentary produced by the BBC to introduce a series of repeats of the author’s work. It featured numerous clips from the broadcaster’s various adaptations of the author’s stories, and Sir Christopher Frayling, Muriel Gray, Michael Cox, Ruth Rendell, Kim Newman and Lawrence Gordon Clark were amongst those who were interviewed.

The most memorable—and only credited—feature film adaptation of M.R. James’ work is
Night of the Demon
(USA:
The Curse of the Demon
, 1957), directed by Jacques Tourneur. Based on “Casting the Runes,” Niall MacGinnis played the deceptively evil warlock Dr. Julian Karswell, who met his end at the claws of a fire-breathing demon (reportedly depicted on screen against the director’s wishes).

Ramsey Campbell has described it as “one of the most accomplished examples of British horror cinema.”

Campbell has also speculated that the scene in Hammer’s
The Brides of Dracula
(1960), in which the padlocks drop one by one off a coffin before Andree Melly’s fledgling vampire rises from it, were possibly inspired by a similar occurrence in “Count Magnus.”

Michele Soavi’s
La Chiesa
(
The Church
, 1989), co-scripted by Dario Argento, included several uncredited ideas from James’ story “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas,” while Hideo Nakata’s
Ring
(
Ringu
, 1997) also contained a number of Jamesian elements.

Sam Raimi’s disappointing
Drag Me to Hell
(2009) reportedly started out as a remake of
Night of the Demon
, and a few elements of the original story were retained in the screenplay.

Co-writer and director Nick Murphy acknowledged that his 1920s-set supernatural drama
The Awakening
(2011) took its cues from some of the literature of that time, including the work of M.R. James.

There have also been a number of short films based on James’ stories, including Patrick Amery’s
Lost Hearts
(2007) and Stephen Gray’s
Rats
(2010).

Given the author’s propensity for reticence in his stories, it is no wonder that they have perhaps best been served by radio, where it is left up to the listener’s imagination to conjure up the horrors only hinted at on the printed page.

The first known radio adaptation of James’ work was
Madam, Will You Walk?
, a forty-minute version of “Martin’s Close,” broadcast by the BBC on the Home Service in March 1938. Adapted by C. Whitaker-Wilson and produced by John Cheatle, the cast included A. Bromley-Davenport, Franklyn Bellamy, Gladys Young and the scriptwriter himself. Under its original title, “Martin’s Close” was also presented as an abridged reading by John Gloag on the same wireless service in April 1940.

The first American radio adaptation of M.R. James was William N. Robson’s “Casting the Runes,” broadcast as the thirteenth episode of the CBS series
Escape
in November 1947. The show featured John MacIntyre as Edward Dunning and Bill Conrad as Karswell.

In February 1949, the BBC broadcast a dramatization of “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” as part of its
Man in Black
series on the Light Program, and there were reportedly dramatizations of both “Casting the Runes” and “The Uncommon Prayer-book” on the Home Service in the early 1950s.

Around 1956, “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’” was produced for, of all things,
Children’s Hour
, and radio’s Man in Black himself, Valentine Dyall, read an adaptation of “A Neighbor’s Landmark” a year or two later on air.

“The Tractate Middoth” was atmospherically re-titled
A Mass of Cobwebs
when it was adapted by Brian Batchelor for an April 1959 broadcast on the BBC’s Light Program.

In the early 1960s, Erik Bauersfeld’s
Black Mass
series, which ran on stations KPFK/KPFA in Berkeley, California, broadcast adaptations of both “The Ash-tree” and “An Evening’s Entertainment.”

The well-known English stage actor-manager Sir Donald Wolfit appeared in a Home Service dramatization of “Martin’s Close” in August 1963. Four months later, the same station broadcast a half-hour version of Michael and Mollie Hardwick’s adaptation of “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,’” which featured Michael Hordern as Perkins, a role he would recreate in Jonathan Miller’s controversial television production five years later.