The Stalls of Barchester
Directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark
The discovery of a mysterious box in a library leads a scholar to piece together a chain of events leading to the murder of an archdeacon.
An ambitious cleric engineers the murder of an archdeacon.
Cast: Harold Bennett, Clive Swift, Erik Chitty, Robert Hardy, Thelma Barlow
Member Reviews
Richard Bucket is in this tale.
I appreciate James' understated style of horror writing. His tales terrify but are not dependent on gore, over the top stories and characters. He has buttoned-up characters who are not the sort you expect to go in for ghost hunts and adventures, and so when they encounter the numinous, they are all the more terrified and leave us feeling this same terror. His stories lend themselves to understated filmmaking like this. What some call boring and slow, I think are precisely what James was master of.
An amazing adaptation of what I consider one of James's somewhat disjointed tales. The story actually flows better and makes more sense in this wonderful drama. A truly classic and compelling ghost story.
1970s does 1800s, darkness, wood, candles, strange occurances, creaking floors, lonely footsteps, old manuscripts, divine (or hellish) retribution adds up to my favorite sort of horror, whether it's Stalls and really any of the A Ghost Story for Christmas films. Add in a hot mug of tea and a cosy warm blanket and you've got a perfect winter evening's entertainment.
Not as good as the other ones in my opinion was a little tedious but has creepy moments, just ok definitely not bad