Boris_G

I haven't seen this series since it was first broadcast, and I was all of 17 when I saw it so possibly my memory of it is distorted. But I do remember it being hauntingly beautiful in its on-location (as I remember it) rural setting, not least the underwater scene where Toby (Michael Maloney), a young student about to go to Oxford, discovers the submerged bell of the title; and I was impressed by Ian Holm as the repressed homosexual head of the community in which the action takes place. The drama, based on Iris Murdoch's novel, struck me as very powerful, and my hope of being able to see it again has been rekindled by the discovery that the score was by Marc Wilkinson, who also scored Peter Shaffer's "The Royal Hunt of the Sun" and that terribly titled but wonderful film "Blood on Satan's Claw".

Apologies for not being able to offer a more in-depth review, but since nobody else seems to have written about this series here and I fondly remember it, I hope this review stirs more into being written.

This is not one of those Amicus anthologies which present unexpected twists: three out of the four stories are utterly predictable from their initial set up. But then it's like one of those fairground rides - you see what you're going to get (eg a 25 foot vertical drop), but if you're into that sort of thing you can still get a thrill out of the ride (the last story in particular is quite unpleasant - watching it is like watching an unavoidable car accident in slow motion). While none of the acting is quite on the level that you get from Peter Cushing in particular in anthologies like 'The House that Dripped Blood' or 'Tales from the Crypt', it is consistently good (Joan Collins actually being more believable than in the silly story she appears in for 'Tales from the Crypt'), and Freddie Francis directs these with a good sense of atmosphere and character. One I wouldn't mind seeing again.

The film starts off promisingly with the opening night of a new opera on the subject of Joan of Arc, due to be sung by a Maria Callas type soprano. A series of discovered acts of sabotage culminate in the film's first shock-horror moment. So far, it looks as if its going to be an enjoyable hour and a half. Michael Gough is great fun as an eminently hissable villain, and Edward de Souza is fairly watchable, too, as the charming if rather conventional hero. But alas, it all goes horribly downhill from the Phantom's first appearance. Poor Herbert Lom is given a pretty duff script (a lot of ineffectual muttering to himself), and a frightfully tacky hideaway replete with tiger rug and a naff red-upholstered throne. The music this alleged genius writes is pretty awful too - a sort of cross between the worst kind of Gilbert and Sullivan and a Broadway show with truly cringe-worthy lyrics. And why exactly does the phantom rip his own mask off just before rescuing the heroine? A huge disappointment all round.