It's also been a while since I saw John Hurt in a TV role and nowadays his lived-in face is perfect for an anguished role like this. The rest of the cast is minimal in number, pointing up his isolation. The unnatural eeriness of him walking a deserted beach in broad day-light and being completely alone in the boarding house seems a little unnatural however and stretches credulity.
The direction too is a little slow and grey and fails to convey Hurt's dread until the very end. A production then which for me lost something in the updating, and couldn't withstand the superimposition of modern-day post-traumatic psychology onto the source material of a hoary old Victorian ghost-story.
Lejink Jan 9, Details Edit. Release date December 24, United Kingdom. United Kingdom. BBC Drama Productions. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 52 minutes. Related news. Alice Lowe webchat — your questions answered on folk horror, Sightseers and sexy golf. Contribute to this page Suggest an edit or add missing content.
From his description, Parkins and the Colonel determine that there was a strange figure in white waving from the window of Parkins' room. They send the boy home then go to the room to investigate. The door is locked. Parkins unlocks it with his key. The room is undisturbed except for the second bed which is in a twisted mess. The maid swears she has not been in the room since the morning. The landlord has the only spare key, and he and his wife assure Parkins that they did not give the key to anyone.
The Colonel is silent and pensive during and after dinner. He examines the whistle before retiring to his room and declares he would throw it into the sea if it were his. There are no blinds or curtains on the windows in Parkins' room, and he is forced to rig up a makeshift screen to keep the moonlight off his bed. He sleeps soundly for a while then wakes to the noise of the screen collapsing.
The moon shines directly on his face. He is pondering whether to reconstruct the screen when he hears something moving in the spare bed on the other side of the room.
Parkins turns over to look and the noise stops. Then the commotion begins again. It grows till finally a figure sits up in what should have been an empty bed. Terrified, Parkins dashes to the window and picks up the stick he had used to prop up his screen. The figure spreads its arms and, with a sudden smooth motion, positions itself between the two beds, blocking Parkins' access to the door.
Then it stoops over Parkins' bed and blindly gropes around. Finding the bed empty, the figure then moves forward and faces the window. In the moonlight, Parkins sees it has a horrible face of crumpled linen. Then the figure quickly moves into the middle of the room groping and waving.
Its draperies brush across Parkins' face, and the professor cries out. Instantly, the figure leaps towards him. Parkins backs up screaming. He is halfway out the window with the linen face close to his own when Colonel Wilson bursts open the door.
By the time the Colonel gets to the window, there is only Parkins left, with just a heap of bedclothes on the floor in front of him. Parkins collapses. The Colonel gets him into his bed and spends the rest of the night in the spare bed. Rogers arrives at the Globe Inn the following morning, and the three men have a long meeting in Parkins' room.
Afterwards Colonel Wilson leaves the inn carrying a small object and casts it into the sea. The episode, entitled "Whistle and I'll Come to You", stars Michael Hordern as Professor Parkin, a middle-aged, eccentric and socially-awkward academic.
It appears late in the story, as Charles Halloway is talking to his young son Will about the duel nature of mankind. He recalls an old religious tract written by Pastor Newgate Phillips in which these individuals are referred to as 'Autumn People' Where do they come from?
The dust. Where do they go? At the beginning of the extract the:. Note how the chimneys sounded as though they were complaining and unhappy. This sets the mood for the rest of the extract.
The tumult of the wind, like a banshee, and the banging and rattling of the window in its old, ill-fitting frame. Then yes, again, a cry, that familiar cry of desperation and anguish, a cry for help from a child somewhere out on the marsh. There was no child. I knew that. How could there be?
0コメント