Christmas: Time for Ghostly Revisits
Every year, as we approach Christmas, there’s a few experiences that I’m drawn to. A few Christmas traditions.
Christmas ghost stories!
If there’s a new one on the television, I'll almost certainly watch it. I’ll almost certainly rewatch some of the old ones, and re-read a few from my old, vintage book editions. I would say dusty to be evocative, but they’re not. I take better care of them than that!
For reading, Whistle and I'll Come to You and Casting the Runes by M. R. James are almost certain revisits, as is The Signalman by Charles Dickens, but for variety I’ll surely read a few others too.
For viewing, the same actually, and if I don’t watch Night of the Demon, the classic film with Niall McGuinness and Dana Andrews based on Runes, I'll be amazed. I'm also fond of the modern, videotape era adaptation of Runes that Yorkshire TV did with Jan Francis and Ian Cuthbertson.
Given a couple of new additions to my Dracula book collection, I've already started a slow re-read of that great gothic novel which will take me to the end of Christmas. This time, I’ll read it more studiously and prepare what I hope will be a studious appreciation among my growing set of such on Substack. There’s much to unpack about symbols and repression after all, and even though I’m hardly the first to do so, I’d like to give it my own style and take.
I’ll probably watch the classic 1977 BBC television version of Dracula with Louis Jourdan and Frank Finlay at some point. It’s the best screen adaptation to date and certainly the only one that evokes the cold chill of the book. Oh, how I wish, in this era that the BBC prepares old 1970s Doctor Who and Blake’s Seven series for Blu-Ray, they would do that title.
I’d be surprised if I don’t make time for the classic Hammer Films’ 1958 version of Dracula, with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, too.
Another great thing I like to revisit at Christmas time is the BBC serial of Quatermass and the Pit, with Andre Morrell, written by the great Nigel Kneale and directed by the great Rudolph Cartier.
Speaking of Kneale, given the imminent release ob Blu-Ray of The Stone Tape, I will almost certainly revisit that too.
There'll be a classic era Bond movie. It wouldn't be the winter holiday season without one of those.
To be truthful, and I admit it, it's a very, very predictable fare of revisits for me, and quite a lot. It’s the same core set of revisits from one year to the next, with a few variations at the edges.
I don't know why Christmas seems the right time for me to visit this specific fare all again, but it does, and I get so much joy out of revisiting these classics.
