The Ice House

 "But there is only ice in the ice house..."

This is the last of the BBC's original run of A Ghost Story for Christmas, screened just before Christmas, 1978. Like the previous year's instalment, this is an original story, set in the present day, which may well be counted against it. Worse, this instalment departs even further from its predecessors in not being directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. And there isn't even any suggestion of a ghost.  I understand it was rather panned at the time.

Personally, though, I rather like it.

Our protagonist is Paul, played by John Bowen who looks significently older than my forty-seven year old self does today, despite being five years younger- which is rather appropriate. Paul has separated from his wife (join the club...!), yet seems to have no spark for life, with no appetite for competition in playing croquet and seeing life as somnething to be "got through". He seems to have very little zest for ligfe to begin with.

And so he visits a very peculiar health farm, whose peculiarity is so very gradually revealed. The farm is run by a sinister, pansexual and incestuous brother and sister who seem to be symbolically (or literally) echoed by the flowers of a mysterious and sinister vine that covers a creeply ice house within the grounds... and holes appear in the windows of Paul's room which are the shape of the flowers of the vine... and rather phallic.

Paul's path to his inevitable doom, echoing those of the other zombified guests, is very well done. Yes, the performances are very mannered, but this works well in showing us a world where stultified middle class convention is a substitute for a life truly lived.

Definitely worth seeing.