Although based on a short story by the master of the form, M.R, James, director Lawrence Gordon Clark’s 1975 offering in the A Ghost Story for Christmas strand plays more like a period monster film than a traditional ghost film. Adapted by David Rudkin, whose Play for Today, Penda’s Fen (1974) had been a paean to the mystical qualities of the English landscape, The Ash Tree stars Edward Petherbridge as Sir Richard Fell who inherits the family country estate but soon finds that it has unwanted guests living in the branches of an old ash tree. When his ancestor Sir Matthew (also played by Petherbridge) had condemned a local woman, Anne Mothersole (Barbara Ewing) to death for witchcraft, the family lined was cursed and the harbingers of that curse are a colony of hideous spider-like creatures.
The Ash Tree is one of the more under-rated of the Ghost Stories for Christmas, perhaps because it lacks the more ambiguous supernatural elements of the better episodes. As in Lost Hearts, the haunting presence here is more tangible, and therefore perhaps rather less frightening. Clark and his regular cameraman John McGlashan do their best but there’s no escaping the fact that the budget defeated John Friedlander’s best efforts to bring the spiders to life effectively. They look fine, horribly disturbing in fact, while scurrying up the the trunk and branches of the tree, but the close-ups of their human-like faces fail to convince.
Petheridge is fine in his dual role and Lalla Ward, soon to become Doctor Who companion Romana, Lucy Griffiths and Preston Lockwood give solid support. But the show is comprehensively stolen by Ewing, giving a ferocious performance as the wronged Mothersole. Her screeched curse – “None shall inherit!” – as she’s put to death is far more powerful and shocking than the rather stiff little monsters who turn up at the climax. One can’t but wish that Clark had chosen to merely suggest the creatures swarming from the ash tree to bring about Fell’s demise rather than resort to effects that the BBC simply couldn’t afford.
Rudkin keeps the basic plot of James’ story intact but adds in a few of his own distinctive tropes. As in Penda’s Fen and the later headscratcher …Artemis.. 8.. 1…. (1981) time is fluid, the past and “present” (the story is firmly set in the middle of the 18th century) intermingling. Fell’s fantasies about his ancestor get muddled with his own timeline as he seems to slip back to either witness or even participate in the historical events that are to lead to his downfall. Rudkin also adds a hint of sexual repression on the elder Fell’s part, a longing for the beautiful and earthy Mothersole that leads him to accuse, torture and eventually kill the object of his desire.
The hit-and-miss effects notwithstanding, The Ash Tree is a worthy addition to the Ghost Story for Christmas strand. More intellectually demanding than any of the other offerings, it lacks the tension of other episodes as it moves rather leisurely towards its horrific climax but the bold decision to present it without music (instead we get the unearthly, baby-like mewlings of the spiders, the ambient sounds of the English countryside and the plaintive song-humming of Mothersole), Barbara Ewing’s committed and powerful performance and Rudkin’s more experimental approach to the story make it worth half an hour of anyone’s late night Christmas time, though anyone expecting a more traditional Jamesian ghost story may be disappointed.
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