!!Spoiler warning: This review gives away the ending!!

Broadcast in four half-hour episodes on successive Friday evenings from 1 May 1981, this fondly remembered science fiction/horror mini-series was adapted from the 1978 novel Child of Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire by Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield, both Doctor Who alumni. From the title one might reasonably expect a purely horror story and initially, with its snarling “monster” complete with red-tinted point-of-view shots, that’s where it looks like it’s going. In the end it turns out to be science fiction, a denouement that disappointed some at the time but which is actually more chilling than a simple monster on the loose tale.

Colonel Howard (Jonathan Newth) arrives on the Hebridean island of Inverdee, apparently on a break from duties at the very end of the tourist season. His arrival coincides with a series of brutal murders committed by an unseen assailant whose vision is dyed blood red and who snarls and slobbers as it attacks. Locals Michael Gaffikin (James Warwick), the island’s dentist, and Fiona Patterson (Celia Imrie), the local pharmacist become involved in the investigations being run by Inspector Inskip (Maurice Roëves) and Sergeant Carch (James Cosmo) who are baffled by both the number of bodies and the ferocity of the attacks – victims have been literally torn apart. As rumours sweep the island, the killings continue until Howard is revealed to be a Russian soldier leading a covert force to retrieve a Vodyanoi, an experimental one-man submarine/aircraft that has washed up on the island’s shores. Its pilot (Pat Gorman, another Doctor Who veteran) had been cybernetically wired into the craft and has been driven to a murderous rage after being forcibly disengaged during the crash.

The resolution of the mystery and the final reveal feel a tad rushed and wrapped up too neatly but is nonetheless effective, and though some were disappointed that the killer turned out not to be the ravening monster (“all of the evidence we have got to date, points to something which is half human, half animal”) or murderous alien invader that the characters believe it to be, the truth is actually even more chilling. Howard reveals that there are more Vodyanoi pilots out there, all subjected to the same training programme that created the killer. Howard is quick to defend the pilot – “that’s not Genyeva’s fault,” he snaps at Gaffikin when the latter accuses the pilot of being nothing more than an animal, “it’s what was done to him!” The implication that there are many more Genyeva’s out there, minds and bodies genetically and mechanically enhanced by the Russian military and all potentially unstable if they’re forced to forcibly disconnect from their ships is understated here but quite chilling.

The first couple of episodes are as atmospheric as videotape will allow (at the time, The Nightmare Man was unusual for being shot entirely on outside broadcasting cameras and not the mix of tape for interiors and film for exteriors that had long been the norm for British television drama) and the mystery is engrossing and nicely paced. It cleverly shows the speed at which rumour and paranoia can spread through a small enclosed community as the locals react to the news of several deaths on the island with talk of satanic cults, UFOs and aliens.

Holmes was noted for his “double acts” in the Doctor Who stories he wrote, two characters that are put together for comic relief (see Vorg and Shirna, the owners of the eponymous Carnival of Monsters (1973), Jago and Litefoot from Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977), the con men in The Ribos Operation (1978) and many others) and here it’s the two island coppers, Maurice Roëves as Inspector Inskip and James Cosmo as Sergeant Carch whose cynical, slightly world weary outlook helps to root the more fantastical elements of the story.

With its excellent cast, nicely chosen locations (Port Isaac in Cornwall stands in effectively for the fictional Outer Hebridean island of Inverdee), moodily lit by Clive Potter, The Nightmare Man struck a chord with viewers in 1981 but the BBC never repeated it, though they did release it on DVD in 2005. It’s inevitably showing its age now. In an era of fast moving television filtered in post-production to look like it was shot on films, The Nightmare Man‘s video look will be alien to many younger viewers and its peculiar pacing (it tends to take its time in the first three episodes then break into an unseemly gallop in the fourth) might be equally off-putting. But it’s a thought-provoking, gripping thriller that may not end up where you expected (or wanted) it to be but which will keep you guessing and engrossed throughout.

David Wiltshire, author of the original novel, had written it in response to fond memories of seeing Howard Hawks’ The Thing from Another World (1951) and Holmes had reverted to Wiltshire’s working title when he wrote the scripts. Wiltshire was a former dentist who felt that his profession was rarely treated fairly or interesting enough in fiction which explains Gaffikin’s job here. Although Wiltshire was displeased with the minor changes that Holmes made to his script, he was impressed enough by the production that he approached producer Ron Craddock with a view to adapting another of his novels, Genesis II, about cloning, but the BBC balked at the potential cost and it was never optioned. Wiltshire later tried, unsuccessfully, to get a Hollywood remake of The Nightmare Man of the ground.