M.R. James purists were dismayed by what Jacques Tourneur did to his 1911 short story Casting the Runes when he directed Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester’s adaptation, titled variously Night of the Demon or Curse of the Demon (1957). They might have been happier with the Mystery and Imagination (1966-1970) adaptation broadcast on 22 March 1968 (sadly now lost) as it at least stuck to the original period setting. What they would have made of this modern-dress version broadcast as part of the ITV Playhouse strand on 24 April 1979 is anyone’s guess.

The adaptation was directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark who had created the much-loved A Ghost Story for Christmas strand for the BBC and he brought Clive Exton, writer of Clark‘s final contribution to that series, Stigma (1977) with him. Changes are made – the famous puppet show is missing, the gender of the leading character is changed, Karswell is somewhat different character and events are compacted to squeeze everything into a brisk 48 minutes – but it’s a fine ghost tale, nonetheless.

In this version of the tale, protagonist, Dunning, is Prudence Dunning (Jan Francis), a television news producer who has recently done a piece on the American cult leader and occult writer Karswell (Iain Cuthbertson, who had just played a similar role in the children’s folk horror classic Children of the Stones (1977)), who styles himself the Abbot of Lufford. This Karswell is a rather thin-skinned character, ready to lash out and kill anyone who even so much as dares to criticise him. At the start of the play, he unleashes a barely seen supernatural presence on John Harrington (Christopher Good) who has already tried to expose his practices. While digging deeper into Karswell’s activities, Dunning meets him in the British Library and is passed a rune that curses her to death in one month – unless she can find a way to return it back to Karswell without him realising it. She narrowly escapes an attack by a spider-like creature that she finds lurking in her bed and with the help of friends Derek (Bernard Gallagher) and Jean Gayton (Joanna Dunham) pursues Karswell to the airport where he’s about to leave for South America…

Despite the modern-day setting, Casting the Runes sticks close enough to the original story and makes excellent use of the wintry settings, Clark capitalising on an unexpected blizzard that gripped the country while shooting. One suspects that he would have rather shot ion the 16mm film of the Ghost Stories for Christmas rather than the videotape he was obliged to use here, but he still manages that hardest of tricks, bringing some semblance of atmosphere to a medium that usually worked against it.

The Tourneur version had its towering, lumbering and still divisive demon at the climax. Clark unleashes his supernatural horrors early, a barely glimpsed form moving through the bushes towards a terrified Harrington. It’s a creepy moment that captures some of the “did-I-really-just-see-that” chills of the Ghost Stories and it’s the most unsettling moment in a production that strangely isn’t as scary as it might have been. It’s perfectly entertaining, well mad and acted, but scary it isn’t. There’s nothing here to match the running figure pursuing Peter Vaughn in A Warning to the Curious (1972), the ghostly children of Lost Hearts (1973) or the cowled figure that turns up at the end of The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974).

At the end, Dunning frees herself of the curse as the story demands but in an odd twist that is cut off before the ramifications can be explored, in this version Dunning causes the deaths of countless innocent bystanders when the passing back of the curse causes the plane that Karswell was travelling on to crash. Francis conveys a flicker of remorse but is brushed aside in the rush to the end credits. Just an extra beat to allow Francis to convey that horror for a few seconds longer would have made the climax all the more chilling.

For all that, the play is a hugely enjoyable piece. It chills rather than scares, Prudence managing to pose as an airline check-in clerk at Heathrow would have seemed implausible in 1979 let alone in these more security-conscious days and it very slightly fumbles the ending but elsewhere it’s a little gem of atmosphere and implied horror. The thing in the undergrowth in the opening scene is never explained – we assume that it’s next destination will be Dunning – and quite rightly so, and Clark pulls off some lovely shots, like a semi-silhouetted Karswell walking across a bridge, or silhouetted against the wall of the old British Library reading rooms.

Clark continued to work for ITV, directing the outstanding three-part Harry’s Game (1982) about the Northern Irish Troubles, and the four-part science fiction/horror mini-series Chimera (1991), as well as directing for some of the network’s best loved shows like Minder (1979-1984). He later returned to the BBC where he contributed to the supernatural anthology series Chiller in 1995.

Crew
Directed by: Lawrence Gordon Clark; Yorkshire Television; Executive Producer: David Cunliffe; Produced by: Lawrence Gordon Clark; Adapted by: Clive Exton; From the Story by: M.R. James; Lighting Cameraman: Peter Jackson; Film Editor: Peter Taylor; Film Sound: Barrie Box; Designed by: Natasha Kroll

Crew
Iain Cuthbertson (Karswell); Jan Francis (Prudence); Bernard Gallagher (Derek Gayton); Joanna Dunham (Jean Gayton); Edward Petherbridge (Henry Harrington); Christopher Good (John Harrington); Patricia Shakesby (Elise Marriott); David Calder (John Marriott); Jane Lowe (Joanna); Alan Downer (Peter); Clifford Parrish (Wiggin); Christine Buckley (housekeeper); Abdul Ali (doctor); Simon Prebble (newscaster)

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