For many horror fans, Halloween isn’t just about creepy cosplay or getting the kids to hassle the neighbours for free sweets, it’s about the horror, the scares, the chills. And, thanks to Radio 4, this year the chills are multiplying.
On 31 October, it is devoting three hours of airtime to making listeners feel uncomfortable, unsettled and terrified.
The inaugural annual Fright Night kicks off at 10pm with a new radio adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s classic 1972 teleplay The Stone Tape, from film director Peter Strickland.
Jane Asher returns for a smaller role in Strickland’s version, with Romola Garai taking over her original part in a cast that includes Julian Rhind-Tutt, Julian Barratt and Dean Andrews. The script is from Strickland and Matthew Graham (Life On Mars), with the radiophonics being handled by James Cargill from the band Broadcast and Andrew Liles, sometime member of Nurse With Wound and Current 93. Both previously worked with Strickland on his second feature film, Berberian Sound Studio.
The classic 70s original saw Kneale explore a “supernatural events with scientific explanation” routine arguably more effectively than with his earlier, better known, Quatermass and the Pit. Starring Asher, Michael Bryant and Ian Cuthbertson, the TV version featured unforgettably eerie Radiophonic Workshop sound effects from the late Desmond Briscoe in a tale of researchers from an electronics company working on new recording techniques. They discover that certain rooms and environments can “record” harrowing events, an idea first postulated by the parapsychologist Thomas Charles Lethbridge in 1961. It is these residual impressions that gave rise to the belief in ghosts and hauntings. Obviously things go tragically, harrowingly wrong.
This is followed, at 11pm, by another interesting-sounding new production, a radio version of Ring. This promises a fresh take on Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel, Ringu, which gave rise to several movies from Japan, the US and Korea as well as follow-up books, manga and TV series. For radio, it’s adapted by award-winning playwright Anita Sullivan and directed by James Robinson. As haunted videotapes and possessed televisions feature heavily in the source material, it will be interesting to see – or rather hear – how this is handled for radio. The cast includes Torchwood’s Eve Myles and Naoko Mori, as well as Broadchurch’s Mathew Gravelle.
Both of these new productions feature binaural recording techniques, where microphones placed either side of a dummy human head lend recordings a 3D effect when listened to on headphones. If you are feeling brave, there will be a binaural version onRadio 4’s website on the night.
Alternatively, there are some suitably spooky listening events where you can hear both shows before their broadcast date in a fitting environment. Organised by In The Dark, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to taking radio out of the home and into interesting settings for a more communal experience, there are ticketed events in London and Bristol. The Stone Tape will play at The Crypt in Holburn on 22 and 23 October, while The Ring will be at Bristol’s Arnos Vale Cemetary on 27 Oct ober. Tickets are available via the In The Dark website.
The radio lineup is completed at midnight with a rebroadcast of Radio 4’s version of William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, starring Robert Glenister. While it doesn’t feature any of the 3D techniques of the newer productions, it is still a very intense and effective retelling of the blockbuster novel.
