Classics Dark and Dangerous
Educational Horror
As a result of re-reading Stephen King’s Danse Macabre, his take on the history of the horror genre, I revisited or looked up a few obscure or semi-obscure television series. For the next few weeks I will be presenting my take on them.
First up: Classics Dark and Dangerous. This was a British and Canadian co-production originally aired in 1977. It only produced six episodes, all adaptations of stories from prestigious writers. The Canadian/American producers were educational institutions. The Learning Corporation of America specialized in 16 mm educational films for schools; I’m sure most of us Boomers were forced to ingest many of their offerings.
The episodes of Classics Dark and Dangerous appear to have been filmed in 16mm and were low-budget affairs. Each was about 30 minutes long and featured small casts and limited locations. In spite of those limitations, they attracted quality casts: John Hurt, Charles Gray, Kenneth More, Kier Dullea, Glynnis Johns, and Christopher Plummer to name a few. A few were directed by top directors, namely Robert Fuest (The Abominable Dr. Phibes, The Avengers) and Peter Medak (The Changeling, Romeo is Bleeding) There was a wide gap between the production values of the British offerings versus the Canadian contributions, however.
Silver Blaze is a well-known Sherlock Holmes tale, featuring Plummer as Holmes and Thorley Walters as Watson. Plummer would go on to reprise the role in the excellent Murder By Decree a few years later; Walters had played Watson in three previous films. Both are excellent. It’s about a missing race horse, so it doesn’t really belong in a horror series, but it’s brisk and enjoyable. If you are a fan of Murder By Decree, I would strongly recommend checking it out.
The Rocking Horse Winner continues the theme of horse racing with D.H. Lawrence’s famous tale of a boy who picks winners by riding a rocking horse into exhaustion. It’s well told and includes an appropriate tone of pathos.
The Island, from a story by L. P. Hartley, is a tense and atmospheric story about a World War One soldier (Hurt) traveling to a remote island to connect with a lover. Unfortunately, when he arrives, her husband (Gray) is waiting there to torment him. The two British pros spar with one another fantastically and Fuest does a great job of keeping the story compressed within a near-claustrophobic setting.
Mrs. Amworth, by E. F. Benson (more about him HERE) is a fairly conventional vampire story and here it’s presented in a fairly conventional manner. It doesn’t really offer anything new or interesting to the vampire legend, but it’s competently produced and acted.
...an then there’s the Canadians.
The Ugly Little Boy is based on an Isaac Asimov story where scientists transport a neanderthal child into the present for study. A nurse is assigned to care for him while he is poked, prodded, and borderline tortured by his captors. She develops feelings for him which leads to a very predictable ending.
The ‘futuristic’ sets are so cheesy and cheap they would have been embarrassing in 1967, much less 1977. Everyone wears jump suits; it looks like they bought leftover costumes from Space 1999 after it was canceled.
The final offering of the series, Mannikin, is just awful. It was adapted from a Robert Bloch story from his Weird Tales days and it’s about witches and reincarnation (I think?) and it has all the production values of a cheap 1970s porn movie. The star, Ronee Blakely, was a famous singer, so she gets a musical number where she howls while playing the piano. Then a puppet grows in her back and pops out, but she’s OK. The wildly exaggerated facial expressions of the other actress during that scene are almost worth enduring the rest of the film.
This episode was so bad it made me hate Canada.
On balance, Classics Dark and Dangerous is only worth watching for the first three episodes. Maybe Mannikin if you harbor a grudge against our neighbors to the north.
Interestingly, this show as used in Canadian schools as an educational supplement, to teach kids about adapting stories for film. Or how not to, in some cases.
Classics Dark and Dangerous is available streaming on YouTube.