Not a movie but a TV and radio play, because I couldn’t refuse.
At an author talk and signing (which I’ll get back to later!) one of the writers mentioned an early horror influence being Baby, an episode of Beasts by Nigel Kneale, the writer best known for creating Quatermass. And that day I also found a link to a new production of his lost 1952 radio play You Must Listen. So...
Beasts: Baby (1976)
Jo and her husband Peter have moved to the country for his work, and she feels uncomfortable even before renovations of the house reveal a large pottery jar with something inside. It doesn’t help that Peter is quick-tempered and dismissive of her concerns, or that the local workmen tell stories about something like witches’ familiars...
You Must Listen (2023, from a 1952 script)
A new business moves into a renovated office and a telephone line is installed but there seems to be a fault, a crossed line that the technicians can’t explain. And the more they listen, the more it reveals a dark secret.
Both involve renovations discovering something, though in very different ways.
Baby is the chillier of the two, with the ability to show some horrible things as well as the story isolating Jo, while You Must Listen has a good-natured group cooperating to solve the mystery contrasted with the disembodied voices of telephones playing with the format of the radio play. Kneale would explore the idea more thoroughly in The Stone Tape in 1972, and with a more isolating story around the protagonist again, so it was interesting to hear an early take.
Gameability: Both are modernisations of something being unearthed, You Must Listen in particular uses the technology of the day, and how little it’s understood by anyone outside of the field. I could definitely see a horror adventure about trying to trace a voice on the phone working today.
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