Ghostwatch

Ghostwatch (1992)

Runtime: 92 minutes

Directed by: Lesley Manning

Starring: Some real life BBC anchors and journalists... along with a few actors

From: The BBC

Sunday night I rewatched the poliziotteschi Syndicate Sadists, which I still say is very good. Last night I watched this infamous BBC program for the first time, and this revolutionary product is very good in its own right: 

I am not a Brit, so I was not an 11 year old in London or Cardiff or Edinburgh or Belfast huddled with my family around the telly and the BBC turned on during Halloween night of 1992, when this program was presented as legit and subsequently caused an uproar as it was based on The Enfield Poltergeist, which was also covered by The Conjuring 2. I am sure that there were at least a few who soiled their knickers... and I might have done so too if I was a British lad back in '92.

I finally saw this last night via Shudder. Finally checking out something that has had a lot of notoriety over the past 25 years was a wise choice on my part. I am not familiar with the BBC journalists and hosts that played themselves and some aspects could be nitpicked, including how things got over the top at the end. All that said, I still say this is very good and is effective at its task of being scary.

90 minutes are spent with host Michael Parkinson as he is in a studio with some people (including a parapsychologist) and Sarah Greene & Craig Charles (wearing a sweet Chicago Bears jacket) is at the haunted house. At first things aren't taken too seriously, then odd things happen and everyone feels more chilled. The first hour, things are built up; I can comprehend why some would think of it as “boring”; to me, that allowed the stage to be set and the story had time to spool out. You get to know the personalities involved, including the single mom and her two young daughters.

“The Big Bad” of the film is a spirit known as Pipes. Pipes is never seen close up in detail; instead you see brief glimpses throughout and sometimes it's more obvious than others, so at least once you aren't sure if you saw the spirit or not. That helped immensely in setting the right mood. Like I said this film caused an uproar as it traumatized plenty of kids and likely some adults too, & others were upset that the BBC told them a lie. Even knowing it was a fictional story and years of found footage films having been made since 1992, I still say this works as a faux program you'd see on television and to use a cliché that is hoary by now, “this was ahead of its time.”