When the Lights Went Out
A fresh start is not always what might be hoped for, thirteen-year old Sally Maynard unhappy that her parents Jenny and Len have moved them to a new house in a new town, forced to start a new school and make new friends, neighbour Lucy’s over-eager approach indicating that she has been rejected by everyone else, but something else reaching out to the family in their new home.
The estate backing onto the Castlefield Woods, Lucy’s comment that it’s “right spooky in there” is easily dismissed until the disturbances begin, first blamed on Sally acting out but the adults unable to deny something is deeply wrong when they are also targeted, objects moving, electricity cutting out, acts of physical violence towards them and visitors when there is nobody around, the family reluctantly concluding they are being haunted.
Perhaps best known for his 1976 novel The Space Vampires which was filmed as LifeForce, Colin Wilson was also a prolific writer of non-fiction, his 1981 work Poltergeist!: A Study in Destructive Haunting having brought to public attention the 1974 case of “The Black Monk of Pontefract” in West Yorkshire, the story adapted by director Pat Holden into When the Lights Went Out and shot on location in the area.
The remaining members of the real family thanked for their assistance in the production, Jean, Philip and Diane Pritchard have been fictionalised as Jenny, Len and Sally Maynard (Kate Ashfield, Steven Waddington and Tasha Connor), all convincing in their roles as down-to-Earth northerners going about their uncomplicated business in a time of economic depression whose lives are upturned by the irrational, something beyond conventional experience.
With Craig Parkinson and Jo Hartley as family friends Brian and Jeanette, Hannah Clifford as Lucy and Martin Compston as history teacher Mister Price who uncovers the story of the murdered girl of the forest, the setting and recreation of the hair, fashions and furniture of an era when brown and floral soft furnishings reigned scarier than the ghost itself, for the most part created without special effects but losing impact with the dependable regularity of its manifestations rather than remaining unpredictable and so unknowable.
“Spiritual Mediator” Hilary Barnes (Tony Pitts) unable to make good on his promised “paranormal eviction,” Father Clifton (Gary Lewis) is blackmailed to undertake an exorcism, what starts as a grounded and plain-speaking retelling of Poltergeist with children’s toys the medium for communication, suitably restrained but not particularly dynamic, becomes embarrassing in the overblown sensationalism of the preposterous finale; the last five minutes excised, it would be easier to take When the Lights Went Out seriously.
When the Lights Went Out will be streaming on the Arrow platform from Friday 17th October
