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GHOSTWATCH-- The BBC's "War of the Worlds"

Filed under: Imported

In 1992, BBC television played a Halloween joke on the general public of a magnitude not seen since Orson Welles's Martian invasion. A 90-minute special called Ghostwatch, hosted by one of Britain's most likeable personalities, Michael Parkinson, pretended to be a live broadcast from a known haunted house. They had an ongoing remote broadcast from the residence (complete with Craig Charles from Red Dwarf) interspersed with studio business that involved phone calls from viewers and in-studio interviews with an expert in psychic phenomenon, and all of it looked real. Plus, there's an "Al Capone's vault" (e.g., nothing's there) feeling to the first half-hour or so that adds to the progam's credibility, so when the supernatural scares do begin, they work.

(In fact, they worked too well-- after a full night and day's worth of complaining phone calls, mostly to do with frightened children who couldn't sleep, the BBC declared that it would never show Ghostwatch again.)

The scares of the house, past and to-the-minute, are convincingly shown in varied ways: well-made mock surveillance footage, effective "live" handheld explorations of the house's scariest places, and even through "heat cam" footage that actually shows the ghosts. For all of the technology, however, the basic plot is that of a tradiional ghost story, and the more graphic scenes are a little bit Exorcist, a little bit Blair Witch (although done years before that inferior ripoff), with even some of Lucio Fulci's House by the Cemetary thrown in.

Some of the acting is weak enough to give the game away to someone really paying attention-- one cast member, doing an American accent, is so bad that almost anyone should spot him as a phony-- but the rest of the fake-out is so well done, it's still more believable than not. When, finally, all hell literally breaks loose in the studio (according to the guest expert, the program inadvertently became a mass seance) it doesn't matter if you bought it or not, the ending gets to you in a way almost no "fiction" ghost story does.

Much as I love "The War of the Worlds," it really is time to retire it as the annual Halloween media event, especially with a macabre gem like this show available to take its place. Maybe the BBC did go over the line a bit in its original hoax, but eleven years later, Ghostwatch really should be resurrected for the holiday. It's perfect trick-or-treat entertainment and needs to be much better known.

Posted by Steve Monaco at October 30, 2003 4:10 PM

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