A creepy, deserted fairground at midnight, a spooky whistled incantation, a ghostly rollercoaster taking us on another late-night… Journey to the Unknown!
I love this show. Its one of those series that used to get shown late night in the 80s as “filler” programming and nobody else seemed to know about it apart from me, or so it seemed. Despite being filmed on glorious 35mm and having serious cult credentials its never had an official release. And when you consider the deep shade of brown Network DVD are now mining, that’s a damn shame (another forgotten Reg Varney sitcom, anyone??)
Turns out it was quite a big deal back in 1968 when Hammer and Fox TV co-produced 17 glossy, self-contained 50 minute films in the UK , each with one regulation American guest star parachuted into a weekly fix of very British thriller-fantasy strangeness. The likes of Stefanie Powers, David Heddison, Barbara Belle Geddes and Julie Harris were matched up with a cadre of higher-than-average British thesps with variable, but always watchable results. I used to see odd episodes dotted over the late night Anglia schedule but never in the same place at the same time. What was this strange show? The only mention I ever saw of it at the time (mid 80s) was a great write up by Tise Vahimagi in Starbust magazine.
With a technical crew of mostly Hammer stalwarts overseen by Alfred Hitchcock’s former movie co-writer right-hand TV lady Joan Harrison, the production quality is easily the equal of any other filmed series of the time. And the plethora of ITC alumni in front of the camera goes a long way to establishing an initially familiar atmosphere. But ITC didn’t do anthologies and rarely dipped their toes into the uncanny; this does both with real gusto. Exhibit A: “The New People”. Robert Reed, soon to be Mike Brady, and Jennifer Hillary play just-married Hank (rhymes with Yank) and Anne Prentiss, a pair of sickeningly happy newlyweds. The set-up has them moving to the sort of idyllic Avengerland hamlet we know well from this era of telly hokum. Further assurance comes with the familiar likes of Patrick Allen, Adrienne Cori and Milo O’Shea who rather too-eagerly welcome these “new people” to their oh-so-cosy community. Patrick Allen plays Luther Ames, a portrait of indecently chinned suaveness who is, of course, the chuckling puppeteer behind this proto-Stepford. He’s also a big fan of Rosemary’s Baby if his nighttime maneuvers are anything to go by. Ah yes, quite the lady-killer is Luther…
“The New People” is everything I want from 60s telefantasy – great opening titles, smart scripting, cool production design, beautiful people, sinister shenanigans and a rug-pulling twist to send me right back to the beginning to see how I didn’t see it coming – duh! And the ending really is a blinder; the hapless Hank is led a merry dance by the whole shameless lot of them to a final shocking and marvelously woozy denouement that almost out-Wickers The Wicker Man five years early. Its one of many fine episodes that I’ll likely revisit here but, for now, its a great place to start.
OK then, one more: “Jane Brown’s Body” was the episode I first saw one late night in the 1980s when I should have been getting my beauty sleep for school the next day. It stars a radiant Stefanie Powers as a young woman who come back from the dead after a suicide attempt courtesy of a kindly scientist’s magic resurrection serum. Totally missing all memories of her troubled past, she’s reborn as a childlike, vulnerable girl in a woman’s body. Anthony Skene’s teleplay of this short second life and how she gradually comes back to her “true” self is unnerving, Powers gives the best of her numerous late 60s Hammer performances and the twist ending will not fail to move you, you have my honest word. Its a haunting episode that I’ve just re-watched again for no other reason that the hour is late so the TV simply has to be great.
The whole series is out there of course, if you care to look for it, but it looks like fuzzy off-air crap. No series is more ripe for restoration and reappraisal. Perhaps now that Hammer are back on their feet (a fact that pleases me no end), we’ll finally get to see Journey to the Unknown given a well-deserved official release. But until then, its still my late-night secret…
The Man in the Elegant Room 