mwilson1976 Review of Stigma

Stigma (1977 TV Short)

A creepy tale in which terrible things happen to nice people for no good reason other than lifting the wrong stone in their garden.

[5/10 · 26 March 2020]

A short (30 minutes) film made for the BBC's A Ghost Story For Christmas series, Stigma is one of three non MR James adaptations and the first of two that broke with the tradition of adapting a classic ghostly tale. Instead we get an original slice of horror penned by screenwriter Clive Exton (who would later spend a period in Hollywood where he wrote Red Sonja), who turns in a passably creepy tale of a middle class family moving into a country cottage next door to an ancient stone circle (Avebury in Wiltshire, also used as the location in the ITV kids series Children of the Stones). When workmen attempt to move one of the stones located in their garden, an ancient curse is unleashed which causes the mother of the family to bleed uncontrollably before her body re-enacts the ritual execution of a witch , who was buried under the stone centuries earlier. Stigma tries hard to be an MR James story, but Exton's script is full of blood and nudity which at times make it feel like a David Cronenberg body horror rather than a subtle chiller. The whole affair is also let down by some poor acting, with lots of wooden performances and only Peter Bowles (a versatile actor better known as a mainstray of British television comedy) putting a decent shift in. You'll never look at an unpeeled onion in the same way again.