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Reviews
Stigma (1977)
Stigma
Between the 60s and 70s it was fashionable to adapt the best of the horror and ghost writers to TV, something to get your teeth into during the festive season. like The Ferryman, it depicts a couple in modern-day society living in a seemingly normal, everyday setting. from their rural, and very isolated, cottage home they hire a labour force to excavate and remove one of a number of lay stones from their garden. Buried beneath they discover some iron age burial site, containing a body and knives. soon strange things begin to affect their lives. Is it a haunting or just imagination running riot? This one scared the pants off of me as a kid, as the Ferryman and the Signalman had, and all those M R James' stories by the BBC did. I found that most of the series from that era has been unavailable in commercial form, this one, could only be viewed by a version containing a time lapse coded transmission. But have recently discovered a cleaned up version on the ghost stories for Christmas boxed set by BFI. No matter how old they are there's no comparison with current TV and film which lend heavily from these marvellous classics. Stigma keeps the mystery going throughout and keeps you cuddling up on the sofa, biting the snuggle blanket or your partner's shoulder with the suspense. I particularly like the female home owner when a patch of her skin haemorrhages slowly through the tiny pores like sweat. And she goes through the episode looking like an ashen faced zombie for the duration. worth a watch.