Ghostwatch (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray]

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Limited Edition Booklet: Includes ‘Extra Sensory Perception Management’ by Sarah Appleton, ‘Ghostwatch – As it Happened’ by Tim Murray and short story ‘31/10’ by Ghostwatch writer Stephen Volk The whole thing is very well put together, and it's directed in such a manner that it keeps up at a very fast pace. Casting real life news reporters in prominent roles helps to add to the illusion, as this very much does feel like a live news broadcast from the early nineties. There are all sorts of great moments that foreshadow the conclusion and if you pay close attention to details, you'll be rewarded with some nice little scares in the latter half of the production.

Ghostwatch’ review: Dir. Lesley Manning [Celluloid Screams 2022] ’Ghostwatch’ review: Dir. Lesley Manning [Celluloid Screams 2022]

years later and “the cat now being out of the bag” about it, as well as a proliferation of found footage/live streamed/homemade horrors vying for our attention, does Ghostwatch still manage to entertain, especially during the “spooky season”.At first, the broadcast seems harmless, but supernatural phenomena occur in the house, until Suzanne is exposed making noises, convincing Parkinson that the whole affair is a hoax. Suzanne then speaks with a demonic voice and develops scratches across her arms. The public share their ghost stories, but numerous callers mention they have seen Pipes lurking in the house, and that paranormal incidents are happening in their own homes. The disc also includes a new 30th Anniversary feature length documentary titled Do You Believe In Ghosts? that runs for forty-eight minutes in length. This piece features interviews with Sarah Green, Gillian Bevan, Lesley Manning, Jed Shepherd, Robert Savage, and Stephen Volk. They cover where the idea for the movie came from, how it wound up at the BBC, why they decided to make the project look like a live broadcast, choosing the house location for the shoot, how the different newscasters wound up in the project, working with the different actors who played the other parts, what went into directing the project, how the movie does a great job of getting you into the heads of the different characters that populate it, the influence of Ghostwatch, how it was received when first broadcast, the use of night-vision and heat-vision cameras, what went into trying to keep it as realistic as possible and lots more. Shudder – On Halloween 1992, the BBC aired GHOSTWATCH as a..." Facebook. 17 April 2017. Archived from the original on 26 February 2022 . Retrieved 31 October 2017. In May 2010, at a public screening of the film at The Invisible Dot in Camden, director Lesley Manning revealed that she provided the voice of Pipes the ghost after the professional voice artist hired for the production could not accurately replicate the style of voice she had intended. [7] Technology [ edit ] Ghostwatch. What could be considered the best practical joke the BBC ever made on the Great British public. And, much like all ambitious practical jokes, faced unconsidered consequences. A live report on Halloween from what we were told was a haunted semi-detached home, with some of the nation’s most respected faces. There’s children’s TV’s Sarah Greene, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed; her husband, Mike Green manning the phones; Red Dwarf funny man Craig Charles taking a side-eyed cheeky glance at the whole spectacle as roving reporter; and national treasure Michael Parkinson – Parky! – the grandfather of the talk show. Surely he’d be there to hold our collective hand if things get spooky? Right, Michael? Right?

Ghostwatch Blu-ray (Limited Edition) Releases October 2022

The premise of the thing is pretty sneaky - take a handful of recognizable and respected British news personalities such as Michael Parkinson, Sarah Green, Mike Smith and Craig Charles (all playing themselves), set some of them up in the studio and send a team out to a haunted house to investigate the supposed hauntings that occur there on a regular basis. Broadcast the entire thing over live TV and unleash some extremely frightening imagery onto an unsuspecting and surprisingly gullible populace and voila, you’ve got yourself a bit of a horror classic. The story itself centres on Volk taking part in a fictitious, 10th anniversary edition of Ghostwatch in 2002. Venturing into the previously sealed-off BBC studio space where the original show took place, he is accompanied by a small team of individuals whose lives were somehow affected by the broadcast, ten years previously. A retrospective documentary, Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains, based on the film's lasting impact, was released on DVD in 2013 (having been in production between 2007 and 2012), featuring interviews with many of the original cast and crew. It too was made available as part of the BBC Store Frightmares collection, and shortly after release, the BFI Mediatheque. Ghostwatch’s ‘writer’, Stephen Volk, published a follow-up account, titled 31/10. In it, he wrote an alternative depiction about what had happened that night – that Sarah Greene and Susan Early were truly never seen again. That a lookalike had played the children’s TV presenter during her shows in the aftermath. That the surviving members of the Early family were secretively moved abroad. That the BBC studio was sealed off and boarded up. Ghostwatch has never been repeated on UK television. It has been repeated internationally, on stations such as the Canadian digital channel Scream for Halloween 2004, and the Belgian channel Canvas in 2008. From 2017 to 2019, Ghostwatch was available on the American streaming video service Shudder, [3] [4] and was made available on the Internet Archive in 2017. There have been three UK home video releases. In 2002, the British Film Institute released a 10th Anniversary edition on VHS and DVD, and 101 Films issued a DVD release in 2011 and a 30th Anniversary Blu-ray release in 2022. In 2016, BBC Store made the film available as part of the Frightmares collection, marking Halloween.

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Ghostwatch was originally conceived by writer Stephen Volk as a six-part drama (similar to Edge of Darkness) in which a fictional paranormal investigator and a TV reporter investigate poltergeist activity at a North London housing estate, gradually discovering more elements of the mystery each week. This would have culminated in the final episode in a live TV broadcast from the property, in the vein of Nigel Kneale's The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass and the Pit, in both of which "all hell breaks loose". However, when producer Ruth Baumgarten doubted the viability of an entire mini-series and recommended instead a 90-minute TV special, Volk suggested that they "do the whole thing like Episode Six", portraying it as an actual "live" broadcast fronted by well-known TV personalities. I don't have the limited edition...I wish I did! But I have the normal Blu Ray with the latest documentary (which is excellent). The doc features most of the cast and crew reflections (except for Mike Smith of course who passed relatively young age) but the only regret is Parky is not included which is real shame because he was the star, and despite having no acting experience, he was brilliant because, he simply played himself as if he is doing an actual Ghostwatch show. But playing yourself, is not an easy thing to do! The director cleverly, gave Parky room and flexibility to do his thing with just basic guidelines. And boy, did he deliver, giving a performance of skepticism and good ol' Parky mannerisms that we all grew up with. He was brilliant. So was Sarah Greene, who gave, imho, the most outstanding performance out of all of them, including the experienced actors, but turns out she actually did drama school when she was younger so that explains her excellence.

Ghostwatch Blu-ray (Standard Edition) Ghostwatch Blu-ray (Standard Edition)

Forbes, F; McClure, I (12 March 1994). "The terror of television. Made worse by family stress". British Medical Journal. 308 (6930): 714. doi: 10.1016/S0378-7206(96)01068-3. PMC 2539415. PMID 8142802. It’s the moment that the crew, those making the show, finally get a glimpse of what we have seen. There is danger here. And we all now know Foxhill Drive is a house of horrors. Parkinson is supported by fellow hosts Sarah Greene, who ventures into the house to spend the night with the Earlys; her husband Mike Smith, who oversees staged phone calls from the public who wish to share their own ghost stories; and comedian Craig Charles, who interviews the locals regarding the street’s violent history. Greene is accompanied by her camera crew, Chris Miller and Mike Aiton, played by actual BBC technicians. Parkinson is joined in the studio by Dr. Lin Pascoe ( Gillian Bevan), a psychologist studying the phenomena. Ghostwatch itself is still as unnerving as ever. As much as one can keep repeating it isn’t real, Manning’s craftwork still has you questioning certain aspects. What really helps sell Ghostwatch is the presenters involved. At the time of broadcast, Sarah Greene was a staple of BBC programming. Working across both kids shows like Going Live and magazine format show Pebble Mill; it made sense that she might be involved in a new programme for the channel. Similarly, the inclusion of Michael Parkinson added credibility to the project. The only slight indicator that something was awry is the addition of Craig Charles. He slightly over-egs his part as the silly cynic, but his segments are short and so audience attention remains on the other two. Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtains DVD – NOW AVAILABLE". Lawmanproductions.co.uk. 31 October 2012 . Retrieved 31 October 2017.Parkinson and parapsychologist Dr Lin Pascoe, who has been investigating the haunting at Foxhill Drive, have some fun in the studio with a tape purportedly featuring the voice of Foxhill Drive’s spook, having a netter through the portal of eldest daughter Susan Early. Before the tape finishes and Parkinson sniggers ‘Bizarre!’, Pipes’s shimmering apparition appears over the shoulder of the unsuspecting doc. It’s one of the easiest to spot appearances of Pipes although one that perhaps would have thrown the more cynical viewers off the haunting scent, as the early studio appearance would have had impact of stripping the show of some of its believability. Midway through the production, Craig Charles has a natter with other residents of Foxhill Drive by the neighbourhood haunted playground that’s previously played host to a pregnant Labrador’s butchering (‘The kids weren’t right for weeks’), before going for a chat with Arthur Lacey, professional exorcist. Lacey can’t be that good at his job because, in among the crowd behind him, there stands Raymond Tunstall in all his partially eaten glory in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it manifestation. A false rumour persisted that Sarah Greene had advertised the programme on her Saturday morning children's show Going Live, including a visit to the location of the "haunting," and gave the impression that she was taking part in a "reality show." This rumour was debunked via the Ghostwatch: Behind the Curtain blog (which gathered information for a documentary about the show). After acquiring the three most likely episodes of Going Live (the week before, the day Ghostwatch was shown, and the week after) the blog's editors found no reference to the show. [9] Greene did however appear on the following Monday's Children's BBC strand to reassure younger viewers the show was not real.

Ghostwatch - 60 Minutes With Review: Ghostwatch - 60 Minutes With

What if Raymond Tunstall really did get into the machine – all our machines? Because he’s here now. On my screen, at home with me, where only I seem to see him. Kevin's sandwich! #Ghostwatch #NS13". Ghostwatchbtc.com. 1 November 2013 . Retrieved 31 October 2017. More recently the creative team behind the 2020 British Zoom-based computer screen horror film Host have credited Ghostwatch as an influence. Co-writer Jed Shepherd, who had appeared on a podcast with Volk prior to working on Host, stated in an interview that he and his collaborators considered Host to be their version of Ghostwatch, and noted that the film has "a lot of Ghostwatch references", including displaying a Zoom caller ID of 31101992, referring to the date of Ghostwatch's broadcast. [25] Sequel ('31/10') [ edit ] For an North American audience it may not be as convincing as on this side of the pond we're less likely to be familiar with some of the faces involved, but Ghostwatch still makes it very easy to suspend your disbelief for ninety-minutes. Watch this one with the volume up at a decent level and the lights completely off for maximum effect.British label 101 Films released a Blu-ray disc in late 2022, including Do You Believe in Ghosts?, a new 30th anniversary documentary on the Ghostwatch phenomenon. [21] Legacy [ edit ] Inspirations [ edit ] Its style of " found footage" filmmaking is a predecessor for many later popular horror films such as The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield.