Ghostwatch (1992 film)

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Summary

"We don't want to give anybody sleepless nights." A reality–horror/mockumentary television film in which a BBC film crew visits a family besieged by a poltergeist.

Details

• Release Date: 1992
• Country/Language: UK, English
• Genres/Technical: Horror (found footage, "mockumentary"), made-for-TV
• Runtime: 1 hr 31 min
• Starring: Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith
• Director: Lesley Manning
• Writer: Stephen Volk
• Producer/Production Co: British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
• IMDb: (link)
• Wikipedia: (link)
• View Film: (link)

Ratings

MPAA Ratings

• Rated: (not rated) (perhaps equivalent to a PG for the unsettling "reality" of the "haunting")

Tentacle Ratings

A rough measure of how "Lovecraftian" the work is:

• S____ (One Tentacle: Debateably Lovecraftian; has almost no direct connection to Lovecraft's work)

I've never seen this, but I get the impression that there's not much 'Lovecraftian' in this film in any usual sense, aside from the Gothic horror premise combined with the faux-documentary style common to that subgenre of horror, and any Weird effect on audiences with suitably suspended disbelief, or audiences who believed it was real.

Note: This rating is not intended as a measure of quality, merely of how closely related to Lovecraftian "Weird" fiction the work is.

Reviews

Review Links:

• (review needed)

Synopsis

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Ghostwatch is a British reality–horror/mockumentary television film, first broadcast on BBC1 on Halloween night, 1992, in which a BBC film crew visits a family besieged by a poltergeist.

Notes

Comments, Trivia, Dedication

• Film legend has it that, similar to the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast in the U.S., enough of the audience of Ghostwatch didn't realize they were watching a scripted ghost story for the BBC to be bombarded with calls from panicked viewers, while psychologists reported an epidemic of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder among children who viewed the programme!
• Ghostwatch was never supposed to trick or deceive the viewers. It was billed as a drama and contained a "written by" title card at the start. The majority of people tuned in late to the programme after a film finished on ITV and therefore many thought what they were seeing was in fact going out live.

Associated Mythos Elements

• TO DO
• film: compare to the work of Nigel Kneale