Wednesday 7 September 2016

487 The Nightmare Man


First  viewed : 1  May  1981

I  knew  this  one  must  be  cropping  up  soon. BBC  1  slotted  a  modest  little  science  fiction  serial  into  the  Friday  night  slot  usually  occupied  by  their  less  popular  sitcoms.

The  Nightmare  Man  was  an  adaptation  of  the  novel  Child  of  Vodyanoi  by  David  Wiltshire  about  a  genetic  experiment  gone  wrong  and  wreaking  havoc  on  a  remote  Scottish  island. It  was  written  by  Robert  Holmes  and  directed  by  Douglas  Camfield  both  Dr  Who  stalwarts   and  it  showed  in  both  the  structure  and  the  pacing  of  the  story.

Though  filmed  on  VT   with  a  modest  budget  ( with  Cornwall  standing  in  for  Scotland )  it  was  always  watchable.  In  its  pre-9pm  timeslot  the  gore  had  to  be  discussed  rather  than  shown.   Comprising  four  30  minute  episodes  it  didn't  allow  too  much  room  for  character  development  and  the  romance  between  rugged  English  dentist  ( James  Warwick )  and  pharmacist  Fiona  ( the  not  very  Scottish  Celia  Imrie ) was  pretty  dull  though  Celia  flashed  a  fair  amount  of  cleavage  in  one  scene.  Jonathan  Newth  was  authoritative   as  the  army  colonel  who  wasn't  quite  what  he  claimed  to  be  and  the  reliably  Scottish  duo  of  hatchet-faced  Maurice  Roeves  and  James  Cosmo  made  a  good   pairing  as  the  local  plod.


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