Aickman on Film!

[joysilence]

I've been suffering from insomnia lately, but it does have its bright side! The other night, buried in the schedules between 3 and 4 in the morning I found a twinkling little treasure of horror: the short film The Cicerones, based on Robert Aickman's strange tale of the same name. It's directed by Jeremy Dyson, famous as one of the four men behind the League Of Gentlemen dark comedy series. However, I wasn't at all surprised to find his name associated with such a film, since the series was at times far more dark than it was comic (a particularly nasty episode involving a man trapped alive in a scarecrow springs to mind) and featured many nods to the canon of horror film and fiction. His series co-author, Mark Gatiss, has even written a foreword for a Tartarus Robert Aickman anthology, but here Dyson seems determined not to be outdone!

The film only lasts 15 minutes, but a mood of unease builds from the outset, when the art enthusiast and traveller, Trant (played by Mark Gatiss), sets out for St Bavon in Belgium by train, drawn by the many paintings the local cathedral is said to house. A gypsy woman sharing his carriage warns him that the place is 'holy', in implied protest at the relish with which Trant has been discoursing about the wonderful paintings he looks forward to seeing in the cathedral. Once inside the place, he finds it oddly empty and silent, save for the presence of a man slumped forward at an alarming angle in one of the pulpits, dressed in technicolour raiment (this differs slightly from the story, but I actually think the film's first depiction of the mysterious Bishop is even more frightening than Aickman's vision.) Trant wanders around the church in search of the promised paintings, and in doing so encounters a series of weird and incongruous young 'cicerones' or guides who each proudly display to him their pet painting. All the paintings show scenes of extreme barbarism, each martyrdom more gloating and repulsive than the next. But where will the guided tour end? ( Cut for mild spoilers )

Have any of you seen or heard this, or any of the other Aickman adaptations? The following passage from the Wikipedia entry on the author lists them as follows:

In 1968, a television adaptation of "Ringing the Changes", retitled "The Bells of Hell", appeared on the obscure BBC 2 program Late Night Horror. The first radio adaptation of "Ringing the Changes", appeared on the CBC Radio drama series Nightfall on October 31, 1980.

A 1997 adaptation of "The Swords", directed by Tony Scott, appeared as the first episode of the cable original horror anthology series The Hunger (not the same as Scott's film of the same name).

Jeremy Dyson has adapted Aickman's work into drama in a number of forms. A musical staging of the Aickman short story "The Same Dog", which Dyson co-wrote the libretto for with Joby Talbot, premiered in 2000 at the Barbican Concert Hall. Also in 2000, with his League of Gentleman partner, Mark Gatiss, he adapted into a BBC Radio Four radio play Aickman's short story "Ringing the Changes". (This aired exactly twenty years after the CBC adaptation, on Halloween, 2000.) Dyson also directed a 2002 short film based on Aickman's story "The Cicerones", with Gatiss as the principal actor..

I can't wait to get my hands on the old TV version of Ringing The Changes! I wonder how common copies are?

Oh and by the way, I've just got round to answering some questions asked in the comments of previous posts! Prepare to be dazzled. Maybe.