The Stone Tape (1972) on Netflix
NR19721h 30mFantasyHorrorMystery
Electronics researchers move into a Victorian mansion to develop a new recording medium. When Jill Greeley sees a ghost in a stone room, Peter Brock thinks the walls recorded it.
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- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.3/102,508 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Ryan Electric Products installs Peter Brock and his research team at Taskerlands, a Victorian mansion fitted out as a facility where they are to develop a recording medium that will beat their Japanese competitors. Estates manager Roy Collinson explains that one room, a stone-walled relic of the original building whose foundations reach back to Saxon times, was left unfinished because the builders refused to work in it. The team explores it and hears a woman running and a scream; Jill Greeley, a computer programmer, also sees a woman fall on the stone steps. Records show a maid died there in 1890, and Brock comes to believe the stone preserved an image of her death.
Cast
- Philip Trewinnardas Stewart Jessop
- Christopher Banksas Vicar
Show all 14 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Stone Tape (1972)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Since the play was broadcast, parapsychological researchers have called the idea that ghosts are recordings of past events made by the physical environment the "Stone Tape Theory"; T. C. Lethbridge promoted that hypothesis in his 1961 book Ghost and Ghoul.
- Not all scenes of The Stone Tape were recorded in time, so a remount was needed on 4 December 1972; Michael Bates was unavailable that day and his lines had to be given to other cast members.
- The exterior scenes of Taskerlands were shot at Horsley Towers in East Horsley, Surrey, a house once owned by Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and sponsor of computer pioneer Charles Babbage.
- The play influenced John Carpenter's 1987 film Prince of Darkness; besides directing it, Carpenter wrote the screenplay under the pseudonym "Martin Quatermass" and included a reference to "Kneale University".
- Desmond Briscoe of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop provided the incidental music and sound effects, which set the play's mood so effectively that sections were later reused in a BBC educational programme about incidental music.
- Nigel Kneale based the Taskerlands research facility on the BBC's research and development department, which he had visited when it was housed in an old country house at Kingswood Warren in Kingswood, Surrey.
