When I was a kid in the early 1970s there were four things on TV that gave me a case of the old screaming Plockton williecobblies- Shop front mannequins with an attitude problem, Cybermen clunking their way up the stairs, David Essex attempting to sing, and Escape Into Night.
The story based on Catherine Storr's novel is about a girl confined to bed after falling from a horse. Out of boredom she doodles an imaginary house in her notepad and is then surprised to find herself transported there in her dreams. No one is in the house so when awake again she draws a boy at an upstairs window for a companion during her next dream visit. As it turns out the boy (Mark) is also in bed in the real world, unable to walk, and has now somehow been pulled into her alternative world. He also has the same home schooling teacher as Marianne, Miss Chesterfield although the two children have never met. The children don't get on too well at first and when in the real world Mark buys Miss Chesterfield a more impressive bunch of birthday roses than Marianne, she vents her annoyance by drawing in some boulders surrounding the dream house which unfortunately seem to take on board her rather negative mood. As the series continues Marianne discovers from her teacher just how sick Mark really is and so the children's relationship mellows somewhat. Marianne starts drawing objects to make Mark more comfortable at the house. The sinister one-eyed boulders outside however become increasingly threatening, and Marianne is horrified to discover that not only can they move but she is also unable to rub them out of her drawing. Together, Marianne and Mark decide they must find a way to escape from the house. The action switches back and forth between Marianne's dream existence and her bedroom where her mother, doctor and teacher are concerned by her strange behaviour, nightmares and obsession with Mark.
The whole thing was obviously filmed on a cheap budget with just five cast members and what appears to be only three locations. I'm not knocking it though, cheap can work fine if you have the right story and approach, and this does work. Sure you can pick holes in it but this is a children's program and us 70s urchins weren't too critical of plot shortfalls. The stark empty house is almost as creepy as something out of the film 'The Grudge'. The sound department needs to take a lot of credit. The loud continuous tock of the grandfather clock on the stairs gets ominously slower as the story unfolds, and the eerie disembodied voices heard as the children have to walk past it sets a gloomy aura to the place. Then there is the radio which Marianne draws to cheer them up. Instead of getting Radio Caroline the airwaves are immediately taken over by the malevolent boulders who make their threats to the children quite clear.
So, would the current generation laugh at it or hide behind the sofa? No idea. They would certainly recognise the concept of two people inhabiting an alternative reality, to them it's just like Cyberspace. The Tony Curtis poster on Marianne's bedroom wall would puzzle them. Actually it puzzles me. At the time my sister would have opted for either David Cassidy, Davy Jones, some chap in a magazine she once took a shine to advertising a hideously naff buttoned up shirt, or even the previously mentioned over optimistic warbler David Essex. Tony Curtis wouldn't even have made the list. Weird.
The story based on Catherine Storr's novel is about a girl confined to bed after falling from a horse. Out of boredom she doodles an imaginary house in her notepad and is then surprised to find herself transported there in her dreams. No one is in the house so when awake again she draws a boy at an upstairs window for a companion during her next dream visit. As it turns out the boy (Mark) is also in bed in the real world, unable to walk, and has now somehow been pulled into her alternative world. He also has the same home schooling teacher as Marianne, Miss Chesterfield although the two children have never met. The children don't get on too well at first and when in the real world Mark buys Miss Chesterfield a more impressive bunch of birthday roses than Marianne, she vents her annoyance by drawing in some boulders surrounding the dream house which unfortunately seem to take on board her rather negative mood. As the series continues Marianne discovers from her teacher just how sick Mark really is and so the children's relationship mellows somewhat. Marianne starts drawing objects to make Mark more comfortable at the house. The sinister one-eyed boulders outside however become increasingly threatening, and Marianne is horrified to discover that not only can they move but she is also unable to rub them out of her drawing. Together, Marianne and Mark decide they must find a way to escape from the house. The action switches back and forth between Marianne's dream existence and her bedroom where her mother, doctor and teacher are concerned by her strange behaviour, nightmares and obsession with Mark.
The whole thing was obviously filmed on a cheap budget with just five cast members and what appears to be only three locations. I'm not knocking it though, cheap can work fine if you have the right story and approach, and this does work. Sure you can pick holes in it but this is a children's program and us 70s urchins weren't too critical of plot shortfalls. The stark empty house is almost as creepy as something out of the film 'The Grudge'. The sound department needs to take a lot of credit. The loud continuous tock of the grandfather clock on the stairs gets ominously slower as the story unfolds, and the eerie disembodied voices heard as the children have to walk past it sets a gloomy aura to the place. Then there is the radio which Marianne draws to cheer them up. Instead of getting Radio Caroline the airwaves are immediately taken over by the malevolent boulders who make their threats to the children quite clear.
So, would the current generation laugh at it or hide behind the sofa? No idea. They would certainly recognise the concept of two people inhabiting an alternative reality, to them it's just like Cyberspace. The Tony Curtis poster on Marianne's bedroom wall would puzzle them. Actually it puzzles me. At the time my sister would have opted for either David Cassidy, Davy Jones, some chap in a magazine she once took a shine to advertising a hideously naff buttoned up shirt, or even the previously mentioned over optimistic warbler David Essex. Tony Curtis wouldn't even have made the list. Weird.