{"id":6275,"date":"2014-02-23T20:15:20","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T03:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6275"},"modified":"2014-02-23T20:17:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-24T03:17:51","slug":"the-scary-countryside-2-children-of-the-stones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6275","title":{"rendered":"The Scary Countryside 2: Children of the Stones"},"content":{"rendered":"

The original “Scary Countryside” post.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"

Uncial script means “old and spooky.”<\/p><\/div>\n

As mentioned above, “the scary countryside” is a staple meme of television and movies on both side of the pond, but in the UK there is the additional refinement of “the scary countryside where people practice strange and ancient rites.”<\/p>\n

That does not work as well in North America unless you set your TV show in Awatowi<\/a>, which is not going to happen soon.<\/p>\n

So M. and I are enjoying a little “back to the Seventies” moment, watching the British TV series Children of the Stones<\/em>,<\/a> which so far might be described as The Prisoner\u00a0<\/em><\/a>meets The Wicker Man<\/em><\/a> meets Groundhog Day<\/a>. <\/em>Or something like that.<\/p>\n

To quote its Wikipedia entry,<\/p>\n

Filmed at Avebury<\/a>, Wiltshire<\/a> during Summer 1976, with interior scenes filmed at HTV’s Bristol<\/a> studios, it was an unusually atmospheric production with sinister, discordant wailing voices heightening the tension on the incidental music. The music was composed by Sidney Sager<\/a> who used the Ambrosian Singers<\/a> to chant in accordance with the megalithic rituals referred to in the story.Director Peter Graham Scott was surprised on seeing the script that the series was intended for children’s airtime due to the complexities of the plot and disturbing nature of the series. The series is frequently cited by those who remember it as one of the scariest things they saw as children.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sounds good to me. More episodes await. If Netflix had existed in the late 1970s, this would have been on the coven viewing list, I am sure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The original “Scary Countryside” post. As mentioned above, “the scary countryside” is a staple meme of television and movies on both side of the pond, but in the UK there is the additional refinement of “the scary countryside where people practice strange and ancient rites.” That does not work as well in North America unless […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,21,153,22],"class_list":["post-6275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-archaeology","tag-england","tag-television","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Dd","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":967,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=967","url_meta":{"origin":6275,"position":0},"title":"The Scary Countryside","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Jason Pitzl-Waters notes an upcoming Guillermo del Toro movie:The duo will be co-producing Born, a film adaptation of [Clive] Barker's story about a family who gets more than they bargained for when they move to the English countryside.The scary countryside is a staple of British--and frequently North American--film-making. Perhaps that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Colorado\"","block_context":{"text":"Colorado","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=colorado"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9099,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9099","url_meta":{"origin":6275,"position":1},"title":"“Come Out and Fight Me for My Throne . . . “","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 . . . says Janet Farrar melodramatically in this 1977 broadcast from the Irish national network Raidi\u00f3 Teilif\u00eds \u00c9ireann. Author and screenwriter Stewart Farrar and his wife Janet, both from London in England, met through witchcraft and founded their own coven. In 1976 the couple moved to Ireland, accompanied\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4161,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=4161","url_meta":{"origin":6275,"position":2},"title":"Pentagram Pizza for May 1","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Four toppings this evening. . . \u2022 This made me laugh. \u2022 Some occult-cult films from the past reviewed by Peg Aloi. \u2022 Teaching a course in \"world religions\" is not as simple as it looks, once you start sorting out \"religion,\" \"religious,\" and questions of group identity. \u2022 In\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/pentagrampizza-126x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7279,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7279","url_meta":{"origin":6275,"position":3},"title":"How They Celebrate the Summer Solstice","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"From 2012, a BBC piece on how Latvians celebrate the summer solstice: It is not a complicated festival. All you have to do is head out to the countryside, get a fire going, stay up all night waiting for the sun to come up and drink lots and lots of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Latvia\"","block_context":{"text":"Latvia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=latvia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":295,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=295","url_meta":{"origin":6275,"position":4},"title":"More Pagan movies While we\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"More Pagan movies While we are waiting to see Colin Farrell as Alexander the Great, an Icelandic-Canadian cinematic version of Beowulf is also in the works, and from the Web site Beowulf and Grendel looks visually stunning. Although the original story is set probably in Denmark, this one is filmed\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7059,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7059","url_meta":{"origin":6275,"position":5},"title":"Magic Earth Lines 1: “Discovering” Ley Lines","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"At Bad Archaeology, a skeptical look at Alfred Watkins and the \"discovery\" of ley lines: According to a later account, all this [discovery of a hidden web of straight lines in the English countryside] came to him \u201cin a flash\u201d on 21 June 1921 during a visit to Blackwardine; according\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"archaeology\"","block_context":{"text":"archaeology","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=archaeology"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6275"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6279,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6275\/revisions\/6279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}