The Nightmare Man
Tags: murder

Plot synopsis:
Ellen believes there is a supernatural creature trying to kill her named the "Nightmare Man". However, her husband and doctors believe she is a paranoid schizophrenic.
On the way to a psychiatric ward, the Morris' car breaks down. When her husband goes to get gas, Ellen stays behind and is attacked by the mysterious, horrifying enemy, the Nightmare Man. Escaping into the nearby woods, Ellen stumbles upon a country house where two young couples are spending the weekend. They do not know if the killer is real or just a figment of Ellen's tortured mind nor if the killer is outside or already inside the house.
As people start dying, nobody knows whom they can trust. Near the end of the film, the killer is revealed to be a hitman hired by Ellen's husband to kill Ellen before she discovers his affairs. Ellen reveals she is possessed by the real Nightmare Man, a demon who enters a female body first by getting them to wear his mask, then he rapes them. As the Nightmare Man, she kills the hitman and her husband. She sets her sights on Mia, the survivor, who kills Ellen, but is stripped and raped by the Nightmare Man's spirit. She is left in an institution, where the doctor decides to take her off her medication, which are the only things that keep the demon asleep.

Review: A short, sharp shocker!.
It really does feel like a Doctor Who story, this being helped by having one of the Doctor's best directors and writers on board.
The lurking monster, isolated community, strange killings and impending doom are all textbook Doctor Who.The Nightmare Man is more adult than Doctor Who. Not just because there's a mention of cannabis, a hint of blood and the sight of the ever-glorious Celia Imrie in a low-cut dress.
There's a real claustrophobia to it.
The fog rolls in, and the gloomy little island really is cut off.
Actually, when the fog lifts (very abruptly, at the start of part four), the island doesn't look nearly as barren and miserable as we've been lead to believe.
It's all very well constructed: lots of brief mentions of bogs, cliffs, isolated crofts.
We feel like we are at the end of the world, and there's a genuine mystery about what might be impinging upon it.Celia Imrie is, of course, magnificent.
One of the strengths of the production is that her character is essential to the story.
She's a cartographer, and raised on the island, so her knowledge of the area is vital to the investigation.
She is not sidelined as could so easily have happened.
Maurice Roeves and Jonathan Newth as The Inspector and The Colonel are perfectly decent, and James Cosmo utterly believable and likable as the occasionally Gaelic-speaking Sergeant.Occasional glimpses of the monster are very carefully done, although the gasping growl and red point-of-view are a bit OTT.
At the end, when we finally see the killer, it's maybe on screen for a bit too long.
More could have been left to the imagination, but that's only a minor gripe.The only significant grumble about the production is the final episode.
I had expected it to be 6 episodes, not 4.
Lots of time is spent standing around talking int he final episode.
The production slows down enormously as we get caught up in info-dumping.
When the monster makes its final attack, I couldn't help but feel it was all over a bit quickly, and there's a very rushed and perfunctory feel.That said, the production keeps up the suspense nicely for quite a long time.
The viewer is never really sure what the killer may be, and there's a wonderfully claustrophobic, foggy, damp sense of doom throughout.
And Celia Imrie..
Big let-down.
Oh dear.
Some of the best talent in British TV made this serial, and so I can only assume that they were working under incredible time pressure, and had to settle for first takes of many scenes.There ARE some frightening scenes in this Highland mystery (mostly when the "monster" attacks and we see it from his point of view), but I'm afraid that I found most of the story unintentionally funny !
Such as the moment when the hero discovers a dismembered corpse on a golf course: Oh look, there's a hand ...
oh, and there's another hand over there ...
hmm this is a bit puzzling ...For many years fans of British cult TV shows campaigned to have this serial released on VHS or DVD, but the BBC always said no.
Now I think I understand why !.
Not the best of British atmospheric spooky drama..
Nobody does spooky, mysterious 'out in the boonies' drama as well as the British...
and the late 70s to mid eighties was a great time for them, too, Armchair Thriller, Chiller, Tales Of The Unexpected, The Agatha Christie Hour and many more besides!Unfortunately this one isn't one of them.
The 'style over substance' approach, which can often work well in these types of programs, falls flat here.Most irritating is the screen play, which is constantly forcing silly ideas into our heads...
"What if the mysterious thing killing the sheep is a monster from outer space?" There are ludicrous attempts to shower the viewer with suggestions of what's going on through the screenplay which makes the entire relationships between the characters a little forced.When the military enter the scene, they seem to embrace the locals and tell them everything that's going on.
Soldiers running over a heath comes off as silly and time-wasting.James Warwick does a wonderful job of staring off into the middle distance and getting annoyed over nothing...
Celia Imrie has the best eye makeup artist in entertainment and provides an insane amount of 'Doctor Who assistant' style exposition along the way..There are a few vague similarities to other TV programs of that time, especially from children's TV like 'Timeslip', 'Ace Of Wands' or 'Children Of The Stones', etc.
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this was originally intended for kids and spruced up a bit for adults in a production meeting.It has a small amount of nostalgic value but ultimately this is silly and forgettable..
Very Scary for the time.
It was a fitting title because I had nightmares for several months afterwards (I was only 10 at the time).You know there's something evil lurking on the deserted Scottish island,but of course you only see it's point of view before it attacks in the fog.
It was a sort of Doctor Who for adults.Ultimately let down by far too much exposition and revelation of the Russian pilot in the last episode.When the fog finally clears, it is rather obvious that we're not in Scotland either.The late Douglas Camfield was a veteran Dr.Who director, so the similarities in style are many.
Great to see early performances from Scotland's James Cosmo, Maurice Roeves and Celia Imrie.Despite it's failings,this was another of those one-off experimental series used to showcase new talent that is sorely lacking in todays ratings obsessed British Television..
Atmospheric and claustrophobic island horror.
The tourist season has just ended on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, winter is beginning to set in and the inhabitants, both humans and sheep alike are settling down to much quieter times ahead.
Michael Gaffikin (James Warwick) a former paratrooper in the British Army, is the local dentist, he's not an islander by birth and as such his relationship with local artist and cartographer Fiona Patterson (Celia Imrie) is always being viewed with a little suspicion, not maliciously, but just out of the protective instincts the tight knit community have for their kin.
The islands serenity is broken when Gaffikin out for a solitary round of golf finds the headless remains of a brutally slain woman.
He immediately reports his gruesome find to Insp Inskip(Maurice Roëves) at the islands police station, Inskip arranges for delivery of the remains to local GP, Dr Goudry, for closer inspection.
A quick search for the killer proves fruitless, as does a search for a missing local woman.
Over dinner that night with Michael Gaffikin, Fiona realises that the dead woman might be Sheila Anderson, a woman from the mainland, who lives on the island through the winter months.
A quick search at her home Dove Cottage reveals the missing remains of her body, her home proving to be the murder scene, but why did the killer drag her torso over a mile into the woods?
Suspicion immediately falls on the one stranger left on the island, one Colonel Howard (Jonathan Newth)who also happened be the last person to see her alive as they came across on the last ferry together.Goudry asks Gaffikin for some dental expertise on the victims body, it reveals that she had been torn apart my somebody or something with great strength, one set of teeth marks on the body seem to point at a human killer, another points to that of an unknown animal of some kind.
A sheep is found mutilated and then a Canadian ornithologist is found slain.
With a heavy fog rolling in, the island is cut off from the mainland and any possibility of help, the radio also doesn't work, seemingly being blocked and the phone lines have been cut.
Reports of UFO's and the sighting of a camouflaged soldier are compounded by the finding of an odd looking craft hidden behind rocks on the beach.
Inskip is confused and refuses to listen to anything but the facts and laughs off Gaffikin's idea that aliens might be involved, but a rise in radioactive levels on the island, has him doubting himself.The Nightmare Man is based on the novel, Child of the Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire, it is here adapted by Dr Who and Blake's 7 scriptwriter Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield who also had directing experience on both Sci/Fi classics and the film benefits from having such experienced genre experts on board.
The Nightmare Man though is on the whole, a succinctly better crafted piece, that builds its plot alongside solid character development, even down to the minor characters, time is given to giving them all a firm background.
The island setting is perhaps a genre cliché that has been used over and over, but its one that I enjoy very much, the remoteness, the sense of being under siege with no way out always add to the atmosphere and here it is given an extra oomph by having an impenetrable fog close in to hamper all efforts.
In many genre efforts of this kind it is very easy for proceedings to get silly and for the plot to resort to melodrama, but credit to Camfield, he holds it all together with the emphasis being on believability at all times.
There is an authenticity about proceedings, the characters even speaking Gaelic at times to further this point.
If there is one negative about the killer its that, we are given his/her/its POV for the killings, an acceptable cliché on its own, but when seen through a red filter and a fish eye lens, it just screams of overkill and dates the film just a little.
Still though you will be hard pressed to guess the outcome or the identity or for that matter the species of the killer, given the clues presented, but it's a fun and very well acted piece.
The local Scottish cast are exceptional, the local bobbies Roeves and Cosmo in particular spar well off each other and are a delight to behold.
Imrie, never one i've taken to in other works, is also pretty good and displays hew womanly physique as if she were in a Hammer production.
The outlandish, maybe even preposterous ending may irk some viewers, it disappointed me in some ways, but taking into account when it was made, its an understandable and acceptable addendum that if you think about it, is even more terrifying..
Gripping - even by today's standards.
I loved this series so much that I purchased the original book (by David Wiltshire) from a tiny library in Pennsylvania that was closing down, trust me, it took some finding.It's rare that the TV version and the book are so closely aligned, but that is the case with Child of the Vodyanoi and The Nightmare Man. The book obviously goes into more detail about the capabilities of the mini-sub and the training that the Vodyanoi pilots are put through, the passage where the "creature" tries to, and finally succeeds, in killing the one remaining Coastguard is truly chilling, and it's scary enough in the TV version.Programmes from the early 80s have an intellectual honesty about them that makes me watch more and more of these old series, if the BBC remade TNM today, the dentist would be a socially aware Muslim, the pharmacist he falls in love with would be an African asylum seeker, and the chief of the island's police force would be a one legged lesbian with a nut allergy.
The maniacal killer would of course be the token heterosexual white guy..
Hambelievable!.
Have just watched the DVD of this prime slice of old nonsense, the kind of obscure hokum that was churned out regularly in the 70s and 80s but is seldom seen in these dull televisual days.
The cast is quite an amusing mix, with jut-jawed Agatha Christie adaptation regular James Warwick as the dentist/paratrooper hero and a youthful Celia Imrie as his busty girlfriend.
Maurice Roeves is the wry, cynical cop and Jonathan Newth the obviously dodgy Colonel.
One of the biggest giggles is the way Warwick constantly suggests outlandish explanations for the murders - 'Genetic experiments gone wrong' or Alien invasion.
Of course it turns out to be even dafter, a Russian cyborg gone AWOL.
It's a bit of a cheapy as well with a submarine so lightweight a couple of brawny chaps can carry on their shoulders and a cast of about 12.
Still, worth a watch for novelty value..
Works Once But Doesn't Lend Itself To Repeat Viewing.
I had great memories of watching this away back in the Spring of 1981 .
With the legendary duo of Robert Holmes and Douglas Camfield , both best known for their work on DOCTOR WHO in the 60s and 70s this had all the hallmarks of being " The Quatermass of the 1980s " and watching it on its initial and sole broadcast in 1981 it didn't disappoint .
Well until the last 15 minutes of the final episode when it's revealed that the antagonist isn't an alien fiend with a fetish for human flesh but a deranged communist serviceman from the Soviet Union .
Perhaps knowing this plot revelation spoiled much of my enjoyment watching after a gap of over 30 years ?
It's not dreadful by any means but doesn't lend itself to repeat viewings To be fair to the production team it doesn't have a Hollywood budget but the production team in general and Camfield in particular manage to bring a brooding , claustrophobic atmosphere to the proceedings .
Okay it's achieved by very simple and clichéd means by smothering everything in fog and relying on monster POV shots .
Indeed it's the horror aspects that work best and stick long in the memory such as the very memorable attack on the coastguard station that makes up the climax of episode three .
Bare in mind also that this was broadcast pre-watershed on Friday nights so there's little gore but never the less it does show that you don't need gore to terrify an audience .
The downside is that these aspects overwhelm the rest of the story , especially if you know how the story turns out and the characters come across as stock bland one dimensional cyphers No doubt if you're on the wrong side of 40 you might have vivid memories of this show .
It works very well in segments but not enough to make THE NIGHTMARE MAN a satisfying whole .
If you've not seen it before you might enjoy it but if you saw it in 1981 you might be left with a nagging sense of disappointment after seeing it again.
Sci-fi/horror in the style of Kneale.
I enjoyed this unpretentious mystery/SF/horror/cold war thriller, but then I'd been marinating in vintage British genre products like the Hammer, Amicus and Tigon films and Nigel Kneale's "Quatermass" series and "Beasts," so I was in just the right frame of mind for it.
You might need more expensive production values and more extreme thrills in order to get off, like that commentator who scornfully compared Celia Imrie's character to Miss Babs.
Babs didn't repair cameras and do a spot of cartography on the side in addition to running the shop, hon..
From a Bygone Era of British TV.
I watched this when it originally aired in the early eighties.
It must have struck a nerve because it stuck with me for over 30 years.
Mostly the attack scenes and the red POV of the killer are the things I remembered.
In particular when the guy is attacked by the gas mask wearing"creature" in the tent and his camera and voice recorder capture the attack, only to be viewed later by the police.
What was that thing in those photos????
Quite chilling at the time.
Anyway, I finally tracked it down again recently after several failed attempts to find it.
I could't even remember the name of it, and just chanced over during an internet search.
God bless Google.
Like a lot shows that had a nostalgic connection to you, it looks very dated now, and it's merit is really based on having experienced it at the time.
But I still enjoyed a repeat viewing.
It didn't quite bring back that feeling of dread it created for me as a 10 year old viewing it (how could it, eh?) but I can still see why it stuck with me after all these years.
Anyone viewing this for the first time now, most likely will find it unintentionally funny and ultimately unsatisfying.
However, it was new and fresh for it's time and much bolder then most of the garbage that now fills the UK TV schedules.
So Glad I finally found it again!