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Mystery TV Programmes Of The Seventies

Oddly enough, someone asked the 'Australian bunyip/crane' movie question in this month's Empire. And I smugly knew the answer then as well.

The film is Frog Dreaming also released as The Quest and Go Kids. Some kids think they've found a monster in an old lake. They meet an enigmatic old guy who makes enigmatic comments about the nature of monsters and the supernatural. One kid apparently dies but doesn't really. It turns out that the monster is an old pumping engine/crane thing powered by the wind (rather cleverly, all the clues to this have been onscreen all along). Kids get rescued, everyone is happy.

Aha! Twist. One kid stays behind and glimpses the old guy again...and a real, poltergeist-like supernatural monster in the lake...

Gosh, I went on a bit about that, didn't I?
 
I've been trying to track this programme down for a while now but to no avail.
It's a BBC series from the late 80's, early 90's set in the near future. There's been a war in which nuclear weapons were used in Europe. The series it's self is set around London Zoo and involves trying to keep itself going in the face of an increasingly totalitarian government. In the end it ends up being used as a concentration camp for political prisoners.
The most interesting thing for Forteans is that the Governor of the zoo, has a stuffed Yeti in his office, that he shot while on expedition, only to find it was the last of its kind. So in proving it's existence he ended up wiping out the species.
It's been a while, so some of my recollections may be a little suspect but the post nuclear war , the zoo, the people in the cages and the yeti remain fixed in my brain.
Has any one got any ideas?
 
sort of rings a bell..something about a Orang/human hybrid?... tiz all i can remmebr tho,,
 
Marion said:
Anyone remember David Attenborough's cryptozoology/fabulous animals series from the 70s? I loved that, even had the book that went with it.
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Have searched for Fabulous Animals, unfortunatly not avaiable on DVD or video:(
 
carole said:
Another one I liked was 'The Haunting of Cassie Palmer'.

Carole
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Was this about a schoolgirl who was being visited by a cadaverous bloke from the graveyard? Something about a ring hidden in a picture frame, as well?
 
Re: 70's childrens TV drama?

Spook said:
I was trying to recall the TV programmes I watched as a wee’un in the seventies that might have inspired a taste for the Fortean. Children of the Stones and The Owl Service come straight to mind but there is one I absolutely loved and can now remember nothing about. It was based around a couple of children (brother and sister, I think) who found and took home a Bronze-Age torque from a burial mound and were thereafter visited by lots of sinister stuff. Anyone remember what it was called or anything else about it.
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In the early 80s, the US children's cable channel Nickelodeon ran a few foreign miniseries under the anthology title The Third Eye. I don't remember much about them except that they were twisted as hell. It contained the miniseries, "Children of the Stones," "Into the Labyrinth," "The Haunting of Cassie Palmer" and "Under the Mountain." Perhaps "Under the Mountain" is the one you're talking about.

Synopsis:
Under the Mountain was New Zealand in origin, and focused on twins Rachel and Theo who went to visit an aunt. While they were they, they met Mr. Jones, who they had apparently met several years earlier. It turned out that Mr. Jones was an alien, and he had been sent to recruit Rachel and Theo to assist him in his battles with another race of aliens, who were sluglike, but could take on any form. It was also revealed that the twins had psychic abilities, and they were able to use this to defeat the evil aliens.

This is the only miniseries of the bunch I can even vaguely remember. It was quite unsettling, though. The aliens were these mindless zombie things covered in green slime and seaweed.

An overview of The Third Eye can be found here:

http://www.johnnorrisbrown.com/classic- ... /index.htm
 
Re: 70's childrens TV drama?

Ogopogo said:
Perhaps "Under the Mountain" is the one you're talking about.
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Nope, not that one. The one I was thinking of was UK based. I can still see the shots that ran with the opening credits - in the background a farmhouse, lights on in the windows, darkness gathering, then the camera drops picking out a gold torque poking out from among the rubble spilling out of a tumulus - or something like that!

And then a bit of synchronicity. I was going to post an experience I had on the "weird childhood dreams" thread (which I can't now find). I inextricably associate the dream I was going to describe with the TV series that I was thinking about when I started this thread - not because they have anything in common but because they both occured at the same time in a period of my childhood which remains incredibly vivid and detailed in my memory for reasons I cannot really explain.

Hey presto! On the day I start writing a description of that childhood dream the old 70's TV series thread gets resurrected out of the blue, after a gap of over three years.
 
I remember a children's TV series that might fit the bill, called "Into The Labyrinth". Also starred Rula Lenska, if I remember correctly.
 
Slightly off-topic but did anyone ever break the code at the end of Redshift? I suppose I could Google for it I'm sure I'd get more interesting answers here.

Really enjoyed Alan Garner's stuff when I was a kid - particularly The Owl Service. I recall my English teacher doing a thundering Welsh accent to some of the characters when we read it out in class.

Got me very interested in the Mabynogion too (forgive if the spelling's wrong).
 
What was the one where at the end the kids had to use a radio controlled plane to attack a radar dish on top of a van to prevent some terrible global catastrophe?

I'm sure I asked this ages ago on another thread and got an answer that I've totally forgotten.
 
I remember a jackanory drama in the 70`s,based on the film Paper House,about a girl who is sick and confind to bed for ages.
She has been given a sketch-pad and pencil to draw and pass the time,but everything she draws becomes part of some kind nightmare.
She draws a house surrounded by standing stones which are watching the house,the next thing we see her in the house looking out at the stones which appear to have moved slighly nearer to the house than she`d drawn.
She draws a boy looking out of an upstairs window,when she dreams of the house again she meets the boy who is crying,because he is paralized due to her not drawing him any legs!
Basically everything she draws she dreams about,but none of the dreams are at all nice and extremely creepy,and throughout them all the stones are watching.
:eek!!!!:
 
I dunno about a 'Jackanory' drama, but this was filmed! If I recall correctly, this was a New Zealand production and was both seriously spooky but at the same time really damn good!
The Paper House - yeah; that rings bells!
 
When I was a child, we had aquila, in which a couple of children keep saving the day in a talking roman flying saucer that they keep in a belltower.
 
stormkhan...You are right it was pretty disturbing.
I made a mistake...Paper House film was made years after the jackanory version,which was made in three episodes in the very early 70`s.

I seem to remember she has a dream dad who is a phyco-killer and tries to chop her up with a huge axe!!!!

How horrid. :shock:
 
stu neville said:
It was the Children's Film Foundation, staple of the middle section of "Screen Test", and de riguer summer holiday BBC morning programming in the seventies and early eighties. Apart from Glitterball, their movies usually consisted of kids with mullets and flares riding around on Choppers and foiling armed robberies, etc. It's logo consisted of pigeons taking off from Trafalgar Square, IIRC.

[edit]The redoubtable TV Cream has a whole section on the CFF - link from front page :) [/edit]
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Specifically here:
https://www.tvcream.co.uk/films/cff/the-childrens-film-foundation/

I have happy memories of what must have been the tail-end of the CFF.

My school hall was commandeered during the long summer holidays and would be the best part of full with kids every Saturday, there to watch their output on the big pull-down projector screen. My brother and I would often get packed off (it was within walking distance of home) with what would now sound a trifling amount of money to buy 'penny sweets' during the intermission.

Frankly, I loved it. At that age, you're simply not that discerning and even the corny seems fresh.
 
we used to watch the BFF shows at junior and (i think) primary school where we were all summoned to the assembly hall where the film projector had been set up. One that jumps to mind was "The Sky Bike". We also saw "A Hitch in Time" with Patrick Troughton.

I was about 9 or 10 and even at that age I realised what embarrassing crud they were
 
My favourite for a while when I was a kid was 'Here Come the Double Deckers', which I think was made with the Children's Film Foundation.
They did good stuff.
 
Mythopoeika said:
My favourite for a while when I was a kid was 'Here Come the Double Deckers', which I think was made with the Children's Film Foundation.
They did good stuff.
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I suspect that if I thought nobody was within hearing distance I could do the theme song!
 
FilthyleDog said:
Mystery TV Programmes of the seventies...

I noticed there's been a few of these on the forum over the last few days and everybody seems to crawl out of the woodwork to try and find answers to them...

Here's mine - your help much appreciated.

There was a children's BBC drama series around the early to mid seventies and an integral part of this (or at least the part that sticks in my mind) was to do with electricity pylons creating some malignant force field or inflicting suffering of some degree. I also remember there was an air of desolation portrayed (I was very young at the time, so all this is a bit vague).

Anybody know what this series was? It was pretty powerful, even scary stuff for a five year old!
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The series you are thinking of was called The Changes
 
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