Review of A Warning to the Curious

The best episode yet that I have seen from the BBC's yearly GHOST STORY FOR Christmas benefits greatly from a fine central performance from Peter Vaughn (atypically but effectively cast in a sympathetic role), an interesting archaeological-historical background to the story, on-location shooting of the lovely English countryside and brilliant direction that makes the most of its creepy loner villain; the sequences showing archaeologist Vaughn being relentlessly pursued at great speed by the ghostly curator of the burial place of the third (and last remaining) crown of Anglia sent genuine shivers down this spectator's spine. Clive Swift - who also appeared in the modern-day bookends of the previous entry in the series, THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER (1971) - plays Vaughn's fellow hotel lodger who, being an amateur painter, is a regular around these parts for the purpose of scenery sketching and, indeed, another frisson is provided when the ghost appears out of nowhere right in the middle of the landscape! The curator is actually introduced to us at the start of the 50-minute short when he brutally fells another nosy (and arrogant) gravedigger and, throughout the film, materializes himself among the trees, as a perennially late (and invisible) train passenger and, most memorably, as a pale-faced intruder in Vaughn's hotel room.