User Reviews

Paul (John Stride) is trying to come to terms with the fact that his wife has just recently left him. He books himself into a remote health spa on an old country estate, where relaxation, massage and some nice lunches are the order of the day. The spa is run by a brother and sister, Clovis and Jessica, both of whom seem friendly, maybe even a little over friendly towards Paul. Paul begins to get suspicious of the resort as everyone seems to have ice cold hands, he first notices this when masseuse Bob, apologizes for his "fit of the cools" before pleading for help from Paul to get him out of the resort, but before Bob can elaborate more, their conversation is interrupted by Clovis. The following day Bob has disappeared and Paul has more questions for the increasingly odd Clovis and Jessica, who increase their hands on approach to their most recent guest. They show him their prized Ice House in the garden around which grows a very unique vine, containing two highly scented trumpet shaped flowers, one red, one white. Jessica beckons Paul to climb the vine and inhale deeply the wonderful scent, Paul declines...

Paul's sleeping habits have been interrupted too, on his first night, there was a wrapping noise on his window which disappeared when he opened it, this of course left the him to deal with the noise of local wildlife. The second night, he notices that his window now has a small hole in it, a hole that gets increasingly bigger and grows in the shape of a trumpet shaped flower? all the while of course the overly aromatic scent of the flowers (which is more active at night) creeps its way into Paul's room.

Paul decides to investigate further by himself at the mysterious Ice House, which he finds locked despite the fact that Clovis and Jessica have told him its always open. That night under darkness, Paul makes another attempt to enter, this time the old oak door creaks open with ease, what ghastly deeds will he find there? The Ice House was the final film in the initial run of the annual Ghost Story for Christmas series that ran from 1971. This time it retains the modern setting adopted by the previous years Stigma(1977) although it still retains an old fashioned air about it which i liked. For the first time too, Lawrence Gordon Clark did not helm, perhaps a sign that the series was coming to an end. Its an oddity for sure, its brief running time and its theme giving it at times, the feel of a Twilight Zone episode. The strange otherworldly owners and guests with their mannered speech are more reminiscent of a 50's Sci/Fi flic a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers or of Day of the Triffids than the usual ghost story fare, Are these odd personages aliens? pod people? plants in human form? ghosts? who knows?...little is explained in this regard or to any plot point for that matter, as is de rigeur with the series, all such matters are left purely to the instincts and imagination of the viewer. For the most part it kept this viewers interest, Its finale too sticks firmly to the vagueness of previous films and is somewhat fitting. Not as bad as its rating, thats for sure.

THE ICE HOUSE is the last of the classic-era BBC GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS, and based on an original story for once. It lacks a certain something compared to the likes of the many M.R. James adaptations or indeed THE SIGNALMAN, but at least it's written by John Bowen, who also wrote the classic adaptation of THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS. This one's a rather strange and subtle effort of rich lives at a country spa retreat run by an odd brother and sister. It's a story where there are no ghosts at all and the supernatural is merely hinted at. John Stride gives a good showing as the lead and the cast are all very interesting, as are the sinister moments of disquiet; it's just that it does pale in comparison to what came before.

Eighth and final entry in the British "Ghost Story for Christmas" series that ran on BBC around Christmastime every year from 1971 to 1978, It runs just 35 minutes, is the only entry that wasn't directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark and, like the previous years STIGMA, is set in contemporary times and wasn't based on a literary classic but instead on an original concept written specifically for the series. Paul (John Stride - who played Lee Remick's shrink in THE OMEN) attends an upscale vacation resort with a health spa and gym. Out back in the garden, there's an ice house covered with strange vines and two overwhelmingly fragrant flowers (one white, one red). The near-catatonic behavior of some of the other guests raises suspicions in Paul, as does masseur Bob's (David Beames) request for help getting away from the resort before he disappears. The unnaturally polite and proper resort owners - Jessica (Elizabeth Romilly) and Clovis (Geoffrey Burridge) - claim to be siblings but may not actually be, seem to be paying extra special attention to their new guest and keep mentioning how their advertisements will appeal only to a certain kind of person... The only common link to guests and workers alike is that everyone seems to have freezing cold hands.

If you want a cut-and-dry answer to know why Paul was seemingly lured there, who the resort owners are, what the resort owners want, what has happened to the other guests or what significance the flowers and ice house have, then you're out of luck with this very ambiguous tale. It's likely to be polarizing. I'd understand why one viewer may like while another wouldn't. Much is suggested or left to the imagination, which is something likely to appeal to fans of the other tales in this series, though this one isn't particularly scary or frightening, just a bit eerie instead.

1978's The Ice House proved to be the final episode of A Ghost Story for Christmas, until the program was revived in the twenty-first century. With Lawrence Gordon Clark having gone freelance and left the BBC after the previous year's episode, Derek Lister directs the episode, which like the previous year's Stigma is based on an original screenplay. Clark's absence is immediately and painfully obvious; The Ice House really isn't very good.

The episode was written by John Bowen, who previously provided the script for The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, and sees John Stride's Paul visiting a countryside retreat following a messy divorce. He gradually discovers that the mysterious siblings who run the retreat have strange secrets, which seem to revolve around the mysterious ice house and the unusual flowers growing on its roof. The idea of city folk finding that the countryside is rather more sinister than it might seem is not a million miles away from the folk horror trappings of Bowen's later Robin Redbreast, but The Ice House is unfocused and sloppy. The mannered dialogue given to the siblings is awful; the significance of the flowers is left so ambiguous that one suspects Bowen got halfway towards an explanation and gave up; and there are vague incestuous and homoerotic undertones thrown in that don't get developed and thus just feel gratuitous and silly.

It's almost worth watching the episode for the bizarre denouement, which reveals what is really going and the significance of the ice house, but for an episode that is only thirty-four minutes long, this is astonishingly dull at times. Part of the reason for its frosty reception at the time may be that it isn't actually a ghost story, Bowen instead opting for psychological horror with fantastical elements thrown in. The problem is, whilst Clark might have managed to milk some real suspense out of the premise, Lister does not. Although he does provide a memorable scare when Paul finds Bob frozen in ice in the ice house, the rest of the episode suffers from flat and lifeless direction.

The acting doesn't help. John Stride makes a believable leading man as Paul, but Geoffrey Burridge and Elizabeth Romilly veer embarrassingly between wood and ham as mysterious siblings Clovis and Jessica. The stilted lines that they are given undoubtedly don't help, but their atrocious performances rob their scenes of any possible suspense. Ultimately, the weak script, the lifeless direction and the bad acting all add up to a mess: the only thing that is chilling about The Ice House is the eponymous ice house itself. Whether or not the poor reaction to the episode was the reason that A Ghost Story for Christmas came to an end in 1978, it certainly ended the series on a damp squib. No doubt the cold reception received by both Stigma and The Ice House was part of the reason why when the program was revived some twenty-seven years later, it would go back to basics and the short stories of M. R. James.

Between 1971 and 1978 the BBC used to dramatise a ghost story every year under the title "A Ghost Story for Christmas". The first five entries in the series were all based upon tales by that great master of the genre, M. R. James, and the sixth was an adaptation of Charles Dickens's "The Signalman". All these had a period setting; "The Ash Tree" was set in the mid eighteenth century, "A Warning to the Curious" in the 1930s and the other four in the Victorian era. The seventh entry, "Stigma", and the eighth, "The Ice House", were both original stories with a modern setting.

Paul, a middle-aged man who has recently separated from his wife, is staying at a health spa in an old manor house in a remote part of the country, run by a brother and sister named Clovis and Jessica. The two are decidedly odd in their manor, and Paul begins to suspect that something sinister may be happening, especially after a masseur named Bob mysteriously disappears. Paul also suspects that these strange occurrences may be connected with an ice house in the grounds of the manor.

"The Ice House" was the only one of the original eight not to be directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark, who had moved to ITV. (The director was Derek Lister). It was written by John Bowen, who was also responsible for "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas". It was not well received by the critics when first broadcast on Christmas Day 1978, and their lack of enthusiasm may have been the reason why it was the last film in the original "A Ghost Story for Christmas" series. (The series has been revived in the 21st century, although these more recent films have been shown at odd intervals and the series has not become an annual fixture).

Bowen was previously best known to me as the author of that excellent Play for Today "Robin Redbreast", but "The Ice House" is not in the same class. I can understand why the critics disliked it. To begin with, it does not really belong in the series as it is not a ghost story. No ghost ever appears, and no supernatural explanation is put forward for the strange occurrences. Indeed, no explanation is ever put forward for a lot of the details in the film. Much is made of the two trumpet-shaped flowers, one red and one white, growing on a vine on the ice house, and it is vaguely suggested that these flowers may be connected to Clovis (normally seen dressed in white) and Jessica (dressed in red), but it is never fully explained how they fit into the picture. Clovis states that the two flowers live forever, never dying or producing seeds or fruit, which botanically seems like nonsense.

Nor is any explanation given for the strange noises Paul hears in the night or for the hole (shaped like the trumpet-flowers) which appears in his bedroom window. As for Bob, it is implied that he was murdered by Clovis and Jessica, but no plausible motive is put forward. I would rank "The Ice House", a baffling puzzle without a solution, as the poorest of the original "Ghost Stories for Christmas", well below than the reasonably good "Stigma" or even "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", the weakest of the five James adaptations. A disappointing end for a series which, at its best, brought us such excellent offerings as "A Warning to the Curious" and "Lost Hearts". 4/10.

"The Ice House" is a 35-minute live action short film from 1978, so this one has its 40th anniversary next year. The director here is Derek Lister and the script is by John Bowen. And even without Lawrence Gordon Clark in charge this time, this is still a film from the series of horror Christmas short films from the 1970s. The title actually sounds promising and the premise does as well here on IMDb. An ice house, a harmless protagonist, a pair of evil landlords etc. Simple but good right? Well, not really. What I watched in here was just as unappealing as the other ghost stories for Christmas overall. Such a shame. The ice house never made a truly lasting impact as a location in this film and this is especially bad because it is in the very center of it all. I like some horror films about unknown dangers, but all these unseen scare Christmas specials do almost nothing for me, so maybe if you like some of the more known ones, then perhaps you will appreciate this one too. From an entirely subjective position, however, I give it a thumbs-down as neither acting, writing or atmosphere turned out to my liking. Watch something else instead.