One would be hard-pressed to find a children’s program with as much creeping dread as Children of the Stones (1977), screening tonight at Spectacle in its seven-episode entirety. Directed by Peter Graham Scott, the folk horror/fantasy serial aired on the Welsh network HTV in early 1977, perturbing its unsuspecting British audience so much that it’s often described by those who saw its original broadcast as the scariest children’s series ever made.
Young Matthew (child actor Peter Demin) accompanies his astrophysicist father, Adam Brake (Gareth Thomas), to the sleepy fictional village of Millbury, where the latter plans on studying the ancient stone circle that surrounds the town. The overly-friendly locals they encounter, as well as the suspicious mayor (played by the prolific Scottish character actor Iain Cuthbertson, whom fans of British folk horror may recognize from the 1972 BBC teleplay The Stone Tape), belie the sinister energy bubbling beneath the town’s surface. Matthew confronts the relatable adolescent stress of not fitting in with his new classmates, but it quickly becomes clear from the townspeople’s strange manners and customs that something more nefarious unites Millbury’s community. While the plot first appears like a YA-version of The Wicker Man (1973), a much more bizarre and convoluted tale eventually emerges. As Dr. Brake investigates the stones, attempting to find a link between them and the strange psychic forces that appear to keep the residents in captivity, he uncovers a conspiracy involving pagan mythology, black holes, and multiple timelines.
The show’s blend of science-fiction and folk horror is enhanced by its filming location’s eerie atmosphere. The exterior scenes in Children of the Stones were shot in Avebury, a village in Wiltshire, England, that is encircled by a real megalithic stone circle that was likely used for a pagan rituals. The filmmakers often use these real stones—as looming figures in the distance watching over the town, or through unsettling, threatening close-ups. Sidney Sager’s dissonant music score—a combination of minimal, atonal instrumentation and a chorus of wailing and whispering voices performed by London’s Ambrosian Singers—haunts the landscape, acting as the final key ingredient that transforms this children’s program into a phantasmagoric experience.
The ‘70s were a prime period for British children’s television in terms of creative and challenging narratives. Series such as The Changes (1975), Raven (1977) and King of the Castle (1977) blended science-fiction and fantasy with social critique; these programs also shared a fascination with time-jumping and collapsing the boundaries between the pre-industrial era and the present day. Still, Children of the Stones stands out for its idiosyncratic tone, as well as the mature, often existential, themes it trusts young viewers to contemplate, like the role of the individual in society, power’s corrupting influence, and the tension between modernity and England’s pagan past.
It is Matthew, the doctor’s son, who has a psychic connection to the stones and quickly senses the town’s strange energy. But the insecurity he feels as an interloper also colors the strange interactions he has with the village and its inhabitants. The experience of adolescence can be almost as destabilizing as an unnamed metaphysical force, and it’s difficult to push back against the evil power compelling everyone to submit and conform when you’re just a teenager who wants to belong.
Children of the Stones screens tonight, March 28, at Spectacle.
