Someone At The Top of the Stairs (1973)

[00:00:06]Hello and welcome back to Who Gives a Folk.

[00:00:09]Today's video is another from that fascinating 70s series Thriller.

[00:00:20]Someone at the top of the stairs was the third story in the first season and again it was written by Brian Clemens.

[00:00:29]The guy who also wrote And Soon the Darkness which we covered recently.

[00:00:34]And there are a couple of similarities between that film and this program.

[00:00:39]Namely two young women in danger.

[00:00:46]Now basically the story is there's two young women Gillian and Chrissy.

[00:00:52]Chrissy's American.

[00:00:53]And they are fortunate enough to find a really good flat in a big old house somewhere in London and the landlady seems to take a liking to them.

[00:01:09]She lets them have the the flat at a really cheap rent and she's a bit odd.

[00:01:15]And keeps saying oh pretty girls, pretty pretty girls and the room is ready for you even though they hadn't actually visited the house before.

[00:01:28]So it's a little odd but they laugh it off.

[00:01:32]>> We have a beautiful room and it should suit you marvelously. It's all prepared for you.

[00:01:39]>> For us?

[00:01:39]>> Well, someone very like you.

[00:01:41]You're such pretty girls.

[00:01:43]Such pretty pretty girls. Come along.

[00:01:47]>> A lot of things happen that are a bit odd.

[00:01:59]All independently or individually dismissible.

[00:02:04]I don't know how long it would take for most of us to think it's time to get out.

[00:02:14]But then there wouldn't be a program.

[00:02:16]So, fortunately, they don't.

[00:02:19]>> Do you know I've lost three pairs of underwear in the last two days?

[00:02:22]Well, you can laugh.

[00:02:23]Girl can catch an awful cold.

[00:02:26]>> The rooms are spacious.

[00:02:28]It's, you know, not a little bedsit, it's a full apartment with separated sleeping areas, dining areas, living areas.

[00:02:38]And there's a cupboard or a wardrobe.

[00:02:42]And when Chrissy's, yeah, putting her stuff in, they find scratched on the inside of the wardrobe, "Help me. Help me."

[00:02:59]Which might be a bit alarming.

[00:03:02]Certainly, Chrissy's a bit alarmed by it.

[00:03:05]Gillian just laughs it off.

[00:03:09]And that's kind of what happens throughout the rest of the program.

[00:03:16]Chrissy's very sensitive to what seems to be happening.

[00:03:20]Gillian just laughs it off. She's just, yeah, she's out for a good time. She's out for a nice easy life. Just wants to enjoy things. Really doesn't want to get bogged down with creepy feelings.

[00:03:34]There are several reasons why Chrissy might think this is a creepy place.

[00:03:41]They slowly meet the other inhabitants, shall we say, of the house.

[00:03:47]And they're all very friendly.

[00:03:49]Really friendly.

[00:03:51]Peculiarly Except when the girls aren't there.

[00:03:57]We're in the first quarter of an hour, we have a colonel coming into their room and fondling their underwear, which goes missing.

[00:04:08]>> Marvelous.

[00:04:11]Marvelous.

[00:04:13]>> We have at least two instances of peeping Toms.

[00:04:28]One of which turns out to be a young kid spying on the girls in the in the bathroom.

[00:04:41]So, we're given loads of warnings, as are the girls, that this is not your everyday room in a house.

[00:04:52]As they are examining their room, uh they look in the chest of drawers, and they find that it's got newspaper in it, as I think was quite common back in the '70s.

[00:05:04]But when they look at the date, it's 1852.

[00:05:08]Which is quite old, even in the '70s.

[00:05:13]And on the first night, Chrissy's sure she can hear someone trying their door.

[00:05:23]All of which means that by the end of a couple of days, Chrissy wants to go.

[00:05:29]Gillian thinks that's stupid, and gets her to agree that they've already paid the first month.

[00:05:36]Let's see it out.

[00:05:38]>> But we've got to get out of this house.

[00:05:40]>> Oh, Chrissy, you know >> I don't know what it is, but I feel it.

[00:05:43]It's something wrong. We've got to get out of this place before it's too late, really.

[00:05:47]>> Now, all of this has happened in the first 15 to 20 minutes of the program.

[00:05:53]So, you can see there's a hell of a lot goes on. There's a hell of a lot to watch and do enjoy.

[00:06:01]It rewards repeated views because after the first time and you know how it unfolds, you can just enjoy what you're watching. You can enjoy piecing the bits together again.

[00:06:14]Because there's a lot of things that you might miss on the first viewing.

[00:06:24]It's a really good fun film.

[00:06:26]Um I think a lot of that is a whole '70s vibe. You've got the '70s clothes. Uh the actors are just that slightly bit off kilter.

[00:06:40]So, you're not quite sure what's going on. They're not weird enough to be weird, but they're not normal enough to be normal.

[00:06:48]And that just It gives you this whole sense of what the folk is going on.

[00:06:56]Uh it's really well done.

[00:06:59]As I say, it is written by Brian Clemens and there are some similarities to what we see in And Soon the Darkness.

[00:07:08]You've got some slightly oddball characters.

[00:07:12]You've got people who don't quite seem to be what they are.

[00:07:19]And you've got two women who appear to be in peril.

[00:07:24]Or at least appear to be in a dodgy situation.

[00:07:30]In a way, this is like a microcosm folk horror. In that you've got two outsiders coming into the community of the house and finding it's a bit different to what they expected.

[00:07:47]But to say any more would be a spoiler.

[00:07:54]Now the cast of this is quite interesting.

[00:07:57]Uh as we know the Thriller series always had to have an American in it because it was being uh part franchised by an American company as well for showing in America.

[00:08:08]And Chrissy is played by Donna Mills who's quite famous.

[00:08:15]A couple of years before this, she'd played Clint Eastwood's girlfriend in Play Misty for me.

[00:08:22]She's uh you know, a big role.

[00:08:24]She also appears in two more episodes of Thriller.

[00:08:28]I think she's one of the few that comes back quite so many times.

[00:08:33]She was also in the better not mentioned, let's pretend it never existed film, Look What Happened to Rosemary's Baby. Mhm.

[00:08:43]And she's been in 236 episodes of Knots Landing. Massive American soap Dallas Dynasty style.

[00:08:55]I never watched it.

[00:08:57]Donna Mills was born in 1940 and she's still acting.

[00:09:02]She's quite impressive.

[00:09:04]Her friend, Gillian Pemberton, well, she's played by Judy Carne and I thought I'd seen her in several things, but obviously not because she's hardly been in anything.

[00:09:13]Uh she's mainly famous for Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in America which was a a regular weekly I don't know, sketch show or something. She was in a couple of episodes of I Dream of Jeannie.

[00:09:28]And spent most of her time in America where she was born and she died in England, Northamptonshire.

[00:09:38]She sadly passed away in 2015.

[00:09:40]I thought she looks really familiar, but I don't see any of these programs that she's been in, so that's really weird.

[00:09:49]Now, the landlady, Mrs. Oxley, she's played by Alfie Charlton, who was in the very first Doctor Who series playing a cavewoman.

[00:10:00]And then again a few years later in another William Hartnell the Meddling Monk, which she played an Anglo-Saxon woman. But she's also made lots of one-off appearances in programs like Sherlock Holmes, Herod the Wake, and that anthology series Out of the Unknown.

[00:10:18]She looks quite familiar um when I saw her.

[00:10:22]The underwear fondling colonel Colonel White, well, that's played by Peter Cellier.

[00:10:30]He's been in Doctor Who Timeflight, but he's also in several episodes of Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister.

[00:10:39]Now, there is a boyfriend interest for both of them.

[00:10:43]And Chris's boyfriend interest is a guy who tried to rent the room, but nobody answered the door.

[00:10:52]And a couple of minutes later the girls answer the door a knock on the door and answered and get the room.

[00:11:00]So, he's got a reason to be miffed, but anyway.

[00:11:03]His name is Gary Masters. He's played by Francis Wallis, who hasn't got many roles, but is instantly recognizable cuz he was Roger in The Owl Service.

[00:11:15]And he plays a bit of an annoying guy in this as well.

[00:11:20]Too slick to be believable.

[00:11:22]And bit irksome.

[00:11:25]>> I'll let you know.

[00:11:26]>> Listen.

[00:11:28]>> Well, you are going to ask me back for a drink sometime, aren't you?

[00:11:34]David de Keyser is also in the program.

[00:11:37]He's mainly a voice actor, but he has been in some interesting programs. He voiced Dracula in the Hammer film Legend of Seven Golden Vampires.

[00:11:49]He was in Diamonds Are Forever.

[00:11:53]He's also been in Yes Prime Minister, and he appeared in Robin of Sherwood, where he was the father of Geoffrey in Levi, who we saw in Children of the Stones. So, all in all, this is a really marvelous episode of Thriller. It's great fun. It's spooky.

[00:12:13]There are some really chilling bits in it, and you you can start to feel why our girl's putting up with it.

[00:12:24]But, good rent, lovely rooms.

[00:12:30]You can understand why Jillian's saying, "Ah, to hell with all this. It's fine.

[00:12:33]Just get over yourself."

[00:12:35]But, you can also see why Chris is saying, "This is crap. I want to get out of here. Let's leave."

[00:12:41]It's well-acted, fun to watch, and [snorts] yeah, hope you enjoy it.

[00:12:48]Until next time, take care.