Mystery and Imagination Review

This collects the surviving eight episodes of ITV’s flagship ‘quality’ horror show of the ’60s and early ’70s. You get Denholm Elliott as both Dracula (with Susan George as his most fetching victim) and Roderick Usher (with Susannah York as mad Madeleine), Ian Holm as Frankenstein and (in rare but logical casting) his own Monster, Jack Hawkins haunted by a child, Patrick Mower and Isobel Black suffering The Curse Of The Mummy and, best of all, fine old slyly sent-up melodrama in Uncle Silas. Mostly studio-bound, it has fine writing and acting, but The Fall Of The House Of Usher isn’t the only episode in which the sets seem ready to tumble.