The Nightmare Man

1981
The Nightmare Man

Seasons & Episodes

  • 1

EP1 Episode 1 May 01, 1981

The tourists have returned to the Scottish mainland and Inverdee is preparing for the long hard winter. However, Sheila Anderson's late arrival has a dramatic effect on the island community, as Michael Gaffikin and Inspector Inskip are soon to discover.

EP2 Episode 2 May 08, 1981

The brutal murder of Sheila Anderson remains a mystery. Could it have been a ritual killing? While her murderer roams free, Inverdee's community is in great danger.

EP3 Episode 3 May 15, 1981

Dr. Symonds has been brutally murdered. Radioactivity is discovered on Inverdee; a 'flying saucer' has been sighted, and a strange craft is found on the sea-shore. Are these incidents connected with the recent killings?

EP4 Episode 4 May 22, 1981

Although the film from Dr. Symond's camera reveals the presence of a grotesque, monster-like creature, Inspector Inskip remains suspicious of the Colonel's activities.Unknown to the island community, the coastguards are fighting for their lives.
6.7| 0h30m| en| More Info
Released: 01 May 1981 Ended
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Country: United Kingdom
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02zn074
Synopsis

The population of a small Scottish island is gripped with fear following a strange discovery and a series of savage murders. Adapted from David Wiltshire's 'Child of Vodyanoi'.

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Jim bob I watched this when it originally aired in the early eighties. It must have struck a nerve because it stuck with me for over 30 years. Mostly the attack scenes and the red POV of the killer are the things I remembered. In particular when the guy is attacked by the gas mask wearing"creature" in the tent and his camera and voice recorder capture the attack, only to be viewed later by the police. What was that thing in those photos???? Quite chilling at the time. Anyway, I finally tracked it down again recently after several failed attempts to find it. I could't even remember the name of it, and just chanced over during an internet search. God bless Google. Like a lot shows that had a nostalgic connection to you, it looks very dated now, and it's merit is really based on having experienced it at the time. But I still enjoyed a repeat viewing. It didn't quite bring back that feeling of dread it created for me as a 10 year old viewing it (how could it, eh?) but I can still see why it stuck with me after all these years. Anyone viewing this for the first time now, most likely will find it unintentionally funny and ultimately unsatisfying. However, it was new and fresh for it's time and much bolder then most of the garbage that now fills the UK TV schedules. So Glad I finally found it again!
Prof-Hieronymos-Grost The tourist season has just ended on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, winter is beginning to set in and the inhabitants, both humans and sheep alike are settling down to much quieter times ahead. Michael Gaffikin (James Warwick) a former paratrooper in the British Army, is the local dentist, he's not an islander by birth and as such his relationship with local artist and cartographer Fiona Patterson (Celia Imrie) is always being viewed with a little suspicion, not maliciously, but just out of the protective instincts the tight knit community have for their kin. The islands serenity is broken when Gaffikin out for a solitary round of golf finds the headless remains of a brutally slain woman. He immediately reports his gruesome find to Insp Inskip(Maurice Roëves) at the islands police station, Inskip arranges for delivery of the remains to local GP, Dr Goudry, for closer inspection. A quick search for the killer proves fruitless, as does a search for a missing local woman. Over dinner that night with Michael Gaffikin, Fiona realises that the dead woman might be Sheila Anderson, a woman from the mainland, who lives on the island through the winter months. A quick search at her home Dove Cottage reveals the missing remains of her body, her home proving to be the murder scene, but why did the killer drag her torso over a mile into the woods? Suspicion immediately falls on the one stranger left on the island, one Colonel Howard (Jonathan Newth)who also happened be the last person to see her alive as they came across on the last ferry together.Goudry asks Gaffikin for some dental expertise on the victims body, it reveals that she had been torn apart my somebody or something with great strength, one set of teeth marks on the body seem to point at a human killer, another points to that of an unknown animal of some kind. A sheep is found mutilated and then a Canadian ornithologist is found slain. With a heavy fog rolling in, the island is cut off from the mainland and any possibility of help, the radio also doesn't work, seemingly being blocked and the phone lines have been cut. Reports of UFO's and the sighting of a camouflaged soldier are compounded by the finding of an odd looking craft hidden behind rocks on the beach. Inskip is confused and refuses to listen to anything but the facts and laughs off Gaffikin's idea that aliens might be involved, but a rise in radioactive levels on the island, has him doubting himself.The Nightmare Man is based on the novel, Child of the Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire, it is here adapted by Dr Who and Blake's 7 scriptwriter Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield who also had directing experience on both Sci/Fi classics and the film benefits from having such experienced genre experts on board. The Nightmare Man though is on the whole, a succinctly better crafted piece, that builds its plot alongside solid character development, even down to the minor characters, time is given to giving them all a firm background. The island setting is perhaps a genre cliché that has been used over and over, but its one that I enjoy very much, the remoteness, the sense of being under siege with no way out always add to the atmosphere and here it is given an extra oomph by having an impenetrable fog close in to hamper all efforts. In many genre efforts of this kind it is very easy for proceedings to get silly and for the plot to resort to melodrama, but credit to Camfield, he holds it all together with the emphasis being on believability at all times. There is an authenticity about proceedings, the characters even speaking Gaelic at times to further this point. If there is one negative about the killer its that, we are given his/her/its POV for the killings, an acceptable cliché on its own, but when seen through a red filter and a fish eye lens, it just screams of overkill and dates the film just a little. Still though you will be hard pressed to guess the outcome or the identity or for that matter the species of the killer, given the clues presented, but it's a fun and very well acted piece. The local Scottish cast are exceptional, the local bobbies Roeves and Cosmo in particular spar well off each other and are a delight to behold. Imrie, never one i've taken to in other works, is also pretty good and displays hew womanly physique as if she were in a Hammer production. The outlandish, maybe even preposterous ending may irk some viewers, it disappointed me in some ways, but taking into account when it was made, its an understandable and acceptable addendum that if you think about it, is even more terrifying.
chuffnobbler It really does feel like a Doctor Who story, this being helped by having one of the Doctor's best directors and writers on board. The lurking monster, isolated community, strange killings and impending doom are all textbook Doctor Who.The Nightmare Man is more adult than Doctor Who. Not just because there's a mention of cannabis, a hint of blood and the sight of the ever-glorious Celia Imrie in a low-cut dress. There's a real claustrophobia to it. The fog rolls in, and the gloomy little island really is cut off. Actually, when the fog lifts (very abruptly, at the start of part four), the island doesn't look nearly as barren and miserable as we've been lead to believe. It's all very well constructed: lots of brief mentions of bogs, cliffs, isolated crofts. We feel like we are at the end of the world, and there's a genuine mystery about what might be impinging upon it.Celia Imrie is, of course, magnificent. One of the strengths of the production is that her character is essential to the story. She's a cartographer, and raised on the island, so her knowledge of the area is vital to the investigation. She is not sidelined as could so easily have happened. Maurice Roeves and Jonathan Newth as The Inspector and The Colonel are perfectly decent, and James Cosmo utterly believable and likable as the occasionally Gaelic-speaking Sergeant.Occasional glimpses of the monster are very carefully done, although the gasping growl and red point-of-view are a bit OTT. At the end, when we finally see the killer, it's maybe on screen for a bit too long. More could have been left to the imagination, but that's only a minor gripe.The only significant grumble about the production is the final episode. I had expected it to be 6 episodes, not 4. Lots of time is spent standing around talking int he final episode. The production slows down enormously as we get caught up in info-dumping. When the monster makes its final attack, I couldn't help but feel it was all over a bit quickly, and there's a very rushed and perfunctory feel.That said, the production keeps up the suspense nicely for quite a long time. The viewer is never really sure what the killer may be, and there's a wonderfully claustrophobic, foggy, damp sense of doom throughout. And Celia Imrie.
alistair.bell It was a fitting title because I had nightmares for several months afterwards (I was only 10 at the time).You know there's something evil lurking on the deserted Scottish island,but of course you only see it's point of view before it attacks in the fog. It was a sort of Doctor Who for adults.Ultimately let down by far too much exposition and revelation of the Russian pilot in the last episode.When the fog finally clears, it is rather obvious that we're not in Scotland either.The late Douglas Camfield was a veteran Dr.Who director, so the similarities in style are many. Great to see early performances from Scotland's James Cosmo, Maurice Roeves and Celia Imrie.Despite it's failings,this was another of those one-off experimental series used to showcase new talent that is sorely lacking in todays ratings obsessed British Television.