FIVE (FREE TO VIEW) GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS

Five tales with a ghostly aspect - all linked to each other and free to watch on YouTube.

Here are the connections:

The Dead (1987) and from the same year Mr Corbett's Ghost - John Huston directs the first, his son Danny the second (in which the older Huston also appears - as Satan).

Ava Gardner stars in The Ballad of Tam-Lin (1970); she acted in Huston Snr's The Bible, Night of the Iguana and Judge Roy Bean.

One of Gardner's best pals was the actor Charles Gray, who stars in The Gourmet (1984, playing a jaded gourmand who cooks and devours a spectre).

Stephanie Beacham was also in Tam-Lin, she starred in The Nightcomers (1971) with Marlon Brando, a prequel to The Turn of the Screw...

The Dead (based on the James Joyce short story) isn't technically a spectral tale, but the haunting memory of lost love and early death pervades the picture.

PS: Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I), Joanna Lumley, Linda Marlowe (Berkoff muse) and Jenny Hanley (Magpie) also starred in Tam-Lin, set in a country retreat far nicer than Uncle Monty's cottage in Withnail.

A very young Ian 'Lovejoy/Deadwood' Ian McShane stars as Tam, with an unusual role for Richard Wattis, best known to some as 'Charles Fulbright-Brown' in the sitcom Sykes and as a regular Jackanory narrator.

EXTRAS: Orson Welles - Return to Glennascaul (1951)