Episode 12a – Casting the Runes

A Podcast to the Curious - The M.R. James Podcast

Join Mike & Will as they delve into Brian Blessed’s beard, the truth of alchemy, diabolical magic lantern shows and class war in the first of our two-part extravaganza on M.R. James’s chilling story ‘Casting the Runes’!
Our reader for this episode is Mr Torion Bowles.

Show notes:

• Magic Lanterns (Wikipedia)
  Mr Karswell was not the first to use a magic lantern to scare the crap out of his audience, it’s been going on since the 15th century!
• Aleister Crowley (Wikipedia)
  Many have commented on the similarities between the fictional Mr Karswell and the English occultist, poet and mountaineer Aleister Crowley (1875-1947).
• ‘Class War in Casting the Runes’ by Mike Pincombe (Ghosts & Scholars)
  Mike Pincombe’s exploration of class conflict in Casting the Runes is a must-read.
• Night/Curse of the Demon (1957) (Trailer – Youtube)
  The first and best screen adaptation of ‘Casting the Runes’ was filmed in 1957 as ‘Night of the Demon’ (released as ‘Curse of the Demon’ in the U.S.). Superbly atmospheric and worth watching for Niall MacGuiness’s exemplary performance as Mr Karswell. It is available on DVD.
• Casting the Runes (1979) (Amazon)
  Casting the Runes was brought forward to the seventies in this 50 minute UK tv version. It is clearly very low budget and not very good to be honest, but still worth purchasing on DVD as it is cheap and comes with two decent extras, a short tv version of ‘Mr Humphreys and his Interitance’ and a very enjoyable documentary about the author.
• Drag me to Hell (2009) (Trailer – Youtube)
  Sam Raimi’s 2009 splatter-fest ‘Drag me to Hell’ is a loose (and unacknowledged) adaptation of ‘Casting the Runes’. James would have hated it but fans of OTT gorefests will love it!
• Lamplough’s Pyretic Saline (Ghosts & Scholars)
  This is the ‘highly convincing’ advert that Dunning examins in the tram shortly before spotting the strange message about John Harrington.
• The British Library (bl.co.uk)
  The real-world location of Dunning’s first encounter with Karswell.
• London United Tramways (Wikipedia)
  In ‘Casting the Runes’ Dunning travels to work and back on the then-new London tram network operating in the west and south of London.
• A Podcast to the Curious Merchandise Store
  That’s right, you can now grab yourself an Official APTTC t-shirt in a wide range of exciting colours! It’s what all the cool kids are wearing nowadays!