A Child's Voice (1978) User Reviews

Ghostly child's voice haunts radio station story teller.

[mjnichoson · 8/10 · 20 November 2006]

This short spooky tale relies on the imagination of the viewer to scare , rather than the modern CGI of today. It is a well worked traditional Ghost story about a DJ of a radio station who broadcasts a horror story concerning a Magician who enlists the help of a child to perform the " disappearing " act on stage.

Each night the DJ Narrates a chapter of this story to the listeners as he sits in his darkened studio with just his producer in the control room. After the first nights broadcast , the DJ goes home to his nightcap but is disturbed by the phone ringing , and upon answering finds a child's voice asking him not to continue with the story as it is to scary.

Brushing this off , the DJ continues with his broadcast the following night, and again when he returns home in the dead of night , the same thing happens, only this time the child is more insistent.

This continues over the next few nights much to the annoyance of the DJ as he is getting rather scared by the child's chilling words and warnings of personal doom if the story continues , and is becoming more and more tormented as the story continues.

I am not going to ruin the story by giving away the ending , but this creepy tale is well worth watching as it is a well crafted and superbly directed entry to this Genre.

A very good example of the 1970's TV Ghost story

[paulalanoliver · 8/10 · 19 May 2020]

The 70's seemed to be awash with Supernatural drama's/ TV plays like this. Such a great thing we can access almost all of them now-albeit in not so good quality on YTbe. This story is effective- the tension does build, and though most viewers will think of at least one obvious way the thrill at the end could have been heightened...it is well worth the wait. The only thing I can think of that is remotely like this now, in terms of quality and "single story" macabre is the truly excellent "Inside No.9" (With added humour).

A CHILD'S VOICE {TV; Short} (Kieran Hickey, 1978) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 10 October 2013]

A popular radio personality, renowned for his writing and reciting of blood-curdling horror stories late at night, receives a plea – via repeated eerie phone calls – from a child to discontinue his latest narrative. Intriguing but uninspired supernatural tale in the well-tried vein of BBC's popular TV series "Ghost Story For Christmas" – though not actually forming part of it, not least because of its relatively modern setting. The mainstays of the film are T.P. McKenna's central performance and its depiction of an era where cuddling up nightly to be terrified by a horror tale emanating from the airwaves was the order of the day; for the record, the story is told in flashback and narrated by Valentine Dyall. Interestingly enough, the concept of recurring entreating phone calls from a child in the dead of night was also used as a basis for menace in the first season of the revived DOCTOR WHO in 2005 in two consecutive episodes entitled "The Empty Child" and "The Doctor Dances"!

Comfort food for horror fans

[begob · 6/10 · 14 September 2015]

Traditional ghost story, with lots of voice over and a claustrophobic atmosphere. The version I saw on youtube was poor quality, with sound slightly out of synch.

The sequences with the telephone are eerie, although the second one was slightly marred by bad editing as the protagonist left the room to go to bed. The main character is a bit stuffy, but the acting is good from T P Mckenna.

Plenty of contrast in the light, but they could have had more fun with it. And some of the sound used reverb, which was effective.

Overall, short and enjoyable.

nicely spooky and unsettling

[myriamlenys · 8/10 · 15 October 2020]

Radio is wildly popular, with a multitude of faithful audiences addicted to their preferred programmes. One such programme consists of a cultured gentleman reading aloud from the sinister yet elegant tales he wrote himself. This time around the man starts out on a tale about an over-confident magician and his doomed boy assistant. For some reason or another, trying to tell the tale turns into a hellish assignment...

Lovers of the horror genre can do worse than take a look at "A child's voice", a short but potent story set in the glory days of the wireless. The story can be interpreted in a variety of ways ; for instance, it can be read as an allegory about writer's block or about a writer succombing to the nastier undercurrents of his own works. It can also be read as an allegory about the perils of loneliness and self-imposed isolation. One rather gets the impression that, to the protagonist, fellow human beings are less real than the ficticious characters engendered by his fertile imagination ; this is not the most healthy or moral of worldviews. Combine this with the fact that the said imagination tends to run to the weird, the macabre and the outlandish, and you've got the recipe for a internal collapse.

Actor T.P. McKenna gives a fine performance as the sonorously named "Ainsley Rupert Macreadie" (an excellent choice of name, here).

A minor point of criticism : at one point the protagonist is supposed to receive telephone calls from a young boy. The voice does not sound like the voice of a young boy, presumably because it came from an adult woman. Which causes the mind to boggle, given that even in the 1970's the English-speaking world contained millions upon millions of actual boys capable of reading a few simple lines...