Director Lionel Jeffries adapted this follow-up to The Railway Children (1970) from the Antonia Barber novel, The Ghosts.
A near-destitute widowed mother, Mrs Allen (Dorothy Alison), and her two young children, Jamie (Garry Miller) and Lucy (Lynne Frederick), take up the mysterious offer from genial lawyer Mr Blunden (Laurence Naismith) to become housekeepers at a crumbling, partly fire-damaged country mansion called Langley Park, that is rumoured to be haunted.
Young Jamie and Lucy meet the mansion’s resident ghosts one afternoon in the gardens; the spiritual orphans Sara (Rosalyn Landor) and Georgie (Marc Granger), who were once the mansion’s heirs.
They recount the tale of tyrannical Mrs Wickens (Diana Dors), the mother-in-law of Bertie (James Villiers) and his wife Bella (Madeleine Smith), who plotted the children’s death to claim their inheritance. They were killed in a fire at the mansion one hundred years ago.
Jamie and Lucy are given instructions on how to concoct a magic potion made from woodland herbs that will transport them back to 1818 so that they may help right a 100-year-old wrong.
When researching into the death of Sara and Georgie in the local churchyard, they once again meet Mr Blunden, who explains how he was the guardian of Sara and Georgie but failed to act on their pleas of impending danger, and it is his ghost that instigated the Allen family taking up residence at the mansion.
Jamie and Lucy consume the magic potion and are sent back in time to the night of the children’s deaths so they can assist Mr Blunden in rewriting history.
Veering between suspense and pantomime, the movie ends with a satisfying twist and the half-promise of a sequel (which never materialised).
Mr Blunden
Laurence Naismith
Uncle Bertie
James Villiers
Mrs Wickens
Diana Dors Sara Latimer Rosalyn Landor George Latimer
Marc Granger Lucy Allen
Lynne Frederick
Jamie Allen
Garry Miller
Mrs Allen
Dorothy Alison Bella
Madeline Smith Benjamin Benjamin Smith Thomas
Stuart Lock Mr Claverton
Erik Chitty
Mr Clutterbuck
Graham Crowden Meakin Deddie Davies Mr Wickens
David Lodge Sexton
Reg Lye Vicar
Paul Eddington Elsie Tucker Aimee Delamain
Director Lionel Jeffries
You May Also Like
Last Tango In Paris (1972) If movie audiences weren't plonking down money in 1973 to see Linda Blair vomit pea soup…
Dracula AD 1972 (1972) This ill-conceived attempt at updating Dracula sees the vampire (once again played by Christopher Lee) materialise…
Amazing Colossal Man, The (1957) US Army Lieutenant Colonel Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) is exposed to radiation after a plutonium bomb…
Jeremiah Johnson (1972) Robert Redford plays Johnson, the former soldier of the title who becomes a mountain-trapper in Utah…
Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972) Medfield College chemistry student Dexter Reilly (Kurt Russell) accidentally invents a spray that renders people and…
Ben (1972) Just your typical "8-year-old-boy-with-heart-condition meets highly-intelligent-killer-rat and wreaks havoc on a small California town" story. This…
Adventurers, The (1970) Harold Robbins' guess-who novel about the jet-set and South American politics was as commercial as it…
When researching into the death of Sara and Georgie in the local churchyard, they once again meet Mr Blunden, who explains how he was the guardian of Sara and Georgie but failed to act on their pleas of impending danger, and it is his ghost that instigated the Allen family taking up residence at the mansion.
