The Glade

A family picnic takes a sinister turn in this off-kilter supernatural tale set in 1970s Cleveland.

Lost in the woods … here’s a dash of distinctly 70s English amateur weirdness from the Cleveland Cine Club of Middlesbrough, pitched somewhere between Peter Weir’s hypnotic Australian drama “Picnic at Hanging Rock” (released in 1975) and 60s American TV series, “The Twilight Zone”. A tragic mother returns to the site of her children’s disappearance in a forest glade dappled with sunlight and steeped in supernatural menace.

One of the stranger productions by Cleveland Cine Club, this film earned a Movie Maker Competition ‘Ten Best’ two star rating. The cast includes Betty Cook, President of the Cleveland Cine Society and North East Cine Society, herself a prolific amateur filmmaker working between 1964 and 1986. The sound track was recorded on separate magnetic stripe and added to the Kodachrome 8mm film in post-production. This detached sound and dubbed speech creates a haunting mood that permeates the silent images, heightened by a curious selection of bargain basement 70s music.