i've slipped into a depression recently. i've been in treatment for an eating disorder for six months as well, although i'm doing much better than when i started. this film really spoke to me. depression and the like really do crowd out all other thought or feeling and make you feel like a spectator in your own life. a ghost, unable to reach out, unable to touch or speak or communicate what is happening to you. it stalks you until you've given up and then it swallows you whole. it waits until you'll walk into it's jaws all by yourself. the choppy, surreal nature of the editing also contributes to my connection with this movie because it feels so much like how i perceive the world whilst starving, floating through the days, weeks, months, even through whole seasons as a mindless witness, with energy for little else than self immolation.
John Smith came to my Fine Art Film college in the 80s and gave a talk. He showed us this film and several others. I've always loved this one in particular.
I can’t believe how flawlessly this has aged! It’s so alike the horror art videos you can see people doing on UA-cam nowadays… very ahead of its time 😨
During the final weeks of my first year at university, I became extremely depressed and survived entirely off of Domino's Pizza and Subway sandwiches. I pissed away all my savings eating it. In the corner of my room was a pile of greasy cardboard boxes. To this day, I feel ashamed that I sunk so low. The scene in this where the narrator eats nothing but ice cream for months and is eventually hospitalised got me in a place no other work of horror has ever done. I have never seen the reality and the absurdity of mental illness so accurately captured. This will stick with me for years to come.
Wow! I somehow caught this on TV around 30 years ago when I was 15 and it blew my mind. So chilling and haunting. No one I know had ever even heard of it so I'm thrilled to finally see it again after all these years. Thanks for posting.
Me too, when I was about 13. Watched it by accident very late at night and it haunted me ever since. Still think about it now. Great to see it in full!
Me too! I think it was late night channel 4? It's just a lovely little chiller, very "Wicker Man" in that it starts off so normally: tea & toast, bowl of porridge, ice-cream van, sentient murderous building setting up its next victim. Proof that you don't kneed knife-wielding maniacs, buckets of blood or multi-eyed tentacle monsters from beyond space fora decent horror.
When I first watched this, I thought, "This is really good!" but didn't think much more about it. A few hours later, I locked my screen at work when it was time to go home, and the picture that came up was of a lighthouse. Of course, I realized it two seconds later, but for two seconds I clinched up at the sudden appearance of a tower. That was when I realized the power of this short. It gets under your skin without you realizing.
It’s clever to make the tower seem to be appearing at any spot in the country just by changing the point of view, angle/zoom of filming and sound. At least I reckon that‘s how they did it.
I remember seeing this about ten years ago at the BFI in a one-off showing with various other things. The whole cinema went into a tense silence. Amazing film. Thank you so much for helping me see it again.
I watched this 1989, late one night with friends and it had a marked affect on me. Never forgotten it. But I run mental wellbeing awareness courses and wondered if this was around still.
I lived in this area from 1974-2001 , the water tower at Langthorne hospital was a familiar but mysterious part of the skyline . Would of loved to of looked inside
Weird idea but I think it’d be cool to find someone doing a drum cover of this movie in time with the footsteps, the sequence with the narrator running and stopping to see the tower sounded really nice and hypnotic
My personal interpretation of this movie is that the tower is actually Death appearing to the character in the form of a building. I have seen others intepreting it as a metaphor for depression. Maybe Death appearing to him long before his actual death is due to depression killing him slowly
I thought this at the end when he stepped through the door and died, and it does work in some bits, like how no one wanted to talk to him about it at the beginning, or how he realised the absurdity of it towards the end. But I think it falls a bit flat as a metaphor compared to depression, for me at least. The tower is omnipresent in the way that depression is - once you notice it, it sticks to everything you do. It makes him feel like staying at home and isolating himself is the only way to avoid it. It causes him to completely give up on nutrition and self-care. Time slips away and every day blends into the next. I think the film loses a lot of its meaning if the tower is literally just death but shaped like a tower.
GLAD SOMEONE ELSE HERE NOTICED. the length of the video the narration the overwhelming britishness the absurd/ambiguity the subtle horror even where it's set. it's uncanny. jonny MUST have seen this and subconsciously filed it away under 'inspirations'
I'm just listening to them talk about it justnow! I was going to watch it but it's half 3 in the morning so i'm going to come back in daylight when i'm hopefully less terrified by that sound
i assume the tower represents depression, starting off ordinary and then getting more irregular and intense over time, with the door representing suicide, which is why the man dies and his acquaintance seeing the black tower herself after his death
@@frankshailes3205what comments there's no comments above yours that talks about it.....🤷🏼♀️ besides ...you DO KNOW that in all art....it's how each person interprets it, NOT like you're suggesting "NO the artist said it IS NOT DEPRESSION so your interpretation is wrong!" 🙄😂🤣
The tower was a water tower in the grounds of Langthorne Hospital, Leytonstone which John Smith could see from his then home in nearby Colville Road. It was sadly demolished shortly after filming.
I had to google I haven’t done a huge lot of research but Lambeth water tower looks/looked the same at the top.Water towers in England are a bit odd,just something about them.
@@ann-mariepaliukenas19 The tower in Kennington that supplied Lambeth Workhouse is structurally very similar to the one at Langthorne Hospital, E11 used in the film. There is a tenuous connection too - the hospital was formerly West Ham Union Workhouse built around the same time that the Lambeth site was refurbished, the tower design was likely common to them both. The transformation of the Lambeth tower was famously documented by Grand Designs although it has become a bit of a white elephant and apparently difficult to sell - clearly, the curse of The Black Tower lives on.
Reminded me a bit of Possum, and the Ghost Story For Christmas short films (especially The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Whistle and I'll Come To You and A View from a Hill.)
@@frankshailes3205 La Cabina is a great short film. I watched it as a kid on tv and it never left me. No-one else I knew had seen it and for a while I thought I'd imagined it. Luckily with the advent of the internet I found it it was real! ua-cam.com/video/1H1_p6B4Ugo/v-deo.html
A very weird film and very arty in it's presentation. It strikes me to be more about mental illness than anything else, especially as the tower looks like the victorian water towers they built as part of an asylum back in the day.... A very odd film.
I’ve always seen the tower as a metaphor for depression. The first narrator entering the door symbolizes his suicide, and that depression naturally follows those who grieve his death.
The shadow man stare at you, always, if you can see him, you already know what it means, but you forgot because you're tired, so then appears black doors in front of you, barely invisible, and you can open them, but you're coward, you want a light of hope all the time, but the shadow doesn't dissapear, walking on a way that you can't recognize, you only walk again and again, waiting for
Thanks to a 8/6/23 Bing article about this short movie, I was happy that it was on UA-cam. It's the most boring 'horror' movie ever. The comments about how great this short is, has to be from people who worked on this 'film.' Or knew the people who worked on the film. If you have trouble sleeping, watch The Black Tower and you won't have long before your asleep. ZZZZZ There is no art to moving the camera quickly to make it fake seem that the building or tree are moving toward you. It doesn't work and I grew up in the 1970's, so this isn't a Gen X posting about the dull and unaspiring short.
ahhh ive been looking for this! i looked up black building black house but i finally found it when i searched “black tower full movie”. really intriguing film, i like it alot.
i've slipped into a depression recently. i've been in treatment for an eating disorder for six months as well, although i'm doing much better than when i started. this film really spoke to me. depression and the like really do crowd out all other thought or feeling and make you feel like a spectator in your own life. a ghost, unable to reach out, unable to touch or speak or communicate what is happening to you. it stalks you until you've given up and then it swallows you whole. it waits until you'll walk into it's jaws all by yourself.
the choppy, surreal nature of the editing also contributes to my connection with this movie because it feels so much like how i perceive the world whilst starving, floating through the days, weeks, months, even through whole seasons as a mindless witness, with energy for little else than self immolation.
Nobody asked for your sob story.
John Smith came to my Fine Art Film college in the 80s and gave a talk. He showed us this film and several others. I've always loved this one in particular.
I can’t believe how flawlessly this has aged! It’s so alike the horror art videos you can see people doing on UA-cam nowadays… very ahead of its time 😨
proto-zoomer :D
Pretty much predicted liminal spaces horror
@@shiobuzz3724 a masterpiece
During the final weeks of my first year at university, I became extremely depressed and survived entirely off of Domino's Pizza and Subway sandwiches. I pissed away all my savings eating it. In the corner of my room was a pile of greasy cardboard boxes. To this day, I feel ashamed that I sunk so low.
The scene in this where the narrator eats nothing but ice cream for months and is eventually hospitalised got me in a place no other work of horror has ever done. I have never seen the reality and the absurdity of mental illness so accurately captured.
This will stick with me for years to come.
Wow! I somehow caught this on TV around 30 years ago when I was 15 and it blew my mind. So chilling and haunting. No one I know had ever even heard of it so I'm thrilled to finally see it again after all these years. Thanks for posting.
Me too, when I was about 13. Watched it by accident very late at night and it haunted me ever since. Still think about it now. Great to see it in full!
This is cool that, just as the tower, you spot this film again
Me too! I think it was late night channel 4? It's just a lovely little chiller, very "Wicker Man" in that it starts off so normally: tea & toast, bowl of porridge, ice-cream van, sentient murderous building setting up its next victim. Proof that you don't kneed knife-wielding maniacs, buckets of blood or multi-eyed tentacle monsters from beyond space fora decent horror.
And me! Thirty five years and other people felt the same!!
What a peculiar, but spectacular film. The tree part made me feel like I was going insane, and I got chills when the door was revealed
When I first watched this, I thought, "This is really good!" but didn't think much more about it. A few hours later, I locked my screen at work when it was time to go home, and the picture that came up was of a lighthouse. Of course, I realized it two seconds later, but for two seconds I clinched up at the sudden appearance of a tower. That was when I realized the power of this short. It gets under your skin without you realizing.
It’s clever to make the tower seem to be appearing at any spot in the country just by changing the point of view, angle/zoom of filming and sound. At least I reckon that‘s how they did it.
This is exactly how he made it. Actually this play with the artifice of cinema and the brains desire to believe is a big part of what he does
I remember seeing this about ten years ago at the BFI in a one-off showing with various other things. The whole cinema went into a tense silence. Amazing film. Thank you so much for helping me see it again.
I watched this 1989, late one night with friends and it had a marked affect on me. Never forgotten it. But I run mental wellbeing awareness courses and wondered if this was around still.
I'm so glad I stumbled on this. I've the vaguest memory of seeing it as a kid and it really disturbing me.
I lived in this area from 1974-2001 , the water tower at Langthorne hospital was a familiar but mysterious part of the skyline . Would of loved to of looked inside
can you send google locations id really like to see for myself please
Weird idea but I think it’d be cool to find someone doing a drum cover of this movie in time with the footsteps, the sequence with the narrator running and stopping to see the tower sounded really nice and hypnotic
Feels like today’s analogue horror or something like skinamarink
My personal interpretation of this movie is that the tower is actually Death appearing to the character in the form of a building. I have seen others intepreting it as a metaphor for depression. Maybe Death appearing to him long before his actual death is due to depression killing him slowly
I thought this at the end when he stepped through the door and died, and it does work in some bits, like how no one wanted to talk to him about it at the beginning, or how he realised the absurdity of it towards the end. But I think it falls a bit flat as a metaphor compared to depression, for me at least. The tower is omnipresent in the way that depression is - once you notice it, it sticks to everything you do. It makes him feel like staying at home and isolating himself is the only way to avoid it. It causes him to completely give up on nutrition and self-care. Time slips away and every day blends into the next. I think the film loses a lot of its meaning if the tower is literally just death but shaped like a tower.
Reminds me of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, especially The Zahir.
That’s exactly where my mind went, by way of Chris Morris.
Wow. Amazing. Did the Skinamarink people see this for inspiration?
Never would have heard of this but for it coming up as an answer on the Tip of My Tongue subreddit. Eerie.
i think what creeps me out the most is that i was getting deja vu first time watching this
holy shit this reminds me so much of the magnus archives
It seems like a spiral statement to me.
GLAD SOMEONE ELSE HERE NOTICED. the length of the video the narration the overwhelming britishness the absurd/ambiguity the subtle horror even where it's set. it's uncanny. jonny MUST have seen this and subconsciously filed it away under 'inspirations'
I thought so too. I think it's the way the horror mingles with the mundanity of British urban life.
Love this. Horror Vanguard brought me here.
Me, too! 'Sup, Comrade?
Hell yeah horrified comrades
I'm just listening to them talk about it justnow! I was going to watch it but it's half 3 in the morning so i'm going to come back in daylight when i'm hopefully less terrified by that sound
“I realized that I was facing a flat, black wall.” Heh.
?
That is my favourite line!
i assume the tower represents depression, starting off ordinary and then getting more irregular and intense over time, with the door representing suicide, which is why the man dies and his acquaintance seeing the black tower herself after his death
she says she saw it then forgot about it. So she experienced depression from grief, then began recovering after grief.
@@wickedfeylady But the director said it isn't about depression, see comments above.
@@frankshailes3205what comments there's no comments above yours that talks about it.....🤷🏼♀️ besides ...you DO KNOW that in all art....it's how each person interprets it, NOT like you're suggesting "NO the artist said it IS NOT DEPRESSION so your interpretation is wrong!" 🙄😂🤣
Slain by that ending oml
Wonderful short. Ahead of it's time, fuckin, amazing
One of my favorites, thanks for posting.
This makes me hungry for an ice lolly.
A very British horror comedy.
True cinema
4:39 piss
OK but actually? This is really good
Now that is eerie! Absolutely great!
I'm so happy to have stumbled upon this.
공포영화인걸 알고봐서 그런지 화면 난리칠때마다 쫄림😢
One of the best movies ever
I wonder if the tower is still there today?
The tower was a water tower in the grounds of Langthorne Hospital, Leytonstone which John Smith could see from his then home in nearby Colville Road. It was sadly demolished shortly after filming.
I had to google I haven’t done a huge lot of research but Lambeth water tower looks/looked the same at the top.Water towers in England are a bit odd,just something about them.
@@ann-mariepaliukenas19 The tower in Kennington that supplied Lambeth Workhouse is structurally very similar to the one at Langthorne Hospital, E11 used in the film. There is a tenuous connection too - the hospital was formerly West Ham Union Workhouse built around the same time that the Lambeth site was refurbished, the tower design was likely common to them both. The transformation of the Lambeth tower was famously documented by Grand Designs although it has become a bit of a white elephant and apparently difficult to sell - clearly, the curse of The Black Tower lives on.
The demolition story is a cover-up. It has been impounded by the SCP Foundation. 🙂
so good
Instantly captivating, can anyone recommend anything similar?
Reminded me a bit of Possum, and the Ghost Story For Christmas short films (especially The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, Whistle and I'll Come To You and A View from a Hill.)
There is that short film of the man trapped in a phone box...
@@frankshailes3205 I love that! It's also called "The Telephone Box" 1972 if I remember right
@@frankshailes3205 La Cabina is a great short film. I watched it as a kid on tv and it never left me. No-one else I knew had seen it and for a while I thought I'd imagined it. Luckily with the advent of the internet I found it it was real! ua-cam.com/video/1H1_p6B4Ugo/v-deo.html
Aah La Cabina. Marvellous!
sounds like an MZ 250 starting up at 15:12 🙂
Man this is an ARG
❤
A very weird film and very arty in it's presentation. It strikes me to be more about mental illness than anything else, especially as the tower looks like the victorian water towers they built as part of an asylum back in the day.... A very odd film.
I thought this was really good. Clearly low/no budget but still enjoyable
Just incredible
A reworking of Fritz Lieber's Smoke Ghost.
이 영화 자체가 블랙타워 아닐까 볼사람만 보인다는
!
😊
magnus archives spiral/dark statement
Fp
this gives me notpron vibes 😳
Ah, it was a start of problems of Osama with his obsession about Tower.
I just didnt get how he died
It doesnt matter how I think
The tower seemed sentient
Maybe it wasn’t the narrator that died, and the second narrator wasn’t connected to him.
I’ve always seen the tower as a metaphor for depression. The first narrator entering the door symbolizes his suicide, and that depression naturally follows those who grieve his death.
The shadow man stare at you, always, if you can see him, you already know what it means, but you forgot because you're tired, so then appears black doors in front of you, barely invisible, and you can open them, but you're coward, you want a light of hope all the time, but the shadow doesn't dissapear, walking on a way that you can't recognize, you only walk again and again, waiting for
뭐노 이게
Thanks to a 8/6/23 Bing article about this short movie, I was happy that it was on UA-cam. It's the most boring 'horror' movie ever. The comments about how great this short is, has to be from people who worked on this 'film.' Or knew the people who worked on the film.
If you have trouble sleeping, watch The Black Tower and you won't have long before your asleep. ZZZZZ
There is no art to moving the camera quickly to make it fake seem that the building or tree are moving toward you. It doesn't work and I grew up in the 1970's, so this isn't a Gen X posting about the dull and unaspiring short.
Yeah.... hard to understand any of the hype. Like, what am I missing here? Dumb, cheap, flat line emotionally.
Art is very subject, and I totally see where you’re coming from. I just watched it for the first time, and I absolutely loved it :)
ahhh ive been looking for this! i looked up black building black house but i finally found it when i searched “black tower full movie”. really intriguing film, i like it alot.