In the final days of 2022, I happened upon an intriguing sixty-minute low-budget film. Entitled Letters to the Postman, it is an adaptation by British indie filmmaker Felix Dembinski of a short story by Robert Aickman which appeared in the author’s 1980 anthology Intrusions and proved to be his final work prior to his death at the age of 66 on 26th February 1981.
As an author of what he himself liked to call ‘strange tales, Aickman was often ranked alongside the likes of M.R. James, though it’s accurate to say that Aickman has not enjoyed the level of adaptation that James has enjoyed and continues to enjoy thanks to Mark Gatiss’ more miss than hit revival of the perennial Ghost Story for Christmas. Only a handful of Aickman’s tales have been adapted, including 2002’s The Cicerones starring Gatiss and written and directed by his The League of Gentlemen colleague Jeremy Dyson, and The Hospice, an edition of ITV’s Night Voices series from 1991, starring Jack Shepherd and Alan Dobie.
In Letters to the Postman, Dembinski resurrects Aickman’s story for connoisseurs and newcomers alike to achieve greatness with limited resources. This adaptation takes the wistfulness of late adolescent love and the perils of fantasy and crafts the kind of production that feels reminiscent of Jonathan Miller’s 1968 production of M. R. James’ Whistle and I’ll Come to You and its successor, the original Ghost Story for Christmas series of films from Lawrence Gordon Clark that followed throughout the 1970s. These creepy vibes are enhanced by the black and white photography, the coastal locale, an ambiguous period setting somewhere in the late 50s or early 60s and a central protagonist whose curiosity sets him on a very peculiar and ultimately fateful path. As a director, Dembinksi also leans into some of the amateurish performances, using their charmingly stilted nature to truly bring the eerieness and otherness of Aickman’s writing to the fore in ways that other low-budget chillers could learn and benefit from. This strangeness is further advanced by the fact that all the roles are played by more than one actor.
The film is a story of wish fulfilment brought into reality (though what is real here is decidedly moot) by a series of anonymous pleas to Robin, the eponymous young postman, for help. These missives are left in the letterbox of an isolated home by a woman the locals attest to having never seen and who never normally receives mail, at least until Robin commences the round. Each note that Robin receives are polite cries for help from someone seemingly trapped in an abusive, coercively controlled relationship.
With all the naivety and goodwill of youth, Robin is immediately suckered into these communiques, answering supportively and pledging his loyalty and help. I say youthful naivety because the scenario clearly plays, subconsciously or not, into Robin’s innate adolescent fantasies – a dream woman, a victim he must heroically rescue. And, as we all know from bitter experience, our adolescent appreciation of love is inevitably scotched by reality. Letters to the Postman is fantasy in the truest sense and, indeed, in every sense.
