I had great memories of watching this away back in the Spring of 1981 . With the legendary duo of Robert Holmes and Douglas Camfield , both best known for their work on DOCTOR WHO in the 60s and 70s this had all the hallmarks of being " The Quatermass of the 1980s " and watching it on its initial and sole broadcast in 1981 it didn't disappoint . Well until the last 15 minutes of the final episode when it's revealed that the antagonist isn't an alien fiend with a fetish for human flesh but a deranged communist serviceman from the Soviet Union . Perhaps knowing this plot revelation spoiled much of my enjoyment watching after a gap of over 30 years ? It's not dreadful by any means but doesn't lend itself to repeat viewings To be fair to the production team it doesn't have a Hollywood budget but the production team in general and Camfield in particular manage to bring a brooding , claustrophobic atmosphere to the proceedings . Okay it's achieved by very simple and clichéd means by smothering everything in fog and relying on monster POV shots . Indeed it's the horror aspects that work best and stick long in the memory such as the very memorable attack on the coastguard station that makes up the climax of episode three . Bare in mind also that this was broadcast pre-watershed on Friday nights so there's little gore but never the less it does show that you don't need gore to terrify an audience . The downside is that these aspects overwhelm the rest of the story , especially if you know how the story turns out and the characters come across as stock bland one dimensional cyphers No doubt if you're on the wrong side of 40 you might have vivid memories of this show . It works very well in segments but not enough to make THE NIGHTMARE MAN a satisfying whole . If you've not seen it before you might enjoy it but if you saw it in 1981 you might be left with a nagging sense of disappointment after seeing it again

I loved this series so much that I purchased the original book (by David Wiltshire) from a tiny library in Pennsylvania that was closing down, trust me, it took some finding.It's rare that the TV version and the book are so closely aligned, but that is the case with Child of the Vodyanoi and The Nightmare Man. The book obviously goes into more detail about the capabilities of the mini-sub and the training that the Vodyanoi pilots are put through, the passage where the "creature" tries to, and finally succeeds, in killing the one remaining Coastguard is truly chilling, and it's scary enough in the TV version.Programmes from the early 80s have an intellectual honesty about them that makes me watch more and more of these old series, if the BBC remade TNM today, the dentist would be a socially aware Muslim, the pharmacist he falls in love with would be an African asylum seeker, and the chief of the island's police force would be a one legged lesbian with a nut allergy. The maniacal killer would of course be the token heterosexual white guy.

The tourist season has just ended on a remote island off the coast of Scotland, winter is beginning to set in and the inhabitants, both humans and sheep alike are settling down to much quieter times ahead. Michael Gaffikin (James Warwick) a former paratrooper in the British Army, is the local dentist, he's not an islander by birth and as such his relationship with local artist and cartographer Fiona Patterson (Celia Imrie) is always being viewed with a little suspicion, not maliciously, but just out of the protective instincts the tight knit community have for their kin. The islands serenity is broken when Gaffikin out for a solitary round of golf finds the headless remains of a brutally slain woman. He immediately reports his gruesome find to Insp Inskip(Maurice Roëves) at the islands police station, Inskip arranges for delivery of the remains to local GP, Dr Goudry, for closer inspection. A quick search for the killer proves fruitless, as does a search for a missing local woman. Over dinner that night with Michael Gaffikin, Fiona realises that the dead woman might be Sheila Anderson, a woman from the mainland, who lives on the island through the winter months. A quick search at her home Dove Cottage reveals the missing remains of her body, her home proving to be the murder scene, but why did the killer drag her torso over a mile into the woods? Suspicion immediately falls on the one stranger left on the island, one Colonel Howard (Jonathan Newth)who also happened be the last person to see her alive as they came across on the last ferry together.Goudry asks Gaffikin for some dental expertise on the victims body, it reveals that she had been torn apart my somebody or something with great strength, one set of teeth marks on the body seem to point at a human killer, another points to that of an unknown animal of some kind. A sheep is found mutilated and then a Canadian ornithologist is found slain. With a heavy fog rolling in, the island is cut off from the mainland and any possibility of help, the radio also doesn't work, seemingly being blocked and the phone lines have been cut. Reports of UFO's and the sighting of a camouflaged soldier are compounded by the finding of an odd looking craft hidden behind rocks on the beach. Inskip is confused and refuses to listen to anything but the facts and laughs off Gaffikin's idea that aliens might be involved, but a rise in radioactive levels on the island, has him doubting himself.The Nightmare Man is based on the novel, Child of the Vodyanoi by David Wiltshire, it is here adapted by Dr Who and Blake's 7 scriptwriter Robert Holmes and directed by Douglas Camfield who also had directing experience on both Sci/Fi classics and the film benefits from having such experienced genre experts on board. The Nightmare Man though is on the whole, a succinctly better crafted piece, that builds its plot alongside solid character development, even down to the minor characters, time is given to giving them all a firm background. The island setting is perhaps a genre cliché that has been used over and over, but its one that I enjoy very much, the remoteness, the sense of being under siege with no way out always add to the atmosphere and here it is given an extra oomph by having an impenetrable fog close in to hamper all efforts. In many genre efforts of this kind it is very easy for proceedings to get silly and for the plot to resort to melodrama, but credit to Camfield, he holds it all together with the emphasis being on believability at all times. There is an authenticity about proceedings, the characters even speaking Gaelic at times to further this point. If there is one negative about the killer its that, we are given his/her/its POV for the killings, an acceptable cliché on its own, but when seen through a red filter and a fish eye lens, it just screams of overkill and dates the film just a little. Still though you will be hard pressed to guess the outcome or the identity or for that matter the species of the killer, given the clues presented, but it's a fun and very well acted piece. The local Scottish cast are exceptional, the local bobbies Roeves and Cosmo in particular spar well off each other and are a delight to behold. Imrie, never one i've taken to in other works, is also pretty good and displays hew womanly physique as if she were in a Hammer production. The outlandish, maybe even preposterous ending may irk some viewers, it disappointed me in some ways, but taking into account when it was made, its an understandable and acceptable addendum that if you think about it, is even more terrifying.

Oh dear. Some of the best talent in British TV made this serial, and so I can only assume that they were working under incredible time pressure, and had to settle for first takes of many scenes.There ARE some frightening scenes in this Highland mystery (mostly when the "monster" attacks and we see it from his point of view), but I'm afraid that I found most of the story unintentionally funny ! Such as the moment when the hero discovers a dismembered corpse on a golf course: Oh look, there's a hand ... oh, and there's another hand over there ... hmm this is a bit puzzling ...For many years fans of British cult TV shows campaigned to have this serial released on VHS or DVD, but the BBC always said no. Now I think I understand why !