Rather to my surprise — seeing this for the first time since 1964, when I was five years old — The Singing Ringing Tree (1957) managed to be almost as weird as I remembered it. The highlights reel you see here doesn’t have very much of what haunted my dreams forever afterwards, but there’s a few glimpses. I’m going to try it again with the color turned off, and see if that’ll get me most of the rest of the way there…

UPDATE: oh yes, take the color away and I’m totally there. Mind you, a few of the shots are pretty glorious in colour, I must admit. Man, the soundtrack is just Sick and Wrong. Casting further about, we find a BBC Radio 4 documentary (sadly, only Real (ptui) Media) about people of my age who were similarly affected. At least a few of them grew up to build fan sites.

So I did another quick check, and no, no-one of which Google is aware has already written this exact same post. Nor has anyone cited the film anywhere near the word hauntology until now. Mekkem gwan mash it up.