Chimera (ITV)

Archive transfer - originally posted December 19th 2005 (contains spoilers)

When this four-part ITV thriller was first shown in 1991, I was a 15-year-old boy who really shouldn't have been as scared as I was!
Strapping 15-year-olds should be able to handle things like this, but there was something about the brutality of the creature Chad, and the way it was directed by Ghost Story for Christmas veteran Lawrence Gordon Clark that affected me.
Chimera was based on the Stephen Gallagher book of the same name and tells the tale of a journalist investigating the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend while she was working at a fertility clinic. The clinic is actually the cover for a much more disturbing project involving cross-breeding the DNA of human and ape foetuses, resulting in the horrific chimera that is Chad in the story.
The story revolves around the journalist's quest to uncover the truth, and the authorities' quest to recapture and ultimately destroy the escaped creature.
Chad is a scary thing. Half man, half monkey, and wearing a Freddie Krueger style stripey jumper and Michael Myers dungarees, it escapes from the clinic in spectacularly bloody fashion, killing everyone he comes across and leaving the clinic ablaze and buried in bodies.
Episode one of the drama is a masterpiece of deception. We are introduced to lots of new characters, some sympathetic, others not, and then see them all ruthlessly hacked to bits by the episode's close at the hands of Chad and his kitchen knife. The massacre scenes are shocking and disturbingly directed, and I really don't think we would get some of the in-yer-face shots of stabbings these days. However, it manages to convey the confusion and anger the creature feels, and as the episode ends you really do fear for the lives of others out on the Yorkshire moors as the chimera is let loose.
Episodes 2-4 do not live up to the strong opening, and concentrate too much on the aftermath of Chad's outbreak, and not enough on Chad himself. Perhaps it works better for our focus to shift to the humans left behind, and let the escaped creature take a backseat for a while, but for me it slows the pace down enormously.
Horror fans will love episode one and creature fans will love episodes three and four, but the bits inbetween really do drag, as interesting as the premise is of a journalist on the run from the authorities and the uncovering of a hideous scientific cover-up.
John Lynch is suitably vulnerable and edgy as Peter Carson and Christine Kavanagh gives a great performance as the scientist whose conscience gets the better of her - but who is ultimately the reason so many innocent people die. Kenneth Cranham's character is there to represent the heartless mystery of the suits behind the cover-up, but Hennessey is ultimately a pointless, wasted character who does precisely nothing except leer over his half-moon specs. In episode four he has a scene where he talks to his daughter, whose stage play he has to miss, and you then assume he's going to end up dead and oh what a tragedy it all is. But no. That's pretty much the last you see of him.
The ending is a bit of a damp squib, the potential face-off between the Army and the creature at the centre of the rural community failing to capture any element of danger. Chad is shot, through a car window, and that's it.
All in all it's hard to see why I was so scared of this aged 15. It still has its eerie moments - including the bloody first episode and the cliffhanger to episode two - but the director does not make as much of the Chad creature as he could. I've seen "monster holed up in a barn" done much more effectively in Doctor Who's Terror of the Zygons and The Silurians.
Oh, and who the hell cast that kid as Peter Gaskell, the farmer's son who looks after Chad with his sister? It's his only IMDb entry, and thank god for that!

Chimera, originally transmitted July 7th-28th 1991.
Written by Stephen Gallagher; directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark.