There is a bit of a vogue these days for 50th anniversary screenings of films, but it's never enough for them to just show the fucking film: they also force you to sit through the kind of bonus feature material that on a DVD you'd probably choose to ignore or maybe watch once some rainy afternoon while bored. So in this case an anniversary screening of The Wicker Man was preceded by a recording of a concert in which some musicians (all of whom were born after the film came out) played songs that appear in it, together with a series of interviews, including with Britt Ekland, two of director Robin Hardy's sons, a film critic, etc. It was in fact not uninteresting, with Britt Ekland in particular giving good celebrity bantz, but I don't think I would describe any of the bonus material as essential.
The film itself… well obviously it is amazing; it's not for nothing that I never turn down a chance to see it. And there's always an element of version bingo when you see The Wicker Man, with different versions varying in length and featuring unique scenes.
This I think was the final cut version, which giving Howie two nights on the island. This is good as it means we are treated to "Gently Johnny", probably the film's best song. But it also meant that there was a pointless mainland scene at the start, in which we see Howie doing some religious stuff in a church (especially pointless as the same scene appears in flashback later). It still left me pondering one of the great unanswered questions of The Wicker Man: to what Christian denomination does Howie belong? His in-your-face god bothering comes across as stereotypically Presbyterian, but the mainland church scene looks a bit high church. Could Howie be an Anglican or even (shudder) a Papist? I suspect the filmmakers were not being too careful in their representation of Scottish Christianity.
One other thing struck me about the film, which maybe occurs to me every time I see it and is then forgotten afterwards: even in the two day version of the film, there is something a bit odd about the timescale. Think about what we are shown of Howie's actions. At the start of the film Howie lands on the island. After an initial conversation with the harbourmaster and a bunch of old lads, he goes and briefly interviews Rowan Morrison's mother about her daughter. And then it is dark, so he goes to the pub for his dinner and to bed down for the night. But it's summer in the Hebrides: it wouldn't be getting dark that early. What does Howie do between meeting Rowan's mother and going to the pub?
images:
The Wicker Man (Warped Perspective: "The Willing Fool: the Spectacle of the Wicker Man by Robert J. E. Simpson")
Islanders (Movie Nation: "Classic Film Review: They should’ve known better than to try and Nic Cage a Classic — The Wicker Man (1973))
So this is a collection of Stax classics from Ace Records. It's a great selection of southern soul sizzlers, but you probably know that already.
LoneLadyNerve Up (2010) & Hinterland (2015)
You will recall that I went to see Ms LoneLady earlier this year, at what was basically my first proper gig after the menace of Covid was vanished from the world. I picked these up at the concert. If you've listened to the LoneLady track I included on my 2021 compilation you'll get the basic idea: nervy vocals over a somewhat retro accompaniment of electronics and edgy guitar lines. LoneLady's Julie Campbell plays almost all the instruments on both records. Nerve Up is a bit more guitar-oriented than the later record but they are both broadly of a piece. There are Tim Burgess listening parties for both of these (Nerve Up & Hinterland), which I keep meaning to play back while listening to the record. Probably should have done that before writing this.
In an effort to rake in the $$$s, the Anchoress has been posting cover versions on Bandcamp for short time periods. I keep downloading them. The first one here is a cover of "The Tradition" by Halsey. I have no idea who Halsey is so the song has no prior residence for me. It's nice enough. The second one is "These Days", originally from Nico's debut album Chelsea Girl. I have a troubled relationship with that album: while it is certainly pleasant enough, I feel like it is basically False Nico, in that she is singing a selection of nice songs written for her by other people. It is also from before she acquired her harmonium and started writing her own songs of subterranean doom. "These Days" was written by Jackson Browne, reportedly when he was about 16. While it was not written for Nico, she appears to have been the first person to record it commercially. The Anchoress croons her way through it; divorced of my difficulties with Chelsea Girl it's hard not to listen to it here and conclude that this is in fact a beautiful song with appealingly wistful lyrics about loss and regret.
And then a cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence", the electropop banger slowed down. It's fine but not revelatory. Continuing the trawl through goth-adjacent tunes of yore, the next one is The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love". I've never liked this song and the switch from the uptempo poppiness of the original to the slower and sparser version her does not change my opinion that this is one of those fundamentally bad songs that everyone in the world bar me loves.
The last track is "Pennyroyal Tea", originally be Nirvana and released by the Anchoress after the US Supreme Court's revocation of the Roe v. Wade judgement (pennyroyal has history as a herbal abortificant of variable efficacy). The cover is fine but again, not revelatory.
In fact I think all of these covers are inessential, with the exception of "These Days"; none of them leap out at me like her 2020 covers of "Wicked Game" or "Martha's Harbour" did. But I'll probably keep chasing the buzz by downloading whatever covers she releases next. You can do the same by keeping an eye on her Bandcamp page: https://iamtheanchoress.bandcamp.com
Confidence ManTilt (2022)
I feel like I bought a RoisÃn Murphy album by mistake. This is fine as far as it goes and the songs would probably be great live if you had Janet Planet and Sugar Bones dancing in front of you, but there aren't enough lyrics about how Ms Planet is amazing and everyone else is a loser. Some of the tunes also sound a bit over-reminiscent of other tunes by other artists.
Howard Blake "The Moon Stallion" (1978)
This is the theme from this now quite obscure TV series that is now completely unavailable on home media and has never been released on English-language DVD. Its unavailability is a shame, as anyone who remembers seeing it will recall it as a classic of spooky 1970s kids' television. Its use of the Uffington White Horse and Wayland's Smithy interspersed with a plot mixing up Arthurian myth and Graeco-Roman paganism would make it highly relevant to our current revived interest in all that folk horror stuff. If you've seen it you'll remember its late-Victorian setting and its spooky plot based around the mysterious white horse of the title, with anyone who catches sight of it being doomed to die in the near future (conveniently the story's heroine, played by Sarah Sutton, is blind).
The theme, downloaded from YouTube, is of short duration, but in its 50 seconds it manages to evoke the stallion's untamed gallop while hinting at the esoteric content of the programme. The theme isn't even on YouTube (the "Moon Stallion" hits you find there are for a completely different programme), but it can be listened to here. Give it a go, but don't blame me if next thing you find yourself meeting a spooky white horse and then dying in an unfortunate accident.
This is a documentary by Kier-La Janisse about all that folk horror stuff, starting off with the big three (The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General, and Blood on Satan's Claw) before heading on into weirdo TV of the 1970s (typically written by Nigel Kneale) before travelling around the world and on to the present day. Howard Ingham, who wrote the book on folk horror, features as one of the talking heads, possibly being the first voice heard in the film. The guys who set up the Folk Horror Revival group on Facebook also make an appearance.
The film is good but maybe goes on a bit. It loses focus a bit when it starts talking about folk horror from places other than Britain. That section felt a bit "Around the World in 88 Crazy Folk Beliefs", coming close to offering little more than a superficial listing of the films.
My sense of unease with the folk horror around the world section did get me thinking about what this folk horror stuff is all about. I lean towards the idea that is fundamentally a very British thing, based on the country, particularly England, having a continuous history that has rolled on for hundreds and hundreds of years without the disruption of invasion and the like. That sense of long history means there is a lot of past from which things can resurface. And despite the name, there is more to folk horror than horror featuring elements from folk traditions (e.g. leprechauns exist as threatening entities in Irish folk tales but Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood is not folk horror). Some of the non-British folk horror films in Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched did just seem to be taking some monster from folk traditions and having it eat people, which to me is not what true folk horror is about.
I also found myself taking issue with the claim by one of the commentators that folk horror asks "what if the old ways were right?". I don't think any of the great folk horror narratives pose that question. Rather they ask "what if there were nutters who believed the old ways are right?", e.g. people on a Scottish island who think that human sacrifice will guarantee an abundant harvest or East Anglian peasants who think that their neighbours are practising witchcraft and should be executed. Folk horror sometimes presents the followers of the old ways in an almost appealing manner, but you'd have to be a right weirdo to think that their ways are better than the ones science has to offer us.
That's a lot of grumbling and caveats from me, which is unfortunate and might give the wrong impression that I did not enjoy the film. It is a great piece of work and I think it functions well as both an introduction to the genre and something that triggers debate and thought for people who have more engagement with it. I think it is available on some online streaming patterns and possibly also DVD. I encourage people to seek it out. This might actually be a better film to see at home rather than in the cinema, as you may well find yourself wanting to note down films to check out later.
I nominated Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched in the Best Related Work category in this year's Hugo Awards, but it did not make it to the list of finalists, due to biased political voting.
images:
The Unholy Trinity (The Kim Newman Website: "FrightFest review – Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror")
Warwick Davis and friend (Nathan Rabin's Happy Place: "Exploiting the Archives: Control Nathan Rabin: Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood")
These are two BBC radio adaptations from 2015 of much older teleplays by Nigel Kneale. They are not available to stream or download on the BBC's own website, but they can be found on shady websites like the Internet Archive or YouTube.
The Stone Tape
This one was adapted from Kneale's 1972 original by Peter Strickland (who also directs) and Matthew Graham. The basic set up is essentially the same as in Nigel Kneale's original: some scientists move into a Victorian mansion to do research and discover that it seems to be haunted; they stumble onto the "stone tape" theory of hauntings (that traumatic events of the past can somehow be recorded in their surroundings). And computer programmer Jill Greely (Jane Asher in the original, played this time by Romola Garai) seems to have a special sensitivity towards the ghostly manifestations.
If you've seen the TV drama then the way this one ends will probably not surprise you. What is maybe interesting is the way in which it deviates from the TV version. For one thing, it is set in 1979 rather than the early 1970s. Also the scientists are working on using sound waves in mining or something, rather than trying to make a breakthrough in recording technology. But the really striking difference for me is the lack of the original's all pervasive racism. I'm guessing that comes from the march of progress and a sense that having a play full of characters who make jokes about "the Japs" or their Irish employer would be a bit problematic in our more enlightened times. Yet it feels like a retreat, not because I am a colossal racist but because the original characters' racism struck me as a marker of weakness and unease on their parts, whether over having to take orders from an Irishman or the imminent destruction of their industry by Japanese competition.
Still, this remains an impressive work, thanks to strong direction and acting bringing out the best of the source material. The play also features striking electronic music by James Cargill of Broadcast and Children of Alice.
The Road
The TV version of this was broadcast in 1963, but no recordings of it survive. For this radio version, Toby Hadoke adapted Nigel Kneale's original script and Charlotte Riches directed. Actors included Mark Gatiss and Hattie Morahan. Set in 1768 this centres on an investigation of mysterious phenomena in a wood by the local squire (one of those gentleman scientist types, played by Adrian Scarborough) and a visiting urban philosopher (Gatiss); the philosopher seems to be carrying on with the squire's wife (Morahan), or maybe I am supposing too much here.
The phenomena being investigated see strange sounds manifesting in a local wood, but only on one night of the year. People report hearing unfathomable and disconcerting noises, but also the sound of screams and people in extreme terror. And a local girl reports that she also heard the sound of people moving over a paved roadway, even though the wood has been there since time immemorial. There are stories of Queen Boudicca's followers being massacred in the woods during Roman times; the squire thinks the sounds might be a stone tape echo of this but the philosopher dismisses such ideas as superstitious nonsense. He sees the supposed haunting as the product of over-active imaginations. It turns out both squire and philosopher are wrong: the actual nature of the haunting may surprise you. The ending packs a considerable punch; rather than spoil it I encourage readers to listen to the audio drama themselves.
Like everyone my age I have not seen the original television version of The Road, but I did find myself wondering how Toby Hadoke's version might have varied from the source material. My suspicion is that Nigel Kneale's philosopher probably did not have a West Indian former slave as a manservant, although it's not impossible that someone of his class at that time might have done. It pleased me that the drama presented 18th century race relations in a reasonably realistic manner and did not present us with a fantasy bollocks utopia version of such things (as seen in popular drama Bridgerton).
This year the World Science Fiction Convention (i.e. Worldcon) is taking place in Chicago. I am not going, but because I voted in site selection I have a supporting membership of the convention, which means I get to vote in this year's Hugo Awards. That means I receive the voters packet: digital copies of most of the works that made it onto the ballot. But before the packet was distributed I went and read all the finalists in the short story category, as these are all available to read online. To be honest, not all of these are great, but one really stood out for me, that being Sarah Pinsker's "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather". This is presented as though it were the talk page of Lyricsplainer, one of those websites like Mudcat where people discuss the lyrics of folk songs. In the story the people are discussing the obscure folk tune "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather", whose lyrics can also be found in both the Child and Roud collection of ballads. The song tells of a man and woman meeting together for a tryst in the woods, where oaken hearts do gather (that line is repeated throughout the song). There is an element of foreboding, with the reader perhaps fearing that the man will have less than noble intentions, but things take an unexpected turn and it is the man who suffers a terrible fate. The lyrics go on to suggest that his fate is a ritualistic one and that these events will be repeated when other men find themselves lured into the woods, where oaken hearts do gather. What exactly is happening here remains oblique, but that only adds to the sense of unease the lyrics generate.
Meanwhile, in the Lyricsplainer comments people there are discussing the song and making the case for particular variants of the words. We also see the kind of feuding and trolling that bedevils the online world. But buried in among all the chatter one of the commenters starts talking about how he thinks the song is set in a specific place in England, which he decides to find for himself. As the discussion progresses he posts again about how his inquiries are progressing. What happens next may not surprise you; in the best tradition of folk horror, the reader twigs where the story is going a good bit before the protagonist does. That does not stop the ending from packing a considerable punch.
You can read the story for yourself on the website of Uncanny magazine here:
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/where-oaken-hearts-do-gather/
Sarah Pinsker meanwhile is a musician as well as a writer. Her band The Stalking Horses have recorded their own version of the song. It would not spoil your enjoyment of the story if you listened to this first, or vice versa.
image source (Guardian: "Getting back to nature: how forest bathing can make us feel better")
I went to London for a celebration of the centenary of the birth of screenwriter Nigel Kneale. Organised by Jon Dear, with the glamorous assistance of Toby Hadoke, Howard David Ingham, and Andy Murray, this was a day of screenings and panel discussions in the Crouch End Picturehouse.Nigel Kneale is not a household name by any means, but in his long career he produced striking work for television and cinema. He started writing for television in the 1950s, when TV drama was starting to become a thing, and while he initially wrote all kinds of stuff it is his science fiction and horror writing that he is remembered for. His best known works probably being the three 1950s series of Quatermass (a kind of proto-Doctor Who, except for grown ups), though he was still writing into the 1990s.
The first panel looked at Kneale's early work with the BBC, which started with literary adaptations and then moved on to The Quatermass Experiment in 1953 and its follow-up serials in 1955 and 1958, as well as his adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1954. These were the event television of their time, with questions being asked in parliament about Nineteen Eighty-Four and the streets reportedly emptying when Quatermass was on, though of course this was also a time when there was only one British TV channel. The details of television's early years brought up the panelists were fascinating. At that point television, even drama, was still mostly broadcast live; pre-recording was only used for material shot outside, which was still a bit of a novelty. Drama was also conceived in very theatrical terms, with Reginald Tate, the actor playing Quatermass in the first series, taking a bow at the end of the last episode.
One of the panelists had looked up what was actually shown on the BBC on the day the first episode of The Quatermass Experiment was shown. Initially there was alternating coverage of Royal Ascot and Formula One motor racing, then a short piece of children's programming, more Ascot and motor racing, and a news reel, all interspersed with interludes when nothing was being shown. And then a warning from the announcer that the following programme might not be suitable for children or those of a nervous disposition, before the ominous tones of Holst's "Mars" brought us into the world of Professor Quatermass and his experiment.
Another point made by the panelists (and one repeated through the day) was that for all Nigel Kneale's best remembered work dealt with science fiction and horror themes, he never thought of himself as a genre writer and was indeed very dismissive of science fiction. Partly that derived from his having a somewhat limited sense of what constituted science fiction, seeing it as something characterised by the US pulp tradition and screen material inspired by it. Science fiction fans will rightly grumble that the genre has so much more to offer. And yet if you look at what passes for screen science fiction now you see that it is dominated by films in which people in stupid costumes punch each other or by formulaic Trek Wars crap that is cosily familiar rather than in any way challenging. It's like the pulp tradition has taken over science fiction, so maybe Kneale was right to dismiss the genre entirely.
This discussion preceded a screening of "Contact has been established", the first episode of The Quatermass Experiment. Professor Quatermass is the director of a British space programme that has sent a manned rocket into orbit, but something has gone wrong. Eventually the rocket crash lands in south London, but inexplicably there is only one of the three astronauts left inside the capsule.
One thing that struck me with this episode was how the shadow of the Second World War hangs over Kneale's early work. After the rocket lands on a residential street displaced locals reference the Blitz, with one confused woman seeming to think that the V2 rockets are back. The later Quatermass and the Pit sees people finding something during tunnelling that they initially think is an unexploded German bomb (that drama's nightmarish climax sees people consumed by an urge to exterminate the different, which also evokes the horrors of the Third Reich). And Kneale's Nineteen Eighty-Four feels very much like it is set in a world where the Second World War never stopped (which I think was Orwell's intention but it is maybe less obvious to us when reading his book). I suppose in the 1950s the war was still very recent, with some food rationing still in place when the first Quatermass episode was broadcast. That the war, or something like it, could start up again must have been a fear forever lurking below the surface. The depiction of a street destroyed by a rocket must have triggered uneasy memories on the part of many viewers (and for all the studio bound nature of the first Quatermass episode, the ruined house set is surprisingly effective).
"Contact has been established" was followed by Tom Baker reading Kneale's short story "The Photograph"; the story is from much further back but this was broadcast in 1978, when Baker had only recently departed from Doctor Who (ironic in that Kneale thought Doctor Who was rubbish but also resented how its producers lifted his plots and themes). After a short break Jon Dear talked to Douglas Weir of the BFI about the restoration of Kneale's Nineteen Eighty-Four (out now (finally) on DVD and Blu-Ray); having seen that some years ago at Loncon I am looking forward to catching it again in all its restored glory.
Then we had a panel on Nigel Kneale in the 1970s. This was Kneale's folk horror period, with ancient evils supplanting the dangers of science gone wrong in his work (though arguably the danger of chthonic terrors from the past was also a theme appearing in some of his earlier work, notably Quatermass and the Pit, while the 1970s still saw Kneale engaging with science fiction themes in the likes of The Stone Tape and the final 1979 Quatermass series). By now of course television was a much more mature medium, broadcast in colour with drama no longer going out live. And there were more channels in Britain (three, to be precise). TV was also edgier: for all that Mary Whitehouse was clipping its heels, much more could be shown now than in the 1950s. There was an interesting point made by Una McCormack about how not all of this lack of inhibition in the 1970s was necessarily great, with the television and cinema of the era sometimes seeing sexism slide into outright misogyny (think about how common sexual assault of women is in notable works of the decade); she talked of Kneale acknowledging this and reacting against it in the likes of Murrain or the Beasts episode "Special Offer". You could see something similar in The Stone Tape, where Jane Asher plays almost the only woman in a drama otherwise featuring a lot of often boorish men.
That was followed by a screening of Murrain, originally broadcast by ITV as part of the Against the Crowd anthology series. The film is based on two conflicts: the young vet representing science and modernity versus the superstition of the country folk, and then same superstitious country folk versus the eccentric old woman they believe to have cursed them. It makes for disconcerting viewing as it is never quite clear where your sympathies are meant to lie. Well, the vet is always operating with the most noble of motives, but beyond that it gets more complicated. Are the countryfolk bad because they are persecuting an old woman for no crime other than being a bit odd? Or is the old woman actually an evil witch who has brought a curse down on her neighbours? Or is she a woman of power who is merely striking back against her neighbours' persecution? The drama also retains an ambiguity as to whether the old woman is actually possessed of sinister powers, or whether the various ailments afflicting those who have slighted her are psychosomatic (which could be the case even if the old woman thinks she has cursed them). On the other hand, the farmer's pigs are actually suffering from a mysterious sickness (the murrain of the title), something that for them is unlikely to result from a belief in witchcraft.
Murrain is also surprisingly funny. Not funny all the time, but it has its moments. Like when the vet is in the village shop trying to buy stuff for the old lady. He asks the shopkeeper if she has any olives or chorizo; she gives him a look suggesting there is not much demand for such fripperies in these parts.
Murrain also gives us the great phrase from the vet, "We don't go back", with which he asserts his confidence that science will always provide the answers and that the old ways of superstition have nothing to offer us. The phrase gave Howard David Ingham the title for their book on folk horror, because the whole genre is largely based on the idea that maybe we will go back actually. By the end of Murrain even the vet's confidence in science seems to be shaken, for all that the drama's climax remains ambiguous.
That was followed by a panel on Kneale on film. For all that he wrote primarily for television, there are a good number of films based on his work or else scripted by him. Hammer made films of the three 1950s Quatermass series, the first two in the 1950s while Quatermass and the Pit (the best by a considerable margin) did not appear until 1967. He wrote some other films for Hammer (Abominable Snowman and The Witches) as well as an adaptation of H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon (which seemed to be always on television when I was a child). And he did some non-genre work (including, surprisingly to me, adaptations of John Osborne plays). But it was hard to escape the feeling that film was not really his medium, with his writing for the big screen being littered with projects that were stillborn or ended up as compromised failures (e.g. Halloween 3). Cinema is a more difficult medium for writers, with the amount of money riding on a picture meaning that someone like Kneale was never going to be given the kind of free rein he had on television.
And then we had a short clip from The Quatermass Xperiment [sic], the 1955 Hammer film adaptation of the first Quatermass series. A little girl playing on her own meets what we know to be a man transforming into something else, in a scene that cannot but evoke a disturbing counterpart in the 1931 film of Frankenstein. The girl was played by Jane Asher, who started out as a child actor. We then had the excitement of Jon Dear interviewing Jane Asher (Jane Fucking Asher!) as an introduction to a screening of The Stone Tape, in which she played the leading role.
Asher lent the day an air of star quality and was an engaging and entertaining interviewee. I was particularly amused by how one of her anecdotes pivoted to "He was a lovely man" when she discovered that its subject (a Stone Tape collaborator) was still alive. I had to admire her making a long round trip to attend the event, particularly given that she did not stay for the screening (she mentioned hating seeing herself on screen, something which I understand is not uncommon among actors). I was also struck by how there was an accidental echo of The Stone Tape in her appearance in the Picturehouse. In the TV drama she plays almost the only female character, isolated in a world of blokey blokes, while the Nigel Kneale Centenary event was also a pretty male-dominated affair, both in terms of the audience and the programme participants (there were several manels and no panel with more than one female participant); hopefully this event went better for her than The Stone Tape did for the character she played.
And so to The Stone Tape itself. As with almost all the screenings, this was my first time seeing this, though it is something I have heard discussed at folk horror online events. It is a feature length TV play first broadcast on BBC 2 in 1972. It mixes science fiction and horror, being in part a ghost story but also attempting to offer a scientific explanation for hauntings (the idea that places can somehow record events that have taken place in them, now often referred to as the Stone Tape theory, for all that the idea preceded the drama). And the play itself is about recording, as its premise is that a team of recording engineers are setting up in a country house to research new audio technologies. The house being haunted presents some challenges, but when they hit on the Stone Tape theory they start thinking that this could maybe be harnessed into a revolutionary new audiovisual recording medium. But this is horror so things do not entirely work out.
I mentioned that Jane Asher plays (almost) the only female character in The Stone Tape, a computer programmer. The sexism of the era is a bit of a theme to this one, with the married head of the project in a problematic relationship with her, while she often finds herself patronised by her colleagues. But what is really striking about the drama is the racism. The researchers are in competition with Japanese rivals, and every time they are mentioned (usually as "The Japs") the characters switch into the kind of parody Asian accent and facial contortions that would disbar you from public office if a recording of you doing it were to surface. And also the company they work for, Ryan Electrics, is owned by an Irishman; he never appears but whenever he is invoked the characters switch into stage Irish accents. Yet it is hard not to see all this as signs of weakness rather than confidence. It must gall these arrogant Englishmen to be taking orders from the scion of one of their former colonies. And for all their mocking of the Japanese, it is stated fairly explicitly that unless the team achieve their sonic breakthrough the British audio industry will be soon wiped out by its East Asian competitors. The sexism might also mask a blokey unease that women are now moving into the workforce and occupying roles that would previously have been the preserve of men.
I should also mention that The Stone Tape features an amazing BBC Radiophonic Workshop soundtrack.
I was talking after the screening to one of my neighbours about how Ireland and the Irish people are a bit of recurring theme for Kneale. As well as Ryan, he mentioned how in Quatermass II the revolt against the alien invaders begins on St. Patrick's Day and is spearheaded by Irish labourers. And there is an Irish drunk in The Quatermass Experiment. Irish names show up throughout Kneale's work. I'm not sure what the significance of this might be. Kneale was not from Ireland and as far as I know he did not have ancestors from here; he may never have visited the island. But maybe this is not so remarkable: there are lots of Irish people in Britain after all, and they are an easy kind of slight other to represent.
And then we had an odd thing, a live performance of You Must Listen a lost Nigel Kneale radio play broadcast in 1952. Again it combined technology and hauntings, with an initially comical tale of crossed telephone lines becoming more macabre as the intruding voice is revealed to be that of a dead person. It had a lot of characters, who were performed by programme participants and a few professional actors (these were not mutually exclusive categories). I was impressed by how Mark Gatiss, probably the most famous participant, took a relatively minor role.
You Must Listen reminded me somewhat of Robert Presslie's short story "Dial 'O' for Operator", in some respects a similar tale of crossed wires and temporal distortion, though in other ways rather different. Presslie's story did not appear until 1958, so it is possible Kneale's drama planted the seed in his brain.
The final panel looked at Kneale's legacy. Stephen Gallagher compared Kneale to Stephen King, in that both writers revolutionised horror by placing it in everyday contemporary settings (sadly no one noted that we were attending an event in Crouch End, setting and title of one of King's most effective short stories). There was also reference to the disturbing prescience of his late 1968 TV play The Year of the Sex Olympics, which prefigures much of the reality television that blights our age, with something like Naked Attraction almost looking like it took Kneale's play as a template. Mark Gatiss mentioned that at the peak of The League of Gentlemen's success, he tried to push the BBC's controller to commission a new series from Kneale, still living at the time. However, he was told that there was no place on the BBC for someone whose career started before the invention of the remote control.
And then the day closed with a screening of Quatermass and the Pit, the 1967 Hammer film version of the 1958-59 TV series. Directed by Roy Ward Baker and with a strong cast including Andrew Keir as Professor Quatermass, James Donald and Barbara Shelley as palaeontologists, and Julian Glover as an army officer. Like much of Kneale's work, this combines science fiction and horror, with Quatermass's space research interrupted by the discovery of strange hominid remains during construction work on an extension to the London Underground's Central Line; that initial find is followed by ever more disturbing revelations about the true history of humanity.
It is a stunning piece of work, with the tension building as the awful truth is gradually uncovered and the drama moves towards an apocalyptic climax. Maybe the closing section of the film is ever so slightly rushed, but Kneale nevertheless did an amazing job condensing a TV series of more than three hours into a film of 97 minutes, with the propulsive energy of the narrative carrying the viewer along without leaving them time to ponder possible logical gaps in what they are watching. Much of the horror comes from people realising things or just having an idea at the edge of their understanding: there is an astonishing scene early on where a tough policeman comes close to a breakdown merely be viewing odd graffiti marks in an abandoned house. As one of the panellists earlier remarked, The Quatermass Experiment is about an alien incursion happening now while Quatermass II has an invasion that began a couple of years ago, but in Quatermass and the Pit the alien invasion took place five million years ago and basically succeeded, profoundly altering the course of human development but not in a good way (this a year before the publication of Erich Van Daniken's Chariot of the Gods).
The film also looks amazing. It has the saturated colour of Hammer films of the era but somehow this all seems more impressive in what was then a contemporary context rather than being in some backward corner of Mitteleuropa. Like other Hammer films Quatermass and the Pit is also happy to focus much attention on the good looks of a female lead. Yet for all that Barbara Shelley appears in a succession of stunning outfits, she is never presented as the kind of sexy lady seen in other Hammer films (for comparison see her performance in the latter part of Dracula, Prince of Darkness); the film's poster is somewhat misleading in this regard.
And that I suppose was that. I enjoyed the event a lot, with the combination of programming and discussion working very well. The material shown to us was particularly well chosen, presenting a fascinating overview of Kneale's career, building like one of his works to a terrifying climax, in this case Quatermass and the Pit. The panels were full of interesting people whose insights greatly improved our enjoyment of the screenings and had me thinking of more things to watch. Overall the event had the feeling of a cosy SF con (there was even a slightly redux Lally Wall). Looking back though I found myself thinking about two things the panellists did not really touch on. The first was Kneale's non-genre work, only really mentioned in passing. There was a surprising amount of this, including an episode of Kavanagh QC (his last work according to IMDB), an adaptation of Sharpe's Gold, the previously mentioned John Osborne screenplays, and an adaptation of Wuthering Heights (which admittedly is semi-genre). What I was curious about here is whether in his work on these non-genre pieces he still somehow injected some Kneale magic into proceedings, or whether they are essentially pieces of generic hackwork that could have been written by anyone. The other thing I found myself wondering was whether Kneale ever considered moving into direction, thereby trying to become a proper auteur director rather than a writer who had to worry about how his work would be realised. Books like Into the Unknown by Andy Murray (on sale at the centenary event but sadly all copies were snapped up before I could buy one) or We Are The Martians (edited by Neil Snowdon) might provide further insights into these questions.
When my aunt was in her early teens she reported having a strange dream. Her mother, my grandmother, was concerned and questioned her closely. The answers confirmed my grandmother's suspicions: she was no longer dealing with her daughter but with a changeling who had been left in her place by the fairy folk. Fortunately my granny knew what to do. She and my grandfather borrowed a car and brought my aunt (or the changeling who looked like my aunt) to meet a man who was wise in the ways of the fairy folk. The fairy man was a Protestant living in a mainly Catholic country; this may have been significant. He did some things and then told my grandparents that the matter was resolved: their daughter would return to her normal state provided they brought her back home without talking to anyone on the way. They had probably anticipated this condition, which was why they borrowed the car in a time when people in their locality still mostly travelled by horse-drawn carriage. So they drove back home and talked to no one on the way.
The most famous Irish case involving a changeling, or the belief that someone had become one, is that of Bridget Cleary, which ended in horror and tragedy. In 1895 Michael Cleary became convinced that Bridget, his wife, had been replaced by a changeling. To recover his wife, he set fire to the "changeling", burning her to death; he seems to have been assisted in this by some of his neighbours. Michael Cleary was convicted of manslaughter, his confederates of lesser crimes. The flames did not recover the real Bridget Cleary from the fairy folk.
You Are Not My Mother, an Irish film directed by Kate Dolan, starts off as a film about mental illness. Teenager Char lives with her mother, Angela, and her grandmother. Her mother suffers badly from depression and is really crushed by it; she barely leaves her bedroom and declares at one early point that she can't go on like this anymore. She disappears, leaving her car abandoned on a piece of common ground in their housing estate. And when she returns she can't say where she has been but seems now to be entering some kind of manic stage, no longer crushed by depression but acting in an increasingly erratic manner. Meanwhile Char is suffering in school, where the tough kids are picking on her and making fun of her for having a crazy mother. And Halloween is approaching, a time when things get a bit strange in the housing estates in which this film is set.
So, so far so bipolar. Except Char's grandmother starts to have suspicions about Angela, suspicions she eventually reveals to Char: the person she thinks is her mother is actually a changeling, sent by the fairy folk in the hope of abducting Char herself, whom they had apparently tried to take when she was an infant.
Now, there are two ways you can go with a film like this. You could be making a film about people with funny ideas and crazy beliefs, in which case the grandmother's conviction that Angela is now a changeling becomes a mirror image of Angela's own bipolar problems. Alternatively, you could have an OMG reveal that "Angela" is actually a changeling. I'm wary of posting spoilers but the fact that You Are Not My Mother is billed as a horror film rather than a psychological drama might give readers a clue as to which way the film goes. And I think maybe this choice was a mistake.
The changeling idea works well as a metaphor or manifestation of mental health issues. Capgras' syndrome is the delusion that a loved one has been replaced by an identical double, with cultural beliefs determining whether the double is seen as a changeling, an alien, a pod person, a foreign spy, an android, or something else. Or the issue can lie with the person perceived as the changeling. I have heard it said that the idea of infant changelings might be linked to the first manifestations of autism. Severe psychiatric illness can also make it seem that a loved one has been replaced by a double. You Are Not My Mother nods to this last approach, with Angela already established as suffering from mental illness and her post-disappearance mania initially seeming like a new phase of her condition. Taking this route, the monster in the film becomes the grandmother, with her crazy idea that fire will get return true Angela in place of the false one. But the film turns its back on that approach with the sudden reveal that Angela has actually been replaced by the fairy folk.
At this point You Are Not My Mother turns into a monster film, with Char being chased by the false mother, who wants to take her away to live with the fairy folk. I would have preferred a different outcome, but your mileage may very. I was particularly uncomfortable with the way the film's ending evoked Bridget Cleary's homicide, but in a way that could be taken as justifying her killing.
And yet for all my grumbling about a pretty fundamental turn the film took, I nevertheless really liked You Are Not My Mother. The characterisation is very strong, with Hazel Doupe as Char, Carolyn Bracken as Angela and Ingrid Craigie as the grandmother all excellent. Jordanne Jones as Suzanne, a classmate of Char, is also very impressive. The film is really stunning in its depiction of bipolarity and the confusion it engenders in the bipolar person's dependents. Char's troubles with her peer group and then her growing friendship with Suzanne (after initial hostility) is very well handled. I particularly liked how a scene where the two share a joint is presented as a bonding experience rather than a prelude to Char's descent into delinquency.
I should also mention that the film uses music very well. Die Hexen provide an eerie eerie electronic soundtrack that also evokes Irish traditional music. There is also a striking scene where Angela (or False Angela) dances in an increasingly demented manner to Joe Dolan's "You're Such A Good Looking Woman".
So there is a lot that I Iiked about this film. I just wish that the film had used the changeling myth as a way of exploring its interesting ideas further rather than going down the monster film road.
Hazel Doupe as Char (Advocate: "Out Director Kate Dolan’s You Are Not My Mother Queers Folk Horror" [This piece is worth reading. I did not talk about possible lesbian subtext between Char and Suzanne as I am wary of seeing all female friendships in films as sapphic, but it seems like the film's director did see it that way.]
This is the final part of Irish Film Institute, to see Folk Horror themed films being shown as part of their Haunted Landscapes season. Folk horror is a term coined by Mark Gatiss. You can read my account of the first set of these films here and the second here
There was more black magic action in Night of the Demon (1957), Jacques Tourneur's adaptation of M.R. James's 'Casting the Runes', about a magus who is able to set a malevolent demon on his enemies and a man who finds himself marked for death by the monster. Among other things, it is famous for providing the "It's in the trees! It's coming!" sample for Kate Bush's 'Hounds of Love'. It is also that odd beast, a noir horror film, with much use made of shadow, lots of men in hats and long coats, an opening scene in which a man drives along a darkened road by night, a closing scene in night fog beside a railway track. And yet it is not fully comfortable in its embrace of the uncanny, with the magus a somewhat bumptious type and various interludes with mediums and hypnotists seeming almost like comic relief for all that they are advancing the plot of horror. In that regard it feels less certain of itself as a horror film than Cat People, Tourneur's 1942 classic.
Night of the Demon is famous for the studios insistence that the monster be shown in it ("If people go to film called Night of the Demon then they'll feel ripped off if there is no goddamn Demon!" must have been the logic). Tourneur on the other hand wanted the Demon to be left unseen, more terrifying if the audience's imagination is left to run riot. In truth, the long shot version of the Demon is actually quite scary, reminiscent of the monster in Forbidden Planet in its semi-corporeality. The close-up version is pretty ridiculous though, that classic dud monster who ends up looking a bit cute thanks to its trying too hard to be fierce. And despite its ridiculousness, the close-up view of the monster gets used in all publicity for this film, including by the IFI in the run up to this season.
And how fares this enjoyable film as a member of the folk horror genre? I'm not too sure. All the black magic stuff and people in posh houses again feels like something other than folk horror. On the other hand, there is a bit where the protagonist goes to Stonehenge and looks at some runes carved into the stones, calling to mind the ancient folk ways of England, so maybe we will let them away with it.
And the last film was the most recent, The Blair Witch Project from 1999. You have surely seen that found footage film about the three people who get lost in the woods while trying to make a low budget documentary about a legendary with. Looking back on it now it is striking how none of the people involved in have gone on to do that much. Given how much of a stir the film caused at the time this may be surprising. I am also struck by how short it it is, possibly because a film of people wandering around in the woods and then being woken up by strange noises at night can only go on so long before it gets boring.
It is still a most unnerving. The sense that the characters are doomed comes early to the viewer, and it is their dawning sense of their inescapable fate that gives the film its mounting dread.
Sound design corner: I know people who are into cinema sound design get annoyed when people say "oh, like music?" when the concept of sound design is outlined to them, but in Blair Witch Project it was noticeable that in the very last sequence (when the characters run around through the world's spookiest derelict houses, pretty much knowing they are about to die) the film sneaks some low volume music onto the soundtrack. This should break the illusion that this is unmediated found footage, but the volume is so low and the scene so engaging that most audiences probably do not notice.
Folk horror credentials: well there is a witch in it (or mentioned in it) and there is a fair bit about folk beliefs and folk lore (albeit of the completely made up variety).
So there you go. After reading all this, what do you understand by the term Folk Horror?
For more Folk Horror action, see my account of interesting conference A Fiend in the Furrows here and here.
I continue my account of trips to the Irish Film Institute, to see Folk Horror themed films being shown as part of their Haunted Landscapes season. Folk horror is a term coined by Mark Gatiss. You can read my account of the first set of these films here.
The second day of the season saw us in the IFI's smaller screen for a showing of Quatermass And The Pit (1967), a Hammer film version of the late 1950s TV series, both scripted by Nigel Kneale. Kim Newman introduced the film, about which he has written a book. Quatermass (a rocket scientist) finds himself investigating strange goings on when workers on an extension to the London Underground discover an unexploded bomb that turns out to be a spaceship older than humanity. There are shocking revelations and the release of long dormant powers.
When things come together in Hammer films they are the best things in the world: not schlocky or camp but genuinely unnerving. Everything comes together in this one, with the design, acting, scripting and direction all making this one of their greatest works. But is it folk horror? One might say no, arguing instead that this is horror science fiction in the Lovecraft mould, yet it still has a folk feel to it. The horror is very much located in a physical place, with the sense that the buried ship has had a malign influence on its surroundings since time immemorial (a trip to the library reveals that the area above it has been regarded as haunted and unhallowed as far back as there are records).
With this film I must particularly sing the praises of Barbara Shelley, a Hammer stalwart, who in this plays one of the archaeologists. She appears in a succession of amazing outfits that appear to have driven the colour coordination of the sets and astutely plays a role a world away from the screaming victim more commonly seen in Hammer films (often played by Ms Shelley). Hers is not the lead role but I did watch this wishing she had been given a fairer crack of the whip by film history.
The next film was the first I had not seen before, it being Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, a Czechoslovak film from 1970. Its Luboš Fišer soundtrack was re-released some years ago by Finders Keepers and became quite popular with people who like that kind of thing. Having listened to the record a good bit made for a strange experience finally seeing the film. It is a somewhat avant-garde work, described by Kim Newman as being exactly like Company of Wolves, except with vampires instead of werewolves. As such it falls into the world of films about teenage girls and their sexual awakenings. Valerie is menaced by shifty characters who try it on with her and who may or may not also be her close blood relatives. A sinister Nosferatu-like figure directs proceedings. Her grandmother may also be one of the vampires. Things happen, but it is not a plotty film. Instead it is a work of great beauty, with a wonderful combination of visual images and music.
But is Valerie and Her Week of Wonders folk horror? I fear not, but it would be churlish to complain about this rare opportunity to see this classic of obscure cinema.
Following that we found ourselves watching the third of the films that Mark Gatiss used to define the folk horror genre. It was The Blood on Satan's Claw, a 1970 film directed by Piers Haggard, made by the same production company as Witchfinder General, seen on the season's first day. This one is also set in days of yore (the 18th century or some such) and begins with a young yokel finding a strange looking hairy skull in a field while ploughing. He brings a grumpy old judge to investigate, but the skull has vanished, yet it soon transpires that Evil has descended upon the locality.
This one was introduced by Donald Clarke, Irish film critic. One of his interesting points was that the film is like a hippy dream gone bad. The servants of Satan in the film are the beautiful flower children, while it is ultimately The Man (the grumpy judge) who puts a stop to their shenanigans. For all that the cultists are murderers and rapists, they look far more like the good guys than Judge Establishment. There is a disturbing brutality to the judge defeating the cultists by laying into them with a big sword at the head of a mob of irate villagers.
This is a great film, managing a more straightforwardly disturbing tone than Witchfinder General and entirely lacking its sense of schlock. For all that the film features a Satanic monster gradually becoming more powerful, the real sense of menace is more psychological, either in the way that the young people are somehow turned by the Dark One or else appear to have their minds destroyed by exposure to the purity of evil. There is also an arbitrariness to the Dark One's ways: why does the lad who finds the skull in the first place remain unaffected by its power?
The next film was Hammer classic The Devil Rides Out (1968), a black magic film adapted from the novel by Dennis Wheatley (with Richard Matheson writing the script). It has Christopher Lee playing the Duc de Richelieu, who discovers that a young friend has got mixed up with Satanism. Richelieu turns out to have made an extensive study of the Black Arts (while fortunately remaining resolutely on the side of righteousness), so he and another more square-jawed hero friend battle to save the impressionable young lad before it is too late. It is a film I have seen before and they showed the trailer before everything in the IFI recently, so it felt very familiar when I watched it. It is schlock but it is great schlock, with Lee delivering classic lines like "It's the Goat of Mendes - the Devil Himself!" as though he means them.
It is also striking how the film is pretty much about a battle of poshos against satanists, with most of the satanists also being poshos. Everyone seems to live in mansions and have armies of servants at their disposal. From having read the book the film is based on, this reflects well Wheatley's snobbish world view. Overall the film is an enjoyable romp: a good Hammer film but not necessarily the kind of thing enjoyed by someone not wedded to the Hammer aesthetic.
It is not particularly folk horror; in fact I fear that it is what members of the Folk Horror Revival community on Facebook refer to as "not strictly folk horror". There is nothing really about folk practices or traditional ways, with the film being more straightforwardly an example of gothic horror. So how did it make it into the season? Well, maybe there was a good print available, or maybe it makes for an interesting counterpoint with Blood on Satan's Claw in terms of how satanic forces are represented.
My account of the last films I saw in the Haunted Landscapes season can be read here.
For more on folk horror, see my account of A Fiend in the Furrowshere and here.
The Irish Film Institute held a season of folk horror films. What the hell, I thought, buying tickets for all of them. For those that do not know of such things, Folk Horror is a term coined by Mark Gatiss in a 2010 BBC documentary about horror cinema. The three films Gatiss proposed as the epitome folk horror are all from the late 1960s or early 1970s. They were included in this season, as were many several others.
I have not seen Gatiss's documentary so I do not know how exactly he defined his genre. I think of it as being a combination of the uncanny with folk beliefs and practices, though the canonical films do not all readily fit such a mould: indeed, it would largely leave us with folk horror being a one-film genre, with that film being The Wicker Man. So instead I will now bomb through the films shown in the season and we can see if any kind of commonality can be seen.
First up there was Witchfinder General (1968), one of Gatiss's trinity. Directed by Michael Reeves, it tells the story of Matthew Hopkins, a real historical figure who hunted and executed large numbers of suspected witches in eastern England during the chaotic Civil War period. The film has a curious relationship with the reality of the Hopkins story. On the one hand outdoor scenes are filmed in places where Mr Hopkins stalked and killed his prey, but the film presents a more lurid version of his activities, throwing in a baroque witch burning at one point (with hanging being the more usual method of executing witches, or so I understand). The film's narrative drive comes from the quest for revenge of a soldier whose betrothed has been abused and debauched by Hopkins & his thuggish assistant, with the grim ending turning the soldier from square-jawed hero into violent maniac.
For all that this is one of the defining films of the folk horror genre I find Witchfinder General's inclusion therein somewhat problematic. There is very little sense in the film of anyone actually believing in witchcraft (either people considering themselves witches or sincerely believing that others are practitioners of the black arts). Accusations of witchcraft appear as a cynical ploy for people who want to punish their enemies or satiate violent urges. Hopkins himself is hard to think of as anything other than a conman using his witch hunts as a way of enriching himself (though his being played by Vincent Price has a lot to do with this). Perhaps what makes this folk horror is its evocation of the latent sadism and malevolence of the common folk, which we see in those scenes where jeering crowds watch the abuse and execution of those accused of witchcraft.
Famously Michael Reeves did not want Vincent Price in the Hopkins role, wishing that he could have Donald Pleasance instead, but the studio insisted. Price and Reeves did not get on, and at one point Price exclaimed to the much younger Reeves, "I've made 80 films! What have you ever done?", to which Reeves replied, "I've made three good ones". Or so it is said.
That same evening I saw The Wicker Man (1973), again introduced by Kim Newman. I have started thinking that this might actually be my favourite film in the world and that I will never turn down a chance to see it. Part of its fun is that it circulates in a multiplicity of versions, so whenever it is shown you never quite know what you are going to get. Newman mentioned that they did not actually know what version they were showing tonight, so he must have been as surprised by me to see an odd two night version that nevertheless leaves out the snails and 'Gently Johnny', felt by many to be the film's best song. Newman also confessed to a sneaking regard for the short version, which was originally shown with no fanfare as a support film for Don't Look Now, with much of its early word-of-mouth power coming from the fact that people were seeing it completely without preconceptions. I know what he means, as I still shudder at the memory of short horror film The Cottage,which I saw unexpectedly before Airplane 2 or similar back in 1982.
The Wicker Man is the folk horror film because the sense of unease and then the horrific climax all derive from the crazy folk customs of the islanders. An odd feature of the film noted by Newman is that it has become very popular with neo-pagans, which he likened to Spotlight becoming a favourite of Catholic priests. The analogy does not quite work, as the priests are a shadowy off screen presence in Spotlight while The Wicker Man is very much about the islanders and their funny ways, but it does bring home how odd it is to have people watching a film about a death cult and saying, "we love those guys".
One other thing occurred to me after an online discussion on the film. In The Wicker Man the pagan islanders are in opposition to the uptight Christian cop Sergeant Howie (played as you know by Edward Woodward). To modern viewers (and I suspect to many in 1973) the two poles of unbending Christianity and pagan fertility cult are both equally strange. It might be that if someone were to try and remake the film now (please don't) or to make something new but similar they would need to replace Howie either with a Dawkins-style scientific rationalist or someone with a more "whatever" approach to religion.
Part two of my write-up of the Haunted Landscapes season is here.
If you want to delve further into this Folk Horror business, see my account of interesting conference A Fiend in the Furrowshere and here.
There is a bit of a vogue these days for 50th anniversary screenings of films, but it's never enough for them to just show the fucking film: they also force you to sit through the kind of bonus feature material that on a DVD you'd probably choose to ignore or maybe watch once some rainy afternoon while bored. So in this case an anniversary screening of The Wicker Man was preceded by a recording of a concert in which some musicians (all of whom were born after the film came out) played songs that appear in it, together with a series of interviews, including with Britt Ekland, two of director Robin Hardy's sons, a film critic, etc. It was in fact not uninteresting, with Britt Ekland in particular giving good celebrity bantz, but I don't think I would describe any of the bonus material as essential.
One other thing struck me about the film, which maybe occurs to me every time I see it and is then forgotten afterwards: even in the two day version of the film, there is something a bit odd about the timescale. Think about what we are shown of Howie's actions. At the start of the film Howie lands on the island. After an initial conversation with the harbourmaster and a bunch of old lads, he goes and briefly interviews Rowan Morrison's mother about her daughter. And then it is dark, so he goes to the pub for his dinner and to bed down for the night. But it's summer in the Hebrides: it wouldn't be getting dark that early. What does Howie do between meeting Rowan's mother and going to the pub?
