Category: Television

Folk Horror, Literature, Television

The Tractate Middoth – Mark Gatiss (BBC Ghost Story at Christmas).

This article contains minor spoilers. It has taken a while for the traditional BBC ghost story to make a fully formed return in the 21st century.  This is surprising considering the popularity of the return of other genre television traditions from Doctor Who to Battlestar Galactica, but the singular ghost story at Christmas has taken some time to get right.  Before this recent M.R. James … Continue reading The Tractate Middoth – Mark Gatiss (BBC Ghost Story at Christmas).

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Television

An Ancient Evil: M.R. James and Nigel Kneale.

Two writers who could be said to epitomise the ideas of Folk Horror, M.R. James and Nigel Kneale, while addressing these ideals through different media, are writers whose work often crept into the same realm.  This has lead to both of their work having a natural relationship with each other, with one almost being a reincarnation of the other.  Of course, to imply such things … Continue reading An Ancient Evil: M.R. James and Nigel Kneale.

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Literature, Television

Village Green Repression in Film, Television and Philip Larkin.

Mythological Introduction by Philip Larkin. A white girl lay on the grass With her arms held out for love; her goldbrown hair fell down her face, And her two lips move: See, I am the whitest cloud that strays Through a deep sky: I am your senses’ crossroads, where the four seasons lie. She rose up in the middle of the lawn And spread her … Continue reading Village Green Repression in Film, Television and Philip Larkin.

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Folk Horror, Television

BBC Dead of Night (1972) – BFI

The BBC experienced a real golden age for television horror during the late 1960s and 1970s.  Almost every year seems to have produced an array of horror delights, ranging from ghost stories of all types to full blown, psychological nightmares.  Though now over half of the series is missing from the archives, 1972’s horror anthology Dead of Night and its surviving three episodes represent a … Continue reading BBC Dead of Night (1972) – BFI

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Television

Robin Redbreast – Play For Today (1970) – James MacTaggart (BFI).

This articles contains minor spoilers. Holding the record at the time for being the only play in the BBC Play For Today series to be repeated, James MacTaggart’s Robin Redbreast has an aptly cult aura surrounding it.  First broadcast in the “spooky” slot (a December time tradition since Dickens’ era) in 1970, it manages to foreshadow a number of interesting movements in film and television … Continue reading Robin Redbreast – Play For Today (1970) – James MacTaggart (BFI).

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Folk Horror, Literature, Television

Classic Ghost Stories by M.R James with Robert Powell (BFI).

M.R James’ ghost stories seem almost tailor-made for television and radio.  They’ve taken on so many forms and guises over the years that, like their original forms read by the fireside at Christmas in Cambridge University, they have become a regular, traditional event.  Though their presence has been somewhat thin on the ground of late (though soon to change with the fourth modern adaptation coming … Continue reading Classic Ghost Stories by M.R James with Robert Powell (BFI).

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape, Television

A Brief History of Occult and Folk Horror

Article originally published in New Empress Magazine. Being old and feeling almost excavated from some grainy piece of earth, silent horror has the unnerving sense of being a genuine piece of documentation. No doubt unaware of it at the time, Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (1922) is a film that so embodies this accidental aspect that viewing it recalls the feeling of Ash’s … Continue reading A Brief History of Occult and Folk Horror

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