Tag: folk horror films

Folk Horror, Television

Technological Hysteria in Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape (1972).

The following article contains plot twists. Hysteria and Nigel Kneale’s Baby. A very particular and often quoted segment from Freud’s summations of hysterical patients will be used here to begin the contextualisation our analysis.  Whilst writing about the generalities surrounding such cases of hysteria and eventually compulsion neurosis, Freud came up with a short but rather useful sound-bite to describe every patient he had seen.  … Continue reading Technological Hysteria in Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape (1972).

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Folk Horror, Television

Hysteria and Curses in Nigel Kneale’s Baby (Beasts, 1976).

When watching Nigel Kneale’s infinitely weird TV series, Beasts (1976), there’s a great sense of underlying currents behind what appear to be strange amalgamations of the everyday with something of the Other.  Though the links between the episodes are often animalistic, ranging the ghost of a dolphin in Buddyboy to the hoards of rats in During Barty’s Party, the majority of the episodes all, at … Continue reading Hysteria and Curses in Nigel Kneale’s Baby (Beasts, 1976).

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Folk Horror, Landscape, Short Film

Short Film – Tarot.

For my last film of the year, I wanted to put into practice some of ideas that I explored in my presentation at this year’s Folk Horror conference, held at Queens University Belfast in September.  I had already filmed the footage before I presented my paper (though didn’t get it developed until a good few weeks after that) but had already been forming the ideas … Continue reading Short Film – Tarot.

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape

The Folk Horror Chain

The Folk Horror Chain The following is a rough transcript of a paper delivered at the A Fiend in the Furrows conference, held at Queens University, Belfast on the 20th of September, 2014. Introduction Folk horror is a strange form of media. There’s an unusual craving for defining and canonising in spite of being a sub-genre which seems inherently intuitive. This unusual combination of shared thematic … Continue reading The Folk Horror Chain

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Film, Folk Horror

For Those In Peril (Paul Wright, 2013) – The Reality of Lore.

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. He despiseth the creatures of the calm, The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. – Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Paul Wright’s debut … Continue reading For Those In Peril (Paul Wright, 2013) – The Reality of Lore.

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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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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape

The Wicker Man (1973) – Defining Of The Folk Horror.

Its geography is stark, rugged and eerily inviting, its characters are sickly happy and lying through their teeth and its narrative is immersive and questioning to the point where its finale is deeply affecting and horrifying. It’s a crying shame that viewers of The Wicker Man (1973) will never fully see the film as its director intended. Having been slashed to bits by the studio … Continue reading The Wicker Man (1973) – Defining Of The Folk Horror.

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Film, Folk Horror, Landscape

The Early Short Films of David Gladwell.

David Gladwell may be more well known as Lindsay Anderson’s editor on such cinematic masterpieces as If…. (1968) and O Lucky Man! (1973) but his own directorial endeavours are equally worthy of discussion and analysis, especially in their relation to both his editorial work and his own creative trajectories. Whether it is the, very English, visual language of his first four short films or the … Continue reading The Early Short Films of David Gladwell.

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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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