For some time now I have been involved in a collaborative arts project with local illustrator and artist Katie Craven. Before the first stage of the project could be unleashed onto the unsuspecting public, the project collapsed in on itself thanks to a Belgian art gallery among other things. To show just how close it got to being finished, there’s even a stop press advert … Continue reading Forest (Short Film) and A Screaming Breeze (Book).
Making a video for a song without vocals has been an interesting and ultimately rewarding experience. Without the ties to vocals that often mean music videos scream of publicity, making a video for guitarist John McGrath has given a freedom I’ll probably never enjoy again for other music videos. McGrath’s music is at once refreshing; a mixture of percussive guitar and electronic delays; consider a … Continue reading Music Video – Four Hills (John McGrath)
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.
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.
Director Digby Rumsey sees his BFI DVD debut this month on the Flipside release of Leslie Megahey’s Schalcken the Painter. Rumsey is a traditional BFI director, coming from the same ranks as Terence Davies, Bill Douglas and Peter Greenaway. His work in Gothic short films, especially adaptations of work by Lord Dunsany, places him firmly in the British Gothic traditions of directors such as Jonathan … Continue reading Interview With Digby Rumsey (BFI Flipside, The Pledge).
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).
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.
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.
Cry of the Banshee (1970) makes no qualms as to what its aims are. Looking at its promotional poster, it would be natural to associate it with Roger Corman’s Poe films; it’s emblazoned with Edgar Allen Poe references, its main star is Vincent Price and its design is a technocolour nightmare. The film itself is about as far from Corman’s dreamlike fantasies as possible in … Continue reading Cry Of The Banshee – Gordon Hessler (1970)
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
Celluloid Wicker Man 