THE BALLAD OF TAM LIN

Tam Lin. Imprint Films, director Roddy McDowell. Blu-Ray (Via Vision Entertainment) 2021.

The Ballad of Tam Lin is an old Scottish fairy ballad that’s been told, and refashioned for centuries. On the website Tam Lin Balladry you will find 46 accounts, one of which is a song performed by the group Pentangle and is part of the soundtrack of the 1970 film Tam Lin. This song is one of the numerous pleasures of a strangely seductive film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBgl8mZVZ0Q

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It’s a hazardous undertaking to make old British ballads and poems succeed on screen. Too often these attempts fail because they have a portentous script artificially boosted by broad epic action. They thrust dialogue at you, every ten minutes, containing “thee”, “thou” and “Your sacred quest” prior to a bloody CGI battle. Rather than being concerned with tradition or Hollywood constructs they ought to seize, in modern or period dress, the spirit of the work and the pulse of the verse. Few have succeeded. The 2007 film of Beowulf is to be well avoided; the recent The Green Knight (2021) gingerly sampled but David Rudkin’s 1991 scripted Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (now available on YouTube) is well worth catching.

Director Roddy McDowell’s intelligent Tam Lin is remarkably effective at transposing a fairy myth to the present for it avoids being anachronistic or worse still 'relevant.' Filmed at the end of the sixties, in a fortified mansion set in the Scottish countryside, the ballad becomes a love story then a tale of revenge where fairy enchantment spirals into LSD trip convulsions without becoming ridiculous.

Tom (Ian McShane) is the toy-boy attraction of Michaela (Ava Gardner) a rich middle-aged matriarch who lives in palatial surroundings where she captivates her young sycophants. Her hedonistic life style is interrupted by the appearance of the vicar’s daughter, Janet (Stephane Beacham) who Tom falls for and makes pregnant. This enrages Michaela who, aided by her youthful pack, hunt down and attempt to kill Tom.

Tam Lin had an awful release and distribution history. Originally it was shelved then bought up by AIP who promoted the re-edited film as an exploitation horror movie re-titled as The Devil’s Widow. Thankfully it has now been restored much closer to McDowell’s intensions. Although the film has supernaturally tinged folk elements: Michaela as a decadent and ageing Queen of the fairies pitted against a city, rather than country, lad (Tom) shielded by an enchanting stand in for a country-maid purity (Janet) I found Tam Lin never quite veered into fantasy, stayed put in allegory or maintained a heightened realism. And rather than being disconcerting this continual shift of tone is the film’s great strength.

Instead of being transformed into a monster and killed Tom wins the day. Dragged out of his white sports car (replacing the ballad’s white, knightly horse) he fights against the hallucinations of a serpent and fire in a lake, all the while held in the protective arms of his girl friend. The photography and lighting of those scenes is very atmospheric. Roddy McDowell’s direction and William Spier’s screenplay manages to alchemize supernatural elements into druggy side-effects. This is no witch’s curse causing madness, in the obvious urban horror of a city apartment, but head-on primal terrors snapping at you in a swampy outdoors. (Striking shots of a line of cars pursuing Tom and Janet through a misty night: a man hunt that reminded me of the 30s horror film, The Most Dangerous Game.)

McDowell does succumb to some cliché slow motion film-still moments. They shouldn’t work yet almost do. Ian McShane and Stephanie Beacham deliver on their romance: though the camera lingers too much on sweet close shots of the beautiful Janet. Her vicar father (Cyril Cusack) is an underwritten character whilst the performances of the 60’s ‘beautiful people’ (clinging to Michaela’s authority) range from the bland to cutting edge. But Elroy, Michaela’s accountant, played by Richard Wattis, delivers a strongly sinister performance as a closeted gay man anxious to warn Tom of the dangers he faces. And not forgetting Ava Gardner, who anxious about ageing, within her invented pocket of youth culture, is excellent. A malevolent queen of psychedelic furies more than fairies: parading round dressed in exotic outfits, she’s a commanding presence.

Tam Lin is a hybrid spin on ancient balladry. Love story, horror film, social satire, reflection on ageing, paradise turned sour, thriller and mystery story. It ought to be nonsense but defiantly isn’t. Tam Lin creates its own world. Too brilliantly quirky to be classified as folk horror it takes risks and comes satisfyingly through.

• Alan Price.