RECOVERING THE OUTCASTS

The Outcasts (1982) BFI Blu Ray / Flipside. Robert Wynne-Simmons (Director) (24 September 2024.)

Very few films have a genuine Celtic/Pagan sensibility where environment and characters possess a mysterious and magical charge that feels authentically rooted in myth and legend. The cult favourite The Wicker Man is an obvious first choice. Then Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s still underrated Gone to Earth. 

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STONE LUKEWARM

Katy Soar [Editor] Circles of Stone: Weird Tales of Pagan Sites and Ancient Rites. British Library 2023.

Katy Soar’s persuasive introduction to Circle of Stones made me pick up a collection of stories exploring the native (wraith-like) stones that cover the British Isles. They are rich objects for human sacrifice, devil worship, pantheistic cults and magic. Stones are ambiguous and mysterious. 

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THE COMPLETE NIGEL KNEALE

Andrew Screen, The Book of Beasts. Headpress 2023.
Andy Murray. Into The Unknown, The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale. Headpress 2017.

Does a book examining the six episodes of Nigel Kneale’s television series, Beasts warrant 430 pages? Beasts is a large, attractive paperback with copious black and white illustrations and undoubtedly a labour of love from author Andrew Screen.

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BUT IS IT HORROR?

Colin Fleming, Scrooge. Liverpool University Press (Devil's Advocates) 2021.

Anyone expecting a dispassionate review of the 1951 film Scrooge directed by Brian Desmond Hurst and of course starring Alastair Sim as Scrooge and Michael Hordern as Jacob Marley will find the opposite. Fleming's review is a personal homage to the film but also it is very much more than that. It is a personal confession of the importance the film has played in his life. 

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DANGEROUS DIGGINGS

Amara Thornton and Katy Soar (Editors) Strange Relics; Stories of Archaeology and the Supernatural, 1895-1954. Handheld Press, 2022.

To gather together a collection of short stories linking archaeology and the supernatural might appear blindingly obvious to fans of horror and ghost stories, as it has must have been done before. However I couldn’t find previous evidence of such a literary project. So, Strange Relics is a very welcome book: the intersection of the past and present, with ancient relics, being the catalyst for a disaster or profound shock, is a compelling idea.

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THE BEAST DECLAWED

Juri Herz (Director) Beauty and the Beast (Panna a netvor) Second Run. BluRay 2021.

'Beauty and the Beast' is viewed as a classic text about the awakening of female sexuality in a young virginal woman. There have been many musical, film and stage adaptations, and literary re-workings (Angela Carter’s story “The Tiger’s Bride (1979) is an interesting feminist re-writing of the tale). For many Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bete (1946) is the definitive film adaptation. 

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LET ALL THE HAUNTS BE YOURS

All the Haunts Be Ours (A Compendium of Folk Horror) Blu Ray Box Set – Severin 2021

Defining the term Folk Horror is as difficult as pinning down what Film Noir is. In place of the mean street we have a mean forest of disturbing forces (both real and mythic). Both are treacherous and shadowy worlds. Although Folk Horror Cinema appears to exhibit common themes or traits it remains remarkably fluid. 

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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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PRE-HAUNTED AND RE-HAUNTED

Merlin Coverley. Hauntology, Ghosts of Future Pasts, Oldcastle Books, 2020.

Hauntology, Ghosts of Future Pasts is a book about hauntings, or more precisely the idea of haunting, and why, since the publication in 1848 of Marx and Engel’s The Communist Manifesto, we, meaning modern English society, have been pre-occupied with the supernatural. The term hauntology was first used by the philosopher Jacques Derrida in 1983 and describes, according to Merlin Coverley, “the ways in which the past returns to haunt the present.”

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GHOST TOWNS AND HAUNTED CITIES

Karl Bell (Editor) Supernatural Cities; Enchantment, Anxiety and Spectrality. Boydell Press, 2019.

Karl Bell is the author of The Magical Imagination: Magic and Modernity in Urban England 1780-1914, a fascinating account of the persistence of supernatural beliefs in the growing industrial urban areas of the 'long nineteenth century'. [Reviewed HERE]
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EXPLORING FENLAND

Matthew Harle and James Machin (editors). Of Mud and Flame: The Penda’s Fen Sourcebook. Strange Attractor Press 2019.

There are very few TV plays that have received the kind of critical essay treatment of Penda’s Fen (1973.) And Of Mud and Flame is grandly even more – a source book drawing upon English social history, mythology and philosophy. Does it warrant this kind of attention? After giving Penda’s Fen three viewings I can honesty say yes.

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