Lyndsay Townsend It’s a misty morning and, to the soundscape of crying crows, young ploughman Ralph (Barry Andrews) is hard at work. As his horse trudges through the thick mud, layers of trampled grass build up on the wheels of the plough, and Ralph’s feet sink further into the earth as he struggles to stride […]
Michael Jacob From Mark Gattiss’s astute observation that folk horror shares a “common obsession with the British landscape, its folklore, and superstitions” (History of Horror) to Adam Scovell’s “folk horror chain” (17-18), central characteristics and analytical frameworks for this horror subgenre have recently been emerging. Despite these illuminating contributions, what is still lacking is an […]
Paul A. J. Lewis “Well, there’s a howdy-do.” These are the first words spoken by the Judge (Patrick Wymark) in Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw. They are the words that open the film “proper,” following the pre-credits sequence, in which ploughman Ralph Gower (Barry Andrews) discovers the fiend’s partially-skeletonised skull in the ploughed […]
Michael Cerliano Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) is a quintessential folk horror film, often grouped with Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) as part of an “unholy trinity.” Adam Scovell identifies a number of key features shared by these three films in particular, and by folk […]
Matthias Hurst In 1973 the world was shocked to watch a teenage girl in the film The Exorcist who suffered from mood swings, lazed about in bed, cursed, and masturbated. Since this happened in the USA, in “God’s own country,” the explanation for such erratic behaviour could only be one: demonic possession. And the only […]