Editor’s note: this article contains a full discussion of Night of the Eagle and as such contains spoilers. “I DO NOT BELIEVE” are the first words both spoken and seen in Night of the Eagle. These words are the crux of a lecture being given by Professor Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde), a rational man who […]
Folk horror movies are a bit of an odd duck. Based on the folklore of the country from which the movie originates, the genre relies heavily on the unique landscape of its audience’s heritage and history to divvy out the scares. Examples are much more common in Asian horror such as Sadako from The Ring, […]
“COMPLETE US THE CIRCLE!” STORIES OF STANDING STONES The numerous standing stones of Britain are familiar, beloved points on our landscape: Stonehenge is now an integral part of the British tourism trade, for instance, bringing in visitors from around the world. There are examples of monoliths and circles throughout the country – over 300 in […]
Idylls are not idylls in the British folk horror world, and the land itself hides a multitude of sins – even if ‘sins’ are a relatively modern phenomenon, by its standards. This small, but significant sub-genre derives a great deal of its power by examining the deep unease generated by Britain’s ancient history: the palpable, […]
Strange, isolated houses, villages and islands; closed communities, whose initial friendliness seems to mask something deeply sinister; people who have rejected modernity, or have simply been passed over by it; ritual practices; the uncanny; dark magic; pagan symbols; the threat of the old ways spilling over into the new, with devastating consequences… Welcome to a […]
By Tristan Bishop “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence” – as first lines go, it’s one of the best. Delivered by a disembodied voice over an image of a pulsing soundwave, the opening narration goes on to warn us about “…this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of […]
Update, 14th March 2015: it’s been brought to my attention that The Descent did not in fact premiere in March 2005 at BIFFF, but that July at Dead by Dawn. Just goes to show – never assume IMDb to be definitive. Naturally I feel a colossal divvy for getting the date of the film’s 10th […]
By Ben Bussey You don’t need me to tell you what a distinct period the 1980s were when it came to horror movies. Coming off the back of arguably the most revolutionary era in the genre’s history (if not cinema overall) the previous decade, the artistic and intellectual advances of the 70s gave way to […]
By Ben Bussey In the last act of Ghostbusters (the supernatural comedy classic which just turned 30), there’s a scene which mostly went over my head when I was a kid, yet somehow made me sit up and pay attention. This particular scene had no Slimer, no devil dogs, no Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man; it was […]
By Tristan Bishop In 1994 the Italian film industry, having been a major player on the world’s screens throughout the 1940s until the 1980s, was on its last legs. Those in the know point to interference from legendary sleazeball and occasional politician Silvio Berlusconi and his attempts to monopolise production with his company RAI, plus […]
by Ben Bussey READER ADVISORY: spoilers ahead (though perhaps that’s a given on a retrospective…) 22nd August 1986; a day that will live in… well, I can’t honestly say I have any conscious memory of that particular day. I was six years old and living in North-East England. As such, I certainly wasn’t aware that it was the […]