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Posted on January 20, 2024

I am so Glad: Pearl and an Interpretation of a Smile

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by

James Rose

Even though it is the second part of a projected horror film trilogy, Ti West’s Pearl (2022), is more a sharply written and extremely well performed character study of the titular character than it is a genre film. Set in 1918, at the height of World War One and the Spanish Flu epidemic, the film chronicles the slow but steady emergence of psychopath Pearl (Mia Goth). Living with her German immigrant parents on an isolated farmstead in rural Texas, Pearl dreams of becoming a famous Hollywood Chorus Girl, a fantasy which will enable her to escape her strict, dominating mother, Ruth (Tandi Wright), and her responsibilities in both looking after her paralysed father (Matthew Sutherland) and managing the farm. Her sense of entrapment is compounded by her marriage to Howard (Alistair Sewell) who, despite coming from a wealthy family, desires nothing more than the honest life and work of a farmhand.

Posted on January 14, 2024

Finding a Lost Production by Nigel Kneale?

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Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

In a recent column at this site, I reported what I believe to be a significant find in the history of the folk horror genre, namely a 1961 television episode titled “Hay-Fork and Bill-Hook,” in Boris Karloff’s series Thriller. This was, I believe, the first ever folk horror ever to appear on screen, and it closely foreshadowed the classic film The Wicker Man. Based on some further work, I now think that the episode is still more interesting than it first appeared, given its probable authorship. It is, I will argue, an unacknowledged work by the brilliant writer Nigel Kneale.

Posted on December 26, 2023

The Place Called Dagon – Herbert S. Gorman’s Folk Horror Novel

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Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

The current fascination with folk horror as a genre began with British contributions in cinema and literature, and that focus is still obvious, despite all the efforts to broaden and globalize the narrative. Even today, the American part of the story is still seriously under-valued, particularly early writings that long precede the British wave of the 1960s. If I was looking for the first ever piece of writing in folk horror, I would make the case for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown” (1835), while Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” (1948) is an obvious early classic. Here, I want to highlight a work that still stands among the very first full-length novels in this tradition written in any country, and one that already at its early date fulfils all the criteria for the folk horror label. This is The Place Called Dagon, by Herbert S. Gorman, published in 1927. Although it is poorly known today, it still makes for very rewarding reading.

Posted on December 19, 2023

The Creative Vision of Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist (2019)

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In recent years horror fans have been treated to high quality releases offering fresh takes on witches (You Won’t Be Alone), mental illness (Smile), and really sketchy basements (Barbarian). But as engaging as these films are, the most fascinating horror-related movie that I saw in 2023 is Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary, Leap of Faith: William Friedkin on The Exorcist. Six days of interviews with director William Friedkin produced an entertaining deep dive into one of horror’s most revered works, The Exorcist (1973). But it goes further, becoming a meditation on the nature of creativity that is both revelatory and exhilarating.

It would have been easy for Leap of Faith to be a typical “making of” project filled with anecdotes explaining production details for some of its most famous sequences and recollections about the film’s seismic cultural impact in the 70’s. As satisfying as that may have been for many, I give Philippe a lot of credit for taking the movie into a markedly different direction, far away from spinning heads and projectile vomiting. He focuses instead on the imaginative processes and creative personality at work that ultimately resulted in the finished film. The reason we are so easily drawn into this discussion is because Leap of Faith has a super power. And its name is William Friedkin.

Posted on December 12, 2023

The Wicker Woman – A Missing Folk Horror Link

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by

Philip Jenkins

Baylor University

Folk horror is a major theme in the study of contemporary media and popular culture. Because it attracts so much attention, I am both surprised and pleased to say that I have discovered a significant reference to add to the discussion, one that I am pretty sure nobody else has spotted. It might actually be a missing link in the emergence of that whole genre. I will argue that it was a shaping influence on the 1973 production of The Wicker Man, which regularly appears in critics’ lists of the three or four greatest British films ever made.

The term folk horror dates from 1970, and it originally applied to British films that explored the idea that potent ancient forces and deep-rooted evils survive in the landscape, scarcely acknowledged by the modern world. Commonly, these dark forces are mobilized by active witches or pagan groups, deploying secret rituals dating from pre-Christian times. The plots involve innocent outsiders entrapped in these fearsome proceedings, and likely facing the prospect of a grisly sacrificial death. The genre relies on confrontations with an unsuspected ancient reality, which is inconceivably perilous. Read more