1
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Downloaded from
YTS.MX

2
00:00:02,252 --> 00:00:04,505
(birds tweeting)

3
00:00:04,796 --> 00:00:07,299
(crows cackling)

4
00:00:07,591 --> 00:00:08,717
(mysterious suspenseful music)
- Whatever walks

5
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000
Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.MX

6
00:00:09,009 --> 00:00:13,222
through Dooney Woods holds
its silence like the leaves.

7
00:00:13,514 --> 00:00:15,140
That decay in Dooney woods,

8
00:00:15,432 --> 00:00:17,476
a sodden autumn weeps and grieves.

9
00:00:18,894 --> 00:00:20,270
Whatever whispers in the woods

10
00:00:20,562 --> 00:00:22,481
is heard by some and some alone.

11
00:00:23,398 --> 00:00:25,192
The rasp of mossy tongue and lips,

12
00:00:25,484 --> 00:00:26,860
the muttering of bark on bone.

13
00:00:28,237 --> 00:00:30,364
Whatever moves within the woods,

14
00:00:30,656 --> 00:00:33,075
it watches with a yellow eye.

15
00:00:33,367 --> 00:00:35,118
And whatever hunts within the pines

16
00:00:35,410 --> 00:00:37,329
is not of kin to your eye.

17
00:00:38,288 --> 00:00:40,499
Whatever sleeps in Dooney Woods,

18
00:00:40,791 --> 00:00:42,751
you must not meet or catch its stare.

19
00:00:43,877 --> 00:00:46,255
And should you travel in Dooney Woods,

20
00:00:46,547 --> 00:00:49,007
they pass by swift and best beware.

21
00:00:54,346 --> 00:00:57,015
(wings flapping)

22
00:00:59,142 --> 00:01:04,064
♪ One's for sorrow, two's for joy ♪

23
00:01:07,276 --> 00:01:12,155
♪ Three's for a girl
and four's for a boy ♪

24
00:01:15,075 --> 00:01:19,997
♪ Five's for silver, six for gold ♪

25
00:01:22,207 --> 00:01:27,129
♪ Seven's for a secret never told ♪

26
00:01:30,299 --> 00:01:33,302
♪ Oh, the magpie brings us tidings ♪

27
00:01:33,594 --> 00:01:37,889
♪ Of news both fair and fowl ♪

28
00:01:38,181 --> 00:01:41,643
♪ She's more cunning than the raven ♪

29
00:01:41,935 --> 00:01:46,648
♪ More wise than any owl ♪

30
00:01:46,940 --> 00:01:49,943
♪ For she brings us news of the harvest ♪

31
00:01:50,235 --> 00:01:52,696
♪ Of the barley we done called ♪

32
00:01:52,988 --> 00:01:56,408
♪ And she knows when
we'll go to our graves ♪

33
00:01:56,700 --> 00:02:01,455
♪ And how we shall be born ♪

34
00:02:02,497 --> 00:02:07,419
♪ Devil, Devil, I defy thee ♪

35
00:02:10,213 --> 00:02:15,135
♪ Devil, Devil, I defy thee ♪

36
00:02:17,638 --> 00:02:21,224
♪ Devil, Devil, I defy thee ♪

37
00:02:25,896 --> 00:02:28,774
(suspenseful music)

38
00:02:36,448 --> 00:02:41,370
(fire blazes)
- Folk horror is based upon

39
00:02:43,664 --> 00:02:45,624
the juxtaposition of the prosaic

40
00:02:45,916 --> 00:02:50,629
and the uncanny.
- It's strange things

41
00:02:50,921 --> 00:02:52,089
found in fields.

42
00:02:56,635 --> 00:02:58,970
Lights flickering in dark woods.

43
00:03:03,100 --> 00:03:05,102
The darkness in children's play.

44
00:03:08,855 --> 00:03:11,274
Being lost in ancient landscapes.

45
00:03:15,862 --> 00:03:18,281
- [Howard] The devil having
a cup of tea with you.

46
00:03:20,867 --> 00:03:21,910
- [Kier-la] The power of ritual

47
00:03:22,202 --> 00:03:24,579
and the power of collective storytelling.

48
00:03:26,331 --> 00:03:28,959
- [Jonathan] Ancient wisdoms, if you like,

49
00:03:29,251 --> 00:03:32,129
that have long repressed and forgotten

50
00:03:32,421 --> 00:03:35,382
rise up again, very often
to the consternation

51
00:03:35,674 --> 00:03:40,387
of a complacent, modern man.
- Someone heading to a village

52
00:03:41,471 --> 00:03:43,181
just outside of town and discovering

53
00:03:43,473 --> 00:03:46,935
a pagan conspiracy.
- It's something

54
00:03:47,227 --> 00:03:50,856
like pre-Christian, something
that's surviving in spite of

55
00:03:51,148 --> 00:03:55,110
the dominant culture.
- Rural locations

56
00:03:55,402 --> 00:03:58,989
in Schiller communities, these
old superstitious beliefs

57
00:03:59,281 --> 00:04:01,950
that tend to breed
around these communities,

58
00:04:02,242 --> 00:04:05,495
which are seen as being
backward, in the past.

59
00:04:05,787 --> 00:04:07,414
(dramatic music)
- You're outside

60
00:04:07,706 --> 00:04:10,041
of modernity, isn't it, it's
really all about outsiders

61
00:04:10,333 --> 00:04:11,585
being outside of civilization,

62
00:04:11,877 --> 00:04:14,212
and realizing that you're
really a smaller part

63
00:04:14,504 --> 00:04:17,966
of this wider cosmos.
- That old Freudian chestnut,

64
00:04:18,258 --> 00:04:21,928
the returned of the repressed.
- It's a way of accessing

65
00:04:22,220 --> 00:04:25,766
all those layers of meaning
that build up in a landscape,

66
00:04:26,057 --> 00:04:28,518
that build up in a culture,
and that often build up

67
00:04:28,810 --> 00:04:30,479
unofficially.
- It's this sort of

68
00:04:30,771 --> 00:04:32,522
illegitimate culture

69
00:04:32,814 --> 00:04:35,859
that has sustained
historically and culturally,

70
00:04:36,151 --> 00:04:39,321
just through sheer force
of will of the people,

71
00:04:39,613 --> 00:04:41,656
you know, the folk.
- Folk horror

72
00:04:41,948 --> 00:04:46,745
ultimately ask, what if
the old ways were right?

73
00:04:48,455 --> 00:04:52,125
(dramatic suspenseful music)

74
00:04:57,631 --> 00:05:01,510
(mystical suspenseful music)
- I gained the hilltop,

75
00:05:01,802 --> 00:05:03,220
saw its boulders bare,

76
00:05:03,512 --> 00:05:06,431
some worn by time, some
carved by Druid art,

77
00:05:07,349 --> 00:05:09,434
where oft perhaps the
painted Briton prayed

78
00:05:09,726 --> 00:05:12,729
to Thor and Woden, offering human blood,

79
00:05:13,855 --> 00:05:16,399
when moral darkness
filled our blessed isle.

80
00:05:19,361 --> 00:05:20,987
- When I first used the term folk horror,

81
00:05:21,279 --> 00:05:22,989
I had no particular notion that the phrase

82
00:05:23,281 --> 00:05:26,368
had ever been used before,
though, of course, it had.

83
00:05:26,660 --> 00:05:28,703
The first usage of it that we know of

84
00:05:28,995 --> 00:05:33,750
is in the April 1936 issue
of "The English Journal”,

85
00:05:34,459 --> 00:05:37,170
and it was the American
Shakespearean scholar,

86
00:05:37,462 --> 00:05:39,631
Oscar James Campbell, writing a piece

87
00:05:39,923 --> 00:05:42,425
called "The Biographical
Approach to Literature”

88
00:05:42,717 --> 00:05:44,553
and he was discussing Wordsworth.

89
00:05:44,845 --> 00:05:47,097
And he was discussing the
influence on Wordsworth

90
00:05:47,389 --> 00:05:50,058
of Bogers' German ballads

91
00:05:50,350 --> 00:05:53,979
with their freightage of
superstition and folk horror.

92
00:05:54,271 --> 00:05:56,982
So he's relating folk horror
right back to the origins

93
00:05:57,274 --> 00:05:58,358
really of gothic literature there.

94
00:05:58,650 --> 00:06:01,027
Having used the term folk horror in 2006,

95
00:06:01,319 --> 00:06:04,739
it seemed natural to
reuse it a few years later

96
00:06:05,031 --> 00:06:06,032
when Mark Gatiss and I

97
00:06:06,324 --> 00:06:09,911
were working on his documentary
series for BBC Four,

98
00:06:10,203 --> 00:06:11,162
"The History of Horror."

99
00:06:11,454 --> 00:06:12,998
In that, there was a second episode

100
00:06:13,290 --> 00:06:14,374
called "Home Counties Horror"

101
00:06:14,666 --> 00:06:17,377
focusing specifically
on British horror films,

102
00:06:17,669 --> 00:06:21,047
and folk horror seemed a
natural name, if you like,

103
00:06:21,339 --> 00:06:24,801
for a body of films that
had a very strong presence

104
00:06:25,093 --> 00:06:27,429
in the British horror
filmography, if you like.

105
00:06:27,721 --> 00:06:30,932
We specifically applied it
to what has since been called

106
00:06:31,224 --> 00:06:33,476
"The Unholy Trinity of Folk Horror",

107
00:06:33,768 --> 00:06:35,562
three films, "Witchfinder General",

108
00:06:35,854 --> 00:06:38,648
"Blood On Satan's Claw"
and "The Wicker Man".

109
00:06:40,108 --> 00:06:42,694
(ominous music)

110
00:06:56,416 --> 00:07:00,629
- In terms of the trinity,
what groups them together

111
00:07:00,921 --> 00:07:05,592
in some respects is that
they're all about belief.

112
00:07:05,884 --> 00:07:08,345
"Witchfinder General's" nonsupernatural,

113
00:07:08,637 --> 00:07:11,473
but is obviously about the
clash of belief systems

114
00:07:11,765 --> 00:07:13,892
and the corruption of the establishment.

115
00:07:15,226 --> 00:07:16,102
(Sara screams)

116
00:07:16,394 --> 00:07:18,313
- I am Matthew Hopkins, witchfinder.

117
00:07:19,481 --> 00:07:20,899
- "Witchfinder General's" a true story,

118
00:07:21,191 --> 00:07:22,567
there was this character Matthew Hopkins

119
00:07:22,859 --> 00:07:24,152
who was a psychopath really.

120
00:07:24,444 --> 00:07:27,197
And he said, "I can detect witches,"

121
00:07:27,489 --> 00:07:30,033
and he just loved to burn people.

122
00:07:30,325 --> 00:07:30,951
(fire crackling)
- Bring forth

123
00:07:31,242 --> 00:07:34,996
Elizabeth Clarke.
(Elizabeth screaming)

124
00:07:41,294 --> 00:07:43,213
- It's more or less an inquisition story,

125
00:07:43,505 --> 00:07:45,799
so it's not dealing with this sort of idea

126
00:07:46,091 --> 00:07:49,469
of Catholic inquisition as in
some of the sort of Spanish

127
00:07:49,761 --> 00:07:52,639
or Italian films, but
you have this inquisitor

128
00:07:52,931 --> 00:07:57,394
who is just sort of let loose
in the midst of a civil war

129
00:07:57,686 --> 00:08:00,188
and has completely unchecked power.

130
00:08:00,480 --> 00:08:02,023
(Fisherman sobbing)

131
00:08:02,315 --> 00:08:04,567
(Fisherman screams)
- This man went round

132
00:08:04,859 --> 00:08:07,237
16th century, 17th century England

133
00:08:07,529 --> 00:08:11,116
burning and hanging innocent
women in order to make money.

134
00:08:11,408 --> 00:08:14,077
And whether he was
religious fanatic or not,

135
00:08:14,369 --> 00:08:15,870
nobody really knows, I mean,

136
00:08:16,162 --> 00:08:18,707
he was certainly a nasty
piece of work at the time.

137
00:08:18,999 --> 00:08:21,626
(women screaming)

138
00:08:22,585 --> 00:08:25,714
- So to me, Michael Reeves
is one of those figures

139
00:08:26,006 --> 00:08:28,299
who could be viewed as a new wave

140
00:08:28,591 --> 00:08:30,301
of British horror director.

141
00:08:30,593 --> 00:08:33,096
These are people who
were responding to things

142
00:08:33,388 --> 00:08:36,641
like Hammer horror and the
films released by Amicus

143
00:08:36,933 --> 00:08:40,812
and really wanted to push
back against this idea

144
00:08:41,104 --> 00:08:43,523
of tightly laced period piece horror

145
00:08:43,815 --> 00:08:45,942
that follows these gothic tropes.

146
00:08:46,234 --> 00:08:48,820
And so you have these younger directors

147
00:08:49,112 --> 00:08:50,905
who really pushed back against that,

148
00:08:51,197 --> 00:08:54,117
and I think no one pushed
back against it as violently

149
00:08:54,409 --> 00:08:57,037
as Michael Reeves.
- It's also worth noting

150
00:08:57,328 --> 00:09:00,874
that "Witchfinder General" is
the only one of these films

151
00:09:01,166 --> 00:09:03,918
that takes place during an active war,

152
00:09:04,210 --> 00:09:05,336
the English Civil War,

153
00:09:05,628 --> 00:09:09,466
much as the Vietnam War
was going on as well.

154
00:09:09,758 --> 00:09:11,843
- Obviously, all period
films are about the time

155
00:09:12,135 --> 00:09:14,387
they're made as well as
the time they're set.

156
00:09:14,679 --> 00:09:19,476
The way that that injects
Vietnam into a period film

157
00:09:19,768 --> 00:09:20,643
is there in "Witchfinder",

158
00:09:20,935 --> 00:09:23,396
and it became kind of de
rigueur later on in the '60s.

159
00:09:23,688 --> 00:09:25,065
If you look at something
like "The Dirty Dozen"

160
00:09:25,356 --> 00:09:26,691
or "The Wild Bunch", you know,

161
00:09:26,983 --> 00:09:29,652
there's this kind of
Vietnam inflected quality

162
00:09:29,944 --> 00:09:32,697
to a lot of the violence.
- "Witchfinder General"

163
00:09:32,989 --> 00:09:37,118
works almost within the
context of nihilistic westerns

164
00:09:37,410 --> 00:09:39,829
that begin to emerge in the 1960s.

165
00:09:40,121 --> 00:09:41,498
- We discovered this
halfway through filming,

166
00:09:41,790 --> 00:09:42,916
is Mike Reeves suddenly said, "Oh my God,

167
00:09:43,208 --> 00:09:44,334
we're making a Western."

168
00:09:44,626 --> 00:09:45,960
(upbeat spirited music)
And if you look at it,

169
00:09:46,252 --> 00:09:49,714
it sort of is, it's horses,
it's riding across countryside

170
00:09:50,006 --> 00:09:53,343
in search of the bad guy, is
a lot of galloping and things.

171
00:09:53,635 --> 00:09:55,470
- He anticipates the
westerns of the late '60s,

172
00:09:55,762 --> 00:09:57,680
and early '70s, particularly in terms

173
00:09:57,972 --> 00:09:59,099
of the female characters,

174
00:09:59,390 --> 00:10:03,728
that women are there as a
sort of pretext for violence,

175
00:10:04,020 --> 00:10:05,605
women are there to be fought over.

176
00:10:05,897 --> 00:10:08,024
So many of the things that
we think of as associated

177
00:10:08,316 --> 00:10:09,901
with Peckinpah, you know,
the dubious attitude

178
00:10:10,193 --> 00:10:12,737
towards women, the peculiar
notion that children

179
00:10:13,029 --> 00:10:15,281
are kind of, you know,
inherently unpleasant.

180
00:10:15,573 --> 00:10:17,283
There's a brief scene in "Witchfinder"

181
00:10:17,575 --> 00:10:19,369
where you see children roasting potatoes

182
00:10:19,661 --> 00:10:21,704
in the ashes of a fire where
a witch has been burnt.

183
00:10:21,996 --> 00:10:23,540
And that comes before the
opening of "The Wild Bunch"

184
00:10:23,832 --> 00:10:26,209
where the kids put the
scorpion in with the ants.

185
00:10:26,501 --> 00:10:27,210
(dramatic suspenseful music)

186
00:10:27,502 --> 00:10:29,212
So I think that the darkness,
particularly the misogyny

187
00:10:29,504 --> 00:10:32,423
of "Witchfinder", find its way
into a lot of later westerns.

188
00:10:34,717 --> 00:10:36,678
- I think the theme of
"Witchfinder General" is revenge.

189
00:10:36,970 --> 00:10:40,181
It's charlatanism, it's cruelty.

190
00:10:40,473 --> 00:10:42,934
- (screams) No!

191
00:10:43,226 --> 00:10:48,022
- But it also has the
sense of nihilism to I,

192
00:10:48,898 --> 00:10:53,444
this bleakness of existence,
it's what really fuels

193
00:10:53,736 --> 00:10:56,447
not just Reeves' "Witchfinder General”,

194
00:10:56,739 --> 00:10:58,241
but I think it's also there
in Michael Armstrong's

195
00:10:58,533 --> 00:11:00,994
"Mark of the Devil",
and it's certainly there

196
00:11:01,286 --> 00:11:03,955
in "Witchhammer", the Czech film.

197
00:11:04,247 --> 00:11:06,124
- It sort of takes Nietzsche's aphorism,

198
00:11:06,416 --> 00:11:07,876
he who fights monsters must take care

199
00:11:08,168 --> 00:11:09,502
not to become a monster.

200
00:11:09,794 --> 00:11:11,671
The idea that violence infects everything.

201
00:11:11,963 --> 00:11:14,299
(man screaming)
(ominous music)

202
00:11:14,591 --> 00:11:19,387
(gun fires)
- You took him away from me.

203
00:11:21,222 --> 00:11:25,018
You took him from me,
you took him from me,

204
00:11:25,310 --> 00:11:26,853
you took him from me!

205
00:11:29,022 --> 00:11:31,941
(suspenseful music)

206
00:11:44,287 --> 00:11:47,999
- In April, 1970, when
Piers Haggard's film

207
00:11:48,291 --> 00:11:50,919
"Blood on Satan's Claw" was in production,

208
00:11:51,211 --> 00:11:53,963
a piece appeared in
"Kinematograph Weekly",

209
00:11:54,255 --> 00:11:56,132
one of Britain's trade papers of the day,

210
00:11:56,424 --> 00:11:59,219
in which Rod Cooper referred to the film

211
00:11:59,510 --> 00:12:01,679
as a study in folk horror.

212
00:12:02,639 --> 00:12:05,225
(ominous music)

213
00:12:08,436 --> 00:12:11,105
(wings flapping)

214
00:12:18,696 --> 00:12:22,450
- I grew up in a countryside,
I grew up on a farm,

215
00:12:22,742 --> 00:12:25,370
the countryside, and the
meaning of the countryside

216
00:12:25,662 --> 00:12:28,873
and the mysterious
power or possible danger

217
00:12:29,165 --> 00:12:33,086
or threat of the countryside
which I experienced as a child.

218
00:12:33,378 --> 00:12:35,296
- Human remains?
- No, sir,

219
00:12:35,588 --> 00:12:37,382
a sort of head, a face.

220
00:12:37,674 --> 00:12:39,467
(gentle foreboding music)
- Of a fiend?

221
00:12:43,179 --> 00:12:46,140
- [Piers] To me, that tries
to express that it connects

222
00:12:46,432 --> 00:12:49,686
with traditions and poetic traditions,

223
00:12:49,978 --> 00:12:52,772
and historical, semi-historical.

224
00:12:53,064 --> 00:12:56,526
- Holy Behemoth, father of
my life, speak now, come now,

225
00:12:56,818 --> 00:12:58,653
rise now from the
forest, from the furrows,

226
00:12:58,945 --> 00:13:01,114
from the fields and live.
- Folklore,

227
00:13:01,406 --> 00:13:04,867
which is rich and scary,
and folktales has wonderful,

228
00:13:05,159 --> 00:13:09,914
wonderful, strange, eerie
stories of good and evil.

229
00:13:10,206 --> 00:13:11,708
- I was then told a few years later that,

230
00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:15,003
"Oh, you're the man who
invented the term folk horror."

231
00:13:15,295 --> 00:13:19,215
(gentle ominous music)
- Shame on you, child.

232
00:13:19,507 --> 00:13:20,174
- "The Blood on Satan's Claw"

233
00:13:20,466 --> 00:13:24,262
seems to be more about this sort of terror

234
00:13:24,554 --> 00:13:25,972
of female sexuality

235
00:13:26,264 --> 00:13:29,100
and this terror of kind
of a youth population

236
00:13:29,392 --> 00:13:31,936
coming up against the establishment.

237
00:13:32,228 --> 00:13:33,938
(gentle ominous music)

238
00:13:34,230 --> 00:13:37,567
- I never want to see
you in this school again.

239
00:13:37,859 --> 00:13:42,613
- Chaos or violence or
a lack of discipline

240
00:13:42,905 --> 00:13:45,408
in the young is a perennial concern.

241
00:13:45,700 --> 00:13:48,328
And at the time when that
was written, you know,

242
00:13:48,619 --> 00:13:50,747
there was worry about gangs and so on.

243
00:13:51,039 --> 00:13:54,375
So it tucks into that.
(group cheering)

244
00:13:56,210 --> 00:13:58,796
(ominous music)

245
00:14:03,885 --> 00:14:06,721
(suspenseful music)

246
00:14:07,013 --> 00:14:10,099
- Mary Bell was a scandalous
story back in the '60s

247
00:14:10,391 --> 00:14:12,560
in England, a young girl,
she was only 11 years old

248
00:14:12,852 --> 00:14:17,315
at the time, who strangled
a three-year-old boy

249
00:14:17,607 --> 00:14:19,275
and a four-year-old boy with the help

250
00:14:19,567 --> 00:14:23,488
of another female friend, it
was a pretty horrific story.

251
00:14:23,780 --> 00:14:27,367
But I think what made it even
worse was that at the trial

252
00:14:27,658 --> 00:14:30,411
she showed no remorse
and she just seemed to be

253
00:14:30,703 --> 00:14:32,372
the epitome of evil for whatever reason.

254
00:14:32,663 --> 00:14:35,666
And yet, she was still a child herself,

255
00:14:35,958 --> 00:14:39,587
that whole case influenced
the character of Angel Blake

256
00:14:39,879 --> 00:14:41,297
in "Blood on Satan's Claw."

257
00:14:43,216 --> 00:14:47,387
- It came out of some
quite dark areas, I think,

258
00:14:47,678 --> 00:14:51,140
and that's why it gets to
people, it gets under the skin.

259
00:14:51,432 --> 00:14:53,142
(suspenseful music)

260
00:14:53,434 --> 00:14:56,771
(dramatic suspenseful music)
- Ah!

261
00:14:57,063 --> 00:14:59,941
(water burbling)
- Come.

262
00:15:00,233 --> 00:15:03,653
It is time to keep your
appointment with the Wicker Man.

263
00:15:03,945 --> 00:15:06,739
(suspenseful music)

264
00:15:08,908 --> 00:15:12,161
- I understand you're
looking for a missing girl.

265
00:15:12,453 --> 00:15:16,249
You suspect foul play?
- I suspect murder.

266
00:15:18,126 --> 00:15:20,253
- Horror films as they
were done at the time,

267
00:15:20,545 --> 00:15:21,629
were missing something.

268
00:15:21,921 --> 00:15:25,883
And we believe that that was
basically the old religion,

269
00:15:26,175 --> 00:15:28,386
which had gone underground
for many centuries

270
00:15:28,678 --> 00:15:29,762
after Christianity came.

271
00:15:30,054 --> 00:15:33,516
And that it would be fun to
try and conceive of a story

272
00:15:33,808 --> 00:15:36,310
where the old religion had reappeared.

273
00:15:36,602 --> 00:15:41,399
- The fact that you have
this pocket of pagan belief

274
00:15:42,358 --> 00:15:47,280
that not only persists within
the environs of modern life,

275
00:15:49,282 --> 00:15:53,953
but is sustained by people
who are every day folk

276
00:15:55,079 --> 00:15:59,876
is very exciting to me,
but it does, of course,

277
00:16:00,168 --> 00:16:04,922
bring us to a very
homogeneous, very rarefied

278
00:16:06,299 --> 00:16:11,220
cultural domain in which
complexities of our migratory world

279
00:16:11,679 --> 00:16:15,183
are unaddressed.
- It looks at this idea

280
00:16:15,475 --> 00:16:17,477
of aristocratic corruption.

281
00:16:17,768 --> 00:16:19,854
- And what of the true God,

282
00:16:20,146 --> 00:16:21,939
whose glory, churches, and
monasteries have been built

283
00:16:22,231 --> 00:16:24,525
on these islands for generations past?

284
00:16:24,817 --> 00:16:26,819
Now, sir, what of him?
(suspenseful music)

285
00:16:27,111 --> 00:16:29,155
- Well, he's dead, he can't complain.

286
00:16:30,072 --> 00:16:33,826
He had his chance and in
modern parlance, "blew it."

287
00:16:34,118 --> 00:16:36,412
- Lord Summerisle,
Christopher Lee's character,

288
00:16:36,704 --> 00:16:39,290
is trying to go back to
what he sort of describes

289
00:16:39,582 --> 00:16:40,541
as the old ways.

290
00:16:40,833 --> 00:16:43,252
And I think that's something that turns up

291
00:16:43,544 --> 00:16:45,880
in a lot of British folk
horror in particular,

292
00:16:46,172 --> 00:16:49,675
where you have these old
money aristocratic figures

293
00:16:49,967 --> 00:16:51,385
who are often villains

294
00:16:51,677 --> 00:16:54,805
who are really struggling
in the modern era.

295
00:16:55,097 --> 00:16:56,682
And they're trying to sort of preserve

296
00:16:56,974 --> 00:16:59,227
this old way of life that's dying out.

297
00:16:59,519 --> 00:17:00,728
(birds chirping)
- What my grandfather

298
00:17:01,020 --> 00:17:02,021
had started out of expediency,

299
00:17:02,313 --> 00:17:04,774
my father continued out of love.

300
00:17:06,567 --> 00:17:08,486
He brought me up the same way,

301
00:17:08,778 --> 00:17:10,947
to reverence the music and the drama

302
00:17:11,239 --> 00:17:13,074
and the rituals of the old gods.

303
00:17:14,450 --> 00:17:17,453
To love nature and to fear it.

304
00:17:18,913 --> 00:17:21,874
And to rely on it and to
appease it where necessary.

305
00:17:22,166 --> 00:17:22,875
He brought me up-
- He brought you up

306
00:17:23,167 --> 00:17:24,168
to be a Pagan!

307
00:17:27,004 --> 00:17:29,840
- A heathen, conceivably, but not, I hope,

308
00:17:30,132 --> 00:17:32,051
an unenlightened one.
- And it occurred to me

309
00:17:32,343 --> 00:17:35,721
that I had never actually seen a film

310
00:17:36,013 --> 00:17:39,267
on the nature of sacrifice.
(gentle mystical music)

311
00:17:39,559 --> 00:17:43,813
And so I started with a
checklist, as it were,

312
00:17:44,105 --> 00:17:47,233
of who would make the ideal sacrifice.

313
00:17:47,525 --> 00:17:50,278
There were, obviously,
certain entitlements

314
00:17:50,570 --> 00:17:53,239
that emerged from the
research, the king for the day,

315
00:17:53,531 --> 00:17:57,243
the man who represents the
law, a man who is a virgin,

316
00:17:57,535 --> 00:17:59,412
and so on and so forth, there
were a number of things.

317
00:17:59,704 --> 00:18:01,622
So I thought if we fitted up someone

318
00:18:01,914 --> 00:18:05,084
with all those attachments and qualities,

319
00:18:05,376 --> 00:18:07,211
we had the ideal sacrifice.

320
00:18:07,503 --> 00:18:11,382
- It is very dangerous for people

321
00:18:11,674 --> 00:18:13,217
to become victims of a cult.

322
00:18:14,760 --> 00:18:16,429
They can do absolutely terrible things

323
00:18:16,721 --> 00:18:18,556
in a nice cheerful way.

324
00:18:18,848 --> 00:18:20,683
The Christopher Lee, Lord Summerisle,

325
00:18:20,975 --> 00:18:25,730
has, in effect, persuaded his fellow
citizens on that island

326
00:18:27,398 --> 00:18:30,776
to give up their normal moral sense

327
00:18:31,068 --> 00:18:35,823
and believe in something quite,
in modern terms, outlandish,

328
00:18:37,283 --> 00:18:40,828
but it happens all the time.
(drums thudding)

329
00:18:41,120 --> 00:18:44,957
♪ Summer is icumen in ♪

330
00:18:45,249 --> 00:18:49,128
♪ Loudly sing cuckoo ♪

331
00:18:49,420 --> 00:18:52,673
♪ Grows the seed and blows the mead ♪

332
00:18:52,965 --> 00:18:55,509
♪ And springs the wood anew ♪
- Like any decent piece

333
00:18:55,801 --> 00:18:59,472
of work, it survives.

334
00:18:59,764 --> 00:19:02,308
It has coiled at the
heart of it a mystery,

335
00:19:03,351 --> 00:19:04,268
and "Peter Pan" has it,

336
00:19:04,560 --> 00:19:07,104
it's virtually a very silly play.

337
00:19:08,272 --> 00:19:10,608
But it isn't because it's about something

338
00:19:10,900 --> 00:19:14,403
other than what its
surface purports to be.

339
00:19:14,695 --> 00:19:18,908
♪ Now shrilly sing cuckoo ♪
- Damn you!

340
00:19:21,118 --> 00:19:21,869
Damn you!

341
00:19:24,747 --> 00:19:25,498
Damn you!

342
00:19:27,291 --> 00:19:29,710
♪ Sing cuckoo ♪

343
00:19:31,587 --> 00:19:36,509
- And paganism has a habit
of surviving as we see

344
00:19:37,802 --> 00:19:39,887
and it's that which
helped this film survive,

345
00:19:40,179 --> 00:19:41,305
the subject matter.

346
00:19:41,597 --> 00:19:43,974
(fire blazing)

347
00:19:46,769 --> 00:19:49,438
(dramatic music)

348
00:19:54,193 --> 00:19:57,113
(suspenseful music)

349
00:20:07,665 --> 00:20:10,334
(fire crackling)

350
00:20:11,877 --> 00:20:14,463
(ominous music)

351
00:20:17,675 --> 00:20:20,302
- As a literary tradition
and a cinematic tradition,

352
00:20:20,594 --> 00:20:23,723
there's more folk horror
coming out of Britain

353
00:20:24,014 --> 00:20:25,099
than anywhere else.

354
00:20:30,521 --> 00:20:32,857
- A lot of these tropes that
we know from folk horror films

355
00:20:33,149 --> 00:20:35,943
actually came into existence
like 50 to 100 years earlier,

356
00:20:36,235 --> 00:20:37,570
just from horror fiction.

357
00:20:37,862 --> 00:20:40,906
(gentle ominous music)

358
00:20:42,950 --> 00:20:46,036
So the story of the
scholar or the outsider

359
00:20:46,328 --> 00:20:47,955
who comes to the isolated community

360
00:20:48,247 --> 00:20:51,333
and ends up experiencing some
kind of old pagan ritual,

361
00:20:51,625 --> 00:20:52,626
this was in things like

362
00:20:52,918 --> 00:20:55,254
Eleanor Scott's story "Randalls Round",

363
00:20:55,546 --> 00:20:58,048
and Grant Allen's "Pallinghurst Barrow".

364
00:20:58,340 --> 00:21:00,968
This is probably the most
common story in folk horror.

365
00:21:02,803 --> 00:21:04,263
- An author like Arthur Machen

366
00:21:04,555 --> 00:21:07,141
is a vital contributor to folk horror.

367
00:21:07,433 --> 00:21:08,434
Indeed, one of his later stories

368
00:21:08,726 --> 00:21:10,603
was called "Out of the Earth."

369
00:21:10,895 --> 00:21:13,355
I think also Algernon Blackwood

370
00:21:13,647 --> 00:21:15,357
with his extraordinary stories

371
00:21:15,649 --> 00:21:17,860
about strange forces of nature

372
00:21:18,152 --> 00:21:20,362
overwhelming mere puny mankind, you know,

373
00:21:20,654 --> 00:21:23,449
stories like "The Willows"
and "The Wendigo."

374
00:21:23,741 --> 00:21:26,285
(dramatic music)

375
00:21:30,372 --> 00:21:34,168
Another maybe less obvious
proponent of folk horror

376
00:21:34,460 --> 00:21:38,839
was M.R. James, who wrote
very precise, scholarly,

377
00:21:39,131 --> 00:21:41,300
but nevertheless extremely
chilling ghost stories.

378
00:21:41,592 --> 00:21:45,971
- He was probably the most
distinguished ghost story writer

379
00:21:46,263 --> 00:21:48,599
of the 20th century English cannon.

380
00:21:48,891 --> 00:21:52,144
He didn't take the work
very seriously himself

381
00:21:52,436 --> 00:21:55,105
and he wasn't taken very
seriously for a long time,

382
00:21:55,397 --> 00:21:57,191
but he's since become recognized

383
00:21:57,483 --> 00:21:59,652
as a leading influence on British

384
00:21:59,944 --> 00:22:02,238
and European horror.
- But they often deal

385
00:22:02,530 --> 00:22:04,698
in folk horror, "Casting the Ruins"

386
00:22:04,990 --> 00:22:06,659
was made into a great British film

387
00:22:08,035 --> 00:22:10,287
called "Night of the Demon."
- And then

388
00:22:10,579 --> 00:22:13,999
you sort of travel through to
the adaptations that were done

389
00:22:14,291 --> 00:22:16,252
on television by Lawrence Gordon Clark

390
00:22:16,544 --> 00:22:19,046
in "The Ghost Stories for
Christmas" in the '70s.

391
00:22:19,338 --> 00:22:24,134
They are key texts and incredibly
effective works, you know,

392
00:22:24,593 --> 00:22:28,264
capturing that certain
something that M.R. James does,

393
00:22:28,556 --> 00:22:30,432
you know, the rustle in the trees

394
00:22:30,724 --> 00:22:32,434
or the inhuman mouth under the pillow

395
00:22:32,726 --> 00:22:35,646
in all of those kinds of
very peculiar fissures

396
00:22:35,938 --> 00:22:37,857
in the modern.
- Those M.R. James

397
00:22:38,148 --> 00:22:39,483
"Ghost Stories for Christmas",

398
00:22:39,775 --> 00:22:43,863
particularly "Whistle and [I'll
Come to You", is essential

399
00:22:44,154 --> 00:22:45,823
British folk horror.
- It's a story

400
00:22:46,115 --> 00:22:49,118
of solitude and terror,
and it has a moral too.

401
00:22:50,035 --> 00:22:52,454
It hints at the dangers
of intellectual pride

402
00:22:52,746 --> 00:22:55,499
and shows how a man's
reason can be overthrown

403
00:22:55,791 --> 00:22:59,211
when he fails to acknowledge
those forces inside himself

404
00:22:59,503 --> 00:23:01,088
which he simply cannot understand.

405
00:23:02,506 --> 00:23:05,759
- You've got this very
British bumbling old guy,

406
00:23:06,051 --> 00:23:08,095
he kind of almost
represents the patriarchy.

407
00:23:08,387 --> 00:23:09,972
He's kind of, "ooh, nonsense,

408
00:23:10,264 --> 00:23:11,640
there's no such thing as ghosts."

409
00:23:11,932 --> 00:23:14,310
- Hmm, inscription.

410
00:23:18,105 --> 00:23:20,524
Who is this?

411
00:23:20,816 --> 00:23:23,903
Who is coming?

412
00:23:26,655 --> 00:23:27,406
Al right.

413
00:23:29,158 --> 00:23:32,953
We shall blow it and see.

414
00:23:35,039 --> 00:23:37,791
(whistle tooting)

415
00:23:39,585 --> 00:23:44,506
(dramatic suspenseful music)
- How do you conquer

416
00:23:45,633 --> 00:23:46,759
something like that if
it was not even part

417
00:23:47,051 --> 00:23:48,260
of your belief system?

418
00:23:56,268 --> 00:23:57,353
I think there's nothing so terrifying

419
00:23:57,645 --> 00:24:00,731
as seeing someone like that
being reduced to madness,

420
00:24:01,023 --> 00:24:02,399
and like he's literally sucking
his thumb by the end of it,

421
00:24:02,691 --> 00:24:05,778
he's sort of gone back to childhood

422
00:24:06,070 --> 00:24:07,196
"cause he's so terrified.

423
00:24:11,784 --> 00:24:14,286
- Jonathan Miller's "Whistle
and I'll Come to You"

424
00:24:14,578 --> 00:24:17,748
was not actually part of the
"Ghost Stories for Christmas",

425
00:24:18,040 --> 00:24:20,250
but it was obviously popular enough

426
00:24:20,542 --> 00:24:23,337
that when Lawrence Gordon
Clark went to the BBC

427
00:24:23,629 --> 00:24:25,381
and proposed the whole "Ghost
Stories for Christmas”,

428
00:24:25,673 --> 00:24:29,009
he was probably able to, you
know, use that as a foundation.

429
00:24:29,301 --> 00:24:32,846
(gentle spirited music)
- If you take a wonderful

430
00:24:33,138 --> 00:24:37,142
<i>MR, James story in "The
Stalls of Barchester",</i>

431
00:24:37,434 --> 00:24:38,978
“The Hanging Oak,” as it was called,

432
00:24:39,269 --> 00:24:42,898
which for centuries had been
fated with blood sacrifice,

433
00:24:43,190 --> 00:24:45,484
it was cut down by Puritans

434
00:24:45,776 --> 00:24:48,028
in an attempt to get rid of that custom.

435
00:24:48,320 --> 00:24:51,365
And the wood was used for
carvings in the choir schools

436
00:24:51,657 --> 00:24:56,453
which became absolutely deadly
to anybody who touched them.

437
00:24:56,954 --> 00:25:01,458
(choir singing)
That is how James

438
00:25:01,750 --> 00:25:06,130
interwove historical evil
and violence and sacrifice

439
00:25:06,422 --> 00:25:10,342
with so-called rational Christian beliefs.

440
00:25:10,634 --> 00:25:13,637
- One of the most
influential aspects of James

441
00:25:13,929 --> 00:25:15,472
is the "Ghost Stories for Christmas”,

442
00:25:15,764 --> 00:25:19,184
because they're done in
such a sparse, suggestive,

443
00:25:19,476 --> 00:25:22,146
atmospheric way is that
you can look at those

444
00:25:22,438 --> 00:25:24,982
and you kind of use those as a template.

445
00:25:25,274 --> 00:25:27,484
They're frightening
because of what's not shown

446
00:25:27,776 --> 00:25:28,819
and what's suggested.

447
00:25:30,988 --> 00:25:34,158
(dramatic music)

448
00:25:34,450 --> 00:25:39,246
(suspenseful music)
(crickets chirping)

449
00:25:44,460 --> 00:25:47,838
(Paxton panting)
- Folk horror

450
00:25:48,130 --> 00:25:51,717
is very much about our
connection to the land.

451
00:25:54,053 --> 00:25:55,637
- The landscape's always
been a key component

452
00:25:55,929 --> 00:25:57,473
of the English ghost story
and you can really see this

453
00:25:57,765 --> 00:25:59,016
in the writings of M.R. James

454
00:25:59,308 --> 00:26:00,559
in the East Anglian locations

455
00:26:00,851 --> 00:26:02,853
where he set a lot of his stories.

456
00:26:03,145 --> 00:26:05,147
- He's intensely visual,

457
00:26:05,439 --> 00:26:08,358
he uses the English
countryside, which I love,

458
00:26:08,650 --> 00:26:11,779
and English times, particularly
in the shabby era once,

459
00:26:12,071 --> 00:26:16,283
absolutely beautifully.
- His ghosts are more earthy

460
00:26:16,575 --> 00:26:20,162
and physical, he describes
their texture and their smell.

461
00:26:21,455 --> 00:26:22,331
They're deeply connected

462
00:26:22,623 --> 00:26:24,833
to their physical
surroundings in a lot of ways.

463
00:26:26,085 --> 00:26:28,170
And to this idea of like a bloody history

464
00:26:28,462 --> 00:26:30,589
that's buried beneath
the facade of civility.

465
00:26:30,881 --> 00:26:34,426
(dramatic suspenseful music)

466
00:26:38,347 --> 00:26:41,100
(ghost chuckling)

467
00:26:45,479 --> 00:26:46,814
(ominous music)
- So you often find,

468
00:26:47,106 --> 00:26:49,900
and especially the case in
"Blood on Satan's Claw",

469
00:26:50,192 --> 00:26:53,195
that it begins with a claw
being brought up from the land.

470
00:26:56,323 --> 00:26:58,992
- That's why the opening scene,
the plowing and the furrows,

471
00:26:59,284 --> 00:27:01,328
so a lot of camera angles are very low

472
00:27:01,620 --> 00:27:03,122
right throughout the film,

473
00:27:03,413 --> 00:27:07,501
but it's supposed to suggest
that whatever is coming

474
00:27:07,793 --> 00:27:09,461
is coming from below.

475
00:27:09,753 --> 00:27:13,799
(suspenseful music)
- Folk horror

476
00:27:14,091 --> 00:27:17,177
very much channels people's
relationship to the land,

477
00:27:17,469 --> 00:27:19,221
to this sort of shared consciousness,

478
00:27:19,513 --> 00:27:22,641
these traditional beliefs
that are somehow in the soil,

479
00:27:22,933 --> 00:27:23,934
in the landscape.

480
00:27:25,352 --> 00:27:29,189
♪ The land's sharp features seemed to be ♪

481
00:27:29,481 --> 00:27:32,860
♪ The Century's corpse outleant

482
00:27:33,152 --> 00:27:36,530
♪ His crypt the cloudy canopy ♪

483
00:27:36,822 --> 00:27:40,242
♪ The wind his death-lament ♪

484
00:27:40,534 --> 00:27:44,204
♪ The ancient pulse of germ and birth ♪

485
00:27:44,496 --> 00:27:47,791
♪ Was shrunken hard and dry ♪

486
00:27:48,083 --> 00:27:51,545
♪ And every spirit upon earth ♪

487
00:27:51,837 --> 00:27:55,340
♪ Seemed fervourless as I ♪

488
00:27:55,632 --> 00:27:58,969
♪ So little cause for carolings ♪

489
00:27:59,261 --> 00:28:02,806
♪ Of such ecstatic sound ♪

490
00:28:03,098 --> 00:28:06,643
♪ Was written on terrestrial things ♪

491
00:28:06,935 --> 00:28:10,397
♪ Afar or nigh around ♪

492
00:28:10,689 --> 00:28:14,067
♪ That I could think
there trembled through ♪

493
00:28:14,359 --> 00:28:17,779
♪ His happy good-night air ♪

494
00:28:18,071 --> 00:28:21,867
♪ Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew ♪

495
00:28:22,159 --> 00:28:24,953
♪ And I was unaware ♪

496
00:28:26,622 --> 00:28:30,292
- Until, you know, as late
as the late 20th century

497
00:28:30,584 --> 00:28:33,712
and we shouldn't forget how
rural a lot of the culture

498
00:28:34,004 --> 00:28:34,546
in the British Isles was.

499
00:28:34,838 --> 00:28:37,424
And you can see that looking
at, say, the documentary

500
00:28:37,716 --> 00:28:39,509
"The Moon and the Sledgehammer”

501
00:28:39,801 --> 00:28:44,056
where you're looking at a
family living in the 1970s,

502
00:28:44,348 --> 00:28:46,391
but you may as well be looking at a family

503
00:28:46,683 --> 00:28:48,435
living in the 1870s.

504
00:28:48,727 --> 00:28:49,269
(ominous music)
- I never go

505
00:28:49,561 --> 00:28:53,023
where the cock never crows, and
I wouldn't advise any of you

506
00:28:53,315 --> 00:28:55,776
to go where the cock don't crow.

507
00:28:57,611 --> 00:28:59,571
(fire blazes)

508
00:28:59,863 --> 00:29:01,907
- Folk horror is more
of a back to the land

509
00:29:02,199 --> 00:29:04,534
kind of species of horror, if you like.

510
00:29:04,826 --> 00:29:06,536
It's more a rural thing

511
00:29:06,828 --> 00:29:10,082
rather than something to
do with the aristocracy,

512
00:29:10,374 --> 00:29:12,000
it's more to do with the people

513
00:29:12,292 --> 00:29:14,086
who till the land, if you like.

514
00:29:14,378 --> 00:29:16,129
Maybe that's one reason
why in the late '60s,

515
00:29:16,421 --> 00:29:18,382
sort of back-to-the-land
movement of that period,

516
00:29:18,674 --> 00:29:19,925
it suddenly gained currency,

517
00:29:20,217 --> 00:29:22,010
it was very, very important.

518
00:29:22,302 --> 00:29:23,512
- 'Cause we were the first people

519
00:29:23,804 --> 00:29:25,264
with an industrial revolution

520
00:29:25,555 --> 00:29:27,099
and that was our great break point.

521
00:29:27,391 --> 00:29:29,726
Between the continuity
of hundreds of years

522
00:29:30,018 --> 00:29:32,271
and suddenly people
flooded into the towns,

523
00:29:32,562 --> 00:29:34,356
didn't have access to the greenery,

524
00:29:34,648 --> 00:29:36,817
they didn't have access to
what they'd known before.

525
00:29:37,109 --> 00:29:39,736
And we're constantly
trying to get back to that.

526
00:29:41,738 --> 00:29:43,198
- You come from the city.

527
00:29:43,490 --> 00:29:45,284
You cannot know the ways of the country.

528
00:29:46,368 --> 00:29:47,619
- I think this is why
we see a lot of films

529
00:29:47,911 --> 00:29:50,038
around the late '60s and the early '70s

530
00:29:50,330 --> 00:29:53,208
which have become known as folk horrors,

531
00:29:53,500 --> 00:29:56,712
which reflect a kind of
general anxiety in society

532
00:29:57,004 --> 00:30:00,257
that the town is
overtaking the countryside.

533
00:30:00,549 --> 00:30:03,343
(calm upbeat music)

534
00:30:12,144 --> 00:30:14,980
(birds chirping)

535
00:30:15,272 --> 00:30:15,897
- You stuck?

536
00:30:19,609 --> 00:30:22,029
- Then it can also link up with something

537
00:30:22,321 --> 00:30:24,823
like "I Start Counting” or
other films in the 1970s

538
00:30:25,115 --> 00:30:26,241
which are very much about,

539
00:30:26,533 --> 00:30:28,952
I guess, like suburbia
and changing housing,

540
00:30:29,995 --> 00:30:31,455
new tower blocks, these kinda things.

541
00:30:31,747 --> 00:30:33,415
And this, you know, the city

542
00:30:33,707 --> 00:30:35,584
sort of moving into the countryside

543
00:30:35,876 --> 00:30:37,544
and it's on the kind of periphery spaces,

544
00:30:37,836 --> 00:30:39,212
like in "I Start Counting”
with Jenny Agutter

545
00:30:39,504 --> 00:30:41,256
where there's a sort of child murderer

546
00:30:41,548 --> 00:30:44,301
who's kind of stalking the
lakes on the edges of the town

547
00:30:44,593 --> 00:30:46,511
and all these kind of older
houses have been knocked down.

548
00:30:46,803 --> 00:30:48,055
We think about it as linking to the past,

549
00:30:48,347 --> 00:30:49,389
but it's very much about change

550
00:30:49,681 --> 00:30:50,891
and kind of in between places

551
00:30:51,183 --> 00:30:53,143
and where things sort
of seep into each other.

552
00:30:53,435 --> 00:30:55,312
- I would think of someone
like David Gladwell,

553
00:30:55,604 --> 00:30:56,688
whose "Requiem for a Village"

554
00:30:56,980 --> 00:31:00,067
is in a kind of maybe
penumbral or peripheral way

555
00:31:00,359 --> 00:31:03,945
a kind of folk horror
tale about the importance

556
00:31:04,237 --> 00:31:09,034
and unkillable nature of
history and all that is natural.

557
00:31:09,868 --> 00:31:11,620
"Requiem for a Village" charts

558
00:31:11,912 --> 00:31:15,082
that transitional moment
between the old ways

559
00:31:15,374 --> 00:31:18,502
and the coming of modern high-rise blocks

560
00:31:18,794 --> 00:31:20,045
and the bulldozing of the fields

561
00:31:20,337 --> 00:31:24,383
that had reaped the harvest
that fed and nurtured us all.

562
00:31:24,674 --> 00:31:26,259
I think maybe it's a stretch
to call it a horror film,

563
00:31:26,551 --> 00:31:28,178
although it does have an
extraordinary sequence

564
00:31:28,470 --> 00:31:30,806
of those who have passed
away in the village

565
00:31:31,098 --> 00:31:34,059
rising from their graves,
which is almost Fulci-esque.

566
00:31:34,351 --> 00:31:37,479
(gentle ethereal music)

567
00:31:49,574 --> 00:31:51,576
- On Mike's set it's
quite a conservative view

568
00:31:51,868 --> 00:31:53,620
of this kind of imagery

569
00:31:53,912 --> 00:31:55,622
'cause it's almost more like harking back

570
00:31:55,914 --> 00:31:57,165
to the pastoral idyll.

571
00:31:57,457 --> 00:32:00,252
(suspenseful music)

572
00:32:03,255 --> 00:32:04,923
- I think that there's this tendency

573
00:32:05,215 --> 00:32:06,091
to think of folk horror as something

574
00:32:06,383 --> 00:32:08,468
that is always set in the past,

575
00:32:08,760 --> 00:32:10,053
but often it's actually that friction

576
00:32:10,345 --> 00:32:12,764
between the present and
the past that creates

577
00:32:13,056 --> 00:32:14,850
that tension.
- It seems to me

578
00:32:15,142 --> 00:32:18,145
that you've kind of got
two areas of folk horror.

579
00:32:18,437 --> 00:32:21,064
You've got the stuff that
takes place in the past

580
00:32:21,356 --> 00:32:22,065
and then you've got the stuff

581
00:32:22,357 --> 00:32:24,609
that's dealing with something
coming out of the past.

582
00:32:24,901 --> 00:32:26,611
Well, the stuff that
takes place in the past

583
00:32:26,903 --> 00:32:28,155
never really seems to me

584
00:32:28,447 --> 00:32:30,449
to sort of have a
particularly rosy view of it.

585
00:32:30,740 --> 00:32:32,492
It's not like these halcyon days

586
00:32:32,784 --> 00:32:34,119
we're desperate to get back to,

587
00:32:34,411 --> 00:32:38,206
the past is usually presented
as a pretty unpleasant place.

588
00:32:38,498 --> 00:32:41,126
And similarly, when you're
dealing with modern day stuff,

589
00:32:42,419 --> 00:32:45,881
the threat is usually what's
coming out of the past.

590
00:32:46,173 --> 00:32:49,301
So I don't really see this idea that

591
00:32:50,969 --> 00:32:52,888
it's being represented
as anything positive,

592
00:32:53,180 --> 00:32:56,433
it seems to me that folk
horror is more often than not

593
00:32:56,725 --> 00:32:57,976
quite politically radical.

594
00:32:58,894 --> 00:33:01,146
(upbeat music)
- They were just

595
00:33:01,438 --> 00:33:04,566
ordinary troublemakers
as long as they lived.

596
00:33:04,858 --> 00:33:06,651
But they return from beyond the grave

597
00:33:06,943 --> 00:33:10,030
with superhuman powers,
unleashing an unholy reign

598
00:33:10,322 --> 00:33:12,240
of terror that holds an entire community

599
00:33:12,532 --> 00:33:14,784
in the grip of "Psychomania”.

600
00:33:19,539 --> 00:33:22,167
"Psychomania."
- "Psychomania's”

601
00:33:22,459 --> 00:33:26,379
an absolute classic hoot of
a movie, isn't it? (laughs)

602
00:33:26,671 --> 00:33:28,715
- Everybody dies, don't they?

603
00:33:29,007 --> 00:33:31,510
But some come back.
(suspenseful rock music)

604
00:33:31,801 --> 00:33:34,221
- "Psychomania” is, you
know, these kind of tearaways

605
00:33:34,513 --> 00:33:36,431
who end up kind of reaffirming
these old folk traditions,

606
00:33:36,723 --> 00:33:39,809
and once again, turning
into stone statues.

607
00:33:41,561 --> 00:33:43,897
(Abby gasps)

608
00:33:45,857 --> 00:33:48,235
But it's almost as if there's
some kind of an anarchy

609
00:33:48,527 --> 00:33:49,236
going all the way through,

610
00:33:49,528 --> 00:33:51,154
it's not like there's some beautiful,

611
00:33:51,446 --> 00:33:53,073
astonishing past.
- Yeah, I think it's important

612
00:33:53,365 --> 00:33:54,616
to stress that folk horror

613
00:33:54,908 --> 00:33:56,368
shouldn't necessarily
be reactionary, right,

614
00:33:56,660 --> 00:34:00,038
the actual content in there
is very much a challenge

615
00:34:00,330 --> 00:34:02,916
to the kind of narrative
traditions of that time,

616
00:34:03,208 --> 00:34:06,044
to the ideological
traditions in that time.

617
00:34:06,336 --> 00:34:08,630
(Abby screaming)

618
00:34:08,922 --> 00:34:11,299
(Abby sobbing)

619
00:34:17,847 --> 00:34:20,016
- I think the back-to-the-land movement

620
00:34:20,308 --> 00:34:23,770
and the hold over the hippie
movement going into ecology

621
00:34:24,062 --> 00:34:25,313
and stuff is part of it,

622
00:34:26,690 --> 00:34:28,441
but it's not entirely part of it.

623
00:34:28,733 --> 00:34:29,276
And it's interesting to see,

624
00:34:29,568 --> 00:34:32,862
that actually in the pages
of "Prediction" in the 1970s,

625
00:34:33,154 --> 00:34:36,700
you have articles about vegetarianism

626
00:34:36,992 --> 00:34:39,244
and you have articles about
organic farming as well,

627
00:34:39,536 --> 00:34:43,373
since back then, they
weren't part of the everyday

628
00:34:44,332 --> 00:34:47,210
discourse.
- Certainly in the 1970s,

629
00:34:47,502 --> 00:34:49,129
both in Britain and in America,

630
00:34:49,421 --> 00:34:52,507
there was a kind of movement
of people leaving the cities

631
00:34:52,799 --> 00:34:54,593
which had started to become polluted,

632
00:34:54,884 --> 00:34:56,886
overcrowded, sort of overheated,

633
00:34:57,178 --> 00:34:59,806
and trying to find better
lives out in the countryside.

634
00:35:00,098 --> 00:35:02,726
And in doing so, they
encounter both nature,

635
00:35:03,018 --> 00:35:05,103
but also the people who live with nature.

636
00:35:05,395 --> 00:35:07,105
And that's very much a sort of class

637
00:35:07,397 --> 00:35:10,358
and cultural tension, but it's
also a sort of environmental

638
00:35:10,650 --> 00:35:12,277
tension.
- We think of in westerns

639
00:35:12,569 --> 00:35:14,112
in American films, the mythic America

640
00:35:14,404 --> 00:35:15,822
is the extending, expanding landscape,

641
00:35:16,114 --> 00:35:18,158
so the kind of dream of
moving onto new territory

642
00:35:18,450 --> 00:35:20,577
that hasn't been picked
over, whereas the folk horror

643
00:35:20,869 --> 00:35:22,871
in British tradition is there's
all these like sediments.

644
00:35:23,163 --> 00:35:24,039
It's more about like depth

645
00:35:24,331 --> 00:35:25,874
rather than kind of moving outward.

646
00:35:26,166 --> 00:35:28,877
(machine whirring)

647
00:35:30,545 --> 00:35:33,381
(machine groaning)

648
00:35:42,891 --> 00:35:44,559
- Heildy, whoa, whoa.

649
00:35:49,314 --> 00:35:54,235
(gentle suspenseful music)
- Nigel Kneale

650
00:35:54,527 --> 00:35:56,404
is best known for inventing "Quatermass”,

651
00:35:56,696 --> 00:35:59,908
but he also, in the 1970s and
right up to the '80s, in fact,

652
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:03,370
wrote several of the things
that folk horror fans

653
00:36:03,662 --> 00:36:05,580
particularly rate.
- I think Nigel Kneale

654
00:36:05,872 --> 00:36:08,083
is the pinnacle in terms of quality.

655
00:36:08,375 --> 00:36:11,461
If he was working in a medium
that was more respected,

656
00:36:11,753 --> 00:36:14,047
like novels, I think he'd be
a far more household name.

657
00:36:14,339 --> 00:36:15,715
He's very prescient like ♪. G. Ballard,

658
00:36:16,007 --> 00:36:17,384
but whereas ♪. G. Ballard wrote novels

659
00:36:17,676 --> 00:36:18,968
and became very respected,

660
00:36:19,260 --> 00:36:21,680
Kneale stayed with television largely

661
00:36:21,971 --> 00:36:23,306
and some films as well.

662
00:36:23,598 --> 00:36:27,310
His work is incredibly
haunting, incredibly prescient,

663
00:36:27,602 --> 00:36:30,397
he virtually predicted the
rise of reality television

664
00:36:30,689 --> 00:36:31,231
amongst other things.

665
00:36:31,523 --> 00:36:35,068
And the strongest elements
of folk horror in television

666
00:36:35,360 --> 00:36:37,821
and film, I think, are
largely indebted to him.

667
00:36:38,113 --> 00:36:42,200
So Nigel Kneale, I think,
is the epitome of the great,

668
00:36:42,492 --> 00:36:44,077
writer of folk horror.

669
00:36:45,954 --> 00:36:48,540
(ominous music)

670
00:36:58,049 --> 00:37:00,468
- I would say that something
like a Nigel Kneale's

671
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:02,762
"The Stone Tape" is a kind of uber text

672
00:37:03,054 --> 00:37:04,139
when we're talking about folk horror

673
00:37:04,431 --> 00:37:08,852
because it encapsulates so
many ideas, the haunting parts,

674
00:37:09,144 --> 00:37:11,813
but also the idea of the
recording of the past

675
00:37:12,105 --> 00:37:15,191
and the very analog version of that.

676
00:37:15,483 --> 00:37:16,484
(typewrite whirring)

677
00:37:16,776 --> 00:37:18,445
- It's your code number. You fed it in.

678
00:37:18,737 --> 00:37:20,739
- I didn't.
- You must have done.

679
00:37:21,030 --> 00:37:21,823
- Th-there are words

680
00:37:22,866 --> 00:37:23,908
or they might be words.

681
00:37:24,200 --> 00:37:26,995
See, pray.
- Soul, that's soul there.

682
00:37:27,912 --> 00:37:29,080
- Pray, prayer.

683
00:37:33,585 --> 00:37:35,336
- It's in the computer!

684
00:37:35,628 --> 00:37:38,882
- "The Stone Tape" deals with a haunting

685
00:37:39,174 --> 00:37:41,718
and trying to apply science to a haunting,

686
00:37:42,010 --> 00:37:45,305
but you soon find out
that there's only so far

687
00:37:45,597 --> 00:37:47,974
science can go and there's
something much older underneath

688
00:37:48,266 --> 00:37:50,268
that science can't actually cope with.

689
00:37:50,560 --> 00:37:52,937
(spooky music)

690
00:37:53,229 --> 00:37:55,774
- We have a deeply historical landscape,

691
00:37:56,065 --> 00:37:58,902
which has been subject
to human intervention

692
00:37:59,194 --> 00:38:02,447
and design over centuries and centuries.

693
00:38:02,739 --> 00:38:07,202
So again, we're looking at
layers of occupation and usage,

694
00:38:07,494 --> 00:38:10,789
but we also like to think
that there is a genius loci,

695
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:12,665
a spirit of place.

696
00:38:12,957 --> 00:38:16,669
So anywhere where you feel
that is liable to lead

697
00:38:16,961 --> 00:38:21,299
to a folk horror
inspiration or experience.

698
00:38:21,591 --> 00:38:24,886
♪ Oh, the praties they are small ♪

699
00:38:25,178 --> 00:38:29,390
♪ Over here, over here ♪

700
00:38:29,682 --> 00:38:32,811
♪ Oh the praties they are small &

701
00:38:33,102 --> 00:38:35,104
♪ Over here ♪
- This is where folk horror

702
00:38:35,396 --> 00:38:36,731
intersects with psychogeography,

703
00:38:37,023 --> 00:38:38,817
which is essentially the
psychological relationship

704
00:38:39,108 --> 00:38:39,651
between people and a place,

705
00:38:39,943 --> 00:38:41,528
and the kind of psychic imprints

706
00:38:41,820 --> 00:38:43,696
that people leave on a
place and vice versa.

707
00:38:43,988 --> 00:38:46,783
- In folk horror, we're very
much talking about the effect

708
00:38:47,075 --> 00:38:48,034
of the environment on people,

709
00:38:48,326 --> 00:38:50,662
on people's psyche, on their behavior.

710
00:38:50,954 --> 00:38:53,373
And I think the conflicts
between different behaviors

711
00:38:53,665 --> 00:38:55,625
is very much at the heart
of folk horror, right?

712
00:38:55,917 --> 00:38:57,335
- Yeah, and I guess with
psychogeography, you know,

713
00:38:57,627 --> 00:38:59,796
it's partly about previous psyches

714
00:39:00,088 --> 00:39:01,840
kinda pressing themselves
into the landscape

715
00:39:02,131 --> 00:39:04,175
and then, you know, a
contemporary person walking around

716
00:39:04,467 --> 00:39:07,804
and kinda picking up on the
resonance of those psyches

717
00:39:08,096 --> 00:39:09,681
in the past.
- Whether it goes back

718
00:39:09,973 --> 00:39:12,600
to Alfred Watkins looking for ley lines

719
00:39:12,892 --> 00:39:14,686
or somebody like Peter Ackroyd

720
00:39:14,978 --> 00:39:16,813
looking for a secret history of London.

721
00:39:17,105 --> 00:39:17,730
(ominous music)
- That would sort of draw you

722
00:39:18,022 --> 00:39:19,607
on to something like
"Quatermass and the Pit", right?

723
00:39:19,899 --> 00:39:20,775
- Mm, yeah, yeah.
- Whereas the sense

724
00:39:21,067 --> 00:39:22,694
that Nigel Kneale, who's this writer

725
00:39:22,986 --> 00:39:24,779
primarily associated with science fiction,

726
00:39:25,071 --> 00:39:27,407
then fusing science
fiction with folk horror,

727
00:39:27,699 --> 00:39:30,159
talking about this hidden
menace deep within the earth

728
00:39:30,451 --> 00:39:33,454
which is only dug out when
people start to burrow down

729
00:39:33,746 --> 00:39:34,747
into the center of the earth.

730
00:39:35,039 --> 00:39:36,833
Which is very much one
of these key concepts

731
00:39:37,125 --> 00:39:38,501
behind the folk horror, I think.

732
00:39:38,793 --> 00:39:41,588
(suspenseful music)

733
00:39:57,729 --> 00:40:00,148
- It was one of Nigel
Kneales recurring ideas,

734
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:02,859
he would make reference
to mythology and folklore

735
00:40:03,151 --> 00:40:05,695
and yoke it to science fiction.

736
00:40:05,987 --> 00:40:08,114
And "Doctor Who" picked up on that.

737
00:40:08,406 --> 00:40:10,909
- Devils End is part of the dark mythology

738
00:40:11,200 --> 00:40:13,161
of our childhood days.

739
00:40:13,453 --> 00:40:16,539
And now for the first time,
the cameras of the BBC

740
00:40:16,831 --> 00:40:19,876
have been allowed inside the cabin itself.

741
00:40:20,168 --> 00:40:22,170
- You think of the classic
John Pertwee storyline,

742
00:40:22,462 --> 00:40:24,839
"The Daemons”, which has
all of the key themes

743
00:40:25,131 --> 00:40:27,175
of sort of folk horror within it.

744
00:40:27,467 --> 00:40:29,552
You have, another thing,
ancient burial mounds;

745
00:40:29,844 --> 00:40:33,890
disturbing, long buried forces
in the English countryside.

746
00:40:34,182 --> 00:40:36,017
You have evil Morris dancers.

747
00:40:36,309 --> 00:40:37,644
(upbeat folk music)
- You're being invited

748
00:40:37,936 --> 00:40:39,854
to join our May day revels, Doctor.

749
00:40:40,146 --> 00:40:41,898
- You know, it's all in there.

750
00:40:42,190 --> 00:40:45,568
(crickets chirping)
(bell chiming)

751
00:40:45,860 --> 00:40:49,822
Nigel Kneales' final storyline
in the "Quatermass" series,

752
00:40:50,114 --> 00:40:53,534
broadcasted in 1979, is set
in a post-apocalyptic world

753
00:40:53,826 --> 00:40:56,537
after what we assume is a nuclear war.

754
00:40:56,829 --> 00:40:59,248
(ominous music)

755
00:41:03,002 --> 00:41:05,505
- Who are they?
- Planet people.

756
00:41:07,131 --> 00:41:09,968
- (sighs) They've got some strange belief.

757
00:41:11,219 --> 00:41:13,429
- Magic, it's always magic.

758
00:41:13,721 --> 00:41:17,517
(tense music)
- And you have bands

759
00:41:17,809 --> 00:41:20,353
of hippie travelers
marching across the land

760
00:41:20,645 --> 00:41:21,646
being drawn mysteriously

761
00:41:21,938 --> 00:41:24,357
to stone circles.
- Many of these groups

762
00:41:24,649 --> 00:41:29,112
of stones, like Stonehenge,
were complex observatories,

763
00:41:29,404 --> 00:41:32,991
predicting what once were
thought the unpredictable,

764
00:41:33,282 --> 00:41:34,826
fickle wondering of their gods.

765
00:41:39,539 --> 00:41:43,084
- They were just a kind of
normal part of the landscape

766
00:41:43,376 --> 00:41:45,920
for many people, certainly
Avebury, where we are now,

767
00:41:46,212 --> 00:41:50,675
has had a village within it
for over a thousand years.

768
00:41:50,967 --> 00:41:54,512
(mystical suspenseful music)

769
00:41:57,557 --> 00:41:58,224
- And you just want me

770
00:41:58,516 --> 00:41:59,267
to touch it?
- Mm hm.

771
00:42:01,477 --> 00:42:05,148
(spooky music)
- Yes, please.

772
00:42:09,652 --> 00:42:12,447
(people screaming)

773
00:42:25,585 --> 00:42:27,336
- Surprisingly, it hasn't featured

774
00:42:27,628 --> 00:42:31,174
in that many sort of films and television.

775
00:42:31,466 --> 00:42:34,218
Most famously "Children of the Stones”,

776
00:42:34,510 --> 00:42:37,638
the children's TV series
from the mid 1970s,

777
00:42:37,930 --> 00:42:40,141
that was set and filmed here.

778
00:42:40,433 --> 00:42:42,935
And it also appears in "A
Ghost Story for Christmas"

779
00:42:43,227 --> 00:42:45,480
called "Stigma".
(calm upbeat music)

780
00:42:45,772 --> 00:42:46,355
(gentle suspenseful music)
- In "Stigma",

781
00:42:46,647 --> 00:42:49,192
the malevolence or blight
occurs because someone

782
00:42:49,484 --> 00:42:51,110
has disturbed the standing stones,

783
00:42:51,402 --> 00:42:53,404
and people have come from the
city to settle in the country

784
00:42:53,696 --> 00:42:55,490
and have no sense of what
the standing stones mean.

785
00:42:55,782 --> 00:42:57,700
They have no connection to that history.

786
00:42:57,992 --> 00:43:00,787
(suspenseful music)

787
00:43:01,746 --> 00:43:02,997
(farmer grunts)

788
00:43:03,289 --> 00:43:06,584
(lightning zapping)
- Ah!

789
00:43:08,961 --> 00:43:10,797
- So the standing stone,
there are these monuments

790
00:43:11,089 --> 00:43:13,466
of great mystery, they kind of harp back

791
00:43:13,758 --> 00:43:15,843
to this pre-Christian and pagan past

792
00:43:16,135 --> 00:43:17,970
to this whole idea that, you
know, the past and the history

793
00:43:18,262 --> 00:43:20,640
are threatening to kind of re-emerge

794
00:43:20,932 --> 00:43:25,228
and kind of reclaim
ownership over the land.

795
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:27,438
With "Rawhead Rex", in
the original short story,

796
00:43:27,730 --> 00:43:31,651
you have this clash between
these kind of ancient customs

797
00:43:31,943 --> 00:43:32,860
and ancient way of life

798
00:43:33,152 --> 00:43:35,363
and these new forces of gentrification.

799
00:43:35,655 --> 00:43:38,783
This idea that, you know,
getting back to these old ways,

800
00:43:39,075 --> 00:43:40,284
getting away from the rat race

801
00:43:40,576 --> 00:43:42,328
and getting back to nature,

802
00:43:42,620 --> 00:43:46,207
it's just another form of,
kind of colonization and invasion.

803
00:43:46,499 --> 00:43:49,544
(gentle ominous music)

804
00:43:53,214 --> 00:43:56,592
- Your hands, they're bleeding.

805
00:43:56,884 --> 00:43:59,220
- Actually think that
there's a good trilogy

806
00:43:59,512 --> 00:44:00,555
of old "Play for Today" episodes

807
00:44:00,847 --> 00:44:05,643
that define the form of folk
horror with a bit more nuance,

808
00:44:06,310 --> 00:44:08,229
John Bowen's "Robin Redbreast”,

809
00:44:08,521 --> 00:44:09,897
David Rudkin's "Penda's Fen",

810
00:44:10,189 --> 00:44:11,858
and Alan Garner's "Red Shift."

811
00:44:12,150 --> 00:44:13,901
Now all three of those, I think,

812
00:44:14,193 --> 00:44:18,865
deal with the sort of temporal
qualities within place,

813
00:44:19,157 --> 00:44:21,826
which is, for me,
essential to folk horror.

814
00:44:22,118 --> 00:44:24,328
(calm music)

815
00:44:25,413 --> 00:44:29,458
♪ Baloo, my boy, lie still and sleep ♪

816
00:44:29,750 --> 00:44:33,880
♪ It grieves me sore to hear thee weep ♪

817
00:44:34,172 --> 00:44:38,217
♪ If thou'lt be silent, I'll be glad ♪

818
00:44:38,509 --> 00:44:42,889
♪ Thy moaning makes my heart full sad ♪

819
00:44:43,181 --> 00:44:45,141
- David Rudkin, the playwright,

820
00:44:45,433 --> 00:44:47,059
particularly wrote "Penda's Fen",

821
00:44:47,351 --> 00:44:50,855
which is a beautiful,
lyrical, very pagan piece

822
00:44:51,147 --> 00:44:53,858
about a young lad's coming to terms

823
00:44:54,150 --> 00:44:56,235
with his sexuality and his identity,

824
00:44:56,527 --> 00:44:59,864
and realizing that he's never
really going to be part of

825
00:45:00,156 --> 00:45:02,617
the culture that he
thought he was part of.

826
00:45:02,909 --> 00:45:06,787
♪ O'er thee I keep my lonely watch ♪

827
00:45:07,079 --> 00:45:11,250
♪ Intent thy lightest breath to catch ♪

828
00:45:11,542 --> 00:45:16,130
- It deals with issues of
geography, of the land,

829
00:45:16,422 --> 00:45:19,050
of how we relate to the land,
how we consider the land,

830
00:45:19,342 --> 00:45:22,220
but it also talks about the
idea of television itself.

831
00:45:22,511 --> 00:45:23,888
The lead character, the young boy,

832
00:45:24,180 --> 00:45:25,598
is haunted by a number of figures.

833
00:45:25,890 --> 00:45:27,558
And I mean, he's haunted by a figure

834
00:45:27,850 --> 00:45:29,518
who's basically Mary Whitehouse,

835
00:45:29,810 --> 00:45:32,730
who is presented in the play
as essentially being an avatar

836
00:45:33,022 --> 00:45:36,150
of a kind of Manichaean witchcraft.

837
00:45:36,442 --> 00:45:37,276
(dramatic music)

838
00:45:37,568 --> 00:45:38,986
The idea that there's a sort of battle

839
00:45:39,278 --> 00:45:41,739
between good and evil, and
there's two opposing forces.

840
00:45:42,031 --> 00:45:45,826
This idea that there's good
and evil, purity and impurity,

841
00:45:46,118 --> 00:45:49,205
is something that Rudkin reject.

842
00:45:49,497 --> 00:45:51,832
- My God.
(fire screaming)

843
00:45:52,124 --> 00:45:54,418
(fire blazes)

844
00:45:57,255 --> 00:46:01,217
- There you have seen your
true dark enemies of England.

845
00:46:01,509 --> 00:46:05,846
Sick father and mother who
would have us children forever.

846
00:46:07,098 --> 00:46:08,391
The questions around national identity,

847
00:46:08,683 --> 00:46:09,642
which are often embedded,

848
00:46:09,934 --> 00:46:11,102
especially into British folk horror,

849
00:46:11,394 --> 00:46:13,729
it's there if you want to read it there.

850
00:46:14,021 --> 00:46:15,940
And the paranoias that we have

851
00:46:16,232 --> 00:46:18,901
around national identity are there,

852
00:46:19,819 --> 00:46:21,821
for better or for worse.
- And, you know,

853
00:46:22,113 --> 00:46:25,324
thinking about something like
the play today, "Penda's Fen",

854
00:46:25,616 --> 00:46:27,243
that was within the place they slought,

855
00:46:27,535 --> 00:46:28,828
you know, it has genre elements,

856
00:46:29,120 --> 00:46:31,205
but would not have been seen connecting

857
00:46:31,497 --> 00:46:32,665
with the other things that
we've been talking about.

858
00:46:32,957 --> 00:46:34,667
But something like folk horror

859
00:46:34,959 --> 00:46:36,961
allows that to have a relationship.

860
00:46:37,253 --> 00:46:38,713
(tense suspenseful music)
- Who are you?

861
00:46:39,714 --> 00:46:41,048
Bring me here,

862
00:46:42,425 --> 00:46:45,594
slip of a girl, such short time living,

863
00:46:46,721 --> 00:46:48,764
dead now so long,

864
00:46:49,849 --> 00:46:54,770
still bring me, day after day
bring me to this uneasy place.

865
00:47:03,696 --> 00:47:06,198
(ominous music)

866
00:47:06,490 --> 00:47:09,410
- David Rudkin's later
piece, "The Living Grave",

867
00:47:09,702 --> 00:47:12,079
- Oh, yeah.
- which is all about

868
00:47:12,371 --> 00:47:15,416
this woman, Kitty, who is
buried in Dartmore in Devon,

869
00:47:15,708 --> 00:47:18,169
and put in an unmarked grave.
- In an unmarked grave.

870
00:47:18,461 --> 00:47:20,379
- And so he sort of looks
into the history of her

871
00:47:20,671 --> 00:47:23,215
and who she was, but he does
it in this very curious way

872
00:47:23,507 --> 00:47:26,302
in which he has a woman,
and this is all based

873
00:47:26,594 --> 00:47:29,472
on a true account of a woman
being put under hypnosis.

874
00:47:29,764 --> 00:47:32,350
And then she kind of embodies
and remembers Kitty's past

875
00:47:32,641 --> 00:47:33,601
and kind of recounts her story

876
00:47:33,893 --> 00:47:35,644
through hypnosis.
- And part of the fascination

877
00:47:35,936 --> 00:47:37,730
in that is the kind of the use, again,

878
00:47:38,022 --> 00:47:39,106
of new technology.
- Yeah,

879
00:47:39,398 --> 00:47:40,024
and seeing the past with these

880
00:47:40,316 --> 00:47:42,777
kind of filters.
- And multiple layers

881
00:47:43,069 --> 00:47:45,571
of history and myth.
(dramatic music)

882
00:47:45,863 --> 00:47:49,450
- Such bounty there was, such
fruitfulness, Miss. Palmer,

883
00:47:49,742 --> 00:47:51,660
from the blood that
drained from Robin Hood,

884
00:47:51,952 --> 00:47:53,579
so the old stories say.

885
00:47:53,871 --> 00:47:55,706
- John Bowen wrote "Robin Redbreast”

886
00:47:55,998 --> 00:48:00,419
about a woman who winds up
trapped in a village and trapped

887
00:48:00,711 --> 00:48:03,714
by a pagan conspiracy.
- I'm sorry if I sound

888
00:48:04,006 --> 00:48:06,592
hysterical, I'm alone here.

889
00:48:08,052 --> 00:48:09,887
I keep telling myself
it's only imagination,

890
00:48:10,179 --> 00:48:14,934
but I've had proof now.
(tense suspenseful music)

891
00:48:15,226 --> 00:48:16,602
There's something wrong, Jake.

892
00:48:18,062 --> 00:48:19,522
I don't know what it is.

893
00:48:19,814 --> 00:48:20,856
They're keeping me here for something,

894
00:48:21,148 --> 00:48:23,275
making sure I can't
get away before Easter.

895
00:48:25,694 --> 00:48:27,947
(Norah gasps)

896
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:30,032
- Another aspect of English culture

897
00:48:30,324 --> 00:48:32,326
that lends itself very well to folk horror

898
00:48:32,618 --> 00:48:34,829
is, of course, the class system.

899
00:48:35,121 --> 00:48:37,456
- One mile to the village
and a mile from the road,

900
00:48:37,748 --> 00:48:39,750
I'm going to live in it for awhile.

901
00:48:40,042 --> 00:48:42,503
I've got to get used to
living on my own as it seems.

902
00:48:43,838 --> 00:48:46,257
It's clearly a good place to start.

903
00:48:46,549 --> 00:48:48,092
(ominous music)
- You're looking at

904
00:48:48,384 --> 00:48:50,594
middle class or upper middle class people,

905
00:48:50,886 --> 00:48:53,931
essentially fearing
what lower class people

906
00:48:54,223 --> 00:48:56,559
or poor people do in a countryside.

907
00:48:56,851 --> 00:48:57,893
- As far as I can see
there's no privacy at all

908
00:48:58,185 --> 00:49:00,396
in the country, whatever
you do, wherever you go,

909
00:49:00,688 --> 00:49:01,564
everybody knows.
- If you're going

910
00:49:01,856 --> 00:49:03,107
to go around like Lady Chatterley,

911
00:49:03,399 --> 00:49:04,483
the woods are traditional.

912
00:49:04,775 --> 00:49:06,527
Some mossy glade where you
can feel the rough touch

913
00:49:06,819 --> 00:49:08,154
of the earth on your backside.
- Rough touch

914
00:49:08,446 --> 00:49:10,322
of the nettles more likely.
- Mm.

915
00:49:12,575 --> 00:49:15,119
- Far too many people in the woods.

916
00:49:15,411 --> 00:49:17,496
- People?
- One gets that feeling,

917
00:49:17,788 --> 00:49:22,543
like being watched.
(dramatic tense music)

918
00:49:37,308 --> 00:49:38,559
(suspenseful music)
- Children's TV, as well,

919
00:49:38,851 --> 00:49:39,935
has a lot of folk horror in it,

920
00:49:40,227 --> 00:49:42,104
things like "Children of the Stones",

921
00:49:42,396 --> 00:49:45,774
later on "Moon Dial", "Century Falls."

922
00:49:46,066 --> 00:49:47,109
- You know, things like "Bagpuss”

923
00:49:47,401 --> 00:49:51,280
which is enduringly popular
over many generations,

924
00:49:51,572 --> 00:49:55,409
but is, I find, deeply
sinister with clockwork mice,

925
00:49:55,701 --> 00:49:59,955
talking toys, Victorian parlor
maids all coming to life,

926
00:50:01,123 --> 00:50:04,752
you know, inside a dusty,
spooky, dimly-lit junk shop.

927
00:50:05,044 --> 00:50:07,546
What could be more eerie than that?

928
00:50:07,838 --> 00:50:09,215
- There was sort of really
creepy children's shows,

929
00:50:09,507 --> 00:50:12,885
and I don't know why, but
that was kind of a trend

930
00:50:13,177 --> 00:50:16,972
at that particular point.
(calm upbeat music)

931
00:50:18,849 --> 00:50:23,729
(water splashing)
(engine revving)

932
00:50:24,021 --> 00:50:28,943
(water burbling)
(spooky music)

933
00:50:30,194 --> 00:50:35,115
(dramatic music)
(wings flapping)

934
00:50:37,993 --> 00:50:39,411
(dramatic music)

935
00:50:39,703 --> 00:50:41,288
(spooky music)
(graphic creaking)

936
00:50:41,580 --> 00:50:42,790
- And they all things that were drawing

937
00:50:43,082 --> 00:50:47,753
on British mythology, on
pagan mythology, folklore.

938
00:50:48,045 --> 00:50:49,964
- And I think it was
authors probably tapping

939
00:50:50,256 --> 00:50:53,175
into this mystery that you feel as a child

940
00:50:53,467 --> 00:50:54,677
when you hear these fairytales

941
00:50:54,969 --> 00:50:59,306
and it represents danger as
well as magic and mystery.

942
00:50:59,598 --> 00:51:01,642
Yeah, I think children
are much more intelligent

943
00:51:01,934 --> 00:51:05,854
about understanding
symbolism and metaphor,

944
00:51:06,146 --> 00:51:08,983
they just have an inherent
understanding of it.

945
00:51:09,275 --> 00:51:10,067
- Look at that part,

946
00:51:11,235 --> 00:51:14,071
it's an owl's head, see?
- Yes.

947
00:51:16,198 --> 00:51:18,284
Well, I suppose it is
if you want it to be.

948
00:51:18,576 --> 00:51:20,244
- And I think that in
itself is kinda interesting

949
00:51:20,536 --> 00:51:22,997
and subversive because you
had this kinda generation

950
00:51:23,289 --> 00:51:26,959
who'd grown out of the '60s
suddenly adults, teachers,

951
00:51:27,251 --> 00:51:30,921
infiltrating the theoretically
conservative systems

952
00:51:31,213 --> 00:51:33,340
of education with their
kinda hippie ideas,

953
00:51:33,632 --> 00:51:35,259
their magical ideas.

954
00:51:35,551 --> 00:51:39,096
(dramatic suspenseful music)

955
00:51:40,514 --> 00:51:41,682
- With "The Company of Wolves",

956
00:51:41,974 --> 00:51:44,518
there's a shift from the
children focused stories

957
00:51:44,810 --> 00:51:47,229
that you get in 1970s television series,

958
00:51:47,521 --> 00:51:50,524
such as "Escape Into Night"
or "The Owl Service".

959
00:51:52,776 --> 00:51:55,070
This narrative structure of
having stories within stories

960
00:51:55,362 --> 00:51:58,991
within dreams, to me, seems
to be very much in keeping

961
00:51:59,283 --> 00:52:02,661
with the 1980s trend of
kind of postmodernism,

962
00:52:02,953 --> 00:52:06,498
this use of bricolage and
pastiche to kind of interweave

963
00:52:06,790 --> 00:52:07,916
all these different elements

964
00:52:08,208 --> 00:52:10,502
and inter-textual references together.

965
00:52:10,794 --> 00:52:12,838
So this, I think, relates to all

966
00:52:13,130 --> 00:52:16,258
the kind of numerous
mutations and reiterations

967
00:52:16,550 --> 00:52:19,261
and retellings of
"Little Red Riding Hood."

968
00:52:19,553 --> 00:52:23,140
You have also the fact that in
Angela Carter's source book,

969
00:52:23,432 --> 00:52:27,394
she is kind of taking these
stories and re-imagining them

970
00:52:27,686 --> 00:52:30,981
in a way where they kind of
subvert the original stories

971
00:52:31,273 --> 00:52:33,776
and become, you know, tools of liberation.

972
00:52:36,528 --> 00:52:38,530
And then in the film, you have Rosaline

973
00:52:38,822 --> 00:52:40,491
who through the course of the film,

974
00:52:40,783 --> 00:52:42,868
she becomes a storyteller, but she becomes

975
00:52:43,160 --> 00:52:45,954
a very transgressive one.
- And after the woman

976
00:52:46,246 --> 00:52:47,081
made the wolves come to sing to her

977
00:52:47,373 --> 00:52:48,916
and the baby at night, made them come

978
00:52:49,208 --> 00:52:51,669
and serenade her.
- (laughs) But what pleasure

979
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:54,380
would there be in that,
listening to a lot of wolves?

980
00:52:54,672 --> 00:52:56,548
Don't we have to do it all the time?

981
00:52:56,840 --> 00:52:58,258
- The pleasure would come

982
00:52:58,550 --> 00:52:59,176
from knowing the power
♪ Rock-a-bye baby ♪

983
00:52:59,468 --> 00:53:01,679
- that she had.
♪ On the tree top &

984
00:53:01,970 --> 00:53:03,347
(suspenseful music)
- So she's taking on stories

985
00:53:03,639 --> 00:53:07,434
as a way to kind of explore
in her own power and agency.

986
00:53:07,726 --> 00:53:10,979
- She crept inside
(gentle suspenseful music)

987
00:53:11,271 --> 00:53:16,068
To the world below.
(wheel creaking)

988
00:53:20,656 --> 00:53:22,241
And that's all I'll tell you

989
00:53:24,201 --> 00:53:25,661
because that's all I know.

990
00:53:27,621 --> 00:53:29,248
(tense suspenseful music)

991
00:53:29,540 --> 00:53:32,167
(heavy breathing)

992
00:53:39,508 --> 00:53:42,511
(woman screams)

993
00:53:42,803 --> 00:53:43,762
(dramatic suspenseful music)

994
00:53:44,054 --> 00:53:47,474
- "The Lair of the White
Worm" was based on a story

995
00:53:47,766 --> 00:53:50,853
by Bram Stoker, who, of
course, wrote "Dracula”,

996
00:53:51,145 --> 00:53:53,230
it's kind of set, you know,
in contemporary times,

997
00:53:53,522 --> 00:53:54,231
in the 1980s.

998
00:53:54,523 --> 00:53:58,736
And at that time, you had
this trend for heritage films,

999
00:53:59,027 --> 00:54:01,739
looking at Britain's imperialist history

1000
00:54:02,030 --> 00:54:03,490
with a sense of nostalgia.

1001
00:54:03,782 --> 00:54:05,451
And that was very much in keeping with,

1002
00:54:05,743 --> 00:54:06,869
you know, this heritage industry

1003
00:54:07,161 --> 00:54:09,246
that was being fueled by this nostalgia.

1004
00:54:09,538 --> 00:54:11,540
So I think one of the ways that both

1005
00:54:11,832 --> 00:54:14,710
"The Lair of the White Worm"
and "The Company of Wolves"

1006
00:54:15,002 --> 00:54:17,880
reject their heritage
film is the upper classes

1007
00:54:18,172 --> 00:54:21,258
become completely monstrous
and completely inhuman.

1008
00:54:21,550 --> 00:54:22,092
(dramatic ethereal music)

1009
00:54:22,384 --> 00:54:23,844
(Dionin teeth crunching)
(Angus screams)

1010
00:54:24,136 --> 00:54:26,221
In the heritage film, you have landscape

1011
00:54:26,513 --> 00:54:28,390
which becomes scenery
and that's very different

1012
00:54:28,682 --> 00:54:31,602
to the kind of darker way
that the landscape is used

1013
00:54:31,894 --> 00:54:34,396
in "The Lair of the White
Worm", it really emphasizes

1014
00:54:34,688 --> 00:54:36,815
kind of the phallic and the yonic forms.

1015
00:54:37,107 --> 00:54:38,567
And you have these underground caves

1016
00:54:38,859 --> 00:54:41,445
where the snake god resides.
(snake hissing)

1017
00:54:41,737 --> 00:54:42,404
(Dionin screams)

1018
00:54:42,696 --> 00:54:44,114
(dramatic suspenseful music)
- It's something

1019
00:54:44,406 --> 00:54:46,992
about Britishness that we think of

1020
00:54:47,284 --> 00:54:48,660
as very much to do with order.

1021
00:54:48,952 --> 00:54:51,163
There's a kind of stereotypical impression

1022
00:54:51,455 --> 00:54:54,708
of a British person is quite
uptight, quite repressed,

1023
00:54:55,000 --> 00:54:57,544
manners, rules, all of this kind of thing.

1024
00:54:57,836 --> 00:54:59,630
And when you uncover that,

1025
00:54:59,922 --> 00:55:01,089
it's this sort of idea
that there's something

1026
00:55:01,381 --> 00:55:03,091
much wilder underneath.

1027
00:55:03,383 --> 00:55:05,093
(bell chiming)

1028
00:55:05,385 --> 00:55:07,221
(dramatic suspenseful music)

1029
00:55:07,513 --> 00:55:09,014
For my film "Prevenge"

1030
00:55:09,306 --> 00:55:12,267
I did quite a lot of research
about human sacrifice

1031
00:55:12,559 --> 00:55:15,270
because there are remains of
bodies that have been dug up

1032
00:55:15,562 --> 00:55:18,565
in the UK that they think were
possibly human sacrifices.

1033
00:55:18,857 --> 00:55:22,486
And when you contrast
that with what our idea

1034
00:55:22,778 --> 00:55:26,615
of Britishness is, it makes
you feel like our ancestors

1035
00:55:26,907 --> 00:55:30,994
are alien to us.
(wind whistling)

1036
00:55:31,286 --> 00:55:34,665
(gentle suspenseful music)

1037
00:55:39,503 --> 00:55:40,170
(tense music)
- But this idea

1038
00:55:40,462 --> 00:55:41,046
of what's in the ground

1039
00:55:41,338 --> 00:55:43,674
and this attempt to
bury the old traditions,

1040
00:55:43,966 --> 00:55:45,884
trying to hide or dismiss
where we come from,

1041
00:55:46,176 --> 00:55:48,053
is still the key idea
of British folk horror,

1042
00:55:48,345 --> 00:55:51,348
right up to today.
(tense music)

1043
00:56:02,025 --> 00:56:02,943
- Whitehead.

1044
00:56:04,152 --> 00:56:07,573
Come friend, I'll protect you
from yourself as best I can.

1045
00:56:07,865 --> 00:56:10,576
(slow tense music)

1046
00:56:33,307 --> 00:56:33,974
(gentle suspenseful music)
- In a way

1047
00:56:34,266 --> 00:56:35,475
it's a historical drama,

1048
00:56:36,685 --> 00:56:38,437
but there's a sense of uncanny,

1049
00:56:38,729 --> 00:56:41,648
there's a sense of the
history of the nation.

1050
00:56:41,940 --> 00:56:43,108
- What do you see, friend?

1051
00:56:46,612 --> 00:56:49,406
- Nothing, perhaps, (panting)

1052
00:56:49,698 --> 00:56:50,991
(drums beating)
only shadows.

1053
00:56:56,538 --> 00:56:59,750
(tense drum music)
- The blood

1054
00:57:00,042 --> 00:57:01,168
flows into the soil,

1055
00:57:02,210 --> 00:57:04,671
it's still there, it's still resonant.

1056
00:57:13,305 --> 00:57:14,723
- Generally speaking, we wanna believe

1057
00:57:15,015 --> 00:57:18,852
that the thoughts and fears and beliefs

1058
00:57:19,144 --> 00:57:21,897
of a past generation, we've
sort of transcended them,

1059
00:57:22,189 --> 00:57:23,523
we've grown out of them,

1060
00:57:23,815 --> 00:57:24,399
we're above them.

1061
00:57:24,691 --> 00:57:26,526
Horror films always pose this problem

1062
00:57:26,818 --> 00:57:28,737
that, in fact, it's not as simple as that.

1063
00:57:38,789 --> 00:57:41,458
- SO you have a short TV
play called "Murrain”,

1064
00:57:41,750 --> 00:57:44,378
which is about a vet who discovers

1065
00:57:44,670 --> 00:57:48,256
that a group of local
farmers and farm laborers

1066
00:57:48,548 --> 00:57:49,675
have turned against an old woman

1067
00:57:49,967 --> 00:57:51,134
because they're convinced
that she's a witch

1068
00:57:51,426 --> 00:57:52,678
who's cursed them.

1069
00:57:52,970 --> 00:57:55,263
And it's a lovely little character piece.

1070
00:57:55,555 --> 00:58:00,352
It has a moment in the
middle where he discovers

1071
00:58:01,937 --> 00:58:04,314
that these farmers believe
that they're cursed.

1072
00:58:05,399 --> 00:58:07,567
And he says, "But, you
know, what about science?"

1073
00:58:07,859 --> 00:58:10,654
- They've got you trained
to thinking nothings true

1074
00:58:10,946 --> 00:58:12,906
if it's not in books or you can't shove it

1075
00:58:13,198 --> 00:58:13,907
in a bottle and analyze it.

1076
00:58:14,199 --> 00:58:15,075
- That's called knowledge.
- Work out the rules

1077
00:58:15,367 --> 00:58:17,160
and when the rules don't
fit, don't jab 'em.

1078
00:58:17,452 --> 00:58:19,079
- The purpose of science-
- Until you found

1079
00:58:19,371 --> 00:58:21,707
you got the rules wrong.
- And the vet says.

1080
00:58:21,999 --> 00:58:23,750
- Then we change the rules.
- Oh!

1081
00:58:24,042 --> 00:58:25,627
- When the rules don't
work, we make new rules,

1082
00:58:25,919 --> 00:58:27,170
we work it out.

1083
00:58:27,462 --> 00:58:31,133
- But we don't go back.
(calm music)

1084
00:58:32,134 --> 00:58:33,885
“And we don't go back”

1085
00:58:35,846 --> 00:58:39,266
is the fundamental tension of folk horror.

1086
00:58:44,021 --> 00:58:48,191
We don't go back because if we go back,

1087
00:58:49,234 --> 00:58:52,029
we enter a realm of
superstition and madness.

1088
00:58:56,575 --> 00:58:58,493
(woman screaming)

1089
00:58:58,785 --> 00:59:03,582
(man screaming)
(dramatic music)

1090
00:59:07,461 --> 00:59:10,922
- [Black Phillip] Wouldst
thou like to live deliciously?

1091
00:59:11,214 --> 00:59:14,843
(ominous music)
(witch cackles)

1092
00:59:15,135 --> 00:59:17,095
(women screaming)
- By the pricking

1093
00:59:17,387 --> 00:59:22,184
of my thumbs, something wicked
this way comes. (cackles)

1094
00:59:24,019 --> 00:59:26,605
- Shall be done, the cold
cast of days and nights,

1095
00:59:26,897 --> 00:59:28,356
the magic one.

1096
00:59:28,648 --> 00:59:30,525
♪ They're now sleeping, what ♪

1097
00:59:30,817 --> 00:59:33,487
♪ Who's that ghost in the town, what ♪

1098
00:59:33,779 --> 00:59:37,324
(mystical suspenseful music)

1099
00:59:38,825 --> 00:59:41,495
- There were lots of things
that were in the air,

1100
00:59:41,787 --> 00:59:45,040
and I think that in the 1970s,

1101
00:59:45,332 --> 00:59:49,961
you had one of the very first
periods in the 20th century

1102
00:59:50,253 --> 00:59:53,256
British history, where people,
for a long time anyway,

1103
00:59:53,548 --> 00:59:55,675
where people became
convinced that actually Britain

1104
00:59:55,967 --> 00:59:57,135
wasn't kind of great.

1105
00:59:57,427 --> 01:00:00,597
You come out of the '60s, which
is a very celebratory era,

1106
01:00:00,889 --> 01:00:03,934
and suddenly you have
a period of austerity,

1107
01:00:04,226 --> 01:00:06,645
you have a government
that calls an election

1108
01:00:06,937 --> 01:00:07,896
thinking they're gonna smash it

1109
01:00:08,188 --> 01:00:09,773
and then it goes a bit wrong.

1110
01:00:10,065 --> 01:00:13,318
You have a big, divisive
referendum about Europe.

1111
01:00:13,610 --> 01:00:15,320
Over the pond, you have
an American president

1112
01:00:15,612 --> 01:00:17,781
who's going through like
a two year long scandal

1113
01:00:18,073 --> 01:00:20,575
about things he did wrong
in his reelection campaign.

1114
01:00:20,867 --> 01:00:25,497
None of these things are
sort of exist in isolation,

1115
01:00:25,789 --> 01:00:27,415
SO you also have like this big rise

1116
01:00:27,707 --> 01:00:29,751
in interest in the occult.

1117
01:00:30,043 --> 01:00:31,086
♪ Jet white dove ♪

1118
01:00:31,378 --> 01:00:32,629
♪ Snow black snake ♪

1119
01:00:32,921 --> 01:00:35,715
♪ Time has turned it's face ♪

1120
01:00:36,007 --> 01:00:38,426
♪ From the edge of mystery ♪

1121
01:00:38,718 --> 01:00:41,972
♪ Where running is no race ♪

1122
01:00:42,264 --> 01:00:43,431
♪ Ageless night ♪

1123
01:00:43,723 --> 01:00:44,766
♪ Careless day ♪

1124
01:00:45,058 --> 01:00:47,894
♪ Fate reaches out a hand ♪

1125
01:00:48,186 --> 01:00:50,814
♪ To touch the edge of destiny ♪

1126
01:00:51,106 --> 01:00:54,067
♪ A story with no end ♪

1127
01:00:58,780 --> 01:01:00,574
- A lot of witchcraft
going on in the late '60s

1128
01:01:00,866 --> 01:01:05,662
which is becoming a more prevalent idea

1129
01:01:06,329 --> 01:01:08,790
amongst young, educated intellectuals.

1130
01:01:09,082 --> 01:01:11,418
It's no longer just a thing
that the country folk do.

1131
01:01:11,710 --> 01:01:13,336
When you have like the
films of Kenneth Anger,

1132
01:01:13,628 --> 01:01:15,881
there's this kinda sense that witchcraft

1133
01:01:16,173 --> 01:01:18,216
is becoming
- I think it's a modern thing.

1134
01:01:18,508 --> 01:01:19,050
- A modern thing.
- You know,

1135
01:01:19,342 --> 01:01:20,468
magic can be modern, it's not
just something in the past.

1136
01:01:20,760 --> 01:01:22,095
- The factories were closing

1137
01:01:22,387 --> 01:01:24,973
so the kids went off travelling.
They followed The Beatles,

1138
01:01:25,265 --> 01:01:27,392
really, to India.
- Far from the noise

1139
01:01:27,684 --> 01:01:30,854
and pace of city life, in the
cool, clear air of Rishikesh,

1140
01:01:31,146 --> 01:01:34,399
North India, Pathe News reports
from the meditation retreat

1141
01:01:34,691 --> 01:01:38,069
of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
- They discovered cheap drugs,

1142
01:01:38,361 --> 01:01:39,946
they discovered different ways of life.

1143
01:01:40,238 --> 01:01:43,074
They discovered entire ways of being

1144
01:01:43,366 --> 01:01:45,076
that were intact for thousands of years

1145
01:01:45,368 --> 01:01:46,620
and that intrigued them.

1146
01:01:46,912 --> 01:01:49,915
And they came back here
and wanted to know,

1147
01:01:50,207 --> 01:01:52,125
well, where's England's one?

1148
01:01:52,417 --> 01:01:53,376
How do we do it?

1149
01:01:53,668 --> 01:01:55,670
Witchcraft is the only
religion that the UK

1150
01:01:55,962 --> 01:01:57,589
has ever given to the world.

1151
01:01:57,881 --> 01:02:01,009
And it was so popular
amongst musicians and people,

1152
01:02:01,301 --> 01:02:03,386
and so because famous people were,

1153
01:02:03,678 --> 01:02:06,473
the rest of people
followed and it just grew

1154
01:02:06,765 --> 01:02:08,016
and grew and grew from there.

1155
01:02:08,308 --> 01:02:12,145
- And it's not like everybody
knew a spiritus medium

1156
01:02:12,437 --> 01:02:15,732
or knew a pagan, but
everybody knew someone

1157
01:02:16,024 --> 01:02:17,943
who knew a pagan.
- Lonely,

1158
01:02:19,027 --> 01:02:20,820
Diana desired another.

1159
01:02:21,988 --> 01:02:24,282
That desire became the dawn.

1160
01:02:25,242 --> 01:02:30,121
And from the dawn came the
son, Lucifer, the God of Light.

1161
01:02:30,622 --> 01:02:33,208
(ominous music)

1162
01:02:35,168 --> 01:02:38,797
- Pagan and sort of folk
culture is very much part

1163
01:02:39,089 --> 01:02:40,215
of where I'm from.

1164
01:02:40,507 --> 01:02:43,009
Like when I was at school,
we'd do, quote unquote,

1165
01:02:43,301 --> 01:02:44,970
country dancing, which
was the sort of thing

1166
01:02:45,262 --> 01:02:47,389
you see in "The Wicker
Man", where we'd go out

1167
01:02:47,681 --> 01:02:49,140
and we'd dance around the maypole.

1168
01:02:49,432 --> 01:02:52,560
Christian festivals like
Candlemas and Harvest Festival

1169
01:02:52,852 --> 01:02:55,939
were intertwined with
these sort of folk customs.

1170
01:02:56,231 --> 01:02:59,317
So it was very much part
of the local culture

1171
01:02:59,609 --> 01:03:02,779
to integrate these two
things, because traditionally,

1172
01:03:03,071 --> 01:03:06,700
Christianity and paganism
have always been sort of mesh.

1173
01:03:06,992 --> 01:03:10,287
(bell chiming)
- And so,

1174
01:03:10,578 --> 01:03:14,416
at this time of fulfillment
of the country year,

1175
01:03:14,708 --> 01:03:18,628
let our thoughts return to that one source

1176
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:21,756
from which all good gifts come from,

1177
01:03:22,590 --> 01:03:26,261
to bring it forth once more in the spring

1178
01:03:26,553 --> 01:03:29,931
when the green shoots pierce the Earth.

1179
01:03:30,223 --> 01:03:33,601
In praise of the only bigoter

1180
01:03:33,893 --> 01:03:37,897
of all held goodness.
- This cup

1181
01:03:38,189 --> 01:03:39,691
is the new covenant in my blood.

1182
01:03:41,026 --> 01:03:43,236
This oft as you drink
it in remembrance of me.

1183
01:03:44,237 --> 01:03:48,450
For as often as you eat this
bread and drink this wine,

1184
01:03:50,243 --> 01:03:51,703
you do show the Lord's death

1185
01:03:53,038 --> 01:03:56,291
(gentle suspenseful music)
till he comes again.

1186
01:03:56,583 --> 01:03:58,877
- For the 1973 film, "The Wicker Man",

1187
01:03:59,878 --> 01:04:03,423
director Robin Hardy and
script writer Anthony Shaffer

1188
01:04:03,715 --> 01:04:06,301
researched with books such
as "The White Goddess"

1189
01:04:06,593 --> 01:04:10,972
by Robert Graves and "The
Golden Bough" by James Frazer.

1190
01:04:11,264 --> 01:04:15,894
Now, these books have since
been questioned by academics

1191
01:04:16,186 --> 01:04:20,982
and scholars as to the
authenticity of the folk customs

1192
01:04:21,691 --> 01:04:24,569
and religious rites which
are contained within the books.

1193
01:04:24,861 --> 01:04:28,156
You have certain things
such as the Mummers Parade,

1194
01:04:28,448 --> 01:04:30,408
you have the Hand of Glory.

1195
01:04:30,700 --> 01:04:32,619
You have "The Wicker Man" itself,

1196
01:04:32,911 --> 01:04:37,540
the existence of which was
quoted in Roman times

1197
01:04:37,832 --> 01:04:40,627
by Roman invaders and it still isn't known

1198
01:04:40,919 --> 01:04:43,129
whether it was a clever
piece of propaganda

1199
01:04:43,421 --> 01:04:47,801
or whether people in the
Celtic and Gaeilge countries

1200
01:04:48,093 --> 01:04:51,262
did actually burn animals
and possibly other people

1201
01:04:51,554 --> 01:04:56,351
as sacrifices within giant
humanoid wicker structures.

1202
01:04:58,228 --> 01:05:00,730
- Of course, the difficulty
is there's no Bible

1203
01:05:01,022 --> 01:05:02,690
of what these customs were.

1204
01:05:02,982 --> 01:05:07,695
So often you're connecting
it with revived or reinvented

1205
01:05:07,987 --> 01:05:10,407
customs via modern witchcraft,

1206
01:05:10,698 --> 01:05:13,076
and people like Doreen
Valiente, who was, you know,

1207
01:05:13,368 --> 01:05:16,746
the doyen of what we think
as traditional things that,

1208
01:05:17,038 --> 01:05:18,498
well, they had their roots in tradition,

1209
01:05:18,790 --> 01:05:20,166
but they were invented.

1210
01:05:20,458 --> 01:05:23,586
But movies will always need
to go for what looks good

1211
01:05:23,878 --> 01:05:27,173
on screen, so they may
well play their own game.

1212
01:05:27,465 --> 01:05:29,801
And sometimes it's
frustrating for a folklorist

1213
01:05:30,093 --> 01:05:34,013
because what it says in the
movie becomes the folklore.

1214
01:05:34,305 --> 01:05:36,099
- What's this?
- Tell me,

1215
01:05:37,475 --> 01:05:40,979
do you believe in magic?
(ominous music)

1216
01:05:50,029 --> 01:05:53,324
You also have films such as
Robert Eggers' “The Witch,”

1217
01:05:53,616 --> 01:05:57,704
which I love for the
elements of witchcraft

1218
01:05:57,996 --> 01:06:01,207
that have not appeared in film beforehand.

1219
01:06:01,499 --> 01:06:04,335
The things such as the
transformation into a hare.

1220
01:06:09,424 --> 01:06:14,012
- The hare is a huge part of
folklore in Western Europe,

1221
01:06:15,430 --> 01:06:16,764
particularly the British Isles,

1222
01:06:17,056 --> 01:06:19,601
but we don't really have hares,

1223
01:06:19,893 --> 01:06:21,519
you know, there's jackrabbits out West

1224
01:06:21,811 --> 01:06:23,563
in American mythology, but in New England,

1225
01:06:23,855 --> 01:06:27,317
we didn't really have
that, so that whole line

1226
01:06:27,609 --> 01:06:29,694
was lost.
- The pulverizing

1227
01:06:29,986 --> 01:06:32,780
of a baby's body to make flying ointment,

1228
01:06:33,072 --> 01:06:36,659
the signing the "Book of
Shadows", things like this

1229
01:06:36,951 --> 01:06:40,788
relates to stuff such as
"The Malia Smell for Kamon",

1230
01:06:41,080 --> 01:06:42,916
and "The Discovery of Witches".

1231
01:06:43,208 --> 01:06:46,836
(tense music)
- Witches is one area

1232
01:06:47,128 --> 01:06:50,131
where we do have more of
a folk horror tradition

1233
01:06:50,423 --> 01:06:52,634
in the United States because
of the Salem witch trials.

1234
01:06:52,926 --> 01:06:56,971
And because the Puritans
wrote everything down,

1235
01:06:57,263 --> 01:06:59,265
New England was the most literate place

1236
01:06:59,557 --> 01:07:01,851
in the Western world in the 17th century,

1237
01:07:02,143 --> 01:07:05,980
you know, Cotton Mather
being one of, you know,

1238
01:07:06,272 --> 01:07:08,525
tons and tons and tons of
Puritans who were obsessive

1239
01:07:08,816 --> 01:07:09,984
about writing things down.

1240
01:07:10,276 --> 01:07:11,402
- "Memorable Providences,

1241
01:07:11,694 --> 01:07:14,948
Relating to Witchcraft and
Possession” by Cotton Mather.

1242
01:07:15,240 --> 01:07:16,282
I read from it all the time.

1243
01:07:16,574 --> 01:07:20,286
- The witch is a source
of persistent fascination

1244
01:07:20,578 --> 01:07:23,206
and consternation throughout the world.

1245
01:07:23,498 --> 01:07:26,334
This is true in Africa,
this is true in Europe,

1246
01:07:26,626 --> 01:07:28,211
this is true in the South Pacific,

1247
01:07:28,503 --> 01:07:30,797
and this is true in the United States.

1248
01:07:31,089 --> 01:07:33,424
And it really begs questions

1249
01:07:33,716 --> 01:07:38,346
about how uncomfortable
humanity as a whole

1250
01:07:38,638 --> 01:07:41,432
has been with feminine power.

1251
01:07:41,724 --> 01:07:43,893
- I think as well because of
the sort of feminist readings

1252
01:07:44,185 --> 01:07:46,729
you can make of folk horror, specifically,

1253
01:07:47,021 --> 01:07:50,316
because of the witch
figure, and goddesses,

1254
01:07:50,608 --> 01:07:52,110
and this connection to femininity.

1255
01:07:52,402 --> 01:07:55,071
- And I think that's reflected
also in "Night of the Eagle”,

1256
01:07:55,363 --> 01:07:56,864
which is a film with Peter Wyngarde,

1257
01:07:57,156 --> 01:07:58,950
also about a sort of very rational guy

1258
01:07:59,242 --> 01:08:01,244
who's a college lecturer, but his wife

1259
01:08:01,536 --> 01:08:03,830
has been doing witchcraft
to sort of protect

1260
01:08:04,122 --> 01:08:05,081
his position at the school.

1261
01:08:05,373 --> 01:08:07,166
And he says, "That's
stupid, we shouldn't use

1262
01:08:07,458 --> 01:08:09,335
witchcraft anymore, we're
modern, we're rational.”

1263
01:08:09,627 --> 01:08:12,088
And she stopped from doing
this witchcraft stuff

1264
01:08:12,380 --> 01:08:14,090
and then bad stuff
starts to happen to him.

1265
01:08:14,382 --> 01:08:16,259
So it's this sense that
even though he's rational,

1266
01:08:16,551 --> 01:08:18,636
even though he chooses
not to believe in it,

1267
01:08:18,928 --> 01:08:21,264
maybe the old forces still have power.

1268
01:08:21,556 --> 01:08:22,140
(ominous music)
- I want some

1269
01:08:22,432 --> 01:08:25,226
kind of explanation.
- Isn't it obvious?

1270
01:08:26,811 --> 01:08:30,481
I'm a witch.
(dramatic music)

1271
01:08:30,773 --> 01:08:33,276
- When we think of horror cinematically,

1272
01:08:33,568 --> 01:08:35,737
we're looking at a male
dominated genre from there,

1273
01:08:36,029 --> 01:08:38,364
we're looking at the Draculas,
the Frankensteins,

1274
01:08:38,656 --> 01:08:40,241
you know, and that sort of thing.

1275
01:08:40,533 --> 01:08:42,285
And then by the time it gets to the '60s,

1276
01:08:42,577 --> 01:08:45,872
we start to see more
powerful female characters,

1277
01:08:46,164 --> 01:08:47,290
things in like Hammers' "The Witches."

1278
01:08:47,582 --> 01:08:50,668
- We have all these different figures

1279
01:08:50,960 --> 01:08:52,086
that we're fascinated with,

1280
01:08:52,378 --> 01:08:55,548
the zombie, the vampire, the werewolf.

1281
01:08:55,840 --> 01:08:57,634
We're fascinated with
issues of reincarnation,

1282
01:08:57,925 --> 01:09:00,011
all these things that touch
upon the supernatural,

1283
01:09:00,303 --> 01:09:01,888
but none like the witch.

1284
01:09:02,180 --> 01:09:05,475
And that puts us in
front of a huge question.

1285
01:09:05,767 --> 01:09:07,935
- When you look at traditionally witches,

1286
01:09:08,227 --> 01:09:10,063
we have this idea of the hag,

1287
01:09:10,355 --> 01:09:12,440
this old woman, the medicine bringer,

1288
01:09:12,732 --> 01:09:14,942
traditionally, she would have
been the midwife, the doctor,

1289
01:09:15,234 --> 01:09:17,570
she would have had a
purpose in the community.

1290
01:09:17,862 --> 01:09:18,905
She would have had power.

1291
01:09:19,197 --> 01:09:22,575
- It's impossible to
understand the development

1292
01:09:22,867 --> 01:09:27,205
of the Suffragist Movement in America

1293
01:09:27,497 --> 01:09:32,293
without understanding how it
was intertwined in its DNA

1294
01:09:32,627 --> 01:09:37,548
with American occultism, the
two were absolutely joined.

1295
01:09:37,924 --> 01:09:41,886
- In the 1800s when you had occult belief

1296
01:09:42,178 --> 01:09:44,138
and occult activity become more prominent,

1297
01:09:44,430 --> 01:09:47,892
you saw prominent female
figures holding high ranking,

1298
01:09:48,184 --> 01:09:50,019
well, look at Madame Blavatsky,

1299
01:09:50,311 --> 01:09:52,689
she founded the Theosophical Society.

1300
01:09:52,980 --> 01:09:55,191
You know, high priestesses
like Moina Mathers,

1301
01:09:55,483 --> 01:09:58,361
who came out of the Hermetic
Order of the Golden Dawn.

1302
01:09:58,653 --> 01:10:00,905
- The earliest spirit
mediums, when the movement

1303
01:10:01,197 --> 01:10:04,367
of spiritualism swept
the country, were women.

1304
01:10:04,659 --> 01:10:09,455
And this became the
first time in modern life

1305
01:10:09,956 --> 01:10:13,584
that women could serve
as religious leaders

1306
01:10:13,876 --> 01:10:16,295
of a certain sort.
- And I think

1307
01:10:16,587 --> 01:10:18,214
it's this thing of women having power

1308
01:10:18,506 --> 01:10:22,468
that makes it so scary.
- "The Witch" represents

1309
01:10:22,760 --> 01:10:27,515
men's fears, and fantasies,
and ambivalences about women

1310
01:10:28,599 --> 01:10:31,310
and female power and female sexuality.

1311
01:10:31,602 --> 01:10:33,688
You know, she also
embodies women's own fears

1312
01:10:33,980 --> 01:10:37,024
and anxieties about
their power in themselves

1313
01:10:37,316 --> 01:10:39,986
in a male dominated
society, to some extent,

1314
01:10:40,278 --> 01:10:43,406
certainly that's what the
like evil fairy tale witch is.

1315
01:10:43,698 --> 01:10:46,409
(slow tense music)

1316
01:10:52,081 --> 01:10:55,168
- Even if you look at something
like Benjamin Christensen's

1317
01:10:55,460 --> 01:10:58,254
silent film "Haxan",
there's this connection

1318
01:10:58,546 --> 01:11:00,631
between mental illness and witchcraft.

1319
01:11:00,923 --> 01:11:04,969
And he sort of points out this
idea that maybe these figures

1320
01:11:05,261 --> 01:11:07,180
aren't evil, maybe
they're not supernatural,

1321
01:11:07,472 --> 01:11:10,725
maybe they're just different
for a wide variety of reasons.

1322
01:11:11,017 --> 01:11:13,269
And I think, to me,
that's the common thread

1323
01:11:13,561 --> 01:11:17,106
is this female type
that's existing outside

1324
01:11:17,398 --> 01:11:20,568
of what is expected of her
and what she's supposed to be.

1325
01:11:20,860 --> 01:11:24,489
We all have things that have
become our folk traditions.

1326
01:11:24,781 --> 01:11:26,199
- When we get to the '80s and '90s,

1327
01:11:26,491 --> 01:11:28,618
the witches become "Girl Power",

1328
01:11:28,910 --> 01:11:30,620
it's become "The Witches of Eastwick",

1329
01:11:30,912 --> 01:11:31,996
it's become "The Craft".

1330
01:11:32,288 --> 01:11:35,416
It's become cool to be this
powerful witchy figure.

1331
01:11:35,708 --> 01:11:38,419
- You know, 'cause we are marvelous

1332
01:11:38,711 --> 01:11:40,797
because we all still the renegades,

1333
01:11:41,088 --> 01:11:42,632
and we're happy to be the renegades.

1334
01:11:42,924 --> 01:11:44,592
I don't wanna be respectful,
thank you very much.

1335
01:11:44,884 --> 01:11:46,969
- You girls watch out for those weirdos.

1336
01:11:47,261 --> 01:11:49,305
- (scoffs) We are the weirdos, Mister.

1337
01:11:51,349 --> 01:11:52,892
(dramatic music)
(bus door thuds)

1338
01:11:53,184 --> 01:11:56,646
- So I think that's why
the witch, of all monsters,

1339
01:11:56,938 --> 01:11:59,524
is the most dangerous
because she represents

1340
01:11:59,816 --> 01:12:02,401
feminine world takeover. (laughs)

1341
01:12:03,736 --> 01:12:08,658
(dramatic suspenseful music)
(Thomasin cackles)

1342
01:12:18,251 --> 01:12:22,255
(tense suspenseful music)

1343
01:12:22,547 --> 01:12:24,924
(fire blazing)

1344
01:12:31,138 --> 01:12:33,558
- It's impossible to really
understand the history

1345
01:12:33,850 --> 01:12:35,852
of this country, unless one understands

1346
01:12:36,143 --> 01:12:39,146
that religious experimentation,
religious radicalism

1347
01:12:39,438 --> 01:12:42,358
was there at its very, very root.

1348
01:12:44,026 --> 01:12:48,239
Going back to the 1600s, the US Colonies

1349
01:12:48,531 --> 01:12:51,117
were considered a safe harbor for people

1350
01:12:51,409 --> 01:12:53,828
with radical religious beliefs,

1351
01:12:54,120 --> 01:12:58,082
all kinds of different little
mystical Christian grouplets

1352
01:12:58,374 --> 01:13:00,042
from throughout Europe.

1353
01:13:00,334 --> 01:13:03,421
And that inspired people to
found their own colonies,

1354
01:13:03,713 --> 01:13:06,299
and very early on, very early on

1355
01:13:06,591 --> 01:13:10,511
in American colonial history,
you start to hear about things

1356
01:13:10,803 --> 01:13:14,515
that we later came to call
seances, and channeling,

1357
01:13:14,807 --> 01:13:18,895
and mediums, and people
were sort of branching off

1358
01:13:19,186 --> 01:13:20,855
into these little grouplets.

1359
01:13:21,147 --> 01:13:23,232
It was a very, very rural country.

1360
01:13:23,524 --> 01:13:26,235
You really had very little social life

1361
01:13:26,527 --> 01:13:30,364
outside of farm, trade, and church,

1362
01:13:30,656 --> 01:13:35,453
and people would experiment.
(spooky ominous music)

1363
01:13:42,209 --> 01:13:45,046
They would form either into
preexisting fraternal orders,

1364
01:13:45,338 --> 01:13:47,757
like Freemasonry, or they would form

1365
01:13:48,049 --> 01:13:49,383
their own little colonies.

1366
01:13:49,675 --> 01:13:52,511
(calm upbeat music)
- Mr. Will said

1367
01:13:52,803 --> 01:13:56,599
we'd start our own settlement
in the promised land.

1368
01:13:57,558 --> 01:13:59,769
He said, if we just
floated down the river,

1369
01:14:00,061 --> 01:14:03,356
it would find us.
(birds chirping)

1370
01:14:04,565 --> 01:14:07,652
- I first used the term
folk horror in 2006

1371
01:14:07,944 --> 01:14:09,862
when I was writing a book
called "American Gothic",

1372
01:14:10,154 --> 01:14:14,325
and on that occasion, I
referred to a 1923 silent film

1373
01:14:14,617 --> 01:14:17,828
called "Puritan Passions" as folk horror.

1374
01:14:18,120 --> 01:14:19,246
And that film is now lost,

1375
01:14:19,538 --> 01:14:22,750
but it was based on stories
by Nathaniel Hawthorne,

1376
01:14:23,042 --> 01:14:26,253
who was a 19th century
contemporary of Edgar Allen Poe's.

1377
01:14:26,545 --> 01:14:28,047
And they had a very personal stake

1378
01:14:28,339 --> 01:14:30,800
in America's ancestral
folk horror, if you like,

1379
01:14:31,092 --> 01:14:33,052
in that one of his
ancestors had been a judge

1380
01:14:33,344 --> 01:14:36,305
at the Salem witch trials.
- Fasten your seatbelts,

1381
01:14:36,597 --> 01:14:38,933
everybody, Harold is about
to conduct another one

1382
01:14:39,225 --> 01:14:41,602
of his tours to the 17th century.

1383
01:14:41,894 --> 01:14:44,605
- 17th century, that was in
the Puritan times, wasn't it?

1384
01:14:44,897 --> 01:14:47,608
(witches cackling)

1385
01:14:53,155 --> 01:14:55,199
- The horror trope of the small town

1386
01:14:55,491 --> 01:14:58,244
hiding a terrible secret
is influenced very much

1387
01:14:58,536 --> 01:15:00,621
by the Puritan legacy and by the legacy

1388
01:15:00,913 --> 01:15:03,165
of the Salem witch trials in particular.

1389
01:15:03,457 --> 01:15:05,960
And I think that perhaps
the deepest disquiet of all

1390
01:15:06,252 --> 01:15:08,504
comes from the recognition
that the community

1391
01:15:08,796 --> 01:15:10,798
in the wilderness could
turn against itself

1392
01:15:11,090 --> 01:15:13,175
with really frightening speed.

1393
01:15:13,467 --> 01:15:16,012
- Kill, Kill, kill, kill.
- Now, the specter

1394
01:15:16,303 --> 01:15:17,346
of the colony that fields

1395
01:15:17,638 --> 01:15:19,807
is one of the most powerful anxieties

1396
01:15:20,099 --> 01:15:21,142
in the American psyche.

1397
01:15:21,434 --> 01:15:24,145
And it manifests itself
time and time again

1398
01:15:24,437 --> 01:15:27,314
in the rural gothic and in folk horror.

1399
01:15:27,606 --> 01:15:30,651
- Most American horror, American
gothic, think Stephen King,

1400
01:15:30,943 --> 01:15:35,239
has its roots in the same
European witchcraft anxiety,

1401
01:15:35,531 --> 01:15:38,701
so ""Salem's Lot", you
know, "Pet Sematary”,

1402
01:15:38,993 --> 01:15:40,995
although “Pet Semetary”
has its First Nations,

1403
01:15:41,287 --> 01:15:42,872
Native American narrative, too.

1404
01:15:44,290 --> 01:15:46,751
- Yeah, so the Puritans
are weird. (laughs)

1405
01:15:47,043 --> 01:15:49,628
They believed a lot of weird stuff.

1406
01:15:49,920 --> 01:15:52,339
When they arrived to the
Americas, they thought

1407
01:15:52,631 --> 01:15:55,342
the New England colonies
would be like paradise.

1408
01:15:55,634 --> 01:15:58,054
And so when they realized that
there were other people here

1409
01:15:58,345 --> 01:16:00,556
that had been here for
many, many years before,

1410
01:16:00,848 --> 01:16:04,769
they basically read them as
like manifestations of Satan.

1411
01:16:05,061 --> 01:16:07,855
And so Native Americans,
according to Puritans,

1412
01:16:08,147 --> 01:16:11,150
were put on this earth
to basically test them.

1413
01:16:12,068 --> 01:16:14,070
As we get into the development

1414
01:16:14,361 --> 01:16:17,239
of like an American literary tradition,

1415
01:16:17,531 --> 01:16:19,366
we get indigenous ghosts.

1416
01:16:19,658 --> 01:16:21,994
It renders indigenous
people as sort of inevitably

1417
01:16:22,286 --> 01:16:25,247
going to disappear as like
a sort of ontological status

1418
01:16:25,539 --> 01:16:27,541
of indigenous people, just
like something that is part

1419
01:16:27,833 --> 01:16:29,585
of their being, that's
inevitably going to happen.

1420
01:16:29,877 --> 01:16:31,796
- No!
- And not that

1421
01:16:32,088 --> 01:16:33,631
indigenous people are disappearing

1422
01:16:33,923 --> 01:16:37,760
because of intentional
actions by white settlers

1423
01:16:38,052 --> 01:16:40,596
that destroyed their
cities, and their lands,

1424
01:16:40,888 --> 01:16:42,848
and their languages,
and disrupted families.

1425
01:16:43,140 --> 01:16:47,103
So it sort of takes some of
the guilt off of settlers.

1426
01:16:47,394 --> 01:16:50,272
It sort of, obviously,
others indigenous people,

1427
01:16:50,564 --> 01:16:53,818
and they're so other that
they're like other worldly.

1428
01:16:54,110 --> 01:16:56,904
We're all ghosts, we have
these mystical magical powers,

1429
01:16:57,196 --> 01:17:01,992
we can return and give you
our knowledge or haunt you,

1430
01:17:02,326 --> 01:17:04,829
you know, indigenous stories matter,

1431
01:17:05,121 --> 01:17:08,082
but indigenous people don't
matter in this framework.

1432
01:17:08,374 --> 01:17:10,751
It's that, you know, we want
all of the the good stuff

1433
01:17:11,043 --> 01:17:13,295
that your cultures have,
like your knowledge,

1434
01:17:13,587 --> 01:17:16,590
and your practices, and
your sort of ability

1435
01:17:16,882 --> 01:17:17,967
to navigate the environment,

1436
01:17:18,259 --> 01:17:20,261
and be good caretakers of the environment.

1437
01:17:20,553 --> 01:17:22,346
But we don't want you.

1438
01:17:22,638 --> 01:17:24,515
- A few years ago,
(suspenseful music)

1439
01:17:24,807 --> 01:17:27,101
There was millions of Indians, see,

1440
01:17:27,393 --> 01:17:30,187
they covered this land like buffaloes,

1441
01:17:31,272 --> 01:17:32,523
living their Indian ways,

1442
01:17:32,815 --> 01:17:36,318
and practicing their
strange tribal rights.

1443
01:17:36,610 --> 01:17:39,822
Tribes varied as they would
do, but one hard and fast rule

1444
01:17:40,114 --> 01:17:41,824
known to damn near every white man

1445
01:17:42,116 --> 01:17:45,244
was that you don't go kicking
around their cemeteries

1446
01:17:45,536 --> 01:17:47,621
because that's sacred ground.

1447
01:17:47,913 --> 01:17:51,292
- Look, there's no such thing
as an Indian burial ground.

1448
01:17:53,294 --> 01:17:57,214
So full stop, let's start with that.

1449
01:17:57,506 --> 01:18:00,301
So when I think of the Indian
burial ground in movies,

1450
01:18:00,593 --> 01:18:02,887
I think of a plot device,
I think of something,

1451
01:18:03,179 --> 01:18:06,807
a figment of the Western imagination.

1452
01:18:07,099 --> 01:18:09,101
- Construction started in 1907.

1453
01:18:09,393 --> 01:18:10,519
It was finished in 1909.

1454
01:18:11,729 --> 01:18:12,980
This site is supposed to be located

1455
01:18:13,272 --> 01:18:14,315
on an Indian burial ground,

1456
01:18:14,607 --> 01:18:16,150
and I believe they actually had to repel

1457
01:18:16,442 --> 01:18:19,195
a few Indian attacks as
they were building it.

1458
01:18:19,486 --> 01:18:20,029
(tense music)
- Well,

1459
01:18:20,321 --> 01:18:21,530
there's Ojibwe burial grounds,

1460
01:18:21,822 --> 01:18:24,742
there's Mohawk burial grounds,
there's Cree burial grounds...

1461
01:18:25,034 --> 01:18:26,202
These are not Indian burial grounds.

1462
01:18:26,493 --> 01:18:31,290
When you reduce a multinational
people into Indian,

1463
01:18:31,624 --> 01:18:35,961
which is what Hollywood
has done pretty effectively

1464
01:18:36,253 --> 01:18:39,215
for, you know, its entire history,

1465
01:18:39,506 --> 01:18:41,091
you know, you're working in fiction.

1466
01:18:42,051 --> 01:18:44,637
(Creep howling)

1467
01:18:45,930 --> 01:18:47,139
(tense suspenseful music)
- This was

1468
01:18:47,431 --> 01:18:52,770
their burial ground.
- Who's burial ground?

1469
01:18:53,479 --> 01:18:56,232
- Micmac Indians.
- The Indian

1470
01:18:56,523 --> 01:18:57,441
burial ground trope in fiction

1471
01:18:57,733 --> 01:18:59,109
goes back to the 18th century,

1472
01:18:59,401 --> 01:19:01,362
but when Stephen King was
writing "Pet Sematary”,

1473
01:19:01,654 --> 01:19:02,696
Jimmy Carter had just signed

1474
01:19:02,988 --> 01:19:04,740
the Maine Indian Claims Settlement Act

1475
01:19:05,032 --> 01:19:08,702
after a decade long, highly
publicized legal battle.

1476
01:19:08,994 --> 01:19:12,414
And controversy over the
ownership of indigenous land,

1477
01:19:12,706 --> 01:19:15,000
artifacts, and remains was a focal point

1478
01:19:15,292 --> 01:19:17,753
in 1970s indigenous activism.

1479
01:19:18,045 --> 01:19:21,173
- We don't wanna be a Canadian citizen.

1480
01:19:22,883 --> 01:19:25,386
We don't wanna be an American citizen.

1481
01:19:25,678 --> 01:19:27,137
We feel this way because we think

1482
01:19:27,429 --> 01:19:29,139
that this reservation is ours,

1483
01:19:30,057 --> 01:19:31,976
and it does not belong to the white man.

1484
01:19:33,018 --> 01:19:34,687
That's the only part we still have left.

1485
01:19:34,979 --> 01:19:36,981
- They got no right
here on our reservation.

1486
01:19:38,107 --> 01:19:40,150
- Both America and Canada, you know,

1487
01:19:40,442 --> 01:19:42,945
are functionally illegal nation states

1488
01:19:43,237 --> 01:19:46,031
that exist through broken
treaties between other nations

1489
01:19:46,323 --> 01:19:48,200
that predate them by millennia.

1490
01:19:48,492 --> 01:19:53,289
So there's always gonna be
an anxiety in those places,

1491
01:19:53,580 --> 01:19:56,208
whether they actually would
recognize it consciously,

1492
01:19:56,500 --> 01:20:00,129
they're actually deeply,
deeply aware of the violence

1493
01:20:00,421 --> 01:20:05,217
and oppression that was
necessary for them to exist.

1494
01:20:06,719 --> 01:20:08,887
(ominous music)

1495
01:20:09,179 --> 01:20:12,099
You know, I think a lot
of American horror movies

1496
01:20:12,391 --> 01:20:16,895
are actually informed by the
colonial history of America

1497
01:20:17,187 --> 01:20:20,107
in that the thing that colonial states

1498
01:20:21,066 --> 01:20:24,361
fear the most is to be colonized.

1499
01:20:24,653 --> 01:20:28,490
When we talk about that,
the fear that it generates

1500
01:20:28,782 --> 01:20:31,160
in non-indigenous people boils down

1501
01:20:31,452 --> 01:20:34,079
to this sort of innate
feeling that someone

1502
01:20:34,371 --> 01:20:36,206
is gonna come and take your home from you.

1503
01:20:36,498 --> 01:20:39,335
And what do most Indian
burial ground movies involve?

1504
01:20:39,626 --> 01:20:40,919
Someone building their house on top

1505
01:20:41,211 --> 01:20:42,004
of an Indian burial ground.

1506
01:20:42,296 --> 01:20:44,882
- You're living on some
sort of special ground,

1507
01:20:47,051 --> 01:20:51,972
devil worship, death, sacrifice.

1508
01:20:53,932 --> 01:20:57,644
George, there's one simple rule.

1509
01:20:58,896 --> 01:21:00,981
Energy cannot be created or destroyed,

1510
01:21:01,273 --> 01:21:02,983
it can only change forms.

1511
01:21:03,275 --> 01:21:07,112
(ominous music)
- As more indigenous people

1512
01:21:07,404 --> 01:21:11,367
start to make movies, I
think then we'll start to see

1513
01:21:11,658 --> 01:21:13,535
a greater representation.

1514
01:21:41,522 --> 01:21:44,483
(dramatic music)

1515
01:21:44,775 --> 01:21:45,442
- I'll tell you one other thing

1516
01:21:45,734 --> 01:21:47,528
about the Indian burial ground though,

1517
01:21:47,820 --> 01:21:51,824
that I sort of like it because
if non-indigenous people

1518
01:21:52,116 --> 01:21:54,368
are gonna be afraid of
the Indian burial ground,

1519
01:21:54,660 --> 01:21:56,495
then I got some news for ya,

1520
01:21:56,787 --> 01:21:58,747
it's all an Indian burial ground.

1521
01:22:00,374 --> 01:22:04,336
(calm upbeat music)
- As the site

1522
01:22:04,628 --> 01:22:06,463
of the white settlers ancestral horror,

1523
01:22:06,755 --> 01:22:08,674
we return to New England again and again

1524
01:22:08,966 --> 01:22:11,260
throughout the history of
American horror fiction.

1525
01:22:13,887 --> 01:22:15,764
- Washington Irving's "The
Legend of Sleepy Hollow",

1526
01:22:16,056 --> 01:22:17,599
I mean, there's film adaptations of that

1527
01:22:17,891 --> 01:22:22,438
going back as far as 1922.
(gentle suspenseful music)

1528
01:22:29,236 --> 01:22:34,158
(wind whistling)
(ocean whooshing)

1529
01:22:34,450 --> 01:22:37,035
There's definitely a tradition
of folk horror in America,

1530
01:22:37,327 --> 01:22:40,372
also in things that utilize
stories of shipwrecks

1531
01:22:40,664 --> 01:22:44,126
and Mariners Ghost.
(dramatic music)

1532
01:22:48,422 --> 01:22:50,424
- I would have to include remarkable films

1533
01:22:50,716 --> 01:22:52,134
like "All That Money Can Buy" as well,

1534
01:22:52,426 --> 01:22:54,136
which was made by RKO in 9041,

1535
01:22:54,428 --> 01:22:56,847
known under various titles,
"The Devil and Daniel Webster",

1536
01:22:57,139 --> 01:22:58,307
or "Daniel and the Devil",

1537
01:22:58,599 --> 01:23:02,102
in which an impecunious rural farmer

1538
01:23:02,394 --> 01:23:05,481
is given the opportunity to
improve his station in life

1539
01:23:05,772 --> 01:23:08,192
by a character called Mr. Scratch.

1540
01:23:08,484 --> 01:23:11,612
And it's not very difficult to
work out who Mr. Scratch is.

1541
01:23:11,904 --> 01:23:14,531
(tense suspenseful music)

1542
01:23:14,823 --> 01:23:17,910
- Doug, sort fire.
(sea screaming)

1543
01:23:18,202 --> 01:23:21,205
- I mean, like even Lovecraft
flirts with folk horror,

1544
01:23:21,497 --> 01:23:25,125
but with his own mythos it
becomes like bogged down

1545
01:23:25,417 --> 01:23:28,504
in a lot of occulty specificity

1546
01:23:28,795 --> 01:23:31,256
that I think makes it
no longer folk horror.

1547
01:23:31,548 --> 01:23:34,760
- Obviously, in Lovecraft,
there was no, you know,

1548
01:23:35,052 --> 01:23:38,680
in a way was much more accepted
as a religious discourse,

1549
01:23:38,972 --> 01:23:39,890
if you want to call it that.

1550
01:23:40,182 --> 01:23:41,308
But ultimately the Old Gods, you know,

1551
01:23:41,600 --> 01:23:45,145
there were Old Gods of
some other tradition.

1552
01:23:45,437 --> 01:23:48,690
(dramatic ominous music)

1553
01:24:00,077 --> 01:24:01,870
(gentle chimes)
- Lovecraft's genius

1554
01:24:02,162 --> 01:24:04,164
was his capacity to create

1555
01:24:04,456 --> 01:24:08,877
this internally consistent
self-sustaining world,

1556
01:24:09,169 --> 01:24:13,799
in which the gaslit certainties
of the Victorian Age

1557
01:24:14,091 --> 01:24:17,052
were being challenged by the re-emergence

1558
01:24:17,344 --> 01:24:19,429
of these primordial gods.

1559
01:24:19,721 --> 01:24:21,098
(dramatic music)
(girl screaming)

1560
01:24:21,390 --> 01:24:23,934
(wings flapping)

1561
01:24:30,148 --> 01:24:34,152
(tense music)
- So the writing

1562
01:24:34,444 --> 01:24:36,363
of H.P. Lovecraft, in particular,

1563
01:24:36,655 --> 01:24:38,907
often featured these
very fraught encounters

1564
01:24:39,199 --> 01:24:43,161
between unwary travelers
and degenerate country folk.

1565
01:24:43,453 --> 01:24:46,999
(dramatic suspenseful music)

1566
01:24:51,962 --> 01:24:54,298
In his tremendously creepy,
another story of his

1567
01:24:54,590 --> 01:24:56,008
called "The Picture of the House",

1568
01:24:56,300 --> 01:24:58,885
the narrator even urges, I
think he uses the phrase,

1569
01:24:59,177 --> 01:25:02,681
"The true epicure in the terrible
to esteem”, as he puts it,

1570
01:25:02,973 --> 01:25:06,476
“the ancient, lonely farmhouses
of New England.”

1571
01:25:06,768 --> 01:25:07,853
And this is a story that concludes

1572
01:25:08,145 --> 01:25:11,565
with this incredibly tense and
sort of horrific revelation

1573
01:25:11,857 --> 01:25:14,860
of pagan ritual and
cannibalistic practices,

1574
01:25:15,152 --> 01:25:17,279
which have been, of
course, this is Lovecraft,

1575
01:25:17,571 --> 01:25:20,866
imported overseas to a
New England rural setting.

1576
01:25:29,750 --> 01:25:33,920
- All right, fellas.
- To me,

1577
01:25:34,212 --> 01:25:37,758
the real, sort of, like,
proto folk horror tale

1578
01:25:38,050 --> 01:25:39,217
is Shirley Jackson's

1579
01:25:39,509 --> 01:25:41,595
"The Lottery."
- Acts of communal

1580
01:25:41,887 --> 01:25:44,056
togetherness in Shirley Jackson's work

1581
01:25:44,348 --> 01:25:47,225
actually relatively often
involve mob violence

1582
01:25:47,517 --> 01:25:49,478
or the fear of mob violence.

1583
01:25:49,770 --> 01:25:52,856
- It's Tessie.
- I think it could be argued

1584
01:25:53,148 --> 01:25:56,693
that her close-knit rural
communities are never more united

1585
01:25:56,985 --> 01:25:59,780
than when they close
ranks against an outsider.

1586
01:26:00,072 --> 01:26:02,240
This is very much the case,
of course, in her final novel,

1587
01:26:02,532 --> 01:26:04,159
"We Have Always Lived in
the Castle", but, you know,

1588
01:26:04,451 --> 01:26:06,119
most famously of all in "The Lottery"

1589
01:26:06,411 --> 01:26:09,081
where the ultimately sort
of sacrificial victim

1590
01:26:09,373 --> 01:26:11,833
Tessie Hutchinson becomes
a symbolic outsider

1591
01:26:12,125 --> 01:26:14,670
through this random act of selection.

1592
01:26:14,961 --> 01:26:16,755
But as critics, such as for instance

1593
01:26:17,047 --> 01:26:19,758
a guy called Fritz Oehlshlaeger
who was writing in 1988,

1594
01:26:20,050 --> 01:26:22,052
have pointed out Tessie's fate

1595
01:26:22,344 --> 01:26:26,056
is actually potentially
telegraphed by her name.

1596
01:26:26,348 --> 01:26:30,894
In 1637, a woman named Anne
Hutchinson was forcibly expelled

1597
01:26:31,186 --> 01:26:34,898
from the Massachusetts Colony
for her antinomian beliefs.

1598
01:26:35,190 --> 01:26:38,985
And so Hutchinson is a name
associated with female rebellion

1599
01:26:39,277 --> 01:26:40,904
and punishment within the wider context

1600
01:26:41,196 --> 01:26:42,864
of New England history.

1601
01:26:43,156 --> 01:26:44,866
So whilst the ritual carried out

1602
01:26:45,158 --> 01:26:46,243
at the climax of "The Lottery"

1603
01:26:46,535 --> 01:26:48,370
might seem to have
little initial connection

1604
01:26:48,662 --> 01:26:51,665
to Christianity, both
the method of execution,

1605
01:26:51,957 --> 01:26:55,043
which is of course stoning,
and the name of the scapegoat,

1606
01:26:55,335 --> 01:26:58,630
Hutchinson, suggests this
link between pagan ritual

1607
01:26:58,922 --> 01:27:02,217
and the Christian
appropriation of such rights.

1608
01:27:02,509 --> 01:27:04,428
- There's always been a lottery.

1609
01:27:04,720 --> 01:27:07,097
(upbeat music)

1610
01:27:13,603 --> 01:27:15,272
- Is this your land?
- Yeah.

1611
01:27:15,564 --> 01:27:17,441
- How come you don't use machinery?

1612
01:27:17,733 --> 01:27:20,193
- Against the ways.
- Religious ways?

1613
01:27:20,485 --> 01:27:22,988
- Nah, just tradition.
- There would be films

1614
01:27:23,280 --> 01:27:28,076
such as television serial of
Thomas Tryon's "Harvest Home",

1615
01:27:28,618 --> 01:27:29,828
which was given the name

1616
01:27:30,120 --> 01:27:34,291
of "The Dark Secret of Harvest
Home", featuring Bette Davis.

1617
01:27:34,583 --> 01:27:36,626
(choir singing)
- Thomas Tryon's novel

1618
01:27:36,918 --> 01:27:40,297
"Harvest Home" is set in an
ancient New English village,

1619
01:27:40,589 --> 01:27:42,591
as it's called in the
novel, whose residents,

1620
01:27:42,883 --> 01:27:45,177
like Shirley Jackson's
town folk in "The Lottery",

1621
01:27:45,469 --> 01:27:48,764
have a very unusual way of
ensuring a good harvest.

1622
01:27:49,055 --> 01:27:53,351
- And so it will continue
forever, the eternal return.

1623
01:27:53,643 --> 01:27:56,229
(bell chiming)
- I would argue

1624
01:27:56,521 --> 01:27:57,939
that Tryon's novel can be read

1625
01:27:58,231 --> 01:28:01,985
in part as a kind of reflection
of contemporary male anxiety

1626
01:28:02,277 --> 01:28:03,653
about the rise of feminism.

1627
01:28:03,945 --> 01:28:06,740
We're talking about the
early 1970s here after all.

1628
01:28:07,032 --> 01:28:08,950
At the climax of the novel,
the family breadwinner

1629
01:28:09,242 --> 01:28:10,869
ends up thoroughly emasculated,

1630
01:28:11,161 --> 01:28:12,871
both literally and thematically.

1631
01:28:13,163 --> 01:28:14,539
And, of course, the women in his life,

1632
01:28:14,831 --> 01:28:17,626
his wife and his daughter,
both end up very happily

1633
01:28:17,918 --> 01:28:20,253
embracing the old matriarchal ways.

1634
01:28:20,545 --> 01:28:23,006
- Make it harm, make
it harm, make it harm.

1635
01:28:23,298 --> 01:28:26,092
(upbeat rock music)

1636
01:28:27,969 --> 01:28:31,139
- The time when folk horror
was having its first wave

1637
01:28:31,431 --> 01:28:32,933
in the '70s, also coincided with a time

1638
01:28:33,225 --> 01:28:34,976
when a lot of alternative religions

1639
01:28:35,268 --> 01:28:37,979
were forming communities.
- If what I have to say

1640
01:28:38,271 --> 01:28:42,067
to you is true, you see
where being in such a family

1641
01:28:42,359 --> 01:28:45,695
benefits you.
- Utopianism is embedded

1642
01:28:45,987 --> 01:28:48,406
in the very fabric of the American dream

1643
01:28:48,698 --> 01:28:50,826
and these kinds of communal
experiments flourished

1644
01:28:51,117 --> 01:28:53,620
in the United States as
they did nowhere else.

1645
01:28:53,912 --> 01:28:56,373
(women sobbing)

1646
01:29:05,674 --> 01:29:08,677
(women screaming)

1647
01:29:08,969 --> 01:29:10,345
- “Midsommar” is set in Scandinavia,

1648
01:29:10,637 --> 01:29:13,181
but it's an American film
and it's deeply informed

1649
01:29:13,473 --> 01:29:16,935
by the anxiety around cults in America.

1650
01:29:17,227 --> 01:29:19,855
The conflict isn't really
between like a new religion

1651
01:29:20,146 --> 01:29:23,400
and an old religion, as much
as it's about societal norms,

1652
01:29:23,692 --> 01:29:26,444
about intimacy, and support, and grieving.

1653
01:29:26,736 --> 01:29:31,533
And the way that modern society
does not really leave space

1654
01:29:31,950 --> 01:29:34,411
and time for people to grieve properly.

1655
01:29:34,703 --> 01:29:38,999
(calm music)
You have this

1656
01:29:39,291 --> 01:29:41,626
older community that is a
more nurturing community,

1657
01:29:41,918 --> 01:29:44,629
and a more welcoming and
supportive community.

1658
01:29:44,921 --> 01:29:47,632
And I think that's still the
reason why people join cults,

1659
01:29:47,924 --> 01:29:50,635
you know, is because the modern world

1660
01:29:50,927 --> 01:29:53,179
does not really leave enough space for us

1661
01:29:53,471 --> 01:29:55,390
to experience the connection.

1662
01:29:55,682 --> 01:29:58,810
(gentle staccato music)

1663
01:30:04,691 --> 01:30:05,358
- And I dedicated my life

1664
01:30:05,650 --> 01:30:07,027
- Amen.
- to God, praise the Lord.

1665
01:30:07,319 --> 01:30:09,446
Hallelujah. Only because she believed!

1666
01:30:10,405 --> 01:30:12,949
- The interesting thing
about cults in North America

1667
01:30:13,241 --> 01:30:16,036
is that most of them are
actually different iterations

1668
01:30:16,328 --> 01:30:18,747
of Christianity, so it's not
like with British folk horror

1669
01:30:19,039 --> 01:30:20,999
where you have Christian religions,

1670
01:30:21,291 --> 01:30:24,002
which are considered the more
contemporary, modern religions

1671
01:30:24,294 --> 01:30:26,254
and the older pagan religions.

1672
01:30:26,546 --> 01:30:28,757
In a lot of the American
folk horror films,

1673
01:30:29,049 --> 01:30:30,550
it's actually weird Christians.

1674
01:30:30,842 --> 01:30:33,803
(upbeat music)

1675
01:30:34,095 --> 01:30:37,349
♪ It's been written In
the Book of Revelation ♪

1676
01:30:37,641 --> 01:30:41,019
♪ You can hear it if you open your ears ♪

1677
01:30:41,311 --> 01:30:43,104
♪ He's gonna tell you all ♪

1678
01:30:43,396 --> 01:30:44,814
♪ Just what you are ♪

1679
01:30:45,106 --> 01:30:49,069
♪ Gonna hit you in your feels ♪

1680
01:30:49,361 --> 01:30:52,364
♪ The psychos at the end will show it ♪

1681
01:30:52,656 --> 01:30:56,451
♪ As is written many years ago ♪

1682
01:30:56,743 --> 01:30:59,621
♪ I know that life's getting harder ♪

1683
01:30:59,913 --> 01:31:04,125
♪ Without Christ, you
don't know where to go ♪

1684
01:31:04,417 --> 01:31:09,047
(tense suspenseful music)
- So this archaic

1685
01:31:09,339 --> 01:31:11,716
way of life, this
devotion to the old ways,

1686
01:31:12,008 --> 01:31:14,803
I think evokes very strongly
parallels with religious sects,

1687
01:31:15,095 --> 01:31:17,514
such as the Amish and Mennonites.

1688
01:31:17,806 --> 01:31:19,849
I think there's definitely
a sort of a conflation

1689
01:31:20,141 --> 01:31:21,726
and a correlation happening here

1690
01:31:22,018 --> 01:31:25,313
between fears of dangerous
sort of rogue cults

1691
01:31:25,605 --> 01:31:27,774
and uncertainty about
isolated, but obviously,

1692
01:31:28,066 --> 01:31:30,735
pacifist communities like the Amish.

1693
01:31:31,027 --> 01:31:33,029
I think there's a real anxiety
here about what happens

1694
01:31:33,321 --> 01:31:34,114
when those kinds of people

1695
01:31:34,406 --> 01:31:36,700
being kind of rural
religious fundamentalists

1696
01:31:36,992 --> 01:31:38,451
are left to their own devices.

1697
01:31:38,743 --> 01:31:41,037
A suspicion about, you know,
what will they get up to

1698
01:31:41,329 --> 01:31:43,999
when they're left on the room
with no external oversight?

1699
01:31:45,375 --> 01:31:48,294
- It inevitably made its
way into these films,

1700
01:31:48,586 --> 01:31:49,754
you know, especially when you've got

1701
01:31:50,046 --> 01:31:53,174
a lot of these communities
moving into rural areas,

1702
01:31:53,466 --> 01:31:55,885
it becomes very tied in with the tropes

1703
01:31:56,177 --> 01:31:58,930
and imagery that we
associate with folk horror.

1704
01:31:59,222 --> 01:32:01,891
- Behold,
(tense suspenseful music)

1705
01:32:02,183 --> 01:32:05,437
A dream did come to me
in the night and the Lord

1706
01:32:05,729 --> 01:32:08,231
did show all this to me.
- Praise God,

1707
01:32:09,733 --> 01:32:11,443
praise the Lord.
- Also,

1708
01:32:11,735 --> 01:32:12,402
in "Children of the Corn",

1709
01:32:12,694 --> 01:32:14,237
the fact that they are
a Christian religion

1710
01:32:14,529 --> 01:32:17,699
with Isaac altering the
Bible based on dreams he had

1711
01:32:17,991 --> 01:32:19,451
is very reminiscent of Mormonism.

1712
01:32:19,743 --> 01:32:21,745
The way that they are
Christians with Joseph Smith

1713
01:32:22,037 --> 01:32:24,330
publishing "The Book of
Mormon" as a companion piece

1714
01:32:24,622 --> 01:32:28,001
to the Bible, claiming that
he was shown the location

1715
01:32:28,293 --> 01:32:31,004
of ancient writings on golden plates

1716
01:32:31,296 --> 01:32:32,964
during a visit from an Angel of God

1717
01:32:33,256 --> 01:32:35,633
named Moroni.
- I think people are also

1718
01:32:35,925 --> 01:32:38,178
frightened by fundamentalism.
- If you look at Isaac

1719
01:32:38,470 --> 01:32:40,138
and Malachi, and you look
at the way they're dressed,

1720
01:32:40,430 --> 01:32:43,349
and you look in the town,
they don't allow games anymore

1721
01:32:43,641 --> 01:32:45,185
and they don't have any
televisions anymore.

1722
01:32:45,477 --> 01:32:47,103
They don't have any telephones anymore,

1723
01:32:47,395 --> 01:32:48,229
it's all about the crop

1724
01:32:48,521 --> 01:32:50,815
and they don't have any of
these modern conveniences.

1725
01:32:51,107 --> 01:32:53,318
(dramatic music)
- It does reflect

1726
01:32:53,610 --> 01:32:57,572
a lot of the anxieties that
people have about what people

1727
01:32:57,864 --> 01:33:00,533
do sacrifice when they go
into these communities.

1728
01:33:02,952 --> 01:33:04,496
- You know, that's really
going on, I mean, it's like,

1729
01:33:04,788 --> 01:33:07,707
it starts with the
poisoning of the coffee pot.

1730
01:33:07,999 --> 01:33:10,210
Before they started shooting,
that night people were dying

1731
01:33:10,502 --> 01:33:13,546
because of poisoned Kool-Aid.
- These references

1732
01:33:13,838 --> 01:33:16,466
to Jonestown in Stephen
King's "Children of the Corn"

1733
01:33:16,758 --> 01:33:19,594
are, I think, directly tied
to this foundational horror

1734
01:33:19,886 --> 01:33:23,598
of the colony that sort of
splits off and self-destructs.

1735
01:33:23,890 --> 01:33:26,684
So religious migration to
escape perceived persecution

1736
01:33:26,976 --> 01:33:27,977
was really nothing new at all,

1737
01:33:28,269 --> 01:33:30,563
even when the Puritans did
it, and it is a journey

1738
01:33:30,855 --> 01:33:34,234
that I think in many respects
Jonestown replicated as well.

1739
01:33:36,653 --> 01:33:40,031
The People's Temple in Guyana
was actually one of the sites

1740
01:33:40,323 --> 01:33:43,451
that the Puritans had
initially considered going to

1741
01:33:43,743 --> 01:33:46,496
before they decided upon New
England as their destination.

1742
01:33:46,788 --> 01:33:48,039
So there's actually a really fascinating,

1743
01:33:48,331 --> 01:33:51,417
coincidental overlap between the Puritans

1744
01:33:51,709 --> 01:33:54,754
and the People's Temple in this respect.

1745
01:33:55,046 --> 01:33:57,423
(feet tapping)

1746
01:33:59,092 --> 01:34:02,011
(crickets chirping)

1747
01:34:05,181 --> 01:34:10,103
(bird cooing)
- American Prairie horror,

1748
01:34:10,436 --> 01:34:12,105
you don't see it a lot.

1749
01:34:12,397 --> 01:34:15,984
When we're in a horror movie,
it's usually that the walls

1750
01:34:16,276 --> 01:34:18,736
are coming in on us and
that we're in this space

1751
01:34:19,028 --> 01:34:22,157
and we are so closed in
and it's claustrophobic,

1752
01:34:22,448 --> 01:34:27,245
but with "The Prairie”, you can strangely

1753
01:34:27,954 --> 01:34:32,000
have the same feeling of this
claustrophobia in this place

1754
01:34:32,292 --> 01:34:33,585
where you can see everything.

1755
01:34:33,877 --> 01:34:36,421
(wind whistling)

1756
01:34:45,638 --> 01:34:48,558
(calm upbeat music)
-In 1973,

1757
01:34:48,850 --> 01:34:51,603
Michael Lesy published the
book "Wisconsin Death Trip",

1758
01:34:51,895 --> 01:34:54,606
fashioned entirely out of
19th century photographs

1759
01:34:54,898 --> 01:34:57,692
and newspaper reports from
the isolated community

1760
01:34:57,984 --> 01:35:01,321
surrounding a place called
Black River Falls, Wisconsin.

1761
01:35:01,613 --> 01:35:04,574
And collectively, they tell
a story of crime, death,

1762
01:35:04,866 --> 01:35:07,368
and insanity that fuels this narrative

1763
01:35:07,660 --> 01:35:09,913
that isolation breeds sickness.

1764
01:35:16,753 --> 01:35:20,173
(tense suspenseful music)

1765
01:35:21,507 --> 01:35:24,761
- I lived in Ottawa, Kansas, we joined

1766
01:35:25,053 --> 01:35:27,847
a community supported agriculture garden.

1767
01:35:28,139 --> 01:35:31,851
I was out there one day
with just a bunch of women

1768
01:35:32,143 --> 01:35:33,019
who were working in the garden

1769
01:35:33,311 --> 01:35:36,522
and they kept talking to
me and asking me questions.

1770
01:35:36,814 --> 01:35:39,442
And we're in Kansas, it's very flat,

1771
01:35:39,734 --> 01:35:41,778
and the wind is just insane that day,

1772
01:35:42,070 --> 01:35:43,488
and I couldn't hear anything.

1773
01:35:43,780 --> 01:35:45,365
One of the women like
holding thumbs with me

1774
01:35:45,657 --> 01:35:48,034
and she's like, "You know it
used to to drive women crazy?"

1775
01:35:48,326 --> 01:35:50,787
(wind whistling)

1776
01:35:51,079 --> 01:35:52,413
And I asked her, "What did?"

1777
01:35:52,705 --> 01:35:54,457
And she said, "The wind,
it used to drive women

1778
01:35:54,749 --> 01:35:56,251
crazy out here."
- No, no,

1779
01:35:56,542 --> 01:35:57,168
no. (screams)
- Anna, please,

1780
01:35:57,460 --> 01:35:59,003
listen, English.
- One of the things

1781
01:35:59,295 --> 01:36:02,465
that Theresa was referencing
when she wrote the script

1782
01:36:02,757 --> 01:36:04,175
was a book called "Pioneer Women."

1783
01:36:04,467 --> 01:36:07,428
And a lot of those women were
coming from other countries.

1784
01:36:07,720 --> 01:36:10,473
A lot of people settling at
that time were immigrants,

1785
01:36:10,765 --> 01:36:14,018
in this case from Germany
there woulda been a whole other

1786
01:36:14,310 --> 01:36:17,689
like batch of both spirituality
and religious beliefs

1787
01:36:17,981 --> 01:36:19,691
that she was coming with and prayers,

1788
01:36:19,983 --> 01:36:22,860
as well as maybe some folklore as well.

1789
01:36:23,152 --> 01:36:24,904
(dramatic music)
- This land,

1790
01:36:25,196 --> 01:36:26,906
there's something wrong with it.

1791
01:36:27,198 --> 01:36:31,953
(door whooshes)
(woman screams)

1792
01:36:38,418 --> 01:36:42,171
♪ There's blood in the kitchen ♪

1793
01:36:42,463 --> 01:36:47,260
♪ And there's blood in the hall ♪

1794
01:36:48,469 --> 01:36:52,307
♪ And there's blood in the parlor ♪

1795
01:36:52,598 --> 01:36:57,395
♪ Where the lady did fall ♪

1796
01:36:58,563 --> 01:37:02,275
♪ And Lankin is a hanging ♪

1797
01:37:02,567 --> 01:37:07,363
♪ On the high gallows tree ♪

1798
01:37:08,573 --> 01:37:12,285
♪ And the nurses are burnin' ♪

1799
01:37:12,577 --> 01:37:17,373
♪ In the fire close by ♪

1800
01:37:18,583 --> 01:37:22,211
♪ Oh, the death bell is knelling ♪

1801
01:37:22,503 --> 01:37:27,300
♪ For lady and baby ♪

1802
01:37:28,593 --> 01:37:33,097
♪ And the green grass is a growin' ♪

1803
01:37:33,389 --> 01:37:35,850
♪ All over they ♪

1804
01:37:37,727 --> 01:37:40,396
(dramatic music)

1805
01:37:41,522 --> 01:37:43,649
(tense music)
- Many of the settlers

1806
01:37:43,941 --> 01:37:47,028
who came to Appalachia and
associated frontier regions

1807
01:37:47,320 --> 01:37:50,573
during this fourth big
wave of British migration,

1808
01:37:50,865 --> 01:37:53,409
came from areas like the Scottish borders

1809
01:37:53,701 --> 01:37:56,913
or the were descendants of
Scottish Presbyterian planters,

1810
01:37:57,205 --> 01:38:00,708
whose family had originally,
several generations back,

1811
01:38:01,000 --> 01:38:04,420
settled in the East or
the North of Ireland.

1812
01:38:04,712 --> 01:38:06,798
They tended to be independently minded.

1813
01:38:07,090 --> 01:38:08,299
They tended to be very resilient.

1814
01:38:08,591 --> 01:38:10,343
They tended to be very adaptable.

1815
01:38:10,635 --> 01:38:13,262
- These people were
wanting to pull themselves

1816
01:38:13,554 --> 01:38:16,724
away from the mainstream
of what had become

1817
01:38:17,016 --> 01:38:18,684
of their culture at the time.

1818
01:38:18,976 --> 01:38:22,188
- Low income is not what
we are, we're poor people.

1819
01:38:22,480 --> 01:38:26,067
I think low income is
people that maybe has a way

1820
01:38:26,359 --> 01:38:28,069
of just getting by, but poor people

1821
01:38:28,361 --> 01:38:31,239
is the one's that don't know

1822
01:38:31,531 --> 01:38:33,157
where the next dollar's coming from.

1823
01:38:34,283 --> 01:38:36,452
- Some of the ways in which
these Appalachian communities

1824
01:38:36,744 --> 01:38:39,038
differed from the dominant settler culture

1825
01:38:39,330 --> 01:38:43,418
was because they were an
essentially classless society.

1826
01:38:43,709 --> 01:38:45,795
They had a lack of respect or interest

1827
01:38:46,087 --> 01:38:48,506
in centralized authority,
and they tended to live

1828
01:38:48,798 --> 01:38:51,050
in insular close-knit family groups,

1829
01:38:51,342 --> 01:38:53,636
rather than in these larger settlements.

1830
01:38:53,928 --> 01:38:56,556
They're sort of a rosdist
perception that they clung

1831
01:38:56,848 --> 01:38:59,517
to what you might call,
you know, the old ways,

1832
01:38:59,809 --> 01:39:01,310
that they were intensely superstitious,

1833
01:39:01,602 --> 01:39:03,771
that they preferred the sort
out, you know, blood feuds

1834
01:39:04,063 --> 01:39:07,191
between themselves without
recourse to the law.

1835
01:39:07,483 --> 01:39:09,026
And this is, of course, a perception

1836
01:39:09,318 --> 01:39:11,028
that really lingers to this day.

1837
01:39:12,280 --> 01:39:15,575
♪ While the woman plows
and makes the corn &

1838
01:39:15,867 --> 01:39:18,536
♪ And the man shoots turkey and deer ♪

1839
01:39:18,828 --> 01:39:22,457
- Look upon the face of death,
(ominous music)

1840
01:39:22,748 --> 01:39:26,210
Never feel your baby's breath.
- Cassie, stop it.

1841
01:39:26,502 --> 01:39:28,838
- Look upon the face of death,

1842
01:39:29,130 --> 01:39:32,258
never feel your baby's breath.
- Earl Hamner Junior,

1843
01:39:32,550 --> 01:39:34,886
who created "The Waltons"
was a great proponent

1844
01:39:35,178 --> 01:39:37,722
of putting Appalachian culture
and folklore on screen.

1845
01:39:38,014 --> 01:39:39,891
And in addition to a couple
of “Waltons” episodes

1846
01:39:40,183 --> 01:39:41,476
that get into the realm of folk horror,

1847
01:39:41,767 --> 01:39:44,103
he also wrote a beloved
"Twilight Zone" episode

1848
01:39:44,395 --> 01:39:46,731
called "Jess-Belle" about
a woman who makes a deal

1849
01:39:47,023 --> 01:39:50,234
with the local witch to ensnare
the man who rejected her.

1850
01:39:52,069 --> 01:39:54,614
- My mamma says that when
you see a fallin' star,

1851
01:39:56,365 --> 01:39:58,284
it means a witch has just died.

1852
01:39:59,285 --> 01:40:02,455
(spooky suspenseful music)
- There's a really great use

1853
01:40:02,747 --> 01:40:04,790
of those kinds of rural folk legends

1854
01:40:05,082 --> 01:40:06,417
that can get in Appalachian

1855
01:40:06,709 --> 01:40:09,170
and the more distant parts of America.

1856
01:40:09,462 --> 01:40:11,672
There's a writer called Manly Wade Wellman

1857
01:40:11,964 --> 01:40:13,633
who wrote a whole series of stories

1858
01:40:13,925 --> 01:40:16,511
and books about this
guy called Silver John.

1859
01:40:16,802 --> 01:40:19,096
And he had a guitar with
strings made of silver.

1860
01:40:19,388 --> 01:40:20,806
There was a guy who wandered
around the countryside

1861
01:40:21,098 --> 01:40:22,850
getting involved in various adventures

1862
01:40:23,142 --> 01:40:25,520
that always seemed to involve
local folk legends and things.

1863
01:40:25,811 --> 01:40:27,563
(bird screeching)

1864
01:40:27,855 --> 01:40:30,316
(ominous music)

1865
01:40:36,447 --> 01:40:37,114
(gentle music)

1866
01:40:37,406 --> 01:40:41,035
(suspenseful music)
- The American film

1867
01:40:41,327 --> 01:40:43,955
"The Fool Killer" was referred to in 1965

1868
01:40:44,247 --> 01:40:46,249
as “an offbeat folk-horror film.”

1869
01:40:47,416 --> 01:40:49,877
- Almost think you believe that story.

1870
01:40:50,169 --> 01:40:51,462
- Ain't you never felt like
there was some sort of something

1871
01:40:51,754 --> 01:40:52,922
like the Fool Killer?

1872
01:40:54,090 --> 01:40:55,091
Ain't you never done things you'd known

1873
01:40:55,383 --> 01:40:56,342
was just plain foolish

1874
01:40:56,634 --> 01:40:57,260
and felt like you're just gonna have to

1875
01:40:57,552 --> 01:40:59,303
pay the price?
- "The Fool Killer"

1876
01:40:59,595 --> 01:41:03,140
movie was directly based
on a novel by Helen Eustis,

1877
01:41:03,432 --> 01:41:07,019
but it's central character, a
roving philosophical murderer

1878
01:41:07,311 --> 01:41:08,604
who rids the world of fools,

1879
01:41:08,896 --> 01:41:10,398
he had become a fixture of Appalachian

1880
01:41:10,690 --> 01:41:13,025
and Southern folklore in
the late 19th century.

1881
01:41:13,317 --> 01:41:16,445
And his enduring appeal
possibly due to the fact

1882
01:41:16,737 --> 01:41:19,323
that he's an outcast from society

1883
01:41:19,615 --> 01:41:21,450
and considered a fool himself,

1884
01:41:21,742 --> 01:41:24,036
but he turns the tables
on the dominant culture

1885
01:41:24,328 --> 01:41:25,788
that rejects him, and so he becomes

1886
01:41:26,080 --> 01:41:27,832
Kind of an anti-hero.
-I'm a man

1887
01:41:28,124 --> 01:41:29,417
who's got no history.

1888
01:41:29,709 --> 01:41:33,254
I like to eat when I'm hungry,
talk to folks when I want to

1889
01:41:33,546 --> 01:41:36,215
and not when I don't, and see the world.

1890
01:41:37,383 --> 01:41:38,926
Strange cities and strange houses

1891
01:41:39,218 --> 01:41:40,928
is a place in my enemies, George.

1892
01:41:41,220 --> 01:41:44,390
(ominous music)
- Folk horror expresses

1893
01:41:44,682 --> 01:41:46,642
an ambivalence about progress.

1894
01:41:46,934 --> 01:41:49,687
And so often in these films,
through the production design,

1895
01:41:49,979 --> 01:41:52,023
the old dialects, and
stuff, you get the idea

1896
01:41:52,315 --> 01:41:55,151
that this culture is just
holding on for dear life.

1897
01:41:55,443 --> 01:41:56,944
- No!
- I know

1898
01:41:57,236 --> 01:42:01,240
who the next jug face is.
(ominous music)

1899
01:42:03,367 --> 01:42:04,118
It's me.

1900
01:42:05,119 --> 01:42:07,204
(dramatic music)
- And so,

1901
01:42:07,496 --> 01:42:10,458
so many of these stories
are about sacrifice

1902
01:42:10,750 --> 01:42:12,793
and protagonists who are resistant

1903
01:42:13,085 --> 01:42:17,006
to the sacrifice necessary
to keep the culture alive.

1904
01:42:17,298 --> 01:42:20,926
(tense suspenseful music)

1905
01:42:21,218 --> 01:42:22,303
- I think of things like "Pumpkinhead"

1906
01:42:22,595 --> 01:42:25,181
where, you know, it's very
specific to that region.

1907
01:42:25,473 --> 01:42:26,515
So I think that also
plays a big part in it,

1908
01:42:26,807 --> 01:42:28,809
is kind of where it's set,
and the method of the people

1909
01:42:29,101 --> 01:42:30,269
that live in that community.

1910
01:42:31,812 --> 01:42:35,149
- What killed him?
- City folks run him over.

1911
01:42:35,441 --> 01:42:36,692
I'm looking for an old woman.

1912
01:42:38,027 --> 01:42:40,071
She lived somewhere in
the mountains here abouts.

1913
01:42:40,363 --> 01:42:43,240
(upbeat suspenseful music)

1914
01:42:43,532 --> 01:42:46,369
- "Deliverance” probably
brought that in actually,

1915
01:42:46,661 --> 01:42:50,122
the sort of idea of the
stereotype of the hillbilly.

1916
01:42:50,414 --> 01:42:52,249
And so we started to see
the sort of different idea

1917
01:42:52,541 --> 01:42:54,210
of what the South was like.

1918
01:42:54,502 --> 01:42:56,420
(suspenseful music)
- So the early 1970s

1919
01:42:56,712 --> 01:42:57,755
was very much a period,

1920
01:42:58,047 --> 01:42:59,632
particularly on the
American cinema screen,

1921
01:42:59,924 --> 01:43:02,760
where you had these kinds
of backwards anxieties

1922
01:43:03,052 --> 01:43:05,429
manifesting themselves
very openly on screen,

1923
01:43:05,721 --> 01:43:08,057
but really these filmed
for tapping into very long,

1924
01:43:08,349 --> 01:43:11,268
established stereotypes about degeneracy,

1925
01:43:11,560 --> 01:43:13,771
particularly amongst Southern Hill folk.

1926
01:43:14,063 --> 01:43:16,399
Between 1880 and around 1820,

1927
01:43:16,691 --> 01:43:19,777
the so-called Eugenics
Record Office, the ERO,

1928
01:43:20,069 --> 01:43:22,780
produced a series of
eugenic family studies.

1929
01:43:23,072 --> 01:43:24,782
And what they wanted to
do here was demonstrate

1930
01:43:25,074 --> 01:43:27,785
that large numbers of
particularly poverty-stricken,

1931
01:43:28,077 --> 01:43:31,706
rural whites were so-called
genetic defectives.

1932
01:43:31,997 --> 01:43:34,125
And according to this
logic, the stagnation,

1933
01:43:34,417 --> 01:43:36,961
the decrepitude, the poverty
of their surroundings,

1934
01:43:37,253 --> 01:43:39,213
and the proximity of the wilderness

1935
01:43:39,505 --> 01:43:42,550
had bred in them this kind
of dangerous primitivism

1936
01:43:42,842 --> 01:43:44,927
which could erupt into
violence at any time.

1937
01:43:45,219 --> 01:43:48,514
- Ewe!
- Oh, the salt marshes

1938
01:43:48,806 --> 01:43:49,890
around here are rotten,

1939
01:43:51,225 --> 01:43:55,104
and it gets worse the further down you go.

1940
01:43:55,396 --> 01:44:00,151
- The film is basically set
in a sort of a backwater town

1941
01:44:01,652 --> 01:44:04,113
that's almost impossible to get to

1942
01:44:04,405 --> 01:44:06,741
except by this old rickety bus.

1943
01:44:07,032 --> 01:44:09,994
- Those people, oh, God, those people.

1944
01:44:10,995 --> 01:44:13,289
Nobody likes those people,

1945
01:44:13,581 --> 01:44:14,540
it's the way they look.

1946
01:44:16,500 --> 01:44:19,128
They call it the astros look.

1947
01:44:19,420 --> 01:44:21,088
- H.P. Lovecraft, of course, was huge

1948
01:44:21,380 --> 01:44:25,259
and "Shadow over Innsmouth"
was a big, big influence.

1949
01:44:25,551 --> 01:44:30,222
Not only because of the remote, small town

1950
01:44:30,514 --> 01:44:32,850
that it takes place in, but the whole idea

1951
01:44:33,142 --> 01:44:35,728
of people going under a transformation.

1952
01:44:36,020 --> 01:44:38,564
(dramatic music)

1953
01:44:39,690 --> 01:44:42,151
- Just the idea of these
poor backwards people

1954
01:44:42,443 --> 01:44:45,112
cut off from the rest of
the world is, I think,

1955
01:44:45,404 --> 01:44:50,159
an example of kind of what
happened after the civil war

1956
01:44:50,451 --> 01:44:53,788
with, you know, just how it
was devastated financially.

1957
01:44:54,079 --> 01:44:55,414
♪ There's a story you should know ♪

1958
01:44:55,706 --> 01:44:57,041
♪ From a hundred years ago ♪

1959
01:44:57,333 --> 01:45:00,169
♪ And a hundred years
we've waited now to tell ♪

1960
01:45:00,461 --> 01:45:01,754
♪ Now, the Yankees come along ♪

1961
01:45:02,046 --> 01:45:03,339
♪ And they'll listen to this song ♪

1962
01:45:03,631 --> 01:45:06,550
♪ And they'll quake in fear
to hear this rebel yell ♪

1963
01:45:06,842 --> 01:45:10,095
♪ And they'll quake in fear
to hear this rebel yell ♪

1964
01:45:10,387 --> 01:45:12,973
♪ Yee-Haw ♪

1965
01:45:13,265 --> 01:45:16,018
♪ Oh, the South's gonna rise again ♪

1966
01:45:16,310 --> 01:45:17,895
- You can't really talk about the South

1967
01:45:18,187 --> 01:45:22,441
without having a little bit
of a tricklin' of the effects

1968
01:45:22,733 --> 01:45:26,445
of the civil war.
- This perception

1969
01:45:26,737 --> 01:45:29,073
that the south had been left behind

1970
01:45:29,365 --> 01:45:31,742
was exacerbated by the
fact that it actually

1971
01:45:32,034 --> 01:45:34,161
had a very considerable basis in reality.

1972
01:45:35,204 --> 01:45:36,914
The poverty of the rural south,

1973
01:45:37,206 --> 01:45:39,959
it wasn't just some kind
of theoretical abstraction,

1974
01:45:40,251 --> 01:45:42,962
it was something that affected
the lives of ordinary people

1975
01:45:43,254 --> 01:45:46,006
in a myriad of ways, every
single day of their lives.

1976
01:45:46,298 --> 01:45:50,010
(vases clattering)
(tense music)

1977
01:45:50,302 --> 01:45:52,471
- Even thing like, I think,
“Texas Chain Saw Massacre,”

1978
01:45:52,763 --> 01:45:54,974
you know, can certainly be
placed within the realms

1979
01:45:55,266 --> 01:45:57,685
of folk horror.
- You like this face?

1980
01:45:57,977 --> 01:46:00,229
(woman screaming)

1981
01:46:00,521 --> 01:46:04,775
- You get this idea that people
are on the land for so long

1982
01:46:05,067 --> 01:46:07,653
that something happens to the family unit

1983
01:46:07,945 --> 01:46:11,866
where there's this idea
of corruption and cruelty,

1984
01:46:12,157 --> 01:46:16,787
where there's this sense that
family is not a place of love

1985
01:46:17,079 --> 01:46:20,791
and warmth, but a place
where a lot of dark secrets

1986
01:46:21,083 --> 01:46:23,919
are concealed and people's violent natures

1987
01:46:24,211 --> 01:46:28,173
are given free reign.
(door thuds)

1988
01:46:28,465 --> 01:46:31,552
(birds chirping)
- I was born and raised here,

1989
01:46:32,761 --> 01:46:34,096
and my daddy before me.

1990
01:46:35,347 --> 01:46:38,559
I seen things in these woods,
no man's supposed to see.

1991
01:46:40,352 --> 01:46:42,813
And I know things, no
man's supposed to know.

1992
01:46:44,982 --> 01:46:48,235
These woods can be a strange place.

1993
01:46:48,527 --> 01:46:52,156
(gentle suspenseful music)

1994
01:46:52,448 --> 01:46:55,910
- In many ways, folk horror
arises out of the gothic itself,

1995
01:46:56,201 --> 01:46:57,703
and particularly southern gothic.

1996
01:46:57,995 --> 01:47:02,458
Southern gothic rose out of
reconstruction anxieties,

1997
01:47:02,750 --> 01:47:06,128
the sense that the south,
despite being devastated,

1998
01:47:06,420 --> 01:47:07,963
has supposedly been caught up

1999
01:47:08,255 --> 01:47:10,132
to the rest of the nation's industry

2000
01:47:10,424 --> 01:47:11,884
through government legislation.

2001
01:47:12,176 --> 01:47:15,763
And that has been caught up
to the nation's racial ideas,

2002
01:47:16,055 --> 01:47:18,933
again, through government legislation.

2003
01:47:19,224 --> 01:47:22,686
What we see in the southern
gothic is an anxiety

2004
01:47:22,978 --> 01:47:26,732
that perhaps this progress
isn't progress at all,

2005
01:47:27,024 --> 01:47:30,778
perhaps it's as horrible as the old ways.

2006
01:47:31,070 --> 01:47:33,238
Equally problematic when
you think about writers

2007
01:47:33,530 --> 01:47:36,992
such as Flannery O'Connor
and William Faulkner,

2008
01:47:37,284 --> 01:47:39,370
perhaps all of it is pretension.

2009
01:47:39,662 --> 01:47:42,373
Perhaps the old genteel
ways were horrible,

2010
01:47:42,665 --> 01:47:44,833
not just to people of color,

2011
01:47:45,125 --> 01:47:48,337
but to whites of lower class standing.

2012
01:47:48,629 --> 01:47:53,425
Perhaps that genteel nature
merely meant hiding the horror,

2013
01:47:54,093 --> 01:47:58,389
ignoring it and masking it as
something beautiful and kind.

2014
01:47:59,306 --> 01:48:01,976
But maybe modernization and industry

2015
01:48:02,267 --> 01:48:04,645
is equally horrible and alienating.

2016
01:48:05,813 --> 01:48:08,273
Maybe there's no winner on either side

2017
01:48:08,565 --> 01:48:11,944
and we're ultimately all monsters still.

2018
01:48:24,081 --> 01:48:28,585
(record needle scratching)
- It is time, Lord,

2019
01:48:28,877 --> 01:48:31,964
from the dry dust, out of these chains,

2020
01:48:32,881 --> 01:48:34,717
from the Devil's house.

2021
01:48:53,444 --> 01:48:54,820
From the Devil's house.

2022
01:48:55,112 --> 01:48:56,739
Save me from my damn-

2023
01:48:58,532 --> 01:49:02,619
- Hey, it was just a local band.

2024
01:49:04,580 --> 01:49:05,873
(calm upbeat music)
- If you have stories

2025
01:49:06,165 --> 01:49:07,791
that are taking place down south,

2026
01:49:08,083 --> 01:49:11,545
very often the regional specific
elements are either voodoo

2027
01:49:11,837 --> 01:49:14,923
or hoodoo, and one of the
problems that filmmakers

2028
01:49:15,215 --> 01:49:16,467
have experienced over the years

2029
01:49:16,759 --> 01:49:19,678
is being unable to distinguish
between voodoo and hoodoo,

2030
01:49:19,970 --> 01:49:21,972
and they are very different.

2031
01:49:22,264 --> 01:49:23,932
(upbeat music)
- Hoodoo's a religion.

2032
01:49:24,224 --> 01:49:26,226
Slaves brought it Haiti from Africa,

2033
01:49:26,518 --> 01:49:28,437
they worship God, heaven and hell.

2034
01:49:28,729 --> 01:49:30,647
- How's hoodoo different?
- It's magic.

2035
01:49:30,939 --> 01:49:33,150
American folk magic, God
doesn't have much to do with it.

2036
01:49:33,442 --> 01:49:35,861
(ominous music)
- When you talk

2037
01:49:36,153 --> 01:49:38,405
about hoodoo, what you're
essentially talking about

2038
01:49:38,697 --> 01:49:42,367
IS a magical folk practice
that is often divorced

2039
01:49:42,659 --> 01:49:45,788
from religion, and as
such, it's also divorced

2040
01:49:46,080 --> 01:49:48,499
from the moral and ethical codes

2041
01:49:48,791 --> 01:49:50,626
that go along with religion.

2042
01:49:51,752 --> 01:49:53,629
- Some things are better left unsaid.

2043
01:49:55,422 --> 01:50:00,135
- I paid you a dollar, old
woman, now tell my fortune.

2044
01:50:01,887 --> 01:50:06,809
(spooky suspenseful music)
(crickets chirping)

2045
01:50:13,524 --> 01:50:14,566
(tense music)
- As Michelet said,

2046
01:50:14,858 --> 01:50:15,776
Jules Michelet wrote the book

2047
01:50:16,068 --> 01:50:19,655
on sorcery, witchcraft and sorcery

2048
01:50:19,947 --> 01:50:21,907
is always a religion of
an oppressed people.

2049
01:50:25,077 --> 01:50:25,869
- Also, when we talk

2050
01:50:26,161 --> 01:50:29,915
about Voodoo's role in
thinking about folk horror,

2051
01:50:30,207 --> 01:50:32,292
we're also talking about
the haunting, again,

2052
01:50:32,584 --> 01:50:35,629
of slave history and more
particularly slave rebellion.

2053
01:50:40,008 --> 01:50:43,929
This rebellion starts
off deep in the forest

2054
01:50:44,221 --> 01:50:46,932
of Haiti's mountains in a remote location

2055
01:50:47,224 --> 01:50:49,601
called Bois Caiman.

2056
01:50:49,893 --> 01:50:54,690
And it's led by a Maroon
leader named Boukman,

2057
01:50:55,482 --> 01:51:00,279
Retrace the power of this
rebellion, its success,

2058
01:51:00,571 --> 01:51:05,075
and essentially the rise of
Haiti back to a voodoo ceremony.

2059
01:51:05,367 --> 01:51:08,579
And what you see in
much of the 19th century

2060
01:51:08,871 --> 01:51:12,457
is an anxiety around voodoo
and black practitioners

2061
01:51:12,749 --> 01:51:15,127
of voodoo and mystical
religious practices.

2062
01:51:15,419 --> 01:51:17,296
(mystical music)
- As sure as my name

2063
01:51:17,588 --> 01:51:21,341
is Boris Karloff, you will
witness fantastic events

2064
01:51:21,633 --> 01:51:25,012
in this form, events as dark as the jungle

2065
01:51:25,304 --> 01:51:27,347
where the voodoo rights and voodoo drums

2066
01:51:27,639 --> 01:51:29,892
were first seen and heard.

2067
01:51:30,184 --> 01:51:32,644
They even lead you to
wonder what you yourself

2068
01:51:32,936 --> 01:51:36,440
could accomplish with just an ordinary pin

2069
01:51:36,732 --> 01:51:38,859
and a doll shaped like someone

2070
01:51:39,151 --> 01:51:41,862
of whom you're not particularly fond.

2071
01:51:42,154 --> 01:51:43,322
(dramatic music)

2072
01:51:43,614 --> 01:51:46,992
(fire blazing)
- So when we look,

2073
01:51:47,284 --> 01:51:51,413
for instance, at films like
"White Zombie", "Aaunga”,

2074
01:51:51,705 --> 01:51:55,876
"I Walked With a Zombie",
"Voodoo Black Exorcist”,

2075
01:51:56,168 --> 01:51:59,296
we see, in many cases, voodoo represented,

2076
01:51:59,588 --> 01:52:01,882
but divorced of its religion.

2077
01:52:02,174 --> 01:52:05,469
Instead what voodoo
becomes is an ominous sound

2078
01:52:05,761 --> 01:52:10,557
in the distance suggesting
evil is beginning to rise

2079
01:52:10,849 --> 01:52:15,687
and make incursions upon
proper white authority.

2080
01:52:15,979 --> 01:52:18,273
So when we think about
particularly the films

2081
01:52:18,565 --> 01:52:20,734
coming out in the late and mid '80s,

2082
01:52:21,026 --> 01:52:22,778
such as "The Serpent and the Rainbow",

2083
01:52:23,070 --> 01:52:24,947
"The Believers" and "Angel Heart",

2084
01:52:25,239 --> 01:52:28,951
it emphasizes it as a
corruptive influence.

2085
01:52:29,868 --> 01:52:32,704
- Open this please.
- Just personal items.

2086
01:52:35,332 --> 01:52:36,708
No need to look in there.

2087
01:52:38,085 --> 01:52:39,920
(mystical music)
- And more importantly,

2088
01:52:40,212 --> 01:52:43,298
a corruptive force which can spread to

2089
01:52:43,590 --> 01:52:45,926
and corrupt and contaminate the US.

2090
01:52:48,011 --> 01:52:48,804
(spooky music)
- "The Believers”,

2091
01:52:49,096 --> 01:52:50,973
John Schlesinger, which is a film

2092
01:52:51,265 --> 01:52:53,308
about the way Santeria comes

2093
01:52:53,600 --> 01:52:55,936
into a white American community.

2094
01:52:56,228 --> 01:53:00,065
They use African magic to
create power and wealth.

2095
01:53:01,525 --> 01:53:03,068
But the interesting thing
about "The Believers"

2096
01:53:03,360 --> 01:53:06,947
is that it was actually
used by a drug running cult

2097
01:53:07,239 --> 01:53:08,031
as a training film.

2098
01:53:08,323 --> 01:53:09,950
So it creates this strange loop

2099
01:53:10,242 --> 01:53:11,368
whereby, and this is another thing,

2100
01:53:11,660 --> 01:53:14,413
that the cinema becomes
part of the mythology too.

2101
01:53:14,705 --> 01:53:16,164
(flies squelching)
- Come with me.

2102
01:53:17,165 --> 01:53:18,834
Come with me
(dramatic suspenseful music)

2103
01:53:19,126 --> 01:53:23,005
And be immortal.
(ominous music)

2104
01:53:23,297 --> 01:53:26,133
- The Candyman, huh?
- Yes, have you heard of them?

2105
01:53:26,425 --> 01:53:28,385
- Mm hm, you doing a study on him?

2106
01:53:30,595 --> 01:53:32,681
- Yes, I am, what have you heard?

2107
01:53:32,973 --> 01:53:34,141
(camera shutter clicks)
- Another one,

2108
01:53:34,433 --> 01:53:37,394
that's slightly more subtle
and nuanced, is "Candyman”,

2109
01:53:37,686 --> 01:53:40,230
which brings in the
question of folk legends

2110
01:53:40,522 --> 01:53:42,399
or urban myths.
- Typically,

2111
01:53:42,691 --> 01:53:45,027
we would reserve the term
folk horror for stories

2112
01:53:45,319 --> 01:53:46,903
that take place in rural environments,

2113
01:53:47,195 --> 01:53:49,281
but I think a strong case
can be made for "Candyman"”

2114
01:53:49,573 --> 01:53:52,617
as a folk horror film
because of its liminality,

2115
01:53:52,909 --> 01:53:54,619
the psycho geographical pull

2116
01:53:54,911 --> 01:53:57,122
of the Cabrini-Green
housing project itself,

2117
01:53:57,414 --> 01:54:00,292
and how that connects back
to the reconstruction era

2118
01:54:00,584 --> 01:54:01,877
of folk tale.
- My apartment

2119
01:54:02,169 --> 01:54:03,545
was built as a housing project.

2120
01:54:05,130 --> 01:54:06,506
- No?
- Yeah.

2121
01:54:06,798 --> 01:54:09,843
(newspaper reel clattering)
- What we often find,

2122
01:54:10,135 --> 01:54:12,262
as in "The Believers",
the central protagonist

2123
01:54:12,554 --> 01:54:14,639
is often someone who's
studying, or researching,

2124
01:54:14,931 --> 01:54:17,309
or is educated and they
don't really believe in it,

2125
01:54:17,601 --> 01:54:18,935
but they're deeply interested in it.

2126
01:54:19,227 --> 01:54:22,105
And their fascination becomes
a part of their undoing.

2127
01:54:22,397 --> 01:54:25,025
- Candyman.
(dramatic music)

2128
01:54:25,317 --> 01:54:26,860
♪ By the Christians it is written ♪

2129
01:54:27,152 --> 01:54:30,072
♪ That in the black Myrthian age ♪

2130
01:54:30,364 --> 01:54:35,160
♪ There existed an addiction
to blood among it's people ♪

2131
01:54:35,452 --> 01:54:36,411
(ominous music)
- "Ganja & Hess"

2132
01:54:36,703 --> 01:54:40,665
is a 1970s so-called black vampire film,

2133
01:54:40,957 --> 01:54:43,752
made by a great, great director
and writer called Bill Gunn,

2134
01:54:44,044 --> 01:54:46,380
and it stars Duane Jones
who was the lead character

2135
01:54:46,671 --> 01:54:51,051
in "Night of the Living Dead".
- "Ganja & Hess"

2136
01:54:51,343 --> 01:54:54,304
is a very interesting take on the problem

2137
01:54:54,596 --> 01:54:57,307
and tension between the
rejection of the old

2138
01:54:57,599 --> 01:54:58,642
and the embrace of the new.

2139
01:54:58,934 --> 01:55:02,229
Because when we look at Hess'
plight within this film,

2140
01:55:02,521 --> 01:55:06,066
what we really see is a
problem of assimilation,

2141
01:55:06,358 --> 01:55:09,486
utter assimilation, into modern politics

2142
01:55:09,778 --> 01:55:14,574
and ideas of race, and
capitalism, and consumerism.

2143
01:55:14,950 --> 01:55:19,162
And what this film urges
is actually a remembrance

2144
01:55:19,454 --> 01:55:22,290
of the ancestral.
(upbeat tribal music)

2145
01:55:22,582 --> 01:55:25,544
- He was an anthropologist,
he had those African art

2146
01:55:25,836 --> 01:55:28,880
around his house and all kinds of objects.

2147
01:55:30,465 --> 01:55:34,136
So he dealt with old history,

2148
01:55:34,428 --> 01:55:38,390
you get with bones, you get with messages

2149
01:55:38,682 --> 01:55:40,976
from centuries before.

2150
01:55:41,268 --> 01:55:44,354
So he had developed the
whole communication.

2151
01:55:44,646 --> 01:55:47,065
(spirits screaming)

2152
01:55:47,357 --> 01:55:48,608
(gentle suspenseful music)
- It's a misuse

2153
01:55:48,900 --> 01:55:52,779
of the ancestral that rather
emphasizes disconnection

2154
01:55:53,071 --> 01:55:54,406
rather than connection.

2155
01:55:54,698 --> 01:55:58,034
And so this curse is the
curse of remembering.

2156
01:55:58,952 --> 01:56:01,872
- It's also about the fact
of this return to Africa

2157
01:56:02,164 --> 01:56:04,249
and Africans sensibility

2158
01:56:04,541 --> 01:56:05,834
in the African-American community

2159
01:56:06,126 --> 01:56:07,794
in the late '60s, early '70s.

2160
01:56:08,086 --> 01:56:09,337
And there's a deep sense of trying

2161
01:56:09,629 --> 01:56:11,590
to get back to your ancestral roots.

2162
01:56:11,882 --> 01:56:13,675
So the film is very much
about the ambivalence

2163
01:56:13,967 --> 01:56:15,760
of trying to be a modern American

2164
01:56:16,052 --> 01:56:18,555
kind of in a post-racial society.

2165
01:56:18,847 --> 01:56:21,892
And the impulse also, or perhaps
the contradictory impulse,

2166
01:56:22,184 --> 01:56:24,561
to try and reclaim your African ancestry.

2167
01:56:26,646 --> 01:56:29,149
It needs to be seen In
relationship to the assassination

2168
01:56:29,441 --> 01:56:31,776
of Martin Luther King and
the ideological conflict

2169
01:56:32,068 --> 01:56:34,362
in the black community
in America at that time

2170
01:56:34,654 --> 01:56:37,657
between violent, revolutionary,
militant politics

2171
01:56:37,949 --> 01:56:40,035
of the Blank Panthers,
and the Nation of Islam,

2172
01:56:40,327 --> 01:56:42,787
Malcolm X, and the legacy of King,

2173
01:56:43,079 --> 01:56:45,624
which was a much more
passive-resistance Christian

2174
01:56:46,958 --> 01:56:48,835
way of bringing about change.

2175
01:56:50,795 --> 01:56:54,341
So it's a film very much about redemption.

2176
01:56:54,633 --> 01:56:55,842
(calm music)
- There's a tension

2177
01:56:56,134 --> 01:57:00,931
at the end between his
acceptance in the black church

2178
01:57:01,389 --> 01:57:04,059
and his embrace of the cross.

2179
01:57:04,351 --> 01:57:07,145
Hess dies not in the church,

2180
01:57:07,437 --> 01:57:10,899
Hess dies in the shadow of the cross.

2181
01:57:11,191 --> 01:57:13,693
And if we think about
what that shadow means,

2182
01:57:13,985 --> 01:57:18,782
it's the ways in which
this Christian tradition

2183
01:57:19,407 --> 01:57:23,370
has been manipulated to
become a tool of warfare,

2184
01:57:23,662 --> 01:57:27,249
of racial oppression, of domination.

2185
01:57:27,541 --> 01:57:31,920
The ways in which the cross
has cast a black shadow

2186
01:57:32,212 --> 01:57:36,383
across cultures that it
encounters to erase the ancestral

2187
01:57:36,675 --> 01:57:40,512
and displace it with white Christianity.

2188
01:57:40,804 --> 01:57:42,681
This is what kills him.

2189
01:57:42,973 --> 01:57:47,769
(wind whistling)
(Hess humming)

2190
01:57:54,276 --> 01:57:57,779
(air whooshing)
(dramatic music)

2191
01:57:58,071 --> 01:57:59,781
- Folklore tends to have a lot of cultural

2192
01:58:00,073 --> 01:58:03,034
and geographic specificity, but
when you start to look at it

2193
01:58:03,326 --> 01:58:05,829
from a global perspective,
these films are often speaking

2194
01:58:06,121 --> 01:58:08,456
to each other in really interesting ways.

2195
01:58:08,748 --> 01:58:11,126
(bomb booming)

2196
01:58:12,961 --> 01:58:16,464
(upbeat suspenseful music)

2197
01:58:23,763 --> 01:58:26,683
(thunder crackling)

2198
01:58:29,102 --> 01:58:34,024
(fire blazing)
(crowd yelling)

2199
01:58:35,692 --> 01:58:38,778
(tense ominous music)

2200
01:58:46,494 --> 01:58:49,164
(ocean crashing)

2201
01:58:53,168 --> 01:58:55,420
- This man had a dream,
(rain drumming)

2202
01:58:55,712 --> 01:58:59,883
A forbidden vision that
becomes a living nightmare.

2203
01:59:00,175 --> 01:59:02,719
(door squeaking)

2204
01:59:03,011 --> 01:59:03,678
- What are dreams?

2205
01:59:06,181 --> 01:59:08,600
(ominous music)
- The way of knowing things.

2206
01:59:08,892 --> 01:59:10,101
Dream is a shadow

2207
01:59:12,562 --> 01:59:13,355
of something real.

2208
01:59:15,440 --> 01:59:17,275
- When I first thought about
the folk horror in Australia,

2209
01:59:17,567 --> 01:59:18,193
I thought, well, we don't have any,

2210
01:59:18,485 --> 01:59:21,488
it's this very European thing,
this very British thing.

2211
01:59:21,780 --> 01:59:25,700
But when I started thinking
about the very complex

2212
01:59:25,992 --> 01:59:30,622
and often quite ugly colonial
history of Australia,

2213
01:59:32,123 --> 01:59:35,168
folk traditions dominate.
- A lot of Australian

2214
01:59:35,460 --> 01:59:38,963
folk horror deals with
indigenous tradition

2215
01:59:39,255 --> 01:59:43,927
and deals with the white
colonial, I suppose,

2216
01:59:44,219 --> 01:59:45,470
response to those traditions,

2217
01:59:45,762 --> 01:59:48,890
which is often one of not
understanding what's happening

2218
01:59:49,182 --> 01:59:50,475
and sort of fear.

2219
01:59:50,767 --> 01:59:53,269
(tense suspenseful music)
- But when you dig

2220
01:59:53,561 --> 01:59:55,397
a little bit more deeply,
I think films that feel

2221
01:59:55,689 --> 01:59:58,775
that they don't have a
direct indigenous connection,

2222
01:59:59,067 --> 02:00:02,696
in fact do.
- I feel like

2223
02:00:02,987 --> 02:00:04,572
something bad is gonna happen to me.

2224
02:00:06,449 --> 02:00:08,618
I feel like something bad has happened.

2225
02:00:09,953 --> 02:00:12,247
It hasn't reached me
yet but it's on its way.

2226
02:00:12,539 --> 02:00:15,625
(mysterious tense music)
- Lake Mungo

2227
02:00:15,917 --> 02:00:18,169
is a sacred indigenous site.

2228
02:00:18,461 --> 02:00:20,672
In the late 1960s, they found the bodies,

2229
02:00:20,964 --> 02:00:23,341
40,000 year old bodies,

2230
02:00:23,633 --> 02:00:26,261
remains of three indigenous people.

2231
02:00:28,346 --> 02:00:30,724
Nothing in the film mentions this,

2232
02:00:31,015 --> 02:00:33,101
but there's something about that place

2233
02:00:33,393 --> 02:00:38,148
and indigenous cultures,
they're so connected to land.

2234
02:00:39,399 --> 02:00:42,819
(tense suspenseful music)

2235
02:00:45,071 --> 02:00:47,741
And we find this in "Wolf Creek."

2236
02:00:51,286 --> 02:00:52,787
And what I find interesting
about "Lake Mungo",

2237
02:00:53,079 --> 02:00:54,706
"Picnic at Hanging Rock", and "Wolf Creek"

2238
02:00:54,998 --> 02:00:56,791
is that they may not be directly

2239
02:00:57,083 --> 02:01:00,503
talking about indigenous
cultures in the same way

2240
02:01:00,795 --> 02:01:03,798
that something like "The Last
Wave", or "Red Billabong",

2241
02:01:04,090 --> 02:01:08,219
or "Prey" are, but they're
more about this sense of place.

2242
02:01:08,511 --> 02:01:13,308
And instead of exoticizing
indigenous history

2243
02:01:13,600 --> 02:01:16,811
and indigenous culture, there's
a sort of acknowledgement

2244
02:01:17,103 --> 02:01:19,522
that there are things about
this land that we don't know

2245
02:01:19,814 --> 02:01:22,901
and that we don't understand,
and we will never understand.

2246
02:01:23,193 --> 02:01:24,486
And I think that that's perhaps one

2247
02:01:24,778 --> 02:01:27,447
of the more productive ways of engaging

2248
02:01:27,739 --> 02:01:31,159
with this folkloric background
from a colonial perspective.

2249
02:01:31,451 --> 02:01:35,830
(spooky music)
- A really interesting film

2250
02:01:36,122 --> 02:01:38,958
that sort of bridges the
gap between folk horror

2251
02:01:39,250 --> 02:01:42,170
in Australian cinema from the
white filmmakers perspective

2252
02:01:42,462 --> 02:01:44,130
or the secular perspective,

2253
02:01:44,422 --> 02:01:47,258
and folk horror from the
Aboriginals perspective

2254
02:01:47,550 --> 02:01:50,053
is Tracey Moffatt's film "Bedevil".

2255
02:01:50,345 --> 02:01:52,680
(spooky music)
So that's a very unusual film.

2256
02:01:52,972 --> 02:01:55,517
It's essentially a
trilogy of ghost stories

2257
02:01:55,809 --> 02:01:58,478
about a town where the main character

2258
02:01:58,770 --> 02:02:02,023
believes that an American
GI from the Second World War

2259
02:02:02,315 --> 02:02:05,902
died in a swamp and therefore the ghost

2260
02:02:06,194 --> 02:02:08,696
of that person haunts that area.

2261
02:02:08,988 --> 02:02:12,408
And then later, a cinema
is built over that swamp

2262
02:02:12,700 --> 02:02:14,452
and it is supposedly haunted.

2263
02:02:14,744 --> 02:02:15,995
(ominous music)
- They built

2264
02:02:17,789 --> 02:02:21,584
a poxy cinema above that stinking swamp.

2265
02:02:23,461 --> 02:02:26,881
Can you believe that?
- I suppose Tracy Moffitt

2266
02:02:27,173 --> 02:02:29,467
is saying with "Bedevil"
that everything is mysterious

2267
02:02:29,759 --> 02:02:33,596
to someone, and our past and
our culture is mysterious

2268
02:02:33,888 --> 02:02:34,556
to all of us as well.

2269
02:02:34,848 --> 02:02:36,683
So she's kind of throwing away

2270
02:02:36,975 --> 02:02:39,602
that sort of traditional
folk horror paradigm

2271
02:02:39,894 --> 02:02:42,814
and mixing things up in
a really interesting way.

2272
02:02:43,106 --> 02:02:45,400
(tense music)

2273
02:02:59,497 --> 02:03:03,751
(tense suspenseful music)
- It is Tuesday 26th January,

2274
02:03:04,043 --> 02:03:07,213
1988, and on behalf of the staff

2275
02:03:07,505 --> 02:03:09,007
at the Better and Broad Northwest Radio,

2276
02:03:09,299 --> 02:03:11,092
I'd just like to wish
this great nation of ours

2277
02:03:11,384 --> 02:03:16,180
a happy 200th birthday.
(tense music)

2278
02:03:18,474 --> 02:03:21,269
- So 1988 is a hugely significant year

2279
02:03:21,561 --> 02:03:25,440
in Australian history,
it marked the bicentenary

2280
02:03:25,732 --> 02:03:30,528
of white settlement, it's Invasion Day.

2281
02:03:31,487 --> 02:03:33,907
(tense music)

2282
02:03:37,493 --> 02:03:38,578
The government sanctioned ads,

2283
02:03:38,870 --> 02:03:40,997
there were huge, you know,
parties at the opera house.

2284
02:03:41,289 --> 02:03:42,957
There were government funded ads

2285
02:03:43,249 --> 02:03:45,585
that were this little
celebration of a nation.

2286
02:03:46,628 --> 02:03:48,129
And these odd little horror films,

2287
02:03:48,421 --> 02:03:52,467
just that seemed like nothing,
start to critique that.

2288
02:03:52,759 --> 02:03:54,052
Two films came out

2289
02:03:54,344 --> 02:03:56,512
that I think are really,
really interesting,

2290
02:03:56,804 --> 02:03:57,847
and I don't think they mean to be.

2291
02:03:58,139 --> 02:03:59,724
And I love this about horror

2292
02:04:00,016 --> 02:04:02,977
in that sometimes they
just capture a moment

2293
02:04:03,269 --> 02:04:05,146
or articulate something
that they don't even know

2294
02:04:05,438 --> 02:04:06,689
that they're articulating.

2295
02:04:06,981 --> 02:04:07,565
(suspenseful music)
- Look, the stones

2296
02:04:07,857 --> 02:04:10,526
aren't such a mystery, not when
you consider where you live.

2297
02:04:10,818 --> 02:04:12,737
- How do you mean?
- Well, your street

2298
02:04:13,029 --> 02:04:14,781
is the side of an old
Aboriginal burial ground.

2299
02:04:15,073 --> 02:04:16,991
There was quite a protest
about it a couple of years ago

2300
02:04:17,283 --> 02:04:19,118
when the area was being developed,

2301
02:04:19,410 --> 02:04:21,621
I was involved in it myself actually.

2302
02:04:21,913 --> 02:04:22,914
I'm surprised you didn't know

2303
02:04:23,206 --> 02:04:25,291
because your father's
company was the developer.

2304
02:04:25,583 --> 02:04:27,418
- That film is hugely significant

2305
02:04:27,710 --> 02:04:30,838
because it's really the
closest, one of the few places

2306
02:04:31,130 --> 02:04:34,258
in the mainstream white imagination

2307
02:04:34,550 --> 02:04:36,177
where we started getting a critique.

2308
02:04:36,469 --> 02:04:37,679
And maybe this isn't cool.

2309
02:04:39,764 --> 02:04:41,224
There was another film
that came out that year

2310
02:04:41,516 --> 02:04:43,810
that I adored called "The Dreaming."

2311
02:04:44,102 --> 02:04:47,063
(tense ominous music)

2312
02:04:58,408 --> 02:04:59,951
The main character is a doctor

2313
02:05:00,243 --> 02:05:03,204
and she is working in an emergency ward,

2314
02:05:03,496 --> 02:05:06,165
and a young indigenous
woman comes in and she dies.

2315
02:05:06,457 --> 02:05:09,585
And after her death, the
doctor starts having nightmares

2316
02:05:09,877 --> 02:05:14,215
about the past.
(tense suspenseful music)

2317
02:05:15,758 --> 02:05:18,094
It's a really interesting
movie specifically,

2318
02:05:18,386 --> 02:05:23,182
again, for 1988, the year
of the supposed celebrations

2319
02:05:23,808 --> 02:05:26,936
of the bicentenary because
it draws a direct parallel

2320
02:05:27,228 --> 02:05:30,773
between colonial violence
and gender violence.

2321
02:05:31,065 --> 02:05:33,943
(tense spooky music)

2322
02:05:40,867 --> 02:05:41,743
(crowd yelling)
- The connection

2323
02:05:42,035 --> 02:05:44,370
between invasion, genocide,
and gendered violence

2324
02:05:44,662 --> 02:05:45,580
can also be seen in things

2325
02:05:45,872 --> 02:05:48,875
like Marcin Wrona's 2015 film "Demon."

2326
02:05:49,917 --> 02:05:54,839
- "Demon" is loosely based
on the idea of the dybbuk.

2327
02:05:55,339 --> 02:05:57,008
The dybbuk comes from Jewish folklore,

2328
02:05:57,300 --> 02:06:00,970
it's a clinging ghost that attaches itself

2329
02:06:01,262 --> 02:06:02,472
to somebody who is living

2330
02:06:02,764 --> 02:06:04,849
and effectively possesses them.

2331
02:06:05,141 --> 02:06:09,854
Most famously, the idea of
the dybbuk comes from a play

2332
02:06:10,146 --> 02:06:14,025
written by the Russian
folklorist, polemicist, writer

2333
02:06:14,317 --> 02:06:18,071
S. Ansky, and made into a film in 1937.

2334
02:06:19,155 --> 02:06:24,077
(calm upbeat music)
- What is most significant

2335
02:06:24,952 --> 02:06:29,874
in terms of the film's
relationship to the folklore

2336
02:06:31,167 --> 02:06:35,296
is that the clinging ghost
is ultimately defeated

2337
02:06:35,588 --> 02:06:38,174
not through a formal exorcism process,

2338
02:06:38,466 --> 02:06:43,262
but through the great rabbi
remembering his own ancestry.

2339
02:06:44,222 --> 02:06:48,392
(upbeat music)
Jumping ahead to 2015,

2340
02:06:48,684 --> 02:06:52,772
and Marcin Wrona's
remarkable film "Demon",

2341
02:06:53,064 --> 02:06:56,400
we get another kind of dybbuk narrative.

2342
02:06:56,692 --> 02:06:58,611
(tense dramatic music)

2343
02:06:58,903 --> 02:06:59,695
(glass crunches)

2344
02:06:59,987 --> 02:07:00,822
(Piotr and Zaneta laugh)
- Piotr and Zaneta

2345
02:07:01,114 --> 02:07:03,741
are getting married on
the family homestead,

2346
02:07:04,033 --> 02:07:06,869
property that Zaneta's father owns

2347
02:07:07,161 --> 02:07:09,997
and is giving as a wedding
present to the young couple.

2348
02:07:10,289 --> 02:07:12,792
The vast majority of the film
takes place over one night,

2349
02:07:13,084 --> 02:07:15,711
the night of the wedding itself.

2350
02:07:16,003 --> 02:07:19,632
On his first night there,
Piotr uncovers some bones.

2351
02:07:19,924 --> 02:07:21,592
(ominous music)
- It turns out

2352
02:07:21,884 --> 02:07:24,428
this land being given to
them as a wedding present

2353
02:07:24,720 --> 02:07:27,140
is the site of a massacre where
all the Jewish inhabitants

2354
02:07:27,431 --> 02:07:29,642
of the village were killed
during the Holocaust.

2355
02:07:30,643 --> 02:07:35,565
- The film positions itself
as a way of recounting

2356
02:07:35,940 --> 02:07:38,860
the past of this little village in Poland,

2357
02:07:39,819 --> 02:07:43,322
that has quite literally
covered up what happened there

2358
02:07:43,614 --> 02:07:47,076
in terms of the Nazi genocide.

2359
02:07:47,368 --> 02:07:49,829
This is not a history which is recognized

2360
02:07:50,121 --> 02:07:51,539
within the village itself.

2361
02:08:36,167 --> 02:08:37,501
- [Crowd] Zaneta!

2362
02:08:37,919 --> 02:08:41,088
(spooky ominous music)

2363
02:08:43,799 --> 02:08:48,012
- In 2019, Jayro Bustamante
used the folk legend La Llorona

2364
02:08:48,304 --> 02:08:49,347
to talk about the genocide

2365
02:08:49,639 --> 02:08:52,141
of the indigenous Mayan
population in Guatemala,

2366
02:08:52,433 --> 02:08:55,061
what's known as 0 Holocausto silencioso,

2367
02:08:55,353 --> 02:08:56,520
the Silent Holocaust.

2368
02:08:58,940 --> 02:09:01,776
La Llorona"s this like old
story, depends who you ask it,

2369
02:09:02,068 --> 02:09:03,152
but it has to do with one thing,

2370
02:09:03,444 --> 02:09:05,154
when Hernan Cortes, who
was the big conquistador,

2371
02:09:05,446 --> 02:09:07,615
came to Mexico, he married La Malinche,

2372
02:09:07,907 --> 02:09:11,619
who was an Indian woman that
was given to him as a present,

2373
02:09:11,911 --> 02:09:15,831
she was a slave, but she
understood other languages.

2374
02:09:16,123 --> 02:09:18,626
And she had like a ability for languages

2375
02:09:18,918 --> 02:09:20,336
and she starts learning Spanish.

2376
02:09:20,628 --> 02:09:23,839
So she became translator
for the conquistador,

2377
02:09:24,131 --> 02:09:26,175
and, of course, they
had children together,

2378
02:09:26,467 --> 02:09:27,385
and that was like the first, you know,

2379
02:09:27,677 --> 02:09:29,220
they say that she's the
mother of the Mexican,

2380
02:09:29,512 --> 02:09:30,930
the first, you know crossbreeding.

2381
02:09:31,222 --> 02:09:34,058
And from that came the
idea that eventually

2382
02:09:34,350 --> 02:09:37,311
Cortes had children with
other women, and he left her,

2383
02:09:37,603 --> 02:09:38,604
and there was like some drama.

2384
02:09:38,896 --> 02:09:42,400
And so the idea of the
rich man or the white man

2385
02:09:42,692 --> 02:09:45,611
that falls in love with the
Indian and then leaves her,

2386
02:09:45,903 --> 02:09:47,780
and she's scorned and she's like sad,

2387
02:09:48,072 --> 02:09:49,907
and drowned the children.

2388
02:09:50,199 --> 02:09:52,493
And then when she realizes
what she had done,

2389
02:09:52,785 --> 02:09:53,911
she would kill herself.

2390
02:09:54,203 --> 02:09:56,664
But, of course, her spirit would stay

2391
02:09:56,956 --> 02:10:00,459
and, you know, go howl at
night, "Ah, mis hijos."

2392
02:10:05,631 --> 02:10:08,801
(dramatic suspenseful music)
(woman screams)

2393
02:10:09,093 --> 02:10:10,803
- It's not something
that's only in Mexico,

2394
02:10:11,095 --> 02:10:12,972
the Llorona takes stuff that, you know,

2395
02:10:13,264 --> 02:10:16,100
Medea, you know, the mother
that kills the children,

2396
02:10:16,392 --> 02:10:19,228
there's the ubume from
Japan, which is the yokai

2397
02:10:20,354 --> 02:10:21,939
for the women that die in childbirth.

2398
02:10:22,231 --> 02:10:24,442
There's the Banshee
from Ireland, you know,

2399
02:10:24,734 --> 02:10:27,403
the screaming, "Ah, mis
hijos," it's the equivalent.

2400
02:10:27,695 --> 02:10:30,323
So I think it's super
interesting how these myths

2401
02:10:30,614 --> 02:10:31,824
are like all around the world,

2402
02:10:32,116 --> 02:10:34,493
they just have different
names and we make it local.

2403
02:10:36,203 --> 02:10:38,622
(tense music)

2404
02:11:12,031 --> 02:11:15,785
(Valeriana speaks in Spanish)

2405
02:11:27,963 --> 02:11:30,508
(gentle ominous music)
- And where commonly,

2406
02:11:30,800 --> 02:11:33,427
the La Llorona legend has her
drowning her own children,

2407
02:11:33,719 --> 02:11:36,013
here her children are being
drowned in front of her

2408
02:11:36,305 --> 02:11:39,308
by the soldiers of a dictator
who's massacring her people.

2409
02:11:39,600 --> 02:11:42,103
So it calls attention to what the story is

2410
02:11:42,395 --> 02:11:44,563
depending on who gets
to be the storyteller.

2411
02:11:44,855 --> 02:11:47,066
(gentle suspenseful music)
- So were water imagery's

2412
02:11:47,358 --> 02:11:49,735
always been important
in the Llorona mythology

2413
02:11:50,027 --> 02:11:52,863
because of its maternal associations,

2414
02:11:53,155 --> 02:11:55,449
here it becomes a symbol
of national trauma.

2415
02:12:14,927 --> 02:12:17,888
(suspenseful music)
- I think that drowning

2416
02:12:18,180 --> 02:12:21,225
or being submerged in a river or a lake

2417
02:12:21,517 --> 02:12:23,727
is such a potent image for these films,

2418
02:12:24,019 --> 02:12:27,064
I think because the lake
is a communal place,

2419
02:12:27,356 --> 02:12:29,567
it provides sustenance to the community.

2420
02:12:29,859 --> 02:12:32,027
And so it instantly
implicates the community

2421
02:12:32,319 --> 02:12:34,864
and becomes a source of collective guilt.

2422
02:12:35,156 --> 02:12:36,782
(calm music)
- This comes into play

2423
02:12:37,074 --> 02:12:40,077
also in a Japanese film called "Shikoku."

2424
02:12:40,369 --> 02:12:43,038
"Shikoku" is the smallest
of the main islands

2425
02:12:43,330 --> 02:12:45,583
that make up Japan.

2426
02:12:45,875 --> 02:12:48,377
It means literally fourth kingdom.

2427
02:12:48,669 --> 02:12:51,630
This, again, was a hotbed
for traditional Buddhism

2428
02:12:51,922 --> 02:12:54,216
and they had a very famous Pilgrim tour

2429
02:12:54,508 --> 02:12:56,886
that you do between 88 temples.

2430
02:12:59,096 --> 02:13:02,516
So the story was that a girl
goes back to her countryside

2431
02:13:02,808 --> 02:13:05,686
where she grew up and her
best friend from high school

2432
02:13:05,978 --> 02:13:09,064
drowned in a lake five years before.

2433
02:13:09,356 --> 02:13:12,067
And she's sort of coming
back and haunting.

2434
02:13:12,359 --> 02:13:14,778
(lake burbling)

2435
02:13:17,907 --> 02:13:20,576
We find out that the
mother of the dead girl

2436
02:13:20,868 --> 02:13:23,662
is going around and doing
the pilgrimage backwards.

2437
02:13:25,206 --> 02:13:26,499
(crow screeching)
- And then in "Noroi",

2438
02:13:26,790 --> 02:13:30,002
which was one of the earlier
Japanese found footage films,

2439
02:13:30,294 --> 02:13:32,421
the entire village itself is drowned.

2440
02:13:32,713 --> 02:13:35,508
A dam is built on the
site and the folk rituals

2441
02:13:35,799 --> 02:13:37,176
that have been observed for centuries

2442
02:13:37,468 --> 02:13:39,803
to appease a local demon are disrupted,

2443
02:13:40,095 --> 02:13:41,889
with dire consequences, of course.

2444
02:14:15,172 --> 02:14:19,176
(gentle suspenseful music)
- But a lot of it

2445
02:14:19,468 --> 02:14:21,762
is about building on
top of something else,

2446
02:14:22,054 --> 02:14:24,348
so basically anywhere people have moved,

2447
02:14:24,640 --> 02:14:27,351
or displaced other
people or other cultures,

2448
02:14:27,643 --> 02:14:30,145
or where older traditions
are being transported

2449
02:14:30,437 --> 02:14:33,274
to new environments, you're
gonna find folk horror.

2450
02:14:33,566 --> 02:14:37,111
(mystical suspenseful music)

2451
02:14:38,821 --> 02:14:43,742
- We are largely a culture of
migrants, so our traditions,

2452
02:14:44,827 --> 02:14:47,663
apart from obviously the
indigenous traditions,

2453
02:14:47,955 --> 02:14:49,915
are imported from elsewhere.

2454
02:14:50,207 --> 02:14:51,959
There are some examples
of Australian folk horror

2455
02:14:52,251 --> 02:14:54,628
that fit more within
the European tradition.

2456
02:14:54,920 --> 02:14:57,965
And one of those would
be the early '80s film

2457
02:14:58,257 --> 02:14:59,383
"Alison's Birthday."

2458
02:14:59,675 --> 02:15:03,512
(group chanting in foreign language)

2459
02:15:03,804 --> 02:15:06,098
This young girl, Alison, becomes drawn

2460
02:15:06,390 --> 02:15:10,436
into a strange Celtic
cult, and they have decided

2461
02:15:10,728 --> 02:15:13,230
that she's going to be the
vessel for their ancient goddess

2462
02:15:13,522 --> 02:15:14,356
that they worship.

2463
02:15:14,648 --> 02:15:16,525
(thunder crackles)
- Skip, skip,

2464
02:15:16,817 --> 02:15:19,820
skipping on the ends of
their toes ran the Hobyahs.

2465
02:15:20,112 --> 02:15:23,032
And the Hobyahs cried,
"Pull down the hemp storks,

2466
02:15:23,324 --> 02:15:27,286
eat up the little old man,
carry off the little old woman."

2467
02:15:27,578 --> 02:15:29,163
- When we think of
Australian horror movies

2468
02:15:29,455 --> 02:15:32,291
about a young child who
is obsessed with a haunted

2469
02:15:32,583 --> 02:15:34,877
or a spooky storybook, we, of course,

2470
02:15:35,169 --> 02:15:36,629
think of "The Babadook",

2471
02:15:36,920 --> 02:15:38,422
but it's predated by "Celia."

2472
02:15:38,714 --> 02:15:42,259
And Celia's a young school
girl who is told a story

2473
02:15:42,551 --> 02:15:43,886
at school, there's a book at her school

2474
02:15:44,178 --> 02:15:45,554
called "The Hobyahs."

2475
02:15:45,846 --> 02:15:47,640
It's apparently a Scottish tale,

2476
02:15:47,931 --> 02:15:50,017
but it was very much imported

2477
02:15:50,309 --> 02:15:52,186
and reinterpreted in Australia.

2478
02:15:52,478 --> 02:15:55,314
It was put in a formal collection
of fairytales initially

2479
02:15:55,606 --> 02:15:58,400
and then an Australian
folklorist picked it up

2480
02:15:58,692 --> 02:16:01,278
and it really became part
of Australian folklore.

2481
02:16:01,570 --> 02:16:04,615
♪ There was a Wild Colonial Boy ♪

2482
02:16:04,907 --> 02:16:08,160
♪ Jack Duggan was his name ♪

2483
02:16:08,452 --> 02:16:12,414
♪ He was born and raised in Ireland ♪

2484
02:16:12,706 --> 02:16:15,751
♪ In a place called Castlemain ♪

2485
02:16:16,043 --> 02:16:18,420
- A lot of Australian folklore stems from

2486
02:16:18,712 --> 02:16:22,091
what I guess we can call the
Wild Colonial Boy's imagination

2487
02:16:22,383 --> 02:16:25,511
and this, the origins
of this lie in a ballad,

2488
02:16:25,803 --> 02:16:27,096
an Australian Irish ballad

2489
02:16:27,388 --> 02:16:29,932
called "The Wild Colonial Boy" singular.

2490
02:16:30,224 --> 02:16:33,686
♪ At the early age of sixteen years ♪

2491
02:16:33,977 --> 02:16:36,897
♪ He left his native home ♪
♪ Whoa ♪

2492
02:16:37,189 --> 02:16:41,026
- And it's so deep in
there, it's not just in film

2493
02:16:41,318 --> 02:16:44,530
and fiction, it's in the newscast,

2494
02:16:44,822 --> 02:16:45,823
it's in football coverage.

2495
02:16:46,115 --> 02:16:47,741
This idea that, you know, we are the lads

2496
02:16:48,033 --> 02:16:50,369
and we will band together
and we will fight the law.

2497
02:16:50,661 --> 02:16:52,788
The legacy of the Wild Colonial
Boy, you can see in things

2498
02:16:53,080 --> 02:16:56,041
like "Ned Kelly", true crime
films, obviously, "Chopper",

2499
02:16:56,333 --> 02:16:59,628
things like "The Boys" and "Snowtown".

2500
02:16:59,920 --> 02:17:02,297
But "Wake in Fright" would
be the obvious go-to place

2501
02:17:02,589 --> 02:17:03,632
to really feel the legacy

2502
02:17:03,924 --> 02:17:08,637
of the Wild Colonial
Boy's legend in Australian

2503
02:17:08,929 --> 02:17:11,473
horror film history.
- All right, everybody,

2504
02:17:11,765 --> 02:17:13,183
fair do.
- Fair go.

2505
02:17:13,475 --> 02:17:15,519
Fair go.
- I think ritual

2506
02:17:15,811 --> 02:17:18,939
in "Wake in Fright" operates
on a number of levels.

2507
02:17:19,231 --> 02:17:23,068
So there's probably just a
level of these are some customs

2508
02:17:23,360 --> 02:17:25,779
that are common in Australia,
like playing two-up

2509
02:17:26,071 --> 02:17:27,656
or going out and shooting kangaroos

2510
02:17:27,948 --> 02:17:30,033
to keep the kangaroo population down.

2511
02:17:31,201 --> 02:17:35,164
But in the town that we
see depicted in the film,

2512
02:17:36,707 --> 02:17:40,961
these activities are sort of
taken to a heightened level.

2513
02:17:41,253 --> 02:17:44,590
So two-up becomes a very
powerful sort of game

2514
02:17:44,882 --> 02:17:48,719
of fate and destiny.
(dramatic music)

2515
02:17:52,097 --> 02:17:54,600
(boom booming)

2516
02:17:56,351 --> 02:17:59,688
(suspenseful drum music)

2517
02:18:21,335 --> 02:18:23,504
(ominous music)
- The colonial settlement

2518
02:18:23,796 --> 02:18:25,506
of Brazil brought a lot of the same fears

2519
02:18:25,798 --> 02:18:28,342
about contact between
different systems of faith

2520
02:18:28,634 --> 02:18:30,552
that we see in North American folk horror.

2521
02:18:37,351 --> 02:18:40,729
- Candomble is the
African Brazilian religion

2522
02:18:41,021 --> 02:18:45,776
which retains most of
its Aboriginal elements,

2523
02:18:46,068 --> 02:18:50,697
native elements when it was
celebrated back in Africa.

2524
02:18:50,989 --> 02:18:55,118
The religion was brought to
Brazil by the African slaves,

2525
02:18:55,410 --> 02:19:00,207
but it was very readily
repressed by slave masters,

2526
02:19:00,499 --> 02:19:02,459
authorities, the clergy,

2527
02:19:02,751 --> 02:19:06,964
and was mostly practiced in secrecy.

2528
02:19:08,924 --> 02:19:11,885
Umbanda is basically Candomble

2529
02:19:12,177 --> 02:19:16,473
mixed with a Christian
element, mostly of Catholicism,

2530
02:19:16,765 --> 02:19:21,562
and some of another very famous
religion practiced in Brazil

2531
02:19:21,895 --> 02:19:23,856
which is Kardecist spiritualism.

2532
02:19:24,147 --> 02:19:28,068
And it came from France from
the medium, Allan Kardec,

2533
02:19:28,360 --> 02:19:29,862
which created this Christian religion

2534
02:19:30,153 --> 02:19:32,781
based on spiritual
communication with the dead.

2535
02:19:33,073 --> 02:19:33,949
(dramatic music)

2536
02:19:34,241 --> 02:19:34,950
(crickets chirping)

2537
02:19:35,242 --> 02:19:39,621
There is a third branch of the
African Brazilian religions

2538
02:19:39,913 --> 02:19:44,710
which is something very
small, very marginal,

2539
02:19:45,419 --> 02:19:49,923
and very frowned upon by the
practitioners of Candomble

2540
02:19:50,215 --> 02:19:54,136
and Umbanda, which is a
branch called Kimbunda.

2541
02:19:55,470 --> 02:19:59,141
Kimbunda is technically
what the practitioners

2542
02:19:59,433 --> 02:20:01,977
of Umbanda and Candomble
will call Macumba.

2543
02:20:02,269 --> 02:20:06,982
Macumba is sorcery, it's
using the powers of, you know,

2544
02:20:07,274 --> 02:20:12,070
the spiritual world for your
personal individual advantage.

2545
02:20:13,322 --> 02:20:18,243
This practice of calling African
Brazilian religions Macumba

2546
02:20:18,619 --> 02:20:23,123
or dismissing all African
Brazilian religions as witchcraft

2547
02:20:23,415 --> 02:20:25,208
or devil worship in disguise,

2548
02:20:26,585 --> 02:20:31,256
that all came from the
Brazilian Christendom.

2549
02:20:45,312 --> 02:20:47,898
(bird chirping)

2550
02:20:59,242 --> 02:21:01,578
(calm music)

2551
02:21:27,229 --> 02:21:30,649
(tense suspenseful music)

2552
02:22:26,246 --> 02:22:28,665
(fire blazes)

2553
02:22:34,921 --> 02:22:38,884
(gentle ominous music)
- And I think

2554
02:22:39,176 --> 02:22:40,761
"As Filhas Do Fogo" also deliberately

2555
02:22:41,053 --> 02:22:43,722
recalls the Nazi associations
with folk tradition.

2556
02:22:46,349 --> 02:22:49,436
- If we go back far
enough, say for example,

2557
02:22:49,728 --> 02:22:53,190
to Johann Gottfried von Herder ideas

2558
02:22:53,482 --> 02:22:58,278
of romantic nationalism,
Herder was a German philosopher

2559
02:22:59,446 --> 02:23:04,159
in the 1700s who recognized or who felt

2560
02:23:04,451 --> 02:23:09,122
that the true spirit of
Germany lay in “das volk,”

2561
02:23:09,414 --> 02:23:13,460
the folk, the people of the
villages, of the mountains,

2562
02:23:13,752 --> 02:23:15,962
that this is where you would really find

2563
02:23:16,254 --> 02:23:18,882
the true spirit of Germany.

2564
02:23:19,174 --> 02:23:22,344
Had tremendous repercussions,
it's what sparked

2565
02:23:22,636 --> 02:23:26,139
the Grimm brothers, for example,
to start their collections,

2566
02:23:26,431 --> 02:23:31,144
and really got the whole
folk narrative ball rolling,

2567
02:23:31,436 --> 02:23:35,232
as it were, in the late 18th century

2568
02:23:35,524 --> 02:23:37,275
and into the 19th century.

2569
02:23:37,567 --> 02:23:40,362
Now, of course, this idea of
the true spirit of Germany,

2570
02:23:40,654 --> 02:23:44,491
being in the countryside
was particularly popular

2571
02:23:44,783 --> 02:23:46,868
with the Nazi period.

2572
02:23:47,160 --> 02:23:49,621
And the whole notion of das volk,

2573
02:23:49,913 --> 02:23:51,957
and creating within the Third Reich

2574
02:23:52,249 --> 02:23:55,585
a sense of the true spirit
of the people was, of course,

2575
02:23:55,877 --> 02:23:58,880
very important to the Nazis.
- And this connects

2576
02:23:59,172 --> 02:24:03,176
to what is now very well
documented, Nazi occult research.

2577
02:24:03,468 --> 02:24:06,763
(tense suspenseful music)

2578
02:24:36,751 --> 02:24:38,461
(dramatic music)
- It's well-known

2579
02:24:38,753 --> 02:24:41,214
that Nazi occultist Otto Rahn
was an influence

2580
02:24:41,506 --> 02:24:44,259
on "Raiders of the Lost Ark",
and it connects to the role

2581
02:24:44,551 --> 02:24:46,511
of the seeker or the archeologist

2582
02:24:46,803 --> 02:24:49,306
that became really
important in these films.

2583
02:24:49,598 --> 02:24:51,224
(sand whooshing)
- In the late 1930s,

2584
02:24:51,516 --> 02:24:53,894
there was this big discovery of ruins.

2585
02:24:54,186 --> 02:24:56,479
There was a very famous
archeologist, Alfonso Caso,

2586
02:24:56,771 --> 02:24:59,357
who made of discovering
world super-important books

2587
02:24:59,649 --> 02:25:00,483
that kind of changed the outlook

2588
02:25:00,775 --> 02:25:01,693
of our geology at that time.

2589
02:25:01,985 --> 02:25:05,322
And a decade later, there
was like a boom of these,

2590
02:25:05,614 --> 02:25:08,450
"The Aztec Mummy", "La Cabeza Viviente"

2591
02:25:08,742 --> 02:25:12,662
and all these different incarnations
of pre-Hispanic warriors

2592
02:25:14,289 --> 02:25:16,583
that were left in the
pyramids and they're awakened

2593
02:25:16,875 --> 02:25:19,878
by these archeologists that
come to bother their slumber.

2594
02:25:20,170 --> 02:25:23,465
And they start attacking
people and killing them,

2595
02:25:23,757 --> 02:25:27,594
and, you know, trying to
reenact sacrificial practices

2596
02:25:27,886 --> 02:25:29,596
tied to the old gods.

2597
02:25:29,888 --> 02:25:31,014
And I think it was very interesting

2598
02:25:31,306 --> 02:25:32,766
how that thing that actually happened,

2599
02:25:33,058 --> 02:25:36,102
the discoveries, started
affecting these movies.

2600
02:25:36,394 --> 02:25:41,191
(horn blares)
(tense suspenseful music)

2601
02:25:42,400 --> 02:25:44,110
Those movies, those old
movies was the first time

2602
02:25:44,402 --> 02:25:46,696
that you would see,
talking about the pyramids,

2603
02:25:46,988 --> 02:25:49,741
and the old Mexico, and
all the indigenous empires,

2604
02:25:50,033 --> 02:25:51,576
you would have a representation.

2605
02:25:51,868 --> 02:25:53,370
(calm music)
I find it super interesting

2606
02:25:53,662 --> 02:25:55,956
that there's always like a cult of people

2607
02:25:56,248 --> 02:25:59,000
that still believe in the old gods

2608
02:25:59,292 --> 02:26:01,670
and they're like embedded
within the society.

2609
02:26:01,962 --> 02:26:03,755
And even though they wear
a tie and suit, you know,

2610
02:26:04,047 --> 02:26:06,049
they have to do a ritual at night.

2611
02:26:07,759 --> 02:26:10,095
There's a very important movie made in '37

2612
02:26:10,387 --> 02:26:11,680
called "El Signo de la Muerte"

2613
02:26:11,972 --> 02:26:15,267
in which one of the famous
archeologist, who runs the museum

2614
02:26:15,558 --> 02:26:17,394
and is like the leading scientist,

2615
02:26:17,686 --> 02:26:21,189
he's also leader of a sect, a cult.

2616
02:26:21,481 --> 02:26:24,359
They're kidnapping women
for human sacrifices

2617
02:26:24,651 --> 02:26:26,736
and they're doing them
underneath the museum.

2618
02:26:27,862 --> 02:26:30,073
I think that's amazing
about all these beliefs

2619
02:26:30,365 --> 02:26:32,951
is that they've been kept down for years,

2620
02:26:33,243 --> 02:26:35,620
they try to erase them,
like the Mexican Conquest

2621
02:26:35,912 --> 02:26:38,623
was dark shit, like they killed everybody.

2622
02:26:38,915 --> 02:26:40,083
They burned everything.

2623
02:26:40,375 --> 02:26:42,669
They wanted to erase the culture

2624
02:26:42,961 --> 02:26:45,422
and it seemed like they did,
but it keeps coming back.

2625
02:26:45,714 --> 02:26:47,257
It keeps coming back, it's like waves.

2626
02:26:47,549 --> 02:26:50,927
(gentle suspenseful music)

2627
02:26:55,265 --> 02:26:57,767
(Joe groaning)

2628
02:27:01,313 --> 02:27:03,982
(dramatic music)

2629
02:27:05,191 --> 02:27:08,486
(suspenseful music)
- You get the weird

2630
02:27:08,778 --> 02:27:11,197
fascination that Catholics
have with paganism.

2631
02:27:12,657 --> 02:27:14,117
At the same time as they refuse it,

2632
02:27:14,409 --> 02:27:16,953
at the same time that I
think that's a sort of envy

2633
02:27:17,245 --> 02:27:19,372
of what they perceive as being the freedom

2634
02:27:19,664 --> 02:27:21,207
that pagan have with everything.

2635
02:27:21,499 --> 02:27:24,753
- Ah!
- There's another film,

2636
02:27:25,045 --> 02:27:28,923
which I think needs to
be discussed in light

2637
02:27:29,215 --> 02:27:31,343
of the whole concept of folk horror

2638
02:27:31,634 --> 02:27:34,971
and that's Brunello Rondi's
1963 film "The Demon",

2639
02:27:35,263 --> 02:27:37,724
about a young woman in a village

2640
02:27:38,016 --> 02:27:41,644
who is thought to be a witch,
has embraced witchcraft,

2641
02:27:41,936 --> 02:27:45,023
and uses it to curse the
man who rejected her.

2642
02:27:56,076 --> 02:28:00,997
(wood thuds)
(gentle suspenseful music)

2643
02:28:20,517 --> 02:28:22,227
(crowd chattering)
- Rondi creates this

2644
02:28:22,519 --> 02:28:25,563
ethnographic background
for the central narrative

2645
02:28:25,855 --> 02:28:27,482
to play out in front of.

2646
02:28:27,774 --> 02:28:31,945
It's this Southern Italian village

2647
02:28:32,237 --> 02:28:35,490
filled with superstition and folk ritual.

2648
02:28:35,782 --> 02:28:38,660
(crowd singing)
- You can see

2649
02:28:38,952 --> 02:28:41,454
in "Il Demonio" how
integrated Catholicism is

2650
02:28:41,746 --> 02:28:43,665
with the older superstitious
or pagan traditions.

2651
02:28:43,957 --> 02:28:47,585
And there's a strong sense
of natural worship leftover

2652
02:28:47,877 --> 02:28:49,921
and adapted into their
brand of Christianity.

2653
02:28:55,510 --> 02:28:58,680
(dramatic music)
- You could almost see

2654
02:28:58,972 --> 02:29:02,350
"The Demon" as a kind
of prequel to Fulci's

2655
02:29:02,642 --> 02:29:04,144
"Don't Torture a Duckling",

2656
02:29:04,436 --> 02:29:07,355
specifically the character of Maciara,

2657
02:29:07,647 --> 02:29:11,526
the witch played by Florinda
Bolkan in Fulci's film.

2658
02:29:11,818 --> 02:29:15,488
How she is created as an
outsider to the village,

2659
02:29:15,780 --> 02:29:20,577
how she is put upon, how she
is tortured by the villagers.

2660
02:29:22,287 --> 02:29:24,164
They want her there as a wise woman,

2661
02:29:24,456 --> 02:29:29,085
but they also despise her for
being outside of the norm.

2662
02:29:29,377 --> 02:29:31,838
(ominous music)

2663
02:29:35,967 --> 02:29:40,847
- That is a very much a
Southern Italian folk habit.

2664
02:29:43,183 --> 02:29:46,811
(dramatic music)
(Maciara spits)

2665
02:29:47,103 --> 02:29:48,855
(gentle suspenseful music)
"Dark Waters"

2666
02:29:49,147 --> 02:29:53,151
in some ways was obviously
born from having grown up

2667
02:29:53,443 --> 02:29:55,153
with that version of Catholic religion.

2668
02:29:58,406 --> 02:30:02,327
Then the element of the Catholic religion

2669
02:30:02,619 --> 02:30:06,956
versus some older religion
IN a way was a consequence,

2670
02:30:07,248 --> 02:30:11,294
of the story mainly was
about you going back

2671
02:30:11,586 --> 02:30:15,006
to a place where you
came from and realizing

2672
02:30:15,298 --> 02:30:18,051
that where you came from wasn't
exactly what you thought.

2673
02:30:18,343 --> 02:30:22,347
And also having to face,
okay, where do I come from?

2674
02:30:22,639 --> 02:30:25,558
(dramatic music)

2675
02:30:25,850 --> 02:30:27,810
(calm, upbeat music)
- Where it could not destroy

2676
02:30:28,102 --> 02:30:31,814
the previous beliefs,
Christianity adopted, physically

2677
02:30:32,106 --> 02:30:34,901
and spiritually, the temples and rites

2678
02:30:35,193 --> 02:30:36,236
of the older religions.

2679
02:30:38,363 --> 02:30:41,115
Churches built on pagan mounds,

2680
02:30:41,407 --> 02:30:44,452
one of the most extraordinary
of these converted stones

2681
02:30:44,744 --> 02:30:48,122
is this huge minia which has been carved

2682
02:30:48,414 --> 02:30:50,124
apparently with Christian symbols.

2683
02:30:51,334 --> 02:30:52,418
But only apparently.

2684
02:30:53,962 --> 02:30:56,089
Persecution made the
disguise necessary.

2685
02:30:57,757 --> 02:31:00,510
All symbols of witchcraft.

2686
02:31:00,802 --> 02:31:03,429
(suspenseful music)
- This particular spot

2687
02:31:03,721 --> 02:31:05,974
is called the Morenci cross,

2688
02:31:06,266 --> 02:31:09,143
which originally was a stone marker

2689
02:31:09,435 --> 02:31:12,647
covered with pagan faces,
possibly representing

2690
02:31:12,939 --> 02:31:15,858
the Sun God of the Gauls, Belenus.

2691
02:31:16,150 --> 02:31:19,612
But in the 17th century, the
original stone was destroyed,

2692
02:31:19,904 --> 02:31:22,907
and the stone cross here
now to the original rock

2693
02:31:23,199 --> 02:31:25,493
was put in its place to Christianize

2694
02:31:25,785 --> 02:31:27,870
what was originally a pagan site.

2695
02:31:28,162 --> 02:31:30,623
(ominous music)

2696
02:31:35,211 --> 02:31:38,798
- Russian paganism and the
Orthodox church had found

2697
02:31:39,090 --> 02:31:41,551
a kind of accommodation
where they could accept

2698
02:31:41,843 --> 02:31:42,969
each other's presence.

2699
02:31:48,349 --> 02:31:52,061
"Viy" is the old story of
somebody having to spend

2700
02:31:52,353 --> 02:31:54,355
some time in a creepy place.

2701
02:31:54,647 --> 02:31:59,444
A woman dies and asks a
seminarian, a training priest,

2702
02:32:00,695 --> 02:32:04,324
to come and say prayers over
her body for three nights.

2703
02:32:11,289 --> 02:32:13,541
One of the things it's
about is about the clash

2704
02:32:13,833 --> 02:32:17,295
between the Catholic church and paganism.

2705
02:32:18,379 --> 02:32:21,007
And that was something that had gone on

2706
02:32:21,299 --> 02:32:23,301
for quite a long time in the Soviet Union.

2707
02:32:24,594 --> 02:32:27,430
(seminary sneezes)

2708
02:32:27,722 --> 02:32:31,851
It's also about the
depth of the hero's faith

2709
02:32:32,143 --> 02:32:36,939
and whether he has sufficient
faith to shun paganism.

2710
02:32:39,859 --> 02:32:44,781
(dramatic suspenseful music)
- There are a lot of

2711
02:32:45,073 --> 02:32:47,867
really interesting examples
of Eastern European films

2712
02:32:48,159 --> 02:32:51,371
that maybe someone wouldn't
directly describe as horror,

2713
02:32:52,538 --> 02:32:55,583
- Ah!
- but leave you

2714
02:32:55,875 --> 02:32:58,336
with this just feeling
of knowing that violence

2715
02:32:58,628 --> 02:33:01,964
IS inevitable.
(dramatic music)

2716
02:33:03,549 --> 02:33:05,968
(calm upbeat music)
- So you see

2717
02:33:06,260 --> 02:33:09,305
in the '60s and '70s, a
group of films coming out

2718
02:33:09,597 --> 02:33:11,641
that do fit the definition of folk horror,

2719
02:33:11,933 --> 02:33:14,686
they have ritual elements,
they have the landscape,

2720
02:33:14,977 --> 02:33:18,356
they have communities in
Czech and Slovak films.

2721
02:33:18,648 --> 02:33:21,317
So you have things like "Marketa Lazarova"

2722
02:33:21,609 --> 02:33:23,778
which is like not even
really a horror film,

2723
02:33:24,070 --> 02:33:26,280
but it's a drama with horrific elements,

2724
02:33:26,572 --> 02:33:31,369
set in medieval times in this
very grim brutal landscape.

2725
02:33:31,661 --> 02:33:35,039
(dramatic ethereal music)

2726
02:33:49,679 --> 02:33:52,640
- I think the most direct
parallel that comes to mind

2727
02:33:52,932 --> 02:33:54,642
for a lot of people is
something like "Witchhammer"

2728
02:33:54,934 --> 02:33:59,188
from 1970 which is more
or less the Czech version

2729
02:33:59,480 --> 02:34:00,815
of "Witchfinder General"

2730
02:34:01,107 --> 02:34:04,152
in the sense that it's a really angry film

2731
02:34:04,444 --> 02:34:05,695
and a really political film.

2732
02:34:05,987 --> 02:34:08,948
And it looks at this
idea of political power

2733
02:34:09,240 --> 02:34:11,951
as something that inherently corrupts.

2734
02:34:12,243 --> 02:34:13,453
(woman yelling)
- It's based on

2735
02:34:13,745 --> 02:34:16,122
the Malleus Maleficarum and witch hunting,

2736
02:34:16,414 --> 02:34:20,460
it's like another medieval
drama with lots of aspects

2737
02:34:20,752 --> 02:34:24,672
of folk horror that you see
in "Witchfinder General.”

2738
02:34:26,215 --> 02:34:29,177
(tense music)
- And essentially

2739
02:34:29,469 --> 02:34:32,305
it's depicting how the
survival of folk customs

2740
02:34:32,597 --> 02:34:34,348
was such a threat to
the dominant religion.

2741
02:34:34,640 --> 02:34:37,351
And they were seen as, you
know, holding people back

2742
02:34:37,643 --> 02:34:39,979
from cultural progress and in many places

2743
02:34:40,271 --> 02:34:42,815
obliterated to the point
where it then created

2744
02:34:43,107 --> 02:34:44,650
this whole field of ethnography.

2745
02:34:44,942 --> 02:34:47,320
People then trying to track and document

2746
02:34:47,612 --> 02:34:49,489
what little of these beliefs remained.

2747
02:34:52,074 --> 02:34:56,996
(bell chimes)
(tense music)

2748
02:35:15,973 --> 02:35:16,933
(tense music)
- The "Savage Hunt

2749
02:35:17,225 --> 02:35:20,770
of King Stakh's" about an
ethnographer who goes to Belarus,

2750
02:35:21,062 --> 02:35:23,606
he stays in a big creepy castle.

2751
02:35:23,898 --> 02:35:26,943
The hostess is obviously
disturbed about something,

2752
02:35:27,235 --> 02:35:29,403
but you don't really know quite what.

2753
02:35:30,947 --> 02:35:34,951
He then goes into the forest
to look at ancient rituals.

2754
02:35:37,787 --> 02:35:41,582
Clearly, the story is aimed
at saying that science

2755
02:35:41,874 --> 02:35:46,003
and myth, science and legend
are two separate worlds.

2756
02:35:46,295 --> 02:35:49,507
And that science will
never really understand

2757
02:35:49,799 --> 02:35:54,595
myth or legend and, in a
sense, it shouldn't even try.

2758
02:35:55,471 --> 02:35:58,057
(ominous music)

2759
02:35:59,183 --> 02:36:00,601
(woman screaming)

2760
02:36:00,893 --> 02:36:02,645
(dramatic suspenseful music)
- If you look

2761
02:36:02,937 --> 02:36:04,939
at Japanese horror film, Japanese horror's

2762
02:36:05,231 --> 02:36:07,400
always been intertwined with folk customs.

2763
02:36:09,277 --> 02:36:09,944
(suspenseful music)
- Japan began

2764
02:36:10,236 --> 02:36:12,822
its modernization process,
you know, in 1868,

2765
02:36:13,114 --> 02:36:14,532
you had the beginning of the Meiji period

2766
02:36:14,824 --> 02:36:17,368
and Meiji means, sort of
literally, “enlightenment.”

2767
02:36:17,660 --> 02:36:20,538
The sort of drive was all
about sort of modernization,

2768
02:36:20,830 --> 02:36:24,417
urbanization, development
of academic structures,

2769
02:36:24,709 --> 02:36:27,837
and really about drawing
a line between the past.

2770
02:36:28,129 --> 02:36:30,339
And there was an
anthropologist ethnologist

2771
02:36:30,631 --> 02:36:34,176
called Kunio Yanagita who
pioneered this sort of field

2772
02:36:34,468 --> 02:36:36,345
of folk studies in Japan.

2773
02:36:36,637 --> 02:36:39,765
And he used to go around to
all these sort of ancient,

2774
02:36:40,057 --> 02:36:41,517
these tiny village communities

2775
02:36:41,809 --> 02:36:44,437
and record their sort of folklore beliefs.

2776
02:36:44,729 --> 02:36:46,606
Sort of in the way, I guess
someone like Cecil Sharp

2777
02:36:46,898 --> 02:36:49,692
went round and recorded
all sort of morris dancing,

2778
02:36:49,984 --> 02:36:53,779
you know, these traditions
from a pre-modern era,

2779
02:36:54,071 --> 02:36:54,906
which were disappearing

2780
02:36:55,197 --> 02:36:56,699
and he was sort of codifying that.

2781
02:36:56,991 --> 02:36:58,659
(suspenseful music)

2782
02:36:58,951 --> 02:37:01,871
And part of this was these
phenomenon called yokai,

2783
02:37:02,163 --> 02:37:04,415
it literally means a spirit or a goblin

2784
02:37:04,707 --> 02:37:07,293
or just basically any sort
of supernatural being.

2785
02:37:21,182 --> 02:37:23,517
(gentle suspenseful music)
- Norio Tsuruta

2786
02:37:23,809 --> 02:37:25,728
directed a film called "Kakashi",

2787
02:37:26,020 --> 02:37:27,396
which was based on the manga

2788
02:37:27,688 --> 02:37:31,150
by a sort of famous horror
manga writer, Junji Ito.

2789
02:37:31,442 --> 02:37:34,028
And this, again, was a
girl going back to her

2790
02:37:34,320 --> 02:37:35,446
sort of rural background,

2791
02:37:35,738 --> 02:37:39,158
and a small village where they communicate

2792
02:37:39,450 --> 02:37:41,869
with the sort of dead spirits by burning

2793
02:37:42,161 --> 02:37:44,622
these sort of scarecrow like effigies,

2794
02:37:44,914 --> 02:37:47,041
which naturally enough all come to life.

2795
02:37:48,793 --> 02:37:51,712
When you're talking about
a country like Japan,

2796
02:37:52,004 --> 02:37:54,548
their cinema, obviously this
is not a Christian country,

2797
02:37:54,840 --> 02:37:57,009
so when we're talking about
pre-modern sort of the ghosts

2798
02:37:57,301 --> 02:38:01,097
of the past manifesting
themselves in landscape,

2799
02:38:01,389 --> 02:38:04,600
a sort of nativist indigenous
religion is Shintoism,

2800
02:38:04,892 --> 02:38:07,895
which says that, you know,
their spirits and gods

2801
02:38:08,187 --> 02:38:10,815
reside in everything,
in trees, in the wind,

2802
02:38:11,107 --> 02:38:13,484
in those sort of patterns in the clouds.

2803
02:38:13,776 --> 02:38:14,860
In absolutely everything.

2804
02:38:16,070 --> 02:38:18,322
More about flows of energy and
how you're very much a part

2805
02:38:18,614 --> 02:38:19,824
of this huge system.

2806
02:38:20,116 --> 02:38:22,410
(tense music)

2807
02:38:31,961 --> 02:38:33,546
So I think if there's
any sort of folk horror

2808
02:38:33,838 --> 02:38:36,340
in a Japanese context,
it's more about people

2809
02:38:36,632 --> 02:38:40,136
being sort of off-kilter
with these spirits

2810
02:38:40,428 --> 02:38:42,930
or with the sort of
spirits of their ancestors.

2811
02:38:45,891 --> 02:38:48,519
- Lao people believe that
besides regular spiritss

2812
02:38:48,811 --> 02:38:51,439
and besides our soul, there
are spirits dwelling in nature.

2813
02:38:51,731 --> 02:38:54,400
And this is actually very
similar to, for instance,

2814
02:38:54,692 --> 02:38:56,527
indigenous New Zealand,
and Australian beliefs,

2815
02:38:56,819 --> 02:38:58,154
and indigenous American beliefs

2816
02:38:58,446 --> 02:39:00,948
where there are already nature
spirits residing in the land

2817
02:39:01,240 --> 02:39:03,075
and the trees that we may not know about.

2818
02:39:06,162 --> 02:39:09,373
- Desert wind, soo-oop-wa,
(ominous music)

2819
02:39:09,665 --> 02:39:13,210
Was a man like us until by mischance

2820
02:39:15,463 --> 02:39:16,881
he grew wings

2821
02:39:19,258 --> 02:39:21,010
and flew like a bird.

2822
02:39:25,848 --> 02:39:28,768
(calm upbeat music)

2823
02:39:39,195 --> 02:39:39,862
(calm upbeat music)
- You tend to see

2824
02:39:40,154 --> 02:39:41,822
direct adaptation of folk legends

2825
02:39:42,114 --> 02:39:44,283
and folktales more readily in cultures

2826
02:39:44,575 --> 02:39:47,620
other than Anglicised cultures,
whose brand of folk horror

2827
02:39:47,912 --> 02:39:51,165
has much more to do with
fears of the folk themselves.

2828
02:39:53,209 --> 02:39:55,419
- It seems to me that
the greatest difference

2829
02:39:55,711 --> 02:39:59,924
is in the distinction between us and them.

2830
02:40:00,216 --> 02:40:02,635
I think in Western folk horror,

2831
02:40:02,927 --> 02:40:06,180
what you find most often is the situation

2832
02:40:06,472 --> 02:40:11,185
in which a regular person
comes across a cult,

2833
02:40:11,477 --> 02:40:15,981
or a village, or some
isolated place, or community

2834
02:40:16,273 --> 02:40:19,318
where those old beliefs
are still prevalent.

2835
02:40:19,610 --> 02:40:23,864
And then there is this
contrast and this struggle

2836
02:40:24,156 --> 02:40:26,992
between the value systems
that they represent,

2837
02:40:27,284 --> 02:40:28,828
so there is a clash.

2838
02:40:29,120 --> 02:40:31,122
Whereas in Slavic horror, it seems to me

2839
02:40:31,413 --> 02:40:35,584
that this distinction
between alleged normality

2840
02:40:35,876 --> 02:40:40,131
and alleged strangeness is not so strong.

2841
02:40:40,422 --> 02:40:45,219
They start from the position
that in Western folk horror

2842
02:40:46,262 --> 02:40:50,307
someone has to arrive to,
SO someone is already there.

2843
02:40:50,599 --> 02:40:52,518
Someone already lives in that village,

2844
02:40:52,810 --> 02:40:55,688
in this surrounding,
someone is already immersed

2845
02:40:55,980 --> 02:40:57,731
in this value system.

2846
02:40:58,023 --> 02:41:00,359
And whatever happens in this plot

2847
02:41:00,651 --> 02:41:04,530
arises from within.
- So in Scandinavia,

2848
02:41:04,822 --> 02:41:08,033
Eastern Europe, Russia, Asia,
you're much more likely to see

2849
02:41:08,325 --> 02:41:11,453
stories derived from fairytales
or films full of magic

2850
02:41:11,745 --> 02:41:12,913
and shape-shifting.

2851
02:41:13,205 --> 02:41:15,958
(calm music)
- There's an amazing

2852
02:41:16,250 --> 02:41:19,461
Icelandic made for TV folk
horror film called "Tilbury",

2853
02:41:19,753 --> 02:41:21,589
which is based on a folkloric monster.

2854
02:41:32,641 --> 02:41:35,269
(sheep bleating)

2855
02:41:48,657 --> 02:41:50,576
(tense music)
- And it's interesting

2856
02:41:50,868 --> 02:41:55,080
coming from a colonial perspective
how that story plays out

2857
02:41:55,372 --> 02:41:58,292
with an Icelandic man who's
worried that his girlfriend

2858
02:41:58,584 --> 02:42:01,045
has fallen in love with a British man.

2859
02:42:01,337 --> 02:42:02,713
And imagines that he has turned

2860
02:42:03,005 --> 02:42:04,882
into this sort of
monstrous tilbury figure.

2861
02:42:05,174 --> 02:42:07,801
(dramatic music)

2862
02:42:10,012 --> 02:42:12,765
(gentle suspenseful music)
- Nietzchka Keene's

2863
02:42:13,057 --> 02:42:14,892
"The Juniper Tree" is
another Icelandic film

2864
02:42:15,184 --> 02:42:17,144
based on a German folk tale,

2865
02:42:17,436 --> 02:42:20,231
that takes the familiar story
of "The Wicked Stepmother”

2866
02:42:20,522 --> 02:42:21,815
and places it against a backdrop

2867
02:42:22,107 --> 02:42:24,777
of vaguely medieval witch hunts.

2868
02:42:25,945 --> 02:42:29,073
- It's much more a fairy tale film

2869
02:42:29,365 --> 02:42:33,202
than I think a folk horror film.

2870
02:42:33,494 --> 02:42:38,290
It becomes folk horror when Keene plays

2871
02:42:38,707 --> 02:42:43,629
closely to the original grim
tale in its grim qualities,

2872
02:42:43,921 --> 02:42:46,632
the murder of the son, the cannibalism,

2873
02:42:46,924 --> 02:42:49,677
and then the transformations
into the bird.

2874
02:42:49,969 --> 02:42:52,846
(Margit harmonizing)

2875
02:42:57,309 --> 02:42:58,727
(crow cackling)
- Once there was a boy

2876
02:42:59,019 --> 02:43:00,271
whose mother was a bird,

2877
02:43:01,355 --> 02:43:03,357
she loved him very much,

2878
02:43:03,649 --> 02:43:06,026
but she could not stay among people.

2879
02:43:06,318 --> 02:43:09,571
And one day she returned
to the land of the birds.

2880
02:43:11,573 --> 02:43:14,118
The boy's father got
used to her being gone,

2881
02:43:15,035 --> 02:43:17,621
but her little son wept so much

2882
02:43:17,913 --> 02:43:20,708
that finally she heard him from far away,

2883
02:43:21,000 --> 02:43:23,043
and flew to back to comfort him.

2884
02:43:24,169 --> 02:43:26,630
"I will take you with me," she said,

2885
02:43:26,922 --> 02:43:28,799
"and teach you what I know,

2886
02:43:29,091 --> 02:43:31,635
but you cannot stay among the birds

2887
02:43:31,927 --> 02:43:35,014
and must return to take
care of your father."

2888
02:43:36,390 --> 02:43:39,810
And when the boy came back
from the land of the birds,

2889
02:43:40,102 --> 02:43:42,396
his father did not know him.

2890
02:43:42,688 --> 02:43:45,858
His skin had changed and become feathers,

2891
02:43:46,150 --> 02:43:48,402
and his fingers had turned into wings.

2892
02:43:49,903 --> 02:43:52,614
And he knew what the birds know.

2893
02:43:52,906 --> 02:43:56,285
(gentle suspenseful music)

2894
02:43:59,330 --> 02:44:04,251
(leaves rustling)
- Alexei Konstantinovich

2895
02:44:05,502 --> 02:44:08,589
Tolstoy wrote a series of vampire novels,

2896
02:44:08,881 --> 02:44:10,341
"The Family of the Vourdalak."

2897
02:44:11,550 --> 02:44:12,885
The Vourdalak was a name,

2898
02:44:13,177 --> 02:44:16,180
a word that had been coined by
Pushkin in the 19th century.

2899
02:44:16,472 --> 02:44:18,682
(calm music)

2900
02:44:22,436 --> 02:44:25,564
(woman screaming)

2901
02:44:25,856 --> 02:44:28,275
- Vourdalak, that's the existing word.

2902
02:44:28,567 --> 02:44:33,113
And Vourdalak is essentially
a synonym for vampire.

2903
02:44:33,405 --> 02:44:38,202
It is a man who after his
death comes back as a revenant

2904
02:44:39,203 --> 02:44:43,290
and assaults his family,
his friends, his villagers,

2905
02:44:43,582 --> 02:44:46,377
and among other things,
he can turn into a wolf,

2906
02:44:46,668 --> 02:44:49,380
he can appear in human form, he can appear

2907
02:44:49,671 --> 02:44:52,132
as a huge blob.
- I think ironically,

2908
02:44:52,424 --> 02:44:56,220
most Westerners know
Vourdalaks from Italian movies,

2909
02:44:56,512 --> 02:44:57,805
from Mario Bava's "Black Sabbath"

2910
02:44:58,097 --> 02:45:00,349
and from "Night of the Devils."

2911
02:45:00,641 --> 02:45:04,561
- But vampires and the undead
had already had a big part

2912
02:45:04,853 --> 02:45:09,650
to play in Russian Slavic
pagan history and folk history.

2913
02:45:11,402 --> 02:45:14,071
(birds chirping)

2914
02:45:17,491 --> 02:45:19,910
(vase clanks)

2915
02:45:24,540 --> 02:45:25,499
(calm music)
- "Leptirica's" based

2916
02:45:25,791 --> 02:45:28,877
on a story by Milovan Glisic from 1883,

2917
02:45:29,169 --> 02:45:31,130
which means 14 years before "Dracula”.

2918
02:45:31,422 --> 02:45:35,509
Although its plot, its story
is based on a folk belief,

2919
02:45:35,801 --> 02:45:37,719
on a alleged real vampire

2920
02:45:38,011 --> 02:45:41,557
from the Western part of
Serbia, Sava Savanovic.

2921
02:45:41,849 --> 02:45:45,352
When Dorde Kadijevic
decided to adapt this story,

2922
02:45:45,644 --> 02:45:47,354
his worldview is much darker

2923
02:45:47,646 --> 02:45:51,316
and he actually added the
bride transforms into a vampire

2924
02:45:51,608 --> 02:45:53,735
and rides the groom until his death.

2925
02:45:54,027 --> 02:45:58,198
(groom groaning)
(bride grunting)

2926
02:45:58,490 --> 02:46:02,286
This notion of riding a man like a mare,

2927
02:46:02,578 --> 02:46:06,540
it is a very powerful image,
which obviously was striking

2928
02:46:06,832 --> 02:46:09,376
for Kadijevic precisely because it merges

2929
02:46:09,668 --> 02:46:10,878
eroticism and death.

2930
02:46:12,754 --> 02:46:14,590
(tense music)
- Shapeshifting

2931
02:46:14,882 --> 02:46:16,758
is a recurrent motif in these films,

2932
02:46:17,050 --> 02:46:19,178
which in addition to
things like "Leptirica”,

2933
02:46:19,470 --> 02:46:21,054
we see in films like "She-Wolf"

2934
02:46:21,346 --> 02:46:24,433
which is probably the most
famous Polish werewolf film.

2935
02:46:24,725 --> 02:46:26,351
And particularly in the case of a woman,

2936
02:46:26,643 --> 02:46:29,521
the shape-shifting often
signifies like a liberating

2937
02:46:29,813 --> 02:46:34,276
kind of transformation.
(gentle spirited music)

2938
02:46:35,444 --> 02:46:37,613
It's also something
central to Asian folk tales

2939
02:46:37,905 --> 02:46:39,698
and folk horror films
that we see in things

2940
02:46:39,990 --> 02:46:42,701
like "The Ghost Cat" movies of
which there were over a dozen

2941
02:46:42,993 --> 02:46:44,536
of these films up to the '60s.

2942
02:46:45,871 --> 02:46:49,041
By the 14th century, it was
a common belief in Japan

2943
02:46:49,333 --> 02:46:51,418
that cats, especially older female cats,

2944
02:46:51,710 --> 02:46:53,587
could turn into demons or goblins

2945
02:46:53,879 --> 02:46:58,133
and also shapeshift into humans
in order to bewitch people.

2946
02:46:58,425 --> 02:47:00,135
And importantly, they would
eat the people (laughs)

2947
02:47:00,427 --> 02:47:02,513
Whose shape they had adopted.

2948
02:47:02,804 --> 02:47:07,601
(calm music)
(woman sobbing)

2949
02:47:22,032 --> 02:47:24,701
(dramatic music)

2950
02:47:36,588 --> 02:47:39,591
(cat slurping)
- And a lot of these spirits,

2951
02:47:39,883 --> 02:47:41,635
their revenge, certainly in the films,

2952
02:47:41,927 --> 02:47:44,805
is a form of vampirism, they're
sucking blood and so on.

2953
02:47:45,097 --> 02:47:48,475
(gentle suspenseful music)

2954
02:48:00,862 --> 02:48:05,450
- A kind of ethnographic
vision, if I can use that term,

2955
02:48:07,119 --> 02:48:12,040
is also there in the 1953 Finnish
film, "The White Reindeer"

2956
02:48:12,958 --> 02:48:17,504
and while we have this
story of a young woman

2957
02:48:17,796 --> 02:48:22,593
who is transformed into a kind
of vampiric white reindeer,

2958
02:48:23,302 --> 02:48:28,223
what the film really focuses
on are the folk traditions,

2959
02:48:28,849 --> 02:48:33,562
the folk beliefs, the
folk culture of the Sami

2960
02:48:33,854 --> 02:48:36,648
in Northern Lapland, in Finland.

2961
02:48:36,940 --> 02:48:39,234
The story and the belief
about the young woman

2962
02:48:39,526 --> 02:48:44,239
who can exist as both a
human and as an animal,

2963
02:48:44,531 --> 02:48:47,743
the kind of shapeshifter
figure is still very much part

2964
02:48:48,035 --> 02:48:49,995
of the Sami folk belief.

2965
02:48:50,287 --> 02:48:52,831
(dramatic music)

2966
02:48:58,003 --> 02:48:59,004
(ominous music)
- And this idea

2967
02:48:59,296 --> 02:49:02,382
of a man hunting or is somehow
pitted against a creature

2968
02:49:02,674 --> 02:49:05,510
only to realize it's
actually his own wife,

2969
02:49:05,802 --> 02:49:07,220
it's kind of a common story type.

2970
02:49:07,512 --> 02:49:11,183
Most famously something like the
“Lady of the Snow” segment

2971
02:49:11,475 --> 02:49:16,271
of "Kwaidan."
(mysterious music)

2972
02:49:22,903 --> 02:49:24,029
(gentle suspenseful music)
- So the themes

2973
02:49:24,321 --> 02:49:26,073
of Asian horror are
probably the same themes

2974
02:49:26,365 --> 02:49:28,575
as you're getting most in horror, revenge,

2975
02:49:29,493 --> 02:49:31,119
things to do with childbirth, for example.

2976
02:49:31,411 --> 02:49:35,540
A lot of, in Indonesia,
Philippines, Malaysia, and so on,

2977
02:49:35,832 --> 02:49:37,876
a lot of the ghosts, the female ghosts,

2978
02:49:38,168 --> 02:49:40,045
are women who died in childbirth.

2979
02:49:40,337 --> 02:49:41,672
And in some cases, women who gave birth

2980
02:49:41,963 --> 02:49:43,006
after they'd been buried.

2981
02:49:51,056 --> 02:49:53,850
(people screaming)

2982
02:50:07,447 --> 02:50:10,033
(woman sobbing)

2983
02:50:28,510 --> 02:50:33,390
(suspenseful music)
- One of the very big hits

2984
02:50:33,682 --> 02:50:36,601
for Thai cinema was a
film released in 1999,

2985
02:50:36,893 --> 02:50:38,019
which is called "Nang Nak",

2986
02:50:38,979 --> 02:50:41,398
and the story's about a
young couple who get married

2987
02:50:41,690 --> 02:50:44,151
and the guy is called
away to fight in the war.

2988
02:50:45,485 --> 02:50:48,697
When he comes back, everything
has sort of slightly changed.

2989
02:50:48,989 --> 02:50:52,284
His wife is there and
he's got a young child,

2990
02:50:52,576 --> 02:50:55,328
but she never lets him have
very much to do with the child.

2991
02:50:56,329 --> 02:50:57,998
And also he finds that all his friends,

2992
02:50:58,290 --> 02:51:00,250
the ones that survive, don't
really wanna have too much

2993
02:51:00,542 --> 02:51:01,209
to do with them.

2994
02:51:01,501 --> 02:51:03,670
And eventually one of them tells him,

2995
02:51:03,962 --> 02:51:05,380
you're living with a ghost.

2996
02:51:05,672 --> 02:51:06,673
And he says, "What you talking about?"

2997
02:51:06,965 --> 02:51:09,301
He says, "Your wife died in childbirth,

2998
02:51:09,593 --> 02:51:11,303
you know, she's been dead for a year."

2999
02:51:13,221 --> 02:51:16,349
The ghosts and the spirits
that you get in Asian films,

3000
02:51:16,641 --> 02:51:17,684
they're hungry for blood,

3001
02:51:17,976 --> 02:51:19,770
but particularly they're
hungry for revenge.

3002
02:51:20,061 --> 02:51:22,939
So a lot of these scary
spirits and, you know,

3003
02:51:23,231 --> 02:51:24,399
monsters I suppose we would call them,

3004
02:51:24,691 --> 02:51:27,652
that you see an Asian films are
women that have been wronged

3005
02:51:27,944 --> 02:51:29,696
that are looking to right that wrong.

3006
02:51:29,988 --> 02:51:31,865
And in a sense, they're gonna continue

3007
02:51:32,157 --> 02:51:33,700
looking to right that
wrong more or less forever,

3008
02:51:33,992 --> 02:51:36,119
they never actually seem
to find that closure.

3009
02:51:37,162 --> 02:51:42,042
(gentle suspenseful music)
- So like all folk tales,

3010
02:51:42,334 --> 02:51:45,003
these stories tend to
evolve and mutate to reflect

3011
02:51:45,295 --> 02:51:48,089
the beliefs and fears and
anxieties of the place

3012
02:51:48,381 --> 02:51:49,257
and time they're in.

3013
02:51:49,549 --> 02:51:52,594
And all folk horror, whether
it's about a pagan village

3014
02:51:52,886 --> 02:51:56,097
being confronted with the
changes brought by modernization,

3015
02:51:56,389 --> 02:51:58,391
or the physical transformation of a person

3016
02:51:58,683 --> 02:52:00,769
into a she-wolf or a white reindeer,

3017
02:52:01,061 --> 02:52:04,648
this idea of change and
how scary change can be

3018
02:52:04,940 --> 02:52:07,400
is central to a lot of the stories.

3019
02:52:07,692 --> 02:52:10,821
And so a lot of time, these
traditions that we hang on to

3020
02:52:11,112 --> 02:52:14,366
by observing these folk
tales are ironically stories

3021
02:52:14,658 --> 02:52:16,368
that help us adapt to change.

3022
02:52:16,660 --> 02:52:20,205
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3023
02:52:37,472 --> 02:52:41,142
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3024
02:52:46,064 --> 02:52:49,025
- I love our stories, I
love how unique they are,

3025
02:52:49,317 --> 02:52:51,069
and I think people need
to see our interesting

3026
02:52:51,361 --> 02:52:53,905
and different stories,
and hear our voices,

3027
02:52:54,197 --> 02:52:56,283
and also see how similar they are.

3028
02:52:56,575 --> 02:52:57,868
But I think that the
future for folk horror

3029
02:52:58,159 --> 02:53:00,287
is not about any one country.

3030
02:53:00,579 --> 02:53:03,206
I think the future for
folk horror is about seeing

3031
02:53:03,498 --> 02:53:06,293
how diverse it can be
and seeing how it's more

3032
02:53:06,585 --> 02:53:09,963
than just this set of
British films that people

3033
02:53:10,255 --> 02:53:12,173
think is folk horror,
that there's so much more

3034
02:53:12,465 --> 02:53:14,009
to folk horror than just that.

3035
02:53:14,301 --> 02:53:16,845
(dramatic music)

3036
02:53:18,471 --> 02:53:21,975
(gentle suspenseful music)

3037
02:53:27,439 --> 02:53:31,109
(crickets chirping)
- Where the wave

3038
02:53:31,401 --> 02:53:34,738
of moonlight glosses, the
dim gray sands with light.

3039
02:53:35,030 --> 02:53:37,991
Far off by furthest Rosses,
we foot it all the night.

3040
02:53:39,659 --> 02:53:44,205
Weaving olden dances, mingling
hands and mingling glances,

3041
02:53:44,497 --> 02:53:45,832
till the moon has taken flight.

3042
02:53:48,376 --> 02:53:51,463
To and fro we leap, and
chase the frothy bubbles,

3043
02:53:52,589 --> 02:53:53,882
while the world is full of troubles

3044
02:53:54,174 --> 02:53:55,634
and anxious in its sleep.

3045
02:53:55,926 --> 02:53:57,052
(fire blazes)

3046
02:53:57,344 --> 02:54:01,306
Come away, oh, human child,
to the waters and the wild,

3047
02:54:01,598 --> 02:54:03,183
with a faery, hand in hand.

3048
02:54:04,976 --> 02:54:06,978
For the world's more full of weeping

3049
02:54:07,270 --> 02:54:09,022
than you can understand.

3050
02:54:10,357 --> 02:54:13,985
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3051
02:54:23,286 --> 02:54:26,289
(car engine revving)

3052
02:54:31,336 --> 02:54:34,714
(instruments clattering)
- In March, 2011,

3053
02:54:35,006 --> 02:54:36,925
a film called "Wake Wood" came out.

3054
02:54:37,217 --> 02:54:38,593
And I think it was "The News of the World"

3055
02:54:38,885 --> 02:54:42,597
that referred to it as a
great example of folk horror.

3056
02:54:42,889 --> 02:54:47,018
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3057
02:54:47,310 --> 02:54:48,144
And I remember noticing that and thinking,

3058
02:54:48,436 --> 02:54:50,897
oh, there's that phrase,
that's interesting.

3059
02:54:51,189 --> 02:54:55,026
And then I wasn't quite
prepared for the degree

3060
02:54:55,318 --> 02:54:58,822
to which that phrase suddenly
became very prevalent indeed.

3061
02:54:59,114 --> 02:55:02,659
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3062
02:55:24,889 --> 02:55:26,641
- One of the big mistakes I think I made

3063
02:55:26,933 --> 02:55:28,393
and is still continually
being made about it,

3064
02:55:28,685 --> 02:55:31,146
is that it is and functions like a genre.

3065
02:55:32,105 --> 02:55:36,192
So I think the best way
to see it is as a mode,

3066
02:55:36,484 --> 02:55:37,610
in the sort of musical sense,

3067
02:55:37,902 --> 02:55:40,947
where there is a set of key notes,

3068
02:55:41,239 --> 02:55:42,907
but they're providing a different context

3069
02:55:43,199 --> 02:55:44,409
'cause they're played
in a different border.

3070
02:55:44,701 --> 02:55:47,620
And so folk horror works like
this along with other modes,

3071
02:55:47,912 --> 02:55:49,247
things like psychogeography,

3072
02:55:51,708 --> 02:55:55,670
ontology, urban weird, English eerie,

3073
02:55:55,962 --> 02:55:56,838
all these sort of different modes

3074
02:55:57,130 --> 02:55:58,048
that are sort of interlinked,

3075
02:55:58,339 --> 02:56:00,800
but they don't quite function
as one cohesive genre,

3076
02:56:01,092 --> 02:56:04,054
they're all more interrelated
in more complex ways.

3077
02:56:05,096 --> 02:56:07,640
(ominous music)

3078
02:56:13,772 --> 02:56:14,689
(gentle suspenseful music)
- When we go through

3079
02:56:14,981 --> 02:56:18,109
a celebratory phrase,
as we did in the 1990s,

3080
02:56:22,781 --> 02:56:25,408
as we did in the 1960s, there's that sense

3081
02:56:25,700 --> 02:56:27,243
that history has resolved.

3082
02:56:28,286 --> 02:56:30,830
In the 1990s, Francis
Fukuyama wrote this book

3083
02:56:31,122 --> 02:56:33,416
"The End of History", talking
about how liberal democracy

3084
02:56:33,708 --> 02:56:37,504
was the ultimate, ultimate
result of Western civilization.

3085
02:56:37,796 --> 02:56:40,256
(ominous music)

3086
02:56:42,467 --> 02:56:46,137
And then September the
11th, 2001, happened,

3087
02:56:46,429 --> 02:56:47,597
and we discovered that liberal democracy

3088
02:56:47,889 --> 02:56:50,767
was not the ultimate result
of Western civilization.

3089
02:56:51,059 --> 02:56:53,144
And we entered a period of doubt.

3090
02:57:02,278 --> 02:57:04,948
And this brings us to hauntology.

3091
02:57:10,912 --> 02:57:11,579
(ominous music)
- Jacques Derrida

3092
02:57:11,871 --> 02:57:15,625
described hauntology as an
unresolved past that comes back.

3093
02:57:19,462 --> 02:57:23,091
The ghost is the idea
of an unresolved past.

3094
02:57:23,383 --> 02:57:25,844
(ominous music)
- Heading towards mic three.

3095
02:57:26,136 --> 02:57:29,055
(device squeaking)

3096
02:57:29,347 --> 02:57:32,725
(suspenseful music)
- Hauntology and folk horror

3097
02:57:33,017 --> 02:57:36,396
are both forms of kind
of cultural nostalgia

3098
02:57:36,688 --> 02:57:38,273
for a mode of storytelling

3099
02:57:38,565 --> 02:57:40,400
that kind of doesn't really exist anymore,

3100
02:57:40,692 --> 02:57:42,110
and perhaps never existed at all.

3101
02:57:42,402 --> 02:57:46,322
Perhaps both of those
things are ideas that we,

3102
02:57:46,614 --> 02:57:50,326
30, 40 years later are
projecting onto the past.

3103
02:57:50,618 --> 02:57:53,997
(gentle suspenseful music)

3104
02:58:10,847 --> 02:58:13,516
(metal clanking)

3105
02:58:21,649 --> 02:58:23,902
- One of the reasons that folk
horror has so much resonance

3106
02:58:24,194 --> 02:58:28,698
to me is that theater itself is ritual.

3107
02:58:29,699 --> 02:58:32,202
(Jane panting)

3108
02:58:34,621 --> 02:58:38,625
So theater is a very
ancient form of storytelling

3109
02:58:38,917 --> 02:58:42,545
that probably evolved
from rituals themselves.

3110
02:58:42,837 --> 02:58:46,925
So it evolved from the
religious or spiritual rituals

3111
02:58:47,217 --> 02:58:49,427
that were important to early cultures.

3112
02:58:49,719 --> 02:58:51,471
In the horror genre, that sense of ritual

3113
02:58:51,763 --> 02:58:53,223
is still very much alive.

3114
02:58:54,140 --> 02:58:56,726
(ominous music)

3115
02:59:09,405 --> 02:59:14,327
(dramatic music)
- He knows you would,

3116
02:59:14,786 --> 02:59:17,580
to what you gaze and gore
on with an expression

3117
02:59:17,872 --> 02:59:20,416
on your face.
- If you look at

3118
02:59:20,708 --> 02:59:23,962
all around the world urban centers

3119
02:59:24,254 --> 02:59:29,050
are basically the producers
and recreators of sort of ideas

3120
02:59:31,052 --> 02:59:34,389
and ideologies in terms of
this is where the financial

3121
02:59:34,681 --> 02:59:36,724
centers are, this is
where the media bases are.

3122
02:59:37,016 --> 02:59:40,561
The cultural industries,
academic industries,

3123
02:59:40,853 --> 02:59:44,482
basically the whole global
culture is an urban culture.

3124
02:59:44,774 --> 02:59:47,735
So really what goes on in the countryside

3125
02:59:48,027 --> 02:59:51,239
is sort of automatically
shrouded in darkness.

3126
02:59:51,531 --> 02:59:54,325
It's, you know, it's hidden from view.

3127
02:59:54,617 --> 02:59:57,578
(tense ominous music)

3128
03:00:03,876 --> 03:00:06,462
(feet thudding)

3129
03:00:07,797 --> 03:00:10,466
(dramatic music)

3130
03:00:15,763 --> 03:00:19,017
So I think maybe that's
why there's a resurgence

3131
03:00:19,309 --> 03:00:20,810
in folk horror at the moment.

3132
03:00:21,102 --> 03:00:23,104
We're so busy living in the moment

3133
03:00:23,396 --> 03:00:26,399
that we've forgotten really our connection

3134
03:00:26,691 --> 03:00:28,776
with our own landscapes

3135
03:00:29,068 --> 03:00:31,529
and where we fit into
our wider environment.

3136
03:00:31,821 --> 03:00:34,324
(dramatic music)

3137
03:00:43,833 --> 03:00:45,960
(bottles rattling)
(knocking on shelf)

3138
03:00:46,252 --> 03:00:47,712
(dramatic music)
(glass shattering)

3139
03:00:48,004 --> 03:00:50,381
(Luke gasping)

3140
03:00:53,968 --> 03:00:56,637
(trees rustling)

3141
03:01:08,816 --> 03:01:12,362
(crows screeching)

3142
03:01:12,653 --> 03:01:13,905
(feet stomping)
- I made this short film

3143
03:01:14,197 --> 03:01:17,867
"Solitudo", and it was set
in the medieval period.

3144
03:01:22,747 --> 03:01:25,041
And I think one of the reasons
that I became interested

3145
03:01:25,333 --> 03:01:28,711
in that particular era was
the idea that if, you know,

3146
03:01:29,003 --> 03:01:30,671
you lived in the 12th century,

3147
03:01:30,963 --> 03:01:33,383
how would you know what was reality?

3148
03:01:33,674 --> 03:01:36,886
You can't check your phone,
you're not getting rolling news.

3149
03:01:37,178 --> 03:01:37,720
What's your guidance,

3150
03:01:38,012 --> 03:01:39,639
what's your signpost for what's reality?

3151
03:01:39,931 --> 03:01:41,557
It would take ages for a
message to come to you,

3152
03:01:41,849 --> 03:01:43,476
even if something massive
politically was happening,

3153
03:01:43,768 --> 03:01:45,269
there was a war or something,

3154
03:01:45,561 --> 03:01:48,106
you wouldn't get that
news for a long time.

3155
03:01:48,398 --> 03:01:49,482
And so I think that was why, you know,

3156
03:01:49,774 --> 03:01:51,734
obviously superstition prevailed,

3157
03:01:52,026 --> 03:01:54,195
but I wonder if there is a
parallel to our current time

3158
03:01:54,487 --> 03:01:57,698
where we've got such a
proliferation of information

3159
03:01:57,990 --> 03:01:59,492
because of the internet that we don't know

3160
03:01:59,784 --> 03:02:04,580
what's reality anymore.
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3161
03:02:10,461 --> 03:02:11,629
So I think definitely
something like "The Witch"

3162
03:02:11,921 --> 03:02:14,048
where it's people in isolation, you know,

3163
03:02:14,340 --> 03:02:18,177
it almost could be like "The
Village" by M. Night Shyamalan,

3164
03:02:20,096 --> 03:02:21,013
you're almost expecting like,

3165
03:02:21,305 --> 03:02:22,598
well, maybe that they
don't live in the past,

3166
03:02:22,890 --> 03:02:24,225
maybe they live in the present.

3167
03:02:24,517 --> 03:02:26,227
Maybe that's what we're
all going towards anyway

3168
03:02:26,519 --> 03:02:28,104
because there's gonna
be some sort of nuclear

3169
03:02:28,396 --> 03:02:32,358
(laughs) apocalypse.
(dramatic music)

3170
03:02:32,650 --> 03:02:37,071
And we'll all be in, you
know, leather jerkins,

3171
03:02:37,363 --> 03:02:39,740
digging up the ground
trying to plant stuff.

3172
03:02:40,032 --> 03:02:43,578
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3173
03:03:15,651 --> 03:03:18,905
(crickets chirping)
- He also has a nightmare

3174
03:03:19,197 --> 03:03:20,156
about Mary, doesn't he?

3175
03:03:20,448 --> 03:03:23,743
He sleeps on some clover,
he says it's six feet high,

3176
03:03:24,035 --> 03:03:25,786
six feet high.
- But I think also,

3177
03:03:26,078 --> 03:03:29,123
and very importantly, and
the thing that kind of ties

3178
03:03:29,415 --> 03:03:32,502
the present to the world
that the sort of key

3179
03:03:32,793 --> 03:03:34,879
folk horror films emerge
from is we are living

3180
03:03:35,171 --> 03:03:39,300
in dark times.
- He's lying on the ground

3181
03:03:39,592 --> 03:03:43,304
under a tunnel, foot tunnel.
- It definitely feels like

3182
03:03:43,596 --> 03:03:45,348
anything can happen right now,

3183
03:03:45,640 --> 03:03:50,394
but not in that hopeful
anything could happen,

3184
03:03:51,103 --> 03:03:52,563
it's like absolutely anything
- Anything (laughs)

3185
03:03:52,855 --> 03:03:53,898
- Can happen right now.
- can happen.

3186
03:03:54,190 --> 03:03:56,984
(suspenseful music)

3187
03:03:58,611 --> 03:04:01,405
- Far from this bastardly.
- All of the atrocities

3188
03:04:01,697 --> 03:04:04,492
that are happening right now
in our culture are people,

3189
03:04:04,784 --> 03:04:05,660
you know, there is nothing supernatural,

3190
03:04:05,952 --> 03:04:07,703
it's all people doing all this stuff.

3191
03:04:12,124 --> 03:04:15,795
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3192
03:04:18,798 --> 03:04:20,091
And so I think that folk horror

3193
03:04:20,383 --> 03:04:23,427
feels like it's something
else, like the old gods,

3194
03:04:23,719 --> 03:04:26,430
or the land, or the bad
harvest, or the ground is bad.

3195
03:04:29,225 --> 03:04:30,601
When Jud says, "To the
soil the man's heart

3196
03:04:30,893 --> 03:04:32,937
is stonier, Louis," he's basically saying

3197
03:04:33,229 --> 03:04:35,231
that at the end of the
day, you bring your horror

3198
03:04:35,523 --> 03:04:39,986
in with you.
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3199
03:04:58,713 --> 03:05:02,091
- There's a direct echo of the world

3200
03:05:02,383 --> 03:05:04,885
from the time that the folk horror films

3201
03:05:05,177 --> 03:05:06,637
that we're talking about were made

3202
03:05:06,929 --> 03:05:10,349
and the world we live in now
in that there's a real sense

3203
03:05:10,641 --> 03:05:12,893
of pessimism about the future.

3204
03:05:13,185 --> 03:05:15,396
And that was very much present in the '70s

3205
03:05:15,688 --> 03:05:18,316
when, certainly in Britain,
you had quite a serious

3206
03:05:18,608 --> 03:05:21,986
sort of state of social
and cultural breakdown.

3207
03:05:22,278 --> 03:05:24,113
You know, there were
famously rubbish piled up

3208
03:05:24,405 --> 03:05:26,782
in the streets, power cuts, strikes.

3209
03:05:27,074 --> 03:05:28,367
(dramatic music)

3210
03:05:28,659 --> 03:05:31,829
There was a great sense of
environmental destruction

3211
03:05:32,121 --> 03:05:35,374
and the sense that the way
that we had built our culture

3212
03:05:35,666 --> 03:05:37,376
around us was actually destroying

3213
03:05:37,668 --> 03:05:38,794
the world that we lived on.

3214
03:05:39,962 --> 03:05:42,465
(dramatic suspenseful music)
- I talked about how

3215
03:05:42,757 --> 03:05:46,761
in the '70s you had an ill-fated
conservative election plan,

3216
03:05:47,053 --> 03:05:49,180
a president going a bit wrong,

3217
03:05:49,472 --> 03:05:51,307
and a divisive referendum on Europe.

3218
03:05:51,599 --> 03:05:53,184
And if those things don't sound familiar,

3219
03:05:53,476 --> 03:05:55,770
where have you been the last few years?

3220
03:06:00,524 --> 03:06:03,903
Suddenly, we get to a period
where there's terrorism,

3221
03:06:04,195 --> 03:06:08,991
there's Nazis on the streets,
there's stuff happening

3222
03:06:10,076 --> 03:06:13,454
which does not feel
like everything is okay.

3223
03:06:14,705 --> 03:06:16,248
And history's biting us.

3224
03:06:17,708 --> 03:06:21,796
And we have this unresolved
past, this hauntology

3225
03:06:22,088 --> 03:06:26,133
that is bringing back ghosts.

3226
03:06:26,425 --> 03:06:31,055
And we're expressing this,
partly in the way the occult

3227
03:06:31,347 --> 03:06:34,767
and the unusual is extending
itself into everyday life.

3228
03:06:35,059 --> 03:06:38,604
(dramatic suspenseful music)

3229
03:06:56,205 --> 03:06:59,291
- I think there's just a
huge need in our society

3230
03:06:59,583 --> 03:07:02,253
to hold onto something that is more

3231
03:07:02,545 --> 03:07:05,172
than what we see in our ordinary life.

3232
03:07:12,972 --> 03:07:16,809
- I think people feel lonely.
(tense music)

3233
03:07:20,688 --> 03:07:22,148
And I think people feel isolated.

3234
03:07:22,440 --> 03:07:23,441
I think people feel out of touch

3235
03:07:23,733 --> 03:07:27,486
because in our new modern
world, we're so connected

3236
03:07:27,778 --> 03:07:32,116
and yet we're super anonymous
and we've just lost touch

3237
03:07:32,408 --> 03:07:37,163
with the community and the
traditions that we once had.

3238
03:07:38,748 --> 03:07:40,458
- In the 21st century,
the renewed interest

3239
03:07:40,750 --> 03:07:42,835
in folk horror now is to do
with another major change,

3240
03:07:43,127 --> 03:07:44,503
it's a change of technology, right?

3241
03:07:44,795 --> 03:07:45,963
People living in an analog era,

3242
03:07:46,255 --> 03:07:47,715
we live in a very digital era.

3243
03:07:48,007 --> 03:07:49,675
People living in their own little worlds,

3244
03:07:49,967 --> 03:07:52,178
their own little bubbles
of contained communities

3245
03:07:52,470 --> 03:07:53,929
like pseudo communities.
- Mm.

3246
03:07:54,221 --> 03:07:56,307
- And often in these kinds of situations,

3247
03:07:56,599 --> 03:07:58,559
people yearn for the old again.

3248
03:07:58,851 --> 03:08:01,061
(calm music)

3249
03:08:04,523 --> 03:08:05,733
They wanna believe in something.

3250
03:08:06,025 --> 03:08:07,193
It may not be religion anymore,

3251
03:08:07,485 --> 03:08:09,570
but they wanna believe
in some kinda power.

3252
03:08:09,862 --> 03:08:11,697
- You're sounding like Lord Samurai.

3253
03:08:15,618 --> 03:08:18,746
- I think there is this
urge to find something that,

3254
03:08:19,038 --> 03:08:21,832
because it can't be
dissected and analyzed,

3255
03:08:22,124 --> 03:08:25,044
tend to non-existence
that will have retained

3256
03:08:25,336 --> 03:08:27,254
some kind of core of power.

3257
03:08:27,546 --> 03:08:30,216
And perhaps you can call
that spirit or soul,

3258
03:08:30,508 --> 03:08:33,469
I don't know, but I think
maybe that's what people

3259
03:08:33,761 --> 03:08:35,805
are drawn to, the fact that these films

3260
03:08:36,096 --> 03:08:38,891
do seem to have a kind of a soul.