A Year In The Country

Rounding the circle…

Looking back I think it’s quite possible that the 1978 animated film version of Richard Adams’ 1972 novel Watership Down was one of the early signposts or examples of the bucolic countryside having a darker flipside and undercurrents that eventually led to A Year In The Country… in particular due to “that” scene… and if you’ve seen the film I expect you’ll know which one I mean…

And so with that in mind I thought it would be a good point on which to round off these posts.

This tie-in book has an unusual hybrid format; it includes stills from the film which are accompanied by text by Richard Adams but it’s not a fotonovel and it doesn’t attempt to tell the whole story of the film, it’s more sort of edited annotated snapshots…

A somewhat unique and distinctive “making of” tie-in book, published before such things were all that common, particularly for TV series…

Still waiting for a new widely available DVD re-release of this…

In the meantime there’s Fantom Publishing’s republished version of Brian Hayles’ tie-in novel:

“When the Purwells set out to explore the land of the real King Arthur, they find themselves caught up in a hunt for the Moon Stallion, a beautiful but dangerous beast without mortal master. Mortenhurze, Purwell’s patron, wants revenge. Todman, a horse warlock, has more sinister intentions. Both men seek to capture the mysterious horse, so that its magic powers will become theirs to command… But they are no match for the dark forces of myth and magic which still exist among the Berkshire hills. Only Diana, who is blind, is allowed a glimpse of the truth. With Merlin’s help, she learns that the Moon Stallion is beyond the reach of ambitious men. It is part of a legend which unites past, present and future… Based on the 1978 BBC Children’s fantasy drama starring Sarah Sutton, John Abineri, and David Haig…” (Quoted from text which accompanied Fantom’s edition of the book.)

 

More “Doctor Who goes folk horror”… Folk horror / wyrd check list: Ancient stone circles? Check. Pagan rituals? Check. Human sacrifice? Check. Dread and isolation in a rural setting? Check. Quatermass and the Pit-esque ancient alien lifeforms? Check…

Seeing as it’s Christmas, I thought I’d post something related to classic seasonal TV; this belated 1976 tie-in book has one of those convoluted sets of credits that novelisations of films that were adapted from books etc sometimes have, and inside the book it says:

Original story L. Frank Baum
Adapted by Horace J. Elias from the MGM movie starring Judy Garland

And then heading towards more nighttime-orientated viewing themes… Is The Wizard of Oz a folk horror film in disguise? Well, not exactly, but it does have a fair few folk horror-friendly elements: it tells of an outsider, Dorothy, who enters the seemingly pleasant dreamlike world and landscape of Oz, which has a darkness lurking beneath it and brings with her an outsider’s more modern perspective that clashes with Oz’s magic-orientated, deeply-held belief system. This, in turn, interconnects with the clashes between old and new ways and beliefs that often occur in and underpin folk horror-orientated work.

Alongside which, in Oz, symbols of rural idylls etc are at times subverted in a folk horror-esque or at least folk horror adjacent manner, such as in The Haunted Forest, the trees that have a bountiful harvest of ripe red apples turn out to be grumpily sentient, talking apple-throwing creatures. While a vast peaceful-looking poppy field has actually been created by an evil witch’s spell, and its magically poisonous scent is intended to lure Dorothy and her companions into a deep and possibly eternal sleep.

While The Scarecrow’s appearance isn’t all that far removed from a traditional folk ritual straw bear, while the unsettling scene when he is pulled apart in The Haunted Forest by magically enchanted flying monkeys is markedly folk horror-like…

This is another tie-in edition that’s gotten to be fairly pricey nowadays…

One of the impressive things about John Carpenter’s The Fog is how it’s supremely spooky and creepy often more by suggestion rather than say using graphic onscreen shocks and gore…

…and typing about it makes me want to take another visit to sit around the campire just before midnight with old Arthur Machen and hear about the night one hundred years ago when the fog rolled in…

PS… As a side note I like how John Carpenter “snuck” cultural references into his films etc… such as the character’s name Arthur Machen in The Fog being a reference to the pen name of Arthur Llewellyn Jones, the Welsh author and mystic of the late 19th and early to mid 20th century who is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction; John Carpenter using the Nigel Kneale referencing pseudonym Martin Quatermass for his writing credit on Prince of Darkness; and the main characters in that attending the Kneale University…

Interesting choice of cover artwork for this recently published tie-in novel which takes a sidestep away from, say, more obvious imagery drawn from the series and instead has an illustration that recalls classic Chris Foss-esque scifi cover artwork from back when…

The novel is a standalone revival story and is something of a hybrid that “jaunts” down the timelines as it was written by Andy Davidson, who also wrote Jaunt: A Viewer’s Guide to The Tomorrow People, and is based on a “treatment” storyline by the series’ original writer/creator Roger Price… Below is the intriguing pop-meets-scifi story blurb that accompanied it’s release:

“A decade has passed since teen pop sensation Gabriel burst onto the scene. Rescued from the shattered ruins of a city devastated by alien invaders, the plight of the golden-haired orphan with the face – and voice – of an angel burned brightly for a decade, winning legions of devoted fans across the world.”

It’s published by Oak Tree Books / Chinbeard Books, who’ve also published a number of other “revival” tie-in books including amongst others ones based on Robin of Sherwood and intriguingly vintage 1980s ZX Spectrum text adventure computer games…

Talking of “beings” in furry suits (see Songs for A Year In The Country 51)… a sad, uplifting, playful hymn to those who are lost. Coil’s “hidden reverse” casts a long shadow across my A Year In The Country wanderings and it seems appropriate to end this particular part of its journey here.

Taking a step over to a 1970s preternatural Jekyll and Hyde story…

This tie-in edition has some great stylised illustrations inside that wouldn’t have been all that out of place amongst, say, Look-In magazine’s TV comic strip adaptations in the 1970s…

The White Reindeer (1952) was the first film made by Finnish cinematographer Erik Blomberg and while it contains elements and tropes that interconnect with folk horror it notably steps away from the often woodland or greenery filled landscape settings of much of folk horror related work.

It is set amongst the bleakly beautiful snowbound landscape of Finnish Lapland and tells the story of a newly married young woman called Pirita who becomes lonely, frustrated and desperate for affection due to her husband often being away herding reindeer, which leads her to seek out a shaman who gives her a potion which will make her desirable to all men.

However, this leads to deadly consequences as the magic powers she gains are beyond her control and cause her to become a vampiric shapeshifter who can assume the form of a white reindeer, which she does in order to lure male herders out to isolated spots where she then kills and consumes them.

It’s a strange experience watching a horror film when you know that there are unlikely to be any graphic scenes of any kind due to such things generally being neither the norm nor allowed due to censorship and societal expectations at the time when it was made. Even with knowing that when watching The White Reindeer, I still found myself tensing and expecting all of a sudden beasts, gore, fangs, etc, to jump out of the screen.

Despite this lack of more graphic visual shock, etc, the film still has a distinctly unsettling atmosphere, perhaps in part because of the way it initially lulls the viewer into a false sense of security and seems almost like a family-friendly period documentary, with the early scenes showing Pirita and the other villagers in their traditional Finnish clothes carefreely frolicking in the snow and good-heartedly racing one another on reindeer-drawn sledges.

But The White Reindeer is soon revealed to be far removed from being a period romp rather it shares a number of similarities with John Carpenter’s 1982 science fiction horror classic The Thing with both showing an isolated group of people in a bleak snowbound landscape who must try to identify and fight a deadly being that is able to hide amongst them by taking on human form. However, rather than being a straightforward genre film, Blomberg’s film has a dream and almost fairytale-like quality and as with a number of the other films discussed in this chapter it is nearer to being a form or precursor of arthouse horror.

As the film progresses, almost without the viewer realising, the atmosphere and tone become ever darker, particularly after a notably folk horror-like sequence where, in order to “activate” her potion, Pirita is required to sacrifice a young fawn to a stone god, the physical marker for which is a tall standing stone that is be topped with the skull and antlers of a reindeer and is sited amongst a sacrificial graveyard of antlers. She then goes on to claim victim after victim in the snow-filled landscape, which, rather than being crisp and brightly white, is more often shown in various shades of grey under a leaden sky.

Initially, it appears as though Pirita has little control or volition over her transformations and deadly actions, and it seems as though she may not even be all that aware of them when she is her “normal” self. Alongside which she seems to have been damned from birth as a haunting opening song tells of a woman, presumably Pirita, who unbeknownst to her was born a witch with “evil in her belly” and indicating this, even before she has taken the potion, she is shown leering menacingly over the shaman, apparently uncontrollably revealing her inner “witch”.

These aspects, combined with her siren-like supernatural deadly irresistibility and taking the form of a reindeer when she is entrapping her male victims, could be seen as an exploration and expression of masculine and societal fear regarding unfettered, animalistic female sexuality and its power over men. This is given further expression when once Pirita has given in to and used her power, she then seemingly becomes beyond redemption. Despite her desperate attempts to reverse the magic curse when she comes to realise what has happened to her and sees the villagers arming themselves and preparing to hunt down the “evil” white reindeer, her fate seems sealed.

The ending is particularly poignant and bleak, as it is her husband, who does not yet know what has happened to his wife nor that he is actually hunting his spouse, who is shown singlehandedly tracking her down in a snowy valley while she is in the form of the white reindeer. He kills her with the “cold iron” of a spear and, for a brief moment, is shown as being joyously happy at, presumably, both his success and also returning safety and the status quo to the villager’s way of life.

However, his joy in this is very short-lived as on her death Pirita has regained her human form and she is shown impaled against the snow and he realises what he has done and lost. The camera then pulls away to show just how isolated and alone they both are amongst the snowbound landscape. While the end song plays, the screen goes dark, but the film continues to roll almost interminably, causing the viewer to hope beyond hope that there will be another final act and that somehow things will turn out okay. But they don’t and, for Pirita and her husband, at the very least, never can.

 

This is another tie-in novel with fairly convoluted credits:

A Novel by H. B. Gilmour
Based up the screenplay by John Carpenter and David Zelag Goodman
From a story by John Carpenter

The UK Corgi tie-in edition uses an illustration for its cover art, whereas the US edition has a similar design but uses a promotional photograph from the film…

As I wrote in A Year In The Country: Other Worlds and AYITC: Wyrd Explorations it’s a curious hybrid film in various ways; a sort of late 1970s downbeat urban set paranormal ESP high fashion romance horror thriller mystery slasher. Or to put it more succinctly and to quote some of the extras on the ltd edition 2017 Blu-ray release of it by the boutique Blu-ray label Powerhouse Indicator, it’s a “disco giallo”…

It centres around the successful photographer Laura Mars, played by Faye Dunaway, who works in both high-end fashion and fine art and whose controversial work incorporates a form of constructed reality that contrastingly explores and includes both glamour and stylised violence.

The setting for the film as a whole is one of contrasts: the glamour and high-end fashion aesthetics of Laura Mars’ photographs and the affluent lifestyle that their success affords her contrast with the reality of late 1970s New York as depicted in the film, which at the time was suffering economically and in other ways, and the film’s depiction of the city streets etc is notably downbeat.

In terms of which it intersects with the 1981 Wolfen which was also filmed and set in New York around a roughly similar period and is also something of a hybrid film which in its case mixes elements of the supernatural horror, science fiction and mystery thriller genres and combines these with an exploration and comment on urban decay, renewal, social disenfranchisement and neglect.

Now here’s something of a curio; a screenplay of Edgar Wright’s film Hot Fuzz that was published in 2021, fourteen years after the film was relased.

You can order unofficial printed versions of Hot Fuzz’s screenplay at Etsy where they sit alongside a considerable amount of other unlicensed “public service/pirate/folk culture samizdat”* (*delete according to philosophical bent) film related merchandise that’s listed there but this edition isn’t one of those as it looks like it’s an officially licensed independently published version as it’s listed at mainstream bookshop websites such as Waterstones and Blackwells.

Looking back the quiet village gone awry elements of Hot Fuzz, alongside The League of Gentlemen and some of the more folk horror-esque episodes of the 2000-2001 remake of Randal and Hopkirk (Deceased), can be seen as being part of the lineage of folk horror revival in recent decades where such things began to pop their heads up over the mainstream cultural parapet for a mo’ or two, and in that sense they could be considered precursors to how in recent years there’s been a storming of the mainstream ramparts by all things folk horror and Wicker Man-esque…

This is Repeater books 50th Anniversary Edition republication of John Boorman’s Zardoz, which was nice to see as tie-in novels being republished is pretty rare plus the original edition has started to get quite pricey… Plus plus there’s a new introduction by John Boorman.

Here’s the text that accompanied the reissue, which just reminds me of how odd the film is and makes me want to go and watch it again:

“In a post-apocalyptic 2393, society is split between an elite group of immortal Eternals and a brutal underclass that live in the outlands and are controlled by the Exterminators. Zed, an Exterminator who has come to question his role and the exact nature of the world he inhabits, stows away in the flying head that descends to issue guns and sermons to the Exterminators and enters the world of the Eternals: the Vortex.

“An ostensible paradise of rationality and order, the Vortex is revealed as a place which is itself full of division and intrigue. Has he come here of his own free will? Or is he part of some larger competition among the Eternals? How has the Vortex come about and what might come after? What is it in Zed that the Eternals lack and is he there to bring them “the gift of death”?

“Expanding on and fleshing out the characters’ history and the themes of his riotous, psychedelic cult classic film Zardoz, Boorman’s novelization has become something of a cult itself, a fully realised visionary sci-fi novel by one of the most important directors of the twentieth century.”

The 1986 anthology series is perhaps best known for its Ladies Night episode that was written by wyrd and hauntological cultural favourite Nigel Kneale and which was included on a DVD anthology of three of his television dramas that was released under the title of The Crunch.

The cover photo of the tie-in book though is from The Lost Property episode which was written by another “wyrd and hauntological cultural favourite”; Mr Peter Hammond, who also created and wrote a fair bit of Sapphire & Steel.

Lost Property is an odd story that centres around a married couple, Anne and John Forrest, who appear to be in their later twenties/early thirties, and who live in an unexplainedly partly fire damaged rural – or at least edgeland – located school which no longer operates as a school and where Anne has created an escapist dreamworld bubble for herself where she pretends that she has an actual school.

There are two paintings by John Forrest which are hung in the main classroom that have an odd quietly sinister folk horror-esque air to them and which show a young girl/woman with a scythe and a boat on a pond with the same scythe in it… 

Things begin to take a markedly darker turn when a former pupil called Marian turns up who says she misses her old school and that she’ll hurt anybody who sits in her old desk and it’s not fully clear if she’s real or an angry vengeful spirit… How’s it end? Well, let’s just say that the scythe and the pond come into play in the real world via Marian in an ending that is brutally (non-visually) graphic and disturbing…

One of the recurring themes etc I’ve explored as part of A Year In The Country has been work such as Stephen Poliakoff’s Hidden City and Troy Kennedy Martin’s Edge of Darkness that can be  seen as being part of the “secret state cycle” of British film and TV which often explored the shadowy, subterranean activities of the “secret state”:

“The ‘secret state’ thriller… [was] a cycle of paranoid [British film and television] in the 1980s which portrayed the intelligence services in a conspiratorial light, best understood as a reaction to excessive official secrecy and anxieties about an unregulated security service.” (Quoted from text which accompanied Alan Bolton’s 2018 book Looking-Glass Wars: Spies on British Screens since 1960.) 

As I wrote in A Year In The Country: Other Worlds, in part, the attraction of such things may be that “hidden histories” etc explore secrets, and secrets are intrinsically intriguing to humans, as indeed often are unexplained mysteries. Accompanying which creative work that explores “hidden histories” etc often reflects worries, changes etc during the time in which it was made and so looking back at related work from previous decades can highlight and help to foreground such things…

All of which brings me to Defence of the Realm, which can be considered to be part of the “secret state cycle” of film and TV and which has quite possibly one of the most both bleakly shocking endings, albeit one that’s accompanied by a more upbeat coda, that I’ve seen…

Once upon a time The Wombles were recycling television and pop music superstars and looking back, I think that alongside Bagpuss they were one of the “gentle wyrd” signposts that led to A Year In The Country. For myself, this and the glam stomp “Remember You’re a Womble” are their classics…