Melbourne Cinematheque did a couple of British horror mini-seasons, you've probably already seen a lot of these, but just in case
OLD, WEIRD ALBION: BRITISH SUPERNATURAL AND GOTHIC HORROR CINEMA FROM THE 1950s TO 1970s
Drawing upon a folkloric tradition with roots stretching back to before the Roman invasion, Britain has a rich heritage of supernatural tales. In cinema, this has translated to a powerful if eclectic body of work exploring the idea that something older, and undoubtedly malevolent, lies just below the modern surface (often literally, in an archaeological sense).
Once disturbed, these weird, unfettered forces will manifest as a direct threat to the precarious rationalism of our era’s disconnection from the natural world, folk traditions and the elemental fears of death and the afterlife. With the exception of Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General, chronicling the brutal activities of a witch-hunter – played by Vincent Price – during the Cromwell era, the films chosen for this season follow in the tradition of the ghost stories of M. R. James (whose short story “Casting the Runes” forms the basis of the earliest film in our season, Jacques Tourneur’s extraordinary Night of the Demon), forsaking historical settings to reveal terror erupting amongst contemporary communities. This season – a sequel to our 2018 focus on British psychological horror – explores an atmospheric but similarly psychologically motivated legacy of eerie cinema. From Jack Clayton’s masterful and influential adaptation of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents, onwards to The Wicker Man’s terrifying encounter between the old, pagan Britain and the veneer of modern Christianity that replaced it, this is a season promising lashings of cinematic strangeness, dread and unease.
- THE HAUNTING Robert Wise (1963) 111 mins – PG
- THE INNOCENTS Jack Clayton (1961) 100 mins – M
- THE WICKER MAN: THE FINAL CUT Robin Hardy (1973) 94 mins – M
- WITCHFINDER GENERAL Michael Reeves (1968) 86 mins – R 18+
- NIGHT OF THE DEMON Jacques Tourneur (1957) 95 mins – PG
- NIGHT OF THE EAGLE Sidney Hayers (1962) 90 mins – PG
TWISTED NERVE: BRITISH PSYCHOLOGICAL HORROR OF THE 1960s AND 1970s
Although the British horror genre is often defined by the rich legacies of gothic literature, Shakespeare, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, the ghost stories
of M. R. James, the films of Hammer and a range of other influences and precedents, there is also a rich vein of “psychological horror” that emerged in late 1950s British cinema and betrays the impact of Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis, the fractured post-war psyche, the reportage of true-crime mass and serial murders, shifts in censorship, and the arrival in the UK’s rapidly changing film industry of European and American directors such as Roman Polanski, Richard Fleischer and Wolf Rilla. This season focuses on a range of the most provocative, potent and obsessive of these films, exploring the dark and disturbed psychology and psychosis of modern British society. It opens with one of the most notorious and influential works of the subgenre, Michael Powell’s profoundly cinematic, deeply personal and patently disturbed Peeping Tom, a film that met with outrage and derision on its initial release. The film’s portrait of the damaged, murderous and poetic psyche of its lead protagonist, a focus puller working in the British studio system, provides a point of comparison and contrast with the other movies included in this season – such as Nicolas Roeg’s extraordinary Don’t Look Now and Fleischer’s truly chilling portrait of serial killer John Christie, 10 Rillington Place – and its focus on the impact of trauma, environment, sexuality and tradition on an increasingly cracked national consciousness. These films also reflect a deeper tradition of British horror literature, ranging from cryptographer Leo Marks’ original script for Peeping Tom to seminal mid-century writers such as Daphne du Maurier and John Wyndham.
- PEEPING TOM, MICHAEL POWELL (1960) 101 MINS – M
- 10 RILLINGTON PLACE, RICHARD FLEISCHER (1971) 106 MINS – M
- VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED WOLF RILLA (1960) 77 MINS – PG
- SYMPTOMS JOSÉ RAMÓN LARRAZ (1974) 92 MINS – M
- DON’T LOOK NOW NICOLAS ROEG (1973) 110 MINS – M
- REPULSION ROMAN POLANSKI (1965) 105 MINS – M
(EDIT: Should have followed the old rule of reading to the end of a thread before posting, last page makes this post very out of place.)
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