Like my fascination with folk horror, I can trace my interest in Terence Fisher to my early teens, when I stayed up late to watch a TV screening of Curse of the Werewolf. Hoping for something lurid and fast-paced, I both did and didn’t get what I bargained for, as a slow-burning film – that seemed less a horror and more a sadistic tragedy – unfolded. Continue reading
Folk horror is like obscenity in Potter Stewart’s famous definition: you know it when you see it. Characterised by eerie rural landscapes, malevolent forces that work through ancient objects unearthed by hapless farmhands, and bloodthirsty cults that flourish in secret behind a peculiarly British veneer of village green propriety. Closely associated with the 60s and 70s, it’s the sort of stuff that was a mainstay of late-night television during my adolescence. Does folk horror then refer to a style of horror past – to once-chilling fireside ghost stories that are now occasionally disinterred for a nostalgia rush or for camp value? Continue reading
The Scientific Anglian 