WDGB Midsommar Special #2: Dymphna

The last time Dymphna wrote a guest post for me, it became the single most read piece on this site for nearly two years by several thousand views. Dymphna is a fierecely intelligent writer and an excellent game designer (fans of role-playing and folk horror should definitely take a look at her game Dreaming the Devil), and when she offered me a short piece on Midsommar, I jumped at it like a puppy offered an especially tasty treat. Dymphna's piece is a rare thing on this site, a piece that you can read before  you see the movie. 
 

WDGB Midsommar Special #1: Eve Elizabeth Moriarty

So I've seen Midsommar, because of course I've seen Midsommar, and I have things to say about it, but I'm holding back on that because from tomorrow I'm going to be at the 13th MotelX film festival, in Lisbon, where I will, aside from being honoured to be on the jury for the short film selections, be hosting a folk horror masterclass with Midsommar director Ari Aster, and it just seems sort of sensible to hold off on saying much about it until I've, y'know, met the guy and talked about it.  

However! I'm not the only one who's got Thoughts, and several great writers I know have ideas about this. So over the next few weeks I'm running three (at least) takes on Midsommar by my friends and colleagues. 

First up is my good friend, the frankly powerful Eve Moriarty. Eve is a poet and academic, and it is no exaggeration to say that she numbers among my favourite people in the whole world. Here's what she has to say. There are spoilers in this piece.

Guest Post – The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, episode 1 (2019)

The Dark Crystal is one of my favourite childhood movies, one that had a powerful formative effect on me. So the news that there was going to be a Netflix prequel series was not a thing that I had simple feelings about. My friend, frequent collaborator and BERGCAST co-presenter, Jon Dear felt the same way, and when he offered to write about the first episode, which he got to see previewed, I leapt at the opportunity. And unlike most of the posts here, this is more or less spoiler-free.

On a Thousand Walls – Guest Post: Quatermass and the Pit (1958/9)

OK, this is epic, this. It's the single most extended piece of criticism yet to appear on this blog, and it's not by me, it comes from my friend and frequent co-conspirator Jon Dear. You may know Jon from the credits of Perplexed Music, the wall of the BFI and the fine cultural criticism he writes at Views From a Hill. Jon also very kindly contributed four entries to my book We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror, which you can totally buy now for Kindle and which, if the Universal Forces (and also Amazon) are kind, should be available in inch-thick print by the end of August. 

Jon's piece on Quatermass and the Pit fortuitously comes at a time when for reasons I don't fully understand, the BBC have seen fit to put the whole thing up on iPlayer so if you're in this United Kingdom that we still (Brexit willing) have here, you can watch along. Jon worked like a demon on this piece, and it shows. Jon's done me proud here. Over to Jon.

We Don't Go Back – Guest Post: The Turin Horse (A Torinói Ló) (2011)

So it's Guest Post Week, and the second post of this week comes from esteemed colleague Daniel Pieterson who wrote this fabulous piece on Bela Tarr's 2011 The Turin Horse (A Torinói Ló).

We Don't Go Back – Guest Post: Ravenous (1999)

I've known Craig Daniel for a few years now as part of a loose collective of colleagues and friends who talk about games and politics. We were talking the other day about backwoods horror which Craig, who lives in rural North Carolina, naturally has strong feelings about. Too often, poor rural people are demonised and othered, and we were talking about films that might buck that trend. Anyway, Craig mentioned Antonia Bird's 1999 blackly comic cannibal horror Ravenous, to which I enthusiastically assented, but which I haven't seen for, oh, years. 

The 90s were a weird time for media. I think it was the first time that media really exploded, that you no longer had a hope of catching a general idea of the shape of pop culture. And at the same time, it was the birth of the internet, and I often feel that there was this assumption that people didn't necessarily archive and record things the way that they pretty much automatically do now, because they just assumed that it was, you know, on the internet. Does that make sense? I think that there's a lot from the 90s that's nearly forgotten, which, if it had been made a decade earlier or a decade later, wouldn't be, and Ravenous falls into that bracket. Which is a crying shame.

Here's Craig on Ravenous.

We Don't Go Back – Guest Post: Duel (1971)

Yes, that's right, Steven Spielberg's 1971 made-for-TV debut, Duel, in my folk horror strand.

My frequent collaborator Jon Dear (of viewsfromahill.com) contacted me the other week and said, “What do you think about me writing about Duel as a folk horror film?” and I paused for a moment and suddenly I thought, hell, you know, yes it is. Jon makes a strong case for Duel as part of the folk horror canon. Hell, if Carnival of Souls counts, and you know I think it does, Duel certainly does.

I know you're sceptical, but go with Jon on this, and see what you think.

We Don't Go Back – Guest Post: The Borderlands (2013)

Another guest post today, this time from friend and critical sparring partner Jon Dear. Jon is still among the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject of TV and film, and has recently started up his own blog, Views From a Hill, where he's been rewatching Twin Peaks and offering illuminating insight into a bunch of old TV shows I haven't even heard of, let alone seen. Over to Jon.

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This review will spoiler the hell out of the film. So if you’ve yet to see it and you want to, and have any intention of enjoying it, please watch the film before reading this review. I’ll wait...

We Don't Go Back – Guest Post: Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto del Fauno) (2006)

Today's guest post is by my friend Simeon Smith. He is talented, funny, a musician, artist and writer. He is a faithful friend and sometime collaborator. Simeon and I sat and watched Pan's Labyrinth together last week, with a view to his writing a guest post for me. This is what he sent to me.

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We Don't Go Back – Guest Post: The Company of Wolves (1984)

A guest post, this time on Angela Carter's The Company of Wolves. It's by Monique Lacoste, who I've known for maybe 13 years, although the last time we saw each other in person was when she very kindly let me stay at her home, then in Los Angeles, in 2005.

Monique is one of the smartest, funniest, and most courageous people I know. She describes herself a media scholar and student botherer who loves movies and cultural criticism. Monique says that she has been known to turn into a werewolf when provoked.

Monique has taken her brief much more seriously than I usually do (this is the first film article I've posted that has a proper bibliography!) and there's some real meat here.

The complexities of structure in The Company of Wolves allow for the navigation of a landscape of dreams, and the film's isolated geography, with a sense of combined proximity and distance so like the British countryside, lies in the territory of an adolescent imagination. In many ways it's a companion to Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, and several scenes are direct callbacks to that strange, awkward little film.

Enough of me. Today we're here for Monique.

We Don't Go Back – Guest Post: The Woman in Black (1989)

(Once again I have to mention before we start that The Age of Miracles is still funding. Kickstarter tagged it as a "Project We Love" and overnight it went from 67% to 82% funded. I have hopes that it will actually hit target. Don't dash them! Or do. I suspect my reaction will be entertaining either way.)

Today I'm very pleased to be handing over my blog to another guest writer. I've known Jon Dear for something like fifteen years He's one of the most knowledgeable people I know on the subject of British TV, and he's the one person I know whose name features on the wall of the BFI.

Guest Post: Women in Historical RPGs

From the British Library collection.

First up, I have to tell you that my project The Age of Miracles is still funding, still crawling towards its goal. Help a neomystic cryptotheologian out, people?

While I'm working on it, I've commissioned some guest posts, which I've scheduled to appear in the next couple of weeks. First comes Dymphna, someone I've enjoyed interacting with over the last few months, and who very kindly agreed to supply some words for my Inner Worlds series on a subject that I felt very strongly needed someone more qualified than me to write about properly.

Amara

Four of Swords.

Another excerpt from the upcoming Cosmic Memory, by Malcolm Sheppard. Backers and Patrons have had the chance to see the whole thing.

Moyra, Trader of Qeraf

Backers of Chariot will be glad to know that Cosmic Memory is finally on its way. This is one of my favourites from Malcolm's collection of supporting characters. It has a delicacy, a poetry to it. It felt right.

Chariot: Actually Running the Thing

 (A guest post today by my friend Tim Groth. Tim has been one of Chariot's most enthusiastic supporters and cheerleaders and his account of running it was so fascinating that I asked to post it here. With his story of magickal AI and hijacked Atlantean propaganda, I think Tim completely gets the sort of atmosphere I wanted the game to have. And I think his game had heart, and heart is sorely what this sort of pastime needs.

You can find links to the various outlets that stock Chariot here.

Tim's words start after the cut.)