We Don't Go Back #53: Watership Down (1978)

A few months ago, there was this news report about how Channel 5 had gotten a mountain of complaints about having broadcast Watership Down on Easter Sunday, presumably from parents who'd not seen it themselves as kids, or had forgotten it, and who'd sat their adorable moppets in front of what they'd thought was an enchanting fable of bunny life. Crying children ensued. Obviously.

And I greeted this story with some bemusement (and amusement), especially when in a social media conversation, an American friend said something like, "What were they thinking, broadcasting that at a time when kids could see it?" To which my kneejerk response was, but it's a kids' film, it's only ever been broadcast on holiday afternoons since I was a kid, and anyway, the BBFC certified it as a U.

But it's more complicated than that.

We Don't Go Back #52: The Witch (2015)

My original essay about (The) Blood on Satan's Claw sorely needed a reappraisal on the grounds that my first crack at it amounted to "ahahahahaha yeah this is rubbish". But my first post about Robert Eggers' essential 2015 folk horror The Witch (styled as The VVitch: a New-England Folk Tale) was just perfunctory, for the simple reason that it was the very first post I did and I was still thinking, "YES it will be fun to write about my Halloween film marathon," and then the film marathon took over pretty much the entire blog because the whole film-writing enterprise turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected. More than that, though, it wasn't a very good analysis. It's got some good lines, but the whole is sorely lacking. But now I'm (probably) (if it funds) going to make this project into a book, so it's time to look at The Witch with some proper depth.

By the way, people are starting to say to me, "But you keep going back," to which the answer is, of course I am, that's been the whole bloody point from the beginning.

As with all the essays on this site, if I have to I'll give away plot developments of the film, and to talk about The Witch? I have to.

We Don't Go Back #51: Requiem for a Village (1975)

One of the real pleasures of this project has been how the broad theme of "folk horror" encompasses a whole spectrum of films that wouldn't otherwise go together at all,so you end up teasing out common threads between shoestring indie films, exploitation horror, artsy genre films, thoughtful TV plays, children's shows, "serious" films that win awards, and full-on art film. I've found a sort of sliding scale, a continuum, and yet you can see in the the "highest" and the "lowest" those same tropes and themes.

David Gladwell's 1975 film Requiem for a Village, released not so very long ago as part of the excellent BFI Flipside series, is not long (just over an hour), but it's tremendously dense, and it took me two watches really before I felt I had got to grips with it. And yes, it's most definitely on the art end of the spectrum.

(This is a content warning, though: mention is made of a rape scene, and as usual, if discussion of such distresses you, please don't read on.)

We Don't Go Back: the Kickstarter, funding now

My Kickstarter for the book form of We Don't Go Back: A Watcher's Guide to Folk Horror is now live. I'm aiming to raise £1200 in 28 days, and as is the custom, I have amusingly named rewards and inspiring stretch goals. Help me print my words about film on sustainable trees (it's from the forest, see).

Support me here.

Cult Cinema #7: Safe (1995)

Every so often you get a film that starts out as one thing and at then end turns into quite another, and while I genuinely don't care about spoilers, there is something to be said for not knowing how a film will end, or what course it will take. Sometimes even including a film in a list of thematically similar movies ruins the surprise of first viewing. Todd Haynes's 1995 film Safe, is perhaps old enough for it not to matter. So. Safe starts out one way, and goes to an unexpected place.

We Don't Go Back #50: Blood on Satan's Claw, a reappraisal

When I first wrote about (The) Blood on Satan's Claw, it's fair to say that I didn't take the film at all seriously. I sort of regret that review.

My previous review of Blood on Satan's Claw is one of the most negative posts on this blog. That's not the problem, though. The problem is that it's basically a dismissal of the film. And the fact is, if you're properly looking at folk horror films, the three films you have to take seriously are The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General and Blood on Satan's Claw. People I like and respect consider it one of the Towering Classics of the genre; every time someone's talked about how great it was, how fantastic, I started to begin to doubt my judgement.

I began to to wonder if I'd seen the same film as these people.

So, here's the thing. I'm going to launch a Kickstarter for a We Don't Go Back book this week, and that means it's time to return to Blood on Satan's Claw and give it a reappraisal (I'm going to rewatch The Witch as well, since I didn't really give that one enough depth either, first time round). This post retreads some of the ground of the first post, and supersedes it.

Yes, yes, all right. I went back.

(Before I go further, it's content warning time. If discussions of rape and rape culture upset you or bring back things you wish they wouldn't, please don't read on. An essay about an old horror film is not a good reason to experience real distress.)

We Don't Go Back: the Book

Alternative Titles For This Blog #207

So ever since I got past the original dozen or so posts I planned, I thought that there might be mileage in compiling and re-editing We Don't Go Back into book form.