The term folk horror - now a key subgenre of British horror cinema - was popularised by Mark Gatiss in his acclaimed BBC Four documentary A History of Horror (2010). 

Since then, interesting in the folk horror unholy trinity of Blood On Satan’s Claw, The Wicker Man, and Witchfinder General has grown. Already cult classics of British cinema, there has been a steady rise of appreciation in them in the last fifteen years. 

A new wave of filmmakers are championing them. 

Mark Gatiss’ interest in the folk horror subgenre is apt considering how much The League of Gentleman draws from its wellspring. There is the isolation of the town Royston Vasey, the cult of the Special Stuff and Edward and Tubbs’ Satan-clawed son David for starters.

In fact Piers Haggard, director of Blood On Satan’s Claw, used this term to describe his British folk horror film many years earlier - however at the time there was little recognition of it. 

It was really once the iconic The Whicker Man was released a couple of years later that the ‘unholy trinity’ of British folk horror was formed and the sinew of common themes, tropes and motifs became an identifiable subgenre. 

By all accounts the production of Blood On Satan’s Claw was not straightforward. 

Originally conceived as an anthology of three tales, it ended up being stretched to a single story due to the production running out of money. 

Some plot threads that were meant to lead into the other tales are left hanging and the finale is extended in the feeling that they were scrabbling to make up time. 

Director Piers Haggard is very honest about the shoot and how these challenges resulted in a film that is narratively patchy and not all it could have been. 

The acting, in general, is better than expected and the young cast and crew acquit themselves well. 

Blood On Satan’s Claw proved to be Patrick Wyman’s (who plays The Judge) final film as he died of a heart-attack aged 44 shortly after production wrapped. 

His poor on-set behaviour also didn’t help things, as detailed in detailed in David Taylor’s essay Don’t Overact With Your Fingers (see below) – the definite account of the making-of Blood On Satan’s Claw. It is definitively worth a read if you can find a copy.  

But what made folk horror different to other rural-set horror films – or classic horrors featuring vampires, zombies or wolf-men - and why the evergreen interest in them? 

In many ways it is the newer generation of filmmakers who are the torch-bearers for the folk horror revival – such as Ben Wheatley, Robert Eggers, Ari Aster and Lukas Feigelfeld. 

Ben Wheatley’s A Field In England contains one of the most terrifying shots in all folk horror – a three-minute slow-motion tracking shot of Reese Shearsmith emerging from a tent, possessed and in harness, with a rictus grin straight out of an Aphex Twin video. 

Robert Eggers’ debut The VVitch is set in the time of witchfinders and Ari Aster’s Sweden-set (if overlong) Midsommar hit many of the beats of Whicker Man. 

Whilst Aster’s  Hereditary is one of the best debuts of recent years, I think it falls outside folk horror as its setting is too suburban to convey the earthiness of rural folk horror. 

Likewise Eggers’ The Lighthouse, whilst a brilliant melange of Lynch, Cronenberg and pirate accents is effectively a two-hander so lacks the mass hysteria of the community settings in which folk horror films often take place (see Blood On Satan’s Claw, Whicker Man, Children of The Corn). 

This year’s smash hit, Ryan Coogler’s Mississippi-set Sinners, may well be considered a folk horror. A brilliantly evocative vampire film, its grounding in the soil of the delta, the folklore, music and charismatic cult-leader Remmick make a strong case for it to be part of the Southern Gothic folk horror tradition (which makes me think True Detective’s first series, heavily– infused with Robert Chamber’s King in Yellow lore, could also be a contender). 

Going back to the seventies there were also a spate of children’s TV shows which conveyed the eeriness and nightmare quality of folk horror – from Children Of The Stones to more sci-fi inflected series such as Chocky or The Tripods or other John Wyndham stories such as Day of The Triffids (which would bring the modern sentient foliage series The Last Of Us into the folk horror fold too).

In the 80s even Robin of Sherwood (and John Boorman’s Excalibur – in particular Nicol Williamson’s unhinged Merlin) had some of the folk magic creepiness of folk horror. 

Honourable mentions to recent British debuts including Saint Maud (the final, terrifying scene), Censor (the backwoods film shoot) and also Peter Wright’s archive bricolage Arcadia which “captures the beauty and brutality, the magic and madness of rural Britain.”

So why folk horror - why does it matter? It’s because it resonates. It accesses something primeval, non-rational and uncanny that we can’t quite articulate. 

Primarily folk horror is about the earth and the soil. It’s not just working the land but appeasing the old gods to ensure the land is fertile and the harvest is bountiful. It harks back to an agrarian, pre-industrial time of magic, superstition, paganism and even esotericism. 

It harks (Triton hark) back to the nascent religion, mythologies and folklores detailed in James Frazer’s Golden Bough, Joseph Campbell’s Masks of God quartet. 

It’s chthonic – life emanating out of the soil itself – like Cadmus’ autochthonous dragon’s teeth, the Greek tale retold by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in his analysis of the function of mythology. 

Secondly, alongside this is the community. This is typically an isolated village or a people stuck in time. It is a group which falls prey to some form of occult bewitchment, delusion or psychosis. 

This could be a cult-like adherence to ancient gods or magic, or an external demoniac form that perverts and entrances villagers away from their normal daily lives, morality and belief system. 

Finally there needs to be some kind of external agent – a stranger, an interloper or a charismatic – that disrupts the status quo through their presence (Vincent Price’s Matthew Hopkins in Witchfinder General) and often is the avatar for the viewing audience (such as Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie in The Whicker Man). 

This agent is either driving the narrative, or a victim of the cult’s conspiracy outside their control (same goes for Alex Wolff at Peter in Hereditary – a film overtly made from the perspective of a sacrificial lamb). Many end up being sacrificed, witnessing sacrifices or being inducted into the cult (if they’re lucky).

Thematically folk horror is important as it raises echoes of primeval, preternatural life. The paganism and animism unlocks something uncanny, sublime and liminal – the supernatural and abysmal. 

This thread runs throughout English history and literature from Beowulf through to Shakespeare – Macbethand The Tempest (an isolated island, shipwrecked interlopers, demon Caliban and fairy Aerial, Prospero as the charismatic in the same mould as Lord Summerisle) – and on to Blake’s Jerusalem. 

Folk horror is not limited to the UK either. Japan’s tales of witchcraft and uncanny horror (Onibaba in particular) draw on Japanese mythology as well as Shinto animism. 

Kier-La Janisse’s epic documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched –dives into this – it’s latter sections detailing folk horror movements around the world, from Southern Gothic in the US to Europe, Asia and on to Australia.  

So whilst Blood On Satan’s Claw may not be a perfect film it is an important one. It’s a foundational text in folk horror. In being so it tells us something deep and profound about our past – our connection to the land, the rolling green hills and fields of Albion and the dark spirits lurking in the woods and forests. 

Further reading and watching

Introduction: The Blood on Satan’s Claw at 50 - Horror Homeroom

‘An Insolent Ungodliness’: 45 Years of The Blood on Satan’s Claw – Warped Perspective

Don’t Overact With Your Fingers, by David Taylor in Shock, The Essential Guide to Exploitation Cinema, Ed. Stephan Jaworzyn, p85-95.

For Adults Only: Home Grown British Crud 1954-1972 by Mike Wathen in Shock Xpress, , The Essential Guide to Exploitation Cinema, Ed. Stephan Jaworzyn, p91-102. 

Cult films and the people who make them: interview: Piers Haggard

Folk Horror: An Introduction – Folk Horror Revival

Where to begin with folk horror | BFI

British Folk Horror Films to Lure You Into the Forest

Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful & Things Strange by Adam Scovell 

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched. It’s available on Prime, Apple and Plex in the UK.

A History of Horror with Mark Gatiss (Part 2 of 3) Home Counties Horror - YouTube

Moviedrome - The Wicker Man - Alex Cox

Moviedrome - Witchfinder General (Alex Cox)