Out On Blue Six: Belinda Kordic

BBC2 recently screened the 2013 horror film The Borderlands, a mash up of the modern affection for the found footage trope and the more traditional English folk horror end of the genre. It's quite an eerie little low budget film, but one of the most affecting things about it was the use of music, especially the end credits which featured a rendition of the traditional English folk ballad The Trooper Cut Down In His Prime, aka The Unfortunate Rake, hauntingly sung by one Belinda Kordic, a Swedish singer who has recorded as Killing Mood and as one half of the duo Se Delan...

Gives you chills eh?

Belinda Kordic

End Transmission

Darklands (1996)

I can't actually recall when I first saw Darklands. I just recall it being on some TV channel late at night either in the late '90s or the early '00s and have a vague idea it may have been on Sky movies prior to that, but I can't be sure. Whilst I enjoyed it and found it diverting enough at the time, I was a bit dismissive of it I must say, largely because I'd not long since seen The Wicker Man. To me, it just looked like something extremely derivative of Robin Hardy's cult classic. I didn't realise at the time how derivative The Wicker Man itself was. I doubt I knew or understood the pagan mythology and legend of John Barleycorn back then, now that I do Darklands has actually gone up in my estimations on this rewatch. It's hardly surprising either; it's actually refreshing to see an early entry in what has become known as the revival of the British horror genre that stands apart from the formulaic and repetitive dirge being churned out in its name now - all those [insert subsection of society here] Vs [insert traditional horror creature here] titles - I think the only one they haven't done yet is Chavs Vs Werewolves

Darklands stars Craig Fairbrass stars as Frazer Truick, an investigative journalist born in Wales but taken to London in his formative years (which explains his cockney accent) he now finds himself back in the town of his birth after being dumped by Fleet Street for writing a story they couldn't defend. 

So OK, that's the first credibility stretch - Fairbrass as a cockney sounding Welshman. The second is that, for an investigative reporter, he struggles to see the truth when its standing right in front of him and tweaking his pumped up pectorals. No matter, I'm one of those people who actually find Fairbrass quite charismatic and watchable borne from the fact that I grew up watching him in the likes of Prime Suspect and London's Burning and then going 'No way, that's Technique!' when he popped up in major Hollywood action flick Cliffhanger. I will stick my neck out here and say this is one of his most satisfying central vehicles, primarily because it's just really nice to see him play something likeable and something other than a gangster.

Darklands opens with some atmospheric shots of industrial Wales - Port Talbot to be exact - interspersed with scenes featuring some grungy alternative circus looking types performing a sort of prototype Stomp! These look like the kind of people who rock up at Glastonbury making art with chainsaws and bits of old flatbed trucks and remind you that the 90s really were a bit of a cultural oasis; a no man's land of identity, fashions and style whereupon anything remotely 'alt' looking was leapt upon to provide the shorthand for 'sinister' and 'strange'. Throw in a few gypsies - as Darklands goes on to do - and you have an audience convinced these boyos are up to no good. Sure enough, the next thing we see them do is drag a squealing pig into the space by the ears (this moment is not for the squeamish, animal lover!) and promptly slit its throat and string it up in a vaguely 'sacrificial' manner.

Frazer, and his new colleague Rachel (the glamourous looking Rowena King), are called to the local church where the pig' remains have been unceremoniously dumped, along with Celtic writing daubed on the walls in its blood. This isn't the first time such desecration has occurred and it's clear that this is a story Frazer wants to get to the bottom of, but he's soon sidetracked by Rachel who asks him to investigate the death of her brother, a steelworker who she feels got mixed up in a strange cult in the town. It isn't long before Frazer believes the two investigations are linked and his digging around leads him to a Nationalist MP (Jon Finch) and a sinister well dressed man called Carver (David Duffy)  as well as revelations about those closest to him. 

Efficiently directed by first timer Julian Richards, Darklands cherrypicks from several classic horrors. There's more than a pinch of The Omen, a touch of Rosemary's Baby, a liberal dose of the classic, chilling Play For Today
Robin Redbreast and then of course there's the aforementioned The Wicker Man. There's even an air of the '70s Hammer movies in the rather lurid, baby oil slicked depiction of ceremonial sex! But it's all done with obvious affection and with a sense of atmosphere and it has developed something of its own retro style too now that the years have moved on, making it all really rather enjoyable.

Robin Redbreast (1970)

Robin Redbreast gained the accolade of being the first Play For Today to get a repeat, just months after its initial broadcast. It's second and last screening on TV occurred in the February of 1971, yet it's deeply surreal and eerie narrative had firmly ingrained itself on many a TV lover's conscious and it's impact can still be clearly felt on many of a certain generation, either in idle chat down the pub -  'Anyone remember Robin Redbreast?', 'Yeah, what the bloody hell was that about?' -  or in the works of that delightfully devilish quartet, The League of Gentlemen. It's writer, John Bowen, can take pride in creating a uniquely singular and disturbing TV event that is hard to shake off. 

Warning: This Blog Post Contains...

Anna Cropper stars as Norah Palmer (a character who had previously appeared in Bowen's novel The Birdcage) a 35 year old distinctly middle class television script editor who has recently broke up with her lover. In an attempt to rebuild her life, she opts for that then modern fad for 'getting your shit together in the country', and takes up residence in an old cottage. 

The village is typical in its folk horror tropes and the full array of odd and sinister locals are on display, including the learned, bespectacled and much admired Fisher (Bernard Hepton) the stout housekeeper Mrs Vigo (Freda Bamford) and Rob (Andrew Bradford) also known as Robin, whose attractiveness and half naked karate practice immediately catches Norah's eye. 

She arranges a dinner date at her cottage with home one evening, but is dismayed to find he is dull and has poor social skills as befits his far from worldly character. Seduction is most definitely off the menu until she is frightened by a screaming bird in the chimney (just one of the many unwanted animal intruders the cottage is beset with) Comfort from Rob turns to sex, and Norah - whose dutch chap mysteriously vanishes for the night - falls pregnant. She begins to suspect that the villagers have arranged for this to happen, fearing she is their broodmare she returns to London, and her fey, urbane friends (Julian Holloway and Amanda Walker - playing the kind of characters still likely to appear in LoG alumni Shearsmith and Pemberton Inside Number 9) intent on having an abortion, but ultimately finds she cannot go through with it. 

When she returns to the cottage, she is prevented by the locals from leaving before Easter Sunday, which they consider crucially important. Her car is sabotaged and her phone disconnected and she becomes convinced that she is going to be sacrificed in some Pagan ritual on that date. But the twist is that a woman's blood is no good for the land and the villagers plan is to sacrifice Rob. Indeed they have nurtured him, treated him like a king and pampered him all his life precisely for this fate, dismembered by axe, his blood used to enrich the soil and the next harvest - as in the Pagan legends of John Barleycorn, Robin of the Dale, Robin Hood and The Golden Bow. The villagers go on to explain to Norah that they want her child to be the 'new' Robin. She refuses and is finally allowed to leave the village, because no one would ever believe her tale. When she glances back, she sees that the locals have all been transformed into their pagan equivalents with Fisher resplendent in antlers as Herne the Hunter.

Fans of folk horror will love Bowen's tale, which treads a similar path to the more well known and celebrated productions like The Wicker Man. But Robin Redbreast stands apart from that illustrious contemporary in some clever and satisfying variations on the genre's themes. Take for example how open and blase the villagers are with Norah about what is going on; when she notices that a drainpipe has been pulled away from her house Fisher clearly and matter of factly states “I should say it was somebody on your roof”. He even goes on to more or less admit that her car has been deliberately sabotaged when he says  “One would be bound to notice. To crack the rotor from the outside, as it were. With scissors, say.” This is not your typical villager conspiracy thriller, they're actively challenging Norah to join the dots at each turn, but Norah proves unable to do so for whatever reason and remains struck with fear at the red herrings instead, unable to see the bigger picture. 

Sight too is a big metaphor within Bowen's tale and director James MacTaggart delights in some atmospheric visual motifs playing upon such a theme; be it a marble stone Norah finds and likens to an eye, Hepton's round spectacles, the eyes of dead animals or the truth of the conspiracy Norah cannot 'see' until that final moment even though they are in plain sight all around her. 

Robin Redbreast has been released on the BFI label to DVD but many other classic Play For Today's remain languishing in the BBC vaults.

To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic plays please sign the petition I started here

Penda's Fen (1974)

You'd be forgiven for thinking that Penda's Fen, with its air of bucolic strangeness, its preoccupation with Elgar, its fantasy sequences and its (homoerotic) sexual subtext, was a film from Ken Russell rather than Alan Clarke, that acclaimed director of urban, working class dramas. Clarke was handpicked by the play's author David Rudkin who (rightly) viewed him as one of the best British directors working at that time. Clarke, mystified by Rudkin's screenplay, approached Penda's Fen with a typical straightforward directing style and as a result created his first true masterpiece. It's fair to say that on first impression there's little in common here with the rest of Clarke's work but, delve deeper, and you'll be rewarded with a through line of  yet another disenfranchised, confused youth searching for his identity in a surrounding that seems to shape him.

The plot concerns itself with Stephen, played by Spencer Banks, a precocious and initially rather unlikeable middle-class son of a clergyman who amid the Malvern Hills at the height of summer encounters angels, the composer Edward Elgar, and the mythical 'mother and father' of England as well as the last pagan ruler of the land himself, King Penda. It is never specified whether these woozy encounters are real or imaginary - as Clarke shoots them as continuous from the daily realistic events - but it is through them that Stephen begins to question his beliefs, both religious and political, and his sexuality.

This journey of bizarre visions serve as a unique coming of age for Stephen; a visible maturity and articulation that turns him from a cretinous conservative youth to a sympathetic point of identification for the play's narrative especially as, as time goes on, he realises that the things he believed in and believed he was turn out to be rather hollow and false after all. His father, may be a vicar but he is open minded enough to accept that religion as an organisation doesn't always have Christ's teachings at its heart and holds some interesting views on Manicheanism (a recurring motif in the drama) and on Christ himself. It also turns out that his parents aren't really his parents at all, that he's adopted and not as English as he had once considered. Who Stephen is goes hand in hand with the question of what England is and Clarke captures the beauty of the rural scenery in such a manner that reminds you just how unique the landscape is that we reside upon.

I can't quite make my mind up about Penda's Fen. It's undoubtedly brilliant, but I can't escape a feeling of disappointment or a desire that it addressed some issues a little further...yet I can't quite put my finger on what or why. I think if I return to it it will probably go up in my estimation. I know that now I have properly viewed it, several scenes will linger in my mind for a long time.

This film remains unavailable on DVD and can only be watched on YouTube. It's rather ridiculous that one of the UK's finest directors has so much of his work under appreciated/little screened.

To get the BBC to consider repeating some of these classic TV plays please sign the petition I started here

Red Shift (1978)

God love the BFI. Another near forgotten treasure is released from the vaults this month; Red Shift is an adaptation of The Owl Service author Alan Garner's sci fi fantasy children's novel (and let's use the term children loosely) that appeared in the acclaimed Play For Today strand in 1978. It's a mark of the quality and distinction TV had at the time that the two plays that sandwiched Red Shift were David Hare's Licking Hitler and Jim Allen's The Spongers. Remember when the BBC gave a toss about intelligent drama and showcasing a variety of voices? This was then.

Time figures much in Red Shift. The story is set in South Cheshire and the slip roads leading to the M33 (the 'red shift' of the title; its triangular formation allegedly being something seen by the naked eye from space to have a red glow) and beyond, the hills of Mow Cop (the subject of today's Wordless Wednesday). But, whilst the setting may remain static, it literally shifts across three time periods; a heartfelt but strained romance in the 70s is our introduction and meat of the piece, before we flit back to a beleaguered militia coming into contact with a pagan goddess in Roman times and a bloodthirsty massacre during the English Civil War. 

In each segment the narrative focuses on a disturbed and troubled youth, Tom, Macy and Thomas, each linked by his location, the discovery of an axehead and 'visions' that appear like fits when words can no longer be summoned up. As you can see from such a description, it's a deeply elliptical and disturbing piece that neatly fits the burgeoning 70s preoccupation with folklore, the ancient characterisation of women having the ability to heal or hurt man, specifically when they are fated to hurt already, and paganism - an echo of which Garner appealingly suggests runs through the arteries of the modern day motorways that course through our ancient countryside. It commences like the standard fare one perhaps stereotypically expects from a Play For Today, depicting the 70s setting as little more than a tale of small town frustration featuring a verbose and intelligent yet clearly pained young man trapped by his overbearing yet well meaning parents as his modern thinking girlfriend looks set to move on thanks to a career opportunity in London. One can only imagine what the unexpecting viewers at the time thought with the sudden shift to a different timezone.

Directed beautifully by Long Good Friday director John Mackenzie and starring some truly excellent television actors including Lesley Dunlop, Bernard Gallagher, Ken Hutchison, James Hazeldine and Michael Elphick, BFI have restored the original print in crisp HD, present this beguiling headscratcher to a new generation.

Picnic At Hanging Rock (1975)

I've been meaning to (re)watch Picnic At Hanging Rock for some time. I had last watched it at some stage in my very early teens so I knew it needed a proper viewing. This year, with my undertaking to watch as much Ozploitation and Aussie New Wave as possible, it seemed the right time to do so. Also of course the film is set on St Valentine's Day, 1900, and this being 16th Feb, there really was no time like the present.

The film tells the story of a school party taking a picnic at a local rock formation when four of the girls and their governess simply vanish inexplicably during the course of the day. 

I must take the time to admit that whilst I am on this enjoyable journey of Australian movies now, I didn't always have the enthusiasm for their film making. As a child I watched an awful lot of Australian cinema because my parents - who very nearly emigrated there in the early 70s - enjoyed it. The junior me always came away from watching such output with a stultified and deeply uncomfortable feeling, which I put down to the intolerable heat and themes these films often focused on. Picnic At Hanging Rock however is a film that deliberately sets out to make one feel unsettled. A film that deliberately tugs at your consciousness, it haunts and lingers in your mind, challenging your thoughts and what you feel you know. Ever dozed off after a few drinks on a hot day only to wake from a disturbing dream where, when left to recount the day's events, you're not altogether sure what was real and what was imagined? Well, that's Picnic At Hanging Rock.

Like its fellow Aussie films, Walkabout, Long Weekend and to an extent Wake In Fright (the latter two I've recently blogged about) Picnic At Hanging Rock depicts and suggests Australia as a landscape we 'interfere' with and inhabit at our peril. It's too ancient, unknowable and ultimately impossible to tame or civilise. It's Joan Lindsay's brilliance to set her work of fiction (and it is fiction, stemming from her 1967 novel, despite her canny pseudo-historical/factual writing style) in the year 1900, contrasting the buttoned up, repressed and virginal young women of the Victorian era with the mystical, wild and almost sensual landscape around them. It's a deeply feminine take on British colonial Australia versus the more natural Aboriginal Australia, and the myth and beliefs of 'dreamtime'

A bold and mystifying feature full of imagery and sounds in perfect harmony that will remain ingrained upon your brain forever, Picnic At Hanging Rock is also a film in which the mystery of the disappearing girls at its core is never resolved. Such ambiguity is expected in several films based on fact -  JFK or Stoned (the biopic of Brian Jones and his mysterious demise) say - but it is a rarity when it comes to fiction. Audiences simply expect fiction to have a neatly wrapped up conclusion and neither Lindsay nor the film's director Peter Weir delivers one. Indeed, Weir recounts how one US distributor threw his coffee cup at the screen after watching the film, disgusted that after 2 hours he was none the wiser! But to concentrate on the answer misses the point of the film; the mystery itself and how it makes you feel, and how it affects those characters in the film left behind, is the key. The 'solution' by Lindsay, the infamous errant Chapter Eighteen of her novel, was actually withdrawn on her publisher's advice at the time of its release, and was eventually published separately and posthumously in 1987 as The Secret Of Hanging Rock. It's summary is available at a glance online, but don't expect a definite solution, in fact it throws up more questions. Again, to look for the conclusion, an answer, would simply be missing the point.

The Ballad Of Tam Lin (1970)

You can always tell when a film has a troubled production and/or various versions when the film itself goes by many titles. This one is no exception and is known alternatively as Tam Lin, The Ballad of Tam Lin or the more lurid and ridiculous The Devil's Widow.

Tam Lin is in fact an ancient myth originating from Scotland, however the story has similarities with many European folk lore tales. At its basic form it concerns the story of a young virgin, Janet (sometimes known as Margaret, depending on who tells the tale) who plucks a double rose in the forest and is greeted by an elf called Tam Lin. He subsequently takes her 'possession', her virginity, and Janet becomes pregnant though will not give up her elf whom reveals to her that he was once human but captured and tended to by the Queen of the Faeries. Every seven years an elf in her possession is given as a tithe to hell, and one Hallows Eve, Tam is selected as that elf and goes out to ride upon a white horse. Janet tries to rescue him from his fate, and the Queen casts a spell of transformation upon Tam, turning him into all manner of things such as a bear and a burning coal, in an attempt to break Janet's love for Tam. It is only when he reappears as a naked man and Janet's persistence to secure him prevails that the Queen admits defeat and let's them live as man and woman.

Strange bedfellows: Ian McShane and Ava Gardner

Actor turned director Roddy McDowell attempts to update this fable to the early 70s, casting Ava Gardner as the evil Faerie Queen, who assembles a coven of youthful beautiful sprites from London's swinging scene. And McDowell certainly assembles a beautiful cast; Stephanie Beacham as Janet and, in the coven, Joanna Lumley, Jenny Hanley, Madeline Smith, Linda Marlowe and Sinead Cusack, whilst Ian McShane appears as Tam and Bruce Robinson appears as one of the doomed lovestruck 'elves'.  Two male actors that were so beautiful in their prime I sometimes think they could have turned me! I also spotted Julian Barnes, the eternally wooden actor of the previously blogged about films Haunted House Of Horror and Au Pair Girls too. McDowell also quite cannily imbues the piece with the wonderful music of The Pentangle, the folk outfit featuring Bert Jansch, Jacquie McShee, Danny Thompson, John Renbourn and Terry Cox, who were at the peak of their commercial popularity (indeed folk in general was enjoying something of a major revival at the time) having also provided the soundtrack to the successful TV series Take Three Girls. Their version of the trad folk ballad 'Tam Lin' is scored to a tune they had previously used in that very series. In giving them the chance to score the film, it provides a nice nod to the heritage of the original folk tale.

McShane and Stephanie Beacham

McShane's Tam, Gardner's favourite lover, falls for Beacham's Janet when he finds her in the forest and the fable essentially plays out rather faithfully against the modern backdrop. Gardner, who plays her part with the right mix of menace and fading sensuality and glamour (which the former Hollywood screen goddess of course had at that time) is angered at the thought of losing Tam and, on selecting a new coven, drugs Tam and tells him to flee in a white car. If caught, they will kill him. Janet comes to his rescue and a tripping Tam envisions himself as a bear, a writhing snake and lastly on fire, but Janet refuses to let him go. Gardner has to accept defeat and moves on, with a new favourite lover/elf in tow.

Ultimately, it's a beguiling, quixotic and mildly frustrating viewing experience. You genuinely feel the film has a lot going for it, but for either studio interference or an uncertain hand on the directing tiller from McDowell, the film struggles to convey its message successfully. It's true that McDowell was incredibly disappointed with the film and accused the studio of butchering his original artistic vision, but I'm not entirely convinced he was a great director - with some strange unintentionally amusing and downright cheesy choices, such as depicting Tam and Janet's meeting and falling in love as a series of stop frame montages and lingering bewildered close ups. It is a beautiful film with some truly gorgeous shots, but I think here McDowell is especially helped by the excellent cinematographer Billy Williams, the Scottish locations and the utterly beautiful young cast. 

McShane and Beacham beneath The Forth Bridge.

An example of Williams' beautiful cinematography.

At times the film really kicks up a gear and you feel that it is finally going somewhere gripping, heady and interesting - I particularly loved a scene in which Richard Wattis, as Gardner's gay aide, in turn equally menacing and gauche, reveals the fate that will befall McShane's Tam and his own handiwork in previous murders - but these moments quickly dissolve and are few and far between. Don't get me wrong I did enjoy this, but on first viewing it's a bit of a curate's egg. One can't help wonder how better it would have been with a more assured director (McDowell would never helm another film again) or indeed if it will improve for me on a second watch. As it is though, its an intriguing addition to the genre of folk horror.