Best known for directing the original mini-series of PENNIES FROM HEAVEN/’78, Piers Haggard’s early folk-horror feature is both seriously creepy and unexpectedly serious. A telling of a witches cult, with real supernatural elements, at a time when England’s upperclass has written off witchcraft as superstition, but still feverishly believed by devout country folk. And damned if they aren’t onto something wicked this way comes. No doubt the film’s release in the ‘Mod’ era, with advertising fit for the film-savvy ‘70s, made this come off as Hammer Films fodder. But Haggar seems to have had something more like Carl Theodor Dreyer’s DAY OF WRATH/’43 in mind.* And if he doesn’t get all the way there (who has?), it’s an honorable attempt. A country farm lad (with a mop-top hidden under his wool cap, is ploughing his field when he turns over monstrous remains. His master makes light of it, but is convinced to go to London for answers when an ancient scientific tome cites similar finds. While he’s away, half the town starts to succumb, becoming possessed by a witch who seduces men (with full frontal nudity, no less) to either their doom or into joining her cult. Even a female acolyte, saved by a local farm boy, is unable to resist the call of this devil cult. And that’s after an unqualified surgeon has painfully removed a patch of ‘Devil’s Skin’ from her thigh. Yikes! Returned from London, the Magistrate is now convinced, and a fight between The True Church and The Devil’s servants is inevitable. Very effectively done, and well shot largely in bright sunshine instead of the typical gloom & doom. And while Haggard has neither the funds nor the chops to make his ambitious final showdown work, the film is good enough so you take it ‘on account,’
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *Recently, Robert Eggers got his horror-driven career off the ground with THE WITCH/’15. But nothing has ever matched the stake-burning conviction of Dreyer’s DAY OF WRATH. A film to make you think of tossing the reel tins in the lake to find out if they’ll innocently sink or guiltily float. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/day-of-wrath-1943.html
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