YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER. (2021) AN IRISH FOLK HORROR REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

**YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER. (2021) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY KATE DOLAN. STARRING HAZEL DOUPE, JORDANNE JONES, CAROLYN BRACKEN AND INGRID CRAIGIE.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

Damn you, scary Irish horror films about changelings and the wee folks and so on! Scared the Christ out of me there the other night, making me close my bedroom door at bedtime instead of leaving it invitingly open for Dracula as usual. Well, you know, just in case he’s ever free for a supernatural shag, like.

This film, which feels to me to be primarily a woman’s film with a mainly female cast, is set on an Irish housing estate with mountains and woods nearby. Char, short for Charlotte, is the protagonist. She is a schoolgirl with a really miserable life. I mean, seriously, you’d feel actively sorry for her.

She has no dad. Her mum Angela has untreated mental problems. They live with Angela’s mum Rita, who, though kindly, is elderly with health and mobility problems, and Angela’s brother Aaron, who lives nearby, pops round from time to time to throw an eye over things.

There’s not enough food in the house for a growing schoolgirl, and you get the impression that poor miserable Char, with an unexplained burn on her face to boot, has to fend for herself much of the time. She gets bullied in school by a trio of really disgustingly horrible female bullies, and, to be honest, her life is just one long round of misery piled on top of misery.

**Anyway, one day Char’s mentally unstable mother Angela, who clearly needs to be treated for her obvious depression, goes missing for a day and a night. The Guards aren’t a whole lot of help.**

Then, Angela just suddenly turns up back at the house, seemingly none the worse for wear. Where the fuppin’ hell has she been…? *‘I can’t tell you… yet,’* Angela tells her daughter Char ominously. **Well, that’s not bone-chillingly disturbing at all…**

It’s clear to the viewer that Granny Rita thinks there’s something radically wrong with the Angela who’s returned from God-knows-where. A terrified Char notices some pretty big differences herself between her old mother and this frighteningly upbeat new mother.

**There are some really creepy scenes as she tries to keep herself safe from the eerily manic ‘New Mom.’** ***(Including one set to the music of Irish, erm, heart-throb, singer Joe Dolan. I haven’t been able to find out whether writer and director Kate Dolan is any relation…!)***

Where has Mum been, and what if anything does it have to do with the burn on Char’s face, which her family have always tried to persuade her is a birthmark? And why do the neighbours think that Char’s family is weird, and why does the dad of one of Char’s bullies order his daughter to stay the hell away from Char?

It’s all tied up with the fascinating but terrifying world of Irish folklore and mythology, where changelings and fairy folk and curses and spells abound. Trust me, you don’t want to piss off the little people, whether it’s by demolishing their fairy fort in order to build a new road, or by trying to swap a changeling back for your original child. Nothing but thorns and sadness, or even madness, lies in store for such a person.

*YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER*, on Netflix at the moment, gave me a right good scare, so I’ll score it highly and recommend it to fans of Irish folk horror. Almost as frightening as the scary story itself is the bullying element of the movie.

If girls today are really as vicious to each other as they appear in the film, then teachers and parents are not properly doing their respective jobs of keeping an eye on the little brats. Parents in particular need to start looking into what the hell their kids are doing in their after-school hours and clamping down on it where necessary.

The film is set at Halloween, by the way, and revolves around a bonfire built by the schoolies ***(handle fire carefully and responsibly, kids!)***, so it’s the perfect film to watch this October. Happy viewing.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

ALISON’S BIRTHDAY. (1981) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

**ALISON’S BIRTHDAY. (1981) AN AUSTRALIAN FOLK HORROR FILM WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY IAN COUGHLAN. PRODUCED BY DAVID HANNAY.**
**STARRING JOANNE SAMUEL, LOU BROWN, BUNNEY BROOKE, JOHN BLUTHAL, VINCENT BALL AND BRIAN WENZEL.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

I watched this Australian folk horror film on Shudder at the weekend for the first time and I really liked it, although it wasn’t too difficult to work out the plot, based on the information that we’re given in the first scenes when the titular Alison and her school mates ‘mess about’ on a Ouija board after school.

In the first place, you do not ‘mess about’ on Ouija boards; they are much too dangerous for that and should be taken seriously. Secondly, if we’ve learned anything from every horror movie that ever featured a Ouija board as its means of communicating with the ‘other side,’ it’s that when you open that door to the other dimension for someone to step through, it may not always be your sweet old deceased granny or your childhood pet who does so. It could be a raging demon or a malevolent spirit who’s thrilled with the chance to be back in the world again.

In Alison’s case, she gets a deadly warning from her dead father; her parents died in a car accident when she was a child. She’s been brought up by her Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Dean. The message involves a certain birthday, and, as I said, a deadly warning concerning same. The Ouija board session has serious enough consequences for Alison to never fully be able to put the warning to the back of her mind…

Jump forward nearly three years later, and Alison and her boyfriend Pete are motoring to Aunt Jenny and Uncle Dean’s house in the country for Alison’s nineteenth birthday celebrations. Birthday, you say? But wasn’t there something about a birthday, and a warning, or something…? You’re right. There was…

Auntie and Uncle are a bit dismayed to see that Alison and Pete are practically joined at the hip. It seems that whatever they have planned for Alison, they’ve reckoned without an ultra-protective boyfriend who genuinely only has Alison’s best interests at heart.

How to get rid of him without arousing Alison’s suspicions? How to do the thing they’ve lured Alison here for without arousing his…? They seem like a resourceful couple, dearest Auntie and Uncle. *(They remind me of Roz and Brother in the brilliant 1976 supernatural horror film, BURNT OFFERINGS*). **I’m sure they’ll rig up something…**

Two horror movie tropes of great interest here; firstly, the shocking presence of a one-hundred-and-three-year-old woman in a bedroom at the top of the house, whom Alison’s Auntie and Uncle have the cheek to tell her is a granny of hers she’s just forgotten. **You don’t just forget you have a living granny.** **The nerve…**

Secondly, there’s a wild, overblown space beyond the end of Auntie and Uncle’s back garden filled with old standing stones that you immediately understand will figure in whatever ghoulish fate Alison’s relatives have in store for her.

Standing stones rock, if you’ll excuse the pun, associated as they are with ancient runes and ancient rites and other ancient things that may or may not begin with ‘r.’ Watch *NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957)* for a truly cracking example of same.

Australia is such a mystical, mysterious country, isn’t it? It has its indigenous ghosts and spirits and mythical creatures, and so much open, untamed space that you could well imagine strange, wild things happening there.

The dreamy, atmospheric *PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK* (1975) is a fantastic example of Australian mystery/horror cinema, but even modern Aussie horror films like *WOLF CREEK* (2005) and *WOLF CREEK* (2013), both starring John Jarratt who, coincidentally, was also in *PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK*, also compellingly feature treacherous Australian landscapes, and not always treacherous for their wild animals and legendary ghosts, either. Sometimes, it’s the people you have to look out for, eh, Mick…?

*WALKABOUT* (1971), starring Jenny Agutter of *THE RAILWAY CHILDREN* fame, is another film which, while more survival and adventure than horror, showcases the wild barrenness and dangerous beauty of the magnificent, but unforgiving to the uninitiated, Australian Outback.

Even *A CRY IN THE DARK* (1988), probably better known as *‘The Dingo took my Baby’* film, features the massive primeval sandstone formation known as Ayers Rock, a place where you could well imagine bad things might happen…

I was pleased to see Brian Wenzel from *A COUNTRY PRACTICE*, the popular Australian soap opera, turn up at Alison’s house as a middle-aged copper. Who did he play in *A COUNTRY PRACTICE*…? Oh, a middle-aged copper, Sgt. Frank Gilroy.

He was married to Shirley and his daughter Vicki was a vet, remember? I loved *A COUNTRY PRACTICE*, which ran from 1981 to 1993. It’d still be on today if it hadn’t been elbowed out by *NEIGHBOURS*, grumble grumble.

Anyway, *ALISON’S BIRTHDAY* is interesting straightaway for being both Australian and cast in the folk horror mould. The opening scene, with the schoolgirls and the Ouija board, is not quite as good as the opening five minutes of *THE APPOINTMENT* (1981), but it’s still pretty good.

*THE* APPOINTMENT, by the way, is a British supernatural horror film starring Edward *THE EQUALISER* Woodward, who also appeared as the ill-fated Sergeant Neil Howie in the Mammy and Daddy of all the folk horror films, *THE WICKER MAN* (1973).

Other English folk horror films of note include *THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL* (1968), starring Vincent Price, and *BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW* (1971), which is the film to watch if you’ve ever sat down and actively thought, *Eeeeeeh, I wonder what Frank Spencer’s missus Betty would be like if she were in a folk horror film, attending an orgy as a dead sexy imp of Satan’s…?* This fillum answers that question.

**I think I’ve imparted enough of my wisdomness to you lot for today, lol. **I’d best be off now, anyway.** It’s time to keep my appointment with the Six o’Clock News and a baked potato…**

**AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.**

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Vampirology. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
**Her new book, *THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER,* is out now from Poolbeg Books:**
https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv
**Her debut romantic fiction novel, *‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’* is out now from Poolbeg Books:**
https://www.amazon.com/Thirteen-Stops-Sandra-Harris-ebook/dp/B089DJMH64
**The sequel, *‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’* is out now from Poolbeg Books:**
***https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thirteen-Stops-Later-Book-ebook/dp/B091J75WNB/***

THE FALLING. (2014) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE FALLING. (2014) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY CAROL MORLEY. PRODUCED BY LUC ROEG AND CAIRO CANNON. DISTRIBUTED BY METRODOME UK.

STARRING MAXINE PEAKE, MAISIE WILLIAMS, FLORENCE PUGH, JOE COLE, MONICA DOLAN AND GRETA SCAACHI.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

This is a strange, but strangely compelling, mystery drama film. You can’t really call it a horror film, as it doesn’t have all that much horror in it, but at first or second glance you could be forgiven for thinking it’s a folk horror movie, as it definitely contains elements of same. Confused? You said it, lol. Let’s have a look at the plot…

We’re in a posh girls’ day school in England in 1969, where the beautiful Abbie, played by Florence MIDSOMMAR Pugh in her rather impressive acting debut, is best friends with Lydia, who’s not quite such a raving beauty.

The blonde Abbie is at the age where she’s starting to explore her sexuality, so she has sex with Lydia’s brother Kenneth (never Ken!) to try to dislodge a pregnancy that’s been implanted in her womb by another boy. Lydia is, understandably, jealous of her friend’s popularity with the lads. She needn’t worry. Kenneth Never Ken is as happy to have sex with his sister as he is to copulate with Abbie…

We never once see Abbie’s parents, and I can’t help thinking that if they’d been a little more present in their daughter’s life, she might never have gotten into quite such a pickle. As it is, the kids in this film seem to be able to come and go as they please without any kind of parental interference whatsoever, except for rare interventions by Lydia’s mum, Eileen.

Eileen is an interesting character. Played by Maxine Peake, who portrayed Myra Hindley in the absolutely superb television drama about the Moors Murders, SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL, Eileen is an agoraphobic single parent who runs a hairdressing business from home.

Her husband is out of the picture and her children, Lydia and Kenneth Never Ken, seem to mostly do what they like. Lydia in particular gives her poor mum a ton of verbal abuse, especially about her agoraphobia, but Eileen has her own perfectly sensible reasons for not wanting to leave the house…

Anyway, after Abbie has sex with Kenneth, she starts having strange fainting fits. Soon, Lydia and the other teenaged girls at the school are all having these fits of fainting, in which they all swoon elegantly and artistically to the floor without ever hurting themselves or braining themselves off table corners and things like that.

It’s like a choreographed ballet of fainting, an orgy of delicate swooning that drives the headmistress Miss Alvaro and her second-in-command, Miss Mantel played by Greta Scaachi, batty with anger and exasperation. They become especially irked when the school has to be shut down after a mass fainting fit during a special assembly.

Neither the head nor Miss Mantel are prepared to believe any explanation for the fainting fits other than, one, the girls are faking it for the laugh, or, two, the girls are being unduly influenced by Lydia, Abbie’s best friend and sidekick. Lydia is acting out for reasons she’s unsure of, but a good therapist, and I don’t mean the snobby toff attached to the hospital, could probably help her to work it out.

Instead of feeling compassionate towards the greatly disturbed Lydia or trying to help her, however, Miss Alvaro decides to expel the unfortunate teenager. It’s then up to the psychiatrist treating the remaining girls to decipher whether their fainting fits are caused by a surfeit of female hormones or hormone imbalance coupled with menstruation and the onset of sexuality, or whether a thing called ‘mass hysteria’ could possibly be at work here, and the girls are picking up the ‘infection’ or the ‘bug’ from each other.

It could also be a sort of mass demonic possession, couldn’t it? The teenage girl is more likely to be susceptible to this type of thing than any other age group, due to hormones and changes in their bodies and maybe even a general propensity for drama and such. That’s just one theory, anyway.

The director here is clearly channelling PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK, the floatiest, dreamiest mystery film about missing schoolgirls ever to hit the big screen. The school in THE FALLING has a lake and the most dazzling scenery, forestry, little hidden wooded paths and other natural charms on its very doorstep, giving rise to the notion that here be folk horror, and the girlies read poetry by choice, listen to music and draw and paint to their little hearts’ content. All the subjects guaranteed to arouse romance, glamour, sex and romantic longing in young girls.

If something floaty, dreamy and utterly mysterious doesn’t happen to the girls in this film, then I don’t know who it would happen to. Teenage girls are always doing something weird, whether it’s going for a Picnic at Hanging Rock and getting lost in the Rock or mass-fainting in a delightfully artistic pile of arms and legs and long, long swathes of hair in The Falling. Personally, I wouldn’t mind getting lost in the Rock myself, as long as that Rock was the former wrestler and now actor, Dwayne the Rock Johnson, but that’s another matter…

Guys probably won’t dig this flick, what with its being artsy and slow-moving and quiet and such-like. But women will like it, and fans of PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK will like it, so it will have its fans.

The Rock, good old Dwayne Johnson himself, probably won’t like it because it’s a movie where no-one really punches anyone or throws someone out of a speeding car whilst punching them in double time, but don’t you worry your head about that. There are plenty of other films out there for the Rock to enjoy. He’s gonna be all right…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

WITHOUT NAME. (2016) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

**WITHOUT NAME. (2016) DIRECTED BY LORCAN FINNEGAN. WRITTEN BY GARRET SHANLEY. STARRING ALAN MCKENNA, NIAMH ELGAR, JAMES BROWNE, DONNCHA CROWLEY AND OLGA WEHRLY.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

There’s not a whole lot to say about this Irish eco-horror film, and I still can’t really decide if I liked it or not. It’s about a bloke called Eric who accepts an assignment to survey a forest in Dublin from a businessman who won’t tell him what the survey is for. Don’t get too excited about that last bit, lol, as it doesn’t turn out to be relevant.

Eric is more than happy to take on the assignment, as it means he’ll have to live on the job for as long as it takes, and not with his family. He has a disastrous relationship with his wife Margaret, and we get the distinct feeling that it’s Eric’s appalling lack of communication that’s to blame. His desperate wife is just about ready to give up on him, and even his teenage son Justin is getting in trouble at school purely, we feel, to grab his dad’s attention at long last.

**While doing the surveying job, Eric will live in a creepy old house on the edge of the forest we later find out is called Without Name, or Gan Anam, pronounced ‘Gone Annem,’ in the Irish.**

He hears from the regulars in the tiny local pub *(anyone hear the sound of duelling banjos?)* that the previous incumbent of the house, an old man called Devoy, was found naked and gibbering in the forest one fine day, his mind gone. We know this to be true because we see Devoy in the mental hospital. **In. His. Pyjamas, if you please.**

**Eric’s student assistant Olivia, a beautiful young blonde woman with whom he’s having an extramarital affair, comes to the house and they have wild, passionate sex before commencing on the job.**

Olivia is no happier than Margaret, the wife, because Eric is uncommunicative with her too, on top of which he’s clearly going back on his promise to leave his wife for her, citing the teenage Justin as an excuse. Quite hypocritical of him, as he hasn’t done a whole lot for the lad lately.

The forest gives both Eric and Olivia the creeps. More than that, Eric keeps thinking he sees a dark, eerie silhouette of a human figure through the trees. His visions don’t exactly improve after a night of ingesting magic mushrooms with Olivia and Gus, a weirdo who lives in a caravan in the forest. In fact, things get much, much worse.

Is Eric doomed to go the way of poor, mentally ruined Devoy, and just how much of what he’s seen and heard is real, and how much is just a figment of his crumbling sanity…? The woods and scenery in this are gorgeous, but then Ireland is filled with such fabulous woods. It’s plot, narrative and storyline the film is short of. Sorry, but not a lot is happening here horror-wise to satisfy your average fan.

The most interesting thing to me about this film was that the part of the publican in the miniscule local pub is played by Donncha Crowley, who was Father Billy in the Christmas episode of *FATHER TED*, one of the priests who gets lost in the lingerie department on Christmas Eve.

I’m not sure if he’s the one was was ‘messing with the bras and the strap flung back and hit him in the eye,’ and the next scene he’s in he’s wearing an eyepatch. That’s just the funniest Christmas episode of a sitcom ever, bar none. Given a choice between it and *WITHOUT NAME*, *A VERY CHRISTMASSY TED* wins hands down. *WITHOUT NAME? WITHOUT PLOT*, more like.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

THE RITUAL. (2017) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

**THE RITUAL. (2017) BASED ON THE NOVEL OF THE SAME NAME BY ADAM NEVILL. DIRECTED BY DAVID BRUCKNER. STARRING RAFE SPALL, ARSHER ALI, ROBERT JAMES-COLLIER AND SAM TROUGHTON.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

I loved this one, a genuinely spooky folk horror set in rural Sweden but filmed in Romania. It’s kind of like *THE BLAIR WITCH,* but with adult males instead of excitable and impressionable teenagers. The effect of this was to make the film’s concept even more scary, I thought, because when *adult males* are fleeing in terror from something, then you damn well better flee too, lol, ’cause it means that something *bad* is coming.

So, we’ve got our four lads anyway, Luke *(Rafe Spall)*, Hutch, Phil and Dom, all proper English blokes who’ve been mates since college and who still try to keep up with each other and with their heavy laddish boozing, even though they all seem to have wives and kids at home.

They’re planning a lads’ holiday when we first meet them. They’re even mentioning Ibiza as a possible destination, which is a bit ridiculous as the kids who go to Ibiza would all regard these four lads as pipe-and-slippers-category auld fellas. *Go home to your cocoa, Grandad,* type of thing.

In the end, the lads go to Sweden on a very out-of-character outdoorsy hiking holiday, to honour one of their original five who has died a horrible death in an off-licence hold-up. Luke, who was involved in the same hold-up, is suffering from terrible survivors’ guilt, and he’s also guilty because his own instinct to survive saw him *not* coming to the aid of his chum. The remaining lads seem also to be harbouring a grudge against Luke for not saving their mate, so some of these resentments may come vomiting copiously out of them later.

They leave a touching memorial to their fallen comrade on a rain-washed Swedish hillside, then they promptly get lost in the forest, miles from civilisation, because they think that cutting through the woods for a short-cut on the way to the lodge they’ve booked into is a good idea.

Come again? A short-cut through the deserted woods in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night, a *good idea…?* That’s bound to turn out well, eh, fellow horror fans…? Jesus H. Christ, lol. Are these men or weak-witted morons? **Morons who don’t watch horror fillums on d’television…?**

The abandoned ‘cabin in the woods’ in which they spend their first night of being lost makes the Blair Witch house look welcoming. It makes it look like your granny’s house when you went there on holiday as a kid and you knew she was baking up a storm to prepare for your arrival.

Or your own little bed after a night on the lash fuelled by cider and onion rings that’s ended in disgrace as you puke in the taxi and arrive home wasted and without your knickers. I’ve never done that myself, of course, but it just seems like the kind of awful thing that might happen to people. Other people, naturally. Not to me. Never to me. Ahem. **But I don’t even like onion rings, so there!** **Let’s move on…**

The cabin is dark, damp, cold, gloomy, sinister, deserted, unliveable-in, and that’s just the downstairs. Upstairs is a hideous humanoid effigy with no head and antlers for hands, but which self-respecting cabin in the woods hasn’t got one of these, especially in Nordic climes? You can get them from IKEA and assemble them yourself, shure…!

The effigy has a very strange, very unsettling effect on the four lads. After a night spent in its malevolent company, they’re all having nightmares or experiencing nightmarish flashbacks to terrible events, eg, it gets into Luke’s head and so poor Luke is being constantly dragged back to that awful night in the off-licence where his mate Rob was brutally slaughtered. They need to get out of the cabin, and out of the woods which stretch for literally miles around, as soon as is humanly possible.

It’s when they’re fleeing through the woods that they discover that whatever was affecting them in the cabin is still with them. *(‘Yes Bart, I never left you…!’ Hugo to Bart, THE THING AND I, THE SIMPSONS’ TREEHOUSE OF HORROR, Episode 7.)* Only it seems bigger, much bigger now, and it makes rustling noises in the trees *(which, incidentally, are carved all over in mysterious, runic-looking symbols)* as it approaches and it seems like very much a real and physical thing that the lads need to run from. Before it catches them, and kills them…

Rafe Spall is excellent as Luke, the lead character. He makes a great sort of Everyman, just an ordinary bloke living an ordinary life who gets caught up in a situation way, way outside of his normal comfort zone. He has to really dig deep down inside himself to find the courage to extricate himself- and his mates- from the hairy circumstances in which they find themselves. **I’d love to see him as the dad in a story about a failing marriage, or about a man losing his kids because he can’t afford to pay the child support, stuff like that.**

I was a tiny bit disappointed with the ending but otherwise, this is a perfectly acceptable horror film with some really spooky moments in it. The Swedish scenery and those miles and miles of isolated forestry are all staggeringly beautiful, until you come to the credits and see that it says there: *Filmed in Romania.*

So, is this Romanian scenery we’ve been admiring then, or is it Swedish scenery? Never having been to either country, I haven’t a clue, but it’s a gorgeous-looking film either way, and one you should check out if you get the chance. Tell ’em Loki sentcha…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her new book, THIRTEEN STOPS EARLIER, is out now from Poolbeg Books:

https://amzn.to/3ulKWkv

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

WRONG TURN. (2021) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

**WRONG TURN. (2021) DIRECTED BY MIKE P. NELSON. WRITTEN BY ALAN B. MCELROY AND BASED ON ‘WRONG TURN’ BY ALAN B. MCELROY.**
**STARRING CHARLOTTE VEGA, MATTHEW MODINE AND BILL SAGE.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

Wow. I love all these *‘WRONG TURN’* movies to bits. This one is what’s known as a franchise re-boot, I think, and it was hugely entertaining. I don’t think I was bored at all during the one hour and fifty minutes it was on.

It’s sort of a *‘WRONG TURN’* for the digital age, which I thought might put me off, but strangely enough it didn’t. It’s *‘MIDSOMMAR’* meets *‘THE HILLS HAVE EYES,’* combining a weird cult with the usual inbred and terrifying mountainy folk we’ve come to expect from this kind of film.

**Matthew Modine plays Scott Shaw, a concerned dad trying to find his daughter Jen, who seemingly went missing recently while hiking with some college friends along the Appalachian Trail.**

According to Wikipedia, this trail is a marked hiking route about 2,200 miles long which extends from Georgia to Maine in the Eastern United States, and is said to be used by about two million tourists a year. Popular trail.

The viewers quickly find out what happened to Jen and her five mates. First, they wind up in the kind of old ‘Confederate’ town in Virginia where some of the older folks still retain the mores and morals, customs and mind-sets of a much earlier time. **This often means that the community is rife with racism, sexism and homophobia.**

The little group of six college students rouse a lot of suspicion and contempt in the town. Jen, the lead girl and a student of the arts who is unsure of what to do with her life, is an all-American white girl who is dating Darius, a black guy.

**That’s frowned upon by the townspeople, as is the gay relationship and ethnicities of Gary and Luis. Gary is an Indian chap (not a native American Indian) and Luis is of Hispanic origin.**

Milla and Adam, a trainee doctor and app developer respectively, are just an ordinary white American couple. Clearly, the film-makers couldn’t think of a way to make them into some kind of a minority, lol.

Anyway, the six students head off happy as Larry on the self-guided trail, but tragedy strikes when the group take a ‘wrong turn’ in search of an old civil war fort and one of their number is horribly killed.

The remaining five students decide that they need to get back to civilisation and safety straightaway, but the unseen presence on the mountain that’s been dogging their footsteps since they arrived in town has other ideas. Nasty, painful, dangerous and *horrible* ideas…

I love the idea of the mountainy cult known as *‘the Foundation’* that actually pre-dates the Civil War. You’d expect them to be as racist as the townspeople, so it’s a pleasant surprise, if a tad confusing, when it turns out they’re not. They’re no saints, though, and what they have, they hold. Remember that…

They have such evil reputations for murdering and torturing outsiders that even the townspeople are scared to death of them and won’t go near their hunting grounds, which are lethally equipped with booby-traps.

The sheriff and the townsfolk prefer to act like the strange, spooky mountainy folks just don’t exist, which is why they- mostly- elect not to help Jen’s distraught dad Scott when he comes looking for his missing daughter.

I don’t mind the bear costumes, but I’m not sure why the culties have to talk in weird Scandinavian-type accents, though. I loved the cult leader, Venable, whom I nicknamed ‘Poppa Bear,’ not just because of the bear costume, but also because he’s exactly the type of burly, beardy middle-aged bloke I go for now. I would have volunteered for ‘wifey duties’ in a heartbeat, and you wouldn’t have needed to force me either, lol, but that’s just me.

The violence in the film is pretty shocking. It seems to be the fashion since *‘MIDSOMMAR,’* a sort of modern day re-imagining of *THE WICKER MAN,* to portray in horror movies of this nature the complete obliteration of the human head and face, and this film has that kind of thing in spades. It also has the horror movie trope of the ‘lost and found’ shed, filled with the backpacks and dead cell-phones of legions of murdered tourists.

I liked that we find out what happened to Jen in her life ‘post-Foundation,’ but I can’t help feeling that she’s going to have a lot of explaining to do to the authorities after that ending. Still, that’s not our problem, I guess.

I’d love to see more films in the re-booting of this excellent franchise, although it’d be a challenge to come up with a better premise than this one. If the film-makers do run out of ideas, I for one would be happy enough to go back to basics with the cannibalistic hillbillies from the backwoods. Now there’s an idea that just *never* gets old.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

MIDSOMMAR. (2019) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

**MIDSOMMAR. (2019) WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY ARI ASTER. STARRING FLORENCE PUGH AND JACK REYNOR.**
**REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©**

If the young American college students in this film had ever seen the 1973 mystery film, *The Wicker Man*, they would never have done any of the following: travelled to Sweden to stay on some kind of hippy, culty commune at the behest of one of their mates; timed the visit to coincide with a massive once-in-every-ninety-years festival to celebrate the arrival of Mid-summer; allowed themselves to be disorientated and confused as a result of drugs pressed upon them by their so-called Swedish ‘mates’; watched an horrific ceremony involving geronticide- or old people euthanasia- without a murmur of protest or so much as a *what the fuck is going on here in this fucked-up fucking place???*; had public sex as part of a bizarre fertility ritual and, lastly, they certainly wouldn’t have allowed themselves to become mere kindling on the eventual, terrible fire of sacrifice…

Yes, dear reader, a quick watch of *The Wicker Man* would have solved those little problems for them all right. *The Wicker Man* did it first and *The Wicker Man* did it better. *Midsommar* is still a great watch, though, if a little long at one-hundred-and-fifty minutes.

Dani is a psychology student who falls to pieces when her sister Terri commits suicide, selfishly taking their parents into the afterlife with her. Her boyfriend Christian, a cultural anthropology student, had been just about to dump Dani for her clinginess and neediness but now, after her family tragedy, he feels like he can’t do it. But their relationship is so unhealthy and Dani so emotionally needy that it would almost be a kindness to give her the push, dead family or not, and put this unhealthy relationship out of its misery.

Instead, he reluctantly invites her along on the trip to Sweden, much to the disgust of all his college mates… all except the Swedish one, who can clearly see a place for Dani in the festivities to come. Christian, Dani, Josh, Mark and Pelle, the Swedish guy, all travel from the States to the commune of the Harga in Sweden, set in splendid rural isolation amongst some of nature’s most fabulous glories.

Christian, who’s still stuck for a subject for his thesis, decides that the secluded cult of the Harga would make an ideal subject, and that’s why he doesn’t push to leave the commune when they all witness a geronticide so appalling that it genuinely would give you nightmares.

The cult leaders explain it away and tell the shocked students that it’s actually a joyous occasion for the geriatrics involved, but it doesn’t look joyous to me, or to Dani. It just looks barbaric, completely and utterly barbaric.

One gets the feeling that the American kids, plus a young couple from London, are being gaslit, in pretty much the same manner as poor old Sgt. Neil Howie in The Wicker Man, into believing that no harm can come to them in a commune where everyone wears flowing white robes and garlands of flowers and lives off the land in an atmosphere of peace and love, learning and harmony. **Drugged-up, free-love-having, non-believing-in-Jesus hippies, lol.**

The Harga people’s ‘Wicker Man’ is a triangle-shaped, man-made oddity that’s curiously at odds with the scenes of nature all around it. It doesn’t take a genius to work out why these post-grads have been lured from America with the promise of experiencing the fascinating indigenous rituals and ceremonies of another country’s Mid-summer festival.

But the film is still worth watching right to the end of the one-hundred-and-fifty minutes, just to see how Ari Aster, the director of *Hereditary*, achieves a sort of re-make of *The Wicker Man*, but without actually mentioning that this is what he’s doing.

**It seems at times like the film is a bit crowded, a wee bit too busy, as the director tries to cram as many rituals as he can into the one festival, but how-and-ever.** **The violence in the film is hard to stomach. Some images are extremely disturbing, while others don’t make much sense or are confusing, misleading.**

Some of the rituals, especially the ones that take place at the outside tables during meal-times, go on a bit too long and my mind started to wander for a bit. Male frontal nudity is in evidence in the film too, plus the fiery come-uppance of a cheating scumbag of a boyfriend, lol.

It’s a gorgeous film to look at, with a suitably unsettling score, but I said it earlier and I’ll say it again: *The Wicker Man* did it first and *The Wicker Man* did it better. That doesn’t mean that directors shouldn’t try to make a film about a pagan cult who worship the old gods and approve of group sex and human sacrifice. It just means that they have to try to make it a bit different to its predecessors. Does *Midsommar* succeed in this? I’ll be nice, and give it five out of ten.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

The sequel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS LATER,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books:

THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW. (1971) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW. (1971) TIGON BRITISH FILM PRODUCTIONS. DIRECTED BY PIERS HAGGARD. WRITTEN BY PIERS HAGGARD AND ROBERT WYNNE-SIMMONS.

STARRING PATRICK WYMARK, BARRY ANDREWS, SIMON WILLIAMS, TAMARA USTINOV, LINDA HAYDEN, MICHELE DOTRICE, WENDY PADBURY, CHARLOTTE MITCHELL AND ANTHONY AINLEY.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW is such a dark, dark sexy film. Yes, I did mean to put in two ‘darks,’ lol, because the film really is incredibly dark. It was made by TIGON, the British film production and distribution company that brought us WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968), starring horror legend Vincent Price, and THE CREEPING FLESH (1973), two of my favourite horror films from that period.

What happens is as follows. An entire village falls victim to an outbreak of demonic possession, caused by the unearthing of a deformed skull imbued with a malign influence. In this, we observe the similarities to excellent Hammer film QUATERMASS AND THE PIT, in that everything is grand until people go digging shit up which was better left alone, if you get me.

Anyway, the malignant influence has a terrible effect on the young people of the village in particular. They’re behaving oddly, going insane for no reason, holding black masses, sprouting demonic-looking fur on parts of their bodies where certainly there was no fur before, weird stuff like that. They’re even skipping the Reverend Fallowfield’s excellent religious instruction lessons, and those used to be a huge draw for the kids before Beelzebub came to town…! Not, snigger.

It’s up to good old Patrick Wymark as the local Judge to track down the source of the evil and attempt to eradicate it. Will he be successful?Before he’s even had time to plonk his Judge wig down on his noggin, though, there will be an horrific rape in the village that would never have happened before the Devil strutted into town on his cloven hooves. Wait a minute, where’s everyone gone? Oh right. Off to You-Tube the horrific rape. Ye naughty little brats, ye…!

Michele Dotrice, who’s probably best known for portraying Frank Spencer’s long-suffering wife Betty in superb ’70s sitcom SOME MOTHERS DO ‘AVE ‘EM, plays an unexpected blinder in this film as a young ‘un who’s been- ahem- filled with the Devil. Her lascivious expressions when she’s watching the rape would have scandalised poor Frank, who was always very modest and shy when it came to sexual matters, hee-hee. He’s ‘ad a bit o’ trouble, don’t you know…?!

‘Betty’ also does an amazing job in the scene where she’s fleeing from the savage dogs who are pursuing her, a suspected witch, through the olden days woods. The scene where she’s having ‘the devil’s skin’ excised from her leg was so real and powerful that I ended up feeling quite queasy while watching it. There’s something quite sick-making about people’s skin, teeth and nails when you see them up-close in films.

Michele Dotrice is actually a brilliant horror actress, as well as being a great comedienne too. She co-stars with Pamela Franklin in one of the best and spookiest horror movies of the period, AND SOON THE DARKNESS (1970), which you should definitely try to watch if you haven’t already seen it.

The long dark wig that Simon Williams (he played a posh toff in drama serial UPSTAIRS DOWNSTAIRS) is wearing, as lovelorn suitor Peter Edmonton, makes him look like a pre-moustache Freddie Mercury. You know, like when he wore the white lycra suit and played the piano in the video for BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY? Yeah, back then…!

His girlfriend Rosalind Barton (played by blonde beauty Tamara Ustinov) goes screamingly insane after one night spent in Peter’s aunt’s disused attic room, and is carted off to the lunatic asylum the next day sporting a hideous claw where her right hand should be.

So much for spending the rest of their lives together in married bliss. The aunt, a Mistress Banham, goes missing then, increasing local feeling that something in the village is seriously amiss.

The truly gorgeous Linda Hayden is terrific at playing sexually aware young minxes, who are well aware of the power their bodies and beauty have over mere men, who are visual creatures and easily tempted off the straight and narrow.

Her nude scene, in which she tantalises and teases the mortified Reverend Fallowfield with her delectable wares, would surely make red-blooded male viewers long for the days when women had actual pubic hair.

Seriously, do you know that there’s a whole generation of blokes growing up today who think that women naturally don’t have hair down there? Think about it. You know it’s true. Women today are shaved, waxed, tanned, toned, trimmed, straightened and sanitised almost out of existence. And who’s it all benefiting, anyway? Mainly the grooming industry, as far as I can see.

Here’s a naughty thought. Perhaps some of the Devil’s leftover furry bits from this film could be donated to the women of today who’ve all but forgotten how to grow good honest pubes? We could have a sort of charity drive or something, you know, the way people do.

As well as the horrible public rape, the film also features the attempted drowning of a witch.

‘If she swims, she’s a witch!’

‘Yeah, but if she drowns, you’ve done her murder…!’

The way the perpetrators shrug and slink away, unconcerned for the unconscious women they’ve flung into the river, is terrible to witness. I believe it was fairly typical behaviour, however, of the kind of people in those days who went round accusing innocent women of witchcraft and being a witch, just for their own amusement, or for other petty motives, like revenge or maybe coveting that person’s property, and hoping you might come in for it once the rightful owner is deceased. Awful, isn’t it?

How they ever managed to stand in a village square with their friends and neighbours and watch a human female, someone they knew, and maybe even liked or respected, hang or burn to death is beyond mine, and most peoples’, comprehension.

The ruined church and creepy woods are tremendously atmospheric, as is the weird and eerie soundtrack. The way the devil is ‘assembling’ himself piece by piece, with the help of his warped young congregation, is also quite ingenious. Donate a limb and help Satan, there’s a good fellow (or lady)…!

The film is similar to a Hammer film and yet somehow much, much darker, with a vein of genuine evil running through it. It’s as good an example of vintage British folk horror as, say, THE WICKER MAN (1973), and maybe one of the best British horror films ever made, full stop.

Au revoir, horror buddies, until we meet again.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

Her debut romantic fiction novel, ‘THIRTEEN STOPS,’ is out now from Poolbeg Books.

THE RITUAL. (2017) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.©

THE RITUAL. (2017) BASED ON THE NOVEL OF THE SAME NAME BY ADAM NEVILL. DIRECTED BY DAVID BRUCKNER. STARRING RAFE SPALL, ARSHER ALI, ROBERT JAMES-COLLIER AND SAM TROUGHTON.

REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

I loved this one, a genuinely spooky folk horror set in rural Sweden but filmed in Romania. It’s kind of like THE BLAIR WITCH, but with adult males instead of excitable and impressionable teenagers.

The effect of this was to make the film’s concept even more scary, I thought, because when adult males are fleeing in terror from something, then you damn well better flee too, lol, ’cause it means that something bad is coming.

So, we’ve got our four lads anyway, Luke (Rafe Spall), Hutch, Phil and Dom, all proper English blokes who’ve been mates since college and who still try to keep up with each other and with their heavy laddish boozing, even though they all seem to have wives and kids at home.

They’re planning a lads’ holiday when we first meet them. They’re even mentioning Ibiza as a possible destination, which is a bit ridiculous as the kids who go to Ibiza would all regard these four lads as pipe-and-slippers-category auld fellas. Go home to your cocoa, Grandad, type of thing.

In the end, the lads go to Sweden on a very out-of-character outdoorsy hiking holiday, to honour one of their original five who has died a horrible death in an off-licence hold-up.

Luke, who was involved in the same hold-up, is suffering from terrible survivors’ guilt, and he’s also guilty because his own instinct to survive saw him not coming to the aid of his chum. The remaining lads seem also to be harbouring a grudge against Luke for not saving their mate, so some of these resentments may come vomiting out of them later.

They leave a touching memorial to their fallen comrade on a rain-washed Swedish hillside, then they promptly get lost in the forest, miles from civilisation, because they think that cutting through the woods for a short-cut on the way to the lodge they’ve booked into is a good idea.

Come again? A short-cut through the deserted woods in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night, a good idea…? That’s bound to turn out well, eh, fellow horror fans…? Jesus H. Christ, lol. Are these men or weak-witted morons?

The abandoned ‘cabin in the woods’ in which they spend their first night of being lost makes the Blair Witch house look welcoming. It makes it look like your granny’s house when you went there on holiday as a kid and you knew she was baking up a storm to prepare for your arrival.

Or your own little bed after a night on the lash fuelled by cider and onion rings that’s ended in disgrace as you puke in the taxi and arrive home wasted and without your knickers. I’ve never done that myself, of course, but it just seems like the kind of awful thing that might happen to people. Other people, naturally. Not to me. Never to me. Ahem. Let’s move on…

The cabin is dark, damp, cold, gloomy, sinister, deserted, unliveable-in, and that’s just the downstairs. Upstairs is a hideous humanoid effigy with no head and antlers for hands, but which self-respecting cabin in the woods hasn’t got one of these, especially in Nordic climes? You can get them from IKEA and assemble them yourself, shure…!

The effigy has a very strange, very unsettling effect on the four lads. After a night spent in its malevolent company, they’re all having nightmares or experiencing nightmarish flashbacks to terrible events, eg, it gets into Luke’s head and so poor Luke is being constantly dragged back to that awful night in the off-licence where his mate Rob was brutally slaughtered. They need to get out of the cabin, and out of the woods which stretch for literally miles around, as soon as is humanly possible.

It’s when they’re fleeing through the woods that they discover that whatever was affecting them in the cabin is still with them. (‘Yes Bart, I never left you…!’ Hugo to Bart, THE THING AND I, THE SIMPSONS’ TREEHOUSE OF HORROR, Episode 7) Only it seems bigger, much bigger now, and it makes rustling noises in the trees (which, incidentally, are carved all over in mysterious, runic-looking symbols) as it approaches and it seems like very much a real and physical thing that the lads need to run from. Before it catches them, and kills them…

I was a tiny bit disappointed with the ending but otherwise, this is a perfectly acceptable horror film with some really spooky moments in it. The Swedish scenery and those miles and miles of isolated forestry are all staggeringly beautiful to look at, until you come to the credits and see that it says there: Filmed in Romania.

So, is this Romanian scenery we’ve been admiring then, or is it Swedish scenery? Never having been to either country, I haven’t a clue, but it’s a gorgeous-looking film either way, and one you should check out if you get the chance. Tell ’em Loki sentcha…

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

THE WICKER MAN. (2006) BASED ON A SCREENPLAY WRITTEN BY ANTHONY SHAFFER AND THE 1967 NOVEL ‘RITUAL’ BY DAVID PINNER. DIRECTED BY NEIL LABUTE.

STARRING NICOLAS CAGE, ELLEN BURSTYN, KATE BEAHAN, FRANCES CONROY, MOLLY PARKER, LEELEE SOBIESKI AND DIANE DELANO.

‘I can tell what she sees in you. A kind of rough potential…’

‘Step away from the bike…!’

‘Not the bees…!’

Nicolas Cage on the re-make: “There is a mischievous mind at work on The Wicker Man, you know? You know what I mean? And I finally kind of said, ‘I might have known that the movie was meant to be absurd.’ But saying that now after the fact is OK, but to say it before the fact is not, because you have to let the movie have its own life.”

Christopher Lee on the re-make: “I don’t believe in remakes. You can make a follow-up to a film, but to remake a movie with such history and success just doesn’t make sense to me.”

The 1973 WICKER MAN, on which this film is based, is one of the best British horror films ever made. Starring Christopher Lee as the eccentric and charismatic Lord Summerisle and Edward Woodward as Sergeant Neil Howie, it tells the story of a prim and proper Christian copper- Howie- visiting a pagan island off the coast of Scotland to search for a missing child.

Once on the island of Summerisle, with its close-mouthed and strange inhabitants leading him a merry dance for most of the film, he discovers the real reason behind his mysterious summons to the out-of-the-way place. Therein lies the horror, the kind of real lasting horror that outlives the mere boogeyman-under-the-bed story.

Nicolas Cage’s re-make of this superb film has not only been deemed unnecessary (I mean, you don’t re-paint the Mona Lisa, do you, or get some hack to re-write Shakespeare’s plays?) but also, erm, if I may say so, diabolical. Diabolically bad, lol.

Personally, I feel rather sorry for poor Nicolas Cage as Edward Malus, as he bumbles around the female-dominated island of Summersisle in his hot heavy city suit (he’s clearly suffering from excessive heat the whole way through the film), making himself look more and more ridiculous in the eyes of the snotty, superior natives. They are really, really mean to him, the bastards. Or should I say bitches…

Edward Malus is a big, burly California cop who, one day right out of the blue, is gobsmacked to receive a letter from his ex-fiancée, Willow Woodward, who dumped him and ran off under mysterious circumstances many moons ago. She lives on Summersisle now, a privately-owned island off Puget Sound in Washington, and it is from here that her daughter Rowan has gone missing. She’s appealing to him because she trusts him and also because he’s a cop, see?

Malus can’t get himself to Summersisle fast enough, so obviously he still has feelings for the anorexically skinny Willow with the moon-face and the bee-stung lips. And they might actually be bee-stung, because the island’s main export is their honey, for which they keep, like, a million bees, to which poor Malus is unfortunately allergic and must keep a shot of adrenaline to hand, just in case.

It’s not the only thing he’s allergic to. He’s also very much allergic to the smart-ass, lying backtalk he gets from the members of the weird, isolated community that resides on the island of Summerisle. From the moment he lands, he is led on the same kind of soul-destroying wild-goose chase we remember from the 1973 original movie.

Who’s Rowan? Rowan is alive, Rowan is dead. I’ve never seen this child before in my life, but lo and behold, here’s her name in the school register. Rowan was burnt to death, Rowan is being held somewhere. Something terrible is going to happen to Rowan and, last but definitely not least, Rowan is your daughter, Edward Malus, and this stirs Edward to action like nothing else could have done.

Round and round he goes in circles, re-tracing- or trying to!- the steps taken by Edward Woodward in the original movie. The tavern is run by the sarcastic and gigantic Sister Beech, who might just possibly maim the gnome-like, poisonous little Alder McGregor for life if she were to accidentally sit on him.

The school is the province of the snooty, smirky Miss Rose, who propagates the same kind of phallocentric ‘filth’ in her class of ‘little liars’ as does Diane Cilento in the original, but this Miss Rose doesn’t run rings around the bamboozled copper with the same panache with which Diane Cilento does it. Diane Cilento was the kind of mature sexpot who would eat Edward Malus- and Nic Cage!- for breakfast, lol.

Then, of course, there’s the obligatory trip across the island to meet the boss of the whole kit and kaboodle, the smilingly enigmatic Sister Summersisle whom poor Malus just can’t fathom out at all, with all her ‘Goddess of the Island’ gibberish that Malus can’t quite believe he’s hearing spouted in the twenty-first century. (She’s played by Ellen Burstyn, Regan’s mom in THE EXORCIST, by the way, so there’s no questioning her horror pedigree.)

She even takes him on the obligatory tour of the grounds on which she gives him a potted history of her ancestors and their wacko beliefs and how they came to be keeping bees on Summersisle. It doesn’t measure up to Christopher Lee’s immaculately sardonic and memorable sound-bites in the slighest: ‘A heathen, conceivably, but not, I trust, an unenlightened one…’

There’s the visit to the offices of the doctor-cum-photographer, who takes the pictures of the harvest festivals every year (I liked Frances Conroy as Dr. Moss; she was possibly my favourite character in a film in which you’re not exactly spoiled for choice), and the house-to-house search of the island that reveals nothing near as elegant as the gorgeous Ingrid Pitt, resplendently nude in her hip-bath. Nic Cage’s normally fairly wooden acting (sorry, Nic!) is ridiculously over-the-top in places, which kind of gives the film a comedic value the film-makers probably didn’t intend it to have.

There’s a bit more violence against Malus’s person in the climactic scenes than in the original, as the twisted islanders make full use of his allergy to bees, and they decide to break his legs as well into the bargain to incapacitate him (My God, weren’t the bees enough???), but the climax- the procession, the chase, the walk to the Wicker Man- lacks the fantastic atmosphere and high drama of the original film, even if it does try to replicate the ending.

But the ending of the 1973 WICKER MAN could, quite simply, never be replicated. When the burning head topples majestically while the sun sinking over the ocean is itself a huge ball of fire, and then the words British Lion come up and the credits as well, I get shivers down my spine every time that don’t stop until the screen has gone blank. That ending is legendary. You can try to emulate it, if you wish, but you’ll never repeat what cannot be repeated.

Of course, the marvellous music is also a substantial part of what makes the 1973 film what it is, and this 2006 version obviously doesn’t have that advantage. On the other hand, the 1973 film doesn’t have Nic Cage dressed as a rather shabby-looking bear, for some reason, or Nic Cage punching three women in the face and karate-kicking one of them, or Nic Cage in what I believe to be the funniest scene in the whole movie, the one where he’s pointing a gun at a schoolmarm on a bicycle and shouting in typical heavy-handed California-cop fashion: ‘Step away from the bike…!’ It also doesn’t have the Evil Twins from THE SHINING in it, horribly aged to resemble hideous old crones, lol. So there you are, it’s all swings and roundabouts with these things, isn’t it?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA HARRIS.

Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, poet, short story writer and film and book blogger. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, women’s fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra’s books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO

You can contact Sandra at:

sandrasandraharris@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/SandraHarrisPureFilthPoetry

https://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com

http://sexysandieblog.wordpress.com

http://serenaharker.wordpress.com

https://twitter.com/SandraAuthor

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Fun reviews of films of all genres

folk horror

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER. (2021) AN IRISH FOLK HORROR REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS.

ALISON’S BIRTHDAY. (1981) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.

THE FALLING. (2014) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

WITHOUT NAME. (2016) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE RITUAL. (2017) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

WRONG TURN. (2021) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE BLOOD ON SATAN’S CLAW. (1971) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

THE RITUAL. (2017) REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS.©

THE WICKER MAN… BUT NOT THE GOOD ONE! THE 2006 RE-MAKE REVIEWED BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©