Over the past few years, Folk Horror has become a Big Thing, as evidenced by the publication of numerous texts theorising this newly discovered genre, the emergence of a hugely popular Folk Horror Revival Facebook group, and the appearance of numerous Folk Horror-themed blogs (including last year’s The Horsingdon Transmissions - that also intersected with the categories of Urban Wyrd, Speculative Horror, Lovecraftian cosmicism, and Ligottian nihilism). But I digress.
Recently, I decided to undertake a rewatch of some of the foundational ‘texts’ of Folk Horror, starting with the film by way of which the term was coined: Blood on Satan’s Claw. Whilst the film doesn’t betray any explicit Lovecaftian influences, it struck me as being very Machenesque in parts - to the extent that I can’t help wondering if Machen’s work had an influence on the film.
I, for one, couldn’t help draw comparisons between the character of Angel Blake to both The Great God Pan’s Helen Vaughn and the unnamed narrator of The White People; the fact that local children are also inducted into monstrous rituals which the adults of the village mistake as ‘games’ also resontates with tropes found both in The White People, as well as in some of Machen’s tales which invoke the Tylwyth Teg of Welsh legendry. Whilst the film’s plot seemingly deals with a category of Judeo-Christian demonic evil, the origin of that evil in a plough furrow (and in the form of a strange, inhuman skull) perhaps speaks to a different, more primal and earthly horror; Machen’s notion of Sin (with a capital ‘S’) - treated in The White People as a horrifying transgression of the natural order - also seems apposite here, especially so given that both Machen’s ‘Sin’ and the manifest evil in Blood on Satan’s Claw lead - a la The Novel of the White Powder - to irruptions of physical corruption upon the human body. But then perhaps I’m reading a little too much into this...
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