Rupert Russell’s fascinating documentary is a sophisticated analysis of how real life and fiction merged in post-empire Britain in the 1960s and 70s
Centred on the unsolved 1945 murder of Warwickshire farm labourer Charles Walton in Lower Quinton, this fascinating and feverish documentary starts under the true-crime umbrella. But it quickly expands, exploring the killing’s influence on the emerging folk-horror film genre, particularly 1973’s The Wicker Man, and almost reaching Adam Curtis-type grand sociology in mining these pop-cultural ley lines for what they say about the British psyche.
After Walton was found on Meon Hill with a pitchfork pushed through his head and a billhook in his neck, rumour soon spread that his murder was ritualistic. When the Warwickshire police called in crack Scotland Yard inspector Robert Fabian to lead the investigation, he was comprehensively stonewalled by the villagers. The notorious case set a blueprint for the you-ain’t-from-round-’ere tone of 60s and 70s rustic horror: the likes of The Plague of the Zombies and The Blood on Satan’s Claw. In parallel, there was a real-life hippy-era increase in witchcraft and paganism, influenced by and influencing the films.
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