C.M. Rosens's Blog, page 18

Beauty and the Beast and Me

This new blog post series focuses on Beauty and the Beast, and I’ll be posting book recs and films and various things while I’m revising my own retelling, just for fun! (Be warned that in this post I describe some of the erotic scenes from La Bete (1975), so consider this post 18+/NSFW for that section).

I’ve already posted about the original tale, criticism of the 2016 film and Disney versions in general, and some retelling inspiration ideas here.

I can’t stop writing (or reading) Beauty and the Beast tales. I don’t know why. I think I imprinted on it somehow like a duckling at a very young age. My novel The Crows was always a Beauty and the Beast story, but where the house itself and its avatar was the Beast – a scarred Beast bearing the marks of all its renovations, like The Phantom of the Opera. The rewrite included a new character, Ricky Porter the eldritch asexual hoodie-wearing chav lad next door, and he’s also on the aromantic spectrum but ended up as the central ‘Beast’ figure.

Now, I’ve finally given in and I’m writing a dark fantasy B&tB story called Yelen and Yelena, in which the Beast’s curse cannot be broken, they are both aromantic and allosexual, and she’s a laundress and sex worker in her 30s. Like everything I write, it started off with all the erotic, fluffy intentions, and morphed into another novel-length exploration of grief and identity and loneliness (with what I consider a HEA). Oh, and body horror. Obviously.

I’ve had a think about what I like about the story (there’s a lot to critique), and what elements attract me to it and keep me writing versions of it over and over. As a very young child, I had a picture book version, and the part where the Beast died made me feel really sad and ruined the whole story for me so I really didn’t like it at all. I think I was three or four, it’s a very early memory. I also really didn’t like the art for Where The Wild Things Are: the colour palette made me feel what I now know was desolate, lonely and sad. It was a hollow pit in my stomach when I looked at it, that I couldn’t explain. But I loved the monsters. And I came to love the story of B&tB, although that illustration has always stuck in my head.

Illustrations by Walter Crane: not the version I had, but this one is gorgeous.

So why B&tB and not Cinderella or Snow White? I liked them too, I just didn’t resonate with them as much, and I think the Disney film made me love the story more because Belle had brown hair (like me!) and liked books (like me!) and didn’t like Gaston (like me!) and she could make a sad Beast happy and that was the best thing ever.

He was also much better as a Beast than a Prince. Facts.

My type then became big, hairy, grumpy men who need cheering up a bit and then are really affectionate and soft, and I can’t seem to stop writing/reading/watching versions of the “making a sad bloke happy against his will” trope as a result. [INTO MY VEINS. INTO MY EYES.]

I think also being neurodivergent and not knowing, being asexual and not knowing, being on the aromantic spectrum and not knowing, being bi/pan and repressing (easy enough in my case because of the ace/aro aspects muddying the waters of attraction for me anyway), never being able to express myself because I didn’t have terms or vocab, not being allowed to learn about it because of Section 28, not having access to the internet and then not having a clue about searching for any of that anyway, all put me in a weird limbo place. I also had half of me missing – I didn’t meet my father until I was 28, and I was actively discouraged from learning about my Turkish family and heritage (except negative things about Turkey). So while I started out resonating with Belle, I also began to deeply relate to the Beast. I think that’s why this story has such a big personal hook in my life, and why explorations of identity and monstrosity are core to my work.

The Fairy Tale

My favourite versions of this story in film:

Panna a Netvor (1978)

Panna a Netvor – the Virgin and the Monster – is the Czech New Wave film from 1978 which reimagines the Beast as a carnivorous bird monster. I absolutely love this version; there’s no explanation for the curse, Netvor is responsible for Belle’s father losing all his fortune in the mercantile venture, and it’s a beautiful bit of storytelling that incorporates Belle’s sisters from the original version and their rubbish marriages they make then regret. I love it.

La Belle et la Bête (1946)

I really love this – it’s the version that inspired Disney’s animation, with actors being living statues and holding smoke in their mouths to release slowly as part of the fireplace decorations. It has some great 1940s effects, some beautiful costumes, and takes the original storylines of Belle’s materialistic sisters, the Beast smoking with gore (literally) after his kill, and so many great little moments. I liked Jean Cocteau’s take on Orpheus, too (1950), but this one is my favourite.

La Belle et la Bête (2014)

Vincent Cassel is not disappointing as a human version of the Beast in this. It does lack the whole “this is why she falls for him” storyline in detail – she’s just really into a fiery relationship with a leonine beast she wants to kiss, I guess, but she does also see the Prince in dream-visions and I think probably comes to fall for what she sees in these, while she’s watching him wooing and banging his late faerie wife. That makes a lot of sense to me, I very much understood that motivation. Honestly, really liked it, and the closure at the end. I couldn’t stand the dubbed version though, just a personal thing; I think the original French with subtitles is much better.

Beauty and the Beast (1991)

This one will always have a nostalgic hold on me and I really love it, and the songs were great. This is where I absolutely fell in love with the Beast in his monster form, and I have no regrets. I put up with the end, but it wasn’t ideal. If he’d come out like Vincent Cassel, that would have been better. The scene in the forest with the wolves was also absolutely amazing and I loved it so much that I would sometimes rewind the VHS to watch it again. Not the bit where he comes to save her, the bit where the wolves chase Maurice to the castle. I felt so bad for the poor cold little wolves attacking then being beaten up by the Beast, but also I loved the hurt/comfort part that came afterwards.

Beauty and the Beast (2016)

Yes I liked this one. I really loved the songs, I liked the Beast design, the colours, Luke Evans and the homoeroticism, so much stuff. I liked the backstory of Paris and the plague. I liked the cast. I don’t know, I just really enjoyed it. But I don’t have a lot to say about it.

La Bête (1975)

Not my favourite but an honorable mention.

I went in cold on this one, only knowing it had been banned for a long time. I didn’t know who Walerian Borowczyk was, or what he made films about. I had an idea that it was erotic. I didn’t know it was… like that. I bought it on a whim at HMV. I’ve linked a video essay on it here but feel free to check out other critiques of it instead. The Beast is not anthropomorphic, it’s a gigantic wolf thing that just growls and fucks. I was not expecting the graphic bestiality scenes (it’s actually a guy in a fursuit, but still) and my gran kept coming in so I had to hit stop not pause so she could only see blue screen and not a freeze frame of a gigantic cock dribbling precum or a half naked chick frozen mid-orgasm among the snails on the grass with a close up of her tits popping out of her ripped dress. Let’s just say it wasn’t her kind of film.

I have seen this one a couple of times now. I’m still not sure what I think about it. It’s pretty well shot. I actually liked the storyline. Now I think I get what Borowczyk was doing, and I’ve seen some other shorts of his like the one where the blonde chick masturbates with a cucumber, but also, do I want to watch the cock bobbing around taking up the majority of the frame for a while? I just don’t know. I’m not that bothered in real life, so I think I’m not the audience.

What’s your favourite film version? Let me know!

Christmas Box Set Sale!

THIS IS THE LAST FESTIVE SALE! Canelo Horror have bought the rights to The Crows and Thirteenth, so they won’t be in my box set after May 2024. This means that 2023 is the last complete eBook box set sale on my Ko-Fi… but that some signed author copies and so on might be up for grabs later next year!

Meanwhile, this is your last chance to get this box set at a hefty discount – 50% off – AND have the original illustrated versions of the novels too.

Download the eBook files and send them individually or as a bundle… or treat yourself!

Check out the box set sale only in my Ko-Fi Shop. ko-fi.com/s/811fa7d3b0

Free Audio Available! The Complete Sussex Fretsaw Massacre

Reblogging this post as I’ve updated it with embedded links to all 3 episodes on Spotify. I’ve even added a small extract from “Dinner For Two”, a short story that Ko-Fi members have received back in April 2023, at the end of Part 3 – a bonus bonus, if you will!

You can read the whole story here (signing up to membership for £3 gives you access to all the members-only content, including free eBooks to download, and you can cancel any time).

Members get this novella for free here.

Everyone else gets it discounted to £1.99 here.

Never miss an episode or a newsletter update by subscribing to cmrosens.substack.com. Paid pledges get the same content that Ko-Fi members get, and you can comment which Free-To-Members eBooks you want to receive your free eBooks via email. The subscription on substack is a little more per month than the Ko-Fi subscription, though, due to minimum price setting on substack. So only choose this option if you want to support me with a bit extra.

The Sussex Fretsaw Massacre

The Sussex Fretsaw Massacre

Enjoying the Pagham-on-Sea series but want more Ricky content? Or know a little something about the series and want to dip in but not sure if you want to start with the novels?

This is the standalone novella for you: The Sussex Fretsaw Massacre sees five strangers doomed to die arrive at Fairwood House… but the sixth member of the party has a quite different destiny.

You can buy this novella now as an eBook only, discounted to £1.99 in my Ko-Fi shop, but also part of the complete eBook box set, and listen to it for free on my podcast. It’s free to my Ko-Fi members!

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5* GoodReads Review

This is a short little read featuring favourites Carrie and Ricky from C M Rosens ‘The Crows’ and ‘Thirteenth’. You don’t need to have read them enjoy this but you’ll love it all the more if you have.

For a novel featuring the grisly death of 5 people it is … hilarious. It also includes some surprisingly touching scenes between Ricky and Carrie (a queer platonic relationship). Love the new character Olly! Oh and… after the scene in the kitchen, I don’t think anyone is going to be sad about the fate of our five!

Also, for the sake of Ricky’s good name, I should note he doesn’t do any of the killing. Which is its own layer of hilarity.

Dirty Dozen: #100HorrorMoviesin92Days

Greetings, horror lovers!

Once I’d completed the 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days Challenge, I kept watching films because … I like them. But as the challenge was ongoing (until 31 Oct), I counted my new-to-me horror films towards the challenge as well, so here are the bonus films!

I’ll throw in some horror shows I’ve watched as well which don’t count, as they aren’t movies, but they are new to me and worth a watch.

Halloween Listen-along

I usually rewatch a few versions of Dracula, and I did a listen-along of the 1931 version on my podcast a coupe of years ago. If you want to listen along with my commentary, feel free to join in.

Halloween Special – 1931 Dracula Listen-Along

CM ROSENS

·31 OCTOBER 2021

Listen now (76 mins) | Listen to my improv commentary of the 1931 Dracula (dir. Tod Browning). The full transcript is available on my website cmrosens.com, and if you’d like to tip me on Ko-Fi it would be much appreciated! I might put future film commentaries up on Ko-Fi for supporters.

Read full story

Shows

I had already seen The Haunting of Hill House (2018), but hadn’t watched the other Mike Flanagan created series. I started Midnight Mass and never finished it, and same with Bly Manor. So, I’ve now completed The Haunting of Bly Manor (2020), with its bizarre parody of Englishness (the RP accented local copper was the weirdest thing about that show), and The Fall of the House of Usher (2023). I did enjoy both of these.

I will go for Midnight Mass as my next show.

My Fave Series Rec

My favourite show at the moment, though, is YARATILAN / Creature (2023), created, written and directed by Çağan Irmak. If you’re looking for a new version of Frankenstein that really does something fun with the material while still being faithful (in its own way) to the story, this is absolutely something for your watchlist.

It’s an 8-part series based on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, transposed into an Islamic context in Ottoman Turkiye. If you want mad science in the time of cholera, necromancy with alchemy, astrology, riddles and galvanism, and the most heart-wrenching Drama dialled up to 11, this is it. This is the one. Easily my favourite adaptation just because it’s from a different perspective and using different theology and philosophy to explore the story, and I love that fresh approach to a very familiar plot.

This adaptation gives us the framed narrative on the icy slopes of a Turkish mountain, where a group of treasure hunters, seeking the hidden gold of a Byzantine prince and led by Captain Ömer, rescue Ziya from the snows and nurse him to health while he tells his story. Ömer is the Walton equivalent, and Ziya, whose name means “light”, is the Frankenstein character, the seeker of illumination and a way to prevent death. He is guilt-ridden after his exploits with a certain machine and forbidden knowledge from the Book of Resurrection. In this version, it is the raising of a dead man, not creating a man from animal and human body parts, that is the central issue, as the theology here is Islamic and so the discourse and themes are transposed into this context. The series does a lot with the original novel, and develops and adapts scenes that usually don’t get a lot of screen time (if any). It takes a few liberties while also nodding to the original storyline.

I can see myself re-watching this, for sure.

If you like this and enjoy adaptations, you might also like GOGOL (2017-2019) dir. Egor Baranov, a film series turned into an 8-part show based on the work of Nikolai Gogol (the titular character). GOGOL is a fantasy-horror show/film series loosely based on stories in the collection Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. It is more in the vein of the Poe films where Poe is the central character living through inspiration for his writing, like The Pale Blue Eye (2022), or The Raven (2012), but with a gritty, rural, Gothic atmosphere. I have re-watched this a couple of times, and it’s definitely on my Hallowe’en re-watch list for this year, too.

And now… for the films!

CAVEAT (2020) dir. Damien McCarthy: I really enjoy Irish horror, and this was a really creepy, low budget indie film that plays with the haunted house trope. Lots of dark secrets and family tensions abound.
***HARUM MALAM/ Blood Flower  (2022) dir. Dain Said: Malay horror with younger protags, and the child’s eye-view really makes for uncomfortable watching as you start to work out what’s going on, and the reasons for the haunting and possessions. I really enjoyed this. If you like jinn AND ghosts in your horror: why choose.
***OLDER GODS (2023) dir. David A. Roberts: Set in Wales, but without anything identifiably Welsh to classify it properly as Welsh horror/Welsh Gothic. The suicides hanging from a creepy tree (all cult members who are active across the world and tracking the protagonist/his friend) did unpleasantly remind me of the (real life) suicide cluster in Bridgend, motives still unexplained, about which a film was made a few years after, using the town’s name as the title. In this case I don’t think that was the intention, but the association was automatic.
***DEATH LINE (1972) dir. Gary Sherman: Terror on the London Underground, using the trope of cannibals who live in the deserted tunnels and forgotten, disused stations of the sprawling network, coming out at night to pick off unwary commuters. Donald Pleasance is the unpleasant, jaded policeman dealing with it all, and there is an unpleasant young American student who sort of is the hero, and his lovely English girlfriend who is the damsel in distress but also possibly the only decent human being in the whole film. Except the cannibals, just trying to live.
***THE OPEN HOUSE (2018) dir. Matt Angel, Suzanne Coote: One of those I’d sort of meant to watch a while ago, and it was fine I guess. The premise is straightforward and puts itself in the same category as The Strangers for random house terror, but also has elements of Creepy Community, Is This A Set Up, and They’re Inside The House tropes. It centres the broken mother-son relationship, which is not so much healed as presented with additional trauma to unite them, and nothing is really resolved there so much.
***THE BLOCK ISLAND SOUND (2020) dir. Kevin McManus, Matthew McManus: I really enjoyed this. USA SciFi/EcoHorror, with a great family core and central focus on fishing / traumatising sea life in pursuit of research aims. I really liked the small close-knit community feel, the islanders vs mainlanders dynamics, and the whole premise worked for me.
***THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970) dir. Roy Ward Baker: An adaptation of Le Fanu’s Carmilla, with a hot, haughty lesbian whose type is wide-eyed pillow princesses. It’s your typical vampire male-gaze tits-out sapphic romp with angst and melodrama, and I enjoyed it.
***THE SHRINE (2010) dir. Jon Knautz: This was honestly a bit forgettable for me. The masks and human sacrifice was like The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism (1967), with a bit of The Devil’s Men (1967), a good year for people getting offed in weird sacrificial ways. It’s another ‘Eastern Europeans do bad things to American tourists’, and is a bit folk horror… but honestly, if that’s what you want, Vampir (2021) absolutely nailed it (with bonus vampires).
***THE VELVET VAMPIRE (1971) dir. Stephanie Rothman: The polyamorous quad that never was, with unrealised sapphic repressed desire. The fact it’s set in a desert is the vampire film twist I wasn’t ready for. There was such a lot going on in this film. Honestly, though, I preferred Jean Rollin’s Fascination (1979), where the main girl offs both her lovers (m & f) and gets her vampire cult girlboss.
***TALES THAT WITNESS MADNESS (1973) dir. Freddie Francis: An anthology horror, where I liked 3 out of the 4 stories. I really liked the boy and his imaginary (OR IS IT) tiger, the sight of Joan Collins getting tit-spanked by an angry tree, and the concept of a haunted penny farthing with timey-wimey stuff. The 4th one just went full anti-indigenous with the “Hawaiian natives are cannibals” trope, and a (white) British woman made to eat her own daughter at a culturally-appropriative luau for exclusively white people (barring the 2 native characters), which includes the musicians etc. The framing narrative is your basic “is the psychiatrist insane or is he right” with the basic reveal at the end.
***THE NUN II (2023) dir. Michael Chaves: I had forgotten the whole plot of THE NUN and so didn’t realise who the caretaker, Maurice, or Sister Irene, even were. But it all started coming back to me and it operated very much like Errementari (2017) or Kuntilanak (2018) or Mata Batin 2/The Third Eye 2 (2019), with the child’s perspective at the boarding school. The ending was inspired – I should have seen it coming but given that I was so tired that I got confused about where different characters were for the first half of the film, I’m amazed I was on the ball enough to notice anything.
***زیر سایه /  Under The Shadow  (2016) dir. Babak Anvari: Set during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, a missile hits a Tehran apartment building but doesn’t explode – but may have brought with it something ancient and evil. Or perhaps the traumatised boy who came to stay with relatives has brought something with him. Or perhaps it’s all trauma. A tense supernatural horror that was a really hard watch given the current unfolding situation in Gaza.
***I SEE YOU (2019) dir. Adam Randall: In the vein of The Open House (2018), and Aftermath (2021), with police procedural thrown in. I actually watched this much earlier in the challenge and thought it only counted as a thriller, not a horror, so I didn’t list it. But now I see that ‘Horror’ has been added to its genre on Letterboxd (a condition of the challenge – it has to be classed as ‘Horror’ on Letterboxd / IMDb to count). So I’m adding it in here, now. This is another broken family who struggle with the aftermath of the breakage, and there’s a fair bit of implied CSA in the child abduction plot.Thanks for Reading!

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Urban Gothic Recs

I put out some calls for recommendations for ‘urban gothic’ across Facebook and BlueSky, and got some really interesting responses, as well as ideas on what ‘urban gothic’ is. Ramsey Campbell posted a snippet of horror in a multi-storey car park as a comment in one group, which I can’t share here obviously but was fun to receive! (Books of Horror fb group is a good one for book recs!)

I posted some prompts to give a flavour of what I personally might class as ‘urban gothic’:

decaying high rises with mould and rot eating into the residents’ soulseerie, dingy labyrinthine passages & alleys leading to dead ends and hiding dark secretsechoing corridors of worryingly silent hotels, where human connection is only theoretical and other people are only seen in glimpses, like ghostsdouble lives flipping honest, respectable glitz and glamour with seedy underbelly and lies

This got us into discussions of genre and subgenre, like ‘Liminal Horror’ and ‘Urban Paranormal’. Loads to think about! Maybe you would disagree with the recs being ‘urban gothic’ – I’m not sure they all fit my own definitions as I haven’t read them all – but I’m including all the ones people said. (MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia was also suggested, for example, but I’d say that’s not urban as it doesn’t take place in a city or urban space for the majority of the book, but I think maybe the person who suggested that had a different view because it was contemporary and the lead is a city girl and it opens in an city setting.)

Recommendation List

GILDED NEEDLES – Michael McDowell

THE GRAVEYARD APARTMENT – Mariko Koike

THE MANHATTAN HUNT CLUB – John Saul

I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS – Iain Reed

HOUSE OF LEAVES – Mark Z. Danielewski

LESSER DEAD – Christopher Buehlman

MYCOPHILIA – C. B. Blanchard (free to read here)

MUNICIPAL GOTHIC – Ray Newman

DARK CITIES – Christopher Golden

THE WINDS OF MARBLE ARCH – Connie Willis

THE FORGOTTEN – Clive Barker

THE MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN – Clive Barker

THE MARIGOLD – Andrew F. Sullivan

SISTER MAIDEN MONSTER – Lucy A. Snyder

MINTY FRESH – J. Corvine

THE GOLDEN PERSIMMON – Lindsay Merbaum

THE CITY AND THE CITY – China Mieville

Here for the Horror #2 – Films 51-100

Part 2! The post on the first 50 films for my challenge can be read here, and this post covers films 51-100. To nobody’s surprise, there is… more family horror on this list! And more Welsh Horror! Wow. Who could have foreseen. I’ve made these themes deliberately broad so that it fits all the films in!

Family Horror (Films 51-65)Welsh Horror (Films 66-68)Trauma/Existential Dread (Films 69-86)Supernatural/Possession (Films 87-100)Family/Generational HorrorPOLTERGEIST II: THE OTHER SIDE (1986) dir. Brian Gibson – This carries on almost immediately from where Poltergeist left off, and this time, the spirit of a deceased cult leader is after the angelic little Carol Anne, the focus of activity in the first film. There are some interesting developments in the family dynamics and especially with exploring the father’s insecurities and how he overcomes them as the cult leader seeks to exploit them. There’s also the angelic child ideal and her position in the family relative to her siblings, and how children handle death (of their grandmother). THE DOLL (2016) dir. Rocky Soraya – Indonesian horror franchise. This is a choppy film and not the best one of the series. Some kids find a doll at their house which is clearly cursed, and call in Laras, an exorcist, to get rid of it. She then tells the story of the doll, and the secrets it uncovers in the original couple who end up with it.
THE DOLL 2 (2017) dir. Rocky Soraya – A different doll this time, the ‘Sabrina’ doll, and a different family. This time, after the death of her daughter, a woman calls the girl’s spirit into her favourite doll, but the girl is now vengeful and determined to uncover all the family secrets that led to her death. We see the return of Laras the exorcist, and the impact of this case on her own family.
SABRINA (2018) dir. Rocky Soraya – We see some overlap with characters from The Doll 2, but this time, the affected doll is a new version of ‘Sabrina’ and the child is the daughter of the single dad who designed her. The girl tries to summon her mother’s spirit to inhabit the doll, but gets… something else. Again – there is the uncovering of family secrets and the tensions that show there’s no such thing as a happy family.
THE DOLL 3 (2022) dir. Rocky Soraya – When her troubled little brother kills himself after the death of their parents in an accident, a woman calls his spirit into his favourite doll, but with murderous results. Again, some terrible truths come out regarding the new life that she is trying to build for herself.

The Doll films are basically the same plot over and over, but with different dynamics, secrets and characters each time. Each film is as much about the doll/child via the doll exposing the cracks in the adults’ world, the lies that the adult relationships are built on, and wreaking some kind of punishment with relentless childish logic and unmitigated fury. These films all belong to the ‘Trauma’ theme section as well as the ‘Family’ section, but I’ve put them here as the central concern in each is the relationship between people trying to be a form of family to one another, and what happens when this goes wrong.

MATA BATIN/The Third Eye (2017) dir. Rocky Soroya – A different franchise to the Doll films but the same premise. This one focuses on a relationship between two sisters, Alia and Abel, and the family of vengeful ghosts in their home who need release.
MATA BATIN 2/The Third Eye 2 (2019) dir. Rocky Soroya – Alia now works at an orphanage, and there are more vengeful spirits plaguing the children. Again, this focuses on child-rage (another young girl), and the destructive nature of that rage, despite strong justification. It’s also about ties that bind family members across life and death.

The Third Eye films in substance are more of the same formula for Soroya, who also writes or co-writes the films. They explore different characters and character dynamics, but the core is always a micro-study of a family, the cracks that adults conceal, and the way these cracks are brought to light by the family’s children while dragging the same children into the darkness. This darkness is represented in MATA BATIN 2 as a hellscape (in an Indonesian context: not the Christian concept of ‘Hell’ and the afterlife, but recognisable to those with that religious background). it’s represented in the Doll films by the evil dolls, which are very much in this world, and causing havoc and destruction that the children could not do in life, acting out rage fantasies and revenge fantasies in brutal, bloody fashion, even on other children who have done nothing except draw the spirits’ jealousy for various child-logic reasons.

If you find this interesting, these films are worth a watch through this lens alone. There are other things going on in the films too, but this was the lens I was watching through and the themes I was focusing on in my watch through.

If you are interested in this kind of horror, then another recommendation for family trauma and grief navigation is HARUM MALAM / Blood Flower (2022), dir. Dain Said. It’s a Malaysian horror with possessed plants from Sumatra, more [Islamic] exorcisms, and the uncovering of dark secrets within a broken family.

HATCHING (2022) dir. Hanna Bergholm – Keeping with the theme of child-rage, this film is a Finnish supernatural monster horror that’s also an allegory for tweenage self-discovery and transition from pliable, submissive, easily moulded child to a person with her own desires and goals. This is very much in the same vein as Ginger Snaps, the Canadian werewolf puberty allegory, except in this case the creature is represented as something external to Tinja, the main character, and something she has real trouble reconciling with. The struggle between these two sides of Trinja plays out within the context of the stifling family environment and toxic relationship with her mother, who simultaneously treats Trinja like a grown-up and confidante while at the same time trying to keep her repressed and submissive. Something has to give, and there is too much inside Trinja to be contained in one small body… so she hatches Alli.
UMMA (2022) dir. Iris K. Shim – Korean-American horror that looks at diaspora experience and the uneasy shift from one culture to another, and is as much about that as it is about the generational trauma passed down from mother to daughter across three generations. There’s a lot of trauma in this film so it also belongs in the ‘Trauma’ theme section, but that is depicted as family-related, although the grandmother/mother’s trauma was from moving from Korea to the USA. There’s also the rift between the living mother and daughter in terms of cultural and linguistic absence; the new generation has not been taught Korean, and does not know any of the traditions or where they come from. Meanwhile the mother does – she straddles both worlds and tries to put the old one behind her. Rejecting her past means rejecting her culture and not passing it on, but that’s also depicted as doing her ‘American’ daughter a disservice.
TETHERED (2022) dir. Daniel Robinette – I can’t really explain this one without spoilers… but the twist is fairly obvious I think. It’s a film about hereditary madness (as hinted at from the voiceover at the beginning). I think it’s trying to play with the Wolf Man/North American forest cryptid myths, but without a full transformation. But it is also a film about being tethered to the whims and will and wants of a parent, even after that parent is gone. This is a very literal element of the film, and can be read as a different look at cultural ties, and the restriction of following them. It was good up to the very end, and then I get why people don’t like that arc/ending.

When I posted this one on Bluesky, it was compared to CAVEAT (2020) dir. Damien McCarthy, just the tethering concept, but that film also fits thematically into this section as well so I am mentioning it here!!
CTHULHU (2007) dir. Dan Gildark – Much like Dagon, ignore the title, it’s actually another adaptation of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, with a bit of a twist on the hereditary concerns. In this version, a gay man goes home to his family after his mother’s death, only to find his father is leading a cult (of Cthluhu, the god of the fish-people, I guess, the worldbuilding is very mythos-based but not clearly spelled out). He requires his son have children to pass on the fish-person genes, and this leads to a scene of male rape while drugged. It merges apocalyptic happenings and near-future dystopian scenes with the coming of the fish-people, so it’s got a lot of creepy cult goings-on and elements of In The Mouth of Madness, all while the gay MC is trying to navigate his place in his family and escape their pervasive hold on his life, while being forced to participate and continue the line. He has to choose between his lover or his father, and which part of himself he is going to accept or attempt to destroy.

The director put a copy on YouTube to legally watch for free like an absolute legend, and here it is:EVIL DEAD RISE (2023) dir. Lee Cronin – This latest installment of the Evil Dead franchise focuses on a single mother, her kids and her pregnant sister, in an apartment building, in a set up reminiscent of Demons 2. As the family begin to turn one by one, the tensions build and things spiral. I’ve put this as family horror because that’s the focus of the story, and the dynamics between the central characters are the driving force of the film.
ปริศนารูหลอน/THE WHOLE TRUTH (2021) dir. Wisit Sasanatieng – A Thai YA horror about the trauma of ableist ideals and addiction combining in a perfect storm of layered secrets and lies that need to be exposed before they repeat themselves.
DAS PRIVILEG -Die Auserwählten / The Privilege (2022) dir. Felix Fuchssteiner and Katharina Schöde – a YA German sporror (spores/fungi) about adoption and experimentation, cults and the enforced/controlled passing down of generational … stuff. I found this really interesting from that adoption perspective, and the existential crisis of discovery that what you’re inheriting is not actually yours to be forced to carry around – and there’s other stuff rammed in on top. It adds that extra layer to it, I think.
M3GAN (2022) dir. Gerard Johnstone – US American AI anxieties collide with middle class white US American culture around death and managing trauma badly, individualism to a dangerous extreme, and over-reliance on technology. An auntie who is not ready to be a mother takes on her orphaned niece and farms out all the emotional bonding to a robot doll called Megan, who takes over their lives. The girl’s grandparents have already offered to take on the child, and this would seem to be the best option for the girl, but the Auntie decides against it – presumably to combat her own loneliness, without thinking of what’s best for the child. The lack of ritual and structure around death in this family/film means that there is no space for it to be discussed openly or navigated, and this leads to Megan’s role as the child’s grief counsellor, replacing her Auntie, who doesn’t know how to navigate her own loss let alone the emotional impact it is having on the child.

This arc is – spoilers ahead – never resolved. The young girl has to defeat Megan on her own as the Auntie is pretty useless, and the girl is left to deal with her own trauma and save the adult in loco parentis in the process. This can be seen as a metaphor for the expectations of Gen Z – self-saving, expected to overcome their own trauma alone while saving everyone else around them, and to do so by finding a balance with technological progress and human potential. It can also be seen as a wider critique of how children are raised with only the parental figure’s wishes and needs foregrounded, not those of the child. In this case, the emotional needs not being met are around grief and loss, but that can be replaced with other things, too; anything a child isn’t given room to express to the adults in their life.Welsh HorrorDARK SIGNAL (2016) dir. Edward Evers-Swindell – I liked this one a lot. It’s got some very North Welsh flavour to it, and has a Polish single mother main character with a disabled mixed race son (Polish is the third most-spoken language in Wrexham after English and Welsh, and it was really good to see some of the diversity in North Walian communities reflected in the film). It’s also about the horrors of modern dating, and the struggles facing local Welsh media, and gives us a Welsh serial killer (the Wedlock Killer) who collects the wedding ring fingers of his victims as trophies. Plus: James Cosmo!GWAED AR Y SêR / Blood on the Stars (1974) dir. Wil Aaron – a cult classic and one of the first horror films in the Welsh language. It’s a horror comedy about a choir and their creepy choirmaster, who turns out to be controlled and bullied by the children, into committing terrible (and terribly funny) murders to ensure the choir win a local talent competition. There is an unsubtitled version on YouTube, but you arguably don’t need subtitles to get what’s going on, you just miss a lot of the jokes.

Wil Aaron also directed the classic O’r Ddaear Hen (1981) which is hailed as the first Welsh horror film (that’s not a horror comedy). It’s really hard to track down, and described as The Wicker Man on Anglesey. I think it’s very loosely based on a Welsh language novel, Y Gromlech ar y Haidd (1971) by Islwyn Ffowc Elis, discussed by Jane Aaron in her book, Welsh Gothic (UWP, 2013). I’ve done a post on that here.

68. VALLEY OF THE WITCH (2014) dir. Andrew Jones – I should have known going in that this would not be a good film, as Andrew Jones films are of a similar quality all around. He’s also responsible for the ‘Robert the Doll’ franchise, a knock-off version of the cult classic Puppet Master. Yes, this is set in a Welsh valley community, but it’s based on a faulty premise: no witches were ever burned in Wales, and only five people (four women and one man) were hanged as witches during the witch hunts of the 17th century. I’ve written a full post on this here with citations and links. [Burning was in Lowland Scotland and on the Continent, not in England or Wales, where the penalty was hanging.]

This film also presupposes and imposes an English attitude to witches and witchcraft that did not seem to exist in Wales at this time, and also has an uncomfortable but not explicit link to the real suicide cluster in Bridgend 2007-08. It’s hard not to draw that parallel with young men killing themselves in this film, in this case due to supernatural coercion. I made that connection instinctively, and I am pretty sure anyone affected by it, or who knows about it, would do so too.

This is a real shame, as there are so many ways this film could have used real Welsh folklore or Welsh witchcraft/ghost stories or Welsh supernatural elements, and instead we got a bit of an Anglicised mess.

Trauma/Existential Dread

This section is a miscellany of trauma, but most of it is rooted in the human fears around isolation, a lack of connection or an imposition of community (see: cults), political upheaval/war, climate change, and the aging process. Within this section, I’ve grouped the films by their trauma type.

LegacyTHE HARBINGER (2022) dir. Andy Milton – US American film about the 2020 lockdown, where a demonic presence, the Harbinger, that erases people one by one after giving them sleep paralysis and night terrors. ‘I’m not ready to be forgotten’ is a powerful line, and the end line about returning from hospital to ‘gaps in the world’ is a hideously poignant one. It’s a film not just about processing COVID lockdowns and losses but also about young people being forced to face mortality before they’re ready, and the big questions of what they might leave behind to be remembered by.
I AM THE PRETTY THING THAT LIVES IN THE HOUSE (2016) dir. Oz Perkins – I wasn’t sure where to place this film, but it covers a lot of ground. There’s the writer, aged and frail and lost in the past, who confuses her nurse for the ghost in the house. There’s the ghost, who has forgotten how to communicate, and is just an echo of herself. There is the nurse, good at her job, but living her life like an apparition rather than a person. The writer has her legacy, and the ghost, through the writer, has hers; but the published story has robbed the ghost of her voice, so that she couldn’t hold onto herself after it was told, and the nurse doesn’t have a way in life to tell her story at all.
X (2022) dir. Ti West – This was devastatingly sad, and I loved it. I need a long break before watching PEARL, though. The crisis of growing old and beyond the ability to do the things you could when you were younger, the loss of youth, the loss of virility, the desire to return to something so far out of reach… all of that.
ENYS MEN (2022) dir. Mark Jenkin – This is a Cornish horror with a lot of silence and existential crises piled into one film with a load of Cornish folklore elements. It’s about loss of community, identity, history, heritage, youth, love, and more. The main character asserts that she is not alone on the abandoned island, as to her, all of the memories and people sporadically surrounding her and re-enacting brief moments of their lives are real and present. I’ve put this under ‘Legacy’ trauma as this is all about the legacy of these abandoned places where Kernow was spoken, and the way these things live on in memory until there is nobody left: and what happens then? I don’t have the range to talk about the standing stone and the lichen growing in her scar, as I don’t know enough about the ways in which Cornish Gothic and Cornish folk horror use the landscape, but I saw parallels with Welsh Gothic themes here. Welsh Gothic and the landscape has a complicated relationship that is claustrophobic/entrapping and plays into the ‘Haunted by the Past’ trope, but it’s also something to cling to, to be sustained by, and something that can contribute to a sense of hiraeth – a deep aching homesickness for Wales, even for a Wales that never existed. I’m not sure exactly what ENYS MEN is doing with this, but I think it’s very similar. I’ll be reading more about this, as it really intrigued me.RepressionMARIONETTE (2020) dir. Elbert van Strien – There is so much trauma in this film, and when you know the ending, that makes the central story details all the more horrifying in hindsight, and even sadder than before. The philosophy and theology of fate is discussed, but ultimately it’s about the repression of trauma and what that does to the human mind (particularly the mind of a child).
HAUTE TENSION/High Tension (2003) dir. Alexandre Aja – This could have been a good slasher with a sapphic relationship endgame and two final girls, and it became À la folie… pas du tout / He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (2002) dir. Laetitia Colombani meets Identity (2006) dir. James Mangold. It’s also suspiciously similar for the first part to a Dean Koontz novel, Intensity (1995), which had a mini-series adaptation on the Fox network which ran in 1997. By ‘suspiciously similar’, read ‘virtually the same’. So the twist in this film – which makes no logical sense – may have been an effort to avoid a copyright lawsuit, as they really didn’t work through the issues the twist throws up. It also makes this a film that reviewers have interpreted both as lesbophobic (the locus of desire is itself monstrous and destructive) and a warning against repression (the repression of desire is the monstrous thing, not the desire itself). It can also be both at once.Community Trauma1BR (2019) dir. David Marmor – I don’t want to spoil this, but it’s an apartment complex horror/thriller that looks at the lack of community in modern US American urban life (specifically in Los Angeles, California), and ways in which the need for community can be exploited. It can also be seen as a critique of certain oppressive political regimes, but also is an a-religious critique of religious cults and their modus operandi.
THE HERETICS (2017) dir. Chad Archibald – Canadian horror with a sapphic couple and the consequences for a survivor of a dark cult who tried to use her to bring their god into the world. I’m putting this in “Community Trauma” as cults are a community, and this is all about the characters dealing with their relationships with others, via support groups and their memories of the cult.
THE WOODS (2006) dir. Lucky McKee – New England Gothic boarding school horror, set in 1965. This one has a lot of folk horror vibes, and is kind of The Craft (1996) dir. Andrew Fleming meets Down A Dark Hall (2018) dir. Rodrigo Cortés, with Ms Traverse giving big Aunt Zelda from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina vibes.
Kladivo na čarodějnice/WITCHHAMMER (1970) dir. Otakar Vávra – Czech drama which contains an allegory against Communist show trials in Czechoslovakia, and bears a lot of similarities in content and critique to Witchfinder General (1968) dir. Michael Reeves, but with more criticism of the aristocracy’s involvement in the trials, and more focus on the torture methods. While Witchfinder General focused on Matthew Hopkins as sexual predator, in WITCHHAMMER the accused can be anyone and are mainly elderly women. The horror is how the trials progress, the deliberate insistence on accepting confessions made under torture despite reservations of other characters, and the arc of the witchfinder himself. He falls into decadence and drunkenness the more people he accuses and the higher he climbs through the fear he cultivates, until his final drunken speech, where he announces to the camera that he is above the law and no longer ‘an ordinary man’. This is a film about the methods used to turn communities against each other and destroy them, and methods of oppression, and complicity, and the abuses possible within socio-political and religious structures.Socio-Political Upheaval/War TraumaTHE INVOCATION OF ENVER SIMAKU (2019) dir. Marco Lledó Escartín – Spanish horror film set in Albania, in English, Albanian and Italian, shot in documentary style complete with narrator voiceover. This was a good watch for me, a moody, slowburn supernatural horror interweaving Albanian Orthodox mysticism and heresy with folklore against the 1997 riots. I’d definitely watch this again.
A HAUNTING IN VENICE (2023) dir. Kenneth Branagh – if you’ve read the Agatha Christie novel this is based on, Hallowe’en Party, or seen the Mark Gatiss adaptation starring David Suchet and Zoe Wannamaker – no you didn’t. Forget all that. This is war trauma Poirot, who is a very different man to his previous incarnations, and Ariadne Oliver’s arc is also dramatically different. The film leans heavily into the supernatural and supernatural explained tropes of the Gothic, while also using jumpscare shots, It Was A Dark And Stormy Night pathetic fallacy, and using a cursed Venetian palazzo close to ruin to reflect the hollow and broken lives of those trapped inside it, all haunted, in their own way, by war and some form of personal failure.
EL PÁRAMO/ The Wasteland (2021) dir. David Casademunt – Spanish horror in which a small family live in an isolated cabin in the titular wasteland, away from the war that ravages their country. They find, however, that the spectre of war and its trauma can touch them even there, when a wounded fighter arrives unconscious in a boat, and blows his brains out in their cabin. The monster from the wasteland begins to stalk them, and fractures their lives in different ways, forcing the sensitive young son to grow up fast as he faces it.
NNEKA THE PRETTY SERPENT (2020) dir. Tosin Igho – Nigerian horror in which a traumatised young girl who witnessed the murder of her parents by ritualists grows up and gains powers, setting herself on a course of vengeance. She has to face the Queen of the Coast, who at first seems to be helping her develop her powers and encourages her quest for revenge – but Nneka falls for the son of one of her parents’ killers, and this weakens her allegiance to the Queen and the Queen’s agenda. As Nneka learns she might be able to dethrone the Queen, things get more complicated and far more dangerous.Relationship HorrorAFTERMATH (2021) dir. Peter Winther – This horror/thriller is about the attempted reconciliation of a married couple following the wife’s affair, but their fresh start in a new house where a murder-suicide took place is rife with problems. I enjoyed the twists, and I chose to put this as ‘relationship trauma’ rather than ‘family horror’ as I think that best describes the films in this section. Technically, some of the Doll franchise films could fall under this subcategory too, but I wanted to keep them all together!
THE NIGHT HOUSE (2020) dir. David Bruckner – I liked this one, a fairly predictable twist but I liked the story. A grieving widow is haunted in their lakeside property by a presence that may or may not be her late husband. His dark secrets start coming to light, along with trauma from her own past.
IN THE EARTH (2021) dir. Ben Wheatley – British sporror about man’s relationship to the environment, played out in a microcosm of domestic drama as a man goes to an island to check on his ex-girlfriend, who is studying fungal phenomena with her ex-husband. This is a kind of mad science meets Wicker Man ritualism, folk horror meets ecohorror, reminiscent of The Happening (2008) dir. M. Night Shyamalan, and They Remain (2018) dir. Philip Gelatt.
IT FOLLOWS (2014) dir. David Robert Mitchell – a thinly veiled STI allegory, in which a deadly supernatural creature is passed down a chain of one-night stands, ready to kill those who don’t evade it and work its way back up the chain again. This one can go under supernatural themed films, but due to the allegory of the plot, as that’s really what stood out to me about it, I’ve put it here.Supernatural/Possession

This section is also quite broad, so again, I’ve grouped the films under some subheadings to parse them out.

I Want To See Dead PeopleDISCARNATE (2018) dir. Mario Sorrenti – This is the ‘using drugs to see dead people’ approach, which is fine. I really enjoyed the creature design and the concept.
VERÓNICA (2017) dir. Paco Plaza – The fictionalisation of the real life case of Estefania Gutierrez Lazaro, who died in Madrid, 1992, after using a Ouija board. This is a fairly good possession film, with the added ‘based on a true story’ element to build an additional sense of tension and dread.Monster MashNOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (1979) dir. Werner Herzog – The 1922 Nosferatu ran into copyright issues, so couldn’t use the name of the famous Count. This film had no such problems, and Count Orlok is, as intended, Count Dracula.
I, FRANKENSTEIN (2014) dir. Stuart Beattie – This wanted to be Van Helsing (2004) dir. Stephen Sommers so badly, and it wasn’t. It was not quite as badly paced as Morbius (2022) dir. Daniel Espinosa, but it didn’t stick with me very well.
FASCINATION (1979) dir. Jean Rollin – You can’t go wrong with Jean Rollin, can you? This one is genuinely great, mainly because the bisexual murderlady does indeed kill off both lovers (m/f) and then levels up to kiss the vampire queen. It’s also one you can play the Jean Rollin drinking game with pretty well. The rules are: every time someone fully exposes their tits with no fabric in the way, the last person to yell “TITS!!” at the screen has to drink. The absolute best film to play this with is The Shiver of the Vampires (1971) which is presumably the collective noun.
THE UNCANNY (1977) dir. Denis Héroux – Peter Cushing plays a nervous writer with a dark secret to reveal to the world: cats are evil, and actually own humans, not the other way around. I mean. We all knew that, right? This is a fun anthology film and I really enjoyed the segments. You just know Vincent Price was jealous he didn’t get to be in the cat film.
THE CURSE OF ROBERT THE DOLL (2016) dir. Andrew JonesROBERT REBORN (2019) dir. Andrew Jones

I don’t know why I watched not one, but two, of the Robert the Doll films. I don’t know why there are five of them. I don’t know why Stalin is called ‘the Czar’ in Robert Reborn. Let’s just move on.

Somebody Think of the ChildrenSKINAMARINK (2022) dir. Kyle Edward Ball – Canadian arthouse horror, no idea what I thought of it, to be honest. I get the claustrophobia and the long drawn out tensions, and the disorientating camera angles at child-height. I get the waking nightmare dissolving collective consciousness and concepts of ‘up’, ‘down’, etc, and the dragging out of time in a way that seems eternal to a child. I also didn’t really enjoy it. I don’t like children getting hurt anyway, and definitely not in that visceral kind of way. The 911 call was awful. So that one is one I’m glad I can say i’ve watched, and now I don’t have to watch it again.
CHILD’S PLAY (1988) dir. Tom Holland – a classic for a reason, and it was nice that the kid was ok. I watched it after Skinamarink as a palette cleanser.
KUNTILANAK (2018) dir. Rizal Mantovani – a fun kids’ horror with cute kid protagonists battling a cursed mirror. It does get dark so maybe not for younger kids, as there is a dead boy in it and they find his body later, but I enjoyed it as a horror comedy with intrepid children.Highway to HellBEYOND THE WOODS (2016) dir. Sean Breathnach – Irish horror that had a great concept but didn’t stick the landing. I actually enjoy films where groups of mates have naturalistic dialogue and sit around chatting shit to each other as if you’re eavesdropping on them, so I did enjoy this, and the dynamics of the friendship group. I also really liked the sinkhole concept, and the creature design was fine for a low budget horror.
DELIVER US FROM EVIL (2014) dir. Scott Derrickson – US American Catholic possession horror, with a Jesuit priest who’s a bit of a dick and a cop who’s also a bit of a dick facing a demon being a colossal dick. The theology is as you’d expect from this sort of film. Essentially. I thought about putting this in the ‘war trauma’ subtheme, as the demon in this case came from Iraq and got back to the US by possessing some veterans and inducting them into its cult, and you could see the demon as a clunky PTSD allegory. However, I like the rule of three, and demon possession is the central plotline, so it goes here.
NEFARIOUS (2023) dir. Cary Solomon, Chuck Konzelman – Not being too familiar with US American right wing personalities or religious culture, I don’t know who the writer/s are, but this was a fairly run-of-the-mill possession film where the demon spouts a lot of US Evangelical theology, and from what I can see of the reviews, it looks like the film was intended as a vehicle for this theology to be gotten out into the mainstream. This explains why it was much better expressed than you’d usually find in a possession film, which usually manages to convince me the writer/s have never met a Catholic or in their lives, and why the emphasis in this film was on the theological discussion rather than the special effects. If I was in the mood to study this film from a theological perspective I may have been more interested, but it was 2am, and I just didn’t care. I’d foolishly paid to rent it on Prime on impulse, not knowing a single thing about it, so I didn’t DNF. I just sat on my broken sofa until the [later] early hours of the morning, regretting my life choices.

For a US right-wing film, it managed to be persuasively anti-capital punishment, or at least descriptively anti-electric chair as an inhumane method of execution, which I wasn’t expecting. I’m not familiar with the inter-community debates and discourse around that, so the nuance was interesting to see.

It was also a really good example of how US Evangelical theology attempts to rewrite its recentness and claim it is an accurate interpretation of a much older tradition, when it’s neither. It was essentially The Screwtape Letters on Death Row, but I think C. S. Lewis had a more humane theology in many ways, and a stronger grasp of ethics. It did make me think again about S. Jonathon O’Donnell’s excellent book,  Passing Orders: Demonology and Sovereignty in American Spiritual Warfare  (Fordham University Press, 2020), and this filmic text is something that could be examined through the lens of O’Donnell’s work. Not by me, though, I don’t have the time or the inclination.

Theological interest aside, it was a bit of a dud to end on, so I watched CAVEAT (2020) and BLOOD FLOWER (2022) afterwards as bonus treats for myself, and I’ve recommended both further up.

Challenge complete. How are you doing?

Bonus Short Story: ‘Gerald’

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Exclusive Anniversary Edition Short Story – only published in print in the limited edition anniversary hardback of THE CROWS. This will go out of print May 2024.

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‘GERALD’ 

© 2021 All Rights Reserved 

C. M. ROSENS 

CWs: parental neglect, abuse including food restriction and deliberate withholding of comfort from a child, toxic masculinity, development of disordered eating and associated thought patterns, animal abuse/killing, physical abuse framed as punishment, emesis, and other Horror/Gothic tropes including cannibalism.

He couldn’t even think of her name anymore without remembering how she’d tasted. He filled the oil lamp for his father, remembering Mrs Antram and her kind eyes, the lines around her mouth, her grey sheep’s curls, and the slippery ridges of her brain, a similar shade of grey threaded with blood vessels, hidden underneath. He remembered the creamy, jelly-like texture that held its shape in his mouth until he chewed, the raw animal aftertaste on his tongue, but reminding him of eggs. Mrs Antram had taught him the words for all the parts of the oil lamp, and now they nestled in his head rather than hers.  

His father nodded, made him wash his hands, and said it was time for dinner.   

Ricky wasn’t allowed to eat too much dinner. Everything his mother cooked was dry and plain, boiled mercilessly to steam in the pans, but his father ate stoically without complaint and Ricky had to, too. At least today there was something. There usually was when Dad got Mum a new girl. She should be dead by now, and he didn’t know her name either. 

There was even a slice of Victoria sponge cake for dessert but he wasn’t supposed to have any. To him, it smelled impossibly sweet, the edge of forbidden fructose driving every other thought out of his head. The dead girl got a slice of cake taken to her on a small china plate. 

Ricky didn’t dare look over his shoulder as his mother hummed a little excited tune on her way down to the cellar. He focused on the sticky table edge, and the dark stain taunted him with shiny jam-thick glaze and the forbidden image of moist light flesh, sugary and risen to perfection, bleeding raspberries and clots of fresh cream. Maybe he could have what the ants left, when it was stale and crumbling to biscuit dust on the plate. Maybe the insects would fill him with cake he wouldn’t ever taste, like Mrs Antram had filled him with words he didn’t know. 

Maybe the dead girl would taste all the sweeter for rotting. He wouldn’t be allowed to find out. 

He wondered what her name was, or at least, what name his mother was using for her, but he wasn’t supposed to ask.  

There wasn’t any meat left in the outhouse. He’d cleaned up too thoroughly. His stomach gurgled, and all he could think about was cake. It clogged his farsight as surely as if he’d had a taste, pulling his focus away. His concentration was always worse as the days got lighter. He could read livers and the slippery parts of an animal easily in the darker, colder months, when the sharp blade of winter opened him up to the secrets steaming out of the guts in the frostbitten air. But now everything was hazy with the flourishing of Spring, everything thick and fertile and vital, and he was just as cold and dark inside and nothing matched, nothing fitted, he didn’t fit, and he couldn’t see the future, only wished he could crawl out of his own skin. 

There was something under his skin, he knew. Something waiting, something strong, something he had grown to love. Like everything he loved, he couldn’t touch it. He kept it jealously, his nameless secret, not wanting anyone else to give it a name or explain it to him, because that would feel like they were putting their grownup fingers on what should only belong to him. 

He clung to his secrets, hoarding them like stolen sweets. One day the big secret inside him would emerge, and then he would be whole, complete, and every season would feel right, and he would be able to see whatever he wanted. The Voice in his head told him so, but it didn’t speak to him often. That was a secret, too – and so was this, his taxidermy practice, something his father could be proud of him for. Ricky wasn’t sure which he was more excited about, the hope of an approving nod, or the prospect of his completed companion. Ricky had taken to his father’s hobby with intense interest, learning how to make other creatures as hollow as he was and fill them back up, and how to thread needles that stabbed through his own flesh just as easily as their skins. Like everything else, he learned the hard way. 

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#EldritchGirl S03E23 – The Final Installment

Even Death May Die | Epilogue: Masters of their Fateslisten nowRead now

A double bill for the final episode of the season: the bonus episode will follow!

The showdown is upon the Triad, and as Wes finally gets his priorities straight, the new gods are taking no prisoners.

Today is the day they eat Grandad.

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CWs: emesis, violence, trypophobia, drug/alcohol use

Intro/Outro Theme Music: Gemma Dyer

Bisexual Panic! In the Greenwood

I got some interest on Bluesky for doing a series of videos on Welsh folklore, fables and folktales, so I thought as it’s Bi Visibility Month I’d start with an 18thC fable that Iolo Morgannwg recorded in his infamous manuscripts called Einion and the Lady of the Wood. I’ll do a video on who Iolo Morgannwg was another time, but you can Google him if you’re curious. 

Iolo claimed this tale was composed by Hopkin son of Thomas of Gower, but who knows, it’s Iolo. 

The story goes like this: 

Einion ap Gwalchmai of Anglesey was married to Angharad, daughter of Ednefyd Fychan, and he was out walking in the woods of Trefeilir when he meets a mysterious and beautiful woman. He’s taken with her until he notices she’s got hooves, but it’s too late. She enchants him and he has to follow her everywhere, but he gets to say goodbye to Angharad and their son first. When he sees Angharad, she appears like a hag to him, and nothing in his old life looks right – but he still loves his wife so they split a gold ring in half as a remembrance of each other and he walks out on his family to follow this beautiful woman everywhere instead.

29 years later (according to the ‘fragment’ of the tale Iolo says he found elsewhere), Einion alone, the Lady of the Wood isn’t around, but he’s still bound to her, and he’s just bereft and lost and nothing looks right to him, everything and everyone around him looks different and weird, except for this half ring he’s carrying around. So he’s looking at his half of this ring and decides to try and hide it somewhere, so he puts it under his eyelid. He immediately sees a man dressed in white on a white horse coming over to him and the man starts to talk to him and asks him what sort of spell he’s under, and Einion tells him the whole story. So the man in white gives Einion a long white staff, which is meant to be magic, and it will grant you what you desire, but that’s what they all say. Einion isn’t free of the spell yet, so he says he wishes to see the Lady of the Wood. 

The staff takes him to her and he sees her as this most hideous, grotesque goblin-witch that is worse than anything he’s ever seen in his life and he screams with horror and the man in white pulls his cloak over Einion and rescues him from her, and Einion wishes on the staff to be back with his wife and child, and that’s where he ends up.

But what’s this? Now everyone sees Einion as an old man, they don’t recognise him, and his wife believes he’s dead and is due to remarry a great nobleman who is incredibly rich, very handsome, very persuasive… and the exact same goblin that pretended to be the Lady of the Wood and has been with Einion for the past however many years. So Einion pretends to be a beggar to gain entry into the hall, where he’s able to speak with Angharad and he realises that she’s been enchanted by the same goblin in this different disguise, so he gives her the staff (behave) and she sees her suitor for what he is, which is this grotesque horrible goblin-witch creature. So she faints, which is proof enough that this is an 18thC fable, not an older one, to be honest, and when she comes to, the thwarted goblin and his retinue have vanished, and she sees Einion for who he is, and gets her husband back, and their kid gets a shit ton of therapy. The End, except for some unnecessary 18thC moralising tacked on to the conclusion. 

This version is found in the 1888 edition of the Iolo MSS, via Internet Archive. Iolo manuscripts. A selection of ancient Welsh manuscripts, in prose and verse, from the collection made by the late Edward Williams, Iolo Morganwg, for the purpose of forming a continuation of the Myfyrian archaeology; and subsequently proposed as materials for a new History of Wales: with English translations and notes (1888) pp. 587-92

So that’s the story – and I think there must be some really cool and creepy ways to tell it and retell it.

I’m going to tease out some of the points from it that might help with a retelling, some bits I find really interesting as images or ideas. 

Firstly, the Lady’s complexion is described as white and red (like the blush of sunset, like blossoms, you know the kind of thing). White and red are very important colours and Welsh fairies are often wearing red, white, green, or blue, so you’ve got these colours to play with to help create the aesthetic.Secondly, this idea of glamour having a side effect, so that it’s not just that Einion sees the goblin witch as this beautiful enchantress, but as a result of that, he can’t see the reality around him for what it is either. He sees his wife as a hag, and he’s unable to see anything correctly, with the sole exception of the love token he’s carrying around from his wife after leaving her. Putting the half ring under his eyelid, onto his eye – I think there’s a lot of eye stuff, and a lot you can do with that. I think the point of that is the ring is meant to be touching his eyeball and curved around it with the eyelid over the top, so his eye is wearing the ring, and that’s what enables him to see this mysterious magician. The man in white and his magic staff… go wild, everyone’s bi hereThe big reveal that the Lady of the Wood is in fact a monstrous creature, the other big reveal that this creature has been wooing his wife in his absence in disguise as a handsome noble, and you might want to lean in to the love triangle, resolve it as a monster-fucking throuple, I don’t know, but you’d have to reckon with the magical coercion that’s a key theme. The ending – very 18thC moral tale, which is basically saying, men don’t stray unless they meet a beautiful woman, women don’t stray unless they’re lured by wealth, which is explicit as the moral at the end, so if you don’t agree with that, then what are you going to do with the arc of the narrative to make sure that this is not the message that can be read in your version? 

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