Episode Details

Greetings pagans and godless heathens! Thank you as always for checking us out and we have got one H-E-L-L of an episode for you guys.

First and foremost we want to give a shoutout to our sponsors over at Lehigh Valley Apparel Creations, the premiere screen printing company of the Lehigh Valley. Chris Reject and his merry band of miscreants are ready to work with you to bring to life your vision of a t-shirt for your business, band, project, or whatever else it is you need represented by a shirt, sweater, pin, or coozy. Head on over to www.xlvacx.com to check them out. Thanks!

This episode we are discussing the oft-overlooked sub-genre of pastoral horror, or ‘folk horror’ as it’s known otherwise.

We begin by talking about what we’ve seen recently. Both of us were lucky enough to catch a screening of Julia Ducournau’s Raw. We briefly discuss the film and our thoughts on it (we really liked it) and then talk about the importance of local cinemas so that they can keep doing screenings like this. You can check out the Steel Stacks here. We then talk about M. Night Shyamalan’s newest film Split. Also, we talk about the newest member of the Cinepunx collective the GOT ME A MOVIE podcast hosted by Lori and Andrew Bergeron, as well as upcoming addition to Cinepunx, a story based podcast called BLACK SUN DISPATCHES. Check both of them out!

Before we get into the heart of the episode we talk about the recent passing of James “Doc Terror” Harris, a well-known and beloved fixture of the Northeast horror scene. The Cinepunx collective was lucky enough to interview James a few months back at a benefit screening for him. You can hear that interview here. Hudson Horror is doing a benefit screening of two Italian horror films with all the benefits going to James’ family, and you can get tickets for that here, and there is going to be a special screening of James’ favorite film Creepshow on 35 mm at the Alamo Drafthouse, and you can find out more on that here. Likewise, donations to James’ family can be made here.

First up is Piers Haggard’s 1970 film The Blood on Satan’s Claw aka Satan’s Skin aka The Devil’s Touch. We open the discussion by dissecting the genre that is pastoral horror. We give a few examples and discuss the motivations behind the genre, including English guilt and anxiety towards colonialism and white anxiety in general and the similarities between that English anxiety and the modern America anxiety/guilt towards the subjection of Native Americans and that anxiety emerging in the “Indian burial ground” trope often found in the horror genre.

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