Against the Crowd: "Murrain"

Maybe there is just something in the air, in the water, or buried deep in the ground, but with the recent release of Ari Aster’s Midsommar, the upcoming autumn release of Robert Egger’s The Lighthouse, and the inclusion of such films as The Ritual (David Bruckner, 2017) and Apostle (Gareth Evans, 2018) on Netflix, it seems that Folk Horror is back on the big and small screens with a vengeance.

I’d never heard of the term, Folk Horror, until a few years ago. After I’d picked up Andy Murray’s book, Into the Unknown: The Fantastic Life of Nigel Kneale, I was looking for more information on an episode of the ITV series Against the Crowd that was written by the British script writer. A few internet searches and multiple hyperlinked portals later and I felt as though I’d stumbled into a mysterious society that existed (and thrived) just beyond the ken of our own. The more I read, the more I felt like an outsider, a stranger in a strange land. And then, before I knew what was happening, they’d got me - I was hooked! In short, I felt very much like a character in a Folk Horror movie.

Like film noir, Folk Horror is a term created by critics to describe the films of a particular time and place: Britain in the late-1960s and early 1970s. Many Folk Horror enthusiasts and scholars (like Mark Gatiss, Howard David Ingham, Adam Scovell, and Andy Paciorek) will point to that era’s “Unholy Trinity” as the fountainhead of the sub-genre. These three films - The Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968), The Blood on Satan’s Claw (Piers Haggard, 1971), and The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1975) - portray the deleterious effects of the landscape on isolated individuals and communities. Witch covens seem to spring forth from the furrows and fields, pagan rituals soon follow, and, more often than not, a little human sacrifice is needed to set things right.

Like film noir’s flashier, modern cousin, neo-noir, Folk Horror is also subject to updated takes on those older texts. These new novels and films take Folk Horror on the road. You can head off to Sweden to check out the cult surrounding the weird human-elk offspring of Loki in The Ritual. Cross the pond to the New World and spend some time in the Colonies with The VVitch (Robert Eggers, 2015). After that, you can head up to Canada and read about the movies featuring the not-so-friendly Wendish mythological figure “Lady Midday” in Gemma Files 2015 novel Experimental Film.

Films and literature aren’t the only art forms allowed to play in the Folk Horror sandbox. Music, too, gets its hands dirty and builds ritualistic stone circles. Old film soundtracks (like those for the “Unholy Trinity”), the electronic work of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and the folk-, psychedelic-, and prog-stylings of bands such as Pentangle, Comus, and Hawkwind all seem to map out a territory of terror where rural, pagan rituals stand shoulder-to-shoulder with modern, industrial society. Present-day musicians use this map to meander through the moors of Folk Horror. Bands like The Hare and The Moon, Pye Corner Audio, and The Advisory Circle all to varying degrees play with the folk-electronic sounds of the past, while artists like Klaus Morlock, The Heartwood Institute, and Thorsten Schmidt create soundtracks to “lost” films and tv series. Perhaps the main reason they are “lost” is that they never existed in the first place?

These “lost” sounds would not seem out of place playing over the opening credits of, say, an episode of Play for Today, Shadows, The Mind Beyond...or the 1975 Nigel Kneale-penned episode of Against the Crowd entitled “Murrain.”

Nigel Kneale is best known for his creation of the intrepid and indefatigable head of the British Experimental Rocket Group, Professor Bernard Quatermass. The old boffin’s adventures in such 1950s BBC television series as The Quatermass Experiment and Quatermass and the Pit cast a long shadow over any filmmaker looking to explore the bleak territory where science-fiction and horror intermingle. If it wasn’t for Kneale’s special blend of science and terror, we wouldn’t have films like John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Prince of Darkness (1987).

After working at the BBC for the previous twenty-five years, Nigel Kneale spent most of the 1970s writing scripts for newcomers ITV. His first produced script would be for the network’s seven-episode series Against the Crowd. While none of the episodes are connected by characters or storyline, all deal with the same basic situation: a lone individual standing against the majority. Kneale’s contribution, “Murrain,” was the third episode and was originally broadcast on ITV on July 27, 1975. It was rebroadcast (along with the rest of the series) two years later in early 1977.

After experiencing Kneale’s tv work on the Quatermass series, as well as his scripts for Hammer Films (1957’s The Abominable Snowman and 1966’s The Witches), you’d be excused for expecting something more explicitly sinister and “wyrd.” “Murrain” has the feel of a fairly straightforward drama. As the story develops, however, we get a sense that behind this perceived normality lies a world that is more in line with what we consider to be “Knealean,” a worldview that is akin to William Faulkner’s: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” By the end of the program, the viewer (like the very modern main character of the story) is left staring at an ever-widening crack in what had once been the smooth facade of reality.

(WARNING: Beyond this point there be spoilers!)

David Simeon as "Alan Crich"

Things begin in an ordinary, even mundane, manner. Mr. Crich (David Simeon), a veterinarian, is making a follow-up visit to the pig farm of Mr. Beeley (Bernard Lee). Tests have been made, precautions taken, but Beeley’s pigs are still dying, and Crich is unable to discover the cause. Crich preaches patience, he assures the farmers that it is only a matter of time before science solves the problem. Beeley and his men, however, have another solution in mind.

Crich is escorted around the farm and the surrounding area by Beeley and his men. In addition to the sick hogs, Crich is shown empty pipes where water used to flow. He is introduced to Mr. Leach’s (David Neal) sick and bedridden child (Philip Gilman). Mr. Coker (John Golightly) walks with a noticeable limp on a twisted leg. According to Beeley, all of these problems and ailments have been caused by the same thing – a murrain. Murrain is an archaic word meaning quite literally death. It is a term used to describe a number of infectious plagues affecting animals, as well as humans. And the cause of the murrain? Simple – a witch.

Bernard Lee as "Beeley"

Next door to Beeley’s farm is the dilapidated house of Mrs. Clemson (Una Brandon-Jones). It was Mrs. Clemson who gave blackberries to Leach’s son for trespassing on her land. It was Mrs. Clemson who passed a pot of jam into Mr. Coker’s hands, paralyzing his body and making him lame, after he confronted her about drying up the farm’s water supply. “How do you suggest she did that,” Crich asks with a sardonic smile on his face. “Oh, she’s got her ways,” Beeley replies.

Beeley and his men have chosen Crich, because of his outsider status, to deal with Mrs. Clemson and her murrain. The men empty Crich’s doctor’s bag onto the ground and fill it with grit, gravel, and dirt. Once invited into her house, Crich is to dump the detritus onto the old woman’s head, thus breaking the spell.

Una Brandon-Jones as "Mrs. Clemson" 

Crich refuses to partake in Beeley’s archaic ritual and tosses the bag aside. In the ramshackle stone house, he finds not a witch, but merely a lonely old woman made lonelier due to isolation from the surrounding community. The Leaches won’t sell her goods from their store; Beeley cut off her water supply for his piggery. Crich is appalled at Mrs. Clemson’s treatment and determined to help her. He promises to bring her back supplies from Leach’s store.

As he shops at the store, Crich is surrounded by Beeley and his men. They demand to know what he saw in Mrs. Clemson’s house. Crich promises to notify the authorities about their treatment of their old pensioner neighbor. The men put two and two together, notice that Crich is purchasing supplies for the old woman, and chase him out of the shop empty-handed. Mrs. Leach (Marjorie Yates) screams when she realizes that the money that Crich handed her was from Mrs. Clemson.

Marjorie Yates as "Mrs. Leach"

The following day, Crich returns to the old woman’s house with a box of supplies. The men at the nearby farm watch him from afar. As Crich makes another trip to his car for more goods, Beeley drags the vet to Leach’s store. There, Mrs. Leach sits in a daze next to her son, suffering from the same sickness, her hands swollen and useless. The men are sure that Mrs. Clemson passed some sort of spell to Mrs. Leach through the pound notes she gave Crich.

Determined to put a stop to events once and for all, the men gather up their farming implements and charge off to Mrs. Clemson’s. Crich cuts through the dried creek bed between the properties to head them off. He shouts a warning to the old woman. As the men approach her, Mrs. Clemson raises her hands and speaks an incomprehensible phrase. Beeley drops dead from an apparent (at least to Crich) heart attack. The men stare at Mrs. Clemson in awe. Crich looks up, and Mrs. Clemson pronounces an emphatic “Yes!” in answer to their gazes. As the end credits roll, the men take Beeley’s body away, and Crich is left unsure of what he has just witnessed.

"YES!"

What makes the foregoing Folk Horror, you may well ask? Writer Adam Scovell lists several links in what he calls the “Folk Horror Chain.” These include:

• the use of the landscape and the environment as an isolating influence
• the skewed morality and belief systems of communities that develop in these environments
• the violent manifestations that proceed from these belief systems

On the surface, “Murrain” follows the Folk Horror Chain from one end to the other without missing a beat: Beeley’s pig farm sits far outside the urban center of Buxton. Not only that, but outside of the farm are signs warning off trespassers due to the sickness in the pigs. This double isolation, in turn, encourages the farmers to look for the cause of their bad luck outside of accepted, rational, scientific explanations. Their belief in witchcraft, then, causes the death of Beeley at the end of the program. It’s all pretty straightforward, no?

Well, yes and no. The “isolated community that harbors strange beliefs” was a pretty standard trope of the horror genre by the time “Murrain” hit British tellies in 1975. The late-1960s and early-1970s was a time period when so many members of the counterculture sought greener pastures in hopes of leaving behind the damaging influences of urban society. Many hippies hoped to live off the fruits of the land and to create utopias in the country. Others, not quite so extreme, just looked to start their lives over in simple, rural settings. What tends to happen in these types of horror films and books is that what is viewed as “simple” or “utopian” is, in fact, much more complex and, in the long run, dystopian. The danger of country living soon rears its head and the city-dweller finds out that the rural dirt roads are every bit as deadly as the city streets. Think: Thomas Tryon’s novel Harvest Home (1973), Bryan Forbes’s 1975 film version of Ira Levin’s 1972 novel The Stepford Wives, and John D. Hancock’s 1971 film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death, which you can read about (...cough, cough...shameless self-promotion) here on this very blog.

What “Murrain” does so well and why it is a paragon of the genre is not that it embodies the links in the Folk Horror Chain (it obviously does), but that it does so in many, complex ways – not just narratively-speaking.

"Who lives there?"

Taking the first link as an example, the isolation apparent in “Murrain” happens on many levels. For instance, aside from the opening and ending credits, there is no musical soundtrack. Instead of musical stingers and leitmotifs and sound bridges between scenes to guide us, we are left to the sounds of the wind blowing through the trees or the sounds of galoshes on muddy pathways. The lack of a music in “Murrain” leaves the viewer in the position of the main character Mr. Crich: we are unsure how to react to what is happening around us.

The color palette, too, adds to the overall tone of creepiness. The colors are muted, which may be down to the digital transfer of the original video, but I don’t think so. The faded browns, blues, and greens, match the mood and atmosphere. It is either the fall or winter of the year. A chill is in the air. The trees are bare. There seems to be more mud than grass on the ground. Death stalks the land, and we shouldn’t hold out any hope for springtime to return anytime soon.

"The name's...Mrs. Clemson."

The cast is phenomenal, as well, and their performances create a sense of worlds (and worldviews) clashing. David Simeon’s earnest portrayal of the upstanding and well-meaning Mr. Crich seems utterly out of place amongst the men of the farm and Mrs. Clemson next door, which is as it should be. Crich and men move differently from one another. When Crich arrives at the farm, he calls out to Mr. Coker, who turns to him like a man living in slow-motion. Crich and the men speak differently, too. When asked a simple yes or no question, the men answer Crich with a drawn-out and ambiguous “I dare say so.” There is also a generous use of repetition when the men speak to one another that stretches time out. As Beeley and Crich go off to look at the pigs, the men hang back to watch a fellow farmhand, Jimmy, work in the distance (what he is working on is withheld from the viewer):

Start (Raymond Platt): Do you remember that wireless? That old wireless he took to bits? 

Leach: Jimmy’s wireless. 

This type of repetitive and laconic dialogue would not be out of place in a Harold Pinter play. It further serves to point out the differences between Crich and the men.

"Jimmy's wireless..."

The deliberate positioning and movement of the camera, too, is another tool used by the filmmakers to create tension. Director John Cooper uses simple set-ups to capture the action. There is only one instance of handheld shooting, so far as I can tell, and that is a brief shot from Crich’s point-of-view as he walks down the street. Outside of that single moment, the camera is kept in a fixed position and captures action either through panning left and right or by allowing the actors to move through the frame, from one side to the other or walking towards or away from the camera. Although this would be standard shooting protocol at the time, to modern viewers, who are used to shaky, documentary-style camerawork that flies over, under, or through the scenery and actors, it is disconcerting and isolating.

The ways in which Cooper fills his frame is equally effective in creating tension. Scenes with multiple characters are filmed by using either the tried-and-true shot/reverse shot method or by framing multiple characters at once. This latter method is especially effective when Beeley and his men crowd around Crich. By framing more than one or two characters in a single shot, the pressure being brought to bear upon Crich is expressed visually. Cooper places his actors in different fields within the frame, as well. For instance, when the men drag Crich to Leach’s home so that he can look at Leach’s bedridden son, there is a shot that includes the boy and his mother in the foreground and Crich, Beeley, and Leach between them in the background. This shot gives added visual dimension to the cramped bedroom, as well as to the danger that the viewer feels is slowly encompassing poor Crich. Indeed, in several scenes like this one, there are always men between Crich and a door, as if the farmers are trying to entrap him.

"He got given stuff."

The second link in the Folk Horror Chain, the isolated community’s skewed morality and belief systems, is also dealt with by Kneale et al. in a complex fashion. On a narrative level, Kneale pays out information in a way that keeps the viewer from ever knowing what really is going on. There are quite a few scenes in which Crich and Beeley square off, the one trying to convince the other that he is right. Mr. Crich represents modern, scientific, rational thinking; Beeley is an agent of the older ways, of superstitious, magical thinking. In other horror films, the viewer would be granted a scene, early on, in which Beeley’s position is shown to be the correct one. The viewer would then carry that knowledge into every scene to follow. In this way, Crich’s position is undermined, and we are merely waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“Murrain,” on the other hand, keeps the viewer on Crich’s side up until the very end. Until the moment Beeley keels over, we assume that the farmers are crazy and that Mrs. Clemson is a poor, old woman being tormented for simply looking the part of a witch. When Beeley hits the ground, the viewer’s certainty falls with him.

How Beeley and his men relate to what they are experiencing is also off-center, but not in the way other films have portrayed rural paganism. In an earlier scene, Beeley and Crich argue for and against the possibility that Mrs. Clemson is responsible for laying the murrain on the farm:

Beeley: It’s what I got in my pigs, like a plague on them. And your science can make nothing of it. Well, when that happens you got to look around for other reasons. And when it takes on people, too. And young kids. 

Leach: By God, yes! 

Crich: Then you find somebody to blame. 

Beeley: Find out who is to blame. 

This is a very subtle, semantic distinction. On the one hand, Crich is speaking of superstition and witch hunts, of the majority finding a minority (any minority) to lay their bad feelings and hatred upon. On the other hand, Beeley and his men speak with the certainty of the old ways, of just plain knowing what the truth is without proper evidence:

Beeley: “All this talk! You’re tryin’ to prove there’s no such thing. Well, you won’t prove it to us. We know there is. They got you trained to thinking nothing’s true if you can’t find it in books or shove it in a bottle and analyze it! You work out the rules, and what the rule don’t fit, don’t happen! Then you find out you got the rules wrong! 

Crich: Then, we change the rules-- 

Beeley: Oh, that’s handy! 

Crich: --for better rules. But we don’t go back! 

"Now they got another name..."

Up to this point, this argument is by-the-book stuff, breaking across “city vs. country” and “science vs. magic” lines. Crich is a forward-thinking, college-educated, urban-dweller; Beeley and his men are backward, uneducated, country folk. What pushes these distinctions into new, complicated territory is Beeley’s insistence that his and Crich’s positions are not that far from one another.

Crich: You’re trying to justify the persecution of some poor, half-witted, old biddy. And how do you do that? Kill her cat in the name of magic and then go home and watch your color telly. 

Beeley: Magic’s a dirty word, then. 

Crich: Aye. 

Beeley: Scrying is magic. 

Crich: Eh? 

Beeley: In the olden times, they took a picture miles away, then it come before them on a bit of glass. Scrying it was called. Now they got another name. 

Start: Double Your Money. 

Leach: Coronation Street. 

"Double Your Money...Coronation Street..."

This exchange is another form of the old saying that can best be summed up by the Leigh Brackett quote from her short story “The Sorcerer of Rhiannon”: “Witchcraft to the ignorant,...simple science to the learned.” The technology of television is just another form of mystical scrying to Beeley and his men. Later, Beeley will expand upon this naturalist view of the supernatural:

Beeley: There’s dreadful strains in the land. Always has been. There still is. Just waiting there, see? Until someone has the trick to come along and use them...It’s like finding oil and gas under the sea...They said there were none, and then there it was, once they had the cunning to tap it and put it to use. Now that’s the same with the other. Learn how, and you take a man’s breath away, spoil him, stop him all roads! 

This skewed morality isn’t formed in quite the same way as the witch’s coven being formed due to the skull found in the fields in The Blood on Satan’s Claw or Lord Summerisle and his family introducing pagan worship to the islanders as a form of social control in The Wicker Man. For Beeley, witchcraft is a natural part of the land, like fossil fuels. Whoever finds it, can use it. What Beeley and his men fear is that Mrs. Clemson has found a way to tap into these “dreadful strains in the land” and use them against the farm.

"He don't believe in North Sea gas."

This leads to the third link in Scovell’s Folk Horror Chain: the violent manifestations that proceed from the skewed belief system of the isolated community. On the face of it, the death of Beeley is caused by Mrs. Clemson’s witchcraft. His death, then, proves that everything that he and his men have told Crich is true. Again, in other films of the period, this is certainly the case, but in “Murrain,” Kneale has offered the viewer a slightly off-center perspective, one that complicates such a simplistic reading.

After Crich delivers groceries to Mrs. Clemson, he is dragged back to Leach’s store by Beeley. There, Crich is confronted with Mrs. Leach, who is exhibiting symptoms similar to her sick son: she is pale and unresponsive; her hands looked bloated and waxen. Beeley attributes her condition to her handling of Mrs. Clemson’s money, but Crich says it is due to something else:

Crich: Suggestion! 

Beeley: What? 

Crich: Well, that’s what’s done it. The power of suggestion. She’s brought it on herself through hysteria, if you like. She believes this influence to exist and that it can do this to her, and so it has. 

The possibility that Mrs. Leach’s sickness is her own fault, that it was conjured up by her own mind and not by Mrs. Clemson’s witchcraft, sends a shockwave through the men. But, here, Kneale adds another twist to the tale:

Beeley: It’s a powerful thing, belief. 

Crich: It is. Very. 

Beeley: Suppose her over there. 

Crich: Mrs. Clemson. 

Beeley: Aye. Suppose she believes, too, that she’s...that. 

If Mrs. Leach can believe herself to be sick, then why couldn’t Mrs. Clemson believe herself to be a witch? After being accused time and time again by Beeley, after being cut off from the community, after having her last friend, her cat, killed, why shouldn’t she finally succumb to believing what the rest of the community believes? It’s only logical, after all.

This double-edged belief is what is manifested during the violent attack on Mrs. Clemson. Beeley believes that the old woman has the power to do him harm; Mrs. Clemson believes what the men believe, and so lashes out, killing Beeley with her words. Was it witchcraft? Was it a psychosomatic-induced heart attack? Kneale offers no comfort as he leaves the viewer to ponder those questions as the credits roll. Mrs. Clemson’s final, “Yes!” is no answer. It could mean, “Yes, I am a witch” or “Yes, I believe that I am a witch.” There is no relief that comes from knowing one or the other is true.

In a way, both are true at the same time, which is a frightening proposition for Mr. Crich as well as the viewer. For Crich, the happenings at Beeley’s farm seem to throw everything he thinks he knows about the world into disarray. For the viewer, “Murrain” is a horror show in straight drama clothing. Or is it the other way around? Nigel Kneale complicates the tropes of the genre and forces the viewer to constantly question what is happening on screen. Is “Murrain” about the existence of witchcraft or is about the belief of the existence of witchcraft? Folk Horror, it seems, lives in the shadows of such distinctions.