With the dissolution of the Hayes Code in 1968, genre cinema enjoyed a newfound freedom to explore the unique horrors of motherhood. As women underwent bodily changes, there was continuous societal pressure to maintain feminine ideals: A woman must be sexually attractive—and attractive often means youthful. A mother, however, is definitionally mature, and maturity lies outside the bounds of conventional female beauty standards. This catch-22 plays out in films such as ROSEMARY’S BABY(1968), THE EXORCIST (1973), THE SHINING (1980), and even MOMMIE DEAREST (1981), in which the real-life horrors of child abuse, addiction, and ageism take the place of supernatural horrors. In these films, the costume designer becomes a kind of hybrid psychologist-detective, working from a character’s inner life, as well as her cultural context. How does clothing inform us about the protagonist’s state of mind, her stage of life, and the role society wants her to play? And how does the horror genre especially reflect on the challenges of aging, motherhood, and shifting sexual values? Please join costume designer and fashion historian Jolene Marie Richardson for this discussion of fashion as a form of hypertext that conveys essential information about the sociological content of a film.

Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” is a classic of American horror literature. Since its publication in 1820, the tale of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman has been adapted multiple times for both the big and small screens, variously highlighting the author’s original themes of greed, chivalry, and folk belief. In 1999, Tim Burton took a different tack, building upon Irving’s foundation an allegory for the spiritual debate that still pervades American culture. The director’s first full-blooded horror film re-frames Crane as a skeptical police investigator sent to a Sleepy Hollow gripped by superstitious fears and religious paranoia. As the twin dogmas of rationalism and Christianity pitch their battle, the chaotic power of witchcraft undermines them both. Thus Burton’s adaptation offers a thoughtful and frightening reflection on the ideological character of America itself—a country that still struggles with an inner conflict between spiritual faith and scientific enlightenment. From this perspective, the folkloric tale of Sleepy Hollow may be as relevant now as it was at its birth, almost 200 years hence.

NOTE: This live, in-person lecture will take place at the Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Miskatonic is pleased to present the latest offering from our ongoing collaboration with the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival with this lecture on horror’s ability to interrogate national traumas and haunted histories, spotlighting two classics of Japanese cinema. Despite recent Hollywood portrayals of the Manhattan Project (OPPENHEIMER) and Operation Paperclip (INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY), one controversial World War II-era endeavor remains largely taboo and obscure: the medical experiments conducted on human test subjects by Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army. The fight to bring this subverted history to light may be reflected in certain fantastical post-war fictions—see especially the contagious curse in Hideo Nakata’s RINGU (1999), and the nuclear monstrosity of Ishiro Honda’s GOJIRA (1954), threats that rise up from dark depths to assail innocent, ignorant, or irresponsible victims. In this talk, Professor Sigmund Shen identifies these films as allegories for the struggles of Japanese historians, journalists, and scientists to reckon with memories of this troubled past. Shen’s comparative analysis of these classic genre films will be supported by an in-depth examination of their historical underpinnings, and a psychoanalytic inspection of their symbolic and emotional content, ultimately highlighting the psychological and political functions of horror cinema. 30% of ticket proceeds will be donated to The Sunrise Movement because the fossil fuel industry is the real giant monster.

Folklore brings us tales of witches, ghosts and ghouls, myths and legends: stories like these are how we make sense of the world around us and shape our common perceptions.  How these are communicated, whether in film or TV or online, can influence us in terms of our beliefs, actions and understanding of the world, but it doesn’t mean they are literally true. Folklore is a core element of folk horror that is often overlooked: the roots of horror are often firmly based in folk tales, myth and legend. Horror is indeed the stuff of folklore which includes unofficially recorded histories, campfire tales and urban legend. But, whilst the schlock and gore antics of villains like Freddy Krueger and Jason Vorhees may have folkloric origins in satanic panics and urban legends, the films in which such characters appear are not necessarily regarded as folk horror. Although the use of folklore is absolutely integral to folk horror narratives, conversely, not all horror is folk horror. Folk horror is not even always horrific or merely restricted to the medium of film: its eerie dissonance can be observed extending beyond boundaries of genre and medium. Part one of this class explores the conventions of what we now think of as film and television folk horror, and discusses folk horror as part of a broader cultural context arising from 1970s popular culture and its continued impact on filmmakers today. Part two of this class more specifically explores British 1970s television, which itself was bursting at the seams with weirdness, eeriness, supernatural folklore and contemporary legend. The effect of ‘wyrd’ programming on those who grew up with it should not be underestimated in terms of its influence on Generation X, (which Bob Fischer aptly terms the ‘haunted’ generation) referred to here as Generation Hexed. The importance and value of children’s television has been an area traditionally overlooked, which modern scholars aim to redress not only in relation to screen studies but also with reference to folklore studies and wider social and cultural implications. This paper considers why supernatural folklore was so prevalent in 1970s media, why it emerged then, and how it has been represented on screen. Using Children of the Stones as a case study example of “the scariest programme ever made for children”, I look at how television has horrified children and the ways in which such programming impacts upon generations of audiences far beyond the reach of television itself.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, excitement about the study of the paranormal spread across the globe. Curiosity about supernormal phenomena permeated popular culture in the form of the New Age movement, but neither academia nor world governments were immune to the craze for extrasensory perception and psychokinetic power. Fueled by escalating Cold War tensions, a quiet arms race began on both sides of the Iron Curtain, and eventually this ostensibly “Top Secret” research bled out into civilian life. The figure of the weaponized psychic savant has since became a common archetype in the science fiction and horror genres. This class will examine the historical facts that inspired films such as THE FURY (1978), THE MEDUSA TOUCH (1978), SCANNERS (1981), and PHENOMENA (1985), in which scientific experimentation exposes, and often encourages, the deadly potential of psychic abilities. We will also develop a framework for exploring the symbiosis between the pop cultural trends these films represent, and various corporate, government, and NGO-funded programs. This approach will illuminate the ways in which declassification of official documents can shed new light on familiar cultural tropes.

Aleister Crowley, prophet of sex magick and self-styled “Beast 666”, had a starring role in the occult revival of the late 1960s and early 1970s, appearing on the cover of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper and inspiring the urbanely evil character of Mocata in Hammer’s 1968 film The Devil Rides Out. This talk will consider the real life of Crowley, a late decadent rooted in the Victorian deviance of the 1890s, and his transformation in the work of Dennis Wheatley, the massively bestselling popular novelist whose black magic novels created a strangely seductive and luxurious image of Satanism. In reality Wheatley was more interested in politics than magic, and his original Devil Rides Out had a 1934 propaganda subtext of friendship with Nazi Germany, deftly elided from Richard Matheson’s screenplay, while Crowley’s Nietzschean creed of “Thelema” was – to borrow the title of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1935 film – his own “Triumph of the Will”. Considering Crowley’s public persona and Hammer’s much-loved film, this talk will suggest that in both cases the real horror lurks offstage.

Riddled with enigmas and ambiguities, the 1973 British Lion production The Wicker Man managed to claw its way back from obscurity to cement itself as an internationally lauded piece of British cinema history. Boasting a script by recent writer célébre Anthony Shaffer, the production immediately hit compromises and challenges, and then struggled to see the light of day. Helmed by Shaffer’s ad firm partner and debut feature director Robin Hardy, The Wicker Man tells the story of a Scottish police officer who arrives at the outer Hebridean island of Summerisle in response to an anonymous letter reporting a missing child and in the process finding his devout Christianity, and the investigation, repeatedly challenged by the islanders and their adherence to the ‘old ways’. Culminating in an iconic and disturbing sequence of ritual sacrifice, this is a film made by English people about Scottish identity and culture with a heavy focus on the tensions between British Christianity and millennia of British and Celtic paganism. A cursory understanding of thousands of years of British history and culture only marginally reveals the way this movie is informed by a rich and ancient culture that goes back far beyond its own written history. The Wicker Man not only implicitly deals with the colonisation of Scotland – and Celtic cultures more broadly – by the English and the feudal class system it imposed. It also draws from the wellspring of agrarian communal and ritual culture, not just in the gods it worships but in the celebrations developed around the agrarian calendar and the music the community sings together. This only partially explains the mystical grip The Wicker Man has on audiences worldwide, however. In this presentation, Wickham Clayton will take you through this historical context and the troubled production and distribution of The Wicker Man. Furthermore, he will analyse the film itself explain why a movie which met with tepid praise on release and resigned to obscurity for nearly two decades became a mainstay of British film culture. Furthermore, Clayton will discuss the twin legacies of the film; on one hand it is seen as a ‘cult’ classic, on the other it holds a place as a ‘legitimate’ classic of British cinema. Can the enduring appeal of The Wicker Man be concretely identified, or is it surrounded in as many mysteries as Summerisle itself?

“The odd combination of actors/semi-actors plus Southern non-acting churchgoers give an Ormond / Pirkle film a particular off-kilter charm. Is it a documentary? A sermon? A hallucination? What is it?” – Jimmy McDonough For almost half a century, June, Ron and Tim Ormond, a Nashville mother-father-son trio, cranked out a wild bunch of movies, from Lash LaRue westerns to the stripper-gore-musical outrage THE EXOTIC ONES, and plunged into every area of showbiz. What’s more, they did it all on a shoestring, totally independently, with no studio to back them.  At the height of their frenzied career, Ron and June experienced a spiritual awakening when their private plane crashed on the way to a premiere. From then on, they turned their back on secular show business to produce a series of shocking, surreal religious pictures, including an unbelievable trio of films for Mississippi Baptist preacher Estus Pirkle – films such as THE BURNING HELL, which made millions, despite never being shown in an actual movie theatre. These strange, wonderful examples of truly Outsider filmmaking have recently been restored by Nicolas Winding Refn for the Powerhouse Films/Indicator Blu-ray box set From Hollywood To Heaven: The Lost and Saved Films of The Ormond Family, released to coincide with FAB Press’ publication of forensic biographer Jimmy McDonough’s awe-inspiring tome on the extraordinary life and work of the Ormond Family, The Exotic Ones.  Author and film historian Jimmy McDonough will join us to present two of the most wildly entertaining and outrageous Ormond Family films: IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? – 1971, 52 min.  Dir. Ron Ormond.  “Many of you listening to me today will see hundreds of dead bodies in your towns,” warns Baptist preacher Estus Pirkle, in this hilariously and rabidly anti-Communist / anti-sex education / anti-mini skirt wearing religious propaganda classic.  Truly jaw-dropping from the get-go, featuring a laundry list of corrupting dangers to watch out for including Saturday morning cartoons and drive-in theaters – and worst of all, bearded Cuban soldiers handing out candy to stunned grade-schoolers courtesy of their glorious leader, Fidel Castro! THE BURNING HELL – 1974, 58 min.  Dir. Ron Ormond.  “Every hour at least 3,000 people go to hell,” intones Eustus Pirkle, in one of the Ormond Family’s best-known films, filled with grinning demons, charcoaled sinners, and “recreations” (ahem) of large chunks of the Bible featuring decidedly non-Middle Eastern actors.  The plot involves Pirkle trying to save the soul of a young hippie biker whose friend unfortunately rejects Pirkle’s teachings and is sent to roast in Hell – where he meets a multi-colored harlequin Satan leaping around in the film’s most bonkers sequences.  Author Jimmy McDonough will sign copies of his new book on The Ormond Family, “The Exotic Ones” (FAB Press/ByNWR), available for sale in the PRS Bookstore!  PLUS!! Ticket Bundles are available that include Live From Miskatonic: Crazed Biographer JIMMY McDONOUGH in conversation, co-presented with the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies on May 31. See details on that event HERE. Please Note: Limited Supplies of “The Exotic Ones” will be available for walk-ups at the event due to the sheer girth of this epic masterpiece of exploitation eye-candy – if you want to be GUARANTEED a book (and trust me, you do!) you must select one of the ticket bundles offered, BEFORE the shipping cutoff date of May 15th. After that, you take your chances – but this is a rare chance to get the book domestically, and at a heavily discounted price! Special Thanks to:  Peter Conheim and byNWR.

You’ve read his warts-and-all biographies. You’ve reveled in their fiery prose and pulsating detail. Maybe you’ve even seen him in Tales from the Tour Bus, talking George Jones in cartoon form. But tonight you will see him in the flesh, and you will bear witness to the testimony of the mad biographer himself! From art school to 42nd street, where he co-edited seminal Deuce chronicle Sleazoid Express, McDonough went on to fashion one of the most rich and colorful careers in pop culture history. He did time in the editing rooms of Radley Metzger and Brian DePalma before music writing for The Village Voice led to twin trajectories, penning definitive biographies of some of the biggest names in popular music – Neil Young, Tammy Wynette, Al Green – while also trawling the gutters of exploitation cinema to give voice to misunderstood iconoclasts like Russ Meyer and Andy Milligan. We’ll head deep into Milligan country as we revisit anecdotes from McDonough’s groundbreaking and personal account, The Ghastly One (a perennial favorite of artists as varied as John Waters and Patton Oswalt). We’ll discuss the libido-igniting Ormond Family picture that sent McDonough on a 35-year mission to tell the story of vaudevillian, UFO enthusiast and shrewd no-budget producer June Ormond and her odd family of filmmakers. Maybe he’ll even share a taste of the Southern gothic tragedy next on his plate: a biography of honky-tonk singer Gary Stewart. McDonough’s is a wild story full of lawsuits, betrayal, broken hearts, and most importantly for our purposes, MOVIES – from the swamps to Staten Island, from skid row to the Hollywood hills and straight up to heaven itself. “Does anybody out there remember F. Lee Bailey’s Lie Detector show? That’s how I envision this interview. I hope Janisse will grill me unmercifully. For I intend to TELL ALL and let loose every bat in the belfry! Because I am KING of the Crazy Biographers! Hallelujah!” – Jimmy McDonough Copies of Jimmy’s new book THE EXOTIC ONES – in a gorgeous, fully illustrated limited slipcover edition from FAB Press and ByNWR – will be available for purchase in the lobby alongside the paperback edition of THE GHASTLY ONE, or you can get a ticket bundle that includes a copy of THE EXOTIC ONES, to guarantee you have one waiting for you! PLUS!! Ticket Bundles are available that include double bill screening The Films of the Ormond Family:  IF FOOTMEN TIRE YOU, WHAT WILL HORSES DO? + THE BURNING HELL – with author Jimmy McDonough In-Person! Co-presented with the Philosophical Research Society on June 1st. Screening Details available HERE. Please Note: Limited Supplies of “The Exotic Ones” will be available for walk-ups at the event due to the sheer girth of this epic masterpiece of exploitation eye-candy – if you want to be GUARANTEED a book (and trust me, you do!) you must select one of the ticket bundles offered, BEFORE the shipping cutoff date of May 15th. After that, you take your chances – but this is a rare chance to get the book domestically, and at a heavily discounted price!