Although it’s often named the best British horror film of all time, the impact of Robin Hardy’s incredible film lies in the fact that it ultimately has very little to do with the shocks and scares we normally associate with horror. The whole film is one giant red herring; the overt referencing of magic and paganism led me to expect a more supernatural conclusion, whereas there is in fact nothing in the film that one couldn’t expect to encounter in everyday life. The magnificent denouement yielded not terror but instead a sickening sense of realisation that such an outcome was glaringly obvious almost from the start, but I’d effectively been looking the other way.
The presence of horror veterans Ingrid Pitt and Christopher Lee helps this misdirection, but it mainly stems from the way we see events through Sgt Howie’s eyes; he is our anchor of ‘normality’ as the bizarre occurrences unfold, and although he is a bit of a prig, we mistakenly assume that he holds the moral upper hand as he effectively represents us in this foreign landscape. Howie’s horrible death is quasi-tragic in the way that he brings it upon himself – which is not to say that the islanders are right and that he’s wrong, but that his bluff moralising and starchy Christian preaching mask an ignorance of the culture he has walked in upon. It is his unwillingness to learn that proves his downfall.
This is one of the few films that I’d actually label flawless. The acting is marvellous across the board, with Edward Woodward and Christopher Lee hitting all the right notes. It looks both bizarre and gorgeous, the music’s lovely, and the iconic ending stays with you long after the credits have rolled. Probably one of the best British films full stop, it deserves a wider appreciation than its cult status allows.