Horror As Folk: Become Ungovernable – Coming of (Atomic) Age with Penda’s Fen (1974)

For the very last film contained in Severin’s initial All the Haunts Be Ours boxed set, we return once more to BBC’s Play for Today series, which previously gave us Robin Redbreast, honestly one of the best films in the set and one of the most idiomatic folk horrors we’ve covered.

And of all the films contained in All the Haunts Be Ours that I hadn’t already seen, Penda’s Fen is possibly the one that I have seen most widely praised as a genuine classic. Is it? Well, perhaps. It certainly nails the “folk” part of the folk horror equation, at any rate, although the “horror” part is a bit sketchier.

More than anything, Penda’s Fen is a bildungsroman. It follows the coming of age of Stephen Franklin, a conservative young vicar’s son who is struggling with his own burgeoning homosexuality. But it’s also about the struggles of England itself, and maybe all of mankind, as we move from a relatively pastoral lifestyle into modern capitalism.

It will not come as a shock that the teleplay of Penda’s Fen was written by David Rudkin, a playwright who also penned the screenplay for Francois Truffaut’s 1966 version of Fahrenheit 451. As such, Penda’s Fen is filled with people delivering lengthy monologues espousing their political and social beliefs, haphazardly (it not unconvincingly) tying together all sorts of elements from Cold War paranoia to England’s pagan history to the music of Edward Elgar and beyond.

So, if Penda’s Fen is a somewhat heavy-handed meditation on coming of age and England’s past and future, what’s it doing on a folk horror compilation – and where does it derive its considerable reputation?

Much of both can be chalked up to the artistry of director Alan Clarke. The largely internal conflicts of Penda’s Fen are rendered through a series of near-wordless visionary sequences, encounters between Stephen and angels, demons, the 7th-century pagan King Penda, the “father and mother of England,” and more. These moments are no small part of what guarantee the film’s reputation, and an even bigger part of what qualifies it for a folk horror collection.

These sequences are impressive not for their special effects – which, fundamentally, are both simple and, in most cases, theatrical; something which could easily be pulled off on stage. Rather, they’re impressive for how they’re shot and edited, making uncanny and transcendent that which should, by rights, be relatively tame.

Even outside these visionary sequences, however, Clarke’s direction helps to elevate the material that he’s working with into something more than the sum of its parts. Many of the lengthy monologues take place over shots of the English countryside – specifically the Malvern Hills, near Pinvin, where the film is set. And these lingering landscapes help to tie the film’s human plot to the fate and fundamental character of England itself.

And while the dialogue may be heavy-handed, it doesn’t usually hurt the grandiosity of the proceedings. “The earth beneath your feet feels solid there,” Ian Hogg, as the author-insert writer character, says in one memorable monologue. “It’s not. Somewhere there, the land is hollow.”

He’s talking about the government building some sort of secret underground complex in the hills, no one knows what for. But his language is intentionally evoking the mythic, the legendary “hollow hills” of Britain where the fair folk were said to live.

Like the various writings of Nigel Kneale, or like Robin Redbreast before it, Penda’s Fen is heavily preoccupied with the juxtaposition of this folkloric past with the industrial present. While the film itself may take place entirely against the pastoral backdrop of the Malvern Hills, the industrial is never far from its mind, as when Stephen’s father exhorts that the only future for mankind may be an eventual act of disobedience in which they “revolt from the monolith; come back to the village.”

This preoccupation with England’s history (both pagan and otherwise) makes this an obvious choice for inclusion in a folk collection. However, as I said earlier, its “horror” bonafides are perhaps less compelling.

I’m not here to suggest that Penda’s Fen isn’t horror, per se, but rather that regarding it principally as horror is perhaps not an especially profitable lens through which to view it. The arguments in favor of its inclusion in the horror genre come predominantly from those visionary sequences, which are undeniably freighted with a heavy cargo of religious awe and an older sense of terror, the kind that leads angels to announce “be not afraid.”

Alongside these visionary sequences there is also one non-sequitur involving (presumably) the secret government installation in question. It is perplexing and largely unconnected to the rest of the narrative, but it is also genuinely horrifying.

All these moments are integral to the power of Penda’s Fen, but they also occupy very little of its total running time, and they are seldom deployed in the same way – or to the same effect – that they would be in a horror film.

Penda’s Fen is probably better understood as a play of social realism despite its occasional trappings of angels and demons and pagan kings. This makes it perhaps another odd fit within a folk horror collection, but not an unwelcome one.