Behind the Couch

Christopher Lee as Dracula Established in 1976, Westport Arts Festival is not only one of Ireland’s longest running festivals, but an on-going celebration of the arts in and around Ireland. With over 100 events spanning two weeks, this year’s festival – which runs from 1st – 14th October - represents one of the most ambitious to date. Amongst the array of events are screenings of Hitchcock’s masterful thriller North by Northwest , Hammer’s classic adaptation of Dracula . Aside from the film screenings, festival goers can look forward to a staggering amount of live music, comedy, theatre, visual art, literature readings and workshops. This year’s programme is as diverse, interesting and exciting as last year’s, with the work of both local and international artists promoted throughout. Organised entirely by volunteers, the annual Westport Arts Festival has been a fixture in the Irish arts calendar since 1976, making it one of the longest-running festivals in the country. It has...

Issue 17 of Paracinema Magazine is now available to pre-order. As ever, its packed to the gills with all manner of insightful and provocative articles and essays on genre cinema. Amongst the titles in this issue are “Endemic Madness”: Subversive 1930s Horror Cinema by Jon Towlson , You Can Clean Up the Mess, But Don’t Touch My Coffin: The Legacy of Sergio Corbucci’s Django by Ed Kurtz and I Don’t Want to See What I Hear: Paranoia and Personality Eradication in The Conversation by Todd Garbarini. Issue 17 also contains one of my own essays, an examination of the Gothic influences of Sergio Martino’s giallo Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key , titled Black Cats and Black Gloves.  Sound good? Head over to Paracinema.net to pre-order your copy now. Go on, support independent publishing.

2011 Dir. Robin Hardy Based on Hardy’s own novel Cowboys For Christ, The Wicker Tree isn’t so much a sequel to The Wicker Man , more a curious companion piece. Incorporating many of the same themes, it is the tale of two young chaste American missionaries who travel to the wilds of Scotland to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to people who ‘don’t believe in angels.’ Seemingly embraced by the local community, the pair are invited to participate in the annual May Queen celebrations, with inevitably fatal consequences… The Wicker Man cast a long shadow over cult horror cinema. While it is none other than Robin Hardy who has returned to plough the furrow of folk horror, religious extremism and earthy sensuality he tilled with that film, the results this time around are much less fertile. The source material, his novel Cowboys For Christ , unfurled as a slow-burning, evocatively written work that pitched modern evangelical Christianity against paganism and built slowly and surely...