by Fiona Moore

The British horror movie scene is ending the year on a high note with Tam-Lin, another entry in the new breed of scary films with no monsters, ghouls or goblins, just people at their very worst. It’s also part of a new trend that some reviewers are beginning to call “folk horror”: movies which draw inspiration from on British myths, legends and histories rather than nineteenth-century writers or Hollywood monsters.

Tam-Lin movie poster

Folk music fans will of course have spotted Tam-Lin’s credentials in this line straight away from the title, which it shares with a well-known ballad. For those who don’t know it, the ballad of Tam-Lin is about a young woman, Janet of Orkney, who has a sexual encounter with a strange man, Tam-Lin, who she meets on her father’s estate. She learns that Tam-Lin is a human who was kidnapped by the Queen of the Fairies for a sinister purpose: every seven years the Fairy Court pays a tithe of one of their own knights to the court of Hell, and they have been exploiting a loophole by substituting human knights for their own people. It’s up to a pregnant Janet to fight for her man and win him away from the Fairy Queen.

The movie isn’t just a riff on the legend, however, but is a straight-up retelling of the story as a tale for the 1970s, directed by, of all people, Roddy McDowall. Tom Lynn (Ian McShane) is the toy-boy lover of a wealthy older woman, Michaela “Mickey” Cazaret (Ava Gardner), who surrounds herself with hippies, artists and homosexuals, and whose rejected lovers seem to have a habit of dying in accidents. On a trip to her country place, Tom meets, falls in love with, and, yes, seduces, a vicar’s daughter, Janet (Stephanie Beacham). There then follows a battle for Tom’s soul between virtuous Janet and dissipated Mickey, with the murderous assistance of her debauched gang of hangers-on.

Continue reading [December 28, 1970] Nowt so Queer as Folk: Tam-Lin and Robin Redbreast →