Darklands -- A Metrodome Films Production (1997). Starring Jon Finch, Craig Fairbrass, Rowena King and Richard Lynch. Produced by Paul Brooks. Written and directed by Julian Richards.

The visitor to the official Web site of the horror movie Darklands is confronted by the following warning:

"This film has been cursed by an authentic pagan cult who found its content offensive. Whilst this hex was originally aimed at the producers, it may also affect the film's audience and therefore any viewers of this site. The webmaster disclaims any responsibility for any misfortune you may incur as a result of browsing this URL."

Laughing at danger, I bravely clicked the Enter hyperlink (a pagan symbol) and visited the site. That was several months ago, and since then, I haven’t been feeling too well… but that’s another story.

A masterful performance by Jon Finch

Darklands was filmed in Wales in 1997. Its director is the young Welsh filmmaker Julian Richards. This intriguing foray into the uncanny stars veteran actor Jon Finch (late of Frenzy and The Final Programme) as a sinister Welsh politician. "Jon gave a stamp of pedigree to the film," Richards says. "He is very menacing indeed."

"This land is my land."  David Keller (Jon Finch) argues the case for nationalism in Wales.

Asked to describe his working relationship with Finch, Richards said: "I'm always reluctant for actors to try accents in my films, as it often contrives their performance (just look at Michael Gambon in The Insider, with his forced American accent). But despite my reservations, Jon was determined to model himself on the Welsh politician and passionate orator Neil Kinnock. In fact, he pulled off the accent so well that many people have since expressed their surprise to discover that Jon is not Welsh."

"Having worked with Hitchcock and Polanski, Jon is obviously used to formal etiquette on the set, but the Darklands crew was very young and laid-back, which occasionally caused problems. One hilarious moment I remember was at night when we were shooting the pig sacrifice scene. Jon arrived on the set to find a very dishevelled man asleep in his chair. ‘Is he the producer?,’ Jon asked. ‘No, that's the pig wrangler,’ I answered. ‘Then what the hell is he doing in my chair?,’ Jon replied."

How was Metrodome Films able to afford Finch’s services, considering that Darklands’ budget was a paltry US$750,000?

"We paid Jon about £10,000 and gave him profit points, but ultimately he hadn't worked for a while and liked the script enough to work on the cheap," Richards revealed. "Towards the end of the shoot, we'd run out of money and needed Jon to come back for some pickups. Jon and his agent were very sympathetic and agreed to defer the payment."

Richards was of course delighted to work with Finch and extremely pleased by the Shakespearean actor’s superb performance as a very unsettling and malevolent character. A 'cult movie' par excellence Since 1997, Darklands has developed something of a ‘cult following,’ in the usual sense and in a more macabre and unexpected manner. "This film is dark and creepy, perfect for horror fans who like their movies with bite and something to think about, rather than just lashings of gore," Richards says.

David Keller (Jon Finch) and Detective Carver (Dave Duffy) await the arrival of their human sacrifice.

With a pervading sense of menace and unease throughout, Darklands follows the adventures of London journalist Frazer Truick (English action star Craig Fairbrass) as he travels to Wales to investigate the mysterious death of the brother of trainee journalist Rachel Morris (Rowena King).

Delving deeper into the tragedy, Truick becomes convinced that murder lies at the root of it, committed by a bizarre religious cult. But as the evidence unfolds, events take on a more sinister and potentially lethal significance for the reporter. As Truick becomes embroiled in devil worship, witchcraft and ultimately human sacrifice, Darklands builds to a shocking and bloody conclusion.

Not unlike The Wicker Man -- Robin Hardy’s classic 1973 creepfest to which it has often been favorably compared -- Darklands has been slowly gaining a devoted following in Europe in the years since its release and may soon be available on this side of the Atlantic. In 1997, this ‘thinking man’s horror picture’ won three top awards at the prestigious Fantasporto fantasy film festival in Portugal -- Best Film, Best Screenplay and The International Jury Award for Originality. Darklands then went on to win the Melies Award for Best European Fantasy Film in 1997, 'The Audience Award' at Madrid, ‘The Silver Lone Star’ at Houston and 'Best Film' at Manchester.

Darklands also attracted a lot of press attention with five-star reviews in genre magazines like SFX and two thumbs up from mainstream publications like Time Out and Uncut. All this contributed to a great United Kingdom video release via Fox Pathé, although theatrical distribution in the U.K. was disappointing.

Darklands is positively Wellesian in its use of light and shadows, and the frequent motif of fire and smoke in dead urban landscapes enhances Zoran Djordjevic's brilliant cinematography. Darkland’s spooky stylishness is all the more impressive as it was shot on such a meager budget.

Although Darklands has enjoyed an enthusiastic response from genre film audiences across the U.K. and Europe, the same cannot be said for the real-life Welsh pagan cult that plays a prominent role in the film’s storyline. Angered by their portrayal in the film, they proceeded to curse the entire cast and crew, as well as viewers and even visitors to the film's official Web site (the fearless among you may wish to check out the site at www.prolificfilms.freeserve.co.uk/).

Paganism (which is the pre-Christian religion of Wales) was an agricultural faith that worshiped the life source of the community -- the harvest. If the harvest failed, then animal sacrifices were made to the soil (much in the same way as the Kurban after Ramadan in Islamic faith). Unlike The Wicker Man, Darklands is a contemporary story set in an urbanized area, and the idea of Paganism was updated by making it an industrial faith -- the contemporary life source of South Wales being the steel and coal industries. But now that South Wales is in economic decline, these pagans would sacrifice to industry -- to the steelworks and the coal mines, according to Richards’ reasoning.

Apocalyptic images of urban collapse

Richards says he was going for a certain look in the picture. "I wanted urban decay and post-industrial wastelands, so I chose to shoot on location in the steelworks town of Port Talbot in South Wales." (Rumor has it that the heavy industrialized vista of Port Talbot inspired Ridley Scott to do Blade Runner. Richard Stanley filmed the opening sequences of Hardware there as well.)

The mysterious pagan cult members found several animal and human sacrifice scenes particularly offensive.

Darklands opens with a dreamy, but very graphic scene in which the pagans sacrifice a pig by cutting its throat and hanging it upside down. To achieve this effect, "we had three variables on the pig, starting with a real pig, which we filmed being dragged from a truck to the place of sacrifice. Then, for the close-up of the sacrificial blade cutting its throat, we had a prosthetic pig’s head and neck. Finally, for the wide shot of the dead pig being hoisted upside down above the pagans, we used the carcass of a dead pig, which we bought from the local abattoir."

"A Roman myth to discredit the vanquished." A pagan interpretation of the crucifixion. This is part of the horrific sight that greets Frazer as he is dragged toward the place of sacrifice.

For the human sacrifice scene at the end of the film, this technique was repeated, but having to hang a real actor upside down 20 feet above the ground caused a few problems. To achieve this with the comfort, control and safety required, wires were connected to the actor via a hip harness. Then, in post-production, the Cineon process was used to paint the wires out.

"The old flesh is dead. Long live the new." David Keller (Jon
Finch) and the good people of Port Talbot celebrate a human sacrifice.

Another sequence involved a priest (Dennis Cox) being murdered by a chainsaw-wielding pagan. For this scene, a water pump was attached to the chainsaw and filled with stage blood. Then, "as we filmed the chainsaw going into the priest’s torso, the water pump was switched on, creating a spray of blood."

The saga of the Darklands curse began in 1995, when Richards was teaching film studies at Edinburgh University. At that time, he was introduced to a real-life pagan cult -- the Beltane Fire Society (BFS). "One of my students heard that I was writing Darklands and offered to show me a 'home movie' she had filmed of a local sect performing a ritual," Richards recalls. "I was enthralled by her material and asked if I could attend their next gathering.

"A month later, she took me to the Beltane Fire, which is held on April 30 by pagans throughout Britain. Beltane celebrates the coming of spring. On a cold, rainy night, I ventured into the hills of Edinburgh to witness this ceremony. What I experienced was both haunting and liberating. It was like watching a primitive tribe, except these guys were white and this was civilized Europe. The ritual was a genuine reflection of our pre-Christian, tribal selves and for the first time, I glimpsed the ancient man within us all."

Richards asked these pagans to perform their Beltane ritual in Darklands and they agreed, but a week before principal photography began, they read the script, discovered it was a horror film, that they were playing the bad guys and pulled out. Richards opted to hire a group of local dancers to re-enact the ceremony, based on the 'home movie' that the film student had shot.

Many myths surround Paganism, because much of what has been written by pagan high priests has been destroyed since ancient times. "There is no devil or god," Richards reveals. "Theirs is an agricultural faith based around the life source of the community -- earth, sun, air and water. Historically, in the event of a bad harvest, animals were sacrificed to the land during a festival known as Samain, but there is no evidence of human sacrifice, except as a myth created by Rome to discredit and suppress the Celtic culture that it vanquished. Contrary to popular belief, Paganism is a 'White Magic' religion and is often confused to its detriment with Satanism and Witchcraft."

If such misinterpretation exists, then Richards is the first to admit that he must take some share of the blame. "The Beltane cult were upset with Darklands because it took a reactionary view on Paganism, fusing it with Fascism and Satanism, and therefore promoting this negative stereotype," he observes.

Is the curse nothing more than a publicity stunt?

A spokesman for the BFS dismisses the Darklands curse as nothing more than a publicity stunt. "There seems to be a danger that this story will be swallowed up by its own hype," says Topher Dagg, an information officer at the BFS. Dagg emphasizes that, as far as he knows, no curse was placed on the makers of Darklands by anyone in the BFS. "We are not in the business of casting hexes, black or otherwise," he says. "It seems that the inclusion of the 'curse' story on the film’s Web site is merely an attempt to develop Blair Witch Project-style publicity for it.

"The BFS is not a 'pagan cult', however romantic Mr. Richards may find that idea," Dagg maintains. "It is a cultural organization that spreads information about Scotland's aboriginal festivals and folklore, especially the four pastoral quarter-day festivals of Beltane, Lunasadh, Samhain and Imbolc. To this end, we create community-led recreations of these festivals in a modern form, fusing historical Scottish elements with traditions from England. There is no prescribed religious or occult aspect to involvement in the BFS. The Beltane Festival is attended by about 12,000 spectators a year, illustrating its role as a community event rather than an occult pagan ritual!"

Dagg recalls that "(Richards) contacted the BFS looking for support for his film. We invited him to attend our festival as a spectator. However, on reading the script, we decided that any further collaboration was out of the question. The imagery, characters, costumes and fragments of the narrative that originated with the BFS were exploited by Mr. Richards and used to portray the Beltane tradition in a very negative light. In Mr. Richard's own words, he was ‘fusing Paganism with Satanism and Fascism’."

Dagg accuses Richards of conducting a disinformation campaign, misleading the public about the historical traditions that organizations such as the BFS are trying to maintain. Dagg also believes that "traditional" (meaning pagan) cultures are usually exploited for sensationalistic purposes by the mass media.

Richards says he is in full agreement with Dagg, "but Darklands is fiction and wouldn’t work commercially in the politically correct context that he is suggesting. Basically, the world of fiction needs good guys and bad guys and, in the real world of pagans, not all involved are as well meaning as the BFS. A case in point: When I screened the film in Germany, a member of the audience told me that he had left a pagan cult because he thought their views were neo-Fascist."

The runes are cast

Richards first became aware of the curse after a screening of Darklands at the Welsh International Film Festival in Aberystwyth. "I was confronted outside the cinema by an angry group of pagans who accused the film of being racist against the Celts. Then later, when Darklands was doing the festival circuit, I received threatening phone calls from members of an unidentified cult, who were offended by the derogatory way I had depicted Paganism. They said that Darklands was a racist and reactionary film born out of primeval fear and that misfortune would come to all involved with it. They told me that unless I withdrew Darklands from distribution, it would be cursed and that everybody involved with its making would suffer the consequences!"

The following week, Richards attended a Halloween screening of Darklands at a horror festival in San Sebastian, Spain. The other guest director was Richard Stanley (Hardware, Dust Devil), an eccentric filmmaker and connoisseur of the occult who added to Richards’ paranoia by telling him that he had heard about the curse on Darklands and would use his influence in these circles to get it revoked.

This is no laughing matter, as injuries and illnesses are linked to this hex. Richards recalls his own near brush with death. "I was driving home very early one morning, and I crashed straight through a fence into a field, wrote off my car and was concussed for a day. I really can’t say if there is any connection to the Darklands curse, but one wonders."

Other effects of the curse may include the demise of Metrodome as a U.K. production company and producer Paul Brooks having to move to L.A. to find work, Richards muses. Darklands was also mysteriously banned in Korea after a lucrative Korean distribution deal was signed at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

Jon Finch is unfazed by all the talk about a ‘Darklands curse.’ "Touch wood, the curse hasn’t affected me," he said in a recent interview with Filmfax Magazine. "I think the film needed a stunt of some sort. I couldn’t work it out at all. I know that some of my scenes were cut, although I hear I’m quite good in Darklands. I must make a point of seeing it sometime, but it barely got a release here.

"Nobody knew what they were doing on Darklands," Finch revealed. "The director, Julian Richards, was almost as bad as C. Courtney Joyner (with whom Finch worked on Lurking Fear, a Lovecraftian debacle filmed in Romania in 1994), except he was a nicer person. Julian might be a good director someday, if he’s ever given another chance to direct. A lovely man, but he didn’t know what day it was."

Darklands slowly gains recognition as classic horror film

Despite the hex, Darklands sold out at many international fantasy film festivals and is still being selected by mainstream festival programmers around the world for 'midnight movie' slots. The current trend in the U.K. is for cinema exhibitors to screen Darklands as a double bill with The Wicker Man, while the U.K.'s ITV network has scheduled it for broadcast at Hallowe’en.

Darklands has received video and TV distribution in all world territories outside North America, garnering favorable reviews in Portugal, Spain, Germany and the U.K. After seeing the film at a Korean festival, Roger Corman made an offer for U.S. video, but the deal didn't favor the film's producers and they declined.

Yet Darklands could soon be released globally, either on video or pay-per-view. "Like The Wicker Man, Darklands falls outside the parameters that many acquisition execs look for when they buy at the markets," Richards observes. It's not an obvious sell, so they don't take the risk. However, if you look at its U.K. video performance via Fox Pathé, you'll see that with a decent marketing campaign, the film will perform very well. But until a buyer with enough balls and imagination comes along, frustrated American horror fans seeking a copy can e-mail me at jr@prolificfilms.freeserve.co.uk and I'll point them in the right direction."

Julian Richards: The next John Carpenter?

Still healthy after all these years of living under the curse, Richards is busy working on several other horror projects -- including a remake of the James Herbert novel The Survivor, which was the basis for a film directed by David Hemmings in 1981. Why does Richards feel the need to remake The Survivor after only 19 years?

Richards allows that, of the four Herbert novels made into films -- "Haunted was okay, but The Rats, Fluke and The Survivor were disastrous. They didn't have enough money to put Herbert’s vision on the screen and they all strayed away from the original narrative. Hemmings’ Survivor was an Australian TV-movie, which shifted the story away from horror and made it more of a supernatural thriller. My version would be firmly pitched in the horror genre and would stay true to the original novel.

"The scariest cinematic sequences I've experienced were the possession scenes in The Exorcist. I haven't seen anything since in the cinema to rival its impact. Handled correctly, The Survivor has the potential to continue where The Exorcist left off, and remaking it in this way would really put me on the map as a horror film director."

In January 2001, Richards signed to direct Silent Cry, a US$4-million feature.   "It's a hospital conspiracy thriller about a mother searching for her baby after doctors switch it at birth,"  Richards explains.  "Coma meets Internal Affairs."  Silent Cry stars Frank Finlay, Kevin Whately (Det. Sgt. Lewis on the Inspector Morse series), Emily Woof, Douglas Henshall, Clive Russell, Steve Sweeney and Craig Kelly.

Richards’ pet project is The Monkey Farm, a very dark psychological thriller. "The Monkey Farm is an original screenplay, which I've co-written, based upon an idea by Dave Mitchell (who did a dialogue polish on Darklands). It's set in Fort Yukon, Alaska, in a remote, snowbound asylum that houses the world’s most notorious serial killers. The story follows the exploits of two FBI agents, as they investigate the brutal murder of the asylum warden. Inspired by the Batman comic Arkham Asylum, it's very dark, violent and has a terrifying twist in the tail!"

The Monkey Farm is being produced by the U.K. company Spice Factory (The Killer Tongue, New Blood and Pilgrim), which is setting it up as an Anglo-Canadian co-production to shoot in Quebec this winter.

In the early nineties, Richards had a development deal with Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment on a project called Calling All Monsters. Amblin paid him handsomely, but the project is now with another writer at Dreamworks SKG.

Although creatively frustrating, his time with Amblin netted Richards enough money to get Darklands made, as he waived his director’s fee due to the film’s very low budget. Since Darklands, the Amblin money has run out, so Richards is busy directing television drama -- including 12 episodes of the Liverpool soap opera Brookside.

"Surviving as a European independent filmmaker means living hand-to-mouth, so I certainly see myself moving to Hollywood when the call comes," says the ambitious Richards.

This article was reproduced with permission from Harvey Chartrand
for the Unofficial Jon Finch Site.

10 May 2001