Most Haunted

BORLEY RECTORY (2017)
ULTRASOUND OF A HAUNTING: THE MAKING OF BORLEY RECTORY (2019)

A ghostly nun has been at the forefront of the Borley Rectory legend. Whether in life or afterlife, the nun has a rich tradition in horror; their distinctive dress and unwavering devotion have creeped out audiences in an array of religious hysteria on film, including HAXAN, THE DEVILS and SCHOOL OF THE HOLY BEAST. 

THE gothic rectory of Borley in Essex - which stood between 1862 and 1944 - has been described by psychic researcher Harry Price as "the most haunted house in England." By the late 1940s, a study by the Society for Psychical Research had rejected most of the sightings as either imagined or fabricated, and cast doubt on Price's credibility. A convoluted history includes the ghost of a nun, headless horsemen, spirit messages, a human skull and failed exorcisms; and although having no basis, ghost hunters often quote the story of a nearby Benedictine monastery, to which a monk conducted a relationship with a nun. After their affair was discovered, the monk was executed and the nun bricked up alive.

To add to this, in 1938 Helen Glanville conducted a planchette séance in Streatham. Price reported that she made contact with two spirits, the first of which was that of a young woman, Marie Lairre. Marie was a French nun who travelled to England to marry a member of the Waldegrave family, the owners of Borley's 17th-century manor house. She was said to have been murdered in a building once on the site of the rectory, and her body buried either in a cellar or thrown into a disused well, with the spirit messages her pleas for help from beyond the grave. In 1939 the rectory was severely damaged in a fire when new owner Captain W. H. Gregson was involved in an insurance scam; whether the blaze was accidental or incidental, it mirrored the 1841 fate of a first rectory.

Ashley Thorpe of Carrion Films. Carrion prides itself in bringing to the screen the spirit of our wind-swept myths and penny dreadful traditions (previous shorts include Scayrecrow, about a vengeful ghostly highwayman, The Screaming Skull, and The Hairy Hands, taking inspiration from the Dartmoor legend). 

The first inhabitants – the Bull family – soon reported ghostly phenomena, largely thought to be a combination of local rumour and the imagination of the Bull daughters. In 1929 Mr and Mrs Smith became the new incumbents, and the supernatural shenanigans persisted. The Smiths approached the Daily Mirror, asking for their help in contacting the Society for Psychical Research, and a series of sensationalist articles appeared before the paper facilitated the involvement of Price. When the Foysters moved in during 1930 Price maintained his interest, as the strange occurrences seemed to intensify around Mrs Marianne Foyster.

This peculiar tale is the basis for the first feature-length release of Carrion Films, led by Devon-based writer and illustrator Ashley Thorpe. Operating a rotoscope-style fusion of animation and green screen, BORLEY RECTORY recalls a movie heritage of James Whale and THE INNOCENTS in its 75 minute docudrama format. Narrated by Julian Sands, the details are built upon by its flickering monochrome images, creating a dreamworld of pale faces and pitch black shadows (most memorably, a figure sits at the end of a child's bed, and the phantom nun's face transforms into a grimacing skull). The cast are uniformly excellent: Reverend Harry (Richard Strange) and Ethel Bull (Sara Dee), Reverend Guy (Nicholas Vince) and Mabel Smith (Claire Louise Amias) and the Reverend Lionel (Steve Furst) and Marianne Foyster (Annabel Bates), all shine in their stylised make-up and costumes. And for genre enthusiasts it is a joy to see film historian Jonathan Rigby as Price and Reece Shearsmith as journalist V. C. Wall.

Annabel Bates as Marianne Foyster. During the Foyster tenure of the rectory - between 1930 and 1935 - the alleged paranormal activity was at its height. In fact, the unconventional personal life of the couple would make a fascinating feature in its own right.

ULTRASOUND OF A HAUNTING: THE MAKING OF BORLEY RECTORY is the centrepiece bonus on Nucleus' recent Blu-ray disc, which runs thirty minutes longer than the film it documents. And it needs to: a nostalgic labour of love that goes back to the 1977 publication of Usborne's World of the Unknown: All About Ghosts, and the loss of a childhood friend. The most astute observation is that the hauntings can be traced not just through the tall stories, but to the needs for monetary recognition and sexual fulfilment of the Borley females; perhaps the stuffy men of God saw them as second best to their faith. BORLEY RECTORY itself is a triumph of getting the job done after six years of trials and (often personal) tribulations. Yet even in his darkest days, Thorpe's escape back to Borley cements the power of wondrous childhood memories and the need for simpler times. After all, it is us human beings - with all our yearnings and motives - that create the reality or unreality we experience. 

We can all relate to Ashley's sentimentality; popular culture exists in a whirlwind of nostalgia. First described as a psychosomatic disease, we can confuse the past and the present, the real and the imaginary; our preference for the sights, sounds and smells of yesteryear has its foundation in our carefree childhoods. It was Immanuel Kant who stated that people were triggered not so much for an actual place as for the time of youth. David Lowenthal's The Past is a Foreign Country considers that nostalgia constructs a form of escapism; and by savouring these ruins of artificiality, author Susan Stewart condemns the condition as a "social disease," maintaining that the past is utopian and unreachable.

Loudun Calling (Part II of II)

THE DEVILS (1971) DVD release
AMELIA AND THE ANGEL (1958)

The BFI's DVD of Ken Russell's THE DEVILS is a strong contender for home video release of the year. The fact that the film remains controversial today is a remarkable tribute to the conviction of Russell and his creative acolytes.

AS the British Board of Film Classification celebrates its 100th year, it is fitting that the subject of one of its most volatile battles - Ken Russell's fearsome masterpiece THE DEVILS - was released as a 2-disc BFI DVD on the 19th of March. In this set, the BFI give us the original British X cut, and not the restored and extended 2004 version that has been seen at a handful of film festivals. The second disc of extras include Paul Joyce's 2002 documentary HELL ON EARTH, DIRECTOR OF THE DEVILS - featuring candid Russell interviews and unique footage of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies recording his score - and an audio commentary with Russell, critic Mark Kermode, editor Mike Bradsell and Joyce. For those wondering how this DVD includes HELL ON EARTH - which contained the missing "Rape of Christ" footage from the film, yet not include it in the feature itself – the part of the documentary containing the notorious sequence has also been excised by the powers that be at Warner Brothers.

The "Rape of Christ" - running just over two minutes - was long presumed lost until Kermode discovered the fabled footage in a single canister of film in England. This Holy Grail of censored material also contained other cuts, including Sister Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) performing lewd acts with a charred bone from Father Grandier (Oliver Reed)'s remains. The "Rape of Christ" segment itself sees Sister Catherine (Catherine Willmer) tearing and burning pages from the Bible while Sister Agnes (Judith Paris) frantically strokes a giant candle between her thighs. Naked nuns then abuse Christ as Father Mignon (Murray Melvin) scales a ladder and pleasures himself overlooking the orgy (here cinematographer David Watkin essentially creates a jerk-off zoom, as the camera darts in and out of the carnal activity to the rhythm of Mignon's strokes). This is all shown with repeated cuts of Grandier giving a solitary Communion, unaware of the pandemonium taking place within the walls of Loudun.

Mercedes Quadros - nine-year-old daughter of the Uruguayan ambassador to London - plays Amelia in Russell's AMELIA AND THE ANGEL.

The story of THE DEVILS is one that tells of battles not just with the censor, but also with the studio. Any film with a toxic mix of religion and politics would be a target, especially when originating from an increasingly conservative American financier (for the United States, it is rumoured that Warners ordered Bradsell to remove every nipple and pubic hair). After Russell showed his cut to the BBFC, the board couldn't release the film intact on grounds that "it would have been subject to the Obscene Publications Act," even though they aired no reservations with the shooting script. As stated in Joyce's absorbing - though re-edited - companion piece, not including the "Rape of Christ" rips the spine from THE DEVILS, as this scene is integral to the narrative both dramatically and philosophically: the debauchery shows the exploitative level of which the authorities aimed to achieve, reducing the easily manipulative nuns - women with no vocation or personal development - to play their game.

The DVD also includes Russell's redemptive 1958 short AMELIA AND THE ANGEL. This 16mm piece sees Amelia (Mercedes Quadros) scouring the streets of London looking for a replacement pair of angel wings for her school play, after she steals the initial set which are subsequently damaged beyond repair. Quadros, with her long dark hair and probing eyes, gives a performance which carries the simple narrative, and its many artistic flourishes skillfully shadow its minuscule budget and library music. On the outside, hand-held camera mimics a child's eye view of the crowded locality; here, Russell is clearly influenced by Albert Lamorisse's celebrated 1956 short THE RED BALLOON, about a little boy who triumphs over adversity in Paris's mean streets. Internally, the opening choreography of the angel ballet beautifully draws on Russell's own training as a dancer, the butterfly wallpaper in Amelia's room openly mocks her loss, and the ascent of a robed, bearded artist into the heavens on a ladder has a much more wholesome conclusion than Mignon's "Rape of Christ" activity. 

Loudun Calling (Part I of II)

THE DEVILS (1971)

Vanessa Redgrave cackles and leers as hunchbacked Sister Jeanne of the Angels. Her demonic voice, implements of masturbation and even a spider-walk were all seen two years before THE EXORCIST.

SYNONYMOUS with the word maverick, Ken Russell has been referred to as "the Wild Man of the BBC," "the infant terrible of British cinema," and a "fish and chips Fellini." Drawing from a wealth of historic and literary references, Russell made some of the most bombastic yet beautifully photographed films in motion picture history. His informed sensationalism not only horrifies but inspires, producing a body of work that is as much smothered in an impish yet intellectual sense of humour as it is in the director's passions and neuroses. After early work as a stills photographer, Russell made a number of ground-breaking programmes for the BBC's MONITOR and OMNIBUS strands, broadcasts which set the scene for television to be considered a serious art form; and in the 1970s and 80s, he practically invented the pop video and provided a template for MTV. Critics have consistently labelled Russell's work as pretentious and frequently vulgar, yet there is always a creative energy which jolts the viewer into his peculiar phallic-worshiping world of gods and demons.

Originally written for United Artists until "somebody actually read the script," THE DEVILS was picked up by Warners, and Russell's screenplay is based on a play by John Whiting - staged in London by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961 - and Aldous Huxley's 1952 book The Devils of Loudun. THE DEVILS - described by Joseph Lanza in Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films as "postwar British cinema's greatest marvel and nightmare" - tells the shocking true story of political and religious persecution in 17th century plague-infested France. King Louis XIII (Graham Armitage) and Cardinal Richlieu (Christopher Logue) conspire to create a new France where Church and State act as one, and troops are sent to destroy the fortification of Loudun, which is vital to Richlieu's plan to demonise the Protestant faith and ensure that Catholicism is embraced throughout the territories. Father Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed), the charismatic Jesuit priest of St Peter's Church, successfully rallies the citizens and halts the destruction.

Oliver Reed shines as Father Urbain Grandier. An otherwise unrelated Reed UK film - 1973's trippy class war oddity BLUE BLOOD - was bizarrely released in Italy as THE DEVILS, PART II.

What sounds like a dour historical drama unfolds into a frenzied pageant of gender-bending libertines, debauched exorcists, enthusiastically administered enemas and sado-masochist nuns. Grandier settles down with the virginal Madeleine de Brou (Gemma Jones), whom he marries in an unorthodox ceremony conducted by himself. Unknown to the priest, Sister Jeanne of the Angels (Vanessa Redgrave) - the hunchbacked Mother Superior of Loudun's Ursuline convent - is sexually obsessed with him and prays to Jesus to "take away my hump." After Grandier rejects an invitation to counsel her order and news reaches Jeanne of his marriage, the sister concocts jealous lies about Grandier visiting her in the form of an incubus. With the aid of sadistic medics Ibert (Max Adrian) and Adam (Brian Murphy), the chief exorcist of the Catholic Church Father Barre (Michael Gothard) tortures Jeanne into confessing herself possessed, and Grandier is arrested for diabolism and burned at the stake. Blistering and boiling, Grandier perishes, as Loudun is felled by explosives.

Though performances are uniformly excellent, this is Reed's finest hour, a stoic portrayal that provides the film with a linear path between the outrages and extremities. An anti-intellectual and dyslexic, Reed relied on Russell's simplistic method of direction, instructing the actor to give a take "Moody 1, Moody 2 or Moody 3." Reed always acknowledged limitations in his inimitable style - telling the director to "piss off" when asked to recite sixteenth-century Latin - and even though he despised the stage, Reed delivers speeches of great gravitas here, but such power is even diluted in one scene by cutting away to the theatrics of the King taking shots at Protestants dressed as blackbirds. Its a contrast you can either hate or love; hate because it deflects from the rhythm of Grandier, love because it shows a contrast of convictions at the centre of the film. Whatever your conclusions, it means you are undoubtedly watching a Ken Russell film.

Sister Jeanne licks the wounds of Grandier 
envisioned as Christ in one of her feverish fantasies.

THE DEVILS acts as a perfect storm of Russell at the height of his creativity, the beautifully lit cinematography of David Watkin, sublime set design by Derek Jarman, and a discordantly effective score by Peter Maxwell Davies. Similar to the outrage that encompassed MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN, THE DEVILS was roundly condemned as being anti-Church, but both works show the genuine mistrust in organisations which have the power to corrupt and distort. As with much of Russell, controversy has clouded the true value of his work: the male wrestling sequence between Alan Bates and Reed in WOMEN IN LOVE generated a tabloid campaign of outrage while its literary origins helped it past the censors, yet THE DEVILS was a target for lasting interference from its inception. During the shoot at Pinewood, stories circulated about the extras - overstimulated by naked nuns and a general environment of permissiveness - who manhandled the actresses and committed at least one confirmed sexual assault. When THE DEVILS was released as an X certificate - deleting the infamous "Rape of Christ" sequence - it was still banned outright by seventeen local councils, and BBFC chief examiner John Trevelyan resigned from his post the following month.

Unsurprisingly, THE DEVILS caused religious uproar. The Festival of Light picketed cinemas, in Rome polizia confiscated prints, and the Catholic Film Office branded the film "C for Condemned," "for turning serious historical fact into a drug-induced cinematic experience" and its "objectionable use of religious symbols reduced to flippant pop iconography." THE DEVILS also produced a scolding critical barrage: Newsweek's Paul D. Zimmerman concluded that the work demonstrated how Russell "has gone beyond extravagance to insanity"; The Iconoclast said it had "all the taste and restraint of a three-day gang bang"; and The Evening Standard's Alexander Walker provided a more personal attack by claiming its vistas "look like the masturbatory fantasies of a Catholic boyhood." Russell later hit Walker over the head with a rolled-up copy of the offending review on a late-night BBC news programme, before storming out of the studio.

Genius, madman, or both? Exploring Catholicism, sexual excess and kitsch, Ken Russell described himself as the saviour of the British film industry.

Over the centuries, scholars have been divided in their attempts to explain exactly why a convent came to believe that they had been overwhelmed by sorcery. One theory has the nuns driven to their fervour by accidentally ingesting ergot - a fungus which contains an LSD-like chemical on rye bread which has been allowed to dampen and warm. Ergot has also been liberally mentioned as a driving force for the Salem witch trials, and inspiration behind the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. But the most widely accepted notion is that the nuns were manipulated by politicians and priests within a hysteria which endures under long-term stress in captive environments. Over forty years later, THE DEVILS, in itself, exists with an aura of social epidemic; it is the film maker's one and only political statement, and a timeless one. "This is not the age of manners" Russell told Time Magazine in 1971, "this is the age of kicking people in the crotch and telling them something and getting a reaction. I want to shock people into awareness. I don't believe there's any virtue in understatement."