Sergeant Howie travels to Summerisle, Scotland to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. He soon discovers the tight-knit community has a sinister secret involving pagan rituals and human sacrifice.
Hardy films a Scottish island as a folkloric trap that has been smiling at the policeman from frame one. The horror is community as the apparatus that needs the sacrifice.
A devout policeman investigates a pagan island and discovers he is the investigation. The original folk-horror cult film, and still the most chilling.
British Lion mutilated Hardy’s pagan horror to fit on a double bill with Don’t Look Now and then reportedly used the original negative as landfill under the M3 motorway. The film survived only because a workprint had been sent to Roger Corman. The 2013 "Final Cut" reassembled it from fragments.
The rare horror film with no monster and no gore — just a devout policeman walking calmly toward a fate the whole village has already decided. Folk horror's founding text.
Robin Hardy's horror classic was his debut film, and his later efforts did not achieve the same success
A devout policeman investigates a missing girl on a pagan island where everyone smiles and everyone lies. He thinks he's the detective; he's the sacrifice.
