The film Robin Redbreast (1970) was produced as part of the program Play For Today on the BBC. The film was written by John Bowen and directed by James MacTaggart who worked regularly as a director for the Play For Today program. In the years since its first airing Robin Redbreast has become a cult classic. It’s often cited as an influence on The Wicker Man (1973).
However, unlike The Wicker Man, Robin Redbreast deals directly with a number of political ideas. The film addresses issues such as a woman’s right to choose, deriving from those societal anxieties much of its horror. The film also addresses the process of aging from a woman’s perspective, tackling head on the taboo nature of female sexuality in mainstream culture.
All things considered Robin Redbreast is an anomaly. That a film made for television could address these ideas frankly in the early seventies is amazing. One of the reasons why the film gets away with as much as it does is because it is a horror film. More specifically it is a folk horror film.
Robin Redbreast locates in British folklore a number of conceptual connections with contemporary Britain society. The terror the film provokes from the viewer is very much rooted in the film’s observation that little has changed in terms of the bodily commodification of the female or the shame that society instills in sexual women. The folklore of ancient Britain becomes a kind of mirror of the Britain of the seventies.
In fewer than eighty minutes Robin Redbreast weaves a complex web of conflicting ideologies before coming out as decidedly progressive. The conspiratorial nature of its horrors being the most effective facet of a film whose narrative economy is reminiscent of Val Lewton’s work in the genre. Robin Redbreast is a masterpiece of horror not only because it accomplishes so much with so little, but because it has the audacity to pursue connections that most horror films are content only to imply or allude to.
