Crossroads #1 | The Long Decade

Crossroads is an apposite name for this excellent new folk horror zine from the US. Edited by Candice Bailey and Gavin Lees, it's a publication that focuses on intersections (of culture and tradition, for example) and divergences (particularly from the recognised and popularised tropes of British folk horror). The blind banjo boy on the cover, taken from John Boorman's Deliverance, provides an instant remove from the Albionic and pastoral folk mythology and imagery of Summerisle, for instance. Here is something different, something singular, with a dark heart all of its own.

The inaugural issue looks at the period between 1969 and 1981, a period in the US known as the 'the long decade', a span of years that take us from "a time of transition from the peace and love of the 1960s to a turbulent era of disillusionment and oppression". The conflict, racial tension and war that often defined the period found form in its cultural output, especially in film.

The Long Decade presents a series of articles that look at the filmic folk horror of the period, which include the black American folklore of folk horror masterpiece Ganja and Hess, the Southern gothic folk horror of Deliverance, a look at rural white working class demonisation present in the hillbilly horror genre, and the rural purge, and  the suburban horror of Romero's Season of the Witch. And Leatherface... of course Leatherface!

Size: 215 x 140mm (perfect bound)

Pages: 80