Ashley Thorpe on Spitting Feathers

Ashley Thorpe from Carrion Films talks to Lee Rawlings and Tony Eccles on Spitting Feathers this Tuesday at 10pm.

Once upon a time, there were local legends and folk songs about monsters. There were execution chapbooks and there were penny dreadfuls. For a century these stories have been all but forgotten, until now.

About Carrion Films and the Penny Dreadful tradition

The Penny Dreadful or the Penny Bloods were sensational stories published in weekly parts. Usually with an emphasis on the terrible and the fantastic and often inspired by gothic melodramas of the time, the bloods were an important feature of Victorian sub culture.

Though once prolific, these items and the stories within are now scarce. The subjects once familiar, are now (bar Sweeney Todd and Dick Turpin perhaps) all but forgotten. Characters like ‘Spring heel Jack ’, once a household name, are now esoteric.

Cultures may change in time and place, but the roots of culture remain the same. Like any story they exist through their telling and the bloods are not the only legacy that has passed with a generation. Many folk stories and communal legends once integral to the fabric of a regional, and perhaps national, identity are being lost because they are simply not being passed from one generation to the next.

Carrion film seeks to redress that.

Each film will draw from neglected local legends and aspects of the early Penny Dreadful’s . Some, like the phantom coach of Okehampton castle, have been drawn from folk songs.  Some were once part of a shared English mythology, such as ‘the Lambton worm’, but have since slipped into obscurity outside the region that spawned them.

The diversity of these tales lies testament to the richness of our folklore’s heritage.

These then are simply new ways to tell old tales but they are tales worth telling.

Absolutely love it, and in awe at the amount of painstaking work involved. Hugely captivating. – Derren Brown Trick of the Mind and The Event, Channel 4.

Films that take the time to bow and kiss your hand before cutting your throat. Visionary and reverent animated gothic. Fantastic. Beautiful – Chris Alexander Fangoria magazine.

More scalpel than sledgehammer, refreshingly classic. – Lee Morgan D & C Film

Expressionist nightmares, evocative of Hammer and Amicus, thick with period detail. – Thom Hutchinson Filmstar magazine

AWARDS

‘Scayrecrow‘ – Winner of Media Innovation Award for Best Independent Film 2009
‘Scayrecrow’ & ‘The Screaming Skull’  – Both nominated for Best Animation, Horror UK 2009
‘Scayrecrow’ – Official Selection for Cannes Short Film Corner 2009

‘The Screaming Skull’ – Official selection for 17th Raindance Film Festival 2009