The Last Sacrifice, on Shudder

In America, small towns are friendly and welcoming. Not in England (and particularly not the Cotswolds). That’s basically why we have folk horror. They are used to having neighbors die in gruesome unexplained ways, so they resent it when outsiders come to investigate them. That was the case for Sgt. Neil Howey in Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man and also for the legendary Detective Sergeant Robert Fabian when investigating the real-life murder of Charles Walton. Filmmaker Rupert Russell delves into the case widely considered to be the partial inspiration for The Wicker Man, in the context of the rise of Wicca/witchcraft in 20^th Century United Kingdom, in the documentary The Last Sacrifice, which premieres tomorrow on Shudder.

If Russell only addressed the Walton murder, his film would still be one of the more interesting true crime docs. Walton sounds like a perfectly nice farm laborer and landscaper, who had the grisly misfortune to be impaled with his own pitchfork and slashed with his pruning shear, so probably not suicide.

In fact, the case was so sensational, DS Fabian was dispatched to lead the investigation, but he was shocked by the locals, whom he found disinterested, recalcitrant, and uncooperative. At the time, Fabian never failed to solve a case, so this blemished his perfect record.

Subsequently, many “experts,” like anthropologist Margaret Murray, argued the Walton murder was a ritualistic sacrifice related to witchcraft. They found a receptive audience thanks to the likes of Alex Sanders, who became a tabloid celebrity as the face of hip swing sixties Paganistic wicca.

Although not directly related to the Walton case, Russell’s discussion of Sanders and related figures makes sense, because it perhaps helped inspire the general milieu they capitalized upon. Horror fans will also enjoy the way he uses clips from folk horror films, especially Wicker Man, but also including films like Wheatley’s Kill List, Aster’s Midsommar, and Hammer’s The Witches, to illustrates various concepts and themes (while clearly labeling them as fiction).

To Russell’s credit, he also includes skeptical voices, who openly doubt claims Walton was murdered as part of a pagan sacrifice. However, his on-camera experts draw sufficient parallels with Hardy’s film, so that fans of the cult classic should not feel misled.

As a result, Last Sacrifice is a far superior examination of folk horror than the three-and-a-half-hour survey documentary, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, which frequently repeated the same talking points, many times over. Frankly, Last Sacrifice gives the impression England was collectively losing its mind, from 1945 until the election of Margaret Thatcher.

It is also a superior true crime documentary that fully explores the strange lore surrounding the killing. Obviously, it is a perfect doc for Shudder, which would fit nicely in a curated collection with Mansfield 66/67 and Sympathy for the Devil. Enthusiastically recommended, The Last Sacrifice starts streaming tomorrow (2/16) on Shudder.