Damned By Dawn (cert. 15) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by Momentum Pictures on 7th March 2011.

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The list of hideous creatures that dwell in folklore is only limited by mankinds imagination and when it comes to summoning creatures to dismember, terrify and drag us off to parallel dimensions of eternal suffering, we’ve always had a real talent.

Horror cinema has it’s own myths and legends that borrowed heavily from European folklore and literature, before being honed by Universal and Hammer into their familiar shapes. Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstien are endlessly repackaged and so many Zombie movies are now being made that it’s beginning to resemble the late 70s Slasher boom.

So, what of other ancient figments of our collective imaginations? Sometimes it seems as if fantastic cinema, a umbrella term that should inspire filmmakers to new giddy heights of invention, is as homogenised as a modern high street. The genre keeps endlessly refining slasher movies, turns it’s focus onto the body via the limitless supply of grinding Torture-Porn or retells the undead apocalypse and man’s struggle to survive the aftermath, when I think it’s time to dig into the ancient myths that makes us who we are.

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In times gone by, when death was a closer presence in everyone’s life and science had yet to provide as many answers, we coped with mortality by spinning yarns about boatmen on the River Styx or the scream of the Banshee, carried for miles on the rushing wind.

The Banshee is an excellent place to start, after all, it gets increasingly difficult to wrong foot an audience with a careful eye for genre conventions so why not focus on something from our distant past that hasn’t been raked over a million times already? Asian horror scared Western audiences because it referenced folk tales from a culture very different to our own, but, once you get away from Vampires and Werewolves, there’s a rich seam of ghouls and monsters ready to take a bite out of the screen. Where, for instance, is the scary gothic tale of Spring Heeled Jack?

Damned by Dawn mixes Evil Dead style Demon-splatter with a vein of Irish mythology, about a woeful creature who screams in mourning for the deceased in prominent local families. The natural howl of storm winds whipping across the rolling green landscape was thus transformed into a howl of pain for those left behind. But beware those who interfer in the Banshee’s task, for they’ll meet a end that’s truly terrible…

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Time then, to learn a little more about this undersubscribed movie fiend…

Although the Banshee hasn’t got the biggest list of film credits, at least one notable film has featured her screams of torment. Vincent Price starred in the 1970 horror cheapie CRY OF THE BANSHEE

WIKIPEDIA has an informative entry on the myth, including a nice bit of trivia for us Welsh folk, there’s a local version for valley dwellers, THE HAG OF THE MIST.

IRELAND EYE has more on the legend, including the ‘fact’ that a Banshee can have three forms, a young woman, a stately matron or a raddled old hag, while YOUR IRISH covers similar ground.

MARVEL COMICS have never been fussy when it comes to co-opting historic myths to help bolster their ever expanding and extremely profitable universe. Their take on the Banshee keeps the superhuman scream intact, only now it’s a mutation that leads it’s owner to join the X-men.

BONUS CLIPS:

Check out backstage footage from the making of DAMNED BY DAWN…