‘The Last Sacrifice’ Explores the (Maybe?) Occult Crime That Inspired ‘The Wicker Man’

In 1945, an elderly man was murdered in the British countryside. The crime conjured up screaming headlines and remains a topic of fascination decades later. It was unusually brutal; the victim was found in a field pinned to the ground with his own pitchfork. But it gained even more notoriety once people began to wonder if perhaps witchcraft was involved.

Directed by Rupert Russell, The Last Sacrifice digs into Charles Walton’s mysterious death, which occurred on Valentine’s Day 81 years ago. The killing proved perplexing even to Robert Fabian, Scotland Yard’s most famous detective at the time, who was summoned to the rural crime scene to lend his expertise. Though he identified at least one potential suspect, he wasn’t able to close the case.

In the subsequent years, as the documentary details, a variety of theories have circulated as to why Walton was targeted. Was it a robbery gone wrong? Or more salaciously, was Walton perhaps some kind of blood sacrifice to ensure a robust harvest?

The idea of a police officer—unfamiliar with local culture—blundering into an isolated community determined to solve a bizarre murder informed David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual, which then became the basis for Robin Hardy’s 1973 film The Wicker Man. It ends very badly for the cop, who’s lured into a mystery fabricated by the locals and, famously, is burned alive in a rite intended to make their crops thrive.

That’s the basic framework of most folk horror tales, which often follow an outsider who realizes too late their seemingly quaint surroundings are harboring ancient evil, emanating from the people (Satanists, pagans, or witches, sometimes all three at once) or the land itself. And as The Last Sacrifice explores, The Wicker Man was just one of many British folk horror movies of the ‘60s and ‘70s that drew upon the tension between old-world traditions and modern intrusions.

If you want an encyclopedic examination of folk horror, the best resource is 2021’s Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched, which runs over three hours and explores the genre’s origins and many branches, far beyond British film and TV. The Last Sacrifice may still give you ideas for your watchlist, though its carefully edited clips include both narrative films (The Blood Beast Terror, The Devil Rides Out, and yes, The Wicker Man) as well as retro TV specials and documentaries dating back to the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s.

That latter element is what makes The Last Sacrifice, which also includes contemporary interviews with journalists, authors, and other experts, particularly interesting. It’s wild to see a fictional film contrasted with a sensational sequence taken from, say, a BBC investigation depicting “real” witches performing “real ceremonies.” The documentary demonstrates repeatedly just how much popularity witchcraft and the occult enjoyed in the 1960s and ‘70s. We meet more than one publicity-hungry character claiming to be “King of the Witches” and see talk-show interviews that prove even the mainstream media was eager to cash in on this titillating fad.

One of those vintage interviews, however, is with Charles Walton’s niece. Nearly 30 years after she helped search for his body, she’s still distressed that random strangers have theorized black magic had anything to do with it. To that end, The Last Sacrifice introduces a third theory that ties into an 1875 murder that happened in a nearby village, in which a woman was killed by a neighbor who suspected she’d cast a deadly spell on his animals.

Could someone have believed Walton himself was a witch and taken matters into their own hands? Perhaps the old man was blamed for a farmer’s bad luck and, like so many accused of witchcraft throughout history, became a violent scapegoat for the superstitious. As The Last Sacrifice points out, even supercop Fabian “jumped on the bandwagon” and introduced supernatural suspicions about the case in his memoirs—observations that had been curiously absent from his official reports written at the time of the murder.

At this point, we may never find out who killed Charles Walton or why. But the allure lingers. Stick around through the credits to hear a former Teletubbies performer describe his own weird experience while filming the children’s TV show not far from where Walton’s body was found. It’s one final freaky note in a film that brings admirable texture to what could have been just another historical true-crime tale.

The Last Sacrifice hits Shudder February 16.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.