Druid Come from a Land Down Under?

Alison's Birthday (Ian Coughlan, 1981)

Originally planned to give Robin Hardy's classic The Wicker Man (1973) a watch over the May bank holiday, but for one reason or another, I didn't get the chance. On the plus side, another folk horror film managed to sate my desire for pagan hijinks in the form of Ian Coughlan's relatively obscure Alison's Birthday (1981) from Australia.

The film begins when a trio of unconvincing looking school girls (they look like they're in their thirties), hold a Poundland ouija board session; one of whom is Alison, our film's heroine, played by none other than Mad Max Rockatansky's missus (Joanne Samuel) before she wound up as Toecutter's roadkill. One of the girls is possessed by the spirit of Alison's father, who warns her not to make any plans for her nineteenth birthday before it all ends tragically for her.

Jump to three years later and it's almost Alison's nineteenth birthday and who should ring her out of the blue? It's only her creepy aunt and uncle out in the boondocks; who happen to have a mini Stonehenge site plonked at the bottom of their garden. They convince her to come celebrate her birthday with them. You would think that a ouija summoning session which ended with the horrific death of her friend,  warning her to stay put would still run fresh in Alison's mind. No chance. She relunctantly goes with her boyfriend, Peter (Lou Brown). Anyone who has seen Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Richard Donner's The Omen (1976) should have an idea where this film is heading as Coughlin's film is very much a hybrid of the two classic films.

As deriviatve as it all might sound, it's a very enjoyable slow burn horror that has heaps of great atmosphere, particularly the Mirne ritual scenes (with Alf Stewart's wife) and it's blessed with a very memorable finale. Australia produced some top quality genre films during the late seventies and early eighties and while Alison's Birthday is hardly on the same level as Long Weekend (1978), Patrick (1978) or even Road Games (1981), this definitely feels like a quality effort from that era, regardless. 

It's a real shame that this film is only currently available on Severin's freakishly expensive box set, All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror. Would have loved to have copped this box set if had been more affordable, since there are a bunch of other movies on there like Eyes of Fire (1983) and Kier-La Janisse's feature documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021) that I'm desperate to see. Perhaps the YouTube gods will bless us with a rip of them, since that's how I wound watching an obscure title like Alison's Birthday in the first place.