You know we’re huge fans of The Silver Bayonet, Don’t Look Back, and other horror games – now let’s take a look at some of the films that have inspired us! The Goonhammer Historicals team writes up summaries of some of our favorite historical horror films that you can check out on most streaming services.
Ghost Brigade (or Grey Knight, or The Killing Box)
Martin Sheen is briefly in this movie, along with Billy Bob Thornton, David Arquette, and Matt LeBlanc — an amazing cast. The story is set in the American Civil War – slave traders bring a voodoo entity with them to the US and the entity starts raising up dead soldiers from both sides to fight a war for it. Both blue and gray must join together to fight the zombie army – and at one point they actually cast silver bayonets and use them, which is amazing.
This is a B movie with not great production value but some good inspiration for Silver Bayonet scenarios and ACW stuff. Interestingly enough, it was released on video by Turner the same year Gettysburg came out.
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning
The only Canadian horror movie on our list, this is actually the third movie in a trilogy but serves as a prequel. It takes place in 1815 in the Hudson Bay area. The two main characters, Ginger and Brigitte, are ancestors of characters played by the same actors and with the same names in the other two movies. They’re traipsing through the Canadian wilderness after their trader dad gets killed and loses their horse when they happen upon a fort that is being besieged by werewolves. Lots of intrigue happens with the soldiers in the fort and the girls eventually have to defend each other from the soldiers and the werewolves.
The costumes and sets are excellent in this movie. You can find it on Tubi for free; it serves as a great inspiration especially for The Silver Bayonet: Canada.
Witchfinder General (The Conqueror Worm)
Set during the English Civil War, this movie stars Vincent Price as Matthew Hopkins, a real life witch hunter who terrorized the English countryside by torturing and killing innocent people (many of them women) who he considered witches. He eventually runs into a young officer who takes umbrage with the killing of his betrothed’s priest dad. The officer goes on Revenge Tour 16k30 and Vincent Price is definitely not up for that.
The horror in this movie mostly comes from the torture scenes; they’re pretty graphic. It’s a good inspiration for ECW games and Devilry Afoot in particular.
You can find this movie as The Conqueror Worm (the name for the movie as released in the USA) on Pluto.
The Witch
Set in 1630s New England, this movie tells the story of a small Puritan family who have been removed from a settlement because of a religious disagreement and end up dealing with a titular Witch. It’s both Robert Eggers’ directorial debut and Anya Taylor-Joy’s acting debut, but really the most important person in this movie is Black Phillip, the family goat. The actor goat was notoriously a huge asshole, never doing what the cast or director actually wanted. He even injured the main character’s ribs.
The misery and child suffering in this movie can’t be understated. It’s a rough go, but definitely worth a watch, and a huge inspiration for stuff like Devilry Afoot and The Silver Bayonet.
Ravenous
This movie is a bit of a hidden gem. It stars Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, Jeffrey Jones, and David Arquette as soldiers in the US Army during the US-Mexican War stationed high in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The story starts out with Pearce’s character distinguishing himself in battle in Mexico after first being a coward; he is found out and sent to the remote post as a punishment.
He arrives and meets a stranger who claims that the camp commander led a wagon train that got lost, with all of the party members turning on each other and cannibalizing the dead. He wants the army to go out and find the remains, so they set off. The Native American scout with them warns them of the w*ndigo myth, but they don’t pay him much attention. What happens after is part black comedy, part horror, part historical fiction, and well worth watching. It’s got a killer soundtrack, too. It’s an incredibly unique movie that I love.
Atun-Shei does a great summary of why he loves the movie here.
The Keep
A WW2 movie, finally! This is a really fun movie from 1983 about a Gebirsjager unit taking over a castle in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania. The soldiers, of course, disturb an ancient evil known as Radu Molasar that starts knocking fascists off. More fascists from the SS are detached to the local village, killing innocent civilians as punishment for the goings-on at The Keep. Molasar wreaks a ton of havoc while a Jewish historian and a Greek stranger engage in a battle of wits. This is Michael Mann’s second film, after which he did Manhunter and then possibly the best historical film ever made, The Last of the Mohicans.
This movie is available to stream for free on Pluto.
The Sudbury Devil
Shot on a budget of around $25,000, this independent horror film is directed by Andrew Rakich from Atun-Shei Films, who you might know for his series Checkmate, Lincolites!
This film takes place just after the end of King Philip’s War in Sudbury, Massachusetts. A local man claims to have seen spirits in the woods, so two witch hunters go out with him as a guide and end up in some real devil hours. The production values are not huge, being a low budget independent horror movie, but the acting is good and the story is interesting, eerie, and evocative of the period. The costumes are great and it is definitely inspiration for some Devilry Afoot or Don’t Look Back 1698.
The movie is available to stream for free on Tubi.
Bone Tomahawk
Daniel “Zuul the Cat” Rucker
I can’t even remotely begin to explain how much this movie rules. Set at the tail end of the 19th century in the American West, basically some townsfolk are kidnapped by a cannibalistic, inbred outcast tribe of Native Americans and Sheriff Franklin Hunt (Kurt Russell) forms a posse to go and rescue the kidnap victims. While the plot sounds pretty basic, it’s 132 minutes of some of the most horrific shit I’ve ever seen in a movie.
The action scenes are really great, but particularly brutal. Do not watch this movie if you can’t handle gore, because brother, there’s a lot of it. In terms of historical accuracy – well, it takes place in the Wild West. That’s about it for accuracy, as it’s featuring a completely made up group of Native Americans, but it does feature quite a roster of Native American actors (specifically Zahn McClarnon, one of my favorite actors). For a really great, in depth analysis of this film, I highly recommend this post over on Medium.
Bone Tomahawk is streaming right now on Netflix (US).
Dead Snow
Another WW2-ish movie – this one is actually a horror-comedy. Released in 2009, it’s been very popular on streaming since then. The story centers around a group of students who are partying in a remote cabin when a stranger approaches and tells them of SS death squads that occupied the area during WW2. They stole all the valuables from local towns, but were chased into the mountains to freeze to death by local militias.
Of course the kids somehow disturb some of the treasure stolen by the SS and awaken the frozen zombies of the German soldiers. Lots of chasing and fighting ensues, with some hilarious moments. There is a sequel called Dead Snow 2: Red Vs Dead where the main character enlists the support of Soviet zombies.
Dead Snow is streaming on Plex for free.
Viy
Triphos
Released in 1967, this is known as the first horror movie to ever be officially released in the USSR. It’s based on a folk tale from the early 1800’s, written by Nikolai Gogol, and it’s a trip.
The movie follows a seminary student, Khoma, at school sometime in the 19th century, as he and the rest of the students get released on what I can only assume is the seminary version of spring break. As Khoma and some friends are taking shelter for the night at a barn, he encounters a witch and things go sideways from there. Equal parts whimsical and scary, Viy is great at sucking you into the world it’s presenting and then just assaulting you with crazy visuals that land super well despite the obvious limitations involved in making the movie. The creators had a very limited budget and it shows, they had to get super inventive with the special effects and they ended up making something super fun that, at times, borders on the psychedelic.
You can watch it for free, legally, on youtube!
A Field in England
Lenoon
I started off at Goonhammer writing about the English Civil war. Since then I’ve written a lot about historicals, but I’ve also gotten into weird modeling stuff with twigs and lichen and bone. Combining the two into a horror movie is pretty easy because we’ve got Ben Wheatley’s A Field In England.
Following deserting Civil War soldiers who are tripping out of their minds while dealing with alchemist, a treasure hunt, the pressures of war, rivalry, murder and madness, A Field in England is a fantastically eerie, spooky movie that captures both the weirdness of English politics and spirituality at the time and how terrifying it can be to just accidentally fall in with a bunch of really violent weirdos. It’s shot kind of messy, in very stark black and white, got done in less than two weeks and cost bugger all. It all comes together in a fantastic experience that’s deeply creepy and sticks with you until you finally work it all out much, much later on.
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