"Rudkin's drama, appearing a year after Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now and Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man, is often hailed as a watermark of British horror. But its real peers are eldritch TV thrillers such as Jonathan Miller's adaptation of an MR James story Whistle and I'll Come to You (1968), Alan Garner's The Owl Service (1969-1970) and Nigel Kneale's The Stone Tape (1972)... deeply layered, rich in sexual and mythological motifs, trusting the audience to have the patience and intelligence to engage with its handling of complex theological, historical and political ideas, it also migrates beyond the social-realist templates of the majority of screen and stage productions in the early 1970s – the West Country has never looked so Aztec" - Sukhdev Sandhu, The Guardian