In 1973, David Pirie published the first book-length examination of British horror cinema, A Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema 1946-1972. Though now supplanted by Jonathan Rigby’s even more extensive English Gothic, it remains, in its original form (an updated and largely rewritten second edition in 2008, now retitled A New Heritage of Horror: The English Gothic Cinema, was a massive disappointment) on of the most important of all genre studies. He went on to write several other films on cinema (The Vampire Cinema (1975) and Anatomy of the Movies (1981)) as well as becoming a regular contributor to the BFI’s Sight & Sound and published a number of novels.
In 1984 he turned his hand to screenwriting with the borderline genre piece Rainy Day Women (1984) for the BBC’s Play for Today strand and in 1995 penned this science fiction tinged thriller for Screen Two which raised a number of issues as pertinent today as they were when it got its only outing on 4 June 1985. Black Easter uses its SF setting – a near-future Germany struggling to cope with the influx of refugees following a civil war in the ex-Soviet Union – to explore such weighty matters as racial and religious tensions, human trafficking and police and political corruption.
Trevor Eve stars as police officer Alex Fischer who in the early years of the 21st century is on suspension following a sexual indiscretion with a refugee that he was investigating that has already cost him his family and is threatening to end his career. But the murder – seemingly racially motivated – of a young Danish woman, apparently at the hands of Muslims protesting the plight of refugees stranded at the border brings him out of suspension and plunges him into a conspiracy that will lead him and a group of illegal immigrants to a devastating climactic encounter in a tunnel with a gang of Russian Mafia assassins.
Given more recent developments, the film’s portrayal of escalating conflict between Muslim and Western communities seems remarkable prophetic if entirely accidental. The police procedural stuff, like the science fiction angle, is largely perfunctory, merely a stage for Pirie to explore his vision of a continent split apart along religious and political lines. His vision of a post-Millennial Europe is one of a thoroughly corrupt establishment willing to do whatever it takes to ferment social unrest and injustice if it means clinging to power. The trans-national Eupol, the police outfit set up to maintain order along the EU’s borders, is riddled with ineptitude and corruption and their willingness to collude with Russian gangsters to “solve” the migrant problem is the trigger for the entire story.
Performances are mostly solid (Shaun Dingwell, John Shrapnel and Peter Stormare are all particularly good) but the characters are largely stock. Trevor Eve gets the best material – his cop starts out as unlikable, racist himself though outwardly his resentments and prejudices seem “mild” compared to the gang of fascist skinhead thugs he encounters outside the police station. His encounter with a young woman (Amanda Ooms) trying to help the refugees by smuggling some of them out of the camps sets him on a path to a redemption of sorts. Seeing at first hand the appalling conditions the refugees are forced to live under, and subsequently learning of the link between the Danish victim and the conspiracy, gradually transforms him into a man willing to put his own life on the line to save a small handful of refugees. Eve rises to the occasion, overcoming the limitations of his character and making the transformation believable and compelling.
The science fiction trappings are kept to a bare minimum, all the better to root the story in a believable near future milieu. Social change has been immense across Europe though technology has altered little – the only outward manifestation of genre gadgetry is a laughable chunky handheld computer used to play back illegally smuggled pornography.
If Black Easter were repeated in these politically fractious and complex times it would likely be lauded for its prescience and its bold take on a troubling situation. In 1995 when it was first broadcast the idea of starving refugees contained in ramshackle camps and ghettos on the very edges of mainland Europe would have seemed almost absurd. Time has, tragically, been kind to Black Easter, making it more relevant and necessary today than ever. And how depressing is that?
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