Directed by Wil Aaron and written by Gwyn Thomas, this film was played in primary schools thanks to Bwrdd Ffilmiau Cymraeg, the Welsh Film Board, who produced it. While it seems odd and a bit scary to us as adults, imagine watching this if you were under ten years old and a captive grade school audience. One of the extras for this film, in the Severin All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2 set, has Aaron discussing how the movie was made and how he learned years later, through Facebook, how many Welsh children were absolutely destroyed by his movie.

In its native tongue, this is called O’r Ddaear Hen. A man named William Jones (Charles Williams) is toiling in his garden when he discovers a stone head. It’s so frightening to his wife that it causes her nightmares and she forces him to give the head to a female archaeologist at a local university. An expert on the Celts, she brings it back to her own home, where it starts to infect her family with fear, including a monstrous animal that keeps showing up. It all leads to a car wreck that seems beyond the budget of this feature.

O’r Ddaear Hen has led to childhood traumas, such as this quote I found from Mari Williams, who watched it when she was a student: “Whose opinion was that this was a film for children? It has created hours of lost sleep, years and trauma, and close to an accident a few times – you turn around to see if there is a man with horns in the back of the car, while driving – not to be advised.”

It’s films like this that are the reason why this box set exists. It’s just such a singular and strange film, one that created a stir in a country you may never get to and soon, you learn so much that you never expected to know.

From the Old Earth is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including an introduction by musician Gruff Rhys, an interview with director Wil Aaron and featurettes on Welsh folklore and Welsh Film scholar Dr. Kate Woodward on the Welsh Film Board. There are also two shorts, Blood On the Stars, that has an introduction by Gruff Rhys and a cast reunion, and The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barra.

You can order this set from Severin.