The 1970s didn’t simply introduce paranoia to cinema — they fused it into the medium’s DNA like a spliced strip of film held together by nicotine fingers and institutional dread.

From Kenneth Anger’s ritual montages to Jodorowsky’s psychedelic Westerns and Hammer’s lurid satanic spectacles, cult cinema of the 1960s wasn’t just entertainment — it was ritual. This in-depth essay explores how the occult shaped a decade of underground film, counterculture, and horror that still haunts cinema today.

From Dr Crippen’s wireless-tracked flight across the Atlantic to the unthinkable cruelty of the Moors Murderers, Britain’s most infamous murder trials have shaped not only criminal justice but the nation’s conscience. These ten cases reveal how forensic science evolved, how miscarriages of justice fuelled abolitionist campaigns, and how society confronted its darkest fears in the courtroom.