Hot Fuzz’s Hidden Horror Influences

Hot Fuzz is respected for its deconstruction of/homage to policework depicted in film. It valorises a realistic depiction of policework, while also indulging in the stylised violence of cop-centric action films like Point Break or Bad Boys II. What is less talked about, however, is the influence of other genres on Hot Fuzz. The film’s support of proper and diligent policework is shaped by horror narratives as much as police or crime fiction.

Hot Fuzz is about a skilled and perfectionist London cop, Nicholas Angel. He is transferred to a sergeant position in the country town of Sandford. Despite Sandford’s seemingly crime-free appearance, Angel suspects foul play when a series of gruesome “accidents” descend on residents of the town. Angel’s investigation leads him to the town’s shadowy Neighbourhood Watch Alliance (NWA), who have been ridding Sandford of citizens who are deemed undesirable to the town’s “model image”.

While the film has a typical murder mystery structure, a closer look uncovers influences of Italian giallo horror and British folk horror. Comparing Hot Fuzz’s narrative structure to the aforementioned European horror cinema traditions can give us insight into how Hot Fuzz blends genre narrative tropes to provide a new perspective on the role of the detective in crime stories. The detective in crime fiction uses rationality and modern ideals of justice to solve crimes, but Hot Fuzz demonstrates how a detective must accept the fallibility of rationality and justice. The evil forces in giallo and folk horror don’t abide by those rules, and neither do the NWA.

Giallo influences: subverting a typical crime story

Hot Fuzz’s audience may expect a murder mystery, or whodunnit, plot during their first viewing. The whodunnit genre label refers to a type of crime fiction with two stories that converge at the conclusion. In a typical whodunnit, the first story takes place before the film’s beginning and details the motivations and methods behind the criminal. The events presented on-screen are called the second story and comprise the investigation into the crime. The second story concludes with the detective providing a detailed reconstruction of the first story.

The film provides viewers with clues towards a scheme for securing land rights. Angel then connects this motive to creepy supermarket owner Simon Skinner and leads the police force to him. Angel arresting Skinner and explaining his motive would be the ending of a typical whodunnit story. But this isn’t where the film ends. The true ending better resembles an Italian giallo film ending.

Giallo horror films were inspired by giallo novels written by Italian authors, who were inspired by American and British whodunnit stories. These novels diverged from the rational deduction method of American and British crime authors and were closer to Stefano Tani’s definition of anti-crime fiction. ¹ Tani classified anti-crime fiction as a crime story that replaces the detective as the story’s centralising figure with ambiguity. ²

Giallo films of the ‘60s and ‘70s frequently made their mysteries more ambiguous by having multiple people be the killer. Blood and Black Lace (often considered the earliest example of a giallo film) reveals that the murders were committed by Count Morlachi and his wife working together. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage unmasks a gallery owner as the killer but subverts that by revealing he was working for someone who first appeared to be one of his victims: his wife. Neither film answers which murders were committed by whom among the multiple killers. Hot Fuzz uses a similar twist by having the culprits be the NWA, of which Skinner is a member.

The first murder scene in Hot Fuzz (pictured above) deliberately uses typical imagery from giallos. The killer is disguised in a hood and all-black clothing, a common look for murderers in giallo films. The scene features bold and stylistic red and blue lighting, which emulates the highly theatrical lighting of Blood and Black Lace. The use of giallo iconography and lighting techniques orients the audience to the film’s giallo influences and invites them to interpret Hot Fuzz through the lens of a giallo.

Interpreting Hot Fuzz through the lens of giallo reveals that a detective’s rational mindset can’t always explain violent or horrific acts. Anti-crime fiction unnerves audiences by presenting them with a solution that they cannot rationally accept. ³ The film uses dialogue and visual details to give audiences all the clues necessary to make Angel’s accusation of Skinner believable. The rational motive Angel constructed is disproven, however, meaning that a whodunnit story’s belief in rational detection is not at the centre of Hot Fuzz. Instead of a rational explanation, the audience is forced to accept that the NWA committed barbaric acts over something of little importance: winning a village of the year contest. Rewatching Hot Fuzz with the twist in mind allows the whodunnit plot to be recontextualised as a horror genre plot. Detective fiction revolves around using reason and rationality to give an explanation for the inexplicable. Horror narratives similarly involve confronting the inexplicable, but function by accepting, rather than disproving, the existence of something irrational.

Hot Fuzz and The Wicker Man: rural town horrors

In addition to giallo films, Hot Fuzz shares a lot in common with The Wicker Man. The latter is one of the three films commonly regarded as emblematic of the folk horror tradition, along with Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw. The common tropes of folk horror include a rural setting and a naïve outsider as the narrative focus. ⁴ The Wicker Man combines those elements with crime fiction elements. This makes it a more direct object of comparison to Hot Fuzz.

The similarities between Hot Fuzz and The Wicker Man begin with just the story beats. Sergeant Neil Howie, a devout Christian from the Scottish mainland, is dispatched to the small village-island of Summerisle in search of a missing girl. Summerisle’s people practice a variation of paganism, and repeatedly claim that there either is no missing girl or that the person has died. Howie, undeterred, uses investigative techniques to conclude that the missing girl is being held as a planned sacrifice for a plentiful harvest. The ending, however, reveals that the girl was just bait to lure Howie to the cultists; Howie is the planned sacrifice.

The Wicker Man’s plot, like Hot Fuzz, pits the detective against something that defies his personal beliefs. By extension, Summerisle becomes a horrific antithesis to modern conceptions of morality and civilisation. Paul Newland argued that rural settings in horror can act as spaces in which the ideologies of modernity and enlightenment might be challenged. ⁵ This idea of horror can easily be applied to Nicholas Angel’s confrontation with the NWA. The rational deduction that is prided in traditional crime fiction only came about after the Enlightenment, when criminology was established. Modern criminology posits that punishment should be determined by the crime. The NWA, on the other hand, execute Sandford citizens for the smallest of infractions.

Analysing Hot Fuzz through the lens of folk horror provides further clues to the presence of a dark force in Sandford. One of the first places that Howie visits in Summerisle is a pub, and Nicholas Angel visits a pub when he arrives in Sandford. Both police detectives face challenges to their worldviews within these bars. In Sandford, the bartender and his wife allow underage patrons to drink in their pub, because it prevents them from causing trouble out in town. The patrons of Summerisle’s pub, meanwhile, sing racy pub songs about young girls and fornicate outside, visibly disturbing the virginal Howie.

As outsiders to the rural communities, Angel and Howie want to impose their own beliefs of proper behaviour onto their environments. Howie resists the temptations of sex from the pub owner’s daughter, and Angel arrests and processes the children for underage drinking. Neither man knows that their actions support their respective environments’ violent cultures. Howie’s virginity is one of the qualities that makes him an ideal sacrifice. Angel arresting the children from the pub marks them for death by the NWA, with their corpses discovered among those of the NWA’s victims.

Defeating the horror: Nicholas Angel’s role as a horror protagonist

Nicholas Angel’s beliefs and methods, however, are not invalidated by the Hot Fuzz’s horror-influenced narrative. An investigative approach is still crucial to bringing him to the film’s climax. Art philosopher Noel Carroll observed that horror narratives frequently revolve around a process of proving, disclosing, discovering, and confirming the existence of something that defies existing conceptual schemas. ⁶ In Angel’s case, the NWA doesn’t believe in rationality and proper justice. Knowing that the central threat of Hot Fuzz defies rational conceptions, seemingly pointless moments suddenly become crucial to cracking the case. The petty reasons that the NWA give for killing their victims – horrible acting, an ugly house, or an annoying laugh – first appear as one-off jokes, shortly before each murder happens. These jokes, however, are clues towards the motives of the NWA: a first story to help us understand and prove the existence of something irrational lurking beneath Sandford. Angel’s commitment to rational investigation was necessary for finding the murderers, he just did not consider an irrational solution.

It’s only when Angel adapts to the town’s violent, pre-Enlightenment method for doling out justice that his idea of civilised justice prevails. Angel brings down the NWA members through violence so he can duly prosecute them for the murders they committed. Furthermore, Angel’s climactic showdown with the NWA represents the moment of confrontation with a horror monster once its existence has been proven and disclosed. ⁷

The European horror films I’ve analysed don’t have such satisfying conclusions as the one in Hot Fuzz. The murderers in Blood and Black Lace are never apprehended by the police, instead killing each other in a failed double-cross, while the protagonist of The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is saved at the last minute by the all-too-convenient arrival of the police. Howie doesn’t come close to surviving his encounter with evil in The Wicker Man. Angel, on the other hand, can defeat an irrationally minded and dangerous threat while remaining true to his principles.

Hot Fuzz demonstrates how genre narrative expectations determine a viewer’s interpretation of a story. A crime fiction protagonist is supposed to serve as the perfect guardian of rationality. The influence of giallos’ anti-crime fiction structure, however, undermines the rationality Angel, and the viewers, had trusted up to that point. Rewatching the film with knowledge of an irrational influence reveals that a monstrous presence had been lurking beneath an innocent rural community the whole time. Crime fiction and horror fiction protagonists both seek to confront frightening and/or violent presences within their communities. Analysing Hot Fuzz as a horror film rather than a crime film makes it a protagonist’s story of embracing irrational behaviours to properly defeat the horrific presence and restore order.

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