The Death Metal Baron on Rewilding, HP Lovecraft and Masonry

We meet the ‘Death Metal Baron’, 21st Lord of Dunsany Randal Plunkett, at his family estate in County Meath, Ireland. Having resided there for 900 years, the family are the oldest in Ireland still in their original home.  

Randal Plunkett at home in his County Meath Estate

Lord Dunsany recently came into the news, not for the rather excellent oddity of being a ‘Metal Baron’, but for his project of rewilding 750 acres of the 1600 acre family estate, the largest rewilding project in the country and one of the largest private  rewildings in Europe,  inspired by his interest in environmentalism and veganism. 

Randal is also a horror filmmaker, inheriting a passion for the macabre from his great-grandfather the famous Lord Dunsany (Edward Plunkett) a fantasy writer and one of the originators of the genre. Writers of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror who cite Dunsany as a major influence include J. R. R. Tolkien , H. P. Lovecraft, Frank Herbert, Arthur C. Clarke, Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Gene Wolfe, and Ursula K. Le Guin, among many more. Brendan Heard is an obsessive fan of the entire corpus of Dunsany’s disciples, and met Randal for a conversation on the County Meath estate for a tour and talk about all things dark and damned.

The Dunsany Estate in County Meath is the largest rewilding project in Ireland, and one of the largest in Europe

Anyone who knows about 20th century fantasy, sci-fi or horror knows about Randal’s great-grandfather, the 18th Lord Dunsany. Not only were legendary pulp writers Lovecraft and Howard strongly influenced by him, but Dune and Lord of the Rings are indebted to him.

People like him and that generation absorbed a lot of influence and fed off each other, making  something really unique. It had a feel of the time, and was all very exciting. It’s very poor now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m always open minded and hopeful, but it’s almost impossible to do anything really exciting nowadays. Not because of the talent or the ideas, but because nobody wants it.  

It’s almost impossible to do anything really exciting nowadays. Not because of the talent or the ideas, but because nobody wants it. 

I’ve come across this as a filmmaker. I like the original writing where you can get away with anything, but often, in the end, it means you’re not going to sell your work.

People’s minds are more closed? 

The film industry still relies on a gatekeeper system with distribution, where you need to go through what buyers want. If you experiment or overcomplicate things people aren’t used to seeing, then there’s trouble. I had this problem with my movie The Green Sea, because I decided to do something a little bit different. I had to tailor things in favour of, shall we say, ‘established thinking’ unfortunately. I used to think it was just the buyers, but even the audience has become accustomed to recycled routines of entertainment norms. 

It’s much harder to break through with a totally new idea.  

Regardless, I’m maybe not the most intellectual generation of the Dunsanys, compared to the 18th Baron. He was the most unique. Edward’s father Horace, my great-great-grandfather, spent all the money building the schools in Ireland before his son decided he was going to be a fantasy writer, which basically means you’re going to be broke! Just like Lovecraft was. 

Edward Plunkett, The 18th Baron Dunsany and Randal’s great-grandfather

Lord Dunsany was an early pioneer of the horror genre of fiction

Dunsany’s books inspired well known macabre masters such as HP Lovecraft…

…whose supernatural tales of the eerie would inspire most of the great works of fantasy we know and love today…

Such as J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy

Yet your great-grandfather almost single-handedly created the genre of fantasy?

I don’t go in absolutes but I’d say he’s definitely second generation. Some of the first generation were very cryptic and it wasn’t really like fantasy as we know it today. He instigated the turn where you’d construct a universe out of nothing, with its  own gods and everything. 

Yeah, in the old days, even pop films, something like Star Wars, you just got dropped into this universe. They didn’t bother explaining how or why it was there. 

That’s the beauty of cinema and fiction, I want to feel the mystery. I love mystery and things that don’t make sense. I’m happy enough to just make small movies that nobody’s going to watch, because I’m going to make the ones I want to watch. That’s the only way you can think about anything.  

I’m happy enough to just make small movies that nobody’s going to watch, because I’m going to make the ones I want to watch.

If you look at any article that’s written about me just look at how many comments there are. The reason people love  putting me in the newspaper isn’t because I am saying anything interesting, it’s because they love clickbait, you can put  me up and they call me Lord or Baron or some bullshit like that and then the comments section absolutely explodes. You’ll get 400 comments from people writing “I love nature, oh he’s a filmmaker! Oh, that’s so cool!” and on the other side they’ll be like, “oh imperialist baby killer blah blah” all that stuff.  

Randal marauding through his enormous 900-year-old estate, which he is rewilding

The Survivor & Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft

Edward Plunkett’s Over The Hills and Far Away, an early adult fantasy novel

Randal feels he has inherited his great-grandfather’s obsession with the mysterious and the macabre

Ah, the tribulations of being an elite. 

Yes, people behind closed doors, manipulating the world. I don’t believe in lizard people per se, but there has always been groups of people, even in my great grandfather’s time because he was frankly in one of  those groups. He was a high-ranking Mason in this time, we’ve got letters here from Alistair Crowley, so he would have been involved in all that. But he wasn’t into any pervy sexual stuff like Crowley. He was a gentleman. I think he thought Crowley was a bit weird. But, again, he probably enjoyed him because he was also an eccentric.  

I don’t believe in lizard people per se…

Well, Crowley had some genius things to say. But he was also truly depraved. 

Yeah, my great-grandfather Edward didn’t have any satanic pervert in him, no. He was just a guy who liked being out in nature and in his own world. He had a lot more time for people like Lovecraft, young guys trying to get a foot up and do something creative, something that was going to enrich rather than destroy, it was more about enrichment. 

But it was also the structure of his writing. There was a vivid musicality to his literature. Nowadays, people want more narrative, and more character-based stories. 

Game of Thrones. 

Yep. Because that’s what’s popular. You look at when that began, with Tolkien’s generation, who started creating more action (he and my grandfather were rivals). Not long after that it became like fast food. By the time we reach our generation, you’re in the main plot in under ten pages.  

Game of Thrones, an example of contemporary fantasy that focuses much more on character narratives than world building

Today it’s about character relations and the relatable real-life drama, which is totally opposite to their way of storytelling, where it felt like you were reading a manuscript from a 1000-year-old tomb or something.  

Yes, that was definitely true of Lovecraft. He was very heavily influenced by my great-grandad. In fact, we have some letters here from Lovecraft. My girlfriend laughs because she started reading my Edward’s autobiography and she says he’s basically me a hundred years ago! 

He was also Ireland’s chess champion at one point, competing against the Russian chess champion for the world title. So he was a real… what’s the word…

The Dunsany estate covers 1600 acres and is situated around 20 miles northwest of Dublin

Polymath? Like Bruce Dickinson.  

Yes! Like Bruce Dickinson. Olympic fencing, aeroplanes, and writing really great songs. Edward was also a friend of Yeats, though sadly they had a falling out at the end. But Yeats remains revered here in Ireland to this day whilst sadly, in many ways, Edward fell into the cracks. If you go to the great literary museums and look up Irish writers, you’ll never see my grandfather appear in anything, despite his huge influence. 

I noticed that when I read interviews with you in the Guardian and elsewhere, no one one brought him up or knew about him, to my knowledge.  

He comes up now and then in pop reference, mostly from America, and often in relation to Lovecraft. The director Guillermo Del Toro, for example, is very open about taking a lot of influence from Lord Dunsany. Also, you’ll like this because, like me, you like your heavy metal, but I have a friend who’s good friends with Phil Anselmo of Pantera. He says Phil often mentions the influence Lord Dunsany has had on him.  

Edward suffered during the Great War then once he was home he was called again, this time to Dublin, to face the rebellion. His car and driver turned up at the wrong side of the city. As they turned around the rebels fired shots at the car. A bullet hit him right on the face.

Dunsany and Dog

Those old school guys were like that. Tough. Always amazing stories. 

Now I can only honour his legacy.  

You honour his creativity by making the horror films. 

True, that’s my game, but it’s hard being a filmmaker here. I’ve never received financial backing in Ireland. In fact, my full-length feature never even got into any of the Irish film festivals, which is ironic, as it’s selling very well on VOD [video-on-demand]. There’s some prejudice in this country towards people like me – they hear I’m an actual baron and they say ‘oh isn’t that cute’. 

I suppose it is the chance for a mediocre managerial type to have a little clerical powertrip on a baron. Where did you first get interested in horror films? 

My family have always been very intellectual. My mother was a prominent architect and my father was an artist. When I was about seven, I was in New York and was allowed to rent movies from the local video store. The rule was that I was allowed to rent one movie that I wanted to watch, and one my parents would choose. My parents, being a couple of freaks, would pick French New Wave or Italian Neorealists films, and directors like Roman Polanski. I remember watching Rosemary’s Baby and I was like: what is my dad thinking?!  

Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960)

I really liked the old psychological horrors, especially Hitchcock, because I was really into the fallen personalities. I started getting into filmmakers like Nicholas Ray, who was probably the first director to focus on the psychological trauma and the flawed personality in cinema (he did Rebel Without a Cause starring James Dean). I really like the flawed ‘I can’t handle my own personality’ kind of thing, which I would argue came originally from Nicholas Ray.

As a fellow metaller I’d like to ask the ‘Metal Baron’: what are your favourite bands? 

I’m an eclectic nerd when it comes to music and a hi-fi enthusiast.  

I’m guessing you can blast out this giant house with some serious noise.  

Oh yes, great acoustics! My favourite bands: Neurosis, Type O Negative, Dark  Throne, Death, Obituary, Marauder, Lingua Ignata, Cannibal Corpse. 

What are the options for modern filmmakers? When I hear video-on-demand I think Netflix. 

Netflix doesn’t pay much for movies. You’ll be surprised how much those filmmakers are losing, and that’s the problem. The industry is losing so much money, so fast. Now Netflix has their own film people that they like. They may pay them a bit more, but then they’re just a studio again. Because their only interest is video-on-demand, there aren’t many revenue streams: if you sell on Netflix, you can’t go to the cinema and can’t sell DVDs. Generally, you have to be commissioned by them, which means Netflix owns your movie outright. 

The film industry is about to collapse in the next ten years and it’s going to be massive.

The film industry is about to collapse in the next ten years and it’s going to be massive. Too many producers are losing money. There’s no incentive to invest in film and so more and more films need to get state funding. When you start putting people who work for the government in a room to make decisions about film, you’re not going to get great cinema. Let’s be fair, it’s going to be a creative sinkhole.  

I’m not saying you have to reinvent the wheel but there’s not even the possibility of trying something different, narratively speaking. You really need to have the hook in the first five to ten minutes, and that doesn’t leave you a lot of room to try anything different, structurally.  

The stories I want to tell with film revolve around reality as a perception, about maintaining a sense of mystery and not explaining everything. What I’m doing with my films and with rewilding the estate, is what my great-grandfather Edward would have done, what he’d do if he was here today.  

And how do you reconcile your creative goals and your responsibilities? 

The movies are a personal joy. The title and estate are duty.  

Duty comes first.