Drawing on real-life events in Soalhães, in Serra do Marão, in O Crime de Aldeia Velha Manuel Guimarães seeks to merge something of classic genre film, in particular folk horror, with an almost documentary gaze at the romantic and social relationships in rural 1930s Portugal. In the subsoil of this story of love and desire between an irresistible woman and the men of the village, themes of superstition and witchcraft help us understand how configurations of femininity and men’s “ownership” of women were a part of Portuguese reality.